Full-Gaps Day 74 (Pre-Intro)

Breakfast:
-fresh nectarine 
-coffee, with honey

Lunch:
-leftover Roast Beef
-leftover coleslaw

Snacks:
-crispy walnuts & hazelnuts
-raw kefir

Dinner:
-leftover Roast Beef
-leftover coleslaw
-Bubbies pickles

Supplements:
-1 tsp Magnesium Citrate (Natural Calm) with breakfast
-1 tsp Magnesium Citrate (Natural Calm) with dinner
No foot or leg cramps last night.

Dairy:
Week 5 of dairy reintroduction: introduced raw kefir last week
Both The Fiancé and I are doing well on raw kefir. I did a second fermentation and it was really good.
How To Make Your Kefir Taste Extra Yummy
Ripening Kefir under AirLock

Energy Level:
OK.

Mood:
Good.

Brain Power:
Good.

Back pain:
Low back is getting better. I put it out last week by sitting on a chair wrong. Gotta love that.

Foot pain:
Very mild in both feet.

Knee Pain:
A bit in the left knee when sitting.

Heartburn:
None.

Day of cycle:
4 (.)

Last nights sleep:
Good.

Anxiety:
Oh boy, a new category.

Anxiety is my newest most annoying Adrenal Fatigue symptom. It's especially annoying as it has decided to manifest itself, not as a panic attack like in a normal person, but as diarrhea. Yep, the joke's on me. Why, oh why, oh why, oh why does it have to be that? No idea. It is what it is.

I've been reluctant to talk about this, as it's a tiny bit (= A LOT!!) embarrassing, not to mention really gross. I'm not a good public pooper and what's been coming out of me is far from normal, so I've been pretty much homebound. There are little things I get out to do, within range of my toilet =] Groceries and such. But longer excursions, yikes, they come at a risk. I've had to turn down so many fun events and visits because of it and it really sucks.

I was really, super-duper hoping GAPS would address this sooner rather than later, but it hasn't. If anything it might be worse.

So, I'm about to do something drastic. I'm weaning myself off coffee. Oh dear coffee, I love you so. It's a necessary evil. It'll get The Fiancé off my back, as I shouldn't be drinking it at all with Adrenal Fatigue and he loves to remind me of that daily, and it will answer the question lurking somewhere in the back of my mind... Is coffee part of my poopy problem?

The other thing is that I really should be recording when it happens. Don't panic, I'm not going to be describing anything here, I'm not that gross. Well, actually I am, but I'm still not going to post it. I mostly want to see the frequency and what days it happens on. I'm hoping to see a pattern emerge. Something that will clue me in to the inner workings of my weird brain and help me figure out why the heck this is happening. I'm ready for my life back, please.

So in the spirit of documenting my progress on GAPS...
(d) x 3

Comments:
Missed a few days of posting again, oops!
Hurt my back last week and couldn't sit comfortably to type. Then I got busy. Then I was a lil' bit hungover. The truth hurts.

Lots of fun stuff going on with our Milk Share. To make life easier for our new Agister, I've put our share back to "normal". This means we'll be messing up our reintroduction schedule and will have raw milk to "bathe in" this week. (I secretly can't wait!!!! I miss it soooooooooo much!!) I like kefir, but I don't want to "bathe in" 4 litres of it a week. I was intending to wait and bring raw milk back last. It's not even officially GAPS legal, being a more advanced "bath product". Whatcha gonna do? At this time I feel it's more important to support the cause, our Agister, and our herd, so we'll be "bathing in" raw milk before I'd planned. (secret YAHOO!!)

Besides, I'm confident we won't have any negative reactions to it. We've been "using" it for 3 years and had no problems with the dairy we've reintroduced so far. The Fiancé reacts instantly to pasteurized dairy. His nose runs, he sneezes, and he even gets asthmatic at times. Scary. He's A-OK on raw dairy.

Ontario raw milk farmer takes over Home on the Range cows

Full-Gaps Day 63 (Pre-Intro)

Breakfast:
-leftover Spicy Meatloaf, with homemade ketchup and mustard  
-coffee, with honey

Lunch:
-Bison hotdog (GAPS legal), with sweet onion, ketchup, mayo, yellow mustard, and sauerkraut

Snacks:
-raw yogurt
-fresh prune plum & nectarine

Dinner:
-Beef Stew with Root Veggies
-Classic Drop Biscuits

Supplements:
-1 tsp Magnesium Citrate (Natural Calm) in the morning

Dairy:
Week 5 of dairy reintroduction: pasteurized butter  
Both of us are doing well with all of the dairy we've reintroduced so far.

Energy Level:
OK.

Mood:
Good.

Brain Power:
Good.

Back pain:
Low back was a bit stiff today. Had a weird dream that The Fiancé rolled over onto me while we were sleeping and I was yelling at him to wake up because he was crushing my back and then I woke up (for real) and was sleeping all contorted and now my back hurts. Hee hee.
A little between the shoulder blades pain this afternoon while preparing the stew.

Foot pain:
Mild in both feet.

Knee Pain:
None.

Heartburn:
None.

Day of cycle:
29

Last nights sleep:
Good. Didn't have a big pee-fest like the other night. Had the weird dream I mentioned above just before I woke up this morning.

Comments:
Feeling much better today. Got more done around the house, that's my yardstick. I wonder if this tired (low) phase I've been dealing with is a recurrence of my old fatigue pattern reasserting itself or truly just a crash caused by all my anxiety over attending and shooting that wedding a week and a bit ago.

Before I started taking supplements for Adrenal Fatigue, a year before GAPS, I had a repetitive cycle of fatigue where I would feel my worst the 2 weeks before my period, every freakin' month.

After I was on supplements (and I was on a lot of them, to the tune of $300 a month) my fatigue time shifted. I would feel good up until my period and then on day two I would go into my "low time". It's stayed that way up until this month. 

One of the first things I noticed about GAPS was that I didn't get a harshly defined "low time" (that 2 week stretch), I was consistently low, but not as bad as my actual "low times" of old.

So, I guess I have another wait-and-see on my hands.