Time for the big switcheroo!

The last few months have seen some major changes for me, especially concerning food.

Since January, I've been writing this blog and talking about my work towards eating heathfully most of the time and reasonably the rest of the time . . . about working through the various emotional and psychological issues I have around food . . . and then about working exercise into my life as well.

In June, I was diagnosed with food allergies to a large number of foods. A couple of weeks ago, I learned that instead of just allergies, I also have atypical celiac disease. Atypical because I have to give up cow dairy (which has casein, very similar to the gluten in wheat, barley, rye, etc.) in addition to gluten, and atypical because it's not necessarily my small intestine that's carrying the brunt of the effects of my consumption of gluten and dairy. . . .

Before this year, I had already cut out some foods while trying to deal with interstitial cystitis. Then I got on some amazing antihistamines that helped with that condition. More recently, cutting out my food allergens has dropped my IC to its lowest level since I first developed it.

In any case, over the past few months, I have not only appreciated the weight-loss blogging community but also the food allergy/intolerance community as well. Both have buoyed me as I have worked towards being a healthier me.

At some point I started thinking about combining my interest in the two in a blog. When you can't have dairy, tomatoes, wheat (or other gluten-containing grains), soy, almonds, eggs, and a few other foods, you realize you have lost the ability to eat about 90% of what most Americans eat. And as you start to figure out food, you want to be able to share that with others.

And honestly, the restrictions are not all bad. Trying to make foods unhealthy without any butter, wheat, soy, or eggs is not impossible, but it's more difficult--especially when you consider that I try to eat whole, organic foods and eschew artificial additives and preservatives. I walk into grocery stores and find myself untempted by a huge variety of foods that would have called to me two months, six months, or two years ago.

So I'm taking my weight loss public in a way that I have not done before now; my full name and photo will be attached to what I'm writing. (Of course, I do know my sleuthing Turkish reader found me out a while back!) I'm adding in doses of how I'm dealing with food allergies/intolerances for good measure on my new blog, including recipes that my friends who can eat all those foods say are genuinely good. (And plenty of those recipes are normal ones that just happen not to have any allergens in them.)

I have, in the last year, not spent time counting anything and have been able to lose weight that way; part of what I have been doing is trying to prove to myself that I can trust myself to make good decisions without strictly rationing what I eat. However, I do recognize that other people find it very important to count what they eat. So on my new blog, I'm plugging each recipe into a program I bought before I post it so that I can offer an approximation of calories per serving, and WW points as well.

My new blog is called "Aprovechar," and if you want to know why I picked such , you'll have to head over there and read the first post I wrote there. (Of course, I'd love it if you'd link up to me, too.)

As you can see on my new blog, I'll still be tracking my weight loss there, and I'll still be writing on the same topics. I'll just be adding more topics and trying to keep a focus on getting the most out of life every way I can.

Because of some posts I have written on here, I am not linking this blog to that one. I wrote on this blog with the intention of keeping it private and unattached to my name, and that remains. Please keep my privacy intact by not referring to this blog by name if you comment there. I won't, at least for now, be announcing the new blog to many people I know in my day-to-day life, but I'm sure I will tell some of them at some point.

In the meantime, I hope you will join me at my new blog and add a link to it in your blogroll. (Yes, right now! Won't you forget later? I often do. ;))

Oh, and I may still be posting comments to you from this blog, since some of you have Blogger-only comments enabled.

New site: http://aprovechar.danandsally.com

One more post before I go

Jessica Seinfeld was apparently on Oprah recently talking about hiding veggies in kids' foods. I thought the ways to include veggies using purees were ones we could all put to good use, kids or not. I love what different vegetables and fruits add to meals; my chocolate zucchini bread is one of my favorite foods.

Anyway, check it out if you want to increase your veggie quotient easily.

Away

I'm headed to my best friend's wedding in our hometown this afternoon, so it's unlikely I'll be blogging for a few days.

I'm fully expecting a small gain this week, as I will have greatly reduced control over my menu on the trip. And I'm okay with that.

I hope you all have a lovely week!

Half-Way Mark!

177.4--down 1.6 pounds! And that's been my approximate weight every morning for the last 4 mornings, so I know it's real.

That also means that in this year's weight loss, I've reached the halfway point in my overall weight loss goal--26.2 pounds. (From my highest weight, I'm down over 45 pounds.)

Reaching the halfway point means I get to reward myself if I choose to. My husband and I set aside a small pot of money for my weight-loss rewards, so now I need to think if I want to spend any of it. . . .

C25K Update

I ran 29 minutes straight this morning, and honestly, it didn't even get hard until about 20 minutes in. It never got unbearable. (I don't do pain.)

The funny thing is, that run, even though it's the longest I've done, doesn't even feel miraculous anymore. But it is amazing if you compare my health and stamina now to what it was six or nine months ago.

I took a week off of running prior to today--first to recover from an overexertion injury (I also got a massage to help with that, mmmmm), and then because of rain. It actually did drizzle during part of my run today, too, but I ran on anyway.

I think taking a week off is good occasionally. Today, I felt much more rested and recovered when I started my run. The first 10 minutes or so were almost, well, easy, which is crazy.

This was my first day of using an iPod instead of my cute little former mp3 player, may it rest in peace. (The eulogy: it served me well.) Since my husband got an iPhone (his school bought him one), he uses that for music and everything else now, so I get to use his "old" iPod Nano and don't have to worry about buying a new one with the death of my old one. I got a red, wide armstrap from Nike (I don't care about brands, but I did not want a narrow thing that would feel like a tourniquet) to hold the iPod while I ran, and I have to say it served me well. It stayed in place, it was not too constricting, and it sheltered the iPod from the misty downpour. I think the earplugs on the iPhone (I borrowed my husband's) are great; they fit in my ears and block out other noise without hurting my ears like most in-ear headphones do.

I have two weeks until my first 5k (attempt 2, last spring's attempt having turned up to be up the side of a freaking mountain and back down). So I have about .75 mi to increase my run in two weeks for that 5k. Does anyone have any supportive words or stories for me about that kind of increase?

Feeling better

Well, I don't know what happened to me yesterday, but it was just one day. I feel better today--slept a bit late and came into work a bit late, but now I feel better . . . just empty after all my tummy troubles!

One aspect of taking care of yourself is that, if you mess up for a day (purposefully or not), you don't have to punish yourself. You just have to go back to taking care of yourself. So today for breakfast, I ate an allergen-free pumpkin muffin (from a batch I made and froze this weekend), and for lunch, I brought several cans of organic soup to pick from to have something that will go easy on my stomach. I'm not beating myself up at all. That's quite a change from how I would have reacted a year ago. I love being in this process for the right reasons and in the right mindset!

Urgh

Oh boy. Yuck.

Today has not been a good day for me with food.

I met the dietician at 9:30, and we had a great visit until about 11:15. However, due to a test she did on me, I was only allowed to have water before we met.

By the time I got to work at 11:45, I was ravenous. I heated up my lunch right away and ate about 2/3 of it.

But I felt weird--shaky, strange. And tired--I slept terribly last night.

For some reason I thought I wanted chocolate. So I had one ounce, and then another.

A couple of hours later, I got this euphoric idea to make macaroni and cheese for dinner--to figure out how to make mac'n'cheese that I can eat (that has no cow dairy in it). When I left work, I picked my husband up from his job and headed to Whole Foods. I asked the guy at the cheese counter what sheep and/or goat cheese he would recommend for mac'n'cheese, and he gave me a sample of one. It was delicious. I bought it and another kind.

When I got home and was ready to grate the cheese I had sampled, I noticed that--so random!--it contained egg whites. Egg whites in goat gouda? Yep. Eggs are my worst food allergy. I sent my husband back to exchange the cheese for another kind and fretted a bit over whether the sample I'd eaten would upset my stomach.

While he was gone, I ate bits of the other two kinds of cheese I used. Finally, I was concerned I wouldn't be hungry for dinner if I kept eating, so I stopped.

At one point while my husband was gone, I thought, Is mac and cheese what I really want? A wave of exhaustion hit, and I thought, No, what I want is sleep.

But I didn't listen to my body. I thought, Well, I have to make dinner anyway. I decided to make the mac and cheese with butternut squash soup and sage added so that it would be tasty but a bit healthier.

Then I decided I would drink a fruit-juice-sweetened soda from the fridge. Why? I don't really know. And after one sip, I didn't want more. But I kept drinking it. I didn't listen to myself. Why?

My husband and I invited over my best friend and her fiance; my best friend had asked for my help with something, and I was making a huge pan of macaroni, so I thought they could just eat with us. They brought a salad of greens, dried cranberries, dried banana slices, and sunflower seeds, and we ate poppyseed dressing on it. I ate a salad, and then I thought, Hmm, I don't really want very much mac and cheese now. So I took what seemed a moderate scoop of it--1/2 c. to 2/3 c. maybe (it was the main dish, right?)--and ate that. Everyone else ate seconds, which made me feel a bit ill just to watch. I felt so full of fat, so full of dairy, even though it wasn't the cow dairy I'm allergic to. It was so rich and . . . then I had to go to the bathroom.

My stomach got upset and is still upset. I didn't get to help my friend; I just went and lay down on the bed face-down. Her fiance stayed with my husband to wash dishes.

Was it the macaroni and cheese itself that made me sick? The amount of dairy fat I had? The sample of cheese I ate that had egg in it? What role did my exhaustion play? Who knows? But the rare times when I feel this way strongly reaffirm to me that when my body speaks, I should listen.

And now I'm listening by going to bed early.