Is "Homemade" Food Really Healthier Than Restaurant Food?

Image by Dimitrios Dalagiorgos via Flickr

I guess the answer is "yes", if you have a wonderful mother or partner who can cook "professionally", or, if you are a good cook yourself. If not, I think sticking on your own food might do more harm than good to your health.

In my experience, getting take-out foods from restaurants really is one of reasons that helped me tremendously on my health recovering. The reason is simple: since I can only be that much "creative" by myself, eating my own boring food everyday really could not supply all nutrition my body needs.

Recalling my past years, my diet had been never good but "Ok" until 2009, when I stopped almost completely eating outside of my house (because that's the time I started working at home). Back then I learned a "scientific" common sense that eating at home was always better than the junk foods from restaurant. So I started cooking myself everyday. However the truth turned out just opposite: after I mentally completely settled in peace, my physical health which was supposed to be on progress just went down, all the way down to the bottom. Finally, after my last serious relapse, which was summer 2010, I "woke up" from my false "belief" on some sort of healthy diet structure, and gradually realized that my own foods were the primary reason of my illness. So while I improved my "homemade" foods, I also started getting take-out foods from restaurant regularly, just give myself some alternatives on the taste and nutrition. Since then, my health started climbing up, from 20-30% of energy level to now, over 90% everyday.

Food, or diet, really is the last piece of the puzzle of my chronic health problem. I knew food was important many years ago but I did not really know what's exactly I missed until a little over a year ago. What I really learned? 1: listen to my body instead of listen to "professional". But of course, I do not mean "absolutely"; 2: diversity. Never stick on just one type of foods for too long; 3, health care is a personal thing, so is diet. It is up to everybody him/herself to find out what's the best.

White rice and wheaten food

For years I have learned that how these two type of foods were unhealthy and I purposely avoided or reduced intake of them. However, after latest serious relapse I have realized my messed digest system demand those foods. As I increased amount of these two type of foods, my stomach feels better and better, and each day I feel more energetic.

White rice and wheat(or flour) products are two staple foods (main course?) in Chinese diet structure. And I grew up with such foods. I believe my digest system had been used to them so my purposely avoidance of them did more harm than good. And that might be the primary cause that my body could not get nutrition from what I ate daily thus caused my big energy trouble.

Based on over 2 months diet adjusting and result I am positive that this is the main cause of my recently years' health trouble. Even though I realized the importance of diet years ago, I was in a wrong track, and virtually made my diet structure worse. Now, by turning my diet back to what I used to when I grew up, I hope I could finally be on the road to a normal health.

Again, I should not be presumptuous. I should be aware of other possible consequences. Also, as soon as my stomach back to normal, I should not stick only on white rice and white flour. I will update my progress in very near future.

Ginger roots and Chinese dates

Image by chaos™ via Flickr

There is a Chinese saying:

men cannot live without ginger roots even one day; women cannot live without dates (Chinese dates) even one day.

The second diet change

I have changed my diet 5 months ago, from my regular unhealthy food hobby to an almost vegetarian food structure. I felt a dramatic health change immediately and I thought I would stick on this diet in the rest of my life. However, after 2 or 3 months' significent health improvement, my health condition stopped at a point where I could not make it any more progress. I didn't know why? I could not exercise as much as I needed (I used to walk 45 - 50 minutes, but somehow I could only walk around 30 minutes). And what was worse later on, over a month ago, I suffered a huge back fire of chronic fatigue syndrome! Again!

I did not find the true reason (actually i believe that reasons are always multiple) until a week ago. Before that I had blaimed everything and tried everything I could, still did feel any better. Then I tried the last thing: changing diet again. I was somehow convinced that what I had been eating is too simple. It was good for killing candida yeasts but it may not be nutritious enough for my health needs. So what I did was to increase the variety of foods, not only fish and vegs, but some beef, chicken, etc. And I started to take some Chinese herbs again which I disbelieve for a while.
It has been about a week and I do feel better, even though the difference is not significant as the previous diet change.

Moderate and regular exercise, the best way to keep you healthy!

I believe, physically speaking, 2 things dragged me into CFS: extreme lack of exercise and bad diet.
Based on yeast theory, CFS is due to the fact that increased yeast (or candida) population stresses our immune system. So, first is the increased yeasts, second is stressed immune system. I also found that lots of people carry too many yeasts but they are fine. Why? The answer is simple, because they have stronger immune system than I do. So, just one single reason, either increased yeast population or, weak immune system doesn't really cause such terrible outcome as CFS, only 2 of them get together can destroy one's health.*
For my own case, the lack of exercise caused my terribly weak immune system and the bad diet also made yeasts inside my body very happy (that's why I gained weight since I got into middle age).
Now, solutions are: diet pretty much takes care of starving yeasts; exercise would take care of improving immune system.
Here are some researches about how moderate and regular exercise can boost up immune system:
http://sportsmedicine.about.com/od/injuryprevention/a/Ex_Immunity.htm
*Of course mental issues are also very important but, I don't really want to discuss those right now.

4 things make me feeling good recently

For my recent 6 or 7 years, I was constantly driven into a condition that I could not handle my daily life. However, about 3 months ago I was suggested again to change my diet (I say again because I did once before). I took the suggestion and it really made immediate change on my health condition. Another thing helps me is a medication recommanded by an online friend: lugol's iodine. I started to take this medicatoin less than 20 days ago and I have to say, for about 3 or 4 days, I have been experiencing another positive change.
Here are 4 major things I believed that heeps my health getting better:
1. Diet. For more details about what I eat, please visit: http://overcomecfs.com/menu.html
2. Exercise. Mostly just walking.
3. Lugol's iodine? I started to believe it works. The first week since I took this medicine (or supplement, should I say?) I didn't feel much difference, but after 10 days, I do feel some obvious postive changes of my health.
4. Mental rest. Very important. One of reasons that I got into this health mess was stress. I didn't know how to rest myself since I was a teenager. I was a sever insomnia sufferer for over 25 years and it destroyed my health little by little until I reached the situation that my mental care could not recover my physical weakness (even though mental issue might be the reason for the beginning of my physical damage). So, since I learned to rest myself, everything seemed to be much easier.

Brain fog

I was always one of brightest students in school and have been believing in my intelligence for all my life, despite the years torture of this fierce CFS. Just very recently I found that I started to suffer brain fog in some degree.
After diet, I no longer feel that extreme fatigue. I mostly have decent sleep now so at daytime I no longer suffer heart palpitation or some other symptoms. However, I easily get "brain fog" if I try to concentrate myself to engage in some serious study, especially reading. It looks like I start to have clue how those "stupid" people feel like: not able to memorize things, easy to forget things, etc.
However, I am not discouraged. I believe there is a reason. It might be my diet is too simple. I mostly just eat salad, fish and nuts. Maybe I should try to put back some meat in my diet. I am going to try Lamb.

Check it back and see if I am smarter later on:-)

Raw vegs effects.

I have been living in USA almost 14 years but just recently learned to eat salad (Can you believe that?). It gives me energy back better than any other methods I tried before. And cooking is so simple: just all kinds different vegs, slice them and put some garlic and olive oil. That's it!

My weight dropped these days without much exercises.

Several things I have been doing together but I don't know which one worked or, just all of them worked: diet, psyllium seeds husk supplement, a lot of water.
Here is my diet menu:
breakfast: oatmeal (actually experts put it as forbbiden food), nuts, a piece of whole wheat bread, soy milk, one egg;
lunch: fish, vegs (salad), brown rice;
dinner: almost the same as lunch.

Oh, just realized that I haven't eaten any fruits for several days! By experts' opinion, fruits have lots of sugar, so they belong to forbbiden foods for CFS sufferers.

A simple recipe of steam fish

I started cooking everything very simple. Most vegs I just eat them raw (not that easy for a Chinese). Here is how I steam fish and mushroom:

a piece of whiting fish fillet, cut in small pieces (around one inch wide);
sliced mushroom (any kind, fresh is better);
sliced tofu (if you don't like it, you don't have to put it);
fish on the bottom, mushroom and tofu on the top, can be mixed, put very little salt, some sliced garlic, green onion, and some rice wine.

Then steam! About 10 mimutes, done!