Friday's Five: Five Goals to a Healthier Life

People who are close to me know that I was probably one of the unhealthiest person in the world. No need to enumerate my vices (it's all in the past now, haha) but even worse than that, my diet is awful. I love everything that is pork - liempo, pork chop, name it! I am almost 90% carnivorous and rarely do I eat my greens.

That all changed when I had APAS. My doctor required me to do a 180-degree transformation on my lifestyle. Of course, I had to comply. I have not touched any hard drinks for almost 13 months now - I thrived with a glass of wine once or twice last year. Husband introduced more chicken and fish and veggies to our meal.

But I feel that it is still not enough.

Late last year, I was able to land a work-at-home stint dealing with the health industry. These are naturopaths, health coaches, nutritionists, etc. The longer I pored on the subjects they tackle, the stronger I want to commit to a healthier lifestyle. I envy their commitment. I want the fire that they say they get from eating healthy greens and doing activities that contribute to a more focused mind and spirit.

The more I think about it, the more I realize why the Universe brought me this job. Yes, it gives me enough cash flow for my needs (read: books) but the bigger benefit is its effect on me. It is hypocritical not to walk your talk. When you read about healthy stuff week in and week out, it is hard not to heed the call.

As they say, first step is acknowledgment and it is always the hardest. And today, I acknowledge my need to be healthier. They also say that anything not written is known to be a wish and not a goal; so, for my Friday's Five, here are my five resolutions for the quarter, recorded and announced:

1. Eat more fruits and vegetables. Okay. The key word here is "more". I am already eating my greens but as I said, I feel that it is still not enough. In my two months of working with our health clients, I have always come across talks about Superfood and Green Smoothies - how they are good for your body, helps with detox and so on. The whole is idea is simple - to blend your veggies and fruits and other Superfoods so that you don't need to eat them; you just gulp them.

So green smoothies, it is! I had a hard time looking for the healthy ingredients locally. I know that Healthy Options would probably have them but I am lazy to go out and grab what I need from the shelves. I was looking for a more convenient option (read: online shop) and to my surprise, online resources on healthy shops in the PH are limited. These were the ones I found:

1. Sugar Leaf PH - website is not updated and I could not find the products I was looking for
2. The Healthy Grocery - carried most of the products I was looking for; easy to order
3. The Green Grocer Manila - while they have most of what I was looking for, you can't fulfill an order immediately through online purchase as you need to download their Grocer's List and you will receive and email confirmation of your order
4. The Superfood Grocer - I loved this website. It has tons of information and the ordering process is fast and very simple. 

No need to say, I ordered my first set of Superfood from The Superfood Grocer and I am waiting for my delivery (2-3 days for Metro Manila). Exciting!

2. Enroll in a formal yoga class. 

I have been delaying this last Christmas because of the horrible traffic, I was doing my pseudo-yoga via instructional videos in Youtube but this month, I am planning to get the New-To-Yoga package from Urban Ashram Manila. According to their website, it is "a new to yoga pass gives you access to unlimited classes over two weeks, offering unbeatable savings that can help you create and shape your yoga practice."

3. Sleep earlier. 

This is such a struggle. My acupuncturist told me to sleep at 10 PM every night to restore the body's balance and increase fertility. She said that the body needs to be at REM stage from 11 PM - 3 AM. I promise to try! One effort I did was to buy bedside lamps that were warm to soften the mood and prevent bright lights that could disrupt sleepiness.

4. Drink three liters of water a day. Did I share with you that before I turned 30, I was a cactus. I never liked water. But since I stopped working last October, I have made it a conscious effort to drink more water. So far, I can already consume 1.5-2 liters of water everyday. I plan to up the ante.

5. Do something to calm my mind every day. 

I am becoming busier with my stints but I have to stick with my word for 2015: Tranquilo or Take it easy. So what to do? Read a book (I have subscribed to Goodreads Reading Challenge and committed to read a book every week). Meditate with my Omvana app. Take a nap. Walk Sachi. Anything. Everything.

So there you go? Do you have any health resolutions for 2015? If you have, please feel free to share! If you have other tips to share with me as well, do hit me up. Thanks, loves!

xx,

Balot

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Day 90: A Letter To All Young Girls, Wild and Free

And since it is Monday, I would like to reminisce what my Mondays were like, some years back. I always considered Mondays toxic. A majority of us would. So I applied this saying together with my other friends:  work hard, party harder. So we had wine or alcohol nights every Monday. Never mind that we have to report to the office the next day. It didn't matter. Mondays were stressful. We have worked hard. We have earned the badge to party.

Photo from www.colorfully.eu.

Work hard, party harder, they said. It would be fun, they said.


That motto did not apply only on Mondays. I lived it by heart. Yes, that is exactly what I did. 

I worked hard. 

Earlier in my professional life, I worked around twelve hours a day at the minimum and go to the office even on weekends. That was voluntarily -- that was how much I loved my job. Sometimes, I skipped lunch. Then I go home tired and what I thought was the beauty of living on my own is now backfiring. 

Living on your own without your parents spelled awesome (In hindsight, not that much fun anymore). You can sleep whenever you want to. Go home anytime you want to. You can eat whatever you want and in my case, since I was too tired to even move a muscle, my dinner would consist of fast food takeouts, pancit canton, inasal or whatever express food that was convenient to prepare. On weekends that I was free, I slept the whole day. That was my body conking out and me giving in to it.

It was only imperative to give myself a pat on the back -- to reward myself for all my hard work. So, I partied even harder. I was proud that I can handle my alcohol. I know for a fact that my ex-boyfriend (now husband) was also proud of that, too. Vices are sooo fun when you are young.

It never dawned on me that it would jeopardize anything. I was young. Besides, during that time, no one really told me that this could happen. I only knew about these crazy immune disorders now. And to add to that, I had friends who smoked all their life, quit when they were pregnant and went back to smoking immediately after birth. No complications. I have friends who drove their car amidst this crazy Manila traffic up to their ninth month. I had friends who worked until their water broke. I had friends who were allowed a cup of coffee a day throughout their whole pregnancy. So this really, was never a concern. Everybody seems to get pregnant easy. You just have to want it, and when you are ready, boom! – you will just bloat like a balloon.


And then, I got smacked into this whole thing. Yeah, it is true. Regrets really come last. I took care of my career, somehow assisted my family. Took care of everything except my body. When I hear about healthy lifestyle before, I scoffed. I am not unhealthy!!! There are people worse than me - people who do drugs or what-not. Hell, I don’t even get sick!

 

So, in retrospect, how was I extremely unhealthy?

• Vices
• Not enough sleep because I claimed that I was insomniac
• Coffee
• Fried food
• Very little veggies and fruits
• Very little water
• A red carnivore (I love lamb, steaks, everything red meat)
• Coke everyday (the softdrink!)

Yeah, I may not have consumed alcohol every day but my eating habit is really bad. My husband always told me that this will be the source of my sickness. But I always thought that if I would die, better eat everything that is good. 


But I didn’t die. And now, I want a baby. And my past habits are haunting me. Oh yes, perdition indeed. 


So what steps am I undertaking? I will tell you –

• Stop all the vices. No alcohol. Not even a puff of cigarette. No nothing. Cold turkey. So this is how it feels. Not that bad actually. Given the right motivation. I thought I could never quit.
• Lessen consumption of red meat. The husband prepares my nutrition plan. For today, he prepared chicken, salad and kimchi. Oh, this is going to be fun!
• No more coffee and Coke. This is my greatest struggle. I replaced water with coffee and Coke. Now I have to go back to water (and juices, and herbal teas). Good luck to me! From all these, coffee withdrawal is the thing funks me up. I am so dependent on coffee. Now, I am having tension headaches. Hopefully, this will come to pass. I have been replacing coffee with tea and fruit juices.
• Sleep. This was easy. I did not bring work home anymore. They say that you have to prep your mind for rest. The more that you do something before bedtime, the more you drive Mr. Sleep away.

So, I urge you, those who can relate and who live vicariously through these experiences, to just think a little about your future. I am not a hypocrite. I won’t tell you to stop. But if you see a baby in the years to come, then you know what to do. 

Sometimes, you think you would never want a kid but all those will change when you would finally get married. When you would finally yearn for a baby. When you would want to complete your family.

In all honesty, I did not. Babies were actually the last thing on my mind. But trust me, you will want to. Unless you plan to be single for the rest of your life and you are 100% sure that you will be a eunuch, you will want to create a family – and a precious little one is part of that.

An overactive immune system caused by the toxins and acute stress that it has to constantly battle is sooo expensive to treat. Trust me, I am having that problem now so I know. The reason may not be totally  because of this (research has no conclusive results yet on why people develop autoimmunity and other immune disorders), but I believe that it is part and parcel of everything that I am undergoing (not to mention my over-compatibility with my husband’s leukocytes)!



I think that the new motto for young ambitious girls shouldn't be work hard, party harder. It should be work hard, rest harder (a vacation, a walk in the beach, a rejuvenating massage to give you a sense of relaxation).   Doesn’t seem that exciting, but boy, you would thank yourself when the time comes. 

Writer's Note: I know that this is supposed to be a post about happiness or hope as this is my 365 days of happy. However, I just want to do this writeup because as I mentioned, everything about repro-immuno disorder is becoming my advocacy. I still consider this part of my project because in my own little way, I hope I am paying kindness forward (to all young girls out there) especially because I have received many random acts of kindness over the past months that we have discovered about our condition.  Also, this is a late post for Monday.

xx, 
Corporate Junkie

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