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I’m Going on Vacation! (Wellness Quest 2014…)

Well. This August we are finally going on a real vacation again.  It will be our tenth wedding anniversary and we will be revisiting the places we went on our honeymoon. Some of the highlights will include The Badlands, Black Hills, Mount Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, and Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Park. Now, I am really looking forward to this trip for several reasons. It’s been quite a few years since we have been able to take a real vacation.  We spent the last four years trying to have a baby, and that really depleted our financial and emotional reserves. Our efforts were not successful, but we are finally climbing out of the financial and emotional hole we have  been in. We’ve worked hard and are going to enjoy our time away.

badlands

Only one problem stands in the way of me enjoying this time off.   I have Hashimoto’s autoimmune thyroid disease.  My personal experience with this has not been a whole lot of fun. Add to that all the chemicals I pumped into my body with fertility treatments and multiple miscarriages, well let’s just say I am not feeling all that healthy these days. I have a tendency to be tired- all. the. time.- partly from the autoimmune thyroid and also because I have a diet coke addiction.  My body is out of balance and I have not been all that successful in getting back to ‘normal’.  I have made SOME small progress toward ‘recovery’ but not enough to really be able to enjoy walking, hiking and all the other activities we want to be doing.

mount rushmore So I am trying to come up with a plan to build up my strength and endurance so I can enjoy the activities ahead of us. Keep in mind this is my personalized plan, and I will be working with what I have health wise. There are several stages to this fiendish plan, and some parts involve giving things up, while other parts will involve adding things in. I have never been all that excited by food, and if left to my own devices, more often than not, I will forget to eat. Then when I reach a point where my body says, “Damn, I’m starving!!!!”, I grab whatever the fastest option is to stop being hungry, and that usually results in bad food choices. Now several things happen when you get into the habit of doing this. Your body will start to believe that it is facing a feast or famine scenario and will slow down your metabolism and will hold on to all the fat that it can. Obviously this causes some problems with weight. Since I have a compromised metabolism any way from having a crazy thyroid, then I add to that the lack of good eating habits…..well lets just say I am certainly not supermodel material. ;o) So here is my personalized list of things to accomplish before vacation.hayden valley

  • Reduce/eliminate caffeine which spikes insulin and adds to stress levels. Also interferes with iron and vitamin B absorption. I have always had a problem with being anemic and being vitamin B deficient, seems to be hereditary in our family.
  • Reduce/eliminate gluten consumption. Again, in my personal experience, if I eat too much bread, pasta, etc.,  I get bloated, uncomfortable  and usually end up with diarrhea. Not fun.
  • Build up my strength and endurance for all the hiking and adventure to be had out there.
  • Eat cleanly. Reduce/eliminate all processed foods. I want to only consume whole foods that nourish my body and that make me feel good.

The least I can do is take good care of myself. I manage to keep my younger dog healthy even though he has IBD. Otherwise know as a sensitive stomach. If he does not eat on time, he spits up stomach acid. If he eats too many treats, or ‘unathorized’ treats, he gets the runs.  We spent a lot of time and money when we first got him going back and forth to the vet trying to figure out the cause behind his non stop diarrhea.  After eliminating EVERY possibility of infections, etc. the vet basically told us that he ‘just has a sensitive stomach’. No kidding. We have switched both of our dogs to grain free food, they both get Pet OPC and they are limited to only healthy treats and very few of those. They also get to enjoy a tiny spoonful of organic no salt peanut butter twice a day because our older one takes medicine for her discoid lupus and it’s just easier to get her to take a pill coated in peanut butter. And of course her little brother just thinks that if she gets some, he should too. And since both dogs are doing so well on grain free food, makes me wonder if they both don’t have some sort of allergy to corn or wheat. But my point is, I take such good care of every one else, including my dogs, why not myself?!?jazikodi 1

So that’s my plan for this year! I will be sharing my progress and tips, tricks and information I pick up along the way. Join me on this journey back to health and fun!

Kate ♥

 

 

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