Apoche production Growing Glows Twelve Days of Christmas. Good morning, good afternoon. Wherever you are in the world, welcome back to Grow and Glow another day of the twelve Days of Christmas. If you're new here, we're literally doing twelve days in a row. So many epic conversations, so many really cool guests, and obviously a couple of solo episodes with MOI me. Today I'm doing an episode. This was a request in our Facebook forum. I did a post asking what you guys would like me to cover, and
a lot of suggestions even came through my inbox. Was around my journey with food, the relationship I have with food, how I used to eat to how I'm eating now, what I've learned along the way. So that's what we're going to do. I'm going to go over my whole journey from when I was baby to how now I'm eating now, and how I'm eating now feels so damn good. I've never felt better or healthier with the way that
I'm eating right now. Excited to talk about that, but let's rewind it back to when I was a baby. When I was in hospital as a baby, I actually got selmonella from a nurse that did not wash her hands. So I was violently ill, like so sick to the point where the doctors said to my mum, she's not gonna make her overnight. You need to get all of your family here to say the goodbyes. I'm still here, a miracle. But yeah, I was really really sick as a baby. Then as I started to grow up, I
really just was not interested in food. And I think this might have been just trauma from being so sick. I was also allergic to my mum's breast milk. I couldn't have any dairy. I think my mom put me on soy milks to be honest. But yeah, when I grew up, I just really wasn't interested in food. I was that kid that just wanted like chicken nuggets and an orange juice. If I could live off liquids, I probably would have. I didn't like any textures. I didn't
like trying anything new. I didn't like anything spicy. I was the fussiest eater. Going into my teenage years, I went through a lot of phases of trying so many diets and starving myself and being addicted to junk food. And I think because I worked since I was really young, I always had my money, so I felt like I didn't have to be restricted with what I had to eat, because even at home, like for example, my stepdad used to buy like Whittaker's chocolate and these sour gummy bears,
which I love sour gummy bears. I love lollies, but we weren't allowed touch them. And same with orange juice. He would literally put a label on the juice and be like, do not touch. So once I started earning my own money, like I went crazy on orange juice, crazy on lollies, on chocolate, like anything that I wasn't allowed at home, I went nuts on. I felt like
I went through this really big junk food stage. And then when I moved out of home, I also felt like that kind of continued on because I just felt this new sense of freedom of like I can eat whatever but the fuck I want, and no one's gonna make me eat anything or do anything. Rewind, when I was at home, I felt like my relationship with food wasn't the greatest. And not that I want to put all the blame of my stepdad, but he definitely played his role. So for example, I really don't like mushrooms.
He would put a lot of mushrooms on my plate, and I was not allowed to leave the table until I ate every single mushroom. Some nights I would be there for hours. Other nights he would like send me to my room with a smack of my bum or like yell at me lock memo room. Like I would be punished if I did not eat everything in my plate, because there was children in Africa starving a food, and I need to be grateful for the food that I've got. He used to do it to my little brother too.
He didn't like tomatoes, so he would pile on tomatoes my brother's plates. And there were just meals that I didn't like, like kidneys and rice and stuff. And oh. So what I started to do is I obviously had to consume the food because I was going to get in trouble. If I didn't, I'd be really scared. I would then go to the shower and make myself vomit. This became a part of my every day, and it wasn't even from the sense of all I wanted to lose weight or be skinny or anything like that. It
was more about gaining control. I felt like he'd forced me to have this food. But once I got out of my body, I was like, you no longer have control over me. So I felt this sense of like lightness, but not in a physical sense more and of just like you're not going to control me. You're not going
to do that to me, And it was crazy. I did that for a couple of years and then he kicked me out of home when I was sixteen, and I went straight to my boyfriend's parents' house and I moved him with them, literally rocked up with my suitcases. And the first day that I moved him from there was the last day that I vomited my food. Once I was out of the environment of the pressure around food,
I started to build a healthier relationship with food. I still really didn't have any idea on nutrients and what was good for me and what was not. I was working at a gym when I turned I think I was seventeen. I was working at the reception gym, and the personal trainers there were like kind of in the mindset of like you can eat takeout, just burn it off at the gym. So I would literally would have CAFC across the road I would eat KFC and then try and smash myself on the gym for hours afterwards.
Like that's how unh healthy my relationship with exercise and food was, and just I suppose lack of education. Gosh, this is going like back fifteen years ago. There was a period there and it was just before I met Steve.
I used to do these bikini modeling competitions at nightclubs and bars, and it sounds awful, but I knew that I wasn't the prettiest girl ever, so I felt like I had to rely on having a slim toned figure and also having stage presents to help me win, like I could do the splits and I'd take out glitter and blow on stage. Yeah, I didn't think I was the prettiest on there, so I really felt like I had to work on my body in beers skinny as
I could be, so in my comp seasons. At the very start, like just before I met Steve, I was definitely not eating enough and eating off like apples and tuna and crackers, and I didn't have much money either, so yeah, it wasn't really healthy. But then once I started to learn more about how to eat healthy that's my relationship really developed nicely. And then I met Steve, and that's when I feel like my health journey really
kicked off and started. And he could see all of my bad food habits and the relationship a hab with food, what I thought was healthy compared to what wasn't and he just started slowly introducing different meals to me that I really enjoyed, Like I never had a protein smoothie, and he made me this like protein smoothie. I think it was like oats berry chocolate, protein powder and almor milk. It might even just be water. And I was like, this is so young, and that became my staple breakfast
for years to come. And that's obviously when my love of smoothie started to, you know develop. And Levi was his business planner at the time, and then all three of us started the Ashybiydness Pickinnibody Challenge, and Levi is a natchpath and nutritionist, and I felt like I learned so much within the space of a couple of months of just being under his wing. He really taught me about not even like counting macros, but just making sure
that I was consuming healthy fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. He really tried to make me focus on whole foods and cleaner option things with less chemicals, less artificial sweetness, less ingredients, just like a wholesome healthy diet with lots of rainbow fruits and vegetables, lean quality meats. I suppose more of like an eighty twenty way of living. And I felt so good, so fast. Within a couple of months of kind of adapting what Levi and Steve had taught me,
I felt so much better. I lost a ton of weight. Yeah, I just felt really really good. Now throughout that time, I feel like I've still been on different journeys with my food. I felt like when I came off the pill at I think I was about twenty three years old,
my skin went absolutely crazy. And I went on a bit of a gut cleanse with Levi where I did cut out like gluten and dairy, started getting acupuncture, and I felt like I had to be a little bit more restrictive to try and figure out what my body was tolerating, what made it feel good, where my skin reacted. And I learned a lot in that process as well, and that's when I really adapted more of a paleo
way of living and once again less process. But there also wasn't a lot of dairy and that or anything. But I really found that just focusing on a high protein diet gave me way more energy, made me feel fuller and more satisfied. My skin cleared up, and I just felt it was really easy to maintain. I never really got into like say kido. I tried to be a vegan for I think maybe two months slash vegetarian, but tried to do veganism because there was just so
much hype around it back then. This is literally probably like twelve years ago. But I have never felt worse. I felt so blow to my digestive system, my energy, my skin went bad again. I hated it. As soon as I started eating more animal products again, I felt so much better. So I just think for my body, a high protein animal based diet works so well. So I went to Europe recently with Tajiboy, and over in Europe we ate copious amounts of pasta, pizza and ice cream.
I enjoyed it. I think we do better pizzas in Australia if I'm being honest, but their pastor was pretty nice. I found it really hard to get any serving of vegetable at any restaurant. One of the locations where the wedding was. I did get a steak each night, but our yeah I diet was a lot of sugar, hot chocolate. Tarji is quite fussy, so he had a lot of cross ons for breakfast. It was hard to even find
like eggs, you know, anywhere. Really, I didn't feel very healthy over there, but we just enjoyed it and dropped in and you know, ate whatever, and we enjoyed the ice cream, and whenever Taji wanted to try something new, I was like, yeah, let's do it. But when I came back, and I also gone to Bali with Mum before that too, and in Bali I had a steak that literally changed my life. I got it from this restaurant called Grumpy Cow. It was like a striploin wagu deliciousness.
And since then I have just wanted so much steak. But it was after my surgery and after I got back from Europe that I just had this intuitive feeling and like craving and desire to eat more steak and I went nuts on it and I still am on that train. I have steak every single day, if not twice a day, and I absolutely love it. I've never
felt better. And this kind of led me into looking into back into the paleo way of eating, because over the years, I felt like I've been, like I say, eighty twenty, I feel like I've been more seventy thirty, just intuitive eating and no restrictions. I thought I knew what foods would make me feel pretty good. I feel like I've got a really good gut foundation, so not many things upset my stomach. I don't get very bloated or anything. However, I definitely felt a bit brain foggy.
I still recovering from surgery, and intuitively, I just felt like I needed a lot more protein and a lot more red meat. And then I'll go into why I
think my body was telling me that. And that's when the animal diet started to kind of pop up into my algorithm on TikTok, and I started doing a lot of research and Steve and I were looking at it, and we were also looking into just different things that we wanted to improve on, and one of the examples was seed oils and how much seed oils is in so much of our food and seed oils are so
inflammatory to the body, regardless if you've had surgery and not. Like, getting your information down it should always be a priority, especially for us women as well. If you've got information in your body, it's really going to affect your cycle, your skin, your moods, your sleep, like literally everything. So
I'm always about getting my information down. So, yeah, I started do a lot of research and the seed oils was a huge thing, and we started to look into better ways to cook our food, so that was cooking with ghee and cooking with beef tallow and yeah, the animal diet is really interesting. It's basically meat, organic meat, particularly red meat, bone broth, organs, which I know sounds absolutely disgusting. I can't eat organs. I actually take them
in a capsule format. Now, eggs, raw dairy, so raw cheese and raw milk, and fruit, a lot of fruits, vegetables. But in the animal diet, like a lot of people that are experts in this, they say that we can get most about nutrients, fiber, minerals and health benefits mainly from fruit, so you don't really necessarily need a lot of the vegetables. I still eat vegetables, and there's some that they say to eat, but definitely make sure you
are getting all organic. And I suppose just looking at your food, at what nutrients they do hold and where you can get them from, and eating what you enjoy. I personally enjoy eating a lot more fruit than what I do vegetables. I still love my sweet tato, I still love carrot, I love beans like I do love some vegetables, but I have been eating a lot more fruit. Yeah, so eggs, red meat, fruit, honey. And then I'm not
fully strict animal diet. There are other things that I still incorporate into my diet, like clean trets, because I will never not eat clean trees, and even though they're full of healthy fats, maybe coconut oil protein powder. I just find it's such an easy way to get a decent serving of protein into a smoothie in the morning. And if I'm ever craving sweet or I'm struggling to get enough protein into my day, I'll just have a
protein shake. And then, of course when I go out for date nights or I take taj to Yochea, like, I still enjoy treats, but majority of my diet is red meat, eggs, raw dairy. I don't drink raw milk. I can't bring myself to do it. But I love cheese, a lot of fruit, And I tell you what, my digestive system has never been better. It wasn't even bad before, but it's so much better now. My skin is consistently clear. I feel I'm sleeping better, my energy is better. I
just all around feel less inflamed and healthier. Like I really feel healthier. I feel like my sex drive has gone up. Same with Steve, like he feels all those benefits as well. And we've got our kids just eating a lot more protein and a lot more fruits, and it just feels really good. So obviously there is no bread, rice or pasta. I'm not a massive bread person. I was eating a lot of pasta. I thought I'd missed that, but I don't. I just feel really good of not
having it. And we had some bit of ball and asy the other night, but you know what, I didn't need the past or. I just had like so much more meat and cheese and it was just as satisfying. And now when I'm talking about this, I'm not saying that you should go and follow and do what I'm doing. This episode is literally just me talking about my food journey,
and That's where I'm kind of at right now. I'm really loving how I'm feeling, and the older I get, it is less about what I look like and it's more about how I feel and the energy that food gives me. As you guys know, I had brain surgery a couple of months ago, and I have another one at the end of January to fix my other aneurism. So when you're on blood thinners, if you've missed the previous episodes, your periods are on another level, like Holy Moley,
like literal crime scene. Like I can't leave the house for a full day, sometimes two days because they are so heavy. I'm now down to one lot of blood thinners, which will increase again when I have my next surgery. But I think my body like knew what was coming and that's why I needed so much more iron. So I think the amount of steak I'm eating is really so porting my cycle at the moment, and I would hate to think how low my energy would be if I wasn't consuming the red meat IM eating and getting
that iron. So even in my period, like I definitely get a little bit tired a few days before and feel a bit more like wanting to be internal and be at home and rest, and I really try and honor that. But yeah, I think this way of eating is just really supporting my health right now and I've never felt better, and same with Steve, which is really cool.
So yeah, it has been a journey. I feel like I've tried every diet under the sun over the years, and I don't regret any of that because I think that diet and eating isn't a one size fits all. I think it's really important for every single individual to trial and really tune into what foods are eating and what feels good and what doesn't like. If your body reacts and responds to certain foods, I feel like that is an invitation to actually go, oh, maybe my body
doesn't like this, Maybe I should try something else. And at the end of the day two, if you're having reactions to foods, you may have some gut issues as well, which might be worth getting some bloods done and working with the nature path to build up your gut health that make sure you're getting enough fiber, et cetera. But yeah, this way of eating I really really enjoy I thought I would miss sauces. I love sauces like I love
tomato and barbecue sauces. But I found a brand called Mingle and they sell them in health food store, coals and woolies. This is not sponsored, by the way. I just fell in love them. They have a tomato barbecue and a sweet chili and the ingredients are so clean. Cheese just makes everything so much better. I do miss having chicken sninsels. The chicken sinsel I used to buy
obviously had crumbs and like other ingredients. But literally, I'm eating so much less processed stuff, like it's very natural what Earth has kind of given us. And yeah, it feels amazing. So that's my journey with food. I love hearing about everyone's food. Like I've got a girlfriend that is completely vegan and she absolutely thrives and her skin's glowing, her digestis is amazing and it feels great for her. Like I said, I don't think there's a one size
fits all. I think it's about you finding what works for your body. But it's cool to trial different things to see what works and what doesn't, and you know, readjust as you go. I remember when I had tala, I had a Duela, and it was really cool to learn about the different types of food you should and
shouldn't have in your fourth trimester. You know. That was a lot of like slow cooked things, a lot of there was a lot of rice in there, like congi, a lot of turmeric late not Latin, not coffees, but like turmeric drinks, a lot of tonics, black rice puddings. But it was all like warming foods. It was nothing cold, and that was really cool. For like twelve weeks, I just solely ate what the Duela would recommend because that
was all the research she'd done. And I felt so good in that period and that season because I feel like that's truly what my body needed to be able to heal internally, to be able to provide and make beautiful breast milk, to be able to keep my energy as high as it could be with a newborn baby. But how I ate in that twelve weeks is very different to how I eat now because I'm in a different seasons. So yeah, I hope this helps you just kind of reflect and check in and to see how
you're eating. And I suppose coming up to the end of twenty twenty four, it's such a beautiful time too, for you to do some reflection on your whole life and what's working, what's not, and that can be including your diet. I love doing a massive clean out of my cupboard or my fridge and getting rid of anything that's like expired, anything with seed oils. Now there just isn't a lot of like crappy options in my cupboard and fridge now, like it's all healthier, natural, more alternatives.
There's still a couple of snacks in there that I haven't taken away from Tajiboy yet, Like he loves his Milo bars and these rice crackers that do have one oil at it that I don't like, but I would say like ninety percent of what he eats is really healthy and really clean. There is a couple of little snacks in there. Overall, good time to have a reflection, clean out your fridge and pantry, and really tune in and listen to your body. I'm very like intuitive eater.
I don't have any restrictions on my diet. I just really know what's making me feel really good in this season of my life, and I'm following that and honoring that until it doesn't feel good. I'm just going to keep doing it, so I encourage you to do the same. I also think these days there's such a big focus on counting calories and counting macros, which I think works
for some people. And I'm not dissing at all, Like I have friends that count their macros or count their calories and they're on a weight loss journey, or you know, I know people that are getting on stage to compete, and it all serves its purpose. However, I do wish there'd be more of a movement and more focus on the actual nutrients in the food and also where it's grown and the kind of sprays it on the foods.
Like I wish there was more movement and people trying to eat more organic or like washing their fruits and vegetables and looking at their plate of like what nutrients am I getting? Rather than am I hitting the numbers by the end of the day, Because a thousand calories of fruits and vegetables is going to look very different or it's going to digest so differently in your body
compared to a thousand calories of McDonald's meal. There is no nutritional benefits to eating and McDonald's meal compared to eating all the fruits and vegetables, the amount of fiber and minerals and vitamins you get from fruits and vegetables compared to McDonald's meals. That's where I don't like when numbers come into it because I think sometimes it's at the cost of your actual health. And maybe short term, I don't know, depending on what you're doing with your calories,
you may lose weight. But long term, I think we
need to really think about your health. Maybe that's just me getting older, but I think as you get older too, you really do just value life so much and you know that it is so short and tomorrow isn't promised, and when you're younger, you're so focused on looking a certain way, and now it's all about longevity, Like I want to eat in a way that I know my body is thriving so that I can be healthier for longer and be around for my kids and my grain kids, etc. So, yeah,
I wish it was more normalized to focus on nutrients, and I wish there was more conversations around that. If you are someone that is struggling with inflammation, PCOS and hormone issues, skin breakouts, bad sleep, brain fog anything like that. I kind of feel like, what have you got to lose by altering things in your diet. If you are finding you are struggling with any of that, and food can be medicine, why not try a different way of eating and try it for thirty days and see how
your body responds. I'm not saying it has to be the animal diet. It could be whatever it feels right for you intuitively. But if you try something for thirty
days and see improvements and like, that's a win. But if what you're doing right now, if you're so sick of feeling how you're feeling and you're aren't seeing any improvements, take control of your health and trial different ways of eating and try to add in more natural foods, less processed, less sugars, less takeout, more nature, more higher protein, healthy fats, and getting creative with the way that you eat. In that sense, and I can almost guarantee one, if not all,
of those things will improve in your life. The brain, the mental clarity, the sleep, your skin, your energy, your moods, your sex drive, like all those things that I feel like we ought to improve. You've got nothing to lose by just trialing and tweaking things in the way that you eat. I know, eating organic it can be really expensive. However, there's definitely cheaper ways to do it. If you go
to your like your local farmers' markets. I feel like that's always so much cheaper than a health food store. So on a Sunday, Steve and I and the kids will go down to the markets and we will stock up on all of our fruits and vegetables, and it's so much cheaper. But then during the week I do do a drop into flineeries to restock whatever we need. Same with eggs. There are a lot cheaper at the
markets as well. And I just think for myself, like I don't drink, I don't do drugs, you know, I really value my health, so that's where I like to spend my money. Everyone's so different, you know, you might really value going out and having a cocktail with your friends on the weekend, but for me personally, it's an investment in my health and in my life for longevity long term, and that's really important to me. So I think it's how we perceive it well. But yeah, there
is definitely cheaper ways to do it. You can also order organic boxes of fruit and vegetables from local farms, and I found them to be a lot cheaper than going to like your local flanteerries as well. And then some fruits and vegetables are more heavily spray than others.
So for example, strawberries that you buy from coals or woolies, there's up to fourteen different pesticides and sprays on them that like when you're ingesting that it is just so bad for your body, compared to like say a pineapple that isn't as many. So if you were to buy something organic, I would recommend it being like spinach, strawberries, apples, things that you eat the skin, your sweet potatoes, but things that have a cover, I feel like it's a
little bit more protected and just no eating organic. Also that it's being grown in a beautiful foundation of healthy soil as well, and they're not normally plucked or pulled out before they've ripened, and you want your fruits and vegetables to be fully ripe so that they have all of the newtribes in the mouth. They get plucked earlier, a lot of the time, they won't be containing all
the nutrients that you're wanting to get from them. But yeah, the soil on where your fruit vegetable has grown has massive impact on the quality of the fruit and vegetables that you're eating. We just want it as less amount of sprays as possible. And if you can't afford organic too,
then you can also wash them at home. You can buy fruit and vegetable washes, or I've seen online that there's like mixtus you can do with like baking, I think baking soda, baking powder and apple sided vinegar or something that's a really cool way to do it as well. I also wanted to note that my body doesn't react badly to bread, rice or pasta and even a lot of processed foods, whereas Steve can feel quite brain foggy and overall slower and just like not as good when
he's consuming those things. Because I feel like whenever I talk about diet, there's always a little bit of pushback or people think I'm being restrictive or I'm giving bad advice.
Remember this is just my journey. But know that this didn't come from a place of feeling crap or hating my body at all, or any kind of online pressure or influence or losing weight it was simply going with what I was craving, and I didn't realize how much better I could feel now that I'm eating ninety percent natural, organic foods, which just feels so good for my bodies. Because I think a lot of the time you can start dieting or following a trend online and you're being
influenced elsewhere. But it's really important for you to check in your own body, your own lifestyle, your own goals, and finding what works for you. But I'm going to wrap it up. Thank you for joining me. I really hope you guys enjoyed this, and I'll be back in your ears tomorrow. Bye.