Sunday, January 16, 2011

A Question of Calories?

I'm amazed at something I've discovered about how my body works: If/when I eat what my body needs, my weight is stable. If I don't, it's not.

I know that for me, for now, my ideal diet is extremely high in fat, mainly from animal sources, with vegetables & greens, and no carbohydrates except the lactose in my goat milk or raw milk (I'm even feeling like the lactose is a compromise so that my body can get the nutrients from the milk, because cream and raw milk cheese appeal to me much more than the milk, but goat's milk or raw cow's milk are good when I don't have cream or cheese available).

My breakfast this morning consisted of a quart of grass-fed cream, 2 pieces of coconut cake (basically coconut flour, coconut milk, coconut oil and eggs), and 8 slices of uncured bacon. Total calories? 3,923 according to www.nutritiondata.com

I have no idea how many calories I will have consumed by the end of the day. I have not been running like I planned to, so I am not burning off big amounts of calories through exercise. In contrast, I gained 10 pounds in 10 days when I added occasional grain and fruit to my diet last month, and I didn't have any significant increase in the total amount of food I was eating during that time. As soon as I stopped eating carbohydrates, I stopped gaining weight. My one "cheat" has been having some beans in soup or chili at a couple of family parties, which has added about three more pounds.

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Stress & Staying Well

I have a friend whose whole family is sick. Yesterday, a coworker told me she can feel herself aching all over, getting sick. I have had a LOT going on lately, and I've gotten pretty stressed & overwhelmed. Yesterday I had two more things added to my plate for the coming week. With people getting sick around me and my history of gettting sick easily, I knew I had to take care of myself if I am going to keep functioning. I always try to eat really nutritious foods, and here's what else I do: Last night I took a hot bath with essential oils of lemon & wild orange. I took a couple of drops of each one internally, too. After my bath, I put on an essential oil blend to relax my tight shoulder & neck muscles, and I dropped some other oils on my sheet so I could breathe them through the night. I've upped my vitamin D3 dosage in order to help my immune system, and a bonus is that vitamin D3 also helps mental function & mood. I say it can't hurt! :)

p.s. I forgot to mention the B vitamins I take to help me handle stress better. Yay!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

The Rainbow Train of Happiness

Santa bought my son all kinds of great coloring stuff. He brought me scrapbook paper. After we had opened gifts, my son was looking around at his gifts, trying to decide what to do first. That's when I realized/remembered just how boring scrapbook paper is and how awesome it is to color. I was wishing I had asked Santa for a coloring book. My sweet son took pity on me and offered to share. This is what I did on Christmas day:



p.s. I used some of my Christmas money to buy a big coloring pad and some markers and colored pencils, and I'm pretty sure I'll soon have enough pictures to wallpaper my bedroom. :)