So, it’s been 10 days since I got the blood test results back and had to cut out dairy, grain and sugar.

10 looooooong ass days.

I don’t want to exaggerate or anything, but it’s ranked amongst the hardest things I’ve done in my life.  Except like birthing a few babies, surviving meningitis and not punching Seth in face when he snores all night.  But other than that, definitely the hardest thing.  You know why?  Because dairy, grain or sugar are in EVERYTHING!!!

Have you actually looked at the ingredients in the things you eat?  Damn son!  Maybe it’s better not to, because you’ll get a fright.  Sugar in every sauce ever made, wheat in all kinds of things and dairy, well I just want that cheese to be ON all the things I eat.

But I did it.  So far so good.  Here’s how it went down.

This is a bit of a long post – I have a lot to say about this OK?!  If you want to just see the kinds of meals that we have been eating, scroll to the bottom, I won’t hate you for not reading all of it – promise.

Full disclosure before we get into this:  I’ve read that real butter is good for you so I use it VERY sparingly (maybe once or twice a week), we eat rice (basmati, sometimes brown) and ALL the potatoes.  You cannot take potatoes away from me too.  And also, this is so not a weight loss issue for me, so I’m happy to keep the “fatty” foods.

Before we made the cut…

I have to be honest and tell you that on the day I found out what was in store for me, I called Seth and we ordered a massive burger combo meal thing from Steers.  Which I followed up with a Savannah and Nik Naks.  Plus a few other titbits I found floating around my cupboard.  It was deliciously disgusting.  But worth it to clear the cupboards of anything tempting.  Because y’all know, when you’re hungry, you can’t say no to that chocolate looking you right in the face.

Summary:  Red faced, over-indulged and bloated.  All the time.

Every day I take some of these as prescribed by my Doctor.

After a bit of trial and error (and feedback from the blood tests), the ones I take daily are the Krill (Omega3’s), the D3 5000 (Vitamin D) and a probiotic (that’s at home in my fridge so I didn’t get a picture of it) – all supplied to me by Health Renewal.  I joked on Twitter about the problem I have with my probiotic.  I have since added three alarms to my phone so I won’t forget 😉

I need to take a probiotic pill as the last thing I do every day

And the last thing I do every day, is to forget to take my probiotic pill

— Cindy Alfino (@CindyAlfino) October 24, 2016

Day 1 – 3

Oh my word.  I don’t think I have ever felt this tired – even with a new born baby and two toddlers hanging around my neck.  Because I couldn’t drink milk in my coffee, I cut out coffee.  I repeat, I stopped drinking coffee.  Yes, I should have just gone to get almond milk, but I’m busy and also a bit lazy.  So I didn’t.  The effect had me yawning every 10-15 minutes all three days.  Not even joking.  It was really bad.  Realised that I was more addicted to coffee than I thought, so I’m actually glad I cut it out.

On the food front, I went out and basically cleared Woolies of all their vegetables.  I stocked my fridge so well that I’m glad that we got a new one.  We were totally running out of space.  The thing is that I was so gung ho on getting all the ingredients I could possibly need, I didn’t think through anything at all.  So half of it went off before I got to use it.  So I felt like a bit of a chop.  I didn’t have a recipe book, so I just tried to make do with our usual meals just without the bad stuff.  Which would have been good to think about before I spent all my hard earned cash monies.

Summary: Tired, miserable, headachy, angry and totally over having to think of things to eat.  Skin is still an angry red colour with persistent little pimples.

Day 4 – 6

The headaches have eased up and I’m not craving coffee as much, but the tired?  It’s still there.  SO very tired.

Tried a few new recipes, including broccoli, spinach and celery soup.  It was interesting.  Definitely got all those green things into my body, but I don’t know how often I could force myself to eat that.  I’ve also noticed that my tastebuds aren’t as sensitive to the gross vegetable taste anymore.  And things like strawberries are noticeably sweeter than they tasted before (also the perfect chocolate craving substitute).

I’m no longer bloated all the time, which was really becoming notable in the previous few weeks.  Also, I’ve lost 3kgs.  Which is cool, but flip, it feels a bit quick.

Summary:  Less tired, still a bit miserable and thin – which is great.  Slightly less redness when I wake up and less little white head pimples.

Day 7 – 10

Feeling a lot more like myself now.  Still tired, but only around 8 or 9pm as opposed to wanting to crawl under my desk at 10am.  So that’s pretty much back to normal.

Managed to finish all the contents of our fridge and now that we’re about to start a ‘new week’, I’m going to properly plan my meals before going on a shopping spree again.  We’ve found a few options which the kids love, no wait, tolerate is probably a better word, so that’s been helpful.  I try and make things I know they’ll like one day and something new the next.  Or incentivise eating it with a banana, peanut butter (sugar free) and cocoa ice cream (you’ll see in this recipe I think we added honey, but I don’t even do that anymore, it’s literally those three ingredients and the kids LOVE it).

Starting to really get into the hang of it now, choosing meals has become easier again and even going out and asking them to hold all the bread etc is easier.

My skin is starting to look better.  When I wake up the right side actually even looks “normal”.  But not nearly normal enough to go without make up.  Feeling like this definitely was the right choice.

Summary: Feeling MUCH better, getting the hang of it and still thin.  Skin looking a lot less red. YAY.

See?  So far so good.

And for real, real full disclosure, I need you to know that I cheated twice.  Once I had cup of Nomu hot chocolate and half a massive chocolate chip cookie (it was in this date night box that my friend Zoe gave me for my birthday – before we made the change – and I didn’t want to waste it) and a 1/4 packet of Nik Naks a couple of nights ago.  There’s no excuse for that one. Eeek.  it won’t happen again, promise.

Shew, now that that’s off my chest we can move on.

I’m going to end off with some of the meals that we ate.  I’m not the next Masterchef, that’s for sure, but it’s been interesting trying out new recipes and things.  Much to the displeasure of our kids (who eat what we eat because not the hell am I making two meals every night).

Breakfasts…

Lunches….

Dinner…

Snacks…