I recently decided or more so felt the Lord tug on my heart to shift my diet to mostly plant-based only. I think today it has officially been a little over a month or around there and, its HARD. For many of you who do not know about two- years ago I was diagnosed with Hashimoto disease.
According to google Hashimoto's disease is an autoimmune disorder that can cause hypothyroidism, or under-active thyroid. With this disease, your immune system attacks your thyroid. The thyroid becomes damaged and cannot make enough thyroid hormones. The thyroid is a small, butterfly-shaped gland in the front of your neck.
According to me it has and continues daily to shape the way I see food; it knocks me down when I try to live a little and it sucks. For about a year now I have been in remission because I changed my diet. I no longer eat gluten…. bread, pasta, pizza. Bread being one of my favorite things this was hard. Not only was I told to avoid gluten, but also soy. Do you know what has soy in it? Basically, everything that is not fresh i.e. canned foods, frozen food kind anything that lives on a shelf, except for some fun things like chips and pickled beets which are still fair game.
If you have not noticed this is my soap box message. This is me speaking my truth, so if you want to stop reading now, I totally understand… because there might not be a happy bow at the end. So, gluten and soy are the only things the doctor mentioned I should avoid, but with Hashimotos the hole seems to get deeper and deeper. When I started to avoid the two food groups, I became more aware how food made me feel. Which food make me feel like I have a sore throat because it is causing my immune system to want to attack. Which foods make me feel like I just got knocked down with a random cold out of nowhere. Foods like potatoes, tomatoes, eggs, bell peppers, chili powder, high fructose syrup the list goes on and on.
Like I said it sucks. So, my diet became mostly meat, you would think vegetables but no. And now I have no meat to turn to, bread is long in the past and even though I’m eating more vegetables now, I today find myself longing to shove bacon in my mouth or eat things that make me feel like poop…because you only live once right? But is it truly living if the food you are putting in your mouth is destroying your body? Is it truly living if the food you put in your mouth is shorting your days of life? Is it truly living if you are not able to do the work God is calling you to?
So, I wake up with a new outlook every morning. I try not to look at the things I cannot eat, sometimes I eat fun foods in moderation. I have learned that things like ginger, and matcha are helpful in calming my attacker soldiers and telling them to take a chill pill (i.e. anti-inflammatory). Can you see it now… me and food are not Bffs anymore, but more in a its complicated relationship for now.
Some days I eat meat and some days I don't..... this is me trying to figure out my new life with food!