My Hashimotos "Journey" part 1

Hello Everyone! I was planning on sitting down last night to write this blog post, but my husband Trevor and I were asked to go to a couple of meetings for church stuff right after work at 6:30pm and 8:15pm. We didn't get called in to the second meeting until almost 9pm. As we were sitting there waiting to go in, I said to Trevor, "I was going to start writing a blog post tonight to tell my "Hashimotos Story", but I don't think I can do it, I'm soooo tired!" He laughed and said, that's all you have to write to tell your story, "I have Hashimotos, I want to tell you all about it, but I'M TOO FREAKING EXHAUSTED...all the time."

The end.

True story.

We laughed because it's so true, that it's funny...but so not fun!

I was first officially diagnosed with Hashimotos Thyroiditis, about 5 years ago. Most people had never heard of the disease at that time, including several doctors. I knew what it was because for the previous two years, I had been working with hundreds of female clients with hypothyroidism. I did a ton of research on what some of the root causes of hypothyroidism were because I had a doctor in my area, that specializes in women's health, ask me if I could create a program that could help balance hormones through proper nutrition and lifestyle. She wanted to offer this program to her patients. So, I created what I then called "The 21 Day Detox". I taught this program to her patients and then to hundreds of women and men over the next two years. I was so excited to see the amazing results people were having through following my outlined program. They were finally losing weight, they were able to get off of several medications they were taking, their symptoms were disappearing! Poof! It was fabulous. It felt so good and it was so rewarding to receive their many loving testimonials. I too followed the outlined style of eating, religiously, because I always strive to practice what I preach.

Irony.

God has a great sense of humor.

Just when you think you've hit expert status, you soon learn how much you still don't know.

Hilarious.

Not only was I eating pretty much a perfect diet, I was also an ironman triathlete and trained personally about 2-3 hours per day on top of training my Personal Training clients about 7-9 hours per day. Also at this time I was raising two teenagers, and Trevor and I were managing a couple of gyms, and yay, had just opened our OWN gym, The Lab Health + Fitness Studio. I pretty much never sat down.

So, of course I was tired.

Made sense to me.

The "funny" thing is though, even though I was so exhausted, I could NOT sleep! Ugh!! I had been dealing with insomnia for about 6 years at this point, and I was lucky to get a total of about 2, maybe 3 hours of sleep (at best) per night. Then, I'd show up to greet my clients with a motivating smile at 5am and start the same day again, and again, and again.

So, I was "healthy" but really not.

I'm going attempt to break down the beast of explaining what Hashimotos is in three segments based on some of your questions:

"What the heck is Hashimotos and...holy crap will I get it too?"

I'll explain what some of the symptoms are and what some of the known causes are.

"I think I might have it, how do I know for sure?"

I'll give you a breakdown of what tests you need to ask your doctor for to get a proper diagnosis.

"Oh suck, now what?"

If you've been officially diagnosed and are told too that this is an incurable disease and you'll be fat, grumpy, exhausted and on medications for the rest of your life...I want to give you some hope. I'll share a plan that can make living with Hashimotos symptom-free a True Story.

So, join me again tomorrow.

To be continued...

xx Cody