What do you eat?

The no.1 question I was asked the most as I embarked on the journey of adopting an anti-inflammatory way of eating.

Part 4 on adopting an anti-inflammatory way of eating. So far we have covered how to approach it, the unexpected benefits and breaking/ending cycles (including the cycle of sugar addiction).

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I felt like I ate a great range of foods so this question surprised me. (Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash)

A question I used to get asked a lot was “what do you eat?!”.

People genuinely seemed shocked that I would take so much out of my diet and believed it left nothing else to eat. Which says a lot about what we’re eating and the impact this may be having on our bodies. In that, many of the foods I reduced or cut out of what I was eating are inflammatory. Eating foods that inflame us is leading to higher levels of inflammation in our body, which, when chronic can lead to numerous health problems including heart disease, arthritis, depression, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer¹.

I believe that the unique way I approached it - one small change at a time and really imbedding that change before moving on the next, as well as allowing myself to eat what I wanted when I wanted - so long as it aligned with my goal of reducing inflammation - meant that I didn’t feel deprived or like I was missing out on anything.

In no way am I recommending the following as a diet. As a reminder, I am not a trained nutritionist and I learnt as I went and made it as straight forward as possible for myself to make changes.

There are many personal choices and factors to make and consider when adopting a new way of eating. This is the part where I am supposed to recommend you speak to your doctor before making changes to your diet. However, I find this hard to do when I am aware they haven’t necessarily been trained in nutrition and the advice that is becoming increasingly common is not to bother making any changes². Ideally you will receive support and guidance from someone who is trained in nutrition. Working with a nutritionist is especially popular in those of us living with endometriosis and other types of chronic illness.

As covered in part 1, in my own case, I sought medical advice about cutting gluten out first, which, when I received the response “I wouldn’t bother” was based on a number on the scales and not in any way connected to the fact that I was occupationally disabled and severely ill. The book, The Migraine Miracle, confirmed that gluten is the number one recommended change for migraine, alongside sugar. Both of which I eliminated and reduced in my diet at separate times to ease the pressure on myself.

You will hear me talk a lot about this, but from the moment I “woke up” to complete disability by illness, I began (for the first ever time) to learn to let my body lead.

What I am about to share with you is – in no perfect way – where learning to let my body lead (alongside the research and making small changes) took me in the early days. This gives a rough example of what I ate on the daily and how perfectly imperfect this was:

Breakfast

Porridge oats, with seeds and anti-inflammatory additions like turmeric & cinnamon.³

Lunch

Plate full of raw veg with hummus⁴, cheese and avocado.

Evening meal

Rice dish, often with meat⁵.

Eating all the colours of the rainbow is a great practice, but so is knowing that wherever you’re at on the journey of making changes is ‘enough’. One tiny step at a time. (Photo by Dan Gold on Unsplash)

Snacks

• Apple and nut butter

• Dark chocolate

• GF/SF fruit and nut bars

• Hot cacao

• Strawberries and double cream.

I followed a not too dissimilar pattern to this for a good 18 months/2 years.

For anyone without support be that financial or otherwise, I am someone who didn’t go organic. I didn’t do any of it perfectly. I cannot emphasise enough how happily imperfect this was and how I believe the greatest change was made possible (and more enjoyable) because I eased the pressure to get it “right” and do it perfectly. I had my intentions and my boundaries, I wasn’t strict.

Somewhere along the way (there’s a good chance it was a topic covered in the Migraine World Summit annual event in 2018/19) a neurologist who had studied gut health alongside having a deeper understanding of the complexities of migraine disease, highly recommended lentil soup during attack.

Back before I made any of these changes a typical binge at the onset of attack would include:

• Cereal for breakfast

• A Greggs breakfast (bacon baguette and a latte)

• A packet of oranges

• More cereal

• A packet of chocolate biscuits

• Lunch

• More cereal

• Many cups of coffee (and water and herbal tea and regular tea)

• Whatever I could get my hands on for evening meal

During attack I wouldn’t be able to eat, drink, move or speak (the pain was so severe). The only thing I could eat in recovery was plain vanilla ice cream (a tub).

All this only began to change when I brought in one small change at a time and I got clear on my goal of reducing inflammation in my body.

I began to batch cook lentil soup and section it into portions for the freezer so that I had a ready supply of lentil soup for the predrone and prodrone phase of attack.

During the lockdown in 2020 I remember buying a box of “perfectly imperfect” strawberries from Tesco. I’d been applying this approach to my diet the entire time and made a conscious decision to start applying this in all areas of my life.

Given that perfectionism is associated with chronic illness and especially migraine (Louise Hay “You Can Heal Your Life”) I see this as an being an even bigger win than getting it “right” when it comes to adopting an anti-inflammatory way of eating.

Yikes, I’ve written 3,000 words on food. At the time of sharing this, I not only have a 5 part series but with some of the invaluable insights and questions you’ve shared and asked, I now have a possible series of 9.

This does not surprise the old version of me. I still do - and I always have - loved food. I enjoy it so much more now though, feel fuller and satisfied for longer. In fact, I NEVER felt satisfied and full in the before times. I no longer think about food incessantly all day. I don’t worry about eating out. I enjoy a burger and chips on occasion.

I still have more to talk about; the mishaps and what happened when I went astray, how my dietary changes have grown and evolved as well as my experience of fasting (head’s up, I didn’t start doing it based on someone else’s say so. I didn’t even read about that one, my body was guiding me all the way. It took me a long time to listen to that one due to the messages I had received about breakfast being the most important meal of the day, but eventually I did listen and my inflammation levels are now the lowest they have ever been, 6 years in).

Anything else you want to know?

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Over to you

What changes have you noticed to your appetite pre and post attack?

What is your relationship with perfectionism?

Over the several month course of making changes to what I drank and ate, I worked with a few mantras such as

1. “Health first - no matter what”

2. “I do what I can when I can”

3. “I eat what I want when I want”

4. “Perfectly imperfect”

If you were to choose a mantra for yourself, or invent one of your own, what would it be?

1. Reference www.health.harvard.edu “What is inflammation and why is it dangerous?”

2. It’s important to understand why this might be, specifically in respect of migraine. Putting pressure on ourselves can increase our stress levels which in turn, can lead to an increase in attacks. So there can be good intention behind it. That said, not making changes is unlikely to improve our health and so to me, its not necessarily about not making changes, but in exploring how we go about making changes.

3. I used supermarket milk until I learnt that coconut milk is good for migraine brain (reference: The Migraine Miracle). But when the 99.9% coconut milk I bought went out of production, I moved on to locally sourced raw milk produced from grass fed cows. I don’t deny that cutting out dairy could be a good change, especially for skin conditions such as eczema, psoriasis and other inflammatory conditions. Its just not one I have gone on to adopt myself.

4. Shop bought hummus which I later found out contains inflammatory rapeseed oil. So this is a great example of what I mean by perfectly imperfect and starting with where you are, working with what you’ve got and meeting yourself where you’re at. I still went on to reduce inflammation in my body drastically.

5. I ate a daily diet like this more or less everyday for 18-24 months. When me and my then boyf split up in 2020, I was internally guided to move away from supermarket plastic wrapped meat. Combined with feeling the need to detox my body from meat entirely for a while. As luck had it for me, I wound up living with a vegetarian for the next 18 months and ate no meat at all for a long while.

It’s been great to have you here with me on this journey. I really appreciate your support, cheerleading and sharing what stands out for you. (Photo by Hester Qiang on Unsplash)