After a lifetime of bad eating, I finally started to get healthy a few years ago. I and switched from the Standard American Diet to Low-Carb overnight.
I did pretty well with it and lost about thirty pounds (I was about fifty pounds overweight at that time). But I knew I couldn’t sustain it. I had to make just about everything from scratch so I could control the carb content. If I wanted a sandwich, I could have one, but I’d have to make my own bread first. It was exhausting, and the cravings I had were driving me mad.
Finally, I fell off the wagon just about as far as any can fall. I gave up trying to sustain that and went back to my old way of eating, and then some. I gained back that thirty pounds, plus another fifty. Every now and then I would try to force myself to eat “healthy” foods but, since I hate vegetables, I could never sustain that either.
Back in college, there was a short time when I became a vegetarian. That was over pretty quickly because it made me so sick and tired that I couldn’t continue.
That was it, then. I’d determined that “healthy eating” did not work on me, at least not in a way that I could keep up forever, and that I would be fat and miserable for the rest of my life.
Then, something happened that forced me to change. I started having very bad, painful reactions to food. It began with heavily spiced foods and things like that. I would eat it, and then my heart would hurt. It felt like pressure, like someone was reaching in and squeezing the crap out of my heart. It hurt like hell. Based on my own research and speaking with my doctor, it was a non-cardiac type of heart pain that was caused from gastrointestinal issues. Basically, my body could no longer handle the food I was eating, and I was given a special diet.
I wasn’t that surprised because I’ve always had digestive problems (IBS-symptoms and such), but I’d never had a reaction like that before. Still, I followed my new diet with the intention of being pain-free.
But I wasn’t. Almost overnight, I began having a bad reaction to almost every food I hate, bar none. It didn’t matter how healthy or otherwise the food was anymore. If it went into my body, it made my digestive tract flare up which sent the shooting pains and pressure to my heart.
I felt the best when I ate only meat (I’ve always been a meat lover) but I had no idea that you could sustain on that, so I always tried to force myself to have something with it.
I found out about the zero carb woe because a Youtuber I like to watch started eating it and shared her story (proof that procrastinating can sometimes be life-changing). She linked over to Kelly Williams Hogan’s blog, which I then devoured.
Holy moly. Everything that Kelly experienced resonated with me. Her extreme sensitivities to food, her constant struggle with weight, her feeling like healthy eating did not work for her.
And now, all she ate was meat. And all that was gone. That was really all I needed to hear to dive in face first. I had absolutely nothing to lose.
Now, I am still “new” to the zero carb woe compared to many people. But I don’t expect to ever go back to any other way of eating.
My gastrointestinal issues cleared up almost immediately. I could eat without any pain within the first week. There were times when I would be having such a severe attack that I couldn’t move and struggled to breathe, and my husband would be crying because he didn’t know what was wrong with me or how to fix it. That seems like ages ago now, but it really hasn’t been that long.
My weight has also gone down. I don’t know exact numbers because I’m not a scale person, but I feel lighter and I’m having to buy smaller clothes. Here is a list of all the benefits I’ve experienced thus far:
- Depression and anxiety almost completely gone
- No more digestive issues
- Excess weight slowly diminishing
- Brain fog cleared
- Improved memory
- Moodiness gone
- Hair and nails grow faster and stronger
- Acne cleared up
- No more constantly sniffling and sneezing like I used to
I’m sure the long list of benefits will only keep growing. I would have tried this woe long ago if I’d known it was possible. I just never had any idea you could ever live on meat, and I probably would have laughed in your face if you’d told me otherwise. Boy, am I glad to be proven wrong!
