Listening To My Life

31 Days of Self Care: Day 13 (no diet products)

 

Last year, I would have these moments when I would find myself standing in front of the fridge, eating something (what didn't matter), and I quite literally couldn't figure out how I got there. It was frightening. I was completely out of control.

So I started to look for an answer. Countless Google searches phrases that seemed to describe what I was experiencing later, and finally I landed on a possibility in a word I'd never heard before: phenylalanine. For you and me? That's aspartame. And it was in so very much of what I was eating and drinking.

As an experiment, I cut out all diet products--diet coke, sugar-free gum and candy, Equal, most non-fat yogurt--everything. If it mentioned phenylalanine on the label I avoided it like the plague. And the out-of-controlness stopped.

My doctor was skeptical. Blood work didn't show that I had phenylketonuria. Or anything else. I also didn't have any symptoms ever "officially" reported or documents about phenylalanine sensitivity. She was perplexed. 

Ok -- so if it wasn't that, I was going back to to my Diet Coke with lime. And yeah...you know what happened.

So I stopped again. And the problem stopped. 

All in my head? Was hanging it on phenylalanine sensitivity enough to make whatever it actually was stop? Maybe I'm powerful beyond measure. All I know for sure is that when I avoid it, I'm fine. How that happens doesn't matter much to me.

I decided to write about this because I was just realizing that it's been just over a year since I had my very last Diet Coke--also the last phenylalanine I've had. Yay me!!! And while being diabetic without diet stuff is really limiting, I've done it. And I've survived. Quite nicely, I must say.

Today, I'm recommitting to taking care of myself in this particular way--even when it's hard, and even when I think that the best-tasting thing on the planet would be a Diet Coke with lime (which is actually fairly often).

31 Days of Self Care: Day 10 (Clearning)

Clearning...not a typo, but a word I created by combining "clearing" and "cleaning" to create a new word to describe that thing we all do when we get rid of crap we no longer need, after which we feel so amazingly good.

Whenever I've read/heard about organizing, I always hear about "cleaning" out drawers and closets and such to make the space for new wonderful things (never mind just getting rid of the crap we amass over time that stops serving us). To me, "clearing" makes more sense, as in clearing the space, and clearing the energy. And because there *is* cleaning that happens, too, yeah...clearning.

Recently, in my consultation about time and space management with Amy Thill, I learned that my bad (my word for it--and from my perspective, simply descriptive, rather than judgmental) office habit is in bringing useful things in, finding them less useful than I imagined, and never getting rid of them.  You can read a post about it, here.

This weekend, amid movies and shopping, I realized I do that with all sorts of other stuff like hair-care products and do-dads (barrettes, head bands, hats, scarfs), travel-related items (luggage tags, travel-sized bottles, jewelry cases), socks, underwear...oodles of things.

So today, stuck with a headache from the moment I woke up, I decided that clearning would be the thing to do (rather than something more adventurous or strenuous).

Three of the six drawers in my dresser are empty now, as is half of my medicine cabinet, and half the etagere in my bathroom. Good Will gets two more bags of stuff, and there are three for the trash man.

This coming Friday, during a Virtual Retreat day I'll be facilitating for one of my Mastermind Groups, I'll be clearning my office. Can't wait!

31 Days of Self Care: Day 6 (Hydration)

Two of the most amazing things to me following surgery were that I was never hungry, and never thirsty. And while I've learned to eat on a schedule, I haven't yet figured out how to drink on one.

It's complicated because I can't drink and eat at the same time, and I have to stop drinking for a bit before I eat, and can't drink for a bit after I eat, so planning the drinking becomes a real art--because scheduling doesn't work so well.

I *think* I could nail it, because I've been so very cold this winter and I've managed to drink a LOT of hot tea. But there's a problem with that, too--despite having far less caffeine than coffee or sodas, it's still dehydrating. And since it's really the only thing I drink, I'm finding that, by evening, I have a whopper of a headache.

I'm sure it's dehydration.

So I'm going to very consciously work on correcting this. Not because drinking is so fun and I want to do more of it, but because I hate headaches, *and* staying hydrated is very important.

31 Days of Self Care: Day 1 (Saying No)

A week or so ago, I had an idea for a new blog, tentatively titled 365 Days of ______ (the blank was waiting to be filled in, but that part doesn't really matter here). I was really jazzed about it at first, but as the days have marched along and I've thought more about it and about having to write it every single day of the year, I felt myself feeling less inclined to take it on.

Which is why, of course, you've heard nothing about it. ;)

Even tonight, I was sitting and watching a movie and running circuits in my head trying to make it work for me. 

And then I said no. I said no to the idea. I said no to any more brain circuits. I said no to taking something on that wasn't making me vibrate with excitement. I said no so that I have the space to say yes to something more meaningful and yet to show up.

"Half the troubles of this life can be traced to saying 
 yes too quickly and not saying no soon enough."
 -- Josh Billings