Kinesiology - round forty seven....

It's been over four months since I last posted, my only excuse being that things have been quite busy and there have been some interesting, at times hilarious, developments in my life since that last post. My personal life has changed beyond recognition, as has my work life but I'm not going to go into too much detail, particularly about my love life (apart from to say that it's good and fun and I'm happy!) - I want to see how this story falls into place before I talk about it.

Anyway, I thought it a good time to start blogging again as life is on the move - literally. I've moved out of the family home and into a house share a few streets away. I realised that I was living in total chaos and not wanting to be there and this was making it difficult (or near enough impossible) to focus on the Arbonne business in any kind of systematic way. It was all very stop start stop start and I was going nowhere. I knew I needed to get a bit of order in my life before I could focus on Arbonne and so I've moved into a lovely house where my double room includes a desk (which I'm sat at now, overlooking the garden) and an alcove full of shelves for me to get my life back in order. In some ways I'm traumatised by the chaos I was living in as it really did get pretty bad but I think I managed to block it out in some shape or form. I'm curious to see how life feels now going forwards.

I also finished my last lot of supplements for the kinesiology treatment back at the end of January. Although they'd done a remarkable job of tackling the candida that had obviously been causing problems for many years, my hormones still felt a little wonky and my energy levels were still non-existent. It's difficult to gauge how your energy levels are when you're living in an environment you don't want to be in as you're not at optimum state but I also knew that the kinesiology sessions I'd already had just didn't seem to sort out the energy levels. They were brilliant for lots of other things and identified that my energy levels were suffering due to leaky gut and malabsorbtion of nutrients but no matter how many supplements I took, it never seemed to make any difference. It was a little frustrating as it felt like I was making no progress at all even though I was popping pills furiously and could see some amazing results with other areas of my health. Anyway, I made an appointment to see my kinesiologist at Easter time. On the day of the appointment, she texted to say she had flu and would have to cancel. A little while later I tried to make another appointment but it seemed like a series of calamaties had left my kinesiologist unable to practice for a few weeks, or may a few months. I decided that I didn't want my progress held up by what was going on in my kinesiologist's life so I found another kinesiologist who was based locally and went to see her today.

It feels like the candida has returned in some fashion as my lower belly has stopped being as flat as before. And yes, tests showed that it had returned and I was prescribed one of the supplements I'd taken before plus some others that help to elimate the toxins that are produced when you get rid of the candida bacteria. I don't think I had anything like that in the previous session and I'm wondering why? Today's kinesiologist focused on my depleted energy levels by looking at my diet and making some changes that I consider fairly drastic - it was the first time that I actually felt sad and upset by some of the things I have to give up. As well as taking 24 supplements a day and some weird iron drink 3 times a day, I've been told to give up sugar, peanuts, chemical food additives, coffee, coke, alcohol and cow's milk products. Looking at that list, the things I will struggle with the most are deserts, chocolate and dairy products. These are all things that I don't eat excessively but when I do eat them, they give me great pleasure and I'm just not the sort of person who wants to take out the pleasurable things in life - things in moderation are better. However, having spent £120 on a month's worth of supplements I decided that I might as well do this properly instead of wasting the money and not making any progress. And in all fairness when I look at my diet over the last year or so, at times it has been pretty poor. When you're not in control of your own life, you're not in control of what you eat either. I would tend to eat what was available instead of buying and preparing the things I would normally eat. And I'm sure there was some comfort eating going on - lots of coffee, muffins, chocolate, crisps, coke - hmm, maybe this is a good thing that I'm about to embark on what feels like a boot-camp as my diet had slipped into a poor state without me even being aware...

So I went for my last "normal" meal with S today, off to one of our favourite local places for lunch and ate everything that from tomorrow I won't be able to have. I had a tomato, mozzarella and basil ciabatta with a can of coke, followed by a chocolate fairy cake and a coffee - trying to enjoy it all but most of the time thinking what I'd be able to eat now and how much I'd miss enjoying a bit of chocolate when I sat down for half an hour with the Sunday papers. At times today I have toyed with the idea of not bothering with this regime as it just seems too extreme but then I've had to remind myself that over the last few years I've longed to have normal energy levels, trying to imagine a day when I'd wake up and bounce out of bed, ready and raring to go! I'm lucky that my energy levels have never stopped me from doing anything and I come across as quite an energetic person but feeling tired a lot of the time just makes you feel more weary. So instead of baling, I've decided to do this properly and that's why I find myself blogging again. I thought it might make for quite intersting posts if I chart how I feel over the next month or so as I embark on this energy-seeking journey. I thought it would be interesting to track progress and make a note of just how I get on.

So I've prepared for the big day tomorrow by stocking up on some things that I can eat. Even though I can't eat dairy, it's okay for me to eat produce made from ewe's and goat's milk. As I wandered round the supermarket trying to find some viable alternative options for yoghurt, I spied some yoghurt made from goat's milk and another one made from sheep's milk. I plumped for the goat's milk yoghurt even though I convinced myself that it would taste awful. When I got home, I had a quick taste and found it to be absolutely fine - it tasted of the yoghurt that my mum used to make when I was a kid. I think you just imagine that something is going to taste horrible simply because it's not as widely available as the popular choice of milk. So pleased was I to find that goat's milk yoghurt is actually quite lovely that my dinner turned out to be a bowl of chopped bananas and strawberries with sunflower seeds and yoghurt and honey! However, when I was in the health food shop earlier today and I spied some chocolate that was dairy-free, I thought about getting it but decided that I wasn't quite ready to be disappointed by something that doesn't quite come up to scratch with a gorgeous bar of Galaxy!

Right, I've got to go now and prepare all those pesky supplements for tomorrow. It's going to take a while to get my head round what I need to take when as there are so many and I need to make sure that I've got them in a transportable fashion so that I don't wander off without them....