A Busy Active Life with Physical Discomfort
Jen is in her 40s and has two children. After having her second one in her later 30s, she found that recovery from second childbirth was very challenging, saying, “After my little boy was born, I just could not get my body back; not in a way that I could feel comfortable in my body. I was one of those people that said, ‘I’ve tried everything, and it just doesn’t work. It’s just my body like; I’m stuck like this.”
Jen says, “I’m a really active person. I’m a runner, and I’m a dancer; I’m an aerialist; I use my body on a daily basis. I got to the point where I felt like a sack of potatoes all the time. I just had inflammation everywhere in my body.”
The Impact of Diet on Jen’s Health
The culprit was Jen’s diet, as she admits, “Looking back, I had a complete carb addiction. I craved salty crunch.” Jennifer also used exercise as a justification for eating sweet foods that she knew she shouldn’t eat.
“One of the things I would do after my run is I would go to Starbucks, and I would get a plain bagel with cream cheese and a grande soy iced chai. It was like my favorite thing! I would literally go for a run and sweat my head off and then eat complete garbage.”
Though she wasn’t eating a huge amount in one sitting, she says, “I was eating in small increments, but if you added it up, it just added to countless amounts of sugar in my body.”
Intermittent Fasting and a Keto Diet
She was physically uncomfortable and unhappy with herself: “Every night before bed, I would bloat and look like I was six months pregnant, and I would just be disgusted with myself.” Jen was tired all the time, even for a mom of two, saying that she felt like she was “always dragging.”
She learned about intermittent fasting at a performance when a sound engineer friend explained that he had lost weight and been able to discontinue his diabetic meds because of his ketogenic diet. She decided to commit to the keto diet for four weeks, and after three months, she had lost “ten or twelve pounds.”
Eliminating Sugar and Gluten
Sugar was a game-changer for Jen. “One of the big things for me that made a difference was getting all that sugar out. Table sugar and carbohydrates. My bloating went away.”
Jen has reached a weight that she is comfortable with and says that her diet now is “meat, fats; I eat a lot of avocados; I use olive oil and coconut oil; MCT oil. Eggs, lots of nuts and seeds, and a lot of greens and vegetables. I eat a little bit of fruit.”
She also credits quitting grains and gluten for her progress: “Getting those grains out was a really important thing, and it made me realize that gluten does not agree with me, and I don’t think it agrees with our country. I would be surprised if gluten works for anybody, truly.” Way to go, Jen!
