Progress - Week 3...

Apologies, I'm a little bit late writing the update for this week. I've had a rather busy day and am just now finding time to sit down and write!

I've been a baaaaad dieter...

Just being honest, this week was not the best for me and my AIP diet. The weekdays were fine, I stuck with the 'approved foods' list really well! The weekend, however, was not quite the same. My husband and I were out running errands Saturday and ended up still being out and about at lunch time...and, of course, I didn't have salad or sweet potatoes with me. We debated a few different food options and ended up going to Panera. I got a half salad and soup combo...not terrible, but definitely not AIP approved. The rest of Saturday, I tried to make up for my lunch transgressions...I did a good job! Well, up until the evening....then my husband revealed that he'd brought home some banana pudding from work on Friday. Sooo, I had to have some. I mean, it's inhumane to subject a person to banana pudding temptations!

Sunday, I had a totally non-AIP breakfast. I didn't even try to stay compliant. And I felt pretty lousy about it for the rest of the day. The rest of the day was 100% AIP though!

Now, today was another 100% AIP day. Perhaps even more than before! I finally bit the bullet and cut out all diet sodas! [I practically thrive on Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi...I'm not constantly guzzling them, but I do typically have at least one a day, mostly for the caffeine] So! Now I'm back to eating 'clean' and drinking only water....hooray.

I'm hoping that a renewed gusto for sticking to the AIP plan will help with HS symptoms. My flares this week definitely reflect that I've been haphazard with my diet.

I totally felt like Lurch, I couldn't
turn my head!

- HS symptoms: This week started off pretty 'okay' but quickly spiraled into 'much worse' as I started deviating from the diet plan. I had a super painful knot pop up at the base of my skull and stay there for several days. You never realize just how much you move your head around until it's excruciating to do so! Virtually all of my flares that appeared to be healing got worse this week, most of them started bleeding and draining. And I think I counted 2 or 3 new ones. Oh, it was a super fun week. [sarcasm]

- Mood: I feel like my mood had improved this week. I would say that I feel like I'm craving certain foods less, but I guess that's hard to gauge, seeing as I didn't exactly have a strict week. It's still frustrating to not be able to eat 'normally' and to have to plan and eat at home all of the time. I miss the convenience of 'quick' foods probably more than anything else! It doesn't make it any easier that my husband and kiddo aren't doing AIP with me...I guess they're trying to make things easy for me...?? I don't know. I've just about given up even thinking of ways to say how I'm feeling about it to them. It's not worth the conflict.

- Weight: This week was a total bust when it comes to weight. The scale is not my friend! This week resulted in 1 lb gained back. However! I'd like to attribute that partly to my wonderful, monthly female cycle. I know that it being 'that time of the month' can cause us ladies to hold a bit more water weight....so that could be part of the problem, right? Right?! **sigh** I'm going to be super good about my diet this week and I'll do my best to come back with better numbers next week.

- Overall thoughts: I feel really lousy for not having the willpower to stick with this diet. I feel 10000% confident that it's a tough diet. It's so strict and has almost no room for error, whatsoever! However, I fancy myself to be a strong-willed, fierce gal....and yet, I can't seem to stick with it for more than 2 weeks. I feel as if this past week more or less undoes all of my progress so far and I'm back starting at square one. It's a horrible feeling, and I know that I've brought it upon myself. I will get my butt in gear and get better about it though!

Anticipate some sort of mid-week updates in a few days. Hopefully I'll find some motivation to write a few posts about non-AIP topics soon, too!

So Maybe It's Working...

Okay, so I feel like I need to be completely honest about how the whole AIP diet is going...including if and when I mess up...so here goes!

Totally me right now...

Over the long weekend, I decided to give myself an 'allowance day.' On Monday, I was feeling particularly frustrated with the diet, it's restrictions, and my lack of perceived progress. The day started with sneaking a bit of biscuit with my breakfast and ended up with me allowing myself to have a 'cheat' dinner. [Pretty sure I stuck to the AIP books for lunch that day, though!] And then I had a small portion of rice with Tuesday night's dinner.

Now, if this were an ordinary, calorie reduction diet, a cheat day is not a horrible idea! In fact, I remember having them more or less built into certain diet plans that I've done before...I think it was the grapefruit diet, maybe?

So, what effects, if any, did straying from the AIP diet at this point have?

Well, coincidence or not, my HS symptoms actually got worse. Not, like, tragically worse [thank goodness], but it's definitely noticeable. One of my trouble spots that has been dormant for a good while [4-6 weeks] has decided to give me some problems as of yesterday. Kind of a bummer, but I can't say that it wasn't expected. In a weird way, though, it kind of gives me a bit of affirmation that the AIP diet is probably helping me more than I realized.

Now, because I did cheat with more than one food and at a couple different times, it's nearly impossible for me to pinpoint which food is the cause of the trouble....or if the food is really the cause at all!

But! For the time being, I've decided to go back to being strictly on the AIP diet and I hope that my HS symptoms will continue to improve!

Full updates on this week's AIP progress on Monday, check back then!

Progress - Week 2...

Week 2 of implementing the AIP diet is officially over, here's the weekly progress update!

I don't know if it's typical or not, but I still find myself missing a lot of the foods that aren't approved on the diet. It's not a constant thing, but it's definitely still there. It's worst while I'm watching TV in the evenings with my family....there are so many commercials for food! I'd say the Olive Garden commercials are the one that make me the most sad about the AIP diet. I guess it's a good thing I usually watch Netflix rather than TV!

Another week of AIP food...

The hardest thing about the AIP diet, aside from TV commercials, is the lack of convenience. I really dislike the fact that I can no longer just come home and have 'whatever' for dinner...running late from the kiddo's Tae Kwon Do class? No stopping and picking something up! I have to go home and see what meat, veggies, and starchy veggies I have pre-made in the fridge. Don't have anything pre-made and ready to heat up? Then I guess I'm cooking! It's really a drag. And it keeps me in the kitchen sooooo much more than I was before I started AIP.

I'm also finding that it's quite expensive! Probably because I can't fill my plate with inexpensive grains or breads anymore. Now that 3/4 of my plate at every meal is some sort of veggie, I'm having to buy a ton of vegetables with every trip to the grocery store. Yes, yes, I know that "you shop for what's on sale." But, can you honestly say that buying 5 lbs of vegetables is going to cost the same as buying a bag of rice or loaf of bread? No. No it's not. And there are 2, 3, sometimes 4 trips to the grocery store a week because we run out of my 'diet approved foods.' Everything adds up!

Alrighty. I could complain about AIP stuff all day long, so I'm just going to cut to this past week's results:

- HS symptoms: This week was much worse than the week prior. I've had 4 flares that have required bandaging for most of the week due to draining/bleeding. 4 of my 6 typical trouble spots are currently bothersome, which is no better than last week, but no worse. I had two new flares develop, one is still giving me trouble and one has already drained. Overall, not enough improvement for me to say that the AIP diet is helping.

#mood

- Mood: I'm still periodically irritable. I find myself getting frustrated when I feel like my husband and other family members aren't being understanding of all the AIP diet changes...but I'm thinking that it'll get better as everyone gets used to what I can and cannot have.

- Weight: this morning, I'm down 6.4 lbs since I started on AIP. [That's down .6 lb from last week] I've got to be honest, I'm extremely frustrated. I don't know why the number moved so much the first week and hardly any the second. I know that my diet has improved significantly and that my portion sizes are much smaller than pre-AIP. I'm almost not snacking at all, but when I do, it's fruits or carrots! I don't know...I guess I was expecting some miraculous, scale-melting numbers, but it's just so... slow!! I know that 6 lbs in 2 weeks is probably great, especially without adding any exercise into the mix...but I was hoping for more!

- Goals: I'd decided to set my first goal/reward at 15 lbs. I think I'm going to allow myself to [temporarily] dye my hair some fun, funky color. After the first week's stellar weight progress, I thought it was going to be a super easy and quick goal to reach. Now? Maybe not so much. Keep your eyes peeled for a post with a photo of my with blue hair...it'll be here, eventually!

- Overall thoughts: I'm starting to wonder if the AIP diet is going to be helpful enough for my hidradenitis to be worth it. If in another week or two, I don't see some positive changes in my HS symptoms, I'm going to consider 'downgrading' my diet to something more 'normal.'

More updates soon, check back in a day or two!

It's Tough...

Today is an exceptionally hard day for me, so far.

I'll be honest, I feel rather silly posting this only 10 days into adopting the AIP diet...but it's true! The urge to stray from the list of 'approved foods' is strong today.

I think it's because there's been a massive uptick of stress in the last 24 hours...maybe?

Me, internally

Or maybe it's because this diet sucks. It's frankly not fair to have to sacrifice so many different foods and seasonings just because my body is dysfunctional. I'm not typically one to whine about things that are out of my control, but if I don't vent, I feel like I'll burst!

I'm also frustrated because my HS symptoms are currently much worse than day 1 of this diet. Much worse. Controlling my HS flares is the whole reason for going on the very strict AIP elimination diet. If I were only wanting to lose weight, I'd do a much more lenient 'normal' diet! I did some reading on how AIP diets can improve HS symptoms yesterday....the article said that it can take weeks or months before you start seeing real results. Months!!! Sorry, I am not a patient lady and I don't know if I can stick it out for months before this diet plan is worth all of the trouble.

***Sigh***

I came thiiiiiiiis close to stopping and getting a doughnut this morning. Like, infinitesimally close.

But...

I resisted. And now I'm sitting at my desk, at work, pouting and internally warring with myself while trying to find a position to comfortably sit and not aggravate my bleeding flares.

Guys, this is horrible. Hidradenitis is, I mean.

Send me positive vibes, please! I'm definitely on the struggle bus today. 

Progress - Week 1...

Alright! It's been a full week since I've started my AIP diet....how did it go?

I feel like it's been a pretty tough transition! It's hard to go from eating pretty much anything you want to having what feels like an ultra-restricted diet. I haven't had any bread, rice, or pasta for a week. That's a record for me! [I did 'protein diets' like the grapefruit diet when I was a teenager, but even for that diet, we could have pretty much normal dinners!] Couple my personal carb-withdrawal problems with the fact that the rest of my household isn't on the AIP train...that's where I'm at right now.

The weekend was much more difficult for me than the work week. I think because my husband and I have so many weekend routines that were based around food [kind of sad now that I'm typing it out]. Typically, we'd either go out to one of our favorite breakfast spots or we'd fix breakfast at home. Breakfast always had some combination of eggs, hash browns, some sort of bread, and usually grits, for my husband. Sunday mornings, if we go to church with my parents, we always stopped at the Huddle House that's on the way. But not this weekend! Nope! Because of my choice to start the AIP diet for my HS, I can't participate in our sacred little breakfast routines anymore.

Honestly, it makes me quite sad. Maybe even more than it should...

But you all should be proud of me! As badly as I wanted to grab the habitual breakfast with my husband, I did not! I stuck with my new diet plan and my sad-looking bowl of sweet potatoes and turkey sausage! It's the small, personal victories that I have to hold onto...otherwise, this whole transition is just too tough!

Now let's look at what, if any, changes the first week of the AIP diet has brought to me...let's look at some results:

- HS symptoms: to be honest, on Wednesday, my HS symptoms had dropped to almost none! I was so elated, I was ready to declare the AIP diet a miracle...but! By Thursday, some of my flares had returned to remind me that they're still around and don't plan on going anywhere anytime soon. Overall, I'd say there's probably been about a 20% decrease in the amount of pain and swelling in my flares....4 of my 6 typical trouble-spots are currently acting up, which is about the same as last Monday. I currently have 4 individual flares that require bandaging, and 2 that are bandaged just in case they decide to act up. This is actually more bandaging than last Monday, but I'd say that most of the flares are actually a little bit better than they were.

- Mood: I find myself being periodically irritable, a little more than usual. I don't know if it's due to all of the foods that I cut out on the AIP diet or not, but I feel like it has to be playing a part in it.

Tiny Victories ^_^ 

- Weight: as of this morning, I'm down 5.8 lbs down from last Monday. Almost 6 lbs! Now, I know weight fluctuates everyday, but I'm really enjoying seeing that number go down! Granted, I know it's likely 'water weight,' but it's still encouraging. I know that this trend should continue as long as I stick to my AIP diet...especially if I remember to be mindful of the amounts of and calories in what I'm eating. But, I feel like my eating habits for the week are 200% better than they were before. I just have to stick with it...and find time to exercise!

So far, the new diet/lifestyle seems to have been a positive change...check back in a few days for more updates!

So Far...

I'm officially halfway through my first week on AIP diet! Time for a few updates...

Sticking to this diet is hard. Not going to sugarcoat it in the slightest, at all! I vastly underestimated

Me, trying to summon my willpower...

the amount of prep-cooking that needs to be done, and I've also underestimated the quantities of food that should be made!

So many veggies!

It's the fourth day of this diet, and I've already had to make 2 more batches of the turkey sausage! In all fairness, it's partly because my husband and kiddo have taken a liking to it and have been helping me deplete my sausage stash....but mostly because I didn't realize how far 1 pound of meat doesn't stretch. Luckily, my local Sprouts grocery store has had a weekly special on ground turkey [3 lbs for $6], so I've been able to make more as the sausage has been running out.

I severely underestimated meats for dinner, as well! I made beef patties on the first day...however, I made my normal-sized batch for my family, and didn't have enough for any leftover. [There was 1 patty leftover, but I used that for one of my kiddo's dinners!] This left me having to choose between my breakfast turkey sausage and my lunch/salad chicken for dinner proteins for two nights this week [hence, running out of sausage]. In the future, I will need to make sure that I 1) prepare and make enough different kind of proteins so that my family and I don't get bored with the week's menu and 2) make large enough batches of whatever I decide to cook so that there is plenty for the week!

If I don't adjust my cooking and planning habits, I can foresee having more weeks like this one....and my sanity won't make it! I've done more trips to the grocery store, 'batch' cooking, and dishes in the last few days than in the last few weeks combined! I will re-evaluate the variety and amounts of food needed at the end of the week and do a better job of preparing for next week!

Sticking to not having certain foods has been pretty tough...I find myself missing breads and carbs the most! Yesterday, I was jokingly telling my family that I would do anything for a breadstick! But! I managed to tough it out and did not cave to my carb craving! **Woo-hoo!!**

As far as results:

I'm really not expecting anything at this point, it simply hasn't been long enough! However! I will tell you that the scale has been doing a bit of downward trending, which makes me ecstatic! I'm going to post weight numbers 1x a week...I feel like that's the most objective way to gauge progress, since weight tends to fluctuate daily. Check back soon, I'll keep updating with my progress!

New Beginnings...

Yesterday, I started my AIP diet!

I'd say that, overall, yesterday went pretty 'okay.' Having no carbs wasn't horrible and I didn't even realize that I didn't have any dairy at all. However, I do realize that it was only the first day and that the real test of willpower is yet to come. Hooray?

Food Prep!

For this week's starch replacement vegetable, I prepped some sweet potatoes....it felt like it took forever! I bought 4 medium-large sweet potatoes and plan to eat them with breakfast and dinner just about everyday this week. I peeled and sliced them, and then cooked them in a skillet with coconut oil and some salt and rosemary. [I've never cooked with coconut oil before, I still am undecided on how I feel about it...]

In addition to prepping the sweet potatoes, I cut up and caramelized 4 onions for the week. Caramelized onions compliment sweet potato excellently! [I know there are more than 4 onions in my picture...I kept one raw to use later in the week and ended up throwing one of the smaller onions away] For future meal prep, I think I'd need to almost double the amount of onions...there just doesn't seem to be a whole lot once they've cooked down!

Finally, I made some maple and sage turkey sausage [there isn't a picture of this, but you can see it in my assembled breakfast bowl]. I really like having a batch of this made and kind of just hanging out in the fridge...I'm hoping I made enough for all of this week's breakfasts and maybe even some if I need it for lunch, but I'll likely need to make bigger batches of this in the future!

I don't have a picture of it, but over the weekend, I had some split chicken breasts that I seasoned with olive oil, garlic, rosemary, and thyme and then baked in the oven. For lunch, I've been having a little bit of this chicken on top of a kale and spinach salad. Yesterday, I realized that store bought salad dressings aren't allowed on the AIP diet....so today, I made a small batch of balsamic vinaigrette. 

I'll be sure to write another post later this week, updating on how the diet is going. Wish me luck, I'm going to need it! 

My Hidradenitis Suppurativa Story [Part 2]...

Hey there! Welcome to my second post about my personal hidradenitis story...I'm picking up with how I got diagnosed with the chronic, auto-immune illness...

Me, 2006, at a friend's wedding rehearsal

 I continued through high school and college with occasional HS flare ups. I remember getting them in my armpits and upper thigh/groin area, but it wasn't a constant presence. Looking back through some of my old pictures, I'm wearing tank tops and sleeveless shirts, so I know that my flares must not have been as bad as they are now. [There's no way I would wear a tank top out in public now]

Of course I'd seen doctors throughout that decade [13-23 years old], but I don't think I ever brought up my 'knots' with the exception of my general physician that I saw while I was in college. Pretty sure I may have mentioned it once and was told that the bumps were from shaving and that I need to do a better job of being careful. [Totally not the case, by the way. HS flares can be aggravated by shaving, but they're not caused by shaving]

The next time that I remember seeing a doctor for an HS flare, I was 23 and just recently had my son. I had a knot that on my leg that was giving me a particularly hard time, but by the time my appointment arrived, it had opened up and drained on its own. The doctor looked at the spot and told me that it was a staph infection because I wasn't keeping that area clean enough after shaving. How embarrassing! Of course, he wasn't correct....and I remember feeling like he couldn't have been right...I told him that I had been getting bumps like this when I was 13, long before I started even thinking about shaving my bikini line! He seemed a little puzzled by this, but stuck with his diagnosis. It was around this time that I started to seriously research what in the world was going on with my skin. Crazy, right? It only took 10 years of dealing with HS mess for me to decide that something wasn't normal...I wish I'd been bothered and brave enough to start looking for answers sooner!

I started researching and came across more skin conditions than I care to recall...everyone knows the rabbit hole of using the internet to self-diagnose medical issues! But reading about this super hard to pronounce condition, hidradenitis suppurativa, I felt strongly that it described just about precisely what I was dealing with! However, having a hunch that my skin condition had a name wasn't the same as being officially diagnosed by a physician....

About a year later, I found myself going to the emergency room for some pretty intense back pain. Turns out, I'd strained my back and had muscles spasms which stemmed from picking up my son. Without realizing it, I was bending over kind of sideways to pick him up...I was doing this because I had several angry HS spots I was trying to manage. I told the ER physician the reason why I was picking my child up 'funny' and when I described my painful knots, he immediately asked, "Oh, is it a 'suppurativa' type thing? It's not very common, but not unheard of."

I was elated!

Not only was I getting treatment for my back [which was absolutely necessary at the time] but I finally had confirmation about my skin condition! Unfortunately, being diagnosed is not the same as being treated....even though I now officially knew what was wrong, it would still be years before I got treatment for my condition.

The next decade of my life was quite tumultuous. A few romantic relationships, a few moves, lots of familial stress and strife, a couple of failed engagements, and mountains of stress...

Every time I started seeing a new family physician, I always made sure to let them know that I have HS...and, frustratingly, none of them had ever heard of the condition! Thankfully, my current physician seemed to actually take some degree of interest in my overall health and decided to offer me antibiotics for my HS [and of course she recommended that I seek the care of a dermatologist]. At first, the antibiotics did wonders for my active flares! I was amazed that they actually provided relief! However, this relief would be short-lived. Not too long after the antibiotics were out of my system, the flares came back...with a vengeance! 

After a few rounds of antibiotics, my physician was quite insistent that I see a dermatologist...and I finally agreed to go. I don't know why I didn't go sooner! You can imagine the disbelief on the dermatologist's face when I told her that I'd been dealing with HS for over 15 years and never once thought to visit a skin doctor! One quick look at my armpit flares, and the dermatologist agreed that it was HS and that I needed specific treatments in addition to antibiotics.

My first visit to the dermatologist was back in 2016. I sought her medical care for about 6 months and then things went wonky between her billing office and my medical insurance company. I eventually stopped seeing her, because of the billing issue and what I perceived as a lack of treatment results. However, if I'm being completely fair and honest, the lack of results is greatly my own fault [but the billing mishaps were her office's mistakes!]. On my second or third visit, the dermatologist told me that I needed to start a modified diet. I needed to cut out carbs, sugar, dairy....she was talking about a paleo/AIP diet. I was stubborn and didn't want to change my diet that drastically, so I tried to continue with the medication portion of treatment without the dietary/lifestyle changes. In retrospect, I should have known that I wouldn't have the expected results if I wasn't being totally compliant...

That just about brings us up to the present! After a little over 2 years of self-treating [mostly unsuccessfully] I've decided to finally take the advice of that dermatologist and change my diet. I'm hoping that fully adopting the AIP diet will allow me to have better control of my HS and to determine what my dietary triggers are. AIP day is on Monday! I'm going to buy and start prepping for it today, wish me luck!

Do you or anyone you know have a chronic health condition like HS? If so, how was a diagnosis reached? I hope it didn't take you as long as it did for me!

My Hidradenitis Suppurativa Story [Part 1]...

I was about 12 or 13 when I got my first hidradenitis flare.

Of course, I had no idea that it was HS or that it would be something that I would continue to deal with for the rest of my life. I remember that the first flare was on my upper thigh and started almost like a pimple...but then it continued to grow, getting more and more painful as it grew larger. Eventually, it caused me enough alarm that I told my mother about it. She assured me that it wasn't cancer and I wasn't dying [I've always been prone to anxiety 😅] and that the bump would go away on its own in a day or two.

Well, she was right, it did eventually go away. But it 'popped' and oozed purulent blood before it did! I remember being worried about the bump, especially because of how painful it was, and worrying that there was something wrong with me. However, since the bump eventually went away on its own, I didn't bring it up again to my parents. A few months later, I would start to develop similar bumps, but this time they were under my arms, in my armpits.

After a few of these bumps came and went, I remember bringing them up to my parents again, saying that I had the rather large, painful 'knots' in my armpit. At this point, the flares wouldn't always open and drain...they'd get large and angry and then subside about a week later. Giving it their best guess, my parents said that they thought it might be swollen lymph nodes due to some sinus/allergy/upper respiratory crud. It was a good guess! At that point in my life, I was struggling with allergies much more than I am now. But! The knots, lumps, and bumps actually had nothing to do with allergies at all, not even close!

Ok, so I'm guess that those of you that aren't blessed with HS are probably curious to know what exactly the flares are and what they look like....I'm nowhere near brave enough [yet] to post pictures of my own skin, so these are images that I found online.

***GRAPHIC IMAGE WARNING***

[Seriously! You may not want to keep reading this post if you're squeamish!]

This is what a flare looks like before the 'knots' start draining. At this point, they're quite painful and any sort of touching or friction will probably make me want to jump to the ceiling! But, the thing about these 'knots' is, they almost unfailingly get much bigger than these...





This second picture is not a nipple, I promise! [It totally looks like one, though, doesn't it!]
This is a HS flare-up that's on the verge of opening and draining. At this point, you can see that it's huge, it's angry, and it's bound to be making this poor person miserable. Now, place this angry nuisance in one of your 'high-friction' zones of your body [armpit, inner thigh, underboob for the ladies] and you've got a day in the life of an HS sufferer. At this point, we're generally begging and pleading for this thing to drain to get some relief...



After the angry 'knots' open and drain, we're left with essentially open, hole-like wounds. This particular picture looks like the flare has been healing for a few days after it has opened and drained. At this point, HS management is about trying your best to manage these open wounds and keep them from getting infected...or swelling back up! Unfortunately, these wounds don't always heal...or if they do, it can take months. So, I'm sure you can imagine the toll that all these wounds have on a person's skin...



This picture looks to be of a fairly advanced case of HS, and yet all of the wounds appear to be closed. Sorry for the gruesome image, but this is the reality of HS! HS leaves us with horrible, Deadpool-looking scarred up skin. It's disfiguring. It's humiliating. And it's not our fault. [And it's NOT contagious, by the way!]




Hopefully, the gross-out worthy pictures in this post help to better paint a picture of what it might be like to have HS...I know that the vast majority of people have no idea that HS even exists!

In my next post, I'll explain the different stages of HS and tell my HS diagnosis story...check back soon!

P.S.: In the meantime, I'm posting the links for some websites with information about hidradenitis. Feel free to check them out, if you like!


Mayo Clinic - Hidradenitis Suppurativa

American Academy of Dermatology - Hidradenitis Suppurativa

HS-Foundation - What is HS?

Goals...

Happy New Year!!

I hope all of you are having a wonderful day, are you ready to start of another year? I know that I am!

I'm looking forward to 2019, I've got big plans! I'm not usually one for making New Year's resolutions, but I've decided to this year.

- I plan on making some changes as far as my job...finally finishing up some classes and working towards growing my branch of the appraisal business. I think that being a business owner and under 35 years old sounds pretty darn good, don't you?

- I plan on taking charge of my hidradenitis and kicking it's butt! I've been dealing with all of it's symptoms for far too long, and I've had enough! I'm going to be more proactive, starting with implementing an AIP diet...which starts in 6 days!

- I will do better, overall, in regards to my health. By sticking to the AIP diet, it's virtually guaranteed that I'll lose some weight. [Virtually any weight loss is a good thing, to me, anyway] Once I start to see some progress, I'll post some before/after pictures and such....

- I'm going to start reading more! I love to read, but have let my reading habits decline pretty significantly over the last couple of years.

I'm sure that there are several more goals I could think of and list, but I wanted to keep this post fairly short...how about you? Have you got any goals for the upcoming year?