Advice for a victim of the "Standard healthy diet"

Attakai

Member
Joined
Dec 1, 2014
Messages
228
Well let's see, where to start. My health has been degrading for the past decade, looking back on it now, it must have started around the time I was 14 when I started suffering from tinnitus. From then on things got progressively worse, At 16 I started experiencing diffuse hair loss, fatigue, depression, etc. Now at 24 I'm feeling a bit better after seriously cleaning up my diet(going through the standard salads + fatty fish, moving all the way through to more primal where I'm coming from), but I'm not even close to where I want to be and feel.

I've been trying to figure out why my family's health degraded, whilst people around us growing up were happy and healthy while eating what I thought of as unhealthy diets.
You see, my parents fell for the whole "healthy diet fad", since probably around age 10 my diet consisted mostly of whole grain bread + processed low fat turkey slices, + chicken/turkey/fish for dinner. We had very sugar and low fat, and what fat I was consuming was mostly in the form of polyunsaturated fats(vegetable butter, canola oil + fish).

Even though I migrated away from that diet after feeling better with more red meat and saturated fats, I always thought of it as at least moderately healthy, compared to our sugar eating friends(health propoganda) and it never crossed my mind that it was our "healthy diet" that destroying our health. It wasn't until I found ray peat and his articles that things finally started clicking and making sense.

I can relate nearly every symptom I'm reading about the thyroid, and it seems pretty clear to me that the "healthy diet" had been suppressing my thyroid. In fact it's pretty clear that my mother and sister are suffering from hypothyroid symptoms as well(diffuse hair loss as well). I'm going to be shifting my diet towards the ray peat diet as much as I can over the next week, but I thought I would post here first, any advice is very much appreciated.
 

tara

Member
Joined
Mar 29, 2014
Messages
10,368
Welcome Attakai :welcome2
Looks like you've figured out some of what wasn't working for you. Hope trying this approach works better for you.
There is lots of information about food people here are eating - you could take a look at the diet and food guidelines thread in the Diet subforum, if you haven't already.

My guess is top priorities should be to minimise PUFAs, make sure you are getting ~80-150g protein, plenty of sugar, preferably a good bit of it from fruit and milk.
If you want, you can run a typical day's diet through cronometer dot com, to see if you are low on any particular nutrients. Just don't buy their calorie recommendations - they tend to be too low to support a healthy metabolism, and for most people it is good to be a bit lower on iron, and as low as poss. on PUFAs.
Some of us who thought we were eating 'healthy' have suffered from simply not eating enough, as well as from the pros and cons of specific foods.
I was raised on whole grain bread and low sugar too, at least until I had enough pocket money to supplement with sweets. Probably low protein, as well. And thought the more coleslaw I ate the better. I like my current diet much better.

Ask if you have more questions.
 

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