Go Big or Get Bigger…
January 7, 2009
Yesterday I mentioned on Twitter that I hadn’t had coffee, soda or red meat since 2008… yeah, it’s a little more impressive to use the year than to say “in 7 days” but I was feeling all impressed with myself. A little sass never hurt anyone.
But that brought up a lot of questions like “is that a New Year’s Resolution?” and “why those things?” and “how can you live without coffee??” (and bacon.)
It was part of my New Year’s Resolutions in a tangential sort of way. It’s that number 2 one: “Lose weight, get healthy, get fit.” A key element of all 3 of those is diet. What goes in your mouth is crucial to all of them. I didn’t set out thinking “no coffee, no soda, no red meat” – I set out thinking “okay, now how the heck do I get my pH balance back in control?”
I know, I know – ‘huh? Your pH balance GeekMommy? What the heck are you talking about??’
I don’t bring it up a lot but I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in November of 2007. That was official confirmation of something that had been getting progressively worse for me over the course of about 12 years. At that time, the pain was so bad, I’d lie in bed trying to sleep cataloging the parts of me that didn’t hurt, because there were fewer of them most days. So my doctor started putting me on things to treat the Fibro and I’ve been mostly pain-free for about 4 months – since she added Lyrica to everything else.
Here’s the catch though – one of the side-effects for the drugs I’m on? Insomnia. As if I didn’t already have enough problems with that. One of the worst things for Fibro? Lack of sleep. See where the cycle starts getting vicious pretty quickly? So I start having to take Ambien just to sleep. Now we’ve added in yet another pill. Another side effect of sleep issues and the drugs? Weight gain. Seriously now… I’m trying to lose weight not add more. Did I mention that weight-gain is bad for my back, my arthritis, and you guessed it, my Fibro?
Okay, to top it all off – I start having serious problems with finding words. Not difficult words – every day normal words. Like ‘honey can you hand me that… um, round thingy with the drink in it, you know…’ I’d say ‘Coffee cup?’ my poor husband would reply. Short-term memory? I haz none. Alright then… I write it off to “fibro fog” that everyone talks about. Then Lyrica puts an additional 15 lbs on top of my already totally unhappy weight and shows no signs of stopping.
I go to look up the side-effects… I’m about to list the “more common” side-effects here (hold on to your hat)
Accidental injury; bloating or swelling of face, arms, hands, lower legs, or feet; blurry vision; burning, tingling, numbness or pain in the hands, arms, feet, or legs; change in walking and balance; clumsiness; confusion; delusions; dementia; difficulty having a bowel movement (stool); difficulty in speaking; double vision; dry mouth; fever; headache; hoarseness; increased appetite; lack of coordination; loss of memory; lower back or side pain; mood or mental changes; painful or difficult urination; problems with memory; rapid weight gain; seeing double; shakiness and unsteady walk; sensation of pins and needles; sleepiness or unusual drowsiness; stabbing pain; swelling; tingling of hands or feet; trembling, or other problems with muscle control or coordination; trembling or shaking of hands or feet; shakiness in legs, arms, hands, feet; unusual weight gain or loss.
Hold up there… did that just say clumsiness; confusion; delusions; dementia?? You don’t even want to see the list for “less common” – but yeah I have some of those too (okay, if you do want to see it, click here.)
So I started researching. Something I should’ve done before I started putting things in my body, but hey, when you’ve got chronic pain and your doctor says this will fix it and is safe? Sometimes you’re less cautious than you should be.
Well let’s just go with ‘better late than never.’ Sometimes that’s as good as it gets.
I’m not going to drag you through all of my research – it took me a couple of weeks and this is already getting longer than I planned. I’m just going to skip forward to the good part. The part where the people in the tin-foil hats start making sense.
Somewhere in the midst of all of my research the whole idea that I really ought to check my body’s pH-balance comes in to play. It seems that a lot of people with chronic pain ailments are ‘very acidic’ due to the ‘Standart American Diet’ (SAD) and that the body really should be closer to neutral or even slightly alkaline in nature to be healthy. Trust me on this – the science is solid, but it’s hard to find it behind the deluge of people trying to make money with “pH-balancing solutions” – from additives to diets to drops to ‘whole body wellness’ programs that you can access via eBook for just the low, low price of…
So I go to Amazon.com and buy these pH test strips. It’s $10 and what the heck, it reminds me of tests we did back in high school science lab. They’re supposedly good for urine & saliva and they do have the nifty little color-chart right there for you to compare too. Home science fun!!
They show up a couple of days later and I start doing the testing… according to directions and all. Testing for 2 days twice a day to get a ‘range’ so I can see where I really am. The little chart goes between 4.5 and 9.0 by halves and quarters. I learn that the 1.0 is a power of 10 – so while totally “neutral” water is a 7.0, 5.0 is not 10 times more acidic than 6.0, but rather 100! Scary.
Except for the part where the strips must be bogus. I mean, I’ve tested for 2 days in a row… and I’m down at 5.0 which is about the color it looks like the little test pads would turn if they were nothing except damp. Oh yay. So I drag out GeekDaddy as my control subject. We test at the same time. I mean, we have the same diet mostly, we live the same lifestyle… in theory, his should turn out the same way mine does, right? Especially if they’re just lame, or stale, or non-functional strips. We both stick the little strips on our tongues… wait 15 seconds – hold them up to the magic chart.
Mine still says 5.0 – or very acidic – his? 7.25 – normal, healthy, right in the zone. Crap. A few days later, my friend is visiting, so I have him do it with me. Mine? 5.0 again. His? 6.5 or right below the ‘optimal’ zone. Then again, he drinks a lot of coffee.
So then. What do you do? You change it. How do you change it? By getting rid of the foods that mess you up. Bye-bye coffee. Bye-bye red meat. Bye-bye Coca-cola my one ‘unbreakable’ habit!
Of course, everyone tells me “GeekMommy, you should make changes a little at a time, that way you will succeed.” Let’s revisit yesterday’s post for a minute, shall we? I don’t function like that. I’m a “do it, do it now, or spend the next several years talking about how you’re going to do it any day.”
Why do I say that? 7 and a half years ago, GeekDaddy and I quit smoking. I smoked for 20 years (from age 15 to age 35) and was at 2 1/2 packs a day when we quit. Cold Turkey. No ‘gradual ease down’ for me. No nicotine gum, patch, pill, treatment plan. I’d tried all those – if you throw in hypnotherapy and aversion therapy, you’ll get a complete view of what didn’t work. What worked? I stopped smoking.
Moreso, I just didn’t start again. Throughout many temptations (and there have been some big ones!) the trick has been just don’t ever do that again. No excuses, no plan for failure, no loopholes. Just. Don’t. Do. It.
Losing weight has been harder for me the past 10 years. Because while I could just never smoke another cigarette, I couldn’t not eat food. It’s kind of the equivalent of telling an alcoholic “you can’t get drunk, but you MUST drink 1 shot of alcohol 3 times a day to survive.” Yeah, that will happen.
But you know what is working so far? I just can’t eat those foods. I can eat – even sensible portions of ’semi-bad’ foods. Fish and chicken and pork are ‘moderately’ acidic in the body – but those red meats? The worst. So I’ve put certain things off limits. I’m living with The Acid-Alkaline Food Guide at my fingertips. Until I’m back “in the pH zone” everything in the far-right column (highly acidic) is right out. Anything on the acidic side at all is best avoided, except the protein thing for me once a day (I like it.)
So far? I’m one week in. I’m 6 lbs down from my weight before I started. (Yes, I know it’s mostly water-weight.) I’m feeling better than I did before. I’m working hard on getting enough sleep a night. I’ll be eliminating the drugs as I go. Did I mention that I just tested my pH balance as I was typing this? Yeah, it’s at a 6.0 today. Just like it was yesterday.
I’m going to get healthy. Losing weight will be a part of that, but not the only part of that. I don’t want to be here any more – the “cure” is just as bad if not worse than the “illness” it’s supposed to fix. And I’m doing it my way – the big way. The all-at-once way. The trick is? I’m not going to let myself off the hook this time. I can’t afford to.
Because that’s how I roll.
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