My Journey to a Healthier Life.

Through the years I look back on what I learned as a child. I think we all do. We don't really question much of what we are taught but accept it as good. Some of us will break out of the norm to find something better, but many of us stay the course. I think it is safe to say food isn't any different. Matter of a fact I think taking care of our health is one of the most challenging adventures any human can take. Challenging because we love what we eat and don't really want to change it. This is by far the biggest hurdles for people to overcome. I don't think it is conquered in a day. However I do believe we can retrain our tasted buds. This could be the key to taking something yummy and making it be better. We have discovered this to be one of the most powerful ways to affect ones health. ( We will be sharing and growing in this on the Let's Get Cooking Group, so be sure to join in.)

My journey started with growing up on a ranch. My mother was very consciencious about our food choices. We ate whole grains, no fast food, no sodas, no chips, all goodness. She even dewormed us every year with the animals. She taught us to bake and cook. She didn't trust the fast food places. My grandma would send us coupons for one of the fast food chains and some how they would mysteriously go missing.

When I was older and had moved out, I couldn't afford much food. I grabbed what was easy. I worked at a restaurant at the time, so my food was soda pop. Just a few years earlier, I worked at a restaurant, my first job. I learned everything there was to learn except manage the place and man the grill. I worked as a hot foods girl making the soups, muffins, and fried foods for the salad bar. Back then salad bars were a full meal deal. We were taught to put MSG (monosodium glutamate) into the soups. Everyone loved my soups because I put a lot of MSG in the soup. ( Doesn't that tell you something?) I didn't know what it was. By the time I was 17, 2 years into working there, I developed migraines from MSG. Any time I ate MSG I would get migraines, even to this day. You could say it was because I was working with it, or we could all be honest with ourselves and realize, it isn't safe, the man made version of it, that is.

At this point, as a teenager, I was starting to realize chemicals were taking an ill effect on me. However, I still didn't think about any other chemicals. I should have. It was another 10 or so years before I to took a real hard look at my eating habits. Honestly though the way I felt, motivated me more than knowledge. When I felt awful, I wanted to know why and fix it. I don't like feeling slow, sluggish, or bad in any way.

Coming into my late 20's early 30's I started to gain weight. I really didn't like it. By this time I was working as a manager at a retail store. I often chose convenience over quality of food. I wasn't feeling vibrant like when I was younger. This motivated me to find a way to drop the weight. I had tried the things that used to work in my teens and early 20 with really no lasting results. My hunt took me to the library where I found Suzanne Sommers diet book with recipes. I took it home and wrote down my notes and started the plan. It worked. I felt better and continued this diet for about 3 years. I am sorry, I do not remember the name of the book. I felt great and within 6 months, I was smaller than in high school, even though I weighed more. Muscle weighs more than fat (little FYI).

Now let's fast forward a bit. I get married, have twins and now my body takes another turn I wasn't expecting. This one has been much more difficult to adjust to. Do you know what I am talking about. At first I felt like I lost my cardio. For 4 years I just chalked it up to having kids and kept moving. Then finally when they were about 4 I had had enough. I was tired of feeling sluggish. I didn't have much cardio strength. I was getting into changing my food to include really clean ingredients. I was reading my husbands books on detoxing and fasting. These inspired me to get a powdered colon cleanse, which helped for awhile. But it came time to get the roto rooter service, a colon hydrotherapy session. I had never done this before. My husband kept talking about it, but honestly it wasn't until I woke up one morning with the urgency to pursue getting one. Off I went to clean out my bottom. I thought it was going to be like going to the OBGYN, which I despise.. It was so much easier than that. Thank goodness.

The day after my colon hydrotherapy, I went on one of my daily walks. I decided to take a run to see how my body was doing. Normally, I would puff out of air in only a few yards. This day I ran full boar down the street. I felt my lungs open up like I was young again. I could run again. I was so happy. These experiences motivated me to dig in deeper to understand how the things I was doing affected my life.

. Now, my husband grew up, like many of us, eating any kind of processed food, like Hoho's, Twinkies, Top Ramen. He was a junk food junky. This went on for many years. Sometime later, in his thirties, He had a miraculous experience. Being a believer, my husband encounter the living God over his health, something likened unto the matrix download (from the movie "The Matrix" rated R). He received counsel and information that changed the way he saw food and nutrition. He started studying anatomy, natural remedies, food benefits and more. He was led to scrap everything and eat mangos and avocados for a duration. During this time, his body reset and dumped toxins. He studied and studied and soon was helping others.

He began training people how to cook raw, vegan, vegetarian, or simply changing ingredients based on their desires. People started coming to him to teach them how to cook. This opened the doors for him to revive the vitality and health of a dying woman and many others. He has helped people from general nutrition, to parasite cleansing, to saving peoples lives, even after the doctors gave up on them. He has been given a true gift. I am blessed to have married this amazing man.

I am thankful for the options we have to better our lives in this country. Like you I am finding my way. I know there are so many of us out there wanting real answers. For each of us, we have to find what that is. Our bodies go through many changes as we age. I am in the journey of experiencing and finding my way to keep my health as strong as I can. Up to this point, I have learned a bunch, and there is so much more to learn. We are amazing, profound, one of a kind creatures with such intriquette details down to a tiny, tiny, tiny instruction book in our bodies called DNA. We each are so unique in our personalities, our bodies, our minds. With all this uniqueness in the world, there are also many answers for different health dilemmas. This is a place we can all come to overcome and thrive in our health. Healthy mind, soul, and body. We hope you will be inspired to change your life for the better too.

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