My Health Journey

Over the course of my health journey I have tried many diets, learned to cook, overcame disordered eating habits, healed of IBS (a digestive/gut disorder), learned to maximize my nutrient intake, learned to eat for weight training (cutting fat, gaining muscle and tracking macros), studied ancestral nutrition, got a bachelor’s degree in Nutrition and Food Science with an emphasis on Sports Nutrition, healed my metabolism, detoxed and cleansed, optimized my health, and have helped many others to improve their health as well.

My journey is what inspired me to start Heart To Kitchen and Ancestral Nutrition Coaching! Learning about health and nutrition has had such a tremendous impact on my life, as you will see in this post, that I wanted to share what I learned in effort to help others maximize their own health!

So without further ado here’s my story!

Childhood:

My health journey began in my childhood. Growing up, my parents were both pretty health conscious. We ate mostly whole foods and home cooked meals and we had a garden that we would eat from. My parents taught my brother and I to cook and garden, starting us out with simple tasks when we were young. We also spent tons of time outside and were always going on adventures!

My parents weren’t big on meat though so I didn’t have a ton when I was young. In fact, when I was in 3rd grade my dad went vegetarian and my brother and I followed. My dad was studying to become an Ayurvedic practitioner at the time, and in Ayurveda (Indian holistic medicine) eating meat is typically frowned upon. It’s thought of as wrong to “unnecessarily” take animals lives and it’s said that you take on a negative energy when consuming meat. This made sense to me at the time.

I obviously think quite differently now, but I’ll wait to get into how my mindset shifted until later in this post, and I put unnecessarily in quotes because I now believe eating animals is necessary for properly nourishing our bodies.

Anyways, my dad shared the principles of Ayurveda with us as he learned them which had a huge influence on me. Ayurveda looks at how nature, the cycles of nature, the elements, the food we eat, and our sensory intake influence our bodies and spirit. These principles greatly influenced how I saw the world and I’m grateful to my dad for teaching them to me.

One more thing to note about my childhood is that constipation, sometimes accompanied by intestinal pain, was a recurring issue for me. Other than that and some colds, ear infections, and cavities, I had pretty good health as a child.

Early High School:

In my late grade school and middle school years some unhealthy convenient snack foods like Cheez-Its, Cheerios, instant oatmeal, and more gradually seeped into my diet. I didn’t think much of it or even fully realize it.

At least not until my freshman year of high school, when a dietitian came to my dance class to do a short presentation about healthy eating. During the presentation, I had a massive realization that I ate some unhealthy processed foods and that I wasn’t as healthy as I though I was!

After that, I immediately cut out the vast majority of processed foods and began cooking my own meals. Through cooking I could better control the quality of my food and despite the steep learning curve, I quickly feel in love with it!

At this time I believed that whole plant foods were the healthiest foods so I ate lots of veggies, fruits, grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds. I also ate some eggs and dairy, but I limited these along with gluten, caffeine, and sugar because I thought they weren’t as good for you.

I also focused on my overall health. I started doing some other exercises in addition to my dancing, I started going to bed around 8:30 every night, I limited tv, started reading more, and of course spent a good chunk of time outside.

While these are mostly great things (I say mostly because my diet choices were not great), my mindset was awful! I was extremely obsessive about being healthy. It’s practically all I would think about, I would be very hard on myself if I wasn’t “perfect” with my diet and health, and I became very restrictive with my diet. I had what some call Orthorexia, an unhealthy obsession with being healthy!

This eventually led me to lose 15 lbs bringing my weight to 115 lbs at a height of 5′ 6,” in other words way too skinny for my health! As a result I lost my period and my digestive health suffered.

My Vegan Times:

In my sophomore year of high school, I watched a vegan documentary called “Vegucated” (It’s a cringey title I know). The main thing that stuck out to me from the movie was how poorly the animals were treated in factory farming. I already knew that factory farm animals raised for meat were treated poorly, but I didn’t know it was the same (or worse) for animals raised for dairy and eggs.

After learning of this, I felt a moral obligation to become vegan so I did. While this was my primary reason for going vegan, it also appealed to me because I believed it was a very healthy diet.

This diet change did not go well for me! My already bad digestion and obsessive tendencies got worse! In retrospect I’d say about 75% of the time I was bloated, constipated, had painful intestinal cramps, no appetite, and was obsessing over food and health. I also had terrible stinky farts, would starve myself during the day and often binge at night, I lost confidence in myself and my ability to make the right decisions, and I never had my period the entire 1 year and 10 months I was vegan!

In my junior year of high school, I stopped dancing (after 13 years of Ballet) and started weight training. My weight training helped stimulate my appetite and I began to eat more. I found adding a few snacks in helped me with this as opposed to the strict 3 meals a day I was previously following. I also found that building some muscle helped me increase my confidence. By this point my digestion was slightly better but still far from ideal, my mindset had improved, and I was less obsessive about health. Over the course of about 1 year I slowly got my weight up to 135 lbs (some of that was new lifter muscle gain, but I also gained a little more fat than I wanted).

I also often struggled with overeating. I think my body was so excited to be getting food again, that I kind of over did it. When eating later in the day, I would get to a point where I was full and knew I should stop, however I wanted more so I would keep eating for the pleasure of how good it tasted despite making myself uncomfortably full in the process. I would beat myself up over this (figuratively, not literally) and try to fix it with shear will and discipline which didn’t quite work.

Back To Vegetarian:

After not having my period for 2 years and 5 months, my step mom encouraged me to reintroduce eggs and dairy into my diet. She helped me realize that I wasn’t able to nourish my body on a vegan diet and that I was harming my health. She also reminded me that I could get my eggs and dairy from local humane farms and not support factory farming. I wouldn’t be supporting an industry that harms animals and I could still prioritize my own health.

This was all hard to hear and it really shattered my previous belief that a vegan diet was best for both animals and humans. Yet, it was the truth and it’s exactly what I needed to hear! So I decided to try reintroducing eggs and dairy.

A month after doing so, my period returned. This amazed me. I had returned to a healthy weight 6 months ago but was not able to menstruate until I started eating eggs and dairy. I assume I was deficient in cholesterol and other nutrients critical for hormone production. My digestion also improved (but it wasn’t prefect), my relationship with food improved, and my body felt more nourished. However, I would get hangry easily and had a hard time going more than 3 or 4 hours without food.

I was thrilled to have less foods off limits because it allowed me to cook a wider variety of things, plus I’ve always loved dairy! I made lasagna, pizza, pancakes, enchiladas, quiche, and so much more! I learned how to cook so many dishes and had a blast cooking during this time!

A year later, I started Heart To Kitchen and began posting recipes to my website!

Time For Some Meat:

After about 2 years of weight lifting (I was 19 and had moved away for college at this point), I began looking into nutrition to support my training. I wanted to get the most out of my time in the gym by fueling my body properly. One of the first things I learned was the importance of a good macro split so I decided to start tracking macros and perfect my macro split.

I quickly found out that I was not getting enough protein! I was only eating roughly 50 g/day while about 140 g/day was recommended for me. At first I tried to up my protein while sticking with a vegetarian diet, but I couldn’t seem to get above 80g a day on a near 2000 Calorie diet. I started to think that maybe I couldn’t get all the nutrients I needed on a vegetarian diet.

This was the spark that lead to a lot of contemplation regarding meat consumption. For most of my life I had believed that killing animals was wrong, however I began to think that maybe it wasn’t that simple. I eventually came to the realization that eating meat is not wrong, it’s part of nature! And that whether you eat plants or animals, some things must die in order for you to live.

This got me thinking about how omnivorous and carnivorous animals don’t feel guilty for eating meat, it’s simply in their nature. Likewise humans have been eating meat for 10s of 1000s of years and are designed to eat meat, so why should I feel guilty for eating meat? I then started to crave meat and for the first time ever the butcher counter looked like the most delicious section of the grocery store! After much pondering, I decided to try meat again!

This was a pivotal moment in my life and health journey! Eating meat worked so well for my body and noticeably improved my health! My digestion significantly improved, my constipation and stinky farts became very rare, I lost a little body fat, my bloating significantly reduced, and I just felt all around fueled and strong.

I should note that the meat I ate (and still eat) is from good humane farms and is not factory farmed! While death is necessary for life, cruel treatment of animals (like in factory farms) is not! I think it’s important to show respect towards the animals who give their lives to nourish us by supporting humane farms!

Ancestral Keto:

Shortly after I turned 20, I came across ancestral nutrition. My first introduction to this way of eating was through Dr. Cate Shanahan’s book, Deep Nutrition.

In this book, Dr. Cate described the superior health of our ancestors along with their dietary practices and lifestyle. She discussed the importance of eating nose to tail (including organ meats and bone broth in our diet); properly preparing (soaking or sprouting) any grains and legumes we consume; including high quality animal fats in our diet; including fermented foods; cutting out vegetable oils; and not overdoing the carbs (especially refined and processed carbs).

This way of eating really resinated with me! I found the nutritional info, science, and traditional aspects fascinating and it all just made so much sense! So I began experimenting with an ancestral diet and doing more research into ancestral nutrition.

This lead me to come across the ketogenic way of eating as well. This seemed to align well with ancestral nutrition and I really liked the idea of being able to go longer without food without getting super hungry. I also liked the anti-inflammatory benefits especially since I had been struggling with a knee injury for several months at this time in my life. So I decided to try an ancestral keto way of eating. Meaning I cut my carbs down really low (no more than 40 or 50g a day) and I ate primarily meat, dairy, eggs, organs, bone broth, veggies, and some nuts. I also did regular intermittent fasting and only ate 3 meals a day with no snacks.

I definitely noticed some benefits from these changes. The decrease in plants (more specifically plants high in anti-nutrients and fiber) and the increase in nutrient dense animal foods really gave my gut a chance to fully heal. In this way, my diet kind of served as an elimination diet. Getting fat adapted (burning fat as my main source of energy instead of carbs) eliminated my energy crashes and hanger. For the first time in my life I could easily go several hours without eating if I wanted to.

However, there were a few drawbacks to keto, but I didn’t realize this until about 1 1/2 years later. Despite the popular belief that you shed fed easily on a keto diet, I accidently gained 20 lbs in less than 1 year which brought my weight up to 162 lbs! While some of that was likely muscle due to my weightlifting, most of it was fat. This was likely due to the stressful nature of a keto diet.

Keto diets and excessive fasting often increase cortisol and can keep your body in a stressed state (sympathetic, fight or flight, state). This has a negative impact on your hormones, thyroid, and metabolism and can therefore easily lead to weight gain.

Effortless Weight Loss:

After learning of this, I decided to add back some carbs. However I was very strategic with what carbs I added back in because I didn’t want to aggravate my gut after working so hard to heal it. Therefore I chose carbs that were lower in anti-nutrients like fruit, white rice, and root veggies. I also always paired my carbs with protein and fat in order to avoid blood sugar spikes and crashes.

Meanwhile, I became very interested in detoxing. I started learning about how many toxins we are exposed to on a regular basis and how negative of an effect they can have on your health (toxin overload is a root cause for many diseases and chronic illnesses).

I did a lot of research on how to unclog and support the detox pathways in your body in order to eliminate toxins and prevent toxin build up. Some of the things I did for detoxing were: dry brushing, sweating (laying out in the sun in the 105 degree F summer did the trick for me), coffee enemas, drinking liver detox tea, tongue scraping, and taking parasite cleansing supplements. I also got a good quality water filter (you can find info on the importance of a water filter here), cut back on plastic, and did some other things to try to reduce my toxin exposure. (For more info on detoxing, check out my In Depth Guide On How To Detox And Cleanse Your Body).

Both adding carbs and detoxing lead me to effortlessly drop 12 lbs in about 4 months bringing my weight to 148 lbs. I honestly wasn’t even trying to lose weight! I think the carbs helped me decrease stress, balance my hormones, and increase my metabolism. While I think the detoxing helped by pulling toxins out of my fat. Toxins are commonly stored in our fat and our bodies often stubbornly hold onto fat in efforts to not release lots of toxins into our bodies. However if we cleanse out the toxins, fat loss often comes naturally.

Sharing What I’ve Learned:

I have learned so much over the course of my health journey! I’m finally at a place where my gut and digestive system is fully healed, I’m well nourished, I’m at my goal body composition, my eating optimally supports my weight training, my detox pathways are open and flowing properly, my metabolism is healthy, and listening to my body’s cues makes it easy to eat the right amount.

Of course there is always more to learn and more to work on, so I will continue to strive to make my health even better. Never the less it feels good to have come this far!

After going through so much trial and error, time, and research to get where I am today, I want to help other people effectively level up their health without all the guess work by teaching them what I’ve learned. That’s why I regularly share nutrition and health info here on my website and on my Instagram. And that’s also why I started my 1 on 1 coaching program Ancestral Nutrition Coaching! You can find out more about Ancestral Nutrition Coaching here, if you’re interested!

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed hearing about my health journey and I hope the info I share helps you on your health journey as well!

Much love,

Kayley