Day 5

Homework levels are beginning to consume me, so this will be brief so I can get back to that.  I have made time to try a few new foods, well two I guess weren’t “new” but I made some tiny adjustments and they were just as good!

For dinner last night, I used the leftover chicken breasts from the crockpot chicken on Monday to make an amazing Greek Inspired Chicken meal!  It is almost the same recipe as this one: Greek Inspired Chicken Breast Recipe except I subbed garlic infused oil instead of the garlic and instead of spinach on top, I added chopped cucumber and fresh mint.  SOOOO good!  So good in fact that I devoured it before I could take a picture of it!  Trust me, it looked as good as it tasted.

Since I made up a broth from the crockpot chicken, I wanted to throw together a quick soup with some of it and the rest of the leftover chicken.  One thing to note, I am loving the making your own broth from the chicken bones/skin, but cooking it in the crockpot overnight is a bit annoying because the WHOLE house smells like soup and I actually found it hard to sleep!  Next time I might make it in the basement and close the door haha!  The soup I made is one that I have made before, it is from Iowa Girl Eats: Harvest Chicken Quinoa Soup  The only changes I made was I excluded the onions and just sauteed the veggies in the garlic infused oil.  Looks yummy and I will be glad to have it on hand for a quick meal!  I accidentally used my smaller pot, though, so it was a bit full 🙂

harvest chicken quinoa soup

For breakfast yesterday, I made an impromptu oatmeal/quinoa bowl, semi-inspired by Chocolate Covered Katie.  It was oats cooked in coconut milk with some already cooked quinoa added, fresh pineapple, shredded coconut, cinnamon, and a tiny bit of maple syrup.  It was yuuummy!

oatmeal/quinoa pina colada!

Last thing I gave a whirl was 3 Ingredient Paleo Naan.  She had me at 3 ingredients!  Well, and Paleo 🙂  It is just almond meal, tapioca flour, and canned coconut milk!  I would say the only thing not super “easy” about them was they take quite a while to cook all the way through and I even made them pretty thin to hopefully save time.  I think it is because the canned coconut milk has a lot of fat, so it takes awhile for that to really cook.  Very tasty though and definitely satisfied my bread/carb craving!

paleo naan

A quick analysis of how I’ve been feeling: I would say it’s hard to tell.  I’m super tired and stressed with school right now, so that is definitely playing a factor.  Stomach wise, I would still hesitate to say I have seen a huge improvement.  Foods I have missed this week: BANANANANANA.  Yeah I am way missing bananas, though really my smoothies have been fine without them, just not the same.  I have also wanted chocolate a few times and been bummed to not have that.  I haven’t missed yogurt as much as I thought I would, my mashed carrots+almonds+raisins has actually been a satisfying alternative.   I’m thinking next week I might try adding bananas back to my smoothies.  We’ll see, I need to remind myself not to rush things because all of this takes a lot of time to figure out!  To quote the movie UP!: Adventure is OUT THERE! 😉

Cheat week

With the plan to fully implement the FODMAP diet coming up this weekend, I haven’t been quite as careful about what I’m eating and have intentionally eaten things that I knew wouldn’t be the best for me.  I know, not the greatest mindset and I really don’t recommend the “gorge yourself before diet” mentality, but it has been a busy week and my willpower was low.

So needless to say, I’ve been feeling pretty miserable this week, thanks to two pizza splurges and a few desserts.  I have at least found a few GF pizza crust recipes, so with some planning, I don’t need to give up pizza completely at least- especially since, amazingly, mozzarella is supposedly a-ok!  And same with desserts, if I take the time to make healthier ones, I can still indulge here and there.  I think the part I have found overwhelming this week is the lack of time to plan and prepare things.  Last week went decently because I had a sick day to get some cooking done!  This weekend and week has been chaotic and the piles of homework/reading are adding up, and so I’ve been eating terribly.

Sadly, though, even when I have tried my best to eat the right things, a few times it seems like it has backfired!  I made homemade oatmeal on Sunday with my homemade coconut milk, bananas, and bacon (weird, I know, but surprisingly tasty!).  All of that should be fine, in theory, and yet I felt really crappy afterwards and couldn’t eat lunch until after 1 because I just felt so terrible!  The only thing I can think of is maybe I have a sensitivity to bananas when they get too ripe.  I realized just recently that bananas are low FODMAP only when they aren’t super ripe.  Once they get pretty brown, the fructose level skyrockets, so assuming that fructose is one of my issues, this might explain my pain.  But oh what a terrible thing, I eat bananas all the time and they are a STAPLE for my smoothies- that’s the only way I can add all the crazy things that I do without needing any sort of sugar.  So I’m going to have to play around with this and see if bananas are actually an issue.

Another surprise issue was some buckwheat pancakes I made recently.  I made them a few weeks ago, before even considering this diet, but have heard good things about buckwheat, which despite its name, is wheat-free.  I had three of them for dinner and added some bacon (yeah I’ve been on kind of a bacon kick), topped with sunflower butter, bananas, and maple syrup.  I didn’t feel that great afterwards, but I thought it was because they were a lot more filling than I expected and three was too many.  So I had them again for breakfast a week or so later.  And didn’t feel that great afterwards, but again just thought maybe I ate too much or something.  I decided to give them a try again this morning, topping them with raspberries instead of bananas, and still it was an almost instantaneous feeling of miserable!!  So sadly, I think I’m intolerant to buckwheat.  What a bummer!  I hate wasting food, but I think I’m going to have to give the rest of them in the freezer the boot.  *sigh* Sometimes these adventures don’t turn out for the best, huh?

buckwheat pancakes w/ bacon