An update on the kids

As far as dinners go, I've basically gone from cooking on most nights a dish of vegetables, beans and rice to a dish of vegetables and meat. The kids have not shown any change in their willingness to eat dinner. Still lots of complaining and they still usually eat it all. Breakfasts have been hit and miss. They enjoy eggs and meat some days, but others still want the bagels or oatmeal. The bagels are gone but there's still been oatmeal. It's almost gone. I need some other breakfast ideas. Lunch has been going great. Since both kids are home I've been either feeding them leftovers (they hate that but I remind them that's just what we have to do sometimes) or making plates of cold meats and cheese and apples and/or carrot sticks. Snacks are okay, but I really need more options.

I'm still on the fence about making the house sort of a grain-free zone, at least for a period of time. Grains would not be off limits for the kids, just not something they'd get at home. I don't want to be weird or radical, I just want to do what's right to keep them healthy and give them the best start to a long, healthy life. Trying to find the balance is hard. And I'm also dealing with two things here: one is healing past damage, two is long term maintenance, and those things are different. I can see already that grain-free meals leave them satisfied longer. We've had less constant hungriness and less extreme hunger, esp from the boy (who I say is hypoglycemic). Overall I've noticed, again esp in the boy, a need for less food overall. (I've noticed the same in myself).

So, here on day 10 since I made the switch, the kids are doing really well with it all. I'm being really open about why we're doing everything and they are mildly interested :)

A 30 day Social Experiment. Care to join in?

I was wondering if anyone would like to use the first of the year to do 30 days grain/bean/nut free along with me and keep a lively discussion going on this blog about how it goes and how they feel? My thoughts are that this would not be hard and it would be interesting to see if others, whether they have symptoms they hope to improve or not, have similar thoughts or reactions. The challenge would just be as above, no grains/beans/nuts and any of their products (from bread and pasta to oils and soy added to anything prepackaged).

Of course, I'd recommend if you are interested, you do some reading about the why of it all, but mostly I'm just looking for nice discussions. Anyone in?

Back on track

With no difficulty I was back on the new food plan the day after Christmas! Eating this way makes me less hungry and I feel like overall I am eating less and I crave much much MUCH less sugar and chocolate.

As the foods I plan not to eat run out, I am not restocking them. There's no bread at this point. There's still tortillas and pretzels and crackers. I'm not eating it, and I did throw a bunch of stuff out, but I'm trying to go easy on the kids. They, for the most part, are enjoying the dinners I'm making. So far, so good!

I found a new snack for my evening sweet tooth so I don't drink the hot chocolate every night anymore. I make a cup of hot milk and put in just a little bit of honey and a decaf chai tea bag. YUM!

I also think the 5-HTP is making me feel really good. Not that I didn't feel good before, I just had more mood swings to deal with and I feel much more steady. The other supplements I wanted for myself and dh I ordered online so we are waiting for them to arrive. We are both going to try them for a month.

Today:
breakfast: scrambled eggs with ham
lunch: last night's Mexican Turkey (bone in dk meat cooked in a stew of tomatoes and peppers with chili spices and chocolate)
dinner: carnitas pork with salsa and cheese, peas

I'm really trying to eat very little sugar right now, even in the form of whole fruits as I let everything heal.

Merry Christmas!

A quick note to let you know that indulging in the banned foods liberally on Christmas Eve had me feeling nothing but horrible for 12 hours!!! Today is not much better, as I throw caution to the wind, but tomorrow will be the first day of the rest of our (nutritional) lives. Husband cleaned out the fridge today and we said good bye to the ingredients to our old life. Also, I finally found the time to try and make the blog look a wee bit more inviting. Welcome.

Also: dropped the spirulina because it was giving me green poo (need I elaborate?) and upped probiotics to 2 caps three times a day on advice of SIL

Husband gave me new cookbooks for Christmas. New recipes all week long!

Making Sense of it All

Figuring out what to eat and what not to eat here is what I've compiled:

NO
Soy (any and all forms, read every label, eliminate every single molecule)
Corn (and all corn products including corn syrup)
Beans
Nuts
Peanuts
ALL GRAINS (and all their byproducts-flour, bread, pasta, crackers, cereal, etc)
PUFAs (polyunsaturated fatty acids): corn oil, veg oil, soybean oil, safflower oil, cottonseed oil, canola oil, margarine, shortening, anything partially or fully hydrogenated

YES
fish, Omega 3 fatty acids
MUFAs (monounsaturated fatty acids): olives, olive oil, avocados
naturally saturated fat: meat, dairy, eggs, BUTTER
coconut, coconut oil
lard (natural/organic)
ghee
honey--sm. amts

So basically this is the life shattering information on what is bad or good for you: grains and beans are BAD. Soy is BAD. All PUFAs are BAD. Saturated fats are GOOD. Meat, dairy, eggs, fish, full fat dairy are GOOD. Coconut is GOOD. Butter is EXTRA GOOD! (I know it's hard to accept this as we've been lied to our whole lives. It took me about a week to internalize this)

Eliminating all grains is not easy. It's one thing to go gluten free, it's another to avoid all grains and corn. I'm not sure how much I can push this on my children. Certainly they can have cake on their birthday! But some grain everyday? Every other day? I don't know the answer to this. I do know I will not buy another bag of bagels when this one is gone, and I will not buy any more instant oatmeal packets when these are gone (read the label and second and third ingredients are sugar and corn syrup, fourth is soy. ACK). The pretzels, the crackers, I need better alternatives before I can eliminate everything.

I'm really stuck on snacks. I can only come up with so many so far and the kids like variety. They can only eat so much dairy, even when given free license!

After reading "The Mood Cure", by Julia Ross, I decided to add two supplemented amino acids in which I am probably low. I have started taking 5-HTP twice a day and when I can find tyrosine to purchase, I'll add that too. My current supplements are designed to promote my recovery. I feel I am coming from a place of being chronically undernourished due to both the lectins that left my GI tract so inflamed it was constantly unable to absorb nutrients and the massive quantities of phytates I was ingesting from beans and nuts binding up the nutrients I was ingesting. Also, I feel that I am probably deficient in several amino acids due to chronically not providing my body with enough. Looking back, I suspect three back to back pregnancies* depleted my body of any reserves of a multitude of essential nutrients and when my diet did not replace them, I became undernourished. Fortunately, according to the book, within 1-3 months of supplementation, my levels should both be normal and able to maintain themselves without supplementation. (*36 week pg in '03, 15wk pg in '05, 40wk pg in '06) (See below for my complete current list of supplements.)

When I stopped eating meat daily in 2001 part of my decision was a rejection of factory farm meats. With the changes we wanted to implement in our diet we knew that we couldn't go back to factory farm meat. So, we have decided to join a third party CSA that will bring us meat from local farmers each week. Animals will be raised as they should so that their nutritional content will be what it should. It should also give us access to unpasteurized dairy products which Weston Price argues are THE way to go.Haven't tried yet!!!! Keeping an open mind :)

Since 12/20/10
To get you completely up to speed, I started eating this way (the list of No and Yes above) on 12/20/10. I am keeping a food log. I am eating a little bit of sugar each day, I am not trying to deprive myself but rather enjoy the right way of eating! It's very small though, a bit of full fat eggnog two of the days, and really I just don't crave it the way I do when I'm regularly ingesting it. I've known that before when I was on different diets or detoxes or healthy food kicks. The sugar withdrawal usually gives me a headache the first couple days and it did. Also, as I read in "Protein Power Lifeplan", on days 2 and 3 I was really thirsty and peeing constantly. I supplemented with extra potassium and will continue to do so till I feel like my thirst and urination is completely normal. Here on day 4 I feel a decrease in symptoms but they're not completely gone. 

Here is my food log for days 2 and 3 to give you an idea of what I'm eating right now. See below for information on specific foods.

12/21
B: 2 scrambled eggs with canadian bacon
L: beef stew (beef, tomatoes, butternut squash, carrots, celery)
D: chicken with bacon and peas cooked in white wine
S: hard boiled egg, carrot sticks with flavored cream cheese, egg nog, milk

12/22
B:  3 hard boiled eggs with butter and salt
L: chicken with bacon and peas
D: Caribbean pork chops with carrots
S: yogurt with honey, eggnog, milk

eggs: currently omega 3 enhanced eggs until I have a reliable local source of free range eggs
egg nog: full fat, but does contain corn syrup. small guilty xmas pleasure
cream cheese: full fat, does not contain corn syrup or sugar
milk: full fat organic until we can find and try local unpasteurized
butter: dropping the ball by using store brand, will switch to organic or local unpasteurized if able
yogurt: full fat organic, cream top, plain
all meat: currently just coming from big chain grocery store, waiting till after holidays to join CSA


Symptoms
I have a list of symptoms of which I have been suffering and hope to find relief. Most of these through the years have been attributed to IBS, 'nerves', stress, hormones, PMDD, and allergies (both skin and blood testing done--seeking AAT therapy this summer**)


Julie's symptoms
abdominal upset/pain
diarrhea
hemorrhoids
nausea
stomach pain
hot flashes
acne episodes
false moods (named from Julia Ross' book)--depression, anxiety, "blahs"
insomnia episodes
monkey brain spells
migraines
headaches
cold flashes
fuzzy thinking spells
tachycardia spells
heart palpitations
lethargy/fatigue
allergic rhinitis
reactive asthma
chronic sinus issues and infections
frequent viral and bacterial infections


The above symptoms I tried to list in a way that would help you understand the frequency in which I suffer from them.
Addtionally, there are some things I hope to improve in my children:

Son
short stature and underweight (I fully understand this might just be his normal size due to genetics, but I also            think that if he is not given the nutrition needed to reach his full genetic potential, he simply won't)
recurrent sinus infections

Daughter
moodiness (again, may just be her temperament, but if deficiencies are present, she doesn't have the tools
          needed to cope with her big emotions)
trouble sleeping (night waking, insomnia, she gets bouts)
frequent viral and bacterial infections
frequent tummy aches



My husband will not be mentioned because he likes his privacy :)

Here is my current list of supplementation:
fish oil 2 caps twice a day (will switch to cod liver oil when current supply is exhausted)
spirulina 2 caps twice a day (from a previous healing attempt, using what's left)
potassium (as needed while kidneys relearn)
magnesium 250mg at bedtime, hoping to be able to up it to 500mg gradually
probiotic 1 cap twice a day
vitex tincture 1 dropperful twice a day (to correct hormone irregularities)
dong quai 1/2 dropperful twice a day (except during menstruation, as above)
5-HTP 2 caps twice a day (at midafternoon and bedtime)***

As tomorrow is Christmas Eve and the next day is Christmas, we will not worry about our new diet and I will not blog. Enjoy the holidays :)

**AAT Therapy is a new, highly effective way to treat allergies. A chiropractor trained in applied kinesiology retrains your body to not identify allergens as dangerous invaders. No clinic currently provides this in Raleigh, we will travel to Asheville, NC this summer for me to undergo treatment. Identified allergies are dog, cat, dust mites, and grasses. Treatment may identify additional allergies such as: histamine or neurotransmitters

***previous attempts to relieve low serotonin symptoms have not been tolerable including Prozac and St John's Wort (the latter will reduce the effectiveness of birth control pills-don't find out the way I did)

The Story of this Blog

This story actually started more than 10 years ago, but let me get you up to the present.

My name is Julie, I'm a 30-something mom living the suburbian dream. A cozy house, a new minivan, a husband with a great job, and two amazing kids. Oh, and the requisite dog and cat too. But before I had all this, I had the dream to have all this. Around the time these dreams were coalescing into something tangible I was spending more time with my brother's family. 12 years my senior, my big brother was a grown up before I was. His smart and beautiful wife was raising their 3 girls in a way that made me pause and evaluate my own life. The foods she fed them blew me away. Sure, we all have some idea of what 'healthy eating' is supposed to be like, but she was putting it into practice to nourish her kids. I knew I needed to make some changes to how we ate BEFORE we had kids, to both nourish them as they were depending on my body for nutrition, but also so they were raised thinking that healthy eating was just what we ate. That it was normal. That other eating was not normal.

I started to do some reading and found I especially liked the ideas of a Whole Food diet. Dr. Andrew Weil, Dr. Dean Ornish and even Frances Lappe Moore were all telling me the same thing: animal products are bad for our health, whole grains, beans and vegetables are good. Dairy is bad, any fat of animal origin is bad bad bad. This was 2001 and in a radical sweep I did a 14 day "detox diet" then moved into the new diet. Out with cow's milk, in with soy milk. Out with processed pre-packaged sides of rice and noodle mixes, in with brown rice and bulgur. Out with meat, in with beans. I completely re-learned how to cook, although I'll admit I wasn't much of a cook prior, more of a re-heater. Everything was to be made from scratch, nothing was to be prepackaged. I made my own salad dressings. I made my own granola. At some point years down the line I even swapped the dairy we still ate (yogurt, cheese, ice cream) for the no fat or low fat versions. I relied on canola and soy for my fats, on beans for my protein and on grains for their promises of better digestion and lowered cancer risks.

Here I should pause and say that this journey was not without hopes of making me feel better. I had been suffering from daily diarrhea for years and after having a colonoscopy diagnosed with IBS. Part of my goal with a new way of eating was to eliminate the symptoms I had been suffering. And at first, I did get relief. A lot of relief. Getting rid of all the processed foods I was eating everyday probably helped me feel better.

Over the next decade I got pregnant three times. I gave birth twice. I nursed two children for over 24 months each. Each major hormonal change seemed to go haywire with increasing escalation. After kid number one was born my cycles were a little off. After the miscarriage I had to use progesterone to approximate a normal cycle and get pregnant again. After kid number two came along I got worse and worse: hot flashes, migraines, moodiness, nausea. I saw several doctors to try and figure out the root cause of the hormonal symptoms. Additionally, with digestive symptoms through the roof I had to see an additional doctor for problems related to that.  I, myself, tried to find relief on my own--more soy, less soy, more exercise, herbs, hormone replacement, I even tried Prozac. Nothing helped. Finally, with a diagnosis of PMDD making me feel like these symptoms weren't killing me (not literally anyway), that they weren't due to a tumor or something life threatening, I resigned to just feel that way until menopause.

And that's sort of where I was a week ago.

Now, for the part where everything changes. My brother in law had been trying to get us interested in a different way of looking at food and nutrition. He gave me some information about Weston Price, his works, his findings, what is done in his name today. I read it, I agreed with some of it, but my previous ideas were too entrenched to even consider the opposite. Then he gave us a book called The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith. I'll admit I was not very interested. In regards to vegetarianism, it was a philosophy I never bought into. I never felt morally wrong to kill animals to eat them. I never felt that it was necessarily the right thing nutritionally to not eat any meat ever. BUT, I didn't have a strong opposition to vegetarianism. My brother has been veg since the 90's and I respected that as his choice. And we mostly ate vegetarian at home because while I didn't think it was bad nutritionally to eat meat occasionally, I didn't think it was healthy to eat the factory farm produced meat available to us every day. Besides, how would we eat all those super healthy beans and whole grains if we were bogged down with the meat? So, husband read the book. Husband encouraged me strongly to read the book. Looking at it further, it was full of info I was interested in. So I read it.

The book, in a word, is genius. Honestly, there was not a whole lot in there that was new information to me. However, it tied it all together, linked things I already knew, in a totally novel way. A revolutionary way. A way that, in actuality, is so simple, I'm a bit embarrassed I didn't make these connections myself. In my own defense, if I had wanted to advocate vegetarianism passionately, I don't see how I wouldn't have arrived at some of the same conclusions she did, it was the fact that I didn't really care about all that that let me easily believe the accepted rhetoric without question. The few kernels of new information to me, though, are the cornerstone of this food revolution that is occurring right now in our home and the subject of this blog.

Knowing that you, reader, probably have not read this book (yet!) , I'd like to fill you in on a few key points so you can figure out what the heck I'm talking about between now and you getting your hands on it!

In The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith sets out to dispel the myth that by choosing grains and beans over animal meat or products, you are being less cruel, being responsible for less death, and being more "green". I'll let you read the book if those topics interest you. Her argument is air tight. You can continue to be a vegetarian, of course, but you can't use these arguments to justify it.

Second, she talks about how grains are, in a word, poisonous to humans. It was information I had researched in regards to Celiac Disease, but didnt' realize that Celiac or not, this applies to all of us. The evidence is clear across the centuries, everywhere agriculture began to provide humans with the new food of grains, 'modern' diseases follow. Humans ate ZERO grains before agriculture turned some wild grasses into the grains we eat today. The human body has lots of requirements, including for fat and protein, but needs ZERO carbohydrates. No whole grains, no beans, no sugar. Don't need any of them. None of them provide anything healthful to our bodies. Worse, grains break down in to lectins that mimic your body's own chemicals and lead to a cascade of autoimmune issues. Keith references mostly the Drs. Eades' book "Protein Power Lifeplan" for this section and I recommend their book too. If you are interested in the nutrition aspect of Keith's book and especially how grains are poisoning us, read their book or at least the chapter about "The Leaky Gut". This information, much like all the studies that smoking was bad, has been suppressed for decades.

At this point I was convinced a change was necessary. I could, in hindsight, clearly see how my health had slowly been deteriorating as the years went by since I adopted my whole food diet.

Additionally, I read Julia Ross' The Mood Cure since my hormonal issues are often manifested in moods. She has some really good information on how protein and diet affect the chemicals that control your mood or how you feel. It's clear that the combination of not enough protein and too many toxic grains has completely sabotaged my body's ability to function normally.

So, this is where I'll leave you for the first entry. This is where I was about two days ago, my head SWIMMING with information, everything I once thought was up was now down. I had to sleep on it a few days and talk about it with the husband and my mom over and over again. Once some of it was internalized, I knew I was ready to start putting this plan into action. My goal here is blog about this, what we are doing, why and how we are making the changes and how they are playing out. We really had nothing to lose, but trying to implement this over Christmas will lead to a staggered start, lol.

More tomorrow! Welcome to our journey!!!