What Is a Good Diet ?

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What you eat has a huge impact on your health.  You would think this is easy to see, but what is a good diet? This is a lot harder than you think.  There are so many camps out there promoting opposing different ideas.  Enough to drive me nuts!


November of 2019, for six weeks, I was completely raw vegan.  I followed the protocol as suggested by Goodbye Lupus by Brooke Goldner, M.D. Smoothies with 75% green vegetables, 25% fruits plus flax seeds and / chia seeds.  Green salads and no oil.  Very hard, but I persisted.  I lost 9 kgs.  My joints felt better.  But I could not sleep. After six weeks, I added back rice, sweet potatoes, cooked vegetables.  Then I could sleep.


In my search for a diet that could help me with my autoimmune issues, two doctors impressed me.  Dr. McDougall of the Starch Solution and Dr. Mark Hyman of the Pegan Diet.  Dr. McDougall’s Starch Solution stresses nutrient density and calorie density.  The idea is to eat more of the nutrient dense whole plant based food and and less of the calorie dense kind.  Watch him here https://youtu.be/B_Yt7ODgQTc His solution allows people to lose weight without feeling hungry.  Famous YouTubers who have lost a lot of weight include High Carb Hannah, Plantiful Kiki and Chef AJ.  They offer all sorts of simple recipes, do check them out.  


Dr. Mark Hyman suggests that it is not that animal products cause inflammation, rather the quality of farming that is not regenerative and harmful.  Well, it isn’t feasible for me to eat free range, organic and wild caught products all the time, easier to eat a little bit now and then.  Watch him here: https://youtu.be/McjeOAqkkJk


After paying close attention to the effects of food on me, I avoid or at least minimise gluten, dairy products, food additives and refined packaged food.  I am about 80% vegan but I do eat the occasional eggs, chicken and seafoods.  I do have weird sensitivity to mushrooms, pumpkin, mustard and some seafoods.


I still have smoothies and lots of salads as suggested by Dr. Goldner . I also eat a lot of cooked vegetables and fruits. I am still tweaking what I eat.  I do intermittent fasting whenever I can.  I normally can stop eating by six in the evening.  I try not to eat till 10 in the morning, but whenever I am in pain and sleep becomes difficult, my tummy hurts so badly I have to eat earlier.

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