June 4, 2014 – Day 4

What did I Eat?

Meal 1

1 Boiled Egg

1 Banana

1 Larabar

Meal 2

everything in one bite

Salad

• Romaine
• Tomatoes
• Avocado
• Shrimp
• Walnuts

Meal 3

2 Italian Baked Eggs (Oeufs En Cocotte)

 The Day

I FORGOT TO BUY EGGS!!!!

I did not start the day off right. I forgot eggs when I did my grocery run last night. I grabbed some things out of the fridge that would enable me to make a salad for lunch at work. We have a decent kitchen in the office to if need be, salads and things can always be assembled on my lunch break rather than having to get up super early or make something the night before. Unless I need to make for Sean too, then he doesn’t have the luxury of a kitchen since he works outdoors. With his digestive issues of late, he has been sticking to mainly liquids and soft foods lately and I really only need to worry about me.

I got to work and stopped at that little café in the lobby. I grabbed a black coffee, banana, and apple and I asked the lady for 2 eggs. She says “oh no! They are just cooking now if you want to wait… otherwise there is only one left from yesterday.” I was already late so I take the one, pay and head up stairs to the office. I peel my eggs and eat it. I bite the apple and it’s gritty. I look at the apple and it’s bruised. I decide I better cut it up and I take it to the kitchen only to find, once I’d cut it in half, that the bruise surrounded the whole apple just under the skin. I have never seen that before but what a letdown. I pouted as I tossed it in the organics bin we have at work. I went back to my desk and started on the banana. This was relatively bruised also but most of it was salvageable so I ate what I could. I waited until I was hungry again to eat the Larabar which was a longer time than I thought.

Lunch rolled around and I chopped all my veggies and assembled my salad. I think I need to bring a decent sized bowl to work for my salads. Once I had all the ingredients in the bowl, there was no room for the shrimp. I put it on the side and ate them together as best I could. I opted for no dressing as I had an avocado as a fat and tomatoes, and avocados on salad kind of blend together to make their own delicious dressing any way. After eating in the lunch room (not at my desk) I went out into the sun, over to Urban Fare, to buy eggs.

When I got home I was excited to make the baked eggs dish mentioned above. I had pinned it for my first round of Whole30 and always seemed to be short one ingredient or another. When I went grocery shopping yesterday, I bought spinach purposely for this dish. Everything else, I had. I get home only to realize we forgot eggs and couldn’t make the dish. So tonight was the night! I was going to make them for breakfast for the next day. After prepping and making the dishes, I decided we would have them for dinner tonight instead. They were easy but made a few dishes and there were many steps. Once they were in the oven, I did not feel like making another meal for dinner so I thought, why not have these fresh tonight instead? I ended up making 6 instead of 4 anyway, I could serve 2 to each Sean and me for dinner and have 2 for breakfast tomorrow as left over. They were soft enough for Sean to eat, and probably the healthiest thing he has had all week. He was living off of Mr. Noodles and juice.

Sean has diverticulitis and has had 3 major flare-ups in 4 months. It is uncommon to have a second flare-up at all, let alone within a year of the first one. And it is uncommon for people under 50 or so to have this condition period, then it becomes increasingly common after that age. It’s the reason old people need to eat high fibre. You have to keep everything moving, or there is too much pressure on the large intestine and these pockets form. Then when they become infected, they cause a lot of pain. We’ve been told when he has a flare up, he should move to a liquid diet and get antibiotics. For the three major flare-ups, we have gone to the hospital, he has been on pain meds, diagnosed, and sent home with antibiotics. He is missing so much work and it’s causing him so much pain, so frequently that the doctors have decided to operate. This is the surgery that he is having Mid-June. It will not be laparoscopic like we had initially been told and had read. It will be a full invasive procedure, he will be in the hospital for up to 5 days, and then home resting and healing for up to 6 weeks. It’s kind of a big deal. This will hopefully be the best thing for the long run. He should be in less pain, less often moving forward. Unfortunately he has diverticula throughout his entire large intestine. The part the surgeon is focused on is riddled with scar tissue from past flare-ups and they want to remove it. They obviously cannot remove his entire large intestine. Well technically they could, but the benefits do not outweigh the cons just yet, and hopefully we never get to that point.

All in all, we are feeling nervous but optimistic.

How do I feel today?

The clarity I feel continues to amaze me. I had another small headache in the morning that went away pretty early on. I had more sugar and crap food before this round than the other so I fully expected some withdraw in the first week or so. I also have had cravings and small fantasies of cheating. I have asked myself things like “I know dairy isn’t my issue, so it wouldn’t hurt if I added cheese here and there right?” but I remind myself that I did not do a proper reintroduction after my last W30, so I don’t really know that I am ok with dairy. I also have been tempted to weigh in this round. This is weird to me because I was so set on not doing it last round. But I have really noticed a huge difference in my belly size from day 1 to now and it’s got me curious if that translates to pounds. Again, I remind mself it’s not about that. Who care if I lost 1 lb, 5 lbs, or no lbs? I am feeling great!!