Starch Hurrahs, New Exercise Equipment, Cherry-Almond Smoothie

I hope everyone's having a great weekend. We seem to be perpetually busy right now, and I can't blame the full moon! I can blame these Anchorage trips: we're getting ready to take off again and all the back-and-forth is unsettling. Hopefully after this week, we can start going less frequently.

I've been promising to share my experiences around trying out eating more starch and cutting out PUFAs. I'll talk about the latter next week, but am ready to talk about the starches! As I mentioned before, I felt that I had good reasons for being Carbophobic, between celiac/gluten allergy and the difficulties that I've experienced digesting starch on many occasions, as well as all the claims that equate starch with sugar in the body.

Although I still have to go through candida clearout when I finish with chelating, my sense is that I'm far less rife with yeastie-beasties than I was a year ago. Far fewer yeasty symptoms, and whereas last summer, even yams and beets would upset my stomach, lately they have been my great friends--yams and parsnips especially. And my ND says that I'll still be able to eat those even when cleansing candida.

 I'm not eating a huge amount of it, but am eating some every day, usually at dinner. I'd been tackling the mental portion of Carbophobia by reading a lot of research showing that starch (as opposed to sugar) is good for our bodies. This is per rule #5 in my conversation about ground rules for nutritional research: I'd sucked in a lot of why starch was bad, and come to find out, there was plenty of research showing the opposite was the case!

But here's the gold/paydirt: I just got through my 11th cycle of chelating, eating some starch every day, and had been eating some every day the week before, and I wasn't constipated at all! This was a hallelujah event (and I'm sorry if it's tmi). I'd had the ample experience of ten previous chelation cycles, and in every instance, constipation was one of several major discomforts. It is also one of long-term results of my 'bad and ugly' years of self-mistreatment, and I'd pretty much resigned myself to having to control it with high doses of Magnesium for the rest of my life. Can't take Magnesium during chelation, hence the problem. This last time, no problem at all! I was caught between wanting to sing hallelujah all day every day and not wanting to breathe a word and jinx it!

This feedback from my body is a wonderful gift in two ways at least:
1) It's the first sign I've had in years that my body knows what she's doing and can come back into balance. I've always believed in the self-healing and homeostatic powers of bodies, just not of my own body.
2) It feels so liberating to relax on demonized foods: to think of foods like yams and even bananas as 'good for me' rather than 'something I shouldn't be eating.'

And so, I share a smoothie that made me so happy, I've had to repeat it.

 It's: 1cup almond or coconut milk
        half a frozen banana
        half a cup of frozen cherries
        a handful of greens (this one had cilantro but I couldn't taste it)
        a couple tablespoons irish moss gel
       half a teaspoon sunflower lecithin (tastes gross by itself but is a great emulsifier)
       vanilla
       half a teaspoon almond extract
       spoonful of spirulina
       half a teaspoon of yacon syrup
       bit of coconut oil (it's solid up here, so I just put in a little chunk.)
       dusting of stevia powder
Perhaps it's since I made that marzipan, but the richly cyanided blend of almond and cherry flavors just melts me and delights me. So good! One time I made it with leftover baked yam in place of the banana--and then found that Lori had done something quite similar. I'm also seeing myself heading in a similar culinary direction to the wonderfully talented Pure2Raw ladies: nourishing and delectable combinations of cooked starches with lots of raw food all around.

Of course, per rule #4, I'm not making any long-term conclusions yet, but this feedback that my body can learn to function unassisted is just entrancing. If it can do that, maybe my metabolism can normalize too, and, and.... :)

Moving on to exercise equipment. I love to be outdoors but my work involves being indoors, and sometimes even stubborn old me is deterred by icy winds and sideways snow. I love rebounders and finally bought one recently. The challenge, even with a piece of equipment so small, is how to fit it in our little space!

Here's Phil figuring it out...

It hangs above our heads like a dorky sun-negative with little feet, when not in use. When I want to use it, I unclip the rope and down it comes (easy now!).

I bounce away. It's a blurred pic but you can see I'm smiling!

And yes, it's pretty cold in here, so I'm wearing my hat and heavy booties. Much of what I've been reading about exercise lately is suggesting that short, intense bursts of exercise are the way to go. Having those super-heavy feet is one way of ensuring that I'm gasping and panting and ready to stop after a short but fun bounce.

The pulley is strong enough to support my weight, so I can also hang onto the rope and work my upper body while bouncing. Super-tiring. Phil is a genius!

Do you like exercise that makes you feel like a kid?
What's the best validation you've had from your body recently?

What Motivates You to Do Your Best? Raw Chocolates in London Review: Should We Sample Everything in Pursuit of Our Writing?

We're still in Anchorage, where it warmed up today from 10 degrees to around 32 (freezing): freezing it may be, but the 20 degree-increase in temperature makes it feel positively warm! You can't imagine this application of 'it's all relative' until you experience it in your flesh.

I'm more than ready to be getting home and have had a couple of embarrassing, shaming incidents where my behavior wasn't as I'd have liked because I hadn't eaten enough and my blood sugar was too low and I was cranky. What's the lesson here? Well, I need to fend for myself no matter what everyone else is doing, and I need to accept that my needs are different. More globally, I need to find some things that nurture me in Anchorage. I tag along with Phil and his friends, and they have been wonderful friends too, and very accepting of me. Some of them are even writers also, and afford me a tantalizing glimpse into Anchorage's thriving literary scene. But I don't know any raw-food enthusiasts in Anchorage and since there are raw products at the natural food store, there must be someone out there. And there must be other writerly types with whom I could connect also. So right now, a sense of frustration with myself at not having done my best is my motivation to do better. It's not pure and unmitigated shame: it's also a determination to do better.

What motivates you to do your best?

I have a couple more posts to make about our London trip and time is passing on and carrying in its current all kinds of other happenings to talk about as well. I'm looking forward to feeling less skewed and more caught-up.

I promised to share a review of the raw chocolate and other goodies that I broke the budget on at the Whole Foods in High St Kensington.

Pictured are 'conscious' 'Healthy Heart' chocolate bar and also their lucuma bar (with cacao butter, sort of a white chocolate) and 'pulsin's maple peanut protein bar and also their 'berry burst' with dried raspberries and goji berries and cacao. I also picked up this little ball

and a heinously expensive bar of Shazzie's Naked Chocolate that I seem to have failed to photograph. It wasn't an accident that the flavor of Naked Chocolate that I picked was the 'Siren,' with blue-green algae added, just like the 'Healthy Heart' flavor of 'conscious' chocolate that I picked out, shown above.

I have more intimate pictures of these goodies that I will add another time, since this internet connection is ridiculously slow and I want to post this blog before I have to leave! But it's kind of symbolic that I'm having such trouble posting photos, as I'm finding myself ambivalent about this whole reviewing process. I could tell you about how the conscious chocolate bar had more of a truffle texture, which was delicious and satisfying.

That the 'naked chocolate' bar, whose blocks are much thicker, was a little grainier, not a very good texture, but that both of them tasted great (the 'conscious' somewhat better) and the algae was a very unobtrusive note.

I could tell you that Phil, who loves chocolate but had never had raw chocolate before, thought that the raw cacao was a very 'harsh' note in the chocolate. I could tell you that 'conscious' lucuma bar was disappointing, especially since I'm on a quest to make chocolate without caffeine in it, and was thinking of exploring a white chocolate path. The cacao butter on the bottom was kind of waxy, the lucuma layer above was just too sweet.

I could tell you that the little 'berriball'

tasted a lot better to me than 'pulsin's berry-cacao offering,

which I would have categorized as somewhat 'harsh' too. But the 'berriball' had raisins and dates and much more sweet stuff in it whereas 'pulsin's was lower-glycemic.

I could tell you that my favorite thing was the 'pulsin' peanut maple protein bar.

Despite the fact that personally, I think that carob/peanuts/maple syrup is a very odd flavor combo, I liked the fact that they used carob and cacao butter, I loved that they used pea protein powder (my protein powder of choice, with hemp), and I especially loved that they were low-glycemic and low-fructose, with a minimal amount of maple syrup and 'brown rice malt' (a new ingredient for me) also with the sweetness of carob.

And thereby hangs a tale. What does it say that the bar I liked best may not have had the best flavor, but tasted good and was made from a set of ingredients that I was happy about? Furthermore, what does it say that sampling those raw chocolate bars just underscored for me that my naturopath is right and that I really shouldn't eat chocolate?

This all seems to say that maybe trying out all the chocolate bars isn't the best thing for me to do, and that as much as I love tastes and good foodiness, I (am compelled to) prefer what feels better in my body. The maple peanut protein bar tasted great (if a little offbeat) to me, and I ate half of it after lunch and half of it late afternoon and it didn't wig me out (the final ingredient was green tea extract, which I think is caffeine free) and it didn't spike my blood sugar. I would buy it again. All the others, not so much. I'd like to learn more about 'pulsin:' I noticed that although they are 'low temperature processed' and a small company, they did have whey protein in some of their flavors.

Another one of theirs I was tempted to try was a maca-ashwagandha flavor, except that (as I've shared before), I know that ashwagandha wigs me out, much as I love maca! So, I didn't try the bar with the ashwagandha: why did I try so many cacao bars?

And why was this a bad idea?

When I eat raw cacao, I feel an instant hit of anxiety and stimulation. It often makes my stomach feel more capacious, like I could eat more than I'd otherwise be able to. It's addictive: I always want more of it. When I eat it more than a day or two in a row, it exacerbates yeast symptoms and prevents me from sleeping. And of course, the social element: everybody adores cacao, and I want to share in the conversation about it, not be the party-pooper who says 'oh, it's bad for me!' (or even worse, 'oh, it's bad for you!')

I love that having a blog has helped me to feel freer to buy sometimes expensive goodies to review them. I used to put myself off with sticker shock and deprive myself of the experience. But I'm now recognizing that taking the blogging as carte blanche to try all kinds of raw cacao when I know that I find it addictive, that it gives me instant and then cumulative symptoms, and that it is counterproductive to the adrenal healing that I'm working on, may not be wise, smart or even self-loving. As my very wise and kind bloggie-friend Bitt says, "We have to do what's best for our health first and foremost." 


And so, when we got to Anchorage and discovered raw chocolate bars at the natural food store...and then later found that they're even available in Homer, and at about half the price of raw chocolate in London...

 ...I didn't feel like I was compelled to buy them just to review.


Yes, I do still have a review of Vega's Whole Food Vibrance bars coming up. But this twist in the tail of a blog product review might actually be a more interesting direction for the blog itself! I'm mulling over all that and will talk more about it in due course.


What has you blog writing or other putting yourself out there inspired you to do? Have you ever had to back off from certain things that it allows that don't serve you well?

I'll be back as soon as I can, with photos and hopefully another post. Much love.