Updates and a Recipe: Yeast Cleanse, PUFAs and NaPoWriMo

Happy Sunday! Day 3 of NaPoWriMo and I'm loving it so far. Since my major New Year intention for this year was to be a more excellent reviewer and stayer-on-track, I want to dedicate this post to a few updates. I plan to do some review and updating at the beginning of every month: this didn't happen quite so well last month, but now I'm back on track. So, today is an update on my yeast cleanse, which is now one-third through; my latest thoughts on nutrients, particularly PUFAs; and I also have some additional thoughts about Poetry Writing for this coming month to share.

Yeast Cleanse Progress
I've finished my course of ketoconazole, which I was taking along with grapefruit seed extract for a bacterial infection. I have two more months of the restricted diet (which still seems quite lenient to me, with its permitting of root veggies and even some fruit), together with probiotics and berberis tincture (to eliminate more bad-boy bacteria). I'm happy with progress so far: it has been fairly uneventful, for the most part.

Better yet, my energy has been returning, even since before I quite finished the ketoconazole. This medication is hard on the liver, and together with die-off and toxins exiting, it promises a debilitating time. For the first couple of weeks, I was slammed. In Chinese medicine too, Liver governs anger. I have often seen the connection, and definitely these past four weeks. I've been cranky! And even with Tapping, and all the other tools I have to help me, it's been hard to curb that. Sometimes emotions have such a strong physiological base that they can be hard to neutralize with the mind. I try to remember this when I'm dealing with others and it helps me to be compassionate when someone is being unpleasant.

So, no more cranky, is my intention! :)

PUFAs and Others
When I started the yeast cleanse and shared its restrictions on here, Bitt asked the very sensible question: Would I continue to restrict PUFAs, as I have been for a few months now, in addition to those other restrictions? At the time, I wasn't sure of the answer. So many experts do insist that omega-3's are not only essential, but anti-inflammatory and otherwise beneficial. Many people, especially plant-based types, share the experience that the omega-3 seeds help tremendously with mood regulation. I was seriously considering incorporating flax and chia seeds again.

However, I just carried on doing my thing, opening myself to guidance, tuning in and listening to my body, and I haven't added them back in. I'm not restricting all PUFAs completely: I've been eating some beans, which have a few, and when I've made cheesecakes, with cashews (fairly low in PUFA as nuts go), I've had a taste of them. I've also been having a little avocado (zealous PUFA-avoiders would avoid all of these). But otherwise, I haven't felt moved to add any of them in. I can't guarantee that I'm feeling generally 'better' as a result of PUFA avoidance, as it could be due to the added starch alone, and at some point I should probably try adding omega 3's and keeping everything else as close to the same as possible.
For now, though, I'm not even putting olive oil on my salads most of the time: they're plenty juicy with some lemon or lime juice, tomatoes, julienned beets--

 --and I've been making my snacks mostly out of some form, or several forms, of coconut. Coconut pulp from making my coconut milk, shredded coconut, coconut butter. These bars (sorry for the poor picture)--

--are made from the zest and juice of a lemon,
about a cup and a half of coconut pulp,
a quarter cup of shredded coconut,
a quarter cup of coconut butter,
a quarter cup of irish moss gel,
an eighth cup of xylitol,
a teaspoon of ginger--all whizzed in the cuisinart.

These are really good, but a little more crumbly than most snack bars. Maybe best kept in the freezer. But isn't this odd? I was making energy bars with 'chia sweet' for such a long time (and there are tons of posts on it)--stevia-sweetened chia gel replacing dried fruit because I was avoiding sugar--and now I'm replacing the chia! Doesn't it seem a little reductive?

Well, part of the reason that this cleanse is feeling so easy is that I'm enjoying the starches so much. It's been a while since I mentioned that I'm feeling so good eating a fair amount of starch : before embarking on the cleanse, this included increasing amounts of fruit. And my blood sugar has only gotten better since making these changes. Until the last couple of years, I'd been a big fruit-eater (and fruit geek) my whole life. I feel that I have had enough of a break from fruit, and no longer need to demonize it, nor to demonize high-glycemic foods (I think the whole concept is far too reductive anyway, and will talk about it more if there's interest). So, come June, watch out for some recipes on here that feature fruity goodness again after all! Yes, I'm a nutritional whirling dervish, but I do feel that I get closer to the truth, for me anyway.

NaPoWriMo
I set myself a few additional guidelines for my daily poem effort. While part of the attraction of a daily poem is that it places the emphasis on generating material rather than on polishing it, I have required of myself that every poem I write, even if it isn't polished, should be worthy of polishing later, should be taking me somewhere. I've also decided that using ideas that are scribbled in my notebook waiting to be born into poems is allowable too: what a good opportunity to give them birth! I want to use the opportunity to play with some forms that I haven't yet played with, although not all poems need to be form poems. Finally, I've suggested to myself that I produce at least one 'funny' poem per week.

I'm not going to reproduce poems in full on the blog here, but I will share snippets and updates.

Thus far, Friday's poem was a braided poem, whose first line is "Panorama has no intentions."
And yesterday's poem was my first try at a Triolet.
Today's is yet to be written, and I'm off to do it!

We're off to Anchorage tomorrow again for a couple of days. Hopefully my wonderfully slimmed down new bag and netbook will make the whole thing easier and smoother.