Hi people.
I'm going to tell you my dietary/health story and see if anyone can chime in with similar experiences an where they ended up after investigating the raw paleo scene.
I'd been a lacto-veggie since I was 15, mostly for ethical reasons but later got into natural health and was influenced by the idea that vegetarian diets based on wholefoods were just about the best thing you could do for your body. After reading Sugar Blues I ditched all refined sucrose and almost immediately felt much more stable and lost some puppy fat (i've always been lean).
I've had a few health issues over the years. Linked, I believe with hindsight part to heavy use of antibiotics in my late teens, I developed what was diagnosed as 'anxiety/depression' after suffering blackouts, near blackouts, constant dizziness, feeling drunk, with no 'physical cause'. At the same time I had chronic digestional issues, squirting mucous, everything going right through me, getting really thin, which the Doctors did not think was a CAUSE of the anxiety but rather a SYMPTOM of it. I utterly resisted the anxiety diagnosis - I was up until then an utterly normal confident kid and never seemed to fit the profile of anxiety cases. I'm now convinced I'd shot the bacterial health of my guts to bit by being given masses of antibiotics (for a fairly trivial reason too). I'm sure if at the time they'd dug deeper they'd have found major malabsorbion of key nutrients.
I didn't much want to go to University due to my health but went anyway. Soon after starting I read Sugar Blues, cut the refined sugars, and was amazed to find I was much, much better. I was still spacey and flighty at times but was no longer worried about my health - at one point I thought I'd either die of a mystery illness or be put in a loony bin.
Over a decade on, I'd never entirely ditched the episodes of woosiness and always felt I had far too many bouts of loose stools and diarrea and while holding down a job, due to fatigue, I always felt like I was using too much grit and determination and missing out on progressing my life.
A couple of years back I was given another brutal round of antibiotics for an infection and I was soon almost, but not quite, as I been as a teen - the musty mucous was back with a bang, severe dizzy spells, sudden headaches like being zapped by a raygun. I knew from my knowledge of natural health this was probably a yeast condition as I was itching all over, getting sweat rashes, etc. I remembered how Sugar Blues had helped the last time and looked to making by lacto-veggie wholefoods diet much better to get my strength back.
I arrived at raw veganism after much reading and gave it a shot, transitioning to a 95% raw diet in a month or two. I noticed dramatic changes. First of all the zapped-in-head headaches just went, my habit of blowing my nose dozens of times a day to clear my sinuses and pop blocked ears just faded away. I had more alertness, my always-there spacey and wooziness reduced somewhat and I no longer felt occasionally unsafe while driving but confident and calm - I just felt much better in general. The version of raw vegan I was doing was, I suppose, influenced by hippocrates and Gabriel Cousins. I suppose it was also high-fat raw with lots of salads, seed and nut butters and pates as I prefer savory tastes - although I didn't consciously avoid fruit.
After a few months, though, I came unstuck. First of all, I'm a slim guy and I started to get quite emaciated no matter how much I stuffed my face. I used a nutrient calculator called Chronometer on my computer and realised that although I wasn't feeling hungry my calorie levels were often a little - or a great deal - too low, even with all the seeds, avocados, etc. I had to add in loads of cooked millet, brown rice, quinoa to get those calories up. I also seemed to never ever have normal stools - they were always super loose, almost diarrea, and I had bowel movements several times a day.
I then got influenced by some evangelical 80/10/10 raw vegan people on forum, who seemed massively vocal about the miracle health they had on Doug Graham's programme. As I said, I wasn't avoiding fruit per se but I knew that fruit was frowned upon by all sorts of diets that target the stablisation of blood sugar. Plus, I wondered if the fructose was good for me, given that i was in part recovering from antibiotics. I did this for around three weeks, following Doug Graham's book and massive fruit menus to the letter, but had to stop as it was obviously messing me up and badly - yeasty sweat rashes, massive hunger, feeling drunk, massive sugar crashes, reactive sugar crashes after eating, feeling really cold, just peeing non-stop. Once and for all I knew that I'm sugar sensitive, whether that comes from a chocolate bar or healthy fruit. I should have known better anyway - when I read the Graham book the rationale didn't seem to chime with me, in fact it seemed a bit simplistic and evidence-less.
So I went back to raw bulked out with slow-burn cooked complex carbs. Wow, I felt much better than on sweet food. However, one day I'd forgotten my lunch and had to eat at the canteen - I had two bowls of plain salad and not wanting to eat stodgy dairy (I knew ditching diary had probably sorted out my sinuses) got two servings of tuna steak. I don't really eat fish but occasionally eat it when holidaying in utterly non-veggie nations. What happened surprised me. I usually crash out at 2.30 and work through to 5 or 5.30 in a really sleepy state - I've always been that way ever since starting full-time work. Raw food had helped a bit but wasn't giving me miracle energy. That day, though, I was still buzzing, blazing through my work at approaching the end of the day. I also felt REALLY on the level, one of the few occasions where I could honestly say I was free of all traces of wooziness and lightheadedness. We're talking something I hadn't felt since before I got ill in my late teens. Was it a fluke? I'm sure I had a bit more energy on some days for some random reason. Still, my curiosity was aroused.
The next day I took my usual raw vegan food but added a bit of grilled salmon. The effect was the same - I definitely felt more sustained for having the fish. I'd already limited fruit to maybe a couple of tart low-GI fruits so my diet was effectively low-carb, moderate protein, highish fat. Now with the fish the protein was raised significantly.
As I'd been suffering so much with my health I wondered if I was on to something. In for a penny, in for a pound I thought. I went to a good gastropub and ordered a very rare 10oz steak with a side salad. I hadn't eaten meat in over 15 years and it didn't look too appealing but I didn't gag or anything and ate it quite normally. Aside from being quite farty that day there was no weird stomach cramps or feeling odd. After about 30minutes, like with the fish, I started to fee much less light in the head, much more grounded. The next day my usual extreme morning fatigue wasn't quite as bad and I still felt good.
I investigated online and started to find all sort of testimony from people that chimed with my experiences. There was a guy who'd been veggie for years and had terrible anxiety and panic attacks. He went low carb and meat-eating diet and got better. There were autistic and epileptic kids doing better on a ketogenic low carb diet. I read about candida-crazed ladies doing much better on a high protien low-carb regimen. There were also testimonies from ex-veggies and raw vegans who just felt better, stronger, with a bit, or a lot, of animal products in their diet. Wow. Perhaps I just wasn't cut out to be a no-meat veggie - I knew I was incredibly sugar sensitive but maybe I shouldn't really have any significant carbs at all, even the 'complex' ones.
Any of this chime with anyone? I'm not down on raw veganism - I can see that the idea of utterly unadulterated food is a great one and has obvious transformative power - but am I really a paleo guy waiting to happen? What do you think?
