Primal Challenge Journal (MamaGrok) page 110

[MamaGrok]

140.5. much better.
BBT - 97.7
234 days binge-free!

Leptin Resistance goals:
- Breakfast w/ 50gm of protein, w/i 30m of rising: probably not.no, fasting for ultrasound.
- 5+ hrs between B/L & L/D: yes, no lunch
- finished dinner by 7:30, 3.5hrs between dinner & bed: yes.4.
- no snacking, <50g carb/day, 100% primal, GAPS: yes.yes.yes.yes.
- morning temp & sun; dark house @ sunset:no. yes.
- no PUFA's other than fCLO yes.

Morning
D5K, Bcmplx150:
HCl, DigEnz, Bitters:
CO: 2T
Feverfew, Curcumin -
Probiotic -
Organs, broth, ferments: broth galore

Midday
15m sun - no
Se200 -
Vit C -
ACV -
Green tea - 2C
Salt and/or potassium - yes, normal amounts
Seaweed -
Glutathione -
Zinc (for NAC) -
Mg (400mg) -
Liver support -

Foods that make me feel bad (FODMAPs, nightshades, coconut flesh) - trace cayenne b/c I'm stupid
Cold -

B - soup: broth, 1.5T CO, yellow squash, cumin. Pernil. Heavy stomach then.

D - bkfst sausage. :P blueberries (~5). 2 blackberries, just for FODMAPy spite.


Results
- energy: 3-4. Mood: 5
- bloating - 3.5m morning, 5mo after dinner?
- skin = one arm super smooth, other not, lol.
- slept 12:15-8am. Dead tired mid-morning, but had to go all afternoon. Lost tiredness, strangely. . DEAD tired by 9pm. Dead dead dead.

I've no doubt been back in the hole with energy this last week or two.

If I'm honest with myself, what I need to do is, every day:
Broth
CO
Meat w/ just salt, pepper, & maybe cumin and cinnamon (not too much). Not much animal fat.
Yellow squash or zuke, boiled. Maybe carrots, boiled
Salt
ThyroGold, out of caps
Mag, out of caps (need to email LEF to see if this is okay)
Green pepp tea

One week on this, and see where I'm at.

[MamaGrok]

Well, I've had sausage three times this week. Once with no effect, two with headache and that feeling that is like shrinking into my head ... distancing from everything around me.

I felt better today till dinner. Was FAMISHED and ate pork chop at 5, but was still starved and ate several ounces roast beef, then still starved, and that's when all I had left was sausage, and ate a few patties. *sigh*

I think I'm doing really well every meal that I have

Broth
Boiled squash
Simple meat
Coconut oil

Maybe I'll just get boring and eat that for a while. I gotta keep the meat prepared, though, no time to prepare it when I'm famished and sausage is already made and calling!

[MamaGrok]

139.5 Phew.
BBT - 97.7
235 days binge-free!

Leptin Resistance goals:
- Breakfast w/ 50gm of protein, w/i 30m of rising: probably 42.yes.
- 5+ hrs between B/L & L/D: yes, no lunch
- finished dinner by 7:30, 3.5hrs between dinner & bed: yes, 6?.5.
- no snacking, <50g carb/day, 100% primal, GAPS: yes.yes.yes.yes.
- morning temp & sun; dark house @ sunset:yes. yes.
- no PUFA's other than fCLO yes, & no fCLO.

Morning
D5K, Bcmplx150:
HCl, DigEnz, Bitters:
CO: 2T, some rumblies
Feverfew, Curcumin:
Probiotic -
Organs, broth, ferments: broth galore

Midday
15m sun - no
Se200 -
Vit C -
ACV -
Green tea - 2C
Salt and/or potassium - yes, normal amounts
Seaweed -
Glutathione -
Zinc (for NAC) -
Mg (400mg) -
Liver support -

Foods that make me feel bad (FODMAPs, nightshades, coconut flesh) - trace cayenne b/c I'm stupid
Cold -

B - soup: broth, 1.5T CO, yellow squash, cumin. Pork chop w/ its fat.

D - pork chop. Roast beef. Bkfst Sausage. doh!


Results
- energy: 4-5. Mood: mostly 5-6
- bloating - 3.5m morning, 5mo after dinner?
- skin = fabulous all except upper arms
- slept 11:15-8:15 solid, more really weird, detailed, long dreams, like every night this week.

Tired of people expecting me to do things (that are really very reasonable & I want to do, like visiting an ailing grandmother once/month, but hard with this tiredness). Sad for my very ailing grandmother & grandfather, who broke his hip today. Tired of being tired. But looking up!

[MamaGrok]

For some reason, I don't feel like typing on forums lately. I need to keep up at least with this.

I drank buffalo sauce tonight, lol. Not so good for my belly to have dairy-nightshade soup. At least it was pastured & from scratch.

Got lots of labs in, and nothing unusual in the ultrasound. Strangely, my LDL dropped like a bomb to 99. !! Pancreas labs seem fine. Still slightly high lymphs; have had them for a year. DISASTROUSLY low TSH at .03!! Gotta figure that one out.

I need to make a commitment to stopping eating foods that make me feel like crap, for at least a week. No more nightshade soup. Just ... what was it?

Broth
Boiled squash
Simple meat
Coconut oil

Next week will be a challenge - a week in my mother's house, where the occupants don't understand the connection between diet & health at all. Love them, but they don't get what I'm trying to accomplish, just think I'm nutty.

Broth
Boiled squash
Simple meat
Coconut oil

I can do it for breakfast, but then I fall apart some time in the evening.

Gotta get solid on timing, too. Once or twice a week, I'm eating two meals too close together, or after 8, or delaying bkfst.

I'm worth it. Gotta get my gut right.

[MamaGrok]

Forcing myself to check in again for a moment.

I learned that I canNOT eat my homemade goat curry without spending most of the night in cramps with burning diarrhea. Sorry, folks. No idea why, either. What is magic about it? (other than being delicious)

RUQ abd. ultrasound found nothing unusual anywhere. Still pain, though.

Found a paleo endocrinologist locally, yay!

Blood tests show my LDL dropped from "familial hypercholesterolemia" warning to 99. !!!! What?!
HDL dropped 10, same reason, or could be now it's more reflective of my leaky gut?
CBC way lower with several months of AF under my belt.

I'll put the labs here some day.

Still no rhyme or reason to why some days PP bkfst ssg gives me headaches & some days it doesn't.

Still 139.5-140. Still bloated. Still swollen on limbs.

Felt like death, energy-wise, half of Monday, ,then better in the evening. Felt like death, irritability-wise, Wednesday, then better in the evening. No clue why. None.

My eyesight IMPROVED for the first time in my whole freaking life. Opto says, "Oh, 1/4 variation is normal," but like I said, that normal variation has NEVER HAPPENED before to me. DD's eyes are still 100% stable - no degradation in the two years since we took grains out when she was 12. DS's got worse 1/4-1/2 point ... that's all, at age 10. Gotta get on his bread obsession when he's at Grandma's.

Night night, y'all.

[annedawso]

Love reading your posts MamaGrok. Think I always assume that when someone is near to goal weight everything is easy, reading your posts make me realize it is not. I am 5' 7" and weigh 157lbs. I relate to your previous bingeing as I am either very good or very bad. Thank you for sharing.

[MamaGrok]

Hi, Anne! Yep, weight is just one tiny aspect of health. There's so much more. For whatever reason, losing weight hasn't been *hard* for me (once I figured out I just can't tolerate wheat, and how to kill the constant cravings for me), albeit slow, but other things continue to get worse even as I turn so many big health problems around.

I've been really resistant to journaling the last few weeks, even though things have been going fairly well. I did find myself in cravings land after a week at the lake, then a week at the beach, but nothing huge happened. Definitely no binge.

One very interesting development was realizing that during the week at the beach, I had only one instance of cramps/runs. Weird, since I was choosing primally from food prepared by others, which meant conventional meat, lots of microwaving, few veggies, little broth, ... and no meat fat. Always totally lean meat. Despite eating CO daily, I realized that I had had no meat fat. So I've been watching ever since, and am about 85% sure now that it is excess animal fat that causes the IBS for me.

WHAT?!?!

It didn't used to, that's for sure. This started somewhere between Nov & Feb - I think closer to Feb. Now, yes, I have severe fat malabsorption, but I had it back when I wasn't having the runs, too.

It also *seems* to correspond with increased bloating and increased gallbladder-area dull pan ... but I'm not totally sure. Keeping my eye on things.

What would cause this to begin? What can I do to fix it? I'm at a loss. For now, it's

B: 7oz of (raw beef) liver & other meat (pork chop, ham steak (uncured), polish beef sliders...), 1.5-2T coconut oil
L: soup: broth, boiled summer squash, cinnamon & cumin, 1T CO
D: simple meat, maybe a veggie

I have a hard time staying 100%, but I am 100% most days. Yesterday I had salad, green beans, watermelon, & fried rabbit (soaked in whey, rolled in coconut flour & paprika, etc.) and didn't get crazy bloat. Bloat, yes, but not crazy.

This week, I've had several days of being much more interested in doing than sitting. Praise God for that! Sleepiness has overcome that two of the days, but in general, it's there, and I'm sleeping around 11-7:30, with occasional afternoon naps this week.

Things are looking up.

Still at 138. I stopped weighingfor a while when I knew my legs & arms were still swollen, then weighed when they stopped swelling (like 1/2" overnight, so definitely not fat loss) and yep, back down to a good weight again. Lowest has been 137.75.

[avocadogirl]

You journal is very inspiring! Thank you for so much detail. I'm still new around here. Being mindful about everything that goes in the body is the key to health. Your self-observations are keen. Thanks for sharing!

[MamaGrok]

Thanks for the kind words, avocadogirl!

Still experimenting and trying to get down to an elimination diet that works. It seems, bizarrely enough, that cutting way back on all fats but CO is helping considerably. When I do eat stuff my body doesn't like, like actual coconut, the damage isn't as bad and doesn't last all week.

I'm still struggling, ,though, with the effects of the deprivation/frustration-induced variety-cravings I've been having the last month or so. I'm buckling down this week and following this pattern - JUST FOR A WEEK - to get the apparent effects of more-fat-than-I-can-handle out of my system, and then start working on supplements, variety, etc.,, to see if I can fix this nonsense.

Gallbladder-area-pain is down, too, but again - my ultrasound detected NO stones, no thickening, nothing.

BREAKFAST
7oz protein via pork chop, sausage (no sugar or nightshades, just salt/pepper/cumin or something like that), etc., plus liver
1.5T CO
fermented cukes

LUNCH
Soup: broth, yellow squash, 1T CO, CSS, pot/sod salt blend, tons of cinnamon (probably need to back off on this), cumin
Half serving or less of summer fruit like blueberries or watermelon or raspberries

SNACK
Thyrogold!

DINNER
3-6oz meat
Half serving or less of summer fruit
LEF Magnesium

That seems to be able to keep me satiated & nourished.

Next week, I want to try, in an order resembling this one, one new thing every 3-5 days:
- Swedish bitters
- Eggs
- Ox bile or bile salts
- Rx grade probiotic
- Digestive enzymes
- Vit B complex
- Curcumin
- Possibly NAC, Zinc, Feverfew, Seagest again.
- Possibly local quack-y doctor's supplements (and Naturethroid) for a month
- BUTTER (hmmm, 'tis fat. maybe I can tolerate small amounts in my veggies?)
- daily natural C

The great news is that my physical energy is pretty darn steady at 6/10 or maybe sometimes 7/10!!! Mood is still up and down, but mostly NOT the doldrums.

[MamaGrok]

137.25
BBT - 97.6 (fabulous for post-AF, and much higher than this time last month)
274 days binge-free!

Leptin Resistance goals:
- Breakfast w/ 50gm of protein, w/i 30m of rising: yes.no(1hr).
- 5+ hrs between B/L & L/D:
- finished dinner by 7:30, 3.5hrs between dinner & bed: y, __..
- no snacking, <50g carb/day, 100% primal, GAPS: y.y.y.y.
- morning temp & sun; dark house @ sunset:no(overcast, wet). y.
- no PUFA's other than fCLO:y.

Morning
D5K, Bcmplx150: yes.
HCl, DigEnz, Bitters:
CO, Probx: 2T.yes.
Feverfew, Curcumin:
Organs, broth, ferments: no..yes.

Midday
15m sun, Cold:
Salt, Potassium:
Se200, Seaweed:
Green tea, VitC, ACV:
Glutathione, Zinc:
Mg, Liver support:

Suspect foods (FODMAPs, nightshades, coconut flesh): trace red pepper

B - 7+oz polish ssg, ferm pickle.
L -
D -


Results
- Energy: . Mood: .
- Bloating: Been feeling my hip bones within a few hours of each meal ever since decreasing the animal fat. . .
- Skin: Very soft upper arms with only very mild (&soft) bumps, leg & rump skin is smoothest ever, hands & rest still super soft!
- Sleep: kept up by severe cramps last night till midnight, then 12-8am. Felt bleh, but was able to get up.

Brisket Sat night gave me no cramps (even though I foolishly forgot and ate tons of its fat), while it gave me bad ones last night (even with much less, and far less fat). Sat night I had green beans & trace broth with it, and took dig enz as soon as I realized all the fat I'd eaten. Last night I had nothing else. This is very definitely something to keep in mind once I get that base level of healthy-without-much-non-CO-fat I'm looking for.

I'm definitely feeling a new hopefulness with this new discovery, even though it's imminently frustrating! Information is good!