Sleepless Nights

Author: Veronica

  • Why I quit sugar (aka: I’m probably insane)

    FebFast_Ribbon_RGBThis article is sponsored, but I’m also going to talk about my health, quitting sugar (aka: losing my sanity) and why I agreed to do it and see how I feel.

    I’d like if you kept reading, because I’m interested in your thoughts too.

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    I’d been thinking about quitting sugar for a while, in an abstract “maybe I’ll feel better” kind of way. My health is tenuous at best, and I wondered how my chocolate consumption was impacting on my general feeling of wellness.

    Plus, I have rotten skin and I was interested to see if cutting out sugar would help. This tied in well with my “god I need to drink more water” epiphany in December, which saw me doubling my fluid intake and feeling much better for it.

    Now, I haven’t been over the top about it all. I’m still eating fruit, and I’ve been adding honey to smoothies. When the sugar cravings got really bad I was also eating honey on bread, much to the passive aggressive disgust of one of my twitter followers. Apparently I can’t complain about quitting sugar because I’m DOIN IT WRONG or something.

    Today is day ten of no processed sugar, and I honestly can’t tell you if I feel any better or not. I think I do. Maybe? Detoxing is such a slow process I’m not sure I’d notice the improvements.

    I’ve definitely been making better choices with my food, making salads, or sandwiches, or cheese on crackers instead of reaching for another chocolate biscuit. If you tell me cheese isn’t healthy, I will cut you.

    I’d like to say that quitting sugar has eased my Ehlers Danlos related nausea but I’m also weaning Evelyn, so I think my periods are returning, and someone pass me a goddamned bucket and a cold compress PLEASE.

    It’s been an interesting experience so far. I’m not as ravenously hungry as I was on days one through five, and it’s interesting to me to notice how often I was snacking out of boredom, or oral fixation (who said my quirky kids fell far from the metaphorical quirky tree?), rather than pure hunger.

    As for my skin, well it’s been kind of terrible actually. BUT, I noticed with my skin it gets really bad whenever I make a big dietary change, before improving again. Doubling my water intake made me breakout badly, before my skin improved to look clearer than it had in a long time (gestating girl babies messes with my skin horribly – I had lovely skin during my pregnancy with Isaac).

    I was also hoping to lose weight quitting sugar, but I think ravenous hunger and ‘oh god I’ve got no energy why am I doing this’ lethargy have been working against me, and ten days is not enough time to lose weight anyway. So that’s still something that might happen.

    All in all, I’m really glad I was sponsored to begin this kick. It definitely pushed me over the edge and made me commit, which I’m not sure I would have been able to do without the incentive. At least not without lots of angst and should I shouldn’t I oh help crap.

    I’m going to keep it up, definitely for the entirety of January, and then I’ll be joining in properly with Febfast (my lovely sponsors) to stay off sugar for February, and then we’ll reassess and see how I feel. I started early, so that I could write about it for you.

    Now for the sponsored part.

    FebFast is the original charity movement which challenges Australians to take a 28 day break from alcohol and raise funds for youth addiction. New for 2014, FebFasters will have the choice to take a break from alcohol, sugar, caffeine or digital overload.

    For six years, FebFast has been just the tonic to kick-start a healthier year, raising $5.5 million and inspiring nearly 1,000,000 drink-free days in the process. Resisting your cravings is also a tiny insight into the challenges young people face with serious addiction issues each day. It’s time you joined the ultimate pause for the better.

    ANYTHING that raises money to help with youth addiction is something I am willing to get behind.

    If you’re interested, check out their About page.

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    JOIN MY TEAM

    Currently I’m all lonely in my quitting sugar team, and I’d love if you joined the Sleepless Nights AHOY team. You can also give up digital devices (SACRILEGE), alcohol, or caffeine.

    Or you can support us by going here and donating. Your money is used to help young people suffering from addiction.

    My advice

    My advice if you’re quitting sugar is to start cutting down now. I spent December cutting out sugar in my tea – going down 1/2 teaspoon at a time, and avoiding chocolate biscuits. Of course, then Christmas came and I ate WAY too much pavlova, effectively setting myself back the entire month, but you know. BABY STEPS.

    I assume it’s the same for anything you’re quitting. Cutting down to begin with is easier than going cold turkey.

    I’m interested to see if I’ve lost weight by the end of February, how I’m feeling, and whether I’ll immediately fall back into my old habits.

  • Resolving to spend less and be more awesome.

    “I’ve been seeing the 52 week savings plan show up everywhere on my Facebook dashboard, with the promoters imploring people to save. And it’s not a bad idea – showing how putting away a little extra each month can mount up faster than you’d think.

    I didn’t put it on my list of New Year Resolutions however, because I am at best disorganised, and at worst, positively scatty. I would remember to save really well for the first month, and then, pffft everything falls apart. As a saving strategy, I work best with a direct deposit out of my account every week. Then I just pretend that money doesn’t exist. It’s easy. I don’t have to think about it.”

    Read the rest at Money Circle.

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  • We need to tell more stories.

    This morning Hobart Mums’ Network asked what we resolved to do this year. I thought about it briefly, and flippantly replied:

    Write more, daydream more, take notes for everything, smile lots, laugh, embrace irreverence, be silly often, tell stories every day, love well, live well.

    As flippant as I felt, looking back on my comment this is exactly what I plan to do this year.

    Christmas Night, when everyone had gone home, Evelyn was asleep, and the light was disappearing from the horizon, Nathan lit the bonfire. We sat there, watching the paper and wood burn, and my brother and I began telling stories.

    Amy and Isaac curled up on the grass next to us, blankets around their shoulders, while Nathan listened. We sat there, and I recounted moments from my childhood for them. My brother added things I’d forgotten – although how I’d forgotten sliding down the dry grassy hill on a body board, I don’t know.

    My children laughed, and snuggled, and begged for more.

    There is power in telling stories to my children, especially stories from my childhood. Snippets they take into themselves, building connections between us as they imagine me as a child, hiding from my parents in an old cupboard, or sliding down a hill on my stomach.

    This year, I resolve to tell more stories. Write more, and write often. To laugh. To embrace irreverance, and to not take myself seriously.

    We can learn a lot from how our children approach life, and this year, I plan to emulate them.

    Of course, bits of adulthood continue to sneak in around the edges, with a credit card disaster fresh in my memory, and a discovery that no matter how stable it feels like we are, it only takes a minor disaster to set off my financial disaster alarm bells.

    But it’s all okay. It’s a New Year, all fresh and shiny, with the bubble wrap still caught around the edges.

    I plan to take advantage of every second.

    Of course, I’m also quitting sugar for January as part of a sponsored campaign that I’ll talk about in detail a little later in the month, so “taking advantage” may also equal “curling up in a ball with tea and a book”. Clearly I am insane as the house is still full of chocolates from Xmas. Twitch. Twitch.

    —

    You can read about my credit card disaster on Money Circle. It wasn’t the highlight of my Christmas period, that’s for sure.

  • Death, and similarities.

    The hardest thing about my grandmother dying, if you ignore the loss of our matriarchal support system, is that I can see her in my children and she is not here to see herself in them.

    Evelyn Kathleen was named after both Nathan’s grandmother (Evelyn) and my grandmothers (Lyn and Kathleen), and I can see them in her. Especially my grandmother Lyn.

    Death is a multi-layered thing. There is grief and grieving, loss and missing. It changes, warps and moves, and sometimes I am still struck low by just how much I miss her.

    Our Christmas was low key. Original plans fell out of the window when all three children fell sick just before the big day, so we cancelled and stayed home. It was a good decision, albeit a hard one to have to make. The children spent a lot of time doing nothing, and being unwell.

    Evelyn’s eyes are finally settling on the colour they will be. A piercing blue green, I see my grandmother in them. Same colour, same curls. And maybe, you think I am looking extra hard, because she died too soon and missed this third great-grandchild of hers. Maybe you’re right.

    But then I see photos of Nan as a baby, and I know I’m not wrong.

    I miss her, a lot.

    Christmas is hard when your family is missing giant parts of itself.

    I asked Mum today if she would hunt up the photos of Nan as a baby and send them to me so I could share them.

    Evelyn

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    We think the final photo is our Aunty Joan holding Nan. My grandmother, Kathleen is on the right in the second photo. Joan was her sister.

  • Food, glorious food, there’s nothing quite like it, something something.

    When you’ve got a child who won’t eat, everyone is full of advice and admonitions that it’s all normal. Which it is, in 99% of cases. Toddlers are insane creatures who want to live on tina wafers and air, with the occasional cracker or chicken nugget thrown in.

    But Evelyn’s issues aren’t like that.

    After a huge amount of success with our new therapies, we were working on getting her to eat enough at each meal. Slowly, the amounts were increasing from one teaspoon through to 100g, through to 150g, four times a day. Sure, mealtimes required more planning, a certain amount of structure and we had things we did that worked – but she was eating. Albeit, only smooth purees, but who cares? Anything can be blended.

    But a week ago, Evelyn had a pain reaction during swallowing. All our work making food a safe fun thing, and our high chair a safe place went out the window. Evelyn doesn’t trust food. All my promises of “this won’t hurt” doesn’t mean a thing when neither of us believe it.

    We don’t know why sometimes swallowing hurts. If we knew, maybe we could fix it.

    So. Evelyn hasn’t been eating anything. Our medical team know about it, and they’re as upset at the big refusals as I am. Or maybe not as much as I am, because they don’t live with her. But they know, and they’re working on a plan.

    It’s hard to not worry about her, and harder still not to obsess over everything she puts in her mouth.

    Spoon food makes her gag violently at the moment, and spit it out frantically.

    It’s hard, and I don’t know where we go from here. Current advice is to not push food, not to make a big deal out of it, and hopefully she’ll cut out the spoon refusal within the next week or so.

    Until then, she’s eaten half a mouthful of watermelon today, and chewed on a variety of things that she didn’t deign to swallow.

    How dare we expect her to nourish herself.