An Open Letter

Dear Friends,

A number of your have asked me the same question lately: "Have you lost weight?". The answer, for those wondering but not asking, is: "No shit, Sherlock". My jeans don't fit. Nor do my shorts or skirts. Apart from being a royal pain in the arse clothing-wise it's not something I'm concerned about, and neither should you be (so shut up and stop asking). I'm not going to waste away into oblivion. Ask D: he sees me eat, hears me whinge when I'm hungry, sees me pat my tummy when I'm full. I eat a lot. Probably a lot more than I used to. But cutting out refined sugars and processed foods just means you lost fat reserves. I'm happy. All I was carrying around was shit that my body didn't need. I wasn't any healthier for being heavier. I haven't lost muscle tone, I've lost fat.

And you know what? I feel bloody amazing, thank you very much. It would be a lie to say I've never felt better, but the truth is that I haven't felt better for about 6 years now, and that's a bloody long time. Last weekend I went to two parties on Saturday night, and stayed out until 4am. On Sunday, hungover and sleep deprived, I packed for a week long trip (many thanks to D who did all my cooking for the trip!). Then I got up early on Monday, drove and worked all day, stayed up late, and did it all again for the next 4 days. On Saturday morning I cleaned the bathroom (I'm not sure what got into me there), I was social through the grand final BBQ, I slept for a couple of hours in the evening, got up and kicked on. Then I got up on Sunday and cleaned the kitchen (it's Spring, that's the only explanation I can think of). I have spent the week at uni, doing my thing, keeping normal hours. I went to a gig last night, stayed up til 1am and got plastered. Now I'm hungover at uni remembering what that feels like. Yeah, it doesn't feel great, but it was fun at the time!

The above sequence of events may not seem unusual to you. Maybe a little tiring, maybe less that you would do in a normal week, I don't know. But it's pretty incredible for me. I have chronic fatigue syndrome. The kind of behaviour I've been exhibiting for the last (nearly) 2 weeks would normally have put me in bed after 3 or 4 days. Touch wood. It may yet put me in bed, but it's astonishing that it hasn't already. Especially since I've been drinking like a trooper as well as all the staying up late and working hard. And when I say "put me in bed", I don't mean having an early night. I don't even mean having an early night and then a sleep-in the following day. I mean run-over-by-a-truck flu-like symptoms, deliriousness, muscle aches, racing-heart, can't get out of bed to feed myself for 2 days. Yup.

So please, stop looking at my loose jeans and start looking at the glimmer in my eye. It is the tiniest spark of hope that things might be changing for the better in my life. Smile with me and cross your fingers that it continues.

Love you lots,
Ellie



Photo credit: Zara J

Eating Out

One book I won't be buying anytime soon. Or ever.

"Hi, I can't eat garlic or anything with gluten, is there anything on your menu that I will be able to eat?"

This is how I envisage a lot of pre-dinner conversations starting in the future. You know, scenarios like this... I walk into a restaurant with friends, the food looks yum, I ask the above question, get a negative and decide that for the sake of friendship a liquid dinner will have to suffice, end up throwing up in a gutter later. Or I walk out, repeat said process a few more times then give up and go home to cook. Or I call ahead and don't even make it to the restaurant before getting a negative. Bleak picture I know. But think how many things have garlic in them.

D and I are going out for dinner tonight. It's super exciting. First meal out since all these shenanigans started. We're going to a little place that he has sussed out at being able to cope with my dietary requirements. Hooray for places like this. :)

Day 35 - I've been away too long

Sorry! I just dropped off the face of the blogosphere for a while there. I have an excuse. I was away on field camp taking students around Northern Victoria to do some water quality monitoring. It was great fun!

Not so fun, however, was having to cook my own meals after a long day in the field. I ate a lot of fried rice. In fact, looking back at my food diary, it seems I've been pretty much living on fried rice for about a week now. Can't be too healthy. On the other hand, all it has is lamb, rice, beans, egg, sunflower seeds, oil and salt. OK, so those last two not so good. But the others, health plus!

Anyway, I've been feeling super awesome, but I still can't quite figure out if wheat is a problem. Sometimes it seems so, sometimes not. Hm.

We introduced the nightshades last week. I don't expect you to know what they are, but isn't is such a great name for a plant family? There's even a deadly nightshade (belladonna), but I wouldn't go eating it. Anyway, the two most commonly eaten nightshades are potato and tomato. On Sunday we introduced tomato, and on Tuesday, potato. Tomato gets two thumbs up, plus an extra one for being so delicious and juicy! Potato gets another "hm" from me. I only tried it once and felt a bit yuck immediately afterwards for a couple of hours. I had, however been out all day in the field and was pretty tired etc, so that's why its a "hm". I haven't tried it again yet, but I suspect a second eating will resolve the hmmming.

And then, on Wednesday, D fell off the wagon. Oh dear. It started with a salad, then a gluten free rhubarb slice, and by dinner had progressed to a smorgasbord of Indian curries. But, luckily for him, he suffered no ill effects. This seriously dinted his commitment to the process. And then on Friday night when I said it didn't bother me, he decided to largely abandon the process. His main aim, it seems had been achieved. This was, of course, to get me to do the diet, and get me committed enough to finish it. I'm committed, although I did have a small tumble off the wagon myself on Saturday. My darling friend C is a ginger fiend and makes the most amazing ginger cake and ginger balls. On Sat we had an AFL grandfinal BBQ at our place and C made ginger balls. Oh, such a cruel temptress. I caved. And ate about 6. Possibly more. :) I was largely fine, although the amount of wine I had consumed would probably have masked any minor effects anyway. Oops. But I'm all back on the wagon now and gunning for the finish line, which is not too far off.

Still on my list of things to check are:
Red wine (we cracked this last night and seemed OK, but I'll give it another run tonight, just to be sure.
Oranges
Yeast (supposed to be tried in bread, but as wheat is still iffy it might get bumped for a while)
Beef
Lentils
Capsicum
Ginger (more ginger balls perhaps?)
Sugar
Licorice (my chocolate substitute)
Gluten free pasta (I can't have durum wheat, so normal pasta is out. Some varieties of GF are fine because they're just rice or corn, but the one I like is a bit of a mix)
Beer (not a big priority because I don't like it that much anyway).

I also need to retest wheat (again), potato, and avocado. But I will probably sneak these in on off days between having tried the other things, or else exclude them until I've tried everything else and then avoid tack them on the end in quick succession.

So....

That means I should be done by October 16. Phew. And old friend is getting married on the 16th, so I'll eat a bit of whatever at the wedding. I've already RSVPed as the most difficult wedding guest with a request for gluten free, lactose free (pre revelation), cocoa free and garlic free. I'll resume my more strict diet for a little while after that if I still have things to test. Wow, only a couple of weeks to go! How exciting!

Day I-dunno-what - Corn

Oops! Too many corn chips. But they're so yum! I hope they don't give me a tummy ache. I guess I'll find out later tonight.

In other news, I have been field camp menu planning for the trip next week. I think fried rice with lamb, egg, beans, and sunflower seeds will cover a couple of dinners. Some chops with broccoli (yay, my fave vege is A-OK!) and mushrooms (double yay!) will probably make a showing. And the surprise runner, which brings in another challenge food - corn chips with sour cream, cheese, tomatoes and avocado. Mmm, how good does that sound? Throw in some poached fruit with maple syrup and some banana muffins and I'll be the envy of everyone else eating their mess hall slops. Suckers!

Image from Christaface

Day 31 - Confounding factors

Since I last wrote, we have added a few things. Lately, broccoli, mushrooms. Before that wheat (and in D's case yeast too). I had two bananas in that blackened pungent state, so I decided to make them into banana muffins. Yum!

I slightly modified my Mum's banana cake recipe. I have to say, although I'm biased, it's a pretty bloody awesome recipe. It's in a recipe book Mum's had since we were kids. It's a hardcover book, and if you stand it on it's spine, it will fall open to the banana cake page. All be-smattered with old cake batter and butter and whatnot.

My modified version goes like this and it's just as good, I reckon.

125g butter
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs
1 teaspoon bi-carb soda
2 very ripe bananas
1/3 cup yoghurt/milk
2 cups wholemeal self-raising flour
Pinch salt

Cream honey (melt it a bit), butter and bananas. Add eggs, beat. Add yoghurt, bi-carb, flour and salt. Mix. Bake in 180 degrees C oven for about 25 mins. Makes 12 bigish muffins. Or back for about 50 mins as one cake.

Anyway, onto the confounding factors. I've been doing some tutoring on environmental monitoring. My students have to design a monitoring program, and it's really important to reduce confounding factors. This diet is just like that too. That's why there are no spices allowed and things like that, even though we're not going to be explicitly testing them at any stage. If you just started eating them, then you wouldn't be able to tell if a reaction was due to those things, or to the food you are testing. So you exclude them to reduce confounding factors. But, just like environmental monitoring, you can't control for everything.

Take wheat as an example. It's hasn't given me a stomach ache (my classic intolerance response). However, I have been waking up with a stuffy nose and throat. Hmmm, says I. Is this the wheat? Or, perhaps I'm just getting a cold. Well, I haven't come down with a cold, but the level of tiredness I've been experiencing would suggest that I have been fighting off a cold. Or... perhaps that level of tiredness if a result of a reaction to wheat? Hm, who knows! See what I mean about confounding factors? I am well confounded on this one!

Day 29 - Now you're cooking with butter!

Wow, it's been a month and we're still going strong!

On Friday, we tried milk. As I've said here a number of times, and to my friends about 50 million times, I was already about 99% sure I was lactose/milk intolerant (you can be intolerant to the milk proteins also). Er... And now I'm about 80% sure I'm not milk intolerant. I was totally gearing up for a horrid experience. I didn't drink my milk until mid Friday arvo, just in case I needed to rush off and throw up or go home because I was feeling terrible. I started slowly - after the garlic experience I'm a bit cautious - with just about 75mL. Half an hour later and feeling fine I had another 75mL. An hour later and wondering what was going on I downed the rest of the 250mL bottle I had brought with me. Nothing. Nothing at all. Feeling braver on Saturday morning I started the day with a whole glass of milk and nothing else. I figured the combo of empty stomach + no other food was sure to get a reaction. Nope. Made it 2 and a half hours til lunch without so much as a rumble or pang. Hm. So it would seem that milk's not such an issue. How strange. a year and a half of total milk avoidance for nothing. Well, not for nothing - I actually don't like milk, so it was hardly a chore.

In other good news, while it's still on the suspicious list and needs further trialling tonight, it seems wheat might not be a problem either (durum wheat is still permanently off the menu, unfortunately). D and I ate pancakes until we were exploding last night and again, not so much as a dull ache resulted. D seems to have an iron stomach, although is beginning to suspect that avocados (one of our 'safe' foods, haha) might be a little problematic at times.

Day 26 - No lactose, no gluten, no garlic, no cocoa

So. After inhaling some more bran muffins after dinner last night, I woke up this morning with a stomach ache. I woke up yesterday with a stomach ache too, and attributed it to the honey we put in the last lot of muffins (thinking we were fine with oats and trying to sneak another food in). This lot of muffins only had maple syrup in them. Oats? Are oats a problem? Honestly, what an innocuous food! Well, if the garlic stomach ache was a 7/10 on the "I never want to eat again" scale, oats are a measly 3 or 4. But there's something there for sure. I'm not ruling them out, but they're off the menu for the moment and I'll see how I go some other time.

I filled in a form for a conference registration today. When I got to the bit about dietary requirements I had to think hard. No cocoa was an easy one; so was no garlic. I'm pretty sure I'm lactose intolerant (or milk intolerant), but I'll find out later today or tomorrow for sure (more punishment for some past-life misdeeds), so I put that down too. And then I thought about the oats. Surely they weren't going to serve oats. But having small problems with oats has me worried about a bigger issue - gluten intolerance. See, while wheat is the biggie for gluten intolerance, oats have some gluten in them too. Geez I hope I don't end up on that road. Although, honestly, it will probably be easier than no-garlic, as gluten intolerance is well recognised and reasonably well catered for at many restaurants these days. My final food list said "No lactose, no gluten, no garlic, no cocoa". *sigh* I restrained myself from also ticking the "Vegetarian" box. I think they might have spat in my food if I'd done that.

Recipe - Apple Bran Muffins

So, having made 2 more batches of bran muffins, we've now gotten as far as writing down the recipe, but not quite as far as far as taking photos before we scoff them all. In lieu of the photos, here is the recipe:

Apple Bran Muffins (make 12)

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

1 cup of brown rice flour

1 cup of oat bran

2 teaspoons of baking powder

2 eggs, beaten

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1 tablespoon of soy milk

2 grated granny smith apples (we've used 3 small red apples and it was good)

4 tablespoons is maple syrup OR 5 tablespoons of honey

Mix all dry ingredients.

Slowly add apple and mix.

Add eggs and mix.

Add other liquid ingredients, mix.

Bake for 25 minutes.

Try not to eat them all at once.

Day 23 - Naughty Children

D and I, that is.

So I've been on the chicken for 2 days. No issues, yay. D is all good with chicken and broccoli (he moved on while I was still moaning about garlic). So today (day 24) was supposed to be oats day. D bought some oats and some oat bran yesterday in preparation, and last night we made muffins from a modified recipe on the bran packet. No recipe to give you just yet as I wasn't looking too closely as D whipped it up. We put them on to bake, thinking we'd have them for breaky this morning.

Oh no, it wasn't to be. We couldn't resist the look and smell of them when they came out of the oven, and like naughty children we gobbled them all up, as fast as you can say "We've eaten a fair bit of chicken for 2 days, I think we're fine to move on to another food a bit early". Yeah, I know that's a longish sentence, but we did eat 3 muffins each in that time! We ate them so fast there are also no photos. We're making some more tonight, so I'll take some photos then. :) Then I got worried. I got worried because when I ate a lot of garlic (and then, even when I ate a little garlic), I got soo sick and felt horrible for days. And in my haste to devour muffins I forgot this for a second, but then I remembered and was worried that I might get really sick again. Anyway, we went off to the Melbourne Ukulele Collective open mike night and I tried not to worry.

When I woke up this morning without any signs of tummy ache I felt like waking D and squeaking at him with joy and elation, and waving my arms about a bit (nothing so drastic as actually getting out of bed to do a dance). But he was sleeping so I didn't. When he woke up he said "No tummy ache!", haha, great minds, and then I got to have my celebration. Oats for breaky this morning,, so we'll see how that goes down.

Soap Avoiding Hippies and the Opposite of Elimination

D and I had a discussion last night about our changing views on food. We decided we were in imminent danger of becoming health nuts. It may already have happened, in fact, however it's hard to tell when at present we're eating healthy by force rather than by choice. Certainly, though, I've been having quiet hopes of taking up dancing if I get enough health and energy back, and certainly of restarting yoga once my back is up to it. At one point last night we were discussing brown rice (as one of the few carbs in our diet it features highly in meal planning). In particular we were noting that neither of us had eaten it much before this diet and that we were both quite enjoying it. "Yeah, it's really got something to it, you know, texture and flavour. Why do we even eat white rice?", I wondered aloud. "Societal norms." D replied, as he picked up his uke and started strumming.

Another societal norm I've been bucking is the use of soap. Ok, stop going "Ew" now, I've been washing myself! I've started using natural ingredients, no preservatives body wash. D hadn't noticed yet and in general isn't as fussy about bath products as I am anyway, unsurprisingly. As Sam Kekovich (who I'm not sure if I like or hate, I've only seen one clip of his work, so don't throw things at me) would say, I've become a "soap avoiding hippy". I've got to say, I'm not going back in a rush, the body wash is certainly much kinder to my winter ravaged skin. And it smells yum too. The one I've been using is Sukin. I've also tried their shampoo and conditioner since my previous (also soap-avoiding) shampoo just ran out, and my conditioner is about to do the same. The shampoo's not that great (not terrible either) and I will be going back to Natural Instincts for the ole shampoo next time, although I like the conditioner.

Actually, rereading that paragraph reminds me of something else, a tangent which I will briefly indulge. My nose has become incredibly sensitive since I've been on this diet. D came home from coffee with a friend a couple of weeks ago. At this stage he wasn't drinking coffee himself, he'd just had an apple juice (100% pure, of course), but his mate had had a coffee. He came home from the cafe and I could smell the coffee on him. It's was bizarre. I mean, yeah it's a cafe, but it's not a bloody CBD espresso-a-minute cafe, it's our relatively sleepy round-the-corner cafe (the lovely Squirrel Cafe, which gets a few bad reviews if you google it, but they are from the early days and I have to say it's pulled it's socks up since then). Then, yesterday (geez I hope my uni colleagues aren't reading this or they'll think I'm weird. er, even weirder than they already think I am), I was sitting in a lecture on OH&S. In between giggling uncontrollably at photos like this (yes, they're from the Waikato), I was wondering who sitting near me had been sitting by a wood fire recently. I would get wafts of wood-smoke smell coming towards me. I was surreptitiously (I hope!) sniffing the air to either side to see if it was one of my immediate neighbours (my colleagues, hence the weirdness). It's my nose's fault! I'm just not used to this newly acute sense and it's making me more curious than usual. Not curious enough to ask outright who'd been by a wood-fire, but almost.

Back from the tangent, and to conclude, I am reminded occasionally of how strange this diet seems to others, even though it's becoming normal-seeming to me. And even though I might be a health nut for the rest of my life as a result. I was reminded yesterday in a meeting about the upcoming camp. I had to enquire again about cooking facilities and then was queried about why camp food wasn't good enough. A blush, some nervous Ummming, and then "Er, I'm on a really strange diet at the moment and need to cook for myself." Cue restrained strange looks, and a possible light-bulb moment in the head of the colleague who had recently observed that I eat a lot of fruit. I was even more forcefully reminded of the fact that most people eat quite differently, and some in a manner that is on the other end of the extreme. People like this the Facebook Food Diary keeper. A short sample of his diet:

Breakfast - Skipped

Lunch - Chicken Snitty Pack (with chips and gravy), and a can of coke.

Dinner - 2 beef patties, 2 eggs, 2 slices of cheese, 4 rashers of bacon and 4 slices of toast, 1.25L Coke.

Wow. Cue strange looks.

Day 22 - GIY and Recipes

Finally, finally on Saturday night my stomach was good enough for me to try soy. So I made soy pancakes - soy milk, eggs and soy flour. DON'T do it! They're horrible! Nevertheless it was a milestone to be able to try something new again after 4 days of pain.

Anyway, off the back of the horrible soy pancake experience, I was still hankering for something sweet. One of my favourite sweet things is creme brulee. But, I can't have milk yet, or cream, or sugar. So um, I improvised! I replaced the sugar with maple syrup (the Joy of Cooking suggests this as a bona fide alternative anyway). I replaced the milk with soy milk, and I replaced the cream with silken tofu. It kinda worked! It has a nutty flavour from the soy which actually went nicely with the custardyness and the maplyness. I didn't go in for the bruleeing, instead I made a different baked custard. Here's the recipe:

Soy Maple Custard:

2 eggs
1/3 cup of maple syrup
200mL soy milk200mL silken tofu (squoosh it up in a measuring cup and use a bit less than a full cup).

Preheat oven to 150 degrees C.
Squoosh up the silken tofu until it's smooth.
Put tofu and soy milk in a saucepan and bring almost to the boil.
Meanwhile, whisk eggs and maple syrup.
Pour in soy mix and beat until just combined.Pour into ramekins (this will fill 2x 300mL ramekins, or 2 and a bit teacups).
Place in a baking tray. Fill the tray with boiling water up to halfway up the sides of the ramekins.
Bake for 45mins until just set (use the wobble test).
Pour over a little maple syrup to serve (I liked it better cold than hot).

Also, fried rice is great! Since we have been able to eat eggs we have been making it with brown rice, a little olive oil, eggs, sunflower seeds and beans.

And we've been doing a bit of GIY - grow it yourself. We've been growing alfalfa sprouts. It's pretty easy and kinda cool. In fact, getting the seeds seems to be the hardest bit. We eventually got some from ebay. Once you have them, you just put a tablespoon of seeds in a largish jar and soak them in water overnight. Then you cover the lid with a piece of old stocking or muslin or fly mesh, drain the water, roll the jar to get the seeds to spread out and stick to the glass. The you put the on a window sill, or in this cold weather, somewhere warmish - like the top of the frog tank, or if you don't have one of those then the top of the fridge will do. Leave then for a day and the rinse them, drain them again, and repeat this process for a few days until most of the seeds have fallen off the sprouts. Then put the sprouts out on a tray in the sun for 15mins or so, then eat them! You can save any extra sprouts in the fridge for several days. And if your sprout jar gets too cramped during the growing process then just transfer half the sprouts to another jar. Et voila!

Day 19 - Falling Behind

Oh my poor tummy. I am still suffering from that goddamn garlic. Although I think I exacerbated things by not being careful enough with some medication that I should know to be more careful of when I have an upset stomach. I am finally starting to feel a bit better today, and hopefully tomorrow I should be back on track.

Back on track but behind schedule. D had soy yesterday and today, as planned, and I didn't because of the masking effects of already having an upset tummy. Tomorrow he's onto chicken, but I, I will be stuck back on soy, 2 days behind schedule. I'm tossing up skipping soy for the moment and moving on to chicken. We'll see. But either way I've fallen behind. This does not bode well. If there's anything else I'm intolerant to it's likely to cause a pretty similar response, and possibly set me back further. On the other hand, next time I will trust my poor stomach and not eat the food again the following day.

Day 16 - Garlic - Friend or Foe?

Hm, having uploaded this photo, I realise that our meal from Tuesday night looks totally unappealing. You'll have to trust me that it's just exceptionally unphotogenic (like me) and really was totally delicious and looked amazing in real life (like me).

We have introduced deep sea fish (not farmed = no chemical contaminants) for a bit of protein variety. That's the flaccid white blob at the bottom of the photo. The slimy green things are very yummy baked green beans with olive oil and garlic. And the lumps up the top are baked kumara with baked garlic smeared on them. We really went all out on testing the garlic, mostly because we both LOVE it.

So we enjoyed our meal, and D didn't seem to suffer any major repercussions. I however, swelled up like a balloon, or pregnant lady (choose you imagery), felt very "weird" in the tummy all evening, and then woke up with a heavy stomach feeling, suspiciously similar to how I feel after eating chocolate or durum wheat.

When I still had a stomach ache yesterday morning, I though "Oh no, garlic intolerance". D said "Maybe you just ate too much of it, after all garlic is really potent". So I looked up dose-response in food intolerance, and yes, it could have been that I ate too much, although that would suggest some level of intolerance anyway. But despite the stomach ache lasting til midday, I decided to brave the garlic again last night in a much smaller dose, the kind we would normally include in a meal. Fortunately I didn't become grossly pregnant looking this time. I did, however wake up in the middle of the night with just the same stomach ache, which is persisting even now. *sigh* I guess it's just time to face the fact that all these years garlic has just been a frenemy, and I should let it go from my life. This it a royal PITA, because not only do D and I love it, but it's also put in just about everything you get when eating out. Seems I'm condemning myself to a life of cooking for myself.

Oh, and as an addendum to that, my Poppy used to always say that garlic didn't agree with him. We all used to think he just didn't like the taste, but maybe he was intolerant too!