Vicki from LegitChics shares her raw journey from food lover to child protector. Plus one of the most common foods around that can actually help regulate estrogen levels

What you will learn

•about one food lover's journey that led her to protect children and families

•the most common food around that can actually help regulate estrogen levels, help with migraines and help eliminate PMS At the end of this episode I'll share with you one of the cheapest foods you can buy that can help transform your health if you're a food lover too, and Marilyn Monroe ate this food every day. OK that was a huge hint!

Have you got any idea what food it is? You'll find out.

On with the story

This story comes to us from Vicki Marie, who is an incredible woman. Vicki is the founder of LegitChics.com where she shares other women's stories of their triumphs, survival, struggles, trauma, loss and grief, and what we all can learn from their experiences.

In addition to founding LegitChics.com and being what she calls a Bad Ass Solopreneur, Vicki is also a Women's Empowerment & Resiliency Coach, a Family Safety & Family Enrichment Coach, a Crime Victim Advocate, a Social Worker, an Educator and a Survivor.

So here's Vicki's story, which I'm going to share with you in her own words.

Vicki's story: from food lover to child protector

"I love food. I mean really love it. Let me put it this way - when my sister and I were having the team Edward vs. team Jacob debate (like all sisters do right!) - I went team Jacob all the way. I told her I could never give up food - especially Mexican food! To give up chips and salsa, enchiladas, tacos ... no fucking way! She laughed and tried to convince me to be on team Edward by saying, "You could always just eat a Mexican!" Oh, my God we laughed so hard I almost peed myself. But seriously - give up food? Come on."

A lifelong struggle

"My whole life I have struggled with my extra chub. I think my earliest memories of feeling self-conscious started in junior high - like most of us do at that age.

"One time while making a sandwich my step grandmother made a comment about how much Miracle Whip I was putting on my ham and cheese sandwich and how that was going to go straight to my hips.

"My dad commented on how wide my butt was getting.

"Better yet was the time we got weighed in for PE in front of the whole class and one of the guys (yes, I remember you) held up a sign with my weight for the whole class to see.

"In 8th grade I was fully grown and bigger than the awkward scrawny guys, and weighing in at 154 I was mortified. I maintained that weight all through High School and even following the birth of my daughter.

But that wasn't good enough

"I prayed and prayed God would just help me lose 20 pounds - that's all I asked for. Funny how living with extreme abuse by my mother and I was more worried about that 20 pounds than an...

How not to get married in France, and what to serve in case uniformed officers turn up on your doorstep

What you will learn

•how NOT to get married in France

•the best food you can serve in case any policemen turn up on your doorstep At the end of this episode I'll share with you the best food I think can come in handy to offer policemen because it contains a super stress-busting food.

On with the story

This story is about one of my girlfriends, whom I'll call Masha.

Masha was really smart. And in Masha's defence, I've got to say straight away that she didn't actually know that her husband, whom I'll call Paul, was a felon when she married him.

I think Masha was smarter than me. I married my French hypnotist much later in a messy, grey sort of way (which I talk about in episode 3). Masha however knew that she wanted to do an exchange. She was American, and she wanted to be able to live and work in France. So she decided she'd marry a Frenchman who wanted to be able to live and work in the US, and it would be a win-win. Right? They'd stay in France for a while and then both go their separate ways.

How we found each other

Now I don't remember how she found Paul. I think she started asking around rather than place an ad or something. Remember there was no internet so you couldn't hop onto a forum like 'marry me dot net' or whatever. You had to find someone with more traditional methods. She might have put up a poster? No, I don't think so. That would have been scary.

Oh but first I have to tell you how I found her. That was really weird.

Masha and I were actually friends in high school back in the States. We didn't really see each other just the two of us, but we hung out with the same group of people.

One day in Paris, so after university which was like 5 years later, I'm standing in this gym waiting for my aerobics class to begin. Suddenly this girl comes up to me and she asks me in French if I'm Barbara. As soon as I saw her eyes I knew it was Masha and I was like 'No way! How are you!' and it was amazing!

Can you imagine, bumping into a high school friend in an aerobics class in another country? I mean, it was too weird.

So Masha gets married

I was so happy to have found Masha. It can be kind of tough when you're away from family and anything that's familiar in a new country with a new language and all of that. So we had a lot of fun together, it was really great. And of course we had had some of the same experiences when we arrived. We even both wound up with French husbands. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Anyway, I was teaching English at the time I think (surprise, surprise). I hadn't heard from Masha in a little while, but one day I get a phone call from her. She was like "Hey, I got married" and I was like "What?"

Masha said "Yeah, I needed my papers, he wanted US papers, so yeah, it's all done and I've got my French resident card now". Well to get a French resident card was all I'd ever wanted. I used to have nightmares about...

What happens when you leave a French hypnotist for a sexy Italian...and food that can help you breathe!

What you will learn

•How a 'grey marriage' might not be the best idea

•A simple food you can eat that can literally help you breathe easier I actually blame myself as well, and my French hypnotist husband...but the sexy Italian is definitely the main culprit in this story.

At the end of this episode I'll share with you a super common food that can actually help you breathe easier. (Yes, breathing plays a very important part in this story, as you'll hear later on). This food is so common, you'll probably be surprised.

Do you know what it is? Take a guess and see if you're right. I'll give you a hint: it's very common.

OK enough hints from me...

On with the story

This story came about all because of a hot, sexy Italian guy that I moved in with 2 weeks after I got married to a French hypnotist (mentioned in Episode 2).

In my defence, first let me say that I didn't marry the hypnotist just to get my French work papers. That would have been what the French call a 'white marriage' - a 'mariage blanc'. I always thought of ours as more of a 'gray marriage'. By that I mean, we loved each other, but we didn't really want to get married. We really wanted to stay together, but I needed papers so I could stay in France.

It was basically either get married, or I'd have to leave the country. (Turns out I almost had to leave the country anyway...but that's another story!)

So we got married. (My family couldn't be there. A family member was on top of a tall building deciding whether to skip the elevator on the way down...and no-one told me. But that's also another story!)

A honeymoon gone bust

My hypnotist-now-husband I call Dave. (Actually that's so NOT a French name, I could have at least chosen David, but that's my friend's French husband. Even I wouldn't steal a girlfriend's husband, French or not).

Anyway, Dave decides that for our honeymoon he wants us to go to Corsica and camp out in a stationwagon. He figured we could sleep in the back while traipsing around the countryside to look for small trickles that could pass for waterfalls. (Dave needed a photo of a waterfall for a client).

Romantic, right? Clearly our marriage was totally on the right track. We were headed straight for marital bliss and happily-ever-after.

Well, we were in Corsica for two weeks. (I'm pretty sure I managed to convince him to skip sleeping in the station wagon).

Unfortunately though, by the end of those two weeks, I knew the whole marriage thing was a BIG mistake. But I just kind of pushed it to the back of my mind and figured I'd deal with it later(!) I thought 'Come on, this is Dave, I love him, maybe I'll snap out of it or maybe he'll get more romantic' - which in retrospect was just dumb. But there you go.

Enter the sexy Italian

So we got back to Paris, and that night...

A situation in a tiny room that went one way but could have gone another: do you speak up or not? And food that can help the heart.

Hi everybody, I'm Barbara Fernandez, the Rocking Raw Chef, and welcome to my Clean Food and Dirty Stories: one to entertain, the other to inspire.

I help people stamp out stress, depression and fatigue over at RockingRawChef.com, and today's title is:

This is SO not girl on girl

What you will learn

•How you can use a little self assurance to avoid a lot of discomfort

•How to eat some great foods to help you if you're feeling lonely, scared, insecure or just plain blocked Before I say anything else, I've GOT to say that this is NOT a sex story. It really is NOT girl on girl. I mean, it could have been, but things didn't really go that way. It's more like a super vulnerable, I-know-I'm-not-the-only-one-but-it's-still-kind-of-weird-so-its-super-scary-to-share story.

So on with the story

It takes place in a tiny room - specifically, in a maid's room in Paris - a 'chambre de bonne'.

There are a few requirements for a room to classify as a real French maid's room:

•It must be super tiny. How much room does a maid need, right?

•It must be at the top of at least 8 flights of stairs with no elevator

•It must NOT have a shower I guess maids didn't need showers? That one kind of baffles me - but anyway. If you were a lucky maid you'd have a communal shower in the hallway. Otherwise you just did what I did, you went to the local pool a lot.

It had no kitchen area either - surprise surprise - but we had an electrical socket next to a shelf with a hot plate. We basically made a lot of pasta and oatmeal. I guess it was the equivalent of what the British call a bedsit. A bedsit is a room with enough room for a bed and for you to sit on the bed. There's not much else.

We actually had a deluxe maids room because there was enough room for TWO beds which was unheard of really. Maybe that one was where the head butler lived or something.

Anyway I was really grateful to be able to live there with my friend - I'll call her Mave.

Mave was the whole reason I went to Paris in the first place. She had said 'Come to Paris, I'll be there too, we can stay for a year, it'll be really fun'. Mave went back to the US at the end of that year, and I wound up staying for another 14 years (but that's another story).

From the airport straight into 'French fried'

When I arrived fresh (well not so fresh actually) from the Paris airport, the train and the subway, Mave was kind enough to help me lug my 3 HUGE suitcases up 8 flights of stairs (God knows WHAT I was thinking by bringing so much stuff). She also let me stay with her till I got my own place. She was working as an au pair and the maid's room was included in her 'deal'. So there were TWO of us in a tiny room th...

My adventures with a French hypnotist, and some brain food that could have come in handy...

Hi everybody, I'm Barbara Fernandez, the Rocking Raw Chef, here with my Clean Food and Dirty Stories: one to entertain, the other to inspire.

I help people stamp out stress, depression and fatigue over at RockingRawChef.com, and today's title is:

Can you learn English AND drink coffee...while you sleep?

At the end of this episode I'll share one of the best foods you can eat if you want to learn faster because it can improve both your memory and your concentration. Do you know what it is? I'll tell you in a bit.

So on with the story.

When I finished university with an oh-so-useful degree in theater (I don't know WHAT I was thinking), a friend of mine was like 'Barbara you should totally come to Paris with me'. As in like Paris, France, not Paris, Texas. Actually I'd never been to Texas so that would have been an adventure too - my mom always said that was one state that she'd drive AROUND if she went cross-country which of course would make me want to go there all the more. I actually have some really good friends who live in Texas who I hope to visit really soon (sorry Mom!)

But back to Paris. So my friend was like 'come with me to Paris, we'll stay for a year, have a lot of fun and come back' and I was like 'actually, yeah!' Because it was either that or start working as a waitress in some random diner while I struggled to make it as an actress, and I think that kind of thing is way sexier if you do it in French, right? Plus there's lots of other stuff you can do in French which is definitely sexier, but that's another story.

So I arrive in Paris with my wobbly high-school French (I can remember buying a baguette was traumatizing, I couldn't understand what anyone was saying) and I'm thinking 'Right, I'll just grab a job' which now that I know what I know about working in other countries - as in having an official work visa or other kind of paper is probably a good idea - I was totally delusional, but fortunately for me, blissfully ignorant.

And I did get a job! Now this was when - dare I say it - there was NO GOOGLE. You actually had to leave your house and hunt down notice boards, write down the phone number, and then find a PHONE BOOTH and use COINS to call the person. And all of this in French, at least in Paris.

The first job I landed was in an 'Institut' (fancy word for school), where they promised their clients you could 'learn English while you sleep'. So you can imagine the motivated and dedicated students that ad attracted, right?

These lucky people paid premium prices to lay down in a room, get hypnotised (that wasn't me, that was a guy, I'll call him Dave 'cause I wound up marrying him - but that's another story) and then while hypnotised they'd listen to a tape playing a key sentence in English followed by its French translation. These were absolutely essential phrases, such as, "I'm washing the dishes / Je lave la vaiselle" "I'm walking the dog / Je promene le chien".

 

Now my job - which was really good for my French - was to read out the French phrase and try not to fall asleep myself while waiting for them to come up with the English. So the way this usually played out was that I'd read the French, they'd yawn and rub their...