How I changed my life with healthy choices.
From my teenage years I had always suffered from acne. By 30 I was kinda like ‘ok, body…the jokes over…acne AND wrinkles?’.
We all know that our skin is the red flag to what is going on within. I knew deep down that my lifestyle, stressful job and poor diet (which included a few drinkies) played a crucial role in my health and well being. But I wasn’t quite ready to change anything. I tried medications and dermatological creams that made me so photosensitive I burned within minutes of sun exposure, all of which seemed only to exacerbate my problems.
Add to the bad skin a significant weight gain in my late 20s and I was finally ready to take matters into my own hands and clean up my diet and lifestyle. I felt that if medicine couldn’t help me, perhaps the internet could?
Absolutely desperate, I started blindly with a full detox, eliminating all the ‘fun’ stuff, i.e. no dairy, gluten, sugar, vegetable oils or meats. It felt like I was dying – like the worst hangover I had ever had – for three days!! Then, by day four I felt the best I had ever felt in my whole life! I got back into exercising too. After 30 days I felt great, so I slowly added foods back in until I found the culprits – for me it is unfermented dairy, sugar and gluten.
I certainly don’t advocate these drastic measures, as I said, I was desperate – and it’s not something that one can maintain over the long term. But it helped me realise what an impact diet and lifestyle play on our longevity, happiness and outward appearance – let alone the inflammation that must have been occurring within.
This led me to formal education in integrated nutrition, which opened my eyes and my mind to how powerful food is. A little of a food can be the cure – too much, a poison. So, armed with an education in nutritional biochemistry, and a passion for research, I honing my counselling skills to teach others how to listen to their body, to see the signs and know how to make the changes needed to live a long and healthy life.
For over 12 years I have found success in crowding out the bad choices with good and the biggest improvements I have made have been dietary.
Thank you for reading, my one piece of advice for a happy life…just eat real food, plenty of fibre, lots of water and not too much of any one thing. Variety is the spice of life!
In health and happiness
Georgia Limmer