Under Active Is My Middle Name

My lunch break usually involves Publix. I had to get bananas for the class Valentine's Day party and for the past few visits I've found myself looking at different kinds of pasta as if to accept my fate. You see the Chriss fam moved up a bit in life, we have decent insurance now. So we did what you're supposed to do with insurance and we went to the doctor. And for me that included two blood draws and low levels of something or other that say "Under Active Thyroid."

The official diagnosis is just once test away but I'm already overthinking. Funny how my body under-acheives in some ways and overdrives in other. I'd first heard about this with another mom friend like months ago and lets just say we'll have many talks over wine after all this is said and done.

I did what you should never do and looked on WEB MD. Unfortunately like 10 out of the 12 symptoms are all Alison. Things like "Extreme sensitivity to cold, fatigue, always feeling tired, dry skin, trouble losing weight, depression." It was all just stuff I was used to. I thought that was just who I was now.

Then I saw the "Foods to avoid," section, which may as well be named "All my favorite things." Included were bread, butter, pasta, spinach, kale, brussel sprouts, sugary things and sweets. Yeah I love those all. My husband makes fun of the fact that I believe bread to be a snack!

So I had a blah day feeling really annoyed and inconvenienced, and a little mad at my body. If you've known me since my teen years I have always struggled with weight. In fact my mom announced to my daughter's after care program that I have "weight issues." It was after my daughter was born that I stopped believing I could eat whatever I wanted and taught myself, "You can eat anything you want...in moderation, and you're going to work for it." I finally felt like I had a healthy relationship with food.

And now I have to adjust. Is this part of resilience again? So I'll be trying zucchini, lentil and chickpea pastas, I'll be saying bye to bread in my regular diet, saying goodbye to most sweets, and replacing my spinach and kale addiction with spring mix and other lettuce. But I do feel like if this makes no damned difference, I'd rather just continue my healthy affair with food and exercise as it was established.

You see I'd accepted being uncomfortably cold and I now live in Florida. I've always just been that person that needs 8 hours of sleep to be kind and productive. The dry skin didn't happen until after the baby, but that's what lotion is for. And depression has been around forever. It's not until you look at everything together that it all clicks.

This is a manageable situation for sure, but I am very resistant to western medicine. Maybe I spent too long in Oregon, but I always try to go for natural, holistic methods and ways to deal with my body first, before the drugs get brought in. Yes, I'm that hippie.

I think what bothers me is the dancing around the "diagnosis." I mean is my thyroid under active? Is it on strike? Maybe it's really mad at me. Oh and I also read that stress makes everything much worse. To quote How I Met Your Mother, "Hey, have you met Ted?" I'm the queen of stress. I'm 90% stress and anxiety incarnate!

So I've just been Pinteresting and Googling and talking everything out, trying to get a grasp on this for the next test. I'm fully open to suggestions or commiserations and ready to just know what I'm dealing with but I'm not ready to say no to cupcakes, I will miss bread dearly and thank goodness they make different kinds of vegetable related pasta because I tried the gluten free pasta and that is NOT pasta. Sorry, not sorry.

Maybe this is more of my resilience or maybe that tiredness makes me too exhausted to fight back. Maybe I figure it can't hurt to try and abide by the food restrictions to see if I feel any different. Maybe this is just a part of adulthood. Maybe the test will come back and my thyroid will have gotten its act together. So many maybes!

This week is kind of my last hurrah, like a cheat meal because next week I have to take it all more seriously. I'm sure there will be many more reports of these shenanagins. Please feel free to message me if you have advice or have dealt with this stuff yourself and also, just know that the Under Active Thyroid club apparently has many members. I just feel we should meet at the bar, preferably a taco bar with margaritas.