Learning Not To Stray

 

It's interesting to note that when your body is chronically inflamed you don't really notice the swelling and pain very much if it's at a low level. However, once your body is free of that inflammation, you notice its return immediately!

My husband and I belong to a local conservation group in our town and the last weekend of April is our annual roadside cleanup for Earth Day. We start with road assignments, bags and gloves being handed out in the morning and then in the early afternoon we have a cookout. All members of the group contribute food, and my contribution is usually potato salad, something that my husband and I normally love.

Originally I hadn't planned to eat there with everyone and neither had my husband. I was going to behave and stick to my Lion Diet, make the healthy choice. But then everything looked so good and everyone else was eating, we gave in and joined. Call it social pressure even though nobody really cared if we did or not. It all tasted so good! Yes, I even had potato chips, cookies and brownies though I didn't eat any buns. I decided that I could allow myself one "normal" meal and it would be okay...back on Lion right afterwards.

I had heartburn that night from the potato salad and chips. The next morning I felt like I'd been run over by a train and my husband and I noticed that our hands and feet were swollen up a bit again, his worse than mine, and painful. I was also stuffed up from the grains in the cookies and brownies. We were actually amazed at how fast our bodies suffered the effects of inflammation in response to just one meal!

So, we won't be doing that again any time soon, it's just NOT worth it. Our bodies didn't get that toxic and sick overnight, it took decades, and it's not going to all heal in just a few weeks or months, it's going to take some time. I've settled in to accepting that, but also accepting that I'm human so I may give in to temptation again at some point. We just have to make sure it's not too frequently and really choose the foods we eat carefully even if we stray for a moment, try to lessen the impact by not binging like we did at the cookout, maybe just choose ONE unhealthy treat instead of ALL of them. 

I feel like this is part of the process. Mikhaila Peterson, the woman who started and named the Lion Diet and inspires so many, has spoken about the fact that she's tried to add foods back in to her diet but has been unsuccessful at doing so. I'd like to reach a point of getting back to Paleo, or at least being able to have a more lax Paleo meal or treat occasionally. I did so well on that for so long and I'd really love to get back there, but if not I can accept remaining on the Lion woe if I can have occasional treats without suffering so much for it. 

Nobody is on this type of restrictive diet completely by choice, it's just a choice of not being on meds and making our bodies more and more toxic, but healing it instead, which doesn't happen on medications.

Find the diet that works best for you and your body using trial and error and doing your own research. Your body knows what's right for it better than any doctor, especially since they get zero training in nutrition in medical school, just training on drugs and procedures.

Be Healthy and Happy,

~Diane Jarecki 🥩

Welcome

Welcome to The Lion's Life, my blog site where I'll be sharing my long journey from the Standard American [Sugar] Diet (SA[S]D) to following a Lion Diet way of eating. I'll be sharing the journey to here and then onward from here, including my struggles and pitfalls and the result of those as well as my successes and what's been working.

This is a journey that started in my mid-40s after I was widowed in 2007 and woke up to the fact that my body was extremely toxic as I had Chronic Myofascial Pain Syndrome and Fibromyalgia, hypothyroidism, insulin resistance and was on my way to being a full-fledged Type II diabetic. I'd lost my husband at the time to cancer and discovering that there were over 400 natural cures for cancer that doctors will never tell you about awakened in me an interest in holistic health as I'd done a lot of research on diet and nutrition and natural medicine during his battle with that disease. I started a course to earn my degree as a Doctor of Naturopathy through Clayton College, which later went bankrupt before I could complete my program.

So I started to do some research and my first step was to go gluten-free because I realized that I had all of the classic symptoms of celiac disease when I read Going Against The Grain by Melissa Diane Smith. I used up the last of my normal foods and replaced them with organic gluten-free ones, and that relieved some of my health issues like the Chronic Myofascial Pain Syndrome, but I came to realize that wasn't quite enough and eventually I completely removed grains from my diet. 

In 2010 I remarried and my research continued. A year or two later I discovered the book The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain, Ph.D. and started to follow a higher protein, lower sugar and carb diet. That worked well for me and I had also been walking for all of those years, and while my health improved considerably I lost 70 lbs., going down to a size I hadn't worn since I left the Army at the age of 19, and my blood test results came back better than they'd been since my early 20s! An eye exam even showed that my astigmatism in my left eye, which I'd been diagnosed with at 14, was gone.

In 2013 I turned 50 and my younger son and stepson both graduated from high school, so I had a graduation cake that I'd ordered MUCH larger than was needed because of the anticipated guest load followed shortly afterwards by my birthday cake and all of the food brought in for the potluck picnic we hosted. I'd also discovered Aldi's and an amazing Philly steak and cheese pizza they had, and I'll go into more details of just what a drastic effect that had on my health in a future post on dairy. Suffice it to say here that I went "off the wagon" in a big way and the weight came back on. I was also unable to walk anymore because I was so short of breath that I couldn't walk down the hallway upstairs. (Again, more in that dairy post.)

Not only did I regain that 70 lbs., but also another 30 for a total gain over time of 100 lbs. I was clinically obese and out of shape in my 50s and facing a move out of state to return home to NH where we wanted to homestead, and I knew something had to change but I struggled to make those changes. 

It was years before I got on track again, and it took my husband ending up in the hospital and being admitted to the ICU for three days with a diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and placed on four medications for heart rhythms and hypertension for us to both start making drastic changes. 

We started out on Keto and have gradually transitioned into Carnivore and finally, by losing our taste for certain things and making conscious choices, to Lion. He still has some things like eggs and coffee in his diet, but I've eliminated all of that and now only eat beef, lamb, bison and salt and drink only water. 

I'll go into more details in future posts about the different parts of this journey and how things are going moving forward, as well as resources. I also have a YouTube channel where I'll be talking about it all if you want to tune in!

Be healthy and happy,

~Diane Jarecki 🥩