Coconut oil saves the day

As any of the readers of my previous blog will tell you, I am not the most... consistant writer, shall we say. Life gets busy, I get tired and I just don't have any desire to sit and write a post at the end of my day. Once I do start, of course, I remember that I enjoy writing and I usually find I have a lot to say.

So, here's the story so far:

December 31st-

I had a break in the day during which time I was going to prep for oncoming month. I roasted a chicken. I have roasted chickens before and my preferred seasonings are lemon and butter (or butter-like substitue). I don't know if it was the Ghee, or that it's been a while since I roasted a chicken, but I nearly smoked myself out of the house. In December. In Massachusetts. The fans were on and the windows were open, letting in plenty of sub-freezing air and eventually clearing everything out.

Once that was done, I carved the chicken and threw the bones into a pot and filled it with water until the top of the bones were covered. Once it started boiling, I took it off the heat and dumped the lot into my crock pot. The reason for this extra step is that it works best to boil the water first, and crock pots (though magical) do not bring things to a boil. I cooked the stock on high for 24 hours. By the next morning I had delicious Bone-broth soup. Breakfast of champions.

I also made a salad dressing of Olive oil, apple Cider vinegar and an assortment of spices.

Symptoms:

Sinus headache/migraine/death-like pain

GI unpleasantness

January 1st-

I had some bone broth for breakfast. For lunch I pan-fried chicken and made carrot fries cooked in coconut oil. Coconut oil is the greatest thing in the world. The carrots didn't taste like carrots. They tasted incredible.

That afternoon I was working again. I packed up some cold chicken, spinach salad with carrots and zucchini and some dressing in a separate container. I also brought a lemon because well, why not?

Again, I pan fried the chicken (notice a pattern) and threw it into the salad. Thus dinner was served.

Symptoms:

3^rd day of sinus pain. Tried Neti pot many times, flonase. Nothing helped.

Possibly less GI unpleasantness

January 2nd

I try not to focus too much on weight. However, one of the reasons I thought it might be a good idea to heal my stomach is that my weight has been steadily increasing the last four or five months, regardless of how often I would go running during the week, or how much I would eat. My weight continued to rise and stopped at 160. I haven't weighed this much since freshman year of college. Nothing I did changed it. However, one day after starting this odd diet, I am at 157. While I'm not taking too much stock in this and will not focus too heavily on it, that did tell me that perhaps my stomach really does need to heal.

I am a nanny and I work for an amazing family. This does help certain aspects of this journey. For instance, I can bring raw carrots and turn them into fries at work, instead of preparing everything beforehand. The difficulty with this job is that one of their children has a severe peanut allergy and I, not looking carefully enough at the label (which is weird), discovered that the coconut oil I love so much is made on equipment that is used to also make peanut oil. Therefore I cannot cook with it at their house. A small price to pay, I assure you, but carrot fries cooked in olive oil... not quite the same thing. It was a very off day. The food in general just didn't taste as good, now that the novelty is gone, and I was hungrier throughout the day. I would eat and still feel hungry. However, I'm not sure if that was true hunger or just stomach acid acting weird, as it will sometimes do. I also noticed I was lightheaded if I stood up too fast. That, thankfully, went away around mid-afternoon.

So I was feeling a bit disheartened when I came home and started preparing dinner: meatballs. I shredded carrots and zucchinis and sauteed them in a pan. Then I mixed them with 1 part beef, 1 part pork (yeah, for this experiment- Kosher is almost completely out the window. Just for now.) I put the meatballs in a muffin tin lined with coconut oil. Oh. Man. That coconut oil strikes again! I don't know what the secret is, but everything that I cook in coconut oil just comes out amazing. Freakin awesome dinner, with leftovers for tomorrow!!

The Long and short of it:

This morning- Bone broth soup for breakfast.

Chicken and carrots for lunch.

Dinner- the most amazing meatballs ever.

Symptoms:

No more sinus pain!!! Friggin hallelujah!!!!!!!

Fatigue after eating, lightheadedness/dizziness upon standing around midday (went away around 3pm)

Noticeably less GI unpleasantness

So.... What CAN I eat?

So.... What CAN I eat?

The Elimination Diet as told by Aglaee Jacobs

Animal Protein:

Meat: beef, bison, venison, lamb, wild boar, pork

Organ meat and offal: liver, tongue, kidneys

Poultry: chicken, turkey, duck

Fish: salmon, sardines, herring, mackerel, sole

Seafood: scallops, oysters, crab, lobster, mussels

*The ideal is to eat organic produce and animal protein, ghee, and butter from healthy, happy pastured animals. **Avoid shrimp, smoked fish, and aged/cured meats (bacon, sausage, ham) at the beginning ***avoid animal proteins that are marinated, in a sauce, or breaded.

Traditional Fats:

Extra virgin coconut oil

Ghee (clarified butter)

Butter (to make your own Ghee)

Extra virgin olive oil (or macadamia oil or avocado oil)

Bones

Ideally from grass-fed cows, pastured chickens, or wild-caught white fish to make homemade bone broth

Vegetables
Carrot

Zucchini

Spinach

Green Beans

Seasonings:

Unrefined salt (unless, of course, you are medically advised to avoid salt)

Chives

Asafoetida Powder (any idea what this is?)
Cinnamon

Lemon juice

Lime juice

Apple cider vinegar

Fresh herbs

Green parts of green onions

Herb-infused oil

Beverages:

Sparkling water

Lemon or Lime juice to add to water

Fresh herbs to add to water

Rooibos tea

Sound fun, right? I'm going to do everything I can to follow this with one possible exception. Eggs. I always react well to eggs. If i'm feeling tired or funky, a couple fried eggs perk me right up. They're one of the few foods i'm certain I don't react negatively to. I'm going to try to avoid them but if i'm stuck at work without food or if I crack- they will be my fall back. I'd rather eat a couple of eggs once or twice to get through than lose heart completely.

So that's it. See you in the new year! 

Thus it begins

        I hate diets. On principal. I grew up with a mother who had warned me of the evils of dieting. She may not have meant anything by it but I internalized the message. “Don't ever diet. Diets don't work.” For the first twenty one years of my life when it came to food I never denied myself anything. I ate whatever I wanted whenever I happened to want it but I constantly felt sick. I had no idea why I felt so sick and I wasn't going to be bothered with finding out why either. I was just sick. It was the norm.

       When I was twenty one my mother discovered she had Celiac Disease. Knowing it was hereditary, she convinced me that I probably had it too. I went to her Naturopath who confirmed I had Celiac. I looked down at the list of now-forbidden food that stretched across multiple pages and I sobbed. I felt like my life was over. Dramatic? Yes, but that's how it felt.

       It warped my whole world. The one thing I refused to ever do was diet and now here I was- forced to change my perspective. I had to be on a Gluten Free diet. Yes, it was for health reasons, but the bias was still there. It took months, if not years for me to adjust to the fact that I had to say “no.” I could not automatically take whatever food I might be offered. I had to check labels and ask questions and often say “no.” I had to be the person at the restaurant who bugged the server with a million questions about the different dishes and most of the time they had to double check something with the chef. I had to order salads (which I had never done by choice). I had to order burgers wrapped in *shudder* lettuce.

      Given time, I adjusted. Celiac became a more recognized disease. Coupled with the fact that “Gluten Free” became a trendy diet for a while, the availability of Gluten Free (GF) food expanded enormously over the last five years.

     For a while, everything was fine. I became comfortable with being GF and life went back to normal. Then I started to get sick again. 2012 saw crippling migraines on a nearly weekly basis. I was so nauseous I couldn't eat, so fatigued I literally couldn't get off of the floor and would sometimes have to crawl to the bathroom.

     After more investigation, and more doctor appointments that I could keep track of, I figured out that my migraines were likely caused by anemia, the same anemia that was likely caused by my Celiac. I tried prescriptions, last summer I even attempted a dairy and sugar free diet for two horrible weeks, kicking and screaming the whole way, before throwing in the towel and ordering a pizza.

     I started taking Iron supplements and the migraines subsided. I still get them semi-regularly, but they're minor enough to be an considered an annoyance rather than a debilitating illness. Then came the sinus headaches. They were nearly as bad as the migraines that proceeded them. More doctors. more prescriptions. It's been a few weeks since my last sinus infection but in the mean time i've been having more stomach symptoms, though my GF diet is still rigorously maintained. My stomach seems to be constantly swollen, as it had before. Foods that are certified GF and shouldn't make me sick, often do anyway.

     This continued illness (and a trip to see my mom) brought me to Aglaee Jacob's book- Digestive Health with REAL food.

     In her book, Ms. Jacob presents us with an Elimination Diet. Essentially, you eat nothing but meat, four different vegetables and a few specific fats for at least an entire month. The reason for this is, due to most autoimmune and completely irritating diseases, you can develop what is called “Leaky Gut Syndrome” (AKA increased intestinal permeability) which is as gross as it sound. The name says it all- due to a myriad of illnesses, you develop tiny holes in your intestines. Molecules of the foods you eat slip through these holes and are attacked by your bloodstream. This can lead to more GI unpleasantness and more food allergies than you originally had. The only way to fix this is to heal you intestines. The only way to do THAT is to eat foods that are easier on your intestines, like those listed above.

     Eventually you get to the point where you are just plain sick of being sick. Modern medicine doesn't seem to be working. Whatever I'm doing now doesn't seem to be working either. Perhaps a more holistic approach is exactly what i've always needed, but I haven't taken the time to investigate it. Maybe, just maybe, this Elimination Diet could be the answer to all that ails me.

     I hate diets. But I need to heal. For the month of January, I am going to follow the elimination diet. I am going to focus on healing. It's going to be tough. I will need to rework my entire brain. I am going to enter this in as positive way possible. I am going to try to be Zen. Try not to think about all the deliciousness I will temporarily be leaving behind. With the help of my mother, who will also be on the elimination diet, and hopefully with the help of this blog, I will make it to February with a healed stomach and a new outlook on life. This will be difficult. But I am ready to feel better. I am ready to heal.