Low Iodine Diet - Day 2

Day 2 in the bag!!! Let's get creative!!! Here's what I ate today:

Breakfast:
oats with a chopped up apple and some cinnamon and brown sugar sprinkled on top
coffee with coconut milk

Lunch:
Harvest Blueberry Mini Wheats, dry
a banana

Dinner:
vegetable stir fry consisting of carrot, zucchini, onion, sweet bell peppers and fresh chopped garlic sautéed in sesame oil.  
Basmati rice cooked using 1/3 coconut milk for water
4 oz chicken breast baked with Mrs Dash

Snacks:
Salt free homemade toast with salt free concord grape jelly
Salt free homemade toast with honey
Raisins

It was a great day!! I drank 7 glasses of water and feel super de-bloated!! I also had alot of energy but again paced myself not to over exert (I still don't know if that's a thing) but it was HOT today.  The humidity was over 40° and man! did I sweat! Gross right?  But I did cuz it was sickly humid.

Another day in the bag, 12 days til treatment.  My best friend keeps telling me "You got this!"...I love her enthusiasm and support!  I was down 1/2 lb this morning also.  Probably water bloat coming off but any loss is good loss!  I'm ready for tomorrow!

~Sally

Low Iodine Diet - Day 1

Day 1. So far so good.  Here is what my food consisted of today:

Breakfast:
brewed coffee with coconut milk
oats with raisins and brown sugar

Lunch: Harvest Blueberry Mini Wheats, plain no milk

Dinner:
Chicken breast seasoned with Mrs Dash
Romaine lettuce, tomato and cucumber with homemade dressing (oil & white wine vinegar)
Basmati rice

I also drank about 5 glasses of water today so far.  I've been tracking all this in My Fitness Pal to keep an eye on things and like I said before....so far so good.

Today I learned that coconut milk in coffee makes my coffee tastes MUCH different than with cow milk.  Not gross, but different.  I can definitely live with it.  I also learned that most bottled water has mineral salt and I can't drink that, so tap water it is! I drank one bottle this morning before I thought to check but it's day 1 so errors were bound to be made.  I also discovered that balsalmic vinegar is okay as long as their is no caramel coloring....GROWL. All mine has caramel coloring, so I made salad dressing with white wine vinegar and oil instead.  It tasted good.

I plan on ripping up some frozen bananas in my food processor later for "just bananas" banana ice cream.  it's literally JUST frozen banana, cut into pieces, and you food process the hell out of it and it becomes the consistency of creamy ice cream.  PERFECT!!! You can also add a Tbsp of cocoa for chocolate banana "ice cream".  Which is also perfectly acceptable to consume on a low iodine diet.  (side note: I prepped and froze my bananas in advance for this very diet).  I've tried it weeks ago and it's delicious!!

I had quite a bit of energy today but paced myself throughout the day since my subconscious figured that if I expelled energy fast I might run down the remaining thyroid hormone in my body faster.  (???) I don't know if that's the case but I paced myself regardless. 

Day 1 is winding down  and I am currently optimistic!  let's hope this keeps up.

~Sally

One Last Hurrah...

So tomorrow I start this low iodine diet.  And cease my meds for 2 weeks....this is me completely unimpressed.  But it is necessary. So I will do it to a 110% success rate.

What is involved in a low iodine diet you may be wondering? Here is a short list of things I CAN NOT eat:

Salt, Sea salt, ALL dairy including but not limited to milk, butter, yogurt, ice cream and cheese, soy, whey, casein, anything6t with red dye #3, fish and seafood, carrageen, all cured meat such as ham, bacon, corned beef, lox, weiners and lunchmeats, tofu, egg yolks, frozen peas, mayo, ALL CHOCOLATE, and potato skin.

Let's put it this way, my honey and I went to the grocery store tonight and you wouldn't BELIEVE the amount of food and isles you skip when you can't have ANY of the above listed.  I can't even eat flash frozen chicken breasts because they are soaked in soy and salt before the flash freeze(which sounds even grosser typed out and as a rule we always buy fresh....just throwin that out there ) And almost EVERY product has salt and/or milk products.  As does every single condiment, salad dressing and dip.  Yea I even have to make my own salad dressing from oil and vinegar.

So I bought plain rice cakes (because all the flavored ones have....you guessed it - salt), mini wheats (which are just wheat and icing sugar....strange but acurate) and a myriad of fruits, vegetables and fresh chicken breast.

It's not as bad as it seems and I think it's going to turn out to be quite a health journey because we skipped over basically every Isle in the grocery store.
But in the spirit of change honey and I decided to use this as an opportunity to get back on the healthy train.  We also bought McDonalds and sugary soda. Does that count as life balance??

Tomorrow I begin life without thyroid hormones for 2 weeks and a strange diet which is basically like strict vegan plus chicken.  Bring on the carrot sticks!!  I got this!!!

~Sally

When Life Throws You a Curveball...

Hello Internet! It has been awhile.  Here's a quick update and we'll be off and running with a series of blogs. 

So I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in February of this year.   They caught it early.  I had my thyroid removed over the course of the spring and I've been on synthroid since.  Everything is going well! 

However being the giant Google researcher than I am I was annoyed that I couldn't find hardly anyone's story detailing a treatment I'm going in for in a few weeks.  So I decided to document my experience and hopefully help out someone else down the road.

Here's where we begin: they switched me over to a different thyroid replacement medication called Cytomel for 5 weeks to prepare me for Radioactive Iodine Therapy(RAI).  Basically I go in and they have me swallow a pill and then I'm radioactive for a week. I say basically but its actually much more.  I'll get to that later.

Tomorrow I begin a Low Iodine Diet (LID) AND go off my Cytomel completely for TWO WEEKS. 

Now for those of you who have no idea what I'm in for I'll give you a brief analogy.  Imagine you are driving around in a car with a full tank of gas.  You get home and park your car for the night and the tank is still full.  When you wake up in the morning to leave for work you find that your gas line has sprung a leak and through the course of the next day or two your tank drains to empty.  Now you're stuck on the expressway with an empty fuel tank. 

This is how I have perceived going off my medication will be.  Your thyroid produces a hormone that fuels all your organs and gives you energy.  It controls metabolism, energy levels and mental clarity.  So you can imagine how thrilled I am to be stopping my meds completely.  My endocrinologist told me to prepare for the worst exhaustion, fatigue and sluggishness (is that a word??) possible.  I am grateful he did not sugar coat it.  I am hoping that I will just feel very tired all the time but my infinite googling has told me it will probably be worse. 

I read somewhere that it is similar to having the worst flu you've ever had.  That horrible brain fog and fatigue that drains you to the point of reaching for the kleenex box exhausts you.  I hope it isn't that bad.  I might be trying to fool myself.

So starting tomorrow no meds AND the low iodine diet.  which in itself is challenging.  I'll blog about the whole experience as I go.  14 days until my RAI.

Oh did I mention I have to continue working until then?  Thankfully my employment provides me with a verrrrry flexible schedule so it should be okay. I hope. Cross your fingers for me.

~Sally

Chocolate Peanut Butter Marshmallow Amazingness

Hello Internets! (and anyone who might take the time to read my blogs)... HELLO! I am here and back for more blogging! I admit, I am the very worst blogger in the history of bloggers. I do, however, keep coming back, so maybe that makes me a little better at blogging that the very worst person who ever blogged....
...at any rate, I am here. Alive and well. No, I was not trapped under a large heavy bookshelf for the past 15 months. 15 months!? Has it really been that long? My name is Therese, and I am also a procrastinator. My adventure has not procrastinated, it has leapt forth and claimed me. I am now (so far) happily employed at a well-known local bakery in town as a baker. Well done me! I even gave myself a pat on the back for that one. For privacy (and probably legal) reasons, I won't tell you the name of the bakery, or real names of anyone I might mention in any forthcoming blogs. I also feel compelled to mention that I won't be posting any recipes from said bakery, incase of, oh you know...getting sued or fired. :) I will talk about what I do, and give you my "at home" version - either my personal recipe, one I found online, or an easy-bake way to make some delicious treats.
Since my last blog was about peanut butter and chocolate, let's keep with that. Did you ever want something sweet, but you don't really have the ingredients in your cupboard, or you don't want to be bothered with mixing, stirring, scooping, spreading, etc, etc. ?? Or maybe it's just too flippin' hot in the house to turn the oven on? Well here you go- so quick and easy, you'll be making this regularly.
I give credit to my cousin who made these for me once, and I've made them dozens and dozens of times over since. I remember when she made them she said a comment to me that she couldn't believe she was making this simple treat for dessert, since I was a professional baker and all. Which of course, is silly!! I even buy puff pastry pre-made from the frozen food section of the grocery store *gasp!* Shhh...we'll make that our little secret. Back to my cousin. She made this ***Aaaammmmmaazzzzinggggggg*** chocolate marshmallow square. I could have eaten the entire pan, which I think I might have since done at home once or twice...oops! Funny to think back on this memory, because we actually make these regularly at the bakery I work at!! Simple, rich, mouth-watering awesome. That is my personal definition of these squares.
There is only 3 ingredients. You can buy the 3 ingredients at any grocery store totalling under $5. One bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips, 1 cup of peanut butter, and one small bag of mini marshmallows. You *MUST* buy semi-sweet chocolate chips. It doesn't matter if it's chips, jumbo chips, chunks n chips or mini chips - they're just getting melted anyways, but they *MUST MUST MUST* be semi-sweet. I have forgotten this simple, stupid, easy tip several times, and even once recently and it resulted in failure. Semi-sweet chocolate chips. Repeat it. Semi-sweet. Only.
Don't get in the grocery store isle, staring at the 35 types of chocolate chips they sell and think to yourself, "ooh maybe I should get MILK chocolate chips (or DARK chocolate chips, or Butterscotch chips etc etc) because they're my favorite and they would make this treat even more perfect for my personal tastebuds." NOOO! Stop what you're doing and PUT DOWN the rainbow covered skor bit mini chips!!! SEMI-SWEET. Ok, now the why. Semi-sweet are the only kind of chip that will melt, in a bowl, in the =microwave=. The rest you have to melt in a double boiler, on the stove, at the correct temperature, and if you get it wrong you'll muck up the whole chocolate bowl and have to throw it out because it looks like clumpy dirt. This results in a second trip to the grocery store, now agitated that you bought the wrong kind of chips in the first place, stand in line again, to get home and try again. Yes, I've made this mistake several times. Semi-sweet chocolate chips.
Ok, so you have your semi-sweet chocolate chips. Chuck the peanut butter (any kind will do!) in the bowl with the chips, melt in the microwave at 30 second intervals - to avoid burning the whole works - stir until smooth. Take your 8X8 square pan and feel free to lightly butter the bottom to avoid sticking. Dump in the marshmallows to cover the bottom of the whole pan, pour the chocolate/pb mix over and mix it around a little with a spoon to cover everything. Put it in your freezer for 15 minutes, or refrigerate for 30-45 minutes. Cut into whatever size gluttonous square you desire and voila! Drool-city squares.
It's great when you have unexpected company, treats for the kids, or you just had enough of your PMS and want to kick it's butt out the door. Either way, it's a rich pleasure that you have to try at least once. Or maybe a few dozen times. Until next time...
Enjoy!
~Sally

Chocolate Peanut Butter Marshmallow Squares
1 package of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup of peanut butter
1 bag of miniature marshmallows

• Put chocolate and peanut butter in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave at 30 second intervals (stirring as you go, to avoid burning the mixture)
• Lightly butter an 8"X8" square pan.
• Put enough marshmallows to fully cover the bottom of the entire pan (I use the whole bag)
• Pour your melted chocolate / peanut butter mixture over the marshmallows until completely covered.
• Freeze for 15 minutes, or refrigerate 30-45 (basically until they are hardened)
• Cut into squares, and enjoy!