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.  

An update and an introduction

First of all, I would like to introduce you all to Max, born January 23 and weighing 9lbs 3 oz. I think he is pretty cute :)


Still, that blog isn't about nutrition and now that I'm out of the throws of pregnancy I have some thoughts on food to share.

I did not have an exclusively paleo/whole foods pregnancy. I would say I ate very healthy meals of mostly protein and vegetables once the first half of my pregnancy was over and I stopped feeling so nauseated, but I also ate a fair amount of sugar and refined (gluten free) junk food too, though I did not overeat-- just could have made overall better choices.

Over the course of my 41 week pregnancy I gained 39 pounds. I admit I was a little panicked about how hard that weight was going to be to lose. By the end I was retaining a LOT of water and was very uncomfortable-- my rings didn't fit, my shoes got tight, my face was puffy, I had cankles-- it was not cute. Exercise was mostly out of the question-- I was just too huge to get around. I did discover swimming towards the end-- if I had started this sooner I probably would have done that a lot more because it really helped.

Here's me at 40 weeks, huge and puffy:


Overall, it was not optimal but in the moment I felt like I was doing the best I could.

For several weeks before I gave birth I went on a crockpot cooking marathon and cooked and froze as many protein-type foods as possible so we would have healthy food available after the baby was born as my husband, who has many other talents, does not cook at all. I also decided that in addition to gluten and dairy, which I always avoid, I was going to cut out eggs and tomatoes. (Originally this was going to be all nightshades, but potatoes have happened). I especially wanted to avoid tomatoes because when I was a baby being breastfed, my mom said every time she ate tomatoes I would scream like crazy. And too many eggs give my mom eczema, plus I tested somewhat sensitive to them in the past, PLUS I ate eggs every day in my third trimester so I thought I probably should take a break from them.

I decided to support my breastfeeding I absolutely need starch in my diet, so in addition to yams and potatoes, I am eating rice, including a little bit of gluten free rice bread. I find I digest rice well (as opposed to most other grains) so I feel fine about this.

My diet now is not exactly paleo, but it is 98% whole foods and high protein. Every morning I have a green smoothie with almond milk, pumpkin seed protein powder, kale, fish oil and frozen fruit. On the side I have two slices of rice bread with nut butter.

Lunch and dinner are some kind of meat, often salad because it's fast or sauteed kale, and potato or yam, very occasionally some rice.

I snack on apples and TONS of trail mix, which I make myself out of the bulk bins at the grocery store of various raw nuts, dried fruit and dark chocolate. I am certain I am getting far too much omega 6 in my diet but honestly I have a 6 week old, it's kind of a miracle I'm eating as well as I am, so eventually I will cut back on that but for now it's sustaining me.

Supplements: still taking my prenatal and fish oil, plus I am taking garlic and grapeseed extract, recommended by my midwife after I had a case of mastitis (basically a breast infection). I also am taking heavy duty doses of probiotics after the aforementioned mastitis required antibiotics.

I don't know if it was because I lost a lot of fluids giving birth to my 9 pound baby good genetics, or my fairly clean diet, but I lost 25 of those 39 pounds in the first two weeks after giving birth and now, at 6 weeks post partum I only have 6 pounds to go to get to my pre-pregnancy weight (though I wouldn't mind losing twice that). I definitely have some work to do in the gym to rebuild a lot of lost muscle and fix the ab situation, but overall I feel like I'm pretty much back to being myself again. (Not that I can get into my favorite jeans, but hopefully I'll get there somewhat soon).

I've been thinking a lot about how I want to raise my son regarding food, paleo or otherwise, how big of a control freak I want to be (lately M has been eating way too much pizza and other crap because I haven't been doing a lot of cooking and that's what happens when he fends for himself-- not sure I want to have gluten in the house at all when Max starts eating solid food). I haven't quite decided yet-- I'm glad I have at least six months before I have to think about real food with the baby.

After several weeks of exhaustion and anemia due to blood loss (which I probably still have-- midwife will do blood work next week) I am finally really feeling ready to start exercising again. (Unfortunately my son will not take a bottle of pumped breastmilk so it's kind of hard to leave him for any length of time, but hopefully we will get there soon so I can hit the gym).

I am not sure how much better I could have really done food wise while pregnant because so much of what I felt was hormonal, but if I had it to do over I really would have worked harder at getting exercise in the second half of my pregnancy. I let my gym membership lapse and the weather didn't cooperate very well with walking outside and honestly I was just tired and kind of lazy about it.

I'll probably post here again occasionally when I have nutrition related thoughts to share, but I post much more often over at Sassy Chicken about mommy things if you are interested.

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.