Doctors Orders!

When speaking to my doctor about my lifestyle change the other day, she was very adamant about two points:

1. Eat more protein! She was most excited to convey this point to me. Protein is the building blocks for our body and she explained that when your body is sick or coping with an abnormal situation (i.e. a cyst from hell on your nerve root) it needs even more protein to maintain itself without feasting on your muscles. Protein has never been priority numero uno for me and in fact I rarely ever ate meat even before I decided to become vegetarian. This further shows my ignorance in the matter that I only ever associated protein with meat! This explains where I went wrong and how this misunderstanding of nutrition might have leaded me astray. Evidently there are tons of plant sources that offer complete proteins. In order to help fulfill this protein need I purchased Olympian Labs Pea Protein, which has something like 25 grams of protein and only like 100 or so calories; which is great because I am not trying to win an Ironman competition. The other bonus is that I can now have a shake as the main course for lunch. This means less time stressing out over what the hell I am going to make out of vegetables that would resemble a turkey and cheese sandwich with salt and vinegar chips...no easy task.

2. Exercise when you can! Muscle deterioration is of high concern for any individual that may become less active or bed ridden for whatever medical reason. Because it causes pain to move around too much, we Tarlovians tend to go into overprotective mode, trying to prevent one of those lovely, and all body consuming flare ups. As a result our level of physical activity plummets. There are certainly things that we cannot and should not do, but there are also tons of things that we should and aren't doing (if you are like me!). Over the last year or so I have watched all of the muscle in my body go to shit and find it tiring to do very much. This is not good and definitely not helping my cause. The body needs to be in top fighting condition in order to take on something as big as this, not to mention the increase in endorphins that would benefit my mindset. To compensate, I have begun doing 10 minutes of a stretch video (will work my way up to 20 minutes), 3 sets of ten calf lifts, and hand weights for at least 6 minutes (in a commercial for the new shaker weight it suggests doing it 6 minutes a day so that is where my timeframe came from).

I know making these improvements will speed my healing. That is the thing about cleaning up your diet and removing toxins from your thought process, you become very self-aware and able to see things clearly and listen to that little voice inside you that prompts you to make the right choices. And it is all about choices. I told my husband the other day that I realized my body had not been a democracy before. My mind made all the choices on behalf of my liver, kidneys, heart, spine, etc. How is that fair? It might have been except that my mind was selfish and it only cared about its every whim being satisfied. Meanwhile the rest of me paid the price and continues to. I am glad to have this wisdom now though and have diligently been working on creating a more bipartisan system. Sure the government can't do it, but my body is way more intelligent then those yahoos in congress. Believe me, so it yours.