The Curse of the Junk Food Diet!

It impacts you every morning when you slump out of bed, sluggish from eating too much crap the night before.

You feel it when you’re puffing and panting after climbing one flight of stairs, or when your achy joints feel about 20 years too old.

(And let’s not mention your ever-expanding waistband…)

So maybe you’ve watched the popular documentary Forks Over Knives or What the Health? and you’re sold on the evidence.

You might believe a whole food plant-based lifestyle can reverse your diabetes, heart disease, or arthritis.

You desperately want to give up junk food, but it’s so damn hard.

And that’s totally normal – it’s designed that way!

These products are literally engineered to be biologically addictive.

Who am I to think I can help you?

Maybe I can, maybe I can’t. “One size fits all” fits about as well for recovery as it does for leggings, so I provide a ton of info about my philosophy and my technique to give you a sense of whether my work might be right for you.

I’ve tried so many recovery programs looking for help, and none of them had quite what I needed, so I created something different.

Most programs I tried were too psychological (but not run by psychologists). They only addressed thinking-problems and didn’t look at the body-heart-social levels.

If they did, they came with baggage like “powerless” and “broken” and “diseased”, which I think is gross (and total bullshit).

I do this because it’s a calling, and because I need it too.

I have extensive training & experience in multiple healing modalities, which helps me tailor my support to the individual instead of shoehorning you into the box that happened to work for me.

I have led hundreds of hours of mindfulness-based connection circles where we explore our shared experience as fallible humans beings, doing silly human things.

I’ve been in the food addiction recovery world long enough to know what the different options are, and I’m objective enough not to impose any of them in a “one size fits all” program.

My role is to help you find the approach that’s right for you.

I’ll help you get in touch with your own inner knowing about what direction feels aligned, while providing education, tools, and resources to inform your options and support your choices.

Why is my approach slow and gentle?

I believe high intensity growth work is harder to integrate, leads to healing burnout, and ultimately takes longer to achieve the same results (or worse, adds to your wounds and gives you more to heal).

When you slow down and nurture your system with patience and caring, you create space for your own wisdom to emerge. This supports a healing journey that’s exactly right, just for you.

To be transparent: I don’t have a perfect diet, not by a mile. I still choose junk food far too often, even when I know all the reasons why I should eat better. And, I now eat way better than I used to.

I am not a guru or a sage. I walk alongside my clients as a fellow wobbly (but skilled) human being, replete with my own struggles and inadequacies, but always progressing towards my goals.

Where am I on my own Journey?

Since 2018, I’ve pretty much worked full-time on my healing.

I’ve grown my capacity to stay present with intense feelings and self-regulate my nervous system when I’m distressed. I’ve processed & integrated most of my childhood wounds and I’ve developed healthier tools for emotional regulation.

In 2023, I passed a major threshold: I abolished the toxic shame cycle that drives the emotional eating loop.

And that’s frickin huge!

Now, I’m in the physical healing phase of resetting my body. I’m focused on dopamine rebalancing and microbiome realignment, while navigating withdrawal symptoms and tastebud recalibration.

(Unfortunately, those are a bitch – see Why You’re Hooked)

I believe that my junk food habit has been reduced to a biochemical dependency that I’m in the slow process of unhooking from my gut & brain. I suspect I could do it faster if I would spare 30 days and $15,000 to lock myself in a food detox retreat, but alas, such is life.

While I’m not yet in what I would consider “full recovery”, I’m far enough along that I feel confident and in integrity helping others walk this path, and I have places to refer people if the work goes outside the scope of what I’m qualified for.