Part 1 of my story and how it all began

The year I started to get into shape was 2006. I was 17 years old and I hated the way I looked and the way I felt about myself. I slowly started taking notes from my mother; how she ate and how she was exercising. Watching her I decided to "take matters into my own hands". I did. Since I love food (Hey, I'm Italian! Of course I'm gonna love food), cutting out white bread, pasta and white sugars (ice creams, cakes and cookies) was very hard, especially during the holiday's! But I think what made it a little bit easier for me was the fact that I wanted change. I wanted to feel - and yes - I wanted to look better. So I stuck to whole grains, 2% milk, egg whites, very little butter, light cheeses, fruits and veggies. I started a workout program ("Slim in 6") in January of 2006 and by April of that year I lost about 15 pounds. I went from a size 14-12 to a 10! I can't begin to tell you how happy I was! I felt GREAT! Things were looking so much better for me... 

However, things started to change about a year and a half later.I started to going to sleep with VERY bad stomachaches. This happened EVERY SINGLE night for months!  My parents and I thought that it had to be what I was eating and so they told me to keep a food journal (I will admit that I wasn't very faithful with doing this) and log everything I ate throughout the day. We came to the point where we all thought that I had to be lactose intolerant because I had most - if not all - of the symptoms. So my parents bought me the lactose pills and they worked! Oh, how happy I was! I could have fresh milk again (if you knew me then, then you knew that I loved my dairy!). I took them whenever I had a bowl of cereal, or when I would treat myself and have some ice cream. You see, I could have milk - and eggs - when they were baked into something or whenever I took my lactose pills. With eggs I could not eat them raw, now when I say that I don't mean I used to eat them like Rocky did during his training to fight Apollo Creed in Rocky I; I mean like scrambled eggs. I couldn't eat them cooked in that way, but I could eat them baked in muffins, cornbread, pancakes, etc. Now when it came to cream cheese and regular cheeses (like cheddar and pepper-jack), I had no problem eating them; they didn't bother me at all. Yogurt didn't bug me at first, but then after a while I had to stop eating it because it would just go right through me and give me a nasty stomachache for hours on end. So here I was: a young gal who was lactose intolerant (to my knowledge) but I could eat cheese, and cream cheese. Makes perfect sense, right?

Things seemed to be going better now that I was on the lactose pills, but every now and then I would get an occasional upset stomach, but not nearly as often as I used to, though the thing that I just couldn't seem to figure out was the fact that I didn't eat junk and I was still having heartburn, sharp abdominal pains (this happened whenever I would unintentionally eat eggs that were not baked), and diarrhea. Here is what I used to eat for one day's worth of meals: Breakfast was one slice of whole grain toast with Tofutti and homemade jam or a bowl of oatmeal with an apple (I used that in replace of my sugar), cinnamon and two pieces of bacon that I would dip into my oatmeal (I know, that probably sounds gross, but it was soo good!) My snack was one apple or banana with natural peanut butter. Lunch was sometimes (most of the time because I loved it so much) PB & J on two slices of Ezekiel bread (sometimes I would have two small sandwiches because Ezekiel bread slices are kind of small). Or for lunch I would have one larger slice of bread lightly toasted with two or four slices of tomatoes drizzled with olive oil, seasoned with salt, pepper and topped with a slice of provolone or mozzarella cheese. Dinner was normally steak, chicken or a pork chop with a baked sweet or gold potato and a salad. Then on Sunday we would have our Sunday pasta and I would have my whole grain pasta with the same tomato sauce - or gravy as we call it - with a meat ball (that had the eggs and cheese taken out). That doesn't sound like a bad meal plan, right? But that didn't matter because I was STILL having problems. 

At one point we all thought that maybe I had Acid Reflux. So my parents bought me the Aloe Vera juice and I drank that whenever I had heartburn and it seemed to help. I had all of the symptoms of acid reflux so I took the information and kind of ran with it for a while. I think at that point in my life I just wanted to know what was going on with me and any little bit of information that sounded like it might be related to my issues was like gold to me.    

Everything was going well, then sometime in 2009 (I am not really sure when) my stomachaches came back and with a vengeance, like they had it in for me or something. During one of our football-watching days my family - after a nice big BBQ - had some ice cream with all the fixing's, I had some and that evening I had one of the worst stomachaches I've had in a long time..or so I thought. We also had some soda that day also, so I thought that maybe that was the problem, so I cut that out. However, just weeks (maybe even months later, I can't remember the exact date) I had the WORST stomachache I've ever had! It was so bad my Mama and Pop asked me if I wanted to the ER ( I don't really remember what I said, but I think I told my Mama that I wasn't sure if I wanted to go) thankfully my stomachache faded after I drank some warm water and rested a while, so I didn't need to go. What I had a hard time doing was trying to describe what I felt like when I was having one of my bad stomachaches. My father would ask me to tell him what I felt inside and every time this was what I would tell him, "I feel like there is a ton of air inside my stomach, like bubbles that I can't seem to burp up (and I never could)."  At times it would feel like I had a VERY bad case of heartburn. Sometimes it was so nasty I couldn't even lay down. However, there was something that told me deep down that heartburn wasn't it.  So thus began my research. What I was unaware of then was that God wasn't done with me yet. 
Part 2 coming soon...