I went to a Quirky Cooking Life Changing Food Seminar a couple of months ago & also got my copy of the Life Changing Food cookbook.
At the seminar both Jo & Fouad shared some of their story around food & health. They also demonstrated some of the recipes from their Life Changing Food Cookbook. Recipes shared included Apple Cinnamon Nut Porridge, Sunflower Seed Paella with Prawn & Chorizo, Chilly Bowl, Hummus, Grain Free Dough & Nutty Chocolate.
We were given a taste of Hummus with Almond Crackers & the Nutty Chocolate. Both were very yummy. We also got to feel the Grain Free Dough to feel what it should be like when it’s ready to roll out and use.
Some of the things that I learnt or was reminded of in the seminar were:
- food can have a huge impact on your health
- we should eat whole foods as close to nature as possible
- you need to work out what works for you and your body
- chickpeas are a good legume – doesn’t create the sugar spike – low GI
- living beings need to eat living things
- potato cooked & cooled is lower on the GI index
- you need fats to absorb the nutrients from plant foods
- polyunsaturates age us more rapidly
- vegetable oils increased heart disease when introduced into Israel
- good fats including duck fat, goose fat, coconut oil & olive oil are the most sacred food in many cultures
- try slowly swapping foods for eg 1/2 cauliflower rice with normal rice and slowly increase the cauliflower used or swapping zucchini noodles for pasta
So with all this learning along with other information that I’ve been seeing online I’ve
really started to think that I need to change my diet. Even though I have worked out some foods that aren’t good for me, there are many days when body doesn’t feel quite right. I also have had very regular headaches for many years. Mostly I manage these with pain killers but sometimes they are so bad that I don’t want to move & twice in the last 18 months or so I have had migraines so bad that I’ve ended up in hospital.
I have been pretty much been dairy & soy free since we first discovered my sons food intolerance’s & in the last few years I’ve eaten pretty much gluten free as well. I talk a little bit how diet has affected me here and here.
More recently I’ve tried to cut back on tomato & capsicum. I have a feeling that tomato may not be great for me. When I was a child I used to get migraines and then one day I got one after having eaten a rotten cherry tomato that day. I did not eat tomato for years after that. Not sure if when I stopped eating tomato corresponded with my migraines stopping or not. Anyhow, this week after eating burrito mince with a tomato based sauce I didn’t sleep well. It may have been partly what else was on my mind at the time as well.
Jo talks a lot about her families journey with GAPS so I was wondering if this might be something I should try. After researching GAPS some more I’m not quite ready to try a full GAPS diet and could see that you would need professional support to do it properly.
However for now I’m really trying to eat grain free as much as possible & cut way back on sugar. I did quite well last week but then ate some gluten free (but not grain free) biscuits I had made for my husband. This week I planned to have cabbage ‘noodles’ whilst the rest of my family had rice with Beef Stroganoff but then automatically had corn chips with our burrito mince.
For now I’ll keep persevering with being grain free & sugar free as much as possible to see if it makes a difference.
Have you found that changing your diet has helped with your health? If so, how?