Blog Posts and Articles

If you’ve followed us for a while – both our Healthful Elements content as well as our Essential Thyroid Cookbook updates – you may know that we don’t take the one-size-fits-all approach of the AIP (autoimmune protocol) diet for those with Hashimoto’s (or any autoimmunity).

I know, I know, this is downright blasphemous to some.

I never suggest going gangbusters with grains or legumes and I do walk my clients through a systematic approach for sleuthing out food sensitivities like nightshades, corn, nuts, etc.

Do they get the results they’re looking for? Yes, the vast majority of the time.

As I embarked on writing the (substantive) educational component of my Essential Thyroid Cookbook and as Lisa, my co-author, and I began to build the nutritional springboard that would ultimately determine the ingredients that we’d highlight in her recipes, I’m not going to lie – I thought, “We may be committing professional suicide here.”

By the time it’s published on September 19 of this year, we’ll have poured five years of our lives into this cookbook. What if all of this hard, hard work is for nothing? What if no one buys our cookbook because we’re not hard core Paleo/AIP proponents?

Still, we had to speak our truth.

And for me, that truth is based on years of walking clients through immune modulation, which ultimately helps with reversing autoimmunity. I’ve only suggested the full AIP diet for a handful of clients.

Just shy of a year ago, I wrote a blog post that was adapted from the chapter in our cookbook, Why This is Not Another Paleo or AIP Cookbook, so that people would know where we’re coming from sooner than later. You can find that post here.

It scared the crap out of me, but I thought, Well, if it’s going to be in the book, I may as well put it out there now for the world to see.

And we received a great deal of email support – people hitting “reply” after reading the newsletter associated with that post. No one said, “You’re an idiot. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re doing this community a disservice.”

Okay, so that was one hurdle conquered.

The next one was this – getting endorsements from the functional medicine community for this cookbook. You know, the words that go on the back of a book and on the one page in the interior.

The book was written. It’s not like Lisa and I were going to change any of the content.

And here’s what we wrote in our invitation to our endorsers:

You’ll see that this is not a Paleo or AIP cookbook. You can find our reasoning in the chapter, Why This is Not Another Paleo or AIP Cookbook.

Although we created a few recipes with grains and legumes (and other non-AIP compliant ingredients), we’ve attempted to make this cookbook as appealing and beneficial to as many people as possible by providing Paleo and AIP adaptations, when possible.

If you’re fundamentally opposed to our approach, you’ll in no way hurt our feelings. In order for our endorsements to be authentic, we want all potential endorsers knowing what they’re endorsing.

And again, I thought, what if they all laugh in our faces?

That didn’t happen.

Lisa and I created our A-list of preferred endorsers and we have a 79% success rate in getting supportive and enthusiastic words for our work and our “non-dogmatic” approach that respects that different people are on different paths, have different preferences, and are in different places in their healing journey.

And those 21% didn’t laugh at us – most were working on “multiple deadlines” (including their own books).

Endorsement or not, everyone has expressed support for this cookbook and for our approach. 

You’ll find the words of some of our biggest heroes printed in our cookbook. We owe a great deal of appreciation to: 

Dr. Aviva Romm (foreword), author of the groundbreaking Adrenal Thyroid Revolution 
Dr. Frank Lipman
Dr. Susan Blum, author of The Immune System Recovery Plan
Dr. Deanna Minich, PhD, creator of the groundbreaking Whole Detox
Dr. Michelle Robin
Dr. Greg Plotnikoff, author of Trust Your Gut
Dr. Richard Shames, author of Thyroid Power
Donna Jackson Nakazawa, award-winning science journalist and author of The Autoimmune Epidemic
Kathie Madonna Swift, MS, RDN
Maggie Ward, MS, RD, LDN at Dr. Mark Hyman’s Ultrawellness Center
Leigh Wagner, MS, RD
Andrea Nakayama, FNLP, MSN, CNC, CHHC
Heather Dube, Functional Nutritionist
Tom Malterre, MS, CN, author of The Elimination Diet
Michael Magliano, Chef
Melissa Joulwan, best-selling cookbook author and food blogger (and our guardian angel for the last few years)
Amie Valpone, Chef, best-selling cookbook author, and food blogger

Lisa and I are overflowing with gratitude.