Part 3: How I Renewed my Sparkle and Creative Drive

Hi Everyone!!

In the last 2 posts, I talked about exercise!  See here and here. 🙂 But next I want to cover all about how I renewed my sparkle and creative drive! <3  My journey has taken my through struggles with my skin, low energy, digestion, and unbalanced hormones! I feel like I have been through it all! But I know that my struggles are meant to help other creatives just like you!

Our creativity suffers when we aren’t feeling our best and that is why I am here sharing my own story so you can learn from it and let it guide you on your own journey!

I know you want lots of energy so you can create! You want smooth digestion as this is where your creative energy sits in your body! You want balanced hormones as the same energy in the body used to create life is the same used to create beautiful work! You want to feel happy and stress-free so you an focus!  When you eat food that work with your body and give it everything it needs, you will be amazed at the creative energy ready to explode out from inside of you! And I want to help YOU get there! 

So where do you even begin to start? Changing your lifestyle is a process (over 3 years and counting for me!) so through everything I share, remember these 3 things.  1. Take small steps and consistently do the work!  2. Be willing and open to try new things for a specific length of time.  Trying things for a couple days here and there will not help you reach your goals and instead leave you feeling stuck.  3. You must BELIEVE in what you are doing.  If you don’t’ believe that doing yoga will decrease your stress it won’t happen.  If you don’t BELIEVE that you can heal your skin with just diet and lifestyle, it won’t happen. If you don’t BELIEVE that you can get off all medications, it won’t happen.  Once you believe in what you are doing, THEN it will be that much easier to show up daily and to do the work to REALLY make it possible.

So take what I share with you below and the next series of posts and apply it to your own life.  Choose things that you BELIEVE will make a difference in your body and mind. And YES every small baby choice makes a BIG difference. (ok getting off my soap-box lol)

Let’s start with how I got my SPARKLE back…

I struggled with energy for a long time, I thought it was just because I was in college and working long hours and out with friends until late through the night. I would drink coffee EVERY morning and there was rarely a day that I didn’t drink coffee. It was my fuel to get me through exams, work, and late nights out! I couldn’t imagine a day without it! When I moved to Chicago, my life slowed down a lot.  But I seemed to be more tired than ever.  I was still stuck in the cycle of staying up late, drinking coffee every morning….I would literally walk to the coffee machine half awake!  When I finally got a Keurig it was heaven because I could actually make coffee with a push of a button.  (I mean really putting coffee in the filter is WAY too much work haha)

Then I started sneezing like crazy…I didn’t know what was wrong with me.  I just felt miserable EVERY single day. I would come home so exhausted from sneezing so many times! This wasn’t just once a month it was DAILY.  Some days were worse than others an all dependent on….my diet. Yep! The more vegetables that I ate the less I sneezed.  But drinking one class of alcohol or eating a treat would make me feel instantly worse. It definitely wasn’t any fun! And this was when I was trying to start going to the gym again…yea that made going to class MUCH more difficult.

So how did I go from sneezy, teary-eyed and exhausted to bright-eyed and energized? Here are some of the things that revolutionized my creative energy and drive:

1. Food Intolerances. – I took a food sensitivity test and learned that I was intolerant to eggs. Wow! This was game changing and I found out that it directly impacted my skin too. (everything really ties in together – one health problem ignored can lead to another) I thought it was nonsense at first. I was like I eat eggs all the time! So I stopped eating them for a month….and then one day I was like let’s try them again.  So I cooked up 3 eggs for breakfast and ate them. By the time I got to work, I felt AWFUL. My head hurt so bad that I could not think. My allergies came back and literally felt like I had chills up and down my body.  I felt like I suddenly had the flu.  It was so weird. I had never felt this BAD before from eggs, but I just KNEW I never wanted to feel like that again.  This experience only reaffirmed for me that our body HIDES intolerances. It isn’t until you remove something for a long period of time that your body can show you clearly that it doesn’t like that food. This is why you might THINK that you don’t have food intolerances but you really do. Your body wants to keep you functioning and alive so it will always fight to keep working and protect you.

Note: Other times that I have ate eggs, I always become lethargic and my brain power significantly decreases.  It becomes insanely difficult to focus and concentrate and I crave caffeine instantly to give me the boost to re-focus.  And sometimes my skin breaks out too. It hasn’t been the same every time which I believe is just dependent on how strong my body is at the time.  Note 2: Food intolerances usually appear from leaky gut so once repaired you MAY be able to enjoy foods you were once intolerant to again.

     2. Nourishing my Body with Pharmaceutical Grade Supplement. – So like I mentioned above I was addicted to coffee for at least 8 years of my life and coffee isn’t necessarily bad, but coffee does have effects on the body that can deplete your body of many important nutrients. On top of that I have been on drugs like antibiotics, spirolactone, and birth control which kill gut bacteria and make it harder to absorb nutrients from the food. AND besides being a poor college student…it wasn’t easy to eat vegetables every day and probably even eat enough quality food!  A quality multi-vitamin can provide your body with optimal levels of nutrition specifically B-vitamins which are important for energy.  And once I started taking them, I noticed a BIG difference. I could tell my body was healing and I felt stronger and more energized. It feel so much stronger and my body is much more resilient as I am able to bounce back from eating food that may not be the best. And like Dr Linus Pauling , 2 time Nobel Peace Prize winner states “Every disease can be traced back to a nutritional deficiency.”

And taking a supplement isn’t the “magic” answer.  In order to see results,  it took commitment to taking them daily! And THEN I saw the difference. 🙂 (that’s how everything works right ?– commit and take action = results)

3. Listening to my Body on Kryptonite food. Kryptonite foods typically include: sugar, gluten, dairy, and caffeine.  These foods SEEM to provide energy at first, but in reality they end up stealing energy from your body.  So you get a boost of energy, but then you have to make up for it later or you feel worse off in an hour. MY goal is to have consistent energy, day in and day out.  And I know how I will likely feel after eating these foods! If I need LOTS of energy in the next few days, I tend to avoid indulging! Pretty simple?  If I accidentally eat something that causes brain fog, I drink some hot green tea with lemon and that helps to clear up my brain. Sweating is also really helpful whether that is through exercise or sauna!

4. Going to Bed Early. This might sound REALLY simple, but it will make a big difference! I find that I crave sugar foods WAY less if I get more sleep and my body feels rested! One of the reasons I was so addicted to coffee is because my cortisol levels were SO out of whack. My cortisol was extremely low in the morning and much higher later.  This did not help me go to sleep early or wake up early and it was just continuing the cycle. Want more energy without the coffee? Make time for more sleep!

5. Eating enough Food. Food gives us energy! If you want more energy, eat more food! This might sound like an odd thing to say in a world where we are constantly being told to WATCH how much we eat. But did you ever think that you might be undereating? How can you expect to function and heal on a daily basis if your body isn’t getting  nutrition? In my experience, when I don’t eat enough my energy is shot by 7-8pm.  Set a goal of eating consistently throughout the day so your body is always fueled!  I don’t advocate counting calories, but it can be a helpful tool to see how much food you are really eating!

All of these steps have helped me show up more on a daily basis! I am able to have the energy to focus on me and do more of the things I love which leads me to be happier!

I hope you found this interesting and inspiring! And remember taking care of your body is NECESSARY so you can spread your creative work and mission into the world. And we know how sad the world will be if you are too tired to create more of your beautiful work! <3

Last thing! If you want more juicy material on having more energy in your body and mind! The 5 Day Energy Meal Plan for Busy Entrepreneurs This includes my all my tips for increasing your energy AND a 5 day meal plan to jump start you to more energy and of course more creativity!