I've now been following the MS Recovery Diet for exactly two weeks. I continue to feel better than I have in years and my MS symptoms are still slowly backing off. I've got a tingling sensation in my left leg - which may sound annoying to some of you, but to anyone dealing with the numbness that can come with MS - to have the tingles is a wonderful feeling. I can move the toes on my left foot more each day. My girlfriend asked me if I was ready to walk around on tiptoes - maybe not just yet, but I am getting there.
I've had a lot of great feedback to this blog, heard from a lot of friends, family and even some people I haven't met yet. I talk to anyone and everyone about my decision to recover from MS. I noticed that the comments I get most are about the diet itself so I thought I'd spend the rest of this post talking about the nuts and bolts of the MS Recovery Diet. There is so much I want to say about the diet but I'll try to just summarize it here.
One: it isn't a 'diet'. It isn't an 'Eat-Cabbage-Soup-For-40-Days' sort of weight loss thing. The MS Recovery Diet is my guide to eating healthy and allowing my body to heal from the shit MS has put it through. It has shown me what food sensitivities I have or, in other words, what foods will trigger an onset or worsening of my symptoms. The theory is that by avoiding those trigger foods, I can allow my body to heal.
Two: I have eliminated beef, pork, gluten, sugar, dairy, legumes, soy, caffeine and alcohol from my diet.
***Oh, but Joe - then what is left to eat?? I can't live without my TastyCakes and steaks and fast foods!"***
Three: I eat three balanced meals and go heavy on the protein. I pretty much graze my way from meal to meal because I've found that my symptoms get worse when I wait too long to eat something.
Four: I eat great stuff - chicken picata, Shepherd's pie, scallops wrapped in turkey bacon, pasta with homemade putanesca sauce, meatloaf, chili. Turkey and chicken are my meats of choice. There's a great Amish farm market nearby - they raise and process their own turkey. They have the best turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey bacon, turkey burgers, turkey hot dogs, turkey pizza, turkey gellato (kidding on the pizza and gellato - but you get the idea). I snack on lots of vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts (but not peanuts, because they're a legume, and a trigger food).
Five: I eat sweets. I love sweets. So far my favorites have been apple almond scones, chocolate brownies and pineapple upside down cake. There are a ton of cookbooks and recipes out there for gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free goodies. You name a trigger food, and there is a way to make a sweet treat around it.
Six: Raw Foods. Look it up.
Seven: I plan my meals. Gone are the days of eating on the fly - just grabbing something quick and easy. Now I look through recipes (the MS Recovery Diet book has a bunch of great ones), decide on a bunch that sound good, make sure I have the ingredients and then go to town making everything. I make a lot in advance and now use my deep freezer for more than just tacquitos and ice cream.
Eight: The key for me is that the food gets cooked in big batches and then frozen into smaller servings. So yeah, it may take a few hours in the kitchen up front but then I've got a few weeks worth of amazing dinners and snacks.
That's about it. Like I said at the beginning, there is so much more I plan to say about this diet and nutrition in general. I'll save that for another post.
In the meantime, please continue to share my blog with anyone you think may benefit from my experiences. Thank you in advance!
Also - feel free to ask questions. If I don't like the question, I just won't answer. But seriously, you can post a question here or send it via email and I will to get back to you with some sort of response.
My leg is sparkles, my leg is pins
I better get my shit together, better gather my shit in
The National - Slow Show
No comments:
Post a Comment