01/18/2026
What I Didn't Know in my Weightloss Jouney....
While I've known about the effects of mental and emotional stress for a while and became a Licensed and Certified Trainer & Coach to help myself and teach others how to reduce stress and manage their emotional response to stress, I didn't know how much stress I had been creating in my body and my life with my food choices.
Sugar, junk food, and fast food seen me through some very traumatic times in my life, starting when I was 11. Then during my tumultuous marriage, my stress eating intensified and I gained weight. Add in my Dad passing away when I was 24, leaving me feeling like the one person who could protect me was now gone, and the perfect mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual storm was created.
The food choices I had made as part of my survival mode for 22 years, set the stage for a total of 4 decades of trashing my body with so called food.
What I did not understand, until recently, was that the effects of my belief systems I had developed about my safety and the eating patterns that resulted from that, affected my body on a cellular level. I simply thought I carried too much fat, and I was okay with that.
Over the past 8 months, as I have learned about the toxins in the stuff, we are falsely taught is food, I've finally realized what I have been doing to my body. And man, did I have some self-forgiveness bundled with self-compassion to learn how to grace myself with.
I don't think I realized just how much I have learned until I sat down to write this.
• I've been learning about the gut microbiome, blood sugar levels, and the effects that eating so many simple carbohydrates have on the body.
• I've been learning about fat metabolism, bile and the gallbladder and liver functions.
• I've been learning about the effects of seed oils and sugar, which are both in a majority of the packaged "foods" in the grocery store, and how they create inflammation in the body and how that inflammation is a driver of disease.
• I've been learning the difference that eating the proper amount of protein and complex carbohydrates makes and how starting your day fueled by protein instead of the sugar found in toast/bread, pastries, and even hash browns affect how you feel, how your body functions, and even what your body craves and pushes you to eat for the rest of the day.
• I've been learning about the benefits of fasting, eating within a set window of time, and giving your body breaks instead of snacking and eating all day long.
• I've been learning about natural vs. synthetic vitamins, supplements, and how depleted of natural minerals we are.
• I've been learning about the antioxidants found in the foods we eat and how they help our body recover.
• I've been learning how exercise and diet requirements change as we age, especially for woman as we deal with hormonal changes of perimenopause, menopause and beyond.
The more I learned these past 8 months, the more I realized I was finally ready to make changes in my thinking, habits, and eating, which has allowed my body to drop some weight, have less inflammation and less gut issues, and has allowed me to tighten my belt buckle by 2 notches.
This ongoing process of learning is part of my path of wholeness in body, mind, emotion, and spiritual well-being.
And now I'm excited to try a new product from Young Living Essential Oils that supports the gut to naturally produce GLP-1, helps metabolize fat, and helps maintain blood sugar balance. It arrives tomorrow! YAY! 😃
I'll be sharing some posts and stories along the way so I can track my progress.
I'm definitely ready for this next chapter of Wisdom & Well-Being in my own story.
What's the next chapter in your story?
Much love,
Jan
