Merry Christmas, everyone! Stay tuned for…
I’m posting a letter I wrote to my god-sister Natalie to explain the Maker’s Diet. January is just around the corner, and I know I can’t wait to detox from all the great holiday food I’m about to completely stuff myself with!
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Dear Natalie,
I told you I would write to give you some “basics” about the Maker’s Diet. We’re going to do the forty-day “diet” in January to start the year off on a great foot, nutritionally speaking. There are three stages to this forty-day experience, the first being the most restrictive, and the last being the stage you stay at, ideally, for good. After the forty days are over, we try to stick to the third stage as much as possible.
We did the diet in September, but November and December we’ve not stuck too faithfully to it—too many delightful holiday goodies around to pass up! I was a skeptic of the diet before we tried it, but we saw such dramatic results that I’ve become a convert. We both lost weight, and we noticed a big difference in our energy levels. Last winter, Jesse was sick every single month. He hasn’t gotten one cold since starting the diet. (Though the past two months we’ve noticed a big difference in how we’re feeling when we don’t eat as well.) Doing the forty days also helps you rethink the way you eat and shop; it changes your habits.
Since we’ll be doing the diet starting the second week of January, I suggest indulging over the holidays and then using the first week of January to prepare for the diet. We’ll probably eat at stage two or stage three for that week to transition ourselves. The first time we did the diet, we overindulged the week leading up to the diet and then crashed when we had such a drastic diet change.
Here are some of the major principles of the Maker’s Diet. It’s based on the traditional Hebrew diet.
1. No industrial processed foods and simple carbs (white flour, white rice, preservatives, additives, artificial flavorings, soy products—except traditional foods like fermented tofu and miso)
2. No sugar (except honey, fruit, and sweeter veggies like sweet potatoes and carrots)
3. Plenty of fresh (organic when at all possible) meats, veggies, and dairy (whole milk, no hormones added—we’ll get to dairy in a minute)
4. No pork or shellfish
5. Grains must be either sprouted or fermented (more on this in a minute)
Okay, so I’ll briefly explain some of the reasoning behind those points. For more information, I really recommend reading the book (The Maker’s Diet). I also highly recommend In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan and Real Food by Nina Planck.
First off, the idea is to eat traditional foods that people have been consuming for ages. People have not been consuming soybean oil, soy flour, skim milk, bleached and enriched white bread, MSG, and so on, for ages. What we have been eating are whole foods, things that God made, not scientists. Basically, if it has a label, then it warrants closer inspection. There’s no need for an ingredients label on a cucumber. I’m not saying everything in the grocery store with a label is bad—just that it needs to be read, and carefully. A lot of the “food-like substances” you can buy in the store is packed with sugar, soy, trans fats, etc.
That brings us to sugar. Limit this, if you can’t eliminate it entirely. (And look for it in places you wouldn’t normally expect—odds are your chicken broth, ketchup, and canned peas, just to name a few, have sugar added.) Diseases love sugar. And our bodies weren’t designed to have much sugar; we don’t have an off switch for our sugar cravings because we weren’t supposed to have access to so much of it. How often are you going to run across a beehive full of honey?
So, dairy. A lot of people avoid full-fat dairy (whole milk, butter, cream, etc.) because they’ve been told that diets high in fat cause all kinds of diseases, like heart disease. But we’ve been eating butter and red meat and cheese for ages—and we’ve just started having heart disease within the last century or so. In fact, our consumption of animal fats have decreased as our rates of heart disease has increased. There’s plenty of evidence out there to suggest that the low-fat hypothesis is outright wrong.
However, not all dairy is created equal. There are plenty of proponents of raw dairy, i.e. non-pasteurized. We haven’t taken that step yet because I need to research this further. But we try to stick with organic dairy whenever possible, and we don’t use low-fat versions. (For instance, they add powdered milk to skim and two-percent milks—powdered milk is a great source of oxidized cholesterol, which is very damaging to your heart.) Industrial dairies are wretched for the animals, too.
We’ll wrap this up with grains. We are excessively exposed to wheat from a very young age. Most people have wheat allergies or sensitivities without knowing it. Eating sprouted grains (you can find sprouted-grain “Ezekiel” bread in the frozen section of your grocery store) breaks down the enzyme that people are sensitive to in wheat. Also, look for bread with grains like spelt, which are less common and therefore less likely to cause allergic responses.
I’ll post on the blog the do-eat and don’t-eat lists for each phase. I’ll also post recipes and menus for what we’ll be eating (you learn a lot going through it once). And I will post “modified” menus for if you’re not able to stick to the diet completely but want to get as close as possible.
Some caveats: It takes a lot of time. You have to cook. For a little while, you’ll feel like you’re constantly doing dishes. But with a little preparation and forethought, it’s not too hard. And there is a lot of satisfaction in knowing that you can list every single ingredient of everything you’re eating (and feeding your family). The other thing is, it can be expensive. The way I see it, you’re going to pay one way or the other—with your food or with your health. And if you do things like buy whole chickens for roasting instead of buying chicken breasts all the time, you can cut down on costs. Once you reach phases two and three, your costs go way down because you can add things like beans and grains, which are cheap and super nutritious.
I hope you’ll go through the forty days with us, or at least try a modified version. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak—you’ll lose weight, you’ll feel fantastic, and you’ll have a much better immune system. (asterisk: I’m not a fortune-teller or doctor, so don’t sue me if you don’t experience the same things I did!)
I’ll just come right out and say it. The holidays always make me think about babies. As in, having them. Did I really just type that? It started a few years ago, when Jesse’s cousin gave birth to the most adorable little brown-haired baby girl I had ever seen. I spent the whole family Christmas celebration holding that baby. How can I explain how badly I wanted that girl to be mine? I came back home and wandered the baby section of JC Penny, looking at lavender blankets and nearly crying like some crazy woman because she wasn’t mine.
You must understand that up until this time, Jesse and I had no interest in having children of our own. Kids were nice in theory, for other people to birth and raise, but no thanks. Not for us. Babies were smelly and messy and noisy, and as they aged they seemed to only get worse. And pregnancy? Um, do you know how that usually ends? Sure it’s all fun and games until the pumpkin-sized human being actually comes out you-know-where.
So, there I was three years ago looking at baby blankets when I was supposed to be doing some post-holiday-sale shopping, with this strange sensation in my chest. What, a biological clock? I have one of those?
And since then, whenever Thanksgiving and Christmas roll around, I inevitably start thinking. This Thanksgiving was the worst yet. I remember sitting on the couch one afternoon, our families around us. I don’t know what was going on, but it couldn’t have been much. We were just there, the way families do when there isn’t food to prepare or eat.
I literally felt like something was missing. Like someone was missing. Then I realized that it was my baby who I was missing. My very next thought was something like, holy crap that’s weird! And then, you can never tell anyone that because they will then know you are insane. I was missing someone who doesn’t exist yet (and may never exist—who knows? I don’t have a crystal ball). I might be losing my mind.
Of course, it could just be hormones. They still aren’t back on track, though the holistic doctor I’m seeing is doing her best, bless her heart. So, I’m on a rollercoaster emotionally anyway. Eventually the holidays end and life gets less sentimental and I’m sure we’ll hang out with our friends who have babies and one of them will do us the great service of pitching a fit or throwing up, and then I’ll feel better, at least for a while. After the JC Penny incident, I settled down and went about my life, sans brown-haired baby.
But if we do have children, one day at Thanksgiving I will tell them, I thought of you, I prayed for you, I missed you, before you were born.
For Halloween, we found chicken “hats” for Oliver and Gracie. They were not amused. Thought I’d share the love with you. Also, it appears Gracie is finally packing on some extra weight! Her giant arm is back to normal now, too. We’re hoping her weight gain continues.
I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, but everything is too big to put into words just yet. Everything is a little too big still. I feel 2009 is going to be a changing year. Things have been calm here. Things have been steady-as-she-goes here. Things have changed, but nothing has changed course. I can’t put it into words, but I feel next year will not be like this one.
I’ve been surprisingly productive this week so far, for being in the mental funk I’ve been in. I’ve knocked out nearly all the Christmas cards and letters, paid bills, balanced the checkbook, took Oliver to the vet for a vaccination (these cats are our own economic recession–two trips to the vet in the past week, ouch), stocked up on stamps, deposited a check, worked, cooked, cleaned, read. I had lunch today with one of the small group leaders from my “pod” (more later) to discuss the best way to help someone in her group with some heavy life decisions. I had a long, calming phone conversation with Simona, who encouraged me not only with her words but also the deep happiness I heard in her voice.
Oliver hates going to the vet. Oliver is not a normal cat in anything he does, and in his hatred of the vet he is characteristically extreme. All he needed was a rabies shot, and it took a muzzle that covered his entire head and two people to hold him down while the vet gave him the shot. He didn’t even react to the needle, so I doubt he felt it. He was just convinced they were going to kill him, and he wasn’t going down without a fight. He was going to show them.
And today I thought of Jonah. About how his story ends so abruptly, with him miserable and whining, not about the fish or anything like that, but about the plant that grew up and gave him shade one day and died the next. A metaphor, and he missed it. And I wondered what Jonah’s life was like after Nineveh. Did he ever get it? What is life after the city doesn’t fall?
I tried to think of how to end this and came up with nothing. No grand metaphor. No image to pull it all together. Just a weight, Regina Spektor’s “Samson,” and an improbable sense of hope.
And it’s about time. He’s funny and clever and sarcastic. A writer who hasn’t been writing enough. But I’m glad that’s changing. Check it out.
So, I got my cat back. Much to my relief. The good news and the bad news is that they can find nothing wrong with her. Well, really it’s only good news, unless there is something wrong that is more difficult (and therefore more expensive) to diagnose. But we’re back to the drawing board and will be giving her more to eat. I looked on the vet’s wall posters and found out that Gracie is in her late 20s by now, so we know it’s not teen angst that’s causing the weight loss.
Right now I’m drinking a cup of peppermint tea while a load of laundry is in the wash. Once I finish this, I’ll be making cookies for a “cookie swap” party-thing I’m attending tomorrow. Should be interesting. The cookies I’m making are cranberry-orange cookies, and I’m fairly jazzed about them (they’re so off the Maker’s Diet, but hey, they have fruit in them. That has to count for something). Then it’s off to bed. Tomorrow morning is reserved for cleaning the house. Then the cookie party from 2-4 and the Leland Christmas Party (people on staff at PC3 or somehow connected to PC3 who live in Leland, the most awesome place ever) at 5:30. Busy day. Then Sunday it’s church and then off to Jacksonville (yeah, there’s one up here too) for a graduation party and then the small group Christmas Eating Extravaganza (I made that up) that evening. Phew! I will need a few days to recover from this weekend.
I leave you with pictures of Gracie’s Bulge. Apparently to get the urine sample, they had to pump her full of fluids, some of which her little adorable body has not yet absorbed. So, now she has a bulge on one of her arms. How pitiful! It doesn’t seem to bother her much, but every time I see it I kind of pout, for her of course, since she has no lips and therefore cannot pout for herself.
