Onto the Details

I'm one of those people who doesn't think to take "before" pictures of a project until I've already finished it and it's too late.

That's how this journey has been.

I didn't think to jot down what we did and when until we were so far along, it's hard to remember.

Before we launch into the details, I have a few disclaimers.

1. I'm no doctor. I don't have any nutrition training. I'm just a girl sharing our experience. Don't take my advice without doing your own research.

2. There are plenty of people out there who have done a lot more learning on this subject than I have. I'll link to some other blogs and sites from time to time when I feel like they have better facts than I do.

3. The title of this blog is "Unnatural Journey to Natural Living." Meaning, I may jump around. Because that's what this journey has looked like for us. We may get into some details and then I realize I need to fill y'all in on something I forgot. Bear with me.

Now that those are out of the way, here's how we got started.

When I last left you, I was baffled at how we were eating "healthy," yet not seeing stellar results.

So I began searching the internet.

I stumbled upon several blogs written by women just like me who were sharing their experience.

What's more, they were reporting that they had seen a reduction or elimination of symptoms similar to ours by just changing the way they ate.

I was intrigued.

What was more intriguing, they seemed to agree on the same eating plan.

That's unusual.

Normally, for every 10 people, there are 10 different ideas on how to improve.

The fact that they all seemed to agree struck a chord with me.

And then, we watched Food, Inc.

That documentary, along with several others, really opened our eyes.

The food industry is just that.

An industry.

They're out to make money.

Large profits.

They're not so concerned with the actual healthiness of what they're selling.

They just tell consumers what they want to hear to get them to hand over their cash.

Once we realized that, we began to question why we had placed so much trust in advertising.

We began to look at what food was intended to be.

Fuel.

Nourishment.

A way to grow and heal.

That's where the blogs and the documentaries collide.

The blogs I'd stumbled across were talking about a man named Weston A. Price.

He was a dentist who, in the 1930's, began to wonder why Americans' teeth and health were declining.

He went around the world and documented how other cultures that were less advanced than ours had better teeth and better health.

According to Wikipedia, "He argued that as non-Western groups abandoned indigenous diets and adopted Western patterns of living they also showed increases in typically Western diseases, and concluded that Western methods of commercially preparing and storing foods stripped away vitamins and minerals necessary to prevent these diseases."

Thus, he began documenting "traditional" foods.

Ways foods were prepared and eaten that provided the most nutrition.

Being a natural skeptic, I began to look into what he was saying.

What I was reading seemed to make a lot of sense.

I had three primary thoughts.

1. Somehow the world survived for centuries without things like margarine and low-fat, skim dairy. How did everyone not keel over from a heart attack? I don't know much about the old-fashioned ways of eating, but the little I do know seems to fly in the face of modern advice. Things like lard and bacon and butter and frying were pretty common, I believe.

2. People that are chiefly interested in profit are not as interested in helping people truly resolve their problems permanently. Kinda like the drug industry. They survive by selling pills to alleviate the symptoms of a problem rather than figuring out what causes the problem to begin with.

We saw an example of this recently on the show "Shark Tank."

There was a guy trying to get the panel to invest in some nasal filters that would prevent particles from getting into the body.

As part of their questions, one of the panel asked why he wouldn't just sell the idea to a drug company.

The guy responded by saying that he had "considered licensing the product to a major drug manufacturer, but he found out that they would rather buy his product and shelf it (not sell it) because they make more money by selling the drugs to cure the patient then (sic) to prevent the disease.*"

*(taken from http://inthesharktank.com/2011/03/shark-tank-premiers-biggest-offer/)

So it just makes sense that an industry isn't necessarily as interested in what would be the most beneficial as they are in what will make the most money.

3. What could it hurt to experiment with this way of eating? I had experimented with quite a few things over the years, so this would just be another one to check off the list.

If you're interested in getting started on some research, check out the Weston A. Price foundation's website.

There's all kinds of good info on his theories and eating recommendations.

http://www.westonaprice.org/

The biggest thing that changed for us was FAT.

As in, we ate MORE of it and found our bodies were carrying around LESS of it.

How could that be?

I'll do my best to answer that next time.