So, you can party, you can eat out, you can drink a little if that’s what you like to do, but inform yourself how to put your body right the next day, and the day after that, until it’s so ingrained in your life that living this way becomes normal. You can get such a high from eating ‘clean’ that you will want less of the ‘bad stuff’ and be high on the more beneficial energizing foods that I am going to tell you about throughout this book.
My motto in life is: ‘Life is for thriving, not just surviving, and why would you want it any other way?’
CHAPTER 2
BELIEVE AND ACHIEVE
My passion for health began in the year 2000 when my beautiful baby girl was born. Up until that point I had been relatively healthy all my life. No major illnesses and naturally in good shape. I was one of those that pretended to go to the gym, but really spent the entire time chatting to everyone and not doing much else! Shortly after my daughter was born, I started getting stomach cramps, to the point where, every time I ate, I felt nauseous and unwell. While all my friends that had babies were desperate to lose weight, I was shedding weight at an alarming rate. I had always been a curvy girl, as a teenager and in my twenties – an average UK size 10. I had boobs and a butt and was proud of them!
As the pain continued, and the weight fell off I reached out for medical help. Having grown up in a healthy family, with an average life expectancy (from the grandparents) of around 90 we didn’t go to the doctors much. My parents believed in homeopathy and we saw therapists for reflexology, acupuncture, and reiki if we felt unwell. So it felt kind of alien to me to have such problems that wouldn’t go away. That year I saw three gastroenterologists, had tubes up, in, and down to look at every angle of my intestines and they found nothing.
Don’t get me wrong, I think doctors are amazing. I have doctors as relatives, and know they perform miracles every day, working with the information they have, but in my case they couldn’t find out what was wrong. Having a newborn child would have been exhausting at the best of times, but I was up half the night doubled over in pain, unable to digest anything, and feeling tired and afraid. As regards my daughter, it is as if she knew, from the day it all started, how to behave in a way that was overwhelmingly supportive to me. From just six weeks old, she started sleeping through the night and has never been a moment’s trouble ever since.
So now, I had gone from a healthy size 10 to a skinny size 4–6. I had lost my curves and I didn’t feel like me at all. The doctor actually told me to go home and eat a ‘good pie’, but how could I when I literally felt like everything hurt? Telling me there was nothing more they could do gave me no option but to seek ‘alternative’ help. It’s a pattern that I am all too familiar with now, as most of my clients don’t see me as their first port of call. They see me because they are running out of options and are desperate to feel well. I like to spread the word that prevention is better than cure, but I guess not everyone sees it that way.
I trawled through the internet and tried to find a practitioner that I thought might be able to help me. I started reading about Ayurvedic medicine and eventually booked myself an appointment with the most incredible practitioner. It’s to her that I owe my passion for my career. When I saw her, I was 29 years old, skinny and frail and desperate for help. She told me my condition was simple to fix and that once I had learnt from her how to use food as my medicine, I need never be in pain again. She was right … and it changed my life.
I remember looking at food in a completely different way. I started looking at every single thing that went in my mouth as something that would help heal me. Sure enough, over the next few months my appetite returned, the pain disappeared, and I felt happy and energetic again. In my eyes it was incredible and I wanted to learn more.
After my amazing son was born a year later, I decided I wanted to study naturopathic nutrition. I thought it would be a fantastic thing to know and could help my family immensely. If I could bring my children up knowing how food could make them feel, and teaching them to eat well, it would be a life skill they would have forever. I didn’t really see past that, and certainly had no idea that it was going to turn into the unbelievable career that I have today. However, before it was really going to fully blossom, life was going to throw another few little curve balls my way … DEATH and DIVORCE! Oh how it doesn’t rain but it pours.
Separating from my husband, with two young children, was without doubt one of the hardest and most painful things I have ever had to endure. I remember sitting on my kitchen floor just after he drove away for the last time and honestly thinking my life was over. The first few months were a bit of a blur and I could feel myself slipping slowly down a slope of self‐destruction. I was not in check with my emotions in any way, as I was so struck by grief that all my thoughts were being utterly hijacked and disoriented. Being the party girl that I was (pre children) I thought it seemed like a very good idea to go back down that road. WRONG! What it did for me was make me feel lower than I had ever felt. My mind was going crazy, my body was getting depleted and I looked tired, haggard, and hopeless.
Even though I did know how to take care of myself at this particular time, I was choosing to ignore that knowledge. While I was in that state of mind things were only going to get worse. I had children, other family members, friends, a dog, and a home to take care of and it wasn’t pretty. My little secret mission was to apply my make‐up every day and face the world with a smile on my face. If I could make each day without a total meltdown it would be a miracle. I would do the school run, walk the dog, get the grocery shopping, meet friends for coffee, go to work and make everyone else feel fabulous and healthy, all with a perfect smile and newly mascaraed lashes (always waterproof for the silent tears in the car journey between each task). I became so super‐good at pretending and faking it I should have received an Oscar for the ongoing performances I put on over the years that followed. During the divorce I lost friends, family, and at times my sanity. Money was tight, the mortgage was high, and I was drowning in a pool of despair. I thought I could bag a new husband by fluttering my eyelashes and being entertaining and funny, but inside my heart felt dead. Why oh why was everyone else on the entire planet happy except me?
When you look back at yourself in your worst moments its insanely ridiculous that we do this to ourselves. Drink to excess, party, and have fun! Fake fun! So many people choose these destructive routes. It’s called avoidance and denial and it needs serious attention.
Sometime later the unimaginable happened. Fairly soon after my own grieving period, one of my best friends – someone who had talked me through the worst few months of my separation and helped me with endless advice on how to earn more money and get stronger once my husband’s income diminished – chose to take this destructive route. We had been friends since the age of two, and although very different characters, we had a massive amount of love for each other. She was my daughter’s godmother and a beautiful larger‐than‐life character that everyone adored. For her, the drinking, the parties, the lack of sleep, and a pretty out‐of‐control existence quickly led to serious and fluctuating levels of anxiety and clinical depression. Her situation became much more frightening and after just over a year of this constant self‐destruction she actually took her own life. It was devastating to everyone that knew her, and something we could never have imagined would happen. Do I believe she would ever have done this in her right frame of mind? No. Never.