I warned you from the start!

I abandon blogs with abandon.  If you know what I mean.

But I didn’t really abandon this one, just pressed pause for, you know, a long time.  Here’s why:

No good reason.

Also, I fell off the food-wagon because it’s too hard.

Also, I got really really busy with work. Damnit.  I was super enjoying the down time.  Bastards expecting me to work.

Also, I decided to write a book.  Fiction.  Just fluff, really.  I will not be posting any sort of summary or synopsis or excerpts or any of that jazz.  I have no idea how to write fiction, I just want to do it.  I have 12 pages.  Twelve whole pages.  It’s like the longest paper I ever wrote in college.

Let’s discuss the food-wagon.  Really, it should be called the food truck, because they’re trendy?  And everyone likes them?  But it’s a wagon.  Anyway, it is so hard and takes so much work to stay on the food wagon.  I have to tangle with my husband virtually every day, he feigns total ignorance about the goals and loses all motivation to contribute anything at all to food prep, so that leaves it all up to me.  I got busy and couldn’t go to the stores every week and certainly couldn’t make it to the specialty stores or farmer’s markets.  As my work days grow longer – something that happens every Spring and Summer and well into Winter – my food gets worse and worse.  I have crap going on every weekend for six weeks in a row which you can deduct from my food prep time.

Without having the food on hand and without the time to prepare food, I am lost.  My husband is all-up-in-it (the kitchen, that is) nowadays because it’s all meat and wheat and sugar and shit, so I have plenty of help with food prep when we don’t give a crap what we’re eating.  It’s rather heartbreaking, actually.  I feel a bit dejected and quite a bit resentful.  I have no one in my corner with this.  Okay, well, that’s not true.  I have no one in my house with this.  Plus, if I relent one time on cookies, my husband takes it as a precedent and then brings cookies home every day (or the equivalent).  And I’m not strong enough to not eat them, people.  And it doesn’t matter what I say to him, the cookies/cakes/ice creams keep appearing.  So then I’m all, fine, yes a cupcake would be great.  Because cupcakes are great in every way except the way in which they are detrimental to my health.  And then the man, who cannot be bothered to even slightly try to come up with a healthy dinner for us, sits around dreaming up cakes that have peanut butter cups for the filling and fudge for the frosting and you know, screw me.

I do completely recognize that he is not forcing me to eat this stuff.  It is entirely my fault.  Most of my anger is with me for being weak and so quickly led astray.  I am going to get back on top of it, though.  I just needed a moment to vent.  I see how easy it is to backslide now and I will be more on guard in the future.  And on the positive side, I believe the months of effort before did make some lasting changes.  Maybe the changes aren’t enough to ensure good health, at this point, but even in the midst of a major backslide, both my husband and myself had moments of “I just really want a salad for dinner” much more often than we ever would have.  At least that part is encouraging.

And, lastly, let me leave you with this:  I can vouch for the effects diet on how you feel.  I feel so. much. worse. when I am not eating properly.  In every way.  That has always been my motivating factor for trying a different nutritive approach, and I was right.  Eating well makes you feel well.  Eating shite makes you feel shite.

xo

Nutrition and WTF to eat.

I have stated repeatedly that I am not much of a cook (TRUTH), so swallow what I am about to tell you with the knowledge that none of it was cooked well.  I did not take pictures of it because my cooking is an embarrassment.  That said, I cannot let that stop me from pursuing greater health.

That little report I did on pastured eggs made me see food entirely differently, ie. now I see it as something I can research and assemble and document and while I cannot fucking cook it well, I sure as shit can figure out what TO eat, if not how to MAKE it.

Last night, for dinner, hubs and I had the following:

Grass fed ground beef patties (pan-fried) – they varied in size, but mine was approx. 4 oz which is correct and is what my numbers below are going to be based on..

Big salad w/ mixed greens, carrots, mushrooms and Greek salad dressing

Cauliflower mash which was 1 head of steamed cauli, a splash of whole milk and a Tbs of butter to help make it creamy

First off, none of this dairy crap is allowed, but I am not believing that 2 or 3 Tbs of milk or butter a day is harmful, especially if divided between two people with some left over for another day.  I will strive for no dairy days, but right now, with my limited skills in the kitchen, making edible food is pretty hard so I have to do what I have to do.

When all is said and done, this meal, including evoo used in cooking and salad dressing, butter, milk, everything, should break down as follows:

483 calories

38.5 grams of fat

6.5 glycemic load

243 ig (or rather, fairly anti-inflammatory)

 

The hubs liked this meal and I loved it.  This is now on the menu and will be in the rotation.  I can stretch that expensive-ass, grassfed beef ($9/lb) over multiple meals (as long as we eat 4oz portions, of course, which hubs did not do – he had 2.5 times that amount.. working on it…).  We can eat cauliflower mash to our heart’s content and we can eat salad to our heart’s content.  We were full and felt we had enough variety of tastes and textures to feel satisfied.

Since my goal for myself is to eat meat only two times per week, this meal will happily fill one of those slots.  Fish will likely fill the other.  I may swap this beef meal out for a chicken meal once I figure out a decent one to make.

I am happy with this result.  Now I have two healthy meals that I can lean on.

2 down, about 28 to go.

xo

PS. And because I am anal and love school supplies and clearly am too OCD to NOT do so, I put all the nutritional data on index cards by ingredient and then created “meal” cards.  That way, if I ever forget my combos, I can refer to my cards.  And if I want to mix it up, I can always assemble new meals by swapping out cards.  Check me out.

My report on eggs. Because.

I might as well share some of my decision making with you and I’m even going to try to justify it nutritionally.  Below is the detail that is going into my food decisions, and in this case, the argument FOR eggs.  Pastured eggs.

According to Mother Earth News, from 2007, plus a few other sources, here is the breakdown on nutrition gained from pastured eggs vs. conventionally (or industrially) produced eggs:

(My additional information = Calorie count:  140 per pastured egg, just fyi, although calories are not my focus.  RDAs listed below are for ADULTS.  Also, I am not an expert and cannot even tell you where I got some of this info so PLEASE do your own research and do not trust my numbers whatsoever.)

Vitamin A (recommended RDA 900 IU):
Conventional: 487 IU

Pastured avg: 792 IU

Vitamin D (recommended RDA 600 IU):

Conventional: 34 IU

Pastured avg: 136 – 204 IU

Vitamin E (recommended RDA 15 mg – 33 mg if from supplements):

Conventional: 0.97 mg

Pastured avg: 3.73 mg

Beta-carotene (recommended RDA 15 to 20 mg from food – NONE from supplements):

Conventional: 10 mcg

Pastured avg: 79 mcg

Omega-3 fatty acids (recommended RDA 1 – 2 g):

Conventional: 0.22 g

Pastured avg: 0.66 g

Eggs have no glycemic load and are neutral on the inflammatory scale so they do not cause or reduce inflammation.

In addition to the nutritional gains, check out what all you do NOT get with your eggs:  no antibiotics, no hormones, 39% less arachidonic acid (an inflammatory Omega-6 fatty acid that most people eat too much of), and no bad karma.  Yes, I said it.  Vegans may disagree with me on this point, because eggs are baby chickens.  So let’s say there is less bad karma as no one suffers as a result of you eating this egg.  Although a chicken is deprived of life.  So you make the call.

 Anyhoo.

My $6 per dozen of pastured eggs is money well spent. 

Plus, those little babies taste so damn good.  You have never had a better egg, I swear it.

For complete nutrition, you should probably pair them with something that contains any/all of the following:  calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper, manganese, and selenium.  So that would dairy, meat, and some veggies (esp. leafy greens) so for me, a touch of pastured meat and some leafy greens.  Sounds like a great scramble to me.  I will be trying this ASAP.

xo

And, now I have plan.

Welp.  The time has come to commit to a nutrition plan.  I can only read so many books and watch so many documentaries before I eventually have to commit.  No one knows FOR SURE what the best plan should be for most people, much less for people with my issues, so if I keep waiting for definitive proof, it will become just another excuse.

I do not really want to do this because I don’t know what to eat once I eliminate all the stuff I am going to eliminate.  Plus, there will be sacrifices.  Terrible, scary sacrifices.

So here is the plan:

• No dairy (except eggs)
• No wheat
• No sugar (not even honey)
• No artificial sweeteners (not even Stevia)
• No oils besides olive oil and nut oils (includes coconut oil).
• Light, pastured meat (less than 4oz per meal and not every meal)
• No (or very little) fruit for the first 8 weeks.  (less than 1/2 cup)
• No coffee (but I will have to ween myself)
• No grains or oats (even gluten-free)
• Add necessary supplements

Pretty much, I am allowed vegetables, some pastured meat, nuts & seeds.

The goals of this nutrition plan are:  low glycemic (because I’m automatically pre-diabetic as a person with PCOS), anti-inflammatory, controlled calories (although I probably will not count), and to reset my system, which should take 8 weeks on this plan.  After 8 weeks, I can re-introduce some of the verboten items like healthy grains (no modern wheat) and fruits and a little honey or stevia and coffee.

I am actually most devastated by having to give up the coffee.  It is the only thing that makes getting out of bed worth it, some days.  I am destroyed over this one and not at all sure it’s a good idea and straight up DO NOT WANT TO.  Damnit.  Foot stamping.

I am most curious about the wheat part, though.  I had a pretty good day yesterday in terms of being low glycemic and anti-inflammatory, but then I ate some Trader Joe’s cookies that were hiding in the pantry.  I had shooting pains in my upper abdomen within a few minutes.  Weird, huh?  I really do wonder if I’m gluten intolerant.  According to the book Wheat Belly, we are all intolerant to a certain extent (at least these days).

Anyway, I keep telling my husband we are going to clean out the pantry, but it has not happened yet.  It is about to, though.  I’m heading there next.

Wish me luck.

xo

Update:  Here are the bags of crap that were pulled from the pantry.  Sigh.  I guess I will start an Apocalypse Pile in the garage.  Plus, hubs will want to retrieve some items to store in his car, which is the agreed upon location to stash snacks that I do not want to fall victim to when I’m feeling weak.

Twitterdee, Twitterdum, Yes, Indeed, I’m Twittersome

I cannot share my feed, though, as it is a bit too revealing and while I do not mind sharing my innermost thoughts with you, random people who take a wrong turn, get lost, and find your way here… no one in my life knows I do this.  It is not a secret, though, I just haven’t figured out how to tell them.  I told my husband that I was going to start a blog (after it was already started, like, months ago), but he is not a “reader” and has not asked about it since, so we can assume that he will not be visiting.  As for my friends, well, how’s that supposed to go down?

Hey, y’all!  I’m a closet narcissist!  Read my blog where I talk about myself all the time!

Hey, friends, why don’t you take time out of your already busy lives to read my blog?  Because you can never get enough ME!

I guess if they asked, I would not lie about it, but you know, how does that question arise?

And there is no way in hell I’m telling my family.  My sister can’t keep a secret, my mother would NOT approve nor would that be a welcome commentary, and my brother is a DUDE.

I can, however, tell you all about who I follow on Twitter.  Here are some examples:

@johncusack   Because it’s John Cusack?  And he’s awesome?  He tweets a LOT, he responds to some tweets, and he is SUPER political.  Who knew?  What he lacks in humor, he makes up for in earnest activism.  I thought I was in love with him before, but now I really am.  Because he fights with trolls.  And wins.  He will not tweet me back, but that’s because he’s all smart n shit, and I’m all “you’re so cute, John, I love you and want to have your babies, John”.

@stevemartin  Because he is charming & funny, even on Twitter.   He does not respond to tweets, as best I can tell.

@nathanfillion  Because he is Castle.  And hot.  And sexy.  And sometimes he devotes entire days to twittering mediocre, oversimplified advice (his words) to questions random people tweet him.  He does it well.  He has staunchly ignored all of my tweets to him, but I will wear him down.  Mark my words, I will wear him down.

@HonestToddler  Because even though I do not have children, this is the funniest twitter shit I have ever read and I believe this person truly does channel the inner thoughts of their toddler.  Toddlers, of course, are borderline sociopath.  Cute!  Probably going to turn out okay!  But sociopath.

@TheBloggess  Because she is the most charming and disarming and hilarious of bloggers, and, frankly, I adore her.

@DalaiLama  Because.

@JimCarrey  Because he really is insane.  And maybe not in the good way.

@salmanrushdie  Because he is Salman. Fucking. Rushdie.

@Meryl_Streep  Because she never posts so it doesn’t clog up my twitter feed, but when she does, it’s Meryl… tweeting.  Can you imagine?

I know these are all celebrities or famous bloggers or whathaveyou, but what can I say?  Who else am I going to tell you about?  Aunt Mary?  Cuz she’s boring and you probably don’t want her giblet dressing recipe 140 characters at a time.

If you have any fun twitterers that you follow, I am game!  I try not to just add everyone willy-nilly because I want to be able to stay current on my feed, but I got some folks I could boot to make room, if you know what I mean.

xo

Wherein I am wrong, and also addicted to Twitter

I was on the fence about publishing a post discussing my menstrual period, because, well…  I’m sure you understand.  Anyway, it may have been in bad taste and all, but I felt compelled to publish it anyway because I have updates which would not make any sort of sense if you did not have the back story.

I did end up going to the gynopoke and it went pretty well.  I mean, I had to take my clothes off and wear a backwards paper gown and spread my legs for a stranger (without cocktails), so it did not go super-fantastic, but as far as it could go well, it did.  The Doc was not all that happy with the condition of my feminine health.  No reason to think dire thoughts just yet, but she did send me home with pamphlets and prescriptions and a book recommendation.  It’s nothing so glamorous as an STD – it’s just plain old PCOS.  Of course, it’s totally untreated and always has been, but I will not take total responsibility for the lack of attention to my disorder.

The thing is, this whole obesity epidemic did not exist as we know it today, back in the 1980′s.  Back then, I was just a somewhat chubby chick.  So the only thing doctors would ever say to me was that I needed to lose weight.  Over and over again they said it.  And back then, a diet was grapefruit and Tab and possibly some OTC speed.  And dieting has never been my thing.

As the years have gone on, my weight has climbed.  And climbed.  And climbed.  In fact, if my weight were a person, it would be incredibly fit because it is a damn good climber.  It’s a fucking mountaineer.  Sadly, my weight is not a person, although it weighs as much as a person.  It’s just the suit I walk around wearing.  The other women in my family are all tiny, both in height and circumference, so I caught a whole bunch of flack for my weight.  That flack was more the normal sort of flack, but there was one person who served up some abnormal flack.  The details do not matter for this particular post, but suffice it to say that my father was not always a nice man.  He is dead now, so I’m free to talk about him.

But Daddy is a whole ‘nother topic.

Anyhoo, all doctors have treated me as if I were a lazy slob who needed to go on a diet and stop eating her way through box after box of Little Debbies.  While there may have been a grain of truth in some of the judgment I was subjected to, upon reflection, I do not believe that I am all that different from my friends or relatives.  I just have a metabolic disorder and they do not.  So if I eat a Little Debbie and my sister eats a Little Debbie, I end up wearing it around on my hips and she uses it as rocket fuel.  My hips then slow me down even further while she rockets ahead and the gap just keeps getting wider and wider.

I suspected a long, long time ago that there was some sort of disorder at work and self-diagnosed myself with PCOS ages before I ever had a doctor confirm my diagnosis.  I actually had to go through a handful of doctors before one even consented to considering it an option.  Then they saw it on the sonogram pictures clear as day.

My confidence in doctors’ abilities to see past their prejudices and actually diagnose illnesses has been pretty low, needless to say.  Plus, every time I found a gynecologist I actually liked, they either moved to Florida to take care of their ailing mothers or I lost my benefits and could not keep seeing them.  Not that I really cared because I had been undiagnosed and untreated for so long I figured that a few more years could not hurt.

I believe it may have cost me the chance to have children, though.

And I bet a lot of people will not believe what I am saying about the way doctors treated me, but hand to (probably enlarged) heart, it is the truth.  A younger relative of mine was diagnosed with PCOS in her teens and has never gone untreated.  But she had a parent who cared and a doctor who did not believe PCOS was a made-up condition.  She’s chubby, too, though, even with treatment.

The gynorast is most definitely the most disappointing of all medical experiences for me, so although I worked hard to talk myself out of going through with it, some damn grownup part of me insisted.   So I went.  Big dumb stupidhead.

Sidebar: by the way, my gyn…?  She is anti-birth control?  And pro-Natural Family Planning?  Because she’s super religious?  Have you ever heard of this?  Because I haven’t?  But whatevs?

Regardless, bless her pious heart, she actually took me seriously and started TREATING me.  Maybe she is a good doctor or maybe the medical community has, at some point in the last 10 years of my medical neglect, actually embraced PCOS, but hallelujah.  If I do not die soon, I may actually live!  Of course, I may have some other, more-pressing concerns to deal with, but we will not know about that until after further testing (coming soon, too a vagina near you!), but as for the PCOS (which I pronounce PEE-Cose, to annoy the doctors), she is all up on top of it.  Prescriptions and charts and “you have to come in for follow-ups” and whatnot.  Whatever, lady.  If you want to be all Doctory about it.

Also, she confirmed that a lot of what I’m doing nutritionally is a good idea and that I should keep on keeping on.

So anyway, my main reaction to all of this is, “oh, so that’s what it’s like when a doctor wants to help you get well.”   Who knew?

The table, the stirrups, the paper gown (that I took off Hulk-style, hell yes I did), was all super awkward, but was made so much better by good ole, trusty Twitter, which is able to provide entertainment in almost any situation!  However, the gynecologist, in a very embarrassing moment, did have to take my phone out of my hand and put it on her little speculum table because it was causing me to interfere with her attempts to scrape cells and whatnot from my uncooperative cervix.

Perhaps I have a small Twitter problem.  Or just a gynecological one.

xo

PS.  In my younger years, I used to steal liberate the occasional plastic speculum from the gynecologist’s office and leave it on a coffee table or side table at my house, just to perplex people.  FYI, plastic speculums do not hold up to very much abuse and, in fact, do not make great duck puppets.  Just saying.

My pancakes bring all the boys to the yard…

Right, so I don’t cook well and by “pancakes”, I mean boobs.  Flat boobs.

I had my first mammogram today (jazz hands).  Yep.

First off, I have fears on the boob front.  I am big and my boobs are really big.  They are a cup size of the alphabet that a scrap of fabric cannot contain (e.g.G).  ”H” on a bad day.  And Mom had boob cancer which she kicked to the curb handily, but she’s smaller and healthier and richer and retired.  And lucky.  And did what the doctors told her to do.  It takes a village.

Anyway, so big fears to go with my big boobs because of family history and my seemingly chronic fatigue and weird bumps on them and all that jazz.

Mammogram.  Jazz hands!

Second, I had no idea what to expect.  Now I do.  No biggie.

I took some pictures.  The first two I took accidentally.  Not sure how it happened, but okay.  I can roll with that.

Here is where you take your top off.   I may have cropdusted this room a little bit as my nerves make me toot.  And I had homemade burritos last night so you can guess the wake of stank I left behind me.

 

My head’s down in shame here for aforementioned cropdusting.

 

These were some handy instructions (get it? handy? eh? eh?) posted in the dressing room.  There is no hand-washing involved in a mammogram, but thankfully, this sign explains that washing your hands means washing your hands.  There was some pit-washing however, in my case, because DAMN.  Burritos + nerves + not allowed to wear deodorant = B. effin O.  And no little boob-fondling xray lady needs to smell that crap.

And lastly, here she is…  the Squishomatic 4000…

It didn’t hurt.   I hear the little-boobed ladies have more trouble with it.  For me, it was more of a… plop.  There you go.  Get to squishing.

Now the hard part… WAITING.  I hear tell that a lot of first mammograms require follow ups because they are trying to figure out if all your little booby-quirks are normal and not dangerous, but that seems pretty crazy-making in light of the fear machine that is steadily pumping worries into my brain.  My doctor swears she is going to call me tomorrow, mostly because she felt really bad that last time I went in for blood work it took her TWO MONTHS  and FOUR PHONE CALLS to get her to tell me my results.  Of course, in light of that experience, I am understandably doubtful as to her potential to deliver on her promise.

But she damn well better or I will go all bitch on her ass.

xo