Start Anew

“You have a fatty liver, you are pre-diabetic, your cholesterol is way too high, and unless you make some drastic changes to your lifestyle you won’t live long enough to see your youngest graduate from college.” Full Stop. 

That is what my physician said to me after my annual physical. Honestly, it was like someone had punched me in my stomach and I knew I had to do something quickly.

Now, let’s rewind a few years (read decades) and evaluate how I got to this place. I was NEVER one who had weight problems, in fact, I was always on the thinner side until the birth of my third son. 

Then, despite my usual Weight Watchers membership, breastfeeding, and cardio, the weight wasn’t coming off as it usually did. During that same period, I found out that I had tumors on my thyroid (thankfully benign) that wreaked havoc on my metabolism and affected my hormone levels. This resulted in chronic fatigue. 

To cope with the fatigue and keep up with my family schedule, I started binge eating sugar-laden foods at the end of the day. 

A few years later Covid hit the world hard and it hit me even harder (having it at least three times). All of a sudden, the events and tasks that kept me busy were gone. All I had around me was silence; that silence spoke volumes. The space left room for me to finally face the internal demons that have been plaguing me since childhood and as a practicing Muslim, I didn’t use alcohol to numb the emotions this brought up-I used food. 

One day, I finally decided to stop self-medicating and get to work. I want to share the 5 main things I learned along the way to jump-start my journey.

1) Really REALLY look at the situation: You can’t be in denial, avoid the scale and hide behind stretchy yoga pants and oversized sweatshirts. When you face the fear, instead of avoiding it; the control comes back to you.  (Note to reader: I had a therapist, a coach, a medical physician, and used EMDR to help me through this process)

(photos were taken exactly a year apart)

2) Put yourself on the list: Describing myself as a mom, podcaster, business owner, wife, friend, and volunteer, I realized that I never put myself on this list. Through therapy and coaching, I recognized it was because I didn’t feel that I deserved it. Slowly I started to add myself to the list. I began waking up earlier, starting with five to ten-minute blocks a day, for prayer/meditation and work out before my family wakes up. If you start the day right, focused on you, you’ll find it easier to view the rest of the day in a positive day. 

3) Diet Overhaul: A mindset shift, though important, won’t magically cure your health issues. That said, whatever diet is currently “trending” on IG, Tik Tok, or Facebook won’t work for everyone. I had to be honest with myself that the diets that worked for me in my 20s and 30s were NOT working for me in my 40s and I likely needed professional help to iron out the details. I started with a food sensitivity test and realized that I was sensitive to caffeine, sugar, and gluten (essentially everything I ate on the daily).  I worked with a weight loss physician who monitored me carefully throughout the process. With a two-month liquid diet to reset my metabolism, shrink my fatty liver, and kick start my weight loss, I inched my way back to good health.

4) Exercise: So with mindset being 100%, diet being 80%, this leaves 20% left for exercise. Guess what? If you don’t do the type of exercise that helps your hormone level, it can actually hurt your health journey efforts. The intense cardio and HITT workouts I was doing actually raised my cortisol levels and made me keep the weight on!  I switched over to strength training, yoga, and walking and it made a dramatic difference in how I looked and felt. 

5) Gratitude: I am grateful to be in a space now where I feel that I am on the right path. It was walking that path that I realized I wanted to help other mothers and women reach their full potential. No one else can understand the difficulty of being a biracial Chicago girl transplanted into suburban Mclean with four children, trying to run a business, be wife, mother, friend, etc….except me. No one can understand you except you, but you don’t and need to figure it out alone. You are worth reaching out for help and getting started.