Tag Archives: craving

Heat and Hormones (or Not Letting Cravings Take Over)

Posted on June 16, 2017 | Comments Off on Heat and Hormones (or Not Letting Cravings Take Over)

I’ve written about the heat from time to time on here. I don’t know why each year when it gets hot I seem surprised by it and how my body reacts. I know that my body swelling is a reaction to the heat and I understand that I shouldn’t be stressed about it. But knowing about something and feeling that way are totally different things. So of course, as soon as my body starts swelling (and my clothes stop fitting as nicely), I start to stress out.

And knowing that I’ve gained a little weight lately doesn’t help me stay rational about this. I’m working on getting my weight loss back on track, but it’s not easy to do. There are so many things that feel like they are working against me and sometimes I forget that it’s not always all my fault. There are things beyond my control at times and I have to try to manage them the best that I can.

I do have air conditioning now, but I do limit how often I use it. It’s not too expensive to run, but I also don’t want to feel dependent on it. I use it when it gets really hot and stuffy inside my house and once it feels cool and comfortable again I’ll either turn it off or adjust the temperature setting. But I really don’t need to limit it as much as I do and I have to tell myself that it’s ok if I get a bit spoiled with the air conditioning. I’m hoping that I will never feel like I always need it on and end up spending a ton of money on electricity (which is unlikely to happen with my current energy-efficient a/c), but there is a lot of middle ground between how little I’m using it now and using it all the time.

The other thing that I’m dealing with (and is probably being made worse with the heat) are the food cravings I’ve been having lately. I’m still adjusting to having hormone fluctuations and haven’t had to deal with cravings this way since I was in high school. Since I was on continuous birth control pills, I didn’t get a period and didn’t have PMS. The cravings are so weird to me and I’m working on trying to distinguish the difference between cravings because of hormones and cravings because of my eating disorder. I need to treat each type of craving differently and it’s not easy to know what to do.

I’m working on finding good and healthy options for when I do have hormonal cravings. It’s not easy when you want something that you know isn’t good for you, but hopefully I can figure out what will satisfy my body when I feel like I need something. This is all new to me, but hopefully once I’ve been birth control pill free for a year it will normalize. It’s only been 6 months and I know a lot of people told me it could take a year or two for things to be stable. While some things stabilized right away, I have to keep reminding myself that other things might not have normalized as quickly and I have to allow myself for an adjustment period.

I hate that I feel like I have these issues every single time that it gets hot and I wonder when it will stop feeling so crazy. I’m letting myself have these feelings because I know that things aren’t always in my control and I shouldn’t try to avoid feeling however I’m feeling. But it does annoy me that it feels like the heat and the cravings have ganged up on me right now and are making my life extra difficult.

But as all the other struggles I’ve written about on here, I know this is temporary. I have things in place to help me out this time. I’m in a better mental space to deal with the issues and I know what I can do to work on them. It’s not easy and I have to accept that it might never become easy. It’s all about getting through the tough times so that the next time they happen you are better prepared. I haven’t had to deal with the heat and hormone fluctuations together yet, so this time it might be a bit tougher. But that just means that next year should be better and that is what is helping me deal this time.

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Almost Halfway Through The Cleanse (or Bring On The Tonics And Detox Drinks!)

Posted on January 30, 2015 | 1 comment

The second week of Nykki’s Cleanse is definitely more intense than the first week. When you are not doing the 28 day group cleanse, the cleanse is only 14 days. So the 2nd and 3rd weeks are the “real” cleanse while the 1st and 4th weeks are transition weeks.

Starting on the first day of the 2nd week, I incorporated the tonics into my schedule. There are 2 tonics for the cleanse. A liver tonic that you take in the morning and afternoon and a bowel tonic that you take at night. Both of these can be mixed with either water or juice. Since I was pretty sure that the tonics weren’t going to taste delicious, I chose to mix them with orange juice.

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I basically do the tonics as a shot and hold my nose so I don’t taste them. The liver tonic tastes better than the bowel tonic, so I’m grateful that I only have to take the bowel tonic once a day.

To be totally honest, the taste of the tonics are so strong, that I questioned if I could really do them for the full 14 days. But I sucked it up and I’m so glad that I did!

I don’t know if it’s the tonics, the clean eating, or a combination of both; but my skin is looking so much better than it has in a long time! Also, before I started the cleanse, people said that while on it you experience mental clarity. At first, I was a little skeptical about that, but doing this has really cleared by head and allowed me to focus on what I need. A lot of the voices in my head (or the voice of my stomach in my head) are gone. I’m not thinking about what’s for dinner or what treat I can have. I’m focused on the here and now.

If you read that last paragraph and thought that I must be crazy, I don’t blame you. Reading people talk like that before I started this made me think that they must be crazy. But I’m shocked that it’s true!

The tonics are still not my favorite thing to drink, but they’ve become bearable and I’m getting through them.

The next thing that was added to my schedule this week was the detox drink.

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This was added in the middle of the week and I drink it once right now first thing in the morning. Again, it can be mixed with water or juice. Since I don’t want it to taste bad, I’m mixing it with juice (I’m getting more sugar in my diet than I’m used to, but it’s “good” sugar and I’m staying in my calorie range).

The first time I drank this, I was super nervous. But it was actually delicious! The psyllium husks have no taste at all and the bentonite either has no taste or the orange juice covers it up nicely!

For right now, I’m only doing the detox drink once a day, but soon it will be upped to twice a day. But I’m not worried about that (at least not yet).

Overall, I’m super happy how week 2 went on the cleanse. I’m not really feeling hungry and most of my cravings are gone. The only craving I really have left is for more protein, but I know that that will be the first thing that I add back into my diet. As far as other foods that I used to eat, I’m now thinking twice about a lot of them. I have lots of food stored in my fridge and freezer that I’m questioning if I want to keep in the house anymore. Like bread for example. I used to eat toast every morning, but now I think I’ll be fine with fruit and eggs. No toast needed. So I might toss out the bread that I have in the freezer. This doesn’t mean that I won’t eat bread again. It just means that I don’t think I need/want to keep it in my house.

But a fridge/freezer clean out hasn’t happened yet. I think I’m going to work on that next week. For now, I’m just so happy that this cleanse came into my life and I chose to take advantage of the opportunity!

Quick Update: Because so many of you contacted me about Nykki’s Cleanse, Nykki decided to do a sale today and tomorrow (so ending on January 31st) for all readers of Finding My Inner Bombshell! Just go to the website, pick your cleanse, and enter the promo code: BOMBSHELL . That will get you $50 off! I hope you guys get the cleanse and have as amazing of an experience as I’ve had so far!

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Soda Free (or Maybe I Can Keep This Last Bit of This Vice)

Posted on March 19, 2013 | Comments Off on Soda Free (or Maybe I Can Keep This Last Bit of This Vice)

I’ve previously mentioned that I’d like to get rid of my diet soda habit. Well, after that post, I wasn’t able to kick my diet soda habit. I wasn’t drinking it every day, but I’m aware of the problems that artificial sweeteners can cause.

But somehow, for the last month, I haven’t had a soda once. I didn’t realize at first that I didn’t have a soda, but after a week or so, I thought that maybe I’d try to keep it up.

And it wasn’t easy at first. There are some places that seem to go hand in hand with drinking a diet Coke. Like when I forgot my lunch at my day job and would run to Wendy’s for a baked potato (best emergency lunch). Or going to the movies. Or when I’m driving around and  get really thirsty and want to grab a diet Coke from a drive through.

But I’ve managed to avoid getting a soda while going to those places. The key for me is getting a bottle of water (with a straw). It has seemed to work really well for me for the last month. But I will admit sometimes even though I’m not craving a soda, I almost get one out of habit.

But the one thing I haven’t been able to kick is drinking sparkling flavored (calorie-free) water.

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I’ve tried plain sparkling water, but as I described it to a friend yesterday, the bubbles seem different.

But if this is my one vice, maybe it’s not so bad. It’s not like I smoke, do drugs, or something else harmful to my body. And if this sparkling water keeps me sane, is that so horrible?

If I’m not thinking about it, I’ll just drink plain (non-sparkling) water for an entire day, but sometimes I really do crave it. And drinking one over the course of the day does help me stay hydrated.

I’m going to try to limit how many I drink (when I was doing the RFO diet I could easily drink 4 a day) . I’m not going to drink more than 1 a day. That seems reasonable.

And maybe one day in the future, you’ll see a post from me saying how I was able to give up the sparkling water. But for now, I’m not going to beat myself up over it.

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