A new commitment to me

I hate change. I fight it until I get to the point where it just has to happen. I have been struggling with life these past few months. Stress, poor diet, insomnia has led me to feeling bad. My endometriosis is out of control (had 2 very heavy periods this month almost back to back). I have an eczema flare up I cannot get control over. I have what I think may be a fungal infection on my hand. I actually went to the dermatologist the other day to have it looked at and they ended up taking a skin scrape KOH test on it. Boy those hurt. (note to self take advil before letting them slice the top layer of my skin off with a razor blade with no numbing cream.) The test showed negative for fungus yet they said you can often get false negatives so they basically sent me home without a diagnosis. They just said put some cream on it and if it doesn't get better in a couple of weeks to come back. Uugh.

I swear I feel like every time I go to doctors they have no idea what is wrong and I end up paying money for nothing along with time wasted waiting to get seen. The other day at the dermatologist it was a 3 1/2 hour ordeal before the whole thing was over. I usually end up diagnosing and treating myself for whatever is ailing me.

Hence the new commitment to me. I have decided that I have let worry, fear, stress, poor diet ruin my life. It has turned me into a walking malady of disease and it has to stop. I have made a similar commitment to myself a 1 1/2 year ago when I was suffering so badly with candida. For 2 months during that time I went to family doctor, dermatologist, and internist to get treated for candida that would not go away. I was on numerous antifungals, creams, potions, you name it and nothing worked. I finally researched candida treatment and found that diet and managing stress were the number 1 fighters in the fight of candida. So I put my butt on a candida cleanse eating a mostly raw whole food diet, learning breathing exercises to control my stress, and after 2 weeks of being on the detox my symptoms were clearing up fast! I felt so good then. People who hadn't seen me in awhile would ask if I had lost weight (I hadn't. stayed the same.). They would ask if I got a new hairstyle (no.). They would ask how I looked so good...it was my new diet and my commitment to eating live foods that provided my body with live enzymes which my body glow. literally. I loved how I felt. I loved how my candida symptoms went away. But all that came with a hefty price both wallet wise and emotionally. It was muy expensivo eating this way. I was having to go to the store daily to stock up on kale, lettuce, veggies, etc. Then the preparation time of washing, dicing, and sometimes steaming these things was hard. Add to that me cooking and making my foods while having to make other foods for the rest of the family to eat. They love me and my cooking but lets face it they don't want to eat raw kale salad (which was a part of my diet). So cooking dinner became this laborious affair. I had to make a meal for myself then set that aside and make something for everyone else. Then eating out was hard. We love eating out as a family but when I was on this diet there was a limit to where we could go. Basically I had to make sure wherever we went they had salad as that was what I could eat. This made it hard on everyone. Soon my hubbie and I would fight over the money spent on all my healthy foods I had to have. Soon my hubbie would get frustrated by not being able to just go through any drive through and get something real quick because there was nothing there for me to eat. Soon I started getting comments from my own kids of "another salad? you are eating another salad?" It was hard and after a few months of doing this diet and being symptom free of my candida I ended up slowly going back to my SAD (standard american diet) ways. I slowly started indulging in fries, sodas, and before I knew it I was back to my old ways. Drinking my sonic cokes in happy hour, driving through the drive thrus for burgers and fries all the while wondering why I had no energy and why my endo. symptoms continued to get worse.

I have been doing a lot of research lately. I have learned that endo. can make you feel tired, have cravings, moody, etc. I have also learned that there is a candida connection to endo. That is when my eyes opened a bit. Being that I had candida a year ago and did that cleanse I do remember that my periods were not as heavy and only lasted 4 days compared to the 7 days I have now. Once I detoxed my body I remember not having cravings (or not that bad I should say) and my moods were much more stabilized. I also have been doing research on eczema and that too is linked to diet and stress. Poor diet and stress are huge triggers for eczema. Basically both disease processes are results from a poorly functioning immune and hormone system. The best way to regulate both is through stress management and diet.

Which leads me to where I am now making this commitment once again. I do so with trepidation as I am going into this knowing darn well how hard this is going to be and how hard it will be on our pocket books. However, given the current state of my health do I have any choice? No way. So, I am officially starting today. My road to my own recovery. I fear these initial days of detox as my body purges all the toxins out of it but I look forward to 2 weeks from now when I am detoxed and am glowing and am full of life. I am going to blog everyday my feelings as I go through this. I so wish I had blogged through my candida cleanse. It would have helped me through this now. I am going to blog about what I am eating, how I am handling my stress, and what kind of symptoms are showing up. This way I can track just how well things are going or pin point areas that need more work. I'm off to make my first blog post on my commitment to me.