It’s been about nine months now since we started this experiment, and several months since my last post about how and why we began, but after eating this new way for most of the year, I can say with certainty that we’ll never go back to “the way it was.”
Not that this new diet doesn’t come with its drawbacks, most notably in the area of eating out, whether at restaurants or at the homes of friends, which can be challenging. Being “gluten free” had its challenges, too, such as the lure of French or Italian baguettes and “real” pasta (in which case I usually indulged and simply ached in my joints for a few days afterwards), but being “lectin free” means, in addition, trying to avoid dishes containing ingredients such as white potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, peppers, and other potential gut disruptors.
(A quick caveat to the above statement: instead of white potatoes we indulge in sweet potatoes; and tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, and cucumbers can be used in recipes after peeling and seeding them. So it’s not like they can’t be eaten ever again, it’s just that restaurants – or well meaning but non lectin-free friends – aren’t going to do this for you.)
The lectin-free “Yes” list is actually pretty extensive, and after eating this way for so many months my husband and I feel that we’re actually indulging in more delicious meals than we ever did. It takes some time getting used to what ingredients to use and what to avoid, but the benefits – for me, especially – have been huge.
If you read any of my previous posts on health, which you can find here and here, you’ll see that the main reason I wanted to try this diet is because I was usually seriously bloated after eating, not a pleasant feeling and an obvious red flag that something was wrong internally.
Now I’m never bloated. What I didn’t expect, in addition to that happy fact, was the disappearance of my occasional, although increasingly more frequent, rapid heart beat. That had been pretty scary. Yes, I could have “checked with my doctor” and taken all kinds of expensive tests to determine what was causing it, but do you think the medical establishment would have concluded it was the food I was consuming? Hardly. I would have been put on some type of heart medication for the rest of my life.
So: no more bloating and no more heart palpitations. That alone gives me impetus to keep creating lectin-free meals.
Along the way, after spending some time reading books and blogs and a lot of lectin-free recipes, I discovered a bunch of tips on how to continue making many of my favorite meals, such as chili with tomatoes and kidney beans (both of which appear on the “No” list). It turns out there are certain simple ways of making sure that tomatoes and kidney beans don’t cause any gut problems when consumed.
I learned what kind of butter and cheeses are better for your intestinal mitochondria, how to create healthy sweet treats without using sugar, and what brand of lectin-free pasta actually rivals the “real” stuff.
But that, and more, is for next time. Until then, thanks to my favorite lectin-free food bloggers – Kristine at the Lectin Free Gourmet and Claudia at Creative in My Kitchen – for the photos illustrating this post.