Elimination (of fun) Diet Day 4

It’s been a long four days. Long. Four. Days. Not only was my manic alcoholic boss here from Toronto this entire week, I had wall to wall meetings, jet lag from traveling, and sugar, caffeine, and carb withdrawl. I was also surrounded by cookies, pizza, and M&M’s at all times.

I am certain I was a blast to be married to.

Positives:

1. I made it through the week without strangling my boss and/or drinking with her (she is the definition of “misery loves company”).

2. I stuck to the diet–mostly by eating hourly and subsisting on water, fruit, salads, almonds, avocados, and fish. I did treat myself to lamb one night.Goal for next week is to eat more complex dishes that I make over the weekend and save as leftovers.

3. Caffeine withdrawl headache is finally abating.

4. My poop diary has been written 3 out of the 4 days! No constipation except on Day 1. Things are rocking, things are rolling. Movin’ and a groovin’. They have been mostly standard turds. I had one day of lighter/yellow-tinged poop which I contribute to A)too many B vitamins B) too many yams C) liver failure.

I haven’t said this in a while, but this weekend, I’m looking forward to COOKING! No more eating of whole avocados and bell peppers for sustenance. I must learn the ways of the eggless omelet and sugarless sugar cookies. I’m already strategizing on ways to make my favorite dishes gluten, dairy, egg, and sugar free. I think I will try my banana bread and pumpkin pie. I’m also planning on making lamb stew. Frickin love lamb!!!!

Anyone have any favorite recipes I can attempt to put an Elimination Diet spin on?

 

Reacquainting myself with salads

Yesterday, the diet made me do crazy things: Like eat a huge, vegetable laden salad for lunch.

Before I left for work, I made a olive oil and vinaigrette dressing which took me all of 5 minutes:

“So Easy A 5 Year Old Who Is Allowed To Play With Knives Can Make It” Vinaigrette Dressing:

1/2 cup cold pressed olive oil

3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

2 cloves of garlic, sliced (you can crush the garlic if you want a spicier more garlic flavored dressing)

salt and pepper to taste

1. Shake everything in a container with a lid.

2. Head to nearest supermarket salad bar to make your salad because you’re lazy, and hate cutting vegetables.

I don’t know about you, but homemade dressing always sketches me out a bit. I think it’s the mixing of oil with spices, powders, etc–it just looks goopy. That being said, this dressing tasted pretty yummy, and when I look at the ingredients on some of the dressings I’ve been eating before, this homemade stuff is about a trillion times healthier.

If there is one thing this diet is bringing my attention to, it’s how many processed foods I eat on a daily basis. It scares me that I can’t remember the last time I ate a big, healthy salad. The idea of eating a bunch of lettuce and chopped veggies isn’t appealing to me for whatever reason. In Elimination Diet Land, however, by the time lunch rolled around I was so hungry that the Ralph’s salad bar salad actually looked amazingly delicious.

After work, I forced myself to Whole Foods to buy some lamb and yam for my next recipe, which I like to call:

Lamb n’ Yam

One all natural lamb shoulder cut per person

One Yam/sweet potato

1. Sprinkle lamb with salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste

2. puncture yam a few times, wrap in a paper towel, and nuke it for 7 minutes

3. while the yam is nuking, cook the lamb for about 4 minutes per side in a pan lightly oiled with olive oil.

4. Cut open yam. Sprinkle yam with cinnamon if desired.

5. Eat lamb n’ yam in front of the TV and zone out because you’ve had a rough day and are going through caffeine withdrawl.

6. Wish that you could also have some mint jelly for the lamb, and butter for the yam, but also note how delicious it tastes anyway.

During the work week, I really only have the time and energy to make dishes that are this simple. I usually get home around 7PM, so anything gourmet will have to wait for the weekend. I enjoy cooking, so we’ll see what recipes I can come up with when I have more than 10 minutes!

Other than that, the fuzzy headache symptoms have subsided since yesterday, but we’ll see if that lasts.

So about this whole diet thing…

Yesterday sucked balls.

Not only was I tired and grumpy and jet lagged and dragging my feet to go to work, I was completely ill prepared for this diet, craving caffeine and sugar.

Warning to anyone who wants to attempt this diet: The level of preparation involved with keeping up with a restrictive diet is massive. I need to spend this weekend making meals so I am not gnawing my own arm off during the work week.I managed to stick with “the plan” yesterday, only to realize that I didn’t have much of a plan in place. This needs to change.

We had out of town production partners in the office yesterday. This meant an all day meeting that was catered. During our 8 hour production meeting delicious sandwiches, chips, muffins, and cookies were served.  I ate fruit salad and dried apples that I brought. I forgot to bring any “diet approved” salad dressing, so I literally ate a green bell pepper whole with nothing on it (mainly because I was so hungry). I also ate a banana, which was surprisingly delicious, and drank about 5 cups of tea.

Then, because this diet can bite me, we took our partners out to a really delicious restaurant for dinner where everyone ordered beer, martinis, wine, gourmet burgers and ribs , and I ordered water and the plain halibut with lima beans and peas (I couldn’t do the creamy yukon potato risotto that came with it. Grrr). I’m pretty sure the halibut was cooked in a bit of butter which is a “technical” no no, but at that point, I didn’t give a shit.

I got a lot of comments yesterday about posting recipes, so I think that I will post one a day (if I can).

Today, I am making “Rice and Shine” for breakfast. It’s like Cream of Wheat, but made with quinoa and brown rice.

1. Boil 1 cup of almond milk

2. Add 1/4 cup of Rice and Shine

3. Simmer 3-4 minutes until thick.

4. Sprinkle some cinnamon on top with some agave syrup to sweeten.

5. Smile and pretend this tastes just as good as fluffy waffles with strawberries and whipped cream.

Poop Diaries

I’m back. Back from all of the traveling, the greasy, cheesy, yummy food, the family, the twin bed sleeping (that one I could have done without). Overall, it was a wonderful 10 days…but now  I have been hurled back into the thick of things. Some fertility related, some not.

1. My work email inbox is overflowing.

2. My laundry basket is overflowing.

3. My diet starts today.(insert small, feeble whimper here).

I landed at 10AM yesterday morning, and by 2PM I was picking up my diet plan from Intuitive Health Lady.

I won’t bore you with the long list of things I must avoid. You can take a wild guess and assume there will be no more peanut butter Oreo ice creams in my future. The basics are: no sugar of any kind including honey, no chocolate, no alcohol, no caffeine, no dairy, no eggs, no wheat or corn, no fun.

Short list of what I can eat: fruits (except oranges) veggies (except corn), quinoa, brown rice, lentils, nuts and seeds, any fish, chicken, or lamb that is organically grown, olive oil,  agave nectar or Stevia to sweeten things, and 2 quarts of water daily. There’s quite a bit more on the list of what I can eat, but in order to make these foods taste remotely edible, it will require extensive prepping and cooking on my part. The diet is not meant to be a weight loss diet, and there are lots of ways to get all of my essential fats and proteins from it, I just have to be very diligent about what I eat and how often I eat.

Intuitive Health Lady wants me to write down every food I eat, and when I eat it, along with (get this) a description of my daily bowel movements— or, as I like to call it, my poop diary. I can’t help but crack up at the Bowel Movement diary keeping. I gave myself a good laugh this morning when I fancied myself a Victorian era lady of leisure who was also keeping a food/bowel movement diary.

Dear Diary,

Today mama and I stitched a kerchief for Rebecca. I had kale with almond slices and a little bit of organic, free range chicken sprinkled ever so lightly with ground flax. My bowels had a malodorous pungency–nutty, with a hint of spoiled fruit.

I’ll be honest: It’s Day 1, I’m sipping on hot water with lemon, and I am freaking the fuck out. I know that I will get through the next 28 days, but I am worried about all of the cooking, sugar/caffeine withdrawl symptoms, etc.

More updates to come on this!

The Fertility 15 and Friendship

As you know, I’m traveling in Boston right now, so many apologies that my blog hasn’t been as diligently updated this week. Along with reveling in the absolutely gorgeous weather we’ve been having here this week (hello global warming, pleasure to meet you), I’ve also been helping my MIL prep for my SIL’s wedding shower which is today.

I’ve also been busy eating here. A lot. And by a lot, I mean: Dunkin Donuts French Vanilla with Cream and Sugar every morning, honey soy marinated chicken, jasmine rice, and chicken sausage, calamari, Spanish sole with shellfish in a cream sauce, grilled cheese on rye, white wine, red wine, bloody Mary’s, a huge plate of amazing Brazilian Food with fried plantains, yummy spicy green curry and egg rolls, muffins, peanut butter Oreo ice cream from J.P.Licks, and five slices of pizza. And that’s just Boston. I can’t even begin to explain the food damage I did in New York.

In the last few weeks, I have gained what I like to call the Fertility 15.  I wish it was an exaggeration, but I’m afraid it’s not. I know it won’t make the diet any easier when I get back…but I needed to go out in a carb induced bang before entering the land of vegetables and almond butter with Intuitive Health Lady.

The truth is, I needed this food. Food has been connecting me with friends and family this trip, and frankly, it has been good for my heart and soul. I am just kicking back, and enjoying it. I am refusing to worry about my flabby arms and tummy pooch.

For many reasons, my favorite food splurge this week was my J.P. Licks Peanut Butter Oreo ice cream.  I mean, SHIT. What genius combined those flavors? Not only did it taste out of this world, I ate it while spending time with a dear friend who I hadn’t seen in about 4 years.  This friend is warm, caring, absolutely smart as a whip, and gives the best hugs in the world. No joke. She should start a hug business. She is also one of the only women in the world I can talk to about what I’m going through, and know that she can truly relate to how I feel. More on that in a bit.

We have known each other since high school, long before any of the fertility nonsense started and we were just two kids sharing the ups and downs of being sixteen.  Emotions always  run high during those years, but she and I never had any drama. We blended well: Her sharp wit and dry sarcasm with a dash of Ani DiFranco combined nicely with my flittery kookiness and Eddie Vedder obsession.  I remember one time she told me that mac and cheese should be eaten with a spoon, not a fork. It’s one of those concepts I thought was so awesome, it has stuck with me 15 years later.

We both grew up in Los Angeles, and then coincidentally both decided to move across the country to go to the same college in Boston. During my last year there, we were roommates. I was dating a guy pretty seriously at the time and was not home that often, but when I was, (usually because he and I were fighting and I was depressed), she would be there to cheer me up. She made this amazing chicken dish once, and as she was cooking it, she placed the spoon on one of those spoon rests so she didn’t get the counter dirty. I thought that was an amazing concept. Why I have such vivid spoon memories of this friend, I do not know.

Anyhow–about 8 or 9 months ago, I heard through a mutual friend that she too was struggling with PCOS, and was dealing with all of the awful effects of TTC while dealing with the disease. We hadn’t spoken to each other in years, but I sent her a brain dump sort of email where I spilled all of my fears about TTC  with PCOS. After I sent it, I started getting nervous that I wouldn’t hear from her, or that I came off too crazy and desperate. But she emailed back. That email was a port in the storm.  She and I chatted over the phone about our struggles a bit. She even let me know she was keeping a blog about it, which in retrospect was amazingly generous of her,  knowing how hard it is to open up the blog to friends IRL. I followed along her journey, and her writing was incredibly inspiring. So inspiring that I started this blog.

I call her something else IRL, but here in Blogland, her name is Her Royal Fabulousness.

She is, in fact, fabulous. And she still lives in Boston!

We sat out in the Boston sun a couple of days ago, ate our J.P. Licks, and talked a lot about our struggles with fertility (that’s her on the left!). It is beyond amazing to have her here for me on our journey. I am so thankful to you, HRF!

We are still struggling, but we will beat this thing. Just you wait.

 

ICLW #2–Welcome!

Heya all you ICLW-ers. Can’t believe it’s that time of the month again. And no, silly…I don’t mean THAT time of the month. It’s not like I ever get my period these days. It’s time for ICLW! Time for fun, frolic, and fertiliy related frivolity!

For those of you new to the site, I don’t ovulate much (or ever in the last 8 months.) This would be awesome if I was actively trying to avoid pregnancy, but since I’m TTC, it’s, how do you say, shitty?  My timeline goes something like this:

1. Formally diagnosed PCOS in July 2010, although I’ve always had irregular periods.

2. Get on on the pill for a year to “regulate” my cycles.

3. Get off the pill in Aug of 2011 in hopes of TTC with Hubs.

4. Get one “normal” period in Sept of 2011

5. Never ovulate again.

In the span of 8 months, my emotions have run the gamut between hopeful and really effing pissed. Even with PCOS, I have never gone this long without a period, and I believe that BCP may have messed royally with my system, but I can’t quite be sure. I have a doctor who is more than ready to prescribe me Clomid (just as he was more than ready to prescribe me birth control), but I am working with an acupuncturist/nutritionist (whom I have named Intuitive Health Lady) on trying to get my system detoxed and healthified before I start trying to force an egg out of my crusty ovary. I will most likely be starting Round 1 of Clomid in May.

I’m traveling right now with Hubs in Boston, staying with his mom. We’re sleeping in his childhood bedroom about 2 feet from his mother’s room (HAWT!)  in a twin bed with another twin mattress that pulls out from under the bed, so I have nicknamed us Ricky and Lucy for the time being. There is a 99.9% chance that no children will be attempted to be conceived in this room for the next week. The .1% chance depends on how much wine I drink at dinner tonight.

Happy ICLW! Looking forward to meeting all of you.

Time to skeedaddle

Will PCOS stop me from being a sexy cab flagging machine?

Hail, no.

It appears as though my time in NYC is coming to an end. What an amazing trip.

Great food, great weather, great company. Now it’s off to Rhode Island for a quick visit with Hub’s grandma, and then a trip to Boston for more food and family fun.

I’ll have some more time in Boston to catch up with everyone’s blogs! Hope you’re all having a great week.

Soup Dumplings

Yesterday, we met Hub’s long time friends J and S, and their two children, Adorable Boy and Adorable Girl, in Chinatown for soup dumplings at Joe’s Shanghai.

Soup dumplings fall into the category of “insane yum”: stretchy dumpling dough that encases a rich, hidden broth that pops in your mouth and releases flavors that have you believing in Santa Claus all over again. Much like the invention of the spork or the Pillow Pet, the soup dumpling is a merging of two worlds to form perfection.

The lunch was so fun. Adorable Boy and Girl were just that: FREAKING ADORABLE. And incredibly smart. I love smart kids.  If there were any two children that would inspire my ovary to spontaneously ovulate, it would be them. Adorable Boy is five, full of crazy fun boy energy, and couldn’t get enough of the fact that I jokingly called the soup dumplings “poop dumplings”. Adorable Girl is three, and has the biggest, most inquisitive brown eyes you’ve ever seen.  She was shy at first, but then warmed up to me and took  my hand as we walked through Chinatown. At one point in the afternoon, Hubs gave me a hug and a kiss, and she looked at both of us, smiled, and said, simply, “You have love.”

If that doesn’t melt your heart, folks, I don’t know what will.

More updates to come!

Headed to the Big Apple

I went in and saw Intuitive Health Lady again yesterday for acupuncture. I don’t know why, but this time, the specific areas she stuck on my legs, feet and toe area felt really tingly–particularly the area between my first and second toe which she says is a Liver Qi point. After doing my front side for about 45 minutes, she came back in and took out the needles. I thought I was done, but she told me to flip around, and lie face down on the table. She did my back area for another 45 mins! Love this lady.

Today I am leaving on the red eye after work to join Hubs in NYC for 5 days. NYC is his City of Dreams–he is most vibrant when he’s there. He lived there for 10 years before moving out to LA in 2002 so he saavily knows his way around (unlike me who just looks up at all of the tall buildings, stares, and munches on a pretzel). We’re going to see “Once” the musical on Broadway (ohmylordholyshit LOVED the movie!!), go to the Museum of Natural History, go to a photography exhibit called Weegee: Murder is my Business, and maybe catch a Klezmer Brunch on Sunday. Then we head to Boston for another 5 days to visit his family and attend his sister’s bridal shower (thank god it’s not another baby or braby shower).

IHL told me that I needed to stick to the non dairy diet while I was in NYC. To which I obediently shook my head “yes”, and thought in my head: “There is no way in hell I am not having pizza while I’m in New York.” I’ll do my best, but honestly, I’m not going to stress about it if I don’t keep a strict diet while I’m there.

I will probably not be updating as much in the next week or so, but will do my best!

I will bid adieu with my favorite song from Once. Gaaaaa. I am reduced to a puddle of mush when I hear this song.

 

Yawn

Warning: today’s entry will be somewhat blah. Nothing much new here. Still taking the vitamins, still drinking gross green drink, and I’m doing acupuncture again today.

Frankly, this whole anovulation thing is starting to bore me.

I know the healing crap is supposed to take a while. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Whatevs. I want to pop a damn egg out of my damn ovary. At this point, I seriously don’t give a rat’s ass if it fertilizes. Just want the sucker to develop, ripen and release from my crusty old man ovaries. That is all.

Oh. I should also mention that after years of loving Oprah Winfrey, I am finally over her. She has reached a point of wealth and fame where I don’t believe she is humanly capable of identifying with the “normal” masses that once loved her. Her network is a mess–the shows are boring and unrelatable. I caught her interview with Paula Deen where she went over to Deen’s multi bajillion dollar Georgia mansion for a “slumber party” with Gail, gushed over Deen’s diabetic coma inducing buffet of lard, butter, and cheese, and then jumped on some sort of trampoline with her.  The whole thing just made me sick. Screw you, Oprah.

Blah.