Jim here… Yesterday, Wendi toughed it out and typed up a lengthy health update (a painful process  for her — trust me!). So, for the rest of this week, I’m going to fill in here (letting her get back to her resting and healing) and share a few interesting stories related to this Lyme adventure. But first, I wanted to add that today brought some great improvements in Wendi’s condition. She was able to do a physical movement (wrapping a towel around her head) without pain for the first time in months. So, we really think those antibiotics are starting to kick in.

Today’s topic is intuitive eating. I’m certain we’ve covered this many times on the blog here. So, rather than explain what it is again, I’ll just share an intresting example. Basically, while dealing with these Lyme symptoms, Wendi experienced a serious craving for olives.

Going back a few years, I can remember when it was only myself and KDcat who would ever even touch olives in our household. I’ve carried on a life-long love affair with the little delicacies, in fact, dating back to my childhood when my Irish grandfather always gave me the olives from his martinis.

Much, much later (once we began studying raw foods three or four years back), we learned that most olives are not in fact raw;  most have been effectively cooked during the canning / jarring process. Whether the ones in the fancy olive bars (which seem to be ubiquitous in upscale grocers these days) are raw or not, I’m uncertain. (And, where we’re uncertain, we usually assume things are not raw.)

Once you’re a “raw food person,” you naturally start to seek out raw versions of things not commonly found in their natural, raw state. Fortunately, most of these items (e.g., non-roasted nuts and seeds) are relatively easy to procure. Olives are a bit trickier. For us, we normally need to order from an online retailer. (I’ll share some super olive links at the bottom of this post.)

We first discovered the availability of raw olives a few years back, and it was super-fun for me to witness Wendi transition from someone for whom the thought of olives did nothing to someone from whom you’d better hide your stash, lest she get into them and eat them all up!

Okay, just kidding. But, she really does love them now. Who knows why… Is it because raw changed her taste buds? Is it because the cooking process had always destroyed some essential nutrient? Is it because many of the available raw varieties are of a higher caliber than what’s widely available commercially?  Or is it because raw olives simply taste better to her than any of the canned ones she’d tried before? Who knows…

The interesting thing is not only that she began to like them (and she’s now enjoyed them for at least a year now), but that she began to crave them. Wendi’s always been uncommonly in tune with her body and has always had the experience of craving foods that her body needed to heal or address various issues (especially when we ate cooked foods and those physical ailments were significantly more common). Other times, a craving is simply a craving.

So, when she first began to crave olives, she thought that it related to a return to wanting tasty, richer foods after doing that five-day water fast. Her desire for olives reached a point, however, that matched her craving for coconut in the beginning of her raw journey. She knew her body was needing the olives, so she ordered six packs of them and couldn’t think of anything but olives until they arrived. Here’s what’s interesting: when she looked into it more deeply, guess what olives are especially good for?

A major symptom of Lyme is the joint inflammation and resultant arthritis-like feeling. Olives contain monounsaturated fats and phytonutrients (polyphenols and flavonoids) that help address this common problem. As such, inclusion of olives and olive oil in the diet is recommended for anyone suffering from inflammatory illnesses (such as rheumatoid arthritis).

So, this is just a small, but noteworthy example of how tuning into your body (or, at least learning to do so), and then taking action on that feeling, can actually result in getting the nutrition you need. Learning to listen to your body may not be an overnight process, of course. Quite often, it’s helpful to observe how you feel after you’ve eaten something.

If you feel weighted down or sour, what is your body potentially telling you about that food? (I say “potentially” because there may be a variety of reasons why you feel the way you do.) Over time, though, this communication between yourself and your body can indeed be established — and you can benefit directly from it!

Wendi has finished off the olives (maybe KDcat and I helped her out a bit), and we’ll be ordering more very soon, since she’s still desiring them a great deal. She’s feeling so much better the past two days, so the olives may be helping as much as the antibiotic!

Okay, I know some of you want those olive links, as promised. These Botija olives are hands-down our favorites! They’re 100% raw, 200% delicious, and 300% addicting. (I also wanted to note that, while commerce was not the point of this article, these links do go through our affiliate link with Natural Zing. Wendi has shared the links many times with our Pure Jeevan family because she loves these particular olives so much.)

• http://tinyurl.com/SpicyBotijaOlives (spicy, but not overly so… these ones have pits, which makes you slow down a bit while eating them. They are also a bit less salty than the ones without pits, probably because no curing seasalt is entering the center where the pit is.)
   
• http://tinyurl.com/HerbedBotijaOlives (just like the above ones, but with nice herbs instead of hot spices).
   
• http://tinyurl.com/PeruvianOlives (no pits, and seasalt-cured, these can be eaten faster — but try to pace yourself or you’ll over-eat and that could mean a stomach ache! Great for flavoring up a raw pasta dish, too!)

If you try the olives (all on sale as of this writing), let us know what you think! We’re sure you’ll LOVE them. Here’s a link to a vidoe of a recipe that Wendi created for my mother. It includes the olives (since my mother is an olive-lover, as well). Wendi  has received countless emails about how delicious this pasta sauce is…it’s very much like a cooked pasta sauce from an upscale Italian restaurant! Here’s the link: Paradisio Pasta Pomodoro!

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