Seeking a Calmer Mind in 2013

[bonnynancy]

Great job, Callan! I tried your Bora Bora Fireballs recipe on my family, and it was a big hit. Can't wait for you to post one for your green curry.

[Callan]

You guys are all so kind! Bonnynancy, I got the recipe for those from the book Well Fed, which deserves exactly as much praise as it has been receiving around here. I finally got off my butt and made the green curry today, put some aside for lunch, and forgot to photograph it. Heh. But, it was SUPER easy and will definitely become a staple for me in the future. Lara, thank you for the kind words. It means a lot to me, as I'm a bit self-conscious about my writing.

Day 7 (we are on 7, right?) is going great so far. On my way to work right now with lunch and dinner in my bag. Looking forward to both meals.

[Callan]

I'm going to keep it brief since I need to get to bed ASAP.

For breakfast I had a giant plate of food. Romaine lettuce topped with cumin-spiced ground pork, two eggs, a fried plantain (my new favorite thing… recipe and a surprise tomorrow), salsa, and half an avocado. Lots of food, super delicious.

Pardon the glowing spaghetti squash in the upper right-hand corner.

For lunch I had some Thai green curry I finally whipped up. Very easy: saute half an onion or so in coconut oil. Add two cups of mushrooms, minced garlic and ginger, and four or five cups of other vegetables (I used sugar snap peas, green bell pepper, green beans, chunks of yam) and a few handfuls of stir-fry sized pre-cooked boneless skinless chicken breast. In another saucepan, combine one can of coconut milk and a tablespoon or two of green curry paste. Pour this over the veggies and chicken. It is awesome.

For dinnerI had a salad. Spring greens (the last of ‘em!), beet and carrot slaw, steak, cucumbers, and steamed broccoli. Drizzled lemon juice and olive oil on top of it all. I also had about 1/4 cup of cashews and feel completely satiated.

Just now I took my supplements (for probably only the 2nd or 3rd time since Whole30 started), including magnesium, a hair, skin & nails formula, fish oil, zinc, and black currant oil. I'm going to try to get back on the wagon with my supplements, just to see what benefit they have.

I mentioned this a bit on someone else's topic, but I'll talk about it here. Nostalgia. While I was walking to work today, I was suddenly struck by the fact that I would never experience my college years again (recent graduate here). I thought about things I hadn't thought about in ages, and memories emerged so viscerally I wanted to cry. When I got home from work, I dropped my bag off and went for a walk in the dark and tried to work through those feelings. I think I've made some progress. There are a lot of people I once cared dearly for, and many whom I still love and care about, and I interact with them very rarely nowadays. I miss my friends. I miss feeling that kind of love, and genuine connections with people my age. I miss feeling comfortable and happy with my surroundings. Things are not bad now by any means, but my environment leads me to feel “on edge†way more than I'd like. I hope I can find a way to feel comfortable where I am.

[ORBren]

I appreciate the reminder about supplements... I have been very hit & miss too.

You know how a void must be filled... I wonder if your body/mind just has a little more energy to process things (even emotional things) since you have a clean eating week under your belt. Sounds healthy to me - transitions deserve attention.

[Guest Andria]

Your food looks great, Callan. I am drooling over your breakfast! I have to get some plaintains again.

Continued great luck to you!

[Callan]

Just so everyone knows, I'm hosting a giveaway of Tropical Traditions Gold Label coconut oil here at my blog. I'd love someone on their Whole30 to win so please enter! :-)

Here's the lowdown on today:

Got up today at 6am to head to the gym with my dad. Cooked an egg as a pre-workout snack, and packed up some mashed yams and steamed broccoli to have post-workout. Kinda forgot about the protein, but I had a chunk of chicken breast at home. Also, about six ounces of coffee.

Boy, that workout was hard! I stretched and foam-rolled afterwards, but my neck has been awful stiff lately. And, for those of you who don't know, I'm dealing with some unpleasant joint hypermobility issues, and a possible torn labrum in my left shoulder. I have chronic inflammation in my shoulder, and my neck and upper back are often pretty achy too. Strength training helps to an extent, but I need to be very careful. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to sleep on my stomach/side, which can exacerbate symptoms. Once having good eating habits becomes more ingrained, I will devote more time to resolving these issues.

I went grocery shopping and spent way too much, thanks to a sale on Applegate organic hotdogs, and my own desire for rainbow Swiss chard, fresh asparagus, a pomegranate, winter squash, and more Thai curry paste. At least you all will get to see (and I can enjoy) more interesting and varied meals!

Then I remembered I ought to have a real breakfast. (10:15am) I defrosted some cream of broccoli soup (broccoli, onion, coconut milk, chicken broth, curry powder and garam masala) and tossed in some pre-cooked pastured ground chicken. This was AWESOME and I didn't have to do any work! …until my body decided I needed more carbs, at which point I thinly sliced an unripe green plantain and fried half of it in palm shortening. This was too close to potato chips for comfort… Fortunately, I don't have a big (psychological) problem with chips!

For lunch (2pm) I reheated some green curry with a side of frozen green beans and broccoli – coconut oil melted on top.

After work, my dinner was a nice salad of romaine with some grass-fed steak, beets and carrots, avocado, and cucumber. I was full and happy and that was that.

On another note, I've noticed something interesting related to my work. I've always (well, maybe not always) been known as a quiet, patient person. In the past six months, I started two new jobs that are fast-paced, high-stress, and have e capacity to make one frustrated (Kindergarten after-school teacher and coffee shop barista). The past few days, I've noticed that I haven't gotten too angry or frustrated, I haven't become overwhelmed or exceedingly stressed, and I've been able to maintain a calm, gentle manner at all times. I can't say why this has happened – perhaps it is coming with experience and skill – but I would not be surprised if the mental clarity this whole foods diet is giving me is affecting this aspect of my life as well. Awesome.

Tonight, my goal is to be off of technology by 9pm, and in bed by 10. A cup of tea and some fiction is what I need right now.

[glimmer]

Your food looks so good.

Like you I seem to be eating massive amounts for breakfast at the moment, glad I am not the only one.

[melbournegirl]

I have been having large brekkies too, it seems to help set up the days eating nicely.

Callan, my chronic inflammation improved dramatically after a month off sugar and about 2-3 months of only exercising at lower heart rates (under 160).I think reducing caffeine alsp helpedme. Hope some of this works for you too!

[Callan]

Yeah large breakfasts!

Juzbo, that's one of the best things I've heard. Back in the fall my dad and stepmom forced me to start running by signing me up for a 5K, and I sort of enjoyed it at first... but I didn't enjoy the nightly leg cramps I started getting! I started learning about lifting weights, which probably led me to learning about Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint, which eventually led me here. So, I guess I have chronic cardio to thank for all my health discoveries! Haha, hooray...!

[melbournegirl]

I got to this site via sock-doc.com. I have adopted his aerobic base building training plan.... lots of slow runs for months if you have never developed your aerobic capacity. I started running a few years ago after never being a runner ever and got to be able to run 10km in an hour but heart rate was always over 170. Now I still run 10km once a week but I take 90 minutes to do it and I run 6km in 50 minutes 4-5 mornings with heart rate much lower and almost instant recovery (and no leg cramps except after doing a 60 minute barefoot run on beach sand for the first time in summer LOL)

[Callan]

I'll keep it short.

I had a good breakfast:

Ground pork with onions, chard stems, cumin and chili powder. Sauteed chard and broccoli, plantain chips, habanero salsa.

A good (but getting boring) lunch:

Green curry (the last of it)! Broccoli! Beets and carrots!

And a tasty dinner that gave me a bellyache:

Romaine, steak, hard-boiled egg, olives, broccoli stems, radishes, cucumber, carrots and beets (in there somewhere). A splash of apple cider vinegar and a drizzle of olive oil.

Tonight and this morning I supplemented, too! I am too lazy to type up exactly what I've been taking, but it includes magnesium, black currant oil, fish oil, D3, a hair-skin-and-nails-formula, N-acetylcystene, and zinc. I don't know precisely how effective each component is yet.

Also, after dealing with some student loan and bank-related issues, I had some “joint comfort†tea and a few cashews. I was still hungry, and my belly hurts a bit. The same thing happened from the salad last night, too. I don't know if it's the steak, the lettuce, or the olives… will try to figure it out tomorrow. Otherwise, a good day. Surprise stress bit me in the bottom at the end (thanks, student loan provider!), but I did pretty well and am getting to bed by 9:30. By which I mean, I'm going to read until 10. Not the worst plan.

[Derval]

Did you check the ingrediennts on your hair & nails formula? mine had several non compliant ingredients. I'm taking biotin too which is supposed to be good for hair/nails.

[AmyS]

I eat monster breakfasts too. It's insane how much food I eat. I sure do love it. Heh. Gotta try the green curry thing.

[Callan]

Today I went to the dentist! No cavities, woo!

But before I went, I whipped up a big three-egg omelet and filled it with sautéed Swiss chard leaves and stems, and ate it with a dollop of habanero salsa. Why didn't I have some avocado with this…!?

After I walked home from getting my teeth cleaned, I was mysteriously hungry. After hemming and hawing over frozen bora bora fireballs and frozen veggies, I dug out a frozen container of not-tomato soup; it was puréed beets and carrots with coconut milk. Heated this up and tossed in some coconut flakes…

Now, this was delicious and all, but had the odd effect of awakening the mindless eating dragon in me. So, I ate a few handfuls of coconut flakes, and a handful or two of cashews. No good. I need to be more mindful and stick to my three meals. Probably needed even more veggies with breakfast, or perhaps some starch (I didn't have my usual plantains today, after all).

I did a great thing for lunch. Took a serving (palm-sized portion or so) of ground chicken, 2/3 of a bag of frozen stir fry blend vegetables, and put them in a food storage container. In another small food storage container, I blended 1.5 tablespoons full of sunflower seed butter (these are estimated numbers), 1.5 tablespoons of coconut aminos, and a good squirt of lime juice. I packed these up and brought them to work. Dumped the meat and veg into a nice bowl, nuked ‘em until everything was hot, and then stirred in the sauce. And it was amazing. This is the way I should have been eating all along (sometimes. I do need variety, and you probably do too!)!

For dinner, I packed a bento box I hadn't used in a while. One tier has roasted asparagus and two organic turkey dogs, and a bit of mustard. The other contains a hard-boiled egg, some olives, beet-carrot slaw (hence the overdose), and some mashed sweet potato. Had to take a break from the salad.

I'm feeling good, albeit a little tired today. However, I've been having a little trouble making myself get certain things done, such as sending out thank you cards and cleaning my room. It's making me feel somewhat out of control. I'm looking forward to sitting myself down on Saturday and figuring out my priorities, or something like that. My life is in need of a bit of spring cleaning. There are other habits I'd like to begin cultivating, but for right now, my experiment is with food, and that comes first.

P.S. When I got home, more cashews. I might go play some DDR to give them a purpose…

[Callan]

Did you check the ingrediennts on your hair & nails formula? mine had several non compliant ingredients. I'm taking biotin too which is supposed to be good for hair/nails.

Yep, I learned that the hard way. Mine is (miraculously) clean.

[captainninjapeters]

Your meals are gorgeous! (in the best-paleo-whole30 kind of way)

[Callan]

Thanks, I try. :3

I haven't been eating this way all that long, but my once regular meals of steel-cut oats, lentil soup, and greek yogurt filled with granola and fruit seem so strange and foreign now. And yet, only three months ago they seemed like the epitome of health. I've never felt better in my life and I'm going to keep reporting out to the world in the hopes that people I care for (and people I don't even know [yet]!) will listen and be inspired.

...It's working.

[Callan]

Friday already, eh? Thank goodness. Last night I dreamt I made myself a bowl of pasta and was terrified and appalled by what I had done. Man, what a strange experiment I've embarked on!

For breakfast, I feasted on steak, easy guac (avocado + onion), plantain chips (someone help me) and a garlicky cumin chili-spiced sauté of broccoli and chard stems. Definitely an interesting change. Oh, and a dollop of salsa right there in the middle. Yum.

For lunch I braised some frozen Brussels sprouts and onions in the leftover coconut oil used for the plantains, and mixed them with some cooked ground chicken. I also finally chose to indulge in some pomegranate seeds, with a side of cucumber. Pardon the atmosphere of the photo – I was at work, cutting paper for collage. The Brussels and chicken was very tasty, but left me with an odd bellyache afterwards. I probably ate too fast.

I had a small handful of coconut flakes as a snack.

Come dinner time, I wasn't all that hungry. But, I ate my beets, carrots and cucumbers out of obligation for high veggie intake. I will not get the flu, gosh darnit! These turkey dogs have nothing on the greasy, non-compliant, mystery-chemical laden ones I sort of miss. Oh well. Also had a hard-boiled egg, some more guacamole, radishes, and asparagus. I'll never tire of asparagus!

I'm getting a little worried. a) Many of my meals are resulting in slight abdominal pain, which goes away pretty quickly, but occurs nonetheless. I think it happens most when I'm eating too fast, i.e. at work or on my commute. Perhaps I'll try to start waiting until I get home (8pm ) to have dinner.

b ) Snacks are creeping up on me. I got home today and had a bit of mashed sweet potato, a few cashews... it's that dessert demon. That said, I didn't really like my dinner much. This upcoming week, I'll be sure to have all the things I want and eliminate the need for that little bit extra.

[melbournegirl]

Callan, could it be too many beets? They affect some people (like me....)

I have had a few days with no stomach problems whatsoever (lots of meat and veg and eggs and sweet potato and small servings of okay fruit) then today I am suffering from too many nuts, seeds, fodmap fruits etc the last day or so.... a great reminder to me too that this new way of healthy low inflammation eating is so much better than my old style of 'healthy' eating......

[Callan]

Too many beets... perhaps. But the pain often occurred right after beetless meals. Ah well - this week I've got a whole new lineup of stuff to eat, so hopefully my system will get a break from whatever was making it uncomfortable. It never turned into anything more than a few odd abdominal pains.

On another note, I must resolve today to not snack. Believe it or not, when my stomach starts to hurt, instead of becoming averse to food, I suddenly feel this strange need to "fix" things my eating more "comfort" foods, such as coconut and tree nuts. It's quite odd and is doing me a pretty big disservice. Saturday is always challenging for me, as I stay home and find it hard not to snack when the food is all around me. I'll make it work.

[kshacklett]

any chance the stomach pains are actually stress related, not food related? I noticed in one post you mentioned it right after talking about student loans/banking (unless, of course, you enjoy dealing with those things )

[Callan]

Hey, you never know. After all, the pains have always occurred when I've eaten at work or in a hurry on my commute - never when I'm sitting around, relaxed, at home. Interesting thought, thanks.

[Callan]

For breakfast I finally got the ground pork to work for me. I call it: Deconstructed Egg Roll. Ground pork, cabbage, carrots, coconut aminos, ground ginger, garlic powder, rice vinegar. Nailed it.

Lunch was rushed prior to grocery shopping: two turkey dogs, some homemade coleslaw (with homemade mayo!!), mustard, and leftover mashed yams. Good enough.

I ate dinner early, around 4, not because I was hungry but because I wanted to eat. Bad idea #1 for the day. It was delicious, a Moroccan butternut beef stew I invented and will share the recipe shortly, I hope. It is quite good and easy – slow-cooked all day.

The afternoon was spent moving. I moved into the living room, the living room moved into the dining room, and my former “room†(more of a small alcove) is now empty. It was very tiring. I was stressed and my heart felt hungry. I'd been picking at my head badly all afternoon, and it was starting to bleed and hurt. I needed to do something with my hands, and settled on de-seeding a pomegranate. Wound up toasting some coconut flakes with cinnamon, combining that with about 1/4 of the pom arils, and eating a bora bora fireball to make it a bit more compliant (protein).

I found this broke the cycle of skin-picking most effectively, but I wanted to keep eating. I caved and had some cashews, mindless, mindless… Ah well. Tomorrow I will use non-food methods to stop this habit if it occurs, e.g. painting my nails or playing video games. I will beat this emotional eating/self-destructive dragon!

TMI warning – I have a feeling a lot of this is a result of so-called PMS, which I haven't had for months since going off of birth control (last period was in October, I think). My cycle is very, very messed up. It just occurred to me that I haven't been this bloated since all that sugar-binging during the holidays, I feel emotionally volatile and stressed, and I want to eat everything. Yes, this must be it. Fingers crossed that my hormones are in the process of sorting themselves out presently.

[ORBren]

Olives, pickles...something sour before you eat one of those quick at work meals - works for me. It seems to get the digestive juices going when I can't be thoughtful and take as much time as I like to eat.

[Callan]

Wow, so, last night - worst sleep ever. Went to bed around 9:35 and set my alarm for 5am (work at 6:30 today) and got into bed... in my new room. I don't have a door yet, and someone was watching TV in the other room, so there were the lights and sounds from that. I couldn't find my earplugs or face mask, so I just threw the blankets over my head, but an hour later I still wasn't asleep... and was suddenly experiencing horrible gastrointestinal discomfort! It was the weirdest thing - like having gas but... well, never passing gas. Anyway, I finally fell asleep, but had long, awful dreams about being late for work and missing buses and technology failing me, so now I'm very tired. Bleh.