What should you do when you DO feel great?

I woke up yesterday morning feeling great! I wrote an article, walked two miles, did yoga, and showered--all before 9am! Then I got ready for the day and went to the post office, Walmart, Joann's, and Michaels. When I got home I made lunch, played with my hair (hot rollers!), did dishes, and cleaned up the house.

And then I started hurting. A lot. Way more than normal. This morning I hurt a lot more than I usually do. So what should you do when you wake up feeling amazing? Here are my top 5 tips:

DO exercise. If you're used to exercising, do your regular routine and let yourself feel fantastic and powerful while you do it. If you don't usually exercise, do some gentle stretching and easy walking to get your blood moving. Do not decide you're going to go running (I didn't do this today). Do not add another 1/2 mile to your walk just because you feel so good (I did this today). You will end up hurting like crazy.

DO leave your house. If you have a few (short) errands to run, go do them. If you have nothing that you need to do (lucky you!), go to the park or something. Seeing the sun is very important and most of the time, leaving your house is the first thing to go when you're feeling crappy. But you're feeling great! So leave your house!!!

DO eat healthy food. Sometimes getting out of the house is dangerous. Starbucks calls during the morning, frozen yogurt screams in the afternoon. Don't give in! If you're anything like me, any huge change (excess salt or sugar) to your diet will make you hurt like crazy. I think the worst thing in the world is doing something preventable and then paying for it. When you feel great, one of the best ways to keep feeling great (no matter if you have fibro or not) is to eat healthy food! Wraps, salads, and light sandwiches are perfect for lunch!

DO rest. When you feel amazing, it's the easiest thing in the world to feel invincible and push through the day without stopping (see my anecdote above--ha!). Rest! If you're used to taking a nap, take a nap! If you watch the noon news, sit down, relax, and watch the news. Keep to your schedule, and take a break!

DO acknowledge reality. You feel awesome today! Yay! But tomorrow you might feel like crap. Revel in your moment today because these days come few and far between. Don't make plans for tomorrow that are similar to your plans for today, because you don't know how you'll feel tomorrow. But you know the other reality??? You feel great today!!! Enjoy!

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi

Top 5 Apps for FibroChicks

I have my phone with me all the time. I charge it every night and sometimes I use it so much that it dies by the evening and I have to plug it back in. So, silly comments about addiction aside, I thought I would share my top 5 that pertain to having chronic pain!

1. My Pain Diary. The thing we all share is that we have pain. This is one of only two paid apps I've ever gotten and it is absolutely worth the $4.99 is costs. You can track your pain locations, intensity, type of pain, remedy (if any), and weather. It has calendars and graphs and a place for notes. It's a really fantastic app!

2. Sleep Cycle. This is the other paid app I've bought. It was $1.99 and, again, totally worth it. It's really easy: you set your alarm for the time you want to get up by choosing a 30 minute window during which the alarm will go off. Since it's tracking your sleep cycles, it wakes you up (with an alarm of your choosing) at the point in your sleep cycle that's best for you, within those 30 minutes. You can "snooze" and it'll keep going off every five minutes. It keeps a few different graphs: time in bed, quality of sleep, activities during the day correlating to your sleep quality, etc. I highly recommend this app, if for nothing else, the gentle wake-up every morning.

3. MyFitnessPal. Amazing free app to track your food and exercise! You can use a barcode scanner to scan your food so you don't have to enter all the nutritional info. It keeps a graph of your carbs-protein-fat ratio, tells you how many calories you have "left" in your day based on your fitness goals, tracks your exercise, and saves your "favorite" foods if you use them often. I've been using this one off and on for over a year and it's incredibly helpful!

4. Allrecipes. If you're going to track your food with MyFitnessPal, you might as well have a great app that has wonderful recipes. Save your favorites, add your own, and adjust recipes for any amount. While, yes, you can find this on your computer and either print it or just read it from your laptop, I like using my phone better. I hate having my laptop in the kitchen, don't have a recipe holder, and my phones already with me in the kitchen, so why not? The only thing I would caution against is touching your phone while you're baking. My last phone was definitely covered in powdered sugar at one point...

5. Viggle. Now this one is just for fun, but hey, you're mostly at home, so you might as well get something out of it, right? All you do is "check in" to a TV show when it starts and you get points. These points (when you've accumulated enough of them) then translate into real-world rewards: gift cards, discounts, and products. I'm at home most days, but don't watch a lot of TV. With this app, you just have to turn on your TV, let the app listen to the show you're checking into, check in, and then you're set for the duration of the show, and you can turn the TV back off! It's awesome!

"Be the change you wish to see in the world." --Gandhi