Chapter 7: Digging deeper

At this point the universe gave me a helping hand, and I grabbed hold of it. I started buying organic products from a calm, unassuming middleaged man. One day while buying some products from him, I was talking to someone else about running some kind of health-related project in the local area and he overheard me and expressed an interest in participating. Great, I thought, let’s do it. We went for a cup of tea at the local bar to talk about the idea and he started by asking me about myself and why I wanted to do this, so I told him my story. Straight away, he said that there was a short-cut to improving your health in these situations and that I could have done that instead of spending years trying to eke out improvements. “Autophagy” he wrote on a piece of paper. I scrunched up my brow, saying “eat oneself”? Yes, he said, then gave me a brief explanation of autophagy, and told me that it is induced during fasting. It’s the fast track to getting better, that 98% of people can do. “But!” I protested, “I have been pregnant and breastfeeding!” Yes, he said, you were in the 2%. But now your daughter is one, you can safely work up to fasting and radically improve your health.

Now, anyone who knows me would know that I came up against a problem there. Because food has always been my number one love. Or better said, my primary addiction. I have always eaten a huge amount of food, much more than I need to survive, and the idea of not eating, even skipping one snack, never mind a meal, was too much to bear. I thought I had been willing to try anything to get better, but this was a real test of my dedication.

I came to learn that this guy who sold organic products was also a naturopath, with experience in nutrition, herbal medicine, fasting and had even got part way through studying and practicing psychiatry. I had seen so many professionals on my journey that I was reluctant to start again, especially to go back to a restricted diet. I had only just reintroduced a whole load of foods that I had missed for years! But after getting knocked down with flu (probably covid again) and spending 10 days in bed, getting my menstrual cycle disrupted again and generally feeling like crap, I knew I was ready to do whatever I needed to do to actually get better, whatever that meant.

So I signed up for some sessions with the naturopath. And there didn’t seem to be anything he didn’t know about or couldn’t help me with. The first practical step was to get myself on a keto diet. My previous experience of keto flu still haunted me. And giving up my carbohydrate comfort blanket was more of an emotional than a physical challenge. But the callous, driven side of me won out over self-pity and I was rewarded with dramatically improved energy, and reduced hunger. The next step was to start fasting, and I spent a few weeks pre-grieving the loss of food as a general comforter. The first ‘fast’ I did was literally just skipping dinner. I was so nervous about it, so terrified of going to bed hungry. But I woke up feeling more awake and alive than I ever had, and I was hooked. I worked my way up slowly over the months to doing a three-day fast! I was nailing life. I was finally thin and healthy and happy. Everything was fine.

I started exercising and regaining strength. I tried some techniques to calm my jittery nervous system. And every time I talked with my naturopath, we ended up talking about emotions. I had known for a long time that this was the stuff underlying my illness and all of my problems in life, but here it was being set out for me again and again. He would point out things about me that I recognised as deep truths that I had been unwilling to accept. It was painful for me to hear these things, the fake me wanted to reject them, but the real me needed to hear them.

Of course the new version of my healthy, happy façade fell away like all the others before, and I went back to eating carbs for a time, and the brain fog crept back in. But this time when I landed in my slump and found myself with old and new symptoms, aches and pains and depression, my naturopath was there to catch me. We had become friends and talked about projects and life and family as well as health, and it was all so intertwined. Every time we met up, I would learn some new unspeakable truth about myself.

Contact

anna@autoimmunerecoveryproject.com

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