5 Huge Health Mistakes I Made On My Healing Journey
Healthy living isn’t easy, especially when you’re bombarded with conflicting information about health and nutrition. I’ve had to learn the hard way that not all health advice is good advice. Keep reading to discover five huge health mistakes I made on my healing journey.
Healing is not linear. True healing involves many ups and downs, and my healing journey is no different.
I’ve shared my story many times before, but in a nutshell—I lived with depression, anxiety, joint pain, insomnia, hair loss, and so much more for over ten years. I was finally diagnosed with Hashimoto’s in 2018, which started me on my healing journey.
Instead of taking medication that I believed would have only suppressed my symptoms rather than heal me, I decided to seek out natural alternatives in hopes of getting to the root cause and truly healing my body.
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The good news is that I’ll be 40 years old next year, and I feel amazing. The bad news is it wasn’t easy getting here and I made many mistakes on the way.
But you know what—that’s okay. I’ve learned so much, and I’m happy to share what I’ve learned so others can learn from my mistakes.
Over the past few years, I realized so much of what I thought I knew about health was wrong, and I had to do a ton of unlearning to get where I am today in terms of my health.
I used to determine whether a diet, supplement, or other natural healing modality was working simply on whether it made me feel good or bad.
It didn’t matter that I didn’t know the science behind why it was making me feel good or bad.
If it made me feel good, then it must be good, and it must be working.
But the truth is many diets, supplements, and even natural healing modalities just suppress symptoms (just like pharmaceutical medication), and very few actually heal.
So, it’s absolutely vital to understand how something is working within your body because even so-called natural healing modalities can have unintended consequences that actually cause more harm than good.
I’ve had to learn this the hard way.
So here are five huge health mistakes I made on my healing journey. I’ve actually made a lot more than just five but these are the ones that had the most detrimental effects.
Health Mistakes I Made On My Healing Journey
Intermittent Fasting
I know some people who are very passionate about intermittent fasting, and believe me—I get it. I used to be one of them.
I first tried intermittent fasting in 2019 and was hooked soon after. I felt amazing. I had tons of energy, and I could focus and concentrate better than I had in years.
But after about a year, the benefits I had experienced started to fade. And not only did they begin to fade, but I actually started to develop new health issues that I had never experienced before.
Although intermittent fasting seemed to work initially, it ultimately had major unintended consequences.
I’ve since learned that intermittent fasting is extremely stressful for the body. When you fast, cortisol and adrenaline begin to break down tissue so that your cells have energy since you’re not providing them with the food they need to make energy.
Chronically elevated stress hormones are extremely damaging to the body.
Stress depletes minerals, which are cofactors for enzymes. Enzymes speed up chemical reactions in the body and have thousands of roles, some of which include digestion, respiration, and nerve function.
Without minerals, enzymes can’t function properly, and without enzymes, the necessary chemical reactions inside the body can not occur. A lack of minerals leads to disease and illness.
You can read more about the true science behind intermittent fasting in this article—Why I Stopped Intermittent Fasting.
Fad Diets
When it comes to diets, I’m pretty sure I’ve just about tried them all.
I’ve done the Atkins diet and the Whole30, and I ate paleo for years and years. More recently, I was really into keto. I’ve been gluten-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free, and I even stopped eating meat at one point for a while.
But I’ve now learned that any diet that completely eliminates an entire macronutrient is very harmful to the body.
You need carbs for energy, protein for repair and metabolic function, and fats are required to transport fat-soluble nutrients and slow sugars’ absorbency into the blood.
I now eat a pro-metabolic diet, which may sound like a fad diet, but it’s not. In a nutshell, pro-metabolic eating is simply eating traditional foods that nourish and support your cellular metabolism and avoiding foods that damage or harm it.
When I was on a ketogenic diet, I consumed a lot of sugar-free protein bars and sugar-free protein shakes. And when I look at the ingredients of some of the things I used to eat (that I actually thought were good for me), I literally cringe.
Most are filled with vegetable and seed oils, gums, artificial sweeteners, and all kinds of other ingredients that are not actually even food.
Now, I simply eat real food. If it didn’t exist 200 years ago, I don’t eat it. It’s that simple.
However, I definitely have a special preference for foods that are rich in bioavailable minerals because minerals truly do run the show when it comes to the human body.
Over-Exercising
Did you know exercise is very stressful on the body, especially cardio? Now, I’m not saying all exercise is bad. Getting some form of movement in on a daily basis can be extremely beneficial to your body. But over-exercising can be very harmful.
Exercising when your metabolism is already thrashed due to fad diets and intermittent fasting is a recipe for disaster—which is precisely what I did in 2019.
On the outside, my body looked great, but on the inside, my metabolism was being completely destroyed, and I didn’t even know it.
Just because someone is in great shape doesn’t mean they’re healthy. Often, you’ll find that people who are really into fitness are usually struggling with hair loss, low sex drives, skin problems, and other signs of metabolic dysfunction.
This is usually caused by over-exercising because exercise is a form of stress on the body, and stress on the body depletes minerals and minerals are needed for your metabolism to function correctly.
You can read this post—10 Ways to Support & Boost Your Metabolism, to learn more about supporting your metabolism.
Taking The Wrong Supplements
Supplements can be beneficial, or they can be extremely harmful.
Taking the wrong supplement or the wrong form of a supplement can lead to various issues.
For years, I supplemented with synthetic B vitamins, zinc, and vitamin D.
I’ve now learned that synthetic vitamin D increases calcification in the body, causes potassium waste, and depletes magnesium. Synthetic B vitamins are derived from coal tar and zinc supplements destroy the bioavailability of copper in the body.
Taking supplements without knowing what they are made from or how they truly affect the body can have major unintended consequences.
I’m a big fan of the Root Cause Protocol, and I became a Root Cause Protocol consultant in 2022.
The premise behind the Root Cause Protocol is that we are iron-overloaded and copper and magnesium-deficient. Copper is needed to transport iron in the body. When we have too much iron and not enough copper, unbound iron begins to accumulate in the tissues.
Iron accumulation in the tissues creates oxidative stress, which causes inflammation and increases the body’s magnesium burn rate.
Magnesium is required for over 3,400 chemical reactions in the body. Without the magnesium your body needs, enzymes can’t do their job, which eventually leads to metabolic dysfunction, which in turn leads to the majority of the diseases and illnesses we see in the world today.
I’ll be sharing a lot more about the protocol in the future, but my point is that supplements can make or break your healing journey.
Now, I try to get most of my vitamins and minerals from food, although I do take quite a few whole-food supplements, such as vitamin C, desiccated beef liver, and cod liver oil.
Striving For Perfection
Obsession with anything is bad, even if that obsession is fueled by a desire to live a healthier, happier life. For years, my desire to heal truly consumed me.
Living with an undiagnosed illness stole years from life. For over ten years I struggled just to function throughout the day. But at times during my healing journey, my striving to be healthy and do everything perfectly also stole precious moments away from my life.
Especially during the time that I was intermittent fasting and consuming a keto diet.
If a friend wanted to go to breakfast, I would often decline because it was outside my eating window. Going to family get-togethers and backyard barbeques was always stressful because I would be worried about the food that would be served.
It was awful. I felt like I could never have fun or enjoy my life.
Don’t let your desire to be healthy keep you from having fun and living your life.
Having fun and enjoying your life is good for your health. It helps to lower stress in the body. So, it’s important not to become overly obsessed with healthy living.
Balance is so important, and I’m glad I realized that.
That said, I think there is a time, for example, at the beginning of your healing journey when being somewhat strict with your diet and health choices can be helpful.
It can help you develop good eating habits, retrain your taste buds, and kick off your wellness journey.
But if your health choices require you to remain strict long-term, meaning if you stray from them for even just a day, you start to feel awful again, that’s an indication that your health choices are just suppressing symptoms and not actually healing you.
When I was intermittent fasting, I had to intermittent fast every single day— otherwise, I wouldn’t feel good.
Things are totally different now. I do my best to eat healthy most of the time, but if a friend wants to go out to eat, I go—and I feel fine.
If my kids want to go out for pizza, we go out for pizza—and I feel fine.
Because I’m no longer just treating symptoms—I’m actually healing my body.
By replenishing my vitamins and minerals, I’m restoring enzyme function in my body, and by restoring enzyme function, I’m restoring metabolic function.
Your body is designed to heal, and it wants to heal.
And when you’re genuinely healing, balance is definitely possible. You don’t have to be overly obsessed with food and healthy living.
So, if you’re on a healing journey, be very careful not to let your desire to heal steal your life away the way your illness did.
Final Thoughts
Well, I could honestly go on and on about countless other health mistakes that I’ve made over the years, but I think I’ll go ahead and wrap it up.
Healthy living isn’t easy. And, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, all the conflicting information about health and nutrition that’s on the internet and in books can actually make it more difficult to heal.
It’s so hard to know what to believe. I’m at a point in my wellness journey where I’m no longer looking for the new health fad or gadget or whatever.
I’m now looking for what’s old rather than new. What did our ancestors eat? How did our ancestors live? There is so much wisdom to be gained by looking back into the lives of our ancestors.
I’ve heard Morley Robbins, founder of the Root Cause Protocol, say a few times about health—”Instead of talking about what’s new, let’s talk about what’s enduring.”
I’ve really let those words guide me in my health choices over the past few years.
If you’re tired of all the contradicting health information and want to truly heal, I highly recommend reading the books below.
- Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food by Catherine Shanahan
- Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price
- How to Heal Your Metabolism by Kate Deering
I know this post is mostly about what not to do when it comes to healthy living, if you want to know more about what to do, I recommend reading this post—My Hashimoto’s Story: Symptoms, Diagnosis, & Healing Journey.
