Hiatus and a new blog

I am taking a hiatus from this blog. I feel like the main point of a nutrition blog is to write about nutrition and to be honest, food and I are like wary, grudging roommates at this point instead of the good friends we used to be. I eat because I have to, I eat as healthfully as hormones will allow, but really I don't feel like cooking or thinking for long periods of time about food right now-- I can't see that changing until after the baby is born.

However, I do like writing, and so I've started a new blog where I will talk about things in my life besides food, and in perhaps a much more irreverent style than I have allowed myself here.

You can check out my adventures here. Otherwise perhaps I'll see you back here next year, when my body is willing to cooperate with things like protein again :)

It's a BOY!!!

I was stunned to find out this morning we are having a little boy! I was sure he was going to be a girl. Surprise! That kind of made it sweet though, to have it be so surprising and M. was THRILLED. He really wanted a boy and had convinced himself it would be a girl, so he was over the moon at getting his wish. We are so excited to meet this guy! M and I look alike (brown hair, blue/green eyes, fair skin) so we know kind of ballpark of what he might look like, but the big family question now is whether he'll have red hair, as we have that recessive gene (my brother, M's mom) on both sides. Finding out the gender weirdly made it feel that much more real-- instead of an abstract baby in there, it's a little boy, whom we named months before he was even conceived. (Sorry, not going to tell you what his name is yet but he does have one). As of Sunday we will be 20 weeks-- half way through, though I'm convinced he will be late (best to believe he won't be on time then be stomping my feet when the due date comes and goes, which is what happened to my friend who recently gave birth and was sure her son would be early and was instead a week late!)

I've been having major allergies or maybe a bit of a cold, causing me a runny nose, sore throat and congested lungs, and increasing my nausea-- I threw up this morning making M eggs because I cracked an egg that had gone bad. Just recounting it here makes me gag.

A lot of food things still sound bad-- the "good" kind of sausage from my local co-op is the most palatable protein and I just finished the best batch of nectarines so far this year. Lunch was ground beef and beans in a brown rice tortilla, which did not digest very well-- bread based stuff really sits in my stomach in an acid kind of way. We are having chicken salad for dinner-- hopefully I can get that down as I could definitely use some veggies. I actually keep craving soup, probably because I've fallen off the wagon with my chicken stock consumption (I have some that's been in my fridge for over a week with the bones still in it-- wonder if it's still good?), but it's 80 degrees outside!

Pretzels, Potential and Puking

We are in a state of controlled chaos around here. Because what else would rational people do at nearly 5 months pregnant, but buy a property that needs a lot of work and try and sell a house? We are currently in an inspection process for a property that has two very small houses on it in Seattle. Both need work to be livable, but the plan being we will live in one and rent out the other once they are finished. We have been running around like mad getting our current house clean and organized to put on the market ASAP, meeting with Real Estate Agents, meeting with architects and inspectors and generally doing 18 things at once. M. says if it all falls through at least we'll have the cleanest house ever! It really never has been this organized-- all but one closet left to do are completely clean. I had a vague plan of getting more organized before the baby comes but this put that plan on fast forward-- my office is now officially a baby room after I spent all weekend cleaning out old school stuff and boxing everything else up.

I've also unfortunately had a resurgence of a lot of foods sounding bad, especially the protein ones. I've tried several times to explain to baby that eggs are good for us and free but he or she is not interested. I also seem to still be averaging once a week of either throwing up or near misses and THAT is getting very old.

Baby seems to have had a growth spurt in the past week or so. After gaining a pound a week for several weeks I suddenly gained 3 practically overnight which was kind of scary, but my bump got a lot bigger in that time too so I think it's all baby. I thought my bump was pretty obvious, but with all these realtors we've been meeting they have either been surprised that I'm pregnant (wearing looser shirts seems to confuse people) or else not quite sure if I'm pregnant or just have a little pot belly. Weird how depending on what I have on it changes completely. But since I lost so much weight in the beginning, technically I've only gained 6 pounds above my pre-pregnancy weight (though I lost and regained another 6 and can't decide how that counts in the total-- it either puts me on the high end or low end of normal--before the 3 pound surge I was hanging out slightly below the charts if you don't include weight re-gain, so maybe we were just catching up). The whole process is very fascinating to me. On Friday we have an ultrasound, and will hopefully find out the gender! I can't wait.

The other annoying thing is I really don't have a lot of stamina. I'm not as constantly tired as I was in the first trimester, but I also get worn out pretty easily. Doing all this massive cleaning in our house has knocked me out-- I tried to work out yesterday but it was kind of half-hearted. Today I went to the mall to buy new towels for staging our house and after an hour or so I just came home empty handed because I was too tired to do any more. I'm also constantly either hungry, too full, or grossed out by food-- sometimes all three at once. Unfortunately I discovered these gluten free pretzels that are really good-- all refined garbage but they go down so nicely. I think I might ask the midwife to check my iron levels-- perhaps I'm becoming anemic.

At any rate big things are happening around here. Cross your fingers for us our house sells quickly... I really hope to move before the baby comes, but it's all very much up in the air.

18 weeks: I'm not sure I know how to do Paleo + Pregnant

I really have been trying to eat paleo, and I'm definitely eating better than I did during the first trimester, but I can't say it's 100% Paleo, and I am not sure I can get there. One of the reasons that paleo is so great for losing weight is eating vegetables and protein as your primary meal is very self-limiting in terms of calories. Most people can't significantly overeat chicken salad. The problem is that during pregnancy, your body naturally wants less meat-- the kidneys process urea (a by-product of protein breakdown) more slowly, and so excess just is unappealing for most people-- I can eat a smallish portion three meals a day, but I just can't get down more than about a palm sized amount. That leaves vegetables, mainly salad for me at the moment since it's summer and I have more lettuce than I know what to do with in the garden, and tomatoes are in season so I'm taking advantage of that. I do eat fruit, probably 2-3 pieces a day-- peaches, grapes and cherries especially. At dinner most nights we have potatoes or yams. But all of that rarely adds up to more than about 1600 calories a day, which is just not enough and I find myself eating handfuls of chocolate covered almonds or occasionally worse treats instead of more nutrient dense food. Grains really don't agree with me all that well, so I don't want to add those back in-- I really wish I could tolerate dairy as I'd love to eat yogurt, but that's out. It ends up being very limiting and I'm not quite sure what to do about it. I often find myself very tired mid-day and often it is because I haven't eaten enough.

Exercise is not as consistent as I'd hoped either-- I only seem to find the energy a couple times a week, and a workout wipes me out. Today I walked about 2 miles and while it was nice to get outside, I was for one thing very slow (I usually walk the whole 3 miles of this particular trail and I only did about 3/4 and it still took me longer than the whole thing usually does!) I do a bit of weight work when I make it to the gym too, but it's pretty inconsistent.

Besides all that, we are discussing selling our house and moving closer to work. Our original plan was to do that next summer, but it is possible we could do it earlier if a bunch of things fall into place, but it adds a whole other element of stress and complexity to our impending parenthood as we ponder not only moving, but moving to a much smaller house!

A week from Friday we get our first real ultrasound-- I am hoping baby wants to show us whether it's a he or a she-- I have had a very definitive feeling about it since very early on, and I will be really thrown for a loop if my intuition was wrong! But either way I'm looking forward to making sure everything is going well.

16.5 weeks-- update

This picture is from last Friday, at not quite 16 weeks. I definitely have a bit of a bump going on now, and I swear it popped out there in a matter of days last week! I've regained the 6-7 pounds I lost in the first trimester, and no more yet, so I'm not sure whether to say I've gained 6 pounds or zero. It's definitely distributed differently then it was 16 weeks ago!

I've been trying to eat mostly paleo now that I've been in the second tri-- but I can't say it's going all that well. Last weekend M. and I took a little road trip to Portland and back and I twice, in two separate restaurants ordered cobb salad without cheese (my go-to food choice) and twice had HORRIBLE meals. The first one I got a massive gluten contamination-- I was coughing and wheezing for a half hour afterwards-- I might as well have eaten a sandwich for how bad I felt afterwards (it also wasn't a very good salad). The next day I ordered a cobb salad again at a deli, and despite the 90 degree weather it came with big chunks of hot, unseasoned chicken on it. It was gross. (But as a bonus it didn't make me sick, but I couldn't eat much of it. I think they were relying on the blue cheese to provide all the flavor, but since I got it without, it was pretty bland.).

Yesterday morning I had my usual breakfast of chicken sausages and a peach, but unfortunately, I think the sausages were bad (I had bought them and then did errands in a hot car for 1-2 hours) and back up they came about in a hour later. Oops. The rest of the day was kind of starchy because I couldn't face more meat after the vomit fest. As a result I was exhausted all day.



I did just switch to a more comprehensive supplement routine. Previously the only thing I was taking was my Thorne prenatal vitamin, and for awhile in the first trimester I even gave that up because of the nausea. Now I'm phasing out the Thorne for Innate, which is a food based vitamin and has a few more fun things like probiotics in it (though the Thorne is a perfectly good supplement). Also I am taking a high DHA fish oil supplement, which I bought in strawberry flavored capsules since I can not get down liquid fish oil anymore. DHA is particularly important for baby's brain development, which is why I got the highest DHA per capsule I could find. (These ProDHA supplements from Nordic Naturals have 900 mg in two capsules. I'm taking two for now-- in the third trimester and while breastfeeding I'll probably double that.) I'm still taking 5000 IU of vitamin D most days- I'm working on a whole post on D I'll share soon.

Other than that I'm eating a lot of chicken/chicken sausages, drinking lots of bone broth (I just ran out! I need to make more tomorrow), and having steak or burgers every few days, with mostly salad for veggies, and lots of peaches and cherries. I'm trying to mostly avoid grains- my vices are dark chocolate covered almonds and coconut ice cream, which have a fair amount of sugar, but at least no grain. I'm taking things one day at a time, sometimes, like yesterday and the day before I'm really tired and other days, like today I have energy (I cleaned my whole house top to bottom today!).

At least we are finally getting sunshine and pleasant temperatures most days-- better late then never! (And I infinitely prefer our 75-80 degrees to the rest of the country's 95+ degrees!)

A mountain adventure

Rocky Mountain State Park

I'm home after a hot weekend in Boulder, CO. I went to see my two good friends from graduate school, Ryah & Laura. It was so much fun to see my friends-- I hadn't seen Laura in two years, and Ryah in one year so it was great to spend some time together instead of a rushed phone call every couple of weeks. Laura and I were virtually inseparable when she lived in Seattle and I miss her all the time. What was also fantastic is that Boulder has some amazing local food, especially meat and my friends cooked for me just about every meal, which was a wonderful break from being the sole cook and food shopper at my house! Both Ryah & Laura are getting into a Paleo-ish slant, partly because of my proselytizing, so we were all on the same page. I didn't do a very good job of taking pictures of our meals, but we had steak, chicken, amazing sausages, eggs, and bacon all at various meals that were all local and fantastic. We added salad or kale, yam or fruit and on a couple of nights a few not so paleo treats of coconut milk ice cream or a few chocolate covered almonds to finish it off. The only 100% not paleo meal I had was the only one I took a picture of! On my last day L and I had brunch at a restaurant called Tangerine that had a gluten free option for almost everything on the menu. I had buttermilk pancakes, gluten free of course, and a side of chicken sausage. L had a sample platter of the different pancakes (hers weren't gf) and also chicken sausage, but it was way too much food, though really yummy.


We drove through Rocky Mountain State Park and saw the beautiful mountains, some elk, many stupid tourists parking their cars in dangerous places to get pictures, and the best part was-- we drove so high we found snow and 65 degree temperatures. Why was this so exciting? Because every day I was there it was between 95-100 degrees. When you are used to less than 70 degrees that is a bit of a shock. Add to that the altitude and pregnancy and I found myself often hot and tired and occasionally (especially on top of the mountain at 12000 feet) headachey. Thank goodness both L's car and her apartment had air conditioning or I might have melted into a puddle. I admit I have never been so glad to see rain and 65 degrees when I got back to Seattle!

The other really fun thing we did was tour the Celestial Seasonings Tea Factory. It is a huge and impressive operation, and while the tea ingredients are sourced from all over the world, they are all processed and packaged in Boulder. The whole place smells amazing, like a big mix of herbs and fruit, though our favorite might have been the mint room, which was a bit like walking into a tub of vic's vaporub or a vat of toothpaste- it was really strong, but also refreshing. (The mint is so strong they have to keep it in a separate, double walled room, or everything in the whole place would be minty!) We also got to taste some teas, and we each bought one of CS's new Kombucha lines-- it was really good, but it has added prebiotics in it and my stomach felt a little funny so I didn't drink it all (plus I had to throw the rest away when I got to the airport anyway).
Here we are with our lovely hairnets. Sorry it's a little blurry....

Lately I've been having vague milk cravings which are surprising since I'm pretty sensitive to dairy and haven't had milk in probably 7 years, though I can get away with a couple bites of cheese or butter in something. This morning I tried a half cup of goat yogurt and it was a no go. I was coughing and wheezing within 5 minutes. So much for that. So instead I made a big cup of chicken stock (figuring what I'm craving is calcium). It's a little bit not paleo because I made it Japanese style, adding Ume Plum Vinegar, based on a suggestion from my friend Katrina (so handy to be friends with so many great nutritionists!) and a spoonful of miso because I love miso soup and because I could use some good friendly bacteria in there (miso is made from fermented soybeans, hence the not so paleo-ness of it). But it is very satisfying on this cool, feels like autumn morning.

I'll try and take a picture of my little bump this weekend-- at 15.5 weeks pregnant I've got a bit of a bump, but still don't really need maternity clothes yet. It's the sort of thing where, depending on what I'm wearing, you might or might not even be able to tell. Apparently after the first time you are pregnant, subsequent pregnancies pop right out there much faster, or so I'm told.

Chipotle Chicken Stew

I apologize if you are reading this from somewhere other than the Northern West Coast-- I realize that for most of America soup is not exactly something you want to contemplate. To you I say file this away until Fall. Here in Seattle where we are lucky if we top 68 degrees and see the sun at all so far this summer, it feels more like September. I have been thinking about making this soup for a couple of weeks, but didn't have the energy until now (fair warning, there is a lot of chopping involved). This soup is adapted from this recipe at Nourishing Meals. Ali does an amazing job of coming up with delicious recipes with whole food ingredients-- I also have her cookbook and absolutely every recipe I've tried of hers has been delicious. However, while gluten free, her recipes are not at all paleo, in fact this recipe started out as a vegetarian stew-- I started adding chicken and kale to it long ago, but this is the first time I also omitted the beans and it was just as yummy.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
3 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano (I used 1 Tablespoon of fresh oregano since I had it handy)
3/4 teaspoon chipotle chili powder
1 Tablespoon sea salt
2 medium yams, peeled and diced
4 cloves garlic, crushed
2-3 pounds chicken breasts or thighs, diced into bite sized pieces
1 head kale, de-stemmed and chopped small
other veggies as desired (I used a couple chopped zucchini)
6 cups water or chicken stock
1 medium red bell pepper, diced


Heat a large 6 or 8-quart pot over medium heat. Add olive oil then add onions and saute for 5 to 7 minutes.

Then add the chicken and continue to cook until chicken starts to brown. Add spices, and vegetables and saute a minute or two more. Add the water/chicken stock (I used half and half of each). Simmer covered for 20 to 30 minutes or until yams are tender and chicken is fully cooked.


Top with Cabbage-Slaw (this recipe is fully Ali's except I use parsley instead of cilantro)

Cilantro-Cabbage Slaw

4 to 5 cups thinly sliced Napa cabbage
2 cups chopped cilantro
2 to 3 green onions, sliced into thin rounds
the juice of one lime
1 to 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt

Place all ingredients into a medium-sized mixing bowl and toss together. Be sure to make only what you will eat with you meal. Otherwise it will become soggy and unappealing for your next bowl of stew. (The stew gets better as it ages, this doesn't).