One Week of Clean Eating

What an interesting experience!  I did not expect to feel quite the way I did after a week of clean eating.  As I alluded to in my previous post, I am not hell bent on compliance here, however, up until the evening of Day 7, I ate only Whole30 compliant foods.  I will confess that I didn’t stick 100% to the “spirit” of the program which is three meals, no snacking.  Most of the time I was OK, but as the week wore on, breakfast became more and more of a problem and I found myself snacking on cashews instead of eating a meal.  Even after making  this:

I still couldn’t summons up the enthusiasm to eat breakfast every day.  It is a meal I have always struggled with.  I was doing intermittent fasting and skipping breakfast altogether.  That style of eating actually worked really well for me but then I discovered the Chobani coconut and chocolate yoghurts and started eating those every morning for breakfast. Yum!  Back to the here and now, if I didn’t have a meal prepared, I also didn’t eat lunch on schedule. Yesterday for example, I didn’t get lunch until 3 PM because I didn’t have time to fix it.  This is on top of no breakfast.  Could I make this work?  Absolutely!  But I would need to change so much about my lifestyle to be 100% compliant and I am not feeling the motivation or the need to make these changes.

I woke up on day 2 of the Whole30 thing feeling great!  But that really was the last time I have felt great.  My head was less foggy than usual, but my stomach was a disaster.  And this was part of the problem with breakfast.  As soon as food hit my stomach, the gas and pain would begin.  It got progressively worse throughout the day to the point where I was miserable and in pain every evening. I looked to be 6 months pregnant.  This did not ease at all over the course of the week.  Yesterday I bought magnesium and what I hope is Whole30-compliant lactobacillis acidophilus.  I haven’t yet identified why I am having so many GI issues but I am guessing that either my soluble fiber intake is too low, or my stomach acid levels are too low, or I have an imbalance between the good and bad bacteria in my gut.

We were unexpectedly invited out to dinner last night.  I knew I had not the will power to get through a dinner out without breaking the rules.  So I compromised with myself. I’d order a salad and have a glass of wine.  Well, we all know that I don’t do just one glass of wine.  I was true to form and had two glasses with dinner.  I had a third when I got home.  I also ate a few corn chips with cheese dip.  Yup, if you are going to break your diet, might as well do it with style!  I am proud of myself for only having between 5 – 10 corn chips though.  If I’d not been on the diet, I’d have eaten the whole basket!

And that brings me to another aspect of the Whole30 diet that has surprised me. I haven’t been hungry at all. No cravings for anything.  I think the bloated stomach plays a big role there, but that’s OK.  My main objective for doing this was to stop the carb binges!

Luckily for me, my mother was an excellent cook and she turned some of those skills over to me.   Putting together meals without a plan isn’t that difficult for me.  I made this green curry from leftover stir fry chicken and vegetables:

 

My slow cooker has become a best friend and has allowed me to easily prepare meat that can be used in numerous ways, including my own version of southwestern pulled beef:

 

I have discovered some foods that I didn’t know existed.  This loaded sweet potato has a big spoonful of coconut butter on it.  This was one of my favorite meals to date.

 

I bought a spiralizer last summer and it really is the most practical diet tool in my kitchen.  I am not a big fan of spaghetti squash but I love spiralized summer squash or zucchinis.  I made this “pasta” dish and served over summer squash.

 

I also made myself a sweet potato shepherd’s pie using lamb from a roasted lamb that I fixed on the first day of the diet.  It was really, really good.  I also used the lamb in the breakfast casserole. I have yet to find breakfast sausage that is Whole30-compliant in my town.

 

I know that eating this way is not for me. I  don’t really enjoy it and the bloating impacts my life significantly.  After my intentional slip up last night, I woke with no bloat but with a wicked migraine that was resistant to all drugs.  I know the wine is the culprit and I am treating yesterday as a reintroduction day, of sorts.  That means that today, tomorrow, and the next day are pure Whole30 eating.  I will then add in dairy for a day, as detailed by the plan.

Many will criticize me for doing this for only 1 week.  I had hoped for 2 weeks but I just don’t see any point in being this miserable.  I find that the diet has too much meat in it for me.  I also feel nauseated at the prospect of a full meal for breakfast.  The last issue I have is muscle fatigue.  My muscles burn to a ridiculous extent when I do anything more than a brief walk.  Clearly, my muscles are not accustomed to drawing energy from much other than an immediate source.  On the one hand, it is probably a good indicator that my body is trying to use fat instead of glucose.  On the other hand, it sucks to feel so physically exhausted.

So there you have it.  My first attempt at a very dramatic dietary change.  Let’s see how the next 3 days go.

 

 

 

Trying Again

Well hello to my old friends. I bet you forgot I existed.  It has been so long that I couldn’t remember my password!  I fail to understand why, as much as I love to write, I cannot blog on a regular basis.  I guess it goes hand in hand with my inability to stick with anything!  Diet, exercise, resolutions, etc.  My weight yoyos like crazy.  When I exercise, it is down, when I am highly stressed, it is down.  Anything in between and I begin to look like a hippopotamus!  I don’t seem to be able to find a happy medium.  And so, I am starting to work on a new me all over again!  Is that a collective groan that I hear from my readers?  I don’t blame you in the slightest.  Nonetheless, I am going to give it a shot.  And since it is spring, this is an apt time for Springcleanedmom to do some spring cleaning!

What exactly are you doing, I hear you ask?  I don’t usually do things in half measures so I am throwing myself into a Whole30.  Yes, me, the anti-high protein, -low carb girl. Yes me, the anti-paleo girl.  I couldn’t care less what my cave-person ancestors ate and I don’t believe that today’s diet should reflect what they ate.  I know, I know, this doesn’t make sense at all.  Well, here is what I like about Whole30.  They are not advocating for a caveman diet.  They are advocating for a healthy diet.  A good deal of what they say makes sense to the scientist in me.   And a part of it is plain desperation.

It all started when I was a wee-little lass.  The “sick headaches”, the fatigue, the anxiety, the depression, and the insomnia.  And it only got worse through my college years, partially because I discovered alcohol (actually, that discovery was a little earlier than college).  My 20s were the worst years for depression, my 30s for migraine.  My 40s haven’t seen much in the way of depression, but pain has been my companion for a very long time now, as has insomnia.  I started running in my 30s and although this new-found love went hand-in-hand with a healthier lifestyle and weight, it also went hand-in-hand with chronic hip pain.  While surgery fixed some of the hip problems, it hasn’t been the complete answer to my troubles.   Every so often I have major flare ups which require steroids.  And in the past two weeks I have had shingles and debilitating back pain.  Out of shear desperation, I have turned to the internet and as luck (or misfortune) would have it, I stumbled across the Whole30 program!

Anyone who knows me, knows that I love to eat.  I am addicted to food.  While I am fortunate enough to enjoy healthy foods, I am a potato chip addict.  If it wasn’t so bad for me, I’d live on a diet of dips, chips, and red wine 🙂  Who wouldn’t want to do that?  As you can imagine, I don’t feel so good when my diet consists largely of fat and sugars.  It is time to detoxify.  I am also treating this as a migraine elimination diet. I have started many of these over the years but have a hard time sticking with them.  Why do I think Whole30 will be different? Because it has an end date.  They even have a plan to add foods back in to the diet after the 30 days.  The one problem for me is that I am scheduled to have surgery mid-way through.  I thought about starting the “eating plan” after my surgery, but why wait?  If I cannot stick to the diet during my overnight stay in the hospital, so be it!  Technically, the folks who developed the 30 day plan would require I start over.  I will wait and see.  I am highly unlikely to beat myself up about eating something “off-plan) while in the hospital.  The two weeks of healthy eating prior to my hospital stay can only be of benefit.

Today is Day 2 for me!  Day 1 was a breeze.  Today I am lacking energy but given that I am on pain killers and muscle relaxants, I don’t think the diet is soley to blame!  I am looking forward to the morning when I wake up with the “extraordinary energy” that so many Whole30 and Paleo folk describe.   I am not hungry.  That is a good thing.  I do want something sweet but I can handle that.  I am feeling rather positive about this new journey even though I have never experienced a diet-induced change in how I feel.

How about you?  Who has made a significant dietary change and reaped benefits?  I’d love to hear your stories!

Day 2: Make Me or Break Me Day

Usually on day two of a detox, I have convinced myself that I am not a problem drinker and that one beer after work isn’t going to hurt. And so, I have that one beer! Today I didn’t do it! I almost did because let’s face it, I felt like one. Just one. And I probably would have had just one. I don’t seem to need to keep going with beer like I do with wine. But, for two reasons, I didn’t reach for the beer. The first being that I am determined to do this. The second being, there is no beer in the house LOL. There is however, Black Cherry Lemonade which is very, very good. I don’t even like cherry flavored stuff but this stuff is gooooood!

Also on day two is the no unnecessary ingestion of Lortab. This was a pretty big battle today for two reasons. First, I had a headache. Wasn’t bad, but was annoying, and like all headaches, it had the potential to transform into a migraine. But I was feeling as though it probably wouldn’t, and I was correct. Second, I went for a 2 mile run this morning. Finally decided to check out the hip to see if any of my exercises were working. Turns out that 8 days of strengthening exercises and stretches do not help at all. By late afternoon, my hip was considerably painful. Now, instead of taking Lortab (I only have 8 left until sometime next month), I took Panadeine. This is an over-the-counter medicine available in Australia that contains acetaminophen and codeine. The codeine is in ridiculously miniscule doses which I doubt have any greater effect than the acetaminophen alone, but I took it just the same. I needed to at least try for a placebo effect. At least the pain got me on the phone making all sorts of appointments around town to try to sort this out.

Tonight I would like to introduce a third addiction of mine – Ambien. I have had sleep-onset insomnia all my life. This was a real problem as a kid and now it is just a real nuisance. Ambien changed my life. I could finally sleep again. I don’t even care if I am addicted to the stuff. There is just one problem with it, it DESTROYS my short term memory and probably has other more subtle effects on cognitive function. So, it is best for me not to keep it in the house. I have prescription refills that will give me enough for 1 a months for the next 3 months but for now, I am not filling it. I want to, but unless I can limit myself to using it only once or twice a week, I refuse to keep it in the house. Tonight will be night 2 without Ambien. In its place I have lorazepam (Ativan). This drug is OK. I use it sometimes. I believe that while I am detoxing from alcohol, Ambien and probably hydrocodone, popping a couple of lorazepams a night is probably a very sound thing to do. I don’t really notice its anxiolytic effects but I think I sleep better with it onboard. Eventually, my goal is to be drug-free except for when needed for the migraines and the arthritis.

I was the crankiest mom you could ever imagine tonight. I knew I was going to be. What with the premenstrual stuff going on which is probably also perimenopausal stuff AND detox, what can you expect? I feel a little sorry for my adorable little boys and a lot sorry for my lovely husband. They get the raw end of the deal when mommy/wifey is like this. But I can promise you all that I do not neglect my children or my husband. They are well taken care of both physically and emotionally. I am also the major breadwinner in this household and have managed to raise us to the social status of “soccer mom family”. Big house, big cars, big vacations, too many toys, a dog, a cat, a hamster and fish. Three fish at the moment. Just put 5 neon tetras into a 10 gal tank and two died right away. The other three look great so hears to hoping that they remain that way.

Ah, but blogging is therapeutic. Every time I thought about a drink or medicine today, I thought about my blog. Heck, no one has even read it yet but just the thought that it is public makes me want to stick to my guns. Now I just need some followers who can encourage or flame me. Tomorrow is going to be a great day!

Day 1, And So Begins the Spring Cleaning

Other than a rip-roaring hangover, which I might add, is very rare for a Monday, the day was perfectly OK. Even with all of my new resolutions, I’d have been hungover today. Yesterday was a retirement party for one of my favorite colleagues. I had to be there and I had to be sociable 🙂

No booze today. Not a drop. Of course, that isn’t uncommon for a Monday because I am usually at work all day and then doing karate in the evening. I have not yet been invited into the inner sanctum where I understand, beer is a favorite sustenance! No karate today either. Since injuring my hip several months ago, I have been very cautious about exercising. In fact, one might go so far as to suggest that I am using the injury as an excuse not to exercise. However, to prove the naysayers wrong, tomorrow morning I am scheduled to meet a friend to run at 8:30 AM. And tonight, it is supposed to reach a low of 25 F. WTF?

Another small feat today – no migraine or pain medicine other than my NSAID for my hip. This is great news for I tend to find a headache pops up whenever I think about my stash of Lortab. Another addiction? I surely hope not. I have to think seriously about this one. I don’t take it daily but I totally freak out if I don’t have any. It is my “emotional” crutch for when I have a migraine. Sure, my zolmitriptan works most of the time, but it doesn’t make me feel better emotionally! Today I hardly gave it a thought. This is a great sign.

Tomorrow I will be feeling less enthusiastic about my no alcohol, no drugs diet. I am yet to have added in the reduction of food-derived calories. That will come when I appear to no longer be losing weight from cutting out the booze. Hopefully, by adding some running back into the mix, this will be a few more weeks. Remember, 1 lb per week is the big goal.

I have been wondering a lot about menopause as of late. I have had some symptoms ever since my second child was born when I was 40. Now I am thinking more about it. I guess that until I stop cycling regularly, I can assume I am not yet there. However, I am a whole week early this week – and heavy. TMI? Too bad, this blog isn’t supposed to be for the faint of heart. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but ALL WOMEN GO THROUGH MENOPAUSE eventually. Yep, it is true. Even little old me. However, I wasn’t expecting it until later. After all, I had my babies at 37 yrs and 11 months, and 40 years and 5 months. Heck, I could keep popping them out for years to come, right? Hmm, maybe not. Ah well. If I could survive the hot flashes that I had a year or so ago, I can survive anything!

Bring on tomorrow…

New Beginnings

How many people start their blogs in exactly this way? Who am I to stray from the crowd? “Spring Cleaning” is a nice name for it. Perhaps “Dexoxing Mom” might be more appropriate. Makes me sound like a horrible drug addict or alcoholic, yet I am really neither of these. However, I am very impulsive and I do what I want when I want. This usually involves food or alcohol, and often, both. Long story short, tomorrow, this changes. Tomorrow, I get back on the proverbial wagon, although I have never intended, and still don’t, intend to remain on it permanently.

Who doesn’t love food? Well, to be honest, nearly every man who has ever been in my life (except for ones who I share various genes with), don’t really care less about food! I hear you gasping with disbelief, yet it is true. My very own husband eats to sustain himself, not for enjoyment. This is as foreign a concept to me as jumping out of a plane. I will never jump out of a plane and I will never be someone who doesn’t eat for pleasure. However, I have heard it said that even “foodies” can lose weight. Although I hardly qualify “Biggest Loser”, weighing in at a grand total of 134 lbs (my guess is that tonight, I would be closer to 140 if I dared get on a scale), my 5 ft 1 frame is not very forgiving when it comes to over-eating. Even the various height-weight scales put me at the high end of the “large frame” range. This never makes me feel good about myself. The second link I checked out after googling “height weight charts” told me that my ideal weight is 106-119 lbs. The last time I weighed that little was 3 months into a nasty bout of mono (glandular fever) at a time when my body was acidotic and showing signs of starvation! Oh, and I was only 119 lbs at that point! I cannot imagine weighing 106 lbs. I doubt that I have ever weighed that little, except sometime during my teens on my way up to where I am now (at a ripe old age of 43).

One pound a week. That is my usual goal. And it is realistic. I can usually achieve this for several weeks by making only one change – cutting out alcohol! I don’t consider myself to be an alcoholic, although I recently heard the term “functioning alcoholic” and wondered if I fit that definition. I have two little kids (5 and 3) and I work full time (as a college professor to boot!). I have never skipped a day of school due to a hangover, nor have I ever not looked after my kids because I am too ill from over-indulging. However, and yes, there is definitely a “however”, I have used LOTS of migraine medicine which one might argue was unnecessary, had I not lost count of the number of drinks that I had.

My migraine safe limit is 2 glasses of wine. Three is like playing Russian Roulette, but I feel the odds are in my favor. Four definitely tips the odds from me. I tried to implement a rule for 2012 – no wine in the house except on special occasions. It is now the end of March and I think I have only bought 3 bottles of wine since the new year. But, wine can be bought at restaurants and beer can be brought into the house. So I think a better policy might be “NO ALCOHOL DURING THE WEEK” and “NO EXCEEDING THE MIGRAINE-TRIGGER LIMIT (2)” on weekends, weekends being Friday and Saturday nights. Special occasions may be exempt if I submit an application for exemption to myself in advance. I will figure out the fine details later.

Being that it is late on a Sunday night, I need to go to bed and think about the new, spring-cleaned me.