We all make mistakes, right? I often tell my patients that it’s not about perfection but persistence. We all forget to do our exercises, get lazy with our supplements, fall off the healthy eating lifestyle bandwagon and our job is to get back up and keep moving forward.
I frequently remind my patients that it is human nature that once you start you start feeling good, you will eventually get cocky and overdo it/cheat/stop doing what got you feeling better, etc… Again, your job is to reinitiate the behavior that got you feeling better.
So, why am I writing this little therapeutic blog post? Well, let me tell you.
I don’t eat wheat gluten, not even a little bit. When I was in my “selectively-gluten-free” transition phase, I compensated by eating more corn: corn chips, corn tortillas, corn pasta, corn, corn and more corn. For me, It made giving up the bread much easier. I started to realize was that I when I ate corn regularly, I would become inflamed and begin to ache similar to when I was eating wheat gluten. That’s when I started to experiment with rotating corn in my diet to determine if I could eat it without getting symptoms. (The rotation looks something like this- I would eat corn, wait five days before eating it again to see If I developed symptoms. If no symptoms, I would eat it again in four days, then three days, then two days until I experienced symptoms.)
Through my rotation experiment, I realized if I ate corn more frequently than every three or four days, I would experience an inflamed feeling, achiness, abdominal bloating and more. I typically feel much better without corn in my diet but occasionally I will cheat (chips & salsa) or get lazy and not look for other options.
This past week, I had corn just about every day and twice on a couple of days. If truth be told, I would say that I got a little cocky because I wasn’t experiencing any symptoms at all, until last night.
As I prepared for bed, I began to experience flu-like symptoms like I do if I eat wheat gluten: chills, fever, body aches to the bone and a nagging dry cough. I couldn’t move without experiencing pain, couldn’t get comfortable to sleep, When I would fall asleep, I would wake up with a cough and could not get warm (ended up wearing a sweatshirt, beanie, gloves and socks with multiple layers of blankets you finally get warm).
Thought I broke my fever this morning only to realize my symptoms were less intense but not gone. I have spent my day resting, doing Epsom salt baths, aromatherapy, getting an acupuncture treatment, taking my vitamins, hydrating, eating healthy food and getting an adjustment. I know better and, yet, I still fall into the same faults and feelings as everyone else. That danged cocky zone/human nature.
As The apostle Paul said in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.”
God bless,
Dr. Jeff