eat what you fancy

I'm having one of those moments when i really don't know what i want to eat and all i keep hearing is 'eat what you fancy'. To tell the truth i don't fancy anything. Even half my dinner went in the bin last night - again. Okay there is plenty of me and i'm unlikely to starve to death just yet but food holds no delight for me any more, not even chocolate.

My specialist thinks i may also have the beginnings of rheumatoid arthritis, as well as the osteoarithis. I didn't think it was possible but apparently it is. The RA normally affects multiple joints and opposite joint, such as both hands, both feet. Whereas OA can effect just one joint but sometimes more. RA is an immune response from the body, basically my body is overeacting and is now fighting itself and the OA is normally wear and tear on a particular joint. Hope that make sense?

What the causes? no one knows but it's thought to be genetic. Treatment: pills - my body doesn't noramally like those very much - and diet - need to try harder - including a dairy free diet but it does like citrus fruit (oranges, grapefruit, lemons, limes) and exercise, of cause.

I'm feeling a bit scared to eat anything this morning as once you stop something that is causing an allergic reaction your body will never be able to tolerate it again and how do you actually go 'erm, no milk please'. And what do you eat? There is dairy in many foods, especially processed food and i like cereal with milk, breakfast and supper, oh and chcocolate. And what will my family say erm do erm say erm do erm say erm do erm you get the picture when i tell them that my house is now dairy free? And where to start? do you go the whole hog and just banish all dairy or do you wean yourself off it slowly? And what is dairy free chocolate actually made from? 

I did read somewhere this morning that those who suffer migraines and breathing problems can also suffer RA and that's definately me on both accounts. I've had on going migraines all my life accompanied with flair ups from time to time and i suddenly started with breathing problem about three years ago, with no known cause but treated as asthma to which it took some time to respond but is now reasonably under control.

My body is poisoning itself and i'm hoping i can slow the decline but it's hard to know where to start???

It's too early

I woke at 6:30 with headache and feeling sick. In fact i wake most mornings feeling sick these days, i put it down to the pain pills i have to take on a regular basis. But, there must be some way to overcome feeling like this every morning.

My insides and therefore my whole being feel like it's being poisoned by all the pills and potions i need to take. Some so i can get up in the mornings and some so i get some sleep. I don't think i slept very well either. Woke up feeling like i had tossed and turned and ended up bent the wrong direction. 

There has to be something that i can do to stop myself feeling like i've been poisoned every morning. Arthritis, or just living with pain, is a very odd animal i never know how bad it's going to be until i step out of bed and sometimes i don't know until i step out of the house and have to walk to the end of the street for a bus. Then there are days when i dont feel too bad, walking isn't bad either and then wham the pills wear off and i am just stuck wherever i may be. Usually i have to find somewhere to sit, have a bit to eat, take some pills and wait for them to work before i am then able to hobble on my way.

So i need pain management with less pills and arthritis managment without surgery. The answer seems simple, exercise and lose weight. So why don't i just get on with both? I think it comes down to acceptance. Whereas once upon a time not so long ago i could jump out of bed and be out the door in 15 minutes, if i had too, now it can take 2 hours. Accepting that my time table isn't the same as the world's. The beat of my drum is now different. 

I envy those people who say this is my life and this is what i'm doing with it and then do it. Whenever i try and do something like that reality kicks in and my family need me or i have yet another bill to pay or the cats need feeding and i have to slip back into life. I wish i could throw my clock away, live in my own time but i can't i have people who need me and things that need doing but just for now i will dream a little and pretend.

Life is so difficult

I'm trying to understand the curse of my osteoarthritis. I just seem to just get my head round it all, sort out the pain and try to move forward with my life when find myself back at where i started, in pain, feeling sick and unable to function on a day to day function. 

So it was back to the doctor's i had to go in the hope that they could help. I now have pain in all the joints of my body, some more painful then another, at different times and even on different days. the doctor said it is all arthritis. He kindly told me that when you damage one joint it puts more stress on the remaining joints causing damage there too, the cure exercise and more pain relief. 

Then yesterday i was supposed to go into work and have a trial day, working in another area but it was no good. The pain was too great the job too unacceptable but the staff very nice and helpful. So it's back to the drawing board with work and i have to wait until whenever they can sort out a job i can do, it may take several months they have warned me.

I suddenly feel very old. May be i could be the Old Maid in the game and who ever gets me, loses. I'm only joking. I may feel like an old maid but i don't feel like i've lost. I'm just waiting for God to reveal his plan because i am totally and completely at a loss. I know works needs faith and faith needs work and i'm trying to do whatever i can and i know when i get to that point i will know in my heart what i am doing is part of God's plan.

Back to the osteoarthritis. I think the problem is this - normal joints can crack, mine cannot and so it gets stuck, even though i can sort of walk on it, it becomes increasingly more painful. Finally, yesterday, my knee unlocked and i was released from the pain. When it finally gave way the initial pain would have had me on my knees but thankfully i had the arm of a friend to hang on to. He asked what was happening and i tried to explain, in the end i just said pain, pain, pain. 

I hobbled home, went to bed and except for the brief trips to the ajoining bathroom i didn't get up again until this morning. This morning i was assesing the pain, what hurt, what didn't, i came up with left hip, knee, ankle, right ankle, left wrist and right shoulder, pain score without pain killers about 5/10.

Chocolate or Potatoes?

I wanted to write a really exciting post about eating fruit and vegetables, but i really couldn't do it. Get excited that is. Now chocolate, that would be a whole different thing.

However, my mind is taken back to when i was a child and the fact that chocolate aka sweets were only allowed on weekends. birthdays, Easter and Christmas the rest of the time they just weren't available, neither was the money to buy such delicacies. I would like to state for the record that i haven't bought any chocolate since Sunday and i've eaten just one 2 fingered kitkat, yesterday. But i can feel my resolve weakening, feel myself being forced, body and soul, to the nearest shop for the chocolate delights that are know to be there. But i know that once i buy, then tatse the delicious chocolate, i know it will lie to me about it's real tatse for under the smoothness, there is that horrible soya taste. 

It's okay you can think i'm crazy, my children do so all the time, but i can really taste the soya. It's in everything that used to require butter and its foul. It is used as a cheaper alternative to butter and is supposed to give that lovely, smooth, buttery taste you are supposed to get from eating chocolate but alas it's just not there any more for me. Don't they realise they are killing the chocolate experience, crazy, mad world.

I know i said i was going to get excited about fruit and vegetables but they just don't move my soul in quite the same way. Maybe i'll tell you about my Dad the gardener? Now that was vegetables worth eating and i did once have a vegetable garden myself and there is nothing more satisfying then pulling up a potato plant and finding not one but a whole load of potatoes. If you have never grown potatoes you really should, some ideas on that another day, maybe.

Oompa Loompa

I was just musing on the effect that food has on our bodies. Then my mind wandered to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Violet Beauregarde and the fact that when she ate a sweet that contained a three course dinner has she reached ther desert she became round and turned blue, like a blueberry.

This is what i mean, if I ate an orange would I become orange, round and dimply not unlike the Oompa loompa’s themselves. May be they had been eating oranges? Or may be carrots and broccoli? With orange faces and green hair the Oompa Loompa’s are industrious people always working hard and striving to do one better than before, imperfection isn’t allowed.

Now I make bread, or I used to when there was lots of us to feed. Yes, it was cheaper and it took time to do, in fact there were days when it was a daily chore. I always have a great feeling of satisfaction when the bread is finally cooked and out of the oven. Now my bread would be fresh enough to eat for about 36 hours, then it would be fit only for toast and within three days it would be starting to go mouldy. 

The problem with commercial bread is that we want/need it to last all week and the manufacturers know this and tries it’s best to fulfil our every desire. Now I’m sure when I was a child the bread was made from whole meal flour and at some point we began to eat white and now there is every shade in between to suit every taste and desire. I also get suspicious of bread that isn’t going mouldy or at least a little dry after three days. As you can tell comercially made bread bugs me and i think someone out there could do it better.

It seems that I’ve ranted on about bread but really this post wasn’t about bread it was about this; so do we really want to look like the food we are eating and what would we do if every time we ate a piece of chocolate and ... I will let you imagine. 

However, maybe it would get me to eat leeks and spring onions more, I rather like their shape but being a bit green might be a problem.

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

No, sorry, not me

Yesterday on my daughter Emily’s facebook page I read that she had been out running. She said she had enjoyed it but she should have been at church, conference or not. However a word of warning for all those runners, it’s the worst exercise you can do for your hip, knee and ankle joint, especially if you do it for a while, even if it’s a long while and then stop. A second warning osteoarthritis is genetic, sorry Emily.

So what is the answer? Walking or swimming or even cycling is better, whether it’s road bike or a stationary bike it matters not. Exercise is the answer to stave off the development of osteoarthritis although it can’t be prevented indefinitely.

So here is part of my tiny exercise routine, which is hoping to turn into a fully grown routine eventually.

1.       Fully body stretch

2.       Thigh flex – sit on the floor, legs out straight in front, flex the foot towards you and press the knee into the floor, hold and release and repeat 12 times, each leg – you should feel the thigh muscles contract

3.       Knee bend – same position on the floor, bend knee slight put heel on the floor and slide foot towards the body, bending the knee as you go, hold and then release slowly, x12

4.       Standing squat – stand feet hip width apart, bend your knees as if you are going to sit on a chair, hold and then stand, x12

5.       Door slide, it’s a squat, using a door or a wall. Lean against the wall feet hip width apart about a foot width from the door, slide down the door into a sitting position, hold and come back up to standing and repeat x12

6.       Full body stretch

Firstly I started off doing 6 of each exercise and every 4^th day adding 2 more. Secondly they only work if you do them regularly, aim for at least every alternate day to begin with increasing to every day over time. Lastly, remember the stretch is just as important as the exercises. 

Try and go for a walk today too.

Soup, Soup

You can now buy whole recipe books full of soup recipes and there are even web sites/blogs dedicated to just soup. However this will not be a whole book or a whole web site it is is just one simple recipe.

Soup, Soup

makes 2 portions

1 large pototo, peeled and diced - bite sized (jacket potato size - big)

1 onion, diced

peeled and diced carrot the same amount as the pototo

peeled and diced swede/turnip/parsnip, each vegetable should be the same amount as the potato

tin of beans/pulses - chick peas,butter beans, etc about 200g

tin of tomatoes, chopped

stock - stock cubes and water

dried basil

Put all the vegetables into a pan. Add enough stock to cover and a bit more. Bring to the boil and simmer until the veggies are cooked, about 15 mins. Add the beans and the tomatoes and the basil. Bring back to the boil and simmer for a couple of minutes. It's a complete meal but i do like a bit of crusty fresh bread to go with it. 

You could always change the flavour by adding different veggies, cabbage works well and so does brussels sprouts. You could always add baked beans in tomato sauce, instead of the tomatoes which would change the flavour again. Or try sliced leek instead of onion. This thing with this soup is, that it can't go wrong, so go on, experiment and enjoy.

Being just one on my own most of the time i like to make this soup. Eat half and save half for another day. If you are storing food, remember to cool it to cold quickly, store in the fridge/freezer and heat until boiling.

ps. you could always try adding small dumplings.

Hinges

'I’m all made of hinges, ‘cause everything bends.

From the top of my neck way down to my ends.

I’m hinges in front, and I’m hinges in back;

But I have to be hinges, or else I would crack!'

(Aileen Fisher, LDS Children’s Song Book)

So the children sing at church and on the word ‘crack’ fall to the floor, laughing.

Yes, thankfully we are all made of hinges. I think not being able to bend anywhere would be rather inconvenient. I mean just think how difficult it would be to put your shoes on or brush your hair. There are medical conditions that make bending difficult, arthritis being one of them. They have no idea why arthritis develops but they think it may have a genetic link. 

Now some people love exercise. They really can’t get enough of it but really I’m not one of those people and a nice easy stroll a couple of times a week round the local park and lots of excuses as to why I don’t do so every day is more like me. And I lie a lot. I mean I have a job where I walk all day, surely that’s enough?

However having to learn to walk again as not been easy and is often painful and sometimes just plain frustrating. I have learnt to shrug and walk off when I drop something in a shop because to me there is no point in agonising over whether I can retrieve whatever it is or not, the answer is not.

I now have an exercise routine which I try to do every day because it keeps me mobile. I thought I would share it all with you but you would probably fall asleep half way through with boredom. So here is a simple stretch to start off with, the very, very basics of my daily exercise. The first thing I had to learn to do were stand up straight. I had learnt to lean towards my good side, which didn't hurt.

Full body stretch

Stand feet hip width apart. Raise both arms above your head interlocking the fingers and facing the palms of your hands upwards. Stretch upwards and hold for several seconds. bring your arms down and take them behind your back, inter-lacing your fingers. Lean forward from the waist allowing you arms to dangle in front of you, fingers apart and stretch. See if you can touch the floor. Try and keep your knees straight. Relax your knees and uncurl your spine until you are upright. Raise both arms above your head interlocking the fingers and stretch. Unlock your fingers, brings arms down to each side of the body and raise up on your toes and hold. If you can do this without wobbling too much your body is in alignment, i couldn't but i can now. Release and relax.  Try repeating this one exercise first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

Well, I did do something -

Last week I lost 5lbs in weight and that’s a good start but I know I have already slipped back into my old ways, which weren’t good in the first place. 

This morning I was reading a newsletter from Tess daily over at The Bold Life, a blog. One of the few that I keep heading back too and she was talking about ‘taking five swings of an axe’ to chop down a tree. She wasn’t really on about axes or trees but was illustrating a point. That if we make 5 small changes it can make a big difference to us. 

So she got me thinking what 5 small things could I do each day that would make a big difference and help me to remove the tree in my way? I decided that firstly I needed to give the tree a name, a little pause and a little thought but really the name of the tree is osteoarthritis. Then I started to think about a goal, what do I really want to achieve and why and am I doing it, for someone else of for me, because fulfilling someone else’s goal is doomed to fail before I even start.

So the goal is this to be able to go back to work in the job I was previously doing without having major surgery to my knee at this time. There are reasons for the second part but I’m not intending to discuss them here. The problem with osteoarthritis is that it’s not curable and they don’t really understand why it occurs. 

So 5 swings of the axe:-

1.       Exercise every day – get moving, keep moving

2.       Stop drinking coffee – I’m owing up, this is a onetime offer

3.       Stop being a lazy vegetarian – going out to dinner may be the exception, doesn't happen often

4.       Meditation – I’m a great believer in mind over matter, that we can help heal our bodies by spending time with them

5.      Write about it - state what I am going to do, do it, then say if it helped

If I could have 6 I would add eat fruit. I love fruit and there is so much to choose from I couldn’t ever get bored. So why do I end up throwing out more then I eat?  If I was to say why I think it is so, I would say that it stemmed from childhood where there wasn’t a lot of anything spare going round and we weren’t encouraged to just eat everything in one go. 

So here I am and I haven’t done any of those this morning. I shall repent. Okay I did do number 5.

What a weekend

I would have liked to have said that my weekend was amazing, but really it wasn’t, I was sick, I mean really sick. I think it was the new medication the doctor prescribed for me but if it was then they have left a lasting or maybe just a lingering stomach problem.

I would have also liked to have said that I have been eating lots of delicious fruit and vegetables, which is did for part of the week but alas for the second half of the week I ate whatever my stomach would let me, which unfortunately turned out to be chocolate, or is that fortunately? The one thing I have noticed about when I am sick is that I crave sugar, sweet things and yes chocolate.  

Now here is a thought: unfortunately one of my own although I know people have had the thought and followed it by action in the past. Could I really live on minimalistic food? Now don’t get confused with minimalism, that’s not what I am on about. So this is the thought; would it be possible to cut out all processed foods? Bearing in mind that one of the most processed foods is bread, and as westerners we do like our bread – don’t we? The definition of processed food that I have come up with is any product made up of more than one ingredient to the point that it resembles neither ingredient. 

 So in my thinking if I was to get rid of all the pre-packed, processed foods the food list would look like this; fruit, vegetables, pulses, brown rice, seeds, and herbs, you could also add organic meats, milk and eggs if you are so inclined.

As far as I can say for myself, I crave sugar and I suffer from withdrawal symptoms when I don’t have my daily fix. As I have tried to banish the sugar from my diet I have come to realise how addicted I am to the glittery, sweet crystals. 

Sugar, sugar, sugar, sugar – yes please.

PS – my Mother was 81 years old and my daughter Grace got engaged on the 7^th October 2011