Hi there and welcome to my new blog! Yes, that was me who called one of my friends crazy when she told me that she had more than one blog - sorry Andrea! Well here I am joining her as I start up blog numero dos! My other blog, Run Lisa Run, was focused on my trials and tribulations of fundraising, training for and running a couple of marathons all to support the Arthritis Society, and I decided that I would leave that blog for that purpose and start up a new one instead of jumbling everything into one. I had been tossing around the idea of starting a new blog for a while, mostly for the purpose of keeping my family and friends up to date in my life since I've moved to the Okanagan. However, for the past two months I've also been making some changes in my life that people have been asking me about so I thought now would be as good a time to start blogging again and combine my general musings with my cooking blunders (and successes!) and recent lifestyle choices. Also, my Dad thinks I'm a good writer when I'm feeling inspired - thanks Dad!
In a world of ever changing health and fitness advice, I
have decided to embark upon a journey to find what works to keep me fit,
healthy and full of energy. I am not a doctor nor am I a nutritionist, I am
simply trying to sort through all of the advice and find what works for me. I have never been a fan of fad diets or taking "miracle pills" as I spent many years watching my Mom (and many others in my life) pour money into various different diet companies while not really seeing any long term results. I now find myself at a point in my life where I am working harder and harder to stay "naturally skinny" and am taking a closer look at my own diet. That point in my life is also commonly known as my mid-thirties and I did not see the health changes that happened along with it coming!
How is it that I didn't really have an issue with acne in my teens but now that I've hit my mid-thirties I have giant oil wells popping up all over not just my face but my back and decolletage! The eczema that used to pop up here and there, mostly because I wore something made of cheap metal or during the winter, has decided that my arms need a couple of permanent itchy, scaly patches to add to the allure of the sexy, acne prone, thirty-something body I have going on. I've struggled with IBS for years and have had to leave dinner parties early because I was so bloated I resembled someone who was five months pregnant - an awkward way to look while drinking wine around people you'd just met! I was taking all of these different issues in stride until I was rear ended almost 2 years ago and forced to sit and lay around for 3 months before being able to do any real form of exercise. All of a sudden the "eating anything I want because I'm a marathon runner" attitude caught up to me and BLAMMO - the weight started piling on.
My final straw to feeling how I was about the way my body was acting happened when I ran the marathon in the Bahamas this past January. I found it tough to train as I was always feeling sluggish and lacking energy. That lead to a serious lack in training, which then lead to running a marathon in the heat that I was ill prepared for. The result was having my legs seize up on me and having to walk the last 8 miles of that marathon just to cross the finish line for a cause I am so passionate about. Disappointing at best. Though I was proud that I had persevered and finished, there was no pride in how ill prepared I was for that day. I decided then that things needed to change and I needed to start that change when I returned home.
This is me 15 or so steps away from the finish line of the Bahamas marathon.
I made the decision to change two things immediately upon my return from the Bahamas that I had been thinking about since the beginning of January. The first was to drop obvious gluten from my diet to see if it would help with my IBS and eczema. This was not an easy decision for a pasta-loving, pizza-loving runner! The second was to get more whole foods into my body and use as little pre-packaged foods as possible. This one ended up being a little easier than I thought. I had a friend sign up for Young & Raw's green smoothie challenge in January and decided that I too would give it a try.
The results; I LOVED IT! I now have a green smoothie every morning for breakfast, usually a giant salad or a plate full of veggies for lunch and then a fairly normal-for-me dinner. I don't crave pizza or pasta, though I have had days where it would be a lot easier just to throw a pizza in the oven than to make a healthy dinner, I know along with that pizza comes the pain and bloating that I hate. My eczema has almost all cleared up, the bloating has been pretty much non-existent, and my thirty-something bout of teenage acne has cleared up amazingly well! Not only do I not crave pizza, pasta or bread, but I find myself craving greens, fruits and medjool dates as sweets. Who am I???
Change, for some, can be very scary and overwhelming, but it can also be exciting and bring you to amazing places in your life. I have been through a lot of changes over the past year. Through those changes I have learned a lot about who I am, the people I need to surround myself with and what I need to do to keep my body and mind healthy. In this ever changing life, I am hoping to find a healthy, happy, diet-free lifestyle that I can count on for years to come.
Health and happiness,
Lisa
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