Snow Day!

So we got a heap of snow in a couple of days... so much so that my van is going to remain parked for the time being.  At our old place (did I mention we've moved??), I would have inched my way down the driveway, and parked at the bottom if I couldn't make it up again.  Can't do that at the new place!  The road coming into our property is at a fairly decent incline, and apparently not high on the snowplow list!  So, the kids and I have been a bit stranded for the past several days.

Thank goodness Santa had the fore-sight to include "Monopoly Deal" in the boy's stocking!  We've been playing it almost non-stop since Christmas.  I am not only enjoying the game itself, but it is so heart-warming to watch the kids at it.  Even though there is a clear-cut winner and a lot of swapping and stealing of things, everyone has taken it all in stride, and sometimes even with laughter on the part of the "victem"!  I guess it shows that the kids are (sigh, teary-eyed) growing up, and becoming more mature.  Oh my goodness. :)

And also, as with my last post, oh so many months ago, it IS all about the snacks!  For me?  Lots of chocolate, and this tea.

... which we tend to call "fake chai" because, as good as it is, there is not a tea bag in sight.  Now, all I need is a roaring fire, and we would be quite set.

Happy New Year to all, and the best of 2016 to us all!

It's all about the Snacks

Ok, so I've been doing this "auto-immune paleo diet" thing for almost 2 months now.  How's it going?  I really am not sure.  There is this huge list of foods to avoid, and frankly, I'm really bad at it.  For the first month, I totally ditched dairy, grains of any kind, nuts, "most" legumes, eggs, "most" high-glycemic fruits, all alcohol... and a few others.  Exactly 1 month after I started was my birthday, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to have something special on my birthday!  The cupcakes I made had only a handful of ingredients: eggs (like, 10 of them), chocolate, cocoa powder, and honey... And they were CRAZY good.  So eggs have been back "in" since then.  But I didn't notice a difference with or without them.  I am, however, mostly using duck eggs, as they are structurally different than chicken eggs... but that's a different post.  And I came to realize I was "cheating" without realizing it.  I honestly missed my lattes.  I did switch to chai lattes instead of coffee, but I was ordering them with soy milk instead of milk-milk.  DUH.  Soy = soy beans = legume.  Silly me.  But then, thankfully, I rediscovered a local roastery that has Almond milk Chai Lattes.  Saved!  And thank goodness for my bank account, they're not open on weekends.

I'll tell you, for the first while, all I could think about was what I couldn't have.  It gets you down, let me tell you.  My hubby is a fantastic cook and baker -- makes this amazing bread with fermented grains and yumminess.  I couldn't touch it.  Breakfast for the first month was a nightmare -- no eggs!  No toast or cereal or oatmeal or yoghurt or granola!  Geez! So I bought coconut yoghurt (not cheap stuff, lemme tell you!), which has added sugar... not so good on a "clean" diet.  I tried making it myself and failed miserably.  I ate a lot of applesauce that first month.  And I was ALWAYS hungry.  I even woke up in the middle of the night once and had. to. eat. meat.  I raided the fridge in the middle of the night.  I NEVER do that!  I've only got a handle on the frequency of eating recently.  I eat basically all the time.  I always have snacks going.  The best one?  Coconut chips by Blue Monkey.  Cheap and they satisfy the sweet/salty/crunchie cravings.  I love 'em.

Along with the eggs, I've tried a bit of dairy, but my shoulders seem to bother me afterwards.  So I've cut out the dairy (again).  I'm trying nuts this week.  I figured, might as well, as I'm drinking those delightful almond chai lattes a couple times a week.  Still staying away from all the grains though.  Which has me experimenting.  A recent issue of Taproot Magazine had a recipe for gluten-free sourdough starter.  I am trying it using coconut flour.  It actually seems to be working!  It smells yeasty now, and I've been working on it for about 10 days.  Which is longer than the recipe says, but I expected that with the coconut flour.  What spurred me on was my friend discovered this amazing coconut bread "Cocolithic" made with just Organic coconut flour, whole coconut, sea salt, and water.  No grains, yeast, oils or sugar.  I can't wait to try a bread with my starter!  Mainly because I can only get this bread in our town once/week and only if I line up at 9AM.  Crazy. And it's like $8 for what seems like 1/2 a regular loaf of bread.  But it's SO good!

My ankles are still a major issue, but I seem to be more focussed, not so foggy now.  I think.  I will continue on the AIP diet for now.  I've read that the longer a person's been dealing with an issue, the longer it takes to go away.  I can remember my feet bothering me for YEARS.  Not all the time like now, but definitely for about the past 5 years or so.  That's not going to go away overnight.  So I'll keep at it and will post my frustrations and successes as I go.

The Long and the Short of It

Hmm.  It's been so long, I hardly know where to start.  My year last year was a bit of a doozy, health-wise.  The short story is that all my weird pains were finally diagnosed as Rheumatoid Arthritis and the specialist of course wanted to put me on all kinds of major drugs right off the bat.  I have resisted that, going solely with diet changes.  I've slowly been eliminating different foods and lately stumbled on the book "Why Isn't My Brain Working" which basically says that most afflictions have to do with an unhealthy brain and here's what do to about it.

So my year last year was about good days and bad days (probably an even number of both), and working our family business and trying my damndest to keep up with our garden and the animals.  Let's say the animals are well, we added about 9 more laying hens, and I grew great pumpkins, which I'm still enjoying from the freezer.

2 weeks ago, I started on the path of the "Auto-Immune Paleo Diet" (insert groan here), and here I am, still figuring it all out.  Basically, I've totally cut out all grains, dairy, eggs, and all nuts/legumes, extremely limited sugar & coffee, and nightshade veggies.  It's quite the thing.  I'm hungry ALL the time, and I'm obsessed with my next meal or snack.  After 2 weeks, I'm kind of getting the hang of it, but if I'm not always eating, I'm hungry.  When I was first diagnosed last year, I started limiting a lot of bread-y things, and the weight just fell off.  Not that I was big before.  I'm 5'7", and have weighed 134 lbs for most of my adult life (with the exception of pregnancies).  I'm now 20 lbs lighter.  So I can't really afford to lose any more weight.  It's very weird, and I don't feel strong, which bugs me, being the independent kind of person that I am.

Am I feeling better?  I think so.  2 weeks is a little early to tell, but I feel like I need to document this somehow, to see any results.  I'm still really stiff in my ankles, which means I limp pretty much all the time, but it seems to be lessening.  What I am noticing is that I experience less ups and downs throughout the day... like a fog has lifted.  And I'm sleeping through the night.

That's about all I can say for now.  I'm taking it day by day.  Thanks for listening.