OK let me first post a disclaimer: Our scale is not the most reliable. I don’t trust it. That said, I am going to weigh myself at the gym today and see what it says.
Now, let’s go on to my news.
I just weighed myself and it looks like I lost 6 pounds since Tuesday.
All I can say is holy moley, maybe this high-fat low-carb thing really does work!
I posted a while back about how Seth lost 7 pounds. We were following the Eat Fat Lose Fat program. However, we slacked off of it due to a number of reasons:
(1) One day we ate too much coconut oil (we were trying to ramp up quickly to 3.5 TBS per day) and both felt nauseous and had diarrhea. (This happens. Most of us are used to eating a low-fat diet, so it’s important to ramp up slowly. See the top question on this FAQ.)
(2) Seth kept badgering me about how this diet could possibly healthy (he hasn’t read the book). Kept worrying that he would gain weight.
(3) We were eating too many grains and not enough fat. I didn’t realize this until I started using this online tool that keeps track of everything you eat. It charts everything on a pie graph so you can see the percentages of carbs, fat, and protein you are eating every day.
So for the past 4 days, I entered everything into FitDay and tried to eat at least 50% fat and keep my carbs down to 10-15%. It is not the easiest thing to do. You have to eat lots of butter, coconut oil (I have taken to drinking at least one cup per day of herbal tea with a tablespoon of coconut oil), and olive oil.
I’ve also found that it is hard to include grains in your diet in order to make the numbers work. They are way too high in carbs.
I don’t mind not eating grains since we don’t eat that many of them anyway. They are hard to digest (unless they are soaked and/or sprouted). Plus, since Seth has been diagnosed with leaky gut, we are going off gluten until further notice.
So I’ve been making lots of salads with meat and cheese. I’ve been eating lots of eggs and dairy and meat and fish, lots of fresh organic (raw and cooked) vegetables. Lots of good fats. I still have my coffee (organic) with whole (raw) milk in the mornings, and a little stevia. And I have a glass of wine or two in the evening.
I’m excited. We are leaving now for swimming class. I will let you know what the scale says at the gym. (If it says any different, I’m throwing our scale in the garbage.)
UPDATE: I weighed myself at the gym. The scale there said the same thing. So I lost 6 pounds!
UPDATE 2: I was wrong… it was only 4 pounds. I had my starting weight wrong! Still, 4 pounds in 4 days is a lot!
Congrats on the 6 pounds!! High fat diets work wonders if they’re the right fats. I did well on South Beach before my last pregnancy and I couldn’t believe how much fat I ate there. FitDay is a great site, but if you haven’t seen it yet, I’ve always liked SparkPeople better. Same idea, easier layout
Good luck with gluten free! My son has autism so we’ve had him on the gluten-free / casein-free diet for a month now and wow. His behavior has gone crazy from withdrawl but his language progress has been huge! He went from completely non-verbal to being a total chatterbox. Half of what he says is hard to understand still but hey, they’re words!
Anyway, just wanted to say hey. Happy holidays!
Hi, thanks!
I had some reservations about doing it because I am still nursing. I think I’m going to stop though.
I have been producing less and less milk over the past several weeks. And I have her on a homemade raw milk fomula so I feel OK about it. (The raw milk has the probiotics — and the formula recipe I have is the closest you can get to breast milk.)
It’s hard because I’m working. It’s hard being a mom. You want to do everything perfectly — but you just do the best you can.
Congratulations on your son. That is awesome!
Have you read anything about probiotics yet? I posted a link to some videos…. I’ll go look it up and post here.
Jenny McCarthy wrote about how much it helped her son, too. First she did the GFCF diet, then she found out about probiotics and her son had another major leap forward. Have you read her book yet? I really liked it.
Happy holidays to you and yours.
Here’s the link about probiotics:
http://cheeseslave.wordpress.com/2007/12/03/why-you-should-feed-your-baby-butter-raw-milk-and-sauerkraut/
Thanks for the link! That video was realy interesting. I hadn’t looked into probiotics yet but I’m willing to research/do anything to help my son. I just finished Jenny’s book last month, which was incredible. My son is a lot like hers was when she first discovered his autism (we just discovered my son’s around his 3rd birthday). The only difference is mine didn’t have seizures! We feel really blessed for that. Her book made me cry so many times but I was so inspired. She is the reason my son is on this diet.
Thanks for the video. Do you recommend a book that explains it all as well? My husband won’t look at anything unless it’s in paper print. He thinks the internet just plants ideas in my mind lol.
I understand trials with breastfeeding! I have a 6 month old son too and I was nursing him until about 3 weeks ago when my milk suddenly dried up. All my efforts failed at getting it back. I think it was stress with the withdrawl my older son was going through on gfcf. He seriously regressed back to the worst behaviors I’d seen… screeching, spitting, throwing things. Thankfully, most of that seems to have settled down some!!
Here’s the link to the book written by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. She is a nutritionist and doctor.
http://www.guthealth.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=1&Itemid=26
If you remember in the Louder Than Words book, her son had the second huge breakthrough with the probiotics. They used a product called ThreeLac. About two weeks after she started her son on that, he laughed at a joke for the first time ever.
Campbell-McBride has a product called Bio-Kult. It’s similar to ThreeLac. It’s on the same website. I’m going to order that as well as her book. My husband has leaky gut so he has a lot of the same digestive issues.
I think the Bio-Kult is probably better than Three-Lac which is why we are going to start taking that instead of Three-Lac.
You will most likely have major regression again when you start the probiotics — that is what happens usually — and it happened to Jenny’s son. That is normal. They have to flush out the toxins and get rid of the yeast overgrowth. Until they do this, they can’t get back to normal.
Campbell-McBride says the GFCF diet is great but it is not enough. You have to do probiotics to help them recover. Also cod liver oil. In her book she also has what she calls the GAPS diet — it goes a little further than GFCF and it has a way to slowly introduce dairy.
You know some moms out there are so militant about breastfeeding. They make you feel awful if you don’t breastfeed for 2 years. But not everyone has such an easy time with it!
I do think breastfeeding is critical but if you can’t do it, you CAN (and must, in my opinion) supplement with probiotics. I also give my daughter raw milk (in homemade formula) which has the enzymes and the probiotics.
OK I gotta go now — early flight tomorrow and I still have to pack! It too me hours just to pack all the homemade formula and baby food.
It’s worth it though.
Before I do I will go look up some links to some articles for Campbell-McBride.
Have a Merry Christmas/Happy Hannaukah!
Here is a source I found for sprouted grains. With their quality standards and labor-intensive process, I thought the prices were gonna be an arm and a leg, but they’re around $2/lb. Read “about sprouted grains” it’s an interesting read I’m sure you’ll enjoy.
http://www.creatingheaven.net/chmenu.html