Hi!
I’m Mimi—
I used to cook for a living. Unfortunately, I lost interest in cooking after owning and executive chef-ing my meal delivery service, DISH, for 7 years. I flailed around with no direction, trying different things, not finding my way, and drinking to cope with anxiety, depression, loneliness, and boredom. There were no DUI’s or anything dramatic. I just realized that I wanted to get as strong as possible physically, emotionally and spiritually and leaving alcohol behind was the best first step.
After sobriety took hold, I found I had more energy and time than I was used to. As a result, I fell in love with cooking again, and decided to get my coaching certification in functional nutrition.
It took time off alcohol and lots of study and developing tools before I got to the place where I could really visualise a future, and my path became clear. If you’re interested in how I began that journey, here’s a link: hipsobriety.com. This is where I learned everything I know and have come to believe about holistic recovery.
The first essay question in my Functional Nutrition course was, “What is your nutrition philosophy?’ My answer was, ‘Common Sense.’ By that I mean, if something makes you feel better, keep doing it. If something doesn’t make you feel better, or makes you feel worse, don’t do it no matter how many people tell you how great it is. I don’t believe in diets that recommend eliminating any macronutrients. Macronutrient is a fancy word for food group, (carbohydrates, proteins, fats) but I use it on purpose. Food is medicine! An overused expression maybe, but so true. Balance is necessary to have a healthy body, mind, and spirit, and every whole food contains micronutrients that work symbiotically to create a healthy, strong body.
Healthy food used to be defined by what was left out. Now it’s defined by what we are adding. I always recommend that you add before you eliminate anything from your diet. (or your life for that matter) It’s much more realistic and manageable. We have so much more information about how foods work together to create the biggest nutritional punch, and about how to include ‘superfoods’ into our diets.
If you’re like me, once you’re in recovery, you’ll become hyper aware of how your body is feeling. You may find that some foods don’t agree with you. For me, I think those intolerances were probably already there, but I just felt crappy so much of the time it wasn’t possible to single them out. Incorporating healthy recipes even part of the time will strengthen your body and change your palate in such a way that you can begin to eliminate less healthy choices.
I hope to share what I’ve learned regarding nutrition, and feature recipes, tips and resources always with an emphasis on restoring and strengthening our bodies and minds as we work to build lives we don’t need to escape from!
Mimi
