Living Magazine Fall 2015 Living Magazine | Page 8

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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 52 lbs*. 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.

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.