Weight gain is a symptom.

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This simple fact eluded my doctors for 20 years. Every doctor that I visited refused to believe that I wasn't doing something wrong to cause my weight gain. In the beginning, I knew that my eating habits hadn't changed but I gained weight anyway. I followed the doctor's orders but still gained weight steadily. As time went on, I did begin to eat more, but the weight gain started first.

We live in a fat-phobic society that just doesn't believe that weight gain is proof that there is a malfunction in the body. If the medical industry were to acknowledge and embrace this simple truth, imagine how health care could change. Doctors might actually cure people instead of simply treating symptoms.

It took me so many years to stop listening to conventional doctors' recommendations on how to lose excess weight. My health crisis proved to me that weight gain was one of the first symptoms of a much larger problem. I was allergic to corn but unable to avoid it without all the facts. My corn allergy always seemed like another random symptom until I realized that continual ingestion of corn every day in the form of food additives was killing me.

If any one of those doctors that I hired would have simply told me to avoid food additives, my health crisis would never have happened. I cooked every meal for my family anyway, I could have easily changed my modern cooking style to embrace traditional foods and pure ingredients. Instead, it took me many years of declining health and trial and error to figure that out on my own. I thought home cooked meals were healthier alternatives to fast food or junk food, but that wasn't true of modern cooking.

What is modern cooking and why is it so bad? Modern cooking is essentially taking a bunch of prepared ingredients and a few fresh ingredients and mixing them together to get meals (like most of the "chefs" on Food Network). I made casseroles from frozen vegetables, "processed cheese food" and white rice. I cooked in a crock pot using canned "cream of" soups, canned vegetables and grocery store meat. I made my own pasta sauce using canned tomatoes and garlic salt, serving it over enriched pasta. I made hamburgers and served them on prepared buns with frozen french fries. I made desserts using cake mixes and frosting in a can or prepared crusts and canned fruit. I made sandwiches using jars of condiments and deli meat on commercial bakery bread with a pickle on the side. I made breakfast biscuits using shortening and enriched flour and served it with eggs and bacon or sausage. I was busy in the kitchen making meals for my family and diligently avoiding snacks and fast foods. I just didn't realize that I was serving up a hefty dose of GMO corn with every meal. In my naivete, I never considered that the food on the shelves of my store could be harmful.

Now I am on a long journey back to health by cooking traditional meals and incorporating now rare health foods like grass fed liver, fermented condiments and raw dairy products. My family is getting healthier every day and, of course, we are losing weight.

For more information on nutrient dense, traditional foods check out Real Food Wednesday hosted this week by Kelly the Kitchen Kop. Learn something new every Wednesday, guaranteed.

Fermented Veggie Headstart

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I'm getting all my ducks in a row. I am hoping to get started on the GAPS diet after Saturday so I am getting ready as much as I can. I made two quarts of lacto-fermented vegetable mixes on Monday. I can't wait until I can try them. I didn't measure or follow a recipe but they are coming along great. I have been reading about lacto-fermentation enough that I felt comfortable with my process. I just shredded carrots, ginger, garlic, and onion in the food processor and mushed (technical term) it with my hands with added Celtic sea salt. I then packed into my quart mason jar and put the lid on tight. The other jar consists of cabbage, radish, turnip and tiny bit of carrot mixture and salt. It worked out great and is fermenting away in my office covered with a folded sheet.

I knew I would need lacto-fermented veggies for the GAPS diet so I wanted to get those going ahead of time. I think they will make a lot of juice which is what we want in the beginning. I think I will make some other mixes after Saturday. I keep saying Saturday because I will be driving the two hours to Whole Foods (the closest source of organic produce and butter) and also picking up my order of pastured meat and eggs at the farmer's market. (The irony of which you can't possibly appreciate unless you could see how many pastures full of cows and farms I pass in that two hour drive.)

Speaking of irony, I am currently paying for 20 acres of pine trees out in the country. We originally bought this land to have some room out in the country to do whatever we wished. Now that I am pushing to do what I always wanted (raise chickens and goats and cows and vegetables, you know, farm) I find out my husband has no intention of being a farmer (or farmer's husband). I never hid my intentions from him (in fact, I was very excited about it from the very beginning) so I don't know why he never shared his ideas about what we would do with the land. Apparently, he now wants to spend the next 5 - 10 years watching pine trees grow so we will get a "good price" for them when we cut them. We may be approaching an impasse.

His idea is to buy pastured beef, chicken, eggs, and organic veggies from other farms. Forever. My idea is to start small by trying to raise enough to feed our family at first. Once we get the hang of it we can expand our operation to raise enough to sell. I don't know if it will ever make me rich, but I do know that I want to guarantee my family access to quality foods. If you read the news, you can probably see the wisdom of trying to secure these foods for our family. Not to mention that the farm that I want to buy eggs from said that she won't have enough to meet demand. We have wonderful climate here in Alabama and a shortage of family truck farms (especially organic). Alabama farmers bought the whole "better farming through chemicals" method the county agents sold in a big way.

This GAPS diet is going to be more complicated than it looks on paper (and not because of the cooking). The pastured eggs, beef, pork, and organic vegetables are going to become too expensive. I can already feel the pressure, but I don't cave to pressure so well since I became ill. I have two teenagers that I fully intend to get well so that they can start their adult lives without the burden of ill health hanging over them.

Personal Heroes:

1. Sandor Ellix Katz is a fearless citizen of this earth sharing knowledge about the link between fermented foods and health. His book, Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods started me on the path toward GAPS.
2. Joel Salatin is a farmer for the future of food in this country. He is spreading the word about sustainable organic farming as a profitable business. Check out his book,You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise if you have any inclination toward growing your own food.
3. Eliot Coleman has inspired me to try my hand at growing food throughout the year. After all, if he can do it in Maine under a blanket of snow, I should be able to manage something in Alabama (it probably won't even freeze but maybe twice all winter here). His book, Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long, is very informative even for a backyard gardener. He has a new book, The Winter Harvest Handbook: Year Round Vegetable Production Using Deep Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses, that I can't wait to read.