Therapeutic Diets: My Journey
My pain has become my purpose
and I am here to help you succeed!
Hi, my name is Tammie and I have celiac disease (no gluten), crohn’s disease (IBD), and ankylosing spondylitis (degenerative joint attacking arthritis and fusing of the spine). I lived in pain for 10 years, and saw many health professionals before someone suggested I might have autoimmunes. I lived so long with aggressive chronic inflammation and progressive undiagnosed diseases that my body already had destroyed all my hip cartilage by the time I got control of my arthritis. I now have two prothestic hips. I started out with a gluten free diet, and ate plant based for the past three years, and now I am on a autoimmune specific food protocol. Using diet to manage my diseases has been a game changer for me and has allowed me to take control of my health.
What is a therapeutic diet?
A therapeutic diet is a meal plan that controls the intake, elimination, timing, or quantities of certain foods or nutrients as part of the treatment of a medical condition.
Here are some examples of therapeutic diets:
-Gluten Free
-Dairy Free
-Autoimmune Paleo Protocol
-Low Starch
-Specific Carbohydrate
-Low FODMAP
-Low Histamine
-Renal/Kidney Stone
-Antifungal/Candida
- A modified carbohydrate diet prescribed to someone diagnosed with diabetes
-A ketogenic diet recommended to assist a child with epilepsy
-A low-sodium, high-potassium diet for someone living with high blood pressure
This is not an exhaustive list. If you have been told by a GI doc, ENT, Naturopath, Functional Practitioner, or Nutritionist that have you food sensitivities of some kind, then reach out to me, I can help you.
Belly Love is an inclusive health coaching program where you can learn tips and tricks for how to meal plan, how to navigate social situations and family gatherings, how to order at restaurants, healing our relationship with food, and local restaurant guides that are happy belly friendly.
People change for an acute benefit, rather than a future goal.
Therapeutic Diets are different from just a general Anti-Inflammatory Diet or Plant Based Diet (which work great for many people). For most people who don’t have a specific comorbidity, eating this way can help prevent most human diseases and create optimal health (Mediterranean Diet with very forward veggie & fruit focus). However if they do end up on the spectrum of any of these diseases, then a therapeutic diet can be prescribed. A Therapeutic diet should only be prescribed under the care of a qualified professional who can guide and monitor the patient through the process.
Healing your relationship with food is absolutely critical to your success with a Therapeutic Diet.
There will be a great grieving process as we leave behind many of the foods we have come to love. But with whatever personalized nutrition plan that we are following, we have to ask ourselves, which do we love more? Food or Pain?
We speak positive words of affirmation and this mantra: If I can get control of my disease with nutrition, through a therapeutic diet, then I can get my life back. Insert your why - right here! Whatever it is; have a baby, grow in your profession, strengthen your relationships, prevent cancer, etc.
We are adaptable. For me personally I told myself this: “I have cut gluten out of my diet, which was hard, then I cut dairy out of my diet, which was harder. I’m working on limiting alcohol, which is also hard. Choose your hard - Food or Pain? I had the privilege to travel to Italy and had the life changing experience of eating gluten free food there and drink their amazing wine. I experienced their inclusivity toward celiacs and their philosophy of foods and how it is so integral to their culture. That they wouldn’t ever want to leave anyone out, so they accommodate for all dietary restrictions. Shouldn’t that be our philosophy everywhere we go?”
You can do this. It is just one more adaptation, one more step in our multi-step journey.
Eating to Survive and Thrive does not have to be scary. Let me help you develop the skills to eat to live and live to eat!
At Belly Love, we are all about self love and self care. We are not going to put pressure on ourselves and constantly be hyper focused on weight and waist size. Losing weight may be a secondary outcome to a personalized, anti-inflammatory diet & lifestyle. But our worth is not connected to our weight. And how skinny we look does not even begin to tell the story of what is going on internally. A person might eat whole, plant based food and have a great workout regimen, and still continue to gain weight (i.e. me personally). It could be because of a medication or trauma that the body has gone through. It can be our hormones or thyroid, our sensitivity to certain types of carbohydrates, or all kinds of factors that play into weight. It could be emotional. It could be a toxic burden we are carrying and our body is trying to store the toxins away from our vital organs.
Weight does not necessarily determine health. After all, we also were all born with three different body types - mesomorph, endomorph, ectomorph, so we naturally hold onto weight differently. You could have these three body types eat the same food and work out the same and their bodies would look different. Your genes are different. Your height is different. Your body composition is going to be different.
Finally, with cheap and quick food being so laden with food additives like natural flavors, it can be difficult for people to say no to delicious food that is not aligning with their health goals.
If you are in need of meal prep assistance, I offer private or group services and grocery store accompaniment. I also offer a service where I can help batch cook for those that need help making many homemade items from scratch and are healing from their chronic inflammation and inflammatory diseases. I will help make meal plans for you, and walk alongside you. I want to teach you to build meal plans for yourself as well. That way you can become confident and independent in the kitchen, and be able to meet your personal health and wellness goals of healing yourself.