Living Magazine English Living Magazine 2016 | Page 10

® 2015 COMPETITION GRAND PRIZE WINNER Mary Myers When she realized how bad her health had become, Mary knew she needed to change or she could end up leaving her kids without a mom. With this reality check, Mary began the journey to wellness and didn’t look back. She has lost 23 kg* and loves her new lifestyle. The Wake-Up Call After a period of increasing health care that wasn't working, Mary’s doctor told her that there was a reason she wasn't getting better. She clarifies, “I was blaming my hormones and my medication for everything that was wrong, but my doctor told me I needed blood work because he knew I had other issues.” Mary had been eating her emotional pain away for some time, but she could not admit to herself that she had a problem. Mary’s wake-up call came the day she got her blood test results. She had many indicaters of long-term poor health which runs in her family, and has shortened the life of some family members. "I didn’t want to be like that. I realized that how healthy you are is a choice, and being unhealthy is not the way your future has to be.” With this new mindset, Mary decided to enter the Slim & Sassy Competition. 10 / 2016 EUROPE LIVING MAGAZINE Introducing a New Diet Push to Keep Going Mary's husband, Shane, was her rock during that time. The day she began the challenge, he went through their cupboards and threw out all the junk food they had in the house, even though she begged him not to. He then went shopping and came home with healthy food and containers for snacks to make it easier for her to start clean eating immediately. For three days, Mary wanted to give up as her body went through sugar and caffeine withdrawals. But Shane told her that she could keep going for another day—even another hour. With his encouragement, Mary did keep going, and she grew to love clean eating. Mary says, “I never felt restricted. I had Slim & Sassy essential oil and a TrimShake every morning and I never felt like I was starving. I wasn’t on a skinny diet; it was a health-change diet. I went from eating one vegetable a day to eating seven to nine servings of vegetables a day. Instead of snacking on candy, cereal, or chips, I would eat a handful of sweet peas, carrots, or edamame.” Mary insists, “If you can get past the first week of exercising and the first week of eating clean, you don’t want to go back.” As she progressed, her motivation to keep going shifted. She says, “I started liking the way I felt, so it pushed me to keep going, even on days when I felt sore and didn’t want to work out. I would look in the mirror, step on the scale, or suddenly realize I could run around with my kids, and that made the difference.” Mary has done things that she could not have done before the challenge, including coaching her son’s kindergarten soccer team. She says, “When you’re teaching eight kindergartners how to play soccer, you don’t stand on the side and tell them what to do, you have to run on the field with them. So I was running with them three days a week on top of the workouts and running I was already doing. I couldn’t have done that without fueling my body properly.” For anyone out there trying to make the change to a healthier lifestyle, Mary has this advice: “Anyone can do it. It doesn’t matter what level you start at. Anyone can do one day at a time, or even one hour at a time if they stay focused. Along with exercise and clean eating, essential oils are essential to a healthy lifestyle change, because they keep your body going in the right direction. I had used dōTERRA before on and off, but when I started using the products every single day and getting into a regimen with them, my body just felt so good.” *Results require changes to diet and exercise. Users who do not make the changes are less likely to see results.