Week One: We Survived!

It's been a very interesting week. It turns out that if your kitchen is the size of a postage stamp and already full of dirty dishes, your best bet is to clean the kitchen before starting the intro diet. Ah, hindsight.

We felt so miserable for the first couple of days, the dishes just kept stacking up. Then we ran out of soup, and nobody had enough energy to clean things enough to make another big pot. When a pot was made, nobody remembered to put the soup in the fridge, so it sat out and nobody wanted to eat it.

At this point, James was HUNGRY. He was Hulk SMASH hungry. He was ready to go off the intro diet. We decided to not follow the phases at this point, and if we have to start over at some point, so be it. I went to the store and got a ton of fresh fruits and vegetables. I know raw fruit isn't recommended this early on (it should be peeled, seeded and cooked) but James needs something he can grab and eat right away, or else he gets a little...homicidal. His symptoms didn't get worse with the fresh fruit.

Friday night, James made a chicken stir fry with tons of fresh veggies, and it was delicious. Saturday night, James wanted something bad. Something off the diet. And I was craving a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger from Wendy's. So we decided to make our own burgers.

We made open-faced bacon cheddar burgers, topped with tomatoes, onions, and lettuce, with a portabella mushroom "bun" on the bottom. The fries were fry-sized pieces of zucchini, red bell pepper, and carrot. And to make the meal complete, we had a fresh spinach salad topped with homemade strawberry vinaigrette. The whole meal was AMAZING. The veggie "fries" were mostly ignored because the salad and burgers were so much better, but still. If we can eat like this, we can stick with this diet.

Unfortunately, James put too much cheese on his burger, and had a rough time today. So no more cheese for James for a while.

Ideally, we would be moving along a lot more slowly, adding in foods one at a time to test for reactions, and starting with cooked versions of the veggies. I think if I were to do it over, I would have pre-made, frozen food items for at least the intro diet and phase one, and I would have a clean kitchen to start with. I think we may have slowed down the healing process, but I think the end result will (hopefully) be the same.

If James does decide to restart at some point, at least I won't be going through die-off syndrome again, so I'll be able to make more food for him and help him slow down.

After the first few days of horribleness, I woke up Friday with a lot more energy, and Saturday was even better. I feel like the food I'm eating is nourishing my body. It's hard to explain, but I feel like I'm on the right path, like I'm getting healthier. My back hurts less. My head is a little less foggy. I have to remember to snack more often, because without high-sugar, high-calorie things like soda, I'll wake up from a nap shaky-hungry.

I'm going to make single-serve frozen smoothie packs to go in the freezer. I'll post the recipes when I do. I also want to make breakfast muffins and other things that can be frozen and reheated as needed. Quick snacks and mini-meals. More things I would have pre-made, if I did this all again.

Right now, James and I are both fighting one of those middle of the night snack attacks. Back in the day (a whole week ago), one of us would've run to the store and brought back a ton of junk, and we would've laid in bed eating chocolate chip cookies, cupcakes, Hostess donettes, candy, ice cream sandwiches, and who knows what else while watching a movie. Now, we just keep looking at each other with sad puppy-dog eyes. James said he wanted buttercream. Me too, James, me too. And I want a soda.

But we both want to stick with this diet and see where it takes us. I just need to hurry up and find acceptable sweet treats that'll tide us over until the sugar/carb craving period is over. I read somewhere that it takes an average of 7-10 days...almost there...