» 2012

Happy New Year! My Resolutions, Some Reflections, and Some Changes…

December 31, 2012 in 2012

Happy New Year! I hope you are all having a marvelous holiday season, filled with fun, family, friends, relaxation and joy!

I have greatly enjoyed my week off, although it has flown by with me accomplishing very few of the things I wanted to do over the past week. I did get to sleep in one day, made it to one yoga class, and I did get to go see a movie (like a real movie in an actual movie theater!). My days were mostly taken up with the bustle of the season–lots of cooking (and eating!), opening presents, overstimulated children, visiting with my mom, and shopping. But, also my oldest daughter is currently quite ill, which has meant the last couple of days were taken up with a doctor’s appointment, runs to the drugstore, surviving on very disrupted sleep, finding things for a bored sick kid to do, and tons of extra cuddles (she’s getting better though! phew!).

Do I feel recharged? A little. But not completely. If I was a battery, the red light would still be on on the charger and you’d be starting to wonder if I can even hold a full charge any more. I can. Just leave me plugged in a little longer…

But, even if I don’t feel particularly rested or energetic, I do feel really jazzed about some upcoming projects and ideas for the blog for the New Year.

This past week has given me the opportunity to spend some time reflecting. Reflection comes naturally to me this time of year. I am a resolution-setter (and very typically, I really do follow through with my resolutions too). I don’t limit resolution-making to New Year’s, but I do have a habit of saving the most challenging resolutions for January. So, as I contemplate my priorities for 2013, I have been thinking quite a bit both about my accomplishments over the past year but also my plans moving forward.

My blog has grown dramatically over the last year. I feel so grateful to all of you for reading, sharing and connecting with me. I am greatly looking forward to continuing with informative and impactful posts. I love being able to answer your individual questions. My skills in the kitchen have improved substantially over the past year, as I get more and more comfortable with paleo ingredients. I have some awesome ideas for exciting new recipes to try out. At the beginning of last year, I was so nervous to be a guest on Low-Carb Conversations with Jimmy Moore. Now I co-host a podcast, which I love, both for the time I get to spend with Matt and Stacy from www.PaleoParents.com but also for the ability to reach and help so many. I’ve been doing guest posts and interviews galore and will be a guest on the Balanced Bites Podcast for a special autoimmune protocol-themed show in late January. I gave a rockin’ awesome seminar at 4.0 Martial Arts in Sandy Springs (was that seriously only a week and a half ago?) and have plans for more seminars. Oh yeah, and the new huge project that I’m going to tell you all about in about three weeks. Whenever I stop to think about what my little blog has turned into in 14 months, I am blown away by how crazy awesome this all is!

All of this started in my spare time while my kids were napping and in the evenings after they go to bed. But over the last few months, the time commitment has increased dramatically (and my youngest gave up naps, dangit). I seem to have slowly made the transition from full-time stay-at-home mom to full-time working mom (but without the paycheck to go with it). And trying to do and be everything for everyone has started to impact my health. It’s time for me to start evaluating the best uses of my time and sort out my priorities.

When I started my blog, I never imagined I would ever have to choose what I spent my time on. It’s amazing to me and I consider this dilemma a privilege. Thank you!!!

Don’t be afraid! I am not stopping! Blogging has become part of my identity. I love it. I love researching topics, writing, drawing, sharing. I love developing and sharing recipes and hearing about your successes with them. I love connecting with you all through blog comments, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. And my blog will continue to be and will always be completely open and free (ugh, unless you are viewing my blog with IE and then there’s a compatibility problem that I would totally fix that if I had any idea how to do so). But, I do need to scale back to free up time for my growing list of other endeavors.

I’m going to scale back one post per week (from 6 to 5 posts per week). Even just posting one less post per week is going to free up 6-8 hours of my time for my other projects, and for making sure that sleep, exercise and spending time with my kids remains a priority. My plan is to try this for a few weeks and then reevaluate to see if I need to scale back more (fingers crossed that this will give me enough time to work on my other projects!).

Making sure I keep balance in my life is my number one New Year’s Resolution this year. I’m not sure if an earlier bedtime is realistic for me right now, so I’m tweaking my supplements (mainly adding some adrenal support supplements) and am going to reduce my consumption of green and black tea (with my adrenal glands in mind). I am going to try to find more short time commitments for exercise on a daily basis (since at best I seem to be making it to only two yoga classes each week and only two good walks per week), which means simply finding small chunks of time to add things like a few sun salutes, or some push-ups, burpees, and/or lunges scattered throughout my day. I am also going to commit to doing at least 5 minutes of mindful meditation every day.

I have one more BIG resolution. I am going to do a modified 21-Day Sugar Detox starting tomorrow (Wednesday’s post will be dedicated to talking about why, what and how). I am excited to be joining the biggest group of 21-Day Sugar Detoxers ever this year and will be the featured blogger for January on The 21-Day Sugar Detox Blog (woot!). I will be sharing my experiences through the next three weeks here on the blog and also on my Facebook page, the 21-Day Sugar Detox Facebook page and Twitter. If you are interested in learning more about the 21-Day Sugar Detox, click here.

I hope that you understand my need to scale back on the number of posts I produce each week. I really just need to free up time for my other endeavors that doesn’t take away from things I need to do to stay healthy (like exercise, sleep, and enjoy life). I figure I wouldn’t be very inspirational, if I didn’t practice what I preach. Plus, I feel that most of you appreciate quality over quantity, if you have to choose between them. But, I really see this change as being positive. What started as “just” a blog has become so much more. And I don’t mean more in terms of actual projects or time commitment (although that’s true too)… I mean more. More important, more meaningful, more fulfilling. And that makes me so excited for 2013! Happy New Year!

Tags: 21, 3, activity, announcement, autoimmune, balance, blog, celebrate, Change, chrismtas, day, detox, diane, disease, eve, Exercise, Holiday, management, meditatin, new, post, priorities, project, protocol, resolution, resolutions, sanfilippo, seminar, Sleep, Stress, Sugar, week, year, year's
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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

December 24, 2012 in 2012

Happy holidays everyone! I wish you all a peaceful, fun, relaxing and safe holiday season!

If you follow me on facebook, then you know life has been pretty crazy for in the last few weeks. I’ve been pumping out the Christmas cookie recipes, I did a guest post for Balanced Bites, and I gave my first seminar on Saturday (which was three hours of awesome!). More seminars to come in the New Year too! All of this on top of the podcast, my normal writing for the blog, and the big project I am working on that I will tell you all about toward the end of January (yes, that is officially a teaser). Oh yeah, and I have been tackling all of this during (arguably) the busiest time of the year.

Did I mention that all of this stuff if my hobby?

Somehow I managed to do all of my Christmas shopping, send parcels to my family on the other side of the continent on time (barely!), hang Christmas decorations outside, and put up the tree (although many of our other decorations never made it up this year). I remembered to take the turkey out of the freezer to thaw for Christmas dinner. I let my husband write our Christmas letter this year, and instead of our normal family photo card, we will hopefully find time tomorrow to e-mail the letter and a few pics of the kids to family and friends. I feel like the only reason I’ve succeeded in getting this much done is because I’ve been sacrificing sleep and even yoga.

Today was spent finally baking for gifts for neighbors and for company over the next week, cleaning frantically for my mom’s visit (she should be here in just over an hour! yay!), and spending some much needed quality time with my kids. I fell asleep on the couch this afternoon WHILE reading to my kids (the sweethearts decided it would be a fun game to get blankets and put me to bed!). [Oh, if that's confusing, I am writing this Sunday evening while paleo cookies are baking in the oven. Yay for multitasking!] I don’t remember the last time I had such an energy crash in the afternoon (and my eating has been clean clean clean). I just need a break!

I have been burning the candle at both ends and I am burnt out!

So, I’m taking an actual break. No new writing for the blog for a week. I’m going to sleep, relax, play, do lots of yoga, and look after myself. I know you are all too busy taking your own breaks and visiting with your friends and families over the next week to read any new content anyway. I will still be on facebook (and twitter and pinterest) and will still respond to your private messages and e-mails (although maybe not as promptly as normal). I am reevaluating how to balance so many competing interests in the next year (more on that in my New Year’s post) and also take better care of myself. For now though, I just need a little time off.

Best wishes to you all for the New Year! I will see you next year (hopefully recharged and raring to go!).

Tags: break, chrismtas, new year, news, seminar, update
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Celebrating Another Milestone with My Oldest Daughter

December 6, 2012 in 2012

Many of you will recall from various posts in the past that my oldest daughter doesn’t like to eat meat (see Challenge #2: My Kids, Why I Cater To My Kids, Challenge #2 Update: My Still Spirited but Much Healthier Kids). Through a series of events (sensory issues, severe reflux, undiagnosed gluten intolerance, being on doctor’s orders to fatten her up because she was so dangerously thin at 1-year old, catering to her desire for soft foods just to get her to eat), my daughter never really developed the jaw strength or muscle coordination to chew meat properly. We’ve been working on this slowly over the last year of eating paleo in our home.

We changed our strategy in the early part of this year (see Towing a Harder Line with My Kids). We went from completely catering to my daughter’s food preferences to feeding her a meal that was much closer to what the rest of the family was eating (I always make sure to have fruit and vegetables on her plate that she likes). And, we started making it a rule that she had to eat a reasonable amount of meat at every meal (well, eggs at breakfast and something like 1-2oz of meat at other meals).

I go to great efforts to make delicious food, to keep my daughter’s flavor preferences in mind, to remember that chewing is hard for her, that food texture can be overwhelming for her. Even still, we have generally found that most meals were a battle, the intensity of which varied depending on the meal, how tired my daughter was, how stressed my husband I were, and whether or not we had any bribery power on that specific day. We have seen slow (S-L-O-W) improvement though. My daughter went from only eating Paleo Chicken Fingers and maybe some types of fish with minimal harassing (it still would take her an hour to slowly pick at it before she had eaten it all) to the huge milestone we hit just this week. My daughter announced that she likes steak!

Yesterday was leftover night in our home. I asked my daughter if she would prefer leftover Paleo Chicken Fingers or leftover Simple Broiled Pork Chops. She chose pork chop! It still takes her a long time to eat and she still needs some gentle reminders to take another bite (and another and another), but we haven’t had a battle over dinner in over a week. A whole week! Best of all, she is finally getting at least some enjoyment out of foods that require chewing!

Getting my daughter to eat quality proteins has helped in many other ways too. She is stronger, has more energy, sleeps better, behaves better (this all may be related to getting gluten and most dairy out of her diet as well, although we successfully went gluten free a couple of months before implementing the “meat-eating plan”). I often lament not knowing any better when she was born, when we started her on rice cereal and she became chronically constipated, when I didn’t look at my diet when she was extremely colicky (for a whole year!) and would projectile spit-up (and continued to spit-up until she was over 3-years old!), when she didn’t start sleeping through the night until she was 3.5-years old and when she started having tantrums at 9 months old. I don’t know how much might have been different if I had had a better diet through pregnancy and nursing and fed her better foods in those early years. Mommy guilt is tough to get over, but I do try not to think about that too much. Instead, I try to appreciate just how far we’ve come and be thankful that I did figure it out when I did. Vive la paleo!

Tags: child, chwing, daughter, difficulty, How To, improvement, issue, kid, meat, oldest, paleo, sensory, slow, slowly, update
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Celebrating Thanksgiving with Influenza A

November 22, 2012 in 2012

I am pleased to have the energy to write a little this morning. I am through the “acute phase” of the flu and find myself feeling very thankful to be on the other side. That one was not fun.

My oldest daughter started it all Monday morning. A moderate fever, cough, runny nose and headache that gradually got worse. By overnight Monday, her fever was 104F and I had broken out the Tylenol which was barely touching it. She had severe body aches and stomach cramps. She threw up Tuesday morning in the pediatrician’s parking lot. We spent five hours between the pediatrician’s office and the children’s hospital on Tuesday, ruling out more serious possibilities and finally getting a positive diagnosis of influenza A.

Overnight Tuesday night, my daughter’s fever lowered to 102 and her need for Tylenol stopped. She was barely drinking and refusing to eat, but now that we knew it was the flu, we could feel somewhat confident that we had another day at most like this.

Yesterday morning, I woke up with a cough and scratchy throat. And a sense of foreboding. I was ravenous at breakfast but shortly after my temperature started to go up and my energy level started to plummet. Then the joint aches set in. I do not remember ever having such intense joint aches with any flu ever. My spine, hips, and sacroiliac joints were so painful that it was difficult to sleep, even though I was exhausted and barely able to stay awake. I went to bed with my oldest mid-morning and basically didn’t get out of bed until this morning (except for potty trips, a bath with epsom salts, eucalyptus and peppermint oil in the afternoon, and getting up twice to reheat some bone broth). I remember feeling intensely angry with myself for getting dressed because it took so much effort to get back into my pajamas. By evening, I was experiencing intense stomach pain that I can only liken to pitocin transition contractions without pain meds (yes, I know how those feel too) but without the predictability and without the joy of a baby at the end. I did take prescription anti-nauseants that were in our medicine cabinet, but I successfully avoided taking Tylenol or NSAIDS. I would have taken a pain-killer if I knew it wouldn’t reduce my fever (or increase gut permeability), but I so wanted my fever to stay up so I could get better as quickly as possible (and it was only 101.5F), that I suffered through the pain for the greater good.

Both my fever and my daughter’s fever broke around 3am. She had some paleo toast this morning, but I’ve only had some bone broth and some tea since my stomach is still sore (although more like a dull ache now and I may try some solid food soon). I still have a headache and cough and feel weak, but the joint aches are just an echo of what I experienced last night, and I’ve been upright for over an hour already, which is pretty darned impressive, if you ask me.

There’s nothing like illness to change your mindset about things and draw into focus what really matters. This is definitely not the same list as what I would have written a couple of days ago, but this is what I am thankful for this Thanksgiving:

that my freezer was filled with bone broth and bones for making more
that my daughter waited until we arrived at the pediatrician’s office and was out of the car to throw up
the incubation period of the flu, which means that I didn’t get sick until my daughter was starting to do better
for my wonderful mother-in-law, who happens to be visiting and watched both kids while I slept all afternoon yesterday and made supper last night when I couldn’t
Tinkerbell and The Great Fairy Rescue, which my kids never seem to tire of
that all of this happened after the birthday weekend so my youngest was finally able to have a birthday party (her first was cancelled due to a stomach bug and her second was cancelled due to a leak in the kitchen that meant our floors were completely ripped up)
that I didn’t have a turkey thawing in the fridge so it’s very easy to postpone our Thanksgiving dinner until I have the energy to make it, but that my fridge and freezer are still well-stocked with food so no one needs to go to the store
that my medicine cabinet was well stocked with prescription anti-nauseants
that my yoga class was cancelled yesterday so I wasn’t tempted to go to yoga and see if that might make me feel better
my wonderful husband, who was able to come home from work early, put the kids to bed without me, and run out to the pet store for cat food (which I was supposed to do yesterday)
that my mother-in-law and husband got flu shots and seems to be fighting this off very well so far. I think this is what my youngest probably had a week and a half ago that only lasted 24 hours with her, but I’m still on “flu watch”.
for all the well wishes that I received on Facebook for you lovely people.

I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving free of illness, stress, and catastrophe and instead filled with joy, relaxation, celebration, appreciation, goof food, family and friends.

Tags: fever, flu, thanksgiving
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