Day 1: Dear Mornings, Go Crawl Into a Hole and Die

I am endeavoring to keep track of my excursion into tackling my autoimmune disease and generally get healthier. I’ve never been healthy, so I can’t say I’m getting healthy, because it’s a state I’ve never been in, nor will I ever be, I don’t think. I’ve had to start the AIP protocol, or the autoimmune Paleo protocol. It’s like Paleo, but with a lot more restrictions, mainly restricted of food which can cause inflammation flare-ups for people with autoimmune disorders.

So far, it sucks.

I’m all about trying to get healthy. I’m all about treating myself better and living healthier, but today has sucked. The morning sucked the worst.

I put a fair amount of effort into this yesterday, by cooking, yesterday, getting my lunch ready, yesterday, setting my pills out, yesterday–none of this really prepared me for today, well it did, but I don’t know that it helped a whole lot.

I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep because for some weird reason I was hot. Then I had a weird dream about my best friend from high school. Then When I did get up, my stomach was upset and I generally felt like crap. I did not feel like eating the breakfast I had prepared, yesterday. I ate a couple of bites of it, part of the chicken, and none of the vegetables and mushrooms I had set aside, just for breakfast.

I made it to work, feeling like a run-down old dog and I didn’t really feel like eating a snack. I kind of had a long lunch, as I worked at my computer. My lunch was snap peas, mushrooms, a couple of baby carrots, a little bit of cauliflower, a little bit of broccoli, half of a beef patty, and some coconut sauce I made yesterday, for dipping.

Let me tell you about that coconut sauce–the recipe calls for four cups of flaked, dried coconut, some salt, and a tablespoon of coconut oil. You’re supposed to put all of this in your food processor and it’s magically supposed to turn into a creamy substance known as coconut butter, or coconut concentrate. Well, it takes more than a tablespoon of coconut oil to make this happen. The oil should also be melted. Without enough oil, you’re pretty much just spinning dried coconut around your food processor and it never really goes anywhere. There is a chance my coconut could have been too dry.

Later, you mix your coconut concentrate with some other stuff, lemon juice, vinegar, dill, some water–then you blend that, and that’s your sauce. It’s supposed to be sort of like ranch; it’s not ranch, but it’s not that bad. I did find that once I had cooled it in the fridge, it turned from a liquid, into a solid. It still works though. Broccoli can still penetrate it.

In addition to the food drama–I’ve drunk over a hundred ounces of water today, so far. I feel like a water faucet. Just wait a few minutes and I’ll have to pee. I don’t understand how anyone accomplishes anything while having to pee so much.

I was foggy at work. My head kind of hurt. I also had restless leg, while I was sitting at my desk. I suppose this is from a lack of caffeine, or something in my new supplements.

I came home, hoping to take a quick nap–nope. The darn dog has to bark at every f***ing thing that may or may not exist outside of the house. I have absolutely no idea what he’s barking at. It could be a squirrel, or it could be the Pope knocking at the door. I don’t know. I don’t care. I just want him to shut up. Please quit barking, nothing is out there that is genuinely important enough to bark at.

So all in all, I’ve made it, but I feel very low. It doesn’t help matters that I’ve seemed to have hurt my left hip. People might have noticed I’ve walked with a slight limp today.

Maybe tomorrow will be better, but I doubt it, because there is always a detoxification period in eating changes like this.Your body gets pissed off at you for making a change and everything is pretty awful for a while. So, we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

My Folate Levels Bring All the Boys to the Yard

In reality, my folate levels do not, in fact, bring the boys to the yard because they’re so darn low, my folate levels that is. Well, some boys might come to the yard for that because my low folate levels mean that I couldn’t sustain a pregnancy right now and those boys might think, “Yippee, there’s no possibility of child support!” I only have one boy, man, actually, so this isn’t really a conversation about my lack of boys. This is a conversation about my folate levels, well, it’s a conversation about my health in general.

You see, I thought I had two auto-immune diseases, at least, and now I’m not sure how many I have. I have one for sure, but the other two I thought I might have, I may not actually have. I’ve actually spent over ten years thinking I had one of them, but I don’t currently have the blood work to support that. This is a good and a bad thing. It’s a good thing because the one I may not have, PCOS, causes all sorts of problems, especially in regards to fertility. It’s a bad thing because it means the other autoimmune disorder I have, for sure, is so darn bad that it’s mimicking PCOS to a degree. It’s also the reason my folate levels are in the toilet and so are my B12 levels. So all these mornings that I wake up feeling tired and like junk, it’s because my B12 levels are as low as a hot air balloon powered by one guy frantically blowing in the general direction of the balloon.

I’ve had problems for a while. I mean, a while, a while. I go to medical doctors, who may or may not diagnose me with anything, but then they don’t do anything, even if they do diagnose me with something. They’re just like, “Oh, you have so and so, but we’re not going to give you anything for it, nor are we going to give you advice on how to manage it. Give us money and leave.” I decided to see a functional medicine doctor. It’s all diet and minerals and stuff, which is fine. As I told her today, if she had told me to go outside and lick a leaf seven times a day, but it worked, I wouldn’t care how crazy it sounded, I would do it. I’m tired of feeling like crap. It’s been especially bad these past few months, which is unfortunate because I’ve been quite happy these past few months.

What’s my remedy to all of these problems? It turns out that I have a whole lot of digestive issues; don’t ask. This means that I have to try to heal some of this through diet. The diet of choice is the Autoimmune Paleo protocol. It’s Paleo, but a lot more strict. You say almond butter; I say what almonds? I’m going to eat a sweet potato. I can’t even have pepper. Pepper, seriously, or bell peppers for that matter. I also have to take some supplements to help remedy some of these issues, such as chasteberry, probiotics, and fish oil. There’s a few others on the list as well. I also have to drink a camel’s worth of water, but it can’t be fluoridated, or it’s not supposed to be anyway.

None of this is cheap, not at all. The functional medicine doctor is not covered under my insurance. The supplements are not covered under my insurance, and some of them are kind of expensive. I’m going to have to figure out something with the water. I have to eat more times a day. I was eating one meal a day and some snacks and that’s it.

It’s also going to suuuuccckkk for a while. I’ve done elimination diets before, The Whole 30, which I think is just as strict as AIP, but in different ways. If you have ever done an elimination diet before, you will know that you feel like run-over possum guts for at least a week, depending on how dependent you are on caffeine, sugar, coffee, and alcohol. Luckily, the only one of those I regularly consume is sugar, well, and caffeine. We’ll see how bad this is.

I still have to buy my supplements and figure out some sort of meal plan that involves me eating more than once a day. It’s going to be an adventure. I won’t be having French fries, which is fine with me right now because I just ate a whole lot of French fries, but at least they were the kind freshly made from whole potatoes, so they weren’t additive laden potato sticks, although, those are delicious as well.

All in all, I’m going to have to torture myself for a while to feel better, so I can figure out more of what I need and don’t need in my life.

P.S. The picture at the top is kale, which is a source of folate. You know, kale, the super food. I’m probably going to have to drink a kale smoothie.

My Kale smoothie brings all the boys to the yard.

And they’re like,

“Kale is a super food”

“Damn right, kale is a super food”

I can blend it for you,

but I have to charge.