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Health & Fitness

From Syringes to Potatoes

What an amazing journey this life provides…

If anyone had told me in 2008, that in 4 years I will no longer be working as a nurse, and that I will be teaching about how amazing potatoes are, I would probably pee my pants a little bit from laughing super hard.  In May of 2008 I was on stage on the lawn of University of Hartford accepting my Master’s Degree in Nursing Education while my family proudly yelled “Congratulations Rosol” ( which means chicken soup in polish and was my nickname for many years).  I have spent a total of 5.5 years with breaks in between advancing my career as a nurse.  I had ambitions of becoming a nurse educator of a trauma center or teaching in a nursing school.  By 2008 I had finally acquired necessary degrees to put me on that trajectory, and then…

“When you want to make God laugh… tell him what your plans are”

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God had a different plan for me… and it took a few years, but eventually it was finally revealed to me…And it took a little mouse to give me the necessary guidance.

A mouse???- you might say… how???

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Well, let me tell you a story…

There was a girl (or a woman rather) who loved chocolate. And cookies. And candies. And anything sweet.  She would eat sweets and crave more of it the next day and even more the following one… She couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her and why she couldn’t get this sugar thing under control.  She kept going on diets that eliminated sugar and would white-knuckle herself for a while until she finally would give in anyway.  Her weight never got out of control, but pounds would creep up slowly until another diet.  She mostly felt sluggish and tired.

One day (it was in May) she was home alone and she had a strong craving for sugar. She looked through all cupboards and pantry in search of a sweet treat.  All Halloween candy was gone by then…all other sugary snacks have already been devoured by her.  But in the closet she found an old large box with some old stale girls scout cookies (from probably 2 years earlier). She got very excited and grabbed her favorite box-Thin Mints. The box was opened so she tilted it to have the sleeve of cookies- still in the plastic wrap- slide onto her hand.  Well, the sleeve of cookies came out and with it… small black particles…it was mouse poop.   Well, you probably are thinking that she got grossed out and dumped the cookies and the mouse poop and washed her hands and that’s how her addiction got resolved.

Nope… she shook the poop off her hand and she proceeded to eat the entire sleeve of cookies.  

This was by far the lowest low she had even reached and the subsequent crying lasted for hours.

Through an amazing chain of events (none of them coincidental) that followed that day, she found herself overcoming the addiction to sugar, finding her passion in nutrition and true wellness, getting healthy and teaching true prevention to anyone who would listen.

That woman was me, and all of that happened in 2011.   I no longer have sugar addiction, I no longer have aspirations for high position in nursing career ladder, I no longer need antibiotics, I no longer worry about cancer, I no longer feel unfulfilled or unappreciated and most of all I am making a difference in people’s lives by empowering them to live their best lives.

I traded syringes filled with fancy meds for teaching people about potatoes.

Because potatoes are amazing!!!!

Iwona Leger, RN, MSN, Certified Health Coach,  owns Love and Peas Health Coaching and runs individual and group coaching sessions. She is very passionate about disease prevention, lifestyle and diet modifications, as well as stress reduction techniques.  New classes starting soon.  Check website for details

For more info visit www.loveandpeashealth.com

 

 

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