100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 5 and Day 6

Thursday, May 12
100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 5

Breakfast:  Yogurt and strawberries
Lunch: Another one of those chicken thighs, roasted asparagus.
Dinner: Cheese crackers, three sugar-free chocolates, the little kinds
Lots of water

Only the fifth day and I am wavering.  Oh, my commitment is fine, but my old body is just not up to the task today.  I dragged out the calendar and figured out that I have been unwell for nearly seven months.  There were several bouts of infection that required 2-3 weeks of antibiotics, but I mostly am just tired and sick and tired of feeling sick and tired.

I am sticking with the healthy eating.  Dammit.  I really am.  I expect that my body will take as long to adjust to the lack of refined carbs and other junky kinds of foods at it needs to take.  This stuff takes time.  It must be like detoxing or something.  You try really hard to stop doing some thing and you feel worse for a while.  I know that happens when I have a really bad infection.  I have to keep reminding myself about this so that I do not lose heart and give up.  Because, you know, I really do not want to, well, you know.

It is only that I wish that I had more energy.  I did not do any of the errands and other household stuff that I needed to accomplish today.  I kept taking to my bed, reading and resting.  The new fiction is titled You Believers.  It is good.  Gritty, but good.  The first part had my heart pounding, honest, and by the looks of things, I am not going to read about the resolution of that part until the end of the book.  Good thing I am not inclined to skip to the end.

I did get a half-hour nap, but that kept me alert only for a couple of hours.  The only reason that I am even writing now is that I have to find a way to stay awake until it is closer to bedtime.  A six-hour nap during the daytime does not do anyone any good, no matter what you may think otherwise.  So, I am trying to stay awake for another two hours, at least.

I have another upper-respiratory something.  Dark clouds in and escaping from my upper sinuses, wheezing, coughing and general malaise.  However, I am not going to the doctor because all that happens there is more meds that only depress my system.  Exactly what that system is, I have no idea, but it is there and it is depressed.  Maybe it needs some chocolate to pump up the endorphins or something.

Patience...where are you?  I just need to get through these first few weeks.  On a brighter note, I did not succumb to the siren call of the maraschino cherries.  Score one for the exhausted, ooey-gooey bod.  Snort...hack...leak.

More guilty pleasure...

O.K., so I made the hope cloud image a few days ago.  Then, early this evening (Friday, which is when Blogger would finally allow new posting) I was reading my latest library book and one of the characters was gazing up at the sky and another character said something like she was looking at the sky as though she could read hope in the clouds, or something like that.   How freaking cool is that!!

Friday, May 13

100 Days toward a healthier life - Day 6

Breakfast: Nothing.  Shame on me.
Lunch:  Half of a Subway roast beef sandwich, no dressing, lots of vegetables, a little Provolone cheese
Dinner: Stir fry, pork, tons of celery, pea pods, mushrooms, onions, 1 big jalapeno.  Pineapple and a cookie for dessert.  Tea.
Lots of water all day. 

Since this began, I have been drinking at least a gallon of water each day, and will be able to have more when I get the water filter going.  I have a Britta pitcher and finally found filters for it.  They have to soak for a while before you can use them, and I keep forgetting.  Our tap water is icky and I know I can drink more when the pitcher is ready.

So.  Breakfast.  Did not have any today.  I felt so icky yesterday and had no energy.  I took a walk around the block, hoping to get something going in my body, but it did not work and I had a short nap.  It sort of helped, but by the time I went to bed, I was at the point of being overtired and not able to sleep.  So, I read until nearly 4:00 a.m., fell asleep and was up at my usual 6:30-ish waking up time. 

I fed the cats and went back to bed.  When I next woke, it was just after 11:00 a.m. and I had a hour to pull everything together and get to the gallery.  I made it, and stopped at the Subway place for a foot-long roast beef and veggie.  I ate half of it on the way to work and then forgot about the rest.  Oh, well, such a waste, though.

I was just hungry enough to eat well at dinner.  After, a friend stopped by with ice cream and I had a scoop of chocolate and a half-scoop of strawberry.  I made him take the rest home with him, so I am safe for the moment.  I should have been able to say 'no' to it, but I did not.  This is only the sixth day and I had better get more effective control over my appetites and my ability to restrain myself, or this hundred days will seem much longer.  I thought about making myself begin over again, at day 1, at each fall-down, but that means that I would likely being finishing the hundred days sometime next decade.  My health cannot wait that long.

I was sitting in the gallery this afternoon and the day was going so slowly, so I had a lot of time to people watch and think.  Whilst that was happening, the detachments in my left/good eye kept bothering me and I had this notion that it may be too late to save my health, and it was so alarming a thought in that moment I felt afraid that I might really just freaking die.  Then I started to worry about having another heart attack thing and I was spiralling all over the place, shame, anger, fear and a sense of loss that took me beyond tears into such a hopeless state.

I have no one to blame for the sorry state of my health but myself.  I alone am responsible for getting to this point.  Only I can do what needs to be done to get back on that path to health, but I am so afraid that it might be too late.  What if I have done irreparable damage to my body? 

I know that people come back from devastating heart damage or crippling strokes (another concern as per my internist) or horrible accidents.  I find no comfort in any of that, because I may have too many critical health issues at one time. 

You know, I was sitting there and those vision issues were what started the whole spiral thing and I thought, well, maybe I will be lucky and will only lost most or all of my sight.  You know, maybe that would not be so bad, at least it is better than dying. 

But, I do not want any of it to happen.  I want to get healthier, lose weight, take care of my heart, not have strokes or lose any toes or end up with seriously compromised vision or anything.  I want to be strong, dedicated and faithful and fix it all.  I am taking all of my medications and walking and eating well, or as well as my stupid human nature will allow.  I am now, finally, doing what I should have been doing, what I knew all along I should have been doing.  I am doing it.  But, what if it is too late?

I do not have the heart for any guilty pleasure today.