Meals 5/5/15

The eggplant "bacon" was...okay. It was flavorful. But it didn't get crispy like you want in a blt. It was my first time trying eggplant and I wasn't thrilled with it but I did think that I'd be willing to try it in other applications. 

For the sandwich I decided to do half with the eggplant bacon and half with the coconut bacon flakes and see which I liked better. I thought the bacon flakes would get a better crunch but I didn't end up liking either side. I didn't eat very much of this sandwich.

I added "shaved brussle sprouts" from the Appetite for Reduction book. I've made four recipes from it so far this week and they've all been good. No surprise I liked these. I don't know if they were meant to get quite this black but that's how I like my veggies: pan fried until blackened!

I want to start keeping an eye on whether I'm getting enough fruits and veggies every day. With eating reduced carbs and sugars plus no meat or dairy you would think the only thing left to eat would be fruits and veggies yet I still seem to manage to avoid getting enough. I've been eating a lot of nuts.

Did I get five servings of fruits and veggies?

1. Apricot in breakfast and snack
2. Eggplant in "b"lt
3. Brussle Sprouts in lunch side
4. Red Bell Pepper in soup at dinner
5. Spinach in "b"lt
6. Tomatoes in "b"lt
7. Spinach and strawberries in dinner salad

I didn't exactly eat much of my lunch but I did well in serving myself enough varieties of fruits and veggies!

Meals this Weekend and Mood Changes

My Sunday meals did not get done at all since I didn't get all my grocery shopping done in time and we had a friend in town visiting. I ended up making the sweet potato hash browns with coconut bacon and vegan pancakes. I threw in an egg because we still have some to use up.

The pancakes were phenomenal. Very light and fluffy. Super easy to cook. I like them better than my standard pancake recipe.

The coconut bacon also turned out great. My husband says they taste like a mixture of coconut and bacon and he likes both those things.

The hashbrowns were not as much of a success. The idea of cooking them in a waffle iron sounded so awesome. But it did not work at all for me. Despite using up all the rest of my paper towels (I usually use cloth paper towels), I couldn't get enough moisture out.

This morning I woke up at 5:00 am to get lunch finished before my husband left at 7:15. I just barely made it! I'm really glad I got a new food processor because I used it for four different things this morning: bread dough, pesto, mousse, and diy lara bar.

This is portabello mushroom burger (marinated in balsamic) on whole wheat bun (actually mixed flours because I ran out part way through!) with a home roasted red pepper and homemade pesto. Avocado chocolate mousse (I forgot to add the strawberries for hubby's lunch!). And a homemade version of an apricot almond Lara bar.

I'm on day 17 of my cycle and my mood has been really bad. It feels like nothing is going right the last couple of days. I feel like sleeping until it's over. It's PMSy feelings but it's far too early to be getting PMS, I think. 

I'm recording it on my fertility tracking app and waiting to see what it might mean.

In the 140s!

For most of my adult life I was between 120 and 130 lbs. I am 5'4". In graduate school I lived in Los Angeles and the pressure there to be thin had me between 110 and 115.

But then a few years ago my weight suddenly began to skyrocket and nothing I did would stop it. I was determined to figure out what was going on and stop it before I hit 200. 

When I was diagnosed with an under active thyroid I was 173 lbs.

I've been fighting my way back down and this week I made it into the 140s at last. I haven't been this weight since before my wedding. I might even be lighter than when my husband met me! At least I'm close to that.

So that puts me about half way to my goal of 125!

Just The Essentials

From reading message boards and watching videos of other people with PCOS I see lots of people talking about diet and its effect on PCOS symptoms.

There's different books and different websites and different programs that we can get on but they all have two things in common. These are the essential basic foundation of using diet to heal PCOS.

1) No simple carbs
2) No simple sugars

(and those two things are related).

So regardless of the other details, I think if you have PCOS: going for complex carbs and natural sugars will go a long way towards balancing your hormones and getting you back onto a proper cycle.

That's what all the PCOS diets have in common, what they all recommend.

It may not matter which of these diets you follow as long as you're doing low carb (basically the food that is good for people with diabetes).

Another element that's very common in these diets is lessening dairy intake.

Increasing fiber matters because that can clear excess estrogen out of our systems.

These are the basics that can go a long way towards healing us and erasing our symptoms!

Meals 4/27/15 and 4/28/15

Breakfasts:
Oatmeal Bars
I don't like these very much. They're edible but I don't love them. I put some honey on them yesterday and that was a little better. But this morning I had an avocado with balsamic vinegar for breakfast.

My husband likes them, though, and he's impressed by how filling they are.

I also attempted the chia seed banana bread muffins. I didn't have arrowroot powder, though, so I just used corn starch. I probably should have looked up what conversion rate to use. They ended up pretty bad. Didn't really cook through. The glaze was good, though. I may try this again when I have all the right ingredients.

Snacks:
Trail Mix
Yum yum yum. This is tempting to eat every time I'm hungry. I mixed cashews, walnuts, craisins, raisins, and mini semi-sweet chocolate chips with some salt and a drizzle of olive oil. Good stuff but I need to make sure I'm snacking on enough fruits and veggies and not just nuts and bits of dried fruit.

Baby Food

This was a good suggestion. I got a great deal on these on-the-go applesauces (which are not billed as necessarily baby food but have the same concept as the baby pouches). The only issue for me is that I am sensitive to food texture and I don't like things that are too smooth. So rather than eat this straight from the pouch, I spread it on a graham cracker and sprinkled with raisins. Delicious!

Baked Fried Pickles

I love fried pickle chips so when I heard that you can make breading out of chia seeds I wanted to try it with pickles. 

It worked fairly well. Next time I'll use more oil for the pan and not try to put wax paper down (oven temp is so hot that the paper burned). The one side of the breading stuck to the paper pretty badly.

I tried some with just gelled chia seeds (mixing chia seeds with water and letting sit a few minutes) and others with a mix of that and flaxseed meal. The mix worked much better.

With a dollop of ranch dressing these were quite yummy.

Main Meals:

Carrot Noodles
I don't have a veggie spiralizer yet so I sliced the carrots with a mandolin slicer. The sauce is very flavorful and intense so it goes perfectly with some brown rice.

Egg Salad on whole wheat toast for lunch. I'm really going to miss egg salad a lot when I go vegan.

Caprese Salad with a homemade pesto using cashews in place of pine nuts. Regular salad on the side.

Weight and PCOS

I have two conditions that I found out about when I started looking into why my husband and I weren't getting pregnant. One is PCOS and the other is under active thyroid.

Both are associated with weight gain and great difficulty losing weight.

A handful of years ago I started gaining weight very rapidly for no apparent reason. I hadn't changed the way I ate at all. I had been a size zero in graduate school (though my "normal" was more like a size 4-6). I attributed it to the metabolism slow down of the late twenties.

I tried to diet. I went back to the diets that had gotten me to that size zero that I so enjoyed being. I continued to gain weight. I tried the diet that my husband had used to lose over 100 pounds. I continued to gain weight. It was staggering. We couldn't figure out where my body was getting the material to put on weight. So I just gave up for a while.

Luckily for me I found out what was causing this before my weight got too out of control. I am 5'4" and the heaviest I ever got to was 173. I know a lot of people in my situation are over 200.

I wouldn't have known except I got blood work done at a fertility clinic. I started seeing an endocrinologist and got onto medication for the thyroid. I have not gotten on any medication for the PCOS as of yet. I hate taking medication (I'm kind of a hippy natural girl) so I'm seeing what I can do with food and natural living first.

However, the thyroid medication has made weight loss possible again. It isn't easy. I'm still fighting for every pound and eating to a much stricter code than my healthy/normal friends. But I've lost 20 pounds and am at 153, which is near where I was when I first started noticing fertility problems.

If I can get down into the 130 range then it is likely that my cycles will become more normal and I might start ovulating again.

Some people think thyroid issues is just an excuse but I'm here to tell you that thyroid issues can make losing weight impossible no matter how disciplined you are. If you struggle with losing weight or have PCOS, get your thyroid levels checked. Once you've got that under control then the battle really begins!