Lesson 1500 – Forks over Knives

 

Oh hurrah for the optimism that is January. After doing a little bit of reading from the Forks over Knives cookbook given to me at Christmas, I decided to go full-on vegan with a plant-based diet this week. I sat down and explained what I was going to do with the kids and they (somewhat reluctantly, at least at first) agreed to go along with it. For the entire week, we are going to try our hardest to not eat any animal products.

Our first dish was Tofu Taco boats. The kids were a little squeamish about the tofu, but I got extra-firm and I pressed the water out of it and so when it was finally sauteed with onions, corn and spices it tasted fine.

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Lesson 1189 – My egg teeth

I know that many of you are anxious to hear about my ketogenic journey (and yes Rich, that would be a great new blog, *if* I had the time – which I don’t.) Last week went extremely well. I had salads, broccoli, olives, onions, mushroom, eggs, cheese, and meat. I can truthfully say that I was happy with the food, was never hungry and even with such a *dense* diet (and yes it was dense, I would highly suggest fiber supplements and tons of water if you do this) I started to see the number on the scale come down.

And then I went and broke a tooth.

Here’s where it’s time to confess. I have HORRIBLE teeth. I’d like to blame it on my Lyme disease, but much like a chick’s egg tooth, my teeth were not designed to be permanent.

Lesson 1184 – If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

Trust me, this is not going to turn into a diet blog, but I feel like I need to do a follow-up on yesterday’s diet post. If only for the people out there with autoimmune and chronic diseases who may be looking for dietary answers.

First, now that I’ve had time to digest what went on – the doctor who “counseled” me will not be counseling me again. She never once asked me about my Lyme disease (even though I put it down on the forms and even told her about it in the office.) And she clearly knew nothing about a Ketogenic diet (even though their website states they do.)

Photo credit: Laurel F

Because of my Lyme disease, I don’t even get the flu shot. Right now, it might be too much of a stress on my immune system and I’m not willing to take the chance. We’ve already had experience with one of my Lyme-compromised kids having a horrible reaction to a vaccination, we are just not going there again. I don’t take any medication (save for an over-the-counter sleep aid on occasion – darn that Lyme insomnia.) I try to be as chemical free as I can.

And yet, at the first appointment, I was counseled to consider an appetite suppression drug – without even first seeing if I could make progress on my own. Not cool.

Lesson 1183 – Me along with half of America

I bit the bullet today. I made an appointment to talk to a Doctor about going on a Ketogenic diet.

From what I can tell, it’s very complicated to get the nutritional Ketogenic numbers figured out. A certain amount of protein, balanced by a percentage of fat, along with a limitation of carbohydrates – it’s so much work. Just tell me what to do. Which is exactly what I was hoping this clinic could do for me.

Please just help me to figure this out.

I do know that since I’ve had Lyme disease, my metabolism has been trashed (along with my immune system.) In the 2.5 years I’ve had Lyme disease I’ve put on about 30 pounds. Some of it is not exercising (who can exercise when you need to crawl up stairs) and some of it is an altered metabolism. Talk to many long term Lyme patients and you’ll hear story after story of added pounds.

I need to do something to get this weight off so that I can exercise with less pain. But I can’t exercise until I lose weight and I can’t lose weight until I exercise – this is the nowhere land in where I currently reside.

So today I visited a local Medical Weight loss clinic. First I had to fill out pages of forms asking everything from how often I eat to where I eat (sitting down? In front of the TV?) The forms asked me to put down my current weight – I briefly thought about skipping that question, but decided that that would be defeating the whole purpose of going there in the first place. I put down the weight I was at my last LLMD appointment in November (which I might add was my all-time high, so I was able to skip the next set of questions.)