Chest Pains, Pills, and Insomnia

Kim and I are taking a few days to relax, evaluate, and plan. Reflecting back on where our journey started, I sit back, close my eyes, and vividly recall the absolute hell brought into our newlywed apartment some 8 years ago.  What started as intense chest pains led me to the Fort Carson ER where I was immediately taken back only to discover strong acid reflux - a symptom that would plague me for years and force me to sleep in a recliner for most of my first year of marriage.  People can describe intense chest pain and acid reflux, headaches, irritable bowels, insomnia, gut inflammation, and mood swings but it just doesn't do justice to the lived experience. 

A year later, taking 6 pills a day and feeling like a lab rat undergoing experiment after experiment, no relief was in sight.  My lap nisson fundoplication surgery (basically wrapping my stomach around my esophagus) gave me hope, despite the required all-liquid diet for the month to follow.  (Thanksgiving dinner just wasn't the same out of a blender...)  Fast forward 6 years after having tried all of the diets out there from Paleo (cave man diet), the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD), Food Rotation Diet (keeping a journal of everything you eat and not eating it again for 72 hours - that was tough), Low fat, Low Sugar, Low Carb, Blood Type Diet - all of them.  Only to discover my eventual path to healing almost by accident - one in which could have prevented all those pills and perhaps even surgery.  A simple whole foods plant-based diet.  If you had told me even just a year ago that I would become a vegan and be running a plant-based meal delivery business, well I'm not sure what I would have said, but probably can't repeat it here...Here is where we are and I am proud to say I am a healthy man today because I changed the way I eat and the way I think.  No more pills.  No more sleepless nights.  No more pain. 

You deserve to feel great all the time too.  Our bodies were made perfectly and to exist in harmony and health.  Your pain is simply telling you to make a change.  The start of fall marks a chance for a new beginning.  YOUR new beginning.  Your new life.  Start yours today. 

How To Make $100 Cake

1. Purchase $24 cookbook with Triple Chocolate Fat Pants Cake recipe (two-layer chocolate cake topped with vanilla frosting and layered with chocolate chip cookie crumbles.

 

2.  Make grocery list of all 32 ingredients that comprise this 3 part recipe (frosting, cake, and cookies) and split shopping with baking partner.

 

3.  Turn on Finding Nemo for 3 children and put baby to sleep in bassinet.

 

4.  Start recipe with frosting mix since it requires 6 hours of chilling before use.  Replace first two ingredients with substitution (due to food allergies that prevent use of soy) and document.  Use mixer on unmelted coconut oil and document that oil should be melted next time.  Refrigerate.

 

5.  Review cookie recipe and divide recipe between partners - one assigned wet ingredients, one assigned dry.  When wet ingredient baker discovers that $11 jar of coconut oil that was purchased is not in kitchen or left in grocery bag, make dairy and soy free butter substitution.  When said baker discovers the end of vanilla extract bottle, decide to substitute with combination of butter and peppermint extract.  When dry ingredient baker admits that evaporated cane juice was nowhere to be found at the store, decide to substitute an eyeballed amount of brown rice syrup and agave nectar.

 

6.  Discontinue substitution documentation. 

 

7.  Finish remaining steps per instructions and bake.  Upon tasting, promptly throw away cookies and agree to purchase packaged gluten-free cookies for substitution.

 

8.  Begin cake recipe, substituting coconut oil and evaporated cane juice with aforementioned products.

 

9.  Feed children and baby.  Then find additional distractions for them to occupy themselves that involve being anywhere but the kitchen.

 

10.  Go look in trunk of car and discover lost grocery bag that has $11 jar of coconut oil.  Throw out cake batch in progress and decide to start over using melted coconut oil.

 

11.  Decide that children acting like monkeys are a  distraction and reconvene the next day after purchasing appropriate 

ingredients on grocery list.

 

12.  Make cake recipe as instructed.  Make cookie recipe with coconut oil.

 

13.  Layer cake with frosting and cookies.  Taste test and serve to children.

 

14.  Nearly go into diabetic coma after 3 bites.

 

15.  Add up grocery totals and decide that this is the best tasting cake ever made - half because of the name itself and half because you spent your entire week's grocery budget on one cake (made 2 1/2 times).

Wednesday Meeting

Had a great meeting at The Lazarus Group, Kansas City's leading website company.  They are making a great website for us.