Ah! My health!

So I'm starving, and have been for days.  Weeks.  I'm stressed, and I am a terrible depression/stress binge eater.  I found out I've gained 30 lbs in the last year, 20 of that in the last 3 months.  My relationship is going less than no where fast, and I've been too sick to work.  I haven't even wanted to leave my house.  Lack of nutrition will cause you to feel starved, even if you're pounding food.  I have to stop trying to survive on saltine crackers and ramen, and fattening fried or super processed foods when I feel good, sending me back into pukeytown.  I'm making my low fat potato soup right now.  I just throw diced potatoes, diced carrots and diced onions into chicken broth, simmer for a half hour.  (People with normal digestion, feel free to add celery here.)  Then I chop some mushrooms, add some chicken base, throw them in with some 2% milk, and simmer another half an hour.  Bam!  Done.  Its been a long day so I added water and made it kinda thin.  I always have to keep an eye on the budget of a meal, and easy availability.  I absolutely hate it when you see something that looks super yummy and I can't read/don't recognize half of the ingredients.  Elaborate things like that are fine if you have a professional kitchen and live in a big city, I live in a very rural area.  Escargot is a hard to find item here, ok?  Also, I have a simple kitchen, so you can put away your chestnut roasting pans.  Actually, on the subject of equipment, I would suggest getting a cast iron dutch oven and skillet.  They will last longer than you will if taken care of properly, and you can use them for anything pretty much, from cakes to soups.  But I digress.

Aunt Cody's Gastro Diet

Number One Rule For Dieting - DO NOT change everything you eat overnight.  Start with baby-steps, or you will crash and burn.  Always follow a doctor's advice, and following any diagnosis make ABSOLUTELY SURE you talk to a professional about the diet you need.  Follow their advice.  Seriously, when they say something will make you sick, they aren't kidding.  My doc told me to stay away from bacon, and I ate it anyway because bacon is my super double fave.  I died for three days.  Don't make my mistakes.  
Make sure you take time to eat at least 3 meals and 2 snacks per day, you will burn fat faster.

Keep track of your water, you need at least 8 glasses.

Slow down on the dairy, get the lowest fat version available.  If you're cooking with it, the difference is harder to taste.

Make sure the food you do eat is actually food.  The closer to raw food, like an apple with cheese slices vs apple with store bought caramel sauce.  Can you read the ingredients of the sauce?  Hmmmm.  Corporations put ingredients in food like natural flavorings which is actually secretions from a North American Beaver's butt. so you're always better off with real food.  

Pair guilty pleasures with twice as much healthy stuff.  You get the taste you crave, plus you have taken the guilty out of your pleasure by eating healthy at the same time.  Crave cheese, ham, bacon, eggs, and turkey?  Cobb Salad anyone?  Just use a huge amount of healthy greens, like spinach and kale, and low fat dressing, you're eating healthy!  WITH BACON!  Well, healthier anyway.  Baby steps, remember?

Pick an exercise, and do it for at least 15 minutes a day.  It can be anything as long as you are up and moving.  Pick your favorite 4 dance songs, and get down with your bad self.  Seriously, its that easy.

If you have a cell phone, set alarms for everything you need to get done.  The water, when you need to eat, your workout, all of it.  Do it now before you talk yourself into staying exactly where you are.  Make sure you set them to repeat, or you will forget.  Don't lie to yourself, you know you will.  Did you think I was kidding?  Seriously, take your phone out right now.  I'll wait.  *hums Jeopardy theme*  K, done?  Good.

Get enough sleep.   Take naps if you can.  Schedule yourself enough sleep.

Take care of your skin, its your biggest organ and your first defense against the world.

Make sure you get some sun every day, it provides vitamin D and helps your body absorb calcium.

Juicing is a great way to get your fresh veg in.  If you have regular digestion, fresh veggies are better for you, because normal people need the insoluble fiber to clean out their bellies.  Gut scrapers are your friend.  If you're like me, throw an apple, a carrot, some pineapple, and a beet or 2 in the juicer and enjoy.  Good stuff, that.  There are those that hate the idea of eating fresh veggies, or don't enjoy doing it.  Juicing is a good way to introduce yourself to the flavors.  If you eat the regular American diet, at first your taste buds will be confuzzled by these new foods, and their lack of sodium and fats.  I personally dreaded it at first.  Then after experimenting and getting used to the different tastes and textures, I came to crave it. 

Slow change is good change.  If you drop a lot of weight quickly, you will most likely gain it back.  Plus your skin can't keep up and it gets all gross saggy.  Eww. 

If you're a phone junkie like me, apps really help.  I use MyFitnessPal.  With Gastroparesis it is really important to keep a food diary. 

Don't feel like you have to be perfect.  A donut will not ruin your life.  A dozen donuts are a terrible idea though, so exercise moderation.  A donut and a tasty and healthy fruit smoothie, after staying with the diet?  Good do.  I can do one treat like that once every 2 weeks or so with minimal backlash. 

Drink tea instead of soda or coffee.  There are literally thousands of varieties easily available over the internet if you are in a super rural area.  Check your local grocery store, or if you have a hippie store ask them.  They will be able to point you in the right direction.  If you have any specific health needs, there are many teas to help you.  These are some of my personal favorites.

         

And that is the basic rundown of what I need to do.  Let me know if any of this has helped you! 

Tired

I'm tired. Tired of being admired.  Tired of love uninspired.  I'm so tired!


I even know why.  I haven't been taking care of myself.  I've been forgetting things, losing track of things, letting life slip by me as I scramble to catch up.  I've gone off my schedule, and stopped eating healthy.  Again.  I seriously need to stop doing this.  I decide to be healthy and that I'm tired of feeling bad.  Next thing I know its 10:30pm and I've eaten half a bag of chips and ramen for food all day.  I want to get up at 5am every day, but I find myself staying up every night until 1 am.  Oooops.  I have to have 9 hours of sleep a night and I haven't gotten it in weeks.  Could be the amount of soda I've been drinking.  The excessive smoking doesn't help either.  I know people my age that are in great shape with amazing careers.  Granted most of them don't have kids, but that doesn't mean that I'm not better than them.  Ha!  When I was 18 I had this idea in my head, that I can be fit, have beautiful clean children, a job I love, the perfect relationship and a clean home.  Oh, and I do the whole thing in heels.  Nice thought, right?  Now I know, children are not clean, nor am I having more than one.  Being fit takes more work than chips, which is obvious yet ruins my life just a bit.  You have to find things to love in a job.  There is no perfect relationship, just one that works enough.  OMG if I dated the perfect man I would probably murder him.  The bastard would make me look bad.

My son is gone for a week with family (my Madre and Bro-face+family) and this is my big chance to reset my world.  Also, I've gotten more quality time with the boyfriend, and that's neat.  Here's where I get started on getting shit done.  Tonight, I'm going to bed at 8pm, since I never get a damn thing done after then anyway.  I can get up at 5, and have a couple of hours to throw up and make coffee.  Walk the dog, then start my day.  I have to take time to do my yoga too.  I have to actually use a food diary and drink 8 glasses of water a day.  I need to juice.  I have to walk the dog once a day or he's an unreasonable turd.  Rah.  Now I am filling up my phone with alarms to get all of these things done, and I see my days laid out for me.  Now that is scary, knowing what I'm going to be doing every day.

 I remember a time when I would wake up and every day was a magical adventure.  I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing, but it was so much fun.  Now I have responsibilities, to myself and Mr. Monkeyface.  Also the boyfriend, to a degree.  And my family, though that has been an odd balance beam to toe down.  I need to connect with them more, and more of them.  I am very blessed to have been raised with the idea of family with no blood relation.  Most of my blood relatives and I don't talk, for one reason or another.  I do have a good Facebook relationship with my half sisters, they seem like cool people.  I of course have my sweet grandparents (3), the lovely-yet-deadly Madre, Bro-Face, Sis-In-Law I love so much Sarhot, Hazely-poo the Princessbutt niecey.  But most of the people I call family are not related to me at all.  I have brothers, sisters, homies for life.  I keep talking about moving, but short of me buying a compound or my own island, its not going to happen.  At least, I won't go far.  Maybe Laramie.  I like Laramie.  It's Wyoming's version of Portland.  Maybe someday.  For now, I own my own home, and need to get myself healthy.  Oh a rigid schedule.  I've never actually done this, and I'm pretty nervous.  I feel almost like I'm putting myself in boot camp.  I've gotten lazy with myself, and my life.  I was getting so much done, I got sick, and I never quite retrained for life.  I got lazy in my off season, time to fix it.  This pep talk really needs to get more motivation behind it.  I'm going to do this for myself, my family, and my life!  Yeah!  I'm going to get up early, and go to bed early, since collapsing into bed every night exhausted is not working out at. all.  Going to bed early!  Yeah!  Up early!  Yeah!   WHOOOOOOO!  Ok, I feel slightly better about this.  On an ending note, look what my yard looks like, before and after!

Dead and full of crap.  Yay!

Full of weeds, but life!  Yay Life!

The first steps have been taken on my invasion of the yard.  We have a brick path that goes *most* of the way across the yard, and a rosebush Tristyn picked out is next to the steps, so that it is the first thing I see when I pull up.  It's been a cold summer so far, the earth seems angry.