I Got COVID: My Experience

Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, fat loss expert turned lifestyle and high performance coach. Welcome to Listen up the podcast. On this podcast, I do what I do best. Taking complicated information that is relevant to us now and breaking it down simply with actionable steps you can implement to level up your life. I also regularly interview some of the most inspiring and courageous men and women on the planet who at their worst, learned how to achieve success greater than anything they ever dreamed possible, creating everything from nothing. If you are new here, I encourage you to go back and listen from episode one when this podcast was previously called Leveling up for the Full Transformative Experience. Welcome back to Listen Up. So I didn't record a podcast last week. I didn't release one last week. It's the first time in two years I ever skipped a week recording or releasing an episode. And the reason I didn't do it is I was actually very, very sick. And and I had the big C. I had Covid, I did. My husband had it. And I'm going to share on this episode a little bit about my journey. What I went through, what I found out, what I learned, where I am on the other side. That's what this episode's going to be about. Those of you that have known me for a while listened to me, followed me, worked with me, you know that I do share a lot of opinions about things, but I've remained very neutral on this topic this last year. In fact, there's a lot of topics I've remained neutral on. Not because I didn't want to shout from the rooftops my opinions, but because there's a lot of unanswered questions I still have. There's a lot of things that are in the unknown to me. There's a lot of things that I'm not extremely black and white about. This year especially. And it seems that this world, this year and last year, 2020, 2021, the time of this recording seems very divided. People want very black and white answers to be a for or against, something to be all in on one topic and not on another. And that's just truly not who I am or how I operate. I find myself being a neutral person in a lot of ways, very inquisitive, and I don't have a lot of answers. So in this episode I'm going to share what I went through, a little bit about my opinions. And I just hope that some of you will take it in with an open mind and recognize that what I went through, what worked for me, is not the same for Everybody, we're all very different. We all have to be our own health advocates and we all have to make the best decisions for ourselves. Okay, so let me let you know what happened. So about four weeks ago, I was having massive flare ups in my body from all types of my past injuries. So if you've known me for a while, you knew I had some setbacks with injuries over the last year. And all of them started flaring up again. I started feeling pain in my back, in my hip from my bicep, tear in my foot from where I broke it. Like, just massive flare ups. And I was baffled on what was going on because I take very good care of myself. I am 49 years old, um, but I take very good care of myself. Heck, I have a whole business with health and fat loss and fitness and all those things. I hadn't changed much. So I was confused on why I was having all these flare ups and which brought me to doing a lab test. And in my lab test, I was showing high levels of inflammation. Now, I do have an autoimmune condition, but I've managed it over the years. And this was unusually high the inflammation, but didn't still put it together that I, that I had Covid. So had a lot of inflammation, a lot of pain, probably upped my workouts even more. Trying to, to get to the other side of it, thinking, oh, I just need to activate muscles more or whatever it is. In hindsight, that probably wasn't the best idea. But then what happened was about two weeks after that, I couldn't lift my head. One morning I. I woke up, I knew I had a high fever, came, felt like it came out of nowhere. Couldn't lift my head out, up. I felt just completely knocked out, sick. Still didn't occur to me it might be Covid. Assumed it was a flu. Something. I had not been sick in over a decade, not had a serious sickness or anything in over a decade. So my husband got me soup, all the things you do for the flu. And I rested for two or three days and I felt extremely sick, like I had a massive flu. Still didn't put it together that it could be Covid. Until about day four, I was feeling a little bit better, but I lost my taste and smell. And that's when I deep down knew I'm like, okay, crap, that's. This is probably what it is. So I got a test and sure enough, it came back positive. And right when mine came back positive, my husband started feeling sick. So he was a few days behind ME tested him as well. He was also positive. So we knew we had it. So what happened then? Well, for exactly two weeks, for both of us, it was very up and down. Now, I had a very rough first three days where it felt full on flu, Foggy, had extreme fatigue, chills, high fever, all of that. And his started a little bit more mild than mine. But both of us would have described the same feeling where you would start feeling okay for a few hours and then it would just hit you again. And I had understood that Covid created fatigue in people. I would hear people say they're extremely tired. With us, it was like it wasn't tired where you want to go take a nap. It was more like you would try to walk to the other side of the room and it would feel like you're running a marathon. Just completely winded us. Took everything in us to move from one side of the room to the other to go upstairs. So we pretty much stayed in bed, was on the couch, just hydrating a lot and doing everything we can to recover. And now I will say we are for sure one of the lucky ones. I believe that Covid is very real. I believe that there are some people that are not so lucky and it can go south very quickly. I. I believe in all that. I also believe that one of the huge variables in why him and I had a rough time, but are on the other side of it now, fully without it getting worse, was because of our commitment to health and taking care of our bodies and how we eat unprocessed natural foods, eating anti inflammatory diets. I fully believe in every cell of my body that that is a big reason that we were able to be one of the lucky ones and overcome this fully at the time of this recording. Right now, I feel fully recovered. I don't have any lingering symptoms. I'm not contagious. He's not contagious anymore. But we were one of the fortunate ones. And I believe it's because of our commitment to taking care of our body. Now, what are my feelings about this? My feelings are that everybody has to do what's right for them. Everybody has to do what's right with them. I was not vaccinated. And people did ask me, wow, you got so sick. Do you regret it now? Do you wish you were vaccinated? I don't know how I feel about the vaccine yet. I'm just going to be quite honest. My opinion was I did not want to get it until it was out a lot longer. I wanted to see more research on it. I am a firm believer that if our bodies are in a great, optimal, healthy state, that our immune systems will do their job. And that's how we fight viruses. You get sick, your immune system activates, you recover and you're stronger because of it. And I think back to being a kid, not to compare chickenpox and Covid. I know they're very different, but when I was a kid, when the neighbor down the street got chickenpox, your parents would send you to go play with the kids so you can get it early, beat it, get the antibodies and move on with your life. And today it's interesting because people vaccinate against chickenpox. I got chickenpox when I was, when I was a kid and then became immune to it. So that was my personal belief, my husband's as well, that we were not anti vaxx at all. In fact, I feel everyone should make their own decision there. But I decided that I would rather risk my immune system. I believe in that and that if we were to get it, that's how we would manage it. However, I was still curious, like, how did I get it? What happened? Because we haven't been around huge crowds of people. We do take care of ourselves. I thought, how did I get, how did I get Covid? So just did a little digging and what I did learn and I verified it now is I have a daughter who is 13. She, about two weeks before I had my first symptom, she did have a pretty bad cold. And now with kids, things present themselves very differently. She had a bad cold and she actually called me from her, from her day and said, hey, mom, can you come pick me up? I feel extremely tired and achy and I have a really bad cold. I picked her up that day, she slept the rest of that day. She then had like just a mild cold for the next week or so. So she had one bad day and then a mild cold. Still didn't think much about it. She didn't lose her taste or smell, none of that. But as it turns out, I did get her a rapid antibody test. You can do that, which shows if you've had Covid in the last month, that's a test that I got her and sure enough, I just had that done for her. It shows that she did have it. And so it's my understanding that because she was around me, I'm her mom, she had this cold, I got it from her, it probably showed up in my body. That's what was creating all that inflammation. All of that pain. Studies show that Covid can take 2 to 14 days in your body to present itself as Covid. So I believe that that's what happened. That's why my lab numbers were high. That's why I had all these aches and pains. And then it presented itself about 14 days later as actual Covid, and then took about 14 days prevention from a time of finding that first massive symptom, not the aches and pains, but the symptom of having the flu. 14 days total to run through my body and be out of that. So I believe that that's how we had it. Now I'm gonna share what my husband and I took and did to help us. As always, this is not meant as medical advice for you. This is just sharing what we learned from our naturopathic doctors, from what we knew, what we took to help us recover. And these are all pretty much over the counter things that you could do on your own, but always check with your doctor on what's best for you. But we did take, from the time we found out we had Covid, we took high levels of turmeric, course 10, vitamin C, vitamin D and zinc. That's what we did. And we made sure to get out in the actual sun every day, just in our backyard, just to get some natural vitamin D as well for our high fever. We did not do the Tylenol thing. We did not. I am a firm believer personally of when you have a fever, that is your body's way of getting rid of something, of changing. So we took a homeopathic remedy called belladonna. You can also get that over the counter. And I took that every hour under my tongue. And that helped us sweat out that fever faster and move it on quicker. Now, we were very fortunate. We did have some local naturopathic doctors that came by, suited up, guarded everything so they would not get Covid. And we did get an intravenous, so an IV of high levels of antioxidants, vitamin C, all that, which I believe could have also helped speed up the healing. So that's what we did. That's what we did. So that. That's it in a nutshell. Now, how have I changed my opinions about anything? I tell you all that I've changed my opinion about. Actually, it's not even a change of opinion. I've gotten more committed to how important our health is, how important our health is. People have put so much energy into this vaccine. And I don't have any ill feelings about the vaccine at all. I don't I don't know enough about it, but I don't understand why there's not an even greater emphasis on health and immunity. Because it's so critical, it's so important. Why are we not talking more about that? The reason me at age 49, almost 50, the reason that I had this mild, I believe everything. And I have some. I have an autoimmune disease. I do have an autoimmune condition. The reason I had it mild is because I've put so much energy into being at a healthy weight, taking care of my health, being really careful with my immunity and my husband as well. I believe that. Do I believe that some people can be in perfect health and do all the right things and still get tragically sick? Yes, I do believe that that can happen. I don't believe that that's the common. I don't believe that that's the norm. Do I believe the vaccine could help people not get Covid? Very much so. I believe that it can help not get Covid. But I also know that there's people that getting the vaccine that are also getting sick from the vaccine, maybe a lot more mild. But how do we know that if you had strong immunity and strong health, you might have had less of a reaction. So I'm just more committed to getting the word out about how important it is to take care of our health. Eating a heavily processed food diet, not getting exercise, being okay with being overweight, none of that is helping our health. None of it. So it doesn't become this discussion around. It shouldn't become a discussion around just mask and vaccines, which. Fine with all of that, but let's open up a bigger conversation about taking care of our overall health too, because it helps everything along. Do you want to socially distance and wear the mask and get the vaccine and all of that? That's amazing. That's great. And please take care of your health too, because when you do get exposed to something, when you are in a bad situation, it might not have anything to do with COVID You can have an accident, anything. You being strong and healthy is going to help you overcome and conquer anything. Better, faster, stronger than by not taking care of it. That's what I wanted to share. So what did I learn about all this? I learned one, the importance of our health. My gosh, I've got to get even stricter about it, not slack. It's so critical. It's everything. And it made me even more committed to ensuring that my daughter is doing those healthy things, not just letting it all Go. Because she's a teenager, it's important to set those foundations. I also learned that none of us are immune to this. None of us. Like I wasn't around a lot of people, I take care of my health and I still got Covid. So none of us are immune to things. No matter what we think, we're not all immune to things. Things do happen. I also learned that things will not fall apart by taking care of your health and resting for a few weeks. My gosh. You know, as soon as I got hit so hard with this, I couldn't think of work, I couldn't think of recording a podcast, I couldn't think of doing anything. And I'm grateful to be in a situation where I was able to take that time off. As much as I was worried about things falling apart, they didn't. Things are okay. So I did learn that. And I did have a wake up call about sharing my experience and my knowledge a lot more with people. I want you to know that when I teach health and fitness and fat loss, it's not just about vanity. It never was about just vanity, but it's not about vanity. It's about surviving. It's about thriving. It's about being able to deal with setbacks, hardships, in a way better place when. When they hit you. So today, Brooks and I are healthy, my daughter's healthy. We've beat this. We are happy to have the antibodies now for sure. We're happy to have immune systems that did their job. And whatever journey you are on, whether you decide to vaccinate or not vaccinate, just make sure you are taking care of your health in every way, in every way that you can. You're eating those nutritious foods, you're eating anti inflammatory, healthy foods. You're moving your body, you're listening to your body. That's my message for you. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen in as my guest today. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with friends and on social media. I don't advertise this show, so I rely on word of mouth and reviews to get it out in the world. The biggest thank you that you can give me is leaving me a review. And a nice one. I hope, by the way, this is how others find these episodes. If you do leave me a review, be sure to Message me@supportataliejofitness.com with a screenshot of your review because I would love to send you a free digital download of my DSR journal as a thank you. And please don't forget to connect with me on social media at Natalie Jill Fit on Instagram and Facebook Sat.