My dear friend who is a retired priest once told me that she most often observes people make major changes to their health and lifestyle only after they’ve hit what she calls a turning point. Losing a few pounds, trying a new form of exercise, eating less meat–all of these are well and good, but the complete lifestyle overhauls only happen after a turning point, probably because that’s what it takes to create the kind of motivation for such an overhaul.

At the time, this was one of those bits of wisdom I filed away for later.

And now, of course, I’ve come to understand what she means or why else would this be a blog post?

My particular turning point was that my hormones went haywire / had minds of their own / turned against me / how dramatic can I get away with being here because it was awful. Awful, I tell you.

To keep a long story short, we weaned in May, and it’s been a crazy, downhill circus since then. Out of control mood swings, unexplained weight loss, extreme fatigue mixed with sleeplessness, spells of crippling anxiety . . . you name it, my hormones probably caused it. It took me forever to figure out that I wasn’t, in fact, losing my mind, like I told my husband I thought I was on more than one occasion, but that my post-post-partum hormones were all over the map.

Luckily, another wise friend of mine who is not a retired priest but is a yoga teacher and natural living guru recommended this book.

Actually, she recommended it years ago when I was suffering from endometriosis. At the time, I kind of skimmed it, took away one or two suggestions that worked easily with my lifestyle, and filed it away on my Kindle.

This time around, I read, highlighted, made notes, had conversations with my husband to discuss how we could make our family life support the changes I needed to make, everything. A turning point, indeed.

I’m about a month in, and I’m officially one of those crazy people who is only moments from stopping strangers on the street and telling them, “I read a book and made lifestyle changes, and I feel like a completely different human being! Want to know more?”

I decided to blog about it instead. Cue the collective sigh of relief from my neighbors.

I will not be evangelizing about hemp seeds whilst pruning my mums.

Endocrine Disruptors
I guess I lived in some sort of clueless bliss about how many endocrine disruptors were entering my system. Now I’m looking up pretty much everything I’m putting into and on my body, even more so than I did in the past. It’s been a bit time-consuming, but I’m committed to my health and hormonal balance more than anything else at this point.

Morning Routine
My mornings look very different from how they did a month ago. I wake up at 5:50 every morning, follow an ayurvedic routine that involves scraping my tongue with some sort of oddly-shaped metal object, and enjoy a light form of exercise. Two mornings a week, I go to yoga at 6:30. The other mornings, I take the toddler for a long stroller ride through the neighborhood. Learning that light exercise was better for my constitution than running or cardio was eye-opening for me (not that I was running or doing cardio, mind you, but I always felt like I should be).

Natural Products
Natural deodorant. I don’t even know what to say about this one beyond that it’s actually working, and I will no doubt write a post about my experience with this because I know it’s daunting.

Seed Cycling
I’m also seed cycling, which I didn’t actually read about in the book but had been meaning to try anyway. And I’ve made some other dietary changes that are working wonders and deserve their own post, too.

I guess this is a bit of an introductory post about a topic that has become very important to me and that I’m sure I’ll blog about here and there, but I’d love to know if you’ve had any turning points in your health journey and what changes you made. It’s the best thing we can do for ourselves, right?