I managed to drop quite a bit of weight during my two weeks of outdoor vacation steelhead fishing on the Deschutes and hiking all over near Mazama but it rebounded very quickly this time around and this week I hit a new high of 159!!!! This is the most I’ve weighed in several years. I hope that the 160 mark isn’t too far away, I’d like to get there and really I’d like to be back around 165 which was my best shape weight.
Monthly Archives: October 2015
Run With the Kokanee and 2015 Wrap-up
Saturday was my last trail run of the regular season for 2015, the Run With the Kokanee 10k sponsored by the Bellevue/Issaquah chapter of Trout Unlimited and Northwest Trail Runs. I walked this event last fall, it was the first even I’d been to in several years after being sick so it was good to be able to go back and actually run it this time. This is a “trail” run in that it is all on trails but about 2 miles of the 3 mile loop is paved bike trail and the last mile is packed grass trail plus it is dead flat which all adds up to a perfect PR course.
I ran with my Luna Sandals again on this event as I have at all events this year but forgot about the pavement and I kind of hate using Lunas on pavement. After doing reg and sitting around for 2 hours then taking off at a good clip at the start my left calf cramped up about one mile in and I wasn’t really sure I was going to do the second lap but luckily by the time I got to the end of the lap @ 25:12 (my fastest 5k time by far), I was feeling better so went for it. The second lap was much easier though I slowed a bit and ended up crossing the finish at 51:18. This beat my previous best 10k time by 9 whole minutes.
Meatless Mornings
After 20 months of meat at every meal I’m finally to the point where I don’t need it at every meal so I’ve been instituting Meatless Mornings quite a bit this last week. Eggs are what saved me, once I could eat them daily it opened up my possibilities for breakfast meals that didn’t have to include a sausage patty or bacon. I was in a total run on the basic AIP Scramble which had been my staple breakfast item for about a year. This week I’ve gone meatless about half the days and here are a few of my breakfasts from the week:
Scramble with chanterelles and asparagus with sweet potato hash browns, a banana and a coconut milk latte. It is so nice to be able to eat mushrooms again, just in time for chanterelle season in the NW since they are one of my favorite mushrooms. A few days before this I had a scramble with asparagus, zucchini and button mushrooms.
Another good SIBO post
This must be the week of good SIBO posts because here is another that was going around on various Facebook pages – Why Diet Alone Is Not Enough to Treat SIBO. This is another post that I wish I’d read two years ago since I spent a LOT of time on the low FODMAP diet while taking herbals when I probably should have been pigging out on FODMAPs at that time and saving the low FODMAP for after I eradicated the little buggers. Instead the 18 months on low FODMAP caused the current imbalances I’m dealing with in my colon.
On that front, I have added in more good food for bacteria this week. I made nomato sauce yesterday with the full dose of onions and garlic for the first time and seemed fine with it. This morning I made banana flour pancakes, green banana flour is a great source of resistant starch and so far so good on that front. Hopefully between the addition of more FODMAPs in my food, the probiotics with potato starch and the fermented foods I’ll build back up my colon flora and get my butyrate and SCFA levels back to normal in the next 6-12 months.
Good reading for those with SIBO
Here is a great post by Riley Wimminger entitled Words of Wisdom for SIBO Newbies that I really wish I’d been able to read two years ago when this whole SIBO journey started, it has some great advice on how to hang in there for the long haul.
On the point about restricting your diet only as much as needed, I was talking with Dr. Keller yesterday and this point came up in our conversation. She recommended no one stay on the super restrictive low FODMAP diet longer than six months since it does mess with your microbiome. Of course I was low FODMAP for almost 18 months so it is no wonder that my butyrate, short chain fatty acids and microbial diversity are all a bit out of whack. It is a challenge for those whose SIBO won’t clear within six months though, what to do to keep the microbes happy yet also keep the symptoms down, a balancing act for sure.
Paleo now, no longer low FODMAP AIP
In the last few months my diet has expanded quite a bit to where I no longer consider myself eating AIP (Autoimmune Protocol) but instead am eating a pretty full Paleo diet. I added in eggs first about six months ago and have been slowly expanding with some nuts and seeds. I’ve also stopped the low FODMAP portion of my diet and have added in many fairly high FODMAP foods. This week I even went a little crazy and had a bunch of garlic and mushrooms with several meals with no real effects, I was kind of surprised. I’m finally able to eat apples and stone fruit which are my favorites. I also ate a lot of raw food on my trip to the Deschutes with no issues so salads are back. I eat a TON of sweet potato these days which are pretty hard to handle for most SIBO sufferers but I eat several a day now.
Watching salmon
For the last few weeks we have spent pretty much every afternoon sitting by the river watching salmon. Our little stretch of river has become prime spawning ground for the pink salmon which were in huge numbers this year, upwards of 6.5 million fish in the Puget Sound rivers. The Raging was so low that I wasn’t expecting to see any but a week or so after they appeared in the Tolt we got our first fish. Now we have a dozen or more which provide us with a few hours of entertainment every afternoon. I shot the video with my iPhone a few days ago so you can see a bit of what we sit and watch every afternoon.