10 Days, 8 Pounds

During the second week of April, we started reducing sugar from our family diet. We added more fresh veggies and fruits and reduced the wheat. After getting back in town from the parenting conference, we headed to the store for our serious shopping.  On the 13th, the kids and I started following the Whole9-type plan, eating fresh produce, grass-fed, organic meats, some nuts and seeds.  We did not eat dairy, sugar, or grains of any kind.  Two of the kids stuck to the strict plan for an entire week.  After that initial week, they added in some dairy and grains. This week, we celebrated one of the Brownies' birthdays, so that was their chance to have sugar again.  My child who has been struggling had a rough time eliminating everything all at once.  We decided that for her especially, we should eliminate one food-type at a time while reducing addictive food like sugar slowly.  I'll be interested to see how she does as we remove certain things.  She's completely ready to eliminate one thing at a time. She's also been working out and swimming every day, which we hope will improve her overall well-being.

As for me, I've been following basically the Whole30 plan at about 95%.  I am not eating grains at all. I put 2-3 tablespoons of CoffeeMate Natural Bliss in my coffee every morning, but have otherwise eliminated sugar and dairy.  Like last time I followed the Whole30 way of eating, I notice that my craving for food stops when I eat this way.  I don't think about food or what I'll eat.  I just go about my day, then suddenly realize I'm hungry.  I have not counted one calorie or fat gram.  I've lost 8 pounds in the past 10 days.   That pace will slow, but it's nice for now.

Another way I am not adhering strictly to the Whole30 is that I do have sex with my pants on. Before you gasp, that's the Whole30's way of describing Paleo copies of junk food.   Chocolate. I can't live without chocolate.  The darker, the better.  Here are some of my favorite discoveries.  All of these have no grains, no sugar, and no dairy, yet they are delicious!

Cacao and coconut. Can't go wrong.

Thanks, go raw, for making
yummy treats!

Lovely find for when I'd like a sweet, crunchy snack.

As for meals, it's eggs for breakfast, along with either tomato or fruit, then turkey with fresh veggies and fruits for lunch.  For dinner, it's pork chops or steak or chicken, along with grilled squash or cabbage or sweet potato and a salad.  I like to add in some bacon or nuts to any one of these meals on occasion.  About 85% of the meat I'm buying is organic. The grass-fed beef is just too pricey for me to justify, so I buy organic, hormone-free, and nitrate-free meats and eggs.  75% of our produce is organic. What I buy organic depends on a system I'll explain in a later blog.

Turkey, avocado, strawberries!

Guacamole keeps me happy! H-E-B
guac on Costco's organic ground beef.

Can you tell I like avocados?

Over the next few weeks, I will begin adding some legumes, rice, and Greek yogurt.  Oh, and we made tasted a new discovery! We are using grass-fed Kerrygold butter.  Oh. My. Word! If you haven't, buy it! H-E-B now sells it for a decent price and it's worth every penny. I can feel how eating "good" fats like nuts, seeds, coconut, avocado, and even a little butter helps me not feel deprived. When I do eat those things, I don't end up overeating like I would if I were eating processed grains and sugars.

The kids and I had gotten in the bad habit of buying either soda or sweet tea a couple of times per week at least.  To replace the soda, we buy 100% juice and mix it with mineral water. Everyone likes it, even the boys!  Because the fruit juices are so high in sugar, we still limit these drinks to a couple of times per week.  We've figured out that water isn't really as bad as we thought.

Secret Discovered! - Food and Mental Health

Oh. My. Word!

The Interwebs. I love them. And I hate them.  We can find any bit of information at the simple stroke of a keyboard (and the website better load in less than a half-second, dangit!).  We can also find a load of crap at the same simple stroke of a keyboard.

Just as soon as I read something about how we should cut out this food or that food, use this sweetener instead of that sweetener, cut this fat and add that fat, I'll come across an opposing article that tells me why the first one I read is all wrong. 

Forks Over Knives and Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead both sing the praises of a meatless diet that includes grains.  On the other hand, the whole Paleo movement (Wheatbelly and Whole30) will tell you that meat is necessary; that it's in our DNA to eat meat, and that it's modern wheat that is making us sick.  Other sources say it's dairy that causes so much mucus and inflammation.  Or maybe it's what combinations we eat, such as the Trim Healthy Mama suggests.   Everyone agrees white sugar is evil, right?  So we sweeten our food with Stevia?  No?  That's bad, too?  Honey?  Yes!  No?  Wait....

As a layperson, it makes me tired! Each method seems to have a mix of anecdotal and statistical evidence to back the claims, so what gives?

What gives is that we are all different.  That's the secret! Just as we metabolize food differently, we react to food differently.  What does this mean for my teen?  I have a few solid ideas for our family for now:

Avoid:

white sugar

high fructose corn syrup

synthetic or highly processed sweeteners (including Stevia, thank God, because I think that stuff is nasty)

highly processed foods

fake foods

meat and dairy with hormones, antibiotics, or nitrates

Eat:

fresh fruits and vegetables

most nuts and seeds

grass-fed beef

organic chicken and other fowl

wild-caught fish

Test intolerance by removing for a while. If no intolerance, add in again:

organic or raw dairy

all wheat

other grains

gluten

For 30-45 days, I'm going to have my teen (I'll be joining her) follow The Whole 30, which will remove everything I listed in the first and third lists.  After that, we will add back dairy for a few days, then gluten, then general wheat to see if she has any intolerances to that.

(Click here to read my previous post that explains why we are doing all this.)

For the first few days, we will do a gut cleanse.  This is also a debated issue, but the fact is that 95% of the body's serotonin is found in the bowels. (read more here)  For this reason alone, we are going to do some things to focus on gut health: cleansing diet, drinking Kombucha and adding in small amounts of other fermented foods, and taking a probiotic supplement.

We will add daily vigorous exercise in addition to the food changes.

I must add that we are keeping our teen on her medications. She will also be under the continued care of her doctors. I'm sure we'll have some trial and error, but we feel hopeful to find some healing. 

More at Stake - Treating Mental Illness with Food

I last blogged here over one year ago. When I checked in today, I was tempted to remove that past post where I was motivating myself to get fit in the year I had until my 40th birthday.  That year DID pass and I didn't make any progress in my health.  It's easy to be discouraged when I see my tendency to dream big, then do nothing.

This time, though, I come to this blog with a new reason to "Run Toward Freedom."  After a year in and out of psychiatric hospitals, receiving varying diagnosis, and taking more medication than we like to think about, we are finally looking at changing our family's diet in order to treat not only our child, but the entire family.

Last year, I shared three posts in my other blog about our daughter's depression.  I'm moving that thread over here to keep a record of changes we make and changes we see in our child and ourselves.

To give readers a very short version of where we are now regarding our child's diagnosis and treatment:

• she's had 5 hospitalizations over the past 12 months, all of which she went willingly
• her last stay ended last week
• over the past year, she has been treated for depressive disorder, anxiety, and mood disorder
• she has a new diagnosis of "bipolar, not otherwise specified," but they assume type 2
• if this new diagnosis is correct, it means that her medication over the past year was doing more harm than good
• she tried and quit about 4 or 5 different medications: anti-depressants, anti-anxiety and anti-phychotic
• from a young age, this child has not responded well to and/or responded very negatively to many medications (as evidenced with previous allergy and asthma medication)
• in addition to medical treatment and hospitalizations, she sees 2 therapists weekly, one of whom does EMDR therapy

One more key piece of information: Over the past 12 months, we've felt "stuck" with our psychiatrist due to insurance constraints. This was our first time to ever have a psychiatrist, so we were learning as we went along.  Our teen's doctor was impossible to reach outside of our scheduled appointments. She didn't seem to really listen to what we were needing and even disregarded our teen's therapist, who called and shared some concerns. As of Friday, we've dumped that doctor and have hired a private practice psychiatrist who is giving us some much-needed new hope.  I would encourage any person or parent going through this to do whatever you must to find a psychiatrist who you can feel is on your team, who is reachable, and who is working toward your same goal.

To say we've felt hopeless over the past year is an understatement.  We've felt like the pain of this mental illness will never go away.  We've lived in a state of frequent (sometimes constant) stress of walking on eggshells, wondering when the next episode is going to hit.  Our teen feels so tired of the war going on in her brain, she has often felt like death is the only way out.  It's heart-wrenching for us as her family to witness.  It also wears us down and wears us out at times.

Over the past few weeks, I've talked to a number of friends about what our child is going through. Repeatedly, what keeps getting brought up are these words:
gut health
clean diet
removing toxins
vigorous exercise

One person shared with us his own experience treating his bipolar with diet, another shared her experiences fighting stage IIIC cancer with diet over the past 3 years.  Other friends have shared how drastically changing their diet improved their life in a major way.  I can't ignore the obvious sign. I feel as if God is using these people to make clear a path for us.

We have a lot of reading and research to do for now.  I'll do my best to keep up this blog with the changes we are making and changes we see and don't see. These changes won't be easy, but, more than ever, this isn't just about weight, body image, or being able to run a 10K in under an hour. It's about saving our child's life.