Maker's Diet: Day Four

We made it through another day of phase one. Though I will confess for Jeremy that he broke the rules. He had lunch plans today that were on the calendar prior to us starting this diet, so he took the opportunity to eat a hamburger (with the bun) and french fries. And he said it was the most delicious burger and fries he had ever eaten. :)

I haven't cheated yet today, but the fact that he cheated makes me almost feel justified in cheating myself. A bowl of cereal is sounding pretty good to me right now!

Seriously though, we might start phase two tomorrow. I haven't decided for sure yet, but I'm considering it. I told Jeremy from the beginning that I'm okay with shortening phase one and the book says doing phase one for even just a few days is beneficial. We'll see what happens when we wake up tomorrow.

Here's what I ate today...

Breakfast- fried eggs and turkey bacon

Snacks- grain-free blueberry muffin, almonds, strawberries

Lunch- carrots w/guacamole, cherries, grain-free blueberry muffin, hamburger patty

Snack- cherries, almonds, sunflower seeds

Dinner- stuffed green pepper, coconut flour bread w/raw honey

This one's for Uncle Jeff

Thanks for the cute outfit, uncle Jeff!

I really do like it, despite the fact that I'm crying.

(My sister probably just stole a toy from me.)

Summer fun day!

Last night I was driving home from a Norwex party and I was just feeling the urge to do something special and fun with the girls today. The best ideas I could come up with were the free zoo or strawberry picking. After looking online to see where the strawberry farms are, I called my cousin at 8:15 this morning to ask if she wanted to meet us at one between my house and hers. She said she had plans to watch her niece and nephew, but that she's be up for it if her sister could come along to help. Everything lined up so we left at 10:00 to meet up for some strawberry picking!

Four of the six kids picking strawberries. Somehow I didn't get any pictures of Clara picking. :(

Lola was confined to the stroller, but she occupied herself very well eating strawberries!

And after awhile she did get annoyed with the stroller, but I didn't trust her not to tromp all over the plants.

They had this "cow train" at the farm and the whole time we were picking berries the kids were asking to ride the train, so when we finished picking we did oblige them. It was fun, but that was one bumpy ride!

After 2 1/2 hours in the sun and not leaving the farm until almost an hour past naptime, of course the kids passed out in the car.

After naps and snacks we headed out to the deck for this summer's first swim in the little wading pool that I recently bought. The kids absolutely loved it! And I loved that I got to sit under the shade of our patio umbrella and read a book while they splashed around for an hour.

Summer days like this are just the best!

Maker's Diet: Day Three

Day three was definitely better than day two for me. No signs of detox today!!

Here's what we ate:

Breakfast- I made grain-free waffles using almond flour. They were only okay. We ate them with almond butter on them and strawberries and blueberries on the side. They were kinda dense, and of course dry since we couldn't use syrup on them. I don't think I'll be making them again. At least not while we're banned from maple syrup. They did fill me up though. I always snack in the morning, but today I didn't need to.

Lunch- leftover omelet and chicken sausage from breakfast yesterday, and some cherries

Snacks- almonds, cherries, 1/2 of a blueberry muffin

Dinner- bunless hamburgers, side salad of lettuce/spinach/carrots, strawberries

Bedtime snack- grain-free blueberry muffin, another strawberry or two and a couple blackberries and cherries

You know the saying "The silence is deafening"? I'd like to coin a new phrase since starting this diet... "The lack of being really full is definitely noticeable." I don't think it will catch on, but it's true. I've realized that I usually reach for food at the first sign of possible hunger. The past three days I wouldn't say I've been hungry, but I've never felt stuffed, and unfortunately it's been a strange feeling. So that's one lesson learned from this experience- I probably used to eat too much.

The other thing I've noticed is how easy this diet is on the digestive system. My stomach has felt really good (aside from that detox period)! I'm hoping this continues as we add in more foods when we enter phases two and three.

Also, Jeremy was kinda grumpy at dinner tonight and sarcastically asked me if there was anything he could eat while I was gone for the evening. I think the lack of variety is starting to get to him. And I don't think he appreciated having to eat his burger without a bun.

Maker's Diet: Day Two

Day two was definitely more difficult than day one, at least for me. I slept fine last night, but when I woke up this morning I felt kinda awful. I dragged myself out of bed when the girls started crying and I just could not wake up. Physically I felt like I could barely get up and do anything. My head was so foggy and my stomach felt weird. I don't really know how to describe it because it was unlike anything I've ever felt before. Phase one of this diet is designed to detox/cleanse your body and I think what I was feeling this morning was the effects of that.

Jeremy was kind enough to make breakfast for us, which I think did help me some and by late morning I was able to get going and start being a productive member of the family again. By this evening I'd say I pretty much felt back to normal again. We even went for a bike ride to the park after dinner.

Honestly, when I felt awful this morning I was seriously questioning this diet and wishing I could go back in time and never decide to do it. But now that I'm feeling better I have a better attitude about it again. I can definitely see benefits from it already after only two days.

I've eaten way more vegetables in the past two days than I used to. I've never been anti-vegetables, but it was just easy to choose other things because of convenience or cravings. And I'm also finding myself offering foods to the girls that I otherwise wouldn't have. Like yesterday Clara had carrot sticks with guacamole instead of ranch dressing.

What did we eat today?

Breakfast- omelets (no cheese, no milk) with onions and green peppers, chicken breakfast sausage, strawberries

Lunch- large salad (two kinds of lettuce, baby spinach, carrots, sugar snap peas, green peppers) with grilled chicken and all-natural ranch dressing, cherries

Snack- today I made grain-free blueberry muffins with almond flour- they were quite yummy so I ate two of them this afternoon, plus snacking on cherries here and there

Dinner- salmon, broccoli, acorn squash seasoned with butter, nutmeg, cinnamon and raw honey

Dessert- I pureed some strawberries, frozen blueberries, frozen raspberries and some coconut milk beverage (I think this is actually not approved, but I used a small amount... it ended up like a melty sorbet kind of and it was yummy... Lola agreed wholeheartedly! I also had another of those yummy blueberry muffins! And I'm thinking about a handful of almonds before bed.

So really I don't feel deprived because we're eating lots of good stuff. We'll just be glad to have more variety when we enter Phase Two. We'll see how tomorrow goes. I'm hoping for no more detox.

Intro to The Maker's Diet and Day One

Today we started The Maker's Diet. If you haven't heard of it, you can read more about the author's story here. I read the book in May and knew right away that I wanted Jeremy and I to do his 40-day cleanse, but it has taken me until now to get up the nerve to take the plunge (and to convince Jeremy to do it with me).

It's set up in three phases, with phase one being the most restrictive and with each new phase you can add back more foods. The first two weeks are phase one, the second two weeks are phase two and the remainder is phase three. And the author advocates staying on phase three forever. It starts out so restrictive for the purpose of detoxing your body.

Because it starts out so restrictive and I question our willpower, I'm strongly considering having us do phases one and two for just one week each. I guess we'll just see how this week goes and make a decision when the time comes. The author even says you can start at any phase you want, but he recommends everyone do phase one for at least a few days to detox, so I take that to mean doing only one week of phase one instead of two weeks would still be very beneficial.

So why are we doing this? Primarily because of Jeremy's lyme disease and my long history of having a not-so-good stomach. This diet is supposed to help inflammation, which Jeremy definitely has a lot of from his lyme disease. And it's also supposed to help with digestion and gut health, which I apparently need.

After we finish this 40-day (or less) cleanse, my current plan is to just move us into more of a whole-foods, traditional foods diet. We've always felt like we eat fairly healthy, but I know there's lots of room for improvement. I especially want to learn about lacto-fermentation of foods and how to incorporate them into our diet because they are so good for gut health, and therefore overall health. I'm currently working on making a sourdough starter to kick things off!

So that's that. I decided today that I want to blog about this Maker's Diet adventure, mostly so I will have a record of how it went, how we felt about it, the struggles, and hopefully the joys of it.

So what did we eat for our first day of our new diet?

Breakfast - eggs fried in coconut oil, peppered turkey bacon, organic strawberries

Lunch - large salad of mixed greens, baby spinach, green pepper, carrots, sugar snap peas, tomato, and grilled chicken... Jeremy ate some salad dressing that I mixed up, but I wasn't crazy about it so I broke the rules and had a bit of all natural ranch dressing... we also tried the coconut flour bread that I made today, with a bit of almond butter on it

Dinner - stuffed peppers (green peppers stuffed with free-range ground beef, zucchini, tomato, onion... really yummy), guacamole with carrot sticks and sugar snap peas

Dessert - smoothies that weren't very good (mixed frozen berries, coconut milk, vanilla, almond butter, water, Jeremy added goat's milk yogurt into the second batch), we ate them but they were kind of disappointing... I'll be searching out some better recipes

Snacks - fresh berries, almonds, coconut flour bread

For the most part it was all really yummy and healthy-feeling. I ate more veggies today than I do most days, by far. I definitely had some cravings though, for things like tortilla chips with the guacamole, a salty snack, a sweet treat after lunch. I'll be interested to know how long it takes for cravings like that to go away.

Oh and we're not putting the girls on this diet. They're obviously eating some of the same things as us, but I'm not yet making any drastic changes to their diet.