I hope everyone has had a good holiday and New Year! :)
I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions, but this year I
thought I’d make an exception.
In 2015, I continued to slowly gain weight, and by November
I discovered that I was now the heaviest I have ever been. I am not in danger,
but I do not feel good about myself, and don’t feel healthy either. Therefore,
I have decided that my New Year’s resolution for 2016 is to prioritise my
health!
There are three parts to this resolution: more exercise,
more cooking for myself, and more focus on understanding my belly.
EXERCISE
I have already started working on this part of my
resolution. In November, I realised that while it was good for improving my
fitness in the long term, swimming twice a week was not intensive enough to
help me lose weight. I was very conscious of not pushing my body too hard, as
this can put extra stress on the body as previously discussed, so I
decided to add walking to my weekly routine.
I first started with a gentle 10 minute walk to and from my
local public swimming pool on my swimming days, and after a few weeks, added a
30min walk on Monday evenings. After I was comfortable with this, I started
trying to jog some parts of my walking route. At this point, I am now going for
a walk/jog twice a week on top of swimming twice a week, and have already lost
3kg!
To help me with this, I have also invested in some good
quality running shoes and comfortable clothing, and borrowed my partner’s old
GPS watch (see photo below). My partner has been running regularly for a couple
of years, and he has been very helpful and encouraging in this, which has really
helped with my confidence and motivation! ♡
COOKING FOR MYSELF
As I have mentioned previously, I am not the best cook. I
can cook basic things, but have no instinct or creativity for it, and often no
energy either. However, last year I started living with my sister who is a very
good cook, and she has helped motivate me to try cooking new things and experiment
with making things that are more suitable for my belly. :) I have decided to put much
more effort into learning how to cook more for myself this year, which will
hopefully help me to both improve my health and decrease my symptoms.
I am also looking forward to trying out the below cookbook,
which was a Christmas gift from my family. Sourdough bread (particularly when
made with spelt flour) has been confirmed by Monash University to be better for those with fructose malabsorption and IBS in
general, as the long fermentation process seems to use the FODMAPs in the
flour, thus making it easier to digest.
UNDERSTANDING MY
BELLY
I have also realised that while I now have a much better
understanding of UC and fructose malabsorption, I still have a lot to learn
about my belly and its trigger foods. Therefore, I have resolved to put more effort
into testing my tolerance levels for different foods, and working on my diet in
general.
The first step in this was creating a new food table card (see photo below), which
has a more up to date list of good and bad foods based on fructose and fructan
levels (using the Monash University Low FODMAP Diet and FODMAP Friendly apps as guides), and it is now colour coded – including putting the best and worst foods
in bold, based on what I currently understand about my trigger foods. I have
also given copies of this card to my family and others close to me, to help
them better understand my situation with food, and work as a guide if they are
cooking for me.
