Читать книгу The Art of Healthy Living - Denise Kelly - Страница 8

My passion for health began in the year 2000 when my beautiful baby girl was born. Up until that point I had been relatively healthy all my life. No major illnesses and naturally in good shape. I was one of those that pretended to go to the gym, but really spent the entire time chatting to everyone and not doing much else! Shortly after my daughter was born, I started getting stomach cramps, to the point where, every time I ate, I felt nauseous and unwell. While all my friends that had babies were desperate to lose weight, I was shedding weight at an alarming rate. I had always been a curvy girl, as a teenager and in my twenties – an average UK size 10. I had boobs and a butt and was proud of them!

As the pain continued, and the weight fell off I reached out for medical help. Having grown up in a healthy family, with an average life expectancy (from the grandparents) of around 90 we didn’t go to the doctors much. My parents believed in homeopathy and we saw therapists for reflexology, acupuncture, and reiki if we felt unwell. So it felt kind of alien to me to have such problems that wouldn’t go away. That year I saw three gastroenterologists, had tubes up, in, and down to look at every angle of my intestines and they found nothing.

Don’t get me wrong, I think doctors are amazing. I have doctors as relatives, and know they perform miracles every day, working with the information they have, but in my case they couldn’t find out what was wrong. Having a newborn child would have been exhausting at the best of times, but I was up half the night doubled over in pain, unable to digest anything, and feeling tired and afraid. As regards my daughter, it is as if she knew, from the day it all started, how to behave in a way that was overwhelmingly supportive to me. From just six weeks old, she started sleeping through the night and has never been a moment’s trouble ever since.

So now, I had gone from a healthy size 10 to a skinny size 4–6. I had lost my curves and I didn’t feel like me at all. The doctor actually told me to go home and eat a ‘good pie’, but how could I when I literally felt like everything hurt? Telling me there was nothing more they could do gave me no option but to seek ‘alternative’ help. It’s a pattern that I am all too familiar with now, as most of my clients don’t see me as their first port of call. They see me because they are running out of options and are desperate to feel well. I like to spread the word that prevention is better than cure, but I guess not everyone sees it that way.

I trawled through the internet and tried to find a practitioner that I thought might be able to help me. I started reading about Ayurvedic medicine and eventually booked myself an appointment with the most incredible practitioner. It’s to her that I owe my passion for my career. When I saw her, I was 29 years old, skinny and frail and desperate for help. She told me my condition was simple to fix and that once I had learnt from her how to use food as my medicine, I need never be in pain again. She was right … and it changed my life.

I remember looking at food in a completely different way. I started looking at every single thing that went in my mouth as something that would help heal me. Sure enough, over the next few months my appetite returned, the pain disappeared, and I felt happy and energetic again. In my eyes it was incredible and I wanted to learn more.

After my amazing son was born a year later, I decided I wanted to study naturopathic nutrition. I thought it would be a fantastic thing to know and could help my family immensely. If I could bring my children up knowing how food could make them feel, and teaching them to eat well, it would be a life skill they would have forever. I didn’t really see past that, and certainly had no idea that it was going to turn into the unbelievable career that I have today. However, before it was really going to fully blossom, life was going to throw another few little curve balls my way … DEATH and DIVORCE! Oh how it doesn’t rain but it pours.

Separating from my husband, with two young children, was without doubt one of the hardest and most painful things I have ever had to endure. I remember sitting on my kitchen floor just after he drove away for the last time and honestly thinking my life was over. The first few months were a bit of a blur and I could feel myself slipping slowly down a slope of self‐destruction. I was not in check with my emotions in any way, as I was so struck by grief that all my thoughts were being utterly hijacked and disoriented. Being the party girl that I was (pre children) I thought it seemed like a very good idea to go back down that road. WRONG! What it did for me was make me feel lower than I had ever felt. My mind was going crazy, my body was getting depleted and I looked tired, haggard, and hopeless.

Even though I did know how to take care of myself at this particular time, I was choosing to ignore that knowledge. While I was in that state of mind things were only going to get worse. I had children, other family members, friends, a dog, and a home to take care of and it wasn’t pretty. My little secret mission was to apply my make‐up every day and face the world with a smile on my face. If I could make each day without a total meltdown it would be a miracle. I would do the school run, walk the dog, get the grocery shopping, meet friends for coffee, go to work and make everyone else feel fabulous and healthy, all with a perfect smile and newly mascaraed lashes (always waterproof for the silent tears in the car journey between each task). I became so super‐good at pretending and faking it I should have received an Oscar for the ongoing performances I put on over the years that followed. During the divorce I lost friends, family, and at times my sanity. Money was tight, the mortgage was high, and I was drowning in a pool of despair. I thought I could bag a new husband by fluttering my eyelashes and being entertaining and funny, but inside my heart felt dead. Why oh why was everyone else on the entire planet happy except me?

When you look back at yourself in your worst moments its insanely ridiculous that we do this to ourselves. Drink to excess, party, and have fun! Fake fun! So many people choose these destructive routes. It’s called avoidance and denial and it needs serious attention.

Sometime later the unimaginable happened. Fairly soon after my own grieving period, one of my best friends – someone who had talked me through the worst few months of my separation and helped me with endless advice on how to earn more money and get stronger once my husband’s income diminished – chose to take this destructive route. We had been friends since the age of two, and although very different characters, we had a massive amount of love for each other. She was my daughter’s godmother and a beautiful larger‐than‐life character that everyone adored. For her, the drinking, the parties, the lack of sleep, and a pretty out‐of‐control existence quickly led to serious and fluctuating levels of anxiety and clinical depression. Her situation became much more frightening and after just over a year of this constant self‐destruction she actually took her own life. It was devastating to everyone that knew her, and something we could never have imagined would happen. Do I believe she would ever have done this in her right frame of mind? No. Never. She was the most successful person I know, she had love in her heart, and a soul so clever she could connect with anyone. She was successful beyond most people’s wildest dreams (awards from Richard Branson and the Queen for her contribution to London business) because people loved her. She believed in giving everyone a chance, and if they proved themselves, they were ‘in’. She achieved more in her 45 years than some achieve in a lifetime.

The point is, the body is incredibly robust, and is actually your best friend.

It will literally do anything to try and keep you well and hundreds and thousands of communications are going on between your beautiful cells right now to help you read this book, digest your food, and aid your memory so you might just remember some of the things you read! But, if you abuse your body over and over again, with drink, drugs, processed foods, and sleepless nights eventually something will go wrong. I believe that all disease is a result of our lifestyle choices, and I don’t just mean the food that we eat. If we are continuously unhappy, have issues from our past that we are avoiding, and know they are affecting everything about our future we need to seek help, seek therapy. If you know you are unfit and it’s affecting your daily energy and your enjoyment of life, get a personal trainer. If you don’t have enough money, go running or go for a walk. It costs nothing. If you have an illness that is causing you pain, discomfort, challenges and hindrances, get a nutritionist. There is always a solution, no matter what your problem is.

For myself, I had some knowledge. I knew that my destructive ways were undermining my body, and that I had to face up to the reality of what was going on in my world. I loved my children more than life itself and it was they who got me out of bed every day and gave me the strength to go on. But my heart was broken and so was I. At this point I had choices to make. Enough was enough. I felt weak, vulnerable, and an utter failure. The only way from there had to be up.

I knew that, in order to take some of the pressure off myself, I had to start earning more serious money. I had debts to pay off and a life to provide for my children. So I started writing a health column for a local newspaper to create a wider audience and gain clients. This worked brilliantly and I have not had to spend a single penny on advertising since. It has a weekly readership of 70,000 people and very quickly I started getting regular emails and began to build a real rapport with my readers.

Because of this I began seeing more clients on a regular basis in three different clinics in the UK. This also gave me a platform to promote health and well‐being talks and presentations. At one of these local events a wealthy businessman happened to be passing through town. He was sitting in a coffee shop and opened the paper at the page that my column was on. There was my announcement about the health talk I was giving that evening. Unbeknown to me, he was an entrepreneur who travelled the world teaching managing directors and CEOs about emotional intelligence and being a leader that works from the heart and not from the head. He had for some time been looking for a nutritionist that would be able to travel with him as part of his masters training programme.

My talk that night was in a nearby hotel, and I had sold around 60 tickets. There were about five spare tickets, but I always had a few extras turn up on the night, so it all seemed good. It was a relatively small venue and I was comfortable with my subject and felt quite relaxed about the evening. What I always hoped for from these events was that I would inspire people to live healthier and happier lives and inform them of the best ways to look after themselves nutritionally. Off the back of this I would then gain new clients who perhaps knew they needed more specific help with their health. Finally, I was about to discover that my luck was beginning to change, in a big way … Halfway through the first session I could see out of the corner of my eye a sharply dressed guy walking into the room. Not only was he coming in late, but he sat directly in front of me in the front row. I didn’t recognize him, but I certainly noticed him, almost to the point of being distracted from my flow.

At the end of the first half I suggested to the audience that they could buy juices and smoothies (a separate business I had created, alongside my clinics, with one of my best friends) and told them to feel free to come and talk to me if they had any questions. This was always a popular moment as the people attending usually had some sort of illness or ailment that they wanted advice about, which I was always happy to give. But this well‐dressed, polished looking guy that had come in late leaped out of his seat and headed straight for me before anyone else had a chance. Handing me his business card he said: ‘My name is Steve, and I run a corporate training company teaching large groups of business executives how to lead through emotional intelligence. I have been looking for a nutritionist to teach alongside me to inspire these people to eat properly and gain energy through their diets. I have been looking for two years, and now I have found you. I want you to come to Lithuania with me next week to start training them. I will pay well, book your flights and cover all your costs while you are there. Call me tomorrow with your answer.’

A week later I was on a plane to Vilnius, in Lithuania. Once I arrived, I had to catch an internal plane about an hour inland. It was the middle of winter; the snow was falling heavily, and the plane was tiny … and it had propellers! I boarded the 1950s‐style plane thinking ‘I have literally lost my mind. I am about to die in a country I know nothing about, am meeting a man I don’t know in the middle of nowhere and I have never trained anyone in the corporate field in my life. I have no idea what I am doing, and what if they all think I am rubbish and don’t like what I have to say and … blah, blah blah! I want to be back at home in my warm house, with my children, snuggled up on the sofa!’ Someone get me oooouuutttt ooooffff hhhheeeerrreee!!!

Turns out it was the best decision I ever made. Those few training days had forced me to step out of my comfort zone and changed everything about my business and how I valued myself. No longer was I the local nutritionist, I was an international jet‐setter giving lectures all over the world about a subject that I was so passionate about – I could talk about it for hours and hours. For days on end! Well, I wasn’t quite there yet, but what this man saw in me was something I hadn’t even seen in myself. He believed I was capable of delivering what he needed in less than 10 minutes of knowing me, and now, so did I.

I think, looking back, that when you have hit rock bottom, there is an inner strength that you can find, that comes from nowhere. It’s like a survival mechanism that suddenly rears its head and says ‘you must start to get your shit together!’

I stopped drinking and started putting into practice all the things I had ever been taught. I ate only foods that I knew were going to uplift me, heal me, and keep my energy and mood high. I started to practise yoga and meditation on a regular basis, and ran further and faster every day. I joined more fitness classes, drank green juice … and slowly but surely the dark clouds began to lift.

Digging deep into your soul to regain your strength is not an easy task, but it’s a mighty rewarding one. What doesn’t kill you does make you stronger. With the utter love of my children, my parents, my sister, nieces, and best friends, I started to feel lucky again. Before, all I looked at was the negative. I had no husband, friends had deserted me, and I was financially broken. If I didn’t turn this around things were going to get bad. Once I started to feed my body the correct fuel, I began to see the value in small things and feel grateful for everyone that had stood by me in my darkest days. I realized that I may have fewer friends now, but at least I know who my true friends really are. Surely it is about quality not quantity. The friends that would call me every day and constantly make me laugh though the tears. The friends that would force me to run every morning even when I was exhausted. My children for loving me beyond anything I could ever imagine and giving me a reason to get out of bed every day. My parents who loaned me money to fight the lawyers when they had no idea whether they were ever going to see that money again, and emotionally and continuously supported my broken soul. My sister who lost friends just to stand by me. These people really loved me, and I owed it to them to make them proud.

Making money, staying healthy, keeping fit, teaching others, being inspired, and inspiring others: it was all beginning to be a possibility. In order to be successful, gaining strength in your body and your mind helps you to see things clearly that will help you to get there. For so long I focused on the negative, but that is the biggest waste of energy for any human being.

Don’t focus on your problems, focus on your dreams.

Life is 90% what it throws at you and 10% about your reaction.

Believe and achieve … and I am about to tell you exactly how to do that.