Playing to My Strengths

Its harder for me to give up a behavior, pattern or coping mechanism than to start a new one.  I find myself fighting with myself, trying to change me, trying to stop doing this or that.

I had had a string of migraines starting. It had gone on for a few months, speckling my landscape with miserable moods, fatigue and pain. Although I have a pretty good attitude about things like this, it creeps up on me: I started to feel like I was having a hard time making plans to do things socially and that made me feel defeated, and afraid of how unpredictable it was all becoming. 

When I tried a medication that helped, I realized what a relief I felt by having an "out" and that made me realize how trapped I really had been feeling.  The medications are not something I want to pile on, since my liver needs to be able to process my interferon meds for MS and therefor doesn't need a bunch of other crap with which to deal.  So if I can find another way, I'll try it.

I live a pretty healthy life, with a few bad habits sprinkled in there, but I started thinking I might need to lock down all my fun in order to get this under control.  Then, my husband made me watch a documentary he really enjoyed called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead (lovely, right?).  It was really a great film, not the dark and dismal piece I thought it would be. It was then that I decided to play to my strengths.

Instead of trying to overhaul all my bad habits and patterns, I added something: juicing.  I bought a juicer, and after a few combinations I found some that I really liked pretty well.  I found out from my local produce department how to get the least expensive, juice-rich organic veggies and fruits for juicing.

I started with a subtle modification of my diet for 4 weeks for cleansing:

1. 24oz* homemade fresh-pressed fruit & veg juice for breakfast
 *this is a lot of juice, don't expect to be able to afford to do this for very long!  But it helped fill me up while I was getting used to less fat and protein
*good combo: collard leaves, granny smith apples, lemons; or carrot, kale, lemon (organic only)

2. salad for lunch (lettuce, tomato, cucumber, fresh mozz, balsamic)

3. good well-rounded dinner like 2 small organic roast chicken thighs, fresh steamed veggies and brown rice.

4. 12oz  homemade fresh-pressed fruit & veg juice and about 10 dark chocolate-covered almonds for evening snack

5. I drank a lot of water

At times the juice was a bit difficult, but it was actually not that hard to stay on it. After about 3 weeks I craved juice daily.  It made me happy!

I had no more than one headache the whole 4 weeks, not even a full-fledged migraine. What a relief!

I kept up with a juice a day for several more weeks before tapering off due to travel and what-not.  I'm starting to feel some aches & pains reemerge.

I think I'll add back in some juice and see how it goes!