Happy Birthday Mom!

I went to visit my mom this weekend. I try to visit once a month and this month I timed the visit to coincide with mom's birthday weekend. It was really nice. Mom turned 84 and she doesn't like being 84, but I think she enjoyed her 84th birthday in spite of that. A couple of other sisters came over on Saturday too and we all brought a dish -- my brother-in-law made the cake. It was pretty perfect. It was a good visit.

Jen couldn't make it because she has a big order that she's working on. www.homesweetbyhand.com that's my girl! I love her stuff and apparently so does someone else. :-)

Of course, that was the first day of snacking/munching that I've had since the beginning of the year. What can I say ... mmmmmmm. And I was hungry today. It's amazing. I've been sticking to my new routine so well, but one day off the wagon and I'm back to my old cravings. Hopefully it will pass quickly. On the bright side, I didn't gain weight from it so I guess I didn't go too crazy. Back squarely on the wagon and hoping I have a way to go before my calorie intake = my output.

Today was a really rainy day, so Jay and I couldn't ride bikes after work. Tomorrow will be iffy, but after that, we should be able to ride the rest of the week. That's an activity that we enjoy doing together. For some reason, we chat more while riding than we do when we're doing other things, so it's really pleasant. And we both have very sedentary jobs, and we work out very differently, so having a physical activity that we both enjoy and share is really nice. We look forward to the nice weather.

I think I'll play a little Wii tennis before bed. :-)

Improving ... knock wood

I continue to cough, but I've noticed a change since adding homeopathy to my treatment with my sister's help. She has been studying homeopathy for years and has helped all of us in the family over the course of time. What I noticed is that I don't cough or cough hardly at all until late in the afternoon ... as I approach the time for my evening inhaler dose.

I've been on inhalers since November and have continued to cough a lot, but I found out that it's definitely better with the inhaler than without, but still not really good. I don't want to jinx it, but it's been greatly improved in the last few weeks. So maybe there's hope after all.

On the eating front, I'm still sticking to my new eating plan without much difficulty. I don't find myself craving snacks much any more -- like entire bags of popcorn. :-) And not snacking at night is finally getting easier. I do make sugar free frozen yogurt for my husband and I sometimes -- it's really good. But I'm not snacking constantly and I'm doing ok with that. That's been the most difficult change for me. I think it was harder than cutting back on how much bread I eat, which surprised me. I guess I really was snacking way more than I thought ... if I missed it that much.

But I've lost 22 pounds which is awesome. I think a lot of that is my workouts and my effort to boost my metabolism in general. Since I sit all day at my job, I needed to figure out ways to keep moving periodically. So I walk at lunch (walk fast and include stairs) and I do Wii tennis and whatever in the evenings. But the biggest workout change was the Denise Austin Bootcamp Workout DVD. That workout seems to work for me as well as jogging used to. So, everything combined adds up to 22 pounds! Woo hoo! And all this stuff is a maintenance plan, so the weight should stay off. Woo hoo!

I'm back into pants that I haven't been able to wear for a few years. I can get into my skinnier jeans, but I don't think they're a good idea yet. They are really tight and I don't like really tight, so they'll stay on the shelf. I'm still feeling so much better even at this not-so-thin size. I have to try and not let myself get into that kind of slump again. I won't be 20 again. I won't have young skin again. I will continue to acquire new aches and pains and problems. But that's no reason to give up on myself.

I hope I can actually do it when the going gets tough.

More coughing, more rain, Calgon ... take me away

I tried a couple of different homeopathic remedies during the last week. They caused my coughing to change, but not really go away. Then my sister thought of causticum. I read the Materia Medica and it struck a nerve on a lot of fronts, so I went looking for it. I couldn't find it in local stores, so I ordered it. Thank goodness for "Homeopathy Works". I've been using their online store for several years. I think they filled the order in record time.

I took a dose of causticum this past Thursday night and started coughing more again. I was moving in the wrong direction! It didn't keep me from sleeping, but I started coughing again when I woke up Friday morning and all day long. I ended up needing cough medicine so I could sleep last night, which I know wasn't good for the homeopathic meds, but I really couldn't sleep. I didn't take any more causticum because I had such a strong reaction.

But I woke up this morning feeling pretty good. I don't want to jinx it, but I coughed very little today. I'm thinking I'll hold off on the next dose of causticum until Monday morning. I'm doing pretty well today, so I'll see where this first dose takes me. Boy, I hope this works. 6 months of coughing ... enough already.

Also, I had a cup of regular coffee this morning and have been jittery all day. I'm wondering if it was partly the causticum too since one cup of coffee doesn't usually affect me like that. I just started feeling "normal" a little after dinner. That causticum is potent stuff -- at least it is for me.

And, of course, it's raining buckets today. Which is better than snow, but I'm sick of gray, dreary days and blizzards and crappy weather in general. We did have nice weather last weekend. I even got out to the driving range to hit a bucket of balls. But I'm thinking that all this snow and rain is going to make for a very bug-infested spring. At this point, I just want spring. My feet are tired of being in shoes. I want my flip flops back.

I'm still hanging in there with my new exercise routines and eating habits. It has definitely paid off and I've been happy with my energy level and how I feel. I'm a lot less sluggish. I find that I get up right away when the alarm goes off and I don't dawdle as much. All good things. I'm actually getting to work earlier. And I'm into some jeans that I had to stop wearing. Granted, they WERE my fat jeans as my girth grew, but NOW they are my skinny jeans. It's all a matter of perspective. There's another pair that are a better size. I don't know if I'll ever get back into those. I'm just happy having gotten this far. But this isn't a diet -- it's my new routine, so we'll see where it takes me.

So life on this side of the hill has been a little better lately. I know that I'm still on the bad side of the hill and that this feeling that I'm improving is kind of an illusion, but what the hell. I'll take it. If it feels good, it feels good. Don't look that gift horse in the mouth.

Let's try homeopathy

I visited my mom last weekend which is always nice. My sister came to visit to. Les is a nurse who has become a big believer in alternative medicine and has studied homeopathy. She has been able to help everyone in the family with various health issues, so she's taking a crack at my eternal coughing. I seem to have reached the end of what western/traditional medicine can do.

The difficulty with a cough is that it's a symptom of almost everything. The first remedy we are trying is drocera. It definitely changed the cough. I started proving the remedy so I stopped taking it and we're seeing where this takes me. I can actually laugh a little and not trigger a cough, which is an improvement. And it seems to be changing from a reactive cough to a tickle cough. I'm not sure if this is good, so we'll keep watching for a day or so. If this isn't the right remedy, we'll try spongia next. I've been reading about it and it sounds like the next best thing to try.

I found that I managed to loose another couple of pounds. It took a couple of weeks, but that's ok. I guess that means that I haven't reached the bottom after all which is good. I got into a pair of jeans today that I haven't been able to wear in a long time ... like over a year. They used to be the jeans that I wore all the time, so I'm pretty happy about that. I long time ago I was pretty unhappy with this size, now I'm delighted. I guess it's all a matter of perspective.

If I can loose a few more pounds and this cough, I'll be pretty pleased.