Thoughts

For the last few weeks, even months, I keep thinking about food, diet, nutrition as well as creativity, gardening, and other alternative/complementary health practices. With regards to my diet and my philosophy regarding diets, I think the biggest thing that I want to follow is clean eating. I plan to work at following the Palo diet, but I really want to eat clean. I am not against eating beans and grains, and even some dairy. I am also not against eating junk food once in a while. What I am against is beating myself up and judging myself when I don't follow my beliefs to the exact letter of the law. I am involved in a Facebook group about eating real food, and recently, there was a post about moderation and how moderation is not something that they would even think of. They were talking about how there is no such thing as eating healthy most of the time, but eating junk in moderation. Well, for me, that is not even something I could or would ever consider except for a short time. I would consider being extremely serious and focused if I were to do an elimination diet, or maybe a detox diet. With regards to my diet, I would be in a horrible position if I were to never eat anything bad for me. I think, at least for me, if I never had anything "bad" for me I would end up binge eating junk instead of allowing myself to eat a small amount and enjoy it, but then get back to eating healthy. I think, especially as women, we tend to beat ourselves up and have all sorts of negatives voices in our heads when we think we have done something wrong. I think its time to stop beating ourselves up when we "stray" and start enjoying life. It's important to be healthy and eat good nutrition foods, but it's also important to be good to yourself and enjoy life. Eating healthy and eating a good diet is important, but so is keeping your mind and spirit healthy too. I certainly need to focus more on keeping my mind and spirit healthy as well as my body. More recently, I have been looking and thinking, and talking about my diet, but I've kind of forgotten about my other passions. With the crazy winter we've had, I've somewhat forgotten about how I love to be in the dirt in my garden. I can't wait to get out there and get growing again. That will certainly help with my eating as well saw my budget. I also haven't been sewing or crafting or drawing like I want to. I also want to start meditating or even doing yoga as well as exercising with cardio and strength training. I am going to continue to work on my diet and continue to try to eat healthy. I am going to start making time to be creative. I need to make a point to be active and exercise. I also want to make a point to get outside and enjoy being outside and not stuck in the house. I know that I will make small changes and probably need to take one step forward and sometimes take 2 back, but I will continue to move forward without beating myself up. I chose to make this for dinner tonight. It was curry turkey meatballs from paleomg.com. It was so good and really easy.

My last creative project

These are my goals and my plans! Amy

Body Ecology Diet

Today is day 1 of the body ecology diet.  I decided that I really need to do something to get my health in order.  This morning I had my tea, a blend of oolong, mate, and herbal, which now that i think about it is probably not great, but not as bad as it could be (it's a mix of raspberry and orange flavored teas).  I really enjoy my tea and it's really expensive so I want to use it.  I also had my eggs, an omelet with spinach, onions, and cheese.  The cheese isn't really on the diet, but I figure it's better than eating my traditional breakfast of total carbs and fats.  My morning snack was corn chips with hummus, which I'm not sure is truly on the diet, but again a better choice than more carbs or sugar or both.  I'm not sure about lunch but dinner is going to be chicken with broccoli.

I just ordered the newest body ecology diet book and I can't wait for it to come in.  As much as I have read about the diet already, I certainly need a refresher and I'm hoping for more recipes.  I am really hopeful that I can do this.  Unfortunately, tonight is my husband birthday and I am making a cake and I will have some!  I don't feel as bad about this since it is only my first day.  After tonight no more sugar and there will be no more sugar throughout the day.  I believe that I can have rice milk and millet puffs and my husband said that is how he dealt with sugar cravings.  I think I can get by the sugar, but I am nervous about making sure I don't eat starchy carbs.  That is truly my addiction.

Along with the diet my goal to be healthier includes exercise.  I went to a yoga and social work conference the other day and I really want to add this practice into my life.  I also want to try to walk every day, wether it is outside or on the treadmill.

This is definitely going to be a struggle, and I'm sure one with set backs, but I am going to keep going an not give up no matter what happens!

Amy

Diet

I've written a lot about my issues with my diet.  I recently wrote how I  planned to start the South Beach Diet given my issues with carbs.  Well, so far, it's been a total failure!  I am still eating more carbs than I should, never mind eliminating them from my diet.  I know that technically most people don't have to eliminate a food from their diets, but right now I can't eat carbs in moderation.  Without giving out too much information, I am thinking that I may have an issue with candida, which is basically a systemic yeast infection.  There are multiple reasons why I think that I may have issues with this, but I think from a health perspective I really need to change my eating.  I know that there will be lots of ups and downs and probably a lot more downs, but I think I really need to do this.  So as of right now, I plan to follow what ever diet is going to help me win this battle.  My hope is, that after I get rid of my candida issue (which I only assume I have given certain symptoms) I can go back to eating carbs, only this time I hope that I can eat them in moderation!  If anyone has any thoughts, recipes or suggestions, please forward them to me via comments or e-mail.  I am going to need all the help I can get to follow through with this.  The other plus to following this diet, other than feeling better, is that I should find myself losing weight and that is a very good thing!

On another note, I attended a yoga and social work conference today that was wonderful!  I spent from 9am til 4 pm learning about yoga and it's use within therapy as well as practicing therapy.  We learned about certain poses, breathing, and meditation, practiced these, and talked about the benefits of yoga within the social work practice!  I plan to learn more about yoga and start practicing it myself.  Maybe one of these days when I go back to work, I can incorporate this practice into my social work practice.  I only hope that I can learn more tools that are not the typical set of social work tools that I can use in my practice.  I will be looking into other conferences that spend time teaching social workers how to incorporate more min/body practices or complementary medicine practices into social work practice!

Amy