Dear Gillian

I'm not your typical client.

I'm vegan. I'm gluten-free. I don't eat refined sugar. I eat vegetables, legumes, and whole grains at nearly every meal. I do yoga three times a week, and on alternate days, I am on the ellipticals at my local gym.

Why am I writing you this letter?

I have IBS-C.

According to your book, "Gillian McKeith's Food Bible," if I exercise and follow a diet of vegetables, fruits, legumes and whole grains, I should NOT have IBS-C. But I do. I have it pretty bad.

Many days, my stomach refuses to digest food. I get very bloated from the smallest amounts of food. I can't eat.

Despite working out and being vegan for the past five years, I have lost little weight. I have had a lot of trouble gaining muscle mass. Something is wrong.

Sometimes, I get very weak and dizzy. Last week, I drove through two stop signs, completely delirious.

My life is at stake here, Gillian.

While I have implemented some of your tricks - drinking vegetable juice and smoothies to keep me from malnutrition - I do still have IBS-C. This tells me that I must be doing something wrong. There must be something making me sick.

As you know, the health care system in America leaves many sick people uninsured. I am one of those people.

I am an adjunct English professor. I am not given insurance through any of the colleges that employ me. Yet, I work just as many hours as a full time professor.

In the past, when I have splurged and gone to doctors, they have been unanimous in their diagnoses. IBS, yes. Celiac, no.

This doesn't help my bloated belly.

Can you help my bloated belly?

I am inviting you to the US. Please come visit and help me find balance. I have many nutrition-Nazi, vegan, gluten-free IBS friends; we are all desperate for some insight on our condition.

Sincerely,

FartyGirl

There it is! I wrote the letter. Actually - I wrote it a few weeks ago.

Lately, I've been wondering if I should send it.


Starting a food diary really highlighted some of my problem foods. Soy is a big one. So is sugar and nuts.

Food combining seems to be very important as well. One of my favorite lunches - cauliflower and nut butter - leaves me feeling sick. But mixed green salad with pumpkin seed cheese? No problem.

(Photo Coming after Today's Lunch of Said Salad)

Go figure!

It appears that the simpler the meal, the better off I am.

Another trick I learned - just last week - came from the lovely Saxifrage. Her doctor suggested she start a rotation diet. Simply put, it's making sure to eat a variety of foods on a regular basis.

Switching it up has REALLY helped! Thanks, Sax!

When it comes to nutrition, here is what I did learn from Gillian.

Eat energizing foods in the morning, like foods filled with B-vitamins. These include eggs, brussel sprouts, quinoa, asparagus, fish, nuts, shittake mushrooms, lentils, adzuki beans and sunflower seeds. These foods all help tone the nervous system too. That's something us IBSsers need a lot of help with!

Quinoa porridge from Lisa's Kitchen

Foods with iron are also good to eat in the morning. These are nori, lentils, kidney beans, watercress, kale, apricots, figs, prunes, nettles, dulse, kelp, parsley, amaranth, quinoa and beets. Veggie sushi breakfast, anyone?

Carrot and avocado soosh!

Liver stagnation causes IBS, PMS and hormone irregularity. This is one reason why IBSsers are told to not drink. So don't drink alcohol! Consume foods and herbs that get bile flowing to the liver, like dandelion, globe artichokes, and milk thistle.

Milk thistle seeds!

Zinc helps tone the liver as well. Foods containing a lot of zinc are pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, nori, eggs, kelp, brown rice, and tahini.

Pumpkin seed and cranberry bars!

Eat brazil nuts! They have tons of selenium, which aids against aging and takes good care of your skin and hair.

For PMS, eat lots of fiber to remove old estrogens. Leafy greens and seeds contain the magnesium, calcium, and B-vitamins to help balance hormones. Spirulina, chlorella, and blue-green algae help PMS as well.

I love kelp powder in my smoothies!

For constipation, drink a mango smoothie every morning. Eat figs, prunes, flax, apples, carrots, pumpkin, pine nuts, leafy green vegetables, cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and raw hemp seeds. Herbs like nettle, dandelion, fenugreek, and slippery elm will also get things moving. (I've had lots of success with licorice and fennel, too). Ultimately - YOU MUST EXERCISE if you have chronic constipation.

Stretchin' it out!

For IBS, drink lots of vegetable juice (NOT V8 - real vegetable juice!). This will give you proper nutrients when your digestion is not working properly. Fiber-rich foods are your best bet.

My first coconut water, basil and kale smoothie

Summary
Gillian's plan is a lot like the Fat Flush Plan.
Both stress that toning the liver is crucial to keeping the body working properly.
Without a churning liver, the body can't function.
Forget having enough energy to get out of bed in the morning.
Forget digesting food! It ain't happening without your liver!

More (Averie-style) Questions!

What is your major ailment? Are you an IBSser? A dieter? Do you suffer trouble with hormones? When you eat, what part of your body are you looking to heal or help?

What foods make you feel good? What foods don't make you feel so good? What's your eating schedule look like? Are there certain foods that you prefer at certain times?

What is your favorite nutritious food to eat? Think of something super-healthy, but something that you love.

Making the Impossible F'ing Fantastic

Some things just can't be veganized.

Take mac n' cheese, for example.

You can buy soy cheese, almond cheese, rice cheese. You can mix them all together in a bowl, and throw it in the nuker. But the end result? It tastes like cardboard.

I know. I've tried a million different ways to make vegan mac n' cheese.

Sure, there's the vegweb-certified recipe. That contains either nuts or soy butter, plus garlic, mustard powder, and a mountain of nutritional yeast. Usually the garlic or the mustard overpowers everything.

It ain't easy. And it ain't soy free.

Long ago, I mourned the loss of mac n' cheese from my vegan and lactose intolerant life. I waved goodbye from the dock as it set sail. I thought I'd never taste such lusciousness again...

UNTIL NOW!!!

GUESS WHAT happens when you mix...

Daiya...

with Nooch???

You get Mama's Old School Mac n' Cheese!!!

This is no imitation Kraft Deluxe Dinner! This is Thanksgiving-style-rainy-day-in-the-middle-of-February-with-a-cup-of-hot-chocolate mac n' cheese. This is recipe-passed-the-fuck-down!

This kicks the bowl out of any Kraft Deluxe dinner any damn day. SERIOUSLY.

Eat it up! Eat it up! Eat it up!

So... You Wanna Keep a Food Diary?

Does the chick in this photo have a huge head or what?

And what's up with the tanned belly?

She looks like she goes tanning dressed in a burqa!

HA!

Photoshop, anyone?

Anyway...

Food diaries. Journals. Whatever.

If you wanna start one, here's what's important to know.

Here's what I learned, anyway.

Size

Size matters! I bought a tiny notebook! Stupid me! After two weeks, I'd filled up half of it.

It's important to have a diary that you can cart around with you. But it also needs to be big enough to fit all of your info. Something in between an address book size and a regular size spiral notebook should do ya good. If you are a techhie, use your iPhone or Blackberry. I'm a cheap hippie, so I prefer to rape the eco-stationery section of Target.

Punctuality

Write in your diary immediately after you are done eating. Don't rely on memory. You won't remember. Trust me.

Honesty

Include every dirty detail. If you ate two Larabars for breakfast one morning, like I did, write it down. If you threw a giant scoop of butter into your rice, like I did, write it down. If you killed a carton of Turtle Mountain's new coconut water sorbet, like I'm planning to this PMSy afternoon... you know the drill.

Details

Write down what you eat, when, where, and how. Include the specifics - the food, the dressings, the spices, etc. It's important where you ate and if you ate alone or with somebody. All of these factors affect mood, which affect digestion. For this same reason, it's good to note how much sleep and exercise you get each day. Don't forget drinks either!

Focus

Dieters need to count calories and portions. Athletes may want to do this as well. If you are like me and have tummy issues, it's important to note how much of each food group that you eat. Certain food combinations, as Gena notes in her blog, can lead to digestive problems for some people.

Linkage

• Here are six good reasons to keep a food diary from Diet Blog.
• My personal fave: Twelve Tips on How to Keep a Food Diary from All Women Stalk
• In 2008, ABC news reported that keeping a food diary can double your weight loss.
• Here's the same report from the Telegraph, who I prefer simply because they are Brits and I love how they talk.
• Family Doctor has a neat chart you can copy and use in your food diary.

What About You?

Have you ever kept a food diary? How did you do it? What rules did you follow? What did you discover?

Sources: FamilyDoctor.org, WebMD.com, ABC news, The Telegraph, Diet Blog, All Women Stalk, Extra Pounds, MSNBC, Meals Matter, Harvard Gazette, The LA Times, and Me.

Food n' Feelings

Remember how I said I was gonna start a food diary?

I did!

It's called Food n' Feelings.

The loverly and sweet Heather asked how I've been feeling lately... so I decided to crack open ol' "Food and Feelings" and share a bit with you.

The diary is organized into two columns.

One for food.

One for feelings.

Interspersed throughout, I note exercise and sleep.

This is how Gillian McKeith suggests one keep a food diary in her book, "Slim for Life." At first, I didn't think it mattered to note sleep and exercise. But eventually, I saw patterns emerging!

One thing I do differently is REFLECT.

At the end of each day, I muse on the food and the feelings. I try to figure out why I felt good. I try to figure out why I felt bad.


Here's what I found.

• I need to start my day with water.
• I need to eat on a set schedule.
• I need to exercise in the morning, as often as possible.
• I need to eat mostly whole foods.
• I need to eat lots of vegetables, fruits, legumes, and grains.

And last but not least, the sad truth.

What I've been hiding from you, and myself, for the past year or so...

Almond butter hates me.

It's true. Nearly a year to the day of discovering almond butter, I discovered that it makes me as bloated as an octo-mom. It was the most obvious and most disappointing realization from this whole experiment.

The end hypothesis? Fats and sugars are my biggest offenders. Soy is too, which I haven't touched in over two weeks, after getting very sick from it. Since I cut soy, I haven't had any super-bloated days where I can't eat at all.

Bloats and farts still happen - BUT always in one of the two following instances.

• When I'm eating nuts, nut butters, and raw honey
  
• When I'm snacking in between meals

Not all IBSsers are the same. Don't take my report to mean that YOU can't have fats and sugars. If you can take anything from this, it's that food diaries are very helpful.

Oh yeah...

I almost forgot!

Do you know what I can digest with absolutely NO PROBLEM????

DAIYA CHEESE!!!

Here I am, driving home from Whole Foods with one hand, nomming with the other. My favorite way to eat it is exactly like this. Cold. Pinched between my fingers.

If you haven't heard about Daiya, you must be living in a Patagonian cave or some shit. It is the best vegan cheese ever made. It's also the only vegan cheese that's free from all allergens. It's low in fats and high in calcium. That makes it a good cheese alternative for dieters too.

Daiya didn't send me any free crap. I went and bought this with my own jar of pocket change. And I'll tell ya. It's seriously as good as everyone says!

I Got a New Way to Walk!

Children of the eighties! Remember this?

I got a new way to walk.

It's called swimming.

And it's not really new.

Not for me anyway.

I just do it more in the summer.

Nothing sexier than purple goggle wrinkles around the eyes!

Swimming is how I worked out after falling and giving myself prepatellar bursitis four years ago.

Stupidly icing bursitis - moments later I cramped up and screamed in agony.

I lived in Boston then. The gym was cheap. The pool was dingy. As I swatted my limbs around in the water, I watched hair and bits of dirt float by.

A friend of mine once told me that she refuses to swim in public pools, because they are gross. Ironically - this same friend doesn't wash her hands after peeing in public restrooms. I'm not slamming her at all. This pretty much sums up how I feel about germs.

Germs are inevitable.

Are public pools gross?

Yes.

But I keep coming back to them.

I am in love.

Swimming is glorious. It feels like flying to me. Where else can you hang suspended in matter and not die? The tiles sweep underneath my belly. I like to imagine they are blocks of neighborhoods and I am a bird. Bubbles stream from my fingertips. Webby light dances on the floor of the pool. Above the surface, lifeguards play their radio. It sounds like elephants thumping around.

What dirt? What grime? I am soaring through a magical underwater world!

ALSO...

The smell of chlorine reminds me of my grandfather.

Howard Ireland, WWII

Every inhale - I am back in Florida. It's 1986. I am crouched over the pool, watching my grandfather's long tanned fingers drip eye-dropperfuls of pool water into a clear plastic box. Each channel inside the box turns a different color. One red. One blue. One yellow. I go, "Ooooh."

Our family has always belonged to a pool. My mom was a lifeguard. My sister was a lifeguard. Swimming is a part of our heritage.

Stone Harbor, NJ. 1983

Today, I love swimming because it's light exercise. Well, unless you rock it like Michael Phelps.

I don't. I swim for healthy digestion.

As VeganDukkaGirl noted in this post, working out really helps prime the tummy for eating.

Swimming is REALLY GOOD for IBS!

All of that twisting and turning?

It wrings the gas right out of ya!

So often we go hardcore at the gym. Light exercise can be just as beneficial. Sometimes more so. When I work out too hard, I hurt my knee.

Homemade herbal salve for my knee

Then I'm stuck in bed for two months. This only exacerbates my IBS.

So! Err I go! Diving into the chemical stew laden with germs and feces!

I know I should worry about chemicals. But I don't. Two in particular don't bug me.

Chlorine

Fluoride

Why chlorine? Because I feel refreshed and clean after a swim. Because swimming has significantly reduced the number of colds I get. Because the smell reminds me of my grandfather!

God's Country, PA. 1988

Why fluoride? Because it was in our water all the years that my family lived in Philadelphia. Because it did nothing but prevent us from getting cavities. Because it's the only thing that keeps my Irish gums from receding and my molars from deteriorating into black nubs.

Sorry, but I love my ACT!

So, yeah. I eat organically as possible. Afterwards, I swish cancer-causing chemicals in my mouth.

Does this make any sense?

No.

Neither does IBS. Or LIFE!

To close, I wanna do a little homage to the loverly Averie. Her suggestion that I cut soy was spot on! I feel SO MUCH BETTER having cut it out of my diet. Thanks girlfriend!

In the spirit of Love, Veggies, and Yoga, I got a couple Averie-type questions. (Aren't her questions freakin' awesome?) I really wanna know what you think!

1. How do you feel about public pools? Are they skeevy? Dirty? Too full of chemicals? Or do you dive on in anyway?

2. How do you feel about chemicals like chlorine and fluoride? They often pop up in the water we drink. Do you think we should have the choice to ingest them, or that they should always be included in our water? Do you do anything to filter them out?

3. How do you feel about getting nekkid in the locker room? At my gym, the ladies are SO careful about covering themselves! Meanwhile, I'm whipping off my towel and slapping lotion on the rough spots on my butt. Is there locker room etiquette that I'm unaware of?

Photos by: green-planet-solar-energy.com, www.rsc.org, www.actfluoride.com, various members of the Ireland and Ryan families, some dude who knew my grandfather in WWII, and me!