Eating to Live: What I Eat, and Why

Hello to my family, friends, acquaintances, and to those who share a passion for wellness! I am excited to share my journeys through this blog, and I wanted to take an opportunity early on to answer a question I often get asked - What exactly will you eat again? And why won’t you eat real food?

Yes, I have what most would call a very restrictive diet. I, however, challenge the assumption that my diet is restrictive or void of real food and consider my dietary choices to be selectively nourishing. I believe in eating to live rather than living to eat.

Regardless, it makes conversation, especially around planning for get togethers, potlucks, and any other time spent with others that includes food, incredibly challenging. My amazing friends and family always want to try to include me in their food preparation plans. I know how difficult that is, and their thoughtfulness, willingness, and want for this is nothing less than a God-given love in their hearts. However, there always seems to come a moment when we find out something was “wrong.” Feelings are sometimes hurt and sometimes I end up eating it regardless, suffering digestive discomfort or feeling sick afterwards. More difficult, I try to have my daughter follow the same dietary choices, compounded in difficulty for others by her cute little face begging for treats that mommy does not normally allow her to eat.

I was pondering this recently while reading Dr. Livingood’s Make Food Simple. What I think the disconnect comes to is that it is too difficult to explain in casual conversation what my food choices are and why I make them. In order to try to alleviate the pressure on everyone else, I simplify my preferences to being gluten, dairy, and sugar free. Then come the awkward conversations when I explain I do eat butter or why the gluten and sugar free crackers are still something I would put on my “bad” list. So, I decided to write this article, where I will do my best to - as succinctly as possible - overview my dietary choices and why I choose to eat this way.

Eating to Live - Choosing Nourishing Foods

If given the opportunity to eat in a way that perfectly sustains my body every day, I could not simply state I am gluten, dairy, and sugar free. It goes much deeper than that. In its simplest form, what I attempt to eat, as often as possible, is food that is as close to the way God created it as possible. This means food that is minimally processed, organic if possible, and that holds the least amount of toxins possible.

As simply as possible, that list includes:

• Vegetables - omitting potatoes (except sweet) as often as possible

• Fruits

• Meat and eggs - preferably from animals fed their natural diet and not injected with steroids and hormones

• Natural sweeteners - maple syrup, local raw honey, stevia

• Natural fats - first cold pressed olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil/milk, and sesame oil

• Raw nuts and seeds (as tolerated)

• Natural peanut butter (this is a “splurge” food I try not to eat a lot of but do allow my daughter to eat daily)

• Herbs and spices that do not contain any ingredient beyond that herb or spice (no mixes)

• Sea salt

• Water - plain or with maca powder, lemon, or apple cider vinegar (with the mother); most often hot

• Cashew milk - very rarely and sometimes with Cacao

• Flours - coconut, almond, cassava, tapioca starch

• Coconut amnos (instead of soy sauce)

These are foods that are minimally processed and close to nature. When I do a good job of diversifying and eating appropriate quantities, these foods provide me with the necessary macronutrients - fats, protein, and carbohydrates - and micronutrients I need for my body to repair itself, heal from inflammation and sickness, and become strong.

Eating to Live - What I Try to Avoid

This means the list does not include a lot of foods other people choose to eat and I must be careful in asking how food in others’ kitchens is prepared. There are many hidden ingredients in various spice mixes, packaged foods, and food that is disguised as being whole that actually denature (strip out the natural vitamins and minerals) the food and leave it lacking nourishment.

When I narrow my list of foods I avoid, I am leaving out a plethora of unnatural foods that have become toxic buildup in my body over the past three decades. Therefore, part of my dietary choices means purposefully excluding, as often as possible, foods that were not a part of God’s original creation or that trigger inflammation and/or sensitivities in my body.

Below are some of the main foods I avoid as often as possible, along with a brief rationale for each:

Sugar

Sugar is the leading cause of inflammation in the American population. We are sugar addicts. It seems everyone knows that sugar is more addictive than cocaine but most shrug if off and consume over 100 pounds of it a year anyway. There is no way to reduce inflammation in the body without eliminating white and brown sugar in all of its forms. Fruit and natural sweeteners should also be eaten in moderation, especially high sugar fruits like bananas. I am not there yet, but I am working on it!

Sugar also hides under multiple names. Gluten-free items often contain a lot of sugar to make the processed food more palatable, so it is a “hidden” ingredient that I often search for. I attempt to avoid all of the following: barley malt, beet sugar, brown sugar, cane juice, caramel, castor sugar, confectioner’s sugar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, dextrin, dextrose, fructose, fruit juice, glucose, high-fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, maltol, maltose, mannose, muscovado, panocha, powdered sugar, saccharose, sorghum, and syrups.

Gluten

I realize God made wheat and other gluten-containing grains. However, our current processing practices for most grains includes stripping them of most of their natural nutrition, bleaching it (as in the case of white flour), then pumping it back full of synthetic (i.e. artificially created) nutrients made in a lab. Yes, scientists can closely recreate vitamins and minerals - but I would much rather give my body an easier time of synthesizing natural-made nutrients as God intended.

Furthermore, I have the autoimmune disease Hashimoto's Thyroiditis. Not only is this a disease of inflammation (consider most bread and processed grain products also have a lot of hidden sugars), one of the theories behind why the body attacks the thyroid is because gluten and thyroid hormones floating in the bloodstream look similar. Because gluten should not be floating around in the bloodstream (it should stay in the intestines, but inflammation leads to leaky-gut, which allows food particles to escape the intestinal tract), the body sounds an alarm and attacks it. When this becomes a recurring cycle over years, the body stops being able to distinguish between the bad gluten and the good thyroid hormone and begins attacking the thyroid as well. Continuing to eat gluten until the gut is completely healed can compound and prolong the body’s attack on the thyroid hormone.

Rancid Fats

I consider fat the most important food I eat. Every single cell in the body is made out of fat, and your brain cells need more fat than any other type of cell. In Matthew 7:24-27, Jesus states,

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”

I use the rock foundation as my analogy of what good fats create in the body and the foundation of sand as my analogy of the effect eating bad fats will cause.

The bilipid layer of the cells is responsible for letting and keeping in the nutrients cells need to do their jobs effectively. Furthermore, it allows toxins created by or passing through the cell, out. When we build these layers with rancid fats, the bilipid layer can no longer effectively allow in what the cell needs and the toxins become trapped. Imagine yourself sitting in a very small, enclosed space, shoulder to shoulder with three other people. They are smoking. There are no windows. The room is sealed shut. As the smoke continues to build, there will be less and less fresh air. Breathing will become more difficult and cumbersome. You may start to feel sick or dizzy. We do this to our bodies on a cellular level when we choose not to eat healthy fats.

What makes fats rancid? Most often it is the extraction process. Hydrogenated oils in any form are poisonous to the body. Even if an oil is not hydrogenated, the food is processed through high temperature heating and pressure mechanisms and sometimes includes the use of solvents, then stored in plastic bottles. The processing turns the fats rancid and the plastic often leaches further anti-nutrients into the fat.

Finally, fats bioaccumulate toxins. This means that every toxin the fat has ever been exposed to will also end up in our bodies. Consider the cow that our meat came from and all of the steroids, growth hormones, antibiotics, and genetically modified, and pesticide-ridden food it was fed prior to being butchered. When we eat this cow, its toxins assimilate into our body and become stored there. This is why I prefer free-range, grass-fed, antibiotic-free meat of any kind, when possible.

Fats I attempt to avoid include: partially hydrogenated oils, hydrogenated oils, canola oil, corn oil, rapeseed oil, mustard seed oil, cottonseed oil, soybean oil, vegetable oil, margarine, synthetic butter; farm-raised fish; meat and dairy from cows that was not free-range or grass-fed.

Corn & Soybeans

Though I will occasionally give into a tortilla chip or wrap when we eat Mexican, I attempt to avoid all corn and soybean products in any form. Corn and soybeans are among the top genetically modified and most over-processed foods eaten in America. I am also sensitive to corn, as my body barely even tolerates it straight from the cob.

Eating to Live - Why I Choose the Narrow Path

The simple version of why I choose to eat this way is because I believe God’s plan for my body is to be healthy, not sick. Furthermore, I have this grand vision of myself as a robust 75 year-old who is still active and full of vitality, playing with my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and having the energy of a 50 year-old. I want to live this as my reality and also help others to (re)claim their health as well.

There is a lengthy backstory as to how I came to this path and the hills and valleys I have encountered along the way, but the short version is I have spent many years suffering from a hidden disease and not understanding what it was or what it meant for my body. My goal now is to witness God’s plan for my body and watch the miracle of His creation unfold in my daughter’s health as I give her as many essential building blocks within my locus of control to live a vibrant, healthy lifestyle.

The reality is that most of today’s processed foods were created with the intention of satisfying the palate and being hyper-pleasing so people would continue to buy it. Most of this food has been denatured - stripped of any available natural vitamins and minerals and then “fortified” with close approximations that were created in a lab. While our bodies can synthesize some of these re-additions, it’s akin to putting cheap fuel in our cars versus higher grade fuel. I want my body to run optimally, so I want to feed it optimal fuel.

I realize this makes me “different” than most people I will associate with. That it may paint different targets on my back. That I will be viewed a mean and uncaring mother, though my only goal is to help build my daughter’s body stronger than 98 percent of her peers’ so she does not have to suffer through many of the health struggles they will, whether it be serious like depression or an autoimmune condition or even mildly annoying like acne. I believe in the power of God’s innate design to help us avoid or at least negate the severity of most diseases and illnesses, but I also believe to enjoy health, we must build our foundations on the rock, not sand. And this is why I choose the narrow path.