I never considered myself to be a healthy person. Growing up it seemed I always had a headache, heartburn, runny nose on one side, stuffy on the other and green gunk coming from somewhere. I always attributed that to life. Too much stress from work; too much studying for school – life made me sick. And unhappy. After all, who is happy when you always feel rundown, sick and just plain exhausted.
In 2013 I learned my life would be changing in a drastic way – baby on board! Like many women who pretty much were in a constant state of dieting my first thought was – hey, I can eat whatever I want. I’m pregnant; I’m supposed to get fat! This is awesome. Until it wasn’t so awesome. Through research I quickly learned that all of the medications I relied on day-to-day to help me function were no longer allowed. The two T’s of pregnancy were pretty much all that were allowed: Tylenol and Tums. Panic set in. Not only that, but there are actually a ton of foods you are not allowed while pregnant. And as if that was not bad enough, the food aversions hit hard. My long-awaited pregnancy diet pass was quickly turning into my worst food nightmare and now I could not even rely on my precious medications.
Nine months later a healthy baby was here and I discovered I was a mess. Sure I could finally get back to some of the daily medications I previously relied on, but those only sort of helped me function. I still had many long days of migraines and nausea, heartburn and anxiety, and the green gunk came back in full force. However, with a new little one around, I could no longer afford to spend entire days in bed watching Maury while sucking down the cold meds. I had to be alert and ready for whatever this baby threw my way.
Luckily while I was desperately searching for an easier way to drop the baby weight I came across an entire natural health system. I didn’t know it at the time but the comical book I found, Kick Your Fat in the Nuts, taught me not only how to drop the weight for good, but it also showed me an entire new way to live my life to be the healthiest me I can be. The end result – I haven’t had a single cold, runny nose, scratchy throat or flu ever since. Now surely it wasn’t quite as easy as reading a book, but it was definitely easier than anything else I have ever tried and I have pretty much tried it all.
The first step I took to avoid the 2014/2015 cold and flu season was I ate less sugar. By less sugar I don’t mean I skipped dessert on some nights. I cut out sugar anywhere and everywhere I could. This was initially to help me drop the baby weight, but it did absolute wonders for my health. For Halloween, when in previous years I snacked on multiple mini candy bars every day for an entire month leading up to Halloween, I just didn’t eat them. For Thanksgiving I said no thanks to the pies and for Christmas I passed on the holiday cookies. Not only did I avoid the sweet holiday treats but I also limited my overall carbohydrate consumption in my daily diet. While sugar is highly toxic, so are many of the grains and carbohydrates that are consumed on a daily basis. Once these foods are ingested your body breaks them down and turns them into sugars for your body to use for energy. It sounds great for the moment, but once those sugars are quickly burned you will be right back in the kitchen searching for more simple carbohydrates to get your next quick fix.
I will admit someone telling you to eat less sugar is not very helpful. While it is a step in the right direction most people depend on sugar and simple carbohydrates to make it through the day. It is actually an addiction in many instances. Given all of the carbohydrates I previously consumed I have no doubt it was an addiction for me as well. The way I was able to get my body to stop relying on sugar and start running off of healthy fats and proteins was by fixing my digestion. Sometimes people are able to just put the sugar down, never to be eaten again. For everyone else there are supplements that can finally end your daily carbohydrate blood sugar spiking roller coaster once and for all.
The book I mentioned earlier taught me how to use natural supplements and proper nutrition for my body chemistry to fix the way my body processes foods. Most people consume carbohydrates because they are the easiest nutrient for the body to break down for energy. Proteins and fats can be much more difficult and over time, through damage from lifestyle choices and medications, it can get even harder. Our bodies lose the ability to digest these foods so we just lean more toward the easier foods to digest naturally. We don’t get the nutrition we need, we start to feel like crap and continue to have more and more health problems while relying on more and more medications just to make it through the day. It is a terrible cycle, but a cycle that can be corrected through proper nutrition and sometimes with the help of supplementation. You can learn much more about this topic with a four week almost free digestion course found here.
The supplements I used are called Beet Flow, Beatine HCL and Digestizyme. All of these supplements are high quality, natural supplements that can be found on a website called Natural Reference. While not every person will require all of these supplements to kick their dependency on sugar, they all have their own place in restoring proper digestion. A word of warning: taking these supplements do not cause a person to automatically lose weight or automatically fix a compromised immune system. You still need to make wiser nutrition choices to work with the supplements. The supplements simply make it easier for your body to heal the natural digestion process we were all born with, but somehow screwed up over time. In time this helps you naturally crave more of the good stuff and step away from the junk with ease.
The first supplement I mentioned, Beet Flow, is actually beet greens ground up and put into little capsules. They are highly concentrated, so cooking up a bunch of beet greens will not have the same effect. Beet Flow helps sticky bile flow better. This is helpful because it helps the body break down the healthy fats we should be consuming on a daily basis and eliminate them effectively. Fats such as butter and coconut oil are essential for every function in your body, especially for brain health. But if you go from eating practically no fat (as mainstream media and health experts like to tout) to then eating way more fat than you ever dreamed possible, you are going to have some problems. I’m talking smelly, bloating, acne filled problems. One solution is to slowly ramp up your intake of fats. Once your body gets used to moving the bile to help process the fats you can then continue to add a little more. Another step to that solution is adding Beet Flow to your daily regimen for a while. It helps speed along the process and helps with all of those unwanted side effects. Once you are eating more healthy fats and cutting way back on your processed carbohydrates you will feel a world of difference in your health status. You will have more energy and be able to maintain your ideal weight without any of the gimmicks sold by the mainstream.
The second supplement I mentioned is Beatine HCL. The HCL is short for hydrocloric acid. Sounds scary, doesn’t it? It sure did to me when I first read about it. It actually is an acid all of our bodies are supposed to make naturally. Over time, and with our society’s reliance on various medications including acid reducers like Tums, our bodies stop producing the HCL we need to break down our foods properly. If you get heartburn you likely are not producing enough acid, not too much like medication manufacturers lead you to believe. Also, if you get nauseous from eating red meats, you are most likely dealing with a stomach acid deficiency. There are many other symptoms that show a stomach acid issue. Beatine HCL is the way I turned many of these symptoms as well as a few of my other health problems around. When taken as directed (please contact me directly for further instructions), I also believe this is the supplement that kick started my weight loss into high gear and aided me in consuming the appropriate foods to keep my immune system healthy. The foods I was eating were no longer rotting and fermenting in my stomach since that is what happens when you don’t have sufficient stomach acid. I was no longer constipated and getting rid of the waste piling up really prompted my body to let go of unwanted fat and stored toxins. This is not a supplement you will need to take forever but it is an appropriate supplement most people will need to help them process nutrient dense foods properly again. Consuming and digesting nutrient dense foods on a regular basis is key to a strong immune system.
The last supplement I mentioned is Digestizyme. It is basically a high quality digestive enzyme with co-factors added that also assist the body in making its own HCL, which cuts down on the amount of time the HCL and Beet Flow supplements are needed. Digestive supplements help your body break down the foods you eat so you acquire the proper nutrients for your body to function properly and to give you extra energy to get through your day. In many cases, without these enzymes, you basically just make nutrient dense poop which does nothing for your health or energy levels. If your body can actually break down the food you eat properly you will have a lot of extra energy for whatever tasks you need to accomplish throughout your day. You will also eat less food overall because you are actually acquiring the nutrients you need to function instead of just pooping them out and foraging for more food. Higher quality food is actually just more expensive poop until you have the tools to break the food down properly.
Once I got into the habit of taking the digestive supplements regularly it became much easier for me to eat the foods I needed to improve my immune function over cold and flu season. I no longer craved the nutrient deficient processed foods I previously relied on and instead actually craved healthy vegetables, fats and proteins that my body so desperately needed to function and feel great. I stopped taking over the counter medications because I just did not need them anymore to function. Not only did this greatly help my liver, but I never realized how costly the store-bought medications were before I no longer needed them. It is true that the supplements cost money up front, but those digestive supplements are only temporary. A reliance on cold medications, antacids, pain relievers and eventually prescription medications when those are no longer strong enough is for life.
The second step that really helped me avoid constant sinus infections and overall helped to heal my body is another supplement many people currently take called vitamin C. Sounds simple enough, right? Eat a few oranges, sip on some orange juice and poof! No supplement required. I am sure you are waiting for me to explain to you that it is not really that easy. Especially sipping on orange juice. Please put the orange juice down! Liquid sugar is the exact opposite thing you need to do in order to maintain your health this cold and flu season.
Humans are one of only a few species that do not make vitamin C on their own. Therefore some kind of supplementation, be it through foods you consume or a supplement you take, is necessary to get this very important vitamin. Vitamin C is necessary for all sorts of health functions but the one I want to focus on is the immune system. If you walk down any drug store aisle you will see tons of cough drops and other medications with vitamin C. It is the immune booster you need to keep you healthy all year-long. Too bad the vitamin C you are being sold isn’t the kind of vitamin C you need to stay healthy.
The vitamin C sold in most drug stores is called ascorbic acid. This is only a fraction of the vitamin C your body needs in order to maintain good health. While ascorbic acid does have its place in our health needs it is not all of the magic it is sold to be. In order to keep proper levels of vitamin C in your body you need a whole food form of vitamin C. They do sell some of these in health food stores, but I like to know I am getting high quality supplements so I go to Natural Reference for my whole food form of vitamin C. It is a supplement called Bio-C. I took this supplement all throughout cold and flu season last year and it did wonders for my health. While I saw constant social media updates of entire families succumbing to cold after cold, flu after flu, I stayed healthy. That is not me trying to brag. I am amazed I made it through an entire year with nary a nose drip and I wanted to let you in on my secret to see if you can have a cold and flu free year as well.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I could make it through an entire year with no doctor visits, antibiotics or even cold medicines. I thought I was destined to get the gross green-gunk month-long infections for life and just feel miserable. Here I am more than a year later still feeling great day after day, season after season. After fixing my digestion I not only lost 70 pounds, but I never found it easier to maintain weight loss in my life. Not only that but the added health benefit of not getting sick and not feeling run down? It was worth every single digestive supplement I swallowed. I now know that feeling energized and healthy in today’s society is very possible and look forward to many years of great health ahead!
Cutting out unnecessary sugar this cold and flu season is a great start to staying healthy but if you decide you want to take the extra step to fix your digestion and add the benefit of a whole food form of vitamin C, please contact me directly at NissaHelpsMe@gmail.com or find me on Facebook @eatingfatisthenewskinny. I am more than happy to answer any questions you may have to get you on the road to better health once and for all. If you decide to order the supplements directly from Natural Reference, please use my practitioner code: nissahelpsme.
This upcoming cold and flu season I wish you good health and the ability to flip through your social media and be happy you are not a part of one of those families bound to your home by sickness. Getting caught up on baby daddy’s on Maury just isn’t worth feeling so awful!
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