Happy new year all. Hope 2024 was great for you. For me it was a year of improvements across many aspects of my life.
I’ve done a lot of improvements to my house, new boiler (man, these things are expensive!) new flooring in two rooms including my bedroom which has had a complete make-over, a dedicated office space (more on this in a later post), a new bedroom for my son and an ongoing kitchen transformation.
I also improved my work situation, the company I worked for at the start of 2024 weren’t doing great and I was worried about redundancy. I’ve always wanted to run my own company so I took that very scary step in 2024 (read all about it in: http://elskehoweler.com/2024/08/30/so-i-did-this-thing/) and I am so glad I did.
But, the improvement that stands out most for me is one that is health related. About 8 years ago, I developed an intolerance to wheat. Out of nowhere and for reasons that were a mystery to me at the time. What felt like overnight, I went from someone who eats everything to someone who is super cautious about food and having to eat gluten-free. It sucked. But realistically, it wasn’t the end of the world, so I sucked it up and cut out whatever would upset my stomach.
I also became very aware of my immune system being utterly rubbish. One year, I remember getting ill on Christmas eve and not getting better until after Easter. Admittedly, this was the year that my eldest started school full-time and brought every cold, flu and whatever else home with her, but still, I should not have been that ill for that long. Ever since that awful winter, I’d get a chest infection once or twice a year, always in September or October and sometimes a bonus one at the start of summer. This would consist of me feeling really ill for about a week and then spend a month with a horrendous cough.
At times I felt hopeless and confused, asking myself: Why am I ill so often? And why does it take me so long to recover from illness? I’m almost 40 and I’m ill all the time. And why can’t I eat bread? What’s going on?
Please note: The information provided in this post is for general informational purposes only and is not intended as professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this or any other website.
Initially, my research on wheat intolerance (it’s was pretty clear it wasn’t actually gluten and it wasn’t anywhere near serious enough to be an allergy, I made sure to rule that out first) only came back with people having some success with kefir, a type of fermented milk that you can easily make at home. And, although it definitely had a positive impact on my stomach (I really noticed it when I hadn’t had any for a few days), by itself it didn’t solve my problems.
Then a few years later, I came across Dr Mindy Pelz. First I listened to her podcast and later read her book Fast like a girl, an amazing and inspiring read which opened my eyes to intermittent fasting and the healing powers of my own body. I’ve always thought (and have always been told by doctors) that to keep my blood sugar levels steady, I had to eat regularly. I never thought in a million years that I could go without food for longer than 12 hours. But, never scared of a challenge, I tried. Armed with a blood sugar monitor (you gotta be sensible about these things) I slowly build up from fasting 12 hours overnight, to 13, to 15, to 17 and eventually managed a 24 hour fast. I felt great, I had more energy, enjoyed my food more and, not unimportantly, I fitted in my jeans better.
It also made me question everything I was ever taught about food. Which led me to Spoonfed – Why almost everything we’ve been told about food is wrong, by Tim Spector. A slightly less animated read than Mindy Pelz, but I was equally intrigued by all the nonsense we think we know about food. We are all told that: Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Turns out, this isn’t a statement backed up by science, it was a marketing slogan, to sell more cereal…..
By this time, my diet had drastically changed and I ate mostly whole foods. Processed foods were out. Crisps were replaced by nuts, over processed milk chocolate was replaced by the darkest chocolate I could find and I could tell my body was loving it.
And then, then I discovered Dr Will Bulsiewicz and his mission to get people to eat more fibre. His book Fibre Fuelled – The Plant-Based Gut Health Plan to Lose Weight, Restore Health and Optimise Your Microbiome really opened my eyes to what I had to do, and what was possible. By now, I’d figured out that although I have always had a reasonably healthy diet, it was never very varied. I ate lots of fruit and veg, but mainly stayed with a few that I liked best. And as there were plenty of veg that my stomach no longer tolerated, I steered clear of those. But Dr B’s books have a method in them to overcome food intolerances. Yes, you read that right, overcome food intolerances. I had to reread the sentence introducing this a few times for it to sink in. Overcoming food intolerances. It was the answer I’d been looking for. So I also read The Fibre Fuelled Cookbook where he describes the process of overcoming several food intolerances. Turns out, mine had nothing to do with gluten (as I worked out early on) and instead I struggled with certain FODMAPS.
This was during the summer of 2024 and after reading it, I set myself a goal to, on new years day, eat a slice of sourdough toast with avocado, smoked salmon and egg (my favourite breakfast). My first task was to get my gut microbiome in the best possible shape by eating a huge variety of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains (the ones my stomach did tolerate), herbs, spices everything.
Then in the first week of September, I got ill. My dreaded, annual, chest infection had arrived. I felt crap. For two days. And then I was better. No week in bed, no cough, nothing. I was a bit tired for a few more days and felt that there was something that had gone to my chest, but it didn’t develop into anything like it used to. I was over the moon.
I decided that now was the time to try and start re-introducing wheat. I bought a bread-maker and started adding a teaspoon of spelt flour to my gluten-free bread. It was scary and I only did it when I know I had nowhere to go that day. But I was fine. No symptoms. I increased it to a tablespoon, 50 grams, 100 grams, no symptoms. I was soon having half gluten free half spelt flour bread. I started with spelt as it is lower in FODMAPS than wheat. I then added a teaspoon of wheat to the half and half bread and increased it as before. No symptoms. I couldn’t believe it and for a couple of months it felt really strange. I was still nervous about eating wheat and wasn’t quite sure how much I could cope with.
But my confidence grew and at the end of October, two months earlier than I hoped, I went out to meet a friend at a local cafe and, for the first time in 8 years, I looked at a menu and ordered exactly what I wanted rather than what I was able to eat (see the main blog post picture), it was delicious and quite an emotional moment. With the help of some very clever people who are brave enough to write about what they believe in, I had fixed myself. I had healed my body. I could eat whatever I wanted again. It changed my world.
I’d love to hear about your 2024, let me know in the comments what you’ve been up to, or if you have any inspirational stories to share.
Happy New Year my friends!
This site is reader supported, which means if you click on some of the links, I may earn a small referral fee. This post only has links to books I have actually read and that have improved my life.
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