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Yesterday I had such a nice day. I started out the day with a walk, as I did on Sunday, and the mornings are nice still. Soon it will be so hot it will be like walking out into an oven, even at 4am.

I even did another vlog on my walk, and intended to put that up yesterday but didn’t quite get around to it. I had some trouble with the video editing and my son wasn’t able to help me fully until he got off work so there was some delay getting it done and up.

Anyway… after I did the interview with my husband on Friday, I guess he had started to feel like he had a sore throat, so he decided to stop eating sugar. He hasn’t always eaten so much sugar as he was getting with the Oreo Cakesters, this is a recent new “addiction” for him, and in the past years we have always cut out sugar if we feel we are getting sick.

He told me on Saturday that his throat didn’t feel right, and he thought he was getting sick, but he didn’t tell me he’d stopped the cakesters cold turkey. By Sunday morning he was really feeling awful, and now thought he had the flu… with a headache, and joint aches and feeling light headed. He was just miserable.

I was at my computer and he had been resting in bed, but came out to sit on the couch and was telling me how awful he felt, and now he thought he had a sinus headache, so he decided to take some garlic, which started to burn his stomach.

He fell asleep for a few minutes and when he woke up he said his headache was gone and he felt a lot better, until he stood up and the headache came back and he said he felt light headed. He sat back down and asked me if I thought this could be die off since he had stopped eating cakesters over 24 hours ago.

I looked at him and said yes it was certainly possible, and not only that but also carbohydrate withdrawal, and I read him this bit from the book Fiber Menace by Konstantin Monastyrsky:

You may not experience hypoglycemia while consuming carbohydrates as usual, but it may hit you over the head hard as soon as you cut down on them, or drop them altogether. That’s what the Atkins and similar diets have done to hordes of unsuspecting people who went from a high-to-zero diet overnight, completely unprepared. You don’t really want to repeat their unfortunate experiences: relentless migraines, severe fatigue, alarming drowsiness, intense depression, obnoxious irritability, impaired speech, blurry vision, lapsed memory, sometimes
a scary bout of fainting. To prevent all that from happening to you, too, aren’t you better off knowing why it’s happening and what you could do to avoid it?

Let’s address the why question first. It’s simple: When you cut down on carbohydrate consumption, your pancreas, still unaware of the sudden change, releases more insulin than is now required. This happens because a healthy pancreas releases insulin in two stages. The first stage is an unconditional release of stored insulin in anticipation of, or in response to, a meal. The second, and much later stage, is a response to glucose as it gets assimilated from digested carbohydrates.

When you cut down on carbs, the unconditional release of stored insulin is adjusted to your new eating pattern gradually. While the adjustment is taking place, you may still experience moderate headaches, similar to ones that happen while waiting for a meal or missing one. I call this condition the “hungry spouse syndrome” because, in addition to the headache, elevated insulin makes people irritable and angry. For the same reasons, hyperinsulinemia is often at work in abnormal behavior patterns such as road rage, spousal abuse, workplace violence, and the like. The more insulin and glucose in the system, the more violent and aberrant the behavior.

So if you don’t rush things and reduce carbs step-by-step the pancreas will gradually adapt to your new diet, and insulin-induced hypoglycemia will go away for good.

See, without the cakesters, the food I serve my husband is what I eat, which is pretty much a low carb version of GAPS. I do try to serve my husband the high carb vegetables, because I feel he needs them since he has a strenuous job where he gets a lot of exercise.

After that, my husband said some things that led me to believe he is doing to finally stop eating cakesters. If he stops eating cakesters, he’s one step closer to doing GAPS, so basically I started gearing myself up to do what I can to make sure he has meals to take with him for lunch when he’s out working.

I cooked twice as much meat last night, made a big salad and then I thought I should make some kind of GAPS legal muffins so he would have something to take with him and could eat easily.

I had cooked two acorn squash yesterday, and made the nut butter and squash pancakes as I’d planned to (today I need to remember to do the olive oil drizzle thing), and I did also juice some carrots and made enough to last a few days.

Anyway, I had a lot of acorn squash and I thought it would be perfect to make some almond flour [affiliate link] muffins for him and also use the acorn squash so I googled and found a recipe that looked like it would work. Even though it had baking soda [affiliate link], the rest of the ingredients were GAPS friendly.

I was suspicious of the honey [affiliate link]… 3/4 cup for twelve muffins, but I thought I would try to make the recipe with the amount it called for first, and if they worked out, I could lower it next time. I know from experience that 3/4 cup would be way, way, way too sweet, but maybe not as sweet as the cakesters and my husband might like them.

I didn’t put in the hazelnuts called for and nuts sometimes put my husband on the toilet, so I used some blueberries I’d dehydrated.

I also added in 1/4 cup more of butter than called for.

The muffins didn’t cook too well. They were very soggy when finally done, and more like pudding in the muffin tin.

I had to scrape the muffin tops from where they were stuck at the top of the muffin tin just to get down to the papers to pull the muffins out. And I decided to take a taste or two… and then we were off and running… I ate one, and it was sickeningly sweet, but very delicious.

As I was working to extricate the remaining muffins, the temptation grew stronger and stronger and stronger, and I succumbed and ate a second muffin.

Thank goodness I stopped there, but the damage had already been done.

The first thing I remember was feeling really really tired and while sitting at the couch I just wanted to go to bed. But the only thing to eat for dinner at the moment was some grilled steak – which I’d already eaten so really wished I could just go to bed. My husband said he would just eat steak, but I didn’t want to leave our older son without only steak, so I got up to make at least a salad, that would be quick and I could go to bed.

The next thing I remember was not being able to find the salad spinner bowl, so that I could dry the lettuce. I snapped at my husband about that, and then said, “I’m getting SICK and TIRED of being the ONLY ONE doing anything around this place.”

You should know my husband didn’t sleep the night before, he got home late around 2:30am and had to leave at 4:30am, so he didn’t go to sleep, just stayed up. Which I knew that, and so you know when someone hasn’t had any sleep it’s not really the best time to start nagging and complaining. My husband didn’t respond, and I noticed right away that I was having a reaction, and told him I was having a bad reaction to the honey (sugars) and squash (carbs) in the muffins. So then I had to work really hard to keep my thoughts inside my own head because I kept thinking more and more things that were bothering me. Finally, I almost started crying. And I was also very angry at myself for succumbing to the too sweet muffins. It didn’t stop there. I started to feel depressed and overwhelmed. I knew that I was sliding downhill so I took two Kava Kava, a Vitamin B Complex 100 (both to help my nerves) and got into a detox bath and just stayed there about an hour. After I got out of the tub, I went to bed, but I just felt morose and depressed. And, no longer sleepy. That was the most annoying to me, since I know I cannot eat that many carbs just before going to bed, unless I want to have insomnia.

It is going to be a challenge if my husband does start really go on GAPS because I think he needs the normal version of GAPS, while I need to do a low carb version. If I make the high carb vegetables, it is hard for me to resist eating them. But I need to make them along with dinner so he has them. He has lost a lot of weight already, and I think eating the higher carb vegetables will help him to keep from losing more weight. He is about at an ideal weight for his height, but I don’t think he should lose anymore weight.

This morning I was telling him about what happened last night. I told him I could really feel the night and day difference in my mood and disposition, like when I said I was sick and tired of being the only one doing anything around here. He said, “It’s true. You are the only one doing anything.” I replie, “Yes, but what is the point in complaining about it? It’s not like you have time to help and it’s not like I’m doing that much. I’m washing dishes and cooking and that’s about it.”

When I’m on an even keel, doing GAPS, I really don’t stress about it. I do what I can, and it’s not like my husband is complaining, and no one else is complaining. So why worry about it? I can only do so much, he’s working many hours so he can’t. So without the sugar induced complaining, I’m a lot more calm and serene.

And this round of intro has even furthered my suspicions that I simply do better with less carbohydrates. This is not to say I’m getting zero carbs, but definitely eating a high amount of carbs messes me up.

I figure in the two muffins, I got two tablespoons of honey, which is 34 carbohydrates, and four tablespoons of squash, so that’s another 5 carbs. I just don’t do well on that amount of carbohydrates, especially since I’ve been on intro and barely started having winter squash in pancakes.

Which by the way, I was able to control myself and only eat two small pancakes when I ate then plain, instead of slathering on butter and honey mixed together.

Sorry for such a very long drawn out post.

I did not sleep enough and I believe I am going back to bed. Thankfully I am on vacation today. Also, my oldest son seems to have a sore throat and my throat feels funny… it scares me to death when my son gets sick because no telling how a cold will affect his asthma. He hates going to the doctor that just the thought of him getting sick freaks me out a little bit. It’s obvious to me that my body is going to be a little whacked out for a day or two.

I’m convinced that a low carb version of GAPS is right for me. Before I started doing intro this time, I was noticing that I was feeling unhappy, and I think it was due to the fruit and carbs. Before I ever did GAPS, these things didn’t matter. If someone told me I could change the way I felt with my diet, I would have rejected their suggestions immediately, as I had no intention of restricting the foods I loved to eat (which I had already determined made me feel like crap).

Okay, that’s it. Over and out.

In spite of the levity of my previous post, I do worry about my husband’s poor diet. I was actually, to tell you the truth, surprised at his honest response to my initial question. I know how difficult it is to be prepared when away from home and as a business owner, he is working many hours trying to keep his business afloat. This can sometimes mean he is away from home 12 to 16 hours a day. And I know how difficult it is to be prepared with that much food for that many hours. It is hard enough for me, and I work at a job that has a kitchen, where I can put my food into a refrigerator until I’m ready to heat it on a real stove (as opposed to no heating option at all, or having to settle for a microwave!).

It is definitely a problem, and I wish I could quit my job, because I think then I would have more time to dedicate to cooking.

The only solution at this time is to cook double meals for every evening meal. Thankfully my husband does not mind eating leftovers. Unfortunately, he is currently limited on some things he can eat, for example, boiled eggs [affiliate link] are a great quick and easy lunch or snack, but he cannot currently tolerate eggs. Eggs are another thing that causes him, as he said in the video, to be on the toilet for quite some time.

I wanted to speak a bit more to my first video, where I said I need to own my own intro. I realized that everyone is going to do intro at their own progression and what works for them. I don’t need to do intro within a certain time frame, or for a certain amount of time.

For example, I’m stuck on stage 4 because I want to work through some of the suggestions that I haven’t done yet.

I did make the squash nut pancakes on stage 3, but it was a pretty big disaster as I made twenty small sized pancakes from the batch and proceeded to stuff six pancakes into my mouth hot from the pan. They were divine.

I notice that compulsive and binge-like eating now only occurs when I eat vegetables that are high in carbs (and also with fruit). Butternut squash causes me to basically go bonkers and eat like a madwoman.

The pancakes were bread-like and I had hoped to make a “hamburger” using two pancakes, but alas, the twenty pancakes lasted three days.

Dr. Natasha says in her book’s instructions on intro, Stage 3 pancakes, to eat one a day to start with… okay, so I just decided to not make any more pancakes since I can’t stop with just one. It’s as if I literally, physically cannot. I don’t like that compulsive binge-like behavior.

Stage 4 says roasted and grilled meats, but not barbecued or fried. I know what fried is, but what is the difference between grilled and barbecued? I have baked some of my food, and I admit to eating a fried hamburger. UPDATE (the next day): I have done some research on the great Internets and it appears that grilling is to quickly sear meat at high temperatures. This means the lovely ribeye steak that I had for dinner on Saturday night, and failed to tell you about, was okay for Step 4. It seems that barbecuing is to cook foods for very long periods of time, and possibly with a concoction poured onto the meat, like barbecue sauce. I found several sites, but this resource seemed to explain it best: Are You Grilling Or Is It a BBQ?

I also need to juice carrots… I have organic carrots from Costco, but my juicer is subpar and I have not yet brought it out from where it is currently buried under the sink.

I haven’t done olive oil drizzled on my foods.

And, I haven’t done any baking with almond flour [affiliate link], since it seems anything breadlike I cannot control myself to eat just a small amount.

I suppose I could make one tiny loaf, slice it and freeze it immediately to avoid temptation.

I also am not sure if it’s okay to juice several carrots and then use the juice over several days. This juicer of mine is a bear to clean, and I don’t have that much time every day. This is why intro took me so long to get through the first time, because I lose three days a week when I have to leave my house and go to work.

This week though, I do have tomorrow and Tuesday off, and I will be working from home on Wednesday. So I think what I will do is set little goals for myself, and try to meet.

Monday I will juice some carrots, enough for a few days. I will also make another batch of squash nut pancakes, but this time I will eat only one, and freeze the rest for subsequent days.

Tuesday I will begin to use olive oil.

Wednesday I will bake one small loaf of almond bread, and slice it and freeze it in individual portions.

On the weekend, I will see how I did, and try to create another plan to move forward to Stage 5.

In the meantime, I will continue to have daily broth and soups. I have a pot of chicken stock going right now, I ran out yesterday and had no broth at all yesterday! Sacrilege!

Partly what happened is there was a discussion on the GAPShelp list about “burned” broth and “rancid” fat from cooking stock too long. Apparently I overcooked my last batch, so that got me all confused. When I get confused, I tend to do nothing.

I have been mostly eating meats and vegetables.

If you got to see my vlogs from Saturday, excuse me, Friday, you will see how cheerful I seemed with my husband. He makes me laugh and I love him for that. I noticed starting that day, how much happier I am feeling lately.

I haven’t yet determined exactly why. I want to say because of doing intro, which equates, at least at this stage to no fruit and not so many high carb vegetables.

Or, is it because I’m getting to take a few days off from work, and don’t feel that horrible pressure that I usually feel every single weekend where I feel I must spend every minute working to catch up. I do admit I am beginning to feel a little bit nervous, for even though I have Monday and Tuesday off, I have spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday taking it easy. Putting together the vlog with my husband was very enjoyable and gave me much pleasure. And with my son’s help, I learned a bit about video editing, which is a great tool to have under my belt. I need to work on our income taxes, I filed an extension, but I have no intention of waiting until October to file at the last second. My husband has several customers he needs to bill and we need to work together on that. And I have some accounting work I must do for a bookkeeping client that I have. Quarterly reports are due at the end of this month, so I must do those to take in to the couple that owns the business as the wife had a stroke not too long ago and is not cleared yet to drive, and the husband is legally blind and cannot drive.

I sometimes wish I could just drop everything, and, or maybe quit my job. I have to continue with both at this time, unfortunately.

I also can’t believe I passed my 500th day on GAPS without some kind of celebration, or at least a mention here at the blog.

I guess in closing, I just want to say I feel well and healthy. And it seems like I feel happier. It feels like I was starting to feel some depression before starting on intro again. And I do think it was having too many carbs. I want to point out that GAPS is not a low carb diet. Not at all. But some people find they do better on a lower carb version. Please see this post of Baden’s: GAPS and Carbs where she explains that GAPS is based on the Specific Carbohydate Diet, which selects “specific” carbohydrates to be used for the diet, rather than being low carbohydrate.

Okay, so I guess that’s it for today.