As is the case with religion, diet is a very personal journey, you have to figure out what your body needs and take all the scientific studies and distill them into what works for you. Having said that, like everything in life, education is the key.
Over the years I have been on just about every diet imaginable in my eternal quest to shed first the "puppy fat" and then the baby fat. Although all diets have been moderately successful, I have failed to find a sustainable one. If your sole motivation in changing your diet is to lose weight you will never maintain it. It has to be a mindset. You have to know what food does to your body in order to make educated choices. If that means eating that donut or custard slice at least you're doing it in full knowledge of what it's doing to your body and will savour it more for being forbidden fruit.
In my quest for a girl I delivered 3 healthy boys. I did my research and tried the timing system with boy no3 and was totally convinced it had worked. I even went to the hospital with a blanket with her name sewed on it so when a boy popped out I was totally flabbergasted. It took me 5 years to convince hubby to have one more try and a lot of time spent on forums of mums with boys trying to conceive a girl.
That was where I hit upon the ph balance information. All the food you eat will either make your body more acidic or alkaline. Some women's bodies are naturally more alkaline and the foods you will be attracted to will support this and vica verca. I checked through the list and I did tend towards the Alkaline, hence all the boys! I promptly changed my diet and could actually feel the shift. My joints started aching and my saliva felt acidic, I could feel it burning my tongue and on my teeth. Because my body was not naturally acidic it didn't like the change of environment. It freaked me out a bit to be honest and I decided it was messing around with my body too much and went off it but I conceived at the same time.
It was a girl! The whole way through my pregnancy my body remained acidic, I had constant heartburn and my joints and teeth ached and continued for a few months after I gave birth, despite my change in diet. This just proved to me the theory of body chemistry determining the gender that you tend to conceive. The science behind it is that you get 50/50 from dad. The boys swim faster and like an alkaline environment and the girls live longer and can survive an acidic one. Women with a mixture of boys and girls would probably have fluctuating ph balances. You also find that older women and those who struggle to conceive will usually have girls. Thus the ph balance in diet became known to me.
Apparently an acidic environment is ideal for the breeding and spreading of Cancer as well as other diseases like heart problems. As my mother died of Cancer, I'm particularly aware of and concerned with ways of preventing suffering the same fate. Since forcing my body chemistry to change I have found that it slips easily back into the acidic state and the modern diet facilitates this.
This is a good site to get a list of alkalizing and acidifying foods
http://www.rense.com/1.mpicons/acidalka.htm
After having my daughter I went onto Slimming World to try and shed the extra weight. It worked well and I lost but as soon as I went off it I put the weight on again. I discovered that the old red days worked best for me because carbs and my body just don't agree. Most people I speak to agree, with bread being public enemy no1! Darn the bakers of tiger bread, crusty rolls and the lovely founders of Subway.
my friend pointed me to a talk on you tube, which I highly recommend you watch, it's about an hour and a half long but well worth the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
One of the most important things I discovered from this is that carbohydrates and sugars push up your insulin, which makes you store fat and sends a message to your brain that you're still hungry. The body burns fats, which is what we are told to avoid in all these low fat diets. If you read the labels on your food you will actually be shocked what the carbohydrate/ sugar content is. Once you start eating fat your body goes into ketosis, which is when it burns fat most effectively and you don't get hungry because you're using the calories you're consuming.
I was, of course, sceptical because it goes against everything we've had drummed into us all these years. My husband was the biggest doubting Thomas as he has a veracious appetite. The doctor convinced him to go onto Slimming world, after years of me nagging and he did actually do very well on it, losing 12 stone in as many months. A remarkable achievement indeed BUT when life got in the way he just piled it all back on again. It was a diet change for weight loss, not a mind set change.
After a lot of nagging from both me and our friend we convinced him to give it a go. The first few days were a bit rough as he was going through carb and sugar withdrawal but after that he made a total change. He is like a different person and his weight is coming down quickly. The diet is based on a book called the Real food revolution or Banting and basically helps you get your body into a state of ketosis, where your body burns the fat that is stored. You can buy Ketostix from your chemist, which allow you to measure the ketones in your body. If you are a diabetic, however, this can be dangerous. They do speak about the diet helping diabetics as they obviously need to avoid raising their insulin but it needs to be done under the guidance of a GP.
Basically we are boiling down to the Paleo or caveman diet. However, in these carbs are allowed but we all agree on the general principal, ie. eat raw foods. I have been following the Banting diet as well and, although I haven't managed to reach ketosis yet, I've had no bloating or heartburn and feel less sluggish. The ladies will all know what I'm talking about when I say that the feeding and sugar frenzy you go through at that time of the month throws any good intentions out the window but you just have to get back in the saddle as soon as you feel human again.
The problem I am now running into is my PH balance, which brings me full circle back to the beginning. Your PH balance is the most important factor in changing the way you eat. The modern diet pushes all our PH down into the acidic values and that is very bad. Cancer and other illnesses thrive in an acidic environment and on top of that you are inhibiting your cells from fighting them effectively. You can buy PH sticks from your chemist or order them on line. I would strongly suggest you get some and test yourself regularly. My PH is 5.5 at the moment, which is not good at all, I'm aiming for a 7, which is neutral or slightly above to be on the safe side, especially as I have a history of cancer in my family. I can continue to follow the Banting diet and attain ketosis but with a few adjustments to what foods I eat as your balance needs to be about 65/35 alkaline to acidic foods.
As this is now a rather lengthy post I will talk about diet specifics in further posts, should you be interested in following my progress. Thanks for your patience in seeing it through to the end, your reward.....
a lettuce leaf! ;-p
