My name is Sarah Vella and I am a 33 year old mom of two busy little people. I have a daughter (6 years old) and a son (4 years old). Additional to being a mom, I maintain a very demanding municipal management career, juggle life with my husband’s shift work schedule, am a type 1 diabetic and try to balance an organic, natural eating diet. Maintaining this type of lifestyle gave me perfect reasons to fulfill all of these “obligations” while forgetting about my own well-being. I was not giving myself the attention I deserved since my life has always been dedicated to serving others…..all the time!
Sooo….. I got burnt out! I started thinking about why I chose an organic, natural eating diet and forced my wonderful little family to follow along with me. Reasoning…..I am a type 1 diabetic but also have an identical twin sister who was not a type 1 diabetic. It doesn’t even run in my family. After doing a lot of research and asking a lot of very important people, some very important questions, I came to the resolve that I want to know what is going into my body and the other little bodies that I am responsible for….after all….they may thank me for this some day right? So….I wanted to lead a better healthy life! In my opinion, I was only doing half of what my definition of a healthy lifestyle meant to me. Sure I managed to get my kids to baseball, hockey, swimming, karate, gymnastics and soccer, but how did that benefit me? As the house secretary and taxi driver I decided that it was time that I make myself happier in some sort of way.
As coincidence would have it, a fellow Team Laus-mate, just a friend at the time, had posted a picture of one of her personal transformations. I knew her, but hadn’t seen her for about a year. When I saw her pictures and read her story, I was very inspired. So the first thing I did was ask her a thousand questions, reached out to Nichelle and justified to my husband why I was spending money on something like this. I have always been able to work out and eat “properly” but I guess I was never really sure of the method behind it. I think I would always just hope for the best, but to be honest, I think I was fooling myself!
Now 12 weeks and a lot of hardwork later, I can confidently and unequivocally say that believing in Nichelle was one of the best investments I have ever made. I learned how to push myself, trust the process, that patience is a virtue and that what you put in, is what you get out. I have changed my lifestyle to always include physical fitness even on the busiest of days (because hey….I have to commit to myself if I want to commit to others!), and that most of my overall healthy lifestlye is dependant on what I eat, how I eat it and when I eat it.
The most important benefit from my 12 week journey was my “new” diabetic life. I recently visited my specialist for a regular appointment and he noticed a significant change in my test results,. For those of you who understand diabetes, an A1C test is very telling as to your blood sugar management history. Although I have always been very controlled, I did at a certain point need to stop using insulin before meals and only depend on my background insulin. My A1C significantly dropped (which is fantastic!). At this point in time, I regularly do my insulin according to my eating habits and what may be required at that moment, but the amount of insulin needed to maintain my daily health has also been significantly reduced.
No doubt, this lifestyle is hardwork, but I don’t think that I would ever be able to maintain this lifestyle moving forward if it were an easy process. With the physical changes I see and the difference in how I feel…..why would I let that go? I worked so hard to get there! I had many aha! moments along the way, conquered personal goals, received many compliments, and had tons of support from Nichelle’s facebook group. I can’t wait to see how I look and feel a year from now!
Sincerely and whole-heartedly!
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