Why I Stopped Doing Figure Competitions

In 2007 my career as a figure competitor and fitness model started but by 2009 it ended abruptly. Within two short years I had created a name for myself in the bodybuilding world. I had places top 5 at Nationals, earned a contract with a supplement company as their spokes-model, was published seven times, and my career was what most competitors dream about. I was basically getting paid to workout, and inspiring others to do the same, and each day I checked things of my list of accomplishments. From the outside I may have looked like I was living the life, but there was a lot going behind the scenes that I didn’t want to share.

The first year I competed wasn’t so bad. I started my “diet” or show prep after getting out of an unhealthy relationship, and wanted a goal to work towards to keep me focus, and distracted. After having more than one abusive relationship I really didn’t value myself very much. I felt like I was always putting others needs before my own, but for once I was going to just focus on me, and I finally had an excuse to do so.

When I did my first figure show I spent about 3 months prepping for it, and lost over 30lbs. I was so thrilled with my results, and loved the attentions and recognition I was finally getting from the outside world. Everyone was constantly complimenting me, and for once I felt so important and special. A few months later I did the LA Championships, and not only won my class in figure, but took the overall. Honestly, I was shocked by my success, and loved feeling like I had so much control over how my body looked. For once in my life I felt like I had it together. I was hooked and competed 5X in 2007.

The off-season was pretty rough for me. Once I relaxed a little from my hardcore workout and eating routine, I instantly started to put on weight. I still worked out daily and followed a very clean diet, but my body didn’t look like it. When I started to diet for the National Season the following year next year it took me twice as long to lose the weigh. I wanted to compete so bad but I felt tired and frustrated with the lack of results. Often my body screamed at me with different aches and pains. My menstrual cycle was extremely irregular, and I had to drink coffee and take supplements to get through the day, but instead of stopping and listening to my body I just kept on pushing.

The last time I competed was at Team Universe in 2008. I remember being in NY City, and being exhausted and cranky, because I was just so worn down. I remember that day so clearly because I felt horrible regardless of the smile I pasted on my face, but I also remember it because it was the day that my path and competition career would come to an end.

Competing didn’t stop for me just because I felt like crap physically. I probably could have continued to push through the physical pain and exhaustion, or even taken more supplements to lose the weight and stay lean. I maybe would have even achieved the IFBB Pro status that most competitors dream about, but I decided to stop because my emotional and spiritual life was suffering dramatically. Typically our physical bodies are the first to show signs that are lives are out of balance, or at least mine was. I had become so emotionally and spiritually detached from my body that it literally had to scream at me before I decided to stop pushing it, and it was screaming so loud that I couldn’t drown it out anymore.

The next few years were the worst, but also the best years of my life because they were the most life changing, and I by far learned the most about who I really was and also who I wanted to be.

In 2010 I left San Diego, got rid of A Deal 4 Fitness (my personal training and nutrition business), and moved to rural PA to work at a Holistic Healing Center. Not only with the hopes of healing my own body, but also with the hopes of helping others heal their bodies too.  One huge lesson I learned out of many is you can’t help someone do something that you don’t know how to do yourself!

In the process of trying to reverse the physical damage I had done to my body, I spent thousands tens of thousands of dollars on different doctors, and still didn’t have an answer of why I wasn’t well. When I finally realized that there was a lot more in my life that was broken besides just my body, I then shifted my focus to healing my mind and soul, and many of the health challenges I was dealing with went away. This healing process took me years and I struggled with changing things about myself that I needed to work through. It wasn’t as simple as the typical western approach of taking a pill, and having my symptoms go away. I spent a decent amount of time miserable because of all the difficult things I went through with my health, but I will spend the rest of my life grateful for everything God taught me in the process.

What “Holistic” Meant On My Healing Journey

In 2010 I got very ill. My hormones where severely out of balance; low progesterone, high testosterone, very low cortisol, hypothyroid and high cholesterol. To top it all of I was about 40 lbs over weight, and had such bad inflammation that I could barely walk. For years I saw countless doctors and each time I would receive a new diagnoses like PCOS, PMDD, Hashimotos, Adrenal Fatigue, Candida, Food Sensitivities, Digestive Disorders etc.; At first I was relieve to have a diagnoses, because this meant I could now follow a treatment plan, but I still wasn’t getting better.

For over a year I could barely work and my boyfriend at the time (finance now) was supporting us both. I wanted answers, but mainly I wanted solutions so I could have my healthy life back! The supplements and different medications I tried would sometimes help for a while, but I got tired of just treating the symptoms, and we were literally spending all of our money on my poor health. I saw so many different types of doctors from MD’s to Naturopaths and everything in between, but no one was REALLY helping me.

Basically, I was just fed up and didn’t understand why I wasn’t getting better. I had made up my mind that I was going to keep fighting this regardless, and I tried every kind of diet you can image to see which one was going to work best for me; Gluten Free, Paleo, Vegan, Low Carb, Juice Fasting! You name it I did it! The problem that I kept running into was most of these diets worked for a while. I actually was starting to feel better just by making the proper dietary changes and adding some supplements. Even though I was walking again and had lost most of the weight I had gained I still felt fatigued pretty often, and was dealing with some bad hormonal irregularities. My health and my life were becoming manageable but not great, and I wasn’t going to settle.

I had no doubt that the body has miraculous healing abilities if you give it what it needs, but why wasn’t my body healing?!?! I decided to continue to educate myself as much as possible, and enrolled in school to become a Holistic Health Practitioner. I believed in a Holistic approach, but quickly realized I hadn’t been practicing it on myself. I was now aware that I couldn’t just focus on healing my body alone, but had to also focus on healing my SOUL. This meant the solution wasn’t just a to do list of what I should and shouldn’t eat, it wasn’t cleansing, it wasn’t supplements or medication, and it wasn’t exercising. I couldn’t just try to heal my body without healing my soul, because it didn’t work that way!!!

BUT how the heck do you heal your soul? I mean we all have issues and baggage right? Honestly, I had no idea that I had things in my life that I hadn’t dealt with and that they  could still affect my health so much, until I actually started dealing with them. It was recommended to me to keep a journal and I thought why not give it a try. I had never been good at just sitting sit in meditation or prayer, but when I started journaling I was shocked on how much I wanted to write. I never knew I was the type of person that processed things through writing, and often I would sit down to write not even knowing what I was going to talk about. The more I wrote the more I opened up. I wrote about my past, my present, my future, my dreams, my goals, my failures, and ALL of my feelings. Overtime my journals became my prayers, and a way for me to talk to God about my joys, and also my sorrows.

When I got sick I searched for answers everywhere on how to heal my body, and before I got sick I was focused on filling my life with everything else I thought would make me feel whole. When my body started suffering physically and I started seeking God instead answers, He showed me that is was my soul that really needed the most healing, and many of my physical problems where just symptoms of what was broken in my life.

All along I had thought the answers were within a diagnoses, and then finding the right supplements, medication, or diet to help me heal. Even though many of these things helped me improve my health on my healing journey, the real answers I had been searching where found in a loving God who was holding out His arms saying He loved me and nothing could EVER change that.

How I Found My REAL Self Worth

Throughout most of my life I struggled deeply with my identity, even though I had an identity to others, I really wasn’t the person I wanted to be deep down. This hit me hard in my mid 20’s when I started to experience what I would call an identity crisis.

I think often we build our identity based off how much self worth we have, and I built mine based off of how much others validated me as a person, and not how I valued myself. Not having much self worth was the outcome of growing up in broken family, like many of us do. Often I didn’t feel very valued, and I learned to seek my value outside of myself instead of within.  This only resulted in a series of unhealthy and broken relationship where I felt like I was not getting my deep needs met. When all the relationships all failed, I trying finding my self worth based off of other peoples acceptance of me. I used my physical appearance to get my needs met and based an identity around that.

In 2007 I decided to further my career as a personal trainer/nutritionist, and became a fitness model/competitive figure athlete (bodybuilder), and I was very “successful”. I felt like for the first time in my life I was getting what I needed from the world. People that didn’t even know me would give me compliments and words of encouragement, and this made me feel so special and accepted.  The problem was that I was still basing my self worth off what other people thought about me, and not how I felt about myself. On the outside I looked so confident and strong, but on the inside I rarely felt that way. I didn’t realize what REAL self worth was until I no longer received validation from others.

In 2009 I got very ill, to the point where I gained over 50lbs and was constantly weak and in excruciating pain. I would say this was the lowest point in my life because I felt like my “identity” had been taken away from me. I couldn’t model, compete, or even workout, therefor the validation from the outside of myself came to a halt. I was no longer receiving my value from my job, from my appearance, from my peers and I felt worse off than when I started, because now I no longer had my health.

My self-worth was in the gutter and it stayed there for quite sometime. I tried to get my old life back, but my health wouldn’t allow that, so instead I kept trying on different identities to see which one fit best. Some would seem to fit for a short period of time, but none of them really fit right. My life was full of confusion and I was in so much physical and emotional pain. The problem was I kept trying to be someone else and I wasn’t trying to just be me.

As I started asking myself a very important question, “Who am I”? I began to find the answers within me.  I had lived 30 years of my life and I didn’t even know who I was. All the struggles I had been through had taught me that no outside source of validation could make me feel complete. I am just ME,  and I had to learn to be ok with that.

When I realized that I’m a child of God and I am uniquely created and designed by Him my perspective started changing! I had the answers within me all along, and I received them when I started seeking approval from God and not people. As I search deep within my soul I continue to find God, and I learn more and more each day about how much He loves me,  I continue to find my identity in Him and learn more about myself. I am worthy, I am valued, and I have my own unique voice.

What Happened When I Stopped Believing In Coincidences

Often we blame the crazy things that happen in our lives on a coincidence. Maybe it’s because we are so disconnected from the Divine, or maybe it’s because we don’t believe that there’s a loving God watching over us, making sure we always know that He’s there. The expression “it’s a God thing” used to drive me nuts. I would think, “REALLY?…Just because something amazing happened to you, that I doesn’t mean there’s some Divine Intervention going on behind the scenes.” Even though I believed in heaven and God, I thought things just happened, but mainly I believed in coincidences.

Truthfully, my life felt like I was living in a fiction novel, and due to some of the more difficult parts of my story, I had become very cynical of the possibility of a greater meaning. Basically, my life was full of “coincidences”

When I met two of my closest friends (at different times) that just so happened to be battling with the some of the same  issues as me, I chalked it up to a coincidence. When I met my fiancé in the oddest of circumstances, who is definitely the man I’m supposed to be with, that was just a coincidence. When I got in a terrible car-totaling accident on the freeway driving a convertible, and didn’t have a scratch on my body, I figured, “ehhhh coincidence”. When I wept uncontrollably walking through the airport, not even knowing at the same time my mom was suffering a terrible head injury, that of course was a coincidence. Recently after spending a tough weekend grieving and praying over what had turned into a broken relationship with my dad, and then waking up to an email from him the next day, I stopped trying to convince myself that is was coincidence and decided to write this blog.

What if just for a day we believed that there was no such thing as a coincidence, and God was working for a purpose? What if we opened our eyes to the world and allowed ourselves to see EVERYTHING that we were meant to see? What if we trusted our instincts, and paid attention to the signs? Then would we begin seeing things not as “just a coincidence” but more so with a meaning and a purpose? And if this was the way we viewed the world, how would it change the way we lived, not only our own lives but also how we impacted others?

I used to think I was just an extremely sensitive and highly emotional person, which I am (but I’m learning there’s more to it). I would be in a room with a group of people, and would be the first one to notice if someone else was sad or angry. This made me extremely uncomfortable, and I labeled myself as an introvert. My sensitivities made me withdraw from the world even more, and I grew lonely. Emotionally I was suffering, which also started to manifest physically.

Then, just when I thought life couldn’t get any harder, and that I couldn’t climb over another mountain, the most traumatic thing I could have imagined happened to me. I lost my mom, the closest person in my life. Not only did she accept me for who I was, but she understood me. As a result I became even more cynical, and further isolated. I now justified every good by a coincidence, and everything bad based off of how tough life was, and I refused to see God in any of my pain.

The thing is, once you really meet God He never leaves you, and until you find your way back to Him you feel a yearning in your soul for something. Even though I had been through a lot, somewhere deep down I wanted to hang onto the belief that there was a loving God watching over me and He was involved in everything that was happening to me. Somewhere in all my hopelessness, I realized I had two choices:

1. I could continue to keep my head down and ignore all of little (and BIG) “coincidences” God was bringing into my life

2. Or I could look around and be even more open than I have ever been to what God was trying to show me.

Slowly, I began waking up when I realized that all the coincidences had really been God showing me that He was there. Now that I was becoming aware of all that was really happening around me, my life has really started to change. The pain associated with all of the difficult things I went through had been destroying my soul, and detaching me from whom I really was. Looking back at my own life and all I had been through, I knew that there was much more to it all. I knew that everything that happened in my life — good or bad, happy or sad — God could use the situations for a greater good.

As I continue to accept the truth about who God is in my life, I’m constantly seeing a “divine intervention” going on in the world. After years of searching for answers, I’m realizing that real healing only happens when you don’t just TRY to heal your body, but you also LET God heal your soul … and that my friend is no coincidence.

Pumpkin Cake Balls

Could they be gluten, dairy, and egg free and still taste yummy? You should probably just make them and find out for yourself! Feel free to let me know how they turn out.. and enjoy! 

Balancing cortisol (and life)

This past Saturday was my birthday, and I can’t believe that I’m 31. I also can’t believe it’s been almost 6 years since I last competed in figure competitions. If you would have told me the last day I stepped on stage that I would never do it again, I would have laughed at you. Competing was my life, and training and preparing for them is what motivated me to take on each day. I defined myself by being a figure athlete and a fitness model, and when I didn’t have that in my life anymore I didn’t know who I was. It was a tough realization because I didn’t stop competing by choice, when my body stopped functioning like a healthy body, it decided for me. 

My endocrine system told me to stop when I was no longer having a menstrual cycle or I would experience horrible hormonal swings. When my period finally starting coming back, after being gone for months, it was horrible. The doctor diagnosed me with PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder) based off my symptoms, which is a condition that includes severe depression symptoms, irritability, and tension before menstruation. This only occurs in 3-8% of woman and I was one of the lucky ones. Every month, for at least 2 weeks, I felt tired, anxious and depressed to the point that I didn’t want to leave the house.

When I finally had a hormone test done, my hormones were completely out of balance and my cortisol was extremely low. No wonder I felt like crap. When your cortisol levels are out of balance you more than likely will experience fatigue, insulin resistance, and gastrointestinal and reproductive problems — and I was dealing with all of them. Based off my lab results, I was suffering from severe adrenal fatigue. This is what happens when your adrenal glands are so exhausted they are no longer producing adequate amounts of cortisol.

The first two doctors I saw tried treating my adrenal fatigue with hydrocortisone. Unfortunately, this treatment was temporary. I would feel better for a short period of time and then I would feel worse. I first time I tried hydrocortisone my hair starting falling out and my stomach swelled up like there was a beach ball inside. Perhaps the dose was too high or maybe it was a combination of all the other hormones he had me taking. The second time I tried hydrocortisone was about a year later, and I developed severe candida overgrowth in my intestines and my food sensitives became worse then ever. Needless to say hydrocortisone didn’t treat my adrenal fatigue but only made it worse in the end.

Lately, I’ve gotten quite a few emails asking how I healed my adrenal fatigue. I wish this was a simple answer, but it’s not. It took me quite some time to get my cortisol levels back to normal again, and I strongly believe that the biggest contributor to this was learning to manage my stress and live a balanced life once again. When I was a competitor, my life wasn’t in balance. I pushed my body harder than it wanted to be pushed; I didn’t eat a balanced diet; I didn’t get enough rest and hardly spent time with friends and loved ones. Overtime, all these things depleted my cortisol reserves, and the adrenal fatigue was just my body was telling me that I was completely out of balance, and I needed to bring my life back into a state of equilibrium again. This wasn’t something that happened overnight, and living in balance is still something I have to be conscious of daily.

My goals for 2014 are to continue to heal and help others do the same. I want to bloom into the person I have the potential to be. I’m not exactly sure what that person looks like physically but I know they are happy, healthy, and peaceful — which is all I can ask for.

A New Year & New Opportunities

As the 1st of January approaches, many of us are thinking about what our resolutions will be for the upcoming year. I think I make multiple “resolutions” (or goals) throughout the year because it’s so important to have things that you’re working toward. For many of us, goals aren’t just something to strive towards, but they can also give us a sense of purpose. I think that’s a big part of why I loved competing in Figure Competitions so much, because I always had a goal — not just short term goals on a daily basis, but long term ones each month and year as well.

I want to share my New Year’s Resolution with you for the upcoming year, but first I want to flash back to the New Year of 2011. At the time, I weighed about 175 lbs, I was constantly exhausted and I was not a happy girl. I wanted my health back, and I wanted to be able to look in the mirror and have a body I was proud of and feel confident again.  I knew how to eat right to lose weight, but everything that I had done in the past wasn’t working. I couldn’t work out like I used to, and even with a dramatic decrease in my caloric intake, the scale wasn’t budging and my size 14 pants weren’t getting any looser. For once, my goals seemed unachievable and this sent me into a deep depression. All the doctors I saw kept saying you have severe adrenal fatigue (the lab tests all indicated my body was barely producing cortisol) and I was told that exercising would only make it worse. I wanted to listen, but I was fed up and stressed out because I wasn’t feeling better or losing weight.

Exercise had been my drug of choice, and it was how I overcame depression and possibly other addictions I struggled with as a teenager. So after a year of not exercising, I made the decision to work out lightly, because I needed to do something not just to lose the pounds, but also for my emotional health. Instead of just making a resolution for 2011, my boyfriend (now fiancé) and I decided to have a competition, because I knew with my competitive nature that this was the best way for me to stick to my goal. And you know I wasn’t going to let him beat me!

In the meantime, I had been doing tons of research on different types of diets and what foods are inflammatory, because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do much exercising if I couldn’t even walk. First I looked into the typical night shade foods (tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes, etc.) and I had tried cutting them out with little improvements. I had also cut out gluten, which seemed to help some, but I still was in pain — and pain meant no exercise. Then, after hours upon hours of research into different diets and eating plans, I stumbled upon the what is currently the very popular Paleo Diet, which had quite a few anti-inflammatory testimonies associated with it. So that was it, we decided we were both going all out Paleo. We decided that not only was it a competition, but we always put a wager on it. If he reached his goal first, I would have to give away one pair of shoes every week until I reached my goal weight!

Within a month, I was down almost 10lbs and the pain had started to improve. I was working out lightly, sticking to the new nutrition plan and starting to feel a little bit like myself again! And guess who won the competition and still has her shoe collection intact — yep, that’d be me!

That was my goal in 2011, and I’m proud to say I achieved it. I didn’t get to where I am today right away by just by changing my eating, but I was finally seeing some improvements and moving in the right direction. With 2014 around the corner, I’m thinking about my newest goals and how they relate to my health and fitness journey.  I’m still applying many of the things I’ve learned on this journey — which I’ll continue to share — mostly through trial and error, and I’m going to use all my experiences to get to where I want to be this year. I’m excited that I can finally work out again and see what kind of results I can get. My approach is much different then it used to be though. I value my health and I will and I listen to my body and what it tells me. There is a huge difference between pushing through a tough workout and fighting extreme fatigue or feeling hungry and starving yourself, and this is something I — and maybe even you — unfortunately had to learn the hard way.

The picture I posted is how I currently look. I no longer look like a fitness model or am I ready to step on a competition stage, I’m just a girl that wants to be healthy and fit and is blessed to have been given a second chance and have the ability to work toward my goals.

Tis the Season to be Grateful

Today is Christmas Eve, and one my favorite times of the year. The reason why I enjoy this season so much is because I have so much to be grateful for. Three years ago today, I was living in rural Pennsylvania with my family, and this was one of the worst years of my life — but looking back, it was also one of the best.

It was the worst because of how ill I was. I can remember having to take an elevator where my mom worked because I was too weak to walk up the stairs. While everyone enjoyed a nice Christmas meal, I could barely eat a thing because I was too afraid of what the food would do to my body. I was worried that I would have a flare up and not be able to stand up from the dining room table, or that I’d wake up in the middle of the night with paralyzing pain. These bouts of inflammation would come on unexpectedly and sometimes would last for days. Back then, I was just starting to figure out that it was partially related to what I was eating, and also related to how afraid I was of food and what it would do to me, both physically and emotionally.

It was one of the best years of my life because I got to spend it with my family and the people that loved and supported me no matter how sick I was. They didn’t care what I looked like, but continued to give me hope and love me when I needed it the most. The image that I had once created for myself through diet and exercise could no longer been seen in the mirror. The girl I once was, someone with so much drive and ambition, now felt defeated and depressed. If it wasn’t for my family, especially my mom, I may have given up and lost the little hope I had left. I remember her telling me not to worry, and that she knew I was going to get better. She said she could visualize me in the future, and I was strong, healthy and confident again. She encouraged me to hold on to that image and I always kept it in my mind.

Little did I know at the time that I would only have two Christmases left with her. However, if I had never gotten sick, then I probably would have never moved to PA and had the opportunity to spend all those extra days with her — and I wouldn’t have this story to share with you today. In future blogs, I want to tell you how I got better and provide you with the hope you may need to get through your own struggles. My experience made me stronger and I’m forever grateful for how much healthier I am today, and most importantly that I had people — in this case, a mother and other loved ones — who never gave up on me.

Cost Cutting Kitchen: Pumpkin Bars

I assume if you’re a health nut like myself, then you probably shop at Whole Foods or another type of health food store. Every time I leave, I wonder how I ended spending so much money, but only have once bag of groceries. Many of us want to be healthy, but we really don’t want to go broke trying to do so.

About 2 years ago I spent a decent amount of time barely employed due to my health issues at the time. The “upside” of that period of time is that it gave me time to experiment in the kitchen. Some people don’t enjoy cooking, baking or what I like to call “creating”, but for me it’s a passion. Not only do I get to be in my favorite room in the house, the kitchen, but I also get to find ways to save money.

I was buying the Go Raw Pumpkin Bars until I looked at the label and realized how easy they would be to replicate. They are also completely grain free, so I can enjoy them on my diet guilt free, and I hope you can enjoy them too! 

• 2 cups Pumpkin Seeds (soaked overnight and rinsed)
• 8-10 Dates (soaked overnight in 1/2 cup water)
• 1/2 cup Flaxseeds (soaked for about 30 minutes in date water before dehydrating)
• Sea Salt (to taste)

Process the dates and flaxseeds in food processor until thick and jelly like. Drain and rinse the water off the pumpkin seeds and mix all ingredients in a bowl.  I used my hands! Mix until everything is all clumped together, then flatten it out (use your hands or back of a spoon if you’re too sticky) on unbleached parchment paper and dehydrate for about 8 hours. If you don’t have a food dehydrator, you can set your oven on the lowest temp and leave it cracked open and check on them in 3 hours. Then simply cut to serving sizes, store and enjoy!

Before, After, and Now

Most of the time, when you see before and after photos, the first images is where the individual is at their heaviest or more unhealthy, and the “after” shows them in a healthier and fitter state. Well, that’s not the case when it comes to my story. My before starts with me in what I felt was the best shape of my life, and ends with healthy complications, uncontrollable weight gain, and visits to countless doctors. However don’t worry, it has a happy ending!

In 2008, I competed in my first figure competition and by the year’s end I had already qualified nationally and placed in the Top 5! In 2009 I was a sponsored athlete, representing a supplement company at stores and fitness expos, and went on to compete in 2 more shows.

At the end of 2009, my competition career ended abruptly. Out of nowhere, my body was no longer responding the way it had in the past, and it took me almost a year to prepare for a competition that previously took less than 3 months. I went to several doctors — MD’s to Naturopaths to everything in between — and was given numerous diagnoses including Borderline Type 2 Diabetes (Insulin Resistance), Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, Gluten Intolerance (Borderline Celiacs Disease), Auto Immune Thyroid, Candida, severe Adrenal Fatigue, Estrogen Dominance and the list goes on.

All the while, my inflammation had gotten so bad some days I would literally wake up paralyzed, not being able to get out of bed. This is coming from someone that could leg press nearly 800lbs in the past, and now I was immobile! I was so physically weak, and to top it off I weighed around 180lbs, which was over 50lbs my competition weight and at least 35lbs over what I would consider a healthy weight for someone with my frame. Keep in mind that my diet was still relatively clean this entire time.

With all these different diagnoses to deal with, I started doing my own research and learned how to get some physical relief using a combination of alternative approaches. If I knew then what I know now, my health journey would have been much shorter — however the process of getting better taught me so much and is still teaching me things today. As a result, I’m now a Licensed Holistic Health Practitioner and I probably wouldn’t have chosen this path if it wasn’t for what I went through.

Don’t get me wrong, some days I literally wanted to die than go through the pain and suffering, but I chose to keep fighting. Everyday I fight to be healthy and keep my symptoms under control. I’m using new tools to get back and stay in shape (recent pics to come in next post), and continue to work on balancing my hormones. I now have hope, and once you have hope, you can accomplish anything.