Erika McKellar here, Senior Content Manager on the Recipe Team at Diet Doctor. My health journey would fill a novel, but that's not what I'm here to share today.
I'm here to share a message of hope to help you through your more challenging days. The days where you feel worn out and ready to give up. The days where you feel like you've tried everything that everyone has told you to do - your doctors, your family, your friends - but somehow your health situation isn't changing.
You watch what you eat, you move your body, you count your macros, you take the drugs prescribed by doctors, but you still feel awful. It seems like you're running as fast as you can on a hamster wheel, going nowhere. So eventually, you think, "what's the point?"
I'm here to tell you there's hope. The path to wellness is not linear. It often looks like one step forward and two steps back, or three, or four. I'm here to remind you that what matters most is that one step forward.
I was born sensitive and vulnerable in a fast-paced world. I was raised in Southern California in the early '80s and '90s, where life was about what car you drove, what clothes you wore, and how perfect your family looked on the outside.
I quickly learned to fall into this pace because it was what was expected of me. On the outside, things looked "perfect." I was a good student, from a good family, who lived in a nice house and had everything I needed and more.
On the inside, I was sick a lot, whether it was respiratory infections, skin problems, cases of flu and colds, stomach issues, and food sensitivities. When I was 15, my eyesight started to deteriorate, and when I was 16, I was diagnosed with my first autoimmune disease.
Doctors told me my problems were genetic and there was nothing I could do about it. I accepted that. Like everyone else I knew, I was also told to eat the Standard American Diet. That meant tons of processed food from a package and fast food at least three times a week.
I didn't slow down; I kept going faster. When I left home for college, I began to look for things to control in my chaotic world. The first and easiest thing to control was food. Beauty magazines told me that a zero-fat, low-calorie diet of 1,200 calories per day was optimal. They also told me I needed to go to the gym every day and work out HARD.
In my freshman year of college, I lost over 30 pounds (13 kilos) off of my athletic frame. At one point, I was close to hospitalization, but then a compassionate therapist helped me realize that food wasn't the problem. It was that I had never learned how to listen to my body, only to the world around me.
Just as my self-worth started to flourish again, I was a passenger in a tragic car accident that shook my world. I survived, but my best friend who was driving the car did not. I spent the next decade running as fast as I could from that experience, ignoring my body and never processing the pain.
Over the next 15 years, I learned to listen to my body again and less to the world around me. I ate the cheese, the fat, the beef, and I got healthier, slowly. I adopted a high-protein, moderate low-carb diet in 2010 because my body told me that was right for me. It helped, but I still suffered from inflammation and gut issues. I still had a long way to go emotionally.
The big transformation happened when I decided that I was ready to become a mother. I was running a startup business and living off Starbucks coffee and hot yoga to cope with the extreme stress. Naturally, my husband and I couldn't conceive.