better
There are those points in everyone's life, where you can foresee an event that's going to rock your world from top to bottom. Mine happened last week with the death of my father in law. It was an inevitability - his disease had progressed to a point where we knew it was coming, but it wasn't something we expected to happen THIS FAST. And yet we were there, and it was an absolutely insane time.
The stress and grief of losing a parent is something I'm awfully familiar with, almost too intimately. Watching my husband go through the loss of his father has been difficult. He has a lot of emotions built up over it - frustration, anger, exhaustion, sadness, relief... I'm sure there are so many more. No sooner than he passed, we went straight into funeral planning and we are just now starting to settle back down. Out of town family has finally left, kids are back in school, people are going to work and today is the first day in a long time I've been home alone. It's glorious.
All of this to say that stress and grief can derail your health. Exhaustion, poor food choices, lack of time for yourself, dehydration- all these things can sneak up on you in a heartbeat. My downfall has been access to crappy food with no time to prepare better choices. Maybe that's a poor choice of words. Maybe it's more that I valued the ease of grabbing fried chicken rather than taking time to cook something better. And believe me, I ate the damn chicken. And pecan pie. And drank a LOT of Diet Dr Pepper.
Since starting a very lazy keto diet, I've been really good at cutting out sugar and gluten. Reintroducing that stuff has been hard on me. It's messed with my skin, with my energy levels and with my ability to get good sleep. Add all that to my messed up back (poor shoe choices and lots of standing) and I'm BEAT. I've been fighting my doctors and pharmacy, trying to get my medicines figured out, arguing with my husband over the dumbest things, and I'm over all of it.
The goal this week? Get back on track. I've got to heal up my back, choose the better foods, get back to walking (if only for the peacefulness I get from it), and work on my mood. Choosing to be happy and nice and caring and calm and all those virtuous things is a challenge for me. It's damn near impossible for me. My sharp tongue, quick temper, and depression/anxiety make me miserable. I have to actively choose better. Most of the time I fail, but these next weeks are demanding and I MUST do better. Say better. Act better. Eat better. Live better. Love better.
The stress and grief of losing a parent is something I'm awfully familiar with, almost too intimately. Watching my husband go through the loss of his father has been difficult. He has a lot of emotions built up over it - frustration, anger, exhaustion, sadness, relief... I'm sure there are so many more. No sooner than he passed, we went straight into funeral planning and we are just now starting to settle back down. Out of town family has finally left, kids are back in school, people are going to work and today is the first day in a long time I've been home alone. It's glorious.
All of this to say that stress and grief can derail your health. Exhaustion, poor food choices, lack of time for yourself, dehydration- all these things can sneak up on you in a heartbeat. My downfall has been access to crappy food with no time to prepare better choices. Maybe that's a poor choice of words. Maybe it's more that I valued the ease of grabbing fried chicken rather than taking time to cook something better. And believe me, I ate the damn chicken. And pecan pie. And drank a LOT of Diet Dr Pepper.
Since starting a very lazy keto diet, I've been really good at cutting out sugar and gluten. Reintroducing that stuff has been hard on me. It's messed with my skin, with my energy levels and with my ability to get good sleep. Add all that to my messed up back (poor shoe choices and lots of standing) and I'm BEAT. I've been fighting my doctors and pharmacy, trying to get my medicines figured out, arguing with my husband over the dumbest things, and I'm over all of it.
The goal this week? Get back on track. I've got to heal up my back, choose the better foods, get back to walking (if only for the peacefulness I get from it), and work on my mood. Choosing to be happy and nice and caring and calm and all those virtuous things is a challenge for me. It's damn near impossible for me. My sharp tongue, quick temper, and depression/anxiety make me miserable. I have to actively choose better. Most of the time I fail, but these next weeks are demanding and I MUST do better. Say better. Act better. Eat better. Live better. Love better.
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