After having been brought up on the High Carb/ Low fat mantra for the bulk of my life, this radical turn around in my diet will be significant. The rest of the family will just have to go along with the flow.
I am probably in the most dangerous phase right now. I am preparing for the diet by trialling a few new recipes and ways of eating whilst also using up the left over carbs from the cupboard. So I am probably on a high carb high fat diet at the moment that is probably the deadliest of all diet combination.
It seems that if you are gonna go for the high carb low fat
model the safest bet is to restrict calories as well in order to manage insulin and blood fats. This is easier said than done seeing as carbs tend to cause the blood sugar fluctuations that lead to cravings. Eat carbs, crave more carbs.
The start date of the diet has been put off a bit too because we just have too many gorgeous home grown mangoes to not finish eating them. I couldn't stand to waste them, particularly as we never know when we will encounter another good mango season like this one. I also have a few lovely rockmelons that I have grown and I fully intend to eat them too before I embark on fruit deprivation.
But get started I must, or this diet of high fat (experimentation) and high carb (well I'm not officially on the diet yet) will most likely kill me.
So what do I want to get out of the diet? It is not just a whimsical idea, or a fascination with a new scientific idea. I have a few goals that I am hoping the diet will help me reach.
Minor health problems that I would be interested to see if a high fat diet alleviates are:
general tiredness
a bit of belly fat
dry skin
thinning hair.
So most of the minor complaints are probably cosmetic, but at least they are external measures that I should be able to readily assess.
More major health issues are:
poly cystic ovaries
thyroid
blood clots
avoidance of another melanoma
Maybe the diet will nourish my bodily tissues and tweak my hormones so that these issues will not develop into chronic complaints as I age.
More long term goals are:
avoidance of Dementia ( as mum is suffering at the moment I can see first hand what a devastating disease it is)
avoidance of cancer (dad died of pancreatic cancer, it was sudden and fatal)
avoidance of Heart disease ( it is supposed to be a number one killer).
They are fairly lofty goals, but you have to have some clear idea of why you would want to so radically mess with your diet and effectively shun every health advisement you have ever heard in your entire life.
I do remember a few disparaging remarks that my father made about the diets that us teenage girls used to go on in the eighties. His favourite remark was:
'why are you eating yoghurt? They used to use that to fatten up pigs'
Also he made the observation that our supposed calorie reduction diets actually had us eating more.
No one could stop my father from drenching his food in salt and sugar. He was a big fan of both of the white powders.
I do remember comments made by adults that carbohydrates were meant to make you fat, but by the eighties we had changed that to: ' no it's not the carbohydrates that make you fat, it's the fat that you put on the carbohydrates that does that.' They were the days; Teenaged, and already we knew it all. We were taught the low fat message in school and we were avid readers of girls magazines about all the latest diets. We used to try a lot of them but never really lasted on any of them very long.
In the early 90's Steve and I dabbled with Fit for Life and became vegetarians. For a number of years we ate a diet high in fruit and vegetables, including juices and avoided meat. That was the last time I dieted as such. We felt pretty good on the diet, but once I became pregnant with Sarah I started to crave meat. I stopped being vegetarian then.
In 1998 we switched to dairy free when our second child, Evan was diagnosed with a dairy allergy. Steve decided that he had a dairy allergy too. We have been pretty much dairy free, Evan, Steve and I since then. Only recently have I started to consume dairy again. I never thought that I would, but I am. As for Steve and Evan, this creates something of a dilemma as it is hard to get a butter/marg substitute that is not based on a oil that is high in omega 6 and is dairy free. How do I increase their good fats in their diets and lower the omega 6 content?
Perhaps if the diet is a spectacular failure that is one issue I wont need to address. In the mean time, once those mangoes are eaten, we are on our way to High Fat/ Low Carb come what may.
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