I feel really healthy – why do I need to change the way I eat?
I feel really healthy so I don’t see any reason to change the way I eat. I hear that from a lot from people who are interested in the lifestyle and diet changes I have made in my life. While these days I don’t need a lot of convincing that the lifestyle and diet changes I have made over the last 6 months have been some of the most important steps I have ever taken in my life, I am constantly reading about the effects of sugar, gluten and grains on our physiology and health. I don’t do it because I need reassurance that my diet choices are correct ones, but because I just have a voracious appetite for information. As a lawyer I was taught to always question, question, question. This can be annoying to some, but its a process that I have to go through to understand issues. Look, as a lawyer, I could probably make a very convincing argument that this whole primal/paleo thing is just a crock. Lots of people would easily buy it. However, I have never had such a difficult time convincing others that the diet choices they are making are killing them. Why is that people can understand that jumping off a building can kill them, or not using a seat belt increases there risk of serious injury or death if they are in a car accident, but don’t understand why bread, pasta, and grains can cause cancer, heart issues, diabetes and a host of other serious ailments. This is a difficult question to answer but I can see why there is resistance to making a wholesale change in the way we eat.
Bread, cake, cookies, pasta – they all taste good and give a lot of us comfort. For most, they don’t cause intestinal discomfort or any tangible immediate signs that they are poisoning us. We also see people who eat bread, pasta, rice, and cake live relatively long healthy lives while still enjoying these foods. While I have seen changes in the way I feel after stopping eating these foods, the changes haven’t been what I would describe as remarkable. I felt pretty good and healthy before I started. I think what convinced me most was the research I did (I’m not much of a follower – I need to see concrete evidence before making a huge change in my life), but mostly what convinced me was the remarkable changes I saw in other people who have made the same changes. If my partner could, at a relatively young age go from having high blood pressure and bad cholesterol issues to completely turning this around, including completely stopping taking blood pressure medication and cholesterol lowering drugs, it wasn’t hard for me to see that while I didn’t have those problems, the way he ate had some serious connection to his health issues. While the same type of diet did not cause me to have similar tangible identifiable problems, I understood that to some degree it was probably problematic for me as well. just not as visible.
I recently came across an excellent blog post on the affects of grain and our health on The Blog of Tim Ferriss – Experiments in Lifestyle Design and author of the New York Times bestseller “The 4-Hour Workweek”. He explains the problems with most grains and gluten in particular as well as its effects on our physiology. He also identifies 3 individuals, a 61 year old women with a myriad of health issues, a middle aged man with unexplained horrible allergic reactions every time he eats, and a 5 year old with serious digestive problems. All of these people saw remarkable changes after simply changing there diet – something apparently none of their doctors saw fit to even address. I would really encourage you to read this post, if not for reassurance that your lifestyle choices are right, but for added encouragement to continue on this path of living a grain free life.
Maybe your like me and you don’t need additional reassurance, but reading this kind of stuff, at least for me, makes me feel good. It’s like getting a A on a test, you study hard and you see tangible evidence that the hard work you are doing pays off. Its just satisfying. Perhaps you need ammunition. I seem to be constantly talking about my diet changes and people are interested, but mostly resistant. It’s nice to have additional information and concrete real life examples to give to people who are open but, like me, may not have any tangible health issues or problems to convince them that eating grain free is better for them. The science is lost on many, so seeing real life change in others is much more convincing.
I learn something new everyday and its fun to pass the information on to others. For instance I’m not sure I realized how grains, high in lectins, damaged, I mean really damaged, our guts. I knew that they were anti-nutrients, but that during digestion they cause your gut lining to be permeable which can lead to a host of autoimmune diseases was news to me. In light of this revelation, I plan on doing some more research and reporting further, and in particular, will report on my findings regarding digestion, including something you might be surprised can aid in digestion and actually counter the effects of lectins you may consume.
Have a great day!
No comments yet.
