Blessing My Body with Whole Foods (and why it’s been a struggle to convince myself I’m worth it.)

Knowing what my body needs and understanding how whole foods bless it, is something I’ve been passionate about for years. The complexity of our bodies and how they interact with what we put in it has fascinated me for a while now. The Lord began to take me on a wellness journey through my husband’s suffering years ago.

In the fall of 2015, my husband? Adam, developed some unusual problems. He began having flu-like symptoms that developed into intense muscle pain, weakness, fatigue and general discomfort. He was cleared by physicians all over our area including a neuromuscular specialist at Baylor Medical Center in Houston, TX.

Everyone, including us, decided it was stress and eventually moved on. His symptoms are much better now, but he’s never regained muscle stamina and often isn’t able to participate in strenuous activities. To this day, it’s unclear if a negative reaction to medication caused it, or if it was, in fact, stress-induced.

Although it was a very difficult time in both of our lives, one of the many blessings that came from that experience was the relationship we developed with our chiropractor and like-minded friends. It’s amazing what there is to learn about holistic healing when you continuously hit walls within mainstream allopathic and diagnostic medicine.

In the midst of disappointment, we found ourselves making life changes regarding our diet, as well as what household products we allowed in our home. We learned that being exposed to certain foods and toxins (processed foods, sugar, corn syrup, vegetable oils, heavy metals, dyes, etc.) stressed Adam’s system and needed to be avoided as much as possible. The more we learned, the more we realized there are so many reasons our bodies shouldn’t be working well, and there was so much we could do to help them be at their best moving forward.

After a year of tests and life changes, we decided to do a serious diet detox, both of us. During the spring of 2017 Adam and I ate an extreme elimination diet for 28 days in an effort to rid our bodies of any and all stressors. We learned what it felt like to fuel our bodies well. We both felt absolutely amazing. Energy, sleep, stress, all areas!

After the 28 days we began to add in a few other foods, but remained committed to eating primarily whole foods, and eating other indulgent foods very sparingly. It was the best I’ve ever felt and I was looking forward to living healthy and strong through my thirties.

That was in May of 2017, by June we had found recipes we loved, were enjoying trying new foods and creating snacks and loving our new healthy lifestyle.

So you’re probably thinking, this sounds great, what could’ve possible made you go back to your old habits… well, here’s when things changed. In mid-July of that same year, I found out I was pregnant. In fact, I told Adam the news while we were out to dinner on July 26th, our 9th wedding anniversary. It was magical. I remember thinking it would be such an easy pregnancy because I was going into it so healthy and feeling so strong.

I was wrong, I miscarried by the weekend and it was over faster than it began. It was painful and sad and everything you can imagine. After that, there was a drastic change in my attitude and behavior regarding my health. I was disgusted and disappointed in my “healthy” body.

Suddenly I wasn’t interested in eating well, taking the supplements my body needed, exercising regularly, resting, none of it. My body had failed. When it was supposedly at its healthiest, it failed. Why did it Whole Foods matter? Supplements? Rest? Was my health really worth it? I had two previous pregnancies that went great, why now? None of it made sense and I was struggling to understand.

Three months later I got pregnant with our Daisy and everything went beautifully, but I had left everything I learned behind and moved on, back to my “normal”, patterns. I didn’t want to spend my time or energy on healthy choices if it didn’t matter. I put it all out of my mind and made choices based on how I felt, or at best, in the name of “losing the baby weight”.

At the beginning of this year 2021, I committed to working on myself… physically, spiritually, mentally, relationally. I knew I would have to face this and I am. I’m revisiting the idea of fueling my body well and choosing not to believe the lie of failure. I’ve healed from the trauma that a miscarriage causes, and am facing my lifestyle head on, ready and committed to living my healthiest life.

Living a life centered around wellness doesn’t mean you eat only salad everyday and do yoga constantly. It looks different for all of us, but it’s a commitment to listening to and learning about what makes your body feel its best; what makes it feel blessed and not burdened.

Let me end by saying this, the clarity that I have now has not always been there. The Lord revealed what I had done, and how I had abandoned myself well after the fact. Daisy was a few months old before I realized that I had self-sabotaged and created a mess for myself and my family. Here we are another 3 years after that, and I’m finally putting my big girl panties on, acting on what I know, and putting into practice the healthy lifestyle routines that I committed myself to years ago.

The lesson here is this: trauma happens, time passes, God gives grace and hard work pays off if you don’t give up. I often wonder how my life would be different if I would have stuck with a healthier lifestyle all those years ago; but it’s never too late to restart.