![[NTK Logo image]](../images/NorthTexasKidsLogo.gif)
If you have been reading our blog since January, you will have noticed a few posts about my husband’s and my journey to health, both physical and emotional. If not, here is a quick update. Jenny Bair and Betty Murray, CN, HHC, RYT are the co-founders of Living Well Dallas, a holistic collective of alternative, medical and therapeutic practitioners helping people to feel better. That’s a very brief description of what they do but I think their concept and their practice is amazing: you can read more about the Jenny, Betty and the Living Well by clicking here.
Brad and I had reached a point in our lives where nothing seemed to be working, weight kept going up, not down. Our priorities were skewed and we found ourselves putting work before our relationship with each other and our children. We felt buried under life and it’s accompanying paperwork around the house.
So we reached out to Jenny and Betty for help and it has been an amazing journey of growth, discovery, laughter and tears, not to mention sore muscles from restarting our fitness programs. I will talk more later about the success and absolute joy of working with Jenny Bair, our inner organizer who has done so much to change our relationships with ourselves and with each other. She is an amazing life coach and a deeply spiritual person who has helped us to see each other again and pay attention to what was missing.
Today, I want to talk about Betty Murray, CN, HHC, RYT. Betty is a nutritionist and holistic health counselor. If you read her bio online, you learn that she is committed to seeing each person as a unique individual and creating a health/eating plan unique to you. We are not all the same and not every plan works for everybody. Trust me, over the years I have tried them all. Since high school, I have been a yo-yo dieter, losing and regaining and losing the same 50 pounds. As I have gotten older it has gotten harder to lose the weight, to find the energy and focus to follow a plan for any length of time. I am too busy, too tired, too stressed, don’t care enough, you know the drill, too many excuses.
I have been working with Betty since January and not seeing a lot of success. I have been mostly faithful to the plan and made significant changes to how and what I eat. You can imagine my frustration two months later at my lack of weight loss (now granted, I totally accept responsibility for this and don’t blame Betty.) Every time I would go visit her, she would tweak my diet and exercise plan, ask me for an accounting of what I had been doing and eating and help me find the small moments to celebrate. God bless her for that or I would have quit.
I knew I was allergic to wheat but had never been formally tested and I knew that certain foods I was eating were not making me feel good. So Betty encouraged me to take a blood test to check for 93 different and common food allergies, hence the title of this blog post, what in the hell am I supposed to eat? Pardon my cursing, but that is exactly how I felt when I met with Betty last week.
Not only did I discover that I am severely allergic, not just to wheat but all gluten, which is in EVERYTHING, but I am allergic to almost everything I was eating. (At which point Betty said, this is why I like to do this testing FIRST, so that I can really help you make a difference. I had resisted taking the test, my loss!) Okay, are you ready, here is the crazy list of foods that I have to completely eliminate from diet for 12 weeks (I am on day three, so far so good.) All gluten products (so anything with wheat, rye, barley, any kind of flour, all bread, crackers, bagels, most sauces and even salad dressings, canned soups and sausage have gluten in them. Did I mention I love to eat out and it just got really hard?) Being wheat-sensitive is very different than having to live a gluten-free life. There are tons of websites full of information that I am still wading through with a sense of overwhelm and information overload.
But the gluten was just the beginning. I am also allergic to almonds, avocado (I cried about this one,) peanuts, mustard, chicken, pork, salmon, sole, eggs (both yolks ans whites) and the only HOORAY on the list: lima beans, who cares. But every single one of those other foods were ones I was eating a lot of.
So back to the question of what to eat for breakfast. Yesterday I had ground turkey and an apple. No more scrambled eggs and bacon! Basically, no more breakfast foods and I love BREAKFAST! Especially at Cafe Brazil, awesome vegie migas. I have to say goodbye to them for a while.
I am so grateful to Betty for encouraging me to figure this out. I will report back here in a week and let you know about my progress and if this will finally help that scale begin to move in the right direction.
So what happens if I eat any of these foods? I have achey joints, my whole body feels tender to the touch, my small intestine gets clogged and crampy, you don’t need all the gorey details, just suffice it to say that I don’t feel good. I don’t have my normal energy and enthusiasm.
I am ready for something different and it will be interesting to see what that looks like. So if you made it al the way to the end of this post, I would love to hear from anyone else who is suffering from food allergies and how you have managed happy eating, both at home and in restaurants.
And remember, there is a health/wellness program that is perfect for you. I chose Living Well Dallas is because they see each person as unique and create the program that will work for you, not some cookie cutter version that some super star says is sure to work for everyone. I encourage you to check them out!
Tags: Betty Murray, celiac, food allergies, gluten, Jenny Bair, Living Well Dallas
Oh Good Luck! Your body is getting cleaned out. I’m eager to see how you feel in 30 days. You can do this. You are strong!
Thanks, Lori. I am one month in and feeling better! Grocery shopping is still a challenge when I want to eat anything like a cracker/bread product but mostly eating lots of fruits, vegetables and lean beef, turkey. The scale is not changing a lot which is challenging. Now trying to increase exercise and water intake. Life is always interesting… Thanks for your vote of support!
It’s amazing to me how many people are developing/developed allergies to so many foods that we consider “common place”. Hang in there!!
We have added Isagenix to our family diet which has been AMAZING…it adds the benefit of nutritional cleansing to healthier eating. As the mommy, it’s helped me with an amazing amount of energy and my weight has gone down (plus losing inches all over).
As you said, everyone is different and their bodies have different needs but I wonder if adding Isagenix shakes and cleanse products to your diet might help with weightloss as well as boost your energy to help get you working out also!!
Check out isamovie.com to get more info and/or email me if you would like to know more about my experience…francine0270@gmail.com…best wishes for success!!