My Chronic Fatigue Recovery And Weight Loss Journey: From Fat and Fatigued To Lean and Loving Life In 4 Months - Green Thickies: Filling Green Smoothie Recipes (2024)

I overcame Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and lost 56 pounds in just a few months. I’d always had a few health problems as a child, but I functioned fairly normally until I got married and suddenly everything changed for me. I ended up in hospital on my honeymoon. After that I was left unable to function and suffered one setback after another until finally making a complete health recovery and dropping 5 dress sizes.

I want you to see the ‘real’ me in this story. Most about pages will mainly share successes. But people who really know me know that I’ve had my highs and lows like everybody else. They have seen me unable to move and even look after my own kids, to being so fit and healthy that I can go for hour long runs and lift heavy weights. If you read to the end you’ll see how I finally discovered what was causing my health problems. Since then I have been blessed to be able to share my approach with millions to help them in the same way. This is my story and I hope it gives you a good sense of who I really am.

Faddy Dieting For My Wedding

It all started when I was on yet another faddy diet to drop a dress size before my wedding day.

We lived in Manchester, England at that time.

I religiously counted my points and I was doing pretty well.

My dinners consisted of as many ‘fat free’ foods as I could lay my hands on. The following is a list of the types of foods I was eating…

And I regularly had a selection of them for one meal. I thought I was so clever having all this food to eat – and hardly any of it counted towards my points!

Sugar free jelly
Sugar free hot chocolate
Sugar free meringues
Egg white omelettes
Diet soda
Low calorie cereal bars
Packaged shakes made with fat free skimmed milk

I finally got to to my ideal weight just before the wedding.

So thankfully the dress fitted and looked pretty good.

So I looked good, but unfortunately I didn’t feel good…

The whole way through my wedding day I had a banging headache that just wouldn’t go away, and I felt all jittery and strange.

This was just the start of my health problems….

Hospitalised On My Honeymoon

At the start of our honeymoon we went to the beautiful lake district for a few days in a lovely hotel. I decided to let my hair down and indulge as I didn’t want to be on a diet on my honeymoon.

We had 4 course meals with lots of rich, fatty, creamy foods that I wasn’t used to. We also had lots of coffees that I didn’t normally drink.

We then set off on a flight to Andorra (small country in Europe) for the second part of our honeymoon.

In the airport I decided to buy a humongous coffee at the airport to keep me awake.

We had been up since 3am and I was already feeling wiped out.

I drank the coffee quickly, then we boarded the flight, and it didn’t take too long before we had landed in Barcelona – Spain for our transfer to Andorra.

I certainly had no idea what was about to happen next…

As soon as I stepped out of the plane, I got this unbelievable pain in my stomach. It was absolutely agonising and I was completely doubled over.

My husband was hoping that I’d be OK to get through passport control – but I literally couldn’t walk.

Tears were streaming down my face because the pain was unbearable and I was scared and didn’t know what to do.

My husband found me a chair and ran off to get help.

The airport staff came back with a wheelchair and pushed me into a lift and then out of the airport into the back of a van.

They were all speaking in Spanish and neither my husband or I could understand them but I was in too much pain to really notice what was going on around me.

My husband said it was terrifying as at times they entered a lift and wouldn’t let him in, so he was running down stairs trying to find me.

We arrived at a hospital and I was seen by a doctor. I was still in agony and she gave me a shot of something. I have no idea what it was because I didn’t understand a word of Spanish at that point.

The doctor had very limited English – but eventually after a while of her examining me, she finally said…

‘There is nothing wrong with you. You are just sensitive’.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I had no idea what was wrong with me but we later found out the shot was something to calm your stomach, an antispasmodic mainly for people with IBS.

I had suffered from IBS for years and although it did get pretty painful at times, it had never gotten this out of control before.

I couldn’t believe IBS could land me in hospital.

After we were released from the hospital a long time later, we had to get a public bus to Andorra as we’d missed our transfer.

I was pretty sick for the next 10 days of the honeymoon and was really upset that this had happened at the start of our marriage. This is me trying to smile but I was really struggling to cope with the heat here.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Diagnosis

When I got home – I was no better, in fact I was worse.

My energy plummeted, and I struggled to get out of bed and do simple chores most days.

My whole body was deteriorating and I had a whole host of debilitating health problems such as allergies that also landed me in hospital when I scratched my eyes so hard that I scratched my entire eyeball. I would spend every evening just scratching my face and wanted to rip it off.

I had constant stomach pain, couldn’t sleep, everything I ate hurt me, could barely move…

I had to quit working as a teacher as I just wasn’t well enough. I’d already taken so much time off sick and was constantly letting everyone down and it wasn’t fair on the kids.

I was not able to enjoy anything about my life. I stopped seeing friends, my new marriage was pushed to its absolute limits. My husband had no idea he was going to get married and be stuck with an invalid of a wife who couldn’t even move. We were both really upset that this is the way our life had turned out.

We really wanted kids and I was not able to get pregnant for the whole two years after we got married. But realistically this was not the right time to be having kids as I had no energy for looking after them.

To top it all off, I couldn’t do anything useful at all. I couldn’t do household chores most days. Even having a bath would drain me so much I had to lie down and I’d be literally shaking for hours.

Why was this happening to me at such a young age?

Nobody seemed to have the faintest idea what was wrong with me.

I went to doctors with a list of about 50 health problems which they didn’t seem to like. Eventually they gave me various different diagnosis such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME), IBS, Allergies, Insomnia, Depression.

The medication they gave me didn’t work and they seemed to think everything would magically get better if only I would take the antidepressants!

When we suffer from health problems that make us miserable, we are bound to feel depressed. But I knew the depression was only caused by my health problems.

So doctors couldn’t help me and I hit a wall. After a while of feeling sorry for myself, I had a change of heart. I had a spark of hope ignite in me. I refused to believe that this was what my life was going to look like from now on.

I suffered with these health problems for about a year and a half, asking for prayer and being angry when I didn’t get better.

During this time I also gained over 50 pounds in weight going up 5 dress sizes!

I gave up on dieting completely and when I recognised that my eating was a little bit out of control, I read a book that was supposed to help me to overcome overeating.

The book said that what you are to do is just eat everything you’ve always wanted to eat but couldn’t because you were on a diet.

That way you get it out of your system and your appetite starts to regulate itself.

The idea is that we will naturally start to crave salads if we eat too much junk food – that the body will eventually let us know what we should be eating – if we stop going on rigorous diets and depriving ourselves.

Sounded pretty good to me, so I loaded up on chocolate bars and Easter eggs and ate creamy pastas, pizzas, everything I enjoyed.

But what happened was I piled on even more weight and my health was worse than ever.

The worst thing is, I never started craving salads or healthy foods and my body just wanted more and more fatty sugary foods.

Not good!

My Journey To Health Begins

Finally – out of desperation I decided that I couldn’t live like this anymore and there must be something I could do to get healthy.

So I turned to Amazon and my local library and started to read books about health.

Up until that point I’d never had a really big interest in health before. I had read some books about healthy diets as most of us have. The ones that tell you to eat low fat dairy, chicken breasts, low fat margarines and other low fat processed food, and completely avoid saturated fat.

But that ‘health’ advice is outdated and as we know now from science, can actually be the cause of health problems.

I started to read hundreds and hundreds of much more modern books about health, and healthy weight loss and what I learned really shocked me.

I learned the hidden truth about true healthy weight loss and the lightbulb moment when I knew exactly what was wrong with me, how to fix it and how I dropped all the weight in a matter of months!

Let’s take for example saturated fat. Some foods that contain saturated fat are harmful, but saturated fat is actually in quite a lot of foods that most of us agree are good for our health such as coconut, avocado, nuts, and seeds.

So what else should we be eating for good health?

It mainly goes back to something we all know deep down. Yes it really is this simple…

Fruit and veg are the most important foods in any diet – by a long shot.

We all know it – but do we eat them?

Mainly – no. Sadly.

I was one of them.

I didn’t really enjoy eating fruit and veg very much and to be honest with you – I really didn’t think they had any magical abilities to make me healthy.

I knew they were good for us, but I thought I was so sick that some magic pill from the doctor should have cured me.

Most of society thinks the same way. My friends and family didn’t understand why the doctors hadn’t given me any pills to treat my condition, so that I could function again.

When we are constantly thinking a magic pill is going to fix all of our health problems, fruit and veg don’t stand a chance.

Of course I couldn’t have been more wrong.

What I learned during all of my research is that fruit and veg – especially fruit and leafy greens actually do contain an incredible amount of power to not only keep people very healthy – but also to help the body quickly heal from any number of debilitating illnesses.

I was blown away by some of the stories I was reading, people were getting their lives back, dropping dramatic amounts of weight and all with fruit and veg?

It sounded a bit too good to be true.

Surely it couldn’t be that easy?

Well unfortunately – it is simple – but it sure isn’t easy.

If it was that easy – all of us would be doing it surely?

And it sounds easy…..

All you do is get the fruit, and stick it in your mouth, chew it, swallow and repeat.

What Really Stops Us Eating A Healthy Diet?

Unfortunately there are three main stumbling blocks that stop most people (and me too) dead in their tracks when it comes to dropping weight and getting the best health of their life:

1) They simply don’t believe it! It took hundreds of books and testimonials to convince me that this was legit and actually worth trying.

If we don’t believe something is going to work – it doesn’t work. One of my favourite quotes is the one by Henry Ford ‘whether you think you can, or you think you can’t – you’re right!’. It’s so true. If you don’t believe a diet or a healthy eating plan will work for you. It won’t – simple as that.

By sharing my comeback story (later) I hope to show you that it is possible and encourage you to believe it. It will work for you if you believe it can.

2) They can’t drop the junk. It’s not quite as simple as just eating more fruit and veg.

We are told to ‘eat our 5 a day’ and that seems to be all we need to do for good health.

Well unfortunately that’s not all we need to do. There are plenty of sick, overweight people who still eat their 5 a day.

It’s not enough.

You have to completely drop the junk food, at least until you have detoxed and completely lost your desire for it.

If you still have junk food cravings – it still has its grip on you and will continue to grip you both mentally and physically unless you banish it from your life – at least for a good few weeks, if not months.

This is what I had to do and it worked a treat. (more about that later)

3) They don’t have a plan that actually works for both health and weight loss.

As I said in my first email, so many diets claim to be healthy, and it’s a complete lie. If your faddy diet contains processed, packaged foods with an ingredients list as long as your arm with all sorts of chemicals you can’t pronounce, it is not a healthy diet.

You are ingesting a co*cktail of chemicals that are doing untold damage to your health if you eat processed and packaged foods every day.

There is one final missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to weight loss.

This is pretty important if not most important and it’s not what you might expect.

Are you ready?

You have to actually value yourself and that means valuing your own health.

You have to believe you deserve to have the very best health so you can really shine..

You have to believe you have something to give to the world, and even if you can’t see it right now – I promise you that you have something unique and very valuable that can really help other people.

If you are struggling with this, I urge you to begin to look at yourself a bit deeper – because until you start to see that you are extremely valuable in this world, weight loss will not be a powerful enough driver for you to stick to a diet.

If you value yourself and you value your own health, because you want to live a longer and better quality life, and make a difference to people you love and more … then you need to start to put yourself first.

It’s like what they say to you on a flight, that in the event that something happens, you have to put on your own oxygen mask before you put the mask on a child.

You can’t look after other people until you look after yourself.

So what’s the real secret to sustained weight loss?

It’s actually valuing your life and your health.

You can’t get long lasting results on some faddy diet.

Do you know why?

It’s not making you feel good, which means you’ll lack willpower, you’ll feel lousy and your cravings will be worse than ever.

Your body knows when something isn’t right for you and it will send you a million and one warning signs to quit it!

You’re basically set up to fail and unless you break free from this pattern today. Or you will continue to pay in terms of wasted money, poor health, weight gain and lack of confidence in the future.

It’s time to put your health first and get off the treadmill of faddy diets. They aren’t serving you.

Do you agree?

Anyway I digress….. Back to the story

So for me, learning to value myself was a big part of the puzzle. Was I worthy of getting well? Did I have anything to offer? I did lots of reflection during the time when I was ill. Lying flat on your back all day tends to give you a lot of time to think things through.

I had no-one in my life that I could turn to because nobody really understood what I was going through. This was really tough to have no support at all.

So I did the only thing that I could do. I prayed and reached out to God and really did feel like I was loved. I knew I had more to offer the world. I had to trust and believe that I was going to get a chance to really fulfill my potential in life and really be able to help other people.

I wanted to give up so many times as life was just unbearable, but every time I prayed, I felt certain that things would turn around for me. They had to. I had to keep believing.

I had to do the only thing that I felt like I had control over in my life, which was the food I put in my mouth.

I had no energy to do any exercise, no money to go and pay for any kind of treatments or supplements.

So changing my diet was the only thing I could do.

Little did I know at the time, diet is the single most impactful thing you can do to improve your health. And I’m so thankful that I was able to get on the right path and recover.

After a lot of research and experimentation I finally developed a plan that worked, not only as a quick detox, but also as a sustainable long term healthy eating plan – that contains everything needed for optimal health and sustained weight loss.

I managed to drop 5 dress sizes in just a few months when I discovered the secret of sustained weight loss.

(Hint: It might involve something green)

Do you know why a lot of people struggle to lose weight? It’s because their health has totally been destroyed and their bodies are clinging on to every last bit of fat.

Why?

Because they are starved.

How can people be starved if they are overweight?

Well – they are certainly not starved of calories.

But what they are starved of…

is nutrients.

Yes it’s true.

When you start giving your body exactly the right nutrients for good health, do you know what happens?

It can finally let go of that excess weight.

I Discovered The Secret Ingredient Most People Are Missing

Do you know what is one of the most nutritious AND healing foods on the planet?

Yep, you guessed it!

Leafy greens.

That’s one of the many reasons leafy greens are absolutely vital for our health. Your body will really struggle to lose weight if it’s nutrient starved, no matter which faddy diet you follow.

And deep down inside, most of us know that leafy greens do absolute wonders for our health.

Remember how mothers always tell their kids to eat their greens?

Yes – there’s a good reason for that.

So what’s the problem?

The main problem is…

We don’t!

So why don’t we eat our leafy greens?

Well – a few reasons:

1) We don’t like the taste

2) We don’t like the texture

3) They take too long to chew

4) After all that chewing – they contain very few calories and we still need more food to eat and do even more chewing.

No wonder we don’t like our leafy greens!

And I’ve got to be honest with you – I never used to be a fan of salads. And to this day I really don’t like raw spinach, in fact I’d go so far as to say I would rather go hungry than eat a salad made up of mainly raw spinach.

So how in the world do I manage to eat 4-8 cups full of raw spinach every day and enjoy every mouthful?

Two words…

Green Smoothies!

The moment I discovered green smoothies – my life changed, seriously.

What Foods I Gave Up And What I Introduced

I had been experimenting with eliminating foods from my diet.

I had been reading about recovering my health, and I was on a mission to improve my health so I could actually function again.

So far – I had taken out dairy, gluten, refined sugar and most processed foods.

I was feeling SO much better.

The minute I gave up dairy – my debilitating allergies completely went away.

I gave up dairy and refined sugar at the same time.

It took 2 weeks where I had this itchy skin – I was literally scratching every part of my skin, and I had these awful rashes and burns on my face and I couldn’t use any of my normal shop bought creams or lotions.

But after that – well I felt normal again. I no longer spent every evening scratching my face until it bled. Wow – life changing.

I have tried many times since then to reintroduce dairy and my symptoms are mild at first but after a while I my allergies start coming back again.

And listen to this…

My asthma, my hay fever and my eczema that had plagued me most of my life completely went away almost overnight when I cut out dairy.

So it turns out I’m intolerant to dairy and I never knew.

The worst thing is – most people are actually intolerant to dairy and don’t even know it.

Because their symptoms are not life threatening – they’ve always had them and they just live with them.

And in just one week, following the same type of diet that I did is enough to convince people that yes – they have a problem with dairy too, as problems they’ve had all their lives start clearing up.

Wow!

OK so back to the greens…

So I was feeling loads better after the changes I already had made to my diet, but I was still struggling with a lot of things including my energy levels.

I was still pretty floored most days.

One of the worst things about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is people think you’re just lazy because there isn’t a pill you can take from the doctor, and you might be fine one minute and wiped out the next. That means people don’t trust you as you are fine one minute and wiped out the next for no apparent reason.

Why Green Smoothies Are The Key To Optimal Health

I started reading about how amazing green smoothies were for energy.

I decided it was time to put green smoothies to the test.

So I got my blender out and just threw in a load of vegetables including leafy greens.

I didn’t follow a recipe. I just made it up.

Was it tasty?

I’ve got to be honest – no, it was not tasty. I will be sharing my formula with you a little later about how to guarantee your smoothies are tasty. And it took me a long time to realise that green smoothies could actually be tasty.

So really – it was a vegetable smoothie I was making.

It wasn’t good but I didn’t care. I was sick and I was at the point I would have done anything to recover.

So I gulped one of these down every day and something amazing happened….

I started to recover. I started to notice spells of increased energy and felt the life running through my body again.

The weight finally started to come off and it was coming off so fast. Every day I seemed to lose another pound.

After a while I started making simple banana and spinach smoothies and massively increased the amount of fruit in my diet.

It still didn’t taste great – but it wasn’t disgusting either.

Later on I came up with a green smoothie formula that was a complete game changer. The perfect number of calories for weight loss, ingredients that are proven by science to fill you up, eliminate hunger, make you look younger and give you energy you never knew was possible. Keep reading and I will share my formula with you and the recipe that changed my life.

Trivia fact for you…

Did you know that celebrities have all cottoned on to the fact that green smoothies are pretty amazing for your health?

They understand that they are the secret to slimming down and keeping their skin youthful.

Check out this quote from Venus Williams. This lady needs some serious energy to power her through the day.

“If I could live off green juice and smoothies I’d be extremely happy—well, and candy, too,”

I carried on with this strict regime of eating a gluten free vegan diet made up mainly of raw, unprocessed foods because I was absolutely determined to get my life back. I wanted to enjoy my marriage. I wanted to be able to work again. I wanted to have kids. I just wanted to be normal.

I could just feel it was working – and every day I would notice something that I couldn’t do before that I now could do.

For example…

The Sun Made Me Sick!

Most of my adult life I had been intolerant to sunshine.

Sad but true..

One doctor looked at me like I was crazy when I mentioned this and said “That’s a new one on me. I’ll have a look on google and see if I can find any information for you”.

So no luck there.

Whenever I was out in the sun, even for 5 minutes, I’d get a banging headache and heatstroke, feel like I was going to pass out and have to go indoors. Then I’d have to go to sleep for the rest of the day.

And not only that, my hay fever would be unbearable during summer months.

So I never spent much time outside in summer – good job in the UK we don’t get a lot of sun!

4 Months Of Dedication Paid Off

So, I carried on this way for a few months being very strict and going through this detox until something amazing happened.

4 months later – I had recovered from ALL of my health problems. No more allergies, no more chronic fatigue, no more IBS, no more pain, no more depression.

And not only that – I felt better than I ever felt in my entire life.

I can’t describe how much it changed me. I was so happy, so alive, so full of hope and vitality. It was the most incredible feeling ever.

And not only that, but it also had a massive effect on my weight.

I lost all of my excess weight in just 4 months. And a couple of months after that I was even slimmer than I ever thought imaginable.

I lost 56 pounds, dropped 5 dress sizes and I was slimmer than I’d been as a teenager.

I was over the moon that I had my life back.

I had all this energy that I’d never experienced before, the kind of energy that I’d never experienced. I had so much life inside me that I started craving exercise. So I started a running program and also started doing a weights based DVD workout. (P90X)

I went from being flat out in my bed with Chronic Fatigue to spending 1 hour running per day followed by an intensive weight lifting regime.

I could not believe the difference in me.

I was so grateful for my life, so happy to be alive and to be able to move my body again and feel like I could do anything I put my mind to now.

After that I made it my mission to help as many people as I can experience this amazing feeling.

There is nothing on earth that can rival how good it feels when you are feeling your most confident, more alive, more energetic and more happy than you’ve ever felt in your life.

It just takes one little decision to eat life-giving foods every day. And very soon, you won’t have to make this decision every day. It will just be a habit. It’s just simply what you do – how you live who you are.

This sounds like the end of my story, a good happy ending – as all stories are supposed to finish with. But we all know that life isn’t quite like that, so keep reading as I share the struggles I had after this blissful new state came to an end. Or if you’re running short on time, skip to the end where I share more about how I can help you.

We then moved up to Glasgow Scotland where my husband got a new job. We moved there to be closer to his family and wanted to start our own family there.

Pregnant And It AllUnravels

OK let’s get back to my story, when it all started to go downhill.

Earlier I promised I would share my secret smoothie recipe with you.

It was funny how I stumbled upon my secret smoothie formula.

After I got my health back and lost all my weight – we decided the time was finally right to start a family.

I had previously struggled to get pregnant, and this time it just felt right.

I knew I was finally well enough to look after a baby..

I was wondering if my body had healed and whether or not I was going to conceive easily this time.

I needn’t have worried…

I got pregnant straight away!

My daughter, Lowenna was smiling even in the womb. Her name means Joy, and it suits her perfectly!

I wish I could tell you how my healthy diet gave me the pregnancy of my dreams, a healthy glow, a lovely slim body with a cute little baby bump and how I was exactly the same weight after giving birth as I was when I was pregnant.

Sadly that was not the case.

What actually happened was my cravings went haywire and food tastes turned upside down.

The first problem was that I completely went off green smoothies. Just the sight of them made me feeling like throwing up. I could not handle the texture or the look of a green smoothie. I tried making smoothies without greens but I felt so empty after them. I felt I was starving all the time, but couldn’t stomach any food.

I started giving in to my cravings as I became so hungry. So I’m sad to say I started eating processed junk food again and found myself addicted to chocolates. I would shovel them down like there was no tomorrow.

I also had this weird flu type thing that got a lot worse when I had my central heating turned on. I didn’t feel as bad without any heating on, but we had the worst winter ever, with the thickest snow, and it was literally freezing. So having no heat wasn’t an option most of the time. But I did sit there wrapped in two duvets on my sofa for as long as I could cope with the cold. But as soon as I turned the heating on, I’d be wiped out, unable to move.

So eating chocolates and lying on my sofa was a recipe for disaster. And I then developed agonising back ache which seemed to be related to the side I was lying on. Thankfully a chiropractor fixed this.

After about 14 weeks, I turned a bit of a corner. I wasn’t feeling quite as bad any more but I still couldn’t tolerate the green smoothies. So I decided to buy a juicer. I figured that I would juice my spinach and get the nutrients that me and the baby needed from juice instead, and the juice did seem to go down much easier than a smoothie did.

So I started juicing and was starting to feel much better.

But then disaster struck…

My Dreadful Accident While I Was Pregnant

I was juicing spinach after a sleep deprived night.

The spinach got stuck in the juicer spout and the plunger just wasn’t pushing it further down.

For some reason I thought the juicer blade was near the bottom of the juicer. But in actual fact, it was at the top, very close to the opening of the very short spout.

So I did the unthinkable…

The biggest regret of my life…

I pushed my fingers into the juicer to dislodge the spinach.

And I ended up juicing my fingers.

I cut the tops off two of my fingers.

My middle finger was the worst hit, I had lost about an inch off the top of my finger.

I started screaming, staring at my shredded fingers, oozing blood.

I dialled for emergency services, but I couldn’t speak, I just screamed at them…

Just writing this now is making me well up.

I have never shared this story before, so bear with me. This has got to be the hardest thing I’ve ever been through.

They thought I was being attacked so they sent the police round.

The police asked where my finger tips were as sometimes they can stitch them back on. But I said, “I juiced them”. They are in my juicer.

I made finger juice.

They took me to the hospital and I was given morphine which didn’t work. I was so worried about the baby and all these drugs but I was in agony. Eventually they gave me a block on my hand which numbed the pain.

The police called my husband and told him that I’d had an awful accident but didn’t tell him any of the details.

My husband was an hour and a half away at work, and he drove all the way back from work to the hospital. At this point he’d not had a chance to eat any breakfast.

When my husband reached me in the hospital, he took one look at my gory hand, and he fainted!

I was too scared to look at my hand again so I have no idea how bad it must have looked.

I was then given an operation straight away.

They had to cut even more off the length of my middle finger so they would have excess skin at the back. They then pulled the skin from the back of my finger over to the front and stitched it back up.

I got out of the hospital the day afterwards and back to the scene where it all happened.

I couldn’t chop vegetables or make smoothies as I needed both hands for that, so I just sat eating bread out of a packet. I was back to junk food again.

I had nightmares about it every night for a long long time until I received some trauma help.

To make matters worse, we were due to move house 2 weeks after I had my accident. And I was supposed to be packing up the house! We were moving away from family and friends to start a new life miles away with my husband’s new job.

I don’t know how we got through this time, but here we are, still standing!

We got to our new location, me heavily pregnant, due to give birth in just over a month. A new location where we didn’t know anyone in the Highlands of Scotland, in a small city called Inverness. My husband was starting a new full on busy more than full time job, and me unable to lift a finger!

I literally couldn’t move my whole right hand at all. I am right handed and had to write with my left hand during this time. Every time I tried to move my hand a shooting pain went through my fingers, so I just didn’t move it for over a month. Then my hand completely seized up and I couldn’t move it even if I wanted to.

Thankfully I was provided with daily physio at the local hospital which was within walking distance. I was so grateful because I couldn’t drive and I couldn’t even get on a bus as I couldn’t balance with my big bump and one hand out of action. And we knew nobody who could have given me a lift.

I had just one month to get my hand working before I was due to give birth to my baby.

I had to do daily exercises, moving my fingers in different ways for over an hour every day.

Thankfully, just before I gave birth, I regained full control of my hand again.

So physically I could do almost everything I used to be able to do, apart from sewing and bowling which I still can’t do now.

But mentally I struggled to accept my new deformed finger. My beautiful new baby was a welcome distraction but still to this day, I rarely look at my finger because it is misshapen and has a big round ball type tip on the top of my finger and no nail.

So I generally hide my fingers and don’t talk with my hands anymore. You’ll never see a video of me showing my finger as I don’t like to draw attention to it.

I didn’t even want to share this story and it has taken me 8 years to pluck up the courage to share it here for the first time publicly on my blog. And I guess this may be the first step in me finally accepting it.

But I did want to be honest with you and share my struggles, because all of us are guilty of thinking that other people’s lives are a bed of roses, and we all have our unique and different struggles in life. Sharing these with each other is what draws us close together so we support each other through the good and the bad times. Nobody is immune from the struggles of life.

Back to the story.

Hungry, Tired & Time Starved With A New Baby

My beautiful little girl, Lowenna was born and I was determined to be a healthy role model for her.

Before I had children, I had gotten used to doing what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it and eating what I wanted, when I wanted.

So it was kind of a shock to have a little person completely dependent on me who seemed to choose the moments where I sat down to eat my meals to scream and scream, like it was the end of the world.

As a lot of new mothers do, I tried everything to calm her down, offer her food, try and get her to sleep, pace back and forwards, sing to her, go out for a walk.

And a lot of the time these things worked – but the problem was my food was sitting on the table going cold and untouched, and I was SO hungry (and grumpy – I’ve never been one for skipping meals)!

I also knew I needed the extra calories for feeding my baby and I needed the energy to get through these physically and emotionally tiring days on very little sleep.

I was honestly at the end of my tether.

This is when I started buying chocolate bars and eating 10 a day just to get through the day.

The result?

I actually put on even more weight than when I was pregnant!

Pretty horrific. Especially when everyone tells you the weight is going to drop off when you start breastfeeding.

Not the case with me.

And I was constantly wracked with guilt because my nutrients are my baby’s nutrients and I KNEW how to eat healthy, I was just too tired to think straight and work out a solution to this problem.

During the late stages of my pregnancy, after I was able to use my hand again, my standard breakfast consisted of a bowl of porridge topped with nuts, seeds and raisins and a glass of green smoothie.

I tried to carry on with this breakfast pattern and it just didn’t work.

My porridge would sit there going cold and congealed while my baby demanded my attention.

And I could often drink just the green smoothie, but the problem was it only filled me up for about an hour and then I was starving hungry again, and once again reaching for the chocolate bars.

It was driving me crazy, literally.

My slim healthy body and good mood were long gone.

It went on like this for months – and then I had a brainwave.

How I Invented The Green Thickie

Why not just add my oats, nuts and dried fruit into my blender along with my fruit and leafy greens while I make my green smoothie?

I tried it, and added in a couple of other ingredients I usually used to add into my porridge like nuts or seeds, some dried fruit and other things that made it delicious like vanilla or cinnamon.

I couldn’t believe the result…

I had in my hand a complete meal smoothie that contained all of the ingredients that I needed.

This smoothie was:

– Filling

– Tasty

– Nutritious

– Unprocessed

The Green Thickie was born.

I called my green smoothie a Green Thickie because it was thick and green and a complete meal.

I also coined my slogan:

Make it green, thick and quick, to make a healthy habit stick!

This was long before it was common to see smoothies with more filling ingredients in them. I had never seen another smoothie like this on the internet and I believe the concept of Green Thickies has sparked a trend of seeing more filling smoothies across the world, which makes me very happy.

The unique combination of different ingredients meant it was the most delicious smoothie I’d ever tasted, and not only that, it made it so easy to take a sip in-between looking after my baby, so it often took me an hour to drink it, but my energy soared through the roof and stayed high all day long.

The best thing was…

My weight started going down again.

So how long did it take me to lose the extra weight?

It took me about 4 months to reach my ideal weight again.

My baby was born in July and I spent a few months actually piling on the pounds, chomping on chocolate bars as that’s all I seemed to have the time to grab and eat.

When I made my first Green Thickie, I loved that particular recipe so much that I literally drank it daily for 6 months straight. And not just once a day – I drank it twice a day! So this is the recipe responsible for my weight loss after I gave birth to my first baby.

And I’m going to give you my exact recipe in just a minute.

I’ve got to be honest with you – it wasn’t until I started my blog to share this amazing invention with you that I started to experiment a bit more and create different recipes. And now I have hundreds. I put my 80 best recipes into a book.

The very first Green Thickie recipe that I ever invented is still one of my very favorites. You can get that exact recipe at the end of this page.

Before that, I want to share with you the formula for creating a Green Thickie so you can easily adjust any of my recipes for your own needs and taste.

6 essential ingredients in a Green Thickie

There are 6 essential ingredients in a Green Thickie.

1) Liquid. Your smoothie won’t blend without it. You need this so your smoothie slips down the hatch easily without you having to chew. We’re too busy for chewing right?

2) Fruit The lifeblood of good health – you don’t realise how important fruit is for your health despite what anti-all-forms-of-sugar gurus may tell you. Funnily enough the definition of a smoothie is a blended fruit drink. And the amount of emails I get from people asking me for a ‘fruit free’ smoothie (which I do actually have a couple of in my book) but I would really prefer to see you eating an abundance of fruit in your Green Thickies.

3) Greens As I shared with you a couple of days ago, greens help our bodies heal, give us energy, keep us balanced and help us lose weight. Also an essential ingredient. If you are worried about tasting them – don’t be, I promise you will not taste them in my Green Thickies. And if you are turned off by the colour, add some dark berries to your smoothie which will turn it purple.

4) Protein: Who needs protein powder when you can get your protein from a natural, healthy whole food for a fraction of the price? I add nuts and seeds to all my Green Thickies which turn them into a complete meal complete with protein. This is what builds your body and staves off hunger for a lot longer – which helps you lose weight.

5) Filler: Here’s where things get interesting. Tomorrow I’m going to be sharing more about why calories DO matter and how we can ensure we get the right amount, not too little so we are hungry and not too many so we can still lose weight. The filler makes the smoothie into a complete meal and keeps you full without needing to snack until your next meal. I started off with just oats as a filler and now I have 20 different all natural fillers. There are options for all special diets, grain free, raw, gluten free, high protein and more.

6) Sweet and tasty: This is the only ingredient section that is optional for making Green Thickies. I have a sweet sweet tooth (and I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with that – more about that later) so I love love love to make my smoothies extra sweet – so they feel like a treat and I want to carry on drinking them year after year. I like to add healthy sweet ingredients like dried fruit to my smoothie so I feel like I’m eating dessert for breakfast. Those with less of a sweet tooth can leave out the dried fruit. This is also where you may like to add more flavour to your smoothies, herbs, spices and anything healthy, natural with a good flavour can be added here. Feel free to remove these or experiment.

As you can see, Green Thickies have more ingredients than the average smoothie. This is because you need more variety in your meals than just fruit and leafy greens. All of these ingredients give you everything your body needs for good health and weight loss.

Now my story doesn’t end there. But I am aware how long my story is getting, so I will summarise the next few years as quickly as I can.

Chronic Fatigue Returns During My Second Pregnancy

I felt great while I had my first baby, drinking my Green Thickies and I was always full of energy.

But just under 2 years later I was pregnant again with my second baby. As soon as I got pregnant I had a similar pregnancy to the first one. I went off all of my healthy foods and only wanted to eat dry bland foods like crackers and bread. So for a good few months I pretty much lived on bread.

I felt dreadful. I had anemia and no energy to look after my little girl who was now a very active toddler.

My friends and health colleagues convinced me that my vegan diet was to blame for my health problems and at that point I switched to a paleo type diet and didn’t drink many of my Green Thickies. I didn’t like the paleo food as I have never liked animal products but I was trying to do the best for my baby and my own health. I had such severe brain fog, I couldn’t even think clearly so I was easily swayed by other people at this point. If I hadn’t have gone off my Green Thickies, I probably would still be well, but I felt too sick again to want to drink them.

At this time, I had an infection in two of my front teeth due to a biking accident I had when I was a kid. I already had root treatment and it had become infected. I had to have 2 of my front teeth removed and had implants fitted. Cosmetically, the implants don’t look great as you can see the metal pole and I now have a fake gum because most of my gum had to be removed. So I was already feeling freakish after my finger accident and now I’d lost more parts of my body. I lost all of my confidence and just wanted to hide all the time.

My beautiful little boy, Ellis was born.

After Ellis was born, I continued to feel dreadful. My chronic fatigue had returned and I was so ill I couldn’t look after my kids any more and both of my kids went to full time nursery.

This was heartbreaking for me because I had planned to bring my kids up myself, and had really enjoyed looking after my daughter.

After a while, I decided to return to my Green Thickies and previous healthy diet. AlmostImmediately I felt well again and my good health came and ideal body size came back to me within just a few months again.

We moved to a new area again and by this stage the kids adored being at nursery and they didn’t want to stop going to nursery. We found a lovely forest outdoors heart centered nursery and the kids had the best experience there that I could ever wish for them. I could never have provided all the experiences they got at that amazing place so I’ll be forever grateful for that.

Third Episode Of Chronic Fatigue and Finally Some Answers

I dedicated myself to my Green Thickies work, working full time and doing what I could to spread the word about Green Thickies and helping as many people as I possibly could.

I was over the moon to see Green Thickies recommended by a doctor on a major broadcasting channel in the UK, Channel 4.

They put the Green Thickies diet to the test in front of the whole nation, and the lady who was following my plan got some great results.

A couple of years ago I set myself an unrealistic deadline at work and stressed myself out to the point where I stopped making time to make healthy food and just ate junk food instead for a couple of months.

After a series of health problems such as my teeth implants becoming infected, I had to have an intrusive operation which left my so depleted that I developed chronic fatigue syndrome yet again. This was the third time I’d had this and every year it had lasted for 2 years before I finally found the solution and recovered a few months later.

During this time, I was speaking to a doctor about my health problems and he asked me if I’d ever been tested for celiac disease, which I hadn’t, despite having constant digestive problems. So I did the tests, and got a phone call from the doctor.

The tests revealed I had celiac disease.

I was so shocked, but it explained so much.

I finally realised why I had the unexplained health problems. It was my allergy to bread that was causing it. And now I know why my health got worse and worse during my second pregnancy when I was pretty much living on bread and nothing else.

I was also quite a sickly child with lots of allergies, and very low levels of fitness. Again, I was quite relieved I found the answer.

Straight away I realised that my vegan diet was never the problem, it was just the bread all along.

I spent a year trying to recover my health on a strict gluten free diet. But it just didn’t work. I was so sick I felt like I needed something a bit more radical. So I cut out all processed foods and went on a raw food diet for 10 months. Within a few months I was healed again.

I was over the moon to get my health back once again. I also lost most of my excess weight. I didn’t actually get as low in weight as I previously had because I was building a large amount of muscle at the same time as shedding fat from my body.

Now I’m back on the diet that has always worked for me in the past and continues to work for me, Green Thickies for breakfast and lunch and a cooked vegan, gluten free, unprocessed nutrient rich dinner. No more gluten for me!

Despite all these health setbacks, I’m now feeling fitter than I’ve ever felt in my life.

I’ve joined a gym and focusing on weight training mainly, and I’m so impressed at how quickly my muscles are building. I’m feeling so strong and healthy and I never want to stop feeling this way.

I’ve had about a year without processed foods now and I feel fantastic. Long may it last!

I’m now also studying for a diploma to become certified in vegan nutrition as that is where my passion still lies. I am solidifying my trust with solid scientific evidence in the diet that I know is the healthiest diet for me and for the thousands of people who are drinking Green Thickies.

I have written this about me page as we go into 2019. I will keep it updated and hopefully I will report that my health remains just as good if not better than it is now.

Thank you so much for taking time to read my story. You just being here means the world to me.

No doubt you’ve got lots of questions about Green Thickies. I did write a recipe book and a 7 day detox to answer all of these questions, and if you aren’t ready for that just yet, I also put all of my tips and recipes into free daily emails that I send out to the Green Thickies community.

At the time of writing, 133,797 people have received these emails, and I get thank you messages all the time telling me how much they have changed people’s lives.

Get My First Delicious Green Thickie Recipe Here

OK so the moment we’ve all been waiting for…

No doubt you’ll be wanting my exact recipe so you can make it and get the same results?

You can get my very first Green Thickies recipe that helped me lose 56 pounds in 4 months, straight to your email inboxby clicking here.

Starting to replace your breakfast and your lunch with a Green Thickies is the first step to optimal health.

You might be wondering, what about my dinner? What if I don’t want to drink a Green Thickie for lunch, what should I eat?

When I first shared my story on my blog, I received hundreds of emails and comments from people all asking the same thing – please would I tell them exactly what I ate so they can get the same results.

So that’s exactly what I did.

I started creating healthy, calorie counted meal plans that were made up of the most delicious meals I was making, which were Green Thickies, other healthy options and delicious cooked plant based meals. Seeing as leafy greens are at the heart of this meal plan, I call my meal planning system The Leaf System.

And even years later, it continues to be my number one best selling product, by far, and I still get daily testimonials from people who can’t believe the results they have got in as little as just one week.

If you’re ready to commit to 1-4 weeks of following my healthy weight loss plan – you are going to be blown away by the results.

I get testimonials daily from people telling me how much I have helped to change their lives.

Here’s just one example of an email I received recently that brings a tear to my eye.

“Hi Katherine, I wanted to share my progress after being on the green thickies for almost 2 months now. I am so excited with my daily workout and the thickies and smoothies. I have dropped 4 dress sizes. I do not own a scale to weigh myself, but I put items in my closet that never thought I could possibly get into and I have achieved into getting back into my smaller dresses and pants. I have successfully gone from size 18- 20 to now size 12-13 my goal is to get down to a size 8. So I want to thank you Katherine and the greenthickies team for your constant support in my journey to a healthy me.

You have given more than you will ever Know my self confidence back, Even though I have some minor imperfections on my skin. To me it is not even noticeable, I can now wear shorts again, I can wear tank tops, I can wear a swim suit. All because of you. I was never proud of my body. But now I can hold my head up high and thank the Heavens for you Katherine. so I bless you for all your goodness in allowing me to be a part of this healthy journey. I even started a new business recently. I am so excited now I am able to meet the public and not feel self conscious of my looks and weight. So once again Katherine God Bless You.”

“YOU ARE MY ANGEL”

Isn’t this amazing?

I am so passionate about helping people that I never wanted lack of money to stop people getting success with their health, weight and lives. That’s why I gave you my free Green Thickies recipe above (and I share many more via email) and I am also making one month of meal plans in my signature product available to you completely free.

If you’d like to learn more about my meal plans, click here.

Can’t wait to hear a similar comeback story from you soon!

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