As you may know, my health hasn’t been well. I have Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Sensory Processing Disorder. I also suffer from chronic headaches and migraines and a myriad of other symptoms that can’t be explained by my currently diagnosed conditions. Understandably, at this point, they are leaning towards an auto-immune disorder. I finally see specialists in a few weeks, so I’m hoping to get some answers.
Regardless, this is an eye-opening experience for me. I am in pain pretty much all the time right now and many days I feel like I can barely function. Once upon a time I was better about eating healthy. I weighed less, worked out more, had more energy, and although I still had occasional flareups they were easier to bear.
You may think “yes, but then you had kids.” No, the healthiest I’ve been was right after my husband’s cancer came back, which is when our youngest was 4 months old. The shock of my husband becoming so ill at young age really woke me up. Between then and now I fell back into bad habits – convenience. I’ve been cooking less and eating more processed foods. Something needs to change, so I’m starting a healthy eating challenge, and I’d like you to join me!
Because I know going straight from a place of maybe not eating so healthy to eating extremely healthy is a lot to bite off (pun intended), this is going to be a step-by-step challenge. We’ll start by eliminating common additives, preservatives, etc. step-by-step until we are shopping the perimeter more and processed foods less. After we complete the challenge, I’m going to continue into gluten-free, which is something else our family has been working on. This will be a separate challenge following the initial healthy eating challenge, but I wanted to mention it up front!
I hope to kick off the challenge in a couple of weeks, but I need your help! I’d like to get some opinions from those of you that are interested in taking the challenge – or even if you’re not sure but would like to share your input! Sharing your input will not require any identifying information (like your name, etc.), but it will help me to be sure the challenge is reasonable for everyone! Please fill out the survey below! If you have trouble getting it to load, please visit the survey here. Thanks!
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Thanks for throwing out the guantlet to join you in eating healthier. I really need to get my son and myself back to eating healthy. I appreciate the challenge and will look forward to setting goals and following along with you.
I have multiple chronic conditions caused by progressive, degenerative mitochondrial myopathy. I also live life with severe chronic pain and fatigue, and lost insurance coverage several years ago of the ONLY medicine (out of DOZENS) that helped me, PROCRIT injections, a cancer medication. I’m now denied because I don’t have cancer, and it’s extremely expensive. Anyway, this meant I had to accept that the ONLY way to get energy is from the food I eat. I try very hard to eat locally, and seasonally. I know that if I have sugary foods to start my day, I’ll be exhausted in an hour, but if I start my day with whole grains, I’m going to feel OK. I drink a lot of smoothies and can’t recommend a Vitamix blender enough for its ability to pulverize just about anything into a nice, smooth drink. I do my very best to eat things with ingredients I can pronounce and with zero preservatives. I’m not perfect, and I indulge in treats when I want them, I just understand that my health will pay, and some days, I just feel like crap anyway, and don’t care much! But I will absolutely say that my degeneration has slowed, I don’t by any means feel good, but I’ve avoided the hospital and ER, when I spent a few years there almost weekly. I try to eat foods known to be anti inflammatory, and high in fiber. I was bedbound and weighed 78 lbs when I was 25, after getting proper diagnoses, medications, learning how to cook and bake, at 37 I weigh 107. I never thought I’d be able to travel again because my immune system was so weak I’d always end up in the hospital a few days after I got off a plane. Now I travel with my dad on business and fly several weeks a year. I just wanted to give you an example of someone in a similar situation and what worked for me. Eating well will not cure me, but I am feeling MUCH BETTER. Good luck!
Thank-you so much for sharing your input!