Improvisational Crackers

Hey Errrybodyy! Alexis here!

Today started off great. I got to sleep in...until 7:30 yikes. I'm really getting a little taste of the real world this summer yeah? Cathy, my boss, surprised us with tons of new cheeses to try from Whole Foods. You know you've got a good setup when your boss allows for food tastings at work! I improvised and turned my apple into "gluten-free crackers" and chowed down on some almond butter. I'm pretty sure almond butter is a requirement for all health bloggers to eat on a regular basis.
After work I headed straight to Solana Beach for a quick run by the ocean before an INTENSE yoga practice this evening. I think I may space out my runs and yoga sessions more between each other in order to properly hydrate for each work out. If you all are ever in the San Diego area you really need to check out Haute Yoga in Solana Beach. Everyone there is so welcoming and helpful and it's a really calming space to allow for the best yoga practices.

I thought I would give you all a little run down about what's going on with my diet before I dive into all the great stuff I learned from Rob Yang on Tuesday!

In high school I began to develop some serious stomach issues. I would flip flop between feeling super bloated to having major cramps. After months of pain and discomfort, I finally saw a gastroenterologist. After several different diagnoses and an endoscopy I found that I had developed small stomach ulcers and had Helicobactor pilori.

H. Pilori in a nutshell: This bacteria causes a chronic low-level inflammation of the stomach lining and is closely linked to duodenal and gastric ulcers and even stomach cancer.

A lovely close-up:

So definitely not a great thing to have in your system, let alone at the age of 15. It's very rare to develop H. Pilori at such a young age.

My stomach is very sensitive and there are certain things that definitely trigger the same kinds of problems like caffeine, too much dairy, and gluten of course.

In high school I was able to avoid these things, but when college started it became pretty difficult. Take It Away sandwiches, Bodo's bagels, and beer pong called to me, to the point where I began to ignore any stomach issues. But as the end of second year came upon us and stress increased, it made the problems even worse. By the time I was getting ready to leave for Peru I realized that a lot of the symptoms I had previously experienced were back.

I'm an adventurous person though, and couldn't deny all of the wonderful foods I'd been offered while in Peru. It was also pretty tough to communicate in a foreign language, let alone talk about an intolerance that's not even well known in the States. So from the start I made the decision to lay off the gluten as much as possible and when I got back to the States I'd cut it out of my diet completely.

It's hard to make this type of major change so I wanted to meet with someone to help me shape my diet better for my college lifestyle and in order to obtain proper nutrition for running, etc!

Look out for a post about the meeting very soon!

As of now I'm majorly looking forward to one of my best friends RYAN coming to visit in less than a week! It's going to be a lot of running, good eating, and beach chillin'.

That's all for now! Enjoy your Friday!

-Alexis