Saying farewell to vacation is always bittersweet

Today was our last day in London. Somehow a trip that seemed so far away snuck up so quickly, and once it was upon me, it came and went so fast. I’m still shocked we’re leaving tomorrow. I’m actually still in shock that I’m really even here after ten years have gone by since I called this place my home for four months. It’s crazy to think I lived in London longer than I lived in Los Angeles.

Despite the bittersweet feelings, we made the best of our last day here. The morning started off with a tour of The Globe Theatre. Though I toured it last time I was here, this time around felt more informative. Plus, with my love of Shakespeare, you can never tour the Globe too many times. My only regret is not having seen a play at the iconic theatre. Romeo & Juliet was currently showing, but the only tickets available were standing room only and as much as I’d love to see one of the playwright’s notorious works acted out for me how he intended them, I just couldn’t fathom standing for an hour and a half, with no roof over my head, in the cold, with the chance of being rained on. Guess I have a reason to come back.

After our guided tour, we hit Borough Market for some nourishment. I managed to find several gluten-free options, enjoying a tasty Indian dish for lunch and buying a gluten- and dairy-free cupcake for dessert (which I ate after dinner and was delicious), as well as a gluten- and dairy-free blueberry muffin to enjoy on my way to the airport tomorrow. Once we’d satiated our palates at the market, we headed back to Covent Garden to return to the Alice Through the Looking Glass bookstore that I’d tried to go to on Thursday while my friends were on their tea bus tour. It was open this time, and it was glorious. They had so many rare editions of Alice in Wonderland, as well as some great prints and posters with illustrations from the book (which of course I had to buy).

As we headed back to our hotel for a quick rest, we passed through Trafalgar Square, which was supposed to be hosting a St. Patrick’s Day festival but instead seemed to be the spot of some sort of protest about Turkey. Not exactly what we had expected, so we high-tailed it out of there, through St. James’ Park and back to our hotel for a quick break before hitting Oxford Street shops one last time. We ended the night with a good meal at Timmy Green.

I’d say it was, overall, a good last day, a final farewell to this city that captured my heart all those years ago. This whole week, I haven’t really felt that overwhelming excitement you get when you go to a new place for the first time, but that’s probably because, in some ways, it’s felt like coming home to be back here. After all, I did get to know this city very well in the 16 weeks I lived here. It’s been ten years, but in some ways, it feels like I never left, like I just slipped right back into my old life here. I’ll forever cherish my memories, old and new, that this city has given me. It’s been real, London. Until next time, xoxo.

Just touched back down in London Town

My friends and I arrived back in merry ole London yesterday morning, and already we’ve crammed quite a bit in to the two days we’ve been here. After getting to our hotel, the St James’ Court, yesterday, we headed back out towards the edge of town to ride the Emirates Air Line. While it wasn’t super exciting from a touristy standpoint (there were really no notable sights to see from the sky that make London the city it’s known for), and it was slightly terrifying when the wind picked up (swinging from a cable car over the dirty Thames is not how I want to go), it was super cheap at about £4. I think it would be a lot cooler had they built it closer to the city center, but there are probably reasons why they didn’t, and it’s a good excuse to travel farther to the outskirts than you might normally do.

After puttering around Westminster for most of the day, we decided to regroup at our hotel (which is super swanky and probably the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed in as an adult paying my own way) and then head to the West End to catch a show.

The abbey of Westminster.

When we studied abroad here ten years ago, we made it a habit to just show up to the ticket window just before showtime and score whatever last-minute discounted tickets were left. While we didn’t get super cheap seats like we were accustomed to back then, we were still able to score dress circle seats at the last second for Waitress starring Katharine McPhee.

The show was great. Unfortunately we made the decision to see an almost three-hour musical after an extremely long travel day with no nap and some serious jet lag. Let’s just say we all caught some shut eye at one point or another during the show. Still, it was entertaining with a very talented cast. Definitely worth the money and time spent.

After the show, we took a very European approach and decided to have dinner at 9:30 at night. I’d never understood why they wait so long to eat dinner until now; it becomes sort of necessary depending on what other scheduled events you having going on. Although I can’t say I enjoy eating so late, at least I can begin to see why they do it. With my recent dietary restrictions (no gluten + no dairy + no sugar = a difficult task of finding somewhere to eat), we settled on a Mexican restaurant near the Adelphi theater where Waitress was playing.

The restaurant, Lupita, had a lot of really tasty dishes, and I was extremely happy with my gluten-free and vegan quesadillas I was able to enjoy. But man, the service. I don’t get why every restaurant I’ve ever eaten at in Europe seriously sucks when it comes to the service. Maybe it’s the lack of motivation, since European servers don’t work for tips the way Americans do. But seriously. If I have to flag you down after 20 minutes of being completely bone-dry on my glass of water, we have a problem and I hate you. It makes it extremely hard to like your restaurant if the food is good when the service is so terrible.

Today’s choices were slightly better (although not by much). We got some much needed sleep after our long flights and skipped breakfast, instead forging ahead right to lunch at the Thai restaurant Patara. The food was delicious (they even had a gluten-free menu!) but again, the service was less than mediocre. Luckily, I decided to treat myself to a tasty gluten- and dairy-free macaron (yes I cheated with the sugar but who cares?) from Laduree, so I quickly forgot how annoying the service at lunch had been (although I definitely appreciate the special menu, and how they made sure to tell me not to eat the appetizer they brought for the table, which apparently turned out to be incredibly gross anyway).

We did some light shopping at all the best stores (Fortnum & Mason, Harrods, Topshop, and of course, Primark) before ending our day with some delicious sushi at Sticks’n’sushi (which was able to provide me with gluten-free soy sauce).

We were even able to sneak in a quick nighttime visit to Buckingham Palace on our walk back from dinner (who knew Buckingham Palace was so close to our hotel on Buckingham Gate road, am I right?).

Though there’s still so much to do the remainder of this quick, 9-day trip, I feel like it’s finally starting to sink in that I’m really back in this city that captured my heart all those years ago.

An ode to all the things I must give up if I want my body to survive

It’s been about a week and a half since my first visit to my “witch doctor” Dr. Dana. While I certainly wouldn’t go all hyperbolic and say I’m a new woman, that I’m cured and I’ve never felt better, it is true that I feel much healthier than I did two weeks ago, and it’s largely thanks to her and her magical homeopathic drops, as well as the recognition and understanding that I was slowly destroying my body with the wrong foods and prolonged prescription use. So, in addition to the oils that have slowly been repairing my insides, I’ve had to make some bold changes to the foods I’ve been putting into my body all these years. It hasn’t been easy, and will continue to be a struggle for awhile, I’m sure. But I can already feel the difference, and why shouldn’t I want my body to feel content and well cared for? I’ve spent so long feeling like my insides were dying, it’s probably about time I start nurturing them instead of torturing them. After all, I am going to be 30 soon. As unbelievable as that is to me. But moving on.

For starters, sugar had to go. I figured this would be the easiest of the three, as I’ve never really had a sweet tooth the way the rest of my family has. It would just mean forgoing that Coke with my lunch, and canceling any and all outstanding ice cream dates. I could survive without the deliciousness of birthday cake ice cream, right? It isn’t worth it anymore; while it temporarily pleased my palate in the moment, it was destroying my body in the long run. If only it were so simple though.

Once you actually start reading labels, you realize how many non-sugary foods have sugar added to them, things you wouldn’t assume would need sugar added. Like, why is there sugar in tomato sauce? And who added it to my gluten-free pretzels? Sugar is a drug, the worst kind, and unless it’s natural from fruit or something, I can’t keep letting my body stay addicted. So, while it’s going to take some effort on my end, I need to get as far away from it as possible. Now if I could only convince my students to stop bringing me sweet treats as presents.

The next item up? Gluten. I’d already cut gluten out of my diet for the most part since last summer, as recommended by my endocrinologist, but apparently eating even the roughly 20% of gluten I was still eating was ruining me. Again, other than having to be a bit smarter with my shopping and ordering when out at restaurants, it’s really not the end of the world for me. They make a ton of gluten-free options at the grocery store, so I’m still able to get my crunchy snack fix (although, again, I really have to read the label well, because salty/crunchy snacks you wouldn’t think have sugar in them actually do). Popcorn is naturally gluten-free, so I can continue having that as a snack, I just have to make peace with the fact that the overly salted version, the kind I like to drench in synthetic butter sauce at the movies, will have to RIP, at least for the foreseeable future. I was probably headed toward a heart attack from that butter anyway, so it’s just as well. It seems a small price to pay for not feeling like I’m dying every second of the day. Because, even when I was “mostly” gluten free, I could still tell immediately after I ate gluten. I would feel more sluggish, more lethargic than I already am thanks to my thyroid, my stomach would hurt and I’d feel bloated; I could just tell something was off.

I feel the same way about dairy. I can tell after I’d eat a piece of cheese or a dairy-based salad dressing that my body wasn’t happy. But this one has been incredibly difficult because I love cheese. I’ve never been a huge milk drinker so that wasn’t hard to cut out. I’ve even started putting almond milk and coconut milk in my smoothies instead of yogurt, so I’m finding ways around all these limitations and restrictions, but giving up cheese I’ve done so begrudgingly. I used to put cheese on tacos, sandwiches, eggs, and salads. I used to eat hunks of cheese by themselves as snacks when I was feeling a bit peckish. I could devour a plate of cheese fries without help any day of the week. Did I mention I love cheese? This one has made me want to cry. But I guess if my insides are no longer roiling in agony, then it’s worth it.

The last change I need to make will be the biggest struggle, but will also reap the most rewards, I think, because at 29 years old, I am livid with how many medications I am on. I assume I am on the prescription equivalent of someone two or three times my age (okay, that time I was a bit hyperbolic, but I’m trying to make a point here). To come back to my Band-Aid analogy that I made on a previous post, prescriptions are the medical equivalent of putting a Band-Aid on a giant gaping wound, hoping that it will heal the wound when all it’s doing is causing the wound to become infected and disgusting, which requires more Band-Aids to be piled on until you can no longer see the source of the original pain, because now you’re too busy trying to fix the slew of other problems the now-infected original wound has created. Er, or something like that. It was more eloquent the last time I said it (I think). Basically, stop giving me drugs and vitamins, my body can heal itself if I just let it.

Your body has ways of telling you the things it likes and doesn’t like, so I guess it’s time I start listening to my body and really making an effort to heal it from the inside out. After devouring Your Tastebuds are A**holes by Unique Hammond (who also happens to be a family friend), it really started to click that my health shouldn’t be dictated by what my “asshole” tastebuds wanted. Unique compares our tastebuds to children; they want what is yummy, but what is yummy isn’t always good for them, it isn’t what they need. So basically, I have to stop feeding them what they want because it tastes good and start giving them what they need because it’s good for me (although most of it tastes good, too, you just have to retrain your body into remembering that). The whole time I was reading her book, I felt like she was in my head (or I guess, I was in hers?). Everything she was saying was exactly what I’d come to realize on my own through this whole process: my whole life, I’ve tried to make good choices when it came to food and if I looked good on the outside, I thought that meant I was healthy on the inside. But years of making choices based on what I wanted in that moment, instead of what’s good for my body long-term, has finally caught up to me. And the only advocate for my health who is really going to make a difference is me. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and I’m finally starting to recognize and accept this, because it’s probably the only way I’m going to reverse the problems I’ve caused and keep my body alive.

Need a dinner dish that meets all dietary constraints? Lemon garlic shrimp and zucchini noodles for the win. 

 

I’ve finally found hope in curing my health, and it’s a good good feeling

A week ago, I was at my worst. In the ten months of agony I’ve endured fighting a slew of health issues, I was finally so beaten, so broken down, so utterly without hope that I decide enough was enough, I was done letting doctors string me along, promising answers, promising relief, fighting my symptoms but not fighting the cause of my problems. I decided to seek a more nontraditional route. At this point, I was so desperate to cure my issues, to get back to a life worth living, to feel like a human being again, I would have tried just about anything.

Western medicine is great. For certain things. When I broke my elbow at 13 years old, it took many trips back and forth from my Poconos home to my Philadelphia doctor to get things put back together. I’m eternally grateful to that doctor, whose name now eludes me, for having the experience and education that no local doctors could muster to mend my one-of-a-kind injury. If it wasn’t for him, my arm would have forever been frozen in a half-usable state, stuck somewhere between fully extended and fully retracted, with my elbow and wrist locked up for good, never to be fully utilized again. When I got in my one (and hopefully only) car accident eight years ago, even though I wasn’t severely injured, it was a good thing to have the ambulance come and take me away, to be whisked off to the hospital for a thorough screening and to be checked for any internal damage. If I, heaven forbid, ever have a heart attack or some other life-threatening issue that comes on instantly and spontaneously, I want a western doctor nearby to bring me back from the brink of death. So yes, western medicine is a vital part of our existence as humans, and we’ve come a long way with many scientific advancements regarding medicines and I’m grateful to have access to these technologies if and when the need arises.

But when it comes to my insides, I’m done letting the western doctors have their way with me. I’m done trusting they will figure out what’s really going on inside me, what’s causing the problems deep down instead of just asking what my symptoms are and throwing a bunch of medications and vitamins at it. At my lowest point, when I was so desperate for relief that I would take anything the doctors threw my way, I was taking about 8-10 different over-the-counter and prescription medications on any given day. For an almost 30-year-old who doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t do drugs, eats fairly healthy (at least what I believed was healthy), has a regular sleep cycle, and exercises fairly regularly (at least when my fatigued body would allow), this seemed insane to me. There’s no way someone as “healthy” as I seem to be on the outside should need all this garbage.

But I think that’s exactly where the real problem lies. I might look healthy on the outside to anyone observing my physique and my habits, but I’ve been allowing myself to stay sick, in fact I’ve been keeping myself sick all these years by trusting these western doctors to “fix” whatever ails me. Instead of healing my body from the inside out, they’ve just been throwing more drugs and more synthetic garbage at me, telling me to take this or that to solve my problems, only to wind up creating more problems for me, thus requiring more drugs and more fake sh*t to suppress those symptoms and to keep me coming back for more and more. Depression and anxiety? Here’s a drug for that. Just watch out for the ringing in the ears it will inevitably cause you, stealing away what little peace and quiet you had left in your life, forever plagued by tinnitus when all you want to do is read a book or go to sleep without the sound of buzzing keeping you up. It will also make it hard to focus and make you dizzy and give you migraines, but don’t worry, we make more pills to tackle those issues. Frequent migraines? Here’s some prescription strength ibuprofen. Take as often as needed, up to three times a day. Don’t mind the ulcers and the holes it will tear in your stomach, who needs a stomach anyway? Painful cystic acne? Here are some antibiotics to cure that inflammation right up, just don’t mind the havoc it will wreak on your intestines, shredding your insides to the point where your body can longer get the nutrients it needs to survive. The list goes on. By trying to “fix” one problem with medications, three new problems pop up. It’s no wonder my body has gotten to the point where I can’t eat anything without chasing my food with Tums. And it’s all I can do to drag myself through the work day, only to come home and go straight to bed. And I shouldn’t be surprised the probiotics and vitamins I keep inhaling aren’t doing any good when I’ve destroyed my insides so bad they can longer absorb them. Not that I need the vitamins anyway; if my body was working properly and if I was giving it the right nutrition, it would have all the vitamins it needs in the first place without me jamming artificial versions down my throat.

After I went to see what I like to refer to as my colleague’s “witch doctor,” a holistic doctor with 15 years experience healing people, I came out with that sort of light bulb moment. In the hour she spent with me, testing every inch of my insides to find the source of my agony, she told me how she was going to help me fix the root of my problems, not just fix the symptoms. It makes sense to me now. All this time, I’ve just been slapping Band-Aids on things, hoping the problem would go away, but the Band-Aids are piling up and there’s blood oozing out from underneath, and I can’t keep hoping these wounds will close unless I do something to heal them, not just cover them up.

I feel like I’ve finally woken up, that my eyes are finally open to what’s been happening to me all these years with doctors and medications and ailments and symptoms and never feeling like I could be my best self because I was so sick and dying on the inside. I understand the hand I’ve played by allowing these doctors to dictate my health, but no more. I’m ready to regain control and, even if it’s messy, even if it takes some trial and error, even if it takes time and effort and frustration, which I’m sure it will, it has to be way better than these last few years, even these last ten months, where I’ve felt like a slave to doctors and medicine, only to continue feeling my body slowly dying, crying out for help. Well, I’m finally listening and I’m finally ready to make a change that hopefully changes the fate of my health for the better. For good.

Oats Overnight seems like an easy health win to me

I hate to be one of those people who gets taken in by advertisements and the latest trend, but recently I’ve been taken in by advertisements and the latest trend: overnight oats.

Since Facebook is the devil, and constantly listens in on my private conversations and scans my Google search history to curate Julia-specific ads to blast me with every time I scan my newsfeed, I’ve been getting a lot of ads recently for super foods and the like. With this thyroid issue seemingly never getting any better, I figured I’d do what I could to help my body along to wellness by changing the foods I eat and the ways I eat them.

Within the slew of annoying advertisements, I kept seeing the same short video for Oats Overnight. You know, that video where the woman mixes up her oats the night before and then emerges the next morning ready for work, smiling and drinking her oats as she walks out the front door (which she then proceeds to leave wide open…). Yeah, that one.

While I’m certainly not the type of person to simply succumb to good advertising immediately, I did do some research into these mysterious “overnight” oats (like what makes them “overnight”? why can’t I just eat some regular oats?) and decided that the health benefits were enough to satisfy the curiosity I had to try the hype. So I logged on to Amazon, placed my order, and not-so-patiently waited for the box to arrive in the mail. Side note: the delivery guy actually delivered them to my neighbor by mistake, who opened the package without reading the name, and kindly knocked on the door to explain why the package was open. What a stand-up guy. My neighbor, not the delivery guy. Screw that guy, he should be fired for his incompetence. Just kidding. Not really.

Anyway, last night, I filled my Blender Bottle with the required amount of milk (which seemed like a ton when I poured it in, but I guess 8oz is only really a glassful), poured my choice of oats in (between the chocolate peanut butter banana, strawberries & cream, and green apple cinnamon, I decided to first try the strawberries & cream), shook it up a bit, and placed it ever-so-gently in the fridge to let it “activate” overnight. Whatever that means. This morning, in addition to my eggs, I got to try my first cup of oats overnight.

First, I had to get past the fact that I was drinking the oats, instead of eating them with a spoon, as I’d done all my life. It’s still a weird concept to me, but I didn’t hate it. I’ve heard you can warm them up in the microwave to eat them hot, and make them a bit thicker, but honestly, it was fun slurping them out of a bottle.

Next, I had to contend with the amount of milk I was consuming. I don’t really like to drink milk that much, but luckily these oats can be mixed with a milk substitute. Now I just have to convince myself to like Almond Milk.

The last and probably only real hangup I have about these oats is the expense. The starter pack, which included 3 packs of oats and the Blender Bottle, was $18, which I thought was reasonable, since it came with the reusable bottle. But now that I have the bottle, the smallest pack they have is a 12-pack for $45. That’s almost $4 a pack (and I’ve already checked, the price is the same whether you order direct from their website, or from Amazon). Luckily, I noticed I could really only “eat” about half the bottle for breakfast, so I still had half a bottle left, which I just finished consuming as an afternoon snack. So the packs seems to yield about two servings; whether I prepare the whole thing at once, or just use half the oats with half the milk, I think I’ll be able to stretch each pack into two meals, making it cost about $2 per serving. Those numbers I can get on board with. I also like the idea of having a healthy meal/snack option ready for me as I leave for work. I can envision myself eating half the oats with my typical eggs & gluten-free bagel breakfast, and saving the other half for a mid-day snack at work. I can just pop it in my mini-fridge in my classroom, and have zero prep when I’m dying of hunger halfway through classes and can’t stop teaching to sit and eat a snack. #teacherproblems

And who knows, with all the promised health benefits, maybe I’ll also start feeling like a human again soon. Not that I expect my life to become glamorous and elegant overnight like the woman’s in the commercial. But hey, if I keep eating these oats, I’m one step closer.