My "New" Diet

I am a type 1 diabetic & have been raw most of the last 4 1/2 years. I have had a lot of problems with insulin resistance (which isn't normally a type 1 issue) & other health challenges in those years (although some of the health issues existed before that, too). Not only have I had health problems, but in the last year and a half (since I was hospitalized for complications of diabetes), I have put on almost as much weight as I lost in the first three months of eating raw. Weird. Anyhow, I recently experimented with eating more cooked foods as I wasn't feeling great eating raw & thought maybe I was missing something. In August (while continuing to eat lots of cooked whole foods as they made me feel better than my raw diet had), I started using herbs, supplements and some amazing essential oils, which helped a lot in how I felt, and my insulin sensitivity has been gradually improving since then. I still hadn't lost weight, though. In fact, I was only three pounds away from my highest weight ever - which was pre-raw. I found Dave the Raw Food Trucker on Youtube, and watching him I felt like maybe I should get back to raw, but do a low-glycemic raw diet, since my body wasn't processing high-glycemic carbs well (I would eat a piece of fruit & get really irritable & crash & have to sleep for an hour). I recognized that I'd been drawn to low-glycemic cooked foods, so I wondered if maybe low-glycemic was the key I needed. I went to eating a low-glycemic raw diet, and I drank loads of fresh green vegetable juice for two or three days. I have never felt good/healthy being vegan long-term, but I felt that there was an element of truth/power for in Gabriel Cousens's eating plan, so I was planning to stick with the low-glycemic raw vegan diet for 6 months to see how I felt. Well, after six days, I felt a shift - that I didn't need to do it any more because I had reset the body-mind connection and now wanted to eat just what was best for my body, so I didn't need the rules any more. I added some grass-fed beef and a few more carbs into my diet & continued to feel better. At some point in this self-discovery process, I remembered a discussion about agave (months ago) in which I became aware that most of my crazy blood sugar issues started at the same time I started using agave. I dismissed it at the time, but it came back to me this past week. I use muscle-response testing (kinesiology) in my practice as a holistic health coach, so I decided to muscle-test myself to find out if there was/is a certain diet I need to follow, or if I can just eat intuitively, etc. I tested specifics of my ideal diet, based on the thoughts & intuition I'd had, and I discovered something amazing, which shouldn't have surprised me one bit! The diet my body wants is the exact diet I was following the first six months: when I lost weight, had more energy & experienced lots of health improvements (including better insulin sensitivity). One of the main things about this diet is NO AGAVE. I am eating plenty of carbs again, I have energy instead of crashing afterward, I get more energy every time I eat...in short, I feel better from my food than I have in the last four years since I started using agave. I have also finally started losing weight - seven pounds in the last two weeks since I got back to "my diet" - mainly raw but with no agave.

Learning

Any of you who know me well know that I eat based on what I feel my body is needing, rather than basing my diet on what someone else tells me I should eat. I read books, take classes, get blood work done regularly, etc. and I greatly appreciate the wealth of information, knowledge & experience that people share. The things I hear from other people give me ideas to start with when I feel something is missing or that I need to make changes. This listening to my body is tricky when I have taste buds, ego & habits to contend with, but it is COMPLETELY worth it! I am learning some things about me.

I've been needing calcium, so I used raw carob powder in something the other night, and I discovered what I suspected before - raw carob is HORRIBLE for me, blood sugar-wise (I'm diabetic - type 1). Carob makes my blood sugar levels go high & stay high even when I've taken "enough" insulin to cover the amount of carbs in my food. Raw milk has had the same effect on me, even worse, but not raw cheese, so I bought some raw cheese to get my calcium up. It's not my favorite way (I love eating plants!), but it works.

Lately I have been experimenting. My insulin needs are much lower (like half?) since I have been doing the following:

1) Fruit - alone - in the morning
2) Greens at lunch/early afternoon - usually combined with some sort of fat
3) In late afternoon and evening, I eat no fruit or sweeteners, but I eat vegetables, greens, sprouts, nuts, seeds, spices, salt, etc. - as much as I want.

I eat a lot less dessert now, because of the fruit/fat combination. If I DO have one of those combinations, it is usually because I don't yet have enough experience with the new combinations & timing my body seems to be wanting now. I eat fruit/fat combinations (i.e. raw pie, carrot cake, etc.) at lunchtime if I'm needing more calories or certain ingredients that I haven't found another way to use yet. Then I get my greens in the early afternoon or at dinner (or both). I don't know if this will be the way I eat long-term, but it's working really well for now, so I'll see what happens.