It Worked

All the work we went through to get pregnant was a million times worth it.

Pregnancy and labor suck but you get the most wonderful prize afterwards. I had a very normal pregnancy despite all the issues getting there and gave birth to a completely healthy and wonderful baby boy.

Motherhood is everything I hoped it would be.

We Have Achieved Pregnancy!

Two and a half years has led us to this amazing point. We are five and a half weeks pregnant and everything is looking good so far!

I'm amazed and delighted that WomanCode really worked for us.

I'm not a success story quite yet since there's a long way to go before a healthy and happy delivery. But we're well on our way. Despite PCOS and hypothyroidism we got pregnant naturally.

Only five weeks in it is already tougher than I expected in some ways. I haven't thrown up but my stomach often feels unsettled and the thought of food disgusts me. I'm sleeping a lot and don't feel much motivation to do things (like write this blog post!). I'm also having emotional issues with the hormones bringing up a lot of my fears, insecurities, and depression.

It's all going to be good, though. I know this journey will be worth it.

There's five more weeks to wait before I can see my midwife and get my first scan but the pregnancy has been confirmed with blood work and the hormones are rising appropriately.

If you are struggling to get pregnant because of a hormone imbalance or irregular cycles, you should definitely give the WomanCode diet a try. You've really got nothing to lose!

Erratic Temps After Chemical Pregnancy

My temperatures this cycle have been weird. In fact, they look a lot like the temps I was getting before I got on the WomanCode diet.

Back then my temperatures were all over the place and I couldn't really detect any patterns. I kept thinking maybe the battery was bad on my thermometer, or I was sleeping with my mouth open, or I wasn't getting good enough sleep.

Then I went on the diet and immediately my charts started looking like a normal person's!

Those erratic temps were all the PCOS. With my hormones in balance, my temperatures started making sense.

So when my temperatures this cycle have been all over the place, I have been feeling very upset. Have I not been doing the diet well enough? Do I need to refocus and work harder at avoiding sugar?

But then I think, I know this is weird, but I haven't been constipated. It's a good sign for the diet working if I'm able to go regularly because it moves the excess hormones out of the body without giving them the chance to get reabsorbed.

My thermometer was starting to sound strange so I went to replace the battery (and ended up buying a new one since that's easier and cheaper than finding the right battery).

But when my temp was still low this morning I realized that maybe it's the aftermath of the chemical pregnancy.

A chemical pregnancy isn't supposed to effect things that much. You're supposed to go straight back to normal and it seems that lots of people get pregnant immediately after. But there are those who find that hormones are out of whack for a cycle.

There are those who aren't sure they believe I was actually pregnant since I didn't go to the doctor for confirmation. I think this is a big sign that I was. That and the way my temps looked during that cycle and the change in the way I tasted food. Those all indicate to me that I really was pregnant.

So this cycle what's happening is that I had a very consistent and normal low temperature for 15 days. Then I got a positive OPK. Last time I got a positive OPK it took a full 48 hours to ovulate, remember, and it was cycle day 18. So I was expecting another O on day 18.

Then my temperature shot up the very next day.

But then it dropped again. And then went up. And went way down. And stayed down. I'm at day 22 now and my temps are low. So I don't think I've even ovulated yet.

I've also had a mild cold this cycle and I had a very low-grade fever for a day. So that also may be having an effect on my temps.

It's very frustrating and I feel flattened by it all. Sick of the effort, sick of the trying, furious at how unfair life can be. Pregnancy announcements continue to pour in from friends.

Part way into year three of trying I wonder when it's going to finally be our turn.

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."

Schrodinger's Baby

Yesterday was 4 DPO (days past ovulation) and I began the usual ritual of driving myself nuts with potential symptoms.

I really tried not to. But part way through my day at work I took a drink of water and had intense nausea from it. I tried to eat my lunch but it was totally unappetizing and my stomach just did not want to settle down.

Naturally I felt swelled with hope and then chastised myself for hoping when it was probably just a reaction to the milk last night (haven't had dairy in a while). But I'm not prone to nausea at all.

Of course I spent the evening on the Internet looking up nausea 4 dpo and had lots of people saying its impossible to get symptoms so early as implantation can't have happened yet and then some people saying it is possible. And I continue to drive myself nuts.

My husband looks at me and says maybe I should stay away from looking up baby stuff during the two week weight. I raised an eyebrow. "No," I said, "This is totally necessary. It has to be done."

[I was able to eat dinner. I was too nauseated to cook but when my husband made an amazing pesto white pasta, I ate four bowls of it! Plus he made me chocolate chip cookies from scratch that I wanted even though he'd never made cookies before. Bad diet choices again]

This morning, 5 DPO, my temperature was higher than it has ever been before. At 5:00 am I was Googling on my phone whether that could mean pregnancy. [conclusion: it could. It could mean any number of things.]

Like everyone else, I hate the two week wait with a passion. It feels like my life is on hold while I wait out a Schrodinger's baby situation. No checking ahead of time if there is or is not a baby. It could be either right now.

A couple weeks ago, when it felt like my cycle wasn't progressing, I had a bit of a melt down. I asked my Facebook friends for advice on how to cope with the grief. One friend, who has been going through infertility too, suggested taking time completely off from the trying.

She thinks I should go on birth control so that I'm really sure I'm not trying.

I just can't stand it. It honestly feels like this only the second time we've ever been able to try. We tried in May 2013. Then I had a false pregnancy and found out I had PCOS and worked for the next two years on getting my cycles under control. This is the first time since all that that I've been able to actually time sex to try. I can't give that up now.

I want to be hopeful that this is our cycle, but I'm afraid of how devastated I'll be if it isn't. It makes me want to fast forward to when I can find out for sure. I hate that I'm living in limbo, wasting these two weeks of my life, trying to make it disappear so I can get to the next point.

At Last My Temperature Rose

Day 29 and my temp finally went up. And the next day it was still up. So good so far.

I'm struggling again to interpret my symptoms. We did a good job having sex every two to three days throughout this LONG phase before ovulation. And I saw some cervical mucus, though it never really looked like egg white.

And-- gross out alert--

I got some very different cervical mucus the day that my temperature rose. It was thick and yellow and sticky. Unlike anything I've seen before. Not knowing how to interpret that, I went to the Internet. Which promptly told me that it was an early sign of pregnancy. Oh jeez. It's like WebMD where everything comes up cancer. Just what I need, another potential sign of pregnancy to obsess over.

If my temperatures are even remotely accurate then there is no way for it to be a pregnancy symptom. But oh how I want to believe that it is!

All I can do at this point is keep on eating healthy and tracking my temps.

If there's nothing this cycle then next cycle I think I'm going to try the Mucinex/Robitussin trick to improve the cervical mucus.  Just need to find one that is pure Guaifenesin. You don't want one that has a decongestant, apparently.

Other plans include going back to the doctor to get some more tests done if we aren't pregnant within a couple more cycles. Metformin is a possibility. Clomid is a possibility. 

Still Struggling

Still no temperature rise. I'm starting to panic that my cycle is not going to be a normal length and I'm obsessing over what I'm doing wrong.

I am eating really well but I still have challenges. I've been having too much sugar (found a store that sells the coconut ice cream I love). I'm having a hard time not having carbs in the evenings (even though they are complex carbs).

I also need to cut back on dairy more and be careful about soy. The jury is still out on whether soy really does mess with one's cycle and imitate estrogen in the system but to be on the safe side I should avoid it. Which is really hard! (I made a great almond crusted tofu today).

If stress is really what delayed my ovulation, I need to find a way to relax. Panicking over the role that stress has played is just adding to the stress and making it all worse. I don't know what makes me relax. My husband has his baths that he loves. I nap when I'm stressed. But I need ways to destress when I'm awake. Time to do some research on things to try for relaxing.

Day 17

Day 17 and no temperature rise yet.

I know that I had the most stressful experience of my life last week and that stress can delay ovulation...but for how long? How do I relax and let my body know that it's okay?

As always happens to me these days, I feel fear and panic over whether my body is going to make the transition to the next step or not.

Travel Food

I spent last week on a rather stressful trip to NYC. I knew it would be cycle day 14 the day I got back so I packed as much ovulation food as I could. Apricots, red pepper hummus, etc. I was staying with my cousin who eats a very healthy vegetarian diet so I was able to eat very healthy while there. (My favorite was avocado sushi with flax seed rice from Silver Rice in Brooklyn).

Despite all this healthy eating and walking three to four miles a day, I gained weight while there.

Very discouraging and frustrating. And before you say I gained muscle, I knew I was gaining weight because my bra strap was getting tighter. I don't think I was gaining muscle mass in my rib cage.

My husband thinks that the stress contributed. Hopefully now that I'm home I can relax and some of that stress will drain out of my body and take the weight with it!

I took my thermometer with me and checked for ovulation, but my temperature has not risen as of yet and today is day 15. I was able to get some sex in as soon as I got home in the evening of day 14. So I'm somewhat hopeful this cycle.

It feels like the first time we've been able to actually try since May 2013. I've spent all my time since that time trying to get my cycle back after a psycho-somatic pregnancy.

I wouldn't be surprised if stress delayed ovulation this cycle, which is okay since I needed time to get back to my husband.

I say I'm feeling hopeful but that's not entirely accurate. I feel like I should be feeling hopeful. A week ago I was feeling hopeful. Right now I'm struggling to let go of my anxiety from the trip and as with every transition of my cycle, I feel unreasonable panic that the next step isn't going to happen. I would really like to know if I'm ovulating. I have yet to ever get a positive result on the pee sticks that my friend gave me.

I'm reading a lot of infertility memoirs on my Kindle app. Even though they make me cry, I find them comforting in some way. I also wish I could find more books that I've heard called "Mommy lit." Chick lit style books about women dealing with pregnancy or babies. I've read maybe three of them and I want more but I don't know how to find them!

Here are some I've found on Amazon:

• Babyville: A Novel 
• Three Girls and a Baby 
• Totlandia: Book 1 (Humorous Contemporary Women's Fiction): The Onesies - Fall 
• The Buggy List 
• The Baby Planner 
• Milked: A Modern Mommy Tale with a Retro Twist 

 (some of these are free first books in a series)

I'll also have recommendations on the infertility memoirs soon.

Rough Day Yesterday

I was so down yesterday. It was depression like I expect during PMS but my period just ended. I was hopeless, despairing, and angry. A lot of things I am not at all used to being. It was brutal. And I don't know what caused it.

Perhaps a number of anxieties coming together. Like my husband going away for the weekend (I chose not to go and work extra hours instead), my friend getting into a car accident and me having flashbacks to when I lost my closest friend in a car accident five years ago, stress over a trip to NYC I have to take next week (the city scares the hec out of me and I feel super overwhelmed and in over my head).

It may also have been the melatonin.

I had never heard of it until I met my husband but he has me use it sometimes to help me sleep. I read the other day that melatonin may actually help your eggs so that made me more willing to take it. I took it the night before yesterday and while it did help me fall asleep, I feel like when it leaves my system I wake up. So I woke up at 3:00 am and then me waking up caused both the animals to wake up and they thought is must be breakfast time so they kept me awake for the next two hours until it actually was breakfast time for them.

So then I took my temperature and, not surprisingly, it was way off. And that made me start stressing about my cycle again even though I knew the measurement couldn't be accurate. (And today my temperature is back on track).

I'm also stressing trying to understand what it means that I get really horny right after my period ends. I should be feeling that around ovulation time not the day I stop bleeding!

I want to be hopeful that this month is finally our month but the pressure of trying not to get my hopes up too high is stressful (And yes, believe me, I have heard many times about how stress is preventing me from getting pregnant).

Excess Hair Growth and Measures of Success

One of my most noticeable symptoms of PCOS is hirsutsim, which is excess hair growth. It's one of those signs that should have told me years ago that I had it. But all the women in my family are fairly hairy. We have pale skin and thick black hair. I never really noticed that I was the only one who had it not only on my upper lip and between my eyebrows but also on my chin and neck.

I've struggled with feeling ugly because of this hair for years and years. I've tried every hair removal process known to man (no, seriously. Every single one). These days I just shave it. It's the simplest and quickest.

But now that I know that the hair growth is part of PCOS, it should get better as I use my diet to get my hormones back into sync.

I need to find a way to track how often I'm shaving to see if there is any improvement.

This article has some information about supplements I could take to help with this. It also says that cutting out dairy is the most important thing to do for excess hair growth.

I think I'm going to get the paid version of my fertility tracking app, OvuView, because then I can set custom things to track like whether I shaved and constipation stuff!

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.

Ovulation Tests

I am so frustrated that I can't figure out if I'm ovulating!

Chances are if I get a period regularly then I am. But not necessarily. I could still be having anovulatory periods (meaning without an ovulation).

I've been trying to get back to taking my temperature each morning. The dog has a diaper on over night so I don't have to leap out of bed the instant she wakes me up. I'm tracking them on an app called OvuView. It is super slick and nice! Much better than the old app I was using. It lets you track a whole lot of different symptoms too. But anyway, I'll have to see if my temperatures are more steady now that I'm on this diet. So far so good. I've been high (for me) for the last four days which is what it should be if we're in luteal phase.

So maybe eventually the temperature will tell me if I'm ovulating.

I have a stack of pee test strips that a friend gave me when she started going to drugs to induce ovulation. I have yet to ever see a positive on one of those things!

They are so hard to read too. You're only ovulating if the second pink line is the same shade or darker than the test line. I've never had that happen but I've seen it get pretty close. It doesn't say whether it is supposed to get progressively darker as you head towards your ovulation. But message boards online suggest that for some people it does. I may need to start testing multiple times a day when it starts to look darker.

I also didn't realize until I downloaded the OvuView app that I'm supposed to be testing in the afternoon and definitely not with the first urine of the day. I was definitely messing that up.

There are easier to use and read ovulation testers out there. But I'm reluctant to buy one because I keep hearing that they aren't all that accurate with people with PCOS. Then again what I hear is that people with PCOS get a lot of false positives because we have a lot of the hormone in our systems already and I have never had any kind of positive, false or otherwise! So maybe they would work for me.

I'll give it a few months and then I might buy the ClearBlue predictor kit. You have to buy sticks to go with it too. Pretty expensive but still less expensive than evasive procedures or shots of drugs!

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!

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.

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.