Dietitian turned homesteader

How being a dietitian shaped my homestead journey:

My background is as a disordered eating dietitian. I am a firm believer in how restriction treats us mentally and physically. I have seen first hand how people’s lives have been impacted by food, but also how their life impacts their relationship with food.

I also know that the industry of food and nutrition is very fueled by fear mongering, which is not something I do not want to be a part of. The homesteading movement can also feel very moved by fear.

I have healed my own relationship with food and my body and helped many other women to the same. I by no means want to add to anyone’s disordered behavior and very much started my journey by adding in and not restricting. I would say that I am pretty counter cultural when if comes to how my family eats, but I would not say that we feel as though we are restricting what we eat.

Once I had kids I felt the pull to be home and the importance of the roll I had for my family.

I work hard to cultivate a healthy relationships with food in my children while also making all of our meals at home from scratch, giving me a lot of control over their intake.

We do not restrict at home or when we are out, but with my kids I do talk frequently about how to listen to how our bodies feel before, during and after eating food.

Filling your kids plates with variety of colors, tastes, and textures is such a great opportunity at a young age.

There are many things my kids know as normal that I am sure a majority of adults today have never experienced like organ meats, fermented foods and vegetables straight off the plant.

Exposing your kids to a variety of taste and textures out of the norm like sour (as in fermented foods) and bitter tastes can expand their pallet and allow them to get nutrition intuitively a lot easier.

One of my biggest motivators in making change was seeing the rates of infertility as well as so many other health problems among kids and adults. I want to do my best to ensure my kids have the greatest quality of life that I can provide and when they are young you have the unique opportunity to control certain factors that may impact their health, which for me has been primarily around food, but also environmental when I can.

I feel like everywhere you look the standard American culture is pushing foods onto kids that are over processed, full of dyes and other additives, and just generally not expecting kids to eat nutritious foods at all (i.e. all restaurant kids menus only having hot dogs and fried chicken strips). I want to raise my kids to learn to eat intuitively but also expect more from their food and know how it impacts them physically.

And on the other side of that there is a huge push for supplements for kids and adults with multivitamans, prebiotics, protein powders, etc. I understand that the state of food we have today on a large scale is very much less nutrient dense due to soil quality, agricultural practices and animal diets, but I still believe that there is good nutritious food available to us even if it is more difficult to source.

American’s rely so heavily on convenience and the more I work to get back to basics, the more I feel that many modern conveniences are what I want my family to be gravitating to for a number of reasons.

I know that access to food can be such a priviledge, and I am very blessed to live in an area with many local options. I have been able to make a substantial change in our grocery budget by avoiding the convenience, buying seasonal produce, bulk and for the most parts just ingredients. What you don’t pay for in money, you often pay for in time, but we have been able to make cooking, baking and learning new things a big part of our family dynamic and something that my kids can be a big part of.

If you choose to follow along with me, I hope that you find encouragement and not fear in how and why I have chosen to move towards a more traditional way of eating and living for the health and well-being of my family. I also hope you find as much joy as I do in learning new skills and feeling great purpose through hard work!