Tag Archives: health

A Sleepless Night

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The journey isn’t always fun. Sometimes it’s a sleepless night with hopes for a better day.

My grandpa lived a full life in the middle of the night when he got older. He would leave bed, watch some tv, make a sandwich and read Louis L’Amour paperbacks. Of course, he would sleep half the day, taking naps on the couch.

He and his poor sleep schedule were on my mind the other night as I doom scrolled Instagram from bed between the hours of midnight and 3 a.m. It was midnight when I awoke and the room was stuffy so I got up for a sip of water and turned on the ceiling fan.

About four minutes after lying down and closing my eyes tightly, I was cold. So I got up and turned it off. Stuffy again. So back on it went and I wrestled a blanket and my pillow to my likeness. 

No matter what I do, I want to sleep on my left side but have read that sleeping with all your weight on your heart is a bad idea. That reminded me that heart problems run in the family.

I still have a chance at about five hours of rest if I go to sleep now.

Does the cat always bathe in bed in the middle of the night? Oh, look! My favorite writer is doing an online book club chat tomorrow night. I will register and then I will put down my phone and go back to sleep. 

So I put down the phone, closed my eyes again and realized that I was hungry. Dinner didn’t amount to much and lunch wasn’t great either.

Nope. Too bad. Midnight snacks are not good for you and I will not become my grandpa.

I was still wide awake at 2:43. I should get up and do something useful. Maybe cleaning the kitchen would wear me out enough to sleep. Or maybe I would end up on the couch watching Little House On The Prairie with some peanut butter toast.

I have got to get it together, I thought. Grandpa was retired. He could sleep all day if he wanted. I have a job where they expect me to show up and be smart.

Good grief. I’m going to have an anxiety attack right here in the comfort of my bed if I don’t get a grip. 

This does not bode well for my old age!

Every Day Can’t Count

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Make every minute count. You only live once. Carpe diem. You’ve heard all these phrases and more like them. 

Those people who insist that every day must count are well meaning, but man, they are exhausting. We get a finite amount of days in this life so it is best not to waste them. I get that. In fact, many people waste every single day and then complain the world is passing them by. We can’t do that either.

Unfortunately, every day can’t be the best, most productive day filled with breakthroughs or adventures. We can’t always be high energy and ready to tackle the world. Anyone who says different is either selling something or lying to themselves too. On the flip side of the coin, when our world turns small, it’s important to find ways to be fulfilled and to make life more meaningful.. 

There has to be a middle ground. 

Some days are only meant to be survived. These days don’t need to count – they just need to accumulate. Think of them as rungs on a ladder to help you get to the next step. You have to keep moving forward to get through this day and on to the next and the next and the one after that. 

Whether the days seem dreary and hopeless or the night long and dark, the night will eventually end, the clouds will move on and the sun will shine again. 

There’s a point every year that I need a mental health day but can’t get one in good conscience. It sucks but it’s character building. At least that’s my theory and it does help. After all, if you think that what you’re doing is good for you, it’s easier to keep going. 

So keep going. You’ll get there.

Do You Know How To Relax?

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When was the last time you just sat down and relaxed? It seems to be a dying art for most people in my life. I’m certainly not good at it. After all, I spend the bulk of my day working at my job or sleeping. My free time is split between responsibilities at home, occasional hikes and a day trip when I can fit one in but these have been rare lately. 

Sitting down to do nothing just hasn’t been a priority for several months and my mind tends to wander if I try. 

Once the Christmas Eve dishes were cleared and my family left on Sunday night, there was a moment of calm like I haven’t felt in a long time. I looked around and realized that the shopping and gift wrapping were done, the cookies baked, the meal was over and there was nothing left to be done for the holiday. All I needed to do was show up for gifts and a meal at my parents’ house the next morning. 

So I curled up on the loveseat and read a book. I read several chapters and savored the experience. Warm pjs, the glow of the Christmas tree and my little house panther Scout nearby made for a perfect end to the day. 

It felt downright luxurious. 

It would be nice to bottle the calm that made this possible. 

Am I alone in this? 

It’s not healthy to be so busy that you can’t relax. It can lead to poor sleep, tension in the neck and shoulders, headaches and digestive issues. It elevates your blood pressure and is detrimental to your mental health. I notice that some overly busy people in my life are caffeine addicted, tense and paranoid. Personally, I carry all my stress in my shoulders and would be in severe pain if not for the magic hands of my great chiropractor. 

And why? What do we have to gain by keeping ourselves so busy we can’t even sleep at night? 

Do you have tips for relaxing and for sitting still? Winter is a slower time for me and a more relaxing time at home so I suspect I’ll naturally remember how to do this but could probably use a little help getting started!

Life Around Here: December Edition

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Life around here has been off kilter for the last couple of months. It has been busier than I like and more stressful in some ways. Adventure season was shorter than normal this year as I opted to spend more time hiking and less time out running around. That has its pros and cons but the lack of going out and doing and seeing new stuff on Saturdays this fall has given life a different tone. 

I completed 75 miles as part of a Fall Hike Challenge over the course of two months. Those miles zig zagged through state parks, state forests and even a couple of nature preserves and mostly onto new trails rather than repeating the same ones as I’m prone to do. That’s a great thing. 

My annual Christmas weekend with a friend was a bust this year because she got sick at the last minute. I felt bad for her because she was sick and missed out on the fun. While I made the best of the circumstances and went anyway, it would have been more fun with my pal. I haven’t told any of the stories from that weekend here and need to do that soon. It was just a couple of days. While I stayed in Ohio’s Amish Country, I didn’t do much that people traditionally enjoy in Amish Country. Instead, I mostly opted for museums and shopping in surrounding counties. I’m not a fan of that area and have no reason to go back except that I did stay at a lovely bed and breakfast and enjoyed driving some back roads to see beautiful farmland. 

The headline lately is that pure and utter exhaustion has set in again along with a number of other issues I now recognize as symptoms of my hypothyroidism. So, it’s back to the doctor this  week to talk again about how I can’t live this way. Thyroid pain and fatigue are real so don’t doubt the people in your life who complain about their issues. Waking up in the morning is the hardest thing I do all day unless you count staying awake in the afternoon when my mind and body begin to beg for a nap. Diet does help along with rest, exercise, fluids, LOTS of Vitamin C and a little pill that contributes precious little but is part of the team. 

As the holidays approach, so has the cookie baking, rich meals and the comfort foods that make cold weather more pleasant. I’m weighing my options for how I want to retool my diet to better support my thyroid but am putting it off until after all that fun cookie baking is over.  I have been down this path before and know exactly what I need to eat but, man, it is hard to keep up with that kind of rigidity seven days a week. When I’m eating for thyroid health, there’s no processed food, no sugar or sweeteners of any kind, no dairy, no grains and very small amounts of gluten. I prepare every morsel of food I eat and only drink water. Whipping out a frozen dinner because you’re tired after a hard workday is not an option. You use the ingredients you have on hand to whip up a protein, vegetable and healthy fat or just go hungry. 

As hard as it is to prepare from scratch every bit of food I eat, it’s much easier when my head is in the game.

My head is not currently in the game. But I’ll get there. 

Meanwhile, the house is decorated and Christmas cards have been mailed. The days are getting shorter but the impending solstice means that we will soon start to gain daylight. I’m engaging in a Winter Hike Challenge. Our goal is fifty miles and we’ve already completed twelve. I hope to surpass this goal but we’ll see what winter brings. 

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. I always hoard vacation time for year end and have a reasonably long break upcoming. It can’t come a moment too soon and I’’m looking forward to some time to rest, spend at home and maybe even go out on an adventure or two. Once we finish up Christmas, I’ll be shifting gears into the next season – my Winter No Spend Challenge when I commit to staying home and using what I already own rather than being on the go so much. This is when I reset my habits for the year opting for rest over running around, for getting creative with ingredients from the back of the pantry instead of shopping and spending more time doing quiet things I truly enjoy – hiking, reading, puzzles, movies and puttering around the house. 

This is when I’ll buckle down on nutrition and try to get back into some kind of daily exercise habits that support my angry thyroid. 

I have big plans but these habits I want to build are manageable because self care and wellness can be the focus of my time. Not to mention, many go together. I’m a fan of habit stacking. When you commit to staying home and resting, it’s easier to find time to cook, to sleep, to write, to exercise and to engage in the self care habits you believe are important. When you eat whole foods, your body naturally craves more water and naturally has more energy to propel you into a mindset of wanting to exercise. 

See where I’m going with this? You can apply this mindset to your own life as well by studying your own habits and desires to create goals that support each other. 

So, this is where I am right now. I’m tired and stretched thin. I have ideas for how I want to be but still have a mountain of work on the job and at home to trudge through before I can get there. That’s ok. It just means I’m needed and it means I’ll appreciate better days when they arrive.

For this I am grateful. 

Tell me, what’s happening in your world? Are you stretched thin? Feeling great? Wishing for more time? Tell me all about it!

Rest

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A sinus issue that I have been fighting for over a week seems to have settled in to stay. It’s the dry kind that makes your sinus cavities hurt and that causes pain in the gums. The strain of it all causes fatigue.

Last night, after work, I did something out of character and went to bed. My to-do list can wait. Yesterday’s lunch dishes can wait too. Sometimes a gal just needs to rest.

When you don’t feel well, just rest and reset. Maybe today will be better.

Thyroid, Nutrition And Next Steps

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The last year has been a work in progress where my hypothyroidism is concerned and these last few months have been about food experimentation.

Read all the articles you like but it isn’t until you begin playing with your food that you comprehend how food can help or hurt your body.

Regular readers are familiar with my Whole 30 journey which ended after 43 days of whole foods and no sweeteners, dairy, soy or grains. Then I took a break for most of June when it seemed to be a parade of meals outside my control.

I used this time to stretch boundaries and learned that they don’t stretch very far. When I ate Whole 30 for those 43 days, I felt great and had tons of energy. Since stopping, my energy has gradually waned and some of the pain has come back.

So I started a new round on Saturday. Only, this time will be different. This time, I’m working to make the Whole 30 way of eating the norm rather than something that has a beginning and an end. This time, I’m allowing vanilla yogurt with a small amount of sweetener because I like yogurt and life with plain yogurt is just too basic.

There normally is no room for mistakes when you do Whole 30. Make a mistake today and you’ll start again tomorrow. This time, if I need to go off script for a meal, I will just keep going with the next meal.

You can lie to yourself about all manner of things but your body will never lie to you when it is feeling abused or neglected.

I really haven’t eaten that badly until the last few days of my break when I developed a “last supper” complex, eating fried food, popcorn and Oreos.

I didn’t feel good about it at all. Three days in and it feels like I’m detoxing a bit and am looking forward to feeling good again in a few days.

One other thing to note – I had fallen into the habit of blaming my thyroid and having negative thoughts toward this small gland that is basically command central for the human body. It’s a big responsibility. But it isn’t my thyroid’s fault that it is under siege. So I am flipping the narrative to speak with words of support rather than contempt. No more calling it “my stupid thyroid!”

Thyroid disease is life altering for most patients but I refuse to give in and just live with it for the sake of a cookie. So today, I will double down on nutrition, rest and water consumption.

It’s the first day of the rest of my life and I’m dedicated to making it count. I hope you do the same in whatever way is good for you.