The book Eat Right 4 Your Blood Type has proven to be an important source of nutritional guidance for most of my adult life.
From around the age of nine-years old I started having negative reactions from eating the standard American diet. When I consumed foods that contained processed wheat and sugars I felt “off” balance, experienced brain fog and felt a general sense of lethargy for hours, and sometimes even days. I’d often express to my parents that I felt tired or sometimes, had too much energy, which made it hard to focus.
Other than feeling tired and increasingly melancholic much of the time, I was an active child. Physical activity gave me energy which led me to competitive sports where I was fully engaged. I thrived in a competitive setting. Still, that alone was not enough and I continued to complain to my parents about my tiredness and lack of energy.
My parents sought the council of western medicine. After my doctor ruled out diabetes he diagnosed me with hypoglycemia - or low blood sugar. Even though I had a name for what was negatively affecting my energy, the doctor was not helpful in giving me a solution to combat the feelings of fatigue.
Frustrated, my parents took me to a Nutritionist. The nutritionist explained that hypoglycemia was my body’s reaction to eating simple foods, or foods which rank high on the glycemic index - like processed grains and sugars. Ingesting simple foods caused my blood glucose levels to spike followed quickly by a sharp let down in blood sugar, resulting in the “off” balance feeling. The solution to this was to eat a diet high in protein in order to stabilize my blood sugar in addition to cutting down on carbohydrates. This type of eating would reduce the amount of ups and downs I experience throughout my day.
With the limited knowledge available in the early 80’s, I practiced what the Nutritionist suggested and those few rules until my early 20’s, tweaking my diet continuously and paying close attention to what I ate and how I felt after I ate it. Eventually I realized I was so sensitive to simple sugars that are so common in the american diet that I started eliminating nearly all grains and carbohydrates - including fruits - and eating mostly protein. Looking back, I made some uniformed conclusions in regards to carbohydrates.
Then I happened upon the book which changed my life, Eat Right 4 your Blood Type by …
What struck me first was how we as a species developed four distinct blood types that changed over the relatively short time span of time of about 10,000 years. First the O type(hunter/gatherer) developed and then the A type(the cultivator) next the B-type(the nomad) and lastly the AB type.(the Enigma) These changes co-inside with humans starting off being primarily hunting and gathers(O) to growing crops (A) to living a wondering tribesmen lifestyle (B) to the combining of A and B-type into another unique future blood type. (AB).
It was amazing for me to me see the blood type maps of our ancestors and how even today most people in any given country are nearly all the same blood type.
What was most compelling to me personally was that all the foods for my O "type" were foods I was naturally drawn to eat to feel good over the years. I found that eating lean/clean meats and mostly vegetables made me feel best. It also became more apparent to why processed grains, fats and inorganic foods had always given me low blood sugar in the past. My body was evidently reacting to the parts of food that weren't healthy for me; it was not because I "ate carbohydrates," which was a relief because now I could eat a more well-rounded diet.
The food categories in the book made it easy to experiment and incorporate more and more clean/non-grain carbohydrates into my diet. The list was also helpful in narrowing down what fruits and vegetables that I'm best suited to eat.
Using the principles in this book has without a doubt changed my life for the better. I notice that I have steady and consistent energy and I feel like I'm able to live a more "balanced" life.
