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.

Sticking Up for Myself

"We need to reschedule your appointment with your new doctor and he's scheduling out until August," said the nurse with possibly the worst job ever that day because she had TONS of patients to reschedule (she told me so).

"WELL, I'm afraid that this is not an acceptable scenario for me. I was supposed to see my original doctor in weeks 6-8 of the elimination diet. I'm currently on week 7. Also, I got that letter that my new doctor is transferring fully to the functional medicine practice as of July 1, WHICH IS WHY I CALLED A WEEK AGO TO ENSURE I STILL HAD MY APPOINTMENT. This is terrible patient care, bordering on unethical. I've been told that I need to go on a really restrictive diet with monitoring by my doctor, but the monitoring isn't happening. Please give me another option before I just give up on you guys entirely and find another functional medicine practice that will take my insurance."

BOOM. I got my appointment moved by only two days with the PA in the office. And I made the appointment in August that they were offering, just in case.

I would like THAT to be a bigger aspect of my personality, please.

I get jerked around a lot. It's part of the nature of my job (people want me to see the best sides of themselves, and I to believe what they're telling me, whether it's grounded in reality or not - who am I to say that someone is lying to me?), but it's also part of my nature as a person. People push me around a lot to get what they want and I just give in, in the interest of preserving the relationship. Ironically, that's not what happens, though - I just become resentful of the people who push me around and I don't say anything, and then I just don't want to be around them, and then I blow shit up when it's too late and I feel like I have no other options. It's my way of having control, I suppose, because then I get to decide when enough is enough, not the other person. In all reality, I have this control all the time - no one gets to dictate my experience or my feelings in any way, but I never feel that way until it's time to break a few eggs, y'know?

What's funny is that I can usually do it when it comes to professional stuff. For instance, I was borderline stalking the administrative assistant of the licensure board because I had to switch supervisors, there was a problem with my paperwork that I didn't catch, so it didn't get approved. I had to be SO FAR up this woman's ass that the last time we spoke, she hung up on me. There were a few things she had to do that she hadn't, and I had been waiting literally a month and a half to get my approval paperwork, AND every time we spoke on the phone (which was daily at one point), she acted like she had no idea who I was. Also, if something unacceptable is happening at work (on the administrative side of things), I have NO PROBLEM speaking up, even to people pretty far above me. I'm pretty outspoken. I'm also pretty outspoken with my clients. I have NO PROBLEM naming it if something is going on.

But not in my personal life.

I'm getting better, but I'm nowhere near there yet. I think when it's personal, it's just harder. At work, I'm able to take the personal entirely out of it for the first time ever in my whole working life. It used to be that if someone treated me badly or something happened that I didn't like or I wasn't listened to, I would take it SUPER personally. I don't do that anymore. In my personal life, though, some of those same patterns that don't usually bother me show through and I go THROUGH THE ROOF.

Inside.

No one, save for my husband probably, knows it.

This is something that I'm working on, but it has taken time and will continue to.

In other news, I started over on the Couch to 5k, and the first day was great. I'm running inside right now because my allergies go haywire around this time of the year (and get 10 times worse when it's muggy), but I'll give it another month and see how it goes, maybe start outside. I signed up for a color run in August, and I'm super excited about it.

Also, soy is a no. I waited the requisite three days, and I'm going to reincorporate corn today. I'm excited about this because now I can eat GF bread without worrying about its ingredients. I'll have to check for dairy ingredients (sometimes GF bread has carageenan in it, which is a dairy-based ingredient), but I think I'm on the right track. I also had dairy-free, soy free, gluten free pizza last night, and it was ok. Yeah, just ok. The cheeze (as they called it on the box! SNORT!) didn't melt, and that was strange to me. If it's gonna be cheese, it's gonna have to melt. Though, I did save a piece because I couldn't eat the whole thing, and it is TASTY the next day.

I incorporate dairy on the 30th. I CAN'T WAIT.

Cutting the Cord(s).

Since I deactivated facebook and twitter and instagram, even though it was in a flurry of frustration in the moment, it's the best decision I've made in a long, long time.

You know why?

No more political bullshit.

No more of Donald Trump's tweets.

No more heartbreak that I have to see this shit every day and know that he's President. Do I still have heartbreak? Yes. Of course I do. But I don't need to see it displayed in the form of literally hundreds of facebook posts or reposts every damn day. Do I see it in the news that I follow? Yes. But that's easier to turn off.

No more horrifying videos or pictures of animal abuse that some of my friends like to post because they're shocking. Newsflash and possibly unpopular opinion: Those videos and pictures just make me mad at you, friends who post them. They don't make me want to act. I know that's what you're hoping will happen, but it doesn't work, at least not for me. Heartbreak no longer makes me take out my wallet - knowing that my dollar will make a difference does, even if it's a small one.

No more stories of parents who are abusive to their children or this 12-year-old that died by suicide the other day because they were bullied.

I never realize how much of a toll that stuff takes on my mental health until I walk away from it, even for a few days. I really, truly can't take it anymore.

There was also a time where I deactivated for about six months, and I was asking my husband a lot about what was going on in facebook land.

This time, I don't really care. To be honest, I kind of already know because it's the same shit over and over and over again.

I'm sure I'm feeling this way now, but it may change and I may want to reactivate in the future, but I think that it might be permanent this time. It feels different. I feel so starkly better that it is almost shocking.

Also, I called this morning and canceled my cable service. We've been paying for cable and don't even have the box set up - we solely watch netflix, hulu, and HBO. We can get ALLLLLL of those things on Apple TV. There was -literally- no reason that we were paying as much as we were, so I finally chatted with a very helpful representative (on XFinity! WHO KNEW THEY EXISTED?!) and got it taken care of. They now leech $50 less per month from us. (Now I just need to remember to return the box, which is happening this morning.)

Being less engaged overall has been helpful for me as of late. I have REALLY needed a break from people-ing. I also think I'm going to be taking a vacation sometime this summer (especially since I'm about to max out my earned time and I lose it if I don't use it) because it's looking like some pretty significant plans that I had are going to fall through - nobody's fault, it's just what's happening - and I need to do something with that time.

PHEW. This is how I know I'm an introvert, friends who don't believe me when I tell you that I am one.

Indulging My Nerdy Side

Guys, I'm SUPER excited. 

You're going to think I'm weird.

My mentor took my first draft of the first section of my article and ripped it to effing shreds. There was six pages of material, and like eleventy billion pieces of feedback.

 

I could kiss him on his married mouth.

This is all by way of saying that my article is cooking. Also, I love love LOVE getting feedback on my writing. I am STOKED. What I have also realized is that I have to indulge this nerdy side of myself if I'm going to find fulfillment in my career. I've been blessed with this deep well of curiosity, and I'm finally in the career that might make a great run at filling it. 

I am also fortunate to be going up to my alma mater every Thursday night this summer, and I go with extra time and high hopes about working on my article during that time.

Last week, I napped.

This week, I sat outside and ate chips and didn't pick up a single piece of paper.

I'm not quite in the right mindset, I don't think. It has been a rough week to say the least, and I'm going to make a run at some revisions and some lit reviewing this weekend, I think. We'll see. Self-care is at the front of my mind at the moment, and sometimes that means putting some stuff away for a bit, which is perfectly acceptable.

Getting Signs at the Right Time

So, I deactivated Facebook and unfriended my coworkers on social media earlier than expected - today, in fact.

Sometimes, it's tough when you transition into a new role to see the impact that it has on others, and to remember that not only do they have to adjust, you have to allow for your own adjustment time, too. It's been harder than I've been allowing myself to admit, and today, I finally was able to say that out loud to someone. My sign from the Universe finally came. I had also been doing this strange thing that allowed me to keep more distance from this transition, which was looking at it as my predecessor's old position instead of my new role. I think it has insulated me from the weight of what's about to happen to me and my relationship with every person I work with, because it's going to be painful (if I'm being truthful, it already is), and as a human, I tend to shy away from that.

Yeah, I'm totally at the "I'm still excited, but also I don't entirely like this" phase. It's not a great place, but better than where I was mentally because it's more real. Also, it does not help that I am in this weirdo gray area for what feels like too long (who am I kidding? Any amount of time is too long for my general tolerance level), just waiting for July. Practicing appropriate closure. Wrapping things up but also ramping things up on the other end. Ugh.

Also, on an unrelated note (or maybe not so unrelated even though I've been thinking about it for a while), I'm going back to therapy after taking about seven months off. It's time, and has been for a really long time.

I will weather this transition, as will those around me - I am entirely confident in this. It just won't be entirely smooth, and that's ok. It will be what it is, and while it's super hard sometimes, I just have to let it be that.