paleo zealots and pb&j on wonder bread

i posted this on the healthy skeptic blog, but i thought it was cute, so i'm putting it here for a good memory.

i’ve been feeling very confused because i feel great and super energetic eating pb&j on wonderbread. i’ve even tested my post-prandial glucose and i’m fine. i’m just waiting for a paleo zealot to tell me that i am fine now because i haven’t damaged my metabolism yet, but by the time i’m in my 50s, mr. diabetes will be showing up. who are they to tell me not to trust how i feel? and where are the specific pb&j wonderbread studies? until i see proof specifically that eating pb&j for the next 30 years will hurt me, i will continue to eat it!! I may even go on an 800 calorie pb&j diet just to prove that i can lose weight on it!

night time calf cramps

well, to follow up on the trip post- i didn't gain any weight. i had lots of sandwiches, but i ate the insides and threw out the bread. at a restaurant i had crab cakes and the salad bar. i also used the hotel gym to do bike sprints. so i didn't have to worry. good.

but i have a new issue to apply my brain to!! hurray i get to use my brain!!! why am i getting calf cramps the night after i do intense exercise and IF? aren't i getting enough magnesium, salt, calcium and zinc in my diet? if not, why not? i am eating the good ef foods and not crap. i understand my anemia problem- i am bleeding too much during my periods. now that i take aleve on the first day of my period instead of starting it on the heaviest day, i have cut down on the flow quite a bit. i still take one 325mg ferrous sulfate a day (when i remember).

now for the experiment. i could just take a multivitamin and do a gattlin gun spray approach (what is a better gun for spraying bullets? i have to ask my black-ops fan daughter), but that would be no fun since i couldn't isolate a variable as well. soooo tomorrow i'm going to IF and do exercise (but not as intense as on the weekend since i have less time), so tonight i will take one magnesium (forget dose, will post later) and see if it mitigates the cramps or not.

trip

i'm going to my sister's for my niece's batmizvah over the weekend. i'll be flying over and staying in a hotel, so that means i can't cook my own stuff. I find in social situations where i do eat crap, the main reason is because i am down about having to be there in the first place.

my mother has cancer and diabetes- she needs someone to travel with her. originally she was going to go with my brother and i wasn't going to go at all. but my brother decided to drive down instead, so my mother wasn't going to go. i knew she was really looking forward to it, and the doctor says she doesn't have that long to live, so i thought i could sacrifice a little to take her myself. i don't really enjoy these big family get-togethers, especially where it is not easy to escape if you get bored or people start getting on your nerves. so knowing all this, i think i need to get myself psyched up and not get down in the first place.

i need to eat small portions because even the meat and seafood will be soaked in sugar, salt and unhealthy oils that will start my cravings up. i may even nibble at salad sans the salad dressing just to look like i am doing something and not draw attention to myself! of course there is always the old standby white lie 'i'm feeling a little nauseous so i don't have an appetite'. i will make an effort to enjoy people's company and do some people watching. my sister converted to judaism when she got married, so i don't really know a lot about the religion/culture. so my natural curiosity may be a way to keep myself in a good mood.

i'll be an alcoholic in recovery in a room full of alcohol and alcoholics, but i've been in that situation before and did pretty well. the key is to not start feeling trapped and down. so i have a game plan.

how coud i lose 2 pounds after thanksgiving?

yesterday i was 131.6. today i'm 129.6. huh? i did if yesterday and started lifting a new weight- 15 lbs. and i felt very springy in my legs. maybe this is what some people get with carb cycling- my metabolism has temporarily speeded up.

what i learned from the thanksgiving meal

a couple of weeks before thanksgiving i tried cooking a paleo pumpkin pie with pumpkin, eggs, pumpkin pie spice, and lots of coconut milk. at that time i was thinking that this pie is so healthy, it won't kill me to put some reddi-whip on top. it was so delicious, i kept eating and eating!!! then i was out like a light. i had to sleep from the sugar and insulin surge.

so i learned from that. on thanksgiving day i made the pie, but no cream on top. i also made some "paleo" yams with spice, apples, some butter, etc. these were desserts that were SO good, again i kept eating and eating!!!! at least i didn't go to sleep in the afternoon and my heart wasn't racing- so i count that as a win.

i didn't put any sweetner- no honey, no stevia, no maple syrup flakes- in anything. but- i overate because the cravings just kept building!! i even ate some candy!! that night when i closed my eyes, i didn't see the dark patterns that usually dance around on my inner eyelids before i fall asleep. i saw brighter swirly thingys. so that sugar/insulin response made its way all the way up to my eyeballs. i also had greater temp changes than usual with all those carbs, so i know that must play into my nightly temp changes. the next day i was in a bad mood. so were my daughters.

what i learned is that i will still cook the yummies, but cook much much less so that we can each only have ONE small portion and NO leftovers. the broccoli/cauliflower casserole i got off the everydaypaleo site was yummy- and i will start including that as a regular (not just holiday) dish. my younger daughter helped me cook, which made the whole experience better. she wants a paleo cookbook for christmas.

before thanksgiving i ate little (not much of an appetite), and the morning of thanksgiving was the same. maybe that semi-Ifing helped to mitigate the impact of the meal. so far the scale doesn't register any weight gain, but i know from experience sometimes the effect of damaging your insulin sensitivity doesn't show up for a couple of days.

remember the words of the prophet (Arthur): " there is no failure, only feedback".

great sleep last night/bone soup + leaves

I haven't started taking the iron supplements yet because I wanted to start them to coincide with a new cycle. Today is day 3, and i will start taking one a day til the end of my cycle.

i'm still having forgetfulness, although not as bad as that one day i wrote about. like just now i forgot that i had already taken out the eggs- not a major slip up, as far as my slip ups go, but something i want to improve.

the big news is that last night i had the best sleep i can remember in a long while- no temp changes and no waking up after 6 hours and then having to make an effort to go back to sleep.

it could be the result of cumulative changes, or it could be something different i did yesterday.

yesterday a took an aleve, since my flow was starting to get some small clots. i also had 3 bowls of chicken bone soup, each with a pinch of salt, and a lot of leaves (like baby spinach) thrown in. this is chinese style soup and super easy to make. we just put water with the chicken carcass that was left over from the roasted chicken we got from sam's after my husband first cut all the meat off it. we didn't add any spices to it. then when it's boiling hot, you just throw in some leaves and a pinch of salt.

when i woke up this morning, my heart seemed quieter than usual, i couldn't even feel any beats as i usually can when i wake up. i slept from 9 pm until 4:45 am. then i laid in bed until 5 am and got up to cook breakfast. i only got up at 11 45 pm to put the dog out, and immediately went back to sleep. so that's 7 hours and 45 min of good sleep. Yeah!! also i did IF yesterday morning and one hour of vacuuming. the rest of the day was relatively stress free, although i did have some pain in my right chest area in the afternoon. that came after eating pecans and cinnamon. don't know if they are related. sometimes i have fleeting chest pain and so does my 13 year old daughter. i think we must be deficient in some nutrient- maybe magnesium, calcium, or both. i'm hoping drinking bone soup + leaves regularly will help.

So the bone soup and the iron are the 2 new things i am trying. i don't take iron in the morning because calcium and i think spinach inhibit its absorption. i'll take it on an empty stomach for greater absorption (so i read).

aleve and no more meat-only days

well, i don't have time to post a lot. but no matter. the important things i will remember to post. i'm not having any significant problems sleeping and i'm not taking any supplements- no iron, no iodine, no omega 3 fish oil. my period started out lighter than last time, but the second day it came on strong, so i took one aleve cuz i didn't want any accidents. if my heavy day falls on a weekend, i'll go without the aleve to see what happens. the aleve lightened the flow considerably, even though it was still fairly heavy the second day, and it cut down on the length of my period. it would be better not to take it, but the risks of taking one aleve a month hopefully seem to outweigh not taking it: heavy blood loss, missing work, some kind of surgery to stop the heavy menstrual bleeding (like uterine ablation).

i'm eating more shrimp and flounder, so hopefully that will offset me not taking iodine or omega 3 fish oil. i'm also eating tons more dark, leafy greens in salads twice a day.

i tried an experiment with eating all meat one day and doing a lot of walking as well. the next morning i drank coffee with coconut milk on an empty stomach. big no-no. i felt a tingling throughout my head and what felt like a big bowel movement coming on. i felt dizzy so i layed down on the bathroom floor and then passed out for a second. then i had diarrhea. so no more all meat days for me. plus that bad experience put me off of coffee, which i was cutting down on anyway. i posted over at artdevany.com about the experience. i also searched paleohacks for anyone with similar experiences. it may be that my blood pressure was too low that morning. in any event, i'm going to add salt to at least one meal a day. and i want my mom to teach me how to take my own blood pressure (she's a retired icu room nurse with 40 plus years of experience).

i was trying this experiment because i thought eating all meat and doing a lot of walking would help me lose belly fat. professor devany said i could not depend on diet alone to lose it, i would have to do more brief, but relatively hard exercise. i don't want to over do that either, so i'll gradually push the envelope of how much i can do before i get negative effects (sick, etc).

to sum up- sleep is pretty good- solved heavy bleeding problem (no more fish oil for now and 1 aleve on first day period starts to get heavy), weight is around the same it has been for the past year- up slightly only- most importantly: mood has been better than usual and i'm starting to want to run spontaneously more. my normal time to get my first cold- around november 4- is coming up. i want to see if i can go the whole month of november cold free. after that i will probably start using the sperti lamp to get my vitamin d.

sleep day 14 of cycle

well sunday night into monday, i had the usual temperature changes, but nothing that really made me feel overtired. the dog even woke me up in the middle of the night, but i still felt pretty good. but, monday night into tuesday, i had temperature changes that interfered with my sleep to the extent i feel a little dragged out this morning. the dog didn't even wake me up! i also had a little bit of a stuffed up nose and, really strange, some pain in my right chest area.

i have to do some speculation as to why things are different, so i can see what i want to do differently tonight. 1)last night i went to bed super tired because i had to wait up for my daughter. 2) i had a lot of fruit in the evening: a bowl of blueberries and coconut milk (early evening), a bowl of half a banana and coconut milk, and an apple. 3)i put chocolate-flavored whey protein in the coconut milk.

i had a good day yesterday- no real stress. i was feeling good helping students and meeting parents- so that didn't come into play.

the dreaded monthly cycle can always be a factor since my hormones are supposedly going yo-yo now. to see if this is a prime cause of my temperature fluctuations, i'll have to be diligent in posting what day of the cycle i am in and see if there are patterns over time.

so, for tonight and for the rest of this week ending sunday night- i will only eat fruit in the morning, no more whey protein powder period, i will have my last meal at 5 so i go to sleep on an empty stomach (9 to 9:30), i will not go to sleep overly tired, but stick to my schedule.