Hard Things

For about two years, I've been trying to manage some extreme muscle tightness in my shoulders, neck, and chest. Tension headaches are the worst symptom! My functional medicine practitioner recommended an elimination diet to see what foods, if any, were causing inflammation in my gut and thus lending to the pain in my neck/shoulders. Man, am I addicted to food and the buffering provided by putting something in my mouth!! It was the hardest 2.5 weeks I've had in a l o n g  t i m e.  No beef, dairy, eggs, peanuts, soy, gluten, or sugar. Gone were my go-to items for breakfast and snacks. I was having so much anxiety about what I would eat! Seemed silly, even at the time. Luckily, a dear friend had been through something similar and provided ideas for substitutes. She probably saved me from a major meltdown (thank you, Megan!). 

I tried enchiladas with zucchini in place of tortillas (bigger zucchini would have been ideal), making bread with almond flour (it was nasty, but the chickens enjoyed it), oat and pumpkin pancakes (not bad), and having the most delicious salads at lunch (feeling so grown up not eating peanut butter and banana every day). 

I was obsessed with food - what I could eat or couldn't. At the end of said diet, you are supposed to introduce one new food item back for three days and keep track of how your body feels. Well, I had just driven ~900 miles to Albuquerque with my kiddos and Mom and planned to stay a week before driving back to Boise. The willpower to stay on the diet was wearing thin (I cried the first night back home when my parents and children ate pizza and I had dry salad with chicken) and I didn't do so well introducing one thing at a time. But the bowl o'papas with green chili from Weck's had never tasted so amazing! 

No, I didn't feel any amazing changes in my shoulders and neck but I did learn that I could do hard things. That having to feel my feelings instead of eating or drinking something was possible. It's a baby step in the right direction. Now to keep stepping......