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| My reasons for wanting to be healthy. Our day hiking at River Legacy. |
My eyes were bigger than my stomach...or my cravings were bigger than my digestive issues. Whatever it was, I'm paying for last night's indulgence today. I won't lie. That Italian meatball casserole tasted oh so good, but about halfway through my second helping of the heavenly stuff the thought ran through my head, 'You really shouldn't have done this'. And by morning I was really wishing I hadn't.
I've always been the girl with the 'delicate' stomach and food allergies. They've done tests on me, attributed most of my stomach issues to either stress or allergy issues, and then the possibility of IBS (that thing we don't like to talk about in mixed company). I love food, particularly fast food. If it comes in a paper sack out of a window and I can purchase it 24 hours a day, chances are good that I'm going to like it. Most of my life I just ate mindlessly, indulging my cravings without regard for how it was making me feel.
About 8 years ago, after going on a hospital-supervised diet program, I had a horrible attack of food allergies. In a two month period I was taken to the ER three times because of allergy attacks linked to food. I had overloaded my system so much with pre-packaged diet foods whose primary ingredients were cheese, tomato, and mushrooms, the three foods that I was most allergic too. They were also some of the ingredients to my favorite foods - pizza anyone? Another food I tested positive for having an allergy to was wheat. Did I mention my second favorite food is bread? For a year, I took allergy shots and avoided these foods as much as possible. I lost quite a bit of weight and felt much better. After the year was over, I started reintegrating these foods back into my diet. Some foods bothered me and little "allergy patches" would pop up on my skin if I ate too much, but I got to where I would sometimes ignore these (I know. I know. Not a good thing.)
While I was pregnant with C5 (was this seriously 6 years ago?), my food cravings were those allergy foods. Amazingly enough, I never once had an allergy attack while I was pregnant. My food allergy issues seemed to be over. Yes, I had uncomfortable stomach issues occasionally, but I continued to eat my way through these.
Flash forward five years, and I'm back to having stomach issues. This time it's the kind of issues that I can't just ignore or mindlessly eat my way through. For the past three weeks, I've begun tracking everything that goes in my body, comes out of my body, how I feel, how I exercise it, what my stress level is...If it happens to me or around me, I'm documenting it. This is helping me see patterns of what foods to avoid, my pattern of eating, and the progress I am making. Yes, I'm actually making progress. Some of the highlights include: going 4 weeks without soda, exercising more, trying new and healthier foods, and not be afraid to prepare vegetarian meals.
All of this is a process. Sometimes I will have moments of weakness. Sometimes my cravings will be bigger than my digestive issues. But I'm feeling better, and I'm seeing a vast improvement in my health. Rome wasn't built in a day (sorry for the cliche), and my health/weight didn't get this way over night. There's no magic quick fix, and I'm not going to let that get me down. I am going to go out there and make positive changes every day, and I know in the end that this will be better overall.
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