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My husband loves chocolate cake and I decided to make him the almond flour cake that I’ve made before. It turned out decadent and delicious. I also made cashew ice cream. Hubby was very delighted with the cake. I made only a single layer cake and it was plenty for the four of us, with some left over. In the past we’d have made a double layer cake and snacked on it for a couple of days. (Cocoa/chocolate is not GAPS legal but if your gut symptoms have subsided you can try and see if you tolerate it. Read more here in my post about chocolate on GAPS).

Dinner was crock pot roast, Faux-Tatoes, gravy and salad.

Yesterday and today I washed several loads of clothing which had been piled up in my bedroom. I went through and folded and sorted and have a couple of piles in my vehicle, ready to donate to the nearest Goodwill, Savers or clothing donation box I come across. It is hard work decluttering but I am so thankful to have energy!

I have been so tired lately. I think this weekend I am going to try really hard to take it easy and just nap every time I feel tired.

Yesterday and today I have felt cranky and have had inappropriate thoughts about people. For example, I was talking with a coworker and I kept trying to finish what I was saying but kept getting interrupted. I had the thought to shout, “Will you just SHUT UP so I can finish what I was trying to say?!” That is not like me at all.

I wondered if I might be having some reaction to the printer in my office. I had to print 250 sheets in a row and it started to put off some fumes. On the way home I was really cranky, but I think part of that is because my prescription sunglasses can’t be adjusted and they are tweaked sideways on my face and it is just very distracting to see the frames where they shouldn’t be. The sun is so bright, it is really so much nicer to drive with sunglasses.

I was so annoyed I called the company I got my sunglasses from and they said I could return them for a partial refund.

Also my bedding arrived yesterday and I was terribly disappointed with the quality. The material was thin and flimsy and caught on every little bit of rough skin on my hands and I was just sorry I bought the thing. I emailed the company today and they are willing to refund my money once I send the set back to them. I think I’ll be out shipping at least one way, if not both.

It was also off-gassing something horrible, and I wondered if that might have contributed to my cranky mood today and also the feelings of exhaustion. My sinuses and nose were sure clogged up (which hasn’t been happening).

I just felt disappointed and let down all day long so after work I decided to go by Savers to see if I could find anything. They had nothing. Then I decided to stop by Ross Dress for Less and I found a beautiful set for the same price, but much higher quality. I went ahead and bought it and I’m really pleased with it. Lesson: Never buy bedding online that you haven’t seen in real life!

I was thinking I need to make a chart of everything I’m supposed to be doing, like raw liver shots, cod liver oil, Vitamin C, and anything else, like detox baths (with what), etc. Then I can go back and see how I’ve done and where I can improve. Or at least I’ll have the chart as a reminder to do all these little things that need to get done every day.

I have been trying to eat smaller amounts, and wait a little longer once I feel hungry. I don’t know if this could have the effect of making me more tired? Maybe I shouldn’t concern myself with eating less if my body needs more nutrition to heal. ?? Doggone diet head has totally evaded my body and thoughts. Yesterday when I picked up my coop order the coop manager was telling me about how successful the raw foods diet has been for her and her family. I think she said they eat raw for breakfast, lunch and snacks and their dinner meal is the only one cooked. My head is too filled with GAPS right now to even look into another diet.

GAPS seems to be working good for me, so I am committed for the long haul.

I did take a Kava Kava today because my stress was just going over the top and I didn’t want to be like a pressure cooker needing to let off steam and vent on someone accidentally.

I heard about a young lady today who really needs to be on GAPS. I wish she would consider it. She has serious digestive issues that could definitely be healed with GAPS.

Also, another of my family has been diagnosed as schizophrenic and/or bipolar. I’m hoping the GAPS message will make sense to this person, that’s all I can do is hope.

Today a list member who joined a few weeks after I did posted an update and it was so uplifting and encouraging! Off medications and no depression. That is so great.

I had better get to bed. Thank goodness tomorrow is a day off.

So today I worked from home and I felt tired and was having a hard time concentrating.

Finally, I just had to have something, so I decided to act on a whim and make myself a smoothie.

I used some ingredients that are not GAPS legal. Here is a link to what I made. The coconut milk [affiliate link] was canned, and contained illegal ingredient guar gum (which causes me to have phlegm in my throat), and I used cocoa powder, which is also not GAPS legal although it does not seem to have any adverse effects on me.

I started out with almost one cup of coconut milk which would have increased the calories significantly as that is what I felt worst about the cheating, was the additional calories which I would not have had if I’d not made the smoothie. I ended up measuring out 1/2 cup and saving the other 1/2 cup.

I also felt some distress that I have been off fruit for over a month, and here I was eating a banana.

For the record, the small treat I made for myself contained 467 calories. That seems like a very large amount of calories. Although I am not counting calories, when I first started GAPS I was having a lot more “treats” and I think that may have caused me to keep weight on initially.

I seem to be deeply immersed in “diet head” today.

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I was talking to my mom about it, and she said, “I know you’ll go back to it [eating GAPS], it’s helped you too much.”

When she said that, I realized that I hadn’t gone off GAPS at all. I had in fact, not embarked on a diet-induced binging frenzy.

I know that is a common thing for people to do when dieting, to “fall off the wagon” and then go nuts for the rest of the day, eating anything and everything. I myself have experienced this guilt in the past when I was on a low fat diet. I would feel horrible, and think, “May as well party for the rest of the day and start over tomorrow.”

But I didn’t do that. I just had my little treat and that was that.

I actually felt satisfied and was able to concentrate much better and focus on what I was doing, and didn’t feel hungry for several hours.

I’m not sure what happened. I mean, I don’t think I’m nutritionally deficient, although bananas do contain potassium and I did just read recently from Fiber Menace that low carbohydrate diets tend to be low in potassium. But, now don’t quote me, I think he said to drink cucumber juice (juiced from fresh cucumbers). He didn’t say make a cocoa banana smoothie. 😉

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Remember I mentioned putting kefir in my bath last night? Well, I did it. I actually had two cups of raw goat’s milk leftover from yesterday, and I put the two cups (or so) of kefir in that milk for the day. Then in the evening, I added the quart to lukewarm bathwater. It actually made some bubbles in the water, and was nice to be in. I really liked it. I soaked for a while and it seems like my skin felt very smooth and silky afterward.

I didn’t want to take a hot bath, because I figured the bacteria in the kefir would be killed if it was too hot.

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The Fiber Menace guy says it is hard to digest protein and we should only eat protein once a day, in the evening. So I kind of got that in my head and I’ve been eating vegetables for breakfast and lunch for the past couple of weekends.

Tonight I made hamburger burros for my husband, and I had some of the hamburger with cooked bell peppers and squash. It was fairly tasty and I have enough for lunch tomorrow.

Yesterday I ate two huge artichokes all my myself. According to Fiber Menace, if you have gas it is because of fiber fermenting. I had gas throughout the night (not painful or anything) so that makes me think artichokes are higher in fiber than the foods I have been eating.

Jumbled thoughts tonight. I’m feeling tired. I wish I could have taken a nap today. I am really loving seeing my bed made instead of just being a jumbled mess of covers (I wonder how long this phase will last). But I will get to bed soon so that should help me tolerate tomorrow.

My cheat wasn’t too terrible, but it was deliberate and I enjoyed it. I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come. I don’t think it will be. But I have already decided that I’m making an almond flour [affiliate link] chocolate cake for my husband on Father’s Day.

I can’t wait for my new bedding to arrive.

Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite. 🙂

Today was a better day. A special thanks to Tara Marie for the uplifting and encouraging comment to yesterday’s post. Last night I went to bed after I posted here and fell to sleep shortly after. I can’t believe for spending so many hours in bed yesterday that I was tired enough to fall asleep and sleep soundly for the entire night, at 7:30 in the evening. I did wake a couple of times to potty but was back in bed asleep. By 4:30am, my back was complaining like it used to but that made sense since 9 hours is my new maximum (where it used to be a mere seven).

I have been up all day. I felt tired and thought about taking a nap, but I really wanted to get some things done, like paying bills and reconciling some checking accounts. I also tackled another section of my bedroom because I splurged and bought myself a comforter set. I have never bought new bedding in my entire life and I have been making our bed every day and keeping our room tidy and I wanted to have something nice to show for my hard work.

I think that’s a good sign that I’m improving in my overall mental attitude because for so many years it’s been, “Why bother, it’s going to get ruined anyway because I can’t take care of it properly.” Now it seems I feel like I have enough gumption to care for things. That could be a good thing!

I wanted to buy a set from Savers or Goodwill, but my husband said he really wished I would buy something new instead of second hand bedding. So this is what I bought: 7 Piece Queen Floral Jacquard Bed in a Bag Comforter Set.

Click here to see a photo of my new bedding. (By the way, that is not my bedroom, it is the photo from Amazon. I will take a photo of my bedroom once my order arrives. I sent my mom a text message by phone with a picture of the computer screen and she thought it was my bedroom. 😀 )

I looked for all the queen comforter sets on Amazon, starting with the lowest priced and opened a window for each one that caught my eye, and I also made sure it was machine washable (some of these are dry clean only!). Then I asked my hubby to take a look at what I had found and we both agreed this was the nicest of them all. It was $49.99 plus $13.95 shipping. I thought it was a pretty good price, even though I know I would have spent less at Savers or Goodwill.

Now enough of that.

As I said, I felt better today. Tired, but not as down in the dumps as yesterday and I didn’t need to spend the day in bed.

I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post that I took my first “raw liver shot”. Which is about one tablespoon of frozen raw liver, cut into cubes. Yesterday I took my liver out of the freezer (the grass fed liver that I found at a farmer’s market on the last coop day), sliced it and chopped it into small pieces. I wondered how do people swallow it whole when it is frozen? Yesterday, it was partly thawed, so I swallowed the tablespoon in two separate portions.

On the second portion, I tossed the liver into my mouth and realized I didn’t have much water in my glass, which ended up causing me to spit out the water and gag, but the liver went down. I hurriedly got another drink of water and that wasn’t too bad.

I thought, I’ll just put it all back into the container and freeze it and tomorrow (meaning today) it will be easy to chip out of few little cubes. Not so easy. But I did manage with a knife (being very very careful to not end up slicing off a finger or slicing myself) to chip out about a tablespoon for today’s liver.

The liver went down much easier today.

I didn’t really taste it in my mouth at all.

Compared to having to prepare liver, to have to touch it, look at all those ugly veins, remove them, the spongy bloody texture, having to remove the touch skin, then having to cook it and smell it, and finally taste it while eating it… swallowing it raw is 100 times better.

I wish I loved liver. I really do wish I loved liver.

I had an idea today of what I could do with my kefir that I make just to keep my grains growing (usually I give the kefir to the chickens). I do eat my kefir grains, about one tablespoon every other day when I change out the milk. I decided I was going to take a kefir bath. I decided I’m going to draw a bath of lukewarm water, then dump in the kefir (about two cups) and see if that has any effect on me. I wonder if it will be detoxifying?

I make my kefir with our goat’s milk, which is naturally homogenized, so the cream (fat) does not separate from the milk (like cow’s milk). I am also going to put another two cups of raw milk in my bath.

I’ll let you know tomorrow what I thought about it.

Today has been a rough day.

After I wrote yesterday about feeling poorly, I realized a couple of things. First, I went swimming last Saturday in a chlorinated swimming pool. I have heard this can be a toxin. At my dentist appointment, which I still cannot remember if that was Tuesday or Wednesday, I had two x-rays. Maybe those are a toxin for my body to have to work at removing. I did a little bit of research on the ‘net but who knows what to believe.

The dentist’s receptionist told me the tests for mercury (with regard to amalgams) were basically all skewed and no one would ever be exposed to that much mercury and she said the dentist works with amalgams all the time and he’s fine.

Well, that’s good to know.

Then work was stressful this week.

I guess there is a part of me that thinks all my hard work on GAPS is for naught. On the other hand, I know it’s normal to have ups and downs. We can’t be happy and handle stress perfectly all the time, every minute of the day.

I spent most of the day in bed. I also took a detox bath with Epsom salts, I haven’t had a detox bath in weeks and weeks.

I got literally nothing done this weekend so far. I have so much to do that it’s not even funny. I’m getting behind in my husband’s accounting for his business and also with tracking our own personal finances.

My mom got stung by a scorpion twice in one week and the second sting was much more difficult for her body to shake off. I guess her feet were numb for a couple of days, and her hands were tingling. She spent a lot of time on the phone with poison control. That probably stressed me out.

That’s the thing. I don’t think that I’m really aware of how many things are stressing me out. For one thing, I just take it in stride that I have a child with Down Syndrome, but it’s probably a big stressor. I mean, normally your 23 year old is out on his or her own by that age, or at least you don’t have to worry about persuading her or him to take a shower and change clothes, you know?

I guess I am going to crawl into bed again.

There was also a website posted on the list today and GAPS was kind of being trashed. That was quite upsetting.

For many years, I wouldn’t diet mostly because diets don’t work. So there is a part of me that feels that I’ve been elaborately hoaxed by GAPS. That it’s not really going to work out for me in the end and worst of all I’ll gain back all the weight and more.

The thing is, since I’ve been studying Fiber Menace so much lately, I now have more information to persuade myself to stick with GAPS. Mr. Monastyrsky explains a lot on his website and also in his book, and he advocates a low fiber diet, which is what GAPS is.

Anyway. I’m tired. I’m going through a confusing time right now with GAPS. The most part of me is still convinced it is a good thing. After all, if I get nothing more than my feet not hurting and my back not stiffening up at night, that is better than nothing. Those two things are very important and have made a world of difference for me.

I am sure I will feel better tomorrow.