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My mother just came back from spending a month in Tuscany and the first thing she said to me was, “You’ve shrunk!”

She had a point. I recently bought a size two skirt and in my incredulity my reaction was to tell the sales lady that I’d have to start frequenting that store as their clothes must run really big.

Because I haven’t been dieting. Nor have I changed my eating habits or my exercise habits in about 2 years.

In fact, as I look back over the last 2 months or so, the only thing I’ve changed has been starting back up on plant-based digestive enzymes.

As we age our bodies ability to produce enzymes slowly diminishes, interfering with complete digestion and putting us at risk for degenerative diseases.

I’ve talked about how incomplete digestion is a major cause of weight gain, and how eating whole foods rather than processed foods encourages complete digestion and can help lose weight and nourish health. Digestive enzymes can help the body break foods down for better absorption of nutrients and more efficient elimination of extra material.

Years ago, my homeopath put me on digestive enzymes to help end the hives and facilitate my quest to get pregnant. At the time, I thought it was a great idea, knowing what I’ve put my gut through in my lifetime.

Beyond the typical alcohol/fast food/terrible eating habits abuse of my intestines, I’ve been infested with various parasites at various points for varying amounts of time, including giardia, cryptosporidium, listeria, cyclospora, blastocystis and others over a period of several decades. In my life, parasites have been a side effect both of traveling through the developing world and camping in the Rockies.

The commonly used anti-parasite medication is Flagyl, which, if you’ve ever done a course, brutally strips your insides as it annihiliates both troublesome parasites and beneficial flora and fauna. Usually, by the time someone goes on Flagyl, the instigating parasites have been so brutal that the patient happily accepts the side effects as long as it works.

So I was thrilled to learn about digestive enzymes then to help rebuild my intestinal tract. I don’t remember losing weight that time, but I was a little distracted by other things.

The plant-based digestive enzymes, taken with every meal, are helping me to fully digest my food. Which is leading to weight loss as a bonus. This is the easiest diet I’ve ever done!