I am a QUITTER!

You will find that I quit so many things but they are for the best reasons!

About a year ago, I start to rid my body from toxins, such as the chemicals from cigarettes, aspartame/artificial sweeteners, gluten, GMO wheat, and refined sugars and flours.  

Before I began this journey, I was having many health issues. At one point, my daughter referred to it as the “Ozzy stage”. I was basically dragging my left leg around, stuttering, and running into everything. I was checked for strokes and MS. Was told I had hemiplegic migraines and was put on medicine. When I realized the medicine was causing more problems than I originally had, I QUIT the medicine. I then continued on hurting however, the symptoms were changing and I was checked for Lyme disease. I was eventually told I had fibromyalgia and put on new medication. After taking the new medicine, I realized it too was causing new symptoms so I QUIT it. Which brings me to about a year ago…Somethings had to change. The first thing I QUIT was smoking…that was not too hard. I have now been smoke free for a year. Woo Hoo! However, it got worse after that…

I was hurting, gaining about a pound a week and my sleep was so horrible. I needed answers and I was tired of turning to doctors who put a label on it that was basically an umbrella and handing medicine to me that were causing more harm than good. So I decided to take another step and break up with a long term lover I had, diet Pepsi.

I QUIT my soda…my comfort drink, my buddy.

And I did it a month before we went to France. Mistake.

Sans aspartame
France 04/2015

Most breakups are done and over but not aspartame…it lingers like a stalker ex that you have to get a restraining order for. I figured a month into it I would be fine but no, it hit me like a ton of bricks. All I wanted to do was sleep. My feet, ankles and face were swollen and I had shortness of breath. I was irritable and just plain miserable. I had severe anxiety problems and was not coping well but it soon passed after a couple more weeks and I was free from the demon and I felt so much better. But of course that feeling did not last…

What I realized though after quitting cigarettes and aspartame that I still was not feeling 100%. I knew I had more demons to slay and what a better way than one at a time?? So my next victim was Gluten. Worst of all it was in my beer and not just any beer but my German beer! Death come now and take me please!! I had to QUIT beer.

I am a known connoisseur of beer…I like to drink it. We moved to Germany over two years ago and I discovered the best tasting beer in the world, Bavarian beer. Now, I can give up bread, cookies, candy, and even cigarettes and diet Pepsi but to give up beer could cause me to revert back to old ways, kick my dog, and divorce my husband….could, but didn’t. So I left wheat and gluten high and dry.

  

I noticed things changing for the good when I gave up my gluten however I still had one more thing to quit and it was a biggie. One that I never knew was so prevalent in foods. It actually caused the least amount of withdrawal symptoms and is the one that took me over the top with my health. The biggest demon I had to slay was...to be continued...