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I am afraid to make this video because I've never been this vulnerable before. But this is a story that you need to hear. So. 20 years ago, I was a food addict. Every single day, I would wake up swearing I would not overeat that day. And then I would end the day literally stuffing my face with every kind of junk food I could find. But now, at 46, I am the healthiest I I've ever been. And if you have ever had that compulsion to eat where you see this food, you know you shouldn't eat, but suddenly you just want it so badly. I can totally relate. But the garden, it changed everything for me. And I'm not just talking about planting some seeds in the backyard. I'm talking about twists and turns and surprises and the garden kind of showing up in my life and showing me a way out. Today I want to tell you the story of how the garden changed my life. From the ages of 16 to 26, I woke up literally every single day completely obsessed with two things, my body and food. I would lay in bed and vow to myself, today is the day I'm not going to overeat. I would make this big goal, this big plan that that would be the first day when everything would change. But yet, by the end of the day, I would find myself lamenting because I had not, in fact, controlled my eating. All I took was one bite of Frosted Flakes or a handful of pretzels, and suddenly I would look up and realize I'd eaten two or three bowls or an entire bag. I would end every day feeling depressed, overwhelmed, frustrated because I had done it again and failed myself. Making my body feel terrible and eating food I knew wasn't good for me. I. I wasn't sure this was ever going to get any better. Pictures of me during this time show my weight going up and down and up and down again. Because I would go from eating everything to nothing at all. But my emotions, they were always down. But I was high functioning. I was trying to do all the things. I was valedictorian of my high school. I was president of my college. But on the inside, I felt tormented. But everything started to change when I headed to live overseas right after I graduated from college. So right after college, I moved to a small town in southwestern China. I studied Mandarin at a local teachers college and spent a ton of time in the surrounding mountainous villages. There's a saying about the province where I lived. Not three miles without a mountain, not three days without rain, and not three pennies in a pocket I went there thinking I was going to help them, but on the inside, I was a complete mess. I was suffering from food addiction and had a major problem with being a people pleaser. You culture shock is not even a strong enough word to describe what I was feeling. I went from being top of my class and respected by my peers in college to suddenly being the fat foreigner with the big nose. Not only could I not speak the language, I literally couldn't do anything for myself in this new culture. I couldn't even call to order water for my apartment. With my fancy accounting degree, I was suddenly very aware of how helpless I was and how resourceful these people that I had come to help were. Every single morning. These people were up at the crack of dawn, and all the tasks that they were doing in their everyday lives were keeping them strong and fit and healthy. One of the first things I learned to say was, ni tri nali. Now, don't criticize my Mandarin, okay? But the answer was always tri mai thai, which is, I'm going to buy vegetables. Because that's exactly what every single person was going to do every afternoon. Get fresh vegetables. Fresh. The market right down the street. So while I struggled with culture shock, my stomach was actually on a different path. I had never eaten food like this, Food that was just picked, that was in season, that was locally grown. I was literally healing from the inside out. Before I knew it, I was adopting their practices. I was up before dawn, taking long walks in the morning, going a couple extra steps to get the best vegetable possible for dinner that night, without even knowing it. This different culture was changing my life for the better. But the real challenge was still ahead of me when I had to head back home to the US When I got back to the States, I just went back to my old way of living. I was eating mostly processed foods and driving instead of walking. I was sleeping in instead of heading out when the sun came up. Within a few weeks, I woke up with the most intense pain because I hadn't pooped in, like, a week. It took me years to figure out how to mimic what I had seen in China. Here in America, those people were agrarian. I was suburban. But. But when my family started our first Garden Back in 2011, I was suddenly taken back to those early years when I was overseas. I was outside, naturally, every single morning. I was bending and kneeling and carrying and picking. And in the afternoons, if you asked me where I was going, I would say I was going to get vegetables. But this time, they were right outside in my backyard. Once I gardened for a few seasons. I figured out this one concept that, that I have locked in on for the last 20 years, and it's called fill up on the good stuff. So something that tortured me during my years of food addiction were the words like don't or can't or with moderation. Because all these foods that I love so much, they were too sweet and delicious to eat just a little bit of them. So after thousands of days of failed diets, I finally had the realization that diets and restriction were never going to work for me. What I needed was to feel completely free when it came it came to eating. And the only way I knew how to do that was to consume a ton of good stuff. So the idea is to get as full as possible on really good food so that all those other really tempting foods are a lot less tempting because there's just not much room left. One example of this is drinking a garden smoothie every single morning. I created a habit of taking a walk, going outside, and then coming through the garden on my way inside. I would grab a few greens like kale and parsley, parsley and Swiss chard, and then go make a green smoothie that I would guzzle down as fast as I could before I could put anything else in my mouth. Suddenly, I was full of delicious and nutritious food, and there wasn't much room for anything else. Filling up on the good stuff actually made me feel good. I was full, I was satisfied, and I had zero regret about what I had just consumed. This was the unlock for me to take the garden to into the kitchen, get as full as possible and not worry about all the rest of that stuff. So I've taken the concept of fill up on the good stuff and turned it into 10 really weird hacks that I do almost every day. And you should try them out because they're pretty cool. Number one. This is so embarrassing, but you gotta poop a lot. Every single morning, I wake up early enough so that no one interrupts me and I can clean my system out. I am obsessed, obsessed with pooping. In fact, I made a whole video about it. If you haven't watched it, My kids are like, oh, my gosh, mom, please stop talking about poop so much. But literally, it is the best feeling to wake up and clean your system of everything that was in there yesterday. The next hack is to brush my teeth early in the evening as soon as I'm done with dinner. I learned this from living with my friends in China. They would not eat breakfast until like 10 or 11 in the morning because it took that long to fix everything. And then they'd finish dinner by like 5pm and then the lights were out. There was no electricity in these villages, was nothing to eat. They turned off the lights and went to bed. So I may not be going to bed at 6pm But I can brush my teeth at 6 so that my stomach gets a chance to rest until the next morning. Don't focus on working out as much as living out. All of us are obsessed with going to the gym. We feel like we aren't doing a good job if we're not at the gym, lifting weights and doing lots of cardio. I do love going to the gym, but what I try to do is just make a practice of living out throughout the day, having little moments throughout the day where I stand up, move and stretch my body just like my friends taught me overseas. Next, I eat sunshine. Oh my goodness. Most of the reason why we feel bad and want to eat stuff that just isn't good for us is because we don't have energy. And energy, y', all, it comes from the sun. Even though there's none shining on me right now. But I try to get out in the sun as often as possible. If you were to follow me around my house, you would watch me chasing the sun coming in from the windows and always trying to have sun on my body. Sun makes me feel good and keeps me from wanting all that stuff that isn't good for me. Don't go inside yet. This is one of my favorite hacks. Not just for staying healthy, but also for taking care of my garden. Anytime you're outside during the day, when you come back to your house, don't go inside yet. You can go inside, but don't do it just yet. Make a little trip through the garden and see all the things that are growing. Look at the green. Take a deep breath. Being exposed to nature and to plants and to hear the birds and see the bees, it calms you down. It's going to make you feel better and less like you've got to run inside. Open the pantry and eat something. Next, listen to your body. If you're tired, don't go to eat. Lay down. If you're feeling frustrated or angry, get outside and run a little bit or grab a pillow and yell into it. Try to listen to your body for what it actually needs rather than assuming it needs a snack. Next up is focusing on fiber. All those years when I was obsessed, obsessed with not eating food, I was lacking so Much fiber. Everything I ate was ultra processed, which mean it didn't fill me up or keep me satisfied. Now I focus on eating as much fibrous food as possible. I love having kale and celery and carrots and chia seeds are my favorite. Every time I eat, I try to make sure I've got some fiber in the snack or the meal or the dessert so that I feel as satisfied as possible. And. And I keep those things moving, you know, for the pooping. Next up is fermented foods. I don't know why, but I just can't stop talking about pooping. And fermented foods are part of the deal. So sauerkraut, kombucha, sourdough, and yogurt. I don't take a probiotic. I eat probiotics. I try to have fermented foods at least once, twice, maybe even three times a day. It keeps my gut healthy. It makes me feel light and clean, and it also fills me up. Next up is walking. You do not have to work out and kill yourself at the gym. You can just go outside and walk a little bit. I try to walk as close to sunrise as possible, and then I try to take another walk as close to sunset as possible. Now, I am a mom of four teenagers, so that sunset walk sometimes is before or after, depending on the schedule of the day. But the sunrise walk, that's the one I can almost always make happen. And I've got two dogs that kind of force the issue when I'm not feeling it. I'm sure a dietitian is going to come at me for this one, but I eat an apple every time I crave sugar. Salt is really not that big of a temptation for me, but sugar definitely is. And as I go through my day, running from here to there, working, being in the garden, making videos, hanging out with my kids, I have these moments where I suddenly just want something really, really sweet. So I keep about two dozen apples on hand every single day. Now, when I start to crave some sugar, I just grab an apple as I go and just eat it as fast as possible. And getting that apple into my body when I'm craving a sweet thing doesn't mean I can't eat the sweet thing. It just means by the time I have time to eat the sweet thing, I've got a lot less room inside and I crave it a lot less. Listen, this is not about having a perfect body. It's not about being skinny. It's not about looking any certain way. This is about how you feel. This is about having the amount of energy you need each and every day to do the things you're called and you want to do. Having a garden in my backyard was the biggest unlock for me, taught me the magic of filling up on the good stuff, of living in sync with nature. It's not a fad, it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle. And it's something that has completely changed my life. So that's the story. That's the story of why I am so obsessed with the garden, because it literally saved my life. I was telling my team how sad it makes me to think about all those years that I wasted being obsessed with the totally wrong thing when there was a better way waiting right outside my back door. Honestly, this is why I do what I do. It's why I'm obsessed with teaching you how to garden. Because I'm sure that there's got to be more people out there like me who wake up and want a way out of our food system, but just don't know how. Because you don't have to move across the world to find this way of life. You can simply walk out your back door, plant a couple of seeds, and start every single day to fill up on the good stuff. If you've made it to the end of this video, I double dog dare you to tell me in the comments how many times I mentioned the word poop. I'm gonna have to add it up with my team after we're done here. I love talking about this because it really has changed my life and I hope you enjoyed this new style of video. If you did, tell me what you think about it in the comments and subscribe so that you can see more videos like this in the future. I am so thankful for you being here with me and I wouldn't be here without you. I know that you've got your own special story, your own place where you are in your own life, and I'm just here to tell you it matters. Thanks for being here. We've got all kinds of resources to help you start gardening and filling up on the good stuff right below this video. So don't leave before you check those out and I'll see you next time. Bye. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. You can keep listening, listening anywhere. You love getting your podcast delivered on Apple podcasts, on Spotify, iHeartRadio, you name it, we are there for you. And if you want to read the notes and get our free resources to help you grow more. You can go to gardenary.com podcast.