About Nadia

Hello and welcome to Gustsy Girl Diaries! My name is Nadia and for most of my life I have struggled with a chronic illness called Ulcerative Colitis which is a form of IBD. For years, I felt like my body controlled me. I was scared to eat because I wasn’t sure if the one piece of food would soon wreak havoc on my digestive system causing pain, bloating, and multiple trips to the bathroom.  This illness took a toll on my body and I constantly lived in fear because I didn’t know how my disease was going to be from one day to the next. This fear would also cause me to cancel plans, miss work, and just not have a quality of life that I feel I deserved.  For so long I allowed my chronic illness to define me as a person.  But one day, I decided that I needed to embrace it. This is my life and instead of letting my body control me, I would from that point on take control of my body.

Over the years, I have found that eating clean whole foods, taking supplements that support a healthy digestive tract, participating in various types of physical activity, and taking my medication has helped me manage my symptoms. I started to become conscious and aware of what I was eating and what I was doing.  I started believing that what I put in my body could either help or fuel my disease. I started exercising. I started telling myself that I could conquer my illness and live a happy, joyful, eventful life.

I noticed that I was not alone. There are many people who suffer from IBD and those people felt the same way I did about myself, about food, about life. At the end of January, I started to have a flare which developed into one of my worst flares I’ve ever had. This is when Gutsy Girl Diairies was born. I wanted to share my story, my eating habits, my practices.  My hope is that by sharing these things, I will raise awareness about digestive diseases, emphasize the importance of gut health, and provide a place for my fellow warriors to find the comfort, support, and strength they need to live fearlessly with IBD.  We are all in this together and together we can fight any illness!

Sending love and blessings