Scale Sunday: Week 5

Peanut butter cookies. Jalapeno poppers. Cheese bread. The supper of champions, right? Sunday night after Mass seemed a good time to sit down and indulge in a few treats before I refocused on health again the next day. Except I didn't. The peanut butter cookies were so small my indulgence of them spilled over to breakfast on Monday. They were so good with my coffee (which I'm still not putting sugar in! The little things I tell myself to appease my conscience....) Tuesday morning's walk of shame to the scale was painful. How little time it takes to erase seven days of hard work! I had gained four pounds back. More than I lost the week before.

All week was spent losing those four pounds. It was agonizing every day seeing the same numbers I had already defeated and put behind me. Except I hadn't really, if I was standing here seeing them again. It was with trepidation that I stepped on the scale this morning: I didn't know what to expect. It's the ups and downs of life, and as much as I know this, it doesn't seem to grow any easier to deal with!

I talked some last Sunday about the lectin-free diet I stumbled across. The Plant Paradox Cookbook came on Tuesday. I started studying it, trying to decide if it was doable, and most importantly, if it was believable. With the myriad of diets out there promising success I'm generally a skeptic; I do not believe there's one way to health, one "bad guy" food to avoid, save for the way the Good Lord intended us to use the nourishment He gave us on this earth. Like Paraclesus, who stated: "The dose makes the poison", I'm more a subscriber to moderation than hacking off entire food groups (pasta is a food group, right?)

If you all are tired of hearing about one more diet, I don't blame you. If so, feel free to skip to the end. If you're curious about what I've read, I'll try to talk just a little (ha!) about why this diet seems to make sense to me and to answer a few questions that I myself had about it.

Hippocrates stated that "all disease begins in the gut". We've also all heard the adage "you are what you eat", which is not far from the mark. Maintaining the delicate balance of our microbiome is necessary for good gut health, and what we introduce to it determines how our bodies digest food, how they extract nutrients from food, and how it communicates with our immune systems. Certain things, when ingested, have been proven to cause various diseases and health issues. While it calls out "lectins" as the main bad guys, we know there are a lot of other things in our diets that are not great for us as well, which it also takes into consideration. If you missed what I wrote about lectins last week, you can head on over to my last Scale Sunday post to catch up. In a nutshell, lectins are proteins that attach themselves to the lining of your GI tract and create holes in it, causing bacteria to leak out ("leaky gut") and spread throughout your body, which in turn can cause multiple health issues. (More technical description for my fellow geeks: Lectins bind to the sugar molecules in your intestine's microsal lining, triggering the production of zonulin. When your cells produce zonulin they stop "linking arms", and junctions between cells open up, creating a hole in your gut. Lectins that have not attached to your intestinal lining leak out, along with waste bacteria.) Gluten is a lectin, and has become the "media darling" of lectins. But there are so many more lurking in the foods we eat every day. Changing your diet (reducing or eliminating lectins) can heal your gut and reverse other health issues. The plethora of autoimmune disorders people are plagued with anymore is a testament to the war our bodies are waging against something.

Why am I even looking into this? Because I thought it was odd that I was still feeling sick even when I changed my diet to "mostly healthy". I discovered that most of the "healthy food" I ate when on a diet were veggies from the nightshade family that contain a lot of lectins. These include tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, eggplants. I know, I thought the same thing: what in the world am I going to eat?

Dr. Gundry throws a lot of so-called "facts" out there that I don't necessarily subscribe to, ones that we have no way of proving. For example, he begins with "450 million years ago the world was ruled by plants". I'm really tired of the scientists throwing out dates like we've proven it's accurate (which research has actually shown is not) and stating theories as scientific fact when they can't be proven. It's extremely unscientific of them. What I do believe are facts proven by actual research, trial and error, and results-based studies. Dr. Gundry dedicated his life's work to refining this diet, and seems to have discovered the key to a healing diet by not only trusting the visible results, but also by doing regular blood tests on strict followers of the lectin-free diet to see what it was actually doing to their bodies. 

What can I/can't I eat?

The book shares a list of cans and can'ts and goes into detail why. Thankfully the list of cans is three times as long as the can'ts. Here's a little sneak peek of the can't list:

My yogurt is on there...😭

People have been eating these foods for hundreds of years, why are they suddenly bad?

The history of food and how we eat it is fascinating to me (forgive me!)

Throughout the years there have been shifts in culture, in discoveries men have made, and advances in food production/preparation that all have contributed to changes in what we eat and how we prepare our food. Humans started out with a mainly plant diet, with occasional meat when hunting was good. We weren't intended to eat a lot of the plants out there; our bodies weren't designed to digest many of them. After consuming certain plants the side effects were obvious, and those foods were not eaten anymore, or rarely. We used to eat plants that were in season...our bodies were in tune with the seasonal banquet available to us. Fruits were in season in the late summer, and these high-sugar foods were consumed to help fatten us up for the winter. Now, fruit is available to us all year round, constantly sending our body signals to "fatten up". As different plants and animals died off that we relied on for food, our diets had to change. Humans began intentionally cultivating crops and storing them to eat later, which introduced more lectins into our diets. The discovery of fire opened up new food options. Cooking foods breaks down lectins, making certain foods edible in small amounts. When the New World was discovered, many lectin-rich foods (tomatoes, squash, corn, quinoa, etc.) were introduced into European diets. Native Americans were apparently equipped with special gut bugs to digest these foods, and/or had special ways to prepare them.

Traditional ways of preparing foods make food easier to digest and "friendly" to your gut, such as fermentation (think kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, etc.) Old World food preparation also involved removing hulls, seeds, and peels from plants that also reduced the lectins in these foods. Many of these old preparatory measures have fallen away from the norm in the last 100 years, making us more susceptible to damage from lectins. In our ultra-busy culture, we also now rely heavily on highly processed food...some of which barely resembles food anymore. Thanks to our agricultural bounty, the amount of wheat, soy, and corn we consume has also skyrocketed in the last century. One of the many lectins out there, wheat germ agglutinin, is particularly nasty: it has the ability to mimic insulin in the body, keeping insulin from doing the job it's supposed to. What's more, many crops are genetically modified to withstand regular dousing of chemicals to kill weeds--and we in turn ingest these chemicals. Even some non-GMO crops are treated with Roundup as a desiccant because dried up, dead plant is easier to harvest. We've become the products of years and years (specifically the last half a century) and millions of dollars worth of marketing about the healthfulness of many of these foods: of whole grains, high fruit/veggie-fruit diets. And obesity has skyrocketed in the meanwhile.

In addition to these issues, our lifestyle is killing us. Advances in technology make it the norm to stay up long past sunset, plugged into blue-light emitting devices (TV's, cell phones, SCREENS). People used to follow the earth's cues for rest...when it was dark, they slept. I've done some research into how blue light affects our circadian rhythms, affecting stress levels, sleep, weight gain, etc. Some new model TV's even come equipped with an "amber light filter" to reduce rhythm interference. Our bodies were designed to take it's cues for fat storage from the environment around us. In summer when light is plentiful, our bodies are being signaled to store fat for the coming winter (I know it sounds contrary to the "slim up for summer" trends...but that just shows how far from nature we've grown!). In winter when light is low and temps are cooler our bodies kick into "burn fat stores for survival" mode. We've created a false "eternal summer" for ourselves with all these light-emitting devices and staying up too late, thereby sending our bodies cues to STORE ALL THE FAT and hoard calories all year round.

We are poisoning ourselves not only with our lifestyles, but with the medicine we hope will make us feel better. Antibiotics are often over-prescribed and taken for things that they cannot possibly help with. They are huge disruptors of healthy gut flora...and are used to help fatten up livestock. They should only be used in serious situations that our bodies cannot handle on their own. NSAIDS (pain relievers) are frequently used for anything and everything, but how many people read the warnings on the labels? They damage the walls of our intestines. Antacids are another harmful "helper". We eat food (usually high in lectins) that causes indigestion, and spend the rest of the day fighting it with Tums, or Ranitidine, or Prilosec, or Zantec. These medicines reduce stomach acid...the one thing that is trying to save your gut. Stomach acid is a tool our bodies use to neutralize bad bacteria in our gut. When the bad bacteria gets the upperhand, we run into even more gut issues and illness. People who use acid blockers have three times the likelihood of getting pneumonia.

Is it doable? The Plant Paradox Program is broken up into three phases, claiming that within six weeks' time you can be reaping the rewards of a healthy gut. It sounds like the perfect Lenten regime, though I probably shouldn't wait that long to actually do it. After that you can add some lectins back into your diet (TOMATOES!) in small amounts, with the skins and seeds removed.

Is it affordable? I have to say, with the amount of food you are asked to cut completely out of your diet, yes. Many of those foods I've already eliminated from my weekly diet (save for Sundays) because of their high calories/high carb count. 

If you've stuck with me till now during this information overload, I'm guessing you've had stomach or other health issues and would like to find a real solution. If you're like me, you've already heard a little about many of these things and had suspicions that something was just not right in what we've been told about health food. It is still overwhelming, nonetheless. I'm at the point of reinventing how I think about food, and easing into this slowly. My will is balking at giving up my favorite foods...even if they are killing me.

My stats for the past month (It's been a month already!):

What I've lost:

71 LBS total since April 26, 2017 (one day before giving birth to Adeline)
52 LBS of that total since January 1, 2018
11 LBS since August 30, 2018

...And More Books

I've tried. The pull is magnetic. I see a row of titled spines and my my breath catches in my throat. My pulse quickens. I spy a book sale and my heart palpitates. I know I have issues.

I've compromised by only allowing myself books in thrift stores or libraries, not from new book stores. But then there's Amazon--with one click I can have a new read (even used!) tagging along with whatever necessity it was I needed and on my doorstep in a couple days--and Kindle, and Audible. The fact that we are completely out of shelf space has done little to curb my book hoarding issue. Not to mention the sheer amount of time it will take to read everything I've collected. I imagine some day having so much free time that I will be able to devour books at leisure, with each page offering new and exciting possibilities. As Aidan would say, "It smells like adventure in here!" I try not to think of the fact that I have children who won't be "done" being homeschooled until I am 53. FIFTY-THREE.

When we moved two years ago I rearranged my bookshelves according to priority, and found that somehow three boxes of books no longer had shelf space. Mostly paperback novels, the "junk food" of my literary collection, they remain in our attic room until the day we build a whole wall of built-in bookshelves in the dining room. *Here insert starry-eyed gaze into the ether.

Just imagine, shelves spanning the entire far wall, floor to ceiling, surrounding the window, with a pillow-smothered bench built in below the window.

It's been three years since I introduced you all to my bookshelves in this post, Books, Books, Books, and true to my prediction, the walls of our "new house" have become lined with mismatching bookshelves yet again. It's just not home without a gazillion books, a billion house plants, and a dog curled under a blanket.

The main bookshelves in the dining room: the first, for my collection of antique and vintage books, fantasy and myth, classics, and hobby/interests; the second, for religious, novels, the rest of the classics, photo albums, and baby books.

My side of the couch in the living room with the children's read-aloud shelf and my new stack of library discards I just bought that need a shelf to call home (and earbuds and phone charger for Audible).

School bookshelf, and some of the new library discards that need to be squeezed onto the shelves.

Top baskets for currently reading and library books, newspapers I need to read, readers, book report books, saint stories, and middle-grade books.

Cookbook shelf in the kitchen

Addie's bookshelf waiting to be filled in the coming years (she's got a start!); Aidan's bookshelf that never has all his books in it (there are piles scattered around his bed) and doubles as a "treasure" hoarding cabinet.

The shelf in Gavin/Ian's room (which doubles as the playroom) and is also missing many of it's books, scattered elsewhere throughout the room.

I read about a new method of picking out books on a blog somewhere a couple years ago. The post reviewed ten books (or so) that the author picked out simply by reading the first line of the book. Her theory was that the first line of a book could make or break a book, and therefore would be a good meter to judge by. In testing the theory, you weren't allowed to make a judgment based on the book's cover art, and were not allowed to read the plot summary on the back or dust jacket.

I'm often rushed when picking up new titles, and I'll admit I often choose books simply because of the attractiveness or intrigue of the cover. So I decided to try out the first-line-of-a-book-gauging theory for myself. Apparently there are more books which intrigue me with their first line than those that snare me with "first-cover-glance". Normally I can escape the thrift store with two or three new books. This was the result of First-Line Book Shopping:

I did pick up a couple books from my favorites, or other recognized authors, but the main goals here were to both test the "first-line-as-a-gauge" theory, and also to broaden my reading horizons. I often fall into the rut of only reading works that are classics or by my favorite authors. Among the books I found were a hardcover copy of "Lord of the Rings" to replace my paperback, an extra copy of "Aesop's Fables"(the read-aloud for unit 8 of our history), and "Stellaluna", along with a couple other children's books. It took me a very long while to read all the books I picked up during this particular trip. I even forgot about this experiment for a time, but I think I finally made it through the stack!

The Books and Their First Lines

• One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus

"I leave this record for my dear children, Hortense and William, in the event that they never see their loving mother again and so that they might one day know the truth of my unjust incarceration, my escape from Hell, and into whatever is to come in these pages..."

The first line promises adventure, and yet, this book is one of the reasons why I don't often branch out into unfamiliar book territory. Life is so short, and there are so many bad or sub-par books out there. My OCD makes it very difficult to leave a book unfinished, and if I do I have a nagging sense of anxiety that I left something important unfinished. This story was supposed to be the journal of a pioneer woman belonging to the "Brides for Indians" program in the 1800's...written by a man, and very poorly done. I had to skip over certain crude parts that I did not care to read.
👎 First-Line-Gauge: inaccurate

• The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom

"There was a strong smell of smoke, and new fear fueled me." (I confess, had to read more....) "Now on the familiar path, I raced ahead, unmindful of my daughter behind me, trying to keep up."

The first line had me impulsively skipping to the second line to see what was next. I was pleasantly surprised by this book, though again, there were some parts that I skimmed over as I felt it went into a bit too much detail that I didn't care to read. This book was set in colonial times in the south and detailed the lives of slaves of the kitchen house. It told the story of not only abuses they suffered at the hands of their masters, but also kindnesses they were shown. This book kept me in suspense and was a literal roller coaster of emotion...definitely not a "feel good" read. It had me holding my breath and exclaiming out loud trying to tell the characters what to do--or what not to do.
👍 First-Line-Gauge: accurate

• The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler

"In a small room off a banquet hall in Montreal, Lily Kramer sat in silence with her new husband."

If I was to gauge this first line it would be mediocre, which was fitting for the book. Some books have so much potential, it's quite disappointing when they fall flat. I would have been much more disappointed had I known what this book was supposed to be beforehand. Refugees of war (WWII to be exact), concentration camps, the mystery of a woman who built a life (and then abandoned it) on an identity she stole to escape her war-torn Poland...this book had it all, but bombed anyway. It wasn't bad enough to quit reading, but did not earn a permanent space on my shelf. A slow read, no build up to an exciting moment, no plot twist, and Jewish main characters I had very little in common with: this book was re-thrifted on finishing.
👎 First-Line-Gauge: accurate

• The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian

"Pamela Buchanan Marshfield saw the ad the homeless shelter in Vermont had placed in the newspaper before her attorney did."

What in the world could a homeless shelter and an attorney have in common? I made the mistake of missing that this book had a Prologue in reading this first sentence. It would have been enough to keep me from actually buying the book, and in the end proclaimed this the last of Chris Bohjalian's books that I would ever read. I recognized his name from the book "Midwives" I read a few years ago, and hoped that this book would not contain the crudeness the other did since it was on different subject matter. But it did, which again left certain spots that I skipped over. It seems to be an unfortunate theme among modern books. Besides the obvious issues, I found myself correcting grammatical errors in the text (have the rules of grammar changed in the last 20 years? How did this book pass editing?) and rewriting boggling sentences in my mind. Mr. Bohjalian dipped a little into religious topics a couple times, and made it obvious that he didn't have a clue what certain terms meant or how to use them. Very poorly written. Not surprisingly, since I read (and trashed) this book it's one I now often see on thrift store shelves.
👎 First-Line-Gauge: inaccurate

• Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks

"He is coming on the Lord's Day." 

I did not choose this book for the riveting first line, but to test the theory backwards: does a boring, unimaginative first line mean a boring book? Set in Martha's Vineyard before it was Martha's Vineyard in 1665, this story tells the tale of the first settlers there, their relationship with the local Indians, and the first Indian School. The story branched out of research the author had done into the history of the area. I was so excited I happened upon another historical novel by accident! At first hard to get into because I was jumping into the book blind, it soon had me hooked, and turned into a good read. This is one I never would have picked up because of the cover or the first line, but I'm glad I did!
👍 First-Line-Gauge: inaccurate

• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

"Old Henry Lee stood transfixed by all the commotion at the Panama Hotel."

Not exactly a gripping first line, but intriguing nonetheless. This story was hard for me to get into at first, but I'm glad I stuck with it. It told the story of two Japanese children, good friends, who were separated during the Japanese internment during World War II, with their story beginning in the twilight of their lives. I felt like the book ended too soon with so much of the story yet untold. It left me feeling reminiscent and a little sad like a cold drizzly day. While being overall a good read, there were a couple apparent historical inaccuracies I caught: one, that CD's were popular in 1986, and implications that a computer was used the same year to find someone.
👍 First-Line-Gauge: accurate

• The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield

"John Moses couldn't have chosen a worse day, or a worse way to die, if he'd planned it for a lifetime."

One of the best first lines I've ever read, this book proved to be just as good. I fell into this story and became emotionally caught up in the life of the Lake family, rejoicing with them over small victories and feeling sorrow over their trials, complete with gasp-out-loud moments and verbal exclamations at the unsavory characters I wanted desperately to intervene with. Set in the 1950's in rural Arkansas, a family reunion is darkened by a family tragedy and becomes the springboard for the events to follow; namely, how Samuel Lake, a traveling preacher, loses his employment and the repercussions all this has for his family. I plan to read this book again down the road.
👍 First-Line-Gauge: accurate

• Cane River by Lolita Tademy

"My great-grandmother Emily died in bed at her Louisiana home at the end of the summer of 1936, with $1,300 in cash hidden under her mattress."

There are so many stories of slavery that come out of the south, and this is one of the best (albeit tragic) that I've read. The author wove the tale of her ancestors into an intriguing account of what life was like for her grandmothers in pre-Civil War Louisiana. My heart ached, and I was repulsed by so many of the things that were just part of life for them.
👍 First-Line-Gauge: accurate

• Losing Battles by Eudora Welty

"When the rooster crowed, the moon had still not left the world but was going down on flushed cheek, one day short of the full."

I tried to read this book several times, and each time upon starting I just could not get into it. It seemed all over the place, manic, disorganized, using dialogue understood better by natives of Mississippi. I started it around the time of my last miscarriage, and my brain was not where it usually is. Sitting down here to peruse it better, it appears to be a complex, multi-layered story full of humor about a family reunion. It also has some good reviews going for it, so this may be one I need to revisit. For now I'm going with my first impression.
👎

• Wedding Pictures by Jacqueline Carey

"KIP: I adore your sister. We had a great time when she was in New York."

Again, I ventured out of my comfort zone with this novel, hoping for a surprise, but with a disappointing conclusion. The book is satire, supposed to be funny, and is written like a play. Totally not my style, which the first line did forewarn. I didn't even finish it.
👎 First-Line-Gauge: accurate

In conclusion, I found the theory that the first line of a book will make or break a book generally held true. It was far from a hard and fast rule, however, and while this was a fun theory to test, I'm going back to my old-standard method of choosing books: study the cover, read the plot summary, and then read the first few sentences before thumbing through the pages.

Scale Sunday: Week 4

You may have noticed something a little different around here. I decided to modify the name of my blog a little. Hopefully this won't cause any issues in finding it.

Today is super busy, so I must type fast. It's my Grandpa's 95th birthday and we need to leave by 11:00 this morning for his birthday party. Immediately after we have to run home and change, and head back out for Mass. So I spent yesterday afternoon baking multiple batches of cookies for it, and I didn't have a crumb! Woohoo! I usually can't make it through the first batch hot out of the oven without taste testing a couple. It did help that it was an Ember day (day of fasting and partial abstinence in the Catholic Church).

My Grandpa and Grandma Langreck with their brood, plus first grandchild (Grandpa is holding him). My Mom is the pretty young lady with the glasses to the left of my Grandma.

I pushed myself harder this week. This is when the real frustration kicks in: when I push, and fight, and tell myself no repeatedly, and run daily, and I don't drop a pound. It's also when I learn the most about myself, and all the illusions fall away. I saw clearly why I'm doing all this, and I realized in a way I've been expecting instant gratification. I understand there are good things happening to my body as I discipline it. But I can't see them. I tell myself it's for my health, to feel better, to be able to do all that I need to do as mama, teacher, nurse. And it is--but mostly for the way it makes me feel. I want to feel comfortable in my own skin. To not feel embarrassed by the way I look when I run into someone I know in the store. While I know most people probably feel that way just a little, I can't help feeling like it's vanity. So I go back to work on the mental aspect of this change, throwing out thoughts of what society sees and thinks, and work on loving the body God gave me, and being thankful for all that. After all, this body is a vehicle to get through this life and nothing here will stay the same.

There is something I stumbled across that I started researching this past week. It's something I feel will make a world of difference, and I want to share with you all.

I mentioned at the beginning of this leg of my journey that I had experienced a lot of gut issues, and some people had suggested I may have a leaky gut. The Gaps diet was also suggested as a way to heal my gut. That thought has been in the back of my mind this whole time, but when you research the Gaps diet, it's pretty rigorous. I'm not sure how sustainable that would be for me at this time in my life. In most diets one thing usually rises to the top as "the bad guy", such as carbs, or calories, or fat--despite most of us knowing it's a combination of things. Last week an ad popped up on my Instagram feed with a video of a doctor talking about his research into the correlation between health issues, weight-loss, and your diet. A lot of it clicked for me. I'll try to summarize what I got out of all this in the short time I've had to look into it.

The doctor is Steven Gundry, formerly a top cardiothoracic surgeon in the Unites States. Once 70 pounds overweight despite being on a vegan diet and working out regularly, he set out to find out why what should have been working wasn't. Dr. Gundry does some major name dropping in his pitch, including the singer, Usher, and life coach Tony Robbins--which automatically made me skeptical. I'm not the type of person who buys beef from the trunk of a travelling salesman just because he has a list of all our neighbors who have. As I listened to him go on detailing his research, I started to do some of my own: fact checking, reviews, testimonials, and actual medical studies. It appeared his theories on diet carried some weight. I was still skeptical, thinking that he would eventually ask me to buy his "life changing book" or "join my diet club today for the low price of $____" just to learn what the simple thing is that he found he needed to eliminate from his diet. I was wrong again! He explained his findings in this video. Of course, he also markets his own supplements and books...it would probably be even fishier if he wasn't making money off of this somehow.

Basically, certain foods we eat contain little proteins called lectins. Studies have linked lectins to inflammation which causes heart disease, cancer, depression, and autoimmune diseases such as celiac disease (which my Grandpa Mahoney had), diabetes, and rheumatoid arthritis. They have been found to cause red blood cells to clump together, and are considered antinutrients because they can block your body's absorption of other nutrients. As with most things in this world, lectins are also beneficial in certain ways. But it's how we use these things that determines good or bad results.

Dr. Gundry explains that lectins have the ability to destroy the lining of your GI tract, creating tiny holes that allow endotoxins, or bacteria (waste) to leak out (leaky gut). This bacteria is then free to spread through your body. If it enters your joints you get joint pain and inflammation. If it enters your upper GI tract it causes heart burn and indigestion. If it enters your blood stream you get sepsis. This bacteria is fought by your body in the same way that viruses are, which leaves your brain on "threat level red" the whole time. Your body can fight bacteria successfully for a while, but eventually it wears out. You are left with headaches, brain fog, fatigue, and illness. Most medications simply mask symptoms without ever healing the problem. Changing your diet can heal a leaky gut and reverse many health issues.

If you're like me, you've wondered why are so many people getting sick from gluten? Is it a scam? A health fad? I never thought it was a fad, but maybe some people were getting paranoid for no reason? Are we just learning it's bad and causing these health issues, or is there something different in the kind of food we're eating now? Why is there so much conflicting news about what we should and shouldn't eat? Dr. Gundry does a little explaining about the history of food. How tomatoes and eggplants weren't part of human diets until Columbus brought them back from the New World. How brown bread and whole wheat foods gained popularity in the 1950's, while until then the brown husks had been removed before using, and how gluten-related illnesses increased from there. So what ingestibles contain lectins? He mentioned a few:

• Gluten (obviously)
• tomatoes (*gasp*)
• beans
• whole grain wheat
• eggplants
• antacids
• OTC pain killers

I started asking myself some serious questions: can I live without tomatoes? Once you heal your gut, can you occasionally eat things that contain lectins? How sustainable is this diet? How expensive is this going to get? And mostly, can I keep on living like I have been, constantly fighting feeling sick because of something I ate? I had to do more research. And so, calling myself a sucker, I headed on over to Amazon, and ordered Dr. Gundry's book, "The Plant Paradox Cookbook". The majority of the reviews were favorable, and mentioned that the beginning of the cookbook contained a good description/explanation of the diet instead of buying his other book ("The Plant Paradox") as well.

This is currently the stage I'm at with all this. Looking at the recipes will shed a lot of light on how sustainable and affordable all this will be. But, for someone who has a lot of autoimmune and other health issues (like my husband, who I hope to drag on board with some of this) I can't imagine it could be worse than the pharmacopoeia of drugs it takes to keep on kicking every day.

Beef and Broccoli Lo Mein

I hopped on the computer early this morning to get a nice, thoughtful post published today, but alas, I underestimated the extent of my ambitions. I leave you, therefore, with another food post. Who doesn't love food, though?

It's a pet peeve of mine that some bloggers make you read pages and pages of ooing and aahing about their dishes before they finally get to the nitty gritty of the recipe. So: this meal is delicious, easy, and the next best thing to calling up the Lucky Bamboo and running out 10 minutes later to pick up an aromatic brown bag of American Chinese goodness. 

Beef and Broccoli Lo Mein

Ingredients

(will probably feed a family of five...we needed to double it!)

8 oz. lo mein or spaghetti noodles

3 cups broccoli florets

1 Tbsp. olive oil

8 oz. flank steak, sliced against the grain

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 medium carrot, shredded

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup soy sauce

2 Tbsp. hoisin sauce

2 tsp. sesame oil

1/4 tsp. ground ginger

1/4 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes

1/4 tsp. pepper

Instructions

Boil noodles in a large pot. Add broccoli to the boiling water during the last five minutes of cooking until broccoli is tender. Drain the noodles and broccoli.

While the pasta is cooking, add olive oil to a skillet. Cook steak until no longer pink. Add the carrots and garlic, and cook for a minute more.

In a small bowl, whisk together the brown sugar, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, ginger, red pepper flakes, and pepper to make the sauce.

Add noodles and broccoli to the skillet and pour the sauce over. Toss with tongs until all is incorporated. (The story of my life: I always need a bigger skillet!)

Enjoy!

Aidan and Liam's Bedroom Makeover

Slowly, room by room, we are getting this old house fixed up how we like it. It's been two years this summer since we bought it, and I have to say, we've accomplished quite a bit. Of course, I wish we could just do it all at once and be done with it, but our budget and free time won't allow for that. We might get done just in time for kids to move out and to start all over again undoing their rooms. But that's a terrifying thought, so I'll just quit there. 

Last summer when the two big boys went to camp, we received a heart-wrenching letter from Aidan about how much he missed home and how he wasn't fitting in with the other boys. As a parent you want things to always be okay for your kids, but that's obviously not how the world works, and not at all how they learn to deal with things. So, instead of hopping in a vehicle and racing 200+ miles to go pick him up like my mama bear's heart urged me to, I decided to do something nice for him as a surprise when he got home. He had been asking me to paint his room for so long I finally decided to do it.

The first time we saw this room while viewing the house, Aidan picked it as his own. As you can see, it boasted lovely striped carpeting in various shades of green. The room lies over the southeast corner of the kitchen, and is very much a "morning room" as it gets the full force of the sun in the mornings. I have no doubt Aidan picked the room because it contains the door onto the upper porch. The room also shares a walk-through closet with the neighboring bedroom, which immediately took away the option as a master bedroom for me. Since the boys generally end up sharing all their clothes, it made sense that those two rooms would be theirs. So the porch door was padlocked shut for safety, and it was declared Aidan's room, with a younger brother bunk-mate to be decided. The younger brother was initially Ian, but Liam's and Aidan's personalities ended up being more alike, thus resulting in a more peaceful set of roomies.

After we closed on the house, my Mom and my sister-in-law, Carly, came to help scrub it from top to bottom. I decided to rip up the ugly green carpet last minute, and Carly was a dear and humored me...she dove right in and helped me roll it up and dump it over the porch railing. The floor underneath was the norm for this house: painted soft wood, which we gave a good scrubbing.

After we moved in I ordered a few things for the walls from Hobby Lobby. Aidan loves baseball and Peanuts. This was pretty much how the room looked until July 2017 when I decided to do the surprise makeover.

Aidan had talked a lot before how he wanted a blue and yellow room, so the littles and I took a trip to Wal-Mart to pick up a couple gallons of paint. Their ColorPlace brand in satin finish is my go-to paint, cheaper than most, and durable.

This is how it turned out! The blue is called Brittany Inn, the yellow is Lemon Ice (and is the same color I used in the front porch). The curtains were Liam approved, and were about $5 a panel at Wal-Mart, so $20 for both windows. I threw out the dusty, sticky yellow mini blinds that were in the windows and replaced them with new (less than $4 a set), installed inside the window trim rather than over it like before. Along the wall on the left there is now a large Minecraft poster, but Aidan wants me to paint a space-themed mural there. We'll see if I ever get around to that one. Liam is simply happy if he has a play sword to fall asleep with, and seems to care less what his surroundings look like. He is my minimalist child.

A few things have been rearranged since this photo was taken. That little blue bookcase was repainted white and gray and rehomed in Addie's room. The cedar chest now sits where the bookcase was, opening up room to walk around the trundle bed that Aidan sleeps on. It rolls under the double bed, but generally stays out most the time. We added Liam's name to the wall and hung the poster Aidan got for his birthday. 

Aidan has had his share of mental struggles, and it helps him to have visual comforts while he falls asleep. I gave him my collection of framed holy cards from when I was in high school, and ordered him a nice, larger, colored crucifix overlooking the bedroom. 

The last step of the bedroom makeover will be the floors, but there is no time frame or decisions made regarding those yet. Since this room accesses outdoors I don't want to replace it with new carpet. So we have yet to decide on a durable hard floor that fits within our budget. I would just paint the floor, but there are sections of boards that are not in great condition, and painting a floor is so much work without being a permanent fix. I'll be sure to update when we get this figured out.

Scale Sunday: Week 3

This week has been the best yet in terms of will power. Like I said before, if I can just keep in mind that it gets so much better, all the cravings are manageable. It helps to tell myself that I can have whatever it is that sounds so good to me, but I have to wait until _______ time (insert a splurge day, or earlier the next day, or another appropriate time). I find when I do that, often the craving has disappeared or my will power has returned in full force and I can hold off having a treat even longer. I've succeeded in completely eliminating the middle-of-the-night binges by telling myself I can have whatever treat it is I want for breakfast. By breakfast, I could care less.

I've also reworked my strategy about splurge days. If you followed along during the first leg of this year's healthful living journey, during which I lost 48 pounds, you were witness to what my weekends became. Toward the end they were nothing but a binge on everything that I had craved during the week, which left me scrambling all week long to recover from and make up for it. It does no good for your will power to completely disregard it for any length of time. This time the things I'm allowing myself on Sundays have been thoughtful indulgences, still reigned in by moderation. Monday morning and the scale has been thanking me.

This sandwich was last Sunday's indulgence, along with a couple handfuls of my favorite "chips": Fritos Honey BBQ twists. (There has been a bag and a half of them in the pantry for the last two weeks, you guys! They rarely last a couple days, normally!) The sandwich was built of honey walnut bread, oven-roasted turkey sprinkled with garlic pepper, cheese, and lettuce, with (unmeasured!) mayo and southwest mustard. It was the best thing I had tasted in a long time, and didn't trigger an ounce of guilt.

I had a test this week when friends and fellow homeschoolers came to visit mid-week. My dear friend works in a cupcake shop (how did I get so lucky?!) and brought two boxes of cupcakes to share. I also made tacos for lunch...another favorite of mine. In times past this would have been a major stumbling block for me, after which I would have had to give myself a "brush-yourself-off-and-get-back-on-the-wagon" speech. I allowed myself two tacos and one cupcake, something I had firmly decided beforehand. Setting my allowances mentally took away the tendency I have to overthink my food choices, and reason a way into having "just one more". If I am this ruthless with my children when I say no, for their own good, I should definitely be with myself as well. The old adage "practice what you preach" comes to mind here. The other box of cupcakes that we didn't touch has remained unscathed in the freezer until today. I will share, and I'll limit myself again, even though it is "splurge day".

I did a little quick math, and I determined that if I keep up with the trend of losing two pounds a week, I'll be in line to lose 24 pounds by Thanksgiving. Not quite at the goal I had set, but close. I have one pound to lose to get back to my lowest weight this year.

Scale Sunday: Week 2

Sometimes I sit and imagine what my system would be saying if it had a voice. I suppose my own is as close as it gets, and it'd probably sound something like this:

"Nooooo! We're staaaaaarrrrrrrrvvvving! There's a gram of fat, grab that. A carb! Stash it some place special! Huuuunnnnngggrrrrryyyy."

"Oooo nevermind. Mmmm chocolate. Mmmm more chocolate. Uuuuuhhh so much chocolate. This isn't right. Bad bad bad! What do we do with it all?! Aaaaah!"

I could've saved all that and just written how confused it must be, but you would've missed all the fun of dramatization. You're welcome!

I'm still stuck in the stage of impulsive cramming, but it's getting better. Aidan made brownies last week...thick, chewy-around-the-edge and gooey in the middle brownies. One of the worst things to have around when I'm trying to build better habits. When he asked to make them I said yes because he loves to bake, and all of them love to eat. I think next time I'll try to compromise with carrot and apple muffins.

I have found that sipping on a hot drink in the evenings helps curb my end-of-the-day desire to graze. Vanilla chai tea with a little creamer is my go-to drink, but it has just enough caffeine in it to keep me from sleeping well. I'll have to try to find a suitable caffeine-free alternative.

I found a new tool that I'm excited to share with you! I've said before that I don't like using apps to track my health because it takes longer to log something on my phone than to just jot it down in my food journal. This app has changed that! MyFitnessPal had way too many ads and articles attached to it, and wasn't very easy for me to navigate. Maybe it was me subconsciously rebelling against what everyone else was doing? I don't know. At any rate, I still had to look up calories of foods for my journal whenever I didn't have them memorized. It's also quicker because I don't have to do math before I eat again. My time: 1; mental math skills: 0. One of the things I looked up the other day had an add for Nutritionix Track, which was advertised as a "free calorie calculator" so I decided to try it. It is so much more!

It's a lot like MyFitnessPal wherein you add the exact foods you ate that are already in their database, or you can create a custom food to add. Similarly, it tracks saturated and total fat consumed, cholesterol, sodium, carbs, sugars, fiber, protein, and vitamins and minerals in the daily summary. I love charts and graphs, and the pie chart at the bottom paints a pretty clear picture where most my calories are going. Carbs. Darn you, Betty Crocker. This is going to be a game changer for me in balancing my nutritional needs, and it appeals to my competitive nature. I'm going to beat the me from yesterday!

On the dashboard page I can see, much like in my food journal, the rundown of what I've eaten. Not only that, I can track how much water I drank. I often forget where I'm at on ounces, and this helps remind me to grab another drink. At the top of the dashboard page is a colored bar measuring where you're at in your daily caloric intake, telling how many calories you've consumed and how many you have left. The number in the middle tracks calories burned (and adds that amount to the calories you have left for the day). Exercise is also tracked on the dashboard page. If you go over your goal (which you determine) the line turns red. Your weigh-in is also on the dashboard.

In your preferences tab you set your age, height, weight, and sex, and whether you want to lose or maintain your weight. From there it suggests a daily caloric goal for you to accomplish that. There you can also connect a Fitbit to the app. (All you MyFitnessPal groupies are probably rolling yours eyes at me about now. I see you, it's ok. I've never claimed to be tech savvy...or even in tune with any of it!)

The stats tab tracks how many days a month you've kept on top of your diet, % of days greens were eaten, and a weight graph so you can see your progress.

One of the most refreshing things about Track: there's none of the "Stage 2 Obese" or "Morbidly Obese" categorizing. I'm a pretty solid person and I have never fit into the suggested weight ranges for my 5'1" frame, even at my fittest. I appreciate not being shamed for the way God made me!

Around the Yard Lately: Part II

The last "Around the Yard" post was pretty barren of blooms. The lilacs had just gone out and the irises were just about to break open. Here are some of the flowers we enjoyed over the summer.

Blooms

grape irises

daylilies

clematis jackmanii

onion blossom

peonies

calla lilies, daylilies, forever plant (white variegated sedum), ferns, and hosta leaves

begonias

endless summer hydrangeas

phlox 

The phlox never fail to take me home. These are from the bed my Mom keeps.

It was heavenly sitting in the front porch this summer with the scent of the phlox drifting in the window.

as of yet unidentified flowering bush

lovely fall mums, a gift from my mother-in-law

 autumn joy serum, a bee, and a cabbage white butterfly (pieris rapae)

sunflowers

The vines covering the bit of fence on the tree are scarlet runner beans. Again this summer my picket fence flower bed failed me! The sunflowers I planted behind the fence have done great, but the three packets of wildflower seeds I planted did not grow, save for a few scraggly bachelor buttons. I planted a bunch of poppy seed I saved from the old house, which came up in a nice thick line...only to be mowed off. For two years now I've been unable to get poppies to grow. That bushiness to the right is our new thriving aparagus bed! 

scarlet runner beans

The Garden/Produce

The garden was marginally better this year than last. I mostly stayed ahead of the grass and weeds, so we didn't lose any onions at least. They still only grew between ping pong ball and tennis ball sized. I had all the lettuce I wanted to eat in June, but the spinach did well for only a short time. Radishes were big and flavorful, but they go so fast  Despite fertilizing, on average the produce was lackluster. Blight took over the tomatoes early, and our efforts to stop it were futile. We got enough to eat, but still will be moving our tomatoes to a different location next year to try to avoid blight. Cucumbers were amazing and produced bowls and bowls worth until they started turning brown about a month ago. Their proximity to the tomatoes makes me think they may have contracted blight as well. The zucchini did well, though stem borers took one plant down. Sprinkling the other zucchini and the squash with diatomaceous earth seemed to stop the borers. Ironically enough, I learned this year that those pretty little white moths that I hope for and usually find flitting among the garden in late summer are what stem borers turn into! Our peppers (green and orange bell and jalapeno) grew tall (higher than my waist!) and bushy, but didn't grow peppers until mid-August. My green beans couldn't make up their minds either and quit blooming a couple different times. We got enough for several meals, to share with the elderly neighbor lady, and for half a dozen pints of pickled beans. And finally, kohlrabi didn't form bulbs until late July.

After the first major weeding I laid all the grass and weeds down in the rows to act as mulch. It wasn't pretty, but it worked. Very little of it rerooted itself.

The black landscaping fabric also worked wonders to keep weeds down between rows. Weeds did still find their way into every hole and gap, and we might use black plastic next year.

In the midst of weeding

View from the school room window

Ian was my picking buddy this year. He'd call for me not to start without him, and was always so excited no matter what it was we got out of the garden. It was his job to take what I picked and put it in the big stainless steel bowl.

Before harvesting the onions. You can see the cucumbers on the far side fence starting to turn brown.

So much rain...we usually can't see the water in the creek from the house.

This is after cleaning the garden up recently. There will be one final pulling of everything once we harvest the squash, but until then the gardening is pretty much over for the year.

This is a composting box that Eli made out of old pallet boards and scrap wood. The front gate pulls up and locks with a peg so the compost can be scooped out of the bottom and onto the garden.

Kids Fun

A new addition to the yard just this month is a little hand-down playhouse for Addie (and Ian!) from their cousin, Allison. Our yard has been pretty bare in terms of child-entertainment, other than nature itself and the old sandbox, so this is a nice diversion for them. I keeps me from having to grab Addie from wandering off every 10 minutes. 

Addie with a backdrop of dead cucumbers

Liam also got a nest swing for his birthday August 4th. Despite big boys crashing into the tree a couple times, it's been a big hit.

You may remember a little red geranium I planted by one of the clothesline poles back in May. Well, we had no shortness of rain this year and it drowned. I did hang Addie's swing on the clothesline, which was all the cheer I needed while working. It is also extremely handy in keeping her out of the creek. 

This tom kitten/cat adopted us in July. The neighbors across the creek feed stray cats, and one of their regulars is a large tom cat we like to call "The Black Panther". Judging from looks, The Black Panther fathered this kitten, which Aidan named "Sly Cooper". Sly was a friendly beast, though often too affectionate and desperate to be a house cat. We had to sneak in and out of the house because he'd squeeze as quick as he could into the front porch to eat Mojo's food. Mojo was not happy with the whole situation and spent weeks perched on chair arms peering out windows for his nemesis. A couple kids walking by picked the super-friendly Sly up and took him home. This lasted only a few days until Sly found his way back here. After a 2 a.m. cat fight between Sly and The Black Panther, resulting in me chasing cats through the yard with a broom, we knew Sly definitely had to go. We were able to rehome Sly to a cattle farm with a lot of mouse-hunting opportunities.

The boys' stick teepee got an addition this summer, with plenty of branches falling in the yard to aid in the construction of another wall and a secret entrance. The cantaloupe and squash I planted around the boys' teepee all flooded out. I don't think they were getting enough sun anyway.

The line of debris in the grass is how far the creek comes up when it swells out of it's banks. The teepee is to the left.

Secret entrance to the teepee

Herbs

Herb bed this year: SUCCESS! It totally made up for the disappointing veggie garden. I was able to make about seven batches of pesto this year from my little forest of basil. I put basil on salads, in sandwiches, in all sorts is dishes. I ate so much cilantro I actually got tired of it. I let it go to seed, and harvested it as coriander. The dill seed I used in pickled beans and dilly bread, and harvested a bunch more to put in the spice cabinet. The dill "ferns" or weed were amazing in salads and in cooking. Katie made mint mojitos while she was here, and I plan to dry and save it for tea this winter. Same plan for the oregano...but not for tea, obviously.

Basil. oregano, lettuce, chives, and peppermint

Ian and Sly Cooper standing to measure the height of the basil during the second cutting.

Washing basil is a labor intensive process. My last batch of basil wasn't finished until 2 a.m. one night (and yes, ended in the breaking up of a cat fight).

Tomato, cucumber, and basil on buttered toast was one of my favorite lunches over the summer.

coriander

Vines and Shrines

The viny bean flowers I planted in the corner of the rock bed in front of the house drowned. One of the pussy willows there also died. I did not get any more rocks moved out of there. Ah well. The two main places I wanted the vines to thrive did. 

In June I got the willow whip trellis for the sweet pea hyacinths over Our Lady's shrine woven. The trellis is attached to the stumps by holes drilled into it and filled with Liquid Nails. It's hard to believe this was what it looked like in April.

Addie helped....

The vines pretty quickly started up the trellis, with a little guidance.

The calla lilies and petunias by the Sacred Heart shrine overlooking our garden and yard grew as I had hoped as well. The lilies made lovely, long-lasting additions to bouquets over the summer.

The honeysuckle teepee trellis for sweet pea hyacinths by the back garage worked well.

Flower Beds and Unfinished Projects

The view from the kitchen window. Can you see the basketball hiding in the weeds? I managed to get the field stone planter (formerly left of the shrine) demolished and debris hauled away

Exciting things are happening next door as well. The property has been sold, and multiple loads and massive dumpsters full of trash have been hauled away. We were told by the former owners that the brown house will be torn down soon, and possibly a small starter home put in it's place. This is good because it'll raise the value of our property...but worrisome because I value our privacy back here in this little corner of town. 

I succeeded in getting over half of this bed weeded. It's all growing back now. And I'm past caring at this point! A benefit of letting it go, I discovered a clematis jackmanii vine growing! I built a little trellis for it. Raspberries and grapes are also growing now.

I was going to put a herringbone walkway though the flower bed with bricks the boys hauled out of the creek. It hasn't happened yet.

Mulberries! I wanted to make pie or jam with them this year. Never happened. Maybe next year?

View from the dining room window. The morning glories vined up the yield sign nicely, but never bloomed.

The geranium in the box drowned, so I replaced it with daisies. We never got the screen door put on the dining room door onto the side porch, and are waiting until next year to put the little deck on the front of the house off the front porch. We did accomplish a lot around the yard this year, so there are no regrets. We celebrated two years here this summer, and I've decided to take an anniversary picture to note the changes we make through the years.