So I eat horribly. And dairy products are evil.

At this point in my life, proactive thinking has become a compulsion, thank gawd. So even though I'm in the same crappy space I've been in since I haven't been able to afford meds (still working on that, I just have to remember to make that phone call!) I'm thinking a lot about my diet.

My journey to figuring out I had what we call ADHD and that I should probably starting dealing with myself in reality truly began without a diagnosis in my early twenties, when I acknowledged that I was not taking care of my own basic needs. I realized that not eating regularly, for example, was not making my life any easier. So I started making myself eat regularly and pay attention to my body's hunger signals.

I had trained myself to ignore them as a teen, when I feared that I was fat at a whopping 125lbs (and I'm 5'4" so clearly it was my thinking and not my body that had the issue). I retrained myself to listen. The added challenge for me of course is that anxiety makes me not want to eat...but I still worked at it consciously and improved the frequency with which I ate.

In my early 30s I started thinking about it again and adhering somewhat to the glycemic index as a guide, helping me make food choices that didn't screw with my blood sugar quite so much - hypoglycemia is an issue for me.

And now it's time for my next change.

I'm in my late 30s now and what I've learned in the past two years is that having small children makes parents eat horribly even if they are attentive to making sure the children get healthy food. What brought me to this current reassessment of my diet:

1) I'm feeling awful without my meds, and poor diet will only make me feel worse.

2) The tiny therapist in my head (which is funny because my therapist is already very tiny) is totally nodding in agreement.

3) One of my freelance clients is a "health product purveyor" and it's got me thinking about the quality of what I put into my body.

4) I have always been lactose intolerant and I hit bottom in my relationship with dairy yesterday.

Even in times when I have given up other sweets, I have been able to enjoy ice cream, thanks to its fat content and the fact that, despite my lactose intolerance, it didn't seem to bother me. Until yesterday. I had an ice cream cone for lunch. And spent the rest of the day and evening feeling like sand paper had been dragged through my entire digestive tract, and other assorted GI symptoms that you probably don't need more details on.

So...I know that I need to eat more healthfully and make sure that I'm eating regularly...and that I have to cut out most dairy.

I'm going to start tomorrow by just focusing on eating whole foods. Fresh meats. Real veggies. Nuts. Grains with good glycemic index ratings like quinoa and barley. Nothing crazy. No diet. Just foods that are processed 15 times over. Foods that I cook myself. Foods that frankly set a good example for the kids. I'm not gonna freak out if it's not perfect but I'm going to try to keep this in the front of my mind. I used to cook for myself for heaven's sake. No reason I can't do that again.

And it'll give me something to focus on besides the fact that I'm feeling so out of sorts.