Heidi ate mostly wholefoods, cooked with real ingredients, didn’t eat sugar, and lived for years as a strict vegetarian. But she was struggling. Her health was not good, and she was suffering from major depression. She began to study naturopathy to try to find answers, removed all packet foods from her diet, and researched the role of proteins and fats in the body.

The post AQJ 39 : Toxic Kids: A Health Professional’s Experience with Healing Her Daughter appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

Sometimes it’s difficult to work out how to eat well and stay at a healthy weight, without being confused by all the ‘diet’ advice out there. Is it all about counting calories, cutting out fat, and exercising heaps? Brenda and Naomi of The Break Through! Program say no!

Healthy weight loss is much more about healing than ‘dieting’. Some important factors are:

– detoxing the body

– getting rid of ‘trigger foods’

– giving the gut a chance to heal

– getting into the right mindset and reducing stress

– breaking the cycle of emotional eating

– balancing hormones

– eating healthy fats

… and there are many more things to consider.

It may seem like it’s all way too complicated, but Brenda and Naomi are very experienced at helping women to navigate the weight loss minefield. Brenda is a certified health coach, and Naomi is a naturopath, and together they have put together a fabulous program to help women uncover the reasons their bodies may be resisting weight loss and work out a plan to work on positive, thriving health.

You can check out The Breakthrough! Program here!

Visit Brenda’s and Naomi’s websites here:

Brenda Janschek, Certified Health Coach

Naomi Judge, Naturopath

The post AQJ 38 : Healthy Weight Loss, and why ‘Diets’ Don’t Work! appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

This week Mary from Good Mood Food joins Jo again, to discuss working through anxiety and depression with the help of a healing diet.

If you, or someone close to you, has struggled with depression, you know how debilitating it can be, and how hard it is to pull yourself out of the vicious cycle of eating badly, which only makes things worse.

How do you even begin to get back on track with healthy eating when you feel completely overwhelmed by everyday life? And does it even help to change the way you eat, anyway? What else can you do to help yourself to heal?

Mary talks about the importance of just putting one foot in front of another each day, doing what you can, but not putting yourself under the pressure of a time limit for changing your diet or getting off medication or feeling well again. It takes time, but there is definitely hope, and if you have hope, you have everything.

Mary has been through deep depression herself, due to her son’s illness, post-natal depletion, and her damaged digestive system, and is passionate about helping others through this dark time. She shares five key areas to work on that will make a very big difference to your health and well-being, and recommends taking it one step at a time, as you feel ready. Mary also explains the importance of adding good things in that contribute to healing, before trying to take the bad things out.

This is a very encouraging and hopeful podcast, showing how healing the gut can totally turn around the way you feel both mentally and physically.

The post AQJ 37 : Good Mood Food – Healing from Anxiety and Depression appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

Over the last couple of months, Jo has been focusing on simplifying her busy life. She says, “It’s challenging not to get caught up in the ‘do more, have more, eat more, buy more’ mentality”, and that we have to consciously work on taking a step back and making life simpler, even though that’s not what our culture is all about.

In this episode, she chats with her friend, Fouad, about how they both found their lives were getting way too complicated, and what they have done to help simplify things. They talk about the importance of not getting so caught up in all the ‘doing’ that we neglect the ‘being’, learning to say no, learning to cook more simply, decluttering, disconnecting from the constant barrage of social media, how lists and prioritising can help, and how little things we do to live a simpler life can help someone else to have a better life.

The post AQJ 36 : Simplifying – with Fouad Kassab appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

What do you do when your kids are having constant meltdowns and nothing is going right? How can you help them to cope better, and turn a bad day into a good day? How can parents press the ‘reset’ button on one of those days?

Nicole Azzopardi has some great tips for how to have a good day! She came up with a “Better Day Plan” with the help of her children, and as simple as it sounds, there are good reasons behind each idea, and they really work!

This is a very practical podcast which will be a big help to parents of GAPS kids, or kids with anxiety or stress issues. Working on gut health makes a big difference for these kids, but for those first few months when the gut is still healing, you will also need other wats to help your child cope with the everyday stresses of life.

Jo and Nicole also discuss:

•  dealing with constipation problems in kids

You can read about Nicole’s “Better Day Plan” here: http://www.mummacare.com/blog/previous/3

And follow Nicole on Facebook at MummaCare! https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mumma-Care/405299626262430

The post AQJ 35 : Nicole Azzopardi – The “Better Day Plan” appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

Nicole Azzopardi is the author of ‘The Alchemy Cookbook’, where she shares simple, delicious, traditional recipes that fit so beautifully into the GAPS way of eating. In this episode, Jo and Nicole discuss the importance of bringing traditional foods back into everyday eating.

Nicole also shares the story of her family’s healing journey, starting with a low salicylate, additive free diet to help her daughter with severe food allergies, sleep issues, and autism symptoms. Her health improved, but Nicole asked herself, ‘Once you work out what foods are bothering you, are you stuck with avoiding those foods for the rest of your life?’ After much research, Nicole decided the answer was no!

Knowing that you’re reacting to different foods just highlights that there’s some work to be done with your digestion, and Nicole believes the GAPS diet can totally heal your gut so that you can bring many, if not all, of the problem foods back in over time.

The changes in Nicole’s family have been amazing, and as a busy mum, Nicole shares that it was much easier to work on changing the way they ate than to continue on dealing with the overwhelming allergies and health issues. Although it takes time and effort to change cooking and eating habits, it’s so worth it in the long run.

Nicole shares her recipes and tips online at Mumma Care, and can also be found on Facebook. She is passionate about helping mothers look after themselves so that they can better care for their families, and loves to help other mums get on track with healthy eating.

The post AQJ 34 : Nicole Azzopardi – Healing the Gut with Traditional Foods appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

This podcast is especially for those of you with GAPS questions that you need answered by a health professional, who has studied GAPS as well as other methods of healing. Shalani McCray, naturopathic nutritionist, medical herbalist and GAPS practitioner, joins Jo this week to answer your questions. Learn more about:

• how to decide if GAPS is right for you

Shalani shares that there is no magic formula, everyone is different, and each person needs to work out the healing diet that suits their body. GAPS may need to be done a little differently for different people, so if in doubt or needing help, please get in touch with an experienced GAPS practitioner.

Jo has invited Shalani to come back for another podcast as there are still more questions from readers that they didn’t have time to answer, so stay tuned for part two. If you’d like to send in some questions, please contact Jo via her blog or Facebook page, and they will be added to the list!

Visit Shalani’s Website here, Live Alive, as well as her Facebook page and Instagram. Shalani is based in Sydney, but is also available for Skype appointments.

The post AQJ 33 : GAPS Q & A with Shalani McCray – Naturopathic Nutritionist and GAPS Practitioner appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

This week’s story is absolutely fascinating – an amazing story of hope and healing, with Mary Kelly of ‘Good Mood Food’.

Anaphylactic to wheat, dairy, eggs, nuts, and sesame seeds, and allergic to just about everything else except white rice and corn, life was difficult for little Daniel. He survived on a hypoallergenic formula, but was not thriving at all – always sick, coughing, vomitting, underweight, and reacting to so many things in his environment. His mother, Mary, was so traumatised and exhausted by her son’s condition, that she suffered from debilitating depression. A visit to the allergist was followed by her spending days in bed trying to cope with the stress of the situation.

After much research, and grasping at the only hope that seemed left to her, Mary decided to try a very slow and careful version of the GAPS diet, to see if that could help their son. One drop at a time, they added broth to his formula… and the healing began.

Now, 2 years later, they have a different child. He’s no longer is allergic to everything – only tree nuts are left on his list of reactive foods, and it’s no longer an anaphylactic allergy. He’s a happy, healthy little boy, mum’s depression is gone, and the whole family have seen major changes in their health through this healing diet.

It sounds too good to be true, but listen in as this mum explains her years of researching ‘white papers’ and working out the best way to help her son and the reasons behind her decision to try GAPS – and the difference it has made in their lives.

Mary shares her story and her research, as well as her family’s favourite recipes, on her website, Good Mood Food.

Follow her inspiring posts on Facebook, and if you need some one-on-one coaching from someone who knows the science behind GAPS, and how to begin GAPS when your child can’t eat ‘anything’, contact Mary here.

The post AQJ 32 : Anaphylactic Allergies, FPIES, Post Natal Depression, Parasites, and Hope for Healing! appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

In this episode, Jo is joined by her foodie friend, Fouab Kassab, and they discuss how Jo’s family has benefitted so far from the GAPS diet, as well as Fouad’s experience with the Paleo diet. They share the many positive changes in their health through these healing diets, then approach the question, ‘What next?’

Should GAPS or the Paleo diet be something you stick to for the rest of your life? How long do you continue to eat this way before beginning to add some restricted foods back in? What would you add back, and when? What happens if you react to something you add back in? If you do begin reacting to foods, do you have to begin right back at the beginning again?

Fouad began the Paleo diet in 2011, and it changed his health dramatically. He now eats what he describes as a ‘high nutrition, low toxicity’ diet, which is close to Paleo but he prefers not to ‘label’ the way he eats. He’s much more flexible with the foods he eats now that his body has healed. He explains why he feels that you can’t expect a certain way of eating to always be exactly what your body needs, and how we have to stay aware of our body’s needs and change our diet to suit, as time goes on.

Fouad will be regular on “A Quirky Journey” now that he’s closed his pop up restaurant, Baraka. He has a great interest in the science behind healthy eating, and is a talented cook, writer and speaker. You can connect with Fouad on his blog, The Food Blog, and also on his Facebook page, Baraka.

The post AQJ 31 : Should GAPS or Paleo be a lifetime diet? appeared first on The Wellness Couch.

Essential oils can be a powerful tool in your ‘health and healing’ toolbox! They are more than just a lovely way to keep your house smelling nice – they can be used for first aid, for relaxation and reducing stress, for natural medicines and for non toxic cleaning products and pest deterrents.

In this episode, Samantha Bulloch of The Alchemist’s Tree, naturopath and aromatherapist, joins us to explain the basics of essential oils.

•  why she began using essential oils, and how she went about studying them

Jo and Sam also discuss where to buy good quality, pure essential oils from, but agree that this is very much a personal choice and there are many great brands out there to choose from.

Next week Sam will share some practical tips and answer specific questions asked by Jo’s readers, so stay tuned for part 2!

You can also join Jo’s Quirky Cooking Chat Group and read more detailed information about these topics in the ‘Files’ section of the group.

If you’d like visit Jo’s DoTERRA essential oils page, you can find it here.

The post AQJ 30 : Essential Oils 101 with Samantha Bulloch of The Alchemist’s Tree appeared first on The Wellness Couch.