How to get started: The Shopping List

After reading Eat to Live, I decided that this was the way to go for me.  I decided to not call it a diet but to think of it, instead, as a new way of eating for life.  Having made that decision meant a new way of looking at the grocery store and my own pantry.  I knew that I would have to rethink my shopping habits.  Gone were the days of buying fresh fruits and vegetables only to have them rot in the fridge or on the counter!  Gone were the days of pre-packaged boxed foods.  Hello to actually eating the fruits and veggies that I bought!  Interesting idea, but where to start…

The following is a list of my must have in stock items (in no particular order):

Silk Vanilla Almond Milk

Pomegranate juice 

Milled flax

Chia seeds (these are great – they give smoothies the same consistency as that of a milkshake)

Spinach – fresh!

Kale - fresh

Raw veggies: broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, corn, peas, carrots, celery, greens for salads… you get the idea – I use both fresh and flash frozen.

Fruit – mostly fresh: grapes, oranges, bananas, blueberries (both fresh and frozen), pineapple, apples.

Applesauce – natural organic – the fewer the ingredients the better – look at the label – apples and water is a great list of ingredients!

Whole wheat flour

Quinoa

Organic peanut butter – here again look at the ingredients when making this choice!

Almonds

Walnuts

Pistachio nuts

Raw cane sugar

Truvia/Stevia (packets)

Butter – not margarine

Flax sandwich rounds

Salmon – in the ready to eat packets

Tuna - in the can or packet

Beans - chickpeas, navy beans, black beans, pinto beans… any type of beans that you like

Rolled oats

Balsamic vinegar

Olive oil

Sea salt 

I am sure that I have missed something but you get the idea…  Keep in mind that some of these items you will only buy once every few weeks...  After the initial shopping spree the budget eases up considerably!

Think of the foods that fit into the following categories and buy them:

Fruits

Vegetables

Nuts

Beans

Lean protein – but very little if any the first 4-6 weeks.

I was also armed with a few simple recipes:

Eat Your Veggies Smothie *found in Dr. Fuhrman’s book Eat to Live

One Minute Chocolate Cake * found on Chocolate Covered Katie’s website: http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2011/11/06/one-minute-chocolate-cake/

 Oatmeal Breakfast Cookies * found on Chocolate Covered Katie’s website: http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2012/01/11/oatmeal-raisin-breakfast-cookies/

Quinoa Salad *see below 

Vegetarian Chili * see below 

Lentil soup  

Kale Minestrone Soup *found at http://enlightenedcooking.blogspot.com/2011/03/quick-kale-quinoa-minestrone.html  

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Quinoa Salad (from A.Lane)

2 C cooked quinoa

2 C chick peas

1/2 C golden raisins

1/4 C chopped red pepper

1/4 cilantro

A few cloves of garlic chopped fine

Mix together.  Add dressing.

Dressing:

3T olive oil

3T lime juice

1T honey

2tsp curry powder

Vegetarian Chili (Red, Gold, Black, and Green Chile – by A.Lane)

1/2 C bulgur wheat or quinoa

1/2 C hot water
3 C undrained canned tomatoes (28oz)
3 T olive oil
3 C chopped onions

3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed

1 generous tsp ground cumin

1 generous tsp chili power

1 T tabasco or hot pepper sauce or 1/4 tsp cayenne

2 green bell peppers, chopped

2 C corn, fresh, frozen or canned

1 can drained black beans

1 can drained kidney beans

Salt to taste 

Place bulgur/quinoa, hot water and cup of juice from canned tomatoes in small sauce pan.  Cover and bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer gently.  Heat olive oil in large saucepan, sauté onions, garlic, and spices.  Stir in peppers, sauté 2-3 mins.  Chop tomatoes and add to pan.  Stir in corn and beans, heat thoroughly on low heat.  Add cooked bulgur/quinoa (with any liquid left).  Cover and simmer a few more minutes.  Add salt. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I kept it simple that first month.  I ate a rotation of salads, soups, steamed veggies, quinoa salad, and smoothies.  I can honestly say that I didn’t get bored.  I was also never hungry.  In the first month I ate very little meat – less than 10oz per week.  Now I might eat 20 oz per week give or take.  

I gave up diet coke – all soda actually.  I used to drink 2 big cups per day.  I have had 2 ½ small sodas in the last 3 months.  I never experienced caffeine withdrawal.  I don’t miss it.  I drink about a gallon+ of water per day. 

I snack on fruit and nuts during the day.  I generally eat just three meals per day in addition to the fruit.  This isn’t difficult at all.   If anything, it is over simple! 

I hope this will help get you started but feel free to contact me with questions… 

Peace,

L

How I Arrived Here

I have a habit of going the long way about things at times and so perhaps I should go back and explain how I ended up where I am today on this medical marathon ride.   

Part One:

In November of 2010 I had a sinus infection and thought I could tough it out without medical intervention.  I wasn’t adverse to medical intervention but I like to let my body do as much of the work as possible.  When the body didn’t seem to find an instant fix to this bout of the sniffles I decided to take some over the counter meds.  Large green gel capsules!  What my mom would have called horse pills!  Well, I swallowed them with some water but it felt like they’d gotten lodged in my throat.  More water.  Still there.  More water.  Finally after about 32 ounces I decided to feel my throat for signs of the sideways pill that surely had to be sticking out through my neck.  I let my fingers do the walking and guess what I found??  The pill was stuck in my throat!  My mind raced as I tried to figure out what I would have to do to dislodge the damn thing!  Oh wait, I should probably tell you that I have blonde moments, and this was one of them.  The pill wasn’t stuck in my throat, but at the moment that I realized this, I felt my heart sink.  There was a protrusion but it wasn’t the pill.  It was a lump; a lump on one side but not the other.  It was a lump that shouldn’t be there.   A really big lump!  It was the weekend and since I was not in a life threatening situation, at least at that moment, I did what every hypochondriac does in these situations: I Googled it!  Hello Web.MD!  I safely surmised that worst case scenario I had esophageal cancer and had less than three years to live; but it was right there on the thyroid and therefore it could be one of four different types of thyroid cancer and only one of those was really lethal…  My mind was running on way more than these sentences!  Or… it could just be a cyst or something benign but whatever it was, I wouldn’t know anything until I talked to my doctor. 

My primary doctor saw me on Monday, sent me for a sonogram the next day and sure enough, there it was, a big old lump perched on the right half of my thyroid.  We had it on our sites but I couldn’t get to see a surgeon until January 5^th, 2011.   

In the interim I decided to reach out to someone that I didn’t know at all, but had heard about through her husband, she had had thyroid cancer the year before.  She was truly sent from God.  Over the holidays when I had to just sit and wait she was a beacon in the dark!  She didn’t know anything about me but met me in my need and comforted me beyond belief.  I am sure that madness would have taken over my whole being if it had not been for her.  So Lisa, if you are reading this, know that you will forever be a part of me and my journey!   Lisa and I have added a third member to our group, Susan; both of these amazing women inspire me everyday - I am so blessed and so very thankful for their continued support - just wish the common denominator would have been different - like the lottery or something :)

As I said before, this whole episode happened right at the beginning of the holidays that year and so appointments that normally could have happened in quick succession were spaced ridiculously far apart.  I waited it out and finally I had my appointment with the surgeon.  He examined the lump and reviewed the sonogram.  He thought about it and then he spoke!  This man minced no words, he wasted no time, and he said “How does Monday sound to you?”  I was sitting in his office on Wednesday, January 5^th and he liked the way Monday, January 10^th sounded; well, I did too!  This man was on my page, let’s just get this thing out and it will be over and done with.  He assured me that thyroid cancer, while treatable, was rare and he assured me that I had less than a 10% chance of it actually being cancer.  Sounds good to me.  He told me that he would have pathology look at it while I was still under to determine just what the cells contained.  If it wasn’t cancer they would only take the half with the lump and leave the rest.  If it was cancer they would take the whole thing and I would have to add another chapter to the saga but really in the grand scheme of things this was the best bad case scenario that I could hope for.   

When I woke in recovery I saw my doctor walking toward me.  I knew before I asked but I asked anyway “half or whole?”  “Whole” was his simple reply.  I closed my eyes and decided to think about what that meant later. 

Recovery was rough – like a bad hangover with a spectator section.  My kids, the husband, brother, niece, nephew, nephew’s wife, neighbor, several friends… you get the picture!  They all came to see me puke.  It’s funny now but at the time…   Spent the night, left the next day with a couple of scars and in dire need of a shower, that chapter was over. 

At my follow up the next week the doctor told me what I had and what was coming my way.  I had papillary carcinoma.  The best damn thyroid cancer a girl can have!  Praise be to God – no really, I was lucky and very thankful!!  They would ablate what was left of my thyroid bed with T131, the stuff three-Mile Island likes to protect us against, so that papillary carcinoma would be discouraged from returning.  Since I would be without that little butterfly shaped gland forever and ever I would have to take levothyroxine for the rest of my life but in the grand scheme of things I was alive and I had the best kind of cancer – that was now out of me and in a dish somewhere so what could I possibly have to worry about!      

FATIGUE!  That is what I had to fear.  Not the fatigue that you say you have when you don’t want to run the mile in gym class.  Not even the fatigue that I experienced as the mother of a new born who nursed every two hours.  This was fatigue on an epic scale!  While I waited to have the Radio Active Iodine (RAI) ablation I had to be come as hypothyroid as humanly possible and then proceed to deplete my body of all iodine so that the T131 would hit its target and nuke the hell out of any remaining thyroid cells.  This took about six weeks and two very expensive thyrogen shots.  I literally woke up feeling as though I hadn’t slept in days.  I would go to work, come home, and go to bed.  I couldn’t exercise; hell, I could barely walk to my car.  I felt like the walking dead – not the vampire, all strong and sexy kind of walking dead – rather the zombie march, messed up face and hair kind of walking dead.  Co-workers would walk up to me first thing in the morning and ask “are you ok?”  I could see the worry in everyone’s faces but I didn’t have the energy to care!  I held onto the fact that after the RAI I could start on the meds that would make me feel normal again!  Focus on that and everything would be ok.  By June I would be back in fighting form! 

Not so fast…  Turns out synthetic hormones aren’t all they are cracked up to be!  I survived the low iodine diet and the RAI.  Side note: the RAI came with some pretty odd restrictions – for another post – but the main one was that I had to be quarantined from all living creatures for 5 days –probably the best part of the whole damn thing! After coming out of the comfy basement I was on a mission to feel better!  Only trouble, I had a noble goal but lacked the ‘how to’!  While my ‘want to’ kicked in I started reading about how the thyroid works and what it does for the body – “too little too late” my thyroid would probably say to me now…  I started to read about how certain foods can hamper our best efforts at being well.  The book that I started with was The Thyroid Diet by Mary J. Shomon; a must read for anyone with any type of thyroid issues at all!  Since I no longer had a thyroid I had different issues and basically realized that it was going to be calories in vs calories out for me.  Good news in the grand scheme of things – math I can do! 

The meds took hold and I was feeling like me again only better!  As I made my way toward spring and summer my friends gathered together to celebrate me – best night EVER!!!  I really am blessed with an amazing group of friends and family.  Coworkers, I include in my ‘friends’ column, and to all: I can’t begin to thank each of you enough for all of the meals and well wishes!  

I was me again only better, I felt like a twenty year old again!  Over the course of the summer of 2011 I tried to get back to my spinning class and to the gym but my energy levels very quickly tanked again.  I asked for blood work and found nothing wrong.  I was fading again fast.  With this came the depression.  How can I live like this?  So I did what I always do when backed into a corner, I reason my way out.  This reason came by way of reading again…  After carefully researching all possible explanations, I was sure that I was suffering from adrenal fatigue.  So I decided to try everything that was suggested to help pull myself out of the pit again.  I really don’t even remember what all I tried to be honest, I only remember what worked for me.  I started taking B_1, B_6, and B₁₂ vitamins.  Within a week I could see the light again!  I still take all three!  I would like to mention that I discussed all of my supplement additions with my endocrinologist before proceeding.  I would highly recommend talking to your family doctor or you endocrinologist before taking anything as everyone is different but take a look at what the ills are and plan to do something about them!  Don’t just sit back and let it take over who you are! 

After starting the B vitamins I felt better and started to focus on my diet.  I was still afraid to exercise, believing that adrenal fatigue had spiraled me into the pit the last time, but at least I could function!  I was ready to tackle the weight that I had gained during my months of listlessness and deliciously ‘prepared-by-others’ meals.  I was ready, except for the whole boob thing…   but that’s another post!

Peace,

L

Here’s the deal!

After reading Eat to Live, along with several other books, I came to a few conclusions.

1)      I really am what I eat!

2)      Only I can be held responsible for what I eat

3)      What I eat affects how I feel

Simply put, I made a radical choice to make radical food choices!  Here is what I did:

I eat little or no meat most days (with one exception which I will get to later), I eat no dairy products (except for a little feta – what’s a little feta between friends??), I eat no processed foods – that means I stay away from the evil white family: no white sugar, white flour, white rice, and no food made with these ingredients.  Read Skinny Bitch for a detailed view of how food is processed!!  Go ahead I dare you!! J   

So, what do I eat?

I eat as much as I want.

I eat mostly fruits (4 servings a day is the goal), vegetables (strive for as many as I can fit in wherever I can fit them in!), nuts, and beans (try to get up to a cup per day of beans – doesn’t always happen).

Now for the meat exception:  I eat an egg scrambled with milled flax every morning on a flax sandwich round.  I love eggs and this was a deal breaker for me so I kept them in my diet!

I keep a few things in mind when I am shopping or looking at a restaurant’s menu:

·        How many ingredients are in this food – chances are if there are more than 5 or if you can’t pronounce the ingredients, it is a food that you might want to put back on the shelf!

·        Whole foods – foods with only one ingredient are the best foods!  These are what I call God foods – made by God, just the way they are is perfect – how much better can you get??

·        Can I pick this, dig it up, catch it or kill it?  If I can say yes to these questions then I can probably eat it.  Keep in mind I said that I eat very little meat… seriously though a girl needs little meat once in a while – HA!

So what about recipes with more than one ingredient?  As long as the ingredients are whole foods and not from the evil white family you are probably good to go!

No dairy…  I drink Almond milk and I love it!  Enough said.  I get calcium from the other foods I eat – the book Eat to Live really addresses just how you can get everything you need without eating dairy and meat – it is amazing!

I have found several recipes that help to satisfy those times when a girl just needs a treat!  Many can be found on Chocolate Covered Katie’s web site.  I highly recommend bookmarking her site and trying her recipes – YUM!

The one thing – the most important thing – that I have found is that I no longer crave specific foods.  I am never hungry!  I was prescribed Prednisone last week for a shoulder injury and thought ‘this is going to trip me up!’  But it never did.  In the past, when I took Prednisone, I would want to eat anything that was well, in front of my face!  I have lost another 2 lbs since starting the script!  I truly buy into and believe that if you nourish your body your body will not ask for anything.  When you are mal-nourished your body asks for what it needs and you interpret this as cravings or hunger.  When the body is satiated you do not feel cravings or hunger.  For most of us in America, we really don’t know what real hunger is… just a thought…

So what do I eat besides and egg every morning?

·        I strive to eat at least 4 servings of fruit.  Fruit is my friend and my snack food – we get along pretty well!  Sweet!

·        I eat homemade soups - I try to make a new batch every weekend so that I can freeze the leftovers for a quick hit when I need something fast!

·        I eat salads – this is where I get most of my meat and the feta when I have it – I love Chicken Cobb Salad – would probably do bad things for this salad!

·        I eat lots of steamed veggies – either in stir fry or just plain steamed on the plate.  Since I have taken rice out of my nutritional vocabulary I have found a wonderful little substitute in the grain QUINOA – it is a grain that is a complete protein.  Acts like rice, looks like rice (sort of), tastes like rice – but it isn’t rice!  It takes on the flavor of whatever you are cooking – just like rice does so you can use it for stir fry or salads.  Go ahead and try it!  You can find it at health food stores cheaper than the regular grocery stores but it is out there people – get some!

·        I eat smoothies – fruit and veggie smoothies with flax and chia seeds – you know the chia pet seeds!  They make smoothies thicker and creamier!  Chia is also good sprinkled on and mixed in all natural applesauce (remember to read the labels when buying packaged fruits).

How about beverages you ask??  Water is the answer – not the only answer but the main one!  I used to drink diet coke like a junkie smokes crack!  But it is processed and although the myths about cola have been busted it is still not a good thing to dilute your cells with.  So on January 2 of this year I said goodbye to my old friend and have not really missed it!  I have had 2 small diet cokes while out to eat in the last three months but neither time did I want more.  I don’t see diet coke being a choice I make in the future!   What else do I drink?  Well, orange juice and occasionally tea.  I have never been a coffee drinker, I have tried but I just can’t do it!  So water has become my go-to beverage of choice.  On a side note, I tried adding red wine to my daily routine for medicinal purposes – I have heart history too – again another story – back to the wine… tried that and I don’t know if it is because it has been so long since I regularly consumed alcohol or what but let’s just say if you try it too, proceed with caution!  It made me REALLY happy – let’s leave it at that ;)  Still have the bottle in the fridge if anyone wants to come over and finish it off… let me know!

I guess that is about it as far as ingestion goes.  But on that note, some people questioned the high fiber content and vocalized their worry for my digestive tract.  While the concern was heartwarming, I can honestly say it has been a non-issue.  I would however, recommend that you pay attention to your body and go slowly if you find that you are having a hard time with this.  Just remember a clean colon is a happy colon – HAHA!!!

If you only take away one thing from today’s post I would hope it would be that I have not reached perfection here!  I do trip at times and I do occasionally eat things that end up making me feel bad.  The key is that I have guidelines (no hard-assed make-it-or-break-it rules) and I daily strive to stay within these guidelines.  Since starting down this path I have veered many times consuming the following: pizza, several bites of hamburger subs, crab wontons (I affectionately call them sex on a plate so you know I didn’t just have one!) and French fries…  I am sure that I have missed at least a cheat or two but who’s counting?   I’m not! 

Every moment of our lives is about making choices.  Every moment another chance to make the right choice!  Do the best you can, don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes and embrace what you’ve got: TODAY and YOU!  Make the most of it!

Feel free to comment or e-mail me if you have specific questions.

Peace,

-L

Let's get this thing started!

Ok, so, some background to help all of this make sense! In November of 2010 I found a lump in my throat - which was diagnosed, on January 10, 2011, as thyroid cancer following a total thyroidectomy. Thyroid gone, cancer gone (well, we hope so – rechecks for a few years and then I am off the hook – except for the new lifelong addiction to Synthroid but that is another post). Living life without a thyroid should be no problem right? WRONG!!! It took a long time to adjust to the medication, I had to have RAI (yet another post...), and my energy levels just tanked. There were many weeks that the only thing I could do was drive to work, come home, and sleep. I would wake feeling like I had been up for ten days! I just could not live like this! I started to read about my health issues and discovered that the human body is perfectly made - and therefore very capable of taking care of itself if give the right conditions. Conditions = food and exercise. The main focus of this blog will deal with those conditions but let me fill in a few more blanks...

 

Since I was in my late teens I have been abundantly blessed in the ‘knockers’ department - big boobs - wonderful ta-tas! But with a great gift comes great responsibility right? Something like that, anyway... The girls have brought with them their own plethora of issues and so I decided to see a plastic surgeon (June 2011) to discuss the possibility of a reduction. This lead to my second bad news of the year! In order to proceed with surgery I had to have a ‘calcification’ checked out. Long story short, after 2 long needle biopsies, one lumpectomy, and one MRI biopsy they determined that I had LCIS – lobular carcinoma in situ – or as one of my oncologists emphatically demanded I start calling it: lobular neoplasia. They found two other risk factors as well but those names escape me at this moment. Regardless of what I call LCIS the outcome is the same. What they found puts me at a significant risk (42%) of developing invasive breast cancer in the future! So, what to do? I can take tamoxifen (for 5 years – effectively reducing my risk to about 10%) and have mammograms and MRI’s EVERY SIX MONTHS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE or I can skip the tamoxifen and just have the mammograms and MRI’s EVERY SIX MONTHS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE or I can have a radical prophylactic by-lateral mastectomy, which would reduce my risk down to less than 1% and the mammograms would NOT have to happen EVERY SIX MONTHS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!!!! 

After careful consideration I decided to do nothing – no more drugs and no surgery! My surgeon, wonderful man that he is, scared the sh*t out of me! He explained in great detail what he would do and because I have empathy for my fellow (wo)man I will keep those details to myself. So watch and wait it would be… Until I talked to my family doctor, who has been following my mountain of medical reports for the last year and a half, and decided that if possible (up to the insurance company at this point) I will have the surgery – probably in May of this year. My general practitioner spent over an hour with me discussing the pros and cons – all of which I had already done and just simply said that I would be me with or without my boobs! I think he said breasts but I heard boobs… During my whole adult life my breasts have been a major part of my identity. Not that it was the goal, it just happened. Now I am tackling the possible loss, or shall we say reconstruction, of that identity! Again, another post but one worth mentioning – feel free to comment!

So back to the focus of this journey:  

Being well

Being healthy

Becoming one with my body

It is so easy to blame the woes of this world on someone else or something else but because of all of the medical drama in the past year plus I have had a lot of time spent alone in doctor’s office waiting rooms… a lot of time to think and wonder about how I ended up here. I also had time to read and read I did! I absorbed anything and everything I could about the human body and maintaining the human body! I know that after surgery the best thing you can do is to move, move your body and it will aid in the healing process. You have got to move it or lose it! I started thinking and reading articles on how the foods we eat can hurt us but also, if chosen wisely, they can help us. If I was going to fight this fight against cancer I needed to do something! I couldn’t just sit back and wait for the doctors to prescribe me pills or cut me open. I am a take charge kind of girl! While I knew most of what I was reading prior to all of this, it became crystal clear and so personal to me now. I could do my part but it would be radical and it would be all me!

So, on a road trip to Daytona Beach in December (2011) I decided to read the book Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Furhman. It was the beginning of the end of the old me!

Since January 2, 2012, I have lost 25 lbs, 3 clothing sizes, and significantly reduced my LDL and triglyceride levels! The transformation has been amazing! I have more energy than I had at 20! Did I mention that during the medical year from hell I turned 40! Yes, I know, I should have just dug the grave!

What the book did for me:  It gave me a road map, directions, a how-to guide to becoming one with my body.  It explained why I needed to make a change and how I needed to change.  I won't go into all of the details because I could never do it justice!  I simply recommend that you read the book and then we can talk!  There are several other books and web sites as well and I will share those as time goes on...

I became excited to be me again!  ...and in my zeal I have had several friends jump on this ride with me and so in an effort to make getting new information to them as well as medical updates to far away friends and family this blog has been born. Feel free to comment, understanding that my kids and my dad will be able to see this so if there is anything less than appropriate I will delete; real is ok but rude without basis is just plain stupid! So glad you have chosen to come along for the ride.

Peace and blessings,

Lori



Couldn't get the hyper link to work on the test so here is Dr. Fuhrman's Web address: http://www.drfuhrman.com/default.aspx