Just over a month ago I may well have hit a new low in terms of ignoring my own advice. I was eating without mindfulness and gaining weight. Worse still, my energy levels were non-existant and even a minor task felt like I had a mountain to climb. My stomach was bloated, my chin had become plural, and my boobs were actually busting (pun intended) out of control. I was not eating junk food or candy, I just didn’t watch my intake of carbs, starches, and portion sizes. I was not a happy bunny! [Read the full story ...]
The Week in Review
Healthy Working Mom
- Germs: Keeping Them At Bay
I am sitting here in my living room on my iPad Mini (my son is on my laptop so I’m relegated to tiny typing) and right next to me is a peeled and halved onion. It sits on our Santa Cookie plate looking rather odd as a table decoration. Why? Well, not usually one for [Read the full story ...]
- Stress – Taking a Toll on My Health
I have to say, the last three years have been a roller-coaster. Now things are settling into a more ‘normal’ routine (no chemo, radiation and baldness), I should be reveling in joy and calm. But the trouble with fighting cancer (my eight year old son’s, not my own) is that it takes a HUGE toll [Read the full story ...]
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Germs: Keeping Them At Bay
I am sitting here in my living room on my iPad Mini (my son is on my laptop so I’m relegated to tiny typing) and right next to me is a peeled and halved onion. It sits on our Santa Cookie plate looking rather odd as a table decoration. Why? Well, not usually one for old wives’ tales, I got suckered into something I read on Facebook yesterday.
Apparently, onions pull the germs from the air….literally. According to someone’s hairdresser, who heard it from a cab diver, who knew…someone else, the onion has properties that attract germs like a moth to a flame. Legend has it (well, gossip at least) that a town was stricken with flu, and the only household not to have the illness was a farmer who put an onion in each room. The onion blacked and tested positive for the flu virus, but the family remained healthy! [Read the full story ...]
Stress – Taking a Toll on My Health
Relax
I have to say, the last three years have been a roller-coaster. Now things are settling into a more ‘normal’ routine (no chemo, radiation and baldness), I should be reveling in joy and calm. But the trouble with fighting cancer (my eight year old son’s, not my own) is that it takes a HUGE toll on one’s own health.
I am currently waiting, cell phone by my side, to hear from a neurologist. I have ‘white matter’ in my brain, which could be age (that sucks) or could be the sign that my body is giving me grief for being ridiculously stressed for so long. Given my other symptoms: unrelenting fatigue, headaches, strange body sensations, to name a few, it is the general consensus that I have developed some kind of autoimmune condition.
While nothing is confirmed as yet, my family has a history of Lupus and Fibromyalgia, so I wouldn’t be overly shocked to discover my stress has induced a family favorite! While I am organic as much as possible, careful to balance my diet, and believe in exercise, my recent illness has meant I have been more sloth than Supermom! Basically, I feel awful. I feel like crawling into bed and never moving again. I feel like shouting out about how unfair it all is.
What I won’t do, however, is wallow in pity and accept my lot. I intend to fight this with fire…kick it hard…just like my son kicked cancer…and get myself functioning in a positive and healthy way. After all, I am a Healthy Working Mom…got to stick to that no matter what! Unfortunately, I cannot take part in the run I planned to raise money to find a cure for cancer…the doctor actually laughed at me when I told him I still planned to try to train.
So where do I start? I think I need to get myself back to how I was before… gently, with some modifications, and lots of self-discipline.
Force myself to go to bed by 10pm
Plan weekly menus to eliminate panic cooking and stress about feeding family properly
Find a way to get a cleaning person in at least once a month
Accept my fatigue but find a way to exercise each day
Accept that I am too tired after work to be Supermom and give myself a break
Begin Yoga and meditation…de-stress!
Harmony Yoga
Fat-Burning Foods
Here is a FaceBook find from https://www.facebook.com/matthewmcdevitt65 Thought it might motivate me to switch from my obsession with coffee to Green Tea – the latter burns fat!!
Being Good To Myself
I have been very busy lately. It is summer and I have been avoiding the rut I got into last year of blogging all day. Instead, family time has been a priority. I was hoping that the more relaxed schedule, the ability to sleep in past 5am, and the absence of work stress would help me feel less tired.
You see, I have been fighting fatigue for some time now. My doctor gave me the all clear, reminding me that I have been more than stressed for the past three years as my son battled leukemia. I feel now, however, that I should have recovered more from that than my body actually has. I will never ‘relax’ and forget about it all, but I don’t have the immediate stress of the illness anymore. So what is going on?
I have found that I wake up feeling like I have not been to sleep at all. For months I have been sleeping like a baby and feeling exhausted upon waking. Recently, I have not been able to get to sleep at night, despite being bone tired, so I think my new-found passion for coffee is screwing me up some!
I know I have been given a clean bill of health but I am a little suspicious of my adrenal glands. Having such high stress levels for so long will have filled my body with the stress hormone cortisol. That wreaks havoc with your adrenals. So I have been looking for natural ways to try to regulate this. I know I need a good eating plan:
•Avoid gluten — a protein that many women with adrenal imbalance may be sensitive to.
•Eat adequate protein at every meal — important for energy and stamina.
•Eat within an hour of waking — helps restore healthy blood sugar levels.
•Eat healthy fats.
•Eliminate all “white” food – refined sugar, flour, and grains, at least temporarily. (This is easy as I already do this for the most part)
running
In addition to eating well, I also need to follow a gentle and regular exercise routine. Here is where it gets a little tricky. You see I am about to sign up to run a half-marathon – more on that in another post, so I am going to have to train. This means balancing my exercise program to meet the needs of both my adrenal fatigue and my goal of running a crazy amount of miles when I can’t even make it to the end of our street without keeling over!
I also have to take into consideration my herniated disc at the base of my neck. This is an old injury which threatens to pop from time to time, always at the most inconvenient moment, and is a constant nagging companion whenever I decide to be awake!!! I have learned that exercise is the best thing for it; strengthening the muscles around my neck keeps the disc in place. I just have to be careful!
So this is where I am at. School is going to start soon so I need to get my butt back on that crazy schedule. My kids are going to the local school (instead of schlepping down to the school I teach at miles away), so we have a new way of doing things to figure out. I am working on kicking my adrenals into shape along with my ‘within normal weight‘ body with the ‘not going to run anywhere fast‘ physique. Big boobs and butt are sexy to some, but my expanding middle (also a sign of adrenal fatigue) is not! It is also one of the unhealthiest places to gain weight. This healthy working mom wants to reevaluate and get her game on again!
Summer Smoothies
I am a Smoothie fan. I like to create my own versions and discover new and interesting tastes. Not everything works out, especially as I am not good at following measuring rules, but sometimes I hit the jackpot!
My shining glory this morning was a recipe inspired by recent posts on other blogs to do with Kale. I am not a lover of this green, leafy vegetable, but I do know how wonderful it is nutritionally. Naturally, I have never managed to get my kids to eat it, as I don’t cook it much. [Read the full story ...]
Organic? New York Times Article
Having read the New York Times article on the lack of ‘organic’ in our organic food, I am very disturbed by the latest revelations. It seems that we cannot buy real food anymore. We can buy almost real food, but there is always something added or modified. I, like so many others, felt okay buying the overpriced organic options, after all, they had been certified and followed the rules of untarnished, un-poisioned (my own word) food right? Apparently not!
Eden Foods seems to be in the small minority of companies that actually care about providing truly organic products in non-toxic cans and packaging. I strongly suggest all those who can afford it, buy many shares in that company now!
But what of us Joe Shmo’s who just want to feed our children healthy food without going bankrupt? When big companies buy up smaller organic companies, the prices might can come down a little. Of course now I know why. And what about meat? I eat meat, but cannot afford the cost of organic meat too often…which can be a good thing as I’m forced to eat more veggies 
However, it makes finding restaurants that serve organic meats very hard to come by!
So, super-companies are reducing our ability to buy real organic food…they have the majority share of the food industry and are manipulating the way food is deemed to be considered organic. What can we do about this?
Many people are shouting out that we should skip the stores altogether and buy locally grown produce from our Farmer’s Markets. Others suggest being careful but not overly dramatic about the issue. I am sure that there are also many who have just thrown in the towel, as time and money are just too limited to cook from scratch everyday or buy the more expensive goods.
Personally, I’d like to focus more on asking why this is allowed in the first place. This has become public and a major paper has written about it. We all need to shout out and be heard…write to our member of congress, respond to the article, petition stores, boycott products.
How should we, as a nation of consumers, win back our rights to real food?
Linky Party – Mantle – A Pinterest Favorite
I have been pinning things to Pinterest for some time now. I notice something interesting, crafty, eye-catching or inspiring and with a quick flick of a key, it’s pinned to my boards like magic!
One of my most re-pinned pins is this:
It is exactly how I’d like my mantle to look but I still haven’t got around to doing it yet. [Read the full story ...]