Thanks, everyone, for sharing your experiences and thoughts on the subject! It has been really interesting to read about the things you've gone through in the quest for finding the balance between good looks and good health as women.
I am very pleased to announce that my self-prescribed plant-protein treatment has proved to be a smashing success!
This is the evening of my 5th day of doing this and I've reaped some wonderful results.
First off, my period finally came on its own without the help of any herbs or animal proteins! Yey!
I have been keeping notes this entire time of any changes I might have noticed because I tend to forget this kind of stuff. Here are some of the benefits that I've had since the beginning:
- My nails got noticeably harder from the first day and are still growing strong and hard which is a great relief after having brittle nails for over 2 years now
- My hair went from dry and lifeless to shiny and strong. It regained that long-lost ability to untie itself when I make a knot with a small lock of it.
- Muscle regeneration has been much faster
- Surprisingly, muscle definition went up, too, despite me putting on a little fat from all the excess eating. I think it's from faster muscle gain even though I wasn't doing more exercise than normal.
- For awhile now, I've been having very unpleasant and painful edema every time I would overindulge in carbs like dates and rice. The edema was getting more and more severe recently. I haven't had any since I started boosting protein intake.
- What I thought were the early symptoms of varicose veins, like sensation of heaviness in legs and even pain, have also almost completely gone away. I attribute these last two benefits to the role protein plays in fluid drainage.
- Sugar cravings have gone down. I always deal with these cravings through sweet fruit and they didn't bother me much because I wouldn't feel guilty after indulging in them but not having them as much does hint to me that maybe my blood sugar levels are more stable or something. Though I did miss my habitual big amounts of juicy fruit that I was used to.
I think that's about it. I'm very happy with all of these results because they are all issues that have been troubling me for some time now but which I had almost completely given up on ever eliminating. This proves to me that almost any health problem can be treated with plant foods as long as you pick the right ones.
What I was doing for the last days was eating insane amounts of protein rich plant foods with lentils as my staple. I would consume over 80grs of protein in a day with some days going up to over a 100grs. On most days I did consume more calories than I would think to be necessary for my body but I was looking at this as treatment and something that I needed to do. For once in my life I tried not to fixate too much on weight gain. I have put on a couple of pounds but I think I'm still in that period where my body stocks up on nutrients because it's afraid I might deprive it again later on. So I'm giving it some time to figure out that I will be good to it from now on and it doesn't need to store up on anything. I'm building trust, lol.
I'll be going strong on protein for a couple more days until I feel that the situation has been stabilized and after that I'm going to cut back on the protein without it ever dropping as low as before.
Again thanks to all of you for your help and support! I will keep you updated in case I notice any other miracle results
Ina