One thing that I decided early on in my journey of diet change is that I would not think of the way I was eating as a deprivation but as a gift I was giving myself. In other words I thought about how lucky I was to have figured out how to regain my health simply by changing how I ate. The things I no longer could eat might be considered food by other people but I started seeing them as poison and who would voluntarily ingest poison? Arsenic, no matter how good it tastes, will never be on my menu.

Now to specifics. There are lots of food still to eat.

Proteins that are currently in my diet:
ground venison
canned wild Alaskan slamon
wild caught Pacific cod
pork liver
homemade breakfast sausage

Fats:
olive oil
coconut oil

Vegetables:
various leafy greens
broccoli
cauliflower
bok choy
cucumber
red pepper
mushrooms
cabbage

Nuts and seeds:
flax seed
sunflower seeds

Other:
coconut milk (homemade)
shirataki noodles
salad dressing (homemade oil and vinegar)

Liquids:
Coffee
Green tea
herbal tea
water

If you think of it as deprivation then you will feel deprived. If you think of it as a means to a healthy life it will feel like a gift.

Here's my tough love speech. Most of us become very spoiled. We think we need variety and scrumptious tastes all the time. We don't. I think of my food as medicine to keep my body healthy so that I can use my life in more productive ways than taking pills and visiting doctors. My food is easy to prepare and tasty but it is not the center of my life. I used to believe that my coffee had to have milk and sugar in it. Yuck to black. Now I drink it black and it's fine. Habits can be changed. Attitudes can be changed. We can learn to eat in ways that enhance our health if we let go of what we used to think about food and embrace a new way of thinking and eating.

End of lecture.

Jean