Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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‘Fancy’ Food Takes Her Big2Beautiful [Shelisa Goulbourne Rebuilds Her Life One Plate At A Time]

Posted Feb 22, 2010 by Jeff Houck

Updated Feb 22, 2010 at 02:28 PM

Shelisa Goulbourne thought her life was over.

Crippling headaches. Tingling in her left arm. Loss of vision in her left eye.

Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her.

Heart tests came back negative. Then, in June 2008, an MRI showed spots on her brain, the kind that are normal if you’re 80 years old, but not if you’re a 33-year-old mother of three in Riverview.

A neurologist reading her report came to a dire conclusion: multiple sclerosis. Medication was prescribed to help ease the symptoms.

Goulbourne researched the disease, learned about the muscle deterioration and eventual loss of speech.

“I really was afraid my life was ending,” she says. “I’m very active with my kids and family. I’m the kind who goes out and plays basketball with them. I was devastated.”

A month later the fatigue worsened. She became too sluggish to walk up the stairs in her home.

The doctors became alarmed. The disease was progressing much faster than expected. They increased her medication.

“I was just laying there dying,” she says.

Her mother suggested she see another neurologist. He sent her for a second MRI.

This time, the spots were gone. No one could explain it.

Except that she was wearing a metal belt during her first MRI. It threw off the imaging of her brain scan and created the spots.

The doctor took her off all medications and put her on a vegetarian diet for a 21-day cleansing of her system.

She noticed improvement at Day 5. By about Day 30, she felt totally healed.

The original symptoms? They were related to an extreme sinus migraine.

By the time the correct diagnosis was reached last May, Goulbourne had gained 70 pounds. She weighed 232 and had a family history of diabetes — her health now was precarious for a different reason. Depression set in.

“You go from being this lively vibrant active person to being a 230-pound woman,” she says.

Her dental health declined. She lost all her hair. Her skin became blotchy.

“Hair is a woman’s crown,” she says. “I was a pecan-tanned princess. I was embarrassed to hang out with my friends.”

She tried using an exercise trainer to lose the weight, but it wasn’t for her. Then she remembered her cousin Cory Neering had dropped 60 pounds through diet and exercise.

He had asked her to take the menus he used, which were mostly flavorless, and spice them up with herbs and other culinary touches. Goulbourne had been cooking since she was a little girl in Tallahassee. The family loved her traditional Southern soul food. She took the flavors she knew and added them to her cousin’s diet.

“He said, ‘You did it for me. Why can’t you do it for yourself?’” she says.

In December, she decided it was her time to come back.

She began exercising regularly and watching her diet.

Instead of turning food into an enemy, she embraced it by seeking deeper understanding. She enrolled in cooking classes at The Rolling Pin in Brandon to enhance what her family calls her “fancy magazine cooking.”

And she launched a blog, Big2Beautiful, to chronicle the changes and share her recipes. They’re not all low-fat or carb- and calorie-free. Moderation and keeping things simple is the motto, she says.

She’s since shed 15 pounds.

She starts teaching at Rolling Pin soon. She wants to share her take on affordable global cuisine.

Big2Beautiful? At the rate she’s going, she’ll need a new domain name by Christmas.