Hi! I’m Jaclyn and I am a Holistic Nutritionist and the founder of Holistic Foodie. I love to create delicious recipes, share my favourite green beauty products and share my fave health and wellness tips along the way. I believe in incorporating a realistic approach to health and wellness without restriction or dieting.
I aim to teach women how to learn to listen to their bodies, trust their intuition and eat delicious food along the way. I believe it is imperative to have a trusting relationship to food and your body first and foremost. As much as I love food and creating recipes, I know the importance of learning to be comfortable with yourself first.
If you want to get stated on your own healing journey with food and your body, check out my FREE guide and workbook called “Beat the Binge.” This is a great resource for those wanting to get started on healing their relationship to food, banish binge and emotional eating and feel confident around food and in their body.
So what do I believe in and what exactly does it mean to live the Holistic Foodie way? Have a look at this page for more about what I believe in, what I stand for and what this means for YOU!
What experience do you have?
I’ve got years of experience dealing with an unhealthy relationship with food so I understand how confused you may feel right now. This is why I employ a diet and label free philosophy because every BODY is different. You can read more about intuitive eating and how it helped me redefine my relationship to food over here.
I have been there too…
Restrictive eating patterns, followed by an insatiable appetite and binge and emotional eating left me feeling depressed, disgusted with myself and moody. I knew that the way I ate and looked at food wasn’t healthy but I had convinced myself that this was what all women did and that I somehow just wasn’t able to commit like they were to their diet. This had me feeling like a failure each time I attempted and failed to lose those last few pounds which then resulted in a mindset that said “screw it” and I would binge on all the foods I swore off in the previous weeks. If I didn’t see immediate results, I didn’t stick with it. I was a master at self loathing and could never see what others saw in me because my relationship with food and myself was so messed up!
How dieting culture impacted others in my life…
I also saw how this affected other women in my life, particularly my mom who was always trying a new diet each week that left her feeling hungry, miserable and feeling like a failure when she couldn’t lose weight. After dieting her whole life and not seeing the results she wanted, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at only 54 and sadly she passed away shortly after the diagnosis. This had a profound effect on me and I decided to change how I looked at food and life in general. Losing a parent at any age is difficult, especially when you are just discovering who you are at 26, and it really puts things in perspective once you start to realize what is truly important and what isn’t. Life is short and I don’t want to waste a second of it feeling bad about something as insignificant as what I ate (or didn’t eat) for dinner.
If you want to read more about how I found my passion and what led me to become a Holistic Nutritionist, please read part one and part two of the series titled: How I Cleaned Up My Diet and Ditching the Vegan Label.
I started questioning what it meant to be healthy after years of counting calories, macros and eating weight watchers points brownies all while bingeing on all the “bad stuff” at night because I was hungry all the time. I knew there had to be a better way to live.
This is when everything started to change…
Through education, tons of research and an unrelenting commitment to truly love and accept myself, I became my own wellness advocate. I gave up labeling my (then vegan) diet and my food choices and learned to appreciate food on a different level. I started to focus more on how food made me feel and I learned to appreciate the benefits of whole foods, besides just from a weight loss perspective.
I have learned to be more in tune with how I am feeling and how that shows up on my plate. And I have learned the importance of how foods are grown and prepared. As a foodie, (hence the name Holistic Foodie) I truly believe in quality over calories. This means that sometimes I have a kale salad or turmeric latte and other times a hearty oven baked pasta with all the cheese and wine. It means I don’t judge who I am based on what is on my plate (or what isn’t), because my self worth isn’t tied to what I eat. It’s also why I made sure to incorporate both a kale leaf and a cocktail in my logo, because Holistic Foodie is ‘wellness without obsession.’ Getting here wasn’t easy, but it was so worth it!
When I am not busy helping women tackle their food demons and learn to love food again, you can find me doing any of the following: binge watching Netflix series (the only bingeing I do nowadays!), enjoying a good sweat sesh (because I want to), browsing through cookbooks (I have amassed quite the collection) or just hanging around local farmer’s markets in the city. Toronto is the city I call home and I have lived here for seven years.
Here are five random things about me so that you can get to know the real me a little more:
- My favourite movie of all time is The Wizard of Oz.
- My guilty pleasure is celeb gossip.
- My favourite food is avocado and I even did a presentation all about them while attending nutrition school.
- When I was younger, I wanted to be an actress and was in acting school for a number of years.
- I know almost all of the words to The Dark Knight and Home Alone 1 and mostly 2
And if you are looking for a meal prep guide, be sure to check out my FREE recipe guide to help you get started in the kitchen. Meal prep has been a great addition to my intuitive eating journey, which you can read about over here.
Love, peace and plenty of avocados,
Jaclyn
All photos courtesy of Creating Light Studio.