And the freak out continues

Ugh.

So I'm slightly freaking out.

I did state a bunch of goals the other day that I'm working on and so far so good -- even with a kid who came down with strep and had me sequestered to the house for 2 solid days. Set back but not out of the goal game completely. Managed to clean my kitchen and bedroom (those were the two that were bumming me out the most). Got in a little run and 10 minutes of strength training.

I have been tracking at Spark People, plus have hit my personal hydration goals for four days in a row.

a little good news

So humming along and then this. awful *WW weigh-in.

Well. My 'official' WW goal weight is 150 (but my personal happy weight is 144) I've been able to pretty much maintain right around that for the better part of two years. I thought I was flirting with 147.5 or so  (thus up 3.5 / 4 pounds that I had reported) but when I went for my monthly weigh in this morning the scale snarled, 151... WHAT? The highest I've been in 2 years and 1 dangerous pound away from having to pay for attending (Lifetime members don't ever have to pay unless they are 2 pounds above goal.)

How did this happen!? Now I will say that I weighed in wearing jeans, a sweater and post an oatmeal and coffee breakfast, so perhaps (if I'm lucky) I can knock off a pound for that... but still. It's still at least 2.5 pounds more than I expected. BOO.

I've been so careful this week with everything. This seriously bummed me out - and tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I'm not saying I'm going to be the worst eater ever, but it's my favorite holiday and I'm not planning on being the best either. I will run in the morning but, I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm still planning on indulging a bit (or a lot...) Oh for F$&* sake. It's so annoying.

By the way, and in other annoying news... (I counted the calories before you judge this decision) I have to tell you that I got stuck at work and needed to eat. I was starving and didn't have the food I usually have with me and got coerced into going to Taco Bell today. Now I've given up fast food 99% of the time -- not only am I striving for clean eating but with my gluten/dairy issues, there's usually nothing that will work for me.

So back to Taco Bell. I gave in to going with a co-worker based on this review I read by **a gluten-free blogger about the newish "Cantina Bowl." Her picture of the Cantina bowl was beautiful (I didn't expect it to be as fancy as hers, just kinda nice). If I was going to eat fast food, I thought it kinda looked OK and relatively healthy-ish. But here's my review: It was yucky, messy looking and skimpy.  It provided about a tsp. of guacamole, less than a 1/4th of a cup of beans and hardly any rice or pico de gallo.  I didn't put any dressing on it. I added steak to it and couldn't eat more than one piece of the meat because I found it so blech. But maybe that's just me. Serves me right for going to Taco Bell I guess. I used to LOVE that burrito supreme and nachos supreme in the day (you know, the day when I was 200+ pounds, cared less about 'clean' eating and had no clue of my gluten or dairy issues...) Sigh.

Anyway, a mess I still am but I'm hanging in the fight. I am freaked out about the scale but all I can do is work / try harder - I know T-day is gonna be a bit of a monkey wrench but it's just one long meal. I will have to deal. And no more Taco Bell.

XO
Jen

*I am tracking on Spark People because I like the calorie counting program. But like to keep my membership active at WW since it's free to do so, as long as I continue to weigh-in once a month.
** I'm not bagging on that blogger. She has a great site and Taco Bell did set her up with a fancy tasting of the new item at an undisclosed locale… I wasn't expecting that but found the whole thing underwhelming and disappointing...

Food For Thought II: Living with food sensitivities

Gluten-free beer

If you follow this blog you know that I've been dealing with daily tummy troubles for a long time. After searching for answers I finally learned from a visit with a Naturopathic doctor that I have food issues with:

Gluten, dairy, almonds and artificial sweeteners.

Yeah. Awesome.

Thankfully, I've been eating clean and I had suspected some gluten and dairy issues so over the course of time I had experimented with weaning those foods out and ironically, I made a decision a few months ago to kick my love affair with Splenda and other sweeteners to the curb. So, it wasn't a total culture shock to lose these foods. A year or two ago, it certainly would've felt like the end of the world.

But still. It's not easy. It's cool if I'm eating at home and planning but eating out, having dinner with friends, BBQ's etc is a bit of a pain in the ass. 

Believe it or not, one of the worst things is giving up almonds. I never realized how much almonds are used (especially in vegan, dairy/gluten free) things. 

Oh well. Life goes on.

So what am I eating?

Lots of brown rice, quinoa, faro and other non-gluten grains. Beans, homemade hummus, avocado, lean organic meats, eggs. I can eat yogurt so I'm going to try a yogurt cheese and I'm enjoying Coconut milk, coconut milk ice cream, fruits and veggies.

My newer way of eating

I even found gluten free beer at Fairway (this awesome new store) today. It was $15.99 for a four pack so I will most likely stick to vodka and wine but also found a bottle of gluten free beer that was a little less expensive that I picked up to give a shot.

This morning I whipped up some homemade gluten-free pancakes that I made with ground quick oats, an egg, a bit of agave, a little coconut milk, salt and baking powder. They were pretty good. I served with banana and blueberries.

I know you might be wondering - am I feeling better? I've had a few really good days and I've still had a few tummy aches. I think I'm still bumping around but I'm hopeful that with some more time and diligence on eliminating the questionable foods that I'm going to find good results.

Do you suffer food sensitivities?

What would be the worst thing to give up?

XO

Jen

Cracking the code to my tummy troubles

Well today was certainly an interesting day.

After dealing with constant stomach problems and then going to a Gastro Doc who decided to just throw pills at me, I think I finally found a guy who's going to help me crack the code.

I went to meet with Dr. Glenn Gero you can read all about him here.

He's a naturopathic doctor who takes a dietary/fitness and natural approach to healing and ailments. After checking him out, I decided that he was worth talking to and boy am I glad I did.

First of all, it's evident that he takes his health seriously. He lives a "clean-eating" life and is still on a rowing team. He doesn't just preach about health, he practices it. Unfortunately, that seems rare amongst traditional doctors now a days.

My doc rowing to health

He spent a WHOPPING two and a half hours with me. Carefully analyzing and discussing my blood work, my issues, why we were doing what tests we were doing. Have you ever spent 2 hours with a doctor? Not me. Not ever. In fact, the gastro specialist diagnosed my IBS and threw 2 toxic prescriptions at me within 5 minutes.

Anyway…

After a bunch of tests we found out that I have food sensitivities to:

• Gluten
• Dairy
• Artificial sweeteners
• Almonds (ALMONDS!?) Yes. Almonds.

I have been cutting back on gluten and dairy (though I still was having cheese a few times a week and I'm sure some gluten here and there) and thankfully I cut out artificial sweeteners a few months ago… this will encourage me to be even more diligent on all of it… but, almonds? Wow!! No wonder I can't get over my stomach issues - my milk has been replaced by almond milk for years. I eat a handful of almonds almost twice a day. That combined with a cheese stick snack and my day could be ruined and probably has been regularly.

Wow.

And by the way, it's probably worse when I combine these foods so when I did my full marathon and had a MISERABLE 26 miles of porto-potty stops it makes perfect sense now - I carb loaded the night before with pasta topped with cheese and then woke up and chased it with a bagel and cream cheese. 

Oh. Super bad move. Epically bad move.

When I'm home I never eat that. Even before cutting out gluten, I didn't do much pasta and my running breakfast go-to is typically oatmeal… since I couldn't make oatmeal in the hotel, I decided on that friggen bagel. So that could've been what did me in.

Oh, I know, "don't try anything new on race day." A few weeks prior I had, had a bagel the morning before my Jersey Shore half and it didn't seem to affect me. I also assumed bagels and pasta to be a relatively bland food so I didn't think that it would cause issue… Guess I was wrong.

Hmmm and I wonder if the sports drink they served was "sugar free" and used a artificial sweetener? I guess that would be a trifecta of tummy troubles. Who knows.

There were a few other minor issues that I have to deal with too - and it was all very fascinating. 

Good news is, chocolate, coffee, avocados, rice, red wine - all thumbs up foods :-) 

Also, I swore off bananas 4 years ago because I assumed I was allergic to them since I always got a stomach ache when I ate them. Doc says I am not sensitive or allergic to them! It could've been the skim milk I was using with them for my smoothie or the "light wheat" bread I was making my sandwich with but it wasn't the banana! Oh I hope that is true, I would love to eat banana's again and will put that to the test.

The Dr. gave me three supplements to take for my stomach, one was an IBS formula that he has created. Stomach issues is his specialty and he says that I won't ever have to buy that one again because it's healing. He also gave me some super probiotics and magnesium (the magnesium is for a suspected deficiency for all the cramping I get in my calves and feet - a side issue). The supplements cost me significantly less than the drugs medications that the Gastro dealer doctor tried to push at me and Dr. Gero promises me that I'll feel completely better and passed symptoms by Wednesday - less than a week!!!  

We will see. I'm excited to give it a shot… And now I'm off to throw out my whole jar of almond butter :-( 

XO

Jen

PS: So what does this mean for my "celebration" foods? Well, lets face it, I'll probably not swear off pizza for the rest of my life but I'll probably generally avoid it… I still might suck up the tummy ache for a pancake post half-marathon - or maybe I won't… Taking it one meal / day at a time. Thankfully, I'm pretty disciplined.

Food for thought: Gluten, organics, sugar, oh my

My head is going to explode.

I warn you that this post might be a bit of a rambling rant.

All of this clean eating is starting to hurt my head. I mean, it's good. I'm trying. But jeeze, every time you turn around there's more to learn and at what point do you say, enough?

The other day there was a report on 60 Minutes about the toxicity of sugar. 

You can watch it here. 

Everything sucks for you. It's annoying.  Everywhere I look now, I see "poison." Soon I'm going to be down to a little bit of organic kale, topped with some chia seeds and served with a few raw almonds… and then I'll really have no friends because that kind of person is about as interesting as unground flax seeds.

Where does it end? Do you have to be vegetarian? What about vegan? If you're not then do you do dairy? Eggs? Where does your meat come from? And what if you want a treat? What do you eat?  

I gave up most gluten and my tummy has still been feeling a little wonky the last day or two.  I have to make the appt. with the GI - we'll see.

Went to Whole Foods today and spent more on six items then I used to spend on 2 weeks worth of food. 

I'm hungry, my head hurts. Maybe I'm 'detoxing?' 

All I know is sometimes I miss the days where I thought I was healthy because I ate a Lean Cuisine frozen meal, a non-organic apple, and a little fat free pudding for lunch, swigged a light beer or two at happy hour and "only" smoked 5 cigarettes that night.  

Oh the good ol' days.

Now I admit I am an obsessive person. So I don't like to half-ass things and I guess that's why I'm abnormally becoming aggravated and consumed with this. It's just confusing. And expensive. 

Eh. I don't know. What do you do? Am I just a nut-ball? I mean maybe it's my extremes. Somewhere between a Whopper, diet coke & fries, and organic, sprouted wheat there has to be a happy place to live - no?

XO

Jen

digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Weekend recap and other crap

Porky's next to my WW center never gets old to me - yes,
my actual center

After my crappy run on Friday, I decided to take Saturday off. I camethisclose to taking today off too but I was starting to feel a little depression creep in. Not sure why. I was just having a serious case of the blahs and at 4:30PM I looked down to realize that I was still in my pajamas. Not good.

The rain has me feeling a little ho-hum too.

So I pushed myself to the gym. (I didn't have the hoorah in me to run in the damp, icky rain…) 

Because I was still not feeling particularly motivated I decided not to do my Nike+ thing. My Nike+ app asks for how many miles you are planning to run before starting and it then automatically tells everyone on face book that "Jennifer has just started a 2 mile run" or whatever...  

I didn't want to put the pressure on myself to run a certain distance or pace so I just went. I gave myself permission to do just one mile and to just walk if I really wanted to. I knew that doing just one slow, walking mile would still make me feel slightly less crappy than doing nothing at all.

I got there and started with a walk - before I knew it, I was running and running pretty well. I finished 2 miles in 21:00 or so - better than I would've thought.

And while I still feel slightly blah, I do feel at least 50% better than I did before and that does count for something!! AND it was a waaaay better little run than my Friday debacle.

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As far as the cleaner eating - I'm doing pretty good. I would give myself a B to a B+ this week.

The good: I juiced 6 out of 7 days. I had the Chia Seeds 4 out of 7 days. I cut out most gluten, ate tons and tons of fresh fruits and vegetables and swapped most of our meats, eggs, dairy to organic versions.

The bad: I'm still far from being 100% onboard. Yesterday I visited a friend and dove head first into a bowl of tostitos, crackers and goat cheese. I also polished off a half a bottle of wine and a giant piece of cake.  Ooops. Ah well. That's gonna happen. Won't be the first time and probably not the last.

The great: Not one yellow packet of sweetener in more than a week. NO artificial sweeteners of any kind. That I'm going to really try not to bend on.

The kinda annoying: I gained a pound and a half at WW this week. Damn those fattening Chia Seeds and juice! (Just kidding… Eh, it's fine - I'm still well with-in my goal range - just, still, it's a little annoying.)

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And speaking of gluten free eating, on Friday my allergy tests came back. I do not have celiac or any food allergies so now the doc wants to send me to a GI - Yippe.   

Still, I do think I could be gluten intolerant because I really have felt better since cutting most of it out. Today I don't feel so awesome but it follows a day that had gluten in it - coincidence? I don't know yet.  Could've been the wine too? 

For dinner I'm going to try this organic brown rice pasta from Trader Joes and will be making a homemade meat sauce to top it.

I tried to make this picture of my pasta a little jazzy ;)

Hope you had a fab weekend!

What have you successfully given up lately?

Know anyone who is gluten free?

Have you ever tried brown rice pasta?

Do you ever go to the gym with the intention of working out for only 10 minutes? (ha) that's probably just me.

XO

Jen