Kimberly J Garcia

Category: Uncategorized

  • Pain Can Be Your Answer to Better Health!

    I know this may sound crazy, but it is so true. Many of  us may be looking at pain as a problem or experiencing fear wondering where the pain is coming from, when actually pain can be a blessing. A warning sign that something is not right.  Although it can definitely be frustrating, it’s really like your check engine light in the car. When it first comes on it’s a general warning letting you know something needs to be addressed.  If left unaddressed or covered up, a simple need for more oil may lead to something as chronic as a blown engine.  Migraines, back pain, stomach cramping are each signals letting you know something needs to be adjusted. If we keep about our general programming running through the pain or just throw a few Ibuprofen in to cover it up, we tend to create much larger problems.

    Many times we do not intend to ignore the pain and we head to the doctor to find out what is going on. Our physician is trained to check our blood work, look at the site of the pain and to give us solutions to get rid of the pain. But lets say you have something  like chronic stomach pain. This can be triggered by many causes. Your physician will most likely give you a few recommendations such as taking an over the counter Pepto Bismol, prescribe a muscle relaxer or maybe even further testing such as a Colonoscopy. If the Colonoscopy comes back with no chronic findings other than a spastic colon and inflammation in the intestines, your physician will most likely diagnosis you with something comparable to Irritable Bowel Syndrome. He or she may recommend a few dietary changes and prescribe a specific medicine to keep the symptoms manageable.

    Although you appreciate knowing nothing life threatening has developed such as Cancer, have you really fixed the problem? What caused the pain in the first place? We know the pain is there, we know there is inflammation, but did we find out what caused the inflammation or are we still ignoring it? Many times we are told stress caused our stomach pain, migraine etc. or maybe something we ate. This is most definitely true, but did you determine what in your diet was causing the problem? Were you taught how to manage the various stressors which led up to a more chronic symptom?  If you did not find the underlying cause and you were unable to make changes in your behavior which kept symptoms at bay, this means you did not fix the cause which triggered the warning light. You basically just threw a towel over it so you can’t see it or feel it anymore.

    This happens many times when it comes to gall bladder pain. Although someone may have demolished their gall bladder to the point of  needing surgery, there is a reason it went bad in the first place. There is a reason it started to create pain. If we just live with the pain or just cut it out, we generally forget to look for the cause. If we continually just look for instant pain relief, but do not ask why or do not look deeper into what we’re doing to the engine, we’re basically just cutting the wires to the warning lights versus truly fixing the underlying problem. These short term fixes or “quick” fixes can and will lead to more chronic conditions such as hypothyroid, MS, stroke or even cancer. Many times we do not even know more chronic conditions are developing, because we have cut out or medicated the tools which were designed to warn us something was still not right.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Pain can be felt in different forms such mental pain, physical pain, emotional pain or even numbness.

    Although we may need medication or a surgery to fix the acute problem, we truly need to ensure we are addressing the underlying cause to prevent further damage. Of course if someone smacks you in the knee with a bat, we know a simple pain reliever, rest and possibly surgery will get you fixed up. But if you have been taking medication to address symptoms such as stomach pain, heel pain or back pain which came on without direct trauma, it is critical to find out what you may be doing to cause the pain. You may have a muscle imbalance above or below the pain or you may be having stress from overexercising or prolonged sitting. Digging deeper to find the cause may take a little longer than a medication, but you will see the results will be longer lasting and you will drastically decrease your chances of a more fatal outcome.

    This is what we specialize in as CHEK Practitioners and Holistic Lifestyle Coaches. Our training teaches us how to discover the cause, manage it and make it part of our everyday lifestyle. We assess daily lifestyle habits, nutritional choices, movement patterns and overall stressors to find the cause or causes of a persons overall symptoms. We refer our clients to physicians to ensure our steps and the client’s choices are leading to the correct outcomes such as managed blood pressure, blood sugar and proper healing. We also refer to physicians to ensure there are no underlying pathologies needing immediate medical attention.  But helping you efficiently determine the cause to many symptoms and then teaching you how to manage your daily choices, allows us to help you achieve your FULLEST life! This helps create a healthier you, reducing your physician’s liability when treating you, reducing your medical costs and improving your overall well being.  If you are ready to address the cause of your pain or overall symptoms contact us today at info@gimefitness.com or 352-428-6368. We look forward to complimenting your physician’s efforts and helping you take control of your daily choices.

     

     

     

  • Pills are Painless?

    Are you playing with your body’s chemistry?

    Could you be creating a serious health problem?

    Chances are if you take prescription medications, over the counter vitamins and a pain reliever now and then, the answer is YES! Americans as a whole are unaware of the billions of chemical reactions happening in their  body each second and have become immune to the fact that everything which they put into their mouth impacts these reactions. Your metabolism is every chemical reaction happening within your body to maintain life. The substances we place into our mouth either promote these reactions helping to maintain life or they have the ability to cease the chemical reactions leading to a slow death.

    Growing up I saw commercials constantly telling me if I have a headache, take this. If I have a backache, take this. If I have depression, take this. It seemed as if I had experienced any pain or symptom the solution was to take something to get rid of it. When we hear this repetitively, it seems normal to just take something to solve your physical and mental health problems. Although there are times when we do need a medication or supplement to help us improve our health, this programmed thought to just take something is very dangerous in many ways.  Let me share with you just my personal experience with pills and how they have impacted my life.

    1.The Teen Years- As a teen, my mom had to work a lot. My father was not in the picture and my step father was not a good resource for parenting. Needless to say I spent a lot of time with my friends. I originally had a great group of friends which focused on school, good grades and movie night. Through certain events, I slowly migrated towards a group of friends who had less leadership in their life and had more interest in drinking, skipping school and drug use. With my insecurities in myself and lack of quality family time, I became drawn to this environment. As I surrounded myself with people who experimented with drugs, the only one I felt safe to take were in the form of a pill. I would not do heavy drugs such as cocaine, crack or acid. I felt these were unsafe, looked trashy and had too many risks. I did feel safe to take pills. Why? They seemed harmless. Everyone took them and they were very easy to swallow. Smoking caused coughing, smelly clothes and cancer. Although I tried smoking, I always felt pills would be a much easier way to be part of the crowd without too much danger. At this time deadly pills such as OxyContin were not available or popular. Ten years later, a young girl locally who took a half of one pill died that same night in her sleep. Children who have watched their parents take these pills are also following suit and have now lost their life. I was the lucky one, but could you imagine a gifted student who graduated with honors and was most proud of state science fair, falling into the thought process of pills being safe?

    2.The Diet Industry: When I first entered the fitness world, I was looking for a pill which could give me natural energy to improve my workouts and help me get through my work day. I entered a popular nutrition store and the representative recommended a product which was made from MaHuang, the herbal form of Ephedra. He said it was all natural and a great way to receive safe energy.  I was excited and felt like this was a good choice. Well the bottle with a picture of a 200lb body builder on the front said to take four per serving. So the next day I took four pills and within an hour thought I was going to explode. My body was racing, my head was tingling and I could not stop. At 118lbs and 18 years old, I guess the four pills were a little much. Did anyone tell me this? No. Did the bottle warn me? No. The kid in the store said this was safe and why would I doubt him since he sells these products all the time? Needless to say anytime I took these type of pills, I felt as if I was on the speed I experimented with as a young teenager and knew these pills must not be good for me. I definitely did not have lasting energy and if anything, when they wore off, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. This experience helped me later in life working with a mentally ill client searching for weight loss. The client had went to her psychiatrist expressing symptoms of tingling in her head, a racing feeling and itching. He then gave her a prescription for anti-psychotic drugs. Her symptoms seemed closely related to what I felt when I took my energy pill. I asked the client if she had been taking weight loss pills and/or drinking energy drinks at the time the symptoms began. Sure enough she was taking 4-6 pills per day and drinking 2-4 energy drinks. No one asked her what she had changed, nor what she was taking when her symptoms appeared. Instead she was given a very powerful drug which added to her negative symptoms. Luckily I was able to attend a consult with her and her doctor. After hearing this information he felt confident he could remove the prescribed drug from her daily regimen. Simple diet changes and elimination of weight loss products cleared up the client’s problems almost immediately. What’s happening to those out there who do not have an advocate? Are they on a pill to address the symptoms of another pill? Are they becoming an addicted member of society which can not add value to their community in the workforce and does not feel valuable to themselves?

    3. Pills a Safe Way to Die- This is going to sound rough and maybe unbelievable, but it’s critical we share our experiences to help save others. After years of an emotionally abusive relationship in which my boyfriend loved to make me feel lesser about myself, I felt as if I wanted to pay him back for the pain he had caused me. I had secluded myself from friends due to his possessiveness, felt too ugly to do things normal people in their twenties did and was ready to hurt him the way he had hurt me. I decided one day to take pills left over from my step father’s previous surgery. He happened to have an entire bottle of the pain reliever Darvocet in the medicine cabinet. I decided if I took the pills I could die painlessly and make my then boyfriend suffer for all the pain he caused me. Of course I didn’t want to die, but I wanted my feelings validated. No matter how bad he hurt me mentally or physically, he never seemed to let it bother him. I wanted him to feel the pain he had caused me. After taking 17 pills, I planned to go to sleep. Thank you to God (who was  always watching over me, even in the times I was a total idiot) a friend showed up and came to my rescue. I told her what I had done and why.  My mother then came home and called her friend which was a nurse. My mom kept me awake per instruction of her friend. They started giving me water and I began to vomit. Imagine vomiting at least 20 times in one day. I could first only handle a sip of water and then a quarter of a glass and then a full glass. After hours of vomiting and a day of rest, I finally felt like myself again. It was the stupidest thing I ever did, but something I needed to go through to see pills are not painless and that I was much more valuable than what I had felt. My mom, although scared and angry, showed me love and understanding.  I had done such a good job hiding my feelings from her and others. She had no idea I ever felt this way. This was a big life lesson for all of us.

    4. Pills to Cover Severe Stomach Pain- This was my third year into trying to live perfect, go to college, work at night and exercise an hour or more per day. I ate healthy, made good grades and worked hard. I thought I was doing everything right. I began to experience severe abdominal pain, bowel issues, melasma and skin rashes which mimicked lupus. My doctors told me I was stressed, I should drink water and eat salad. I was diagnosed with IBS and given a pill. The pain continued. Two colonoscopies later and continued use of Metamucil with no long term relief from symptoms. I was told my colon was moving at the rate of a 40 year old and I was only 21. Still no solutions other than take this pill and live with it. I later discovered I was eating too little on my healthy diet, over training and was creating a sluggish system with a spastic colon due to my daily choices. After changing my work out regimen, eliminating diet foods and achieving a realistic body fat, all pain and bowel issues went away. I was even able to menstruate again after a year and a half without a period.  All symptoms were accounted to stress according to my Physicians, but no one could tell me how to balance this stress since I was exercising, eating what we thought was “healthy” and drinking water. I later learned through my training at the CHEK Institute how to help balance the various stressors and which factors were impacting my health.  I now teach people how to assess their stressors and how to take control of their life. The pills never helped.

    5. Nutrition Deficiencies– After years of doing what mainstream media told me to do, exercise, eat the right amount of calories, go, go, go- I continued to have vague symptoms such as fatigue, depression, peripheral neuropathy and dull chest aches. I approached my doctor with the symptoms. She tested my thyroid and everything showed fine on paper. Yet I had very low blood pressure, low pulse, low body temp and general fatigue. Nothing in blood work could be revealed. One day when the tingling in my arm and face took over the doctor instructed me to go to the ER. After two visits and a $5,000 bill nothing was discovered, yet my symptoms were getting worse. I finally researched vitamin deficiencies and my symptoms. I found many vitamin B deficiencies which matched my ailments. I then found a company SpectraCell Labs which could test each of my nutrient levels. This is not something generally ordered by Physicians. This is the first time I actually received answers to what was causing my symptoms. The test revealed a Vitamin B3 and Vitamin B6 deficiency, along with lower rates of CoQ10 and B12. Each of the deficiencies matched the exact symptoms I was was having for more than a year. I discovered my on the go diet of “healthier” snack foods and busy lifestyle was depleting my body of essential nutrients needed for proper metabolism, hormones, nerve health and brain function. I quickly purchased the exact vitamins I needed, made additional dietary changes and improved my symptoms within weeks.

    6. Cookie Cutter Programs- Many people are being advised to take the same vitamins, the same medications, the same vaccines, the same diet plans, yet everyone is chemically in a different place. I have found even local health professionals do not understand the danger of recommending the same supplement plan to all of their clients. I have seen clients told to take vitamins designed for a vegan, when their lifestyle matches nothing of a vegan. I have seen people told to take loads of calcium pyruvate for weight loss to later lead to heart problems. Although vitamins may seem harmless and medications may seem to eliminate our symptoms, it is critical we understand we are each uniquely made with drastically different lifestyles. Taking a vitamin to hopefully help prevent disease, without knowing what your body needs, can cause more problems than prevention. Taking the same Statin drug as most people are taking without solving the underlying  cause of your cholesterol issue, can cause additional issues such as joint pain, liver problems and continued disease progression.  You are not an inanimate object such as a car, lawn mower or motorcycle which can be given the same fuel over and over again. You are a person working to maintain a quality of life. It is important that you assess your symptoms and then analyze what you could be doing to cause your symptoms. Once the causes are determined, you work to eliminate the ones you can and supplement specifically to your needs.

    My goal of this blog is to help open a dialogue. A better understanding of how complex our body is. An understanding as to how even smart people can make poor choices and feel as if pills are painless.  Although these are quick synopses of a much bigger picture, these stories are reality and a reality many innocent people are dealing with on a day to day basis. People looking for help in all the right places and mostly innocent professionals trying to offer quick solutions.  These seemingly  harmless prescriptions for pain relief, weight loss and better health are leading to much bigger issues within our society. Issues of drug addiction which stemmed from common back pain or an internal insecurity which went unrecognized during a 15  minute office visit. Issues of chronic vitamin deficiencies being misdiagnosed as depression, MS and Fibromyalgia. Issues of a society who looks to the pill and the doctor to cure them versus looking within at their own personal habits, insecurities and choices. Forgetting to search for ways to take ownership and improve.  After hearing recently that our county  is the second highest in the state with drug addicted babies being born to their drug addicted moms and overdose death on the rise, I asked myself what was it that made me think pills were harmless? What made me think I could solve my problems with a pill?

    I realized these pictures were planted in my head and the notion of pills being painless was eventually just assumed. My TV told me they were a solution, Physicians prescribed them to fix my illness, the nice guy at the store told me I could have more energy and anyone I respected in my life seemed to think it was good to take the vitamins their friend told them to and to just pop an Advil when you felt a headache coming on.  These are pictures planted in our mind. Pictures of approval, of something not so bad to do.

    When you cut yourself, you see blood and you feel pain. If you burn yourself, there is an immediate response. Innocently, as a society, we have failed to realize the tiny wounds which are being placed within our body each time we take a pill which is not intended for us. Whether it’s a pill , a drink or a special meal, if we are ingesting fuel which was not designed to improve the rate of cell renewal in our body, we are slowly creating pain. Vague symptoms which will appear rapidly or over time without us knowing we are creating the problem. In order to change the pill addiction problems in our community we must work together to recommend medications responsibly. We must educate on the complexity of the human body and how valuable we each are. We must understand most of us are not chemist and can not safely play around with medications no matter how harmless they seem. We must start to think about what may be causing our symptoms versus finding ways to cover them up. As Physicians, as friends, parents and educators, we must lead by example. We must show respect to the power of medicine, good and bad. We must try to take care of ourselves through good food, good thoughts and good rest. We must not just assume we can abuse our bodies and burn the candle at both ends without a consequence. We should work to heal ourselves mentally, physically and emotionally reaching out for resources. And once we have covered our part, then if still needed, we shall utilize the correct supplements and medication to help maintain our quality of life. As others start to see the respect and value we place on our body’s and our life,  they will know they can turn to us for assistance versus medicating themselves into a never ending road of unhappiness and addiction.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • How the Successful Lose Weight and Keep it Off

    Working with so many people to help them lose weight, having many successes and having many who give up, I ask myself, how is it that I made the commitment to make better choices?  How is that many people I helped 10 or more years ago to lose weight, have kept it off? Because truly that’s the real answer. Anyone and any diet can help someone lose weight, but which methods and behaviors actually keep it off? And for that matter, which methods and behaviors actually make you healthier during the process? For today, we will discuss how to be successful at weight loss for life, but it’s a whole other story as to whether your weight loss is healthy or not.

    In recent years, weight loss has become very complicated, gimmicky and obsessive. We seem to be drawn to these characteristics, but of course we’re being marketed daily to think we should eat less, move more and if we screw up, we might as well give up.  This is why 95% of dieters fail and most attempt at least 8 times before they actually succeed. If you want to break this statistic, read on. If you want to stay on the hamster wheel, close now.

     GET OFF THE WHEEL!!! YOU CAN BE SUCCESSFUL FOR LIFE!

     

    I believe it’s time to make a change and I believe I am tired of seeing people get caught up in the whirlwind of the dieting industry. Each person deserves to feel their best and it’s time I share the simple, yet priceless secrets with you.

    1.  Successful people make small changes over time.

    No one can be perfect in a week. We do not become a perfect student, a perfect parent or a perfect spouse over night (if ever). So how do we think we could live completely “good” when it comes to diet and exercise? It’s just not possible to turn your world upside down and keep it that way just because the diet book or the trainer told you to. It’s also not smart to just change everything in your body over night. Going from no exercise and no awareness of diet, to daily cardio sessions and food restriction makes your body feel like it’s under attack. Many foods we are addicted to can also cause horrible feelings or severe cravings as we try to wean off of them. It’s important that we make small changes each day, each week to move us toward our goals of living healthier. I personally started drinking water versus soda or tea. Then I started to exercise. Next I started to make sure my snacks offered nutrition versus just something to put into my mouth. Small adjustments lead to long-term success.

    2.Successful people do not feel guilty.

    This is kind of misleading. In the beginning when I started seeing great success with my small changes, I did start to enjoy the results of my choices and started to become obsessed. If I missed a workout, I would feel severely guilty and then over do it the next day or not eat to make up for it. I thought that was the best way to balance it out. That method soon created many health problems for me and I realized I was doing something wrong. I also realized I was putting too much pressure on myself and not allowing myself to be HUMAN. As you begin your health journey, you are going to eat a cookie again, you are going to miss a workout and you are going to fluctuate in weight. It’s just a given. What you can do to save yourself much mental anguish, is to eliminate the guilt. Feeling guilty is poison and it adds no value to your program. The more we obsess over the mistake, the more we tend to make poor choices for our body. We tend to either over eat, under eat, over exercise or GIVE UP. If you make a mistake at work, do you just quit? If you make a mistake as a parent, do you give your kids up for adoption? No, we apologize for the mistake and we generally work to do better the next time. If you can carry this behavior over into your health journey, you will never GIVE UP again. You may have a stall, but when you over eat one day, you can get up, apologize to yourself and determine how to prevent the same mistake in the future. Or you can say, I only over eat one or two days per year, no big deal and let it go. Learning to work around your mistakes and how to prevent them, will lead to long-term success.

    3. Successful people commit for life.

    Do you know how long ago it was that I switched to water from soda and tea? 17 years ago! I didn’t just say let me drink this water to get the weight off and then I will give it all up to go back to my old habits. Once I learned how important water was and how many empty calories were in many drinks we choose to consume, I used my logic and said it’s just not worth it to me. I was not so logical when it came to exercise though. I started exercising about 16 years ago and became really fit the first year. Of course I was 19 or so  and it was not too hard to shape up. Once I got in shape, I said ok, I am fit now. I should be able to maintain this. Then I stopped exercising all together. About a year went by and I had not gained any weight. Yet, while riding as a passenger in the car one day, I propped my leg up by the window, looked down and saw someone elses leg. I thought is that my 20 year old leg covered in cellulite? But how? I have not gained any weight according to the scale. This is when I realized the scale does not always tell the truth. It may tell me good or not so good numbers, but they truly do not matter if my health is failing or my body fat is rising! This is when I realized, just like the water, exercise was going to be a part of my life in some fashion if I wanted to maintain a healthy looking body and not just a number on the scale. If you want to be successful with weight loss for life, you have to realize there are no time frames. Think about what you want to feel like five years from now, not just five weeks from now and start to make small changes you will commit to for life.

    The successful weight loss people you see at work, at the gym, throughout life are the ones incorporating these behaviors. Most are not genetically fit. They have just committed to apply logic to their daily choices and find ways to deal with their emotions. They have made the commitment to value their body and how it feels, just as some have made the commitment to not pay attention to their body. Our daily choices and perseverance is what equates to our short and long-term results. I hope these priceless secrets to success can help you improve your results today and on going! The power is within you to be successful. You may need guidance and support, but there are no magic pills, no magic surgeries and no magic diets, just simple secrets of success.