a day in the life of me

I often get asked how I spend my days at home, sans work or infants. This is an example of a pretty good day. Pretty good days come when I follow this simple routine for weeks on end, without too many outings/energy-using occasions.

I spend my days going slow, as slow as my eighty year old grandma. If I go slowly and gently, I can exist with minimal pain and actually improve a little. In the long run, I get can give and enjoy more by going this pace, because it fosters stability. I farewell the run, crash, run, crash cycle.

8.30 – I start to surface after Ben has kissed me goodbye for work. I just grunt ‘goodbye’ {this could also be interpreted by him as ‘I love you’} because I like to stay in my sleepy zone. If I wake up early, I have a guaranteed sick day.

9:00 – I slowly crawl out of bed, and start oil pulling. I swish a tablespoon of coconut oil around in my mouth to pull from it toxins which compromise my weak teeth and immune system. After 20 minutes of swishing, I go and brush my teeth. I detest the taste of toothpaste while eating breakfast, but oh well.

9:30 – I make my breakfast, and it is exactly the same every single day. Routine is a lifeline for me.

corn puffs

rice puffs

shredded coconut

chia seeds

linseed meal

nuts

rice milk

then I drink a large glass of luke warm water to keep my body temperature stable, and swallow about twenty tablets.

10:00 – Now I’m heading for a shower, and there is no rushing and not enough concern for water conservation. My dad would die if he knew I used heat lamps in the summer too. After I’m dressed and mascared, I celebrate my victory with a little sit down and no champagne.

10.30 – It’s time to deal with my postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome {POTS}. A few days without exercise and my head goes black every time I try to walk. I drive to the gym – and depending on health, this is hazardous as my eyes struggle to focus and prefer to stay relaxed and blurry. I have a program of 20 minutes of cardio on the bike, treadmill, or cross trainer, and 10 minutes of stretching. I leave my fellows sweating it out with my speedy workout, and I feel the best I will feel all day while I’m exercising. I feel alive, but it’s worn off by the time I’m back in the car.

11:30 – I’ve arrived home and it’s time to sit down, sometimes with tea and some sugar/dairy/gluten free treat. Then lunch, where I try to stack on the carbs and protein because my body uses energy the same way I use shower water.

The afternoon is less structured. If I’m still functioning, I’ll do a couple of jobs. Maybe I’ll clean the bathroom, or fold washing, write an email, make an appointment, bath the dog. If I do too much, I get wiped out on the couch with a headache and dizziness.

I need to be restful, so I’ll also read books, make things, water my garden, and do all in my power not to fall asleep. Falling asleep sometimes happens accidentally, but it also brings on insomnia, so I have to very strict with myself.

5:15 – Ben arrives home from work! Wolfie the cavoodle goes psycho with yelping and jumping, because he knows he’s about to get a walk.  We drive to the waterfront or botanical gardens for some nature and catch up time. Then Ben cooks dinner or heats up left overs {he makes incredible food!} and I make a salad, or rest if I need to.  

The evening is eating dinner, reading together, and hopping into bed around 9.30. Ben usually picks me up off the couch and carries me to bed. Then I rest up for a few minutes, hop out and brush my teeth.

The day is done! My favourite days of all are these quiet home ones, where I can be so gentle as to keep the pain and fatigue at bay. Tiring days which escalate into accompanying symptoms are the ones where I catch up with someone, have to go to an appointment, have to go to the shops....those days usually aren’t ‘pretty good days’.

Thoughtful people wonder if going out for coffee with friends might help with boredom, not realising that this ‘boredom’ is the key to feeling ok. I have grown to be content in my own company and the silence of my home, and my body thrives on peace. Others envy my idyllic housewife life. And if I felt well, and could care for my home and see friends, it would be a most luxurious and lazy life. But to me this is a full day. Just as one person’s limit is a 40 hour work week, mine is a shower, gym and a job. 

trying hard things: five weeks fructose free

fructose.

Day 1 and Day 2 I was wandering around the kitchen like a nomad, peeking at the dates in the pantry and opening the fridge over and over in dismay. I felt an unquenchable thirst for sweetness. It was overwhelming to realise that when I reached an energy and emotional low, I couldn’t pick myself up with a hit of dates, fruit, lindt or caffine. I was surprised to realise how real my addiction was. I was flat as a pancake.

Just as I was settling in for prolonged misery, I quite suddenly stopped craving things. It was bizarre how abruptly it ended.

 Ben bought jars and jars of Rice Malt Syrup, the fructose-free sweetener of my choice. He has always been a fabulously caring husband, and this was no exception. He did all the cooking, and baked for me so that my nightly tea {herbal now} wasn’t lonesome. Soon though, I was well enough to do my own baking, and that is something I haven’t done in months.

Here’s the strangest thing of all: I have never really enjoyed vegetables overly much, apart from sweet potatoes and corn -  and potatoes in the fries version. Now, I’m desiring green vegetables, even over grains. I walk into the veggie mart (yes, walk in, that’s right) and want to buy greens and eat greens. I honestly think I have broken the sugar addiction after nearly 23 years. I still wonder if this is the honeymoon period, or if I truly want healthy food now? Is my body saying, ‘FINALLY! You ended my complicated relationship with sugar. Thank you!”

The month I left off fructose, I was struggling to keep my eyes open, unable to drive because I felt blank to the very back of my head, and dreading getting off the couch to get a cup of tea. Things had been pretty wretched since moving. Now days I’m not up and down throughout the day with sugar hits and energy lows. I am driving with a clear head, not needing afternoon sleeps 90% of the time, recovering more quickly from exertion and generally experiencing a radical reduction in symptoms.

The results are worth the sacrifice many times over. And to think I put this off for four years, because I was scared it would be too hard – but, like so many things (apart from coming of antidepressants), it was easier in reality.

Today someone posted this article about fructose being very unhealthy en masse. And until a few months ago, I thought orange juice was good for me. Thank-you myths and supermarket promotions.

PS.

-        Summer might be tricky, because I love watermelon and mangoes on hot days. 

-        Going out just isn’t the same when you can’t order chai tea with honey. And no ciders or wines on special occassions. {it is worth it, it is worth it, it is worth it.}

-        Smelling Ben’s fresh brownies makes me drool, and waver in my resolution, but I will not give in.

-        I am eating ALL vegetables – including onion, tomatoes and garlic, but deliberately limiting these ones. If I hadn’t seen such a radical result, I might have eliminated these too but for now I’m content.

words for wednesday {page 15, happy healthy resolutions}

I have been topsy turveying around feeling perplexed in relapse land. I lose the plot emotionally when I relapse, so it's double trouble.

I decided: time to give my body a chance to snap out of hazy land into energy land and hopefully driving land again soon. Ben is such a great taxi, but it really does make our lives more complicated. I am on Day 7 of quitting fructose – I know, bye-bye fruit, dried fruit, honey... caffine had to go too {and I said bye to processed sugar a long time ago}. No more midday date hits and crashes, and hopefully a move towards a sharper brain and more energy. If you know me, you will know how much I love my English Breakfast tea - my sacrifice just proves how much I want to get well.

But despite saying bye to my frienemies, I feel excited. Buckwheat pancakes, peanut butter chocolate truffles, hummus, leafy greens, nuts, jasmine green tea, and healthy granola. It’s actually a delicious feast, thanks to recipes from Sarah Wilson’s blog and beyond. 

I’m also doing breathing exercises/mindfulness to help calm my ever stressed self down. I trialled my new ‘belly’ {which I prefer to call tummy} breathing at the hairdresser this week under that sneaky black cape, and I returned without having felt anxious, told a lie, or having developed a headache. I didn’t even lie down afterwards! I can’t express my delight at finding a technique which helps conserve energy.

Ben and I also realised that in the kafuffle of moving and ‘settling,’ {which is really code for ‘not feeling settled at all’ and 'missing Melbourne'} we haven’t been doing things we enjoy very much. We used to have happy little family traditions; daily walks to the Parklands to watch the dogs play, going to buy incredible gluten free fruit loaf from the bakery on Saturdays, watching romcoms. Lately it’s all been survival, and not much enjoying – and I have a strong feeling that if we did more enjoying and just being content here we might settle better. We have re-committed!

It could be a placebo effect, which is fine by me, because I don’t care what makes me feel better, or it could be a combination of eating great food, breathing, enjoying walks outside and being positive...but I’m feeling a tiny bit better. I appreciate this little step forward.

{the other night I went to youtube for a laughing/cute animal fix, but I cannot beat this hair accident one which naturally went viral.}

toxic

I will let my children eat coke and cake whenever they like, I said as a kid. Mum and Dad assured me that I would change my mind when I grew up, but I was certain that I wouldn’t. According to my baby book, I used to sit in front of the sweet food cupboard just fantasizing about the sugary delights within. In my childish mind there was no good reason not to eat these delicious things; I went on taste buds alone. When mum started to serve up healthy brown rice instead of white, I was furious. I hated the stuff.

I also thought food was about filling myself up. Eat enough bread to keep away hunger pains, and all will run fine. Anyway, the packets of food always boasted their great health benefits, and I believed the propaganda.

I went on the Candida Diet eleven months after I became sick. This diet is basically the elimination of yeast, sugar, wheat and cheese, because these things feed a fungus, Candida, which is toxic to the body. 

toxic.

What a scary word. We see it slapped across cleaning products, and glues, and dyes. We don’t see it written on coke, or white bread, but maybe it should be...

At first when I started to eliminate these trouble making food groups, I definitely saw it as ‘a diet’ - an extreme measure to take in the extreme circumstance of having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I was dying for the day I would come off my diet, and once again indulge in my favourite dessert, golden syrup dumplings and sticky date pudding. Oh, and creaming soda.

But while on this eating regime, I started to read about food. It was unpleasant and convicting to read these things, to remove the cotton wool which was securely fastened over my eyes. I mean, its hearty nutrition to have a couple of pieces of toast and a glass of milk in the morning isn’t it? I started to discover that all those beautifully, delicious, refined things...white sugar, white flour, white rice, white milk...they are not nutritious, but rather loading the body full of rubbish which it then has to deal with, using precious energy and resources it doesn’t have. It takes more energy to work through these processed foods than is gained by consuming them in the first place.

I began reading the labels on food. For the first time ever. I discovered that it wasn’t just ‘sweet’ food that was full of toxic stuff, it was savoury too. In fact, it was nearly anything which wasn’t in its raw form. Take a dinner staple, chicken stock:

Salt, sugar, flavours, maltodextrin (form of sugar), maize startch, onion, chicken (4%), sunflower oil, yeast extract, parsley, flavour enhancer, colours, anti-caking agent, wheat starch, spice extract, herb extracts.

So, chicken stock has 4% chicken in it. That’s all.

You wouldn’t think yourself unhealthy for eating hearty savoury meals, but once you start looking at what you’re putting in it, it’s frightening. The faster, the more refined, the more deadly and nutrition-lacking for the body.

And we wonder why our bodies develop all kinds of ‘mysterious’ illnesses and cancers?

I don’t consider myself to be on ‘a diet’ anymore. I have made permanent choices about how I’m going to eat, based on the huge blessing of no longer being blind to our dangerously processed food world. Even, and especially if I have great health one day, I will still say ‘no’ to those insidious processed foods which are clogging up bodies all over the western world. I haven’t loved being sick, but I am incredibly grateful for the way it’s shaken me up and forced me to care for my body the healthy way.

                                              ----------------------------------------------------------

Cooking healthily isn’t quite as ‘quick’ as grabbing a packet of preservative filled rot from the supermarket, but even with my husband’s business and my lack of energy, we’ve found ways. And dessert is still on the menu. Here’s my favourite recipe for a quick and delicious dessert:

Berry Crumble

• Grab some frozen mixed berries or fresh berries; put them in a ramekin or small dish, filling it 2/3 way up.
• Chop up some dates and sprinkle over the berries for sweetness.
• Make in a small bowl a mixture of almond meal, shredded coconut, rolled oats (if you like) and rub some Nuttelex into it.
• Sprinkle the crumble mixture over the berries and dates. Drizzle organic honey over the top of the crumble and stick in the oven.
• Take out once the top is light golden, and the juices of the berries are bubbling.