A proper diet - hints and tips :)

In recovering from chronic illness, diet is so important! 

One of the positive things that has come from this year is that i have discovered i am a massive foodie. I love food!! I love cooking, and in december i went on a cooking course for a week in Putney in london where i met some wonderful people. I find cooking calms me down, and quietens my mind and most importantly has boosted my confidence and kept me mentally sane during times where i was bored out of my brain!

Before i got ill, my diet was relatively poor given the amount of stress i was under with my exams. I was living off a gazillion cups of tea and Special K mini bites which are PACKED full of sugar! My blood sugar was out of control, creating more anxiety and stress!! I now understand when i am stressed, that eating properly is fundamental. 

Here are some tips from me on my diet that i have followed:

1. The MOST important thing i found is controlling blood sugar levels, so protein with every single meal was absolutely key for me. I also ate fish every single day (smoked mackerel on gluten free bread). Fish is proven to boost endorphins in the brain and increase happiness, decrease anxiety and is protein rich! So personally, i found a fish rich diet really beneficial. 
2. Cut out gluten! Gluten is proven to be a stress on the digestive system, so by cutting out gluten i found that my digestive issues eased a lot. It was hard at first, but after a while i got used to it. I recommend gluten free oatcakes as a snack, and "Genius" gluten free bread (this can be bought from most supermarkets).
3. Eat your greens! I try and eat as much fruit and veg as i can with every meal. It is so beneficial and energising. 
4. Cut out caffeine! This was literally so hard for me to do! But there are definitely a lot of good herbal teas out there, and the last thing you want is a caffeine high stimulating you when you are tired and wired!
5. Cut out alcohol! So hard i know, but obviously not great for your system having a lot of this. But the odd glass of wine will not hurt! We DESERVE it.
6. Keep hydrated! Drink as much water as possible, it is calming for your nervous system and your body needs it!

As i am getting better,  i am indulging a little bit more and have the odd desert and non-gluten free slice of bread now and then! I think i find it important not to become too OCD with the whole thing and let myself go now and then. 

I had a nutritionist with the Optimum health clinic, however i found this too pricey to keep going. I do recommend getting one if you have just crashed or are tired and wired and your digestion is a bit haywire, as they can recommend good supplements to calm everything down.

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food”  ~Hippocrates

Tough days and how i deal with them

Today has been a bit of a rubbish day. I woke up and instantly felt very tired and sleepy, and I knew that today was going to have to be a down day. At the moment I am tucked up in bed, listening to the rain fall outside which is really comforting.

On days such as these, my positivity is tested to the limit. My real pit, that I sometimes fall into is having anxious thoughts such as “How will I cope with this or that next week…” or “I thought I was doing well and now I feel really tired..”

I am learning, slowly, to just accept everything that is happening as life naturally unfurling itself. I read a really great book recently actually, called “The Invitation” by Oriah. The book is based on a poem, which is really beautiful and grounding, and spoke to me on so many levels. Mabye it will speak to you too:

The author herself had severe chronic fatigue syndrome, but has now recovered! You can read more about her here. This poem really reminds me of the inner strength that we all need to get through whatever we need to get through in our worst moments, and how being true to myself and evaluating my needs, my feelings, my thoughts and fears are so important to move forward when dips occur!  The stop process for me is also crucial I have found, I’m learning that having a down day is not the end of the world, and if I quieten my mind and notice the world unfolding silently and calmly around me, I feel much more present and powerful.

Most importantly I have found that self compassion is hugely important on down days. I had a habit before I got ill of wanting to be completely independent and conquering the world! However I now realise I definitely have my limits, and that is completely ok. It is ok to be vulnerable sometimes, it makes us more human and we are able to discover aspects of ourselves we would never discover otherwise. Sometimes, I like to write down a list of all the things that I am grateful for when I am struggling to be positive.

Here are just a few:

• My home
• My family
• My cat maple (who is meowing at me right now..he knows when it's dinner time!)
• My CD player
• The beautiful planet earth upon which i live.
• My bathtub!
• My friends

I realise all the love I have in my life, and somehow things don’t seem nearly as bad!

Why i can't get enough of yoga!

Recovery tip number two: YOGA.

When i first went on the 90 Day Programme and learnt about how yoga was meant to help people recover from this i thought to myself - seriously?! I can barely do anything and you want me to do a load of yoga?! But believe me, it does help a hell of a lot.

One of the main things i learnt in yoga, which can help tremendously to alter your state, is proper breathing. When i was in my "crash" and "wired and tired" state, i had an exceeding amount of anxiety and began to breath a lot out of my mouth, which is known as stress breathing! By learning to follow my breath, slowly listening to it entering and leaving my nostrils, feeling my abdomen rising and falling, i began to calm down and regain control thereby calming my whole entire nervous system down and looking at things from a very different, calmer perspective. If all you can do is breathing exercises - it is definitely going to improve your health!

I would recommend to you the "Beat Fatigue with Yoga" Dvd by Fiona Agonbar, and also her book Beat fatigue with yoga. It is very gentle yoga, specifically designed for people with fatigue or CFS and even in my worst stages, helped me so so much. Her voice is so calming and the postures are very grounding. If you are getting stronger and improving i would also recommend to you the dvd "Yoga for stress relief" which is available on amazon. It has the sea in the background and is so relaxing!

Yoga is proven to really help calm your nervous system, improve sleep, stretch out muscle tension and improve our circulation. Currently, i am strong enough to go to classes several times a week, and i cannot tell you how beneficial it has been to me! If classes overwhelm you, i would also recommend getting a private yoga teacher so you can go at your own pace and get the attention you need and you can make her aware of issues that you have.

When i do my yoga, i feel the stress and anxiety just leave me. I am caught up in the moment and the postures and i just do what i can, being compassionate towards myself and listening to my body's needs.  I am even considering becoming a yoga teacher one day (i am gonna need a bit more practice obviously)! That is how much yoga has influenced and helped me, and so i hope you give it a go!

Nameste.

Recovery tip number one: Acceptance and hope.

At the beginning of my recovery journey, all i thought about was getting through the next day. My thought patterns went something like this:

"You fucking idiot what have you done to yourself, how on earth am i gonna get better from this?"

"Everyone else is enjoying themselves..i'm 19 i should be going out and partying..i am such a loser" etc etc.

Another really unhelpful thought that popped up a lot - "Why is this happening to me?"

As you can see, i had a raging inner critic, which to this day is still raging, just a little quieter. On top of all of this i had extreme anxiety, which only helped to heighten my symptoms. From birth i have always been a high achiever, pushing through any obstacle or issue, trying to get on and not address issues that come up, just coping and pushing..until my body had enough of that horrible person and decided for me that i wasn't going anywhere. For me, this felt like the end of the world..until i found the 90DP. This was where i began to realise - there is hope! There is an end to this black hole.

I began to ACCEPT my situation, rather than fight it, and that then allowed me to focus and for my anxiety to calm down.

This is the first step. By allowing to really accept the bad, and feel the real pain about that situation, i discovered another nuturing voice that i hadn't been in contact with for a long time. It felt so calm and almost god like in its reassurance that "Everything is going to be ok." It was almost like a mother soothing a crying newborn baby.. at that moment when the world was falling around me, i just had this quiet knowing and connection to myself, and this connection has really grown over the last year.

I also think having a support network like the Optimum health Clinic, was invalueable and i felt stronger knowing that i was not alone and that so many others HAD recovered and so why the hell wouldn't i?

On the 90 Day programme, they used psychological techniques such as the "STOP" process, where you basically physically stop anxiety or inner critical thoughts from spiralling out of control my stopping yourself and choosing a different place and state to be in. I have found this technique invaluable. (You can find out more about this my googling "The Lightning Process" or indeed do contact the Optimum Health Clinic!) 

I remember very clearly being at the course in September, which was up in central London and being petrified of how i would physically make it home.. because at this point i was in a real state and felt as if i wouldn't make it! By using the Stop process, my entire state was calmed down, and i chose to feel ok about the situation - they called a taxi for me and by taking my mind off everything with talking to the taxi driver about his life story.. i found myself living in the moment, and accepting the moment for everything that it was, bearable or unbearable!

So, blog readers, there is hope. Accept where you are, stop fighting and resisting. BREATHE. This is reassurance from me - you will get there, its a bumpy journey, but once you accept where you are, that is half the battle. 

My story so far

Hey y'all.

I wanted to create this blog as for the past year i have been concentrating on recovering from chronic fatigue syndrome/postviral fatigue, following a very bad episode of glandular fever.
I would like to share with you all my story of how i am getting better and improving and the big issues for me that i have worked hard on over the past year. I want to share with you in this blog positivity, tips of nutrition and healing and be as frank and as honest as possible about the things that really have helped me.
My story starts back in September 2011. Following a summer holiday to Malia with some friends i came back with glandular fever. YAY!! To this day, i do believe this horrible illness was the start of all my problems. I had this quite severely with hepatitus, which really affected my liver turning me as yellow as Marge Simpson. Not nice. I remember just feeling really anitsocial and wanting to just curl up in a ball and shut everything else away, but after a month or so, i had to come back to school to continue my A levels. As i had been away, i had a lot to catch up on which i think really stressed me out, and looking back i can see my body still needed a lot of time to rest and heal properly. But i thought to myself, i'm no longer unwell or yellow anymore - pull yourself together! So, i decided to join a bloody dance class, going to the gym all the time trying to get a good figure, trying to keep up with school work and socialising and just PUSHING THROUGH that eventually as i was revising, my body simply gave up on me and in May 2012 i crashed out.
I remember just revising so so hard, lying on my bed clammy and my heart beating at a million miles an hour and i just thought to myself - WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING TO ME?
I was so unbelievably tired, and my brain felt like it was on fire. My muscles ached, i had really bad digestive issues, headaches, nausea, feeling really hot then really cold, muscles twitches, breathing difficulties, dizziness and fainting spells and i jumped out of my skin everytime the phone rang. I just couldn't relax, and i felt on hyper alert all of the time. My body was screaming at me that i could not continue like this.
I happened to crash midway through my exams ( convenient!) so i basically was a zombie for the last few exams.. looking back i dont know how i got through it! It was an awful time.
That summer is basically one big horrible blur. Picking up my A level results i was convinced that i had failed however miraculously i did achieve the grades i needed. (going to newcastle next year woop woo :) 
However, there was no way on gods earth i could go to uni that year - i couldn't even walk down the bloody street! That was when i had a good sit down with my parents and told them i needed a year off. I would find a way out of this, somewhere deep down inside i knew that if i could get like this, then i could find a way back to the old normal healthy me, I just needed to backtrack. ( At the time i don't think i thought about this as calmly!).
So, guess what i did? I popped into google "chronic fatigue syndrome" and all of this scary stuff about people living with this for their whole lives came up and how noone ever recovers. TERRIFIED, i shut off the computer, and i think i cried for a good couple of days, until with defiance i typed in RECOVERY CHRONIC FATIGUE. That is when i came across The Optimum Health Clinic, which i am pretty sure saved my life at that moment. It is a fantastic clinic dedicated to the recovery of chronic fatigue sufferers. I signed on the 90 Day Programme in September 2012, and have not looked back. The support they give is massive, and i met some people going through the same thing, which i think was really key for me. I just wanted to know i was not alone in this.

The worst stage, by far, was the "Tired and Wired" stage. I went through severe insomnia for months, and had to listen to sleep tapes every night just to get to sleep and took meds. It was just surviving and getting through each day, but as i began to properly relax, and just observe what was happening, i began to gain a sense of stability and my anxiety began to release, and for the first time in a long time i relaxed.
I am at the stage now where i would say i am around 80 or 90 percent recovered although i still do need a lot of support and help. Let me put it straight - chronic fatigue folks, ain't a walk in the park! Its bloody awful. It takes more strength than you ever thought you would have in you to get through it, but if you just let it play out, letting kind words of others sink in and be self compassionate with yourself it will help an enormous amount. 
So hello everyone, i hope we can all sail along this recovery journey together.
In my following posts i will go into more detail of the things that have helped me along the way.
Love and peace to you all,
Soph x

Some sites that may be of interest to you:
Secrets to Recovery - a great online free resource with TONS of information on how to recover from CFS.
The Optimum Health Community - a bit like facebook for ill people! Its a great place to share recovery journeys with others, and give much needed support!!