Daily menu of healthy food

I had to constantly remind myself to maintain an attitude of gratitude during the months it took for me to gather all of the information I needed to recover from fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.  Maintaining a positive outlook while getting the chemicals out of my environment was easy. Remaining cheerful while making drastic changes in my diet was a lot more difficult. It took time, prayer, and patience.  I eventually learned to be grateful for what I can eat instead of being bummed out about what I can't eat.  

I have been eating healthy whole foods that are high in antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties for over a year.  It took several months to get all of the unhealthy, processed, chemically laden food out of my system because I was on a learning curve finding out what I needed to eliminate and which healthy whole foods were the best choices to add.

I have been symptom free for almost five months.  Every morning I am amazed that I wake up with no pain and no debilitating fatigue. Here is a typical daily menu.

BREAKFAST

scrambled egg                  

whole wheat toast with raw honey sprinkled with almonds 

dark red grapes and fresh pineapple

hot ginger tea (recipe in earlier post)

LUNCH

grilled steak sandwich

raw carrot sticks and radishes with vinaigrette dip

chips

orange and half a banana

DINNER

ground turkey meatballs with tomato basil sauce

pasta

mixed green salad

berry oat muffin

SNACK

baked apple drizzled with raw honey and sprinkled with walnuts and cinnamon

I am grateful that I have a glass (and plate and bowl) and that there are plenty of choices of healthy food to put in them.


                    

Supplements: Do I Really Need Them?

I recently saw the above post on the Growing Organic, Eating Organic site on Facebook,  It pretty much sums up my current food philosophy.  The group has a lot of good information on eating healthy food.  You might want to check it out.

I have gotten rid of chemicals in my environment, ditched processed food, and I'm eating a healthy diet that is rich in whole foods, and anti-inflammatory and antioxidant foods.  But, hey, I could still be missing something that might help me maintain my freedom from fibromyalgia pain.  After making all these changes I'm symptom free and I surely do not want that horrible pain and debilitating fatigue to come back.  I wondered if I needed to take supplements.

So I hit the computer and started reading about vitamin and mineral supplements.  Some people recommend taking a lot of pills.  There are companies and websites devoted to explaining which supplements a person needs (and often include a convenient link for buying the products they describe.)  If you take a lot of vitamins and supplements and this has helped you, that is awesome. 

I was hesitant to add a ton of manufactured supplements to my recovery plan. There is no oversight or regulation concerning what goes into these products.  There is no requirement that companies have to disclose what they use for fillers, coatings, and additives to the supplements they make.  After spending two years getting chemicals out of my life and food, I don't want to risk unknown chemicals sneaking back into my body through a processed supplement.

I do take two vitamins.  My routine lab work last fall showed that I had developed a Vitamin D deficiency and that my B 12 level was low.   So I take Vitamin D and B 12 and will continue to do so until my levels return to normal and stay there.  It is important to have yearly lab work done to determine if you have any true vitamin deficiencies or other treatable conditions that will only show up with laboratory analysis.  It is equally important to follow the recommendations of your physician for treating a vitamin deficiency. 

But there are many vitamin pills and mineral supplements that some people recommend for inflammation, pain, fatigue, and other symptoms.  These vitamins and minerals can be absorbed easily through eating whole foods.  Why should I take a pill of concentrated cherry compound with unknown manufactured components when I can just eat cherries every day?  
Why should I take a pill for omega three when I can get it from eating salmon, flaxseed, walnuts, basil, oregano, and spinach?

If you want to know which foods contain which vitamins and nutrients, just get online and google away.  There are lists of foods high in omega three, lists of antioxidant foods, lists of anti-inflammatory foods, lists of foods that help control pain, lists of super foods.
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Word of Caution

Eating healthy food will not help you recover if you don't get rid of the harmful chemicals in your environment and stop eating processed food 

To Snack or Not to Snack? Hmmmm.

I enjoy eating snacks and treats. I've eaten far too many of the wrong kind for decades.  But I knew myself well enough to know that I wasn't about to give up snacking completely.  It was obvious that I could not continue to eat the prepackaged cookies and candies I had been consuming because of the chemicals and additives they contain. But the truth is I was trying to find a food plan I could live with for the rest of my life. On a practical level, I knew I did not have the time or the inclination to make every single thing I eat from scratch. 

I use some packaged foods. I have become an avid label reader. The things I buy tend to contain only a few ingredients. The brand of dried cherries I buy has one ingredient: cherries.  I stay away from items that contain dyes, preservatives, trans fats, and other harmful chemicals.  I have found that if I eat whole foods 95% of the time, I can tolerate some packaged foods the other 5% of the time.  You may discover a different formula that works for you.  I got well and I have stayed symptom free on this plan.

Some day I may decide to make my own bread, mayo, mustard, ketchup, pickles, chips, dried fruit, granola, yogurt, and almond butter but right now these are things I purchase that someone else has made.

I had to learn to think a new way and be creative in my choices. Being willing to change was a key factor for me.  I'll admit that I had a serious internal struggle with this.  It was six months from the day I first read about chemicals in the environment and processed food as a possible cause for fibromyalgia to the day I finally decided to go for it and alter my lifestyle.  I felt so miserable and hopeless by then that I was willing to try anything to get better.  Today my fibromyalgia pain is gone.  My debilitating chronic fatigue symptoms are gone. And now I wonder, why in the world did it take me so long to decide to do this? 

Here are some snack ideas you might want to try:

Wash and freeze grapes.  Take out a handful to munch on at night while watching TV.  They are a cold, crunchy treat.  Red or dark purple are my favorites.  Fresh pineapple is also delicious frozen.  

Sprinkle organic granola over a cup of Greek yogurt.  Add walnuts, almonds, and dried cherries.

Have an apple, banana or an orange.  Drizzle with raw honey. Sprinkle with nuts and a spoonful of crunchy almond butter.

Spread chocolate almond butter on a graham cracker. Most graham crackers contain some partially hydrogenated fats but no other harmful chemicals.  I do well with them as long as I eat only two at a time and do not eat them too frequently. 

Have a single serving size bag of potato chips.  Read the ingredients label.  I eat chips that list three ingredients:  potatoes, oil, and salt.  Some brands also list food additives, preservatives, hydrogenated fats, food dyes, and other chemicals as ingredients.  I steer clear of those

Make ginger cookies with molasses and freshly grated ginger.  My favorite recipe makes about 100 cookies. Ginger is a main ingredient and it is an anti-inflammatory food.

I love chocolate.  Occasionally I make homemade brownies with walnuts.  Walnuts are on my good foods list.   I bake and freeze the brownies and defrost only one at a time.  I do the same thing with the cookies.

These are the four key points to my snack attack plan:

Limit refined sugar

Read the ingredient labels on every single package

Eat plenty of whole fruit

Find healthy substitutes for unhealthy foods

What is your favorite healthy snack food?

Spread the Word

In my last blog post I shared what I have learned about the role of visceral fat in contributing to chronic inflammation on a cellular level.  So, what causes the chronic inflammation to morph into a disease process like fibromyalgia?

The current research indicates that some type of stress on the body is usually the culprit.  We set ourselves up to get sick by constantly exposing ourselves to chemicals in our environment and eating processed food.  I spent decades consuming packaged cookies, candy, ice cream, and other processed foods that had most certainly increased my visceral fat and cellular inflammation levels to extremely high numbers.  But I didn't get sick for a long time. There has to be some type of trigger to make the chronic inflammation spike to cause a full blown disease.

I know what my trigger was because I know exactly when I got sick.  I had a severe allergic reaction to shellfish which sent me into anaphylactic shock.  My body was stressed further when I had to take three injections of epinephrine to bring the anaphylactic shock under control. The next week I had a virus.  This combination of events overwhelmed my immune system, caused the chronic inflammation to go through the roof with no possibility of going back down, and left me suffering with severe fibromyalgia pain and debilitating chronic fatigue.

I know other people with fibromyalgia who have experienced some kind of physical and/or emotional stressors prior to the onset of their symptoms.  Here are some possible stressors:

Suffering severe bodily injury in an automobile accident

Having major surgery

Having a severe allergic reaction

Dealing with ongoing difficult family problems

Being seriously injured from a fall

Having a prolonged viral illness

Okay, so this is rough stuff.  But there is good news to share.  You can get better!  When you stop eating the chemically laden processed food that keeps the inflammation going and start eating healthy whole food filled with antioxidants, vitamins, and anti-inflammatory goodness, you stop the inflammatory cycle and you get well.  I know this is true not because I read it in a book or because some researcher said so.  I know it is true because I was horribly sick for three years and now I am symptom free.

I need you to help me spread the word.  Pass this information along through social media like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.  Tell everyone you know who suffers from fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome that there is hope.  There is something you can do to get better.  I have to go now.  I'm trying to figure out a way to shout it from the rooftops.  

Visceral Fat and Inflammation

My husband, who retired from his private family medicine practice to teach medical students, just came home from a grand rounds lecture at the university.  That sentence sounds boring but I'm stoked, excited, and positively pumped over what he heard from a medical researcher today.

I've been pretty much flying by the seat of my pants trying to find possible causes for my fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome symptoms and searching for a cure or at least a way to feel better.  I've ditched processed food and been eating whole foods especially focusing on those that have anti-inflammatory properties and contain antioxidants that help strengthen the immune system.  My symptoms have completely resolved and the lecturer who spoke today shared part of the reason why.

It has to do with visceral fat and inflammation.  Visceral fat is fat that you cannot see that wraps itself around your internal organs, especially organs in the digestive tract including the stomach, liver, and spleen.  This type of fat causes chronic inflammation on a cellular level that leads to a host of diseases including autoimmune diseases like fibro and CFS.  (It also contributes to aging, heart disease, diabetes, depression, sleep apnea, and a bunch of other illnesses, in case you were wondering.)

And guess what is one of the main causes of developing visceral fat and the subsequent inflammation?  Eating processed food full of corn syrup, dyes, trans fats, preservatives, and other chemicals. Wow!  The speaker is working on a research project about this and will publish a paper about it when they complete the study.  He said we should never eat anything that comes out of a box, bottle, can, or package.  He recommends eating the anti-inflammatory and antioxidant foods I've been eating.  He said eating the Mediterranean type diet is a good place to start.  All of the patients who have followed his advice have significantly improved.  Many of them are completely symptom free.  That's amazing!

All the people they have tested who eat processed food, drink soft drinks, and consume other packaged products have high levels of visceral fat even if they are not visibly overweight.  That is the bad news.  If you fall into that group, don't despair, you can change your ways, pick yourself up and move on toward getting better.  Here's how:

Do not eat any processed food.

Stop drinking soda.

Eat lots of fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains.

Eat foods that have anti-inflammatory properties.

Eat foods that contain antioxidants.

If you want more information on getting rid of processed food in your diet, eating healthy foods, and clearing chemicals out of your life, check out previous blog posts.  I was sick for three years but after changing my lifestyle, I feel great.  The trade off of giving up certain foods for the blessing of feeling fantastic is a no brainer.  Nothing that I have eliminated from my diet tastes as good as I feel.

The researcher also recommends exercise to speed up getting rid of the visceral fat and inflammation.  We will save that to discuss another day.

What reasons could keep someone from eating a healthy diet?

Why does the processed food industry not want this information to get out?