Hi! I'm Ayana
The "How to Enjoy Life Specialist"
I grew up feeling larger than everyone else my age, different, and out of place. To give you an example I have been 5' 7" since I was about 11 years old and I haven’t weighed what I do now since before then. At my heaviest, I was 2 lbs shy of 200.
I was not massively overweight, but I was overweight, I got sick often, had digestive problems, allergies, and food sensitivities.
Let me take it back a little so you can get a better picture.
I am 8 years old, and my eyebrow starts to turn white. I'm pretty freaked out, thinking my whole eyebrow is going to turn white.
I had developed vitiligo (an autoimmune disease) on the left side of my head.
Around the same time, I began to smell “ghost” smells or things that weren’t really there. Usually cigarette smoke. It was terrible.
Fast forward to 18, and I’m on the computer at home, when all of a sudden, I wake up in an ambulance. We lived two blocks from the hospital. Irrelevant, but laughed about it.
I had a seizure, due to a brain tumor on the left side of my head just above my ear.
That’s one of those things that you think happens to other people or in movies, at least that’s what I told myself after having a few partial seizures where I was conscious and aware but language and sound ceased to make sense, sort of like I was underwater. I thought it was due to stress.
And then I thought it was a brain tumor like a day or so before I had a seizure and ended up in the hospital. I'm grateful it was small and I'm here to talk about it, and also that it was a part of what brought me to what I'm doing now.
Through high school and college I struggled with food allergies and sensitivities, digestive issues, weight, acne, along with anxiety, disastrous thinking, being highly self conscious, feeling unworthy, just all the unfortunately usual things.
I cut out gluten when I was 15 or 16 and dairy shortly after. I ate what I thought was a pretty healthy diet, because as you can maybe imagine, having a brain tumor felt like coming face to face with death, and being that I was still alive, health was important.
I also wanted to look and feel good in my body like I knew I should if it was functioning optimally. I tried many of the modern fad diets, except keto thank God. I tried supplements and other natural products, went to the gym regularly, got acupuncture, but nothing seemed to work completely.
So I essentially gave up. I was eating what I thought was a healthy diet, dealing with my emotional eating, still going to the gym regularly and living an active lifestyle. I felt pretty good, but I didn’t feel amazing, even though I had achieved the figure that I wanted (and did lots of mindset work) but I still had acne, my kidneys hurt when I drank caffeine, I would get bloated often, and I even got rashes on my arms after eating out sometimes.
Paying attention to my body naturally guided me towards the diet and way of living that I enjoy now—with a couple minor exceptions once I discovered the extensive science and research that exists that validated everything that I was feeling, and explains why in detail.
This is why I do what I do. It should not be as hard as it is to figure out how to feel good in your body and I am here to help other people learn what I learned and guide you through it while providing a space for FUN personal growth and transformation, community, support, and accountability.