If you can’t kill the animal, don’t eat it?
From an ethical and moral side of the story, I would wish everyone to become vegan or vegetarian. I was a strict vegan for several years only because I was thinking about the animals and was willing to do everything in my power to consume less. The thought of killing an animal was unbearable. “If you can’t kill the animal, don’t eat it” was my philosophy. I can’t hurt a fly, so it’s not hard to see where this story will end…
However, as time went by, my health didn’t become any better. I was doing everything right in all the areas around eating, sleeping, exercising, and so forth. Then my focus leaned towards gut health. I came across Candida and started to look into that more. What it was, how you get it, why you get it, how you feel if you have it etc. There’s so much information, so many stories out there. You can read for days about the same stuff, so sooner or later your brain will become overloaded or exhausted.
There’s only one of you
All bodies are unique. We have different prerequisites, are born in different places (under different conditions), our mineral and vitamin foundation varies and our hormones shift during different days. So, to compare ourselves to others is like copying a haystack. My heart tells me that everyone should be vegan. But my brain says otherwise, at least until you’ve been checking or correcting imbalances in the body.
Some areas you need to look into, before I would recommend a diet are;
- Are you female or male?
- How old are you?
- How much body fat do you have?
- How much training experience?
- Are you deficit in any of the essential minerals or vitamins?
- Do you have regular periods?
- How is your gut health?
- And then a full-body exam with liver tests and so forth.
From there, I could get a better picture of what’s going on in your body and recommend what I think would be suitable for you right now. So, my message to you is: don’t go on a diet that doesn’t feel right for you. Don’t do something only because your closest friend succeeded with that specific diet. If you try something and it doesn’t feel right or make you feel worse, switch to another.
Different food affects us differently
To give an example. If you start the ketogenic diet it may feel great initially, but then worse or like it did before you started the journey. Hormones and the shift between them often cause that, and research has shown that the Ketogenic diet can raise estrogen and cortisol levels in women (link to article), so it all comes down to your starting point in those areas. Maybe the diet doesn’t fit for you as well as it does for your boyfriend’s hormones.
Another example is a vegan or vegetarian diet. If you have a sensitive gut like leaky gut or not enough good bacteria, there’s a chance your body can’t absorb all the nutrients. It may raise some of the minerals while others get suppressed. For example, the body has a really hard time absorbing zink so things like cereals and a lot of fiber may not be for you (phytate in some fiberinhibits zinc uptake).
I would suggest you do some research before you start something long term. Make sure you have checked with your doctor before. And if you can, your hormones, minerals and you’re your overall health. Due to the fact, that there’s no “one solution fits all”, is the reason why I give different tips and talk about what’s been working/is working for me. But in the end, it’s your body, so you know what’s work best for you.
I also want to point out that a “diet” doesn’t have to be something that makes you lose weight. It’s not what it’s all about! When I say diet, I mean a long term eating style that makes you feel as good as you can and deserve — a way of living for optimal health.
