Grow Visibly Younger, With More Time And Energy For Your Purpose: Meet Donna Gates

Yes, this headline is for real - Donna Gates is living proof. She’s literally re-written many of the rules that most of us have come to believe are fixed when it comes to health, healing and aging.

Over the past 25 years, Donna has become one of the most loved and respected authorities in the field of digestive health, diet, and nutrition. She is the creator of the Body Ecology system of healing, and is known as a worldwide expert in candida, adrenal fatigue, autism, autoimmune diseases, weight loss, and anti-aging.

My favorite bottom line explanation for what Donna does is that she teaches people how to use food as medicine. She’s the international bestselling author of three books:

1. The Body Ecology Diet: Recovering Your Health and Rebuilding Your Immunity,
2. The Baby Boomer Diet: Anti-Aging Wisdom for Every Generation, and
3. Stevia: Cooking with Nature’s Calorie-Free Sweetener (she was instrumental in bringing stevia to the US, and in contributing to the mainstream use of it).

This woman is a powerhouse Sweet Spotter. How she got into her life’s work, like so many other Sweet Spotters,  was through the need to solve a pressing problem in her own life. She says in The Body Ecology Diet:

I was born with a sensitive constitution, including an allergy to milk. I had constant lung problems and colds. When my skin broke out in my teen years, I started taking antibiotics. My skin was very yellow. I had low energy, and antibiotics led to food allergies and digestive problems - and I went to a dermatologist and complained that the antibiotics made my stomach burn and gave me indigestion, but he said not to worry: people stay on antibiotics for years without problems.

I was vain, so I did stick with the antibiotics until I was in my 30′s. Yet I knew something was wrong, and with my very sensitive body, I had clues it was connected to the food I was eating. So I began my intensive search for answers.

I tried macrobiotics, natural hygiene, raw foods, and megavitamin therapy. I studied with some of the greatest teachers in these disciplines. Everything I did improved my health somewhat, but not completely.

At the time, Donna was renovating homes for a living, while raising her two children and two step-children. She actually loved the renovation work, but life was leading her into what she was ultimately meant to do through her own search to solve her health challenges:

I remember one time being in a plumbing store picking out pretty toilets, and sinks, and faucets and things, and I thought ‘This isn’t helping people that much. I may be making one lovely environment for one family but I want to help the world’…

In my heart I knew that there was an answer out there, and I was going to find it. That’s what I think was something that really drove me, was I really believed that there was some reason I was here, some purpose. I didn’t just come here just to be here. There was a purpose that I had while I was here.

So I started always asking ‘What am I here to do? Why am I here?’ I didn’t get that answer for a very long time, but as I look back now I realize that everything I did – the courses I took, the people I met, the trail I stumbled upon, the experiences I had other places around the world, whatever – they were all part of teaching me, and preparing me, and helping me shape what I wanted to do, which was to get well. And if I got well, to help other people get well, too.

After six years of studying many disciplines, Donna took the most important truths from everything she’d studied and took them a step beyond to develop the Body Ecology Diet, and found her nutrition company, Body Ecology, Inc.

One of the things that’s evident in Donna’s story is that when you’re on purpose and in your Sweet Spot, you are simply being yourself, and taking the learning and experience you’ve developed for your own reasons and using it to make a difference in the lives of others. She says:

I wasn’t even a very good student, but I loved to research and dig into answers - kind of like a Sherlock Holmes type of person. There’s all kinds of clues around us that tell us that we’re good at certain things. And I think we need to be mindful of those and even ask other people.

Your parents might not be the ones that point those out or you might not even have a guidance counselor at school, but if you can go to wise people around you and say “You know, what do you think are my good qualities? What do you think I’m best at?” and then begin to build that base, after a while it becomes clear that you’re very gifted with people, or you have this amazing ability to write music that inspires people or whatever. But you have something. Everybody has something.

Donna looks back and recognizes that those clues were there all the way along in her own life, even before she knew where they were leading:

For me it was this connection with food. Even when I would get around food, I just was really respectful of it. It always had a reverence for me. I started cooking at a really early age. I’d climb up on a stool about six years old and start making eggs and tasting them, and something wasn’t right so I’d add more salt. Nobody was teaching me, but there was just this curiosity that I was beginning to follow.

And then one day – a long time later – I learned that food can be medicine and I thought “It can. I know that’s true. But how can food…what’s the secret? What’s the answer for doing that?” And so that’s where my quest began.

And again, teachers show up, information shows up. You just put it together in little pieces step-by-step and someday (you have) something – and in this case – something that is actually helping people all over the world, and I’m amazed at that.

Donna has a spectacular vision of where the world is heading (which I share), as those who feel called to move fully into their purpose have the courage and the faith to do so:

I believe we’re going into a better world. I think we’ve made so many mistakes. We’ve learned from those mistakes and we’re all wanting a better world, and so we’re creating that. Many, many people are here now creating that…there’s never been a more exciting time to be alive. There’s never been so many resources available to us. So many, many people helping make it happen. So you just have to do your part…

I’m really super healthy today. Twice as old as I was back then, and four times healthier probably than I was back then. I mean 100% healthy. I don’t dye my hair. I don’t take bio-identical hormones. I should exercise more - I sit too long at the computer - but it’s amazing to me I wake up with the energy. (Note: Donna is 65 years old!)

It’s really important to take really good care of yourself right now because amazing technology is actually here. The reason we don’t have it yet is our doctors are learning about it. It’s really here. So stay tuned for a very exciting time.

It’s going to be like computers. First we didn’t have it, and then we had them, and then they changed our world. That’s what’s coming for us. So it’s a very, very exciting time to be alive. And yes, there’s a lot of weird and scary stuff happening in the world, but that’s just because the old stuff is dying out and there’s a whole new world ready to come on stage, and we’re going to be part of that if we live long enough.

Can you imagine 79 million US baby boomers with the intention to become very healthy, grow younger (at least 20-30 years younger), and stay here long enough to use this wisdom that we have and these resources that we have to make the world a wonderful place to live in?

It’s very doable to do that, but you have to have the energy to do that. You can’t be a grumpy old man or a grumpy old woman. That’s the main reason we have to get our health back again, and to restore our youthfulness - so that we can really be of service in the world.

The bottom line is that you’re perfectly built for what you’re most meant to do. Literally everything you’ve done, your interests, what problem you need to solve for yourself, absolutely everything in your life is useful and holds clues to what you’re here to do and how you can make the greatest difference in the world.

If you assume that to be true, and stay in the question of how you can serve others in the most valuable way you can by simply being yourself, you will discover how - step by step. As Donna said:

When you have the intention to help people, I think that’s what brings the answers that you’re looking for.

You can watch my full interview with Donna here, in which we talk about many other Sweet Spot lessons learned on her journey, including:

• The new rules of prosperity in the emerging economy (it’s easier than you think)
• The importance of developing your courage and intuition
• How much support you receive when you’re on path, and how that amplifies your reach and impact
• The importance of letting go of the path you’re on when the signs show you a different direction
• How you can create miracles by invoking the full power of forgiveness (Donna saved her son’s life with this one)
• The power of fermented foods in promoting health and slowing down the aging process
• The profound work Donna’s doing, and results she’s seeing, in helping families who have children with autism.

You can find out more about Donna and the Body Ecology Diet on her web site, BodyEcology.com. There’s a wealth of free information in the articles section of the site.

You can find out the latest news about Donna’s work on the Body Ecology Facebook page.

You can find invaluable resources, information and community support for families with children with autism on her BEDROK web site (Body Ecology Diet Recovering Our Kids).

Donna regularly contributes to The Huffington Post and The Daily Love (read what I wrote about The Daily Love’s founder Mastin Kipp here), and she lectures at Hay House’s the ‘I Can Do It!’ Conference, David Wolfe’s Longevity Now Conference, and the Women’s Wellness Conference.

Photo: BodyEcology.com