Today marks 8 weeks on a plant free diet for me! Yes, this former vegan, plant chomping nutritionist survived 8 weeks of no plant foods!

My reason for doing this experiment was to see if plant foods might have been impacting my lymphedema and lipedema legs in a negative way. I know, i know, this sounds like such a crazy thing to even think because hey, our governments and official health bodies tell us to eat mostly plants and i’ve been towing the party line for well over 3 decades now! I used to consume 3-4 kale smoothies over the course of a day on a regular basis before I started using a ketogenic diet, because hey, if a little bit is good then a lot is better right? WRONG!!! Plant foods contain a lot of anti-nutrients (i’ll write more about that in another post) that bind up some really important nutrients in food so that we cannot absorb them efficiently.

For this experiment I kept my fat and protein macros at keto levels as they were before. I took some measurements at the beginning of this experiment (bloods and tape measure) and here are the results after 8 weeks …

Down 6cm (almost 2 and a half inches) just under my boobs
Down almost 5cm (almost 2 inches) at my waist
Down almost 3cm (just over an inch) at the largest part of each thigh
Down about 1cm (almost half an inch) at each knee
Down 1cm (almost half an inch) ON MY STUBBORN RIGHT FOOT AT THE ANKLE!!!!
Down 5mm ON MY STUBBORN RIGHT FOOT AT THE DORSAL MEASUREMENT!!!!

I haven’t had my second lot of blood work taken yet but i think it’s safe to say that my body seems to do better without the plants! Who knew!

Needless to say, i will be judging the health of my plate with a different mindset moving forward, and i cannot see much in the way of plant foods making much of an appearance in my life from this time forward. Coffee is already back in my life (my old friend!), and garlic will definitely be making a regular appearance!

If i can encourage you to do anything with your health, it would be to be your own best experiment. And make sure that you use something quantifiable to know for certain whether what you’re doing is helpful or not. Take measurements, do blood work, rate your energy and stress perception levels on a daily basis.

You only get one body, and what you eat can change the way it works.