eveheart's Journal

[Inger]

I think I'm falling in love with one of the butchers at the market. Yeah, I know, I'm too old for him. But, he knows everything about meat. "Hi, honey, I'm home, and I brought you an adrenal gland...." <sigh>

If that is not enough to fall in love with a man, I dunno what is.. huh.
I feel with you. 

Inger

[eveheart]

I've been here for just over 6 months now. I had looked forward to this mini-milestone as a victory, but as it turns out, I'm at a low point. There are several components to this lowness:

Social obstacles - Seasonal blues? All the holiday parties are scheduled. I'm bringing dessert to the Thanksgiving party, and we're not talking about fruit. I've already been slipping by eating cooked meats in the employee cafeteria. I don't want the cooked food, but I do want the company of the co-workers who eat there. The Christmas party will be steakhouse food. Cooked. I'm going to eat that!

Macronutrient indecision - I read Nora Gedgaudas's Primal Body, Primal Mind, and it set me in a VLC-higher fat direction. I was fine for a week, but then I felt antsy. I'm not sure if that meant I was adjusting, or if it meant that it was all wrong for me. When I read the book, it sounded to right... but anything can sound right when it's printed down, even fruitarianism, and many other diets that were unsustainable in my past experience. When I try to follow someone else's bright ideas, I lose my own sense of instinct.

Not losing weight lately - my weight has been stable (not losing) for about 2 months now. Not a good sign. Strangely enough, the problem began when I bought my own scale to get weighed on, instead of going to my daughter's house and using hers. With a history of eating disorder, I think I'm obsessing about weight loss too much. Eating disorders can play games with one's thinking that triggers bad eating behaviors. I might have to get rid of the scale.

I caught a cold! I thought I'd never get sick again. I'm blaming occasional cooked food for my lowered resistance. Or maybe I just got the bug that was going around the office.

It's winter - I don't like the colder weather and the rainy season. I've been reading the thread about this on our forum, and I know that I'm designed for warmth, even though I've adapted with heaters and sweaters.

Sorry to sound so down. Gotta shake this lowness, or use it as a springboard for a new season of RPD'ing.

[Dorothy]

Hi Eve. We've been doing a bunch of research re vit D and it seems to be no coincidence that people get colds more in the winter and get depressed then too. Less sun = less vit D. You might not be able to change the holiday things, but I thought I'd suggest perhaps looking into supplementation and seeing what that does.

Cherimoya suggested vit d in my thread asking for help for my husband. So far this is the first October/November (fingers crossed) where he hasn't gotten a flu or cold that I can remember.

In that thread I posted some links by a doctor that we thought were fabulous and extremely informative on the subject.

I sure hope you feel better!

[eveheart]

Ever notice how ya hear about a good idea more than once? A friend's doctor gave her vit D for stiff shoulders, so I started using it about 3 weeks ago with immediate results in my shoulders. I've been doing shoulder physical therapy for years with minimal results, but within the first week of d-3 I noticed marked improvement. I also switched to eating lunch outdoors in the sun, instead of in the lunchroom, and it feels good to be outside on nice winter-ish days. I don't have much of a head for research articles, but I love anecdotal evidence, especially when the benefits accrue to me.

The cold was mild. I work in a swampish environment. I don't catch colds as often as others do, and mine heal up quickly.

[Dorothy]

Swampish -sounds ominous! 

How much are you taking? Cherimoya suggested 5000 and that sounded way scary with a fat soluble vitamin until our research revealed to doctors recommending that amount. He was on 1000 before without the results.

[cherimoya_kid]

\

\ I'm bringing dessert to the Thanksgiving party, and we're not talking about fruit. I've already been slipping by eating cooked meats in the employee cafeteria. I don't want the cooked food, but I do want the company of the co-workers who eat there. The Christmas party will be steakhouse food. Cooked. I'm going to eat that!

I usually recommend eating a good-sized raw meal right before a social gathering .  That way, you can just eat small amounts of the cooked food, and your hunger will still be satisfied.

As far as not losing weight, here are some general good suggestions:

1. Don't eat within 3 hours of bedtime, and eat most of your food at lunch.  breakfast/dinner should be smaller.

2. Do some moderate walking after you eat.

3. Just get moving. Housework is excellent exercise, if it's too cold to go walking.  You can also go walk at the mall, Walmart, or even the YWCA.

4.Make sure you're getting enough fat.  Eat your fat at the beginning of the meal.  It satisfies you, so you'll eat less food at the meal.

 

[eveheart]

I was all mopey for a few months because I couldn't figure out how many carbs were best for me. Possibilities dawned on me as I read Nora Gedgaudas's Primal Body, Primal Mind, because I could relate to her description of the symptoms of leptin intolerance. I wanted to learn more, so I read Byron Richards's Managing Leptin. I don't have much of a head for biology, so I have read Managing Leptin four times, and it's beginning to make sense.

Richards explains the intricacies of the body's leptin cycle, and how it relates to many other hormone cycles. The good thing is that, even if I don't understand the science of hormones, I can follow the suggestions. His Five Rules are: never eat after dinner (as CK suggests, above), eat three meals a day, do not eat large meals, eat a breakfast containing protein, and reduce the amount of carbohydrates you eat. He suggests using a scale to determine the body's morning vs. evening weight fluctuation as a reaction to carbs. The object of his suggestions is to manage hormone levels, minimize inflammation, and let the body have some efficient fat-burning periods at peak times during the day and night.

Richards also gives good suggestions about how to get the body into shape gradually, when even a small amount of exercise is a challenge, which is where I am now.

Managing Leptin is not about raw paleo eating, but it applies to when to eat and how to balance the ratio of macronutrients, given that the body has been out of whack for a long time.

And now for my butcher update: one by one, the butchers at my market are coming out of the closet and admitting that they eat all sorts of raw meat. I remember in the sixties trying to decide which Beatle I was going to marry. I'm starting to have crushes on some of the butchers - a different one each week. Not the really young ones; I haven't lost my sense of social propriety. It's the way they deftly wield a knife and sell me grass-fed beef at grain-fed prices.

[eveheart]

One side effect I've noticed from reading Mastering Leptin by Byron Richards is that my mind is racing on about food supplements. Richards is in the food supplement business, and his book makes a good case for taking a whole sh**pile of supplements. They all sound like excellent magic bullets which could help me lose weight faster, sleep more soundly, and leap tall buildings in a single bound.

To counteract this mental frenzy, I have resolved to live without food supplements until the end of December. That will leave me free from supplement obsession now, and allow me to change my mind if need be. More important: I will be able to evaluate my progress with the Five Rules.

[eveheart]

Last night, I slept successfully through the night. My disrupted sleep pattern for years has been to wake up fully around 1 pm and stay wide awake for 1 - 3 hours.

True, one night's experience does not evidence make, but as for journalling, I'm reporting about what I did so I don't forget it. Mastering Leptin recommends having enough carbs for dinner to help the brain and liver "make it" through the night. Yesterday day, my meals were breakfast (liver-coconut), lunch (beef-fat-sauerkraut), and dinner (beef-egg yolks-coconut water-honey).

This is an example of why I do not want to take supplements before I experience the effects of Richards's Five Rules in and of themselves.

On another note, after a week of following the Five Rules, I no longer have the appearance of facial bloating that is the worst sign of imbalance. True, my whole body is bloated when that happens, but the effects on my face are scary. Bloating makes me look 20 years older.

[eveheart]

Live dungeness crab - YIKES!

I live in dungeness crab territory, and the season is now. I never thought of eating carb raw before RPD. Got one today, along with some awesome oysters (same winter season). I'm good at killing them, but this kill didn't go well, so I'm feeling a little bit cruel.

After I dispatched the crab, I tried to eat it, but it was too galvanic to eat right away, so I followed some advice I read in this forum and put it aside until tomorrow so it can relax. From the little bite I had, I'm sure I can eat it.

When I looked at all the innards, I couldn't distinguish the organs from the goo, so I'll have to study a crab anatomy chart before I try my next one.

[Adora]

Re supplements
I have tried mastering lepton 5 rules for 1 week and I'm doing well without supplements. I always slept well, but I over ate. I'm satisfied on so much less that I've been forcing myself to eat fruit when I don't want it to prevent blood sugar crash. Thank you for posting this. My daughter is starting it tonight b/c she can't sleep either. She eats cooked paleo, and she is going to do melatonin with it. I told her to try 1. Week. She is at the end of her rope, so thank you again for sharing. It sounds promising.

[eveheart]

Adora, I toyed with the idea of buying melatonin, but then I re-read the part about eating carbs with dinner and tried that first, since melatonin should be something that is released as part of the balanced cycle. Richards does say that all this balancing takes time, so I was surprised to have noticed a lot of improvement so soon.

I'm sticking to 100% raw paleo because I have had such dramatic positive results so far. For example, Richards includes all sorts of grains when he talks about carbs, but I know grains are not good for me. When it comes to meat, raw has been very agreeable, so I don't want to change that, either. Sometimes when I change too many things at once, I can't tell what's working and what's not working, and I end up with an overly complicated system that overwhelms me.

[Adora]

Eveheart -

    I agree too many things at once isn't healing, it is confusing. I prefer simple too. I panicked with the melatonin. My daughter hasn't had good rest in too long and I wanted a pill to produce fast results. She definitely seemed better yesterday. She has followed the Leptin program (for 2 days), but she's eating cooked paleo. She has enjoyed raw fish, scallops, dairy, steak, and venison. She like eggs in milk, and she eats most of her food very rare.
      I haven't been preparing raw for her lately b/c she's been grumpy w/o sleep and I don't want her to start a teenage lack of sleep/rebel against mom's suggestions. She was quite motivated last night after 1 night of improvement. So, I think she will come to me as she feels better wanting more raw foods that I'm eating. I've been asking her to stop having big meals before bed for a year or so, but she insisted it didn't bother her. Poor kid, she's really suffering now. Thanks for your journal entries here they are making the whole experiment/process more fun.
     I'm doing better too. My blood sugar's are perfect in the morning now, and I feel totally stable w/o snacking between meals. I think I started last Monday so maybe 5 day's of Mastering Leptin I feel stable, but also in flux. I sense that my body is changing daily, but that homeostasis is well maintained.

[Adora]

Eve heart - Ivy just texted me that she is felling better, and slept better than the last night. so we will probably keep up the melatonin for this week, but cut back to 1.5mg from 3 Friday night and see how she does. I doubt that 3mg for 5night is going to hurt her and I don't want to take anything away when she is improving during the school week, but we will talk on it tonight.

[eveheart]

I'm glad to hear of your progress here and on your journal. Optimizing your blood sugar levels is such a major improvement. The consequences will last your whole life.

I haven't been preparing raw for her lately b/c she's been grumpy w/o sleep and I don't want her to start a teenage lack of sleep/rebel against mom's suggestions.

My daughter is 30 and a mother herself, but I still have to be careful that I don't trigger her teenage rebellion, which I learned means meddling mother. My rule is that I mention good ideas once and never use the word should.

My daughter eats cooked paleo with high-quality foods and is doing well. She also started the Five Rules. She has lost a ton of belly fat and doesn't have habitual post-nasal drip. We don't use dairy at all because of hereditary milk intolerance.

Best wishes.

[cherimoya_kid]

Eveheart -

    I agree too many things at once isn't healing, it is confusing. I prefer simple too. I panicked with the melatonin. My daughter hasn't had good rest in too long and I wanted a pill to produce fast results.

Vitamin D really improves the quality and length of my sleep.  I take the Now brand softgels.

[eveheart]

I spent a recent vacation visiting ranches and farms that are featured on eatwild.com. Knowing where to find good food and understanding the distribution system really helps to keep the cost low and the quality high.

First, I visited some poultry farms with non-scratch-fed chickens. Visiting let me verify that the chickens really do have room to forage for their meals. They all slaughter their chickens on-site, and one I liked best has same-day unfrozen chickens. At nightfall, they freeze the day's carcasses, so it's possible to call ahead and get unfrozen chicken on a regular basis. Their eggs are similar - unwashed and unrefrigerated on the day they are laid, then washed and put in cartons in the fridge in the evening.

I didn't visit grassfed beef ranches - nothing to visit there, because in my area they are just ranch cooperatives. They truck their cattle to large USDA-approved slaughterhouses, then the carcasses go to distributors, then to markets, then to me. If I need a special order that my butcher cannot order, I can special-request the item directly through the cooperative that my butcher uses, the co-op gives the order to the slaughterhouse, and I let my butcher know it is coming.

I went to two bison ranches and emailed a third ranch. So far, there is no way I can get unfrozen bison, so I'm sticking to buying frozen bison marrow bones in bulk and bison heart, which thaws out okay IMO.

If anybody here wants to know what I want for my next birthday, it's a bison hide rug for only about $1200 USD. Honestly, J/K... I live in a studio apartment, I don't have a large enough floor for the thing, but it's so-o-o-o luxurious! No, wait! If you DO want to buy it for me, get me a house with a large floor area in front of the rustic stone fireplace to go with the rug. The rest of the house can be modest, but there needs to be another larger house on the property for my daughter's family. Also, get another rug for her house so she doesn't steal my rug, like she steals my aged grassfed beef.

[van]

you can get unfrozen bison at 888- 295-6332,, hopefully I got the number right.  it's North Star Bison. 

[eveheart]

I've looked at North Star Bison -  they're prices are good, even with shipping, which has to be FedEx. BUT, FedEx delivers while we are at work, and they won't leave packages, even if there are explicit instructions where to leave them, so I have to pass over North Star Bison.

[van]

really,  I think you can arrange with Fed X to do that??   But why not at work,  maybe too much of hassle for them.  How about a neighbor or a friends house?  Did you ask Mary if there's a way for Fed X to drop?   There's also fed x pick up places too,, maybe one's handy for you. 

[Adora]

Eve you should call Mary, she fixed it with Fed Ex to drop it on my porch.

[eveheart]

Okay, you convinced me to give it a try next time. My past experience with FedEx is that the driver ignores special instructions, which in my case is "leave it behind the unlocked gate ten feet past the front door" (specific enough?). For the love of bison, I'll take another chance with FedEx.

[intrigued]

Hey, I've been looking through fermenting vegetables.  I'm wondering if you have any quick and easy recipes or resources to point me to on how you do it.  I want to try some banana peppers, maybe some pickles, sauerkraut, and definitely some kimchi, if I can find the stuff to do it.  I thought I stumbled on a thread a while ago that had some great info, but I can't seem to find it anymore.  Sorry for the intrusion on your journal!

[eveheart]

I ferment foods because I like the flavor.

My good kimchi instructions come from Sandor Ellix Katz, AKA Sandorkraut, and from Maangchi.com. I mostly make plain ol' kimchi with napa cabbage and very little pepper! If a typical recipe calls for a cup of pepper flakes, I use a tablespoonful, and that tastes plenty hot to me. Also, if a recipe calls for something like 500 tons of cabbage, I use one head of cabbage and scale everything back.

I also make high (fermented) beef, following the directions on this forum.

The important thing with fermentation is to follow the process. The recipe can vary with each fermenter and each batch.

[eveheart]

I've been avoiding writing in my journal until I answered a few questions for myself. Here are the three main questions:

• How much carbohydrates should I be eating?
• Which is the lesser of two evils, cooked protein or raw carbs? (A common question in social situations.)
• What do I need to consider outside the realm of food in order to heal?

The answer to "how much carbs" is "almost none." A "high carb" meal can contain about 5 carbs without producing painful symptoms such as brain fog or joint pain. I limit myself to fermented vegetables or seaweed and stay well in the right range. I completely avoid grains, legumes, starchy vegetables - instant poison. Nora Gedgaudas in Primal Body, Primal Mind really set me straight on how poisoned I was by eating grains and using grain-ish products. I'm past fooling around on this issue.

The second question is answered by the first: very low carb intake is right for me now. My last social eating situation was the Christmas party at work. I opted for baked salmon and cooked green beans and ate plenty of butter with my meal. No harm done. I learned this the hard way at a business luncheon where I ate fruit salad instead of cooked meat and bounced out of ketosis. It takes me a long time to convert back to ketosis, and in the meantime, I suffer horrible exhaustion and cravings. I don't want to learn the same lesson again.

The third question is not fully answered yet. I started medical treatment for hypothyroidism last spring after some unsuccessful attempts at RPD cures. My TSH was 128 (it should be in the low single digits). I supplement with synthetic T4 and my TSH is now 4. In a few days, I will be starting something a little more controversial, and I'll write about it another time. I'm not a fan of western medicine and its narrow system of treating the symptoms but not the cause, but I am aware that all my maladies are autoimmune issues.