Healthy Home Highlight: Hard Things Are Doable & Worth It

A Bonus Motivational Episode on Change, Growth & Resilience

Transcript

Natalie: 0:01

Hello and welcome to this week's Healthy Home Highlight. Where we talk about the little things in your daily environment that make a big impact on your health, your home, and ultimately your well being. Today, I wanted to take a little step back from the usual focus on specific products and home wellness tips, and instead focus on something deeper. Something that I needed so badly when I first was diagnosed with my autoimmune diseases. I needed hope. I needed someone who had been through it, someone who could tell me what life was going to be like. I needed to know that it was possible to live a full and happy life, even when things felt impossibly hard. And that's what I want to do for you today. If you or someone you love is going through something tough, whether it's health related, a major life transition, or just the exhaustion of trying to make better choices for yourself. I want you to hear this loud and clear. You can do hard things. You were born with the ability to do hard things. And you don't have to do them alone. There are people, angels, and God Himself who will help you get through them, even if it's just one tiny step at a time. So today we're going to talk about change, what it takes, what it really looks like, and how to keep going when you just want to give up. This isn't about perfection. That's already been covered for us through Christ. This is about moving forward, one intentional step at a time. So, why do we decide to change in the first place? Big lifestyle changes usually come from a deep need. Some people are inspired by others. Some people watch someone they love go through something painful and say, not me, not my family. Some people have a moment of realization where they look at their life and realize, I'm not living the way that I was meant to live. And then there are people like me. People who feel like change is the only option left. When I was diagnosed with five autoimmune diseases, I knew my life was about to change, whether I wanted it to or not. Some of these conditions were at best life altering. And, at worst, fatal. I felt overwhelmed by where to start, but I knew that I had to start somewhere. And I started with my diet. Not because it was easy, but actually because it was the hardest thing for me to give up. I am a huge foodie. Bread y, sugary, buttery desserts were my absolute favorite. Brownies, donuts, cookies, cupcakes, I didn't discriminate. They were my comfort. They were my celebration. They were my happy place. And I knew that had to change. So instead of cutting one thing out at a time, I decided to go cold turkey off of everything at once. Sugar, dairy, gluten, eggs, and anything baked with eggs. It was brutal. I felt awful for about two to three weeks. Like, I had the flu. I was in a brain fog. I had zero energy. My body was achy and it made me want those foods even more because they had been my comfort. But then I started feeling better. During this whole process, I needed to find a way to get through it, and what I found that worked for me was learning. Every day I researched the amazing things that whole healthy foods we're doing for my body. And I would look up specific foods as I would eat them to understand what that food had inside of it that was doing to benefit me. And then I also would read all the terrible things about the processed foods that I was giving up. That knowledge ended up deepening my why. And here's the truth about change. It's possible for anyone. But it is not easy. It took three months before I even started to feel the first benefits of everything. And even then, I still had flare ups and I still have hard days. I remember one moment so clearly. I was at a festival with my husband. We were walking around holding hands and I smelled churros in the air. And you have to understand that churros are one of my most favorite, favorite foods. And I turned to him and I said, I really hope that I enjoyed that last churro I ever ate because I can't even remember it. That used to be my favorite thing. But you know what? Now I have a whole new list of favorite foods. I have found ways to recreate some of my old favorites in ways that fuel my body instead of harming it. And it was worth it. It took an entire year before I saw big changes start to happen in my blood work. But during that year, I had other great changes happen. I lost 40 pounds. My skin cleared up and my hair became really strong and shiny. Whereas before, my hair had been falling out by handfuls every time I would wash it or brush it. And people started telling me how healthy that I actually looked. It was the boost that I needed to really keep going. Looking back, there are some really big things that I felt made the difference and As I've started the podcast, I wanted to do those in order so that you really could understand the journey that I went through and what helped me the most. So Recapping a little bit, here are the biggest things that made the difference for me. The first one was patience. This does not happen overnight. My inflammation stayed high for about 12 to 18 months before my body finally felt safe enough to really start healing. Even now, I still have occasional flare ups, but they're less frequent, they're much shorter, and a lot easier to recover from. Number two, I would say fuel your body with whole foods. You literally are what you eat. Your body builds new cells out of the food that you put into it. So put in the good stuff. Number three was sleep a lot. And we just recently did a sleep episode, and learned about all the benefits of sleep and why we need it. Sleep is when your body heals, and you cannot get back the sleep that you miss. Now, number four for me was detoxing the environment. I got rid of toxic body products and household chemicals one at a time. Wasn't all at once, as I would run out of a product. I would try and find a new product to replace it that was cleaner, that was healthier, and I used those apps that I talked about in the detox episode, that you can scan all of your different products to find out what chemicals are inside them and if they're clean and safe to use. I tested and replaced things slowly until I actually found what worked. And some of the products were pretty hard to find things equivalent that I really liked to use. Shampoo was a big one. I tried a lot of different shampoos and things that worked for some people just didn't work for me. With the condition that I had and my hair falling out so much, I needed to find something that was really nourishing and that would help my hair from falling out. So, the shampoo that I actually ended up landing on is Dr. Squatch. Now, I know that this is considered a guy's shampoo. That's at least how the company markets it. But, I have loved the summer citrus scent and the coconut scent, and it leaves my hair just feeling silky soft, and it's made it really healthy and strong, and there's nothing in it that I wouldn't put on my skin. The other thing that was really tricky for me was deodorant. Um, it's, it's really hard to start switching from an antiperspirant and deodorant to something that is more natural. And it took a lot of tries to find the combinations, to find what I liked and what worked for my body. Next, as we're going down the line of things that really helped was filtering water. As we learned in our episode about water, there is so much junk in it, and we have to get that junk out. Water is so important to keep our bodies alive and healthy. So, definitely suggest getting a filter. I'm going to post some filters and we'll do a deeper dive on a Healthy Home Highlights with some specific filters that you can get and that you can use for your water. But, try and get filtered water. Um, Jury's still out on bottled water. Obviously, you know, I don't like the plastic that the bottled water comes in because that leaches into the water itself and we get all those micro and nanoplastics, but even the water that is in bottled water from where it's originally filled, It doesn't always have the best content either. I actually had a colleague recently ask and challenge me to say, Hey, if I'm in a situation where I don't have a glass bottle, where I don't have clean water and I have to choose a bottled water, what is the best one? And I'm working on that. I'm doing some research. I'm looking into a lot of different studies from companies and I will let you know what I find out. So number six would be Epsom salt baths and saunas. We need to sweat, and sweating and soaking really helps flush toxins out of your body. Number seven, sunlight, rest, and grounding. We've got to get closer to nature. God made the earth. He knows what our bodies need, and we need light, we need rest, and grounding is amazing for healing in your body. We're going to do some future episodes on grounding, talk about grounding sheets and those kind of things. We just did an episode on sunlight specifically morning light and midday light and getting that vitamin D and setting your circadian rhythm, so if you didn't have a chance to listen to that go back and listen to our sunlight episode, but that's number seven for me. Number eight, and the final one, is meditation, prayer, and visualization. And again, I'm going to go into these topics much more in depth in the future, but mental and spiritual health are just as important as physical health. And so this all has to tie into your healing journey. So, uh, How do I do all of these things? How do I have time for all of this? It's a lot, but I habitt stack and I've found simple ways to get these in during my day. You don't have to do it all. You don't have to do it every day. You can get support from your family and your loved ones. For me, I have a miracle morning and a miracle evening. So, every morning, my alarm goes off, and the very first thing that I do is drink a big glass of water. At night before I go to bed, I fill up a glass of filtered water, set it on my bedside nightstand, so that as soon as I wake up in the morning, that is the first thing I do. And what's really interesting is my husband actually just told me today that he was doing some research on a study that if you're trying to lower your blood pressure, they've actually found that by drinking a big glass of water, right when you wake up and a big glass of water right before you go to bed showed significant impact on helping to lower blood pressure. Um, the next thing I do in the morning after I drink my glass of water is I do a Qi gong abdominal massage. I linked to this in a past episode, talking about how to do these abdominal massages. And there's some YouTube videos that you can take a look at, but the Qigong abdominal massage really gets my blood flowing. It gets my organs moving and functioning first thing in the morning. And then I move on to scriptures, meditation, and prayer. I read things that are uplifting and study the word of God. I take a moment to meditate and visualize my body, the healing process, my why, and my motivation and my intention for the day. And then I end with a prayer. And then after that, I go get my 5 to 10 minutes of morning sunlight. To really set my circadian rhythm for the day and get all of the benefits of that good morning light. Now this whole process in the morning usually only takes about 30 minutes, so I don't have to get up extra extra early. I still get my full sleep, my full rest, and then it's off to the races, get ready for work, and take my drive up to the office. In the evenings coming home, um, when everybody's settled down, dinner's done, cleaned up, and we're winding down for the evening, my miracle evening looks like an Epsom salt bath or time in the sauna on most nights with a good book. Then I do some gentle stretching right before bed. And then I lower and dim all my lights in my house and have a really calm wind down. And again, this doesn't take a lot of time. This is maybe 30 minutes in my evenings as well, and it's enough to really make sure that my body is set up at the beginning of the day and ending the day right before I go to sleep with really good things. Most of these things are free. I know I've talked about in multiple episodes all of these different things that we can enhance our homes with and replace everything with. And I really don't want you to get overwhelmed with these items and the price of them because it can get overwhelming. It can get expensive. I want you to understand that there's so much you can do for your health that God has given us that is just naturally around us. That we can really use on a day to day basis that's free. If you're really into biohacking and you're wanting to take things to the next level, or if you are ready to start replacing some of the items in your home, that's why I'm doing these extra Healthy Home Highlights, to use my design background and all of the studies and the knowledge that I've gained over these years and combine those to help you understand what are really great products that you can benefit from in your home. If you're ready to start replacing those things. And again, I have no affiliation with any of the products that I suggest or, post links on to the podcast. These are just things that I've personally used that I love and that I have really found benefit from. So if you're overwhelmed, remember, start small. You can't replace your sheets. Start with your laundry detergent. If you can't swap out all your pans, Use one cast iron skillet. It's cheaper and safer. Every little change stacks up. And hard things, they are doable and worth it. So if you're in the middle of something right now, if you're struggling through changes, if you're feeling like it's too much, if you're wondering if it's worth it, I'm here to tell you it absolutely is. Keep going. I believe in you. And remember, you don't have to be perfect. You just have to keep moving forward one intentional step at a time. Please message me if you have any questions and I'd be happy to do future podcasts on these things. We'll see you next time