Healthy Changes, Day Five: Mental Health Day

Gosh, writing all of these blog posts is exhausting! I need to take a personal day.

Psych! I will actually be talking about the subject of mental health.

A lot of people don't really understand clinical depression. They're like, oh you're just sad? Just sad doesn't even begin to cover it. Everything in your life can be going wonderfully, but if you have legit depression you'll still be miserable all the time. It's not something you can control. "Fake it til you make it" doesn't work with depression. Having depression can screw up everything in your life. Your relationships, your job, you name it and depression will mess it up.

I've had diagnosed depression and anxiety since I was 14. I was taking antidepressants and going to therapy from 14-17, when I decided to stop doing both. I don't really remember why, but things were okay for a while. And then it wasn't.

I decided that I should talk to my doctor about maybe going back on antidepressants when every day turned into a struggle over whether or not I should quit my job and just lay in bed all day.

I've been taking Prozac for about a month now. Things have REALLY improved, or at least the way I see things has improved. I'm sleeping better, eating better, exercising, and I doubt I would have the motivation for any of this without medication to pull me out of the hole of depression that I was sinking in. It's also helping with my anxiety. I have energy and can relax! It's an amazing feeling. Coming out of depression is like living in a dark room and suddenly someone opens the blinds and lets the sun in. Cheesy, I know, but that's how I've been feeling.

Sometimes I feel crappy about having to take medicine in order to feel normal, but then I remind myself that mental health and physical health work best when they're working together. Prozac can function as an appetite suppressant which helps curb my boredom snacking and my mealtime overeating. I'm happier so I'm more motivated to cook from scratch. I'm sleeping better and less anxious so I'm no longer physically and mentally exhausted every day and have the energy to work out, which leads to endorphins which make me even more happy! And it goes around and around and around.

I'm sharing this incredibly personal information on my blog not to make excuses for myself or anything like that, but rather to share something that has been a struggle in my life for a long time, and something that I'm finally happy to say that I'm successfully working through!


This has been a fun week for me! If anything I've said hasn't been helpful, I hope that it will at least have been interesting :)

Healthy Changes, Day Four: ENOUGH SLEEP!

Today's change is something that has been a goal of mine for years. I've slept poorly for as long as I can remember. I used to get in trouble a lot for not being asleep by midnight, one, two, three... but it's not like I didn't try. I would lay in bed in the dark for hours but my brain would not shut off, even as early as first grade. When I DID manage to fall asleep, I would still wake up several times during the night and not be able to go back to sleep. This continues to this day.

I feel as if a good night's sleep has been evading me for years. But I recently decided I'd had enough of spending my days feeling lethargic and irritable. I did some research and set a bedtime routine for myself (and Nathan).

I get up around 7-ish, so I try to go to bed at 10. I take melatonin at around 9:30 and turn off most of the lights. Ideally I would fall asleep by 10:30 but it usually ends up being closer to 11. But even so, it's still about 8 hours of sleep! Also I bought an eye mask to block out the light when it's finally time to sleep. Then I listen to an audio book (one that I've heard a million times, like Harry Potter) and fall asleep!

I've found that having a routine has been helping a lot. Going to bed at the same time every night has definitely made a difference. My body is like, okay, now it's time to wind down because you need to fall asleep in less than an hour. And 9 times out of 10, I am falling asleep in the time frame I set.

Now, my problems aren't completely solved. I still wake up in the middle of the night almost every night. I would rather not take something like Ambien that makes me hallucinate so I think I'll keep going with my routine and see if it lessens as it goes on.

Do any of you have problems sleeping? Any solutions you've found? Please share some ideas!

Healthy Changes, Day Three: Wii Fit!

This is by far been the most fun thing I'll be blogging about. Wii Fit, people. Get with it! How does something this fun exist? No, really. We've had it in our possession* for almost two weeks now and Nathan and I are both having a blast!

We both have our own things that we're good at but we both have so much fun exercising! Here, enjoy this video of Nathan skateboarding! The video is sideways, by the way.



He's totally cute, right?

I know that Wii Fit isn't terribly strenuous compared to, say, running 10 miles with weights strapped to your ankles, but man, it's a pretty good workout! Hula hooping DESTROYS me. Yoga is also much much harder than I thought it would be. I'm not very flexible and I'm not very balanced so I usually do pretty badly on those, but I can sure feel everything stretching! I thiiiiink I'm getting better. At least, I hope I am.

Nathan really likes the marching band (Rhythm Parade) activity, and I've been having lots of fun doing the snowball fight :) We've been playing with our friends Joanna and Clark and it's so interesting how everyone is good at totally different things!

If you have a Wii, I would definitely recommend investing in a Wii Fit! It can be disheartening when they weigh you and your little Mii gets fat, but it's pretty good motivation haha. I also love that there are soooo many different things you can do! You can play balance games, rhythm games, strength training and yoga, aerobics, and so on! With the wide variety available and the fact that most things only take up about 2 minutes, you can make up your own fun little routines! YOU CAN RIDE A SEGWAY, PEOPLE!!!

My new best friend!

Well, dear readers, I've told you my favorite way to work out (also the only way I work out, but I digress) so tell me the ways you try to fit a little extra fitness in your life! Do you purposefully park a long ways from the door? Do you take the stairs instead of the elevator? Let me know in the comments!

*Thanks in-laws for letting us borrow your Wii Fit! We'll probably never give it back.

Healthy Changes, Day Two: Easy Calorie Cutting

"Count your calories" is something we hear nonstop. Well, I don't know about you but that's kind of a drag for me. But I realized a couple weeks ago that there was a super easy way I could cut out a couple hundred calories a day: stop drinking them!!

I really hate water. I think it's pretty sick. I know human beings are 75% water or something (maybe that's the earth) but I can't stand drinking it most of the time. Soda is good, but sometimes when I was feeling like I should get something healthier, I'd pick up a Snapple or Sobe. But did you realize those things are like 300+ calories? That's no better than a can of soda and basically a whole meal! What the heck?

I thought about it for a while and then decided that if I'm going to ingest a ton of calories, I would rather it be in food form instead of beverage form. So I went on the hunt for low calorie drinks. Diet soda is more or less pretty nasty, but I found a couple that are quite tasty :) Vanilla Coke Zero is one of those. The vanilla really covers up the weird aspartame taste. Diet root beer is very hit and miss, but A&W is totally tolerable. Their diet cream soda is also tasty! Low calorie Sobe and Snapple is available when you're looking for something less carbonated, and everything I've tried from those brands has been good! The Fuze juice brand, on the other hand, was quite disappointing.

Lemon water has been a big winner for me. Put some lemon slices (or dump some lemon juice) in a pitcher of water and let it chill. Nice and refreshing and the gross water taste that usually keeps me away from water doesn't bug me with another flavor in there. Another alternative is cucumber water! Peel and slice a cucumber and put it in a pitcher of water and let it chill for a while. It's a great summertime treat! One more option is raspberries but those are just sliiiightly pricier than cucumbers and lemons haha. Lucky for me, Nathan doesn't like cucumber water so I get it all to myself :)

My last example is not quite as low calorie as everything else, but almond milk is really healthy and really filling. It makes a great breakfast, and at only 90 calories a cup, I wouldn't say that's particularly awful. It's also good on cereal! I think I blogged about its tastiness during BEDA and my opinion has not changed. Almond milk, yay!

While I haven't been trying to cut calories in any other way, I know that I'm taking in a lot fewer since cutting out soda and bottled juice and stuff. This wouldn't be a big thing for most people, but my aversion to drinking water makes the task of finding lower calorie beverages a little tricker for me. Most people would just stop drinking soda and only drink water, but ew, water. It's working out really well, too! When we go out to eat, if I want a drink, I get a diet soda or suck it up and deal with water (with lemon, of course).

I've only slipped up once, and that was while I was getting our car's oil changed. I got a free fountain soda and my options were diet Sprite, diet Mountain Dew, diet Coke, and diet Pepsi. So I got a small thing of Dr. Pepper. But when that was done I filled up with diet Mountain Dew. Mistake. Diet Mountain Dew is disgusting. Don't bother trying it.

Obviously I could cut my calories into shreds if I wanted to, but I don't. I just wanted to make one simple change and I think it's been a really good thing! I have even lost a few pounds, but as you'll find out the rest of the week, Vanilla Coke Zero doesn't deserve all of the credit ;)

I suppose if today's blog had a moral, it would be eat your calories, don't drink them! I never said this week would be full of incredible scientific breakthroughs, but I think sometimes we forget that just because something's liquid doesn't mean that it's not packed with calories.

Anyone have any tips for easy ways to cut calories without too much effort? Let me know if there's a low or no calorie beverage that you're a fan of in the comments!

Healthy Changes, Day One: Bountiful Baskets

In my humble opinion, step one to being healthier is eating healthier foods. Nathan and I try to stay away from ultra-processed convenience foods as much as possible but we still find ourselves not eating as many fresh fruits and veggies as we'd like to. With the exception of potatoes and bananas, everything's so expensive!

Luckily, thanks to a few friends, neighbors, and coworkers, we kept hearing about something called Bountiful Baskets and decided to give it a try a couple weeks ago! The short explanation is you pay $15 on Monday, and on Saturday you pick up something like $50 worth of fresh produce! You never know what you're going to get, because the people who run the co-op try to buy seasonal produce directly from farmers.

But it's always fresh and always good. Don't believe me? See what we picked up on Saturday morning!

Right there we've got 10 lbs of potatoes, four bananas, a cantaloupe, a pound of grapes, a pound of strawberries, two tomatoes, a head of cauliflower, a bunch of celery, a head of romaine lettuce, and SIX ears of corn. 

On top of that, we had five apples, five tomatoes, two cucumbers, and ANOTHER 5 lbs bag of potatoes left over from last week! And a banana, but I used it for banana bread :) I cut up a cucumber and put it in a pitcher of water and let it chill. Cucumber water is a delicious and refreshing summertime drink!

Phase two of this plan is to make our weekly menu based on what we get in our basket! 

Sunday we had friends over so we made Zuppa Toscana, the Olive Garden soup. It was tasty and impressive. We used potatoes in the soup, but other than that we didn't use any more of our produce.

Tonight we're having chicken salad (using celery and perhaps a bit of cucumber) on croissants and fruit salad (using bananas, strawberries, apples, grapes, cantaloupe, and some canned peaches).

Tuesday is Puttanesca with a fresh salad. I'll use the romaine, some corn, more cucumber, and possibly some celery.

Wednesday we're having chicken gravy with mashed potatoes, OR we're going to Aunt Marcy's for dinner!

Thursday we're having corn on the cob and German potato salad!

Friday or Saturday I'm making a vegetable chowder with potatoes, cauliflower, corn and anything else I can think up! I say Friday or Saturday because we don't know yet which day we're having our weekly date night. Whichever night isn't date night is chowder night!

Last Saturday I made my famous salsa with all of the tomatoes we had. We had it with quesadillas and a salad :)

We have most of the ingredients we're going to need already, and will probably only spend about $20 this week on groceries. That means our food costs for the entire week will be less than $50! So not only do we get to eat healthier, we also save a bunch of money!

This week was pretty easy to figure out recipes for, since most of the stuff we got in our basket was pretty familiar. Who knows what next week will bring? I don't know, but I hope it'll be fun!

Bountiful Baskets is rapidly opening new sites all over the US. Check their website to see if there's one near you! Contributions open today at 10am for Utah, and 12pm every other state, local time, and they close tomorrow night if you're interested :) Nathan and I have been very impressed with the amazing selection we've gotten two weeks in a row, so we'll definitely be signing up again.

I hope Day One was fun/interesting/informative! Leave comments for recipe ideas or other ways you know of to eat healthy for less money. 

Accutane.

Oh hey! I'm blogging and it's not April! How exciting!

I started taking Accutane a couple weeks ago. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's this drug that you take for five or six months and once you finish, you don't have to deal with bad acne again. If I just got a pimple here and there I wouldn't bother but I have what they call "nodular acne" which is disgusting and painful and causes scarring. I wish I would have done this in high school but it never happened.

The problem with Accutane is it has CRAZY side effects. For one thing, it causes terrible birth defects so I had to sign a contract saying that I wouldn't get pregnant while taking it. It's really now or never, since Nathan and I are going to start trying for kids in a year or so and this is kiiind of my last chance.

Another crappy side effect is dry skin. Dry everything, really. There aren't many drugs that permanently change your body, and Accutane is one of them. It reduces the amount of oil your body produces, and makes your oil glands smaller, etc. Ergo, dry skin. And not just dry skin. My lips are chapped SO bad, they've even cracked and bled a few times. The inside of my nose is so dry that I've been getting nosebleeds, which I've never had before. The outside of my nose and my chin are all scaly and gross. But the worst part, ladies and gentlemen, are the dry EYES. Oh yes, my eyes (the right one more than the left) are like the Sahara desert. On Thursday afternoon it was so bad that I had to come home from work early because I just could not see and the simple act of blinking was killing me.

Sigh. I've found ways to improve my problems. My dermatologist recommended Refresh Plus eye drops, and they are working really well. I'm slathering Vaseline on my lips and even applying it to the inside of my nose with a Q-tip. Good lotion for the rest of my face. But holy crap. I hope it doesn't stay this bad or get worse :(

I really shouldn't complain, modern medicine is awesome. I trust my doctor so if something goes seriously wrong he'll know what to do. I just wanted to vent a bit. If you see me around and my eyes are all red, I haven't been crying, I just have shriveled up eyeballs.

On the plus side, my laptop is in Salt Lake City! FedEx estimates that it will arrive on Wednesday, but is it too much to hope that it might be here by Tuesday? I"m excited!