Dehydrated

OMG! You should have seen my feet! Mostly my feet - some my ankles, or maybe it was also my ankles, but in comparison to my feet they looked small. Seriously, my feet were so puffy that I thought I was going to get stretch marks on them!!


It started with the week of Kirsten's death. I was so dehydrated. I kept drinking water, but it didn't seem to help. Then I drove to VA and back, and that always leaves me slightly dehydrated. And of course you all know what a crazy humid weekend it was too. Sunday I was feeling mildly queasy and had to stop a few times on the way home from Blacksburg. Monday I was still slightly queasy, but not too terrible (easily blamed on my period). Tuesday in the middle of the night I woke up feeling horrible. I stayed up for about an hour. Then it just didn't go away. I stayed home from work then, and around noon I felt my feet blow up. Like balloons. I couldn't get them to go back down. I tried everything. My normal cure - drink two bottles of water and pee like a race horse - didn't work. I drank tons, but it wasn't coming through. I sat with my feet up, no help. Wednesday morning I started the day by drinking about 64oz water. I was hoping to reduce my feet before yoga. However, it wasn't until about 11am that any of it came through... and it wasn't enough to reduce my feet. In yoga I started noticing how achy and stiff my muscles were. Yoga actually seemed to help soften them up. I continued to drink water - and by yesterday the swelling had gone down some - but not completely by any means. However, all of the water I had been drinking finally started to "flush" through. Today my feet looked normal when I got up (they always look better when I get up, but today was the first normal day). They look slightly puffy now - but not anywhere near as bad as they had been.

What is our take away from this? Well, I have to start drinking more water more regularly. I knew I had been slacking over the winter - but I had NO IDEA it was so bad. My new resolution is to drink two glasses of water before I leave the house in the morning. If I start out drinking I usually can continue it. I also have to start walking again. I really think that part of the problem this time around was that outside of work I don't move around a lot. AND I HAVE A SEDENTARY JOB!

I just signed up for the 2010 season of CSA (One Straw Farm out at Boordy). I am excited by this. I really want to make more effort to eat locally and organically. I am OK with the organic part (Wegman's carries a lot) but local is harder. I hope to make more connections with the other vendors up at Boordy (fish, meats, dairy). I am also still trying to find someone to sell me eggs that come out of a chicken instead of a styrofoam box. I need to make a list of the foods I eat and figure out what I can do to filter in as much local food as possible. Maybe I will make this my summer project.