Wellness Blog - Probably More Than You'd Ever Want To Know
From October 2003 thru February 2004 I was a Jenny Craig weight loss consultant. When I was hired I weighed in at 208 lbs - the most I’d ever weighed in my life! And that was a huge wake up call for me.
I told the folks at Jenny Craig that if they hired me - I’d be a client. They did, and I did. I vowed that I'd do whatever it took, to lose the weight.
At training, each of the trainees were given a free week’s worth of food so we could experience the Jenny Craig plan, while we learned the system. I was in heaven!
Prior to this I had never been in the health or wellness industry. I had been a computer systems trainer, technical writer, and systems analyst/consultant. In fact, that's what brought me to Jenny Craig. I'd been laid off from my IT travel job and at that time computing jobs seemed a bit hard to find, so I sucked it up, enrolled in school to finish my bachelors degree and looked at Jenny to help me get myself "back together". I knew I'd probably never travel again but that's another story.
So, working for Jenny Craig was a bit humbling for me, financially, as well as emotionally since I was in a brand new field and had to learn from the bottom up.
I had always been thin, tall and slim, 5’ 7 1/2” between 122 lbs and 140 lbs, for most of my adult life. When I was a kid people said I was “thin as a rail”. But as I grew older, achieved more in my career, made more money, traveled and began eating out daily, I put the weight on year after year. In addition, I suffered several emotional traumas which, eventually sent my weight on an upwards climb from 140 lbs - gaining about 20 lbs a year - to nearly 200 lbs in three years.
My weight held steady at the 200 pound mark for nearly a decade. The added weight triggered my asthma and the medications I’d been prescribed exacerbated my weight gain, or at the least, afforded me an excuse not to try to lose weight. After all, everyone knows steroids make you gain weight and I’d been on inhaled steroids for awhile – though my doctor insisted the medication only contained a small amount of steroids - is any amount good?
During the
four months I worked for Jenny Craig I lost 30 lbs. I really stuck to the program. I also learned a lot about nutrition and various diets. Since I worked with client’s one- on-one, I began to get a feel for why people ate, what made them gain and lose weight and what worked for some and didn’t work for others.
I talked with the two Jenny Craig nutritionists fairly often for various clients especially for the ones who seemed to have difficulty losing or who were coming in after being on a low-carb diet. The nutritionists explained enzymes and other factors to me that were over my head at the time. I knew they were on to something though. They had found out about the glycemic index. Nutrisystem uses the same principle. No white potatoes, no white sugar, etc. Or if you have it, you can only eat a very small amount at one time so the body does not over produce insulin.
I have continued to apply many of the principles I learned at Jenny Craig to my life. However, I really didn't care for all of the “pre-packaged” foods. I loved the fact that I could still buy my own dairy and produce on the plan because I love salads, fruit, and cheese! But the cheese was one thing that they severely restricted. I learned to eat lowfat cottage cheese though and love it! Haha! Everything Jenny Craig sold was either frozen, canned or in a bag/pouch. And we had to take supplements everyday, which I did. Looking back, I am wondering what was in those supplements? I am sure the supplements aided my weight loss. I had clients tell me that they had more energy when they took the supplements and many lifers on the program wouldn’t come in to buy food anymore, just those supplements.
Since I was an employee, I got a discount. I spent about $70 a week on food. The only way I could afford to work the program was that I didn’t have to feed kids anymore. As well, I was divorced, so no husband to cook for. My adult children were working, though living with me, but able to provide food for themselves. (They usually ate a lot of fast food, sometimes even bringing pizza home but I was good for the most part and did not partake - even if offered). Since I didn’t have to cook for anyone it helped me stay on the plan. Some of the things I recall doing while I was on the Jenny Craig plan were to:
Limit wine to twice a week, and then only have one to two glasses.
Eat dessert every night typically fat free whipped topping and sugar free jello. Or have a Weight Watcher frozen treat. Or a Jenny Craig dessert – and they were yummy! No more snacks after dinner/dessert though.
Work out, but no weight training, just walking, mostly at work at the Jenny Craig centre, where I “shopped” for the food, for my clients in centre (we had a large storeroom of food and huge freezers), and walk back and forth down a long hallway - all day - from the front entry/waiting area to my office. I wore a pedometer and some days walked 8,000 to 10,000 steps.
In the spring of 2004, I quit Jenny Craig to return to computer work. This time I was working on a graphics contract and primarily sitting all day again. I quickly regained about 3 or 4 lbs in a couple of months. The end of that job coordinated with my move to a new town, changed living arrangements, and I obtained more full-time work at a Walgreens store. At Walgreens I was standing, walking, stocking, bending, stooping, and cleaning so that was great! I lost those few pounds and then some and was feeling great again. Except that I started drinking more wine because my - soon to be - husband and I moved in together. The only thing that saved me there was that I had to walk my dogs everyday – twice in fact – since they had no other way to get out of the house.
By that summer we’d moved to another area. In this new location I couldn’t walk the dogs as there were too many obstacles.
I was doing fairly well eating on my own until July and August of 2004. That’s when our power went out (once for 5 days) and fresh food supplies were disrupted due to three hurricanes near our area within a six week timeframe. I gained about 12 lbs. It really knocked my motivation and led me to go back to eating tortilla chips (something I had totally given up when I was on Jenny Craig). It also led to me eating a lot of canned foods, loaded with salt. (I had known for years that I’d had sensitivity to salt and had quit putting salt on my food years ago and had not been eating chips because they had salt on them, etc.)
But here I was eating salty foods again.
My husband Richard and I married on
February 25, 2005
and between my nearly 15 lbs weight gain and being married and happy, I totally forgot about my weight issues. I started enjoying more dinners out and having more wine and didn’t weigh myself very often. When we did cook, I began getting into more organic and whole foods but I didn’t count my calories. I tried to eat a correct portion, but we snacked more in the evenings and didn’t work out consistently.
July of 2005 I found myself in an utter state of illness. I got some kind of flu bug that lasted in total, about thirty days. At first, (and it came on quick) I had a fever, chills and body aches. I had quit taking my prescribed Advair in June and looking back I'm wondering if my stopping those medications set me up somehow for this terrible flu.
With this flu I was out of work for 6 days straight, not doing much but laying in bed or sitting in my recliner watching TV. I still tried to do some household chores but it tired me out quick. By about the 3
rd day Richard took me to the local emergency room. I saw two different physician assistants. I had wrongly assumed that the second one was a doctor. I did as I was told. They ordered a urine test because I had described some bleeding when I urinated. After the results for that test came back I was informed I had a UTI (bladder type infection, urinary tract infection to be exact) and prescribed an antibiotic to assist my recovery. They said the antibiotic would help the bladder infection and my “upper respiratory infection”. I insisted that I had the flu but since I was not vomiting they said I had the upper respiratory infection. They also told me “You can’t get the flu in the summer”. (Since then, two registered nurses have told me, “Yes, you can get the flu anytime”.)
Five days later I went to my asthma doctor because I was coughing so hard that I would lose bladder control. At 43 years of age I felt as though I was in my 70’s and wondered how any older person, or child, could live through this kind of experience. My asthma doctor prescribed a small steroid dosage for about 5 days. After I completed it most of the flu was gone but I continued to cough deeply for the rest of the month. In sum, my symptoms were: Fever, up and down… coughing, sneezing, runny nose, stuffy head, foggy head, eyes hurt, body aches, chills, fatigue. No throwing up and no diarrhea. I had the flu. I might also have had pneumonia and/or pleurisy. Nobody ever ordered a chest X-ray so I will never know. But I won’t forget the feeling I had, or the incredible touch I received from the
Holy Spirit.
I vowed to
never be sick again! I started looking for natural cures. I opened my mind to accept anything that would help me to get well and improve my immune system. I recalled that my maternal grandmother used all kinds of greens and herbs to cure all sorts of ailments and that inspired me to learn more.
I went for acupuncture treatments beginning in September. I explained to my acupuncture doctor about my illness in July and sought help and healing for my asthma/allergies and also help with weight loss. My acupuncture doctor told me that I had an underlying issue. She explained that in Chinese medicine they call it “spleen”. She explained that it wasn’t necessarily my spleen organ; I was having problems with, but that spleen in Chinese medicine is more than just the one organ and that I would need to tonify and balance my whole body - especially the spleen system. This could take months. She said I should come in as often as I could, once or twice a week for a few weeks, in order to get a jump on it and more "bang for the buck".
At about this same time, having also complained to my acupuncture doctor that I wasn’t sleeping the whole night through, I started visiting, more frequently, my local health food store. The nutritionist there suggested I begin using a small bit of progesterone cream (only half the recommended dosage on the tube because I have AB blood) before bed to help me sleep all night.
There at the health food store, I started buying up several books on nutrition, diet and natural cures. It was then that I bought a book from TV called “Natural Cures They Don’t Want You to Know About”. Soon after, I bought “
Cracking the Metabolic Code”. All of these books and visiting with the nutritionist at the health food store, (along with some tests she’d given me) pointed to my having a yeast imbalance or overgrowth.
Continue reading...
