Imagine that growing up, you were always chunkier than the other kids. You were healthy, but always overweight. But then as a teenager, things suddenly change. Imagine that at 17 years old you lose 30 lbs. in 3 months without trying—you lose 30 lbs. without exercising and while eating all the junk food you can eat. Sounds fantastic, right?
Now imagine being told by a doctor, at 17 years old, that you have an autoimmune disorder that usually affects people in their 30s, and that the reason you’re losing that weight is because your body is essentially attacking itself by producing too much thyroid-stimulating hormone, thus raising your metabolism to an unhealthy level that could have dire consequences if left untreated. Then you’re told that, because of that autoimmune disorder, you have a dangerously high heart rate and must go on a heart medication because, if not, you could have a heart attack and die.
At 17 years old.
They tell you that while the condition is not curable, they can treat the part of it that affects your thyroid. So a month and a half shy of your eighteenth birthday, you have the treatment done, not knowing that for the next 11 years of your life, you’re always going to wonder if you really made the best choice.
At first, everything seems fine. Your heart rate is still high (and always will be), but it goes down enough to go off the heart medication and resume physical activity. You’re put on thyroid replacement hormones (that you’ll have to take daily for the rest of your life), and everything seems normal.
You start college. Like everyone else, you gain the freshmen 15 and laugh it off because you’re not alone in that...but it doesn’t end there.
During your sophomore year, the chronic fatigue associated with having an underactive thyroid sets in. You’re 19, yet you start having “old lady days” where you just can’t keep up with your peers. And the weight just keeps coming.
The summer between sophomore and junior years you spend 7 weeks working at summer camps, and even though you’re more active than you’ve ever been, you STILL gain weight.
By junior year of college, you start feeling some daily aches and pains (that you will ignore for years to come), and you’re put on an antidepressant. And the weight still piles on even though you though you try to stay active.
By the time you graduate from college, you’re about 105 lbs. heavier than you were when you started. But you keep going. By 22, you’re already on one blood pressure medication, and by 23, you’re on your second. You also find out that you’re pre-diabetic. If something doesn’t change soon, things could get really bad for you.
But none of it makes sense. You try to eat healthy when you can; you try to stay active too. Your lab work always comes back normal in terms of thyroid function, so the doctors say everything’s fine. “Just exercise, eat right, and work to lose weight,” they say. But nothing works. You feel miserable, but you just accept that you’re always going to struggle.
Finally, at 25, someone introduces you to some health and wellness products that focus on gut health. You start doing some research and realize that this is the answer to what you’ve been praying for for years. You start taking supplements that strengthen your gut and push toxins out of your microbiome. And it WORKS! You lose TWENTY TWO pounds, you have more energy than ever, you sleep deeper, your blood sugar goes back into normal levels, you’re able to go off of your blood pressure medications, your daily aches and pains go away, and you feel better than you have in nearly a decade.
You stick with it for a little over 2 years, but then life happens, finances change, and your budget gets so tight that by the time bills are paid, there’s not even enough left for food. And if you can’t even afford to feed yourself real food, how are you supposed to afford the extra supplements? So you stop. You walk away. You sacrifice your health and happiness because you’re afraid to add to your already increasing debt. (Because that makes total sense 🙄)
When you stop focusing on your health, those issues that you’ve been living without for the past few years come back—and then some. You’re back to not having energy, not sleeping well, and gaining weight...and then you start dealing with debilitating pain. There are days when you can hardly get out of bed, and you certainly can’t walk up and down the stairs; you literally have to crawl up the stairs on all fours because you just can’t do it any other way. But you keep going. You keep telling yourself that this is going to be your reality.
Then your finances and living situation change for the better, but you still don’t think you can justify extra expenses. You feel awful most of the time, but you just fight through it.
Now you’re 29. You’re engaged to be married (which is exciting), but you’re also facing a global pandemic and uncertainty about the future. Because you’re stuck at home, you have a lot of extra time for self-reflection, and you realize that if you want a beautiful life with your soon-to-be-husband, you’re going to have to make a change. If you want to even consider becoming a mom one day, you’re going to have to do better. Because if you can’t even take care of yourself, how are you going to take care of your husband and children? So one day, while your fiancé is at work and you’re stuck at home, you decide that you’ve had enough. You’re tired of doing the things that just don’t work, and you go back to taking those health and wellness products that you walked away from a year and a half ago....
And things start to improve almost immediately. You’re sleeping deeper, you’re so energized that you feel as though you MUST exercise/walk just to burn off the extra energy, and you start feeling better. So you keep going. ❤️
That’s MY story.
It’s been almost 3 months since I decided to reclaim my health, and it’s made a world of difference. As of today, I’ve lost 7 lbs., and while that might not seem like much, I have fought HARD for that achievement. Today during my walk, for the first time in YEARS, I ran. I didn’t run far—40 strides the first time, 50 the second, 60 the third, and 70 the fourth—but that’s further than I’ve been able to run in a long time. My goal is to try again tomorrow, and every day after that, until I can go longer and farther.
These supplements and this company have, once again, changed my life. They aren’t some magic “get skinny quick” solution. They allow me to make long-term, sustainable changes in my journey towards health.
But this time, I can’t self-sabotage by letting myself quit. I can’t keep putting other things before my own health, because if I do, I won’t be here to enjoy a life with my incredible husband and his/our boys (and any children we may have in the future if God blesses us with them). If I quit again, I’m going to have to endure a life of pain and suffering. If I quit again, I might not be here to spread love and positivity and kindness in this broken, hurting world.
I don’t know if I’ll ever meet society’s cookie-cutter definition of beauty. I don’t know if I’ll ever be be rich or live the kind of “worry-free” life that so many people aim for. I don’t know if I’ll live to be 100 or if I’ll ever get to cross off everything on my bucket list. But honestly, none of that matters. What matters is that I keep fighting until the good Lord decides it’s time for me to go Home. What matters is that every day I try to be a better person than I was the day before, something I can really only do when I’m prioritizing my health. What matters is that I choose to really LIVE life to the fullest instead of choosing to simply exist and take up space.
So if you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, talk to me. I know what it’s like, and I’m here to remind you that it CAN get better. We can fight for a better life together.
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