Category: Healthy Living

Each of Us is Unique

A few weeks ago, I posted about a 10-day detox. This post is a follow up of sorts. Certainly, it is an example that each of us is unique.

My hopes were high that I would feel much better following Dr. Hyman’s Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox. At the end of 10 days, I was ecstatic.

  • My joint pain was gone or greatly diminished
  • Sugar no longer held me in an addictive grip
  • My sleep improved
  • I was all in for a life long change

Suddenly I Felt Awful

Nausea started to ruin my days as I added back my first food, legumes. Logic would suggest it was the legumes. Well, logic, you were wrong. Nevertheless, I cut out legumes.

The nausea kept up and my adherence to the Blood Sugar Solution faltered and then crashed. I happily started back my morning coffee with half and half. It was like meeting an old friend. Soon wheat returned to a lesser degree. Via my 23andMe health DNA test, I knew I have one of the two markers for celiac disease. As a result, I dropped the wheat again. It was so disappointing when the joint pain shot up once more.

Hope on the Horizon

My thoughts returned to the knowledge that each of us is unique. Therein lay my hope.

Part of the reason I returned to my previous diet was I expected results from a finger prick IgG 184 Food Panel in a matter of days. I’m fortunate to have found a chiropractor who offers this lab test when her patients need it.

And the Results Are In

Let’s start with what I can’t eat:

  1. Wheat, bran, buckwheat, millet
  2. Pineapple
  3. All cow and goat dairy, all eggs, all cheese except one
  4. Almonds, cashews, pine nuts, and pistachios

What can I eat?

  1. The 164 other foods listed
  2. All meat and poultry
  3. Any fish or shellfish
  4. All vegetables
  5. Any legume, including peanuts and soybeans
  6. Blue cheese and sheep’s milk
  7. All other fruits
  8. All beverages, honey, and yeast
  9. The remaining 15 nuts, seeds and oils
  10. Any herb, spice, or flavoring

What’s the Best Thing?

Now I’m on an elimination diet that is specific for me. The snacks of almonds and cashews on the Blood Sugar Solution diet were making me sick. In contrast, most people have no problem with almonds.

How Does an Elimination Diet Work?

I’ve eliminated the foods I have a reaction to. This will last for twelve weeks until February 1, 2021. Then I will pick the food I most want and eat it 3 times in 1 day, in it’s purest form.

Then comes the fun part. I wait 72 hours and record all the effects:

  • Fatigue
  • Bloating
  • Constipation
  • Foggy brain
  • Diarrhea
  • Any other undesirable symptom

I’m hoping none of these effects show up. Then I can add that food back into my diet. If I do have an undesirable effect, I eliminate it again.

How Do I Feel About This?

Above all, I am relieved to know my food problems. I relish using my creative side to find new ways of enjoying breakfast.

Yes, it is the most challenging meal. However, my saving grace is morning coffee with Silk Soy Creamer.

Final Thoughts

Each of us is unique, our bodies amazing creations. I believe it is our responsibility to move toward understanding ourselves, one step at a time.

Sending you love and caring,
Dawn

Three Ways Values Affect Your Life

I have found three ways values affect your life; relationships, career, home environment. When these areas are in alignment with your personal values, happiness comes naturally.

Since we are each unique, you may find different areas of your life play a more prominent role in your happiness. These areas may change naturally over time.

Relationships

Personal relationships run the gamut of family, friends, lovers, spouses, like-minded people (your tribe), and co-workers. Have you found yourself observing personalities? Maybe you like those that exhibit your value system more than those that don’t. Actually, this seems intuitively obvious.

Do you get along with one parent more than the other? Perhaps it is because you share values with one parent and not the other.

Then why do we end up with partners that don’t last? There are undoubtedly many reasons. For me, however, my values played a key role.

Career

A long time ago, fifty years to be exact, I took the Air Force Career Test in high school. The results suggested your best careers. It was an extensive personality test. I remember my results clearly; attorney or psychologist were high on the list.

Psychologist was understandable to me as people tended to naturally open up to me. I listened, cared, and promptly forgot whatever they said.

Conversely, attorney, didn’t appeal to me at all. I understood the research might appeal, but even at age 16, I suspected dishonesty was part of their job.

What about your current career? Are you happy, discontent, or desperately looking for a change?

Home Environment

Although I’m using home environment, any environment can be substituted here; work, transportation, workout area, even the great outdoors.

Where do you feel most comfortable? Does dust drive you crazy? Is there comfort in having many cherished items on display? Rather, do you find simplicity more pleasing? These are some of the ways your values are reflected in your environment. If you have control in your home environment, you will choose what makes you happy, that is, comfortable.

Examples

My personal values are honesty, tranquility, and purpose. If you search online for personal values, these don’t usually come up. Rather a list of 10-25 values that are sometimes hard to even understand emerge.

Here is an interesting article that lists 25 values. One of my three is on it. While the questions they ask are good, don’t get distracted quite yet.

Back to my example. Here are three ways my values show up in everyday life:

  1. In fifty years of driving, I have never received a speeding ticket, because my value of Honesty helps me know what the speed limit is so I don’t exceed it.
  2. Tranquility surrounded me in a home as I prepared to move, with essential furniture, bare walls, and bare floors.
  3. Life gets pretty busy for me, yet I am committed to writing this blog weekly as it partially fulfills my value of Purpose by helping you take small steps toward a life of fulfillment.

Finding Your Personal Values

While researching this blog, the destiny of my purpose brought me an incredible, free resource to help you determine your own personal values. I took the evaluation and found it to be spot on. Furthermore, you can take it many times as your life evolves.

Life Values Inventory

I would love to hear your three ways values affect your life and how it evolves. Please comment below, send me an email or signup for my newsletter for a weekly opportunity to connect.

With honesty, tranquility, and purpose,
Dawn

Three Tips for Finding Value in Yourself

These three tips for finding value in yourself need repeating. Furthermore, no matter how much we grow as individuals, finding our self-worth will elude us at times.

Are You Devaluing Yourself?

Sometimes it’s easier to consider the opposite of a positive characteristic, because it is more familiar to us.

Maybe these are some ways we show a lack of value in ourselves.

  1. Saying ‘Yes’, when we mean ‘No’
  2. Difficulty asking for help
  3. Placing higher value on other people, pets, or things

How to Start Valuing Yourself

Here are three small steps to help you change your behavior. Does one speak to you more than the others? Start there. Then add a second step the next week or sooner if you feel ready. Above all, be kind to yourself.

  1. Start writing Morning Pages
  2. Look at a situation from a different point of view
  3. Do something special just for you

Delving Deeper

Point of view has several meanings. Consequently, I want to make it clear I’m using this definition:

  • the position from which something or someone is observed

In life, we tend to use the same point of view all the time. Most noteworthy, our direct observance is clouded by all the thoughts in our mind drawn from a lifetime of judgement and beliefs.

An Exercise in Point of View

Imagine this scene. A man is walking down a sidewalk with a hedge of plants to his left, listening to music on his iPod. Suddenly, a masked man steps out of the bushes behind him with a shovel in his right hand. He hits the man on the back of the head with the shovel. The man falls to the ground, bleeding from the back of his head.

Chances are, in your default point of view, you placed yourself across the street and observed this attack in horror.

In contrast, let’s try using a different point of view. Pretend there are two birds perched twenty feet up in a tree just on the other side of the hedge. I’ll name them Heckle and Jeckle. Perhaps they observe the same scene this way.

“That man is walking with white strings coming out the sides of his head.”

“Now a second man comes out of the bushes behind him, with a black covering over his face. He holds a big twig with a shiny flat part on the end.”

“The second man moved the shiny part and came in contact with the back of the first man’s head, who falls on the ground.”

“There is red liquid coming out of the man on the ground.”

Different Points of View

This point of view from Heckle and Jeckle is detached, without judgement, a bird’s-eye view observation. Two more possible points of view are the characters in the scene; the man with the iPod, the masked man. And don’t forget the “just the facts” view.

By looking at this fictional scene in different ways, you are practicing changing your point of view.

Do you want to take it one step further? Use different points of view to dissect a scenario from your own life. Extra points if you have strong feelings about this personal circumstance.

Final Thoughts

Don’t forget the third way to start valuing yourself – doing something special, just for you.

Are you doing something special, just for you today? Take a moment to brainstorm one thing you can do for yourself this weekend.

I’d enjoy readIng your ideas in the comments.

Sending love from my heart to yours,
Dawn