I was out doing my run early yesterday morning. Didn’t get too far. Decided if I wasn’t feeling it I wasn’t going to push it. I got to 2 1/2 miles and started to feel dizzy so I went ahead and SAT DOWN! Yep. Parked my butt on a park bench and waited for it to go away. It did. I got up and continued home, not feeling well and taking a few breaks. I had so much on my mind I kept thinking How am I going to fix this? I have too much going on right now. A long list of VERY IMPORTANT CRAP to take care of and taking care of other people and every little project is oh so very important and yes the world will stop spinning. Then it occurred to me, what if I just gave in? What if I just let everyone have their own way and stop trying to do what’s best for them and them fighting me on everything? What if I move to California? What if I just start over? Okay, you don’t have to go that far. But I went down my list of so very important things one by one. What if you just let that go? There were a couple harder than others, but for the most part I was able to let most of them go. No attachments. Let it go. Was hard (and a little sad for some things). But after thinking about it I realized I was faced with a golden opportunity. I could create my own blank slate.
Training wise I have no commitments to anyone other than myself. I don’t have a team I have to report to. I don’t have any goals set in stone. (Yes, I really want to do Rocky Raccoon but I just found out they hold the same race every single year so if I’m not ready by January I could just go down and do 32 miles instead of 50. Or I could just do one loop and just do 16. It doesn’t really matter. I am not getting paid. I have an opportunity here to take care of myself at my own pace and do whatever I have to do to get better. Hmmm, this could be really cool. There are a lot of things I want to do and if I want to take a week to experiment with some stuff, I could do it.
I’ve been struggling with diet. Actually it’s not going that badly but I’m not losing weight fast enough. I know some of this is metabolic changes going on and some of it cause by Stacie’s pita chips and humus. But nonetheless, I feel that old creeping need for a “plan.” Geneen warns about this. Our need and desire to put the thinking on anyone but ourselves. Ugh… What to do? I pull out my Dr. Fuhrman books. I like the way he thinks but I don’t have 40 hours a week to prepare stuff.
I thought for a moment about a juice fast. I’ve always wanted to try one of those. This would be a great time. Then I thought no, I really don’t think they are healthy and I think there are better ways to get healthy.
I have an opportunity right now to explore many options (that’s besides eating beef or chicken so I’ll just save you all the emails!) To really work on becoming a nutritarian. Work on becoming a whole foodie. I would love to dabble in raw but I think I have plenty of room for improvement without going there.
I went to see my acupuncturist Mark Thompson yesterday. 4 weeks now and we are seeing huge improvements. The tingling in my feet and the cramping seems to be dissipating (granted I haven’t run 13 miles either so we’ll see). But my legs do feel better like the blood is flowing. My legs most definitely feel better I just don’t know how much I can push them.
I finally told Mark about the dizzy spells (I usually only complain to him about muscle aches but I was getting desperate). Somehow I felt it was related to my head — maybe sinuses? Because muscularly I was okay but I would first feel dizzy and then drained. I was feeling pressure in my head like it might be sinus related but I didn’t have stuffy nose or anything. We theorized together for a bit. We think it is not just one thing. First, obviously, the lack of iron is probably contributing to my “crashes.” I use up the oxygen in my blood and at that point, I kind of crash. Basically not enough oil in the engine. I conk out and stall. Okay, we’ll work on that by taking my vitamins every day (day 9 of taking my new vitamins). But I think the underlying problem with me and vitamins is I just don’t absorb them. We are now moving on to working on my Iron absorbtion. I think of Mark as the acupuncture version of the iphone — whatever you need, he has a needle for that.
Then we discovered something verrry interesting. He felt the back of my head and there were two really sore spots — almost felt like someone had hit me in the head there with a board. He explained that these points can capture tension, cut off blood flow and could cause some kind of dizziness in my head if I was tensing my shoulders. I admitted that I have been very aware of tension in my shoulders when running and have been working very hard on keeping my shoulders down and relaxed. But added pressures of life were kind of getting to me and now maybe that was causing me to tense up more. Not saying that is the answer at all but it might be a contributing factor. He showed me some pressure points in my hands that will effect my head and I’ve been massaging my head on those two spots and I really do feel some relief. I press the spots on my hands but it is not as good as pressing the spots on the base of my head. It’s like little miracle cure. We’ll see.
I’m really trying to focus in on the slow-down-and-take-care-of-me mantra. Today’s goal (well okay the entire last year’s goal) was to start making more soups as easy ready to eat meals full of vitamins. Today’s soup is White Bean and Kale. Holy Moly this came out good. I don’t have an exact recipe — I kind of winged it but here is the “method.”
- First chop up a medium-large yellow onion. Put that in a small bowl. Chop up equal amounts of celery and carrot.
- Heat large soup pan on medium and add some olive oil to the bottom. Don’t go crazy, just trying to not burn the bottom of the pan. Throw in the onion, celery and carrots. Saute for a bit. (If I had fresh garlic I would have added to but I didn’t so I threw in a little freeze dried garlic.)
- My only goal in cooking was to soften anything fibrous like the celery and the Kale. Otherwise I could have just made in my blender. Plus there is a nice taste when you sautee onions and carrots and celery in olive oil.
- After a bit when the celery looked like it was starting to soften up. I threw in a box of vegetarian stock. (Low sodium ’cause I would be adding some salt later). Here I added spices. Salt, pepper and herbs de Provence (tyme, basil, savory, rosemary, lavender) —
- Then I added a rinsed can of beans. I’ve heard okay to add not rinsed and it will make thicker soup but I didn’t like the murky look so I rinsed.
- No real cooking since those ingredients were already “cooked.”
- Chopped up an entire head of Kale into one inch pieces. Plopped it in and tried to dunk the leaves into the soup. They fought back so I put the lid on for a bit. Five mintues late came back and dunked them more, they were more cooperative.
- When I felt the Kale leaves were softened enough without being mushy I started to ladel the soup into my Vita mix. Did in two batches. Pureed until just flecks of green.
Done. Holy Moly, it is delicious madness!!! I thought I would have the pot for the week but I fear it is not going to last through tomorrow!
I feel good enough to go swim before work.
Namaste
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