2016 found me opting to undergo Lasik surgery. Still one of the best choices I have made, but another stress on my body.  In comes 2017. I lost a precipitous amount of weight. I can proudly say that I felt the best I’ve felt as an adult. I was exercising on the daily- we are talking jogging and biking to the office, lightly lifting, a whole lot of P90X and other Beach Body programs. I was feeling fit and better than ever, but was carefully watching my calories and scared to death my body would betray me by putting on weight despite my best efforts. Life took a turn when we made the mistake of letting our four-year-old son participate in a water slide made slick by untreated ditch water, resulting in his contracting a myriad of bacteria with the official diagnosis being E Coli that worsened into HUS. We spent four days in our local hospital and after being released, he had a nosebleed that we could not stop which indicated things were not yet where they needed to be. We promptly went to the ER and were fast tracked by ambulance down to Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City. What a gift to have such an incredible facility at our fingertips. We spent a little over a week there with him in the best care undergoing several blood transfusions and other treatments the doctors deemed necessary. Keeping this piece brief for privacy. This whole scenario was extremely taxing on our family. As we were nearing the end of the experience, I realized my period was late. That’s right, this is headed where you think it is: I was pregnant with our third baby. Look, I know cynics will say I deserved a tough pregnancy after being lucky enough two have two pretty easy pregnancies. I hear you, but I’m still here to say it was really hard. I had extra water for some reason that prompted lots of Braxton Hicks contractions. Lots. So many, that every time I experienced them, I worked on a rag blanket we now call the “Patience Blanket” meaning I was attempting to be patient for my sweet baby to arrive. I ended up putting on an inordinate amount of weight with this pregnancy and as you will see shortly, proceeded to punish myself for it for years. What I wouldn’t give to reach back to this former self and hug her. Tell her that the weight was a symptom. Please be kind toyour body. It’s trying to tell you things aren’t right. They weren’t. By the time I had the baby, things were already declining quickly. My youngest child was born in Spring 2018. The excess in water caused a herniated belly button which I promptly had fixed. It was painful and unsightly. I remember the doctor requesting I lose weightbefore he operated. My already self-hating, body conscious self was mortified to receive that request. He didn’t know it, but he’d just shoveled more pain on top of a heaping mound of anguish. Perhaps this is where we discuss that back story. Let me briefly pop in and mention that I battled (or perhaps embraced because I loved the results) bulimia through high school and the first part of college. Ifelt pressure from those around me, but more so probably the voice in my mind, to look a certain way and being a young, immature girl, found the easiest road to that body. The niggling voice in the back of my head telling me that I needed to be smaller to be better, to be loved, never went away. That same voice walks with me daily. She lives in a corner of my head that I am working to heal. I have done so much work around forgiving that voice in my head and learning to love the magic that is my body. More to come on this topic, I have strong opinions around how we discuss our bodies. Back to the story at hand, I recovered from my belly button surgery but was not recovering from the weight gain and the lethargy that haunted me from my last pregnancy. I know, oldest story in the book, woman has a baby and can’t lose the baby weight. Please understand it doesn’t have to be this way. There are reasons our bodies hold onto weight and it’s NEVER because your body hates you, despite what my voice in my head says. ​The birth of my third baby marked the end of my child bearing. My husband and I agreed that our family was complete and chose to have a hysteroscopy or in other words, an endometrial ablation destroying the lining of my uterus so I was no longer able to become pregnant. At the time, I was elated that I would no longer have any bleeding in my cycle, but now that I am looking back on this decision, I am saddened that I did not see the value in the beautiful cycle nature had given me. Our cycles have countless benefits for our female bodies, and there I was trying to erase it.​ I’ve always had sinus problems. I had surgery to help clear sinuses when I was 18. My sinus head aches built up again forcing me to seek relief. My doctor reviewed my case and decided he could do further work to relieve sinus issues via surgery. I had sinus surgery in Fall 2020. Here’s where it gets real ugly. When I looked at this body that had given me three babies and had undergone a number of traumatic surgeries, all I saw was fat. I hated it. I was so mad at it for not lettinggo of the weight. My voice in my head took complete control and shamed me day and night. There is so much more to be said about this topic. As I mentioned previously, this topic deserves its own attention. I will leave this here, but suffice it to say, I wish I could have had the strength to love my body through this hard time. Instead, I punished it. That’s right, I went in for liposuction in a move of desperation. I had liposuction on my mid section in Winter 2020. Listen, I will never throw a stone at anyone that chooses this as an option. It works for some people, but my issues were internal and were never going to be resolved by further punishing my body. However, that self didn’t know that I was only worseningmy issues. So there I was, still bigger than I’d ever been having put my body through hell. Instead of seeking a path to heal, I punished my body more. In Winter 2020 I went in for Cool Sculpting and attempted to freeze the fat from my body. As you might guess, this was not a solution and did not provide me anywhere near the results I was seeking.​ While I was undergoing a series of Cool Sculpting treatments, my eye doctor found a concerning pinguecula in my right eye and advised me to have it removed. Another surgery. At this point I was like an unmoored boat, drifting at sea, grasping for anything firm that might lend me peace and still the unrelenting search for weight loss. Notice I did not say health. I still didn’t understand that health was what I was supposed to be searching for- instead, I was desperate for weight loss. The weight was always a symptom of my lacking health. After consulting doctor Google, I decided to jump into taking expensive, tailored probiotics, thinking that would solve my issues. I had my stool tested and was provided an individualized recommendation for probiotics. I can still very clearly remember reviewing the test results. They called my body type ‘heavy’. Heavy. Heavy. The results were heavy. And I almost couldn’t finish reading the results. The probiotics did not solve the heavy issue either.​ After all I put my body through, I’m not surprised that my ears started pulsing again in Spring 2021. I wasn’t listening to my body’s communication, despite it trying to get my attention several different ways. My pulsatile tinnitus came back with a vengeance and tortured me every night. This increased my food intake to find relief from the pulsing and stole my sleep. My body was screaming at me, yet still, still, I thought the solution was weight loss. And then there were the allergies. Oh the allergies. I didn’t have them earlier in life, but they found me and had been making my life miserable for a couple of years. I went into the allergist to be tested and he found numerous environmental allergies and suggested I undergo immunotherapy by having allergy shots in both arms once a week for several years. The allergy shots seemed to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. I was sick constantly and putting on weight at an alarmingly rapid rate. Additionally, the shots went on for a little over a year until my brother, who is a Doctor, suggested I discontinue the therapy because of the toll it was having on me. In Winter 2021, only a few months into the immunotherapy, my husband read an article about hormone replacement by a local Doctor. Fortunately, I was able to connect with him. He tested myhormones and we found that my testosterone was critically low. He placed a pellet in my back to correct the issue. This pellet did help- I had loads more energy and began to see a bit of weight loss. I thought I’d found the magic pill, however, my ears were still pulsing and my sleep was declining. Next, that’s right, the saga continues, I had a Doctor recommend Lipo-C shots. I had no idea what was being injected into my body, only knew that it was being done twice a week and promised swift results. I did lose a bit of weight, but the injections made sleep a distant dream. Not only were my ears pulsing, but I was now so wired and unwell I couldn’t have found sleep if it had hit me in the face. And as if I didn’t learn my lesson, I dove head first into another body treatment called EmSculpt. This claims to flex your muscles and provide you an intense workout via the paddles within a short treatment period. I know this is going to shock you. . .but that didn’t give me the results I was looking for either. Writing all of this out, it seems almost insane that I would think that weight loss was still something I should chase. That weight loss would issue the relief I needed rather than a deeper, healing therapy, but my former self was determined (remember my mention of Type A?). I was all goal oriented, and nothing was going to keep me from my goals, including my health. I had been following a few weight loss accounts on Instagram for a while and, blaming myself and lack of knowledge for my extra pounds, I proceeded to seek the services of one of the Instagram trainers. More about this in another post, but please be so careful about who you let in your circle. Again, this was not the solution. Chasing weight loss was not going to help my body heal. I became absolutely desperate to sleep. I was rarely getting a full night of sleep and was losing my mind, will to live, and did not know where to turn. I visited with both my hormone replacement doctor and my sinus doctor hoping for relief. Both prescribed loads of sedative medications to help my body sleep through the pulsing. (Sleep through the pulsing! This is important- I had been ‘sleeping’ (ignoring) all the signs my body had been giving me that something was not right). My sinus doctor ran out of ideas and referred me to incredibly talented specialists at the University of Utah. There we discussed my extensive health history and formulated a plan. In Winter 2022 I had a cerebral angiography, venogram, and lumbar puncture (while I was awake, 0/10 would not recommend) which resulted in me lying on another operating table as they doctors blew up balloons in my head to try to find the source of the pulsing. Unfortunately, the result of this procedure was not terribly conclusive. They think they found a constricted vein which they compared to a finger stuck in a hose as water is trying to flow. They said that MAY be the source of the pulsing and suggested an experimental surgery that involved putting bone paste in my head to try to dampen the noise of the pulsing. The surgery went well, but it did not stop the pulsing.​ This rendered me hopeless and lost. Searching, begging for relief. Not only did I have the surgery without a successful outcome, but I had those close to me treat me as though I was wasting my time and money, claiming that the surgery “wasn’t even real”. I assure you, it was real, painful, and emotionally draining. Please support your friends and family when they are searching for answers. Those answers do not give themselves up easily and the quest is so taxing.​ It's not over yet. My online fitness coach suggested Semaglutide. Apparently the latest and greatest in weight loss solutions. I consulted with my doctor and he was on board. I began shooting this into my abdomen once a week. It killed my appetite, but did not render significant results. I was told this magic drug was the ultimate solution, that even if everything else didn’t work, this would. It didn’t. I didn’t.​I was lost. Desperate and lost. I turned to some incredibly educational accounts on Instagram to look for answers. They shared their functional nutrition knowledge. Fortunately, one of the best, is local for me. More to come on our meeting, how we started working together, and the emotions surrounding our first interaction. His name is Fitness Dane, and our meeting changed my life.