Friday, February 8, 2013

The Virgin Diet

Last month I started a diet recommended to me by my chiropractor. He learned about it from a PBS program. The creator of the diet is J. J. Virgin. She recommends eliminating seven foods from your diet for three weeks. She believes that these seven foods cause inflammation in many people, even though they are thought to be healthy. The seven foods are eggs; soy; corn; peanuts; sugar and sugar additives; dairy; and gluten.

Virgin recommends this diet for people with autoimmune diseases, joint pain, fatigue, and people who have been struggling to lose the same 10 or 20 pounds for many years. Virgin explains in her book and on her website that as you age, foods that you may be sensitive to leak out into your gut and cause inflammation. She has done blood tests on her clients and they the seven foods above all came back positive for increased IGGA (allergen) levels.

I did lose three pounds although I was not using the diet to lose weight. I have been struggling with a severely bloated stomach for nine months and within four days the bloated belly was gone. I was also having some pain in my right forearm and my right hand was swollen. The forearm pain and swelling in my hand influenced my chiropractor to recommend this diet to me.

After 21 days, you add back four of the most commonly offensive foods on the list, one at a time, for one week each.

Thankfully, I was able to crush my dark chocolate fetish while on the elimination portion of this diet. That's a GOOD thing! I don't even crave it any longer.

I am confident that I am sensitive to eggs and I'm not adding them back. I have been eating four to six egg whites a day for the past three years. I noticed when I had no egg whiles in August when I was hospitalized that my bloated belly went back to flat. The same thing happened after four days on The Virgin Diet. I think I may also be sensitive to cheese. I had pizza a couple of times and the pain returned.

I'm not one to go on fad diets but I really love this diet. I am eating gluten free oatmeal right now. When I finish the bags I will go back to steel oats and then regular oatmeal just to see how I do with it.

I have two other friends who have followed Virgin's Diet and they've lost weight. One of my friends looks years younger.



February 2013

What's New:

I no longer have flu like symptoms after my injection I take every other day for MS. That's such a blessing! I do have some other symptoms but they are manageable. I would say I have a little depression now and then but so does Moe, Joe, and Susie. I have some anxiety here and there with some irritability. My memory is getting better. I have  hardly any MS symptoms at all except some fatigue after working 12 hour night shifts and some blurry vision the day after but it always clears up in less than a day.

I never finished the squat challenge in my last post. I showed it to a trainer at the gym and he warned me not to do squats more than once, maybe twice at the most, per week.

My new gym routine is going well. I love that I have decreased strength training to three days a week.
I have some kind of problem with my foot though. Once a week I was doing some high impact calisthenics such as jumping jacks, jump roping, etc. I am limping and I have some left foot pain. Today I had an MRI and should have the results next week. The orthopedist I saw thinks I have a stress fracture based on my history.

This past Monday I started kickboxing with a trainer. That was very difficult for me. I think in one hour and 150 tries I did maybe 15 jabs properly. Ha. Mr. Trainer told me to stop punching like a girl. I never got into the proper foot stance for throwing a jab and did no kicking at all so my foot injury was not related to that session. I'm looking forward to another session when health permits.

I started a yoga tape an MS organization sent me about a month ago. I did it three times and after my first two tries I could hardly walk. I could barely sit down on the toilet. I talked to my friend Kilby about it and she thought I was possibly doing something wrong. She suggested I take a class. Since I cannot go to work limping around, my schedule has opened up somewhat. I found a class called Warm Sunrise. This was a 6:30 AM class. I thought they meant that the earth was warming up from the sun rising. Nope. That's.not.what.they.meant. This was one of those hot yoga classes.

Halfway through the class I started to feel so uncomfortable I grabbed my towel and leaned against the wall, almost bursting into tears. I was sad that I have multiple sclerosis and that I can't tolerate heat. I am not a quitter though so I thought I would try to stick it out. By the end of the class I just wanted my mom and I curled up in fetal position, not knowing how I would get up or how I would drive home. I felt like I had taken ten Benadryl.  I was too out of it to remember to pray but I just hoped that this stupor wouldn't last for days. Once I stepped into the hallway though I cooled down. The instructor claimed that I did a good job in the class. I told her how horrible I felt and about my friend, MS, and she wrote down the schedule of other classes that were non heated. Whew. I felt so traumatized after that class.

Yesterday I was able to purchase a Groupon for ten yoga classes for $39 at a different studio. After this morning's experience, I panicked, wondering if the classes there were heated. I visited the studio and was told that none of the classes were heated. Whew!