Sunday, March 3, 2013

Day 47 – Stevia a Problem?


There are plenty of posts online that talk about stevia being a great alternative to sugar—they use it in many other countries including Japan and Brazil to—evidently—great fan fare.  It is possibly an issue for my wife who has struggled the last few days with a little case of bloating.  We noticed that she was bloating (we both kind of were) while trying to gain weight to get ready for our next juice cleanse but just chalked it off to all the food we were eating—and sure enough when the cleanse came and went so did the bloating.

However; in the few days this week we have been back on food—actually it was Wednesday when we started—my wife noticed that she started bloating more than usual again.  We pored over the issue tonight along with the foods we have introduced (we have been more careful and slow this time around).   The most likely culprit seems to be stevia so we are going to try to cut out stevia for about 3 days—without changing anything else—and see how she feels.

Today was another good day—I did get more tired mid-day today, but for the last 2 nights I have gotten to bed really late so I think I just need to get some better sleep tonight and I will be fine.  Breakfast was our favorite green drink which was exactly the same as yesterday, but we tried a new cereal called amaranth (actually it is just a grain, but we cooked it as a hot cereal).  It was very good, but very interesting… definitely not my favorite but not bad either.

The boys did great at church which makes it a lot easier for us adults while we are there.  There are some Sundays where the boys make it very difficult and we joke that those are the days where the only thing we are learning at church is patience (which is not a bad thing to learn), but if you are of the school where you learn the lessons you need then we must really need some patience.

Lunch was a few leftovers (the leftover burrito stuff) mixed together and put over salad—we also added some of the guacamole on top of a spring mix, romaine and spinach salad and then snacked on the sweet potatoes we cooked in the oven yesterday.  We made a new dessert to try—we like to call it Chocolate Moose (ish) Cake.  It has a feel ofcheese cake but does taste really good for not having any sugar.  I say “ish” because it does not taste exactly like chocolate moose but it reminds us of it—I adjusted a recipe I found here: http://yourlighterside.com/2012/11/candices-low-carb-almond-flour-brownies/

Kickin Cacao Moose (ish) Cake

Here is my recipe loosely based on the above site:
1/2 -  large avocado
1/4 - 1/2 cup almond milk
1 - cup almond flour
4 - eggs (although we are going to try with 3 next time)
1/3 - cube of butter
1/3 - cup of coconut oil
About 3 droppers (60 drops) of stevia
2 heaping tablespoons of cacao powder (although we could have added one more)

Great Sunday nap and then dinner—Brussel Sprouts cooked with green and yellow onions and peppers seasoned with lemon juice, sea salt, pepper and basil.  We also cooked some quinoa (our grain of choice right now) and then cooked some Butternut Squash the same way we cook sweet potatoes (on a cookie sheet with coconut oil turmeric and sea salt).

We’ll see how the stevia thing goes (or if it is just something that we are just too worried about), but who knows… as we continue our research it seems that plenty of people say that xylitol is no good either and some say it is worse than stevia… I guess we’ll just have to find what works for us and stick to it!

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