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I had to take a few days off and recover from the backup disaster, but I stayed on GAPS. Did you ever hear someone refer to a comfort food as steak and asparagus? I haven’t. Typically comfort foods consist of carbohydrates. And usually when people who are dieting go through a rough patch in their lives they will go back to those comfort foods and binge.

Yay, I felt no compulsion to do any such thing. Because although GAPS is a “diet” I’m not dieting to be dieting. I’m doing this for my health and well being!

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At work one of our clients turned 70, and his brother brought in a huge full sheet cake and they were pushing huge pieces on everyone. Then they broke out the ice cream sandwiches and everyone got two of those, and we had enough left over for dessert for lunch one day next week. I stayed in the kitchen while the cake pushing was going on, and then the brother caught sight of the three of us in the kitchen and brought in three pieces, loudly exclaiming that the kitchen people need cake! I gave my piece to my coworker who has a little girl. A few minutes later, here comes the guy with our ice cream sandwiches! This time I took the item from him, thanked him profusely and ask soon as he turned his back I handed it over to my coworker again.

It looked good, but it was not tempting. Especially when I know I can make delicious baked goods using almond flour [affiliate link] which are perfectly legal and made using healthy ingredients.

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Many people are convinced that self esteem is attached to body size. I do not agree with this. I have one coworker who usually brings that up whenever I mention how I’m feeling better. I have not found a way to graciously point out to her that it’s not my self esteem, it’s that I’m feeling better.

I realized on Thursday that I have been feeling poorly since I had pneumonia in 2002. I have been at my job for ten years, the first full year I volunteered. When I had the pneumonia, I was out of work for one solid month, flat on my back most of that month. I was so ill I could not even sit at my computer.

And now, I’m feeling so much better that I’m beginning to resent the time I have to spend at the computer.

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On Thursday, I stopped at a Saver’s to look specifically for two items: a toolbox and a lamp shade. I found the lamp shade, but not the toolbox. While I was there, I started looking around for something to wear to our annual dance at work. The theme is jungle, like tigers and big cats. I found a really neat vest which has big cats all over it.

I also decided to try on a smaller sized pair of jeans, since my 16s are now becoming quite baggy.

I am able to squeeze into “relaxed” size 14 jeans now. This is pretty exciting, I have to admit. Will I be in size 12 jeans by the end of the year? Or will my weight loss stall out? Will I start gaining again?

I’m curious to see what my weight loss will be on August 1.

I have not been working out on my Total Gym. I have been more tired than usual. Also my husband had to leave one morning earlier than he normally does, so I had to get up at 2:45.

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I’ve actually been having a bit of a problem with constipation so I am re-reading the pertinent chapters in Fiber Menace. One thing that caught my attention made me remember that I have not been getting any fermented foods in the past week. Apparently fermented foods contain bacteria which help to bulk up the stool (which usually fiber does that, but on a low fiber the stool is much smaller). I have been drinking my water kefir, and came up with two amazingly delicious flavor combinations, but apparently water kefir doesn’t provide enough bacteria.

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Last night I got nine great hours of sleep. The hot flashes didn’t get to me all night long like they have been. One of the list members gave me a list of things she takes for hot flashes, and I should look over the list – I could probably at least try the Vitamin E.

Well, sorry I was missing in action, but I just had to take a break.

I am feeling much better about everything, even though I have to recreate six weeks of data. I think I bounced back much faster from this than I would prior to being on GAPS.

So how has your GAPS journey been going?

Oh dear. I had to take Kava Kava tonight.

I had a backup accident with my computer. The backup was done in reverse. Instead of backing up current data to the backup drive, the information on the backup drive, back from March, was copied onto the current drive.

I am less freaked out because I discovered that I actually made emergency backups of the most important files on May 29th. Quickbooks, Quicken, Peachtree and my budget spreadsheet. Those are the bare minimum backups that my life would be incredibly difficult if I did not have them. Thank God.

As it is, May 29th is 6 weeks back. But that is a millions times better than March 15th, where it was before I discovered I’d made backups on my camera card. I could never have recovered from that far back.

Now I just have to stop thinking about what’s gone, like our income taxes which I created with the use of H & R Tax program. I do not recall making a hard copy. Instead I created a PDF. Maybe I did print out a hard copy somewhere. Agh. Agh. But the most important thing I needed was my husband’s accounting.

Now we’ll see how I handle this. I mean, prior to GAPS I know this would be a very dramatic hit to my adrenals. I would be totally wiped out tired and exhausted.

This is what usually happens to me. I’m going along real good, staying up with the housework and then some crappy crisis like this happens. I am going to have to recreate six works of data next weekend. We have to file monthly taxes in Arizona and so I don’t have any extra time, it has to get done. Thankfully there has not been a ton of business and we printed out copies of the outstanding invoices a couple of weekends ago. I can use the duplicate check deposit slips to recreate the checks (and corresponding invoices) that were deposited.

But lost are the scans of everything since March. It will be okay. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

But I can’t spend time cleaning the house for hours and hours every day. Friday, Saturday and Sunday of this weekend I have worked cleaning the house, making the bed, washing dishes, counters, washing and folding and putting away clothes, every day for four or five hours. This next weekend, I will need to forego everything and then there goes my momentum. I was also planning to prepare new beds in my garden next weekend. I don’t see that I’ll have time for that.

My husband reminded me that this is not the end of the world. It’s going to be okay.

Truly, it is a first world disaster.

It’s just that I was doing so well staying on top of everything.

I guess I will just have to see how I cope. The problem is, I can’t create more hours in the day. Something will have to give. And unfortunately, that’s going to have to be the housework. It takes such a long time to get into a rhythm. I hate to lose that.

Well, I have to work tomorrow. I had better get myself to bed.

I was going to say that I was thinking today about how my life was before I started on GAPS, but it wasn’t just today. I think quite a bit about what my life was like prior to GAPS.

For one thing, I had vowed to never diet again. Diets don’t work. We all know they don’t work. A very large percentage of people gain back the weight they managed to lose and then some. I had experience with one diet, when I was 29 years old. I needed to lose some baby fat – a small amount of weight – I remember thinking how FAT I was, and I was only about 20 to 25 pounds overweight at the time. I embarked on the low fat diet, and I wholeheartedly believed everything I read. I proselytized to my mother and sisters, and to this day I’m sorry I swayed them with my opinions. I thought low fat dieting was correct! Anyway, it set me up for some terrible cravings. I was successful for about one year and then the next three years I tried and failed and felt miserable with my failure. Then I found body acceptance and began to work on accepting my body as it was. I could no longer diet. Just the mere THOUGHT of restricting some kind of food I’d start overeating.

Another thing I think about is how grateful I am that my feet no longer ache. My feet used to hurt so badly. I remember at one point I couldn’t even walk from my bed to the bathroom in the middle of the night without putting my thick cushion soled casual men’s wear shoes on my feet. I couldn’t wear slippers, none are thick enough! It was agony to stand in the shower and take a bath with my bare feet. I bought one of those foot soaking bubbling things, and that would help my feet to feel better but they just hurt so bad most of the time. I had to sit down every ten minutes when I worked in my garden. I remember that my husband found the men’s casual wear shoes for me at Big 5 Sporting Goods. That is where we would buy our shoes. I remember the day we found them, I almost cried with relief when I put them on and stood in them. I didn’t care they were men’s shoes!! The brand is Nevados. They are so dorky looking. They are regularly $60 but they go on sale for $20 and I was having to replace them every two months. The soles still felt thick and cushion-y to my thumb when I’d press down, but my feet would ache once the cushion broke down just a little bit. So when they went on sale, I went around to several stores and bought three or four pairs, so I would have them on hand when they broke down a little.

I still wear those shoes, but now I can wear them for much longer than eight weeks – more like eight months! I continue to wear them because I wanted to use up the inventory I had bought for myself, lol. 🙂

One of the other prominent thoughts I have is being thankful that I can spend more than seven hours in bed. It used to be that I had to get up at seven hours because my back would be so stiff it would ache horribly. Then it would stay stiff and continue to hurt for an hour or more. I couldn’t just get up for ten minutes and go back to bed and sleep another hour or two. I’d have to stay up at least an hour, and usually two hours, just so the stiffness would ease up.

Now my back starts to protest mildly if I’m in bed for nine hours! And the stiffness goes away quickly, within minutes of getting out of bed.

I don’t know if it was the gluten, or what it was, but these things are so important to my well being and happiness that I don’t know if I could ever go back to eating anything other than GAPS.

I just wish that more people would be receptive to GAPS.

I remember hearing about GAPS when I was on the Discussing Nourishing Traditions list. I never considered GAPS for myself. I didn’t think I had any digestive issues. After all, I could eat just about anything. I never tied together my growing issues with constipation, the swelling of my ankles and fingers, the bloating, pregnant looking stomach.

And I certainly didn’t have autism (for that was the context I heard GAPS most within, when someone mentioned a child with autism).

I am so grateful I decided to look into GAPS for my husband. I wanted to help him to heal from his ulcerative colitis. Little did I know, in trying to help him,  I was opening the door for my own healing to come about.

I was so determined to accept my body for the size it was, and to be happy there. I did bodywork, and I journaled, and I told myself I was happy weighing over 200 pounds. But secretly I was disgusted, and so very sad that my body had failed me. I was thin “all my life” I used to say, but in fact I was only thin until I was 23, when I had my first son.

I always thought it was the pregnancy that changed my metabolism.

But guess what? Having examined that time of my life through my GAPS lens, I recalled that I had been on antibiotics FOUR times in the year prior to becoming pregnant with my first child. I was ALSO on the birth control pill that year – I was in fact on the pill when I missed a few days and ended up pregnant. Double whammy to my immune system.

Getting pregnant with my son changed my thinking quite a bit. I started to recognize that my mom hadn’t “failed us” by not taking us to the doctor when we were children, but she had actually done me and my siblings a great service. See, that’s why I went on the pill and took those antibiotics. I thought, “I’m going to take care of myself the right way.” Oh boy. I was pretty dumb when I was young.

And today, I was just responding to comments to my posts. I am so far behind, do you know why? Because I am having trouble spending time at my computer! I would rather be up getting something physical and concrete accomplished. I still don’t think I have tons of energy, but I have enough energy that I’m washing my clothes without feeling like I have to force myself to get the clothes together and into the washer. My goodness, if I had to wash them in a river on a washing board I guess we would have been wearing dirty clothes all this time. It is so great to not feel like it’s an insurmountable task to get my clothes into the washer and into the dryer and then folded and put into my dresser!! I just love having a dresser full of clothes to wear, instead of having to sift through a huge pile trying to find something to wear.

I was thinking about this one time I was at a friend’s house and I was trying to solve a computer problem for her daughter. I was sitting there for more than two hours – with her teenage daughter and finally the daughter had to get up, she couldn’t take sitting there any longer. I remember thinking how I had such wonderful stamina to stick with the problem. Heck, I could spend 10 hours a day in front of the computer! No problem!

But more and more, each weekend I’m starting to feel the COMPUTER is an imposition. It is taking time away from me and the things I need to get done!

What’s so frustrating is I need to spend time at the computer, for example, doing my husband’s accounting. It doesn’t take a long time, but it needs to be done in a timely manner. And I manage a couple of blogs, so I have to spend time writing posts. No one will come read my blog if I don’t post with updated information.

There are some bloggers who are famous and well known and make tons of money blogging. Many of them are men. I was just thinking today how can they sit at the computer for so many hours a day. I mean, realistically, how can anyone sit at a desk for hours a day? Is it a sign that people are just worn out? More and more people have desk jobs. Maybe that is because that is all they can manage, to just sit docilely at a desk.

Wow.

This has gotten really long. I should bring my thoughts to a close. I am so thankful to God and to those people who mentioned GAPS on DNT every once in a while. I’m thankful I decided to help my husband. I’m so thankful and grateful for everyone on the GAPShelp list. I’m thankful to Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride and Baden for writing GAPS Guide. I’m really glad that I decided to give GAPS a chance, to break my vow to never diet again. I’m so glad.

Starlene

They’re back! I started having hot flashes last fall. They only lasted for a few weeks, maybe a month. A couple of weeks ago they started again. They have been especially troublesome at night. I bought new cotton sheets, actually they were only 50% cotton but they feel great so I guess they are okay.

Yesterday I stopped at Walmart to pick out a couple of new bras. I’ve been wearing the same one for over a year now and it was getting very worn looking and also I thought maybe I might need a smaller bra. I also learned again, how to size a bra properly. I always remember the part about measuring around the rib cage and then the fullest part of the bust to find the cup size, but I always think the measurement around the rib cage is the size of the bra. Not so… here is a site that tells how to do it: Everything You Need to Know About Bra Fitting.

I am down on size, but the cup size is the same. That’s interesting to me, as I think that women usually lose cup size when they lose weight. I wonder if I will lose cup size as I lose weight. It will be interesting to see how that goes.

As I stood there in the dressing room, I noticed that my pants are become baggy. These are size 16. I don’t know if I could fit into 14’s yet. I am going to wait until I tighten my belt one more notch. That’s a good way to tell if a person is losing weight is how their belt fits. I wear a belt with my jeans for work, but on my days at home I wear shorts with elastic.

I had a good productive morning today. I did most of the chores I did last Saturday, plus I started on the task I’ve chosen to tackle this weekend, which is to clear all clutter from the counters and also to clean the dining room table which everyone stacks with stuff until it’s a foot high.

I did not do my little workout today or yesterday and I blame my husband. He keeps putting his tools on the bench and there is really nowhere to put them and there are several and they are a little bit heavy. It’s obvious I’m still susceptible to little things getting in my way.

Speaking of my husband, he installed two new air vents, one in the dining room, and a second vent in our bedroom today. It is going to be cold in our bedroom tonight! Hopefully that will help to prevent the hot flashes as getting too hot in the night seems to trigger them.

I am really feeling like I have a lot more energy. It’s so weird. I am looking forward to getting off work so I can stop by a store and do a little shopping. I mean, for years it’s been, “Get done and go straight home and agh, I have to stop for gasoline, nooooo!!!” I’m not going on big shopping sprees, but like I mentioned earlier, my bra is just worn out and grungy looking and I was curious to see if the next smaller size would fit. And I hate clothes shopping, normally! But I was okay to take the bras and try them on. It’s amazing what having more energy can do for a person!

A little update on my mom. She is really wanting to do GAPS and is moving more close to full GAPS. She is planning to let go of the buckwheat pancake that she has every day. She has also been adding a teaspoon of olive oil to her meals and thank God, she didn’t gain weight last week adding that little bit of olive oil. If she had, she would have been inclined to stop having the olive oil. If she gains one pound it makes her nervous.

I don’t think I could stand weighing myself every week. I’m glad it’s only once a month.

Well, I guess that’s all for now. I’m tired, it’s almost 9pm. I still need to take a shower. And I need to tidy up the kitchen. Imagine that! Thank God I found GAPS. I am so thankful to be a happier person. I still remember how I felt so blah about life.

I’m curious what the next few months will bring. I also wonder how much better I’d be doing if I were eating organic meats and vegetables. If I have done this much healing and had this much improvement on “regular” food, who knows how much better I’d feel? I have heard of people healing while eating “regular” foods, while some do not see much or any improvement until they are on totally organic foods.

I sometimes feel bad that we are not eating organic. Like I’m cheating somehow. And I got a new book, it is called Primal Body-Primal Mind: Empower Your Total Health The Way Evolution Intended (…And Didn’t) and I am just so curious because on the back of the book it says you can save thousands on your grocery bill, but there doesn’t seem to be a chapter to answer this question. I have not read the book completely through so maybe I’ll find it.

But I don’t find GAPS to be inexpensive and we are not even buying organic! My husband buys as much as he can on sale, I don’t know if we ever buy meat at the regular price. We do buy vegetables that aren’t on sale. But we are spending more money on groceries than we did before when we could buy cheap pasta and the filler carbs, you know?

Okay, this has been another disjointed update. I had better get off this computer.

I only have a few minutes because I need to get to bed.

I don’t think the watermelon kept me awake last night, but I was up about five times during the night due to hot flashes. I had about two weeks of hot flashes last fall and then they stopped (long before I started on GAPS).

I bought some different sheets today, I think the satin ones were holding a lot of heat. I have never had satin sheets before so I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into.

There is one more piece of the illegal cake left and I really want to eat it but I don’t want to risk not sleeping tonight. It was very difficult to get up this morning. So I will forego it and maybe have as a treat at work tomorrow.

Hugs,

Starlene