About This Blog

In the beginning… Well, let’s just start here for now.

I’m not sure if it’s the journalist in me or my hope that maybe my writings (a.k.a. ramblings) will help at least one person who is suffering from Crohn’s, chronic disease, or poor health to find inspiration and hope along their own journey. Either way, I’ve felt compelled to start this blog, “Crohn’s, fitness, food, and my rocky road to health.” Pun intended.

Where to begin…rather than making this first post as long as I possibly could, I thought I would start with a very brief introduction of who I am and why you may…or may not…want to follow me on this blogging journey; I really can’t promise where this will go, so you’ll have to decide for yourself if the risk of spending your time reading my blog is worth it. 😉

Let’s jump right in with a little about me. In the summer of 2006, at the age of 25, my first (obvious) symptoms that I couldn’t ignore or chalk up to a bad lunch, of Crohn’s Disease appeared (I’ll write more about that in a later post). Most doctors avoid labeling someone with a chronic, lifelong disease right off the bat, so over the course of the next few years I took a slew of antibiotics, immune-suppressing and immune-modulating drugs; had multiple colonoscopies (even swallowed a tiny spy camera that took thousands of pictures of my digestive tract that my lucky doctor later got to watch); felt like crap pretty much every day; came to dread even the thought of food; couldn’t leave the house for a period of about three months; enjoyed near-daily sharp, stabbing, gut-wrenching pain; and dedicated myself to finding any possible way that I could heal myself with food. But, I digress, more on those things later.

Fast forward to 2009, I finally got my definitive diagnosis of Crohn’s. It didn’t solve anything, but I did feel vindicated that all of my awful symptoms and pain weren’t just in my head. The next eight years were full of ups and downs, failed diet attempts, starting and stopping medications, and a whole lot of trial and error. I believe I have finally reached an amazing place in life where I have been off medication since May 2016 and my health continues to improve every day (knock on wood…let’s keep this good health going!). I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, so even though I feel great, I’m always searching for and researching ways I can make myself even better. Plus, I know Crohn’s, our bodies, and our environments are ever changing, so I want to be prepared to handle what might lie ahead.

If you’re anything like me in my earlier years when I scoured the Internet, searching for a dietary plan of attack and anecdotes that might help control gastrointestinal symptoms, then I don’t want to make you wait for a future post…therefore, a sneak peek. My diet these days consists of lots of fermented foods (namely homemade sauerkraut and fermented raw milk (kefir)), grass-fed meats, farm-fresh eggs, bone broth, organic vegetables (mostly just well-cooked or fermented carrots, avocados, and spinach), wild-caught fish, soaked and peeled almonds, Bulletproof coffee, and traditional homemade sourdough bread made from a starter I’ve been caring for since January of this year. I’ll get more into each of these things in future posts, but that is the foundation of my diet that seems to be helping me right now. Stay with me on this journey and I promise to write about a variety of fitness and nutritional topics (both common and crazy…at least for those who haven’t tried them) that I have encountered and experimented with over the last few years.

So, if you’re suffering from poor health, chronic disease or just intrigued, I invite you to follow my blog and join me as I chronicle and write about low carb diets, processed food, raw milk, my 15-minutes-a-day workouts, rebounding (jumping on a mini-trampoline…though I don’t have a leotard and leggings), Bulletproof coffee, and other not-your-everyday-health adventures I’ve found myself on over the last decade. Sit back, put your feet up, and enjoy this ride with me.