SO MUCH to be thankful for as the sun shines brightly upon us this Friday afternoon! I worked for a couple of hours early this morning before Doug had to head off to work, and one of my co-workers asked me (around 7:30am) if I was ready for the weekend. My answer to him was that heck, I'm ready for TODAY! I absolutely love feeling that way, especially at 7:30 in the morning, and double especially when at that time of the day I am already up, dressed, at work, Spark down the hatch (mango-strawberry this morning, yummy!!), and ready to go! I know I make a big deal about that, and for many people 7:30am is not that early or is a "normal" time to be up and ready for the day, but this has so not been my normal for many years. There was a time when I did get up around 7am many days and attended college classes and worked full-time. But then my digestion problems set in, and my daily quality of life was altered. My guts weren't work properly, my body didn't get much rest even when sleeping, and I had to try different medications to help things run smoothly and those had side effects, and I got into these cycles and ruts of feeling okay-feeling awful-feeling pretty good-feeling awful again. I didn't want to eat, because food seemed the root cause of the problems, but I had to eat or I'd feel even worse, or get starving and binge on unhealthy food. I am a strong-willed, confident, determined woman, and it took me a long to to accept that what was going on with my guts was pretty much out of my control. I can make things better or worse, depending on what and how I eat, if I exercise and keep my body moving, if I take my meds and try new things when my GI doc recommends them. But I have issues that don't really have remedies, so I will most likely feel some level of digestive discomfort 24/7 the rest of my life.
So what does one do with this? Crawl into bed and just sleep through life? I've tried that, it only got me more depressed. Get out there and go crazy with life? Not in my nature to try that one! Ignore the problems and just live "normally"? What is normal anyway?! For me, I've learned to adapt to the discomfort, and to live one day at a time, and to do what I can to live each of those days to the fullest.
Picture how you feel after overindulging in a meal, complete with greasy appetizers and rich dessert; how bloated you feel, how much you just want to sit and not move while the food tries to settle. This is how I feel all the time. No joke, All. The. Time. A combination of severe lactose intolerance (inability to properly process lactose in dairy), mild gastroparesis (stomach muscles not moving at a normal pace), GERD (severe acid reflux disease), repeated bouts of SIBO (small intestine bacterial overgrowth), ideopathic constipation (no know reason or cause), and slow-moving intestines (digestive dysmotility, or what I call my sluggish system), is what causes me to feel this way. I've been through every test my GI doc can think of to rule things out or try to find what's wrong, and he is always trying to come up with something new we can try to help me find relief, but aside from being pregnant (when I was so big it didn't bother me to feel bloated!), there hasn't been much relief to be found. Pregnancy went great as far as my guts, and with both my kids I felt fabulous for awhile after having them; I figure something in the hormones must temporarily reset my GI system or something crazy like that, or else God's just been extra kind to give me a few months of relief while I tended to the nonstop needs of newborns! But pregnancy is not something I plan on doing again, so as I started to feel more and more bloated and uncomfortable the last several months, I realized that I had better stop anything I was doing to make it worse, and take another look at new options. Because for several years now I have not been doing all that I can to help my body function better. I don't exercise. I eat dairy (lactose) regularly. I eat fried foods (not a good idea when your stomach already processes food slowly). I eat sporadically, then get so hungry my blood sugars drop and I have to chow down on sweets to stop the shakes. I sit around a lot instead of being up and moving. I oversleep. I drink too much caffeine and get dehydrated. The list goes on, but you get the idea!
So I was feeling this way 4 years ago, and was putting on some weight, but told myself "no worries, you want another baby, you can figure it out after that." And then I was pregnant, and I did feel pretty awesome for about 6 months after having Joel. And then all the digestive issues came creeping back in, and fast forward to now, and feeling stuck on the bottom of that feeling awful cycle and feeling no hope for getting out of the rut. There was a bit of hope when my GI doc got me started on a high-grade probiotic, but it really only brought temporary, partial relief, and then the hope was sucked out of me again. And I realized that I could let myself continue this way; putting on the happy face and telling everyone I'm good, but being cranky and snippy and depressed at home, the housework not getting done, bills not getting paid on time, watching my kids run around and allowing them to get on my ragged nerves rather than finding the joy in their silliness. Or, I could let that hope back in, trust that the good Lord was not giving me more burden than I had the strength to handle, and seek some new ways to get myself out of the rut. One thing that I have never lost faith in is that God does have my life under control and is helping me get through difficult times, and He does not place struggles in my life, but rather is the hope and peace who gets me through the struggles. Feeling unhealthy and depressed is indeed a struggle! But it is also within my control, with God's helping hands, to get myself out of the cycle of unhealthy laziness and onto the path of good health and energy.
Because our God is an awesome God, He puts in our paths the right people, at the right time, with the right wisdom. I have been fortunate to walk the path of life for the last several years with a lovely friend who continued to remind me, even at my lowest, that hope was within my reach. She presented that hope to me by way of telling me her story, and what she had done over the past several months to get out of her own rut. She wasn't pushy, she didn't try to sell me anything, she simply let me know that when I was ready to listen, truly listen, she felt that what she had found would also work for me. And when the time was right for me, when I was truly ready to listen, I did. And I am so happy to say that she was right! And thanks to her, and AdvoCare, and the 24 Day Challenge, I am finally feeling that my lazy, unhealthy, inactive self has real hope of being the energetic, fulfilled, active woman that I want to be for my family. I'm feeling better, I'm eating better, I'm off the couch and out of bed, and I'm making positive changes for myself that are having amazing results that are outwardly visible to those around me. And I love knowing that I might be able to bring that hope to someone I care about, as my dear friend brought it to me.
I am not here to push products on you or to force you onto the 24 Day Challenge. But I am here to share my story, and I am here to offer you that same hope that I was offered at a time when I was feeling hopeless. I know that God brought me to the place I'm at now, and placed in my path the people I needed at the time I needed them, and I know that He wants me to open myself up, challenge myself, and to be that person on your path if and when you need me. He has told us to seek, and we shall find; to ask, and we shall receive; to knock, and the door will be opened. If you are feeling hopeless, unhealthy, sad, full of excuses, I encourage you to seek, to ask, and to knock. I will open my door to you, and will stand by you as you take a very important step on your path to good health, energy, and happiness.
I am so glad that I sought answers, asked questions, and knocked on my friend's door.
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