Dr. Crippen is the author of this book and also a practicing chiropractor. His journey into a cure for his migraines led to his expertise on holistic health. This form of medicine treats the body as a whole, instead of just throwing medications at symptoms and hoping they go away.

Anyone who has had a health problem that doctors were unable to help you with can strongly relate to Dr. Crippen’s story that he tells in this book, of searching for answers and being unable to find them in a broken system.

I can strongly relate to this. When my health fell apart in 2014-2016, I had all sorts of crazy symptoms. Thankfully, I had one provider who thought outside of the box. If it weren’t for this one cardiologist I had, I would have never figured out that it was one part of my diet causing all of my problems. (In my case, it was gluten, and you read more about that here.)

So without further ado, here is Dr. Crippen. He is sharing with us a snippet directly from from his new book, Timeless Youth.

***Disclaimer: If you purchase through Amazon links on my site, I do collect advertising fees.***

“Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone.”

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Dr. Lisa Saunders, a medical doctor, journalist, and professor at the Yale School of Medicine, whose New York Times column “Diagnosis” was the inspiration for the TV show House, wrote:

“A decade ago, I stood alongside my 99 fellow freshmen as we were welcomed into the ranks of medicine in a ‘white coat ceremony.’ Here, on our first day of med school, we were presented with the short white coats that proclaimed us part of the mystery and the discipline of medicine. During that ceremony, the dean said something that was repeated throughout my education: half of what we teach you here is wrong – unfortunately, we don’t know which half.”

That quote, often repeated by the Dean of the Yale School of Medicine, was originally spoken by Charles Sidney Burwell, a past Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard, over 50 years ago. It is just as true today as when it was first spoken.

This book will explain why half of what is taught in medical school is wrong.

What if there was a better way? What if, instead of starting with disease and the parts and pieces that make up the body, we started instead with the principles that were true in the beginning and are still true today? 

The first principle of holistic health is The Yellowstone Principle: The Whole Is Greater Than the Sum of Its Parts

In the early 1990s, conservationists with Yellowstone National Park faced a titanic problem. Over the previous 70 years, an ecosystem that was once in balance was spiraling out of control, and conservationists were at a loss to reverse the trend.

One obvious symptom of the change was the ballooning population of elk. But this wasn’t the only change. Many of the trees were losing their bark, which led to a decline in the aspens and cottonwoods. Also, the songbird population had decreased.

Other changes in the Yellowstone ecosystem included a decrease in the beaver population, erosion of the streams, and a decrease in river animals such as muskrats, ducks, fish, reptiles, and amphibians — many symptoms of a diseased ecosystem.

All the symptoms of change, from beavers to rivers to elk, were connected by a single cause.

The ballooning population of elk led to an overgrazing of tree bark, which led to fewer aspens and cottonwoods, destroying the habitat of the songbirds and providing less wood for beavers to make their dams. Fewer dams resulted in erosion of the streams, and a reduced habitat for muskrats, ducks, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. Naturalists hoped they could attack the problem at its source — the growing elk population.

In the 1930s, the park services started trapping and moving the elk out of the park, and then, when that didn’t work, shooting them. This went on for decades. While one symptom improved (the population of elk did decrease) the other symptoms, the trees, birds, and beavers were largely unchanged.

What should be done next?

Plant more aspen and cottonwood trees? Introduce more beavers into the park? Dredge the streams and rivers to restore the wildlife habitats? All were logical — capable of treating one symptom or another — but none would restore balance to the ecosystem.

Why? Because, as the conservationists learned, the solution to the changes in Yellowstone would only be found by understanding the ecosystem as a whole, and not a disparate set of unconnected symptoms.

While the changes in Yellowstone’s landscape were becoming more apparent in the 1990s, the change started in the early 1900s.

When the U.S. Park Service took control of Yellowstone from the U.S. Army in 1916, they systematically killed all the wolves in the park, killing all 134 over the next 10 years. From this point until the early 1990s, there were no wolves in Yellowstone as wolves were a deemed a threat to cattle and livestock.

To make the ecosystem whole once again, naturalists could either kill more elk, plant more trees, add fish, feed songbirds, build dams, or, quite simply, they could reintroduce wolves.

Fourteen wolves were reintroduced in 1995 and 17 more the following year. Thirty-one total wolves were added to a 2.2-million-acre national park spanning parts of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.

This seemingly small addition produced a series of remarkable changes.

First, the wolves, a natural predator of the elk, helped thin the elk population.

Then, the potential threat of being eaten changed the behavior of the elk. The elk moved from the valleys and the gorges, where they could be easily hunted, to the areas of heavy timber. This allowed the bare areas of the valleys and gorges to regenerate.

Songbirds and migratory birds returned to the new regenerating trees. The beavers, with their food source of trees restored, began to proliferate. More beavers led to more dams. Otters, muskrats, ducks, and fish that relied on the dams for habitats returned.

Increasing vegetation stabilized the riverbanks, reversed the erosion in the riverbeds, and created a healthier ecosystem.

The changes in Yellowstone could not be understood by looking at only one species, one location, or one plant. The interventions aimed at treating a single problem produced only short-lived changes, and none restored health to the whole.

Instead, to restore balance to the ecosystem, all the pieces must be considered as parts of the whole, where every part impacts every other part.

Just as an ecosystem is made up of many individual plants and animals, of a variety of species, each independent yet interconnected, the human body is also made of many independent parts — cells, organs, tissues, and systems, that interconnect to form a whole.

This idea of holism fits within the context of nature. When we introduce wolves back into Yellowstone, we accept the cascade of changes as natural consequences. In nature, we understand that a change to one part affects the whole.

But somehow, along the way, we started to view the body as separate from nature.

Instead of seeing the body as a whole ecosystem, the way we might with a national park like Yellowstone, allopathic medicine treats the body as if it operates according to a different set of rules.

The body, the thinking goes, is not a whole but instead a collection of parts. This is called reductionism, the idea that a complex system can be understood by understanding the pieces that make it up. It is this thinking that lets us to cut out a cancer from the body without changing the conditions that led it to grow in the first place.

Reductionistic thinking lets us take an antibiotic for a cold — often without knowing if the symptoms are even caused by bacteria — instead of asking why the immune system did not fight off the bug in the first place.

In another context, reductionistic thinking allows for the surgical replacement of a knee without evaluating the health of the whole.

Specifically, without asking how and why the knee degenerated in the first place. And no, getting older is not a sufficient reason to have a bad knee. My favorite questions for patients who use the “I’m just getting old, Doc” explanation for knee pain is to ask, politely of course, “Well, if that is the case, how old is your good knee?”

The idea of reductionism is not universal, but it is foundational to the medical idea of health. Perhaps, it came from the Industrial Revolution with its proliferation of machines to increase output and its concurrent migration into cities and out of nature.

Or, perhaps, from the revamping of medical education that occurred after the Flexner Report, in 1910, with its increased focus on scientific research in the basic sciences like physiology and biochemistry (both of which focus on the parts of the body rather than the whole) at the expense of holism. However it happened, the medical idea of health mandates that we see the human body as a collection of parts, separate from nature.

This change had a profound effect on our health.

It is the difference between shooting elk and restoring wolves.

The idea of thinking of the health of the whole is foundational to how we see nature.

We do not need to consider the health of 2,000,000+ acres of a national park to see the principle of holism. We can observe the same principle in a single leaf.

When it comes to health, plants are simple. They are not like humans. Plants don’t complain. They don’t forget to eat. They don’t sabotage their health with Oreos and reality television. Plants grow. They add carbon dioxide (CO2) to sunlight to create food. They survive.

Because of this, healing plants is easy.

A healthy plant needs optimum amounts of three things: sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil). A sick plant, one with brown leaves, needs optimal amounts of three things: sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil). That’s it; that’s the whole list. The presence or absence of disease does not change what the plant needs to create health. It may need more or less of each, but healthy plants are the inevitable result of optimal amounts of these three inputs.

But what if things were different? Let’s imagine we enter a world of plants, a world that, for simplicity, we’ll call Plant World.

Let’s imagine Plant World has advanced well past the antiquated ideas of ensuring plants need optimal amounts of sunlight, water, and nutrients. How old fashioned! How antiquated! Instead, in progressive and innovative Plant World, plants are treated like people, following the three-step allopathic model disease care diagnose disease, treat with drug or surgery, eliminate the symptom or disease.

Step one, diagnose disease.

In plant world, before a sick plant can be helped, it first needs — of course! — a diagnosis. How can you treat a plant if you don’t name the disease? In the allopathic plant disease care, as with humans, the disease is given a name, often with a Greek root. We’ll call it Brown Leafitis.

In this progressive system, researchers and plant doctors search for a cure for Brown Leafitis. Lots of money, public and private, is spent researching pharmaceutical treatments and surgical techniques (step two!) to treat the symptoms of Brown Leafitis.

The allopathic plant disease care system even has teams of molecular biologists searching for a miracle drug that will cause an already sick plant’s leaves to turn from brown back to green. Other promising treatments include, covering the leaves with spray paint and the surgical removal of the brown leaf (a leafectomy, if you will). How progressive! How technologically advanced!

Even better, Plant World elected a government that demands equal access for all diseased plants to essential plant medications and includes a team of lobbyists petitioning Plant Congress and the Federal Plant Drug Administration to have medications approved for the new epidemic of Brown Leafitis.

Luckily — for the plants — Plant World disease care doesn’t exist.

We don’t waste our time and money on pharmaceutical drugs or tiny plant surgeries to treat Brown Leafitis. Instead, we restore health in a plant by ensuring the plant has exactly what it needs to create health (sunlight, water, and nutrients (found in healthy soil)).

By assuring a plant has the nutrients it needs, the plant returns to health and the symptom of brown leaves go away, or, better yet, never appear in the first place. Giving the plant water, sun, and healthy soil is healthcare.

We recognize, intuitively, that a brown leaf is not a disease of the leaf, but rather a sign of a problem within the whole plant. We intuitively provide healthcare to plants, but we disastrously provide disease care to humans.

What the medical idea of health seems to forget is that we humans are not reductionistic machines but instead operate under the principle of holism — like plants!

In the case of my headaches, taking pain relieving medications sometimes helped with the symptom of head pain, but didn’t make me healthier. How could I be healthier taking a chemical that (supposedly) helped pain yet at the same time damaged my liver and kidneys?

Doctors who understood the principles of health would take a different approach.

They would see pain in the head not as an isolated symptom but instead as a sign of dysfunction of the whole, much like we view a brown leaf on a plant. Instead of prescribing a drug to treat the symptom, the treatment might include the human equivalent of water, sunlight, and healthy soil needed to restore health.

So how do we find those basic first principles, the human equivalents of water, sunlight, and healthy soil that create health?

We must begin by seeing a disease of a part as instead a dysfunction of the whole.

Timeless You-th tells the story of my struggle to find a cure for my crippling headaches while navigating the established medical system. My headaches persisted and worsened despite seeking the best medical treatment available, including top doctors and pharmaceutical drugs. The overall goal of my book is to teach you five foundational principles of health so that you, too, can create a lifetime of timeless youth.

Timeless You-th is your go to resource to maximize your health without drugs and surgery. Grab a copy on Amazon and share!

The post Why Holistic Health is Life Changing: New Book by Dr. Crippen appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

My fit friend Julie. It was like Israel boot camp, but I could not have asked for a better person to tour with.

When I talked to Julie the week before our big trip, she mentioned that she enjoys walking, and she hoped to walk everywhere in Tel Aviv.

“Perfect, I love walking!” I said.

But then, as I got to know Julie better, I began to realize we were not exactly on the same level with the physical fitness. She walks, and she runs, and she exercises.

Julie is what we call fit. Super fit. I am more like what we call….not fit.

My gut closely resembles this Israeli statue…

He’s cute, isn’t he?

I could not have found a better person than Julie to tour Tel Aviv with. We were already acquainted well enough that I felt comfortable with her, and yet we were new enough of friends that there was no arguing. Ha!!!

Besides, Julie is awesome. She is laid back, intelligent, sensible, down to earth, and an excellent conversationalist, which is perfect because I often have a super hard time thinking of what to say. She also was better than me with figuring out where we were and how to get where we were going, which is important in a foreign country!

Go ahead and laugh. You know I have no sense of direction. And maybe you THINK I talk a lot, but inside I’m working hard to think of all those words.

This is the street in Tel Aviv that runs along the beach.

Tel Aviv Boot Camp

We had a routine that worked well. Breakfast and supper were free at our hotel, so that was what we ate. We had a late breakfast, skipped lunch, and then there was 4:00 tea time at our hotel, with snacks. Then there was dinner at 6pm.

So yeah, we just skipped lunch everyday. We probably did not save any calories though. They fed us so well at the hotel, we were not even hungry at lunch.

Tel Aviv Beach

Alan and I did a little walking on the beach together too.

The Shopping

You know I am thrifty, and Julie is too. I am so easily influenced by who I am hanging out with! I didn’t buy all that much, but we did walk around tons of shops and markets.

We went into Israel expecting to barter for everything. People had told us we would need to barter, and yet, that was not what we found. Maybe it is just different in Tel Aviv, but most everywhere we went the shop owners and workers said, “No, we don’t do that here. It’s just one price.”

I bought these Coca-Cola in Hebrew shirts for my 2 biggest boys.

I scored this entire outfit at the Shuk for only $100 shekels…That’s like $35!!

Funny story:

First of all, several different people asked Julie and me if we were from Germany. ???!!?? Germany? No! America! I found that odd, kind of funny, but also sad, considering Israel’s history with Germany.

But the funny story was the sales guy we met at the Shuk, where I bought that exercise outfit. He was an unusually friendly young Jewish man, probably around 24 years old, a cute, small guy. What I did not realize at first was that he actually lives in Miami, but he was in town for an event and helping his dad in their store that day.

“Where are you from?” he asked us, after explaining the day’s sales to us.

Each time people asked, I found myself not knowing what to call our country. Isn’t that hilarious? United States of America is sort of a mouthful. So sometimes I said America, and sometimes I called it the U.S. or the United States. That was not a sufficient answer for anyone that asked. Every single questioner wanted to know specifically what state we were from.

I move every 2 to 3 years, I do not truly belong to any one state, so my new policy is to claim to be from wherever I currently live.

This particular sales guy laughed when I said “America,” and said, “Well, yeah, I know, I mean I didn’t think you were from Germany!”

Julie and I looked at each other, mystified. Well, the rest of the country seems to think we are from Germany, and even this guy referenced it, so clearly their history left scars.

But he knew we lived in the States because he has been living in the U.S. himself for several years.

We bought this from an arts and crafts fair in downtown Tel Aviv.

We explained to the sales guy where we were from. He said to Julie, “You look like a runner!” Then they talked about running and swimming…Funny…no one ever asked me what sport I participate in……hahahahaha…

I was shopping for a cute exercise outfit, so I picked up Larges, but I’m usually borderline on sizes, so I was glancing around for a fitting room.

“Oh, you don’t need a large!” This sales guy had all the answers…”This stretches, see? You need a medium.”

Flattering, but I actually did not even need to try on the pants. I’m 5 foot 6 with enough hips for all 3 of us standing there. I require the large, and I am thankful I did not consider his advice.

Shirts are a different story. I have to try on every shirt I buy.

There I was, in a foreign country, trying on a shirt, in a storage closet, in an outdoor market area (The closet had walls. The store did not.), with Julie standing guard in the OPEN doorway, with the super talkative young sales guy, waiting outside the closet. He said he was waiting to “snap a photo (of me) and put it on Facebook.”

Laugh. Out. Loud. “Yeah, you are not putting this on Facebook.”

I was in such a hurry to be done with the process that I bought the shirt, without being sure if it fit well or not because I did not want to go out there and look in the mirror long enough for him to get a Facebook photo. (As it turns out, the shirt was far too spandex-y.)

Why do I care about him taking my picture? I am a blogger for crying out loud. My face is all over the internet. Yeah, well, I am a vain blogger who carefully crops out all chubby bits before posting pictures online, and me in a spandex work-out tank? No way was I putting that out there.

That sales guy was hilarious. He talked to us all the way out of the store, as we left, and invited us to come back and see him tomorrow.

I never did make it to the Dead Sea, but I did buy this soap at the craft fair, which was made from Dead Sea Mud.

Gotta love mud.

This was another character that we met. He had lot of jokes.

Okay. Sorry it’s all mirror-backwards, but look how hard it is to read a receipt in Hebrew and shekels!!! If it weren’t for the numbers, we would not even know it was backwards.

That receipt was from a group dinner. Don’t worry. We didn’t spend anywhere near that much.

Ah! I can’t wait to go back someday.

P.S. I lost 3 pounds.

At the Dizengoff Center, a shopping mall exactly like you’d find in America, I found MY store. Yep. April is a cosmetics store.

Julie and I averaged about 9 miles a day, over 20,000 steps. We were sweat-soaked each day when we made it back to our hotel room. If you go for a week, you need to pack like 14 outfits, complete with 14 sets of underwear.

By the time the trip was over, I had definitely built up my endurance. I have been sure to get in at LEAST 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise everyday since we got back, so this trip was a grand success, in more ways than one!

Be sure to check out my last post on Tel Aviv to learn more about this bustling city!

Just can’t get enough Israel? I wrote a book about the whole experience, and you can click here to buy the book on Amazon.

The post Shopping and Shedding Pounds in Tel Aviv appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

As much as we’d love to be a Disney family, high tailing it off to Orlando a few times a year, that’s not really practical for most of us, is it? No, and even if you do, there will be plenty of time between to fill up with memories at home.

Here are 3 things I’ve found lately to have a BLAST with my children without spending much money at all and without leaving our house.

4 Almost Free Ways to Spend Time Together as a Family

Board Games

This one can be even cheaper than you think. I buy almost all of our games at Goodwill or other local thrift stores. Part of Daniel’s birthday gift this year was an Angry Birds game I found for $3.95 at Goodwill. Maybe $3.95 doesn’t sound cheap, but when you figure the whole family could play it, it was in perfect condition, and retail it would have been more like $34, it starts to sound like a steal.

This morning we paid Spongebob Monopoly, and while 3 of 4 boys quit early on from boredom, Daniel hung in there and beat me SOUNDLY.

So did everyone have fun? Sort of. Everyone did for a little while. And one of them had the special honor of beating mom. Also, he learned so much about counting money and making change.

Playing Sports Outside…..and yeah, sometimes inside

What we play depends on what they are into at the time. Last year it was always baseball. Now it’s mostly basketball, but lately we’ve been all about badminton.

Here’s my best tips for introducing your kids to badminton or tennis:

1. Buy any racquets at thrift stores. Thrift stores almost always have tennis rackets, and when you are playing at home, you can totally play badminton with big giant tennis rackets. In fact, it makes it easier for the kids to hit the birdie.
2. If you don’t have a net, designate a line on the driveway as your “net”. By the way, the one above is a nice one. You can also buy super cheap ones, but I can’t vouch for how good they will be, but they might be better than just the line on the driveway. Ha!
3. Our family just used the crack in the driveway as our “net” until we had time to go buy a net.

Most sports can be simulated at home without actually owning the equipment. In most cases, you just need a ball.

ABSOLUTELY FREE: CHARADES!!!

Alan took some papers, cut them into squares and wrote names of people we know, movies we’ve watched, and places we’ve been to on them. Then he made a paper bag for each category, and put the papers in the bags for us to draw out.

The boys LOVED it. It was more personal this way. We used family members, and then they’d act out what they’ve noticed about those family members. The cutest was when they were being their cousin Wesley, and they got on their knees, to show they were short, and then went around hugging everyone! Ha!!!

For places, we used random ones like the driveway, the pumpkin patch, and places we used to live. Just talking about it makes me want to do this again. We all laughed so much.

Include the little ones too. Just whisper in their ear how to act it out. As long as there’s one person to guess, you’re good. When toddlers get involved, I promise it will be hilarious. They may even announce to everyone who they are being, like JD does, and that’s okay.

Turn something they LOVE into a family activity!

Light sabers? Family jousting tournament

Legos? Building contest! And name a different prize for each kid. Maybe even make little construction paper ribbons.

Dancing? Dance Party.

For example, the ever so obnoxious BOTTLE FLIPPING!!

Does any mom or teacher out there not hate this activity? Why? It’s loud. It’s annoying, and it always spills water.

Did you know they make games for Bottle Flipping? As in board-game like games? They do!

 
I decided to give this a shot. This is the very first time I had ever attempted to flip a bottle, and I’m here to tell you it is way HARDER than it looked! I have new respect.

Best of all, my older boys got a real kick out of me participating in bottle flipping with them. My oldest wasn’t even going to play with us at first, but once he saw us having fun, he joined in and then insisted that we play again.

In fact, I want you all to join in on this fun, so this week we are giving the Bottle Flippin’ Game away for FREE to one of you!

***This giveaway is sponsored by the Bottle Flip Game.***

I love giveaways!!!

To enter just Log in with Facebook or your email below, and click one of the options. If you have trouble, just send me your email address, and I’ll enter ya.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck!!!

The post 4 Almost Free Ways to Spend Time Together as a Family + Giveaway appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Vacation in Boston, Summer 2012, Pain level was way down. Such a fun time!

To read Part I Click here. Again, this is a chronic pain post: feel free to skip this one if it’s not your cup of tea. I promise to not always blog about hip pain y’all…

Now onto Part II of the saga.

So where did we leave off? Oh, yes. I was lying on my bed, probably on a hot pad, staring at the ceiling, praying, and crying.

I prayed for help. It came. God has always been so faithful.

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll just pretend I’m not home,” I thought.

“Mom! Mom! Mom! Someone’s at the door!!!  Mom!! Get up! The doorbell!”

Groan. Obviously, we are at home.

“I’m coming. Okay.” I hobbled down the stairs, keeping my arm tucked in close. I answered the door. Just a nice lady needing to ask me a few questions. I don’t even remember her name.

I apologized for taking so long to answer the door. I explained that I’d been having trouble with my back. (It’s just much quicker than saying hip and shoulder.)

And do you know what she did?? She said she could relate! And then she pulled out her phone, and she said, “I have this chiropractor, his name is Dr. Bodnar. Let me give you his number.”

She assured me he was the best, and then she left. I never saw her before that day, and I never saw her afterwards.

I had only been to a chiropractor one other time, way back in 2005, when I was 8 months pregnant and also desperate for help with the hip.

I called the chiropractor. They got me in the very next day. Take that, physical therapy clinic! They were thorough. As my Granny, a fellow pain sufferer, once said, “They measured every bone in my body.” They also took x-rays.

One visit. One visit was all it took to fix the rib-cage thing. He just crunched my back, and bam! that rib went back to where it belonged. The truly fantabulous part is: It never came back!! Phew!

My neck was also repaired quickly. In only a few appointments, I could back up my car with a clear conscience. Wahoo!

Even the hip and shoulder tapered down to a manageable level. I was sold. I didn’t even bother to go back to the doctor who did the x-rays at my regular clinic. These chiropractor people were helping me, so I’d stick with them. No, my insurance didn’t pay for it, but I was breathing, walking, and sitting! Things were looking up!

They explained to me that my neck was straight rather than curved as it should be, and one side of my pelvis is higher than the other.

That’s when I also began to exercise. Dr. Bodnar gave me a few basic stretches and elbow planks to strengthen my core.

Y’all! When I began to do elbow planks in 2012, I couldn’t hold it for more than 3 seconds! It was so sad!! Now I can do 3 sets of 30 seconds a piece, in a row! I have come so far. At that time, the weak core explanation for my pain was something I could settle for. It was true back then. Not so, these days.

The exercise phase.

I lost 15 pounds. I ran. I swam. I was feeling great.

“Hey! Let’s have another baby!” You know I love babies.

But the truth had sunk in by this point that my hip and shoulder were chronic. This is a pain I will be “managing” for the rest of my life. Sometimes, even with the chiropractic care, my hip would flare up for a few days and then calm back down. The shoulder is more of a steady pinch, but I mostly only notice it when I’m lying down or sitting.

I call it sciatica, a hip problem, or a rear end problem. I know it’s confusing. The thing is that when it’s flared up, it hurts to drive, sit, lay down, or climb stairs. When I touch my foot to the pedals of a car, it hurts in my rear end and lower back, just to the right of my spine and deep into my rear.

But then there’s another aspect beside the sacroiliac pain.  The hip joint itself is also angry, so if the flare up gets bad enough, I have trouble walking. Maybe it’s all part of the same thing, but that’s why I keep saying I don’t know what I have, I just know it hurts.

So I was careful about the fourth pregnancy. I faithfully visited Dr. Bodnar every other week. It was my healthiest pregnancy of all four. The pain still came and went, but no horror stories. It was super mild. The worst problem I had was pregnancy anemia and women in grocery stores asking me if I was sure I wasn’t having twins!

Rudest thing ever people. Just tell pregnant women, “You look great.”

That pregnancy agreed with me.

During that pregnancy, I also finally made it to a dermatologist for several things. I’m supposed to go every year, but I don’t. That was when I learned that I had psoriasis. Phew! What a relief! I was afraid that crazy nail was fungus or something, and oh the public disgrace! But no, just psoriasis. No biggie. I’d had the scalp and nose rash for as long as I could remember, but I’d never bothered to find out what it was. It’s not big or very noticeable, so I don’t worry about it.

From 2012 to Fall 2014, the shoulder and hip would wax and wane in intensity, but it mostly stayed mild and manageable. We moved across country, and I made it–all of that car riding!–with no problem. Those were two happy, fit years, even with the c-section thrown in. I was quick to recover. I worked hard to get my ab muscles back in tact, thanks to my Lindsey Brin fitness DVDs and my yoga instructor, Monica.

But then came the 2014 move. I was good the first few months, but as I began to home school the boys, I could not find time to exercise. Plus, I was so tense and stressed. My old pain came back knocking hard.

Such a beautiful place to move to! Who wouldn’t want to live near the coast of California?

I found a local chiropractor. That helped. Then I went on Christmas vacation. I had a truly happy outlook. For some reason, that seems to make a difference. I had a fun time in Alabama, and when we came back I had my very first 4 completely pain-free months since 2011! I was ecstatic. I’d thought that ache was just part of me. But it disappeared for four whole months!! Wahooooooo!

While the shoulder ache and the hip pain evaporated, a new pain showed up around Fall 2014. Remember the white pinky nail I mentioned in Part I? Well, eventually every single fingernail, save one or two, went white and yellow and pink on me. Toward the tip, it gets super thick and looks like it’s separating from the nail bed. It’s embarrassing.

my fingernail psoriasis: a surprisingly obnoxious condition. This is also called onycholysis.

Also, it hurts. That was when I learned to wash my hair with only whatever one or two fingers was working properly. It wasn’t like the arthritis fingers, where they have swelling in their knuckles. It was just the tips of my fingers that hurt. I still have it in my thumb.

I learned to not even attempt buttons or jars. At least I could walk. Four whole months of no shoulder or hip pain! 2015 was off to a smashing start! I was happy. Home school was going better. I was finally making friends, and suddenly I had offers to make money blogging.

Life was looking up for April. I even began to tell myself that perhaps the shoulder and hip thing was truly over. I even took on a sponsored post with a personal trainer who put me on this Water Challenge that totally fixed most of my nails:

If you look closely, you can still see it in my index finger, but look at my happy, healthy thumb nail! All from drinking tons of water. Thank you, Coach Cox!

We’ll talk about Part III next time: The pain came back, and I finally met a health care professional who questioned my spine theory.

Read Part I here.

Read Part III here.

The post My Battle With Chronic Pain Part II: Tendonitis, Sacroiliac Pain, Muscle Strain, Whatever appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Today I met with a nutritionist, also known as my friend Lacy. I bombarded her with all the food questions I could think of about how to lower blood sugar, and I’m going to share the first, most doable steps that I learned.

I’m writing them down NOW before I forget any more than I already have!

Lacy is a fellow home schooling mom. She also has four kids, so there’s no one who better understands what I’m up against. She fully knows the drill of the busy, action-packed life!

This sounds so silly, but the hardest part of ALL of it is just not drinking soda. Coca-Cola has me the same way Marlboro has the smoker crowd! Man, I love my sugary sodas.

Good-bye, soda. We must break up. This hurts me more than it hurts you. Can I still have one on my birthdays?

This is hard.

But I can do it! God will give me what I need.

Let me sum up why I’m cutting sugar.

1. I have high sugar and high sodium in my blood stream. 
2. My head keeps getting fuzzy, like when you have a fever. Sometimes I have a fever, and sometimes I don’t. I also get headaches.
3. We think that some of this is caused by my high sugar and dehydration.
4. I also get mucous-overload from milk products. Talking with Alan and Lacy helped me to reach that conclusion, so I have got to cut back on the milk. Yogurt should not make a person choke on mucous and dry heave, apparently….
5. Inflammation in my shoulder and right hip

Here’s what I’m trying to do about it:

1. seeing a doctor
2. I’m already getting chiropractic adjustments and physical therapy for my pain issues.
3. Now I’m all about lowering the blood sugar and eliminating the milk products.

So here are the tips for cutting down on your sugar intake (Thank you, Lacy!) that I’m implementing this week:

1. Instead of snacking all day, which is my current habit, I need to sit down and eat three square meals a day. Greatly reduce the snacking in between.

Why? I have a sugar problem, so in order for my sugar to be handled properly in my body, my body needs the carbs to be combined with fat and protein. This should help my sugar stay at a better level throughout the day, rather than having constant spikes from my carb snacks. And let me tell you, I have been the QUEEN of carbohydrates, which is what got me into this mess.

2. My biggest issue is that people love to tell you what NOT to eat, but they don’t tell you what TO eat. I

mean, if you take away my bread, my yogurt, and my granola bars, what do I have left??

They always say, “Avoid processed foods, but what does that look like exactly??”

Lacy gave me some “what to eat” ideas. These are specific to my sugar and milk issues, but I think they would be good for anyone!:

lima beans cooked in ham…I think these are okay. I didn’t ask.. FYI, if you boil butter beans in ham, there’s no way you won’t like them.

Vegetables…..like cut up fresh bell peppers of any colors, broccoli, carrots, salad, fennel, onions, garlic, celery, romaine lettuce, and on and on. Cook ’em, roast ’em, eat ’em raw, whatever.

Mini peppers, so sweet and crispy yumminess, even raw.

Alan’s amazing, fresh homemade salsa: tomatoes, lime juice, onion, garlic, parsley. I love this stuff.

Fresh or frozen is better than canned because of the added sodium.

The label on the can of green beans reveals the higher sodium level. Not horrible, just not as good as frozen or fresh veggies.

This steam-in-the bag frozen pack of veggies contains far less sodium.

Avocados! That’s one of my favorite foods anyway, so that’s good news. Eating some fats is important for me, as it turns out.

Meat…..steak, chicken, bacon, fish, ground turkey meatballs…

tiny bundles of yummy beef..They were supposed to be triangles…..Oh well, it was my first attempt!

I loved her ground turkey meatball idea because our family loves meatballs, but I never make them because they are a lot of work. We also like “hamburger steak,” so this is a cross between the two.

Lacy said to just put your ground turkey in the big skillet, sprinkle your favorite spices and salt and pepper on them, and as they cook, cut them into little triangles.

That simple. So yummy.

Confession: I used ground beef, but I think that’s okay.

Carb Suggestions: 

Trader Joe’s whole grain bread…I can’t remember what it was called exactly, and I should have mine in the context of a meal.

Sweet Potatoes (like half of one)

Fruit, but with other things

Beans or peas, which are also proteins

Milk Substitutes

Almond milk or coconut milk. Since our family has nut issues, we may go with the coconut. Some of our kids can still do regular milk.

I put the coconut milk in my coffee today, and that filled me with joy. I just can’t tell you. Coconut milk is naturally a little sweet.

Meal Plates

The plate should be half vegetables, 1/4 meat, and 1/4 carb.

Now obviously, she told me a ton more stuff. It’s still floating around in my head, but these are my FIRST STEP things.

Thank you so much, Lacy! My family thanks you as well!

This week my goal is to sit down and eat lunch with the kids, instead of standing in the kitchen picking on sugars. Once lunch is done, those boys are going to learn the new habit of helping Mom clean up lunch, and I don’t just mean their plates. I mean clean up the whole meal. Laura and Mary Ingalls did it, so I figure what was good for them is good for us too. hehe

Hope you are all having a fun weekend!

The post Easy Steps from a Nutritionist to Lower Blood Sugar appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I like what he has to say here about calling out the hype and building a consistent, simple, effective routine.  –April

Everyday we see ‘gurus’ pitching the ultimate 12 week plan, or 6 weeks to sexy, or how to get the flat sexy stomach you have always wanted in just 20 minutes per day. Trust me, I see them all the time. I have made those programs, I have sold those ads, and I have made a lot of money doing it.

But there is a secret the ‘gurus’ don’t want you to know. This is the secret that keeps you coming back to them time after time again. They purposely keep sending you 6 week programs and special 21 day detoxes so you will buy those products instead of discovering this one secret. They do it because they don’t want to lose their job.

Let’s face it, people like shiny. Coming out with a new sexy abs program every 4 weeks is shiny. Just follow this program for the next 4-6 weeks and you will have the abs you and your husband have always wanted. Just take a look at this screen shot. All I did was a quick google image search of Shape Magazine.

Notice anything? How many new body plans, 4 week to sexy programs, and the ‘new diet’ programs can they really create?

It is all distraction. They want to keep you away from this one secret that I have been teaching to my personal clients for the last 10 years to give them amazing results. This one secret allowed me to create the top personal training studio in my city before I left it to have more family time. It is the same secret I use with all of my online premium coaching clients today. The same secret that I give away for free in my Transformation Made Simple program.

So what is this closely guarded secret that can cost all ‘gurus’ their jobs?

Consistency. That is what you need. You need to be consistent in your program in order to make the best progress. By continually selling you new and different programs, the ‘gurus’ are purposely keeping you from achieving your goals. This ensures that when you fail, or the program doesn’t go right, they can sell you a new program that promises to fix the problems with the old one.

But the biggest, and the truly best fitness professionals I have ever come across, we all have one thing in common. We keep our clients consistent and give them the time they need in order to achieve all their goals.

Consistency allows you to adapt. Adaptation is the sole purpose of exercise and fitness. Forget everything you have ever heard of muscle confusion. There is an actual term for it and a place for it, but it is not what you think and not the topic of this conversation.

Adaptation is what you need. You need to adapt to the stress you are putting on your body so that you can handle more. If you are constantly jumping from shiny workout to new shiny workout every few weeks or even every couple days, you will never fully adapt. That means you never get that much better.

Consistency allows you to adapt and get better.

A simple way to look at it is like this. Burpees burn a lot of Calories. They burn them fast and skyrocket your heart rate. Which workout will burn more Calories? Performing 10 burpees for 4 sets or performing 20 burpees for 8 sets? Without adaptation, you will have a near impossible time progressing to the harder workouts that burn more fat than the easier workouts. If you are jumping from shiny workout to shiny workout every few days or weeks, then you can’t adapt.

Consistency allows you to adapt and get better.

Now consistency doesn’t mean you need to do the same workout every single day for the rest of your life. That just sounds horrible. But there are a few things that you should always be doing. Take these 4 exercises for instance:

Military Press
Squat
Pull Up
Dead Lift
These 4 exercises, or close variations are in ALMOST EVERY SINGLE PROGRAM I make for my clients. I create for them new and different workouts every 4-6 weeks, but within that, these 4 exercises remain consistent. Over time, they end up doing hundreds and thousands of reps of these exercises. They adapt to them and they get stronger. This strength carries over to other parts of the workouts and allows them to do more.

Once they can handle more, they can burn more fat if they want, build more muscle if they want, and eat more food without worry. That is the power of consistency.

But there is a trick to consistency. I am sorry but it is not as simple as just saying, “I am going to start being consistent today.” I truly wish it were that easy.

The key to consistency is simplicity. Sit for a moment and think about past fitness or transformation programs you have used. Were they challenging? Were they complex? At first you started off with all the greatest intentions right? You followed the program 100%. Then something happened. You maybe missed a day or you stopped feeling the vibe.

The key to consistency is simplicity.

That novelty wears off and you start finding yourself having to convince yourself to workout. You have to almost fight yourself just to get your program going. That is the time where you lose your interest, where you fall off the program and have to start over in a few weeks.

The key is simplicity. In my free course, Transformation Made Simple, I stress this in every lesson. The key to being consistent is to make the process as simple and easy as possible. Make it so simple that there is absolutely no reason you can’t do it.

Sounds too easy right? I mean how could something that simple actually work. Well think about it this way. It takes about 50 heavy reps per week to develop strength. To accomplish this, you could do:

5 reps x 10 sets one day per week
5 reps x 5 sets 2 days per week
5 reps x 2 sets 5 days per week
All three of those programs have been proven to be very effective for developing strength. Which one would you rather do? Do you think you will be more inclined to ramp yourself up to do a huge heavy 50 rep workout every week, to a moderate 25 heavy reps twice per week, or a simple 10 reps every day?

That is the idea of keeping things simple and being consistent.

Break things down into the simple small steps that you can manage to accomplish everyday. AND THEN GIVE YOURSELF TIME.

Going to level with you here. Those 6 week, 12 week, and even 20 week programs are good and all but they are kind of a lie. Personally I went from normal to photo shoot ready (sort of) in 8 weeks. But then again, I was already in good shape. I already had a foundation of consistency and simple basics that allowed me to increase my intensity and buckle down for those 8 weeks.

The images they use to sell you those programs, are from people like me, who already were in a decent place. If you are just starting, give yourself time. International fitness coach Scott Sonnon says that it take about the same amount of time to completely transform a body as it does to prepare an Olympic athlete, 4 years. From personal experience, I agree.

Give Yourself Time.

It takes time to develop the new habits you need to create, to change the bad habits, and to truly develop the consistency that you will need in order to achieve the results

To recap, here are the 3 things you TRULY need in your program.

Consistency
Simplicity
Time
Now here is what I want you to do:

1) If you liked this article, and learned even 1 thing from it, click the share button down below.

2) Leave a comment below and tell me what you are going to do to make things simple and consistent for yourself going forward.

– See more at: kbburn.com

The post The 1 Thing All the ‘Gurus’ Don’t Want You to Know, Guest Post by Fitness Blogger Justin Cox appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.