​Natalie is a person previously with a tumultuous relationship with her dinner plate. We sat down with Natalie and she shared her wealth of knowledge on the topic of food and what it really means to foster a  healthy relationship with food. To turn food from a boredom into the life force that it was intended to be.

​Natalie’s journey started when she got sick, really sick. There were no explanations as to why she became sick, there were no doctors that could pinpoint why she suddenly felt like her health was turned upside down on it’s head. She even had one doctor suggest that she was drinking too much water, he proposed that she drink more gatorade to replenish her electrolytes, and no we aren’t making this up. Keeping good faith with her medical professionals, she embarked on a short-lived journey on gatorade train. Nothing much changed, her energy was just as depleted. From then on she started seeing a Traditional Chinese Medicine Doctor as an alternative to the standard general practitioner. Soon after she began her regimen of a restricted diet and acupuncture. These things worked for a short amount of time but then she found herself once again going from jogging two to three times a week to suddenly not being able to get up the stairs without collapsing. And there was still no explanation. 

​​Natalie had to fight tooth and nail for her health. She knew that what was happening wasn’t right and decided to make a point of seeking information on her own in order to resolve the issues she was facing. After testing, and re-testing and inconclusive answers she finally figured out that her thyroid was nearing a non-functional state. Her doctor prescribed thyroid medication, but this medication did nothing but mask the pain that her body was going through. Natalie took the time to invest in her own health, her own body and started researching ways to change how she ate and remarkably… she started feeling better.

After removing most everything from her diet, she has slowly started to re-introduce different foods back into the fold of her life. On this journey Natalie discovered a vital piece of information that most of us will never have the pleasure of truly understanding. She unearthed the difference between feeling good, and feeling like crap. After feeling good, and knowing the difference there is no way she could go back. When you think about it… how many times have you eaten a meal, and felt like taking a nap right after, or felt like you need to push back in your chair and release your buttons because there was not enough space for the giant food baby you were harbouring in your belly? That is NOT how food is supposed to make you feel. 

​Food is supposed to be a life-force, something that gives us energy, stamina and fuel to carry on our busy lives. When food is slowing us down, and making us lethargic or sickly, it is not doing what it was intended to do. Many of us don’t know the answers to why we feel this way, we blame it on too much, or the weather, or any other myriad of excuses but the truth behind our ailments is typically laying right in front of us, swimming on a plate of buttery, saucy, decadence that our bodies do not need to function.