Randoms- Honey & Coconut Oil

Thoughts on Honey, Coconut Oil, & Me:

I LOVE wildflower honey.  It is SO darn good.  I bought some at the farmer's market & instantly fell in love.   Coincidentally the next morning I woke up with what felt like the start of a cold & I was excited to have some honey on hand.  I had remembered reading a remedy to help abate a cold- honey & cinnamon.  I'm honestly not sure of the "exact" preparation, whether it be eating it on it's own, eating it with other foods, drinking it hot, drinking it cold, etc. but I've decided to drink the combo in hot water every morning.  I've done it for the past 10 days.  Guess what?!  No cold!  And it tastes awesome.  

On a side note to that, I haven't sweetened my tea or coffee (I'm not a huge coffee drinker- only an occasional iced coffee every few days) with sugar since I bought my honey.  The honey is so sweet (and did I mention delicious!  lol) that I don't even miss the sugar.  And I love sugar.... It's a love/hate thing really, because I don't want to love it!  So it's been 10 days of no sugar in my drinks.  And to add to that, we haven't bought anything else to drink since then either (sometimes we buy Whole Foods brand Ginger Ale which is sweetened with cane sugar)- so at home I've been drinking either water, tea, iced tea, coffee, or iced coffee- either as is or sweetened with honey.  
I haven't stopped eating sugar yet (although when in my control  I make sure it's organic sugar so as to avoid GMO's) but I think I might work on at least attempting to bake using honey or maple syrup instead of sugar & see how that goes.  :-)

On an unrelated note, I've come to the (sad) conclusion that I'm allergic to coconut oil.  BOOOOO.  That totally bums me out.  I kept hearing about the awesomeness of coconut oil and all of it's benefits, so a few months ago I decided to buy a jar & use it in place of my facial moisturizer.  At first it was so nice.  But then about a month into the use I noticed that my lips started to get really dry.  Really, really dry.  And cracked.  And very uncomfortable.  I had also been using a lip balm made from local beeswax.  I read the label & noticed it also had coconut oil in it.  Eventually I put two and two together & I stopped using the lip balm & the coconut oil.  My lips eventually got better, but the dryness never went away, and some days were still pretty bad.  Then I finally had a light bulb moment- my soap also has coconut oil in it!  Ugh.  So I bought some soap & lip balm with an olive oil base and guess what?!  Relief!  Finally!  Now to find a new facial moisturizer to compliment my new regime (I reluctantly went back to my old moisturizer in the mean time, but I'm not happy with the company or the ingredients).  

So even though I am super-excited to have finally (Finally!) figured out what was contributing to my terrible lip dilemma, I am sad to think that I am allergic to coconut oil, because I think that means I'm allergic to all things coconut.  :-(  Bummer.  

For the record, these musings aren't totally random.  For those of you that don't know, I've been on a quest for wellness.  I've watched just about every food documentary that's free on Amazon Prime.  I follow a bunch of food & wellness pages on Facebook.  I'm soaking it all in.  It's a long process.  There's SO much to learn, so many habits to break, so much terrible advice that we've been conditioned to follow.  But it's a journey that I'm committed to follow. I'll try to keep you posted as much as I can without boring you to death.  lol.  

Thanks for reading!  

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
(John 8:32)