Wednesday, January 2, 2013

A Healing Experiment

My New Year's resolutions tend to be a bit generic like "don't die" and "try not to kill others," but this year is a little different.

I say on a pretty regular basis that I want my health back, and it's coming along, but very slowly.  Sure I ran a 5k in October, but aside from the training for that, I'm still mushy and not to thrilled with my chemo recovery progress.  I admit that it's likely my expectations are too high, but I wanted a healthy, strong, awesome new me and I'm just not there yet.  My immunity still sucks and I get every passing cold, fever, and flu.  My liver went bonkers for a few months, but x-rays, CT scans and hida scans showed no problems other than the pain I was in.  I'm depressed and tired all the damn time, even though I'm taking depression/anti-anxiety meds and sleeping as much as possible.  And of course, allergies and asthma are kicking my ass.

So I've decided to reboot.  Start over nutritionally and really give my body what it needs to heal instead of scarfing down a piece of tiramisu after a few slices of pizza.  Yeah, that happened.

I'm starting the Whole30 this week with my coworker, Sabrina, which means I'm eliminating damn near everything from my diet for 30 days, then slowly reintroducing things to see what's making me feel like shit, if anything.  This includes sugar, soda, alcohol, grains, legumes, soy, and dairy.

For starters, I KNOW I'm allergic to dairy, but I haven't removed it from my diet in many years, so I'm interested to see if removing it will help my allergy issues.  I've never removed grains from my diet so I'm a little nervous about that.  Also, removing dairy AND soy means no coffee or tea because I don't like them black.  We could be in for very rocky times, friends.

I'm excited about this little science experiment though.  It's something I've been wanting to do since I found out I had cancer, and I finally feel strong enough.  If you're tempted to join me, read this blog post about why you should go ahead and do it!

P.S. Did I tell you that I'm writing a book?  Cause I totally am.  :D