Lions and tigers and bears - oh my!

I wanted to write a brilliant post greeting the new year and bidding good riddance to the old, but instead I sat around. This is how much the new year has inspired me.

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My acupuncturist suggested that I eliminate flour, sugar, and dairy from my diet. This is supposed to help my asthma, and, of course, my fertility (because if it wouldn't help my fertility, then really, what would be the point?). I'd been mulling over this suggestion for a couple of weeks, since I don't have a great track record of sticking with my weird diets.

When I was little, I had a ton of food allergies, and so my mom (Hi mom!) was really careful about everything I ate - at home or at other people's houses. There were lists of food I could and could not eat - long, detailed lists. And then I started to grow out of my allergies, or at least to be less affected by them, and so I got less careful about what I ate. And by college, I ate pretty much whatever I wanted - mostly okay food, with an average portion of total junk. One summer in college I went on an anti-Candida diet, where I didn't eat flour, sugar, or fermented things. It worked fine during the summer, but back at school? Not so much. The year before my wedding, after doing a lot of research on my recent PCOS diagnosis, I went on a modified low-carb/Atkins-variety diet. This was, of course, back in the days when everyone thought that low-carb was a terrible idea, and people on the PCOS mailing list would exchange their responses to the obnoxious comments people would make about their eating habits. I lost a ton of weight, though - not that it shows anymore.

Most recently I've tried reducing my carb intake, or at least cutting back on white flour and sugar - this is what I had planned for this next go-around. But instead, I'm eating this weird combination of macrobiotic and I-don't-know. I'm making it up as I go along.

What makes this all the more complicated is that J is not a particularly adventurous eater - and he's not a big fan of veggies, or tofu, or fish. He's more of a pasta and bread person - and that's a clear no-no for me. So I'm experimenting with these recipes that I'm not sure even sound appealing to me, but I don't want to complain because I want him to try some of this new food too. And, since it's not exactly macrobiotic or anything else (since I'm still eating chicken, fish, and meat), there's no clear guidebook. I just have to pull from a variety of sources and make it up.

Tonight I made a veggie-beef stew in the slow cooker. Haven't tasted it yet - we'll see how that goes. Maybe we can put it over one of my many new whole grain products - bulghur and quinoa and wheat berries, oh my!