To recap on Part I: I found myself doing the unthinkable at the end
of 2013. I cleaned up my diet. Getting married in December 2013 had
something to do with it. But mainly, my gut was making noises that
one can only ignore for so long. I managed to do so for about a year.
This post goes into the consequences of dieting in one of the foodie
capitals of the world. 'Consequences' is probably too neutral a term.
'Collateral damage' better describes things...
Gut reactions
It
took about 10 days before I began reaping the 'good' effects promised
by a muscular detox. These effects included a whole gamut of
so-called 'die off' Herxheimer reactions: bouts of nausea, headaches,
muscle weakness, skin outbreaks and the brain fog came back. It was like an initiation process. Although I felt ill, I was comforted by the thought that the
Big Yeast Beast ravaging my gut, Candida
Albicans,
was finally kicking the can, and letting out lots of nasties in the
process.
Stabilised
energy levels
But then after the initial turbulence, my energy levels began
stabilising. In fact my blood sugar levels were so calm that my days
assumed different shades of grey. No more flip-flopping between
moments of darkness and rainbows for me! To M's relief, I had also
stopped acting out my nightmares and nightmarish fashion.
I
had also finally emasculated (though not fully eradicated) the
eczema - which kickstarted everything.
Drastic
weight loss
My
body weight took a dive, which was actually quite unintentional.
Starved of glucose and carbohydrates from food, I was burning mostly
fat. Even though you'd think it is a piece of common sense, I didn't realise that fat is the best store of energy until I started seriously plundering it!
The
ending of an affair
So
drastic were the results, I managed to convince myself that I didn't
need sugar anymore, ever. To be sure, cutting it out from my diet was
a traumatic
experience in itself. It felt like the ending of an affair, a relationship I
had become so dependent on. Whoever said Chinese people have no taste
for sweet things is just plain wrong! So. Wrong. Going sugarless the
first week left me feeling bereft and vulnerable. Thankfully the
grieving process lightened up after about 2 weeks when I reached the
Acceptance
Stage by forming the realisation that
what I was actually mourning was the death of Mr Albicans. It was one of
those “what were you thinking?” type relationships, a telling sign of which was the fact that I prefaced any
talk of Candida with a possessive. My
candida...
What empty
calories?
A far less morbid side effect was the natural buzz I got from the
realisation that everything I was eating was now packed full of
nutrients. There were no more empty calories (like cake) or (known)
toxins in my diet. I felt like I finally earned the title
of Qualified Health Nut and the perceived moral high ground that came
with the status made me feel pretty damn good. I had transformed into
a Warrior Woman nearly overnight, fighting not just the scourge of
Candida but the greater war against highly addictive sugary processed
foods in the developed world! I was a poster child
for the ravages of the modern food industry!
Now for the bad
news
All this detox business was meant to be sobering me up. Yet, around
Day 18, things started going haywire. My resolve to eradicate Mr
Albicans started spiralling out of control. What began as a
curiosity, a bit of self-experimentation, became a 24-hour
preoccupation about what I was putting in my body. My monkey mind was
gummed up with questions like: Is it clean? What's the sugar content
in this can of coconut milk? How many carbs have I eaten today? Is it
under 100g? Did I overcook the vege? Should I even cook the veg? Are
the airtight jars for my activated almonds really airtight?
And I wasn't even counting calories!
This
mental carousel quickly metastasised into a monstrous carnival, with
my touchy gut as the headlining act.
Gut
feelings
Several
sources ostensibly written
by scientists
(here and here) state that, a part from everything else, dodgy gut health can be linked to mental diseases like depression, anxiety, ADHD and autism, which is probably a consequence of our modern
diets and lifestyles. This is based on the idea of the so-called
'brain-gut' connection.
Your gut is your 'second brain', containing some 100 million neurons, and it is the one system in the body that sends signals of distress
or contendedness to the brain (not just the other way around).
Apparently some 95 per cent of the emotion regulator, serotonin, is
found in the bowels. This biological fact could explain why we talk
about having 'gut reactions' and 'butterflies in the stomach'.
So
if your gut is under the weather, so are you.
But
I wanted to be over
the weather (a tall order in England, I know).
I felt compelled to
patch things up with my gut (I should really give it a name). I had
to do my darnedest to furnish it with friends like
Lactobacillus
acidophilus
and other tongue-twisting good gut microbes. After the terrible
havoc wrecked by Mr Albicans,
I owed it that much.
But
I took on this new project with the gusto of someone who traded one
abusive relationship for another.
Where
before sugar ruled my life, dictating my highs and lows, now it was
my gut's turn. It was the partner from hell – demanding, childish
and even a little bit suicidal. Unlike a person, though, I couldn't
just walk away from my gut in a final act of defiance. I had to
endure its seductive calm 'flat belly' moments which would be
punctured by unpredictable shows of unpleasantness: noises that were
as off-putting as Schoenberg's twelve-tone experiments, skin
eruptions after lunch, and missed trips to the loo. I would then have to
call in my crisis intervention unit which would start asking all the hard
questions. Did I forget to take my probiotics? Did I accidentally
ingest some mould? Did I mindlessly forget to chew my food down to a
liquid pulp?
Instead
of falling asleep with a big fat cookery tome left open on my belly (as any self-respecting normal person would do), I regularly
nodded off to pages like this.
By
the fourth week of my detox, I had whiplash from an accelerated
joyride through all the various diet crazes – Dukan, microbiotic,
Atkins, FODMAPs, SIBO, GAPs, and the great, great, great grandaddy of them all - the Paleo Diet. As the British would say, with the colourful plethora of ways one can restrict oneself, I might as well just sod off to
a cave and eat air. Or heed Little Britain's Marjorie Dawes' advice and eat dust.
Even now as I write this, I feel the urge to scream.
By now you can probably guess that my hapless efforts at placating my gut
(Godzilla!) backfired miserably. I was unhappy and stressed and no fun to be around with. Sorry M.
Unhappy
together
Firstly,
about being unhappy. By taking a forensic eye to what I was eating, I
had managed to hoover up all the romance and pleasure out of the
activity. Eating now became a purely functional matter. I ate to live
rather than lived to eat because I was constantly being surveilled by
a phantom health and safety inspector. This left me with no choice
but to stick to eating salads sozzled with extra virgin olive oil
(cold-pressed, of course), raw garlic, lemon and turmeric powder. But
it was November going on December so the days were turning nippy and
I was literally left feeling cold.
If
I got the mid-afternoon munchies (which, disappointingly, did not go
away), I ate a spoonful of coconut oil a
la
Elle Macpherson and her ilk.
Its health benefits notwithstanding, it didn't vanquish my cravings
for the satisfying crunch
of a piece of chocolate or a bowlful of granola. My gut may not have
teeth, but my sentient being does!
Mr
Albicans' scaremongering gave me a scarcity mindset. I fixated on
what I couldn't eat rather than on the little known abundance of
edible foods sprouting from Mother Nature's bosom (did you know that
the world has 250,000-300,000 edible plants?). But when you're down in the dumps, the last thing you want to be
thinking about is foraging for food. Especially as a committed urban
dweller.
For self-preservation reasons, I began living vicariously. I
continued watching Nigel Slater lovingly prepare his hearty comfort
foods on television in full knowledge that I could only ever look not
touch. I found myself staring intently at all those people digging
their gnashers into flavoursome food truck pulled-pork baps and the
like without a care in the world for their gut's feelings. I reached the point of insanity when my compulsion to be around 'real food' led
me to journey around London Soho's many fashion-forward eateries so
that I could peer through their fogged-up windows.
It was all very
masochistic and voyeuristic.
There's only
one word for it: Stress
And
then there was all the stress to accompany all the unhappiness. For
some of us, stress is just another thing to be addicted to. It's like
a security blanket. As soon as we gain a handle on our stressors by,
say, doing less, we begin to worry about not doing enough. Stress
shields us from having to air out our soul's dirty laundry. We needn't face the harsh light of living in the present, content as we are at carrying on well away from the precipice of peace. And we think we prefer this state of affairs to the alternative.
But
this
was not
that
kind
of stress. I was focussing too
much
on the present and I was airing enough dirty laundry to draw
complaints from the council. I was meticulously attending to every
whim and disappointment of my gut. This
level of obsessiveness must have sent my cortisol levels through the roof! I was shooting myself in the foot instead of Mr Albicans'
weed-like roots. As you might recall from Part I,
Mr Albicans loves
it when you're stressed. Chris Kresser, a Paleo guru, has this to say on the
subject:
“Stress-induced
alterations to microbial flora could increase the likelihood of
intestinal permeability, which in turn sets the stage for systemic
and local skin inflammation.”
Which was essentially my problem in a nutshell.
So not only was my gut stressing me out, I was stressing my gut out
by being stressed. This circle of stress provided enough stress to fire up the sympathetic
nervous systems of an entire village of hunter gatherers facing an
onslaught of lions.
Worse,
I couldn't do much exercise to relieve the stress. Because my carb
intake was so low (less than 100g a day), my body's energy metabolism
was totally thrown out of whack. The body burns carbs and glucose most
quickly and efficiently during moderate-to-intense levels of
exercise. Whenever I tried pushing my aerobic activity level higher than that demanded by a power walk, I got lightheaded and felt nauseous.
I was probably in ketosis
which is not advisable if you want to do intense aerobic exercise. So I stuck with yoga. But even then, I felt my strength weaken.
Spanner in the
works
So what put the stop on this whirlpool? I went on holiday.
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