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Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, Tara Watson, 51, absorbed some common cultural mindsets of the era — namely, that weight loss was all about the number on the scale and eating healthy fats was the enemy.
Over the years, her weight yo-yoed, and she rarely felt comfortable in her skin. She lost 40 pounds with Weight Watchers in her 20s and with Weight Watchers/Beachbody in her 40s, but she didn’t feel healthy. “I was focused on food restriction and calorie counting. I wasn’t really paying attention to overall wellness,” she said.
A long battle with Lyme disease, which went undiagnosed for 18 years, helped change her way of thinking.
“It is a tough shift when you focus your whole life on weight, to let that go and say, ‘There’s something more important — that’s choosing to live my life every day in a healthy lifestyle, not in a diet lifestyle,” she says.
“When I was at my most sick and painful time, I was lying in bed piling on the Hershey’s Kisses to make myself feel better. I went to a support group and saw all these people who were super sick. And I thought, ‘This is not my future.’ That was my turning point. I needed to do things differently,” she says.
Losing her strength taught her to value it
With Lyme disease, Watson felt like her body, muscles and nerves were deteriorating. She was so stressed and inflamed that it hurt to be touched. The former fitness instructor says, “I spent a whole year where I couldn’t walk or exercise because I was so fatigued. I just needed to rest.”
Finally, in 2019, she was diagnosed correctly and started holistic healing and the treatment she needed. Her regimen included four antibiotics, supplements and red light therapy to help her cells heal. She also meditated to help manage her mindset.
“My illness told my body what I couldn’t do, so I started to…
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