There are some days where I feel like I could take over the world and then other days I want to curl up on my couch, cry for no apparent reason and just have a pity party. The later happens once in a blue moon. Thankfully! However, I’m learning to pinpoint why it happens and how to knock it clean out of the ballpark (that was really weird of me to use a sports analogy from a sport I’m not a fan of). Here’s how I’m learning to combat what I’m simply calling The Overwhelm.
I do a lot on a daily basis in terms of healthy habits so that my immune system is always boosted, decides not to attack itself for the day with the lovely sidekick called MS that I live with and function at optimal levels so I can continue to challenge myself fitness wise. The minute I decide to sacrifice sleep or have a new symptom that I’m learning to treat or work/life stress builds up in the slightest and I find myself combatting The Overwhelm.
I’m currently tackling fun MS symptoms like digestion health and bladder problems (I won’t get into details until I’ve got it figured out) but it means I have to add more things to my daily regime. This threw me into a “stress whirlwind” the other day and I honestly started whining the following statements. “I do so much already why do I have to do more things to take care of myself”, “I thought I had MS figured out” and “everything was going so well why more?”
After I had my pity party which included whining to a friend, full on pouts and a few tears I Alpha Femaled up (yes it’s now a verb) and told myself to just figure it out. My friend recommended actually writing out all my health habits so I have a visual reference. Everything is in my head but just the act of putting it on paper took the stress off my brain to have to remember. So now my Healthy Habits lives on my fridge so I can start the day off reminding myself of everything I do to have a healthy day.
My friend Chivon John created this Daily Hustle Planner (pad of paper) for visualizing daily tasks as a side hustler, but it was perfect for my MS Hustle as well. I wrote out in the My Schedule section all the daily habits that I do that make me feel healthy and energized. They don’t all actually correspond with an actual time of day but are fairly accurate in terms of the order in which I do them throughout the day. Every day I am committed to my self care, moving through life with ease and loving myself so I put those words in the 3 Things I Am Committed To Accomplishing Today Section. My To Dos are reminders of all the principle actions of my self-care routine and I have 3 affirmations in my Notes To Self to keep my spirit feeling full.
In addition to the above I’m currently using the app Symple to track lovely things like bowel movements and bladder voiding which takes a lot of time daily to input. I’m focused on really fixing my digestive health and I’m so close that the actions I’m taking to understand how food affects me is slowly showing benefits and after writing out the daily habits for my fridge I’ve gotten better at being more consistent in my tracking symptoms in the app. It’s not fun. It adds to the daily overwhelm but I know that I can combat The Overwhelm. I also have specific pelvic breathing exercises I have to do each night and it’s gotten easier to add another daily habit to my regime after getting my brain less stressed about the number of tasks.
Although I’ve been feeling less than stellar, I have amazing friends who are so open to doing things that are good for my body. I have chosen not to eat gluten as part of my treatment and I put healthy pie baking on my winter bucket list of indoor activities to make this winter awesome. I’m so grateful for friends that jump at the chance to do things like this with me. Coincidently it was actually National Pie Day on the 23rd so that was super cool to discover.
Saturday I headed down to my friend April’s condo with pie crust ingredients in tow. Jess, April & Stacie had grabbed apples from the St. Lawrence Farmer’s Market after training and were hard at work cutting them up when I arrived. I got busy making the crust and within less than an hour we were smelling delicious apple pie in the oven. Can we also discuss how proud I am of Jess’s #theface in the below picture. I really think all her practicing is paying off. It was also really funny explaining to Stacie (the redhead in the picture) what #theface means. I had to show her the below picture and Jess and I had to re-enact the wide mouth smile which is a staple on my Instagram in pictures where I’m just loving life.
Ok, back to the pie… I found this recipe from paleomagazine.com for the crust. The base of the crust is Bob’s RedMill Almond Meal/Flour.
We blasted some chia seeds in the Vitamix for the chia flour, added the egg, coconut oil, baking soda, sea salt and organic vanilla extract. I didn’t follow the instructions on pressing it out between parchment paper. We also didn’t have a pie tin (I forgot mine at home) so I just pressed the dough out onto of parchment paper into a cast iron skillet!
Jess and April started on the apple pie filling on the stove and we spoon it into the crust when ready.
The crust was too crumply to make a proper lattice pattern on top so I crumbled it over the top to which April announced it looked like ground meat!
We topped it off with an apple slice heart and ended up baking it at 350 for around 30 mins in total. Checking at 25 mins and deciding to leave it in a bit longer.
The taste test, or pie eating was glorious. I had a slice immediately out of the oven as the crew went off to rock climbing. I was still feeling really overwhelmed from the week so I went home to my introvert ways or needing to recharge. I curled up with a book to hibernate for the rest of the weekend. I finished the puzzle I had been working on from the week before (picture up on my Instagram), listened to some podcasts and just recharged as the homebody that I am. Next weekend I have epic outdoor winter adventures on the schedule so I’m glad I took the time for me this weekend.
as long as the pie was delicious, the recipe was a huge success! thanks for sharing the symple app and Chivon’s tracker – i think those will help me out.