Eight Ways to Lose Your Blubber

An easy-to-use guide to help you understand how hormones and food effect everything.

Dedication:

I dedicate this book to all men, women and children who have struggled with weight, mood and health challenges. I am truly grateful for the thousands of them who have entrusted me with their darkest emotional, medical and eating secrets. They have openly cried, laughed and shared very private information that enabled me to assess their needs and put them on the road to healing.

I am especially grateful to my two sons Preston and Dillon for their love and inspiration that keeps my soul nourished. I appreciate my family for unconditionally loving me.

Thank you to my great friends and supporters Kathleen Stefancin, Gay Russell, and Tangee Moscosco and to Sandy Campagna and Karen Ann Brown for being the best spiritual and business mentors. I appreciate your dedication to making sure my spirit continues to grow.

Thank you to all – for being eternally patient with me and my long work hours. With you love and friendship all my efforts have been worthwhile and rewarding.

Without your love and friendships it would all be worthless.

Introduction:

My personal journey and interest in achieving good health started when I was ten years old, way before I ever became I dietitian. I’ve always had a great intuitive, positive passion for life, supported by a warm-hearted and fun-loving family. But I faced some barriers, created by my wonderful family’s genes of obesity and disease on both sides. When I was young, many of them were already experiencing obesity and medical issues.

I can still remember the day I thought, “I can be different even with ‘bad’ genes.” I was at a family party with the usual tables of food everywhere when I heard a few relatives discussing another’s illness. I felt very sad about the situation and knew then I wanted to help people with their health and make my own future healthier. At that time, I didn’t know my vision was similar to the concept of neutragenomics — the use of food and supplements to change a person’s genetic code for health.

So, how did I get involved with studying hormones and supplements? In 2002, I became the clinical director of an integrative compounding pharmacy. The pharmacist wanted me to put together a program for assessing men and women’s hormones. My other main task was to set up the pharmacy’s natural health section, which involved investigating all types of supplements.

Believe me if you told me my future in nutrition would lead to counseling clients about hormones and nutrition I would have said, “You’re crazy. I’m not that old!!”

It’s amazing what education, a passion for health and listening with careful empathy can do when you consult with so many people who are suffering.

It made me look deeper into the underlying problem instead of just treating the symptoms.

Patients come in feeling broken and disheartened because they have faithfully gone to their health care practitioner after having blood work done and were told they were fine. Today, three complaints stand out most with my patients, “I’m tired, depressed” and “I want to lose weight”. Many times they were offered prescription drugs for their symptoms without being asked many questions or given a reason to take the medication or instructed to eat a better diet. Many of them reported trying a variety of medications for anxiety, depression and other hormonal issues, but continued to experience a downward spiral of erratic periods, anger, sleep disturbances, worsened fatigue, depression and weight gain. The usual medical course of action for many women include starting on a birth control pill, then an antidepressant, then an anti-anxiety medication, and then a sleep aid. But new symptoms continued to manifest and they end up in my office.

I’m sure many of you can relate to this scenario or know of someone in a similar situation. These cycles of medical symptoms can last for 3 months to 10 years. Unfortunately, these cycles leave you feeling fatter, angrier, more depressed and tired. Both men and women going through these challenges report feeling emotionally flat, having no libido, being more tired after exercise and have a poor sense of well being and stating “I do not feel like myself”.

All this can be changed if you obtain the right subjective and objective assessments based on your individual needs. You also need to be willing to become an advocate of your own health and well-being. Integrative techniques. Include individualized nutritional changes and may require some forms of whole food, herbal, vitamin, mineral, homeopathic, synthetic hormonal support (HRT) or bio-identical hormonal (BHRT) support, and/or energetic and stress reduction techniques.

The purpose of this book is to help you begin this individualized healing process. I will provide you with lifestyle changes, simple explanations of the best testing to get from your health practitioner and what they changes they can do to get better. You will also receive some general nutrition trends that support the beginning of your quest to increase your energy and have the healthy fit body your desire and deserve. There are eight ways to lose your blubber. You may need all eight, one or two.

This book does not include a lot of medical words, technical information, in depth menus and medical references. The ways, methods, techniques and guidelines offered here are ones I personally have used that also have proven to be effective with my clients for the last 15 years that will give you hope and to get your started down the new path of vibrancy!