Why I Switched to the Blood Type Diet After Years of Gut Issues

In the summer of 2023, I learned about the blood type diet. Looking back now, I can see why that discovery felt so significant to me. After years of trying different approaches to my health, I finally came across something that explained why my body seemed to react so differently to certain foods.

The blood type diet was unlike anything I had tried before. What stood out to me was that it wasn't based on the idea that everyone should eat the same way. Two people could follow the blood type diet and eat completely different foods because they had different blood types.

That idea was monumental for me because, by that point, I already knew there was no way my digestive tract agreed with a uniform diet for all of humanity.

When I look back at my journey now, I can see that I had been searching for that answer for years.

The Beginning

Ever since I was little, I had various health issues. I had strep throat every year, digestive issues, and my parents said I had a lot of mucus and cried every night, all night long. I later learned that the inconsolable night crying was called colic.

Looking back, though, those experiences were the beginning of a pattern I wouldn't fully understand until much later.

When I was in high school, I took an alternative gym class for girls where we learned how to strength train for women, do yoga, make smoothies and listen to our bodies.

That class gave me something I didn't realize I would need for years to come: the ability to pay attention to how food made me feel.

And how I felt on a daily basis was bloated, gassy, itchy and confused from brain fog. Brain fog was not exactly helpful when I was trying to succeed as a high-achieving high school and college student.

So I started applying what I had learned outside of school. I changed my habits around junk food, fried food, candy and soda and began paying closer attention to what happened when eating each whole food.

As time went on, it became clear that I had poor digestive health. I noticed that my body would react negatively to certain foods almost immediately.

Gluten, dairy and sugar could leave me bloated and itchy all over. Coffee would make my body vibrate and itch and send me straight to the bathroom. Pork seemed to upset my monthly cycle. Popcorn gave me the worst stomach cramps in the middle of the night.

At least I had started connecting foods with symptoms. That was helpful, but it was also frustrating to know what was making me feel bad without understanding why.

My family and friends didn't really understand what I was going through either. I often had to fend for myself by buying and cooking food I knew I could handle so I wouldn't feel sick.

I even had to bring my own food to gatherings and figure out how to concisely and respectfully explain why I couldn't eat dishes that my family and friends were so proud of. 

At the time, it all felt like poison to me. What I couldn't understand was why I seemed to be the only one having these problems.

Connecting the Dots

Because I wasn't getting the answers I needed, I spent a lot of time researching my symptoms and trying to connect the dots myself.

I bought countless supplements and herbs because I was determined to figure out how to feel better.

Eventually, I came across a course that taught me about Candida. That became another major chapter in my health journey because, for the first time, I had a framework that seemed to explain many of the things I had been experiencing.

I became very focused on sugar, probiotics and gut health. Once I learned about probiotics, I thought I had hit the jackpot.

Off I went buying probiotics, brand after brand, and trying to figure out: 

1. how many million cultures I needed

2. whether I needed the refrigerated kind or the shelf-stable kind

3. and which one was actually going to help me

The health and fitness industry started to look a lot like the fashion industry to me. One minute something was “right,” and the next minute everyone was saying it was wrong.

Meanwhile, I just wanted relief.

I had developed skin issues, digestive issues, nail issues, scalp issues and ear issues. It felt like my whole body was being affected, while I was being sent from one specialist to another.

What I wanted was for someone to look at everything together and help me understand the root cause.

When that didn't happen, I took matters into my own hands.

I diagnosed myself with Candida overgrowth because my symptoms matched what I had learned online. The official term is Candidiasis which is an overgrowth of the yeast/fungus called Candida that feeds on sugar and populates in various places in the body, usually in a controlled state.

Mine was out of control.

So I followed the vegan anti-Candida protocol from the course I had purchased.  It required me to juice fast and take specific probiotics to get rid of the excess Candida.  I had hope that it would work.

It helped somewhat, but it didn't give me the healing I had been looking for.

I later learned about CCWS through a Candida support group on Facebook and tried that as well.

That protocol did help my gut feel better, although it came with its own challenges, having to purchase it from the Philippines only and keeping up with the cost.

Looking back, I can see that I was constantly moving from one answer to another. Each thing taught me something, but none of them completely explained what my body needed.

I just didn't know what piece was missing yet.

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Searching for Guidance and Structure

Eventually, I decided to get a colonoscopy to see what an actual gastroenterologist would recommend for my digestive issues.

I was told that I had an inflamed colon and was advised to consume yogurt and kefir for their probiotics yo calm my colon.

That was a suggestion to eat dairy and by that time, I had already become weary about dairy because sometimes it gave me a sour stomach.  So I decided to go with dairy-free yogurt for a while.

Later, I discovered Montreal Healthy Girl on YouTube, where she talked about healing the digestive system and mentioned kefir as an important staple.

So, naturally, I went right back to researching kefir and eventually found the Cultured Food Life podcast and listened to almost every episode. Donna Schweck, the host, had such a caring and nurturing voice, and I appreciated how genuinely she wanted people to heal through fermented foods.

Eventually, I learned how to make my own dairy milk kefir. I even got my mom to make and drink it, and she experienced surprisingly good results with her schizo-effective disorder.

Drinking kefir every day and staying away from foods that gave me bad reactions actually helped me with decreasing excess mucus, and balancing my digestion, mental and emotional well-being and even thickening my hair.

For a while, I thought I had finally found the answer.

My body had improved, but I still had gas and bloating. I was healthier than before, but I still wasn't as healthy as I wanted to be. (As you can see, I wasn’t settling for less than optimal health.)

And that was the pattern I kept running into.

Something would help.

Something would make sense.

Something would move me forward.

But something was still missing.  I just didn't know what it was.

Then I Found the Book

One day, while getting a smoothie from one of my favorite vegan shops, I noticed a book sitting on a shelf next to some blood type tests.

The title was Eat Right 4 Your Type.

I sat down and read a little to see if it was worth reading further.

And it was!  It explained in detail everything I was going through and labeled it as health concerns of people with Blood Type O who don’t eat according to their blood type. 

The digestive issues, the skin issues, the Candida!  Even my frequently cold hands and feet.  It was all there.

Later, I got the book from my library and I dug into it like I had never done with any other book.

Looking back, this was one of those moments that ended up changing the direction of my life.

I felt like I was reading about the missing piece of my identity.

Then I had to pause and ask myself the big question before moving any further: 

Am I Blood Blood Type O??

From the beginning, I had a feeling I was Blood Type O because the health tendencies and dietary recommendations sounded so familiar.

They seemed to validate things I had been experiencing for years.

I couldn't wait to take the blood test, and when I did, I was correct!

I’m Blood Type O+.

Ready to figure out where to start?

Take the Why Am I Always Bloated, Hungry, or Tired? quiz to identify the Type O nourishment pattern that may be getting in your way.

The Missing Piece

Looking back, discovering my blood type gave me a completely different way of understanding my food choices.

The book explained that people with different blood types could have different dietary needs. And for me, the recommendations for Type O seemed to connect many of the dots I had been trying to connect on my own.

One of the biggest surprises was the emphasis on red meat, like beef and lamb.

I had spent most of my adult life trying to stay away from meat, even going days without eating it, and felt proud of myself for doing so as I was preparing myself to become a vegan.

But I always craved meat.

I had never imagined that the thing I had spent years trying to avoid could actually be something my body needed.

That realization changed the way I looked at my previous attempts to eat “healthy.”

I had been trying so hard to follow what I thought was the healthiest way to eat without considering whether it was actually appropriate for me.

The blood type diet gave me the guidance and structure I had been needing all this time to pivot in the right direction of personalized nutrition.

Instead of simply trying to starve or eliminate a problem, I finally had a framework for thinking about what I was actually putting into my body.

Before that, I had been left with questions like:

• Why do some foods bother me and not others?

• Should I drink dairy, or no?

• Which probiotics and supplements are actually right for me?

Finding the blood type diet didn't mean every question about health suddenly disappeared.

But it gave me a framework that made those questions easier to understand.

For the first time, I wasn't simply asking, “What's the healthiest diet?”

I was asking, 

“What's healthiest for me?”

That was a major shift.

What I Understand Now

When I look back at all of the diets, supplements, courses, probiotics, protocols and experiments I tried, I don't see them as a waste of time.

They were stepping stones.

Every attempt taught me something about my body and brought me a little closer to understanding what I needed.

The biggest lesson was that I couldn't keep taking someone else's results and assuming they would become my results simply because the diet was considered healthy and it worked for them.

I had spent years trying to figure out why something that worked for someone else didn't necessarily work for me.

Finding the blood type diet gave me an explanation that finally made sense to me.

Instead of trying to force my body into someone else's definition of healthy, I could start paying attention to what actually supported my own body.

That was the real turning point.

🌙 Want to Explore the Spiritual Side of Nourishment?

As I learned to listen to my body, I also discovered that healing wasn't only about changing what I ate. The spiritual and energetic side of nourishment helped me understand what was happening within me and supported a deeper kind of healing.

That’s why I created Room for Sacred Softness, a free virtual space where Type O women can explore the connection between nourishment, stress, the body, chakras, lunar rhythms, and inner awareness.

Looking Back

When I think about that period of my life now, I can see that I was never really starting from scratch.

I had already spent years learning about probiotics, enzymes, herbs, digestion, food reactions and the relationship between what I ate and how I felt.

I had been gathering pieces of the puzzle without knowing what the finished picture looked like.

Finding the blood type diet helped me put those pieces together.

I don't look at everything I tried before the blood type diet as wasted effort. Even the things that didn't ultimately work for me taught me something.

They taught me to listen to my body.

They taught me to question one-size-fits-all health advice.

They taught me to research.

And, perhaps most importantly, they taught me that feeling better wasn't just about finding the right supplement or eliminating the right food.

I needed to understand my body.

Once I found that framework, I was ready to move forward with a completely different perspective.

The next part of my journey was on learning how to actually live this way: learning which foods worked for me, figuring out how to prepare them, understanding the supplements and herbs recommended for Type O, and learning how to properly cook a steak.

After everything I had tried, that felt like a pretty interesting place for the journey to lead me.

Keep Reading: What Happened When I Followed the Blood Type O Diet for a Year (coming soon!)