Taking the Plunge

At the end of April I made a snap decision that could have turned out to be either daringly bold or crashingly stupid. I walked out of my day job at the supplement factory, a job which I mostly loved. Like a bad relationship though, there came a point where I decided that the parts I loved (my customers, formulating and working with my sister) no longer outweighed the negatives of the situation (ahem). I was tired of waking up every day with a heavy feeling in my stomach about what I might have to face when I got to the office. As a firm expounder of 'vote with your feet' I decided to practice what I preach, even though it was bloody terrifying.

I had a vague idea about hiring myself out as a consultant in the areas of product formulation and regulatory compliance as well as giving Sana Direct some TLC, but in my less confident moments I fretted that I'd just set myself on the path to being bored and broke. Um.. no. In my first week of supposed unemployment I got an influx of orders through Sana Direct to a level that was at least 300% more than any other week since 2005. Then I got a call from someone who needed an experienced product formulator asap to put together a swanky new high-end product (the sort of job that really spins my wheels). Since then I've had some big, exciting opportunities in compliance work and a trickle of technical writing jobs, which in this industry means reading 10 pages of jargon-ridden gobbledegook and turning it into a simple statement like 'Zinc + Mag + B6 work synergistically to help you sleep better'. I'm getting the feeling that taking the plunge has allowed things to come my way that, naturally, would not have previously, much like removing the debri from a river. Also, back when I thought I'd be wallowing in my inactivity, I made another big decision.

Feeling all motivated, probably from a combination of clean food and boxing class, I got online and signed myself up for full-time study at the Uni. My field is Health Science and I've been grinding my way through the degree for the last five or six years, part time. Now, my patience has run out and I just want to get the thing finished, so that's the plan, Stan. Exciting as all of this is I may have to make some sacrifices. Of course there are financial considerations when studying fulltime and working part-time, but I'm talking about real hardships. I may, for example, have to experience a painful reduction in CSI:Miami time (O.M.G) and please feel free to slap me if I start to pine for H and his one-liners. It's a very good thing that a welcome side effect of the 'no potatoes, wheat, dairy or any CRAP' diet is a fantastic feeling of energy. No sugar swings, no caffeine crash, just skipping along feeling like Pollyanna. Was she the one with the crazy braids that stick out? I wonder how you get that effect? As a student I could probably get away with it and I'm sure my consulting clients don't care what I do with my hair, except perhaps on audit day (shudder).

No, wait, that's Pippi Longstockings. Long, stripy socks. Perhaps I'll do that instead.

Feelings Schmeelings

Public Service Announcement:

Get yourselves over to Keks blog to read a genius post about the 'how do you do it?' factor. Of course those of us that manage to exercise and eat well are special and don't have the normal pressures of family, work and meal planning. It's all explained in Keks blog. Now you know for sure what you always suspected. It's just easier for gifted people like Kek. Argument settled.

Creaky joints inc.

I may be a 21st century being, living in a world of convenience food and computer inactivity but, as yet, my soul does not live in a bio-jar. My body, so says Dr Adamo, is full of ancient genes that prefer to get up in the morning, hunt down breakfast, gather a few bits of grass on the way back to cave and then do it all again later. Failure to live in tune with my caveman DNA will cause my body to rebel with decreased immunity, stress related disorders, increased fatness and other problems, such as stupid arthritis.

A month or so ago, I started off with a hiss and a roar on the Arthritis - fight it with the Blood Type Diet book. The force was with me. When I studied Psycho-cybernetics a few years ago I learned that human motivation basically boils down to pleasure and pain. We are wired to gravitate towards pleasure and away from pain and out of the two, the drive to avoid pain is the stronger. As a food related example, when I had kidney disease, eating or drinking certain foods, or too much of any food, caused intense pain. For the six weeks before surgery I ate practically nothing but veges and eggs, no motivation required. It's an aversion reaction. Now, I've got the same thing with the arthritis diet. It's easy because I have a strong motivation - avoiding arthritis pain now and in the future. And besides that, it's just not a hard diet.

The idea is, basically, to avoid foods which can cause a negative reaction with my blood group, which is type O negative. This includes most grains (especially wheat) and legumes, acidic fruits, most dairy products and certain random veges like cauliflower and potatoes. I'm not exactly sure how this blood sensitivity has been determined but I'm looking into it. It seems to be some sort of serology, testing blood plasma against antigens. As long as the whole thing is not based on dodgy 'muscle testing' then I'm ok with it. It makes some sense in my pea-brain that blood type is important to individual biochemistry. Look at how strongly the human system reacts if, for example, transfused with the wrong blood type! I also discovered that Dr Adamo has gone further into the new field of Nutrigenomics with The Genotype Diet and had to investigate it. The Genotype Diet refines the four Blood Types into 6 Genotypes and it's a slightly complicated procedure to figure out which one you are. You have to measure your body parts to figure out such things as which is longer, torso or legs? upper leg or lower leg? index finger or ring finger?. You examine your fingerprints, the shape of your head and your jawline for clues and then at the end, you may or may not know which Genotype you actually are. In the end, I was confused, still not entirely sure if I'm a 'Hunter' or an 'Explorer', so I decided to go back to the standard old Blood Type Diet. At least I know I'm a type O negative. In my opinion, if you are thinking of discovering your Genotype, then it would be helpful to get some lab tests done first. In particular, you should know your rhesus and secretor status. Secretor status refers to whether your blood type can be detected in your saliva. 20% of us are 'non-secretors' and this becomes important when nailing down your Genotype.

After a couple of hairy weeks adjusting to the lack of carbs and caffeine, I'm beginning to feel quite perky. I had to brainstorm how to make this work in the real world, or at least, in MY slightly crazy little life. My next post will be about the nitty gritty of daily life as a wheat-free, nightshade-free, dairy-free, potato-free healthnut (nuts are ok). I've invented some compliant snacks, which consist primarily of rice protein and nut butters, and embraced food substitutions all-round. I have not been counting calories because I knew that in order to tighten up the food options, I'd better let something give or my brain might short-circuit and I'd find myself inside out and living in the freezer because that's where the icecream is. In terms of results, I'm quietly optimistic. I was not expecting to notice anything for at least three months, but there has been early progress. Certain movements that were painful, such as lifting my leg into my jeans, are now painless and that makes me say bwahahaha to stupid arthritic joints. Also, the scales have finally made it off my blacklist by telling me nice things like 'you look great, Sara. Have you lost a kg? Why YES you have'. Perhaps they want to be my facebook friend?

Sana Direct Newsletter

If you are not a subscriber to my Sana Direct Newsletter, you can read the 'hot off the press' issue by clicking here.

Tomorrow, a real blog post where I shall reveal all as regards the success, or otherwise, of my creaky joints/blood type O diet so far :)

I had a habit.. or three

About a week ago, I made a bold decision to embark on a radically different nutrition plan. Since 'that day', and I can't quite remember which day it was, I have removed the following from my eating plan, if not quite from my consciousness:

*Caffeine
*All refined carbs (including sugar and all flours)
*Most grain products
*Most dairy products (I'm still eating a little yogurt and a miniscule amount of cheese)
*All nightshades - that's potatoes, peppers (including hot ones), paprika, eggplant and tomatoes

I've also had partial success with alcohol, having only had two glasses of red wine They were not the giant 'takes half a bottle' glasses either, although I do have some of those glasses, and they are gorgeous.

I'm not doing this to lose weight, because experience has proved to me that you have to remove anything from your diet in order to get leaner. I'm doing it to see if I can get some improvement in my creaky, squeaky joints.

I've never been what you would call a limber person, but the last few years have been ridiculous. I was kneeling in front of the fire about two weeks ago and when I got up my ankles, knees and hips were aching so badly it took a while to straighten them out! Note: I'm not 110 years old. I'm not even 40, people! For the last 6 weeks I've been having some diagnostic scans on my sore and stiff hip which firstly showed a minor tendon problem and then showed the beginnings of osteoarthritis. Bloody Hell. I'm beginning to rust! This can't be allowed to happen! So, of course, I did what any rational being would do in the circumstances; I Googled.

The first thing I discovered was something I remembered from my Naturopathy studies, and that is, with osteoarthritis, expect a very slow improvement. My basic plan is to adopt an anti-inflammatory diet (check, see above), remove nightshades which are known to slow down cartilage repair in people that are sensitive to them (check), take lots of glucosamine, chondoitin, collagen, hyaluronic acid and fish oil (check, check, check) and do it perfectly for at least three months before expecting any results (one week down, go me!). I also found quite a few anecdotal success stories on the Blood Type Diet site and this encouraged me to embrace my Type O-ness and see what eventuates.

I'm feeling quietly optimistic. Before the actual diagnosis, I'd already been thinking quite hard about my systemic stiffness and what might be causing it. I made the discovery that during my eat-stop-eat fasts, or on any day when I'd eaten low-carb and dropped a bunch of water weight, my joints ached less. This got me thinking about food sensitivities and that I might need to clean up my act, and now I've done it. I have no idea if I went through any food-related withdrawl symptoms because, if they were there, they were not as bad as the caffeine withdrawl, which I think I'm not quite over. My de-caffeination symptoms mostly consisted of many random acts of bitchiness. It was like having intense PMT rage all the time arrrrrgh why is everybody so annoying, all the time, and especially right now! I'm a charm right now. Really. Come on over for a c-c-c-coffee *tears up*.

As for exercising, I'm going to take it intuitively. I'm doing Turbulence Training bodyweight exercises, and I'll keep that up. I'm also doing some yoga to stretch out my tight bits. And then, when I've done my exercise and eaten my chicken and jerusalem artichokes with no tomato salsa I go and stand by my coffee machine and take a few deep sniffs. Do you think that's ok?

Dear Tutor,

I'm very sorry that my assignment is not quite as fabulous as I wanted it to be, and is a day late. Last night our neighbours pot-smoking brother blew up their garage and it was very distracting with the sirens and the fire-engines and having to hose the fence and talk to the CSI's.

The CSI's were quite good looking, but not like in CSI: Miami. They lie.

My house smells.

However, it was an excellent way to meet the people in my neighbourhood; everyone has a crisis-loving drama queen inside.

Thanks!
Sara

Enough of the giant carrot?

Sorry, I seem to have accidentally gone all silent and non-bloggy, also the Sana newsletter for May appears to have .. er.. not happened. There are several reasons for all of this slack behaviour, among which, I am fighting off some nasty flu. Also, I am getting older. You know that thing that happens every year, when you have to reprogram your profile on the digital scales because you're no longer 'post 35 again, but have ventured into 'post 35 again again'? Yeah, that was me last week.

However it's not the getting older that has been distracting me, nooooo, it's the fact that I have fallen in love with my getting older present, an ipod touch. As well as doing all the regular stuff that an ipod does, like hold your music and vids, this little gem also has wi-fi capability and I can surf the net, check my email, update twitter and browse youtube, right from MY OWN HAND. It's a rather serious addiction. I found myself considering updating my blog from my ipod touch but, although that would be fun, it would also be quite time consuming as the touch pad is much slower to navigate than a regular QWERTY, expecially for a pitmans trained touch typist.

One of the sites I've spent countless ipod hours on lately is Dr D'Adamo of the Blood Type Diet. I've decided to give it a whirl as the dietary plan for my just started Turbulence Training Challenge. I'm a big fan of 'suck it and see' - a term which we use in taste formulating of dietary supplements, practical if not always pleasant!. The blood typing idea may be a load of kooky wooky, but it can't hurt to give it a try. In reading through the recommendations for type 'O', it seems very similar to the type of eating that I was doing on the Metabolic Diet. Unfortunately, when I did the Metabolic Diet, I threw my brain out the window, ate heaps of fatty meat and full fat dairy and drove my cholesterol up to more than twice the upper end of healthy. This time at least I have some smarts. I'm not going to attach any extremist interpretation to the recommendations and nor am I going to freak out if I accidentally or purposely eat an 'avoid' food. I'm also still doing Eat-Stop-Eat mini-fasts on a sort of random basis. I'm not sure I can say that I'm doing Eat-Stop-Eat proper because the whole idea behind it is not to be doing some wacko nutrition plan on regular eating days, but.. meh. Sometimes you've just got the let the inner obsessive loose, it's one of the perks of advancing maturity. As long as it's all fun and nobody gets eaten, what's the harm?