I wanted to lower my cholesterol and blood pressure besides getting my diabetes under control, but I also wanted to eliminate the almost constant pain in my intestines after meals. I was excited about regaining my health and feeling good again. After attending an Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) class at Kaiser in 2003, I learned that fried foods (calorie-heavy, high in carbohydrates, and with high fat percentages) cause cramping and inflammation in the lower intestine and had no place in my new eating plan.
I cut out three main 'food groups' from my normal diet in the first month--mayonnaise (and anything made with lard or oils such as gravies, sauces, creamy dressings and cream soups), fatty meats (bacon, sausage, corned beef hash, hamburgers), and sweets (ice cream, candy, pies, cookies, cakes, and pastries). I added more fruit (select), vegetables, whole grains and drank much more water.
After only two weeks, these food changes alone stopped the severe intestinal cramping and stomach aches. I no longer had insomnia, and my energies were not sapped by all the heavy carbs and fatty foods. Now when we go shopping for groceries, we take our time to read the labels and compare the carbs, sugar, sodium and fat content of each food item we select before purchasing them. We have found that labels with more than 5 ingredients are usually not acceptable. We eat foods that help control cholesterol naturally, such as apples, carrots, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, beans, nuts, barley, flax seed, olive oil, and fish (we do try to avoid fish high in mercury).
Fats are essential to the proper functions of our bodies, and we need to have some to stay healthy, but stay away from saturated fats, those that are solid at room temperature.
I learned that trans-fats are used in margarine and most of our packaged snack foods and should be eliminated from our diet. You are what you eat. If you reach for dairy that comes from factory-farmed animals, you are increasing your risk of ingesting all the hormones, antibiotics, and stress in those horribly treated cows, goats, or sheep. Those animals are fed corn or soy-based feed, which is likely to be genetically modified, so they also produce more inflammatory omega-six fatty acids than pastured animals.
Acceptable condiments for a whole-food, plant-based diet include: vinegars (apple cider, white, balsamic, red wine, white wine, brown rice, rice, coconut), Bragg's Liquid Amino Acids, ketchup, mustard (yellow, Dijon, spicy, brown) low-sodium soy sauce, low-sodium Tamari, hot sauce, BBQ sauce, tomato/marinara sauce, salsa, nut butters, nutritional yeast, guacamole, chili sauce, sambal oelek, tahini, horseradish, chipotle peppers, pickles, porcini mushrooms, kimchi (not from fish), low-sodium mellow white miso, red curry paste, Worcestershire sauce (without anchovies). When choosing condiments, select those with the fewest ingredients and limited or no added sugar or salt.
Cook with olive oil that has mono saturated fats, long touted for their heart-healthy benefits. The heart-healthy spreads like Earth Balance, or soy spreads are good choices. We enjoy the Avocado Oil blend also. Be aware of how many calories those fast food selections really have: 880 calories for an order of buffalo wings and the popular, whole fried onion with sauce is 2,130 calories. Not to mention the sodium or fat count of these tasty foods!
Glycemic Index
In contrast, broiled seafood has 210 calories, steak has 390 calories, Caesar salad 310 calories and a loaded baked potato is only 620 calories. Portion control is crucial; being diabetic, I also had to take into account the glycemic index of foods, as those with a high index raise blood sugars quickly after you eat, and so are to be avoided as they raise blood cholesterol.
Whole foods (complex carbs) such as whole wheat, brown rice, fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, and soy products are rich in fiber, which slows their absorption rate. Because of this, your blood sugar does not spike and so your body does not need to produce elevated levels of natural insulin. Instead of the rapid swings in blood sugars, you experience a more constant feeling of energy throughout the day.
You become more sensitive to insulin rather than resistant to it; diabetics often are able to reduce or discontinue insulin under their doctor's supervision when they eat a low carb, low fat, whole foods diet. A recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association clearly documented that high fiber diets lower insulin levels. Eating healthy this way could bring about a forty percent average reduction in LDL cholesterol (that's the lousy one) without using drugs.
Vascular Health
It's not enough to just be on a whole food, plant-based diet--vegetarian or vegan; you won't improve your health unless your diet is low in fat and high in whole nutritious foods. That means to not fill up on white products like potatoes, pasta or breads. When we eat the wrong foods, they fuel our cells inefficiently, stress our organs, leach minerals from our bones, clog arteries, fog our brains, bring on disease, and make us fat.
Remember, the health of your veins and arteries affects more than just the heart and your potential for heart disease. The brain is fed nutrients, energy and oxygen by a power grid of an estimated four hundred miles of microvasculature. Any outage along this network not only contributes to cognitive impairment, increasing your risk for Alzheimer's disease but can also produce deficits in cognitive function that we typically associate with aging.
We made the Switch
It happened, not suddenly but slowly, deliberately. Kind of like leaning into it, following a path you know is right. In 2015, I found I could no longer eat and enjoy some cuts of meat. It began with ground beef. It suddenly seemed so mushy to me, full of unknown parts... I imagined bits of snouts and jowls. There were bits of gristle in it sometimes and fatty pieces that would cause me to gag, and a few times, I even found tiny bones! No longer pleasurable, I refused to eat it. I still enjoyed other cuts of beef, though.
Next came chicken. The tendons and muscle strands on chicken legs gave my stomach upheavals. It never had before... I usually just pulled them out and discarded them. I didn't really notice at what point it became too unbearable to continue eating chicken legs, my favorite. For awhile, it was just chicken breast for me. For some reason, I didn't feel the same way about turkey, although we did stop eating it for some time, also. I remember feeling aghast at the numerous tendons in one turkey leg which I had ignored before. Bacon and sausages were so fatty and not hard to give up, as oil and grease really upsets my stomach.
Chicken wings can contain more than 1800 cal, 50 grams of saturated fat, 4400 mg of sodium, and 100 grams of protein per order.
A full stack of beef ribs has more than 2,200 cal, 80 grams of saturated fat, 2800 mg of sodium and 75 grams of protein per order.
A deluxe burger can add up to more than 1000 cal, 24 grams of saturated fat, 1700 mg of sodium, and 55 grams of protein.
A breakfast meat and egg scramble can't contain more than 1100 cal, 25 grams of saturated fat, 3400 mg of sodium, and 45 grams of protein.
My glucose levels began to descend to 170, 150, 130 and finally stabilized around 92-120 before meals. A few months later, they rose again as I returned to the SAD diet. For decades, I had burned out my pancreas and had become insulin dependent in the mid 90's. Now I was reading that diabetes could be reversed and insulin not even necessary. It seemed like a dream, but what did I have to lose? Oh yes, Lose... I would love to lose weight. Insulin puts on weight as does the carbs I was told to eat at every meal by my diabetic counselor. Over the years, I had been instructed to take 40-60 units of insulin to cover each meal!
I could never lose at that rate. I couldn't believe she was not better informed than that or that this was what every diabetic was being told. I checked the diabetic manual I had been given by Kaiser in managing diabetes and yes, there it was... eat carbs, cover it with insulin at each and every meal! There didn't seem to be any way I could lose weight especially since I wasn't mobile. I had blindly followed the instructions for Type 2 Diabetes for years and years.
I began eliminating soda, cake and candy except for the holidays each year. I lost those extra pounds and my A1c went down to 7.3 -- I was elated but it was too little, too late. A year later in 2016, I had a heart attack, just 2 years after my husband's. He was thin but ot diabetic and he ate sweets, crackers, and chips besides buttered toast each morning... and we both had so much red meat and other processed foods daily. Yet I never anticipated a heart attack! Evidently, decades of bad food habits had caused a build-up of plaque which blocked my arteries by 35%. A stent was in order on an emergency basis, and within 3 hours, one had been inserted through my right wrist.
After the allotted time, the bandage was to be removed, however, blood gushed out every time the nurse tried as I had been on blood thinners during my stay. The post-op hand brace ended up being on too long, causing almost a year-long injury to my right hand (greatly limiting mobility which required on-going physical therapy). During that time, I could not fully open my right hand nor had more than 10% strength in it. Finally, another nurse applied an innovative 'seaweed' wrap to it (it hadn't been used much as the hospital had recently received the shipment) which stopped the bleeding and accelerated healing. It was a new procedure and it worked! I had spent almost a week in the hospital--a scary time. I had fully expected to die on that operating table. I vowed to make major changes in my diet and to walk more often.
I began researching what I could eat in place of meat to continue getting nutrients my body needed to function, but heart-healthy options. I learned that all the nutrients our bodies need come from plants solely. That led me to watch videos such as What the Health, Forks over Knives, Cowspiracy, and so many others. All can be found on Netflix. As I watched how pigs and cows, even chickens, were warehoused, abused and inhumanly killed, all to satisfy American appetites for meat, I was sickened. I remember crying several times, I was so moved and shocked. When I further learned how the earth and its environment was being destroyed by the mass production of meat, I was an advocate of No red meat. We feed almost half the worlds grain to livestock while millions starve. Then I found out that euthanized dogs and cats from the pounds are ground up and mixed with grain and other products for cattle feed! Oh my Gosh! What!?
There and then, I became a vegetarian. My husband decided to join me on this new eating plan. We began by giving away any meat products we already had in the freezer. We fully expecting a tough transition, but decided to try it for two weeks. The transition was so easy for us that the initial two-week period sped by, and we extended the trial period to two months, then four months, and finally for six months. We knew hardly anything about this way of eating, or how to cook this way for meals, however, so I checked out a few library books on being a vegetarian and recipes to aid us.
Each book referenced another, until I was checking out around 20 books every 2 weeks. This was fascinating! I was learning so much about being a vegetarian, a vegan, about different vegetables, the huge variety available and how to prepare them, the nutrient load of each and other healthy ways to eat and live. It was amazing! It was a whole new world to me. We have basically been on a whole food, plant-based meal plan now for 4 years as of August 2020. We have absolutely zero red meat cravings! That alone is incredible. Add low-fat, plant-based foods with anti-aging and anti-cancer properties to your diet to reverse heart disease diabetes & dementia. We still eat some fish, shellfish (except mussels and clams) once a month, and on occasion, turkey. How long that will last is hard to say.
This statement really influenced me, taken from a book by nutrition expert, Dr. McDougall: "Protein, fat, cholesterol, methionine (a sulfur-containing amino acid), and dietary acids, which are all superabundant in animal foods, are poisoning nearly everyone following the standard Western diet. Most people cannot fathom this, because it takes four or more decades of consumption before disability, disfigurement, and death become common from these endogenous toxins. This long, latent period fools the public into thinking there is no harm done by choosing an animal-food-based diet. If the case were one of instantaneous feedback—one plate of fried eggs caused excruciating chest pains, paralysis from a stroke followed a prime rib dinner, or a hard cancerous lump appeared within a week of a grilled cheese sandwich—then eating animal foods would be widely recognized as an exceedingly unwise choice."
"In my 42-years of providing medical care, I have never seen a patient sickened by eating potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, rice, beans, fruits, and/or vegetables (unspoiled and uncontaminated). However, during my everyday practice I have witnessed (just like every other practicing medical doctor has) a wide diversity of diseases, including heart attacks, strokes, type-2 diabetes, arthritis, osteoporosis, and cancer, from eating fresh killed and/or collected, as well as processed and/or preserved, animal-derived foods." https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2010nl/jan/major.htm
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