Getting Back to Roots

It recently occurred to me that the original intent of this blog has gone by the wayside a bit. What started as a journey toward better health has culminated into pretty much whatever life throws at me in the moment. And, while I’m ok with that, I did feel like perhaps the occasional mention of what brought me here in the first place would be appropriate.

It really has nothing to do with New Year’s. I know most people make resolutions, and one of the most popular resolutions is to lose weight/get healthy. Sure I want to do those things, too, but I gave up resolutions some time ago. You can read why here: New Year 2011

No, it’s really more because I’ve neglected my blog for so long, despite having many, many things to say. It’s feeling like I owe it to myself to take just a few moments every couple of days to write something just for me. So if you’ll forgive me a few hundred words, I’d like to ramble a bit.

Progress Report and This Week's Goal

Alright, I should have known planning posts for the weekend would be a bad idea. We’re just too busy most weekends for me to find time to write. We’ve had a good bit going on, too, (which I’ll explain at the end) so I didn’t get a chance to write yesterday either. So, I’m just going to throw my progress report, this week’s goal, and hand updates in one post and to heck with the product review for now. J

This Week's Health Goal: Get More Sleep!

I was thinking last week that, although I started this blog just to have somewhere to ramble, I could probably do with just a tad more structure than I have. So, I sat down and wrote out a tentative editorial calendar. In thinking about adding structure to my blog, it occurred to me that it might not be such a bad idea to add a little more structure to my life as well. (Not the first time I’ve had this thought, but ya know.) So, in an attempt to kill two birds with one stone, I’ve settled on a few series of sorts.

Every Monday is healthy goal day. Each week, I plan to set a small, attainable goal that will work toward my becoming healthier and changing my lifestyle. And I’m going to share it with all of you! Don’t you feel special? J

Getting Healthy: Take 2

You could say this is take two, I suppose. You could also say it’s take 200 if you count up all the times I’ve tried to change my lifestyle in the past. It’s either insanity or tenacity…I’m not sure which. What I do know is that, no matter how many times I fail, my health is something I cannot give up on. And so, I continue onward in my resolve to kick the caffeine habit and get well.

Know When to Hold, Know When to Fold

I want to apologize for going on hiatus the last couple of days. I’ve not felt well at all and it’s been all I can do to sit up long enough to do my work, much less try to blog. So, that said, I’m a little bit sad, a little bit mad, a little bit frustrated, and a little bit glad. I had to break the cleanse last night.

Now, to be fair, my heart was never in this. I wasn’t doing it because I wanted to; I was doing it because I had to. Because my Coke habit had gotten way out of control, as had my coffee habit. Then the thing with my hands…I’ve been making myself sick and I had to try to undo the damage and get started in the right direction.

However, it looks like that as wonderful as the Master Cleanse was for me last time around, it was not the answer this time. I’ve felt bad the entire time, and yesterday was the worst. If it were just headaches or nausea, I could have dealt with that and continued. But I was severely dizzy all day yesterday. I had to go to town and got scared a couple of times that I might pass out while driving. I made it home fine, but the dizziness only got worse.

Something’s Not Right

Finally, I checked my blood pressure, since I am prone to having lower blood pressure anyway. In fact, I believe the only reason I’m not on low blood pressure medicine is because I smoke and have tons of caffeine. Even with that, my blood pressure stays in the perfectly normal range most of the time. But last night, it was abnormally low—and every time I’d check it after that, I’d just be lower.

My husband and I decided that I must have something to eat to get my blood pressure back up. Knowing that breaking the cleanse the wrong way will result in severe stomach pain and nausea, I thought that maybe just licking on a spoon of peanut butter would help…but I couldn’t get it down. So I opted for a bowl of chicken noodle soup, which has tons of sodium in it. It brought my blood pressure to just within normal ranges, but not much more.

As much as I really wanted to be done with the cleanse, I also didn’t want to give up before it had time to work. Plus, I have all this syrup and just bought a ton more lemons yesterday. So I’ve spent the day trying to rethink my approach, not sure as to whether I should continue or not. Then, about an hour ago, my blood pressure pretty much made the decision for me…it was lower than it was even last night—I could barely stand up properly.

Being Flexible

I’m not entirely sure yet what I’m going to do. All I know is that if I try to continue this cleanse with it bottoming out my blood pressure, I’m going to end up really sick. I have to eat at least a small meal every day. So I think what I’m going to try is to continue drinking the lemonade throughout the day, but allow myself at least one reasonable meal per day. I know I won’t get near the cleansing benefits—I may not get any at all—but it would be stupid to continue in this manner knowing that I could pass out any moment from low blood pressure.

Wellness is a great deal about learning to listen to your body and taking action to give it what it needs. Right now, my body needs food. So, as true to form as it would be for me to beat myself up about failing, I have resolved not to. If the goal is wellness, and this path is leading away from that, then it is not a failure for me to listen to what my body is saying. There is something good that has come from this, though…and I’ll discuss that in another post.

Setting and Achieving Goals

It recently occurred to me that, given the timing of this whole wellness thing, some of you may believe that it’s my New Year’s Resolution. It’s not. First of all, I stopped making resolutions a few years ago—they’re stupid and very rarely are true resolutions. Second of all, we’re nearly two weeks into the new year, so I’d be running terribly behind if that were the case. No, this is something I’ve been mulling over and planning for a while now.