My Story - From Mom to NTP
What I knew of food
Growing up in Hawai’i, I was surrounded by a melting pot of different ethnicities, yummy ethnic foods, tropical fruits, and of course, sugar. I loved me some fruit punch, Icee, li hing mui flavored candies, chocolate covered macadamia nuts, and shave ice! I have so much to appreciate about the Hawaiian culture, especially the food because we do so much around it with other people. Luaus, parties, potlucks, you name it!
The only thing, though, about being exposed to the melting pot of different cuisines in Hawai’i is that I never got to learn how to prepare those foods myself, or any other foods for that matter. You see, I’m a first generation Korean American in my family. My mom grew up in South Korea where her family had a maid that did the housework, which included cooking, so my mom never learned how to cook herself, which meant I never learned either. My mom came to the United States when she was in high school after her parents got divorced and had to fend for herself so she was always working whatever jobs she could get just to survive. Fast forward to getting married and having children, she’ll tell you, she only knew how to make 5 things and always made them on rotation. One of those things were these homemade beef patties she would dip in egg and then fry in the pan, served with a side of white rice. We had white rice with everything! Other foods I grew up with in the home were Vienna Sausage, Spam, Portuguese sausage, Campbell’s soups, saimin, bacon, mac and cheese… as you can see, these are all processed foods. Convenient, heavily processed and refined, high in sodium, quick to make and serve. There is no judgement about what my mom made available to keep us fed. It was the only way she knew how. And that became what I knew of food… that food comes out of a package or box, the instructions on how to make it are on it, and it doesn’t take long to make it. To me I was like, “why would you want to spend a ton of time cooking something from scratch when you can make it faster with packaged foods?”
I had no idea that food, real food (not in a package or box), was needed to fuel the trillions of cells in our body that perform all the functions we need to live, like regulating our blood sugar, detoxifying harmful toxins out of our body, thinking, moving, digesting, multi-tasking, raising children, contracting and relaxing our muscles, managing stress… I just thought the reason we ate was to keep from being hungry and to not go into starvation. I didn’t know that the quality of our food has major implications to our health.
Fast forward to my years of being married, and becoming a mom…
First off, pregnancy does a lot to a woman- on so many levels. Moms, am I right?! It wasn’t until after we had our 2 boys (pretty much back-to-back) that I became “sick”, but didn’t realize it. I just thought it was normal for moms with toddler aged children who were nursing to experience extreme fatigue, low milk supply, an inability to stay asleep, heart palpitations, dramatic weight loss, bulging eyes, hair loss, brain fog, difficulty focusing/concentrating, and more. I didn’t think much of this until I went in for a general check up with a family doctor and heard the nurse read off my weight… I was under 100 pounds. I was shocked! I froze in that moment trying to comprehend what I just heard. Here I’m in my 30s weighing less than I did in high school. In fact, I don’t even know when the last time I was under 100 pounds. When I share this part of my story to other moms, I’ve had some tell me “oh, you’re so lucky to have lost so much weight without any effort!” I’ll just tell you that’s not super helpful to hear because that time in my life was really scary and it wasn’t a goal or desire of mine to lose so much weight and feel as sick as I did. I was fearful something was seriously wrong with me, that I might have cancer or something like that.
The most unfortunate part about all this, though, was the response I got from the doctor when she walked into the room, and I shared my deep concern. She immediately dismissed it. She said it’s probably just due to dealing with my 2 young boys, and to come back in 2 weeks if nothing’s changed. “Why?!” I asked myself. I’ve been dealing with my symptoms for a couple years now… what’s 2 weeks going to do?! I was floored, and in that moment, I came to the realization that if I wanted to get better, I was going to have to do something about it, myself. Yet I had no knowledge of health and what to make of these symptoms so where do I even start?! You could say I was a bit worried and overwhelmed with the idea.
What I did know, though, was that I wanted a different approach to healthcare. I didn’t want to simply manage my symptoms with medication and be on them for life; I wanted to reverse my symptoms. I wanted to know what was causing my symptoms, because if we knew that then we should be able to correct them, right?
This here is where my health journey to finding out the root cause of my symptoms began and where I started to get the answers I was looking for. I found functional medicine. I went from no nutrition knowledge to being a nutritional therapy practitioner, where I practice nutrition from a holistic, functional perspective and have since reversed my autoimmune condition, reduced many of my ongoing symptoms, and am enjoying a better quality of life, with more energy than I’ve ever had. I wholeheartedly believe functional medicine will be the future of healthcare because of how effective it is at reversing and healing our health issues at the root level.
Let me just point out here that when it comes to doctors and providers there wasn’t one miracle provider who helped me get better. I’ve had a number of wonderful doctors throughout my health journey that have helped discover key nuggets about my genetic makeup, toxin exposures, and autoimmunity but it took knowing when to move on to get more answers when I would come to a plateau in my healing journey.
In addition to having a great team of health advisors, a large part of resolving my lingering, ongoing symptoms came down to addressing the basic foundational needs of the human body through Nutritional Therapy. What a difference this made. Detecting nutritional deficiencies, imbalances in the body, and root causes of dysfunction, and correcting those through a nutrient-dense, whole foods diet, lifestyle adjustments, and therapeutic supplements was game changing. It was the changes to what I was doing in the everyday stuff of life that made a tremendous impact on my health. I didn’t realize I was struggling with symptoms until I didn’t have them anymore! Things like bloating, energy dips, and unknown food sensitivities were corrected leading to improved energy levels and feeling better than ever.
What I’ve come to learn about my health and my client’s health is that health is a journey, not a destination. All you need to do to begin is start by taking one step at a time. If you don’t continue working towards greater health, you’ll never get there, nor will you experience any of the improvements along the way. The reality is, we only have one body, so we ought to care for it well. It’s absolutely worth our time, attention, investment, and prioritization to ensure good health in order to live our lives (and our purpose) to the fullest.
I’ve learned a ton throughout my health journey and have been fascinated by what the human body is capable of. I’ve literally spent years of trial and error and putting myself through school to learn more as my curiosity grew when I wasn’t getting the results I wanted and can now provide others with a more direct path to health and healing, saving folks a lot of time, money, and resources.
If you resonate with any part of my story, or are just tired of not getting better, apply for a Deep Dive Session and we’ll talk. You deserve to get your life back and experience freedom from the symptoms weighing you down. Health IS possible for you. Let’s get after it.