Twelve Years on the Alkaline Diet and now…

Since beginning our ‘new’ diet, I have come to understand that a completely different relationship with my food has evolved – directly as a result of my new diet.

I’ve also come to realise that almost everyone I know is – as was I – addicted to their food.

I just finished reading an article by Dr Michael Cutler suggesting that to change our addiction to food, we have to change our emotional ties to our food.
I have no argument with that, for my observation is that many people do indeed resort to food for comfort.

I’m also aware of the astonishing failure rate of most weight loss diets which does seem to support the proposition that in our society where everyone gets enough to eat, we eat for comfort rather than simple sustenance. If this is so, we can therefore assume that a diet’s failure is directly related to our discomfort as a result of our choice to diet.

So even though my diet seemed to change me  ’from the inside’ to a point where I can as easily skip a meal as eat it, where I regularly ask for less on my plate, and where I have even reduced my wine appetite.. I still accept that most of us may need to  ’do the work’ on our emotional bondage to food before we can even hope to follow a diet to its fruition and benefits.

Let’s get one thing clear. Diet isn’t about intelligence. It can’t possibly be because I often we hear ‘I know this food isn’t good for me but………’.  In his article Dr Cutler questioned why he had to ask people why they would wait for a disease to manifest before changing their diet, and it’s a good, seminal question. We can even confront the highest authority figure in our lives, our Doctor, and offer bare faced whoppers to him or her in defence of remaining on our current disease-targeted diet.

As I have aged I have come to see that pain and suffering are our way of progessing mentally and spiritually. It seems that our mad minds actually need pain to create enough tension for us to see the value in change of habit. We will willingly trade good advice, for instance, for the momentary joy of a carb-laden mille feux from the local patisserie, and we seem to have this ability to shut out thoughts that may impinge on these momentary delights. So we have – knowingly or unknowingly – made a deal with ourselves to delay the pain our authority figures tell us is inevitable – for the pleasure of a mouthful of cream and custard.

I see this as so prevalent in our nature – this choice to put our suffering on (unpredictable) hold – no matter how dire the consequence of delay may be. It makes me so very grateful for how I am feeling now. I simply don’t have the cravings anymore. I have less ‘choices’  (and let’s be honest – we have thousands of choices in the ‘bad’ food category) and I happily make less choices. The only way I can say it is that my relationship with food has changed as a result of my diet.

I am lucky that I live with a woman who cares very deeply about health and who has a very strong will. She is 52, I am 65 and she wants me around as long as possible. Perhaps the pain of possible loss, or of  being a carer for me in my dotage is one of her motives and she’s be the first to agree. So it could be seen that she has reacted to the thought of pain (losing me) by enforcing her diet concepts on me. Whatever her motives, I am extremely grateful that she had the will to overcome my objections to the diet she asked me to take on.

There is an elephant in the room when we discuss diet and it is addiction. I have read enough to understand that this elephant has a name and it is carbohydrates. For twelve years we attempted to follow the guidelines of the alkaline diet where we chose food based on the amount of acid or alkaline minerals left in our body after metabolism. And yet the alkaline diet as purveyed on the net completely ignores the fact that carbs cause acidic inflammation in the body, that carbs cause inevitable insulin resistance, and finally, that carbs and sugars are addictive. The charts we and others created in blissful ignorance testify to our lack of awareness about the addiction of carbohydrates

In studying the psychology of diet, therefore, we can’t ignore the science that tells us that carbs may indeed be the sole reason we can’t change.

In a sense, having an addiction is far more logical than trying to find the childhood trauma that prevented us from sticking to a diet.

Addiction modifies behaviour, and behaviour can appear to be unrelated to addiction. So we can behave irrationally with our doctor, we can lie, and we can beat ourselves up about it till kingdom come, but if we can admit that we are addicted to certain food groups, we have a whole new view of our food madness. We can begin to do what addicts do.

Stop eating the foods that make us crazy.

Never in my twelve years of the alkaline diet did I stop snacking. Never did I get over my ‘hungry ghost’ syndrome of eyeing off the plates of my family to see what they left so that I could nab it. Never did I stop the urge to order a sugary dessert after a sizeable main course at a restaurant. Looking back, the desserts were usually unsatisfying because I was already full – but that didn’t stop my craving.

If you’ve followed my blog you’ll already know that I have always followed what I thought was a healthy diet. I was vegetarian for twelve years and in that time, as most vegetarians do, satisfied my cravings with bread and grains. I ate a fructose-laden fruit salad every day for breakfast, and felt righteous when, at any social event, I chose the carrot cake; a carbohydrate bomb! So I’m not coming from a SAD diet outlook. I ate no processed foods. I was able to source organic foods regularly. I even had the audacity to lecture my ‘errant’ friends about their diet.

But there is no doubt in my mind that I suffered the same addiction we all may suffer and that my delusion about my addiction was as complete and effective as the man or woman I criticised for eating what I called ‘rubbish food’.

So my observations of my own new eating habits are almost revelatory in nature.

I have ‘seen the light’ through little fault of my own.

Of course not all of us have the benefit of a loving, powerful partner. Indeed it’s my observation that bad diet is of often the result of solo lifestyle and – it must be said – a prevailing lack of selfworth. Unconscious eating seems a common response to self-directed angst.

I’d love to be able, at this point, to offer the reader who identifies with what I’m talking about a course of support, with guided contemplations, journalling.. all the good tools of transformation – but I can’t, so I’m going to concentrate on the diet I have taken on which has overcome my carbohydrate addiction from the inside. It – the diet – changed me. I just ate the food.

I may as well announce what we are calling our diet.

It’s the Alkaline Paleo Diet.

It involves a return to the foods my body was designed to consume most efficiently over thousands of years. This is what is commonly known as Paleolithic Diet. It is, simply put, low to no carbs or sugars, medium dense protein, and higher than accepted healthy fats as our major source of energy. It’s called Alkaline Paleo becasue it recognises the problem of excess acidity in modern lifestyle – something never present in paleolithic times – and it includes alkalizing techniques to maintain that critical alkaline natural balance.

It works. I am healed of my food addiction. I think differently. I am lighter, clearer, and lass prone to mood swings. I am enjoying my food more than I have ever done so.

Here then, are my rules for transforming from addict to human again.

1. I am an addict and I am not in control of my thoughts and action. I am addicted to sugar and carbohydrates.

2. As an addict I open myself to assistance in any form.. even divine.

3. As an addict I understand that carbohydrates and sugars will control my life, and therefore I choose to completely remove them from my diet until I am healed.

4. I understand that what I have accepted as the truth of good diet has not served me well and will cause me pain in the future. I am willing to change my basic paradigms about what I eat.

5. I have learned that my addiction will attempt to maintain its hold over me and if I can find a friend to support me I will do so.

6. I understand that beyond the diet I have imposed upon my body, my body knows what it is designed to eat, and I will attempt to eat foods that I have always eaten over the thousands of years that it took for my body to evolve to my present state.

7. I will not hesitate to question dominant paradigms of diet. I will search for and test for the truth of every dietary recommendation I read. I possess the power within my evolutionary body to reclaim the truth of my diet and the ehalth I was designed to experience.

8 I will persist because I am worth it.

 

[1] Am J Public Health. 2004 December; 94(12): 2177–2187.

[2] http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adult_data/cig_smoking/index.htm accessed Feb 8, 2012.