Today is day 7 of testing and implementing changes by taking Digestacure, an aloe vera supplement. This is part of my healing stories: trying something with the faith that things will change as I focus on healthy eating as well as supplements, diet and exercise.

Everything is part of the growth journey:

• mindfulness
• learning to love my gut in spite of whatever challenges it might present
• and even some of the lessons from this week about how my bowel and gut health affect and impact my sleep patterns.

So, I am happy that I haven’t had any adverse effects – the “die-off” kind that I read about.

Overall, the only place I’ve noticed any change is in how deeply (or rather how lightly) I have been sleeping. So, I am looking at what might need to change again in order to get deeper, more refreshing sleep.

Exercise

One of the challenges the last four days has been to exercise. I admit I’ve had four days of minimal movement – without keeping up with my 30-day exercise challenge. Of course, it might be that I’ve been on 10 weeks or more of exercise challenges without any serious time off and my body just needed a break.

I don’t know. But I took a break for 3-4 days.

Today, however, the motivation returned and it was easy to get back into full swing. So, I dove into the workout:

I also added in the ab workout from a few months ago.

Since I’m not doing sit-ups, I switched them out for obliques – doing side-to-side. While I could feel the burn doing the crunches, a few hours later and there is no pain! So, I am well on my way to a healthy life in which my core strength is fit!

These are the small choices.

The choice to drink water:

Another challenge has been drinking enough water. It’s not that I don’t know I should drink water. I have water. I have lemons for slicing so that I don’t have to drink plain water and can add a few lemon slices.

But loving my gut is doing what I know is right for my body, and that’s making sure I’m drinking six to eight glasses of water each day.

And I often fail that prioritising something that small and simple.