Is gluten-free worth it?

Is avoiding gluten worth it? The only answer is: It depends. Your body may be able to handle gluten just fine. Me? I know that gluten does bad things to me: migraines, upset stomach, bloating, mental fog, tiredness - all of these things happen when I eat gluten. I’ve known this for years thanks to first going gluten-free for a month four years ago, and then to going Paleo three years ago. Despite this knowledge, I kept eating grains for the last eight months. I’ve been cutting down significantly since January 1st of this year, but hadn’t completely given it up because I kept craving bread. This past weekend was a bit of an eye-opener for me though. Let me share…

On Saturday, I went out to lunch at a Tex-Mex restaurant with a couple friends. I ate chips and salsa and queso, and then the taco salad. The food was good, and the conversation was better. We ended up sitting in the restaurant for two-and-a-half hours, and by the time we got around to leaving, all of us felt like we needed a serious nap. I’m not much of a napper; I usually only take naps when I’m ill. So, I fought to stay awake and be productive Saturday afternoon. I felt miserable though. My head felt pinched and throbbing, I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, and my sinuses started acting up - my nose, cheeks, eyes, and ears all became a burning type of pain. I ended up laying down, but not sleeping for an hour Saturday evening before heading to a friend’s house for a Candlemas party. My friends and our conversations kept me there for the duration, but I felt worse and worse as the night wore on.

On Sunday, I ate no gluten and no cheese. I still ate some grains, like quinoa, but I managed to steer clear of the pizza, brownies, and bread at the superbowl party. The result? No headache. No stomachache. No lethargy. I didn’t notice it during the day, but by the time I was heading to the party, I realized how much better I felt then than I had 24 hours before. It was incredibly satisfying to feel energetic and not to have a low-grade headache in the background of my life. So I made a pit stop at My Fit Foods and picked up a gluten-free salmon dinner to eat instead of the pizza I had been planning on eating. It’s only been five days so far, but reminding myself of the huge improvement in how my body felt between Saturday and Sunday has been giving me enough motivation to say no to those urges to eat a cookie or stop at the store on the way home to buy some pita bread and cheese.

Here’s hoping I can keep it up…

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a recipe:

Butter Chicken
1.5 lb chicken, cut into 1-2" chunks
2 Tbls coconut oil

1 - 14 oz can coconut milk
0.5 cup tomato paste
1 sweet onion, diced
5 cloves, garlic, smashed and minced

3 Tbls arrowroot flour

1 Tbls garam masala

1.5 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp chili powder

0.5 tsp cinnamon

0.25 tsp cayenne

salt and pepper to taste - I used about a pinch of each

1. Heat the coconut oil in a large pan over medium-high heat.
2. Add the diced onion and garlic, cooking until the onion becomes translucent.
3. Mix all of the ingredients except for the chicken into the pan. Cook for 5-10 minutes or until the sauce thickens.
4. Mix the chicken into the sauce and transfer to your slow cooker. Set on low and cook for 6 hours. Then enjoy.

I seem to have a think for Indian food these days. Stay tuned for my next post on Paleo naan.

W30D13-14

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned... That's how it goes, right? Or at least that's what I've seen in the movies. Anyways, I have a confession... I did not stick with Whole 30 on Saturday. "Why?" you ask. Well here we go. Yesterday I volunteered at an Irish Stew Cook-off and Music Festival, which went from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. I stood at the entrance booth selling tickets from 10:30 until around 4:00, at which point I started to enjoy the festival a bit. I didn't have time in the morning to prep snacks for the day, so I eventually caved and ate some of the samples of Irish stew and chili that the various teams were making. Each stew was different, but I can guarantee that I ended up consuming wheat (flour used as a thickener for the stew) and dairy. So that's it. That's my confession. I didn't stick to the Whole 30. But let me tell you about the rest of my day.

After working for five and a half hours, I took a break to watch a group of Irish dancers (think Lord of the Dance) and then a performance by The Dead Rabbits, an Irish punk rock band. We then rounded up the voting jars from each booth and counted votes to see which team the festival attendees liked the best, and started taking down signs and tables, etc. We reached a lull where there wasn't much left to do so most of us just hung around drinking and chatting. As the sun set, and some of the folks continued to consume the beer that was free for volunteers (don't worry, I didn't drink any beer), the group got a bit louder and a bit more rowdy, which proved for a very entertaining evening. The band started an impromptu acoustic session, which was fantastic. There's something about drunk Irishmen singing that just warms my soul and makes me smile. Sure, that may be a bit odd, but I don't see how you wouldn't enjoy watching a group of men singing in harmony.

We started to disperse so two of the the volunteers and I headed into the bar that hosted our festival to hang out with some other lovers of Irish culture. While we were inside, I made some new friends. These new friends happened to be some guys from a MC. Yep, that's right... a motorcycle club. You're probably like me and immediately thought of Sons of Anarchy, but they assured me that they're really just a group of guys that like to ride motorcycles. The reason why we started talking was because I got involved in their discussion of health insurance costs. It got rather political for a while, but it still remained a great day overall.

The greatness continued today with a Paleo Meetup. We went to a restaurant that specializes in wild game, such as elk, antelope, yak, camel, kangaroo, etc. And yes, I tried ALL of those today! The restaurant gave us a couple sampler platters for our group of 25. What a turnout!

I decided on the yak burger, bunless and cheeseless, of course. It had a different flavor than beef, but wasn't so wildly different that I had a hard time believing it was a burger. Yummy. To be honest, my favorite meat was camel. It's a bit fattier and it tasted great. Try it out if you have the chance!

ECD5: 1 hour walk (+6 hours of standing/running errands at the festival)

ECD6: 1 hour walk (to/from the grocery store - 3 miles total)

W30D1

Whole 30, Day 1

Hello, everyone! I'm back! (Or at least trying my best to come back.) Life has been a bit crazy lately. Let me summarize... Back in November, I started working part-time as a project engineer. I was supposed to spend 50% of my time on process engineering and 50% of my time on project engineering for a month, at which point, I was supposed to completely transition from process engineering to project engineering. What actually happened was full-time process engineering + part-time project engineering. After a month of this split work, I had full-time responsibilities for both jobs. Another month later and my direct supervisor moved to a different project while I was on vacation. So I was welcomed back from vacation with the responsibilities for three full-time jobs. Let's just say that I've been extremely stressed lately. Add in planning a bachelorette party and an upcoming trip, and my attempts at including healthy foods and exercise into my life were failing miserably. I basically stopped cooking altogether, stopped exercising, and stopped reading health-related blogs. Because I wasn't cooking, I was eating a lot of non-Paleo foods, such as bread and cheese, and subsequently, the frequency of my migraines increased.

As of last week, thanks to the help of my process lead, I am no longer doing project engineering work, so my stress level has decreased a bit since then. With that reduction came a slightly more optimistic attitude for getting back to Paleo. I went to a Paleo lunch meetup on Saturday where my enthusiasm for Paleo was reinvigorated. So my friend Jay (of Health Nuts Anonymous) and I decided to start a Whole 30 today. If you need a refresher, Whole 30 is a 30-day challenge to eat nutritious foods.

The things you can eat:

• Grass-fed meat and poultry
• Wild-caught fish
• Eggs (from free-range, grain-free chickens)
• Fruits (2 servings per day)
• Nuts (in moderation)
• Olive oil, coconut oil

The things you can consume in limited quantities:

• Ghee/clarified butter
• Green beans, sugar snap peas, or snow peas
• Most vinegar (white, balsamic, apple cider, red wine, and rice); stay away from ones with added sugar

The things you have to cut out:

• Grains (wheat, corn, oats, quinoa, rice, etc.)
• Sugar - real (honey) or artificial (Splenda)
• Dairy
• Legumes (this includes peanuts)
• Alcohol
• Tobacco
• MSG, Sulfites
• White potatoes
• Seed Oils and Vegetable Oils
• Sex With Your Pants On (Read below for more details)

Check out the full "Can I Have...?" List here

What is the benefit of cutting out these foods?

• Physical Improvements: "body composition, energy levels, sleep quality, attention span, mental attitude and athletic performance"
• Psychological Benefits: "changing long-standing, unhealthy patterns related to food, eating and your body image, and a dramatic reduction or elimination of food cravings, particularly sugar and carbohydrates"

Spiced Tuna Steaks

1 lb Ahi tuna fillet
2 tbls coconut oil
Spice Rub:
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp ground coriander
3/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tbls coarse black pepper, freshly ground

1. Cut the tuna fillet into roughly evenly-sized portions.

2. Mix the spice ingredients together and rub over each side of the tuna.

3. Heat the coconut oil in a cast iron, or heavy-bottomed pan. When there are a few wisps of smoke, add the tuna.

4. Cook for 1 minute on each side, then remove from the pan.

5. Slice lengthwise and serve with veggies and balsamic vinegar reduction.

Balsamic Vinegar Reduction
6 tbls balsamic vinegar
1 tsp lemon juice
1 clove garlic, peeled and cut in half

Put the vinegar, lemon juice, and garlic clove in a small saucepan and heat over medium-high heat. Simmer until the liquid is reduced by half. Set aside until you're ready to serve.

Whole 30 - Day 27

Lots of photos tonight. There's nothing I'd like more than to go straight to bed, but I'm taking a few minutes to share my day with you. I cheated again today. I had gluten-free beer. Two days in a row of cheating? Yeah... I thought about saying no, but I decided to drink it. Let me explain why...

After falling asleep around 11 last night, I woke up a few times throughout the night because my hotel room got really cold. The first time was around 1 a.m., and I got up to turn down the air. The second time was about 4 a.m., but I just burrowed under the covers more. Then I woke up at 5 a.m. and burrowed further. My alarm finally went off at 5:45, but I didn't roll out of bed until 6, after my second alarm went off. I had laid out everything last night, so it didn't take me long to head to the front desk to check out at 6:30 a.m. and then grab some of the eggs at their free breakfast. I'm pretty sure everyone at breakfast that early was there for the regatta (registration started at 6:30).

Anyways, I drove the quarter-mile to the boathouse and we started setting up camp for the day. After a brief course/safety session, we starting getting on the water for the first races. My races were at 8:30, 9:30, and 10:30, though everything kind of fell behind, so I spent probably 90% of my time from 7:50 a.m. to 11:50 a.m. on the water. I rowed 18,000 m today. When you're not racing, you're helping your other teammates with their boats or their oars so that they can launch their boats from the docks. Or you're scarfing down some sort of sustenance in between guzzling water. Once our races were done, we all celebrated with a beer or two (just one gluten-free beer for me), before de-rigging all of our boats for transport back to our boathouse. (We remove the riggers which hold our oars in place so that we can fit all of our boats on one trailer and so that the trailer can be towed without smacking into cars on either side.) Once everything was loaded, all of our garbage collected, and our tent and chairs stowed in our cars, we made the 4.5-hour drive back to our boathouse for unloading and rigging the boats, storing our oars, pushing the trailer back into the back of our boathouse, hanging the slings, and carrying the boats to their proper racks in the boathouse.

This all finished around 9 p.m. I made a quick stop at Whole Foods to grab some food for dinner, but by the time I got home around 9:45, I wasn't hungry anymore. I dragged myself to my room, showered, and started this post. Sigh... I'm too tired to be hungry, but apparently not tired enough to skip out on this.

So with all of the rowing, carrying boats up hills, and general weight-lifting as we overhead press our boats onto the trailers or to avoid hitting things, I decided I deserved a beer... in a social setting. Granted, it probably wasn't the smartest decision from a dehydration standpoint, but I don't feel guilty about it. All I feel right now is tired and sore and a little sunburned.

So to wrap this up, here are some photos from today. I only took photos after I had finished my races, and I don't have any of me actually racing... maybe someone else took some...

Yve and I after our races

Mixed Masters Quad

Watching as boats are brought down to the dock

One of the women in my quad today is on crutches, but she stilled rowed in two races = Dedication!

The row of boats (haha, get it?)

Beaker came to watch

Relaxing/collapsing after our races

And enjoying a gluten-free beer. Judge away.

Happy Twenty-Sexy!

Today was my 26th birthday, a.k.a. the twenty-sexy birthday. To celebrate, a few of the ladies and I went to a wine bar for dinner. And since it's my birthday, we got free champagne. Awesome!

 

Here's what I ate...

Duck Confit Eggrolls: cured confit duck, napa cabbage, daikon, carrot, mango mustard - I ate out the insides of the eggroll, but didn't take a picture of the mess

Braised Short Rib: boneless short rib, red wine braising reduction, whipped potatoes, honey pesto glazed baby carrots

Gluten Free Flourless Red Velvet: chocolate cookie crust, moist and light red velvet cake, red velvet pudding, cream cheese icing, dusted with powdered sugar

Yeah, I ate some... yum!

Paleo Peach Cobbler

Paleo Peach Cobbler

2 small peaches
1/3 cup water
2.5 Tbls honey
1 Tbls + 1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/3 cup almond flour
1 egg
2.5 Tbls coconut oil
pinch of sea salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Prep a baking dish by greasing the dish with melted ghee or coconut oil.
2. Peel and dice the peaches. Mix in pan with water, honey, and 1 tsp cinnamon. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until you hit your desired thickness.

3. Transfer peach mixture to your baking dish(es).

4. In a separate bowl, mix the almond flour, 1 Tbls cinnamon, egg, coconut oil, and sea salt. Scoop over the peach mixture.

5. Bake for 30 minutes.

6. Let cool for a couple minutes. Then serve. I topped mine with coconut cream (milk).

What I did for 4th of July vacation...

Hi there. I feel like I've been saying this a lot lately, but it's been a while. I think about blogging throughout the day (seriously, I compose posts in my head as I walk through the hallways at work or walk down the streets of whatever town I'm in), but by the time the day ends, I'm too tired to write. The past few weeks of work have been kind of crazy. We had a big deadline that we were all racing to meet. I even worked weekends, meaning I worked for two weeks without a day off. Don't worry, it's not a habit I intend to continue.

Last week started getting awesome again though. Last Monday, my gal pal KAOS and I had a catch up dinner at an Indian restaurant we both love. It was definitely not Paleo, but we at least stayed gluten-free. KAOS is like me: gluten doesn't agree with our stomachs or heads. My chicken tikka masala definitely contained dairy, but it's one of the few times the food was worth it. As I drove home, I debated what I should do with the rest of my evening. I really needed to pack for an upcoming trip and I needed to pack up my life for an upcoming move, but I also wanted to relax. What won? Relaxation in the form of a bubble bath and a bottle of cider. Glorious! Sometimes you just need to say "Screw it" and let yourself do the irresponsible/unproductive thing. I'm an adult. I can make my own decisions, right? So if I want to be lazy and have a Paleo "cheat" meal, then I will. I've found lately that my "cheat" meals still manage to be gluten-free, so at least I'm not completely messing myself up.

On Tuesday I went to a gourmet hot dog place on the east side of town to meet up with two of my guy friends who have been living and working in South Korea. One has been there 1.5 years and the other 2.5 years. This trip was their first visit back to the States since they left. I miss them. So seeing both of them made me extremely happy. I even completely disregarded my usual 9 p.m. "It's time to sleep" alarm and stayed out with them until 10:30. Scandalous! I yawned my way through Wednesday, but it was so worth it. Even though I was at a hot dog place, I got a very messy, mustard-covered, fried egg-topped, bun-free burger:

(Note to self: I must remember to take photos of people. It would have been nice to have a group shot of me and the guys.)

I spent my Independence Day traveling. My alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. so I could finish packing, eat breakfast, and get to the airport before 6:30 a.m. I then spent the next five or so hours flying through Charlotte, NC (and dashing from one end of the airport to the other) to Richmond, VA, where my friend Yve and I rented a car and drove and hour and a half to Lancaster, VA. Why did we drive to small town Virginia? Good question. And here's your unexpected answer: rowing camp. Yes, I attended a camp at the age of 25. As I've mentioned before, I rejoined a crew team. Some of the ladies on my team had attended this camp before and were talking about how helpful it was, so about a month ago, Yve and I decided we were going. We arrived at the old plantation house/inn/rowing camp headquarters around 2:30 that afternoon and changed into our rowing gear. Over the next hour, the remaining rowing camp attendees arrived. After a round of introductions and detailing our rowing experience, we headed to the lake for our first practice. The couple who run the camp own a lake. Yes, just the lake... not the surrounding land.

Here's the overall schedule:

6:30               Wake up

7:00               Meet up to head to the lake

7:15-7:45      Technique instruction

7:45-9:15      Row (videotaped)

9:30-10:00    Breakfast

10:15-11:30 Watch DVDs of Olympic rowers. Review video from morning row.

11:45-12:15 Technique instruction

12:15-2:00    Row

2:15-2:45      Lunch

3:00-4:30      Nap

5:00-6:15      Row

6:30-7:00      Shower

7:15-              Dinner in Kilmarnock

10:00             Sleep

In summary: row, eat (talk about rowing), watch rowing videos, row, eat (talk about rowing), sleep (dream about rowing), row, eat (talk about rowing), sleep (dream about rowing). You may think I'm kidding with the dreaming about rowing, but no. I spent my nights dreaming about that perfect stroke, and dreading those not-so-perfect strokes. Obsessive? Maybe, but when you enjoy something, you might as well let yourself enjoy it, right?

I didn't stay Paleo, but I was gluten-free. I had told the coaches in advance that I didn't eat dairy, legumes, or gluten, but I didn't want to make meal prep exceptionally hard on them by saying that I didn't eat any grains. Because I appreciated the fact that they went out of their way to get me gluten-free things like gluten-free bread, oatmeal, corn instead of peas, etc., I went ahead and ate them. The meals were yummy and it's nice to have someone cooking for you. On Saturday night, we went to a place called Town Bistro where I had roasted duck in a ligonberry sauce (my Swedish side appreciated the sauce).

What did I take away from the camp? The technique I had learned in college was wrong. I sit up too straight, my arms are too straight, my hips act too much as a hinge, I dig my oars, I'm too aggressive at the catch, 15-degree layback is too little, I feather with the wrist too much, I grip the oar handles too much, arms away is bad... the list goes on. On the bright side, I'm "very coachable," so by the time the camp was over, they were getting super picky about my form because overall they were happy with what I was doing. I also learned how to maneuver my way back into a boat if you accidentally flip the boat. That was one of the things that made me the most worried about rowing in a single: that I would flip and not be able to get back in. But it was relatively easy. And I did not flip my boat. My dip in the water consisted of unstrapping my feet from the foot stretchers and dangling them over the edge before hopping into the water. How do you get back in? Simple. Get your oars lined up so that they're perpendicular to the boat and fully pushed against the oar locks. Grab the oars in one hand and rest the corresponding elbow on the oar and rigger. Then push yourself up and into the boat as if you were climbing out of a pool without using a ladder. Once you're on the boat, you're ready to get back to rowing.

Because I love rowing so much, camp was generous enough to give me something else to take away. No, I'm not talking about the embroidered t-shirt or the video of us rowing. I'm talking about wounds from an alligator. Yeah, an alligator attacked my boat while I was rowing and knocked me out of the boat. As I hurriedly climbed back into the boat, it nipped at my calves, but I managed to jump in and row away, knocking it in the head with an oar - kind of like punching a shark in the face, but using the oar instead. Haha! Just kidding, though that would be much cooler. Instead, I'm actually talking about the staph infection that I got from the tracks of my boat.

Track bite looks like this normally:

In case you want to know what a staph infection looks like, mine looked like this one over to the right:

Yeah, you're welcome for that loveliness. I had noticed Friday morning that my track bite on my left leg didn't seem normal, but I just figured it was some weird reaction due to heat and humidity. So I covered the red area with a band-aid and kept rowing. By Friday evening, I had to use 3 band-aids to cover most of the infected area on my left leg, and my right calf was showing the same signs. It got worse by Saturday, and some of the other rowers were commenting on how strange it looked. I kept it covered, but I bet jumping into the lake Saturday evening wasn't the best idea for already infected legs. Anyways, by Saturday evening, it was pretty painful if anything touched it. Just resting my calf on the bed while laying down hurt. And I had to take a few minutes of light rowing at the beginning of each session before I was able to ignore the pain.

As Yve and I were climbing into our rental on Sunday afternoon to trek back to Richmond, I nonchalantly said "We're gonna stop at Walmart to pick up some gauze. I think I have a staph infection." She was shocked that I hadn't been complaining about it all weekend and she had to convince me that I should get it checked out that day. I was going to wait until I returned to Texas. After a brief call to my dad for his CDC medical advice, I hit up my health insurance nurse advice line. The nurse I talked to was adamant that I go to a doctor that day. "The sooner the better." Because there weren't any 24-hour clinics nearby, I drove the hour and a half back to Richmond to a 24-hour clinic the nurse had looked up for me. He also told me "If they give you antibiotics you must take them exactly as directed. If they say twice a day that means every 12 hours, not just breakfast and dinner; three times a day is every eight hours, not breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's very important you do as they say. Don't do any strenuous exercise (Whoops, too bad I had been rowing three times a day.) and keep your legs elevated." Yikes. Way to make me struggle a bit more to stay calm. Thanks, buddy.

Though Yve and I joked how I narrowly escaped death or the loss of my legs, it could have happened. There was an instance a few years ago of an Ohio high school rower who got necrotizing fasciitis and had both of his legs amputated: Click here for the article. He didn't necessarily get the flesh-eating bacteria from the tracks of the boat, but the track bites allowed the bacteria to get into the tissue of the back of his calves. And staph infections associated with track bites is not unheard of. So be careful people. There is now a product you can buy specifically for your calf in order to prevent track bites. See rowdock.com for this. Or you can make your own track bite guards out of tube socks - just chop of the toe end of the sock.

21DSD Day 11 - Prosciutto on a Burger? Yummmm

First off: Hell yes! Half-way through! 11 days down. 10 more to go. And I managed to go all of today at work without snacking. Amazing!

In sad news, it was one of my friends last days at work with my company. He's switching to a different company a couple miles down the road where he can hang out with two of our other friends. I'm happy for him, but super sad that he's leaving my cubicle bay. Who will I talk to about awesome cooking knives, or Paleo, or working out, or things like the Engineer's Guide to Cats (http://youtu.be/mHXBL6bzAR4)? So, we may have taken a sanity break from work last Saturday (yes, work on a Saturday) to watch a little bit of cat yodeling... don't judge.

Anyways, back to 21DSD... I lasted 48 hours without any nuts. And it was glorious. But, when hunger starts calling, and you're at a restaurant where everything on the menu would need serious tweaking to make it 21DSD-friendly, then sometimes you cave in and eat the handy nuts. And that I did. I ate pistachios. I admit it. And I can tell you that within a few minutes of eating them, my stomach started grumbling at me. Bad sign? Please don't tell me that my body doesn't like pistachios. They're so yummy! We'll see what happens after a week without nuts when I try them again.

It's probably is a better idea to go off of nuts next week anyways. I'm celebrating the long weekend with some friends and there will be roughly 8 hours where I won't have access to a fridge, a store, or a stove, so I need something to sustain me, that's preferably not a sandwich that I have to eat the insides out of. I'm thinking that nuts may suffice for part of that. I'm still trying to figure out for sure what I'm going to bring with me. Carrots and celery are definitely on the menu, and I just chopped up quite a bit of those tonight in preparation. I'll keep you posted on what I end up eating.

Anyways, here's one of the ways that I tossed together toppings for a 21DSD-friendly burger (man, I really wish that I could have continued the "t" alliteration there)... 

Guacamole - Prosciutto Burger

So, this is simple. Grill, fry, or broil your ground beef. Then top with guacamole, tomato, mini-bell pepper slices, and a slice of prosciutto. Wrap with iceberg lettuce (I find iceberg is the best for wrapping). Then open that gaping hole in your face, and insert burger. Chew. Swallow. Repeat. 

And yep, I got fancy and added prosciutto to my burger. Just keepin' it classy, y'all. Try to contain your jealousy... jk. Go out and get the makings yourself. Then you can enjoy the yumminess, too!