Wow. Simply Wow.

Thank you, God, for pushing me to do this Daniel Fast. Thank you for letting me see what you've wanted me to see, and get out of this experience.

In the last year, I've learned soooo much with regards to my health. I've had success. I've had setbacks. And I've continued to push through.

I'm convinced that every step of this journey has served a purpose. From clean eating, and ditching the white refined sugar for maple syrup, honey, and stevia, and getting rid of packaged, processed products (such as boxed jiffy muffin mix, hamburger helper, blue box mac n cheese, etc) to giving up soda, and eventually my beloved sweet tea, to the experiment of being a vegetarian (no beef, pork, or chicken - dairy eggs and shrimp/fish still allowed), to what I thought was going to be the next step of the process: vegan.

Now...I heard of the Daniel Fast, and thought that it sounded like a good trial period for me to figure out if I could go vegan, and if I could go without any kind of added sugars. I knew I would be able to do it for the fast, but I wondered if I would be cranky, tired, miserable and ready to give up.

Amazingly, I have not. I have felt better in the last 2 1/2 weeks than I think I've ever felt in years. I'm not getting that 2pm in the afternoon feeling where I think I need a nap. I'm not exhausted when I get home, and force myself to stay up until bed time, only to eat something sugary late which spikes me back awake and limits me from being able to sleep. I've had basically fruits, veggies and grains, and nothing else for the last 2 1/2 weeks, and that's it. No bread, because the fast said no yeast, and I couldn't find any whole wheat bread without yeast. I did try to make a Daniel fast approved flat bread last week, but I only had a few small pieces. I forgot to store it in an airtight container, and the next morning it was as hard as a rock. le'sigh.

Anyway, I've felt great. I'm drinking lots of water because I'm trying to be diligent in my effort to drink half my body weight in ounces of water daily. I've got a few people at work who are helping hold me accountable. It's awesome, and it's working. lots of water = lots of potty breaks = lots of weight loss.

I came into this fast expecting a boot camp version of being vegan. I never expected that this experience would swing me the other way though. As it looks, I'm planning to slowly ween myself back into eating meat in moderation after this.

Yes, I know. I watched the Vegucated movie. And Food Inc. And Hungry for Change. And Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. And all of those documentaries are fabulous and I'm not discrediting them because I think they all have VERY valid points. I'm 100% about natural, organic though. I won't be buying cheap meat to buy cheap meat. I won't be buying meat out at restaurants very often because I won't know where it's coming from. It IS important to me that if I'm going to eat chicken, I'm not eating it from somewhere that they injected these poor chickens with "stuff" to make them grow twice as fast as nature intends so someone can make a quick dollar. It's important to me that if I'm eating a steak, that I don't eat a steak from a cow that was treated poorly in the process. Yes, animals have to die for us to eat their meat, but they don't have to be tortured in the process (Lawd, I've become such a hippie!)

What changed? Why the complete 180 with regards to meat after being meat free for 4.5 months? Simple. Some seeds have been planted over the past year - no pun intended. Murmurs of the caveman diet (which I was vehemently against, because of the thought that cavemen died very young, etc etc.) I'm not going full Paleo, for the record... I also heard from various sources that grains were my problem. All those "Healthy Whole Grains" that are marketed to us over and over again is a myth. I thought HOGWASH when I first heard negativity ab out healthy whole grains. Healthy whole grains are good for you! Eat up!

No, actually. They aren't. Paraphrasing Dr. William Davis, while it is true that filtered cigarettes are better for you than unfiltered cigarettes, just because they are better for you does not mean you should smoke them in excess. Same thing goes for healthy whole grains versus their white counterparts. Just because whole grain is a better alternative than it's white counterpart, the problem with this logic is that we continue to eat too much of it.

My doctor told me a year ago that I was insulin resistant and hypoglycemic. I didn't know what hypoglycemic meant, but I thought it was directly related to the insulin stuff, so I didn't bother to research hypoglycemia until this last week or so. I was given a list a mile long of things that were wrong with me. Overweight, insulin resistant. hypoglycemia. PCOS. Infertility. etc etc etc. This most recent doctors visit back in September, after having been vegetarian for 2 1/2 months, my doc mentioned the book Wheat Belly by Dr William Davis to me. I had heard of it, but never read it. I wasn't interested. It wasn't for me. I had already given up meat, why give up wheat too? What else would be left for me to eat, because I wouldn't have any options left after that.

That was late September. After starting this fast, being confident that the outcome was going to be vegan, something clicked. Somewhere along in my research on different recipes allowed on the fast, and studying up on insulin resistance, it's affect on PCOS and how people have combated it, led me back to the book Wheat Belly. I started reading the book mid week last week, and it's a LONG book, and it's taking me a while to get through.

One day this weekend, I had a dizzy spell. Completely not like me... I don't get dizzy, I don't pass out. It was completely out of the ordinary for me. The only thing I could determine is that I honestly had not had much to eat that day. I hadn't been hungry and I haven't been snacking on the fast. I didn't need to. After talking to my dad about some of the information I had been reading in the wheat belly book, we somehow got around to him having a dizzy spell earlier this week too. He reminded me of the term "hypoglycemia" which I had forgotten about, and he told me he has the same thing. I asked him what it means, and it's directly related to my insulin resistance. As I understand it, my body makes entirely too much insulin. Insulin is made by your pancreas to bring your blood sugar levels down when you've eaten something that has caused your blood sugar to spike. The problem is, my body doesn't know when it's made enough insulin and needs to stop. It keeps producing insulin, over and over and over again. Sweet foods don't trigger mine to turn on because it's constantly running. Prior to this fast, I was eating all day every day, at least every few hours even if it was a small handful of a snack. This weekend when I had my dizzy spell, I had been working in the yard, drinking alot of water, but hadn't had any snacks. I hadn't had food at all in probably 7 hours when this happened. My insulin had produced so much, but I hadn't had any food to offset the work the insulin was doing and it caused my blood sugar to bottom out.

It was not exactly a fun experience. However, listening to my dad's story and him reminding me of what hypoglycemia is, made me go home and research it... and then everything fell into place and made perfect sense. It made perfect sense why at night I ALWAYS ALWAYS want something sweet before bed. It never fails. Even when I try to ignore that urge, it's been there, and I've always caved. Since being on the fast though, I am not allowed to have added sweeteners, so when I've had the craving bad enough, I've had to settle for an apple or some natural applesauce.

So.... this research encouraged me to check out what exactly glycemic indexes are... what it means, how it works, and why it important. Apparently, when you eat something, depending on its glycemic index, your blood sugar rises and spikes. Your insulin helps bring you back down from your high, and about 2-3 hours later, when you've hit a low point, you're ready for something sweet again, or something that will cause your glycemic load to increase again. This is why so many dietitians tell us that you have to eat every 2-3 hours to keep your blood sugar levels constant.

Okay, so this stuff is starting to make sense to me. Except that since I've been fasting, I haven't been having the ups and downs. I'm not eating stuff that's making my blood sugar sky rocket, but it's not plummeting either. I'm generally eating just enough when my body is physically hungry, to prevent myself from having another dizzy spell.

Guess what kinds of foods are notorious for spiking your blood sugar levels? You guessed it. Anything with wheat. Anything. I don't want to spoil the book, but long story short, the wheat we have available to us today is more harmful than good. It's not the wheat of the biblical times. It's garbage. It's hybridized, genetically modified garbage that's making us fat. Even if you think this is hogwash, I want to encourage you to read the book, if for nothing other than entertainment value. It's presenting some mighty convincing arguments right now, which I'm totally buying into, and I've now determined to cut out wheat from my diet permanently. Lucky for me, the Daniel Fast allowed me to get through the tough first 5 days detox of coming off wheat because I was more focused on fasting than to think about the wheat.

All that being said - I'm not going back into meat full force day one of the fast being over. I'm going to go back to meat VERY VERY slowly. I gave up meat to give up fast food, and I still fear that I'm on a slippery slope of "if I eat it at home I'll justify going to Zaxby's to get some chicken fingers later." However, with this new desire to cut out wheat completely, I think I'll still be safe from the fast food temptation because of all the bread, and and fried breading, etc.

I'm convinced of the claims Wheat Belly describes because after I hit the 50-52 pound mark back in August, I hit another plateau. Immediately once I started preparing for this fast, about a week before the fast actually began, I started dropping weight again. As of this morning, I'm down 65 pounds. Who is excited? This girl right here. If I play my cards right, I'm pretty sure I'll be able to 75 pounds by Christmas, but hopefully even more than that. At this point, it's still not realistic to expect my original 100 pound goal by Christmas - that's practically a pound day. I won't say it's not possible.... but it's highly unlikely. I'm just gonna keep keepin' on, and do the best I can with the resources I have and see where this wheat/grain free journey takes me.

For more info, check out Wheat Belly on amazon, and I encourage you to read the 5 star reviews as well as the 1 star reviews.

Also check these sites out:
http://www.elanaspantry.com
http://www.eat-real-food-paleodietitian.com/paleo-diet-and-pcos.html
http://casualkitchen.blogspot.com/2012/09/how-do-i-follow-wheat-belly-diet.html
http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/2012/04/wheat-belly-safe-flours/