Tired? Irritable? Foggy? Depressed? No matter how hard you try to lose weight, just keep gaining? Migraines, insomnia, heartburn, or digestive problems, thyroid problems?

You might have the same problem I had. (Yes, for me those were all symptoms of one singular problem.)

I’m getting personal today.  This is something I’ve mentioned on social media a couple times and both times, I got piles of direct messages asking for more info, so I’m sharing here in case it can help more than my very few social followers.  Here’s a relatively brief version of my story:

Weight gain

About 10 years ago, I started putting on a little weight. It was just a couple pounds, but a couple pounds is pretty noticeable when you are only 5 feet tall and very small-framed. I assumed I was eating too much, so I cut back on my portions.

Over the next few years the pounds kept adding up, and I just thought I wasn’t trying hard enough.

After 5 years of counting calories, eating more and more vegetables and less of anything else and STILL steadily gaining, I started feeling desperate and angry about it. I cut back to 1,200 daily calories before 30-60 minutes of cardio and/or strength training. After a few weeks, I had lost ONE pound. So I cut back some more. Until I was down to 900 calories a day. One more pound came off. And when I couldn’t take being starving anymore and went back up to a whopping 1,200 calories, I gained 5 pounds.

And no matter how much I ate or didn’t eat, I was always hungry.

Talk about feeling hopeless.

On-and-off I just didn’t care and ate what I wanted because it didn’t seem to matter anyway.

Insomnia

It has plagued me since my teens. Not just an “it’s-hard-to-fall-asleep-within-30-minutes” insomnia…it was “only-sleeping-for-about-an-hour-at-a-time-and-getting-4-hours-on-average-EVERY-NIGHT” insomnia. (That was hard to type with all those dashes.)

Depression

I am a happy person, the Hubs and I are the goofiest of goofballs together. In fact, it was hard to find “before” pictures to share here, because in 90% of the very few photos there are of me, I’m making weird faces or doing something crazy.

That’s why the depression was extra baffling. I didn’t even realize it was depression until one morning I actually woke up happy like I used to. It felt so weird. It felt like the sun was shining for the first time in years and I was myself. And then it made me really sad to not understand why it was happening, and to know that any minute, that sunshine-feeling would go away, completely unrelated to anything that was actually happening in my life. And it would be another 6 years until I would learn why.

Migraines

Migraines became quite frequent, at one point, even a few times a week. And if you are a migraine sufferer, you know that it’s usually an all-day deal. A few of those days, I actually just had to skip out on all activity and curl up in a ball on the sofa until the evening (which made workaholic-me pretty irritable). Even the thought of food or moving made me sick to my stomach.

Finally finding the problem

A bowl of spring greens with some lemon juice squeezed on top was a normal lunch for me. It was also normal for me to very suddenly look 6 months pregnant (QUITE literally) and feel horrible in every way very shortly after each meal. When one day, I didn’t have a salad and none of that happened, it made me wonder…

I stopped eating leafy greens. That’s when the weight loss started. 5 pounds in the first week to be exact. And I started sleeping for more than an hour at a time.

There were LOTS of other veggies that were literally painful for me to eat, but I thought we were just supposed to suffer through the pain because veggies are the healthy food, right?! And I was always told that if it caused pain, it was because I wasn’t eating enough of them, that if I ate more, my body would produce the enzymes needed to digest them. Well, I stopped eating the ones that caused immediate cramping, bloating, and fatigue. And I felt better than I had in years.

The Food Allergy Test

An acquaintance told us that he had a bunch of the symptoms I mentioned at the beginning of the post, and his doctor recommended a food allergy test. He was no longer supposed to have gluten, or sugar, or several other things.

We went home, and I said to the Hubs:

I can’t even imagine…I am SO glad we don’t have food allergies. That would be so miserable!

What a dork I am. I don’t know how long it took for the realization to sink in that HE LISTED ALL MY SYMPTOMS too, but shortly after that, I got a food allergy test myself.

The results were very upsetting. It didn’t seem like it was possible to cut out all that food. The Hubs and I decided it would be best to cut things out slowly, one or two foods at a time. So we planned a several-month phase-out of foods, finishing with the hardest: gluten. On the left is me towards the end of the phase-out plan, feeling much better already, and many pounds lighter. On the right is me this morning, 3.5 years later.

Can you tell how much I like shoes? And the mirror isn’t dirty, it’s just vintage.

On the right, I’m EATING MORE and exercising less. I’m just not eating things I’m allergic to. Literally the only difference. This was zero-work weight-loss.

I have no clue how many calories I eat anymore, I just eat until I’ve had enough food, and then I’m not hungry again until the next meal time.

Should you get tested?

If you have these symptoms, you might want to! I see so many people suffering with these symptoms and not knowing why. It is really hard to not offer unsolicited advice individually. (So apparently I wanted to offer it en masse instead. )

If you do, you’ll get your results, and it might feel like the end of the world. Trust me, it is NOT the end of the world. It will be hard, but only at first. You’ll crave things you can’t have for a little while, but that goes away. Once you’re used to it, it’s a non-issue…you don’t even think about it anymore.

Life is more than food.

My blood test was a few hundred dollars. And it was worth every penny to change life so dramatically.

It’s important to note that this was a blood test for IgG4 allergies, not a sensitivity test, and no unproven test methods. I did have some family members get allergy tests with…unique methods instead of blood (or even with blood, but not testing for IgG4), and the results were pretty inaccurate. Sensitivity tests are available as well but in my opinion, those are easy to figure out on your own, the reaction is much quicker and usually involving digestive problems right after eating them. Allergy symptoms, because they are an immune system response, may not show up for up to 3 days, so self testing (known as elimination diets) can be very long and frustrating.

Know what I had for breakfast this morning? Ice cream. Real milk, real sugar, peanut butter swirl chocolate ice cream. (No dairy allergies here, obviously.) I’m totally not recommending ice cream for breakfast, we’re just low on groceries and it sounded good. My point is: I’m not starving, I don’t feel restricted, I can have a treat for breakfast if I feel like it and not be afraid of gaining weight. I’m not afraid of food anymore.

Yeah…that’s silly string. Told you I had a hard time finding non-goofball pictures.

All the symptoms: the migraines, insomnia, stomach aches, weight gain, thyroid problems, depression, irritability, fogginess, etc all went away when I stopped eating things I was allergic to. It’s so, so worth it.

And just for the record…it had nothing to do with organic vs. conventional or GMO food. I grew up on organic food (even from our own back yard) and as long as we could afford it, that was all we ever purchased ourselves. It’s just an individual matter. One man’s meat is another man’s poison. If you have problems, you might want to get tested and see what your poison is.

The post A before-and-after (of me this time, not a room) appeared first on Little Victorian.

I cannot believe it’s been almost a year since I’ve posted here. When I logged in this morning (which I still do to check on any questions and comments), it seemed like it had only been a few months.

Nothing to speak of has changed in the house yet.  It’s been an adventurous year to say the least.  That great job we sold the Victorian and moved half-way across the country for?  They decided they didn’t have that much work after all, so the Hubs was laid off a few months ago.  Thanks guys.  ?

Needless to say, there hasn’t been extra money to get to restoring and customizing the house.  We still had leftover paint from the Victorian and the Craftsman that we used to repaint most of the inside of the new house.  And we’ve been picking up a few things here and there from Craigslist and really great store sales too. Like those chairs. We’ve been waiting a year for chairs because we were so picky.  But we both instantly loved them (and they’re comfy too!).  Love World Market.

By the way, some tips if you’re going to shop with them:

1. If you know what you want before you go, buy it online first and choose the “Pick up in store” option…you’ll automatically get 5% off.
2. Sign up for their rewards program (especially if you buy furniture from them).  We’ve gotten many $10 gift cards over the years.  Plus you get additional discounts through the year.
3. Google “World Market” coupon before checking out.  There is almost always a working 10% off code that they let you have.
4. Wait for sales.  Their sales are big (like 20-50% off), and they rotate through entire departments at once.

Couldn’t help but share because it’s just a great store with great deals.

Anyway, aside from the new chairs, you can see that it’s still all our old stuff that you’ve seen before.  There are tons of plans, but first we have to get to things like replacing windows, replacing rotting support beams, stopping leaks, running gas lines, etc.  You know…all the fun stuff.

The post Almost a year! appeared first on Little Victorian.

Following a series of unfortunate events, most of my week has been spent in the kitchen instead of the bedroom.

The fun started when the dishwasher stopped cleaning the dishes.  They wouldn’t just come out still dirty, they actually had more gunk on them than they did when they went in.  So it was being used as a very big drying rack after hand-washing.

Then the fun continued when I found the raw chicken I had on the top shelf of the fridge was leaking…all over the rest of our food.  So most of our food had to be thrown out, and not only did I have a lot more dishes to wash, I had to wash the fridge components as well.

But that wasn’t all.  Before I began to wash the dishes that were taking up the whole counter, I turned the garbage disposal on.  At which point, the pipes under the sink broke apart.  It sounded like a waterfall.  And the cabinet, rug and my legs were covered in dirty, broccoli-filled water.  It took 3 days to get the kitchen back to looking clean again.

But, it did lead to me finishing a small project that had been sitting there for 6 months waiting to be done.  After the Hubs fixed the pipes, of course.

The sink cabinet wasn’t lined with anything, it was just a piece of plywood with no veneer covering.

After I scrubbed it clean, and let it dry, I put down peel-and-stick vinyl floor tiles (similar here).

They are easy to cut with an X-acto blade.  And they only cost $1.20 a piece, so it was less than $8 for a prettier and way easier to clean cabinet floor.

Just start with one corner and stick it down (I started with the front, so that in case I didn’t cut a perfectly straight line, it would be in the back and not noticeable). Then line the next pieces up to the first one. Once you hit the back of the cabinet, you *might* need to trim some off. Just flip the tile over, and mark on the paper backing where to cut.

Make your cut with an X-acto blade or an utility blade (this is my favorite) and then pop it in place. (Affiliate links)

Peel-and-stick tiles are so easy.

And now the cupboard is much easier to keep clean!

The Hubs had the brilliant idea to just take the fridge parts outside and use the hose on them (which actually led to a burst hose in the basement–but he got that fixed too).  And I finally got the dishwasher fixed yesterday.  Everything is clean and sparkly…for now.

The plan for this afternoon is to get back to work on the bedroom.

The post My rotten day at least led to a finished project appeared first on Little Victorian.

We had an absolutely wonderful trip over our anniversary, thank you all for your nice comments and congratulations!

We were planning on getting back to work on the house on Sunday, but I came home from our vacation with a sprained ankle and a bad cough and cold.  So not much has been accomplished here lately.

I went grocery shopping yesterday and re-injured my foot.  Guys, the holding still is driving me crazy.  I’m getting so restless.  I was trying to sit and catch up on an online class, but because of the cold, I can’t concentrate.  So I kept standing up to work on the dollhouse, which of course, only worked for about 5 minutes before the foot started hurting again.

I hate not blogging, especially when I said I was going to.  So, I was going to share one of the projects that I’ve finished, but haven’t blogged about yet, but my pictures are terrible.  Just can’t win this week! 

These are all photos from our trip.  Obviously, we didn’t travel from Mexico to China to Paris, we were at Disney World.  It’s so much fun there.  And there are miniatures everywhere!

So many more miniatures than I got photos of.  Did you know Walt Disney had a miniatures hobby?

As soon as my foot heals up, I’ll be back to my own dollhouse, which I had made some good progress on before we left.  Please understand if posts here are sparse in the mean time!

The post I’m alive! But not exactly well… appeared first on Little Victorian.

Lately, many more projects are being started around here than are being finished.  It’s always something…  And it certainly does not have anything to do with me being overly ambitions.  Pfff.

A few things that are undone around the house?

And that’s just the bathroom.  The bathroom is currently a mess because the shelf we’re now using as a media center was holding all of our toiletries and towels.  Now the floor is holding them all.  I need to fix that this week.  But first, I need to paint the walls, install new baseboard and trim, then cut, stain and install the new wall shelves.

Oh, and finish patching, priming and painting the ceiling too.

On another note, in light of a few things I’ve learned about taking better pictures, the photos on our house tour page are making me twitch a little.  So I have a goal of taking all new photographs of the house and updating that page by the end of February.  See?  I’m not overly ambitions at all.

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