Every one of us is on a journey, but none of us have reached our destination. I have wanted to write a blog for some time now, but I felt like I had to have everything “figured out” before I published the actual site. I thought, “I need to have a portfolio of beautiful food pictures, cooking tutorials, and information about popular nutrition topics. Well, that task seemed a bit daunting, so I continued to put the idea of blogging on the back burner. I realized tonight that I will never have it all figured out, and I would love for each of you reading this blog to be apart of the journey. 

So, let me start off by giving you a background as to why I even wanted to start blogging. I mean, there are a ton of “real food,” “health food,” “paleo,” “fitfood” bloggers out there, so why choose to do another one? There are many reasons, but in a nutshell, I have seen a need of transparency, gut wrenching honesty, and … dare I say it–vulnerability. I know whenever I look at most food/fitness/health blogs, they seem like they have it all figured out. I will tell you now, that I do not, but I have hopes that we can learn and grow together. Nutrition advice can be extremely confusing, and I even get confused with the latest recommendations. Who are we supposed to believe? 

Let me share a little bit of my story so that you all can better understand the motivation behind this blog: 

I can remember as early as 5 years old, battling with anxiety and depression. The feeling of dread, like an elephant is sitting on your chest, heart racing. As a child, I did not know how to describe what I felt, and I did not realize it was abnormal. There were many days that I would have rather been asleep than awake, because I knew relief came at that time.  I was fearful of going to school,  I never wanted to go over to friend’s homes to spend the night. I washed my hands until they bled. Holidays were the worst. I would feel sad, fearful, disconnected with the world. Up until 2-3 years ago, I couldn’t even listen to Christmas music because it reminded me of the dreadful anxiety during Christmas as a child.  Every child has "worry" to some degree, but the "worry" I felt consumed me. It continued throughout elementary and middle school until finally, my freshman year of high school, I went to see my pediatrician because I could not handle it anymore. I was prescribed Zoloft, an SSRI anti-depressant/anti-anxiety. I finally was able to put a name on what I had been experiencing all of those years—GAD Generalized Anxiety Disorder (or so I thought…)

I continued to struggle with anxiety even after beginning the anti depressant, but not as severely. It was well managed and I felt “normal.” An onlooker would have never guessed that I felt tormented inside, feeling as if the real Rachel was trapped inside my body. I was very social in high school, made good grades, and was actively involved. I was embarrassed that I took a medication to treat “anxiety and depression,” thinking that it was only for “depressed kids.” I rarely opened up to anyone except my family. I also carried some shame, feeling like as a Christian I should have “more faith in Christ,” and that “anxiety was a sin.” I know now, that there is no shame in being a Believer and struggling with anxiety/depression.

It was not until college that I even considered coming off of the medicine.  Unfortunately, I listened to people who said that anxiety was "all in my head," and I attempted to come off my medication cold turkey. This was a terrible idea and ended up causing more bad then good. After going back on the medication I started having more symptoms that made my doctor think I needed to go on another psychotropic medication in addition to the one I was already taking. I am thankful I did not follow this advice, because I believe it could have started a point of no return.

So now, fast forward to the present, and I have officially been anti-depressant/anxiety medication free for 10 weeks. It took me about 10 months to wean off of it very, very slowly. As I said earlier, I thought that I should wait until I had “reached the destination” before I started blogging. What I realized, though, is that people relate to the real life struggles way more than they relate to the “I’ve got it all figured out.” Because honestly, I don’t have it all figured out! There are still days where I question whether or not I made the right decision, but deep down… I KNOW I DID. I have moments where the heaviness, chest pressure, and rapid heart rate return. I have moments where I feel "blue" for no reason. 

About now, you are probably wondering, what does a food/health blog have anything to do with anxiety/depression? I used to wonder the exact same thing, and now, after doing a lot of reading, podcast listening, and being mentored by very knowledgable dietitians, I can give you insight into what I have learned along the way. It took me completely altering my diet (and I thought I was already pretty healthy!) over the past year. As I will write about in future posts (soon to come,) there is a proven connection between the health of our gastrointestinal tract (our gut for short) and our brain. Scientists are even beginning to call the gut the “Second Brain.” Just as a quick statistic, 90% of serotonin is synthesized (created) in your gut! So would it not make sense that if your gut is not functioning properly, you may have some serotonin deficiency symptoms? Now, do not misunderstand, as I am in no way saying that anxiety/depression is “all in your head” or “not real,” because I can say with 100% certainty, it is VERY real. What I am saying, though, is that maybe it is not so much of a disease as much as it is a symptom of a deeper physiological issue. (more to come on what I mean by this!)

In this blog, I will cover topics such as inflammatory versus anti-inflammatory foods for the brain, what is “leaky gut,” foods that drive “leaky gut,” organic versus non-organic and why it is important, GMO versus non-GMO, the top gut healing foods, among many other topics that I will also be exploring along the way!

So comment below with topics that YOU are interested in learning more about! Let me know what you think.

-RB