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Casey's blog

What to do when "magic bullet" diets don't work

30/5/2014

 
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Paleo. Raw. Vegan. 80/10/10. Sugar-free.

Unless you've been living in a cave, you've probably heard of some or all of the above approaches to eating.

And if your holistic-health minded, you've probably tried (or have friends who have tried) one or more of these.

To be honest, I've seen people benefit greatly from each of these diets. And when that happens, it's awesome.

New paleo-ists scrapping refined sugars and balancing out their blood sugar levels.

People who incorporate more raw salads into their diets
on their way to becoming raw foodists.

Very sick people who stop eating red meat and watch their cancer disappear.

The bone I want to pick with these approaches is that despite the many promises their proponents claim, and despite the success stories, there are still failures. Nothing is 100%.

I've seen paleo/raw/vegan diets fail enough times to want to say something about it. Because despite the success stories, supporting science, and so-called historical evidence around each of these diets, sometimes they fail miserably.

And when they fail, people are left confused, thinking it's them who failed, not the diet. When really, it's the other way around.


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Dark side of the spoon

What does it look like when a paleo/raw/vegan diet fails?

Think paleo-crossfit chicks who take the most extreme approach to paleo that cuts out all sugar, fruit, starchy vegetables and carbohydrates, who then burn out and distort their hormones. They can't fuel their two high intensity workouts per day, and their periods stop.

Think raw foodist yogis who shiver their way through a winter of blended raw vegetables and juices, and experience low energy, fatigue and a coldness that just won't shift.

Long term die-hard vegans who, although may have been living quite happily as vegans for some years, find themselves craving an egg or some fish when they fall pregnant or get ill - and fail to listen to their bodies.

Please be clear - I'm not saying these diets don't work at all. I'm saying that they don't work for 100% of the population, 100% of the time, contrary to what proponents of each of these approaches to eating will say on the websites and in the books they sell.
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Indigenous Siberians eating raw deer. Modern day "paleo"? Or just eating according to their climate, local traditions and genetic heritage?


How to recognise a magic bullet diet

There are a few ways to spot “magic bullet” diets. Those approaches to eating with huge herds of followers declaring that “everyone should eat this way to be the healthiest they can be.” Here’s how to spot them:

1. "It cures everything"

Enthusiasts of the diet/superfood/ingredient claim it cures everything - from chronic diseases, to skin conditions, and even psychological or stress-related disorders.


According to one top Paleo diet website, “eating like this is ideal for maintaining a healthy metabolism and reducing inflammation within the body. It’s good for body composition, energy levels, sleep quality, mental attitude and quality of life.  It helps eliminate sugar cravings and re-establishes a healthy relationship with food.  It also works to minimise your risk for a whole host of lifestyle diseases and conditions, like diabetes, heart attack, stroke and autoimmune.” That’s quite an extensive list!


2. "There's scientific evidence"

There is often scientific evidence to back up these diets. Some of it is super solid, and some of it is anything but.
Many paleo studies are extremely short term, and there are very few studies done on the benefits of a 100% raw food diet.

The funny thing about scientific evidence is that if you look hard enough, you can find evidence for whichever argument you decide to take, whether it's paleo or the exact opposite – a high carbohydrate, low to no animal protein, plant-based vegan approach.

The work of Colin Campbell and Cardwell Esselstyn exemplifies the many benefits of such a diet. And their studies are probably the most comprehensive and scientifically valid of the lot. It still doesn't make them perfect and fail-proof, however. I've seen people on a vegan diet suffer, the same way I've seen paleo people and raw foodists suffer. Not everyone does well on a 100% vegan diet, the same way not everyone suits a high animal protein diet.


3. "It's how we were meant to eat."

The flyer at a paleo cafe I enjoy attending says the paleo diet "avoids dairy, grains, legumes, added sugars and preservatives, which our bodies were not designed to digest.”


Really? What about the traditional cultures who adapted to digesting lactose and have lived for centuries eating cultured raw milk products, like the Abkhasians of Russia? Or the myriad traditional cultures who eat legumes and grains on a daily basis - Indians with rice and dahl, or native central americans with maize and beans?
You could hardly argue that these guys are unhealthy.

The same applies with hard core raw foodists and vegans. "We weren't meant to eat cooked food." "We don't have the correct length digestive tract or teeth to digest meat." While it's easy to find some form of evidence for some of these statements, they are still sweeping statements - they simply don't work for EVERYone.


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The 'Paleo' i.e. 'what cavemen actually eat' aspect is arguably just its hook and underpinning principle; a clever marketing tool. It's not a paleo label that will make you healthy, rather, any success that comes does so because ultimately it promotes eating lots of fresh vegetables, and avoiding processed food where possible.


5 ways to avoid "magic bullet" disappointment

If you've found yourself feeling disappointed or like a failure after being paleo/raw/vegan for a while and having it go pear-shaped... don't worry. Here's 5 ways you can find a way of eating that works for YOU.


1. Clarify your motives.

Why do you want to go vegan/raw/paleo? Is it to lose weight/fit into your old jeans/get clear skin? If so, look a little deeper. WHY do you want to lose weight/have better skin? The deeper reason for embarking upon any health endeavour is often to feel more confident, to feel more satisfied, to have a more rich and meaningful life. But feeling good is not only dependent on diet.

You need to look at all aspects of your life in order to feel good - and that includes your emotional landscape, exercise and other habits, attitudes, values, beliefs. It involves assessing your job satisfaction, family dynamics, relationships, and lifestyle.

Want to be wholistic? Then look at the whole picture. Diet is important, but it's only one piece of a much larger whole.



2. Practice intuitive eating.

It's ok if you eat a salad, ditch refined sugars, or eat a vegan meal - as long as it's truly what you feel like.

The only reliable authority, in the end, is your own body. We need to learn how to trust our bodies again, and how to listen to the messages it is sending us about diet. The simple tools of tuning into our bodies and fully experiencing each bite of food have the power to resolve most questions about food choices and diet.

Rather than adopt a diet, you could try a more intuitive way of eating that is highly personalised to your needs, food preferences, lifestyle, and experiences.

A truly instinctive approach to nutrition aligns joyful, nurturing eating with the authentic needs of body and soul. It doesn't include eating raw salads in winter when you are dying for a hot pumpkin soup.


3. Take the best from the diet, and make it your own.

The paleo and raw movements get a big tick for their push towards real foods. Veganism gets a tick for the emphasis on plant-based foods, which most people need more of. We would be better off eating real foods. That means foods that we grow, hunt or pick. Foods that are unmodified and come from nature.

When possible, we should aim for the most nutrient dense foods, because that’s why we eat, to nourish! Not to accomplish some idealised macronutrient ratio. Take the good from these diets, then break the other rules. Don't become a slave to rules and extremism. That brings me to the next point...


4. Avoid extremism

As much as we collectively rant about the benefits of moderation, people will always tend to be extremist when approaching a topic as complex and transitional as nutrition, in an attempt to simplify and make sense of it all.

Unfortunately that desire for "the be all answer" contributes to the hype around "magic bullet" foods or diets.
You don't have to go 100% paleo, raw or vegan in order to gain more energy, and be healthier. You may only need to add a few more vegetables to your diet, or reduce your intake of refined sugars and processed foods. People have a hard time grasping moderation as the key, but moderation really is golden.


5. Ditch the labels

Some days I'm "vegan." In Summer in Thailand, I went three months on a raw vegan diet, without even noticing it. In winter in Australia, I eat eggs and the occasional fish. I may have a paleo lunch and on the same day have a non-paleo dinner with roast potatoes and ancient grains. These ways of eating can work when they are slotted in to fit your lifestyle, your day, your mood, your climate, your genetic heritage, and your season.

When these seemingly healthy diets
fail is when we try to fit ourselves to the diet, with its theoretical rules and blanket recommendations.

Don't be a raw foodist for the sake of being able to say "I'm 100% raw." That's not very flexible and unless you live in a treehouse in Thailand all Summer running up mountains and practising yoga for 6 hours a day (as I once did), it probably won't work perfectly in the long term.


Ditch the labels and do what works for you. And that may change on a seasonal, daily or hourly basis.

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Is LOVE the missing nutrient in your diet?

21/5/2014

 
Last night I didn't finish work until late, too late to buy groceries or eat at a cafe. (Late on the Gold Coast on a Wednesday night appears to be 9pm!)

I was starving and my fridge was bare. So I went on a hunt for a healthy takeaway meal. Dodged the petrol stations and 7-11's - because really they offer nothing that's healthy to eat!

After some searching I ended up with sweet potato wedges (from a cocktail bar), salad and a few felafels from the kebab guy. Woohoo! Go me. Or so I thought...

Love what you eat

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Just as I was getting my money out of my wallet to pay the lovely lebanese man, I heard a microwave start to buzz in the corner as he infused my felafels with radiation and kicked off the leaching of carcinogenic toxins out of the plastic container into my hard-found dinner.

Most natural health-conscious folks will understand my dilemma: in short, microwaved food isn't ideal.

I could have made a scene.

I could have asked him to stop the microwave immediately!

B
ut I decided to try something else. Instead I paid for my food and thanked him, went home and did a love infusion ceremony before eating it.

I blessed my meal. I stilled my mind for just a few moments. I imagined a beautiful blue wave of cool energy moving through my food. I thought of the people I love, and the things in my life I'm grateful for. My partner, friends, and career. My beautiful home in the rainforest. The sacred silence around me.

Then I channelled it all into those zapped felafels and ate my dinner: radiation, carcinogenic toxins, non-organic produce and all. And I felt deeply nourished and satisfied.


Think of the HOW

As much as whole food and healthily prepared food is more vibrant and more nutrient-dense than its refined and microwaved counterparts, there’s also a dynamic relationship that happens with within the sensual and psychological contact you have with what you eat.

When you hand pick the beans from the market, when you smell the watermelon for freshness.

When you think fondly of your grandmother while making her famous soup.

When you
listen to music as you chop, laugh with friends around the table.

When you bless your food before a meal, and send gratitude to all the people who helped get it to your plate.

This all sends a vibration of love into your food, which can radically change its molecular structure.
For more on this see Masaru Emoto's work on emotions and water molecules.

Establishing a positive energetic connection to your food is, I believe, just as important as picking local, organic, fairly traded
whole foods grown in environmentally-sound ways.

Eat what you love

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Ok, so blessing your food may help counteract the toxins in a few late night takeaways here and there. But what if you're better prepared than I was, and you eat only pure, organic, superfood packed meals?

We still need to eat what we love, no matter how healthy it is.
Vitamin L (love!) is the nutrient that I see many health-conscious people forgetting, time and time again.

I don’t care how packed that kale & barley grass smoothie is with antioxidants, if you have to pinch your nose to get it down, it’s not good for you.

Your emotional and mental states matter, especially when it comes to eating. When you are upset, turned off, or not particularly excited about your food, you won't absorb it as well as if you were relaxed, interested in what you're eating, and eating something you really enjoy.

What I'm saying is,
if you cringe at drinking that superfood-packed green smoothie, your digestive tract and cells will be cringing at the assimilation.

Not long ago, a client told me that dinner is her favourite meal. Then she went on to tell me how she either binges on chocolate late at night from the sugar cravings, or she wakes up in the middle of the night starving because it’s “healthier” to eat only protein and a salad after 6pm instead of a nourishing meal with some complex carbohydrates. How can suffering and depriving herself of a bit of love and a major macronutrient be healthy? All that does is put her body into stress response.

At a certain point you’ve got to be who you are and eat what you love.

List what you absolutely love to eat. See where there’s room to tweak and improve the quality: think of the upgrade to having salad instead of fries, or take the middle way and go for sweet potato wedges. Think cold-pressed oil over refined. Leafy greens or
zucchini strips to roll your yummiest wrap fillings,  instead of white pasta.

And whatever you eat, bless your meal, and infuse it with love.

When you bring a bit of love for what you’re doing into the kitchen or even when ordering out at a cafe, that energy gets infused into everything you eat. Raising the vibration of the meal, of your cells, of your health.

Bring some Vitamin L back into your meals, and watch your body respond accordingly.

5 life lessons I learnt from being bed-ridden

8/5/2014

 
I went to bed on Tuesday night feeling nauseous and with a belly ache, and woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a truck. Every muscle in my body ached, and moving was a joke – I felt about 200 years old!

I don’t know whether it was food poisoning or that yucky gastro bug going around, but it felt dreadful! However, it lasted a fraction of what it could have, thanks to some herbs, some rest, and even some TV (I know, shocking!).

When I went over the last week step by step, I could see the warning signs and how I’d ignored them. Read on for the five big lessons I learnt from the whole experience that could help you avoid experiencing the same thing I did, starting with lesson number one...


Listen to the warning signs.

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Last weekend I was preparing to open my new yoga and clinic space… at the same time my mum was visiting for the first time in a long time, at the same time I was teaching a bunch of classes the same day, on the same day I planned to catch up with several different friends… you get the idea.

I noticed I was losing my keys over and over again. Locking them in the car, finding them in obscure places after hunting for ages, and getting really frustrated in the process. Picture me after teaching my final yoga class of the day, crying and screaming whilst lying under my Dad’s land cruiser for twenty minutes trying to undo the spare key  in pitch black, while my mum waited for me to pick her up from the train station! I was stressed out and it was giving me the memory of a guppy.

Stress triggers our brains to release hormones, like cortisol, which affect the memory and cognitive function section of the brain. The over-stimulus caused by these hormones overloads the memory part of the brain, which causes us to forget things. Temporary memory loss can also be caused by multi-tasking, which many of us do to "stay ahead" in our busy lives. I for one am guilty of multi-tasking, thinking I’m being more productive when really I’m just making myself unmindful and stressed out!

When we are carrying on a conversation on the phone as we walk into the house, and planning what to cook for dinner at the same time, we aren’t paying attention to where we are simultaneously putting down our keys. Our brains don't store data well when we’re not paying attention to something in the first place. Brains are designed to do one task at a time. We are not computers and when we try and behave as if we were, our brains refuse to co-operate and forget things.

Exercising daily, eating healthily, getting plenty of sleep and practising mindfulness all help maintain a healthy brain, producing more neurotrophins, essential transmitters to enhance nerve connections within the brain.


Herbs are king.

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After a busy four days of fitting out the new space and entertaining my mum, I arrived at my partner’s house late one night, frazzled and exhausted. I ate something and went to bed feeling a bit nauseous but too tired to care. The next day I was in a world of gut pain and couldn't bear the thought of getting up.

Being in no state to self-prescribe herbal remedies, my herbal-wizard boyfriend Andreas took great pleasure in concocting strong and slightly disgusting brews of thyme (anti-microbial and carminative) and peppermint (calming for the gut), and making gel capsules of powdered pau d’arco (antimicrobial, analgesic) and echinacea (immune boosting) for me.

Sure enough, my every-minute stabbing gut pain became less frequent and less intense, and I recovered in record time. The power of herbs never ceases to amaze me. (This further fuelled my desire to study naturopathy in the second half of this year!) I also managed to get some sleep. A lot of sleep…



Rest is golden.

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Trying to do too much gets us into trouble by putting our adrenals into overdrive and driving our immune systems into the dirt. Getting sick was the final alarm bell my body was using to tell me to “slow down or we’ll force you to.”

Once I was sick, all I wanted to do was lie in bed. Sleeping during the day is something I rarely do because of a misguided belief that it’s lazy to be in bed when the sun is out. How ridiculous of me to think that!

I was in bed for all of Wednesday – except when some unsuspecting but lovely Jehovah’s Witnesses came knocking and on seeing the state I was in, offered to come in and make me some tea. (With my about-to-hurl sounds they were only at the door for two minutes, which must be some kind of record.)

Listening to my body by staying in bed all day was possibly the best thing I did. I woke up on Thursday feeling refreshed and better than I did before I got sick! I enjoyed some hula hoop yoga in Andreas' sunny backyard, feeling grateful to be alive. Rest truly is a powerful healer. And it gave me a chance to watch a little TV, another thing I’ve avoided for the past 12 or so years…


TV is not (always) evil.

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On Wednesday night, being in less pain but still feeling exhausted I desperately wanted a distraction. So I turned to watching a few hours of TV to divert my attention away from the pain.

I normally shun television but I managed to find a few English game shows on ABC and SBS that felt like they weren’t killing brain cells. Plus Masterchef was pretty enthralling!

I now understand why people are drawn to TV – it’s a distraction, and when you’re in (any kind of) pain, distraction isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s still not something I’d want to use as a long term coping mechanism, but it helped. And as I lay there staring at the idiot box, I started to realise that…



Having healthy digestion is a blessing.

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In the midst of my crippling gut pain, I thought of all my clients with IBS, IBD, Crohn’s, food intolerances and food allergies, and sent them some serious metta (loving-kindness). I’m extremely fortunate not to have any life-consuming gut issues besides lactose intolerance (which is relatively easy to manage).

Living with that kind of pain day in and day out is hard to imagine, yet it’s something many of my clients and closest friends do every. Single. Day. Having healthy digestion, and having general health, are a blessing, something to be deeply grateful for, rather than take for granted.




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