My weekday mornings usually look like this. I wake Miyu up at around 0630, she shuffles groggily over to the living room, and plops unceremoniously onto the couch, just like so.

I make her breakfast, which is typically toaster pizza squares or sausage, egg whites, and toast. I then prepare my own breakfast which I put in a meal prep container (usually some kind of salad greens, sausage, and one egg), and then put it in my bag so I don’t forget it on the dining table like I’ve done so many times before. After that, I prepare (if I have the time, which is more often than not) Ken’s breakfast burrito. I would prepare him the usual sausage, egg, toast deal but he eats breakfast in the car so I had to come up with something he can eat easily with one hand.

Anyway, I recently had a flare up this past week (arthritis). Last Thursday my hands were in a lot of pain. It felt like there were pinched nerves inside my fingers and stiff joints that would get triggered with certain movements. Now I’m better but I’m feeling new pain in my wrists. They feel very weak and sensitive. I remember last week my left middle finger was the most painful. This is how it is during flare ups. The pain sort of travels. So today, I’m wearing both of my wrist guards.

I’m starting to make the correlation that it’s what I’m eating that’s triggering my flare ups. During my leave in late September, I ate poorly and last week I ate a lot of bread, potato, and sugary desserts (so again, poorly).

I’m proud of myself though because yesterday, I officially restarted keto. I didn’t eat or snack on any carbs, per se. The only exception was the spinach wrap on my Subway but it’s fine. The only snack I did technically have was one packet of dark chocolate and a small packet of mixed nuts. It helped that I had to fast for 12 hours last night since I had to get my blood drawn this morning to check my cholesterol. I think going forward, I’m going to strictly stop eating at 8pm and only drink water if I’m thirsty. No more eating late junk foods (like McDonalds) at 10 or 11pm (around the time Ken comes home), no matter how tempting the Oreo McFlurry might be.