The Best Diet Ever

Listen & Collect Data, Intentionally & Intuitively

I’ve tried a bunch of different ways of eating.

Vegetarian, pescatarian, all organic, ovo-vegan, six small meals a day, cut out a bunch of foods I was negatively reacting to, added most of those foods back in, added the rest back in, intermittent fasting, carnivore, hunter-gatherer, intuitive…

I got so tired of the word ‘diet’ that I, for the most part, dropped it and started saying ‘way of eating.’

One of the few gems my last psychiatrist told me was, “Your diet will become very important” 💎

He said this to me during one of our last, maybe our final, appointments, as we collaborated to taper me off the last of a ridiculous amount of psychiatric medications.

You could have maybe mentioned that sooner, Doc 🤨

You, or one of the dozens of other physicians or therapists I saw during my teens and early twenties, could have been as adamant about the importance of diet as you were about the importance of me taking my medications 💊

To be fair, perhaps one or more of these practitioners did offer advice to be more mindful of my diet, and my ears were closed…

Or, perhaps y’all didn’t know…

Regardless, at least he offered me that pivotal wisdom when he did. Other than cutting out gluten due to a diagnosis of Celiac disease, I paid very little attention to my diet during the years I was plagued by mental illnesses, gastrointestinal issues, and other autoimmune disease symptoms. If anything, I played victim to the Celiac diagnosis, eagerly eating ‘whatever I wanted’, as long as it didn’t contain wheat, barley, or rye 🌾

Shortly after tapering off the last of those medications, I stopped eating any meats, other than fish. That decision was made, in large part, because I started learning about the terrible quality of most meats in the U.S.; I decided to stop eating meat “until I could hunt or raise it myself” 🥑🍓🍌🍳

This way of eating felt very ‘clean’ and ‘light’- a significant improvement from the "I’ll eat whatever I want if it doesn’t have gluten” mentality.

I started cutting back on coffee, trading it for cacao ☕️🍫

I stopped eating sweets, other than honey, for 3 months, which did wonders for my sweet tooth 🍯

Less than a year later I cut out fish and dairy as well. All of this felt appropriate, good for me, at the time.

However, within 6 months of starting my ‘ovo-vegan diet,’ I began having very weird episodes that included neuropathy, migraines, and loss of consciousness. I was in emergency rooms 3 times in 2020 for these episodes. Doctors gave me a range of diagnoses, including “too much water” and “too little salt,” the addressing of which did not stop the episodes. The final diagnosis I was given was “complex migraines,” and to their credit, I feel this was at least a reasonable (semi-accurate) guess.

In case you’re curious, I was a very healthy no-meat eater. It was absolutely a commitment I made, first and foremost, to improve my health. I realize there are lots of fries-and-Beyond-burgers-every-other-day kinds of vegetarians and vegans- I was not one of them.

In September 2020, out at P.F. Chang’s to celebrate my birthday with friends, I started having one of these episodes and ate chicken off a friend’s plate in an attempt to up my sodium levels (and, perhaps intuitively, out of desperation for a real solution). The episode continued, but (1) it was different than the others, symptomatically, and (2) I REALLY enjoyed the taste of that chicken.

After that third and final trip to the ER, I continued integrating meat back into my diet. I started with lighter meats but transitioned to including pork, venison, and beef very quickly. I was certainly pickier about the quality of meats I ate than I had ever been; nevertheless, I was soon eating meat with almost every meal and LOVING it.

And the episodes stopped 🥩🥓🍗

Later that same year, I began working with the most amazing chiropractor I have ever met, Dr. Jason Ciarimitaro.

Though the episodes had stopped, I was still experiencing symptoms of autoimmune disease- migraines, headaches, jaw pain/tightness, incessant itchy/flakey scalp, GI issues, etc. An ex-boyfriend referred me to Dr. Jason, believing that the unconventional methods Dr. Jason uses might be able to help.

I saw Dr. Jason frequently for the next 6 months or so, first weekly, then every other week, then every three weeks, etc.

I won’t give space here to explain what bio-resonance therapy is, or what my personal experience with the technology in Dr. Jason’s office was, but I highly recommend pursuing this link if you’re interest is piqued —>

https://www.bicom-bioresonance.com/ 🔉

As is relevant here, the technology and Dr. Jason’s methodology worked. In those 6 months, I was able to cure the allergic reactions I was having to almost all of the 25ish foods I was reacting to when I first went into Dr. Jason’s office. Today, I can genuinely eat whatever I want, including gluten.

During the 3 years since working with Dr. Jason, I have continued to pay a great deal of attention to my eating. The way of eating that got me over the next hump of the autoimmune disease, mental illness, and GI issues was carnivore (with ample organ meat) and then to hunter-gather style (muscle meat, organ meat, fruit, honey, root vegetables).

But, yikes, I quickly noticed myself becoming more fixed, rigid, than I had been in the few years before. I noticed this especially around my eating habits. Suddenly all the resentful thoughts towards my previous healthcare providers (for not emphasizing the importance of diet in my healthcare) flooded back, but this time mostly projected towards all the non-meat eaters for their claims of the safety and benefit of vegetarian and vegan ways of eating! I sat with, sometimes feeding and sometimes battling, this resentment for months.

Since I don’t enjoy feeling resentful, I will typically give attention towards resolving such feelings, and fairly quickly. One way that I’ve dissolved this resentment is by accepting that there are humans who haven’t eaten meat for decades and are thriving. I can extend this playing-devil’s-advocate-with-myself to recognizing that there are humans who eat food of much lower quality than I eat who continue to maintain their mental and/or physical health. While I imagine that these latter individual’s quality of life could still be improved if their diet improved, I wouldn’t necessarily argue that changing their diets ought be their top priority.

Ultimately, what sent me on my journey of many ways of eating, and has landed me at intuitive eating being my trump card, was copious dis-ease. As Dr. Paul Saladino has been known to say (might be paraphrased here a bit), “If you feel great, don’t change anything!” And, for 10+ years I DID NOT feel great; I felt absolutely beyond awful.

So, I changed ⚗️

I say intuitive eating is my trump card, absolutely. But what about the rest of the deck? Intuition is fed by data, by information that the subconscious mind has and continues to absorb. This information percolates and alchemizes through our perceptions and intentions and is spit out as ideas, intuitive impulses, gut instincts, and emotions. We hone our intuition through education, mostly importantly through first-hand experience.

My intuition leads me towards what to learn, what to read and watch and experience. And what I read and watch and experience hones my intuition. This is a mutually reciprocal, alchemical relationship ☯️

At this point in my life, I feel intuitively called to eat in a wide variety of ways, throughout each month and sometimes throughout each week. For the most part I eat home-cooked meals with mostly organic, non-GMO ingredients. But I don’t not eat something because it’s not organic. Every few months I drink a soda. Every couple of months I eat a delicious, greasy cheeseburger and fries from an I’m-sure-it’s-not-the-best-quality restaurant. Sometimes I even have a milkshake or concrete 😱🥤🍔🍦

Neither my body nor my heart can afford to hold judgement towards any particular way of eating.

Each way of eating was, I believe, intuitive in its own right at the particular time I was called to it. It served its purpose at the time, and my body let me know when it was no longer serving. The most harm I can do to myself now is to become fixated on any particular way of eating being ‘the right’ way of eating, lest I stop listening to my body for being too caught up in my mind and emotions.

Perhaps one day I’ll become a fruitarian? A breatharian? If that is what serves the highest good, bring it on 🥝🍍🌬️

I must remain open in order to hear the call 🧘🏼‍♀️