Holy, Sideways, Batman!

This post may be TMI but I’m freaking out a little and need to set things right in my head.

 

Things are off track over here in my world.  The last two weeks my body has been retardedly out of balance.  I chalked it up to an impending time of the month….which ended up being over a week late.  Last night I was complaining to Ray that my excema is out of control on my hands, I had a killer headache and everything just felt wrong.  I couldn’t put my finger on it, just….wrong.

 

This morning when I got up, my hands felt tight, my face is puffy enough that it’s noticeable to other people and when I stood on the scale (which I wasn’t going to do for the whole month of November), it showed an incredibly horrifying number….a number that, while I know is not fat gained in such a short period of time (November 1st was a perfectly acceptable number) terrified the crap out of me. 

 

I’ve been out of balance for at least 2 and a half weeks now and it didn’t strike me that anything might be really out of whack until I really took a look at myself in the mirror this morning, really paid attention to how my body is feeling, and then of course standing on the scale.

 

It has to be water retention…..I drink at least 48oz of red tea and a goodly amount of water every day…..and I’m not really peeing and when I do go it’s…..very strong.  I can’t say that Ye Olde Diete has been overly whole/healthy in the last couple of weeks.  There’s been quite a bit of processed food which my body is not used to.  Sushi, premade butcher sausages, butcher Tortiere (french meat pie), various lunches out last weekend. 

 

That time of the month finally arrived and right at the same time I also had to medicate myself for my heart condition.  I’ve skipped two spinning classes (Tuesday morning and last night) and I’ve taken several Advil for the migraine that is creeping at the back of my eyes.

 

In an effort to learn more (this has NEVER happened to me) about water retention and sodium, I was reading a fitness website that had a very interesting note on it.  It was an article about how to release water when retaining…..and while that is what I want to do, one of their ideas gave me a lot of insight.  Their trick was to go into the sauna and steam.  To drink water while in the sauna and….this might sound gross….to taste your sweat as you go.  The reason they give is that if you are retaining sodium ions (which make water cling) then your sweat will be very salty.  As you keep steaming and sweating and drinking water, your sweat will eventually start to taste mostly like water.  I’m not planning on doing this, it sounds kind of unhealthy.

 

BUT, remember last week when I went to Tuesday morning spinning and rocked it as hard as I could because it was my one year anniversary of being in the hospital?  I know I mentioned that I was sweating so hard I had to keep my eyes shut.  What I didn’t mention, because I thought it was a bit distasteful (apparantly those gloves are off now) is that I was sweating so hard that I was swallowing some of it and it was so salty that it made me feel like I was going to vomit right there on the bike.  I had no choice, you can’t exactly exhert yourself to an extreme level while nose-breathing so mouth-breathing was my only option….but I remember thinking, that this amount of salt in my sweat is not going to be good for my excema.  And what has happened since then?  My excema on my hands is pretty bad and I’ve turned into Blimpy the Water Balloon.

 

So, somewhere along the way, I’ve thrown my body out of balance and it is possible that the excema, the heart, the migraine, the weird dizziness I had yesterday, they are all a symptom of….what?  Electrolytes out of balance?  Too much sodium because of a rather unclean diet lately? 

 

Whatever the cause, I have to have a plan moving forward because this sort of malaise going into winter and the holiday season is not good.  NOT.  GOOD.  So my plan is this, WATER, EXERCISE, LIMIT CONSUMPTION. 

 

WATER:  I’m going back to one cup of coffee (that never changed) andthen switching to water.  Tea is good but water is best.  So I’ll be on one cup of tea for awhile also. 

 

EXERCISE:  In fairness to myself, I have had a rough go these last couple of weeks…but exercise is good and if I feel like I can’t pull off a spinning or combat class, I can still go to the gym and jog on the treadmill to whatever extent I can.  Movement is good, it keeps everything fresh and rejuvenating.

 

LIMIT CONSUMPTION:  I can’t completely eliminate eating out at the moment and that’s alright because that’s just a part of the fun of life.   Tonight is a girl’s get together, Saturday is my mom and my sister and I going for sushi.  What I have to do is limit the quantity of food that I’m eating when out.  Maybe I won’t leave the restaurant completely satisfied/full, but I can always have a snack afterwards.  I won’t starve if I don’t eat all the food on my plate at a restaurant!  Once these planned events are over though, this has got to stop for awhile!

 

Bonus:  eliminate salt….obv!  No sprinkles on hard boiled eggs, no parmesan cheese/salt on veggies.  NONE.

 

Now that I have my plan in place…I should also point out that I am fully aware that my body may just put things all back to rights again by itself….but I’ve never really been a big fan of just letting my body do its thing without my active involvement.  There is no harm in helping things along a little, being self aware.  It also put me back in a position of being in control, not just sitting in the passenger seat and going wherever life takes me.  Never was a big fan of that.

 

So, forgive this rather informative post….but the point of this blog for me, besides occassionally maybe entertaining you, is to figure things out and make sure I’m living and treating myself as best as I can.  Like it says in ‘About’, to help Fitty kick Fatty’s ass. 

 

Do you guys have any tips on water retention, absurd scale gain in a short period of time, dealing with TOM symptoms and still maintaining your healthy lifestyle?

 

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