Whole30/Elimination Diet Wrap-up

I didn't mean to leave y'all hanging with the whole 30 thing but it just took for-e-ver to finish adding it everything. Yesterday I had quinoa with seemingly no reaction so I think it's finished!!! YAY! Now, the hard part has been over for a while. I like quinoa as much as the next gal, maybe more so, but its not exactly hard to live without it either. Really once wheat and butter was back, the rest seemed inconsequential. Although my first bite of peanut butter was really all I imagined it to be.

The good news - the brown rice was the only thing I reacted to! Which means that I don't have any big dietary changes to keep up with. The caveat is that I do feel the effects of sugar pretty quickly. But it's not a no sugar thing, just a really watch myself. And things with fat and protein along with that sugar seem much easier for me to handle. Yes to a bowl of ice cream after dinner - no to the donuts at church. I also lost about 5 lbs. Not gonna complain about that even thought it wasn't really a goal of mine either way. Now if I keep up with the ice cream thing it might not stay lost but c'est la vie.

The bad news - the brown rice was the only thing I reacted to. No big miracle with a diet change like so many other people with hashimotos/thyroid issues. Now, I'm in a good thyroid place right now but I was hoping that I'd discover something helpful after having put all the time and money and energy into giving it a try. If I work hard to put a positive spin on it, I still did learn something and now I don't have to worry about whether there is a big diet component I'm missing.

Overall, I'm not super impressed by Whole30 program. I know a lot of people who really like it and if you are eating a Standard American Diet, I can see how it would probably be a good change. I'm more of a slow and steady type when it comes to major lifestyle changes but I know there are some personalities that do better with this type of program. Whole30 is clearly laid out in terms of rules and there is a lot of support on blogs so you don't have to make too many decisions which is a huge factor for me and the time factor and goal setting is a big part of it. It's not really meant to be sustainable in its entirely but if you can keep some of the changes, you're probably going to be better off. My guess is that a lot of people go right back into eating the same old crap they were before. I did. I mean, not crappy processed foods, but the same stuff I ate before. Not a lot of the changes stuck. I ate a lot more vegetables while on Whole30 (because I couldn't eat anything else!!!) including a large salad for lunch everyday and I hoped to keep up with that - but have not done as well as I hoped. For the most part, we eat really healthy, whole foods that I prepare myself, it's just that they are now back to being cheesier.

I really wondered if this whole thing would change my perception of Paleo. I didn't come in with the mindset that grains are the enemy or dairy is inherently bad for you. I just didn't believe that despite the current hype. I was really a bit nervous that I'd chance my mind and then be stuck having to live without them. Now after having eaten dairy/grain free for a while - I still don't believe those things. I like those foods, I think they are healthy if your body can handle them. Mind can and I will continue to eat my delicious fresh raw milk and peanut butter and banana toast. Of course, if you can't handle them that's different. None of the Paleo things I ate in the last 6 weeks are bad for me either but my body clearly needed more carbs that I could easily get with Paleo, at least not with the amount of time I was able to dedicate to feeding myself.

Elimination Diet - Reintroduction Part 1

I did end up starting reintroducing foods somewhere about day 17. Between day 14-17 I could tell I was just not feeling good because of the lack of carbs. I know this was an issue for me when I tried gluten-free (and many others, just google low carb hashimotos!) and its much harder to compensate for that without grains as well. I just can't eat enough potatoes and bananas to supply me with the carbs I need to feel good. And they say right about two weeks of Paleo is when you often hit ketosis and that's right when I started to feel bad. Coincidence? Probably not. The doctor I am working with for Jonah's issues recommended 2-3 weeks as a good length for a gluten/dairy break for him anyway and since I was planning on doing much slower food reintroduction period than the 10 days Whole30 recommends, it seemed like a good time to get us all started.

That said, it wasn't a pretty start! I went with brown rice. Not because I had any great craving for brown rice but I had already planned the meals for the week and it was pretty simply to just make rice for everyone instead of making cauliflower rice for me to go along with everyone's brown rice. And I wasn't expecting any issues. And I actually felt really good that first hour (because, finally, carbs!) But then... Brown rice is now dead to me! I seriously felt like I had eaten a bag of rocks. That's the only way to describe it. I was that wolf in Little Red Riding Hood and was going to experience death by rocks. 24 hours later, I had not died but I had lost the desire to ever eat rice again. Now I have heard that white rice is a lot easier to digest and many who can't tolerate brown rice do just fine with an occasional serving of white rice. I am not yet at a place where I want to try this. Maybe down the road.

After I recovered from my one serving of brown rice, I waited another two days just to be mentally prepared. At this point, I'm not going to lie, I was really scared to try anything else. But I went with oats. Again, because kids eat oatmeal 2-3x a week so eating the same is very convenient. No issues.

Wheat a few days later. I've tried being gluten free for almost a year with no discernible difference in my labs or symptoms before so I was pretty sure it would be fine. Then 18 hours after trying to Wheat, I ended up with the horrible stomach flu. Violent vomiting a full day and a half after eating a sandwich is a bit extreme for a reaction to wheat so I was pretty sure it was just a stomach bug - but I was still nervous. The next day I was up to the BRAT diet. Except the BRAT diet without rice or wheat is just bananas and applesauce. That's not very sustaining. By the end of the day, I did try toast with almond butter and that was fine. No issues with wheat since. Kids didn't have issues with wheat either. And boy, are they happy to have their pb&j sandwiches back as a lunch option!

We actually just started dairy yesterday but jury is still out so I'll update that next time. And then I have some other stuff like corn, quinoa, beans and peanuts.

Sugar itself isn't a category to introduce on it's own like the foods because it just tends to come with them but I am keeping track of when I have sweeter things and how I feel. So far, I haven't done much. No binging, although I have wanted to! We had pancakes and they have a bit of sugar in them but I topped mine with fruit instead of maple syrup. I did make a paleo chocolate bar last week with cocoa, coconut oil, and maple syrup but even a small square of barely sweetened (we're talking 1 Tablespoon maple syrup in a 8x8 pan) treat was a bit much for me. I just felt jittery and had a headache later. The only new thing in that was the maple syrup so just as I suspected, I need to be very cautious about my sugar intake, even in more natural forms. My brain says eat a big bowl of ice cream, my body thinks that might be a bad idea. But for now, we keep going. The end is near!

Whole30/Elimination Diet - Week 2 Recap

Another week down. Actually, I'm writing this on day 15 so I'm halfway done with the intro part....if I keep at it for a full month. We'll see.

High Points: In a way things went smoother because we just kept to the same breakfast and lunches routine. The kids are eating more veggies now and we had a few good new good dinners. I've also started serving more side veggies at lunch and dinner - olives, pickles, fermented green beans, that sort of thing which I hope to keep doing next month.

Chicken Poppers - I used turkey and left out the optional cumin mostly because I forgot about it but it was a big hit with everyone. And they don't like zuchini but didn't mention it. We dipped them in guacamole. Guacamole has become the new hit of the month. I normally make my own if I can find good avocados but that's a pretty big IF so I've just been getting the Trader Joes/Aldi version and the kids seem to like a lot more than I remember. Maybe its the smoother texture of the store bought - or maybe they are just desperate for a creamy dip these days. I served them with Carrot/Raisin/Pineapple salad which was also a hit.

Orange Chicken - This was delicious. At least Craig, Norah and I thought so. Lucy and Jonah were not impressed which really surprised me. But Lucy had a tummy bug the day before and Jonah's been kinda whiny today and I'm suspicious. I'm really hoping they just didn't like the chicken and no more puking will be happening in this house this week. But either way, they were wrong, it was great. I used arrowroot instead of tapioca flour because I had it and am familiar with it and it worked just fine but don't add arrowroot into sauce until close to the end because it falls apart in too much heat. I also added snap peas to the mix. I served with brocolli for everyone, cauliflower for me and rice for everyone else. I've never been a fan of cauliflower before, it always just seemed like a bland form brocolli but I'm starting to enjoy it as a base instead of rice. But I'd still prefer rice. I miss rice. Rice is nice.

Steak Bites - No recipe for this. Just cut up steak into smallish pieces and marinated in a bit of olive oil, a bit of coconut aminos and some spices, fried up in my cast iron skillet. Kids probably ate as much ketchup with this as steak but ketchup is a vegetable, right? Served with roasted potatoes and a bunch of veggies. We buy our beef 1/4 cow at a time and funnily enough, I usually use up the ground beef and roasts first. I just don't think about serving steak until that's all I have left. But I really should. Steak is tasty!

Jonah and Norah are perfectly happy with what I give them. Norah isn't really dairy free since she's getting yogurt baby packets occasionally but since other stuff isn't in the house, she's not getting it in non-baby food ways. Jonah's always been my big carb guy so I'm really happy with how he's shifted to eating more meat. Normally dairy, eggs and bone broth are the main ways I've always gotten protein into him but a variety is certainly nice. He still eats his rice or potatoes first at dinner if they are there but will go on to the meat and veggies just fine. And he doesn't normally have any grain at lunch now with no complaints.

Low Points -

Lucy is annoyed with this all. And she was one I didn't think would mind much. But I underestimated how much she hates change. She likes the food I'm giving her but its different and she doesn't like different. I think I'll make some shrimp this week to appease her. It's one of her, and everyone's, favorite foods but they kids can eat like $10 worth of shrimp just between the three of them so it doesn't make it on the menu too much.

I had two slips. Neither intentionally though. One dinner was apricot chicken and I thought the jam we had was only fruit juice sweetened but I was wrong. Didn't realize until I was half way through recipe and I had no other plan to fall back on. Another time I thought I had a can of coconut milk but didn't so I used the kid's carton kind which had evaporated cane sugar in it. I remember seeing that when I checked label at store but got it anyway because it was supposed to be just for kids in their oatmeal or cereal which I'm not having (and because it was half off! A carton of coconut milk for $2!) If I don't make my own, I like the canned stuff for cooking, its thicker and more coco-nutty for things like curry but it slipped my mind. They actually ended up being on the same day too. In all its probably like 1 teaspoon of organic sugar so I hardly feel like a failure but my type A personality is annoyed. I am really happy neither was a case of my being tempted and giving in. That's big.  I'm finding it surprisingly easy to just not eat things. At church seeing donuts - that's okay, I'm not eating those. Everyone else eating veggie straws this afternoon. Not me. That part is kinda empowering I will admit.

I'm getting bored. I like to cook and I really love to bake and I miss it. I feel like I'm spending a lot of time with the part of food I don't like - the meal planning and recipe finding part and not as much on the fun cooking and experimenting part. Plus its expensive. Now, that's only an issue because, I still don't feel any different!! I think I'd actually be more motivated if I had felt bad like they said I might. Because then maybe I'd be more likely to feel good now - or at least have the hope of a change in the future. No tiger blood here. I think we just ate so well before that it really isn't that big of a change. I took stuff out but my body was already used to handling all the foods I'm eating - lots of veggies and healthy fats so no crazy reactions - or big improvements. Which is good long term. If I felt a ton better I'd feel like I need to stick with it ;-) I'm actually contemplating adding stuff in again next week. I'll be adding things one by one with a few days in between so it will take a few weeks to a month to do that still so it seems silly to wait just because. But then again, I made a committment so maybe I should stick with it. As you can see, I'm torn.

I'm also hungry. Really only at night. I'm used to having a snack and there are things I can have but nothing is easy. So I normally just have a piece of fruit or last night I made this apple nut "cereal" which was tasty (and one of those two oops moments). I'm not snacking nearly as much on Whole30 as I usually do but I really do need an evening snack as Norah still nurses the most at night and when I wake up, I'm starving but can't eat for an hour because of my daily medicine. It's rough. I miss having a cup of milk, or a piece of cheese or some peanut butter (and no, I don't really like other butters, I'm trying them but so far, not a fan) right before bed.

Jonah's diet doesn't seem to be helping him at all either. We'll give him (and Lucy but she's really just a tag-along) gluten tomorrow and see how he does.

Whole30/Elimination Diet Recap - Week 1

Well we survived the first week! Actually, it wasn't too bad at all. I knew when we started all this that I was going to be keeping it pretty simply. Mostly I went through my list of our regular family favorite recipes and found ones that were already gluten free/dairy free for the kids and easily adaptable for Whole30 for me.

Breakfast: We normally eat either eggs and toast or oatmeal on weekdays served with fruit.  I'm replacing the toast with hashbrowns or spiralized sweet potatoes and I let kids have rice krispies or cheerios with coconut milk instead of potatoes some days - after they've eaten their eggs. Dry cereal is a pretty rare treat around here so they like this option a lot! If they have oatmeal, I still have eggs.

On the weekends we often to pancakes or french toast or something fancier and I knew the kids would be sad without that so one day I made banana/egg pancakes (mush 1 banana per person, mix in 2 eggs per banana and a sprinkle of cinnamon, cook like a regular pancake). The kids loved these! I also did some leftover sausage sauteed with spinach with an egg on top one day for myself. But we're used to fairly routine breakfasts so this meal is easy. I'll probably be bringing in more sausage and bacon to excite them a bit more as well.

Lunches:

This is our hard area as we are typically eating PB&J sandwiches 90% of the time. I bought these containers and have done a lot of bento box style lunches with rolled up turkey, pickles/olives (I didn't realize Lucy loved olives. Nobody else does but she devours them!), apple slices with peanut butter(kids)/cashew butter (me) as a dip, hardboiled/deviled eggs, carrot sticks, fermented dilly green beans and sometimes trail mix with nuts and sunflower seeds. This worked well for the three days we had picnic lunches and camped. I normally had a big salad with many of the same ingredients, topped with a basic vinaigrette.

We also did some leftovers and tuna salad on apple slices (kids) and as a salad (me). I'm going to be looking for a few more interesting recipes to try for the kids.

Dinner: I made my whole month's menu of dinners before we started this with almost all tried and true recipes which takes a lot of the stress out of this whole thing but because its mostly meat and fresh veggies and not pantry goods, I can easily switch out recipes later on in the month if we need to mix it up a bit and add in new recipes.

Roast chicken with roast veggies and potatoes and salad - no change!

Leftover chicken as chicken noodle soup - replace noodles with zoodles (spiralized zuchini). I was planning on taking mine out and adding zoodles just to mine and brown rice noodles into the rest but the kids wanted to try the zoodles. They didn't actually eat much of them thought so next time I think I'll add brown rice noodles to theirs anyway. Served with salad/veggies

Lemon pepper Salmon, roasted sweet potatoes and broccoli - no change! This is one of my kids favorites, especially Lucy.

Korean Beef Bowls - I used this recipe which is only slightly different from my regular recipe as that one has molasses but its similar and kids didn't notice. I made cauliflower rice for me and brown rice for everyone else and stir fried several veggies separated with a bit of sesame oil added for flavor (julianned carrots, brocolli, zuchini, spinach) plus kimchi all out in little bowls on the table so they could pick what they wanted - after they tried a tiny bit of each one. I normally do this as wraps with them filling lettuce but did it in bowls mixed together this time and kids ended up eating a lot more. This one was a bit hit!

Camping - Whole30 Approved Chicken Apple sausage for me, all beef hotdogs for kids, lots of fruit (grapes, strawberries, apples) and potato chips. The potato chips didn't have any non-Whole30 ingredients but kinda break the spirit of the thing for most people. As I'm doing it for more elimination reasons, rarely have potato chips and had very little time to plan these meals for camping, I don't care if that makes me a Whole30 cheat.

Super Nachos - Tortilla chips topped with seasoned ground beef, salsa, tomatoes, corn, lettuce and guacamole. I had mine as a salad without corn or tortilla chips. I don't normally put salad dressing on our nachos but without cheese and sour cream I thought we might miss it so I went through the trouble of making a creamy avocado cilantro dressing only to have the kids reject it in favor of straight guacamole. Whatever kids, it was good!

Thai Coconut Fish Sticks - This was the big hit of the week. The recipe is from this cookbook I reviewed a while back and my kids love fish but for some reason I got scared off by the red curry included even though my kids like curry and I already had red curry paste in my fridge. I don't know why but the curry flavor is mild but yummy. They ate these up! I served with roasted potatoes and veggies. And it wasn't nearly as involved or complicated as I thought it would be. We will definitely be making these again.

Pasta with Meat added to sauce and brocolli - Aldi organic spaghetti sauce is Whole30 and budget approved and we normally do brown rice pasta so other than leaving off parmesean cheese, no change for kids. I had mine with zoodles instead of pasta. I don't normally like zuchinni but am finding I like the zoodles because they don't have the same squishy/slimy texture zuchini can in other meals.

Snacks: Another hard area for kids especially. We eat lunch early (~11am) and they have a larger snack around 2pm after quiet time. I've done canned fruit with nuts on the side or apple/pb if they didn't have that for lunch but I need to come up with some other ideas. I normally have a snack as soon as they go down for quiet time - a cup of tea and some chocolate with my bible study time. I was super worried about not having my chocolate but luckily I'm used to my tea without any milk or sweetner so that can continue as normal. I've replaced my chocolate with a small handful of sunflower seeds. Sunflower seeds are not chocolate, let me tell you! But at least I have something to put in my mouth as I read so I'm not sitting there thinking about chocolate.

The other issue we had was donut time at church so I made rice krispie treats with coconut oil and Aldi brand rice krispies (which are gluten free, regular ones are not I believe) and took them along in baggies for the kids. I, of course, abstained. They didn't complain although Lucy did mention later on that they weren't quite as good as donuts.

We'll be having a lot of the same meals this month so the rest of my recaps probably won't be so long. I'll just highlight any favorite recipes we stumble upon and talk about how I'm doing. And how am I doing? Pretty good! The Whole30 website has a timeline of general responses and the only one that really applied with day 6 and 7, I was really tired. It could be the diet - or it could have been carry over from camping on day 5 when I shared a sleeping bag with Norah after midnight and didn't really get any sleep after that point. Hard to tell ;-) I'm actually really surprised how easy this has been for me. No crazy cravings which was my worry because sweets are my downfall. I did bring homemade lara balls along on our camp trip but I haven't really needed those the last few days either. It's more work, especially at lunch time and I need to make sure I eat enough at my meals because its a lot harder to fill up at snack time without cheese or milk at my disposal but otherwise, no real issues with my body. Now I just got to keep it up for 3 more weeks!

Whole30/Elimination Diet Recap - Background

So as I mentioned earlier, the kids and I are all on modified diets right now. But let me back up first. If you haven't been around the blog too long, you might not know this but I have Hashimotos, a auto-immune condition that wrecks havoc on my thyroid as well as other things.

 Overall, I'm actually doing really well with my health. I went and saw an endocrinologist two weeks ago and she said that she'd rate me as asymptomic for hashimotos/hypothroidism! I'm still on daily Armour but my labs look good, my thyroid itself looks good (I've got some nodules they are monitoring but nothing that's an issue as of now) and most importantly, I don't have real symptoms. Anyone with an auto-immune condition will tell you that's the real test because lab numbers lie but achy joints, brain fog and fatigue don't! So why do I want to do an elimination diet now?

Well, I've still got some lingering hormone issues which is closely related to my thyroid.  I'm taking bio-identical progesterone and it works well to keep both my numbers and symptoms in check and I have no worries about its safety or any side effects so in theory I could continue to take it until I 'm ready for menopause but I'm still trying to figure out if there is a root cause behind why my body doesn't seem to want to produce hormones on its own. Plus, I don't like needles and shots are painful.
So right now, when I feel pretty darn good, even dare I say, totally normal (!), seems like a good time to tackle something like this. Yet, it is ironic. When I really needed to, I didn't have the mental stamina to plan it, but now that I'm doing good, I can.

After looking at different options like SCD, GAPS and the AIP diet, I went with Whole30. I honestly think AIP (Auto-immune protocol diet) would be the best fit but I'm currently nursing a toddler and I couldn't imagine giving up eggs and nightshades along with everything else. So I went with Whole30 because I liked its clear cut guidelines and limited length. After the 30 days, I'll slowly reintroduce foods and document how my body handles everything. All that's to say that I'm don't think I'm the typical Whole30 users, at least those who blog about it. I'm not trying to lose weight, change my attitude about food or even really eat "healthier" except the cutting out processed sugar part. But I thought I'd document my journey.