The start of my health journey

I have always had an interest in nutrition. This interest (borderline obsession) probably stemmed from a combination of being an athlete, being raised by a health-conscious father, and (if I am being honest), vanity. It was a natural choice for me to study dietetics in school. I learned a lot in school but one of the key take-away messages I gathered through my formal education was to limit red meat consumption. The logic being that high consumption of red meat is bad for health because it contains a high amount of saturated fat. Consumption of too much saturated fat increases your LDL cholesterol, which in theory increases your chance of heart disease.

I came out of college believing that a healthy diet consisted of whole grains, fruits, vegetables and lean meats. I was educated that a healthy meal should be based off of Myplate. 1/4 lean meats, 1/4 grains, 1/4 veggies and 1/4 fruit with a serving of dairy. Therefore I came out of college focusing my diet on lean meats such as chicken breast, whole grains such as brown rice, lots of vegetables and fruit. Absolutely no red meat. My formal nutrition education made sense to me because it was what I grew up eating in a health-conscious household. Our family always followed the mainstream nutrition advice and appeared healthy (within normal body weight), so this dietary approach intuitively made sense to me.

Experimenting with veganism

After college I watched a documentary called Cowspiracy. Cowspiracy was about animal agricultures negative impact on the environment. This documentary changed everything for me. I was completely captivated. For the first time, I was told that animal agriculture is the cause of climate change. The documentary spouted out statistics like most of our green house gas emissions come from animal agriculture and that meat production requires massive amounts of water. I checked the sources and to my surprise they came from what appeared to be credible organizations. This shocked me. At the time I lived with my parents and I remember running downstairs to share this discovery with them. Call me impressionable I know, but this documentary convinced me to try out veganism. I thought that by eating this diet, I would do my part in helping the environment.

ADHD

I was diagnosed with ADHD during my junior year of college. Through the years leading up to my diagnoses, my brain was becoming foggier and foggier. It was difficult for me to organize my thoughts and I frequently misplaced possessions. I felt out of control and (to be frank) stupid. Often times I could not find the words to reflect my intentions. Looking back, I think I was becoming increasingly neurotic as well. I felt discontent and moody, making it difficult for me to enjoy the important things in life like my family and friends. With ADHD came a prescription for adderall. Adderall provided me with relief through stimulation. I felt more confident to speak my mind through this increase in energy. I also was able to organize myself a little better because the stimulating effects of adderall made mundane tasks more interesting. Additionally, taking adderall just made me feel happier, probably from the increase of dopamine.

Even though adderall helped my organization, confidence and mood, I felt increasingly dependent off of it. Without adderall, I felt foggy, slow and moody. Working out, socializing & engaging in physical activity were not enjoyable without adderall. I knew this was a problem but I couldn’t see a way out of it.

I did not like the idea of being dependent off of a pill, I wanted to get to the root of the problem. After all, I was in school to be a nutrition expert. The point of my job is to help others improve their lifestyle so they can be independent.

However I truly believed that my ADHD was a fixed condition and that there was no way out of it. This was reinforced through friends and family who told me not to be ashamed of my condition. Looking back, I know they had the best intentions, but by reinforcing that I was born with this condition I saw no way out of it. Besides what other lifestyle changes could I possibly make? I was following a universally perceived healthy diet with lots of fruits and vegetables and working out all the time. What could I possibly be doing wrong?

When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it. Milan Kundera

Continuing a “plant-based” diet

A couple years went by and I continued with my whole-foods plant-based diet. I went in and out of veganism, leaning more towards vegetarianism (with the occasional piece of meat thrown in the mix). I read books that continued to confirm my plant-based bias such as books written by Dr. Garth Davis and Dr. Michael Greger who argued that a whole foods plant-based diet was not only better for the environment, but better for health. They argued that the more meat you eat, the shorter you live. They would present studies with facts such as, “people who once ate vegetarian diets but then started to eat meat at least once a week were reported to have experienced a 146 percent increase in odds of heart disease”. This seemed to make sense to me. After all, in school I was educated on the importance of reducing my consumption of red meat. Reduction of all animal products was not too far of a stretch from that. So I began to see a diet high in plant foods and low in animal foods as not just better for the environment, but better for my overall health. Without being cognizant of it, I slowly began to wrap my identity around this diet. I know this to be true because looking back I would get extremely defensive and emotional if anyone argued against my health philosophy.

Meeting my boyfriend

This all changed after meeting my boyfriend. We met online and I remember one of the first things he asked were my thoughts on the carnivore diet. “Ugh don’t get me started” I replied. Even though I never even heard of this diet before, I completely refuted it because it went against everything I believed to be true in health. How could you NOT eat vegetables? A healthy diet should be based off of vegetables! People are unhealthy because they aren’t eating enough vegetables!

My boyfriend’s diet and lifestyle completely confused me. His meals were entirely centered around meat with little to no vegetables. He would sometimes eat nearly up to a pound of meat at a time and then go up to 24 hours without eating again. He was eating a very low carb/high fat diet that was very heavy on meat. Essentially a whole foods meat-based diet. He worked out less than me however he was both mentally and physically healthy. This lifestyle contradicted a lot of what I was educated on. I remember when we first started dating, he would send me links to nutrition articles and graphics that he found online. I originally had no interest in his research. For months we debated about nutrition for hours on end. I was very reluctant to take in the information he was presenting me with. After all, I was the expert, who does this guy think he is? He’s just an architect with no formal medical training! How dare he!

After about 3 months of intense debate, I began to loosen up a bit. His genuine curiosity about understanding the connection between nutrition and health slowly started to open up my mind to his ideas. In addition, I was also curious about the potential cognitive benefits of a low carb/high fat diet. Ive wanted to taper off of adderall for some time and I understood that many people felt more focused and energized on this type of dietary approach. I went back to a previous email he sent me abut health (that included over 50 articles/youtube videos/books and mental models) and started exploring. After digging through some of his recommendations with an open mind, my preconceptions started to fade away and my perspective started to slowly shift. I’ll share a few articles, books and tidbits of knowledge that opened my mind.

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in. Isaac Asimov

Breaking down preconceived notions

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration

“Life in all its fullness is mother nature obeyed.” Weston A. Price

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration was a book written by Weston A Price, an American Dentist who made it his mission to figure out why his patients were developing cavities and other dental problems at such an alarming rate. He decided to travel the world with his wife and observe the lifestyles of different groups of primitive people who have not been exposed to western food and culture. Some of the groups Weston Price studied included villages in Switzerland, Gaelic communities, indigenous people of North and South Africa, Melanesian and Polynesian South Sea Islanders, African tribes, Australian Aborigines and New Zealand Maori.

What he discovered was astonishing. Weston Price learned that all of these primitive people exhibited superb health. Excellent dental, physical and mental health. Low rates of cavities, well formed jaw line and low rates of sickness. What did these diets have in common? All of these indigenous diets were limited in refined grains and sugars and included some animal products.

Weston Price also noticed that after these primitive groups were exposed to a western diet of refined flours and sugar, their psychical and dental health began to deteriorate within a generation. Listed below are some before and after pictures that Weston Price took during his trip. When Weston Price compared the nutrition composition of the primitive diets to a standard american diet, he noted that the primitive diets contained at least 4 times the water-soluble vitamins, calcium and other minerals and at least 10 times more fat-soluble vitamins from animal foods such as butter, fish, eggs, shellfish, organ meats and eggs.

This book made a huge impression on me. I was so accustomed to poor dental health in my culture and I never connected it to poor diet. I did not understand that poor dental health is the result of malnourishment. I didn’t know that a healthy human is supposed to have a wide jaw and perfectly aligned teeth. Everyone I know, including myself, required braces for crooked and/or misaligned teeth. This book helped me understand on a deeper level the connection between nutrition and health. I learned that there is something deeply wrong with our modern food system and mainstream nutrition advice. When looking to fix the diseases of modern civilization, shouldn’t we look towards groups of people who do not exhibit these diseases? Why is it that they do not have these problems? What is it about their lifestyle and food choices that prevents these problems from occurring?

. “When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

Bioavailability of plant vs. animal foods

Plant foods are usually touted as the most nutrient dense foods, but that is far from the truth. Even though a food may contain a high amount of a certain nutrient, that does not mean that our bodies have access to that nutrient. There are certain chemical compounds found in plant foods such as lectins, phytates and oxalates that interfere with our bodies ability to absorb vitamins and minerals. For example, even though a serving of spinach may claim to contain 100% RDI (recommended daily intake) of calcium, the amount that our body can actually absorb is minimal because plant compounds such as oxalates bind to the calcium, therefore only a small percentage of that calcium is actually usable by our bodies.

Many of the vitamins contained in plant foods aren’t in a form our bodies can access and this conversion is sometimes very difficult for our bodies to process. For example, plant foods do not contain Vitamin A. They contain carotenoids that our body has to convert to Vitamin A, and many people don’t even have the necessary enzyme to make this conversion. So even though a sweet potato may claim to have 100% RDI of Vitamin A, our bodies can only access a very small percentage of that.

Listed below is a chart created by Dr. Zoe Harcombe comparing the nutrition of chicken liver, sardines, eggs, sunflower seeds and kale. The numbers highlighted in yellow demonstrate which of the 4 food items provides the most nutrition per 100g serving. This got me thinking, why are foods like kale considered to be a superfood when foods like chicken liver provide so much more nutrition?

Learning about the quantity and bioavailability (ability of our bodies to absorb and utilize nutrients) of plant vs. animal foods shifted my perspective on the value of plant foods. Sure plants contain vitamins and minerals, but it is indisputable that animal products contain more and in the form that our bodies have better access to. This got me thinking, shouldn’t we be focusing our dietary advice on foods that contain the most nutrition in the most accessible form? Especially in a culture that is very deficient in many vitamins and minerals such as iron and b12, nutrients very abundant in animal foods.

Every man is the creature of the age in which he lives; very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time. Voltaire

Saturated Fat

Fat present in natural foods comes in a combination of fats, not just one kind. This includes saturated, mono & poly unsaturated fats. So red meat doesn’t just contain saturated fat, it contains a mixture of saturated, mono and polyusaturated fat. Olive oil, fish & chicken (universally accepted healthy foods) do not just contain mono & poly unsaturated fats, they contain a MIXTURE of saturated, mono & polyunsaturated fats just like red meat. When you compare the actual amount of saturated fat between red meat, fish and chicken, you actually see they are quite similar. For example, a 100g serving of mackerel fish contains as much saturated fat as a 100g serving of filet mignon (10g). In addition, mackerel fish and filet mignon contain the same amount of mono-unsaturated (healthy fats) as well.

This fact got me thinking, why are we advocating for a reduction in red meat consumption based solely on the saturated fat content when proclaimed healthy foods like fish contain just as much saturated fat? In addition, why are we claiming that certain foods like fish are healthy because they contain a large amount of monounsaturated (healthy) fats when red meat contains the same amount of these fats? Learning about how natural foods contain a combination of fats, not just a singular one, changed my perception on the health of red meat. It is myopic to reduce a whole food to just a singular nutrient.

All great truths begin as blasphemies George Bernard Shaw

Epidemiology

A lot of the health books I was previously reading based their conclusions off of nutritional epidemiology studies. Nutritional epidemiology is a relatively new field of medical research that studies the relationship between nutrition and disease occurrence in populations. Most of the data coming from nutritional epidemiology is self-reported, requiring participants to summarize their dietary intakes over a year-long span. For example, one kind of question from an epidemiology study may be “Over the past 12 months, how often did you drink milk as a beverage?” I don’t know about you, but I cant even remember what I ate a week ago. These studies are meant to generate hypotheses and can not demonstrate cause and effect. There are multiple nutritional epidemiology studies linking thousands of foods to all sorts of disease. Does that mean we should stop eating everything? No, of course not. The quality of the study is more important than the results. Once I understood that plant-based advocates base a lot of their recommendations off of these studies, I further shifted my perspective away from the value of a plant-based/low-meat diet. It is intellectually dishonest to make conclusions off of such weak science.

Environmental Impact

What hit the nail on the head for me was learning about food production’s impact on the environment. I learned that its not just beef production that is bad for the environment, but our food production system as a whole.

In addition, cows are able to generate food from material that we can not consume. Cows can eat grass. Humans can not eat grass (well we can but there is not much nutrition from that). Humans can eat cows. Cows are not just a net negative to our environment. They can work in our ecosystem to provide us high-quality nutrition.

It seems as though a more sustainable optional is to focus on producing food on a more local level, instead of just simply reducing meat consumption. If you are interested in learning more about our food system impacts the environment, check out some of the resources I have listed at the bottom of this post.

Trying meat

After months of immersing myself in nutrition books/podcasts/articles, I was ready to reintroduce meat into my diet. I started off with small portions of meat, only 3oz servings with my meals. Over the next few weeks, I transitioned to a more low carb/high fat diet in which I reduced my consumption of grains/breads/fruits/starches and emphasized meat and low-sugar fruits and leafy greens. My mental clarity improved significantly! After a few weeks of this dietary approach, I stopped taking my adderall. As time went on, I noticed that the more meat I ate during my meals, the better I felt overall. So I continued to increase my meat intake and reduce my overall plant intake. I’m currently in a place now where I consume about 1-2 meals a day centered around meat, some low-sugar fruit and leafy greens. This is not to say that I never eat fruits, grains or starches. I refuse to be dogmatic about my diet. However I feel better when the my meals are centered around meat. I feel satisfied, clear headed, strong, energized and satiated for hours and hours

I also want to note that during this time of transition for me, my father was experiencing his own health problems. Mind you, my dad has always been a very VERY health conscious person. My dad’s diet looked like your typical dietitian-approved diet, filled with whole grains (oatmeal), fruit, vegetables and reasonable portions of lean meats (chicken, fish). He also worked out 4-5 times a week and maintained a very healthy physic.

My dad was diagnosed with a condition called Hemiplegic Migraine in February of last year. Hemiplegic migraine is an incurable condition where one experiences a migraine and stroke like symptoms. This terrified my family and the episodes were occurring more and more frequently. My dad went to a few doctors and all they could provide him with was some anti-anxiety medication which was not able to solve the problem. I shared with my dad my personal experience and knowledge I acquired. My dad is a very skeptical person (much more so than me) so it took him a while to come around to the diet. But since he didn’t really have any other options, he decided to give it a try. The results were incredible. Since implementing a low-carb/high-fat diet focused on meat, my dad’s migraines and stroke-like symptoms completely vanished. Additionally his TG and fasting BG went down and his HDL cholesterol went up even though they were in the normal range before. He says he feels the best he has in a very long time.

A man is always a prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them. Albert Camus

Reflection

Looking back I think there were many factors that shaped my previously held stance on nutrition. I believe my education set me up to be susceptible to a plant-based diet. I was educated that too much red meat is not good. I was educated to value fruits and vegetables over meat. With this mind set, I was predisposed into believing red meat was bad for me and that the only animal protein (if any) I should eat was chicken and fish. I became further disgusted by red meat through documentaries and books with a vegan agenda. Red meat causes climate change, red meat decreases our life expectancy, red meat is morally bad. This pushed me further away from red meat and meat in general. I became more focused on this ideology of health rather than listening to my own body. Without me even realizing it, I began to shape my identity around a plant-based diet. It was really hard for me to break up with this idea of what I thought was healthy and it took me months of self-education to open up my eyes.

One of the main take-away lessons I learned from my dietary journey is to trust and listen to my body. During college and post-college, I saw weight as the strongest indicator of a good diet. If you are regular sized, you have a good diet. If you are fat, you have a bad diet. This is because I reduced a good diet to one that is low enough in calories. After seeing such drastic improvements in my mental health, I now understand on a deeper level the important role diet plays on ALL parts of health, not just weight.

As nutrition educators, I think our most important job is to educate people to listen to and respect their bodies instead of following vague nutrition theories based off of weak studies. We should be there to help people live independent lives, not dependent off of drugs. We should encourage our clients to ask more questions about their health to get to the root of their health problems, instead of just treating the symptoms.

Also we must keep in mind that mainstream health advice changes with time. Doctors recommended certain brands of cigarettes in the early parts of the 1900s. In the late 19th century, blood letting was used to treat a variety of ailments. Health recommendations change with time so we should not be completely dependent off of them. If you follow the mainstream dietary guidelines and have problems with digestion, mental health, or physical health, I encourage you to question your diet. There may be something you can change with your diet to feel better.

I am not saying that a low-carb/high-fat meat-based dietary approach is one that everyone should follow. I recognize that people thrive on a variety of diets. I just want to encourage people to understand that nutrition plays a huge role in all parts of health, not just weight. I want to encourage people to get to the root of their health problems and look into how their diet may be impacting those problems.

I feel that it is important to be honest with my personal story and I want the information I have acquired to be accessible to all. That is why I have created this blog and I look forward to continuing to share my knowledge to all who are interested in taking ownership of their health.

When the world is running towards a cliff, those running in the opposite direction appear to have lost their minds Anonymous

Resources on our food system & meat’s impact on the environment

Other books that helped shape my perspective