Many of you know I love, love, love to study nutrition. And no offense to all of our wonderful doctor friends, but I will spend a week looking for a home remedy before I will step foot in, or take our kids to, a doctors office! So I like to study nutrition, and sometimes I implement and stick to the things I learn, and sometimes I don't. Here are some things I have stuck with over the years:
* having suffered through "pass out if I jump up too fast" anemia for years, finding out I am allergic to over the counter and prescription iron supplements, and even enduring week after week after week of an iron drip, (costing our insurance company over 10.000 and having a nurse unknowingly hook me up to a chemo drip one of those times), only to have my iron levels drop dramatically again a year later..I cured it myself with black strap molasses. One tablespoon a day...boom, done.
* I inherited a thyroid issue from my moms side of the family. I believe she and all of her siblings take meds for their thyroid. About three years ago now, I had my first bad reading on my thyroid levels and began taking L-tyrosine. No doctor has mentioned that I need thyroid medicine since then.
* I also take B17 as a form of cancer prevention as both my maternal grandmother and my mom had breast cancer. Obviously, I have no way of knowing if this one actually works, but I certainly pray it does, and from everything I have read about it, it does.
To be very real with you, the last time The Yankee was home, I gained 10 pounds out of no where! I am 5'1 folks, ten pounds might as well be 25. My clothes didn't fit and I was exhausted the entire time he was home. Keep in mind that during this time we were training for and running a 5k, and I STILL managed to gain all that weight and feel yucky! The weight did not bother me near as much as the exhaustion.
When he left, I managed to do the old diet and exercise routine and drop six of those pounds, but something just seemed so off. I could NOT drop the last four. But it was more than that. The exhaustion was still there, my joints and muscles ached, and my stomach stayed so bloated that my clothes still didn't fit right even though I was only carrying an extra four pounds. I even made a doctors appointment!!!! That is how bad I felt!
I asked God to show me what it was that diet and exercise wasn't taking care of. I went to the library and what jumped out at me was a book on Food Intolerance. And it clicked! I eat pretty healthy, but that doesn't matter at all if you are eating foods that your body can't process.
So I cut out a bunch of stuff two weeks ago:
Eggs ( which I rarely eat in the summertime anyway, weird, I know)
Soy (which I had already cut out because it is SO bad for your thyroid, but I learned it is HIDING in so many things and under different names!)
Dairy (OUCH! I might have cried over this one, cheese is my friend, and a go-to protein snack for me, plus I only cook with real butter not margarine)
Sugar (again, we eat really low amounts of sugar, and I am good at making some tasty treats with stevia, so this one wasn't too, too hard)
Peanuts (easy, I like all nuts except for peanuts, but I do like my peanut butter, so I had to purchase almond butter instead)
Corn (this one was harder than you might think, corn is my go to side veggie around here, and I love to snack on air-popped popcorn with nutritional yeast sprinkled all over it!)
and last, but not least.....
Gluten (bye-bye bread and crackers..my favorite food group!! I am still in mourning!)
Before you go thinking I really am nuts, I only have to give these up for three weeks. After that I re-introduce one a week for the next seven weeks and see how my body reacts. (this is all based on the JJ Virgin philosophy of food intolerances and how we can use food to heal our bodies.)
I thought my first week was going to be tortureous and prepared myself for such. I was a little tired on day one and day two, but by day three, I could already tell that I was on to something. My joints and muscles had almost completely stopped aching and my stomach was no longer bloated at all.
Once a month I would kill for a glass of chocolate milk. In our house we call this my temporal fracture phase (sorry all you non movie buffs, it's a Men In Black 3 reference, we watch way too many movies in our house!!) Last week I was determined to pass up this craving...and I did, that is, until I rushed my kids and my friends two little kids in for a quick ice cream. That vanilla milkshake looked better than any glass of chocolate milk ever. I knew it before I drank it of course. I knew it was not going to go over well...but it was way worse than I expected...way, way worse!! I may never look at a vanilla milkshake again.
Then my best friend flew in from Florida and we wanted sushi...... twice:) It was worth it to get to sit with her and enjoy our time over some yummy food, but after her three day visit, I was up three pounds, my stomach was bloated again, and I had to restart my three week process.
So now I am on the beginning of week two (after the restart). How's it going? Well, I had lost six pounds. But that milkshake on day 7 and my awesome visit from my bff, literally caused me to gain those three pounds. Now that I started over I lost those in no time and am back to six pounds gone. Losing weight was just a bonus though. I can't tell you how good I feel! My joints and muscles stopped aching for a time, but then with my indulgences, they are hurting again, so hopefully after a couple of days that will go away again, I am not as tired, and I have fingernails! I have never, ever had fingernails in my life.
It will be interesting to see what happens in 13 days when I can reintroduce foods again, but, to be honest, I am not 100% sure I even want to. What we put into our bodies is so important. Food can make us sick, or it can heal us. Do I hate that I can't just eat whatever I want? Yes I DO! But I LOVE that I have control over how I feel. I can eat that sushi and drink that milkshake, but I can't complain about how horrible I feel after because I already knew I was going to feel that way! I think many of us feel helpless when it comes to our health, but I think if we could take control over a lot of issues based on what we put INTO our bodies, we would all feel more empowered and realize what a huge difference we can make in our own health.
All of that being said, I am cheating on one part of the JJ Virgin philosophy..and if you know me, you know what is coming next...stupid diet soda...my worst habit ever...and I know what it does...and I know I was supposed to give it up for this...but I gave up cheese...and bread...and sugar.....and finally, could not bring myself to give up the soda. So say a prayer for me that I will make this choice that I need to make so badly for my overall health. I just don't want to give it up right now, and til I do, I will just have to deal with the memory fog and sugar cravings and goodness knows what else it is causing!
Will keep everyone posted on the results of this food intolerance testing! I am loving it right now and feel like a million bucks!
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