I gave up my FitBit and my recent functional appointment

So much has happened not only today but in the last week (-ish)!

Just today alone - I was able to sleep in until 7!  Woot!  I did wake up a few times but made myself fall back to sleep because I so needed it.

I made a "regular" breakfast of maple bacon sausage, broccoli and avocado.  On days I am off I am eating a "normal" meal, which is my protein mix and yogurt, sometimes I do avocado mixed in and coconut butter.  I know I shouldn't need to apply "" but I figured these to be emphasized since what is normal to me is not what is normal to others.

I had my Skype appointment with Dr. Allen.  Immediately he stated how tired I sounded.  True that!  I worked 4 days straight and that normally doesn't fly well for me.  Plus Labor day was super busy.  My lab work is worse than ever!  My liver values are back up again, my thyroid is all over the place, my cholesterol is up and do you want to know why?!  Nope, my diet is pretty damn good despite the few chocolate chips I eat once a week.  STRESS!

I like to think this is how I am on the inside and on the outside I am completely fooling myself.  Stress has been the one component I just can't keep in check.  It's suspected that I am in adrenal fatigue.  I'm guessing stage 3, but could be 2....

BUT, I am committed to meditation and talking with a health coach.  I figure I need to learn what it takes to be able to help others and I can't do that unless I help myself.  Makes sense right?!  So I am going to talk with Stephanie after I get my labs done.  Dr. Allen told me that she has hashi's and had adrenal fatigue (there was something else too that I forgot) and she got them under control.  I know it can take a long time to manage it, but it didn't take me overnight to get here either.  I have also spent money on supplements that didn't make my numbers budge because I didn't have stress managed.

As I write this I have made the commitment to meditate daily.  I have done it twice today, for 15 minutes each.  Easy enough.  I went on Youtube and search for 15 minute meditation and boom done!  I opted for just music.  I want to avoid any guided meditation and once I get into the grove I will drop the music and just sit and be still like I use to do.

I did some baking for work and was then told I was over on hours.... so I need to manage that time a little better.  I went to the gym and half way through I just wasn't feeling it at all.  I was feeling week and tiring quickly, so I chose to stop and headed to the store to pick up a few items.  But, prior to that I sent an email about a class I was going to be teaching and informed her that due to my health that I just cannot teach it.  As soon as I sent it I felt immediately better.  I know I probably shouldn't have taken the class on.  I know it's only one hour, plus drive time, of my life.  It was causing a huge amount of stress, but that I could feel and had the dread I didn't want to do it.

I came home and finished up a few things and made an easy dinner - prepared chicken kabobs that I just needed to cook and extra veggies.  We had to stop at the store after that and then home for more meditation.

I'm feeling better already.  Which brings me to the other point of this post.  I've dropped my Fitbit for a while.  I was being super obsessive about it.  I was listening to Jason Sieb on the AltShift podcast and him and Erica were talking about getting rid of the tracker for awhile once you already know how many steps you get in.  I can say I don't get enough at times on my days off but I more than make up for it when I am working.  For now it is put away.  I'm sure I will put it back on again, but not for awhile.

I think I am going to leave this for now.... maybe next will be about carbs.  I'm finding I want all the chips all the time (avocado oil chips, fyi).

Pancake fail, temperature drop and meditation

I have been able to do a lot more reading!  YES!  That's two-fold.  First reading, just something that I have enjoyed doing in the past.  Second, that I can read without falling asleep almost instantly.  I know I am still a long way from completely being in remission from Hashimoto's and I say say remission since you can never be cured of it.  In the past any time I picked up a book I would get drowsy or I could really comprehend what I was reading and had to go over the sentence, paragraph or page over again.  Completely frustrating as you may know!  So this is huge anyway since I will be starting classes in September (NTC - Nutritional Therapy) and need to have my brain!  I did purchase all my books and hope to read a majority of them before that time.

Currently I am reading Izabella Wentz's book The Root Cause.

It's been eye opening and so factual and happy that I am doing most of the things in the book and thinking of the things that are keeping my symptoms around.  Like a broken tooth (maybe?), the spot on my leg I just had biopsied.  This books really gets you thinking on how your Hashimoto's started, why it could be getting worse and what you need to do to heal yourself so you can manage the autoimmune disease.  I have mentioned for me there are certain things that I need to keep in check and sometimes it's harder than others to manage them.

Now to my pancake fail and that I will be trying again this week.  I think my problem with the gelatin egg was that I was doing too many other things and I let it sit too long (it was a blob!) so I couldn't get it to incorporate well and the pancakes turned into a gooey mess!  The mix was super chunky.  When I post this it will be Thursday and it's breakfast for dinner night and I will try out my recipe again and hopefully have success.

Except they were gooey and almost translucent, okay yeah I had one goop apart too!  UGH!!

I feel like I'm all over the place but this is the top things that are happening right now!  I changed my thyroid meds recently as I mentioned earlier from Armour to a natural thyroid and my body temp has been low, but I feel hot as hell!  I am running between 94.6 and 96.8 on an average.  I know this is a sign of my thyroid not being too happy but I know I need to wait it out and see the adjustments.  I'm cooler in the morning and then higher in the afternoon and then go back down in the evening, typically.  I'm still tracking it and will for a while.

Stress management and meditation!  This is so important to mine and everyone's health and it's the thing I have had a problem with doing the most of!  I mean I struggle with it.  It's nothing that takes a long time - 5, 10 maybe more minutes.  This is not a lot and yet I find I can't even do it.  I feel like I need to be doing all the there things and I don't.  I have the mind set that I need to do all the things during the morning and day and at night when I get home I don't want to do anything or go anywhere.  Probably why I don't like to go to the gym after work and it's just insanely crowded (more on weekly workouts soon).

I think I'm nailing it this week, like a boss.  I'm not setting any time goal.  If it's before bed and I can do 5 minutes I will do that.  I was at the doctor's office waiting and I took the time to meditate while I sat there on the table.  I mean come on!  This can be done anywhere!  I don't have to be at home on some yoga pillow.  If I have a few minutes at work I am going to do that there as well.  I think taking those breaks at work will be extremely helpful.  So much going through my head right now and I know meditation is the way to go.  Not only will it help keep my stress level down but also help me shuffle through my thoughts and make clear decisions on things to do and how to plan.

Week ??, Meditation & Goals for this year

I had to check this morning to see what week I was on.  I pretty much go with what can I introduce this week.  So last week was dairy, which was week 7.  So that means it's week 8 and intro to grains - which by the way I will not be doing, no gluten free oats, no rice none of it.  I find I feel better without them.  I have no desire to add those back into my meals anyway.  I don't miss grains.  When I did try grains months ago I found that my brain fog was heightened throughout the day.  My mornings would start off good and as the day went on the worse I would feel.  n = 1

UGH!  This was So me for months!!

So, how did last week and dairy go?  I have to say that since I didn't over do it, it went well!  I only added yogurt in and the best I liked was the Maple Hill Creamery grass fed yogurt.  If the Wallaby had the plain greek without the fruit then I would go with either.  Maybe it does exist and I need to go back to their website and take a look and maybe that my store just didn't have it in stock.  I also wouldn't mind trying Siggi's triple cream yogurt.  I find the plain yogurts have the right amount of sweetness without having flavor that I couldn't add to both sweet or savory dishes.  Like last night I had yogurt with plantain fries with sautéed mixed vegetables.  That combination was really good.  I should have taken a picture but honestly it was a heap messy pile of food.  I really should make my food look prettier but hey this is real life and it doesn't always need to look like something you got at an upscale restaurant.

Ok, so it's Monday.  I just got done meeting with Dr Allen.  All I can say is why didn't I ask about this before or remember that coffee is considered a bean and I could have been drinking coffee like 2 weeks ago!  Ah! Oh well!  So I will rotate coffee and peanut butter.  Odd I know, but I love both!  I will have coffee 3 times per week and peanut butter 3 times per week just not on the same day.  Seems like a winner winner to me!

That brings me to my next area I really need to work on.  I think it's really going to start with me going to yoga on a more consistent basis.  I think meditation will flow into that a little better.  Yesterday's yoga really kicked my ass.  WOW, I think I would have been able to stay in chair and goddess pose longer if Saturday wasn't leg day and Sunday morning I didn't run.  Maybe I will try a different form then the hot vinyasa I did yesterday at Center for Yoga.  I hadn't been there in a decade or more!  Long time I know.

I think I have mentioned prior that I am not going to count macros anymore.  It's brought up old habits that I don't care to do again.  Years ago I was a super restricter and I was training and teaching 6 classes per week while eating around 1000 calories a day.  Really not good.  Interesting though that after I found paleo my weight stayed the same until I started doing more AltShift and Keto.  I also changed my exercise to more lifting and less endurance.  I've put on 12 pounds since and only went up 1 size.  So I'm ok with it.

Breakfast this morning - or should I say - fat, protein and carbs?! 

So, I guess that brings me to my last point of all this, goals!  Well, right now it's just one goal.  I have been thinking about it for quite some time.  I am in the winter going to do the nutritional therapy practitioner program.  The intensive is in Ann Arbor so makes it far more economical to get to.  I'll get into that one in another post.  It's late and I need to wind down for the night.