Health

You can be healthy and eat chips too. Yes. You read that right.

I’ve been on a number of exclusion diets and at one point was avoiding 25+ foods including the big dogs themselves: gluten, corn, eggs, and dairy. Lunch time would come around and I would sadly look at my plate and feel like something was missing. It just wasn’t the same. A girl’s gotta have her chips.

And so began my hunt for ones that would make the cut. My criteria? They had to fit within my diet restrictions and they had to taste good. After all, who wants to eat chips that taste like cardboard or styrofoam? I mean, I’m willing to compromise my taste buds when necessary but I gotta draw the line somewhere.

I can happily report Continue reading →

the broken road my journey with disease It started out as a normal summer day and we couldn’t have been more thrilled. Hubs and I had just purchased our very first home. And it was yellow. I had prayed for yellow. Moving day was set, our boxes packed. We were moving right along with our list of goals: New house, check. Jobs, check. Furniture, check. Search for a dog, check. Our future was looking bright.

And then it happened. Something didn’t feel quite right. My energy started to fail and I found myself getting easily fatigued. Over the next few weeks my knees began to swell until they became the size of cantaloupes. As the swelling increased, the pain grew. It hurt to walk, it hurt to stand, it hurt to move.

I spent my 30th birthday and a good part of that year battling a crippling disease. Instead of gracefully waltzing into a new decade, I hobbled my way through. Within two weeks of our move I became confined to our couch, utterly fatigued without even enough energy to make myself a sandwich. Even hobbling across the floor to the bathroom became a tremendous feat. My body was rapidly breaking down before my very eyes and there was nothing I could do about it. Continue reading →