Easter without Chocolate?

Over the last couple of months, I've been clearing out areas of my house and getting rid of junk, cleaning and tidying cupboards, bookshelves and rooms, and generally making the whole house look and feel more spacious. At the same time I've been re-evaluating my diet and eliminating certain foods and giving my body a good overhaul. I'm not actually sure what started first - the diet overhaul or the house cleaning frenzy, but the result is I have a cleaner house and have dropped 3.5 kg without 'trying' to lose weight.

What prompted this change were books, articles, movies, and youtube clips Jag and I discovered during our updating of the Vibrant Health Programme. While each author or speaker has their own area of expertise, there seems to be a lot of discrepancy with regards to nutrition - namely vegetarian vs omnivore, raw vs cooked, and whether grains and legumes were meant for human consumption at all. We learnt how destructive sugar and artificial sweeteners are on our metabolism, the negative effects of phytates, oxalates, lectins and how to minimize the impact of these anti-nutrient plant compounds on our health, and quality and quantity issues regarding meat, fish and poultry. After many hours of discussion and deliberation, we have implemented what we decided was the best way forward, and have both found improvements in energy levels, mental clarity and reductions in body fat. The bio-impedance measurements which measure body composition in terms of fat and muscle, as well as cellular health, fluid balance and biological age indicated that we have both improved the quality of our cellular health, and grown younger than we were even 6 months ago. We haven't been any hungrier than usual, and the food we're eating is readily available and I would say 'normal'.

So what's the secret? We are eating a very simple diet - lots of vegetables, a little fruit, moderate amounts of good quality (non-processed) meat, free range chicken and fish. Nuts, seeds and legumes soaked or sprouted, unprocessed milk, cream, eggs and cheese. What we're not eating is sugar (no cakes, biscuits, crackers, muffins, lollies, chocolate, sweet drinks etc), and minimal amounts of grains (one or at most two servings per day) in the forms of porridge, wholegrain rice and Vogel's thin sliced bread. I'm still having my one coffee per day, drinking lots of herbal teas and the occasional Kombucha tea or home-brewed beer. This may seem simple but it hasn't been easy. Why not? Because I discovered that I also had an addiction to wheat and grains - I would crave crackers or toast during certain times of the day - particularly around 4 or 5pm. While I thought I had it together and limited my intake to one piece of toast or 2 ryvita crackers, the fact remained that I was addicted (arrggg!). When I observed my behavior, and how I was feeling I discovered that first of all I wasn't actually hungry - there was an emotional driver to eating. In fact I could actually tolerate physical hunger quite easily, but the emotional urge was more difficult to tolerate. However, when I did manage to resist the urge to eat and handle the emotions I was avoiding, it wasn't so bad.  In fact, not eating those foods in the afternoon has freed up my energy to get my after-work household chores done much more easily, dinner cooked earlier and more free time in the evening. To add to this my mood is better too - not so easily irritated and a lot more patient.

What we've created is not a new diet - its an eating pattern based on all the traditional and commonsense ideas that made good nutritional and biochemical sense. It's not driven by the need for big companies to make a profit, is not based on fear-mongering, and does not feed into the addictiveness than many processed foods do.

If you're interested to learn more for yourself, read The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon-Morell or visit www.westonaprice.org . Watch the movie Food Inc, http://viooz.eu/movies/2153-food-inc-2008.html and look up Robert Lustig on YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

The weekend is Easter, and the thought of what people will be doing to their bodies by overeating on chocolate and hot-cross buns, knowing what I now know, makes me feel ill. I will be spending my weekend being active and sociable - tramping, dancing and gardening. Not a single easter egg nor hot cross bun will cross my lips, and I won't feel like I'm missing out on anything - except insulin spikes and energy depletion.