An Unexpected Victory!!!

Let me start out by saying I feel AMAZING!!!  Secondly, this may turn out to be a bit of a lengthy post.  As some of you already know, on January 2^nd, I started The 21-Day Sugar Detox program by Diane Sanfilippo of Balanced Bites.  This is not something I’m doing to lose weight but to detox my body from all the processed sugar and carbs that I’d eaten over the holidays from Halloween to New Year’s Day.  I have a serious sugar addiction, not to mention a love of delicious crusty, bakery bread; so this really needed to be done because I was feeling like crap due to eating so much sugar and glutenous carbs while in celebration overload.  The first few days on the detox were incredibly hard while going through detox symptoms of headaches, extra fatigue (as in more than I usually get with my MS), mega crankiness/bitchiness, and over-the-top cravings.  I literally felt like a junkie trying to score my next hit, but my drug of choice was sugar.  To give you an idea, with this program I had to forego all forms of sugar (both processed and natural), gluten, all grains, and basically all fruit.  Do you have any idea how hard that was to do?  For the most part, I thought it would be impossible for me to succeed.  But nothing’s impossible if you really want it to work, which is what I’ve learned firsthand.

 Stepping on the scale yesterday, I’ve lost 7.8 pounds.  I knew there’d be some weight loss, but it’s not my primary goal here.  I’m trying to relearn how to eat properly; as in whole, natural foods; nothing processed; minimal natural sugar; no gluten or grains; no legumes; plenty of lean proteins and veggies, minimal fruit, along with healthy fats.  Low fat and no fat foods will kill you!  Did you ever sit down and read the ingredients list on one of those things?!?!!  The more I’ve learned about nutrition in the past 9 months, the more I think to myself “What the hell was I thinking???” when I tried dieting in the past and filling my body with all this processed, “fake” crap that passes for food in our society.  Talk about eye-opening!!!  Yes, I did lose weight and even hit Lifetime Membership status with Weight Watchers, of which I gained 18 pounds back over the course of 18 months; but I was filling my body full of toxins.  Our bodies were not created to consume all those chemicals and processed foods.  Think about it.  While doing Weight Watchers I never learned how to properly FUEL my body.  Yes, I could feed it, but it really needs to be fueled.  Think about it this way, some cars we can put regular unleaded gas in; but a higher-functioning engine needs the premium stuff to get the best performance out of it.  Our bodies are the same way.

 So, with doing this detox for the past 15 days, I have seen many significant changes and improvements in my physical and emotional well being.  Not only has losing the weight been great for my overall health and my clothes are fitting better, but my hair is shinier; I’ve greatly minimized the redness in the cheek area on my face; I sleep like a rock; I feel much, much happier; my "normal" mood swings are pretty much gone;  and I know this one will DEFINITELY be TMI for some of you, but oh well – suck it up and deal with it LOL – the hemroids that I’d get off and on before I got pregnant with EJ and that just went WAY OUT OF CONTROL from the moment I was in my second trimester with EJ, which then never went from that point forward to starting the detox process; well guess what…hemroids are GONE!!!!!!  Can I get an AMEN and HALLELUJAH  for that!!!!!  See, told you TMI, but we’re all adults here, I think you can deal with it and maybe that bit of info can even help out someone else reading this if they’re looking for a solution to their pain-in-the-butt problem. :-)

Biggest breakthrough and my unexpected victory came this morning, though.  It was the usual Monday morning where EJ and I go to his weekly tumble class.  Towards the end of each class the instructor sets up this huge air-filled bouncy mat that the kids and even the parents can jump on.  Well, with having MS and the neuropathy and mobility issues I deal with on a daily basis, my body from the hips down basically feels like it has lead weights attached to it.  There’s no jumping up and down going on here.  I haven’t been able to do that and get both my feet at once even a teensy-tinesy  bit airborne for many years now.  I physically could not do it no matter how much I tried; yet I’d still get on the bouncy air mat to play with EJ and help him improve his balancing and jumping skills while I just stood and/or gingerly walked on the mat.  Well, you guessed it…that’s right!!!  Today I was BOUNCING UP AND DOWN!!!!!  Both feet up and airborne together off the mat !!!  You have no idea how HUGE of an accomplishment that was for me or how emotional it was.  If I can do that after 15 days of being on this detox, I can’t imagine what I’ll be able to do after my 21 days are over and switch on over to a more Paleo-ish way of eating, which is quite similar to what I’m doing now with only a few tweaks here and there.  I am SO EXCITED to see what my future holds!!!!!!!

If you’ve made it this far through the post, thank you for your time and interest in my life’s new journey.  I truly appreciated it!!!

Wishing you peace, love, and happiness,

 Kristyn