The Primal Challenge Day 18

My enthusiasm for cooking all that I promised last night dried up when my stock search in the supermarket left me empty handed. How can there not be one – just one – stock in your local Woolies that has no sugar added??!! Not one!

Not Campbells, not Campbells Premium range, not Massel, not the cubes not the liquid nothing. Marcel’s smiling MasterChef face in the package trying to ensure me he hasn’t sold out did nothing. He has sold out. To sugar.

 This no sugar no stock situation really threw me into a tail spin, and my dinner plans had to be rediscovered in the herbs aisle.

I moved the ribs to later in the week and instead put on a pile of lamb shanks in the slow cooker, ready for when I get home from work today and could devour them.

Today I turned to my trusted knowledge advisor Google and did a quick search to see where I could find such a treasure of sugar free stock. But I have a rule not to scan past page one and when nothing concrete was returned I have instead resolved to make my own stock using one of the free range organic chickens our friends at Canning’s delivered yesterday.

But back to last night.

I left the stock aisle in disgust and moved to the health aisle to find some almond butter and was pleasantly surprised. Woolworths defiantly had this over Coles. There were options and even specials on the jars of goodness. And while Google had previously advised making your own was probably cheaper, the $2.31 discount meant it wasn’t. So I loaded up with two jars some more nuts (my habit in this area is increasing) a few bananas for my weekend smoothies (and pancakes) and then went off to get my Ghee and Passata for my lamb shanks.

Now a slight off track remark and somewhat embarrassing revelation: when I first saw this word Passata, on the Primal Junction website, I actually thought it was a spelling mistake. That simply the recipe called for normal sugar free pasta sauce….

Just shows how naïve I really was before coming into this challenge. But moving on…

By the time I got home and actually cooked my dinner for that night (steak and veggies with krispy kale) and prepped for the lamb shanks, I was over making anything else. The pancakes and frosty fruit idea went out the window, as did the homemade almond butter. But hey dinner tonight is slow cooked clean lean lamb shanks –so even I forgive myself.

Today bought a few interventions. Well actually, two and the first was via facebook last night. Someone accused me of not doing a great job of selling this eating plan.

And based on the last few winging and whining posts, he is right.

So I apologise, but selling this in was not really my intent, and it’s no surprise it doesn’t sound all that great at the moment.  If you told a junkie when they put down the needle for the first time they would shake uncontrollably, vomit for hours have delusions, uncontrolled anger and shit themselves constantly with violent diarrhea, do you think they would be so keen to go cold turkey? Would they even be so keen to give it up at all?

Well friends, I’m going through my own withdrawal symptoms with no gluten and dairy (I miss my cheese more than I thought I would) and legumes and soy and of course SUGAR.

And while I’m not bound to the loo and there is no bucket by my desk, flashes of anger have been witnessed and I’ve always been told I am somewhat delusional.

But ill shake this monkey off my back and come out clean if the nuts don’t kill me first.

Which brings me to the second intervention.

My ever increasing nut eating habit.

 How much good fat is too much? How many handfuls/packets/piles of nuts are too much?

A colleague next door thought my third packet was in fact too much and came over to tell me. Reading my last post she thought an intervention was the only way to make me see the light, and she too was right. 

I promptly shut the Tupperware lid (container was now half full and I had filled it up three times today – only when it gets half full just to try and kid myself) and locked the container away in my filing/food cabinet.

But now I know they are there. And I had to eat a green apple to try and get rid of the taste of the almonds and the coconut and the seeds and cashews and even as I am writing this I want to find that Tupperware container and open it and stuff another handful of the food into my salivating mouth.

I’m not hungry, just addicted.

To compensate, I bought some organic green and peppermint tea. I checked it has no nasty’s, not that I thought it would – its tea, but I check everything now.  I’m going to make some tonight and put it in the fridge for a flavor option. I originally got it for my coffee addiction, but that has since subsided slightly – the nuts have taken over.

I’m tempted to do the frosty fruit delight tonight, but worried my sugar max is already at overloaded due to my green apple and the amount of nuts I have eaten must have some affect somewhere…

Plus I have the impending Christmas pudding I need to cook and hang tonight – using Gma’s old fashioned recipe that seems to have skipped a generation and sole responsibility land directly on my shoulders – the weight of which is worse than any WOD.

The process could take hours, and the fruit and nuts and flour and of course lots and lots of sugar will fill my house and my nose and drive me to want to eat something…

But I won’t, because underneath the nut eating, the complaining, the sugar free searching, the meticulous label reading – I am feeling better. 

My hair feels much better after a wash; my skin is cleaning up, my blackheads slowly dissolving as the toxins get out of my body every way they know how.

My ‘food belly’ is not appearing as frequently although it did make an appearance when I tried to eat kale stems before finding out they were hard to digest and not recommended – this could explain a few things…. and the pro-biotic I was taking before all of this has not come out of the fridge once.

And while I have constantly complained and made reference to me missing the drink… I actually don’t… I feel better on Saturday mornings, stronger on Sunday’s. I get more out of my day and weekend, and like being able to quite simply say no.

Dry July and a few friends on the wagon does make it easier…

So to answer first intervention – let me get to day 30 and share my skin folds show my strength and talk about my improved digestive habits – it will sell itself.

And to answer second intervention – please continue to intervene, I have already taken out the Tupperware container and have it resting on my knee so you can’t see me snacking…

 

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