I’m getting really tired of reading AI writing.

I’ve been here on Substack since before it was popular. And I remember, even two and a half years ago, when this space was mostly occupied by true writers.

You might be wondering what I mean by that.

What does it take to be a true writer?

It’s pretty simple, actually. You need to write. And you need to do it yourself.

Plainly, if you need AI to write your Substack essay for you, you are not a writer.

If you can’t hit publish without first posting your piece into Chat, followed by “make this sound better,” and then copying and pasting the results to your blog, you are not a writer.

And instead of continuing to push out your artificially created pieces, you should probably spend that time actually improving on the skill by practicing it.

“But Naomi, not everyone is naturally good at writing…some of us need help.”

“What if I want to write, but I’m not a good enough writer yet?”

You do not become a better writer by getting a computer to do it for you. You become a better writer by writing.

Do you guys think that I picked up my laptop one day and suddenly started spewing out meaningful sentences? That this skill just happened upon me?

Now I don’t think by any means that I’m the bee’s knees of writers, but I do feel confident enough to know that I’m pretty good at this. And I’ve become pretty good at this because I’ve been practicing writing since I was a little kid. Between the ages of 7-14, when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I gave one of two answers: Hilary Duff or an author.

While my siblings were outside jumping on the trampoline, I would to steal my mom’s laptop so I could write short stories in the quiet of her home office. At age 21, I decided to do my honours thesis in my fourth year of my undergrad, 1) because women in STEM, 2) because research is cool, 3) because all my friends were doing it, and 4) because I love to write. My final thesis was 86 pages long. It took me weeks to write it. And by practicing the thing I love, I became better at it every single day.

I’ve also been reading since I was a little kid. I strongly believe that you become better at something not only by practicing the skill yourself, but also by observing others who are great at it. That’s what reading gave me: a daily observation of great (and not so great) writing.

By reading, I learned what makes a story captivating and what makes it boring. I learned how to translate something complex into something not only digestible, but actually interesting. I learned about different writing styles, which ones I connect with and the ones I don’t, and found templates for finding my own voice and style in this space. After finding inspiration through reading, I went out and put it into practice by writing.

no one is born a writer

I am not a natural-born writer. Truly, no one is. But I am a person who has been interested in the craft for decades, and as a result, has felt a natural pull to practice the skill over and over and over again until I’ve become better at it — until I became a writer.

Would I be able to publish pieces more frequently if I got a computer to do it for me? Definitely. But would that actually make me a better writer and bring me closer to the person I want to become? Noooooooo.

Yes, plugging “help me write a blog piece on _____” into ChatGPT would absolutely help you produce written pieces more quickly and with less effort. But does that really count as writing? Does it count as really doing the thing? Can you really call yourself a writer when all you’re doing is hitting publish on a post written by a robot?

More and more, I’m seeing people emerge into this space who are very good at keeping up the appearance of being a writer without actually doing the work required to become one.

Listen, I could take a gondola or a helicopter to the top of a mountain and I’d get to see the same views as if I’d climbed it. But it wouldn’t be the same.

I wouldn’t have built the skills or the muscle or the mental strength. I wouldn’t have the same sense of accomplishment. I wouldn’t be any more equipped to handle life’s uncertainties or difficulties. I wouldn’t have learned anything.

Taking a gondola to the top helps me get to the top of the mountain faster, and would certainly allow me to see more views in a shorter period of time. But it doesn’t make me any better at climbing mountains. And it certainly would not allow me to call myself a hiker or a mountaineer.

The point of creating something isn’t only the finished product — it’s the person you become through the process of creating it. AI can give you the output, but it doesn’t give you the necessary experience that shapes you into the kind of person who creates these things.

the discomfort of being a beginner is the most important part

I understand the pull to have a computer do the work for you. It’s extremely appealing to escape the discomfort of being a beginner at something and skip to the end.

But if you do not allow yourself the necessary experience of being a beginner, you will never truly make it to the intermediate level. And certainly not the expert level.

Being a beginner hones the skills, the neural pathways, the learnings that create the foundation for being good at something. Honestly, I really worry about this next generation of school-age children because of how heavily they are relying on AI to do their work for them. But it’s not just kids — it’s adults too.

We need to stop and really think about what AI is doing to our ability to think critically, problem solve, and connect. We need to think about what AI is doing to our ability to learn, and truly progress past the beginner stage.

Using AI to write allows me to skip a lot of steps that I would have had to take in the past: a writing course, a few drafts, the discomfort of writing badly at first, the discomfort of writer’s block, the discomfort of sharing my work with someone who can provide feedback, the discomfort of hearing that feedback, applying it, and improving. And the discomfort of being patient and trusting that process.

Now I don’t have to do any of that! Life hacking baby! No more discomfort!

But without that discomfort, I have robbed myself of the necessary experiences of learning. I have robbed myself of the opportunity to become better at something. I have robbed my brain of new neural pathways. I have robbed myself of a future where it doesn’t actually feel so daunting to start writing a piece. I have robbed myself of the potential of making strong connections with people using my voice. And I have certainly robbed myself of a future where I can honestly and whole-heartedly say that you’re reading my writing, and feel proud of my hard work.

how to use AI in your writing (in my opinion)

I actually do think AI tools are valuable, but not in the ways they’re being used as of late. I do get that we’re all busy, and feeling the pressure of a recession and a world moving too fast for comfort, and we desperately want to keep up. I get that.

But there’s a big difference between using it as a tool to help you vs using it to complete the whole task. ChatGPT should not be your ghost writer — but it can be your editor and mentor. Here are some ways I think AI can be used in your writing in a way that still allows you to build the skill:

• First: stop relying on it to start your pieces. The more you do this, the less your brain learns how to move through writer’s block. When you can’t find a way to get started, just start writing badly, on purpose. Act like the whole point is to write gibberish — just get words on paper. You’ll find that moving through that first part is what activates your brain to start writing the way you want. And the more you practice starting, the better your brain will become at it. This doesn’t happen when you start every piece by typing “help me write an essay on ___” in Chat.

• Second: ask it to organize your ideas into an outline, not to write them out for you. If you’re like me, you get lost in the sauce of your own brain. You might have too many ideas that feel overwhelming, and you have no clue how they all connect. Instead of asking AI to write out a piece for you, start by brain dumping all your ideas for your next piece and ask it to organize them into an outline for you without actually writing the piece. Seeing your ideas mapped out into an outline can lower the mental barrier of starting.

• Third: use it as a mentor, but don’t let it rewrite for you. When you need feedback or reassurance that your writing makes sense, ask your AI assistant (Chat, Claude, whoever) to act as a writing mentor who gives feedback on your pieces section by section, but never rewrites them.

• Fourth: use it to proofread. If you’re prone to typos like me, ask it to do a once-over for grammatical/spelling errors and to point out gaps and places for improvement, without rewriting anything. Or better yet, ask a real, live human friend to do this for you (old school, I know).

I like to think of my AI tools as a free way to take a course. I don’t think AI is evil and that we need to abolish it completely. But I do think we need to reevaluate the role it plays in our lives. More saliently, we need to reevaluate the level at which we rely on it to do our thinking (and creating) for us.

So, using that example, if I were to take a writing course to become a better writer, what would that entail?

Probably some classes on theory of writing, taught by a professor of sorts. They would likely assign us some writing exercises to practice that theory. We would write. And then they would read our writing, provide feedback, and we would write again. Rinse and repeat. And improve and improve and improve. And write and write and write.

A writing professor would never take my piece and say “let me just do it for you.” They would never completely rewrite my paragraphs, or give me my first draft, or eliminate my voice. They would read my work, correct it, provide feedback, and maybe even talk through ideas with me to exercise the part of my brain needed to problem solve. So when asking for help from an AI tool, try to think of how you would ask for help from a human.

I would never throw my draft at my teacher and say “make this sound better” and expect them to return a polished essay to me — so don’t do the same with your AI tools.

The key part here is that needing a bit of guidance is not the problem — it’s the way we’re leaning on guidance to do the work for us completely to avoid the discomfort of learning.

human error is part of your magic. your unique voice is more valuable than anything a robot can create.

Art, emotions, connection, creativity, honesty, imperfect — these are all words that come to mind when I think of what makes humans so valuable. And they cannot be replaced by AI.

The more you replace your own unique voice with a computer, the more you dim your light — and the further you push your fellow humans away.

The things that make me connect with writing are not how perfectly it’s written. It’s the way it makes me feel; the way I connect with the honesty on the page, the way I’m captivated by your storytelling. You lose all of this when you allow AI to create for you instead of doing it yourself.

And furthermore, we lose our individuality.

AI is trained on patterns in human-created material that already exists in the digital world. When you ask it to “write a piece on potatoes” or to edit your draft and “make it sound better,” it evaluates digital writing and spews out text that is statistically most likely to match the answer it believes you’re looking for. This means that the more we publish AI-written pieces and ask it to do the work for us, the more similar all our pieces are going to become.

If we all continue to rely on AI to edit our own voice, we risk losing our individuality until we’ve all morphed into the same being. You may have already noticed this online, especially amongst some very popular Substack articles — they all sound the same. Technically written very well, yes, but eerily similar.

If you feel called to write, it’s because you have something unique and important to say. There are people out there in the world who need to hear your story, written in your voice, your language, your cadence, with your typos and emotions coming through the page. AI cannot replace that for you.

AI writing is boring and hollow, and we can feel it

I think the most frustrating part of reading these AI pieces is that they’re so painfully obvious.

I see these viral pieces circulating around the internet, and think to myself “wow, I can’t wait to read this popular piece, it must be such profound, meaningful writing to be shared this much,” only to open it and feel the annoyance bubble up with the disappointing realization that it was not written by the author — it was absolutely written by ChatGPT.

And then I’m confused as to how all the other readers going crazy over the piece haven’t noticed?

I feel a bit cheated when I read something that’s been clearly hit with the veil of ChatGPT ghostwriting. And it actually pushes me further away from the author, despite the words sounding good on paper.

I don’t really care how many likes, comments, reshares, followers you have — as soon as I see the obvious AI-tells in your writing, I’m exiting the page. And probably unfollowing you. It feels like a big fat betrayal because I thought I was connecting to your mind, your experience, and your unique voice, only to find out I was connecting with generated text.

typos used to break my trust, but now i see them as evidence of good, real writing

You may have noticed I sometimes (often) have typos in my writing. I used to be ashamed of that. Ask me 10 years (minutes) ago if typos are an indication of sloppy writing, and I would say absolutely!!! What a terrible writer I must be to not check over my writing perfectly and scrounge it for typos?

See, I used to see typos as evidence of poor writing. Typos broke my trust with the author because it served as evidence that they didn’t care enough about the craft to check over the small details.

But now I think typos are an indication of good writing — because it means that you were the one to actually put the words on paper. Typos no longer break my trust with you as an author. But pretending you wrote something that you didn’t definitely does.

AI might make the writing better on a superficial level, but it makes the writer worse on a deep level. I’d rather read your imperfect human writing than your flawless AI writing.

And I love you but, respectfully, if all you’re doing is pasting ChatGPT’s writing into your blog and hitting publish, you’re not a writer — you’re a robot’s publisher.

I’m curious how you feel about this? Let me know in the comments!

Lots of (tough) love,

Naomi

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I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps you change your life by changing what you eat. You can learn more about me here.

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Did you know you can just put beans in your smoothie? And you won’t even taste them? And you’ll be doing your gut and hormones a huge favour by doing so?

Black beans are extremely nutritious, but a lot of people don’t really know how to eat them. They’re packed with fibre, plant protein, magnesium, iron, folate, potassium, and polyphenols — and they’re also food for your little gut microbes.

“But Naomi, beans make me gassy.”

So glad you brought that up. Beans contain certain carbohydrates that our own human-made digestive enzymes can’t fully break down. Instead, they travel to the large intestine, where our gut microbes break them down. If you’re unable to digest beans, it’s actually not a problem with the beans themselves — it’s a problem with your gut microbiome.

beans aren’t the problem — your gut microbiome is

Your gut microbiome (the collection of different bacteria that live in our guts) is a living ecosystem. We have a symbiotic relationship with it — for us, they help us break down parts of plant foods that we can’t fully digest alone. Different microbes thrive on different types of fibre and plant compounds (they all have a different favourite food), which is why diversity in your diet is so important and why I always recommend aiming for 30 different plant foods per week to support your gut. When we regularly eat a diverse range of plants, we feed and cultivate a more diverse ecosystem in our gut — and the more diverse the ecosystem, the more resilient and efficient our digestive system will be.

Black beans, for example, provide fermentable fibers and resistant starch that become fuel for beneficial gut bacteria. Those microbes produce short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs), which are incredible little chemical compounds that support the gut lining, immune system, metabolism, and the communication between your gut and your brain.

Our modern lives aren’t great for our microbiomes. Chronic stress, alcohol, ultra-processed foods, carnivore diets, low plant diversity, and environmental chemical exposures can all disrupt the ecosystem. When your gut is struggling, removing more and more “trigger” foods can absolutely make symptoms feel better in the short term — but it doesn’t address why your tolerance to these foods is low in the first place. It’s not a long-term solution.

My philosophy is a little different.

the solution

Rather than living in constant fear of foods that might make you bloated and having a laundry list of foods to avoid, I want to help you work towards true food freedom and gut resilience: a world where you can eat anything and everything without symptoms. Yeah, it’s possible.

That might mean spending 3-6 months gradually rebuilding your gut ecosystem, increasing plant diversity, supporting digestion, and figuring out the actual root cause of your chronic bloating and digestive issues. Foods can become a normal, delicious, nutritionally-supportive part of your life instead of a source of fear — for EVERYONE.

If you still don’t believe me that you need beans in your life, here are some rapid fire facts on how beans support your whole health:

nutrition benefits of beans

• For your hormones → more stable cycles and fewer hormone-related symptoms

  • The fibre in black beans supports regular bowel movements and healthy estrogen elimination through our gut, while magnesium and other nutrients support the processes your body uses to make and metabolize hormones. IRL, that can look like less constipation, less bloating around your period, more predictable bowel movements, along with fewer pre-period crashouts, less luteal phase anxiety, and fewer breakouts.

• For your pre-period anxiety → a calmer, more steady second half of your cycle

  • Beans give you a combination of magnesium, fibre, protein, and complex carbohydrates that can help create more stable blood sugar. And because your gut and brain are constantly communicating, a healthier gut ecosystem also supports your nervous system. This means fewer blood-sugar-crash mood swings, less “I feel like I’m losing my freaking mind” PMS, steadier energy, and a more resilience when life gets stressful.

• For your gut → better digestion and more food freedom.

  • The fibres in black beans feed your gut microbes, helping support a more diverse and resilient microbiome. Over time, building tolerance to a wider variety of plant foods can mean more regular + bulkier poops (that’s a good thing), less digestive unpredictability, and being able to eat at a restaurant or travel without constantly wondering what food is going to wreck your stomach.

• For your brain → better support for focus, mood, and stress resilience

  • Your brain needs a steady supply of energy and nutrients to function well. Black beans provide magnesium, folate, iron, and other nutrients involved in energy metabolism and nervous-system function. This means fewer hunger-induced mood dips, and more stable energy to get through your day.

Look at all those bean benefits you’re missing out on! And this is why I care so much about adding foods back in, rather than living in constant fear of what we should avoid.

i can help you eat beans again

I am taking four (yes, only 4!!) new 1:1 nutrition clients starting in September. There are a lot of really exciting things happening behind the scenes in my nutrition work right now, so I’m not sure if I’ll keep applications open beyond this fall. These fall spots usually fill up quick. All this to say is, if you’re looking for 1:1 nutrition help with healing after hormonal birth control, acne, period problems, ADHD management, endometriosis, PMOS/PCOS, supporting your sensitive body — I invite you to apply to work with me below.

become a nutrition client

And if you’re not sure yet, but just need more information on how nutrition actually helps with these things, start by booking a free call here.

Read on for the black bean chocolate smoothie recipe that will feed your gut and calm pre-period anxiety :)

Read more

Hello my sweet friend in the computer. I’ve been having the most wonderful summer and I want to give you a few personal and professional updates! Welcome to Ep. 2 of Naomi’s Notes, where I’m giving you a peek straight into my brain. Good luck in there!🌀

After the end of any significant trip or event, I like to ask everyone what their rose, thorn, and bud was: the ultimate high, the ultimate low, and something you’re looking forward to most. And lately I’ve been using this framework to reflect on my life month by month.

Like any full, well-rounded life, there is a healthy mix of roses (goods things), thorns (bad things), and hopes for the future (buds). 2025 was a year with more thorns than roses or buds for me, and 2026 has rewarded me with the opposite. Maybe it’s cheesy to say, but I feel like I keep reaching the top of the mountain, and then I look around and see that there’s so much more to go. And I don’t mean this in a bad way — I mean it in a grateful, “life just keeps getting better and better and look how many more cool mountains I get to climb!!” kind of way.

With that in mind, today I am going to share some of the things I’ve loved this summer (the roses), and some of the things I haven’t loved so much (the thorns).

Today’s notes will include updates on:

• choosing the best sardines, and an exclusive discount on my favourite cans

• my ADHD medication journey and the nutrition strategies that have helped me along the way

• my dating life and the self-reflections that come with these changes

• some incredible nutrition client wins and how to work with me this fall

• introducing the Sardine Girl Dinner Party!!!

  

things i’ve loved this summer (my roses)

⭐️ The Fennel & Rosemary Sardines from Nice Cans

Obviously I love sardines. I’m the sardine girl and it’s my mission to convert as many of you into certified sardine girls too so we can feel our best, take over the world, and eat canned fish together.

There are so many benefits to eating sardines regularly (check out my most recent post about that here) and the most common barrier I hear when I suggest them is that sardines seem weird! Or fishy! Or gross! Which I totally understand, because I too was once a sardine hater and used to scream at my dad and run away when he would crack a can of sardines for lunch.

And yet, here I am now, encouraging you on the daily to eat these incredible little nutrition powerhouses.

Nice Cans makes it easy to love sardines though. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran sardine girl, or a newbie like I was 5 years ago, these cans will blow your mind. I suggest having them mashed on a piece of crispy sourdough toast with some greens on the side to use up all the leftover olive oil in the can.

These cans have been sold out in so many local grocery stores lately (no surprise, they’re delicious), but you can buy them online too. This link, along with the code “sardine girl” will support me and get you a nice discount on the individual cans.

code: sardine girl

⭐️ Vyvanse, Omega 3s, Creatine, L-Theanine, L-Tyrosine, and a high-protein breakfast: my tried and true ADHD nutrition combo

I got diagnosed with ADHD in January and started a low dose (10mg) of Vyvanse soon after. I didn’t stay on it for long though. I was having a really hard time with the adjustment period of this medication. I was experiencing some pretty significant crash symptoms. These symptoms tend to pop up as the medication wears off at the end of the day and your system is adjusting, and for me, they included migraines, emotional flatness, insomnia, and increased cystic acne breakouts. Stimulants like Vyvanse can be pretty intense, especially for a highly sensitive person (HSP) like myself, and these side effects were taking away more than the medication was giving to me. So I stopped taking it (temporarily).

In an already overstimulated or burnt out body, stimulants can add fuel to the fire. I had an intuitive feeling that I needed to spend a little more time laying some solid groundwork for my health before the stimulant could really work its wonders for me, so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last few months since my diagnosis: eating well, focusing on my sleep, taking time to slow down my nervous system, and working on my gut health. And it worked — I’ve been able to start taking my Vyvanse again.

With time, I worked my way back up to a daily 10mg dose and am now 3 weeks straight with no more of these horrible side effects (🥳). My brain is absolutely thrivingggg right now, it’s actually pretty wild that I used to live without this. But it wasn’t only the medication that got me here. I have medication to thank (of course), but I have found that the days I feel my best are the days when I take my meds AND I dial in on the following steps*:

• Medication: Take my 10mg vyvanse as soon as I wake up. The earlier the better.

• Eat a high-protein, high-fiber breakfast within an hour of waking. Stimulant medications increase catecholamine activity in the nervous system, which can affect appetite, energy demands and your stress response. That makes it especially important to start the day well-fueled rather than relying on caffeine and medication alone. A balanced breakfast provides protein, carbohydrates, fiber and healthy fats to support steady energy, blood-sugar regulation and neurotransmitter production throughout the day. It can also help prevent the “I forgot to eat all day and now I’m starving and cranky” effect that can happen when stimulants suppress appetite. Aim for ~25–35 g of protein. For example: 2–3 eggs + a slice of whole-grain or sourdough toast + ½ avocado + arugula, with ~½ cup of ground turkey or beef on the side. If your appetite can’t handle a big breakfast like this first thing, go with a protein smoothie like this Vanilla Berry Protein Smoothie or Chocolate Protein Shake. And remember that your gut is a muscle, and like any muscle, it can be trained. To eat more food in the morning, you just need to work your way up to it, slowly but surely.

• Morning supplements: Omega 3s (for brain health), 5g creatine (for brain energy), 2.5g L-tyrosine (the building block for dopamine, very important for ADHDers), and a scoop of Relax Matrix by Cytomatrix (a mix designed to calm your system and support efficient use of energy). This is the stack that’s been working for me and helping me feel my best on my medication. These supplements don’t replace the meds — they support them :)

• Scheduling lunch like a non-negotiable meeting: Losing your appetite is a really common side effect of any ADHD medication. As I’ve increased my dose, I’ve experienced this in the form of strong nausea to a general apathy about food — it either sounds absolutely impossible to stomach a meal or I just don’t even think about it. This is where I had to take my own nutrition advice: you still have to eat, even if you don’t feel hungry. Every 3-5 hours your body needs a full meal, especially with ADHD when your brain is operating a million miles a minute. Where do you think that brain energy is coming from? Food, babe. Food. So even when I don’t feel particularly hungry, I keep a reminder in my phone to step away from whatever I’m doing and eat a solid lunch. Sometimes this means eating past nausea and just doing my best. And my brain has been loving it.

• Evening supplements: I’ve found my brain takes a long time to calm down from the stimulant. The main symptom that still pops up for me occasionally is insomnia. Bedtime rolls around and I honestly feel like I could just stay up for hours. My body is tired but my mind is still sharp. I haven’t confirmed with genetic testing yet, but I highly suspect that I’m one of those people who clears catecholamines more slowly than others, which could explain why I tend to take a long time to recover from stressful events and why my Vyvanse seemingly lasts longer in my system than others. 100-200g of L-theanine right before bed has helped calm my brain to help me sleep better without the hangover effect that melatonin often has.

You find this full supplement stack* on my Professional Supplement Dispensary here.

*None of this is personal medical or health advice — I am simply sharing my own experience. Everyone’s experience with medication and supplements is individualized, which is why I encourage you to find someone you trust to talk through your health history and sift through these different options with you. I recommend starting with your doctor to talk about meds, and then come to see me about the nutrition strategies you can use to make your meds even more effective ⚡️

⭐️ My WONDERFUL nutrition clients

I have been working with the most incredible women this year on their nutrition. Mind if I gush about some of my favourite clients really quick?

• Kendra

  • Why she started working with me: Preparing to come off hormonal birth control and feeling uncertain about what to expect (she was scared of those dreaded post-pill symptoms), and had low energy and motivation to make changes to her eating habits.

  • How things changed: Kendra reported more energy and “brain power,” greater confidence in making health decisions, and feeling equipped with resources to address symptoms if they arise. She also had a smooth transition off hormonal birth control with no symptoms, and described having regular cycles and feeling more in tune with her body.

    

• Domi H.

  • Why she started working with me: Domi had a new PCOS (now named PMOS) diagnosis that left her feeling overwhelmed, with low energy, low self-esteem, and little understanding of how to manage her health through nutrition. Her doctor didn’t talk her through any nutrition strategies that could help her manage her PCOS/PMOS.

  • How things changed: After working with me for a year, Domi became more informed and confident about managing her PMOS, including understanding how to build balanced meals and make supportive lifestyle changes. She described feeling more confident in her body and more equipped to navigate her diagnosis.

• Sam

  • Why she started working with me: Sam was struggling with a complicated relationship with food, alongside managing her ADHD, Crohn’s disease, low energy, and brain fog.

  • How things changed: After our time together, Sam completely transformed. She reported less fatigue, less bloating, fewer energy crashes, and feeling more present and in tune with her body. She became more patient and motivated to make herself meals and no longer felt like she needed a nap after lunch. Her relationship with food has become more positive and she’s cultivating a newfound joy for food and fuelling herself.

These clients are all vastly different in their goals, but have a common thread: they were all struggling with unexplained symptoms that were holding them back from living their lives to the fullest, and they all wanted to get to the root of them. I’m so grateful to have been able to support each of them in their health journeys.

I am taking four (yes, only 4!!) new 1:1 nutrition clients starting in September. There are a lot of really exciting things happening behind the scenes in my nutrition work right now, so I’m not sure if I’ll keep applications open beyond this fall. These fall spots usually fill up quick. All this to say is, if you’re looking for 1:1 nutrition help with healing after hormonal birth control, acne, period problems, ADHD management, endometriosis, PMOS/PCOS, supporting your sensitive body — I invite you to apply to work with me below.

become a nutrition client

And if you’re not sure yet, but just need more information on how nutrition actually helps with these things, start by booking a free call here.

things i haven’t loved so much (my thorns)

🌀 Dating & being back on Hinge

At the end of July, I decided to download Hinge for the first time in over five years. The last time I was on a dating app was for a short period of time in 2020 after just moving to Vancouver, and I think I went on like three dates before meeting my most recent ex-partner organically. Safe to say I didn’t have a lot of experience on the apps.

Dating apps feel like shopping. Curating my profile feels like a marketing campaign. It feels like adding a worm to the end of a hook in the form of 6 pictures and 3 witty prompts, and hoping for as many bites as possible. And this doesn’t feel good to me.

I have this limiting belief and possibly pretentious opinion about dating apps: that the person I’m looking for isn’t using them to meet their person. I’ve felt like I won’t meet someone interesting enough on there. That mindset has kept me from opening myself up on Hinge. But I’ve recently changed my mind about this.

I really do believe in the power of our minds. If you go into an important game thinking you’re going to lose, you probably will. If you assume that dating apps are full of sh*tty people, you’re probably going to find sh*tty people.

Since my last big breakup, I haven’t felt ready to welcome a serious relationship into my life. Dating for the past year has been pretty casual. Recently though, my organic dating life has slowed down a little. These connections have fizzled out and I’ve found myself feeling ready to welcome love back into my life, but have found fewer and fewer opportunities to do so, which is why I decided it was time to change my mind about Hinge.

With this big decision to open myself back up to dating and truly ask for something more serious, I’ve had some significant self reflections. I’ve gone through periods of feeling undesirable and hopeless — like I’m not good enough for the kind of person I’m looking for. I’ve wondered whether one of my exes was right and that my standards really are too high for a romantic partner. I’ve questioned whether I can truly find someone I’m physically attracted to, who’s also sensitive and thoughtful and outdoorsy and athletic and witty and family-oriented and curious and ambitious — all in one.

I don’t have any conclusions about this — I haven’t met the LOML yet, and I don’t know how much longer I’ll stay on the dating apps (it’s all a bit overwhelming tbh). But I will say this: there’s power in telling the universe what you want with your actions.

🌀 The constant self-doubt that comes from following your dreams

The other thing I haven’t been loving much lately is my self doubt. In my life, I’m surrounded by people taking the “conventional” path: undergrad, Master’s or med school, stable 9-5, retire by 60. I almost went down that path too. Back in 2021 when I first moved to Vancouver, I wrote my MCAT and started the med school application process. Shortly after beginning my applications, I switched gears and decided to pursue a career in functional nutrition instead. And here we are.

My path is unpredictable. Unconventional. Self-employment is not for the weak. The uncertainty, vulnerability, and exposure of growing a practice online is a lot of work. But I know it will be rewarding too — it already is.

What I’ve learned is that in any given day, you will have seeds of doubt and you will have seeds of confidence. The direction of your life is determined by which seeds you decide to water.

I’m rewatching Glee right now and there was a quote from Emma in the first season that struck me. She said something like (paraphrasing), “They say it takes more confidence than talent to become a star.”

Stardom is not my goal, but the takeaway remains the same. I know I have the talent and knowledge to continue my work down this path. So now I’m doing my best to keep watering my seeds of confidence to make it happen.

things i’m excited about (my buds)

⚡️ The main thing I’m most excited about is The Sardine Girl Dinner Party 🐟 on August 22nd.

This Saturday, I’m gathering 16 wonderful women under my favourite willow tree in Vancouver to eat sardines in the most delicious way possible. My love language is quality time and food. This event, sponsored by Nice Cans, is going to make everyone love sardines. I’ll keep the rest a surprise, but I’m so looking forward to sharing this with you after this weekend! ❤️

until next time…

Whew, that was a lot of updates. You made it this far, so thank you for reading.

If you skimmed to the end, this is what you missed:

• choosing the best sardines, and an exclusive discount on my favourite cans

• my ADHD medication journey and the nutrition strategies that have helped me along the way

• some incredible nutrition client wins and how to work with me this fall

• my dating life and the self-reflections that come with these changes

• introducing the Sardine Girl Dinner Party!!!

Overall I’m feeling net-positive in my life right now. There are more things flowing in the direction I want to go rather than pushing against me.

I hope you’re feeling the same. And if you’re not, I bet I can help you with that.

work with me

With love,

Naomi

P.S. This post is free and available to all subscribers. If you found it valuable though, you can show support of my work by buying me a coffee.

like a food pairing, this post is best enjoyed alongside:

I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps you change your life by changing what you eat. You can learn more about me here.

It’s 8:43am and my alarm is going off. I roll over to turn it off, and my screen flashes, already saturated with notifications for the day: calendar reminder for this, emails for that, missed texts from so-and-so. I check all my apps, even the ones without a little red notification number in the top right corner, just in case there’s a message somewhere I missed. And in doing so, I fall into the mindless habit of scrolling. I only opened instagram to see if that friend messaged me back, but my brain took me another way, and suddenly it’s 9:07am and the only thing I’ve done so far today is compare myself to others and feel anxious about my day. And this is not how I want to live my life.

I’ve been doing my best to spend less time on my phone lately. But I’ve noticed that the abstract goal of “doing something less” is a recipe for failure, because there’s no tangible measurement or accountability or system to achieve it. I know I need to set better goals — more intentional ones.

the psychology of goal-setting

We’ve likely all heard of SMART goals: a system to setting goals that you’ll actually follow through on. Make them S.M.A.R.T: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This was a core idea in my university sports psychology classes and I carry these systems with me as I guide nutrition clients to achieve their health goals, and when setting my own as well.

There’s also an idea pulled from James Clear’s Atomic Habits, called the “when [cue] happens, I will [behaviour].” The idea here is that instead of setting an abstract goal of “running more” or “scrolling less”, you get extremely specific about exactly how and when you will actually execute said goal.

For example, instead of setting the goal to “run more,” using this method you might say “every Tuesday and Thursday after finishing my last email of the day, I will go for a 20 minute jog around the neighbourhood.” That way, you’re held accountable to your behaviour: when Tuesday comes around and you finish your last email of the day, you know that it’s time to execute and there are no excuses about “doing it later.”

So what does this have to do with what I’m writing about today?

Instead of setting myself the goal of scrolling less, I’ve set a different goal — a S.M.A.R.T. goal: every single morning, after rolling over in bed and turning my alarm off, I will either:

a) read my current book club book for 15 minutes, or

b) open Substack and read at least one piece of writing that I’ve saved throughout the week.

I will do this for at least 60 days straight.

This goal is Specific: it’s clear how and when it needs to be executed.

It is Measurable: notice how I didn’t just say that I’ll read — I set a measurement of at least one piece of writing or for 10 minutes.

It’s Achievable. I have the time and capacity to complete it. I didn’t set the bar overwhelmingly high for myself.

It’s Relevant to my life, and other overarching goals I have for myself: I want to spend less time on my phone, more time learning, and less time comparing myself on social media.

And it’s Time-bound. I specifically stated that I would hold myself to this goal for 60 days.

This one goal has helped me achieve a few other abstract goals of mine:

• I’m reading more.

• I’m writing more, because the more I read, the more inspired I am to write.

• I’m scrolling less. I find that the later I can delay checking social media in the day, the less overall time I’ll spend on it throughout the day.

• I’m less anxious and my ADHD is more controlled. I’m more focused on what I need to do.

Whenever I come across a piece of writing I find interesting, I save it here on Substack to read later. Each morning, instead of checking notifications, I now open my saved folder here, and I read.

Here are a few essays I’ve read recently that have changed the way I think, and have inspired me change the way I live.

3 essays to read instead of scrolling

1. The year is 2063 and you were never interesting.

This essay by reminded me that a beautifully full life is not built by curating an Instagram feed or a Pinterest board. We spend a lot of time keeping up the appearance of a happy life, and not enough time actually living one. This piece put screen-time into a stark perspective. The following quote hit me:

2. the neuroscience behind women’s intuition.

If you’re a huge nerd for science (welcome to the club), love learning about what makes humans tick, and are fascinated by the female experience, you’ll enjoy this essay.

This piece by is a digestible synthesis of research on the female brain, and the hormonal and structural differences that make women more intuitive than men. She puts words to things I’ve only been able to feel, and helps me picture what’s going on in our female brains. I especially love the following quote from her piece:

3. i have time and so do you

A beautifully reflective piece that you should read if you’re feeling behind in your life and caught up in the wheel of comparison that social media spins so cruelly.

I love this writing by . She has a unique ability to shed a comforting light on our shadow selves that we try to keep hidden, making us all feel seen in the process. Her oddly specific story-telling transports me to the beach with her looking at shells. This piece reminded me to slow down.

Cry Baby Club

i have time and so do you

i have woken up to 10,585 suns so far, and plan on waking up to about 18,500 more if i’m lucky (i just turned 29 if you don’t feel like doing the math). i love all of my suns. i think i have spent most of them wisely, not counting the months where i dated a sociopath from brooklyn, or my last year in college when i was scared of peanut butter, or the co…

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3 months ago · 346 likes · 27 comments · isabella 🌀

I hope these essays change the way you think, the way they did for me.

And I hope that, instead of rolling over and starting your day with mindless consumption and comparison, you’ll join me in my daily habit of turning off our alarms and immediately opening this app instead — to read, learn, reflect, and start our days with a little more intention, a little less comparison, and a lot more softness.

With love,

— Naomi

P.S. This post is free and available to all subscribers. If you found it valuable though, you can show support of my work by buying me a coffee.

like a food pairing, this post is best enjoyed alongside:

I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps you change your life by changing what you eat. You can learn more about me here.

There are a handful of recipes that I come back to every summer, and this one sits firmly at the top of the list.

It’s bright, herby, garlicky, and packed with antioxidants, bitter greens, and healthy fats. It elevates any dish it’s poured over — especially grilled fish (I love it on salmon, as you can see above), steak, chicken, veggies, and roasted potatoes. Sometimes I even throw it on my eggs in the morning at breakfast.

But of course its deliciousness is only one of its many benefits. Every single ingredient has been carefully selected because it supports one of your body’s hardest-working organs: the liver.

Liver health is a highly overlooked piece of the puzzle that makes up hormonal health. And before we get into it, no, I’m not about to recommend a 14-day juice cleanse and tell you to go vegan.

Liver support is less about forcing a detox, and more about simply giving your liver the raw materials it needs to do its many jobs. Your liver is responsible for processing everything from hormones and medications to alcohol, environmental chemicals (like the stuff in your makeup and cleaning products), and the natural waste products your body makes every day.

why liver support matters for hormones

Like I mentioned, your liver has hundreds of jobs, but one of its biggest roles is helping your body process and eliminate hormones (particularly estrogen).

After estrogen has circulated through your body and done its job, it finds its way to your liver to be chemically transformed into forms that can be safely eliminated through your bile and stool.

Hormonal balance is a lot bigger than just making the right amount of hormones. If your liver is not helping eliminate them efficiently, they can recirculate in your bloodstream, leading to hormonal problems like estrogen dominance.

Some of the building blocks your liver requires are:

• protein to provide the amino acids needed for detoxification (one of many reasons why I preach a protein-forward diet — it’s not just about muscle health!!)

• micronutrients like B vitamins, magnesium, zinc, selenium, and antioxidants that act as cofactors (aka little helpers) for detoxification enzymes

• bitter foods and healthy fats to encourage bile production (by the liver) and flow (from the gallbladder)

• plenty of fibre to bind toxins and hormones so they actually leave the body via bile and stool instead of being reabsorbed

• good digestion and regular bowel movements (for the same reasons as above)

signs you need some extra liver support

It’s important to note that no single symptom in isolation can tell you how well your liver is functioning, and these symptoms can have many possible root causes. This is why it’s important to pay attention to symptoms, track them overtime, get bloodwork done with your doctor, and work with a trusted functional practitioner who can help make these connections for you.

Here are some clues you can pay attention that point towards your liver needing some help. The more of these that ring true for you, the more likely you may need some liver TLC:

• PMS or painful periods

• sore breasts, especially in your luteal phase

• weepiness and unexplained crying

• hormonal acne, cystic acne

• large blood clots on your period

• changes in flow colour (deep red or even purple blood is common with estrogen dominance)

• feeling significantly worse before and during your period (not just small changes in energy and mood, but noticeable and even debilitating symptoms that significantly change how you live your life)

• constipation or infrequent bowel movements

• bloating or indigestion after fatty meals

• feeling sluggish after eating

• a history of hormonal birth control (HBC) use

• histamine intolerance, and flu-like symptoms around your period

• regular alcohol intake (at least once a week)

• a diet low in protein (less than 100g per day) or fibre (less than 30g per day)

• high exposure to environmental chemicals (nail techs, cleaners, hairdressers, construction workers, painters, and farmers are particularly exposed)

how this recipe helps your liver

Like many things I do, I selected each ingredient with intention. I’ve outlined the benefits of a few of them below:

• parsley and cilantro provide antioxidants, vitamin C, vitamin K, and plant compounds that support liver health — they’re also bitter greens that stimulate bile flow

• garlic contains sulphur compounds that help detoxify excess estrogen

• extra virgin olive oil supplies healthy fats to stimulate bile release, and delivers powerful anti-inflammatory polyphenols

• red wine vinegar help your cells become more sensitive to insulin to control blood sugar (a process closely supported by your liver)

And most importantly, this chimichurri is incredibly versatile and elevates any dish it’s served alongside. It’s something healthy, nourishing, and supportive that you’ll want to eat with everything.

Enjoy the recipe below :)

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in no particular order:

1. I used to think all my different health issues over the years were separate. Now I know they share a common thread: being highly sensitive.

2. I know there’s a connection between HSPs, people pleasing, and chronic illness. A sensitive body stuck worrying about everyone else and not stopping to take proper care of themselves is bound to get sick.

3. I worry I won’t ever have romantic love again, because who would want to be the life partner of someone who needs so much attention, care, and tending to? Maybe that’s a silly thought.

4. Is this my sensitivity acting up or am I just being dramatic?

5. What does “too sensitive” or “too much” even mean?

6. People relate to others in the same way they relate to themselves. If someone labels you as too much, it’s only because they do not have the capacity to hold what you bring to the table. And that is neither person’s fault.

7. Do other people look for meaning in everything they do?

8. I wish I didn’t have to look for meaning in everything I do. Sometimes it keeps me from truly enjoying the moment.

9. What would happen if I just pretended I wasn’t sensitive and put on a brave face more often?

10. Maybe ignoring my sensitivity is why all these health issues pop up for me so often. Maybe I don’t need to be stronger; I need to be softer.

11. Sometimes I come across as cold because I just don’t have the energy anymore. I know when it’s happening, but I just can’t stop it.

12. I am so grateful I found nutrition. I think eating well and intentionally is the reason for my success so far. I think it’s the reason I’ve been able to thrive as an HSP. And I think it’s why I’m so happy all the time.

13. I toe the line between wanting to acknowledge and support my sensitivity in all aspects of my life, and knowing that the more I pay attention to my sensitivity then the more I’ll notice it.

14. I want people to understand my sensitive heart, but I don’t want them to think I’m fragile because of it. And I don’t want them to treat me as something that needs to be fixed.

15. Am I crying because it matters or am I crying because I’m sensitive? Is there a difference?

16. I love how deeply and carefully I consider everything, but dang, it sure is exhausting to be inside my brain sometimes.

17. I think I need more sensitive people in my life who get it without me having to explain.

18. I think I need more non-sensitive people in my life to remind me not to take life too seriously.

19. I wonder what those strangers in the grocery store are shopping for right now. I wonder what they’re thinking about.

20. How do I balance being both highly ambitious and highly sensitive? How do I make sure I don’t burn out trying to achieve all my big goals?

21. Are the other HSPs of the world craving connection like I am?

22. Sometimes it’s hard to believe 30% of the population is highly sensitive. The world makes us feel like we’re so abnormal.

23. I need to spend more time in nature. I always feel better by a body of water, at the top of a mountain, or with my arms around a moss-covered tree.

24. I love the gifts my sensitivity brings me: my empathy, my attention to detail, my big heart, my care for others, and my ability to make connections between things that others aren’t able to see.

25. I think my sensitivity is the reason I enjoy my own company so much. It’s never a dull moment inside my own brain.

26. It annoys me that everyone assumes that sensitive = sad. I wish people understood that many HSPs are extremely happy and grateful most of the time. Thanks to our sensitivity, we appreciate even the smallest, most mundane of moments.

27. I wish I could watch horror movies.

28. People have always said they feel safe opening up to me, but they can’t explain why. I think my sensitivity is the reason for that.

29. I feel bad for people who will never experience the world in this way.

With love,

— Naomi

P.S. This post is free and available to all subscribers. If you found it valuable though, you can show support of my work by buying me a coffee.

P.P.S. You have been enjoying my writing for free for quite some time now. Starting August 1st 2026, you’ll be hit with an occasional paywall, which you can avoid by subscribing to my writing for only $5/month (less than a coffee). Before that happens though, you have the chance to secure a 44% discount. You probably won’t notice that small amount of $ leaving your account every month and you’ll gain access to more newsletters, more recipes, more deep dives, and more cozy content for sensitive souls like you.

get 44% off, forever

like a food pairing, this post is best enjoyed alongside:

I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps you change your life by changing what you eat. You can learn more about me here.

The other night, I found myself feeling lonely after a day of working from home. The thing about living alone and working from home is that sometimes you catch yourself going days without actually speaking to another human. This was one of those days, and I was feeling the emptiness of it.

And, in the midst of that loneliness, as an attempted escape from my own discomfort, I found myself pondering a return to the dating apps.

I haven’t been on a dating app in over five years, a very intentional choice that I can share more about another time. But that night, I started brainstorming answers to Hinge prompts and going through my photos to find a few favourites that represented me well.

And thus began my inevitable tumble down the rabbit hole.

On the hunt for the perfect “and one photo with friends so guys don’t think you’re a loner” to add to my profile, I scrolled my way through the archives of the worst couple months of my life. This was a very veryyyy difficult time in my life, and yet I found myself thinking “wow, I looked so good back then” and “I wish I still looked like that.”

I was looking at photos from last spring, between May and July-ish of 2025, while I was in the depths of recovering from a big breakup and dealing with the most stressful roommate of all time.

As a result, I was not eating. Straight up. I was too anxious to stomach a real meal, and too frozen in my nervous system to make it to the grocery store.

I survived for months off protein powder mixed in water, canned soup, bread, and the occasional Uber Eats that my friends from across the country would send me because they had heard I was struggling.

And as a result, I withered away.

Previously a very strong, very capable athlete, suddenly I couldn’t hit two flights of stairs without feeling my muscles burn.

Previously very comfortable in my clothing and happy with my body composition, suddenly I was swimming in my jeans, punching new holes in my belt, taking genuine “hot dogs or legs” photos, and had a thigh gap.

I was unwell last year. Breakup grief is hard, especially for a highly sensitive person. It takes a lot of processing. And eventually, that “unwellness” caught up to my physical body (as it always does), which manifested as a severe kidney infection turned histamine intolerance turned chronic insomnia turned gut issues turned return of cystic acne.

But my body still looked great. And it was funny, because the most compliments and attention I’ve ever received on my physical body came last year when I was going through the hardest time in my life.

People would ask me what I did to get so skinny, to which I answered honestly that it wasn’t my intention to “get skinny”, and that I was actually happier with my body before because it was the body I had before my life changed so drastically.

“Heartbreak. I haven’t been able to eat properly in weeks,” to which my coworker responded, “You’re so lucky. I wish I could get my heart broken and lose a bunch of weight without trying.”

Oof. The hardest season of my life didn’t feel like luck.

But comments like that had me questioning whether I should be happy with the result. And then had me yearning for that body back. Here I was now, a year later, actually wishing I could go back to the worst time of my life, because at least I looked good. Because I got more compliments on my figure back then than I do now. Because people said I had their “dream body.”

i got tricked by my own highlight reel

For a few minutes, while looking through those photos, I completely forgot what that season actually felt like. I completely forgot that I woke up anxious every single day. I completely forgot that I would cry in the car on the way to soccer and that I skipped the gym for months for fear of running into my ex there.

I forgot about the boxes that scattered the floor of my bedroom and crowded the hallway to the bathroom because I could not bring myself to unpack them for weeks. I forgot how many times I would cancel plans with friends so I could nap instead, because being asleep was the only relief I got from the pain I was feeling.

I completely forgot that the body that came out the other side of that season was a product of survival, not of thriving.

But the photos didn’t show that part. All I could see in those photos was how good I looked.

why do we assume that skinny = healthy?

I’m tired of weight and health being interwoven into the same conversation by default. I’m tired of people assuming that because I had gotten skinnier, that I had achieved something.

I’m not saying it’s bad to want to lose weight, but remember here that I absolutely did not need to lose weight and had never shared with anyone that that was my goal (because it wasn’t). People just assumed it was, and congratulated me on it, unknowing of the real reason for it. And that can make it feel really confusing.

I see this in the women I work with. They come to me physically struggling. Women who haven’t pooped properly without a laxative in months. Women who have been on a 1600 calorie diet for years. Women who can’t get through their days without caffeine. They’ve lost their cycles, their zest for life, and can’t remember a time when they weren’t fixated on what they looked like and how much (or rather, how little) they’re eating.

I see it in my clients who are reluctant to eat the necessary calories to get their period back because they’d rather be skinny and infertile than go up a size in their jeans — even if it means being healthier on the inside.

I’m tired of the recent resurgence of ultra-thin beauty ideals (skinnytok, i’m lookin at you) and of women thinking it’s better to be skinny and tired without a period than it is to have visible body fat with a clear mind and lots of energy.

And I can’t help but wonder how much of our lives as women is stolen by this fixation on our bodies.

How many minutes, hours, and days do we lose over our lifetime to this striving for a body we were never meant to have?

i don’t want my dream body back

I don’t have the “dream body” that I had last year. I no longer have a thigh gap. I have fat on my stomach. I have cellulite on my legs. My thighs touch each other again.

And my life is more full now than it has ever been. I’m happy. And I’m happy with how I look, too.

I wish I could write little notes on those photos to remind myself of what it actually felt like to be in that body — to be the girl in those photos that got all those compliments. I think it would serve as an important reminder to myself that looking cute in a picture does not equate to actually feeling good.

I was not happier when I was thinner — in fact, I was the saddest I’ve ever been in my life.

I was not more creative — in fact, I was the most blocked I’d ever felt.

I was not more confident — in fact, my self esteem was pretty freaking low.

I laugh more now. I feel more at ease. My business is thriving.

I’m a better nutritionist. I’m a better friend. I’m a better sister.

And it’s because I’m actually eating enough to fuel my personality — to fuel actually living my life.

My life is more expansive now than ever, and it has absolutely nothing to do with how my body looks, and everything to do with how I nourish myself.

I think it’s great to want to feel good in your body, and maybe weight loss or gain is a part of that. But the line is drawn when you are so fixated on maintaining those things that it actually starts to take away more than it’s giving back to your life.

If another heartbreak, horrible summer of barely eating and sleeping is what I need to do to get that body back, then I don’t want it.

I’m tired of thinking about my body and that taking away from more important things in my life that deserve my attention: like my work in women’s healthcare, my relationship with my family and friends, my relationship with myself, my health, my creativity, my time outside, my writing, my reading.

If sacrificing any of that is what it takes to get those compliments back, then I don’t want them.

With so much love,

— Naomi

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P.S. This post is free and available to all subscribers. If you found it valuable though, you can show support of my work by buying me a coffee.

P.P.S. You have been enjoying my writing for free for quite some time now. Starting August 1st 2026, you’ll be hit with an occasional paywall, which you can avoid by subscribing to my writing for only $5/month (less than a coffee). Before that happens though, you have the chance to secure a 44% discount — a discount that never expires (but you can unsubscribe anytime, obv). You probably won’t notice that small amount of $ leaving your account every month, but I’ll sure notice that you supported me and that’s good karmic energy imo.

get 44% off, forever

like a food pairing, this post is best enjoyed alongside:

I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps you change your life by changing what you eat. You can learn more about me here.

I love sardines. I love them so much that my clients and followers have started calling me “sardine girl”. But I didn’t always love them.

I used to think sardines were gross. As a teen, I remember making fun of my dad relentlessly for not only eating sardines, but having them plain, straight out of the can.

And here I am, not 10 years later, eating them straight outta the can every single day. Sorry dad <3

That change didn’t happen overnight, though. I didn’t go from being a sardine hater to sardine girl in one fell swoop.

It happened gradually, over many years and many cans of tinned fish.

This recipe is one of the first ways I ever tried sardines. If you’re feeling unsure about them, this is a great beginner recipe because it pairs them with something you’re likely familiar with: tuna.

Your brain thinks sardines are weird because they’re unfamiliar — not because they’re actually weird.

So to make them feel not weird, we need to familiarize your taste buds with them. And that only happens when you try them, repeatedly. Sometimes it can take up to 17 tries for our taste buds to accept a new food into our palate. So if you’ve tried sardines once, twice, even sixteen times with no luck, I encourage you to keep trying.

It can be hard though, to keep eating a food you don’t really like. So to ease the transition from sardine hater to future sardine girl, pair them with tuna. It masks the taste, has a very similar texture, and I promise, you won’t even notice the difference.

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recipe nutrition benefits:

• Tuna and sardines are both extremely high in lean protein, making this a great lunch to keep you full for longer, and to support hormonal and mental processes.

• Sardines are high in omega-3s to support cellular health and combat inflammation. If you choose sardines with bones, they are also rich in calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, and other minerals important for healthy hormones, immunity, and brain function.

• Red onion is rich in quercetin, a powerful antioxidant that supports liver detox and the immune system.

• Nutritional yeast is high in b vitamins, which are needed to support cellular health, nervous system firing, and a strong metabolism.

I hope you love this recipe. Remember, it takes 17 tries to get used to a new food. So don’t give up!

And make sure you’re subscribed to get a new recipe in your inbox every single month.

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With love,

Naomi (the sardine girl 🐟)

P.S. This post is free and available to all subscribers. If you found it valuable though, you can show support of my work by buying me a coffee.

P.P.S. You have been enjoying my writing for free for quite some time now. Soon, you’ll be hit with an occasional paywall, which you can avoid by subscribing to my writing for only $5/month (less than a coffee). Before that happens though, you have the chance to secure a 44% discount — a discount that never expires (but you can unsubscribe anytime, obv). You probably won’t notice that small amount of $ leaving your account every month, but I’ll sure notice that you supported me and that’s good karmic energy imo.

get 44% off, forever

I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps you change your life by changing what you eat. You can learn more about me here.

This is my first summer in Vancouver.

Now before you start commenting on this and asking me “what the flying f are you talking about Naomi,” given that I’ve indeed lived in Vancouver for almost six years, please give me the chance to elaborate.

This is my first summer in Vancouver that is truly my own.

story time…

Let me take you back almost six years ago…

I moved here in the fall of 2020. Yep. Absolutely smack dab in the middle of the worst part of the pandemic.

Looking back now, I’m not sure what the hell I was thinking.

Well that’s not true. I knew what I was thinking: BC was more open than Ontario, I had a few close friends out here, I was struggling to assimilate back into living with my family after four years at university in Halifax, I needed independence again, and I had always alwayssss wanted to live out west.

But I mean, given the same circumstances now, I’m not sure I would have made that same decision to move. Call it frontal lobe development I guess.

I started working in the film industry almost immediately upon arriving in Vancouver, thanks to a mutual friend who got me a job as a COVID PA. Basically I was a glorified hall monitor. I got paid $350 a day to walk 20K steps and occasionally tell someone to pull their mask up over their nose.

I also delivered mouthwash to Ryan Reynolds and helped Mark Ruffalo sanitize his hands, but I digress. Crazy times.

That job kept me busy and carried me through my first winter in Vancouver. Then spring.

Then summer came, and I quit film to study for my MCAT. Shortly after that, I met the person who would become my partner for the next four years, until our split in the winter of 2025.

That summer, the one when I was studying for MCAT, was my first BC summer. My first summer in Vancouver.

I spent it falling in love. I spent it being shown around by someone who had already lived here for seven, maybe eight years at the time. I spent it melding myself into his life and his friendships and his lifestyle.

His spots became our spots.

His hikes became our hikes.

His favourite restaurants became our favourite restaurants.

His evening routines became ours.

And because I didn’t really have anything of my own here yet, it was a lot easier to just let those shared things become my things too. I didn’t spend a lot of time finding things that were just for me.

Now we all know how famous Vancouver is for offering you the summer of your life. A BC summer is like no other. And I can’t really explain it, either. You just have to come out here and experience it for yourself.

But I’ve never really known what it’s like to have my own summer here in Vancouver, one without the influence of the way someone else sees this city. Until now.

Now, if you’ve been following along closely enough, I bet you’re starting to connect the dots and thinking, “waiiiiit a sec, if you broke up in winter 2025, wouldn’t that make last summer your first summer alone in Vancouver?”

And you would be completely right.

Except that last summer, still reeling from my breakup and attempting escape from the most toxic roommate situation of humanity (by the end, she had stolen the batteries out of my appliances and I was sleeping with my desk in front of my door for fear of being attacked), was probably the most stressful summer of my entire life. And I honestly don’t remember most of it because of that fact. Thank you to trauma brain for protecting me with your forgetfulness <3

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Last summer was a rebuild season. I was just trying to stay afloat. I became a shell of myself, both physically and mentally. All you have to do is look through my old fit pics from last year (collected in a highlight on my personal IG) to see how hard it was — I was tiny, swimming in my clothes, and withering away.

This summer, on the other hand, I’m entering the longer days with a clear mind. A stronger body. A healed heart. More clarity in my future. More free time in my day, thank you to immense growth in my work. More confidence in myself, thank you to supremely painful (and rewarding) personal work.

More bbqs. More dinner parties. More friends that are completely my own, because I’m finally reaping the benefits of the village I’ve worked so hard to cultivate in this city.

More solo camping trips, because I finally feel comfortable being in the woods by myself. More plans just for me.

I remember how I felt that summer five years ago. I remember entering the relationship somewhat reluctantly, at least at first.

I remember thinking that I didn’t really want a boyfriend at the time. I wanted a hot girl summer (yeah, we were saying that unironically back then). I wanted to spend more time building my own life, without the influence of a relationship.

But falling in love doesn’t wait for you to be ready for it. It just happens. And I surrendered, and thus found myself in a long-term partnership.

I have no regrets by the way, and as much as I shit talk that relationship, I do not regret entering it by any means. If I hadn’t, I would not be the person I am today. I wouldn’t feel as happy as I do right now, in this very moment, at 10:46pm on a Tuesday, writing this alone on the seawall after my post-bike ride ice cream cone.

As cheesy and probably annoying and insufferable as it sounds, I am the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.

Being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) means that I feel things very deeply. The stereotype is that HSPs are sad and emo and crying all the time. But that’s not true. Feeling deeply includes the good things too, and it’s one of my favourite things about being sensitive.

I truly feel like my joy is spilling over and gushing onto these pages. Every day feels colourful and vibrant and warm. And yes, I do realize how manic that sounds.

Each month, for the last eight or so months, I’ve reflected back on the previous one and declared it my happiest month to date. And it just keeps happening. Again and again and again, I keep having the best months of my life.

And I feel very strongly that I’m about to have the best summer of my life, knowing that I am experiencing it completely alone. Completely myself.

In many ways, I feel like this is the summer I was supposed to have five years ago. The one without any pandemic closures or nerves of a new relationship. Nobody else’s personality bleeding into my own. Nobody else’s decisions or plans influencing or overshadowing mine. Nobody to use as a crutch to keep from experiencing the inevitable discomfort of putting down roots in a new place.

Literally nothing except me.

why is everything always about my breakup?

Gosh, I know right? When will this b**** shut up about her freaking breakup already!!! Move on!!!

Yeah, I feel like I’ve been talking about last year’s breakup on here for way too long. It feels like eons.

I’m sure, to the judging eye, I appear to be stuck on it. Still at the restaurant (my fellow Swifties know what I mean by that).

I guess in some ways I am, in the sense that I do think about it from time to time. I reflect back on what I was doing two years ago, or three, or four, or five, when I was with that person. I still remember what it was like to be with them, to be in love, and to then fall out of it. These days, I sometimes find myself thinking about my happiness then and comparing it to my happiness now. Or occasionally letting my mind wander and wonder what I’d be doing differently now if things had gone in a different direction. So I guess I am stuck on it. But, to contradict myself in the same paragraph, does moving on from something mean that it never crosses your mind again?

As big moments and milestones continue to happen in my life, I spend them reflecting on what I was doing the year prior. I’ve always done that.

Every Christmas, I think about what I was doing during the previous one. Every November, I think about who attended my birthday party the previous year. Every September, I think about my university and high school days, and remember what it felt like to go back to school.

I guess I still think about my breakup sometimes because a year ago, I was thinking about my breakup.

I’ve never really known what it’s like to just be happy in Vancouver, as myself. This is the first summer I’m getting to do that.

And I’m hoping, with the passing of this summer, with the experience of it completely by myself, that I’ll be able to stop relating so many things in my life to that relationship, because my life will become much bigger than it ever was.

Looking back on my writing from even just a year ago (check that out below), I know that it already is. This time next year, I’ll be thinking about my insufferably happy summer of 2026. And you’ll all be like, “holy shit can this girl ever stfu about summer 2026???”

This is my first summer in Vancouver, because it’s the first summer here that I feel proud of my work. The first summer here that I feel grounded in my hobbies and confident hiking alone and taking my own little camping trips around the province. The first summer here that I feel unconditionally loved by the people around me. The first summer that I’m not riddled with anxiety or uncertainty in the quiet*, in-between moments of my schedule. The first summer that I’m not waiting for someone to come save me or take charge of my day for me. The first summer that I’m not questioning my worth. The first summer that I feel unapologetically, authentically, and wholly myself.

*not written by chat gpt, despite the use of the word “quiet” that AI writing seems to be obsessed with. promise!!!

I hope you feel that way about yourself, too. And if you don’t, I wonder what you can do to make this summer (and this life) a little more your own.

I love you guys. Thank you for reading my writing, which is basically like reading my heart bleeding out on the pages.

With love,

Naomi

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P.P.S. You have been enjoying my writing for free for quite some time now. That’s because I had low self esteem and thought my writing wasn’t cool enough to charge. That has now changed. Soon, you’ll be hit with an occasional paywall, which you can avoid by subscribing to my writing for only $5/month (less than a coffee). Before that happens though, you have the chance to secure a 44% discount — a discount that never expires (but you can unsubscribe anytime, obv). You probably won’t notice that small amount of $ leaving your account every month, but I’ll sure notice that you supported me and that’s good karmic energy imo.

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I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps you change your life by changing what you eat. You can learn more about me here.

I’m going to call them Naomi’s Notes and my goal is to share this type of piece once a month. Eventually, these may be reserved for paid subscribers (because it costs to be nosey af!!!), but for now, please enjoy a peek into my brain for free.

what i’ve been doing: travel reflections from LA

As I’m writing this, I’m sitting in Terminal 7 of LAX waiting for my 7:26pm flight back to Vancouver, BC. This concludes a supremely lovely four days visiting California for the first time in my life.

This trip was short but still impactful. I love travel, but I don’t subscribe to the idea that it needs to look a certain way or last a certain amount of time to be meaningful. Upon sharing that I was visiting LA for just four days, I had many surprised reactions (“that’s so short, is it even worth it???”), to which I always reply: yes. Any sort of travel is always worth it in my eyes.

→ I don’t really like LA

I have to be honest though, I don’t really like LA that much. It doesn’t live up to the incessant hype online. It’s dry, wildly busy, traffic is always horrible (I’m talking 40-minute delays on a 5-lane highway at 1pm on a Tuesday), and it just misses that social warmth that any city in Canada provides (yes, even Vancouver).

I’m grateful to visit, and of course I love the Cali sun and ocean, and the health scene is definitely great (had my first Erewhon haul and it changed me forever).

AND I’m also glad to know that I don’t feel like I’m missing out on much by not living here. I’ve always wondered about LA, given the health influencer scene. I’ve questioned whether I made the right decision to be in Vancouver and not somewhere else. Now I can return peacefully to BC knowing it’s the spot for me.

→ I love the PNW

On that note, one of the benefits of travel is that it reminds us how much we love home. At least, it does for me.

Again, I had an amazing time down in LA — this doesn’t negate that. But being away reminded me how much I just love Vancouver. I need mud and trees and moisture and moss. Gosh, moss. I didn’t think someone could miss moss so much, but here I am. I love moss.

There’s something so lush about Vancouver. Technically we’re a rainforest. Even in the heat of the summer, it just feels better than the dry Cali heat. I’m incredibly grateful to live here and to have such quick access to the forms of nature that really fill my cup. Being away reminded me of that.

→ I rely too much on my routines

This trip also reminded me of my resilience. I have so much more of it than I thought.

This trip wasn’t difficult by any means (it was actually quite relaxing and chill), but it reminded me of how much I rely on my routines at home.

I have specific foods I eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don’t like to miss meals. I like to know what’s coming next. I like to plan.

But travel shakes all of that up. And normally, that would give me anxiety and throw my health into a mini spiral, but I didn’t experience that on this trip.

I slept in everyday and had a late breakfast, ate things that I normally wouldn’t eat on the regular — like french toast three days in a row and barely any vegetables — and felt, well, fine.

I missed lunch most days, something I loudly preach against. And again, I felt…fine.

I let my regular routines fall away to make space for the spontaneity of travel. I needed to loosen my grip on these things so I could fully relax into my trip.

Now I’m not saying that these routines don’t matter and that food isn’t important. Obviously I don’t think that.

But I think I just realized, or rather was reminded of the fact that, my body is actually a lot more resilient than I think, and that I can absolutely make more room in my life for “non-healthy” choices without spiralling into a histamine flare or an anxiety attack.

I attribute that resilience to the hard work I’ve done in recovering from all the stress this past year threw at me. My body and mind are finally in a strong place. And I’ll also attribute that to the fact that travel often allows us to finally relax, which primes our bodies to be less reactive to “non-healthy” choices.

It feels calming to know I can handle more going forward and that there’s absolutely still lots of room for fun and spontaneity in my travel (and regular life) while maintaining my values of wellness.

→ stress plays a bigger role in my life than I realize

Or rather, stress plays a bigger role in my life than I like to acknowledge.

My trip down here allowed me to completely shut my brain off.

The friend I was visiting took charge of planning almost everything. He drove everywhere and allowed me to be passenger princess. He bought groceries and cooked for me. He made decisions on where we were going and when.

I live alone in Vancouver. I’m single. My family is all back in Ontario. I have great friends whom I love, but I don’t have anyone here to really take things off my plate. Nobody to cook for me or drive me around or build my furniture or take my clothes to the dry cleaner. No one to organize my to-do lists or prioritize my tasks. No one here to take on part of the mental load for me.

I didn’t realize how quickly my brain has been moving lately until it had the chance to turn it off. I didn’t touch my laptop, or social media really, for four days straight. I didn’t think about my next business decision. I didn’t try to read four different books in one night.

And guess what?? I slept better than I have in months. My skin calmed down. My mind went quiet. I felt refreshed for the first time in a long time.

I think what this has reminded me (I hesitate to use the word “taught” because I feel that I already know this and have learned it already) is that, yes you can eat well, and exercise well, and do the breathwork and the mental gymnastics to try to calm your body and your mind through periods of stress.

But sometimes the only way to really feel better is to remove yourself from the stressful situation. Maybe not forever, but at least for a little while.

Let your body be reminded of what it feels like to be still.

Thank you to LA for reminding me of these lessons. And now it’s time to take them and apply them to my everyday back here at home.

Lots of love,

Naomi

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I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps you change your life by changing what you eat. You can learn more about me here.

I’m sitting here in my apartment. It’s the middle of (self-employment) tax season and my place is an absolute wreck. My bathroom sink badly needs to be scrubbed. My vase of tulips needs water. My dresser needs organizing. I have books, clothes, and receipts all over the counter, couch, and floor. My hair needs to be washed. And I have a full schedule today: first I’ll have a few client calls, write their nutrition protocols, and then I’ll head to my second job that helps me pay my rent while my business is still in her toddler stages. It’s safe to say that life is busy right now. Maybe (definitely) even a little hectic.

And despite all this, I will still eat lunch today.

In today’s piece, I’m talking about:

🌀 how following wellness influencers for inspo can actually make you do less, not more

🌀 why you’re stuck in the wheel of do a lot, or nothing at all

🌀 the best advice I ever received on how to actually break free from the claws of perfectionism so you can stay consistent and reach your goals

your obsession with aesthetic is holding you back

I have a Pinterest board, just like you. I search “summer style inspo” and “healthy eating aesthetic,” and I do my best to curate a space that feels nice to look at. Easy on the eyes, easy on the mind.

But lately, I find myself becoming guilty of not doing something if it doesn’t look the way I want it to. Sometimes I feel like if it’s not perfect — the way I imagined it — it’s not worth doing. And definitely not worth sharing. And if I’m feeling that way, I wonder if you are too.

Wellness has become a bit of a performance. A beauty contest. A competition over who can make it look the easiest, cutest, and most aesthetically pleasing.

Trust me, I follow those influencers too — the ones with the white kitchens and the monochrome appliances and the matching pastel-coloured workout sets and the beautiful dinner plates.

The ones who film their get ready with me videos, but their before video looks like you after you’ve put your makeup on.

They create this perfect life for us to aspire to and dream of. Picturing ourselves in these perfect worlds is like an escape from whatever messiness we’re dealing with in our own lives. Yes, I watch them too — and I’m not saying that anyone is doing anything wrong here.

With that said, I can’t help but wonder how these curated feeds are impacting our ability to take action in our own lives. Our Pinterest boards have convinced us that nourishment must be beautiful, or not at all. The clean girl aesthetic has hammered it into our brains that there is a specific way to practice being healthy: crisp and clean and pretty and soft.

Meanwhile, most of us aren’t actually living that way. Real wellness is often incredibly unglamorous.

We have dishes in the sink.

We’re letting our pans soak for days at a time because the scrambled egg crust just isn’t coming off this time.

We’re prepping chia puddings in (clean) leftover, mismatched pickle jars.

We’re sneaking in a 10-minute walk, still in our PJs from working from home, on our lunch break because that’s the only time we had, and sheeeeeesh it sure feels good to get some sun on our faces, especially because this is the first time we’ve actually been outside today.

Do we see any of that being posted to socials, though? Is that what comes up when we search “wellness girl” on IG?

the performance of wellness, vs the actual practice of it

There are a lot of people on the internet who have gotten really good at the performance of wellness. They put on a great show about how to become a wellness girly. And their performance creates a lot of entertainment, escape, and inspiration for anyone looking for guidance.

But have you ever tried to copy the aesthetic wellness lifestyle you see online, only to feel like a complete fraud or failure, because you just can’t seem to match what you see in her reels?

I’m not sure how well the performance translates to the actual practice of wellness.

I wonder whether you’re guilty of this too (performing wellness, but not actually practicing it at its core). Some examples that come to mind are:

☁️ saving yet another recipe to your recipes folder on IG, but never actually trying any of them

☁️ waiting for the “perfect” grocery haul before making a single change

☁️ buying more supplements, but still skipping meals

☁️ organizing aesthetically pleasing wellness inspiration, instead of practicing wellness itself in a messy way

☁️ trying to optimize everything before you’ve built any semblance of consistency

I’m definitely guilty of this sometimes.

Like I mentioned, this week was busy for me. Tax season just is.

On my busiest day this week, I almost didn’t post my unaesthetic lunch.

Well, actually, first I almost didn’t even eat my unaesthetic lunch. Not because I was intentionally trying to skip a meal or something (you wouldn’t catch me dead skipping a meal), but because I wasn’t sure if I had the “right” food in the house.

I didn’t have my usual meal-prepped, balanced plate. I didn’t have a colourful grain bowl. I didn’t have a cute drink or a pretty cutting board or nice lighting.

What I did have was tinned fish (hello sardine girl), broken crackers, a slightly bruised pear, some leftover sliced veggies, and some hummus.

So I threw it all onto a plate and ate it at my messy kitchen counter, surrounded by tax receipts and half-finished client notes.

And it nourished me just the same as something pretty and story-worthy.

you need to take messy action

Most healthy habits are a lot messier than you’ve been made to believe. They don’t always happen during the perfect Sunday reset, or the colourful grocery haul, and they definitely don’t only happen when life is calm and easy.

They’re built and maintained in between meetings. During stressful seasons. While your dishes pile up in the sink in tiny apartments that definitely aren’t your dream home, or with roommates or family around.

Which means that if you only allow yourself to practice wellness when conditions are ideal, you’ll spend most of your life waiting. And planning. And waiting. And still not feeling your best.

In a world that convinces us all that we need to have it all curated and figured out before we can start, I challenge you to start before you feel ready.

In a world that convinces us that it must be perfect or not at all, I challenge you to take messy action.

In a world that convinces us to skip lunch in favour of productivity, I encourage you to make time to eat anyway.

Eat the weird lunch. Go on the short walk. Do the lite version.

Get scrappy with it.

getting scrappy with it

My introduction to the idea of “getting scrappy with it” came from Fabienne Gordon (@dolifework), a holistic life coach here in Vancouver, BC. She does incredible work and I highly recommend following her.

The whole idea here is that while perfect routines and curated feeds are motivating and nice to have, you absolutely cannot have it together all the time. Life is simply too unpredictable and messy to realistically expect yourself to hold everything and have a perfectly balanced, aesthetically-pleasing life at all times.

But, you also can’t let your healthy habits go out the window whenever life throws you a curveball. Quitting when things become slightly unpredictable is not conducive to having the fulfilling life you want long-term.

Getting scrappy with it means that, when life gets hard, instead of abandoning your healthy habits altogether, you have permission to do them in a scrappy way: less aesthetically pleasing, less time-consuming, maybe even less productive than usual.

Getting scrappy with it means that you’re still finding a way to meet your needs and move in the direction of your goals — but just maybe not in the most optimized fashion. And that’s okay.

This method can sometimes mean that you focus on maintaining what you’ve already built, rather than pushing for growth. And that’s completely cool, because at least it means you’re not actively regressing and letting things crumble around you.

Some of my own examples of getting scrappy with it look like:

🌀 doing the “lite” version of my bedtime routine instead of the full everything shower production

🌀 wearing a slick-backed bun or braids for days because making time to eat breakfast in the morning is more important than washing my hair

🌀 sardine snack plates on repeat instead of elaborate lunches

🌀 meal prepping in batches, in mismatched containers, and eating things cold out of the tupperware

🌀 biking to work and counting that as my movement for the day

🌀 doing a 30-minute workout instead of skipping exercise entirely because I can’t do my ideal routine

🌀 sending friends quick voice notes while walking instead of waiting until I have time for a full catch-up

I hesitated to post that lunch, purely because I thought it looked kind of weird.

It wasn’t necessarily a recipe, and it definitely wasn’t styled. But heck, was it ever nourishing. And you all loved it.

I think everyone’s tired of feeling like they’re failing because their life doesn’t look pretty enough.

I went on a bit of a rant on my Instagram stories (classic Naomi) afterward about how putting nourishment on the back burner in favour of working more or helping others actually helps nobody — not you, not your hormones, not your nervous system, not your productivity, and certainly not the people who depend on you. You can’t help anyone if you’re operating at 30%.

Your body does not care if your lunch was aesthetic. It cares whether or not you made the time to eat.

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do it badly, on purpose.

You actually benefit more from consistently doing a little, rather than inconsistently doing a lot.

Read that again.

We think we need to have it all planned and curated in order for it to work. But we don’t.

We think it needs to be big and extravagant for it to count. But it doesn’t.

I know you know this already — “progress over perfection” isn’t a new idea. I’m not writing gospel here. But I’m willing to bet you still need to hear the reminder.

Which brings me to some of the best advice I’ve ever received…

Personally, my goals are not specific to wellness right now, but rather focused on writing and business. I’m looking for ways to improve in these areas.

Some of the best advice I got on writing was to start by writing badly, on purpose. Not “just write anyway, even if it’s not perfect!!!”

No, when I asked this person (who I’m willing to bet is reading this right now — hi!!) for advice on getting started on writing more long-form, she told me to write badly. On purpose.

And this has stuck with me ever since.

I think the reason this has been so influential is that, for me and my fellow perfectionists, we’re really good at being good at something. So when you tell us to just be okay with the messiness of beginning, yes we’ll hear you and all the reasons why it’s okay to be a beginner, but we won’t really believe you. And there will always be this small part of us that isn’t okay with being bad at first. We know the real goal is to get good at it, so before that happens, we feel like we’re not succeeding.

But when you reverse it — when you tell us that the goal is to actually do it poorly — suddenly the beginner stage becomes really enticing.

You know that episode of Friends when Chandler tells Monica she gives the Best Bad Massages? Yeah, that.

I’m so good at following instructions. So you’re telling me you want me to write poorly? Not just that it’s okay if it’s bad, but that it actually should be bad? Say less.

This mindset has made me really excited to complete my goals in an intentionally scrappy way. I feel pulled to get bad words on paper for my first drafts of my writing pieces. And guess what? I’m writing way more consistently than ever. And remember what happens when we do something small, over and over again?

So I wonder whether you can adopt this mindset in your wellness habits — or whatever it is you’re trying to do right now.

Take the messy action. Get scrappy with it. Do something small consistently instead of something big inconsistently. And do it badly, on purpose.

You’re worth taking care of, even when you don’t do it beautifully.

Lots of love,

Naomi

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I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps you change your life by changing what you eat. You can learn more about me here.

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I think there’s this false narrative around what it means to live a good life. I mean, obviously we know social media is full of everyone’s highlight reels, but I don’t know how aware we really are of how these highlight reels are tainting our idea of how everyone else is really spending their time.

The monthly photo dumps full of the brunches and the travel diaries and the fit checks and the date nights make it seem like we’re all filling every moment of our lives with interesting activities.

We’re not posting our chill Sunday afternoon on the couch munching on tortilla chips and watching reruns of Friends in between loads of laundry. We’re not setting our phones up to record ourselves washing the floors of our apartment. We’re not live-streaming the lunch break at our desk, eating last night’s dinner leftovers and making small talk with our coworkers that we kind of sort of like. We’re not photo-dumping the countless nights we spent staying in, without plans for the night, wondering if everyone else is out doing something that we’re missing out on. These aren’t the exciting, bold, wild, postable moments.

But I don’t think something needs to be exciting or bold or wild in order to be valuable enough to post about — or even valuable, point blank. I don’t think a good life is made up of only the big moments. I think it’s made up of the small, boring, mundane ones, too. And heck, not only “too”, but mostly.

And if you can’t learn to love the mundane, you will continue to be disappointed with what life has to offer.

I used to date this guy who would complain every time we cooked dinner together. He saw it as a chore. We were in university and both kind of just learning how to be adults. Cooking was part of that. And while chopping vegetables, every time, without fail, he would complain of how boring it was. Or he would just blunt the quality time with a hockey game or show on in the background. Upon asking him about this, he admitted that cooking felt like a waste of the little free time he had (we were busy university students after all). He said that he’d rather spend that valuable time doing something “actually fun.”

He actually said, “why would we waste our time cooking when we could just order food and have more time for more important things?” Like watching TV, apparently.

After hearing that, I remember feeling so disconnected from him. I realized in that moment how different we were as people — and this wasn’t something either of us could grow into. It was a fundamental difference in values and how we both show up in the world.

He saw cooking as a chore. I saw it as an opportunity for quality time and nourishment. He saw it as something to distract through. I saw it as something to remain present during.

I honestly love cooking. But also the cleaning up. And doing laundry, along with the folding, and the putting away, and all the tiny little micro-habits that make up my colourful little life.

I love walking under the cherry blossoms in the spring and noticing the bird sounds in the morning. I love staying in on a stormy day and watching the lightning from my window.

I love sitting on my balcony having my morning matcha before a packed schedule full of nutrition clients who have trusted me with their health.

I love walking around my neighbourhood on my lunch breaks. I love running down to the ocean and biking to the gym. Biking…god, I love biking (scroll down for a peek at my yellow 1970s bike that I am absolutely in love with).

I love grocery shopping, imagining I’m on a little quest to forage for food. I love picking out nourishing ingredients, coming home and putting on a nostalgic playlist or TV show, and making a meal from scratch.

I love browsing my favourite bookstore and finding something new to read. I love adding books to my Goodreads faster than I can actually get through them.

I love watering my plants and growing herbs on my balcony.

I love writing about my thoughts and creating a little corner of the internet where people like you feel like visiting.

I love all of it.

the happiest people don’t have the most exciting lives

Maybe all those little things seem a little plain. Maybe they are. But that doesn’t mean they’re not part of a wonderful life.

The happiest people I know aren’t the ones who live in extravagance. They’re not the ones with private chefs and personal assistants. They’re not even necessarily the ones working remotely from Bali or taking big, aesthetic vacations. How many celebrities need to come clean about how money and fame didn’t solve any of their problems for us to believe that a full life isn’t necessarily found in the big, picture-worthy moments?

I think a full life is found in the small moments.

I think my generation values the appearance of a good life more than the actual creation of one. We’re the Instagram generation — we stopped printing photos for personal scrapbooks and instead, social media became our archive. It’s like proof of everything we’ve ever done. I struggle to delete old photos because it feels like literally deleting a part of my life.

I think the danger here is that it primes us to believe that valuable time comes from how “postable” it is. And I think people who hold these mindsets end up spiralling themselves into an unhappy life, because most of their time is spent yearning for more than they have. They spend more time pinning “travel aesthetic” Pinterest than they do actually enjoying what their life has to offer.

Don’t get me wrong, I think there’s immense value in having big goals. In fact, I encourage you to pursue your big business ideas and cross off bucket-list-worthy dreams and go on the crazy trip. You should do all of it, big or small.

You’re talking to a girl who traveled alone to Maui and jumped out of a plane with a stranger she met in a bar. You’re talking to a girl who literally owns her own business. You’re talking to a girl who moved away from her small town in Ontario to live alone in a big, west coast city. You’re talking to a girl who hiked Panorama Ridge and Garibaldi Lake in a day and a half. I’m not naive to chasing once-in-a-lifetime moments, and of course, posting about them.

But in between those moments, you can’t sit there thinking you’re wasting your life.

Life is made up of a lot more small, mundane moments than exciting ones. Are you really going to spend most of your life wishing you were somewhere else? Wishing you were getting it over with faster?

tolerating the mundane vs truly loving it

The mundane moments of life aren’t just something you should learn to tolerate. A true zest for life comes from actually finding joy in the boring moments. Eventually, they don’t feel so boring anymore.

I’d even argue that by practicing the art of loving the mundane, you cultivate the conditions for more joy to enter your life. And these slower moments give our brains the down time they need to rest, regulate, and truly be present.

For me, there’s no big creative idea without the deep clean of my apartment — I can’t be creative in a messy space. There’s no big exciting overnight hike without many boring days in the gym, training for it. There’s no once-in-a-lifetime trip to Hawaii without many mundane nights cooking dinner at home to save money for the travel.

The mundane moments set us up to be ready for the big ones. But even so, by practicing the art of presence, the mundane moments end up feeling just as good as the big ones.

i fell in love again

You may have noticed I speak openly about my love life. How Taylor Swift of me. I really am a lover girl through and through. I relate to the world through the lens of being in (or out of) love. But to me, that extends well beyond romantic love. It encompasses all aspects of my life.

Last year, I went through some of the hardest months I’ve ever had. I fell out of romantic love, which ended up bleeding into every corner of my life. In that time, I lost my joy for the day-to-day things that used to bring me so much happiness. It cut much deeper than falling out of love with my ex.

I stopped cooking for the joy of it — my meals were made to just get me through my days.

I stopped reading books for fun — instead, I used TV to veg out and distract myself.

I stopped baking — instead, I just ate store-bought candy.

I stopped biking and drove my car everywhere instead. I stopped writing. I stopped creating.

Every day was a blur of eat, work, eat, exercise, eat, nap, socialize, sleep. I not only stopped loving the slow, mundane parts of my day — I forgot how to notice them altogether. And without those little moments, my world felt flat. Grey. Tasteless.

And now that that period of my life is far, far behind me, and I’ve made space for new chapters, I feel like I’m finally falling in love again. For anyone who’s been in love before, you know just how colourful it is.

I’m falling back in love with nutrition, the art of cooking, and the slowness of my days.

I have favourite meals again. I’m feeling creative in the kitchen and I’m enjoying experimenting with new recipes to share on my page again.

I have a routine (sort of). I know where things are. I have my favourite cafes to work in and my favourite tree to read a book under. I have a usual bike route to work and to my friend’s place around the corner.

I’m writing again. I feel the most creative I ever have. I feel happy. Like truly, truly content.

In the turbulence of last year, I spent a lot of time questioning whether Vancouver was my home anymore. I considered moving back to Ontario and starting over. I wasn’t sure, in the absence of the romantic love I had been nurturing for most of my 5 years here, whether or not I truly loved this city.

Now I know that I do. I’ve fallen back in love with my life here, along with everything it has to offer, even on the plainest of days. But if you ask me, my life isn’t plain at all.

Oh. I’m sorry. Did you think I meant something(one) else when I said I was falling in love? 🤭

xx

— Naomi

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I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps you change your life by changing what you eat. You can learn more about me here.

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Eating clean, healthy food isn’t enough to keep you healthy.

Most of the people that walk through my (virtual) office door are already eating pretty good food. And yet, they’re sick.

Why?

I specialize in functional nutrition for women’s health and I see a lot of women who eat clean, and yet they’re struggling with things like painful periods, acne, unexplained mood swings, missing menstrual cycles, IBS, and chronic constipation.

They come to me, completely confused (through no fault of their own btw) about what they’re doing wrong, because they’ve already cut out processed foods and seed oils and dairy and eggs and sugar, and maybe even onions too because those make them gassy, and better throw gluten in there, too, you know, because they heard it’s bad for them.

And they’re just as confused when I tell them that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with what they’re eating — there’s something wrong with what they’re not eating.

Nutrition is so much more than “good vs bad” foods. I don’t like the term “clean eating” because it implies there’s a dirty way to eat. It creates this kind of moral superiority around food. And it wrongly assumes that just because someone eats healthy food, that therefore, they’re going to be healthy.

This couldn’t be further from the case.

You can eat all the right foods — clean foods — and still be completely undernourished.

the difference between a clean diet & a nourishing diet

People get confused when I tell them that their clean diet isn’t enough to keep them healthy. And it’s totally valid to feel bamboozled by this btw. It took me a while to understand the difference between food that is objectively healthy, and food that truly nourishes us.

Here are some definitions I think will help:

→ a clean diet

A “clean” diet contains whole, minimally processed foods. It avoids anything labeled “bad” — refined sugar, refined oils, additives, packaged foods. It focuses on foods that come from nature and avoids ultra-processed garbage.

On paper, the clean diet looks great. But it’s often defined by what’s missing, not by what’s included in it (i.e. nothing artificial, nothing processed, etc). A clean diet can easily become restrictive, repetitive, and unintentionally low in key nutrients.

For example, a clean eater could be someone who eats oatmeal with almond milk and berries for breakfast, a salad with chicken and olive oil for lunch, a granola bar as a snack, and salmon with vegetables for dinner.

Clean? Yes.

Nourishing enough? Not necessarily.

Where are the carbs to support your metabolism and hormones? Enough protein across the day? Variety in fibre? Minerals? Healthy fats? Colourful fruits? Foods for the soul?

This is how someone can eat clean and still feel like crap.

→ a nourishing diet

A nourishing diet builds on those same whole food principles as the clean diet, but goes deeper.

It’s diverse. There’s variety in colour, textures, types of fibre, protein sources, lots of healthy fats.

Not only is it void of harmful ingredients (like the ones found in ultra-processed foods), but it includes a depth of nutrients to cover all your bases. It includes:

• enough protein to support hormones and blood sugar

• enough carbohydrates to fuel your metabolism

• enough fats to build hormones and support your brain

• enough fibre to help your gut eliminate waste

• enough antioxidants to protect your detoxification and metabolic pathways

• enough micronutrients to actually run all of these processes

• enough diversity to feed your microbiome

Notice that the repeating word here is enough. A clean diet contains great ingredients, but doesn’t necessarily contain enough of everything, which is why you can still be undernourished while eating clean.

A nourishing diet also considers how you eat — things like:

• are you digesting your food properly?

• are you rushing through meals or actually sitting down?

• are you eating in a stressed state or a calm one?

• are you excited about your meals?

• do you understand the benefits of your food?

A nourishing diet has care, flexibility, and plenty to go around.

→ a therapeutic diet

A therapeutic diet goes even deeper.

It moves beyond simply maintaining health (although that’s part of it). It’s all about correcting a specific imbalance.

This is often needed after:

• long periods of restrictive “clean eating”

• chronic stress (which burns through nutrients quickly)

• gut issues that have impaired absorption

• coming off hormonal birth control

• burnout, overtraining, or under-eating

A therapeutic diet is strategic. And it’s hella personalized.

It might look like:

• increasing specific nutrients (like iron, zinc, B vitamins) in amounts higher than the recommended daily intake (RDA)

• rebuilding digestion before adding more fibre

• reintroducing foods that were unnecessarily eliminated

• supporting blood sugar more intentionally

• eating more, not less

• focusing on what we need to add to your plate, in specific amounts, for a specific amount of time, before moving into a regular ol’ nourishing diet

Therapeutic diets are usually temporary — we go hard in supporting one particular organ or system in your body that needs some TLC, and then we can move you into a nourishing diet to maintain your progress.

It’s like cleaning your house. Every once in a while, you do a deep clean, a process that takes a lot more effort and time, but gets into all the little nooks and crannies that you just don’t have time for in your day-to-day life. The therapeutic diet is your spring cleaning, and the nourishing diet is your daily tidy up. Both are essential to maintaining the cleanliness of your space long-term. It’s the same with your health.

I design therapeutic diets for people in my 1:1 nutrition programs.

The right therapeutic diet looks different for everyone. Even the same person can have a different therapeutic nutrition plan in different stages of their life.

For example, a therapeutic diet for me six years ago was focused on specific nutrients needed to replenish deficiencies caused by the hormonal birth control pill. I needed to increase my zinc, B vitamins, and magnesium significantly, and I needed to get my inflammation and blood sugar under control.

But a therapeutic diet for me now (yeah, even nutritionists have health issues sometimes) is all about calming a histamine issue by supporting my gut and sealing my intestinal lining after a period of high high highhhhh stress a year ago. The main nutrients I’m focusing on are copper (needed for histamine breakdown), glutamine and glycine (for intestinal lining support), and vitamin C (to calm histamine and the immune system).

My body needs different things now than it did back then — yet both diets are technically healthy and “clean”.

See what I mean?

the consequences of undernourishing yourself

You need to care about whether you’re eating simply a clean diet vs an actually nourishing one — because it affects your health in ways you probably haven’t connected yet.

When you’re undernourished, your body has to prioritize survival over everything else. It focuses on keeping your heart beating and brain thinking and your muscles moving.

Guess what’s not essential for survival? A regular menstrual cycle. Reproductive hormones. Clear skin. Digestion. Creativity. These are the things that get tossed to the side.

When you’re eating clean, yet you’re chronically undernourished, you might see:

• missing or irregular periods, or very painful periods

• acne

• anxiety or mood swings

• brittle nails and hair that won’t grow

• bloating and constipation

These are all signs that your body doesn’t have the raw materials it needs to function. And it can be so frustrating to experience this when you’re putting so much effort into eating well.

the cost of clean eating

In my practice, I see a huge cost to being too focused on eating clean with no regard for proper, balanced nourishment.

When every ingredient is scrutinized, every label is meticulously analyzed, and every meal is second-guessed, your body stays in a lower-grade stress state.

And that stress alone can impair digestion, disrupt your hormones, and worsen your chronic gut symptoms.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that almost every constipated woman I’ve ever worked with has a history of dieting and is a chronic “clean eater.”

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the women who are most concerned with their health tend to be the ones who have the most reactive bodies.

It’s ironic, and kind of cruel tbh, because the thing you’re doing to be healthy is what’s keeping you sick.

On top of all that, the food industry has actually caught on to the shift in our priorities. They know we want to eat healthy, so they’re marketing their food as such (even when it’s not true).

You can walk into any grocery store now and find “high protein” everything and every “clean” version of desserts and snacks under the sun.

But a lot of these foods are still low in nutrients. And more often than not, they actually contain health-disrupting ingredients, like artificial sweeteners (sucralose, I’m lookin’ at you).

And everyone’s confused by it. Even me!!

Just remember that just because something is marketed as healthy doesn’t mean it is. And it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily nourishing.

easy ways to make your diet more nourishing

My nutrition philosophy is all about addition. What can we add to your plate? What are you missing?

Here are some six simple ways you can shift your diet from clean to actually nourishing:

1/6. increase variety

If you eat the same 5–10 foods on repeat, your body is missing out on a whole array of nutrients. Rotate your veggies. Try new grains. Switch up your protein sources.

I usually set a goal with my clients to make this fun: one new fruit and one new vegetable per week. If you bought kiwis last week, get strawberries this week. If you cooked with squash last week, get sweet potatoes this week.

Do this with your proteins, too. If you tend to eat chicken and steak on repeat, rotate in some fish (sardines, anyone???), turkey, and plant-based proteins, like beans and tofu.

2/6. count colours on your plate

Different colours = different phytonutrients = different jobs in the body.

For example, blue and purple foods (like figs, blueberries, eggplant, and blackberries) are rich in anthocyanins, which support brain health, reduce inflammation, and protect your cells from oxidative stress.

Green foods like arugula, cilantro, kale, and bok choy support liver detoxification, estrogen metabolism, and provide minerals like magnesium that are critical for hormones and nervous system regulation.

Aim for at least 3 colours per meal, with the goal of eating the rainbow throughout the entire day.

I don’t wanna see a beige plate. ever. again.

3/6. use my balanced plate method

Instead of a “clean” snack or light meal, ask: where is the protein, fat, fibre, and carb here?

You want to build your snacks like mini meals. If you need help here, use my Balanced Plate Method.

Balanced Plate Method free download

4/6. stop being afraid of fats and carbs

A lot of clean diets are unintentionally low-carb and low-fat. Your thyroid, metabolism, and hormones need carbohydrates. Your hormones and skin and detox pathways need fats.

Protein is not the only nutrient that matters. Contrary to popular belief, we need a balance of all the macros (protein, fat, carbs, and fibre). And when you favour one over the other for too long, you unintentionally create nutritional imbalances and leave your body suffering.

Balanced plate method will help here (see #3).

5/6. lunch is non-negotiable — don’t skip meals.

Under-eating is one of the fastest ways to dysregulate hormones — even if the food you are eating is high quality. Skipping meals is a surefire way to put your body into that survival mode we talked about and keeps your body from getting all the nutrients it needs to thrive.

3 meals a day. 4-5 hours apart. Yes, you have time. Yes, even if you’re not hungry. Non-negotiable!!!

6/6. focus on digestion — slow down.

Slow down. Drink your food. Sit down when you eat. Breathe. Chew your smoothies.

You can eat the most nourishing diet in the world, but if you’re not digesting it, you’re not absorbing it. And if you’re rushing through your meals, you’re certainly not activating your digestive pathways.

tl;dr:

Hello my skimmer scrollers. Here’s what I just talked about:

• you can be eating clean and still be wildly undernourished

• there’s a difference between a clean vs nourishing vs therapeutic diet

• health is built on the variety that you include, not just what you avoid

• variety, balance, and enough food matter than the perfect diet

• chronic restriction → chronic symptoms

• your body needs raw materials to function (and you might not be giving it enough)

• creating a nourishing diet, especially if you already eat “clean”, is actually a lot simpler than you think

• check out my easy tips on how to build a nourishing diet above

If you take one thing home today, let it be this: a healthy body is not built on the foods you’re not eating. It’s built on the depth of the nourishing foods that you are.

You should be more concerned with what to include more of, rather than what to avoid. Because most of the time, the answers to your health problems are found in the foods you just haven’t learned to cook with yet.

With love,

Naomi

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I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps people around the world with all things period problems: from PMS and cramps, to PCOS, endometriosis and transitioning off birth control — I help you heal chronic symptoms through personalized, evidence-based care.

Want to see if I can help you? Book a free, 15-minute connection call with me, and let’s chat :)

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On April 1st, 2026, I, along with 57 of you who joined the challenge, committed to cutting sugar from our lives for 30 days. We started the Break Up With Sugar Challenge, led by myself, Naomi the Nutritionist. And today, with only a few days left in this challenge, I’m reflecting on all the crazy ways it absolutely kicked my butt, and what I learned.

In this post, you’ll find:

• what success at this challenge means

• my reflections on how this challenge went for me (spoiler: I almost collapsed on a mountain without my sugar fix)

• how to reintroduce sugar into your diet the healthy way

• which ice cream spot to meet me at on May 1st 🍦

what defines a successful month of no sugar?

Before I get into it, I want to get clear on the whole point of this 30-day challenge. The overarching goal of this challenge is to re-evaluate your relationship with sugar, build awareness around your consumption and the products it’s commonly found in (like pasta sauce and soup broth 🤯), and to learn more about the role it plays in your life (both good and bad).

The name of this challenge is perhaps a little deceiving, because the goal is not to actually cut all sugar out of your life completely, forever and ever and ever. I know the restriction of this challenge scares people into thinking they need to go to extreme measures to achieve their health goals, but I don’t think that’s the case.

What this challenge offers is breathing room. Mental space. By intentionally removing something from our lives, we are met with a whole lot of space where that thing used to occupy. In that space, we start to build awareness around things like:

• where our sugar is actually coming from in our diets

• how we feel when we eat sugar, or don’t

• when or why a craving hits

• our patterns of sugar consumption (when we eat the most, or the least)

• when we might be using sugar to calm emotions, rather than actual hunger

• when we might be using sugar to connect with others or feel included

• how sugar might be impacting our health and symptoms we’ve deemed as “normal”

• and more.

When we make space to become aware of these things for the month, even with the intention of simply observing our own behaviour and collecting information on it, we learn so much about how we actually behave. And then we can use that information to make better choices — ones that are more aligned with our health — in the future.

So on that note, to me, a successful Break Up With Sugar Challenge is not necessarily 30 perfect days of no sugar (cause dang, I didn’t even have a perfect month — you’d know that if you followed my IG). It’s not resolving all your health issues in a short month. And it’s definitely not going the rest of your life without mini eggs.

You were successful at this challenge if you created that space for awareness and kept trying every single day.

You were successful at this challenge if you became more aware of your sugar consumption habits.

You were successful at this challenge if you learned about where added sugars show up in our everyday diets and made some adjustments accordingly (even if they were small).

You were successful at this challenge if you had a slip up or two, but decided to continue with the challenge until the end anyways because you wanted to follow through on the commitment you made to yourself.

Success in this challenge looked a lot different for me 6 years ago than it did for me this past month. And that’s not because I’ve gotten softer or weaker — it’s because my priorities and goals have changed. This will look different for you the next time you do it, too (and yes, there will be a next time 😈).

Here are some things I learned and experienced this time around:

1. i almost collapsed on a hike

On the 7th day of the Break Up With Sugar Challenge, I found myself on a hike up to Pump Peak in Vancouver, BC. If you’re in the area, I highly recommend putting it on your list, especially in the winter on a sunny day. The sunset city views are just unmatched at the top of a snowy mountain.

But I almost didn’t make it up the 3.5(ish) km and 456 m elevation gain to the top. And it’s actually not because I’m out of shape. It’s because my body was in a weird, “in-between” metabolic state where my muscles were still trying to figure out how to make energy without quick sources of sugar.

I knew something was off when I started feeling fatigued less than a km in. I was doing this hike with my uncle and we had a pretty short time window to fit this in during our visit. I had just done this hike reasonably quickly with some friends back in January and rated it a 4/10 difficulty, so I figured there’d be no problem putting a little yip in our step and getting it done even quicker. Not to mention that I’m extremely active, so fitness level isn’t usually a concern for me. But man, I could not keep up without the sugar (at first).

Normally for hikes, I pack tons of snacks. My go-tos for a short day hike usually include:

• a can of sardines (obviously)

• 1-2 pieces of fruit (usually an apple or banana)

• nuts and seeds, either raw or roasted + salted (brazil nuts, walnuts, almonds, pistachios)

• a few dates

• dark chocolate

• water with electrolytes

For this one, my snacks looked pretty much the same, minus the dates, chocolate, and electrolytes. I packed plain water because my electrolyte powder contains stevia, which is on the list of “no foods” during the challenge due to its sweetness. (If you’re curious about what else is on this list, read below.)

My muscles were struggling so hard to keep me moving up that mountain. Granted, the beginning of this hike can be a bit hellish, so I should stop being so hard on myself, but I couldn’t believe the difference between how I felt doing the exact same hike only a few months ago, back when I had the help of readily available sugar in my system.

So, what happened here? Why was I struggling so much?

During high-intensity efforts, like hiking up a steep mountain, your body preferentially relies on glycogen (stored carbs in your muscles + liver) and circulating glucose (blood sugar) because they can generate ATP (energy) faster than fat oxidation (burning fat for energy).

By removing quick sources of sugar in the days leading up to this, I had lower glycogen stores and less quick glucose availability — but my metabolism wasn’t adapted enough yet to efficiently switch to making up the difference through fat oxidation.

After stopping to catch my breath twice in 30 mins, I said f**k it and ate two apples (which I usually reserve for the top) on the way up to fuel me. I felt way better after that — which makes sense because the glucose from the apples would have quickly entered my bloodstream and supported my energy — and was able to make it the rest of the way no problem.

It was pretty interesting to see my body responding to the challenge so quickly.

2. i’ve been so hungry. all.the.time.

Before this challenge, I was eating pretty normally for a nutritionist. Breakfast, lunch, a couple snacks, and dinner, and a few sweet treats here and there. But within the first week of the challenge, I was eating way more than usual. I couldn’t get through the morning without an extra snack between breakfast and lunch. I couldn’t make it through the evening without a second dinner.

Again, this comes back to my body shifting how it makes energy — and more importantly, how quickly it can access that energy.

When your body is used to quick hits of fast-digesting carbohydrates throughout the day (even the healthy kinds, like honey, maple syrup, dates, and dark chocolate), it gets very efficient at using glucose as its primary fuel source. Glucose (sugar) is metabolized pretty fast; it can be used almost immediately by cells to make energy, in comparison to fats and proteins (which require a few extra steps and conversions).

Even if you’re still eating complex carbohydrates (like oats, grains, or fruit), those need to be broken down, absorbed, and — depending on timing and context — stored or released more gradually. They don’t always give you that same immediate bloodstream glucose availability that your body might be used to by eating simple sugars throughout the day.

There are also hormonal layers to this. With less frequent spikes in blood glucose, insulin levels tend to be lower overall — which is a good thing long-term — but in the short term, this can also mean less inhibition of hunger signals. At the same time, hormones like ghrelin (your hunger hormone) can increase when your body perceives a gap between energy demand and readily available fuel.

All of this contributed to my feelings of constant hunger. Maybe you noticed your appetite increased too.

When I did this challenge by myself 6 years ago, the shift from eating gummy worms for breakfast (yes, painfully real) to no sugar at all was… intense, to say the least. I was extremely fatigued and absolutely ravenous throughout the day.

But this time, I wasn’t expecting to feel these effects as much, because my sugar intake up until this past month was pretty healthy imo: a square or two of dark chocolate per day, a spoonful or two of honey or maple syrup in oats or yogurt, and maybe a treat (like a cookie or homemade banana bread) once or twice a week. Pretty chill.

Not chill for my body, apparently.

It was surprising to learn how much my body really was relying on these quick hits of sugar to maintain my energy and feel full after meals. Once I took even these small things away, my body had to stop relying on the easy route and start converting some of its other stores (like fat) to sugar instead.

And it took a bit of time to catch up and start doing this.

3. turns out, i actually do use sugar to manage my emotions

I had a couple of stressful and sad days during this challenge. That’s just the life of a showgirl (business woman), and hard days are inevitable and manageable, but it was extra hard to get through them without sugar. This one SUCKED.

This is what I mean when I talk about building awareness. Before this, I wouldn’t have labeled myself as an emotional eater. But this challenge shed some light on the very real fact that I absolutelyyyy use sugar to manage my emotions, because the cravings hit hard when I was feeling down and it was much more difficult to stabilize my mood without a sweet treat. I noticed almost immediately that my sugar cravings went up when I felt down.

It was helpful to know the role that sugar plays regarding emotions here, because it allowed me to emotionally disconnect from what I was feeling and look at it through a scientific lens.

We reach for sugar when we’re sad because sugar raises serotonin levels — our happy neurotransmitter. We feel sad → we eat sugar → serotonin goes up → we feel better. Pretty simple.

You’re not weak for craving sugar when you’re emotional. But know that the relief you get from it is short-lived, and if it becomes your only coping tool, it can keep you in a sugar-dependent cycle.

Knowing this pathway helped me detach a bit from the cravings, and ultimately helped me keep my no-sugar promise to myself. It also helped me find other ways to feel better. Instead of feeling like I might drown in my sadness or anxiety without sugar, I could see what was actually happening: my brain was asking for a serotonin boost.

So I found alternative ways to do that, like:

• spending time with friends

• going outside and getting sunlight

• exercising

• reading a really good book

• eating a balanced, carb-containing meal (carbs support serotonin, even without added sugar).

All of these things help boost serotonin without the sugar. And even though these activities took a bit more effort and time than simply eating a chocolate bar, the serotonin boost that they offered lasted a lot longer.

4. the social piece of sugar

Sugar is everywhere socially. Coffee dates, pastries, dessert after dinner, spontaneous ice cream runs, “let’s grab a sweet treat” walks. It’s completely woven into the way we connect. We know that.

When I removed sugar for the month, I realized how many of my social moments are actually built around sugar.

There were a few times where I said no to sugar and it felt like I was saying no to social connection, even though that wasn’t my intention.

I also noticed that some connections feel a lot less stimulating when you take away the treat. Turns out, some conversations only feel good when we have a cinnamon bun between us.

This part made me reflect on what I actually value in my relationships, and what kinds of connection I want more of — stimulating conversations, experiences, presence — not just defaulting to “let’s get something sweet” and making that the whole focus of the hangout.

That’s not to say that connecting over sweet things is bad — it’s wonderful. My personal favourite way to show my affection for people is by baking for them. So I think it’s also important to remember to be flexible here and understand when it’s actually more beneficial to say yes to the sugar.

5. sugar helps me avoid boredom

I also noticed that I absolutely use sugar to avoid boredom. There were a couple nights off during this challenge where I had finished up dinner, my work was completed, and I had no social plans. And I found myself wishing this freaking challenge was over already so I could go get a treat.

Sugar is a form of stimulation. It’s a quick hit of dopamine. It’s something to look forward to, and it’s something to do.

Without it, I had to actually sit in the discomfort of my boredom. It reminded me of when I stopped watching TV for an entire month and suddenly had all this empty space I didn’t know how to fill. You can read more about that month below:

6. i’m eating way more fruit now

My favourite result from this challenge has been my fruit intake. It has skyrocketed. It’s been so fun to get creative with incorporating all the different fruit into my diet that I otherwise would have passed over for chocolate or candy instead. And my body has been thanking me for it.

All those extra antioxidants, combined with a lowered intake of the inflammatory effects of processed sugar has given me a noticeable glow this month.

I think most people assume that because I’m a nutritionist, I must have a perfect diet or something, but I don’t. I actually really struggle to keep my fruit intake up. I’m not sure why — I just don’t tend to naturally lean towards fruit as a snack. At least, I didn’t before this challenge.

But now, I’ve reignited my love for fresh fruit and I’m excited to keep my intake up as more variety pops into season this summer. I’ve been eating pears, kiwis, and fresh raspberries on repeat lately.

how to start eating sugar again

Now that this challenge is (almost) done, it’s important to look ahead to how you’re going to reintroduce sugar into your diet. Ideally, you don’t want to go from no sugar back to all your old habits overnight. We want to reintroduce sugar with this newfound awareness.

I encourage you to start by making a similar list that I made above — what did you notice this month? What did you learn?

You can then start asking yourself:

• when do I actually need or want sugar, and when is it an automatic habit?

• how does sugar make me feel, and is that how I want to feel right now?

• what role do I want sugar to play in my life?

Then, reintroducing it with healthy boundaries can look like:

• not keeping sweet treats in the house, but giving yourself permission to go out for something when you want it

• having dessert after a meal instead of on an empty stomach

• choosing higher-quality sweets and home-baked goods over cheap, packaged treats

• having treats in social settings, rather than every single day as a habit

• noticing when you’re using it for emotion vs enjoyment

remember to reflect

Before you move on to the next month, I encourage you to reflect on the following:

• what felt the hardest about this challenge?

• what felt easy?

• what did you learn about sugar?

• what did you learn about your body?

• what new habits do you want to keep going forward?

the takeaway

The difference between cutting sugar as an act of self-care vs a punishment lies in how you’re speaking to yourself while you’re doing it. The difference lies in why you’re doing it in the first place.

If you’re doing it from a place of:

“I need to fix myself”

“I have no control” or,

“I shouldn’t be eating this”

…then it’s going to feel restrictive, anxiety-inducing, heavy, and definitely unsustainable.

But if you’re doing it from:

“I want to understand my body”

“I want more stable energy” and,

“I want to feel more in control of my choices”

…it becomes a tool.

If you joined this challenge, I’d love to hear how this went for you. Feel free to comment on this post or send me a DM in instagram :)

Thank you for being here and for pushing yourself to do something really freaking hard. I’ll see you on the other side of this month — should we all do a collective ice cream date on Friday?

Find me at Earnest with a double scoop in my hand.

Lots of love,

— Naomi

I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps people around the world with all things period problems: from PMS and cramps, to PCOS, endometriosis and transitioning off birth control — I help you heal chronic symptoms through personalized, evidence-based care.

Want to see if I can help you? Book a free, 15-minute connection call with me, and let’s chat :)

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Quitting sugar was the best thing I ever did for myself. And it was also one of the hardest. If you’re one of those people that just can’t operate without a sweet treat, this post is for you.

I’m hosting a 30-day Break Up With Sugar Challenge and it’s FREE. This will help you reset your sweet tolerance, clear your skin, lower your inflammation, achieve a healthier body composition, improve your mental health, and give your body the ✨Spring Reset✨ it needs to feel amazing.

We start this Wednesday, April 1st. More details below.

Follow along on my nutrition page to stay updated → naomi.thenutritionist

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my sugar addiction

Almost exactly five years ago, in early 2021, I was 22 years old and struggling with my health. I had stopped taking the hormonal birth control pill the summer before and I was experiencing the worst post-pill syndrome symptoms: cystic acne, brain fog, irregular cycles, PCOS symptoms, to name a few. But one of the worst symptoms was my sugar addiction.

I’m not kidding you guys. I was full-on addicted to sugar. Not like, haha I love a sweet treat hehe, cute!!! No. Not cute.

Most days, I would wake up and think about sugar. Sometimes I would eat gummy worms for breakfast. I would chew on sour candies until my gums were bleeding. I needed something sweet after every meal. And I couldn’t stop myself from eating entire packs of candy and chocolate — once I had one, the floodgates were open and I would finish the whole box.

I had always had a sweet tooth, even as a kid, but this was next level. It was like something had broken in my brain. I know now that this was part of the side effects of coming off hormonal birth control, in the form of nervous system dysregulation and insulin resistance leading me to crave more and more sugar.

At the time, my skin was breaking out like crazy. I had awful cystic acne that was unbearably painful, inflamed, and slow to heal. It ruined my mental health.

I thought maybe my sugar consumption could be related to my acne, but I wasn’t sure. I just knew I didn’t feel good in my body, and that my sugar consumption was out of control.

I woke up one day and decided I was done. I had heard that it takes 21-days to break a habit, so I decided to cut sugar from my diet for an entire month — an extra seven days just to be sure — and see where it led me.

The results of this month were extremely surprising, and life-changing, but I’ll explain more about that at the end.

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getting real about your relationship with sugar

Normally, my nutrition philosophy is built around addition rather than subtraction. “What can we add to your plate?” and “what is your body missing?” vs “what can we take away?” and “what do you need to stop doing?”

Most health issues are rooted in chronic depletion; when the body isn’t getting enough of the raw materials it needs to do its job(s), imbalances happen. If this persists over a long period of time, disease happens — sometimes even before we notice a symptom pop up on the outside. So my nutrition strategies largely revolve around adding more of what your body is missing, with less of a focus on what we need to take away.

On the other hand, our modern diets definitely have a strong element of excess: larger-than-life portion sizes, sugar added to everything, ultra-processed foods with a laundry list of additives, too many pesticides and chemicals. There are certainly things that we should try to consume less of.

Most people don’t want to hear this next part, but if you want to get your sugar intake under control, you probably need to.

“Everything in moderation” is tough to achieve when it comes to ultra-processed foods and added sugars. The problem with these foods is that they are designed to keep us eating. The more you eat, the more you buy, and the more you buy, the more money those companies make. The companies that make these ultra-processed foods and sugary snacks have a very real incentive to keep your hand in the cookie jar.

These same companies will preach “everything in moderation” to keep you believing it would be wrong to stop consuming their addictive products, and yet your consumption of their foods is anything but moderate.

You start eating a bag of chips, and next thing you know, you’ve finished it. You try to have one, okay maybe twoooooo cookies, and suddenly you’re standing at the kitchen counter shoving cookie number 5, 6, 7, 8 into your mouth. You promised yourself no more sweet treats after dinner, and yet here you are eating ice cream on your couch in front of your favourite show again, uncertain how you even got there or why you keep forgetting to follow through for yourself.

It’s like a fever dream.

As a consumer, it’s difficult to unwind our brains from around these companies’ fingers. Once you’re on the sugar train, it’s very hard to get off. But it’s possible — and I’m going to guide you through it.

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If you’re one of those people, like I was, who feels like they are constantly battling with their mind to stop eating the sugar, stop eating the candy, stop eating the chips, then you need a reset: a set period of time away from these foods, completely, to reset your tolerance, rewire your brain chemistry, and reevaluate your relationship with them.

I am not telling you to give up sugar for the rest of your life. I am, however, encouraging you to take some time to truly get real about the role that sugar plays in your life. It’s important to understand how sugar impacts you, your health (both mental and physical), your self-control, and your happiness. And one of the best ways to truly understand the role is to spend some time without it. That space, the interruption of the habit, is where a lot of things can come up.

signs you need a sugar reset

Here are some signs your relationship with sugar needs some work:

• always needing a sweet treat after meals

• energy crashes mid-morning and afternoon

• high sugar cravings at night, and an inability to go to bed without a dessert first

• irritability and mood swings that are calmed by sugar

• your sugar intake feels more like an automatic habit rather than a mindful choice - maybe you don’t even notice yourself eating it until it’s over

• no willpower around sweets - once you eat one, you eat the whole box

I eat sugar now, moderately, and I no longer have an uncontrollable sweet tooth. After some time away, I was able to reintroduce it, with healthy boundaries, and my relationship with food got way better. I can have a piece of cake at my friend’s birthday without wanting to eat the whole thing; I can have candy at the movies and stop after a few bites; I bake for my friends and family without eating the bowl of cookie dough. I no longer feel like sugar controls any aspect of my life. And my skin doesn’t break out from it anymore, either. It’s completely freeing.

You can have this freedom too. But you need to start by taking a break.

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why is sugar so addictive? this is what sugar does to our brains, and our bodies

When I talk about a sugar addiction, I am not speaking dramatically; sugar is literally addictive.

sugar is literally addictive

Scientific studies (enter Nerd Naomi 🤓☝🏻), like this one and this one, show us that sugar activates the same reward pathways in our brains as addictive drugs. Over time, prolonged and excessive sugar intake creates these addictive cycles that involve bingeing sugar, removing it, going into withdrawal without it, intense cravings, and repeat. Sugar also changes our chemical receptors in our brain responsible for satisfaction and reward. Basically, the more sugar we eat, the more we crave it, and the less satisfying it feels when we do have it, which makes us eat more and more to maintain the same level of happiness we receive from it.

sugar destroys your health

Sugar is a health destroyer — there’s no sugar-coating that (ha, she’s so funnyyyyy). To be clear, when I’m talking about sugar here, I’m referring to added and refined sugars. This doesn’t include natural sugars like the ones found in fruits and dairy products.

Here are some of the ways that sugar impacts our health:

→ Inflammation: added sugar increases our body’s level of C-reactive protein (CRP), which is a marker of inflammation in the body — the more inflammation we have, the more disease and dysregulation we have, including diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, IBS, depression, anxiety, ADHD, acne, infertility, and more.

→ Gut Health: sugar alters the microbial balance in our gut, depletes our short-chain fatty acid production (we need these for good health), and preferentially feeds the “bad” (opportunistic) bacteria — basically, it feeds the bad guys, helps them grow, and helps them kick out the good guys from their home so you have more inflammation, more bloating, more gas, more hormonal imbalances, more brain fog, and more immune system reactions.

→ Brain Health & Cognition (aka how you think and feel): refined sugar intake slows down our thinking, increases neuroinflammation (meaning inflammation in the brain), and alters the communication of our hormones and neurotransmitters — it literally makes us dumber, foggier, and less creative.

→ Metabolism: sugar impacts our metabolic hormones, telling our bodies to store more fat. Because of its impacts on inflammation, it also make us more prone to metabolic dysfunction, like insulin resistance, where our bodies don’t know how to process sugar properly anymore — this puts us more at risk for chronic conditions, like Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), diabetes, and heart disease.

→ Immune System + Acne (yes, your skin is part of your immune system): sugar decreases the effectiveness of your immune system and makes it more reactive by increasing inflammation — all of this makes you more prone to infections, increases acne and makes it a lot slower to heal, and increases chances of developing autoimmune conditions.

My sugar intake was a huge reason why I just could not clear my skin, no matter what I slathered on my face or added to my diet — the inflammation and disruption in healing was coming from within, and I was not giving my body a break from it.

you’re eating more sugar than you think

You might be thinking, okayyyyy I get it Naomi, but I don’t really eat a lot of sugar! A sweet treat every once in a while, or even daily, shouldn’t be having this much of an impact on my health.

Sure — I agree with you that having something small and sweet regularly isn’t terrible for you. We should be able to enjoy a little sweet treat every once in a while, or even daily (I’m a sucker for anything chocolate).

But I’m willing to bet you’re eating a lot more sugar than you think. And not because you’re bad at portion sizes or something — because sugar is in everything (even crackers)!!!

The recommended daily intake of added sugars (not from natural foods like fruit and dairy) is 25g per day (or 6 teaspoons — which is still a lot in my professional opinion, but I digress).

Guess what the average daily intake actually is?

89g per day. That’s 22 teaspoons of sugar. Almost half a cup of straight sugar that we’re adding to our food every day. We’re eating 256% more sugar than we should every. single. day. And we wonder why the world is so tired and inflamed all the time. It really is the damn phone sugar!!!

why sugar is so hard to escape — it’s in everything

So why is this number so high? Like I said, sugar is in a lot more food than you think. It’s not just about the sweet treats.

Apart from the obvious, like candy, chocolate, pastries, and ice cream, sugar is added to:

• flavoured yogurt

• protein bars

• granola bars

• cereals

• oatmeal

• plant-based milks

• bread, wraps, bagels, and tortillas

• crackers (?! I was floored by this one — why do Wheat Thins need sugar?)

• coleslaw

• baked beans

• deli meats and other processed meats, like sausages

• plant-based meats, like veggie burgers and fake chicken

• sauces (ketchup, BBQ sauce, teriyaki, mustard, hoisin, pasta sauce — yes, pasta sauce)

• soups

• trail mix

• nut butters, like peanut butter

• instant noodles

• frozen meals

• and more!!!

it’s not your fault

That list is insane. Sugar is in everything now. And I hope this information doesn’t scare you, but empowers you to understand that your sugar dependence is not your fault. Even if you’ve tried to reduce your sugar intake by cutting down on sweet treats, you may still be eating a heck-ton of added sugar from these sneaky foods listed above, which is contributing to the addiction cycle I talked about earlier. And those sneaky sugars may be contributing to some symptoms of imbalance in your body.

Breaking this cycle and finally healing properly is absolutely possible — I am going to show you how.

how i stopped being addicted to sugar

I cut sugar from my life for 30 days. For me, this included anything added or processed, and also included honey (even though it’s natural) and even no-calorie artificial sweeteners (like the ones you find in a lot of fitness products, like energy drinks, protein bars, and protein powders). My little maple-syrup relapse taught me that I needed a break from all of it. I still allowed myself to eat fruit, but I did this mindfully — more on this later.

The first time I started the 30 days, I only made it a week before I cracked, ate three whole chocolate bars on my kitchen floor, and had to restart again the next day.

The second time, I made it 10 whole days before I got a sugar craving so strong that I broke into my roommate’s private food cupboard and drank (yes, drank) from her unopened bottle of maple syrup. I restarted the clock again the next day.

I can’t remember exactly how many tries it took, and it was definitely very difficult (the fatigue and irritability when you’re quitting sugar is real), but I did eventually make it the full 30 days without sugar. And I was stunned by how good I felt.

the results of my 30-day no sugar reset

My skin was clear and my acne scars were finally healing. If I did get the occasional breakout , it went away almost instantly — no more cystic pimples that stick around for weeks. My energy was way up — so much that I went from 3-4 coffees a day to maybe one, if I felt like it. I no longer depended on caffeine and sugar for energy because my body was making it so much more efficiently. My mind was crystal clear and I had absolutely no brain fog. My digestion was amazing (no more bloating or gas) and my mental health improved greatly (I literally woke up happy and felt way less anxious about my life). Weight loss wasn’t really my goal at the time, but I noticed that I felt more confident in my body and my clothes fit better. Building muscle became a lot easier and my body composition finally shifted towards what I dreamt of for years but just couldn’t seem to achieve.

As for my relationship with sugar, I was floored at this change the most. I didn’t think about sugar anymore. Like, at all.

In 30 days, I went from literally drinking maple syrup to moving through my day without giving sugar a second thought. And when I did choose to eat something sweet, I noticed that my taste buds had completely changed.

Things that used to feel sweet, like candy and chocolate, now felt way over the top — almost too sweet to have more than a few bites. And things that were moderately sweet before, like fruit, now tasted like candy. I remember eating a bowl of blueberries and thinking they must’ve been sugared (they weren’t). I couldn’t remember why I had wanted anything sweeter than that before. But it went even further than that: things that I wouldn’t ever consider sweet now tasted sugary to me. Like onions. I remember eating some sautéed onions with fajitas one night, and thinking that someone had added sugar to my vegetables because they tasted so sweet.

My sugar tolerance had completely reset, which meant that any cravings I had going forward could be calmed with a small treat or even just fruit, rather than overeating an entire box of cookies and still not feeling satisfied. Food freedom level 10,000!!!

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break up with sugar: the 30-day no sugar challenge

Breaking up with sugar was the beginning of my health. It created an environment where my body could finally heal.

And I want to help you do the same. Whether you’re struggling with your health, your sugar intake, or you just love a challenge — this is for you.

I’m hosting a 30-day Break Up With Sugar Challenge and it’s FREE. This will help you reset your sweet tolerance, clear your skin, lower your inflammation, achieve a healthier body composition, improve your mental health, and give your body the ✨Spring Reset✨ it needs to feel amazing.

We start this Wednesday, April 1st. No, that’s not too soon — everything you need is in the free challenge details once you sign up.

how to join the challenge

→ Join the challenge for FREE here

→ Follow along on my IG and make sure you’re subscribed here to my Substack to get updates throughout the month :)

See you in there!

Lots of love,

— Naomi

I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps people around the world with all things period problems: from PMS and cramps, to PCOS, endometriosis and transitioning off birth control — I help you heal chronic symptoms through personalized, evidence-based care.

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If I made decisions based on how I felt on a day to day basis, my life would be a wreck.

My friends and I have a running joke about my monthly/weekly/daily crash outs and life-altering statements I make. “I’m moving home”, “No wait I’m staying but I’m switching careers”, “jk I’m not changing careers but I’m definitely gunna stop dating”, “Wait no I’m going on a date this week but this time I’m definitely moving home” — and the cycle continues. And no, I haven’t acted on any of those things.

What I’ve learned from these…let’s call them emotionally-charged statements… is that it’s not healthy to believe every feeling or thought that crosses my mind. This goes against everything I’ve been taught about trusting my intuition, so let me explain a bit more.

As a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), it’s natural to feel things intensely and to spend more time than non-HSPs internalizing those feelings, processing them, trying to understand them, and maybe (definitelyyyyyy) trying to find a solution or action-plan for them. Like right away. Something happens, I feel something, it feels all-encompassing, I’m uncomfortable, I want to fix or escape the feeling, so I come up with solutions that allow me that fix or escape — such as moving away, or altering my life drastically in some other way.

I also cannot keep anything a secret (big over-sharer over here, maybe you’ve noticed?) so naturally I have to text my close friends these feelings immediately, before I’ve even begun to process them myself.

On top of my sensitivity playing a role in this, I’ve also been learning about neurodivergence. ADHD’ers tend to feel things more deeply, too. And a little birdie told me we’re impulsive. I got my official ADHD diagnosis in January, and both my doctor and I were not surprised. It’s quite common for traits of high sensitivity and neurodivergence (like ADHD and autism) to overlap, so it’s not crazy of you to feel like you show signs of both.

HSPs are more likely to experience emotional flooding. Emotional flooding is the experience of being overwhelmed by intense negative feelings. When it occurs, it feels unexpected, intense, and leads to an inability to process information and make clear decisions. It feels like a giant tsunami of anger, sadness, fear, or anxiety. It can make your muscles lock up and your brain go fuzzy and like you can’t string a thought together to save your life.

Sensitive people can sometimes be labeled as “too emotional” or “reactive”. We are labeled as being “driven by our hearts” rather than our heads. Sometimes, we can act impulsively on the big feelings we experience.

While I don’t necessarily agree with the blanket statements and stigma around honest emotional expression (I don’t think there’s anything wrong with crying or expressing a “negative” emotion outwardly and honestly, as long as it doesn’t do harm), there is actually some science behind emotional flooding affecting decision making, and how HSPs might be more affected.

Whether you identify as highly sensitive or not, you’ve likely witnessed this in some capacity. Here’s an example to help paint the picture:

Maybe you’ve been there to support a friend or partner who just got laid off and is feeling extremely emotional about the news. Suddenly they’re telling you they’re going to give up their lease, move back to their hometown, and never work in their industry ever again. They’re telling you they don’t really care about the rejection (you know they do), and they’re saying that there’s no point in trying anything in life anyway, so whatever, right?! You know they don’t really mean it, and sure enough, 24 hours later, once they’ve had a chance to process the shock and regulate their nervous system, they’re thinking rationally again and making a tangible plan for their next career steps that have nothing to do with running away. And you laugh together about their crash out and move on.

the science behind emotional decision-making

The concept of emotional flooding explains what happens when emotions become so intense that the brain temporarily loses its ability to think clearly.

It happens when a surge of emotion overwhelms the nervous system. In that state, your brain prioritizes survival responses — fight, flight, freeze, fawn — rather than logical thinking. People often experience cognitive disorganization, meaning it becomes difficult to process information, problem-solve, or communicate effectively.

It also makes it harder to understand your own thoughts and needs. There’s no way to truly know how you think or feel about something when you’re emotionally flooded.

When emotional flooding happens, people often:

• say things they don’t mean

• make dramatic or impulsive decisions

• withdraw or run away from situations

• interpret neutral things as negative or threatening

And, to be clear, this isn’t because this person is necessarily irrational or dramatic by fault. It’s just because their nervous system is temporarily overwhelmed.

women’s health, hormones, & pre-period crash outs

There’s another layer to this. Hormones. Yay :)

Anyone with a menstrual cycle knows this feeling. Right before your period, during your luteal phase, you are more emotionally sensitive, and more prone to catastrophic thinking. AKA the pre-period crash outs. Been there.

During your luteal phase, progesterone rises, estrogen declines, tolerance to stress decreases (small things feel like BIG things), and your brain is less sensitive to serotonin and dopamine (happiness and motivation are harder to come by).

Here’s what makes this soooo much harder to navigate:

The feelings themselves are real. Very much so! The interpretation of those feelings, however, is distorted. When your nervous system is more sensitive, you’re more likely to interpret neutral or slightly negative events as extremely negative and overwhelming. Cue emotional flooding and moving across the country to escape.

This is why many women report that the exact problem that felt unbearable during the luteal phase suddenly felt perfectly manageable once their period started, or when they entered their follicular phase (estrogen rising).

Nothing in the external world changed. Your nervous system did. Your hormones did. Your capacity to process things did.

Understanding this is empowering, because instead of believing every single thought your brain produces, you can start to ask: is this intuition, or emotional flooding? Is everything hopeless, or does my body need something?

how nutrition helps with emotional flooding

This part obviously fascinates me the most, being a nutritionist and all. Controlling your emotions and being less reactive isn’t just something you need to think your way out of. It’s biological. It’s affected by what you eat.

Your brain’s ability to regulate emotions depends heavily on things like:

• blood sugar stability

• micronutrient status

• sleep + rest

• gut health

• inflammation levels

• and stress hormones.

If your blood sugar is crashing every afternoon, your nervous system is already under stress. That makes emotions harder to regulate.

If you’re chronically under-eating protein, your brain may struggle to produce neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin.

If your gut microbiome is disrupted, the signalling between your gut and brain (the gut-brain axis) can amplify anxiety and mood swings.

If inflammation is high, your immune system is active, which puts your body under stress, pulls nutrients from your nervous system, and makes your body more reactive.

Sometimes we focus on trying to fix the psychology of a problem, when we need to focus on the biology of it. Sometimes a personality problem is actually a physiology problem.

And this is why I care so much about foundational nutrition.

Nutrition supports emotional resilience. It gives your nervous system the raw materials it needs to regulate itself. You can read about some foundational pieces of this in this article:

how to make better decisions without letting your emotional get the better of you:

1. Pause. The feeling you have might be overwhelming and you’re probably really uncomfortable in it, leading you to want to act now now now or run run run. You don’t need to do anything right now. Rushing a decision when you’re in a heightened emotional state just leads to chaos down the line. Take a minute, breathe through it, talk to someone you trust about it, journal about it, get into the woods — just give yourself some time. Nothing needs to happen as quickly as you think it does when you’re emotionally charged.

2. Record. Write the feeling or the thought down. Just because you had it while feeling emotional doesn’t necessarily mean the decision or idea is bad — you just don’t want to act on it while you’re still in that state. You probably feel like the thought or idea you’re having is really important right now (heightened emotional states do this to us). So justtttt to make sure you don’t forget it, write it down and then allow yourself to let it go (for now) so you can focus on calming your system and processing this big feeling first. Come back to it later.

3. Question. Refute your own thoughts. Exercise critical thinking. Use your discernment. Play the devil’s advocate. Pretend you’re on the debate team for the opposing end of the feeling or thought you’re having. Don’t believe everything you feel. The act of questioning your own thoughts helps your brain form new neural pathways and expands your capacity of thinking, which makes you better at problem solving. This helps you reach a better decision for yourself faster.

4. Notice patterns. Return to the recorded list of thoughts, ideas, or impulses you’ve recorded overtime. What patterns do you notice? What comes up repeatedly, and when? Is it coming up at certain times of the month? After eating certain things? This gives you insight into the ones that might need further investigation and attention. Understanding the patterns and the context is important too. It provides insight into the true root of the problem. For example, one of my friends was texting me about some really negative feelings she was experiencing recently. And then 10 minutes later, after having eaten breakfast, she was feeling better about everything. The pattern here is that low blood sugar leads to more negative thoughts for her. Now that she knows this, she knows not to believe any thoughts she has when she’s hungry.

   

5. Feed yourself. Get your foundations in check so your nervous system can operate from a place of nourishment and clarity. You can’t know how you really feel about something if your body is constantly depleted of what it needs to operate. And it needs FOOD. But not just any food — the right foods. This is something I can help you tackle.

6. Practice discomfort. If you feel like you need to quit or run away each time an uncomfortable feeling or situation comes up for you in your life, you’re never going to move forward. You’ll never really grow. The best parts of yourself are found when you allow yourself to endure discomfort. Practice it by intentionally putting yourself in uncomfortable situations regularly. This can look like taking away your comfort vices (cannabis, alcohol, nicotine), going to a social event alone, cold plunging, trying a new hobby and being ok with being bad at it, hiking up a mountain before you feel ready. Something you know won’t really hurt or kill you, but you just don’t feeeeeel like doing because it would be painful or uncomfortable. Go do that thing.

Overtime, this act of pausing and questioning your own experience leads you to understand which of your feelings are more intuitive (deep knowings that lead you closer to life you want) and which are simply impulsive reactions (and which, if acted on immediately, might result in accidentally moving yourself further away from the life you want).

It gives you the space to really get to know your own mind and to develop trust with yourself. You know that friend that blurts out the next thing crazy life change they’re making every other week, but then never acts on it? You might stop trusting that friend’s words and actions overtime. I know my friends sure stopped believing me when I would say I was moving away for the 1000th time that month.

And it’s the same with yourself. Every time you act on big feeling before you really sit with it, you miss an opportunity to build self-trust and to prove to yourself that you’re capable of feeling something deeply without letting it take over your entire life.

The goal is not to ignore your feelings. Your feelings are data. But not all data is acted upon the moment it’s collected.

The more you observe, the more you notice which feelings consistently guide you toward a better life — and which ones only appear when you’re tired, stressed, hungry, or deep in the luteal phase. This helps you slowly change your relationship with your mind, and yourself. And it helps you take action in ways that truly helps you.

Sometimes, a feeling requires deep analysis — maybe even further action. And sometimes, a feeling is just a feeling that requires no action at all.

With a heck-ton of love,

— Naomi

I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps people around the world with all things period problems: from PMS and cramps, to PCOS, endometriosis and transitioning off birth control — I help you heal chronic symptoms through personalized, evidence-based care.

Want to see if I can help you? Book a free, 15-minute connection call with me, and let’s chat :)

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As a highly empathetic, conscientious person, I’m inclined to see the good in everyone. Even when they’re hurting me. Even when they’ve shown me, time and again, that they don’t care, at least not in the ways that matter.

Sensitive empaths have a tendency to assume the best in people. If you have this trait, like I do, you are probably skilled at seeing the other side of things; you can almost always justify someone’s behaviour by putting yourself in their shoes. This trait, most of the time, is a gift. It’s what makes you a caring friend, present partner, a compassionate listener.

But this skill is also a double-edged sword.

The same ability that helps you make people feel deeply understood is often the reason you find yourself in relationships and friendships with people who put you in distress. You feel like you’re the one carrying the relationship. You let things that bother you slide — often. You stay longer than you should, trying to understand their side, hoping they’ll eventually do the same for you. You explain yourself carefully — “If I just explain this properly, then they’ll finally understand and change”. You give chance after chance after chance, only to get nowhere, until one day you finally leave, exhausted, wondering why it took so long for you to go.

And even then, there’s still a small voice in the back of my mind that asks “do I really deserve to feel this way about this?”, “should I have stayed longer?”, and “maybe I should just let this go…”

caring too much?

I used to think I simply cared too much — and that was why I ended up hurt or disappointed by people so often. But as I began to understand my sensitivity more deeply, I realized something important: highly empathetic people don’t struggle in relationships because they care too much.

We struggle because we care indiscriminately. Without boundaries.

As someone who feels deeply and cares deeply (hello my fellow HSPs), your nervous system is especially sensitive to relational stress. You notice subtle shifts in tone, you hear what’s unsaid, and you anticipate someone’s needs before they even voice them. That’s a lotttt of information for your system to process — in addition to regulating your own emotions, systems, and responses. So that’s why it’s so important, as a sensitive person, to learn to protect your energy — and to know it’s not selfish to do so.

Here’s where it can get complicated (I know, because I’ve lived it):

When you’re deeply empathetic, you’re wired to understand, contextualize, and soften your response to other people’s behaviour — even when it hurts you. You see people’s wounds clearly. You see the trauma and the hardships that have shaped their attachment style and their wounded reactions. You truly understand why they are the way they are. And that understanding can cloud your judgement of the impact they’re having on you.

You offer empathy to people who consistently show you they cannot (or will not) offer that care in return.

Empathy without discernment doesn’t make you noble, even though it feels like it does. But it sure does make you exhausted.

people aren’t evil…but not everyone is safe for you

It took me a long time to accept this: not everyone has the capacity to be a safe or accountable person. Not everyone is willing to reflect, take responsibility, or care about the impact they have on others. Not everyone is able to even receive the love and care that you give so freely, much less return it back to you.

That doesn’t mean people are evil. It doesn’t mean they’re intentionally trying to hurt you. But some people are deeply entrenched in their patterns — and your empathy alone is not enough to change that.

Goodness isn’t always about the intention. It’s about the accountability, the repair. It’s about what someone does after harm has been caused — not how well they can (or you can) explain it away.

When you’re empathetic, it’s easy to focus on what someone could be if they healed, softened, or tried harder. “But they have so much potential!! If they would just go to therapy for a while, or read about their trauma, or repair their relationship with their mother, or maybe if I explain it in a different way to them, or or or…” Stop. It’s not your job to fix this. And relationships don’t exist in potential.

We can spend years trying to decode people like this. Reading about attachment styles, trauma, “narcissism”, anything to help us understand them better…and maybe even trying to change them? Hoping that if we can just show them we see their side, maybe they’ll see ours too, and change their behaviour for the better.

It’s an exhausting loop to live in, constantly justifying behaviour that hurts you.

It’s also what causes a bit of your (let me hold your hand while I say this 🤝) pushover and people-pleasing tendencies.

You have a hard time standing up for yourself when you can see the other side so easily. It’s hard for you to stay mad at someone when your brain is constantly justifying their behaviour, explaining their reasoning for them.

the difference btwn an excuse & a reason

This tendency of yours is what attracts certain people — those who hurt you the most — to you. They feel safe with you because they know you won’t push them to grow or to do any deep inner work. Having you close gives them permission to stay exactly where they are, because you’re already making the excuses for them in your head. You’re doing the emotional labour for them. You’re enabling their bad behaviour by letting everything slide, simply because you have a superhuman ability to empathize with them.

But there’s a big difference between an excuse and a reason.

You can understand why someone acts the way they do without excusing it. You can empathize deeply with the pain that shaped someone’s tendencies and still choose not to stay in relationship with them. Especially when they’re unaware of, or unwilling to take responsibility for, those patterns.

Maybe this looks like a flakey friend. Someone who regularly makes then cancels plans last minute, disappears when you ask for support, or only reaches out when they’re the one struggling. You bring it up (sort of) and they tell you how busy and overwhelmed they are. They tell you they’re just not good with their phone and don’t really like to text to check in. And you get it. Genuinely. It makes sense they don’t have time for you.

Maybe you are in a relationship with an avoidant partner. When you express your desire for more emotional intimacy, they tell you “I’m just not good at feelings like you are.” Sure. Of course. Everyone is different. They had a rough childhood, a turbulent relationship with a parent, and maybe even a traumatic breakup at one point. Their avoidance makes sense. It has a reasonable explanation. So you let it go. And you shrink your needs to accommodate theirs, because their needs make sense, and if it makes sense, you can justify tolerating it.

None of this is particularly dramatic. There’s no obvious villain or someone to hate or blame. And I think that’s what makes leaving these situations, or even setting simple boundaries within them, so hard for those of us with deep, sensitive, empathetic souls. When the reason to leave isn’t absolutely screaming at you, you make up enough excuses and muster enough understanding to stay. You bend yourself to fit what makes sense for them, because you can.

You don’t need to stop being empathetic. You don’t need to become closed off and cold. Your softness and compassion really is a gift.

But it’s not a gift that everyone deserves. If you continue to offer it freely to everyone, you’ll continue to feel used and depleted.

I think it’s beautiful to lead life with a soft heart and an open mind. Go into relationships and friendships with plenty of empathy to go around. But remember that you deserve the care you offer others.

And maybe giving that care to yourself starts by being more intentional with what — and who — you allow in your life.

With (tough) love,

— Naomi

PS: I’m a nutritionist creating a wellness resource for Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) — and I need your help with it! More info here 💙⭐️🌀☁️

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I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps people around the world with all things period problems: from PMS and cramps, to PCOS, endometriosis and transitioning off birth control — I help you heal chronic symptoms through personalized, evidence-based care.

Want to see if I can help you? Book a free, 15-minute connection call with me, and let’s chat :)

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I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten very good at intellectualizing my feelings. I’m really good at figuring out why I feel a certain way about something, and then using that reason to explain away the feeling altogether.

I hear a lot of others doing the same:

I’m just emotional because I’m luteal.

It’s probably my hormones.

Is it a full moon tonight? That explains my mood.

I wouldn’t normally react like this, so just disregard my tears.

Listen, being in tune with your cycle (and any other outside factors that might influence how you react to something) is powerful. Cycle awareness is a huge part of my nutrition + menstrual health practice. Understanding your hormones provides important context that paves the way for you to have more self compassion. Instead of beating yourself up for feeling less bubbly than last week, you can tune into the fluctuation in your hormones and give yourself the grace and nourishment you need. It puts a lot of power back in your hands.

But, sometimes, I think we use this hormonal awareness as a way to discount our own feelings.

As if being hormonal means that the feelings don’t actually matter. It’s like we use it to make ourselves smaller. Between the lines, we tell ourselves “this doesn’t actually mean anything, it’s just my body being dramatic.”

Is that true though? Are you really only upset because you’re hormonal, or are you upset because something upsetting happened?

you’re upset because you care, not because you’re hormonal

Maybe you’re not crying just because of your hormones. Maybe you’re crying because something touched a nerve AND your hormones made it feel more intense than it would have during another phase of your cycle.

Your hormones don’t invent emotions out of thin air. They can, however, change the intensity of those emotions, or lower the filter we have on them.

Take your luteal phase for example. This is the phase in the second half of your cycle after you’ve ovulated when progesterone rises. This is a nesting phase during which your body prepares for a potential pregnancy. Your nervous system is more sensitive here, your tolerance for bullsh*t is lower, and your body is uninterested in pretending things are fine when they’re not. Things you might normally brush off, intellectualize, or minimize demand to be felt here — usually out loud.

So when you reflexively say, “I’m just crying about it because I’m luteal. I don’t actually care that much,” try considering this instead: you actually do care — very much. And you always have, hormones or not.

But maybe the difference is that, right now, your body is not letting you bypass it like it usually does.

Your hormones might influence how the emotions come out (maybe more tears, more intensity, more overwhelm, more visible reactions rather than stoic masking), but they don’t decide whether or not the feelings happen in the first place. If it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t come up, and it definitely wouldn’t keep resurfacing.

Your luteal phase has a funny way of telling the truth about everything you’ve been trying to lie to yourself about, or shove down beneath the surface, during the first half of your cycle. Without the filter of our follicular phase, these things bubble up much more intensely.

It is not a flaw to care about things. It is not a flaw to feel deeply, nor to express those feelings out loud. It is, however, dangerous to dismiss those feelings.

how this shows up with a partner

This is especially important to remember when you choose who to spend your life with. I think it’s incredibly important to choose someone who can make space for your feelings.

I’ve had partners who celebrated my emotions, and others who (barely) tolerated them. I’ve had partners who always wanted to know more about my inner world, and others who never once asked me about what I was thinking about. Once upon a time, I dated someone who knew that I felt things deeply, and would use my sensitivity to dismiss my feelings. He laughed when I cried because he thought it was trivial. He would ask if I was just in “that time of the month.” In his eyes, since tears happened quickly and seemingly all the time, that meant they didn’t really matter. When I was hurt about something, my emotions were a spectacle. It ate away at me. Over the time we were together, I started to believe his narrative about my feelings, and I learned to dismiss them, too.

It took me a long time to unlearn that, and to truly believe that my tendency to express my emotions outwardly is actually a gift. But I did, and I do. And I hope that by sharing more about my own sensitivity, I can help pave the path for you to do the same.

A partner (or really anyone who’s close to you) who writes off your emotions as being “too sensitive”, “hormonal”, or “PMS-y” is avoiding emotional responsibility. And they’re not the right person for you.

Someone with strong emotional intelligence understands this distinction: your hormones and your sensitivity might influence the expression of your emotions (like crying about it vs not, rambling about it vs not), but they don’t invalidate their contents.

Someone who is safe to be with doesn’t rush to explain your feelings away. They don’t try to fix, dismiss, or minimize them so they can be over faster. They sit with you in them. They stay curious. They ask questions. They want to put the time and effort into understanding you and making sure things feel resolved. They recognize that if something matters enough to bring you to tears, it matters — regardless of what phase of your cycle you’re in. Period (pun intended).

The more I share my work about menstrual health, the more I see wonderful men, non-binary folk, and/or people without cycles trying to show up for their partners. They follow my page and message me with questions, not because learning about periods directly benefits them, but because they want to know how to support their menstruating partner, physically and emotionally, by learning about hormonal health. These people give me great hope for our future.

The goal isn’t to find someone who just tolerates your cycle. It’s to find someone who wants to be an active participant in it. We need partners with emotional IQ who can hold both truths at once: that your body is more sensitive at certain times and that your feelings are still real, relevant, and worthy of care — even when you’re hormonal.

Feeling deeply isn’t a flaw. And needing someone who can meet you there isn’t asking for too much.

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stop blaming your emotions on hormones

But first, before we can ask a partner to show up for us in this way, we need to show up for ourselves in this way. You have validate your own emotional experience, instead of dismissing it. You need to make space for it.

When we write our emotions off, labeling them as “just hormones”, we don’t actually allow ourselves to process them, nor do we hear their messages clearly. We don’t ask what they’re trying to tell us. We just wait out the storm so we can go back to being more palatable for the people around us. More tolerable.

Your emotions don’t exist to inconvenience you. They don’t happen by accident. Emotions are powerful teachers — they exist to inform you.

So yes, track your cycle. Yes, offer yourself more softness and nourishment when you’re luteal. Yes, adjust your expectations and workload. Yes, let your partner (or friends or family or whoever) know that you’re feeling a little more sensitive today and that you need to be handled with more tenderness.

But don’t gaslight yourself in the process. Don’t dismiss your own feelings. Don’t hide your sensitivity out of shame. Don’t convince yourself that you don’t care. You do care. And that’s a good thing.

If you’re crying, if you’re irritated, if something feels heavier than usual, pause before you react, but also before you explain it away. Ask what it’s pointing to. Ask what you’ve been tolerating. Ask what needs to change, be said, or be honoured.

And remember that it is not a flaw to feel things.

With lots of love,

— Naomi

P.S. There’s a condition called PMDD that actually can create horrible emotions + mood swings out of thin air during the luteal phase. This is not what I’m referring to in this post ❤️

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I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist & writer based in Vancouver, BC who helps people around the world with all things period problems: from PMS and cramps, to PCOS, endometriosis and transitioning off birth control — I help you heal chronic symptoms through personalized, evidence-based care.

Want to see if I can help you? Book a free, 15-minute connection call with me, and let’s chat :)

instagram | tiktok | book a free call | website | buy me a coffee

There are many different versions of life I want to live. Right now, I live in Vancouver, pursuing a full-time career as a business owner & nutritionist. It’s a pretty fast-paced life I live. I work 65+ hours most weeks. I spend a lot of time creating. I’m very busy. It’s wonderful and fun and exciting and scary. I’m so happy to have the opportunity to be building Naomi the Nutritionist from scratch so I can help people with their health.

But there are other versions of me, crawling beneath my skin, irritating me with their desires for change. Not in a “in another life I would’ve been” sort of way; these other versions of me wish to exist in this life, right now. But they’re not given sunlight, water, and oxygen the same way this current version of me is. I’ve sacrificed them to let this current Naomi have the spotlight.

in another life, i would have been…

There’s a version of me that craves a slower life. This version feels the loudest and protests the most these days. She wants a break. I picture her on a larger property surrounded by nature, with a yard and a garden and a library and an art studio. This version of me takes her time, because she has more of it. This version of me has broken up with city life.

I know this will happen for me someday — it’s part of what I know my business will allow me to achieve — but now’s just not the right time. I have to sacrifice that part of me that yearns for slowness to make room for the hustler in me right now. I can’t be both of these versions of me at the same time.

There’s a world traveler in me, too. She doesn’t waste her money on rent in Vancouver, nor is she concerned about her career right now. Her base is back home in Kinburn, Ontario, mooching off her parents (hi mom + dad) in between trips around the world. Her goal is to soak up as much of the world as possible — not build a business. That girl sacrifices community and stability and her entrepreneurial dreams for adventure and personal growth.

That version of me exists, right now. I crave world travel almost every single day. I miss it. I haven’t spent a lot of time on it the last few years, for lots of different reasons. The most salient reason now is that it’s simply not a priority in comparison to my other goals. I can’t afford to save for it while living alone and building my business.

The student in me protests often, too. She wants to go back to school. She craves the structure of academia and the feeling of endless opportunity and hope that learning brings. That version of me wants to pause everything to pursue a Master’s. She misses being a sponge and she needs me to keep feeding her brain.

Sometimes, the needs of these different versions of myself overwhelm me. They leave me a freeze-state — a standstill. I worry about making space for everyone at once and choosing the right path. And that reminds me of this poem about the fig tree in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

achieving your dreams requires sacrifices

I’d love to tell you a nice story about how I’m making it work — how you can truly have it all as long as you work hard enough. That you can make all these different versions of yourself exist at once. But I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think you can have it all — at least not at the same time.

This is the part no one likes to talk about when they sell you ✨the dream✨. Every life you build comes at the expense of another one you could have lived. And that’s a choice.

If I chose to abandon my life here in Vancouver and pursue traveling, I’d be giving up things that mean a great deal to me: a strong network & community of close friends, my apartment, dating, business opportunities, everything I’ve built here for the past 5.5 years. I’d be leaving things behind in order to pursue the others.

If I chose to escape the hustle and expenses of the city in pursuit of a slower life, maybe by moving back home, there are things I’d be leaving behind for that too: inspiration in a city I truly love, more business opportunities, independence, having my own space to recharge.

there are some things i won’t sacrifice

I choose to make sacrifices to prioritize what’s important to me right now. But at the same time, there are certain things I’m not willing to ever sacrifice, mostly because I’ve put them on the back-burner before and suffered the consequences greatly. Things like my health, my sleep (sort of), the cleanliness of my space, and my diet.

I’ve heard entrepreneurs talk about the sacrifices they made to make it in their industry. Most of them name nutrition, sleep, and cleanliness as the first things to fall off the wagon. Mainly, they stop worrying about what they’re putting in their bodies; they just eat whatever they can, whenever they need to. Next, they no longer prioritize a regular sleep schedule; if inspiration comes from 11pm-4am, then so be it. Lastly, a clean, organized space is no longer an option; there’s no time to deep clean and put clothes away when you have a business to build, right?

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I take a softer approach to entrepreneurship. It’s incredibly important to me to eat properly; it maintains the bottom line of my health. Despite the fact that it takes longer than takeout and eating on the go, I make time to grocery shop and meal prep intentionally every week. My meals aren’t glamorous, but they are nourishing and they keep me grounded.

I also can’t live in a unclean space. My mind is already cluttered enough (hi ADHD), so throw a cluttered apartment in the mix and I’d go insane. Not to mention that I don’t even feel creative when my space feels disorganized. It’s like the clutter suffocates my brain.

Sleep is a tough one for me. I’d love to say I don’t make sacrifices here either, but I definitely do. I’m still working part-time in hospitality to pay my egregious rent in my studio apartment, and that means working nights and sometimes going to bed later than my ideal 10pm bedtime. I’m definitely not staying up til 4am writing nutrition protocols or anything, but this one takes a hit to satisfy my desire to be in Vancouver right now. If I didn’t have rent to pay, I’d get to sleep more.

I’m sacrificing time in favour of my health. Maybe I get fewer tasks done in a day than someone else who doesn’t prioritize these things — maybe I don’t. But I’d argue that taking care of my health actually makes me more productive in the form of higher quality work. In this case, the sacrifice makes sense for me and my values.

life comes in seasons

Stages of life are like seasons. They ebb and flow, and each serve a very unique and essential purpose.

The trees in the fall don’t concern themselves with trying to sprout cherry blossoms — that’s not what the fall is for. They simply drop their leaves, pull their nutrients back into their roots, conserve their energy, and prepare for winter. That dormancy is essential. Without that season of pulling back, they wouldn’t survive the cold — and they wouldn’t be able to grow new leaves and flowers when spring arrives.

The trees don’t try to be in all four seasons at once. They move through them, one at a time, with patience and trust that the next season will come when it’s time.

There’s a cost to trying to do everything at once. It fractures your attention. When you’re constantly thinking about all the lives you aren’t living right now, you end up half-present in the one you are. Sure, you’re here physically, but you’re mentally somewhere else.

I’ve always been an “all in” sort of person. I give things my full attention and see them through to the end. I’m not putting everything on pause to build my business right now (I still travel and see my family and take breaks), but it’s where the majority of my attention and time is dedicated. For me, this is the healthiest way to do it.

Spreading yourself too thin trying to achieve everything all at once doesn’t actually make you grow faster. It sure as heck tires you out though. It keeps you in a state of low-grade, simmering anxiety about all the things you’re not doing, instead of fully inhabiting what you are doing.

you can’t be everything at once - and that’s okay

We all have dreams. Lots of them. Maybe those dreams even conflict with one another, forcing you to choose one version of yourself when you feel like you have many; you are many.

I think you should definitely make space for what you really want to do in life. If you have a nudging voice in the back of your mind that tells you what that is, listen to it.

But I also recognize that you can’t necessarily pursue all your dreams at the same time. Sometimes, you have to go after them in stages. I certainly am.

You can be like the trees. You can do one thing at a time, and give it your all while you’re doing it. You can stay present in the current season of your life and trust that you’ll have an opportunity to move into the next season when you need to. You can drop your leaves now so you can blossom later.

And in the meantime, you can still feel sad about the dreams you’re not currently pursuing. Go ahead and grieve the versions of you that don’t see the light of day and the seasons you haven’t experiences yet. Or you can accept that you make sacrifices for what’s most important to you right now.

And know that you can always change your mind.

Lots of love,

— Naomi

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I’m a Registered Holistic Nutritionist based in Vancouver, BC who helps women around the world with all things period problems: from PMS and cramps, to PCOS, endometriosis and transitioning off birth control — I help you heal chronic symptoms through personalized, evidence-based care.

Want to see if I can help you? Book a free, 15-minute connection call with me, and let’s chat :)

instagram | tiktok | book a free call | website | buy me a coffee