Starting the year as I mean to go on!

Starting the year as I mean to go on but what exactly do I mean by that? Well it is obviously around my stoma but it is divided into three parts! They are:

1. my ostomy supplies
2. my diet
3. my fitness

They look like the beginnings of resolutions but I’m not thinking of them as such, so how do I plan on doing this?

Firstly the stoma supplies – as we all know the NHS isn’t in exactly the best position to keep providing us with ostomy supplies on a free prescription we need to keep on top of what we have and how much we are ordering. Now this can be a bit of an awkward one as we try new appliances etc and find something that suits us better; but rather than binning those items you can ask people in ostomy groups if they would like them or donate them to charities like Jacobs Well Appeal who donate items to people in countries who just don’t have the means for getting supplies like we do. For me I personally try to order the bare minimum and use up items I seem to have built up from changing delivery companies.

Secondly my diet oh how my diet needs an overhaul but not for losing weight although there is a little part of my brain saying I need to be thinner. The reason I need to sort my diet out is because for the last year I haven’t been looking after myself properly and just eating foods that aren’t healthy for me on the whole or my stoma. Whilst we were in Cornwall my stoma decided that there are even more foods that are going to cause me pretty crappy (excuse the pun) after effects. For instance potato which breaks my heart! So I am trying to eat more fruit and vegetables – well I say fruit but they have never sat well with me so I am just eating what I can. Plus I am carrying on making as much food as I can from scratch even if that means I am cooking separate meals for all of us!

Lastly is my fitness – I have just started seeing a physiotherapist for my hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and she has green lighted a few things for me and amber lighted a few others. Which included running! Running was my big love before my pouchitis took hold and from there I needed to have my ileostomy formed. I know I have a long way to go and I would have to be really gentle with myself but I would love to be able just to run a fraction of what I used to run which varied from 18 – 22 miles a week over three runs obviously! I would like to try and go swimming again but I can’t exactly do lengths with Button!

I would like to think these things are attainable as it is just tweaking things I do already which is why I don’t think of them as resolutions really. Do you have any resolutions?