Week One, Day Two

It's week one of the preparatory phase for The Blood Sugar Solution and I'm tackling another five items today. Most of them involve getting your kitchen ready for this big lifestyle change. 

Step one: Set a date to officially start the six-week program.

OK. There are two prep weeks to this before we jump into the six week program. I started week one of prep yesterday, so my six week program will officially start on Friday, August 10th.

I will be on North Carolina at that time, at the tail end of a 10 day vacation. I thought long and hard about starting before or after vacation. It's going to be ridiculously difficult to start something like this while on vacation, out of my own kitchen and home element. On the other hand, I'm sick all the time and it won't be much of a vacation if I'm not feeling good. So either stay sick in the cabin all the time, eating 'vacation food', or put in a bunch of extra work and planning to be able to start this new health plan and hopefully feel well enough to get out and enjoy things with my family. We're planning lots of fun activities like hiking and swimming in natural water spots and bonfires and gem mining; it should be a fairly active vacation. I'd like to be WITH my family for those things.

As part of my prep next week I will spend a good deal of time planning out meals as best as possible in advance of the vacation. I'm also bringing my exercise program with me.

Step two: Prepare Your Healthy Kitchen

Well, they have a check box by this but really it's a headliner for steps 3, 4, and 5. So... done! (as soon as I tackle those anyway!)

Step three: Rid your kitchen of disease- and obesity-producing Frankenfoods.

Here he gives you rules on what NOT to eat, to ideally be followed for life. He says "if you read these rules and think there will be nothing left to eat, then you have been eating in exactly the way that will make you sick and will keep you that way." That is certainly a fear of mine! I guess that's saying something. Here's the rules in brief:

• Get rid of most foods with labels - labelled foods you keep should have fewer than five ingredients
• Get rid of all sugar (any form) and any foods with a form of sugar on the label; same goes for white rice and white flour. For me all flour has to go, even whole grain stuff, because I'm in the advanced stage.
• Get rid of anything with high fructose corn syrup.
• Get rid of anything with the word 'hydrogenated' on the label.
• Throw out any highly refined cooking oils such as corn, soy, etc. Also avoid toxic fats and fried foods.
• Throw out any food with ingredients you can't recognize or pronounce, or are in Latin.
• Throw out any foods with preservatives, additives, coloring, or dyes, "natural flavorings", or MSG.
• Toss all artificial sweeteners - ANY of them, or any foods with them. Include sugar alcohols - basically any word that ends in 'ol'. 
• If it was grown on a plant, not made in a plant, then you can keep it in your kitchen.

I'm a little confused because I've looked ahead at some of his recipes and sometimes he uses raw honey. I know I won't be using it because I'm on the advanced plan, so it'll be out for at least six weeks, but it would seem that honey is a sugar? Yet we keep it? Maybe it's not a sugar. Whatever, I'm keeping mine, I just won't eat it for six weeks. 

This is going to be a little rough because my son turns eight tomorrow and we're having his birthday party so I won't be getting rid of everything until after Monday (it's a sleepover of course!). I'm going to go clear out everything I don't need for the party right now though!

...

SEVERAL HOURS LATER...

My husband was a great help with this task. It was pretty overwhelming. I guess I hadn't cleaned up my diet as much as I'd THOUGHT. I know I fall into traps of 'I'll just buy this for the kids' and 'but we need this for a paaaaarty'. We did keep some things for Drake's birthday party tomorrow, and we will do a final kitchen clean out on Monday evening. 

All the opened items that needed to be trashed.

The hardest thing here was tossing the cooking / baking staples I have used my whole life. Flour. Sugar. Panko. Worcestershire sauce. Soy sauce (it has wheat). Powdered sugar. Brown sugar. My entire 'cooking staples' cabinet is almost empty. My anxiety is pretty high over this one. I feel a little nauseous, a little like crying.

All the unopened items that will be donated to the food pantry.

Biggest points of panic: soups. I keep chicken noodle soup on hand for when I'm sick. With all my stomach problems it's become quite a staple. I guess I'll have to plan ahead and make / freeze my own? Also broths. All my chicken broth had undesirable additives. So did my canned tomatoes. Will I have to make *everything* on my own from now on??

And pastas. I've been eating Dreamfields pastas because they have a low amount of digestible carbs. Giving them away makes me really sad. I won't be eating any pastas for at least six weeks though. And they aren't whole wheat anyway.

A bag of stuff my husband couldn't stand to let go. He's taking it to work with him.

A bag of stuff for my mom that I know she'll use.

Overall this was REALLY emotionally draining. I wanted to cry more than a few times. I did a little dance of joy when I found some bags of nuts I didn't know I had because that means there's actually still something in the house I can snack on. We decided to keep a few things for the kids - mac and cheese, yogurt, ice cream, popsicles. I won't be buying more when it's gone, and if it becomes a problem for me I'll toss it, but they should be eased into it a little bit. Largely because there's practically nothing left to eat in the house except nuts and frozen fish, which they really don't like. My son helped me clean out one of the freezers though and was excited that we are getting rid of all the unhealthy stuff. Kids are amazing.

This was confusing at times too. There's a lot of stuff in food! Calcium chloride! Ferrous something or other! Artificial colors! Natural flavors! Sodium benzoate! Carrageenan! Lecithin! And many, many more. Very overwhelming. What's ok, what's not ok? We had to keep asking ourselves 'was it grown on a plant?' 

Finally, this is frightening. We are, like many in these economic times, struggling financially. The cost to replace these foods with healthy items is going to be painful for us. Honestly, I'm not sure how we're going to do it. I've kind of been pantry-eating the past week as it was... now my pantry is almost bare and I feel more than a little panicked at the thought of finding the money to fill it with foods to nourish my family this week. Health is costly. I just keep reminding myself that in the long run, sickness costs more.

I did it. I know I should congratulate myself for it but right now I just feel kind of sick over it.

Step four: Watch the Supermarket Savvy video at his website.

You can find Supermarket Savvy here. It's 11 minutes long. 

Discusses - soda pop, liquid calories, breakfast, oils, proteins, plate proportions.

Step five: Get your essential kitchen tools.

In the book he has included a list of tools he considers necessary to prepare and cook food. He says to make sure you have most of them. I'm not listing them all here. Luckily I enjoy cooking and I already have a well stocked kitchen. The only things I am missing from the list are:

• dutch oven
• an immersion blender
• a coffee grinder for flaxseed or other spices
• a fish spatula

Of those, the only thing I really want is a dutch oven (not the farting kind!). It's actually been on my list for a while. I've been making stocks and things this past year and it would really come in handy. I think, at least for now, I can live without the other three. I've never needed them or noticed their absence in my kitchen before. I'll have to investigate the cost of dutch ovens though and bump that up the list because I have wanted one for a while.

Any recommendations for a good dutch oven?

Anyone else inspired to clean out their pantries after this?