Stuck in a rut

I am in a big time rut.  Not sure which way I want to go.  My bloating is pretty minimal although I felt really bloated after drinking hot water yesterday morning, go figure.  My food is in a rut, my routine is in a rut, all in kind of a negative way.  I'm feeling the need to branch out but that takes decisions and I'm really sick and tired of making decisions :)  Remember the good ole days when you bought what was available, did what the doctor (or neighbor) told you and just spent a lot of time hanging out.  That's how my family was anyway. Everything is so pressured these days, so much information, options, responsibilites, worries.  Maybe it's just because I'm a grown up, but I remember my mom doing lots of crafts, having coffee and game nights with friends, doing things for pleasure.

So I've been working on rebuilding and reseeding my gut, taking tons of probiotics (ColonCare, OrthoBiotic, Primal Defense, MegaSpore and PrescriptAssist), sometimes all in one day at different times but generally I rotate.  The links are not necessarily the best prices or best places to buy just links from either stores I use or places that I have seen that carry hard to find products. I am not affiliated with any or them nor has anyone advised me to use these products.  In other words proceed at your own risk.  

I put my uBiome results through a program to create a uBiome tree and then consulted with Dr. Grace Liu.  She seems to be the one on the cutting edge of the microbiome, talking a lot on her podcast about different bacterial families and their impact on gut health, but it seems that she bases a lot of her information from animal studies since not many human ones have been done yet.  That said, she is wicked smart and all over the paleo community these days.  (Dr. Ruscio encourages caution here and doesn't believe the microbiome is clinically useful at this point.)  I was hoping that she was going to say I was ready for adding in some fibers and feeding my little critters but she said, "you are not ready".  Now if the one person out there who is pushing people to feed their microbiome tells you no, you have to listen. She feels I need to get my adrenals and thyroid better supported, build my good flora and then I can move forward.  After our call she emailed me two pages of information and recommendations.  Well worth the money spent, in my opinion.

She also brought up an interesting point that I think we may start hearing more of, hidden viruses and pathogenic bacteria.  She claimed that strep can hide out in the gut and "induce autoantibodies".  She said that a couple of the probiotics above contain streptococcus but I couldn't find it on the label and have emailed the companies to clarify.  I could find information online that they used to but nothing to indicate they still do (in my quick search).

So I've been looking into a couple of different diets protocols as well in an attempt to shake things up.  I hate counting anything which is why I hang out where I am but really need to expand my horizons a bit.  I'm also still hanging onto an extra 8 pounds that I have put on since August.  While I am not overweight, I just don't feel myself and I haven't been keeping up my usual activity level so I am feeling really out of shape.  I've started ZGym (the bunny slope workouts).  She eats like a rabbit which is why she is so thin :)  I looked at her food log.  Anyway so I purchased the AltShift book and the Fast Tract App (already have the book).  The former seems real meat heavy and the latter just too much counting.  I've been playing around with adding carbs but I really turn into a carb monster and then overdo it.  I wonder what my blood sugar is doing???

So, been doing a lot of questioning, a little bit of experimenting, some grumbling and wallowing :)