good excuse

I have a good excuse for not posting or being crafty lately. I swear. The excuse is food sensitivities. I've spent the past month obsessing over food, mainly because there's so much of it I can't eat. So far I've figured out that gluten makes me feel icky, and strangely enough I'm pretty sure potatoes make my muscles hurt a lot more. Potatoes! I am also pretty sure that corn and rice are safe. But that's as far as I've gotten. Tomatoes and peppers are part of the potato family (strangely enough) so I am avoiding anything with gluten, potato, tomato, or pepper in them for a long time. During this process I try to see if I start feeling better (do my muscles hurt less? Is it possible that they will stop hurting altogether? Will I stop feeling so tired all the time?) and if things get better, I can bring back tomatoes and see what happens. Then peppers. Then I'll even try potatoes again just in case it wasn't actually potatos. Then comes the fun part (probably months from now) when I try gluten again (find my favorite bread product and chow down) and see what happens, most likely to find that it poisons my body. Hopefully though all of this I will figure out what I can and cannot eat, and from there feel like a better human being. Yay.

In the mean time, much of my life is revolving around coming up with yummy tasty things that I CAN eat, and researching and inspecting labels of everything to make sure I'm not missing hidden gluten. Did you know gluten is in FREAKING EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD? I would be better off if I just never bought anything packaged again, but let's face it, that's not very realistic for me.

I also decided that Food Restrictions Time was also a good time for me to lose a few pounds. I have a pair of pants that I LOVE that I bought about 4 years ago, and I think there is no good reason why I shouldn't be able to fit my butt into them again. So the goal is to fit back into them. I found this fantastic website called The Daily Plate where I have a free account, and I can search for the foods I eat and it will keep track of all the calories, fat, etc that I've eaten in a given day. It also tells me how many calories I should eat if I want to lose a certain amount each week, based on my weight. It's fantastic. So I've been planning my daily food with that, and learning how to control portion sizes (instead of eating half a bag of rice chips like I want to do REALLY BADLY right now, I only eat 10 chips which is like torture).

So with all of that going on, I've just been too preoccupied with preparing tasty healthy poison-free food to do anything else crafty and fun. I mean, I've kind of been having fun making things like mango salsa, sprouted 15 bean soup with chicken sausage, and curry-flavored roasted chick peas. But it takes lots of research and planning and grocery shopping.

Alas! I will probably be all-encompassed by this food nonsense for a few more weeks before I get used to it. I mean, I want to finish all my crochet projects, master resin beads, and fun stuff like that... but there just aren't enough hours in my days. So for now, they will have to wait.