Hi, I’m Amy Boelk and this a quick video about my yo-yo journey with food.  Let’s flash back for a minute and I’ll share with you a glimpse into my food life history.  I grew up on Doritos, Coke and Little Debbie’s and my mother absolutely hates it when I say that.  Besides meat and potatoes, my meals consisted of about 5 things total, none of which were all that healthy.

Needless to say, I was a VERY picky child!

Eventually my poor eating habits caught up with me.  After putting on the freshman 15 in college, I started a journey of trying every fad diet under the sun.  As a short person weight gain can be extremely frustrating!  There is just less surface area to distribute extra weight compared to a taller person.  I watched as my friends had crazy success with the Atkins diet or the South Beach Diet.  I finally settled into a decent Weight Watchers routine that helped me lose a few pounds but not much which was super frustrating.
Fast forward many years (sorry I won’t tell you how many) and I’ve made it through two pregnancies, one with twins, both of which I gained 50 pounds.  As someone who is only 5′-0 tall, that’s a lot of extra weight!  Fortunately, most of it came off after pregnancy but not all.

After pregnancy, not only did my terrible eating habits continue to catch up with me, but I had a child with digestive problems.  The medical advice just wasn’t working and I was so tired of watching my child suffer.  So we decided to take matters into our own hands and adjust our diet.  We were literally stabbing in the dark and decided to remove gluten.  It was the big buzz word, so I figured why not?  I researched how to remove gluten but hit a wall when I read about how gluten free products can be just as unhealthy as the gluten itself.

I continued to research and found the best & healthiest way to go gluten free was to focus on just eating whole foods like nuts, seeds, meat, veggies and fruits.  This diet change helped my child immensely and we were amazed!  Since I made the food changes too, I saw improvements in my health that I never expected.  I didn’t think I felt bad or that I was unhealthy, but I didn’t realize how oblivious I had become to the messages my body was sending me about how it felt.

For example, in my early 30’s, I developed early onset arthritis in my hands (which a lot of the women in my family have).  It was painful and honestly a real drag.  My husband even had to open water bottles for me.  I’m sure you’ve experienced chronic pain in some way and as you know, you just learn to live with the pain.  You stop noticing it like you did when it first showed up so it took a few months before I realized my hands didn’t hurt anymore!

After doing some reading, I learned gluten is very inflammatory to the joints and that was most likely why my hands didn’t hurt anymore.  I tested this theory by eating some pizza with gluten in it and sure enough the pain would come back for a few days until the gluten was out of my system.

The other benefit I noticed from eating a whole foods diet is I lost weight.  AND once I reached my target weight, it was very easy to maintain.  And that’s when the revelation hit me:  That weight loss is all about finding the way of eating that works best for you and your body.  Figuring out which foods GIVE you energy, NOT take it away.

This revelation started me on a health journey that I hope never stops.  It has led my family down a path of improved health for all of us.  Eventually I was so inspired with other awesome results like less mood swings, less sugar cravings and increased energy and focus, that I decided to make a fabulous career change and become a Health Coach.

Now I teach people how to take charge of their health and am able to see the miracle healing power of the body everyday.

Learning how to take charge of my own health is one of the best things I ever did and that is why I’m so passionate about “Living The Total Health Dream”.  I know that this information will be valuable for anybody I can share it with no matter how old you are or where you are in your health journey.

If you want to learn more, I plan on giving a lot of FREE, information, tips, recipes, and valuable health information that is so simple that you can put it into action right away, please follow us so we can help YOU take charge of YOUR health!