Fertility Part 8

We have been on The IVF Diet for 10 days now, today is day 11. It has been a physical and emotional challenge to keep up with the rigor of meal preparation. I am literally exhausted. I work, rest, cook, eat and repeat.

coconut porridge with raspberry compote and bee pollen sprinkle

Some meals appear twice or three times in the two week cleanse program, others do not. The porridge above is scheduled for Week 1: Day 2 as well as Week 1: Day 6. The first time, I didn't serve it with the raspberries or bee pollen. The compote takes time to make, and for Day 2 we ate in our office at work, so it was too labor intensive to do. The bee pollen I consider an "exotic" ingredient that I didn't find until the end of week 1. We rounded out the ingredients by visiting The Vitamin Shoppe, where we found: bee pollen, spirulina powder, omega 3 oil, and inositol powder.

lentil salad with lemon tahini dressing

roasted root vegetables: sweet potato, parsnip, carrot, beetroot

It was good to make the roasted root vegetables on the weekend (Week 1: Day 6), since they took some time to prepare. Then, those vegetables were used in a frittata the following morning (Week 1: Day 7). If I remember correctly, we finished them for lunch a few days later (Week 2: Day 2). We had some superb heirloom cherry tomatoes, which were used in a variety of dishes.

salmon niçoise salad

I didn't realize it was easy to steam salmon fillets until we made this niçoise salad (Week 1: Day 7). We've gone through so many lemons, making the dressing for all the salads. We had one package of green beans that were in a "steam-in-the-bag" packaging, which made it possible to prepare this salad at work (Week 2: Day 2) where we only have a microwave. On that day we substituted tuna for salmon, which tasted OK but I realized later that salmon is preferred because tuna tends to bioaccumulate mercury.

supergreen flapjack seed bars (8)

After finding the spirulina powder, I made a tray of these date-based bars. They taste actually quite sweet. They have lots of nuts (pumpkin seeds, walnuts, peanut butter) as well as oatmeal and dried cranberries. Added protein powder gives them 3g protein per serving and 20g carbs. I plan to do some calculations based on our grocery bills to determine whether all this effort is saving us money or not. I also made some chocolate protein bars which have 7.5g protein and 19g carbs.

brown rice with red onion and spinach

baked "sea bass" with salsa verde

On some dishes, we are still making compromises. Above was supposed to be a "red rice" with pomegranate (Week 1: Day 7). Unfortunately, pomegranates are a fall/winter crop and are not available in this time of year. It was supposed to have feta cheese, but I forgot to buy it at the store. The toasted pistachios were good though. I saw sea bass at the farmer's market for $34 / lb, and I didn't buy it. The dish above (Week 2: Day 3) used cod instead. Also, I substituted celery leaves for the parsley in the salsa verde.

roast chicken with steamed asparagus 

miso glazed cod with sesame seeds and steamed broccoli

I think you can see that most of these dishes are very colorful. I guess I was too tired to take a photo of one dish that we really enjoyed: fish tagine. The roast chicken (Week 1: Day 6) was pretty easy and tasted really good. We ended up eating the leftover chicken (Week 2: Day 1) for lunch the following week. We couldn't find miso paste, so I bought miso broth and reduced it to make the glazed cod (Week 2: Day 1). We weren't able to make the baked eggs in avocado (Week 2: Day 3) again because of the constraints of being at work.

Today we're having jerk veggie burgers with celeriac slaw and salad for lunch (Week 2: Day 4). As I said, I'm exhausted. Last night I did the meal prep for today's lunch as well as last night's dinner and tomorrow's snack (dreamy salt and vinegar kale crisps). I started writing this post, partly to keep up with what we've been doing, and partly to vent about my feelings. I feel like this diet is something important to do to get my body ready for pregnancy.

During this past month, I've weighed myself nearly every day. This greater than 25% protein, less than 40% carb diet seems to be working to help me shed some pounds. I read that for extremely obese people like myself, it can be beneficial to lose even just 15 pounds before embryo transfer, so that's what I'm aiming for. Dear husband is concerned that this diet isn't sustainable. I kind of agree. It depends on what's motivating a person, and how dedicated they are to that motivating factor. 

It has been great to have dear husband helping out in the kitchen and grocery store to make this two week cleanse come into reality. He has stated that he is giving up on Week 2: Day 6 since we plan to go out to Riverside for Easter weekend to be with family. I'm sad, and I don't know in what capacity we will continue applying the principles of the IVF diet going forward. I'm trying to remain in gratitude for what we've learned thus far. I'm trying to avoid going into fear-mode for what we will face next.

The clue app is predicting maximum PMS for tomorrow, so maybe that's why I'm feeling sensitive today. We'll see how it goes, but it seems for now that my next cycle will start April 26th and the one after that will start May 23rd (which is after I will have grades turned in). The end-of-may cycle is likely when we will start the next phase of our treatment (stimulating the uterine lining with estrogen and progesterone). That's only 5 weeks away, so wish me luck on my goal of losing that 15 lbs.