Five months ago I was diagnosed with coeliac disease. Nobody knows how long it was active before I was diagnosed, but it seems like a reasonable explanation for a lot of health issues I had in my life, e.g. migraines and depressions, low blood pressure etc. In the last 5 months I’ve gone from too sick to go to my lectures to actually gaining some weight! 1 1/2 years ago I’ve taken up exercise and I worked out almost every day for about half a year. Then I became too ill for that and whenever I tried some exercise I would end up ill in bed for 2 days. About 3 months ago I asked my doctor about it and he said I was crazy even to try, because my body doesn’t have enough energy to keep me going even without exercise. Of course he was right, but once you start to enjoy sports you actually realize that it makes you a happier and more balanced person. I just missed the balance it gave me and I found it highly frustrating to just sit there and wait until I’m finally healthy again (well, if I ever was).

Now it’s 3 months later and it seems that I’m gaining weight, which is a very good sign, considering that my doctors told me that I’m slightly underweight for the last 10 years. It also means that my body is starting to store left over energy, meaning I seem to have enough energy to keep the normal functions going and even some extra for some exercise! This is why two days ago I started to exercise again, and so far it seems that it’s not making me sick again. Therefore I’ve decided to make this attempt a one month challenge to get back into balance:

For one month starting on the 24nd of August (today) and ending on the 23st of September I will:

• exercise every second day
• meditate daily
• eat my 5 fruit and veg a day
• get rid of one of my bad habits

What have I done so far? Today I did a little (1 set each) body-weight-only exercise routine involving push ups (5), crunches (10), oblique crunches (10 for each side), single legged hip extensions (10 for each side) for  and squats (10). On top of that I did some stretching that is mostly relevant for dancing tango. I ate a handful of raspberries in my yoghurt this morning, had some mushrooms for lunch and had a mandarin and a banana later. My bad habit is under control so far and I will meditate right after finishing this post and before going to bed.

During this challenge I will keep a little diary of my progress on this blog, which I will update every day. The posts will probably be quite short and they are most likely only interesting for myself, so I probably won’t advertise them on twitter. If you want to keep updated about my progress anyway then just subscribe to my RSS Feed (the big orange button on the top right of this page, you can’t miss it ).

A lot of you will probably respond: Well, food is important, because if you don’t eat you’ll die, right? And yes, you’re obviously right about that, everyone needs to eat to not starve to death. Isn’t food more important to you than that though? Do you treat yourself with chocolate or other sweets? Do you binge eat or do you diet? Do you find yourself not knowing why the packet of crisps is gone so quickly? Do you consider food as threatening? Do you have something that you just can’t stop eating as soon as you start eating it? Even if you don’t think about food, it is always there, it has a tight grip on you and a lot of you are probably trying to ignore what a huge impact it has on your life. Since when did you think that you should lose some weight? Do you ever think about vitamins, minerals or properly balanced food? If you never think about food in this way, you’re probably trying to avoid thinking about the fact, that food can also be poisonous and make your body ill! Did your doctor tell you, that you’ll be ill if you eat salty, fatty foods and you still eat it? “Well, it’s not gonna kill me, it’s only food!” –> Wrong! In fact it is going to kill you sooner or later, if you don’t care for your body!

Well, I for one find food very important! There can’t be a good day without good food. Every day I spend about 2-4 hours preparing and eating food and I cook at least once every day, sometimes even 3 times. I might be a special case, because I have to be very careful about what I eat due to my food allergies and I generally can’t eat out, so I’m bound to pay a lot of attention to food! My eating habits might be a bit over the top for normal people, don’t you think? Who has time to cook 3 times a day?! Well, I usually only find time for that on weekends, but it happens maybe once a week. And no, I’m not overweight: 1,70m (5.6 feet) with 50 kg (7.87 stone) – it’s even slightly underweight and I have been holding this weight for 10 years now (-+ 2kg)!

I can’t cook though …

… was what I said when I was a teenager. I never had to cook in my child hood and in my teenage years I could only reheat food, put stuff in the oven or prepare ready meals. I remember eating stuff like tin ravioli and frozen cheese pies, pot noodles or “miracoli” – which is a widely used term in Germany for noodles with some sauce powder to which you just have to add water and stir it up. With this kind of knowledge I moved out of my Mum’s place. I have no idea why I didn’t get scurvy! After about half a year I could cook eggs and pasta with lots of different miracoli sauces – like four cheeses, or romana, all out of powder with probably more flavour enhancer than should be legally allowed. Another thing I’d eat a lot was “yum yum” – basically ramen with absolutely no flavour and freeze dried veg. I knew how to make semolina, but even pancakes were absolutely way out of my league.

After half a year of this non-sense I couldn’t eat it anymore! It was horrible! Who can eat like that for years and years? My parents cooked a lot of “real” food in our child hood. They would rarely make miracoli or oven meals, and then only if we insisted or if there was really no time. Probably you actually can keep eating oven meals and miracoli or tin food all your life if you were brought up like that, but I was not! I started experimenting with cooking “real” food about half a year after I moved out and I learned a lot from just watching my Dad cook something random. First attempts are always hard. My first pasta sauces were basically tomato purée, cream, chicken, buried in rosemary, but hell, I sure tried!

It took a few realistic cook books – not the ones that list incredible ingredients that you can’t find anywhere – and some awful attempts that got binned right away, but in the end I learned how to prepare a healthy meal (without flavour enhancers, preservatives etc). Without even realizing, most of my cooking was lactose free, which gave me a good starting point when I discovered my food allergies.

Why suddenly allergies?

How come that after 22 years of normal lactose and gluten rich food I suddenly developed those allergies? Well, coeliac disease is usually triggered by something – e.g. an infection or a stomach bug. Even only stress can trigger it. When my coeliac disease became active, I was studying two degrees at the same time with a normal work week of 50-60 hours. I only cooked once or twice a week and the rest of the time I ate canteen food and pot noodles in the evening. My breakfast would usually be a yoghurt, a croissant and a coffee. I drank about a liter of coffee every day and I didn’t sleep more than 6 hours in about 6 months in a row – usually less. Even though I had spare time that I spent together with my partner, I wasn’t really relaxing. My mind was always working on some problem or analysing something I read that day. When I didn’t see my partner I would smoke about a pack of cigarettes a day. After 4 months of 50-60 hr work weeks there followed exam time. I scheduled 6 and only managed to do 5, because I became ill. Normal are 2-3 exams per exam period. Why did I become ill, that’s what you ask if you ask why I developed food allergies! I became ill, because I didn’t look after my body.

Of course I could have developed (i.e. triggered) coeliac disease any other time and it is very likely that my migraines and my depressions were also caused by the disease which was just not showing the “normal” stomach symptoms at that time, but if you’re prone to be ill, you will definitely be ill if you treat your body like a machine and food like fuel. If you’re prone to get a heart attack, go ahead, do everything the doctor told you not to do and you will get one! Think about it, you might buy yourself another 10 years if you listen to your doctor and stop eating that crap that you stuff into yourself all the time! On the other hand – “live fast, die young” is definitely an interesting concept as well, but don’t expect to be happy, healthy and good looking until the end!

Every action you take, every bit of food you eat will be reflected in your body. If you eat too much chocolate you’ll get bad skin. If you overeat, you will be overweight. If you don’t get enough iron, you will feel tired and stuck. If you eat too much protein, your body will take too much energy to process it and you will feel dead after eating. There is one little trick that will always help you find out whether you’re eating the wrong thing: If you feel worse after eating than before, when you were hungry, something is very wrong. If you’re very tired after eating, something is wrong. If you don’t feel energetic and “good to go” again, then it’s no good! You wouldn’t let your car run on the wrong fuel, would you? You’d know that this would break it sooner or later. Don’t treat your body worse than your car!

Why am I telling you this?

This article is only supposed to raise your awareness about what you eat and maybe even how you eat it: Do you eat in front of the TV or the computer? Do you eat while you’re reading? Do you eat very quickly to “get on with things” or while you drive your car or walk from the tube to your office? Think about it: It is much more likely to overeat while you’re watching TV or eat too quickly if you’re rushing to work. The result might be overweight, heart burn and even worse stuff.

Start thinking about your habits today and maybe you can even buy yourself a bit more life-time with it:

• Go to your fridge and have a look. Do you actually have anything in there that would be worth cooking? Do you keep veg in your fridge or are there only pickles, a bit of cheese, some ham and some soda together with some ready meals? How would you ever want to cook if there’s nothing in your house and you have to go to the supermarket first?
• While you’re in the kitchen: pull out some processed foods you buy (maybe cereal bars, ready meals, pour-over sauces?) and read the ingredients list. Did you know that “natural flavouring” only means that the flavouring is not synthetic? “Natural” strawberry flavouring is made out of wood shavings! With cooking and preparing your food yourself you can control what ends up in your pot. No artificial or “natural” flavouring or potentially risky synthetic stabilizers etc needed.
• Next time you eat at a fast food chain, ask for the ingredients list. They’re legally bound to have them around (at least in Europe) and I promise, you will be surprised! Why do you eat something if you don’t even know what’s in there?
• Inform yourself how the meat, that you find on the super market shelves gets produced. It is definitely used in your canteen, your next fast food chain and in your smart price ready meals to keep things cheap. A broiler chicken might have died from “natural” causes only days after it was slaughtered (after 6 weeks) due to over-breeding, while a healthy well-treated chicken from a slower-growing breed could live years (You want to know more now? Click here). If you cook your own food you can decide yourself whether you want to eat something like that or not.

Start living consciously today and make a difference for your own sake!

I met people who don’t take their gluten free diet very seriously. They drink beer now and then or eat normal pizza in restaurants if they’re out with friends, but I personally think they’re risking too much. What are the risks actually? Well, apart from food poisoning symptoms, if you overdo it (one of my friends described his first gluten reaction after a year of not eating gluten as “puking like you never have before”) you risk osteoporosis, infertility and even cancer. The risk of cancer is especially high if you only find out about your illness as an adult. This was the case for me and I waited two years before seeing a doctor about my stomach problems. I think, a lot of the time I was also just afraid that I might have something serious like cancer and therefore just thought – if I don’t know I’ll be better off.

To really make sure that you have coeliac disease there is a bowel biopsy necessary if your blood test comes back positive. My doctor – a funny German gastroenterologist, who studied medicine in Italy “for the kicks of it” – told me though that if the blood test comes back positive, they’re already quite certain that you have it, they just need to make sure that it didn’t already cause something more frightening. Well  thanks for the open words, doctor! He basically told me that the chances are reasonably high that there is something more frightening going on! It takes some time before results from the biopsy get back to the doctor and therefore I had to wait with this rather horrible feeling that now I really might be terminally ill and if I had gone to the doctor earlier I wouldn’t be in this horrible situation! Well, of course it doesn’t really make any difference whether you find it out 22 or 24 years too late, so my logic was slightly off, but the reason for not really thinking straight is that the chance was reasonably high.

Since I was 13 I was slightly suicidal due to depressions. For a few years I was actually quite eager to make my miserable, dull and lonely life end – well you know how teenagers can be and I was even worse than most teenagers. I never actually went through with any attempt, but once or twice I looked down from our balcony in the 8th floor and started climbing over the balustrade. Once there was only a ringing telephone that made me go back on the actual balcony again. Dark days in my life that I wouldn’t care to repeat.

Back then there was only a friend between me and suicide. He looked after me and I’m grateful for that. I usually keep my promises and he forced me to promise to him, I wouldn’t do anything silly without contacting him first. He saved me once or twice. I always found it quite stupid if people called friends before actually committing suicide. If you really want to die, just get on with it, else it’s just a cry for attention! I never did that, but after my friend realized what I was going through he forced me to do it. One thing I promised myself though: I would make it end, if it was enough. I even set an arbitrary date – if I wouldn’t be mostly happy by the time I was 36 I would finish it off. Without telling anyone, I would jump, somewhere where nobody would care – maybe a cliff. Nowadays I can’t help but wonder what was going on in my mind back then – I love life, I find the world incredibly beautiful and there would be no reason whatsoever for suicide now. Even losing the man, who I thought would be my husband quite soon didn’t make me sad enough to even consider this again!

Since the moment back then on the balustrade of the balcony I was never afraid to die. I never thought I had anything to lose. I never was afraid of illness, car accidents or dark streets at night. In fact I used to walk home through the park at 3 o’clock in the morning in my home town. My Mom was attacked and robbed quite close to her appartment building only 2 years ago in the same town. It was never safe. And still, when I was 17 I would walk home through the park at night, which takes about 1 1/2 hours. I only had a weird experience once. I heard the ice crack behind me in the winter and then quick muffled steps in the snow. I didn’t really give it any thought, I just walked on and to be honest, who knows what park murderer the cracking ice drove away that night!

Who would have thought that one day I would be scared shitless – pardon my French – by the thought of having cancer? I knew that cancer would be the end for me, because I wouldn’t do chemotherapy. The whole idea of chemotherapy is just plain crazy, especially considering that a lot of people still don’t survive it. I remember running into my friend’s brother while he was getting chemotherapy when I was 12 and he looked like a ghost. He died about 2 months later at the young age of 21 and the only thing that chemotherapy got him was a lot of additional pain and losing a lot of his final days on this beautiful planet to hospital visits. Don’t get me wrong here – if there would be 80% probability that it would save my life, alright, but in cases where it’s the other way round I wouldn’t waste my time on it! Of course these are my personal choices and everyone has to make their own. I wouldn’t want to be kept alive just with machines nor would I want chemotherapy. Everyone else is allowed to cling to their life as fiercely as they think necessary, but I made my choices.

My doctor didn’t actually tell me any probabilities of how likely it was that I had something serious. I just knew that the health insurance wouldn’t pay for unnecessary tests! In fact they only pay for them if they are really really necessary. Suddenly I didn’t really understand what was going on anymore. I believe in afterlife and in the last years I have lived my life on the fast train, I took every chance I could get and therefore I can be proud of what I achieved. Expecting any more from a human being would be wrong. I did everything I could to live a good life. And still: I was scared to death! Who the hell have I become and how is it possible that I suddenly feared death? I have become someone who loves life and who wants to cherish every moment that is given to him on this planet. I have become someone who would actually love to have another hundred years more to spend with just reading books! There is so much that I still want to do and dying just doesn’t fit into my plan!

As soon as I understood that, I had to change my attitude. What if I really was terminally ill? I wouldn’t want to waste my precious short time with being devastated just because I have to die! Only a few months back a friend told me: “You can choose to have no fear. Just like that.” and in those days when I was waiting for the results of my biopsy, I proved that it was true. I decided that I didn’t have time to fear, I decided that I have to take action and have a plan in case I was really terminally ill.

What would I do if I only had 3 months to live? What is the most important plan in my life that I could just realize in such a short time span? It took me only a few seconds to figure the answer out: if I were terminally ill I would go buy a ticket to Argentina and dance tango for the rest of my life. My plan was actually pretty specific – I figured out how to get a proper passport in about a week (I only have a German ID-card which is valid only in Europe) and I certainly had the money saved up to buy a plane ticket and live in Argentina for about 5 months. For 2 days my way of thinking scared me even more than the prospect of cancer.

I also considered that I wouldn’t see some people ever again, that I couldn’t say goodbye and suddenly my fear was gone. Suddenly I remembered the afterlife and that I would see them again, all of them. The reason why I was afraid to die were not the people around me, because according to my beliefs I will see them very soon anyway, no it was about the precious moments I would miss. I could never have children and I wouldn’t see those children learn to walk or fall from their bike or graduate. I would never buy this house in Sweden in which I want to live when I’m old.

And then in all the melancholy these thoughts were causing I realized how important one fact was in all this: I couldn’t have done more in the life time I had! I overcame my depressions and my childhood trauma, I found a purpose in my life and I did whatever I wanted to do without hesitation. There’s not much more I could have done in my life up to now. I emigrated, I went after my love, I did everything to shape my future so that I will grow according to my potential and there is absolutely nothing I regret. What could anyone want more when looking back on his life? I’m happy with who I am and what I achieved until now and for this I’ve come a long way. Remember, I was this suicidal dull egocentric mess without a purpose only 10 years ago!

When I found out that I wasn’t terminally ill, I was almost sad – no excuse to just fly off to Argentina right now! Why don’t I just go anyway? Well, because I actually want to think about the future right now. I started a new degree, which lasts another 2 years and if I don’t want to lose my wonderful position to be happy with who I am, I have to keep doing what I have to and want to! Argentina will still be there in another 2 years – I will most definitely still be alive (touch wood) and I will have time to improve my tango skills further until then. I’ve been dancing for 2 years now, so another 2 years of practice will make a lot of difference!

Who wouldn’t find the thought comforting that he could have done no more with his life and that dying now wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all? If you want to know how I managed to get to a point where I can be completely happy with who I am, then I suggest that you read more of my articles!