Alaena Haber MS OTR - The healing kitchen : 175+ quick & easy Paleo recipes to help you thrive

I firmly believe that preparing and enjoying a large variety of nutrient-rich foods is what gives us the physical and mental energy to achieve the goals we each deem meaningful. Ive seen this in my own life: in my short twenty-seven years, I have had a number of what I call health hiccups that most people go through only in their later years, and Ive experienced how changing the way we eat can change our health completely. I was born in Montreal, the first in a set of twins, in August 1988. My parents have told me that I came out kicking, screaming, and wailing my head off, while my sister, Olivia, arrived into this world like a peaceful angel. Not much has changed. Ive been a high-energy girl from the beginning, and it got me in trouble during school.

I talked too much, wanted to play all the time, and thought I had figured out life by age six while all of the adults were too busy following the rules. In conferences with my parents, my teachers praised my eagerness to help others but added that doing other students assignments for them wasnt as helpful as I thought. Whoops. I guess you can have too much of a good thing. I also wanted to excel from a young age. Second place may as well have been last, and 95 percent on a math test left room for improvement.

These self-set high expectations followed me through my adolescence, and with them came inevitable disappointment and stress. I truly believe that my journey with autoimmune disease has more than a little something to do with these overachieving tendencies. A typical nineteen-year-old in her sophomore year of college shouldnt be diagnosed with Hashimotos thyroiditis and go through the scariest thyroid storm she could imagine. Bouts of fevers, rashes, and digestive sickness shouldnt be how one remembers year twenty-three of her life. And a young woman shouldnt fear her wedding day because shes worried that an unforeseeable case of facial and hand swelling could ruin the moment her husband tries to fit the ring on her finger. So why does a young, active girl develop an autoimmune disease that expresses itself in some pretty debilitating ways? Theres obviously a genetic component, as there is with many diseases, but without an environmental trigger, the genetic predisposition shouldnt be expressed.

I truly believe physical stress and not managing life's daily stressors triggered my development of Hashimoto's. Theres nothing like a full-on thyroid flare to stop a lively teenager in her tracks. I wasnt invincible anymore. I lost my energy, my zest, my personality, and my fearlessness. Instead, I lived in fear. Fear that it would get worse, fear that I would never lose all the weight I gained, fear that I would never gain back all the weight I then lost due to malnourishment, fear that my emotions would stay flat and stunted and I would never burst out into a belly laugh ever again.

It sounds dramatic, but when you have a disease that affects every cell in your body, you start to feel a little hopeless when things dont change or only change for the worse. At the peak of my disease at age twenty-four, I finally found a doctor (after going to many) who agreed with my feeling that diet could influence healing. He introduced me to the Paleo diet, and in my all-or-nothing way, I went home and threw out all the whole-grain pasta, steel-cut oats, and low-fat cheese in my apartment. And I never looked back. The daily headaches Id had since age three were no longer my normal, and the intense lower-back pain Id experienced in the evenings suddenly disappeared. I realized that I'd likely been gluten-intolerant for most of my childhoodthere had never been an explanation for all of the infections, eczema, rashes, and digestion problems I had throughout my youth, and finally, here it was.

The traditional Paleo diet cleared up about half of my nagging daily symptoms, but my drastic weight loss and wrenching intestinal pain kept me up late searching for an answer online. I eventually stumbled upon the Autoimmune Protocol, and that led me to Sarahs website, where she had a flurry of articles on her version of the protocol, which she called the Paleo Approach. I only needed to read a couple of them before I rid my fridge and pantry of all eggs, nuts, seeds, coffee, and nightshades. Within weeks, my stomach pain disappeared, my digestion became regulated, and my mood stabilized. Over the course of a year, my hormonal health was restored and I regained the weight I had lost due to my illness. But as the change in my diet started to improve my symptoms, I realized that I would never get 100 percent better unless I addressed the stress I put on myself to be perfect.

I started allowing myself to be imperfect in every waywith my relationships, my body, my writing, and my career. And then I redis-covered joy in what had always mattered most: my family, my dog, my friends, and helping others. Once I focused on combining diet with stress management, my well-being improved drastically and I could finally say I reached a true state of health, inside and out. I encourage you to learn from my story that no matter how much good food is on your plate, if you do not address the emotional stress in your life, you cant be fully healed. So is there a happy ending for all this? Yes! I am symptom-free of all those life-stalling problems that riddled my early and mid-twenties. My creativity in the kitchen has exploded as Im discovering all of the amazing ways you can turn Mother Earths simplicities into delectable, nourishing dishes.

The best part is that the Paleo diet has allowed me to understand my body on a very deep level. I know which foods make me feel best, and I know which can put me back on the couch for a few days straight. That knowledge will take me a long way in preventing disease and maintaining health. Each of the more than 175 recipes in this book was designed to help you the same wayto show you how food can help you feel better and, when combined with stress management, activity, and other lifestyle changes, lead you to optimal health. So I encourage all of you to explore this book with an open mind. Remember when I said that I am helpful to a fault? I didnt write these recipes for