Itchy Skin? Maybe It's What You're Eating

Last year, I started developing itchy skin on my shins. There wasn't a rash, the skin didn't seem excessively dry, it was just really, really itchy. Sometimes I would scratch until I felt like it would bleed if I scratched more.

Changing detergents didn't help. Using anti-itch creams, like calendula or others, helped, but it didn't stop the itch from coming back. Pretty much every single day.

Then I started eating almost entirely wheat-free after Easter when my daughter realized she needed to go gluten-free. And lo and behold, I started realizing I would have several days of no itching. When I'd eat wheat again, the itch came back. If I'd eaten a lot of wheat, it was a ferocious itch.

I had no itching yesterday, then ate regular wheat bread as part of supper last night. And my shins itch again this morning.

People tend to think of hives or perhaps even eczema when they think of food allergy/sensitivity symptoms. Itchy skin--and it doesn't have to be everywhere as my case shows--is another symptom. If you, too, suffer from itchy skin that doesn't seem to have any understandable cause, have a look at what you are eating. It's probably not the only symptom from a questionable-for-you food.

Signs of Gluten Intolerance

After yesterday's post about my daughter's possible wheat overload, I tried to find out more information on wheat sensitivity. Gluten sensitivity kept coming up, but given her blood test did not show an issue with gluten, I thought that meant she wasn't gluten sensitive.

Turns out I might have been wrong.

According to NaturalNews, the blood tests they typically do don't test for all gluten sensitivity.

So, now I have myself questioning again if my daughter is, indeed, gluten sensitive. And how much damage it has done to her potentially over the years. Looking at Hypothyroid Mom's site and her list of 12 shocking symptoms, let me consider them here, I can say she has suffered from 7 out of the 12. That's a lot. One that's not in there that deals with youth is delayed growth, another symptom of hers, even though teeth all came in at the "normal" time.

Here's another list, almost identical, but I thought I would share it. What caught my eye was the "chicken skin" on the back of the arms: my daughter has this, but so does my son and so do I!

1. Digestive issues such as gas, bloating, diarrhea and even constipation. I see the constipation particularly in children after eating gluten.
2. Keratosis Pilaris, (also known as 'chicken skin' on the back of your arms). This tends be as a result of a fatty acid deficiency and vitamin A deficiency secondary to fat-malabsorption caused by gluten damaging the gut.
3. Fatigue, brain fog or feeling tired after eating a meal that contains gluten.
4. Diagnosis of an autoimmune disease such as Hashimoto's thyroiditis, Rheumatoid arthritis, Ulcerative colitis, Lupus, Psoriasis, Scleroderma or Multiple sclerosis.
5. Neurologic symptoms such as dizziness or feeling of being off balance.
6. Hormone imbalances such as PMS, PCOS or unexplained infertility.
7. Migraine headaches.
8. Diagnosis of chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia. These diagnoses simply indicate your conventional doctor cannot pin point the cause of your fatigue or pain.
9. Inflammation, swelling or pain in your joints such as fingers, knees or hips.
10. Mood issues such as anxiety, depression, mood swings and ADD.

http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-7482/10-signs-youre-gluten-intolerant.html

I think it's time to seriously consider making my home as gluten-free as possible and if others won't willingly switch over, make certain changes slowly (like mixing in gluten-free pasta with regular pasta) so they won't even know.

Gurgle, gurgle

My daughter has been having a VERY gurgly stomach now for at least a  couple of months. I'm not sure I've ever heard it be as bad as it has been lately.

I suspect her body may be overloaded on wheat again. But she's 17, has always brought it up in the past when she's wanted to try wheat-free, and has never gone for my suggesting it, so I'm going to let it go and let her decide if she wants to try wheat-free again. And I say wheat-free because she has been tested twice for a reaction to gluten and both times it was fine. That said, about the only gluten she eats is wheat, so perhaps I should just say, "Gluten-free."

Of course, it's hard for us to go wheat-free. Once we're in it, it's not so bad, or wasn't. Now she's working at a pizzeria, often eating there before her shift starts or once it's done. There is a gluten-free crust available, but she hasn't tried it, and sometimes there is just free pizza to be eaten, too, due to messed up orders or people not even showing up to pick up their order. And without knowing for sure that going wheat-free will help, can you blame her for not being open to cutting it out just yet?

It might be time for Mamma to aim for a wheat-free week in terms of what she is serving others. Even if it doesn't eliminate her wheat consumption entirely, at least it'll ease up a bit on the burden to her body.

Day 2 of Wheat-Free Eating

Although my daughter doesn't seem to be prepared to cut out wheat entirely, I have decided to. And if you read my previous post, there was some angst as to what to actually eat.

Well, I'm on Day 2 and I have to say, this has been the easiest yet of going wheat-free. The first time I went wheat-free was almost agonizing on Days 1 and 2--I was so used to having wheat pretty much all the time, it was just incredibly hard. And I was having cravings for it. This time around, while my thoughts will turn to a wheat product, when I remember I'm not eating wheat, I just find something else.

As for my wheat-free (and, naturally, dairy-free) supper plan for the week, it hasn't been followed at all so far. lol. Yesterday, instead of chicken piccata, we were at the grocery store to pick up chicken breasts and my daughter suggested we get one of the roasted chickens. Sure! I then made dairy-free scallopped potatoes (note: when they say "thinly sliced" potatoes, they really mean it! my poor potatoes were not cooked even after quite a bit of additional cooking time) to go with it and we just had some raw veggies on the side.

Today, I decided it would be rice with something. We have a lot of frozen ground beef, so I picked that and ended up making a kind of skillet casserole with Italian tomato sauce, ground beef, Italian sausage, chili powder and rice. My son complained when seeing it that he doesn't like the texture of this particular dish, that rice, tomato sauce and beef don't go together. I said that you can get burritos with that combination. He said, yeah, but we're not eating burritos. I then suggested he grab a tortilla and make himself a burrito. Well, it did the trick for him! Not his favourite dish still, but more manageable like that.

Breakfast-wise, I've just been having Rice Krispies with vanilla-flavoured rice milk. Had a stir fry for lunch yesterday and a couple of scrambled eggs for lunch today. I've had some other food, but I can't think what exactly.

That's the progress report so far. If you are wanting to go wheat-free, even if just for a few days, why not join me and let me know in the comments? We can support each other, share snack and meal ideas...

Menu Planning Can Be HARD

My 16-year old has been having increasing stomach pains, but has also been eating an increasing amount of wheat lately. Although in the past some activated charcoal did the trick, it doesn't seem to be helping the pain. Whether the pain is from something else or whether it's just so prolonged and she keeps eating wheat so it's not going away, we're not sure, but it's time to do something. Add to that, I've been feeling the need to go wheat-free for a while again, so with the two of us wanting to work on it, it's definitely time.

She wants to just cut back on her wheat; last time she had these pains, it took a few days of being wheat-free for them to disappear completely. So, I want to encourage her to at least go three days wheat-free and see if it helps. But that means having a menu plan. And although we previously did a couple of weeks straight of wheat-free, I'm sitting here trying to plan a wheat-free supper plan for the week and struggling! It's kind of sad that wheat is that much a part of our lives again, that we're that dependent on it.

Ideas I've come up with so far (and given they are for me, too, they are dairy-free, or able to be made dairy-free):

*chicken piccata (from the Wheat Belly 30-Minute or Less Cookbook) with potatoes and veggies
*a veggie or chicken and veggie stir fry with rice
*tacos (without the wheat tortillas; the Wheat Belly 30-Minute or Less Cookbook has a wheat-free recipe I could try or I could see about a traditional Mexican corn soft tortilla)
*pizza, with one of the crusts made with the recipe from Cooking for Your Gluten-Free Teen
*chili or spaghetti with gluten-free noodles
*skillet rice, kidney beans and tomatoes

This felt very hard to come up with. And it only covers 6 days, not the next 7. AND this is just for supper, not the other meals. She has already requested that I make the stuffed peppers recipe from Raw Food: A Complete Guide for Every Meal of the Day for lunch. I'm not sure I have what I need to make it, although I modify it anyhow because I can't eat one of the nuts in the recipe. But she'll need more than stuffed peppers to make it through even a few days of wheat-free eating!

Why does this feel so hard? It's not like we haven't done it before. But it's like a vague memory. I will have to see what I can dig up from this blog about what we've eaten in the past!

---

Cookbooks mentioned above:

Wheat and Blood Pressure

I have, thus far, not done truly anything food-wise or exercise-wise to deal with my increase in blood pressure. I do check here and there when I'm at a pharmacy and it's still like it was before I met the last time with my doctor. I have been thinking a lot about how I've been eating, if I'm eating differently than I had been up until the past year or so (I had BP readings of 110/70-120/80 for as long as I can remember). It's possible I'm consuming more salt and junk the past while than I previously did. Something to tackle.

But a thought hit me the other day when I could tell my body was reacting to having more wheat than usual and then this morning, when I had my first nosebleed in sometime (I was getting them fairly often for a while): could wheat be affecting my blood pressure?

A quick research online reveals the answer to be: YES. And it could be more than that and full out gluten, not just wheat.

It makes sense as my mind rests on the idea. Any kind of food sensitivity creates inflammation in the body. While my inflammation has typically been in my gut, who says that wheat isn't now affecting my blood pressure?

My daughter has been complaining of her wheat belly lately; she's back to full out wheat, too, since she's not having the bad symptoms she had been having for a while. Before she left for a teen camp this week, I told her my plan was to get back into wheat-free next week. I shake my head how each time, it feels like such a daunting task, but once we've been in it for a week or two, it's not that big of a deal anymore.

And me, I'll be checking my blood pressure regularly while wheat-free to see if just that change makes a difference.

What to Eat, What to Eat...

A couple of weeks ago, my daughter decided she didn't feel any different when she was eating wheat, so while she still would turn to some gluten-free things now and then during the week, she didn't restrict herself from eating wheat the way she had been.

Then she had a weekend that had a lot of wheat.

And her stomach ended up with two days of stabbing pains.

So, now we're back to no-wheat/gluten-free (except one or two meals per week).

And on top of trying to adjust back to wheat-free, we're both sick.

And she's super stressed with school and therefore, combined with not feeling well, gets very super stressed with something as simple figuring out what to eat for lunch.

I've made her lunch two days in a row. A kind of chicken fried rice yesterday and then I created a teriyaki bowl (with quinoa--first time using quinoa!) today. (I have a picture of the broccoli and yellow pepper cooking with a garlic clove in the pan, but forgot to take a picture of the rest!)

I've tried two new things in two days. I'm beat. lol.

Now I have to figure out a supper. And I'm so tired, I just can't even think and nothing sounds appealing.

I'm not in the mood for beef; we had chili with beef (and noodles) yesterday. I had chicken two lunches in a row. The supper needs to have at least some wheat-free food for me and my daughter (I've gone back to wheat-free although am not going to freak out about tasting to see if wheat noodles are ready or not). And it has to have a dairy-free element for me.

It would be much simpler if we were all accustomed to eating a raw vegan diet, wouldn't it?

But that kind of change for tonight requires energy and thought capacity, both of which I'm lacking.

I have a bunch of leftover cooked quinoa from lunch. Might be able to find something to do with it.

I saw that we have frozen hash browns. (Can hash browns be turned into a supper?)

We have ground beef and frozen chicken in the freezer. I don't want either one.

We had kidney beans yesterday and I'm not in the mood for more beans today.

I don't have any potatoes left--other than the frozen hash browns.

I don't have any tomatoes (neither canned nor fresh) left.

Maybe my real problem is not what to eat for supper but that I need some groceries.

I could have a each-to-their-own supper evening, but I know what that will lead to with my 15yo: "I don't know what to eat..."

I think I'll go rummage through the fridge, freezers and cupboards, see what I might come up with.

What do you do on days where you're just not up to snuff and don't feel like anything (and have food sensitivities to deal with!)?

(Did I really just write a post where most of it is made up of one-sentence paragraphs?)

Wheat-Free... and Starving

My daughter and I went wheat-free a couple of weeks back. Part of me kept saying that some of the emotional stress she was experiencing was due to wheat/gluten: the happiest I'd seen her in a long time had been our gluten-free stint a little bit before Christmas. I told her I wanted her to at least try wheat-free, that I would do it with her because I do better wheat-free, too, and she went along with it.

We have not completely eliminated gluten, but it is sounding like we might have to. She said she has days where her stomach area is flat--which doesn't happen ever when she eats wheat--but some days, it's not flat, even if she hasn't eaten wheat, like last night. She did, however, have some wheat-free, but not gluten-free, items yesterday, which is why we may have to look at going entirely gluten-free. Admittedly, we haven't been 100% gluten-free: we had take-out last Friday (do you know how hard it is to have gf take-out that isn't just salad or fries??) and a family get-together on Sunday where we decided we weren't going to push things just yet. (It's already an issue that there have to be dairy-free options available for me.) She had a sleepover within the first week and we scrapped the wheat-free focus for that evening, too.

In any case, this time around, she is STARVING. We could say, "Oh, she's a growing teenager," but it coincided so much with going wheat-free that I'm thinking it could be related. Have any readers experienced this?

I looked it up online and found both sides: one where the kids were ravenous while eating gluten but fine when not and others where people had an insatiable hunger when they went gluten-free. One thing has suggested that it has to do with the glycemic index of foods, that going gluten-free usually means adopting a high-glycemic diet. I don't know if that's true, but I'm looking into it!

Here's one book I've found in my research but our local library doesn't have it, so it could be a bit before I can share anything about it (click on it to see Amazon's info):

I've put a request for other low GI books to see what kind of information I can get and see if it seems to be applying to her situation.

Another issue: eczema. She has developed two patches of eczema since going wheat-free. Part of my mind is going, "Um, shouldn't it be the other way around? Eczema disappears when you go wheat-free?" But then my mind's turning to other possibilities: her body is detoxing; her body is reacting to the wheat she's cheating with; um, well, just those two possibilities have come to mind. :P

In any case, while wheat may be affecting her emotions, so is feeling starved! Gotta figure this out. I don't think she's been taking a multivitamin consistently lately, which may be necessary as we keep working on getting her switched to a more balanced, but wheat/gluten-free diet. Perhaps enzymes, too?

Our Gluten-Free Trial

As I mentioned in previous posts, my 15-year old daughter decided to finally try going gluten-free. She was starting to have daily stomach complaints, pain, bloating and we'd suspected at least wheat before, and she was desperate for some relief, so she went for it. First evening, pain ended up worse than before, but within a few days, she had no pain, her stomach was flattest its been in ages and she was feeling good.

We lasted about a week and a half gluten-free before holiday celebrations hit and she decided to indulge here and there. And so did I. ;) But to backtrack, the first day of going gluten-free was okay, the next two days were very hard to make the switch. After that, it didn't seem like a huge deal. Yes, I had my evenings where I was going, "Oh my gosh, what are we going to eat?" but I figured things out. With the internet, you can find just about any recipe you want by listing ingredients you have on hand that you think would go well together! I managed to find this one evening:

Full recipe at http://riappyayan.blogspot.ca/2010/07/mexican-kidney-beans-rice.html

I slightly modified it (didn't have tomato paste, for example) but it was definitely a keeper recipe!  And if you use vegetable stock (Campbell's vegetable broth is gluten-free; the chicken broth isn't), the recipe is not only gluten-free, but vegan, as well.

Since being back on wheat, I'm feeling blah again. But since so many of the wheat things around here are junk (German lebkuchen, for example, and stollen) with sugar, hard to know how much of it is wheat and how much of it is sugar. I don't have any desire for bread though. Nor the baked goods I had intended to make and haven't. I'm eager to get back to the wheat-free/gluten-free eating we were doing. I have this aversion now, which I should probably pay attention to!

My mother tried to tell me that it wasn't healthy to be on a gluten-free diet if you didn't need to be on it. My mother's an intelligent woman, but she doesn't seem to realize that what she said makes no sense. She's just going off of something she read somewhere. If celiacs can be healthy on a gluten-free diet, there's no reason others can't be. This isn't like the recommended diabetic diet where it's playing around with your blood sugars; it's just a matter of having gluten in your system or not. Since I definitely felt better being wheat/gluten-free (I hardly eat other gluten than wheat, so hard to know if it's wheat or gluten), then, by golly, I'm going to aim to pretty much eliminate wheat from my diet regardless of what certain experts may say (other experts say none of us should be eating gluten)! I'm thinking about convincing--or forcing--my 12-year old son to try, too. He has absolutely horrid dry skin on his hands every winter. We tried eliminating dairy last winter or the winter before and it had no effect. Something in his system is causing this! It's so bad that if I don't make sure he gets hand cream on his hands, they end up cracking and bleeding. And, yes, I have to make sure cream gets on him because he doesn't seem to pay any attention to it until it does start cracking and bleeding.

There has been some good things so far about going gluten-free:

1. Improved health.
2. Increased knowledge about using things such as digestive enzymes. Definitely helps my daughter and I've taken some a couple of times and I find my intestinal area seems flatter than usual--less inflammation?
3. Increased experimentation with recipes. Rather than eating the same old, same old, I've been forced to go beyond, find new recipes, try different things. Things I had wanted to do in the past but it took my daughter's health to really push me through the comfort zone barrier.
4. Seeing how we did reasonably easily manage to make the switch--yes, we still had our moments of going "Arrrrrrgh!"--it has me thinking more about my switching to a vegan (or beegan--using honey) diet and at least 50% raw. It can be done; it'd be nice if it didn't take a health crisis to finally do it.

I'll leave you today with just some of my finds during my gluten-free search:

The Naked Kitchen's Gluten-Free Sample Meal Plan 

Celiac Teen

Gluten-Free Vegan

Serendipitous Vegan

Make Things Simpler?

I'm starting to think my life--when it comes to food I eat, as well as what I serve to my family--would be much simpler if I just really made the effort to go raw, or at least high raw. And, to be honest, the idea of going high raw feels incredibly complicated and difficult!

My 14yo has been showing some signs of wheat intolerance, possibly celiac. She also wants to be vegetarian, at least most of the time. And she knows she doesn't eat enough fruits and vegetables, but just picking a plain fruit or veggie is rather boring. And now there's an issue with how much rice you can eat each week (have you heard about that? high arsenic levels found) and food recalls here in Canada (beef, popcorn, Mini Wheats...) this and that and the other. Then there is me, with a known dairy intolerance/allergy and signs of soy sensitivity. It really hit me today that if we could find a number of raw recipes that we love, it would solve a lot of problems: grain-free, junk-free, meat-free, egg-free, high fruits and veggies...

Of course, I just got a pressure cooker for an early Christmas present, but I suppose I can still make use of it even if we end up high raw--and for the transitional period. I do have to find some recipes to try, which could be a whole other issue. I found this one book at the library and it seemed to have a lot of strange recipes, a lot of them with lamb and I can't remember what else. Turns out it's from Australia. I guess they have different staple foods in their diet than here in North America!

Where am I going with this? Not sure. It's Friday night and almost time for bed. I don't think my brain is fully functioning. :) But I suppose with all this in mind, I need to throw a question out there: Would going high raw vegan be simpler than going vegan with trying to avoid gluten, soy and I can't think of what else? Anybody been there, done that?

Overhaul Coming

With looking after my nieces and nephew, along with my 2 kids, and all the summer activity involved with that, I have not been paying good attention to what I have been eating the past while. With only a week left of summer care before school starts, I figure I ought to start working out now some menu ideas for when school does start. I can, by all means, start before that, but I want to make sure to start at the latest September 4th!

My 14yo daughter is on board with me and healthier eating and trying wheat-free/gluten-free (celiac runs in my husband's family) and vegan, or mainly vegan (she keeps coming up with things she doesn't want to give up, but I figure if we can just focus on eating as vegan as possible, she might come to find she'll just indulge now and then or give them up entirely). My 11yo son... A little harder to work with, but being they're both homeschooled and it'll just be us most of the week once school starts, I am confident I can guide him to some positive changes, even if he doesn't go quite as all out as my daughter and I.

But how all out will I go? All depends on my planning and preparation. Part of my problem is I would so often rather not have to eat that if I have to eat, it had better be yummy. lol. Doing a huge overhaul of the diet with untested recipes is not just hard, but frightening. I have reached a point where I feel I do need to do an overhaul. Maybe a one-day overhaul, then a whatever day, then back to the overhaul, at least at first. But I am seeing that I'm not able to do the transitional thing very well: it's taking a lot of time and I'm realizing that if my ultimate goal is vegan, wheat-free meals, and if most of the planned menu items are new, it is going to work better for me to plan on wheat-free vegan meals right from the get-go. Some would say, "Oh, just go vegan and there worry about the wheat later" or vice versa. This just isn't working for me. And part of it is because I know that I'm going to have to phase out a whole bunch of yet-to-be-tried recipes. It may seem perfectionist or something of me, but I don't see the point in trying out a, say, a pasta recipe if it's going to have to be gotten rid of eventually to be replaced by something else because none of us enjoy the wheat-free pastas very much.

Which leaves me with the next week of searching online, working through cookbooks and putting together a collection of recipes I can try out. I have a goal of having the first week of school have 3 "ideal" days: no sugar, no wheat, vegan, lots of fruits and veggies and greens, whole foods... I guess I should really define what it is that I'm aiming for, first! I guess I have an unspoken/unwritten sense of what is acceptable or not, but if I can really define what I'm looking for, it will certainly help!

Today's Raw Lunch

My daughter was going to eat veggie sushi for lunch (a recipe from Gillian McKeith's You Are What You Eat Cookbook: More Than 150 Healthy and Delicious Recipes), but didn't end up doing it (had a sandwich instead), but I was going to base my lunch off the sushi idea. I don't like the seaweed (I've tried more than once; I just can't handle the texture, taste nor smell) and I didn't want the grains, so I decided I was just going to have lettuce wraps. Well, the first greens I came across in the fridge were a head of romaine. Since the rib is too stiff for wraps, I sliced that part out and ended up having a kind of sushi roll. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture until I'd already eaten 4 of them:

I'd call this a recipe share, but it's almost not a recipe: I put some store-bought hummus on some of them, not on others, just for variety. For filling, I kept it simple: cucumber matchsticks, shredded carrot, alfalfa sprouts. For one, I tried some very thin slices of avocado. The ones with the hummus definitely tasted better than the ones without and I liked the taste and texture of the one with the avocado (but that one didn't have hummus). I'm sure there is so much more I could consider using as a filling. (If anybody reading this has some suggestions, I'm all ears!) Okay, let's make it more formal:

*romaine or other green, sliced long and thin
*shredded carrot
*matchstick cucumbers (just cut your cucumber in matchstick pieces)
*avocado
*alfalfa sprouts
*hummus
*other filling you can think of

Spread some hummus on whichever leaves you wish, put down the sprouts first (seems to help with the rolling to have the sprouts UNDER the rest) in the middle, perpendicular to the length, then put your fillings down in the same direction. I folded the one side over, then rolled into the sushi shape.

This is definitely a keeper on my menu ideas. (Oh, I just had an idea: Is there a way for me to include something like this with a supper for my family? Slowly ease them into more raw foods as a focus of the meal this way?) I should have made more than I did; I definitely could have eaten more than I did. But I'm feeling lazy today, the weather's changing (was sunny and bright and all of a sudden, dark clouds are starting to roll in and it's getting chillier; I'd like to just wrap myself up in a blanket and hole up somewhere--do you think it's an instinctive thing since there are threats of a thunderstorm this afternoon?) and I just didn't want to make more. I did have a bit of coconut "yogurt" as a little dessert of sorts and feel satisfied now.

I foresee the rest of the afternoon being just fine in terms of eating only fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds, but do have to remember to have a look at the Shepherd's Pie recipe to make sure I start it early enough! I find I sometimes have wonderful intentions and plans, then I go to make something and discover that it needs to cook for much longer than I had anticipated. 8-/

Putting my intention out there

I am going to write about my intentions today as a means of trying to keep myself accountable!

What are my intentions for the day?

*Lots of raw today. How will I accomplish this? Smoothie and fresh fruits for the morning. Lettuce wrap with veggie filling for lunch. (Might have some hummus with that; it's not raw, I don't think.) Veggies or fruit as snack in the afternoon or even some seeds and nuts.

*Vegan day. How? The above, and for supper, I'm making something from

   .

It's a Shepherd's Pie recipe I've been wanting to make for sometime. I want to serve it with salad and maybe some green beans. My husband has been really commenting on a mainly fruit and veggie diet, but I'm not sure he's really that ready. lol. I suspect he'd be the type where I would have to go all gourmet at first, but I really don't have the tools I need for that (usually requires dehydrator, a good blender and a food processor; my food processor died recently, my blender can barely handle some of my smoothies and I don't have a dehydrator).

*Wheat-free day. How? None of the above has any wheat. Actually, none of the above includes any grains, I think. Not sure if I've done a completely grain-free day before. So, another intention: grain-free.

I have a further intention: To keep going with this type of eating tomorrow. A few weeks back, I had some great days, then I seemed to cancel it all by eating lots of grains the next day and almost no fruits and vegetables. I know I should take it one day at a time, but I want to set the intention for tomorrow, just tomorrow, now so that hopefully it stays with me when I wake up tomorrow morning.

(Slight worry has just set in: "What am I getting myself into??")

A site after my own heart

Too busy to post much lately, but I wanted to share something. I saw this as an ad in Facebook today:

Living Without: The magazine for people with allergies and food sensitivities

http://www.livingwithout.com/

They have a section for recipes, gluten-free, dairy-free, other allergies... Some of the recipe photos look really, really good!

Time to refocus!

A little recap of the past few days:

*Saturday: wheat-free, but heavy on other grains, low on fruits and veggies.
*Sunday and Monday: NOT wheat-free. Even went a little overboard perhaps.

I told you it was a little recap. ;) I will say that my weight has stayed the 2lbs down. It'd be lovely to see it go down more this week. I've slowly had weight creep up over the past 5-10 years, not a lot, but 10 lbs down from where I am now would be fantastic.

Today, I need fruits and veggies. I'm craving them. But I have realized I don't really have a focus anymore. I wanted to see if I could do wheat-free last week, ended up having 4 days wheat-free (wow!), so that's accomplished but I don't know where I'm going from here! What are my goals again? lol.

I still have a yearning to be high raw, at least for a while. I find myself often thinking of people who went 100% raw for a while and their allergies just faded away. I especially think of it when I'm rubbing my eyes lately due to something in my environment driving me crazy. :-/ Or when I would like to eat certain foods raw but can't. My body needs to detox.

I guess this helps give me a vision for the week: more raw, less processed. That's one thing I can say about lately is that there have definitely been fewer processed foods prepared by me. There's so much garbage added to them all that just removing them will probably make a difference.

What does this mean for today?

*Wheat-free again. Why not? It was much easier than I thought. I do have to set some limits on the other grains I eat, like the corn Tostitos in the house (I've been eating them with the Daiya cheddar as nachos and cheese; yum!).

*I've been having a hankering for Ani Phyo's Coconut Breakfast Cakes from this cookbook:

I've had them a few times before and really like them.

*Of course, that doesn't take care of my fruits and veggies situation. I have oranges, not sure if the bananas are ripe yet, there are some grapes... I just have to prepare things. If the bananas are ready, I'll make myself a nice green smoothie today. I can add a salad or two in, cut up some carrots and cucumber and eat that with hummus...

I have lots of great food in the house; I just need to take the time to prep and eat it.

I'm going to have to get more adventurous and really try some different recipes. I have a few raw cookbooks here. I just hate taking the time to prepare something and then I don't like it and have to figure out something else to eat. lol. Of course, it has also happened that I've decided to try a recipe, I've bought the necessary stuff, it's stayed in the fridge so long that I've forgotten which recipe it belonged to. *sigh*

What just a few days can do

I was wheat-free for most of the day yesterday. Made a dairy- and gluten-free cake with a friend, a recipe from this book:

We made the Gluten-Free Basic Vanilla Cake. I hit a couple of snags, like using vanilla rice milk instead of just plain rice milk (didn't use almond milk because my 4yo niece is allergic to nuts and was going to share the cake with us and the vanilla rice milk was the only other alternative in the house), so the resulting flavour was very vanilly. And I undercooked it. And I didn't make the chocolate sauce for it and that would have been really, really good. In any case, I was a little worried because I don't think I've ever had gluten-free cake before, and this one was vegan on top of it, but it tasted good enough for people to come back for seconds, despite the mushy, undercooked middle! lol. It will definitely be one to make again. I really want to make the chocolate gluten-free cake, but I have to find sorghum flour first. Hm.

For supper, I had wheat, so later on, when I wanted a little something, I decided to have one of my son's double chocolate muffins that were left. These are the ones that the other day I realized I could have just eaten one after another all morning and never felt really satisfied. (Did I post that? I was feeling it, even if I didn't post it.) I had a couple of bites and it did not taste like it usually does. Did 3 days this week of mostly unprocessed and wheat-free food change me that quickly? It seems to have. I LOVE those muffins, but not last night. I finished because I didn't want to waste it, not because I wanted it. Confession: I had grabbed 2 because that's how many I usually eat since they're not huge. I put one back. That is not like me. lol. I really don't even want another one now. And then I felt blah afterwards. I understand a little more now how people get started on raw, feel amazing and don't want to leave it!

I like my sweets though. lol. That muffin was just totally unsatisfying, both in taste and in the stomach, so what to do now? I know: I'll head over to Rawdorable and find some raw recipes I can make. :) Of course, there is still a little cake left over from yesterday, too. ;) (Isn't that something? I would prefer the undercooked, gluten-free vegan cake over what used to be my yummy double chocolate muffins.)

A recap and Friday plan

Food tally for Thursday, a completely wheat-free day (do you realize that that makes 3 wheat-free days this week? yes, I'm talking more to myself than to you lol):

MORNING
*nearly 1 litre of green smoothie

I don't think I had anything else during the morning. I need to get into a habit of writing these things down!

LUNCH/AFTERNOON
*full bowl of romaine salad with Italian dressing
*Amy's gluten-free bean and rice burrito with salsa
*a scoop of Rice Dream vanilla ice cream with a little chocolate syrup
*corn Tostitos and Daiya cheddar
*two celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins

SUPPER
*shepherd's pie (ground beef, corn, potatoes with Becel vegan/gluten-free margarine and almond milk)
*baby carrots

SNACK
*a glass of strawberry almond milk

I think that was it. I'd like to sit down sometime and analyze some of these days of mine, figure out calories and nutrients. I suspect I'm not getting enough nutrients, which a multivitamin can help with, but it would be good to plan so that at least over the course of a few days, all nutrient counts are taken care of. (Does it show that I've thought to be a nutritionist/dietitian?)

Today, I'm all congested and coughing stuff up. Can you have detox symptoms when you're still eating some junk, like chocolate syrup? lol

Not sure what my plan is today. We're going to be making a vegan gluten-free cake this afternoon, but I was also hoping to make a vegan, but not gluten-free, lava cake. Hm... I have someone coming over who is attempting to go wheat-free, too, and who loves chocolate like I do--if today's a wheat-free day, it wouldn't be very nice of me to make a lava cake in front of her, now would it? ;) I'll go wheat-free at least until then. lol

Doing another wheat-free day

I decided to not do wheat-free yesterday and, naturally, ended up eating way too many grains over the course of the day (double chocolate muffins, yes, muffins, grilled cheese sandwich, can't even remember what I ate for lunch...) and, well, was rather gassy last night and a bit this morning. Ick. I do think it's likely to be related to my grains over-consumption, if not the wheat alone, so I'm going for wheat-free again today. I am, however, 2 lbs down from earlier in the week. Hard to say if it's due to a change in what I've been eating or just a natural fluctuation.

It is really hard to do an anything-free day without planning ahead, so here's my food plan for the day:

MORNING:
*green smoothie: I've made nearly a litre! and I relearned a lesson: never add stuff while the blender's still going... I might not drink it all this morning and keep some for the afternoon

*if I'm still hungry for breakfast, wheat-free cereal. I have Rice Krispies, Hemp Plus (not guaranteed to not have traces of wheat), gluten-free Crunchy Maple Sunrise, not sure what else.
*snacks, if needed: I have bananas, oranges, grapes, blueberries, pomegranate, a honeydew and a grapefruit. The trick will be to take the time to prepare any of them if I'm hungry; I don't want to prepare ahead of time and it not get eaten.

LUNCH/AFTERNOON:
*large salad with an Amy's Gluten-Free bean and rice burrito
*if I need more, I can have some carrots and hummus
*snack ideas: cashews; almonds; make a little trail mix of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and raisins; celery sticks with hummus or with peanut butter and raisins

SUPPER:
*eek! I'm not sure. I only have burgers and ground beef and don't have what I would need for wheat-free vegetable soup. I suppose we could have hamburgers (I have some wheat-free veggies burgers I could eat, then it'd be a vegetarian day, too!) and I would just go bunless and have another large salad. Or maybe I can find some sort of recipe for the ground beef, like meatloaf using Rice Krispies or something... And serve with potatoes.

Some things to figure out this morning, but it gives a kind of idea of how to have a wheat-free day. Figuring out a variety to maintain a week, or even just half a week, is my next challenge, I think.

Day 2 of Wheat-Free!

I don't know how long I will go wheat-free. This was really one of those kind of wake-up-in-the-morning decisions and I'm not really prepared to do it long-term. So far today, I've managed to be wheat-free much more easily than yesterday; I just don't think that I can keep it up without more time to plan meals and shop accordingly.

Nonetheless, I have learned a few things:

1) First day is the toughest, but I made it through. I can do other wheat-free days over time and increase the number per week. (Oh, there's an idea! A wheat-free day each week, gradually building up. That way, too, my family will notice less when there isn't as much wheat being served at suppers. ;) ) My son even made double chocolate muffins today--one of my favourites--and although the thought has crossed my mind to have one, there hasn't been the huge pull like there would have been yesterday.

2) I have been eating A LOT of wheat and grains on any given day--up until now.

3) If I can do a couple of days wheat-free, I can probably do at least one full raw day. The idea has seemed extremely difficult, but given the wheat cravings I was having yesterday and managed to get through, I think I could do a whole day raw. And perhaps, like above, work at having one raw day a week and build it up. (Meatless Mondays, Wheatless Wednesdays, nothing starts with C to have Cookless --Day ;) .)

4) I seem to feel the need to eat less when I consume fewer grains. I'm also craving sweets less. Correlation? (I normally have chocolate chips or some other little sweet that I can find. I didn't have anything yesterday nor today.)


What I'd like to do right now is keep going with limiting my grain consumption and trying to increase my fruit and veggie consumption, but allowing some wheat--like noodles or garlic bread at supper. :D

My food intake today:

BREAKFAST:
*green smoothie: fresh blueberries, a banana, baby spinach and water
*small bowl of Hemp Plus with almond milk

LUNCH:
*leftover chili
*carrots and hummus

SNACK:
*banana
*a few roasted, salted peanuts
*celery stick with peanut butter and raisins (ha! figured out a way to get my peanut butter in! :D)

For supper, the plan is to have chicken with a sesame orange sauce, cooked veggies and rice.

I survived!

No, I'm not the least bit melodramatic. ;)

I survived a day of wheat-free. Here is what I ate today:

Breakfast:
*bowl of grapes
*small bowl of Hemp Plus cereal (no wheat!) with almond milk

Lunch:
*rice and peas with raw baby carrots and hummus
*I was still feeling very hungry and was so tempted to go for a piece of toast or bread with peanut butter and jam, but I made a couple of eggs instead

Afternoon snack:
*craving for breads was HUGE. I even wished for rice cakes. Who wishes for rice cakes? ;)  Well, I really wanted rice cakes with peanut butter. I do like my peanut butter. :D I ended up making popcorn. That satisfied the grains craving! I also had a few raisins.

Supper:
*not feeling that hungry by the time supper came around. Made some chili; family had it with pasta and garlic bread, I just had a small bowl of chili

Evening snack:
*a banana

Let me tally it up the fruits and veggies according to Canadian serving definitions:
*fruit: grapes and banana; only 2 servings; with the raisins, 2.5
*vegetables: peas, carrots and the tomatoes in the chili: 4 servings

Not bad. If I can get back into the habit of green smoothies, I'll be sure to have enough fruits and veggies each day.

The tought part: The memory of the intensity of the cravings is sitting with me hard. It's like an addiction! Part of me wants to go for a 2nd day in a row. At the same time, I'm very aware now of how habituated I am in my grain consumption. Or addicted. :/ I have to be careful to not replace the wheat with other grains. I easily consume 8 servings of grains on an average day; even by Canadian standards, I ought to limit myself to 6. Various things I have read suggest that if you are going to include grains in your diet, that is too much.

Ideally, I'd like to end up mostly raw vegan. Wheat seems to be the most problematic of the grains in terms of health, so maybe I should just keep going with it--or rather, without it. ;)