My plan when I began my blog was to post here once a week, with words of wisdom and tips to make your lives a bit easier. But the last few weeks have been challenging, what with two road trips back and forth to visit my daughter and her family, and eight days in between babysitting our toddler grandson while said daughter and her husband went on a cruise. And this week I’ll be traveling by air with a trip that will take me from the pacific northwest through to Chicago, on to a professional seminar in Boston then finally back home to southern New Mexico – all over the course of seven days. So yeah…sometimes life happens, and often it happens all at once. Fortunately for me, all this travel is bringing me together with friends and loved ones for fun experiences. Even so, the stress of travel, the lack of sleeping in my own comfy bed and the difficulty adhering to my autoimmune dietary protocols takes its inevitable toll.
With all this in mind, I turned back to Chapter 5 in my book – the chapter titled “Oops (Getting Back on Track)” to reflect on the things I might be able to control during this time to keep my Hashimoto’s symptoms at bay.
In that chapter I talk about “what the heck” moments. These are times when you’re dining somewhere other than your home and you decide you’re just going to eat the queso sauce in front of you because everyone else is enjoying it and it looks delicious. “What the heck” moments are fine in moderation, but I find when I travel like I’ve been doing lately, these can become a slippery slope. Too many meals out and too many “what the hecks” and my Hashimoto’s flares up, leaving me too tired and achy to enjoy myself.
Instead, I try as hard as I can to plan ahead. It was easy on our road trips to grocery shop on either end and pack lunches and snacks that I could eat without concern. I’ll do the same with my plane travel next week (and pray I don’t get stuck too long at any airports!). When we were babysitting, I was doing all the grocery shopping and cooking, so that was pretty easy to control. What was hard there was making sure I got enough rest, but fortunately my husband was with me so we could take turns with our little grandson.
Our upcoming trip will involve lots of restaurant dining, and that is where I’ll need to really exercise self-control. My motivation will be knowing how much more energy I will have to enjoy my family and my colleagues if I avoid the cheese omelete for breakfast and opt for the oatmeal.
Finally, I keep reminding myself that when life happens, I need to be kind to myself. If I didn’t have the time or energy to write a blog post in the last two weeks, so be it. In this case, I feel fine saying “what the heck!”
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