Green smoothie diet

I've been doing this nearly 2 weeks now and I figured it was a good time to update.  Maybe if I update on here it will be easier to keep myself motivated.  

I have lost about 2 pounds.  It may be more, it's a little hard to tell because I ran into a side effect that surprised me.  I have chronic constipation due to my meds and I take medication daily to help that.  Usually the prescription (Amitiza, which nobody has heard of and which my dr said worked pretty much only for me so I got all his samples) is enough alone but sometimes it isn't.  I had the idea that if I increased my fiber from "decent amount" to "more than recommended minimum" that I would see a magical improvement.  Wrong.

Apparently if you jump into this too fast and don't increase your water intake at the same time you gradually increase the fiber intake it can backfire on you and you wind up constipated despite that constipation being made up of a ton of really good fiber sources.  Fortunately I was cautious and so I haven't had a major problem but I have backed down to more fruit, less spinach, more water (which is hard since I'm usually a big water drinker) and trying to be more patient.  So for now I'm waiting for some additional meds to help get things going again and sticking to fruit only smoothies while getting additional fiber from beans and other foods and when my bowels can handle it I'll start again adding spinach more slowly.  I may have to back off even more; I still had about 35 grams of fiber today (recommended is at least 25) and that's probably a big gain from 2 weeks ago. 

I think in theory this will work for me if I can just adjust to the extra fiber and get past the constipation.  I lost a lot of weight several years ago on a low glycemic diet and while that diet in the form I used it then isn't as feasible with my MAOI and migraine diet restrictions this diet with a focus on fruits and veggies is low glycemic but functional for me at this point in my life.  I am trying to be healthy with all meals but am not forcing myself to give up all treats because there are so few substitutes with the restrictions and added to that is the simple fact that I can't really afford meat and so I'm not getting protein that way very often.  I need to get more fish into my diet somehow because I love fish and there are fish I can afford at least sometimes.  But one change at a time and the current change is going to be interesting enough for my budget.  I have a place to get fruits and veggies very cheap which is good but I'm going through large quantities of produce already.  So I need to get used to that budget change first.

The other thing that will have to happen soon, like probably next week when I get paid, is that I have to buy a better blender for this.  I'm using my cheap blender now and it just isn't powerful enough to handle this.  I'm going to burn the engine out before too long.  Which is fine, it was cheap and not meant to handle this kind of thing.  It also, oddly, doesn't have a lid, meaning I threw that out while moving in some weird accident.  

But anyway, that's my green smoothie experience (although right now there isn't green because of the backing down thing....).  Even so I had fruit smoothies (these are 100% fruit, no water, no ice, no milk, no yogurt, no nothing but fruit and flaxseed when I am ready to add that back in) for breakfast and med time today and my calorie count for the day was about 1100 with lots of both protien and fiber.  I'll probably eat a Greek yogurt later since I'm on antibiotics but that's only 100 calories more.   So even if I don't lose weight I'm eating much more healthily.  Which matters a lot.  If I do this and exercise and don't lose weight it means that my meds are just making weight loss impossible.  If it works then I know I have to work really hard to keep this up but I can lose weight with effort.

It will also be easier when this round of antibiotics ends and I don't have to have a 4 hour calcium free window twice a day.  For someone who drinks a lot of milk and eats dairy snacks this is really tough.  About one week left of that.  It does seem to be clearing my sinus infection.  I hope because if it doesn't I have to have a sinus CT and I'm not really interested in that.

Stay warm! Tonight is one of the lowest wind chills I've ever seen in my life (-30).  I have seen -40 once but this is the record for Ohio.