The Lectin-free diet is a bust – for me, at least.  If you’ve been following my story, you know that at one point my weight was just a couple of pounds short of 250.  To get that under control, I started the Paleo Diet, and lost nearly 60 pounds.  Well, when we switched to the lectin-free diet, my weight went back up to 230.  The solution, then, seems to be that the best diet for me is the paleo, sometimes also called the Caveman Diet.  So, we’re switching back.

I’ve written before that one of my fitness challenges is the existence of a huge tear in the upper abdominal wall, which several different doctors and fitness instructors have told me makes exercising my abs dangerous.  Yet, through the years that I’ve carried  this trouble, I’ve found no way around the problem.

Until very recently.

About 3 months ago, I began to wonder if something like the old-fashioned women’s girdles might offer enough support to the hernia to allow me to exercise.  I kept this suspicion to myself, because I don’t want to spend money on anything – ANYTHING – without a good chance that it’s worth the cost.  I’ve been burned too many times.  So, I tried to research the idea myself.

Then, about a month ago, my wife came to me with the revelation that she’d read an actual medical journal article about a trial of this very idea – with incredibly positive results.  That was when I first shared with her what I’d been looking into, and I agreed to try it.  She found an adjustable girdle with velcro fastening that I could place high enough to support the heria, and I began.

I had to start slow – I haven’t exercised  my abs in over 25 years.  But, as I built strength and endurance, I also started to see a physical change.  I haven’t lost much girth, perhaps an inch, but I do see definition starting to form in the muscles, which is encouraging.

I’m feeling a bit vindicated at the moment, over the whole “Lectin Free eating” idea.  But, it isn’t the idea itself that has me grinning, but a thought I remembered having as a kid.

If you were like me, your parents probably did two things: told you to take a multi-vitamin every day, and told you that drugs were bad.  That was probably the end of the similarity between us, because when I was a kid, my family got our vitamins from the local drug store.

I admit that this is very simplistic thinking, but to my childhood understanding, if drugs were bad, why were drug stores legal?  If vitamins look like drugs, why take them?  Shouldn’t people be able to get all the nutrition they need from the food they eat?

Well, it turns out that the “Lectin free eating” idea was a huge chunk of the missing data.  You see, if we never damaged our intestine, most of our standard health problems would probably never happen to us.  So, that 10 year old (me, a very long time ago) was right – we can get our nutrition from our food, at least as long as we’re not deliberately eating things that work against us.

Lectin-free, Week 3 update . . .

Well, this is exciting.  Not really.  This is currently my 3rd attempt at posting this update.  Firefox is giving me fits today.

There hasn’t been much change from last week, as far as physical symptoms go.  What has changed is that the local weather has gotten so hot during the day that I can’t sleep, making doing our laundry at night a serious challenge.  I think I’m going to have to adapt a “1 load per day, just before sunrise” type of program to get through the summer.

Going lectin-free is proving to be a more difficult challenge than we had hoped.  Some of our basic staples have lectins in them, and finding substitutes is a continuous experiment.  For example – sweet potatoes can substitute for Idaho potatoes in some things, but sweet potatoes make lousy hash browns.  They don’t cook right.  Rutabaga has an unusual flavor, but will do a good job as a potato substitute.

Anyway, we’re still trying to meet the challenge.  Life is Strange.

Not so long ago, I posted that I’m done chasing the recovery of my lost ability.  I’ve been seeking a way to reverse the physical decline of my body, which began 37 years ago with a bone tumor, for so long it seems to be the only thing I’ve ever done sometimes.  You could call it my career.  The only thing I’ve pursued longer would be spiritual growth.  I’m frustrated, and tired.

However, I recently saw a video made by a former cardiac surgeon – Dr. Steven Gundry, MD.  He worked at Loma Linda University Medical Center until he had an epiphany – that he was just putting bandaides on conditions.  He realized he could do more good for his patients by helping them to NOT NEED surgery.  Foremost on his mind was the fact that, despite doing “everything right” he himself was 75 pounds overweight and heading for cardiac trouble.

Well, he tells the story far better than I could.  You can find it at http://www.thenewgutfix.com

Anyhow, after seeing that video, I shared it with my wife – and she agreed that his description of the “typical patient” with the problem he now treats – with NUTRITION alone – was a total description of how I’ve been feeling the last few years.  Everything  – chronic fatigue, joint pain, migraines, brain fog, memory lapses – it is all just symptoms of a leaky gut. And he’s figured out how to repair it without surgery. So, making an exception to my former declaration, we’re going to give this a shot.

Yes, “we” – my wife has several of the same symptoms, so she’s going to do the regimen with me.  With a little help from the gods, perhaps we will both soon be in the best health of our lives.