Logo
  • About Me
  • Contact
  • My Running Story
  • Archive
  • RSS
  • Ask me anything

Allison's Big Toe

Nutritional Balancing Resolutions 2013

Resolutions for this year focus on exercise, as those of recent years past focused so much on nutrition and the GAPS diet. I see exercise as the icing on the cake of good health, so the fact that I’m ready to start exercising more shows me that I have come a long way!

1. Start a Peak Fitness or similar routine.

2. Start moderate running again.

3. Continue my strength training (plank, pull ups, push-ups, and squats)

4. Finish my Nutritional Balancing Program (currently 6 months in). This is the big one; including detoxification, meditation, and supplementation. It has been a lot of work, but the results are encouraging so far. Primarily energy and happiness levels have increased. I go in for my next hair test soon.

    • #WAPF
    • #GAPS diet
    • #exercise
    • #peak fitness
    • #nutritional balancing
  • 5 months ago
  • 1
  • Comments
  • Permalink
Share

Short URL

TwitterFacebookPinterestGoogle+

I’m registered! Are you?

If you are from Ventura and want a ride to the 2012 Weston Price Foundation conference (details on the banner to the right —>), let me know! It’s in Santa Clara, CA up near San Jose. It will be my first time attending, and I look forward to learning a lot. Hope to see you there!

  • 10 months ago
  • Comments
  • Permalink
Share

Short URL

TwitterFacebookPinterestGoogle+

How I Came Off the GAPS Diet

Hey there - long time no post! I know, I know :) Blogging has taken a backseat for me lately, as I’ve been reading voraciously and continuing my journey to my own optimum wellness.

Main news:

1. I’ve transitioned off the GAPS diet and am loving introducing new foods and finding true pleasure in eating.

2. I’m working on healing from copper toxicity (also adrenal fatigue and thyroid imbalance) which my acupuncturist and I suspect was underlying much of my discomfort throughout the GAPS diet. 

3. I’m slowly starting to exercise more. But I’ve drastically changed my approach to exercise. No more chronic cardio running, which I now think is damaging for my body. Instead, I’ll be trying more strength training, fun aerobic workouts (rock climbing, yoga, slow jogging), and sprint sessions. I still wear my Vibrams all the time around town and at school!

Details:

The GAPS diet was definitely what I needed to do to seal my gut lining and establish a healthy colony of probiotic bacteria in my intestines. It also taught me to eat a traditional diet, which has profoundly altered every aspect of my life! The reason I went on the diet in the first place: unbearable chronic yeast infections, has resolved. I haven’t had one for two years, and never plan to have another one, as I am now educated on the dangers of overusing antibiotics, birth control, vaccinations like the flu shot, and eating refined sugar, unfermented whole grains, and soy products. All these damage one’s intestinal tract and create nutrient imbalances, among other ills that I can attest to. Now I make my own lacto-fermented foods, eat saturated fat and good quality animal products freely, and make sure to sprout and ferment nuts, legumes, and grains before consumption.

But, I do think undertaking the GAPS diet (and especially the low-carb version I went on in January 2012) put extra stress on my body and messed up my hormones, leading to adrenal fatigue and thyroid imbalance. When I do something, I tend to be a perfectionist and, well, obsess about doing it perfectly. I am hard on myself if I sense “failure” in any way. Through a lot of research and the guidance of my acupuncturist Mike Long of Coastal Acupuncture in Ventura, I have taken a serious “chill pill” about life. Right now I need to rest, stop constantly analyzing my body shape, and enjoy eating again instead of worrying that a piece of homemade sourdough bread is going to undo all the work I’ve done to heal because it contains grains. 

As for exercise, I know that 80% of health is based on what I eat and 20% is based on lifestyle and exercise, so I now see exercise as the frosting on top of the celebration cake that is good eating :)

So, what does all this change mean for my Allison’s Big Toe blog?  Well, it was founded two years ago this month because I had discovered the barefoot running style and fixed some knee injuries. Of course, I wanted to perfect it for myself and share my half marathon training with you Tumblr users. Now, even though I don’t plan to give up running, I don’t see this blog continuing that same trajectory, per se. 

Could you comment below and let me know: Would you be interested in posts once in awhile about my wellness journey? (Sorry to use such a cheesy term, but I can’t think of a better one!) I know most of my followers define themselves as runners primarily, so posts about nutrition, etc. may be unappealing. What do you think? 

    • #GAPS diet
    • #wapf
    • #running
    • #barefoot running
    • #exercise
    • #nutrition
  • 11 months ago
  • 3
  • Comments
  • Permalink
Share

Short URL

TwitterFacebookPinterestGoogle+

GAPS Introduction Diet Re-do (Plus a Recipe!)

This was a hard post to write, after not having written anything here for three months.  I told myself a little while back that I wouldn’t turn this blog into a food blog, but the problem is, all I’ve been thinking about for the past 40 days is food, so I haven’t felt inspired to blog. But, I’ve decided it’s time to let you in on what I’ve been up to lately anyway :)

Running, and really all exercise, has taken a definite backseat for me lately. I decided back in October that I wasn’t going to run the local Santa to the Sea Half Marathon that I had tentatively planned. I just wasn’t feeling well enough to run all the training mileage. I’ll talk more on how my thoughts on exercise have changed in my next post. But, today it’s about food, and digestion, which really need to be figured out before exercise is a priority, considering that 80% of our body composition comes from what we eat, and only 20% from how we exercise. So here we go!

Come November 2011, I had been on the full GAPS diet for a full year, and I honestly thought I’d be having less intestinal distress than I was having (lethargy, bloating, etc.). So, I went to a Naturopathic doctor in Santa Barbara, and she did some tests, and voila, I still have strong food sensitivities to egg whites, gluten, casein (a milk protein), and medium sensitivities to many other foods. Mine are not authentic food allergies (IgE response), which can cause anaphylactic reactions for example. That’s good, because it means I can eventually eat the problem foods!

Instead, I have what are called “food sensitivities” (IgG response): my body produces an autoimmune response when proteins that I eat, like gluten and casein, leak through my damaged gut lining into my bloodstream, undigested and therefore toxic to my body. Food sensitivity symptoms vary for everyone, but mine is extreme muscle weakness and lethargy.

Why is this happening? After a year of research and paying attention to my body, I think I’ve figured it out. Let’s work backwards:

1. My gut lining is damaged because of Candida albicans (yeast) overgrowth over the past many years.

a. Candida’s method is to attach itself to the intestinal wall and poke its little yeast tendrils through the lining, creating holes.

b. It is a VERY long and difficult process to detach and get rid of Candida. A person must starve it out by a combination of eating foods that heal and seal the gut lining, like chicken broth and animal fat, and not eating foods that either feed the Candida, like sugar, or further damage the gut lining, like high fiber/carbohydrate grains. 

c. With careful implementation of a diet like this—a la the GAPS diet—the Candida dies and releases its bacterial toxins into the bloodstream, which have to be processed by the liver, and then are eventually eliminated. This is called “die-off” and causes a variety of different symptoms in people, like constipation and headaches. (That’s the reason why I’ve been feeling worse before feeling better!)

2. The Candida overgrowth was caused by my over-consumption of: the birth control pill, antibiotics, fiber, and high carbohydrate foods. My under-consumption of enough probiotic (lacto-fermented) food in my diet over the course of my life exacerbated the problem.

Now, if you’re still with me, let’s go back to the beginning of this post. Why wasn’t I feeling better after a year on the GAPS diet? My naturopath’s detection of food sensitivities (because of leaky intestines) was the key. I still hadn’t done enough to eliminate that nasty Candida—it’s still hanging on and causing problems.

Fast forward from November to today—I have moved further in my healing process than I did all last year! Hallelujah! 

What did I do? I bit the bullet and went back on the strict GAPS Introduction Diet for a much more extended time than I tried last year. This is a food elimination diet, intended to quickly heal and seal the gut lining, coupled with a protocol for introducing new foods one by one to test for reactions to a possible sensitivity. A life-saver in making the decision to start was Cara’s e-book What Can I Eat Now? 30 Days on the GAPS Introduction Diet from her Health Home and Happiness blog. Thank you, Cara!

There are 6 stages to the intro diet, and I’m only on Stage 2 by now, but for the record, let me just say right now how much I LOVE the GAPS Introduction Protocol. I finally realized that I have to follow it exactly as written by neurologist Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride in her book: Gut and Psychology Syndrome.

The protocol has given me new hope of healing myself! Yay! Because it is so restrictive food wise, I finally know what’s going on, if, beyond the food sensitivities, I’m bloated (too much fiber), have a headache / spacey or “drunk” feeling (too much probiotic good bacteria causing toxic bacteria die-off), or my stomach is heavy (not enough stomach acid for protein digestion, or not enough bile for fat digestion). I would never have been able to figure all that out if I hadn’t gone to Stage 1 and stayed there for the past 40 days!

So, what am I eating? My daily diet has been: boiled vegetables in chicken broth and cooked chicken skin/fat pureed into a soup, with added boiled meat with fat on it, liver, and extra animal fat by the tablespoon(s) melted into the soup. Yes, all that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. KISS = keep it simple, stupid! :) And, I have to say, my body has been loving all that fat and protein…demanding it at every meal. Every time I introduced a new food beyond this, I would watch for some reaction like those above, and then continue introducing in tiny amounts, or eliminate it for the time being.

For those of you worrying about my fat or animal product intake, I give you permission to worry no more, and here’s why:

1. All that fat is actually good for me because it is sealing my intestinal lining.

2. I make a huge effort to only buy organic and/or local meat, organs, and fat from pastured animals. No factory farmed food for me.

3. In terms of numbers, I have been eating a diet of at least 50% fat (mostly saturated from animals**), and up to 50 grams animal protein at every meal. If you’re worried about me getting a heart attack, read The Primal Blueprint: 21 Day Total Body Transformation by Mark Sisson, pages 67-74, or his more scientific explanation here. He uses scientific evidence to debunk all the “Conventional Wisdom” about saturated fat and cholesterol leading to heart disease.

4. I lost 12 pounds in 30 days, and the cellulite I had on my legs and thighs has noticeably reduced from all the gelatin/collagen in the chicken broth. The weight loss was obviously not the goal in this enterprise, but it was awesome to stop feeling bloated and fit into my old pants once again. Over the past year, I had gained those 12 extra pounds from eating carbohydrates that I wasn’t digesting properly!

5. My irritable moods have improved dramatically. Thank you, Julia Ross, author of The Mood Cure.

**Side note for me to rant just a little: If you’re a vegan or vegetarian and all this talk about animal eating grosses you out or bothers you in any way, we need to have a talk :) For reasons I won’t fully go into here, a vegetarian lifestyle is not the solution for a healthy body or environment. Yes, the amazingly effective Gerson Therapy cancer treatment program is vegan, but it is a misunderstanding to think it prevents cancer. All vegan diets at first do make people feel amazing as toxins leave their bodies, but eventually (up to 20 years for some people) veganism and even vegetarianism leads to mass nutrient deficiencies, body degeneration, and chemical imbalances in the brain that cause a person’s thinking to become very rigid and black-and white; s/he becomes unable to make the neurotransmitters that support healthy moods and as a result feels persecuted and angry all the time. If robust health is your goal, go out and eat a grass-fed, local beef hamburger wrapped in lettuce, with buttered veggies on the side. You know, deep down, that you want to. Listen to your body—it is brilliant and will smile. I would also recommend reading The Vegetarian Myth, written by a recovering vegan named Lierre Keith. Please comment below and we’ll start a healthy dialogue!

CASSEROLE RECIPE

Last weekend, on Day 42 of the GAPS Introduction Protocol, I ate something other than boiled meat and vegetables in a soup! I made this healing casserole:

                            

Here is Cara’s recipe on p. 25 of her e-book, with some modifications of my own:

2 pounds hamburger (I used ground pork)

1 large butternut squash

1/2 tsp sea salt

fresh thyme and sage

2 cups chicken broth

Butter or animal fat (I used duck fat—yum!—found at this awesome meat market in Ventura).

Preheat oven to 360. Mix ground meat with sea salt, 1tbsp fat, and 1tsp each thyme and sage. Set aside. Peel and remove pulp from butternut squash and chop into bite-sized pieces. Grease a 9x13” pan with fat. Place squash in the pan and pour broth over the squash. Place pieces of the raw hamburger mixture over the top of the squash, covering evenly. Bake, covered with aluminum foil, for 45 min, then remove foil and bake an additional 30 min or until squash is soft and meat is cooked.

The sweetness of the butternut squash mingles with the saltiness of the meat and it really was tasty. That said, it could have been great just because it wasn’t soup! Enjoy :)

  • 1 year ago
  • Comments
  • Permalink
Share

Short URL

TwitterFacebookPinterestGoogle+

ChiRunning Fatigue Fixers

                                                   

This morning I woke up and my body felt a little weird. I was slightly shaky, and feeling “underpowered”. But, I planned on going for a run today, so I ate a pre-run snack of homemade yogurt cream, chia seeds, 1/2 banana, raw honey, and raw cacao bits. I headed down to the Ventura boardwalk, where I like to run on the weekends. When I started running, my rational brain assured me I’d just run until I was too tired to keep my form in check and then walk the rest, but my competitive brain (what, I can’t have two brains?) told me that I should try to increase my mileage today and run up and over the bridge that I stopped at last week. Although now I’m quite exhausted, I’m proud to report that on the run I was able to both increase my distance to about 6 miles, yet not have to stop and walk, with the help of the ChiRunning Fatigue Fixers.

Today, at about mile 4.5, I thought I was ready to stop and walk, as my quad and calf muscles were getting fatigued. Having spent 2 years now working on my ChiRunning form, I can tell when my muscles get tired and cause my form to break down, because I get mild pains in certain joints and tendons. If I can rally the strength to bring the form back in check, the pains disappear. On page 254-255 of the ChiRunning book, Danny Dreyer lists some great tips for reducing fatigue on a run. I had read these a long time ago, but this morning I found myself cycling through the ones I remembered to keep me going. Happily, they worked! I’ve ordered them below—1 being the most helpful for me, 2 the next most helpful, and so on:

Tips for Reducing Fatigue

  1. Slow down your pace until you recover some strength.
  2. Imagine your upper body as suspended, with legs relaxed and simply swinging from spinal pivot point in the middle of the back. Engage arm swing in upper body to maintain efficient pelvic rotation. (I added this, because for me it’s the magic focus that brings everything else into line. If I’m too tired to do it, then it’s time to walk.)
  3. Breathe more from your abdomen.
  4. Relax your shoulders. Let your arms dangle at your sides for 30 seconds every 2 minutes.
  5. Don’t focus on your fatigue, or you’ll get more tired. Look up and take in the world around you. (I tried to smile at everyone I passed.)
  6. Engage your lean again, but don’t bend at the waist.
  7. Correct your posture. Make sure your feet are hitting behind your upper body, not in front of it.
  8. Stay away from a shuffle. Pick up your heels and get your feet moving in a circular motion.
  9.  Shorten your stride. 

Hope this helps you run further, pain-free and without injury!

    • #chirunning
  • 1 year ago
  • 1
  • Comments
  • Permalink
Share

Short URL

TwitterFacebookPinterestGoogle+
Page 1 of 25
← Newer • Older →
chirunning book


Vibram Five Fingers fan community - free your feet!

I love my toe shoes!



I am a Food RENEGADE!


We Are Affiliated - The Primalfoot Alliance: Taking Our Feet Back.

Let's Connect!

  • @/#!/allisonsbigtoe on Twitter
  • Facebook Profile
  • /allisonsbigtoe on Youtube
  • Google

Follow Me on Twitter

loading tweets…

Following

  • sinnum
  • iron-inside
  • bostonmarathon2012
  • runtoeatrepeat
  • myquirkylife
  • icodeforlove
  • mikepetrucci
  • astoryanew
  • anndar
  • arunningfool
  • runnersworld
  • whatever-it-takes
  • how2runfast
  • feetsofstrength
  • gradualprogress
  • lovelylinguist
  • postcollegerunnergirl
  • runningwithdummies
  • plasmatrout
  • ollyht
  • 2721west
  • primaldawgs
  • healthyhips
  • singletrackrunner
  • elannasdad
  • runningthroughthewall
  • thatoneyearoff
  • chiaracanzi
  • wavehouseathleticclub
  • whatsonyourbucketlist
  • zenmarathonman
  • barefootnyc
  • aaronhiatt
  • michaelthecaveman
  • RSS
  • Random
  • Archive
  • Ask me anything
  • Mobile
Effector Theme by Pixel Union