Crazy Hungry

I used to get sort of crazy hungry. That doesn't happen anymore. It was like the food was controlling me. Stress or fatigue always meant reaching for sugary foods and refined carbohydrates. Then whatever I purchased I would compulsively eat until it was gone and I felt worse and worse. Interestingly the worse I felt the more I wanted to eat that junk.

Now I don't get psycho with hunger anymore. If I wait too long to eat I still get attracted to carbs. I have a few strategies that keep me on track
1) I absolutely do not eat sugar or grains, so if I wait too long to eat and get overly hungry I won't go
    really crazy with my choices.
2) I plan and bring snacks with me, snacks with fat that fill me up
3) I have a game plan for fast food places, things I can eat without getting off track. If I run out of
    snacks, I am hungry and far from home I have a plan.
4) I eat things that taste sweet, but are not sugar or artificially sweet. Stevia is my friend. Just
    bringing Sobe with me can make all the difference.

Be good to yourself and have a game plan!

Peckish in the Afternoon?

I do tend to get just a bit peckish in the afternoon. I call this second lunch. I generally pack up something like a little bag of carrots, a couple of cultured pickles, a couple spears of red bell pepper. Sometimes I bring a few vegetables left over from dinner the night before.

Other ideas would be a couple boiled eggs or 1/2 an avocado with salt and pepper.

At other times I just save a little of my lunch and have that for second lunch.

Lunch Time?

 For lunch I typically have a big salad with lots of lettuce and a few starchy vegetable combined with a small portion of animal protein, like boiled eggs, a piece of fish (insert protein here).

 On some days I have vegetable soup made with a combination of starchy and non-starchy vegetables. I don't use the strong vegetables that I used to use for soup as I cannot tolerate them-- (onions, parsnips, etc.). I make soup from carrots, celery, a potato, then whatever non-starchy veggies I have on hand. For seasoning I use onion powder, a bay leaf, salt, pepper, and the secret ingredient a dash of Tobasco sauce or better Chipotle Tobasco. No, I am not one of those people who love Tobasco on everything... but in small doses it has a great way of giving soup just the right flavor, without going bananas with the salt.

Another option is cooked non-starchy vegetables with an animal protein. Pick the things you like.

I make this my biggest meal of the day.

Breakfast Ideas

I start the day with berries and water. If the berries are sour I sprinkle with stevia powder or use a miracle berry tablet.

When I started out I used to then wait about a half hour or so and then on a typical day have eggs cooked in butter and also spinach with a few pieces of red bell pepper cooked in olive oil and seasoned with a little garlic powder, onion powder and salt.

On work days I packed up the eggs over the spinach in a thermal container and ate at work. Typically I ate half when I got there and the other half at mid morning. I call this first breakfast and second breakfast (you know like the Hobbits in Lord of the Rings).

Later I started building tolerance to homemade kefir. Now I still start with the berries, but then I have a cup of kefir and after that sprouted almonds and/or sprouted sunflower seeds.

At mid-morning I have another cup of kefir and then more almonds and/or sunflower seeds.

For a while I was having homemade vegetable soup and/or salad at breakfast.

Another idea would be bacon or gluten free sausage or just classic bacon and eggs... combined with some kind of sautéed non-starchy vegetable.

Look Mom - (Virtually) No Eczema

Another benefit of my lifestyle change has been a marked improvement in Eczema. I have had eczema on my legs since I was pregnant with my daughter 18 years ago. It did not get better with just low FODMAPs. It improved about 50% after a few months on the Body Ecology Diet. It seemed to really start getting better when I added kefir to my diet.

Next, it took all of my bravery to stop using cortisone cream on it. At that point, it got worse again. I read in a couple of other people's blogs that there can be a rebound effect when cortisone cream is stopped. So I waited a few nail-biting weeks and then it started to settle down again.  It didn't completely go away so I tried one more thing.

It occurred to me that much of the Body Ecology diet is about getting rid of bad yeast for healing and that yeast is a fungus.  I tried using Nizoral (ketoconazole) cream on it. I also knew that the anti-fungal Nizoral shampoo really helps my scalp and the cream keeps seborrheic dermatitis away from my face. I figured chances were good it would help the eczema on my legs.

And the results are in...