#79 Shawn Mynar – Colitis and Hashimoto’s Healed
Subscribe for High Energy Wellness Tips
How to Get Rid of Water Weight Fast
April 16, 2019
Keto – Salad and Wine – Big Mac Salad
April 22, 2019
Meet Shawn Mynar:
I’m Shawn, Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP™), Restorative Wellness Practitioner, Certified Personal Trainer, Real Food Foodie, and Passionate Health Seeker!
I grew up, as many of us do, following the Standard American Diet of grains, cereals, sodas, cakes, cookies, chips, crackers, and plenty of sugar. As soon as I knew what it meant to be on a diet, probably about 7th grade, I went on one. I then made sure to include every fat-free, processed, packaged food into my extremely calorie-restricted meal plan.
My broken relationship with food and what “healthy” meant continued throughout my teen years, into college, and even as a young professional adult. Even upon finding out I had developed an autoimmune disease, ulcerative colitis (UC) in 2008, I still didn’t make the connection that what I was putting and not putting into my mouth could have anything to do with it.
Then I made the switch that changed my life.
I finally began putting the pieces together in July of 2013 after an intense UC flare that I couldn’t seem to get under control. I’ll never forget the day my gastroenterologist shoved my questions aside, telling me I would be on medication for the rest of my life and that diet had nothing to do with my disease or treating it. That awful conversation turned into the moment that changed my life! I knew he was wrong and went on the mission to prove it. I love a good Google session, and that’s exactly what I did as soon as I got home from the doctor that day. It only took a few minutes before I found stories of people with UC and other autoimmune diseases that were able to get well again just by taking the processed crap out of their diets and replacing it with real, nutrient-dense foods. There was hope for a life free of pills!
That’s when I began what I like to call my ‘real food’ lifestyle.
Within a month, I went from 9 pills a day to zero and my UC symptoms went into remission. I no longer suffered from bloating, pain, and other digestive issues. The strength I had in my workouts sky rocketed to a totally different level. I had a huge amount of energy all day, from the time my head left the pillow until the time it touched back down. My skin, hair, and nails never looked better. I lost body fat and gained lean muscle. I had become a different person … just by putting a little more thought into what was on my plate!
I then took it one-step further and began my journey into the ketogenic diet after toxic mold exposure began to put a damper on my previous health successes. Little did I know how much that one little switch would change my life forever. Through a keto lifestyle, I have been able to achieve a state of health and happiness I never thought I would get to again. My energy, mental clarity, hormonal balance, cravings, hunger cues, and inflammation all normalized quickly. Not to mention, for the first time in my adult life, I don’t feel like I’m on any sort of diet. It’s so freeing!
This revelation led me to where I am today with my nutrition practice … a top-rated podcast, The Keto For Women Show, an extremely rewarding online women’s group class, The Fat Burning Female Project, and a thriving team of practitioners working 1:1 with clients.
I now live a fun, active, delicious life in Boulder, CO.
I eat a ton of organic, locally-sourced food, lift heavy things regularly, and play outside every chance I get. I have a thriving holistic health practice where I work with women all over the world and help them achieve a ketogenic diet in a safe, effective approach in order to heal their bodies from the inside out.
I have had a bit of a rocky road with some unforeseen and unavoidable health issues over the past few years. You can read more about those here, here, and here. Knowing there would be a silver lining to it all, I firmly believe that I went through this experience to give me a better, more intimate perspective as to what people are going through health-wise in today’s society and how it feels to not get the answers you are so desperately seeking. I know first-hand how frustrating it can be!
I have the ability to provide those answers to a wide variety of people and jumpstart their healing journey.
I am now thoroughly versed in issues related to autoimmune disease, digestive disorders, unexplained weight gain, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis and all other thyroid disorders, toxic mold exposure, heavy metal toxicity, adrenal fatigue or HPA axis dis-regulation, bacterial imbalances, and leaky gut from a first-hand experience. I survived and thrived through these health issues and you can too!
I LOVE helping women get into a ketogenic diet for optimal healing too, taking my knowledge and applying it to their circumstances.
I am a firm-believer in empowering women to get to the root cause of their health issues just like I did so they can experience a new level and health and happiness. I hope you’ll join me on that journey!
Show Notes:
About Shawn
- I am a holistic nutritionist
- I teach women a healthy, ketogenic lifestyle, that is safe and effective for the female body
- I kind of got into that because of my own personal experience
- I used the ketogenic diet to help me go from feeling the worse I have ever felt, health wise to feeling how I do now, which is the best I have ever felt in my whole life
- Applying this into my own world and my own health, I noticed some differences. It can make you feel terrible if you approach it the wrong way and it can make you feel amazing if you approach it the right way
- It’s been 2 1/2 years of that being my focus and I am committed to it
- It all started back in 2008 when I was diagnosed with my first autoimmune disease, which is ulcerative colitis
- For a while, it was just what it was and I took the medication, went to the doctor, I did what I needed to do
- And then it just started to feel wrong and I felt like there is more that I could be doing instead of needing to be on medication for the rest of my life
- That led to a more paleo type approach
- I was able to feel quite a bit better, be able to go off the medication and all of a sudden, things are starting to fall apart again
- Now that I know, it was because of being exposed to toxic mold and having a gene that does not allow my body to detox when you are exposed to these kinds of issues
- It took years to figure that out
- That exposure to mold led me to all kinds of symptoms
- At that time, I was also diagnosed with my second immune disease, hashimoto thyroiditis. All of these are because of the toxic mold exposure
- I had been living in a basement that had been flooded and did not get properly fix
- Once I figured it out, that’s when I realized that these things that I was experiencing could really be helped by adapting to a Ketogenic diet
- And that’s when I made the transition over to that
- I did not realize at that time that it would make me feel better so quickly
- I am still doing it 2 years later because I just feel really good and I think it is just a really healthy place for my body to be
- I was in my 20’s when I was diagnosed
- There is 24% of the population that has this gene that makes your body incapable of detoxing from the bio-toxins
- In some cases, it is the Lyme, which creates Lyme’s disease and another one is mold
- People should consider their environment because sometimes it is causing their bodies to have an inflammatory response
- An inflammatory response is when your body just starts becoming inflamed from trying to protect you from these toxins that you can’t detox
- With that inflammation, your brain will get inflamed and you’ll have this brain fog, you often gain weight and this is a big deal
- The first step is you have to get out of the exposure
- It is just easier to move, which is what I did. I moved several times and I got rid of my belongings several times
- All I care about was getting back to feeling myself as quickly as possible
- Now, I get to keep my belongings for several years and I feel good about that
- You also have to find someone who deals with this
- Luckily, there are more and more doctors that might be MD’s, naturopaths, functional medicine doctors who are capable of treating these conditions
- Because you will have to go through a pretty intense protocol
- With my autoimmune, I was AIP paleo for over a year combined
- I have to say, it helped but it was so stressful and isolating
- Once I got my stress level under control, both of my autoimmune diseases went into remission
- One of the big things that I teach in my world is when I approach keto, it was from the place of wanting to be 100% healthy again
- I wanted to have enough energy to go for a hike or go out with my friends and have some dinner
- I was able to put what I wanted in my body and I did not approach it as a diet
- I did not care that everyone else is losing 30 lbs. in a month
- I wanted to use it for healing properties
- Approaching it from that aspect made it a very different story for me because I was focused on eating the most nutrient dense foods, making sure I was fueling my body appropriately, getting tons of vegetables, getting enough food, eating 3 meals a day and just really focusing
- I increased my fat intake and lowered my carbohydrate intake
- I approached it from a really mindful place
- When I approached it in that way, it was almost instantaneous
- Any change was very noticeable
- So, I had these really amazing updates to my health, really quickly
- From there, as I approached it in the same way for a longer period of time, things started to fall into place
- I started to have energy to workout or to have a hike
- I just kind of let it happen
- The longer you do it, the more you notice
- It has been 2 and a half years now and I can say that I am completely healed and feeling better than I ever had after about 8 or 9 months
- To truly get the benefits, and to really heal your body, it does often takes a lot longer
- A lot of people are missing out on what could be an amazing healthy lifestyle change for them because they could not wait any longer
- Your body wants to be healthy, balanced, well and has its natural healthy weight more than you do
- If you work with your body and use those signs that it has given you, when you work cohesively with your body instead of being against it, that’s when things really can change
- Whenever any females have some sort of imbalance or they feel like things aren’t well or working my first response is, what is your stress like?
- Because that is so important to whether things do or don’t connect for us in our health
- It is not just the food on your plate
RECOMMENDATIONS
- The biggest difference is because of our hormones
- We as women, we handle stress differently than men
- There’s very much a cascade that happens that starts in your adrenal and cortisol when they get called in more frequently that they should
- And we have this stress responses that take place
- Progesterone and estrogen kind of take the back seat. They don’t get the priority anymore because we are dealing with stress
- And of course, as most of us can relate, we always have incoming stress. There is always something going on
- We noticed these changes in our hormones and hormones are essential just for us feeling ourselves every single day
- Our hormones are dictating us how we feel
- We really need to keep estrogen and progesterone balanced and when that goes on a rye, we have hormonal dysfunction or hormonal imbalance and we will feel like crap
- I think that keto, when approached from an unhealthy place can be stress
- When it is approach from this healthy place where you are making sure to nourish your body appropriately that makes a huge difference
- It’s really just thinking about all the things that could make this diet change as stressor
- I would say, if you can go into the tracking mode knowing it is going to be a short period of time and needing to see what that looks in your plate is necessary
- Tracking your macros could be a useful tool at the beginning
- From there, take out the app from your phone and just use your eyes to gage how this plate of food would look if it were at a keto plate and build that
- You don’t have to be obsessive with it
- That’s not how we are meant to approach food and nourishment
- Let’s get back to what it actually means to have a meal in front of us
- You don’t have to track; just use your intuition and your eyes, let everyday be different
WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU
- I am approaching the 100th episode of the Keto For Women Show
- I am really excited to continue my journey there and teach about women’s health
- Fat Burning Female Project is my women’s group class that will be going up again in July
- My passion is the mindset piece of all of this and how to actually break free from this diet mentality that we have in order to get our bodies balanced and healthy and happy, I am teaching more about that and doing an online course platform
FAVORITE KETO MEAL
- Coconut curry
- It is like a coconut cream based with a bunch of veggies, broth and any sort of meat
- I often roast radishes
- Right now, I have been making a lot of stews and soups and I put the radishes into the stew/soups in my instant pot and it also gives it a potato like consistency too
- I just chopped them up, I don’t peel them
HOW CAN PEOPLE FIND YOU
- Website: shawnmynar.com
- Podcast: Keto For Women Show
- Instagram: shawnmynar
- Facebook: Shawn Mynar Health
