I am a chef by profession and three years ago I opened my first restaurant, Mae – located in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, above The French Paradox wine shop. I have been cooking professionally for 16 years and was a food writer with The Irish Times for a year.
After a food poisoning incident, I experienced h.pylori and required a huge amount of antibiotics to get rid of it. This negatively affected my immune system. My body never felt like it fully recovered and, for years after, I suffered vague but constant symptoms that were too broad to narrow down to one specific disorder or deficiency. I eventually did an allergy test, which indicated I was allergic to barley and intolerant to a few other ingredients.
This for me was great news.
I finally had an answer and when I cut this out of my diet I would finally feel better.
But it didn’t work.
I cut the offending items out – and felt no better. I was eating healthily, going to the gym and drinking lots of water, but still the fatigue and general malaise persisted. I decided to try a different approach as I seemed to “flare up” directly after eating, regardless of what type of food I was eating, which pointed to an intolerance (but not to any of the ones I was told I had). I decided to try an elimination diet, where I would cut out a few different food groups and see if I felt better, and then slowly reintroduce food groups to see which one caused me troubles.
I decided on a diet that is high in protein and very low sugar (think keto but a bit more restrictive) to start with. I would monitor the results and see how I was feeling and if I didn’t feel any better after one month, I’d stop and eliminate protein, etc.
My diet for the next month consisted of meat, fish, eggs, cheese, milk, teas. I initially didn’t drink alcohol and added it back in the third week (I don’t drink barley any more, so would drink wine or champagne).
After one month, I felt much better than I had and noticed an increase in energy levels and my general wellbeing. I continued with this diet for another two months or so, and then decided to reintroduce more into my diet. Then, in the run-up to December (our busiest period), I lost focus and stopped keeping note of how I was feeling and felt like I had gone right back to where I started, and my energy levels were low.
I’ve seen what burnout can look like and I felt I had reached a point where I had to start taking my health more seriously, otherwise I may be headed there. A lifetime – from early age to adulthood to currently – of being in very high-stress situations all the time can take its toll. Couple that with owning a business and being a head chef and everything in between, I had a decision to make.
I decided to redo my elimination technique, but commit 100 per cent to it and remove all sugar (both processed and natural) and only include green tea/water and black coffee for the first month. Here is what happened over a period of six months:
Month one
I only ate fish, meat, cheese, butter and eggs and drank green tea and water. I didn’t feel great and had lots of bad headaches a few days in, along with general aches and pains. I’m more of a savoury person than sweet, but found I was craving something sweet. This subsided by week three. I was also doing intermittent fasting, eating once a day in a four-hour time frame.
Month two
Bloating had gone, including in my face and my energy levels had increased drastically. My food cravings were non-existent, as I wasn’t eating the food for pleasure, but purely for its minerals and nutrients. It was around this time that I realised how unsustainable this was going to be as food is quite literally my whole life, and not eating it for pleasure just wasn’t a long-term option. I had more decisions to make, but, in the meantime, I continued with my eating plan until I decided on my next step.
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Month three
My goal was to feel better and a byproduct of that was weight loss. Reducing my sugar and carb intake meant my body was in ketosis and I was burning fat at a higher rate. Your body will always burn sugar first, and then fat as a secondary option. If you are going to burn fat, you need to burn the sugar first. By now, I was looking noticeably healthier. My skin felt glowy for the first time in a long time and little things like my hair and nails were growing stronger and I wasn’t having energy dips during the day. But I was really missing vegetables and fruits and decided to add them back in.
Month four
Adding tomatoes, berries and a whole host of naturally tasty fruit and veg back in to my diet was heaven. Interestingly, it didn’t affect how I was feeling, I wasn’t having energy dips and, by this point, I had lost all of my unwanted excess weight without introducing an exercise regime. I had also reintroduced carbs, but was very specific about which ones (the bread we make in Mae is just flour and water – natural sourdough) and found that even this didn’t affect my energy levels or bring on headaches, etc.
This changed when I went on holiday to France. I decided to have two glasses of champagne with dinner and an ice cream as a treat and woke up the next day feeling awful. My face had broken out in spots which were really sore to touch, I had an awful headache and felt generally unwell. I rarely suffer with skin issues, so it was very clear that my body was rejecting something, and it became obvious that it was the sugar. To be sure, I tested sugar-free alcohol to make sure it wasn’t from that, and then tried processed sugar again, with the same results.
Months five and six
Around this time I was formally diagnosed with ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder), which is something I had suspected for a long time, but had never researched enough to know how it can affect aspects of your life that you may not even be aware of – impulsivity and dopamine-seeking (sugar hits count as a dopamine hit). I went for assessment as I realised cutting out sugar was the final lifestyle change I could make before running out of ideas on how to harness my energy and learn to focus.
I learned that ADHD is not as common as people think, and that it is a medically recognised neurological disorder. To put it simply, people with ADHD have broken dopamine receptors, so it takes more for them to generate dopamine from activity. Neurotypical people’s dopamine receptors give them little dopamine hits all through the day. People with ADHD are dopamine deficient, so they seek out dopamine more than others. I believe it should be renamed, as the stereotype of the condition mainly applying to hyperactive little boys is not accurate, and often women are not diagnosed because they learn to mask it from an early age.
I have now gone more than eight months without processed sugar (give or take a few times), and I would say that my life has changed because of it. Not always in positive ways, mainly that life is just different. I eat out a lot less and, as a result, I cook at home a lot more. I find it’s just easier than asking for no sugar and explaining constantly.
Just this evening a waiter said, “Oh you’re driving?” when I didn’t want to see a wine list (twice). My social life has changed in that it no longer centres on going for a meal or a glass of wine for a catch-up. I am back in the gym again and the energy dips are gone, even though I am up early and home late most days.
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As a chef, people ask me how I can test the food we cook with sugar, but we only have sugar in two desserts on the menu and the girls in the kitchen are more than happy to quality control it. I can then eat most other foods that are on our menu.
I have fallen in love with fruit again. I feel like it tastes different. Like a smoker quitting and then eating a meal with their renewed taste buds. I crave it now at night-time and have come up with the most magical delicious treats. I also love home cooking again, and being creative. Limiting yourself frees your creativity, and you would be extremely surprised how much sugar is in your everyday food. I have been a chef for 16 years and have made mayonnaise in every kitchen I have worked in. It would be unheard of to add sugar. Yet, there is sugar in most shop-bought mayonnaise.
It’s worth noting that my issue didn’t just begin after a food poisoning incident, it just exacerbated on and off stomach issues I had had before (never diagnosed).
- People can experience negative side effects when they eat less sugar (such as headaches, fatigue or mood changes). You should always consult with your GP and specialist before making any drastic changes to your diet.
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