As The World Turns

I didn’t post anything yesterday, even though it was a Wednesday and Wednesdays are my self-imposed days to feature off-the-beaten-path Thrift Scores.

I was planning to post something yesterday, but life got in the way and gradually ate into my waking hours. Funny that, life… As I realized that I wouldn’t be able to get to my computer and post something on this particular Wednesday, I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated and agitated. It was a Wednesday, and people were counting on me to post something. I wanted to post something. Blogging is important to me. It is important to other people that I blog. Today is a disaster! I can’t not post on a Thrift Score Wednesday! I was not impressed– not with myself, not with my schedule, not with the chirpy “[new post]” emails that kept flooding into my inbox (grating reminders that other people had found time on a Wednesday to sit down at their own blogs. Bastards.)

Imagine my astonishment when I discovered that the world kept spinning on its axis, despite my inability to make it to my computer yesterday. The laws of gravity and physics still applied, the sun rose and set like it usually does, and my hands still got dry and scaly after doing intense amounts of dishes. The laundry didn’t do itself. The compost container filled up as it usually does in the course of a day in the kitchen. Life went on, even without my (groundbreaking) (hip and innovative) Thrift Score post. Imagine that. Huh.

As you can see, I haven’t fully recovered from my Weekend of Falling Behind. I’m still lagging along and putting more pressure on myself because of it. Bah! I haven’t managed to find time to read or comment on any of your recent posts. Sigh. It’ll just take some more time, getting back into the old Harbour routine and figuring out when (and if) there’s time for anything else. Bear with me, please. Hopefully I’ll be back to normal in a bit.

Perms and Combs

Despite the tantalizing title of this post, I will not be meandering through the fascinating world of chemically-induced curls or the instruments of follicle torture teasing today. Nope. *Let down alert:* When I say ‘perms and combs,’ I mean it in the geeky Math Club way– permutations and combinations. (Us math wizards just like to abbreviate certain “terms” to keep our secret language of “arithmetic” on the “down low”. Thx!)

Anyway, in case I have crushed some of your hopeful hearts a little bit with my double-barreled tactics of:

a) Not talking about permanent wave hairstyles

AND

b) Forcing math upon your resistant brains instead,

I would like to extend a peace offering of sorts– an olive branch, if you will:

(Here is a photo of me with a fresh perm and an oversized, paint-splattered T-shirt dress. You’re welcome. Thank you for reading my blog and for indulging my random tangents and whims!)

So where was I? Oh, yes: permutations and combinations. Aside from cutting out dairy from my diet (which I’ve been successful with since January 2010), one of the first major recommendations I’m tackling in my Personal Beauty Detox Journey deals specifically with proper food pairings. Kimberly Snyder goes into considerable detail in her book, The Beauty Detox Solution, about which foods should be paired together to help optimize digestion and which foods should be eaten separately for the same purposes. Food combinations are not a new idea at all– indeed, I had heard the concept a number of times and a number of years before reading this particular book, but I had never really incorporated it into my lifestyle.

(OK, OK– you’ve got me: In all honesty, I actively resisted the notion that I should give up my beloved fruit/nut, hummus/crackers, eggs/toast, almond butter/anything else combos in the service of better digestion. The knowledge about proper food pairings was received, then considered… then consciously ignored. Ahem.)

But I’m on a Beauty Detox Journey now! And I’m willing to try new things! So I decided to attempt better food combinations as an initial step because it doesn’t involve adding in any unfamiliar foods to my diet or eliminating any of my routine staples, either. Instead, this suggestion simply asks followers to rearrange their already existing diets to minimize/eliminate any poor food combinations, which can be extremely taxing on the digestive system. According to the ‘real-life’ vignettes in Kimberly’s book, many people have benefited greatly from this one step alone– success stories of weight-loss, increased energy, and better digestion abound!

The First Step: Breakfast

After a quick review of the food combination guidelines (which are neatly summarized here– check out #3), I came to the immediate and dismaying realization that my normal breakfast dish– oatmeal with dried cranberries, ground flax seeds, and a modest trickle of flax seed oil on top– violates nearly every fundamental rule of food combining. It mixes seeds (protein/fat) with a grain, it incorporates oil, and it mixes in a fruit, which should always be eaten separately (let alone ripe and raw instead of dried!) Baby steps, right?

Undeterred (well, maybe a little bit deterred), I finished up the rest of our cranberries in our usual breakfast style and left them off the grocery list when they had run out. Then, to preserve the semblance of sweetness in our morning oatmeal sans cranberries, I started to cook the oats with a small amount of natural vanilla extract and added some nutmeg and cinnamon as well. I’ve still been using some flax oil on top– the ground flax seeds moved onto my afternoon salads– but the goal is to wean myself off of the oil as well when my bottle runs out. (Eventually, I will possibly even graduate to drinking a Glowing Green Smoothie at breakfast instead of cooking oats at all, but for the time being, a cooked a.m. meal is still de rigeur in Chez Baby Steps.) No big deal.

The Next Step: Lunch

Lunch hasn’t required as much of an adjustment on my part, because I usually eat a She-Ra sized salad in the afternoon, anyway.

Yeah!! I LOVE SALADS!

I did transfer my ground flax seeds from the breakfast to the lunch time slot, and I’ve also subbed my regular balsamic vinegar with raw and unfiltered apple cider vinegar– look at me, Princess of Power in the Beauty Detox department!! Other than that, I’ve just been careful to include only one protein on top of my greens, instead of 2 or 6 or 8. Simple is better, no? I’ll either toss some pecans or slice a boiled egg on top of my salads now– not both anymore.

The Final Step: Dinner

Speaking of how simple is better, I was getting into the habit of making really elaborate, complex, and decadent dinners, most of which contained eleventeen hundred ingredients and naturally violated the fundamental tenets of food pairing. So I’ve yanked on the reins of my free-spirited inner chef and tried to keep things more simple in the kitchen. Baby steps! Simplicity! We eat a lot of greens, stir-fries, or soups for dinner, so nothing much has changed here. (Proper food combinations are a lot easier to achieve for a woman who never grew up with the typical “meat and potatoes” dishes.) Moving right along…

The Bonus Step: Fruit

Incredibly, fruit has been the most challenging food pairing recommendation for me. Defeated by fruit! Fruit is supposed to be eaten on an empty stomach (so either 30 minutes before a meal or a full hour– or more– following a meal). I have caught myself munching on homemade granolas or trail mixes that pair fruits with other foods like nuts or seeds, and I’m also mysteriously craving things like fruit pies and pastries (which I wasn’t really interested in until I learned that fruit should be eaten by itself!) The fruit thing will be an ongoing step for me, but like any new habit, all it takes is a little bit of time and patience.

What about you, dear readers?

Had you heard about proper food pairings before?

Do any of you follow the principles of food combinations to help your digestion?

Anybody else defeated by the simple apple? Anyone? Bueller?

The Weekend of Falling Behind

I knew this was going to happen sooner or later, but to be perfectly honest, I thought I was in the clear until at least July. It’s only April and I’m already falling behind in life, blogging, laundry, cooking, working out, and everything else in general. Seriously??! This can’t be…

From bcmagg.blogspot.com

This weekend was the first ‘long’ weekend of the Harbour season, and it was also the first time Marty and I have actually worked at our art booth over Easter. (During our first season, we got our license after Easter had passed, and last year, the Easter weekend was rainy and we were moving into– and immediately out of– our mouldy rental house in The Sticks.)

Anyway. Who knew that so many people celebrated The Resurrection by sauntering down the causeway in humble Victoria, BC? Alleluia!

Good Friday turned out to be a Great Friday for us– the sun was finally shining, and thousands upon thousands of people poured themselves along the waterfront, many of them with open wallets and generous spirits. Ah, religious holidays! We went from working shorter hours and even being a little bored at our booth to being slammed with excited customers! Slammed, I tell you! (Don’t get me wrong– it was fantastic to have business hopping like a regular Easter bunny again. It was just… unexpected. And earlier than we had planned.) We ended up putting in 10 and 11-hour days on Friday and Saturday and also resuming our old routine of stocking up inventory into the wee hours of the mornings. Yowza. Trial by fire. Totally exhausted. Welcome to summer! (??)

I couldn’t believe how many of you were posting on your blogs over the weekend. Curse ye with open schedules! I felt like I was slipping under water with all of the work and cooking prep I was doing for the Harbour, and then I’d quickly check my e-mail, only to find 1 billion messages in there– all of which started with “[new post]“. Bah! I know that I’ll be able to get into working order again soon, but in the meantime, I just feel like I’ve had the carpet ripped out from underneath my feet.

I’ve fallen behind. Very suddenly. And very dramatically. [insert haggard-looking cartoon Dana drawing here.]

...Or a cheesy stressed out cat. Whatevs. Image from www.calldrmatt.com

Thankfully, it is raining outside today, so I have a chance to regroup at home. I am making soups, doing laundry, and reading all of your incessant inspiring and informative blog posts. (You know I’m just jealous that I didn’t have a chance to sit at my laptop this weekend!) I think we’ll be heading right back into a slow-paced spring, now that the first long weekend is over and done with, but geez– I can’t believe how quickly I went from being prepared to being hopelessly lost and scrambling to catch up. Apparently, it doesn’t take much!

Dethroning the Dairy Queen

I used to reign Queen in the Kingdom of Dairy.

Don’t believe me? Think that I’m exaggerating my personal importance to (and sway over) the dairy industry, when all along I would only eat a modest pat of butter every few days? Ha. Consider this: A typical breakfast for me consisted of two (or three) granola bars washed down with 500mL of milk at least. Every day. Lunch would include a cheese-flavoured bagel smeared with cream cheese and topped off with generous slices of cheddar. (No, I am not making that up.) Dinner would be homemade macaroni and cheese, a Greek salad tossed with large chunks of feta, or a large bowl of pasta topped off with a cream sauce and an avalanche of parmesan. My favourite desserts? Cheesecake. Ice cream. Frozen yogurt. Milk chocolate. Iced cappuccinos. Anything milky, creamy, and full of dairy.

There is a whole *magazine* called "Dairy Today". Who knew? Cover courtesy of Pentagram website.

It would be an extreme understatement to say that I simply liked dairy. I loved dairy, craved dairy, and clung to dairy with the fevered grip of a woman possessed. Even though it made me feel phlegmy, congested, and wildly bloated within mere minutes of consuming it, I refused to give it up. Dairy was my right, my vegetarian prerogative. And even when numerous health professionals advised me to take dairy out of my diet, I resisted vehemently. No way, man– I’ve already taken out meat. You can’t make me take out anything else, especially something as ‘harmless’ and ‘innocuous’ as dairy.

My Herbivore sticker

Dairy wreaked havoc on my digestive system, but it took me all the way up until last year to acknowledge and admit this to myself. Even as a young teenager, I literally sounded like a creaky old house when I tried to digest anything with dairy in it. My intestines would gurgle and sputter like rusty old pipes, and occasionally I even had to raise my voice to be heard over the groans of my churning bowels in conversation. (Classy!) Quite often, my belly would distend after eating dairy (which was basically after every single meal), and I would waddle around uncomfortably like an 8-month pregnant woman. Dairy did not agree with my system– at all– but I would not agree to cut it from my diet. At all.

Dairy also had its way with my complexion, but I didn’t realize (or respect) this fact until just last year again. I had a considerable case of acne from the age of 12 onward. New and painful sores appeared daily, and older ones scarred my face and neck:

My best friend and I in early university. Notice her gorgeous peaches and cream complexion. Notice my not-so-gorgeous fire ants in the olive grove complexion... This was on a "good day", otherwise I would have been too embarrassed to have my picture taken from close-up.

I hated having acne, and I tried (what I thought was) everything over the span of many years to get rid of it: special creams and face washes, zit-zapping lotions, specific brands of birth control pills, and even two courses of an incredibly potent (and expensive! and dangerous!) anti-acne prescription medication called Accutane. Alas. Relief was always temporary, and my acne would return with an angry vengeance soon after I discontinued whatever treatment I had been using to keep it at bay. It was a very discouraging and self-confidence-sapping cycle. (Because who wants to have fire ant replicas crawling all over their face?)

If somebody had told me in high school that dairy (not “my hormones” or “an oily constitution”) was the prime culprit for all of my skin problems, I probably wouldn’t have quit eating milk products. I wasn’t ready to give it all up at that time in my life (eating dairy = social acceptance), and I was more comfortable with the idea of just taking expensive, extremely abrasive medications instead– even medications that were correlated with birth defects, much-higher-than-average risks for blood clots, and depression/suicidal tendencies. Cut out dairy?! No way, José!! Look at pictures of horribly deformed fetuses and then sign a waiver that promises my doctors, their extensive legal teams, and Jesus himself that I won’t ever get pregnant while taking Accutane, forever and ever amen? Meh. No big deal. Give me those documents to sign! And bring on the celibacy!

Obviously, things have changed a lot since then.

After gaining some modest ground in the clear skin department circa 2006-2008, my complexion started getting more, um, rugged in late 2009/early 2010 again. I noticed more acne scarring and more pimples appearing on my cheeks, forehead, and along my jaw line. (So yes– basically all over my face.) While I was complaining to my dear mother about this, I discovered that she had a dairy sensitivity of her own, which manifested itself in breakouts on the skin. Who knew? Genetics! Well. I resolved to cut dairy out then and there, just to see how it would impact my complexion. (Screw my sorry-assed digestion– I just wanna be a Cover Girl!)

Lo and behold, eliminating dairy from my diet worked. Like a charm. (Or a genie!)

Within mere days of cutting dairy out from my diet, I felt lighter, less bloated, and way less phlegmy. By the 3-month mark, I had dropped nearly 15 pounds from my average-sized frame (and that’s without changing even one other thing about my diet and exercise habits!) Today, about 15 months after cutting out all dairy (even butter) from my diet, I haven’t gained any “dairy weight” back. It’s off for good (as long as milk, cheese, yogurt, and butter are off the menu). I’ll get the occasional breakout still, but only if I am very stressed out, tired, or if I’ve eaten a whole bunch of flour the day before. It’s incredible to see how much my skin gauges and reflects my diet and lifestyle as a whole– I really can read it like a map now, whereas before I gave little to no credence to the idea that our skin reflects our inner health.

Kimberly Snyder (she of “The Beauty Detox Solution” fame) recommends that everybody cut dairy out from their diets. Completely. She’s fine with people keeping some meat and eggs on their menus, but when it comes to dairy, she puts her foot down. Take it out. Too acidic, too congesting, too laden with hormones and antibiotics, too not-meant-for-adult-human-consumption, too calcium-leaching, too contrary to inner and outer health. (Of course, she is very eloquent, professional, and encouraging in her book when outlining her arguments against consuming dairy. She’s not nearly as tantrum-prone and ultimatum-laden as I’m making her sound in my overly simplistic summary! )

I consider myself very fortunate to have already cleared this particular hurdle in my personal Beauty Detox Journey. (I first came across Kimberly’s blog when I resolved to examine the connection between dairy consumption and acne on a personal level– her post “The Acne-Dairy Connection” confirmed what I was suspecting about dairy products based on my own body’s symptoms and inspired me to take dairy out for good.) Anyway. Eliminating dairy from my diet was difficult on many levels, especially because I loved it and also because it is so prevalent in restaurants and a surprising number of packaged foods. (Read the labels– dairy, milk, and sketchy “milk ingredients” are everywhere!) I do think that having a sensitivity to dairy makes it easier to cut out; feeling horrible and/or getting acne because of dairy makes for a pretty powerful motivator to take it out! The biggest motivation for me, however, has been noticing the drastic differences between my body “on” dairy and “off” of it. Clear skin, better digestion, not as phlegmy or full of mucous, plus 15+ pounds lighter without having to think or worry about it? I’ll take it.

The Dairy Queen: Off with her acne-ridden head!