It is amazing how much our lives revolve around food. Most people typically eat 3 times a day and snack in between. Without food we are nothing, but for something that is in our lives day in and day out, not too many people actually know what they are putting into their bodies and how it’s affecting them. I am guilty of being one of those people who would eat whatever I wanted and just would always tell myself: “If I work out, I’ll be able to eat whatever I want, whenever I want.” I guess during high school that worked because I was a pretty constant weight, but college I gained the freshmen 15 and didn’t lose a pound of it until I graduated.
I remember there was a month at our school called “February Fitness,” and I was convinced this was the big chance for me to lose all this weight I had gained throughout college. Everyday I worked out in February for at least a 1/2 hour and refused to weigh myself until the month was officially over. After a long month of waking up early and staying up late working out, I finally stepped up on the scale. To my horrible dismay I didn’t lose a single pound, in fact I had gained a pound… At that point I lost most of my motivation. However, my biggest fall back was that I never put together that what I was eating was hindering me from losing weight, so I just continued to be on the school’s meal plan and eat cookies and ice cream for desert almost every night (why not? It was “free” with the meal plan).
After graduation I moved out onto the ranch with Sean’s family and started to work long hot days: riding, fixing up the house we were going to move into and several hard labor jobs. I would come home at night and eat just as much as the boys did because I was so tired, exhausted and hungry! However, my wedding date was approaching fast and I desperately needed to lose 10 lbs to fit into a wedding dress that I had acquired years before. My mom would nervously call me on the phone and ask me how my “progress” was coming along, I would get offended and tell her that I would lose the weight before the wedding. Miraculously, I lost the 10 lbs by cutting back on my portions at meal time and by running at the crack of dawn before it would get too hot out. The wedding dress fit like a slip and I loved the way I looked on my wedding day. Too bad I couldn’t keep the weight off following the wedding.
Almost instantly I gained all the weight I had lost back because it was now the fall time and I was settling down into my own routine without as much manual labor. Now I was in charge of cooking full time to keep my husband filled (which is almost impossible for a guy who is burning everything you feed him without hours) and keeping my house in order. Running went out the window and I wasn’t motivated very much anymore to keep in shape and since I was a newly wed I was trying new recipes all the time and baking sweet goods all the time to keep my husband happy. What I didn’t notice was what I was cooking was not as healthy as it could be, lots of canned goods, sugars, white flours, etc. It didn’t take too long before health problems started to arise… Very subtly I started to notice issues I had never dealt with before.
One of the big things I started to notice was that I felt like I had very little energy throughout the day. Doing small tasks around the house seemed a lot harder then it should have been and that naps were a must throughout the day to be able to do anything. My stomach started to hurt for no apparent reason whatsoever and it would cause me to be uncomfortable all day long, with no real relief from stomach medications. Finally the bigger signs started to reveal the true depth of the problem.
Sean and I had been charting my cycles because we use Natural Family Planning instead of unnatural birth control methods to plan when we were going to have children. We didn’t feel like we were completely ready to have a baby when we first got married, but we decided just to live it up and if we got pregnant we got pregnant and that would be what God wanted. After 4 months not really caring whether we got pregnant or not I started to get a little worried… Because we hadn’t gotten pregnant! I felt like I was a young, healthy woman that should have no problem conceiving a baby but our worst fears were starting to play out, that we could possibly have infertility problems.
I hadn’t had my period in over 2 months and I assumed I was pregnant, but a pregnancy test confirmed that wasn’t the case. Finally I got fed up with charting because I thought maybe I was getting a little too stressed out about not getting pregnant, so we stopped charting. Not too long after stopping charting different symptoms started to worsen: I started to have stabbing pains in lower pelvis area and I was just not feeling good all together. Now I was at that point where I thought I would need a doctors intervention. I called my Creighton Model teacher and sent her my charts from before we stopped charting, by looking at my charts she speculated that I might have an ovarian cyst, which would explain why I hadn’t had my period and possibly why we hadn’t conceived a baby. Immediately I started doing research on ovarian cysts and the answers were not very uplifting. Most of articles I read said the only way it could be corrected was through surgery or a doctor would prescribe birth control. Two things I wouldn’t take as an answer. As I did more research I decided to look up natural remedies for ovarian cysts and found information on how people had gotten rid of nasty ovarian cysts through natural methods, particularly changing their diet.
One e-book I came upon was called “Ovarian Cysts No More.” I was fairly skeptical of the website. It seemed to be one of those “miracle cure” websites and not really worth the money, but I had read plenty of reviews raving about how good the book was and the results they saw. I decided to buy it. The book was a quick read but within a couple hours my perspective completely changed on how to look at ovarian cysts and how they are formed and what feeds an ovarian cyst. At that point I was convinced to try her method first and then if I was still having problems I would follow with a doctor within a week. I never had to go to a doctor to either confirm or deny that I had an ovarian cyst, but I will tell you that as soon as I went on the diet that was suggested I immediately saw results. Within the day the pain in my lower pelvis had been reduced significantly and I was starting to feel that I had more energy. The basis of the diet was getting rid of white flour, white sugars, and processed foods (she did suggest to get rid of some other things, but after doing the diet for a while we decided it was not necessary to cut out certain types of foods).
From that point on I couldn’t have been more convinced that diet was the reason why I had gotten the ovarian cyst in the first place. Within weeks of completely purging our pantry of white flour, white sugars and processed foods, my husband and I felt like completely new people. We were working harder and longer and feeling so much better, what a change in pace! After not having a period for two months my period returned in 5 days after starting the diet, followed by a normal 30 day cycle, then after that cycle… I got pregnant! On top of that I lost 15 lbs just by changing the food we ate, I didn’t work out any more or less, just stopped eating junk! Words could not describe how we were feeling, because we felt like we finally saw the truth on something we had always just been told was normal, when in fact it was far from it.
The longer we stayed on the diet the more we learned about healthy eating lifestyles, and now we are hooked, we can’t stop talking to people about how much food has affected our lives. It was extremely difficult at first to get rid of all foods that contained those ingredients, but I knew that if we didn’t completely purge ourselves from that food that it would take much longer to get used to cooking/eating that way, so we threw it all away and started fresh! Since then, none of those ingredients have entered our house and we are so thankful to be healthy and have a baby on the way!
I am writing this because I plan on in the future to start putting up natural recipes so that those who follow my blog can try it out slowly and see how it’ll work for them. I could spend a lot of time talking about health issues and stuff, but I’ll bore you with that in later posts. It’s great to be eating naturally the food God has given us and has proven to me that is the way he wants me to live a healthy happy life.
