No more skinny wraith!

I have been incommunicado for a while, and the resultant guilt is quite strong. I may only beg forgiveness and offer the following excuse: my husband and I took possession of our first condo at the beginning of December. Since that date, every spare minute was being spent painting every inch of the 1100 square foot space. The walls needed primer and two coats as the previous owners were clearly colour blind, and the ceiling also needed a thorough going-over. As neither of us took time off work to complete this project, it took a few weeks. Then came the moving-of-the-crap part, and while the vast majority of our stuff is out of the boxes and put away, the condo is still a dreadful mess. Happily, however, we are now officially living/sleeping there full time. I’m planning on spending all of Saturday cleaning, tidying, putting away, and organizing.

During this hectic December period, an interesting body change occurred: I lost approximately eight pounds of weight in about one month. Normally, people expect this sort of change to be heralded; in this instance it isn’t exactly welcome. I was nice and lean before, with 137 pounds on my 5'8.5" frame. I dropped as low as 128 lbs and am now at 129.5 lbs, and look skinny and emaciated. Glen challenged me to put on 5 lbs by the end of Christmas holidays – a feat he knew would be next to impossible but would be a good smack-up-the-head to get me to eat more. My mother has been fretting about my weight, and during a class warm-up one of my very dear dance friends blurted out "what happened to your arms?" when she noticed how twiggy they currently appear.

My mother in law took a picture of my on my 27th birthday in late December. I was dressed up for the theatre and had a big smile on, but the feature that struck me most was how grimly drawn I appeared. My grin seemed strained, and my skin looked like it was stretched tight over my neck and cheeks. It was weird. While my western-body-image-issues, thin-is-better trained irrational brain cheers the low numbers on the scale, my rational brain knows that this ain’t good. My fitness loving, powerhouse brain wants to put back on some poundage, and my goal is to get back up to my high-school weight average of 135 lbs.

Now dear reader, don't go thinking "good lord, she’s developed disordered eating habits!" This weight loss has been unintentional and (when my rational brain is in gear, which is most of the time), unwanted. I believe that this is a result of my thyroid management. My current dose of thyroid hormone supplement has returned my physical and mental energy levels back to normal, which feels fantastic - I remember when my brain used to chat to itself like this, and I’m ecstatic that it’s back to it’s old self. I remember when my body wanted to be randomly active, flailing about for the sheer joy of movement and I worked out because I loved feeling my muscles flex and burn. I’ve always been clumsy, but for a while I was clumsy due to fatigue and slowed reflexes. Now I’m clumsy because my body just wants to move but doesn’t always think about how. This is how I remember being before the hypothyroidism, and this is how I feel now.

What isn't quite back to normal is my overall metabolism. It’s back to high-school level, when I had to work at putting on weight (unless I completely ditched physical activity), or even very slightly higher. This does not mean that I don’t have to watch my diet and my calories. Actually, it means I have to watch them more closely than I was before. Now, I need to watch them to make sure that I’m getting enough. My body is now burning calories faster than it was, so feeding it enough has become very important. For someone who is both inclined to be a moderate-to-light eater, this could be a challenge. Huge portions aren’t my style; I get really uncomfortable and kind of nauseous if I eat too much. If I ignore the “man, I’m hungry” stomach growling phase and let myself get too hungry…I get nauseous, lose my appetite, and my energy levels crash quite alarmingly. But I don’t want to eat because I don’t feel good, which doesn’t help the situation.

I’ve decided that I will take advantage of one of the more interesting employee benefits my workplace offers: up to two hours free access to a nutritionist. I need to get more calories, but I want to know how many calories a day are right for me, and how to get the most nutritional benefit from those calories. I could just start slugging back twelve packs of cola, but empty calories don’t do a body good. I’ve got a pretty good handle on nutrition, but a trained professional will be able to give me more focused direction. This can only benefit Glen, who has the metabolism of a blast furnace and at 6'2" weighs 150 lbs soaking wet. When his lung collapsed, he actually dropped down to 140 lbs. Now that was alarming!

I want to optimize my diet so that I can put on five to eight pounds primarily of muscle as well as a little fat. I know what’s sexy: jutting hips and poky spines are not! Time to get back those toned biceps and shoulders, time to fill out that bra!*

My current weight-related goal does not mean that any further diet, nurtition, or weight related posts will focus solely on weight gain. This topic is of interest on all levels, and I've worked with it at all levels. I plan on continuing to address all aspects of dealing with our weight in a healthy way, and that includes weight loss, weight gain, and weight maintenance. There will be info suitable for all, so stay tuned!


*One of the unfortunate side effects of the weight loss is that my boobs have also shrunk. According to the measuring tape, I’ve lost at least an inch, and my girls aren’t that big to begin with!

Nutrition Trick: Measure Everything

With the exception of an occasional holiday – I stuffed myself (almost) shamelessly a couple of weekends ago due to it being the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend – I tend to be very conscious of portion sizes and nutritional intake. Caloric estimations are not too terribly difficult for me, as I often check calorie content and portion sizes. Every now and then I will use measuring cups to monitor all my servings so that I can refresh my memory as to what one cup of cooked pasta or tomato sauce looks like. Having a stash of scoop style measuring cups and spoons on hand is an extremely valuable tool. After all, do you actually know what one tablespoon of smooth peanut butter actually looks like well enough to estimate it when digging in the jar with your knife? Measure it each time for a few weeks and you’ll figure it out.

There are a number of foods that are very easy to overdo if you don’t know what a single serving consists of and what that serving looks like when you plate it. Topping my personal list of things-that-are-easy-to-eat-too-much-of are:

1) Juice. Good, healthy, high-in-calorie 100% juice. I love orange juice, but a single serving. Bolthouse Farms 100% orange juice is 110 calories per 8 ounce serving. Many people will down two cups of OJ in a single sitting, bringing in their energy consumption in at around 200 cals. Adding to the problem is that because juice lacks all of the meaty bits of the original fruit, we don’t feel nearly as full when we consume it. So we would drink more calories in fruit juice than we would consume eating the whole fruit in order to feel the same level of ‘fullness’. And of course, with juice you don’t benefit from the fibre content in the whole fruit nor from the huge amount of nutrition you get from many fruit peels (such as apple, grape, orange pith, etc).

2) Pasta. A serving of pasta is approximately on cup cooked. Restaurant portions are usually closer to two cups. Most people will pile on far more than one cup on their plate. Many will squawk that one cup would be way too little, without knowing what one cup of spaghetti looks like. I know that I used to think that before I started measuring anything. Yesterday, I measured out one cup of cooked spaghetti just to be sure that my portioning is still within guidelines, and I happily discovered that the measured cup of cooked spaghetti was actually more than I’ll often allow.

3) Cereal. This is a big one. When was the last time you actually read the nutritional content on the side of the box and looked at what is considered to be one serving? Do you know how much a serving of Cheerios is, compared to a serving of Raisin Bran, muesli, or granola cereal? Do you know the caloric differences between them? One serving of Honey Nut Cheerios is 3/4 cup and contains 110 calories, versus a serving of granola cereal like Harvest Crunch, which is 2/3 cup and contains 220 calories. Now how much cereal do you normally dump into your bowl? Many people will pour in as much as it would take to nearly fill the bowl, way overshooting the actual portion size as labelled on the box. Crack out those measuring cups and scoop your cereal out that way instead - you might find that you normally eat a bit more or a bit less than the recommended serving size, but with the measuring cups you can at least track what you are eating with some degree of accuracy.



As an extra note, yes I am fallible when it comes to eating. Earlier this week, I went out for lunch with a former professor of mine and made the mistake of not only scarfing down a considerable amount of food at the buffet, but also a full piece of pumpkin pie and slice of cheesecake. This is not normal for me, and my gut informed me of its ire via a bout of indigestion that lasted until the following morning.

Basically eating

The following food-oriented posts come courtesy of Canadian Thanksgiving, which was this past weekend. Viva the full turkey dinner! Viva mashed spuds and gravey! Viva the indigestion coming from my gut, which is unaccustomed to so much fat and starch at once and has been punishing me for the past few days!

I firmly believe that healthy eating is easy, quick, enjoyable, and creative. This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy my junk food – I love baking and never blush at the caffeine or sugar content in my morning coffee. Overall I maintain a healthy, balanced diet; perhaps it is a little too low in calories and protein from time to time, but that is something I’ll be working on. In general, though, my diet is pretty darn clean. Healthy eating habits are easy, once you’ve got some basic guidelines and nutrition ideas to work with. Everyone knows that picking up an apple is a heck of a lot healthier than picking up a store-bought muffin, but having a more utilitarian understanding of basic nutrition does help us keep a more steady eye on our healthy eating targets. Happily, there are plenty of resources out there that can help people understand basic food and nutrition facts.

While not everyone likes government-issue food guides, the Canada Food Guide does a damn good job of hitting the basics. The website has information on what constitutes a portion size, general estimates for how many calories a day you should be aiming for (very general estimates, but still useful), tips on eating well and building good habits, and so on.

Recently, I’ve also become a fan of the Dietitians of Canada website as a source for solid, consumer-friendly nutrition info. Much of the information provided is very basic and sometimes even a little juvenile, but I believe that is a good thing. Considering the average person’s distorted ideas of the complexities of healthy eating, having a solid and reliable resource such as this one helps show how very, very easy it is to make healthy eating a normal and habitual event.

The UK's Food Standards Agency has a good healthy eating website called Eat Well. The site features an interesting Food For Sport section that has a fair selection of reasonable, clear-cut, non-complicated info about how to eat for an active lifestyle. I'd recommend plowing through the whole website, though, as there's plenty of info to be had here.

If you've come across some particularly good and straightforward resources on basic and healthy diets, please pass them on to me.

Body composition tests - measuring the fat

The results are in! I took my urine-filled jugs and 12-hour fasted self to the nutrition lab, laid under the DEXA x-ray machine for five minutes, and got to see a shiny print-out of my body composition.

The verdict is that I am 23% fat. If I recall correctly, the chart I looked at after my scan stated that the average Canadian woman is about 32% (don’t quote me on that – I don’t have the print out in front of me, and I won’t get my copies until they give me the results package in a week or so, which will include the analysis by a qualified nutritionist). According to the Body Composition Clinic, who also uses DEXA scans to measure body composition, this puts me in the “fitness” category of body types. Their classification table is:

Classification
Athletes - Women: 14-20%, Men: 5-13%
Fitness - Women: 21-24%, Men: 14-17%
Acceptable - Women: 25-31%, Men: 18-25%
Obese - Women: 32%+, Men: 26%+

The Body Composition Clinic also gives a good description of necessary and storage body fat, DEXA scans, and why body fat is important. Browsing their information is highly recommended.
The body composition study folks also weighed and measured me, and at just under 5’9” and exactly 134 pounds, I think that I could stand to put on a few pounds of lean muscle. As I work out quite a bit and include strength training along with my dance and cardio, I believe the next steps to take are to add a few more calories of protein to my diet. 134 is a bit on the skinny side, but I don’t want to gain weight in fat and after doing a double take at my diet diary, I realized that it was pretty damn meager. It could be that by averaging 1,800 calories a day and going through my various workouts and generally active lifestyle, I’m not feeding my muscles enough to allow them to build up more lean tissue.

But that is a topic for another day. Namely, that is a topic that will be addressed when I get my results back and receive the promised info from the body composition study’s nutritionist! When I get the results back, I’ll also go deeper into reporting the actual results chart. It should be quite interesting!

Body composition tests - collecting data

Today is an interesting day in my quest for healthy living!

As several of my cronies know, I am a sucker for participating in medical studies. I’ve been a healthy control subject for a PMS study, I’ve had my brain photographed with MRI scanners for a variety of reasons, I’ve given blood samples, and I’ve carried out psychological tests. I find these studies quite fun and interesting. It is a way to donate some of my time and capabilities (being a relatively healthy person) to good scientific and educational causes. As a very welcome bonus, I often receive procedures or information that would otherwise be very expensive to obtain, and I often get paid for my troubles!*

The study I’m participating in right now is of particular interest because it is to improve ways to measure body composition. The oncologists at our local cancer institute are hoping that they can find a way to use body fluids to determine muscle/fat ratios. The standard they are measuring their study against is the Dual Energy X-ray Absorbtiometry (DEXA) scan, which is a low-radiation scan that measures regional body fat and also lean tissue mass with ridiculous accuracy. Skin fold calipers be gone! Electric pulse scales move aside! Water displacement shove over! The DEXA scan is the most accurate measure of your percent of lean muscle tissue and percent fat available. It’s painless and non-invasive. It is also very expensive, which is why they’d like to find a different way of achieving the same accurate measurements.

I’m not getting paid for this study, but I am getting a full DEXA scan, will be told my body composition, and get a short consultation for a nutritionist based on my test results and my diet diary.

So aside from sitting on an x-ray slab for five minutes, what else do I have go do?

-Record my diet for one day (and it has to be a truthful record of my normal diet, no cheating about measurements or fibbing about treats, but I’ve done this before and have no problems being truthful).

-Get a fasting blood sample, which means that I can’t eat for 12 hours before my 9:40 am blood test. THAT is going to be the tricky bit – I’ll do the fast, but I won’t like it. I usually have some tea before bed or a small snack after my evening dance classes, and I’m a monster without my breakfast. Unless I eat within about fifteen minutes of actually getting out of bed, I’m a wreck. This is why I take my thyroid meds so early in the morning, a full hour before I actually get out of bed.

-Do a 24 hour urine collection. That means that I’ve had the privilege of peeing into one of these:



all day (no that is not the actual jug. My jug was opaque orange with a white cap, had a wide opening, and can hold 2 litres of fluid).

I’m thoroughly keen on seeing what the results of my test are. A couple other girls from the dance studio are also participating. How often do you get the chance of finding out your exact body fat/lean muscle composition with an incredibly accurate and expensive test FOR FREE?

Once the results of the tests come in, I’ll let you know what the verdict is. Too fat? Too thin? Just right? It will all be revealed!

Seeing as we are on the subject of body composition and food and whatnot, I would like to share the link that Stacey sent my way:
Drop 10 Pounds by Snacking

The article certainly reinforces why it is a bad idea to habitually chug back calorically dense drinks (juice, pop, wine, etc) without being mindful of how much we are actually drinking. Personally, I tend to stick with drinking water at meals and only drink water or herbal teas that don’t require milk or sugar while at work. My downfall is chocolate milk. Honestly, I can slam back a jug of chocolate milk in the blink of an eye. We rarely have it in the house, though, and when we do get it as the odd treat I usually pour it into either very small glasses or into wine glasses that are filled with ice.

*Trust me, the pay isn’t much and not all of the studies have the budget to fork over for their research subjects. But I do get a little bit of pocket money every now and then, which is always fun.

**Peeing into the jug is much easier than I initially thought it would be. Actually, peeing into a cup is more difficult than voiding into that sucker. But it definitely is not pleasant. Besides, I’ve had to tote around a big soft-sided beer cooler filled with ice packs and pee jugs around my office all day. I’m certain that people are wondering what the heck is going on, but happily they are too polite to inquire. I’ve never been so grateful for single toilet bathrooms with lockable doors.

Idiotic diets

Prepare yourselves, Readers and Bellies, because today you get a heaping serving of long rant:

People love packaged, boxed-up diet plans. Putting together an eating regime that promises outlandish benefits and wrapping it up with a neat little bow drives a billion dollar industry and gives diet-fretters no end of ammunition to worry over. Personally, I prefer a very straight forward outlook on nutrition. Choose healthy foods from all four food groups that vary widely in taste, colour, and texture; eat primarily produce, round it out with sources of protein and carbs. Know your portions, have a vague idea about caloric and nutritional content, don't overeat, and have something sinful every now and then. With a little bit of food savviness, this approach will assure pretty much anyone a healthful and interesting diet.

Yes, certain factors need to be accounted for - your activity level, your age, individual food sensitivities, and, of course, health conditions. I've always been open to having a health practitioner put together a diet plan for me. Now that I have to take my thyroid and metabolic health into regular consideration, it seemed like as good a time as any to try it out. Here is what happened:

As part of my experiment with acupuncture and other more wholistic treatments to deal with my thyroid condition and overall health, I agreed with my acupuncturist's suggestion to consider dietary changes. My acupuncturist had me diarize my eating for one week and would provide me with a diet plan based on my eating habits. I'm up for trying just about anything, so I said that I was game provided that we weren't looking at cutting out entire food groups, such as dairy. I believe that we were given a variety of cutting and crushing teeth for a reason, and there is a purpose to having digestive juices specifically for the digestion of meat, fats, and animal proteins. In other words, I was not going to consider going vegetarian or vegan. My diet tends to be very healthy and produce-heavy anyway, so I was not expecting considerable changes.

As it would take far too long to show you my food diary for the entire week, I have provided one day's record - while I love trying new foods, I'm a very structured and predictable eater, so this day's record is very illustrative of my overall eating habits (and when I say one cup, I mean one measured cup. Yes, for the most part I do measure my food):

Breakfast: Kellogg's Raisin Bran (1 cup), Blueberries (1 cup), Milk 2% (1 cup)
Granulated White Sugar (3 teaspoons), Coffee (2 cups)

Lunch: Crunchy Peanut Butter (2 tablespoons), Strawberry Jam (1 tablespoon), 100 % Whole Wheat Bread (2 slices), Carrot Sticks, Raw (1 cup), Yellow Bell Pepper (1 whole pepper), Red Grapefruit(1)


Supper: Spaghetti (1 cup, cooked), One serving of home made spaghetti sauce which consists of: Basic Tomato Sauce (1 cup), Lean Ground Beef (1/4 cup), Red Onion (1/4 cup), Eggplant (1/4 cup), Shredded Carrots (1/4 cup), Olive Oil (1 tsp), and a bunch of dried herbs/spices.

Snacks: Miniature Candy Cane(1), Strawberry Jell-O(1/4 cup)

Water: about 7 cups

Total calories: approximately 1,726

My husband and I eat well balanced diets - although the leafy greens weren't too present in this particular day, we love to chow down on spinach salads chock full of veggies and nuts, small and lean portions of meat, whole grains, and the like. I have no food allergies and am mindful of my diet. Therefore, I was not anticipating huge changes.

The suggested diet modifications, therefore, came as something of a surprise. It wasn't precicely diet plan that was handed to me, but three different sets of diet guidelines. Italicized comments are mine.

The first was intended to improve my thyroid health:
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Thyroid diet information

Goitrogenic foods: block the intake of iodine, therefore if you have a diet high in goitrogenic foods, be cautious of your iodine intake levels.

AVOID: cabbage, kale broccoli, cauliflower, rutabage, turnips, mustard greens, spinach, brussel sprouts, peaches, pears, strawberries, millet, kohlrabi, watercress, radishes, pine nuts, canola, peanuts, cassava, and soybeans.

As an added note, I have also been instructed to avoid anything from the nightshade family, such as tomatos, peppers, eggplant, and zucchini - apparently they cause inflammation of the joints, and joint soreness is one of my hypothyroid symptoms.

Ensure that your digestion is functioning properly and regularily. Eat foods that have been lightly steamed, cooked, or stirfried. Drink 1.5 - 2 litres of water per day. Exercise a minimum of 1/2 hour every second day. Adhere to a dtrict daily schedule, this will hlep maintain mental and physical health as well as digestive health. Sleep 7 - 8 hours every night.
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First up, it is true that there are goitrogenic foods, and that cooking these foods lessens the goitrogenic effects. However, the degree of effect varies widely from person to person and I have never experienced adverse effects from eating any of these foods. Furhermore, there are very few people, thyroid condition or no, who will experience problems with these foods provided that they eat them in moderation.

Funny, really, how frequently moderation comes into play when talking about nutrition. There are so many compounds in so many foods that are absolutely necessary for existence but when eaten in immoderate quantities can become toxic. But nowhere in the information page I was provided is the idea of moderate consumption even approached.

Things get really funny once we start to look at the next portion of this three-part diet plan. This one is supposed to be for general wellness. It should be noted that it is based on Traditional Chinese Medicine theory, which actually does impact the effectiveness or reasonableness of the diet for a pretty significant portion of the population:

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Cooking Do's:

-Steam foods: Less nutrients are lost when steaming foods
-Boiling foods: lightly boil, too much will leach vitamins and nutrients out of food
-Baking and/or roasting foods: better than frying
The above statements are all true and can be chalked up to common sense in nutritional approaches. I've followed these sorts of cooking practices for years.

-Juicing

-Eating fresh organic whole foods

-Decrease salad intake and limit cold raw vegetables But I am encouraged to juice? Juicing fruits and veg is eating cold, raw vegetables and fruits except you've removed all the fibre and significant amounts of nutrition carried in things like skin, pith, and fibre. This is an interesting contradiction.

-Soups and stews: a quick easy way to make a healthy meal in a crock pot. But according to their own guidelines, foods should not be boiled or steamed for too long, which is exactly the cooking method that crock pots/slow cookers use. Again, another interesting contradiction.


What to avoid:
-Refined foods: sugars, white pastas and breads, etc

-Fried foods, saturated fats, trans fats

-Goitrogenic foods (peanuts, turnips, cabbage) Again, most people need to eat these foods in very large quantities to notice any effect, barring allergies. Nowhere is eating them in moderation indicated, and I'd be missing out on a wide range of very healthy foods if this was to be followed.

-Decrease your gluten intake. Unless you have gluten allergies or celiac disease - and believe me, you'd know if this was the case - there is no reason to limit gluten. It is a useful diet tool for some people because it does make people cut back on their simple carb and refined bread or bread-like product consumption. But I don't overeat on bread, so it is pointless.

-margarine, sugar, artificial sweetners

-shellfish, and ground dwelling fish There is the issue with heavy metal content in some fish, but again - barring allergies there is no reason to avoid these foods.

-Pork (no reason provided), organ meats (some of the healthiest cuts of meat available, considered to be the best part of the animal until recently, when people stopped eating them and decided they taste gross), fake meats, deli meats


Examples of good choices:

-Turkey, chicken (both with skin removed), organic grain fed meats. Fish such as sole, halibut, pollock, mackarel. Eggs may be eaten but limited to 1 per week (and whites only)! Many, many studies have proven that egg yolks to not raise "bad cholesterol", and should be eaten in moderation. The current thought is that if you eat eggs daily, you should stick to one a day. It is next to impossible to completely avoid eggs in your diet unless you never eat any kind of baking again, because the eggs are an important part of what makes baked goods rise.

-Dairy: avoid dairy completely. Use goat or sheep cheeses for alternatives if needed, as well as eat only yogurt with organic active cultures. WHY? If the individual has no dairy allergies or intolerances, why avoid it? It is one of the best sources of bioavailable calcium, and is loaded with the sort of fats and proteins we need to thrive! This is why I mentioned that this diet is not beneficial to a pretty big chunk of our population - lactose intolerance and dairy allergies are common among Indians and Asians, but not nearly as prevalent among those of northern European stock! Being caucasian, I am much more susceptable to certain ailments - thyroid conditions, for one - but lactose intolerance or dairy allergies is not one of them! Yes, there are caucasians with these ailments, but they are simply not as common among that particular ethnic background. Eliminating an entire food group with important and beneficial effects for no good reason is damned silly.

-Vegetables and fruits: Spinach and all greens (According to the first diet, I am not supposed to eat spinach and certain greens), pungents, beets, beans, squash, sprouts (no brussel sprouts, though), celery, cucumber, all berries (but I can't eat strawberries any more), apples, pineaples, grapes, avocado, plum, bananas.

___________________________________________

The third diet plan is intended to support the liver, which is apparently where a number of my problems (including a weird sciatica like thing that pops up whenever I have to sit for long periods, such as in class or at work) are originating. Keep in mind that whenever I'm pointing out something I cannot eat, it is something that appears in one of the two other diets posted above as something I should avoid.

-Foods that support the liver: broccoli (can't eat that), broccoli sprouts (can't eat those), other sprouts (can't eat those), kale (can't eat that), dandelion, salad greens (with a few exceptions), beets, red peppers (can't eat that - nightshade), carrots, onions, garlic, soy (can't eat that), spirulina, whole grains (except if they contain gluten), flaxseet oil, fish oil (but not from ground dwelling fish), olive oil, apples, other juicy fruits (except for pears, peaches, and strawberries), lemon juice, grapefruit juice, tumeric powder.

-Foods that remove liver stagnation - onions, leeks, garlic, mustard, greens (can't eat several varieities), tumeric, basil, bay, cardamom, cumin, fennel, dill, ginger, black pepper, horse radish, rosemary, cabbage (can't eat that), broccoli (can't eat that), cauliflower (can't eat that), brussel sprouts (can't eat that), beets, strawberry (can't eat that), peach (can't eat that), cherry, raw vegetables and fruit (but I'm not supposed to eat raw/uncooked vegetables), apple cider vinegar with honey.

-Sour foods that improve th liver: apple cider vinegar, lemon, lime, and grapefruit

-Bitter foods that cleanse the liver: rye, romaine lettuce, asparague, amaranth, quinoa, citrus peel

-Foods that cool liver heat (although apparently the other problems I have, especially with my thyroid, are because I do not have enough heat in my body, so I cannot see why this would be considered beneficial for my condition): mung beans, mung bean sprouts, celery, seaweeds, kelp, lettuce, cucumber, tofu (can't eat that - soy), watercress, millet, plum, chlorella, spirulina, daikon radish, rhubarb

-Foods that build liver yin and blood (again, according to my acupuncturist - who issued this died - my problems stem from an over abundance of yin and an absence of yang. How is this then supposed to be beneficial?) - mung beans, mung sprouts, cucumber, tofu (can't eat that - soy), millet, flaxseed oil, spirulina, chorella, dark grapes, raspberries, blackberries

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Now taking into consideration the raft of contradictions and downright silliness expressed in the above diets, how the hell am I supposed to take that seriously? Why on earth would I attempt to follow such a self-refuting, limiting diet like that? I am very consciencious of what goes on my plate and into my mouth, and aside from the odd day of indulgence, am a very balanced and healthy eater. After living extremely well for many, many years on a very good and very balanced diet, is my thyroid going to suddenly quit on it's own and kill a whole system of metabolism in the space of a month or two just because I eat strawberries, tomatos, and canola in moderation?

Forgive me, fellow Bellies, if I roll my eyes and chuck this diet over my shoulder. While I am looking into vitamin and mineral supplementation that will help me meet my new increased supplementation needs due to being hypothyroid, I will not go off the deep end and toss myself into such an idiotic eating plan.