My averages for the last 2 weeks are 2,213 calories a day, with 60% fat, 23% carbs, and 17% protein.
So, positives and negatives-
Positive
- It definitely works, when followed to the letter!
- Plenty of calories so you don't feel hungry, even with eating 3 meals and no snacks
- Good, nutrient dense food that's all homemade; no processed "health food"
- Cost! It's inordinately expensive, at least for me. I think I've spent like $500 on food in two weeks, and I just do not have that kind of money.
- Time intensive. Even as a stay at home mom, the amount of time necessary to follow it perfectly is a little overwhelming. I can't imagine how people who work full-time could do the diet perfectly without being exhausted. And, anything shortcut that cuts down on time (like pre-made ferments, kombucha, etc) increases the cost.
So, where does this leave me? Hmmm. I certainly plan to continue, but I'm going to have to make adjustments. I just can't spend $800+ a month on food. Coconut oil (high quality!) alone is ridiculously expensive, and if my husband and I follow the guidelines, we're supposed to be consuming 12 tbsps between us, just before meals! And, even though I SAHM, that doesn't mean I'm home all the time. With 4 kids, we're usually pretty busy :) So, I also need to find ways to make it a little easier on myself.
Cost wise, here's what I'm thinking-
- No organic produce, outside of the "dirty dozen" (when available)
- Pastured chicken and pork, but conventional beef and lamb
- Keep eating eggs from my chickens, but supplement with conventional eggs when it's not enough
- Learn to make kombucha and ferments (time consuming, but kombucha is $3 or more a bottle, and ferments are $13 a pint!!! Big money suck)
- Regular cheese instead of raw milk cheese
So, I'm going to try to do that (though I'm not sure what the heck to do for the rest of the month, since my food money is pretty much gone!!) I'll certainly need to step outside of the recipes in the book to work with what I've got, but I'm going to do my best to keep to the basics; 2500 calories a day, 60% fat, 1-2 tbsps of coconut oil before each meal, fermented cod liver oil each morning. I have found that as a nursing mom, I usually need a light afternoon snack (I usually do a couple ounces of cheese and a piece of fruit).
I also really need to start working out!
Hello! Followed you here from the mothering forum. :) I'm LunaLady there.
ReplyDeleteIt is expensive. BUT - I don't know where you live, but my husband and I eat almost completely tradition on $150 a week - at Whole Foods Market, no less! I think the biggest thing that has helped me is to plan our meals to make sure we a) eat enough, but not toss things out that go bad, b) have enough leftovers from dinner to create lunches and c) buy things on sale.
I have about 10 or so things that I make for dinner, and I decide what I'll make based on what's on sale. Whole Foods market puts their meat on (pretty good) sale quite often - so when ground beef is on sale, I get three or four pounds so I can make meat loaf and burgers or enchiladas, etc - for example. If lamb is on sale, I get enough to make mousaka, stew, etc. It really helps to keep costs low. And I really do make almost everything from scratch – I buy very little in packaging. Coconut milk, chocolate (85%), and sprouted grain bread is pretty much it. Everything else is fresh cut and packaged for me right there (fish and meat from the butcher, fresh cheeses wrapped, in season fresh vegetables, etc).
As far as kombucha - I make my own! It's really easy and REALLY cheap to do so. You can find people online to buy Scoby's from, or I got mine from Wells of Health on Etsy. It's really fun and you can make it how you like it. It's really so easy; you don't have to hardly do anything. It just sits in a jar on your counter or in the cupboard for a week or two and then you bottle it and start over.
We recently moved, but before we moved we had an egg lady, a raw milk shed, and a local butcher that I got most of our staples from. Now we're too far away from that and I haven't been able to find new places to get that stuff - but that really did save us a lot of money. We could buy raw milk for $8 a gallon through the co-op versus $14 a gallon at Whole Foods (back when they still sold raw milk). The eggs I got were farm fresh and $3 a dozen, and I often got a free dozen just because I consistently came to her for eggs.
For coconut oil, I get mine from Mountain Rose Herbs. A 1 gallon tub of unrefined coconut oil is $44. The shipping prices can be high there, so get some other stuff to make up for it. Their essential oils are marvelous. And they have some other things for cooking – amazing spices, salts, teas, etc. I buy from them quite often.
Well, now that I talked your ear off…! I hope to have offered at least something to help. I know how hard it can be to get this way of eating just right. :)