To understand where I am, you first have to understand where I started.

Before I started on my new healthy journey, I was obviously not healthy, but there is much more to it than that. I saw a chiropractor somewhat regularly, but it wasn't for "Health and wellness" it was more to fix the hurt. I was a "Coupon Queen", you know...that lady with 2 shopping carts full of multiple processed food items, toiletries, 20 of each item and a huge fist full of coupons. You did NOT want to get in line behind me. My total would go from $200 down to $20 after my coupons. Yes, amazing, I know, but it was all processed JUNK that I was feeding my family, not anything we are really meant to consume. We, as a family, ate out a lot. Mostly fast food, I drank a pot and a half of coffee a day, and one or two mixed drinks every night. I felt like crap, looked like crap, was always tired, and always crabby. My kids were whiny, my husband getting fatter(I was right there with him), things weren't looking all that great.

So, you might be wondering how someone goes from being the Queen of couponing (spending $50 a week on groceries for a family of 5) to buying all organic, free range, healthy food ($200 a week)? Well, it started a little over a year ago, when my middle daughter, Gwen, started suffering from night terrors. If you don't know what a night terror is, consider yourself very lucky. Basically, it's a bad dream that you CAN NOT wake your kid up from. If you try they scream harder and longer, they can last what seems like an eternity. Her eyes would be wide open, but she would be looking right through me. It was the freakiest thing I had ever seen or had to deal with, and if you asked her how she slept last night, she would say, "good"...she never remembered them. She had them nearly every night. She was crabby most of the time, and rightly so, I'm sure that she wasn't getting enough good sleep. So, I was on a mad search to find out why the hell my then 5 yr. old was experiencing these night terrors. Doctors will say they are hereditary, or can be caused by a fever, well thanks for NOT helping me...she had NO fever. To google it was. I found an alarmingly large number of articles linking night terrors to our good friend MSG. Then I started thinking, what does this girl eat? Highly processed food, loaded with MSG, favorite of which was ramen noodles. She ate them nearly everyday for lunch. Well, I thought I better try to get her on a diet with no MSG. That's when I discovered the dozens of other names MSG hides under. It's not just listed on the ingredients as Monosodium glutamate! NO! why not? Because people are starting to get wise and they know MSG is bad for you, so they call it tons of other things. The first day with out MSG, she still had a night terror, but not anywhere near as bad as they usually were. The first week without MSG she had 3 terrors total, after a month she was down to 1 every couple of weeks. Now a little over a year later? They only happen when she has an extremely full bladder, or a fever. If it's her bladder I carry her to the bathroom, then back to her bed and it's done. That was the start of it all for me. My cabinets were purged of MSG, was it hard to throw my stockpile away? Well, I didn't throw it away, I donated it to the food shelf, but yes, it was hard. I was proud of my savings, my free pile of stuff...but it was just stuff that was poisoning us. Do I miss couponing? Yes. It was a hobby that I loved, but I am replacing it with a better one, learning how to be healthy, body, mind and soul. To love my family and myself. I have a lot further to go...I will need help along the way, I know I will trip, but in total I have lost 38 lbs, am free of my caffeine addiction, and I feel better already. I will post more of my back story in the future, but the majority of this will be my families journey forward. Tomorrow I will tell you about how I got my son to not scream today when I told him he didn't need chicken McNuggets.