Life. Love. Family. Our Perfect Imperfection. Living life as a Catholic, homeschooling family with three amazing, unique boys, a too-oft serious, frustrated and anxious but also loving momma, and a fun-loving, hardworking dad.

Saturday, June 25, 2016

Feingold Diet ahoy!


Today is the day. After having a terrible back ache yesterday and barely moving from the couch or bed all day, I'm finally sorting our pantry!

We are changing over to the Feingold diet fully and starting from scratch. Stage 1. That means:

  • Getting rid of or using up any unapproved items (mostly still "ok" in terms of dye-free but have/might have other ingredients that we will be avoiding) and marking them with "X" if it's something Jason will still eat. 
  • Marking things s1 for stage 1 and placing on the middle 3 shelves 
  • Marking s2 on stage 2 items to put away for later. Same goes for the fridge, freezer, and spice cabinet! 
Over the next week or 2 at most, we will use up certain things because I feel horrible wasting all that money. I will also be replacing them with approved items.

The last straw for finally digging in my heels amd saying that we absolutely must do this? Not my kids so much (though the meltdowns, whining, rash behavior, anger, hyperactivity, etc are all in the list!!) but myself.

I find myself so irrationally angry what feels like nearly all the time. It's been that way for a long time. I can honestly pinpoint it to food, it ebbs and flows depending on what I choose to eat. (Sorry if this is TMI!) Usually there's a week or so every month, right around the time I'm ovulating that I'm pretty level-headed and in a great mood. This week should have been that way. I know I was more stressed because Jason was gone for work, and all the way in Puerto Rico of all places (a friend and co-worker of his was there a few years ago for work and died while there, actually in the same town/area. It was terribly sad.) I also know that I just did not feel like myself at all. Even though a lot of the time myself is the always angry, always yelling, always overwhelmed, always anxious mom. The thing is I know, deep down, that that is NOT the real me.

So while we are doing this for the boys, we are also doing this for me. Which I guess is also for the boys. I am my own "target".