Monday, January 21, 2013

Day 5 - a day of rest


Tried to post this from my iPad last night but I guess it didn't work like I thought.

Generally Sunday would be a day to sleep in, but when you have to active children that wake you up by 7:00am regardless there is really almost no sleeping in.  I admit there are those out there who probably think “7:00am, heck I’ve been at my day for 3 hours by that time I don’t know what you are complaining about.”  My answer to that is “well… I’m not one of those people, which is why it would be sleeping in.  I hope to be able be one of those people soon (after I get rid of the candida and see the energy benefits more—or at least from what I’m told).

Even if our boys would sleep in today we would not be able to stay in bed too long because we go to church at 9:00am, so we need to be up by 7:00am just to make sure our day goes as smooth as possible—which is really impossible with an 8 and 4 year old.  Juice was similar to yesterday, but since we picked up collard greens we decided to have them in the juice: Lemon, Lime, collard Greens, cucumber, ginger, cilantro and of course distilled water.  On top of that we had the steel cut oats.

Now some of you may be wondering what we’re feeding our children while we do this “crazy” diet.  It is very hard to get them to eat remotely healthy anyway so we don’t even pretend to think that we will be able to get them to follow our diet.  However; we do try to get them to eat at least a few more vegetables.  We do have to admit that it is not easy and we don’t do as well as we ought.  This morning I think one of our boys had (wanted) French toast and the other wanted (had) eggs.  We are able to get them to eat oatmeal on some mornings, but if it’s not the flavoredoatmeal it’s oatmeal with a lot of honey or agave in it.  We have been successful at sneaking a little steel cut oats in with their oatmeal every now and then, but haven’t been able to work it completely into their diets yet.

We made lunch quick and easy, eating some leftover tomato soup—since today is the last day we can eat it—along with some leftover brussel sprouts from dinner last night.  Generally we would eat a salad first, but have read that it is better—due to the high water content in salad—to eat the salad after you other meal.  However; as we finished the soup and sprouts it was easy to say no to the salad.  I suppose that advise is for those people who love the salad more than the other items they eat during their meal.  I like salad, but so far am not sure that I will ever “LOVE” salad enough to have it be the last part of my meal unless it is the only part of my meal.

Something that we love and haven’t been able to do for a while is take a Sunday afternoon nap.  As some of you read those words I know you know exactly what I mean and how I feel—for those of you who don’t have the immediate reaction myself and others have to that idea I don’ know what to tell you other than they are good and for some reason the most restful sleep a body can have.  We put a video on for the boys and had a great Sunday afternoon nap being sure to wake up in time to start worrying about dinner.

Dinner was great again; we had chicken chili that had black beans (because they were the only canned beans we had that did not contain any sugar), tomatoes, seasoning along with a few other items.  While this was not quite as good as the soup we had last night it was still AWESOME!! I ate two big bowls full.  Of course we had our salad with cucumber but decided to eat it before dinner.

As far as the energy goes and the myriad of other symptoms of candida go today was a really good day.  I felt like I had a lot of energy and was pretty clear in my mind too.  One of the things candida causes is described by some as a feeling of not being able to think clearly or fogginess, which is a big reason I decided to go forward with this cleanse.  In recent years (through law school and more so since then) my mind has felt more and more foggy which makes it very difficult—at times—to put a thought together in the way I intend.  Since stress and anxiety exacerbate this problem they really feed off each other so the fogginess gets worse as stress and anxiety increase but stress an anxiety increase when the fogginess gets worse.

It all—in hindsight—came to a head while I was taking a final during my 2L year in law school.  One of my favorite areas of study was criminal law and criminal procedure.  During a final for my criminal procedure class I experienced what many law students do and most fear… I had a complete blank out.  I knew I had studied hard and I knew the material—it even interested me, but as I was forced to sit there and try to recall all the “procedural rules” and the “elements” of some offenses the professor had sprinkled in there I completely blanked out!

I was sure at that time that I had failed the exam, which is something that a lot of my tests felt like, but this one was different, it wasn’t that I didn’t know the material it is that I wasn’t able to recall the material when I needed to.  I am thinking more now that it may have been an extra foggy day when I just could not pull my thoughts or my memory together to get it done.  I didn’t end up failing, but I was in the bottom ¾ of that class which is something that I have never done in all my years of study.

I did make it through law school and even the bar exam, but it wasn’t without living with the cycle I listed before my slight detour above.  I know some of you are thinking it is easy for me to match my past (perhaps as an excuse) to symptoms of a disease that may or may not exist.  All I can so to those who think this is that you may be right; but I mention again that I gave standard “mainstream” medical science about 20 years to try to help me figure out why these symptoms exist.  I felt great today which adds to the progress I have made since beginning this fast—more has happened in the last few days to relieve my symptoms than everything that helped even a little bit in the last 20 years combined.  To those of you out there that think candida is not a real disease and think those that believe it is are crazy—If my progress continues as it has and believing that candida is the cause then I don’t want to be sane.

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