My Personal Story

I've been a dancer my entire life. I started taking lessons at age 5 and teaching at age 14. I fell off the monkey bars like other kids, crashed my bike, and danced hard but never had a single broken bone. I credit this to the REAL food my mom cooked for us every day.

In college I began studying food and nutrition science and gave up farm foods for a vegetarian, soy milk, no fat, no salt diet. My health declined rapidly, thanks to the propaganda I was fed. I followed a strict diet of bread, tofu, soy milk, cereal but luckily loved fruits and vegetables.

I at a lot of processed cereals and cereal bars which replace fat with sugar and I was so addicted I became very hypoglycemic. My saving grace was that mom taught me how to cook and my love of cooking REAL food kept me barely able to go on.

In 2000 I started studying yoga because I had so many dance injuries; I thought I was going to have to quit dancing. I loved yoga, but I especially loved Ayurveda, the Indian study of food as medicine.

For a type A, competitive dancer, the relaxing and breathing was a major factor in my survival. But the most intriguing part of the course was the study of food. I made many healthy changes, but I was still living as a vegetarian.

In 2001 I joined a dance troupe in New York, taught yoga, was practicing Ayurveda, and still barely managing my health. I had seen doctors for many health problems but the same answer prevailed time and time again; "You're fine, it's in your head."

It wasn't until my first miscarriage that I realized how severely anemic and fragile my body was. It would take hot showers and hours of stretching in the morning to get my body to move.

With the help of a friend in holistic nutrition I started to see how Ayurveda, Chinese Medicine, and holistic medicine all had very different views from my nutritional science background. I accepted some bigger changes. We introduced meat back into my diet, but were careful where it was sourced. I added sea salt back into my diet, and I went back onto real milk, giving up the soy and tofu. I was pregnant almost immediately.

My daughter was born in 2006 with a really rough start which I contribute to my body that was starving for health. See the scar under my right eye from fainting and splitting my face open. 14 stitches later, I was suffering from adrenal fatigue, but of course back then doctors found nothing wrong with me. It was apparently an accident and all still in my head.

There's a drastic contrast in the birth of my son in 2009. Three years later on a more robust diet of REAL food. He was born a juicy baby at home in less than 4 hours. Mom was relaxed, baby was relaxed, and he ate like a champ.

Today he's 6, he's never had antibiotics, soy formula, or low fat foods and that kid has an invincible immune system. My poor daughter suffered through infection after infection while on soy formula, but once adopting my new holistic way of eating, she has not seen the flu in 5 years without the vaccine.

These birth photos are remarkably different, both taken the day my babies were born. I can barely move in the first photo, yes first babies are more difficult, but I am literally wiped out. Second baby I'm sitting up in bed, smiling and look at the color of our skin. The distress in my daughter pains me, but the calm serene faces in the 2nd photo remind me of our journey.

After my son was born I found the Weston A Price Foundation, a wonderful organization that promotes eating traditional heritage foods. I increased my entire families' fat and protein content, stopped buying processed foods and white sugar, and simply used honey or maple syrup as they suggested.

We have seen the most remarkable differences in our lives. Aside from the weight loss and the fact that food tastes so much better, it's the fact that I literally pop out of bed without a single stretch and can even skip the hot shower that was once necessary to move my joints.

There's no inflammation and my bones are incredibly strong. In fact 2 years ago I was teaching 21 classes a week divided between yoga, dance in schools, and pole dance. I've now reduced the number of classes, not because my bones need a break, but because 21 classes is too much stress on the family.

Today I teach one yoga class at the PCC, 1 pole class at Poletential, and 5 dance classes at my child's public school weekly. The fact that I am still able to teach 7 classes a week with my 40 year old body is pretty amazing.

Here's a photo last year of me teaching a pole dance class.

I share this with you because I'm inspired to help people. We must first help ourself and I have! I went from nearly quitting dance because of arthritic joint pain to joining a pole dance studio as an instructor.

Now I've made it my mission to share what I know with others for the simple reason that it can't hurt you. I'm not going to advise anyone to take a pharmaceutical that may cause side effects, to remove an organ just because you've been abusing it, to eat health bars or shakes with dangerous ingredients and high sugar, or to exercise in a way that would hurt your body.

The truth is we can all find perfect health without medical intervention by simply eating REAL food that fuels the body and by avoiding food that doesn't serve us. The bottom line is you are what you eat and I want you to fall in love with your body, your food, and your life!