My naturopath, Dr. Johnson, recommended a diet to help with my urinary symptoms. I also brought up our lack of success with trying to conceive. Turns out fertility is her specialty. After discussing my symptoms, asking some seemingly unrelated questions, inspecting my tongue and feeling my pulse in three spots on my wrist, she recommended a sugar-free diet for 8 weeks to starve candida (yeast). I'm thinking, okay, what does this have to do with my bladder? I don't think I've ever even had a yeast infection. But I chose to trust her and went with it, even though this was a complete 180 for me. This is what she recommended:
Breakfast: I c. blueberries (frozen), 2 T flax, 2 T soy lecithin, scoop of pea protein, milk alternative (I use Dream Almond milk).
Snack (before and after lunch): fruit or veggies with nuts, nut butter, or some type of fat/protein like hummus.
Lunch/dinner: 3 oz meat/fish, 1/2 c. whole grain/beans/sweet potato, veggies
I thought that this was the end of good food as we knew it.
She asked that I go to her weekly class to learn more about recipes, diet and lifestyle, and to make a follow-up in two weeks after I use up all the Snake and the Dragon teapills.
I brought my husband to the class, and we made an appointment for her to see him about fertility right after. The following week he was thoroughly evaluated and we both had our first acupuncture session. I did NOT want those needles in my body! I tried to stay calm, but that whole first session sucked! I just wanted to pull those needles out! Luckily, it was only for about 15 minutes. My husband, however, was as calm as a Hindu cow, though he looked like the dude from Hellraiser.
The first couple weeks I didn't feel so good. My whole body had to adjust/detox from eating dairy, sugar, refined flours, and fake food, to getting its energy from real, whole food. We started out just making huge batches of beans and whole grains and meat and eating it over the next couple days, and just sauté or steam up a bunch of vegetables. After a little while we became more confident with using herbs and spices and got creative and started to make some very delicious dishes.
We both started to work out in the mornings. My husband was a little more disciplined than me in the beginning, and worked out almost every morning. He lifted, ran, did the stairclimber, he worked hard. He lost his excess 30 lbs. over a matter of months and now looks better than ever. I started out little by little with the exercise. I started just walking for about 30 minutes on most mornings, then after about a month of that I eased into running. I could only run about 3/4 mile the first time, and it was torture! My very hilly neighborhood didn't help with that. The hills got me in shape within just a couple runs. I used to run Cross Country in high school, and my muscles got back in the groove very quickly. I got to running a regular fast-paced 3 mile loop around my hilly neighborhood within a matter of weeks. And it felt great! I missed running. Once I started running regularly, I also started going to Bodypump every week at my gym down the street. It's a really great class to get you started on and to keep you going with weight training. I ran into an old friend from high school who also ran regularly and we started running together about once a week. Having a friend to run with you is a great way to get over those mornings when nothing sounds good but the bed. Me and my husband were well on our way to better health, and it just gets better (well for the most part).
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