Sports Injury Poor Nutrition

Sports Injury/Poor Nutrition?

When I was 16, I used to run track and field for my high school. I was also a cross country runner. I loved running. I loved how it felt while I was running and after I ran, I could run all the time.

My body was out of balance then, unbeknownst to me, mostly due to poor nutrition.

I didn't know anything about eating well. My favorite at home snack was saltine crackers and ice tea, finished off with chocolate ice cream. I didn't eat vegetables and lived mostly on pizza, pasta, hot dogs and Keebler Peanut Butter crackers. Not the right foods for nourishing bone and muscle growth let alone the immune system and the mind.

So.... I pulled a muscle in gym class during the Track season and I started having pain in my hip when I ran. I went to the doctor and he gave me muscle relaxants and told me to rest for 3 days and said “you'll be fine”. Three days later, the pain came back and I did the muscle relaxant thing again, and again once more. I eventually had to give up running. If I had the tools then that I know about and have now, giving up probably wouldn't have been an option but I never ran competitively again and I continued having hip and back problems for many years. I went to physical therapists and bone specialists. Nothing I tried really helped. After college, when I was 24, I found my way to a Rolfer. Thank goodness! It was my first rendezvous with alternative/complementary healing. The Rolfing sessions were amazing and helped me and my back pain so much. Later on, I came to Acupuncture which is another story but going through Acupuncture school made me realize that there are MANY options to so many of the problems that we have (including pain and internal disorders) but we are told there is nothing we can do for it, or we are just given a pain pill. I sometimes think now, if only I had known about Acupunture and Chinese Medicine then...maybe I would have been able to heal my injury and continue with running. But that wasn’t what happened which is now why I am so passionate about teaching other people, especially at a young age that they do have alternatives and teaching them about proper nutrition -- how to build strong, healthy bodies and minds!

In my mid-20’s my focus on nutrition started -- I had a friend who gave me the book, “Food and Mood,” which really opened my eyes to how foods affect how we feel emotionally. My brother was interested in herbal medicine and that planted another seed. Slowly more information started trickling in and I began to learn about how what I ate and drank affected me physically.

When I was a kid, I drank so much soda and sugary juices from a very early age. It doesn’t surprise me now that I had all the muscular problems that I did and the mood fluctuations with my blood sugar roller coaster. There was no nourishment! I loved Cheetos and Coke as a meal. McDonald’s was my best friend.

So, in my mid-20’s after some health ideas being planted over time, I had a friend at work who decided to stop drinking soda and and asked me if I wanted to join her. We slowly weaned ourselves from it. I must have drank upwards of 6 sodas a day (Do you know how many teaspoons of sugar that is?! About 10 in one can. That is 60 teaspoons of sugar a day besides what I had in other foods and the foods were full of sugar too.) My friend and I started by taking one soda away each day until after a few weeks, we were not drinking it daily anymore.

I moved onto organic juices, watered down and eventually weaned myself off of them, over a period of years. Even though a person drinks organic juice, it is still like drinking pure sugar and the mood fluctuations will still be there. I dealt with the mood fluctations for a long time until I finally gave it up.

I became interested in Macrobiotics and took cooking class. I found the book, “Healing with Whole Foods” by Paul Pitchford which is amazing! I read Christian Northrup’s book, “Women’s Bodies Women’s Wisdom.” I started doing things, mostly focusing on nutrition to bring more balance into my life. Eating more whole foods, organic when possible, whole grains, less breads, more vegetables etc.

My mom didn't know any different, she was young and it was the time when all the Fast Food Restaurants were new and no one knew any better. It was a time saver, no one thought about the ingredients inside of the food being bad for you. Also a mom now, of two young children, I understand how difficult it can be to make kids eat and how happy you can be if they just eat something, anything. However, I am on a mission to provide my children with foods that nourish their bodies and their brains and help them grown up to be strong, healthy, balanced, happy people.

Work in Progress...