Sun & Mon April 25th & 26th

Sunday
A smoothie of some sort
dates
a piece of cake at a birthday party
3/4 of a strawberry at same birthday party...
Village Inn blintzes with strawberry sauce, bacon, and eggs
I am very sure there was more but I can't remember

Monday
Kefir smoothie with mango, acai berries, peach, banana, egg, honey
quesadillas on corn Ezekiel tortillas
beef and spinach ravioli in spaghetti sauce with shredded zucchini
sauteed baby portobello mushrooms
organic white cheddar popcorn
leftover pancakes and eggs from VI

Analysis
OK, this every other day posting is clearly not good because I can't remember what I ate yesterday! I have been doing halfway decent I think. I know the Village Inn food doesn't seem good, but the blintzes were really very little pancake and mostly cottage cheese. I probably could have found something better to eat for a snack than pancakes just now, not that I should be eating at 11:30 at night, but I was hungry... I am glad to now have a clean kitchen and a clean oven and a full meal plan with food in the fridge to cook. Eating should continue to be better this week...

Fri April 24th & Sat April 25th - What I'm Eating

Friday
Breakfast: smoothie - kefir, mango, raw egg, honey, acai berries, banana
Lunch: missed...
Dinner: baked salmon, steamed broccoli, brown basmati rice
Dessert: a very little bit of all-natural rocky road ice cream (the last of it)

Saturday
Breakfast: leftover ham and pepper quiche, cinnamon toast
Lunch: leftover garlic pork roast
Dinner: greek salad, gyro meat, half a pita
Dessert: cinnamon toast, organic white cheddar cheese popcorn

Anaylsis: Well I clearly have a bit of a cinnamon toast obsession at the moment. I also need to work on getting more veggies, as usual! But I'm doing a bit better than I was a few days ago! I missed lunch yesterday - I was VERY close to going for fast food while running errands, but the "Baby Baby Baby" mantra actually worked! It was still not good to miss a meal, but I suppose better than eating garbage. Heaven knows I have enough reserve to go without for a while, but being so hungry just makes a person lose all self control and binge later...I did manage to avoid that this time around, but it was touch and go there for a minute with the fast food temptation...

Thanks everyone for the support! I am coordinating a booth at a huge festival this weekend, so the last few days have been really crazy. It opened today and went off without a hitch, so that really took a load off my shoulders! Another day of it tomorrow, and that will be that. I have had a lot of really wonderful volunteers helping with it, both staffing the booth and providing childcare. Hubby has a big exam this coming Friday and is using every moment to study...he'll be fired from his current job if he doesn't pass - no pressure.

I had written what's been going on with the potential move, but I am not 100% sure of who all exactly reads this blog, so its better safe than sorry - I'll send you the story individually, those who asked... :)

Weds & Thurs April 22nd & 23rd - What I'm Eating

Today a friend made the remark that since I hadn't been posting on here, she figured it was because I was not eating anything I'd want anyone to know about...or something to that effect...

That is the honest truth - all the rest of the excuses are true too, but they are really excuses. I have been eating so poorly for the most part, that I am humiliated to make a record of it. But that is the point of this blog, isn't it? I do have to thank my sister Hannah, who actually follows through and pesters me when I don't post! Its a bit of a social contract we have going on here - I agree to humiliate myself, and occasionally provide good recipes or other useful information, and you harass me if I avoid it!

OK, so I don't fully remember everything I ate yesterday and today because its been 48 hours of snacking sinfulness. Not to mention, I am sure most of the time I was in a sugar-induced stupor. I'll do my best to remember most of what I consumed, but I can't promise the order. I do promise not to leave out the bad things.

Weds
- 6 pieces of cinnamon toast (the kind with way more sugar than cinnamon), but at least it was on Ezekiel bread, with pasture butter (and no, I didn't eat them all at once - think Breakfast, Lunch, and Snack...)
- 2 more grocery store beef tamales
- orange juice (I really shouldn't drink it because I can actually feel my blood sugar go up)
- 3/4's of a Panchero's chicken quesadilla with black beans - a white flour tortilla of course
- Cold Stone Creamery Coffee Lover's Only ice cream - at least I went for the small size...

Thurs
- kefir smoothie - peaches, banana, raw egg, honey
- potato salad - two helpings
- another salad containing tuna, white beans, cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes, and I'm not sure what else
- bread with olive oil and tomato puree spread
- a few pieces of fruit, incl cantaloupe, honeydew, pineapple and grapes
- a piece of carrot cake
- apple crisp with a bit of yogurt (plain)
- an entire bag of Werther's caramel candies
- an entire bag of Riesen chocolate candies
(just to confess some more, I ate a whole bag of Swedish Fish and a whole box of Mike and Ike's the other day on the way home from Iowa City - I think I mentioned it before but that is the full extent of it...)
- whole wheat crust quiche with green peppers, ham and cheese (at least it was homemade - yes, I got my oven cleaned...and the dishes too)
- a few carrot chips and some cheese curds

Analysis:
I know, I'm a sick puppy. I revert to eating candy when driving long distances (I drove to Lincoln and back today) when I'm sleep deprived. I'm sleep deprived because I don't go to bed until 1 or 2 am. I don't sleep well even when I do go to bed because of worrying and feeling guilty, and having colds. I'm sure I always have colds because of a lack of sleep and too much sugar... And I revert to eating lots of sugary stuff when I am stressed out... considering we may be facing an out of state move within a matter of a couple of weeks and we don't know for sure yet, among other things, I've been a little stressed.

OK, so I am starting over, no more excuses. What I need is focus! TMI ALERT: I talked before about thinking about trying for another baby - well, today is the start of a brand new cycle, therefore a brand new chance at that. I'm shifting my focus onto that. I'm going to start taking all my supplements again. And exercising. And going to bed earlier. And above all, swearing off sugar. And white flour. Baby. Baby. Baby. Whoever is out there, I need your support!!! Come pester me on Facebook if I show signs of weakness!!! Or call me - its lonely doing battle with the sugar monster... I want to write "CHARGE!" but I all can muster at the moment is ... here we go again ...

And now, back to your regularly scheduled programming...

Sorry I've been a blog delinquent again! I have no real excuses...I've been sick, busy, and out of town again. The guilt has been mounding... I won't bore you with endless details, I'll just jump back into the swing of things.

Tues April 21st

Breakfast: nothing

Lunch: 2 grocery store beef tamales, raspberry green tea

Dinner: Paradise Bakery chicken artichoke panini, Caesar salad, and a chocolate chip cookie

Snack: a few leftover Mike and Ike candies from my drive back from Iowa City yesterday (yes, that means I ate the majority of the box yesterday...better than falling asleep behind the wheel and going into the opposing lane of traffic...)

Analysis: Clearly my good eating has fallen by the wayside. Last week was better because I actually cooked quite a bit. Until I spilled toffee in the bottom of my oven. (I was baking chocolate toffee matzoh in honor of Passover...so its all Michal's fault for giving me the recipe 5 years ago!) I haven't had a chance to run the self-clean cycle yet, but its on the docket for tomorrow. I'm scared...

Here's another thought - maybe I wouldn't be getting sick every 3 weeks if I would just quit eating sugar and go to bed at a decent hour??? What a concept...

Friday April 3rd - What I'm Eating

Breakfast: another smoothie - mango today YUM!

Lunch: leftover rice and beans

Snack: a couple of girl scout cookies (brought home from work by hubby - thanks hubby!)

Dinner: Fish Fry - baked fish with tartar sauce, bread and butter, canned pears and peaches, salad with italian dressing, a few bites of mac and cheese, pineapple coconut cake and lime bar shared with family...

Analysis: not a lot of new things to say today - the fish fry desserts are always too tempting for me to resist. Thank goodness today was the last day of fish fry season...

I realized that I might be more successful if I focus my motivation on something more specific and powerful. When I did this before, as Michal pointed out, I did not have a kid yet - that made it easier to focus, and less stressed, but also that was my motivation! I wanted a baby! Well, the fact of the matter is, I want another baby now, but I have not been very focused on it. In part because I am distracted by the one I have, and also because I guess I am just not feeling too rushed about it at the moment. Still, the little guy is almost 2, but it does take about 10 months to grow another one, and I would rather have them a little closer rather than farther apart. Because of my PCOS, I can't really just leave it to chance - I have to take a very active part in encouraging my body to be fertile, and there are a lot of things I can do! Eating right is the first and most important, though! FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS! NEW BABY!

Thurs April 2nd - What I'm Eating

Breakfast: smoothie with kefir, raw egg, banana, honey, and frozen mango

Lunch: leftover spaghetti sauce with ground beef and zucchini

Snack: orange

Dinner: adzuki bean soup with carrots, smoked ham, and brown rice

Dessert: Neapolitan cheesecake...shared with the little guy

Analysis: the dessert monster won again today... maybe if I would eat more food, like good healthy food, during the day, I wouldn't want to eat sweets after dinner... Its a little crazy, but I do not keep these sweets in the house, so that means I'm actually going out to get them - talk about an addiction! I remember the first time I did this good diet thing, I was eating so much food I was never hungry, and I had to really try to eat all the stuff on my menu for the day. Then I was planning every meal ahead of time, not just dinner, and it really made a difference in terms of the veggies that I was getting, esp. I am not sure I have the time or the drive to go that far right now, but I probably need to!

You know, my chiropractor offers an electro-acupuncture treatment to help people stop smoking - I wonder if it would work for sugar addiction too?

Tues April 1st - What I'm Eating

Breakfast: Ezekiel bread toast with butter, cinnamon and sugar

Lunch: leftover lamb curry

Dinner: pot roast with carrots and celery, mashed potatoes and cauliflower

Analysis: breakfast was not so great with the sugar, but I am out of kefir for today - the next batch should be ready for tomorrow, so it'll be back to my wonderful smoothies. I am generally supposed to avoid white potatoes too, but the mash tonight was probably at least 60-70% cauliflower, which I usually dislike, but it was really really good this way!

Oh dear, yet more reasons to eat organic...

Avoid those genetically modified "foods." I got these tidbits from Midwifery Today's latest e-news issue: http://www.midwiferytoday.com/enews/enews1107.asp#qwr

Think About It

2008 was the first year of commercial planting of genetically modified (GM) sugar beets in the US, with that sugar expected to enter the nation's food supply this year. The Monsanto Roundup Ready sugar beet is genetically engineered to be resistant to Monsanto's herbicide glyphosate (marketed as Roundup). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently agreed to a Monsanto request to increase the allowable levels of glyphosate residue on sugar beet roots by 5000 percent.

A representative of Amalgamated Sugar estimated that 95 percent of the sugar beet crop in Idaho would be of the new GM variety in 2008. Sugar beets account for about half the sugar in processed foods.

Question of the Week

Q: I am writing from Indonesia, the country that got GMO soy first, to share what I am seeing, and to ask if you too are seeing the same. In 2008 Bumi Sehat Bali received 573 babies. We saw an increase in retained placentas. I also am seeing an increase in velamentous cord insertion. In 2008 and so far in 2009 we have seen [far] too many "sticky" placentas; two even had to be transported (we do manual removal on site when absolutely necessary), one for a hysterectomy and one with one liter of blood loss. In the last six weeks of 2008 I had to go after four placentas! It was not pretty, and I do not take it lightly (usually never more than one per year).

Also most shocking is the empirical experience (I have no research to prove it) of an increase of velamentous umbilical cord insertion and short cords. I also am seeing a decrease in Wharton's jelly among all our babies. Cords are also shorter. We don't cut them for a minimum of three hours at Bumi Sehat and many families choose lotus birth. Last week our midwife Ayu had to cut a cord after the birth of the head, as the body would not follow, it was that short a nuchal cord—she had never had to do this before in her life as a midwife.

What are you midwives seeing?

The study I read concerning M16 genetically modified corn showed that when fed to pregnant mice, ALL OF THE OFFSPRING, in one generation, had alterations of ALL the cells in ALL their organs! Can you see why I am worried about our precious placentas? I did not make this connection, until I began to see an increase in abnormalities and pathology due to placenta and cord troubles. The fact that so many Indonesian women depend upon genetically modified soy products (tempeh and tofu) for their day-to-day protein, and the early introduction of GMO soy here got me wondering.

— Ibu Robin Lim
Bali, Indonesia