Holidays, Carbs and Joint Pain

During the holidays, my usual health resolve weakened. I let my guard down and abandoned some of my usual healthy habits. Coupled with the stay at home COVID-19 pandemic, this holiday season turned into a self-soothing comfort food free for all.

While I was reveling in my self-soothing free for all, I noticed I started feeling hip pain. I couldn’t understand why because I had not done anything out of the ordinary. If you’ve read other posts on this blog, you’ll know that I’m a “middle-aged” woman (yes, I intend to live to 120 so that makes me middle age) that is generally in good health. My biggest health challenge was sciatica and I believe I’ve conquered that.

With the recent nagging hip pain, I kept asking myself, “What have I done to cause this?” I would recall the events of the day and couldn’t come up with any particular action that could result in such pain.

Holiday, COVID, or Just Lazy

I’d like to blame it on the Holiday season or COVID-19, but the truth is, I just didn’t feel like cooking. As a result, I relaxed some of my usual dietary habits. Between restaurant dining in and home delivery take out, foods like rice, pizza, Mexican, and Chinese spring rolls started creeping into my daily food consumption. Fortunately, I drew the line when it came to the pies, cakes and cookies, but the savory foods were harder for me to resist.

Along with the increase in processed carbs came an increase in my waistline along with increases in other areas of my body. In other words, I started gaining weight. My pants became snug and my form-fitting t-shirts had a bit more form to fit. I started to feel like (and probably looked like) a stuffed sausage.

Vanity and Pain Relief

Not realizing how my increasing waistline and hip pain were caused by the same culprit, I decided to reign things in. I dropped all of the processed carbs. I stopped eating pizza, rice, tortilla chips, and spring rolls. I went back back to my usual meat dominant, organic food way of eating.

Instead of going to my favorite Mexican restaurant where I’d be tempted to snack on the tortillas, bean dip, rice and refried beans, I made my own Camarones de Ajo. I spooned it over raw kale and was satisfied. For pizza, I returned to my favorite keto pizza recipe and totally left the spring rolls alone.

Quick Reversal

Within a few days, I noticed a reduction in belly bloat. The reduction in bloat wasn’t a surprise, but the reduction in hip pain was. Just three days after cutting out the offending foods, I noticed a significant decrease in hip pain. So much so that I was able to forgo my usual morning magnesium/essential oil hip massage.

Processed Carbs and Joint Pain

Of course, living through the experience wasn’t enough. I had to check with Dr. Google to see if my high carb/hip pain correlation was all in my head. Fortunately, Dr. Google agreed with me. Here are a few links to articles and videos about how carbs play a role in inflammation, joint pain, and arthritis.

• How to Get Relief from Joint Pain on the Ketogenic Diet

• Anti-Inflammatory Diet 101: How to Reduce Inflammation Naturally

• High-Fat, Low-Carb Diets, Mobility & Joint Health w/ Dr. Shalini Bhat

Back to Basics

My dalliance into higher carbs, belly bloat, and increased joint pain this holiday season were great reminders of what could happen if I let things go too far. Having said that, I’m back on track.

In hindsight, I realize my energy level also took a hit. My usual energy level is something akin to the Ever Ready Bunny. However, during my hip pain/stomach bloat I noticed that some of my get up and go, got up and went. Now that I’ve got things resolved, I’m back to my usual energetic self. And you can bet that it will be a long time before I stray again. I like having energy and being pain-free.

Between you and me, I sort of feel sorry for my immediate family. I can be a bit tough to take when my energy bank is full. Thank God for my grandkids. They know how to efficiently handle my excess energy flow.