Happy New Year to everyone! I hope all of you had a relatively pain-free Christmas & New Years and are finding things alright as you ease back into routine. The holidays are always tough for us to get through but we do our best using all of our coping skills. Good thing I have such a supportive family that understands all of what comes with my chronic illness. Luckily we spent most of the Christmas break at the lake so it allows me the escape that I need in order to manage through the Christmas season. I wanted to put some form of  a post up seeing as I’m well past due to put one up.

Today I thought it might be appropriate to talk about food which I don’t often talk about when it comes to chronic illness. At this time of the year a lot of our family gatherings center around food and so it only makes sense to talk about food in a post around this time of the year. Over the last couple of years we’ve been trying to make a real effort to look really closely at what we are putting into our bodies as a family. Our reasoning wasn’t only because of my health but for the entire family overall. As we (or should I say my wife) started researching more about the science behind everything it really made sense that we had to start making some changes in the foods we were eating! Not that we ate really badly before but because I don’t want to be consuming things that aren’t suppose to be in my body.

When you watch the documentaries and read all the books on what our food is supposed to contain and what it should be doing to properly fuel our bodies and what is really being produced and the end results of what really ends up on the shelf it scares you. It really makes one think what is this doing to my body! I owe my wife a lot because the countless hours she puts into the research and the preparation are endless. Eating healthy is work just as going to the exercising is, and if you want to see results then you need to do the hard work it takes in getting to your goals. Making all these positive changes had a whole other side to it with me however in that it could only help in trying to manage my disease. For  someone such as myself who deals with CRPS and Osteoarthritis one of my symptoms is severe swelling, so introducing foods high in anti-inflammatories like spinach, kale, nuts (almonds and walnuts), turmeric, and blueberries into your diet only makes sense.

With no cure for CRPS and a limitation to what treatment options are available to me, I’m left to look for ways in which I can help myself. There are several ways in which we can help ourselves. However food is one of those obvious ones that people have complete control over. So why a food post now when it’s that time of the year when all people do is eat? I’d love to say that I have this great big theory behind why I wanted to write about food today but I really don’t. Its something I’m trying to be more conscious of but lets face it isn’t always easy. However I truly am noticing a difference in how I feel! Now I notice that when I break down and eat that chocolate bar once in a while that I don’t feel so good!

When you actually start seeing the benefits of eating well you don’t want to revert back to your old ways of eating. I’m not doing any crazy diets or anything like that just eating the way that we were intended to eat. We’ve become a society that would rather get all of our vitamins from a pill rather than the food that contains those vitamins! Now am I against vitamin pills? No I’m not! But I’d rather get them the way that I should. Again I have to give all the credit to my wife who is the one in my family that does all the cooking. She looks at ways that she can cook for us that will give us the maximum benefit! How did I ever get so lucky as to have such an amazing wife.

I just makes sense to ensure that we are doing everything in our power to control whatever factors we can when it comes to managing your illness. I can’t help but think that so many of these autoimmune diseases that are being diagnosed today have links to food. With all the chemicals that are being put in our food how can it not! The changes we’ve been making are smart ones like trying to get rid of white sugar, and replacing white flour with chick pea flour. We cut back on gluten and our biggest change would be getting rid of things that have preservatives. It’s really getting back to more of a plant-based diet. It might sound like these changes are simple but don’t be fooled because it takes work like I mentioned!

In my next post I’m going to get into things a little more in-depth. This is a one of two posts so you’ll have to check back in a week to read more about my food journey! See you all right back here!