Dr. Victoria C. Arcadi

I do not think there can be any argument about the state of the world in regard to obesity.It is everywhere, and it is epidemic.So much so, that there is a term for it now—GLOBESITY, or “global obesity.”

I was an innocent child affected by the “trickle-down” effect of family obesity.It was like watching a very slow, tortuous, and miserable death.As a child, I had to endure my mother’s obesity.I was a casualty.Watching the progression of this curse was truly horrible for all the loved ones around her.

My mother was a prodigy, gifted violinist and full of life.Because she was gregarious and outgoing with personality-plus she was the perfect person to invite to your party to help to make it fun and successful.She was also smart, worldly, and incredibly intelligent with regard to almost every subject. 

But as a result of the bondage in her body after the birth of her children, she had uncontrollable weight gain along with depression, feeling uncomfortable and unwell, self-suppression, embarrassment, self-conscious loathing of her looks, and she became miserable.She put on a good show because she loved to socialize, as she sadly developed marked physical limitations, low self-esteem, and feelings of doom and gloom, which eventually made her unable to do many of the things mothers and daughters do together.I missed many of the joys with my mother that most people take for granted, such as spending the day shopping and then going out to lunch, or attending my college tennis matches and tournaments, walking our dogs around a beautiful golf course, going to the beach and walking in the waves, getting on a plane and taking a holiday, or even spontaneously taking off and going to the movie theater.

My mother tried all the different fads, pills, Optifast, starvation diets, grapefruit diet, watermelon diet, shots, Scarsdale Diet, hormones—you name it—throughout her life and mine.All her efforts backfired because with each attempt to lose the weight, while it often appeared that it was working, the diet ultimately resulted in her gaining all of the weight back—plus a lot more.Not to mention that the starvation diets are known to be dangerous for the health of the heart as the body cannibalizes itself from its muscles, including the heart, to take care of the needs of the body.

The sequelae associated with obesity (twenty pounds or more overfat) in various degrees is slowed metabolism, consistent weight gain, arthritic changes in the knees, hips, and spine, high blood pressure, edema, a prediabetic condition or full-blown diabetes, inflammation, the need for a wheelchair and then, ultimately, congestive heart failure.I watched my mom travel this path and spiral downward over the course of my life until her death when I was fifty.

As a thirty-plus year family practitioner of chiropractic, I helped to manage my mother’s last ten months in hospice with end-stage congestive heart failure.It was a blessing that after being bed-bound for ten years due to severe arthritic changes in her hips, knees, and feet caused by morbid obesity, in her last ten months she lost all the excess weight.She went on a special diet limiting starches, sugars and cow dairy.While in hospice and bedridden, I handed her caregiver a manual that showed what and when she was to eat along with a schedule of when and how to take the nutritional supplements to nutrify her body. 

As the fat was pouring off her body, the hospice team was flabbergasted because she continued to be titrated down on her medications.Water retention, which is very severe with congestive heart failure, improved until she was titrated completely off her diuretic medication.Her blood pressure returned to normal, and medications for her heart were titrated down.It was astounding to the hospice team.They had never seen a hospice case improve so quickly.I was convinced it was all about what foods she ate and when she was putting them in her mouth.Hippocrates said, “Let your food be your medicine, and your medicine be your food.”

As a child, I was lucky because we were fed very healthy foods.Later in life, I learned from decades of clinical experience how crucial it was for overall health and wellness to eat healthy foods.I was in private practice, and also had a second practice in a birthing center along with midwives, obstetricians, and pediatricians.With incorporating chiropractic care and medical prenatal care with a midwife, she and I pioneered a successful partnership of approaches that improved outcomes of pregnant women and babies.Our combined prenatal care reversed the threat of miscarriages, especially in mothers who became obese, threatening a gestational diabetic condition.Obese mothers develop extremely large babies which usually require a mandate for a C-section.Through short-term modification of the mothers diet, limiting starches and sugars with targeted nutritional supplementation, in the vast majorities of cases, we had tremendous success with normalizing blood sugars, and reducing the mothers weight to a level preventing large for gestational age babies with a goal of a vaginal delivery, naturally in the birth center or at home with no drugs.After delivery, the newborn received a chiropractic adjustment and cranial manipulation to promote proper breastfeeding.

Globesity is something that can affect us from birth, and pretty much destroyed my family and caused us to watch the tortuous slow demise of my mother.When she became a prisoner in her body, it was felt by all of us around her.I realize now how sad I was.

Therefore, I am dedicating the last decades of my life to this cause because I have lived through the suffering and I have seen the broad damage of this condition.I pray that the FYF4Good Lifestyle resonates with the public, especially those who have tried everything, feel the decline of their health, and are feeling hopelessly out of control in this situation of obesity.We want to change the way that you look at food and give you control of your life to bring the freedom, peace of mind, happiness, self-esteem, and sense of well-being that the Higher Power has given us.We are healthy by design.FYF4Good is different, but not hard to master.

Time with my father was way too short!  He spent time living with the Masi and Ubangi people in Africa.  He not only helped them decrease the rate of childbirth deaths by teaching them about how and why the birth environment should be sanitary, but he also hunted with them for food.  On one such trip, we believe my father was bitten by a Tsetse fly.  He developed cerebral malaria and passed away when I was only eight and a half years old.  In that very short time I had with him, the seeds of my interests in biochemistry and real nutrition were planted in my mind.

My mother was a gourmet cook and was interested in nutrition.  My siblings and I would beg for sugary store-bought cookies and cakes, but she insisted on making healthy ones for us.  She would turn Jack LaLanne on the television and preach how we all needed to get up and exercise.  Something must have sunk in because in high school I became a gymnast and studied dance.

My obsession with music started at twelve when I began playing the guitar.  By fourteen I was teaching others how to play.  At fifteen, my fraternal twin sister, Spice, and I began performing together.  We made a big splash locally and loved it.  Spice called me a few years after high school about a musical group needing musicians and singers.  I immediately said “NO!” but she talked me into auditioning.  Actually, she threatened me but that’s another story.  That was the beginning of my wild and crazy journey of adventure, love, and success in the music industry as Sugar ‘n Spice.  This is where I met my soul mate and first husband, Dick Padgette, the bass player and leader of our group.

Being on the road as a musician, singer, and songwriter for many years was grueling on my body.  There was little time to sleep and less time for eating healthy.  I was often sick but still needed to sing, dance and play guitar as we performed all over the country.  All doctors could do for me during this time was give me drugs.  For the pain, to go to sleep, to feel better: you name it, they were giving it to me.  The more I took, the more problems I was having.  A loud voice in my head started screaming at me that I better learn as much as I can about survival, or I wouldn’t make it.  This is when I realized doctors practice medicine, but they don’t practice health. 

Don’t get me wrong!  We need doctors.  If I break my leg don’t take me to the health food store first!  Take me to the emergency room and a doctor that knows how to set bones.  But I knew if I had to rely on doctors fidgeting with different drugs to offset my exhaustion and poor eating habits, I’d be in serious trouble.  So I went to the library, the health food store, medical journals, anywhere I could and started my own quest for optimal health and well-being.  I found so many incredible science/nutrition books, including one that was all about food combining!  This changed my life forever!  I became entrenched with the knowledge of how to survive on our ailing planet.  It was during this time that it hit me, optimal health and well-being had been part of my entire life.  It started with my father around that kitchen table.

In the mid-80s I was cutting albums, singing back-up for amazing artists and making a name for myself in the music industry.  Man, I was going for it.  As a girl guitarist, singer, and songwriter I was living the life!  And then I got pregnant with my first son.  At four months along I was in a serious car crash.  Not one chiropractor would touch me because it was believed that “adjusting” a pregnant woman would put her into labor.  But I was in pain, so I was persistent in looking for help.  Finally, I was introduced to Dr. Victoria Arcadi who specialized in pregnancy and newborns.  She performed miracles for me to feel better and get right back into the swing of things. 

In the early 90s, six months after giving birth to my second son, my manager wanted me to go to Germany where my music was really appreciated.  The kicker was I had to go there by myself and leave my family in the states.   This idea tortured me until I realized, I could lay down and die knowing I gave up my career, but I could never forgive myself knowing I gave up my family.  So I left the music industry to follow my second love in life, NUTRITION.

I started working as a Chiropractic Assistant for Dr. Vicky and loved helping with her research, studying and understanding supplements, and working with patients.  In 1994, pregnant with my third child (a daughter this time!), California was hit with one of the biggest earthquakes of all times, the Northridge Earthquake.  Reseda/Northridge, where I lived, was on the epicenter.  As the earthquake struck, I fell over a bookcase trying to protect my two boys.  This trauma blew a hole in my daughter’s heart, and I had to remain bedridden until she was born.  With the help of Dr. Vicky and my midwife, during the last month of pregnancy, her heart grew back together, and she was born weighing ten pounds, healthy and beautiful.

Despite the joy of the new addition to our family, life was a real struggle due to the earthquake’s damage.  This is when Dr. Vicky and I decided to form a partnership to focus full time on a nutrition business.  The business took off, and we were helping so many people get healthy.  We were getting our feet back under us from all the expenses and stress caused by the earthquake.  I could see the light at the end of the tunnel and then it all exploded.  I lost my husband of thirty years to lung and brain cancer.  He was my soul mate.  I did not have much time to mourn as I had three kids to care for and needed to be strong for them, but I felt like I lost my right arm.

As God would have it though, I met and married my second husband and I felt so blessed to have had a second time around with such a wonderful man, Tom Baird.  He adopted my kids and loved them as his own and taught them all how to surf.  But time was too short.  After only eleven years of marriage, Tom passed away and I became a two-time widow with three kids.  It was all I could do to just concentrate on the nutrition business with Dr. Vicky to support my family and move forward in life.  So I did.

If Tom’s death was not hard enough to bear, another tragedy took almost everything out of me.  My beautiful little girl was bullied at school in the sixth grade and then started using drugs.  The time, energy, guilt, and fear of what could happen led me down a road of constant sleeplessness and erratic eating.  I will never give up on my kids.  I studied and researched all I could find.  We tried programs and counseling, and nothing was working.  I was determined to make her well and eventually found a clinic outside of the US that allowed me to finally feel safe and at peace and hopeful.  I was able to get my daughter the help she needed, and after checking her in I was able to sleep straight through the night for the very first time in a very, very long time.   Amazing what a good night’s sleep can do for you.

When I awoke, I was so grateful and happy. I went to my bathroom mirror and took one look at myself and said, “Oh, hell no!”  “How did all that weight get on me?”  “Oh My God!  This fat has got to go, like yesterday!”  I knew how fifty-plus pounds got on me: stress, erratic eating, and very little sleep, but it was a shock to see it!  It was now my turn to care for myself and I needed to get the fat off fast. 

Being educated in science/nutrition, supplementing, and eating in a healthy way was in my favor, but as we all know, dieting is horrible because of the feelings of deprivation and fatigue and is something none of us do very consistently.  The thought of dieting, getting some of it off, and then gaining it back as everyone always does, and then starting all over again, was horrifying to me!

I walked around the house a couple of times feeling really disturbed by this and started talking to myself.  “What am I going to do now?”  I went into the kitchen and stood in front of my pantry, bewildered.  How long is this going to take?  How could I not have seen this happen to me?  Can I easily get it off at my age?  I was terribly upset, as I know just twenty pounds of fat on your body is linked to over twenty health conditions.  I needed to become healthy and strong for my kids.  They had already lost two dads and I needed to be there for them. 

I was seriously deep in thought when I heard his voice: “Jackie, you know what to do.”  I kid you not when I say I heard HIS voice.  I even turned around to look and see who was in the kitchen with me.  The good Lord was whispering in my right ear.  “You have all the knowledge and now it is time to put it into action.”  Within twenty minutes, FYF4Good was completely downloaded into my brain and I proceeded to apply it to myself like a robot.  I knew exactly what to do when to do it, and what to take to make all the fat melt off me to give me the strength and the energy to enjoy the process.   

After a few weeks of my privately applying all the knowledge given to me by Divine Intervention, I was shocking my friends.  They could not believe how fast the fat was just melting off me.  I felt amazingly strong, energized, and happy.  A friend, Cathy Castelazo, insisted I put it down on paper for her clients in her health business.  She started getting amazing results with her clients.

Dr. Vicky, my business partner, and a dear friend realized we needed to study the plan, so we developed two trial groups of approximately twenty people for twelve weeks.  The results were breathtaking.  Everyone’s lives were rapidly changing, and they have stayed lean and healthy to this day, just as promised to me that day in my kitchen.  Health by Design, Not by Default!

Making this A Lifestyle for a Lifetime is honoring the body that God has given us.  To appreciate our lives and quality of our health is the most important thing we have.  Flush Your Fat 4Good, to Be Lean & Healthy for Life is our motto and our creed.  Changing people’s relationship with their foods and learning how to live a long, vibrant, and healthy life is what FYF4Good is all about.