Recently I’ve been feeling sluggish, more tired than usual, irritable, struggling to get back into routine after our holiday and lacking in motivation to do the things I love, blogging, dance, swimming, reading. The pain in my knees that was basically non-existent has come creeping back to the point where I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I have been feeling like an old decrepit person who struggles to get up if they sit on the floor.  I felt like my physical health was deteriorating.

For about the last two and years I have restricted gluten, dairy and refined sugar in my diet as well as taking Juice Plus and it has made an amazing difference to my health in general, including my immunity, energy levels and most notably my knee pain. There were certain moves like twisting my leg in dance that I didn’t used to be able to do without having shooting pains inside my knees which completely disappeared when I was eating in this way. I was always very relaxed about the “diet” in that if we ever went out for a meal I would eat “normally” and if I ate like that just for one meal once a week I never had any symptoms.

Since going on holiday at the end of August, I have slipped back into eating a little bit of gluten. dairy and refined sugar every day, maybe only at one meal per day but by not cutting it out consistently for a number of days in a row, after six weeks I now notice and realise why I’ve been feeling the way I have, so I need to do something about it.

This post is for my own accountability and a resource for anyone looking for ideas on what foods to eat, recipes to make when needing to cut out certain food groups.

Here’s what I ate in the first week (1st – 7th October):

Recipe resources:

Leek & Two Potato Soup

Apple & Blackberry crumble

Raspberry porridge

Brownies

Five bean chilli

Chocolate caramel fondant

Here are two more photos I posted on my other Instagram account. The first one is from 30th September but gives a good idea of what the granola looks like and portion size.

So how do I feel after the first week?  My knees are a lot better, I can feel that the inflammation has definitely gone down, although not totally, the pain is much improved. My energy levels and mood are a little better too.  My aim for this week was to be completely vegan/plant based in order to improve the pH in my gut and although I didn’t achieve that, I feel that two non-vegan meals out of twenty-one is not bad going.

As you can see I eat a lot of sweet treats but I try to balance these with fruit and vegetables. This diet is never going to be about losing weight but more about finding more natural alternatives to foods I love in order to make my body healthier. My weakness is chocolate but I eat raw chocolate which has been found to be good for you! You can read more about it here.

My aim for next week is to get into more of a routine and try to get back to making a smoothie nearly every day as I only made one last week.

Thank you for reading x