Diet & Health in 2020
I thought I would give you a bit of background on our Tuesday night topic for this month’s class. As most of you know Dr. Harper has long been a proponent of a diet we call the Metabolic Balancing Diet. That is an eating philosophy both he and I have followed for years. The staples are meat and veggies, no dairy, grains, or high starch foods like corn, potatoes, and low sugar, so no carrots, and no fruit due to the high natural sugar content. The rational for this diet is to “reset” the metabolism, allow the body to get rid of inflammatory foods and put it back on the right track. About 3 years ago we began to go to a more “High Protein/Keto” type diet, for me it was an attempt to get my blood sugar under better control that spurred the change. Blood sugars continued to frustrate me as overall my numbers were good except in the mornings. My fasting numbers looked like I had had several midnight snacks during the night, certainly not like I hadn’t eaten in 6-8 hours! This frustrating phenomenon was very irritating and thwarted my every attempt to correct it. It was during this time that we began to explore intermittent fasting and liked the multiple benefits we experienced. We began by confining our meals to a 6-hour window each day, as this became the norm, we dived right into the deep end (something we don’t recommend for our patients) and did a 3 day fast. This would see my blood sugars drop to a normal fasting range generally by day 2 of the 3-day cycle, and both Dennis and I lost that last stubborn 10 pounds we all seem to fight with. This spring we did an 8-week cycle of 3-day fasting each week and what I began to notice was that my blood sugars were not responding positively as I had experienced the previous year. Another difference was while I could lose 5+ pounds during our fast days, I spent the next 4 days putting them back on! I would generally limit myself to 1 meat and salad meal per day, with high fat low to no carb snacks (nuts, cheese, avocado) once or twice a day and no matter how sparingly I ate I would add 1+ pounds each day until I was back to my pre fasting weight.
Several years ago, when I first became aware that I had Type II Diabetes was frustrated by my morning spikes in blood sugar and wasn’t sleeping well, Dr. Morris recommended I have an adrenal scan to make sure I had no contributory pathology such as a tumor that was causing problems. My report came back negative, however one thing they mentioned in the report was that I was developing a fatty liver. This really irritated me, I thought a lot about it over the next year. Just before the world went crazy this spring, I was reading a book, The Diabetes Code by Dr. Jason Fung. He mentioned the liver and how our cells become stuffed full of sugar that we can’t use which presents a problem and causes fatty liver. From there I found a book called The Liver Rescue by Anthony Williams. After spending a weekend reading this book I told Dennis that I was going to change my eating habits and give myself 6 months to see what the effects would be. So, for the last three weeks we have been feasting on every fruit known to man, veggies, potatoes, sweet potatoes, dried fruit for snacks and limiting fats to low and once per day only, no cheese, nuts, or meat sticks period, no heavy whipping cream in our coffee! We are eating 5 times the amount of food we were previously, and I easily dropped not only the frustrating 5 pounds, but a few more besides! I am at my lowest weight ever and am having no trouble keeping it off despite eating so much more food!
As anyone who has dieted knows, one size or diet does NOT fit everyone! On Tuesday night we will be discussing the different diets, their pros, and cons, which make sense, which might pose problems, and what to look for. We will also discuss eating to your genetics as well as sharing some of the information we found in the book Liver Rescue.
We look forward to seeing you Tuesday night in the clinic at 6:00 pm. Please call and reserve your spot as seating is limited.
