reclaim the power and
pleasure on your plate

Have you noticed that most nutrition strategies are just different ways to say no?  Less carbs, fewer calories, suppressed appetite... are we done with this yet? Because true nourishment isn’t about the math of restriction; it’s about the art of fulfillment. It’s the deep, sensory satisfaction of a body that is finally fueled in a way that honors your physiology and delights your senses.

So… what’s the plan then?


If we aren’t counting calories or tracking macros, what are we actually doing? I know how it feels to read this and think, "That sounds great, but I can’t just float around in the woo-woo land of intuitive eating." Which is smart, by the way—from an evolutionary perspective, intuitive eating is the most counter-intuitive thing you can do. But, that’s a story for another day.

The thing is, I deeply understand why we keep reverting to diet culture tactics: there is structure there. There is a plan. There is a very clear "do this, get that." It is no different here. There is a strategy in this space — one that is both deeply scientific and deeply sensual.  I'm not asking you to wander aimlessly; I'm showing you a different architecture for your health. The old script of restriction, reduction, and diminishing yourself will always be there (oh joy) —  but after this, we have the potential to make it obsolete.

the roadmap +
strategy

This is the framework to help you unlearn the script of reduction, unwind restriction, and move the body out of perceived famine and back into biological safety. It’s a lot —and it’s usually the kind of material that lives behind a paywall or an email opt-in. But, I wanted to give you a deep resource right here, out in the open, for free. You can absolutely take these steps, research them, and work with them on your own. But there is something genuinely life-changing about not walking this path alone. When you’re ready for that level of support, that’s where I come in.

  • Step One

    END THE GROUP PROJECT

    The first thing we do is the most radical: we declare that your body is no longer a group project. We are officially firing the audience. We’re detaching from the unsolicited advice, the "well-meaning" comments from your mother-in-law, and the suffocating weight of everyone else’s expectations.

  • Step Two

    CONTEXT BEFORE CORRECTION

    Anthropology doesn’t ask, “What’s wrong with you?” It asks, “What have you been living through?” Your body hasn’t been failing you; it has been adapting —brilliantly — to the conditions it was placed in: self-imposed famines, chronic stress, the expectations you carry, and a culture that never powers down. Before we try to change a thing, we honor how your body has kept you alive. This work begins by letting your nervous system know the siege is over, so you can step out of protection and back into the flow of your life.

  • Step Three

    WE FOCUS ON TIMING

    Before we ever talk about or adjust what you eat, we lock in when you are eating. We prioritize getting you into a consistent circadian rhythm with your nourishment, which means eating within the window of the sun: when the sun rises, the kitchen opens; when the sun sets, the kitchen closes (with wiggle room for the winter season). We also lock in consistent meal times so your body can finally feel safe within that predictability. This might mean 3–5 nourishing meals at the same times each day—with the frequency depending on your history with chronic dieting, fasting, and the current state of your nervous system.

  • Step Four

    WE RECLAIM PRESENCE + PLEASURE

    You’re probably expecting us to finally talk about what to eat, but we aren’t there yet. Before we look at the plate, we look at who you are when you’re eating —because your state of being dictates your biology. If you’re coming into a meal rushed, distracted, or worrying about what you are eating, your digestion effectively shuts down. We have to move you out of that stressed "fight or flight" state and back into the actual sensation of the meal: the taste, the touch, the smell, the sight. Even if you only have 30 minutes for lunch… we try to find deep presence + pleasure in the experience.

  • Step Five

    REBUILD TRUST

    Now that we’ve established a rhythm, we begin to tune into the body on a deep level. We tune into sensations of hunger, fullness, warmth, satisfaction, energy, heaviness, thirst, dehydration, and so on. We start paying attention to things we once were overriding, and now… begin to respond in the way the body is actually asking for. Over time, trust rebuilds. Communication is restored.

  • Step Six

    GET BACK INTO RHYTHM

    By this point, your body has rhythm. Now we zoom out to circadian rhythm as a whole: light exposure, mitochondrial function, and the timing of hormones like leptin, cortisol, melatonin, and insulin. This is the cellular level. You might wonder why this isn’t the first step, and the reason is simple — early on, this can feel abstract and overwhelming. But now, you’re already experiencing it. You’ve been responding to these signals without realizing it through circadian eating and rhythm. This is the mothership, and at this stage, you don’t have to be convinced—you can feel it pulling you in.

  • Step Seven

    NOURISHMENT = REPAIR

    Now we come back to the what — but with a completely different lens. Food is no longer about control or restriction; it’s a repair kit. Nourishment is a signal, and the foods you choose should clearly communicate the goal you’re working toward without needing explanation. You should be able to look at your plate and know what message it’s sending to your body. This is where we dial in the what in a way that supports the rhythm and signals you’ve already restored, and only then — if it makes sense — we layer in things like supplements to reinforce that signal.

Bonus step: turn off the metrics.

I’m talking about your calorie counter, your step counter—any way you’ve been tracking your body. Just temporarily step away, especially if you’ve been using those tools to override sensation.

If you’ve ever felt hungry, checked a calorie app, and then decided not to eat because the app said you were “done for the day,” this is your sign. We can’t let a device talk over the body. We can’t rebuild trust while an external system is making the decisions for us. At some point, we have to start listening again.

And listening shows up as signals: hunger, fullness, warmth, energy, desire — even cravings. Even all the conversations right now about “silencing food noise.” That noise is information. It’s the body communicating something.

The Human Side of Nourishment

We’ve talked a lot about how food isn’t just calories or macros. But the other side of that is just as important: food isn’t only circadian timing or chrono-nutrition either. Food is community. It’s culture. It’s memory and connection. Somewhere along the way, we took something deeply human, deeply relational and turned it into a set of rules.

But lately, I can feel that starting to shift. People are waking up to it. You see it in the return to slow food, in the sourdough starters being passed between neighbors, in the desire to cook, to share, to linger. For so long everything has been about speed: instant results, quick fixes, optimization at all costs. But there’s a different appetite emerging now. One for slower pleasures. For making food, enjoying food, and eating in company again.

From a wellness anthropology lens, that matters. Because nourishment has never been just about the food—it’s about what arrives alongside it. Time. Presence. Relationship. A sense of safety in the act itself. My hope is that this return— to slowness, to craft, to connection — isn’t a passing trend, but a collective remembering. One that re-anchors how we eat, how we gather, and how we care for our bodies as we move forward.

Diet Culture Hot Takes

  • We have this romanticized obsession with eating like our ancestors. We’ve been sold the idea that if we mimic a prehistoric blueprint, we’ll magically inherit a primal glow and lean body. But let's be real: have you spent any time looking at the archaeological record? Our ancestors weren’t exactly supermodels; they were just trying not to die from a tooth infection at twenty-four. (Okay, okay, not entirely accurate, but you get the point.)

    Every day, I see "primal" coaches prescribing a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to women living in a hyper-digital, artificial-light, chronically-sedentary 21st-century world. It is a biological mismatch of epic proportions. You cannot "Paleo" your way out of modern habits, and I hate to be the one to tell you, but you cannot sardine-fast your way to your dream body while staring at a screen all day. We need to stop looking backward for a lifestyle that hasn’t existed for ten thousand years and start looking at the reality of who, and where, we actually are.

  • On a similar note to the ancestor claim, we are currently obsessed with using stress adaptations as "wellness" tools. We love to cut carbs, do extended fasting, and throw ourselves into tubs of ice. But keto, low-carb, cold plunges, and fasting (outside of gentle circadian windows) are all physiological stressors.

    These tactics aren't inherently "bad." In the short term, for a person with a robust, healthy metabolism, these stressors can trigger a survival response — an adaptation — that makes the body temporarily more resilient. But these responses were never meant to be long-term lifestyle choices.

    I would never take a woman with a dysregulated nervous system (which, let's face it, is all of us), and suggest she pile more stress onto her plate. If you are already chronically stressed, your body doesn't need a long fasting window that feels like a famine; it needs to know it’s safe. If you are already drained and depleted, your body doesn't need low-carb (it needs the exact opposite). If you are already going through a season of anxiety, cold-plunging isn't the vibe.

    Within the delicate female physiology, these well-meaning tactics can land as counter-intuitive. We have to stop trying to starve or stress a tired body into health. It’s a recipe for burnout, not a blueprint for aliveness.

  • We are collectively obsessed with finding the "perfect" diet — the one holy grail of eating that will finally deliver weight loss, longevity, and endless energy. Modern culture is hyper-focused on the what of nutrition because (no big shocker) the what is profitable. There is always a new supplement, a branded diet food, a proprietary protein powder, or a restrictive protocol to sell you. They want you to believe that the secret is hidden in a specific macro ratio or an exotic superfood.

    But the most potent strategy for your biology isn’t found in the macros or the ingredients at all. It isn’t found in the what at all. It’s found in the when.

    This is the science of Chrono-nutrition. Your body isn't a stationary machine that processes fuel the same way 24 hours a day; it’s a sophisticated clock. Your insulin sensitivity and your digestive enzymes are at their peak when the sun is up, and they naturally downshift as the light fades. When we eat against that clock — like fasting through breakfast only to consume a massive "clean" meal at 8 PM — we create metabolic chaos, regardless of how many superfoods are on the plate.

    The liberation in this is massive. Truly. Isn't it a relief to know you don’t have to have the "what" perfectly dialed in like we’ve been led to believe? By simply shifting to a circadian window— eating with the sun, maintaining consistent meal times, and dialing back late-night eating when the body is designed to rest and repair — it gives you so much wiggle room. When the timing is right, the pressure on the plate disappears.

  • A calorie deficit is always presented as the only way to shift body composition. That simply isn’t true. It is one path, yes — but it’s a path I wouldn’t recommend to my worst enemy. We can send people to space, yet we are still peddling a weight-loss solution from the 1800s that requires women to suffer on low-power mode. I don’t buy it.

    When you cut calories, you aren’t "burning fat." You are lowering your body’s total energy. You are literally telling your biology to dim the lights. For a chronically stressed, dysregulated body, a calorie deficit is just a fancy way of screaming "famine." In response, your biology down-regulates everything: your thyroid drops, your body temperature falls, and your system shuts down every non-essential function to conserve the tiny bit of fuel you’re providing. Maybe you shrink for a while, but you’re just becoming a slower, colder, more exhausted version of yourself that you now have to micro-manage forever. You will be white-knuckling those results for the rest of your life. I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years, and I don’t know a single person utilizing calorie deficits who isn't fearful of losing their results. They are constantly doing “cuts” and micro-managing. That is no way to live.

    Not to mention, starting with calories is starting way too far downstream. It’s like trying to build a house with no foundation. The real foundation is unglamorous, it’s dripping in science, and nobody wants to talk about it because it isn't as easy as buying a supplement or a protein powder. That foundation is circadian signaling and mitochondrial function. You go there before you ever touch a calorie level. When you restore the foundation, you’ll find you don’t have to be so manipulative with all the other strategies you’ve been layering on.

    I have used my own body as a lab for the last three and a half years. I lost 100 pounds across two separate experimentations without a fitness routine, without counting a single macro, and without ever going near a calorie deficit. I ate at a nourishing level to give my body the sense of safety it needed to regulate itself. The body has to feel safe to let go — and extreme, chronic deficits signal the exact opposite. They signal stress and famine; they tell your body to store fat for survival. Your body cannot be permanently restricted into a smaller shape. You need the energy required to move, think, and exist at full capacity. It’s time to start nourishing at that level.

  • Wellness that requires isolation or the constant sacrifice of human connection isn’t actually wellness. We have to stop confusing the two. If your diet has become a social cage that stops you from living your life, connecting to others, or simply enjoying your food, you’ve lost the plot.

    Connection is just as vital to our biology as nutrients. When we constantly prioritize the "perfection" of a plate over the presence of our community, we are actually working against our own nervous system. Real health shouldn't shrink your world; it should expand it. If you’ve traded your joy and your relationships for a restrictive blueprint, it’s worth asking what you’re actually gaining.

    I want to be clear: there is a profound difference between being responsible for your health and being restrictive. Being responsible is a beautiful thing. It means acknowledging your allergies, knowing what makes you feel vibrant, and making informed choices because you love how they make you feel. That is an act of self-respect.

    But restriction is different. Restriction is when you say "no" for no reason other than a belief that you "shouldn't" have something. It’s a mindset that keeps you in a cage of your own making, even when your soul — and your body — is begging for the nourishment of a shared meal and a night of laughter. True health is found in the balance between nourishing your cells and nourishing your life. Don't let a diet take your joy away.