My Health Challenge & Food Photo Journal

Good morning! I hope you are having a great week so far. I am having a tough time this week, I had a doctors’ appointment on Monday where I got some unsettling results. I will tell you more about it at the end of this post. First, I want to show you everything I ate yesterday since I participate in a blog link-up party called “What I Ate Wednesdays.”

Breakfast consisted of a smoothie made from a fresh mango, frozen banana, romaine lettuce, frozen pineapple, frozen broccoli florets, hemp seeds, sesame seeds, water, cinnamon, cacao powder, carob powder, goji berries, flax meal, chia seeds, fresh mint, fresh stevia leaves and frozen blueberries. Phew! That’s a lot of ingredients to make such a plain-looking thing:

I am so, so proud of myself for no longer adding dates or liquid stevia to my morning smoothies because they were simply too sweet that way and really fed my sugar cravings. I think I got a little bit of sweetness using some of the leaves from my new stevia plant, but it is much less intense than when I was using the liquid stevia or the erythritol.

Lunch was at a local restaurant that has several vegan options (more than the last time I was there!) with Alan and some friends. I ordered the tofu soft tacos with a green salad. Here’s what they looked like:

This lunch was pretty healthy for a meal out and having the appetizer salad made me feel satisfied enough that I wasn’t tempted to touch the bread or even consider dessert.

For dinner, I roasted some yams in the oven and then made a mixture of onions, tomatoes, green chilies, black beans, asparagus and kale for dinner:

It’s too bad the yam was a dud, otherwise this meal would have been really great. I think tonight when I serve the veggie mixture leftovers for dinner, I’ll make some guacamole or some other type of sauce and pour it all over some corn tortillas.

For dessert, I had some of my carrot pulp cookies that I mentioned on Monday. They turned out quite tasty! I’m still not ready to post the recipe, though, because I want to experiment with sweetening them with date syrup instead of maple syrup. Here’s what they looked like after dehydrating for nearly 24 hours:

Okay, so now you’re probably wondering what is going on with my health? I know I’ve written a lot about some of the issues I’ve had in the past including my migraines, anxiety, allergies and PCOS. I don’t want you to think that I am a sick person, though. The truth is that since I started following Dr. Fuhrman’s program nearly two years ago, 99% of the time I feel fantastic and the migraines, anxiety and allergies are distant memories. In fact, just in the last 6 months or so, I have started needing less sleep and I am consistently waking up between 5 and 5:30 a.m. now feeling rested and full of energy that is sustained throughout the whole day. It seems as if any health problems I have now are remnants of my first 35-ish years of not eating correctly.

The issue that is causing me a problem now are two thyroid nodules. When I did research on Dr. Fuhrman’s website about the cause of thyroid nodules, he mentioned that they could stem from poor childhood eating behaviors. I also have Hashimoto’s disease but so far I have not needed any supplemental thyroid medication. Since the nodules were discovered on my thyroid about 4 years ago, I’ve just had yearly ultrasounds to monitor their growth. They have not done anything until lately when the results of the ultrasound on Monday showed that one grew 30% since last year and has reached a size that now needs to be biopsied to rule out cancer.

<Sigh.> So, that’s my news. Tomorrow afternoon I will have my nodules biopsied, a procedure called Fine Needle Aspiration where the area on my neck is anesthetized and a needle is used with the assistance of ultrasound to remove cells from the nodules. A cytologist will be there along with my endocrinologist to make sure that enough relevant cells are removed for testing. The results will then be available to me in a week.

I’ve spoken with several people about the procedure who have assured me that it is not painful (although not necessarily pain-less…can you tell I am kind of a baby?) and that I should be good to go as soon as it’s over. It should only take about 20 minutes or so and that also makes me happy. Lastly, I really trust my doctor and that makes a huge difference in my attitude, too.

I really debated over sharing this personal stuff with you but ultimately decided that is what my blog is about, my story and my adventures, shall we call them, in life. I originally wanted my blog just to be a place to share recipes, but it has turned into so much more. So, I hope you don’t mind the personal stuff and I do really, really appreciate your support.

Have a great day and I’ll be back here on Friday morning with likely a slightly bruised neck, but hopefully a good report.

Tagged as: thyroid biopsy

Tweet