My Journey to a Healthier & Happier Me!

When you lack good health, everything else in life suffers. It’s harder to concentrate. Illness can cause you to fall behind in all forms of work. Stress can make you feel overwhelmed. If you want to do well in all areas of your life, you must make your health a priority. Period. 

Alright all you Healthy Habiters—today’s post is a long one. But it’s one I’ve been wanting to share for a long time, and suddenly a few weeks ago, it felt like the right time to finally write this all down. So grab your coffee, green juice or heck, a glass of prosecco (I don’t know when you’re reading this!) and settle in because I’m sharing my journey with health. Heads up, it hasn’t been a smooth one.

At the end of 2018, I was feeling, well, kinda crappy. I was tired constantly, even after a long night’s sleep. I’d get random headaches, was irritable, have panic attacks for no reason and it seemed like every other thing I ate upset my stomach. During the day, I felt foggy and sluggish, and couldn’t stay focused. I’d always considered myself a pretty healthy person—I workout, I eat healthy and I get a decent amount of sleep—so, why was I feeling like this?! Is this what my thirties are going to be like? Surely not, right?

Then in August of 2018, something clicked. I’d been doing a lot of reading and researching and fell upon some pretty incredible data. Life-changing, really. So, I started making changes—some small and some major, and awesome things have happened. But, before I dive into the amazing changes I’ve been experiencing you need to know what I’ve dealt with along the way. My journey with health and wellness has been a bit of a roller coaster. So, let’s turn back the clock and take a look at what my life looked like in 2018.

Having been a full time restauranteur since 2008, there is no time for much of anything other than, well, working early mornings and late nights. You eat when you can, and it is usually the fastest things to make that end up in your body, which usually means it’s not the healthiest. You eat on the go, you inhale it into your mouth as fast as possible and you get back to work. Oh, and did I mention the coffee intake? It was coffee in one hand almost at all times. Water? Whats that?! No thanks! I will take another coffee or coca-cola please! I needed the caffeine spike not water to fuel my body (little did I know and found out years later, water IS an all natural energy booster and all I needed!) 

So fast forward to 2018. That brings us to 10+ years of running our restaurants which means 10+ years of eating late at night, barely getting a full night of sleep, stress from the start of my day until the end, and barely any days off…for over 10 years! Doesn’t leave much time or room for health and wellness and man, did my body and mind feel it. I was barely 30 years old and I could barely muster up enough energy to take my dog for a walk to the driveway and back. I would cry at the simplest things (and I am not a person who cries at anything). I wouldn’t care when a catastrophe happened because I just didn’t have the energy to. Everything I ate made me sick, I couldn’t sleep, I was on edge all the time, nothing sounded fun and my stress levels were at an all-time high, and get this, I got sick with walking phenomena, then bronchitis which lead me to crack my ribs-and I NEVER get sick. BUT, I was running a restaurant empire, this is how all business owners feel right? Little did I know, this is the OPPOSITE of how anyone should feel ever.

Finally, my husband, Nick, suggested I go see a holistic specialist down in Florida—that was a wake up call. The way I was currently living my life wasn’t working, and something had to change. I was embarrassed I’d let it get this far and that I hadn’t been able to fix it on my own, but he was right. It was time for a health and wellness intervention.

So that’s what I did. I took control. I succumbed to what I always resisted to and I went and did a massive amount of blood work and waited for the appointment to come to go over the results. 

The appointment came and my husband and I drove down to Orlando, Florida to get the results and meet hopefully the person who would save my life. My doctor’s first question was “How are you still alive? Your blood work shows you are walking dead. Literally, how are you still alive?” I laughed, thinking she was exaggerating, and then looked at her face which was dead serious. So then, of course, I started crying. My levels, and I mean every single one of my levels, were at an all time low. If it was a range of 10-100 I would be at 0, if the range was 100-700 is normal, I would be 0. By my bloodwork results, it looked like I hadn’t drank any water in days, even weeks, because my cells were so dehydrated. My body was very acidic which we all know leads to cancer cells breeding. My bodies bone mass was breaking down faster than she’s ever seen. And this was all happening to me, a 30 year old. Need I go on, because I think you got the point… In a nutshell, I pushed my body to the max for 10+ years, and it finally broke. To feel yucky is one thing, but to see the yuckiness on paper, right in front of you, is a gut wrenching feeling.

What that experience really triggered in me was the serious need for some major lifestyle changes. SO! This is when the real work started. 

When I finally got done talking with my doctor, she basically said stress was wrecking havoc on my body and that I needed to find a way to better manage it. She also told me that I likely had a lot of food sensitivities, even though I wasn’t actually allergic to anything, so she suggested I cut out artificial sweeteners, greasy fried foods, and cut back on dairy and caffeine. Pretty much my entire diet for my entire life. So I quit that day. 

I went with a whole foods, natural, organic, semi-vegetarian diet, started drinking a gallon of Himalayan Pink Salt and lemon water everyday (pink salt provides your body with the minerals it needs and the lemon helps keep your body in an alkaline state vs acidic), started taking vitamins and minerals that my body no longer produced daily and I quit coffee and switched to non-caffeine green tea. These seem like minor changes but it lead to huge changes.

What happened next was a long process—one that’s still happening. One of the first major changes we (my husband and I) made was selling 3 of our restaurants—the major stressors in my life at the time. It’s been amazing to see what that decision has led to, and I’m sure that what I’m doing now would not have been possible without that decision.

But then in 2019, everything started to click, and for once in my life I feel like I actually have control over my health. The biggest difference? Having the knowledge to make informed decisions. Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve been doing a lot of reading and it’s really opened my eyes to how my body works. So, in January, I really started making some big changes to my lifestyle. The biggest change has been my diet (more on this in the near future if you all want), and also my exercise routine, water intake, attitude, and my overall outlook and relationship with my body. I’m finally, after all these years, listening to my body instead of ignoring its flashing red lights.

Amazing, amazing things have happened since that day in 2018. I am still working as hard and as many hours as I once did, but its different now. Healthy Habit has changed my outlook on everything that has to do with positivity, good vibes, health and nutrition!

I feel awake, well-rested, excited, alert and energetic. Those foggy moments I used to have on a daily basis are gone and I sleep like a rock at night. I feel the more confident, powerful and joyful than I have in my whole life. It’s hard to explain how amazing it feels, because really you can’t truly understand it until it happens to you (and maybe it already has—good for you!). The feeling is addicting, which is good, because I know how hard it can be to make healthy choices after a long work day or push yourself to go to the gym when you really just want to drink wine and watch HGTV. But, feeling this wonderful is really all the motivation I need. Food really does heal you.

There’s an assumption in our modern world that if you’re a certain weight or look a certain way that you’re healthy, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Being healthy goes so much further beyond weight and body type and that was another big reason why I wanted to share my health journey with you guys. I’ve had so many people tell me that I “seem so healthy”, and while it’s nice to hear, it wasn’t really what was happening behind the scenes. Now that you know the full story, you can understand where my passion and enthusiasm about health and wellness comes from. Before this gets any longer (seriously, you’re amazing if you’re still reading this!), if you’ve struggled with your health or you feel like you’re not living your best, you’re not alone. It can feel so isolating, and it’s a scary thing to share (writing this post wasn’t easy), but I hope that through my story I’m able to inspire some of you to make changes of your own so that you can feel your absolute best too!

I’m sure the roller coaster ride isn’t totally over, but I’m hoping that I’m done with those big vertical drops and loops once and for all.

Have you dealt with un-diagnosed or “mystery” health issues before? What tips do you have for feeling your absolute best? Would you like to share your health journey with our community? Send me an email at: andrea@hhihospitality.com

With love
Andrea