Who is Sarah?
From early on in childhood, I struggled with digestive problems, ongoing skin problems such as excema and mystery rashes, and hayfever. As I entered into my teens, these seemed to only get worse and when I was a senior in high school, I would often have very extreme stomach aches after eating.
After high school I was tested for food allergies and wheat, dairy, and rye came up as the culprits. I cut these foods out of my diet and I felt like a new person! However, during the next ten plus years of my life, I struggled to stick to a life free of these foods. I convinced myself (and others) that I could eat them in “moderation.”
This led to continued problems with my digestion and skin as well as depression (I didn’t know my food allergies were contributing to my mood) and weight gain. At certain points in my life, I was at least thirty pounds overweight.
One positive outcome of my diet restrictions is that I started to cook and experiment with different foods for my diet. Creating new recipes, like creating new works of art, is one of my passions in life. This blossomed into a career I never imagined when I began cooking for people with special diets at a healing and spiritual retreat in Warfordsburg, PA about in 2005.
From there, people requested my food so much that I began my own personal chef business in 2006. Even though not all of my clients have allergy restrictions, I usually prepare foods free of dairy and gluten anyway. The great news is my clients don’t notice; they love the food and they love how the food makes their bodies feel.
It wasn’t until about the beginning of 2008 that I was able to stick completely to my diet free of dairy, gluten, soy and artificial foods. This all came about with the birth of my son who was a colicky baby. When I ate certain foods (particularly dairy), he would be in digestive and emotional distress. I finally decided to just bite the bullet and start following my diet completely!
Thanksgiving 09
My son became much happier and so did I! It was also during this time that I discovered the connection between my depression and my food allergies.
However my journey with my health continued and during the summer of 2009, I started eating coconut oil regularly. You can read about how this impacted me here.
A few months later, I found the GAPS diet through a client asking me to do menu planning for the Full GAPS diet. It seemed like the perfect thing to help me with lingering physical, emotional and mental problems such as poor memory, continued emotional highs and lows, candida overgrowth, skin rashes, inappropriate frustration and anger, and sleep issues. So I eased myself into the grain, sugar and starch free diet and am still following it today. So far, it is helping me tremendously with all the issues I mentioned.
The picture of my son and I was taken on Thanksgiving, a couple months after being on the GAPS diet.
You can read more about my healing journey here if you’d like.
The reason why I have built my website and created the menu planners is because I love to cook and I know how hard it is to commit to an allergy-free diet. I love to create new dishes and when I am missing an ingredient, it’s like a new challenge to figure out what to replace it with. Being an artist in the kitchen on a day-to-day basis and using wonderful vegetables, fruits and herbs as beautiful “paints” to prepare food continually inspires me.
By the way, I’m also an artist and you can find my paintings at www.soulseedart.com. I haven’t painted very much since the birth of my son but I am slowly getting back into it.
I’d love to hear from you. If you have any questions or would just like to share your own experience of living with allergies, I’d love to hear about it. Click here to contact me.
