Realfoodology - My Food Journey | Solo Episode

Episode Date: March 22, 2023

138: **REALFOODOLOGY PODCAST IS NOW ON YOUTUBE!** Lately I have been going through a lot of personal growth and I feel inspired to share some of it with you.  So this week I am going solo.  Todays episode is going to be all about my food journey. Sponsored By: Yais Thai www.YaisThai.com Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% off any product or bundle (Offer expires 4/15/23 at 11:59pm MT) KION Save 20% on monthly deliveries and 10% on one-time purchases by going to getkion.com/realfoodology Organifi www.organifi.com/realfoodology Code REALFOODOLOGY gets you 20% Off Check Out Courtney: **REALFOODOLOGY PODCAST IS NOW ON YOUTUBE!** Courtney's Instagram: @realfoodology www.realfoodology.com My Immune Supplement by 2x4 Air Dr Air Purifier AquaTru Water Filter EWG Tap Water Database Further Listening: How Realfoodology All Began | Solo Episode 

No matter what your health goals are, whether you are looking to lose weight or build muscle, protein is key. And sometimes a chocolate protein shake just sounds so much better than chicken breast. Many of us turn to protein powders, which unfortunately may not be as clean as you think. Looking at a leading brand's label, I'm seeing artificial flavors, Ace K, which is Ace Potassium, an artificial sweetener, soy, the list goes on. So when you're choosing a protein powder, keep it simple and keep it clean. First, look for whey isolate. It's lower in carbs and higher in bioavailable protein that your body can actually use. Next, make sure that it's grass-fed and

pasture-raised and always choose natural over artificial anything. Be careful with the labeling. Natural is not a regulated term. So make sure that you're getting a good, clean protein shake from a company who you actually trust. My go-to is Keon Clean Protein because it checks all the boxes. It's premium whey isolate that comes from grass-fed and pasture-raised cows, and it's made with organic natural flavors. And if you guys are concerned about the natural flavors in their protein powder, I encourage you to listen to the podcast episode that I have with the founder of Keon, where we talk about the sourcing of his natural flavors. And let me tell you guys, it tastes amazing. I really love the vanilla and

the chocolate depending on the day and what type of smoothie I'm wanting to make. Their rich chocolate is really good when you want more of a chocolatey shake and the smooth vanilla just goes with everything. Especially my favorite is doing the strawberry probiotic. It's really simple. DM me if you want to know. It is so good and so tart. If you are ready to indulge your health with Keon Clean Protein and you want to save 20% on monthly deliveries or 10% on a one-time purchase, go to getkeon.com slash realfoodology. That is G-E-T-K-I-O-N.com slash realfoodology to get Keon clean protein. Hi friends, welcome back to another episode of the Real Foodology Podcast. I'm your host, Courtney Swan. I am an integrative nutritionist with my master's of science in

nutrition and integrative health. And I also run an Instagram account called Real Foodology, which started out 11 years ago as a simple food blog where I was posting recipes and I was sharing what I was learning in school. And I was just feeling so inspired to share all of this knowledge that I was learning about nutrition and health and our food industry. And I am just so passionate about helping others. And I wanted to share this information that I felt was not being shared with the general public about our health. So that's how I started Real Foodology 11 years ago in my small apartment in Austin, Texas. I'm now in LA for context, if you guys don't know too much about me.

And it eventually morphed into my Instagram account, Real Foodology. And here I am. I now have this podcast. I've been doing it for about two years now and I have not done very many solo episodes. My very first episode that I released about two years ago, which I cringe thinking about going back and listening to because I really had not found my voice then. And I was saying a lot of ums and I was feeling pretty uncomfortable and did not speak the way that I do now. But I'm so grateful that I started because we all have to start somewhere, right? So I have been inspired more lately to record some solo podcast episodes. I have been going through so much of my own personal growth and I feel inspired to share some of it. So today's episode is going to be all

about my food journey. So this one's not really so much about everything that I've been going through in my own personal life, in my emotional world, but I feel very inspired to share my whole food journey with you guys. Where I started, how I got super into health, all the different iterations of being too strict and rigid and going through really unhealthy periods of my life and then finding my groove. And I just felt really inspired to share this because so many of us, especially women, especially women, really struggle to find what works best for our bodies. And, you know, of course, a lot of that has to do with societal pressures and feeling like we need to be a certain size and a certain weight. And I'm not here to talk too much about that today,

but I wanted to share my personal journey and where I started in hopes that maybe it can help you find your way and find what works best for you. If you're new here, I would love to reiterate what my overall messaging is with Real Foodology whenever I talk about food and health and all of this is that at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter what I say or what any expert in the health and wellness world says or anyone you follow on Instagram,

it does not matter if it doesn't work for you. I'm a huge proponent for trying all the things, try what you feel intuitively called to do. Let's say you follow someone on Instagram and they're promoting keto really hard. And you're like, I'd love to try that. They're speaking my language right now. I feel like that might help me. I am a full supporter of trying it and seeing if it works for you. But it also takes a level of discernment and knowing when something is no longer working for you or if it's never worked for you. So just make sure as you are on your health journey and learning what is best for your body to never give away your power to someone else. And that's a doctor, a nutritionist, health expert. At the end of the day, something that works for someone else may not work for you.

We are all so bio-individual and you are the only person that lives in your body and you are the only one that really knows what's going on in your body. You are the authority on your body. If someone's telling you that a vegetarian diet is the healthiest thing for the planet, it's the healthiest thing for human bodies, and you're eating vegetarian or you tried vegetarian and it wasn't working for you, you were feeling lethargic, tired, then it doesn't work for you.

And you need to listen to your body because our body is very smart and our body knows what it needs. But it's our job to tune into that and listen and do what's best for our own bodies. All right. Well, now that I've said that, let's dive into my personal health journey. You guys may have heard me talk about this before, because I've definitely shared this on other podcasts and on my Instagram. I feel very fortunate that I grew up in a household where health was very much a focus of our meals.

My mom has always been really, really healthy since I can remember. She made pretty much every meal from scratch. We rarely, if ever, ate out. I barely ever had fast food. Every single night, I would come home to a home-cooked meal from scratch by my amazing mom. She lived in Boulder for a long time and learned really about this alternative, holistic, more preventative root cause approach to our health and to eating. And so she was making all of our meals from scratch. And at the time, you know, as all of us do when we're young, I really didn't have a concept of how lucky I was and how

pretty rare that was, especially now. Most people are not making and cooking their food from scratch. I remember too, my mom was always shopping at these like natural food grocery stores. We had a place called Sun Harvest and this was before Whole Foods. And then Whole Foods came in and ended up buying out Sun Harvest. But so as a kid, we were going to these like, at the time, what we call these like crunchy, hippie, kind of like natural food stores. And I was getting all these, you know, the off-brand natural cereals and the natural peanut butter. I remember I was so obsessed with Peter Pan peanut butter. I actually don't even know if that exists anymore, but it's like Jif, Skippy. And it was, oh my God, I have an obsession with peanut butter already. And it's,

anyone listening knows what like Jif Skippy tastes like. We know that it's terrible for us. And my mom would never let me buy it, but every once in a while as a treat, she would buy me a jar. And if I like did something really well in school or we wanted to celebrate something, she would let me have like a couple spoonfuls of it. And I'm just sharing this with you guys to let you know that really like this was where, how it was in my household. I was not allowed to have sodas and there was just a real focus on having nourishing healthy foods in the house. Now, as a result, as a kid, anytime I went over to my friend's house for sleepovers, there was this one friend in particular that I was so excited

to go to her house. Every time we went there and I had like a sleepover, her pantry was just stocked with everything. I mean, Gushers, Dunkaroos, all my favorite cereals like Captain Crunch and Honey Grahams and Cinnamon Toast Crunch, all of that stuff. And I remember I ran into this friend's mom maybe like five years ago. And she was like, Courtney, I cannot believe that the girl that used to come over to my house and like ransack our pantry and eat all of the like junk food that she could get her hands on is like, I can't believe that this is the profession that you're in now. And so we were making a bunch of jokes about how I would just come over and just ransack their entire pantry and eat all of their junk food. And I think some

of you guys listening may think like, wow, that doesn't sound super healthy. And I know when people start having kids that this is a huge conversation of how far do we go to protect our kids from all this processed junk food while also allowing them to live and be kids. And I don't want to go too far into this conversation, but I do want to say as an adult, I am so incredibly grateful. And I tell my mom probably once a week still that I am so grateful that she did not allow me to eat all of that processed junk and crap on a daily basis. Yeah, I would go to my friend's house and I would while out and eat a bunch of it, but I wasn't eating it on a consistent basis. And that is really where

we're seeing this influx in obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and we're seeing it younger and younger and younger because it's not just that we're having that like spoonful of skippy peanut butter every once in a while like I did you know with my mom kids are eating this processed junk all day every day and it's making up like 70% of their diets now and we know from research that what we feed kids, not only is it during an incredibly pertinent time of their life, their brains are developing, their bodies are growing, they need nutrition more than ever. But there's also this emotional component there that the foods that you ate growing up, when you get older, there's a part of our brain that equates those foods to our parents' love. So let's say that you're

maybe like every Friday night, your mom made you like a, I don't know, Velveeta mac and cheese or something. And as you grow up, you probably equate that mac and cheese, the Velveeta mac and cheese as a comfort food. And there's a chemical reaction happening in your brain there where like basically we equate that with like our mom's love or our dad's love. You know, maybe it was your dad that was making it for you. It's incredibly important that we prioritize healthy foods for growing bodies and growing brains. So at the time I remember fighting my mom on stuff and I was bummed that I couldn't have McDonald's and like Burger King every day, like a bunch of my friends. But as I got older and I realized the importance of nutrition and health

and realized that I had this foundation of health that so many of my peers didn't have and they had to learn it on their own, I am so grateful for that gift from my mom. All right, so I graduated high school and I had just spent the last 17 years in my house with my parents where every, almost every meal was made from scratch, homemade, organic, natural, not really eating fast food. Every once in a while on like weekends and stuff in high school, I would

with friends, but it was really not, it was a pretty rare occasion for me. So I am on my own for the first time in my life. And I go nuts on the fast food, eating out, eating in my school cafeteria, obviously, because I didn't have any other choice in that. And it was the first time in my entire life that I was exposed to really highly processed, highly palatable foods on a consistent basis. The cafeteria food in of itself was not healthy. Even if I was eating salads, those salad dressings were made with canola oil and they had a frozen yogurt, like a soft serve station every day. And I think I ate it every day. Grilled cheese, French fries. I mean, yeah, it was. So you add that on top of drinking very heavily. I drank a lot when I was younger because it was that scene. I went to school at Boulder, CU,

University of Colorado. And it was, it was a pretty heavy party time in my life. So I do want to say that there was a lot of drinking involved. But on top of that, I was eating highly processed foods. And then I was also getting the fourth meal at Taco Bell pretty much every weekend. There was a Taco Bell that was like a block from my dorm room. And actually I found this out later that apparently, I don't know if this is true now, but when I was in college, this Taco Bell was one of the highest grossing Taco Bells in the United States. And it was a block from my dorm. And we used to, when my friends and I would walk home late at night, we would go stand in the drive-thru line and order, like we would just stand in line with the cars and order because they were closed on the inside. And then we got in trouble

and they stopped letting people do that. And so then we would like hand people cash and they would drive through and pick us up Taco Bell. The fact that this is even coming out of my mouth right now is crazy. It's so funny because it feels like I was such a different person back then. Because at this point, I had not made the connection yet because I had a backwards awakening that most people have. I feel like most people grow up on the standard American diet and then they start dealing with all sorts of health issues, whether it be eczema or digestive issues or whatever it is that you're dealing with. And then you start heading down this path of healing and learning about food and nutrition and the importance of it and how it affects our bodies. Well, I was the exact opposite. So I was coming off of feeling,

knowing what it was like to feel really good and super healthy in my body and eating whole real foods my whole life to go into college and gaining the freshmen. I probably gained 30 pounds my freshman year. And I don't say that to like, look, I know weight and body shape and everything is a very sensitive topic. And so I'm not trying to make it about that. But my point is that like, I gained a lot of weight in a really small period of time. And you know, not only was I uncomfortable, but I felt sick all the time. I felt fatigued. I actually had what I think now looking back on was if it was either psoriasis or eczema, but I believe it was psoriasis on the back of my scalp. It was so raw and so itchy and like

basically scabbed the whole time at the base of my skull. And this was going on for years. And I eventually, which I'll get more into this story later down the line, but I eventually went gluten-free years later and it completely went away when I went gluten-free. So I'll get more into this story later down the line, but I eventually went gluten free years later and it completely went away when I went gluten free. So I'll share more about that later, but it's a great testament to what we put into our bodies then goes on to reflect what else is going on in our body. So if you're dealing with digestive issues or skin rashes or your hair is falling out, I would start looking at your diet and seeing what you're fueling your body with. All right. So back to college. So at this point, I'd gained a bunch of weight. I was feeling really bad, like just sick, fatigued, all the things I just mentioned.

And I started trying to lose weight and I did what everyone was doing back then. Maybe people are still doing this now, but I don't know if they still sell it. I was eating SlimFast bars every day for lunch and drinking the SlimFast shakes for breakfast every morning, which is horrifying to me now because I look at those ingredients and I'm like, oh my God. That was such a reflection and testament of how we treat health in this country. And anyone that wants to get healthy and like lose weight, go on this diet of like highly processed packaged foods. And I think this is definitely changing. But do you guys remember there was like all these iterations of like there's lean cuisine, which I think still exists. There was that South Beach diet. I think that's what it was called. And they had bars and like, I think they might've had like meals and stuff too.

And then there was slim fast. And I remember all my friends back then, we were all trying to like, quote unquote, get healthy. And I say quote unquote, because obviously this was not healthy, eating slim fast bars. And I was drinking the shakes. So I'd have a slim fast shake in the morning. And then I would try to just have a slim fast bar for lunch and then would not understand why I was absolutely starving all day. And then I would just gorge myself on like anything I could get my hands on later in the day because I was not eating enough calories, number one. And two, I was not eating foods that were actually nutritious for my body. And it's so crazy to me that I did not make that connection because it's something that's so simple. And I say this with

no judgment too, because obviously I thought this way at one point. And it made me so upset when I started to brain and help your brain to function better and give you energy and can also help you sleep at night. And the healthier foods that you put in your body, the healthier that you're going to be and the better you're going to feel. And it's so crazy that we didn't make that connection for kids at a young age. And I still don't think we're doing that now. I had to learn this the hard way. So I went a couple of years struggling really hard doing all of that. I was eating lean cuisines and drinking Muslim fast. I remember I went through

a phase of drinking vitamin waters. Do you guys remember vitamin waters? There was a time where they were like super trendy. Like back when MySpace was a thing, we were all like posing with our vitamin waters and our MySpace photos. Like what? So it was like a cool drink to have. And I thought it was being really healthy. And I look at those now and they have 50 grams of sugar. I was drinking one or two a day, 50 grams of sugar. It's the same amount as like a can of Coke. So my senior year of college, my mom, well actually throughout all four years, but I feel like my senior year is maybe when it really started to click for me. My mom would always send me little articles in the mail because this was before, y'all I'm old. The internet was definitely a thing when I was in college,

but it was not how it is now. So it's not like there was just articles online that you could just email or text someone. So my mom would cut out articles that she would find in the newspaper or like magazine cutouts, or she would send me books sometimes. I will never forget this.

I don't know why this one in particularly really stuck with me, but she sent me a little cut out from the newspaper and they were talking about hydrogenated oils trans fats and this was this would have been in 2000 let's see I was living in that apartment in Boulder and Taft so this would have been 2003 no 2005 2005 That's how much my mom was on this stuff. Hydrogenated oils have now, or sorry, I don't want to misspeak this because I just got in trouble speaking about this. I didn't give all the nuances to it in a TikTok video. Partially hydrogenated oils are trans fats. And there was an article that was written in the newspaper and my mom was like, hey, make sure that you are avoiding hydrogenated oils

because these trans fats are really bad for our cardiovascular systems. They're really hard on your heart. And I started avoiding hydrogenated oils in 2005. That is crazy to think about. Partially hydrogenated oils were only more recently phased out of our food in the last couple of years. I don't remember the exact date, so don't come from me, guys. I don't

remember the exact year. But basically, the FDA, might have been the USDA, realized that hydrogenated oils are absolutely terrible for us, and they required food companies to phase them out of their food. So you could no longer find partially hydrogenated oils in your food. How much would you love to have a healthy red Thai coconut curry dinner ready and on the table in under 20 minutes without having to do takeout and knowing all the ingredients that are in there? Yai's Thai makes authentically Thai marinades and sauces. These recipes are based on the founder's Thai grandmother's recipes. She actually grew up in Thailand and they're made with fresh natural ingredients. There's no additives or preservatives. They're lower in sugar and sodium. And many of

them are whole 30 approved vegan paleo and keto. So, you know, you're getting a really good high quality product with ingredients that you know, and can eat. And they're also incredibly convenient. So I have this red Thai coconut curry that I'm going to make for dinner later. And it's super simple ingredients. All you have to do is mix in your favorite veggies and protein and then serve it over rice. So you heat it up and you have a meal ready to be eaten and be put on the table within 20 minutes. It is so simple. And you know that you're going to be able to feed yourself. And if you have a family or maybe your roommates, a good, healthy, warming meal, we all love Thai food, right? Oh my God, it's so delicious. But we don't

always want to do takeout. And it takes a lot of different ingredients to make from scratch. And many of us are busy. We're working all, and it's harder to make stuff from scratch. So Yai's Thai has you covered. And they also so kindly shared a code with me to share with you guys. If you use code realfoodology, you're going to save 20% on any product or bundle when you order on yiaistai.com. That's spelled Y-A-I-S-T-H-A-I.com. And use code realfoodology. I want to take a second to talk about some of my favorite Organifi products and why I love them. When I first started getting into health, I was an avid juicer. I was buying fresh veggies every couple of days and wearing out my juicer and also wearing out myself by trying to constantly juice vegetable juices because I wanted to flood my body with all of the nutrients,

the phytonutrients that you get from green juices. But after a while, I was like, I cannot keep doing this every day and also maintain my job, maintain my social life and everything else. But I really wanted to make sure that I had a good high quality green juice that was organic.

And I knew that I could trust came from a good source. So when I discovered Organifi, I was so happy. They not only have a green juice, but they also have a red juice. And I really like I could trust came from a good source. So when I discovered Organifi, I was so happy. They not only have a green juice, but they also have a red juice. And I really like to mix them together because it really helps with the flavor profile. And you're not only getting all of the green phytonutrients from the green juice, but you're also getting all the antioxidants from the red juice. So it's like a win-win situation. I also really love their chocolate gold.

It's their low sugar hot chocolate mix. And it's loaded with ingredients like lemon balm, turkey tail, magnesium chloride, and reishi. Oh, there's also turmeric in there as well. So it really helps to calm down your nervous system before bed. And it really makes me sleepy. It also helps the digestion because you have the turmeric in there, you have cinnamon, you have ginger, black pepper. So it's helping with digestion and inflammation. I'm a really big fan of this. You can also put it in your coffee in the morning and it kind of helps to balance out the jitters that you might get from your morning coffee. And then another product that I'm really loving and taking every single day is their liver reset. Modern living is incredibly

taxing on our liver. Like just existing is hard on our liver because we are constantly being inundated with pesticides, heavy metals, environmental toxins, not to mention if we drink alcohol, that's also going to put a strain on our liver. So I think it's incredibly important that we take something every single day to support our liver health. This product has triphala in it. It also has dandelion, milk thistle, and artichoke extract, which all have been scientifically backed and proven to provide protection for the liver. And then of course, the most important part about Organifi products is that they are all organic and they go a step further by guaranteeing that they are glyphosate residue free. Glyphosate is a known herbicide that is sprayed on a lot of our crops

these days. It's also sneaking into organic foods and it is a known carcinogen. So it's incredibly important to make sure that we limit our exposure as much as possible to glyphosate. If you guys wanna try any of the Organifi products and get 20% off, go to organifi.com slash realfoodology. You're gonna see all of my favorite products in that store and you're also gonna get 20% off. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com slash realfoodology.

So around this time, my mom's sending me all these articles and it just started to click for me. And this was when I really started to understand that the lean cuisines and the slim fasts and all this junk were not serving my body and they were not real food. These are all processed packaged foods just filled with a bunch of preservatives and ingredients that we don't need. And I started to really make that connection. And so I started shopping at Whole Foods. And I mean, this is another thing I'll go into as I share more of this story, but I was prioritizing different things and budgeting because I didn't have a lot of money back then. But I was really prioritizing shopping at Whole

Foods and buying Whole Real Foods because I started to see the importance of it and started feeling a lot better in my body. So my very last semester of college, I take a nutrition class and I am blown away by how passionate I am about this. And I was also so upset because I spent the majority of my undergrad really struggling to figure out what I wanted to study. I almost took time off just because I felt like I needed a second to really figure out what I wanted to do. But everything always works out. It's so amazing how your life just comes together, even when you feel directionless and you don't, you feel like you don't really know what you're doing. I ended up doing an undergrad of communications. And at the time I was like,

I don't know what I want to do. I guess this is like a, my advisor had advised me that this would be a good degree just to have. Well, I'm so grateful for it now because it made me a really great writer and it really honed my communication skills, which obviously now as I'm podcasting for you guys has really served me well. But at the time I was not able to see how this would all unfold. And I take a nutrition class and I remember calling my dad and I'm like, oh my God, dad, I love this. Like, this is what I want to do. And he was like, Courtney, just graduate at this point. Cause my dad was just so focused on me graduating and getting that degree that he was like, oh God, he's like,

you have been struggling for years, figure out what you want to do. And now your last semester, you want to pivot. I ended up graduating and then did not do nutrition for a long time, actually. And if you guys want to hear more about my career path, go and listen to the very first episode. I will warn you that it's cringe, for me at least, because I had not really found my voice yet. And I don't feel like I was great at podcasting then. It was my very first episode.

So just give me a little lenience there. But anyway, so I moved to LA for the first time. I ended up leaving and then coming back. And my mom sent me this book when I was living in LA, and it's called You Are What You Eat. And this is when it finally really fully clicked for me. And this is when I really started to hone into my passion of health. Now, this is where my health journey gets a little juicy. The book encourages you to go vegetarian. And around the same time, I'd read a couple of other books similarly. I can't remember the name of one of them. One was called Eating Animals. And then there was another one where they go into the gory details of factory farming. And this is why now I'm incredibly passionate

about buying organic pasture-raised high quality meat and buying from farmers and from companies that you know are treating these animals with integrity and in humane ways because there is a way to do that. So anyways, this is when the vegetarian portion of my life enters the chat. I think, I hope that this is when the vegetarian portion of my life enters the chat. I think, I hope that this is changing, but I did see a trend for a long time that whenever

anyone started on their health journey and they really started to get into health and nutrition and what they were putting in their body, there's like phases of it. There's different steps of it. And I came on the scene when it was really, really heavily promoted to go vegetarian. And I know that's still happening now on like a big scale, but I think the people that are getting more into like holistic preventative root cause nutrition and health now are maybe taking a different path. But I feel like still the first step of discovering your food and having a desire to want to eat healthier, you go vegetarian first.

So I went vegetarian. I ended up being vegetarian for four years of that. I tried veganism for a little bit. It was not for me because I needed eggs. I love eggs and I could not give them up. And so as vegetarian for those four years, the last year I started incorporating fish because this is when I really started going downhill with my Instagram, that I am so outspoken now about vegetarian diets. And it's funny because I hear messages from people or people will tell me in real life sometimes where they're like, man, you're like really against vegetarian,

you know, vegan diets. And it's funny, it's not that I'm necessarily like vehemently against them because I really stand by what I said at the very beginning of this episode that everyone needs to figure out what's best for them. What I don't like about the vegetarian and vegan diets, and I feel the same way about carnivore diets, keto diets, all the diets, but I'm just going really hard at the vegetarian diets right now because there is a lot of conversation in mainstream media and there's a huge, what feels like a huge push from all these like huge marketing companies like Beyond Meat

and Impossible Burger to get people to go vegetarian. So I'm really outspoken about my feelings around that it is not for everyone and to not get duped into this one size fits all blanketed diet for every single human being that we're marketing as being like the healthiest diet for people and the best for the planet. And what I don't love about labeling these diets in general, like veganism, vegetarian, is that they become almost like a cult or like a religion and I was a part of the vegetarian cult you guys like I am a reformed vegetarian cult member I was telling everyone in my life how amazing being vegetarian was I was telling my parents that I that I was going to raise my kids vegetarian.

I remember sitting at the Thanksgiving table with my parents' friends one year, just preaching to everyone about how important and healthy it was to be vegetarian. Now for me, mine was more about, I do not like the idea of another animal dying for my life. So mine was more about the ethical side of it, which made it that much harder for me to transfer over. The beginning, I thought it was really healthy. And then I just became so passionate about the animal and the ethical side of it

that that was really what it was for me. But I remember my health really started to decline. So the beginning when I first went vegetarian, I thought it was like a miracle diet. I lost like 20 pounds almost immediately. So I lost all that weight that I'd gained in college just effortlessly. I literally, I didn't even know that I had lost the weight because I wasn't even paying attention. And it was my roommate that one time was like, what are you doing? Like, how did you lose so much weight? And I was like, oh, I guess I did. So my mind wasn't even there. Like I wasn't even trying to. And so I remember being like, wow, like I have so much energy. I lost all the weight that I'd

gained in college. So then I was back to the weight that I felt more comfortable being in. And I felt great. And I thought I was doing great things for the animals and that I was doing great things for my body and that it was super healthy. So that went on for about two years. And then I started gaining a ton of weight. And I probably in the four or five years I was vegetarian, I probably gained like 20 to 30 pounds. And again, it's not about the weight. I'm not trying to make this about weight. I'm just trying to give you a picture of my journey and I'm just sharing what happened with me. That's it. I'm not trying to make this about weight. The biggest thing for me was that I realized looking back, I wasn't even aware of it in the moment, but I realized

there were a couple of different things happening. Well, one, I was absolutely starving 24 seven. I mean, I could not ever get full. So I felt like I was eating all the time. I was just constantly snacking, trying to get like whole balanced meals and that filled me up and sustained me. And guys, this is when I was really starting to get heavily into nutrition. So I was reading all these books and I was buying whole real foods. I remember like I was food combining, I was putting rice and beans together. I was being told by other vegans and vegetarians that I just wasn't doing it right. And then I just needed to keep going. And again, this is why I am so outspoken about this because there is this narrative of like, oh, you're just not vegan enough. You're just not going hard enough with it. Or

you're not taking the right supplements or you're not doing the right food combining or, you know, et cetera, added to the list. So then I was fully indoctrinated into what I thought I was supposed to be doing because I was getting all this outside intel from people and not listening to my own body. And this is why I talk about this all the time on the podcast. And I said this at the beginning of the episode, it is so incredibly important that we check in with ourselves and our intuition and we check in with our bodies because our bodies tell us what's up if we really tune in. But it's so hard now because we have Instagram, we have all these experts telling us on Instagram like, oh, you need to do this diet or this diet's the healthiest for the planet, or this is the healthiest diet for

the human body. And then everyone has all this research to back it up, right? But the problem is, is that it's, it may not work for you. And it definitely didn't work for me, but I was listening to all this outside noise going, why the hell do I not feel good? And I'm starving all the time. And oh my God, you guys, the cystic acne that I had during that time was unreal. I never had pimples in high school. And then about a year or so into being vegetarian, I had all these cystic acne pimples on my chin that were relentless. It was like the second that one would go down, literally the next day, another one would pop up. I never had a moment. I never had a reprieve for four years. I just constantly had,

and they were the really deep cystic acne on my chin. It was painful. It was embarrassing. I could never like fully cover it up with makeup and I could not for the life of me figure out what's going on. I saw the dermatologist. They put me on the creams

and they were doing the injections in there. And I will tell you guys that I never solved that problem until I started eating meat. So the last straw for me was I shared with you guys that I was really in the vegetarian cult. And hey, by the way, I share all this not to like make light of it or make anyone feel bad about it. I stand by what I said. If this is how you eat and you feel good in your body and it serves you well, then I love this for you, okay? I'm just sharing my story. So I had, I was clearly suffering with my health.

And so my mom gets me an appointment with this nutritionist. And I go and I sit in her office. And she proceeds to tell me very like just bluntly. She was like, you're a vegetarian? She goes, you need to eat meat. And I remember I left her office crying. I cried to her in the office. And I was like, I could never, I could never.

And she goes, she just could never. And she goes, she just looks at me and she goes, okay, well, there will be a day that you will be fighting for your life, like for yourself. And that's when you will decide to eat meat again. And you'll, you'll do it on your own time. And she was right because I hit a point where I was so sick and I was literally craving meat. At this point, my body was screaming like, you need to eat meat. I will never forget. I started having dreams about eating meat. And there was one time that I had a dream that I was eating, I think it was like Wendy's chicken nuggets. I woke up in the middle of the night, literally I was air feeding myself

chicken nuggets. Like I was dreaming that I was eating them and I wake up and I'm literally like putting my hand to my mouth. And I remember telling my mom the next day about the dream. My mom goes, Courtney, please, please eat meat. Your body is screaming for it. You're having dreams about it now. And I remember at that point it clicked and I was like, okay, all right, I'm going to do it, and ever since then, I made a commitment to myself that if I was going to start eating meat, that I would eat organic, grass-fed, pasture-raised, the highest quality meat that I could find from places that I know are doing it in a humane way, and that's how I made peace with it, so almost immediately when I started incorporating meat back in my diet, all that weight that I had gained when I started incorporating meat back in my diet,

all that weight that I had gained when I was being vegetarian basically just flew off. Like I didn't, I didn't even have to work for it. It was just like my body was starving on a nutritional and cellular level. When it finally started getting all the nutrients that it needed, it was just like, oh, thank God. You know? I mean like my body was like, thank God, the cells are getting fuel again. So I felt like I wasn't starving 24 seven because my body was satisfied and protein is really, really filling and super satisfying for the body. It's also full of a ton of different minerals and vitamins that are imperative for health. Not only that, my cystic acne went away. I had to deal with a couple of hormonal imbalances, but interesting story, when I went back to get my master's in nutrition, I had several, not just one, several of my

professors tell me that in their experience, when they had clients, because a lot of my professors were either practicing also clinically or had in the past, they told me that every single woman that they had in their clinics that had a history of being vegetarian or vegan had some sort of hormonal imbalance. And that's what was happening with me with my cystic acne is that my hormones were all whacked out and imbalanced because of all my nutritional deficiencies, because I was not getting enough what I needed in my diet because I was eating vegetarian. So my cystic acne went away, my hormones balanced, and I got energy back. I felt like for the first time ever, my brain fog lifted. I could concentrate again. I had energy and I felt so good. While we're on the

subject too of the cystic acne, I do want to share something that I think really helped me clear that out as well. I started really focusing on my liver because sometimes acne can actually be a sign that your liver is a little bit overworked or clogged. So I started taking milk thistle and dandelion. Actually, there's a pill called or a supplement called liver rescue, and it has all these elements in here. I can't remember everything that's in there, but it's like milk thistle, dandelion, and a couple of other things. And I started taking that. I also was taking calcium D-glucurate and glutathione and both of those help to bind to excess estrogens in the body and push them out through the liver.

Also glutathione is the body's master antioxidant and it is incredibly good for your liver and also for supporting your liver detoxification pathways. And I also think taking those really helped to balance my hormones and just helped me support my liver so that I could start getting all those excess hormones out of my body and my cystic acne went away. Also, I had this like stubborn lower belly fat that I felt like I could never get rid of. I was always like, I was always like a little like bloated and just kind of like puffy around my midsection. And when I started eating meat again, a lot of that went away. I will say another element of this in part of my journey, I know this is not food related, but I think this is

really important to share as part of my journey that helped me. So I went through a phase, this was definitely after I started eating meat again, where I was very, very into cardio working out. I would sometimes do two SoulCycle classes a day. I was working out seven days a week. I was definitely what you would call exercise obsessed. If I missed one day, I would kind of spiral out and be like, oh my God, I have to do two classes tomorrow now since I didn't do anything today. And looking back on that time period, I'm actually, I feel so much more confident

and healthy in my body now. And I don't do like any of those high intensity workouts anymore because I got so burnt out from that. And I realized that doing those really high intensity cardio workouts, while it may feel good in the moment and feel like you're doing something good for your body by like really exerting yourself and like really pumping it out and sweating a ton and just like burning yourself into the ground, what you're also doing is you're releasing a lot of adrenaline and a lot of cortisol.

And if you have too much of that in your body, it's going to lead to bloating. And also for me, another thing that it manifested in was really high anxiety. I'm already a pretty anxious person as is because of a lot of the trauma that I went through as a kid, which I share in another episode if you guys are interested in listening and hearing about that. And I noticed that my anxiety was really, really heightened.

And then my core, so because, because my cortisol was crazy and then adrenaline from these really high intensity workouts. And I was really bloated around my midsection. And I think that that, not even I think, I know from what I've read that that was excess cortisol and adrenaline running through my body. So also another thing to consider that if you are dealing with a lot of bloating, there's no shame in that and there's nothing wrong with it. It's just another iteration of your body trying to tell you that something is a little imbalanced. Bloating after a meal is one thing. Bloating constantly and always kind of feeling like you have just a little like excess like

water around your midsection is usually your body telling you something. Either you have excess hormones going on or it could be a lot of different things, but it really caused me, um, the anxiety piece is really what caused me to reflect on my, my exercise choices. So I basically went cold Turkey from doing like seven soul cycle classes a week, sometimes more to just, I decided one day I was like, you know what? I'm not going to do these anymore. I'm burning myself out. I was, I was also exhausted. I was so fatigued and I decided I was just going to hike every day. And this was, oh my God, I think this was four years ago now. That's crazy to think about. We also lost two years in the panty. So I feel like those don't really count, but I started just hiking every day and that's all I've ever done since. More recently, I've started incorporating in strength training. So I've been doing more

weight exercises. There's a class called Boonda that I love where they do the Stairmaster and weight training. And I'm a huge fan of that. But for the most part, the last four years, all I've done is hiked. And I feel very fortunate that I live in an area where I can drive like 10 minutes and be on a hike. And I know not everyone has access to that, but you can do a walk around your neighborhood. I think it's so important that we just move our bodies in the way that feels good for us and that brings us joy. You don't have to force yourself through a workout just because you feel like it's good for your body. The best workouts for you are the ones that you're going to do consistently. And the ones that you're going to do consistently are the workouts that you love. And I realized for me,

I really love to hike. So I hike almost every day. And it's not like out of, I feel like I have to, and I'm forcing myself to, and then I feel fatigued and like messed up afterwards. It's actually that it's a genuine joy for me. So I usually do that or I walk the beach every day. And ever since then, I really, outside of having like a really big meal or maybe sometimes like around my period, I don't really deal with a lot of bloating anymore. And I think that's for a multitude of reasons. And one of those being this exercise component. Also another, so this will bring me into the gluten-free conversation that I promised that I would have with you guys. Also, I just want

to acknowledge, I thought this episode was going to be like 20 minutes and here we are. So I was in my vegetarian journey still at this point and I'm like four years, I guess this was around, this was around when I started incorporating fish. Okay. I'm starting to remember this now. So I had gone and seen that nutritionist that I'd mentioned. Actually, this is the woman that told me that like when I was ready that I was going to start eating meat again for the health of my body. Cause she was like, you're so sick. You need to eat meat. But I was not having it. I was like, no, I'm going to be a vegetarian forever. My kids are going to be vegetarian. I was not ready to hear it yet. So we did a bunch of testing and she found out that I was allergic to wheat, more specifically

gluten. Now this was back in 2011. And I was like, I'm sorry, I'm allergic to what? This was before there was like really any gluten-free products. When I was like, I'm sorry, I'm allergic to what? This was before there was like really any gluten-free products. When I first found out that I had a wheat allergy and that I had to go gluten-free, there was like five products on the market that were gluten-free. It was miserable. But I had gotten to a point with my health where my stomach after every single meal I ate, would hurt so bad that I would have to curl up into a ball and just lay on the couch, like curl up into a little ball. I remember one time I was at a show. I was at a concert with a friend of mine, and my stomach hurt so bad that I had to go out to her car and lay down in the car while the concert finished. And so when I found this weed allergy out, I was determined to go gluten-free because

I was in so much pain that I had no other choice. So I went gluten-free and after going gluten-free, my stomach issues went away. Things like my psoriasis that I told you guys about that I'd never even made a connection to my diet at the time completely went away. I had a little bit of eczema under my eyes that went away when I went gluten-free and none of this stuff has ever come back. There was one time like two years ago, I was dating this guy and he was really sourdough happy. Remember during lockdown where everyone was baking bread and making their own sourdough starter? So I was seeing this guy that was obsessed with sourdough and we were making sour, he was making sourdough pancakes, sourdough bread, sourdough pizza. And I was like, I'll give it a go. Sourdough is like lower in gluten. And I know some people that have gluten allergies can have it. And I went really hard for like a week on it.

I mean, I was having sourdough pancakes for breakfast, sourdough pizza for lunch, and we were having like sourdough bread sandwiches and the psoriasis in the back of my scalp came back. And the second that I stopped eating it again, it went away almost immediately. So I was able to make that direct connection, which was pretty cool. So if you're dealing with any sort of like skin issues like that or like digestive issues,

I would recommend trying out going gluten-free because you might be shocked to see what things you're dealing with and suffering from that are connected to gluten. So I've been gluten free since 2011. A lot of people probably don't know this, but gluten is actually a really big source of protein. When I was vegetarian, I used to eat these chicken wings at this vegetarian restaurant. And I found out later they were made with just straight wheat gluten. No wonder I was getting these crazy stomach aches every time I ate them because it turns out I was allergic to gluten, to wheat. So when I went gluten-free,

all of a sudden my need for protein, I really started to feel that gap. And this was when I incorporated fish. So I told you guys in the beginning, I was vegetarian for four years. And then the last year I started eating fish. And this was when I had that gap in my diet from the gluten and felt like I needed more protein and my body was literally like craving it. And then eventually I started just incorporating meat altogether because of the dream and everything I told you guys about. So now we are pretty much all up to date because the last like six years or so, I've been pretty just in flow and in balance.

But I had to go through all those iterations of finding out I had to be gluten free and going vegetarian and first learning about my body to get to the place where I'm at now. And it took a lot of different experimenting and trying different things and trying different diets. Actually, even after I started eating meat, I did keto for a little while although I never went full keto but I definitely tried that for a while and I realized that that didn't work for me either I was very fatigued it's interesting I'm noticing a pattern a lot of these different diets have manifested and just feeling like fatigued and brain fog and all that. But it's a great reminder

to just listen to your body and really tune into what your body's telling you. So what do I do now? I eat a pretty, I would say a lower on the carbohydrate side, but I'm by no means like no carbohydrate. And I'm very intuitively driven with how I eat. So I get messages all the time on Instagram, people asking me, well, how many carbohydrates should I have a day or how many grams of protein should I have? So there's obviously the recommendations with the RDA, which is the recommended dietary allowance of what the average American should be getting. And if you're really concerned about that, you can look up those direct numbers, but I'm here to tell you what I do.

And I'm very intuitively driven and led now because all those different iterations of trying different diets and doing all these different things along that journey and along the way, I learned a really valuable lesson. I learned how to listen to my body. I learned how to tune into my intuition.

And a lot of that, I will say the beginning stage is the most important thing is to cut out all the processed crap. So cut out all the foods that really are, they're highly palatable, highly addictive, highly processed, have no nutritional value whatsoever. And they're really wrecking our health and they're hijacking our palates. So before you just try to be intuitively led and listen to your cravings, I would say that your cravings right now, if you are coming from that place are hijacked and they're not really what your body needs, it's more what your body is addicted to. Like for example, sugar. If you're craving a lot of sugar,

that's not necessarily your body being like, we're deficient in corn syrup. It's like, no, you're addicted to sugar. So I would say first things first, cut out all the noise, get back to eating whole real foods. And I'm not saying that you can't eat any foods in packages, but focus on foods.

I mean, I share this all the time on my Instagram, focus on foods that come in packages that are really simple ingredients. These are ingredients that you look at the label and you could technically buy all of those ingredients in the store and make this at home. I'm not saying you have to, but just if you're like, oh yeah, like these crackers, like, oh, I know what almond flour is and salt and baking soda. I could buy all these ingredients in the store and I could make this at home. Well, then that's a package that's fair game to buy.

So start prioritizing more foods like that that look like more whole real foods and buy as many whole real foods in their natural state as possible because this will help to change your palate. And then you're able to really listen to your body and tune into your intuition and what your body really needs. So now for me, when I'm building a meal, my main focus is around protein

and fat. Because for me personally, that is what I have found has helped me the most in feeling my body. And then I always make sure that I have carbohydrates, but this one more in particular is very intuitively led for me because there will be days where I will eat a ton of rice or I really like this organic sourdough gluten-free bread that I get from this local bakery here in LA and I love to spread butter on it. But I fully go by my cravings. The serving size that I do every day is very dependent on how much I feel that my body needs. And I know if you're newer on this journey, this may not feel super helpful for you, but my hope and my encouragement for you is to get to a place where you are really tapping

into your body and your own body's needs. Like I'm not here to be like, yeah, you should have a cup of rice a day and like one slice of sourdough because every single day looks different for me. One day I'll wake up and I'm like, damn, I am really, really hungry. I'm going to have three eggs and like two slices of sourdough bread. And then there are other days where like maybe I just ended my period and I'm like not that hungry, I'll have like maybe half a slice of sourdough bread buttered or a little bit of rice, like smaller than I would normally eat. So when I'm building a plate, I like to make sure that I have a really good high quality protein. So whether that be pasture-raised eggs, I love bison or organic pasture-raised ground beef.

I don't eat as much chicken, but when I do eat chicken, I make sure that it's organic and pasture-raised ground beef. I don't eat as much chicken, but when I do eat chicken, I make sure that it's organic and pasture-raised. I love bacon occasionally, but only if it's organic and pasture-raised. And I'm not a huge fan of turkey, so I don't really eat a lot of turkey. I'll eat turkey bacon sometimes, but I'm not really a big fan of turkey in general.

So I focus on a really good high-quality protein, and then I make sure I get a really high-quality fat in there. So it focus on a really good high quality protein, and then I make sure I get a really high quality fat in there. So it depends on what the meal is. If it's breakfast, I'll do avocado or I'll do organic grass-fed pastures butter. If it's a pasta dish, I'll make sure that I get a really good high quality olive oil. Olives are a great option. Salmon, any sort of fatty wild caught fish is a really great source of fat. I know that this is a little polarizing and controversial, if you will. I love nut butters. I'm obsessed with peanut butter. And I know a lot of people don't like to eat them because of the mycotoxins and whatever,

but I really like to get organic peanut butter. So I find joy in it. And I also like to, I like to eat what I like to eat. You know, I think this is a really, also really important part of this conversation that Austin Perlmutter and I had recently on a podcast is that you also need to make sure that you are eating things that excite you and make you happy and give you joy. But I say that in the context of like whole real foods, right? Like if you love Oreos, hey, no shade. Oreos taste amazing, but I don't eat that kind of stuff because it makes me feel really bad. So if I'm really craving like a cookie of that kind of caliber, I'll find this like organic gluten-free version of it that makes like a healthier Oreo version or whatever. So

that's also another hack that has helped me a lot over the years. If I'm really wanting a cookie or let's say I really want pizza one night, I don't deny myself a pizza. I either order it from a place that I know uses really good high quality dough. Obviously I have to get gluten-free

and that they use good cheese and good meat or I make it at home. I'll buy a healthy crust and organic marinara sauce, buy some organic pasteurized cheese and some nitrate-free organic pepperonis and make it at home. So this is not about denying yourself of things that you love and bring you joy. It's all about prioritizing more whole real foods as close to their natural state as you can possibly get. There's a huge difference between buying like an organic pizza crust versus buying a Tostino's party pizza that has a bunch of

fillers, preservatives, artificial ingredients in there that your body does not recognize as food. It does not recognize that as real food. So the whole prerogative here is to try to eat more foods as close to their whole natural real state as possible because that's what our body recognizes as real food and that's what our body is going to register as nutrition. And so it's going to feed our cells and this is how we feel better in our bodies and this is also how we change our palates. We change our cravings. As I started eating healthier and prioritizing more whole real foods and eating less sugar, my body started craving more of these foods. And then you just get in a groove. So the last like six years, I've really just been in this groove of craving healthier foods, prioritizing eating healthier foods. And now this is not to say that I don't ever, like, I hate to say the word cheat because I don't consider this like a cheat. But this is not to say that I don't ever eat this stuff.

I mean, it's rare. I will tell you guys, it is really rare. But if I find myself at a friend's party and they have out like a bowl of Lay's chips or something, sometimes I'll eat them. I'll have a couple bites. I'm mindful of not like eating the whole bowl, although honestly, I'm human. And sometimes I'm like of not like eating the whole bowl. Although honestly, I'm human. And sometimes I'm like, oh my God, I'm like, this is why I never eat these. Because once you pop, you can't stop. I'm human. And I'm by no means sitting here claiming to be perfect at all,

at all. I just have gotten to a place where I really only crave healthier stuff for the most part. And when I'm craving the junkier stuff, I try to buy healthier versions of it. All right. The last piece that I want to speak on is something that I've also done the last couple of years. I did a podcast episode with Mark Sisson about this, actually, if you guys want to go listen more into detail about all of it. I believe it was called the argument for two meals a day. So I practice what I call intuitive intermittent fasting. I actually got that from Dr. Will Cole, the term. I intermittent fast, but I'm not rigid or strict about it by any means. So let me explain what I mean by that. I really try to finish eating a couple hours before I go to bed.

One, because it doesn't feel good when you lay down and your body's still digesting. Like that feeling of being really full and trying to fall asleep. I mean, it's almost impossible. Not to mention, there's a lot of research that shows that if you give yourself, if you give your body enough time to digest your food before you go to bed, it's a lot better for your cognitive function. It's a lot better for your brain because then instead of your body focusing on digesting your food, your body is putting all of its manpower to cleaning up your neural pathways in your brain, categorizing memories, also autophagy, which is a cell die-off, like cleaning off old bad cells and replacing it with new cells. So there's a lot of things that happen when we're sleeping and when we're in repair.

And if we're also digesting food, then we're going to be taking away from those vital hours of repair for our brain and for our body. So I try as much as I can to not eat a couple hours before bed. Again, I'm not perfect. If I'm out late with friends one night and we decide that we want to get some late night food, I sometimes indulge, but it's pretty rare. So I will generally stop eating, I don't know, around like, let's say like 7 or 8 p.m. It varies every day because I don't hold myself to a very like rigid, strict clock. Go to sleep, usually on an empty stomach. And when I wake up in the morning, I really like to practice fasting for a couple of hours after I've woken up.

So I'll drink a bunch of water. And here's the caveat. And this is where the intuitive intermittent fasting comes in and is incredibly important, especially for women. Because there's a lot of conversation out there that intermittent fasting is not good for women and not good for our hormones. So I think the intuitive part is really where it comes in that's incredibly important.

If I wake up and I'm hungry, I'm gonna eat. I don't keep myself from eating. I don't sit by the clock and go, oh my God, I can't eat until noon and like starve myself until then. Especially this is like around my period. So when I'm like maybe a week and a half out from starting my period, my hunger really, really ramps up. And that's when I'm eating more calories daily. And by the way, I don't count calories. I'm just saying that like my caloric intake goes up. I end up eating way more food during that time period. And that's usually when I wake up hungry. But right after, so after I start my period and then maybe like a week after my period, I'm the exact opposite.

We're like, my hunger is really pretty low. And I don't really think about, I'm not as like food focused. And that's usually around the time when like I'm waking up in the morning, I'm not super hungry. I just drink some water and about 30 minutes to an hour in, I drink my coffee. Now, more recently, I heard Andrew Huberman talk about this, that it's better to wait a couple of hours after you wake up to have your caffeine. Cause I guess there's something about it helping with your energy and keeping you from having that afternoon slump. So what I've been doing more recently is I've been trying to delay having my coffee. I'm going to be realistic. I usually have it with like an hour of waking up, but he says to wait, I think like two to three hours. So I'll have my coffee about an hour in. I usually add in a little bit of butter, sometimes

some MCT oil, and I always add in collagen. But more recently, I've just been doing collagen, actually. I've just been doing collagen, a little bit of coconut milk and coffee. And then I don't eat until I'm hungry. And that varies almost every day. This is where the intuitive fasting comes in. I'm never waiting by a clock. I just wait for my hunger cues. And that varies from day to day. Sometimes I'll be hungry by 11. Sometimes I won't be hungry until two. And I follow those cues. So that's how I practice intermittent fasting. It's going to look different for everyone. Like I keep reminding you, we are also bio-individual that what works for me may not work for you and vice versa. So you really

have to experiment and figure out what works for you and allow your intuition to lead you. We do not give our bodies enough credit. Our bodies are so smart and they really know what they need. It's up to us to learn how to tap into that intuition. But like I said, first of all, we got to get out all the junk and the processed foods and those cravings that are really driving our brains to want to crave those highly palatable junk foods. But once we clean that up, you're more in tune with your body and you're able to really listen to your body and your body is able to really tell you what it needs. So yeah, that is my health journey and that's where I'm at now. So I really hope that you guys enjoyed this episode. This is the first solo episode that I've done in I think two years. I'm feeling, I'm just going to share this because

I'm trying to practice more vulnerability. And I don't know why I'm feeling this way right now, but I just want to share it because I'm really trying to practice being more vulnerable in my everyday life. But I'm almost feeling like I just overshared. I think it's because I went into this episode thinking that I was just going to be really short and quick and just share with you guys like, okay, this is my eating journey. And it was going to be like 20 minutes. And I'm almost feeling like I way overshared. But what I love so much about having a podcast versus like my Instagram account. And I love both of them for different reasons and in different ways.

There's so much nuance to be talked about when it comes to health and nutrition. There's so many things to be said that there's not enough time in like a reel to get it all in. And I love with the podcast is that I can really speak to all those different nuances and the different corners of the different diets

and my experience. And I just really wanted, I've been wanting to share this for a long time, simply because I get so many questions from people asking like, well, what do you eat? Or what do you recommend? What is a day in the life of eating look like for you? Or how did you get to this place? And so I wanted to share my whole journey with you and so that you could see all the different iterations. Cause I think so many of us, myself included, we tend to see someone at a certain, not tend to, we see someone at a specific point of their journey without having a recognition for all the things that they went through and all the things that they did just to get there.

And you can apply this to everything in life. You know, I'm not just talking about like my food journey, but it is important to remember that if you are newer on your health journey to not compare yourself to people that are further down the line, you know, and we do this with every area of our life, like careers, you know, I look at people being like,

wow, like this woman is doing amazing things and she's so much further than me in my career. And I see that as inspiring, but I'm just saying that I forget that there's so many things that she went through to get to that place. And for me, I think because I'm at a certain place in my health journey, you know, people see this on my Instagram and they see the meals that I make. And I share often that I really feel that I'm at the healthiest place of my life as far as the combination of mentally and also really having my diet dialed in. I don't, I really, I'm very happy with my body. I feel balanced. I feel good. I feel very balanced and confident in the choices that I make around my diet. And I was not there for a really long time. I really struggled through those different iterations of the gaining the weight and then losing weight and then gaining

weight again and feeling super fatigued. And I had brain fog and concentration issues. So I guess I did share it, but I didn't, I guess I didn't really put a lot of motion into how much I really, really struggled along that journey. And I struggled a lot with loving my body during that time too. And I think many of us, especially women go through phases where we really were very hard on ourselves and our bodies and have a hard time loving our bodies and where we're at in our journeys. And I'm happy to say that right now I'm at a place where I'm, I love, I really do. I love my body and I feel incredibly balanced, emotionally balanced as well. I don't have any sort of hangups around food or any sort of like concerns or anxiety around it. Oh man, you guys, there's one more thing I really feel like I need to share as I'm

getting into this conversation. I can really talk. Give me a microphone and I just go. When I first started getting into eating healthy and eating organic, I was very stringent and very rigid about making sure that everything I ate and everything I put in my body was organic. I was very stringent and very rigid about making sure that everything I ate and everything I put in my body was organic. And it was to the point where I shared earlier that, and this was around the same time when I was, so I was touring full time with bands. And if you guys want to hear more about that side of my story, I also shared that in my first episode ever. And we were living out of hotel rooms. We were living on a tour bus. We were flying everywhere. So a lot of my meal choices were contingent. All of them were contingent on eating out. And so I would buy all my groceries from Whole Foods and like concoct

these little meals on the bus, on the tour bus. And I was denying myself of going out with my friends for dinner. So what I would do is I would like make these little like half ass meals that were all organic on the bus. But then after a while, I really started struggling with the mental aspect of that because I was being so stringent and so rigid on my diet that I was missing out on the connection with my friends. So all my friends would go out to dinner and I would sit on the bus and like make sure that I ate all this organic food. And look, it was not to say that I never went out to eat with them, but I would often eat that food on the bus. And then I would go with them and then just like have drinks and not eat anything. And then even when I was not touring anymore for a while, if my friends like planned a dinner, I would eat dinner before because I didn't know if the food there was organic or not.

Or I knew that they used canola oil or something. And then I would just meet my friends out for drinks. And I had a moment with myself where I was like, I no longer want to live this way because I don't want to live in this place of such rigidity and fear and anxiety around food that I was denying myself the joy of connecting with my friends over a meal that was cooked for us. So that's another aspect of balance that I found in my life where all the groceries that I buy for myself and at home and any sort of decision making that I have control over, it's all organic, pasture raised, high quality meats. But when I go out with my friends, I mean, I just went to dinner on Saturday night with my friends. We planned a dinner and I eat the food out, even if it's not organic, even if I don't

know where the meat came from, because I feel comfortable knowing that the majority of the meals that I'm consuming are organic and as clean as possible. And then the rest of it, I'm like, you know what? It is equally as important to enjoy my time with my friends and connect with my friends over a meal. So what I was sharing before I went into that tangent was just that I am very happy with the balance that I found in all of this. I don't stress about the foods that I'm eating out. I don't even think about it. I'm just like, you know what? I'm doing the best I can, but I'm also going to enjoy my time with my friends. And even at home, like I, I just, I'm basically what I'm trying to say is that I feel like I've really found balance in my diet and I'm very happy with how I feel. I'm very happy in my

body. I have energy. I feel great. And I feel like I finally found balance in all this after going through just a roller coaster of my health. Now that's not to say that it won't change. I hope to have babies one day. And I know that my dietary needs are going to change. My cravings are going to change. My body's going to change. And I'll face that when the time comes. And it's also something important for us to all remember that it's always changing. Also our needs are always going to change dependent on where we are in our lives. If we're breastfeeding, breastfeeding moms require way more calories,

way more nutrients. And so it's all about accepting where you're at in this part of the journey. So right now I'm really happy with where I'm at. And I hope that you found this episode valuable. I'm going to start doing more solo episodes. I don't think that they will be this long. I don't know. We'll see. I can't make any promises guys, but I have a whole list of things

that I want to start sharing. And a lot of it is more about my personal life and my personal growth and the things that I have learned over the years about myself and just about life that hopefully will resonate with some of you guys. So please write me on Instagram and let me know if you liked this episode. And please let me know if you want me to do more solo episodes. I mean, I'm going to do them regardless, but I mean, I'm not going to do them if you guys all hate them. If everyone's like boycotting, like no more solo episodes, but my plan is to continue doing more solo episodes. So I hope you guys love this. Please let me know on Instagram. And if you liked this episode, please share it and tag Real Foodology. Bye guys. Thanks for

listening. I'll see you next week. Love you. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of the Real Foodology podcast. If you liked the episode, please leave a review in your podcast app to let me know. This is a Resonant Media production produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. The theme song is called Heaven by the amazing singer Georgie. Georgie is spelled with a J. For more amazing podcasts produced by my team, go to resonantmediagroup.com. I love you guys so much. See you next week. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and doesn't constitute a provider-patient relationship. I am a nutritionist, but I am not your nutritionist.

As always, talk to your doctor or your health team first. Do you suffer from IBS or other digestive issues? Are you looking for a new podcast to listen to? From the producer of the Real Foodology podcast comes the all new health and nutrition podcast, Digest This, hosted by Bethany Ugarte. You may know Bethany as the face of the popular Instagram page, Lil Sipper,

or you may have even read her book. Now you can find her wherever you get your podcasts. On Digest This, Bethany examines topics such as gut health, nutrition, the food industry, and highlights specific ingredients that can be beneficial or harmful to your gut health. She also explores non-toxic options in beauty, home, and cooking essentials. If it has to do with your health, Digest This is talking about it. Each episode features an interview with health experts, doctors, and wellness advocates,

and delivers you information that is, well, easy to digest. Bethany also delivers a weekly segment every episode called Bite of Knowledge, where she highlights an ingredient commonly used in food, skincare, household cleaning, you name it, and gives you the lowdown on the benefits or dangers that ingredient might have in your everyday life. From Botox, potassium, olive oil, and magnesium, all the way to those ingredients you can barely pronounce on the back of your cereal boxes, Bethany has you covered.

There's a reason why it debuted at number two on Apple Podcast Nutrition Charts. Check out Digest This on your favorite podcast app. New episodes every Monday and Wednesday. Produced by Drake Peterson and Resonant Media.