Some honesty for once: being sick + in denial

So I'm a whole foods junkie. I think most people know that about me. What's funny, though, is that I'm a total poser. It's actually not funny at all.

It's really, really sad.

Last year I did the whole Project Real Food thing. We went on GAPS and my kids went from horribly afflicted with some of the most severe eczema to very mild eczema.

I've learned more about food in the last year than ever before and I've become more passionate than ever.

But...then we moved. Even before the craziness that was putting our house on the market in a short period of time and moving cross-country, I would indulge in a bag of peanut butter M&Ms, a Simply Lemonade and the occasional trip to McDonald's to fulfill my guilty pleasures. I was sort of a closet junk food eater. But it was pretty minimal and by going probably 85% paleo when my kids did, I had shed all my baby weight and was looking and feeling pretty good.

Then we went through the whole moving thing. Because of the intense physical labor involved in getting our house ready to put on the market, I didn't gain any weight despite eating like crap 3 or 4 days a week. But once we hit the road and headed to South Carolina, some really awful eating habits developed.

See, I love fast food. Like, a lot. In my pre-foodie days, I ate out almost every day. And when I wasn't eating out, I was at home eating pizza rolls and boxes of macaroni and cheese. It was bad.

Like, bad. 

I was young enough that the only side effect I suffered from that lifestyle was being overweight. I weighed as much at 23 years old as I did a few years later when I was 9 months pregnant with my first kiddo. That would be 170 pounds. Ahem. On a 5'5" frame at only 23 years old. And what's worse is that I had always been skinny with zero effort. I graduated from high school and BAM. I started packing on the pounds.

I went on Weight Watchers (or really, I just starved myself - I ate Lean Cuisines for lunch and whatever dinner I wanted) and was able to shed all that weight and get down to about 130/135 for my wedding at age 24, and from that point on, I yo-yo'd and mostly kept my weight in an okay range by starving myself periodically and eating only dinner most days. There was a brief stint where I exercised pretty regularly after Ben was born and even got tone (for me)! But that was short-lived.

Anyway, back to South Carolina. We ate out on the road a lot, and life was hectic and crazy with three kids, traveling back and forth from Greenville to Lexington to house shop, and then "moving" to Myrtle Beach for a month and now settling into our house, where we had no kitchen for days and I'm still sitting in the middle of a room full of boxes and a house completely messy and not anywhere close to being put together.

I've been saying, "Oh, it's just life. We're just surviving. We're doing what we need to do right now to get by, but once XYZ happens, we'll get back to our healthy eating ways."

Except, that's not really true.

I talk the talk so well. But I don't walk the walk at all. I ate McDonald's last night! Me! The little whole foods junkie.

Cough. Cough.

I ran out of my thyroid meds about a month and a half ago, right around the time I weaned Landon, and I've since gained...wait for it...thirteen pounds. THIRTEEN. POUNDS. In a month and a half.

But much worse than the thirteen pounds is my general health. I've been in such denial for years.

I don't have issues with gluten!

I'm healthy!

I don't need exercise!

I can afford to eat fast food here and there!

I'm young!

I am so not healthy. I'm 30 years old and:

-I'm so tired all day long that all I can do is count down the minutes until bed time.

-Yet when bed time comes, I'm wide awake.

-I have joint pain. Pretty badly. Like, I limp every single time I stand up. Most steps hurt these days.

-I have acne. ACNE! I didn't have zits at all in high school. Yet, as an adult?

-I'm overweight. I crave sugar and carbs like it's my full-time job.

-My eczema is getting much worse than normal.

-My asthma has even resurfaced lately.

-I have really intense dizzy spells almost every day.

-My hair is falling out by the handfuls.

-My skin is supa dry.

-I've suddenly had a really hard time driving at night. Like, anxiety attacks because it's so hard for me to focus on the road.

-My depression has also recently surfaced.

-I feel like I'm getting sick...a lot. At least once I week I declare I'm about to get the flu or a cold. Yet the next day I'm totally fine. I should be thankful I don't get full-blown sick much at all, I know! It's just weird how often I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of sick. This is totally new.

You get the point. I'm not healthy. I have hypothyroidism + adrenal fatigue. I'm a hot mess. And I know exactly why. And I know exactly what it would take to fix it.

Get back on Armour for my hypothyroidism, start the Autoimmune Protocol diet (basically strict Paleo, very similar to GAPS) and exercise every day. Yet...somehow...I just can't. I say I will every day. But every day it's the same thing. Well, just the one last time I'll go to McDonald's. Or Zaxby's. Or go get hibachi. Or, or, or.

There's always tomorrow!

Tomorrow is my worst enemy. I know better than most that the foods I'm putting in my mouth are killing me slowly. I know without a shadow of a doubt that my awful diet and lifestyle are completely to blame for my super fast declining health. More than most people, I actually have no one but myself to blame.

I've decided that the best chance I have of actually getting back on track and taking care of myself (and not just my family, which I'm so notorious for doing) is to put it out there. To own it. To make myself accountable to someone but myself.

I've been living this lie for awhile now, pretending to be so healthy and into whole foods. And I am...for my kids and my husband. But I'm lousy at taking my own advice and even lousier at forcing myself out of a lifestyle that has become a habit so very hard to break.

Tomorrow needs to be my best friend. Tomorrow needs to be the day I start over. For good.