I have a new blog!

As you can see I no longer post on veggielicious. Come visit my new blog called Plum where I will talk about gluten-free cooking, raising chickens, whole foods diets and more.

Changes, and more changes

I've been off-blog for months now, for a number of reasons. I think it's obvious I haven't been following ETL for some time now, and in fact i am no longer completely vegetarian. I started having desperate cravings for chicken, which to me was my body telling me it wasn't getting what it needed. I now eat chicken or fish maybe once a week and eggs a two or three times, and that seems to work for me. I have been slowly trying to improve my digestion and deal with healing my gut after a stressful year. I am realizing that in order to get that under control I'm going to have to do a better job of balancing my blood sugar. This summer was very busy-- I worked three jobs and had a clinic shift to juggle. I exercised very little ate ate "whatever" (other than being strict about dairy and gluten free). I had a couple weeks where I did a liver cleanse and ate really clean but felt constipated from a sudden increase in fiber,and when I came off it I started eating a lot of junk again. (well, my version of junk is stuff like pirate's booty and homemade gluten free cookies). I've been eating too much sugar and my system doesn't like it-- I get out of balance and the sugar makes me moody and irritable. I feel it immediately. Sugar is like a drug and it's one I'm going to have to get off of. My friend Laura and i are about to embark on an 11 day road trip (follow our adventures here) and it is not the time to start a new plan yet. But when we get back and school starts again I've decided to make eating properly and exercising a priority. You would think nutrition students would be immune from eating poorly because of stress and certainly we do better than the average American, but we all give in to the sugar demons eventually.

I seriously considered closing this blog and starting over, but I decided to continue on this same journey even though my priorities have changed a bit. I'm no longer on the boards at Dr. Fuhrman's website-- I just didn't have time to keep up with it. So you'll have to follow my progress here.

Never say never

Sometimes I really don't feel like blogging because I have a tendency to say something and then a few weeks later i change my mind and I feel silly but that's how it is with me so... welcome to the party.

I got a lot of questions about my statement that I would probably never do ETL 100% again. I still feel that for my long-term sanity and happiness it will be somewhere between 85-90%. However my body is not doing so well lately and I think I need a good 6 weeks of solid ETL to try and heal.

After over a week of not getting enough sleep yesterday I had a mid-term I had barely studied for and then I sort of melted down from exhaustion and ate and ate and ate like I haven't in a long time. I feel bloated and fat and just not that well most of the time. My gut needs healing from years of abuse (eating gluten in particular) and I just don't feel good.

It won't be easy, in particular every Wednesday for another month I will continue to have my cooking class where we make, while healthy and delicious, not particularly ETL things (salt, oil, starch involved) and I am going to keep on eating that meal. But if I can clean it up so that is the only meal each week that is not ETL I think it would do my body a world of good. I am envisioning a mostly raw, cleansing spring and summer. I think my body really needs that right now.

I have a strong tendency to say I'll start on Friday or Monday or after I'm done with a test, but I think instead I'm just going to say I'm starting right now. No excuses, just try and avoid grains, salt, processed foods, flour, sugar, for 20 meals a week and get back to a cleaner, healthier system. I imagine the first week or so will not be very fun, but I'm sick of feeling so fat and gross!

Getting enough sleep would help too....

David's post

Thanks to Paige for helping me find it...

Bree I can relate a lot to your situation. I'm just 20 but have suffered with low energy and sugar issues since I was young child so at the age of 17-18 I chose to take care of my health.

I have to say I've always been on the obsessive compulsive side and never seem to be able to find middle grounds. Either I'm surrounded by a pile of candies or I'm surrounded by a pile of broccoli.

Anyway I followed E2L for a year and can say it was the best year of my life. My peer were getting "adults" in the pejorative ways meaning that they were growing in disproportionated ways and getting bulkier, fattier and shapeless.

I on the other hand experienced a proportional growth maintaning body proportions, leaness and youthfulness. I know nowadays that unhealthy modern eating plays havoc with our hormones.

Also I got a more lighter mood, I was in awe about the world around me and started experiencing things with a new attitude: music, arts, animation, nature. In a way I started feeling again like a young child who loves life and loves to explore every little poetic detail of the world. Friends and relatives used to call me "pretty angel" because of my youthfull look, light appareance and calm, relaxed and dreaming mood. It's very hard to explain but in that period I felt surrounded by magic. Everything seemed beautiful and interesting and I would look at people and things like a 3 year old stares and acquarium full of colorful fish. I was proud of my body and liked the feeling of the wind or sun on my skin and felt confortable in my clothes.

I can't remember how but slowly I moved away from that. One reason is that I started looking skinny and my mother convinced me I was undernourishing my body. The truth I realize now is that I needed just to improve my muscular tone through exercise. I was 8% body fat but lacked muscular tone. Just a bit of muscular tone and I would have looked lean rather than skinny.

Anyway I started eating out often, I started eating everything in sight, I ate less and less veggies, I started eating junk food when it was around and I added hamburgers, sausages and steaks back to my diet.

What happened is that I started to wean from that blissful awe inspiring world and started to see reality as ugly and cold (just another proof that things ARE NOT, it's how we see them)

I started developing the typical western teen disproportionate development which grew my trunk more than my legs, keeping my upper arm short and my feet long; and slowly I started looking older.

My skin became dry and dull and I developed dermatisis around my nose.

I became fatter and had a fatty belly for the fist time. I reached 18% body fat which is "average" but on me looked extremely fat and shapeless; maybe because I was 8% body fat and fat was gained in a peculiar pattern.

But what is worst I became a lot more introspective and non-spontaneous and aggressive.
I lost the ability to laugh with an open heart or wake up with a smile and instead became easily irritable and even violent. Things like cursing because I can't find something, ripping a textbook because I don't understand an exercise, punching the keyboard because the computer doesn't work.
I even started slowly to develop the idea that life is inherently ugly and people are inherently evil.

Clearly my relationship with nature and its elements faded too and I spent more time indoor and around the city and less outdoor near a string and below a tree.

I was depressed because I felt like a person had died. That person was the 17 year old. Everyone else though I was now an average 20 guy who has grown a fuller body and a less child-like (read: positive and awe-like) attitude to life. I started to believe them. My body felt like a burden rather than the companion of my spirit and my movements started to become awkward and clumsy.

But one day I was looking at my pics from that period and was thinking "how come only 2 years ago I was always smiling, I had a perfect skin, I looked in peace with myself, flexible and coordinated and creative in love with life?" Then I remember my veggie-based diet, my vegetarianism my "PURIFIED STATE" and understood I needed to go back at that. I had completely removed that experience but a bulb turned on in my mind.

I'm slowly in the middle of such process and I can assure you that the person I used to be is coming back. I can see my body becoming lighter and more coordinate, I can see my skin becoming baby-soft and clear, I can see the traits of my face softening up and the sparkle in my eyes coming back. My dreams are becoming more colorful, my aggressivity is fading, my spontaneity is recovering. I still feel the old pleasure for natural elements: the wind of my face, the water on my hands and the need to go out and walk through wood and swim in clean lakes is blossoming again. So is my creativity and curiosity. Slowly I can feel that old sense of child-like awe and peace coming back and again I started to feel surrounded by a magical peaceful environment.

Now I feel like I'm going through rebirth after 2 years in which I wasn't there but someone else was living my life.

How do I plan to never repeat this mistake and miss precious years of my life?

Well exactly what you said! No rigid structure. Lately I'm perfectly content with buying three cans of beans a day and spead them through my meals with lot of veggies, a big salad with nuts and breakfast of nuts and fruits. If I will feel the need to add variety I will look for interesting recipes. If I will feel the need for meat I will add few pieces of chicken breast to my soups. If I will feel the need to eat junk I will allow myself a slice of pizza. If I will get to skinny I will eat more avocado and exercise more.

The point is I will never "throw the baby out with the bath water"
I definitely learned a lesson about that.

With love
David

P.s. I would love it if you could make a blog-post out of my comment because I'd like to read other people opinions about this important topics as I'm sure many have made my same mistake.

Sorta hung over and pretty frustrated

Something is going on with my body. I don't know what it is but I'm pretty annoyed. I feel like even eating really pretty clean (prior to last night) and exercising regularly I am hanging on to WATER and bloat. I know my body well enough to know when I'm carrying extra water weight and usually just eating more produce and exercise gets rid of it.

Last night I went over to a friend's house to plan another friend's baby shower with some other girls. They ordered pizza, which I can't eat, so I made a lovely salad and brought a piece of tofu quiche to eat. I had done a hard yoga class in the morning and walked probably 3 miles with a 30 pound? back pack on most of the day, so my smoothie and veggie sushi and strawberries wasn't enough. My friend was nice enough to bring gluten-free brownies which I had quite a bit of and I had two large glasses of wine. This morning I woke up feeling not so hot.

I think my body needs a serious cleanse of some kind. I absolutely can't do that until end of next week when mid-terms are over, but I also have a cooking class once a week where we make, while healthy, not "cleanse" worthy food. I will have to think more about this. I also don't want to set myself up for binging by over restricting.

Someone named David left me a really long, lovely comment about trying to find balance but it must have been about an old post because once I hit "publish" I couldn't find it again. As I've said before, if you comment on old posts I have no idea which post you are referring to!

Ginseng and me

In lecture on Monday one of my professors noted that Siberian Ginseng is a good supplement for students because it promotes energy while decreasing stress response in the body. Sounded good to me, so I tried it. I hate taking capsules so I emptied two into my smoothie on Tuesday morning. Half way through class that morning I very nearly threw up! I had to go home after class and lie down so as not to be sick! All day today my stomach has hurt-- I don't know what the deal was with this stuff but needless to say I won't be taking anymore of that!

I've been having an insomniac week. Monday night I couldn't sleep and was awake half the night, then yesterday I had trouble falling asleep despite getting very little sleep the night before. Maybe it was the ginseng.

The scale is not being nice to me this week. Despite several days in a row of really eating well and exercising it has not budged from the scary zone of near 145. Sometimes when I clean up my act I immediately drop a pound or two of water weight but not this week! M. swears I look skinny, so I'm not sure what's happening.

I'm still feeling a bit nauseated and need to go figure out what I'm making for dinner. Maybe a soothing lentil soup?

Not sure how Dr. F would feel about it, but I was pretty darn excited to find Wildwood brand organic UNSWEETENED soy yogurt at the co-op today. Usually soy yogurt has a million grams of sugar. More on this in a minute.

Today was a bit of an overkill day exercise-wise. It was fun at the time but I hope I don't pay for it tomorrow.

I was going to go to yoga at 8am but when I woke up at 7 I did not want to get up and driving to yoga (a 25 min drive) sounded very unappealing. M and I went to the gym and I did a half-hearted 30 minutes on the treadmill while reading trashy gossip magazines. After that I felt really good and decided to go to this new yoga studio I've been meaning to try which has a class at 3pm (I wish my regular studio had afternoon power classes on the weekends!)

I went to school and worked on a project and then drove to yoga-- the new studio is only a couple miles from my regular one. It was... interesting. When I first walked in it was so ridiculously hot and humid I thought I might die before the class even started (when the instructor came in he turned it down somewhat, plus it was heated through the floor so it was extra hot lying on my towel which I didn't realize. In fact, walking in bare feet on the floor kind of burned my feet like hot sand!)

The class was like yoga-style boot camp. The instructor was half self-absorbed surfer guy and half military boot camp instructor. He barked orders at us or rambled on and on about how he gives us a challenge and we have to learn to overcome it blah, blah. It didn't flow as well as my usual class, though the abs were seriously challenging. It was a good workout, but I won't be switching studios. In fact, I just finally got set up with my usual studio to do some volunteer cleaning work in exchange for free classes, so I'm super excited about that.

Anyway, I just put everything into fitday. I had an extra light lunch so I wouldn't get nauseated in yoga and no snack, so I only have had 1400 calories today and I burned at least 1000 calories in exercise alone today so I might have to go eat a little more.

What I ate today:

B: chocolate cherry, blueberry chard soymilk smoothie and two (very small) homemade gluten free muffins

L: leftover tofu quiche I made last night from Cynthia Lair's book (has chard in it) and an apple

D: bean and polenta casserole, side salad
dessert: 1 cup blueberries, 1/2 cup unsweetened soy yogurt, 1 tsp maple syrup, 5 pecan halves (chopped) -- so good!

I know, more than one serving of starch today, but come on-- I worked out for 2 hours! I think we might need to modify the rules to say if I workout over an hour I can have 2...

I'm getting awfully tired and I'm supposed to be doing homework now....

Getting Serious

I've been sick, feeling fat and sorry for myself for a few weeks. I finally realized that the probiotic I was taking was making me exhausted and now that I'm over my cold and off those I feel much better. I went to the doctor yesterday (ND) and she said that the probiotic makes me tired because my gut is damaged from my food allergies and so I have a leaky gut.
She suggested I use glutamine powder (an amino acid) which helps with muscle repair and is healing to the gut. (As a bonus it can help with sugar cravings too). (See wikipedia here for more on why glutamine is our friend). I already had some since I suspected I needed it but I hadn't been using it so I started today.

Last night I went out with some friends. My friend K, whom I admire in many ways, but not the least of which being her near perfect yoga- instructor figure, was suggesting that we all go to a clothing optional hot springs this summer. Um, I'm not sure how I feel about getting naked with people from school in general but there is sure as hell no way I'm doing it with my body in it's current state! That helped me get motivated to get on track. So here's my plan for at least the rest of the quarter:

1. Rest of the quarter supplement with glutamine powder 2x daily, vitamins and cod liver oil
2. Eat a primarily ETL diet, only one serving of starch daily, minimal oil and salt
3. 60-90 minutes of exercise 6 days per week
4. 1400-1600 calories per day unless exercise surpasses 90 minutes
5. Journaling at least every other day

Goal: 8 weeks (end of quarter): -11lb (132)

15 weeks (my high school reunion): =120lbs

I don't have total control over how fast my body lets go of weight even if I follow this, but I'm keeping the numeric goals anyway. I'm finally feeling better and ready to get started. I spent all day outside gardening and I think that spending time in fresh air and sunshine really is good for me too so I'm going to try and work on that as much as I can too. I'll keep you posted!