exercise.

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i have always been an active person.  i was a cheerleader in jr. high and high school.  in college i did aerobics and swam, working out sometimes twice a day.  once out of school and working i stayed fit by going to the gym and walking. 

once i had kids though, everything sort of changed. 

like most mamas out there, i put everyone else first and didn't make the time for myself.

so basically for the past 11 years i have gone through spurts of exercising to take care of myself.  i know how important it is, but finding the time to do it is always the challenge.  i have always been an "all or nothing" sort of person.......not a great quality and definitely something i'm working on.  so, in those "all or nothing" terms, if i didn't have time to put into a good workout, then why bother. 

again, as a mom, i've had to adapt my exercise around my kids schedules.  so maybe when my older 2 were little and napping i could workout then.  things got especially hard as they got older and then extremely difficult once we had little man. 

it's been over the last year that i've realized that everything you do can make a difference. 

maybe i don't have an entire hour to devote to a workout, but i can go for a quick 15 minute walk.....maybe a few times a day even.  here are a few ways i'm able to squeeze in exercise....

little man is loving his bike now, so with the nice weather he rides and i walk (or jog) behind him.  since he's still little, we go on short bike rides, but if we do it 2-3 times a day it all adds up.

a little trick my ob/gyn told me when i was diagnosed with gestational diabetes with my last two pregnancies was to walk up and down the stairs 3-5 times after every meal.  i've kept up with this little trick and will do the stairs whenever i have a few minutes.....and of course always opting for the stairs when out and about....something my kids do now most of the time too.

keep hand weights where they are handy.  i grab them to work my arms while little man is working on a project or coloring.  this is so easy to do and can be done with just a few minutes of spare time.

while i'm cooking or helping the boys with homework i do some squats and lunges.....they're easy and you can do them anywhere. 

wear a pedometer.  aim for 10,000 or more steps per day.  i started doing this about a year ago to give me an idea of what i was doing in a regular day.  most days i do more and some days i do less....but not too many days because i'm always checking it.  if i need extra steps to make sure i hit my goal i will march in place while watching tv.  just being aware of it has been so helpful to me.

making small changes like these is something that anyone can do....so who's with me?

okay, friends!

this is really exciting!

the lovely amanda over at royal daughter designs is doing an amazing giveaway!

so, go!

check out her incredible designs and then enter to win yourself!

just do it.....you know you want to!

no coincidences.

how appropriate that i found this video yesterday.

there are no coincidences in life.

this video is amazingly inspirational as it talks about the power of good nutrition.

dr. joel fuhrman, the doctor in the video, wrote the book "Eat to Live" which i first read a year ago.  it was in this book that he stated that people who take methotrexate (the medication i was on for the rheumatoid arthritis) usually die of some type of cancer.  it was a statement that truly scared me and has stuck with me to this day.  "Eat to Live" is an incredible book about the power of nutrition.  i've been thinking about doing a juice cleanse and after seeing this video i think i'm definitely going to do it.  it's not about weight loss for me, it's about getting healthy and hopefully kicking this autoimmune disease to the curb.

life lately...my story.

so sorry for staying away for so long. 

there's been a whole lotta thinking going on around here.

lots going on with the boys keeping me very busy......and other stuff that's been on my mind.

i've started this post a million different times and always deleted it.  it's something that has been very personal and i've struggled with whether to share it or not.  here i am giving it another go.

about 6 or 7 years ago i was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.

it was something that hit me hard and i had a very hard time accepting.  in fact, i wouldn't accept it for many years and still to this day have a hard time really believing that this is what i have.

it started with pain in my shoulders and then kind of travelled around to other joints in my body.  i was convinced that i had lyme disease.  here we were living in the woods in connecticut, just one town away from lyme, ct.  prime area to get a tick bite.  we had deer in our yard on a daily basis.  in my mind, this was definitely what i had......so i was shocked when the test came back negative.  my doctor did lots of other blood work which clearly stated that my rheumatoid factor was very high giving me the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis.

of course, just hearing the word "arthritis" made me think that this couldn't be true.  i was young, just in my early 30's.....how could i have arthritis already?  then when i went home and researched "rheumatoid arthritis" i was startled by the pictures of the deformaties that the disease caused and even more startled by the precautions that the medicine that they wanted me to take had. 

there was no way i was going to put that medication in my body.

i went to a few different naturopathic doctors who tried a few different things to take away the pain.  the only thing that really seemed to work was when i did a 2 week detox diet.  unfortunately, willpower dwindled once i was done with the 2 weeks and instead of trying an elimination diet at that point (which the naturopath never even recommended and i have no idea why) i went back to my previous way of eating.....which really wasn't that unhealthy, but i do still wonder about food allergies or intollerances.  anyway, a couple of years later i got pregnant with little man and was told that i would probably feel great during the pregnancy but may have some pain after giving birth.

wow!  pain is an understatement.  i could barely move.  my knees and hips hurt so much to sit or stand that it was overwhelming.  my hands and wrists felt crippling pain.  and here i had this precious newborn to take care of.  i would literally cry in pain when i picked him up and even more so when i had to sit down to nurse him.  i immediately had to call the rheumatologist that had told me this might happen just a few years before.  luckily i was able to get an appointment within just a few days. at that point she had to put me on steroids to help bring down the inflammation and help with the pain......and i had to start taking that dreaded medication that i was determined not to take just a few years prior.  i felt completely helpless, i didn't know what else to do.  i was scared because i had read a book stating that most people that take this medication end up dying of cancer.  what was my choice though?  all of the medications for this disease are equally horrible and at least the one that i was taking had been around the longest so there weren't all of the unknowns that went along with the rest of them.

so, up until a month ago i have been able to control my disease with this medication.  i do have some hand deformaties in my right hand which i hate, but apparently it was because i had waited so long to go on any medication.  still with all of this i wonder about my diagnosis only because when i had a recent physical one of my blood tests made my regular doctor raise an eyebrow.  she said that usually with rheumatoid arthritis this other test would also come back high and mine didn't.  this still sticks in the back on mind.

then right before we leave for disney i have another checkup with the rheumatologist who tells me that my white blood count is very low and they need to take me off of the medication.  low white blood count is definitely a scary thing to hear because immediately i start thinking "cancer".  she says that she is sure it's just from the medication so i will come off of it for a month and we will redo the bloodwork.  my mother in law is a nurse who talks with a few doctors that she knows and is told that this is very common with this medication and for me to not worry.....yeah, easy for them to say.

so, here i have spent the past few weeks trying not to do just that......worry.  i have 3 little boys that i need to be around for.  i need to do whatever i can to make sure that i am here to see all of the major milestones that they'll have.  it literally makes me cry to imagine anything different.

so there you have it, the reason for my absence.  yes, things have been busy, but i have also had a lot of my mind......which brings me to the "act" part of the quote above.  i've been doing a lot of research on how nutrition can help imporove our overall health and even reverse or eliminate certain diseases.  along with that research i've been thinking about the direction of my blog.  i think it's so important as mamas that we take care of ourselves so we are around for many, many years.  so, with that said, i want you to know that i'm going to be doing more posts related to how we can keep ourselves, as well as our families, healthy and happy.  i have some exciting giveaways for amazing "healthy" products i've found and lots of great recipes and advice that i've found helpful. 

i hope you'll all stick around and enjoy!