The State of My Health and Home

{My family taking a walk by the ocean recently}

It's been a while since I have given you all a health update, so I thought it might be time for one.

I'm doing OK.

OK is the best way to describe it. Not wonderful, but not horrible.

My current positives: I have more energy, feel less stressed.

If you are new around here, you can read more about my journey in the following posts:

• Hitting the bottom and crawling out
• A Health Update: Hypothyroid, Gluten Sensitivity, Leaky Gut and more! 
• Hashimoto's diagnosis
• Food Allergy Results

When I am able to keep my diet, sleep, and stress in check, I feel pretty decent. But, when any of those slide, I'm down for the count. Well, almost. As down as you can be with three kids at home!

Staying in bed all day is not really an option.

Sleep is the one area I have really improved. I'm getting to bed at a decent hour most of the time (not always). And it helps a lot.

Diet is the hardest area to tackle. I mentioned before that I found out about a number of food allergies. Well, there's over 40! And some of them were staples in my diet!

Here is the list (I had to write it out so I wouldn't forget them all):

Thankfully, a number of those items are not things I would eat on a regular basis, so they don't really count. Rabbit stew, anyone?

I'm still taking supplements, mostly for enhancing digestion, reducing inflammation, and healing the gut. I did also finally give in and try thyroid medication. I'm using Armour right now and am doing well on it so far.

It's a very low dose and I hope to get off it some day, but, I may not be able to. We will see. I recently discovered that both my parents have autoimmune diseases. So, there is obviously something going on in our family!

Current supplements include:

• George's Aloe Vera Drink
• ProBio 5 – probiotic (and also helps to kill fungal infections)
• Bio Cleanse – for aiding in detoxification
• Betaine HCL Pepsin – helps with digestion (kinda like stomach acid)
• Natural Calm – at night. Excellent for sleep and relaxation!

I'm taking a break from Plexus Slim for a while since I am allergic to coffee. It contains and extract from the green coffee bean, which may not be an issue for me, but I wanted to take some time to be sure. Lots of people have having a great results with it. And I hope to go back to it one day.

One other important area that I am working on is my home. I'm striving to have a peaceful, organized home. I try to keep things simple, and make every day activities as easy as possible. I mentioned a few of the ways I do this in my time-saving tips posts: see Time Savers for Busy Moms and More Time Saving Tips for Busy Moms. 

To be completely honest, as my health began to deteriorate, so did my home.

Not having much energy made it very hard to stay on top of even the simplest of tasks. This has contributed to many feelings of guilt and shame. But, I'm learning to go easy on myself and realize that chronic illness does insert some limiting factors on your life.

That is a reality.

I'm dedicating the rest of the year to rejuvenating my health and home.

What does that mean?

–> I'm striving not to take on any new projects.

–> Continuing to make sleep a priority

–> Take my supplements consistently.

–> Spend time preparing good meals.

–> Implementing new routines for my family (This program is helping me do that: Building Family Systems.)

–> Decluttering – one room at a time.

–> Set up an organizational system that works for me (I'm working on the Mind Organization for Moms program. Which is excellent and extremely thorough).

I hope to keep you apprised of the progress I am making and would love to invite you to join me.

What areas of your health or home need a makeover?