Back from the Abyss, at Least for Today

Well, hello there!

Thought I'd fallen off the face of the earth, did you?

I guess that's fair considering how (in)visible I've been on this blog this year.

General news: budgeting for our "vacation" has put quite a hindrance on participating in any events, as has my business being very much still in a building phase. My husband did a giant crazy race in late June, which required full-family travel, which meant time off which meant more budget hit, and so on and so forth.

My back has been...okay. I still deal with pain all the time, especially in the mornings. I've found that I really can't take any pain medication without it invoking migraines and of course, since I'd taken medication, I can't take my migraine stuff simultaneously because of the "slight" risk of side-effect seizures.

However, even without the pain medication, I'm still getting the (I think) heat-induced migraines, so when those pop up the migraine stuff works well, but I hate being useless.

In April, probably a week or two after my last triathlon, I decided to go gluten-free. This was a long thought-out decision and based on a number of things. Waaaay back in 2001, I went on a cleansing diet to address some pretty severe food allergies that was preventing me from eating the majority of fruits and vegetables that were in my diet. It was extremely strict. I managed it for two months, I felt great, I lost weight, and it (mostly) treated my allergies. I was able to eat apples for the first time in about 6 years, among other things.

Ideally, based on how good I felt then and just in general how much better I know that diet was for me, I know that's what I should be striving for (or something very close). However, in the past when I've tried to go back, I've managed for 3-4 days maximum and then completely fallen off the wagon and rebounded in the opposite direction.

I had made several adjustments to my diet already. After self-diagnosing anxiety (I had no clinical basis for this, but it was an ongoing issue of emotion that I could only describe as anxiety, which was starting to have physical manifestations), I took out caffeine. Anxiety was gone. I dismissed it as mental, but I also wasn't craving my coffees, so I didn't think much of it until a couple of instances where I had coffee again and *anxiety* started feeling like it was eating at my chest.

So coffee was out. I didn't eat much chocolate, so I didn't think taking that out would be too difficult, but suddenly it seemed like chocolate was everywhere once I decided not to eat it. I didn't know if it was that I hadn't realized how much I was consuming or if I just really missed the bits that I was consuming, but either way, dropped that. Other than dropping extra sugar, I didn't really see a physical effect to it until once again, a couple months without and a cup of cocoa and WHAM. Migraine. A couple more tied events like that and I don't miss the chocolate--and when I think I do, I just think about a migraine, and suddenly it's not so appealing any more. (I still get migraines, but have eliminated the pain medication and chocolate-induced ones.)

Caffeine and chocolate were small starts, but not enough. I was also facing some major fatigue issues--I was needing more sleep than my 5-year-old. I don't just mean I was a little tired here and there. I mean, 3 or 4 o'clock rolled around and I didn't want to be driving because I felt I was dangerously sleepy. Naps were necessary. And although I could have been sleeping better at night, even when I got a good night's rest, it wasn't helping.

Combine this with some different things that kind of coalesced in my brain and I decided to take just one thing--one major thing--out of my diet. I decided on gluten.

Oh. My. Gosh. Those first couple of weeks were hard. I told the Moroccan not to bring home pizza (which he managed to respect, thankfully) and to avoid brining home the piles of desserts he likes (which he mostly respected). After that, not so bad--and I started feeling better and less tired.

And I began losing roughly a pound a week.

There were days the gluten-free was SO HARD. And then there were times that it gave me an excuse to order the steak instead, so I was fine. I did have a pizza meltdown at a friend's house--which I regretted enough the next day to not cave again. And I went on a business trip to New York. The Moroccan was convinced I wouldn't stay gluten-free on my trip, but it wasn't an issue at all. I had no problems and he was impressed.

So I've now lost a little bit of weight. It's going dramatically slowly, which on the one hand is frustrating, but on the other hand I'm hoping is a sign of permanence. Although I had to go shopping for some smaller clothes, I'm still frustrated because most of the weight seems to be ocming off of my hands, feet, and face.

Which means my feet hurt because my shoes don't fit properly, my wedding ring keeps falling off, and people look at my face, tilt their head to the side, squish up their eyebrows, and say, "Did you get a haircut?"

So visible progress, even if people aren't sure what it is they are seeing different.

I'm still visiting Amazing Dr. Amy. This week when I was in getting my usual treatment, with new bonuses of a cold laser treatment and some other adjustments she hasn't done before, she was telling me about a seminar she attended over the weekend. For anyone out there who is a chiropractic skeptic, I need to stress that at least in the case of Dr. Amy, I have far more faith than any other doctor I've seen for my back. It is not whack-crack, please come back. She spends an hour with me, working on soft tissues, doing muscle testing, joint testing, applying a variety of modalities and explaining all of them in a manner that even if I weren't an LMT, I would understand them.

So when she was talking about a "new" (to me) exercise regime for low back pain that was presented at the seminar, she told me she spent the whole weekend thinking about me and saying, "THIS is what she needs to do!"

It's simple and I'm not going to go into all of the principles and reasons why she thinks this will be great for me, but the primary one was my back stuff and the idea that almost anyone can do something for 30 seconds. Here it is: Sprint for 30 seconds, walk for 4 minutes, then repeat 4 times. Do this 3-4 times a week. For the time being, don't do anything else.

For you non-math geeks out there who haven't already calculated this, that's 18 minutes of exercise--so a total of less than an hour (if three times a week, or just over an hour if four times a week).

Also convenient for busy schedules, kids, etc.

Today was my first attempt at this. What's cool is that when I started this two years ago, I wouldn't have been able to walk to the school where I went to do this, so that's a bonus right there. However, I did not plan today so well. I took my daughter and dog with me and they were less-than-helpful. I did manage to do it, although my sprint is pathetic and then made worse by an uneven surface that nearly bit me several times. I'm not that sore (for the moment), although my feet hurt, but I attribute that to the foot size change and shoe fit issue more than running.

We'll see how this goes.