I used to think eating healthy meant following a whole list of rules. No carbs after 6 pm. Drink this before that. Stick to 1,200 calories. Count every gram. And dessert? Only if it was made with dates and almond flour. I tried so many of these things, and while some seemed to work for a while, I mostly ended up feeling stressed and guilty about food. It got to the point where eating felt like something I could get wrong.

For most of my twenties, I went around in circles with this. Then life got busier. I had two energetic boys and was running a home baking business, and trying to keep up with all those food rules on top of everything else just wasn’t realistic. Instead of making me feel healthier, it left me feeling even more anxious about what I was eating.

When My Body Started Pushing Back

Then my health started to suffer, too. Living with trigeminal neuralgia, which causes sudden, intense jolts of facial pain, became harder to manage. At first, I didn’t think much about my lifestyle. I thought it might have something to do with pregnancy or simply the physical demands of being a mom. But the flare-ups became more frequent, and I was feeling more and more drained. I started wondering if I was overlooking something. I wanted to understand what was going on with my body, so I began looking at my diet, my daily habits and how I was taking care of myself.

I’d always heard that food was important for our health, but I don’t think I really understood what that meant beyond the usual advice to eat more vegetables and less junk food. As I learned more about nutrition, I started looking at food differently. I learned how much our overall diet matters, and how eating a variety of whole or minimally processed foods can help us get the nutrients our bodies need. I also began to understand that health is influenced by so much more than what’s on our plates, including sleep, stress and our everyday routines.

I couldn’t say that changing my diet would stop my trigeminal neuralgia, but it did change the way I thought about looking after myself. I became more curious about what my body needed and more aware of the habits I’d barely given a second thought to before.

Ditching the Rules

Eventually, I stopped worrying so much about whether I was allowed to eat something and started paying more attention to how I felt after eating it. Did I feel satisfied? Did I have energy, or did I feel sluggish? Did I actually enjoy the food, or was I eating it because someone had told me it was the healthier choice?

I also became more aware of how I ate. I used to rush through meals while thinking about everything else I needed to do. When I started slowing down and really tasting my food, I noticed when I was comfortably full instead of eating just because there was still food on my plate. It also took some of the pressure off. I wasn’t spending so much time thinking about what I should or shouldn’t be eating.

Over the years, I’ve also spent time learning about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which gave me another way to look at food and health. TCM considers things like the warming or cooling nature of foods and how they may affect the body’s overall balance. I found it interesting to learn about these ideas alongside modern nutrition. They approach health differently, but both encouraged me to look beyond calories and individual nutrients and think about the bigger picture.

I started to feel less tied to other people’s rules and more interested in understanding what worked for me.

Where I’m At Now

These days, it’s pretty simple. I eat what makes me feel good, I don’t stress about the rest, and I’ve let go of the guilt most of the time. Living with TN has meant learning what works for my body specifically, and that’s taken time. But I’m in a much better place than when I was obsessing over every meal. Real food, actual rest, and being a lot less hard on myself. That’s what it really comes down to.

If you’re tired of trying to follow every food rule out there, I understand. I’ve been there, and it’s exhausting. These days, I try to pay more attention to how I feel, enjoy the food I eat, and not turn every meal into a decision about whether I’m being healthy enough, and honestly, if a dessert tastes better made with regular flour and sugar, I’m going to enjoy it. Food can be nourishing and enjoyable at the same time. I wish I’d understood that a lot sooner.

Simply Salt & Soul

The Salt (The Science): When you’re stressed about food rules, your body can stay in a fight or flight state. That matters, because digestion doesn’t work as well when the body is under stress, and inflammatory signals tend to be higher. Something as simple as slowing down and taking a breath before a meal can help shift the body into a more relaxed state, which supports digestion and nutrient absorption. Less rules, more ease. It’s worth paying attention to.

The Soul (The Wellness): If you’ve spent years thinking about food as good or bad, that’s a hard habit to shake. What helped me was just loosening my grip on the whole thing. Some meals are there to support your body. Some are there for the memory, the connection, the enjoyment. Both matter. But giving yourself permission to eat something just because it brings you joy, without the guilt spiral after, is honestly one of the better things you can do for yourself. You shouldn’t feel bad about it, you’re just eating like a normal person.