FertilehealthyAiming for success, not perfection…

I made it through the first week in my temp job!  Let me tell you all about it…

First of all, there is simply no time for blogging during the week.   I leave home no later than 6:30 in the morning and I get home somewhere between 6 and 7 in the evening.  Then I make supper, eat, prepare my food for the next day, have some face time with my husband, maybe do a load of laundry and go to sleep no later than 10 pm.

This week I was encouraged to explore different starting and quitting times to see if I could find a “window” in the traffic.  Alas no, it takes me an hour in the morning to cover the 25 km (15.5 miles) and slightly less than an hour in the afternoon.  So, from Monday I will be starting at 7:30 am and working till 4:30 pm.  Then, because I am right there in the best walking spot in the Cape, I will change into workout clothes and go for a walk on the Promenade with my iPod, before driving home.  That means I’ll get home at about 6:30 pm…

Thursday night I only got home after 7, so I phoned Craig and told him which recipe to make.  He did great!  It’s nice to have him to fall back on.

As far as food goes, I did great this whole week.  I made myself a huge fruit salad (in a 1.6 liter – 54 oz- container), sprinkle it with mint, ginger, cinnamon, freshly squeezed orange juice and tahini or seeds.  This is breakfast.  For lunch I eat a huge salad with either chickpeas or lentils.  I haven’t set foot in the staff canteen and declined the chocolates and muffins I’ve been offered.  My food is absolutely delicious and only takes about twenty minutes to make in the evening.  I take the food, as well as a few loose apples and a 50 ounce bottle of filtered water, in a cooler bag which I keep under my desk.

Of course, Craig has now decided that the fruit salad looks so delicious that he wants some to take to work too!

Understandably, I’m tired in the evenings.  We eat our supper on the back porch, and then lie on the grass talking and gazing at the stars for a while, before drinking a cup of herbal tea and going to bed.  My life has shrunk tremendously.

The work itself is frustrating at the moment.  The first few days I felt very lost, but as it all comes back to me, I am appalled at the poor quality work and the lack of proper systems.  I would like nothing better to clean up the mess, implement proper systems and delete all their epic and truly pointless spreadsheets, but I have to remember that I’m only there for three months…  It’s a good thing I learned so much about detachment from Evita, because if I didn’t have that I would have been very stressed.   I won’t lie to you, I have had two or three moments where I’ve felt like grabbing my cooler bag and going home and I’ve even shed a few surreptitious tears, but overall I’m doing well.  I think the walking after work will also do wonders to dispel any tension that may build up.

For me the hardest thing about going back to work is being with people all the time.  I share an office with five other women and although they’re nice enough, they’re also chatty and moany.   Boy, can they moan!  Between them, someone is always sleepy, hungry, headachy, tired, cold, hot, constipated or lazy and they proclaim it constantly.  It’s very distracting and tiring and will take some getting used to.  Detachment…

My clothes fit beautifully and are very comfortable (I’ll see if I can take some pictures some time soon).  I must just buy a pair of black flats and a jacket or a jersey and I’ll be totally fitted out.  I’ve taken a shawl to work, since the aircon is stuck on “arctic” and blows right onto my back.   We’ve been waiting for a technician to come and fix it all week.  Leaving it off is just too hot and stuffy, so I just cover my back and neck and then I’m fine.

I made myself  some CD’s of my favorite songs and sing loudly and with absolute abandon in the traffic.  Sure, I get some strange looks, but you know, I’m living my life for me, not them.  It’s that “dance like nobody’s watching” kind of thing…

I do try to read a few blog posts while I’m eating breakfast and lunch at my desk, but I’ve fallen woefully behind.   I’ll see if I can catch up on weekends.

At this stage my mantra is, “It’s only for 3 months“, but that I really don’t hate it.  I’ll keep  you posted.

PS.  I have news on the health front too!  First of all, I definitely have way more energy than I’ve had for a long, long time.  But the best news is that my new enzymes have kicked in and… my appetite has decreased.  For as long as I can remember I’ve had a voracious appetite, but for the last 10 days or so I’ve noticed that I’m satisfied after only one serving at supper time.  In fact, the other night we went out and I couldn’t even finish my meal (we only had one course)!  This has never happened to me!  It all points to the fact that my body is getting the nutrients it needs during the day – all that fruit, raw veggies and legumes.  I feel almost normal.

In the last edition of Two Fit Chicks and a Microphone Carla and Shauna answered a question about food tracking and Carla said something that really resonated with me:

“I’m just not that fascinated with numbers“.

I immediately realized that that was me.  Which is strange, considering that up to three years ago I earned my living as an accountant, and a good one at that!

I used to make lists, graphs, spreadsheets, etc for everything.  For most of the last three years I used these to track my weight loss and exercise.

And then one day I deleted them all.

I had finally accessed the other parts of my brain.  The experiential part.  The part where I could enter into a relationship with my body and feel first-hand what was happening in my body, without having to rely on the scale, the tape measure or a pedometer to tell me.

I had finally stopped being an accountant and started being a sentient being.

One of the reasons why I had wanted to stop working was to get to know myself and have the opportunity and the time to start taking proper care of myself.  Sure, we had to adjust our lifestyle a bit to compensate for the fact that we only had one income, but ultimately it wasn’t that bad.  To me the benefits have been amazing.  I am not the same Hanlie I was three years ago.

It was only supposed to be for six months, but after a while I became adamant that I was never going to do accounts again or work for a boss again.  At one stage, when Craig got rather persistent, I had something close to a nervous breakdown.  My freedom meant an awful lot to me.

So nobody was more surprised at my reaction last week when I got a call to ask if I would be interested in a temporary accountant position at a beach-side hotel in Cape Town while their accountant recovered from three consecutive strokes.  Previously I had stammered out a quick “NO” to these calls, but this time I was interested!

I told the recruiter that I would have to speak to my husband first – after all this would affect him too!  He would have to pitch in with domestic duties if I was going to be working long hours again.  This includes grocery shopping, watering the garden, cleaning the house, doing laundry and having supper on the table if he’s home before me.  He was so overcome by the idea of the great salary – even if it’s just for a few months – that he was only too glad to pledge his support.

So, I went for an interview on Wednesday.  The last time I was forced to go went for an interview (with a recruiter) I couldn’t stop crying while getting ready.  This time I was just excited.  I didn’t even blink when I unearthed my much-hated smart heels that haven’t seen the light of day in three years.

I got the job!  I start on Monday.  And yes, I did have a meltdown on Wednesday afternoon.  It’s a big thing, you know.  But I keep reminding myself that it’s just temporary.  I haven’t been sold into slavery.

I am actually very excited.

My mom and I went on a major clothing shopping expedition yesterday.  I won’t be wearing a uniform, since obviously they have nothing in my size lying around and I’m not going to be there all that long.  So I got four beautiful pairs of black pants, two black tops and two gray shirts.  My mom is making me a cream and black striped top this weekend.  My biggest criteria was that the clothes should not need ironing.  I got three new bras that cost the earth, but man, they do the job beautifully.  Craig had given me his Amex card and phoned me regularly to inquire in a rather worried tone about how much I was spending, but I was having so much fun.  I haven’t spoiled myself in ages.  So what if these clothes may only fit me for three months?  They’ll see a lot of wear in those three months and I will feel beautiful and professional.  That makes it worth every penny in my book.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may recall that I also vehemently declared on more than one occasion that I will never wear black again.

Bah! That will teach me to use the word “never”!

For now I’m making the most of my last few days of freedom…

Have you ever said “never” to something and then gone ahead and done it?  Did you enjoy it?

If you’ve read the last four posts, you’ll know that I’ve come to a very interesting place in my journey.  Let me tell you, it couldn’t have come at a better time.  I believe that there are no coincidences, so I’ll just be grateful and make the most of the knowledge I now have.

Recent events have made me much more interested in my weight.  I was not a fat child or teenager.  Tall and big-boned, yes, but not fat or even overweight.

So how did I get from normal to super-morbidly obese?  And in a relatively short period of time, at that?

Sure, I’ve always loved food.  I was not one of those kids whose mother fretted about my not eating anything.  I ate!  And yes, I did turn to food for comfort on occasion.

I wasn’t a sporty, or even a very active child.  You were more likely to find me with a book than swinging in the trees or on the sports field.  But I walked or cycled to school and everywhere else from about the age of 12, round about the time my appetite exploded.  So the weight stayed stable.

At university I was also always on foot, but that didn’t prevent me from gaining the obligatory 10 pounds most first years have to contend with.

The next weight gain occurred when I went to France to work as a nanny.  After three years of institutional food, the fluffy baguettes, French cheeses and daily snack time won me over in no time and I gained about 15 pounds.  This time you could see the difference, but I still looked fairly normal, as you can see in the picture.

Shortly after returning from France, I drifted into the hotel industry.  The hours were irregular, the food was provided and the booze flowed generously.  Yet, I was still walking a lot, since I didn’t have a car and my weight remained stable.  I hadn’t lost the 25 extra pounds I’d put on since leaving home, but I was still firm and my stomach was as flat as a board.

The women in my family tend to carry extra weight on their hips and thighs.  I was no different.

Around the time of my 25th birthday, I married my first husband and got a car.  One day I was lying in bed and noticed that my stomach was lying next to me.  WTF!  A guest at the hotel asked me when I was due.

Something weird was happening.  I was getting a belly.  I gained a whopping 90 pounds in the space of one year!

It seems crazy to say that I didn’t really notice at the time, but there was so much going on at the time.  My marriage was a disaster (very chaotic) and we had just moved from the country to the city, where I was trying to find work and get settled.  I was battling depression.  Strangely enough, we were eating “healthier” than I’d been when I was single and I was definitely drinking less.  Yet, the weight piled on.

From there on, the weight increased steadily for another ten years (through my divorce and the acquisition of a binge-eating habit),  until 2008 when I started changing my eating habits and managed to lose some weight.

Slowly.  Think continental-drift-speed.  Unless I was doing something drastic, like a cleanse or a juice feast, in which case I managed to lose weight and keep it off.

This lack of pace seriously messed with my head and made me rather inconsistent in my motivation.  I believed in my methods, but I knew that something was amiss in my body and took out my frustration on myself, time and time again, thwarting my best efforts.

I got that I needed to heal my body first before weight loss became a reality.  I knew I was on the right track, and I had many improvements, but it was not enough.

Then I met Vilma and Jackie and the true picture of my weight loss, but more importantly my weight gain, emerged.  Even before she tested me, Vilma told me that my weight distribution looks hormonal.  I started waffling about my thyroid, but she said that it’s most likely the pituitary gland.  She was right, the test showed that my pituitary was hardly working at all.

A few weeks later Craig and I were watching a Mary-Ann Shearer DVD and she talked about alcohol and how it affects the pituitary.  She said that a lot of young women don’t realize that their drinking can bring on a sudden weight gain around the waist when they reach their mid-twenties.  Holy Batman, that was me!

Add to that the fact that I had stopped exercising round about that time and you can see why my whole endocrine system just fell apart.  Exercise goes a long way towards keeping things balanced in the body – in fact it affects 18 different hormones.

Yes, I ate too much and I ate badly, but that alone would have resulted in my ass, hips and thighs going, well, pear-shaped.  Instead I became a luscious apple with a belly that qualified for its own zip code.

You have no idea what these revelations mean to me emotionally and mentally.  There were times when I couldn’t face living in this body for one more day.  I didn’t want to be me anymore.  If I couldn’t get better I wanted to die.

Now I know that I can get better and my life feels meaningful again.  I have hope.

Of course, I’m not expecting the weight to just fall of me.  I will still have to do the work – eat well, exercise and (mostly) avoid the things that negatively affect the hormonal system, like alcohol, caffeine, refined sugar and flour, heated fats, and vinegar.

Bring it on.

Right, so now we now what is wrong with me, what it means and what I’m doing to correct it.  It’s time to answer the big question…

Is the treatment working?

I was warned after the first visit that I would feel tired and “down” for a few days.  That started round about Christmas time, continued right through our vacation in the Karoo – where I slept 16 hours a day – and lasted for most of January.  How I managed to move house remains a mystery.  To say that I was emotional would be like saying that Jimmy Hoffa is hard to reach.

To top it all, I broke out in painful boils (3 of them!), the chronic dermatitis on my hands went ballistic and I got a hellish eye infection that closed up one of my eyes.  I felt like a million dollars, all right – all green and crumpled.

So yes, I knew it was working!

I’ve done enough detoxes in my life to know that you always feel worse before you feel better.  And I had never quite felt this bad before.  I figured that I was either dying or my body was working on a bunch of stuff.

Towards the end of January something amazing happened.  I woke up one morning and I felt that I could face the day.  I managed to do a few chores and the effort didn’t wipe me out.  I felt more grounded and even emotionally.

The next day was even better.  And every day after that.  Now I’m convinced that I haven’t felt this good in more than a decade.

Yes, I’m still fat.  Yes, TOM is still a trial (although there’s no PMS).  No, I didn’t ovulate these last two months.  Yes, I still get up about three times a night to empty my bladder.

But you know what?  The dermatitis on my hands (which she’d ascribed to my poor liver function) has cleared up completely.  My hands are as smooth as a baby’s bottom (maybe not a newborn’s…).  I have energy.  I feel up to facing LIFE again.  I get things done.  And I feel good!

But that is all very subjective.  I was most curious to see what the BEST machine would reveal when I went for a second test.

I found out this morning and the news is amazing!

I have made so much progress!

*  My progesterone is still on the low side, but greatly improved.

*  My liver is working again.  The kick start worked beautifully.  Hence the healthy hands.

*  My water retention has also improved tremendously.

*  All the bad bacterial, viral and fungal stuff are gone.

*  My insulin response is now normal.

That is after only two months!  I am very pleased.

There are some problems which we are still working on:

*  My pituitary problem has been with me for upwards of 15 years (more about that tomorrow), so getting it going and balancing the hormones will take some time.  There was significant improvement though.  We’re continuing with the treatment.

* Most of the parasites are gone, but the giardia is proving to be quite tenacious, so I’ll be doing another round of deworming.

*  My lymphatic system is still sluggish.  We’re starting treatment now.

*  We’re also treating the adrenals now.

Both the ladies (Vilma has been training a partner, Jackie), remarked on how well I look compared to two months ago.  They did a great job with me!  I am so grateful! And so relieved.

I’m getting better!

And the best part?  Apparently, I will start losing weight now…

Now that we know what is wrong with me and how it affects my health, weight and fertility, we can tackle the major issues.  Because everything is connected, an improvement in one area will impact many of the other conditions in a positive way.

None of these problems require medication or surgery, so there was no need to see a doctor.  Apart from a few vital natural remedies, the treatment consists of sound nutrition and good lifestyle habits.  We are letting the body heal itself, something it is designed to do when given the right tools.

I was very pleased to hear that nutritionally I was on the right track.  I should indeed be eating a predominantly plant-based, dairy-free, whole-food, high-raw diet.  The reason why improvement has been slow in the past is because of my poor absorption of nutrients – I need the nutrients to get everything working perfectly again.  I need the enzymes from plenty of raw food and vegetables and I need plenty of essential fatty acids in the form of nuts, seeds, avocados, olives and flax oil.  This is no time to cut calories – I should be feeding my body well so that it can get better.  Then the weight will come off, because my appetite, metabolism, blood sugar, liver, etc. will be working properly.

Of course, having been eating this way for a while is an enormous bonus.  I would have continued to improve on my own, albeit very slowly.  The problem with that is that I used to get frustrated and flame out from time to time, which of course slowed down my progress even more.

Remember that I mentioned flaccid arteries?  Well, that is because I have been slack with regards to cardio.  If you want your arteries to be toned, you have to raise your heart rate for at least 20 minutes most days.  Exercise will also greatly improve the functioning of the lymphatic system.  And did you know that cardiovascular exercise stimulates 18 different hormones in the body?  It is especially beneficial to the thyroid gland.  So, I’m back in the saddle as far as exercise is concerned.  I’m not going to kill myself  – it’s all about sustainability for me.  And having fun of course!  Thanks for the music recommendations – I’m loving my iPod and it will go a long way towards keeping me active.

She was very pleased that I was taking barley grass powder.  I think I’ll do a post about the benefits of green juice powders in the near future, but for now just now that it’s probably the healthiest thing you can put into your body and it goes a long way towards helping maintain the acid/alkaline balance in the body and preserving the bones.  She made me double up my dosage.

For the low progesterone I had been using a natural progesterone cream.  She kept me on it.

For both the pituitary and the liver she prescribed specific herb and enzyme preparations, available from select pharmacies.  They are designed to restore their normal function, so I won’t have to take them for a very long time.  My friend T also had very poor pituitary function, but showed significant improvement after one month.  In fact, she fell pregnant in the second month she was using the product.  I think in my case it may take longer, since I’ve had these problems for many years.

The parasite infestation is probably the easiest to treat.  Did you know that an estimated 90% of people have intestinal parasites?  We get them from poorly washed produce (even if it’s organic!), meat, our pets, soil (when gardening), inadequately treated water, etc.  A diet consisting of lots of animal products, refined sugars and flours and processed foods will cause them to multiply out of control and affect your health in numerous ways.  For instance, they steal your nutrients, which is why I hadn’t been benefiting as I should have from my nutrient-dense diet.  I wrote a post about parasites and the implications for our health and weight two years ago.  I did a parasite cleanse in January and I’m curious to see how effective the product she recommended was when I visit her again.  I am now soaking all produce in an organic fruit and vegetable wash before using them.

As for the infections, I was not going to opt for antibiotics under any circumstances and she agreed with me.  Instead we are working towards strengthening my immune system with nutrition and a herbal and enzyme preparation that acts as a natural antibiotic.

There are a number of smaller issues which we will address in time.  To start with we concentrated on the major problems – parasites, liver and pituitary.  Sorting these out should go a long way towards clearing up the others (everything is connected, remember), but I’m sure she will have solutions if they are persistent.

I am seeing her again on Monday morning, so stay tuned for a progress report and an account of my experiences and observations over the eight weeks since starting the treatment.

Have a great weekend!