#75 Devon Balta – Anxiety, Brain Fog, and Acne

Meet Devon:

Strangers and friends alike thought I had kind of a charmed life.  My weight seemed to stay at bay effortlessly, I always looked 10 years younger than my peers, and my outlook on life seemed very positive. Little did they know, I was constantly counting calories and exercising chronically, dealing with acne flare-ups, and negative and self- doubting thoughts were constantly swimming in my mind. 

As I entered my 40’s, these inner struggles got worse.  The weight was not coming off like it used to and I was developing the dreaded “muffin-top”. No matter how much of the cream I put on my face, my monthly zits turned into very painful cysts. My brain started forgetting things and I became panicky, anxious, insecure and snappy.

I attributed this to age. This way of thinking was dealt to me by older peers, the media, and big pharma.

So, for seven years I went on a self-experimental journey focusing especially on trying to fix my appearance. Seven years! Of frustration!  Of arbitrary spending!  Of things not working!!!

Then I came across the idea of adding healthy fats and eliminating grains and sugar from my diet.  This was a game changer!  Adding fats never seemed to be a practical option…especially for someone who feared eating fat and feared getting fat!

Once my nutrition fell into place, I was more open to fixing the other main components of health I was really neglecting: sleep, movement, spirit and self-care.

Show Notes:

ABOUT DEVON

• I am a happily married Pastor’s wife of almost 30 years
• I am 47 years old, I have 3 adult children
• My husband is a Pastor and we have been at the same church for 25 years, so we have been serving full-time ministry for that long
• I have had a rocky relationship with food all my life
• When I was 8 or 9 years old, I was a very skinny girl
• One time, I went to the doctor’s and I heard them say anorexia. Back then, we didn’t have magazines and crazy things that we would be influenced by
• But for some reasons, I knew what anorexia was
• Just hearing that made me very curious about anorexia
• When I started gaining weight when I was about 13 years old, I felt like I needed to somehow lose the weight
• There was an ABC after-school special about the risks of bulimia and when I watched it, I felt extremely influenced
• So, all the things they tell you not to do, I adapted into my life and practiced them
• It was a miserable experience, I was a fully pledged bulimic up  until I was 18 years old
• I did everything from bingeing and purging to even taking almost 60 laxatives a day
• It was a lonely and heartbreaking experience
• When I was 18, I knew that it was a very unhealthy practice on my body
• Ironically, I was not losing any weight. In fact, I was very swollen
• It really did not benefit me at all
• When I stopped that behavior, I needed to find sometime to replace it
• So, I become a vegan for about 2 years, this was before “vegans” were even a thing
• I ate frozen vegetables, peanuts and baked potatoes. So, that was basically my vegan diet
• I ate so many carrots that my skin turned orange
• When I got to college, I felt like I couldn’t gain any more weight and I started to do the calorie restriction strategy mixed with the chronic exercise
• That worked pretty successfully for me for about 20 years
• People would see me and consider me very healthy, however it got harder for me to maintain my weight
• At 40 years old, I started keeping the weight on and no matter how many calories I restricted, it didn’t make a difference, it got frustrating
• Then, I also started to have other health issues that I kind of attributed to age
• I started feeling older, looking older, experiencing restless legs syndrome, brain fog, and my hair was thinning, I felt anxious and cranky
• And so, I wasn’t losing weight, I was experiencing these other symptoms, and on top of all of that, I started to experience cystic acne
• This acne was so painful and it came about every month and it was huge
• I started researching on the internet and I came across a lot of solutions for acne which required a lot of cutting things out from my diet
• I happened to watch the movie, Magic Pill and then all of sudden, it clicked
• That movie explained things well so, I decided to try Ketogenic diet and it was the scariest thing for someone who is very fat-phobic
• I had been doing so many self-experiments on myself trying to get rid of this acne, at that time, I had already eliminated refined sugar
• But I never eliminated unhealthy fats, all types of sugar and all grains at the same time
• The first thing that changed was the clarity of my thinking
• I had brain fog that I did not even know I had
• I started sleeping better and I realized I had been so anxious over the past few years, and I did not even know that it was a problem
• After I was on Keto for about 2 months, my daughter, who had just gotten her license, told me that she was going to drive me
• So, I sat in the passenger seat, but I was not tense, or screaming
• It was then that I realized that this way of eating had really helped my anxiety
• My anxiety lessened after 6 months, and the acne really improved a lot
• Some things take time. It’s a lifestyle change.
• This diet changed my life and I became a certified health coach
• I am just so passionate about helping other people
• I have been Keto since May of last year
• Everything is coming around full circle
• One of the traps that I did fall out into when I first started is making sure that I have tried everything???
• I was doing so much at once, which I wouldn’t recommend 
• Right now, I am doing intermittent fasting
• I don’t believe in measuring the macros because I want to get away from tracking
• I know Keto can be really successful if you just know what you are eating and have a kind of a general idea of how much
• I really stay away from carbs, except for my dark chocolate and vegetables
• At first when I started Keto, I was looking for some kind of sweet substitute, and I was trying to get my family on board
• I realized, that I don’t really like any of those cookies or fat bombs anymore, I just prefer to eat a piece of meat
• You have to be very intentional, no matter what
• Cutting out the sugar and the grains does help with some of the addiction to certain foods
• Sometimes, it’s just a behavioral thing that you have to change
• I have recently laid off the dairy as well
• My husband is a hunter, so on a good day we have venison
• I put venison in the instant pot with some onions, garlic, and put slices of pepperoni, crushed tomato sauce and some mozzarella cheese

HEALTH BENEFITS

• The first of couple of months people were saying that I was glowing
• Within a week of being on Keto, I felt like I had a better relationship with food
• I was confident in what I was eating, I did not count any macros or calories, but I was mindful of what I ate
• I was happy for the first time, with all those years behind me
• It’s just so awesome that I am finally experiencing what God had intended all along
• The weight loss was great, but the health benefits, for me definitely outweighed the weight loss
• I am looking a lot more youthful

ADVICE

• Don’t get sucked in by so much information
• If you have a health coach, listen to your health coach or choose one information source when you are first starting
• Get rid of the unhealthy fat
• Get rid of all sugar
• Stay away from grains – all of it
• Eat meat and vegetables. Make it simple
• Keep it simple

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