Water, my BFF.

Water is our life source. Without it the average human being would not survive longer than 3 or 4 days. When we are born water makes up 80% of our body weight, 70% of an adults weight. a healthy person can drink up to 48 cups of water a day. Notice I say cups not glasses. Fact is most people use glasses much bigger than 1 cup, therefore people could theoretically drink more water than they think. The recommended daily intake of water is 8 cups, but keep in mind there is water drawn from most food sources as well.

Water is the source of all bodily functions. It acts as a lubricant, base for saliva, forms fluid around joints, regulates body temperature, prevents constipation, regulates metabolism, and prevents many types of digestive cancers simply by helping to eliminate waste and detox the body. Mild dehydration is the most common cause of midday fatigue. Apparently 75% of adult Americans suffer from mild dehydration. Are you kidding me? Come on people this is a first world continent, give me a break.

Many people have issues getting water down the hatch. The lack of taste doesn't do much for our pampered taste buds. Here, I propose a few new ideas to helping you get your water.

1) Cut up fresh fruit and add it to your water bottles. You can do anything you like! I often cut up watermelon, strawberries, slices of lemon and lime, cucumbers (incredibly refreshing), kiwi, pineapple, you name it! Nothing fancy, just slice it so the juices can escape and shove them in your water bottles.

2) Trick yourself. If one large bottle of water sitting in front of you all day is intimidating then do single glasses. I use a pint glass. It holds 3 cups of liquid and I only have to drink 2.5 of then to meet my daily requirement. Mind over matter.

3) If you MUST use flavoured mixes, please try to find natural options. I will sooner than later post about the evils of sweeteners, but for now something like Tetley Infusions is a half decent place to start. You can always water it down. I find one pack nicely flavours (on the lighter side) a full 3 cup pint of water.

Drinking water. Life's first step to optimal health.

A Brief Chat About Period Products.

How a woman goes about handling the inconvenient mess of her period has been a problem all throughout history!

 For the most part women used woven cloth or vegetable fibres, animal pelts, sea sponges, moss, wool, rags (literally) and linen as padding. Simply washed and reused. In the 1920's the pad was mass produced as a disposable product used with a belt. It was in the early 1980's that adhesive tape was used and the pad was stuck to the underwear themselves. A surprising amount of women still use their own reusable pads and can easily purchase them online at places like Lunapads.com.

 As for tampons they have been around for thousands of years. Ancient Egyptian women used softened papyrus, Ancient Africans used rolls of grass, women in the South Pacific used sea sponges. Basically, whatever the hell they could find. Tampons were mass produced in the early 1900's. They have always been sponges or rolls of fibre, usually with a cord. Interesting to note, 97% of tampon using European women prefer digital tampons (without an applicator) to 3-5% of North American women. Tampons pose a risk to women though. The bleach used to make the cotton white is suspected to cause cancer, they pollute the ground water through flushing, and cause Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) when left in too long and bacteria builds up.

150 years ago women in India began using a rubber cup inserted into the vagina to collect the menstrual blood. When the cup was full they would dump it and clean it and reinsert. Zero waste. Well now they are made out of silicone and mass produced as products like The Diva Cup. You simply fold the small cup in half, slide it in like a tampon, make sure it's unfolded and be on your way. It can be left in for up to 12 hours, and when used correctly there is no mess at all. Swimming is finally a non issue, as is sleeping. There is a learning curve with the cup method and for some women its a little gross to get up close and personal with your period. I find it fascinating. I have been using the diva cup for 4 years and I will likely never return to pads and definitely will never again use tampons. I could go on for hours about the benefits of the cup. It costs around $35 and lasts a year or two with proper care.

The average North American woman will use 10-15,000 disposable pads or tampons. That coupled with the potential health hazards was enough for me to make the switch! I highly recommend it, as I will never go back!

Yay for eco periods! Heehee.

Progress Report - It takes a village.

Ok, last Monday was weigh in #2 and I didn't post about it because I was mad that it was so small. I was down 1.3lbs.  I am glad I lost something, that is always good, but I wanted it to be a much bigger number. That being said it reflects that I ate well but did not drink enough water, nor did I get enough exercise. It's not rocket science. Or is it?

So the last week has been busy and off track for me completely. James has a bit of a cold right now and he gets very needy when he doesn't feel well. So there hasn't been much time to write. Let me catch you up!

I ended up having company twice this week and put all of my homeopathics and supplements in a cupboard and incidentally, forgot all about them for a week. I am rather annoyed with myself. I suppose it's a good sign that I am feeling better, but it also sets me back a week and things are starting to fester again. I can feel something happening in my left armpit, and I am not looking forward to that boil coming to a head it seems like Mount Etna. I have to say, boils are shockingly painful. Something interesting to note, there is another member of my family unrelated to me (not Daniel), who is having a much bigger issue with boils than I am but the pattern of occurrence is seemingly similar. It's something I hope to look into.

This afternoon I wanted to talk about protein shakes. I will soon write a post dedicated to them specifically, but for now someone asked me about the one I use. Natural Factors SlimStyles Meal Replacement Drink with PGX. Wow that's a mouthful. Anyway, it's great. It mixes very will with a spoon and glass, but best with a blender (handheld or otherwise). Natural Factors is a reputable Canadian company that has been around over 50 years and is leading excellent development in the natural health field. I feel confident taking their products. I use the meal replacement drink as a mid afternoon pick me up. Right when I start to get a little sleepy, around 2-3pm, just before James wakes up from his nap. It's an awesome breakfast smoothie also! In the morning I add a flax/chia seed blend, flax oil, powdered fibre, and berries or bananas. The other day I added a small amount of coffee grinds to the chocolate mix and it was kind of like a cold mocha, I was thrilled. I would suggest using a milk of some kind in a protein shake, but with this one I do use water. I am going to switch to almond milk I think.

Progress Report coming this evening!

xo

My Apologies

The boy has been a little sick this week. No downtime. I will post tomorrow, great one coming! :)

xo

Progress Report - Wedding Rings.

As of Monday I am down 2.4 pounds! I weighed in first thing in the morning after all the wake up rituals. I have heard time and time again that it's best to weigh yourself at the same time at regular intervals. Once a week in my case. I choose first thing in the morning because 1) it's easy to remember and 2) it motivates me through that day. If I gain then I am motivated to eat well, if I lose then I am motivated to continue doing well. So far so good anyway.

So my wedding rings. I had to take them off around 7.5 months when I was pregnant with James. I was sure that it was ok because I would have them back on in no time after delivery...well it's been 19 month since I took them off and I miss them so much. They are on the top tier of a jewellery stand these days. They're so precious to me. I am about 15 pounds away from where I was when I had to take them off, but I'm worried I'll lose 15 pounds and they still wont fit. Oh well, that's a lots of water and green tea solution lol. But really I miss my rings. I just went on a hunt for pictures of them to add to this post but I realise that I don't have any. Not even on my wedding day, wtf?!

SO after a successful 1st week, my first mini goal is...to get my wedding and engagement rings to fit comfortably again.

I'll post tomorrow night about the 1st week on the holistic meds! Interesting outcomes so far!

Have a good night friends!

Talkin' Turkey

Honestly, turkey is the greatest ground beef substitute I can think of. I can do anything with turkey that I can go with ground beef. I find turkey dries out so do use something to moisten it. For example, in turkey burgers, meat balls, or turkey meat loaf use onions, a binder like breadcrumbs and Worchestershire sauce. Lea & Perrins specifically is cholesterol free, fat free, preservative free, gluten free and has 80% less sodium than soy sauce. I personally don't always use egg and I don't find much of a difference either way. Cheese always works well too. I prefer to use a creamy or  jalapeno Havarti with turkey. I don't know what the cheese/turkey rules in cooking are, but Havarti is a staple for me. 

When we have taco's we use an Old El Paso "Smart Fiesta" taco kit, and use a simple ground turkey. The only difference is I do not drain the fat and add water, instead I add the seasoning directly to the turkey once it's 3/4 cooked through. I also let it simmer a long while. It's so very good. Lately I have been adding guacamole to the tacos also! Yay for extra healthy fats! It's awesome also as a meat sauce for pastas. I adopted whole grain pastas a few yeas ago and love it. It's a little heavier and little more filling but a little tricky to cook. Al dente is the best texture for whole grain pasta, but I would recommend cooking it a few minutes longer than the box asks for. 

I actually started to get hooked on turkey when I worked at Whole Foods Market. There was always dishes made with turkey available in the hot food section. Anytime I am close by a WFM I stop in and try to grab a turkey and brie pannini! SO very very yummy! 


One of my longest term goals is to fully adopted a vegetarian lifestyle. I am far from that goal, but baby steps are happening, very baby, ok infant steps. Fully replacing red meat with lean poultry and fish is step one. 


Healthier options, smaller portions, proper fats, water, exercise....God it sounds so easy doesn't it. 

What PPD Meant For Me (a long one).

There is a lot of misconception around the term Post Partum Depression (PPD). I will speak frankly here because well, it's a serious subject. It is often seen as a debilitating mental illness which causes the sufferer to run away, or drown their children, or burn down the house, or commit suicide. In the vast majority of cases PPD is much simpler and harder to spot than that. I will not speak to the experience of any other woman, but I can attest to my own experience. For me, PPD was an all consuming sense of apathy with bouts of self doubt, and extreme frustration. All while still loving and taking care of my son. I am lucky to have a good man who stood by me through it all, knowing it was doing slight damage to us as a team, but that we could fix it when the time was right. Although, it certainly didn't come out like that at 3am on a sleep deprived night.

Here's how it went. I will leave out a lot of details and I will not ask your forgiveness. This is a very personal topic and involves a LOT of private details and conversations that I will not be so bold as to share. That being said....

After James was born and the hype started to settle, I found myself more than a little lost at what to do with this constantly sleeping bundle of baby. So I left him in his bassinet while I attempted to learn how to function upright after major abdominal surgery. I played with him when he was awake but that mostly consisted of begging him to latch for breast feeding and crying that he wouldn't. I felt like Daniel cared more about the baby then he did me, which is a strange way to feel. We were both sleep deprived, I was in the hospital and there is NO sleeping in the maternity ward. Daniel was working double the hours so that he could be home at least one or two days after we came home from the unexpected 4 day hospital stay.

Day 3 hit like a lead balloon. When the visitors had left and it was just Daniel and James and I, I completely and unexpectedly fell apart. I sobbed for hours. I felt completely defeated and had no idea why. I felt a sadness so deep in my heart it scared me. I loved my baby and he was healthy and gorgeous and peaceful. I tried so hard to fake it, but the tears would just pour through my big fake smile at the nurses and the midwives. They were kind and concerned and did a lot of listening. As did my roommate, Amanda. She was flat on her back in her bed and I was attempting to cry silently in mine, and she talked me through the whole night through a white curtain separating our beds. I am forever grateful for that.

Once we got home I felt better. Family came around, the grandma's helped. But I had a hard time with the c-section and feeling useless. I had a massive amount of weight still sitting on my incision and it complicated the whole deal. Then the TRUE sleep deprivation hit (James ate every 2.5 hours, no mater how long he had been asleep, it was hell),  it all hit the fan. I can remember screaming at Daniel for not helping, bawling my eyes out in the bathroom wondering what I had done and why did I think I could have a baby, and that our marriage would never survive, and so on and so on. Basically, I painted every horrible picture I could think of. I suddenly understood how moms could pack up and leave in the night. I was terrified of what was happening to me. But I knew exactly what was going on.

5 weeks after James was born my mom and step dad took him overnight and I slept for 14 straight hours. I thought that would fix me, but it didn't. The sadness lingered. I gave up on breast feeding, I didn't bother to baby wear James because he was a big baby and it wasn't worth the effort, we didn't go out much if I didn't have to....and it snowballed until I was almost a hermit and had not bothered to do a fraction of the things I had said I would. I left the house for James' sake only. Underneath it all I was crying almost all the time. Daniel couldn't even look at me without me losing it.

Ultimately I felt like a massive failure. This was also when the health issues started coming up for me. Once I found out my dad was dying and then my grandma passed away suddenly it all came crashing down around me. It was hard and messy and I was mean to people who love me. I got some help and managed to get through without medication. I am not sure I would face it unmedicated if it happens again though. Its a potentially dark and scary time.

All through this time, I was loving and affectionate with my son, but I was easily frustrated and lost my patience quite quickly. I am not proud of that but it's my reality. He forgives me, and I work everyday to earn and maintain forgiveness from the emotional gap between James and I for his first 10 months.

Since July I have felt much better, much more like myself. It gets a little better every day and I can finally recognise myself again. I live in the moment and enjoy and cherish my time with James. I learnt a great deal through this chapter of life, and I am happy I did so.

I was the last person you would expect to suffer from PPD, but that is my whole point.

Get help if you need it ladies, its worth it.

How Did I Get Here?

This post is extremely personal to me. My weight (as many of you know) has been an uphill battle most of my life. My first memory of realising I was chubby was in ballet class. I remember looking in the mirror at all the other pretty, long legged little girls and being very aware that I did not look like them and that it did not work in my favour. I wasn't always overly self conscious about it though, I had good friends and my Dad was very encouraging and kind about it. My mom was another story but she tried to do what she thought was right for me, and I have to appreciate that, especially being a mom myself. I have always had a huge loud personality and it was easiest to be the precocious one, and the funny one, and the crazy one than the skinny one. As I got older the weight followed me. Eventually I quit ballet to hang out and get wasted with my friends, and most of my physical activity stopped besides walking from one party to another all across Erin Mills and Clarkson. When my parents split up I was 17 and I ate my way through their divorce. When I left for university at 19 years old, I was 175 pounds.

This was my 26th birthday,
not far from my goal weight of 145 pounds.

When I first met my husband in 2005 he was clear that my weight at the time ( a well carried 220 pounds) was not at all an issue for him, and I loved him for that. About 5 months into our relationship, I joined weight watchers at 209 pounds and lost 54 pounds in 9 months. I was 155 pounds and 10 pounds away from my goal and then I moved in with Daniel and it all slowly fell apart. A true testament to how badly I self sabotage. I went to the gym less, I ate more, I drank more wine. Eventually the portion sizes also got bigger and bigger.

Then we started to plan our wedding. I am a stress eater pure and simple...2 years later, my wedding dress didn't fit and I was sitting at 188 pounds on my wedding day. I was devastated. I started to lose weight again after our honeymoon and before I could make much progress I was pregnant (which was planned and wonderful!). I took the mentality that I might as well eat whatever I want because I'll just throw it all up soon anyway. But that didn't happen. I had an easy pregnancy with zero issues and no sickness at all. So instead of being mindful and working out and eating well because I felt awesome, I gorged myself for 9 months on food and sat on my ever growing ass, in spite of it. In the end my blood pressure skyrocketed after I gained over 70 pounds and tipped the scales at 268 pounds at 38 weeks pregnant. I never did weigh myself the day James was born. It was insanity. I ended up with a c-section for my 11.1 pound baby.  Go figure.

7 weeks after J was born.

As of Monday, oh God, I cannot believe I am about to do this...I am sitting at 238 pounds. I am sitting here staring at these numbers thinking how the hell did I let this happen, again? Oh the games our minds play with us when it comes to addictions.

So there you have it, the mini story about my life as a big girl. Time to change the script.

So here is the deal, I will lose as much as I can in the next 7 months. Safely! I will report weekly on my progress!

I want to say thank you for all of the support already guys, It amazes me how you rally around with such love and faith in me! It's truly appreciated. There's no motivation like everyone you know telling you they believe in you!
xo

The Starting Point.

After almost a year with random and constant health issues I started to panic, and went to see my MD. She would take a look at things and feel around and say "oh it's just this and oh it's just that", and write me a script for an antibiotic. Well I quickly realised these antibiotics were not working and likely creating an internal environment that is allowing these bacterias to grow in the first place. In retrospect it irritates me that I didn't do what I was educated to do, and that is try holistic medicines earlier.

So after seeing my family MD on three occasions  where she told me everything was fine, even after doing blood work; I went to see J's Naturopath. My appointment with her this week was 3 hours long. She made me tea and let my 17 month old play in her medical journals and textbooks. We discussed my goals (get to a healthy weight for pregnancy, resolve bacterial imbalances, reduce anxiety and grief, eventually adopt a fully vegetarian lifestyle), she took urine and saliva samples, I had an iodine skin absorption test and a zinc test. Turns out, my thyroid is slightly low, as is iodine and zinc, no toxicity in my gut, no traces of fun things in my urine, most importantly no diabetes...in fact, despite my size my visceral fat is surprisingly low, and it turns out I am much healthier than I thought in most ways! Which was a huge relief. My MD did all the same tests via blood tests a little bit ago, but never called me with the results because they were normal. It was nice to get a full explanation of something that I now understand reconfirming my MD's results. Again, Co-care!

After this session she loaded me up with a bunch of remedies and recommendations. I will break them down quickly, and you can look them up if you're interested in learning more about them all. I will eventually devote a post to charts about homeopathic and natural remedies.

Weight Loss Basics:  follow anti-inflammatory diet, low - moderate glycemic carbs + healthy fats + healthy serving sizes, 1/2 your body weight of water in oz (in my case this is 119 oz which is 15 glasses of water..yes you read that right!). Flax seeds and oil everyday. One thing I found very interesting is seed  rotation. You eat certain seeds (pumpkin, sunflower) at different times of the month to help balance your hormones! Also, a whey protein shake to help balance my blood sugars and increase satiety. I can add sprouted flax and chia seed powder in the protien shake as well as a powdered fibre blend, flax oils and pretty much anything I can think of to make a super shake for breakfast.

Resolving Skin Issues : Homeopathics - Calc-Sulph 6x - 2x day, Silicea 6x - 2x day,  ascending doses of  Sulphur, Berberis Formula (to kill off any unhealthy microbes in the skin), Castor Oil on the abdomen nightly to help detox, eat alkaline foods and jump on a rebounder (10 mins = running 1 mile) which will unclogged the lymphatic system.

Also I am doing 3 months of HMF Intensive probiotic therapy, and an iodine absorption plan (which is swabbing a 3 inch diameter iodine stain on your upper thigh or abdomen daily until it takes 24 hours or more to absorb.

So that my friends is our first steps!