Great week so far

The last few days have been great with my willpower and new routine.  I've been doing 18/6 intermittent fasting along with continuing to make better choices. 

Starting with Wednesday- got up and exercised- ran intervals with Ella and did the Wednesday exercises but Coco kept trying to wrestle with me while I did crunches! 

So first thing I ate was macaroni salad- not pictured because Eli was using my phone.  Second thing I tried was some fruit snacks- these have no artificial dyes or colors so as a family we wanted to try them out.  Jury is still out.  

Eli had some popcorn and I had some too.  

Then I hadn't had enough veggies, so I made me a broccoli salad.  It was going to be a 7 layer salad before I realized I had no lettuce.  Whoops. 

And before my fast ended- I had some cheese stuffed pretzels.  

Through all of that lots of water, still took all my Plexus stuff per normal routine.  

Today I woke up better.  Didn't exercise first thing because of the other lazy people in the house.   Had my morning routine of Slim, Active, Metaburn, X-factor and antidepressant.  

Then had my Lean and collagen smoothie.

Then I had a blueberry muffin.  Because yum!

Made a chicken curry stew with carrots, mushrooms, onions and roasted cauliflower.  

Had another muffin.  It was good.

During all that time water, water, water.  Had my BioCleanse mid morning.  Had another Active around 3 with my last dose of BioCleanse.  

AND FOR THE FIRST DAY ALL WEEK DIDN'T NEED A NAP!

I also know my waistline is down and bloating is down.  Can't wait to weigh in actually!  

Exercised with Ella and Lyle today too!

So I had my Probio5, Mega-X, Ease and watching Grey's before bed!

Blessings in Health and Happiness!

Exhaustion

My brain.  Today is a day where everything is just swirling inside.  Good thoughts, bad thoughts, exhaustion (mentally and emotionally, not physically). 

Fear.  Fear of things happening in the world.  Coronavirus, natural disasters, political crap.

Hope.  Hope for future things.  Ella duel enrollment, Eli possible services or change in school or both.

Trying to get things checked off the list.  But one or two things get done and then I don't want to anymore. 

Eli didn't feel like doing school.  Me neither.  We do it.  Then I don't want to do my stuff.  Brain is done. 

I'm sure this might not make sense.  If your brain hasn't been done before you got up for the day, you may not understand.  Someone posted this.  It spoke to me.  Don't mind the language. 

Sorry.  Kind of.

So this morning I got up despite not wanting to.  Worked out with husband.  I was happy about it. 

Then I did this little workout thing and walked on the treadmill. 

Drank water, took my vitalbiome, drank my Slim, and more water.  

Late breakfast had my Lean with collagen smoothie.  I was a little better right then.  Eli also had a smoothie which made me feel like a winning mom.

I took my x-factor, Metaburn, and antidepressant with it.  Considering upping the dose.

Water, water, water, BioCleanse.  Big ole salad for lunch. 

Water, Water, a Few Peanut M&Ms, water. BioCleanse, then Active.  Then I resumed my fast except water.  

Evening is weird for me.  If I don't eat, I'm not hungry. But I know from experience if I eat ONE thing even it'll turn it all on and I'll want to eat it all!  For better fasting I should have had extra protein, but didn't feel like it. 

So before bed I'll have Probio5, Mega-x and Ease.  

Water, water, water. 

Grace needs to be on the menu too I think.

Blessings in health and happiness-

I'm tired of coming up with titles

...so that's the title.

That's what I got today.  Low energy and motivation.

However, Ella got my out of bed this morning and we ran intervals and did a little extra!

Had some water, my Vitalbiome, and Slim.  

For breakfast was my smoothie with Lean and Collagen, X-factor, Metaburn and antidepressant. 

More water, water, water, BioCleanse, a few girl scout cookies (what?!) and water.  I decided that January didn't count.  It's been such a crazy roller coaster. What I post isn't even half of it, and I'm pretty dang transparent.  I also am just so tired.  I don't know if it's the meds, the crazy sleep schedules off and on because of races and changes in routine, or what.  But it's nuts. 

Late afternoon I had a salad (and lets be honest, a couple more thin mints and a handful of M&Ms) and not pictured some ham with it.  

Water, water, water, BioCleanse.  

I skipped dinner because I wanted to fast a little and I know hormonal speaking evening is best, and I've had a little too much junk food (all day Saturday at Epcot) so my stomach is wondering what the heck I'm doing to it.  

So much more water, Probio5, Mega-X, and Ease and going to bed soon. 

Going to get up and drag my husband out of bed for workout tomorrow!

Blessings in Health and Happiness-

Push the wagon back on the road again...

You know when I go quiet awhile something has happened.  Usually something stressful- like crazy work hours, doctors appointments or something like that.

In this case, it was a combination.  A social security phone call, work training, a doctors appointment that was VERY stressful, and helping someone out that was a huge strain. 

So once again, I feel like I'm starting over.  The amazing news is it didn't take weeks to get back!  That's a win!  When you don't go months between getting back to it, then you're progressing!

So today I did a thing- I used my Disney pass for the first time!  Yay! 

I had myself a fun day at Animal Kingdom all by myself.  I was debating going by myself, but then decided self care is needed!!!

So after I had my slim and Active, my smoothie (not pictured) and morning supplements, I took the kids to their respected areas and took off for Disney!

Oh, rewind a minute- I did exercise this morning with Ella too! 

And I met a friend for lunch at a restaurant in Pandora area and it was sooo good and pretty healthy too!

The restaurant was Satu'li Canteen and this was Combination Bowl: Grilled Beef and Chicken over noodles with herb dressing. 

After I was done wondering and riding rides, I headed home and grabbed a chocolate bar.  Whoops.  

Dinner was lowish-carb pizzas on tortillas with veggies on top and salad on the side. 

Sorry it's sideways. I'm too lazy to fix it today. 

Oh, and I had my BioCleanse between each meal and took 5 bottles of water with me to the parks and had more when I got home.

So overall, not too shabby.  I'll take it considering what life has been.  If someone can just gift me around $50k it would help decrease my stress a lot and it would be easier to focus on healthy habits. Just saying.

I'll take my Probio5, Mega-X and Ease and go to bed soon!

Blessings in Health and Happiness!

No to stress eating....okay cheesecake is fine.

Sooooo... last night I had a little headache and wasn't feeling awesome emotionally, so I didn't do my food journal- so this will cover today and yesterday. 

So yesterday I got up, had my Vitalbiome, Slim and Active, then went on an interval run with Ella.

Breakfast was my Lean and Collagen smoothie with my X-factor, Ease and Metaburn

Then I took Eli in for his testing. Drank lots of water, had my BioCleanse.  Eli needed a snack and came out and we shared some strawberries. 

Then lunch was a hodge podge of stuff I could pack.  Boiled eggs, turkey meat, grapes, and carrots. 

More water, some BioCleanse, and water.  When we got home, I made BBQ chicken pizzas on low-carb flat breads and had it with Caesar Salad.  

Honestly, I also ate some skittles.  The truth.  Mentally it was a very rough day for me.....so there.  Had my Probio5, Mega-X, Ease, and antidepressant and went to bed.  

I didn't get up to work out with my husband, but he was good and did his workout. I had my Vitalbiome, Slim and Active.  Then I ran a mile then did a Plexus beginner workout from the Facebook page.  

Then I had my Lean and Collagen smoothie with x-factor and Metaburn.  Some dingbat ran out of Ease.  Whoops.  

Water, Water, Water, BioCleanse, cheese stick.  

Then a banana....

Lunch was supposed to be a low carb spinach wrap but I maybe only ate 5 bites.  Didn't taste good. 

I had another cheese stick (not pictured) and lots of water, more BioCleanse and then dinner was mexican rice, turkey smoked sausage, and green beans.  It really hit the spot.  

So since emotionally it has been a rough day, my mom brought over cheesecake.  Definitely enabling, but I'm okay with some self medication for today, since I did actually workout.  

So now I'm satisfied although still in the dumps.  I haven't had this rough of an emotional time since starting on medications.  I know why- Eli's testing and subsequent fight on school work since restarting school.  The worry of if I'm doing the right things.  All of that.  

So Probio5, Mega-X and some antidepressants and off to bed. 

Blessings in Health and Happiness-

Differently wired update and school frustrations

So yesterday we went to the neuropsychologist for follow up testing for Eli.  Some tests are repeats, others are new ones based on new information.  Most he argued with them and wouldn't complete. Now, recall we have no insurance this month- so I paid out of pocket for this.   

Now I may have said before- the hardest part is NOT knowing what the heck to do.  Not knowing resources, not knowing which direction is best, not knowing what to ask for.

Another difficult part is the frustration.  I'm so tired.  Mentally, emotionally and at times it gets physical.   I want someone to tell me what to do.  I want someone to tell me what's best.  I want someone to tell me "these are the 2 or 3 options, pick what you think is best for him."

I sent this letter to his teacher today.  If this doesn't show a glimpse of the stress we're dealing with, I don't know how else to describe it other than crying in front of you and having you watch a day in our school life. 

Mrs. XXX,
Hello.  So I'm not sure if you're the one to answer the questions, or if you even have the answer to my questions, but I figured I'd start with you and go from there. 
You have been great at trying to help us find balance with Eli's school work, and it has improved somewhat from the beginning on the year, but it's still SO much. When we went over attendance hours he has almost enough hours for a full school year.  He does over 3.5 hours of class connects per week, that doesn't include weeks like this week with 2 extra one on one class connects.  The writing class connect had a writing assignment with it that took us 2 hours to complete- and yes we could have done that over several days but it's still heavy work for Eli- and yes a typical student could have probably gotten it done in about 30-45 minutes but Eli isn't typical.  We didn't do all of his accommodations (typing and dictating) because I'm worried about push back from that teacher who isn't as familiar because she's not his homeroom- which maybe I should just plan on pushing back more.  I want to do things right.  I want his portfolio to be "right".  I want the portfolio to show that he's trying.  But maybe that's the wrong attitude.   The mark 12 program is amazing, but is at a minimum 2 hours a day- and we honestly aren't even doing everything we're supposed to based on his scores, we haven't done a single composition page and stopped doing the extra literature work at the end because we're already doing it 3 times a week!  He gets multiple things multiple times a week- which the repetition is great, but once again it takes so much time.  He gets reading, writing and literature in Mark 12 program, then does literature and writing classes, and class connects for them, and then remediation class connects for them.    Is there any way to take out Literature and still get credit through it through the mark 12 program?  Or writing?  Or both?  Or maybe when we get done with this Mark 12 textbook pull him out of intensive reading as his "elective" (which is a complete joke and I know it's not you, but the one class he wanted to take this year was music and we were denied because of this class).   I feel like we could do the normal course load with his accommodations if we didn't have the Mark 12- the trouble is he has progressed so much with the Mark 12 last year, but we only had 1 hour of class connects each week and didn't double/triple assignments (for example- the writing paragraph we're working on in writing we've already done in the writing program.....just a different topic. And once again I don't mind the repetition and he does get something out of the writing class connects, especially doubling up because he's more confident for the second one and participates and it's so good because he has the memory problems so the repetition is great....but we doubling up the work on top of the work we're trying to get done.) 
We're also supposed to be practicing testing strategies because he is going to have to take the FSA and has to practice asking for help, clarification, breaks, etc, but I'm so overwhelmed and over it just trying to get the work done each day that I'm sure we're going to run out of time to practice before his testing dates.  I have links to practice tests I can print, but how can I do even more extra work to practice taking a test?  When we're both tired and don't care any more and have no patience and it doesn't even count as any class time and doesn't get things done.  And when we have doctors appointments, his speech and occupational therapy- there goes more time.  And he really needs more occupational therapy for his sensory issues but we don't have time.  And I'd love for him to do homeschool PE or STEAM classes at the library or anything....but we don't have time.  And they don't count for his school requirement.  I fight with him daily to do school work, but literally yesterday he wanted to "play" homeschool.  He wanted to read books of his choice, do math worksheets that are in workbooks he had left over from school when he was in public school last year and do spelling words which we don't do because of Mark 12. 
I'm not 100% if you can make that call, or if I need to talk to the counselor for the county virtual school and see if she can reduce his course load?  I've even started looking into if we change from county virtual school to homeschool and go through FLVS if we can just pick and choose courses because there is literally so much we just breeze over and don't spend the time to make sure he understands or even somewhat masters it because we're trying to keep up with getting the courses done and I feel like it defeats the purpose.  What's the point if we get the lessons done when he doesn't really know it?  Then when he reads books that he actually likes I can count it as school work.  When he randomly does math worksheets I can count it as school. 
He did his follow up testing with the neuropsychologist, and we'll see what they have to say.  We had a lot of testing refusal again but the IQ/WISC V score they did first so hopefully he cooperated and gave a complete picture.  I think I'd need to talk to the county if he ends up with a very low IQ again on what to do for intellectual disability accommodations- if that can be done with virtual school or not. 
I know this is mostly just my venting my frustrations, but we are working so hard and being so frustrated and spending more time working on school work than his sister in high school.  I just don't know which direction to take that will be best for him for the long term, and hoping you can answer/address some of these things and help me make sure we're on the best course for everyone. 
So I guess the main questions are can you change his courses or are they set by the district for requirements?   Should we talk to the district counselor in March when we have his test results and do his updated IEP goals to see what we can cut out?    Do you know much about the FLVS homeschooling- if I can basically pick and choose the courses that would be most beneficial and say heck with the rest for now?
Thanks for any answers or help you can provide me.  Like I said, you've been great so far and so much help- I hope you'll be able to help me some more.
Sarah

Yes, I broke down crying writing it, then re-reading it.  I'll cry more today.  Because he has several semester tests to do and we're way behind on what is supposed to get done for the week because we didn't have time to do anything yesterday unless we decided to do it during dinner. 

Do they have respite home school teachers for special needs kids?

Blessings....

 PS- I didn't do my food journal yesterday, I'll probably do yesterday and today tonight.  Stress eating is trying to come back and I'm trying my best to push back. 

Weird craving day

Weird craving day- that's an attention grabber, right?  I'm guessing it's still left over from the odd eating and sleeping schedule from the long weekend!

Today started with getting out of bed when we didn't want to and picking up heavy stuff.   I had my pink drink and vitalbiome with it. 

Water, water, x-factor and Ease and breakfast of baked egg omelet that I made last night with green peppers and onions- just had to reheat this morning. 

Water, water, water, BioCleanse and then started to get the munchies.   Had 2 cheese sticks....

Some strawberries.....

A salad.....

And not pictured another cheese stick, a handful of jelly beans, and 4 caramel M&Ms.   I was so hungry.  I was like that catepillar in the book.  

Water, water, water, BioCleanse...

So then I had (not pictured) a chocolate Lean and was finally full!   (and yes, I should have had that before the cheese, jelly beans and M&Ms.  I never said I was perfect).  

Then I was barely hungry for dinner.  Peas and chicken (of course with some left over chick-fil-a sauce!)

A banana also with dinner. 

And now I'm not hungry at all.  The reason it was weird is I'm usually starved/hungry from about 5 PM until bedtime normally, where today it was from 10 am until about 5 when it turned off and nothing sounded good anymore.  Odd, right? 

Anyways, now I'm good, and I'll have my Probio5, Mega-X and Ease and go to bed.  Plans to run with Ella in the morning!

Blessings in Health and Happiness!