This is yet another post in my recent series of posts how my cholinergic urticaria went from being very severe to tremendously better (basically gone now). If you have not yet read my previous posts, then I strongly urge you to read them first so you can know exactly how this has progressed:
- My brief history of hives
- What is visceral fat?
- and My Hypothesis of visceral fat making cholinergic urticaria worse
- How to lose visceral fat
- Use Diet to eliminate visceral fat
- High Calorie Foods to Watch
- My Joyce Chen Steamer Review (My secret cookware weapon to reduce calories)
- Low Calorie Snack Ideas–some snacks to help you curb your cravings without adding too many calories.
- High Sodium Diet–How I was eating way too much sodium, and you may be too.
- Low Sodium Diet Tips
Note: please keep in mind that you should always talk to a doctor before changing your diet or exercise habits. These posts are only relating general information and experiences only.
The Importance of Eating a Healthy Diet to Lose Visceral Fat
Okay, I have decided to “wrap up” this diet portion in this series with this final post so I can move on and write a few posts about my experience with exercise over the next few days. I will try to add a few more diet posts within the next week or two (mostly just showing a few recipes and sample meal plans I am eating). But at this point, I have written most of what I have discovered and changed in my own diet. I hope these posts have been helpful.
In all of this research and experimentation, I have recently realized I was making pretty big mistakes in my diet–even though I thought I was eating somewhat healthy. I was eating above my calorie maintenance level, which had been causing me to gain visceral fat. My metabolism was probably all messed up. My body wasn’t healthy. I was eating WAY too much sodium. And most of the calories I was eating was useless junk calories with minimal nutrition. It was hard for me to accept these facts because I looked relatively skinny (except for hidden visceral fat).
I have now made a commitment to eating a more healthy diet. This isnt’ a fad diet, but rather, a lifestyle change. I am making this change because:
- Changing my diet has caused me to reduce my visceral fat
- My cholinergic urticaria has basically evaporated at this point, going from severe to basically gone in a matter of weeks
- Cholinergic urticaria has taught me that it sucks to be unhealthy. I want to take care of my body. I would love to live in my 80’s or 90’s if possible. Diet is a huge factor in longevity.
- I feel better. Since changing my diet (and exercising), I have more self confidence, energy, happiness, and a zest for life I haven’t felt in years. I truly feel amazing, and I want to keep this up.
- People who live to be old don’t eat junk foods. I have noticed a pattern over and over again when researching longevity–people who tend to live old (90’s or 100’s) tend to be skinny with little or no fat, tend to eat VERY natural foods, usually don’t smoke or do drugs, are religious, and tend to exercise or get physical activity. There may be a few rare exceptions to this (or people with blessed genetics), but generally speaking this seems to be the key to longevity.
Jack Lalanne is a huge inspiration to me. He lived to his mid 90’s, and he ate very naturally and exercised daily even up to his 90’s. I love some of Jack Lalanne’s quotes, and his motto’s were simple yet powerful:
“If man made it, don’t eat it.”
“If it tastes good, spit it out.”
“Exercise is king. Nutrition is queen. Put them together and you’ve got a kingdom!”
These are short and sweet, yet mostly truthful. Processed foods taste amazing, but are they really healthy with all that sugar, sodium, etc? The problem is that they taste so good that they numb your taste buds to natural foods. You would be surprised at how good a vegetable or piece of fruit tastes when you don’t eat junk for a week or two. The flavor starts to come out and your taste buds can pick it up.
Other Changes I Have Made In Diet
To put it briefly, here are the basic summation of my diet changes:
- Eat less sodium (shooting for 500 mg- 1800 mg daily, and hope to reduce to around 1,000 mg daily within a month)
- Eat less calories (shooting for 1,800 right now, hope to raise gradually as my body fat disappears until I can raise it to my full calorie maintenance level)
- Remove all foods that upset my stomach or cause rashes/inflammation (including wheat, oats, processed junk, and dairy)
- Reduce fatty foods, oil foods, fast foods, and restaurants. I only occasionally eat fast food, and its even more rare to attend a restaurant. It is just easier for me to eat healthy if I do that.
- Reduce olive oil in cooking, and other “wasteful” calories, so I can replace them with more “filling” calories that are higher in protein, fiber, vitamins, etc.
- Minimize sugary snacks, and instead eat naturally sweet foods like frozen smoothies (with real fruit), etc.
- Minimize processed foods. I hope to significantly reduce foods that are over processed, packages, pre-cooked, etc as much as possible.
I am also trying to keep track of things like protein, fiber, carbs, fats, sodium, calorie, and other things. I am trying to balance the protein, fats, grains, and snacks, similar to the proportions in the food pyramid given out by the government.
Even though I am eating a few processed snacks now, I am still slowly weening myself off of them and trying to replace them with meals or healthy alternative snacks. This will be an ongoing process for me, and my diet and calorie levels will have to be adjusted as time goes on.
The Impact On My Hives
I have done exactly 2 dramatic changes which I think have basically cured my hives at this point:
1. Diet
2. Exercise.
I have shared my diet tips in these last few posts. I honestly think this has helped so much to reduce my body and visceral fat, restore healthy blood sugar levels/hormone levels, reduce inflammation, etc.
But diet alone isn’t all I have done, so I can’t attribute it all to diet. I think the exercise has also played a huge role in reducing my visceral fat, and getting my CU down. So what have I been doing? How does a guy who can’t even sweat begin exercising? How did I pull this off when I couldn’t even as much as walk outside to the bottom of my yard on a 65 degree day without getting covered in painful hives?
Stay tuned and I will share experience of exercise, how I did it, what I have done, and which exercise you need to lose visceral fat. Stay tuned…my first post on exercise will come either tonight or sometime tomorrow (or as soon as I can get to it).
NEXT Post: Best Exercise to Lose visceral fat