I had a positively wonderful massage at my local Massage Envy today. The therapist who worked on me recommended medical massage to relieve the tension in my back; we compromised by dedicating the 1st half of the massage to medical and the 2nd half to relaxation. Without me saying a word about my diet and exercise habits (or lack thereof), she was able to tell that I was dehydrated and suffered from malnutrition based on the areas and degree of tension in my back. She said I needed to drink more water, eat more fiber (beans & vegetables), reduce my sugar intake, and start exercising. She also realigned my right leg and both hips, literally helped me breathe more easily, and (I thought) improved circulation to my arms.
I opted for aromatherapy during my massage, namely the “Anxiety Release” blend. The aromatherapy in conjunction with massage helped me to relax, both physically and emotionally. Though the therapist said I “slept like a baby,” I was actually awake, listening to the relaxing background music and feeling the massage with my eyes closed. I was also thinking quite a bit about what I can do to take better care of myself.
Obviously I need to do the things the therapist recommended, including getting massages regularly (for now, every other week; I’m hoping to be able to reduce that to once a month by the time I’ve used up all the pre-paid massage hours I’ve accrued).
I also need to take one day off each week, a day dedicated entirely to my mental, physical, and spiritual health. It will be a day when I do not have to do anything for Mom – unless it is an emergency. A day to relax, get a massage, turn off the computer and other electronics, express my spirituality and creativity, and really focus in on my health. On this one day per week I am thinking of abstaining from foods with added sugar, and limiting my diet to whole fruits and vegetables, beans, nuts, eggs, and maybe milk. I’ll be happy to spend time with loved ones on this day, as long as that does not interfere with me focusing primarily on my well-being.
I love the idea of my day for all this being Wednesday because it’s smack in the middle of the week! What better way to put myself at the center of my own life? Wednesday should work for now, based on my and Mom’s schedules, but if necessary I can change it to another day. However, I will not compromise having one day per week to myself – unless there is an emergency.
I hate tracking food (and planning meals), but I need to get a realistic idea of how I’m eating in order to improve my nutrition. I’ve used SparkPeople in the past and find it mostly good for tracking and to some extent receiving motivation to live a healthy lifestyle. There are a lot of ads that get annoying and send messages I’m not entirely confident are healthy, but using the site is otherwise free of (monetary) cost. I did have to spend a lot of time looking up nutrition info on other sites, though. 
My biggest gripe, though, is that it doesn’t really give one the information needed to track the “nutrient” I’m most concerned about right now: sugar. I could track my fructose and sucrose intake, but the site provides no guidelines regarding how much of each I should consume. “Sugar” only exists when you’re viewing or inputting nutritional information for a specific food; it is not a “nutrient” you can track, nor are there clear guidelines – on SparkPeople or in general! – on how much of it one should eat in a day.
Based on this LiveStrong.com article and the daily range of calories recommended to me by SparkPeople, I figured out that the maximum amount of sugar I should consume in one day is 31 grams. Just the 2 chocolate chip cookies I had hours before my massage contained enough sugar to put me over this limit for today.
I’ll use an Excel spreadsheet to track sugar in foods I eat, excluding the natural sugar found in fruits.
It’s not something I expect to be able to adhere to every day, but I hope that at least intermittent tracking will hep me to become more aware of what I’m putting into my body. Maybe it will help me make better choices more in line with my need to be healthy and live a fulfilling life!
a day with depression 
I like the idea of a self-care day. I’ve been meeting to do so myself for awhile, but keep getting caught up in things. It’s harder than you’d think it might be.
Regarding nutrition, I hate tracking too, and personally find it counterproductive in terms of eating healthfully. I find that establishing a positive relationship with food is far more important that specific caloric intake and other numbers, in terms of my health and well-being (stress releases stress hormone, which is bad for you and can cause weight gain, and if tracking is stressful then that is counterproductive and makes me hate food, which sets me up for disordered eating). I find practicing mindful, intuitive eating and the HAES model to be much more helpful (and nutritious!): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_at_Every_Size (What intuitive eating boils down to is: eat slowly while focusing on the physical sensations of food intake, so as to be alert to cues of hunger and fullness, eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full, and eat foods that make you FEEL good rather than choosing foods based on taste alone (and what is nutritious is wildly different for each individual, depending on the body and brain you have).
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