girlymissjulie’s BodyBlog

I honestly thought that my stretch marks were just something I was going to have to live with forever….my many badges of motherhood, but I am so thrilled to be wrong!! I actually found a way to heal them, for real!! I can’t believe the difference already - I’m so excited!! My stretch marks were very old, transparent ridges and I’ve been watching the ridges slowly fill in and smooth out! My remedy has been a combination of things I had heard of that were said to help stretch marks and I figured putting them together would be even better!

My first weapon is a 1mm dermaroller (if your stretch marks are really deep, you might want to get a 1.5mm) - and this thing is a little weapon indeed! Don’t believe them when they say that using this thing just feels like a tickle - it’s painful, not like childbirth pain or anything, but certainly NOT a tickle! But no pain, no gain!! And the pain is so worth it! A great place to get your dermaroller would be www.dermaroller-planet.com, they have a lot of great information on their site about the dermaroller too or you can find a great deal on one through ebay.

My second weapon is a combination of essential oils: helichrysum & sage in hazelnut & rose hip. The kind of helichrysum you use makes ALL the difference! You do not want to scrimp and go cheap on it or you will not see the same results. It’s not cheap, but again, no pain, no gain - this stuff is like a magic potion! The website I got my helichrysum from (as well as the hazelnut & rose hip oils) is http://www.naturesgift.com/essential/descriptionh-l.htm. This is the best helichysum you can buy and delivers the best healing power. The potion is 2oz hazelnut oil, 2 oz rose hip oil, 2ml helichysum oil and 2 ml sage oil. 

My third weapon has been vitamins. I always take Juice Plus vegetable capsules, fruit capsules and orchard capsules, as well as Vitamin C, and fish oil, but I added a vitamin by Olay designed to improve your skin and I’ve been drinking Sambazon Acai Berry powder in green tea. The claims that the Acai berry will aid in weight loss are a joke - I tried it for that about a year ago and saw zero results, but I do remember the extremely positive effects it had on my skin, so I decided to start drinking it again when I began this.

My fourth weapon is any lotion designed to promote skin healing and regeneration - Palmers Cocoa Butter formula is great and I would use it if I could, but, I can’t because it contains gluten, so I use Gold Bond Ultimate Healing with Shea Butter. This last lotion is just to keep your skin moisturized between treatments. Here’s my treatment regimen:

In the morning, I roll the dermaroller over the parts of my body that have the stretch marks. I then apply my essential oil potion and rub it in really well. I let that soak in unclothed for at least an hour and then I rub on the lotion. I also apply the lotion again in the afternoon. In the evening, I apply the essential oils again, let soak in and then apply the lotion right before I go to bed. I do the dermaroller treatments 5 days a week and for the 2 healing days I still apply the essential oils and lotion morning and night.

When you are using the dermaroller it is really important to not let those parts of your body get any sun/tanning bed exposure. If you must be in the sun, wear sunscreen! You should give your skin about a week of no treatments to heal before exposing it to sun again. This has been the hardest part for me - I’m actually taking a week off this week so I can use my tanning bed next week, get caught up with my color (can’t be too light in the summer!) and then begin treatments again. Even on this week off, I have still noticed my stretch marks fading as my skin continues to renew and heal itself!

This treatment really does work!! You WILL see results even after the first week and the longer you do it, the better results you will get. The dermaroller has actually been found to give better and safer results than laser treatment on stretch marks and if you need any convincing on the healing powers of the helichysum oil, you can read more about it on the website link above or do a google search - you will find many testimonials to this magic oil. An amazing combination these are turning out to be!! 

I was screaming along in my progress and it felt great and then a couple of weeks ago, it all but halted! I haven’t cheated AT ALL - have stayed completely faithful to my clean diet - I keep to my daily ratios spot on - I haven’t had so much as a cookie in over 2 months for goodness sake! I have not missed one single workout, even when this celiac disease has me on my knees, I still push through and make it happen and I am actually working harder in the last couple of weeks than I was before, kicking my cardio up to at least twice a day and still no progress! I haven’t lost one single fraction of an inch or percent of bodyfat - what’s up with that?? So frustrating!! This has got to be normal, right? Just part of the process, I hope and this too shall pass and back to watching the bodyfat fall to the floor everyday……? Boy, I hope so!! Cause this is a whole heck of a lot of work to be doing for nothing!

Okay, so I need to vent here……I am so frustrated with just about everyone in my life - they are all so unsupportive to my new lifestyle! They all just roll their eyes at me when I turn down their food and make myself something clean to eat while they’re chomping down their hot dogs, dripping hamburgers, whatever. And when I start talking about working out, you can actually watch them tune out and mentally ignore everything I’m saying! My best friend is the worst and it’s really getting to me - if I start talking about anything to do with working out, she will say "uh huh….." and just turn her head away…..I don’t get it?? Does anybody else have to deal with this? I don’t see how choosing to start eating right and working my butt off everyday is such a bad thing to them and why they can’t stop giving me the cold shoulder about it….ugh! It just makes me want to work that much harder to really prove to them why I’m doing this!!

My name is Julie and although I am technically 31 years old, I don’t feel a day over 21! I have been married over 10 years to my high school sweetheart and we have 4 kids together. I was very into diet and fitness many years ago before I started having kids and then again after my first, but after my second I started down the typical mommy road of not having any time for myself and finding comfort in food from the stressful days of having MANY small children. I also started my own business which took so much of my time, that exercise just wasn’t an option at all……or so I thought - you know how we all like to make excuses. About a year ago, life started to get really rough and a lot of things started to change - one of which was my health. I became very ill and could not figure out what was wrong with me. I went to doctor after doctor, specialist after specialist and not one person could tell me what was causing my massive digestive issues, abdominal pain, chronic headaches & migraines, chronic fatigue, joint pain, weight gain, mouth sores,  depression, anxiety……the list was so long that every doctor thought that I was a hypochondriac and sent me away. I was getting so scared of what was happening to me because I knew that it was not normal….at all!! When you eat a meal and it sits in your stomach like a rock causing pain & bloating for almost 2 days before you finally throw it all back up again and realize "oh my gosh! That’s what I ate….2 days ago!", that’s just not normal and I felt like the only person who thought so! 

Then one day, like an angel, my sister-in-law accidentally stumbled upon an article about Celiac disease while searching the internet trying to help me and when I began reading it, I couldn’t believe it! I had finally found something that was not only explaining everything that I had been going through for the last year, but so many things that I have suffered from since I was a teeenager! It was quite bittersweet to finally find out what was wrong with me and have it be something that left me no option but to cut out almost every food in the world that I loved because if I continued to ingest the protein gluten, it would eventually kill me. Finding this diagnosis also healed my sister because she finally had an answer to the years of health problems that she had been having as well! Now knowing the signs and symptoms we all believe that Celiac is what took my mom’s life…..she had all of the symptoms that my sister and I had, but the disease wasn’t very known 20 years ago, so she was never diagnosed and it eventually caused the cancer that killed her. A Cinnabon certainly isn’t worth that……

Since finding out that I have Celiac disease, I decided to make some major life changes. I decided that since I couldn’t eat almost all of the naughty foods that had made it so hard to stay on any kind of a diet before and I was so tired of being sick - all I wanted was to feel healthy - that I would finally start making fitness part of my every day and transform myself into the healthiest I had ever been. Just a few months later, I feel like a new woman!! I have so much energy and my depression and anxiety are completely gone with no meds at all! The only things I take everyday now are vitamins and supplements (gluten free, of course!). I am so excited with the progress that I have made so far and can’t wait to see what I can continue to accomplish in the future!