IBS is a Crap Diagnosis

Whole30 pro tip: Mindlessly eating healthy food in front of the tv will make you feel as bad as mindlessly eating junk food in front of the tv. Lesson learned. Always be mindful of what you're putting in your body (and how much of it).

Today is day 31 of my Whole30: Project Wedding and I have to admit, I'm feeling pretty discouraged. This is my fourth or fifth Whole30 over the last year. That's almost half a year of eating paleo. And for the most part, when I'm not Whole30-ing, I eat fairly healthy. I definitely notice a difference in how I feel when I'm not eating paleo/Whole30 though. I'm more tired, I constantly feel bloated, my clothes just don't fit right, I'm always uncomfortable, my eczema comes back, and I get a lot more pimples. One thing doesn't ever seem to change, no matter how healthy I eat, and that's my stomach/digestive issues.

I've been dealing with this since roughly my senior year of high school (which was EIGHT years ago). Back then and during college, I attributed those problems to all the junk food I ate back then, especially during college. Over the last year and a half, I've cleaned up my diet. In fact, the Whole30 helped me discover food allergies I had no idea I had. The hives that I had broken out in numerous times prior to that and during my first Whole30 completely stopped once I cut out beef and pork. To my disappointment, none of those food allergies were the cause of my stomach issues.

I had an extremely hard week a few months back and ended up at the doctor's office. I had to do tests and give samples (you don't even want to know how gross that is...and for those of you who do know, I'm sorry). The doctor's diagnosis? That particular bad week was probably food poisoning. But overall, I probably just have IBS. She gave me a muscle relaxer to help with the pain and cramping I experience and told me to "just take Immodium whenever I need it."

I accepted that for a few days. Then I decided that I'm an otherwise healthy 26 year old woman and I don't want to take copius amounts of muscle relaxers and Immodium pretty much every day for who knows how long. IBS is a crap diagnosis, in my opinion. And after our wedding and honeymoon is over, I will be going to see a specialist to get more/better answers. I will not accept that someone who is young, healthy, eats paleo at least 90% of the time, and exercises regularly has to take medication daily for potentially the rest of my life.

Frankly, it's just not fair. I started the Whole30 way back when to try to eliminate the problems I was having so that I'd be 100% healthy for our wedding and honeymoon. No one wants to feel like this on their wedding day, in a white dress of all things. And yet, here I am, less than a month before the wedding, and my situation has not gotten better. Sure, I now know a few things that definitely exacerbate my problems, like coffee (which I avoid most days, but sometimes, the need for caffeine is more important). But I can't seem to further pinpoint exactly which foods are giving me problems--if any.

I can't help but feel frustrated and disappointed. There are a lot of things I wanted to do before the wedding that aren't happening now (and really just aren't important), like getting my teeth whitened. But I just wanted to feel perfectly healthy on my wedding day. I didn't want to have to worry about how my stomach would feel that day. But here I am, worried about how my dress will fit. Will I be bloated? What if I have to go once my dress is already on? What if I eat the wrong thing at some point throughout the day? What if the alcohol I drink makes me sick?

Everyone keeps saying everything will be fine. And almost everything will be fine. But the likelihood that I will feel like literal crap on my wedding day is very high because that area of my life seems to be completely out of my control.

I Made Soap!

Sort of.

In my last post I talked about how I wanted to eliminate more chemicals from our lives. My starting point was switching our hand soap. The chemicals in the soap we were using made my hands so dry and chapped it was painful and no amount of lotion, oil, etc. helped.

So I searched around on Pinterest and found several different ways to make hand soap. The simplest one I found was to use Dr. Bronner's soap.

I bought the 18-in-1 Hemp Peppermint at Target.

I dumped the rest of our Bath & Body Works soap down the sink and rinsed the bottle/dispenser out really well. I had to "pump" it several times to make sure all the old soap was out of it. It's a foaming dispenser which seems to be what works best according to Pinterest. 

All I did was fill the bottle about 1/4 with the Peppermint soap (which is organic), then filled the rest with water (not all the way to the top or it will make a mess when you screw the dispenser back on). You can also add some essential oils like tea tree, which is an antibacterial oil, or some other oil. I didn't have any essential oils, so I just used the soap and water (the soap does have a lot of oils in it). Then I gently shook the bottle to mix the soap and water. 

Voila! Organic hand soap that won't destroy your
hands! 

I have loved it so far. Chris seems indifferent to it. He liked the way the Bath & Body Works soap smelled (vanilla) and apparently wasn't having as many problems with dry hands as I was. But he's tolerating it for me :)

If you're having issues with dry skin like I was or just want to rid your household of harsh chemicals, I highly recommend using this method. My hands haven't transformed overnight. I wash my hands a lot throughout the day, so by the time I was able to make this soap, my hands were in really bad shape. But there has been a noticeable difference, and I think with some more coconut oil at night, my hands will be in much better shape!

Trying to be Chemical Free

I have officially applied for 50 jobs since the end of October 2013. Of those, I've received 10 rejection emails. So most are either still considering me (I can hope) or they've rejected me without bothering to notify me.

Luckily I found my part time writing position. It doesn't pay much, but it at least gives me a little something to do each day, and it's writing. That's very important to me. It's almost like being in school again. I get an assignment. I procrastinate. I write it. I turn it in. The only difference is, I get paid for these.

Aside from not having a full-time job, life is pretty good. Except for that whole being home all day, every day thing. That's not so fun for me. I'm getting bored. I can only search for and apply for so many jobs in one day.

I love her to pieces, but I am really not enjoying
being a stay at home dog-mom!

So I'm looking for other things to occupy my time. I should be exercising, but thanks to the foot of snow outside covering most sidewalks, I think I'll wait until it starts to melt. I've been spending a lot more time on Pinterest. Looking at wedding stuff, food stuff, workout stuff, etc. etc. As you may know, I'm working harder to eliminate chemicals from my life (and Chris's and our fur-babies).

It's adorable how much she loves the snow.

We've already switched from traditional body washes and facial cleansers to Herbaria, handmade, natural soaps. We love them! It's been fun trying different bars of soap. We finally went into the store the day before Thanksgiving and again the Friday after Christmas. It smells lovely. And it's on the Hill. I love that place. In addition to their bars of soap, I've switched from regular deodorant to a natural spray deodorant they have. I think I'd like to try making my own deodorant in the future as well. (In case you're wondering, regular deodorants contain lots of chemicals, plus most contain aluminum which has been linked as a cause of breast cancer--no thank you!). It is way different from using regular deodorant (which is why I think I want to try to make my own), and it doesn't work as an antiperspirant (that's what aluminum does), but sweating is good for you!

Herbaria also makes a soap for dogs! We plan
to use it on her just as soon as it's warm enough!

We've also switched to laundry detergents that are of the "free and clear" varieties. Currently we're using Arm & Hammer. Eventually I'd like to try making my own of this as well and see how it turns out.

The first thing I plan to "diy" is hand soap. It won't be hand-made or anything, but it will be organic which means no cancer-causing chemicals or anything else bad that painfully dries my hands out. (We're currently using soap from Bath & Body Works which does contain cancer-causing chemicals and is the reason this is the first thing I'm making!)

The Bath & Body hand soap has made my hands so dry that they hurt and are about to start cracking. No amount of lotion or coconut oil (from Herbaria and usually works great) has helped. So I'm heading to the store later today to get some organic castile soap and I'll add some essential oils and our hands will be so much better off!

I'm also looking for an organic shampoo (one that's not super expensive!). I've just been using a "shampoo bar" from Herbaria and while it does the job, my hair still feels dry and looks dull. I've found a couple options I plan to try so I'll let you know how that goes!

It is really difficult to find organic stuff, especially things like shampoos. And many claim to be organic when they're really not. Read labels/ingredients on everything is what I've learned in researching this stuff. You can't trust something that says it's all-natural or organic to really be those things. It's very frustrating.

Anyone else trying to eliminate all these chemicals from their lives? I'd love to hear any tips, products you use/love, and anything you've diy'ed!

Going "Natural"

As I said yesterday, I haven't been able to work out much lately. Okay, that's basically a lie. I haven't worked out at all in the last month or so. Spending 4 hours a day in a car and working all day and then job-hunting most evenings is pretty exhausting.

I've still been reading a lot of blogs and stuff though and there was one thing that I kept reading about over and over: the amount of chemicals and unnatural things that go into the stuff we eat, bathe with, clean our houses with, etc. The more I read about all the horrible effects these chemicals can have on people, the more inclined I was to start making some changes.

The problem is "going natural" can get expensive. With our current budget, we just can't afford to buy natural or organic everything. Buying and eating all healthy food is really hard and expensive. The speediness and convenience of frozen meals and fast food right now isn't something I can completely cut out right now. I don't have the time to cook every night or do meal prep or anything like that. And sometimes I just really want a cheeseburger and fries. Don't judge.

So while I am making a small effort to eat healthier, I just can't make any major diet changes right now. The next thing I tackled was soaps. Reading about all the negative effects that fragrances and detergents used in shampoos, body washes, laundry soap, etc. made me want to make some changes.

I now buy handmade soaps from Herbaria Soap in St. Louis. I use their soaps for everything now: body, hair, face, hands. Switching from liquid soap to bars was rough for me at first. I've never liked using bars of soap. But knowing exactly what my soap is made of, where it's made, how it's made, and who my money is going to was all worth it. Oh and they smell pretty incredible too! I highly recommend their soap. While it hasn't solved all of my skin issues (most recently and most frequent is itching all over), I do feel that it has made a difference. And I love that I'm not buying a ton of different (and expensive!) soaps and cleansers all the time.

Since my itchy-skin-issue wasn't resolved just from switching soap, I decided maybe it was time to try some "free and clear" laundry soap and dryer sheets. Again, I haven't noticed much of a difference. However, I did read that detergents can linger in fabrics even after several washings with natural soaps, so if that's the case, I could be itchy for a very long time. (Yes, it may be time to see my doctor about this, but I'm using that as a last-resort.)

That leads me to my next issue: allergy medicine. First of all, that stuff is really expensive. Second, what I had been taking (and what had worked most of the time) has recently stopped working so great. So I tried something else instead. That hasn't worked either. I'm tired of spending money on medicine that only works for half the time it says it's supposed to (like, 24 hours maybe lasts half a day for me). So I've decided to look into some natural allergy relief. What I've found so far is that Butterbur and Vitamin C are the best, especially working as antihistamines. I also read that a combination of the essential oils lavender, lemon, and peppermint can help relieve itching and inflammation.

I've been considering trying a natural deodorant as well. I've even done quite a bit of reading on DIY deodorants, but I think I might just buy some from Herbaria first and see if I like it.

Eventually I want to move to using as much natural and/or homemade products as possible, but that takes time and money.

What's your take on "going natural"? Do you have any tips or tricks or natural/DIY products you use?