new project: MEAL PLANNING. we are going to attempt pre-planning more meals for me so i can make sure i'm getting enough NUTRITIONS. we've been a lot better about getting me enough calories recently, which is very good, and has helped lift my brain fog so i can get back to work. and i haven't gained any weight either, take that doctor fatshame! seriously, i am a walking (limping, anyway) counterargument to the simplistic "calorie math is everything" model of weight and health. i've had god knows how many doctor appointments in the past six months, they weigh me at every single one, and on the whole i think i've maybe lost 2 pounds. which is just going to be water since we're fighting with inflammation. but i haven't gained any weight. and this is while being so stove up that i can't exercise for fuck. i'm going stir crazy being unable to go do shit, can't even do my water therapy when it's this cold out because going to and from the greenhouse would undo all my gains. i'm just sitting around absorbing food like a big lump, and have been eating big meat meals every night, getting the full 2000, not skimping on the carbs or skipping dessert, and would you look. at. that. not gained a fucking pound. because metabolism is a thing, you goddamn idiots. *shakes cane at ten thousand morons on tumblr who reblogged to go "famine mode isn't a thing tho" every time i talked about fighting my fatigue by eating more* aaaaanyway today is no good, foodwise, because of aforementioned hideous bloating. i drank the vitamin shake from my breakfast, then exploded. then took a nap. then ate the peanut butter sandwich from my breakfast, then exploded. then took another nap. now it's past supper time and i'm grimly contemplating the apple from my breakfast. i'm not up for exploding again. but oh god i'm hungry. COMPLAIN DERAIL COMPLETE. back to meal planning. i've been pondering on it for a long time, but hesitated to do anything with it because barb is medical assist, not kitchen staff, you know? i mean, she does feed me, but it seemed wrong to tell her to do so much cooking. but we talked it over, and she said having the planning done would make the cooking much easier, and my nutrition IS a medical assist issue, and just generally was very competent and reassuring. god, nothing is more reassuring than competence. so i am going to make up some... i don't know what to call them. little nuggets of information re what is a food. and then think about how to distribute them thru the week. ideally this would result in me eating more veg, less fat -- which is a concern for my digestion, not my weight -- and less expensive takeout. altho with seebs frequently going "fuckit let's just order in" after having a long work day that's not as certain. i have an optimism. this could be pretty okay. IN RELATED NEWS i am craving a turkey sandwich so hard little sammiches are dancing around my head, but i'm not sure at all if it's safe to eat.
ye more veg and less fat for digestion reasons seems a good idea, good luck!!! (I just had RA nutritions class today if ya want i can share my notes like a good front row sitting nerd :P from across the pond (I'm in Germany lmao) so maybe availability and 'what vegetable is in season' stuff will be off, but ya know, I'm offering bc i just got the whole nine yards of asking questions and begging tips off of the nutritionist stuff done)
oh wow, that would be so helpful. trying to get nutrition advice on the internet fills me with rage, it's all so 'skinny mom' and even the medical resources feel the need to remind you once a paragraph that you need to lose weight. what i need to do is heal muscle damage, heal surgery scars, reduce inflammation, increase energy, and prevent flare-ups. my weight is like... idk 17th on the list of things i care about.
i have thoughts like: i need to get lots of calcium because i'm doing pulsed prednisone doses every couple months -- but is that going to make my bone spurs worse? does the type of calcium help with that? like, should i avoid chewables, should i increase dairy, should i increase fish, should i be wary of fish because of mercury, should i eat only wild caught fish because of deregulation -- and i'm off on another ??? spiral with no answers. meanwhile in reality, we're all so overloaded that just remembering 'carrots and hummus' is an acceptable side for my lunches may be on the outside of manageable. :P
subway sammich lunch today. lots of spinach, cucumbers, onions, a little green pepper, spicy italian meats and provolone on wheat bread. i can feel my metabolism sitting up and taking notice even now. i can feel myself absorbing nutrients like a plant in the sunshine. it's so nice. i think my body was really lacking for veg.
Do you have Pita Pit where you live? It's kinda like Subway, but wraps etc? EDIT: apparently the answer is no, Pita Pit is an NZ food chain
Actually (I looked it up because I was puzzled, since we have a pita pit in my town in Ontario), Pita Pit is a canadian company with locations in twelve different countries, including 39 locations in the US according to their website - no idea if any of them would be anywhere near Jesse, though.
never heard of pita pit, but there's 3 greek restaurants in my small town for some reason, so i can get gyros any time :D i had vinaigrette italian dressing on my sammich and it was delish
In which case ????? When I googled Pita Pit I got a Pita Pit site that had little things in the corner declaring Pita Pit to be in NZ and Aus?
(there is apparently one (1) singular pita pit in the northfield area in like, it says Mall of America? Their dealie is basically subway, you can customize a pita and throw a zillion veggies in there)
jeez witnessed and good luck! I think it's best to avoid mineral/vitamin supplements for anything that can reasonably be taken in from food at a reasonable rate not like bc of bone spurs and stuff but bc the tablets can cause strain on stomach lining and liver if it's like a permanent thing but I would reckon your doctor will have an eye on that if you're getting prednisone. The big things to avoid if you've got an Inflammatory chronic disease thing happening are usually (ortho)-phosphoric acid which is in some sodas and can cause stripping of calcium from bones if those are already a Problem Area arachidonic acid, a fatty acid synthesized by all animals that is involved in the cascade biochemistry reaction of inflammation. Basically you already have enough of the stuff due to ongoing inflammation, adding more (by eating fatty animal products) can essentially exacerbate and prolong inflammatory reactions. It shouldn't, and doesn't in healthy human bodies, but that's auto-immune fuckery for ya. Oxalic Acid bc it can cause kinda like... deposits similar to kidney stones, only in the joints, if you eat like a ton of it, which can also heighten inflammation problems, so best avoided. Another big thing is Nitrates and avoiding that bc potential for poisoning and also carcinogenic metabolic byproducts, but that's easily addressed by going 'try not to eat things that are out of season and pumped full of industrial fertilizer', so not worth further elaborating on ortho-phosphoric acid is innnnn sodas I mentioned, Arachidonic acid is in animal products, but not the same amount in all! Generally meat is the worst, especially fatty cuts, pork has by far the highest concentration, and I've been feeling a ton better since I stopped eating pork entirely apart from a few treats here and there :P My doctors recommend a so-called "flexitarian" diet (flexible but vegetarian leaning) as far as possible, which generally assumes you eat meatbased dishes no more than twice a week, one fish dish and the rest of the week are mostly vegetarian, but I know getting fresh veggies and fruits in the US can be a pain in the ass and also y'all have to be gluten-free so that uh, makes stuff difficult i bet. egg also has a pretty high concentraion, but only contains arachidonic acid in the yellows the doctor said, so the recommendation is currently to eat eggwhite omelette/scrambled egg and so on if you gotta, but it's a decent protein source if you do that? dairy products are also super recommended bc of calcium, and it's not super recommended, but if you happen to have digestion problems with diary, they do make a lot of vegan milk and yoghurt replacements with calcium added to be on par with traditional dairy and that wouldn't have the problem with arachidonic acids. Oxalic acid is in things like amaranth, asparagus, rhubarb, spinach, cassava/manioc or however the fuck that thing is called, chard, red beet (especially the leafs) and a couple other things, but those are the big baddies. occassionally eating these doesn't however matter suuuuuuper much and I eat a shitload of spinach so like eh. ehhhhhh. ideally just don't like. eat a whole course of mostly asparagus, spinach, chard and then top it with rhubarb cake I suppose :P Vitamin D is important bc it strengthens the immune system, but sadly almost impossible to get from food bc it's a synthesized vitamin, so uh. Sunlight or supplements are like the only options sadly. (rip me i've been on supplements for y e a r s bc I'm allergic to sunlight) Selenium can lower inflammatory flare ups, the same as zinc, both are in grains (but only whole-grain stuff), legumes and nuts in high concentrations A BIG thing is omega-3-fatty acids, which are easiest to get from fatty cold water fish like tuna or salmon, and thank fuck it is heat resistant so like any kind of salmon whatsoever, smoked, hot smoked, fried, baked, it's all good, but a big ole chunk of fish a week is highly recommended. other sources for omega 3 can be your cooking and salad vinnaigrette oils. Canola is not bad on the cooking side, Olive oil is also great for that, walnut oil, linseed oil -- there's also some slightly less easy to obtain oils that can be eaten or taken as supplements, like for example borrage oil, that can be used for the purpose of getting omega-3. On the ssssslightly more Woo, less entirely perfectly researched side (research is afaik ongoing rn, studies just aren't concluded yet), there's some slight health benefits associated with Lykopene, a chemical in tomato seeds that is easier to absorb under presence of fat and heat, so cooked tomato dishes don't hurt and might help a lot. other things that were recommended to us: frankincense taken orally can reduce swelling and helps with pain, willow bark tea (IF you do not have an averse reaction to salicylic acid/aspirin, and aren't taking any other pain medication, the usual applies, don't mix nsaids without consulting a doctor, etc etc), stinging nettle tea (may also cause increased water shedding), (common) yarrow tea aaaaand dandelion tea. Oh and Kurkuma extract, but like, ideally bought from a real pharmaceutics place, not some woo diet crap off of amazon that contains only like ten percent of extremely processed kurkuma that's stripped of most beneficial compounds bc of the way it was made. Oats may or may not lower cholesterol and aren't otherwise a Bad Thing to eat but i think they may not be safe for celiacs so ymmv I hope this helps!!!! (so many edits bc my IVs are making me a bit scatterbrained and my spelling is attrocious, sorry)
that's all super helpful, thank you! i don't have celiac, nick does, so i can eat gluten, i just can't throw it around the kitchen like confetti. :D i have noticed that animal fat can give me flare-ups, and that pepperoni pizza is the worst offender. so yeah, pork probably needs to go. alas. i do love my breakfast sausage. re vitamin d, idk if they do this in europe but over here milk has vitamin d added. i'm right in the middle of dairy cow country, so dairy is very cheap and fresh and safe. and i do happen to like it. so i can eat lots of yogurt and drink lots of milk, and some cheese in sandwiches, though too much cheese messes up my stomach. very fond of fish, and salmon in particular. i'll make sure to plan at least one salmon meal a week, probably two just because yum. and frozen salmon fillets aren't too expensive. you said lykopene comes from tomato seeds, not from the whole tomato. does that mean smooth tomato sauce doesn't have it?
Lycopene is a pigment (part of what gives tomatoes their color), so I'm thinking it's not just in seeds.
i think the concentration is higher in the seeds but my nutritionist doc specifically mentioned tomato sauce and soup as being great options bc heat so eta: also wow i never heard of vit d added to milk I think? Only like one specific brand of like children's yoghurt cups does that as far as I remember and there it's like a kind of Peculiarity Of Only This Brand. Germany is however also extremely anti meddling with produce and animal products Or Else The Media And Consumer Base Will Come For Your Throat and the dairy industry is so friggin saturated here that the likelihood of it gaining any kind of acceptance for adding vit d to just plain normal milk rather than just getting run out of the market seems... idk kinda slim to me? but idk the intricacies of dairy economy, i just know every couple years everyone cries and bitches about dairy prices going up a couple cents and the dairy farmers wanting more money from the government rather than just idk not overproducing milk to the point no one else in europe wants to take it off of our hands
this is one of the big national brands of dairy stuff that's headquartered here ("land o lakes" refers to the nickname of minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes) and as you can see all their milk has vitamin A&D added just as a matter of course. some add extra calcium or protein but i generally don't buy those. i've been wondering if i should. but anyhow cows and dairy are a big Thing around here, northfield's motto is "cows, colleges, and contentment" for instance, and i've never heard of any impurities or diseases being involved in any dairy products from around here. every so often there's a salmonella scare with eggs, but never with milk. i guess putting in vitamins isn't considered meddling, so much as value added, like putting fruit in yogurt. it's just something you gotta offer.
i mean it's definitely considered meddling here :P milk IS generally a pretty safe food, yeah, just in general Adding Things Not Naturally In There gets people all kindsa up in arms about it, but we also don't tend to go for the multivitamins as much as US folk in general do, I feel? i'd try to get my vitamin d from the yoghurt i know has it in there but a) afaik they don't come in lactose free and b) they're small yoghurt cups for small hands and I'd probably eat a whole six pack of them in one go and still be like 'hm.......... not enough snack' so uh........ less than ideal.
i'd suggest making your own, as i know that's p easy, but i have no idea how it'd work with lactose free. man, lactose intolerant AND allergic to sunlight, that has gotta be a real job of work. sympathies.
work on meal planning continues apace. doing it in scrivener, since i'm real familiar with the software. except i'm not familiar enough, i guess, because i can't remember if there's a way to auto-generate synopsis cards from the content. i vaguely recall there's a way to tell it to just always put the first few lines of the text doc onto its index card, automatically. i'm pretty sure i've done that in previous projects, like when i was storyboarding comics. it'd be just tremendously handy for this project, where the whole text fits onto the card anyhow. but i can't find the option. phooey.