My Story

My health journey isn’t all that out-of-the-ordinary.

My story starts around when I was around 4 years old. My mom couldn’t get me away from my play food. No matter how much play food she bought me or how many toy kitchens I had, I always wanted more. When I was old enough to be in the real kitchen, I was playing bakery with my Easy Bake as often as I could and helping my mom make lasagna (my favorite meal). Fast forward to middle school and I had just starting experimenting with my own recipes when my younger sister couldn’t take her stomach pain any more. From about the time she could talk she had been complaining about stomach aches. We had always brushed her off thinking, “Meh, she’s just being dramatic.” 

When my mom finally took her into a naturopath to get her tested for allergies, she came back positive for 35 different food sensitivities. You read that right. Thirty-five. Thankfully, 23 of them were not as bad as the other 12, but the naturopath recommended that she cut all 35 out for a month and then reintroduce the 23 one at a time. Now mind you, these weren’t random, rare foods. I’m talking dairy, wheat, eggs, potatoes, pork, beans...pretty much every staple food. My mom was going insane trying to think of what to feed her, to the point where she would break down crying in the grocery store. It was a really challenging time for my parents and us three other siblings as we tried to accommodate her diet. 

It was at this time that something awoke in me. I was determined to figure out what was causing my sister so much pain. And not just my sister. I wanted to dedicate my life to helping people like her. I joined my mom in researching nutrition and digestive health. My creativity thrived as I tried to make food that my sister could eat. Being homeschooled, I was able to take some electives in nutrition that were heavily influenced by the Weston Price Foundation, which opened my eyes to the wisdom of eating like our ancestors. When I enrolled in college for a degree in pre-med, I hadn’t even gotten through my first semester when I realized that pre-med was not the major to be in if I wanted to be a nutritionist. At this point though I really liked my college and wanted to stay even though they didn’t have a nutrition program. The closest thing I could find was Exercise Science with an emphasis in Health Education. I’m happy to say that I completed the program and graduated with a bachelor’s degree, never once regretting that I chose that major. 

BUT. Some things happened during that three and a half years of college that I can’t skip. 

It was the end of my freshman year. I had just started making exercise a regular part of my routine. I went home for the summer and I had nothing to do but research nutrition (and exercise...and work...two jobs...but that’s beside the point). In my mountains of free time, I stumbled upon this little harmless thing called Netflix...specifically the documentary section of Netflix. Specifically the health documentary section of Netflix. Let me tell you, if you could get a degree in nutrition by watching health documentaries I would have had it done in no time. I probably thought I had a college degree’s worth of knowledge because I thought it safe to start experimenting with my own health…

IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE. I had never had ANY major or recurring health issues previously. I almost never got sick as a kid, I had an iron stomach, and I felt energized all the time. I couldn’t sympathize at all with my sister and her stomach issues. My motivation to change my diet that summer was partly because I wanted to avoid struggling with my weight as my mom always had, partly because I wanted to avoid developing a chronic illness, and mostly because the documentaries that said I should change my diet. When I found Forks Over Knives and Vegecated, I was convinced that humans were meant to be vegans and that vegan was the one right diet for everyone. So I experimented with vegan foods for the rest of the summer and finally challenged myself to go fully vegan for two weeks when I got back to school in the fall. I completed the two weeks pretty easily and continued to be vegan for the most part while also staying away from sugar and processed foods. 

I noticed a few positive changes. My hair started growing faster and fuller, I had a lot of energy, and I never felt heavy after a meal. Because the campus offerings were limited, I had to make a lot of my own food which was fun but also time-consuming. I was also working out at least 6 days a week while working and volunteering and doing school full time. Now you’re probably thinking I had no friends. I did have friends...I just never saw them. I didn’t realize what amazing friends (also roommates) I had until they confronted me. You see, the scale and the mirror didn’t tell me that I had gotten to a sickly looking weight. But my friends did. They told me that I was never around for them and that I was showing signs for OSFED (Other specified feeding or eating disorder). I thought they were crazy for thinking I had an eating disorder. Nevertheless, I appreciated their care for me so I considered their suggestions to put away the scale and skip a workout every once in a while. “Not a big deal,” I thought. Until it came time to skip that workout. That first day after they confronted me, I stayed home to watch a show with them. I was fine. “I can be lazy just this once,” I thought. But the longer I sat there, the more guilty I felt for just sitting. It felt so incredibly wrong to skip my workout. When the show was finally over, I quietly went into our room and curled up on my bed...and cried. I had to tell my roommates that I was crying because I skipped a workout. I was so humiliated. I didn’t know what had happened to me. Did I really have an eating disorder? I confided in another friend about it and he suggested I try to make simple adjustments, be less strict with my diet every once in a while. “Try getting a Chick-fil-A sandwich,” he suggested. That was not a simple adjustment. Just thinking about eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich made me cry again. I don’t know what I would have done if my friends had not been willing to stand up to me and walk alongside me while I reintegrated “normal” food into my diet.

Reintegration was not easy. The hardest part was not feeling guilty if I had a sweet or, heaven forbid, white bread, every now and again. When I got over the guilt of eating processed food, I struggled with not over-indulging. It was so hard to say no to a second cookie...or a third or a fourth. I would find myself doing weird things, like taking my roommates’ french-fry containers out of the trash to eat the last few fries. At this point I wondered if reintegration was worth it and tried to revert back to my strict, whole-food vegan diet. Raw-vegan diet was becoming increasingly attractive to me so I played around with that for a couple days at time. While I felt good, I didn’t like being isolated from the rest of my friends and family. I wanted to enjoy eating with them without being jealous that I couldn’t have the same food they ate. I tried slowly reintegrating again and it was going well for the most part.

But then something unexpected happened. I noticed that certain foods that used to be a staple for me were giving me bad stomach pain. They were good foods, like avocados, sweet potatoes, and raw fruits and vegetables. It got to the point where almost all the foods on my vegan diet made me feel bad and the only foods that didn’t were meat, white bread, and sugar. I hated this because I knew those things weren’t healthy but I felt horrible when I would eat almost anything else. I had awful gas, stomach cramping, and I was tired all the time. (The tiredness had actually started before my roommates intervened.) As I ate more meat, I regained some energy and didn’t have as much cramping but the gas got worse. I was embarrassed to go into public. I wish I could tell you that I found a miracle pill that made everything better but I didn’t. I struggled with all these things for at least two years before I really started to feel like I could eat normally again. At the end of those two years, I did a 15-day detox diet which was the last push to really balance my pH and heal my gut of all the damage I had caused by switching my diet around so much. Today, I can eat just about anything in small amounts with no repercussions. I have found a place of balance in eating a whole foods-based diet and I am feeling the best I ever have.

I still love eating healthy and I love experimenting with new things. But I am more cautious now not to let food become such a big focus in my life. Food had become such an obsession that it was all I could think about, even during worship and my quiet time. I knew this obsession wasn’t pleasing to the Lord. Eventually, I stopped putting my faith in my own knowledge and relied upon the hope of Jesus Christ. No diet would ever be able to keep me from disease with 100% certainty. No diet would give me the self-control I needed to not get overweight. Only Jesus can do that. Only Jesus can guarantee profitable life here on earth and life after death. 1 Timothy 4:8 says, “For bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come.”

I am now passionate about helping people pursue a healthy life-style without getting too obsessed with their health. God absolutely wants you to take care of your body, but He doesn’t want you to only focus on things of this earth. The cool thing is, when we focus on Jesus, all these other health issues will fall into place. That’s because His divine power grants us both godliness and life (2 Peter 1:3). I pray for all the self-willed eaters out there, all the men and women who struggle with eating disorders, with gluttony, with food anxiety. I pray that my story would encourage you to pursue health without making it an ever-present thought. I pray that Christ would set you free of all these things as He did for me and that you would experience the joy that comes when you rely on the self-control that comes from the Spirit and not from ourselves. May the Lord grant you wisdom as you make decisions for your health. Whatever you do, do it for His glory.

Blessings,

Priscilla