Elimination diet madness

Clearly I am not finding a lot of time to blog.  Every couple weeks I keep eliminating another food trying to get to the bottom of Marshall's eczema and so far I'm not seeing much improvement, and I am getting cranky.  I started with eliminating dairy, and to be honest, I feel better off that one so I can live without that.  Next I eliminated eggs, which was a lot harder-- I ate them almost every single morning and occasionally for another meal too.  I am not positive whether that has helped yet because even though I have been off them a week, we have to work through the stored breastmilk from when I was eating eggs first, which will take at least through this week.  Last week I also eliminated nuts.  I suppose it would be faster to cut out all of this stuff at once-- that's how an elimination diet is typically done, but it feel so daunting to me, it is easier to cut out one thing at a time.

I'm afraid I am feeling bored with food and deprived and always starving.  I need to find new recipes because I end up eating beef or chicken, sweet potato, and some kind of green vegetable 3 meals a day, with a little sunflower seed butter and allergen free chocolate on the side keeping me sane.

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.

Crash and Burn

So I made it half way through the 21 Day Sugar Detox and then fell off the wagon.  Had I done one thing before hand it would have made a big difference;  In the protocol she says to start with 1/2 a cup of sweet potato per meal if you are pregnant/nursing.  You are supposed to be getting around 40 grams of carbs per meal and you might need more.  First of all, 1/2 a cup of sweet potato is around 20 grams of carbs not 40 which I could have looked up.  But I didn't know that I wouldn't be ABLE to tell I needed more until it was too late.  I felt more or less okay the first week-- I was busy with houseguests and a sick baby and wasn't particularly hungry.  I got the sweet potato in mostly two meals out of three, and the one day I went to the gym I could tell I was dragging but when you are chronically sleep deprived and getting over a cold it's difficult to know the source of your fatigue.   I never had physical cravings for sugar.  On day 12 I hit rock bottom.  Not only was I EXHAUSTED but I also hit an emotional wall and started spiraling into an irrational depression.  Carbs = serotonin and I had been inadvertently on a probably less than 75grams of carbs a day diet, while feeding a sick baby who was doing a whole lot of nursing. Some people would probably be fine on this but I do not do well on very low carb even when I am not nursing.    I could have just eaten a bunch more sweet potato, but really how much sweet potato can you eat in one sitting?  So I not only ate carbs, but I ate (gluten-free) cookies.  And I am fine with it.  Less sugar is good, but when you are nursing and busy extra extreme programs can backfire.  I had a little gluten free bread today.  I still don't digest it well and do better off grains but after two days of basically carb loading I feel a lot better.  Lesson learned people.  I did break my excessive chocolate habit, so that was a good thing, and I found I like my coffee with just cream and no sweetener. 

Also, I did discover that grilled portobello mushrooms make the most amazing burger bun.  I like it better than bread.  Try it-- amazing.

21 Day Detox: 7 days in

I am a week into the 21 day sugar detox and things are going well.  I have not had any sweetener or grains at all, or really even any impulse to do so, in spite of a lot of stress, very little sleep and PMS.  First I had a bad cold, and then Max got it.  He was pretty sick last week, and thus having a lot of difficulty sleeping. Then my parents came for a week, which was great, but also busy.  I think actually having the distraction of guests helped keep me on track. 

I suspect I need to eat a lot more carbs.  I am not terribly hungry most of the time, though a couple times I haven't had a substantial lunch and then I'm starving.  But I feel like I am dragging a bit in a familiar, not enough carbs sort of way.  The 21DSD recommends starting with a 1/2 cup of starchy veggies per meal for breastfeeding moms and increasing from there-- I think I have had that two out of three meals most days, due more to convenience then specific carb avoidance.  I went to the gym for the first time in at least a month today and though I took it easy I did not have a lot of energy.  More sweet potatoes for me (Max and I already eat 3+ a day between us so I feel like I am constantly baking sweet potatoes/yams). 

Most frustrating was I made a giant pot of chili yesterday and even though I decreased the chili powder significantly it is still too spicy for me (I REALLY do not like spicy food). I was planning on eating that for lunch for several days and freezing some but now it's almost all going to be for Marc since I can hardly stand to eat it and don't dare give it to Max.

I haven't started trying to get off coffee yet, which is my next goal.  Maybe after the 21 days-- one thing at at time.

Happy New Year

I am kicking off the New Year doing the 21 Day Day Sugar Detox.  I am getting over a cold, which I suspect is blunting my appetite, so it's been so far fairly easy.  Sometime I would like to get off coffee for awhile too but I have a sick baby who is waking up every two hours and I had to get up for work at 4am, so coffee is helping me survive right now.

I know that later in the week things will get tough and I will miss my chocolate, but I can do it! It's just three weeks! Anyone else detoxing in the new year?

Lessons

I think I knew this, but reminded myself this weekend that I need to have meat protein at each meal.  It doesn’t matter if I am otherwise eating good food, if I eat eggs or dairy as my protein more than one meal in a row I do not feel good at all.  Since I cut out sugar and grains I also have been getting random episodes of feeling shakey/jittery, like my blood sugar is bottoming out.  I am sure this is a temporary adjustment but I perhaps need to increase my good carbs for the time being while my body adjusts.  I had friends over this weekend and did have a gluten free cupcake (ok fine, or two) and it did NOT make me feel good.  Always helpful to reinforce good habits!

My mostly paleo baby is possibly trying to self-wean.  He REALLY likes food but I was planning on nursing him until 18 months or so—we will see if that happens.  Right now he only is nursing maybe once or twice a day and zero to two times at night (last night I had to get up to pump at 3am because he was still sleeping soundly—a first!) Our ND recommends we both take some cod liver oil and vitamin D so we will work on getting that in, though I do give him tuna and sardines occasionally at least. This morning he tried egg yolk for the first time and loved it (though he likes just about everything!).  He does have a tendency to get a little constipated (oh you so want to know this I’m sure)—I am not sure if it’s hard for him to digest some of the stuff I’m giving him, or he needs some probiotics or something else.  So we are experimenting.  When it gets bad I back off on the protein and give him mostly fruit and a little starchy vegetables for a couple days which seems to help.  Now that he is nursing less I feel like he needs protein though so it’s a guessing game.   He also LOVES bananas which is not helping things move along. 

I made chili with ground beef and a little liver (shhhh, don't tell) and homemade bone broth for dinner.  How have I never made beef bone broth before?  It is unbelievable.  In fact, I might drink some right now before I go to bed.

Paleo Reboot-- week one

As promised I have gotten my act together since Thanksgiving.  I am doing a Paleo  + dairy/weston price-y thing and so far it's great!  Good bye gluten free bread and excessive chocolate (I started buying 88% dark chocolate and it has minimal sugar so I can eat a square and be done).

Stuff I'm eating:

Breakfast: 3 eggs, sweet potato, butter, sauerkraut (I never liked fermented veggies before but I'm starting to get over it-- I gave some to Max this morning with avocado and he LOVED it). A couple times I've made a sausage, sweet potato, apple bake.

Lunch:  leftover dinner or new favorite:  sweet potato, tuna, and kale all mashed together (Max also loves this)

Dinner: meat of some kind (chicken/beef/pork etc), potatoes or sweet potatoes, green vegetables.

Snacks: plain whole milk organic yogurt, almonds

Sometimes I throw a little cheese in there, drink a cup of bone broth, eat a pack of seaweed etc.

I am currently obsessed with the balancedbites podcast, and am loving their take on paleo as being a "nutrient seeker"-- this was what was missing before-- I wasn't working hard at getting the maximum quantity of NUTRIENTS.  Oh, and I'm not at all doing low carb anymore-- nursing requires a lot of calories and carbs.

This weekend we were traveling to visit family and I managed to avoid sugar but there wasn't much variety or nutrient density-- I ate a lot of salami, cheese, and flackers (crackers made of flax seeds), in the car-- when I got home last night I was dying for kale, which we are out of, but I did eat seaweed and a cup of bone broth to get some minerals and nutrients in.

 My little man likes pretty much everything I feed him from meat to vegetables to coconut milk and pumpkin (which is what he had for breakfast).