Liam and I have been GFCF since December 27th. Almost 3 months. I feel great and he has had nothing but great reports from his therapists and teachers. I would love to think the diet is to thank, but I am cautious to give credit where credit isn't due. I started incorporating the dairy back into his diet this week with no noticeable change in his behavior. A noticeable change in the contents of his diapers, but meals have been a bit less complicated and less restricted, I'll deal. I'm glad to find that there is no major dairy sensitivity, especially since it may reduce the number of groans from my other angels applied to our "diet". I'm really curious to see how the reintroduction of gluten will effect him. I don't want to deprive my son of anything unnecessarily, but I'm secretly hoping for an excuse to continue to eliminate or at least reduce the amount of gluten in my family's diet.
The fitness professional in me is grateful for another reason to read nutritional labels, avoid eating out and trying new, clean recipes. I have not had that bloated, food comma feeling since I cut the wheat. I find it much easier to eat smaller, cleaner meals and my energy level has been great. I'm currently teaching group x classes 10 hours a week and personal training 5 hours a week and the tired I feel at the end of a long day is a good tired as apposed to the I've-been-hit-by-a-truck tired. I'm also paying close attention to my water intake, drinking 2+ liters of water a day. My new favorite trick is to buy the 1 liter smart water bottles, $1.25 when you buy them from the grocery store, they fit in my car's cupholders, I reuse them for a few days refilling them with the filtered water from my fridge, then toss the bottle and grab another. Filling it up twice a day is much easier to keep track of than 4-6 16oz bottles or trying to guess/remember how many times I refilled my glass at home. It may sound silly, but it works for me.
Enough about me. We've had some great educational and sensory discoveries this week. With Zoe's homeschooling I was about to lose my temper with her dawdling and spacing out during assignments, math especially. Then I had an epifany, a realization I should have had much earlier. I had been teaching the concept then giving her a work load of about 40 math problems, a combination of the new concept and a review of previous ones. I was giving her an hour to finish the 40 problems, which should have been more than enough, yet some days it would take her three hours and me constantly having to remind her to focus on the task at hand to complete it. For a multi-tasking mom that doesn't sit still until her head hits the pillow, this was increasingly frustrating and beyond my comprehension. So, almost accidentally, I gave her a 10 problem assignment to finish in 10 minutes. 4 minutes later, she was finished. Then we tried it again, another 10 problems finished before the allotted time frame, EUREKA! I feel so short sighted for not acknowledging and accepting earlier that Zoe is not motivated by simply finishing a task, as I am, but accepts tasks that she feels are manageable and is happy to complete them.
As for Liam, I had another epifany, that I should have had sooner. Liam is not necessarily a "head banger", however he does bang his head during his rare and occasional tantrums. This has actually lessened over time, but I mention it because it may apply to his recent desire to wear my elastic headbands. He's always had a thing for hair, so when he began stealing my headbands, which I wear almost daily, I didn't think much about it. But then he started to put them on his head, which I thought was really cute. Then he started to leave them on his head for a pretty lengthy time period, this got my attention as I have never been able to get him to wear a hat or tolerate a hood on a jacket. Tonight, when he commandeered my headband I went to my winter clothes and got a thick headband meant to cover the ears. I put it on his head, covered his ears and all, and he loved it, left it on until bedtime. I now know that it is most likely the pressure on his head that he likes, something like head banging, but I got the feeling that the fact that it covered his ears and muffled sounds may have been a plus.
That's enough for this post...more sensory, homeschooling, nutrition, fitness stuff to come!
