Diet Changing & Stopping completely Walking and Biking

After almost one month relapse, my energy is getting back gradually. I have been feeling quite good for about  one week. What I did this time, by "listening to my body", are: 1, cutting off white rice, coffee. This helped me with constipation problem; 2, very importantly, I almost quit walking and biking completely for over a week. This helped resting my heart, so I don't get crash; 3, doing lots of stretches, which helps keeping my blood circulating without burden my heart.

So far, it works quite well.

Some "Interesting " Change

For almost all of my life I was afraid of "cold". I usually felt terrible during winter, and started to feel better during spring, but recent year my body seemed to have changed. I feel good during autumn, winter is OK, and early spring I feel good too, but between spring and summer, the extremely humid weather makes me feel terrible - I feel very easy to get tired, all my arthritis problems would get more serious, and lots of "crashes" due to my heart malfunction.
I have reason to believe one of very important reasons of this change is due to the significant amount of parasites my body carries. During spring, all kinds of lives revive, include parasites. So during this time, the immune system of my body gets busy in dealing with all the parasites inside my body, thus working on my daily life routine would be a burden to the immune system, and consequently I easily feel tired.
Sound very simple, but I am quite convinced.

A Relapse, That's What It Is.

Sick in bed (Photo credit: tpholland)

It's has been 9 days. Yesterday after I did some gardening I felt really good, so I thought I would varnish one of my painting. However, the cap of varnish bottle was too tight, I tried a little too hard, then, my heart went "wrong", I had no choice but lied down for all the evening. Today, I was not totally recovered, but I did feel better afternoon. I canceled my weekend classes again, in order to rest more. I want to make sure that I am in "working condition" before I resume my classes. Yes, I am going to "spoil" myself.

Now I have to think what I did wrong, cause this relapse. Honestly I do not know for sure. Looking back, the previous several months, I was doing pretty good. The only thing beside "too much" exercise was coffee. I always had a couple cups of coffee each day. So I will completely get rid of it until I can regularly exercise every day!

Still Not There Yet

I was extremely happy that I made two friends in "real world". One of them visited me yesterday. We had great time. However, after she left, I knew I was in "trouble". The rest of evening I had to lie down in bed (otherwise my heart would malfunction). Today, I found that I was not recovered, so my class has been canceled.
Friend's visit was not the only cause for my temporary slipping back. I biked yesterday morning, did a little grocery shopping, all these add up, cause this "minor" crash!
I know I will be back to my "normal" probably later of today. However, I found, talking is still one of the most energy taking thing for me to do. And what this tells me is, I am still prohibited from social life.
Maybe, this is my fate. I am fine just living with myself and I can live happily. But if talking, a function that most people would not even feel a slightest problem is continue to be a big problem for me, that only means I am still in great energy "shortage". And as I get old, this would inevitably cause me more problems.
I figure that since this year, so far, averagely, I am about 70% of myself. My goal is not only recover to my own 100%, which is only 80% (or even less than) normal healthy people, but to some 110% of myself, somewhere close to normal health standard. So, a long way to go.

Free From Too Much Cooking

Foto de una carretera en la cual se destacan anuncios de los restaurantes de comida rápida KFC, Wendy's y Taco Bell entre otros. Picture of a highway in which fast food ads are featured:KFC, Wendy's and Taco Bell among others. Taken in Bowling Green, KY. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I think my condition is improving, though not so obviously. One big change recently is my diet, I started eating out. My stomach seems to be more tolerant and I could eat lots of different foods from restaurants, especially fast food restaurant. Eating many "junk foods" doesn't seem to be bad at all. Actually I feel better, due to the diversity of foods I ate. Another good thing about eat out is, I do not need to stand up too much like I did before when I had to cook. I realized, since cooking requires lots of standing up, cooking too much also means to burden my heart. That could be one reason my recovery was so slow.
This change gives me lots of free time, I feel so much happier to be able to get away from kitchen. But still, I need to watch closely about what I eat. If my stomach demands, I will

Another Small Crash & A Little Doubt

Yesterday, I felt good all day until 6pm, then crashed after about less than 2 hours gardening work. Frustrating.

Some time I had to wonder, my heart might suffer some permanent damage, because I have been doing decent job on diet and rest for over a year. It seems, every time when I felt good and tried to make a next move, I crashed. I heard long time ago that if our health condition don't get recovered by 40 year-old, it would be very hard to recover completely. I am close to 50. So chance seems slim. If I could not make further improvement, it would be very hard for me to live a quality life because it would be very hard for me to convince doctors that I have health issue, and accordingly get financial help from government which I deserve since years ago (part of reason that I recover so slowly is because I had to make living. However I am not worried too much because I believe my worst was gone).

But still, I refuse to accept this as fact, only a theory. I am about 70% recovered, will try my best. I hope after this year I will see some fundamental change.

A Small Crash

I had a small crash these days after I over walked in the past Tuesday. It was a deja vu, since most of my crashes were due to the same reason: over exercise. It was inevitable, because I walked in trail, when I found I was tired, I still had to walk the whole way back to my car, during which I knew I was doomed!

For years I have been made same mistakes over and over again. It happened always during the time I felt good. It is frustrating. Good thing is, it's not a relapse but a small crash, which takes me about several days to recover (I thought it would only take 1 or 2 days, but today is the forth day, and I don't feel completely over yet).

Another thing is, looking back, my health condition went straight downward since I started cooking at home, when I started my art classes, in 2009. Even though I tried my best to cook well, still, I found my own foods were some time worse than those from malls. Plus, cooking is hard for me, because the worse thing for my weak heart is standing, and when I cook I have to stand most of time. Recently I felt so tired of my foods so I started to spend lots of money eat out. Strangely, I felt better! I guess it is the diversity of foods that gives me some energy. I need to discover some new good good foods in restaurants, not only Chinese, but also American foods. I really like steak sandwich. It gives me lots of energy.

More and more, I found there is not certain way to make me feel healthier. I just need to follow my instinct, my stomach.

New Improvement!

37 minutes walking on Tobacco Trial yesterday, 40 minutes today, no crash, even feeling better after. This is my new "record" in at least two years. I am happy for that. Diet is the "hero" of this improvement, I would say.

New Start!

Since my last heart attack in October, I pretty much found the last piece (hopefully) of my health puzzle: over-exercise. And since then I rest a lot, and found my energy increased day by day.

To say "over-exercise", I don't mean 45 minutes running on treadmill and followed by 10 weight lifting. No, I mean a few minutes more walking (my average time of daily walking is about 25 - 30 minutes, even less). My body, especially my heart, seemed to be pushed a little hard by my previous biking and walking improvement. So I had to slow down a little. Even though I knew this piece of puzzle long time ago, I had not really learned the right control. I walked or biked a little as long as I felt I could. However, this time I canceled these activities completely for a short period of time. And it worked! It was exactly what my heart needed!

For several months (that is from November to January), I started feeling incredibly easy on my daily life. I am able to handle all routine tasks and even some extra energy to enjoy myself. Yes, I still have some symptoms, but those are no more "fatal" ones like my heart and breath problems, which knocked me down totally. I realized this means that my body energy storage increase. And my careful diet certainly was the hero of this achievement!

This year is "Snake" by Chinese zodiac calender, I am snake. In my previous Snake year (12 years ago) I got my green card approved, this time, I hope my health will get some fundamental change, which will serve as "green card" for my new life.

I've already seen the light!

Depression Or "Depression"

For all those who seem to be depressed and lack energy, people just simply label them as "depression". However, there is a significant difference between "I can do, but I don't want to do" and "I want to do, but I can't".