A huge week!

So I had a huge week,  I lost 1.7kg, and ate clean all week, I burned over 9000 cals - manual fencing, plus lots of hills, will do that to  you!! The wind was terrible later in the week, so I didn't get to finish the fencing, but on the weekend - success. The fence is live....that should keep the bloody cattle in!

I also had more tests done on my beautiful daughter. After 11 years of medicine failing her, I decided on a holistic route. In a 2 hour consultation, that used some serious technological equipment for diagnosing and seeing the areas of sickness and inflammation in the body - I finally know not only what is wrong with her, but how to fix it. It will mean some pretty serious dietary changes, not only for her but for me as well, which means no (or limited) dairy, no wheat, no nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, capsicum, chilli) no olives, oranges, bananas, chickpeas - the list goes on. It isn't a 'forever' thing, once our bodies are functioning, we can re-introduce these foods, in small amounts. To me, the extreme amount of hard work this will cause, and the feeling of deprivation on not eating my favourite 'wog girl' foods, is nothing if it manages to give my daughter good health after an entire lifetime of being sick.

On Saturday night, a friend took me to the cinema for a fundraising evening. She asked after Miss J.'s health as she always does. My friend doesn't believe in anything outside the status-quo, so I knew that she wasn't going to buy into the results of the tests. Now before I continue, I want to make it clear, the diagnostic machine is used in mainstream medicine in several countries throughout the world, but Australia just hasn't caught up - this isn't airy-fairy stuff. This is science. However to my friend it may has well been some archaic ritual performed by a medicine man - who then throws roots and herbs at her. After hearing her criticism's I changed the subject, as I didn't want it to ruin our evening.

Once we got to the fundraiser, there was champagne and nibbles. The basic soft cheese, dip, olives, cabana type platters. Being a vegetarian, the cabana was out, but then so were the olives, the soft cheese, and all but one of the dips. The biscuits had wheat, so I had a couple of corn chips, with the dip I was allowed. I had not long had dinner, and wasn't at all hungry, so I didn't mind. My friend then chose to make a production about how she would quite honestly rather die than to give up the foods that she loves. She said, she'd rather live a short life, with great food, than to live a long one being miserable and eating all the healthy crap I eat.

 That one floored me..... She is a very well educated woman, she's in great health, she's got a beautiful body, she's flexible (she can do a forward standing bend at 42 like a 6 year old does it) and she eats reasonably healthily, although she has a meat/pasta heavy diet. She is often tired, and she doesn't exercise. She is one of those lucky people that doesn't seem to put on weight - she maintains her figure no matter what she eats.

I on the other hand, have been very careful about food for over 2 years. With fibromyalgia, if you eat crap food, you feel it in every cell of your body. I actually think to some degree this makes me the lucky one. I am forced to eat good food, that is kind to my body. This doesn't mean I didn't succumb to cravings and eat the wrong thing, I just paid for it, so binges became more and more infrequent. A night at a friends with a bottle of wine and nibbles made me feel like shit, so I'd only have a glass, and then drink water all night. It has really made me accountable for what I put in my mouth. My friend, has never had to do that.

I was really disappointed that she would say she'd rather die than give up food she loves, and that 'a short happy life, is better than a long miserable one'. Both of our fathers are fighting cancer. Right Now. They are fighting hard, and it has affected her and I in a way that I can't explain, and that no-one can understand unless their Daddy is fighting against the 'Big C'. Both of our Dads have spent their whole lives eating and drinking whatever they liked, with absolutely no accountability. They haven't gotten pain from a big night on the piss the way I do (sometimes for a week or more in my case) they haven't had aches, pains and lethargy if they eat processed foods, their high sugar diet, was feeding their cancer, but they didn't have the pain to alert them to the disease in their body the way I do. I do believe I am the lucky one - my pain, keeps me accountable.

So changing our diets drastically, no big deal in this house - and doing it for my daughter, HELL YEAH!!!! Tonight's menu on 12WBT is for Lasagne, so I decided to follow the recipe using a meat alternative as it is Miss J's favourite food. So she's wheat free and can't have tomatoes. I will admit, it took some thinking about, but I made it work. She's having pumpkin based lasagne, gluten free pasta, with pumpkin soup in the sauce, with mushrooms, zucchinni, carrot, celery onion, garlic and herbs. It's good, it's clean, no crap - and best of all - delicious. I don't mind having to change our diets again, and play with 12WBT recipes if they contain a food we can't eat - because food, is just food. My family is my life.

I kept thinking about my friend's reaction to me choosing to support my daughter and eat only the food she can eat. Initially I was a bit mad, who is she to judge me, and to say that choosing a long, healthy life is not right - to say that food, is more important than health, and so say that food, is what equates to happiness. Then it hit me, I actually felt sorry for her. She is an amazing person, who I love very much, but she has crap going on in her life that really sucks. She isn't at times a happy person, and stress really affects her and gets to her. I think food is her comfort, and because she is so thin, and so healthy, she doesn't need to concern herself the way I do. I feel sorry that she puts so much importance on the food that goes into her mouth, as if not eating olives or salami will make her a different person to the person she has always been. The thing that makes me the most sad, is that she sees all the positive changes in me, but can't see, that the changes that have helped me, might help her too. It's not just about weight, it's about happiness.

So to me, the food - inconvenient as it may be to prepare, is no big deal. It is the people that I share my food with that matter to me. If tomatoes and olives, camembert and bikkies are off the menu, I shall enjoy veggies and rice with my children - hopefully for a really, really long time to come!