I began my health journey in 2016 when I was having health challenges.  This was primarily due to being overweight and the inability to take off the extra pounds.  In fact, the more I exercised and ate healthily, the more weight I put on and the more health issues I experienced. Nothing worked. I mean nothing! I saw nutritionists, dieticians, physicians, psychologists, psychiatrists and went to the weight loss clinic in Edmonton.  I journaled, tracked my meals, and exercised up to 9 times a week, and never cheated on my meal plans. Somehow though, I blew up to 269 pounds by September 2016.  The healthcare providers gave up on me and I felt defeated.  Although I was a candidate for the free weight loss program- bariatric surgery, the wait list was min 3 years.  I could not wait that long and decided to take my health into my own hands. I booked surgery in Tijuana Mexico for Jan 2017, and I got a bariatric sleeve done. Before I decided to take this leap towards my health, my husband and I were very busy with sports and so many of our meals were not homemade, rather they were purchase, heat, and go meals. Surprisingly, these foods were approved by dieticians and physicians- because diet food is healthy for you right?  I was also not a huge cook unless it was BBQ or heavy pasta dishes. Our salads were the bagged kind, we would purchase roasted chicken or pre-made meals from the deli and sidekicks from the aisles. Little did I know diet food, low fat food and processed food was slowly poisoning me. Since I was paying the big bucks for this surgery, I decided to pivot and committed myself to making all my meals homemade in preparation for this surgery. I joined Epicure and started eating homemade meals, learning to read labels and began my love affair of cooking from scratch and fueling my body with whole foods.  I went from boxed frozen or packaged meals to 98% home cooked grub. The night before my surgery I weighed 252 pounds.  

A month after my trip to Mexico, I confided in my family physician that I had the surgery.  I was very fortunate that he was happy that I found something that appeared to be working for me and he got all my testing set up and frequent follow-ups booked to ensure I was healthy.  He had warned me that bariatric patients tend to be malnourished and are required to be on vitamins and supplements for life. However, my checkups and lab work kept coming back normal.  He said, “whatever you are doing, keep doing it”. My health concerns were gone and by the end of 1 year I lost 111 pounds.  I have come very far since 2017.  Today I am a huge advocate of eating natural and whole foods, cooking from scratch, and knowing where your food comes from.  I support local farmers and have become a gardener myself.  To help others and my community I share local farmer information, recommend books, share recipes, host cooking classes, teach people how to meal prep, how to harvest wild food, and educate people about the long-term negative effect that processed and fake food have on our health.  Although I am not perfect and will on occasion share a bag of Miss Vickey’s chips with my husband or I will get popcorn at the movie theaters; eating natural foods is most of my fuel intake.  The food I create is tasty and refreshing.  Most times my meals are simple and customizable. And I always commit to try and eat the rainbow daily.  I hope that I can inspire readers to eat and live better with some of the recipes I will be sharing.  Some recipes will be Epicure inspired and some will not be- but I will always let readers know where to find some of the amazing products I use in my recipes.  For your information purposes, Epicure is 100% gluten free, salt and sugar conscious, is made with organic and whole foods and 80% of the products are vegan friendly. 

To learn more about Epicure please visit my website at https://mistytomashewsky.epicure.com