A healthy and happier person

I have not always been kind and respectful to the body God gave me. I ate what tasted good to me and usually did not pay attention to calories or how much food I was eating. I often snacked, not for hunger but for taste, emotion, oral sensation.
As a young person, all was well and happy and I looked and felt good. BUT, after two children and getting older, my habits started catching up with me and the weight piled on.

Bummer being overweight so I exercised more and started watching what I ate. This approach worked in my 30’S and I was successful and dropping weight with the help of following various plans: metabolism diet, shakes, weight watchers (3 times and most successful), carb diets, protein diets, clinician diets. All of which worked to some degree, and I did learn more about food etc. but would always gain it back. As time went by it became harder and harder to lose even just a pound. I threw up my hands and said OK this is my body and made myself a promise I would never go over a certain weight (motivated by a horrifying picture of myself all fixed up when I was at my heaviest and I thought I looked good – NOT).

As the years went by other changes in my body were happening (as expected) and I was not happy with what I was experiencing. Tired all the time, joints (arthritis) hurting, skin changes, increasing colds, bladder troubles, constipation but worst of all, I felt sick all of the time. If I ate – I felt sick, if I did not eat – I felt sick (kind of a nauseating icky feeling that was always present and would vacillate in intensity). At this time, I was looking at another 30 years of living like this and decided I needed to find the answers and solutions as to why I simply felt so awful, like I was slowly being poisoned.

I had become aware of Ayurveda and decided I would look into it more and started working with Karen Barry. Wow, I wanted to be her! Skin glowing, trim, healthy, happy, loving. From our first meeting she was attentive, patient, kind and sincerely interested in helping me. She was a wealth of information I had never heard of before and I asked a ton of questions. I started to understand why I felt the way I did and the foods connected with that. I appreciated my body type and started paying attention to what it was saying and what it needed. Instead of me dumping stuff in, I was actually feeding it to function. Over the months of meeting with her (information and truly counseling sessions for me) step by step, little by little I could feel my body balancing out and cleansing. As this was happening the sickening nausea disappeared, I was more alert, and had more energy.

Learning how/what/when to eat was a journey of developing new habits and abandoning destructive ones. I got to the point where I felt so good that even the thought of putting fast food in my body was repulsive (I could always force that down before). Working with Karen there were no failures, just setbacks or stepping off the path which we could get right back on. Forgive and love yourself and move forward. She NEVER made me feel guilty or ashamed but supported me with sincere love for my well-being.

Two years after I started, I am now 68 and looking forward to the years ahead. My overall health has greatly improved and I do not catch the viruses like I used to, joint pain is gone, nausea gone, my arthritis, bladder issues are well under control with no medications (don’t even think about it anymore), I have lost 12-15 pounds (weight vacillates but is staying in that range) . Note: Weight loss was not my main goal, feeling healthy was. It is very exciting however that instead of gaining 1-3 pounds a year, the process is reversed and I can now focus more on that.

These are HUGE gains but even better, I understand the importance of balance and listen to what my body tells me. My addiction to sugar is gone, foods taste better and this allows me to enjoy fully healthy choices. I started eating sweets this Christmas and I became very nauseated and realized my body was complaining – too much sugar – STOP THAT! Believe me, that never happened before.

How to sum up?? Working with Karen Barry, a trained Ayurvedic clinician, will bring your body back to the way God created it, an amazing network of checks and balances that keep everything flowing. Don’t clog the machine with junk, feed it well and enjoy the results. It takes time, education and effort but anything worthwhile does. I am changed for the rest of my life and cannot see going back to my old destructive habits permanently as I know what I will get – a life of misery. Get your mind on track to change your body. Thank you, Karen, for all of the knowledge, patience and love you have invested in me. Truly a quality-of-life change.