Tag Archives: food

Doing A Lot Of Spring Cleaning (or Trying To Fill My Day)

Besides the limitations of being able to do things outside my house, I have more downtime in my house now. My main job doing customer service work has significantly cut my hours. I used to work about 30 hours a week for that job. A few weeks ago, most of my co-workers were let go and I had my hours cut in half. We weren’t doing any shows, but my manager and I stayed on to handle the few customers that were contacting us for help with various issues. Then this week, I became the last one left at my job (because of the way unemployment would work for me, it made more sense for me to stay on than my manager). But I am down to 3 hours a week. I now only will be working 1 hour for 3 days a week to answer voicemails. This could change to no hours, but I’m hoping at least I can keep this.

I do still have my other job (although I am restricted in how many hours I can do for that) and I can file for unemployment to make up the difference in salary once the pandemic unemployment assistance is set up. I’m not as worried about money as I thought I might be. Since so many people are in the same situation as me right now, I know there are a lot of people I can ask for help. And they are making the rules for unemployment different so I am eligible (when normally I wouldn’t be). So even though I’m sad that I’m not working normally, at least there is a bit of good news with the situation.

Now that I’m down to 3 hours a week (plus the other few hours a week I do my other job), there is so much free time for me every day. And I’ve really been trying to be productive. I put a lot more stress on myself to be productive when this all started and I realized that I couldn’t hold myself to that standard. This is not just a normal break with work like I’ve had before. I don’t know how long this will last and there are so many other things bringing stress into my life. SO I’m trying to find ways to be productive but not be hard on myself if there are some days that all I do is sit on the couch and watch tv. So I’ve been making a list of things that I have been putting off when I do feel motivated. And a lot of that list is big cleaning projects.

I’ve only accomplished one of those cleaning projects so far and that was to deep clean my fridge. I usually clean my fridge by wiping it down when necessary. But I couldn’t remember the last time I took the drawers and shelves out to scrub them. And I wanted to add some shelf liners to the shelves and a crisper drawer liner for my vegetable drawer to help keep it clean (or make it easier to clean when there is a spill). So I ordered a few things online that I wanted to use and once it was all here and I felt motivated, I did a huge cleaning of the fridge.

I was able to just shift things inside the fridge so I didn’t have to worry about things going bad. I just did one section at a time and then put things back and moved them around to work on another section. Because I was doing a deep cleaning plus adding liners, it did take a bit longer (it took me longer than I thought it would to cut the liners to the right size). But in the end, I’m very happy with having one big cleaning project done and my fridge looking so nice!

I think the motivation for the cleaning was because I have been trying to be better about cooking. And having a clean and organized fridge does help me want to cook. If I can store my ingredients where I can find them, that helps.

I’m sure that some of you are laughing at me for making such a big deal out of this, and I know that this isn’t something that should be life-changing. But it was something I was putting off for longer than I should and I’m so glad that I did it. It made me feel very accomplished and took up a lot of time, 2 things that I really need to feel these days.

Still Having Some Cooking Fails (or Trying But Not Being Perfect)

As I wrote in another post, I’ve been cooking a lot more lately. This is a necessity and it’s also a way for me to pass some time each day (because each day does feel like it takes forever). There are still some things about cooking that are difficult for me, plus there are a few additional challenges.

A friend of mine asked me why I don’t like to cook, and I mentioned that I don’t mind cooking, I just don’t really like to cook for just me. Of course, that got me thinking about why that is and maybe I don’t feel like I’m worth cooking for (but that’s a big rabbit hole I could go down). But I think it’s just that I haven’t had the time or motivation to cook, and my kitchen might not be the best setup for cooking.

Well, I definitely have the time now. The kitchen setup is something that I’m working on. Motivation will probably always be a struggle. But the new struggle is also not being able to plan what I might want to cook because I also don’t know what I will be able to get for groceries. This is making me a little stressed out with cooking because I don’t have recipes that I feel comfortable enough with making huge substitutions. But I’m trying my best and also making a lot of things that are pretty basic and simple.

But just because I’m making easy things doesn’t mean I won’t screw them up. I’ve had a few really great cooking wins with making some awesome stuff, but I’ve also had some epic failures. Like ruining an entire recipe because it got to an unsafe temperature but not hot enough to actually cook (and I didn’t notice it for long enough that I didn’t think it could be saved). Throwing out food is not easy, especially when it’s the meal I planned to eat that night for dinner. But in that case, I didn’t think risking food poisoning was worth it.

In the past, that failure might have made me not want to cook for a while, but I don’t really have that luxury right now. I do need to cook almost every day. And while a lot of days are just making something simple like eggs, that still is cooking every day. Sometimes I do have a day where it’s just leftovers or things that don’t require cooking, but those days are rare. Being forced to cook like I am now is probably a good thing, but I’m looking forward to when I can cook without the stress of everything else going on.

I am far from a perfect cook. I know I will screw up so many more recipes in the future. Hopefully, those screwups won’t be complete failures where I have to throw out the food, but that might happen too. I can only try my best and try to make this time of forced cooking the most productive I can and hope that I will come out of this time of isolation with a new habit and a stronger skill set in the kitchen.

Another Thing I’m Learning In Isolation (or Eating Disorder Issues)

There are so many things that I’m learning about myself and about the world right now. Yes, there are so many sad stories happening and I have friends who have lost loved ones. But I also have never heard of so many stories about how people are helping each other and coming together. I have learned that I’m much more of an extrovert than I thought (I thought I was an introvert until this). We haven’t been doing this for that long and I expect us to have to do this for a while, so I’m sure there will be so many other things I will learn about myself and about others.

But I have also come across issues that I never thought about before that are only happening because of being in isolation. And the biggest ones for me have been with my struggle to recover from my eating disorder. First, my workouts have been so good for me with feeling better about myself. But now, I’m not able to do my workouts the way that I have gotten used to. I’m not able to work out as hard and I’m missing a lot of cardio (I’m working on fixing that, but it’s not easy). Having something that felt like it was helping removed from my life has been hard. I don’t know if I was struggling this way before joining Orangetheory because I didn’t know what I was missing. I don’t know how to get the same feeling I get in class when I don’t have others around me supporting me and pushing me. But it’s something that I have accepted would be difficult to deal with so I’m working on it.

But the biggest challenge or struggle with my eating disorder has been about food (which is usually my issue). I am not used to having this much food in my house. I don’t like it because it makes me uncomfortable. But I know I have to do things this way because I need to limit how often I go to the store. And I’m not keeping foods in my house that I usually keep because I have to find more shelf-stable things or some of the things that I like to have aren’t available or easy to find right now. If I’m craving something, I can’t always find it. And I can’t have a binge of the foods I have in my house because I need that to eat for the rest of the week.

I’m also almost feeling food insecure because of those issues. I know that I’m not actually dealing with food insecurity and that’s a real and serious issue, but that’s the best way I can describe it. I know I have food and I would be fine if I couldn’t get more for a week or two. I wouldn’t be eating anything fabulous, but I have things like pancake mix and ramen that I could have. But I don’t have things that are as familiar to me and I don’t know when I’ll be able to get those again. Going to the grocery store has been stressful, but I have been able to avoid it for the past few weeks. I’ve had both grocery delivery and a friend help me, so it’s been easier now that I haven’t had to deal with going to the store myself. I’m not feeling anxiety by the lines or by being frustrated that I can’t get the things on my list. But I’m also feeling a bit out of control when I don’t see immediately what will be something that can be purchased. It’s a weird situation where I don’t know if I can win.

I’ve seen several articles and heard some podcasts that discuss these issues and say how this is a difficult time for anyone who has had or currently has an eating disorder. Even people in recovery are finding this a challenge and knowing that has made me feel a bit better about my struggles. I’m not alone by any means in this and that is reassuring. There haven’t been a lot of suggestions on how to work through this yet because this isn’t something that people have experience with. The main thing I have heard over and over again is that people need to be gentle with themselves and know that there may be setbacks right now. And that is ok because we are dealing with something that nobody has ever been through before. If right now my recovery takes a bit of a pause, that doesn’t mean I have ruined everything that I have worked for. I can get back to what I was doing before. And maybe I will start to pick up some skills that I can use to help me soon. I don’t know yet, but I am trying to stay optimistic.

I’m sure there will be other things that come up in the coming weeks and months that will be challenges and struggles that I wasn’t expecting. Even when things start getting better, I know that they won’t be just like they were before. We all will need to ease back into normal so we can feel comfortable with not being isolated anymore. But just because things won’t go back to the way they were before immediately doesn’t mean that they will be worse. I hope that I can find a way to make things better for me in the future. And if I can’t, I will just have to keep reminding myself that this time is temporary and any issues I have with my recovery are temporary as well.

Forced To Do Some Cooking (or Making The Best Of Things)

There have been a lot of photos shared since the pandemic started. People in hospitals hoping to survive. People wearing masks and gloves in public. Places that are usually packed with people being empty because people are isolating themselves. But I think the photos I see most often are related to grocery stores and getting supplies. I see so many photos of people hoarding supplies and having full carts or empty shelves in grocery stores. I do understand how panic buying happens because I’ve had those same thoughts, but I don’t get it to the degree that some people are taking it to. To me, panic buying is getting an extra thing of soap and toilet paper when you are buying some, not buying enough to last you a year.

Because of people panic buying, the idea of going to the grocery store has become very stressful for me. I am trying to limit my shopping to once a week to limit my potential exposure to someone who might be sick or an asymptomatic carrier. But at the same time, I don’t know what I’ll find at the store when I get there. If there’s something I need, I know I could still go out and try to get it another time, but there is no guarantee I’ll find it. And again, every time I go to the store I am potentially exposing myself to the virus. So I’ve just been working on doing my shopping once a week and figuring it out from there.

Honestly, if I could just get microwave meals for most of my meals, I would be doing that. But frozen food is a bit limited at the stores right now (hopefully they will be restocked soon). Some fresh things aren’t as easy to find either, but there are some things I can get. I do have to cook for at least some of my meals. And as much as I would love to meal plan and cook based on that, I have to work around the idea that I don’t necessarily know what I will be able to get when I do go to the store. So my cooking has needed to be a bit creative and I’m not used to that.

I’m not a big cook and I have said for a long time that I need to be better about cooking more at home. It’s very easy normally to get prepared or frozen meals (or to order in) and I am a fan of the convenience. I’m not going to deny that some of that comes from being lazy. But it’s a habit that I’m not proud of and I have known for a long time that I need to do better. And I guess being forced into change was the thing that I needed.

I’m not necessarily cooking the way that I have always wanted to. The things I’m making are pretty random or boring. For example, I cooked some peppers and onions and put it over rice with some beans. It was nothing fancy, but it was food and I made it. And I am making enough so I do have some leftovers so I don’t have to cook every night. I would love to find ways to be a bit more creative as I’m forced to cook, but I can’t depend on getting all the correct ingredients for something. I guess I could make a list and see what I can get each week, but a lot of things are perishable so that doesn’t really make sense. So I’m really stuck with this mismatch cooking and figuring out what to eat.

The only things that I am trying to collect things and hopefully I’ll get everything soon are for baking things. I’m not a big baker, but there are a few things that I know are not as easy to find in grocery stores right now that I would like to try baking. I don’t have everything I need, but the baking supplies are dry goods so I don’t have to worry about them spoiling.

Maybe this method will work and I’ll like doing it. I might figure out some new favorites. Or maybe people will stop hoarding soon and the grocery stores will look normal again. I’m mentally preparing that it won’t be normal for a little while and that I’ll need to do my shopping once a week. And fortunately, the grocery store near my house seems to be pretty calm and decently stocked. They limit how many people can be in there at one time so nobody is rushing around trying to get everything they need. People aren’t leaving the store with carts full of food (or multiple carts). They really are only getting what they need and that helps everyone have a chance to get the food they need.

I still have been having panic attacks the past 2 weeks before going to the grocery store because I have no clue what it will look like when I get inside. But the most that I go in and see that it’s not too horrible, the easier it will be. And hopefully, my grocery shopping will get easier as I find a routine with cooking a few things that I feel confident that I can get the ingredients for each week. This isn’t really the way I imagined myself working on cooking more, but it is the way it is and I’m going to try to take advantage of the moment.

Another Attempt At A Reset (or Feeling Sick Got Me Into A Bad Routine)

When I was feeling sick from antibiotics, I dealt with a lot of random symptoms. Many of them were similar to what I deal with each month with pain and nausea, but they weren’t being resolved by the things I usually do to feel better. I was also dealing with other symptoms that made me just feel awful.

I was able to work and go to my workouts, but that’s about all I could do. I was exhausted because I was waking up constantly at night. I wasn’t eating well because I went from not being hungry to feeling so hungry and nothing seemed to be what I wanted. And I wasn’t drinking enough water (which is a rare issue for me to have since I tend to overhydrate) because for some reason drinking water was making me feel very full and my stomach was hurting.

I’m not proud of what I was doing while I was feeling sick because they really weren’t the best choices for me. The sleep issue was one that I couldn’t help too much, even though I probably could have tried to go to bed earlier so I would have maybe gotten a bit more sleep. But whatever sleep I would have gotten would have been interrupted, no matter how early I went to bed. That’s been a bit easier to get back to my normal routine than getting my eating back has been.

I didn’t do anything as bad as I have done in the past with binge episodes, but they weren’t good either. I was making bad choices constantly and I’m paying for it now. I don’t feel like myself and I just feel like I’m recovering from poor nutrition choices and I’m not feeling better. Fortunately, this is just a general uneasy feeling and not a sick feeling like the week before.

I was finally done with antibiotics over the weekend and I started working back toward what I know I need to be doing. But it hasn’t been easy to do, just like every other time I try to have better habits. And I’ve done this attempt so many times in the past and I know how frustrating it can be for me. But I have to do it because there really isn’t another choice for me.

I’m trying to get back to some basics with food. As much as I want to learn how to cook a lot of good options for myself, I also know that having too many options can be a bad thing for me. I need to be a bit more regimented in what I keep in my house and what I might each for each meal. It’s not the most fun thing to do or super interesting, but it’s a way to reset myself before I focus on adding more things back in. And I’ve been wanting to do the autoimmune protocol diet for a while so I might not be adding things back in once I do reset things for myself. But that’s not something I’m focusing on right now.

Right now, it’s about making sure I’m getting some good food into my body every day, even if that’s not all I eat all the time. And I need to get back to drinking more water on a regular schedule so I can stay hydrated but make sure I don’t start overhydrating myself again. I’m not too focused on eating on a regular schedule since that is a much bigger struggle for me that I don’t need to worry about right now. But I do need to make sure that I eat enough so I don’t have horrible cravings.

As things are so often in my life, it’s a huge balancing act to figure out the right combination of foods and schedule so that I’m not swinging too far one way or another. And while weight loss isn’t the point for me right now with trying to reset myself, I know it will be a result of my efforts because the poor choices I was making last week did make me gain weight.

Hopefully, in a week or so I will be back to a slightly more normal situation and I can focus on improving it more from that point. But I need to get back to my normal first before I make more changes. I’ve made the mistake of trying to do too much at one time with fixing my eating and I have seen it backfire. So I’m going to go slowly this time and hopefully I can prevent the issues I’ve had in the past. But if nothing else, I just want to be back to my normal and reset myself so I’m not feeling like I went so far back to old habits and I’m stuck there.

Belated Birthday Dinner (or We Don’t Mind It’s Not Totally Free Anymore)

I haven’t done much for my birthday this year. I don’t mind that I haven’t been celebrating like I thought I would because I’ve had other things taking up my time. I am hoping to maybe do some birthday things next month, but I don’t know if I’ll be motivated to do them by the time things calm down. If I don’t really celebrate my birthday, it’s not the worst thing. While I love celebrating my birthday and it’s one of my favorite things, having an off-year is to be expected. And this August has been extremely busy for me and I just couldn’t put my focus on my birthday.

I usually take advantage of several birthday freebies as well. Many of them have to be done on your actual birthday and I have to skip most of those. But the things that are for your birthday week or month are things I usually do. But just like with celebrating, I haven’t really taken advantage of that this year. I haven’t even gone to Sephora for the birthday freebie (which most women would agree is the one birthday thing everyone seems to do). But there is one birthday freebie that I prioritize over all others and that’s going to my birthday dinner at Truxton’s with my birthday twin Joanna!

The birthday dinner deal has changed over the years. It started as a free entree and free dessert for each of us. Then it was $20 free for each of us and they would combine them on one check. Now it’s still $20 free for each of us, but they have to split the checks. Because of that, we no longer can have a completely free birthday meal. But we know that and expect that so it’s ok. We still are having an almost free meal and the best part of the tradition is our hangout anyway.

Because of all the work I have been doing for the election and some family that Joanna had in town, it was tough for us to find a time that worked for both of us. But we were able to find time this past weekend so we didn’t miss getting our dinner in before the deal ended since the requirement is that it just has to be during your birthday month.

We had a pretty routine meal for us. We had the monkey bread like we always do, we both had a burger, and we split the cookie ice cream dessert. It was delicious as always and the perfect birthday meal. And just like always we had lots of fun and random stories to tell each other. We did talk a lot about the election since things have been a bit crazy with that and she has been seeing the stories in the news. And we both had some random dating stories to share. Although I think she might have had a crazier story than mine with a guy that basically through a temper tantrum after he had a medical issue and she was worried about him. I don’t think either of us will ever understand why some guys act out that crazy when they don’t need to act out or react at all.

We also both talked about how neither of us did much for our birthdays this year. We might be able to do something together later as a late birthday celebration, which would be nice since we rarely do a big birthday thing together. But even if we don’t manage to get that organized, I’m so glad we did get our birthday dinner in. It’s one of my favorite birthday traditions and I love how much we both look forward to it. And it’s been one of the main ways I’ve been able to celebrate my birthday this year.

A Random Brunch With A Friend (or So Many Pancakes)

I’m aware that I am pretty set in my ways with so many aspects of my life. I have my favorite foods, my favorite stores, and my routines for getting things done. It’s not a bad thing to have routines and patterns, but it can sometimes be hard to break out of that when you are so used to it. Breaking away from the norm is one of the things that I get from doing my monthly challenges. Sometimes it is hard to change. But other times all it takes is a friend reaching out and me deciding to go along.

I was doing some errands this past Sunday when I saw some texts from a group text I’m in with some of my Orangetheory friends. One person in the group was craving pancakes from a particular restaurant and wanted to see if any of us wanted to go. It was a restaurant that I hadn’t been to before and I’m not usually a big fan of pancakes. But I was getting frustrated with my errands so I said I’d go just to give me a reason to stop going crazy with what I was trying to do. She gave me the information for the restaurant and I was there pretty quickly. And I lucked out with finding parking in their parking lot so I took that all as a good sign.

We went to A-Frame in Culver City which is a Hawaiian restaurant. But one of the things they are known for is their all-you-can-eat pancakes on the weekends. They have a few different varieties of pancakes that you can choose from. You get one variety at a time and they come in stacks of 2 pancakes. So they aren’t crazy huge, but they are still filling. Since this was my first time there, I wanted to try a few different types but I also didn’t want to be overstuffed.

I started with the standard buttermilk pancakes and got the fried chicken with it (you can get fried chicken with any of the types if you’d like). Next I had the banana macadamia nut ones without chicken. And I got the sweet red bean ones with chicken as my last plate. And they were all really delicious! They were light and fluffy and very flavorful. I think my favorite was the banana macadamia nut ones because they tasted like banana bread. And even though I don’t really like fried chicken, I enjoyed the chicken too! They weren’t greasy which made me happy. And they chicken was so good with the maple syrup too!

I wasn’t able to finish all 3 of my plates (I was super impressed that my friend was able to!) but I definitely got my money’s worth. Good food and good value are important to me when going out to eat, but the most important thing I think is having good company. And it was so much fun to have brunch with my friend when we rarely get to hang out outside of our workouts. She is also an actor so we were talking a lot of industry related stuff, but we also talked about lots of random things. It was the perfect thing on Sunday when I was really feeling down about my errands not going the way I hoped they would go.

We both had things we needed to get to that afternoon and we also were both very full after all the pancakes, so we didn’t hang around too late. And I felt a food coma coming on after eating something that I usually don’t eat. It was still worth it even though I was dragging on a bit for the rest of the day. This isn’t a brunch treat I will do that often, so I’m glad I took the time to enjoy it.

And I was so glad that my friend invited me out to somewhere new. I don’t know if I would have gone there if a friend didn’t specifically invite me out there. I’ve been trying to make brunch plans with a few friend (brunch seems to be a time of day many people can meet up) and I seem to always suggest the same place because it is where I like to get brunch and I don’t know a lot of other places. But this random brunch at A-Frame really made me realize that I do need to make an effort to either look into new places or have more friends suggest where to go. Because I never know when I will go somewhere I have never heard of and discover that it’s amazing and that I want to go back!

Doing More Tracking (or Finding Out Some Data Is Just Too Emotional)

Last month, I had a goal to work on tracking a few things in my life. I knew that things were getting a bit out of control and tracking is a way to gain control again. All of the things I was planning on tracking were things I have tracked before so I figured it should be a relatively easy challenge. And of course, since I thought it would be easy it wasn’t.

It was easy for me to track my spending and income. This was a habit that I had been doing for a while and it was pretty easy to get back into it. There were a few moments where I forgot to track something or had to spend more time than I would have liked double checking things, but it’s been relatively easy. It helps that right now I have more money coming in than I’m used to so I’m not seeing everything in red. But I want to get this habit back to where it was so I’m ready when things aren’t as great.

I also wanted to do accurate tracking of my weight and food. And this is where I struggled last month. Tracking my weight wasn’t too horrible, but I’ve realized that it’s not something I want to keep up as regularly as I was. I have some big weight fluctuations due to hormones and even when I know that my weight gain isn’t real it feels that way. It’s not easy when the scale says you are up 10 pounds overnight and all your clothes don’t fit. I know that it’s due to swelling and water weight, but I still hate seeing that. I need to figure out a better way to track weight because I need to do it, but I can’t do it as often right now. I’m not sure if weekly would be right and mostly doesn’t seem often enough, so this is something I will have to play with.

And tracking my food was kind of a disaster. Food tracking is such an emotional thing for me and I thought doing tracking would help take that away a bit. But instead, it made it more emotional and I could sense my moods being affected if I had a good day or bad day. I know I do need to do some tracking, but I’m not sure how to do it without the emotional tug I was feeling. It may have just been harder for me this time because of where I am in my life and outside factors, but whatever it was I know I failed at tracking food last month.

And for this month, I have another tracking related challenge. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I am not sleeping enough. I have had several days of only getting 4 hours of sleep. Part of this problem is how well I have trained myself to get up at the same time every day. Even if I go to bed really late, I’m still up at 7. If I sleep in, it’s only until 7:30 or 8 and that’s not that late if I get to bed at 2 or 3 in the morning. It’s not always that I am out late, sometimes I am in bed at a reasonable time and I stay up reading. Before I know it, it’s 2am and I’m still awake.

I know in a perfect world I would be asleep by 11pm so that I will get at least 7 hours of sleep even if I wake up in the middle of the night. That’s not totally realistic since there are some times that I’m just getting home at 11. But I think setting a goal to be in bed by midnight on those late nights and by 11:30 on not late nights isn’t too hard. And I need to set a limit on my nighttime reading to make sure that my lights are being turned off by midnight. It probably sounds weird to have to limit how much I read at night, but sometimes I just get so into a book that I forget that I need to put it down.

I think working on having a set bedtime also relates to better time management in general. I don’t have to get everything done in the evenings that I make myself do. I can save some for the next day or if I was better with how I use my time I could probably get them done during the day. Procrastination is my enemy when trying to get better about when I go to sleep.

I know that some people have alarms to remind them to go to sleep, and I’m going to look into those options. I might just add something to my daily reminders to remind me that I need to start winding down. I already have my phone and computer set to reduce the blue light I see in the evening, but I don’t have that for my tv. I know that they have blue light blocking glasses so those might be a good investment for me (I just don’t know how they would work if I was also wearing my regular glasses if I took my contacts out). I also am going to look at what parts of my evening routine I can do earlier so that it’s not a lot of self-care work at the end of the day and I’m tired.

I’m ready to not feel as tired anymore. This has been a problem I’ve been dealing with for a while but it has gotten significantly worse in the past few months. I know that getting more sleep will benefit so many aspects of my life and I can’t wait to see those benefits. And hopefully it will have some benefits I’m not expecting and my life will be even better when I’m well-rested a majority of the time.

Avoiding Something I Should Be Doing (or Scared Of What I’ll Find Out)

Usually, if I know something is going to help me or be good for me, I don’t hesitate to do it. There are a few exceptions, but I don’t normally waiver on the idea that something is going to better me. For example, even though I knew going off hormonal birth control would likely be an issue for me, staying on it was going to make my liver tumors continue to grow. I stopped the pill without a second thought. When I knew that I needed to add different supplements to my life to help with recurring medical conditions, I went to the store and bought them after leaving my doctor appointment. Even getting the non-wart/actual tumor off my face was something I didn’t go back and forth on once I found a doctor willing to do it.

But lately, I’ve been avoiding doing something that I know I probably should do. I have a few different autoimmune conditions and for one of them I deal with it flaring up. When I have flares, it causes very painful bumps on my skin and it can affect so many aspects of my life. There’s no cure for it and most treatments have a lot of negative side effects. And my condition is not nearly as bad as it is for many people so a lot of treatment options aren’t even options for me yet since they are for people with much more severe cases.

But something that I could do would be to find what my triggers are for my flares. Most people find that there are certain foods or categories of foods that trigger flares and you can stay almost flare-free if you avoid those foods. And the easiest way to figure out what foods cause flares is to do something called the AIP diet (which stands for autoimmune protocol diet). It’s like an elimination diet where you don’t eat foods that are common triggers for a period of time and then you slowly add the foods back in one by one. That way, when eat something that causes a flare you will know what it is so you can make sure you don’t eat it. This isn’t a diet that is meant to be long-term. You only follow the protocol until you know what your triggers are and then you go back to normal and just avoid the foods you need to.

I’ve known about this diet for a long time, but it was only recently when I decided to do it because I noticed I was having flares more often than normal. I originally planned on doing it after I had my trip last month, but then I got sick. There was no way I could follow the rules while sick and I knew my food habits would be weird then so I had to wait until I was better. And once I was better, I was dealing with pain and nausea so I decided to wait.

But this is just sounding like one excuse after another. And I had to think about why I have been acting like this. It took a few days of me doing some real soul-searching and thinking, but I think I finally realized what it came down to.

I’m terrified of what I will or won’t find out by doing this diet.

First, I’m scared I will find out I can’t eat foods that I love anymore without having flares. I would hate it if I couldn’t have dairy, eggs, or certain fruits and vegetables anymore. But I know that this is very likely because something is most likely one of the triggers for my flares. I don’t want to have to worry about every single thing I eat and if it has something in it that I won’t be able to eat. I’m scared that it will make eating at a restaurant difficult or that I will find it hard to adjust if something I love has to be out of my diet.

But I’m also scared that I won’t find out that any foods are causing flares. If I can’t find something that triggers them, that means I can’t do anything to help myself for now. I either have to see if I can do a treatment option that may be too harsh for me right now or I might have to wait to see if things advance to a more severe stage.

I don’t know which of those two terrify me more. They both sound horrible and I would be upset if they happened. But at the same time, doing nothing isn’t a good option either. I know I want to see if I can do something to help my autoimmune condition so that I don’t have to stress out about when a new flare will happen. I am lucky that the condition I have does tend to have food triggers because not all conditions have that. I have options I can try before I go to medications with lots of side effects and I owe it to myself to try those.

This is something that isn’t just something I should do for myself but what I need to do for myself. I do still need to do a bit more research on the plan so I can do it successfully, but I have a feeling I’ll be doing it soon so that I can try to find out some answers.

Disney Views and Food (or Rides Were A Low-Priority)

The Food and Wine Festival at Disneyland is happening right now. This has been an annual event that I’ve been able to check out for the past few years. While I don’t drink, I always love seeing the fun and unique food offerings and it makes a really fun day at Disneyland. And with the food pass you can get, it actually makes things not too expensive. So of course I had to check it out again this year.

I went with my friend Dani last week, and it was the perfect spring day. We’ve been having warmer weather, but it wasn’t too hot and we had a gorgeous blue sky with all the flowers in bloom!

The main reason we went to Disney was for the Food and Wine Festival, so we immediately went over to California Adventure to get a food pass and start looking at what each booth had to offer. The food pass allows you to get 8 items and we figured that we would be splitting pretty much everything. There were a few things we each wanted that the other didn’t, but it all balanced out.

There were a few repeat things from the past few years and several new things. We tried our best to vary things up and I think we got a good mix.

My favorite things were the asparagus Caesar (which was a repeat from the past, but they added chicken this year), the pepperoni egg rolls, the corn nuggets with bacon, and the garlic mac and cheese (which was another repeat).

Dani got the ghost pepper mac and cheese (I don’t eat spicy food) and she said it was good and tasted like a spicy version of the garlic mac and cheese we split.

Not everything was a winner for us. The two things we got that we didn’t love were the fried artichoke hearts and the parmesan salt and vinegar wings. The artichoke hearts were a repeat thing but they were just soggy and didn’t have a ton of flavor. The chicken wings were fine, but we couldn’t really taste parmesan or salt and vinegar. They were good wings, but we were expecting something different.

There was also a new thing this year with how you could order food. Instead of having to go to every booth to order what is there, you could order anything at any booth and just bring your receipt to the correct booth to pick up the food. We didn’t try this until we were using our last food pass tabs and we ordered a bunch of different things at one booth. It worked out fine for most things, but we did discover the downfall to doing this.

We ordered the beef tenderloin slider at a booth other than the one that serves it. When we went over to the booth to pick it up, we were told they were sold out and that they wouldn’t have any more for about 30 minutes. We had the option to wait or we could get anything else from any other booth. We didn’t really want to wait 30 minutes for something that we’ve had before, so we decided to go through the options and see what we wanted to get instead.

Since everything we got had been savory, we decided to get something sweet. They had a popsicle duo that had lime and strawberry at a booth. Dani took the lime one and I took the strawberry one. They were good, but nothing special. I probably wouldn’t have picked it normally, but we just wanted something easy and it was a good choice to end the time at the Food and Wine Festival with.

While we were on the California Adventure side, the only ride we did was Toy Story Mania. We didn’t want to do any of the fast rides since we were eating so much food, but we also didn’t want to spend time on rides we could do whenever when the food offerings aren’t always there.

We headed over to the Disneyland side thinking we’d do a few more rides, but when we got there the first thing we noticed was how nice it was with the flowers and trees in bloom. The castle is being worked on so it’s covered by a mural, but that didn’t take away from how pretty it was.

We did Pirates of the Caribbean and then we were going to go over to Fantasyland to do the Storybook Canal Boats. And as we were walking, we saw yet another gorgeous Disney view.

By the time we got to the boats, the sun was down and I was hoping the little houses would all be lit up. But they didn’t have as many lights as I seemed to remember. It wasn’t bad, just different from what I thought we’d be seeing.

We did a lot of walking around and wandering through different parts of Disneyland. It wasn’t empty, but it wasn’t as crowded as we thought it might be. We had a few other rides we wanted to do, but we weren’t having good luck and it seemed like the few things we thought about doing happened to be down when we were over there.

And even though we had a day full of food, of course there is always still room for Dole Whips. I had the orange/raspberry one which I think is my favorite combination.

After the Dole Whips, we started to head out of the park because the fireworks were starting. We didn’t want to be stuck in the crowds exiting the park when they finished, and we managed to be just at the gates as the crowd started heading that way. We still hung out in Downtown Disney doing some shopping, but we didn’t stay too late since we both had early mornings the next day.

Considering that the main point of this Disney day was to check out the Food and Wine Festival, I would say it was a success! It would have been nice to do a few more rides, but since we can do those any other day we are there I was ok with missing out on a few things we wanted to do. I’d love to go back to try a few more things at the different food booths, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it back before it ends. But if I can’t, then I know I’ll just be back to check it out next year!