My story
Food was always one of my favourite things in the world. I loved everything from sweet to savoury, from Asian to French. You name it, I ate it. I loved trying out new kinds of food like exotic fruits, fancy foods and foreign dishes, was curious about new flavours and recipes, was keen on checking out new places around town, but what I loved most was gathering around a big table with friends and family, pampering ourselves with treats.
After experiencing severe digestive problems, stomach aches, bloating and chronic gastritis in 2010, I knew that something wasn’t right with me. I was also bothered with systemic inflammation, bad skin, water retention and chronic fatigue for years, before I was (finally) diagnosed with an inflammatory bowel disease and multiple food allergies and intolerances such as gluten sensitivity. My whole (food) world collapsed! Nearly every single dish I loved so much was affected. How could I possibly live without some of my favourite foods?
This was when I first started to dig deeper into nutrition and started reading a lot about it. This is also when I started cooking without gluten and dairy and started my (high protein) ‘clean eating’ journey. I learned a lot of new recipes and experimented a lot with foods and I guess I liked it. At least I at some point I began to feel comfortable with my diagnosis and wouldn’t bother much about it anymore. For some time I was feeling better, I wasn’t that bloated anymore, dropped quite some weight, my fatigue vanished and my skin started to clear out, I even found motivation to start a gym membership. However at this time I was still consuming a lot of meat and eggs and I was restricting my calorie intake. At some point I wasn’t fully happy with how I was feeling after eating certain foods and I just felt that something wasn’t right. I sometimes still had stomach ache, digestive issues, water retention and I somehow felt ‘brain fogged’ after some meals and my fatigue slowly but surly made its way back. And I had cravings, BAD cravings. Even though I had a fitter body, it still took a lot of overcoming to get myself to the gym to train and I was still only doing some lame cardio exercise. Then someday when I had a blood work done to check my thyroid function (which wasn’t really working), the results came back quite poor: my liver and kidney values were elevated. How could this be when this lifestyle was supposed to be oh-so healthy?
And then once in a while, when things got hard at university I just couldn’t hold up to this high protein life style and often failed to refrain from my cravings for carbs and fat and eventually binged on glutenfree pasta, pastry, nutella, peanut butter, sushi and sweets. For some time I even ‘allowed’ myself a cheat meal once a week, but in the end I knew I was only fooling myself and I only needed an excuse to deliberately binge. I was frustrated and felt that something was seriously wrong with this kind of lifestyle or that it just wasn’t for me. Why do I have to torture myself so much and still didn’t get the results I was hoping for: a lean, fit, strong and healthy body and mind?
Finally I came across Freelee the banana girl and her rawtill4 movement on youtube and was instantly positive about her way of eating and soaked every bit of information she revealed in her videos like a sponge. I love fruits and stuffing my face with it just felt like the heaven sent message I was waiting for. All you can eat potatoes and rice at night, perfection. I also stumbled upon Loni Jane, Fullyraw Kristina and Tina Grundin on Instagram and started to realise that a vegan diet wasn’t that bad after all. Hearing so many bad aspects and the serious health concerns about a diet including meat, dairy and eggs seriously made me doubt my previous choices. I felt like a whole new world was out there (insert Disney song here). How could we not know about all this? And why are the government and food industry deliberately withholding important information from us? On the same day I order The China Study by Colin Campbell, gulped it in only 5 days. Everything seemed to get clearer and I was beginning to see the whole picture. There it was black on white, the truth everybody should know: that a whole food and plant bases diet is the way to go if you want to live a long and healthy life. Books such as The Low Carb Fraud and Whole by Campbell, 80-10-10 by Graham and The Starch Solution by McDougall followed and I couldn’t get enough of them.
I was ready to do some serious high carb healing. And I did. My energy levels are skyrocketing, my belly is always flat, no matter how much I eat (ok food baby after dinner, however it’s gone within 30 minutes), no more bloating, my skin and hair are beauty pageant material and my eyes even changed colour from dark brown to something greenish. Now I actually enjoy working out, I even lift weights voluntarily! I also began to enjoy food again as I wasn't starving myself anymore. All these bad thoughts about food, cravings and gaining weight went away and I just felt complete a peace of mind. Such a liberating feeling!
To some this diet may seem extreme or even boring, however I feel so good on this high carb vegan lifestyle like I never could have imagined. One year ago I would have never imagined living without meat and eggs (and with so many carbs) and I guess I always thought that vegan food was boring and restricting, but I was so wrong. It’s so easy! Just eat as much plant based whole foods as you care for, nothing fancy, just fruits and veggies as Mother Nature intended us to do, that’s it! My body changed for good. I feel so much healthier and fitter, my blood workup is better than it ever was and I experienced such clearness in my mind and such a strong connection to my body. I finally feel alive.
Never had I known that the right nutrition would have such a great impact on me and that it is the key to a healthy body and mind. And now I know for sure: there’s no going back.
Never.
