I’ve been struggling with my physical and mental health for many years now. The troubles began my freshman year of college and have never gone away. Without going into too personal of detail let’s just say they include:
-depression/anxiety
-fatigue
-chronic back and neck pain
-urinary tract infections
-sexual dysfunction
The severity of my symptoms has gone up and down over the years. At my worst I felt as if I was running a constant low grade fever and was unable to stand up or walk around for more than a few hours before having to lie down and recoup. When I first started experiencing these troubles and found that the medical establishment wasn’t willing to do anything except shower me with handfuls of free antidepressant samples, I did a ton of research into natural medicine and of course ran into complex and contradictory dietary information. For some reason I don’t recall I decided to go with the raw food diet. I followed this diet with varying consistency for about a year and a half. It did help, but not enough to be worth the difficulty and social alienation.
So I gave it up. I went on an anti-candida diet recommended by a naturopath for a short time, including antifungal capsules, but I never really understood what I was and wasn’t supposed to eat and it gave me hives. I ate whole, organic foods for awhile longer. Then I moved back to PA and gave that up too, and not just that but the whole environmental purist lifestyle that was taking all my energy to maintain. I stopped feeling guilty, started guzzling gas, eating candy, and buying shit I didn’t need. I chose to ignore my health problems rather than spend every minute of the day (and all my money) fighting them with yoga, heat packs, herbs, acupuncture, etc. It felt great. I was happier and healthier than I’d been in years. But every once in awhile one of my symptoms would flare up and I’d think, “I can’t live this way any longer. Something’s got to change.”
During these later years I ate mostly vegetarian interspersed with some fish and beef jerky. It was a taste/texture issue more than an ethical thing. But then because of my interest in primitive living I introduced roadkilled rabbit and grouse, and venison from the deer my boyfriend shot. I also ate a lot of bacon just because it’s so damn good. But I didn’t start really enjoying and eating meat again heavily until I met Urban Scout. When he came visit me in Pennsylvania he was on the Body Ecology Diet (BED). We cooked food over the campfire together, so I ate what he ate.
Now I’m in Portland and it seems like everybody and their brother are on the BED or the Paleo Diet (The BED is similar to but differs from Loren Cordain’s Paleo Diet in that it does not allow fruit in the first stages, but does allow corn and a few other grains, emphasizes fermented foods, and does not restrict saturated fats). Here it’s harder to eat junk food than it is not to. Seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to take another stab at improving my health. Scout didn’t have a copy of the book, The Body Ecology Diet: Rediscovering Your Health and Rebuilding Your Immunity by Donna Gates with Linda Schatz, so I picked one up for $25 bucks at the grocery store.
“What are you doing?” Scout asks as I underline passages in my new book, and scribble fervently in my notebook.
“Oh, nothing…”
I’m following Donna Gate’s advice and taking notes on her book as I read through. What she and Scout don’t know is my notes involve all the passages I think are stupid so I can write a scathing blog about it that ends with me going on the diet anyway.
The premise of this diet is that the majority of us suffer from an overgrowth of Candida yeast that causes all sorts of health problems. Candida feeds on sugar, so to restore the body ecology the diet restricts your intake of refined sugar, grains, and even fruit for the first few months. At the same time you eat fermented foods such as sauerkraut to reintroduce a diverse array of good bacteria known as probiotics. I liken the yeast to an invasive species. Candida is to the intestines as purple loosestrife is to native swamps. Both are side effects of civilization. Sounds reasonable, so what’s my problem?
God, where to begin…
a) Gratuitous use of caps and italics and generic and unfounded statements such as:
“NEVER, NEVER OVEREAT ON GRAINS OR STARCHY VEGETABLES.”
OKAAAAY!!!!
“The ordinary table salt that most of us eat is too refined. It lacks the minerals we need and has harmful effects on the body.”
“Stevia exists in nature; we merely extract its essence to satisfy our natural craving for sweets.”
“Vegetables are the most perfect foods nature has given us; they are also the most abundant foods on earth.”
Oh yeah? Well I heard once that humans were the most perfect food, a complete protein, and they can be found almost everywhere on the planet to boot!
“All creatures, including humans, live according to the truly wondrous precept of cleansing.”
Give me a break, fruitcake. Oh sorry, fruitcake is an evil food that KILLS YOUR SOUL.
b) I’m wary of rules, all rules. This diet has a lot of them. The no sugar thing seems the most important to me but there’s a lot more to it than that. You are also supposed to be aware of:
Food Combining-
This seems like the second most important principle after cutting the sugar. It makes sense to me that, at least while the body is weak, certain types foods would be most easily digested alone. However, I do not intend to follow the food combining principles such as not mixing proteins and starches for the rest of my life as Donna suggests.
Expanding” and “Contracting” Foods-
This is based on the principle of yin and yang. Maybe it’s because I’ve never studied eastern medicine but this principle seems the most flakey to me. Take this paragraph:
“Humans are contracted beings (we belong to the animal kingdom), so it is our nature to seek sweet, expanding tastes in an effort to balance the contraction. Newborn babies (tiny, contracted beings) thrive on breast milk, because it is sweet and watery; it is expanding. Stress causes the body to contract. This too explains why we often crave expanding foods such as candy, alcohol, and even tobacco, because in our fast paced world, we are usually under great stress.”
Uh huh. Right. And how does this apply to those of us (I’m looking at a certain someone in the room) who crave corn chips (a contracting food) under stress?
Then, and this is nitpicky, but I take issue with the statements like:
“A healthy body always strives towards balance.”
and
“Extremes of contraction or expansion of Ki are not ideal energy states when we are looking at the energy of our body. The ideal is the balance or mid-point of the two—when we feel calmly centered and truly strong.”
I believe that an extreme contraction or expansion of Ki could be useful under many circumstances (stalking animals, martial arts). The New Age obsession with balance is misleading and dangerous. Balance, as stasis, is equivalent to death. True balance in a person or an ecosystem is the ability to be dynamic and resilient. In fact a tightrope walker wobbling back and forth is balancing. Stand still and they will fall off and die. Extremes, whether are we talking about the daytime and nighttime temperatures in a desert or the grief one feels at a funeral versus the joy one feels at a wedding are just fine, as long as we don’t get stuck. Certain religions (I’m looking at you Buddhists) have perpetuated the impossible and undesirable ideal that the perfect mental state is one of detached, peaceful acceptance of everything. Zombies, all of them…my second foray into shit talking is already reserved for Buddhists.
Acid and Alkaline-
Supposedly the foods you eat create either an acid or alkaline reaction and the PH of your bodily fluids should be 7.4. I probably won’t pay any attention to this one.
Eating for Your Blood Type-
I don’t even know what my blood type is.
The 80/20 Rule-
The book has two of them. The first is eat until you are 80% percent full, and the seconds is that 80% of the food on your plate should be land/ocean vegetables and 20% protein, BED grains, or starchy vegetables. Well I would turn that rule around and apply it to the Body Ecology Diet, 80% of the book is true and 20% is bullshit.
As if that’s not enough to think about there are extra rules throughout the book. Some of them make no sense at all like:
“Drink at least eight glasses per day, but not with meals, since it dilutes your digestive enzymes.”
Later in the paragraph:
“Having a cup of warm tea and/or a bowl of soup adds liquid during the meal. This aids digestion.”
I don’t know about you but I fail to see how a warm cup of tea differs from a warm glass of water.
Or this one:
“A final reminder: brush your teeth after you eat or drink any milk product. The milk protein can cause plaque that can lead to decay (just as any food left in the mouth without proper rinsing and care can lead to decay).”
Okay, So brush my teeth after either consuming milk or non-milk foods. Gotcha.
Oh and you didn’t ask but Donna knew instinctually that you’d want some spiritual propaganda along with your dietary propaganda:
“One very valuable tip for managing stress is to practice the spiritual art of always being grateful for everything. This is not easy to do and really does take practice, especially when difficulties and challenges appear. If you can see these as ‘trainings’ to overcome that will make you a spiritually stronger person, you can truly feel gratitude for them. We can feel grateful for the poor physical health of Americans today. It is forcing us to find solutions that will lead us to a much more elevated level or health care than we have ever had before.”
Don’t even get me started on the implications of this thank-you-master-for-beating-me way of thinking. Notice too the unspoken assumption in the last sentence that native people could not have had an elevated level of healthcare, that some combination of natural medicine and modern technology will result in a health utopia.
Ah ha! In case you didn’t get that subtle salvationist innuendo, two-dozen pages later it’s laid out for you:
“We were created for a purpose; to establish a bright happy world, one highly evolved on a material level, yet governed by spiritual wisdom. It will be a world rich with music, art, and science, free from the pain of poverty, disease, and hunger. We are moving toward this paradise, making mistakes along the way, but learning from them. Yet if we continue to eat for pleasure alone, ignoring the purpose of our creation, our minds and bodies will weaken such that we will never find the happiness that is our birthright.”
Jeeze louise, and I just wanted to lose some weight, maybe take care of that nasty halitosis.
c) Lifestyle purity is overrated, as a wise raccoon once told Kranti when she was being tempted by a chocolate bar in the comic Minimum Security. I’m wary of any system that by design or accident makes people feel guilty, and any use whatsoever of the word “cleansing”.
Dictocratic diets like these as well as the other “purifying” measures such as fasts and cleanses that promise everything from relief from stinky feet and suicidal thoughts to spiritual enlightenment appeal to our guilty Christian ethic of denial and suffering. I’m not saying they don’t work at all, but that they rarely work as well as the testimonials suggest and that without a network of cultural support (to help you prepare for and/or stick to them) and checks and balances (feast, anyone?) they tend to create neurotic, health-obsessed, binge eaters. I know because I was one.
If you read the book carefully you’ll find some really bizarre statements that suggest that the author might have some issues to work out:
“Candida is a fungus that thrives in the impure, dark, moist, contracted areas of the body.”
Now if you’re a woman what’s the first dark, moist area that you think of?
“Women find their periods are cleaner and healthier.”
Yeah, I used to bleed all over the place. GROSS! But since I started the BED the menstrual fluid comes out in these convenient disposable capsules!
How bout this one:
“Afterward, especially if she is on the Body Ecology Diet, a woman can be even healthier: he skin color may be more porcelain-like…”
Skin color? Are you sure you don’t you mean skin texture? WTF!?
And here’s one just for fun:
“Grains add important fiber, help stop cravings for carbs like breads and pastries and provide valuable nutrients to the microflora struggling to create a new civilization inside your body.”
I’d prefer the tribes of microflora inside my body to organize themselves into many diverse tribes, thank you very much!
When you go a diet like this certain foods turn into “good” foods and other foods turn into “bad” foods, and if you eat the bad foods you tend to feel guilty, regardless of how they make you feel physically. And whenever you do get a headache or feel tired you blame it on some “bad” food you ate, which you have inevitably done because the rules are too strict.
Sometimes the blame is real. It seems like whatever your diet, you get used to it and if you change it you feel shitty. If I’ve been eating wheat or corn regularly I won’t have any noticeable reaction to it. If I haven’t I’ll get all coughy and sniffly. If I’ve been eating raw veggies and then I eat cooked ones I’ll have the same reaction to those. People living on a primitive diet for several weeks have reported a reaction to suddenly eating homegrown garden vegetables. Someone who has been fasting for weeks will probably experience a poor reaction to eating anything at all. So where do we draw the line?
I’ve come to the conclusion that there exists no pure diet. Whenever you eat, you introduce foreign substances into your body. There are “toxins” in all of our foods. From things such as the solanine in nightshades that pricks holes in our cells, to allergens like the gluten in wheat or the lactose in milk, from the heavy metals in your wildcrafted greens to the pesticides on your produce, from the DDT in your breastmilk to the char on your flame grilled burger. While some of those are avoidable and/or unnatural, the fact is that most plants produce poisonous chemicals to keep them from being eaten by insects and other predators. You simply can’t avoid toxins. But don’t cry you dirty, dirty sinners. The body is equipped to handle these and cooking, mashing, fermentation, soaking, and drying are all adaptations humans have come up to make food more digestible. This suggests that one key to feeling good is eating both a consistent and diverse diet, and not eating too many toxins. It will look different for each individual.
I believe that it’s better not to see foods as good or bad, but rather a to see a diet as a system that works or does not work. A diet doesn’t start and end with the food, or the person consuming it. It starts and ends with the land. In my not-so-humble opinion this makes a hunter-gather diet the “best” diet. It’s the freshest, least wasteful of resources, most economical monetarily and energetically, and highest in vitamins and minerals. A diet of imported foods hauled across the country and locked up in a supermarket and then shit into a toilet where they can be pumped in to the waterways can never be “healthier” in the long or short term than a local wildcrafted and garden based (and possibly dumpstered) diet, gathered with reverence and eaten with gratitude, that intimately connects you to your landbase and returns your shit to the land as food for others.
Let me give you another example of the system:
Hunter-gatherers didn’t always eat roots and tubers that were available to them. Why? Because they were too high on the glycemic index? No dummy, because if the plant had multiple edible parts, as many do, they wanted it to live so they could partake of its tender leaves and shoots, and then let it grow up, go to seed, and make new plants for them to eat next year.
Of course a 100% hunter-gather diet is an ideal that no one living in civilization can possibly achieve, but I hate the way the book pays no mind to bioregional/wild foods. Not that most diet books do, but one of the two super foods recommended on this diet is young coconut kefir. If civilization collapses where am I going to get my young coconuts? Heck where am I going to get them anywhere outside of a major metropolitan area?
And how am I to know where a non-traditional food falls on this diet? Cranberries are okay. So what about mountain ash (used to make a cranberry sauce)? What about high-bush cranberry (not a true cranberry)? Shitake are the only mushrooms on the diet that aren’t too “expanding”. But surely that assessment doesn’t include hen of the woods, the puffball, or the shaggy mane. How bout Jerusalem artichoke? Cow parsnip? The idea of passing up honey, or maple syrup or anything else I not supposed to eat again if I follow the BED principles would be as queer as veganism to a hunter-gatherer.
The only advice you’ll get from Donna about ecology?
“Buy foods and products that help save the environment rather than destroy it. Putting a serving of meat on your table requires much more of the world’s valuable energy and resources than a serving of fish; grain and vegetables use even less.
d) I don’t really trust any diet that is capitalized or starts with “The”. I hate the way the book tells you to buy their Body Ecology™ products and other bank breaking health food store products such as probiotics and digestive enzymes. If you take a visit to the website it’s terribly apparent that this diet is about making money. You’ll find a lot of nifty products for sale, but you won’t find much information about the diet itself because of course they want you to buy the book. Way to lock up the knowledge Donna (you too Schatz).
e) X-Tremeness. I question if it’s necessary or desirable at all, this Nazi-like starving of the yeast for three months to three years. Sure cutting sugar cold turkey produces an extreme withdrawal passed off as “cleansing”. Then you say, “Gee, they said this would happen. The diet must be working!” But extreme measures and quick fixes such as restrictive diets and modern fasts and cleanses are from the same heroic tradition that spawned modern medicine, just in a naturopathic guise.
You can tell this is a heroic diet because it advocates colonics. What “natural” medical technique is more invasive and extreme than having soapy water blown up your bum for an hour or two? Now I can’t talk because I’ve never had one, but I’m just not sure I believe I have 10 pounds of impacted fecal matter lurking in the nooks and crannies of my intestines.
This may just be Susun Weed speaking through me but might it be possible and less traumatic to eat a wide range of whole foods including meats, fruits, vegetables, and some nixtamalized/ soaked/ sprouted grains, fermented and wild foods, mineral rich infusions, and treats like goat milk, dark chocolate, homemade wine, and aged cheese, slowly building your immune system until it is strong enough to deal with the Candida? Nourishing rather than punishing…rewilding rather than resisting. Damn that sounds good. Do you know some things the Body Ecology Diet suggests as snacks? Raw pumpkin seeds with celery sticks, popcorn and carrot sticks, and plain nori. Lame.
So now that I’ve pert nigh talked myself out of going on this diet, why am I still going to try it? Why will I shun the pears, apples, grapes, plums, and walnuts and chestnuts (too acid forming) of the streets and the huckleberries and thimbleberries of the mountains for the carrots and almonds on the grocery store shelf? Well, guess I’m just another sucker looking for a quick fix.
“Take the enthusiasm you have from reading this book and use it to incorporate the Diet into your daily life.”
Will do, Donna. Will do.
very good post, thanks for making the effort, SBW
Don’t do it! That book sounds super lame. It sounded lame when I first heard of it, and you just confirmed it for me. Go have a banana. They are delicious.
Having done the BED, Paleo, Raw and every other damn thing… I have found the foods that best nourish me and have also helped to heal some very chronic issues are local, wild foods when possible and then a wide diversity of whole foods on top of that. I do corn but not other grains, partly just because I’m in NM and that’s how most people eat (unless you want to get sick, then you eat fry bread, argh
Any time your diet is full of rules and is primarily about exclusion, you’re going to run into emotional and physical problems.
And ya know, just cuz lots of people are having serious issues with refined carbs, doesn’t meat everyone has candida…. the candida thing is just so much bullshit in my estimation.
Nice post though, good to hear someone talking honestly about this kind of thing. You’ve done tons of research so you probably don’t need more info but your pattern of symptoms sounds much like adrenal insufficiency and yin deficiency, which go very much together.
And if you still don’t want those thimbleberries and huckleberries, feel free to send them this way
and good luck.
I remember reading something in NeanderThin that blew my top. It went something like “sure, eating these healthy foods I recommend may cost you more, but think of the benefits:” and one of the benefits was that slender, healthy people tend to make more money at their jobs.
So if you’re evicting the Candida from your impure, dark, moist, contracted place, and if you’re looking for an “invasive species” to take over … never mind. I was trying to go for a humorously lecherous comment there, but I just couldn’t make it work. Partly because I can’t really do lecherous that well, and partly because I get pissed off at anybody calling any part of anybody’s body “impure”.
Nice write up, Penny. This is just the grain of low-mineral refined salt that one needs to take when facing an overbearing, overzealous diet concept.
Thanks for the comments. I think what’ll happen is I’ll try this thing for two weeks and see how it goes. I’ll probably end up canning the BED.
Very nice analysis, Penny. I agree with you almost completely. Having gone through the Western health care system for chronic health problems only to find myself in worse shape, I, too, sought the counsel of “natural healers.” I have tried every damn “natural” exclusionary and restrictive diet there is, it seems. One natural health care practitioner advised that I avoid meats, which are supposedly difficult for the body to digest. Another suggested that I eat no grains. Still another advocated that dairy products were acceptable provided they were made from raw milk. Yet another said no cow’s milk products, only goat or sheep’s milk. One said colonics and coffee enemas, another said no coffee at all-oral or anal. One demanded that I consume enormous amounts of fermented foods, such as kombucha and kraut. Another said that the yeast thrives on the fermented foods. It is exhausting to recount, no less to have loved through.
However, I have adopted a diet comprised of a variety of foods, including meat hunted by a friend, vegetables, fruits, and some grains. I feel better, in terms of my health, and moreover, I do not feel so limited and isolated as a result of my diet. I am able to eat in restaurants. I am happy.
Sure, could I stand to lose a few pounds? Sure. But I am not about to be made to feel guilty for loving my body, just the way it i, complete with its “impure” areas.
It is difficult when guides published by alleged experts are poorly written. But thank you for the critique. Now, you must send it to her! As for the skin color comment, I am speechless.
Keep blogging, Penny.
Katie
Post script: I do not intend for this to function as a complete criticism of natural healers. Many natural healers have helped me an enormous amount throughout the years. I believe that every body is different. What makes your body feel that it is functioning optimally make cause in me allergic reactions and discomfort. I am merely sharing what has helped me. This “diet” and lots and lots and lots of acupuncture.
post post script:
my typo/something i felt compelled to share:
paragraph one: LIVED through, not loved through
in general: i this diet of which i speak is not a “diet” at all, in the modern sense of the word. i eat things in moderation, strive for a variety of foods, grow as much of my food as i can, and when i am unable to do so i shop at farmer’s markets and almost always eat locally and organically.
as for my health problems: for my chronic back and neck pain i was very much helped by a form of massage called neuromuscular massage therapy. check it out-it has made a HUGE difference in the quality of my life. that coupled with acupunture in the times of life in which i have been in constant pain have made a difference large enough that i think it was worth the debt i assumed in order to receive that type of care, given my insurance paid for neither. (interesting, since those are the only health care practitioners that did a damn thing to alleviate pain that didn’t involve the heavy use of prescription painkillers.)
Thanks for analyzing, opining, and writing this up. I also have had physical and mental health issues for a long time beginning in young adulthood, and definitely relating to what I eat. I’ve wondered about the BED. I currently eat paleo-esque style, but with some rice. I also feel averse to rules and I refuse to feel guilty about anything I eat. If I plan to eat something, then I plan to enjoy it. I believe that my relationship to what I eat plays a big role in how the food affects my body-mind. Again, thanks for sharing. I enjoy reading your adventures.
Penny Scout, you’re my new hero. fantastic article; i’m with you a hundred percent.
This is an awesome, awesome blog post and serendipitous for me to find as well, as I’ve been thinking a LOT about diet as it plays out with civilization, ecology, etc. for the past few years. More, recently, in fact.
Personally I don’t have an issue with the idea of avoiding a certain kind of food, because we already avoid plants and animals we know to be bad for us. It’s just that our standards for what is “bad” are “anything that poisons us immediately.” But we know now that some poisons don’t act immediately but need time to build up in the body–arsenic, anyone?–and that subtle harm can do more damage in the long run, in some cases.
We know through a relatively new field of study whose name escapes me at the moment (combination of “anthropology” or “archaeology” and “pathology”, maybe?) that cultures which introduced agriculture produced people who were shorter and more prone to disease. Contrary to what vegans preach, osteoporosis showed up as a result of GRAIN-eating, not meat-eating. It’s right there in the bone records, so to speak.
That acid/alkaline crap has its basis in something that is valid medical theory but they’ve taken it too far. Our skin is acidic but our insides are supposed to be alkaline. If they wind up going acidic it’s a condition called metabolic acidosis. But if we wind up with that condition we will immediately know something is wrong–it’s not something that sneaks up on us. It’s the same thing as ketoacidosis in diabetics and alcoholics, to give you an idea.
There are at least two substances we eat that help with buffering acidity to prevent acidosis. One is calcium, the other is an amino acid found mostly in–you guessed it–animal products. And gee, if you’re not getting enough animal food then I guess your body’s gonna use its calcium as that buffering agent. Oops.
The blood type diet’s pretty neat. I didn’t follow it exactly but I did experiment with it and discovered that when I cut wheat and corn out of my diet I lost weight just from that. I hadn’t cut my caloric intake any, so I’m not sure why that would happen, it just did. I’ve realized since then that if I overdo it on the wheat I get edema like crazy. And I was suffering through this for several years *because* I was eating the stuff, not because I’d avoided it and then come back to it again. (I’m type O.)
Oh, and this is priceless, that you quoted from Body Ecology:
HEY STUPID AUTHOR LADY? BREADS AND PASTRIES COME FROM GRAINS. But you see this ridiculousness all over the place. “Whole grains are good carbs.” No, vegetables are good carbs. Trying to say whole grains are your savior while refined grains are Satan is just the same old tired complex carbs vs. simple carbs argument again, and that didn’t work last time either.
Anyway. Going to shut up now and read more of you. *grin*
Oh, I just remembered the word. Paleopathology. You oughta read more about it–it’s an eye-opener.
idiot fat loss
I feel really fortunate to have found a diet that works perfectly, 100% of the time for me, and that I have maintained ever since having begun it two years.
I do violate some major taboos, though. I eat a diet solely of meat and eggs – and very little of it is “wild” – 95% of my diet is factory-farmed meat and eggs that I yank out of grocery store dumpsters. However, it’s a diet that genuinely works for me and I don’t ever feel compelled to eat other things… ever.
I DO feel diet is a very individual thing, and that different people adapt in different ways to different foods. I am also an ex-veg, and even an ex-paleo and ex-neanderthin…
Girl..
All you need to do is consume your constituents by weight…it doesn’t matter what the fuck form you get them in as long as you diversify as much as possible.
Human adult female body: 66% water, thereabout. So by weight, you should consume that much water a day. The other 33% of our body’s mostly carbon, with some nitrogen and calcium thrown in there.
Everyone needs different amounts and forms of that carbon, some foods are warming, some cooling, some are dessicants, but getting the water/carbon ratio right really nails health home IMO.
I am a vegan who never gets hangovers as a routine drunkard in PDX and I feel wonderful.
You are a thinker, I love to talk with thinkers, using reason and looking past agendas and rhetoric to find the truth. Your mental state is as important and physical state and I don’t mean Arizona (thats a joke). Your mind and body work together, and without peace of mind, health will not be achieved. Let me guide you to unification of Mind, Body & Spirit. You know I speak truth.
Hey Emily, have you ever got your thyroid checked out? I have some of the same health issues that you mentioned, and it’s because I have Hypothyroidism… just a suggestion.
-emily
I very much enjoyed this article. The fascist-dieticians have gone too far. Everyone has some punish-yourself formula for you to follow that is THE ONLY WAY and don’t believe the other people, and just keep trying, even though it doesn’t feel good, and when it makes you feel worse, that means you’re getting better, and if you don’t get better, that just means you’re not trying hard enough, or you haven’t done it long enough. I don’t think we evolved to worry so much about such things. I think if we stay a little active, change what we eat from time to time, and try to live as happy as we can we’ll do the best we can.
Hey Penny,
I really benefitted from this blog…now I don’t have to read that book myself…how could the author say that the diet will make your skin more “porcelain?” Is she suggesting people of color are that way because they eat dirty or contaminated foods?
Anyway, I have some similar health issues myself and I’m pretty sure it is related to eating wheat glutin..as a result, I’ve gone from vegatarianism to eating a more balanced diet…that really helps!
I’ve been reading a lot of your and Urban Scout’s blogs and have been really loving them…I’m slowly working on rewilding myself…and as a Portland folk, I’d love to meet the two of you! I’m in midwifery school at the moment, soaking up as much as I can about plant medicine, herbs both wild and cultivated, suturing and other skills that would be useful to a tribe…I’m trying to find my tribe at the moment (actually I’ve been saying I want a tribe since forever…) and I would just love to meet some likeminded folks. I reciently have started hanging with Theressa and Norrs and they are teaching me amazing things…so happy to live in that neiborhood.
Anyway, always greatful to find out about folks interested in the same stuff,
Kim
Thanks Kim, keep hanging around and I’m sure we’ll run into you someday. Your midwifery learnings would be interesting to hear about at one of our skill shares. None planned at the moment but keep in touch.
Hey Girlie,
I am a “still in progress” BED convert and appreciate a look at the diet from all points of view. I suffer (ed) from similar symptoms mentioned in your blog. Found the 7th edition in a local library a few years ago and have had many stops and starts with Donna’s ideas.
Have been suffering from “uneven” skin texture and sinus infections forever and finally took a serious stab at the BED in 02 of this year. My skin “texture” is much smoother..breakouts almost completely long gone and I feel calmer, but eat blue corn chips when I am stressed.
I break the rules here and there (frozen pizza with a salad and sauerkraut) and buy, rather than make, natural sauerkraut as my digestive aid, (along with homemade coconut kefir). I have always loved seaweed and am trying the OceanExtract -just to see. I use the Vitality Drink b/c I wish to gain weight..(am a Type A).
I like the concept of this diet b/c it keeps things simple and yes, after a longggg while, I do notice that I don’t really crave all the delicious temptations surrounding me. If I do, I indulge but quickly notice how run down I feel after eating what everyone else is eating. I, too, was restless, at first, with what seemed to be a lack of variety in the diet. Now I can see how food is meant to fuel us and I actually crave a tuna steak with a vegetable salad, and fermented foods.
If nothing else, I love the BED because I look so much better. I am receiving nice little comments about how much happier and younger I look and notice myself how much better my belly feels.
I am going to speak with a BED consultant in my area – for a little more guidance. It has taken me a long time to change my eating habits and I am still a work in progress – as I mentioned- but I do feel strongly that this system works above any that I have tried before and hope that I can do more to improve upon the benefits that I am seeing – including my lack of guilt for breaking rules…instead of guilt -I focus on how tired, sleepy, and “uneven” I feel and look.
I was on the BED for over 140 days, and I have to say that I lost 35 pounds, and my digestive issues, colds, and sinus infections went away.
I addressed my Candida, and it started to change immediately.
However…
I now have rip-roaring acne. I had occasional adult acne before, but now it’s BAD. I’ve been told it’s my liver trying to detox and got a colonic, I thought it was buckwheat which was confirmed to be an issue through muscle testing and stopped eating it, I was told it’s bad food combing by a raw foods person, and went off the BED abruptly by drinking green smoothies for two days now.
What I have found is this:
90% of my issues WERE food related somehow.
The BED addressed these issues, even if it cost me a fortune.
Raw foods is making me as gassy, bloated and constipated as I was with Candida!
I plan to use a combo of the two, as the BED is leaving something out for me somewhere, and the raw foods diet is easier to manage and I get to eat fruit. I love raw soups and flax “bread!”.
I think paying attention to your body is the BEST thing you can do.
Before the BED, I did a Master Cleanse which told me my issues were food related.
I stopped eating everything that seemed to set off my symptoms, then I heard about Candida and found the BED.
Since BED isn’t totally cutting it, I will be looking for the reasons why my body is still breaking out like crazy. Raw foods seems to give me a lot more energy, but I can’t go to yoga class with this gas!
It’s ALL trial and error and patience.
And in the meantime, I am learning some things, and having kept a journal of EVERYTHING I ate EVERY DAY for over 140 days has really helped me structure my life and focus my thinking.
I am currently developing a healing diet for myself that pulls together the beneficial aspects of the raw diet as well as BED. If anyone would like to provide more one-on-one feedback on their experiences, it would be beneficial!
you can reach me at: http://www.easysustainablehealth.com
Wow, I can relate! First I want to say it was a relief to hear someone freely speaking about dieting. Especially the BED! I felt very overwhelmed wile reading it. It really is just too much at once. Not to mention the conflicting statements, and the confusing idea of feeding fermentation to yeast!
Even so, I’ve been selectively taking some of the advice from the BED for about a month now. I did/do seem to have candida. I’ve been experiencing vaginal, rectal, ear, and breast itchiness. As well as extreme tiredness, and other symptoms.
I have to say that since I’ve been eating sugar-free, and carefully food combining, I’m a lot less itchy. My energy is better now, and my skin is clear, so are my eyes, which previously were often red.
A few critical things i can say about the BED is that the 80/20 veggie/starch-carb suggestion got me constipated with too much fiber. I need to eat more like a 50/50 ratio.
Also, I noticed I got even more itchy almost immediately after consuming the cultured veggies and the apple cider vinegar, so I have given them up, and now I do not get itchy after eating. This makes sense since yeast/fungus feed off of fermentation!
I have also unintentionally lost 5 pounds, which is good for me, since I’m a little overweight.
I’m also including Oregano Oil and Grape Fruit Seed Extract to kill of the excess yeast.
Oh yeah, I just began doing morning liver-flushes – flush, what a funny word, as if I’m flushing a toilet! – It is with lemon, lime, garlic, ginger, olive oil, water, and stevia. This is in order to help my liver to be able to digest my food.
Interestingly, it is also said in oriental medicine that the liver and gall bladder are the seat of anger in the body.
I was surprised to find that the first day of this flush – that word again-, I felt a lot of anger, but since then I have felt good while continuing it.
I’m staying away from hydrotherapy colon cleansing and enemas, even though the BED highly recommends them. I’ve been told that it takes months to re-establish the healthy flora, and I don’t want to lose any of the good stuff that I’ve already got.
Prior to this I was on a Raw diet, and yes, I felt higher energy from it, though I did not feel grounded. I also began having loose stools with undigested veggies. I too was breaking out with acne and rashes. Plus my environmental allergies were getting worse as I was sneezing alot, and got a rash if a cat touched my skin.
I then learned from a community-based acupuncturist that a Raw food diet requires an extraordinary amount of energy from the body in order to digest. This is because the body has to heat the food in order to extract nutrients. This extra work taxes the body and lowers the immune system, the first sign of which is only partially or undigested food in the stool. He also explained that a Raw Diet is usually only good for people with a crisis such as cancer, because it does intitaly cleanse the body. The extra energy we feel from this cleanse is not a true source of energy, it’s actually from a lack of the gunk that has been cleansed. He explained that most people on a raw diet will wear down their immune system.
With all due respect to those who are thriving on a raw diet, I have to say that it certainly seems true for my personal experience.
Any way, I’m still finding my way on a whole-food, sugar-free, food-combining, path to wellness, and less itchiness!
~Purple
[...] Today found this great post, here is a quick excerpt : -Tracker of Plants 1 day ago; Attended Indigenous Ways of Knowing Conference at Lewis and Clark. Really Good. Made necklaces for eachother! Will go earlier next time. -Tracker of Plants 3 days ago; My video bio for TrackersNW … Read the rest of this great post Here [...]
Meat and water, meat and water…
That’s all you need.
[...] Beyond Body Ecology?: My Shit Talking Debut В« Tracker of Plants Sep 17, 2007 … It will be a world rich with music, art, and science, …. get them anywhere outside of a major metropolitan area? … And ya know, just cuz lots of people are having ….. October 2009 (1), May 2009 (2), April 2009 (2) … [...]
get checked for lyme disease!!!!! go steelers! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LA5gosMr88
Hey everyone!
After being on the Body Ecology Diet for 2 months, I was able to regain my health (it turned me around)… it worked great, and I did stick rigidly to it. It’s especially helpful for Candida sufferers. If you are struggling with something else, it’s still helpful, but seems to work best with problems of dysbiosis in the gut! I tend to like to stick with the “rules”, so this was a good approach for me. After 2 or 3 months on the diet, one can become a bit more liberal in their eating… i.e., less rules. It may not be for everyone… but I’ve done it 3 times now, and it worked everytime to bring me back to health. (The problem is, I end up feeling so good, I starting eating too liberally again, and end up back at square one… duh!!!)