“Hey honey, this year I’ve made a
goal to lift weights and get more toned!”
“Awesome! I’ve always wanted a more
toned wife. I will do it with you.”
So began 2014, a pledge between my husband
and myself to get up early every Tuesday and Thursday and turn on Jillian
Michaels and pump iron. After two weeks of sore muscles and little results in
muscle definition, my dizzy spells came back.
I’d been suffering with weird physical
health issues for 3 years, and been trying to combat them with healthier food
and more exercise, and I thought I’d done a pretty good job until I threw my
body off balance trying to “get toned.”
My doctor was no help, in fact, because of my difficult mental health
history, he tried to put me on Zoloft to get rid of the dizzy spells, head
aches, and fatigue, even though I’d gotten through graduate school without any
medication and certainly didn’t feel I needed any now. I’d read books and been to cooking classes and
completely eliminated overt sugars, why am I dizzy again?
I decided this time to turn to God,
and I exercised as much faith as I could muster in asking Him to heal me. The
result was a phone call from an acquaintance down the street. “Hey, I noticed
you don’t serve refreshments or sugar at church meetings. I admire that! I have
a book you might like.”
Oh, great, I thought. Another book
from an anti-sugar extremist telling me all my problems are due to sugar. But
it came to me after an exercise of faith…so I read “Sugar Blues” by William
Dufty, and yes it was more anti-sugar circumlocution, but this time I felt it
was an answer from heaven just for me. I started to change my diet with
religious fervor.
My elimination of all overt, covert
and refined sugars and grains started April 1st, and thus my
adventure in pain was born. This was not a quick fix, and I was not patient. The
only thing that kept me going was the indisputable fact that those dizzy spells
left with the sugars. I wanted to quit many times, but “some miracles take time”
kept replaying in my head and drowned out the opposition. My sweet sister
actually took me aside and started crying because she was so worried I had let
my anxieties about food become an obsession that would hurt me. And then there
were the negative thoughts in my own head.
“Why me? It’s not fair! Why is it ok for
everyone else to eat bad and not for me?”
And then there were the problems, it
seemed every negative health problem I fixed was replaced with a new problem:
ovarian cysts, bloating, bowel irregularity, ulcers. But if I ever tried to “go back” it was
infinitely worse. And I couldn’t ignore the plus side, I did lose a lot of weight
and had way more energy to lift weights, and I got way more toned! I didn’t
seem to have those bi-monthly migraines any more.
I kept reading books, kept being led
to more information that helped me understand my metabolic type and how to
heal. And…in February 2015 I started
noticing lasting change. My passion for learning was back, in fact I felt smart
again. My stomach was rarely bloated and I was more regular. I didn’t have the
mood dysregulation I used to have and I didn’t have to spend all day in the kitchen
preparing food. I was sleeping through the night consistently. I wanted to live
instead of wanting to die! I felt like the miracle had arrived at last!
With patience and persistence, my
story became a success story.
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