Happy Wednesday FitFam! Today I want to talk goals, carbs, fat and food allergies! Most of you may already know my story but for those of you who may not, I will give you an update to get you up to speed.
I started my health and fitness journey about 3.5ish years ago after I started dating this super hot personal trainer guy who is my now boyfriend of over 4 years.
I was overweight and he had 6 pack abs. Like most people I started my journey out of vanity and I just wanted to lose a few pounds. So Chris gave it to me straight, he told me that in order to lose the weight I would have to start eating a clean diet and start working out and that didn’t mean becoming a cardio queen! He got me in the weight room, put some weights in my hand and told me to LIFT. I started out barely being able to lift a 5lb weight for a set of 12 reps…my how things have changed!
I didn’t magically one day snap my fingers and turn into the healthnut that I am today, it took a good while before I would comply with the recommendations Chris gave to me. I resisted meal prep for quite a while until I was tired of not seeing the results I was after. Then one day eating clean, meal planning and prepping just became a habit for me! It was like the weight loss light switch had turned on and it was shocking! Me + planning + tracking my food = weight loss! That formula just worked for me!
Then it was like I was a mad scientist trying to figure out what food worked best for weight loss. Which meant experimentations with excluding different food groups. The first one I tried was dairy, I had this bright idea to cut out dairy for a week or two to see if I lost a few pounds. Well I felt good by removing cheese, milk and Greek yogurt but I didn’t see any real weight loss. So I added the dairy back in and I immediately became very bloated and gassy {YUCK}! I tried a few more times and then I realized the sad truth that I am lactose intolerant. But I wasn’t going to let that get me down, I was going to go back to my old friend soy milk {I was a vegetarian for a little less than a year when I first moved to NYC this, of course, was after reading the book Skinny Bitch}. So I went to Starbucks and ordered a coffee with soy milk and enjoyed every sip. I felt great, but then after about a week or so I started experiencing symptoms that were similar to my lactose intolerance except on steroids! I looked about 3 months pregnant and had stinky stinky uncontrollable gas that could clear out a football arena {sorry TMI…I know!}. It first started with soy milk and then with food items cooked with soy and then even soy lethicin which usually doesn’t affect people with soy allergies because it is an emulsifier derived from soy. I literally couldn’t eat anything that I didn’t cook! It was terrible and spent many nights crying because I couldn’t have a nice dinner out because everything in a restaurant was marinated in soy except for the cheese.
But I dealt with it and eventually found a way to manage my food allergies by making healthy treats to feel like I wasn’t missing out and finding a few great restaurants that were allergy friendly. A year or so after the discovery of my soy and dairy allergies/intolerance, I got curious why all of the sudden I was dealing with these issues as an adult. I started doing my own research around the internet, on podcasts and in school at IIN. I realized that I may have Leaky Gut Syndrom! That’s when your intestinal lining has tiny holes which allows the food you eat and other toxins you ingest to seep through the gut wall lining and into your blood stream causing an allergic inflammatory response.
It made sense to me once I looked back over my health history starting from birth and into my adult life. I went from being a sick baby having an allergy to milk and being fed soy formula, to a teen getting on birth control at a very early age, to an adult drinking my face off, eating crap food, taking antibiotics, working overnight shifts and getting super stressed out over my job!
Well after soy and dairy, then it was an egg allergy. I went from eating eggs 3 times per day to them giving me such bad respiratory issues that I almost had to go to the hospital! Then other things started to affect me like my beloved sweet potatoes, possibly coffee {verdict is still out on this one, but it’s mostly because I am in denial, I now drink mostly decaf}, kabocha and acorn squash, hemp protein {which is said to be a very digestible protein}, buckwheat, and quinoa. Not being able to eat eggs and sweet potatoes nearly sent me into a downward spiral! These were foods I was eating every day, several times per day and LOVED with all my heart! It was awful.
So I decided to look into Natasha Campbell-McBride’s GAPS diet from her book Gut and Psychology Syndrome. Natasha originally created this diet based off the specific carbohydrate diet and used it to cure her son’s autism. It’s a gut healing protocol that can last anywhere from 1-2 years. You have to completely remove starches and any other foods that are a gut irritant, drink a lot of bone broth, eat fermented vegetables, and take probiotics and other supplements. As you heal and seal the gut lining, you gradually add foods back in and move towards living a normal life again. While on the diet it’s almost impossible to eat out or go to a friend’s house for dinner. You really can’t cheat on this diet because it just won’t work. It’s intense and is a major commitment but if you are willing to put in the time and get serious about it, it can heal a leaky gut and possibly cure most food allergies and intolerances.
I ended up deciding to hold off on the full GAPS diet for right now because of my current fitness goals for 2014. But I did decide that I would incorporate some of the practices of GAPS to hopefully help relieve some of my digestion issues and get the ball rolling with healing my leaky gut!
When I first considered doing the GAPS diet, it sounded somewhat doable to me. It actually reminded me a lot of the standard ketogenic diet {SKD} which I had tried for a stint last year. If you are not familiar with keto, it is a high fat, moderate protein, very low carb (under 25g per day) eating plan that is used for fat loss as well as other health conditions such as epilepsy. When you eat this way, it forces your body to go into a state of ketosis where your body produces ketones, causing it to switch over from burning carbohydrates for fuel and starts to burn fat for fuel/energy. I decided that since I was still going to incorporate some of the gut healing protocol and also I was also aiming for some other BIG fitness goals this year, that a keto approach would work best for me. With this style of eating I am able to still lose fat, gain muscle, keep my energy up and also keep most gut irritants out of my diet!
My nutrition game plan for the first part of 2014:
- I started a cyclical ketogenic diet {CKD} plan. The cyclical keto program is very similar to a standard keto program but it incorporates a high carb/low fat day every week or so to help restore glycogen stores in the muscle and liver. This is so I am not always doing low carb and I can give my mind, body and hormones a break now and again. Chris and I decided that I would carb-up or re-feed about every 12 days. I am going to try to keep my carbs as clean as possible and keep adjusting according to how my body responds to them.
- I will get the ball rolling with gut healing practices by taking a really good probiotic daily and eat probiotic foods like fermented vegetables, continue to take my L-glutamine powder which is great for gut lining repair, make and enjoy homemade bone broth, try to reduce my stress, and also reduce starchy carbs in between my re-feed days to give my digestive system a rest.
So for my What I Ate Wednesday here is what a day of eating looks like for me:
8:00am (pre-workout) – almond milk latte with stevia and MCT oil. I also take BCAAs and Glutamine for muscle preservation as well as gut healing.
- This is my own spin on bulletproof coffee, you can find the official recipe here. MCTs are the fats naturally found in coconut oil but are digested much faster since they require less enzymes and bile and are absorbed directly into the liver. They promote sustainable energy throughout the day and can promote weight loss by helping to increase metabolism and promotes increased ketone production making it the perfect Keto friendly fat!
12:30pm – grassfed ground beef, with portobello mushrooms and kale
3:30pm – chicken breast with salsa verde and bacon
- After I cook my chicken, I throw it all in the food processor and shred it well. This has really helped my digestion recently since my body doesn’t have to work to hard to process my meals.
6:30pm – tilapia well seasoned and cooked in bacon grease {aka fat}, avocado, bacon, a few sliced cherry tomatoes on a collard green wrap
10:00pm - Coconut Snowballs dessert
This eating schedule is what works for me and my lifestyle. I’ve heard from many people who are on keto that they only eat a couple meals a day but I just prefer to break mine up. One of the benefits of a ketogenic diet is that you are satiated from the fat and protein, so you don’t have to eat as often. Sometimes I can go several hours if needed before I have my next meal without getting hungry or headaches.
If you are interested in learning more of what this keto thing is all about, I recommend you check out Kim Knoch’s new book Kick the Weight with Keto! Kim was a former carb addict who lost 40+ pounds with keto. She wrote this amazing ebook that explains the many benefits of keto in simple terms, it includes 30 recipes, and gives her best tips and tricks on how to rock the keto diet!
Click here to view more details
I realize that not everyone is doing low carb but that most of you want to eat plenty of healthy balanced meals, so if that sounds like you, then go ahead and download my FREE 7 day meal plan {soy, dairy & gluten free}, tips, guide, blank DIY meal plan and shopping list!
What kind of health issues are you currently work on?
Do you or anyone you know suffer from leaky gut or food allergies?
