31 years of not eating meat, undone by one cookbook


Hi Reader,

After my thyroid was removed, I was handed a prescription and sent home.

No advice. No conversation about food. No one telling me what came next. Just a box of tablets and a leaflet.

I'd been vegetarian since I was 16. My husband had been vegetarian since before we even met. So when my body started struggling, I did what I'd always been told was right. I doubled down. More plants. Less meat. I thought I was doing everything correctly.

Instead, I got worse.

I remember a kind of exhausted that sleep didn't fix. Weak in a way I couldn't really explain to anyone. I was properly scared. Not dramatic about it, just quietly frightened, because I didn't know where any of it was heading.

One day, sitting with all of that, I had a strange thought. This isn't working. What if we tried the complete opposite of everything I'd been told?

My mind went straight to my grandma, Florrie. She was a strong, capable woman who kept her family fed all the way through rationing in the war. Her cooking was simple and unapologetic. Meat, butter, eggs, all the things I'd spent thirty years avoiding.

I found her old cookbook, battered and held together with tape. And for the first time since my husband and I had met, we went out and bought a chicken!.

We stood in the kitchen with absolutely no idea what to do with it. We ended up watching YouTube videos just to work out how to roast the thing properly. I still laugh thinking about it now.

Then we ate it...

Something happened almost straight away.

My body seemed to want it. I

t felt like something had been missing for a long, long time.

Then more meat followed. Slowly, gradually, I started to feel stronger.
A little more like myself again.

That one chicken turned out to be the start of everything. It's the whole reason I now talk about what I jokingly call nourishment maxxing. Two x's, like the trendy influencer kids do it these days.

Underneath the joke, it's a serious point. Real food. Real nourishment. Cooking from scratch with proper ingredients, so your body actually gets what it needs. I believe this matters more than almost anything else, whatever medication you're on or whatever your results say.

I've popped a few photos below. Florrie holding me as a baby. Florrie and my granddad Percy on their wedding day.

And that same battered old cookbook that changed the direction of my health. ❤️

Has anything ever made you go completely against everything you'd been told?

I'd love to know...

P.S. If food feels like the overwhelming part, I get it. That's exactly why we built the 7 Days of Hashimoto's Meal Ideas guide. Simple meals, real food, no complicated plans to follow. It's yours instantly with the 7-day free trial inside the Hypothyroid Recovery Hub: https://www.skool.com/hypothyroid/about

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