After I had two children and survived the stress of  Nursing School in 1996,  I wanted to get back to my teenage figure. Well, I was a nurse right, I am supposed to be “the poster child of health” to my patients. SO I took what I learned and attempted to lose weight.

By 1998 I had had another baby and reached my heaviest weight ever.  I jumped on the low-fat bandwagon, calorie counting, low salt, and eating every 2 hours. Eating every 2 hours is extremely hard as a nurse, and of course, it didn’t work. In the early 2000s, low carb was popular. Still, I couldn’t do it because it was too salty because the same receptors that salt and cocaine bind to were hijacked by sugar, and my body needed those carbs to feel good and to function since I had trained my body to run on them while doing low fat, low salt diet.

I would become shaky, tired, have brain fog, and chronic low back pain, all of these are problems created by a low salt diet. This was stressing my adrenals, and they were complaining, i.e., back pain. Not the right mix when you had three boys and worked 12-hour shifts.

 Fat has more calories than carbs, right… therefore, more energy and I had trained my body to NOT use fat for energy, and it was piling on. My body needed easy-to-digest carbs for a pick-me-up. With all the carbs I was eating, my body was very acidic. Within two years, I had osteoporosis, degenerative disk disease, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, with pain all over my body at 27. My body was stealing calcium from my bones to neutralize the acid caused by processed carbs in a desperate attempt to maintain homeostasis. Then I developed GERD from low bile function created from a low-fat diet, leading to the inability to digest fats and remove toxins, leaving me with rashes, ache, and itchy skin. All because my body was out of practice in digesting healthy fats. Along with taking antacids, lowering my body’s ability to extract vitamins and minerals needed to restore and rebuild my body, like calcium,  from food and/or supplements. Instead of adding strength to my bones. These minerals were left in my bloodstream and created kidney stones. Everything was out of harmony!

My peers told me, “go see a shrink; it might help; change your occupation, don’t gain any more weight, or have any more babies.”  I was miserable and ready to end it all.

I had dreamed of helping people and making them happy since I was two years old, and here I was heartbroken, broken down, and I felt 80.