I *Heart* Cucumbers

One of the side of affects of gallstones/gallbladder problems is that you are frequently nauseous, especially after eating. It sucks. Hard core. Not wanting to feel sick anymore, and as part of the plan to fix my digestive issues that caused the gallbladder problems I am trying to follow a primarily "whole foods" diet. On the website I ordered my supplements from, there is a recommended diet that I am following for my gallstones. Long story short, I eat like rabbit. Not a whole lot of anything and almost entirely vegetables. In fact, the only meat I can eat on the diet is cold water fish. I've pretty much got to go vegetarian. Luckily, I like vegetables and like to cook, so it's not so bad.

I got a brilliant idea the other day to buy a juicer to help out with the cause. I'm supposed to drink obscene amounts of cucumber and beet juice, and they don't sell that stuff at the store, so a juicer made sense. Being the consumer I am, I naturally bought Jack LaLane's Power Juicer... who hasn't seen that infomercial? The day I got it I made some really tasty grape juice, and since that went over so well I went out and bought a book of juicing recipes: The Juicing Bible. Can't go wrong, right?

I'm not supposed to eat dairy or wheat because they can aggravate the gallbladder... which means breakfast is a bit of a head scratcher for me. I LOVE cereal with milk. No can do anymore. So I looked up a recipe in my handy Juicing Bible. Zesty Tomato juice. It sounded good (and it didn't have anything I was allergic to in it- read: carrots and apples, two staples of juicing).

Tomato, parsley, ginger and lemon. Sounds really good. The tomato, lemon and ginger are all on the gallstone diet, so I thought it would be awesome.

The juice looked really good. Taste. Not so much. It was super tart and it smelled funky. I blame it on the beefsteak tomatoes my husband bought when he did the grocery shopping the other day. Plus, it hardly juiced the parsley (if at all), and it finely grated the ginger, leaving it all in the pulp shoot, as opposed to in the juice.

Anyway, I only drank about half of it before I threw it in the sink and resorted to drinking pear juice from a bottle (organic, of course). Super tasty... filling, not so much.

Despite not eating much of anything for breakfast I was nauseous all morning! Which sucks when your job is to stand around selling stuff to people all cheery-like. Thank god there weren't a lot of customers. When lunch time rolled around I was starving though, which for me is a rarity. I honestly can't remember the last time I actually felt hungry. I know it's weird, but I completely blame it on my gallbladder. It's as though my stomach forgot how to send signals that it needed food. No joke. But, low and behold, even after feeling sick all morning I was actually hungry.

Lunch was a very healthy cucumber salad, some organic rice crackers, and organic raspberries and blackberries. It was very tasty, and for the first time in weeks, I did not feel sick AT ALL after eating! Happy dance! In fact, I had almost zero nausea the rest of the day! Dinner was also in keeping with the gallbladder diet (minus the small amount of lamb in it): lamb and basmati rice stuffed zucchini, beet salad, and more organic berries. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I actually got hungry again before dinner! Hallelujah!

I think I'm on to something here folks. My body is starting to react very positively to the dietary changes. If I can have this much success just changing my diet for a couple of days, why would I even consider taking out my gallbladder?