Confessions of a Health Coach - Part 1
Some of you
may be surprised to learn the reasons why my family & I try to have a
‘healthy’ and nutritious life-style.
Could it be out of vanity to have a slammin’ body or the strive for
immortality? I mean really, who doesn’t want to live a long life whilst having
the bod of a super model? Actually, it’s
a complex answer which has evolved over the past 20 years.
I am
overweight currently and it is a struggle for me, but this alone is not the
reason I choose to cut out the CRAP (carbonated drinks, refined foods,
artificial food-like substances, processed stuff in a box) and start eating
FOOD (fruits & veggies, organic, omega 3 fatty acids, drinking lots &
lots of water). Ya see I was in pain & lots of it. When I was 32, I had the ‘perfect storm’
happening; I ate mostly fast foods & little to no nutritiously dense foods
(I was poor, very poor. So much cheaper to buy CRAP than FOOD); I was
misdiagnosed with Rhumatoid Arthritis, I was planning for my upcoming wedding,
and I had a golf-ball sized lump in my breast (cancer is a scary thing, that
runs hard and fast through my family).
As you can imagine, with all the stress it became very easy to just give
up and feel sorry for myself… which lasted for a few years.
Then one
day, I decided I was tired of waiting for the complete disability to kick-in
and made the choice to change my destiny.
After all, I am quite determined.
So I began to research anti-inflammatory foods and drinks which would
help to alleviate my pain and those which cause the inflammation. What I learned was that highly refined foods
and foods that have been MAN-ufactured cause a great deal of inflammation and
pain throughout the body. Side effects
of that inflammation include: cancer, obesity, diabetes, digestive problems,
memory loss (foggy brain), heart disease, hormonal issues, pain, exhaustion,
the list goes on and on. I for one was
already dealing with a number of symptoms which only intensified throughout my
30’s.
In the
beginning, I continued buying and cooking the same foods for my family and only
concentrated on changing my own diet. I
can testify that over the span of about a year, my quality of life completely
changed. I could move, walk, bend, and
twist totally pain-free (no cane required).
Not to mention, way less infections, colds, flus, and illnesses in
general.
It was the
realization that my young children were suffering from some of the side effects
of having a CRAPpy diet that we made the choice to invest in our grocery diet
and cut back on the many medications we had been purchasing.
To be continued…
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