Why am I waking up with headaches every day? Why am I so bloated and crampy all the time? Why am I dealing with daily anxiety? Why can’t I lose these extra pounds despite going to the gym and eating (what I thought was) a healthy diet?

Why do I just never “feel good”?

Does this sound familiar?

For as long as I can remember I never felt great, all of my childhood really. I grew up on processed food, you know… Little Debbies, those delicious Oatmeal Cream Pies and Swiss Cake Rolls. It became a normal occurrence to eat a family size box of Bagel Bites, Ramen, or an entire box of Kraft Mac n’ Cheese the minute I got home from school, just to eat a full dinner two hours later. This could be chalked up as the habits of a “growing teenager”, but dinner typically consisted of pasta or shake n’ bake chicken with a side of garlic bread or carrots doused in margarine and brown sugar – thats not a recipe for growth for ANYBODY.

Sure, I could blame my parents for these pitiful eating habits. It was the 90’s and nobody knew any better, including my parents.

So began the constant trips to the nurses office with “stomach aches”, sneaking in the green pill at lunch in the cafeteria aka Gas X,  with my best friend who also had the same debilitating stomach issues, and spending numerous nights wide awake with unbearable stomach cramping. During a six month stint in college, I ate only NutriGrain Bars and Propel water because my stomach hurt so bad every day, all the while not realizing this diet was contributing to my issues. I was so afraid to eat in fear I would get sick.

Eventually I became fed up and was tested for every ailment under the sun. I’ve had colonoscopies, blood test, MRIs, endoscopies, small bacterial overgrowth testing, X-rays…you name it. Every time it was the same diagnosis of IBS or anxiety because my tests ALWAYS CAME OUT NORMAL.

I was healthy on paper. I felt as if traditional doctors didn’t want to help me, they just wanted to prescribe me xanax or heartburn medication.

I was always looking for “the answer”.  As my mom would say, I became a severe hypochondriac. With the help of my dear friends Google and WebMd I  became OBSESSED with my health, or lack there of. Something was wrong and I didn’t know where to go for help. After realizing doctors were going to be of no help and WebMd was not really my friend but actually feeding the problem, I began diving in to podcasts, books, videos, and following credible people online and became informed on my own.

Rather than just researching my symptoms I started searching holistic foundations and found a lot of great people that opened up my eyes to the benefits of a real food, holistic lifestyle and the importance of our digestive system. Everything started to make sense: eliminate the gut irritating foods, eat to nourish my body, support my metabolism, and my body finally started to respond in positive ways.

 I started to listen to my body and pay attention to how I felt after I ate. I discovered that I had an intolerance to a large range of foods and needed to work on healing myself from the inside out after growing up on gut-destroying processed and irritating foods, under-nourishing and yo-yo dieting. I started eating real, traditional nourishing foods that worked for my physiology. I began healing my metabolism and I slowly began to finally heal. Nutrition saved me.