Cleaning out the cobwebs

The title of this post was intended to be a gentle chiding to myself for neglecting my poor, sad blog (and, in turn, my readers) for so long, but it’s turned out to be a fairly apt metaphor for what’s happening for me right now. For, you see, I have strayed from the true faith, and to say that I’ve been ‘cheating’ on my diet lately doesn’t even really begin to cover how I’ve been eating for the past few months.

It started about a year ago, when Diana and I began to experiment a bit, adding in a few carbs here and there that we deemed safe and appropriate. No biggie…. it was in line with the Body Ecology protocol that we were following at the time. Eventually, Diana became intrigued with sourdoughs. She’d stumbled across a strain that thrives on spelt rather than soft white or common wheat. Spelt being closer to a naturally occurring strain, we felt like it was worth an experiment. Overall, we both did pretty ok with the spelt sourdough, and enjoyed it as an addition to our diet.

But then a couple months ago, as Diana and I were preparing to move. It should come as no surprise to anybody here that maintaining compliance with a non-standard dietary protocol is hard enough when your life and your kitchen are stable. Doing so while trying to pack and move (and, incidentally, start a new job!) is, while not impossible, more effort that either one of us was willing to take on. As such, we declared ourselves ‘on vacation’ and while we tried to avoid much in the way of absolute junk and excessive amounts of gluten, we pretty much were eating whatever we wanted. As it happens, several of my close family members have birthdays in late August and early September (including yours truly!), so combined with injudicious eating, well, you can imagine where that went.

The results are hardly surprising. I’ve put on about 15 pounds, I look puffier, and I feel weaker. My brain isn’t as clear, I feel more sluggish in the mornings, and I just overall don’t feel all that great. I’m achier, and my recurring shoulder and neck pain is… well, recurring. And my poops are all over the map…. Bristol 1’s (or nothing) for days followed by days of Bristol 6 and 7’s.

Weight gain, aches and pains, inconsistent poops. This is precisely where I was a couple of months before starting this blog. It’s precisely what led me eventually to the urgent care clinic thinking I might have appendicitis.

We’ve talked for weeks about getting back on the wagon, but each week, it keeps not happening. Each week, I feel incrementally less great. But each week, we keep having record-breaking heat, which means I don’t want to cook anything. But each week, we’ll do it next week. I’ve been trying to ease into it, but I’m sure you can guess how well that’s going.

I don’t know what the solution is, but I do know this: Things are coming to a head for me, and I’m *this close* to bringing the hammer down. This morning, for breakfast, I had SCD yogurt and fresh berries for breakfast. For lunch today, I had sliced meat and cheese with some probiotic pickles. Change is happening. And the weather is promising to cool down, which is going to make it a lot less challenging to actually cook. I don’t know how the next few weeks are going to go down, but I’ve got a fair amount of broth in the freezer, and I’m fairly confident that I’ll be making more next weekend. And as I sit here, writing this, I feel strong enough to say no to bread (and all that other, amazingly delicious, carb-tastic stuff. So maybe that’s part of the solution… sitting here, writing this. It’s a big part of why I started this blog in the first place.

So it’s time. Time to dust of the cobwebs. Off of this blog, and off of myself.