In today's episode, we'll talk about healing diet and intuitive eating I’m a health care professional trained in using food as a way of healing the physical body. Healing diet, restrictive and elimination food protocol is what I studied for years yet today I very seldom recommend it. Why? I have seen and experienced too many situations that healing diets, restrictive and elimination food protocols actually caused more collateral damages than benefits. Furthermore, in most clinical cases what really was causing the health issue had nothing to do with food. So, why obsess about food? If I can, I'd like to take you back in 2015... Carole breaks down I was sitting in my clinic office talking to a patient seeking help with rheumatoid arthritis. She was in the middle of a major flare-up. All joints in her lower body were painfully swollen and she was in a 9/10 pain level. She wanted me to examine her AIP (auto-immune protocol) dietary protocol & supplement protocol and advise her on what she was doing wrong so she could get over the massive flare-up... she was desperately looking for me to find what she was doing wrong. I read all her testing reports, looked over her medications, supplement and food journals. She was doing everything perfectly... she was eating on point and has been for months. I couldn’t find anything wrong with her diet or supplement or medication. Then while looking at her, a little voice in my head told me to ask her about her husband.... with hesitation I did. “How your is husband doing, Carole?” She crumbled on the seat in tears... and she cried for a solid 10 minutes barely taking a breath. Her husband had asked her for a divorce 4 weeks earlier. Her flare-up was triggered by the divorce NOT the food... when she finally was able to breathe and talk, the first thing that came out of her mouth was: “So Stephanie, what can I do with my diet to help myself through this situation?” “Carole, this is not about the food... you need help emotionally. This situation is very traumatic to you now and your body is flaring up because of it.” “No... I know it’s what I’m doing with my food. It’s always the food. I’m not trying hard enough.” “It’s not about the food: It’s about the relationship to healing.” - Jessica Flannigan, author of the Loving Diet Let’s reflect on your journey with healing diets. Are you currently participating in healing your health using food or are you wanting to use food to support your health? If so, how do you answer these questions: What’s my ‘why’ for using food for my health? My secret WHY? Is it weight loss or healing? Is it healing so I can finally lose weight? Have I looked at my health situation from all angles 4 bodies: Mental, Emotional, Spiritual and last Physical. Do I really like this food? Am I forcing myself to eat food I do not enjoy because it’s good for me? Do I have any feelings of guilt or diet mentality around this food choice? Did I allow my nutrition knowledge to guide this choice for my health without sacrificing pleasure? Am I putting pressure on myself to be a ‘perfect’ healing diet participant? Is this choice coming from a place of self-care or self-control? These are the same questions I ask myself as a practitioner when assessing a client’s ability to use food for healing their health. It will usually take 12-18 months of solid intuitive eating living before one is able to approach food with restriction without triggering the diet mindset. Another way to see this is that it takes 12-18 months for women to finally accept their body image as is so they can separate health from body image and no longer seek to heal their physical body so they can lose weight. In today’s episode, we'll interview Jessica Flanigan, Clinical Nutritionist, Co-Founder of The Institute of Spiritual Coaching and is the author of the first mind-body book about Autoimmune Disease, The Loving Diet. Jessica has spent the last six years of her clinical nutrition practice focusing on working with c