My Story of Recovery from Childhood Veganism and Orthorexia, and Embracing Nourishment Over Dogma
Almost everyone in the western world has a food story, especially women. It’s truly ridiculous that a mammalian species has forgotten how to do the most simple of things that any organism does… EAT. And, yet, here we are.
Veganism…
Vegetarianism…
Paleo…
Keto…
Mediterranean…
Intermittent Fasting…
Juice cleanses and detoxes…
Gluten-free and dairy-free…
Fruitarianism…
Breatharianism… (yes, dead serious)
SO many others…
The list just gets longer and longer and longer with each passing year.
I have a hell of a lot to say about food and women. Food and children. Food and human beings.
But first, I have to tell my own story, because we crave hearing and sharing stories. And only by reading my story will my own perspective on food make any damn sense.
Childhood Veganism and Natural Hygiene
I was raised as an only child (at home) of a single mother on food stamps. We were poor, but we were also highly unusual. My mother had committed to a holistic worldview that paired with her religious perspective. She was an avid follower of the Mucusless Diet promoted by Dr. Christopher, as well as Ann Wigmore and Bernard Jensen (if you know, you know).
It’s not a very commonly discussed diet approach, but it has its roots in the Natural Hygiene movement of the early-mid 1900s. Which has its roots in the religious fervor of the late 1800s/early 1900s health movement that was focused on reducing “sexual feelings” to keep children and adults from so-called “deviant” sexual behavior, such as the very natural tendency toward masterbation or just a general interest in sex in any way (more on that in another essay, but feel free to Google “Dr. Kellogg” for an eyeful).
The general perspective promoted by the Mucusless Diet is that animal foods are bad (for the most part), and humans should be eating a diet that mimics what they might eat in the mythical Garden of Eden. Lots of fruits and veggies, some grains, some nuts and seeds. Everything in its most whole state and as vegan + raw as humanly possible.
Dairy was the worst sinner of all, as the diet espouses the idea that it causes mucus in the body which equals BAD. Growing up, my mom always promoted the idea that I was lactose intolerant (the same as she supposedly was), and I was only very rarely allowed to eat anything that a typical kid got to eat.
Not every family that follows a specific diet is very strict. But my mother was very strict with her religion, and she applied the same religious dedication to her way of eating (and therefore also to what I ate).
I was the kid that brought sandwiches to school made with homemade whole wheat, loaded to the gills with homegrown sprouts and veggies. Or cooked millet with honey and blueberries (with friends teasing me for eating “bird food”). But it was okay. As much as I wanted to devour everything I saw the kids around me eating, I was proud to be weird and different. I had the “truth” and they didn’t — that made me special.
The dark side of this is that I was also the kid that would head straight for the meat, cheese, and pastry table at church events, inhaling food as though I hadn’t had a meal in months. I was out of control every single time.
Our daily meals consisted of…
Oatmeal with honey
Sandwiches made with homemade whole wheat bread and only veggies
Steamed potatoes with salad
With some snacks of mostly raw almonds and raisins, air-popped popcorn with olive oil and a Bernard Jensen veggie seasoning (we also weren’t allowed to eat salt — which is disastrous for the adrenals and cell function). I was also pushed to drink a hell-of-a-lot of home-distilled water to go with my salt-free diet. (You can see where this is going…)
And that’s pretty much what I ate every day of my life until I was 17 and left home (with minor variations and phases over the years).
If you pop that into a nutritional analysis you’ll discover that my fat and protein intake was next to nothing, even if my whole food intake was pretty and shiny on the outside.
Essentially, I was STARVING for the deep nourishment of my ancestors. And I started engaging in binging behaviors very early in life, raiding friends’ fridges and pantries, inhaling candy every Halloween that I was lucky enough to get treats…
As the dogma of the Natural Hygiene approach was that this was humanity’s “natural” diet, we didn’t take supplements or vitamins. And honestly, that wasn’t as common in the natural food scene of the 80s and early 90s anyway.
Becoming a Raw Veganism Devotee
After I left home at 17, I ate whatever the hell I wanted to for almost a year. But I felt immense guilt. And I binged on carbs, sugar, and fat like never before. I felt like absolute shit, and often contemplated going vegetarian again. I developed binge and purge behaviors, eating an entire pot of pasta and then heading to the bathroom to force myself to throw up at least half of what was in my stomach so that I could feel comfortable again.
I felt insanely out of control, untrusting of my body, mad that I was so damn hungry all the time. I couldn’t stop thinking about food and what tasty treat I wanted to indulge in next. While everyone else was thinking about fun activities, I was thinking about food. And simultaneously wanting to crawl out of my skin with each pound that I perceived as gained (SO much body hatred).
And then one day while I was online as an 18-year-old, I discovered raw veganism and I found an even purer form of the Mucusless Diet. I felt self-righteous that I had found a better diet than my mother had raised me with. I was going to be superhuman.
I inhaled blog posts and videos from the superstars at the time (2002): Shazzie and David Wolfe. I learned about how humans were primates, therefore should eat what chimps eat (according to these armchair “scientists”).
So I tried and tried to eat a perfect diet. Smoothies, salads, homemade raw crackers, bowls of raw “cookie dough” made out of almond butter and nuts/raisins. But secretly every few days I would break and binge on carbs, fat, and protein.
Then I got pregnant and became hardcore committed to this lifestyle, so I could raise my baby on the most perfect diet.
But then the morning sickness kicked in, and I threw up like there was no tomorrow. And I couldn’t get it to stop.
Water wouldn’t stay down for weeks.
Every smoothie would come right back up.
Even a glance at a salad sent me to the bathroom hurling up any remaining liquid in my stomach (along with plenty of bile…ugh).
I lost 10 pounds. (Secretly I wasn’t mad about it, as I was terrified of gaining weight.)
Finally, the morning sickness stopped and I could get back to my obsessions around eating pure foods. I tried to be a fruitarian (which left me puking again from so much blood sugar imbalance, so I had to stop being so extreme).
I found other mothers online who were going through raw vegan pregnancies and raising raw children (like Storm and Jinjee). I bought their e-books. Read their blogs. Sent them emails and made them my mentors. I idolized their skinny bodies and wild-looking lifestyles.
I was all-consumed by this idea of perfectionism that would lead to a euphoric state of perfect health and feeling like a superhuman goddess.
(PS Highly Unique Identity Culture emphasizes the euphoria-seeking experience. Watch out for obsessively craving euphoria through perfectionism or achieving a perfect state of identity.)
But the truth was that I felt like absolute shit during pregnancy and postpartum. My blood sugar levels were constantly dropping, giving me the shakes and making me the bitchiest person on the planet. Having a young baby was a nightmare, as I just didn’t have the blood sugar regulation capacity to be a patient person and every challenging moment felt like a crisis. (And, let’s be honest, I was hyper focused on my battle with food all the time too.)
Raising a Raw Vegan Baby
My tiny daughter was breastfed exclusively until she was interested in solid foods at around 6 months. She then learned to love mangoes, avocados, smoothies, and eventually salads. She was never given sugar or processed foods until well after 18 months old (I still remember the time someone gave her a fruit snack and she tossed it to the floor because she thought it was plastic). I breastfed her until she was 3.5 years old.
But shortly after her teeth came in, she developed Early Childhood Caries (AKA bottle rot). And so I agonized over what I had done wrong. Dentists shamed me for allowing her to breastfeed at night (and I rolled my eyes over their lack of understanding of evolution). I tried hard to brush her teeth, but as toddlers often do she fought hard to avoid it.
I was pretty distraught that my so-called perfect diet hadn’t protected my daughter from this… what the heck was wrong? Everything felt futile.
I got pregnant again when she was 18 months old, which left me once again horribly sick from morning sickness. (I even asked David Wolfe at a lecture I attended why raw vegan women got morning sickness, and he froze up, stumbled over his words, and shrugged.)
I was still trying hard to be a pure raw vegan, but I would always backslide a bit and binge on potatoes or tortilla chips when I got so hungry I couldn’t handle it anymore.
I had a wild pregnancy followed by an unassisted birth (freebirth). (My thoughts on freebirth coming soon…) I also continued to breastfeed my first baby throughout the pregnancy and then through my second baby’s first year (AKA tandem nursing). This was for sure hard on my body, as my nutrient stores were pretty low. Luckily, I was pretty young and my body was more adaptable (though I’m sure my struggles were compounded by having two humans depending on me for their nutrition).
Things were more calm with this second baby, but I was still unbelievably hungry and my blood sugar levels were constantly going really high and then dropping really hard. I felt like shit.
It wasn’t until my son was a few months old that I loaned one of David Wolfe’s books to a friend whose husband had a PhD in biology that I learned that the whole thing was utter crap. The evolutionary dribble in there was very unscientific and the whole thing just created as propaganda to help promote his supplement company (entirely my opinion, of course).
There were the beginnings of talks in the online raw vegan community that even primates eat a bit of animal matter in their diets in the form of insects. So perhaps we were meant to eat a bit of animal food. For many mothers, that meant adding in a little goat cheese a couple of times per week to their and their kids’ diet. Some of them added in a chicken egg here or there. I started including a tiny bit of raw cow cheese to my salads, as this was the only thing I could stomach mentally.
Weston A. Price and Anthropology to the Rescue
Thankfully, in 2007, I stumbled onto Weston A. Price’s work from various sources, and immediately dove into this community with a whole lot of hesitation (because wouldn’t it make me fat and unhealthy???). I still remember the very first time I attempted to make scrambled eggs. My stomach turned as I cracked the egg into the pan and I swirled the slimy raw egg around. I forced myself to eat a couple of bites.
But it was several days before I could try again.
Every animal food I introduced back into my diet was mentally challenging. I would freak out about all the rules I had been following my whole life. I would be scared of gaining weight. I would worry that eating a diet that looked so normal would make me blend in instead of stand out (a common issue with obsessed people – we are consumed by wanting to be unique).
Mostly, I didn’t trust my hunger. And I was always VERY hungry.
I started to learn about actual human evolution at this point, and was introduced to the baby paleo diet movement (this was at the beginning of Loren Cordain’s paleo empire). I fell in love with anthropology. And I found new ways to restrict my diet.
Was I supposed to eat grains at all? What if they triggered my IBS? Didn’t that mean they were bad?
I was probably lactose intolerant (because my mother told me so), so I shouldn’t really eat dairy products…right? Plus, who thought it was a good idea to steal milk from a baby cow?
Meat is so expensive… and it’s still murder…right?
I discovered kombucha and started making it at home (back when only GT’s was sold at the store and everyone thought it tasted like vinegar). I tried my hand at making kefir and sauerkraut.
And then I started binging so hard on junk food. I couldn’t stop the cravings. And I binged for at least a year straight on absolute processed shit.
Finally, I was fed up with being a few pounds over my (self-proclaimed) “ideal” weight. And I’d just discovered the zero carb paleo diet (which has now evolved into the Keto and carnivore diets). So I spent a whole month eating absolutely no carbs whatsoever. And I lost a few pounds.
Until I caved and ate a bowl of blueberries. And immediately felt my brain turn back on. And realized zero carb was also absolute bullshit.
Finding Matt Stone and “Eat The Damn Food”
One day, I somehow came across Matt Stone online. He is an independent researcher and has dug up some really intriguing studies on starvation, the thyroid, and body temperature (via Ray Peat and Broda Barnes, and a few other intriguing researchers). He talked about running far, far away from starvation diets and I was so hungry for someone to say it was okay to just eat some damn real food. So I bought his e-book and read it in one day.
My whole life I’d been taught that food wasn’t something to be trusted. Food was addictive. Sugar was a drug. Carbs (especially bread) made us fat. Dairy was liquid puss. I had a supposedly sensitive body, which meant I couldn’t eat hardly anything without having painful IBS reactions.
It seemed like my body hated me. And I would respond with more self-flagellation and an attempt to “control” a body that just wouldn’t behave.
But suddenly, Matt Stone shared phrases like “Eat the damn food” and talked about how it’s better for our bodies to eat food (any freaking food), than to be so focused on eliminating things from our diet. How it was more harmful to focus on what we WEREN’T eating, instead of how we could thoroughly nourish ourselves.
He was so kind (and really damn funny and quirky). I emailed him my thanks and my story, which he published on his blog at the time (in 2012). (If you feel like reading more of my crazy story you can read the version from a decade ago there.)
I read the book Healthfood Junkies by Steven Bratman and reflected on how my whole childhood had been steeped in an orthorexic approach to food. And how many people I had witnessed over the years completely consumed by obsession with food (and detoxes and fasts and cleanses…UGH), justified by a purist label of “health.”
I finally realized that I needed to move beyond my fear of food.
So I stopped.
I stopped reading health books.
I stopped reading blogs.
I started baking brownies.
I kept eating real food.
I also ate whatever I wanted to eat.
I gained weight (like really gained weight) for the first time ever.
And over a few years, I found myself less afraid of food and my body more tolerant of treats.
I realized that my terror of food wasn’t that justified. And that my body was pretty damn adaptable.
And I healed my mind, which was the greatest gift of peace in the whole wide world.
Finding Freedom but Not True Wellbeing
I still wasn’t “fixed.” I still struggled with brain fog. I still had deep, deep adrenal fatigue. I still had crippling social anxiety (something I directly attribute to brain function, as well as hiding at home with newborns as a young mother instead of practicing social skills in public). Every time I’d try to exercise, I’d spend the rest of the day on the couch exhausted.
But I pushed through. I went to college and studied anthropology. I grew in ways that had absolutely nothing to do with food. My kids got bigger and older (and I was vigilant about never saying a thing about my body or my panicky issues with food, especially with my daughter – which paid off and I’ll write about another time).
I had allopathic and naturopathic healthcare practitioners run labs on me every so often, always coming back with a clean bill of health. I had a saliva test done once and the practitioner was shocked by how deeply adrenal depleted I was (but I was too tired to even do anything about it). I spent my days chasing children, attending school, sometimes engaging in part-time work, and the rest of the time planted squarely in bed.
I’d had horrible nightmares since forever and suffered from insomnia. I was exhausted all day and then couldn’t sleep at night.
Sometimes my brain fog was so bad I would avoid social interactions simply because I struggled to even remember my name, let alone find the words to respond to anything said to me.
I read work by Dr. Daniel Amen and decided to go against my frustrations with Big Pharma and try pharmaceuticals. I got on Wellbutrin for 2 years, and even tried Ritalin for a short period of time… hoping they would help with my brain fog. And it did…until it didn’t. (I did toy with the idea of perhaps having ADD, but none of the qualifiers made any sense for me.) I finally quit medications after one day when I was trying to write on a neon poster, I realized that looking at it was like staring into a dizzy, epileptic sun. And I never, ever looked back.
Life took over and I got distracted by other things happening in my world. I stopped caring about my health. I started a business and found relief in being able to work from bed on my own schedule (when I needed to).
Over the years, I realized that I did indeed start feeling a bit better. I would still wake up in the middle of the night with racing thoughts. I was still pretty exhausted. But I didn’t have the intense blood sugar crashes of my raw vegan days (thank all the gods).
I made peace with meat and animal foods (though I was still relatively skeptical of dairy for my own body). I went through shorter phases of trying things – did intermittent fasting for a while (SUCH a shitshow for women’s bodies), tried an elimination diet in connection with another program (nice in the short-term, but quickly led to binging), and other things.
But now that I had made a promise to not fall into the trap of food restriction ever again, nothing ever stuck and I always went back to eating whatever I wanted to eat (within reason).
Rediscovering Ray Peat and Pro-Metabolic
About 2 years ago, I decided to stop grazing all day long and focus on eating 3 square meals with snacks. It helped me lose weight and feel good. But the results didn't entirely stick because I was still restricting calories and playing with hunger (fire).
Almost a year ago, I discovered that a tiny part of the holistic health world was talking about Ray Peat again and my ears perked up. I had been intrigued by this scientist’s work when I discovered it through Matt Stone 10+ years ago, but it was so dense to read at that point and I hadn’t gone to college yet so I didn’t understand anything. And I was just too damn tired at the time to try to make sense of it. And here was a whole community of people who had found a way to apply it in fun, easy-to-understand ways.
So I thought… why not – it’s time to start fine tuning my nourishment and get truly, truly well. I started eating greek yogurt + berries within 30 minutes of waking up and before drinking any caffeine. I began making and drinking adrenal cocktails right before bed (a non-alcoholic drink focused on supporting the adrenals – my version includes protein, fat, carbs, minerals — recipe coming soon).
And suddenly I started sleeping easily through the night every damn night. No more waking up at 2am, panicking about my to-do list or stressing about money. Just blissful, deep sleep.
This small change and my whole body shifted for the better. I was sold.
I rounded out my already mostly whole foods diet with oysters, seaweed, and beef liver on a daily basis. I added in bioavailable magnesium with more purpose and intention. I started religiously making sure that every single meal or snack that passed my lips contained quality carbs, protein, and fat.
And I started feeling like a real human for the first time in my entire life.
I ate grass fed dairy at a rate I’d never before in my life tried to do. And after an initial adjustment period, I realized I wasn’t lactose intolerant in the least. In fact my body LOVED good quality dairy. I didn’t get mucus-y or constipated. I didn’t feel toxic. I felt peacefully nourished.
My IBS bloating and “sensitive” stomach stopped being that way for the first time in my whole life. My body felt quiet and calm.
I gained a bit of weight at first, but as the months have passed I’ve started to lose a few and even out overall. And the best part is I don’t give two shits whether I’m perfectly skinny at this point. I feel too damn good to care anymore.
I suddenly felt like my body is actually wise in ways I never before understood. I realized that every single chronic condition I’d struggled with was simply my body attempting to do its job without the materials it needed to do the job correctly.
I can think clearly for the first time in a million years. I can sleep easily. I don’t get anxiety attacks or adrenaline surges anymore. I can cut down to a simple cup of green tea without experiencing brain fatigue (progress after years of relying on cups and cups of coffee to function).
I am not healed yet. I’m playing with my mineral levels. I’m observing my body’s cravings and learning to trust the wisdom in those cravings.
I now understand that it takes YEARS to undo the damage we’ve done to our bodies. To replenish, remineralize, restore function.
I now know in my bones that women’s bodies are truly STARVING, even when we don’t think we are. And I deeply get how many of our mental health symptoms are just basic starvation symptoms (with serious consequences).
I’m no longer afraid of food, but instead see it as my ally and medicine in healing. I’m sad about the thousands of dollars I wasted on supplements and all kinds of silly strategies, hoping they would fix me (they didn’t). I’m even more sad about how many years I spent hating my body, beating my body into submission, and not giving this beautiful body the nourishment it deserved.
But I’m so glad that I now understand that food is the first stop on the path to healing…not products in a bottle (though limited supplements can be cautiously helpful once food is replenished). I also understand that our healing is dependent on what we add to our diets, and not as much what we take away from our diets.
Sadly, my 83-year-old mother is still very entrenched in her food dogma and constantly obsessed with her weight. Even as she suffers from osteoporosis and other classic old age conditions of malnourishment.
If we don’t heal ourselves, these patterns will follow us all the way to our deaths. No one can heal us except ourselves.
What I’ve Learned from a Lifetime of Learning + Food Obsession + Healing My Mind and Body
Veganism and vegetarianism is downright dangerous. Full stop. Not a single indigenous culture eats a “plant-based” diet (whatever that really is). I don’t care what vegan book you’ve read about whatever culture they’re putting on a pedestal – it’s cherry picking propaganda that supports a damaging view of our world.
Every single human culture throughout all time has placed their highest priority and value on animal foods (with added fruit and carbs – because hello delicious!).
Plant-based diets are just a green-washed marketing ploy to get you to buy products made in factories. Which are barely usable nutrients for your body and are NOT good for our planet (not even a tiny bit). If it’s factory garbage made to seem like the real thing, it’s NOT the real thing and you’re eating the nutritional equivalent of cardboard.
Monocropping and factory farming is killing our planet, not cows. Slash and burn agriculture in the Amazon rainforest is not sustainable. The death of family farms and hunger-gatherer ways of life are not sustainable. Cows eating grass and pooping to create more rich soil IS sustainable and the way things have been for millions of years (ruminants used to roam these lands before cows did).
People living in low-resource countries don’t deserve subpar nutrition as a solution for “world hunger.” They deserve to enjoy living in bodies with vibrant metabolism, healthy fertility, and mental wellness too. Giving them mono-cropped, pesticide-ridden foods that don’t match their traditional diet is not a solution. It’s paternalistic and offensive. Veganism doesn’t solve a damn thing. They deserve autonomy, to eat what is indigenous to their culture (which is almost always nutrient-dense), and to be treated like real adults.
Ethical dairy is not “stealing milk from baby cows” and it doesn’t create mucus in the body. It’s not evil. Factory farming IS evil. Dairy is not. We need to learn how to separate the two and think in more nuanced ways. Dairy is a sacred food revered by many of our indigenous ancestors and cultures all over the world – if your genetic background is from one of these cultures, then epigenetics says give it a try.
Humans were first scavengers before they were hunter-gatherers – eating whatever they came across (including raw, slightly rotting meat) in order to survive. This is how we wandered around the whole world with ease – we are resilient and highly adaptable creatures.
Participating in the web of life is not murder. It’s called being aligned with our planet and Mother Nature. This world is intelligent and beautiful, even in all its challenges. Humans opting to not participate in the web of life, deeply connected to how mammals are meant to live is what has landed us in this truly fucked up path toward planetary destruction. (We. Must. Stop.)
Humans are not parasites. The planet wouldn’t be better off if we just disappeared. Stop believing human domestication lies because they’re leading us to even worse behaviors. Humans are an essential part of the ecosystem of this planet. In our healthy state, we are the servants of life and protectors of the land. Our planet looks the way it looks right now because we’ve forgotten that we are actually wild animals. WE NEED TO START ACTING LIKE IT. Mother Nature is just waiting for us to remember.
Our culture has deep issues with being IN life. That includes clinging frantically to youth and death denialism. Veganism is a product of death denialism and archaic Christian beliefs that promote an agenda of subservience and disembodiment. It’s a product of patriarchal control of women’s bodies. It is NOT going to fix our planet or ease our sense of guilt for being alive. Only by facing and embracing death and our mammalian nature do we find solutions for our big problems. (And no, the solutions aren’t Bill Gates or Elon Musk or any other celebrity distracting us with shiny toys and pretty platitudes.)
Our society profits off our disconnection from our bodies. Gurus, “experts,” trends, and brands are self-serving and do not have your best interest in mind. Sure, some of them are well-intentioned and just trying to live their own disembodied lives like the rest of us. Run from all of them if their approach is money first. Be skeptical of the entire “health and wellness” industry always. Most of the time these are just sad people who have broken relationships with their bodies. Some people are reconnecting and rewilding. Find them and make them your friends.
Plants contain phytochemicals of varying levels of toxicity to protect themselves from being eaten by animals. They are also composed of very dense cell walls. Humans aren’t ruminants with multiple stomachs to break down both those cell walls and those chemicals. This is why we cook our plants, roots, and seeds. Do not believe the propaganda that we are anything like ruminants, or even other primates (who still have VERY different GI tracts than we do).
Carbs are not bad and ketogenic diets are very harsh on a woman’s body. Our brains prefer easy fuel to function well. If you have a low body temperature from low carb diets, it’s the diet and not your body. Our bodies love good quality, whole food carbohydrates and need them to thrive. Humans evolve, and good quality carbs give us energy and more capacity to embrace creativity and life.
Your level of fertility health is also a measure of your overall wellness. Having healthy fertility isn’t just about having babies. It’s about living a life that feels good, having mental health that is healthy, and enjoying a body that is resilient to normal life stresses. If something is wrong with your period or overall signs of fertility, get to the root cause and don’t minimize your need to heal. We are beautiful fertile beings living in a toxic, stressful world. We need to take good care.
So-called “evidence-based medicine” is useful to a certain extent, but often the studies are dead wrong or not even kind of applicable to the real world (a laboratory with factors in isolation isn’t the real world). Often they’re based on men’s bodies and not women’s (which is highly dangerous). Having studies to back up claims is sometimes important. But it’s not everything, because half the time one study can be disproven with another study (which is how we get drastically changing recommendations over time). Be a cautious consumer of all information.
Our society profits by convincing you that you’re not the expert of your own body and by avoiding teaching you how to work with the wisdom of your body. It profits off of convincing you that you’re not enough. That you need to run to expert after expert, buy product after product, hoping someone can cure you. It’s anti-capitalism to instead learn to be embodied and start trusting and listening to your own animal nature.
Women’s bodies and men’s bodies do NOT operate in the same ways (despite what others might try to tell you). WOMEN ARE NOT SMALL MEN. If a man is promoting a certain perspective on health (AKA intermittent fasting, Keto, bulletproof beverages, insane workouts), run the fuck the other way. Seriously. Women’s hormones are drastically different from men’s hormones. And that makes all the difference in healing and feeling truly well.
Women need to stop self-harming and then calling it “good health.” Skipping meals isn’t healthy. Going to sleep on an empty stomach isn’t virtuous. Losing those last 5-10 pounds won’t change your life. Self-deprivation is rooted in Puritan, Calvinistic, and Middle Ages cultures when women were promoted to sainthood by starving themselves (I’m not kidding).
If all the grocery stores disappeared and you had to grow or raise all of your own food in order to survive (or barter or buy from a neighbor)... what would you eat? What did your great-great-great-great grandmother eat? It all becomes more clear now, doesn’t it? Take away the pretty packages, flashy advertisements, overwhelming shopping “experiences” and we suddenly know what to eat. It really is that simple.
Children are not guinea pigs in a Trendy Health Food Philosophy Science Experiment. Food dogma has serious consequences on their growth and ability to feel good as adults. Our society is rampant with children with food sensitivities and allergies galore. Newsflash: THIS IS NEW and many other cultures (especially those in so-called “third world countries”) don’t have these problems at anywhere near the levels we do. Get to the root cause of your child’s sensitivities and find true healing. FEED THEM REAL FOOD. Full of carbs, proteins, and fats. Eliminating whole food groups and sticking them on trendy diets will not solve the problem, but will instead make the problem much worse. (I will forever be working to re-nourish this body that wasn’t properly nourished as a child… I understand these consequences more than anyone.) Teach them abundance and self-love.
Eat real food you either do or could make in your kitchen. Find the root cause of your issues (most likely it’s malnourishment and a lack of necessary minerals and nutrients). Stop cutting out food groups. Your body will be confused at first, as it develops new microbiome buddies to help digest what you’re eating, and it finds a new rhythm. Keep going. Make animal foods the center of your diet. Be cautious with plant foods, but don’t cut them out (cook, ferment, sprout, and cook some more). Enjoy some chocolate (seriously).
A “sensitive” body isn’t a healthy body. We are not fragile creatures, but this culture of frankenfoods and diet confusion has made our bodies seem sensitive. The truth is we are just as badass as other wild mammals in the animal kingdom. Our bodies just need a little help to get back to being resilient again. You SHOULD be able to eat or drink almost anything without your body falling apart and reacting badly. Keep going – you’ll get there.
What you eat the majority of the time is more important than what you eat some of the time. Treats will not kill you or ruin your healing journey. Stop playing in the Black and White Thought Sandbox – it’s how we ended up here in the first place. Everything is always more complicated than it seems (and sometimes more simple too).
You are beautiful, whole, wise, wild RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT. You are worth taking care of and nourishing. You just need to give your body more nourishment and then get out of the way. You can do this. We need you.
If my years of disordered eating have taught me anything, it’s that a friends and mentors who speak truth are crucial for stopping damaging behaviors and starting to truly heal. If you’re tired of spinning around and around in the world of diet dogma and you’re ready to start feeling truly nourished, I work with women 1:1 to heal their minds and bodies with true autonomy and minus the bullshit.
I believe you are capable of taking good care of yourself, armed with confidence, an understanding of the female body, and a pro-metabolism/ancestral approach to nourishment.
Let’s focus on your wellbeing over the course of a day together, puzzling out your struggles and finding new ways to help you come home to your body again. Book a 1:1 session with me here.
