Thursday 5 March 2015

The Long and the Short of It

Hmm.  It's been so long, I hardly know where to start.  My year last year was a bit of a doozy, health-wise.  The short story is that all my weird pains were finally diagnosed as Rheumatoid Arthritis and the specialist of course wanted to put me on all kinds of major drugs right off the bat.  I have resisted that, going solely with diet changes.  I've slowly been eliminating different foods and lately stumbled on the book "Why Isn't My Brain Working" which basically says that most afflictions have to do with an unhealthy brain and here's what do to about it.

So my year last year was about good days and bad days (probably an even number of both), and working our family business and trying my damndest to keep up with our garden and the animals.  Let's say the animals are well, we added about 9 more laying hens, and I grew great pumpkins, which I'm still enjoying from the freezer.

2 weeks ago, I started on the path of the "Auto-Immune Paleo Diet" (insert groan here), and here I am, still figuring it all out.  Basically, I've totally cut out all grains, dairy, eggs, and all nuts/legumes, extremely limited sugar & coffee, and nightshade veggies.  It's quite the thing.  I'm hungry ALL the time, and I'm obsessed with my next meal or snack.  After 2 weeks, I'm kind of getting the hang of it, but if I'm not always eating, I'm hungry.  When I was first diagnosed last year, I started limiting a lot of bread-y things, and the weight just fell off.  Not that I was big before.  I'm 5'7", and have weighed 134 lbs for most of my adult life (with the exception of pregnancies).  I'm now 20 lbs lighter.  So I can't really afford to lose any more weight.  It's very weird, and I don't feel strong, which bugs me, being the independent kind of person that I am.

Am I feeling better?  I think so.  2 weeks is a little early to tell, but I feel like I need to document this somehow, to see any results.  I'm still really stiff in my ankles, which means I limp pretty much all the time, but it seems to be lessening.  What I am noticing is that I experience less ups and downs throughout the day... like a fog has lifted.  And I'm sleeping through the night.

That's about all I can say for now.  I'm taking it day by day.  Thanks for listening.