A Fat Chance

I suffer from intestinal lymphangiectasia, an extremely rare disorder which gave me a chance to change my life. A fat chance.

Name:
Location: Pisa, Tuscany, Italy

Medical student (Psychiatry), online and face-to-face facilitation, CoP practitioner, writer for and about mental illness (mainly in psychiatric rehabilitation, volunteerism and ICT) but also facilitation nonprofit and CoPs, person with mental illness in recovery.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

So how are you?

I'm fiiiiine!

At this moment, I stay away from:
1) red meats:
I only eat white (aka poultry) and black meats (aka game). Only exception is, bresaola, a cured meat that can be made of beef or horse (the latter is my favourite one);
2) any kind of oils:
MCT oil included;
3) most non-skim dairy:
occasionally I eat whole dairy but in small amount, and only if made with either cow or buffano raw milk, that is, containing probiotics (read: creme fraiche, sour cream, kefir, parmigiano reggiano, mozzarella di bufala, regular mozzarella, provola). For the rest I eat skim milk, skim cottage cheese and skim cream cheese.

However, since I still need essential fats (everybody does, even the ones with lymphangiectasia!), I replace all the fat I should eat daily (ie 30-40 grams a day) with a combination of:
1) nuts:
like walnuts and Brazilian nuts;
2) seeds:
like sesame seeds (and tahini butter), flax seeds, sunflower seeds;
3) legumes:
soy beans (and soy butter and soy products), peanuts (and peanut butter and -- NO peanuts aren't nuts!!!);
4) oily fish:
wild salmon, mackerel, sardines, trout, clams (always buy wild fish, it has more essential fatty acids and less saturated fat);
5) eggs:
especially quail eggs.

Avoiding oils is important, especially oils high in monosaturated fatty acoids, which we happen NOT to be able to absorb! So eat olives instead, if you like that flavor (I don't -- it's everywhere here!).

Furthermore, oils have no/few vitamins but no minerals whatsoever, while nuts/seeds/legumes have:

1. less oil (around 40-60%),
2. less calories (100 gr of oil is 900 calories, 100 grams of nuts is 600-700),
3. more proteins (oils have no proteins),
4. more minerals (oils have no minerals) and
5. more vitamins (oils only contain fat soluble vitamins, nuts also contain water soluble vitamins).

With this regimen, I only go 1-2 times a day and I don't have diarrhea unless I've got a bug or forgotten to check the label and mistakenly eaten transfats, mono- and dyglycerides or a mix of both.

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