Year End Recap & New Year's Resolutions

Last year, my goal was to hold on to the healthy living bandwagon for dear life.  I definitely accomplished that.  The last year has been a rollercoaster ride and this is possibly the first year that I am so happy for a fresh start.  I am honestly not a New Year's Resolution person, but I do like going into a new year with goals. 

A little spring to get us through the winter.  :)

First, a 2011 recap!  For whatever reason, I do not have my stats from before last June, so I estimate that in the last year, I have lost approximately 48ish pounds, 26 since July. 76 pounds overall.  Yep, I'm a slow loser, but that's okay.  I feel more prepared to live my life healthfully once I meet goal. 

I have also completely changed the way I eat.  I try my hardest to stay away from most processed foods and have greatly decreased my meat intake (I only eat chicken, fish, and turkey in general).  I typically am only eating meat if someone else cooks it or if I go out to eat.  This means that my veggie intake is up!  Yay! 

So, here are a few good posts that puts the last year into perspective:

-Celiac and Healing Through Food Part I and Part II
-Hitting the big 5-0
-My biggest weight loss resource:  my food scale!
-The Awesome-ness of CSAs
-Learning to love veggies for breakfast
-Recap on being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia (more on that later) and my awesome Turkey Trot!

I thought I'd put forth some goals for 2012:  short term, for the spring semester, and long term.  Hopefully at the end of 2012, I'll be checking these off with glee.  Today, I'm just going to start with my short term goals for 2012 (the next three-four weeks).

1. Read From Fatigued to Fantastic!  I saw a pain management specialist yesterday who gave me a little shock: he doesn't think I have fibromyalgia.  I have all the symptoms and everything lines up but I don't "look like like a fibro".  According to this doc, I am too athletic, my muscles are in too good of shape, and I am in no means depressed (very often accompanies fibromyalgia).  Because he has no other ideas on what I could be dealing with, he told me to read this book and come back to see him with ideas about where I want to go on this.  I get to decide on my treatment options (and they will NOT include prescription medications if I have a choice)!  I like having this control and I'm glad he's giving me options.

2. Work out 5-6 day a week.  I've been doing well with this since the fall semester ended.  This is just a "keep it up!" goal.

3. Work 3-5 hours a day.  This doesn't necessarily mean work on work for next semester, but do something productive (like prepping for spring) or finish projects that I have started but never finished.  I tend to get very lazy during the breaks between semesters.  I stress myself out way too much over the semester and then just zone out until it's time to go through it again.  Time to get productive and get stuff done before the spring semester sneaks up on me!

4. Cook!  And cook good food.

5. Create menus.  I use a whiteboard on my fridge to sort out what I want to make each week but I feel like I could be making it easier on myself.  I plan to list out all the foods I make for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks so I can make meal planning quicker and easier.  I want to put these in sheet protectors on my fridge so I can look at it easily and make grocery lists easier (and hopefully save a little money this spring!).

6. Similarly to making food planning easier, I want to make calorie counting easier.  I want to go through the most common foods I eat and have a list on my fridge of the calories per ounce so that calorie counting doesn't have to be so time consuming.


Okay, off to eat breakfast (pumpkin yogurt and quinoa granola!).  I hope everyone had an awesome holiday last weekend and a very safe New Years!  Longer term goals are coming!

Sweating it out

I'm currently battling a cold/sinus infection/thing, which got me thinking.  Is it better to workout when you're sick (sweat it out) or just to lay low.  I always battle with myself over this.  I mean, I may be sick, but am I so sick that I need to go lay in bed all day?  Today that answer was no.  I have been lucky this time around because I've had time to sleep and rest, work (though not super productively), and workout. 

My theory is this:  If whatever illness I happen to have does not involve my lungs, stomach (flu), or a fever, I usually will try to workout, even if it's just for a 1/2 hour and isn't very intense.  Activity during a cold or sinus infection (though it can be a huge issue to breathe through) seems to lessen the symptoms, even if only for a few hours.  I've also read that working out can boost your immune system, so it's a double whammy!

Whenever I accidently ingest something gluten-containing and I get symptoms, exercise is really the only thing that will help me feel better for a little while.  Trust me, if you know what it's like to have Celiac-like issues, you know that working out is the last thing you want to do!  But, if I can get my butt off the couch and go for a walk longer than 30 minutes (no matter how slow), it really seems to help.

So with cold and flu season on the horizon, I have been considering carrying a can of Lysol (or rather Method Antibac spray) with me where ever I go.  If this is a cold, I think I got it from the gym I recently joined.  If it's a sinus issue, then I blame the season.  Soon, however, I will be in close contact with 170 undergraduates.  If I don't get sick again, it will be a miracle!

On a different note, I had a kid (estimated age of 16) congratulate me for working out today at the gym.  When she asked when I started coming to the gym, I told her I joined last week.  She then proceeded to look all smug and say that she's been coming to the gym since she's been 12 and that some people just make a habit out of it.  I, of course, kept my mouth shut, as per my personaility, but I couldn't help but think that I've been a regular exerciser for longer than she's been alive!  Aparently since I hadn't joined that gym years ago, I have never worked out in my life, according to her mind.  Oh to be so naive again! 

Oh well, I'll go on with my life knowing that even if I had just joined a gym and started working out for the first time in my life, you have to start somewhere and whenever you make the decision to make your life healthier in any form, it's a good thing.

Stay healthy!

Healing Through Food - Part II (The Later Years)

Last summer, all hell broke loose.  My hair starting falling out by the handful, my blood pressure was so low that nurses would joke that I was just about to head into a coma (real funny), and my digestive issues ruled my life.  I felt as though my mental capacity had gone down the toilet.  Students would ask a question and for the life of me, I could not come up with an answer even on the simplest of subjects.  I would look at a word and just stare at it thinking that I knew that word but it looked so wrongly spelled and I couldn't figure out what spelling was correct (and we are talking words like "water" - very simple for most people).  My fingers and toes would tingle constantly and I was always light headed.  My balance was off, my skin was breaking out, I would retain water and then spend all day in the bathroom resulting in weight losses and gains on the order of 10 pounds a DAY...you name it, it was going wrong!

When I finally got to the doctor, they tested me for everything under the sun and everything came back normal.  I had an ultrasound of my gall bladder and internal organs and everything looked good.  My doc gave me a bunch of different prescriptions and called it IBS.  The problem was that all those meds made everything worse!  It was not IBS or heart burn or anything else they could come up with.  At this point, you can bet that I was starting to feel a little crazy.  I mean, if every test always comes back normal, it must be in my head.

Except for one thing.   I was blood-tested for Celiac Disease and the tests came back showing that my body was producing antibodies but I didn't meet the requirements to say that I had Celiac.  From what I've read, blood tests for Celiac are notoriously inaccurate and you really need to have a biopsy of your small intestine to be positive.  If you have Celiac, the biopsy will show damage to your villi. 

My doctor told me I was fine, I could eat gluten without harming my body and to go make an appointment with a GI doc.  The soonest I could get in to see a GI was 2-3 months away and the guy was an 1.5 hour drive away.  All these tests took the majority of June and July and I was told this about a week before I was leaving to teach a 3-week field course out west.  This field course meant pit toilets, long hikes, sleeping in tents, and pretty much living in a van.  I couldn't imagine going on that trip the way I was feeling.

I made the decision that since I was producing some antibodies, something was going on.  I mean, your body isn't just suddenly going to start producing antibodies for no reason.  Think of it this way: if you aren't infected with chicken pox, you won't produce antibodies to fight it.  Since the GI doc appointment was so far away, I decided to try the only treatment for Celiac:  going gluten free.  I figure it would be no harm done if I didn't have Celiac and if I did, then maybe I'd make it through the field course in one piece.

Within a couple of days after going gluten free, I was already feeling better!  I wasn't feeling perfect and many of the symptoms persisted but it was the first thing that had ever helped.  I have stuck with the gluten-free lifestyle for nearly 11 months now and here is how my life has changed:

• Blood pressure is back to the normal range
• Digestive issues have resolved for the most part, I no longer worry about teaching a 2+ hour class or doing such things like long hikes because of the worry that I would have to run out to the bathroom 1/2 way through
• The tingling in my hands and feet is mostly gone
• My hair is growing back and is much healthier and thicker
• I can build muscle with ease  :)
• I no longer take 2+ naps a day
• I'm not as irritable with my students
• My brain fog is starting to lift.  I noticed a huge difference in how I was able to respond to my students this past year.  I still have issues with slow thinking and not able to think of the right words here and there though.
• I don't retain water unless I go overboard on salt or I don't drink enough water
• I don't get sick after I eat!
• I don't catch all of the latest colds
• I had one sinus infection in the past year, compared to four during the 8 months before I stopped eating gluten
• My food allergies and lactose intolerance have lessened in severity.  I eat eggs nearly every morning now and I never get sick.
• The amount of headaches I get have gone down significantly

All this stuff has changed in 11 months...from one simple(?) dietary change.  I still get sick if I eat gluten or if I eat contaminated foods too many times in a row and the effects can last anywhere from a few days to a month.  I never got a confirmation biopsy or saw the GI doc - there were some issues with doctor changes, etc.  At this point, since my body has had time to heal, a biopsy would likely show up as normal-ish and I would have to go back to eating gluten for a while before I could have the biopsy done.  No thanks!  I do NOT want to go back to that!  I feel like the proof is in the pudding at this point. 

Maybe I have Celiac.  Maybe I have non-Celiac gluten sensitivity.  I don't really care what you really call it.  Because I had antibodies and because I obviously had vitamin deficiencies and neurological problems that resolved on a gluten free diet, I know there is something major going on.  

I realize that you are likely thinking, "Wow.  Longest.  Post.  Ever." and that's fine.  I haven't shared the whole story with many people beyond a few select in my life and now I have.  Now you know how I got here.  It wasn't a shot in the dark saying, "hmmm...gluten free is the latest diet trend, let's try it!"  It was me being proactive about my health and figuring things out when all my doctors told me for years that I was absolutely fine and looked at me like I was making everything up.

I really do think that we all need to stand up and take charge of our own health.  There are some absolutely wonderfully fabulous doctors out there, but they are human.  They can make mistakes.  Test results are never 100% accurate and how results are read aren't always accurate.  We know how our bodies feel, we know what's normal and what isn't.  There are too many doctors that just want to tell you how you feel and that everything is in your head.  The problem is that...sometimes it isn't.

The photo below was taken last August in the Tetons, three weeks after going gluten free.  I had just hiked a considerable distance straight up just to see the view.  I never would have been able to do this had I not taken control of my own health.  I was feeling so much healthier and stronger!

Healing Through Food - Part I (The Early Years)

Throughout the past year, the way I have thought about food has changed dramatically.  I have been looking at what food will actually do for me and, consequently, what food will do to me.  I've had a long history with food.  When I was 13ish, I came home from figure skating practice and when my mom opened a garage door, there was a skinned deer hanging from the garage ceiling.  My dad had gone hunting and brought that guy home.  I became a vegetarian very soon after that.  I have always been a "save the environment" type girl and this really fit with me.  My parents were very supportive and did their best to make sure I got the protein and nutrients I needed.  My dad has always been awesome at making two batches of supper - one with meat, one without.

That was really the first time I ever really thought about what I ate.  And it pretty much ended there - no meat.  I knew what types of food I needed to eat to be healthy but in junior high and high school, I didn't really care. 

Here's the deal though.  I have been sick on and off for as long as I remember.  From ages 15 (?) - 28, I would go months upon months where I would get sick every time I ate, then get a month off, and it would come back.  I have had recurrent sinus infections my entire life.  I had massive, debilitating migraines in high school.  I was always more tired than everyone else I knew.  I was achy, irritable, and always coming down with the latest cold or flu that was going around (I think I caught every single one!).  Above all, I had major digestive issues.  I gave up even trying to go to dance lessons in the latter part of high school because I had to miss class so much.  Same went for skating.

Early in my 20's, I noticed that dairy products were starting making me sick, so I stopped eating dairy for quite a while.  At some point, I developed an allergy to almonds and I would get sick from eating eggs.

Around the same time, I started noticing that I wasn't able to get enough protein to support myself.  I couldn't build muscles to save my life (something that had never been a problem for me) and my constant tiredness only got worse.  To remedy this, I started eating chicken, turkey, and fish and sadly had to ditch the vegetarian lifestyle (I still eat this way but refuse to touch pork and beef products).  This seemed to help for a little while but my hair was still thinning and I was still getting sick to my stomach every time I ate.

I broke bones easily.  I even broke my arm while out doing field work in Oregon and didn't know it until 6 months later when I had an x-ray to see why that arm was bothering me.  There was obvious remodelling of that break and a couple others that I didn't know about from when I was younger.  I have also broken both legs and several ribs in my life.

About five or six years ago, all these symptoms ramped up a notch, I felt horrible all the time!  I feel like I missed out on so much during this time because I was either sleeping, working, going to school, and/or sick.  When I'd go to the doctor, they always said I had IBS and sent me on my way.