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.

What happened to me?

My family's delicious dinner this past Christmas. This about sums up my eating habits recently: potato sausage, potato bread (can you get more carbs than that?), Swedish meatballs. But I didn't go completely wrong - there's still salmon and broccoli!

What happened to me? That's a question I've been asking myself a lot lately. For the past 8 months I've thrown Paleo out the window. I said goodbye to Paleo and welcomed back bread, cheese, and baked goodies with open arms. I became re-addicted to bread and grains. I grew up as a bread, starch, and cheese sort of gal. If you had asked me as a kid what my favorite food was, I probably would have said either bread or mashed potatoes. Even now, I can tell you my favorite types of bread, because of course I've ranked them - naan, pita, ciabatta, and sourdough are the top four, but I could got on…

These past 8 months have brought that love/addiction/obsession back to the surface. A majority of meals consisted of pita bread or naan with cheese. I have favorite types of cheeses, too, in case you were wondering: gjetost (Norwegian brown goat cheese), brie, white cheddar, havarti, and gouda are just the top five. Part of the reason why I started eating non-Paleo again was because of some health-related issues that started at the beginning of last summer. I was exhausted all of the time and could barely scrape up the energy to cook Paleo meals. When I did cook, I was never in the mood for it - I've wasted a LOT of Paleo-friendly meals over the last few months. So I turned to pre-made meals from Whole Foods or easy-to-snack-on items, like bread and cheese, or vast quantities of chocolate.

Turns out, I was deficient in Vitamin B12. This vitamin is necessary for normal functioning of your nervous system and cell metabolism. It can cause tiredness, weakness, dizziness, numbness or tingling in your fingers and toes, nerve damage (sometimes permanent), GI issues, mood changes, irritability, memory loss, and disorientation. Vitamin B12 deficiency is usually the result of an absorptivity issue. Other causes include insufficient consumption of B12 (such as if you're a vegetarian or a vegan), intestinal conditions (Crohn's disease, celiac, or parasites), or immune disorders (Graves' disease or lupus). You obtain vitamin B12 through your diet - it is not something that your body produces on it's own. Sources of B12 include: meat, poultry, shellfish, eggs, and dairy products.

Not only was I deficient in Vitamin B12 at that time, but also I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Hypothyroidism is when your thyroid is under-active. Some of the symptoms include fatigue, weight gain, muscle weakness, joint pain/stiffness, depression, impaired memory, dry skin, increased sensitivity to cold, hoarseness, and peripheral neuropathy (numbness and tingling in your fingers and toes), among others.

I was diagnosed with both of these issues after going to a neurologist complaining of numbness and tingling in my fingers. The numbness was particularly bad when I was working out, and sometimes made me a little worried about lifting weights, because I had a hard time maintaining my grip. While this was going on, I was also struggling with waking up exhausted (despite 9 hours of sleep) and had to resort to chugging down caffeine to attempt to stay awake at work. The caffeine just made me simultaneously hyper and tired, and I still couldn't focus. I felt like I was in a constant fog, just struggling to make it through the day. Some days just fighting through work for the first 30 minutes of the day seemed like more than I could bear. I stopped being active because I was tired and I compensated feeling tired with eating more. I stopped cooking for myself because it took more effort than I had to give.

My doctor decided to run some blood tests… and that led to the addition of a few more pills to my daily regimen in order to get my thyroid and B12 levels back in check. I started feeling more energetic again, but couldn't quite get back into Paleo. In a way, I felt betrayed by the Paleo diet. For me, the biggest benefit of going Paleo, was NOT being sick and NOT having to go to the doctor all of the time. And that benefit was slipping away. Here I was, uncommonly tired, gaining weight, and back to visiting the doctor every month. Despite eating meat or animal protein at practically every meal, I was deficient in B12. Despite following the Paleo lifestyle of getting enough sleep, eating clean, lifting heavy things, and moving around more, my body was failing me.

Fortunately, the supplements started to help. After a couple weeks, I started feeling energetic again, but by this time, I was re-addicted to grains and sugar, and though I would tell myself I really needed to get back to eating healthy, I didn't want to give up my addictions. The motivation to eat clean just fell away. I continued to give Paleo the finger.

I was feeling pretty good for a little while, but things started to hurt again. Being the overachiever that I am, I ignored the pain and continued to push myself at the gym and at soccer. I started wearing a knee brace again and ibuprofen became a frequent companion. Then something happened that I've never experienced while working out... my muscles wouldn't completely respond. I tried to use a medium box for step ups at the gym, and I couldn't get my foot up high enough. My quad muscles had obviously started to fire, but seemed to stop half-way. It felt like my body wasn't listening to me. From there, I continued to fall apart. My lifts got harder, and my body began hurting more and more. Around the same time, I started having severe neck pain, which led to physical therapy for my neck, and my exercise was reduced to walking. My migraines came back, and my constant daily headaches returned.

Suffice it to say, I've been falling apart for a while now. And it's time that I try to take charge of my life again.

To start, I'm working my way back to Paleo. I'm beginning with gluten-free, and moving on from there. I'm going to try to break my re-addiction to sugar and grains. And I’m trying to be more active again, which at this point includes swimming, biking, physical therapy (on my knee this time), and walking. And every little bit helps, right?

As I mentioned, I was still cooking some Paleo dishes. And here's one of the desserts I made.

Bacon-wrapped Dates

2 strips bacon

8 dates

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. Cut the strips of bacon into quarters, and wrap each piece around a date. Stick with a toothpick to keep the bacon wrapped around the date.
3. Place on a baking sheet and transfer to the hot oven. Cook for 15-20 minutes.

30 Days of Yoga - Success

Well folks, I made it to 31 yoga classes in the last 31 days. Yeah, the challenge was only for 30 days, but why not make it a full month instead of just 30 days? Plus it turned out that the yoga studio I decided to go to had scheduled a 30 day challenge as well. Perfect timing/coincidence if you ask me. They had a chart on the wall where we got to track our attendance with gold stars. I guess those elementary school years of getting gold stars next to your name for being good stuck with me. And being the overachiever that I was, I got a lot of gold stars. Most of this past month I attended class at 6 a.m. throughout the week and then a mid-day or afternoon class on the weekend. As I had mentioned, the morning class I attended was called Wake Up and Salute the Sun. It's what I would refer to as slow flow, as intense as you'd like to make it. We had a core group of 5-6 of us that showed up on a daily basis. I could tell who was there when I first arrived just by their cars. One of the women drove a orange sedan, whereas the guy who had excellent and super consistent Ujjayi breath drove a silver SUV with a yoga studio sticker on the bottom left corner of the back windshield. Anyways, we bonded over waking up so early every morning and started to feel like the non-regulars were intruders. Our class doubled in size on the Thursday and Friday before Memorial Day weekend because everyone was trying to get their gold stars. When class dropped back down to its regular size, we kept talking about how we were so surprised when there was that many people that early in the morning. It's always nice to feel like you're a part of something, and that's one of the things I enjoyed about my 30 Days of Yoga.

Another good thing about this challenge was my mood. As I mentioned in my Paleo f(x) Recap, one of the big topics was stress and how to manage it. Stress is something that all of us experience and how we handle that stress makes all the difference. Daily yoga definitely helped me with my stress management. Not only did spending at least an hour every day trying to clear my mind and focus only on breathing (while struggling to balance) give me some peace of mind, but I also found myself making time to be calm and relaxed. I took more walks. I read a book. I went to the library for some quiet time to focus. I spent more time with my friends one-on-one, and I called some of my old friends to catch up on life. I felt happy more often and one of my coworkers even commented on how I was smiling more frequently. I don't know whether this was a result of just the yoga or the fact that I was making time every day to be physically active and get a good sweat on. I made physical activity a priority and I want to continue to do so. That may mean that I'm not quite as social with friends as I might like to be, but I can notice the difference between my health and mood now and what it was a month ago.

I do have to admit that not everything improved; my flexibility was one of those things. I swear that some of my muscles feel tighter now than they did a month ago. My hamstrings and calf muscles in particular feel like they got shortened somehow. And my previously very open hip flexors now feel sore and achey often. I don't know how that all happened, but I think that part of it was pushing my body harder that I've pushed it in a while. It may also be that my form improved thanks to daily practice. My instructor said that my form got better over the weeks, and she attributed my recently developed knee twinge to my improved hip placement in Warrior 1, and there's the fact that I'm a woman... with hips... and these yoga poses were originally designed for men, who don't have hips that put extra strain on the knee joints. The solution was easy though, I just modify the pose a bit so that my heels don't quite line up, and voila, no twinge. 

So all things considered, would I do it again? Definitely. Did you make it through the 30 days? How do you feel? Are you ready for another 30-day challenge? Good, because I'm doing a Whole 30 starting June 1st. So let's jump from one challenge to the next. Let's do it!