Psoriasis Resolutions: A New Year and a New Improved Me

New Year. For those of us who are blessed enough to be in a good space, let's take it in. It is also good to be reminded that this time of year is also very hard for some people. Staying keenly aware of this keeps me humble. Having lost my dad recently, it is something really close to home for me.

Emotional responses often make my head turn into a serious flare and this is true for many of us. It leaves us with more pain than is needed. The other thing that this time of year brings is the new year's resolutions.

Setting new year resolutions with psoriasis

While I am all for change, in particular, the good type of change, I find it so hard to stick to new year's resolutions. For 2020, I have decided to approach things a little differently. It is time for some changes in my life, some of which I have already started doing and would like to continue into the coming year.

A resolution to upgrade

Let's call it an upgraded version of me. I like who I am and I am pretty happy with the life that I live, I would just like to improve on what is already there. The basics have been set and like all things, with time we can improve and get better.

This year one of my main focuses is health. My health needs more attention than it has been getting and it is time to make it a priority. The dream here is that if I improve my overall health that I will be able to improve my psoriasis and my psoriatic arthritis. After all, aren't the big things in life not just all the small things grouped together?

Eating clean for psoriasis

Earlier this year I started cutting down on refined food. By no means have I succeeded in cutting it all out. However, what I have done has made a massive change in how I eat. The goal is not to eat 100% clean, more like an 80-20 rule.

Most of the time, I prefer fresh and healthy and food. The gain for me in this is that my psoriasis is less inflamed and a little less painful. My IBS is also much easier to control. I find that I have more good days this way. The brain fog that I experience seems to be a little less too.

Hopefully, with all the small changes, the effect will be great. The eating cleaner also means that I am cutting out a lot of gluten and added sugar. Refined foods seem to be loaded with them among other things. Goodness knows, some days when I look at the labels of some of the food we buy, I cannot help but wonder if some of it is real food at all.

The impact of mental health

This is a big one. As I mentioned early my dad passed away recently, it has been over a year now and the lingering effects are still there. Going into the new year, I will be focusing on making sure I take time out and slow down when I need to. Take enough breaks from work and people to spend some time on my own.

Grief truly has some far-reaching effects that can be rather devastating if allowed the space to do so. Time to close in on that space and to do this I am going to be looking into starting to learn how to do meditation properly and possibly start yoga.

A gratitude journal will also be started, or rather just a journal to process the days that are harder than the others and to make space in my mind for new things but jotting down the old. The other pages will be filled with the joy and the love that surrounds my life so often.  There is something deeply therapeutic about writing. I also find that writing things down helps my overall brain fog, a win-win situation.

Fitness journey

Rather than saying I will be in the gym every day, I am going to aim to be in the gym most of the days. Rather than saying I will hit 10,000 steps every day, I will aim to hit them most days. This year I was able to go back to the gym and it has been a journey, one that I am keen to keep on with. 

Working a sedentary job has been hell on my body. On average I would do around 3000 steps a day, far below where it should be, aggravating my weight gain and also my movement. It would seem that the less I move, the less I am able to move.

I now do a daily average of about 7600 steps which is more than double what I used to get. In the next few months, I would like it to be an average of about 9000. Yes, this means that some days, I walk it out in the same spot in my lounge, I had to learn that that was okay too. Wanting to live a long and healthy life has become too important to me.

Happy new year, psoriasis and all!

I would like to wish you all a very happy new year. May your lives be filled with abundance and blessings in various forms. I would love to hear what your goals are for the new year. Please comment below.