If we start with only one area of concern today in our aim to get physically healthy again, that would be with diet and nutrition. It is a key issue in surviving and overcoming many health problems.
However, there’s one real bug-a-boo in all this if you already have a specific illness like Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. It’s not enough to tailor your approach to merit the average and accepted dietary recommendations for a balanced diet. Average and accepted may never have been enough for your body and may actually be two factors that contributed to you getting sick. You need more nutrition, not less!
That’s because…
A “balanced diet” (as is recommended by the government today) is totally inadequate as a guideline, if you’re already sick. Example: the guidelines on a bottle of vitamins reflect only the minimum amount of nutrients needed to keep a healthy (e.g. not sick) person barely well. That means someone who is consuming a healthy diet and gets everything else they need from it. In other words, if you were eating all the foods you need packed with vitamins, minerals, and nutrients. Hardly anyone gets that much nourishment because in today’s world it’s nearly impossible to do.
Plus, there’s another factor in how the “recommended” diet is composed: high in breads (full of sugar and often white flour unless you change to whole grain), causing the rest of the equation to be skewed against you. If you pack your diet full of empty or harmful foods, then again you’re in trouble.
The website My Pyramid lists the following:
- Make half your grains whole
- Vary your veggies
- Focus on fruit
- Get your calcium rich foods
- Go lean with protein
- Find your balance between food and physical activity
- Keep food safe to eat
Some of these recommendations are valid, but they are still only generic and offer only the “accepted” government-sponsored media-speak. You, dear one, need more than this because you’re not the average healthy person when you’re already sick! It’s time that we woke up to the whole truth:
- Our soils are depleted,
- Our bodies are struggling to get rid of pesiticides, chemicals and plastics at every turn,
- We’re being subjected to too many hormones, antibiotics, vaccines and -and worst of all-
- A high percentage of our diets are now composed of the new genetically modified food products that are flying onto our grocery store shelves every hour of the day!
So I ask you, “What are you doing to yourself?”
The point is, for our purposes today of talking about diet and nutrition, the information on a food label doesn’t tell you what you need to know.
What you do need is the specific nutritional information that is key to your condition as well as general recommendations for good health. Diet and overall nutrition are big keys in your ability to get physically healthy again.
This is a huge subject and I could certainly suggest that you get back to nature with making your own whole grain bread from freshly ground wheat flour- or growing your own vegetables out in the back yard (that you can keep free of pesticides). You could look around and probably find a way to purchase part of grass-fed, antibiotic-free cow. Then you’d have access to good, fresh, clean and healthy meat. These are helpful recommendations.
But how do you do all this if you’re sick, tired and incapacitated?
You have a right to feel confused, as if all of this is above your head right now. I’ve found a wonderful source of information to start your research and it’s Mary Moeller’s book, Fibromyalgia Cookbook: A Daily Guide to Becoming Healthy Again (revised).
Mary offers a lot of practical and down-to-earth advice for getting well from Fibromyalgia and it applies equally well to those folks with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, too. I like a guide that can clear up a problem and show me the light. Mary does just that.
PS- Now… be sure to check in with the Friday edition of the Health Matters Show where we’ll talk more about this issue. Also on Friday I want plenty of your comments, thoughts and questions about all of topics in this series. There’s a reason for that and I’ll explain Friday. So plan to be here Friday at 3 pm EDT or catch the podcast via the RSS feed or on i-Tunes.
I hope you enjoy Mary Moeller’s Fibromyalgia cookbook and guide. I did!
Cinda Crawford, host of the Health Matters Show
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