I want to share a story about someone that I believe is an inspiration when it comes to health and wellness.

And I think you will like this, so I encourage you to read until the end.

Seriously, you will learn something from this persons story.

Read this whole article so you will get the most of it.

If you’re new here, Hi!

My name is Jacqui and I’m an online health + fitness coach.

I help women become the best versions of themselves, whatever that may mean for them personally.

Whether that’s improving their health and wellbeing, becoming stronger, changing their body composition, improving their confidence, keeping them accountable, helping them develop a better relationship with food…

We do it all here at JL Fitness + Lifestyle!

Here’s the Story

About a year ago, I received an email out of the blue.

The email was asking about what JL Fitness + Lifestyle offers and whether I would be willing to take on someone with a lot of food restrictions.

Like, a lot of food restrictions.

They went on to describe how other healthcare professionals like dietitians and nutritionists can’t help them due to the many food items they can’t eat.

Meal plans just couldn’t work because they had so many restrictions.

Not because of preference or dislike, but because a health condition made it so.

This is how I met Tammy.

Tammy is someone who has lived with Crohn’s Disease for 32 years.

Crohn’s Disease can make dietary choices pretty slim in terms of what may or may not sit well with her digestive system.

Now, before I get deeper into this, there’s a couple of things you should keep in mind:

1. If you don’t have Crohn’s disease, there are still transferrable lessons within this story that are applicable to you, and will even inspire you. So stick around and keep reading!
2. If you are someone with Crohn’s disease, keep in mind that Tammy’s experience with Crohn’s could be very different than yours. Whether that’s for better or worse, it’s still something you should consider as you read about her story.

If you don’t know what Crohn’s is, here’s a little background on it so you can better understand what Tammy lives with.

What is Crohn’s Disease?

Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease that causes inflammation in your digestive tract.

This leads to abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss and malnutrition.

It can be extremely painful and debilitating, and sometimes lead to life-threatening complications.

There’s no cure, but there are different medicinal treatments that can help reduce symptoms.

And it causes many different barriers when it comes to food and nutrition, which can impact energy levels and wellbeing.

For 32 years, whenever Tammy has a flare-up from Crohn’s, she deals with abdominal pain and having to run to the washroom several times a day.

To treat it, she takes medication that also compromises her immune system.

So basically, having Crohn’s disease sucks.

Taking Personal Responsibility

Because of the extra challenges she faces every day due to this disease- Tammy could easily fall into the victim mentality.

But here’s what’s so admirable about her.

Not only does she not play the victim card, she finds ways to make her life better in whatever ways are possible.

She sees her Crohn’s as something she has to work around, instead of something that is completely stopping her.

Which is pretty incredible.

Instead of allowing her situation to take over her life, Tammy recognizes that she still has many other areas that are within her control when it comes to her health, wellbeing, and quality of life.

She understands that her health is her responsibility and can only be improved through the choices SHE makes.

And despite the fact that she has extra barriers in comparison to the general population, she knows that feeling her best isn’t impossible.

Her desire to learn more about how to positively influence her health, even though this looks different for her compared to most others, is what inspired her to reach out to a coach.

Our Journey Together (so far!)

I will admit, that when I initially read Tammy’s email I wasn’t sure that taking her on as a client would be within my scope of practice.

But after meeting with her I quickly understood how in tune she was with her body and what worked well for her.

She wasn’t looking for me to FIX her Crohn’s (out of my scope of practice there!) she was looking for ways to improve her health and lifestyle while working around her Crohn’s.

And because she:

1. Knew an incredible amount about the disease, her medications and their side effects
2. Was open and honest about her experience and symptoms
3. Was open-minded to various strategies I suggested and was quick to give feedback

I knew we would work well together.

Learning Together

I think the general idea most people have about working with a coach is that your coach is there to tell you what to do.

In some cases, this may be true.

But when it comes to someone like Tammy (and many other situations), coaching and getting results for a client is more of a team effort.

And Tammy is totally on board with that.

With the several different foods that didn’t agree with Tammy’s body, it was clear that nutrition would be the trickiest part of helping Tammy out.

Some foods were a big no-go.

Other foods Tammy can have once in a while (but not several times in a row).

Then there were her “green light” types of foods that she didn’t have an issue with.

So instead of focusing on the avoidance of certain foods, we placed more emphasis on the foods she can have.

We used tracking as a method to keep tabs on certain nutrients for Tammy, starting with protein and calories.

Tracking her food allows Tammy to make her own choices with her food based on what works well for her and what doesn’t cause any digestive distress.

Seeing the information that she collects while tracking her food allows us to make little tweaks towards improving her nutritional intake.

Can she add a little bit more protein to this meal?

Is there a vegetable we can add to this for more fiber?

But this was a cool discovery:

As a coach, I have most of my clients track their protein to make sure they are getting an adequate amount to support muscle retention, muscle building and strength, and making fat loss goals easier by increasing satiety.

But on our little journey together, Tammy and I learned that protein is even MORE important for people who have Crohn’s!

It turns out, that the inflammation that Crohn’s causes increases your body’s protein needs.

Since protein serves as a building block for tissues, someone who has Crohn’s disease needs a little more help to heal their tissues- and protein helps with that.

Just another reason why protein is so crucial!

And just many of the mind-blowing learning pieces that we discovered together that was specific to Tammy’s unique needs.

Getting Stronger

Tammy was not an inactive person when we first started together.

She enjoyed many different forms of gentle exercise like yoga and walking.

She expressed to me that her energy levels were different than most in the sense that she needed to be careful of how much she did or she would crash.

“Constantly preserving, never pushing” was something she once said to me.

When it came to exercise, we started with lower impact strength-based movements that usually involved body weight, bands and light dumbbells.

Every week, I would get form videos from Tammy to assess.

And every time she would take the tweaks I gave her and implement them.

At first, you could see that Tammy was unsure of the movements.

You could see that she didn’t feel confident doing them.

And yet she continued to show up when she could have easily found excuses to avoid them.

These days, I still get form videos from Tammy.

But you can see that she is so much more sure of herself.

I can give her verbal cues and she knows exactly what I mean to make her own adjustments.

She’s constantly messaging me to tell me that she’s going heavier with the weights she’s using.

Or telling me about other things she’s doing in her life that are now easier because of her training.

She has better balance and stability.

She feels stronger.

She feels less discomfort in her abdomen during certain exercises that she couldn’t do before.

And she feels so much more confident within her training sessions and outside of them!

Unexpected Benefits

One of Tammy’s medications requires her to get an injection every 8 weeks.

Usually on week 8, Tammy could expect to have what she calls a “crash week”.

This week usually meant that as she came to the end of her injection cycle, she would experience extreme lows when it came to her energy levels.

But we had a little surprise!

Her last 2 cycles, Tammy’s “crash week” wasn’t as bad as it normally was.

In fact Tammy said to me, “I keep having to remind myself that it’s injection week, because it doesn’t feel like injection week!”

Something similar happened with Tammy’s flare-ups.

Oftentimes she would describe them as a “crash and burn”, and she would know exactly when they were coming and adjust accordingly.

Lately, she’s been experiencing her flare-up lows that weren’t “as low”, meaning that she would know it’s happening but it wasn’t nearly the same “crash and burn” that she would normally experience.

Was it changes in her nutrition?

Was it increasing her exercise intensity?

Was it drinking more water?

We will never know exactly what has helped with these aspects of her experience with Crohn’s, but we will take it!

Where these were typical parts of her disease that Tammy had come to accept and deal with, seeing improvements in these aspects have definitely influenced Tammy’s quality of life.

What does this have to do with you?

Tammy’s journey highlights a major yet overlooked part of pursuing health + fitness:

It improves your life.

Many people wait to implement better eating habits and exercise when they need to.

Like when they need to lose weight or when their doctor warns them that their health is at risk.

Nutrition and exercise are not just about losing fat.

The way you choose to eat, move and implement certain lifestyle factors (stress management, sleep quantity/quality, hydration, etc.) takes effort.

But it makes life so much better.

You put in that effort so your life can be EASIER.

It lets you not just survive, but to thrive.

You have more energy.

You feel better.

You get more confident.

You start believing in yourself.

Hell, what kind of things would you do if you had all of those factors stacked up on your side?

Tammy is proving every day that this is possible for anyone.

Tammy’s open-mindedness…

Her willingness to try…

Her ability to adjust and pivot when needed…

Her fearlessness…

Her honesty…

Her resiliency…

Are what make her successful in this journey, despite having more obstacles than the average person.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Even though there is no finish line to this.

And Tammy knows that she is in this for the long-haul.

Because it makes her life better.

You should be too!

Tammy, I’m so incredibly proud of you and all of the hard work that you have put into yourself.

You have done amazing things, and I know you will continue to do amazing things!

And I’m so honored to be on this journey with you.

Thank-you for trusting me to be on your team!

-J