Meet Shari
Hi, I’m Shari! I’m fairly new to writing blogs. In truth, I don’t feel like I am a good writer and the idea of writing a blog terrifies me! But, I have a desire to help others, to share what I have learned over the past several years. I am so grateful for this knowledge because putting it into practice in my own life has changed my world. I feel better. I have lost weight. I am sleeping better and have more energy to tackle my day. Most importantly, I have found a new sense of purpose. Here is my story.
In my early thirties I started to struggle with my weight. I had three children in under 4 years. I wasn’t working out and didn’t feel great. Like so many others, my first step was to get back into the gym. I did tons of cardio and lifted weights. I started playing racquetball. It was actually fun. I met a great group of friends and we held each other accountable. And, I did lose some weight at first, but then the weight loss stopped.
I have never been extremely overweight, but always wanting to lose 10-20 pounds, and never happy and confident in the way that my body looked. In my mid-thirties I started doing a 7-10 day cleanse to rid the extra 10 pounds, usually in the spring to get ready for summer. It always worked. Throughout the following year, as I ate “normal” the weight would come back on. The next spring, I would do the cleanse again and the weight would come off, and so the cycle continued.
When I entered my forties, I noticed the cleanse wasn’t working so well. I could only lose 5 or 6 pounds instead of 10. My weight began to creep up. I started to count calories, I ate low fat and whole grain foods. I had low-fat cottage cheese for lunch, in fact almost everything I ate was low fat. If I really restricted my calories, I could lose a few pounds but never as many as I needed. This way of eating wasn’t sustainable, so I would inevitably have a “cheat” meal, which would lead to “cheat” days and then “cheat” weeks. After I gained the weight back, sometimes more than I lost, I would start over and pack my low fat cottage cheese lunches again and the cycle continued.
I was frustrated and tired. My clothes did not fit well and I began buying larger sizes. My self-confidence began to decline and I dreaded wearing shorts (which makes life tough when you live in Florida).
When I was 47 my son was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease. It was devastating. I felt helpless and felt there was nothing I could do to ease his pain. So I started to research. I wanted to learn all I could about this awful disease; and while researching, I stumbled on other peoples stories. So many claimed to control their symptoms and even reverse this disease through diet. This was the OPPOSITE of everything the doctors were telling us. So I dug deeper, and slowly started to change my family's way of eating. We removed most gluten, processed sugar and everything low fat. We stopped using canola, vegetable, and other industrial seed oils. We weren’t perfect by any means but 80-90% of the time we eat pretty clean.
Through trying to tackle my son’s health crisis, I learned so much about how food affects us both mentally and physically. It was at this point I felt like I finally figured out how to feel better and maintain a healthy body weight. I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel!
