Day fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen

Fifteen - I had a little bit of a hard day this day. All the stuff was still sitting around from Valentines day. We had a big dinner the night before and it was just THERE. Luckily Dave had a photo shoot and brought all his "models" over after and I fed them the leftover cake. I couldn't help it, I had some. It is the most delicious cake ever. And its made of cinnamon which is good for the diet. Of course it is packed with brown sugar so obviously not on the diet. I don't even remember what else I had that day. It was pretty much a wash though since I cheated with the cake. This diet is hard. I feel like a loser for not being able to resist. But I never make home made cake from scratch and this one was calling to me haah.

Sixteen - I did much better today. Eggs, meat, veggies, very basic, very boring, no great recipes. I did have meatballs for dinner. Everyone else had spaghetti. Meatballs are good but kind of weird by themselves. But I really didn't feel like brown rice and meatballs.

Seventeen - Today was pretty good. I had to skip breakfast to take my kids to the doctor for the "fifth" time this year. How is it that they have been sick that many times. Aacch I am so sick of winter. Poor Summer has a double ear infection, and has had two shots in 1 week and may have to get a third on Friday. Poor thing.

Anyway I made shish kabobs for dinner. We have the showtime rotisseri. Yes it was one of my major assets when I got married. Haha. Anyway it is pretty cool, we just did chicken with peppers and tomatoes over brown rice. Not bad, that super great, nothing beats the grill in the summertime, but it was still pretty good.

I've had a ton of almonds lately. I must be craving carbs. I should probably go off almonds. It wouldn't be that hard, I am totally sick of them anyway.

Well thats all for now. We'll see how tomorrow goes. I'm thinking of making pork tenderloin with some steamed veggies. I need to find a good recipe though because the last pork tenderloin I made was tender but the spice rub was HORRIBLE!

Day ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fourteen

Well I've totally been slacking on my posts, but I haven't been slacking on my diet except well for today because its Valentines Day.

Heres a quick update

Wed. - ate lots of leftovers from Tuesday, passed up sugar cookies with what looked like yummy frosting at a youth activity that night. That took some serious self control.

Thursday - went out with the girls and passed up pizza factory bread sticks. Seriously isn't that why anyone even goes to Pizza Factory. I had the salad bar. I've been making my own salad dressing at home but didn't bring any so I had to use theirs. I had a stomach ache that night. Makes you wonder what goes into non homemade salad dressing.

Friday - really boring day, had a grapefruit and peas for lunch, so I was starving by dinner. We went out with some friends for dinner and combined babysitters. It was great. One babysitter for all our kids, a destroyed house, but very happy wives, since both of us are doing this diet and neither of us had a decent lunch. We all order fillet mignon at Ruby River and it was delicious. I did have some cheese at dinner which is okay to have on the diet only if your system can handle it. I have pretty much had almost no cheese this entire diet but had a bunch with dinner. I ordered these tomatoes with parm. cheese on top. They were really good. I think I'll have to make them myself when I'm not on this dang diet. I'll be honest I also had some fries but I guess you can have potato every so often and again I haven't had it much so I had some.

Saturday - Kind of a boring food day - ate a giant salad from the MTC. Yep the MTC. My inlaws came over and they brought their lunch and somehow brought too much so I got an MTC salad. Apparently the senior missionaries can pretty much do whatever they want, come and go as they please. Its been really nice to see them so much while they have been here.

Sunday - I have been planning on cheating on Valentines day this whole time. So I had sugar cookies, this super yummy cinnamon cake, funeral potatoes, pretty much lots of stuff I shouldn't have. But I'm okay with it since I planned on it and I'll be starting again tomorrow.

But I haven't had any candy and passed up brownies at church today and the snickers bar that one of my girls brought. And weirdly I didn't even crave the brownies as they went around. That I think is a major break through. I really am just not craving the bad stuff anymore. Its liberating in a way.

Only problem is that all the leftovers are still in my fridge. I think our neighbors may be getting some pie and cake tomorrow!

2 more weeks to go, but really I think I might try to go longer but just slowly bring in some more types of food. I really feel a lot better.

Day Nine

Wow I can't believe I have been doing this for nine whole days. I still have not made it to the health food store, which I really would like to do. I think a whole new world of food will open up for me.

Today I kind of skipped breakfast. Jace's therapist was coming over at nine and the stairs really needed a vacuum much more than I needed breakfast. Part of his therapy is done on the stairs, so anyway had to have them clean.

After she left I had about 20 minutes to get ready for Summer's dance class, which means packing her and Jace some lunch, packing her preschool outfit, and a bunch of toys to keep Jace busy while Summer is dancing. Never works, he would much rather crawl towards the stairs than play with anything I bring along.

So I grabbed a green apple and ate that at about 11:30 at dance class. Not the greatest breakfast, but green apples are okay on the diet so I guess I started out well.

After dropping off Summer at preschool, I stopped in at my parents, and my Dad just happened to be grilling totally diet safe delicious chicken. Leave it to my Dad to grill up a load of meat in the winter. So that made for a great late lunch.

We took the kids to Costa Vida for dinner because we were at the doctor forever getting Summer's ear checked and H1N1 shots. It was just too late to make something and Summer was begging to go and get a taurtita (tortilla). She was amazing at the doctors office and since she got a shot we figured why not let her. They have a cute little playland there too.

I had a chicken salad and just didn't eat the tortilla since that is definitely NOT on the diet. That was tough because their tortillas are really yummy.

My slip ups today were a couple of Summer's pretzels while waiting for a HALF HOUR, maybe longer in the doctors office. It was way past dinner time in the after hours clinic, and I was REALLY hungry.

Really tomorrow I'm not slipping up one time. I resisted cake all weekend for crying out loud, why should a pretzel be too much for me.

Anyway can I just say that I really MISS cheese.

P.S. I have not been using organic spices in my recipes. Who can afford to go out and buy all new spices, or even worse, am I just suppose to throw all the old ones away. No I think I will survive on my regular old walmart spices. I don't think they feed the yeast, I think the health food people just say that they are bad for you in general. Well I'm not doing a "bad for you in general diet." I'm doing the kill all the yeast in your body diet. So I think I'm okay!

Day EIGHT

I woke up this morning and my stomach didn't hurt but it definitely did not feel happy. I think after a week of NO sugar, bread, or anything that tastes half way decent, it was not happy after the big cheat I did yesterday.

It was kind of eye opening really how much sugar etc. can affect your system. I think when I'm done with this diet I will still limit my sugar a lot more that I have in the past. I think I'll be more aware of the things that I buy and keep in my house. Our pantry currently is just one big carb fest, from granola bars, the chocolate covered kind, to fruit snacks, etc. etc. etc. So just looking in that thing is bad for me. I really can't eat anything in there.

Today I did pretty good, I actually had to skip breakfast which isn't good, but my stomach really didn't feel hungry and we were late for art class.

For lunch I used the chicken from my big crock pot fest and made a salad with chicken. Not that creative but it was pretty good.

For dinner I actually made a really yummy recipe. It is called spicy meatloaf and has a completely different taste than I am use to. It doesn't stay together as well as normal meatloaf because you aren't using any bread crumbs, but it was still really good. So we had that with chinese style asparagus, which was really really good. Probably because it is cooked in butter. What isn't good cooked in butter?

Here are the recipes, both winners I think.

Spicy Meatloaf (courtesy of this website - hopefully it is okay to post this http://www.healingnaturallybybee.com/recipes/recipe282.php

Ingredients

• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1/2 medium red onion, diced
• 1/4 red bell pepper, diced
• 1 - 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped
• 2 medium whole eggs, beaten
• 1/2 cup Tomato Paste
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper powder
• 2 teaspoons dried mustard powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons thyme, dried
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped
• 1 teaspoon black pepper

Note: All spices and herbs must be either fresh and organic, or certified organic. All dried commercial spices are being irradiated (zapped with radiation), which change and damage the body's cells if consumed.

Preparation

1. In large bowl mix all ingredients very well.
2. Put it in glass or stoneware loaf pan and bake at 325°F 1 hour and 15 minutes, until loaf appears slightly browned on top.
3. Remove from the oven and let it sit for 5 minutes.

Chinese Style Asparagus

Take 2 lbs asparagus and cut or break off the ends ( I used less)

Wash and cut into 1 inch diagonal pieces

Put in a pan with 1/3 cup water or 1/3 cup butter (I made a mixture of both, mostly butter)

Cover pan with lid and let cook for 5-7 minutes until it is soft and water has evaporated.

This was delicious

Anyway thats my day. Snacks have been grape tomatoes and almonds.

I'm sure I'm eating too many almonds since they are still a carb, but they were listed as okay, and for some reason when I am craving a cracker they seem to do the job for the most part.

Day SEVEN

Day seven was a complete bomb. I did great all day. But then it was superbowl sunday and an array of snacks were just too much. Well I probably would have done fine, except what do you do when your nice neighbor cooks up all these things and absolutely nothing, except the salad is on your diet. I couldn't just not eat anything, it would have been totally rude, and she is an awesome cook. I didn't have any soda though so that I guess is one redeeming thing.

I won't even write down what I ate, much too embarrassing, considering how well I have done all week. But I will be starting again tomorrow and plan on not messing up next week at all!

Day SIX

Well today was the day of parties. I had a baby shower and a birthday party. There was absolutely nothing I could eat at the baby shower, and I didn't eat anything. I'm pretty proud of myself. They had very yummy looking sugar cookies, yummy looking muffins, yummy looking all sorts of things. But I brought a water bottle along and so I "survived." Haha

On to the next party. They had a delicious looking chocolate cake. Seriously it was the most adorable thing ever. My sweet friend had a veggie platter there though so I snacked on that. It was really nice of her to have one, she really didn't need to, but it was nice to have something to snack on. And I was really good and didn't even taste the dip that went along with it.

For dinner we went to Burgers Supreme which is one of my favorite burger places. I had a burger wrapped in lettuce. They actually charge you .30 extra to have your burger that way. I thought that was crazy but oh well. It was really good, but hmm it really felt like something was missing.

I have to admit I ate two of Summer's fries. After a day of holding back I decided it wouldn't kill me to have two fries. But at the same time, kind of lame that I made it the whole day and then cheated over two fries.

I also bought some almond milk today. At first it was really almondy tasting to me, but after a few sips you really get used to it. I think it is actually pretty good. I don't know if I will buy it again, but for the time being it does the job. It is pretty much almonds mixed with water. I'm sure there is probably something else in there but thats the idea.

On the whole I think I did pretty good today!

DAY FIVE

Wow I can't believe I have been doing this dang diet for 5 whole days. Too bad I have 29 more to go. I really should stop thinking about that and take it one day at a time. When I start thinking how long I have to go without a cookie, or bread, or anything good, I feel kind of sad. I know funny but its true.

BUT i did find some information on candida diet safe desserts (if you can call them that.) The only thing is that you pretty much have to buy all the ingredients at the health food store. And taking my kids into one of those stresses me out with their tiny aisles, and everything just in really close grabbing reach of little kids. And they all close early so its hard to make it into one. The other problem is that most of them contain some kind of flour, weird flour like rice flour, or oat flour or something. I'm trying to stay away from all flour for at least two weeks before I bring in the "weird" flours. Just because really any carbohydrate can feed the candida. I guess technically so can the brown rice I've been eating but its sort of on the fence.

So anyway I plan on making some rice flour brownies sometime in the near future. I'm not holding my breath though because alot of the recipes I have made on this diet have not turned out that great at all.

For instance today I made vegetable chips. They are a pain to make and require you to buy rutabagas, turnips, and other things that aren't really that appetizing. You basically slice them super thin, put ocean sea salt on them, let them sit, rinse them, dry them, bake them with a "safe" oil, and then salt them. The big problem was that my slices were not all perfect, some were way thicker that others, my food processor does not handle rutabagas very well apparently. Anyway so when I took them out of the oven the turnips were almost burned and the rutabagas were not even close to done. I tasted the turnips and let me say, they tasted very DIFFERENT. Not entirely bad. I guess if you had never tasted a decent potato chip in your life, you could handle these babies. But wow not my fav, I will not be making them again. But I will force myself to eat them because I did take the time to make them, and the money to buy them.

I did do something kind of awesome today. I made homemade chicken soup. Yesterday I put an entire chicken in the crockpot, then when it was done, deboned it, which was well more fun that I thought it would be, then I put the bones and skin back in the crock pot, threw in a few veggies and spices and made a second batch of chicken stock. So by this morning I had a whole bunch of chicken and two crock pots worth of chicken stock. I have never done this before. Apparently it is really healthy for you.

Then today for dinner I took half the chicken stock, added a bunch of veggies, spices, some brown rice from the other night, and made soup. It was really good actually. My kids both ate a whole bowl. And Dave who has been sick all week loved it. He seemed to get new energy just from eating my soup. I guess thats why they say chicken soup is so good for you.

So that was my day. I've had a few almonds here and there, some plain yogurt, cottage cheese, berries, and another green apple.

I in NO way feel satisfied. This evening I was craving something, and considering cheating at our neighbors super bowl party on sunday, but my sweet sister in law Courtney wrote me an email telling me she thought it was great what I was doing, and just getting that email made me reconsider and think, I really can do this. Seriously is a chip really going to control me. So thanks Courtney, it came just at the right time.

Anyway on to the weekend of parties. Baby shower, birthday party. I think I am for sure going to take a piece of cake home from the birthday party, freeze it, and have it in a month. I have tasted this type of birthday cake before and believe me it is worth saving a piece even for month!