FEB '08 GRAIN-FREE Traditional Diets Thread - Page 4

[meandk0610]

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[quelindo]

Can those in the know tell me if this is a good price for almond flour?

In other unrelated news, we're supposed to get anywhere from 10 to 20 inches of snow tonight and tomorrow. Holy .

[bluets]

Originally Posted by New Mama

Can those in the know tell me if this is a good price for almond flour?

In other unrelated news, we're supposed to get anywhere from 10 to 20 inches of snow tonight and tomorrow. Holy .

i think we just got that amount of rain. last night it was 65F and we're expecting a plunge down to 40F some time tonight. screwy climate.

[gardenmommy]

Originally Posted by bluets

i ordered some last year from wilderness family naturals. it hadn't been available for a while so i ordered a lot (3 x 5lb ?). i'm working on bag #2 now. the thing with coconut flour is that you use more eggs (lots lots lots more eggs) than flour. for example, a normal loaf would use about 6-8 eggs and only 1/4 to 1/3 c. of flour.

Holy COW!! you mean that ONE loaf of bread, or ONE pan of brownies, or ONE batch of pancakes would use that many eggs? not sure I can afford that, either in the $$ for the alternative flour, or the amount of eggs. I guess I'll still check out that cookbook, but maybe just have to learn to be happily grain-free.

I am really struggling right now. I just want to eat something sweet: not sweet like candy bar-sweet. Sweet like a pancake sweet. or a slice of sourdough bread with butter. I don't know why I am struggling so much. When I was grain-free in the past, I didn't miss it that much. Once I got past the first week or so, it didn't really bother me.

[Jojo F.]

Originally Posted by bluets

i ordered some last year from wilderness family naturals. it hadn't been available for a while so i ordered a lot (3 x 5lb ?). i'm working on bag #2 now. the thing with coconut flour is that you use more eggs (lots lots lots more eggs) than flour. for example, a normal loaf would use about 6-8 eggs and only 1/4 to 1/3 c. of flour.

Good to know, I have been searching for coconut flour....

[bluets]

Originally Posted by gardenmommy

Holy COW!! you mean that ONE loaf of bread, or ONE pan of brownies, or ONE batch of pancakes would use that many eggs? not sure I can afford that, either in the $$ for the alternative flour, or the amount of eggs. I guess I'll still check out that cookbook, but maybe just have to learn to be happily grain-free.

I am really struggling right now. I just want to eat something sweet: not sweet like candy bar-sweet. Sweet like a pancake sweet. or a slice of sourdough bread with butter. I don't know why I am struggling so much. When I was grain-free in the past, I didn't miss it that much. Once I got past the first week or so, it didn't really bother me.

dunno about the brownies... my cookies use well, they're different every time so it has varied, from 1 egg (with just nut butter - look up flourless peanut butter cookies) to 3 or 4 eggs if i use coconut flour (or 2 eggs + those 3 egg whites left over from ice cream). pancakes use 4 eggs when i use nut butter as the base (without coconut flour). replacing one egg in the pancake with a scoop of pureed fruit stretches the eggs out a bit.

what about instead... soaking your walnuts, then rinsing and mixing with 1 Tbsp or 2 of maple syrup and then dehydrating... this is the only way ds will eat walnuts. or if you're looking for something decadent... take a pitted date, stuff in a walnut and (optionally) dunk in melted chocolate (we use bittersweet though unsweetened would prolly work too).

[bluebell]

Originally Posted by firefaery

You can still do waffles, pancakes, muffins, bread etc. using nut butter and flour instead of grains. We make a cinnamon pecan muffin that is PHENOMENAL, from Grain Free Gourmet. Everybody adores them!

I also make bread from almond flour and have even made french toast with it.

Grain Free Gourmet also has GREAT egg recipes-there is one for apple pancakes that I adapted and we love. It's just eggs, apples, cinnamon, honey and almond butter.

Also check out www.pecanbread.com and www.SCDrecipes.com for great ideas in grain free baking.

hi firefaery, how do you make bread from nut flour? i would love to try and make that. thanks.

[carnelian]

Gardenmommy, the coconut flour does take a lot of eggs. I have a blueberry muffin recipe that calls for 6 eggs and 3/4 cup of flour. And you can't stint on the eggs either, I've tried with unpalatable results.

I have a question for all of you using nut flours to make things. My understanding was that nuts, even soaked, sprouted etc place a tremendous load on the digestive system as well as being a major source of polyunsaturates. And yet I'm seeing lots of diets, SCD & GAPS for example, which advocate a lot of nutflours. Anyone care to jump in with their experience on this?

[Panserbjorne]

Originally Posted by bluebell

hi firefaery, how do you make bread from nut flour? i would love to try and make that. thanks.

If you follow those links there are tons of recipes! Also, just google SCD bread and you'll find more than you know what to do with.

[Panserbjorne]

Originally Posted by carnelian

Gardenmommy, the coconut flour does take a lot of eggs. I have a blueberry muffin recipe that calls for 6 eggs and 3/4 cup of flour. And you can't stint on the eggs either, I've tried with unpalatable results.

I have a question for all of you using nut flours to make things. My understanding was that nuts, even soaked, sprouted etc place a tremendous load on the digestive system as well as being a major source of polyunsaturates. And yet I'm seeing lots of diets, SCD & GAPS for example, which advocate a lot of nutflours. Anyone care to jump in with their experience on this?

It's an interesting point. I had no issues first time round with nut flours. I ate bread, muffins, pancakes, tortes etc. all day long with no problem. In fact, I lost a ton of weight (that I needed to lose.) I felt better than I had in years so I assumed I was fine.

Now I am eating very differently. I feel better than I did on SCD in fact. However my kiddos are still eating pretty SCD. I make muffins and breads for them from nut flour. I have tasted the results on a couple of occasions and suffered for it. It wasn't awful, by any means, but it was clear that it wasn't a great choice.

I guess it's no different from the first time around, but what I *noticed* was the improvement-KWIM? I was at ground zero when I started it in terms of my symptoms so I was thrilled that I was moving up the scale so to speak. I now realize that I may have had better results without the nuts.

You are right, and that's what many of us have found here. Nuts, even soaked and sprouted aren't really contributing to health. They may not be actively harming everyone, but I wonder if they are assisting healing either.

[barose]

I recently make almond flour (and almond butter) pancakes and they did not bother me nearly as much as nuts normally do. I normally eat soaked nuts raw so would cooking them help??

(I did soak, dehydrate and grind the almonds for the flour)

[purple_kangaroo]

Hi, I've been reading these threads for a while now. I keep thinking about trying to go grain-free and have tried it briefly a few times, but it's certainly not easy. We are already avoiding so many foods that it seems if we cut out rice and starchy vegetables there wouldn't be much left.

We all have had multiple digestive and health issues, as do both of my siblings and my parents.

My sister is gluten intolerant, and DH has a niece and a great-nephew with celiac disease. Baby E and I have both been tested for celiac disease and were negative (I had blood tests and she had an upper GI scope and biopsy). My siblings and I all have wierd autoimmune disorders, chronic fatigue, digestive problems, etc. My mom is a kidney transplant recipient due to a hereditary kidney disease (kidney failure with no other symptoms). Mom was exposed to DES in utero. We have all had horrible female/hormonal issues.

DH is significantly overweight and has frequent indigestion, recurrent fungal issues, and general mediocre health. I struggle with being underweight and have been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and IBS, among other things. My kids have digestive issues too. The two older girls and I are dairy-intolerant, AJ and I to the extent that we don't seem to tolerate even butter well. M&M does ok with small amounts of low-lactose dairy products, and Baby E has only really ever eaten butter and cultured dairy products, but seems to do well with those. I'm in the process of weaning Baby E, very much against her will, but I've felt it was what I needed to do for my own health and sanity at this point.

Baby E loves meat and eats more of it than just about anything else. She self-limits most grains and can't tolerate most fruits or much of anything sweet (we think she has a sugar intolerance, possibly dietary fructose intolerance). She is on reflux medicine (Zant@c) and we have to thicken her beverages so she doesn't aspirate (we use tapioca starch for thickening). She recently grew out of a number of severe food allergies and intolerances, and we no longer have to completely avoid all corn and soy derivatives. The allergist recommends that we continue avoiding nuts/peanuts and fish/shellfish for at least another year or two.

M&M hates meat and would subsist solely on grains and fruit if she had the choice. She has had problems with soy in the past--we don't really use it now anyway.

AJ will eat just about anything, but is very conscientious about limiting dairy for herself. Right now she's decided to try limiting gluten as well to see if that helps her stomach issues. She also recently started taking Zant@c, but it doesn't seem to be helping a ton.

I cannot tolerate coconut, palm oil, avocado or blackberry leaves, in addition to dairy products and all my environmental allergies and several allergies to medications. I'm pretty sure I'm at least mildly gluten intolerant, and I don't do well with refined sugars or any kind of refined grains. Problems with legumes and nightshades seem to run in the family, too, so I tend to try to limit those although we do eat them.

We get almost all of our meat farm-raised and grassfed with no hormones or antibiotics from local farmers. Other foods we try to get as unprocessed and organic as we can. I had a sourdough starter going for a while, and Baby E and I enjoyed that but the rest of the family wouldn't eat it much. I have worked a bit with soaked grains, but it is harder to cook that way (requires more planning ahead!) and I don't have easy resources for getting many alternative whole grains nearby. DH cooks white rice when he cooks, but I try to use whole grains as much as possible.

With our dietary restrictions, I don't even know if we could really go grain-free. No dairy, no nuts/peanuts, no fish/shellfish, no coconut, palm, avocado, etc. ? I already know that I can't maintain my weight on a diet of mostly meat, flaxseed oil and green vegetables--BTDT and dropped to 97 lbs before I was able to gain weight again by adding more grains and sugars, but then felt worse in other ways .

Today I have been feeding the kids grain-free so far. We had cooked ground beef, scrambled eggs, and artichoke hearts for breakfast. Baby E and M&M also had plain yogurt with a tiny amount of maple syrup added. Nobody but me did more than taste the artichoke hearts, although the kids usually like steamed whole artichokes. M&M refused to eat more than a couple of bites of the meat, saying she doesn't like meat.

For lunch we had cooked chicken, green peas with broccoli, a little bit of leftover mixed-vegetable/chicken stir fry, and the 4 of us split half a small cantalope.

M&M got a horrible stomachache immediately after breakfast that lasted until after lunch. She hardly ate any lunch--she ate the cantalope and tasted the other foods, complained about being served chicken, and begged for bread or cereal. Now she claims to be starving but has vetoed my suggestions (raw carrot, leftover chicken, peas and broccoli). She keeps begging for things like crackers and toast.

For dinner I'm thinking about cooking up a lamb heart and supplementing that with the rest of the pound of ground beef I cooked for breakfast, and then doing a stir-fry with broccoli and bell peppers. I'm not sure what else to serve along with that--I don't have salad makings in the house, but I do have a couple of zucchini I could cut up.

I expect M&M again will eat very little of what I serve, and I don't know what she'll do if she doesn't have grains and fruit to fill up on. She's tiny for her age as it is, and can't afford to lose weight. (Baby E is the biggest for her age at right around 50th percentile--the other 2 kids fluctuate between 5th and 15th percentile.)

AJ, on the other hand, seems to be feeling great and had more of an appetite at lunch today than she has had for quite some time. Baby E will be happy as long as there's meat on the menu. DH will probably eat whatever I serve and then fill up later on bread or cold cereal or something like that.

Is it possible that AJ and possibly Baby E may do well on a grain-free diet, but M&M won't? Can we even really DO grain-free with our dietary restrictions?

Is there any hope that we might be able to find a basic diet that would agree with everyone in the house?

[purple_kangaroo]

Forgot to say that I've had chronic pain and health issues since age 6, when I suffered a neck injury. I was on antibiotics as a kid a lot for things like ear infections and strep throat, culminating with a course of extremely strong antibiotics around age 17-18 "just in case" I had Lyme disease, since I had an insect bite that turned into a huge bull's-eye (the doctor didn't actually test me for Lyme disease, just treated me for it).

By the time I was in my early 20s I was so tired and sick I could hardly walk. That's when I was finally diagnosed with FMS/CFS/IBS/etc. and the MDs said there was nothing they could do for me. A nauturopath was able to help me a ton with various therapies, including Bowen treaments, electrocurrent therapy, treatments for Candida and bacterial infections, dietary changes, etc. That made a huge difference for me. I've still had problems since then, but things have been much much better.

Sometimes I feel ungrateful complaining about moderate pain and fatigue when I'm so much better than I used to be, but I just want all of us to be really WELL, you know?

[jamie79]

Ladies, I have a question and it has probably been asked before...why is my weight stalling? I was losing weight like mad and now it is just stuck or else going up a pound or 2 some days. I haven't changed anything. Still grain free, occassionally some rice or potato. I don't get it. Any ideas?

I basically follow a raw vegan diet, however, I supplement with raw eggs and undercooked beef and raw goat cheese and raw fish. I do, as a result of following the diet like this eat a substantial amount of nuts. However, I don't understand why I am just now at a standstill. I also have been having issues with constipation. Argh! I just want to be able to have a normal food life like everyone else...whatever that means.

Jamie

p.s. purple_kangaroo ...I wish I could offer you some advice as it seems as though you have tons on your plate, but I am still learning from these wise women myself. I hope you get the advice you need.

[jamie79]

Originally Posted by firefaery

There are MANY signs. Pale lips, depression, exhaustion, poor sleep, poor dream recall...the list goes on. The B spectrum is VERY important.

HOw do you test for this? In a child, I mean? This describes my son almost to a tee. How do you fix it? B vitamins? OR would a multi work? This parenting thing on top of food issues for them and me is exhausting! Oh yeah and somehow I gotta run this household, homeschool, work (a little), etc, etc, etc.

[LionTigerBear]

Purple kangaroo, your daughter that doesn't eat meat and craves crackers and bread products sounds like my son. He won't touch meat except hot dogs and chicken nuggets, which he can't have right now. Anyway, what that child lives on is "smoothie" (key ingredient-- raw egg yolk) and fried eggs. Seriously, it's pretty much all he eats. Sometimes I make him banana + egg pancakes for a treat, and every once in a whil he's in the mood for a lacto-fermented pickle, but that's it. I offer him other food all the time but he's not interested. And he is thriving since we started him on this new diet.

One thing I have learned is that you don't need lots of different things to eat. Yeah, it's kind of hard to get used to at first, bu then it becomes-- well-- not as hard as you thought it would be, I guess. If you think about, for centuries people lived off of pretty simple foods all the time. What was for dinner? Soup. Again. Or fish and oatmeal. Again. I mean they ate really simple fare and the same stuff all the time. So if your family finds just a few foods that are really nourishing and that you can live off of, then I think you can do it.

Now, we are doing the SCD, but we are dairy and nut free. The only jump from where we are to where you would be would be to go coconut free and avocado free, but I rarely eat avocados anyway so that wouldn't be missed, just giving up coconut oil would be hard. You would need ot find some good alternatives for saturated fat sources (maybe pure unadulterated lard if you can get it?) but other than that, if I can do it you can do it too! Not to say that it isn't hard-- but it is so worth it!

My son used to be so addicted to breads and crackers and grain products, and anything sweet. He wouldn't hardly eat anything else. He had dropped down from the 110 percentile in height (when he was born) to the 25th percentile in height (when he was 3 years old.) Since starting the diet, he grew back up to average height (at least) and went through THREE clothing sizes. This in just a few months. Plus, he was always so skinny and pale. Now he has muscle and fat on his body-- just like a little three-year-old ought to have! Yayyy! And he made HUGE developmental leaps since changing his diet, too. At age 2.5, he was "behind" in his speech, barely putting two words together-- and this from a boy who started talking, I mean saying different words and stuff, at three/four months old. Well, now at 3.5 he talks like a 5yo, at least. He is not perfectly healthy yet, not by a long shot, but when I get frustrated I just think of how far we've come, and IT HAS BEEN SO WORTH IT!!! :

I hope you get more helpful tips and advice that you can apply to help your family.

[Panserbjorne]

Originally Posted by jamie79

Ladies, I have a question and it has probably been asked before...why is my weight stalling? I was losing weight like mad and now it is just stuck or else going up a pound or 2 some days. I haven't changed anything. Still grain free, occassionally some rice or potato. I don't get it. Any ideas?

I basically follow a raw vegan diet, however, I supplement with raw eggs and undercooked beef and raw goat cheese and raw fish. I do, as a result of following the diet like this eat a substantial amount of nuts. However, I don't understand why I am just now at a standstill. I also have been having issues with constipation. Argh! I just want to be able to have a normal food life like everyone else...whatever that means.

Jamie

p.s. purple_kangaroo ...I wish I could offer you some advice as it seems as though you have tons on your plate, but I am still learning from these wise women myself. I hope you get the advice you need.

Jamie-
Our bodies are infinitely intelligent. All of our toxins are stored in our fat. When you lose weight rapidly you are releasing those toxins into your bloodstream where they can and do circulate. This is very damaging in many ways and taxes the liver greatly. A plateau is often a body's way of saying "enough toxins!" You will stabilize to clear toxins and lose again when it is safe to do so.

There *could* be other things going on, but that is my first offering.

When did the constipation begin?

[Panserbjorne]

Originally Posted by jamie79

HOw do you test for this? In a child, I mean? This describes my son almost to a tee. How do you fix it? B vitamins? OR would a multi work? This parenting thing on top of food issues for them and me is exhausting! Oh yeah and somehow I gotta run this household, homeschool, work (a little), etc, etc, etc.

You can do a pretty standard blood test. I would fix it either with liver or a B supplement independent of a multi.

[Panserbjorne]

Purple Kangaroo...it's okay. You're home here. We live off a very small amount of foods quite happily. For the most part in my house we are dairy, grain, gluten, shellfish, tomato, pepper, eggplant, spinach, pineapple, soy, legume etc. free. Now, it's really not helpful to talk about what we CAN'T eat, so why don't we start by talking about what you CAN eat? I think you can definitely find enough crossover that you can all eat the same meals. Even if small things like condiments need to be different.

As LTB stated, it can absolutely be done. Not only can it be done, but you will be shocked at how amazing you feel once you lose problem foods and replace them with nourishing foods. Your entire family can start to heal together. It's such a gift!

There is literally nothing that you talked about that cannot be healed. You are already on a great path and you are willing to go further which is the key.

I will echo too, that my dd was off the charts tiny and diagnosed FTT. Eliminating her major issues and doing a healing diet (we did the SCD) not only put her back on the charts, but had her thriving in no time. Ds wasn't in that bad of shape, but even he got better.

I had an autoimmune disease and related issues and I am SO much better!

I have several other thoughts...but I'll let all these magnificently brilliant ladies chime in!

[jamie79]

Originally Posted by firefaery

Jamie-
Our bodies are infinitely intelligent. All of our toxins are stored in our fat. When you lose weight rapidly you are releasing those toxins into your bloodstream where they can and do circulate. This is very damaging in many ways and taxes the liver greatly. A plateau is often a body's way of saying "enough toxins!" You will stabilize to clear toxins and lose again when it is safe to do so.

There *could* be other things going on, but that is my first offering.

When did the constipation begin?

Hmmm, I wish I knew. Maybe the past couple of weeks? I know I need to be doing my juicing more regularly. I have been sliding a bit on that and using the greens powder more.

In regards to the question about the B vites (sorry I still can't figure out how to multi-quote)...would you say that the B vites in addition to a multi or just the B vites? He is a pretty healthy eater, however like most kids craves the carbs and gets them at his grandma's house. I think I will take an inventory of his food intake for a few days and see what I come up with and just put my foot down with grandma. It is so frustrating with that.