AIP Paleo - Day 6 - 9

Brittany Bowman
Aug 19, 2016
5 min read

Aloha!

I must come clean! These past 4 days have been incredibly hard. I have fallen off the bandwagon 2x! I started off strong on day 6 with my ShakeO for breakfast, an ahi salad for lunch & shrimp taco's with mango salsa in romaine lettuce cups. I have to tell you, those shrimp taco's were amazing - Perfectly paired with the mango salsa. I don't think I can ever eat a shrimp taco without using lettuce as the wrap again. It was so refreshing. I felt great from it too - Not heavy but satisfied.

Then the dreaded day 7 hit & my cravings went through the roof. As hard as I tried, I couldn't hold back from eating a slice of pizza AND a few garlic knots. I know! Shame on me! But it was so delicious. Oh, I paid for it later with an upset stomach but it was worth it! I'm not going to lie. Here is the thing. On Tuesday, my husband went to work and was doing some good manual labor. He is a plumber which sometimes requires digging holes to get to pipes. I will spare you all of the disgusting details of what this job entailed but by the end, he was ready to pass out. This isn't normal. He is a work horse and can get through anything when it comes to plumbing. What changed? Our diet! This particular lifestyle is very low-carb. For someone who is use to a diet comprised of mostly carbs, it is kind of a shock to the system. I know for both of us, when we get going on something, we hardly eat which doesn't help things either. We came to the conclusion his body was crashing hard from lack of food for one & lack of carbs. (He hadn't been feeling very well the days leading up to this - carb flu maybe?) So we ordered a pepperoni pizza with garlic knots. While it didn't make him feel better (surprise, surprise), it did give him a little bit more energy. After sitting down & discussing what he was going through, we realized it was a combination of heat exposure & lack of food which ultimately led to him almost passing out. It took him a few days to recover from that.

In conclusion, we have decided to take this diet slow. We both were trying to quit everything cold turkey and move forward, full-speed, on this lifestyle. We are still committed to this lifestyle but we have decided to ease into it. I will be working on keeping things closer to the intended diet but will have to take it slow too. This is all a personal decision based on the way we have been feeling leading up to this point. Do I feel guilty? You bet I do! I want to be able to stick to this diet as much as possible if I can help it. I do not want to do it at the expense of my husband feeling he doesn't have enough energy throughout the day when he is putting forth hard labor. One concern I have brought up to him about both of us is the fact we are not eating enough. We need to be eating more frequently than we are use to but we don't. So that is an adjustment we will have to start working on. Both of us are not use to eating until lunch time which is so horrible. Things will have to change on that front.

Day 8, we had our ShakeO in the morning then cooked breakfast for lunch. I made bacon, Kielbasa, eggs & english muffins. I ate the bacon, kielbasa & english muffin but not the eggs. To tell you the truth, I felt great from it. So did Jason. I also made my watermelon-cuke-lime drink. This time I used San Pellegrino sparkling water with it. Delicious! It gave it the dimension it was missing. For dinner, I made Naan bread with Cassava flour & Tuna salad with leftover mango salsa. I was so excited to make Naan bread from scratch but I have to say, I wasn't crazy for it. I followed the recipe exactly. Maybe I made it wrong somewhere along the lines. Maybe I am just not use to using Cassava flour. Whatever it was, I was really disappointed with dinner last night.

Today, day 9, I have had ShakeO for breakfast, left over breakfast (bacon & kielbasa) for lunch & for dinner I will be having a roast with onions, potatoes & carrots. I think today I am faring better than the previous few days. Where I faltered a second time this week was in eating the english muffin for lunch on day 8. I plan on making these date snacks tonight from the Autoimmune Protocol Cookbook. The recipe calls for dates, coconut flakes & alcohol-free vanilla. I need something I can grab and snack on when I get cravings. I am a mindless snacker. I can sit here while I am working & just munch on crackers, m&m's or whatever is handy. I'd like to find a paleo-friendly version for snacks to make it easier to follow this lifestyle. I'll let you know how they come out. Cross your fingers for me!

I have News too! I got my blood-work done! It really told me more of what I already knew - I have Hashimoto & my levels are high. What surprised me was how high my levels were. Normal thyroid levels is between 3-4. Wanna take a guess at how high mine is? 9! Yikes! I know. I have been getting berated by everyone in my family that I should have been taking my medication this whole time. Of course I should have. With no insurance & little in the way of money, my options have been limited & health had taken a back burner. I realize as I get older, my health is everything. Try telling that to a twenty something girl who shows no signs of her disease and thinks she is invisible.

The doctor I had seen said this is the reason why my hair is falling out, why I have been having weight gain, why I am fatigued, etc. I'm not a doctor, but these are things I already know! It's great to have doctor confirmation though. Next step is to see a specialist. I would really like to do this with a complete holistic approach, but to my families pleas & me wanting to get better, I will be going back on synthroid or whatever thyroid medication they put me on. My hope is by learning to live a more holistic lifestyle & making it habit rather than a lifestyle of restriction, I can lower my dosage of medication - if not get off it completely altogether. It is a dream. We will see where this all takes me. I really would like to stop losing my hair. It has become something of an insecurity for me now. I always ask Jason about where my hair is missing," is it showing?" It really sucks to put it plainly. I will keep y'all posted here when I get my next results. I am interested to see how things progress. Let's pray it is for the better.

Mahalo!