Eating Healthy

I can't believe I am actually going to write a post about health eating.  Isn't there enough of these already?  Absolutely!  But I'm not going to give you any suggestions on what to eat.  I'm just going to tell you what I've experienced.

I come from a family of active people with high matabolisms, so as a child and young adult I could pretty much burn off whatever fattening, over processed, guilty pleasure I ate.  When I turned 30 I started to notice that I couldn't really do that anymore without a more concerted effort in the exercise ring.  Now at age.....cough 39.....again I really need to watch what I eat.  This isn't uncommon for anyone on the planet. However, if you have an autoimmune disease, weight isn't the only thing you need to consider when thinking of starting to eat better.

Fatigue. That's right, every autoimmune disease suffers best friend.  Fatigue is the guy who comes over uninvited and drives you nuts.  He bothers you for attention to the point where you can't do what you had planned for the day and then when you have finally given up and head to bed, he's there too. He tickles your nose and when you wake up he hides at the end of the bed.  Fatigue has a tagalong friend called Brain Fog.  Brain Fog, loves me and goes everywhere I go.  Recently I changed jobs and ol' Brain Fog came with me.  It got to a point where I was started to get really worried.  Brand new position, new boss and I am having to concentrace twice as hard on everything everyone is saying.  I was petrified I was going to miss something.

Now let me back up a couple of months.

I developed a rash on my leg that wasn't going away.  When I went to see my Rhuemy we discussed if it could be caused by the Humira injections I was taking.  We couldn't rule it out so I asked if it would be possible to stop the Humira and go back to Plaquinil.  She agreed and here I am.  I have noticed that I have more pain and stiffness now, but with several years under my belt I have better skills for dealing with it.  What really increased was the fatique and brain fog.  I knew I had to get a handle on these.  Like most people I need to work and I want to spend time with family and friends.

I now have an elliptical in my home and am starting to exercise more.  The other change I did was to eat much better meals.  This included more fruit, veges, dairy and less processed foods.  I stopped drinking soda and stopped buying salty or chocolately treats.  That was the first step and it helped a little, but my brain fog was still really bad.  Then my mother turned me on to these pre-made salads you can buy at the grocery store.  Not the salad in the bag, this is more like an individual salad serving.  It has the lettuce, cheese, protien, dressing, etc. all package together.  Even a plastic fork.  I took those to work for a couple of days along with a greek yogurt some fruit and a water.  After about 3 days I noticed the fog had really cleared up and I have a bit more energy.  That's enough of a result to encourage me to continue doing it. Which led me to this thought....

When you have an autoimmune disease your dealing with that, a disease.  Your body is constantly working overtime.  That is more than enough to have to deal with day in and day out.  So why make things worse for yourself by not only dealing with RA, but also the effects of a sugar rush or too much weight on my joints or the effects of clogging my arteries with too much fatty food.  This doesn't mean that I have entirely cut out a treat or two.  But it's not worth it in my mind to over indulge in those because quite frankly, I have enough to deal with.