Confessions of a Diet Hack – Part III – Waking Up

Having set out to radically change my lifestyle – indefinitely – it might appear to be a bit of let down when I say that my detox lasted a mere 36 days. Truth be told, not even my steely resolve to fight a yeast foe (detailed in Part II) could resist going on holiday and getting hitched.

So my circumstances were special. No one in their right mind would allow their gut woes to jeopardise their wedding day, right? (That's a job for cold feet!) Mercifully, although my mind wasn't completely right before the wedding (Part II), I still had some sanity on reserve for the Big Day. In other words, I managed to avoid being awkward among loving relatives and friends by practically licking the plate during the three-course French wedding lunch banquet – dessert included.

Yes I ate like a person who enjoys food and, from what I gather, nobody suspected anything. I didn't worry about the amount of corn starch in the hazelnut dressing in my starter. I did not obsess about the mould content in the coffee that infused my slow-cooked lamb cutlet. Nor did I wonder whether the piece of meat belonged to an animal that was fed on grass (it probably wasn't). I had no hang-ups about the quantity of sugar or gluten in my moreish chocolate cake with its molten centre or the dairy content in my vanilla quenelle. In fact, for the first time in six weeks, I (and my bowels!) breathed a huge sigh of relief. The wedding ceremony was over and I didn't choke on my chocolate cake. The End.

A certain kind of freedom

When the world failed to implode after that first brush with said chocolate cake, I decided that I ought to establish a new 'special' relationship with my gut. Instead of the fear-driven (lukewarm rather than hot) war that had ensued between us, the new relationship would be one based on fairness and balance, not control. I would trade armoury for diplomacy. There would be some give and take on both sides. This new enlightened approach would hopefully pipe down my stress levels, which would then benefit the both of us. Hurray!

Of course, concessions were needed from both parties. From my side, I needed to promise to continue eating my greens and laying off sugar, gluten and other refined carbs on a general basis. In turn, my gut needed to refrain from sending out its army of Mr Albicans (why am I picturing Agent Smith in this moment?) whenever my hand was in the biscuit tin.

Okay, okay – so my gut and I are still negotiating on this last one. For instance, when I started eating more 'forbidden foods' after that first bite of chocolate cake, my eczema did flare up. However – and this is a big However – I have since managed to keep the inflammation under control by using a non-steroidal moisturising cream. During the detox, I had formed an almost evangelical belief in the singular healing power of food, blinding me to the utility of more conventional medications.

Even though my gut still likes to kick up a fuss, it has reassured me that its paroxysms to human weakness would be merely passing. Like showers in the meteorological sense. No flooding of hard feelings would result.

But the biggest and most important concession to come from my gut was a missive that went like this: 'Estella, unlike those poor people with fatal allergies and severe autoimmune diseases, like coeliac disease, you have choice when it comes to what you put in your mouth. As long as you're willing to accept the responsibility that comes with choice you can do what you want, my friend.'

After all the drama, it was understanding the deceptively simple idea of choice that finally unshackled me. It made me realise that my gut and the many prophets of gut health including Paleo Mom, Chris Kresser and Mark Sisson have no real power over me. It was I who gave them that power. Left to their own devices, why would they bother diving out from my laptop screen to hold me above a candle burning frankincense and make me sacrifice nightshades and white rice to Lamashtu and other demons. I'm not that special.

So, yes, I had gone a little bit mad.

But now I am sober and enjoying being a little dirty again. So much so that I am typing this up between indulgent sips of a full-fat, whipped dairy flat white.

Food for thought, duh!

With the dust all but settled, I am finally in the position to evaluate what went well during my dieting charade. The proverbial light at the end of a 36-day-long tunnel.

Apart from feeling trimmer, my brain cells got some welcome action. Paradoxically, the obsessiveness that had assaulted my sanity as detailed in Part II had simultaneously raised my level of consciousness about what it means to be a living organism within the vast ecosystem we call Earth.

Messing around with my diet meant that I got to lurk about the not-too-trivial subjects of the human body and, well, nutrition. Not only did I wake up to What I eat, I considered for the first time ever What my body does when I eat and Where the food I eat comes from. Foremost, it made me think seriously (rather than in passing) about the impact the food I eat has on my health and that of the planet's. In hindsight, it astounds me how, despite my intimate relationship with food, I had never once given much thought about food beyond its taste, how it looks on the plate and how satisfying, or not, it is.

As 2013 drew to a close, a minor revolution was unfolding in my head – not just stomach.

The common refrain 'is it good enough to eat?' took on a whole new meaning.

The following sections gloss over the journey my mind took as a newborn explorer of food and nutrition. Forgive me if it's all a bit disjointed. I can't seem to make it read better.

What is food?

This new interest in food nutrition inevitably threw up all sorts of weird and wonderful facts about the basic substances that keep us alive. I mean, what, after all, are these carbohydrates that we so despise? Does your body distinguish sugar in fruit from that in Coke? What does insulin do? How can your liver get fat? Are all saturated fats bad? What are macronutrients and micronutrients? Is there a preference for insoluble over soluble fibre? Why does soluble fibre make us gassy?

My mind boggled with such questions related to the bigger question of 'What exactly is food?'. It then occurred to me that these questions are as vital to our being human as the popular existential ones we all ask ourselves at some point – namely, 'Who Am I?'. These questions about our relationship with food are ultimately questions of identity. After all, We Are What We Eat, no?

(For those who like a puzzle: at what point does an apple that you eat cease being something independent of you?)

What is the impact of my food consumption having on the planet?

I learned that eating locally-sourced pesticide-free foods isn't just an idle treehugger's fancy but is really quite vital to promoting human health. After all, the longer it takes between harvesting a carrot, say, and getting it on supermarket shelves and then onto someone's plate, the more of its juicy beta-carotenes and antioxidants it loses. In other words, supermarkets shortchange us on nutritional value, and pump the air with carbon dioxide to boot. Moreover, chemical fertilisers and pesticides mess with the health of the planet's soil, which then messes with the quality of its food, which then messes with the health of our bodies. So there is a strong case to be made for supporting people who grow food on soil nurtured by organic matter, such as poo from livestock. Only now am I beginning to appreciate how intelligent and self-regulating the planet's ecosystems really is. Humans, with all their arrogance, always think they have the solution to everything.

How nasty is the modern food industry, really?

I'd been aware of the well-documented havoc agriculture and the modern food industry in the West is wrecking on our planet, our guts and our attention spans. Fast Food Nation and all that. But I never really understood the immensity of the problem or the fact that the fast food leviathan is just the tip of the iceberg, its ugly face.

For instance, I never knew that corn-fed, factory-farmed livestock, for all its moral implications, are so nutritionally deficient (all the good stuff like Omega-3s gets zapped out of it). Given that they have no room to wander freely, these poor caged birds also fester in their own shit. No wonder they are at risk of getting sick and so are pumped full of antibiotics – which incidentally also fattens them up. Yum! Moreover, the abuse of antibiotics has led to the emergence of so-called 'superbugs'.

On the other hand, grass-fed cows that are free to roam on green pastures provide a good source of Omega-3s, betacarotene, vitamins E and K, and trace minerals. No surprise considering these animals biologically prefer grass to corn. 

How our livestock are treated affects those who consume it. It's the food chain, stupid! And if it's getting too expensive to eat properly cared-for meat, then maybe we should cut back our meat consumption.

Food poverty in the developed world

Living by the dictates of the modern food industry means that even denizens of the developed world are more than likely to be undernourished. We no longer benefit from the colossal biodiversity that our highly resourceful, foraging ancestors once enjoyed. Estimates of the number of edible plants in the world currently range from tens of thousands to 250,000-300,000. Yet, according to Gary Paul Nabhan, author of the excellent book Food, Genes and Culture, we have whittled our consumption down to a few hundred domesticated plants and made ourselves dependent only a handful of cultivated grains. Even that sounds like a lot when I survey my weekly shopping basket.

Another fun fact: contrary to popular opinion, our pre-agrarian ancestors were actually less likely to starve than we are because they were less picky about what they ate, which enabled them to adapt to seasonal and climate changes. It's no accident that the most devastating famines in history all occurred after we invented agriculture, created the food industry and severed our connection to the land.

Hippocrates, you wise, wise soul

Food really is thy medicine innit? We've all heard this one before. But like most things, the penny only drops when something bad happens to you. In my case, I first experienced the gravitas of the proverb when I started attending to my poor gut. Here's a piece of vindication that I'm particularly proud of: during the Winter Flu Season of 2013, I started each morning with a glass of lemon water, ate raw garlic, did some yoga, and hoped for the best. And it worked. No flu vaccination needed. It's now February and counting.

As I mentioned in Part II, everything I was consuming – no matter the number of calories – had some nutritional value. I was fuelling my body like one really should from the perspective of wellness, and earning an extra layer of protection from airborne nasties to go with my new down jacket from Uniqlo.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the astonishing fact that, almost everywhere on the planet, we are being persuaded to diminish our body's natural healing capabilities by a manufactured desire to binge on toxins, whether in the form of cheap calories or drugs. The drug industry and medical profession profit from treating illnesses rather than in disease prevention. Now thinkers like Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, are hastening a Copernican Revolution in the way we think about health. If we can promote wellness we needn't sink billions into curing illness. In fact, I am currently reading about epigenetics, a newish but radical movement in biology that asserts that, contrary to almost a century reigned by the ideology of genetic determinism, we are not victims of our genes. We are ultimately in control over our genes - and so whether or not we will be healthy.

Instilling this thought should start with the younger generations. Schools that haven't already should introduce nutrition and food preparation lessons. Better yet, students should be taught how to grow their own food. If a child knows how to cook and where their food comes from, would he or she be more or less likely to snack on fried chicken?

Unfortunately, when I was at school, our home economics classes were a) optional and b) focussed solely on baking rather than on cooking dishes using fresh ingredients. So I had to do my own catching-up, ashamedly in my late twenties. Although I'd been cooking for as long as I'd lived on my own, I never paid attention to food preparation and the best cooking techniques that preserve nutrients. I guess therein lies the problem with our schooling. In school, you learn how read, write, do maths and memorise facts so that you can be a good work soldier. But you're lucky if you're taught vital life skills.

When I get over my insecurity at having killed more than one basil plant, I will try my hand at being an urban gardener :-)

Back to Slow Food, please. And not just in Italy

Given that food is thy medicine and medicine is thy food, I now find the notion of people mindlessly munching down their prepackaged supermarket sandwiches while trawling through emails or reading the Daily Mail irredeemably absurd. Not only is the quality of what we eat in question, the very act of eating in the industrialised world is not a priority even though it is a major determiner of how productive we are. Modern capitalistic culture simply does not allow time for eating without distraction even if its in its interest to do so.

To be fair, some companies have woken up to the notion of a healthy workforce. Mindfulness workshops are the trend du jour and companies offering free gym memberships to their minions are almost commonplace. Nevertheless, in the UK at least, it remains de rigueur to overwork its people 40+ hours a week. I reckon that the majority of lunch hour body crunchers get about as much time to eat after their workouts as it takes to slurp down a protein shake. I therefore suggest (with a smile) that there should be a strict enforcement of siestas in the afternoon to allow people to eat and digest their food so that they can return to work feeling energised rather than harried and grumpy. The world – that means, the economy – will have to slow down so that people can learn to use their tastebuds again. What is mindfulness, after all?

I think I will end this post here lest it gets insufferably long. To the one person who has clung on until the last paragraph, well done and thank you! As your reward, you will have Part IV to look forward to.