I Stopped Guessing: Why I Hired Help for a 9-Month Healing

Month 3.5 of 9. No shots. No crash diet. A coach, labs, and a plan I could live with.

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I’ve been researching my health for a long time. The longer I looked, the longer the list got.

This year, 2026, it stopped being a list. My body needed help. Weight I could not explain. Strength that was slipping. The ordinary markers of getting older, and a few things the regular medical visits never really accounted for. The number that finally got my attention was this: I was back at the weight I carried after my last baby, and I had that baby at 35.

I do not want a shortcut. No GLP-1s. No diet that is famous for three months and doesn't give me the information needed for the issue at hand. I want to be guided by what I believe the Lord has already given me — His Spirit to lead me and the ordinary good things He put in creation to be used well.

So I paid for help. Once with 10X. That help felt like a gimmick.

10X is a franchise. I paid cash for bloodwork, sat with a nurse practitioner for about an hour, and was pointed toward their supplements. I do have the MTHFR gene; that part was worth knowing. The rest felt rushed and familiar — same medical-industrial pace, nothing new, and I was paying for something that felt sub-par. I was on the phone, speaking with their nurse practitioner and I still did not feel like anyone was taking me seriously, I didn't feel heard.

I have supplements I already trust. I bought the ones they recommended because I had decided I would be ALL IN. When they arrived, I sent them back, (I read the ingredients), they were not the food-based supplements that I was expecting they would be, they were average ones anyone could get off Amazon, (that’s not how I do things). That was the moment I learned the rule I should have used first: interview the person who is going to treat you before you go all in with their protocol.

Two years later I sat down with a functional medicine coach here in Farragut.

I got a real conversation, I was able to interview them — 1.5-2 hours— they were knowledgeable did not flinch at my questions. We talked about what treatment plans would look like, after we looked at my blood work. Whether I could keep the supplements I already use. How often we would run labs. What a nine-month program actually included. Whether the price could be structured so it fit my budget.

Not once did I feel like I wasn’t heard. Not once did I feel like a number being moved to the next slot. I was actually told that I am a good fit for the program.

We made a plan I could live with and were supplied to me by the practice: recipes, supplements I could stand behind, coaching calls, and bloodwork, (so I was not guessing). I am a health coach myself. That does not make me the exception. It made me more serious about doing what I said I would do.

I am 3.5 months into 9. I do not have a before-and-after yet. I trust this beginning more than I trusted the last one I paid for and more than any medical insurance.

Part 2 — what the first stretch of food, labs, and daily life actually felt like — lands September 3.