It’s been a few days since my last update, and I’m sure everyone is wanting to know how much money to hand to their buddy, right? HOW BAD DID SHE GO OFF? Because I’ve got bets ridin’!
In fact I have gone off the diet in the last few days, but it’s actually been okay. I don’t feel like I’ve ruined anything.
Here’s my original list of things I was going to chuck, just so’s you remember:
- dairy
- wheat
- soy
- legumes
- corn
- sugar
- chocolate
- caffeine
- sugar/processed foods
Here’s what that list has shortened to, as of today:
- dairy
- corn
- legumes
- sugar (in large ridiculous concentrations – e.g., a candy bar? no. a bit of brown sugar on my oatmeal? okay).
- processed foods
- chocolate
- caffeine
As you can see, I’m adding back wheat, and I’m eating small amounts of unprocessed soy (miso soup, soy sauce).
On Friday, Jason came out to spend the weekend, and the six of us (Me, Greg, Jason, Sonja, Bethie, Miles), went into “Weekend Mode”, where we tend to be busy going on little trips and doing a lot of eating out. It became intensely difficult to figure out what to eat as we were traveling around, especially considering I wasn’t able to figure out what to eat much at home. So I faltered a little bit. I began eating wheat in a a few things, and some soy (mostly in the form of soy sauce).
At first, after I had that first bite of Something With Wheat, my mind wanted to go into Dieter Failure mentality, and chuck the whole entire thing out the window. After all, I FAILED, what’s the point of going on? Fortunately my inner drama queen calmed down, and once I got past the failure mentality, I realized I was learning a lot, and I could continue to learn, even if I wasn’t following the diet in the exact same way I’d planned to.
Some things I’ve observed over the last few days:
1) Dairy continues to be a problem.
On Friday night we went out to a restaurant specifically because we though it would have a Hollie-friendly menu. I got some delicious salmon with “apple butter”, which to me means a dairy-free jam-like toast topping made from apples, cinnamon, and sugar. I wasn’t really sure how this would taste on salmon, but hey, I’ll try anything once. Instead, the apple butter was literally a monster pat of butter, with apparent apple flavorings.
The intestinal pyrotechnics that resulted from this one small serving of dairy was pretty impressive. I believe that dairy is something I’ll need to phase out of my life almost completely (I’m willing to suffer these pyrotechnics for very special occasions, like, say, this cake. Overall, though, I think I’m beginning to see the real possibility of a truly dairy-free life.
2) I’m recovering from episodes of anxiety much quicker than usual.
This change is simply incredible to me. Two good examples happened this weekend.
On Saturday night, Greg and Jason and I went to a movie (The Proposal with Sandra Bullock — anyone else get While You Were Sleeping flashbacks? Sandy in a white dress, apologizing to a family at the altar for why she can’t go through with the wedding, an orphan who misses the feelings of being in a family?), and over the last couple years movies have become incredibly difficult for me. I usually need at least one, sometimes two doses of anxiety medication to make it through, and when it’s done (if I’ve made it – I’ve left at least six movies over the last few years after a bad attack), I’m wiped out. I’m so drained from trying to hold it together that I need to take a nap afterward. This isn’t just action movies or thrillers; I could barely get through Pixar’s UP. Also, due to both the anxiety and the meds, I usually don’t remember much of the movie anyway; thus you can understand why I frequently just don’t go, even though before all this got bad, going to the movies was a favorite hobby of mine.
For some reason, during the movie on Saturday night, I was happy. I was having a good time. I didn’t need any meds, and I didn’t need my earplugs, and I didn’t need to leave partway through. After it was over, I was still doing great! We got in the car and I wanted to GO somewhere, like a cafe or or a restaurant, just to hang out and talk. I couldn’t believe how stable and good I felt! I wanted to take advantage of it while it lasted! Unfortunately we live in Ellensburg, and there wasn’t anything to do at 11:20pm on a Saturday night, so we headed home, but I was giddy.
Me hiding behind Llyra, grabbing onto her for dear life (do you see how high we are?)
On Sunday afternoon, Sonja had rounded up a bunch of us to go to the Salmon La Sac campground, which I thought wasn’t that far away from town. I was wrong, it was pretty far out, and by the time we got there I was so anxious I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was examining my options; do I make one of the guys drive me home? Do I take a whole lot of meds and just hole up in the car and sleep? How am I going to cope with this?
I grabbed a camp chair and plopped down into it. I opened up a bag of sunflower seeds and started munching. I put on my sunglasses. I grabbed a magazine. I endeavored to sit there until I felt calmer. To my complete shock, that only took about half an hour. Not an hour, not several hours, not here-let’s-take-some-meds-and-wait-all-afternoon-for-things-to-improve; I just felt good. Again. Quickly. And I continued to feel good the whole rest of the day. And to top it off? I drove us all home. Here, let me continue to italicize things to impress upon you the amazing-ness of this event.
I even ended up playing in the river, and climbing up onto a big pile of rocks. Llyra followed me, at which point we screamed in triumph, and then I realized how high we were – at that point I think I started holding on to her a little too tightly. Thanks to Jason for the photo!
3) Wheat doesn’t appear to be a problem.
So far, the small amounts of wheat I’ve been having (croutons on salad, in soy sauce), don’t seem to be causing me any issues. I don’t feel any more sore in the morning (in fact I continue to feel better, in very small degrees). I’m trying not to overdo it.
4) Soy in small amounts, so far, doesn’t seem to be causing any issues either.
I’m not eating a ton of it, and I’m not eating any processed stuff (like tofurkey or tofu dogs or soy ice cream).
5) I really need to learn how to cook and eat vegetables.
During the salmon dinner Saturday night, Jason endeavored to instruct me on how to eat broccoli with my salmon; by eating a piece of salmon, and then slipping a small piece of broccoli in, unnoticed. I tried it once, and was chewing, and he began saying, “You need more salmon! MORE SALMON!” I began waving my hand at him. “You’re making a face!”, he said. When I was done swallowing, I think I was still making a face, but to my great shock, the broccoli was not putrid. I ended up eating several pieces of broccoli. Miracle.
Clearly this means I need to continue trying to figure out how to get more veggies into my diet.
GEE, MAYBE I COULD WRITE A BLOG TO THAT EFFECT?
Going forward, I’ll be eating small amounts of wheat and soy, attempting to cook more veggies, and trying desperately to stay away from dairy and sugar, which are the two hardest exclusions. Corn and beans, which I’m leaving out for awhile as all this settles down (I’ll re-introduce in a trial in a few weeks), aren’t too hard to stay away from (the exception being corn syrup – but avoiding that also means avoiding most chocolate and candy, so it works out).
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Maybe you need this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Deceptively-Delicious-Simple-Secrets-Eating/dp/006176793X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246385806&sr=8-1
There is another one, with the same basic premise, but the one i own is th above. I’ve tried one or two recipes and they seem to be pretty good. But what might be really interesting to you is the pure number of things that she manages to put pureed vegetables in. Without following the recipes, i’ve taken a hint from that approach and now make pancakes with some sort of pureed something in them, and mac and cheese is really easy to add some pureed something to, as are an awful lot of baked goods.
Yay you! You are doing the elimination diet still… you are in the wheat and soy trial phase–rock on! So if some weird effect *does* start to happen, you take ‘em both back out, add one back in, and see if anything happens. If nothing does, you add the other, and voila! Your culprit! (I know you know this. I just like describing experiments, it’s kindof a thing that I do.)
Congrats on the anxiety reduction! I’m sorry we weren’t able to make it on Sunday, but Alexander was soooo sick this weekend. :( We would not have done well with a long car ride and he would have been very cranky and sad and sick all day. MORE picnics must happen.
I’m so sorry that dairy and sugar are still the evil monsters bent on destroying our sweet Hollie from the inside out. :(
That’s amazing about the anxiety response, Hollie!! You are doing so great, truly. You’re an inspiration. Keep on truckin’, pretty girl.
More picnics! Jo – we all loved it there so much and have committed to going back!
Megan – Yeah, good idea! The other one is The Sneaky Chef, and I know that moms regularly battle out which one is better. I just got an Amazon gift certificate, and I think I might spend it on one of these books!
Jojo – Hey, no worries sweetie! I understand what it’s like with sick kiddos. Going anywhere is a major hassle, not to mention draining. We’ll definitely go back, it was just TOO AMAZING not to!
Meg – Thanks! It’s feeling pretty good! Man, the cheese just CALLS to me, but if I really could reduce my anxiety significantly again, it would be worth it to stay the heck away.
I don’t know what your current stance on bacon is, but a couple weeks ago, we had some grilled green beans in bacon, and oh were they yummy! You take like 6-10 fairly straight green beans and wrap a strip of bacon around them a couple times to hold them in a bundle. Then grill it until the bacon is cooked. There’s still a green bean flavor, but it really goes with the bacon somehow.
Oh, and also, I think it’s pretty awesome that you were able to stop the ‘Dieter Failure’ mentality. You should definitely count that as an Achievement.
I have to say that I really don’t like those two books (Deceptively Delicious and The Sneaky Chef). If you do the math, the amount of vegetables present in a serving of their recipes is tiny, and it’s mostly basically unhealthy food that they’re writing about. A brownie with a tiny bit of spinach in it or pancakes with a little sweet potato are not healthy foods. You’d be better off just not eating the brownie. There’s no way around it – to really have a good amount of vegetables in one’s diet, one has to EAT VEGETABLES. Not brownies and pancakes.
It sounds like you’ve been doing really well. I’m glad that you’ve been able to find out just how much dairy causes problems for you. In the future, you needn’t suffer intestinal pyrotechnics just for cake! Dairy-free cakes can (and should) be just as delicious as dairy-filled ones. I often make vegan cakes even though I eat dairy now. Cheese is the thing that’s really irreplaceable. ;) For me, I’ve found that when I food makes me feel really horrible and I’m avoiding it, the less and less I actually WANT to eat it, because I feel so much better and I don’t want to feel crappy.
I’m SO HAPPY for you about the anxiety stuff. How really, really awesome that is.
Damn, woman, you are doing well.
This elimination experiment is proving to be much more enlightening than others you have blogged about. While I am happy for you, I confess it is also great reading for the rest of us. It sounds like you are seeing some clarity in analyzing how situations and foods are making you feel, and finding good coping mechanisms. Go Hollie, Go!
Interesting discussion about the latest spate of “getting-kids-to-eat-veg” books. Today I just got mail from the great local publisher, Sasquatch Press. I was immediately drawn to a book illustrated by my favorite illustrator, so naturally, the book itself must be good, right? May be worth a look-see:
http://www.amazon.com/Feeding-Whole-Family-Cooking-Foods/dp/157061525X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246405625&sr=1-1
I grew up in a family that drenched veggies in butter, cream sauce, cheese sauce, etc. The upside of this is that due to all that tasty nasty sauce, I ate lots of veggies, and never really had the aversion to them that a lot of kids from “healthier” families had. For years, I only ate broccoli with cheez whiz. But as I grew up, I would occasionally try it without, and now I generally eat it bare, or sauteed in olive oil and garlic. Tastes do change, but once a child gets dead-set against a food, it takes some work to reintroduce it.
So, if a kid is going to eat pancakes anyway, why not toss in some sweet potatoes? That little ingredient may just well wind up being a gateway drug to the wonderful world of veg.
Ivana, I’ve heard about that book you linked to – it sounds really cool, and personally, I like the concept much better than that of the other two books!
The story you told about your family was funny to me, because that’s how everyone tried to get me to eat vegetables when I was a kid – cheese, creamy sauces, sugar, etc, and I HATED all of it. I still remember my grandmother’s shock when I blanched at her maple-syrup-roasted carrots. My parents finally figured out that I would eat all sorts of vegetables if they were plain and raw. The other flavors and texture combinations overwhelmed me. I think learning to love vegetables is a matter of your personal tastes and of learning to cook them WELL – whether plain or fancied up with sauces, no matter what ingredients you prepare them with. (Now I adore veggies – whether it’s simple blanched broccoli or an asparagus and celery root gratin – and I think learning to cook well was the major factor.)
Sure, if you’re going to eat pancakes anyway, slipping a little sweet potato into the pancake batter is fine, why not? I put cubes of roasted butternut squash in my homemade mac and cheese, because I love the flavor, and I like that it gives me some extra nutrition as a bonus. But I think the two books encourage a mindset of going out of your way to bake brownies and cookies, feeding them to your kids (or eating them yourself), and thinking that you’ve gotten all sorts of nutrients in and that the brownies and cookies have become healthy foods. They haven’t, and a few teaspoons of spinach puree in a brownie (which is what it comes out to, if you do the math) isn’t adding nutrition to anyone’s diet, nor is it teaching anyone to enjoy vegetables. I especially don’t see these books as being very useful for an adult who’s trying to learn to incorporate adequate servings of vegetables into their diet to improve their health – you simply can’t do it that way.
Oops, my bb code is showing :P
Liz – Actually, my current stance on bacon is that my year of trying to go vegan really killed my bacon passion. I don’t see it as anything that special anymore. Probably the only exception to that might be strawberry noodles, but even then I’m not too sure!
Like an achievement in WoW! I need to make a list of these and give myself a tabard.
Natasha – Thank you! I’m hoping the effect “sticks”, and I’m really on the path to recovery here. I’ve talked about getting rid of dairy again so many times, but I never seem to go more than a couple days without some of it just sneaking right back in – a Caesar salad here, a little bit of cheese there. This is the first time I’m really avoiding it in everything again, even bread or other baked goods where it’s likely been baked out in the cooking anyway.
Ivana – I JUST took that book off my wishlist! It had been on there forever and no one ever got it. I had thought about buying it but then decided I had enough cookbooks for now, and I ought to just work with what I’ve got for awhile. Oh, and I haven’t decided if I’m going to get the veggie-hiding book yet. I ended up getting another one with my gift certificate, it’s called “Free Range Kids”. It spoke to a lot of my fears as a mother, so I figured it would help with anxiety.
It’s okay! I can edit comments, and I just fixed the BB code for ya. :)