Dinosaur Dash and Marie Claire

Sunday

Once again, I woke up too sick to do anything athletic today. So, instead of running myself, I bundled myself up so that I could head out and cheer Lyle on for his first 5K race in 5 years: The Dinosaur Dash. I’m sort of glad that I did not race again today as it was even colder than CCRR was last weekend. Breakfast was a Chocolate Chip Clif Z-Bar and a banana grabbed on the way out the door, as well as a Chocolate Brownie PureBar. Lyle ended up finishing with a 26:03 and 284th out of a total of 883 runners. I stuck it out in the blistering cold so that I could see him cross the finish line and take a picture to commemorate the occasion.

Once the race was over and I was back home I was famished for oatmeal! I didn’t care that it was past noon; I wanted oatmeal gosh darned it! And I wanted it to be fall-themed. Old-fashioned oats made in Vanilla Caramel tea, mixed with chia seeds, flaxseed meal, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pumpkin puree, and topped with Grape Nuts, PB&Co. White Chocolate Wonderful, and maple syrup. It’s fabulous even in the afternoon.

I’m still scavenging for the time being because 1) I haven’t felt great, and 2) I beyond desperately need to go to the grocery store. You know you need to go right away when you have no choice but to eat cereal for dinner if, indeed, you want to eat something for dinner. Only one more day of this kind of life and then I can at least get some produce and other smatherings of food!

More pumpkin oatmeal and, hopefully, an elliptical workout in the morning. As well as a Food Safety quiz and more studying.

Monday

Well, I had intended to head to the gym this morning, but somehow I have picked up a bug and my throat is a bit narrower than it used to be, making swallowing and the like a bit more difficult than it is appreciated being. In addition to unexplained aches, I made the decision to sleep in an extra 1.5 hours. I think I made the right choice, don’t you? Tomorrow for sure though, as long as I don’t get any worse, I can promise all of you readers that I will do… something.

Breakfast was old-fashioned oats made in Vanilla Caramel tea, mixed with chia seeds, cinnamon, flaxseed meal, nutmeg, and pureed pumpkin, and topped with Grape Nuts, maple syrup, and PB&Co. WCW peanut butter.

In the midst of studying for my Economics exam this week, taking notes on lipids for Nutrition, and working my way slowly through Gilmore Girls (season 5), I of course checked out my blogroll and came across this post by Caitlin over at Healthy Tipping Point. I’m not one to read magazines, so I’m glad that Caitlin posted a PDF on her blog so that I could read the article. It’s reasons like that that I don’t read magazines and try to always have a critical eye when reading anything. Healthy Living blogs have had such a positive influence on my life since I started following them this summer. I’ve tried so many new things that I previously had never heard of, or didn’t know enough about, or were just too scared to try. They’ve inspired me to want to learn how to cook and rediscover my love for vegetarianism and pseudo-veganism. It saddens me that one outlet of the media is trying to deprive many others like who I was from finding and enjoying these blogs.

I had lunch with Lyle today, being that it’s a Monday. I had raspberry preserves on a whole-wheat sandwich thin and a bowl of cheddar broccoli and potatoes. Yes, I am really scraping the bottom of the barrel for food right now. But I’m so close to fresh produce I feel like crying from joy and self-pity! I also packed some Cinnamon Brown Sugar almonds mixed up with Cascadian Farm Raisin Bran for a snack to hold me over until I could get back from grocery shopping and eat something hopefully good.

I’ve been really lightheaded the past few days. Even if I have just woken up or eaten a meal, so I don’t know how to explain it, but it sure is a pain when you’re trying to take notes in class… or trying not to pass out during/between classes. Once I finally got home from grocery shopping, I didn’t feel like eating at all and forced myself to eat some peaches. I’m hoping that my body will decide that it wants sustenance again and that I’ll feel like eating a little later. Once again, my goal for tomorrow morning is to be well enough to get on the elliptical. In other health news, I have a scan scheduled for Wednesday. I’ll only have to fast for a short amount of time, but I have to lie still for 2 hours. I consider it a fair trade-off. I hope you all have had a good start to the week!

And thanks for sticking around through this tough time in my life. I won’t give up as long as you don’t!

Date Night and Rainy Football Saturday

Friday

I woke up still feeling terrible. We ended up bringing me to an Urgent Care center because my face and eyes started to swell shut. The doc thought that I was having an allergic reaction to something, but I have barely eaten a thing in the past three days, and hadn’t eaten anything at all in over 6 hours and had no trouble breathing. Either way, I woke up this morning and my face and eyes are still pretty swollen and I feel terrible still, so I forewent the gym once again. I don’t like taking this many days off from fitness, but I’m at a pretty precarious point in my health right now with both my parents worrying and no idea what my doctors have been thinking.

So, because of my decline in health, I’ve decided that until the worst of it is over, workouts will be put on the very back burner. I will still do my best to post recipes, goings-on, and food pictures (I have a few things in the works, which involve a recent purchase), but don’t expect to see much in the way of workouts or running on here for the foreseeable future. Mysterious, undiagnosed, unpredictable diseases mean that I can’t plan for the future. Not the next day, the next hour, the next minute. Try hard as I might, my body does not care that I have class, a race, or haven’t seen my friends in who knows how long. Right now, I’m just going to try and focus on keeping myself out of the hospital and doing irreparable harm to my body.

I spent most of the morning studying for my test rather than hitting the gym or popping in a workout DVD. I threw a shower in there somewhere because I figured it was necessary. Breakfast was sorely missed over the past few days. Old-fashioned oats made in Vanilla Caramel tea, mixed with flaxseed meal, chia seeds, cinnamon, nutmeg, and pumpkin puree, and topped with maple syrup, Grape Nuts, and PB&Co. White Chocolate Wonderful peanut butter. I’m not a huge fan of the WCW, it just tastes like normal peanut butter, so it’s only because I expected more of a “white chocolate” taste. I’ll eat it, of course. I just won’t expect so much out of it next time.



Lunch was a Chocolate-Chip Clif Z-Bar, a Honeycrisp apple, and some Jell-O Chocolate Mint Mousse. I don’t usually like mousses, but I actually kind of enjoyed this; maybe due to the chocolate-mint combination? After lunch, I grabbed a bus on to campus for a quiz in Food Safety over Salmonella, E.coli, Listeria, and Shigella. At least, that’s what I thought. Apparently, the quiz is going to be Monday instead. Great. I dragged myself to campus, in pain, to take a quiz that turned out to be moved.

A nurse from my doctor’s office said that I should be eating two servings of fresh fruit, drinking 64 oz. of water, and eating 20-25g fiber a day and that that would make me all better. Problem is, those are things that I’ve been doing all along for months. Apparently they don’t believe me when I tell them about my medical and health history. I get that people lie, it’s inherent to some degree, but I know that this has nothing to do with any of those things because I already do do all of those things. I’m so frustrated and still in pain. We’re going to start asking around for new doctors willing to take on the challenge of figuring out what’s wrong with me. I’m honestly up for anything right now. Any tests, any doctors, any treatments. I just want to be better. I just want to be healthy again. To be able to plan more than a minute in advance again. I want control of my life back.

Lyle and I were supposed to have a date night tonight, but had to cancel because of me. The best laid plans. . .

Saturday

Woke up still feeling crappy, so yet another day with no workout. I think that it goes without saying that I will not be running tomorrow, but I’m just saying it for a fact here. Breakfast was old-fashioned oats made in Vanilla Caramel tea, mixed with cinnamon, nutmeg, flaxseed meal, chia seeds, and pureed pumpkin, and topped with Grape Nuts, maple syrup, and PB&Co. WCW peanut butter. I am totally loving this mix now that I finally got all of the proportions right.



Today was a big conference football game for my university: playing against Wisconsin. Good thing I don’t tailgate, because it was rainy, cloudy, and cold all last night and all of today as well. Eating was kind of difficult today again. I was prescribed some new pills to try, which will hopefully help, but the top of my dresser is beginning to look a bit ridiculous with the amount of pill bottles it houses. For some reason, I was a little nauseous starting midday, so I tried to keep things simple for the rest of the day. Things like Cascadian Farm Honey Nut O’s with Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Breeze and bananas. However, this did nothing to appease my body, but at least I tried, right? I don’t like weeks like this where I’m in pain 4-5 days in a row basically nonstop.

Unfortunately, Coach is back in the hospital with a blood clot in his leg after he suffered a heart attack last week and was not able to be there in the coach’s box. Our prayers go out to you, Coach! Luckily, we rocked it out and ended up with a solid win against a team ranked much higher than us.