The Not-So-Hellish Diet-From-Hell.

I've been owing you this post about my actual "diet" for 4 months now... so here we go! 

One of the things that drives me the most crazy about having PCOS is how out of control it makes me feel. Not in a wild way. I'm not Animal:

Excuse the poor video quality. Um, I'd definitely burn some major calories if I had that much energy.

I've tried a few different PCOS-friendly diets. First I tried balancing my sugar throughout the day, diabetic-style, but that was sort of short-lived. Possibly because it was too free. I didn't have the self-control to be able to eat a huge variety of things and still make appropriate choices. So then I tried the Paleo diet, also known as the Caveman diet. Because, apparently, I'm an extremist? That lasted a little bit longer but I was struggling with the idea of making two dinners every night- one for me and one for The Man because I felt bad subjecting him to my restrictions. Since there's only two of us (haha that's kind of the point of this blog isn't it?), if my husband isn't going to be on a diet with me (and why should he be??), things get a little complicated around dinnertime.

I'm not a huge fan of excuses. I guess I just wasn't ready for the full-blown commitment, maybe. Not until I saw this video:

If you watch that video, she spells out the guidelines for the PCOS low-amylose diet and tells her amazing story... you can read more of her journey over at The Subfertile Frugalista.

But to make a long story short, here are the rules in a nutshell:
       1. Avoid all simple sugars- no candy, soda, cake, ice cream, canned fruit, yogurt, cookies etc. AKA: ALL OF MY FAVORITE FOODS. Oh Em Gee.
       2. Avoid vegetables grown underground (except onions and garlic), corn, bananas, and foods enriched with maltodextrin or corn syrup.
       3. Avoid wheat, rice, rye, barley, and oats- yeah, that means no oatmeal, bread, pasta, cereal. You know, all of the easiest/quicket possible food options in existence.
       4. Eat a minimum of 3 servings each of above-ground veggies and fruits daily.
       5. Eat at least 6 ounces of protein every day.
Avoid low-fat foods.
DON'T count calories (holla!).

We're currently on a break from Reproductive Endocrinologist appointments for a number of reasons, so in the meantime, we've been trying this diet out (in addition to my Metformin prescription). I've also pretty much cut out all soy as well since I've read it messes with your estrogen levels and that's pretty much the last thing I need. I've been doing this since April! Almost 4 months! Things do get complicated with dinnertime, like they did with the Paleo diet but after seeing that video and her success story, I just had to make the commitment.

So. What HAVE I been eating? A whole lot of chicken and nuts. More dairy than I should probably should be having (mostly milk). I started out with a ton of smoothies with lots of fruit and vegetables but I've kind of been slacking on that- gotta get back into it. Those Chocolate Brownie Bites I posted about were a major staple for awhile. Some fish. A bunch of different almond flour and coconut flour experiments. I've got this fake cookie dough recipe that uses chick peas that I need to post about! And I've been doing this since April!

It can be done! Clockwise from top left: An avocado & salmon appetizer from a sushi restaurant on a trip to Montreal; homemade salmon kebabs; grilled chicken with a spice rub while visiting my parents in Massachusetts; homemade cauliflower tortilla with kielbasa (questionable) and veggies.

Err, actually, this past month has been a bit harder, I've "cheated" more than I'd like to admit (today we came back from vacation, throughout which I only moderately cheated, but then I declared today a MAJORCHEATDAY and have so far only eaten a doughnut and an ice cream sundae. Yep. Back on track as of right... now!), and therefore my weight loss streak has tapered off a bit, but I've been a lot better about taking my Metformin 3x/day. And yes, with me that is something to write home about. All-in-all I've lost somewhere between 9 and 15 lbs more than the number on the scale that I'd been repeatedly getting stuck at for the past 2+ years, and 15-28lbs since my highest weight spike ever. So... BOOM.

Worth it. (and for realz, we're officially back on track!)

A Fine Establishment

Welllll look who decided to show up. TWO days in a row!

IDK if you happened to notice, but in the last post I started using a real camera. That's right. No iPhone there, friends. You see, my trusty Canon (see what I did there) had been MIA (zing!) for over a year. I started making photo yearbooks a few weeks ago, and I have NO IDEA what I'm going to do when I (eventually) get to 2013. It's going to be an entire yearbook of Instagrammed pictures. No joke. I'm like having anxiety over it already.

But enough about that. For awhile now (like years) I've REALLY been wanting to get one of those framed signs that people make of your last name (or kid's first name) made up of random black and white photos of letters. But those things are EXPENSIVE. I almost sucked it up and bought a Groupon for one on like 8 different occasions. But my cheapness kept getting the best of me.

So then I decided to make my own.

I even bought a nice frame for it on a trip to Ikea! And I actually found a website with free printable photos of letters AND I sorted through 100s of each letter, and narrowed it down to a few of each, and finally picked ONE of each of the 7 letters in "Sherman". I did it! But then it was like 4am and I needed to go to bed.

And then, suddenly, it was like 5+ months later. Oops. So now I don't remember what that awesome free letters website was, but I'd be willing to bet that I found it on Pinterest. :)

But tonight was the night. I found that Ikea Ribba frame and I whipped out my iPhoto album of the 7 photos that I'd already turned black and white, and I did a little bit of math and figured out that each one needed to be 2.6"x2.6" to fit (errr after a few miscalculations and wasted printouts. Math was never my specialty). I'm not sure if I'd recommend this particular frame, btw. I would have preferred it to be a bit shorter and wider so that the photos fit better but that's what you get when you do things on the fly. DO NOT tell my husband that I just admitted that I make rash decisions. Umm... Hi honey! ;)

Here's how that came out:

Next step was to pull my signature lazy person move and flip over the piece of paper inside the frame to get a white background. Except... wait for it... here's my Oh Sh*t! moment:

There were INSTRUCTIONS printed all over the back of that paper! What?! Thinking fast (also not my specialty, but this time that brain of mine *almost* pulled through), I grabbed my bag of scrap fabric and a few rolls of wrapping paper. Chaos ensued:

...Nothing worked. My vision had been for the letters to be against plain white. I actually sat down on the floor at this point, feeling defeated (and overdramatic). That's when I saw it: The pile of my husband's scrubs. At first, I was like:

But thennnn I was like: 

Because guess what color they were, and guess what I'd thrown a pair of into my designated cleaning cloth pile earlier this week (and hadn't used yet)?! That's right. WHITE. SCRUBS:

Now, of course, that added a whole ironing-and-taping step. But hey, sometimes life throws us curve balls. Look, Mom, I ironed!!! ....Yeah, it's really kind of a big deal. I honestly don't know why we even own an iron and ironing board. MAYBE for this exact moment?? ;)

 Aaaand to end a very long story almost-awkwardly quickly, here's the finished product:

Ta-daaa! I threw in a printout of "Established 2009" for a little extra kitsch and because it looked a little weird when it was just the letters centered in the frame all alone. Yeah, that "R" is a little bit higher than the rest of the letters, and therefore driving the OCD in me CRAY-ZAY, but it honestly might be another 5 months before I fix it. True story.

Guess Who's Back, Back Again...

Shady's back, tell your friends!

Okay, okay, I have no idea where Eminem is, but I'm back... please contain your excitement.

What is exciting (for me, at least!) is that I've got my first project for the "Furbishing" category here! And it's only 4 years in the making. Relax, it's about as low-key as imaginable. We bought these bright blue Ikea Nyttja frames back in 2009. I loved the color in the store, and maybe for a hot second once we got them home, but almost immediately decided to paint them black. Maybe because I was so annoyed that they come in black and I could have just bought them that way, I never got around to doing it.

Flash forward 4+ years and 3 apartments later, and I've finally done it. Except that instead of black I used Martha Stewart Crafts Multi-Surface Metallic Acrylic Craft Paint in Brushed Bronze.

Here's the before. (Ignore the unpainted area around the electric socket... we're about to paint the guest room... Again. It's currently Benjamin Moore's Stone 2112-40 with Shakespeare Tan 228 around the sockets- never got around to finishing up!):

 Much to my chagrin, I had to do 3 coats. Not super impressed, but I also didn't sand it down at all so I guess I can't complain... too much. ;) Here it is after one coat:

And here's the after:

I think I love it. I have the same frame hanging in the bathroom and I think I'm going to do the same thing. That print is from the same Ikea trip 4 years ago, btw. Jazzing it up all around the town!

Meanwhile, we're STILL in the process of picking a paint color for the living room... I know I want it to be gray, but all of the samples we've tried so far just aren't quite right. Too blue, too green, too dark, too purple, too light... you get the idea. We LOVE the color that it is now (Studio Taupe by Behr), but we painted before we moved in (two years ago!) and it doesn't look right with our tan couches. Lucky for us, we still have an extra gallon of it, so I'll be using that to paint the guest room... at some point.

Next up for the guest room? I'm thinking of painting some kind of pattern on top of that nightstand (chevron, maybe?) and replacing the knobs. The nightstand is a Craigslist find, and we've been using it as an entryway table until this week. The knobs are from Anthropologie and were bought to match our hallway decor, but they'll actually work really well on our bedroom nightstand. I'd like to get some branch-like handles for this one. I was thinking of something along the lines of this, but a quick Pinterest search just came up with this, which I might like even better, so we'll see!