I guess this is the final part to my health journey, the talk about how the rest of my body and soul was after I had Grace. If I’m being honest, it was horrible. I was SO fortunate that I didn’t get post partum depression (and God bless any one who is reading this who is currently going through that struggle, I send you ALL of my love), I was fortunate to lose all of the baby weight REALLY quickly, but I felt like absolute ick.
All the new mom stuff aside, I mean truly becoming a Mama is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and I learned how to walk again as an adult. People say you’re going to be tired, but you can’t even conceptualize what that means (well I could from this one time I stayed awake for 3 days on an ROTC exercise but that’s a story for another time), the adjustments your body goes through, shoot the adjustments your family goes through, and that’s just scratching the surface. One thing is a lot for one person to handle, not to mention all at once, and all the while you’ve also been deemed responsible for keeping this tiny human alive. Ay yai yai.
I had all those adjustments and then I had this weird thing happen with my digestion, it completely changed. Like drastically and in the worst way ever, changed. I got IBS symptoms without having IBS, and it was miserable. I couldn’t understand why my body was having such a severe reaction to everything I put in it, and I tried everything under the sun to change it. I also tried really hard to accept the “new look” for my body because the symptoms were so severe (and yes I did seek medical attention because of it), I was amazingly inflamed through my core and even though scale wise I lost the weight, it didn’t look like I had lost the weight.
I worked out like crazy as my means to cope, and my means to get whatever excess weight I had off, I had my healthy lifestyle with my healthy eating habits and nothing was working. I was so frustrated, I was so discouraged, and because of those symptoms and being a new mama, I was also exhausted. Quite honestly, because my symptoms were IBS mimicking (I was actually initially diagnosed with IBS, the symptoms were so parallel), I was also embarrassed.
Finally I confided in a girlfriend of mine who takes a more holistic approach on life and she started talking to me about the power of detoxing. I definitely had a reason to, the medications alone from the c-section were reason to detox, so I thought sure why not. Really at that point I figured I had nothing to lose and I just wanted to feel better. I needed it, I was suffering.
3 days after having that superfood in my body only once a day and I felt like myself again. Symptoms gone, digestion back to normal, I didn’t feel tired when I first woke up in the morning, and I was sleeping better at night. 3 months later and people were noticing and asking me to help them get what I had so they could also feel better. Because they were noticing I felt energetic, they were noticing that I was losing weight (which actually turned out to be inflammation), and they were noticing a change in my overall affect.
1 year later and I was teaching people how to safely intermittent fast and fasting with my husband who’s also seen amazing results and feels his best. I get to see my tribe take their health journey to a whole new level because they’re truly giving their body the best nutrition, and I get to celebrate their victories.
And now? I’m growing. I’m teaching people how to incorporate fitness into their nutrition, giving details on how a woman’s body responds differently to fitness, and I’m in a place of maintenance. I’m smaller than I was when I was a sophomore in college (and you better believe I did a happy dance when I put on a pair of jeans that was a size down from where I was when I was 21), I get sick less than I ever have, and I get to give my body the best nutrition everyday.
I’m teaching people how to be accountable to themselves, because I was accountable to MYSELF. I’m teaching people not just how to reach their goals, but also that they deserve to reach those goals. I’m showing people, just like I showed myself, that we MATTER and that we won’t be able to give our best selves to those around us unless we give it to ourselves first.
