Changing my food choices was the most significant factor that drastically improved my negative health symptoms, such as anxiety, brain fog, depression, social withdrawal, and lack of eye contact. One of my first realizations, many years ago, was that processed food and refined carbohydrates were causing many of my health problems. 

Subsequently, I discovered dairy products were causing my depression. At the time, over ten years ago, I knew nothing about the gluten-free casein-free (GFCF) diet. However, I did notice changing my food choices, such as reducing sugar and stopping wheat and dairy, eliminated multiple symptoms, including anxiety and depression.

As a side note, before I made these natural changes, I was prescribed a powerful benzodiazepine drug because of my frequent panic attacks. However, when I tried to cut back on the benzodiazepine drug, the withdrawal effects were much worse than the prior panic attacks. I remember, at some point, grabbing the washing machine, so I did not feel like I was going to fall off the planet. 

Sometime after this frightening experience, I found out about the concept of titration, which involves crushing a pill into a very fine powder and blending the powder into water. I would then place this mixture into a graduated cylinder, which looks a tall thin glass with measurement lines on the side. The graduated cylinder allowed me to accurately see how much water to pour out every other day. This way I could slowly lower the water level and somewhat control the amount of medication I gradually removed over a time span of multiple weeks. This helped me slowly stop taking the benzodiazepine and significantly reduced the negative symptoms from the withdrawal of the drug. Some drugs do not dissolve in water, so to keep my drug mixed well with the water I would have to shake the glass so the crushed drug powder would float around in the glass not just sit at the bottom.

Before I found this titration technique, splitting the pill in half to reduce how much I was taking was too much of an extreme reduction in dose. This drop caused horrible withdrawal symptoms because my body could not adapt to the sudden change in the concentration of a powerful unnatural drug. 

As a caution, this technique may only work on some types of drugs. Therefore, if seeking a better withdrawal from medication, then consulting with a doctor about titration using water is important.

A few months after I began changing my food choices, I learned about the glycemic load and how there are many health benefits to making sure my blood glucose levels do not rise too fast. The glycemic load is important because a sudden arrival of too much glucose in the blood reduces fat metabolism and increases glucose metabolism. This metabolic shift can cause many health problems. After I learned about the glycemic load and the dangers of excess blood glucose, I decided to limit consumption of all foods with added sugars and most high glycemic load foods.

Today, I do not eat most high glycemic load foods, such as white rice, white bread, and many refined carbohydrates. I still eat potatoes because of the potassium content and other benefits. If potatoes are baked, left to cool, and then reheated, that creates resistant starch, which lowers the glycemic load. Also, potatoes have many antioxidants and phytochemicals to compensate for their medium glycemic load status.

Importantly, good nutrition avoids many addictive foods, such as candy, fried food, pizza, and desserts. Often reminding yourself of the multiple health benefits and health risks helps with letting go of addictive foods. 

One of the side benefits of reducing sugar intake is many fruits taste sweeter because taste buds adjust. Now, if I ever have a soda, the drink tastes disgustingly too sweet. 

I also started eating according to how nature adapted the body to eat. Many hunter-gatherers eat whole foods, and about 30-40 percent of total caloric intake is from healthy fats. Therefore, I purchased a 5-gallon container of grass-fed beef tallow from a good online store, and I started to cook meals using this fat. Grass-fed beef fat has a more balanced omega-6/omega-3 ratio. If the fat is from a good source, then there are also significantly fewer pollutants than fat from many industry meats. Grass-fed beef tallow also has a more balanced proportion of monounsaturated to saturated fat, than the ratio found in coconut oil and palm kernel oil. The grass-fed beef tallow kept me fuller after meals and gave me sustained energy for the day.

Around this same time, I started to track my food intake using an online application called cronometer. I wanted to make sure I got enough potassium, magnesium, and zinc, as well as all other essential nutrients. By tracking my food intake, I saw my daily percentages of many different nutrients. Using this application, I saw I was not getting enough potassium and magnesium. Therefore, I increased my intake of food with these minerals, which further increased my energy and improved my mental function. I like tracking because the visual feedback of micronutrient percentages lets me see where I need improvement.

Interestingly, when I cut back on my sugar consumption, this caused my symptoms to temporarily become worse. This reaction likely occurred because the lack of sugar caused the death of many harmful bacteria living in my intestines. 

As discussed, many bad intestinal bacteria love excessive carbohydrate intake. Changing my food plan took away much of the food source for many of these bacteria, which caused them to die and release their toxic contents. These toxic contents can temporarily elevate inflammation and worsen various symptoms.

Also, my food plan increased autophagy, clearing away many old cells and inefficient mitochondria. This process temporarily raises inflammation and my health problems from this effect did not last more than a week. However, I introduced my food changes gradually, which reduced symptom intensity and how long the symptoms lasted.

Shockingly, bad intestinal bacteria influence the brain by using various chemical signals. This affects the craving for junk food and refined carbohydrates. For this reason, drastically reducing my sugar and refined carbohydrate intake was a difficult emotional experience. I knew about the influence of these bacteria and was not going to allow bacteria to tell me what foods I must eat. Therefore, with commitment, I maintained my food plan and was able to move through the temporary discomfort.

Today, my food plan has a lot of plants in my meals. To cook many meals, I like to use a slow cooker. I also do not eat nearly as much meat as the average person. The first reason I reduce my meat intake is because of the number of pollutants and hormones in many industry meats. The second reason is the horrible treatment that happens to many animals in the current industrial food production system. The third reason is most plants cost less money and are nutritious if food is well-planned. To increase this advantage, I purchase my plants locally and in season, which makes plants both less expensive and have higher phytochemical content.

However, I do eat some meat twice to three times a week. I either buy grass-fed at the store or meat from the local farmer’s market. I like to purchase from local suppliers because I can make sure the animals were given a decent life, were hormone-free, and not full of pollutants. I also purchase eggs from chickens not fed grains and allowed to roam around outside.

Also, by shopping at my local farmer’s market, I support someone in my local community, which helps to keep the money circulating in my town. I try not to purchase from a big chain store because most of that money leaves the community, weakening the local economy.

To get even more nutritional value when buying meat, I will also purchase beef liver and other animal parts from my local farmer’s market. Hunter-gatherer societies highly value eating organ meats because of extra nutrition. I chop up the liver into pieces small enough to take like a pill and freeze the liver on baking sheets so that the pieces do not stick to each other in the freezer. I then swallow a few small pieces every other day from the freezer to get added B-vitamins and other nutritional content.

I also like to eat oysters and clams, especially during the winter months. I also eat wild-caught salmon about once or twice a week. Overall, eating seafood that contains less pollution may benefit health. 

I also like to make big pots of tasty stews and soups that have a lot of fat. Some of the foods I include in different meals are lentils, avocado, mushrooms, kale, mustards, broccoli, radishes, carrots, peppers, potatoes, beef, black beans, collards, cabbage, onions, and garlic. I like to eat cruciferous vegetables because these types of vegetables stimulate Nrf2, increasing the activity of my antioxidant enzymes. 

In general, I eat more plants than meat and cook with a lot of grass-fed beef tallow. Depending on what I eat, I try to have my fat intake between 30 to 40 percent of my total daily calories. Ever since I started eating this way, I do not gain weight, and my energy stays stable throughout the day.

This amount of fat surprises some people, especially if the low-fat propaganda still controls their thought. However, eating more fat reduces the need to metabolize a lot of glucose for energy. In modern society, most people do not eat enough healthy fat, which causes an over-activation of glucose metabolism and less fat metabolism. 

Too much glucose metabolism makes an imbalanced ratio of NADH/FADH2, which leads to excess reactive oxygen species generation from complex I in electron transport chains of mitochondria. To prevent the overactivation of glucose metabolism, I eat a lot of grass-fed animal fat and avoid most foods with a high glycemic load.

As discussed, saturated fat temporarily increases insulin resistance because saturated fat and glucose compete for cell metabolism. If fat blocks high glycemic load foods from being metabolized, then combining these two types of food raises blood glucose levels and increases damage from inflammation. Therefore, if eating more saturated fat, then avoiding high glycemic load food is important.

In contrast, eating low glycemic load foods in a food plan with high fat intake greatly improves health. There are further benefits if the foods also have a lot of minerals and phytochemicals.

Another habit I follow is limiting omega-6 fat intake. I achieve this by avoiding most polyunsaturated vegetable oils. These oils damage easily and typically contain many omega-6 fatty acids. Unfortunately, most processed foods often contain polyunsaturated oils. By avoiding processed foods, I automatically eat less omega-6 fatty acids. 

A significant source of these oils is restaurants, which often cook food in these oils at high temperatures that damage the fragile oils. I especially do not eat fried foods because the process of making fried foods involves frequently reheating polyunsaturated vegetable oils, which damages the oils and causes even more health problems.

Therefore, I eat food I cook at home as much as possible. By cooking at home, I can use better ingredients and have more control over what I am eating. By cooking at home, I can use excellent spice combinations to make the food healthier and tastier. However, being able to use spices depends on salicylate sensitivity, since many spices have high salicylate levels. 

Home cooking also helps save money. I enjoy cooking and like listening to music while making my favorite recipes. Making cooking an enjoyable experience is important for staying motivated in the kitchen and improving health.

When cooking at home, using the slow cooker, and letting food cook overnight makes cooking easy. I can wake up in the morning with the cooking completed, allowing me to have a large breakfast and a good morning. Overnight cooking what would have been dinner and eating it as breakfast makes a massive positive difference in both health and easiness of life. Eating the largest meal in the morning better matches circadian rhythms. This improves sleep and digestion. 

Besides managing what I eat, I also limit the time I eat to an 8-hour window, from about 8 am to 4 pm. I typically have a big breakfast around 8 am and lunch before 4 pm. I sometimes eat vegetable snacks in between these times. Also, I fast for 24 to 48 hours once every month. Fasting increases autophagy, removing inefficient mitochondria, reducing inflammation, and improving metabolism.