Break Free from Diet Trends: Connect with Your Body & Find Your Personalized Nutrition

Are you tired of trying every new diet trend, only to find it doesn't work for you? Join me as I peel back the curtain on my own food and self-love journey, revealing the trials, errors, and triumphs I experienced as I navigated through various diets and societal pressures. From my childhood to my mid-thirties, I share how I learned to break free from the toxic cycle of dieting and started listening to my body.

Imagine if you could, not just follow a diet, but truly understand what your body needs. From my transition to a fruitarian diet to my experience with a functional medicine doctor, I'll show you how I learned the importance of personalized nutrition. Hear the candid details of how I reclaimed my health and energy through a diet tailored to my needs. This isn't a one-size-fits-all solution, but a testament to the power of finding what works for you. So, tune in, as I share my story with the hope that it inspires you to explore your own path to health and self-love.

Medical Medium: https://www.medicalmedium.com/
Whole 30: https://whole30.com/
Dr. More Herbs/Fruititarianism: https://drmorses.com/
Health Specialist: https://www.palmernaturalhealth.com/personalized-nutrition

Transcript

Nina Elise: 0:02

Welcome to the Receptive Impact Podcast. I'm your host, Nina Elise. Hello everyone, it is Nina and I am back for another episode, and today I'm going to go into detail about the different diets or different ways of eating that I have experimented with and my entire journey from when I was a child up into an adult, because I really want to showcase and talk not just about the actual food or types of food that I was eating, but also other factors that go into what really dictates the healthiest diet for a person and it is going to be different for each person. and the reason why I feel called to share my journey is because I have experimented with so many different ways of eating, not just with food, but also like mindset and looking into unconscious belief systems and learning how to actually love my body and watching it change and transform, and the different diets and foods that I have tried and the different doctors that I have worked with, and I'm hoping that this may be helpful for anyone who is struggling or on their own journey to figure out what is the best diet for them. What are the best foods for you to eat that are going to be nourishing for your body? That's going to help you get a body that you really love and that you feel really good or fit or healthy. And so I'm going to start off just going through kind of how I was raised and how I approached food from basically a young age up until now in my mid 30s.

Nina Elise: 1:41

So, starting off as a child, my mom was kind of like before her time she was really into all of the health food scene and naturopath and homeopath, and so we grew up on drinking soy protein drinks and eating really healthy foods that were considered healthy back then, and so I have a pretty it's like pretty ingrained in my mind like what healthy means and like what that kind of looks like and how it feels in the body. Although I think at a young age it was very difficult for me because when I would go to school everyone would be eating lunchables and drinking soda and eating all the fruit snacks and then I had like this pita scene which with chicken salad and cucumbers and a bottle of water, and I kind of felt like the total outcast and weirdo in school because I always had the healthiest lunch and so I was kind of like really sugar deprived and I know my parents meant well, but I think that really set the trajectory of like this journey with food for me, because I felt restricted in that sense. and so when I was able to work and have my own money and my own car, that's when I was able to have a little bit more control over my own diet, and so I started adding like more sugary foods and things like that into my diet. I was an athlete, which probably did not help me very well it really affected my energy levels, but you know, this was my journey with it. And also, I want to add, in the aspect of self love and how I actually perceived my body, because I think this is very, very common with most women, like we all experience in our lives, and this was, you know, in an age of the past 20, 30 years.

Nina Elise: 3:25

There's been such an upsurge in the internet and marketing and what we're exposed to, and so this also played a very huge part with how I viewed my body, how I view food and what it actually meant to be a certain size, and so when you read magazines and they're like, well, just eat salads and do this, like you know, you're going to be more impressionable to that because you know, especially when I was in my teenage years and my 20s, there wasn't like the internet hadn't really exploded yet. It was just kind of like starting to come onto the scene. And so, you know, we didn't really have a lot of information. It was just like what was in our environment, what we were told and then what the magazines were telling us. And so for me, like when I went into college, I basically lived off of gummy bears and energy drinks and I was really underweight and that was just kind of like how I ate. I basically lived off of sugar and I could get away with it because I was young. But then after college I was like, okay, can I continue to eat like this? And so for me I shifted into like, okay, I'm going to eat healthier and I'm going to start working out. But that turned into more of like calorie restriction. So it was like I was eating at least semi healthy food. I wasn't eating just like complete junk food. It was like I was transitioning from eating all that sugar and then going into more of like a healthy way of eating, even though I was really restricting my calories. And again this really came into. What really came into play in that was.

Nina Elise: 4:47

There was a lot of like self-loathing towards my body and like how I looked, and there was like this need for control, and so this was like so huge with my journey, with my diet and I know that so many women can relate to this, whether they're conscious of it or not. It is definitely something that's kind of ingrained in us that we're always like in the back of our mind, like we have to be careful what we eat and we have to eat a certain way, and we're not really taught like, hey, why don't you ask your body what is right for you and what it wants and what it needs? Because we're so out of touch with our own bodies. And then we have these unconscious belief systems that were programmed into us or conditioned by our environment and the people around us, and so we have these underlying belief systems about how we should eat or how we need to like maintain our bodies to look a certain way, and so it's like the mind is kind of controlling how we eat and we don't even really realize it, and so these were things that I wasn't super conscious of in my early 20s, and so, instead of restricting myself with calories and working out, I was like, okay, I'm going to try these different diets and see what works for me and what doesn't work for me. And so one of the first things that I did was raw vegan Cause I was like, yeah, this is super healthy, I'm going to try this.

Nina Elise: 6:00

But at the time my body just could not handle it, because it could not break down raw foods and some people can, and that's great and that's wonderful. I just could not at the time, I think, because my body was in such like a high stress state, like mentally, emotionally, physically, I hadn't really gone into like I didn't know how to deal with my emotions. I was so disconnected from my body, and so I think that it was really difficult for my body to receive like highly nutritious food. And so from there, that was when paleo kind of exploded onto the scene, and if you're not familiar with paleo, you're basically eating like a caveman. You're eating meat and like potatoes and vegetables and a little bit of fruit, not a lot of sugar. You're cutting out grains, there's no dairy, no gluten.

Nina Elise: 6:49

So it's definitely a more restrictive diet, but so many people were raving about it and I was like, wow, maybe this is going to help with all of my health problems because, you know, I was struggling with energy levels, I was struggling with digestion issues and just a host of other things that I was just like what is wrong with me? Like why can't I fix these things, like what is going on in my body? And so I was really looking to my diet to kind of like heal these things. And there were so many people out there that was like, wow, this healed like my Crohn's disease or this healed my IBS or whatever. And I was like, wow, this, like it, gave me hope. So I started to eat paleo and I was like I kind of noticed a difference. I kind of noticed that like my brain fog started to go away, but I still wasn't super high energy, but I also think at the same time I wasn't eating enough calories.

Nina Elise: 7:37

And then, once I discovered paleo, something called Whole30 came out, which is basically like even more restrictive paleo and it's actually meant to help people become more mindful and aware of the food that they are putting in their body. So basically it's paleo but without any sugar. So you know you're not eating any type of like paleo type treats or anything like that. You're basically just eating little bit of nuts and fruits or eating eggs and meat and vegetables and potatoes and sweet potatoes, things like that. So it was very restrictive in that sense. You go 30 days and it's like a really big detox to the body. So this was like an introduction to kind of detoxing my body from my addiction to sugar and it was very beneficial in that sense.

Nina Elise: 8:22

But like I had so many addictions to food, emotionally and mentally and physically at that time, that was very, very difficult. So I went through that a few times and it was actually very helpful because when you do the whole 30, it's like after the 30 days you start to reintroduce, like dairy and different things, and see how your body reacts. And so for me that was very helpful to see how my body reacted when I started to add those things back into my diet. So I was much more mindful and aware of what was actually going in my body and so and like what was happening or how my body was reacting to certain foods. So again, this really deepened my awareness and connection to my body a little bit more, and so, after Experimenting with all of that, I started to cut out dairy and that actually really reduced the amount of inflammation that I had on my body and I dropped probably like five or ten pounds just by cutting out dairy from my diet, without even really trying, over the course of like four to six months. And they were just kind of like this progression in my mid to late 20s where I actually cut out gluten as well and then eventually I cut out meat. not because I'm against eating meat, it was just my body was like kind of grossed out by it and so I just kind of stopped eating it.

Nina Elise: 9:30

And After that I was still having like all these health issues and I had been getting like blood work done and like all these different things and trying like basically throwing supplements at my body, saying, oh, I don't have enough energy and so I'm gonna take B12 supplements, I'm gonna take iron, without getting testing done, and so I was just kind of like throwing spaghetti at a wall for a really long time, when in reality it wasn't necessarily like my diet, it was my stress. It was that I was not in an aligned relationship. I was not in alignment with myself. I was so severely disconnected with my body and I had so many suppressed emotions that needed to be released and looked at, and they were just almost like these layers that really needed to be peeled back. So because of all of that, I wasn't aware of that at the time, but as I went down this path I started to get into more like the detoxing type diets and so that means like I really got into medical medium.

Nina Elise: 10:26

So if you're not familiar with medical medium, it's kind of like this guy who's like a psychic who recommends like Celery juice, like juicing, to heal a lot of problems in the body because it detoxes the liver and Starts to actually detox the body from like viruses and different things that are causing like a whole host of autoimmune issues and things like that. And so you're juicing a lot of fruit but you're not eating sugar. So it was restrictive in that sense. But I was really appreciative of my journey with medical medium Because it really deepened my knowledge about food and the additives that were being put in my food on like a much deeper level. So I did that for probably like one or two years and it was really great Like I felt like it detox my body and kind of peeled back some layers more.

Nina Elise: 11:10

But after a while my body was like no, I don't want to drink celery juice anymore, and it was a very like intuitive feeling that my body was like no, like I'm done with this. And then it also kind of got into like this fear-based Diet or like what the information that was being presented or what was coming out. The longer that I followed medical medium, I was like this is making me fear, like you know what I'm putting into my body and that if I eat something like it's gonna make me have to start all over again. And so I kind of really moved away from medical medium and I do want to point out like this is another huge factor that goes into diet. It's like what our mindset is, like how we view food, how we view ourselves, our bodies, and the control we tend to want to have over it. And so around this time period I really noticed fears I had around eating certain foods, so I tended to stay away from certain foods and I was also still trying to control how my body looked.

Nina Elise: 12:09

So there was a lot of guilt and shame surrounding what I was eating or how food outside of my acceptable diet would affect me and I would feel fat or guilty if I ate something that wasn't deemed acceptable and I would instantly feel bloated or not, okay, and then this would send me into a spiral because I would not like how my body looked and I would feel very insecure and it would make me want to work out more, restrict my diet more. And you know, at the core of this at the time there was such a deep self-loathing that needed to be addressed and released, which actually didn't happen until my 30s. But I just wanted to really add that in there, because I think that Not just women, but like everyone in general, we carry these subconscious belief systems and we're just not even aware of them and we're not aware of all the other factors that go into why, you know, certain diets may or may not work for us. And so from this, from going from medical medium, I was like, wow, I'm still having all of these health issues. So I discovered Dr Morse and started working with someone online that was kind of helping me through this next journey where I went into fruititarianism and that's basically where you only eat fruit and you juice, and it was really, really difficult for me.

Nina Elise: 13:22

But because I was detoxing so heavily, because I was eating mostly like water-based foods, like fruits, and then I would eat vegetables or salad or something like that and I wasn't eating like oil and things like that. It really cut out a lot of the fat and was basically just eating fruit. It was actually very beneficial because my body was not just detoxing, it was like detoxing emotions that were stored in my body and releasing toxins in my body and releasing addictions and attachments to food in general, so that when I did start adding other food back into my diet, I wasn't eating it as a distraction or feeling a certain way about it. So I will say, being this extreme or like restrictive in my diet actually forced me to look at the emotions and addictions that I had to food that was like crunchy or like comfort foods like that, and I was able to look at that in a healthy manner and like kind of release it, so it didn't have so much control over me. So when I was a fruititarium, I was gosh.

Nina Elise: 14:21

I was probably around like 105 pounds and I'm like five foot six inches and so I was like very thin. I really wasn't working out a ton and I was still experiencing health issues, but at least at this point I was starting to like love my body and I was also eating intuitively and around this time period I probably was like 33, 34, I dropped down to about 100 pounds for about six months. I was moving through a really deep, heavy period of grief and in this time period I honestly just really surrendered and stopped putting so much attention on my body and I ate because I knew I needed to like, I was just gonna like wither away. And at the same time I was also diving very deeply into unconscious belief systems about how I viewed myself and my body and facing a lot of not so great beliefs about what I thought about myself. And the more that I dove into these belief systems and faced them and began to change the self talk dialogue in my head and became aware of what that dialogue even was.

Nina Elise: 15:26

Food became less of an issue for me and my body began to change a lot, but I honestly didn't care because I viewed it differently. My perception of it shifted. I spoke kindly to my body, I released a lot of control about what I thought it should look like and it was very freeing and my body began to soften in like a really beautiful way and there was definitely an awkward time period where I really let go of control and just watched my body change and I really wanted to share this part of the process because you know, when you begin to let go of belief systems and shift how you perceive your body, there is going to be a transition period with your body because you're actually taking the mind out, like removing the control, and you are learning how to trust your body's innate wisdom and ability to balance itself out and take care of itself without the actual mind interjecting anymore. So after all of that happened, I was so blessed. I was still having health issues and I was like pulling my hair out of this one. I was like I don't even know what to do. This point.

Nina Elise: 16:31

I was just kind of eating intuitively and so eating a lot of fruit, still having digestive issues, and I actually found a functional medicine doctor that did quantum testing where basically they talked directly to the body to find out what is wrong, and so, if you're familiar with like muscle testing, that's kind of like what they did in a more homeopathic type way and they found out the core root of my issues and why I couldn't put on weight, why I had digestion issues for so many years and issues with my cycle being inconsistent, where I had pain in my liver and my gallbladder and hormone imbalances and just like a whole host of issues, basically. And so I started taking herbs and dosages specifically to what my body needed, versus blindly throwing supplements at the problem after self-diagnosing and not getting tests, and after probably about two or three months I started to put on weight again, I had enough energy to begin working out again consistently and I started to add chicken and eggs back into my diet. I tripled the amount of protein I was consuming every single day and my body began absorbing nutrients again. So things like my tan was lasting longer on my skin and I had increased energy and endurance in my workouts. I had better mental clarity. My hair stopped falling out so much. My cycle started to balance itself out and I put on over five pounds.

Nina Elise: 17:53

And I really wanted to share this, because there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Like, every person is different and different diets and foods work differently for each individual. So, for example, like I personally don't do well eating raw foods, as my body struggled to break all of those foods down. So in things like apple cider vinegar and coconut and soy, like my body just cannot handle these things and is very sensitive to them and rejects them. So even so-called like healthy foods may not be good for you, but they're good for others, and this requires like really starting to get to know your body and tap into it and say, like, how is this food affecting me and is this something that I really want to eat? And so, for me personally, it took me going to a specialist to figure out there was like a very, very core, root issue that was affecting all systems of my body that needed to be addressed in a very specific way. Some people they just need to shift their diet and they notice immediate results, and that's incredible and amazing. And so I just really want to share all these different things that I went through, because maybe one of these things is great for you Maybe being vegan or being paleo or whatever is actually going to be what is going to help you in conjunction with, like, shifting your belief systems or diving into, like how you actually talk to yourself and how you can actually shift and change that.

Nina Elise: 19:15

And another thing that I really wanted to add or mention is that human design. Human design has also helped me experiment with my diet, as it provides insight about the best way for you to digest food and information based on your chart. So, for example, my digestion is in direct light, meaning it's more challenging for me to digest food and information while in direct light or during the day. So I have personally experimented with fasting or eating lightly throughout the day and eating heavier meals at night. What I have found, if I do eat in direct light, I eat more water-based foods like fruit or something really light, especially during the day, and my brain fog actually completely went away and I stopped feeling sluggish. When I shifted the timing and the quantity of food in this way and this is what works best for me is basically eating lighter throughout the day.

Nina Elise: 20:07

Fasting does not work for me. I need to have something in my body, I need to be consuming something, but basically eating lighter throughout the day and then eating my heavier meals at night, and so this works best for me. But everyone else will be different, based on their chart and what they experiment with. So, while my journey had over the past 15 years has been frustrating at times, it has taught me so much about nutrition, different foods, nutrients and like what is all out there but ultimately what it has taught me is to trust my body and to listen to it. Now. Our bodies go through different seasons and need different things, so it may not need the same thing today as it needed three years ago, and it's okay to experiment and try different things to see how your body feels.

Nina Elise: 20:54

So I hope that you all found this episode helpful and that you learned something new or providing a different perspective on how to approach nutrition and food has been enlightening or has helped you in some way, because I really struggled with this for so long and I really wanted to share my journey with others and what I learned and to potentially help maybe shorten your trial and error time and learn to accept where you're at with your body and start to tap into what it actually needs, because there are so many factors that go into what you eat, like the nutrition, the belief systems that we picked up throughout our lives, the perception of our bodies and our self-talk, the lack of self-love, and how and when we are actually consuming food. Is it in an environment that feels good? Is there a shame around eating certain foods? Are you relaxed? Is your body in an environment that allows you to be relaxed, to actually receive the food and digest it? So these are all questions to ask yourself and play around with, and, instead of viewing this as something that's like overwhelming, it can actually be a really fun game, with no judgment or shame about what is working or not, and we get to be the scientists in our lives, basically. So we do this all while getting to know our bodies better, which I think can be a really, really fun process if you choose to perceive it in this light. So that is it. I feel very complete about sharing all of this information.

Nina Elise: 22:26

Thank you all so much for tuning in Again. I hope that you find this incredibly helpful. Or you learned something new or different, or feel inspired to maybe play around with some things or become a little bit more aware of your own self-talk or your own beliefs, or maybe you wanna try something a little bit different and become a little bit more aware about what your body actually needs versus what you may be potentially forcing on it right now. So thank you all again, so much for tuning in and, as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at hello at nina-elise. com, and if you wanna learn a little bit more about your human design and your digestion, you can pull up your chart for free at nina-elise. com. So thank you all so much for tuning in and I will talk to you all in the next episode. Bye, Merry Christmas and I hope to continue hearing from you guys so I can be yourNina King.