My Journey Of Living With A Serious Heart Condition

I recently read that, when you stand and share your story in an empowering way your story will heal you and your story will heal someone else, When my heart problems started I kept it a secret. How could anyone get it when I didn't even really get it? I was the perfect picture of good health. On a few occasions, when I found myself stuck in the same cardiac ward surrounded by ladies over double my age, I would hear, "your're far to young to have heart problems." 

I oftentimes found myself unable to answer life, it all just seemed so unfair. Through my darkness of times and struggles, I found comfort in my sadness. If that was even half of what depression feels like, it's such a sad and lonely place to be in, I documented every single little detail as a way of coping. Sometimes I hesitated over the "publish" button, but then I remembered that someone out there might need help and support too. I hope sharing will help you in whatever way it's meant to, thank you Katie for inviting me to share my story on your blog.

I'm such a big believer in the perfect storm, that it's not just one event, it's a series of events that build up to cause the perfect storm. My perfect storm struck in June 2013. I was 21, so much had happened in such a short amount of time. I had just had surgery on my knee, I was back in the gym getting fit and I had just got married.

I had pushed myself to loose weight to fit into my wedding dress. I had fallen in love with it and bought it right away. I  pushed myself to not just walk properly again, but to walk in heels. I walked up and down the physiotherapy department using the bars for support as the physiotherapist hummed a wedding tune as I completed my exercises. I got married soon after and we left for our honeymoon to Lanzarote. While we were in Lanzarote I felt exhausted. Instead of enjoying nights out having dinner and drinks celebrating our new life together, I would eat and head back to the room to sleep. I blamed the stress of the wedding and all the physio appointments, but I now know that's when my perfect storm started.

After arriving home from our honeymoon, I started feeling funny, but I just couldn't explain it. I just didn't feel right, I would start sweating and shaking for no reason. I felt like I was at the end of a tunnel. I could hear and see, but not properly. Everything and everyone felt so far away. I would randomly black out and spent hours feeling and being sick. Brain fog would kick in and I would forget things instantly. For example, I would be reading a book and get to the bottom of a page and forget everything I had just read. The fatigue swallowed me up every day.

It took a long time to figure out what was going on, endless tests and hospital stays, the list goes on and on. The only thing they ever found was that my heart was always beating fast, even when I was asleep. I was diagnosed with not one, but two, heart rhythm problems and told my heart's natural pacemaker wasn't working properly, for a reason no one knew. The doctors said it only really effected young females who work in a healthcare environment and I fitted right into that category.

I managed my condition, until passing became a huge part of my everyday life. Drugs wouldn't slow my heart down, they just made me suffer horrible side effects that made me feel even worse. I went through two heart ablations that were soon abandoned. Ablating some of my heart lowered the pace, but stubbornly it just crept back up again, It was too dangerous to fully ablate, so the only option was to continue managing it all with medication.

Everyone remembers the good old sex education classes at school, don't have sex without using protection, because you'll get pregnant and ruin your life. Well, I fell into this category, except it didn't ruin my life. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, but at the time when my heart problems emerged I really felt like my life was over. How could I be a mum and look after a small human when I needed to look after myself most days? The good old pill had failed to work, which probably had a lot to do with all the drugs being pumped into my body. Falling pregnant only a few weeks after my second failed ablation, I was sick, At the age of 23 I was being put on tables to treat heart failure and now I was pregnant. It felt like another huge dip and that I was stuck on that roller coaster of my unfair life. To make matters worse, my pregnancy was also in the high-risk category. At prenatal classes I felt nothing but jealousy watching the other woman write and stress over birth plans. I didn't even get a chance to look at the page, let alone make a plan, I felt I lost control of my life. I had no say over anything. The doctor described labor to me like running a marathon by highlighting the fact that I hadn't trained for the bigger question, which was how would my heart cope? Another huge obstacle we were facing was that my heart could get worse and, therefore, the baby might not grow properly. Our fears were met when a growth scan revealed at 35 weeks he had stopped growing, I was induced a full month early.

My heart did get worse after Kian was born. The point came when my cardiologist decided there was nothing left to try, except another ablation, and this time to not abandon it. This is because I couldn't be any worse off than I was, even if  the worst case scenario did happen. I'll never forget that day agreeing to something that would either cure me or damage my heart for good. There was no rewind button and the damage couldn't be reversed, but it was worth the gamble, as I held onto every last piece of hope it could be fixed. I tried not to think outside the box that the worst case could happen.

My heart was pretty stubborn, but eventually my heart did slow down, except a little too much. My heart that used to easily beat up to 180bpm was now dropping randomly and only beating at 31bpm. The worst of it was when I collapsed at home. The paramedics arrived and hooked me up to the monitor. My heart was pausing and dropping with every minute that passed, my blood pressure was very low and my veins none existent. They made the decision that getting me to hospital with the crash team waiting, gave me the best chance to survive. I had no choice but to get a pacemaker fitted, which was my back up to when my heart failed to beat.

November 2015 I got my pacemaker implanted. As I felt the little battery under my chest propelling my heart to beat properly, it was a small reminder of the price I had to pay and all the hard times I had been through. I didn't regret any of the ablations because it improved my life. My heart being damaged was the best thing to happen to me, as crazy as it sounds, and I definitely wasn't worse off. Not only did I have the luxury of doing simple things I couldn't do before, but I also didn't have the fear of passing out. This is because I had the added bonus of the pacemaker kicking in when my heart did decide to race.

Ronan Keating once sang a song about life being a roller coaster, and as much as I dislike the song, he has a point. Having sinus node disease means my life will always be a roller coaster waiting for the next dip or bend, never knowing when my ride will go kaput. But if I learned anything from this experience, it's that it's always worth the gamble, especially when the gamble is to have good health.

If you'd like to get in touch with Danielle, please contact her on social media.

facebook.com/livingwithistuk/

instagram.com/danielleurquhartxox/

facebook.com/danielleduffyxox

Ever Heard of Anosmia? Here's My Story About Living With It

I’m writing this with a vanilla scented candle burning next to me.  How do I know its vanilla because it was written on the box when I bought it.  I know it’s sweet and pleasant because I can smell that a tiny bit, but I couldn’t have told you it was vanilla if I hadn’t read the box.

That’s because I have Anosmia, a little known condition which means that I can’t smell anything. Well no, I can smell a little bit now, after a year of smelling nothing at all because there’s been a bit of healing going on since then.

In February 2015, I fainted, hit my head against a wall very hard, and came round to a world with no smell. My nose had failed me because when I hit my head my brain was badly jolted and severed my nerve fibres attached to my olfactory bulb, which is the area in my brain that governs smell. These little fibres were there to tell me what I could smell….and that I could smell, with those gone my smell was gone too.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that day because it changed my life forever, it broke my heart, my spirit, my whole being for a very long time. I was a wreck, and became a shell of my former self. I also stopped eating, this was because as well as my sense of smell, I lost my sense of taste too as they are both connected. Remember what it’s like when you have a cold and your nose is all bunged up, your sense of taste lessens too doesn’t it. That’s because as you eat you breathe in the smell of the food which sends signals to your brain about flavour, what you are experiencing as you eat. When you can’t smell very well your taste is dampened because those signals are fainter. So when you can’t smell at all…..yep you’ve guessed it, you can’t taste at all either.  There are some exceptions to this, I’m no expert so all I can tell you is from my own experience and research, but that’s often how it is for a lot of people with this condition.

Eating was no longer a pleasure, just a chore to endure and I was so unhappy and depressed I just gave up even trying.  That’s when my weight began to fall off and I became very ill, weak, wobbly, always tired and eventually I ended up in hospital with such low blood sugar that if it had been left any longer I could have fallen into a coma. So when I came out I decided that I must try and eat.  It may have worked too, if it wasn’t for the fact that my Anosmia changed to Parosmia.

Parosmia

This is a condition connected to Anosmia, and can happen when the nerve fibres are trying to knit back together. However sometimes the signals get muddled up and they don’t necessarily attach to the correct nerve endings, which is where the problem with Parosmia can occur. When this happens you don’t get true smells, they are known as phantom smells and can often be very unpleasant, which was the case for me.

It meant when I ate something it tasted distorted, disgusting even….like eating rotten egg, food that has gone off or worse in some cases. So it meant the hard work in trying to eat became even harder because I had that to contend with also. So the weight didn’t go back on after all. Well, can you imagine trying to put rotten egg into your mouth for goodness sake!

By this time things were getting very serious and I knew I had to do something, so when I read about the fact that you could be Parosmic in one nostril and Anosmic in the other, I decided to test that theory by closing one nostril and trying to eat, then the other way round. Wow, it turned out I was Parosmic in my left nostril and Anosmic in my right.

So my ridiculous way of eating began – finger over left nostril when putting food into my mouth and eating it – finger off left nostril so can cut food up – finger back over left nostril to eat. Yep you get the picture, but it worked because it meant when I covered over my left Parosmic nostril, I could taste nothing which is a lot better than tasting rotten egg I can assure you! It used to take me ages to eat a meal, I often gave up half way through and I never ate out socially. Can you imagine the looks I’d get and the remarks? “Have you seen the way she eats? Why has she got her finger over her nose?” I still eat this way now and I have to unless I want to starve. Even when I’m having a meal with family or friends it’s still awkward, but not as bad because they know the score and are very understanding and supportive.

If there is something I am thankful for on a daily basis it’s the love, care and support I’ve had from my wonderful husband, family and best friends who have been there for me all the way. Massive hugs and love to all of you.

Well life goes on, and I’m carrying on.  It’s a struggle but even though I’ve been on the brink, I’m still trying to stay strong. Who knows I may get better…it has been known to happen so I’ll never give up hope.

Thanks for reading this and to Katie for inviting me to share my story with you.  If you would like to know more please check out my blog at icantsmellathing.blogspot.com. Also, if you write or blog, or are creative in general, you would be welcome to join my chilled out little writing group on Facebook at www.facebook.com/groups/allwritedj. Maybe see you there.

Type 1 Diabetes: My Rollercoaster Ride of Self Sabotage & Enlightenment

25 years ago, at age six years old, I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. My little life was simple. My mum made me food, and I ate it. If I wanted something I couldn't eat, I accepted I couldn't have it, and that was that, no questions asked. As a single mum, she could rarely afford to buy us treats, but when she did I was quite happy with a bag of chips. I don't remember ever being bothered by having to be injected twice a day and my little friends looked on in amazement when my mum pricked my fingers! 

And then I started high school. I had to test and inject myself. At 11 years old, I started to rebel in my head. I was quiet & self-conscious, and I just wanted to fit in and be like the other girls. This meant eating whatever they ate - chocolates, cakes, chips, you name it! Food seemed to be everywhere I went! I even worked out a way to manipulate my glucose meter into giving me the results I wanted so that my mother wouldn't suspect that I'd spent most of the day eating junk food. 

Things got even worse as I reached my late teens. I was introduced to alcohol and nights out. I still wanted to be just like my friends, and my personal motto became "Anything you can do, I can do better." I ate and drank what I wanted, when I wanted. I had already started putting on the weight. I felt fat and ugly, but that didn't stop me from eating. My sugar levels were constantly up and down. Eventually, I stopped testing my blood glucose levels completely to stop the guilt. I would even make my numbers up before each clinic appointment. A tiny voice in my head told me I was slowly killing myself, but I ignored it. Not even the horror stories of feet amputations, kidney dialysis and blindness put me off. I was in denial. I just wanted to be normal. 

By the age of 21, I weighed 178lbs and was wearing size 14 clothes. I was admitted to hospital with Diabetic Ketoacidosis at the age of 22, a life threatening condition caused by high blood sugars, which will result in death if not treated. On discharge, I was sternly told to "keep better control." I'd love to say I listened but I didn't know how to manage it. And I didn't know who or where or how to ask for help. So I carried on. I told myself "You only live once, may as well enjoy it while I can." 

A turning point came when I found out I was expecting my baby. Suddenly I had support on tap, people telling me what I needed to do & how much insulin to inject, coupled with the realization that I had another being relying on me to keep him or her safe, healthy and alive. My control was spot on for the duration of my pregnancy. 

After the birth of my daughter, the baby weight fell off me, plus an extra 14lbs, and I felt good about myself for the first time in forever! I managed to keep up the good work, but then her dad and I separated and I started to struggle again. My subconscious told me to pull myself together and start looking after myself for her sake. She needed her mummy. But I struggled to juggle my condition with being a single mother. It wasn't long before I started piling the weight back on. 

I was shocked when I received my terrible hba1c result last year. A hba1c test shows your average blood sugars over a three-month period. I knew deep down I needed to drastically change my lifestyle and something just clicked in my head. I started doing some major research and joined a gazillion social media support groups. I started eating healthier, less carbs and more protein. I also joined a gym and found an amazing personal trainer to push me. I've managed to lose the weight I put back on and I feel so much better about myself, and healthier! I even started to test my sugar levels again, so much so that I'm now slightly obsessed, I test myself on average at least 12 times a day! Earlier this month, I was ecstatic to learn that my hba1c had come down to a good level. 

I'm no Doctor, but through my research, I believe I suffered from Diabetes Burnout and some form of Binge Eating Disorder for all those years. I wanted to share my story, as I don't believe I'm the only diabetic to feel the way I felt; if you can identify with my story in any way, I strongly urge you to go and speak to your Diabetes team, so that they can help you. 

I'm finally at peace with myself, at a place in my head where I no longer feel burdened by my condition. I've learned to embrace it instead of hiding it away. I spent all those wasted years in denial and rebellion, but finally I've come to realize that "anything my friends do, I can 100% do better," I just have to do it a different way!

Please feel free to contact Becky via email or social.

Blog: Hectic Dia-BEC-tic
Blog address: www.hecticdiabectic.com 
Facebook: www.facebook.com/hecticdiabectic
Instagram: www.instagram.com/hecticdiabectic
Email: hecticdiabectic@gmail.com

An Inspirational Story: One Woman’s Journey To Get Fit

My story about food and getting fit began as a child and has been a battle my whole life.  I was a very active athlete and always found ways of trying to “out-exercise” my diet. It was exhausting. Fast forward and enter marriage, two pregnancies accompanied with the excuse to not make healthy choices when it came to food. Although I was able to lose the weight both times, I was neglecting my family to go to the gym, bouncing between fad diets and doing whatever it took to be “skinny” again.

Beachbody entered my life four months ago through a friend and it has given me a whole new outlook on fitness and family.  It really came to the rescue, as it was the first program that provided me with a roadmap about food and fitness. My personal journey to getting fit lead me to the 21 Day Fix Extremeprogram which focuses on portion control and 30 minute fitness videos to maximize my time. With the help of an online challenge group and my coach, I have created new habits, and more importantly, a new outlook on what it means to be “fit” not “skinny” again.

Getting Fit with New Habits

The new habits I have created have been a positive change in my life.  Before my journey to getting fit, I never cooked. Now I meal plan for the week on Sunday’s and cook with the help of colored containers and the Fixate Cookbook. My mornings have become less stressful, as I don’t have to pack bags the night before and get up in the cold, dark weather to head out to the gym to workout.

I now get up in the morning, work up a good sweat and get ready for work all from the comfort of my home. I quickly mix up a delicious Shakeology shake for the road and grab my premade mason jars of food and head out the door. On the weekends my kids join in on the workouts and help with the cooking. Our new weekend routine allows for quality family time and a chance for the kids to try something new!

Looking to the Future

As I look to the future, I’m excited about being able to find a healthy balance between life, family, nutrition and fitness. I no longer worry about the number on the scale, but focus on how I feel physically and emotionally. I have more energy and I make better choiceswhen it comes to food. My new lifestyle has allowed me to mindfully step back and reevaluate what’s important to me.

Nobody’s perfect and I realize that everyone needs a cheat day, therefore, I don’t feel guilty about treating myself to a special dinner or indulging when celebrating with friends. I’m so happy with my success to getting fit. I decided to become a Beachbody coach to help others with their personal fitness journeys. This isn’t my “career,” as I truly love my job, but I’m hopeful that I’ll continue to be an inspiration to others and work with other amazing people to help them reach their fitness goals.

Conclusion

If there’s one piece of advice I can leave you with, it’d be to stop putting off taking care of yourself until tomorrow, or spending hours in the gym trying to “out-exercise” poor nutrition. There’s no better time than now to make a change!

Contact Kristin at kruhsamtegelman@gmail.com or visit her website for more information about  the 21 Day Fix, and many other Beachbody programs. You can do this, take the time for yourself now so you have a body to live in for the future!

How I'm Managing Life After My Son Was Diagnosed With Dravet Syndrome

December 6, 2014. It's one of those days that I'd like to forget, but is forever etched into my memory bank. The ground outside was covered in snow, so I spent a good 30 minutes getting all five kids suited up to go play in it - only to have them run back in 10 minutes later with cold hands and red noses. We stripped off the wet, snowy clothes and headed to the kitchen for lunch. The kids all plopped down at the table, and I started making grilled cheese sandwiches. I had my back to them when I heard a loud thud. I whipped around to see Enzo, my then three-year old son, on the ground, flopping around in convulsions. I scooped him up and yelled for Micah. Within 30 seconds Enzo had relaxed and quit seizing, but his eyes were glazed. We called 911, and the ambulance was at our house in minutes, along with most of our neighbors.

By the time the paramedics were in the house Enzo was talking and mostly coherent. They suggested we drive him to the emergency room to be checked out, so we did. When we arrived they noticed Enzo had a low grade fever and assumed that was what had caused the seizure. My niece had done the same thing once before, so it seemed to be a logical conclusion. To be safe, they went ahead and did some blood work (to test his electrolyte levels) and a CT scan (to check for bleeds in his brain, tumors, and all sorts of scary stuff). Everything came back normal, and we were sent home with instructions to work extra hard to keep him fever-free. We assumed that was the end of it, but we were wrong.

The following week my family came in to visit for Christmas. My brother was sleeping in Enzo's room with him, and was awakened to Enzo grunting and making strange sounds in his sleep. The next night we moved Enzo to our bed. We soon realized he'd been having nocturnal seizures nearly every night, and we had no idea how long it had been happening. We called our family doctor. He suggested we take him to the ER at the Children's Hospital in Oklahoma City, and we did. They asked lots of questions, did a pretty minor physical examination, and sent us home with our first seizure medication, Keppra, and a referral to a pediatric neurologist.

We met with the neurologist, who explained to us the steps to figuring out why our child was having seizures, which was basically just a long line of lab tests and trial-and-error medicating. We increased his dosage of Keppra, and the night time seizures stopped. Unfortunately, that's when the day time 'drop' seizures started. Drop seizures look very similar to the motion that happens when a person is falling asleep and suddenly jerks back awake, except they can happen at any time. In addition to the unknown effect of these seizure types on the brain, they can do serious physical damage, especially if they happen while Enzo is standing, walking, running, sitting at a table, pretty much anything other than laying down. His arms and head fly forward with full force when he has one. Each only lasts a second or two, but that's long enough to do some major damage to his face.

Enzo had his first EEG a couple months after the drop seizures started; the results came back normal. Still no answers. His neurologist started us on our second seizure medication, Zonisamide, to try and control the new seizure type. We saw some improvement. We started trying to wean the Keppra. Seizure medications have serious and severe side effects, and we really wanted him on as little medication as possible. Kids on Keppra often suffer from uncontrollable rage, lethargy, among other things, possibly including some long-term side effects we don't know about yet. Sadly, weaning turned out not to be an option for us. He needed both to have any sort of control of the seizures. Luckily, we've seen only minimal side effects so far.

As time went on we learned to deal with the seizures. Enzo almost always had bruises on his face, and a band-aid on his forehead. We tried to maintain some sort of normalcy for him, but it was hard. One time, we took a trip to visit my mom in Louisiana, he had a seizure, smashed his face into her coffee table, and knocked out his front tooth. We learned that changes to his schedule, lack of sleep, stress, anxiety, and illness all caused his condition to worsen. We were on pins and needles all the time.

And then, in the summer of 2015, we did genetic testing and discovered that Enzo had an SCN1A mutation. It's basically a genetic mutation that affects one of the Sodium channels in his brain. It's a common mutation in kids with epilepsy and landed us with a diagnosis, Dravet Syndrome.

Google 'Dravet Syndrome' if you'd like to read what I read driving home from the doctor's office after we heard the news. I was so happy to finally have an answer, but devastated to find out what it was. My expectations for Enzo's life were flipped upside down. The reality of what he'd have to deal with - of what I would have to deal with - hit me and it hit hard. I was lucky enough to find some support groups on Facebook: Dravet Support Group and (Natural Alternatives for Dravet Syndrome. Parents in these groups walked me through my grief and gave me countless resources and, more importantly, hope.

We decided to enroll Enzo in preschool in the Fall of 2015. He was still having seizures, but the staff and teachers embraced him and were eager to work with him and help us. We learned that Frankincense helped slow the seizures and improve his cognition, so we tried that during the first few months of school. It worked fairly well. That is, until his body built up immunity to the oil, and the seizures started getting worse, his poor forehead took a beating. He had several sets of stitches in the same spot, and we were worried he'd soon have to have a skin graft. It felt like five steps forward and then 20 steps back.

Finally, through the encouragement of family and friends, we decided to get Enzo a seizure helmet. I was worried about him looking 'different.' It sounds so superficial now, but I just wanted things to be easy and 'normal' for him. The helmet turned out to be our lifesaver. It protected his head, and it started to heal. As his head began healing, the seizures slowed down, and slowed down, and slowed down... until they stopped. Out of the blue, with no medication change, they stopped. This week will be SIX WEEKS of seizure freedom for Enzo. There were times in the last year and a half where Enzo would have 20 in one day, where making it one day without a seizure was a big deal. And here we are - six weeks - and zero seizures.

My wish is that anyone reading our story will see it as a message of hope. It's okay to push and pray for outcomes that are unreasonable, that your doctors may even say are impossible. Miracles do still happen! I'm not naive enough to think that our battle is over, but I am grateful for the way things are right now and feel confident that Enzo has every chance at a bright and positive future.

If you'd like to keep up-to-date with the Stewart's, please visit their blog: PopGoesPerfection.com!

If you'd like to learn more about Dravet Syndrome and childhood epilepsy you can visit:

www.dravet.org

www.dravetfoundation.org

www.ice-epilepsy.org

If you'd like to get in contact with Sheena, please see below.

IG: Instagram.com/sheenasu

Twitter: Twitter.com/sheenastewart27

Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/Pop-Goes-Perfection-544868275676586/

How I Live A Sustainable Lifestyle In A Processed World

Our society is overfed but starving to death. We eat so many processed foods, but not enough of the right stuff and our bodies are never given the chance to heal with all the right things. Even some of the right foods are severely processed, that we don’t even recognize it in the grocery store. The word natural is thrown around so freely that it can be really confusing to someone trying to eat things without additives.These hype words are being found out and people are realizing what it really means to live self sustainable in this processed world.

Six Years ago my body was starving, and I ended up in the hospital. My body began shutting down on me and the doctors had no idea what was going on, thankfully one of my doctors told me he thought I had Aspartame poisoning. I really had no clue about food back then, I was a crash dieter and never ate healthy long-term. How I ate wasn’t a lifestyle, so the weight wouldn't stay off, and then I‘d find another fad diet to lose the weight again.

After my diagnoses I decided to really look at what I was eating and make eating healthy a lifestyle. I found out about eating real food, how fats were good for our body and about fermenting fruits and veggies. Life completely changed for me with this new knowledge. I got rid of soda and started juicing fruits and veggies. I did a seven-day juice detox to start off this new lifestyle and help rid my bodies of all the toxins. Next, I started experimenting in the kitchen with lots of new recipes and began cooking everything from scratch. It was a lot of work but it was worth it because I felt amazing! 

Exercise was also a large part of the new me. I decided to find something I really loved doing, and stumbled upon an awesome program that included dance cardio, strength training and a trampoline workout.

My husband and I also adopted the 80/20 rule, where you eat real clean 80 percent of the time and 20 percent of the time you can eat what you want. I believe you've got to enjoy life too, so I worked my butt off, but didn’t cry about it if I had a piece of pizza every once in awhile. Once I got physically fit enough, I  noticed that my eating was usually 90/10 because processed food just made me feel yucky.

In addition to eating and exercising, I also stopped using store bought bath and body products, and instead made my own. I began using Essential Oils, and homeopathy for body ailments. I learned about how to live for myself instead of buying everything. We also started going to farmers markets and getting fresh organic meats, fruits and veggies from farmers who grew their produce humanly (grass fed, pasture raised, and organically grown). I’m sure if we lived in the country we would grow our own food, but city living makes it a little harder to do that.


Before I knew it, I lost 60 pounds, and was a size eight. I was happy, healthy and enjoying this new life I created for myself. The best part about my story, is that now my body was healthy, it had time to heal and I knew that I could eventually get pregnant. At this point we had been trying for a baby for two years with no luck. Guess what?! Before I knew it our beautiful miracle baby was conceived. Finally, after two years!!

I ate really healthy throughout my pregnancy, and only gained 35 pounds. I had a really great pregnancy, I actually loved being pregnant. In October 2014 our baby girl was born. After her birth though, I found it really hard to lose weight. I was still eating healthy, but it just wasn’t coming off and I actually started to gain weight, even while I was breastfeeding. I decided to visit my doctor to see what was going on, because I was really concerned. 

After a bunch of tests we found out that I had Hypothyroidism, brought on by pregnancy. I immediately got rid of all grains and dairy, and started to feel a lot better. It’s all a process and I hope to soon be feeling even better.  

Honestly, when I look back at the journey I’ve been on, I’m so thankful for the opportunity to have another chance at life. I wouldn’t take it back for one minute. Food is such a powerful tool for health and can either give or take your life. It gave me a my ultimate dream, the chance to be a mother. A gift I can never repay.

To learn more or get in touch with Erin, please click here.

How I Learned To Break Emotional & Unhealthy Eating Habits

I feel like every woman has an idea for their perfect love story. You know, the all-consuming kind of love that Nicholas Sparks writes about in most of his books.  In my late teens and early 20's, I experienced my perfect love story. It was the “study abroad in a foreign land, meet the most beautiful man with a sexy accent, and fall head over heels (in lust)” kind of story.  But what I also experienced, was a bipolar relationship where the highs were high and the lows were low. It was the type of relationship where we equally brought the worst out in each other, becoming an emotional, mental, and sometimes physically abusive, relationship. 

I reached the lowest point I'd ever been, contemplating suicide, as I had no idea how to pick up the pieces. And naturally, as the relationship unraveled, I gained weight. When the relationship officially ended, I gained even more weight. I reached the heaviest I had ever been, and although it wasn't technically considered obese, I was overweight and unhealthy in all senses of the word. So I went on a diet and I dieted the only way I knew how: frozen Lean Cuisines and Weight Watchers sponsored snacks, with a 30 min "work out" at the gym a couple times a week where I gave little effort. Yes, I lost some weight, but I didn't lose much. I'm pretty sure if I had stopped "dieting" and picked up my old habits again, the weight would have come back on.  But then I learned about two things: (1) All of the artificial ingredients and additives in most processed foods and (2) The power of a plant-based diet. 

I immediately eliminated all food with high fructose corn syrup, artificial dyes (red 40, blue 1, etc.), hydrogenated oils, and all products with ingredients that I couldn’t pronounce. I discovered how to use natural (unprocessed) whole foods in my cooking and how different fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes can be used to make dishes that I loved. I learned that I didn't have to eat animal products which are high in fat, cholesterol, and added chemicals/antibiotics, but can instead get all the necessary vitamins, minerals, fiber and protein solely from plant based foods. Beans, nuts, vegetables, whole grains, fruits...the possibilities were endless! So I began to learn new cooking and baking substitutions and after a couple weeks, I didn’t miss the “food” I used to eat. I could make cheese from nuts, burgers from beans, Alfredo sauce from cauliflower and chocolate mousse from avocado! And as an added bonus to my new discoveries, the weight started falling off and I felt better than I ever had in my life! When I started to look and feel better physically, I began to feel better mentally. Piece by piece, my life was coming back together again. I met my husband, backpacked around the world, got married, moved across country….

…And then I got pregnant. I maintained a vegan diet through my pregnancy, which ultimately helped me to deliver a healthy baby girl and quickly lose the majority of the weight I had gained during my pregnancy. But as anyone who has given birth would know, your body undergoes so many changes and things don't go back to “normal” right away. I had about seven stubborn pounds that wouldn't budge, despite my healthy diet and frequent workouts, and the skin on my stomach wasn't as tight as it had been before. I decided to try the Beachbody 21 Day Fix Extreme and pushed myself through two rounds. The program is exactly what I needed to kick those last few pounds and get my old body back.  

Now through my plant-based diet and occasional workouts, I have been able to maintain a healthy body on the inside and out. But for me, its not just about having a physically healthy body. My mental and emotional health is just as important because I never want to experience lows again like I have in the past. When I think back to the person I was in my early 20's, while in that abusive relationship, I am no where near the same today. The power that a plant-based diet has had on my mental well-being has been my biggest achievement.

Interested in learning more? Contact Shea via her blog or on social media.

Blog Name: A Plant Based Soul 

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Bio: Full-time Mom and Vegan B&B owner by day, plant-based recipe developer by night (and during nap time, of course!). Going vegan was the greatest choice I have ever made, not only for myself, but for all living things as well. My recipes are inspired by old-time favorites, incorporating new flavor combinations whenever possible.  I hope you find my recipes to be not only delicious, but a reflection of the pride and joy I have in living a sustainable lifestyle.