Monthly Archives: August 2015

Seattle paleo burgers

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I realize I’ve posted about Paleo eats in Portland and the Quad Cities but have never mentioned Seattle yet.  Well, in the last few weeks I’ve actually eaten out a few times at burger places that are Paleo friendly and thought it was due a post.

Blue Moon Burgers

IMG_8511First was Blue Moon Burgers in Fremont which Kristen and I went to on the day of the Geocaching Block Party.   Blue Moon has an extensive Gluten-free menu and even a Paleo Burger on the menu which consists of a 1/3 lb. beef patty, two strips of bacon, an egg and red onion all wrapped in lettuce.  I left the sauce off.  They also have sweet potato fries of various forms, regular and curry which are also GF.   Blue Moon also locally sources it’s beef and gives back to the community.   Blue Moon has location in Fremont, South Lake Union and Capitol Hill.

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Weight Update

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IMG_8602It has been two weeks since I got serious about trying to get my weight back up with Operation Bradley Cooper and a little over a month since I cratered out at 151.   What has happened in the this last month? I’ve managed to gain 5.8 lbs is what happened!  I’m now at 156.8, the most I’ve weighed since February when my weight started declining again.   It really seems that something in my system shifted in the last few weeks since I’m finally able to gain weight and keep a steady gain.  Granted, I’m eating a lot more calories than I’m burning so maybe still not absorbing perfectly but at least I know  that if I eat enough food that I can indeed keep the weight trending in the right direction.

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The sleep plan – phase 1

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As I mentioned in my last post, I have been dealing with some middle of the night (or sometimes early in the night) insomnia for the last month and decided to go to a sleep clinic to see what I could do.    I had the appointment on Wednesday and, of course, on Monday and Tuesday nights slept like a baby for over 9 hours each night, I think I had hit the point of total exhaustion.

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Sleep issues, if it isn’t one thing it’s another

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For the last two weeks my sleep has been really rough while my SIBO has been minimal and my weight has been on an increase finally.   I never sleep great but usually I can eek out 7.5-8 hours per night with a few wake ups in there but since coming back from Iowa early in the month I have been progressively sleeping less and less with many more interruptions in my sleep.   For the last week, at least, my pattern is to fall asleep no problem, wake up 2 hours later and then fall back asleep after maybe a bit of reading.  I then wake up again 1.5-2 hours after that feeling pretty wide awake, my body thinks it is 4:30 in the morning and it is 1:00.  I  then never really sleep great after that, I’ll doze off and wake up again every few minutes.  Some mornings I crash again around 4:30 and finally crawl out of bed between 5:30-6:30.

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The old PRs continue to fall

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Ignore that distance, it was 10.4 miles. GPS in the Watershed is always off.

Today was the Summer Blast at the Redmond Watershed put on by Northwest Trail Runs. The Watershed and this run are special to me since I ran my first ever trail run, a 10-miler, at the Watershed, did my first marathon at the Watershed and ran my fastest half there too.   Plus I spent a lot of time running in this park when I lived in Redmond, it was my primary training ground.

I was originally signed up for the half thinking maybe I’d be ready for it by today but alas, I was not.  I stopped running for the most part after dropping weight again so since the Lord Hill 10k I’d run maybe twice and those were 4 mile runs.  So I hadn’t even made it half of a half marathon in distance yet.  On top of that we are heading to Mount Rainier on Monday to do the Northern Loop and I didn’t want to be totally wiped out before starting that.  So, I bumped down to the 10-mile run figuring I could bail at 5 if I needed to.

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Operation Bradley Cooper

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nrm_1421857985-elle-bradley-hEven though I feel about 99% better and much healthier than a year ago I’m still struggling with my weight.   I was up to 159 in December and thought that I was on my way to 160 and done with all this weight loss that I’d been struggling with after dropping from 183 to 146 earlier in the year.    Then early in the year I dropped down into the 156-157 range and stayed there for several months.  In March I dropped down into the 153-154 range and ended up stuck there for months.   Most of the early summer I fluctuated in this range and started trying to eat more to see if I could bump it up.   Then in late July Catherine said I was looking gaunt again so I weighed myself and was at 151 which was the lowest I’d been in a year.  Since then I have been struggling to stay above 150, mostly stuck right around 152 even eating around 3000 calories per day.

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3 months of no treatment

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I stopped taking antimicrobials at the beginning of May to get ready for my last SIBO test on May 15th when I was down in Portland.  That test was still positive but very low and when I met with Dr. Keller on the 18th we decided to just quit chasing after those last few points for a while.  Instead I decided to work on motility, trying to heal my gut lining, trying to get my good bacteria repopulated in my colon plus give my liver some time to recover from the assault it was under with that last 6 weeks of treatment.

It has now been three months, the longest I’ve gone without actively treating SIBO in the last two years and I feel really good.  Overall I have no symptoms at all most days and even on the days I have some symptoms they are very mild and late in the day.   My poops are back to normal and constipation is not an issue at all these days, I go very regularly several times a day.   I’m eating a pretty full AIP diet these days with some eggs thrown in there too and a few seeds and selective nuts occasionally.   I can now handle lots of sweet potatoes and plantains, things that would have killed me a year ago.  Better yet, I can eat chocolate and homemade Paleo ice cream!

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Quad Cities Paleo

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I finally went back to Iowa to visit the family and was pretty worried about the food situation.   In advance I had ordered some staples on Amazon and had them shipped out – ghee, coconut oil, matcha, coconut milk, … and I figured that the fall-back plan was to drive to Iowa City to visit the Whole Foods there and load up on meats.   Boy was I in for a pleasant surprise.

The local Hy-Vee grocery chain has a huge Health Food section complete with a dietician on staff and a notebook full of their Gluten-Free products.  That section had things like Julian’s Paleo Bread, GT’s Kombucha, local farm-raised eggs, Bubbies kraut & pickles, uncured bacon, good dark chocolate and a host of GF products I’d never go near anyway.   Still, impressive, almost as good as PCC.  A huge organic produce section rounded this out, no problems getting good broccoli, chard, berries, bananas, avocados and sweet potatoes.

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