Like me!!!

I finally decided to hook Fit Living Daily up to Facebook. Please join me there so we can support each other!!!!

Here’s my personal page as well. The more the merrier.

It’s taking me a few hot minutes to remember how to do the olde WordPress thing but it’s coming back. I like having my own little world in the internetscape. That’s a word. Yes it is.

I’ve been eating super well and I found mega deals on vegan foods for my freezer at both Grocery Outlet and Fred Meyer. Depending on where you live, you may or may not recognize either of those stores. But look! See above! The picture went somewhere other than here!

It’s like a 3 ring circus here, trying to figure out my new technology. I switched from iphones to a Samsung (for $35 a month instead of $85) and my laptop was ruined when Jeff put it OUT ON THE DECK and forgot about it in a week of snow and rain. So now I have a Google chrome tablet.

And with this comes the almost impossible task of printing documents or saving photos or pretty much doing anything else, without first going through 53 steps. Finally I have had some success at putting things on Dropbox and then pulling from there. It only takes an eternity, but I’ll get better at it. I feel like I’m just stabbing at keys and then something good happens and I’m not sure what did it.

What’s today? Wednesday? Ok, let’s call it “Weigh In Wednesday”. I am at 233 today. My goal is to get back to 178. That’s 53 friggin’ pounds. Oh sigh. Big time Oye Vey. That’s ok. I can do this. I’m going to set a goal of 1 pound a week. I think that’s doable. I’m older now, things are slower….everything is slower.

 

 

 

 

 

Please join me on this path again!

I’ve been gone, gone, gone, I know. It’s been a rough couple of years for sure but things have evened out and I want my life back! I’m ready to move on and pick up where I left off.

I need to lose the 35 pounds or so I gained:

I know. It’s bad. It’s very bad! After I finished 5 months of chemotherapy, I had to do 2 full years of another treatment to specifically target both of the types lymphoma. All of those drugs wiped me out so much. It was impossible to exercise and I started to gain weight and comfort eat. I haven’t even recognized myself, both physically and mentally for awhile now.

Plus, the very month I finished treatment, I went to Albuquerque for 6 weeks and started setting up my massage business….and Mom broke her hip in WA state. Goodbye plans and dreams.

I love Mom and we get along great, but that’s a hard slap-in-the-face from life.

Jeff and I had to move back to WA and now Mom lives with us and I’m her caregiver. It’s an honor to take care of her in her last years but it’s a pain in the butt because whoosh…..my life was just gone.

I finished all treatment a little less than a year ago and my energy has very slowly been coming up month by month. I’ve started to finally get how important it is to still live my life, to still travel, to value my health and fitness. It took a long while and a lot of pity parties to get here. My sister lives nearby and she helps out where she can and is very willing to take on more, I’ve just felt too guilty to ask. Silly.

I want very much to be back in the fitness and health arena again. All of you good people make such a difference.

I took these pictures last week when I was starting out at 237 pounds. I’ve lost 4 pounds since then and I’ll do what I did in the past here on my blog and post new pics every 10 pounds.

I’ve started working out using Beachbody On Demand videos so I can try all kinds of things and I’m surprised I can do it even if it’s really, really modified.  I’m liking exercise again!

But I do have a special circumstance of being tired and I can’t deny or ignore that, so I finally sucked it up and said, I need to exercise and eat right and if I need to take an afternoon nap every single day for a year until I get back into shape and feel a lot better, then the family has to pick up the slack.

Exit doormat Katie.

 

If it’s 2014 It Must Be Time to Post!

Hi everybody! I’m dusting things off and moving back into my blog. I’m missing connecting with wonderful people like my years-long-now friend, Renee  from Run, Laugh, Eat Pie.

It’s been a long, awful year. So, this happened:

Yep. In September I was soooo tired. I returned to Washington state where I found out I have not one but two cancers. I had stage 3 Large B cell Non-Hodgkins lymphoma, which sprang from Follicular Non-Hodgkins lymphoma. I was in a ton of pain and thought I had kidney stones, but…surprise! 19 large tumors, one the size of my fist.

I had 4 1/2 months of chemotherapy which ended in March and my hair is growing out now. So this is my after:

This is 3 1/2 months of hair growth and it isn’t much, but I love it.

The large B cell Lymphoma is in remission now and considered cured unless it comes back. I’m on 2 years of maintenance therapy now for the Follicular cancer which is incurable. Thankfully it’s not a chemo drug but an antigen that directly targets lymphoma so all should go smoothly. The Follicular cancer will return, it’s just a matter of when, but sometimes it can take 2 or 10 or 25 years. Maybe I’ll die from being in a 100 car pile-up on I-5. Meh. In any case I feel great now and am moving on.

I’ve been sitting on my ass watching TV and dying for 6 months so it’s taken me a few months to get back to my old activities. But now I’m up to walking 2-6 miles every day and am even running, very very badly, but running is running. I needed a little time to obtain a few muscles first!

I’m back to happily eating a vegan diet, since a steady diet of meat and eggs and cheese very probably contributed to my cancer, which most likely came from my Crohns (Apparently it’s extremely common for cancer of the autoimmune system to follow). The Crohns is  100% in check now. Oh well. Live and learn. The live part is especially essential.

I want to start keeping up my blog again so I’ll drop back by next week and re-enter the blogging world.

I now weigh 198 which is pretty darn good. I can sometimes hardly believe I’ve kept the weight off all these years. I’ll have to go back into my own blog to see when I actually started losing weight. I don’t even remember!

 

 

 

 

2013

Wow! I honestly couldn’t even remember how to get into my blog! It’s been a long, long time.

I’m really holding pretty much steady with the weight these days. Overall I’m up about 10-12 pounds which is pretty amazing after all these years. I kind of seem to hang out around 199-201 all the time. It’s pretty hard for me to gain more than 7 pounds before I pull myself back up and look at my diet.

It helps a TON that I can only eat carbs in the form of veggies, only 1/2 a piece of low sugar fruit a day if that. The MRSA I picked up loves carbs. I have to keep them very very low and then the virus stays tamped down in my system and can’t take hold. Because of the Crohns I can’t eat any grains at all anyway, not even oats, sad to say. So honestly, it’s not too hard to keep my weight down. And because I don’t eat sugar or grains the Crohns isn’t even an issue. I haven’t taken any medication at all for it in about a year and a half.

I was worried I’d drop dead due to the fact that I do eat a lot of chicken, beef, eggs and cheese with my veggies. But my blood work shows an overall big drop in my cholesterol, and all the numbers in general look super.

I got really into yoga, going to classes every single day for about 5 months. I even paid $3500 and signed up to do teacher training. But then I moved back to Albuquerque and started back to work as a Realtor again, for Coldwell Banker, and I’m so busy I simply can’t take the training this year. I cancelled my space and will try again next year.

I no longer run, just walk. I still want to get back to the running, but in New Mexico, I’m NOT going out running when it’s hot. No sir. I’m keeping running in mind for this fall when it starts to cool off. So, we’ll see.

Life is great. I just got back from our 5 acres in Deming, NM where I spent a week building sidewalks, painting the cabin and refinishing the floor and decking. I worked my butt off! It’s so peaceful and calm out there, I just adore it.

Jeff turns 55 this October so we’re going to spend 2 weeks out at the cabin. We think he’s going to retire one year after that and then the world opens up a bit for us. Do we want to live out at the property? Do we want to spend half a year there and half a year in an apartment or condo in Tucson? We’ve looked into it all. Time will tell.

I’m still working as an artist. It’s been almost 40 years now! I’m looking at the possibility of hitting the road, doing shows in the upcoming years.

I hope everyone is good and I’ll try to come back every once in awhile from now on!

Back to my old weight :)

I really don’t like blogging anymore. So I’ll call this an “update”. Maybe I’ll update every few months.

I’m back at 189! It took me about 7 months to lose what in the end was a 27 pound gain. Eep!

It’s quite easy at this point. So many foods make me sick that I have a very parred down, totally yummy diet that I LOVE but that is pretty much neigh to impossible to gain on. My weight usually fluctuates by 2-4 ounces a day anymore.

Wild rice, rice, brown rice
Veggies
Ghee (butter boiled down with all of the mild products strained off)
Nuts
Fruit
Almond and brown rice flour
Chicken, turkey, fish
Spices-lots
Herbal tea

I make weird looking biscuits with almond flour/rice flour blend and nutritional yeast. I throw in sunflower seeds and I think they are to die for. I make cookies with the same flour mix and sweeten them with raisins, soaked and ground dates and a soft banana. Add lots of cinnamon and I think they’re great. They are way too soft so I keep them in the freezer and pull them out when I want one.

My exercise is very moderate. I do yoga a few times a week, maybe 20-30 minutes each, I walk about 40-60 minutes every single day and lately have started a run/walk program 2-3 days a week, taking it real easy as too much running exacerbates the MS. I run no more than 20-30 minutes at a time, with a lot of walk breaks. Maybe that will improve over time, but if it doesn’t, I’m ok with that. I like to bike when we are at our Michigan apartment. We live by miles of trails there. In finding out what foods make me sick, ie, cause the MS to flare up, I have been super healthy for a long time.

The things I cannot eat:
legumes including soy products
Dairy
Eggs
Any gluten so no flours, no hot cereals. Oats are ok every great once in awhile.
Potatoes—except for one tiny one, and only once a week.
No caffeine in any form: no tea, no coffee, no diet soda
No processed foods of any kind
Sugar in any form
Fake sweeteners of any kind

I’m enjoying eating more than I ever have. I LOVE sitting down to eat and my sense of taste is really fine tuned.

I never think about my weight. My “issues” with the scale are completely gone. And now I get that it was actually an issue with the food, as in, “How much eating can I get away with”? When the scale never changes but to go down, very slowly but consistently, the scale loses it’s power. I can’t eat ice cream and cake and then fearfully step on the scale to see the damage. Plus, I’d be very sick in bed for 2 days so there is most definitely that.

It’s very odd to know that I now weigh 14 pounds more than the day I got married 31 years ago, after being at close to 300 pounds for so many, many years. Now I know I’ll get down into the 170’s, probably the 160’s or 150’s. I’m not trying to achieve anything. I’m going to just let my body settle where it wants to. If I never lost another ounce I’d be fine with where I am now too.

My peace of mind and calm spirit is just mind-blowing to me. Getting off of sugar, grains and caffeine has made me an entirely different person. Or I guess it has showed me as the person I really am. I am rarelyrocked by life, I take it in stride. I don’t feel bursts of anger or frustration very often, don’t worry much at all. I feel quite zen almost all of the time. I am still major active in all I do in life, but the frantic state is gone now. I can’t even remember what that was like. I’m no longer drugged up by things that were killing me.

Later I’ll post another picture, when I reach the 100 pound loss mark at 183. I don’t know when that will be.

My husband got a major promotion and is up for another, which will bring him to the very top of his career. He loves his job and won’t retire next year when he turns 55 as we have planned. He’ll stay on a few more years. We have an apt in Michigan that his company pays for and have recently moved back to WA near my family and his work and live in a sweet apartment here. We are so happy with our small town life. We walk everywhere.

I’m now in the process of studying to take both the New Mexico and the Washington state realtor state exams at pretty much the same time. I intend to work here in Washington state where I used to sell houses, and when we move back to our house in Albuquerque (rented out now) in a few years, I will go back to the Coldwell Banker I loved and worked at while living there. So I’m in a major transition phase and am loving life and the challenge of developing myself and stepping back into a career I truly love. I adore business and I do it very well. It suits my “achievement gene”.

Best wishes to everyone. I’ll update in a few months

Wrapping this blog up

I’m moving on from my weight loss blog.

I’ll be working on a new, more holistically minded blog that better reflects who I have become. If you’d like to keep up with me in general, please friend me on Facebook. It’s been an adventure.

I look forward this summer to sharing on Facebook that I’ve reached the 100 pound weight loss.

I wish you happy eating.

 

Yoga and Running

I’m down to 196 today, 7 pounds from my lowest weight of 189. I’m looking forward to dropping into the 170’s someday. I’m totally managing around 1400-1500 calories or so. Having a smoothie with just strawberries and lots of fresh spinach isn’t actually disgusting and I can get in lots of veggies that way too, so I’ve added that in.

I finished Week 2 of my Couch to 5K program. Woo hoo!

I am doing yoga 7 days a week and am running 2-3 days per week.  2 may be my optimum limit but we’ll see. Yoga comes first now. It’s such a life-changing exercise. I love, love, love my runs, but I get now how important it is to save my energies for that thing which will increase my life span, reduce my stress and keep me flexible. It’s a good thing.The 20-30 minute runs are a wonderful bonus and over time, if I settled into just 2 days a week, I may find I can do 45-60 minutes per run. I’m just happy to be running.

In June or July I take level 1 of the Yoga Fit training! It’s the first of 5 levels I’ll need to go through to get my 200 hour certification. I’m getting smart now; I mapped out where all of the level 1 classes are in each of the states we go to so that I don’t lose out on my classes. Thank goodness I can take them in increments because otherwise it couldn’t happen.

My goal is to teach at MS Societies, Senior Centers, Cancer Centers, Plus Sized classes or basic, beginner classes.I think that would be soooo wonderful to work with people who truly need help to improve how they move through the day or people who may be afraid to start.

I’m also planning a full-immersion class with a yoga teacher/studio in Colorado that specializes in chair yoga for Seniors, MS or other disabilities. So that will add a much needed level to my training. And then when I teach classes? Hello! I’ll be able to keep up!

Before, I was always worried about how I could possibly keep up in a yoga training class. Screw that. Now I get that it’s my money and MY mission is to teach people like me who are older, slower or disabled. I don’t HAVE to be like 20 years olds in a yoga class, or like lithe, bendy 50 year olds. I’m me. I’m happy with that realization at last.Other people need help too. I’m going to be the person who can guide people like me. There are plenty of teachers or the harder core stuff.

I’ll be back here on the blog in about 10 days or so. I leave for New Mexico soon and then will be doing the cross country move, so I won’t be settled and ready to chat until sometime after the 23rd of April.

My husband is up for a promotion at work that came on quite suddenly, we hadn’t expected it for months. It may affect our living situation AGAIN. He may end up having to work a lot of out Seattle and I can’t live here. (The MS Society is doing a study right now of why so many people from Washington state have MS. Hmm. Too little, too late. But good for them.)

So we may end up in Michigan for only 6 months and then I may move to Albuquerque and take a studio apartment there instead of living out at the property with no internet, no creature comforts, no family. I actually end up spending $400 a month on gas when I’m there. A nice studio in Albuquerque is $400 so it’s a good deal and we won’t end up losing any more $ than if I were out at the 5 acres. So if we have to move again, it will be to move me there until the renters vacate our house in Abq in 19 months. And I’ll then return back to flying to WA every 3 weeks to see my hubby.

And yes, it pissed me off seeing as how we’ve just now gotten a new plan in place. I’m very happy for my husband , he’s earned all he’s gotten at work. But I need a life too, and so I’m taking it.

I’m taking classes, I’m making plans and I have a say in where I’ll be and what I’ll do. As long as we can be together about half of each month all is good.

And honestly, I miss Albuquerque, so if it ends up going that way by the fall, that’s OK with me.

Have a great week everyone. I’ll be back soon.

Please, if you don’t already, follow me on Facebook. I always post there. And send me a note letting me know you know me from my blog or I might ruthlessly delete you when I’m doing housekeeping.

I

Got my Second Run In

Great run today! I’m feeling stronger every day. I did just 1.67 miles but that completed at least day 2 of week 2 of my Couch to 5k program. I hope to get in another day tomorrow so I can slip in all 3 days on the calender this week, but that may not happen.

Tomorrow I’m going to Tacoma Habitat For Humanity to work with the hubby. He’s gone every Saturday for months, this is my first time. I’m excited and I don’t want to be pooped, so I’m not sure I’ll run in the morning. Nevertheless, I’m happy with what I achieved run-wise on what was actually a sucky week.

I am running 1 minute, walking 30 seconds. That works great for me. I’m happy with it. I love to listen to the “The Extra Mile” podcasts when I’m out running. Lest anyone think run/walk/run is lame, the people who call in with recorded message to the podcast are marathon runners (and other races) from around the world. Some of them do back-to-back marathons doing the Galloway run thing. They inspire me. I don’t feel like a wuss. It cracks me up that “real runners” get their panties in a twist about us “poser runners” who walk. I’d rather use my energy enjoying life, not keeping score about who I’m better than and exactly why I’m better than them.

I’m eating more calories! I made it to 1600 calories yesterday. I’m happy with that. I was stuffed, but I’ll get used to it over time. I’m not as worried now. I guess I’ll figure it out.

I’m at 198.3 today. I’m just 4.3 pounds away from my old “5 pound safety range” and then another 5 from 189, the least I’ve weight since I started all this jazz. Kind of exciting. 

I’m not quite sure how to be interesting, charming and FUN on this blog. I’m pretty boring. I see that some people become so popular they start making videos, selling books and soon their blogs are covered with business ads, and every other picture they post is them holding a product that “they just ate”.

I wonder how they came to that place? For me, it ruins the experience. For them it’s a nice job and I have to give them cudos for that. I get so sick of hearing myself talk that I’m pretty sure that no one is going to hand me money and say, “Hey, post about these processed products in a cute package.”

Writing a blog is weirdly narcissistic. I probably say that every 6 months, don’t I? I suppose in the end, I feel that if I totally abandon my blog that I’ll never finish losing the weight or maybe I’ll gain it all back. Which is not true. I’m mean, the blog isn’t why I change my habits, why I exercise. 

My battery is dying and I need to plug in the olde computer. Have a great weekend everyone.

Losing and Running

It’s been weird. I think that about covers it.

I WAS eating an extremely fatty high protein diet for just a few weeks in an effort to snap me out of my bad carb, high sugar eating habits and to get me losing again. It worked. It also stirred up my MS for the first time in about a year-big time.

I’ve been struggling for about a month as problems come and go and come back again. I started out on the right track, eliminating sugar and grains but as things got worse and worse I finally did some more research and found the MS Recovery Diet and have found it necessary to stay strictly on the program. I’m seeing big improvements already, especially in my vision, which is once again clear and sharp. It’s a diet I must stay on for the rest of my life and it may take up to a year to see big improvements as my brain and nervous system will take time to heal.

The diet requires I severely restrict saturated fat to less than 15 grams per day as saturated fat is the devil in the MS world. You know, I have the books on how to eat for MS, but I always thought those chapters were not really necessary. Uh, surprise, they are.

On Sunday I inadvertently ate 20 grams of saturated fat by throwing in 1 T of coconut oil with has a whopping 12 grams of saturated fat per tablespoon. Yes, I know it’s a great fat. But it’s not good for me. I didn’t really understand the extent to how sensitive my body is becoming until I woke up the next day incredibly sick and unable to get out of bed.

It’s Thursday now and I finally feel about at about 80%. And I’m so glad. And I learned my lesson. In staying on this diet, which is MORE than proven to work, I’ll see major improvements but it may take time. But it may not be as hard as it initially sounds. Trust me, when something like a piece of chocolate can make you feel like you have the flu x 10 for 4 days in a row, you no longer desire it.

So the good news is I finally am doing the totally right thing. No eggs, no legumes including peanut butter, no oats, no soy, no chocolate or carob, no dairy, no alcohol, no grains, no rice, no potatoes, no red meat, lots of fish, shrimp, veggies and berries and healthy oils.

I’m down to 199 again. That’s super good news.

The “bad” news, and I know you’ll want to punch me in the face for this, is that it’s pretty easy to lose weight because I simply don’t want to eat. I have no desire. It’s just gone. So yay for cutting bad sugary carbs out of my diet, but hey, there is no longer any signal for me to want to eat. And you know, the food tastes great, I love it, but I just don’t have any desire. I probably said this in my last post, but now it’s really noticeable.

I’ve lived my life longing for foods, thinking about them, loving them, crafting them. Now food is just food. Eh. Food. Just the stuff you have to eat to stay alive. That’s not sexy. That’s….boring. No drama. I’m not quite sure what to do with that mindset because it’s so new.

But the real problem is that I’m having a seriously hard time getting in enough calories. When you’re eating lean protein and several cups of vegetables at each meal, it fills you up. You CAN’T eat more food. And while that sounds fantastic, the downside is that those vegetables and protein may add up to 300 calories per meal, if you’re lucky. 300 x 3 meals a day equals seriously under-eating. Not healthy. Bad.

I struggle every day to at least hit 1200 calories because it’s incrediblyimportant to at least eat that amount or your body starts eating it’s own muscle and all that jazz. I count every calorie. I try to eat as many allowable nuts per day as I can without having too much saturated fat because that bumps up the calories without pushing the saturated fat over the limit.

I worry.

I’m working on it. It’s very easy to get the calories you need when you can just add butter, cream, grains, but I can’t. Later, I can try quinoa and millet. It would be grand if they work for me. Thus far, those sorts of foods that “should” work, don’t. But maybe they will. And so I’m a little terrified of food right now, because I’m not a fan of becoming deathly ill just to attempt eating an item. And I need to get better before I can start trying things. Every item I can add to my list is a huge triumph.

I hate talking about this crap. I hate even acknowledging that I have Crohns and MS. But I do, and the body reactions to the food allergies created by Chrohns then attack my body in the form of MS as thingies pass through the blood/brain barrier which it’s not supposed to be able to do. But that stupid MS has found a way to make that possible. A vicious cycle.

And I press on anyway. And if that’s not courage, I don’t know what is. And it’s an honest part of my weight loss experience so I’m gong to talk about it.

Today I went for a run. I’m so so so so grateful. No one appreciates running like I do. No one.

I’m learning to be moderate and I’m so proud of me. I was not able to start my C25K week 2 on Monday, but I decided there was no shame in that, I’m on no timetable. I waited until I felt better and then today I did day 1 of week 2.

I was so slow. My normal slow walk is 3 minutes faster than I ran/walked my 30 minutes today. And that’s OK, because next week it’ll be better.

I’m learning that it’s a great boost to my body to go out and exercise as soon as I feel better, not to wait and worry that it’ll make me feel worse. That almost never happens. And it’s OK if I only get 2 days in of my C25K program this week, because holy cow, I can do day 3 on Monday. The running police aren’t going to come and take away my running shoes.

I’m thankful. I’m thankful that I’m so stubborn that I refuse to be a “sick person”. I’m thankful that I believe in being in charge of my own destiny and that I believe in the power of natural healing and in food being your best medicine. I believe it’s the reason why my MS has never much advanced over the past 7 years or so, because I took responsibility for my own heath.

I screwed up. I ate very badly and ignored my reality and hurt myself. I learned. I changed directions. You can too. It’s so great that every day we have a choice to start over.

So I’m losing weight, a LOT of weight. Too fast, I know, but I don’t know what I could do about that. I’m trying to eat super healthy and take vitamins. If you have any advice I’d love to hear it, for real.

Perhaps I’m silly to worry. Maybe yes, I will drop to 145 without effort. Maybe I won’t starve to death. Maybe my body will adapt to the lower calorie intake? Do you think that’s what will happen? I’d like to think that’s true. Maybe in a month or two I’ll be able to add in something that could provide some more caloric bulk to my diet. Maybe I worry too much. Again, any wisdom or advice would be helpful.

 

 

Week 1 Day 2 of Couch to 5K

Robin wrote to tell me she just bought this top that I’m coveting:

But I can’t find it on the site! Robin, will you send me a link?

And Katie J (Awesome name!) wrote to assure me that YES, my idiotic post of yesterday went out to my OTHER blog subscribers, letting everyone and their brother know exactly how much I weigh and how much I covet this running shirt. Oh, the humiliation.

Oh well, I will bounced back, stuff it down and pretend it didn’t happen.

My running is going great. I’m bribing myself. After I finish the whole 8 weeks without doing the same lame thing of deciding to run more, faster, better!! then I get to buy any running skirt I want, no matter how pricey it is. They can be as much as $75. Gulp. So I have to practice moderation and I have to do the runs. I can do it. I want the skirt. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone reward themselves for not doing too much. I am exactly that weird.

My hip is hurting a little, but I think that’s because I came from almost 2 weeks of non-activity to running 30 minutes on Monday morning, then walking 3 miles with the hubby that night. It felt much better today so I did my run on the treadmill here at the gym hotel but it’s still a little sore. I’m glad I’m only running 3 days a week. It gives things time to settle down.

I loved my run today though. LOVED it. I used Nike+GPS app because it’s only $2 and you can use it to track your runs on Nike+ without paying through the nose for a Nike+band and shoe chip. Which I own, but have lost.  I lose each piece, one at a time. If I find the bracelet, I can’t find the chip. If I know where the chip is, the bracelet is gone. I’m quite sure I shouldn’t be trusted with equipment that I actually need to keep track of. I usually know where my iphone is, so this works for me.

My favorite part about Nike+ is ONLY that I get to run from color to color. I’m serious. It’s so fun to anticipate the color changing from yellow to green. I think green is next. Once I went all the way to blue. Before I lost my chip the first time. So I’m jazzed about the colors. Like a raccoon with a shiny thing.

Do you ever go back and read your old blog posts? Ugh. I would hate that. I have a pile of about 10 journals so far and I mentioned to my daughter the other day that I might just throw them all out because I never like looking back, so why would I keep them? She made me promise to save them for her until I die (Which made me start anticipating that unhappy event). I said, “Well, you might hate me when you read them, so fair warning.” That probably stopped her heart just for a second. But for some reason she wants them. She’ll read my whining for about 6 pages and then probably put them all in a box in her attic.

Don’t complain to me about food or hunger or anything. I have lost all of my mercy and compassion because I’m using it all up for myself. I can SEE really well today. It has been determined that saturated fat is horribly bad for MS and since my optic nerve is involved and I’m an artist, well, HELLO, I need those eyes. I am being super careful now in my eating, especially as I’m the holder of 2 award-winning autoimmune diseases if you throw in Crohn’s, which is likely to have caused the MS.

So this morning I got up and went for breakfast downstairs. The dining room is filled with items. I could eat NONE of them. I tried oats yesterday and I am one of the unlucky ones who can’t eat them. They ran right through me. So I came back to my room, scratching my head.

I ate the 3 strawberries I had leftover, had a cup of tea and sat down to starve to death.

After 2 hours I was bored with that and hiked to an AGS store which seems to sell to in mass quantities to restaurants and little stores. I bought the only things I could find that I could have. A big old tub of roasted, salted almonds, a big hunk of roasted chicken and a bag of frozen vegetables. So that’s what I’m going to eat for the next few days until I head to Albuquerque. And I’m darn thankful to have that.

I love vegetables and poultry and fish so I guess I’m OK with that. But really? Don’t you feel sorry for me?????????

I mean, seriously. No sugar, no processed foods, no dairy of any kind, no grain, a limited intake of fruit, no oats, no yeast, no legumes so no peanuts or soy, no chocolate. I mean, come on!!!

At this point though, those things get strong reactions within minutes, so I have to just do it now. I wonder if that’s what Nike meant when they said, “Just Do it!” I used to love that mantra. Stupid Nike.

 I lost my little hotel key card so I asked my husband for his today. I said, “I just can’t find mine and I want to go out today.” He looked at the sofa which is COVERED with art supplies and said, “Well, I don’t know why you can’t find it. It’s a veritable ‘where’s Waldo’ over there.”  Let’s just say that wasn’t funny. One darn bit. At all. It’s a good thing he left to go to work because I would have snubbed him all day.

 

*Ok, it wasn’t Katie J who sent me the message about my blog. It was maybe Judy or Robin? Whoever it was, thanks so much for letting me know!