Ah… a good question… I feel like I have been swimming underwater for several months now waiting for an air hole to open up in the ice above…

I have been working with my diet for awhile, trying out the Nomad GenoType Diet for size. I find that at this point, it does not fit me very well. This is a little disconcerting as it really isn’t that much different from the B secretor recommendations that I have been so loyal to all these years. With the GTD, I continue to have difficulty with periodic blood sugar swings, and my seasonal allergies have kicked up a few notches this year too. As Dr. D’Adamo says in “The Genotype Diet”… “One clue: The right diet will always make you feel better, not worse.” On the quiz, I do score higher on the BTD than the GTD as well. So there you go.

There are some concepts from the GTD that I do include, although I hesitate to combine both diets… I just do not think that is the best compromise. As I have written before, I think gluten is something of an issue for me but I have chosen to do low-gluten rather than no-gluten as the no-gluten grains just do not have enough bulk for me. I changed my brown rice choice to a medium grain, rather than long grain… not as fluffy but more heft to it that helps. I might even go back to short grain from my macrobiotic days, we’ll see. But I do eat spelt bread on occasion, and use spelt flour in a couple recipes. I have been pleased to find that most of my favorite recipes easily adapt to rice flour or a rice/oat flour combo. I have added wakame to my bean cooking water for now… not the same as my beloved miso of the distant past but I have been trying to find a way to incorporate more of a sea veggie intake and this is any easy way to do that.

When reading the Nomad profile, I guffawed out loud when I read that nomads tend to “sleep restfully” Uh… yeah…. Not Me. One of my earliest memories is lying awake in bed at night. Often. While everyone else in the household slept. I think in my earlier years, I just thought that was the natural pattern of sleep, being awake for portions of the night. Sleeping well, and 'restfully', has certainly been, and continues to be one of my biggest health challenges. I have begun taking time to meditate again. I know the positive effects of meditation are really felt over time, not the quick solution by any means. I hope I have the where-with-all to make it a daily practice… once again. It is frustrating, isn’t it?… to have all the tools needed for glorious, radiant health and well-being and then to find oneself not using them. One of the conundrums of being human.