A couple of weeks ago I shared about the health improvements I’ve seen since upgrading my nutrition, and naturally a number of you asked me to share what I’ve changed.

Eight years ago, I encountered a dietary approach that was new to me. I did some brief reading on a personal website of someone sharing her experience, and while I appreciated it was beneficial to the individual sharing about it, I didn’t read more deeply with the intent to understand.

A year later, I came across information about this same approach, but this time I was intellectually curious enough to do a LOT of reading. After a deep dive, I was intrigued by the level of healing I had never seen before on any eating plan I had investigated – not whole foods, vegetarian, vegan, keto, WAP (Weston A. Price) – all of which I’ve experimented with personally at length.

What was most fascinating and surprising to me was seeing the healing of significant mental health issues that are assumed to be treatable only with medication. I had never seen testimonials of people with issues like these healed by any other diet. I also saw a tremendous amount of physical healing of many issues that generally aren’t considered dietically related (everything, everything, everything about your health is impacted by what you eat!!!). It was just amazing.

My husband has a much more sensitive digestive system than I do and as a result, has to be very careful about what he eats. I told my husband about the many testimonials of physical healing I read about, and it was about seven years ago that I suggested he consider following these guidelines.

My husband has a lot of faith in my research, and began immediately without even reading any more about it. I began with him and felt great for the five weeks I did it but budgetarily it was a strain for us and since I wasn’t suffering any health issues or discomfort in any way, wanted to direct our food budget resources to him. He stayed with it for two and a half years before shifting back into GAPS due to finances.

Since then I’ve continued learning and reading about this approach. When I first came across it, it was known about by a relatively small group of people who had tried everything else to heal and were desperate enough to do something different. I came to believe this was an ideal way of eating but almost never spoke of what I learned: I wasn’t doing it myself, and secondly because it was completely opposite all mainstream nutrition advice so there’s so much to explain. I expected it would remain far outside of the social norms forever.

However, there were some high profile individuals who shared about their success eating like this. As a result, interest in this approach has grown and particularly in the last couple of years it has really gained traction.

This way of eating has become popularly known as the carnivore diet, though the term I originally heard used and still prefer is zero carb. I follow the guidelines of the original group where it’s kept really simple: meat, chicken, eggs, fish, beef fat and butter. I stay away from dairy for the most part (the hardest thing for me to give up was our own raw goat dairy, and why I took a very long time to commit to trying this).

I’ve been eating this way for ten months. Despite my reticence to share about this, this is something that can help with so many health issues and it would be selfish to keep it to myself.

Unfortunately our public nutritional guidelines are so completely corrupted that there’s no way for a person to achieve good health long term by following those guidelines. The official guidelines will lead to the doctor’s office and long term medications for physical and psychological diagnoses.

In contrast, zero carb eating can reverse many chronic conditions and keep a person healthy with minimal input from the medical system in most cases.

When I began researching this topic, there was very little available online. Most of the information was in Facebook groups. But now you can find so many people with lots of experience with this way of eating talking about it at length, including medical doctors from all disciplines.

If you want to know about why not vegetables (Dr. Anthony Chaffee), or what about cholesterol/ won’t this give you a heart attack (heart surgeon Dr. Philip Ovadia), or how does it affect your mental health (pyschiatrist Dr. Georgia Eades), how to eat for fertility (Dr. Robert Kiltz), how it affects your eye health (Dr. Lisa Wiedeman), or every aspect of general health (Dr. Ken Berry, Dr. Shawn Baker) you have so much information available. I have listened to hundreds of interviews of people sharing their personal health transformations (No Carb Life has eight hundred so far; a number of other Youtube channels have many great interviews as well).

I believe this is the way of eating that will give the most health benefits to the average human, and though it’s not necessary for everyone, in that vast majority of people it will be very beneficial. I was in pretty good health but still have seen improvements in hormone balancing, joint pain, metabolism, energy and mental clarity.

It’s wonderful that something so simple can make such a big difference, and maybe that’s the hardest part about it. We’ve been conditioned to believe that achieving good health is complicated and difficult, when actually our bodies are intended to be healthy and move towards healing and wellness when given the nutritional building blocks it needs.

Avivah

Nine months ago I sat down and made a list of health concerns, however small they seemed.

The main thing that concerned me was a pain in my hip. I’ve written here about going to the osteopath for that and getting relief from it. He said it was caused by misalignment, and I noticed it happened whenever I was very busy. So I would rest more often. Then it started happening more often. To compensate, when standing I would shift my weight to my other leg.

As a result of my compensation, I began getting discomfort in my left knee, which then travelled to the bottom of the left foot and manifested as a tightness of the muscles. When the osteopath worked on my foot, he said something about the plantar fascia, and then I realized it was the beginning of plantar fasciitis. Oy.

I asked him what I was supposed to do to stay in alignment, but I was doing everything suggested and I still needed regular appointments (about every 4 – 6 weeks). Then I heard an interview with a doctor who was asked how she chose her specialty of endocrinology, and she said she had been an osteopath and began noticing how many of her patients in their forties and fifties were coming for weekly appointments because their bodies couldn’t hold the alignment. She wanted to study hormones to help women stay in good health.

I don’t remember what she said after that, but realizing that me not being able to stay in alignment was something others in my age range were experiencing was a jolt and got me thinking.

(I also felt stiffness when standing up after sitting for a while, and mild soreness in the joints of my hands periodically. It seemed minor but I included this in my list. )

It occurred to me that the pain I was having might be caused by internal inflammation rather than the localized muscle discomfort I was assuming it to be. If so, I was making a mistake by treating the symptoms of pain rather than addressing the underlying cause.

Along with my thoughts about the possible physical causes, I reflected on my expectations of what it means to get older. I didn’t want to internalize the societal belief that getting older means more pain and less mobility, and I was ready to actively challenge that belief. I wanted to create a new expectation for myself, that as I get older I will be active and energetic, flexible and healthy.

Once I was honest with myself about what I was feeling, I resolved to do something different. If it was possible my hip pain was caused by inflammation, then I needed to reduce the inflammation. How could I do that?

By changing my diet.

I resisted this for a long time because my diet was pretty good; most people would say it was very good. But once I was willing to be honest with myself, I knew I needed to make some changes.

I eliminated every possible source of inflammation, and soon began feeling more energy. I began losing some of the weight I put on after the car accident that had left me completely sedentary. But the hip pain didn’t go away as quickly as I expected.

In the first three weeks the plantar fasciitis disappeared, then the pain in my left knee, but I still had some periodic discomfort in my right hip. But I began noticing my overall movement became much more comfortable and fluid; I easily and quickly shifted from sitting or laying down to standing up. I got up and down from the floor without thinking about it. My hands never felt any soreness.

The pain in my hip faded and I don’t know when it completely disappeared because I stopped being aware of it. It might have been a month or even six weeks until it was completely gone.

One day my husband and I took the kids for a walk and he lagged behind me with one of them. When he caught up to me, he asked me if I was aware that I was walking differently. Again, changes happen over time and he hadn’t noticed my gait had changed as a result of the pain until he saw me walking without pain. He commented on it again a week later, marvelling and saying the difference was miraculous, that I walk with the same fluidity I had in my twenties.

Recently over the two weeks of holidays, I ate some foods I don’t usually eat – things you would call ‘healthy’. I had some moussaka – with eggplant, ground beef, homemade tomato sauce and a coconut cream ‘cheese’ topping. I ate some halva ice cream – made with dates, coconut cream and tahini. I had some fresh fruit and some compote, some slices of cheese, three small pieces of potato. These were the only changes to my usual way of eating, all seemingly small quantities over a two week period.

The homemade ice cream was clearly a sugar overload for me – I napped afterward as if I had taken a sleeping pill. As far as the other foods, my digestion wasn’t as perfect as it usually is.

What took a little longer was for my hip to begin hurting again.

It didn’t happen immediately after I ate a peach or a slice of cheese. But the pain is a powerful reminder of what I used to feel and I’m so glad for the reminder. It’s remarkably easy to forget the negatives when they’re no longer part of your life and to take good health for granted. I didn’t intend this to be a test of what I’m sensitive to, but that’s what it’s been.

I have been blessed for many months now to consistently feel very good physically and emotionally, and have taken that for granted. Now it’s easy for me to see when something I eat detracts from that, and I’m glad for the motivating nudge to recommit to giving my body the fuel it needs to feel its best.

Avivah