Day 38

It is hard. I have no idea how to say where we are. We are still eating mostly meats and veggies. However, mostly my weakness, we have been eating nuts. I am wanting something, but can't figure it out. In fact, I am barely eating. Nothing sounds good, except nuts. My digestion is paying for it also. I shouldn't be eating nuts.

Day 35, stage who the f cares?

So Thursday went okay. I can't remember what we ate, sorry. At potluck we had pinto beans, cornbread, no gluten, but a lot of eggs, rice with veggies and what I made, sweet potatoes with pecans and cranberries. This recipe could easily be adapted for gaps. With squash. It was good. I did have a headache pretty much as soon as we finished eating. Friday was, well. Yeah. We drove Joan to the bus station and did some shopping. We found an amazing health food store in F airfield. Oh my goodness how did we not know it was there? It is amazing. For so many different reasons. Anyway we went shopping and my weakness, Fairfield has 3!!! Indian Restaurants. We ate Indian. We did have some sunflower seeds too, we needed some snack and that what was available. So yeah. We tried some yogurt last night also. Which may not have been a good idea since we had cheated and how are we supposed to know if we were having issues from Indian or from yogurt? Silly of us, I know. Natalie did seem to have a stomach ache after the yogurt, but again it could have been from Indian. Anyway, I have been emotionally down and for no good reason. Yes, I know this can be part of die off. I have severe emotional issues, or should I say I have in my life and it probably needs to be worked out. It has been hard to be the one who is being the cheerleader of everyone lets me great on GAPs. WoohOOO!! Not really. Today was better, kinda. At least we stayed on the diet, mostly. We went to a burn workshop. We brought soup and fat delight. So we had food and it was good. Oh I also had coffee with coconut milk. Oh it was good. Very good and soothing. I needed it. Though after we got back from the class I got slightly violently ill. It wasn't pleasant and I feel slightly better now. Not sure what it was from. We are eating light tonight, broccoli with some ranch I made from our yogurt. I also made some smoothies with the rest of the yogurt and some blackberries. So yeah. Jack asked me today if I was really feeling better this time around. He hasn't. I have. My stomach aches are gone. I feel less crappy in general and up until a few days ago I could breath out of my nose. I am not sure if it is dairy that is doing it or if I am fighting something. I have been snotty though. The girls have been riled. They really have too much energy and have been hyper active. I am not sure about this. I really wish I knew what we needed to eat, what was best for us to eat. Sometimes I just don't know. I have come to realize in the past few days that in regards to pretty much everything in life, there is no one answer. Between diets, lifestyles, religions everything, there is no one answer. So where does that leave us? With no answers unless we keep figuring out what works and doesn't. Hmmm. I hope I get out of my dumps soon. They suck. I do remember going through this last time, and having a hard time being the one who had to keep us all happy on the diet.

Day 32, stage 1

I feel better this morning, but still achey. In fact, most of my right side hurts. I also need to stop occasionally eating a spoon of honey. I have a little and it doesn't even taste good. And it makes me feel like crap. So what is up with that? Willpower, that is what it is. I wish I had some. I also want cream. Okay, I want a few things. I am also feeling very emotionally down. It is a sucky way to be feeling. Not surprising though. I have always hated February. February hates me. I wonder if there will ever be a February where I feel happy? Hmmm? Will it happen? But for right now, I just feel crappy in most ways possible. Yea!! Crappy feelings tend to bring out the snarky sarcastic side of me. Lets hope that the kids wake up in a more not so hyper way today. No such luck. Kids crazy. Me crazy. it just wasn't a lot of fun today. The girls still had a lot of problems getting school done. I am not sure what to do. Last time we went through gaps we were taking school very slow, but we have sped up quite a bit the past year. I kinda want to take a break because it is stressing me out so much. But then I am worried about getting them off of a routine. They tend to do much better when we school everyday. We have been taking weekends off since Jack started working. I don't know. We all had some cashews today also. Probably didn't need that. Jack also went to the coffee shop, which we thought was a real coffee shop and I just wanted a coffee with cream, that isn't what I got because they only have coffee machines so it was all fake stuff with sugar. Ack!!! I am kinda upset over how much the conference seems to have messed us up. I have noticed that since the coffee my patience is GONE. Uggg. Okay, I am going to write what we had for dinner, pork and butternut squash. I was hoping it would help. It hasn't. Today is what I call closet days, or Mexico days. I just want to go away.

Day 31, stage 1

I think I need to preface this with, by stage one I mean 99% of our diet is soup. We are eating oils and ferments though also. We are not adding in avocados, eggs or anything else. I have to wonder at our experience and wonder if we go through all the stages and then go right back to stage one, if this would keep happening? If we would continue to have die off and such. Interesting notion. We are eating soup from the night before. I will be starting a roast, it will be made into soup though. I am also broiling up more of the "soup bones". Really these are not soup bones, they are mostly meat. Though it is all gelatin meat. So they do make great soup bones. Still we get a lot of meat out of them also. We started some yogurt last night to check it out. It won't be ready until tomorrow though. We used heavy cream and half and half. Again fat. Key word, fat. Gwendy was having some serious issues as soon as she woke up this morning. She gets like this sometimes, just tries to hit and be in the way make annoying noises. Being destructive and disruptive. Makes homeschooling hard. We have a decent amount to catch up on because no one could really focus yesterday. I caught Gwendy smiling at one point and made her laugh and so far she seems to be in a better mood. I kinda get the hard time with school yesterday. We see it a lot after conferences. I am more hopeful for today. Though I am not sure if I should be. Okay, maybe I am not more hopeful for today. Yeah, kids crazy today. Too much energy. I still feel like crap. Jack feels crappy. I was really excited about our yogurt, it seemed really solid. It was whey on the bottom. But that is okay. Maybe I will do some whey fermenting. I have never done that before, so it might be interesting. Jack is making himself some kind of yogurt drink. I did have a 1/2 cup of fat again, lightly sweetened. It is funny to see how we are all doing on stage one again. Part of me doesn't want to go off. I actually feel like vomiting. So after I wrote that I felt like vomiting, I went and took a hot shower and went to bed. I feel slightly better this morning. I didn't actually vomit. But damn I felt bad. I slept hard though. I usually wake up a few times a night. I didn't wake up until almost 5. Of course then I couldn't fall back asleep. I did ache almost all night. Wasn't fun. So again, another day not complete.

Day 30, stage 1

Trying stage one with lots more fat. I think we need more fat. Lots more fat. I think we did alright last time, but I don't know. I think maybe it will help trying to get more fat from the beginning. I took the stock that I started yesterday with beef bones and fat and connective stuff. I then put in the rest of the chicken, tomatoes, carrots and peas. Good soup and we ate it with olive oil on top. Good. We are still working on that soup. I have also let them have coconut oil. A decent amount. I also made up more butter and coconut oil and some honey and cocoa this time. Just munching on it. I find that eating that, I actually start to have more of an appetite and soup sounds good, even putting olive oil on my soup. My hunger has really increased and hasn't been cravings, it has just been oh I need this right now. So again, I feel that fat is going to make the biggest difference. We did all have a snack of sauerkraut. Everyone seems fine with it, though I feel a little tummy achey. Jack came home feeling really crappy. It is weird that we sailed through intro just 30 days ago. Yeah, we took it slower than we needed, but we really didn't have much issue. We are having the soup again for dinner. I added some ground beef. Maybe one of the biggest differences is that the girls are very happy with soup right now. Summary Me: Not bad. It feels like this is my first time through intro and I had been eating junk before. A little weird, hopefully it goes away soon. Jack: Tired, achey. nauseous. Headachey. Vit C helped the headache, low energy. Natalie: Good. Kind of. Tired. Kinda had cravings. No stomach aches or headaches. Layla: Good. Belly ache in the early morning. Soup was good. Not very hungry. A little bit sleepy. A slight headache after the first meal. Gwendy: Good, soup was GOOD! (she has had really good energy also)

Day 29, stage 1

Probably thought I had just given up, eh? Let me tell you, it was hard the past three days. I almost don't want to talk about it. We were bad. Though we did the best we could. We ate a good breakfast the day we left. Lunch was provided by Chiptole. It was good, mostly because there were huge salads. We all did eat a half burrito though, most of us took off the flour tortilla though. Dinner however was daunting. We were HUNGRY, and Jack couldn't stop talking. Okay, we had met some really great people. We really didn't feel that we could eat at the expensive restaurant, so we went to the food court. We figured we could at least stay gf if we went to the Mexican one. It was good, but of course we had beans, rice and sour cream. Very interesting, I could feel my body producing tons of mucous. Oh it was gross. So gross. The next day we ate breakfast at the union grill, they get most of their stuff organic, local and such. We ate mostly legal, though full gaps. Eggs, meat, veggies, fruits. It was a good buffet and we decided to do it the next day also. We also pre-ordered our lunch, again mostly legal. We only had an hour to eat. Dinner at the conference was good. There wasn't much in the way of meat, one meat had pasta in it and the other was tillapia. Everyone else besides me ate that. I really have issues with fish and it didn't help that it was in a cream of mushroom sauce. Ick. Our first real sugar though happened that night. Apple crisp. I couldn't resist it. It very possibly had gluten too. So we ate breakfast the next day at the union grill, buffet again and had lunch at the conference. Again, they were really good. They had salads at every meal, so we all filled our plates as much as we could with salad. The also had pork, which was good. We stayed away from the bread pudding. Dinner we on the road, so we stopped at Wendy's and got chili and fries, though Jack got a burger, he was driving and didn't want to mess with soup. I got us all frosty's too. I noticed a huge difference in how I was craving by just the little amounts of sugar that we had ended up with. The girls had eaten a lot of lara bars. It was just bad. They were so and whiny about it. I could so see their yeastie beasties coming out. Of course I could see mine too. All of us were having digestive issues and we were tired, Jack was feeling achey and fatigued. It just wasn't good. We decided that once we got back we would go back on stage one, at least until we were feeling better. Oddly, we are back now. It is 11:18 am and no one has eaten, okay Jack and I had a handful of nuts, I know, slapping our hands, not on stage one. But last night I pulled out meat and it is still cooking. Anyway, after three days of complaining about being hungry. The girls haven't said anything about being hungry and haven't eaten yet. They are quietly playing. Nicely, or at least mostly. We haven't done anything yet today. It is a total bum day I am guessing. Though I think we will have to go shopping since we have nothing but carrots. So yeah, interesting, isn't it? I am almost curious how far we would go before they mentioned being hungry. Well, around noon I finally asked them and they were kinda hungry. I had already started stuff. It was still awhile and no one really ate until 4. Okay, we did eat some summer sausage. I wanted it out of the way. It was given to us at the conference. I checked out our kombucha and some was ready and carbonated. Very yum. It seems pretty mild though. But I was kinda hoping that it would help. I am craving. It was a good soup though. Beef, carrots, peas tomatoes and pizza spices. We are doing pretty much stage one, but I am not as worried about going slow on the veggies and such. We have been munching on soup the whole night. The girls have insane energy. Jack and I have been bumming though. I am still craving. Kombucha usually helps, but it just isn't. I have been eating a decent amount of soup also. Still not helping. I'm starting to get antsy. I ended up making myself butter, coconut oil some honey, vanilla and cinnamon. It really helped. I didn't need much. I think just really needed some fat. Really needed fat. Probably about a tablespoon and my tummy is full in a way it hasn't been. Summary Me: Interesting day. Funny how almost a month a gaps and then having regular food messes you up. I was craving a lot today but fat came to my rescue. I read something interesting today about how fat should be more than half our calories. I think I am going to try and be more proactive about getting lots of fat. I can add animal fat to my soups but I think I need more fat. Coconut oil and butter need to play a big part, but I can't eat them without some flavor. Jack: Physical energy levels not high, all over body aches, headaches, short temper. Not hungry. Natalie: good. not very hungry. No headaches or anything. When I did eat food, it was good. Layla: good. Very high energy. Soup was delicious. No headaches, no belly aches. Gwendy: good. we ate a lot of bad stuff now we are on stage one.I'm happy that we are going to be on stage one because momma's soup is so good. I did not pay her to say that.

Day 25, stage 6

So I soaked cashews and pecans yesterday. Instead of eggs this morning, I ground up the cashews and added eggs and made the girls pancakes. Oh they looked good. It made a lot also. So we have some for our trip it looks like. I let them have one. I had to try a small bite and they didn't taste good to me. Too eggy. So I am assuming I should not do eggs yet. I did take some of the ground cashews and added some lime juice, coconut milk and small amount of honey. I was hungry this morning. I wanted something. I took a few small bites and not hungry. I will probably freeze it. Interesting, though isn't it? Yeah. I am going to see about making some more nuts for taking on our trip. We are going to probably intro fruits a little early. I thought we would be there by now. We got a bunch of lara bars. Today we aren't doing school, we are cleaning and packing. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Maybe I am bad. Okay I am. I also made up the pecans that I soaked yesterday. Put some butter, a little honey and cinnamon. We all ate some. I have issues with nuts. My issue is I can't stop. I hate that. But everyone has done well today. I made up pork steaks and chard for lunch. The girls have been cleaning well and so did I. So it feels weird to beat myself up over it. I guess it is more of a self control issue for me. I made kale chips and roasted a chicken. Oh, since we got the lara bars, we decided to test them and no one had a problem. Figured that it would be better to see that at home then while we were in the middle of a class. Oh. I am wiped. It is 9 and we need to get to bed so we can leave tomorrow. Summary everyone says that they are good. I don't feel like going through everyone. You will have to excuse me :)