There is a comedic Wodehouse story in which some Hollywood folks are put on a diet consisting of a half grapefruit for breakfast, another for lunch, and, you guessed it, another half grapefruit for dinner. Naturally, this diet turns the adherents into crazy people. It’s good for a laugh and a romance that emerges from it, as two of the diet victims find each other, as they can understand each other’s pain.
What’s a harder laugh is knowing these diets and their dictocratic pushers are real, and their advice for health not that different from “eat a half grapefruit for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.” Of course, they couch it all in scientific language and show graphs and use fancy words and catchphrases. I used to listen some of these lunatics when I was doing keto to, in theory, reset my digestion and help my insomnia. If a keto guru made a video on how to fix a health ailment, from skin tags to cracks on heels, the cause would be “insulin resistance” and the cure “keto diet” involving organic free range meats and eggs and, if they hadn’t gone the carnivore route, pounds of organic salad a week, skip the veggies like carrots because they will knock you right out of keto and increase your sugar addiction.
Recently, YouTube has been heavily pushing a diet dictocrat called Dr. Boz. I’ve watched a few of her videos out of curiosity and had to laugh because her “what I eat in a day” was possibly more repellent than a grapefruit and a half, consisting of coffee, “bubble” water, and two cans of sardines. I don’t know if these people are liars or have serious eating disorders they’re using the internet to flaunt. Some people just need attention for their disorders to really shine. I laughed, but it’s a little sad when you consider that these people have an audience that laps up their advice. I’ve seen a couple of her other videos, in which she eats entire sticks of butter, and my gallbladder and stomach gave shrieks of pain at the thought of it. So, apparently, her diet consists of two cans of sardines daily, plus the occasional stick of butter…? I have no idea. That’s a problem with YouTube — random, out of context videos. Still, it’s on the creator to give a little more context to very weird health advice.
Keto dieters are insane, in my not so humble opinion. I suppose it has its medical use for obese or diabetic people who can’t control their diabetes. But otherwise it comes across as a religion, much like veganism. Vegans rattle on about heart disease, while keto dieters obsess over insulin resistance. If keto had aided me in any way for my chronic sleep and digestive problems, I might have stuck with it despite the side effects. But it didn’t help with anything. It rather made everything worse, if that’s possible. It’s definitely possible to have worse digestion; my digestion is mostly stable if I remove hard to digest grains like corn, wheat, and oats from my daily eating. The insomnia I consider incurable at this point, and it gets better or worse. Keto makes it worse.
After doing keto for a while, I suffered from massive stomach pain and upset from too much fat, as well as a cessation of my female cycle. Don’t bother telling a keto nutcase about the infertility it can cause in women (I’ve read it’s around fifty percent of women who suffer this way from keto); they will make excuses and claim the dieter is doing something wrong. I had an MD at one time that tried to convince me it was my fault, as he was a big believer in keto. Any food that contained carbohydrates, such as an apple or a whole grain teff tortilla, he called “sugar bombs.” That doctor was into the AIP and wasn’t much a believer in vegetables such as bell peppers or raw salad or…I can’t remember what vegetables he was okay with, but the list of foods worthy of consuming was very small. Surely, if I only ate this list consisting of three different foods, my female cycle would work spotlessly, and I would sleep like a baby and float on a cloud of organic cotton.
Worst among all diets is vegan, however. I call it worst because the symptoms of stomach pain and massive inflammation occur after a week in my experience. Kudos to anyone who can manage veganism long term and remain healthy. You are probably a genetically superior human. And no doubt another big time religious nutcase. Healthy body, unhealthy mind? Or it could be the reverse, I guess.
There was one diet that helped me sleep and didn’t bother my digestive system, but it came with intense migraines: fasting. I’ve fasted for three to ten days at intervals, simply to reset my body or for prayer, and I admit I do sleep while fasting. That isn’t really a long-term cure; it simply means my body has no fuel, and so I pass out. And get migraines. It’s really awful for my health but definitely useful for my prayer life.
Most of the long-lived people in the world are clustered on islands and eating a varied diet that involves plenty of carbs, such as potatoes or pasta. My takeaway from centenarian studies is one must move to an island, be genetically isolated, and drink a lot of alcohol. That doesn’t seem to work for the Irish, however, which is my ethnicity, albeit clustering with Irish Americans. I don’t much care about living a long life. At the same time, I find it fascinating looking at the habits of centenarians. They tend to drink alcohol, eat carbs, and exercise and/or stay active physically. Some are dedicated athletes and others walk daily and do gardening and light housework. They also seem to have let go of grudges and are thankful for life. All I know is carbs, alcohol, walks and gratitude sound a whole lot better than bubble water and sardines.
Jill Domschot 