My Health Journey

DISCLAIMER

This blog post is intended to educate and enhance your knowledge of health and healthy eating. While this can be an important complement to your medical care or lifestyle choices, it is not a substitute for a diagnosis, treatment or care for a disease, illness or injury by a medical provider or nutritionist. This is based on my own health journey, and what worked for myself may be different to your specific needs. This blog post does contain conversations around disordered eating, so if this may be a trigger for you please discontinue reading.

MY HEALTH JOURNEY

Just a little background on my own health journey to show you how my relationship was with food and how I’ve become a Clinical Nutritionist. I am here today because of what I went through and this is why I want to help other clients adopt a healthy relationship with food and creating a balanced lifestyle. Having restrictions within your diet and lifestyle without creating a balance will constantly keep you in a state of stress which is the most unhealthy way to live and I wouldn’t want anyone to feel like this. We should find joy in eating and cooking, and this is so important for our digestive system as well.

So like any young girl, I started dieting when I was probably around 15 or 16 years old trying to be ‘thin’. I tried every fad diet that was going around such as skinny me teas, eating palm sized dinners, skipping breakfast, no oils, no fats, no carbs and the list goes on. I became obsessive with clean eating and wouldn’t even salt my food and only cook with water because ‘fat made you fat’. Obviously this did not work, as I was so hungry all the time and I would binge eat so this sent me into a vicious cycle and I didn’t achieve any ‘health goals’.
This era passed, but then I became vegan.

When I was 17 I went vegetarian then within 3 months went vegan. I was vegan for 6 to 7 years and at first it was a great transition. I allowed myself to eat more because all I was eating was whole foods and little to no processed stuff. My only problem was because I deprived myself from eating, when I became vegan and thought I can eat as much as I wanted, I literally couldn’t stop eating and used to over eat every single time. My hunger hormones were so out of whack, I didn’t know when I was hungry and when I was full. I would have 10 banana smoothies, 2 burgers for lunch with home made fries, 3 loaded Mexican sweet potato for dinners. It was literally insane how disconnected I was with my body. After a while, I learnt to create a better relationship with food and not be so obsessed with ‘healthy eating’.

Fast forward a few years, and now the ‘plant-based’ era has become so popular, you can buy absolutely anything in your normal grocery store. This had become a new big problem within my health. I was buying everything processed - from cheeses, to milks, fake meats, yoghurt, ice cream and the list goes on. Another problem with this is, when you see something that says VEGAN on the front of a package, I stopped looking at the ingredients list because I finally didn’t have to go looking for vegan options. It was given to me on a silver platter and I could buy things so much easier then back when I first started.

Let me tell you, I felt like crap for so long, but because I felt like this for god knows how many years, I didn’t know what it felt like to have good sustainable energy throughout the day. It wasn’t until I started studying nutrition, I became to realise why I felt like shit all the time, why I was bloated, why my iron and vitamin D was so low, why I never felt satiated, why my skin was breaking out all the time. When I first heard the saying “you are what you eat”, I dived into health and nutrition from a different perspective which is why I went to study a Bachelor Health Science degree.

Now I eat a diet without any restrictions, whole foods and organic wherever possible, sourcing good quality meats whenever possible and have just learnt to going back to the basics. The one diet I would recommend everyone is to just going back to our ancestral diet. We just need to go back to simplicity and seasonal eating.

I still eat processed foods here and there, but I have really learnt how to create a balanced diet and most importantly, creating a GOOD relationship with food without feeling guilt but being aware what types of foods I am consuming now because I know how it is going to make me feel. This health journey has had its ups and downs, but man I am grateful for everything I have gone through and very proud of how I perceive health as now.

If this resonated with you in any way, connect with me through my email saya@satisfainutrition.com or my instagram @satisfainutrition so I can help you with your own health journey!