BYE, SNACKS.

It has been a rough couple of days teeth-wise. Invisalign HURTS. It wasn't an unexpected pain, but holy shit. I'm finally getting to a place where I feel like my teeth almost don't hurt. It's also hard to stay ahead of the pain, but I think I have it figured out at this point, as well as what to do every two weeks when I have to change trays.

However, I have also discovered that the most significant pain is actually mental.

I can't really snack anymore.

Yeah.

I knew this was coming on some level, but I didn't realize how much I mindlessly snacked throughout the day until this past Friday - my first workday with my trays in.

Dentist's orders, I'm to wear my trays 24/7, except when I'm eating. That first full day was so rough pain-wise that I had my smoothie sitting on my desk and was like "it will hurt too much, so I'm not going to have it." I made the conscious choice to not have breakfast in favor of just leaving my trays out. When lunchtime came, I had to psych myself up for it. My morning routine is going to have to change a little bit, I think. I'm still figuring it out.

But the whole day, I also had a bag of snapea crisps sitting on the edge of my desk, taunting me. I wanted literally nothing more than to bust that bag open and eat them, but I couldn't.

I had looked at this bag for probably the thousandth time in the hour after lunch and came to an alarming realization: this is my reality for the next 18 months. I have to get rid of my snack drawer at work. I can't keep snacky stuff at home. If I'm going to snack, I have to be mindful and planful about it.

In the long run, this is actually healthier. My dentist also told me to not be surprised if I lose a little weight because my calorie intake will be lower. This will regulate my eating patterns in a way that has been necessary for years, and with these diet shenanigans that I'm going through, it will actually probably dovetail nicely. I get it. Truly, I do. But, getting it and liking it are two VERY different things. I'm in the "I really don't like this at all and what do you mean that I have to brush my teeth every time I eat, that sucks a lot especially because NOW I HAVE TO CARRY A PURSE" phase.

These are good changes. I know they are. I'm acting as if I like it and then it will be so. Hopefully.

If not, it's going to be a long 18 months.

17 months, 27 days until I can snack again.

New Fun Things

"So, gluten and soy are out, you say? How are you feeling?"

"GREAT! I just know that I need to exercise more, but it was hard on the diet."

"Yeah, that's really common. Now's a good time to reincorporate exercise, so you should try it."

I should try it.

Snort.

I'm a really sedentary person. Like, really sedentary. It's like this black hole in my self-care. I try running for a bit because that's what I know, but I eventually give up the ghost because who wants to exercise and almost shit their pants running every day?

Not me.

So I'm trying to do it differently this time. The only thing I have ever really, really stuck to was yoga, so I'm going to try to go back to that that regularly sometime soon. BUT, Rob went by a yard sale about a week and a half ago, and found this pretty sweet bike. It was super low-priced, so he picked it up. It's got some wonkiness in the gears, but it's nothing that I can't manage.

Friends, that was the first time I had been on a bike in 20 years. Literally. I got a concussion when I was 13 from falling off of my bike and hitting my head, and I've been kind of scared off from it ever since. I tried for a couple more years, but to no avail. I was done.

We rode for about a half hour, and I went about a mile and a half, and then I almost barfed because I'm so out of shape and it was so hot and I felt so gross from the anxiety of it all. I have never been so close to barfing without actually doing it. It was probably the pile of nachos that I ate before going, so I'm going to have to nix that in the future.

Look at me. Belly full of nachos and anxiety. Yummy combo.

Anywho, after I rested a bit, I tried to get up and it felt like I had vice grips on my ass. Rob calls it a new definition of butthurt, and he's right. I still hurt today and tried to bike around again, but I only lasted about 10 minutes. Frustrating, but I'm trying to look at the bigger gain from this, which is that I am overcoming a BIG piece of my anxiety about being on a bike. HUGE victory. Even if I only last 10 minutes, I'm going to try to bike every day. It turns out that I still really enjoy it and love feeling the wind in my hair! (Through a helmet, of course! If I could have worn wrist guards and knee pads and basically wrapped myself in bubble wrap without smothering myself, I probably would have.)

Also, in equally exciting news, I got the call and made the appointment today - I get fitted for invisalign on Thursday! I'm SO STOKED! I go in that day and get my first set of trays, as well as a shitload of buttons and other shit that anchor my teeth in a way that facilitates them being straighter. Oh, also, he's basically going to sand between my teeth and grind the enamel down enough where I don't have to have any teeth pulled, so that's a totally ideal situation. I didn't even realize that losing any more teeth was a dealbreaker for me until I was walking into the office last Monday to approve my treatment plan and watch a really cool video showing exactly how my teeth are going to be straightened. It's going to take about 18 months. Get prepped for embarrassing pictures that get progressively more awesome over the next 18 months.

Also, I turn 37 in two days. This has been quite a year, and I think about my goals for the next year on my birthday WAY more than the new year. It just seems more achievable that way. I think this is going to be my year to finally get physically fit, and in ways that fully heal my arm that I broke a couple of years ago, which still hasn't fully happened. I'm talking yoga, strength training, and some good, intense cardio, including some possible road races.

Also, today started Amazon Prime Day, and I used it as a PERFECT opportunity to get this:

YES I BOUGHT A UNICORN OUTFIT FOR MYSELF FOR
MY BIRTHDAY BECAUSE IT WAS ALMOST HALF OFF
DON'T JUDGE ME

Happy birthday to me, indeed!

Things I have learned from the Elimination Diet

1. I cannot eat soy.
2. I can probably eat peanuts sometimes.
3. I CANNOT EAT GLUTEN. DEAR GOD, I CANNOT DO IT.
4. Dairy is still my friend!
5. Red meat is on the nice list.
6. So is corn.
7. White sugar is a sometimes.
8. Eggs are great! Fantastic, even!

I also had a big worry that once I started to reincorporate foods, I would start to gain the weight back. It's like I have this fear that I'm going to magically put back on the 15 pounds that I've lost, or the 4 inches around that I have lost. Of course, neither is the case. I was able to maintain both, which felt nice.

The biggest thing, though, is that my relationship with food has completely changed. I mean, completely. Do I still love ice cream? Of course I do. But it was really funny - the day came to incorporate dairy, and I was super excited about it, but when I had the plate of food in front of me and I started eating, I was like "meh." It was DELICIOUS, don't get me wrong, but I could have taken or left it. I suddenly had neutral feelings about dairy. ABOUT CHEESE. DO YOU KNOW HOW WEIRD THAT IS?

I FELT NEUTRAL ABOUT THIS AMAZING BROCCOLI SALAD.

AND, the other day I was at a crossroads - I was out of non-dairy ice cream. I had the option to go dairy-based, AND I DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. There has been NOTHING more that I have wanted than to stuff my face with some coffee oreo ice cream. Of course, I couldn't at that point, because oreos have gluten in them, but I had other options, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to take them or stick with what I was used to in that moment!

WHAT THE SHIT IS HAPPENING TO ME.

I also can't eat as much in a sitting, which I think is normal given that I have lost weight and that my gut inflammation has gone down, so I'm assuming pretty safely that my stomach has shrunk back down to its normal size.

Except today, of course. The day after the end of my love affair with gluten.

Sigh.

I had high hopes, friends, even though I knew somewhere deep inside myself that it was going to go badly. After the allergy med incident like three weeks ago and the time or two I'm pretty sure I accidentally ate gluten, I was actually not even sure if I wanted to reincorporate at all, but if I was going to follow the rules of this diet, I had to see what was going to happen.

So, go big or go home, right?

We went to this great pizza place for rob's birthday, and it was delicious.

I got this:

That's right. Mac and Cheese Pizza, baby.

I started having a reaction before we even left the restaurant. My stomach got all wonky, I started to get a headache, and I just went from feeling pretty damn good to feeling pretty damn awful in the span of about two hours. I woke up after a pretty bad night of sleep to the same. Just wonky all over. And swollen. HOLY SHIT am I swollen.

There is a silver lining to this, though - actually several! The first is that I have foods from the elimination diet that I grew to LOVE LOVE LOVE that I can still eat. (I'm looking at you, snapea crisps.) That's the super positive side of it - I think that if I were just told to go gluten free without something like the elimination diet and having to go through that learning curve, I would have been royally screwed. And, it's not entirely that I can't eat gluten - I can, but now I know that this is how I'm going to feel if I do. Is the cost worth the momentary whatever good feelings I might get from eating it? I'll have to weigh that on a case-by-case basis, but I have a feeling that 99 times out of 100, that answer is going to be no. That's how I know that my relationship with food has changed to a healthy one, which was 100% what needed to happen. Through all the frustration and the aimless gazing at the grocery store and being hungry when I didn't know what to pick so I picked something healthy, a positive internal feedback loop has been created that I think has real staying power. I needed more mental change than physical change, and they needed to go together in order for me to feel successful, and I do.

The other big positive is that now I know. I'm not just guessing anymore. I'm pretty sure that this dietary stuff has been an issue for a while, and I'm really glad it's finally getting addressed. I'm now almost positive that gluten was my main migraine trigger, and that it was making my allergies ten times worse (case in point? I can also barely breathe today.). Peanuts sometimes were a trigger also, but gluten is the big problem. I also now know that I'm not actually allergic to rice. I also now know that the thyroid symptoms that I was experiencing were being made considerably worse by soy. This makes sense! Phytoestrogens and GMO shit are actual things that do bad things to your body. Does this mean no more salad dressing? Not necessarily, but I got some scoop from a friend about homemade salad dressings that I'm going to try. Also, friends with thyroid issues, soy bad. Soy very very bad. Like, it's bad in general, but for people with thyroid stuff, it's SUPER bad. I have known this for a longer time than being on this diet, I just never realized how bad until I actually cut it out.

Now that I no longer need to eliminate foods other than the ones that I had a reaction to, I'm ready to have fun with what I can eat on a gluten-free, soy-free diet. There's a bunch of stuff that I want to try (like chocolate quinoa cake!), and I can't wait to figure this out. I am ready to keep feeling amazing. This diet definitely had its frustrations, but I never thought I'd feel this way. I'm kind of bursting at the seams with gratitude about it, actually.