Yonder Way Farm

I mentioned that I would explain grass-fed vs grain fed beef a couple posts back.  The first time I ever heard of such a difference was about 3 years ago when my husband and I were on a hot date having a steak dinner.  One of the items on the menu was a 4 oz grass-fed steak and a 4 oz grain-fed steak served together to compare.  So, we compared.  While I had no idea my future held a life of grass-fed beef, the grass-fed beef was, by far, richer in taste, juicier, and more tender.  We were sold!  It only makes sense that what a cow eats is whats in its muscles.  You ARE what you EAT!  So, if a cow eats synthetic food, then when you eat a steak, you are eating the synthetic food that fed that cow..antibiotics, hormones, and all!  However, cows were created by God to eat grass.  Eating grass doesn't hurt you and it certainly doesn't hurt the cow.  Cows should be eating grass!

We have since started order all our beef, chicken, and eggs from a local farm that delivers to Houston and the surrounding areas, Yonder Way Farm.  We love them.  It is a young family just doing their thing, living off the land and growing healthy food for those of us city-folks who can't do it for ourselves.  PLEASE peruse their site and their blog.  It is loaded with all sorts of information, including the Grass vs Grain debate.

If you are lucky enough to live in the Houston area, I would highly recommend ordering your meat from Yonder Way.  Your bodies will love and appreciate the REAL THING!

Coconut Oil

Before I learned about Expeller-pressed, I ordered this gallon size.

Coconut Oil has become our life blood.  When on the yeast diet you can't have many of the oils you are used to cooking with.  Coconut Oil is one oil that is allowed and it is allowed to be heated, unlike olive oil.  So, I buy coconut oil by the vat.  I often substitute for butter and always for oils.  I make my scrambled eggs with it.  Even when I wasn't following the diet, I started using coconut oil in brownies and treats (yummo!) and we have always used it to pop our popcorn.  Coconut oil is a treat in and of itself and makes everything taste better.

The great thing about coconuts is that they are a natural anti-fungal agent, so it is REALLY good to eat lots of coconut products while on the yeast diet.  ALWAYS be sure to read the ingredients and make sure that there is no sugar or unidentifiable additives.  I have read that sticking with the Thai brands of coconut milk is good.  And I order my coconut oil online.  Expeller-pressed coconut oil is the best form to get because it was extracted the old-fashioned way with as few added ingredients as possible.

This is the primo!

Gratefully, there is SOMETHING on this diet that I love.  AND, drinking a coconut protein shake is like have my own little sugary sweet.  If you are interested, I just concocted my own shake and LOVE IT!


I fill my Magic Bullet up about 1/4 - 1/2 full of ice.  I fill it half way with raw milk (we get it from a local farm) and another 1/4 with coconut milk.  I put one scoop of my vanilla protein powder (in the margin) and I sprinkle about 4 Tablespoons of organic, unsweetened coconut in to give it a little texture. Mix 'er up and DELISH!

Lonely Place

I have followed the Candida Diet before, so I am fortunate enough to know what to expect. The first time I did it, we lovingly, or not-so-lovingly, refer to it as my exorcism.  By simply  removing difficult to digest foods and only eating lean veggies and protein, my body revolted.  I was nauseous, every pain I ever had in my body multiplied by 10, I vomitted for days, I was weak...it was brutal to say the least.  I didn't expect all of that, but thankfully, I had a nutritionist coaching me every minute of the day.  She told me "that's normal" and "this is what will happen next" and she prayed for me.  I think she really started praying when she discovered that, as she said, I was the worst case she had ever seen.  At that point, I was doing it on my own, through this nutritionist simply because I was referred to her by a friend.  I wasn't completely in the know, but I did know that no one else was able to help me up to that point.

This time around, I have found myself in a very lonely place.  That nutritionist is gone and I am following the diet on my own (and with my sweet husband, too!)  I should say "We" are alone because Babe is very much involved in helping me get well.  When I am dragging, he is picking me up.  When you do this diet, it is also considered a detox, or cleanse.  All the bad stuff is getting out and you don't want to take meds or painkillers or anything that will get back in your system and cause more problems.  So when I say I was in pain, I was in pain.  For my pain, my doctors have given me many refills of Vicadin to get through a day.  All that pain magnifies when you are nauseated, vomitting, and tired.  My stomach bloated and burned like none other.  All the symptoms of illness in your body get worse as they heal which, for me, meant torment.  I couldn't sleep through the pain, I couldn't get comfortable and no one could help me.

Babe was so upset one night because he wanted to take me to the ER.  I WANTED painkillers, too!  But we knew that the doctors would only admit me for tests, tell me my stomach was completely inflamed and occluded and do more tests and more meds and the cycle would continue.  The cycle I have been in for 20 years.

It was at that moment that I tearfully told Babe that we were alone.  It was us and God and no one else.  No one else could come close to understanding WHY I was putting myself through this diet and why I was putting up with excruciating pain.  The first time around, I had blind faith in my nutritionist who told me what to expect.  This time I KNEW what was on the other side.  I knew that I would have days of total hell (to be exact), but I knew that it would be worth it in the end.

Our society puts a whole lot of faith in doctors.  I have great relationships with all my doctors...yes, I have many :)  There comes a point, though, that you have to think about what is good for you and your health and your family.  There is still SO MUCH we don't know about our bodies and drugs and diseases.  We can't expect our doctors to know absolutely everything.  When you get to a place like I am, where the people whom I have trusted to keep me alive through surgeries and painful days cannot help me anymore, it becomes frightening. Very frightening.

And thus, the Lord has me where he wants me and that is on my knees, begging for his mercies and for His healing over my body.  AND, sharing my story with you.

I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me.  Philippians 4:13

Thankful for My Blessings

Lately, Babe and I have been particularly aware of the blessings in our life.  We always are, but I think when health or finances or anything BIG threatens a pretty normal life, as humans, we all begin to pay attention when things are going well.  We know first hand that those things can be stripped away over-night.  I have become SO grateful for simply a day without pain.  Imagine that! Be grateful if you are not in pain today! Today, I was at Wal-Mart and saw a middle-aged man in a wheelchair and thought how lucky I was to be walking.  I watched the news story about the young girl who walked into a plane prop and I am so grateful to have my arm and sight from both eyes.  Despite all the pain, I still have something that someone else might desperately want:  a family, children, a house, a car, food, two legs, two eyes, I might even say good health.  After all, my heart and lungs work, I appear to have a normal and active life to those who don't know me.  I have so much to be thankful for.  If you are reading this, then so do you!  Be thankful!

With that said, I really want this blog to be real and not sugar-coated.  I am good at making people think I am OK...really good, as I have been doing it for 20 years.  I don't like people fretting over or worrying about me.  I am strong, but I also try to be stronger than I am.  And, I am learning from many of my dear friends to let them help me.  To let people know when I hurt, to let friends take my children for a few hours, to let people help.  Hardest for me is letting my husband know I am in pain.  It's so very hard to accept that I need help, but I am learning.  Funny, because a friend asked me just yesterday if she could make us dinner.  So sweet, indeed, but can you imagine her trying to figure out what to cook for a family that isn't eating sugar, bread, flour, caffeine, fruit, pasta...?

I just think today is a day to be thankful.  I am SO grateful that I woke up this morning and it is noon and I have not had pain today. I started out well yesterday, but ended poorly.  TODAY is going to end well.  

I AM going to beat this thing.  I AM going to have my body back and I AM thankful that I have an option to do so without putting my body at risk for other illnesses.  I am so thankful for the knowledge I have gained in the past few years and for the people God has certainly placed in my life to teach me how to eat in order to heal my body. 

AMEN! :) 

Maximized Living

I am following a diet with absolutely no sugar and sugar slows healing by requiring more energy to break it down.  Refined sugar is bad.  In my case, the pain it causes, I often think it is truly from the Devil.  We can live life without sugar! And this is coming from a sugar-aholic.  I have learned to sweeten with 100% Maple Syrup, Sucanat, honey...there are many God-given and unrefined options that actually provide more flavor when you cook.  The problem with our society is that white sugar, refined sugar, is cheaper and easier to make in bulk.  Any nutritive value is completely stripped in the processing.  Cheap and easy...sugar is purely a slut.  That is the only reason so many things are loaded with refined sugar...the ease and the price. Richer flavors and healthier options are out there!

I am, was, and probably always will be a picky eater.  The first time I did this diet, there was a fasting phase, where I existed for three days on lemonade made of water, fresh lemon juice and....maple syrup!  I thought, "No way! That's so gross!"  I tried it and you wouldn't believe it, but I couldn't taste a drop of maple.  It was purely a sweetener AND it doesn't spike your blood sugar.  Interesting, huh?

I wanted to explain my love of Maximized Living products. The reason I have referred several Maximized Living products is because they are made WITHOUT sugar.  Try finding a protein powder ANYWHERE that doesn't have sugar or fructose of some form in its ingredients.  The protein powder at Maximized Living is made not only with Stevia, a natural plant sweetener, it is made with by-products of grass-fed animals.  I will hit on that soon.  Grass-fed is VITAL.  I have just come to learn this in the last few years, but this means that the products are made from cows that ate their natural food and they weren't given antibiotics and hormones to prevent diseases and plump them up. And thus...when you consume these products, you will not be consuming antibiotics and hormones in the process! Yeah!

I know it's brief...but the proof is in the ingredients!

Getting There!

So, I made it through the "Yuck" and pain again after two setbacks in this go around.  Each setback, as painful as they are, reminds me to keep it up and keep forging ahead.  Last night I had a BEE-AUTIFUL night sleep.  It was the first night in months that I wasn't in pain and that pain didn't keep me awake.  I woke up this morning at 5:45am...on my own...and ready to roll!  I had my quiet time, got dressed, and the boys' breakfast ready before I ever woke them up.  This is monumental!  I had a great day with increased energy and no pain.  Still gaining energy, but pain free.

And then, I ate a treat.  When I say a treat, this is no treat to the normal person.  I found a recipe for brownies that are sweetened with Stevia and really just barely meet the mark for a dessert, but they sure taste good to someone like me.  I started hurting almost immediately.  I was devastated.  I ran to the recipe and looked at it backwards and forwards and there is nothing in it that I can't have!  I am stumped.  I am now back in pain again, but feel certain it will be gone by tomorrow.  It might be a rough night's sleep, but a good day tomorrow.  One thing it has done for me, is really changed my desire for sweets right now!

Ugh.  I am just so close to a good life again.  While it will still be difficult, I will feel good and nothing beats that.  Oh, and I am down 11 pounds from January 3rd.  Yahoo!

Setback

Ugh.  I have done something to set me back and I am not certain what.  I was on the up and up and really starting to feel like I was on the good side of the hill.  I have eaten something that set me back.  The reason I know this is because my terrible pain came back in my uterine region (although I am uterus-less:))  Then, I hit the nauseous stage again.  So, today, is not a good day.  I am trying to distract myself from the pain by typing, but it hurts so bad!  I am usually an "I'm alright" kind of girl, but I guess my true colors come out in the midst of the pain.  To be perfectly honest, I need pain pills and I want to take one SO bad!  This is no way to live.  That said, THIS is the motivation to stick to this diet in order to achieve total healing so that I don't have to go through this pain ever again.

I saw my GI this week and inquired as to my blood test results.  Surprisingly so, my tests were all normal.  For as bad as I feel, it could only mean one thing that all my Crohn's numbers are normal.  That this isn't Crohn's!  All these symptoms and pain have to be from the Candida Yeast overgrowth. It has to be!

So, I will forge ahead with the pain and the diet.  Hopefully, by tomorrow, I will have less pain and able to see straight again.  Over and out.

Making Progress!

So, today is  Day 9 of my Candida Diet Take Two.  Really, I have done it a couple times in between the first BIG time, but this is my second BIG time.  I HAVE to do this.

Today is my anniversary!  Nine years of putting up with my hubs :)  And nine years of him putting up with me.  I met him two months after my second major abdominal surgery.  He had no idea what he was getting with me.  At that point I was 8 weeks out of surgery, feeling good and definitely had cabin-fever!  He never knew me sick...until May of 2007.  Weird things started happening to my body when we found out we were moving.  I fully see that it was the stress that caused it, but since May of 2007, I have been through the ringer. My pain has been so incredible at times that I can appreciate how fantastic it will feel to die and enter the gates of Heaven where I will be healthy again...and forever!  It is a scary feeling to hurt so much that you want to die.  I can say I have been there.  That is the WHY for this diet.  If for nothing else, my boys need me...all four of them!  And that is a GREAT feeling to be needed so much you want to live!

Each morning I wake up and feel just a little bit better.  I get REALLY hungry REALLY fast.  It makes sense when I am eating the most perfectly digestible food.  It doesn't hang around in my stomach for very long.  (Here's to praying that the inflammation in my stomach that was PHYSICALLY keeping my food from emptying is well on its way to healing, as well.)  When I say I get hungry it is painfully hungry.  I have to have food ready at all times to prevent me from cheating.  I get nauseous and many of my pains in my stomach start to return.  As soon as I eat something, I perk up again.  My favorites perks are scrambled eggs and my protein shakes.  Man, they work fast.  I also keep raw almonds with me when I leave the house. There is nothing worse than being with 3 kids away from home and all of a sudden, I start winding down.  It's like my battery dies.  I cannot function.  That is why I have to have some food with me at all times.

 I don't think I have mentioned my protein shakes before.  Here's the deal.  I love Maximized Living's products because nothing has sugar in it. They are made with Stevia.  Music to my ears.  All the ingredients are made from grass-fed animals with no hormones and antibiotics used.  This is IMPORTANT!  Even in protein powder.  I have both the chocolate and vanilla flavors and I mix it with some ice and almond milk in my Magic Bullet and Voila!  A quick pick-me-up. And they really do taste good.  If you follow the Advanced Plan from the Maximized Living book, you are even allowed to throw some berries in your shake.  NO other fruits.  But berries are allowed.

Needless, to say, Babe and I won't be going out for a fabulous meal and drinks.  We can't even go for coffee.  We might just go somewhere and sit :)  If you have 3 children, boys at that, you might understand that just sitting actually sounds dreamy!

Diet Status

As posted in my family blog on January 6, 2012:


So...I am back on my strictest of strict diets...the Candida Diet.  While I had HUGE improvements after I was on it last time, after two years, I have inched back into the problem zone by being lax in my eating.  With all the ulcer and bleeding issues, I knew it was time to start healing again.  I also knew last time I did this diet that I wasn't rid of the yeast.  I still had some symptoms, although MANY symptoms disappeared. 

I started January 3rd with ease.  The 4th, I was moving slow and fatigued.  Yesterday was getting yucky...I was really tired and starting to get nauseous.  By last night my stomach was bloated and in a great deal of pain.  Sleep was scarce.  I hated for it to happen, but once again, Babe had to miss work because by this morning I was not functioning.  The nausea was horrific, the pain and bloating was awful and there was no way I could take care of the kids, a potty-training kid at that.  Until about 4pm I slept and puked (sorry!).  But that, again, was the yeast revolting and needing to be fed.  It's crazy!  All I have eaten is lean protein and veggies and I am nauseous and vomitting.  So, I know something good is happening.  Since 4pm I have actually been able to hold a conversation and sit up in bed.  I am really hoping that I am over the hump.  Please, Lord!

Blah

So many people ask about my diet because they have seen my changes and have heard my story.  In the next days, I hope to post a lot of resources here so you, too, can heal your body.  Regardless of if you have Crohn's Disease or a Yeast Overgrowth, this is a HEALING diet.  This is how our bodies should eat and you would be amazed at how good you feel when you treat your body right.

I am in Day 3 of my Live-it and I feel like poop.  That is to be expected for the first 4-5 days of detoxing.  The first time I did this, I vomitted for 4 days straight.  I firmly believe I have two issues going on, both of which I can control with diet.  I feel that the Candida Overgrowth is what is controlling my life and making me so miserable.  My symptoms only intensify after eating sugar (which feeds the yeast).  I have yeast infection symptoms, which is not related to Crohn's Disease and that alone makes me believe the Candida still isn't under total control.  That is why I am doing this Live-it for a long time.  If I can get the Candida under control, I fully believe that my quality of life will dramatically improve.

If you have never done a diet like this there are two reasons for the pukey 4-7 days.  First, if you have yeast, your body is literally revolting, as my  nutritionist told me.  She said that the yeast needs to be fed to live  (thus why sugar cravings are a symptom).  Yeast only gets fed by sugar and when you eliminate sugar from your diet, the yeast starves and revolts.  That is the TOTAL purpose of this diet...to starve every last yeast cell I have.  Starve it, kill it and stomp on it for all the agony it has caused! :)  The other reason for feeling bad is that by eating all natural/God-made food, my body doesn't have to digest all the hard to digest fats and sugars that it really wasn't built to digest.  By freeing those little ATP energy cells up from tough digestion, they can now steer themselves to places in my body that need healing.  The body is an amazing thing and it prioritizes its energy use to be so efficient.  Food is necessary to sustain ourselves.  But when it doesn't have to work so hard in the digestion department, it can go more readily to healing our bodies.  When you are in a healing phase, you sleep.  Just like being sick.  And what needs healing gets worse before it gets better.  It sort of reaffirms the healing process to us to know it is working.  Right now, my stomach is killing me.  I am bloated and in measurable pain and really slow-moving.  However, the pain is worth it when I know that in just a few days I will be feeling like a million bucks.  It is so important to treat our bodies like temples...what we see and ingest to our brains on TV, what we ingest in our mouths, how we treat our bodies with exercise...

⁹ Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; I Corinthians 6:19


The first time I ate this way, I did the Candida Yeast Diet.  There are many versions online and I am going to post on my opinions about each of them and give you my strict diet very soon.  Ultimately, the diet I am on is a Yeast-like diet, as there is no sugar consumption at all.  No breads, no sugars, no pasta, no rice...and nothing that turns to sugar readily.  No potatoes, carrots, juices, fruits.  I can't have caffeine, alcohol, vinegar.  It seems so daunting at first, but once you find good recipes (which I hope to help you on that) it's really not so bad.


The diet I am on is from the Maximized Living Book, Maximized Living Nutrition Plan.  In this book (pictured above) are two plans.  An Advanced Plan and a Core Plan.  If your body is currently in disease state it is important to start with the Advanced Plan.  It just allows extra healing by really simplifying your food intake.  My doctor told me to do it for 30 days minimum.  I am hoping to stay on the Advanced Plan for much longer.  Once you are out of disease state and just wanting to maintain a healthy lifestyle, the Core Plan is your place to be.  This book is an excellent resource for how to eat well and gives good explanation as to why we should eat what and why we should avoid other things.

Remember When...

I feel like I need to blog a little to myself today.  So, I have something to look back on when I get overly confident in my eating again.  Yesterday, I started eating pure again...only God-made foods and NO SUGAR, whatsoever.  However, without even thinking, I ate a cheese and cracker that my youngest son handed me.  I didn't even realize it until my hubs asked what I was doing.  So, I nose-dived after that.  And...I paid the price.

I was sick all night.  Not because of a cheese and cracker, but because I could feel myself getting worse already.  I can feel that my food isn't going through my stomach and I knew I would get to this point, especially after being lax on my eating at Christmas.  This morning, I woke up tired from being sick all night and the worst symptom is back.  I have excruciating pain in my lower abdomen... a shade below labor pains.  THIS is the pain that caused me to take Vicadin daily.  This is the pain that led my dr to believe I needed a hysterectomy.  This pain went away in two days when I ate a diet free of sugar.  This pain will go away in two days since I am eating properly starting today.  This is no way to live and I can control this pain if I would JUST EAT PERFECTLY.  It's so hard, but so worth it to feel good!

I am setting forth on a "Live-it" to be documented here.  I have to eat clean and sugar-free from here forward.  It is not going to be easy and I will need lots of prayer and encouragement, but my family needs me to be healthy.  They need me to function...

I can do this!!