It's Always Something

I’m a Holistic Nutrition and Wellness Coach, and I help people learn how to live healthier lives. Sometimes that involves weight loss, sometimes it’s about developing a healthier lifestyle, and sometimes we address other things like developing a different relationship with food, fitness, or even learning to have a healthier relationship with yourself and your body. Taking a holistic approach means looking at the whole person, including all the messy and imperfect parts of your life. We start where you are. Right now.

Let’s face it. We all deal with stress and relationships and our own idiosyncrasies, and we all have responsibilities outside of ourselves. Sometimes we allow those responsibilities to take over and we neglect our self-care until something happens that makes us sit up and take notice. That’s basically why I’m writing today. That’s me at the moment, and I’ve had to take a step back and do some re-assessing.

Teaching others how to do this stuff doesn’t mean I’m perfect at it myself. I’m human too, after all.

I know a lot of Instagram and other Social Media personalities make it look like anyone in this field worth following has it all together all the time. But don’t let them fool you. I talk with other coaches regularly, and we all deal with our own issues. In fact, we face many of the same difficulties we help our clients overcome. And we tend to be our own worst clients. We walk the walk most of the time, but once in a while…

Anyway, back to the story. I’ve mentioned before that I was diagnosed some years ago with Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, and that for the past 7 years I’ve been dealing with menopause. I’ve also had chronic pain for as long as I can remember. Those things together can create the perfect storm when it comes to finding a healthy balance in life, in spite of the fact that my lifestyle is pretty darned healthy.

Every year around my birthday I give myself the gift of health by scheduling a visit with my functional medicine doctor, and this year was no different. Except it was. Now, admittedly, I’ve not been as focused on my eating since we went into our first Covid-19 lockdown, a little over a year ago. We started drinking wine more frequently, having more of the snacks we wouldn’t normally eat, and I’ve been playing around with plenty of new recipes while I’ve had more time to cook.

Outside of a couple of months last summer, we haven’t been able to leave our village for the better part of the past year, and travel in any form has been out of the question. So I got really into my workouts for a while, our yard looked almost like something ready for a magazine, and I was writing and creating courses and social media content like crazy. I figured if people are going to need coaching to help them build healthier lives, then when would it be more important? Ian was working from home and it meant a lot of extra time together we never expected to have, and it was wonderful. After being together 24/7 for 3 full months we still wanted to spend even more time together, which is a testament to our relationship, and for that I am extremely grateful.

Those things were all tremendously positive, and even though lockdown fatigue started to get to us by the end of the year, there were some positive things that came out of it. If you know me at all, you know that I tend to look for silver linings, and I encourage others to do the same.

Then there was the other side of the coin. We were used to going to the hills, the lake, or to visit friends back in our beloved Modena whenever the mood struck, so being so restricted in our ability to move around caused some stress. Ian’s pay was cut for a while and financial worries became a thing for us, just as it did with so many others. I managed to injure myself - again - and ended up with some physical limitations for a while. My dad’s health was on a real roller coaster, and living so far away made it difficult to deal with. And on, and on.

Prolonged, negative stress is never a good thing, and it started to affect my ability to sleep. Which affected my energy levels. Which affected my mood. And so on…

Stay with me here - this is relevant, I promise…

Our bodies are very complex organisms, and when things go out of balance it’s highly unlikely that’s it’s because of one specific thing. Conventional medicine tells us that if we have Symptom X, we can just take Pill Y and everything will be fine, which in my opinion is like trying to fix a severed arm with a band-aid (plaster, for my UK friends). No matter how strong it is, it won’t help the arm reattach properly.

When our health goes out of balance, masking the symptoms with drugs is only going to cause more imbalance, which leads to more drugs to treat those symptoms, and it becomes a vicious cycle. Don’t get me wrong - there are medicines that are important and useful - but there aren’t any I know of that actually help to fix the root cause of any problem. It’s not that doctors don’t want to help, but most don’t have the time to do the investigating that’s needed, and most don’t work with a team with specialists who can help to outline the whole picture of what’s going on with every system in a person’s body - in addition to all the physical, mental, and emotional stuff. There’s that word again - holistic.

But I digress…. So I went to see my functional medicine (FM) doctor and the thyroid specialist (they work together). My blood tests came back with some concerning data. Thyroid measurements were way off, in the very hypothyroid (underactive) range, which means the high dose of thyroid medication I’m taking isn’t working. What else does it mean? Well, aside from a lot more testing, it means there are some big changes that need to be made.

My functional medicine doctor tells me I have some pretty strong gut dysbiosis, which is affecting my liver, which affects my body’s ability to convert the inactive form of thyroid hormone into the active form. My thyroid specialist tells me that not only is my thyroid off, but based on my physical symptoms, there are a number of other hormones that are out of balance too.

Why is all this happening? Was it the extra wine last year? Was it eating crisps on Fridays for happy hour? It’s highly unlikely that those things were the cause. Chances are, this has been escalating over the past 2 years (since I last had blood work done), and there could be a dozen other reasons.

The result of all this is that my FM doctor put me on a very restricted diet to help heal my gut and to lose about 10 Kg (22 pounds) in order to help with the gut, inflammation, and pain levels. My thyroid specialist has changed my medication and wants to see if my body responds to it better. I go back again in early April for some very extensive blood work to see what else is happening in my body, because as I said before, it’s very unlikely that it’s just one thing.

I’m telling you all of this because I would like to invite you along on this journey with me. I’ve done a couple of Facebook Live videos talking about what I’m going through, and based on the responses I’m getting I’ve realized something. There are many women like me who are struggling with Thyroid and Menopause and all the changes our bodies go through at this stage of life. I’ve not only studied holistic approaches to these things, but I’m also going through it personally.

I have a new mission now, and it involves figuring out this journey, finding different ways to deal with it, and then putting together all the resources possible to help others. I understand how frustrating and overwhelming this can be, believe me, and if I can help smooth the path for others, then I’m doing what I’m here to do.

My situation isn’t going to be quickly resolved, but I do plan on writing about every stage of the game. If you’re interested or have similar issues, come along with me. Write to me. Leave comments here or check me out on Facebook. Let’s learn and grow together. And when I’ve found better balance for myself, I’ll have plenty of tools to help you find yours.

I started this blog to share my journey, and that mission hasn’t changed. Maybe the path has (for now), but we’re all in it together, one way or another.

I’m here for you.

Have a health of a day,

Juli