It took me 47 years to realize what a true “healthy lifestyle” looks like. When I think back to my childhood, I remember Coke being the only drink in our refrigerator, pizza every Friday and my dad making giant submarine sandwiches on the weekends. When I say giant, he would get the ironing board out, cover it completely with saran wrap or foil and put a roll the length of the board on top of it. Then, layering meat after meat and cheese after cheese and don’t forget the oil and vinegar. Now, combine that with hearing “we need to lose weight” …. To the extent that pictures of a man in workout clothing and a woman in a workout outfit from the 80s were hung up on the back of the door to the room that had our spin bike in it as a daily reminder of what we weren’t. How could we possibly get to that goal with the foods in our house? Talk about mixed messages.
Of course, this is what I knew which means I didn’t realize that this wasn’t “normal” or that it was unhealthy. I just assumed this is the roller coaster ride everyone is on through life. You can’t possibly have fun and eat delicious food or even enough food while making healthy eating a lifestyle, right?
Wrong! Just some background of the previous 12 years before I get into how I finally learned what healthy eating looks like. When I was 35 I started having a lot of tingling in my fingers, joint issues, specifically my knees. My fingers and toes would turn white when I was cold or held something cold and man, was that painful. I didn’t know what was going on…I thought maybe it had something to do with the side hustle I was doing which was making jewelry. It made sense to me…joints, issues with my fingers. It wasn’t until I went to my annual ophthalmology appointment (love my doc, btw) and she said “I’m going to test your tear production.” What she found is that I was producing 0% tears. She tells me her guess is that I have an autoimmune called Sjogrens. It turns out she was right! Wow! I had an answer to these weird things suddenly starting. Let’s fast forward 12 years….Here I am living my life “healthfully” just living with these symptoms and thinking this is life and it's okay. I got this. This little autoimmune issue isn’t going to stop me.
Well, for a long time I wanted to add nutrition to the RISE business, but I needed to figure out how I wanted to run my program so I decided to take the program my friend teaches. She knew my goals of learning how she runs the business, but I still felt like I should come up with legit goals to really understand it from a client’s perspective. So, I decided to see if any of my autoimmune symptoms would be affected by food.
One night when I got to week 3 of the program, I was trying to go to sleep. I did a body scan meditation to relax myself. This is a meditation where you can lie on your back and have complete awareness of your body and how it feels.I start at my toes and work my way up. I typically fall asleep somewhere in the middle, but THIS night, I was awake the entire time. Why? Because I realized I had none of my autoimmune symptoms. How could this be? How have I had symptoms for 12 years everyday and all of a sudden, none?
Autoimmune starts in the gut. Things like grain and dairy can cause inflammation, a huge contributor to autoimmune issues. A low glycemic lifestyle focuses on keeping our blood glucose levels even which means eating throughout the day without skipping meals and eating low glycemic foods while balancing it out with lean proteins and healthy fats. It sounds easy enough to do, but the key was the education behind why low glycemic is the healthiest way to achieve a sustainable healthy lifestyle. Understanding how the brain and gut work together and realizing how food choices affect things like what we believe is willpower, blew me away….and changed my life forever! There is no more guilt or roller coaster rides. No foggy brain, lack of energy or constant throbbing throughout my body. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, when we did measurements in week 4 of the program….I was down those 5 freaking pounds I
lost an inch on each thigh and waist and 1.5 inches off hips! Whaaat?! These weren’t even part of my goals, but I definitely was feeling pretty good about these results.
So guess what I added to RISE…that’s right, a low glycemic nutrition program because I know it works first hand and the results my clients are seeing are phenomenal! They feel great in their day to day activities while losing the weight they wanted to lose.
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