Recovery Progress: Diet/Food update & other ramblings

I haven't mentioned this here. I had to put Pippy down in December. :( So that means all my kitties are gone. For now I won't get anymore cats. Christina is allergic to them and one of the friends here is allergic to them. Truth be told, I'm fine with it. I loved my kitties dearly but luckily there's been no issues with no cats!

We did an official 3 month blood test and I got the results back this week and they are amazing! It's down right amazing what being off foods that are a trigger for my body have done. Inflammation indicators are now completely normal, A1C stayed the same (5.5) but insulin went down a fair amount and is in completely acceptable range. I was told this indicates blood sugar's have stabilized. Several numbers went up in a good way. They indicate that my body is actually absorbing nutrients properly now. The liver and kidneys numbers are completely normal now as well. Vitamin D will be halved, Vitamin B will be halved and no more liver help.

Because I am off pork, chicken, some fishes (not shrimp luckily but more on that), I had quite a bit more red meat then I'd had in a long time. The bummer of that is that led to really high Ferritin. This happened before but I totally spaced it. Apparently my body absorbs iron very readily (too readily). Heme is the molecule that is in red meat that allows iron to be adsorbed easier in the digestive system, unfortunately shrimp has the same molecule so I'll need to go easy on that as well. Some vegetables have iron but that molecule is non-heme and doesn't get adsorbed near as much, except if you're eating it with red meat. So a beef roast, carrots and potatoes.... not happening. :( Carrots and potatoes have a decent amount of iron and are fine by themselves but not with the red meat for me. I'll probably also stay away from spinach for the most part since that is pretty high in iron for a vegetable. The goal right now is to get the iron storage down to acceptable levels. Menopausal women would typically have the apposite problem I'm having. My provider said it's a fairly rare issue to have. She's guessing it happens to about .01% of women. Go figure..... The good news is that she said this evening that black tea (decaf for me) is a good iron blocker so I'll be having a lot more tea. She said I should probably eat it with white meat as well. I'm going to try and work some pork back in and see if it does okay now. It was causing bloating before but it might be okay since inflammation is gone. In three months we'll test and see how things are going and see how my body reacts to halving the supplements. Ideally my body will hold steady with the changes and not back track some. We'll also do a full food panel again and see what goes from don't have to it's okay. My guess is garlic will still be a no go since it was completely off the charts. I'd guess kidney beans would also be a no go since they were pretty high as well.

The really awesome part.... I've lost almost 10 pounds!!! That is pretty exciting!! If I lose 3-4 more pounds I'd be happy. That'd get me down to around 110. I'm small and petite so that is a very comfortable weight.

I've started a little bit of gardening. I'm using milk jugs to start seeds outside. It's called winter sowing. Ideally seeds should have been put out sooner but I just ran across this way have starting seeds earlier this month. I've started leeks, onions, brussel sprouts, rhubarb, poppies, and milkweed. It'll be interesting to see how it works, or doesn't work. I also got my cold frame! I'm hoping to be able to start using it end of March. The ground was still nice and cold when it got put on so I'm waiting for it to do it's work with warming the soil.

Some know that Christina is taking care of health right now so she's staying with me. She has the total opposite issue that I do with iron so we're working on getting that taken care of. And getting Vitamin D levels up as well. One thing we learned is that iron is what helps get oxygen to the blood. When the iron levels are near rock bottom the stamina level is completely gone as a result. We're learning lots this year!!

Jameson is doing awesome! Teagan is loving her gymnastics and is doing awesome! Scarlet has started Taekwondo and is loving it! I certainly can't wait to see everyone again in a few months!!! These kids just grow much too quickly!