Surgery Madness – Healing Journey Days 76-81

Journal:
There was absolutely not way for me to document each day. It was a whirlwind of doctor’s appointments, surgery, recovery, sleeping, eating, etc. Of course when I say sleeping, I mean off and on all night long. My husband had a very hard time coming off the anaesthetics following his surgery and refused to get the prescription medications that they offered him. He ended up receiving three incisions across his stomach (one of which was through the belly button) and thus it caused him pain with almost any movement. As long as he was idle, he was ok.

While he was in my care, I made sure that he received the best nutrition I could (he doesn’t eat everything I eat and sometimes it was more important he was happy than fighting over what food he wanted). Everything I made was vegan. It was only what he ordered in that was not. I was quite pleased that he allowed me to make him an awesome smoothie every morning. I highly recommend this nutritionally-filled shake.

Surgery Recovery-Boost Shake

7-8 Bananas
1 scoop Vega Chocolate Protein Powder
4 tbsp. Manitoba Harvest Hemp Pro Fibre Powder
4 tsp. Chocolate PB2
1 tsp. Green Protein Alchemy Magic Mint Powder
5 Medjool Dates

My husband is not the healthiest eater and rarely eats fruit. He also still is in the mindset of getting in as much protein as possible. So to accommodate all of these things, this is what I came up with. The nutritional profile of this shake is really good and it filled his cells with awesome nutrients for the day. I may not have been able to control everything he ate, but I at least felt better that the first thing his body was encountering in the morning was a blender full of goodness.

He also was really good about taking vitamin pills (I hate taking pills). He gave himself lots of B12, Vitamin D, and other vitamins that he had brought with him.

Though he was able to manage pain well and quite honestly, seemed to recover faster than the previous two times he has had this surgery, the doctor still gave him a 4-6 week recovery period. So he knows he has to be careful. Neither of us would like to go through this surgery again nor do I think he actually will if it goes wrong again.

My diet has been all over the place over these days. I have put much more care into making sure that he has had his meals than me having mine. I ate some of the meals off the Winter Days of Fruitrition menu, but did not finish them at all. I have 5 meals left that I am determined to accomplish by the end of the week. I still ate vegan but I would guess about 50% of my foods were cooked. I can’t even realistically report how I felt due to food because I also didn’t sleep well. With my husband getting up every 1-2 hours during the night and trying to do everything for him during the day while also maintaining sub plans and coordinations with things going on at school with the substitute teachers, I had no extra time for sleep. In fact, over 3 days, I only had 6.5 hours of sleep total. So I was very tired throughout the whole thing but happy nonetheless to be around my husband and to be able to take care of him.

Winter Days of Fruitrition 5b/7 – Healing Journey Day 75

Journal:
Today was a busy day. I had to work and try to get things ready for the substitute teacher that would be in for me the next two days while also trying to coordinate all of my husband’s appointments for the day before his surgery tomorrow. Thankfully, I woke up in enough time to actually make two smoothies this morning – one for my husband and another for myself – so I actually got to eat breakfast! I also had made some homemade orange juice last night that was easy to take with me this morning. However, this was a very sour orange juice… not sweet at all. Ugh… I paid $50 for a case of oranges and they are terrible. I’m really noticing the low quality fruit this year and it sucks. I’m not sure what I’m going to do.

After school, my husband and I had to leave right away for his last doctor’s appointment. He had blood work that had to be done fasted, so he had not eaten anything since the smoothie in the morning. He was so happy to have the blood work done so that he could finally eat. In celebration, I took him to what used to be our favourite restaurant. It’s a restaurant where you can build your own stir fry. However, when we got there, the name of the restaurant had changed, the management had changed, and instead of being a flat rate, we found out afterwards that we were paying by weight. Well, that was one hefty food bill. I don’t think we will be frequenting there any time soon.

We got a hotel for the night, a super nice one! It had a really nice kitchenette that I unfortunately did not get the chance to use. My husband was only allowed to eat until 2:00 am so we ordered a midnight pizza. I got a medium, hand-tossed pizza with extra pizza sauce and topped with pineapple, tomato and mushrooms. It actually was really good. You don’t need cheese to have a good pizza!

I stayed up as late as I could working on my sub plans. I did not end up with enough time to get them done at school during the day. Eventually it came to a point where I had to set my alarms and take a nap. I wasn’t concerned with getting a ton of sleep myself, but more concerned that my husband got good sleep so he could be better prepared for his surgery in the morning.

Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is bad.
-Happy my husband is here to visit.
-Tired.
-Slightly stressed.
-Hair looks awesome and is feeling great.
-Dehydrated. Need to get back in the water.

Weight at the end of the day = I was not able to weigh myself as there was no scale at the hotel.

Total Calories = 3610 (90% carbs, 3.5% fat, 7.5% protein… awesome macros!)

Winter Days of Fruitrition 5/7 – Healing Journey Day 74

Journal:
Well, today didn’t turn out to be the day I thought it would be. Here’s a list of what I mean:

1. I didn’t have time to make a smoothie again.
2. My bathroom didn’t get cleaned yesterday like I had planned, nor did my dog get his bath.
3. Though I brought lettuce, dates and bananas to school to make two separate dishes, I ended up combining them to make the one big salad.
4. Although I brought those things and made a salad, I was still super hungry and ate some extra hot lunch…. B-A-D I-D-E-A!
5. I did manage to get my dog bathed and my bathroom clean before leaving to go get my husband at the airport, but felt quite tired on the way there. So I stopped at Starbucks and order a Green Tea Frapp with soy. Not only was it served with whipped cream, I’m really starting to think it wasn’t soy. Ugh… not good. And I though I was doing so well avoiding coffee still. Dairy wasn’t supposed to be in my system either…
6. After picking my husband up, I was hungry. I purposefully hadn’t eaten a whole lot because I thought he may be hungry after his day of travelling. We ended up going to Denny’s where not only did I eat an entire skillet of potatoes and veggies, I ended up ordering an extra plate of hash browns as well. This wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that I could feel the oil they had cooked it with in my system later. I don’t miss oil…

So that about summed up my day. I was so excited to have my husband come home. It was really great to see him! However, I did still have to work the next day and he had a series of appointments to go to the next day, so neither of us could stay up late. It didn’t take either of us long to fall asleep.

Review of Symptoms:
-Tired but excited.
-Hungry but satisfiable.
-Acne still bad.
-Got my hair cut and it looks pretty good 😀
-Not feeling good after what I’m pretty sure was some dairy ingestion.
-Digestion is so out of whack.

Weight at the end of the day = 171.6 lbs (still the same)

Total Calories = 3164 (74% carbs, 17% fat, 9% protein… a little high in fat!)

Winter Days of Fruitrition 4/7 – Healing Journey Day 73

Journal:
I don’t know what happened to me today. Somehow I still ended up going to sleep later than normal, but even though I felt fairly wide awake, I still laid in bed for forever this morning. it wasn’t because I was cold or anything, but perhaps it was still a subconscious tiredness that seemed to kick in around three hours later. However, it was an exciting day because tomorrow, my husband comes to visit! I cannot wait!

I didn’t get up in time to make a smoothie this morning like I had planned. So instead, I packed up approx. 1.5 kg of mandarin oranges to eat, and also packed my last Romaine lettuce heart with some Medjool dates and half of an English cucumber to eat together.

The day actually went fairly well. I was able to eat all of my food which was really good. After work, I had a meeting that took way longer than we thought it would. However, it was good to have it done and out of the way.

After the meeting, I ran home to get ready and go to town. I had some grocery items I wanted to pick up plus go to the gym and fill up my car. I grabbed a salad… and then noodles. I was so on track! I did only get a small noodles this time with nothing else added for simple carbs. I also drove to two stores and went in without getting anything which was a little stressful in itself. I did not find any persimmons tonight and I need about 19 to finish the winter week of Fruitrition. I’m a little nervous about that, but have a few more stores I’m going to try tomorrow.

I had a really decent workout at the gym, though I did not finish my negative pull-ups. I will probably sound a bit “baby-ish”, but I really liked it better when my husband was there to set those things up for me. I’ll get over it sometime and make it up on another workout. But for tonight, they were skipped.

After getting home, I made a banana-date smoothie. My digestion is a little messed up with all the late night eating and the one cooked meal I’ve been eating a day, so after the smoothie, I did not eat anything else! Late night snacking was completely avoided tonight which made me super happy! And that pretty much summed up my night. I got almost everything done that I wanted to, and the few things I have left I should have time to do tomorrow before my husband arrives. In the meantime, I’ll be praying that I find some persimmons; a decent price wouldn’t be so bad either.

Review of Symptoms:
-Energy good.
-Endurance is good.
-Digestion is wonky.
-Acne is bad.
-Very busy today.

Weight at the end of the day = 171.6 lbs (same as yesterday)

Total Calories = 2970 (89% carbs, 5% fat, 6% protein)

Winter Days of Fruitrition 3/7 – Healing Journey Day 72

Journal:
I did not sleep very well last night. In fact, I didn’t go to sleep until extremely late, ended up waking up in the early morning as I had passed out on the couch, went to my room and went back to bed. This is not how to get good sleep…

Today was the busy day. I had a house to get ready, making sure everything was clean, and I had to get stuff ready for the week and ready for my husband’s surgery that is coming up this later this week.

To start off the morning, I made 1.8L of orange juice. I don’t like the oranges I bought. They are way less juicy than the prior ones I had and took so much longer to juice. I also used 7 more oranges than last time to make 200 mL less of juice. There truly is a difference in the oranges you use.

The next thing I ate was 2 bananas for a snack. It’s been a long time since I’ve actually just peeled a banana to eat it, so this was actually nice to be able to do.

After I was done cleaning the house, but before getting ready for my soccer game, I made a 10 banana smoothie with a few stalks of celery blended in. It wasn’t phenomenal, but it wasn’t bad either. It definitely filled me up.

Even though I had the banana smoothie 2 hours before the soccer game, I was still full at the game. We actually had a really good game (the score was 5-5) and I felt awesome during the game. My hip pain that I had is gone (I will keep an eye out until tomorrow though) and I just came from the game feeling great. I remembered to take a bottle of water to the game this time, so that helped as well.

After the game, I ate 5 dried figs that I had brought with me. It was definitely a convenient snack to bring with me to eat on the way home.

Finally, I tossed back and forth about whether to eat anymore tonight or not. I don’t have all the fruits I need for the week, and I really need to use up the bananas. But, I didn’t feel like I had enough stomach capacity to have 8 or 10 bananas in a smoothie. So what did my late night irrational brain come up with? A can of maple beans I have sitting on the cupboard. Ugh… Let’s just say I really wish that wasn’t the option I had chosen… Either way, to bed I go for tomorrow I am back to work.

Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is the same.
-Hair is super soft.
-Raw foods make me feel great.
-Digestion was a little slow…
-Energy was great.
-Excellent stamina in today’s soccer game.

Weight at the end of the day = 171.6 (up 1.2 lbs from yesterday… no more late night eating!)

Total Calories = 3433 (80% carbs, 10% fat, 10% protein… how perfect is that!)

Winter Days of Fruitrition 2/7 – Healing Journey Day 71

Journal:
I am so thankful that I am officially in the winter week of Fruitrition. This week involves a lot of bananas, and I have a lot of ripened bananas ready to go. The summer fruits were also extremely expensive, so my bank account could definitely use a break.

This morning, I started off with the best soup ever. I really enjoyed that strawberry mango soup earlier this week, but this mango/celery/cilantro/lime soup was so good. I actually wished I had more.

The next meal I ate was a bowl of chopped bananas covered with a date/carob sauce. If you ever have a chocolate craving, this is definitely something to make.

Following this dish, I went to town. I picked up a Subway gift card for my “secret person” (like a secret Santa) at work. I then went to the gym and did a full body circuit. I had to do it quickly because the gym closes early on Saturdays and I waited until after Sabbath to go to the gym. It was a good workout nonetheless, and the gym was fairly empty which was a bonus!

Now, after the gym, I really badly started wanting some cooked food. I could have easily driven to any fast food place, but I mentally fought myself and drove home. Success! This really is a mental game. And when I came in the door, I made myself a banana smoothie. Simple, but yummy. Unfortunately, I was so excited to drink it I forgot to take a picture. Oops…

As a night time snack, I had some celery and dates, kind of done like “Ants On a Log” where you fill the celery with peanut butter and raisins on top. For some reason, this organic celery was much saltier than the last couple celery bunches I’ve had. So it ended up being a really nice mix of salty and sweet. Try it out.

I did end up eating a little cooked food before bed (oats), but I felt so good eating all raw today. Man, raw is the way to go!

So that pretty much summed up my day. Tomorrow I have a lot to do because people are starting to come home this week and the house has to be completely in order. Plus I have some days off coming up that have to be planned for and preparations to do for my husband. It’s going to be a crazy busy day.

Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is the same…
-Digestion is good.
-Feeling so much better with raw foods.
-Energy was great during my workout.
-Still feeling a little dehydrated.

Weight at the end of the day = 170.4 lbs (up 1 lb from yesterday)

Total Calories = 3095 (83% carbs, 11% fat, 6% protein)

Summer Days of Fruitrition 7/7 – Healing Journey Day 70

Journal:
It felt so good to sleep in again this morning. I got a full 7 hours of sleep last night and I have to figure out how to do that throughout the week.

This morning, I chopped up some mangoes to eat that as a monomeal breakfast. The mangoes were not that great. I really wish I had access to some quality fruit. But I ate it and it was breakfast.

I had to go get a few groceries to cover the weekend (I will do my week-long grocery shopping on Sunday) and to go to the gym. Before heading out, I made some more dates wrapped in Romaine lettuce. It really is a tasty snack.

As I went out to town, I began feeling ravenous again. This ravenous thing is crazy! So I pulled up to Subway and got a salad. I stuck with being raw! I did add some guacamole to my salad which is something I don’t normally do. I wondered if the extra fat might help and honestly, I actually felt quite a bit better afterwards. I did my grocery shopping at two different stores, and then went into a weird state of mind. I had been thinking about my ravenous state and no-word-of-a-lie, ended up driving somewhere I was talking myself out of. I had honestly almost panicked about feeling ravenous so I stopped and got some teriyaki noodles as well as stopping at a coffee shop! People, I haven’t had coffee in the whole 70 days I’ve been doing this journey! Thankfully, I didn’t get coffee. Instead, I ordered myself a terrible green tea thing… I actually was kind of glad I didn’t like it because it means I won’t get it again! For the first time in days… I was stuffed! I tried to eat it all before going into the gym, and I couldn’t! Do you know how satisfying that is after days of not being able to get full? It was so nice.

So I did go to the gym. However, it was getting close to Sabbath by the time all the shopping and eating had happened, so I only had time for cardio. I did 30 minutes of cycling and felt amazing the whole time.

After the gym, I finished the rest of my purchased foods. I came home and put my groceries away, and rested for the rest of the evening. I did make some chopped bananas with a blended strawberry and date sauce. Delicious, but almost wish I hadn’t eaten it after it was gone. My stomach truly was full. The ravenous feeling was gone, and I was happy. No more freaking out. My body is back on track! I did not finish the last two meals for the final “summer” day, but I will incorporate those meals into the next couple of days. 6 more days of Winter Fruitrition, here I come!

Review of Symptoms:
-Ravenous feeling is finally gone!
-Energy is good.
-Still feeling a bit dehydrated.
-Acne is the same…
-Digestion is good.

Weight at the end of the day = 169.4 (down 1.4 lbs from yesterday!)

Total Calories = 3417 (87% carbs, 6% fat, 7% protein… awesome macros again!)

Summer Days of Fruitrition 6/7 – Healing Journey Day 69

Journal:
I’m telling you guys, prepping is the way to go! It was so simple to get up this morning (even though I was tired) and just put my premade orange juice and Jaffrade in the bag to take with me for the day. It was simple and I had the nutrition I needed for the half day of work that I had today.

After coming home, I did something HUGE: I cut up my first fresh pineapple! I honestly have never cut a pineapple before so as petty as it may seem, it was very exciting for me! I then made a strawberry date sauce to pour on top of it, and it was extremely delicious!

Now, looking at the menu, there were some things I could not make today because I didn’t have all of the ingredients. However, I noticed that there was a cucumber-date lettuce wrap recipe that I could make tonight, so I did and it was so yummy!

The danger with this was… I was ravenous again today! I honestly don’t know what’s going on. There are days where it is extremely difficult for me to eat 1800 calories, yet yesterday and today, I’ve been absolutely ravenous! The only other thing on the menu I could have made was a monomeal of mangoes, but I didn’t have the patience to do that tonight. So… I hit the cooked foods. I will say that I at least ate my raw foods first today, but I’m just not completely sure why I’m so hungry lately. I’ve even increased my water consumption! It could be because I’ve had my first period in 94 days and since I’m now near the end, my body is compensating? But I’m honestly not sure. I really never knew I could eat this much…

I didn’t go to the gym this evening, but I did do a small workout at home. Basically, I use a 10-lb db to do one-sided dumbbell rows, shoulder presses with side bends, and squats. The workout went well, but was nowhere near the calorie expenditure I would normally do; so I know this wasn’t the whole reason either. We’ll see how tomorrow goes.

Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is the same (at least not worse).
-Energy is decent.
-Feeling dehydrated even though I’m drinking more water and show no other signs of dehydration. This is bizarre as well.
-Feeling better getting a little more sleep, but more sleep still needs to happen.

Weight at the end of the day = 170.8 lbs (up 0.8 lbs which makes total sense… I’m surprised it’s not more!)

Total Calories = 4541 (84% carbs, 7% fat, 9% protein… so much food but awesome macros!)

Summer Days of Fruitrition 5/7 – Healing Journey Day 68

Journal:
I woke up exhausted again. I got one extra hour of sleep compared to the night before, but this is definitely something I need to work on. I know my body would thank me for it.

So, prepping the night before is REALLY helping me out. That’s the key to success. However, I did think I would be able to get up this morning to make the morning Jaffrade, but that did not happen at all. I didn’t soak my dates and I didn’t take out my orange juicer… so… I took my mango snack with me and the rest of the bananas that I did not use to make the banana celery smoothie last night. And I combined the two together to make myself a banana mango smoothie this morning. It wasn’t huge, but we could call it a good snack-sized smoothie.

I did end up eating some hot lunch which was a total lapse of brain. I didn’t need it at all. Yet for whatever reason, I did anyway. I’m really thinking my lack of sleep is messing with my ability to function. I have felt lacklustre at work, my patience has not been at its normal level, and even though I just had some awesome training the past few weeks, I find myself not using my training like I was so excited to do before. 4 hours of sleep a night is not enough. It needs to be fixed NOW.

In the afternoon, I did manage to get time to eat my soup that I made from mangoes, tomatoes, celery and basil. It was decent and the flavours were vibrant, all except the mango flavour. Quality mangoes would make all the difference.

I ended up taking a nap after work. I honestly was so exhausted. I probably could have slept the rest of the night, but the 20 minutes seemed to be all I could have for the time being.

To add to my exhausted bad choices, I found some more rice and chowed it down. I wished I hadn’t done it as soon as I ate it. Honestly… I’m frustrated.

I did prep some of the menu for tomorrow. I made two litres of fresh orange juice, and the Jaffrade I was supposed to drink for today, though I only made a half serving for tomorrow. Because my biggest jar only held 1.6L, I decided to drink the other 400 mL tonight. Let’s just say my stomach is a little distended…

I ate a lot today, and the worst part is, I felt like I could eat more. I’m not sure why I felt so ravenous, but I stopped before bed because I knew my body needs to digest. I didn’t even work as much tonight because I was just too tired. Thankfully, tomorrow is only a half day of work so I can get my errands done and sleep. Sleep and water are the two major things that I currently need.

Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is bad.
-Hair is feeling great.
-Period is super light/almost gone already.
-Feeling awesome muscle soreness from my workout yesterday.
-RAVENOUS!!!
-Need more water… and sleep…
-Exhausted!

Weight at the end of the day = 170 lbs (now this surprised me because it’s the same as yesterday!!)

Total Calories = 3692 (84% carbs, 6% fat, 10% protein… awesome macro ratio but woah… I ate a lot today!)

Summer Days of Fruitrition 4/7 – Healing Journey Day 67

Journal:
I was so tired this morning. I stayed up way too late working on things. After 6 designated alarms went off, I finally got up and got ready. Thankfully, my food preparations did help me out last night.

This morning, I was not able to eat right away. I had to wait until my students had their morning snack. Instead of having the smoothie first, I ate 2.5 chopped up mangoes. Again, these mangoes aren’t the greatest, but they were food. I finished eating the other 2.5 chopped up mangoes at lunch time. Having food prepped is REALLY helping me out.

In the afternoon, after getting home, I made the “Chocolate Mousse.” However, I have never seen a chocolate sapote in my life and because of such substituted more bananas and raw carob powder. It actually was really good, but I will be on a mission to find chocolate sapote fruit someday and try it.

I did go to the gym tonight and did another full body workout. My chest is still very sore from the workout two days ago, so it was very painful to do chest exercises again tonight. But I powered through and had an awesome workout. I finished the workout with a half hour of cardio on the treadmill. I did less with HIIT this time, and more with elevation changes. It was challenging but it was good.

After coming home, I finished the day off with the banana celery smoothie. Still not my favourite combination, but I can say my new Vitamix does a wonderful job of blending it up; so much better than my blenders previously.

So that pretty much summed up my night. I was extremely tired and really looked forward to going to bed.

Review of Symptoms:
-Acne is bad.
-Hair feels very fluffy and soft after shower today.
-Period is super light. Felt it the first day, but not since.
-Very tired.
-Digestion is good.

Weight at the end of the day =170 lbs (up 2.2 lbs from yesterday which is strange… though I did eat a lot today)

Total Calories = 2994 (89% carbs, 7% fat, 4% protein)