At the age of fourteen in the late sixties I became self-conscious of my weight. This was the time when models like Twiggy were popular, fashion and TV made us aware of how fabulous it is to be slim and so trendy. I had to sew my own clothes and copied the short dress styles. I looked cool and that’s when the eating disorders began, lasting for seventeen years.
I worked as a Dental Chair Assistant from age 16. My front teeth were knocked out in an accident and replaced with crowns and then the rest just rotted away to be all extracted by the age of 23.
When seventeen, wearing one of those dresses at a local dance in the country, I met my husband, the handsome farmer who killed sheep for us to eat but I never really ate them because I would binge and vomit for the sake of staying slim. Another 17 years later with husband number 2, in the city, still with dreadful eating disorders and having the bravery to tell my story to a doctor who had no clue and said nothing. This was in 1980. One day I decided to just stop it myself. Some how I had the discipline to carry this out alone and have never gone back to that particular pattern of self abuse since.
Fast forward 39 years, 2 husbands and 3 children later, aged now 67 my BMI is 24. For all of those years, food has been the focus of family and social life, having to be the Chef extraordinaire, also known as the Salad Queen.
My skin was always unhealthy with acne when young with thick makeup to hide it and Retinoic acid in the 80’s being very helpful. Small pimples still at my age, dry skin, bleeding gums, muscle aches, joint pain in one knee and hands and oedema in feet and ankles and headaches. My diet has been low fat, high fibre, 10% meat, 90% vegetables.
My father was a tall slim man with a moderately big tummy in his last 5 years, died at 91 in 2014 with an enlarged heart and terrible oedema in his legs. The water was coming out of the skin on his thighs 2 weeks before he died. I found him sitting at his table with a pool of water around him with a worried little dog sitting at the edge of that pool. I bandaged up his legs and got him to hospital. His diet was mostly grains, cooked vegetables with some meat with a small desert and one orange from his tree daily. One glass of red wine in the evening. I am so grateful that I will not suffer my oedema again and die the way my Dad did.
I accidentally saw some ex-vegan videos and Shawn Baker then began the carnivore way of eating in mid February 2019 and will always eat only meat for the rest of my life as all of my ailments have gone in those two months. The oedema of the last 5 years has disappeared and all my aches and pains gone. I eat about 350 grams of steak per day, chicken livers and some cheese and coffee with a dash of milk. I don’t exercise.
This amazing and fundamental knowledge that meat heals, needs to be spread all over world.
