“In early February of this year I started to have really bad pains in my abdomen whenever I would try to eat anything.  At first, I thought it was just a stomach bug or that I had eaten too much dairy since I have been lactose intolerant for a while now.  After the first week of the pain, I started to feel like I had a rock sitting in my lower abdomen.  At the end of the second week my mother, Ann Musico, looked into my symptoms further.  She felt that all of my symptoms pointed to SIBO.  This stands for Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth.* 

My mom immediately told me that I had to change how I ate completely.  I always tried to be healthy, eat right, and work out.  She told me that the best way to heal my body was to eat what I saw as a mainly Paleo-type diet. It's actually very much like the detox weeks of her Today is Still the Day plan. This meant that I would have to eat mainly protein with some vegetables and a small amount of starch and natural sugar.  I became Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Egg Free (I learned I was sensitive to eggs**), and only ate a small amount of natural sugar.  Did finding this out scare me and make me feel like I could not eat anything...YES!  I shortly learned that I could still eat so many things.  My mother showed me things I could eat and I followed everything she told me to EXACTLY because your health is not something to mess around with.

My mother also showed me all of the probiotics and supplements that I should take to help me heal myself. This meant that every morning I took two probiotics.  Before any meal that I ate, I took three digestive enzymes and with dinner I also took one Betaine HCl.  I know that it sounds like a lot, but by taking these supplements on my new regimen that my mother gave me, along with making these changes to my diet, my symptoms went away in a mere TWO DAYS! Yes, you read that correctly, two days!

I have now been following this plan my mother made for me for about two months.  I follow the same meal plan and take all of the same supplements.  Not only have I not felt this healthy in a VERY long time, but I have lost almost 30 POUNDS!  I was always someone who dieted and wanted to get fast results, but through all of this I have learned that you need to make a LIFESTYLE CHANGE!  If it was not for my mother helping me out, I do not know where I would be right now.  It is so important to listen to your body and make the changes you need to.

Thank you mom and I love you so much!  I do not know what I would do without you.”

*I want to be very clear – I don’t diagnose. I am not a doctor. What I did was use her symptoms and what I knew about her history and suggest some changes I felt would be helpful overall. That is what I do with any client who does a Get Healthy Strategy. I provide a detailed questionnaire and we have an initial consultation to go over all pertinent information. 

**I encouraged Elizabeth to start a food log and in doing so she realized she got nauseous about an hour after eating eggs. So we eliminated them, for now at least.

If her symptoms had not resolved, I would have strongly suggested she go to the doctor. I told my daughter, as I do every client, bottom line - your health is your responsibility and you have total control over what you choose to do or not do. However, had she not been willing to try something different, she would not have had the positive results she has. Often I recommend changes to people who are unwilling to implement them or to stick with them consistently. That openness and consistency are critical to success.