God Changed My Heart

Back in January 2021, when I decided to get really focused on my nutrition and workouts, I was a little bitter. I was determined to be able to nourish my body without taking gluten and dairy out of my diet. I fully wanted to prove to myself, and to all the experts that said "If you have PCOS, you should be gluten and dairy-free." I still wanted to be able to enjoy the foods that I really liked.

I was also super bitter from having done so many rounds of Whole30. I was caught up in a vicious cycle of restricting foods, being deprived of foods, and then binging on them. It was just adding fuel to a very small fire, and it ended up being a really large, uncontrollable fire.

So when I was confronted with the idea of a gluten and dairy elimination diet by my doctor, I honestly wasn't for it at all. I was resistant to it. I had an attitude about it, and honestly, that was the exact reason I put off making an appointment with him for so long. I just did not want to do it.

Eventually, I went and I did as the doctor asked. Surprisingly, I was eager to actually do it when the time came. I was hoping that it was a simple fix, such as being gluten or dairy-free for a little bit. But when I got the results and was told that I had to be gluten-free for the rest of my life, it was shocking. It was a lot to digest. I had to sit with this idea for a long time so that I could process it.

And to be honest, when I got started, I started very slowly. I did not take all gluten out of my diet. I kept "slipping up" but having one of Henry's animal crackers here and a bite of something else there. I would end up with a stomach ache or maybe some bathroom issues, but my "will" to live a gluten-free life hadn't arrived yet.

It truly took me about 3 full months to come to grips with how I was physically feeling and the fact that I could actually feel better. So it was finally at that point that I made a commitment to converting my pantry to be gluten-free. It was also the turning point for me where I said, "NO MORE GLUTEN." And I've never looked back.

Side note: I think a lot of people want to "cheat the system." I've seen numerous questions about whether or not just limiting the intake of gluten is good enough. But as I've heard...a woman was making brownies, and she had a secret ingredient...just the tiniest piece of poop. Now, do you want a little poop in your brownies? Replace the poop with gluten. Even the tiniest bit in your system stays in your system. As I've read, it takes about 6 whole months of being 100% gluten-free to actually rid your entire system of gluten.

I Have Hashimoto's Thyroiditis

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It was May 11, 2021, and I had a doctor's appointment that day. I was so excited to hopefully be getting answers to all the weird symptoms that I was feeling. But what I didn't know is that the results would change my life.

At my first doctor's appointment, I was encouraged to do a gluten and dairy elimination test. Obviously, I wasn't any stranger to elimination tests. I eliminated gluten and dairy for three weeks. In the fourth week, I added gluten back into my diet for one day, and for the next three days, I observed any symptoms. Then I was gluten-free again, and I added dairy back in and for the next three days, I observed those symptoms.

I reported back to my doctor that I definitely had a gluten intolerance. (At the time, I probably also had a dairy intolerance, but I may have been in denial about that.) When we went over the bloodwork, he got to the thyroid portion and said, "You have autoimmune thyroiditis, so that means you'll be gluten-free permanently."

I remember talking to my mom on the phone right after the appointment in disbelief. I hadn't ever heard the phrase "autoimmune thyroiditis" before, but I had heard of Hashimoto's. So I was very confused about it all, and when I got home to research, anything that said "autoimmune thyroiditis" was related to Hashimoto's. I was also prescribed two different thyroid medications that I had to start immediately.

I had to go back to see my doctor in just a few short weeks to make sure that this medication was working for me. It's synthetic thyroid hormone, so I had to make sure my body was responding to it, and I didn't need any adjustments. So I was armed with all my questions to ask my doctor that day. I had already purchased a few books on Hashimoto's because I'm a researcher. I researched all about PCOS, and now I was going to do the same thing with Hashimoto's. I dove into my questions, and thankfully he answered them, so off I went.

I have hypothyroidism caused by Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, which means that my immune system is attacking my thyroid which in turn is slowly killing it. That means that my thyroid cannot produce enough hormones to function normally. The thyroid is in charge of many of the body's activities. It's essential to have thyroid hormone in your body.

I still feel really unknowledgeable about it all, but I'm currently managing. I keep reading books on Hashimoto's and I've become a student of my body. At first, I was okay with the thought of being gluten-free.  But the thoughts about it and actually doing it are two different things. It took about a week for my new reality to set it. I had been planning a night a week to eat out for our family. And while it's still doable, it's more difficult. I was limited on what I could eat. It was that reality that really made me start grieving my former lifestyle. [If that sounds like first-world problems, it really is!] But I wasn't about to give up.

I originally read that it was best for people with Hashimoto's to be gluten, dairy, and soy-free from the start. But based on my history of binging, I knew that taking all of those things out at once was not a good idea. To be fair, I was already soy free because of PCOS (soy mimics estrogen in the body). So that was easy. Check. I knew that I had to be gluten-free, so that's what I worked on for the next few months.

Once I figured all of this out, I just thought the weight would come off. I thought that gluten was hindering my weightloss journey, and once I took it out of my diet, I'd be golden. But that wasn't it. I continued to struggle and struggle with the weightloss aspect of this journey. Taking gluten out of my diet completely made me feel wonderful. So I knew that I was on the right track.

It did take about 3 or 4 months for the fatigue to subside and for me to start to feel "normal" again.

I took this picture on August 24th, 2021 right after lunch. I remember the day clearly--I had made lunch and cleaned it up all within minutes. This hadn't happened in probably 8 months or so. The fatigue had just overtaken my life.

My doctor had described it like this--we want the lightswitch to flip our symptoms. We want the pill or the fix or whatever it is to just work immediately. But it isn't like that. It's like a daytime alarm clock where the light starts at a very low setting and then gradually and gradually gets brighter and brighter. And that's exactly how it felt for me. Fatigue was the very worst of my symptoms, but I had other symptoms, too. They all got better as time went on.

Body Positivity and Weightloss

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Part 1 here.
Part 2 here.

At the end of 2020, I knew that I had gained weight. I had already surpassed my "heaviest" weight, but I wasn't really doing anything different. I was still eating according to my plan, and I was working out. So in the last week of December, I made a plan. I grabbed an accountability buddy, a workout program, and my meal tracker. I set to work. At this point, I had stepped back from any coaching work that I was doing. I was really needing to focus solely on my journey. I quit taking sweaty selfies. I quit recording my workouts. I quit sharing on social media. I just wanted to do this for me.

Christmas 2020--I have never really liked any picture of myself, but when I was looking for a picture last week, I stumbled upon this one. This had been my "norm" after having gained the weight. I now know that you don't realize it until you can look back to see how far you've really come.

I submitted my food tracker to my friend every day, which honestly was difficult at first. No one had ever seen how much I weighed. Not only that, I had to be honest about what I ate, which held me to a standard and kept me accountable. I didn't necessarily want to have a "perfect" day of eating, but I wanted to make this my lifestyle, which meant treats here and there. This was not going to be another battle with food. This was about learning to love food and knowing how to fuel my body properly.

At this point in my journey, I had gotten into my own head. I had been hearing some voices and thoughts about this journey and how it shouldn't be about weight loss. I kept hearing the phrase "weight release," and how we shouldn't refer to it as weightloss (it's the same thing...call a spade a spade). The #bodypositivitymovement is definitely something that can be this way. There are thoughts about how you should love your body where you're at, and you don't have to lose weight to love it.  I had also been hearing thoughts about how we should steward our bodies well because it's where the Holy Spirit resides, and we should think beyond weightloss.

It took me a long time to sort through these things. I had to bathe this in prayer because honestly, I wasn't sure what I should be thinking or saying. I wasn't sure what I should put out there on social media for everyone to read. I didn't want to lead anyone astray or make them think a certain thing about their own journey, and honestly, I didn't want to take myself down a harmful path.

So here's what the Lord guided me to, and what we came up with together:

My body is a good body. It has served me well in the 30-some-odd years that I've been on this earth. I am especially more grateful for what it did through my pregnancy and birth. I thought it was broken because that's what many doctors had told me. But it's a great body, and I can be thankful that it gets me where I need to go! I can also recognize that it definitely could stand to lose some pounds. 

 

Just because I think it could lose some weight doesn't mean that I hate it. Yes, I do understand that the Holy Spirit lives in my body, and my body was made as a temple for the Holy Spirit. I understand that I get one body (on earth...can't wait for those heavenly bodies...am I right?!), and I am to take care of it well. But I am not to idolize my body. I shouldn't elevate it to the state where all I'm thinking about is my body. I shouldn't be obsessing over every little thing I put in my mouth, and I should be obsessing over what it looks like or my body's relationship with gravity. 

 

I can say proudly that "I am the daughter of the Most High God. I want to take care of my body, because He entrusted it to me. I recognize that I haven't taken the best care of it in the past, and unfortuntely my body shows it, but I will do my best to steward it well. I will eat nutritiously and move it, and hopefully my body will reflect that."

So, yes...I love my body. I want to steward it well, and I want to lose some weight.

Friends, if I could encourage you for a moment, I want to say this: there are so many voices out there telling us what we are and what we're not. There are a lot of things being said to us, and we have to use the "Jesus filter" to figure out what is right and what is wrong. God gave us His Word so that we might be able to discern truth. Not someone else's truth. Not your truth. HIS truth. When you turn things over to Him, He will help you sift through the things to help you see what is right.

By March, I was struggling. I was working out and eating right, and I had barely lost 10 lbs. I knew that something wasn't right. It was also at this time I was struggling with the fatigue. I couldn't keep going on like this...not when I knew how it felt to feel good. But Satan was definitely at work through this. I had thoughts that I didn't want any more kids if this was how motherhood was going to go. I couldn't believe that others had more than one kid because I felt like I was drowning. I'm not saying any of this to be dramatic. It's truly how I felt at the time.

I had come through the postpartum depression and the pandemic depression, only to feel defeated. I knew I had to do something, so it was then that I made an appointment with a new doctor. The more I've learned about health, the more I desire to do things as naturally as possible. Yes, I believe there is definitely a place for modern medicine, but I wanted to keep my options open. I made the appointment with the functional medicine doctor, and right off the bat, I knew it was going to be a different path.

After my first appointment, I had hope for the first time. There was no, "You just need to lose weight." I was met with compassion and belief about my symptoms, something I hadn't ever experienced before. He ordered some lab tests for me, and off I went.

My History

Missed the first part? Check it out here.

The worst of my symptoms was debilitating fatigue. But I wasn't a stranger to being tired, because I had a toddler. I remember asking my sister-in-law one day how tired she felt because she too had a toddler. I remember just telling her that I was exhausted by the end of the day, and she said the same thing.  The one thing I didn't tell her was that I didn't have any energy to spend doing things with my son. I could barely get up and make breakfast. If I did make breakfast, I couldn't clean up the dishes. I spent several months in this state. No matter how much sleep I got at night, I was still completely wiped by 9 am.

I had been working daily on my health journey. I was eating the right foods. I was following an eating plan, and I knew it worked.  It had worked prior to getting pregnant, but I wasn't seeing much progress at all. Now...to understand the lessons that the Lord has taught me over the last year and a half, you must understand more of my history.

Before getting pregnant, I had struggled with binge eating disorder, but in some strange way, being pregnant helped me with that. It wasn't as big of a struggle for me once I had my son. I'm not sure why that is, but I was working furiously at changing my relationship with food. I knew I needed a better relationship with it, as I had been very much in one extreme or another.

In 2014, I found the Whole30 program and used it as a way to live life. I had completed 8 rounds in just a few years, and I thought it had changed my life. Reading the book about finding food freedom forever is what I needed, and I really wanted to find it. But in reality, the program (which should be used as a 30-day elimination diet and nothing more) started the process of ruining my relationship with food. It makes you take out all inflammatory foods (gluten, dairy, grains, legumes, sugar, alcohol), doesn't allow you to recreate any sort of baked goods using "approved" foods, and it doesn't allow you to step on the scale at all for the 30 days.

I'm a black and white person...who's learning to live in a grey world. But this program was one I could definitely follow since it had strict guidelines. But instead of using the knowledge I learned from the round of the program, I began to see this as my lifestyle...a Whole365. As a perfectionist, it was so hard when I couldn't sustain it. Looking back, I see that it wasn't meant to be sustained. But what it did do was put me in a vicious cycle of restriction (taking out foods), deprivation (not having them for a long time), and binging (once I could have them, I couldn't stop). It was a cycle that began in 2014 and didn't slow down for the next 4 years. It consumed my thoughts and my actions.

Hi! I'm Beth!

Okay, okay, okay. Today's the day. Today I'm going to start writing again. My husband hooked up a monitor and keyboard to my laptop and I just feel inspired to write. I think it's because that's exactly how I used to write...on a desktop. I think the inspiration will keep coming as I keep writing, because honestly, although I've wanted to start writing again, I have felt that I have nothing to share. I know that's not true, but I personally haven't been inspired by anything.

So I'm just going to start with what I know best...and that's my story. Since I haven't been in this space for a long time, I'm going to take some time to reintroduce myself and share my health journey with you. Why my health journey? Because I haven't shared anything publicly on social media about it in a long time, and because the Lord has been working in my life and especially in this area. I want to share it with you, and I need to share it with you.

Hi. I'm Beth. I'm a 30-something-year-old wife and mom. I've been married to my husband for almost 11 years, and we have an almost 3-year-old boy as well as an 8-year-old dog. I started this blog when my husband and I were living in St. Louis as newlyweds. Some years later and a few moves later, we are back in Missouri living life!

I started this blog as a way to share what I had been learning as a new wife. It then kind of morphed into a blog to share my health journey. And here I am years later, still sharing my health journey. BUT I've learned so much, and I want to share that with you, too.

So....if you've been around a while, you probably know most of my story. If not...buckle up. 

You can get a refresher here, here, here, and here. 

I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome when I was 15 years old. I didn't share that with many people at all until about 9 years ago. I thought I was alone in my struggle, and when I finally opened up about it and what I was going through, I had an outpouring of women coming to me and sharing that they, too, had PCOS. I didn't feel as alone.  So I made it my mission to keep sharing so that others wouldn't feel alone. Because they aren't alone...and neither are you.

I have kept up to date with information and research on PCOS because I've wanted to know how to help myself. Every doctor that I've ever seen has just said, "lose weight." And friends, I wish it was just that easy. But it's not. I shared my knowledge on my social media for years during the month of September. Why? Because someone I would talk to would tell me, "Oh, I need you to talk to ____, because she just found out she had PCOS." I'm not an expert. There are many experts out there and women who actually specialize in helping women with PCOS. But I shared my knowledge with those in my circle. It made me feel like I had a purpose.

I started my health journey in 2013 because I had hoped that one day I'd have a baby. Most of my doctors had told me that I would need help getting pregnant if I could get pregnant at all. So I started out on a journey to get healthy so that I could give myself the best chance to get pregnant and sustain the life of my unborn baby.

Fast forward to 2018, I got pregnant fairly quickly when we started trying. I was so surprised, but friends...that was God.  I had a healthy pregnancy and in 2019, we welcomed a baby boy who is now a hurricane of a toddler. The end of 2019 brought post-partum depression, and the beginning of 2020 brought a pandemic and with that, it brought more depression. So I was depressed for a long time. It was so hard.

The summer of 2020 brought dreams that I didn't know could be dreams. In early June, my husband brought up the idea of moving back home. I was literally shocked because I figured that I'd be living in Oklahoma the rest of my life. I was okay with living in Oklahoma for the rest of my life. But God knew deep down how much I needed my family. He knew deep down how much I wanted to be near my family. Long story short, we moved home at the very end of Summer 2020. But then heading into 2021, I had a whole new set of symptoms.

I was newly focused on my journey once again, but I just couldn't lose any weight no matter what. This wasn't a new concept since it's really difficult to lose with PCOS, but it just felt harder. I finally gave in and made an appointment with a new doctor. I had labs and appointments and at last, I finally had a diagnosis: Hashimoto's. With that came new diet challenges--I was now permanently gluten free. That's all I knew about Hashimoto's, so I knew that I had a lot of research to do.

You can find part 2 here.