Climbing the mountain

Well, discouragement and set backs can come with the journey when climbing a mountain. That's what it feels like today after a day of challenges.

Chalk it up to a learning experience.
1) Anything with the word enriched is suspicious. In baking yesterday I found the flour I have always used contains malted barley. So watch out for your baking ingredients.

2) Walking into an organic, health food store does not assure you that the food is MSG free. I got so discouraged seeing all the "health" food containing hidden MSG. When I say hidden I mean it's labeled under another name besides MSG.

2a). The discouragement of how expensive it is to try to change to an MSG free lifestyle ( higher prices) and nearly replace everything in your pantry. (initial investment)

3) Trying to replace your favorite food products from scratch isn't easy. I found out that English Muffins are tough to make. (especially when you feel crummy. I don't know if I am going through withdrawal or what, but my blood sugar was very low yesterday and I was battling that among other things)

4). With discouragement comes the nasty feeling of " oh what the hell" especially when you are bombarded with holiday food messages, parties and people eating the food you cant have. Temptation creeps in when one is discouraged.

5). Finding out more and more information of what this chemical does to the body and how it has destroyed so much of mine is overwhelming to say the least. Wikipedia site on glutamic acid explains the issue very well albeit more scientific language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glutamic_acid

I found more info to add to my list of what to avoid including medications and vitamins, etc. in gelcaps containing MSG. (The gelatin contains free glutamic acid via processing)

Fresh produce can been sprayed with Auxigro, a plant growth enhancer that contains hydrolyzed protein(s) and MSG (some of these crops may be used in baby foods?). How do we know what is safe?

6). That the food industry is working ever harder to follow this path of adding chemicals and unhealthy processing to our foods to make a sale. Yesterday I found a health food industry white paper from the corn refiners association, touting that high fructose corn syrup ( HFCS) is no worse than sugar. (Have you seen the recent commercials ? This is the ingredient that started my illness back in the 1970's!!). http://cornnaturally.com/the-business-case/white-paper/
What they fail to mention in their marketing strategy report is the part where processing HFCS creates free glutamic acid (MSG) in the product.

So, what does one do?

1) Lick your wounds and give yourself credit for how hard this is! One can't avoid emotions, you have to work through them

2). Find others that understand. This may not be easy to do on a person to person basis, but there are a lot of bloggers out there talking about this problem and knowing you are not alone helps!

3)Baby steps and be kind to yourself. I ended up taking on too much yesterday especially when I wasn't feeling well.

4). Regroup and try again. I rested up today to recover and will be ready to tackle it again tomorrow I haven't been battling this for 30 years for nothing so why stop now when I know so much more. Knowledge is power.

Wishing you good health