Sunday week in Review - Eating Clean but still Suffering............

Its fun to look back at all the good food you ate. Well in weeks that you cooked lots and actually ate clean. I had been feeling a bit low due to my iron deficiency so I had a couple weeks where I hadn't felt like experimenting. But I'm back baby - well with the cooking anyway.

I was feeling 100 percent at the beginning of the week. But baby was sick with the stomach flu and decided to forego solids and just crank his breastfeeding back up to pre-solid food levels. Well, I'm paying for it. 

My body is not a fan. By day five of this milk fest (Wednesday) I started to feel off. And since I wasn't suspecting anything yet I went and did a REALLY intense workout. Like, I was still sore three days later kind of intense. Dumb I know.

So the combination of the breastfeeding and the overkill at the gym apparently acted as "stressors" and my adrenal fatigue showed its ugly face (anger, hunger, hunger, anger, repeat) and I started feeling tired and shaky. And my sugar cravings and hunger just went completely out of control - I felt possessed.  I even ate some pizza and was scarfing down granola straight from the box. Something I haven't done for months. Then I woke up feeling even worse. 

And with it came a return of my anemia - I started getting the dizzies again which come with general tiredness, headaches and aches/weakness. It kinda sucks. 

I can't do much about the breastfeeding until baby is old enough to take some cow's milk (next month maybe) but I know that I really need to cut down my sugar to control blood sugar swings from the adrenal fatigue. 

I have cut sugar down dramatically but I obviously have a carbohydrate sensitivity that requires extreme measures. So I need to cut back all sugar - including fruit. Sigh! I'm putting it out there so I commit to it - two a day - period. Full Stop. And I have to ease up on the dark chocolate. I'm actually only going to use it in combination with other things from now on (smoothies, apple nacho's) - not eat it straight up anymore. It was getting too frequent and my servings were getting too large. 

But I didn't let the blood sugar roller coaster go on for long. I woke up Friday determined to get back on track with the blood sugar swings. I ate a chia, protein and avocado breakfast smoothie that was super filling and had no carbohydrates or fruit. I skipped my after lunch dark chocolate and fruit. Its easier to just stay off the carbohydrate roller coaster than try to get off when its already rolling. Its a daily battle with the adrenal fatigue but it worked for now - my blood sugar swings, hunger and anger subsided. My adrenals are just waiting for the next assault.............I have to be careful. 

The anemia doesn't seem to be as quick of a fix but I'm doing what I can. I had lots of beef yesterday and I'm keeping up with my iron supplements. You need to take iron with Vitamin C to help with its absorption. I was out of Vitamin C early in the week so I bought a year's supply of chewables at Costco. Not good. My stomach did not like this. Turns out they have lots of sweetener in them. So another trip to the store for ANOTHER bottle of Vitamin C without sweeteners and my stomach seems to be happier. Maybe that's why I started to get iron deficient again? Maybe my stomach stops absorbing when sugar is involved? Who knows. Morale of the story - my body does not like sugar. 

So if you are thinking - why would I eat clean when it doesn't seem to be helping her? All these problems aren't exactly selling clean eating. It is helping me.  I swear. I don't have stomach aches which used to be a daily occurrence. I am sleeping during the night when baby lets me. I used to have constant insomnia. And I was never able to pinpoint my problems before. I would never in a million years figured out that the sweetener in Vitamin C was bugging my stomach and fix the problem within days. I had such bad stomach aches that I could never find a correlation between anyway I was ingesting and how I was feeling. I was just too much of a mess with too many bad things going in. 

And I am sure that I would feel way worse and feel a lot less in control and hopeless (like two years ago when I was basically in the same breastfeeding induced haze) than I do now. I am in tune with my body now. 

And we did eat some great meals this week - here's some ideas to keep you clean this week - do it - really its worth the extra effort.............

Apples slices baked in the oven with an almond flour/flax/maple syrup/cinnamon/walnut topping! I ate it with some Greek yogurt. This was obviously before I decided I need to cut back on the sugar. 

A bunless pork and beef burger with roasted sweet potatoes and green peas.  I froze some extra burgers last  time I made them so this was a quick meal. I'll need to be doing a big batch of these if grilling season ever gets here.

My beef and pork purgers and a Greek Salad.  A quick leftover lunch. 

Okay  - this was the crust I made for my Chia cheesecakes (see below). The topping was  edible but the crust was awesome. I'm going to try this again with a different topping or as a pie crust. I mixed 1/3 cup almond flour, 1/3 cup ground golden flax, 1/3 cup unsweetened shredded coconut, 2 tbsp coconut oil, 1 tsp vanilla and 2 tbsp raw Stevia. I'll use less Stevia next time or try a different sweetener. I baked for 10 minutes at 325.

A pineapple Chia pudding. Okay.

Roast chicken with roasted beets, roasted sweet potatoes and Greek salad. Yummo, mummo. So into the roasted veggies these days.

Damn I wish this tasted as good as it looked. What an awesome picture of a barely edible  chia cheesecake. Not sure why the pineapple tasted like candy by itself but tasted like nothing in this? Oh well, at least we got our fiber from the Chia. 

Leafy greens with leftover chicken, beets, feta and onion dressing. Oh - this was good.

Maple, soy and ginger marinated wild salmon. We grilled it in foil. I don't like salmon but I managed to eat half a portion. It was okay. I want to like salmon and I am determined to get us eating more fish so I am eating it. And this combination of flavors worked for me - as much as it can. Its still salmon.

We had the salmon with roasted beets and Greek salad. Geez - I didn't realize we ate so much Greek salad.

Butternut squash soup with Kale super salad (Costco) and some Mild turkey Italian sausages.

Kitchen sink Carrot soup. Bacon, turkey sausage, lots of carrot, tomato paste, Italian seasoning.  A little of this, a little of that and here we have another healthy pot of soup.

Roasted zucchini with meat sauce. Kids ate it with corn spaghetti - I ate mine with zucchini.

Almond flour breaded cod with roasted cabbage and avocado/tomato salad. Yum.