the carbohydrate addicts diet.

so, i picked up from my freecycle list, the book "the carbohydrate addicts diet", upon the recommendation of the freecycler that it may help me in my weight loss journey, as her husband has been able to keep 50 pounds off his frame for well over two years with it. so i thought i'd read it, and if it sounded feasible for me, give it a shot. why not?

the basis of the diet is changing around your eating habits so that you consume all carbs at night, therefore curbing hunger, overeating and fat storage by preventing carbohydrates from triggering the release of the hunger signaling chemical insulin. eventually the benefits of the diet lead to insulin being properly produced and used, less sugars in the blood, and weight loss and better health. i've read over 100 reviews about the diet and it seems possible and sound for many people, especially those who like me, have a dependency on carbs. it makes sense to me.

today was my second complete day of following the diet. i will admit, already the idea of no carbs for breakfast and lunch was a huge turnoff...which is probably just a testament to how utterly addicted to carbs i truly am. both days i had a bacon and egg breakfast with a cup of coffee (ok i cheated and added 1 tsp of sugar to my coffee) and a bottle of water to wash everything down with. the meal filled me for about two hours, and then i was getting really hungry again. but since i eat breakfast around 10am...i only had an extra hour to go until lunch, and it passed quickly.

at lunch today, i had a HUGE salad of lettuce, olives, red beets and 1/2 a tomato sliced. i added my usual amount of dressing (which was the standard serving size). i know cottage cheese has carbs, and the book says that as long as the carb amount is below 4g per meal, we can wing it. so wing it i did. i had about 1/3 a cup of cottage cheese with my salad, which was about 3g of carbs. and i topped it off with deli ham. it was delicious and actually filled me up. or maybe i was just that hungry (when im hungry liver tastes delicious). i drunk 2 more cups of water and felt pretty good. i was thinking of adding tuna to the mix, but since i had tuna and asparagus YESTERDAY, i didnt want to eat it again. too much tuna is really no good for anyone, with all the chemicals in the waters these days.

so anyway...i made it for another 2 hours or so, and then i was really getting hungry again. it's interesting how i can be really full, and then the food just seems to burn off instantaneously, leaving me feeling REALLY hungry. anyway...after another hour, i felt as if i hadn't eaten all day, so i made another salad...same exact way. so yeah, that gave me 6g of carbs for lunch. not too bad, it still only amounts to about 2% of the daily recommended intake. another 2 glasses of water...and i was held over just fine until dinner.

i have to interject here. technically, by eating the second salad, i broke the rule of strictly 3 meals a day. but reading the thyroid diet (you can purchase it here), i learned that (and tried and find that it works for me) people with hypothyroidism (me), should always eat at least 5, preferably 6, small meals per day. so i did not feel bad for tweaking that part of the book and eating the second salad.

so dinner came, and because my husband was late coming home today, dinner was not made. it was supposed to be fried fish, green salad and spanish rice, a dish that we absolutely love. since i cannot fry fish, it was up to him to do it...he came in too late so dinner plans crashed. tomorrow ill just bake the fish. anyway, that left me getting really hungry. so i decided to just make my favorite immediate fix--a good ole bowl of frosted flakes. i had the normal amount i eat, one full bowl. i topped it off with 2 cookies and a half glass of milk. because i didn't eat any fruit, i also chomped into a big ole wedge of delicious pineapple.

now, for those who dont know, i have a steel plated stomach. i can eat a myriad of foods in one sitting and not get sick. so pineapple, cereal, cookies, milk, seltzer water and olives all on the same plate is right up my alley.

i felt stuffed afterwards. this was at about 8pm. since the diet said to make sure to finish everything from the last meal within the hour, i did that, and felt pretty ok.

now, i'm slowly starting to feel myself get hungry again. eek! i know im going to break the one hour rule, just because i can't go to bed hungry.

as i see, im the person that cuts corners. due to my thyroid illness, i have to be careful with the way i eat. so i figured maybe (as many of the reviews i read suggest), that i could tweak the diet to fit my individual needs. instead of eating meat and fat all day, the idea is to eat my meat and eggs for breakfast, and once every few days, have a slice of low carb bread with it, and some butter, and maybe a touch of low sugar jelly. then to eat a huge thing of veggies for lunch, with lean meat, or seafood. this way, i am not depriving myself of my veggies for the day. then, when the evening comes, have my dinner early (this is easy because its summer), flesh it out really well, add at least 4 servings of fruit to it, have my regular meal and whatever goodies i want without the guilt. despite switching the meals so that carbs are always saved for the end of the day, i have to make sure i eat veggies and fruits too.

someone in one of the reviews said that she could not go absolutely with no carbs all day long, so she tweaked it to have a small serving of carbs for breakfast some days, and then none for lunch, and only a small serving for dinner on the days she had them for breakfast. on the days she has no carbs for breakfast, she treats herself liberally for dinner. she said this satisfies her way more and she's still maintaining her weight loss. so it can be an idea that if this works for me, i can have some tweaking too, with strict moderation, just to keep my thyroid at a healthy place. since there are some limitations to what i can eat anyway with thyroid issues, a menu is paramount daily.

also, the book has recipes for low carb breads, which are just fine to eat during the day. i find that in general, it's a great idea to REALLY start experimenting with recipes on this sort of lifestyle change. there are TONS of recipes that are low carb that people can eat for breakfast and lunch. and considering that most americans eat no fruits and veggies daily, it wont exactly kill them to hold off with eating certain veggies and some fruits until dinner.

i know two people personally (not including the freecycler who gave me the book) who have been on similar menu plans and it has worked for them. one person is an old college teacher, who lost 190 pounds on this exact diet, and has kept it off going on maybe 15 years now. the second person is my neighbor, who says she follows the diet and she feels alot better, at the recommendation of her doctor (who did not recommend the book, but recommended a similar style of eating--limiting carbs to 1 meal per day). she admitted to falling off the 1 carbie meal per day bandwagon, but is now considering trying it again).

this may not be such a bad idea for me.

my results are especially promising. between yesterday and today...ive lost 1.4 pounds. today was the lowest weight reading ive had in WEEKS. and i had to lose the weight because i weigh myself wearing the same thing daily, and the scale has never been so low. also, i immediately noticed that i have more energy. im not sluggish and i dont need naps during the day anymore. also, i know this is tmi...but im going to say it anyway. today my bowels moved the best they have in months. this is an immediate change.

the only downside is that i have to break up the strict 3 meals per day rule. i simply have been advised NOT to go that long between meals, it can wreak havoc on my metabolism. so i will not. still losing 1.5 pounds and cutting all of the corners i did yesterday sounds as if i can definitely tweak this diet.

i'm going to shop later this week for the ingredients to make the low carb bread, and im definitely going to search around for low carb recipes. i have to flesh out my breakfast and lunch more if this is something that may help me out. funny, but ive been praying for God to help me find the encouragement to cook and dibble dabble with recipes more. welp, here it is--the perfect reason to do just that.

i would have NEVER thought my carb intake could've been the cause of alot of my ill. here i am blaming my thyroid for the difficulties losing weight. but the more i think about it, the more i AM recognizing a correlation between my carb intake and weight gain, exhaustion after eating and yes, being hungry relatively quickly after eating.

i will definitely be reporting my progress with this dietary change regularly. with the way i'm going, i may even add a new label LOL. "dieting101" or something LOL. anyway, i'm just thankful to God for allowing freecycle to once again be the way to a blessing. even if this isnt exactly for me (and ill know within a few weeks if it is or not), ill never look at carbs the same, simply because of how good i feel.

any feedback about this diet, or others like that is appreciated....i'm definitely going to see where this road takes me!

martha, martha, martha!

so, i love martha stewart. well, let me correct myself. i have an ever growing admiration for martha that may be somewhat borderline obsessive. she definitely keeps me on my toes and encourages me to do my job as a stay at home mom as best i can: just two days ago, after reading the latest issue of her magazine (which i got for free via !!) and seeing a particularly pretty picture of some its-never-quite-as-easy-to-make-as-it-sounds-or-looks decoration she put in a window, i decided to clean my windows. now...granted, i only cleaned one (and got exhausted in the process), and it was the smallest window in my home (the kitchen window over the sink), but! i cleaned that window so well that martha would've certainly been proud of me. as a matter of fact, i cleaned that window so well that later in the day when i came downstairs and entered the kitchen, i got scared because i thought someone had lifted it up to break in! of course that hadn't actually happened, it was just so spotless that it LOOKED like the pane had been lifted. needless to say, my window certainly looks good enough to have a cameo in martha's awesome magazine with all of the other perfectly pictured windows.

my admiration for all things martha is growing at the speed of light. i've now found her show on tv, and i watch it in my morning lineup. she's funny, because her OCD always kicks in on her guests, but she's always very proper about it. i always giggle at and now look forward to her interrupting guests to move on to the next tidbit of info in her oh-so-martha way. i LOVE the way she always loads her guests up with freebies! i also got a recipe for a cake on the show. one that looked so easy to make and delicious when it was done that i'd wondered where i'd gone wrong at not learning how to bake from the womb. of course, i won't be making the cake, but she certainly made the baker in me stir, if only for five brief minutes.

one thing she did teach me, that i will be using from now on, is to think outside of the box, and to not be afraid to experiment (especially with foods--which im always terrified to do). the other day, i had crackers with cream cheese, ham and olives. that's something i would have NEVER thought to eat. but i tried it (thank you martha) and it was pretty good! im even considering experimenting with making homemade breads.

hmph. i am now a martha stewart fan. i have learned to make soil healthy, make no knead pizza dough, and how to make clam soup. whether or not i will ever put these things to regular use in my life remains to be a mystery, but i do feel like martha would certainly approves that i've learned.

now that's a happy dog!

figured i'd start the work week off with a positive post about baby, whom i haven't spoken about in a while. as most know from previous posts, baby has severe immune system depression that has led to an overgrowth of demodex mites on her body, resulting in a seemingly incurable case of demodex mange. i have tried everything for this dog and spent thousands of dollars on her in an attempt to help her heal and lead a physically healthy and comfortable life. in more recent times, loss of income has made this feat akin to trying to find a needle in a haystack, and eventually things got so bad that i contemplated putting her to sleep. she was always in pain, always scratching, always suffering from secondary infection and always one step away from misery. her only saving grace was that with a sweet heart and ever optimistic attitude, baby never let her condition get the best of her, until...

i was no longer able to keep her. she had to move in with my mother, who then, due to financial reasons, decided to sell her house here in the north and move south. when she left, she could not bring baby. and since i couldn't bring baby home, that left her living with my sister. it was ok for a while, but as the months went on, baby started to become stressed from lonliness (my sister works about 60 hours a week) and her condition began to get worse. i tried to alleviate things by bringing baby over for weekend visits and keeping up with her diet and medical regimine, but having a new baby drowned that out quickly, and eventually i found myself desperate to get my dog and myself out of this no win situation.

it was only by the grace of God that this dog has gotten a new lease on life. no one would adopt her with such severe health problems (she also has allergies) and i had no financial recourse to help her. i was praying for my pooch regularly, for her help, for my help...for some way out of this mess!

and then it came, an answer to my prayers. in december 2011, my mother called me up and said, "i'm going to come and get my granddog baby, bring her down here with me (in north carolina) and let her see a vet down here. we'll see how she does." well, it's been a month that baby has been in her new home with grandma, and from the picture i was sent, it looks like she's getting along just fine in her new home. other than an aversion to walking on dewy grass in the morning, she is taking to country life just fine. for 200.00, my mother was able to get her care that would cost well over 1000.00 here. she has also been cleared to receive a mitoban dip by her new vet, who is watching her progress on the medication. my mother reports that baby has reacted wonderfully to the first treatment, and already doesn't scratch anymore! she has a slight infection in one eye, but it is being treated too. as is visible in the picture, her fur is even growing back in! all of this in less than a month is amazing! baby's favorite place is the huge yard my mother has, and despite the house being placed just off a very busy county road (which i call a 2 lane super highway), baby is safe and knows how to stay away from it. that was a concern of mine...

but goodness! i am so relieved that baby has a new lease on life, in a new place that she loves, with family! now THAT'S a blessing!

"worry is a misuse of imagination." ~dan zadra

spring is here!

so, spring is here, and i couldn't wait to get back to blogging for some odd reason. maybe it's because everything is so new and it's a time to start over, or maybe it's because the longer and sunnier days have my disposition feeling cheery, or maybe it's just because i've missed my blog. at any rate, it's spring and i am happy to be blogging lol.

this year has been a blessing as always, and even through the struggles ive been having with my family and individually, we are still immensely blessed. ecobaby is growing taller every day and now sports a headfull of soft, curly locks! she has fully benefitted from mommy's breastmilk--my only regret is that i stopped her at 1 year instead of continuing on. however, it was becoming extremely difficult for me to produce milk even with fenugreek supplements, so i'm just thankful to have been able to give her nearly a year's worth of milk. with 6 pearly whites to show with every smile, she is now beyond walking to running and getting into everything, and keeping mommy, daddy and siblings diligently on our toes.

our oldest daughter is struggling in school. she is a very social creature, and has allowed her social life override her education, which has resulted in her grades slipping and her mouth getting her in trouble more often than not. as of a few weeks ago, she was actually in danger of repeating 6th grade. due to behavioral issues that have been professionally addressed, her struggles are a bit more intense than they would be under normal circumstances, so it is pretty much a critical situation with her. i am revamping the way that i approach this situation with her, because not only was my previous way of dealing with these difficulties counterproductive to her, they were also counterproductive to my family and i. we are now in a very delicate and very difficult to navigate position, but i am learning patience and to watch what i say and do with her, and it has been helping out. step by step, day by day, and some days seem slower than others, but looking back, i do see changes happening. i am continuing to pray over the situation, and i am continuing to look for Jesus' hand to guide us through.

our ten year old daughter has also been struggling a bit in school, but that's mainly due to laziness on her behalf, and a penchant for drawing and artwork that is overtaking a penchant for listening to the teacher. she absolutely loves her drawing and artwork, and lately her masterpeices have been not only taking over her world, but they've taken over ours as well! artwork all over the bedroom, all over my kitchen table, stuffed in every pocket of her bookbag. this is a passion gone awry, one that we have spoken about, and that she has promised to reign in just a bit. but by no means am i stopping her...we have the next picasso on our hands, believe me as i type it!

our 6 year old is progressing along very well. now more than halfway through kindergarten, she is finally taking to school, and got all a's and b's this marking period, an improvement from all b's and 1 c last marking period. because this is her first full year of school, her teacher is very pleased with her progress. she was struggling with letter recognition, but with the help of outside resources and learning books gifted to us from my mother, a retired teacher, she is coming along beautifully. i am especially pleased because she had such a difficult time adjusting to prek that i not only took her out of prek, but i was dreading kindergarten. but she's taking to it like a fish to water. this serves as a lesson for me never to underestimate my parenting skills. i went against my better judgement by sending her to school before i felt she was ready; now i am relieved to see that taking her out and keeping her home was a good move on my behalf. mornings are still a struggle for her, as she's not too thrilled with waking up so early, but once we get the ball rolling, everything is all good!

my husband is also doing well. although he has not gotten a permanent position anywhere as of yet, that is something for our prayer life, something that we are trusting God about. i would be afraid for us, but fear is not of God. so i have no place for it in my life or heart. i am happy to say that my husband has completed a 21 day fast (not perfectly, but he kept getting back up and going right back on the fast, and i can say his slip ups were unintentional. one meal he ate had bread in it and he didnt know)! i am so proud of him--and i do believe we were mightily blessed by his endeavor. he was saved in may of 2011, so that was a huge step for him. we are doing better than ever on our marital journey, keeping God first and allowing everything to fall into place. i'll be blogging more about this journey as time goes on.

now for me! whew. where to begin? i am teeter tottering on everything it seems. my weight, my thyroid, my studies, everything...even my blogging. i dont want to turn this into a pity party where i kick my own back in...but i am not happy with my progress on anything. another reason for blogging. to help me keep myself on track with the goals that i have in life. my life is so packed and so busy, that i deserve this to not only share myself and what i have to offer, but to help me keep myself on track, and get encouragement. which makes me even more fully welcome the spring and be happy it's here! a new season, a new beginning, and a new attitude!

problems?

the mass of mess that i took a picture of are my locs. i don't know what the issue has been since i've had the baby (well having a baby could be the issue--i've been having a trillion other bodily problems since delivering ecobaby--my fourth baby) but my locs in the front have been seeminingly thinning and pushing themselves back from my hairline.

now the interesting part about this situation is if you look carefully in the picture you'll notice that the locs are thinning because all of the hair isn't catching in the locs. however, my hair is not thinning nor is it breaking off. the edges are just not growing with the rest of the hair to form a coil for my loc. when i retwist my hair, they look neat and get thick at the roots. but as the week progresses, they frizz up and "undo", leaving me with a loc that is much thinner at the root than the length of the lock, with literally a "puff" of hair that is standing up around the loc.

i've looked everywhere online and can't seem to find any real way to combat this issue. i have maintained my same hair regimine for the four years (well nearly four--wow time flies i know) that i've had my locs, but perhaps it's time to change it up. my hair could easily be changing due to a trillion things, including getting older (30 is the new 50 in this day and time) and having a baby. actually this issue honestly just started when i gave birth, so that's my best guess as to why this is happening. i've heard repeated stories from others i know say that locs grow in "stages"...and sometimes they grow thinly and a few months later start to thicken up. my mom's locs seem to be experiencing this phenomenon as each loc on her head seems to have areas of thickness followed by thinness, and then they thicken up again. it hasn't really affected her locs much--they're down her back.

i'm not too worried, mainly because this is only happening around the edges of my head. the middle is just fine (and way neater, might i add). my locs haven't grown much from the length they were here...as you can see, it wasn't even that long ago that i wrote it. so i can't really blame this phenomenon on my locs being much longer than they were before this problem started.

in the meantime, i'm going to rinse my locs way more (i do have a residual build up happening that i'm getting tired of looking at--you may even be able to see it in the picture) and twist them more gently. if there was a way that i could think of to somehow "tie" the puffs of hair back into the main loc...i'd be way happier. this DID happen about 2 years ago and i used individual sterling silver necklace links to secure the puffs to the loc by opening the link and then squeezing it closed around the root of my loc WITH the loose hair puffs. eventually the puffs loc'ed back into the dread and the silver links also got loc'ed in. it helped alot, although there was still flyaway hair around the locs. i did this with about 15 locs in the front of my head and now the silver links fall past my lips...they're almost to my jaw on the sides of my head...so my hair has really grown in 2 years. i am thinking of trying this process again...now i have to find some loose silver laying around.

just call me martha...

...stewart! or raechel rae. or better yet, call me emeril! because that's who i am...the next emeril! i'm not like a professional chef, i am a professional chef! i'm a cooking extraordinaire. i'm a master of culinary arts...

or at least i'm on my way!

hehe. i decided to go on and give making yogurt a try since i find making homemade baby food so easy and enjoyable. it really is amazing how simple it is to make some of the best stuff on earth. thanks to WholesomeBabyFood and A Year of Slowcooking for these great and awesome recipes! although i follow the baby food website to a t because i don't want to botch up the food my precious ecobaby has to eat, i changed up the directions for my yogurt recipe. instead of heating the milk in the crockpot, i simply scalded it on the stove, poured it into my preheated crockpot, let it cool to a temperature of 110 degrees, and then mixed in my yogurt. so in essence, all the recipe calls for is hot milk, plain yogurt, and a place to keep the milk warm while the cultures reproduce. simply let the milk cool down before adding the yogurt because the cultures will die if the milk is too hot.

i have to say, both ecobaby's food AND the yogurt are DELICIOUS! because ecobaby has no teeth and hasn't developed her chewing motions, i thin out her baby food so it has NO chunks in it, just a tad thicker than soup. and because i love my yogurt thick, i seperate the whey from it until it's a thick consistency, like sour cream or greek yogurt. it's easy to seperate the whey as well. simply line a colander with cheesecloth, add the yogurt and let the whey drip out from the colander. make sure to put the colander into a larger bowl so the whey can be collected (and don't throw it out--there are tons of other uses for it: making cheese from it, watering your plants, incorporating it into baking recipes and shakes, drinking it straight--although i hear it's nasty--or giving it to your pets for added nutrition).

i don't know what i'm gonna make next for ecobaby--so far she eats carrots, applesauce and applejuice, peas, sweet potatoes, bananas and rice. i was thinking about summer squash, but i believe that's a bit too mature for her stomach to digest. i also want to wait to start beans. i'm thinking maybe pears and avocado?

as for the yogurt, strawberries, blueberries and cheerios all the way baby!