Good Morning and Happy Monday!

This week I am going to post a few pix from our trip to Kona last year. I am needing a vacation and looking at these helps me to at least REMEMBER that we once took a vacation!

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I love Mondays. It’s so nice to have such a clean start. I cooked a bunch of nice thick peppered bacon this morning. I am right now just wanting a bit of meat now and then, I am really not hungry at all. Last night I didn’t really even want dinner. Patrick handed me am Atkins bar last night around 8:30 and I ate it, not remembering that they really don’t agree with me (it’s been a long time since I ate one) and this morning I am paying for it. The artifical crap and the sugar alchohols are really BAD for IBD.

I made a huge batch of herbal iced tea (cherry berry flavor – Celestial seasonings I think).. I really like it and the blueberry one). I am staying away from even my Pellagrino for a few days.. no bubbles.

My energy is good. I am working on more painting in our bedroom. I can’t believe how slow it is going.

Patrick and I are planning a three day weekend to Sanibel hopefully in a couple of weeks. We found a little beach side motel (old Florida style) right on the beach that is pet friendly so I hope they have a room avail.

This weekend is ShrimpFest up at my sister’s. (Fernandina Beach). Patrick got Friday off. I REALLY am looking forward to getting away. I want to go on another long walk on the beach. ShrimpFest is fun..

All in all I am on an upswing. I am looking forward to the next two weeks and some time off!

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I also wanted to post about something I have been doing lately that is really helping, besides my CO and Fish oil and Krill oil.. I have been making my own "Sports Drinks"

This is what I do:

In a 1 Quart bottle or jar (I save large Poweraid Zero bottles) of water, mix in 1 pk 4C (you might want two packs if you like a strong flavor – these are splenda sweetened and can be found at Walmart by the Crystal Lite – they come in single serving packets) 1/8 teaspoon Morton salt substitute, 1/3 or so capsule coral calcium (I buy the ones that open so you can sprinkle the calcium in the drink), 1/8 teaspoon good quality sea salt (I use Celtic gray) and 1/8 teaspoon baking soda.

I drink 2 of these a day normally. I keep several in the fridge. My husband really likes them too. It sure beats drinking diet soda.

I used to have lots of issues with restless leg at night and muscle cramps occasionally. This REALLY has helped me.

Some meds can make you retain too much potassium so please talk to your Dr. if you suspect you are taking one.



Have a great week everyone!

I am so sick of freaking being fat…

OK.. this really does suck...
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Seriously. I really, REALLY am. I have this inkling I am truly not living my life. I feel like so much must be passing me by and NOW on top of being fat, I am sick? WTF!

I am trying to look at it as another way for me to be “guided” (yes I am very metaphysical). I wonder if I am so sad a person that it has taken me being really, horridly sick to truly kick me in the ass. What AM I suppposed to take from this?

I actually feel like I have really been doing my best, well MOST of the time. But in reality I have been “trying” to get this damn fat off for over 3 years. I am SICK AND FREAKING TIRED OF “pussy footing” around (for lack of a better term?). I feel like I am just watching my life sort of tick away.. sitting on the sidelines. Maybe I am just feeling sorry for myself right now. I need to get out and at least lay in the sun I think.

I might be a bit emotional because I am feeling like damn hell lately but what if I allowed myself to just never do it?. How in the hell am I going to feel a year from now if AGAIN I am in the same place. I keep thinking about that today.

I also have been wanting to just not eat.. even if I get hungry. Is it wrong to want to use a 5# weight loss that happened because I was sick to push me into losing more? It feels wrong.. like I am not taking care of myself but I WANT to get some more weight off.. I normally lose so slow. I know it's not healthy thinking though.

I am afraid I am going to go overboard and start to not eat, on purpose. I feel like my old disordered eating ways could come back to haunt me. I am afraid. I have these feelings in my mind like I should just “use this not wanting to eat” to push myself into losing a few more pounds. Whatever.

I have got to get a grip!

Summer is almost here and I wanted more than anything to be comfortable in at least a pair of shorts. I really did. Why am I feeling so depressed? It’s really not like me actually. I promise to have a better attitude tomorrow!

A bit down.. but not out.

This IBD flare has really got me down. I WANT to say I am totally better. This seems to be hanging on a long time, longer than it has in the past.

I do feel better and can notice a little improvement each day.. I’ve been In bed for over a week, really have not been able to do much. Feeling better the last couple of days. Just eating meat and egg right now. So far pain is about 50% gone. Had a good bit of pain this morning but it's passed. I am eating next to nothing really so I can't understand.

I've lots of good salmon in the freezer (just ended up buying it at WF). Also had some new fish called Corvina I have never had, last night. Wow it is GOOD. Patrick ate most of it for me. I really don't have an appetite at all.

Taking mega doses of Omegas (krill and fish oil) and a couple T of CO a day. Have a couple of other ideas of natural ways to control inflammation but want to try a few things at a time only.

I am adding a couple of veggies this week to see how I do (doing sort of mono meals). I have read veggies have to be cooked beyond recognition. Adding green beans first.

It's pretty boring.. but I guess I just don’t care. Food really does not sound like the end all be all to me right now anyway. Talking with my sister Stacy allot more lately about her life with Crohn’s. She has helped greatly. So have a few friends from LCF. I love you guys so much!

My nausea is totally gone. I've lost several pounds (of course not in a good way). I remember how skinny my sister got when she was going thru bad flares. She always used to say "It's tempting to just not eat".. now I know why.

Thank you Tiff for continuing to stay in touch.. it does my heart good to hear from you! and Fawn thanks for the ideas and support darling. You are an amazing woman with so much to teach.

Tonight is chicken breast with some avo. I love avo so I am really looking forward to it.

I have not had anything fizzy in almost two weeks.. tea and water only. I am dying for a diet soda. No really! I would kill something for one right now but I KNOW I can’t.. so I won’t.. damn it.

All in all I am encouraged.

Some Spring Painting...

Life is crazy this week. Well what makes this week any different, I sometimes feel my life is totally out of control anyway! I am painting our bedroom and it’s turned out to be a much bigger job than I thought! I am loving it though. I am doing a red wall an “old gold” treatment wall (metallic) and a couple of marigold walls and the ceiling is marigold.

The red is taking 3 coats.. apparently I should have used a tinted primer. Live and learn I guess! It's the red wall that started it all *smile*.. wanted a sexy bold bedroom...

The ceiling was HARD! It’s a popcorn ceiling and I did three coats and it still needs touching up here and there. I am in LOVE with the gold wall. I chose the wall that the sun hits in the AM.. it’s got a not so subtle gleam!

A few pix:


This is the red and part of the marigold wall and ceiling. The red is darker than it looks.. it's a brownish red.. deep and dark!


I had a very hard time deciding what color to do the doors and trim.. decided on the marigold. What do you think?

This is the gold wall on the left. With a marigold wall and ceiling. The gold wall turned out great.. four freaking coats though - If you are interested it is Valspar Brilliant Metals. When the sun hits it, it is glorious!


A close up of the gold wall, I think the marigold trim will be great.


and a closeup of the gold wall.. I couldn't get a good pix really.

Hope to get it finished this weekend. We have a window treatment coming.. wooden wide vertical blinds in cherry wood.. Got to get some new furniture too.. got our bed, this is a pix of the bed (from the showroom):

It's more cherry than the pix appears. It's going on the red wall *smile*.

I am still trying to decide on bed side tables.. I love these:


But I am still looking!

Well got to get back to work.

Oh.. doing well on LC..

It's Sunday.. and my mind is racing...

Today I have so much going thru my mind. My focus right now is taking care of my liver while also working back up to high fat (already back to low carb.)

It seems to be a contradiction to me or at least it used to. Now I know your liver can be helped with low carb – even with LOTS of fat in your diet.

I have slowly raised my fat over the last two days. So far so good. I want to do another liver/gall cleanse soon. I think the fact that it is Springtime urges me to do it. My body always wants to do it in the Spring. I feel sluggish, bloated and well… fat! There are times I don’t feel this way. LC is good for making me feel more lean even though I am still very much overweight. I feel more defined.. Hope that feeling comes back soon!

Tonight for dinner is Tiffany’s Pesto Salmon:

Pesto Salmon
You'll need:
 one piece of raw salmon per person
 a jar or tub of pesto
Broil or grill the salmon on one side only. If your fish has skin on one side, put this side up first. When done on the first side, turn the fish over, smear pesto all over the uncooked side, and continue grilling or broiling until done on this side. That's it!

Here is her site again!:
http://www.deliciously-thin.com/low-carb-seafood-recipes.html

I love this because I have some great wild caught salmon in from Whole Foods and also several batches of homemade Pesto in the freezer. This is such a wonderful simple meal. When you have excellent ingredients a simple meal is perfection. I think I am making my roasted balsamic asparagus for the side.

YUM!
Tiffany, thanks for the great idea! Love you girl!

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I am craving fruit in the mornings still (changed to fruit before noon when I started having liver pain – but now I am back to Atkins) Surprised I am craving but I know it will pass. I would get some more strawberries right now but they are in perfect season and I am NOT sure I could control the portions on them! I think maybe the craving is just thirst. I am SO thirsty again.

Just having a nice double espresso with 2 T half n half. I love our epsresso machine! It’s a bit of an obsession.


(That's a pix of me my DH took a couple of days ago.. no makeup yet but I didn't care because he just brought me a GREAT cup of coffee!)

I have over 10 Davinci flavors (which is kind of low for us!) .. I use them in cooking as well as coffee PLUS last year I bought us a snow cone machine and several fruit flavors of the Davinci. My fav is mixing coconut and pineapple and a splash of cream on the ice. YUM.

Well my mind sure is wondering this morning. I love Sundays.

This next week I am aiming for 2# lost. I am going to make sure I walk EVERY day and go for at least 40min. It’s perfect weather here right now so no damned excuses. My boy Suki loves a good long walk.


(Suki when he was a baby! I need some new pix.. he's over a year old now.)


Also I am going to get back on my milk thistle and lemon juice regimen. I use fresh lemon juice and a couple of drops of stevia in a huge glass of pellagrino (yes it’s expensive but I gave up my Diet Cokes and this is what made it possible!) each morning. I had ran out of my milk thistle (for my liver) for a couple of weeks.

Also running low on my CO.. (coconut oil). I was just reading a post by my friend Fawn on LCF (low carb friends):

(Fawn is a personal health coach a Certified Nutrition Educator. She's helping SO many (including me).. you can find out more about here on her site "My Healthy Transition"")

http://myhealthytransition.com/

Her personal journey (with very motivational pix!) can be found here:
http://myhealthytransition.com/packages.html


On LCF she was talking about how the CO along with Cod Liver Oil (which I take both) about how the combo is good for your Thyroid. I sent her a PM asking about ratios. I wonder if I need to up either.. Right now I am taking 1T of both each day. And well, also using the CO occasionally in cooking .. I LOVE my veggies roasted in CO.. especially green beans.

I feel a renewed excitement. I will get this figured out!
Have an excellent upcoming week everyone!

Thats me holding a painting of moi that my mother did.. She's an incredible artist.
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Got back on LC yesterday at lunch and Wow.. down two pounds overnight, it kills me the way my body holds onto water weight.

I am making us shrimp scampi and roasted Brussel sprouts for dinner tonight.. I think I am doing my scampi like this:
Peel and marinate in a bit of olive oil with crushed garlic.. marinate for about a half hour. Heat 3T butter, add some chopped garlic, throw in shrimp, a little lemon juice and rind, dash of Worstershire and maybe a T of dark rum. This sounds so good to me! Going to roast the Brussels in some CO to go with.. OMG.. I love LC.



I was watching a recording of an Oprah show and she spoke about a new book "Women, Food and God".


I went to her site and read a bit from the book. An excerpt is here:

http://www.oprah.com/health/An-Excerpt-from-Geneen-Roths-Women-Food-And-God

I realize I am really tied up in dieting.. my entire world revolves around losing weight. I realize I don’t love or accept myself quite the way I should. I live in fear constantly. I don’t like to leave the house half the time because I have this image of myself that is WAY overboard fat - I imagine myself much worse than I really am, I DO need to lose a good amount of weight but I have an excessively horrid self image. I realize that my life is truly on hold. I have to get out of this mind set. Some excerpts from the book:

"As long as we see ourselves to be the child who was hurt by an unconscious (unavailable?) parent, we will never grow up. We will never know who we actually are. We will keep looking for the parent who never showed up and forget to see that the one who is looking is no longer a child." "Women, Food and God" by Geneen Roth

I realize I don’t allow myself to feel much of anything. I am the queen of pretending. I live in my own world most of the time. I certainly gloss over reality and don’t even allow myself to feel good feelings sometimes, afraid I will just feel them and then something bad will happen, like the other shoe drop.

More excerpt from the book:

“The bottom line, whether you weigh 340 pounds or 150 pounds, is that when you eat when you are not hungry, you are using food as a drug, grappling with boredom or illness or loss or grief or emptiness or loneliness or rejection. Food is only the middleman, the means to the end. Of altering your emotions. Of making yourself numb”

“The poet Galway Kinnell wrote that "sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness." Everything we do, I tell my students, is to reteach ourselves our loveliness.”

I ordered the book. I guess it's time to start letting a few feelings roll thru, ha?

Tonights dinner Caribbean Shrimp Scampi was pretty good... needed more salt and more garlic and less lemon rind. Need to make notes on my recipe. I just needs more oomph.

Feeling better, Thank you so much everyone!

Just wanted to come in and say I am feeling much better. I am back on low carb and right now I am doing low fat and low carb.. I will slowly raise my fat and see how I do.

Eating LOTS of veggies and really enjoying them! I am not back in ketosis yet but not concerned. I know I will be soon enough.

Thank you so much for your emails and comments gang. They really helped me when I needed them most!

Tonight I am having a large salad with fresh spinach, a little onion, grilled chicken, low fat Greek dressing, and a little red grapefruit. I normally would add avo to it but holding off on more fat for a couple more days.

Everyone have a wonderful weekend~

Major Frustration.. What the hell do I do now?

Well it has been a VERY hard week! I just am so frustrated to the point of almost wanting to scream. I can’t seem to get this figured out. The high fat in Atkins seemed to be bothering my liver again so I want on a low fat diet like I had in the past with lots of veggies but ALSO corn and beans and brown rice. Well the last three days I have had a horrid IBD flare-up. I have had serious IBD in the past, so bad that I went thru thousands of dollars worth of tests last year trying to find out what the deal was. I had five tests, an MRI, a Colonscopy, , Cat Scan, Ultrasounds and a bowl follow thru (this is all I can remember right now!).

We were pretty sure it was Crones until a small bowel follow thru test found that it was IBD and maybe candida overgrowth and HPylori. At the time I was having such a bad time with continued flare-ups (I just put this together in my mind NOW) I was NOT doing low carb but doing weight watchers. I started back on LC in Dec. of last year and for the last 3 ½ months had NO flare-ups at all! I didn’t realize this until last night when I was in so much pain. It dawned on me I had not had a flare-up in months. Could it be that I am having IBD from some carb? Last night I had corn (as in chips and tortillas for veggie tacos) and rice and beans. (one of my fav. Low Fat meals from the past) and within a half hour had to lay down because the pain was so bad I could not walk.

I was floored (literally!) and that’s when I put it together. My IBD has not shown itself in all the time I have been on Atkins. Wow.

NOW what to do? Low Fat and LC? Medium fat? Maybe slowly raise my fat again? My liver is feeling better because of the veggie low fat diet – even though it’s only been a week, but what in the world do I do now? Before on LC (a couple of years ago), I got a liver issue (bloat and slight pain under my right breast) and went on a Raw diet (just fruits, veggies, nuts and seed) for a month and it went away. It didn’t bother me for months, until now.

I am so exasperated it is hard to think rationally. I am beyond frustrated.

Having Liver Pain AGAIN...

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I woke up again with that feeling of having a freaking football under my rib cage. I am in a holding pattern, this ALWAYS happens to me after very long on low carb. I need to do another liver cleanse and maybe re-evaluate exactly how I am going to do this.

I love LC and won't be going all insane on sugar but I have to move to a much lower fat diet for a while. I have been thru this before. I do know I can do a very healthy veggie low carb for a while.

This happened last summer and I ended up going veggie then Raw before I could start back on LC. I have gallbladder and liver issues.

Right now I am just eating lots of veggies and trying to gear up for a cleanse. Lots of salads and low GI berries - I am also going to get some apples.. very good for gall bladder issues.

This is a bitch.