A New Journey, part 4

First of all: HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY, YES!!!!

The most recent step in my weight loss roller coaster has been a 5-day nutritive cleanse through an essential oil company that I love and promote and highly recommend: Young Living. My sister & I have gotten into essential oils pretty heavily since June 2014, and my sister even values them so much that she is no working toward a certification in holistic wellness and nutrition! Last October (2014), she & I went to the home of a Young Living distributor who has turned her life around because of YL Essential Oils. I had never met, or even heard of, this lady before our meeting, but I learned a LOT from her class... but my sister and she are Facebook friends and run in some of the same online social networking circles, so I didn't learn her story until my sister shared her testimonial FB post...

She posted about 8-10 photos of herself, starting from May 2013 to January 2015. The first 4 photos, I had no idea who this woman was... I was like, "great, another 'success story'"... and I then I got to photo 5!!! I did NOT know the lady in the early photos, but I KNEW THIS WOMAN!!! I had to go back, over and over to make sure I wasn't making things up and that this was, actually, the same woman! And I was motivated!

My sister & I spoke about this transformation, and decided that we'd both like to try and follow in her footsteps. The 1st thing K did was the Young Living 5-day Nutritive Cleanse. So we ordered one of those. Neither my sister nor myself had ever done a cleanse before, and we doubted we could do it alone, so my sister took 1 of her vacation weeks to drive up and visit me and survive this cleanse together... the first night she was in town, we watched a 30 minute testimonial video of K's experience. K explained everything she did, but reminded us that every body is different. After the nutritive cleanse, she spent the rest of the month re-balancing her minerals and nutrients using YL essential oils and supplements, but she didn't change much of her eating. And she didn't lose weight. The second month, she went off sugar. Month 3: white flour. Month 4: drive thru / fast food. I don't remember what Month 5 was, but it was another elimination... still no weight loss. But she wasn't doing this for weight loss - she was doing this to be healthy. In her words, "If I am supposed to be 399.6 lbs, then I'll be 399.6 lbs, but I'll be a healthy 399.6 lbs!"

During Month 5, her youngest daughter was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Her daughter, at 2.5 years old was the youngest of K's bajillion children, and the only one who was forced to eat gluten-free. So, K decided to go off of gluten as her Month 6 elimination, purely to support her daughter... and she lost FORTY-SIX POUNDS IN 1 MONTH. And the weight kept dropping. Between October 2014 and January 2015, K had gone from 399.6 to 195 lbs... our minds were blown! We made goals for our individual needs and started the cleanse the following morning.