Ailments

Hey everyone, how was your Thanksgiving? Ours was pretty awesome. My family is full of such fun people and I enjoyed spending the day in the kitchen with the women folk while the guys watched football. We made tons of bad-for-you food and I ate it, of course. However, I was very watchful of my portions and that’s all I could really do on a day like that, ya know? How about black friday? Anyone go out and battle the masses? I chose to keep my happy butt right at home and shopped from the comfort of my couch. I love internet shopping! I got almost everything I need for my daughter’s Christmas presents all on Amazon for a pretty good deal. I’m very excited. There’s something about shopping for kids that is just so thrilling. I wanted to get her everything. I can’t wait to see her face light up… hopefully… when she sees what Santa brought her. Speaking of that fat man, I think he owes me. Seriously, when is that red suited turd going to show up?! The more I buy the more I wonder how this really works, does he reimburse me? Or does he just throw his 5 letter name in the “from” spot and take all the credit from M-O-M. Someone here has the short end of the stick… I’m thinking it’s me.

 

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about today is my ailments. It’s about to get real personal up on here. I am perpetually sick and broken. Ok, that’s a slight exaggeration. Compared to others, I’m fairly healthy. However, I’ve got a handful of things that continue to bother me over the years. The first is the reason I missed posting yesterday.

1. Migraines. I have been plagued with chronic complicated migraines since I was 10 years old. The first one I experienced was in the 5th grade at lunch. I thought it was kind of funny when my hand went numb until I ended up in excruciating pain pouding from the left side of my head and I had to call my mom to come pick me up because nothing made sense and I hurt so bad I was in tears. Nearly 16 years later, these buggers are still kickin’ with the same patterns. Numbness, aura, confusion, sensitivity to smell, light, and sound followed by the worst brain pain ever – they’re nasty. I’ve landed in the ER many times needing and IV to kick it. Yesterday it started around 2 in the afternoon. I took a Zomig. 2 hours later when I was still numb and in pain, I took another. A couple hours after that I popped a percocet to combat the pain since the numbness had subsided. A few more hours later promethazine was taken to kill the nausea and the pukies I get with these things. By 11 pm I was finally starting to feel semi-human, 9 hours after the onset of the thing. Today, I feel dopey and not really “here” and I still have a dull aching in my head. I hate having so many pills to take for one problem but when nothing else has worked I’m left to keep trying.

2. TMJ Disorder. Temporamandibular (spelling) jaw disorder. Basically the joint in the left side of my jaw is a mess. Arthritis is already setting in. My jaw pops multiple times a day and I wake up almost every morning with pretty nasty jaw pain. I was given a mouth guard because I’m a night-grinder, but that thing is terrible and I spit it out in my sleep, so really – what good is it really doing? My jaw doctor wants to do surgery. There’s a tiny chance it will actually work because of how long I’ve had the problem. And the side effects include hitting a facial nerve and losing feeling in my face, movement in my left eyebrow, and the inability to close my left eye. AWESOME! That is definitely a last resort and something I really want to avoid if at all possible.

3. Fractured Back. This pesky fractured back is no joke. Luckily, as long as I keep my feet up and don’t do too much, the pain isn’t that bad and it’s healing. I barely take any pain killers for it anymore and I use the TENS unit mostly to help with pain. It’s healing, but I’d love for it to heal faster.

4. The trots. Yup, we’re going there. I get random boughts of diarrhea. By random I mean I never know when they’re going to strike and when they do, they strike. Without warning, my stomach is screaming I HATE YOU and my butthole is screaming I’M GONNA BLOW! It’s terrible. 

Ok, so why am I telling you all this gross stuff about myself? Well, from reading the Whole30 site, it seems that this new way of eating might actually help with my ailments! On the site, they have a nice alphabetized list of testimonials from people who’ve tried Whole30 and found it helped and seemed to miraculous rid them of a long line of ailments. At this point in my life, I’m willing to try just about anything, especially with the migraines. They are so debilitating and I’ve been suffering from them far too long and they happen far too often. If changing my eating and my lifestyle can finally get rid of them for good, or at least minimize them. If it can reduce the inflammation in my jaw and help with the healing in my back, that’s even better. So, I document it here, so down the road I can say OH GUYS I’M SO MUCH BETTER or I can say  WHAT A CROCK IT HASN’T HELPED AT ALL!

Ha, so there ya have it. The story of an unhealthy gal trying to improve more than just her weight.
Anyone out there found that eating changes have changed ailments you’ve had? Or have any suggestions for helping with the ailments I have? I’d love to hear from all the “been there-done that” folks!!!

Gobble Til Ya Wobble

Happy Turkey day y’all! 

I’ve got to say this Thanksgiving, I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. I’ve got the most awesome daughter in the universe (no, I’m not biased), I’ve got amazing parents, some pretty awesome friends, a beautiful home, great pets, freedom, independence, youth, and good health. To name a few things. Oh and great sweat pants. I am always thankful for a pair of great sweat pants.

I’m also thankful that I have the ability to make choices. I can choose what to eat, I can choose what to put on my body, I can choose which pair of sweats to wear, and whether I want to do anything at all every day. I’m hoping today I can make some good choices, but I know they won’t be. That’s okay though. I’ve got some time to worry about that.

I’m really stoked to have my family here today. It’s the first Thanksgiving we’re doing at my daughter and my new home. It is already smelling delicious in here. I wish I could get up and dance. I think I’d do the chicken dance but call it the turkey dance, because you know, it’s thanksgiving and all. I’m really excited. I’ve got a serious foodboner (shhh). 

Well, hope everyone has a fantabulous holiday! Happy Thanksgiving, be thankful, y’all! 

Fitness Debacle

So, when I started here there’s a little detail I forgot to mention… It’s about working out. I have this little problem. Well, two little problems. Slight, teeny, tiny workout problems. 

My back is broken. Twice.

Remember when I mentioned I lived on a farm? That’s okay if you don’t, but it’s true I live on a farm. Well, I happen to have to monsters… er… horses. They are both retired racehorses and they are a little high spirited, for lack of a nicer term. About two weeks ago, I went out to ride after my younger horse hadn’t been ridden in a while and he decided to act up. He bolted, I slid, landed just right (or wrong?) and now I’m all broken. 

So here’s the issue… I can’t work out. I’m afraid my already chunky bod is going to get even chunkier during the downtime (down time that I hate). Not sure why I’m even thinking about this now, I guess I’m just thinking about how badly my back is aching tonight.

It’s already been a total crap storm being broken. I mean, I’m the mother of an almost three year old. I am not allowed to bend or lift or move much. Do you know how hard it is to be a mom who can’t move? It’s no fun, for me or my little punkin. Luckily people have been helping me out tremendously. It’s just no amount of help is going to keep my body toned up while I heal. Boooooo. Hopefully soon I’ll be able to start some sort of light exercise. Maybe swimming, perhaps?

Anyway, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. What does everyone have planned? I know that I will be eating entirely too much of the wrong foods. I know I’ll feel guilty even though I’ll be consciously making the choice to eat the bad-for-you foods. I am going to work my hardest on portion control. Am I going to have some of mom’s famous Mac N Cheese. You bet. Am I going to have two huge helpings? Well, I’m going to try not to! 

I hope everyone has a delicious and nutritious Thanksgiving and remembers to take time and think of what they are really thankful for! Try to to gain 9,000 pounds in one day!

It’s a Flab, Flab World

Well, hello again, blog world. Funny thing is, I know you but you don’t know me. Is that fair? Not really, but it’s how it’s going to work. For now, anyway. Patience, my friends, is a virtue.

So why am I hear under the cover of anonymity, you might ask? Well, it’s time. It’s time I make some changes in my life for the better, and what better way to document my changes and really evaluate them over time than in blog form? I’ve decided to keep it anonymous because I don’t really want anyone to know that I’m doing this just yet. I don’t want the huge pressure of success of failure from people knowing. Sure, I want to succeed. But for once, I want to succeed for me. So here I am just me, hiding, documenting.

I suppose I’ll tell you a little about this enigmatic persona on the other side of the screen. I am 26 years old and the mom to a beautiful almost three year old girl. I am a single mom, not by choice but by sad circumstance, but with amazing family and severe stubborness I push onward.

My weight has been an issue for me back through high school. I was a skinny, leggy kid and then as puberty hit curves did as well and I didn’t really know what to do with them. I never wore clothes that fit properly and I yo-yo dieted. I was relatively tall compared to most of my friends, standing around 5′ 6″. Through college, I found myself constantly comparing myself to my thinner friends and never measuring up in my own eyes, although now I’d be happy to be that “fat” again. I was around 150 then. After college, I enjoyed a rather boisterous lifestyle, and of course the added calories in the drinks I so often indulged in weren’t doing much for my figure. I met my husband shortly after graduating from college and not long after that we were married. He thought I was beautiful and for once I truly felt beautiful. Not long after we were married, we found out we were expecting. We were over the moon. Unfortunately, I used pregnancy as an excuse to eat whatever I wanted. By the end of my pregnancy I had gained around 40 pounds, weighing in between 190 – 195 pounds. When my daughter was born, I found the extra skin on my stomach to be sickening. I worked hard to get it off but my life was turned upside down yet again by the passing of my husband. From the stress and the grief and pain, I quickly dropped weight. It wasn’t a healthy way and of course it hasn’t stayed off.

These days, I am weighing in at 176.8. On my 5’6″ frame, it doesn’t look as bad as it “could” but it doesn’t look good, either. I don’t feel healthy and I don’t feel beautiful, least of all sexy. For once, I want to feel beautiful myself. I want to improve my health, my looks, my fitness. I want to be fitter, leaner, and over all healthier. I don’t want to feel tired all the time. I don’t want to ache. I want to see if I can nip some of my health issues I’ll be discussing in the bud by changing my eating patterns.

This is not some short-lived New Years Resolution. The sole reason I want to start before New Year’s is because I don’t want to get rapped up in the start and quit that is my New Year’s Resolutions.

So here I am. Here is my fitness and health journey with a little life thrown in.
Fasten your seat belts, folks. It’s gonna be one hell of a ride.