I've got eggs I've got eggs!

It's an Easter miracle!! I'm back, reborn (no, not really)...the figurative rock has been rolled away from the cave and I emerge. Ok, enough with the crappy Easter puns but I'm back. I'll admit that I am in kind of a funk and probably about 700,000 other people that live in my city are too. We are having some horrible horrible weather that is just funking everything up. It's like 20 degrees colder than what the seasonal norm is, we've had 2 massive snowfalls in March that were not needed after a winter of heavy heavy snowfall. I was wearing flip flops on March.15th last year...I'm fairly certain I would have lost a toe or two had I worn flip flops on March.15th this year. Drake is sitting here alternating between taunting me and gently weeping...SOON MY PRECIOUS SOON! I am dying to ride my bike, to get out there an adventure around.

In semi-splendid news husbie is home on spring break up (rig off season). It's so nice to have him home. I'm not one of those people that want their mate gone as much as possible. I love having him home with the beasts and I. We did some serious retail therapy which was awesome since we hadn't spoiled ourselves in a loooong time...hello purses and sunglasses and clothes OH MY! I also got a few of my fingers tattooed...info that I had kept under my hat until just now (sorry Mom!) and I have an appointment for the beginning of May which I am irrationally excited about. Husbie and I have also been "gauging up"...making our ears bigger. He had to take his tunnels out for work so he lost a lot of progress so we're using the time off to GO BIG!

I took a few pictures...not many...I have been neglecting my camera and it's still too fucking cold to be outside for extended periods (Mother Nature you c-bag).

My handsome devil with his new shades which he is in LOVE with, homemade earrings (corks and electrical tape y'all!) and his tiny beard which will have just gotten to glorious status by the time he has to shave it off again. Isn't he a hottie??

Faint blue cuties on a brick wall

My signature side angle shot

I have no idea whom this is supposed to be

 BIKE RIDES! I shed a small tear as I took this picture

Husbie and I and the beasts went for a melty Saturday stroll to enjoy the tiny bit of moderately nice weather...blue moon, I saw you standing a-lone!

Sick bike yo!

I had to squat in a massive puddle to take these dirty bike shots but they were worth it

Bunny ears what!?

Reppin' the 204!

Someone or someones built this cutie in my main park. He looked so jaunty and undestroyed

I walked through almost knee high snow in rubber boots to take that picture of the snowman. My rubber boots aren't cute zebra print or pink polka dots, they aren't fancy Hunter rubber boots which I have wanted for like 10 years. No...my rubber boots are black and green mens Canadian Tire specials. They were abandoned and left behind in a pile of tree planting clothes after a camp move. I am a resourceful scavenger and they mostly fit. Hello free rubber boots!

This signage is rather new and I am interested to see if the city enforces this bi-law as all the parks in my neighbourhood become adult hang outs after dark. I recall a night last summer when we stumbled to this park at about 3:30am and it was packed with people swinging, laughing, chatting and finishing up the night's beers. This bi-law can suck it!

I love spring but also hate spring too. All the melting snow exposes dog shit and 6 months worth of garbage...gross

Ok...so a big chunk of the main part of the side walk was under ankle deep water. I walked this earlier in the day and had to do the sketchy balanced walk on the ice hump between the puddle and the road because I was wearing my Uggs. This time I was in rubbers (hehehe "rubbers") and laughed heartily at the chick who was doing the sketchy balanced walk in 5 inch heels....BAHAHAHA!

Come to Jesus y'all...he has a divine surprise to show you

A motoscooter outside the Mexican restaurant. I love the look of this little Honda...me wanty!

The cool store that always has cool stuffs in the window. F.Y.I...Alice in Wonderland (the 60s Disney version not the horrid Tim Burton monstrosity) is one of if not my fav cartoon ever I still watch it frequently.

Eeeeeppp! Saucy bunless daredevil wiener

There was a dog in the window who refused to look at me, good thing he was cute!

I know I've taken this picture before but I just love it so much

Tiny cute bird house. I tried really really hard to not get that blue thing in the bottom left hand corner.

Random graffiti how I have missed you...and my favourite Chuck book!

 We were waiting for a red light and this came out better than expected

 Yucky shit birds

Happy stained glass at the Catholic church

This is the epitomy of spring...a gross melting snowbank studded with garbage sprinkles...yuck

The new Shoppers! It's already open on the inside, they are doing all the brick work on the outside.

Anyone who sends their pet to the spa has more money than brains. Why do these places even exist? So freaking stoooopid!

 I spy a tiny cute little man that left a smile on my face at the end of my walk :D

Happy Easter to all and to all a good night...nom a bunny ear or two for me and I promise to be more consistent with my posts...or not...whatevs.

Flashback Friday

Pardon my absence....things are squirrely 'round these hurr parts without my better half to keep it locked down but here is a picture of me the night I graduated from high school. I vaguely recall it being a thousand degrees on June 30th in the un-air conditioned 50 year old theater wearing a polyester robe and hat under the lights. I was wearing a tank top and short shorts under the robe and was still dying of heat stroke. My mom was front row center with my (older than me) then boyfriend and I think my L.P.C's daddy took this picture. It also just dawned on me this picture is almost 13 years old....ho-lee-FACK!

Do (mental) work son!

I've been talking a lot lately about the nutrition side of things lately with my n=1 experiments. I want to talk about the mental side of things for a second or two because that side is also really really important. I find I am not as "strong" without my rock here (husbie..duh). The first week he left was rough on me; he left very very quickly with no notice and our vehicle died at the exact same time. It was a double whammy of stress for me. I think lots of us can relate to whammies (double, triple, quad) being tied to emotional eating. I am mostly recovered from disordered eating in general and fully recovered from bulimia specifically but when I am stressed I still feel the urges to turn to food for comfort. It is a really hard cycle to break and one that I am not sure that I will ever be free from. With that comes a lot of negative self talk in my head, a lot of not being kind and berating. The kind of things that if your friends said them to you, you probably wouldn't been friends with them anymore.

But it's all about perspective. I was feeling crappy and kinda miserable without husbie here and was eating too much coconut and dried fruit. My friend came over the night I went to get husbie from the airport and he looked at me and said "you're pretty skinny hey?"...out of the blue, without prompting. I couldn't believe it. I had last seen him just before Christmas when I was riding high on almost a month of mega super duper squeaky clean eating and had just fit into my 27 inch waist jeans and then I saw him again after 10 days of dried fruit and negative self-talk. He saw what was really there, what everyone else sees not the obese person I was trying to convince myself I was (yeah, I get the negative self-talk bad). Not only did his comment make me instantly feel 100 times better but it helped me see that 9 times out of 10 I am slimmer (and probably more tanned) than I actually see myself. It's like I am permanently wearing fat goggles (like beer goggles) and prodding and poking the flaws that only I see.

I have reached a strange spot in my journey where the smaller size me I see in the mirror is now the norm...the "new normal"...where as before I could kind of remember the bigger sized me and now I am seeing the new sized me as the old sized me...does this make sense? I feel like I am doing a poor job explaining it. I was convinced I was back to my old size and reluctantly pulled on my mega small jeans expecting them not to fit over my ass let alone button. They fit...and buttoned easily. Even this morning I had to put on my size 5 board short *just to make sure* I hadn't some how magically gotten fat overnight. I do see that I clearly have disordered thinking about my size (thank god I don't own a scale!). I am just unable to properly see the size that I actually am and this fuels all the negative talk in my head that I convince myself is reality. I think this is a topic to broach with Dr.H because I would love to delve deeper into this and pick it apart in hopes of better understanding it and eventually squashing it. Do I fear being fat/overweight so much that I project all these negative things? I have no idea. My husband has always told me I was beautiful at every single weight and never once has made snide comments or anything passive aggressive so I know this issue is all me. I would really love to hear perspectives from other people if you are willing to share. I want to bring this into the light and not have the fear about talking about it.

Moving forward...back to nutrition...dairy is officially voted off the island. I kinda thought this was going to be the case but I had to know without a doubt the affects of dairy on my system. Lots of guts squeaking and gurgling and some strange BMs. Dairy, you are no good for me...we are never ever ever getting back together. That's ok. I am totally not heart broken and I am glad that strange rumblings have come to an end. So dairy and lots of raw veggies/leafy greens are a no go for me. It has been fun (maybe not the right word) figuring out what is the optimal nutrition for my body because it varies from body to body and what works for you might not work for me and vice versa.

My newest experiment isn't really an n=1 experiment, more of an experiment with a new food, something I have never eaten in my life. While looking for fatty foods for my Eat Moar Fat adventure I came across sardines. Obviously I knew about sardines before but they skeeve me out...tiny fishies in a can with skin and bones...Eeeeee! Going paleo really has opened me up to eating things I never would have eaten before so I figured it was time to take the sardine plunge! Admittedly I bought these awhile ago and some how the box is now gone so I took a picture while at the store the other day. I have no idea what the difference between anchovies and sardines is...I am going to assume they are damn near the same thing...tiny fishies in a can with bones and skin

Not the greatest nutritional profile but not awful either

These are the sardines I bought specifically for my experiment. Lots of them had creepy soy in them but these are clean

Not shockingly the olive oil ones have a better nutritional profile for omega 3 ratios

I am kinda scared to try these mostly because I have never had them and I am worried I will hate them but I'm a grown ass woman and I shouldn't fear tiny fishies in a can. So come back tomorrow for my very fishy experiment full of pictures!

Flashback Friday

Going waaaaaay back...BABY MVJ! Look at how cute I was (still am) AWWWWWW

The Great Dairy Test

After attempting the high fat protocol and failing due to lack of choice, I decided to give high fat dairy a try since so many people seem to consume it as part of the high fat protocol. I gave up drinking cows milk years and years ago with the exception of being with fetuses (feti?). When pregnant I consumed milk...a lot of it and I would only drink the milk from one specific store. We bought some from a different chain store just because it was closer or we had a coupon...I don't remember...but I thought that milk tasted "dirty" and I refused to drink it. Once the children were birthed I ceased drinking it. I recall pouring a glass a few days after my second was born and not even being able to swallow it it tasted so gross. I'm guessing the milk consumption was a pregnancy thing...crazy old pregnancy.

Dairy consumption as part of a larger Primal diet is a contentious topic. Some say it's alright or benign other use the argument that humans are the only mammals to consume another mammals milk well after infancy. HERE is a good article from Mark's Daily Apple about humans and dairy consumption.

Anyways! I got some non-creepy organic heavy whipping cream from the hippie food store to conduct an n=1 dairy experiment on myself. Reintroduction protocol is to consume the food you are trying to reintroduce at every meal for a day and see what happens. First dairy of the day...I put an ounce of the heavy whipping cream in my tea. I measured it out using my bad ass WV shot glass from T.M...can you hear the banjos?

Observations: Look away if you fear TMI...the heavy whipping cream seemed to produce "loose poops" within an hour of consuming...ewww I know right. I wasn't sure if it was the HWC (heavy whipping cream) or the fact that I took my magnesium on an empty stomach last night. I wasn't drawing any firm conclusions from the first dosing.

For lunch I ate normal stuff, stuff I eat all the time like meat loaf, bacon, avocado, pickles, a SeaSnax sheet, kombucha then drank about 3ish ounces of the heavy whipping cream straight up.

Observations: Same as the morning! EWWW! By this point I was starting to see some causality between the HWC and my bowel function...experimention, you seem to be working!

For dinner...well I haven't eaten dinner in 2 days. I gave up the Eat Moar Fat thingy but I decided to just keep eating lots of fat but ignoring the counting of all carbs and such (fuck that counting noise!) so my breakfasts have about 50g of fat I am guessing, maybe more since my daily shot of coconut oil is 28g by itself. This has made me surprisingly unhungry (is that a word? it is now!) at dinner time so I listen to my body and don't eat if I'm not hungry (hello unintentional IF). I needed to get the HWC into me to continue the great dairy experiment so I made up a mug of vanilla rooibos (remember the tea that smelled like cigarettes?) and added about 2oz of HWC. I am really starting to like this creamy tea business. It also made the cigarette tea super tasty!

Obeservations: Lots of guts gurgling and squeaking but no bowel movements, nary a single fart!...interesting. I was not expecting that to happen. I assumed that it would have been the same as the morning and lunch time consumption. Now I am not sure what to think. My results seem to be inconclusive so I am going to do another day of HWC consumption at each meal and see what happens...I also don't want to waste the rather-expensive-for-such-a-small-carton of HWC and another day should finish it off. My hypothesis now is that dairy and I are going to stay broken up since I don't miss it or even have the desire to consume it but that I *might* be able to tolerate small doses of high fat dairy very infrequently. Creamy tea is awesome!

I already have my next experiment planned out for when I finish the great dairy test. It should prove to be more entertaining with lots more pictures (really...how many times can I take a picture of whipping cream?) My precious has already left on a jet plane to go be a hard working rigger...insert sad panda. He'll be gone for Valentine's Day which I don't give a squirt about but he will also be gone for our 6th wedding anniversary the traditional gift being sugar and iron...WTF? Who dreamed up this crap??

Fat fail

Alright, so I made it 2 days on the Eat Moar Fat n=1 experiment and let me tell you why. It's not because I'm not a fucking solider because I am but rather, I don't eat dairy of any kind (butter, cheese, cream cheese, sour cream, heavy whipping cream, creme fresh etc.), this makes eating high fat pretty hard without being repetitively snoozily boring. Someone linked me to THIS which is a list of 12 foods for nutritional ketosis. Well I don't eat 5 of the 12 things on the list and the others I was already consuming. For 2 days I ate the exact same things just at different times simply because I lack a lot of options not consuming dairy...can you say BOOOOOOORING? I also HATE olives, salmon and coconut milk which would have helped out my cause. I guess I could have just drank coconut oil for a month Mmmmm oily. Me thinks I should have done a little more research first before jumping in to this...oops! Live and learn. I was bored after just 2 days and couldn't fathom eating the same things over and over for a whole month! I would have stabbed myself in the primal eye.

Also, the ladies on the forum doing the experiment eat a lot of things I just cannot nutritionally stand behind like "cream cheese clouds" which is basically whipped cream cheese with stevia....gross gross gross gross. They also suggested consuming Knorr bouillion cubes...MEGA GROSS AND CREEPY! I refuse to self-sabotage like that. So, here is what I learned...it is exceedingly hard to do very high fat if you don't eat dairy and don't want to eat the same things over and over again and "cream cheese clouds" are a thing...so is FAT BREAD which is just paleo-ified bread...no, just no.

The high fat protocol got me thinking though. After my very successful completion of the program that shant be mentioned, I never did a reintroduction process which they do suggest. I don't really have a desire to consume copious amounts of dairy since I gave up drinking cows milk YEARS ago and I was eating cheese only sparingly before doing the program whose name shant be mentioned. But I got to thinking...maybe I *can* consume high fat dairy (can consume as in eat it very sparingly without GI issues) or maybe I can't but that would be an interesting test given the high fat content of dairy. So I skimmed a few HWCs (heavy whipping cream) in the local chain stores. Interestingly enough ALL of them had carrageenan in them! WHY? Why does heavy whipping cream *need* this additive? (carrageenan is a binding agent and it is in ALL boxed coconut and almond milks and is a known carcinogen...I avoid it like the plague) short answer...it doesn't!. If you do consume dairy, high fat and unpasteurized is the bestest. Low fat dairy is awful....tons of sugar with none of the fatty fat fat benefits. Raw dairy is scandalously illegal in Canada...lord knows why...how dare people chose for themselves what they want to consume...so I scoped out the health food store to see if they had any HWC that did not contain cancerous agents. They had some! Success! I grabbed it.

Horray...cream as the only ingredient! Thanks for the pasteurizing Health Canada

 A nice fatty nutritional profile...FEAR NO FAT! The dairy experiment will see me consuming this at each meal for a day and monitoring how I feel after it.

Check out this cool snow sculpture. These are scattered all over my area for a special winter event called Festival du Voyageur...an annual local event celebrating the French culture in my city, check em out HERE I really want to check out the beard contest...I love me a sweet beard!

Husbie made his signature balsamic beets....NOM! They are soooo good.

We've had a lot of snow this year...like, a lot. The snow banks are over 5 feet tall in some spots...dangerous! I slipped a fell on my already wonky L5 vertebra walking to yoga (I know it's L5 because I have a fucking awesome chiropractor who always tells me what's up)...damn slippery Uggs!

Someone has put up some new happy motivational signs on the way to yoga. I usually go to yoga in the evenings so it's hard to capture them without good day light...and I didn't notice them until I spotted the last one "Keep on smiling even for the little things :)". There is LGBQT resource center right by the studio so I have no idea if these are done by it's members or just a random ar-teest, either way I love them!

Fatty McFat Fat

So my first day of EAT MOAR FAT was what I am considering a success. It was really strange and kind of a lot of work to count everything out (I'm soooo lazy!) but I assume it will get easier as it goes along.

My ratios that I need to hit every according to my size and the protocol are:

Fat - 118-206.5g 
Protein - 64.9g
Carbs - 29.5g

I don't know or remember why the range is so large for the fat, I think it depends on your goals for the protocol. I chose to go on the lower end of the range.

So my numbers for my first day were:

Fat - 123g
Protein - 63.5g
Carbs -  33g

Not too bad. I went over my carb grams before noon..OPPS! Nothing major and I'm not freaking out about it, it is as simple as leaving the salsa off my eggs and I need to balance everything out better so I am not just eating a bowl of lard with a spoon for dinner...Mmmm lard. I think it will take a few days to get it "dialed in" as they say but I did pretty damn good for my first day. I learned avocados are pretty freaking high in carbs as well as good fats. Half of all my total carbs was just one avocado! Totally not worth it for me. I will eat half an avocado from now on just to not use up all my carb grams in one go. I was also just shy of my protein for the day which is also fine. It's allllll about the delicious fat.

I also consumed a lot of coconut oil which had an ahem...poop producing affect. I think because I consumed like 4 tablespoons of coconut oil in 2 hours. I think I'll be fine if I do 2 tbsps first thing in the morning (which is my usual 1oz morning shot of CO) and 2 later on in the evening. Keeping them well spaced out should I'm hoping will lessen the poop producing affects, not that I dislike being regular or anything. It's good to know my colon and GI tract are doing their thang and that copious amounts of coconut oil has that affect on me.

Husbie thinks the amount of food I am eating is light but fat packs more calories per gram than any of the other macros. I legit felt full with all the food I ate yesterday. I did not feel deprived or anything.