Hey Everyone,
I think I best give a summary of my health and dietary history. I have had digestive issues since I was a child, which came along with depression and bouts of anger and I have never had the greatest of memories. I didn't have the worst of diets, just your standard 'healthy' English diet, so plenty of jacket potato's, baked beans, eggs, fish and of course roast dinners. I managed to get through childhood, but was always considered to be lazy or laid back.
When I came into my teens, I started eating allot more junk food thanks to school and ended up being 200 lbs at 15 years old despite being very active, playing sports and going cycling (I suspect that it was more severe water retention than actual fat deposits). In my late teen I was sick of being overweight so I decided to clean up my diet and ate a very clean diet, no junk food (well i guess I would call protein bars and protein powder junk food now) I managed to lose 30 lbs in 3 months without calorie restriction and doing 20 minutes of strength or burst training a day. At this point I realised that no matter how much I worked out I could never really gain any muscle, I was strong but I had always been relatively strong.
I can remember having sleeping problems on and off through my life (used to sleep 21 hours a day when I was a baby, which in no way is normal), but it was when I started university at 18 that it got really bad with severe insomnia. Due to the stress and lack of sleep I started using allot of stimulants to just keep going, I was drinking 2 liters of black coffee and allot of nicotine gum (about the same as a 20 a day smoker), I would quit in the summers but the insomnia persisted and I went back to my 'Lazy' self. While at university I experimented with a higher fat whole food diet and intermittent fasting, but I still had digestive issues no matter what i did (the fasting just gave me a small break from the discomfort). But I managed to drag my self through university and completed my masters (at what cost to my organs and glands, I still have no idea).
Once I finished university I got caught up in veganism and its supposed health benefits, I did start feeling better in a way, but I also quit all stimulants at the same time and I no longer had any stress. So i did a WFPB diet for about a year and a half and felt okay, but my insomnia was never fixed and I had to consume a ridiculous amount of food. I also lost weight eating unrestricted calories, whether it was higher fat or higher carb (i experimented with both).
It was when I started a stressful job when things started going down hill and my digestive issues became worse than ever, IBS and sleep was absolutely awful. I started withdrawing mentally and after a year at the job I completely broke down mentally and physically. I could barely speak and every time I started I would get sharp headaches, my depression was at its worst ever and I was having suicidal thoughts through out the day and on top of this my insomnia was still there. after half a year of misery with colonoscopies, CT scans and nutritionists unable to determine what the problem was, it was pretty much determined that I had chronic fatigue (my mom had chronic fatigue at around the same age). I decided to try and find the foods (still vegan mentality unfortunately) which I can actually digest without much discomfort and I basically ended up being fruit based (which is the dumbest idea in the UK in my opinion).
So I was basically eating a load of supermarket fruit with some raw nuts and seeds and some light salads, I also added 4-5 tablespoons of coconut oil a day but it never seemed to help with my digestion, I still had constipation and haemorrhoids. But I still felt better staying away from cooked food but I continued to lose weight. I eventually got desperate and went down the dr morse herbs and fruit, hoping that they would somehow support my weak organs and glands, but my blood pressure was still 90/60 many days (I still couldn't gain weight no matter how many medjool dates, bananas and avocado's I ate). I eventually gave up because I was scaring my wife and mother being 124 lbs at 6ft 2, so I started to add some raw eggs which helped a bit, but not much and I was still not gaining weight. I then decided to give the snake diet a go so I ate fish and sweet potatoes, but what went in just came out the other end and I felt heavy after any cooked food.
But I recalled a time when my sister made a passing comment 'theres even a guy who solved his health problems eating a diet of raw meat' so I looked into it and decided to dive in. I got some organic raw beef and sat down to eat it, no gagging , no hesitation, just pure bliss... it tasted like butter. From that point 2 and a half months ago I have been hooked on raw meat, I tried a week with raw milk but it made my insomnia really bad, and I stupidly experimented with some water kefir which made me feel awful and I haven't quite recovered from that after 2 weeks. I am still not digesting well (It was getting much better before the water kefir so I suspect I am battling with candida now) I was zero carb, but have since started adding some seaweed for electrolytes.
Overall though since starting raw primal I have gained back at least 15lbs of muscle and some healthy fat stores as I am up to 156 lbs. I have been eating around 1kg of grass-fed beef a day, mostly coming from dry aged brisket, and about 6 eggs. I have had a few weeks where I got some organic organs and mince and added raw butter to make up for the lower fat content. The brisket is definitely my favourite though. I am starting to add in some more seafood (wild caught), as I am unable to source any brains, and I was thinking that due to my mental breakdown my brain may need a bit more nourishment in the for of DHA.
I do still have the insomnia, but being in ketosis has helped me cope much better. I still have digestive issues and fatigue, but they aren't as bad. But my depression is completely lifted and I will hopefully be going back to part time work within the next month or so (my old boss is very happy for me to work the hours that my body allows me too).
Well that turned out to be a much longer summary than I intended, I hope it isn't too detailed.
Any help on tips for insomnia would be greatly appreciated, as I know I will never heal until I am able to sleep. I suspect that it may be partially caused by EMF's as my insomnia got worse when 4G networks came out and since I started working on and around computers more (my university building was basically one hyper computer). Also, the only restful sleep I remember having in 8 years was when I was camping in the rockies last year, I was actually able to sleep in the middle of the day with loads of people around. It may have been a coincidence but I plan on researching it a bit more.
