AIP - DAY 1

Okay so for real today I started the autoimmune protocol (paleo-style), from here on out known as AIP. The weekend was just practice. My diet already takes a lot of planning (paleo) but adding AIP into it really makes it harder. I was already avoiding grains, seed oils, most dairy except for butter (of which I normally eat tons) and sugar, as well as eggs as I suspected a problem with those. Now I am adding to that list nuts, nightshades, and all dairy. No nuts is especially hard because nuts are such a convenient snack although I do tend to soak them and then dehydrate them which isn't time consuming but takes planning. This removes the phytic acid which can be irritating for those on a gut healing protocol, which is what I am basically trying to do with this - heal my gut. Anyway, today went well. I skipped lunch as I had nothing prepared and you cannot take shortcuts on this diet. I had had 3 sausages, leftover roasted butternut squash, and sauerkraut for breakfast so skipping lunch wasn't so bad. I felt a little iffy in the late afternoon but then my body sort of adjusted and I was ok. Dinner was amazing, I bought Mickey Trescott's autoimmune paleo cookbook -- which is where last night's butternut squash recipe came from -- and so far it is great. I spent the afternoon making homemade coconut milk (can't have the guar gum in the canned stuff and anyway it bugs my stomach), a cream of broccoli soup recipe from her blog which was very good, lamb meatballs with olives, spinach and garlic, and roasted sweet potatoes. And what is always good is that I have some leftover for tomorrow. Over the weekend I also made coconut butter from the cookbook, something that I have always bought in the store. I did not realize how easy it is to make yourself -- just blend up a bunch of coconut until it is a smooth paste. It is so wonderful to demystify the processes behind all these packaged things we purchase at the grocery store for so much more money than it costs to make yourself. Of course we don't all have time to make these things for ourselves so we pay to have it done for us --- and that is essentially how we become disconnected from food, what it is, how it behaves, and so on. The photo is of one of yesterday's snacks: banana slices with coconut butter and cinnamon on top. Yum.

All of this is certainly a lot of work but it will be interesting for me to see how I feel after a couple weeks, and also what happens when I add these foods back in. I think a lot about my relationship to the domestic world, and the time it takes to take care of ones self, even if you are not on some special diet. The fact is shopping for and preparing food - and the constant stream of dishes and messes it produces -- is a large job that can take up an enormous amount of time. I feel a lot of tension between my need to feed myself and my family well and tend to matters of the home and other work I want to do outside the home. I am happiest when making films or deeply involved in some journalistic or creative endeavor, and there just is not much time in the day, or in life. I also believe in the importance of sleeping enough, of getting your circadian rhythms straightened out. I am chronically sleep deprived. Once my child goes to sleep at night I want to dive into books and research and all the things I think about doing. It is very difficult to balance all these things. It is, in fact, impossible.

More tomorrow.