My Health Journey and Why I had to Stop Using Coupons

I have been hinting lately about being on a Candida diet, and have gotten emails and tweets from many of you asking about why I am on such a crazy diet.  After thinking about sharing this for a few weeks I decided that maybe my story can help others. It is a very personal story about my health issues; but since so many of you were interested I wanted to share with you what has been going on with me.  It was hard for me to hit publish on this post, because I run a coupon blog and I have had to stop using coupons for the time being.

Three and a half years ago I had my 3rd baby Kaylee. During her pregnancy I was extremely depressed.  I think I only went out once a week to go to the grocery store, all that time I was blogging on this site and no one had any idea the dark times I was going through.  Fast forward to when Kaylee was 3 months old – I got bronchitis, then the flu, then the antibiotics and steroids I took to battle the illness gave me oral thrush that I could not get rid of.  Oral thrush is SO uncomfortable and normally happens when there is an overgrowth of candida (yeast) in your intestines.  My dr couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I felt absolutely horrible and no one could fix me.  I found a Natural Path Dr. to go to help, and after months of having oral thrush with no resolve, she finally got it to clear up within a week!

When I saw this dr. she asked about thyroid disease, which I have. I have Hashimotos Disease (an autoimmune disease that attacks the thyroid). I’ve had it for 12 years and never thought about the cause of it – I just assumed I would always been on medication.  After speaking to this dr. she informed me that almost 100% of people with a thyroid disorder also have some sort of gluten sensitivity.  She wanted me to eat gluten-free and see if that helped.  After one week of eating gluten-free, my oral thrush was totally gone, and I felt better than I had in a long time!

That was the start of my health problems and three years later I was still not feeling well!  The past six months have been especially hard.  I’ve been having really achey joints, exhaustion, never feeling rested, chronic migraines, and many other health issues.  After feeling so sick and tired of feeling sick, I finally went and got help from a nutritionist.

The past month I’ve been under the care of a nutritionist Georgia from New Leaf Functional Nutrition in Manlius, Ny.  The past month I’ve felt better than I have felt in years!  Georgia has been helping me heal my gut (apparently I still had a candida overgrowth from 3 years ago, and have leaky gut).  Just yesterday I met with her for the second time and updated some of my supplements.

I am taking all kinds of vitamins and supplements to help heal my body.  Her approach is to heal your body through nutrition and food.  So I am taking a lot of vitamins and also on a pretty strict diet.

Here is what I cannot eat:

• Pork
• High Sugar Fruits (bananas, mangoes etc.)
• Gluten (not a big deal since I eat gluten-free anyway)
• Dairy – or anything made with dairy
• Corn – or anything made with corn
• Sugar of any kind
• Potatoes

Things I can eat:

• Brown Rice
• Quinoa
• Sweet Potatoes
• Any kind of vegetable
• Olive Oil
• Beef, Chicken, Turkey, Seafood
• Eggs

Here are the supplements I’ve been taking:

• A Medical Food shake
• Magnesium
• Vitamin D
• Fish Oil Pills
• Probiotic
• Licorice Root tablets
• Adreset (for adrenal fatigue)

So I’ve had to be pretty creative in my cooking lately.  I can’t eat a lot of the foods that I would normally eat because they have sugar, dairy, or potato starch in them.  I feel so much better that I don’t really care about the limitations of food, I want my body to feel better!

I initially set my grocery budget at $100 per week, but last week I changed it to be $150 per week because I kept on going over it.  I have stopped couponing for right now (unless I see a really good one that I know I will use.)  I find that most of the products that we are eating I don’t have a coupon for, even though I still coupon for the items I know that I have to buy.  I do the majority of my shopping at Aldi, and it just makes our life so much easier!

I am feeling stronger and better everyday!  Mark actually said to me the other day “Lauren, you haven’t complained about how you feel in a few weeks.” I never even realized how sick I was feeling until I started to feel better again! If you are local to me and are having health issues, I cannot recommend Georgia from New Leaf Functional Nutrition enough!  This is the first health regime I have done that has actually worked!  It’s was hard to me so increase my grocery budget, but I realized that my health was much more important than a budget that I created.