mY HEALTH Story

How I got here is a pretty long story. I have always been an active person. I grew up on a horse farm where we trained horses for show jumping and 3-day eventing. I mucked stalls, threw hay and did a real ‘farmer’s carry’ of water buckets through most of my childhood. Unfortunately, my food was far from traditional farm food.
 
I was primarily raised by my grandmother and most of my food memories revolve around wonder-bread peanut butter sandwiches or cinnamon-sugar toast with margarine. The meat I remember eating was mainly bologna. I used to like to take a slice, smear it with mayonnaise, roll it up and eat it.
 
My grandmother didn’t like to cook. She still doesn’t. Now, when I bring her some of the delicious stews and soups I’ve made, she always asks, wonderingly, “Where did you learn to be such a good cook?” then she answers herself, “It must’ve been in self-defense.” Indeed, it was.
 
The rest of my childhood eating revolved around dining out. I remember trips to pizza hut where I would be praised for being able to polish off half a large pizza. Canadian bacon and pineapple, my favorite. I actually remember how awful I would feel after those pizza binges. I would lie in my bed at night practically groaning with the stuffed, sick feeling.
 
Fast forward to my twenties. I had started to get a bit chubby at 19 but had joined a gym and stripped off most of the weight by doing aerobics classes and trying to eat less. Unfortunately, my weight would go right back up again and then I’d have to do some new diet and exercise thing.  I remember the food combining diet where I would have a fresh baguette of bread with margarine and a frozen 3-cheese lasagna because that was ‘on my diet’. I shudder to think.
 
Over the years, the weight loss became harder and the weight regain faster and each time I would land at a higher and higher weight. It was just so frustrating! I had to choose between starving myself or being fat. The last time had been especially hard. By now my metabolism was so broken that I had to restrict my food intake so much to lose weight that I was ravenous most of the time. When I hit my goal weight, it was literally a touch-and-go because I was there for about a day. It wasn’t long before I regained almost all of the weight. I was in despair. I felt sick and fat.

When I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis in my mid thirties, I asked my doctor what I could do. My doctor explained that there was nothing that could be done for it and eventually my thyroid would be destroyed by my own body and then I’d have to take thyroid supplements for the rest of my life. This seemed like a very grim outcome to me and by the time I was in my forties, I seemed to gain weight if I even looked at food.
 
When I came across the book ‘Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It’ I was ready to finally understand what was going on with me. I cannot express how that book resonated with me. I felt liberated from the mind-set that I was a failure because I was fat. Society tells us that if we are fat it is entirely our own faults because we lack the character and fortitude to eat less and exercise more so we must be lazy gluttons. I even thought of myself that way. This, in spite of the fact that I was still very active with hiking and biking and I was in a state of almost constant hunger. From this book, I learned that we actually get fat from the cascade of hormonal responses that is triggered by the types of food we eat and the hormonal response to store fat actually increases your hunger and causes you to be lethargic. A person becomes "lazy" and "gluttonous" because they are in fat storage mode, not the other way around.
 
I was so excited, I had my husband read the book too. We both committed to completely cut out all sugars and starches. This approach worked immediately. Both of us lost that gnawing hunger and with it the weight.  My husband was so baffled by the fact that this advice was completely counter to conventional wisdom that he plunged into a research frenzy that is still going on to this day.  As we did more research into food and health, I discovered that there was a very close link between gluten and autoimmune disorders so, from that point on, I wasn’t just avoiding sugars and starches, I was carefully avoiding gluten as well.  Through his rabid web surfing, we discovered that the way we were eating was very close to something called ‘Paleo’. We began to focus more on the quality of our food and he even began cooking with me. He is a great sous-chef!
 
The good news is that I lost 50 pounds fairly quickly and with little effort. I reached that weight again that I had briefly visited a few years before but this time it was effortless to stay there. I was even able to drink some red wine and eat dark chocolate fairly regularly.
 
I have maintained that weight loss since autumn 2011 now but the best part is what has happened to my health. That Hashimoto’s diagnosis I had gotten years ago left me with little hope. In 2012, my family doctor retired and the practice sent me a delightful note introducing the new doctor that had joined the practice and informing me that she was NOT accepting patients. Um, thanks for letting me know? Luckily, I belong to a great paleo community now and at a book club Meetup, one of my paleo friends told me about a functional medicine doctor that was helping her with some health issues.
 
Because it had been so long since my Hashimoto’s diagnosis, it had also been a while since I’d had my thyroid checked. I think my doctor had sort of given up on it.
 
My new doctor is an MD and so I got caught up on all of my missed health checks: Pap smear, mammogram, blood work. I knew from my research that she was asking all the right questions and when she ordered my thyroid panel, I was thrilled to hear that she wanted to the T3, T4, TSH, reverse T3 and both of the antibody tests. She also ordered a thyroid ultrasound because I had had one in the past that had shown a nodule on my thyroid.
 
The ultrasound did show a slight increase in the size of my thyroid nodule so I had a biopsy (normal) but the biggest news was my thyroid function (also normal) and my antibody results (nearly normal). My previous antibody numbers had been in the hundreds if not thousands but now I had a result of 39.5 (where did that half an antibody come from?) when 35 is normal.
 
I almost couldn’t believe it but I had literally put my autoimmune condition into remission with my diet!
 
Now my health quest goes on. I knew that wouldn’t be the end of the story because I still have a way to go in the health department. I have a substantial amount of weight still to lose and some fatigue issues so cortisol is next on the radar. Bottom line, though, is that I now know the miracles that can be done with your health by just changing what you put in your mouth and I feel blessed to have discovered it. I just wish I’d figured it out sooner.