Saturday, March 23, 2013

Managing ME

I have love other people for way longer than I have loved me. Of course - I am still in the process of learning to love me. 

I need to ramble a little today.


  I am just TOO much for people some times. Too complicated (healthwise), too talkative, too loud, too quiet, too scattered, too distracted, too deep, just too. Too too, you know what I mean?

 Right now at this very point in my life I am learning to be my own health coach. My own life coach. It's much easier to do this for someone else. 

  Things I have to manage - a sugar addiction despite the fact that I do not believe in eating it, compassion that goes WAY beyond the call of duty - which can lead to all sorts of issues - emotional eating none of which is the least. A tendency toward depression, mostly caused by environmental or food sensitivities, so when I am feeling the worst, is when it will rear up.

 The biggest thing that has messed with my life is an exteme mold sensitivity. Boy Oh Boy is it a fight.  If we find that there is mold in the house -guess what - time to move.  But I will fight that - why does my family have to suffer for MY sensitivity?  But what makes them suffer more is the fight that I put myself through.   I just get angry that I have this sensitivity. I feel like - why can't i just deal with it? Maybe I am just grumpy and moody and have to get over it (not my natural personality -I tend towards being an annoying cheerleader who can sing a few lines to a song you just reminded me of with something you said to me)  

I have been in this spot before - waking up extremely achy and depressed - cannot get my head wrapped around this gnawing depression that I know there is no reason for until I either leave the house, or get some fresh air for a while.  The inability to recover from workouts - which makes it really difficult to reach health goals i have set for myself.  the feeling of sunken eyes. Irritability. The ability to cry at the drop of a hat, despite not being a natural cryer and not having really cried much in years.  I don't even know why I'm crying. Don't bother asking. I have no answers.  Suddenly i have transformed into Eeyore despite being a natural Tigger.  I'm am not even too sure that I LIKE me right now. But its not me that i don't like, it is the situation. UGH.  Exactly WHAT happened here?

Just to review this situation. I have always been sensitive to molds. Can make me totally opposite of ME.  It is almost everywhere. Especially if you live in the country where you usually live if you are married to a country boy and have a (very handsome, very nice) redneck (with morals) son .   I have watched my husband give up everything he worked for to move half way across the country so that I could get more healthy. We found a house in the country to rent for a while - seemed  perfect for a while - until I found myself waking up in the middle of the night feeling like I was going into shock, hallucinated spiders on the wall, felt like I was having a heart attack from the skipped beats and racing heart that I get when I sleep near a moldy situation. Now understand this - its not like we are living in an obviously moldy place. We live in a nice house - and if you are not sensitive to mold - you may never have known it was here. You still may not have felt good, but wouldn't know what to attribute it to.. But I am experienced in mold.  Put that on a resume.  Lol. 

So now what? It limits my ability to use the morning hours to study the bible and nutrition, limits my ability to work out (workouts are only good for you if your body is not already at its stress limit), limits my ability to be the cheerful, energetic, supportive, encouraging, healthy person that I am.

I am not sure what God has for me with all of this - my plans were to be at my goal weight years ago - hard muscles, clear skin, energetic.  I have been working at this for 8 years.  But I know he is teaching me something. I know I have learned a LOT of perseverance. (I have natural stubbornness - but it had to be developed into perseverance - still have a way to go - but have come so far already..)

  I have been blessed along the way to have some great teachers.  My chiropractor in VA  ended up being my first nutrition doc/coach. 
The first thing I learned from her?  
It is what it is.
Some people hate that.
For me - it has rang true.

No matter how hard I push my body to be what i think it should be, 
it can only do what it is capable of at the time, according to what it has been through
prior, its ability to detoxify, what toxins it is in right now and how it is being fed.

Oh - I have to insert something here, because I have heard a lot of things about faith lately - I do believe that having faith CAN heal - I have heard that - illness has no authority in our bodies, if we just have enough faith we will heal.  Well I think that is nice to believe - but so far i have not found that to be true.  God could have chosen to heal my daughter years ago, he could have chosen to heal my sister instead of taken her home to be with Him. God could choose to take all these issues away from me and make this journey so much simpler - like it seems to be for all those dieters out there who just cut back and all of the sudden they are in shape and happy.
 Psh.

Sometimes God chooses not to.  Sometimes He wants us to learn other things.
We are still human in bodies that are subject to nature - so they will react to how they have been treated their whole lives.  So sometimes getting health is a longer battle than one would want. 
Trust me on that one.

So - what do I need to do? What do i need to learn?  It is so easy for me to get distracted from my goals by all of the adversity.  Well - I still want to be a health coach/food psychology coach.  I want to be in the Word of God studying what HE has to say about all of our health.  That means I have to MANAGE me and the things that I struggle with if i want to achieve them.

So looks like we need to move aready, and again, and soon.
 I need to be in an environment that does not inflame my brain so that I can wake up refreshed and ready to go for the day. So that my mind can think clearly. So that I am in control of my emotions, not an outer source of toxicity. So that I can workout and have my body build and recover.

Then I need to eat the way I know that my body needs to eat. No sugar, no flour, no grains, no chocolate. (Yep you heard that one right)
Then I need to workout to build this body back up to before all of this mess happened, and to detox and de-stress it. This means working out smart, not necessarily harder or longer - been there, been messed up by that. 

I need to spend time in the Word of God and with women who can lift me up and whom hopefully i can also lift up as well.

 

And work hard to make extra money so that we can recover from all of this and so i can continue to pursue some more training that i have wanted to do.
I also need to be doing some things that I enjoy.
 One thing that I enjoy is singing & acting. I haven't done either for several years now. So I am going to start practicing my voice and looking for opportunities to use it. This is a great outlet for me.

This is how to manage ME - all of me. Body, Soul & Spirit.

This will make me better for my family. I will be more supportive of my family, more encouraging to others, be able to use my talents and gifts to serve others and be able to be used wherever God has opportunities for me.
 


This is what my newest lesson has been -
 Managing me
 so that i can have an effective, fulfilling life.

'Nuff said.


Tuesday, February 26, 2013

New Starts

I have been kind of silent in my health journey for a while. Sometimes God just allows situations that don't make sense to me.  This journey has not been a simple one for me.  I have asked God many times - why is it that I have this passion for natural health, a passion for educating your people about it, a passion for helping others who struggle on their journeys, yet my own journey is such a treacherous one.  
    And how many times i have watched others just cut back on their eating and lose weight.  How many times I have watched people go on diet plans, just eat less and lose weight. How many "celebrities" have gone on a diet (of course with all of their trainers, cooks and consultants) and have lost their weight, while I trudge on. And still have a ways to go for my goal - have a I mentioned that this journey has been a good 8 years or so?  
    There have been many changes in those eight years. I have lost 80 pounds - okay - well 60. Because 20 of them creeped on this last year after a health crisis.  I have wanted to hide, I have felt like a failure, I have been mad at God at times, I have felt that God doesn't want me to succeed.  and yet...
    I keep remembering the story Brady told me (never mind that he doesn't remember it - and when I tell him he told me he is impressed with the wisdom of it.. lol) that he read about mama giraffes - when they have a baby and the baby tries to get up - the mama keeps pushing it back down.  How hard the baby struggles - and oh the frustration it must feel as it longs to get up on those legs and walk - then run - and mom pushes him down again.    Yet the mother is strengthening the baby - so that if the day comes - and it most likely  will - that a predator chases it - it will be strong. 
    So I keep that tucked away.  
This last year has been a downhill slope for me.  We had been exposed to mold for a while - and did not know we were - I had worked so hard and long to get in shape - and suddenly the harder I worked out the worse I felt - exhaustion, depression, aches and pains, digestive issues, neurological issues.   I eventually had to stop working out.  This was devastating to me as I loved hardcore workouts. We found and eradicated the mold the best we could, but the damage was there - and it takes time to heal.   The longer that I was not able to work out -  the sloppier I got with my natural eating.  To be honest - by most people's standards - my sloppy eating still looks healthy - but its not for me.  So 20 pounds crept on - and my muscles are somewhat of a memory.  It has been easy to feel that all is lost at times.  To feel like a failure - to want to hide. To just forget it - but  - alas. I am who I am.   I love to get healthy.  I love to learn about how foods affect my health and how I can change things by what I put in my mouth.  I love the feeling of health and being fit - so quitting is not an option.  
    It has been a process of getting myself to the point of moving forward again - but I have finally decided it is time to press on. Time to quit whining about the things I didn't ask for, and move ahead towards the goals that I desire. To what is ahead. That will require me tweaking my thinking again - reminding myself of why I believe in healthy eating - why I believe in eating the way that I do.  So that is why I have started this blog.   To remind myself.    Maybe no one will read it but me - and if that's the case - okay - but if some of you out there are at the same place - I hope it will be an encouragement to you. 
    I am calling the blog Trenchin' it because I am in the trenches - dug in.  I desire to be a wellness coach - training people in how to take care of their bodies by what they eat and how to work it into their days - and I kind of like the idea of calling myself a Trainer in the Trenches - because - I have to work it daily - nothing comes easy or fast for me in the world of health.  Perseverance and determination are something that I have learned  a lot about - and so -  here I am in the trenches daily - Trenchin' it.  
     I am also going to post a few pics of myself here to remind myself that all is not lost - to see that there is still a huge change from where I was to where I am now - and while I have had a setback - its just that.   So a before pic and a now pic.   


   The first pic is where I was when I just started to learn about how to take care of me. When I finally decided it was time to do something about my health.