Leaving for Vacation

Life has been crazy busy over the past week.  Toss in a sinus infection and a cough and I don't know what to do with myself.  Here are a few highlights:

My birthday was yesterday!  My sister gave me a nephew for my birthday!  He is super cute, but there aren't even pictures up on facebook so I am not going to post any here yet.  We got to see him today and the kids both said that was their favorite part of today. 

I got some new hiking boots and workout clothes for my birthday.  All of my workout clothes don't fit anymore, and I really want to get back into exercise, I just have to do it in a way I don't get hurt again. 

My boots are RED!  My favorite color.  Couldn't be more perfect. 

Another fun thing that I just have to mention is Pokémon Go.  I loved that game when I was in middle school and I love the idea of going places to catch Pokémon.  It's getting people outside and moving around again.  In the original game you have to walk your character around to hatch Pokémon eggs and you have to physically walk around with the app open to hatch eggs in the game too. (although I've discovered riding your bike works too)  It's like a built in workout!  Matt and I joke that it's the game that is going to solve the obesity epidemic.  They just need to stop the game crashes.  So that has been totally fun and full of nostalgia.

We are leaving tomorrow to head to the Ranch for a whole week!  So I won't be blogging until maybe the 30th.  It is a much needed vacation for everyone.  Get away, get outside, and have the whole family together.  A whole week of having Matt around all day long!  I'm pretty excited to get outside and get moving and break in my new boots. 

stages

I've come up with a plan.  I've been trying how to better transition into eating Paleo as I've been struggling.  I've tried the "eat breakfast paleo" and then move onto the next meal, but that doesn't always work for me.  So what I have come up with is to phase things out, or to go paleo in stages.  Stage one is to phase out dairy.  I feel like I've pretty successfully done that and I'm pretty motivated to stay out of dairy products.  The next stage I've decided is to phase out corn.  I figured that would be the easiest thing to remove from my diet.  The two biggest things that will be difficult to give up are corn chips and popcorn.  But those are two good things to kick from my diet as eating popcorn almost always gives me a stomach ache afterwards and I can eat a whole bag of corn chips.  So I'm going to focus on that for the next month and then see if I'm ready to phase out another food group.  Wheat might be next, or cane sugar.  Both categories are going to be very difficult to phase out, and i'm not sure which one I will pick next.  Dairy was a tough blow.  No more pizza, buttered toast, cheese, string cheese, milk, creamed soups, Italian food, buttercream frosting, etc.  That was a huge category to remove permanently.  Some things I can replace like replacing milk with almond milk which I actually like.  I don't like coconut milk ice cream, and the almond milk ice cream is ok, I think thought there are better desserts to eat if I'm feeling the need to eat dessert, and they are expensive to boot. 

So now it is onto Stage two in operation eat healthier, feel better. 

Some Good News

We had a pretty busy weekend.  We went to the Amusement Park with some friends on Saturday, and the kids had a blast.  It was the first day I had hit 10,000 steps in a long time due to resting my knee.  My knee is feeling a bit better, but it still is popping a lot and it will still hurt if I bend it as far as it will go.  I really think I just pulled a ligament or something somehow.  Sunday was church and I started doing my genealogy research, which turns out I stink at.  My dad's side is pretty much completed.  My dad comes from a long line of Mormons.  My mom however is a convert and none of her family has been researched.  However it turns out we have some relatives somewhere down the line that are also LDS as some of the names have been researched and their temple work done.  I was working on trying to find some names for several hours and couldn't really find anything.  There was one guy named Thomas Graham who I was trying to find, and I found a lot of things that might be him, but nothing that could definitively link him to his daughter Harriet Graham.  One census document is very close, everything seems right, except the age of Harriet is off by two years.  So maybe the person who typed it into the computer couldn't read the historical records quite right?  Maybe, maybe not, as there is a sibling two years younger than the Harriet listed.  Also all the birthplaces are listed as Pennsylvania, and while all the kids were born in Pennsylvania, the father is supposed to be from Ireland and the mother from England.  So I don't know, I think I'm in over my head.  I should go get some help. 

Anyway, I have some good news!  I haven't gained any weight!  I haven't been exercising, (in fact I've been moving less than normal due to my knee) and I haven't been counting calories.  I've just been trying to eat my meals Paleo, and I haven't been perfect either.  I've still eaten chips and cookies and various other non paleo items. 

By having my meals be Paleo, it really curbs my appetite for other foods, and the amount that I have been eating has been ever so slowly decreasing. 

Today we went up to the Aquarium, and the kids got to take pictures with the mermaids again.  I love the mermaid show, it's really neat.  They have a script that the actresses mouth the words to so it actually looks like they are speaking.  Super fun.  And Matt even got to go with us today!  It was a great family day out.   

Not much has changed

This past week has been tough.  My knee is still hurting, although the swelling has gone down a lot.  I suppose that is a good thing, but just going down the stairs this morning it was hurting.  I thought it was better a few days ago, but then it decided to swell up at night and start hurting again the next day.  But I do think it is slowly getting better.  I can't exercise though.  I suppose if I really wanted to I could do Pilates or something along those lines.  I can't even lift weights because many of the maneuvers require lunge positions and I can't support myself on that knee right now. 

The fourth of July was great.  Lots of fun and family and the kids had a blast, they were completely exhausted the next day. 

My eating hasn't been perfect.  I'm really trying to eat Paleo but the afternoons have proven to be exceedingly difficult the past several days.  My meals are Paleo, but some snacks have been creeping in.  Matt also requested chocolate chip cookies on Sunday so we have those in the house.  From now on though, I'm going to make Paleo desserts.  There are lots of them that look really good, and hopefully they won't make my tummy hurt so much because there won't be any dairy in them!  I think in general I'm doing well as my digestive system feels much better than it has in a long time.  I don't get stomach aches anymore.  And my weight has stayed the same even though I haven't' been working out.  However my energy levels have been really low, but that might be due to lack of sleep.  I've had a few restless nights.  Because my energy has been so low, I've really been struggling with my mood.  I've been cranky and kind of depressed the past several days.  Which might be why I've been struggling more with eating. 

School is starting up soon for my oldest and so I've set an alarm on my phone for 6:30am.  I'm going to make it a goal to get into a routine of waking up every morning at 6:30am and getting myself going so that when school does start it isn't quite as big of an adjustment.  I like getting up at 7:30, but she has to be at school by 8am so we will have to start getting up earlier.  Other than that I don't have much to say.  I hope my knee heals and I can start doing some sort of exercise again, maybe I will start riding my bike, which is much easier on the knees.

Figuring it out

My knee is still swollen.  I haven't been able to walk too much and the pain is the worst when I try to go to sleep.  I went to see the doctor on Saturday, but only got in to see the nurse practitioner and she could only tell me that it wasn't injured.  Nothing was torn.  She told me to ice it, get a knee brace, take Ibuprofen and take some Epsom salt baths and come back to see the specialist in two weeks if the swelling isn't gone.  Basically "I don't know what it is, lets see if it goes away on its own".  Just peachy.  If the pain continues to get worse, I will make an appointment with the specialist earlier than two weeks.  I'm hoping it's just a small sprain that will resolve with rest and time.  Of course, I've scoured the internet looking for what causes a swollen knee and the most common things are: injury, which the doc told me it was not; bacterial infection, my knee is not red or hot so that is unlikely; arthritis (at age 28?  and in only one knee and no where else in my body?  not likely) Bursitis-again a type of infection; and then a tumor.  Great, so now I'm convinced I have a tumor in my knee because nothing else seems to fit the bill, and horrid thoughts of chemo, and rotationplasty run through my mind.

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Rotation plasty is seen in patients who have knee cancer where the leg is cut off and the ankle joint is rotated and becomes the knee joint

  I suppose the good thing is, that most knee tumors are benign and can be easily dealt with through surgery.  So, I've got my fingers crossed for a mild sprain or my knee got irritated somehow and hopefully it will fix itself in a few weeks.

Anyway, the last several days have been pretty good.  I've been eating well and I've been feeling better digestively.  There was a lot of dairy that had been slipping into my diet because I just wasn't paying attention and it was causing a lot of digestive upset.  Pesto for instance, and pretty much all protein bars are made with Whey.  I've been really tired the past few days, possibly from such a dramatic change in my diet, but I know it is for the best.  I haven't been 100% and I'm not looking to be perfect.  I'm trying to control the things I can control and not worry about what I can't.  It's going to take a while before I can claim I am a true Paleo eater, but I am on the path.  There is going to be a learning curve, trial and error, and plenty of scouring the internet. 

I am in charge of the vegetables and dip for the festivities tomorrow, and I made two paleo dips.  One was a bacon, spinach artichoke dip and the other was a dill dip with paleo mayo and sourcream made from coconut cream.  I was thinking to myself "drat, the dip I wanted to make calls for sour cream, I wonder if I can make that with coconut cream" and I was right!  There is probably a paleo substitute for every ingredient out there, and if it is dairy, the substitute is probably coconut related.  It seems to be the go to for almost everything (coconut yogurt, coconut ice cream, coconut milk, coconut butter, etc) who thought one food could be so versatile! 

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Above is the photo for the artichoke dip.  I will let you know how it tastes after we eat it.  Click HERE to find the recipe
Also, HERE is the website for the paleo sour cream.  It was super simple, you just take coconut cream, and add lemon juice and sea salt and viola!  I just mixed in my may and my seasonings and I was done.  Hopefully it all tastes as good as it sounds/looks.  I guess we will find out tomorrow. 

Check in

This is just a quick check in to let you know that I am still here.  We will be leaving up into the mountains again tomorrow so I won't have internet access until next Tuesday.  First of all as I'm sure you are wondering, I'm not pregnant again.  Turns out I had a mild stomach bug which became evident when Lily was complaining of her stomach hurting last Saturday and then Chloe complaining on Monday and Tuesday.  I am super glad that it was mild and it really didn't impede on our plans.  However, before my miscarriage I was one of those people who could pretty much pick a month I wanted to get pregnant in and then I would be pregnant that month.  Not being pregnant two months in a row has me a little concerned.  What if something happened to my body during that mess after my miscarriage?  What if something happened during the D&C that we don't know about.  What if I can't ever have any more kids?  I did have a friend who said it took her 9 months of trying after her first miscarriage to get pregnant again, and now she has 8 kids, so maybe my body is just still recovering.  After all it was pretty traumatic. 

I pulled weeds yesterday and had an allergic reaction, that was unexpected. 

I guess it's long sleeves for me from now on.  I was pretty miserable the rest of the day as I had already taken my allergy medicine and the only thing I had left was Benadryl, which I took around 7pm and I promptly fell asleep at 9pm (staying awake for 2 hours after taking Benadryl is pretty good).  I was itching like crazy from the weeds.  The rash is almost gone today, which is good. 

I signed up the kids for swim lessons, Lily is getting too big for her puddle jumper and I would like them to be able to go down the water slides in the kid area of the water park without worrying about them (right now they just don't go down the water slides).  The kids absolutely love their swim lessons

And this is probably the best pose ever.  She cracks me up!

Changing up the exercise plan

So the weekend was pretty rough, It took me three days to recover from my bought with dairy.  Lesson learned: don't eat it even if you accidentally order it, it's better to waste it than suffer for three days.  I ate way too much food on Monday.  We went to BJs and then I ate too many cookies and we had popcorn in the evening.  Although I wouldn't call it a binge, just overeating.  A binge is more of an emotional out of control eating and when I would binge in the past I wouldn't pay any attention to how my stomach felt, I just kept trying to shove more in.  On Monday, I quit eating when my stomach was full.  Probably a little fuller than was comfortable, but not so full that I made myself sick.  I didn't track my food on Monday which wasn't the best choice, but I'm okay with it.  The goal is progress not perfection. 

On Monday I weighed in at 177.6, which is .8 pounds down from last week, but .4 pounds up from my lowest weight last week.  According to my trackers I had a deficit of 6,370 calories which means I should have lost a little over a pound and a half.  A huge part of the discrepancy was my dairy fiasco.  It basically caused me to retain fluid and gas and stopped my digestive system.  So when I weighed in on Monday, I was really backed up.  I think that as long as I do a good job the rest of the week, all things will even out in the long term, and besides, I'm still going down.  It's hard when I'm are just starting out and I don't really have a lot of data to fall back on.  But I started at over 180 and I am not going to let the daily fluctuations bother me this time around.  It's a lot of worrying and stress that results in making life more miserable. 

So yesterday I noticed that the top of my left shin had started hurting when I was walking and especially when going up stairs.  At first I thought I had bruised it by smacking it against something but as the day wore on and the pain got worse I recognized it for what it truly was: shin splints.  Double crapola.  I have always been prone to getting shin splints whenever I start an exercise routine, and I guess I am really starting over from scratch because they have come back.  I thought I had vanquished that foe for good, but I suppose 6 months of doing nothing and gaining 30 pounds will bring them back.  Three years ago I suffered through the shin splints and kept working out even though it was really painful, until I injured myself so badly that I had to take several weeks off and they healed and went away.  That's probably not the best course of action.  I feel like the powers that be are against me right now.  Every few days some new problem arises.  But maybe that is just life.  So my foot is still healing from when I tweaked it, although it doesn't bother me too much, it might be good to rest it for a bit, and now I have shin splints that need resting and healing.  So I'm going to bite the bullet and start strength training.  Not my favorite activity, but it will probably be good to get some more muscle in my body to help me with my cardio workouts anyway.  It will hopefully help prevent me from injuring myself further.  I just did the first workout from my Chalean Extreme DVD, and I am going to be sore tomorrow!  Last time I did this, I was so sore the first two weeks I could hardly walk or move.  Not looking forward to that again.  So since lifting weights doesn't really give you the satisfaction of seeing the numbers on the scale go down I decided I better keep track of my other numbers as well, which will be more revealing in the coming months.  My body fat percentage is 37.9%  and I have 57.4 pounds of muscle.  Therefore if my weight stays the same, but my muscle goes up, I will know that I have actually lost fat and gained muscle.  Which will help with the psychological aspect of everything. 

I want to get back into mountain biking and having stronger legs is really going to help with that.  So, here we go again.

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