Weston Price and Fibro/Chronic Fatigue

Ever since my mom was in the hospital in September life has been pretty hectic for me with no slow down much at all. I am now needed by her more than I have been in the past along with Petunia's active social and school life, and this takes me away from my duties here at the farm more than it used to. That typically means that I am always trying to play catch-up when I am home. For someone with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia that can be pretty tough. So, I really needed to sit down and take a hard look at things. One thing that got me to thinking was the time years ago that I was on the Atkins diet. I felt really good while I was on that diet. I lost weight and seemed to have a good amount of energy. I felt as close to normal as I am ever going to feel. So I really sat down and took some time to read through the health articles at the Weston Price foundation. I realized that even though we eat pretty well and pretty healthy there were still many things going on with me and my diet personally that certainly were not helping with my pain levels and my fatigue. The first thing I noticed was my breakfast usually consisted of muffins or toast with some fruit. First not many calories and the majority of those calories were carbs. For someone with fibro carbs are inflammatory, in other words they cause pain and inflammation. Second, for someone with chronic fatigue the last thing that we need is the down swing in blood sugar that comes from eating lots of carbs. Also, the calories really weren't enough for the amount of work that I needed to do which is pretty physically exerting. So by the time dinner (lunch) came around I was already pretty done for. Then since I usually serve some type of bread with dinner sometimes dinner would leave me with the carb up and down syndrome again and by 1:00 I could hardly keep my eyes open much less be productive. One of the things with my chronic fatigue also is that I am rarely hungry and so when I do sit down and eat I don't eat a lot because frankly it is just too much effort and I am too tired. So again, a physically exertive day with not enough productive calories. Then by supper time I just want something easy. Many times that something easy is fruit and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or heated up leftovers from dinner. So reading through the Weston Price material really gave me a lot to think about. I first realized that I was not getting enough calories in the form of fat and protein to give me any lasting energy. Second, the carbs were killing me in the form of pain and the downswing after eating a lot of carbs really did not help my afternoon fatigue. So I have made some changes. I forgo the fruit and heavy carbs in the morning and opt for loads of protein and healthy fats. Typically for breakfast I will have a good sized glass of milk (raw full fat milk), two tablespoons of coconut milk, meat left over from the day before and two eggs and a cup of homemade broth. For dinner, I eat what I cook for the whole family but I leave off any bread that we may have. For supper I allow myself to have more carbs and some fruit since I will be going to bed and just sitting around. Last night I had a blackened flounder sandwich on whole wheat bread, some peaches and some roasted pecans. I have only been working on this nutrition thing for a couple of weeks, but I have noticed a difference. My crashes are less, I have a little more energy and when I don't follow my regime I feel lousy. I still have pain and I still get a little tired during the day, but it isn't the bone weary can't put one foot in front of the other tired. The pain is bearable, not the bring tears to my eyes kind of pain. I am hoping that as long as I stick to what my body needs and doesn't need nutritionally that I will see even more improvement. I am going to try baking sourdough bread and sprouted grain bread to see if that helps also. Supposedly it is the phytic acids in the grain that causes issues and sprouting and fermenting are supposed to de-activate those phytic acids. We will see. All I can say is that nutrition really plays a huge role in our health and how we feel. So sometimes instead of just living with whatever is ailing us then we simply need to take a real hard look at how and what we are eating. I am doing that now and I am beginning to feel more human. Blessings from the farm, Kat