Flu Recovery Reset

The flu knocked me down this week, and it forced a reset I didn’t know I needed. I talk honestly about what it feels like when your body won’t “bounce back” the way it used to and why real recovery sometimes means doing the thing we avoid most: stopping. No powering through, no cleaning while sick, no pretending rest is optional. Just listening, slowing down, and letting healing take the lead.

One of the biggest lightbulb moments came from something simple: food aversion. When I’m sick, I don’t want to eat and neither did my kids. We’re taught to push soup and crackers no matter what, but I dig into the idea that appetite loss may be your body’s natural way of shifting energy toward repair. I connect it to intermittent fasting and autophagy, the cellular “cleanup” process people often talk about with fasting, and I share how I’m approaching it carefully in real life: focusing on hydration, letting hunger guide me, and only eating small amounts when I take medicine.

To keep my mood from sliding while I’m stuck resting, I share one fast energy reset that always works for me: looking through old photos and letting that joy rise up on purpose. I also share a healthier, kid-friendly kitchen experiment I’m excited to try next, making homemade pickles and pickled vegetables as a fun snack project.

If you want more honest talk about flu recovery, rest, hydration, intermittent fasting, and simple wellness habits that fit real family life, hit play. Subscribe, share with a friend who never slows down, and leave a review, what’s your go-to rule when you’re sick?

Transcript

Choosing Rest Instead Of Pushing Through

Food Aversion And Autophagy While Sick

Pickling Vegetables As A Family Project

Resetting Energy With Old Photos

Closing Thoughts And Next Week Plans

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, everybody. This is Still Rose's podcast. This podcast was created for women by women to elevate women's voices. I hope everyone is doing good. I am doing a little better. Um this flu really knocked me out like bad. Uh I my mom and I were texting about it and she said, you know, uh don't worry, you always bounce back really quick. And I did when I was younger, illness like really couldn't take me down. I I mean illness, injury, it really didn't matter what happened, I would always bounce back super quick. I don't know if it was sheer will, I don't know what it was, but I always bounced back super fast. As I get older, that is not the case. And I actually have to work harder to make that happen, which is normal. I know. Um, but it still sucks because, like I said, this this illness really just knocked the life out of me. Now, granted, I was a little bit more open to having the life knocked out of me. Um, I was willing to slow down and take a break, um, which is what I've been up to is taking a break and making sure that I'm resting and literally just laying down and resting. Um, when your body is exerting energy, it's taking away from what's really needed when you're sick is the energy to heal yourself. So there's that, right? And uh so I was forcibly just making myself sit. Prior Jenny would be cleaning and cooking and doing things that I wasn't supposed to do while I'm sick, and you know, therein lies the problem, right? So I've stopped doing that kind of thing. I am more mindful there and I make it make it a point to make sure that I am um resting the way that I'm supposed to. Now, interesting fact that occurred to me um this week while my kids were um were home sick, um nobody was feeling well, nobody wanted to eat, which is normal, right? When when you're sick, you don't want to eat, you have a food aversion. Um, so as soon as I started getting sick, I remember at one point, now while they were sick, excuse me, let me back up a second. While they were sick, um, I was trying to get them to eat. You know, I was like, have some crackers, please have some soup, please have something, you know, you need you need energy. And they kept saying no. And and I'm I try not to force things on them. Like they they will tell me if they need something. Um, so I was trying to let it go and not be too overbearing with that, right? Um, and then it kind of hit me really quickly. You guys know how much I I like and back up um intermittent fasting um because of how healthy intermittent fasting is for you if you're doing it safely in the right way. So, as you know, with intermittent fasting, um, when you hit a certain point of fasting and keeping your body empty, um you hit a stage called autophagy. I'm saying I probably am mispronouncing that, but I'm gonna call it autophagy. So you hit this particular stage of autophagy and your body starts to heal itself. So it goes into self-healing, it starts eating the bad cells. Um, look it up. I'm probably not saying it right scientifically, but it's really good for you because it just helps your body to heal itself. It became it it migrates the energy that was used for processing food and it starts processing the bad cells in your body. Um, I spoke with a woman on the podcast a couple seasons back who said that in her cancer treatment, they recommended fasting to her because it actually helped kill the cancer cells. Amazing information, right, to have in your back pocket if you ever need it. So it kind of all of a sudden clicked in my feverish mind. Oh, autophagy. When your body is ill, I have the flu, I don't really want to eat, my stomach isn't there for it. Like, is this my body's natural response to try to get me to fast? So I look it up, and sure enough, my body's natural response when you're sick is the body's natural response when you're sick is to not want food, food aversion. That's a natural trigger because they're trying to get you to go to autophagy. Because if your stomach is empty, your body is forcing all of the energy that it has into healing itself as opposed to processing food because it takes a tremendous amount of energy to process food. So all of a sudden it hit me, and I'm like, oh my God. You know, we always try to force people to eat when they're not well. And I mean, and I know every situation is different, and you know, you can't like take this as a blanket statement, but in the right scenario, not eating and fasting and making sure you have time for your body to heal makes a lot of sense. It it kind of just like clicked into place. It was like click, click, click. And I was like, all right, the kids aren't hungry. I'm not gonna force them. I'm just making sure we're pushing fluids. The biggest element, the biggest key for me the past couple of days has been I just need to drink as many fluids as I can and stand at this point, right? So that's all I've been doing. I've been focusing on drinking a lot of fluids. This is day two, and I I essentially have been fasting for two days. Um, I ate today, I was able to stomach a couple of crackers. The only times that I'm eating food at this point is when I'm taking my medicine because I don't want to put anything in my stomach completely empty. So that's that's really all I've been doing. Yesterday morning, I had a little bit of food in the morning with my medicine. And again at night, I had a couple of crackers, literally just to take my medicine. And I'm doing the same thing today. I don't feel terrible. Um, I do feel better, and I'm hoping that maybe with this information in my mind, um maybe this is right and maybe leaning into that, the fasting is gonna help me heal better. I don't know. We'll see. I'm actually willing to try anything at this point. Um, something I saw online that I'm gonna try this weekend, I'm gonna tell you guys about it next week to let you know how it comes out. Because I'm always interested in trying new things at home for like to involve my kids in the kitchen with trying new healthy foods. So I don't, I don't have the research with me because I actually am recording in my car today while I pick up my kids from school. Yes, while I'm sick, I do like to pick the kids up from school because anytime I'm not working, they always ask me to pick them up. And there will never not be a day unless I'm dying or unless my legs are broken. There will never not be a day that I won't come and do that for them. As long as they want me to do it, I will always do it because there will be a day that they don't want me to do it, right? So let me just take advantage now that they still want their mom around. So that out of the way, um, I was looking because I've been bedridden for two days. I was looking online at different recipes. And one of the things that I found I stumbled upon was making your own pickles. And not just making your own pickles, but pickling um cauliflower, pickling uh, you know, what is it? Obviously, cucumbers, pickling carrots, just pickling a whole different kinds of vegetables. I I don't, and again, I don't have the research handy for me, but fermented foods are supposed to be actually really, really healthy for you. And I might be confusing pickling with fermenting. But either way, I know the pickling thing is meant to be a healthy snack and it's supposed to be really good for you and really tasty. So I found a couple recipes on YouTube. I'm gonna give it a shot this weekend and see how it tastes and see if my kids will eat it. Um, I'm actually pretty excited about that. I hope I feel well enough to do it because I, while I don't mind sitting down and resting and just being, um it is making me antsy. I'm trying not to get too antsy. Um, one other thing that I'm doing, I'll share quickly with you before the car line starts to move. In the past couple days while I've been home, I've also been um ill, but also thinking about my energy and making sure I'm pulling in some good energy even while I'm sick. And one of the quickest ways that I like to reset my energy and pull in good energy is you want to the way to reset your energy is getting your body and getting your soul to feel happiness in some way. Now, what's the best way for you to feel happiness? For me, it's actually to look at pictures. So I will start to look through old pictures and I look through pictures of the kids when they were babies, which inevitably almost makes me cry every single time of joy, not you know, sadness. Um, I look, I look through everything. I look through pictures of the first time we got into the pool at our house, like all the things. So today I was looking through all the pictures from our vacation last year, and it brings, it sparks so much joy and happiness anytime I do it. And whenever that joy and happiness come, you know, starts to generate inside me and vibrate inside me, I know that that happiness is being pressed out in front of me. And that's one of those key differentiating factors that people don't realize is that in order for you to attract happiness and to attract more of what you want, you have to generate that feeling. And it's very hard to do that in the day-to-day with all the struggles that we encounter. And so looking at photos is one of the easiest ways to do that. So I just wanted to share that quick tip with you guys too, because that's something that, like, again, I do it not on a regular basis, but I do it pretty often, often enough. And I have my kids doing it too, and they love it. So just a little bit of a tip there. Now, I am still sick, but I did not want to miss any episodes with you guys for as much as I could. So I wanted to make sure I recorded at least a couple for you this week. More to come next week. Hopefully, I'll be better. We will not have any flu week next week, I hope. Oh, but we will have spring break next week. So next week I do have three days off Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, with my kids for spring break. So I will bring you some probably more fun, interesting episodes next week. Um, until then, thank you so much for hanging out with me while I'm sick. Um, thank you for listening to the podcast, and I will catch you on the next one. Take care.