Food And Arthritis

Add the RIGHT foods to your diet to REDUCE arthritic pain and inflammation.
Include the WRONG foods to your diet and INCREASE arthritic pain and inflammation.
My choice? A life-journey based on a low-oil whole-food plant based diet.
Whatever your current state of health, make yourself healthier - you deserve it. Start your plant based diet journey today.

Thursday 16 November 2017

Why some people fail on a vegan diet

I thought I might do my own rant on the subject of why people transitioning to a vegan diet might fail.  Let me start is with listing all possible reasons:

  • Poor motivation to become a vegan in the first place,
  • The vegan diet they tried was an unhealthy one,
  • They did not give sufficient time for gut bacteria to change, and finally
  • It was not a lifestyle change
As you can see, on the surface, this is not a big list.  But inside these bullet points there are some big subjects. Let's start out with motivation.

Motivation: People usually wish to become vegan for one or more of three main reasons: personal health, animal welfare or the health of the planet.

I became a vegan for personal health reasons.  The transition to becoming a vegan resolved my long standing arthritis problems.  So with such a clear personal experience of how my own good health is woven into the mesh of what foods go down my throat, there is no way I will deviate far from my chosen diet.

However, what has been interesting and totally unexpected is not only that my immediate health issues have been addressed but also a range of other health issues, including weight also seem to be addressed.  My skin is clear, by body rebounds from health challenges better, I could go on.

And yes, let me go on a little bit more.  You see I have done my research.  I have checked out the extensive peer-reviewed independent research and it is unequivocal: such a diet as I have is a protection from many of today's chronic diseases.

Healthy Diet: So from my small beginnings of changing from a vegetarian to a vegan I have come a long way.  But along that way I learnt about what constitutes a healthy vegan.  You see it is very possible to be a vegan and at the same time be unhealthy.  Again there are several reasons for this.  Perhaps someone idly thinks that just becoming a vegan is all that is necessary.  Sadly there is danger in "transition" processed foods that many new vegans try.  Perhaps it is a bacon or sausage replacement.  Perhaps it is vegan cheese.  These foods have their place but one does need to be wary.  If all you do is replace meat with direct vegan alternatives that, in my opinion will become a poor diet.

Fortunately for myself my transition moved me straight on towards the Paddison program diet.  They great thing about that change is it moved me straight into a healthy vegan diet, or to be more precise an ultra-healthy vegan diet.  Let me explain why I say healthy and ultra-healthy.   A healthy vegan diet is one that focuses on whole-foods particularly at the expense of processed foods.  The implication is that someone on a healthy vegan diet has little or no processed foods and so is in fact cooking almost all meals from scratch.

Take today's evening meal as an example.  I soaked some black beans overnight, cooked them this morning and added a range of fresh vegetables, herbs and spices.  This was all cooked in a large heavy pan with enough for four evening meals for myself and my wife and I am very pleased to say the meal was delicious.  There was nothing in that meal that was processed.  And, from my researches it proves that that meal was incredibly nutritious, meeting all our protein, calorific etc etc.

My goal here is not to prove I am a great cook.  Rather that what I created was easy to make, cheap and very healthy.  Anyone could cook it and be very happy with the result.

And so onto that extra word "ultra".  Why do I claim that my diet is ultra-healthy.  Well for starters excluded from my meal is anything that could cause an arthritic reaction in my body.  That means excluding foods like fresh tomatoes.

But ultra means more than that.  It means that the meal was cooked with no oils.  Our modern society has a love affair with oils, especially extra-virgin olive oil.  It has been sold by plentiful and assiduous marketing to believe that refined oils are good for you.  The result is a fat society.  Not only that, for my body fats and oils are significant triggers of inflammation. Yes, I can tolerate some oils, but I monitor what I eat carefully.

A third dimension of an ultra-healthy diet is about continuing research.  It is about being awake to new research that explains how to optimise my life.from a food perspective.  It is about taking blood readings for cholesterol, B12 and other indicators of a healthy bloodstream.  I do not want to paint a picture of someone who is paranoid about their health.  But my body has a proven serious weakness, and that is arthritis.  People with arthritis commonly are expected to die early.  Well, I am not going to let that happen to me if I can help it.  My body has a proven weakness and it would be foolish to ignore that.

Just because I have little or no arthritis reacting in my body today does not mean I am immune to its problems tomorrow.  In fact after recent cold and back sprains I have experienced some difficult nights with pain in joints such as wrists and ankles.  My point here is that my body has a weakness and I have to pay attention to dealing with that.  Sitting on my laurels, so to speak is not an option.

Gut Bacteria: Now let me move onto the matter of gut bacteria.   Many people who attempt to become a vegan do not give it enough time or do not take the matter seriously enough.  The gut rules the mind.  Your gut is telling you what to eat.  So if you have had a life of eating meats then giving that up means your gut is going to fight back.  I read of cases all the time when someone has reactions to basic foods that generally cause no reaction.  Perhaps it is a plain food such as quinoa, which on its own is as bland as bland can be.  Contrast that with a highly seasoned sausage or fish, then in terms of taste and attractiveness quinoa will lose out every time.

Add to this the challenge of friends and family saying you are doing something silly or even stupid and it takes a brave ad determined person to get past that threshold. I was talking about time.  The human gut fully replenishes itself every 3 months.  Every time you poo down the toilet the majority of what is excreted is gut bacteria, billions of them.

Anyone who does not fully commit to a vegan diet (and by this shorthand I really mean a whole-food plant based diet with no oils) will find their gut bacteria taking longer to adapt.  Even a piece of meat or fish or some cheese once a week can slow that change to a grinding halt.

Lifestyle: And so we come to the final piece of the jigsaw.  My kind of diet is a lifestyle diet.  I don't have to plan meals, I simply go to the fridge and make up meals from whatever I find.   It is an amazing feeling to be able to make something substantial out of nothing, and that is often what cooking seems like.  Water goes in the pan over a low heat, add onions, garlic, ginger, spices & herbs, cooked pulses and beans and then move onto the veg.  Towards the end of cooking check for taste and serve.

But there is more to lifestyle than the cooking.  Shopping is brilliant, since the only aisles you typically need to visit in supermarkets are whole-foods and fresh veg.  Supermarket visits are so quick and cheap!

A huge part of lifestyle is exercise. I remember in the early part of our marriage my wife washing with a twin-tub.  That was, compared to today's modern washing machine hard work because you had to lift wet clothes from the washing tub and place them in the spinning tub, day in, day out.  Of course in its day the twin-tub was a miracle that made life easy.  My point is that modern society for most people is completely lethargic and lazy.  We drive everywhere and even exercise for many people is limited to 30 minutes per week because of pressures of work.

Well, my life has changed, and as I have blogged my life revolves around yoga, Bikram yoga.  Yesterday I did around four hours of sweating yoga postures.  Every day for the last seven days I have done at least two hours per day of hard focused exercise.

Yes I need the yoga.  My body definitely needs the yoga.  If I did not do yoga my body would regress.  There is no middle ground.  Because of my arthritis I have to fight.  If I fight I get healthier.  If I stop fighting I regress.

But becoming a healthy and successful vegan is about people seeing my story in themselves. What motivates me will not easily motivate someone else.  For success they need to see that just becoming a vegan is not simply about leaving meat or fish off the plate.

To successfully become a vegan is about understanding what health is all about.  That is a journey and sadly some people fail to complete the journey.  Hopefully they will try again another day, for their sake.

7 comments:

  1. This is a very good writing, Andy. I too have had quite a challenge staying vegan with such a limited amount of food that I can tolerate. Even the quinoa has been hard for me to take... I like it but it doesn't like me! Anywho, I am very interested in any ideas you might share to get us over the initial period where we have so few options that leave us feeling at least somewhat satiated.

    Thank you for directing me to this page.

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  2. Nice motivational topic you are sharing.. Thanks for sharing..

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  3. Thanks for sharing the valuable information

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  4. Hi Andy,
    I think I watched your interview with Clint Paddison - unless it was another Andy.
    This is quite inspirational and I'm thinking of going on the Paddison Program. The diet side I think I can manage, but Bikram yoga every day - no way. Partly because classes where I live cost 28 euros an hour. I can't afford that. Can you suggest an alternative?

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    1. Yes it is me. Exercise that is good is the exercise you can and will do. I have done a lot of Qi Gong at home and found that helpful.

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  5. Hi, thanks for the article which is inspirational.
    I'm almost ready to start the Paddison program, but I'm afraid of failing, not because of the diet but because I can't see myself doing the Bikram Yoga (28 euros per hour where I live - I can't afford it!) Is the yoga vital to success or is there another kind of exercise I could do to replace it? I do qi gong and like walking and swimming...

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    1. What you are doing sounds great. If you check out Danny's interview with Clint he swims for two hours a day and that worked for him.

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