I need an adequate amount of calories too (and not all "healthy" ones, I need some carbs) or I feel fatigued and just want to sleep. One of the things I noticed when I first went into remission was that my body craved two things, food and exercise! I thought the food cravings was just part of the steroids, as I was on Entocort for 7 months, but now I realize that my body needs a certain amount and variety of calories to function properly and I guess that was what it was trying to tell me. So in my (non-medical, non-expert) opinion, I would say it shouldn't be an issue at all to increase your calorie intake especially if that's what your body seems to be saying it needs. When trying to get healthy, it is tempting to restrict calories more, but it seems to me that I don't really need to cut that many calories out or it impacts me negatively.
And said no to cookies haha.
I'm so excited to try it out this weekend. Hopefully it'll help me say goodbye to the tummy flab!
I will try to get other people to teach me though. And hula hooping is awesome! I know a girl that is a professional hooper and instructs classes on it, she has an amazing body! Hooping is an amazing exercise if you can get really into it!
It's been just about a full year now since I started lifting weights - I started in May 2011, I started small and did light weights 2x per week. Now I do 20 reps on each machine and I do weights that are heavy enough that my muscles pretty much completely fail by the time I get to that 20th rep, and I do that 3x per week. I'm glad I started small and worked my way up, that way I didn't get burned out or injure myself or anything like that.
I actually make hoops and could probably make you one! I have tons of colors but no sparkly ones... yet. That's going to be my next investment. I've never shipped a hoop though so I'd need to look into that. But once my semester is over, I'll be able to workout a lot more, and I can't wait! I've been eating pretty well but had a lot of cheese this weekend and felt like crap because of it, so I'm doing a cheese detox now hahah. 
(Sparkles would be best of course though, ha ha.)
Music, I would be interested in a proper adult hoop if you can figure out how to ship it! Actually, what I'd really like is a collapsible/portable hoop so that I can fold it up or telescope it or whatever and throw it in my gym bag. Do you think you could make something like that? If so I'd gladly purchase one from you even if it didn't have sparkles!
Miss Underestimated, back when I was really ill I couldn't handle oats, even oats in cereal would kill me (Cheerios were not my friend!). But now that I'm in remission, oats are fine on my tummy. I take a teaspoon of psyllium (soluble fiber) daily as well. I just had my cholesterol tested a couple months ago and it was borderline-high, so after that result I've been trying to eat more oatmeal as I know that it can lower cholesterol. I have noticed that psyllium definitely helped with having fewer bowel movements and oatmeal seems to help as well. I used to think that all fiber was painful with this illness, but now I know that's not necessarily true. It's more a matter of soluble vs. insoluble - I still can't do much insoluble fiber, even in remission!
And how interesting that you and I can eat the same berries - I'm assuming then that you can't do strawberries either? Blueberries have never bothered me and they're my favorite. I'm not a huge fan of blackberries or raspberries but I will buy them if I can't find blueberries. Have you tried adding berries to plain oatmeal? It's yummy!
They might grow wild around here but I live in the city so there's not a whole lot of wilderness in my neighborhood, so growing them myself seemed like a good bet. I just had oatmeal with blueberries on it today for my mid-morning snack, yum! As for the other things you mentioned - I can eat mangoes too, and I can eat canned peaches. I can do steamed or cooked broccoli and peas. The one fruit I had to give up recently, which I really miss, is bananas! They started making my GERD act up and I would get the vurps and taste banana. So I've cut them out of my diet for now and may revisit them later. I miss them.
Stupid setbacks.
I'm excited!
I started back up yesterday with at least trying to hoop for 30 Minutes everyday. When its not too hot or rainy I hoop outside with the radio and will get really into to trying tosses and different tricks as well as just waist/hip hooping. On days when its too hot, rainy or to late in the day to be outside I hoop in my living room while watching tv. (So far I haven't taken out the TV or the glass coffee table).
We joined a "real" gym recently (I usually go to the gym that's in the basement of my workplace, but that's only open during work hours, so I can't go work out in the evenings or on weekends - only on my lunch hour!). Hubby said, "I've decided I'm just going to do whatever you do, because you're getting some awesome arms." Blush! I told him, I just do every weight machine every time, even the ones that seem really hard (the abs machine seems like a torture device for someone that has IBD! Eek! But I do it anyway and most of the time it goes fine). So yeah, you know you're getting into good shape when your husband is jealous of your muscles, ha ha. We bought a used exercise bike recently too, and hubby used it for about an hour yesterday, then he commented that he was surprised how good he felt afterwards. I was like, duh! Ha ha.
Diet-wise I'm still kind of a mess. I tried eating grapes a few days in a row but my body didn't like that. Stools got really loose and I got crampy, then I started pooing out undigested grape skins, so I stopped that. Back to my juicer I went - the good news is, grapes are full of juice so I got a lot out of them when I ran them through my juicer, so I had grape & carrot juice this morning for breakfast and that's been sitting much better than actual grapes did. I apparently just need to give up on actual fruit & veg and just juice everything! Still lifting weights 3x per week. I'm planning on going on a bike ride tomorrow - the exercise bike is great for when it's dark out or bad weather or whatever, but it's so much different riding my acutal bike, it seems to work the core a lot more to balance and turn and steer and all that stuff on a real bike rather than just sit on my exercise bike and pedal and that's it. So I'm thinking of riding my bike a few miles down to the local farmer's market - gotta get more fruit & veggies to stick in my juicer! Ha ha.
I've stuck with it too, as usual I do much better with exercise than with diet, but I have been trying to use my juicer more. I plan on working out 5 or maybe even 6 days out of this week though so I'm still loving the exercise! Let's finish 2012 strong!
