Well I've made it over 5 weeks into this elimination diet (more on that in my last post if you missed it) and I can honestly say this h...

Healthy Holidays

Well I've made it over 5 weeks into this elimination diet (more on that in my last post if you missed it) and I can honestly say this has been the healthiest holiday season I've ever had. I did not realize how bad my timing was for this craziness until I'd already started. I debated stopping and waiting until after the holidays, but I realized how much it helped me say no to the ridiculous amounts of sweets that are everywhere this time of year. Since most all sweets have sugar cane, unless I made it myself, I didn't eat any treats except homemade raw vegan cheescakes. Oh and these bad boys, thank you Trader Joe's →

My knee is feeling pretty good these days. And my stomach and headaches are also much better. Since they're not happening as often, it's a lot easier to tell if I ate something that bothered me. But the best thing about this diet is learning even more about how much shit they put in our food. I've been reading ingredients and educating myself on food for years. But trying to avoid eggs, yeast, dairy, soy, sugar cane, and all the other stuff on my list, has been even more illuminating than I could've guessed. More about that once this crazy ride is over.

So what have I been eating? Oh there's still lots of good food out there. Like Mediterranean sweet potatoes, and another version of this w/ flat bread (I make homemade yeast-free flat bread or use tortillas). And this amazing tandoori chicken we made last night. Best homemade Indian food we've ever made by far.

Being the holidays, there was lots of yummy turkey on-hand so I ate many turkey & veggie wraps with my homemade garlic-free hummus. Breakfast was the biggest challenge but I found an easy and delicious vegan muffin recipe that I added several heaping tablespoons of flax and hemp seeds (these saved me on our road trip to NV). Our pancake recipe was thankfully already vegan, I just had to make some substitutions, and also added flax and hemp seeds to this too. And for my birthday I made a raw, vegan banana cream pie. Soooo good.

The other half of this recovery is the physical therapy. The therapist thinks most of my problem is my scoliosis, which I agree. He does postural pictures each session so we can track my progress and it's pretty crazy to see that my left shoulder is higher than my right, my right shoulder hunches more forward then my left, my arms turn out, my knees turn in, etc. So the routines he's giving me are geared towards fixing my posture. Each exercise by itself seems pretty easy. Things like squeezing a block between your knees or ankles, doing shoulder bridges, downward dogs, wall sits, and other things you wouldn't think to be difficult (until you do 20-40 reps of it). But the real challenge is making the time for it as the full routine usually takes about 45 minutes, and I do this every single day. I'm sure this helps progress come quicker so I'm doing my best to be on it.

The first couple weeks were good, mostly hip strengtheners that had my hips popping and a little sore, but feeling good and strong, like it was helping my pelvis go back at least a little closer to where it was before birthing a giant baby. The third week was more shoulder and spine work, that I overdid the first couple of days leaving me in a lot of pain. After a couple days of rest, massage, chiropractor, and an extra week of taking it easy on the routines, I was better. I felt it happen again the last couple days after starting a new routine so I'm going to take it easy for a few days again. I think my back is being quite reluctant to this change, so I'm going to give myself more time with each routine.

We've made definite progress and I'm confident this will help me in more than just running (cycling, yoga, sitting in front of a computer 40+ hours a week, etc.) I can't wait until he says I can start trying to go for short runs, as in my mind, how it feels sitting here means little compared to how it feels running. But patience is a virtue and all that shit so I'm doing my best to not get antsy. At least we got to go hiking in the snow when we were in Nevada for the holidays, and I even tried snow shoeing for the first time. It's amazing how walking up a hill at 5000 feet elevation is bit more challenging then I remember! But still beautiful.

Heard of deer in the neighborhood!


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