Well I'll be...

Last week I was traveling for work and was visiting a client in Northern Ontario, roughly 3 hours North of Cochrane.  When I arrived at Timmins airport and stepped outside the plane, I breathed in and my nasal hairs froze instantly.  Oh boy.  From then on I breathed through my scarf.  The outside temperature was -40C every morning, warming up to about -28C in the afternoon.  Add wind chill to that and you're at -50C.  Fun stuff.

That meant that everywhere I went there was heat blasting; in the trucks, in the buildings, in the "dorm" rooms.  Upon arrival, the ambient temperature in my room was 25C.  Holy shit.  That got lowered right away to a more comfortable 23C.

In fear of an asthma attack while up North for the week, I armed myself with a new Bricanyl inhaler, the type that I'd used for many years, but haven't had the need to use for over a year now.  I didn't need it once.  I firmly believe that eating properly has just about eliminated my asthma, though I do still experience minor wheezing at times.  It's not nearly bad enough to treat with the inhaler, anyway.

So, here I was, in awful conditions for skin and lungs.  To battle the incessant blowing/electric heat and hopefully prevent my skin from drying out, I applied some serious lotion (St. Ives Intensive Relief) to my body, morning and night.  I found it really helped and I only scratched the hell out of my skin the first night.

On the Thursday, I took my second dose of silicea as directed. Now that I'm back home in "normal" winter weather (between -3C and -10C), I've eased up on the lotion application so we'll see whether the silicea helps with skin ailments as much as it's rumoured to.  I have my hopes up! :)

I noticed yesterday that for the first time in memory I was not itchy.  Anywhere.  I've always had some spot on my being needing a scratch, like as if I had fucking fleas, but suddenly there was no itch.  Could it be??!  Will see how it goes in the next couple of days since I've virtually stopped applying the lotion.

In other good news, the corn on my left foot is gone!  The last bit of hardened skin came off during my trip and I can finally walk with a normal stride.  I'd forgotten how good that feels - why the hell did I resist this treatment so long?!  Avoiding chemicals, that's why.  At times they do good things, okay? :)

Hubby and I went for a hike through a section of our closest conservation area today, and it was so nice to walk normally, even when there were tree roots and rocks underfoot.  I gave my (left!) ankle a slight twist while jogging down a hill, but other than that it was fantastic.  Yay!!

Oh!  And, as expected, I did wheeze a bit after running up and down a couple hills in the cold air, but it wasn't severe enough to use the inhaler.  I'll always make sure I have it on me just in case anyway.

Homepathy Treatment Plan / Update

Helen, my homeopathic practitioner, provided me with my first prescription last week: 2 tiny little balls of silicea.  The instructions were to take one tiny ball, dissolve it in about half a cup of water, and sip it throughout the day.  Ok, done.

It's hard to believe that such a tiny little ball of something could make any sort of a difference to a 150 lb (ok, 153.5 lb as of this morning) body, and to be honest, I haven't detected anything as yet, but I'm anxious for the second dose next Thursday.

As I mentioned before I have an actual goal this year, which is to complete the Toronto Tough Mudder event in September, so I'm tightening the belt, so to speak, and hauling my lazy ass back onto the proverbial wagon.  Over the past month I was enjoying way too much sugar and grain products.  (Dearest Hubby: if you come home with another apple pie I'm gonna wring your neck!)

I weighed myself on January 9th and was semi-shocked (more disappointed, really) to see 155 on the scale.  This morning, after a decent BM it read 153.5.  Good.  It's moving at least.

Oh!  I also mentioned before that I used some heavy-duty corn removal pads on my foot and finally I am seeing something happen.  Those things basically kill the layers of skin by drying them out so that they peel off.  That's what I have happening; a disc of now-dead skin that is slowly coming off, hopefully bringing the corn with it.  About half of the disc has come up, which I've clipped off using my nail clippers, so hopefully the rest will come loose by mid-next week.

Ughhhh...stupid foot!

Lesson learned...see, I've had a corn on my left foot for over a year.  It bugged the shit out of me and REALLY hurt when I stepped on something the wrong way.  Last week I finally gave in and bought a box of those 40% salicylic acid corn remover pads and made use of them.  Yesterday I removed the second treatment (pad) and thought it would be a good idea to soak my feet in warm water and tea tree oil soap (Dr. Bronner's).  That would have been fine and dandy if I hadn't dried my feet and gone for an hour-long walk right afterward.

Stupid.

Part way along the walk I could feel a blister starting between the two smallest toes - on the same damned foot!!!  If only I had waited a little longer before heading out...

Next up, homeopathy

One day late last year was my lucky day; a new co-worker was introduced to me on her first day on the job, and she is also a Homeopathic Practitioner.  Yeehawwww!!  I bet I looked like I'd just won the jackpot! :)

Naturally, we started talking about it and covered the basics of how I'd (for the most part - I'm an addict, what can I say?) cut grains and sugar out of my diet and as a result lost some weight that has stayed off as long as I stay away from that crap.  A quick touch on candidiasis and my preference for natural personal care products and we connected.  It's not often you meet someone who understands the need to avoid the chemicals and toxic concoctions in everyday items that are EVERYWHERE.

Of course I wanted to know more and to sign my ass up for treatment.  I have quite a number of issues that I want to do something about, and last night we had my intake appointment.  She had a lot of great, probing questions about my issues, such as when did they first appear, what were the conditions then, where did you feel it at first, what did you do to treat it, then what happened, etc.  Many of my issues have been around for so long it was difficult to think back to when I was a teenager and what I was doing and feeling.  What the scenario was, even.  Holy moly.

Helen is such a kind and gentle, happy soul, though; very easy to talk to, and we had a great time.  I even showed her my ugly big toe nail.  I look forward to hearing her recommendations for treatment and seeing what is in store for me and my being this year.

Now to change the too-bright light bulbs in the dining room fixture, as they made me frown the entire time.

2013 - a year of change.

Merry xmas to meeeeeee

Christmas of 2012 was very low-key and with all the traveling I'd been doing for work, I really wasn't in the mood for shopping malls.  Never mind trying to figure out what all these people could use.  I'm done with buying them "junk" that would either be thrown into a drawer or worse.  (So they didn't like the fantastic dish-drying gloves we got them a couple years back...their loss, right??)

Anyway, my xmas present to myself this year was an Instant Pot pressure cooker -- the same one that Mark suggested on his site.  It had rave reviews on Amazon and was on sale so I went for it.  Even without paying any extra for quick shipping, it appeared at our door within a couple of business days.  After thoroughly reading the instructions and warnings I decided that chicken soup would be the first dish cooked with it.

Out came the frozen chicken thighs (bone in, skin on...duh!), celery, carrots, onion, garlic and olive oil.  The pot was washed, the veggies were prepped.  You can also saute in the cooker before adding the rest of the ingredients, so the veggies were fried in the oil for a few minutes before the (now-thawed) chicken and 8 cups of water were added.

Close and lock the lid, press the Soup button, and sit back.  I wanted to stand by to see what it would do along the way, and it performed like a pro.  It got up to temperature, then to pressure, and showed me how long it would remain at pressure; 30 minutes.  It even counted down to zero.  I was quite impressed, actually.  Once it had finished we realized that some of Lalah's curry powder mix (which we LOVE) should have been added prior to putting the lid on...so it was added at the end instead.  It was still super-yummy.

What's in store for 2013?

Apologies for my hiatus there...this blogging thing got real boring real quick.  Let's see if I can think of something more meaningful to say, shall we?

2012 was a year of change for me; after being in the same job for 7 years I was finally able to change to a new one, still with the same company, thankfully.  With this change I decided to take the opportunity to spruce myself up some, specifically by colouring my hair to hide the grey.  In an instant, people would insinuate once again that I was fresh out of school.  It's amazing what a little hair colour can do, eh?!

My new position also involves quite a bit of travel.  My first outing took me to sunny Houston, TX for two days, which was a nice escape from the start of our Canadian winter.  Next, after a couple of local assignments, I flew to Calgary, Alberta for a week, came home on the Friday evening, and flew to Halifax on the next Sunday afternoon, to spend a week there.  Both cities had such delicious food, it was hard...no, impossible, to eat primally.  So, I enjoyed myself and ate as much seafood as possible.  (If you're ever in downtown Halifax, go to Salty's, to their upper level restaurant.  The lobster bisque, butter-poached halibut and crab risotto were to DIE for.  Also, go to the middle level of The Lower Deck and enjoy their lobster chowder.  OMFG.)

Ahem...anyway, the food in Halifax was amazing.  The sales taxes sucked.

Now we're into the Christmas season (I don't practice any religion and neither does my family, yet we do the Christmas thing...for some reason) and I've been pretty good in my eating, though I've pretty much fallen off the primal wagon for the latter part of this year.  I have a new goal for 2013, which I'll get into in a moment, but it's time to whip this wet noodle back into shape.

In September 2013 hubby and I (along with whoever of my friends and family wish to participate) will be attempting to complete a Tough Mudder course here in the Toronto area.  It's a huge stretch for me/us, I know, but I also didn't think that shy little me would ever be a product trainer for my employer, either.  We're going to do it and have some fun, dammit!

I really didn't do a whole lot, exercise-wise, this past year.  I'm very soft and have gained back just a few pounds of the 20 that I had lost and kept off for almost 2 years.  Food preparation in our house got really tiring and I was bored of eating the same dishes that we'd cook.  Frankly, I got bored of cooking, too.  I'd come home from work, lounge around, force myself to do some school work, and hope that hubby would be in the mood to put something on the table, which I'd be happy to eat as long as I didn't have to make it.  It got really bad.  Even grocery shopping was a chore.

I'm back to having my daily bag of plantain crack, but it's not the insane addiction like it was before.  I usually have them as my breakfast if I'm not in a position to have bacon and eggs.  They are certainly better then having a muffin or bagel (barf!).

Both hubby and I want to bring more veggies into our diet; our problem is figuring out what to do with them in order to not get bored.  We're going through a bit of a lazy phase, so I think it might be reasonable to rely on canned or frozen veggies through the winter, and hopefully by spring we'll be happy to spend the energy on prep/cooking time again.

The Tough Mudder is going to be a huge challenge for us, but I'm determined to do it.  Let's see what progress we can make by next September.

Here's to a year of positive change and facing our fears. *Raises glass*

You can do it!

As stated in my last post, I had made the decision to "cut the (plantain) crack" cold turkey...and by golly, it worked!!  Sometimes the brain just takes you seriously when you tell it how it's going to be.  Amazing!

I haven't touched a single plantain chip since, and really haven't had the desire to.  I've even walked by them in the grocery store and kept going.  Determination is a wonderful thing. :)

That's IT. This addict is DONE!

If you are a returning reader you probably know about plantain crack.  That is, these little snack bags of spicy plantain chips under the brand name Fat Cats.  Well, for the past x number of months I've had a bag of these pretty much every day.  They're THAT good.  And addictive!

Occasionally, I'll be naughty and consume TWO bags in one day; it's happened maybe 2-3 times within the past month.  Now, while I could certainly be consuming something far worse, but I really feel a bit like a hopeless crack addict when this happens.  It happened again today, when I wasn't even hungry.  I was in the kitchen and the thought of these delicious chips popped into my head (I was standing near the shelf where I store the grocery bag of them in quantity).  Once that happens, there's no hope.  I'm eating those fuckers and enjoying every bit of it.

I hopelessly watched my hands grab the LAST BAG.  Then I felt myself walk over to the drawer to get the scissors and slice the top seam off.  I was on frigging auto-pilot, man.  It was at that moment that I decided that this was the last bag I'm going to eat and we're not going to buy any more, DAMMIT!!

This last bag was devoured hours ago and I feel afraid.  Afraid of what I'll eat for breakfast at work if I'm not devouring a bag of these chips like usual.  Wow.

Well THAT was fun...not.

Food journals suck.  There.  I'm not doing that anymore because it's like writing a book report -- torture.

Yesterday was a weird day - my appetite kept telling me to feed it, even though I wasn't really hungry, and I blame my tongue for wanting flavours of various kinds on it.  Flavour slut.  We'd had eggs for breakfast.  Then a bit later I tried shutting my tongue up by having a couple small pieces of 75% chocolate with PB on it.  It shut it up for about 5 minutes.

After trying to ignore it for a bit I decided to get some fat into me - that's supposed to satisfy hunger for awhile, right?  Took some lovely chicken broth gelatin from the fridge and warmed that up to drink.  Tasty as all hell, but freaking salty because when we cook our chicken thighs we coat them in EVOO and seasoned salt.  Anyway, tasty goodness.  That didn't last.  My brain and tongue were chanting "PLANTAIN CRACK!  PLANTAIN CRACK!!"

Again, I found myself on auto-pilot to get a bag of said crack and munched away, GUILTILY, while I did some review for my upcoming exam.  I love the taste of the spices on the plantain chips, but wow, are they ever addictive (hunny, don't you DARE take these away...I will hurt you).

I seemed to be okay until dinner after the bag of crack, thankfully.  Dinner was a boneless pork rib roast with bacon-wrapped asparagus as a side.  I couldn't eat all that much of my dinner, but somehow I was full/satisfied the rest of the night.

This morning my tummy was rumbling, so I had my coffee and will wait for the Sunday morning usual breakfast of bacon 'n eggs.  Mmmm.

In other news, my nasty rash has reappeared, but it's different this time in that it's not in the usual spot (underarms); it's mostly on my tummy and waist.  Check it out!

It's so bad at times that just pushing my fingernails into it will give me goosebumps.  Then of course I have to drag them across it a bit, but I've been experimenting with tea tree oil on it.  It will take away the sensitivity for a little while (and reduce the redness) but if I don't reapply within an hour or two it's back to square one.  Guess I'd better keep on top of that.

Taking charge...day 4

You know what?  I've always hated food journals.  Why the hell should I post, for the world to see, what all I've been inserting into my (former) pie hole, anyway??  Nobody cares but me, right?  And these are a bit of a pain in the arse to do, mostly because I can't update from work; we're expressly forbidden from posting on message boards using company computers (but I think everyone does it anyway).  Blah.  Anyway...

Today's eats:

- 3x coffee with almond milk
- Obligatory bag of plantain crack
- Leftovers from last night/Easter dinner; two chicken thighs with plenty of juice, with some mashed potato
- A bunch of blackberries
- A good amount of water

...Pause...
- For dinner, a panzerotto from Pizzaville (the result of lack of planning/defrosting, but oh so delicious!)
...Un-pause...

- Vitamin D3, fish oil, cal-mag
- More water

Shit, I gotta go take something out of the freezer for tomorrow night's dinner!