Whole 30 while breastfeeding-- Results!

I made it!  30 days without grains, or chocolate (that’s huge for me), or sugar (other than the previously mentioned bit that was in bacon) or even Stevia in my coffee.  What’s funny is I couldn’t wait to get back to sweetening my coffee and this morning even 1/3 of what I used to use was too sweet.   I had the weirdest experience on Sunday though—I hadn’t had serious sugar cravings in a couple of weeks.  My kids are both sick and not sleeping well and I was exhausted and cranky and just done.  THIS is why you clean out your house before you do Whole30 because if I had any chocolate in my house that day I would have probably eaten it.  I really badly wanted treats but since I had none, I didn’t eat any.  We had Thai takeout for dinner and I also could have had grains but stuck to chicken salad.  

Results: I lost 4 pounds and 2.5% bodyfat.  I know some people have crazy amounts of weight loss, but this was amazing for me because I wasn’t really trying to lose weight and am below what I weighed before I had Max. My smallest old pair of jeans I had been optimistically hanging onto forever are now probably a half size too big.  

My challenge now:  to keep treats and sugar to rare occasions (my birthday is coming! And Thanksgiving, and the baby’s birthday and Christmas.  Hmm.) I am also trying to figure out how to eat enough to fuel Crossfit AND breastfeeding which is my new challenge.  I felt like I was barely getting in enough for the breastfeeding and now I’m doing Crossfit three times a week too and my supply has dropped again.  I find it challenging to eat enough carbs—there is only so much sweet potato and squash I can eat.  Speaking of that, I had an early dinner and it is 9pm and I’m starving again so time to eat once more.

Whole 30 while breastfeeding- Making this work

Let me tell you something about having two kids under three, a job and trying to blog.  It doesn't work very well.  The last 11 months have been an adventure in trying to figure out some food issues both for me and for my baby.  He has chronic eczema.  I eliminated dairy, eggs and nuts months ago.  I determined that eggs cause him to flare, but even with that cut out, he was still having constipation and his eczema was not totally clear.  We had a stressful Summer where we had to move out of our house for three months while some structural work was done and we lived in places that weren't conducive to doing much cooking and the food choices were not great-- too much processed stuff, too much takeout and not enough vegetables.  I was stressed, exhausted and started having difficulty with my breastmilk supply, and Marshall stopped gaining enough weight.  Finally, a couple of weeks ago we moved home and I immediately started a Whole30 challenge.  I have not been 100% truly, completely squeaky clean paleo since before I got pregnant with Max, who is almost three years old.  My previous attempts were too low in calories and carbs and I would quickly crash and burn because I was starving.  FINALLY I seem to have this figured out, for the most part.

So Whole30 + Breastfeeding FOR ME looks like this (your mileage may vary):

1. Breakfast is either leftovers from the night before, or a green smoothie with coconut milk, kale, frozen berries, chia seeds, and grass fed gelatin,  I usually drink half for breakfast and finish it later.  I also have some meat or bacon on the side.  Oh also a lot of coffee with coconut milk.

2. Mid-morning I might finish my smoothie or have a handful of almonds, more coffee

3. Lunch is meat, a sweet potato with ghee, some kind of vegetable

4.  In the afternoon I either eat a second lunch or an apple and almonds

5. Dinner is same as lunch

I can not emphasize enough how important having a decent dose of carbs and eating frequently has been for me.  I haven't been working out as much as I hoped because we all came down with some kind of lovely respiratory illness (thanks preschool germs!) I am not sure if it was adjusting to fewer carbs/sugar withdrawal, or being sick but I felt HORRIBLE for the first week or so.  I still sometimes get really tired in the afternoons which I think is adrenal fatigue given that I have a baby still waking up at least twice a night.  When I remember to take my vitamins I also still take a prenatal vitamin, probiotic, extra vitamin C,  adrenal glandular, vitamin D and Fermented Cod Liver Oil.

You are not supposed to weigh yourself during whole30 but I have and I'm already down 4# and weighing less than I have in years.  This stuff works friends.

And here is the absolute key do doing whole30 with a family and a job:  you have to cook ahead.  It's your part-time job.  At a minimum dinner has to make enough for all four of us to eat for lunch the next day too, but ideally I'd get a couple days out of it.  So  I make three pounds of salmon at a time, or an entire chicken, or five steaks.  The four of us eat twenty pounds of sweet potatoes a week! (Not only do I eat them twice a day but both kids absolutely love them).  I make 10# at a time in the oven, and then put them all in the fridge to grab and reheat.  I also will roast large pans full of veggies every couple days.  By doing all of this I don't have to cook a whole meal every day and on days I work I try to make sure there is either something in the crockpot or we have leftovers since I often have to get up at 4:30 am for work and I'm usually too exhausted to think straight when I get home.

I don't make stuff that's complicated.  Baked yams, roasted vegetables, meat that's baked or cooked in the crockpot.  I rarely make things that require standing over the stove or lots of ingredients because I just don't have the time.  Throw it on a pan, put it in the oven or the crockpot-- that I can manage -- stuff I can do with a baby hanging on my pant leg and a toddler begging to help.  It isn't exciting but it works. The whole family isn't paleo yet, but we are working on it.

What I miss: I like a little stevia in my coffee and I will go back to that after my whole30 ends unless it triggers ongoing sugar cravings.  I miss eggs-- I may challenge them again soon and see how he does with them-- the eczema is 90% better most of the time, but it also is never completely gone.  I give him probiotics and sometimes zinc on the recommendation of our ND, and trying to get better about giving him fermented fish oil. I do think his weight and digestion are back on track at least. Not sure what else to do there.  My birthday and Marshall's first birthday are next month and I am hosting a big family Thanksgiving.  I'd like to stick to paleo-fied treats for those and otherwise avoid sugar.  It is my life long nemesis and I'm better off without it, even the healthier kinds like honey.

There it is, my first blog post in months and some real progress.  I'm about to turn 35 and I am feeling good about the track I am taking with my health.  

Is anyone out there? Time for a reboot

I haven't posted to this blog for over a year, mainly because it was a whole foods/primal/paleo/grain-free eating blog and I haven't eaten that way in a long time.  Until now.

I had my second baby (Marshall) three months ago.  I had a difficult pregnancy-- I was exhausted, nauseated, lots of back pain and cranky, while wrangling a not quite two year old and a nearly full time job.  It was a lot and I didn't eat as well as I should have and I definitely didn't get enough exercise.  If we have any more kids I do not want to go through pregnancy so broken.

When my second was about 8 weeks old I started really feeling ready to get my life together, stop languishing in the land of too much sugar and grains and get back on track.  I joined a new gym that does only personal training of the high intensity kind-- I like Cross Fit fine but I needed something a little more one on one given my propensity to injure myself.  And at the end of January, after Max's second birthday  I said good bye to all but a tiny bit of sugar (I still have a few bites of very dark chocolate here and there).  

I had been eating dairy for over a year, but Mars is starting to develop eczema so it's a good excuse to ditch it for awhile and see if he improves.  In the week since I've been off it my digestion has been better, so I suspect I'm better off without it. 

What's working?  Planning and cooking ahead a lot.  I work 2 long days a week, and on the other days it's not practical to cook 3+ meals a day with two little kids underfoot.  I plan our dinners on the weekend, shop for most of it, and cook ahead some stuff.  That combined with making extra every time so I don't have to cook every night is helping.  I am still struggling with how many carbs and how much to eat to slowly get this baby weight off but support breast feeding- more on that later.

So this week, here's what we are eating:

Sunday: we had beef taco salad.  No real recipe, just a bunch of cumin and garlic in ground beef, plus lettuce, avocado, salsa and cheese for the guys. Not going to lie-- we also had Phad Thai today.  Sometimes you just need take out.

Monday: leftover taco salad
Tuesday: Crock pot pot roast, yams, broccoli
Wednesday: zuchini "noodles" and meat balls
Thursday: sausage/yam/apple bake (recipe soon)
Friday: no bun burgers

What I made ahead:
egg casserole-- I throw some kind of meat (sausage, ham, ground turkey etc), some vegetable (kale/broccoli), and a dozen eggs in a 9x13 pan with some salt and pepper and maybe garlic or basil and bake it.  It was better with cheese but it's still good and it saves me time making breakfast.

yams-- between me and the two year old we go through an insane number of these. I also some times do squash but prefer sweet potato.

roasted vegetables-- I am on a brussels sprouts kick, did some broccoli too.

mushrooms-- this is seriously one of my favorite things.  Incredibly delicious on anything savory

I made some bacon too but ended up snacking on half of it.  I think bacon is my new candy.  Oops.

Lunch is always leftover dinner from the day before (or a couple days if I made tons). 

I have lost somewhere between 2-5 pounds so far-- it seems to vary.  At least it's going in the right direction-- I still have around 15-20 pounds of baby weight to go.  It doesn't come off as easily the second time, in case you are wondering. 

Time to feed the baby and think about bedtime.

Getting it together

One of the downsides to being a professional in the world of nutrition is people in your life expect you to have it all together.  They look to you as an example.  Everyone from my family to my babysitter to my coworkers are interested in what I'm eating, and if I have it in my house, or I eat it once it is seen as an endorsement.  That is a lot of pressure.  And now I am feeding an almost 10 month old, who is interested in everything Mommy and Daddy are eating and I feel overwhelmed by all of it because while I have a lot of information, I don't have all the answers, and I don't even follow my own advice sometimes.

Even more than the fact I don't have a ton of time with a full-time job and a baby, that is what has kept me away from this blog.  But at the same time blogs that are bossy and take the tone that they know everything sometimes irritate the crap out of me.  So here it is-- I eat probably 70% whole foods, paleo-ish, with too much gluten-free bread and way too much chocolate.  I have been experimenting with dairy-- I think I am doing better with cultured dairy than I used to-- yogurt seems ok, and cultured butter, small bits of cheese but too much dairy gives me a stomach ache.  My digestion is not all that good.  My energy is up and down, but I also have a child who is a terrible sleeper, which is the other part of the puzzle-- being chronically exhausted doesn't lead to making the best food choices.  I am still breastfeeding so I need a good dose of calories and carbs, and I realized recently I eat meal portions I would have eaten pre-pregnancy and then I'm still starving an hour later and I eat too much sugar or bread.  Eating MORE real food helps.  Planning ahead, cooking ahead, and being best friends with my crockpot helps.

I do need a reset, a chance to give my body a break from sugar and grains again, so after Thanksgiving (which we are celebrating Friday instead of Thursday) I'm going to do the Whole 30/sugar detox deal until Christmas.  It's not going to be low carb.  Low carb does not work for me even when I'm not nursing.  Though I could stand to drop some body fat it isn't actually about that either-- my main concern is that I am the primary food supply for my kid-- I plan to keep breastfeeding until he's 18 months or so.  But getting more nutrients in and not abusing my poor gut would be a good thing.

Max eats 90% food I make with a little bit of Ella's Kitchen stuff thrown in for convenience.  He mostly gets pureed food-- generally a starchy vegetable (sweet potato/carrots/squash) and or fruit (apples/pears mostly), sometimes greens and usually bone broth. He gets cod liver oil maybe every third day when I remember to put it in his food. In the past couple weeks I've started adding chicken and tomorrow he's getting leftover beef stew, pureed.  He does munch on brown rice puffs, but it's more for him to practice eating then substance-- he probably ends up eating a teaspoon of actual rice as mostly they end up on the floor. I don't otherwise give him much in the way of grains.  He does eat chickpeas a few times a week as I discovered at a party that he adores hummus.  He sometimes will feed himself pears or banana, but so far self-feeding is messy and not very nutritive.  He's an enthusiastic eater and likes everything I've made him so far, though not a fan of the majority of commercial baby food for some reason, other than the Ella's kind.

As he approaches a year, I have to make some decisions about if I will introduce dairy, if so when and what kind (goat? cow? raw? organic? only cultured? etc.) and at what point I will give him a bit of gluten to test for a reaction (I don't anticipate gluten being a big part of his diet, but I need to know what if any reaction to expect if he gets it accidentally.

I would love to get more exercise-- I get to the gym 1-2 days a week.  Less if Max is really sleeping poorly, more if he's doing better.  3-4 days a week would be awesome, but sometimes (most times!) I am just too tired.

I would say I'm back to my pre-pregnancy weight, and back to my pre-paleo, pre-crossfit body but I really could do better and want to do better.  Soon.  Crossfit is not in the budget at the moment and doesn't have childcare, so I'm doing a weights program on my own at a gym with daycare.

So there it is-- the ugly truth.  The dietitian is not perfect. But working on getting better for sure.  

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!

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).

14 weeks: transition

After an awesome energy day last Sunday, I spent most of the week back on the couch barely able to move (either that or at my desk at work watching the clock until I could go home to the couch). This weekend my energy has returned again-- hopefully for good, as at 14 weeks I am now by all calendars in the second trimester. I am definitely in a transitional period. Food wise, I am doing better eating more protein, but overall still eating too much sugar and processed things I don't need. The problem in part seems to be that I can't eat more than a few bites at a time of real food-- I likely shrunk my stomach during the seven or so weeks I wasn't really eating. Add to that, if I can eat a real meal, it sits in my stomach like a rock for HOURS which is very uncomfortable. I have tried my trusty Super Enzymes, but really all that works is to eat small amounts every few hours which I find annoying. When I was a teenager and in college I was definitely one of those 5-6 meals a day people, but somewhere in the last 4 or 5 years I realized it is much more satisfying and satiating for me to eat until I'm full 3 or 4 times a day. It is unsatisfying to switch back to eating smaller meals and it's been an adjustment-- really processed stuff (we had gluten free cookies around for awhile-- I know! bad) goes down easily and I am not used to being hungry all the time-- I just need to plan better.

Because I'm not eating as well as I should, I found myself in a pregnancy hormone induced panic yesterday. After weeks of my weight dropping, it has been steadily coming back up (as it should-- I'm growing a person!) But my overindulgence in the wrong kind of calories has me a little panicked that I'm gaining the wrong kind of weight (mind you, I'm still down 4 pounds from pre-pregnancy weight so it's a rather irrational concern). The solution is simple-- stop eating the crap! I'm working on that-- if my energy remains it will help a lot with food prep. Also what will help is some exercise, which I haven't had in over two months. Tomorrow my Crossfit trainer extraordinaire, Jesse at Lynnwood Crossfit is going to come up with a pregnancy routine for me because I'm not comfortable attempting even modified WODs given my inexperience and how long I've been away from the gym-- getting into a regular routine of activity will be very important in keeping me to a healthy weight gain and strong enough for what lies ahead. (My friend told me to look at pregnancy as training for the marathon of birth and months of sleepless baby care-- I think that's a good attitude).

I am at that funny stage where I'm getting a bit of a bump, but don't quite look pregnant-- just like I'm gaining weight (though when I gain weight it normally isn't all in my stomach!) I bought some maternity capris on Friday and they are so comfortable! Elastic waist bands are miraculous. Both M. and I are just in awe of this process-- I swear my belly gets bigger every day and it's extraordinary. I'm trying as much as possible to savor these moments-- I only expect to be pregnant two, maybe three times in my life and next time I'm pregnant I'll be busy with a toddler, so it's kind of amazing to just sit back and experience it.

Everyone pretty much knows now as I told my office this week-- it's nice to have it out in the open. My good friend that works with me has a one year old and she's become kind of a mentor to me-- it's nice not to have to sit in the corner and whisper about it at work now.

Meanwhile, Seattle seems to be skipping summer this year. It is currently 57 degrees and pouring down rain at my house. Next weekend I'm escaping to Boulder to see the sun and two dear friends. I can't wait!

Robb Wolf Seminar!

Yesterday I had the great fortune to attend Robb Wolf's second to last paleo solution seminar-- he has one more in Boston and then he's not doing them anymore! The seminar was in Vancouver, BC-- a 3 hour or so drive from where I live, depending on how long you have to sit at the border and Vancouver's epic traffic. M. and I drove up Friday and spent the afternoon wandering around Granville Island and downtown-- it happened to be sunny and beautiful and we had a nice day.

I had two amazing meals at a restaurant downtown called Milestones. One was paleo, one was not. The dinner menu has a small but delicious gluten-free section and they will make any pasta dish with brown rice noodles. Dinner on Saturday night I had a simple but amazing brown rice spaghetti with chicken and goat cheese. It was one of the best things I've eaten in a long time.

I went back there on Sunday for lunch during a break from the seminar and had a much more appropriate chicken salad with strawberries and pecans that was also excellent.

As for the seminar itself: it was a bit like going to a movie based on a book you read and loved. It was surreal to hear the man himself speak after listening to hours and hours of podcasts-- when he came into the room talking to someone when my back was turned I recognized his voice immediately. There weren't really many surprises, but I still enjoyed myself-- Robb is an entertaining and charismatic speaker. He kept apologizing to us during the parts of the seminar that went over biochemical mechanisms, but I found it to be a helpful review-- since most people there had read his book I don't think anyone was too overwhelmed, but then maybe that's just me. Looking over my notes, I don't think I picked up anything new big picture wise, though I took a lot of notes as having visuals helped me understand some mechanistic details better-- it is really hard for me to keep all of the biochemistry details in my brain, so constant review is good.

This seminar came at an ideal time: now that I am at 13 weeks pregnant I am FINALLY feeling better. My appetite has returned and I am no longer grossed out by meat and healthy food. In fact after weeks of barely eating enough, M. was astonished to see me eat almost every bite of my restaurant meals in Vancouver, and go back for seconds tonight on our steak, salad and potato dinner (the first real meal I've cooked in quite some time). I'm hungry without accompanying nausea! Hooray! I even was able to run around doing errands and cleaning house all day without having to spend a good part of the day laying down-- a first in many weeks! Tomorrow I will attempt some kind of formal exercise-- after so long without Crossfit when I was already still so new to it I'm not quite sure if that's the best option or not, but certainly some kind of weights and exercise is needed.

Oh baby!

I have a confession to make: for the past six weeks I haven’t really been eating paleo, but I have a good excuse: I’m pregnant!! I am about 12 and a half weeks pregnant. And ever since about 6 weeks pregnant 90% of the foods I usually eat became absolutely disgusting. Even thinking about yams, most meat, all cooked vegetables and coconut milk made me retch, let alone trying to eat those things! You might have noticed I never did a follow up to my experiment with the Autoimmune protocol—that’s because I found out I was pregnant three days in to that, and I made it two weeks before almost everything sounded disgusting. Eggs are one of the few protein foods I can sometimes get down, so I will have to re-attempt that plan at a later date. It’s pretty hard to blog about food when the thought of most food is completely nauseating! So what have I been eating? Mostly cold, raw food: a lot of salad, often with chicken on it (obviously the chicken is cooked) although I can’t eat more than a few bites of that, lots of fruit, nuts, and unfortunately, gluten-free bread, some rice/beans/corn, (one of my good friends knew something was up when we had lunch recently and I was eating the chips at a Mexican restaurant), and the occasional non-dairy ice cream and worse, which we won’t get into. Unfortunately, I’ve noticed the more processed and nutritionally deficient the food is, the easier it is to eat, though I try not to go too crazy on the junk. Ironically one of the only proteins that I have no trouble with is fish, and it’s the only one I have to limit, because of the mercury issue! It’s not been the greatest, and I would love to be 100% paleo, but my body rejects too many foods and as it is I lost about 7 pounds in the first trimester, because I had such strong aversions it was hard to eat anything, and I’m sure some of it was muscle. I had to put crossfit on hold since I was barely eating enough to get through my day without exercise. My legs have gotten so skinny! At 8 weeks pregnant, M. and I went on a little hike—it wasn’t really epic, there were plenty of families with young kids walking it, but I was so undernourished that I completely ran out of steam about a mile from the top (which was unfortunately the end where the car was) and we had to stop every 20 feet for me to rest. Obese smokers were passing me! If I can’t do that, I definitely would not get through any sort of crossfit workout! I hope to get back to some version of Crossfit soon. I did manage to escape my Midwife’s attempt to make me take an early glucose tolerance test—she wanted to do one at 8 weeks because my Dad is diabetic (though type I) but I told her I didn’t want to and she agreed to do just a regular blood glucose test and only make me do the evil test (which I would have had to do AGAIN at 20 weeks) if my numbers looked bad. Thankfully they were fine, despite the all carb breakfast I had that morning! I’ve been testing my blood sugar at home and I hope to talk her out of the 20 week test as well when it comes up. I’m sorry but drinking 100 grams of straight glucose sounds like my own personal nightmare.

Other thoughts: I haven’t had it too bad in the first trimester. I’ve been somewhat nauseated almost all the time, occasionally VERY nauseated, and with very strong food aversions, but I’ve only thrown up once. I’ve been definitely tired—though that slowly seems to be improving. Where before I could go to the mall for three hours, then the grocery store, then come home and cook dinner, now I can take maybe an hour of errands before I need to rest. I’ve been drinking tons of ice water because for whatever reason it takes the edge of my nausea, which means I’m constantly freezing cold, since Seattle didn’t even sort of start looking like summer until last weekend. The only day I felt really horrible is the day I had my first midwife appointment—my blood pressure was already really low (98/70) and then they took 5 tubes of blood for all the tests. I felt nauseated, dizzy and exhausted for the rest of the day.

I am very excited to share this with all of you, because now hopefully I will be feeling better, and can report on my paleo pregnancy as it progresses!

A few random updates

Ack! It's been 10 days since I updated my blog! Terrible. Work has been really busy lately and I'm going through a weird phase of not being able to sleep in when I have time so I've been tired. I wake up at 6am whether I am going to work or not. Maybe because it's getting lighter outside-- I need to look into blackout curtains.

I am still eating the autoimmune protocol for the most part-- I'm definitely avoiding eggs and nightshades-- I admit nuts may have slipped in a couple times.

I'm kind of in a food rut this week-- I've been eating tons of ground beef and canned fish. Today I'm making pulled pork so maybe that will shake things up a little.

Things I'm working on:

I've been slowly making my way through Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes for the past few weeks-- I will attempt to do a full review when I finish. It's an amazing piece of work-- over 400 pages of extremely detailed analysis of how we came to believe some of the things we do as a country about health (fat is bad, high cholesterol = heart disease) and whether those ideas actually have scientific evidence (hint, they don't). It's so dense I can only read a little at a time in order to process the information and I already feel like I need to read it again, and I'm not even finished!

I just listened to this podcast over at the Healthy Skeptic about the intimate neural connections between the brain and the gut and loved it-- I need to contemplate this and listen to it again when I'm not driving in pouring rain to get all the nuances of what Chris is saying but it's so fascinating!

My friend Stevie is helping me out with a webpage for private nutrition practice, but I'm stumped on what to call it. Any ideas? I was considering Paleo RD, but I kind of want something more generic so as not to put off people with predisposed negative ideas about paleo.

My husband has gone off the deep end this week eating almost exclusively gluten and dairy (sandwiches, cake and pizza) and I've been too tired and busy to fix it. Ack! Last night I did get him to eat eggs and yams for dinner at least.

I'm officially now obsessed with this stuff: Kevita is cultured coconut water. I used to be into Kombucha, but ever since they reformulated it after the recall it hasn't been the same. This stuff tastes better to me-- it comes in several flavors but all except original have sugar in them and taste too sweet to me. We did a tasting with some of my nutritionist friends a couple weeks ago and they all preferred the lemon ginger to the original. M thinks they all taste disgusting as he hates anything fermented. They are expensive though, just like kombucha-- over $3 a bottle! I'm going to try and make my own-- I had success in the past with kefir grains in coconut water-- I'm going to give that a try again.

Finally I have a recurring issue with my IT band. In case you didn't take anatomy or it's been awhile, "The iliotibial band is a thick band of fascia that extends along the lateral thigh from the iliac crest to the knee" in otherwords, in runs from the hip to the knee down the outside of your leg in that indent between your quad and your hamstring if you are fortunate enough to have that kind of muscle definition:

My right hip is really tight, or maybe even one leg is longer causing my right hip to get bunched up. At any rate, it's actually very noticable and has been that way for awhile--whenever I get a pair of pants hemmed the tailor comments on it because they are not the same length and when Jesse (awesome trainer at Lynnwood Crossfit) was teaching me to deadlift it was so obvious my right hip was higher he told me not to max deadlift until I get it sorted out and then called another trainer over to look at how messed up I am. Anyway, that wouldn't be a big deal, except that when your hip is tight, it pulls on that fun IT band we just talked about, which pulls the knee out of alignment which hurts. When I hurt my knee a couple weeks ago doing medicine ball squat cleans I thought it was just because I had been sloppy in my form, or that it was combined with running (which often makes my knee hurt). But then on Monday we did a workout with those squats again and I was very cautious, had Jesse show me again how to do it properly and STILL my knee hurt so much the next day I couldn't hardly walk up the stairs in my house and my right hip felt tight while sitting. Using a foam roller along that side helps some, but it's getting really annoying having to miss crossfit for several days after every workout because I keep hurting my knee. So for now, I'm foam rolling the heck out of it, avoiding those specific squat cleans and avoiding running in hopes to sort this out, but I kind of think I might have a structural issue since I remember as far back as 6th grade when they test you for scoliosis being told one hip was higher, which makes me think it's more complicated than a slight muscle imbalance. Of note, however: M. pointed out that I pretty much always sleep on that side, which might be contributing, so I'm trying to sleep on the left to see if that helps.

One pan meal

For dinner this evening I made steak, fried yams and kale all in the same pan that I made bacon in this morning. First of all I love this pan. I have the 5 1/2 quart version and love it so much I may eventually get the smaller one as well. Last year for my birthday I got all new pots and pans after my 10 year old non-stick cheapo set from my wedding registry started to peel teflon at alarming rates. My mom had done a lot of research a couple years ago on pots and pans and the Cuisinart Multiclad Pro had great reviews and she loved the one pot she has of this type, so I bought all new pans of this variety and highly recommend them. This particular skillet is really big-- at least 12 inches (maybe 14) about 2 inches high with a stainless lid making it good for just about anything! When I first got it in the mail I was alarmed at how big it is, but I actually use it more than any other pan.

But back to dinner:

The pan had a little residual bacon fat in it (I poured most of it out into a jar), and I cooked the steaks, which I seasoned with salt and pepper in the pan first. (not pictured)



When those were finished, I set them aside to rest (after you cook meat it's good to let it sit quietly for a few minutes-- it initially loses juices and then will suck them back up again). I added a couple of tablespoons of coconut oil to the pan and when it melted I added thinly sliced yams-- turning them after 3-5 minutes (it's easy to burn them!) both of these were over medium heat. When the yams were finished I added a couple cloves of minced garlic to the pan-- stir fast so the garlic doesn't burn!


And then a whole head of de-stemmed and chopped purple kale to the pan along with about a half cup of water to de-glaze the pan (de-glazing is where you add liquid to a hot pan that has yummy goodness also known as fond stuck to the bottom of the pan. The liquid, combined with a gentle scraping with a spatula helps get the tasty bits to mix in with the food and as a bonus, makes the pan easier to clean later). I added a bit of salt to the kale but I learned the hard way last time to taste it first! Since I salted the meat, last time when I cooked greens in the same pan as the meat with no yams between there was still salt in the pan and I over salted the greens. This time it came out perfectly!
Delicious!
The whole process took maybe 20 minutes and now I only have one pan to clean up!

How to become a Paleo Dietitian (and is it worth it?)

On Robb Wolf’s podcast I occasionally hear people write in to ask him where they should go to school to become a dietitian that has a paleo slant. Robb tells them there is no such place and that if they want to become an RD they are going to suffer through a lot of food pyramid nonsense and that they might be better off just taking some biochemistry classes to get a better background. He is not wrong. My experience though, was better than it would have been at most places. Now granted, I am new to paleo, but in the late 90s I read the original Zone Diet books and Barry Sears’ detailed explanation of the biochemistry of what food does in the body is what inspired me to study nutrition. It was the first time I had ever had an interest in science—it lit a fire in me like few things ever have (all this from a commercial diet book!). Throughout the early 2000s I experimented with the Zone, Atkins, Fat Flush (which is actually fairly paleo) and eventually the Weston A. Price foundation. I had a few years experimenting with being a vegan, but even then it was the grain-free variety as described in Eat to Live by Joel Fuhrman. Paleo made all of that information make SENSE. It was with this background that I entered Bastyr University, a natural health oriented University that trains Naturopaths, Midwives, Acupuncturists, Herbalists and Nutritionists, located Northeast of Seattle. Obviously the Bastyr curriculum is not teaching a paleo diet--but it does teach a whole food, local food approach that is skeptical of the food pyramid. Bastyr graduates are not afraid of saturated fat or red meat, and even sometimes scan the farmer’s market for lard (my friend spent an entire summer trying to figure out the perfect ratio of lard to butter for a pie crust). It was because of my education at Bastyr that I learned how to do an elimination diet and learned of my allergy to gluten (I already knew about the dairy). I learned about leaky gut (granted, not about Robb Wolf’s assertion that legumes and all grains can lead to it, but I did learn what it is and about the 8 most common food allergies and that I most likely had it). I took whole foods cooking classes, I had four intense quarters of biochemistry, both of the macro and micronutrient variety and maybe even most beneficial—I learned how to read scientific articles critically. This is a skill that is missing from a lot of people in my field—they simply take the conclusions of a scientific article as fact (if they read them at all), without being able to evaluate whether the study was well conducted or biased.

Now for the bad parts: sometimes you have to memorize things you do not believe in and other things that are horrendously boring (I’m sorry but Food Service Management was the bane of my existence). Particularly if you are going to become a Registered Dietitian, there are things you have to do because the American Dietetic Association says so, particularly doing a 1200 hour internship after you get your degree, which is fiercely competitive to even get into, during which time you will learn all about how to be a hospital dietitian and calculate how much corn syrup and soybean oil based liquid food sick people should be administered, you will probably have to teach a class on the food pyramid (that was not fun—the curriculum told me to tell people that soybean oil is good because it lowers cholesterol. I think I said it really fast so no one heard me). You will spend anywhere from 4-8 weeks learning about how hospital kitchens are run and a couple weeks having your heart broken at WIC educating low income young women about how to use government coupons that are mostly for dairy products and juice how to feed their children. It was a rough year and ultimately I use very little of what I experienced in that year in my job. You then have to take an expensive and scary exam on all of the stuff you wish you weren’t required to know in order to get your credential. The only thing that was really great about my internship (through Washington State University) was that our clinical instructor was a whizz in biochemistry and our lecture portion had a good review of those topics. That instructor also ultimately helped get me my current job, which is in research at the hospital where I did my internship and that made it all worth it, but seriously, it was a torturous year.

Then if you do become an RD and what you want to do is help people with paleo you are going to need to go into private practice, which is no guarantee of making any money, at least for the first five years. This is something I would eventually like to do, but right now I need to work and pay off my student loans and anyway I really like my job—but I don’t see patients on a day to day basis so I’m not really spreading the paleo word. If you think you are going to be able to instruct people in paleo at your average hospital outpatient clinic though I would take pause. You *might* be able to get away with some level of that, but I guarantee you if anyone overseeing your work got wind of you telling people not to eat grain or even worse, that saturated fat is not the devil, you will probably get fired. (The outpatient clinic where I did a rotation was still telling people they could have no more than 2 eggs a week and had a whole wall of cholesterol lowering margarine product examples. One of my friends heard a dietitian tell a patient that if a food was fat-free and cholesterol-free it didn’t matter what it was. Yikes!) Your best bet is to partner with a gym, probably of the crossfit variety to get clients.

Have I scared you off this endeavor? I hope not because there aren’t that many of us out there with this slant and I could use some company! (Note: one of my good friends from my internship is a hard core paleo crossfitter, so other RDs out there do exist—and she was into paleo way before I was!).

In some states (Washington is one) you can also practice as a “Certified Nutritionist” with a Master’s Degree in nutrition, without having to do the RD internship process. I have a couple friends who went this route and it was definitely tempting. If you know you will only ever have a private practice and will only ever live in a state where this is allowed do it. (But know that the Washington State Dietetic Association is pushing hard for licensure, not just certification for RDs, which depending on how the legislation ends up being worded, could cause problems for CNs down the road). Many states only allow you to practice as a licensed dietitian. It’s also very hard to get a job as a CN, thus the need for private practice.

I do really recommend the Bastyr Masters Degree program if you are going to take this on (I didn’t do an undergrad degree there so I can’t speak to that program). You will find a more open-minded, whole foods approach there, even if they are pretty enamored with grains, at least they tend to be on the whole grain, gluten free side of things. You can’t have everything!

Nonsense and illogical arguments

I came across this article in the Chicago Tribune this morning about how "nutritionists" hate the paleo diet and was very irritated. The pediatrician in this article first of all was a very poor source of information-- I hope he was just misquoted because he came across a complete idiot. Why they chose to interview a pediatrician about the paleo diet makes no sense anyway-- the article was not about children's nutrition (though paleo, with plenty of carbs from yams and fruit is perfectly healthy for kids). What made me positively irate was this comment: "people who eat grains enriched with folic acid have reduced risk of neural tube defects, including spina bifida. Fortified grains "are cheap and there's no downside," he said." First of all, the only people who need to worry about spina bifida are women who are pregnant or may become pregnant-- you aren't going to suddenly get spina bifida at age 35 because you stopped eating grains-- it is a birth defect. Secondly, vegetables, particularly leafy green ones have SIGNIFICANTLY more folic acid/folate, which is more bioavailable and comes with way more other vitamins and nutrients than grains to which it is added (the government decided to add it to grains because people weren't eating enough vegetables-- let's cut out the middle man and just eat veg!). Third, fortified grains are REFINED carbohydrates-- whole grains are not required to be fortified. Even if you don't buy into the grain elimination aspect of paleo, most people with a clue about nutrition understand that refined carbohydrates are bad for you, and in excess lead to diabetes and likely heart disease. To say there is no downside is outrageous.

As for his other claims, that a teenage boy would not be able to afford this diet-- how many teenage boys buy their own food? And his insistence that dairy is important for everyone also bugs me-- as much as 75% of the population is lactose intolerant, and again, calcium can be obtained from many other foods.

His contention that most Americans are overweight because they overeat is overly simplistic-- if you look into why most Americans are overeating, it is because excessive amounts of refined carbohydrates cause hormonal changes that cause desire for even more carbohydrates. Numerous studies have shown protein is much more satiating then carbs, as is fat. Think about it-- most people can put away a pretty big plate of pasta or bread (ever eaten a whole loaf of bread while waiting for your dinner in a restaurant? I bet you still ate a good bit of your dinner). Then consider how many eggs or how much chicken you could eat in one sitting. WAY fewer calories because the protein/fat in the meat helps your body know when it's full. While everyone has a different tolerance level for carbs, eating a big plate of mainly refined carbohydrates for a meal is going to cause most people to either overeat, or be hungry again in an hour, if not both. (I know if I eat a mostly carb meal I still feel like eating even when I'm stuffed!) So yes, if you restrict calories you will lose weight, but it is a lot EASIER to restrict calories on a low to moderate carb diet than on a high carb diet because you don't get as hungry.

I don't have much of a problem with the dietitian's point about beans being a good source of fiber and protein, but again you can get plenty of fiber from any other fruit or vegetable and meat is a MUCH more efficient source of protein than beans, which do not contain all of the essential amino acids and for many people are difficult to digest.

Finally, I am irked by the idea that eliminating an entire "food group" is automatically unhealthy. The "food groups" were invented by the USDA, whose primary job is to promote agriculture in the US. Guess what crops we grow a lot of? Grains! Those same dietitians who freak out about eliminating the "grain food group" also tend to applaud people for becoming vegetarians. This seems ironic to me-- we are all going to die if we eliminate grains because they are a food group, but eliminating meat, also a food group, is totally acceptable. Do you know what farmers feed animals when they want to fatten them up quickly? Lots of low fat grains.

There is your rant for the day.