Hello! You can find a summarized version of my “about me” in the “about” tab, but I wanted to go into more detail about myself, my journey, and why I love my lifestyle.

For starters, I’m Paige. I am a current student at the University of Texas here in Austin, Texas. My major is Corporate Communications with a minor in Rhetoric and Writing. I’m from a small town, so living in such an incredible city and attending a large school has been quite the adventure – but more on that later.

I wanted to start this blog to document not only my health progress, but to also post the recipes I make. I want to show other college students and young adults that it IS possible to live this lifestyle. I want to show people that health is possible.

To get into my health journey: I was never very “sickly” when it came to conventional illnesses one gets growing up. I only ever had strep once, I’ve never had the flu, and I rarely missed school for other things along those lines. However, I had my own set of difficulties, which started in 2nd grade with migraines (yes, 2nd grade). I have pretty vivid memories of going to the nurses office to take Children’s Motrin – I particularly liked the grape flavor for whatever reason. As I grew older, I was put on beta blockers to prevent migraines, as well as Maxalt (bless that med) for when I had a migraine. When the beta blockers stopped working and I hit puberty, I was put on birth control to manage migraines and anti-seizure medication. I hated the anti-seizure meds, they really messed with my sleep patterns and make me feel a little off, so much so that I just stopped taking them to prevent my migraines.

On top of my migraines, I later developed sever abdominal pains. These episodes would last for hours and were debilitating – I often couldn’t walk and would just stay in bed with pain. Imagine a huge ballon in your stomach expanding, but it never pops. These landed me in the ER a few times, where I was never told anything about why these things were happening and they sent me home. I also had a number of inflamed lymph-nodes in the back of my neck, always the same one – on the back left of my neck.

I’d been tested for a number of illness before discovering one of the huge factors in all my discomfort – gluten. I was 18 when I found out I had a gluten allergy. It didn’t make sense to me until I had my first plate of gluten-free pasta: for the first time in my life, I was not in pain after eating pasta. I sincerely thought that everyone felt as horrible as I did after eating pasta. Going gluten-free healed my migraines, stopped my strange abdominal episodes, and helped me gain weight – I am about 5’7″ and weighed about 110 pounds. That wasn’t okay.

Fast forward to my sophomore year of college. My health took a turn for the worst when I was having trouble remembering simple tasks. Had I eaten? Had I already washed my hair? While basic, as a 19 year old it felt very strange to just forget very basic things. I also started loosing some of my hair, experiencing pretty severe exhaustion (I was sleeping about 16 hours a day), as well as other ailments. It took about a year, but I was later diagnosed with an “undifferentiated connective tissue disease mostly resembling lupus.” So, basically, my blood-work is just really funky and all over the place, but not quite at the numbers to be lupus. My doctor told me that it would, and would, get worse if we didn’t act. I was put on 400mg of Plaquenil and told to give it 3 months before it would kick in. However, I didn’t leave without asking about changing my diet. He told me, “it couldn’t hurt” and to let him know how it went.

I chose the Paleo Diet after doing a lot of research of my own on autoimmune disease. For me, this way of eating made sense – eliminate foods that cause inflammation and decrease inflammation in the body. By adhering to this diet and taking my medication, in February 2014, I was told that I was in remission! Not only that, but my Doctor had never seen someone go from my numbers to nothing. When he asked what I did, I reminded him that I started a Paleo lifestyle to which he said, “well keep it up and you can get off your meds.” How cool is that?!

Now, in 2015, here I am completely off my medication and controlling my disease through diet and exercise. It has been an empowering experience that has shed light on just how powerful food, exercise, and lifestyle is.

With this blog, I hope to encourage others like me, post awesome recipes, and advice for anyone who is young who is either battling with an autoimmune disease, or is just trying to live a healthier life.

Welcome! Let’s keep it healthy!