Friday, August 16, 2013

Day 2: No Running so lets talk Food

Todays lunch: potato salad with dairy free mayo

I find it hard to talk about food and diet in general as its not a subject that I love!  It seems every generation there is a new something that must be taken out of everyone's diet to solve the growing issues with weight ... we took out fat, we've taken out carbs, low gi was the way to go, sugar is a drug that should not be tolerated, gluten is poisonous, dairy has terrible side effects, and don't use artificial anythings if you expect to live!  Even fruit has had it's protesters, and don't even get me started about liquid diets and food replacement program's ... where does it stop?  To be honest I think there will always be a next big idea that will aim to solve everyone's weight loss.

I often hear about someone who knew someone who new someone else who lost a lot of weight doing some new amazing diet and it worked wonderfully.  Next minute half the village are doing it and wondering why their results aren't the same or not working at all.  For me the easy, maybe not right, answer is that we are all different in the way we function internally and each diet will do something different for each person.  So for me the answer lies in trying various ideas and seeing what you body likes in terms of not only weight loss but also in terms of inner well being.  We all have our favourites, you know the diet that worked really well but needed lots of will power ... I think most of us know which foods we have to stop eating if we want to make a difference to our weight.  For my sister its sugar, she stops eating it and the weight falls off her.  For Caryn, she has found the Dukan Diet was brilliant, it shifted weight for the half iron man and kept it off using this method.  Caryn is talking about diet on her blog this week as she has some dilemmas with the Dukan Diet and is experimenting with her choices as well!
 
For me?  Well I haven't got the full answer and lots of the next year will be about finding the answer.  Two food groups I know my body doesn't love are gluten and dairy.  I LOVE dairy foods ... cheese is my chocolate as I don't have a natural sweet tooth.  Several months ago I gave up both after doing some research to see if it would help me mentally, physically, and internally.  I am one of those people that believe if you do enough research you can find the evidence to support both sides of the argument :0)  As such, I wasn't overly optimistic about any major changes dropping these two food groups would bring but thought I would give them the three week stand down and reintroduce them one at a time after that.  For me, the feeling of wellness was so, well ... exhilarating I have stuck with no gluten and no dairy 95% of the time and still feel awesome!  It's not going to be the same for everyone, but if you have an inkling about what food group you think you body might have an intolerance for, drop it for three weeks and see if you have any positive results.  Three weeks is a small amount of time to do some personal testing and if you don't see any results there's been no harm and you can continue to enjoy that food group!!

The down side of reducing these two food groups has been the increase in my sugar consumption.  While I have adapted from drinking lattes to long blacks, the coffee now has a sugar in it :0(  As I said above, I don't naturally have a sweet tooth but have developed one since quitting gluten and dairy.  I am keen to get rid of the majority of sugar as well but need to better understand how to put in place a well rounded, flavourful diet that's not boring either!!

So this year the food journey will be a trial and error one hopefully ending up with an answer that is right for me but providing people with lots of ideas along the way they can try for themselves.  I love to try new ideas and new recipes and I will be doing both over the coming 12 months, especially with the help of Pinterest ... my go to website for seeking fresh, fun ideas for anything! 




No comments:

Post a Comment