What We Eat

I have been asked by many people including Mike from The Type 1 Game about getting into more detail about our diet.  You see, our entire family has embraced our new way of eating. Before Tyler’s dx, we ate a very healthy, clean, pure diet; since dx we have made some major changes.

We have removed grains, gluten, corn, soy, some nuts, cow dairy, potatoes, bananas and the list goes on. We have worked with alt. dr’s. to find sensitivities in his body; all the above proved to be working against his body. Oh, I must mention that all processed foods have been eliminated too. When someone is diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder, the first things that should be removed from the diet are grains and dairy. These put extra stress on the body, cause inflammation of the cells and cause the body to work against itself.

I know all of this sounds so very overwhelming. Getting off the grains was difficult for Tyler, and the entire family. I remember hearing once that a habit is formed in about 30 days, and it is true. After about 30 days it became much easier, yes he still gets a yearning sometimes, but it passes and we move on. Yesterday we were in Trader Joe’s and their sample was garlic bread.. ok all of us were drooling, it smelled heavily… When we got to the car we discussed the smell and decided it was the garlic smell that made us drool not the bread.

We follow a few ways of eating and tweak them to our needs. They are the paleo diet, raw foods, Weston A. Price and a few more. We tweak these to our needs and they are proving successful. Common sense also comes into play. We keep a close eye on what Tyler eats ( he listens to his body)  and how his body responds to the food. If his b/g rises too much, perhaps we should remove that food for a while. It is your goal to find out what works for your child. We are all unique individuals and what works for one may not work for the other. It appears that many families doing food therapy follow very similar path.

We eat 3 meals a day and snacks (growing kids are perpetually hungry!).

Almost all of what we eat is organic, bio-dynamic, pastured, grass fed and the like. We know many of the farmers we get our food from mid-spring till fall, we know who raises our beef and next year and friend and I will be venturing into pastured chickens. We have fresh eggs from our chickens and get milk from our goats to make cheese, yoghurt, kefir and ice cream

Foods we eat:

Organic meats preferably grass fed and pastured, but most of the time our poultry is just organic. Beef, chicken, turkey, turkey bacon, home made sausage

Avocado

Goat dairy products

Coconut oil and olive oil

Coconut milk or coconut concentrate from Tropical traditions

Almost all veggies except potatoes, corn, and a few more I cannot think of

Fresh herbs ( like Italian parsley, dill, cilantro, I always put fresh herbs on our salads.) garlic, onions, kale, chard, leeks, carrots, celery, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, spag. Squash, beets, lettuce, greens, spinach, root veggies, eggplant, tomatoes, beans, peas, radish etc…

Fruits we enjoy are

Berries, lemons, limes, grapefruit, apples, small amounts of oranges, pears. High sugar fruits in moderation.

Coconut flour

Almond flour

Raw and soaked nuts

Organic spices like cinnamon

Organic Apple cider vinegar

Sweeteners sparingly like really raw honey, rapadura, yacon syrup, maple syrup, agave only in some recipes as it is similar to hfcs, xylitol

Flax seeds and oil

Hemp seed

Pastured butter

Fenugreek

Chia seeds

Raw cacao nibs and powder

Seeds like sunflower, sesame, pumpkin

Raw coconut flakes

Coconut ice cream

Black, green and herb teas

Medicinal herbs

a bit of quinoa and buckwheat (not a wheat J)

These are not all the foods we eat, but I hope you get the idea. I am sure more will come to mind after this post.

Future posts will get into the type of meals we eat and examples of them.

Please remember what Hippocrates said: “Let medicine be thy food and food be thy medicine”