Farewell "junk food" AIP

Weeelllll... So much for only one month of eating "junk food" AIP and two of eating strict, low-ish carb AIP HA! This month has pretty much been a repeat of last month: technically strict AIP (generally speaking) but way too much sugar. Also, if I'm going to be honest there were a couple of meals with, let us say, questionable ingredients: a reddish mystery spice on my salmon when I went to the Sophie's down by where I work only to find out that not every Sophie's carries the same food (I always get pork chunks, tostones, and mixed veggies)! I mean, even the gosh-darned mixed veggies had chunks of red and green peppers in it at this Sophies!!

I also had way, way, WAAAYYY too much sugar, mostly in the form of fruit (which is still not great for me - sugar is sugar, regardless) but also just straight up sugar, too. I notice that when I finish my dinner with a substantial sugary treat, whether fruit based or not (I'll often have half seltzer, half grape juice after dinner), I wake up with what can only be described as a "carb hangover"; my head feels strange and I feel dull, heavy, and off. It's a really strange feeling. The closest it comes to is a literal hangover; not the headaches but feeling strange and wrong in my body. I need to stop but it's so hard when you've given up so much!

I really think this may be why AIP has felt so easy since I started it. Yes, it's super restrictive but no particular macronutrient is restricted. I.e. I can eat as much sugar and junk as I want. Even though it's AIP my body still doesn't like it. I've also been eating waaayyyy too much salt, but mostly because I'm using this stupid chunky sea salt that I bought from my local food coop. You go from totally undersalted to practically inedible in one sprinkle. I need to get some finer salt and just use this one for cooking.

So I realize that I need a plan. Going AIP was pretty easy, particularly since I was going from another really restrictive diet (GAPS) to AIP. I didn't really need a plan, I just got rid of all non-AIP foods and started eating foods on the OK list. This is going to have to be different, though. I'm going to need to plan things out my food and, more importantly, to plan what I'm going to do when confronted with the desire to "cheat". I hate that word, but clearly just winging it isn't working, I need to make a promise to myself to stick with this and see how my body reacts.

So, farewell junk food AIP, it was fun knowing ya! Hello strict AIP, I'm looking forward to getting to know ya.

Article: The 10 Most Common Mistakes Women with PCOS Make

From the excellent website Paleo for Women: Basically, watch out for the drugs doctors love to put us on, exercising in the wrong way, and an overly restrictive diet. Great article, and great website!

I’ve been working with women who have PCOS now for more than 5 years. In this time, I’ve encountered hundreds if not thousands of specific cases. Iv’e read just about every blog, website, and article there is out there for PCOS. I’ve spent hours searching through online forums and facebook communities, learning about women’s experiences.

After all this time, I’ve learned a thing or two (or several hundred) about what’s right for PCOS, as well as what isn’t.

To help prevent you from making the same mistakes I see over and over again with women who have PCOS, I’ve put together a list of the 10 most common ones. Hopefully then you’ll be able to dodge the bullet, so to speak, and overcome PCOS quickly and painlessly

- Stefani Ruper, The 10 Most Common Mistakes Women with PCOS Make (Paleo for Women)

Easy living on the Good Ship AIP

Apologies for the lack of posts since starting AIP... but you know what? It may be because I no longer feel a desperate sense of urgency on this diet. While doing GAPS I felt like I needed to live, breathe, and (of course) eat GAPS. GAPS filled my brain so full I had to constantly read, or write, about it because I was always thinking about it. That isn't the case anymore.

I'm not sure why this is so. Maybe it's because I'm not restricting a macronutrient. Maybe it's that I was soooooo restrictive during the GAPS intro phase (basically, soup with meat and veg and that's it) that AIP seems positively decadent in it's variety and choice. It's certainly not that intro AIP is any less restrictive than the full GAPS diet that I was eating by the end of my month-long GAPS experiment. Although to be fair, I ate a very generous, loosey goosey version of AIP that first month; after coming off GAPS I simply couldn't face another super restrictive diet. But the fact is, even now on a tighter version of the AIP protocol, I still don't feel that sense of hyper focused attention that I did while on GAPS.

To be honest, this way of eating doesn't seem particularly restrictive to me. The only time I feel the pinch is when I try to eat out. However, I think that says more about how generally unhealthy the standard American diet is than anything about the AIP. What's so damn strange about the foods on AIP, anyway? Meat, fish, veg, fruits, safe starches like sweet potato and tropical starches. How is this SOOOOOOO WEEEEEIIIRD that it's nearly impossible to find in most restaurants so you end up having to cook everything for yourself???

Yes, I miss many of the foods I'm used to eating. I miss rice. I miss curries and spices. I really miss tomatoes and potatoes. BUT, so many of the foods I eat are delicious and totally satisfying. I eat plenty of fat, and I'm not overly restrictive with my carbs. My food is actually well seasoned and delicious. This is NOT a hard way to eat, at least not if you're used to cooking most of your food (which I am).

I will be very happy to expand my diet, especially the spices. This will also make it a lot easier for me to eat with others. This is my biggest complaint about the AIP protocol. But for myself, I find this is not only a deeply nourishing way of eating that minimizes damaging or questionable foods, it's a delicious, satisfying, and quite sustainable way of eating as well.

Trader Joe's haul

Oh Trader Joe's, how I love thee. Your fun and tasty offerings, your wallet-friendly prices, your Hawaiian shirts, but most especially your awesome selection of AIP friendly goodies! You make me feel like a normal person.  <3

I went to Trader Joe's this weekend to see if there was anything (besides the usual meat, veg, and dried fruit) that was AIP compliant and they did not disappoint. Some of the oil choices are questionable (lots of Omega-6 heavy industrial seed oils) but other than that, there were some really fun products. Check it out:

Broccoli Florets

Crunchy chip replacements. When I was doing low carb I'd eat these with sour cream and onion dip... DELICIOUS! They're surprisingly tasty, and you get greens in your snack. Ingredients: broccoli, rice bran oil, salt.


Just Beets

Basically dehydrated beet chips. I haven't tried them yet but they're literally just beets. They're beets, how can you go wrong?? Ingredients: Beets.


Organic Ginger Turmeric Herbal Tea

I love ginger tea, so this should be good. And there's turmeric in it too! It's always good to get some of that awesome antioxidant in your diet. It does have black pepper, which, as a berry, should be avoided in the early stages of the AIP protocol. Also, stevia is not AIP. It's a bit of a grey area food, but I'm going to use it as something of a treat. Ingredients: ginger root, turmeric, licorice, orange peel, orange oil, black pepper, stevia.


Plantain Chips

Seeing as I practically live on these things it's nice that TJ's has plantain chips. The only downside is that these also are fried in seed oils.  :(   Ingredients: plantains, sunflower oil, salt.


Sweet Potato Chips

Another staple chip for AIP'ers, these are nice and crunchy. Watch out for those seed oils, though. Ingredients: sweet potatoes, a mixture of different seed oils, salt.


Banana Chips

These are sweetened so they're not for every day use, but they're nice to have on hand as a treat (especially when your co-workers are holding a bake-off, which is unfortunately a common thing at my job.) Also, they aren't made with any dodgy oils. Ingredients: bananas, coconut oil, sugar, natural banana flavor (???)


Ginger Chews

These are awesome - watch out if you have a problem with spicy foods because these babies are HAAAAAAAT! Ingredients: sugar, ginger, tapioca starch.


Coconut Chips

No, they're not as good as Dang! coconut chips (they're a bit tougher) but these are still darn tasty. Ingredients: coconut, salt, sugar, coconut milk, coconut juice.


Apple Banana Fruit Sauce "Crushers"

Yes, it's a lot of sugar. And yes, there's a lot of packaging waste (these are basically those baby food pouches you see in stores), but they're tasty as heck and handy for trips where you need to eat something that doesn't require utensils. I'm keeping these on hand for my next trip. Ingredients: apple puree, banana puree, ascorbic acid, citric acid (the latter two are "for freshness.")


Coconut Cream

HOORAAAYYYY!!!! IT'S BACK!!!! Last time we went to TJ's there was no coconut cream! The person there said it had been discontinued. GASP! Well, it appears that I'm not the only sad coconut cream lover shopping at TJ's because they brought it back. It's also about $2 cheaper than the coconut cream at my local food coop. And it's organic! So much win! Ingredients: coconut, water. [Post-refrigeration update: This new coconut cream is no bueno in the refrigerador  :(   It separates into one solid half and one liquid half. You can't even make whipped coconut creat with it. This never used to happen with the other coconut cream! Maybe it's because that cream had emulsifiers in it? Ugh, whatever. It's still good for cooking hot foods.]


So there you have it, a few of the more interesting items at Trader Joe's that you can eat while on AIP. They often have questionable or grey area ingredients but I'd say they have a place in an overall healthy AIP diet as a way to make us feel more normal. Many of these also make great travel foods for bringing on the road with us. I'm going out of town at the end of the month and you can be sure that I will be bringing many of these with me!

(Note, some of these packages are already open. I didn't think to take pics until after I'd gotten home and torn into my goodies. My bad!)

Dosed at Sophie's

Whups, there definitely was something in that cassava croquette that my feet did not like. Yesterday I went to Sophie's Cuban again, with the boyfriend. I found a place I can eat out! We get fried pork chunks and tostones (and an extra side dish of steamed veg for me) and split it because the portions are YUUUGE.

It was our day to get out a bit and hang out in the city. First we went to Book Off (a Japanese chain second hand store) to get Akira Kurosawa's Ran and Rumiko Takahashi's Maison Ikkoku, then we stopped by Trader Joe's to see what AIP goodies I could score. In between was Sophie's, which is just a few doors down from Book Off. I'd eaten there before with no adverse effects and I saw a CASSAVA croquette on the menu. It's CASSAVA! I can eat cassava! Well, I took one delicious bite and I knew that there was some stuff in there that I probably couldn't eat. I finished it anyway, though, because, quite honestly, I wanted to see what happened.

Nothing happened immediately after but this morning I woke up with a slight pain in my right ankle. It was very slight and went away pretty quickly as soon as I got moving but it's not a good indication. Or maybe I should say it's a good indication that I really do need to give this AIP thing a bit more time. My issues don't tend to come on fast and strong but generally creep up little by little until I have a hard time walking or standing so I feel like that was an initial sign that my body didn't like what I put in it.

It's nice to get to learn more about how your body handles different foods.  :)

One month in

Sooooo... This has been a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. Of course, it didn't hurt that I was doing what one might call "loose AIP"; everything was technically AIP but it was higher in carbs, especially sugar, than I really should do. Part of this was because I had just done an incredibly restrictive diet - GAPS - and needed a mental break from all that "diet head", part of it was because half the month would be vacation and I was not going to diet during my vacation! So, there was lots of AIP treats and other questionable food choices (I think I cleaned my local grocery store of plantain chips last  month.)

And I got better! Not perfect; my left ankle is still a little wonky. The only time that went away and my feet felt NORMAL is the first two weeks of GAPS, when I was eating basically just meat and veg in bone broth. I'm hoping once I do button-down serious AIP that will change but we'll see about that. But it's much better than it was when I'd introduced eggs and nuts so there appears to be an autoimmune component to whatever is going on with me. I also did a 2 week herbal antibiotic protocol, which I will write about in another post. That was interesting, to say the least!

It's a challenge to stay mentally healthy while restricting your diet. I had very few problems last month, though. I'm not sure if it's because I had just gotten off Intro GAPS and by comparison loosey goosey AIP was positively bountiful in it's choices, or because AIP, while it's restrictive, doesn't restrict any macronutrients; while I couldn't have every carb or fat, I could have any amount of legal carbs and fats whenever I wanted. Possibly it was a combination of the two.

My plan is to spend two more months, doing slightly more restrictive AIP, to add up to a total of 3 months before attempting reintroductions. I went off the deep end with the carbs last month but I know that that isn't good for me. At the same time I don't want to negatively affect my gut bacteria so I will keep my carb intake around 100 grams a day, or one piece of fruit and one modest serving of AIP safe starch (sweet potato, plantain, yucca, stuff like that) per day.

Wish me luck!