What is Personalized Nutrition? (Nutritional Therapy)

Have you ever wondered why some diets work wonders for your friends but leave you feeling drained or unwell? Or perhaps you’ve tried countless approaches to improve your energy levels, only to find yourself back at square one.

Many women face these challenges, especially when juggling family life and personal health. The answer might lie in personalized nutrition, a transformative approach that considers your unique needs and circumstances.

Personalized nutrition is like having a tailored suit made just for you—it’s designed to fit perfectly with your body’s specific requirements. Rather than following generic dietary guidelines, this approach takes into account your genetics, lifestyle, preferences, and health goals.

Personalized Nutrition for Root Cause Healing

Root cause healing goes beyond simply addressing symptoms; it aims to identify and tackle the underlying factors contributing to health concerns. Think of it as peeling back the layers of an onion to uncover what’s truly causing discomfort or imbalance in your body.

For example, an autoimmune disease doesn’t develop because your body one day woke up and decided to attack itself. Your thyroid, didn’t decide to conk out for no reason. And guess what, you’re not constipated for no reason either….and that’s not just “how it is”.

This holistic approach looks at various aspects of your life—diet, stress levels, sleep patterns, emotional well-being—and how they interact. By understanding these connections, you can make meaningful changes that lead to lasting improvements in health. It’s about empowering yourself with knowledge and tools to support long-term wellness rather than temporary relief.

A personalized nutrition protocol is instrumental in addressing root causes because it focuses on nourishing the body from within.

Imagine you’ve been experiencing persistent fatigue despite getting adequate sleep. A personalized nutrition plan would consider potential nutrient deficiencies or food sensitivities contributing to this tiredness. By identifying these root causes through careful assessment and adjustments in diet, you can restore vitality naturally.

Furthermore, such protocols often emphasize whole foods rich in essential nutrients while minimizing processed options that may exacerbate symptoms. This targeted nourishment helps rebalance bodily systems over time—a critical step towards healing from within!

Imagine a nutritional plan that aligns with your body’s natural rhythms and supports you in achieving optimal well-being! By focusing on individual differences, personalized nutrition offers a roadmap to better health.

Today I want to share what is like to receive a personalized nutritional consultation and share about what the Nutritional therapy process looks like.

What the nutritional therapy process is like:

Before we get started, you will fill out a health questionnaire that includes a myriad of information. This is probably the most complete health history you have ever filled out and for good reason.

Our first meeting, we review all of the information you share and ask clarifying questions to get a complete picture. This will all inform, the rest of our process and your personalized protocol.

Since I am not a doctor, at no point will you get a diagnosis. What I will do is collect all of the information that you share, and map out the factors contributing to whatever your main health concerns are.

Our view is always “wholistic”, yes holistic, but looking at the whole of our client. No system works independently of the rest of the body, so we never focus on just one element.

Specific factors we look at:

Your main health concern: which body system is affected, and what could be the root cause on a physical level (deficiencies and toxicities) and what would be the root cause on a psychic (mental, emotional, spiritual) level.

Your current and past nutritional and food choices (that may have contributed to nutritional deficiencies).

The health of your family of origin: from which you may have inherited genetic SNPs that make it harder for you to detox, and/or epi-genetic changes such as a slightly dysbiotic gut micro-biome, or inherited a heavy metal burden (extremely common these days).

You current age, sex, and life stage that affects every aspect of your being. For children, we’re looking at growth, as well as environment. For adults, it’s important to see where you’re at with reproductive health and stage.

Your general stress level. What are the stressors in your life? Are they mental, emotional, physical? Usually all three to some extent…Often times, we uncover significant stressors just in our first intake call together.

Your digestive status: are you able to absorb and assimilate the food you eat? If not, then even the most “perfect” diet will not help you get better.

Your blood type. This is a super interesting way of looking at nutrition and can be absolutely helpful! If you don’t want a full consultation, look up what your blood type diet is and begin adhering to it (of course only with real whole foods). We always take environmental factors into consideration, but this is a nice starting place.

Your preferences. I take this into account when creating your protocol, because it doesn’t matter how good my recommendations are, if they are a burden or you do not like them, you will not be able to stick to the protocol.

Your skills and ability to prepare food. I take this into consideration to a certain degree, but also…I teach you how to prepare the food you need to reach your goals. This is just a matter of practice and I have 100% confidence in my clients’ ability to succeed in this.

Where you live…such an interesting consideration. First and foremost, this is important for circadian optimization and seasonal eating. If you want to eat bananas and papayas all year, then you need to live where they grow. (Sorry it had to be said). But also, the EMF environment and environmental stressors are absolutely a huge part of getting better.

At this point, everyone (and I mean everyone) has some nutritional deficiencies and some toxicities. It is absolutely inevitable because the growing soils are extremely depleted, we’ve had several generations of sub-optimal eating in terms of a nutrient dense diet, and we live in a post-industrial era where toxicity is prevalent everywhere and in everything to differing levels.

However, the tipping point for most people, is stress. This could be physical stress from a mold exposure in the home that derailed the “immune system”, or an acute illness that brought the body out of balance. Often though, it is an emotional or mental stress because of life changes or because we have been stressed for a long time and body just can’t handle it any longer.

Working through a Personalized Nutrition Protocol

So let’s say we get started working together and you get a personalized protocol, then what?

The key to success for most people is accountability. We check in often to see how you are doing, make sure you feel confident with cooking methods and lifestyle changes, and reevaluate if something needs to change.

For the first phase, we will flood your body with nutrients, so that it can decide what change it is ready to make. Therefore working on the gut is the number one task for most clients. Optimizing your digestion is imperative so you can get the benefits of all the food you eat.

Let’s put this out there right now: I absolutely do not believe in long term restrictive diets! Yes they serve a purpose, but one of the things I love about GAPS specifically, is that there is a clear path to coming off of the restrictions.

When the gut is to the point that it is absorbing nutrients really well, we can back off the intensity and focus more on detoxification. In the long run, detoxing heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, and bringing the microbiome and virome into balance is the goal.

While you can do all this “on GAPS”, we can also use “modern solutions for a modern problems”.

Just as the initial recommendations are highly personalized, so is the next phase. This may require a parasite cleanse; it may indicate a need for nutrient supplementation for a certain period (specifically minerals and co-factors if we are working on heavy metals), or I may suggest a meeting with a homeopath to support the vital force before we continue.

Once we have established a good base, this is when we can talk about functional lab testing. Specifically functional blood chemistry and HTMA (hair tissue mineral analysis) to look at minerals and metals in the body. These can be helpful in indicating appropriate supplements to accelerate the process.

So how long does all this take?

I’m going to be really blunt because I feel like a lot of practitioners skirt this question. If you follow recommendations, I expect you to feel changes by 4-6 weeks into a protocol.

If you are able to make really big changes to remove stress, your journey will be exponentially faster. As a general rule, the longer you have put off getting to your root cause, the longer it will take for full resolution. We just can’t expect a body that has been carrying deficiencies for years and decades to reverse everything all at once. But! If you are committed to getting better, you absolutely will. If you’re ready, willing and able to make changes in your life, then your life will change.

I have seen absolutely incredible changes in clients and the healing our bodies are capable of never ceases to amaze me. All that to say, if you believe in you, then I believe in you too! If this is what you’ve been looking for, hit the button and let’s chat!