All day long, I've been trying to work on something, anything that was either writing something new or editing something older, and I kept getting stuck. NOTHING called out to me! I also had this post writing itself in the back of my head, so I figured that I should just write it down and be done with it, lol!
As you may or may not know, I have spent the last few years researching health. I have read more books... taken several anatomy classes... and implemented what I've learned into my own family so that we all enjoy pretty good health. Most of the time, lol!
Except for me, sigh... I am different in that I have diabetes, which can be a pretty complicated condition to treat. MOSTLY because it is - by definition - an addiction to and inability to properly digest sugar AND most carbohydrates.
Say I wanted to make scrambled eggs, and decided to add just a hint of maple syrup to it - the real kind, not the imitation stuff. Most people could eat the lightly sweetened scrambled eggs with no problems. Their blood sugar might spike for a little while, but then their body would send in the reinforcements and clear the blood so that it returned to normal fairly quickly.
This is an inescapable fact. In EVERY body - healthy or not - eating carbohydrates triggers an insulin response - provided that they eat enough to raise the blood sugar levels. This is the body's way of storing energy for when it needs it. Therefore, even healthy, non-diabetic people can have days when they eat just a bit too much sugar or carbs - maybe they combine the two and eat an enormous piece of cake with a side of pie and top it with ice cream - then afterwards they feel weird.
They'll probably feel good and hyper for the first 20 or so minutes, and then they'll feel a bit out of it. They might get a headache, or they might just feel a bit tired and woozy. Lethargic... Maybe paranoid... In any case, they feel like something is not quite right. It may even seem like something horrible is about to happen. I often feel nauseous at this point.
And then... they crash! Their insulin has kicked in - and because their sugars were so high, they had to have a lot of insulin sent in to clean up the blood. The result is that their blood sugar goes too low, which makes them jittery. Shaky. Ravenous!!! They crave carbs and would do anything - even steal if they literally HAD to - in order to get a candy bar or something.
Sounds a bit like addiction right? Take a drug, feel the high, come down and want more...
The problem with actual diabetics is that this happens almost EVERY time they eat!!! Until they hit the stage I have, which is insulin resistance. My body literally has no more available storage left. SO, when I eat something with carbs in it, and then my blood sugar goes up, my body sends out insulin to clean up my blood, but my body doesn't have anywhere to put it. (I also have an enormous amount of insulin floating around my blood because of this.)
Here's what happens. It's the reason why diabetes ends up such a horrible disease! With no empty storage rooms left to stash the excess blood sugar, the insulin has to get creative. It attacks ANY cell in the body that it can! This can be muscles. Organs. Joints...
Rheumatism? I've read more than one study that suggests that it's caused when insulin attacks the joints. Same with gout - which is actually a phenomenon that occurs when the body gets so bogged down trying to digest carbohydrates that it has trouble digesting proteins. The proteins leave Uric Acid in the blood, and the body can't clean it out, so it settles in the joints, crystallizes, and tears them up. OUCH!
The doctors have two solutions to "manage" diabetes. Number one: Take Metformin. A drug that is designed to make a person's body less resistant to its own insulin. It forces the cells in the body to open up and let the excess sugar into storage. Number two: Shoot up with other insulin.
These work temporarily because they solve the symptom - which is high blood sugar. They DON'T solve the problem! The problem is that the body CAN'T properly digest carbohydrates! (Sugar is just the most potent and easily accessible of the carbohydrates.) The problem is that the body has run out of storage for the glucose that it does digest.
The problem is that the body is addicted to the very thing it can't digest...
The only effective solution is to remove the cause and break the addiction. The body needs to reset...
I am writing this post because THIS is what I need to do! I need to reset my body. I need to break my addiction! And yes, I am able to admit that I am addicted, sigh...
Picture this. On an example day, I eat eggs and bacon for breakfast. I feel good! I eat sliced meats between slices of cheese for lunch - my version of a sandwich. I still feel good. I'm tired because I have a weird sleep schedule, so I have tea with cream in it. It perks me up and I feel great! My blood sugars are hovering around 140, which for me right now is good...
For dinner I have a large salad consisting of romaine lettuce, crumbled bacon, leaks, sunflower seeds, cheese, and red wine and olive oil vinaigrette. My blood sugar may go up or down depending on how my body feels. Half the time it goes up a point or two, and the other half it goes down a point or two when I check it about an hour and a half later.
Then... I start listening to the nagging that has been in the back of my head all day. It tells me that I HAVE to have something crunchy to munch on. I have nuts on hand for this exact reason. They are perfect for the crunchy munchies, BUT they are about 60-80 percent carbohydrates! If I manage to only eat a few, my blood sugar stays fine. BUT my craving for crunchy munchies isn't satisfied with just a few! It WANTS about a cup to a cup and a half. This will raise my blood sugar, but not so horribly that it won't come down.
THEN, add in the fact that I frequently want chocolate and haven't quite been able to train my palate to eat it sugar free. SO, most of the time I can ignore this need for chocolate, then... I can't resist taking just a little... I grab a pinch of tiny, soy-free, dark chocolate chips. Usually about 7 chips. These are half the size of the chocolate chips you are thinking about.
Those 7 or so tiny chocolate chips send my blood sugar through the roof!!! Even worse, it tends to make it hard for my blood sugar numbers to come back down for a couple of days!
This is my biggest problem. Willpower... I mean I do have it, and surprisingly plenty of it. I can stick to a pretty low carb diet with mostly no problems. But I am not perfect, and I do often have trouble with cheating on my diet.
When most people cheat on their diet, it's with something big! Not so me. My cheating tends to be tiny, because I am hoping against hope and praying that a tiny little bit won't hurt, but it does...
The WORST part about it is that I don't have all the other problems and side effects of diabetes at the moment. ALL of my other numbers look just about perfect. Blood pressure. Cholesterol. Everything but my weight. It all looks good and I am not sick very often. If I didn't actually KNOW that I have diabetes, I probably wouldn't even suspect...
What I need is a reset! I need to reset my body back to normal functioning. This is actually easier than most people might think. All it takes... is to deny the body the addiction until it heals.
Ever heard of a religious fast? The basic principle is to purify the body. This actually works because a person on a religious fast basically does not put any new food into the body - but does drink water - for a couple of days until anything that the body needs to finish digesting has been cleared out. It is a very simple detox and purification. It resets the body back to optimal functioning!
I know I need to do this - sort of GAPS style. I know that I need to create a bunch of broth and basically consume NOTHING but broth, water, and possibly tea with cream for as long as it takes to clear all the excess sugar out of my blood. To clear all the excess insulin out of my blood. To clear out ANYTHING that needs to be cleared out!
Both my mom and my aunt - and a good friend of mine - have gone through a gastric bypass. If I could have one, I probably would just because I would HAVE to have this fast - AKA liquid diet. Right after the bypass, the patient - for a month - CANNOT consume anything but liquids. They are allowed to have any kind of liquid they want -clear at first - so long as they drink it in small but frequent doses.
My mom drank iced tea, hot chocolate, and some sort of powdered flavored stuff that is the grown up version of Kool-aid. She tells me that the main reason she lost all that weight was because she was basically forced to go on a fast. BUT it worked!
She lost weight. Her diabetes went away. All the rest of her numbers that they measure health by improved. Same with my aunt. Same with my friend. I know that if I could just find the will power to go through the fast without the surgery, it would work for me too.
I KNOW it would! I could reset my body to better health. If I only had the willpower...
I admit it, I just don't have that kind of willpower! Without the permanence of the surgery, I simply could not go through the fasting process long enough for it to work. I'm afraid to even try! I am too damn stubborn to even try!
Why? Because no one else in my family has to do this. (Except for my mom again... but she won't.) It's already agony when my hubby makes spaghetti that I can't eat. It smells so damn good! I end up eating a little anyway.
Or potatoes! OMGs!... Potatoes have always been my favorite food. I have tried all the varieties. Even the supposedly "good for diabetics" variety. The problem with potatoes is that they are low in nutrition, high in carbohydrates, and don't have much else to them. BUT they taste SO DAMN good!!! They are addicting! My hubby just LOVES to make sausage and potatoes for breakfast, and it tastes SO DAMN GOOD!!!
I am weak! I literally cannot resist!
I tried. I made 3 baked potatoes the other night. One for my hubby and each of my boys. I ate the pork loin without the baked potato, but then my son gave me the like, mmm... 3 or 4 bites that were left over on his plate so that they wouldn't go to waste.
I lied to myself and told me that 3 or 4 bites wouldn't hurt. 2 hours later, my blood sugar was 223!!! (It was around 160 before that.) I didn't have any symptoms. I didn't have any indication that my blood was abnormally high with sugar. In fact, other than feeling a little sleepy, I felt mostly fine. Had I not tested, I would have assumed that I was right.
Sigh... This post is for anyone who needs to find the courage to heal their body. It is my hope that I can dig deep and find the will power to reset my body with a fast. It is also my hope that others going through the same thing can find their strength of will, and maybe we can all do this together!
Thanks and have a happy day :-D
Showing posts with label Nutrition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nutrition. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Why I Consider Milk Sacred
I'm in a strange mood today. I can't seem to write, and nothing looks appealing. I don't want to read, watch TV, not even crochet! So, I'm surfing the net and contemplating life in general. I decided to post something I wrote for a local newsletter because it very concisely states what I believe and why.
Why I Consider Milk Sacred
Today, I could go to the store and buy a gallon of milk, which is so very ordinary, how could this act possibly be considered sacred? From nearly the dawn of mankind, milk has been considered sacred. Goddesses were depicted as mostly breasts for their ability to create milk. The Vedic religion reveres milk; the Hindu religion considers cows to be sacred for their milk.
The very first defined cultures of humankind, the Sumerians and Babylonians worshipped the cow as a goddess, as did the Egyptians, having both a cow goddess, Hathor, and a cow god, Apis. Even the bible is full of references to the sacredness of milk (and honey). If all that is true, then why do we modern Americans consider milk as nothing more than a commodity at best, and something vile to be avoided at worst?
I believe the difference in sacred milk and modern commercial milk is exactly that; commercialism. At no other point in history was milk ever produced as something other than a vital and sacred nourishment. As people grew larger in population, and congregated in ever larger cities, providing milk for everyone became a logistical nightmare. It is impossible for everyone in a city to own a cow on their own property, so a few industrious people decided to own large herds of cows and sell the milk to city-folk… for a profit.
Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with earning a profit, but things have been done in the name of making money that could not be considered sacred in the slightest. There is a reason the truly spiritual endeavor to live a life without money; money can corrupt.
After the war of 1812 cut off America’s supply of alcohol from Europe, distilleries soon became a part of every city. It was discovered that the waste product – slop – from the distilleries increased the amount of milk a cow produced, and so cows were kept in lots alongside the distilleries. This slop may have increased the amount of milk, but it made the cows sick, and their milk quality was so bad it could not even be churned into butter. It was good for nothing but selling to the inhabitants of the crowded city.
Unsurprisingly, this “milk” from sick cows caused the people who drank it to fall ill, causing a crisis. Of course, the simple and obvious solution of not feeding cows distillery slop – and keeping them on pasture rather than in lots – was not cost effective, therefore a different solution was needed. Concurrently, in France, a man named Louis Pasteur had a theory about germs, and suggested boiling things to kill germs. This theory was applied to the milk from distillery slop fed cows, and resulted in a decrease in overt illness and death from the consumption of it.
To recap, in an effort to decrease costs and increase profits, the problem of bad milk is created, and then in an effort to solve this problem, pasteurization was employed. Since there were arguably more people in cities drinking bad milk than people in the country drinking milk from healthy animals on pasture, the country grew divided on the subject of milk and pasteurization. Plenty of people, including those who wished to continue profiting from the bad milk, became advocates of pasteurization for all milk.
Many doctors prescribed unpasteurized milk from healthy cows for their patients, and from about the 1890’s to the 1940’s here in America, there existed various medical milk commissions and certified raw milk. Why? Because as people have known for many millennia, milk is good, healthy, and even sacred. Nowadays, people have argued that milk is not meant to be consumed by humans after weaning. Arguments against milk include, “no other animal consumes milk after weaning,” and “no other animal drinks the milk of another species.”
This is only true to a point. Having raised plenty of pugs, I can honestly say that the adult dogs will try to nurse off of a milk producing mama as often as she will let them. I have been told by farmers that the same is true for cows. I reason that it is probably true for most animals, and I also know that pretty much any animal I have ever been around will jump at the chance to drink cow’s milk or cream if given some. I guess that the only reason that they don’t regularly drink milk (their own or another species’) is simply because they haven’t figured out how.
I consider milk to be sacred for many of the same reasons my ancestors did. Milk is full of nutrition, and when it comes straight from the cow (i.e. not pasteurized), it is also full of those things our bodies need for vibrant health (such as probiotics and enzymes like lactase). I consider milk to be sacred because if a person had access to absolutely nothing to consume but an acre or so of grass and a milk cow, that person would survive quite healthily on the milk alone for as long as the cow continued to produce. The same cannot be said if the person ate just the grass…
I consider milk to be sacred because it is. As a friend of mine once said, “There is nothing on this planet that was created for the sole purpose of being food except milk. Absolutely everything else has it own reason for being, sure it may be food to us, but that is not the reason it was created.” I agree.
For a more in depth explanation of how conventional milk comes from sick cows and is pasteurized solely to keep people from getting sick from bad milk - please read The Untold Story of Milk by Ron Schmid. Or visit http://realmilk.com/
Monday, November 7, 2011
An Apple a Day
I like to start my day out by eating an apple for breakfast. I have found that even on mornings when I am sluggish and grumpy, an apple improves my mood. Apples are an enigma to me.
When I was diagnosed as diabetic 10 years ago, the diabetic educator told me to limit my carbs, and as an example, she told me that a medium sized apple would count as the maximum amount of carbs I should eat at any meal. Therefore, if I wanted to eat carbs for lunch, and I wanted to eat an apple, then I couldn't have ANY other carbs with it. She suggested that I only eat half, that way I could also have half a sandwich to go with it.
Throughout the years, I have learned that not all carbs are equal. Therefore, eating the WHOLE apple with a couple of slices of meat for lunch is much healthier for me than putting those slices on bread. HOWEVER, as I was learning about nutrition, I realized that there is pretty much nothing in a carbohydrate based food that cannot be easily found in abundance in a good steak or an egg.
Take an apple, if you look at this nutritional profile, you'll see that all apples really have going for them nutritionally is fiber and vitamin C. Nutritional Profile for Apples
Compare that to a nutritional powerhouse such as eggs. Even factory farmed eggs are packed FULL of vitamins and minerals. If a person ate nothing but eggs, they would live a long and healthy - if dietarily bland - life. Nutritional Profile for Eggs Eggs are also beneficial in that the Vitamin A in it is already in the optimal Retinol form. Some people have trouble converting Beta Carotene into the Retinol form, so no matter how much Beta Carotene they ate, it wouldn't help them.
Even comparing apples to another type of plant, such as broccoli, apples seem to pale. Broccoli has a surprisingly similar profile to eggs, except it has no Vitamin A Retinol and an enormous amount of Vitamin A Beta Carotene - which is the precursor to Retinol, or in other words, it's what the body converts into Retinol. Nutritional Profile for Broccoli
Why then has the phrase "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" been so commonly accepted as true? I truly believe that it's because of the other things apples do for a body. Without going into a tediously long list of enzymes and how they act in the body, I like to think of it like this:
Digestion is vitally important to the body, and any food that is high in enzymes to help digestion is extremely valuable. Ideally - from an enzyme point of view - all food would be eaten raw since enzymes are destroyed by heat or cooking. When I think about my three examples of food, I realize that eggs are normally cooked, thereby destroying their enzymes. This is not because cooking is necessary before one eats an egg but because most people deeply object to consuming an unappetizing blob of goo.
Even broccoli - which technically can be eaten raw - is most often cooked. Therefore, both eggs and broccoli are consumed without enzymes and actually need to be eaten with something containing enzymes for optimal digestion to occur. I didn't really believe this when I first learned about it. It didn't make sense to me that something as fragile as an enzyme could help with digestion, but, I figured I didn't have anything to lose by trying it.
So, every morning for breakfast, I started eating an apple. I notice something strange... well strange for me. Normally when I wake up, I have no appetite. As a diabetic, if my blood sugar drops too low, I start shaking and feeling sick. Therefore, after waking up, I should eat something to prevent sugar dropping.
Most mornings, I just couldn't force myself to eat anything. I would even go hours before I felt hungry. I would eventually eat something for lunch, feel nauseous for hours, and then eat a huge dinner when I finally felt hungry. I used to believe that I should only eat when I'm hungry, but my diabetic educator was very insistent that I needed to maintain my sugar levels - never allowing them to rise too high or drop too low. This meant I needed to eat something every four waking hours at the very least.
Imagine my surprise at how difficult it is for me to eat on a schedule! Anyway, after deciding to try eating an apple in the morning - when my stomach turned at the thought of eating anything - I noticed that I started feeling better. Within an hour of eating the apple - which also has the benefit of getting rid of my morning breath - I would be hungry! Not the ravenous hungriness of a diabetic who has gone too long without food, but the clear thinking hungriness of someone who knows they are hungry, and has plenty of time to grab a bite to eat.
I even felt like cooking things! Don't get me wrong, I love to cook, just not when I'm feeling blah. Eating the apple took away the blah feeling. These days, I can always tell when I've gone a few days without eating an apple because I start falling into my old patterns. I'll feel blah and not want to cook or eat anything until even my hubby is on his hands and knees begging me to feed them. I'll complain, and then realize that it's been more than 4 hours since they've eaten because I didn't feel like cooking.
I am now completely convinced that enzymes and a good digestive system really are vital to good health! An apple a day. It may not make sense to anyone else, but seriously, try it! See the benefits for yourself :-)
When I was diagnosed as diabetic 10 years ago, the diabetic educator told me to limit my carbs, and as an example, she told me that a medium sized apple would count as the maximum amount of carbs I should eat at any meal. Therefore, if I wanted to eat carbs for lunch, and I wanted to eat an apple, then I couldn't have ANY other carbs with it. She suggested that I only eat half, that way I could also have half a sandwich to go with it.
Throughout the years, I have learned that not all carbs are equal. Therefore, eating the WHOLE apple with a couple of slices of meat for lunch is much healthier for me than putting those slices on bread. HOWEVER, as I was learning about nutrition, I realized that there is pretty much nothing in a carbohydrate based food that cannot be easily found in abundance in a good steak or an egg.
Take an apple, if you look at this nutritional profile, you'll see that all apples really have going for them nutritionally is fiber and vitamin C. Nutritional Profile for Apples
Compare that to a nutritional powerhouse such as eggs. Even factory farmed eggs are packed FULL of vitamins and minerals. If a person ate nothing but eggs, they would live a long and healthy - if dietarily bland - life. Nutritional Profile for Eggs Eggs are also beneficial in that the Vitamin A in it is already in the optimal Retinol form. Some people have trouble converting Beta Carotene into the Retinol form, so no matter how much Beta Carotene they ate, it wouldn't help them.
Even comparing apples to another type of plant, such as broccoli, apples seem to pale. Broccoli has a surprisingly similar profile to eggs, except it has no Vitamin A Retinol and an enormous amount of Vitamin A Beta Carotene - which is the precursor to Retinol, or in other words, it's what the body converts into Retinol. Nutritional Profile for Broccoli
Why then has the phrase "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" been so commonly accepted as true? I truly believe that it's because of the other things apples do for a body. Without going into a tediously long list of enzymes and how they act in the body, I like to think of it like this:
Digestion is vitally important to the body, and any food that is high in enzymes to help digestion is extremely valuable. Ideally - from an enzyme point of view - all food would be eaten raw since enzymes are destroyed by heat or cooking. When I think about my three examples of food, I realize that eggs are normally cooked, thereby destroying their enzymes. This is not because cooking is necessary before one eats an egg but because most people deeply object to consuming an unappetizing blob of goo.
Even broccoli - which technically can be eaten raw - is most often cooked. Therefore, both eggs and broccoli are consumed without enzymes and actually need to be eaten with something containing enzymes for optimal digestion to occur. I didn't really believe this when I first learned about it. It didn't make sense to me that something as fragile as an enzyme could help with digestion, but, I figured I didn't have anything to lose by trying it.
So, every morning for breakfast, I started eating an apple. I notice something strange... well strange for me. Normally when I wake up, I have no appetite. As a diabetic, if my blood sugar drops too low, I start shaking and feeling sick. Therefore, after waking up, I should eat something to prevent sugar dropping.
Most mornings, I just couldn't force myself to eat anything. I would even go hours before I felt hungry. I would eventually eat something for lunch, feel nauseous for hours, and then eat a huge dinner when I finally felt hungry. I used to believe that I should only eat when I'm hungry, but my diabetic educator was very insistent that I needed to maintain my sugar levels - never allowing them to rise too high or drop too low. This meant I needed to eat something every four waking hours at the very least.
Imagine my surprise at how difficult it is for me to eat on a schedule! Anyway, after deciding to try eating an apple in the morning - when my stomach turned at the thought of eating anything - I noticed that I started feeling better. Within an hour of eating the apple - which also has the benefit of getting rid of my morning breath - I would be hungry! Not the ravenous hungriness of a diabetic who has gone too long without food, but the clear thinking hungriness of someone who knows they are hungry, and has plenty of time to grab a bite to eat.
I even felt like cooking things! Don't get me wrong, I love to cook, just not when I'm feeling blah. Eating the apple took away the blah feeling. These days, I can always tell when I've gone a few days without eating an apple because I start falling into my old patterns. I'll feel blah and not want to cook or eat anything until even my hubby is on his hands and knees begging me to feed them. I'll complain, and then realize that it's been more than 4 hours since they've eaten because I didn't feel like cooking.
I am now completely convinced that enzymes and a good digestive system really are vital to good health! An apple a day. It may not make sense to anyone else, but seriously, try it! See the benefits for yourself :-)
Thursday, March 24, 2011
My Journey
I just read a blog post from Jenny at Nourished Kitchen in which she describes what she went through over the years getting sick, and then recovering from her various diseases. Her story is different than mine, but in a way, it is exactly the same. So, I decided to write my story. I have said most of this before, but I don't think I have ever written it down.
My journey begins at about age 8. When I find them I will post a picture of what I looked like at age 7 and at age 8. At 7 I looked exactly like I should, thin... perhaps even scrawny. I am not entirely sure what changed in that one year, but by age 8, I was pudgy. I had budding breasts... at 8! The kind that already needed a bra, and a B cup at that, if I remember correctly. I don't remember this part clearly, because to me, I woke up one day at age 12, and magically had a DD cup, but I look at pics of myself at 8, and I see them growing. This really isn't normal. A girl should not be overweight with B cups at 8.
I wish to interrupt and say that if I saw a girl in the same condition I was in, I would assume she was consuming too much soy, because soy is loaded with toxins and plant estrogen. It has so much estrogen in fact, that it has been proven to cause precocious puberty. ( Precocious Puberty: Helping Kids Stay Kids (Home Use)
)
I look back and wonder where I would have been exposed to so much soy, since it wasn't something that my mom actually bought, but judging by the labels on food today, it's in EVERYTHING... especially bread. Guess what, I ate a LOT of bread. I loved it. One summer, when I was 15, I ate almost nothing but bread. But I'll get to that later.
As I said, at age 12, not only did I have DD cups, but I was overweight, 220 lbs to be exact. Other than that, I was a normal and healthy menstruating preteen, except I suddenly needed glasses. Oh, and I had migraines! My mom took me into the doctor several times for this. I had tests upon tests. The most memorable one involved having goo covered sensors placed all over my head (getting my hair just covered in goo), and then I had to sit completely still for a half an hour or so. Every little movement I made affected the test, so I had to suffer the most excruciating itch! The doctors couldn't find anything wrong, chalked it up to excess adrenaline (because obviously I must not be active or I wouldn't be overweight, right?), and gave me drugs to cope with the pain.
I swear to you, and you can ask my mom, from day one, I only ever used the drugs when I was in so much pain I could not stand it anymore. I did not EVER want to become dependent on drugs! (Go D.A.R.E. program!) (Wish I'd had these books back then! Herbal Drugstore
Prescription for Natural Cures
)
At age 15, my monthly got all wonky. I had no idea why back then, but remember when I mentioned that I ate almost nothing but bread that summer? I had 4 slices of buttered toast for breakfast, and 4 slices for lunch. I might have had a few more slices as a snack throughout the day, but then I had whatever mom had me make for dinner. Mostly pasta hotdishes. I love how my mom taught me to cook! She was at work, and wanted to come home to dinner, so about an hour or so before she got off of work, she called me up, and talked me through whatever I was supposed to make. I'd put it in the oven, and it would be ready to eat by the time she got home.
That same summer, I got the scare of my life, and the conversation went like this: "Mom, I swear I am still a virgin, but I haven't had my period in 4 or 5 months." Previously, I often skipped a month, so just one or 2 months without a period was normal and ok, but by the 4th or 5th month, I was freaked out! She near rushed me to a baby doctor, which was my clue that she thought I was probably pregnant. At first, the doctor had an attitude like, "Well you wouldn't be seeing me unless you were pregnant," and even though I swore up and down I was still a virgin, she was like, "uh-huh." After she examined me, she actually asked me, "What are you doing here? You're not pregnant. You're irregular, so just keep track of your periods, and if there's something wrong, we can use that info to figure out what." Dismissed. (Why did I never have the books I needed when I first needed them? Green Fertility: Nature's Secrets For Making Babies
)
My periods remained irregular, so much so that during my first year of marriage I had a total of 3 periods, one of which lasted 3 months... yeah... that was fun, not! I started seeing a doctor to see what was up, and why couldn't I conceive. At first, I was told, "Well, you're overweight. Eat less fat, and exercise more." I rolled my eyes, and asked to go on birth control because most of my friends got pregnant right after they got off birth control. I figured it was worth a shot. Didn't work. The only thing it did do was give me one crampy painful period a month. Never having had cramps more than once or twice, this SUCKED!
At 21, (in2001) the doctor finally smiled at me, and said, "Your last two glucose tests have been high, and your insulin levels are very high. You have diabetes." I guess this was good news to her, one more patient paying for drugs and frequent doctor visits, plus she could finally tell something to blame my infertility on. She gave me Metformin, and off I went. I went to the diabetic educator with my mom, took my meds and checked my blood sugar dutifully every day for three months. I was assured that after 3 months, my blood sugar would be normal, and that I might even conceive. They weren't and I still wasn't pregnant, so I stopped taking them. Honestly, my blood sugar levels did not change, so I knew that the meds really didn't do anything for me.
I stagnated for a while, then in 2003, I lived with my grandpa for a little while. I don't talk about my grandpa enough, but he's a genius. When I say that, I don't mean that I think he's really smart and cool, I mean that he is a genius. He denies it modestly, and talks about how his mother was the real genius, and how he always thought she could have done so much more than get married and have kids. He saw the slight spark of genius in me, and asked me not to get married and have kids. Sorry grandpa, but it's all I ever wanted to do. (And for the record, when I tested my genius level, I was a hair or two shy of being able to join Mensa, so no, I'm not actually a genius, damn!)
While living with him, I got to pick his brain everyday for months! It was weird though, I knew he was disappointed that I was married, and Hubby lived with him too... I got the feeling he didn't really like Hubby, so I actually shied away from him (my grandpa, not my Hubby). Even so, he told me something that made my face go white with shock. He said, "You're diabetic? Oh, well in that case, you're supposed to avoid eating carbohydrates."
He said it like this was common knowledge. I had heard of this concept before, that carbohydrates could be bad, but all the doctors firmly tell their patients that this is ludicrous. Doctors tell you to eat mainly carbs, a little protein, and very little fat. THIS was how I HAD been eating, and to hear my genius Grandpa tell me that I needed to avoid carbs... well, it was an eye opener. We moved to a little rental house in Brainerd, and guess what I did? I went on the Atkins diet. Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, Revised Edition
I know I know, everyone and their brother criticizes that Atkins diet, but from a diabetics point of view, it was worth a try. Mind you, I had weighed exactly 220 until I was 21, and by 22 I weighed 240. This seemed to happen overnight, and stayed put no matter what I did until, at 23, I went on the Atkins diet. I went back to 220 within two weeks and stayed there for about 5 months. At the end of that 5th month, we moved back to my mom's house, and I started gaining weight again. I chalked that up to having to stop the Atkins diet. Hubby had lost his job, and we couldn't afford such a meat heavy diet. I still tried to make it as meat heavy as possible, but I had to return to eating tons of cheap pasta. Only, this time, I often picked the pasta out and ate everything else.
I started massage school, and was frustrated that my period was MIA again. It had been regular since going on Atkins. I hopefully took a pregnancy test after 3 months without a period, but it was negative. 5 months without a period had been the most so far, so it was nothing to me when the 6th month went by. By the 7th month, I was getting concerned, but ultimately, I was having too much fun in massage school to really care what was going on.
My symptoms of diabetes returned in full force. I had even developed a new symptom of diabetes. The diabetic educator had warned me about Neuropathy, in which I would experience nerve pain and tingling, but this was the first time I had ever had it this bad. I could barely stand or walk for more than 10 minutes without my leg falling asleep, and my left Gluteus Maximus hurting like a B****! I had my massage teachers working on my butt and legs, and nothing helped. (Though it felt wonderful to have them massaged!)
Meanwhile, my mom was sick of all my emotional rollercoaster. I have said this before, I have emotions, but normally they are about 1/4 the intensity of someone else's emotions. Therefore even having an emotional rollercoaster was worrying my mom sick! She urged me to take another pregnancy test, as she thought I might be pregnant. I got so mad! I had been trying to conceive for year, and it never happened no matter what I tried, and for her to tell me she thought I was pregnant hurt a lot. TEASE ME why don't you! I went to the store, bought a stick, disappeared into our bathroom, and peed on it. I was just waiting to shove it in her face with a smug, "See!"
Guess what, it came back positive, and I was in total shock. I thought back to when the hell this might have happened, and realized that it must have been right after my last period, 8 months before! I called up the doctor's office to make an appointment, and tried to tell the scheduler that I thought I was very far along, but she was like, "Sure sure, the soonest we can get you in is next week." That was way too long to wait! "Well, do you have any appointments to check out this infuriating bladder infection?" She paused. "You're pregnant and have a bladder infection. That can hurt the baby if not treated. How about I squeeze you in today?" I thought so!
At the doctor's office, the doctor came in thinking that he was going to confirm a brand new pregnancy, and prescribe an antibiotic for UTI. He started by telling us to schedule an ultrasound in a couple of days since everyone was supposed to be leaving for the day. He placed his hands on my stomach, and went white. "You're to term!" My hubby already had a daughter, so he asked, "Wait, doesn't that mean ready to pop?" The doctor then rushed us over to the ultrasound department, and managed to catch a lady who hadn't left yet. The ultrasound showed that I was 32 weeks along, and I had Gryffin exactly 1 month later.
During that last month of pregnancy, I thought, "Hey, I'm pregnant, so I can eat whatever I crave!" I totally did, eating taco bell like every day on the way home from class. The reason I delivered 4 weeks earlier than optimal is because they induced me once it was obvious that I had preeclampsia.
You know, even at that point, I didn't connect the dots. I never once considered that what I ate actually caused my conditions. I didn't stop and think that I could have avoided preeclampsia by avoiding taco bell.
Anyway, all of that right there was what led to me discovering that nutrition was vitally important to good health, and since I have already described what I have learned about nutrition in this post, I'll skip that lengthy part of the journey. Suffice it to say that healing my body from my first 22-23 years has taken almost 10 years now, and I am just now seeing progress. When a person needs to heal their body, they want to do it right now which is what pills often promise, but in truth, real healing takes a long time. The benefits start the day you finally find out what your body needs you to feed it, and you do, but with each step forward, something else might pop up. (For a touching look at a family's journey to heal from several severe food allergies, and this phenomenon, read this blog Everything Free Eating ) My massage teachers called this phenomenon "healing in reverse order," or in other words, the last symptoms to present are the first to heal, and then your body works it's way back to the first symptoms. It can feel like you just manage to heal one thing, and something else comes back, grr! If it took me 22 years to get sick, it may take me 22 years to gain true health.
In the meantime, my blood sugar is normal, I've had two kids, and I rarely get sick. Progress looks good!
My journey begins at about age 8. When I find them I will post a picture of what I looked like at age 7 and at age 8. At 7 I looked exactly like I should, thin... perhaps even scrawny. I am not entirely sure what changed in that one year, but by age 8, I was pudgy. I had budding breasts... at 8! The kind that already needed a bra, and a B cup at that, if I remember correctly. I don't remember this part clearly, because to me, I woke up one day at age 12, and magically had a DD cup, but I look at pics of myself at 8, and I see them growing. This really isn't normal. A girl should not be overweight with B cups at 8.
I wish to interrupt and say that if I saw a girl in the same condition I was in, I would assume she was consuming too much soy, because soy is loaded with toxins and plant estrogen. It has so much estrogen in fact, that it has been proven to cause precocious puberty. ( Precocious Puberty: Helping Kids Stay Kids (Home Use)
)I look back and wonder where I would have been exposed to so much soy, since it wasn't something that my mom actually bought, but judging by the labels on food today, it's in EVERYTHING... especially bread. Guess what, I ate a LOT of bread. I loved it. One summer, when I was 15, I ate almost nothing but bread. But I'll get to that later.
As I said, at age 12, not only did I have DD cups, but I was overweight, 220 lbs to be exact. Other than that, I was a normal and healthy menstruating preteen, except I suddenly needed glasses. Oh, and I had migraines! My mom took me into the doctor several times for this. I had tests upon tests. The most memorable one involved having goo covered sensors placed all over my head (getting my hair just covered in goo), and then I had to sit completely still for a half an hour or so. Every little movement I made affected the test, so I had to suffer the most excruciating itch! The doctors couldn't find anything wrong, chalked it up to excess adrenaline (because obviously I must not be active or I wouldn't be overweight, right?), and gave me drugs to cope with the pain.
I swear to you, and you can ask my mom, from day one, I only ever used the drugs when I was in so much pain I could not stand it anymore. I did not EVER want to become dependent on drugs! (Go D.A.R.E. program!) (Wish I'd had these books back then! Herbal Drugstore
Prescription for Natural Cures)At age 15, my monthly got all wonky. I had no idea why back then, but remember when I mentioned that I ate almost nothing but bread that summer? I had 4 slices of buttered toast for breakfast, and 4 slices for lunch. I might have had a few more slices as a snack throughout the day, but then I had whatever mom had me make for dinner. Mostly pasta hotdishes. I love how my mom taught me to cook! She was at work, and wanted to come home to dinner, so about an hour or so before she got off of work, she called me up, and talked me through whatever I was supposed to make. I'd put it in the oven, and it would be ready to eat by the time she got home.
That same summer, I got the scare of my life, and the conversation went like this: "Mom, I swear I am still a virgin, but I haven't had my period in 4 or 5 months." Previously, I often skipped a month, so just one or 2 months without a period was normal and ok, but by the 4th or 5th month, I was freaked out! She near rushed me to a baby doctor, which was my clue that she thought I was probably pregnant. At first, the doctor had an attitude like, "Well you wouldn't be seeing me unless you were pregnant," and even though I swore up and down I was still a virgin, she was like, "uh-huh." After she examined me, she actually asked me, "What are you doing here? You're not pregnant. You're irregular, so just keep track of your periods, and if there's something wrong, we can use that info to figure out what." Dismissed. (Why did I never have the books I needed when I first needed them? Green Fertility: Nature's Secrets For Making Babies
)My periods remained irregular, so much so that during my first year of marriage I had a total of 3 periods, one of which lasted 3 months... yeah... that was fun, not! I started seeing a doctor to see what was up, and why couldn't I conceive. At first, I was told, "Well, you're overweight. Eat less fat, and exercise more." I rolled my eyes, and asked to go on birth control because most of my friends got pregnant right after they got off birth control. I figured it was worth a shot. Didn't work. The only thing it did do was give me one crampy painful period a month. Never having had cramps more than once or twice, this SUCKED!
At 21, (in2001) the doctor finally smiled at me, and said, "Your last two glucose tests have been high, and your insulin levels are very high. You have diabetes." I guess this was good news to her, one more patient paying for drugs and frequent doctor visits, plus she could finally tell something to blame my infertility on. She gave me Metformin, and off I went. I went to the diabetic educator with my mom, took my meds and checked my blood sugar dutifully every day for three months. I was assured that after 3 months, my blood sugar would be normal, and that I might even conceive. They weren't and I still wasn't pregnant, so I stopped taking them. Honestly, my blood sugar levels did not change, so I knew that the meds really didn't do anything for me.
I stagnated for a while, then in 2003, I lived with my grandpa for a little while. I don't talk about my grandpa enough, but he's a genius. When I say that, I don't mean that I think he's really smart and cool, I mean that he is a genius. He denies it modestly, and talks about how his mother was the real genius, and how he always thought she could have done so much more than get married and have kids. He saw the slight spark of genius in me, and asked me not to get married and have kids. Sorry grandpa, but it's all I ever wanted to do. (And for the record, when I tested my genius level, I was a hair or two shy of being able to join Mensa, so no, I'm not actually a genius, damn!)
While living with him, I got to pick his brain everyday for months! It was weird though, I knew he was disappointed that I was married, and Hubby lived with him too... I got the feeling he didn't really like Hubby, so I actually shied away from him (my grandpa, not my Hubby). Even so, he told me something that made my face go white with shock. He said, "You're diabetic? Oh, well in that case, you're supposed to avoid eating carbohydrates."
He said it like this was common knowledge. I had heard of this concept before, that carbohydrates could be bad, but all the doctors firmly tell their patients that this is ludicrous. Doctors tell you to eat mainly carbs, a little protein, and very little fat. THIS was how I HAD been eating, and to hear my genius Grandpa tell me that I needed to avoid carbs... well, it was an eye opener. We moved to a little rental house in Brainerd, and guess what I did? I went on the Atkins diet. Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, Revised Edition
I know I know, everyone and their brother criticizes that Atkins diet, but from a diabetics point of view, it was worth a try. Mind you, I had weighed exactly 220 until I was 21, and by 22 I weighed 240. This seemed to happen overnight, and stayed put no matter what I did until, at 23, I went on the Atkins diet. I went back to 220 within two weeks and stayed there for about 5 months. At the end of that 5th month, we moved back to my mom's house, and I started gaining weight again. I chalked that up to having to stop the Atkins diet. Hubby had lost his job, and we couldn't afford such a meat heavy diet. I still tried to make it as meat heavy as possible, but I had to return to eating tons of cheap pasta. Only, this time, I often picked the pasta out and ate everything else.
I started massage school, and was frustrated that my period was MIA again. It had been regular since going on Atkins. I hopefully took a pregnancy test after 3 months without a period, but it was negative. 5 months without a period had been the most so far, so it was nothing to me when the 6th month went by. By the 7th month, I was getting concerned, but ultimately, I was having too much fun in massage school to really care what was going on.
My symptoms of diabetes returned in full force. I had even developed a new symptom of diabetes. The diabetic educator had warned me about Neuropathy, in which I would experience nerve pain and tingling, but this was the first time I had ever had it this bad. I could barely stand or walk for more than 10 minutes without my leg falling asleep, and my left Gluteus Maximus hurting like a B****! I had my massage teachers working on my butt and legs, and nothing helped. (Though it felt wonderful to have them massaged!)
Meanwhile, my mom was sick of all my emotional rollercoaster. I have said this before, I have emotions, but normally they are about 1/4 the intensity of someone else's emotions. Therefore even having an emotional rollercoaster was worrying my mom sick! She urged me to take another pregnancy test, as she thought I might be pregnant. I got so mad! I had been trying to conceive for year, and it never happened no matter what I tried, and for her to tell me she thought I was pregnant hurt a lot. TEASE ME why don't you! I went to the store, bought a stick, disappeared into our bathroom, and peed on it. I was just waiting to shove it in her face with a smug, "See!"
Guess what, it came back positive, and I was in total shock. I thought back to when the hell this might have happened, and realized that it must have been right after my last period, 8 months before! I called up the doctor's office to make an appointment, and tried to tell the scheduler that I thought I was very far along, but she was like, "Sure sure, the soonest we can get you in is next week." That was way too long to wait! "Well, do you have any appointments to check out this infuriating bladder infection?" She paused. "You're pregnant and have a bladder infection. That can hurt the baby if not treated. How about I squeeze you in today?" I thought so!
At the doctor's office, the doctor came in thinking that he was going to confirm a brand new pregnancy, and prescribe an antibiotic for UTI. He started by telling us to schedule an ultrasound in a couple of days since everyone was supposed to be leaving for the day. He placed his hands on my stomach, and went white. "You're to term!" My hubby already had a daughter, so he asked, "Wait, doesn't that mean ready to pop?" The doctor then rushed us over to the ultrasound department, and managed to catch a lady who hadn't left yet. The ultrasound showed that I was 32 weeks along, and I had Gryffin exactly 1 month later.
During that last month of pregnancy, I thought, "Hey, I'm pregnant, so I can eat whatever I crave!" I totally did, eating taco bell like every day on the way home from class. The reason I delivered 4 weeks earlier than optimal is because they induced me once it was obvious that I had preeclampsia.
You know, even at that point, I didn't connect the dots. I never once considered that what I ate actually caused my conditions. I didn't stop and think that I could have avoided preeclampsia by avoiding taco bell.
Anyway, all of that right there was what led to me discovering that nutrition was vitally important to good health, and since I have already described what I have learned about nutrition in this post, I'll skip that lengthy part of the journey. Suffice it to say that healing my body from my first 22-23 years has taken almost 10 years now, and I am just now seeing progress. When a person needs to heal their body, they want to do it right now which is what pills often promise, but in truth, real healing takes a long time. The benefits start the day you finally find out what your body needs you to feed it, and you do, but with each step forward, something else might pop up. (For a touching look at a family's journey to heal from several severe food allergies, and this phenomenon, read this blog Everything Free Eating ) My massage teachers called this phenomenon "healing in reverse order," or in other words, the last symptoms to present are the first to heal, and then your body works it's way back to the first symptoms. It can feel like you just manage to heal one thing, and something else comes back, grr! If it took me 22 years to get sick, it may take me 22 years to gain true health.
In the meantime, my blood sugar is normal, I've had two kids, and I rarely get sick. Progress looks good!
Saturday, February 26, 2011
To Homeschool or Not To Homeschool, That is the Question
Shortly after I turned 18, I moved out of my mom's house. She was hurt that I was chomping at the bit to get out, but I was tired of putting up with my stepdad, and decided that moving out was vital to my happiness. A month later, I dropped out of school because school had always been the bane of my existance.
All the way up to 6th grade, I was a straight A student. I soaked up all knowledge like a sponge. I remained pretty much an A student through 8th grade, but I began to grow bored at the repetativeness of the lessons. I never felt challenged. I realized in 9th grade that they were literally repeating everything I had learned in the previous 8 grades, and I HATE repeat work. My grades slowly fell so that by 12th grade, I was getting D's and F's. Not because I couldn't understand the classes, but because I was not interested in learning the same things over and over. I got an A in Avionics because it was fresh and new and interesting.
To clarify the point a bit, begining in 6th grade, every student is given a standardized test for reading/writing and comprehension. I passed it with nearly 100% score in 6th grade. In 8th Grade, they start to give a standardized math test. I have no idea what I would have scored because I was sick when it was given. They didn't tell us beforehand, so it wasn't me trying to skip out. When I found out I had missed a test, I wanted to make it up, but was told that I couldn't. They give that test out every 2 years (as opposed to every 3 for the reading test), and come 10th grade, I scored high enough on it to not have to take it again.
In 12th grade, before dropping out of course, I was in homeroom one day when the teacher passed out a test to everyone but me. I looked around and raised my hand, "You missed me."
"No I didn't, you don't have to take it," she replied.
"Huh?" Then she explained that this test was given once every 3 years and was a standardized test of how well a student could read write and comprehend. At first, I seriously had to think when I could have ever taken such a test, and then I burst out, "You mean that thing I took in 6th grade?!"
Needless to say, as I once again looked around the room, not too many of my classmates were pleased or even impressed to hear me say that. Me, I was in shock that I was the ONLY one who didn't need to take the test. I mean come on, it was so easy I passed it 6 years prior! It also occurred to me that I may have wasted 6 years in school taking the same classes over and over not because I needed to, but because everyone else did.
Hubby had a similar experience, only he did not have the benefit of being a perpetual favorite of his teachers. In fact, he seems to have been picked on by students and teachers alike. If I thought school was a waste of time, he thought it was hell. So, when we got married, and heard of homeschooling, we were in perfect agreement; no way in hell were our kids going to school!
I researched homeschooling in depth before I ever even conceived my first child, and I had a definite and clear plan of attack, so to speak. Then I had Gryffin and Phoenix, and now I realize that homeschooling is not like regular school in which you can just shove a lesson down a student's throat at your convenience. Good homeschooling is led by the child; when they are ready to learn something, they do, and there's really very little you can do to stop them. If they are not ready, all of the bribes, coaxing, and threats in the world can't force them to learn. This is a concept that public schools cannot cater to, and is why so many students are labled as learning disabled when they really just need more time to be ready, or have a different learning style.
Then there is the nutrition aspect. Plenty of studies have proved that good nutrition helps a child learn better, but the food in school is definitely NOT condusive to good health or learning, sigh!
This year, Gryffin turned 6, and I have been officially homeschooling him his whole life, but now it is extra official because he is actually old enough to go to school. I don't have to make it official through the state until the first October AFTER he turns 7, and since he turns 7 IN October, I don't have to make it official until he is almost 8. He's a social butterfly, so he BEGS to go to school. He doesn't seem to know that a kids goes to school to learn things, all he cares about is having as many friends as possible. He is like me, so I know that, like me, he will be gullible, and take the things that his friends say literally, or perhaps I should say, he'll take it as the gospel truth, even if it's not. In that respect, I am glad I get the chance to choose his friends for the time being, but I am big on independance, so he will get to choose his own friends soon enough.
That said, I know it is hard on him to stay home with no one to play with but Phoenix and me, so I try to make sure he gets as much social interaction as possible. I take him to swim lessons at the local YMCA, and I let him play to his heart's content in the YMCA play area with tons of other kids. I also arrange playdates with other homeschooled kids, albeit not as often as I should.
But here's the thing, there ARE things I think he should learn that I just can't teach him, such as gym, art, and music. Luckily, I can homeschool Gryffin AND enroll him into the public school for just those 3 classes. That means that come fall, Gryffin's going to school, lol!
As for Phoenix, I have an even less active role in teaching him, because he learns just by being in the room with Gryffin; he always has. When he wants to know something, he comes and asks me, and we figure it out. Gods! Homeschooling is such a beautiful thing!
Finally, now that I have managed to actually track down some other pagans in St. Cloud, hopefully they will learn a bit more about religion, and their education will be complete... for now, it's an ever evolving thing.
So, that's why I homeschool. Hopefully, in doing so, my boys will grow up following their passion, rather than, well what I did, which is pretty much nothing at all, except try to be the best mama I can be.
All the way up to 6th grade, I was a straight A student. I soaked up all knowledge like a sponge. I remained pretty much an A student through 8th grade, but I began to grow bored at the repetativeness of the lessons. I never felt challenged. I realized in 9th grade that they were literally repeating everything I had learned in the previous 8 grades, and I HATE repeat work. My grades slowly fell so that by 12th grade, I was getting D's and F's. Not because I couldn't understand the classes, but because I was not interested in learning the same things over and over. I got an A in Avionics because it was fresh and new and interesting.
To clarify the point a bit, begining in 6th grade, every student is given a standardized test for reading/writing and comprehension. I passed it with nearly 100% score in 6th grade. In 8th Grade, they start to give a standardized math test. I have no idea what I would have scored because I was sick when it was given. They didn't tell us beforehand, so it wasn't me trying to skip out. When I found out I had missed a test, I wanted to make it up, but was told that I couldn't. They give that test out every 2 years (as opposed to every 3 for the reading test), and come 10th grade, I scored high enough on it to not have to take it again.
In 12th grade, before dropping out of course, I was in homeroom one day when the teacher passed out a test to everyone but me. I looked around and raised my hand, "You missed me."
"No I didn't, you don't have to take it," she replied.
"Huh?" Then she explained that this test was given once every 3 years and was a standardized test of how well a student could read write and comprehend. At first, I seriously had to think when I could have ever taken such a test, and then I burst out, "You mean that thing I took in 6th grade?!"
Needless to say, as I once again looked around the room, not too many of my classmates were pleased or even impressed to hear me say that. Me, I was in shock that I was the ONLY one who didn't need to take the test. I mean come on, it was so easy I passed it 6 years prior! It also occurred to me that I may have wasted 6 years in school taking the same classes over and over not because I needed to, but because everyone else did.
Hubby had a similar experience, only he did not have the benefit of being a perpetual favorite of his teachers. In fact, he seems to have been picked on by students and teachers alike. If I thought school was a waste of time, he thought it was hell. So, when we got married, and heard of homeschooling, we were in perfect agreement; no way in hell were our kids going to school!
I researched homeschooling in depth before I ever even conceived my first child, and I had a definite and clear plan of attack, so to speak. Then I had Gryffin and Phoenix, and now I realize that homeschooling is not like regular school in which you can just shove a lesson down a student's throat at your convenience. Good homeschooling is led by the child; when they are ready to learn something, they do, and there's really very little you can do to stop them. If they are not ready, all of the bribes, coaxing, and threats in the world can't force them to learn. This is a concept that public schools cannot cater to, and is why so many students are labled as learning disabled when they really just need more time to be ready, or have a different learning style.
Then there is the nutrition aspect. Plenty of studies have proved that good nutrition helps a child learn better, but the food in school is definitely NOT condusive to good health or learning, sigh!
This year, Gryffin turned 6, and I have been officially homeschooling him his whole life, but now it is extra official because he is actually old enough to go to school. I don't have to make it official through the state until the first October AFTER he turns 7, and since he turns 7 IN October, I don't have to make it official until he is almost 8. He's a social butterfly, so he BEGS to go to school. He doesn't seem to know that a kids goes to school to learn things, all he cares about is having as many friends as possible. He is like me, so I know that, like me, he will be gullible, and take the things that his friends say literally, or perhaps I should say, he'll take it as the gospel truth, even if it's not. In that respect, I am glad I get the chance to choose his friends for the time being, but I am big on independance, so he will get to choose his own friends soon enough.
That said, I know it is hard on him to stay home with no one to play with but Phoenix and me, so I try to make sure he gets as much social interaction as possible. I take him to swim lessons at the local YMCA, and I let him play to his heart's content in the YMCA play area with tons of other kids. I also arrange playdates with other homeschooled kids, albeit not as often as I should.
But here's the thing, there ARE things I think he should learn that I just can't teach him, such as gym, art, and music. Luckily, I can homeschool Gryffin AND enroll him into the public school for just those 3 classes. That means that come fall, Gryffin's going to school, lol!
As for Phoenix, I have an even less active role in teaching him, because he learns just by being in the room with Gryffin; he always has. When he wants to know something, he comes and asks me, and we figure it out. Gods! Homeschooling is such a beautiful thing!
Finally, now that I have managed to actually track down some other pagans in St. Cloud, hopefully they will learn a bit more about religion, and their education will be complete... for now, it's an ever evolving thing.
So, that's why I homeschool. Hopefully, in doing so, my boys will grow up following their passion, rather than, well what I did, which is pretty much nothing at all, except try to be the best mama I can be.
Friday, February 25, 2011
My Life Pretty Much Revolves Around Books
Well, actually, my life pretty much revolves around my boys, but long before I had them, long before I was married even, my first love was books. I love to read them, I love to write them, I love to discuss the books I read with others. At length. In fact, I'm usually still discussing the books I love long after my discussion partner wants me to stop.
When my discussion partner happens to be Hubby, he fully admits that he tunes me out, but that's OK because I do the same to him. It works for us, lol! Somehow, despite frequently tuning each other out, we still manage to learn new things from one another.
Anyway, back to books. My apartment perpetually looks like a tornado blew through it. Two actually. Their names are Hurricane Gryffin and Hurricane Phoenix, because yes, a hurricane is just a tornado that started over the ocean and got a serious power boost. I have joked, "My apartment looks like it is inhabited by 2 tornadoes, a packrat, and a sloth!" I would be the sloth. Scattered about in this debris is a whole ton of books. About 100 belong to the boys, Hubby owns his fair share, and I own the rest. I honestly couldn't tell you who owns more books, hubby or me.
My book collection has an interesting evolution to it. It started when I was 12, buying all the smut books(AKA historical romance novels) I could get my hands on. Then, around 18, I grew very interested in Wicca. I think this was started when I watched "The Craft" and "Practical Magic" and realized that other people felt the same as I did. My book collection started to look like a pagan's dream library, and my mom bought me my first Tarot deck for Christmas. Ironic, I know, but at least I had her full support.
Then, in short succession, I found out I was diabetic, and went to massage school, so my library expanded to include alternative health books and herbals. One day, I found out I was 8 months pregnant, and the next month I was a mama, so I didn't have much time to add pregnancy and child rearing books. As a result, I have a couple, but not many. These books served me well through pregnancy #2, and are NOT the typical "What to Expect When You're Expecting" books. Rather they are books like, "Natural Pregnancy" by Aviva Jill Romm, and "Magical Child" by Joseph Chilton Pierce.
Finally, after Hurricane Phoenix was born, my passion turned to nutrition and farming. By this time, the budget was tiny, and the public library was free, so my collection did not explode, but over the years, I have bought those books that are important to me. Such as "Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon.
All of the previous rambling occurred so that I could talk about "Nourishing Traditions." THIS IS THE BOOK THAT CHANGED MY LIFE! Don't get me wrong, I took a bit of advice from "Back to Eden" by Jethro Kloss and "Patient, Heal Thyself" by Jordin Rubin, namely that food is typically the cause of all illnesses, and that food is also the way to heal most illnesses. AKA we literally are what we eat. If we eat junk food, our bodies turn to junk, but if we eat health food, we enjoy good health.
The problem is that most people have no idea what health food is! They think health food is soy, which is in fact toxic ("The Whole Soy Story" by Kaayla T. Daniel), and that full fat milk is bad for you, which it's not ("The Untold Story of Milk" by Ron Schmid). "Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats" takes the reader, chapter by chapter, through real nutrition. This is the kind of nutrition that allowed our grandparents, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say their parents and grandparents to live long and healthy lives. The kind of nutrition that could not rely on the food industry to make food "safe" for us to eat, because there was no food industry yet.
Above, I mentioned that I was diagnosed with diabetes, and since my mom had previously been Dx as borderline diabetic, I knew that it was definitely in our genes. Like 80% of the women in our family are, or have been at one point, overweight, and shaped like an hourglass that mated with a pear. You know, top heavy, bottom heavy, and just plain fat in the middle. With this in mind, I made it my goal to do whatever it takes to get my boys to the age of 18-21 without being diagnosed with diabetes, borderline diabetes, or, as it turns out, cancer or heart disease.
That's a tall order, don'tcha think? It's actually really easy to do, if you become a Nazi about food and nutrition, but doing that is not so easy, especially when all of one's family and friends have the attitude that "Food is just food, it doesn't make a difference what you eat." Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, "What are you talking about? This food IS healthy!" Simply choosing to eat as organically and sugar free as possible meant that my boys and I no longer ate practically anything that my family eats.
Isolation, sigh...
I must confess that I would have probably given up long before now if I hadn't read "Pottenger's Cats" by Dr. Francis M. Pottenger. Dr. Pottenger conducted a 10+ year study on several generations of cats divided into 3 catagories, and I realized that his conclusion has SCARY parallels with my very own family. One group of cats was taken off of a cat's natural diet (which in the wild is whatever they can hunt, hence RAW meat). The 1st generation placed on a different diet (a diet that was deemed healthy for Dr. Pottenger's human patients at the clinic he ran. Noticing that a few of the cats running around his clinic started to present the same diseases as his patients prompted the Dr. to conduct the study.) enjoyed perfect health until their old age when disease set in. The 2nd generation had health problems in their young adulthood, including difficulty in conceiving and birthing children. The 3rd generation was sickly from the start, and any of them that managed to conceive all had miscarriages and still births.
In my family (in humans in general), I think it is more accurate to describe it in 4 generations. My grandparents (on my mother's side) are the 1st generation cats. They left the farm (their natural way of eating) and enjoyed more or less perfect health until their old age. Grandpa then died of various cancers. My mom and her sisters are the 2nd generation of cats, that were more or less healthy until middle age, when they had things like obesity, heart disease, and cancer. I'm a 3rd generation cat. I was Dx with obesity in my teens and with diabetes at 21. I already went low carb to treat my diabetes, which cured my infertility, and is what I give credit to for the fact that my boys are as healthy as they are.
My boys... they are the fourth generation... I added a generation, so they would correlate to the 3rd generation in the study. The one that has nothing but problems from birth, and cannot conceive or give birth to a new generation. This breaks my heart to think about; but for my careful, strict, and constant attention to nutrition, my boys could be Dx'd with all of the now common childhood disorders that never even existed when my grandparents first left the farm.
Being a food Nazi has been hard, BUT it's been worth it so far, my boys are wonderfully healthy, and I have absolute faith that I will accomplish my goal. It's a long road, but it's the right one...
When my discussion partner happens to be Hubby, he fully admits that he tunes me out, but that's OK because I do the same to him. It works for us, lol! Somehow, despite frequently tuning each other out, we still manage to learn new things from one another.
Anyway, back to books. My apartment perpetually looks like a tornado blew through it. Two actually. Their names are Hurricane Gryffin and Hurricane Phoenix, because yes, a hurricane is just a tornado that started over the ocean and got a serious power boost. I have joked, "My apartment looks like it is inhabited by 2 tornadoes, a packrat, and a sloth!" I would be the sloth. Scattered about in this debris is a whole ton of books. About 100 belong to the boys, Hubby owns his fair share, and I own the rest. I honestly couldn't tell you who owns more books, hubby or me.
My book collection has an interesting evolution to it. It started when I was 12, buying all the smut books(AKA historical romance novels) I could get my hands on. Then, around 18, I grew very interested in Wicca. I think this was started when I watched "The Craft" and "Practical Magic" and realized that other people felt the same as I did. My book collection started to look like a pagan's dream library, and my mom bought me my first Tarot deck for Christmas. Ironic, I know, but at least I had her full support.
Then, in short succession, I found out I was diabetic, and went to massage school, so my library expanded to include alternative health books and herbals. One day, I found out I was 8 months pregnant, and the next month I was a mama, so I didn't have much time to add pregnancy and child rearing books. As a result, I have a couple, but not many. These books served me well through pregnancy #2, and are NOT the typical "What to Expect When You're Expecting" books. Rather they are books like, "Natural Pregnancy" by Aviva Jill Romm, and "Magical Child" by Joseph Chilton Pierce.
Finally, after Hurricane Phoenix was born, my passion turned to nutrition and farming. By this time, the budget was tiny, and the public library was free, so my collection did not explode, but over the years, I have bought those books that are important to me. Such as "Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon.
All of the previous rambling occurred so that I could talk about "Nourishing Traditions." THIS IS THE BOOK THAT CHANGED MY LIFE! Don't get me wrong, I took a bit of advice from "Back to Eden" by Jethro Kloss and "Patient, Heal Thyself" by Jordin Rubin, namely that food is typically the cause of all illnesses, and that food is also the way to heal most illnesses. AKA we literally are what we eat. If we eat junk food, our bodies turn to junk, but if we eat health food, we enjoy good health.
The problem is that most people have no idea what health food is! They think health food is soy, which is in fact toxic ("The Whole Soy Story" by Kaayla T. Daniel), and that full fat milk is bad for you, which it's not ("The Untold Story of Milk" by Ron Schmid). "Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats" takes the reader, chapter by chapter, through real nutrition. This is the kind of nutrition that allowed our grandparents, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say their parents and grandparents to live long and healthy lives. The kind of nutrition that could not rely on the food industry to make food "safe" for us to eat, because there was no food industry yet.
Above, I mentioned that I was diagnosed with diabetes, and since my mom had previously been Dx as borderline diabetic, I knew that it was definitely in our genes. Like 80% of the women in our family are, or have been at one point, overweight, and shaped like an hourglass that mated with a pear. You know, top heavy, bottom heavy, and just plain fat in the middle. With this in mind, I made it my goal to do whatever it takes to get my boys to the age of 18-21 without being diagnosed with diabetes, borderline diabetes, or, as it turns out, cancer or heart disease.
That's a tall order, don'tcha think? It's actually really easy to do, if you become a Nazi about food and nutrition, but doing that is not so easy, especially when all of one's family and friends have the attitude that "Food is just food, it doesn't make a difference what you eat." Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, "What are you talking about? This food IS healthy!" Simply choosing to eat as organically and sugar free as possible meant that my boys and I no longer ate practically anything that my family eats.
Isolation, sigh...
I must confess that I would have probably given up long before now if I hadn't read "Pottenger's Cats" by Dr. Francis M. Pottenger. Dr. Pottenger conducted a 10+ year study on several generations of cats divided into 3 catagories, and I realized that his conclusion has SCARY parallels with my very own family. One group of cats was taken off of a cat's natural diet (which in the wild is whatever they can hunt, hence RAW meat). The 1st generation placed on a different diet (a diet that was deemed healthy for Dr. Pottenger's human patients at the clinic he ran. Noticing that a few of the cats running around his clinic started to present the same diseases as his patients prompted the Dr. to conduct the study.) enjoyed perfect health until their old age when disease set in. The 2nd generation had health problems in their young adulthood, including difficulty in conceiving and birthing children. The 3rd generation was sickly from the start, and any of them that managed to conceive all had miscarriages and still births.
In my family (in humans in general), I think it is more accurate to describe it in 4 generations. My grandparents (on my mother's side) are the 1st generation cats. They left the farm (their natural way of eating) and enjoyed more or less perfect health until their old age. Grandpa then died of various cancers. My mom and her sisters are the 2nd generation of cats, that were more or less healthy until middle age, when they had things like obesity, heart disease, and cancer. I'm a 3rd generation cat. I was Dx with obesity in my teens and with diabetes at 21. I already went low carb to treat my diabetes, which cured my infertility, and is what I give credit to for the fact that my boys are as healthy as they are.
My boys... they are the fourth generation... I added a generation, so they would correlate to the 3rd generation in the study. The one that has nothing but problems from birth, and cannot conceive or give birth to a new generation. This breaks my heart to think about; but for my careful, strict, and constant attention to nutrition, my boys could be Dx'd with all of the now common childhood disorders that never even existed when my grandparents first left the farm.
Being a food Nazi has been hard, BUT it's been worth it so far, my boys are wonderfully healthy, and I have absolute faith that I will accomplish my goal. It's a long road, but it's the right one...
Thursday, February 24, 2011
First Post
For some time now, I have mentally debated starting my own blog. Almost immediately, I became my own nay-sayer. "Who really wants to read yet another foodie blog written by a homeschooling mama?" I asked myself, and this is why I procrastinated.
Last night, I was typing up a "note" on Facebook when I realized that my Facebook profile was my "keep it nice and clean in case people decide to judge your book based on what you post" profile. As a result, I keep quiet on a few things, and it hit me, that's my niche! If I started a blog that was not limited to any one aspect of my eclectic personality, but inclusive to all of them, I might actually differentiate myself from the rest of the blogs on the web!
That is when I decided that I would use this blog to make glaringly public all the things I tend to keep on the down low unless asked, because once asked, well... it can be hard to shut me up, lol! Herein enters the main self-conscious problem of mine; I like to think I am funny because I crack me up all the time, but apparently no one else seems to think so. It's a side affect of being married to my hubby. He IS stand up quality funny, and I pale in comparison. So, if anybody out there ever reads this blog, please let me know if ANYTHING I wrote ever made you chuckle in the slightest.
Ok, so on this blog, I warn you now, I will be posting anything and everything that crosses my mind, and it will trip over a wide range of topics, including my 5 Degrees of Weirdness. They are:
1- Food Nazi - This means that I value nutrient dense, preferably organic foods over all else... but have to live within a food stamp budget, so compromise must ensue.
2- Homeschooling Mama - This means I will ramble on with something akin to motherly pride and wax poetic of my 2 boys at the drop of a hat, pin, or the occasional frog.
3- Nudist - Yep, I'm letting it all hang out here, lol! We as a family believe clothing to be unnecessary and optional. Aside from theoretical savings on laundry, this is mainly due to The Best Summer Ever in which Hubby and I worked at a nudist resort/campground. I took my clothes off there, and haven't put them back on since... while I'm at home anyway. The unfortunate part is that I am also bordering on so ugly I should wear a bag over my face at all times, plus fat that's hard to look at, SO it's a good thing that my pumpkins - AKA breasts - are distracting enough to draw the eyes away from the unfortunate parts.
4- Wiccan - Oddly this used to bring more gasps than the nudist thing, but these days, people actually do try to be open, or at the very least, I have been so down low for so long that people don't actually know I am wiccan. I did not "go underground" in an attempt to hide my beliefs, more like I just got tired of arguing religion one day, and stopped talking about it altogether. AND lastly,
5- Swinger - Yep, swinger. That means that Hubby and I have an open relationship, and we are not encumbered by The Rules of The Lifestyle. Therefore, if something happens, it happens (YEA!) if not, oh well. C'est la vie!
Then, of course, I will drone on about crochet from time to time.
And there you have it, my 5 Degrees of Weirdness, and the theme of my blog. I want to be one of those bloggers that posts a good pic whenever possible, but rest assurred that I will make sure I am hiding Weirdness #3 (and 5) in all pics in order to conform with The Rules of Blogging, lol!
Last night, I was typing up a "note" on Facebook when I realized that my Facebook profile was my "keep it nice and clean in case people decide to judge your book based on what you post" profile. As a result, I keep quiet on a few things, and it hit me, that's my niche! If I started a blog that was not limited to any one aspect of my eclectic personality, but inclusive to all of them, I might actually differentiate myself from the rest of the blogs on the web!
That is when I decided that I would use this blog to make glaringly public all the things I tend to keep on the down low unless asked, because once asked, well... it can be hard to shut me up, lol! Herein enters the main self-conscious problem of mine; I like to think I am funny because I crack me up all the time, but apparently no one else seems to think so. It's a side affect of being married to my hubby. He IS stand up quality funny, and I pale in comparison. So, if anybody out there ever reads this blog, please let me know if ANYTHING I wrote ever made you chuckle in the slightest.
Ok, so on this blog, I warn you now, I will be posting anything and everything that crosses my mind, and it will trip over a wide range of topics, including my 5 Degrees of Weirdness. They are:
1- Food Nazi - This means that I value nutrient dense, preferably organic foods over all else... but have to live within a food stamp budget, so compromise must ensue.
2- Homeschooling Mama - This means I will ramble on with something akin to motherly pride and wax poetic of my 2 boys at the drop of a hat, pin, or the occasional frog.
3- Nudist - Yep, I'm letting it all hang out here, lol! We as a family believe clothing to be unnecessary and optional. Aside from theoretical savings on laundry, this is mainly due to The Best Summer Ever in which Hubby and I worked at a nudist resort/campground. I took my clothes off there, and haven't put them back on since... while I'm at home anyway. The unfortunate part is that I am also bordering on so ugly I should wear a bag over my face at all times, plus fat that's hard to look at, SO it's a good thing that my pumpkins - AKA breasts - are distracting enough to draw the eyes away from the unfortunate parts.
4- Wiccan - Oddly this used to bring more gasps than the nudist thing, but these days, people actually do try to be open, or at the very least, I have been so down low for so long that people don't actually know I am wiccan. I did not "go underground" in an attempt to hide my beliefs, more like I just got tired of arguing religion one day, and stopped talking about it altogether. AND lastly,
5- Swinger - Yep, swinger. That means that Hubby and I have an open relationship, and we are not encumbered by The Rules of The Lifestyle. Therefore, if something happens, it happens (YEA!) if not, oh well. C'est la vie!
Then, of course, I will drone on about crochet from time to time.
And there you have it, my 5 Degrees of Weirdness, and the theme of my blog. I want to be one of those bloggers that posts a good pic whenever possible, but rest assurred that I will make sure I am hiding Weirdness #3 (and 5) in all pics in order to conform with The Rules of Blogging, lol!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)