Joy and Pain

What a very rough journey this all is. I try to remind myself that life is about struggle. What would be the point if we never had any problems and everything always went smoothly? We exist, I think, to overcome challenges. But damn this is hard.

Two days ago I was super thrilled. I used my new digital ovulation kit and got a positive OPK result for the first time ever in my life! It had a smiley face. I had never seen a positive. I squeeled and jumped up and down (and then jumped on my husband).

Along with the enormous amounts of good cervical mucus I had an LH surge. We had sex three times in three days, sure that this cycle was finally our time.

The day after the smiley face I eagerly woke up to check my temperature and it was still low. I thought that's okay because it can take 48 hours after LH surge for ovulation to occur.

So today I woke up again like a kid on Christmas morning, super excited to see my temperature and to know that all my hard work was paying off.

Still no temperature rise. More than 48 hours from positive OPK result. It was like a Christmas morning with zero presents. Devastating.

In the previous two cycles I've had the temp rise and not the other symptoms. This cycle I have the CM and ovulation test but so far no temp rise. What is going on?! I'm beyond frustrated.

I wonder what I'm doing wrong. I'm eating really healthy meals but slipping up in the snacking (tempted to cookies or other desserts at times and occasionally using white bread or tortillas in recipes). I'm getting lots of my target fruits, veggies, nuts, and beans. Do I need to get harsher with myself again and focus on not giving in to sugar temptation? (not to mention those free cookies at work are definitely not vegan).

I was so sure that I was finally healed.

I have heard that people with PCOS don't get accurate readings from OPK testers because they tend to always have higher levels of LH (a hormone that surges before ovulation) and so get false positives. I was certain that wasn't me because of never having a positive result ever before. But maybe it is me. Maybe I can never rely on ovulation tests to tell me when ovulation is coming up.

I'm on day 17 of my cycle and still hoping for a temp rise. And still forcing my husband to have sex with me every single day just in case.

I hate my body so much right now. I want to hurt it back the way it is hurting me.

I want to go to sleep and not wake up for about two weeks. I want a way to knock myself out so I can spend some time away from this pain.

A couple days ago I had lunch with some girl friends and they encouraged me to think about doing a GoFundMe/crowd funding type thing for infertility. I'm super uncomfortable about the idea of asking friends for money for my own selfish desire, but maybe it's worth trying. I can't imagine any other way we'd ever be able to afford to do IVF. Would it be too snarky to do the intro: "This is for all you people who said 'Why don't you just do IVF?' Here's your opportunity to put your money where your mouth is."

A PCOS Miracle & Meal Plan for 5/17 to 5/24

Okay, so the PCOS miracle I'm really looking for is pregnancy, obviously. But today my period started and that's pretty amazing. It is day 30 of my cycle!

A 30 day cycle is just incredible. Absolutely perfect. Just what I need. Once I keep this up I just need to figure out if I'm ovulating. Plus a shorter cycle makes it a lot easier to time sex effectively.

This is great news and I'm excited that the diet is really working. (And you can tell from my last post that I really am going dramatically up and down between hope and despair each day!)

I have been struggling to keep up with my meal plans. I wanted to use up the food I had to not waste but trying to work from leftovers and what I had on hand is tricky when I can't depend on my usual go-to meals (grilled cheese and tuna fish sandwiches). I need some new go-tos! But I also need new go-tos for each cycle phase. That should be a post soon.

But I'm going to try to get back to having a plan for each day so I know what to make for myself and my husband and I'm not struggling to get him enough food.

Sunday (today)
Snack: kale chips
Dinner: yam and black bean soup with orange (afr)

Monday
Breakfast: chocolate peanut butter chia seed parfait
Lunch: wild rice with cranberries and mushrooms
Snack: cranberry DIY larabar
Dinner: black bean soup

Tuesday
Breakfast: parfait
Lunch: stir fry with kale, mushrooms, carrots, onion over brown and wild rice blend
Snack: watermelon pieces
Dinner: miso soup and  almond butter banana popsicles

Wednesday
Breakfast: graham cracker with nut butter and cranberries
Lunch: rajma with brown and wild rice
Snack: lara bar
Dinner: miso soup and sticky rice cakes with red bean paste

Follicular Phase Switch
Thursday
Breakfast: graham crackers with nut butter and clementine
Lunch: sweet potato and avocado onigiri
Snack: avocado wontons
Dinner: Going out with father-in-law

Friday
Breakfast:
Lunch: creamy mushroom fettuccine (afr)
Snack: cashew cookie dough lara bar
Dinner: boca burger with lots of toppings

Saturday (Husband out on boat)
leftovers

Grocery List:
(for monday)
bananas
wild rice
cranberries
mushrooms
dates
almonds

(for rest of week)
miso
peanut butter
clementines or orange
wonton wrappers
avocado
cachews
chocolate chips
whole wheat flour
portabello soup
nori

Asian market:
red bean paste
glutinous/sweet rice flour from long grain

Meals Last Week

I've been mostly cooking leftovers this week. I made this amazing stir fry and I had forgotten how much I love mushrooms. Sweet carrots, flavorful mushrooms, singed broccoli...it was perfection. I ate it with some brown rice.

This is a pumpkin and coconut cream parfait. Yes, it is as amazing as it looks. I'm not the biggest fan of pumpkin taste but this is good. Would have been better if I had done two things better. One, I didn't freeze the pumpkin ahead of time as the recipe recommends. Two, I didn't realize I had Coconut Milk and not Coconut Cream as the recipe calls for. So I was using my hand mixer on it for about twenty minutes before I realized that it was never going to thicken up and turn into whipped cream. Such a shame! But it was still good as a liquidy mess :)

The graham cracker with toppings has become such a great go-to meal for me whether for breakfast or lunch. I spread peanut butter on it and then add things like applesauce, fruit, granola, and nuts. Delicious!

I also made some nacho spinach chips for my lunchbox here. They didn't stay crispy in with the other stuff so next time I need to put a lid on their compartment, I think.

I tried the vegan crepes with asparagus and mushrooms but my asparagus had gone bad so it was just mushrooms. And I tried to substitute Urad flour for the all purpose white and it tasted kind of weird. The crepes were easy to make, though, and I think with normal flour they would taste great.

Today is day 28 of my cycle. My temperature is still high. I'm waiting anxiously to see what news the next week or so might bring me.

My weight is down another couple of pounds. I'm at 144.5 now, which is 28.5 lbs below my heaviest weight.

Cycle Day 27

Well, here we are at last. Poised on the day before the end of a two week wait. Tomorrow will be day 28 of the cycle that started when I began this diet.

Of course not all women have a normal cycle of 28 days, so it could still be fine if I don't get my period for another week.

I'm trying so hard not to get my hopes up, but it's not working. I'm super anxious and hopeful that I'll see my period tomorrow. (Or that if I don't it means I'm pregnant!)

My temperatures have remained high (for me) and I've never seen that before. Every other time I've tracked my temp would go up about the right time and then a few days later crash back down. This is a good sign. Although now I'm worried about the batteries in the thermometer and if it is giving me an accurate reading. I guess it's just another example of me being afraid to be too hopeful.

In terms of eating I've been saving money this week and mostly making things from what I have on hand. I thought I had asparagus because it was in the freezer but when I went to make my asparagus meals I discovered that it had gone bad (I'd probably had those bags for a couple of years!)

So I haven't been eating the proper foods for this cycle, though I have still been eating healthy. I do have a pile of sweet potatoes in the pantry and that is a food for this cycle so I think I'll see what I can make with those for today.

Healthy-ish Desserts

I have a raging sweet tooth. Melty ice cream is one of my favorite things in the world. And I've been really craving the sweets lately. So I've experimented with some Pinterest recipes.

At first I just wanted to pick up some So Delicious Coconut ice cream from the grocery store but I went to two stores and could not find it! :(

Eventually I tried this recipe at home and it tastes a whole lot like it. Thumbs up to this one. The only issue is that I did get some ice crystals even though I bought and used xanthan gum just as the recipe called for (I did some research and despite its weird name and process, it sounds like it's actually good for people with insulin-resistant conditions). I didn't put the brownies in it either since I had such a bad experience with black bean brownies.

I'd like to get an ice cream maker since that would make it a lot easier than opening the freezer every half hour and stirring, which I did for about five or six hours last night!

Today I went for a "Blizzard" knock off. This recipe got the texture exactly right. I wasn't crazy about the amount of banana taste in it, though. Still, I ate the whole thing because that creamy, melty texture was so exactly what I love.

(For sweetener in these I've been using agave nectar, which rates 15 GI (as opposed to 65 for regular white sugar).

Instead of the cookie dough bites, because I was down to my last few dates, I made this Samoa Girl Scout Cookie bar instead and put that in the Blizzard.

The taste got pretty drowned out, though, and I discovered that they are incredibly delicious by themselves. They taste a whole lot like samoas, which were always my favorite cookies!

Now I just have to be careful not to fall into the pattern that I've had most of my life of choosing these sweet and dessert foods over real meals. Even though I ate that Blizzard knock off, I made sure to saute myself some carrots, broccoli, and mushrooms for lunch.

Sweeteners and Glycemic Index

Because PCOS is a condition that is related to/similar to Diabetes, the diet is similar to that for people with Diabetes. This means you're looking for foods that have a low "GI" (gylcemic index), that is foods that burn fuel slowly in your body rather than giving you a spike in blood sugar.

That's why we steer clear of simple carbs and white sugar. But I was looking at all the various alternative sweeteners out there and wondering where are they on the GI scale compared to white sugar?

I found this helpful chart that lists all the sweeteners out there by their gylcemic index.

After that it has a discussion of the zero GI sweeteners like Stevia. The conclusion seems to be that Stevia is probably a good choice for us (although it always seems to come mixed with other sweeteners that are higher GI, which makes it average out fairly high too. I did see a Stevia plant for sale at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I wonder if one could create their own sweetener?)

Truvia may be the best as it is mixed with erythriol and that has a GI of only 1.

I was disappointed to see that my favorite sweeteners like Maple Syrup, Honey, and Molasses were still pretty high on the list.

Meal Plan & Progress

So we ended up not even getting to the meals Wednesday to Friday of last week. Even though I should be doing Luteal phase meals now I'm going to still do those plans from last week.

I think that I might have a totally normal cycle this time! I'm on day 22 and yesterday I felt deeply sad for no reason plus I have a little tiny bit of acne developing. These things suggest to me that I'm in PMS, which would be just about right for a "normal" 28 day cycle!

This cycle I tried to use ovulation sticks but I can never seem to get a clear understanding of what's happening with those things. I really need to go back to taking my temperature. I did it this morning so that's a start. I just feel frustrated that I can't instantly have the temperature history to know what this morning's number means but that's entirely my own fault.

I still feel my hope and my fear swinging wildly back and forth. One moment I feel full of hope that we're are finally close to getting pregnant and I'm fixing all our issues. Another moment I feel the familiar despair that it's never going to happen and it's too late for me. (It's not. I'm 33, which is old but not too old).

It's Mother's Day tomorrow and it feels like a punch in the gut. My customers want to wish me a happy Mother's Day and so are more likely to ask if I have children.

But anyway, if I do get a period next week that will be pretty amazing and a great sign that I am probably ovulating.

From last week:
Wednesday  Sunday
Breakfast: graham cracker
Lunch: rajma and brown rice
Snack: lara bar
Dinner: grilled asparagus

Thursday Monday
Breakfast: graham cracker with nut butter, applesauce, and strawberries
Lunch: quinoa kale bowl with mushroom and asparagus
Snack: trail mix
Dinner: asparagus leek and green onion soup

Friday Tuesday
Breakfast: graham cracker
Lunch: breakfast for lunch: sweet potato hash browns and coconut "bacon" flakes, vegan pancakes topped with strawberries
Snack: lara bar
Dinner: Savory Asparagus Crepes with Easy Vegan Hollandaise Sauce

New meals (Luteal)

Wednesday

Breakfast: pumpkin pie parfait

Lunch: orange cauliflower and brown rice

Snack: oven baked onion rings with chia seed breading 

Dinner: Sanctuary Salad (ranch style) (afr book)

Thursday

Breakfast:

Lunch: lettuce wrap tacos with fake beef crumbles

Snack: girl scout cookie lara bar

Dinner: carrot soup

Friday 

Breakfast:

Lunch: stir fry with whatever veggies are left and brown rice

Snack: vegan cookie dough blizzard

Dinner: yam and blackbean soup with orange (afr book)

Grocery List:

pumpkin puree

walnuts

molasses?

romaine lettuce

boca crumbles

peanuts

vegan chocolate chips?

cauliflower

radishes

sunflower sprouts

cherry tomatoes

extra firm silken tofu

dill

vegetable broth powder

onion flakes

orange juice

A nice short grocery list means I have the chance to buy some extras that I have good deals for. Like claritin and nature valley bars. Maybe I can even buy that raspberry bush this week!

Also with a few more pet purchases I should get the $7 back coupon that's advertised at Weis this month.

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!

Medication

I am currently not on any medication for my PCOS.

Nor am I on any medication for my close-to-pre-diabetes symptoms.

I'm kind of a natural hippy chick type and I absolutely hate being on medication for anything. I try to avoid it as much as possible and accomplish health with food and lifestyle. However, I am on one medication right now.

I am taking medicine for my thyroid. I'm on a small dose. It took about six months of blood tests and experimenting to get the right dose but now my thyroid levels are normal and I'm capable of losing weight for the first time in about five years.

A lot of people with PCOS and/or Diabetes are on Metformin. I may eventually get on it too. But I'm trying to heal myself with diet first and see how far I can get.

If diet is not enough to get me ovulating then I will look into hormone injections and fertility procedures like IUI and maybe the new one IVM that is supposed to be particularly good for people with PCOS.

So I'm not opposed to getting onto medication eventually for PCOS but I'm not there right now.

(Another complication to that is that we lost our health insurance and so I'm not seeing the fertility doctor right now and the endocrinologist was only for getting my thryoid functioning correctly. He was not a reproductive endro).

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.

Meal Plan 5/3/15 to 5/9/15

As I use up the meat and eggs and milk that I have at home I am moving into the vegan change to my diet. I won't be buying more of the meat and dairy.

Also I should be in the ovulatory phase around now so I'm going to do those foods this week.

Sunday
Breakfast: brussle sprout sweet potato hash (minus the eggs)
Lunch: portabello mushroom burger with roasted red pepper and pesto Make these rolls
Snack: lara bar apricot almond
Dinner: strawberry spinach salad (afr book)

Monday
Breakfast: graham crackers with nut butter, apricots and chocolate chips
Lunch: quinoa with roasted red pepper sauce
Snack: avocado chocolate mousse with strawberries
Dinner: strawberry spinach salad

Tuesday
Breakfast: lara bar
Lunch: "b"lt with eggplant bacon and shaved brussle sprouts (afr)
Snack: almond apricot trail mix
Dinner: red pepper soup (afr)

Wednesday
Breakfast: graham cracker
Lunch: rajma and brown rice
Snack: lara bar
Dinner: grilled asparagus

Thursday
Breakfast: lara bar
Lunch: quinoa kale bowl with mushroom and asparagus
Snack: trail mix and mousse
Dinner: asparagus leek and green onion soup

Friday
Breakfast: graham cracker
Lunch: breakfast for lunch: sweet potato hash browns and coconut "bacon" flakes, vegan pancakes topped with strawberries
Snack: lara bar
Dinner: Savory Asparagus Crepes with Easy Vegan Hollandaise Sauce

Saturday LEFTOVERS
Breakfast:
Lunch:
Snack:
Dinner:

Weis is selling raspberry bushes right now! I really want one. Even though I've never been a fan of berries. It seems like a great easy plant to have for a food garden. And I can learn to like raspberries (my husband already likes them). I have to see if I can fit it into my food budget.

Grocery List:

staples
olive oil

produce
brussle sprouts
sweet potato (4)
onions
portabello mushrooms
red bell peppers (6)
strawberries (bogo, so get two)
dates (whole foods?)
dried apricots
small eggplant
avocado (2)
baby bella mushrooms
asparagus
kale
carrots
spinach

other
pine nuts
almonds (whole foods)
quinoa
tahini
vital wheat gluten
nutritional yeast (get at Wegman's) 5.49 (or whole foods?)
liquid smoke
coconut flakes
vanilla extract
almond milk and soy milk (whole foods?)
agave nectar

Weis has many of the vegan friendly food options. I've been amazed by how many vegan and gluten-free options there are there! But I think Whole Foods may be cheaper for certain things. I also was not able to find nutritional yeast there.

Paying Attention to Poop

Gross out alert! I hate talking about poop. I hate thinking about poop. I don't want to know those details about anyone's life, even my own!

However.

It is an important way that we can know how our bodies are functioning. I have learned from WomanCode that higher levels of fiber are necessary for women with PCOS because when we don't eliminate often enough waste estrogen gets reabsorbed into our bodies (and I've seen that information confirmed with several PCOS experts). That makes our imbalance of hormones worse.

Since I don't like to think about these things, I haven't been paying any attention to how often I poop. I read somewhere once that everyone has their own schedule and there is no normal so not to worry if you go twice a day or once every other day.

But WomanCode explains that you should be using the bathroom within twenty minutes of getting out of bed in the morning with only the help of water (not coffee). You should go again in the afternoon.

Once I started paying attention for it I discovered that I was definitely constipated. I hadn't noticed because I didn't have any pain associated with it (I did when I was a pre-teen and had to go on suppositories for a while. Yuck!)

Even now that I've increased the amount of fiber I'm eating and taking Metamucil pills most days I still struggle to use the bathroom twice a day.

This is another way I'll be able to tell if the diet is working. It's one of the few daily signs that can be observed.

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.