A post Lenten update

Well, as many of you know that I decided to give up yelling for Lent. I kind of thought I was crazy, but I really wanted to do it. I will say that the first week was the most difficult. I caught myself several times and slipped twice. After the first week passed, it definitely became easier.

It's about 2 weeks post Easter and have I started yelling again? Yes, I have yelled some. I can honestly say that the hardest week was the one immediately following Easter. I failed many times in that week. My trigger during that particular week seemed to be hormonal, which has always been one for me.

What have I done to eliminate/reduce yelling?

1. I stop and take a deep breath. It sounds silly, but sometimes just taking the time to breathe before you respond can totally change the way you respond to a situation.

2. I started eliminating stressors in my life. In my case, my stressors were directly related to be over committed. It hasn't happened overnight, but I'm prayerfully eliminating things.  Many of these things won't actually change until the next school year, but knowing change is around the corner has been helpful.

3. Making sure that I eat breakfast. I will admit that I am a horrible breakfast eater. I know that it is a terrible habit. I'm still not perfect on this one, but I know that low blood sugar and hunger are definite triggers for me. I'm also trying to add in a high protein snack during my mid day crash.

4. Trying to reduce my distractions AKA apple products. This is pretty hard because I try to keep my phone on me all day, so it is really easy to pick it up and start playing on Facebook or Instagram.  I love reading blogs and researching and having my iPhone at my fingertips makes it really easy to do just that. However, by not using it as much during the day, I don't snap at my children nearly as much.

5. Offer grace rather than anger. To myself. To others. Everyone deserves grace. Again, I'm nowhere near perfect, but it is a start. During that breath that I'm taking, I try to ask myself if I'm showing grace in my reaction.

6. Getting more sleep. Because I'm a night owl, I often stay up way too late. My burst of energy comes after dinner time. My kids aren't super early risers, but they usually wake up between 7:30-8:00 am. I'm making an effort to get in bed by 11:00pm and allow myself 8 hours of sleep.  When I'm awake until 2:00 am and waking 6 hours later, it catches up to me quickly. I can assure you that sleepyhead Alicia is grouchy and snarky. Also, the more I research, the more I think my sleep issues are hormonal...which brings me to my next point.

What else am I going to do?

I'm going to make some dietary changes. I had gone gluten free with my entire family last year and slowly started introducing it after about 6 months. I realize now that I really felt better when I wasn't consuming gluten. I'm also going to slowly cut out caffeine and sugar. This is going to be really difficult. I'm going to start in about two weeks, when I don't have as many early morning obligations. After doing some research, I think these three steps will help with my hormonal issues that cause so many mood swings for me. I have never officially been diagnosed with thyroid issues, but I have almost every single symptom of hypothyroidism and borderline TSH levels. I've been researching how to heal it with dietary changes and praying this will help the out of whack hormonal issues I deal with regularly. It also seems as if adrenal fatigue and hypothyroidism go hand in hand. Honestly, even if these are not issues, changing my diet won't hurt me at all. I don't expect this to be an easy change or a quick fix. I'm more focused on long term healing with these dietary changes.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.

So there you have it. God really blessed me during this Lenten season. I truly feel that ending my Lenten journey with the Walk to Emmaus was such fabulous timing. It really gave me an opportunity to re-focus and re-prioritize. For my friends who dove into this challenge with me, I'd love to hear your feedback. What was hard for you? What changes did you make?

Our gluten free journey thus far

So we've been gluten free for a few weeks. We've had a few bad days and are still working on cross contamination stuff, but for the most part, we are there. I know everyone really wants to know how we are feeling, so I won't beat around the bush.

The first week wasn't easy. I wanted to eat every starchy or sugary thing that I could put my hands on. I was exhausted and felt horrible. By the 2nd week, I felt like a new woman. I am the type of person who drinks a minimum of 2 cups of coffee every morning, just to function. I literally do nothing before my coffee. Since going gluten free, I've noticed three really big changes in myself.

1. I don't need coffee to function. I still drink a cup, but generally I can unload my dishwasher and get breakfast ready without coffee. I've even been singing in the morning before my coffee. Words that I thought I would never say/type.
2. I am sleeping better! I am falling to sleep within 20 minutes of going to bed and most often before midnight. Yeah, I thought I would never say or type those words.
3. My mood swings are more manageable. I am not perfect, but seriously I am doing better. I don't feel nearly as down and I feel a general just kind of happy feeling...or as Phil from DD would say, "happy, happy, happy".

Chris
I can't really speak for him, but he has way more energy. He is motivated to work on home projects quite a bit lately. He is drinking less coffee. His appetite has decreased and he has lost weight. His digestive issues have improved as well. He doesn't want to eat gluten again because he feels that much better.

Harrison
He is sleeping much better. He has decreased to one mg of melatonin at night rather than two mgs. Ideally, we will have him off of it completely by the end of the year. His rest throughout the night as been amazingly better as well. He was struggling to sleep a full 11 hours and now he is easily getting 11.5-12 hours again. His eczema and itching is almost non existent. He would always get eczema flare ups on his bottom and itch late at night. He doesn't have any eczema and the only night he has itched was the day he consumed gluten. Coincidence...I doubt it.

Kadie
Her meltdowns have slightly decreased and she is eating a little better. She is our child that only wanted carbs and sweets. She will actually eat eggs now. She has always been a good sleeper and generally sleeps 12 hours without issue.

Sam
I've seen the biggest improvement with Sam. Since December, until recently, he has had very loose stools and they are almost completely back to normal. He also has not been waking anymore between 2-3am. His 5am daily wake up time has ended. He will usually wake up between 6:00-7:00 wanting milk and will go back to sleep for another hour or two. This is a HUGE improvement because this mama was a zombie!

I'm very certain we are going to have to cut out dairy if it isn't raw. Harrison had a very obvious reaction to dairy when he was a preschooler. He actually tested positive for a slight allergy to it when he was  2. I am fairly certain, he still can't tolerate it and just manifests  differently now. So removing most dairy from his diet will be something I start working on next week. I'm going to test him with only raw dairy and see if it makes a difference.

I'm also monitoring everyone's weight closely Chris has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 lbs and I've lost 3 lbs. Harrison is between 50-51 lbs/49.5 inches. Kadie is between 40-41/41.5 inches lbs. Sam is 28 lbs/no clue how tall. Harrison is definitely underweight and has been for several years. Kadie is average and I'm not sure on Sam (he won't stand still enough to get an accurate height). I would love to see Harrison gain some weight!

I would suggest for anyone who wants to try going gluten free, to go about it in a one meal at a time approach. I realize cold turkey works for some, but it was too overwhelming for me. We focused on breakfast during the first week and learned how to make yummy waffles, muffins, and pancakes. The following week, we worked on GF bread and other replacements. We actually ended up doing dinner the same week as lunch, because we weren't too bad with consuming gluten filled dinners. We've replaced all of our favorite snacks as well.

Here are some meal ideas with links to recipes I've tried and like. 

Breakfast:
Muffins (with coconut flour), Pumpkin muffins
Pancakes (with GF AP flour), Pancakes (with almond flour),
Waffles
Bacon and Eggs
Lots of fresh fruit

Lunch:
Sandwiches
Tuna
Avocado
Tomato Soup
Salad
Lots of fresh fruit
Salad with protein
Tortillas

Snacks:
Cheese crackers

Dinner:
Tacos
Potato Soup
Cheesy Beef & Rice
Slow Cooker Roast Chicken and Gravy
Meatloaf

Desserts:
Chunky Monkey Cookies
Giant Vanilla Bean Chocolate Chunk Cookies

There are tons more out there. I will update as I can. I would suggest looking on Pinterest or doing a paleo/primal meal search. There are really a lot of options and we don't feel deprived.