Food Saved Me with Danielle Walker

hey everybody what's up it's chase welcome to another episode of the chase jarvis live show here on creative live you know this show i sit down with amazing humans unpack their brain and share it with you in this amazing format where we get to hear long form conversational uh genius at work with the world's top creators entrepreneurs and thought leaders and today's guest is danielle walker someone i've been trying to get on the show for a while she's very busy because all she does is write new york times best-selling books and spread amazing knowledge about food now uh food obviously is required for human life and i like to enjoy food at the same time i want to be more mindful of what i put in my body so a number of years ago i started paying close attention to that and one of the people's work that i stumbled on lo and behold was danielle's she had written a number of cookbooks one that i loved called eat what you love and this talked about both the positive benefits of eating intelligently such that you can maximize performance but it was also a realists view of this stuff like hey you can still have things that um that taste good and are made of good things not the off the store or not off the shelf you know junk food so to speak and acknowledging at the same time that we're all human well she danielle walker has a new book and it's called food saved me this is a little bit more of a memoir around finding health and hope when you have in her case she had an autoimmune disease so for over a decade danielle has been a pioneer in leading the movement to eat healthy food that also tastes great that is free of the things that are bad for us and doubling down on those things that are good for us i have found a lot of wisdom from her and i know you will too this conversation is awesome enjoy it i'm gonna get out of the way yours truly in conversation with danielle walker [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] danielle thank you so much for being on the show i'm really happy to have you and uh congrats on the new book and all you have achieved thank you for being here thank you so much for having me i love your work uh i was chatting up before we went uh we pressed record here and was sharing that my wife kate and i have been longtime fans which is where i first was acquainted with your work through cookbooks and yeah you make we make a lot of stuff out of your book uh eat what you love everyday comfort foods and i'm wondering for the handful of people before we dive into who you are what you're about your your uh your passions and specifically the book give us a little bit of an overview uh maybe a couple of dots of of historic context and then what it is you're focused on in case people are not familiar with your work sure yeah so eou love is my fourth cookbook and it's actually my favorite because it's all comfort foods that are done in a healthier light and i think that if you're flipping through there i feel like it brings a lot of hope that you can still really enjoy the food that you love but in a healthier fashion that's actually healing for your body and that's kind of where my mission began i was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease when i was 22 and the medications and everything else were just making everything worse and i finally after a long time figured out that food could really make a massive impact on my day-to-day symptoms and so i started out as a food blogger um and since then have written three new york times best-selling cookbooks and it's really it's my mission in life is just to make food that still looks and tastes and feels appetizing um but that isn't detrimental to our bodies and there's over 50 million people with autoimmune diseases so it's not just not just for me it's for for everybody out there that's suffering that that wants to still be able to enjoy food and all of the nostalgia and traditions that are tied to it food is clearly uh critical to human life and at what point in you know your work or research or it was there some tipping point where you realized that you know not only does his food sort of necessit is not is it a necessity but it has and it's also not just something to steer clear of bad things but they're also very very proactive health nutritional it's almost like insurance if you're eating well and taking care of yourself and that that that can have an effect on so many more attributes and aspects of your life at what point did you recognize that this was the case and my experience going to so many western doctors is there's no conversations about food and so i'm curious where in your journey did you say hey man this is actually proactive and we can you know build a healthy healthy body a healthy ecosystem by putting good things in it yeah gosh it's hard to exactly pinpoint it um all of my doctors said that food wouldn't make a difference and it took me being in a hospital in uganda of all places the story is in food saved me in the new book um and actually of the doctor that was there he was from london but he had lived in uganda for years and he was the first one to ever talk to me about gut bacteria which i had no understanding of even now being newly diagnosed with a digestive disease uh and really just about how how what we eat how what we do just our lifestyle can affect that microbiome and so that was really i think the first point where i was like oh wow this is all internal there is something happening in there you know i mean i think i maybe like heard that yogurt had some probiotics but we're like talking like the sugary stuff in the store that might have had like one strain and probably didn't do a whole lot um and so that was really like the first point and then after that being online and just finding other people who had tested out different ways of eating um and reading their personal stories because while the doctors i trusted because they had studied a lot they didn't study nutrition and they also didn't actually have any experience with having the disease personally and so as i started finding people with similar ailments that had found healing with food i believed them because i'm like you actually know what is happening in your body you can pinpoint this you've seen yourself you know get into remission or have your symptoms lessened and so that was kind of the biggest turning point for me when i was like i need to try this and see if this works for me i'm i'm in your book right now again she mentioned it in case you missed it uh food saved me it's a memoir again i'm very familiar with your work from cookbooks but uh the subtitle is my journey of finding health and hope through the power of food and i've also seen the photographs of you lying on that looks like a a piece of wood i mean it was a piece of wood you see some wood in uganda and um there's another sort of uh some lore about you recognizing this and turning your kitchen at home into somewhat of a laboratory to experiment and right now i'm sure there are thousands of people who are listening or watching this show maybe they're on a treadmill or commuting to work or whatever and this the idea of turning their kitchen into a laboratory sounds overwhelming most people you know they want a quick and easy fix so at the risk of you know oversimplifying your life's work around food and and that you you know diagnosing and then treating yourself just give the folks at home some simple guidelines and you know based on your experience and the work in in the lab yeah yeah well so first of all if it sounds intimidating or daunting to turn your kitchen into a laboratory that's why i've written all my books because it was not an easy process i did not go to culinary school but i knew that it was necessary because i couldn't eat like grilled chicken and steamed broccoli for the rest of my life and i feel like anybody that's ever either had to change anything about the way they eat you know had a food allergy tried a certain way of eating for you know 30 days whatever it is it is intimidating because everything that you know and love feels like it's going to be lost and there's a story like an opening story about thanksgiving in this book and just that feeling of like i'm never going to be able to enjoy the foods that i loved again um and so i really the message of the book is listening to your body so what i ended up having to do was cut grains dairy legumes refined sugar and anything processed right but some people can tolerate some dairy or some people you know might be able to tolerate soaked legumes and so it's starting out at that point i give some guides in the back about just here's what to start with you know give this 30 days kind of an elimination diet here's some grocery lists here's things to just get you started that make it really simple but then really really focusing on what your your individual body is telling you and then you can kind of hone it in from there but yeah and uh that's that's it in a nutshell and it's it's about five years of of going through every single hoop possible to try to figure out what worked for me and and then realizing after i started blogging that it wasn't just for me it was you know for like i said just millions of people i've received hundreds of thousands of messages over the years from everything from joint pain to rheumatoid arthritis to ms you know just this massive array of different ailments different autoimmune diseases chronic illness that that people found this way and the way that i was eating in my recipes could help what what's the reason what's the cause of the food that's in our universe ultimately being bad for us i mean let's look back you know hundreds of thousands of years we've been eating you know meat whether it's raw or cooked and stuff out of the ground and stuff on the bushes for a long time and why is food such a um a culprit in today's diet yeah i think that the food that we eat now is not at all what it used to be like back back in the day um and i'm not a scientist i am not a doctor i have just learned so much over the years and so i really tried to lay out kind of i what i think are the different culprits in this book in as much of layman's terms as i can because that's the way i needed to understand it when i was in the height of you know my disease and trying to figure things out i think i think not only is everything really processed i think the gut microbiome is completely off especially in the united states and everything in my opinion and from everything that i've read leads back to the gut um which then also brings in inflammation it brings in your immune response to things so there's a lot of different things but really you know i mean gosh our the majority of our immune system is housed in our gut inflammation can start in our gut so if things are not working well in there which leads back to the food that we're consuming then everything can go haywire so i think i think there's a lot of different reasons but i think inherently the way that i eat is is anti-inflammatory you're cutting a lot of those things that can cause inflammation in your body and the majority of illnesses or even just daily aches and pains stem from inflammation so starting with your diet you know and cleaning that up to get it to be inflammation or less less inflammation friendly i should say is just it's it's like the first step and what's i mean i think a lot of people who are listening here they're you know our watchers and listeners they're here because they want if not peak performance there as a desire and endeavor to do better to live a richer healthier life to pursue your dreams and obviously you know sickness gets in the way of that but this term inflammation gets thrown around so sort of casually and if you're not in the business as you are or if you haven't read your books like i have i'm aware of this and passionate about food but for someone who's listening and not like okay inflammation sounds good when i roll my ankle and if it's inflamed i know that's bad i can take some advil and the swelling goes down but talk about inflammation in the body how it gets there why it's bad and why the foods that you're suggesting and that you have researched in your experience are antithetical to this you know horrible thing inflammation yeah i mean gosh that's that's going to be a question that i'm like i might need to go look that i need to go get a definition for that again i'm like i'm a cookbook author um no i mean but that's what i love about your work is it's it puts things in lay person's terms and in like i don't need to know the cellular root cause of inflammation but right right why is inflammation you know bad and and why are the foods that you're prescribing you know how do they not inflame you like you know some low-grade uh rice-a-roni or something yeah i mean i think like i've learned mostly for for my disease for autoimmune diseases specifically but when you're when there is inflammation in your body your body is trained to go and try to fight that off like that's that's what it does that's why the bodies are pretty miraculous and so it wants to try to heal those things and if it's just this long-term you know chronic inflammation which is what i had especially in my colon you know causing that to be inflamed all the time is then what set my autoimmune disease off which is essentially in a very like easy way to explain it it's your body is attacking an otherwise healthy organ and that can be different you know depending on what you have psoriasis it can attack your skin you know different different things your joints for rheumatoid arthritis for mine it was attacking my colon and and the inflammation in there was causing the body to kind of react in that way um and so and then also just with with ulcerative colitis having inflammation in there is what causes the pain and all of that um and so getting that down by reducing things like refined seed oils and sugars and the things that that cause that to spike uh is what has been essential for me to find the health and just the reduction of symptoms so reduction of symptoms i like that you i think i like that you couched your answer in the reduction of symptoms but we also are talking the goal is health here right so you're reducing symptoms and then how by reducing symptoms like on how do we get to health because i think people who are watching listening that's what they want i want to eat in a way that promotes health not just not being sick but actually can make me stronger healthier make my life you know more vitality yeah sure yeah i focus on a few things i think again going back to that but that gut microbiome also things like bone broth that are helping to strengthen the gut which again like just even if you don't have an autoimmune disease that's in the gut like i do so much stems from there and so in general keeping that healthy you know i mean it can reduce like i said our immune system is housed there right so we have better capability to fight off just general like infections and run-of-the-mill colds and flus and i think you know those things are so important just in our day-to-day i mean like you said if we have a sprained ankle or we have a headache or we have some pain after we work out and we take an advil that that puts a band-aid on it and it can get it to you know go away for that day but what's the root cause of it and i think that's what i try to focus on and i work with a functional medicine doctor to help me figure that out again i'm like this is so beyond my pay grade but i'm trying to understand it in the best way that i can but for me it's it's trying to fix those problems internally and food has been has one of is one of the biggest things i actually talk a lot in the book about how lifestyle in general is so important exercise taking care of your mental health sleep rest you know all of those things reducing your stress those can all help you know internally um but but yeah i think there's also side effects of taking things like an advil right like it actually can increase gut permeability so that we're going all that we're going back to that kind of it's like everything to me circles back to to your gut health and so while you can take things to make the pain or the inflammation go away it could actually have long-term side effects that then could cause you know more health things so it's eating in a way that reduces all of that is preventative you know like you've said it's it's not just about controlling like the symptoms as they come it's about the long-term effects that it can have on your health yeah this this i'm fascinated by the fact that we here in the western world in it's august of 2021 when we're recording this that there is still a debate around so much of the the things that we receive from the doctor's office i'm just gonna go to steroid because you talk about it in the book and if there's anybody out there who's been on on a steroid um steroid has this miracular miraculous effect of making you feel better on a very short time window and you know simultaneously i've had people in my life almost die because they were misdiagnosed and it dramatically accelerated the thing that they had unbeknownst to the and i don't want to throw western medicine under the bus because there's a lot of things that it does well but the quick fix and for those people who are watching right now and you've received this or you've received steroids and haven't thought twice about it the quick fix is often sort of a the beginning stages of the cycle of a downward spiral and um you talked about that i think you know when you were originally diagnosed and you got on a steroid there was a moment of feeling great and then you talked about the side effects you know um i think you talked about uh insomnia was one of your main side effects if i'm remembering correctly from the book and and yet we then often don't attribute that to the medicine that we're taking so are you an advocate of avoiding western doctors are you an advocate like help help reconcile this fast-paced world where we need to you know get a pill to fix things and this long-term you know sustainable let's put good things in our body and over time good things are going to result help help us reconcile those things yeah am i an advocate of avoiding western medicine absolutely not am am i an advocate of being an advocate for yourself whether you're using western western eastern natural whatever you when any of those yes i i do think you know and i've had i talk extensively about all the different doctors that i've had and prednisone steroids was the first prescription that they would just write you know without really asking any questions without telling you what the side effects would be and it took me years of being on it first then avoiding it for years and years before i ever asked like is there anything else you know and pushing and pushing and pushing about what i could do and so western medicine has saved my life multiple times i had c-sections with my children i might not have made it through them i had a really bad flare-up that i catalog in the book my first time being hospitalized with this disease for a decade in 2019 and medication and being in the hospital saved my life at that point so i am not opposed to it but i am 100 an advocate for asking questions and trying to do your own research and challenging your doctors um and really advocating for what you know is best because yeah so the prednisone specifically i was on 100 milligrams at one point which a lot of people for inflammatory yeah that's usually what people's eyes do when i tell them that um usually what people do for for you know inflammation low-lying inflammation doctors will prescribe five 10 milligrams you know something around that and so 100 gave me every single side effect in the book i still have long lasting vision problems from being on it i still have long lasting joint problems for being on it um i also have problems with my metabolism from being on prednisone all things that and i've been off of it now for a year and a half was it was the first time i had to take it in over a decade and i took it in the hospital and then weaned off of it and i'm still dealing with the long-term side effects of it so you know i think it's really important to understand everything that you're taking understand the long-term potential side effects the long-term potential benefits but that's not really something that you're gonna get from most doctors you know that's not the way that they've been trained to deal with patients they also see a ton of patients um they also are trying to move a lot of people through to to get more people in the door and so i think you really have to learn to do your own research to you know to read about all the things and then way way out your your personal cost-benefit analysis of those things so this i'm just going to keep pulling on this thread because i'm again as i mentioned a moment ago i just i'm so in awe that we have done so many things well in the modern western world and how food seems to be this thing that you know simultaneously is mostly ubiquitous in a western world and there's still so much complexity when it's i mean you just say the words and it sounds so obvious if you eat things that are good for you then you will feel better than if you eat things that are bad for you and i believe that most people certainly the people who are listening to the show can in some way identify that an apple is better than an oreo that a you know a chicken breast and steamed broccoli is better than uh you know a um baloney from 7-eleven so right so help i guess you know give us some context of you know how we don't have to you know cook all of our meals from your cookbook as inspiring and tasty as hell as they are and and like where did this where did this was it just an education process for you on how to know what things were good for us in general or do you believe that there's an awareness of you can that in pop culture that you can actually eat reasonably healthy and get so many of the benefits like help us navigate the day-to-day because people have kids and jobs and you know busy lives and and sure we might you know cut a corner now and then you know i i just i had swedish fish last night when i watched the movie swedish fish and popcorn but i can tell you it tasted crazy to me because i don't eat that stuff normally so yeah you know where do we develop our radar and how do we know what's good for us what are sources that we can trust besides obviously your books are legendary but just orient the common human who's listening and make them feel okay about the choices that they're making and how to make better ones yeah i think it starts with reframing your mindset and your priorities you know i mean you mentioned being busy our our culture specifically in this country is to just keep ourselves so busy and cooking and sitting around the table with your family and enjoying a meal and you know prioritizing actually making something from real foods went to the wayside a long time ago um and so i i purposely named the book food saved me because i want to focus on the benefits right like i think so much in our culture is villainizing the food and going on a 30-day diet and you know thinking about all the things that are bad for us and that aren't you know that are detrimental or make yeah just making making food the bad guy and i learned over the years that it's actually saving me it's healing me it's bringing back you know sitting around with my kids and my husband around a table and that that need for community and connecting and food to me has always been that it's been the center of family time of you know meeting meeting new people having really difficult conversations having great conversations and so i feel like there's so much that goes into that but i think the first step is is framing food in a positive light that it that it can bring so much to our to our daily and just every everyday life right like from not only the internal like we're talking about but just that that aspect it can be great for our mental health it can you know i mean it's good for for relationships so i think once you realize that it can be healing and that it can be so beneficial in so many facets of your life then you start to realize that it should be a priority and i think i saw that more than ever in 2020 when we didn't have to be running to sports and we didn't have to be commuting to work we didn't you know have a billion things happening in our day we saw more people than ever in their kitchens experimenting with food cooking things because they finally felt like they had the time and i think people want to do it and they they appreciate it but they don't they don't set time out for it it's like the last the last priority and that's why convenience foods and that's why drive-throughs and that's why frozen foods you know have become so popular so i feel like that's the first step the second step you know is to starting out easy i think it can be really intimidating especially if you're if you are really busy and you don't have a lot of time but thankfully you know since i started eating this way in 20 2010 2009 there was hardly anything on the market i mean you if you wanted to make yourself a meal with the way that i needed to eat i had to go and get every single single ingredient you know it wasn't there weren't any pre-packaged things and now you don't have to make your ketchup from scratch you don't have to make your you know like ranch dressing your beef jerky all of your spices like you can actually go to the store and find healthier versions of the things that you used to love so i would say starting there and utilizing some of those great brands that have convenience items is a huge just good first step to make it feel a little less intimidating um but and then also you know starting out a few days a week but in terms of voices to listen to that i think lay it out really well there's two specific doctors dr mark hyman and then dr frank lippman those are two that i feel like do it well that that give you the information that you need that have very similar you know beliefs to the way that i eat but they also kind of give you the why behind it because some people are different like when i was really sick i didn't want to know the why i didn't want to research it i didn't i just couldn't deal with it just give me the list yeah and i think you know it for people who are chronically ill or people who are really busy that's just something they can't they don't they don't need to understand or want to know at that point they're just like give me the bullet points let me just get just get me started right so i think it depends on what you're looking for i think if you need to figure it out and understand the why first before you're ready to buy in then those are two really great great great resources to listen to yeah mark hyman's awesome he also talks about food as medicine he's got a handful of books if you're not familiar with him and his work thank you for recommending that now one of the things that i love about talking very transparently about food as you have in your newest book which we are today celebrating food saved me my journey of finding health and hope to the power of food is the emotional and sort of spiritual dialogue that we have with ourselves i like to say that the most important words in the world are the ones that we say to ourselves and i have recently come through a period where someone very close to me was ill with autoimmune disease and it seemed like there was a psychology around this that was very difficult to manage and watching and observing and trying to help where possible that when you don't feel good it's very difficult to take you know helping yourself seriously and then if you don't help yourself and you're oh well i'm still gonna eat i'm just gonna have one sandwich a day and the bread and that sandwich is from a low quality source and you know there's this cycle and i'm wondering if you can talk about the psychological the emotional and spiritual dialogue that you had to have with yourself and then well and then i'd like to explore you know how you noticed that the food you were putting in to your body actually helped break that cycle or would you i mean i know from the book that you do attribute that to helping break the cycle because there's a bunch of stuff with gut health but yeah talk to me about that sphere because you write so eloquently in the book about it and i think that is a part where people don't even often know that why they're don't feel aware than happy that it's a part of what they're eating and how that cycle fuels itself yeah gosh yeah it's a cycle that is i feel like never ending i mean i definitely think i'm i'm in a much better place than i was but yes i talk a lot about at the beginning not only grieving the fact that you've been diagnosed with this disease that's incurable which autoimmune diseases i think all of them that i know of do not actually have a cure um and so you're dealing with that the mental effects of that and this ideal that you had for your life you know completely now changing and trying to figure out what that's going to look like moving forward i mean again i was 22 my my husband and i had been married for like two months when i got diagnosed so my whole life that i had laid out while we were engaged and all the thoughts that i had about my career and my you know future family and what life would look like you know all of a sudden was gone and i had to re figure out what that was going to look like with having a disease um and then when i figured out that food could help there was a whole second grieving process of well this is everything i know you know i thought i was going to host parties and make all my grandma's recipes and i don't know how to cook for thanksgiving you know using these ingredients so you go through all of these processes and quite honestly i i stalled my healing by years because i mentally couldn't commit to it i would try it for a week and then we'd go out to dinner and i'd be like oh this i can eat this you know tonight or we're having friends over so i'm just gonna throw it all out the window today and i'll get back on track on tuesday and your body can't heal that way i mean it's essentially like you've got an open wound on your arm and every time it scabs you just keep you know taking it off like it's just never gonna have a chance to fully heal if you just keep going back and forth and so it took me quite a few years to learn that and it was not until my son that my oldest son was nine months old and i was hospitalized again for you know weeks and i was bedridden for months and i missed his first steps and there was just this really dark time when i couldn't take care of my son that was like my kind of aha moment and i feel like everybody has to have their own nobody can tell them what to do and have them you won't stick to it unless you internally decide this is my reason this is my why i've seen this work and now like i have to you know i have to stay this path um but yeah there's a lot of mental hurdles not only just from the food side but to just figuring out what life looks like with that disease and not wanting to be a burden to people um that's another side with autoimmune you say your friend you know has an autoimmune the majority of autoimmune diseases are nearly invisible to like anybody else that's around that person i mean i could look like this and i could be incredibly sick inside um and so there's people who just walk around feeling terrible all the time but to anybody around them unless they're vocal about it and really honest you know then they may not know that they're they're suffering and that they're struggling and that's a whole other you know thing about being and being in your own head and not wanting to to burden people and not wanting or people not understanding what you're going through if what was your first step or what would maybe not yours but what would you recommend because this you can understand the paradox right of yeah i don't know i don't feel myself i don't feel great i don't know if i feel bad enough to go to the doctor because the doctor's gonna say what's wrong with you and we already talked about the oh yeah he's going to give me a pill or not tie it to food or maybe she'll you know ask me to you know change my something else but what is is it is it blood work is it where do you for someone who's like i'm intrigued by this i don't feel great haven't felt great for a while what's what you know what's the danielle walker prescription of the place to start gosh well i think it depends if you have a diagnosis or not um i don't think that it can hurt to just do a 30-day elimination diet uh the guide kind of in the back but those things that i talked about cutting out and you have to keep track though you can't just you know cut them and then not pay attention you also can't cut one and not another or cut one for a week and then add something like it has to be a systematic approach to you know doing the elimination but then adding one food back in at a time to really be able to see what's what's happening because you can't pinpoint something if you're kind of just jumping back into it um so i think that could be the first step because i don't think that it can be harmful and then if you don't have a diagnosis yes i mean i still think it's really important to work with the doctor and get the blood work done get the testing done so you at least know what you're dealing with because i think there's you know there's hundreds of different types of autoimmune diseases and then obviously like we've said so many more just different ailments and aches and pains and i think when you can actually pinpoint what you have that can really dictate your you know your your path that your treatment path i do really suggest trying to find an integral medicine doctor or a functional md i really love that they're they're an md and they can prescribe medications when they're needed because that they they are needed you know here and there and um but that they look they look internally and they're they're not just putting a band-aid on it they're figuring out why you know what's happening in your body and that is that's blood work that's stool tests that's the the whole gamut um but they're they're actually running all those things to try to figure out how we can help you know that problem from the inside out rather than just sending you out the door with with the band-aid that's gonna rip off at some point yeah and again in case you missed that that's functional medicine doctors and integrated usually those are the two terms that am i state re-saying that correctly danielle yeah and yeah i mean there's so many different types of practitioners but i found over the years i saw naturopaths i saw you know chiropractors i saw so many different and they all helped in their own way but i just felt especially with having such a severe case of my disease i felt so comfortable being with somebody who i knew if i needed to have preventative measures western medicine come in and help save me that they could do that but that they also weren't just looking to write a prescription and get me out the door they were really looking to work with me and figure things out yeah um i would would be a i think a fair confession if my wife kate was sitting right here she would feel okay with me saying that she had a lot of food sensitivities and you know this idea of trying to manage and process all the stuff you got elimination diet and you gotta there is you know from my personal experience watching kate and reading your book and eating the food that you you know my message would be there are you can do this you can get better and food can still be joyful and a treat and every bit is good if not much better than anything you would be you know denying yourself but part of what you know there's a great piece of the book as someone who's ridden shotgun for i mentioned some family members and my wife's sensitive to a number of things um there's a note from ryan yeah the book and i'm wondering and and this is for if you yourself who are listening right now or watching might not have issues or concerns about people in your life um or sorry about yourself but you do for other people in your life i'm wondering if you can put a little context it's just a beautiful beautiful piece in the in the epilogue uh from ryan i i resonated a lot with it and so how would you well just recap that briefly and then give us a prescription if you would yeah absolutely yeah i really was adamant on including him in that book because my story is my story but he's been a part of that and he's had his own struggles with you know being the loved one or the spouse of somebody that that suffers with chronic illness and again like that was day one you know we got married and we we practically i had it from the get-go so i also really wanted him to speak into just the mental and kind of emotional effects that it has on the person that is is close to somebody because not everybody has an autoimmune disease but i would bet my life that everybody knows somebody who has something you know who's suffering with something and you want to know how to be there for them you want to know how to be their support system you want to understand from you know what their perspective is what they go through i think that's so important and as the person who is sick it's so important to have that person no it doesn't matter if it's your spouse your neighbor your you know your mom your dad whoever it is you can't go at it alone and so he came to the book with the perspective of just trying to give some very he's he's a very analytical very just like to the point person he's an engineer um and so he kind of wrote well mine is very story oriented his is like here's here's some bullet points here's how to like jump in and be the person that's the support system for you know your wife for your sister your mom and then he also wrote from the perspective of here's how you have to take care of yourself because being a quote-unquote caretaker you know even though i'm not sick all the time there are very very hard places in our life where he's really had to step in and be you know both mom and dad to our three kids be the advocate for me at the hospital with my doctors when i'm incapacitated and can't speak be the one that's you know working full-time but also trying to get kids to school and sports and it can be really really draining and you know when i'm going through it unfortunately i can't really think of much else besides just trying to get better and get out of the hospital or get back to my kids or you know what not and so he gave some really practical tips for just also how to take care of yourself as the caregiver and and how when he realized you know he he is what you know what's the saying you can't you can't drink from an empty cup is that the right way um and just realize that like your own oxygen mask on before passengers yes all of those all of those things you know and so yeah he really realized that like if he was wearing himself down to nothing then he couldn't be there for for me for the kids for himself for his job and so just some really practical tips on how to take care of yourself and also how to be there and be the support system for the for your loved one and i think it's it's essential um for people to try to understand and that's kind of my hope for the book is even if you don't suffer with something particularly that you'll be able to read it and know how to be there for somebody that that you love it's as someone who has been in that role it was so eye-opening and enlightening and please thank ryan for me and i think you know there's this is a great relationship between the person who's trying to fix their gut or has had you know food sensitivities or haven't forget bid something as extreme as you went through hospitalization but you know there's a um just the relationship that that if you have as a as a friend or a partner to that that person and the the self-care that you talked about and ryan just did such a great job so please give him a thank you um i will yeah i also want to take a moment and um just express a sincere aspect of gratitude because i think you are just the path i'm watching your journey from cookbooks to now this memoir and to me we are in a moment where food is there's more awareness about quality food than ever before the belief that it used to be so expensive in order to eat this way that that well there's that's that persist that perception may persist some places you've done such a good job and there are so many great resources in food saved me even just lists of key words i remember like just of course lists of things to avoid but listen like not just in the negative things like here's what you should look for grass-fed sustainable hormone-free wild-caught these there's a vocabulary that if you're listening to this food is of interest to you if you don't feel your best this is a great very reasonable and rational place to start get a functional medicine doctor get an you know integrated doctor um so this is just a thank you for being part of the solution for our culture it is super inspiring to read your story um i cannot recommend your book enough and just a heartfelt thank you it's incredible the work that you've done thank you i appreciate that i try i've always tried to make it as approachable for everybody as i could because i i know the feeling of feeling really intimidated and having it be really daunting so and again i'm just like a normal person and so i try to ever take everything that i learn and put it back out there in normal person terms so i appreciate that well and thank you for being vulnerable too it's you know so many books start out if you're you know if you never are imperfect and you just eat perfect forever then you'll never be sick versus right coming from a vulnerable place where health has been challenged or you're eating you know you're trying to reconcile this i know it's good for me but i just love pizza or whatever so there's so many of those things that like you've taken these rough edges off of a culturally charged topic and thank you for inspiring me i'm a big i'm a foodie because i love food and so i originally was attracted to your cookbooks and to get the rest of the story has been eye-opening and super important so congratulations so i appreciate it congrats on the new book and thank you so much i do i want to just re-say it again for those folks uh in case you missed it uh food saved me my journey of finding health and hope through the power of food um just congrats it's so good and i'll also steer people if i may to your blog which where you've always got recipes and stuff going on but now that i've got to say all my stuff and tell people where to go please is there any place in the world or on the internet that you would direct the attention of this community who's listening and whose attention you have right now i mean i hang out the most on instagram so you can find me there at danielle walker um like you said free recipes over on my blog we're throwing a book release party on september 13th uh you know this day and age it's gonna be digital had to cancel the in-person tour which is a bummer but we've got really fun things planned um so you can tune in and we'll be cooking i'll be telling more of my story i have a special guest we've got giveaways um that's september 13th and you can you can find tickets you can just go to my instagram and find them there but yeah that's that's what we've got going on right now other than this this book release and then yeah and you get guy roz right co-hosting that with yes yes co-hosting yep friend friend of the community here so uh check it out and again epic book congratulations so well timed thank you and uh i'm i'm really excited to see this hit the best seller list again four already right four is everywhere three three i've written four books yeah you know one was the the elusive new york times one did not hit it but yeah you know this one for me is it's just i i don't even care about those things i just wanted to try i want to help people i put my soul in every bump and setback and every triumph into that book in helps of of hoping that other people would have less bumps you know that they could learn from the things that that i learned from and so yeah as long as it gets into the hands of people who need it that's all that matters to me but it would be nice it would be nice fingers crossed you don't need those acolytes anymore you're on to a higher mission uh thank you and i'm also going to sneak one other recommendation there speaking to my community here the book eat what you love everyday comfort food is awesome that's just awesome my wife and i cook regularly i think that was you know a book from like 2018 or something like that where i originally got through with your work so much good stuff and if you like concepts are just like oh i like like rich cheesy pastas and i like all these things and you've just got great solutions in there and uh it's been a big part of our lives so thank you again i appreciate that not to put you on the spot but what's your favorite recipe from the book oh well kate does most of the cooking out of the book so okay to either i'm like what's your favorite a lot of uh substitutions for things like using cauliflower instead of crappy rice grains using um oh all the one pot stuff oh my gosh okay so yeah just if if you're new to this insta pot or one pot like you put everything in there um because kate and i have are professionally both very busy so yeah i mean just she throws all this stuff in there and then you know we come home and a couple hours later you've got this incredible meal and you know there's a vibe of like casserole from the 70s that it doesn't you know it's not like that at all it's so fresh i mean we were on an instapot tear a friend of ours gave us one and like your cookbook was the go-to for that so anything out of anything out of the insta pot um anyway again all right big fan thank you yeah thanks so much i appreciate it awesome thanks again good luck on your tour uh friends you know you know that it's really important to support danielle in the week of her pub so now go check it check it out please pre-order uh food saved me you will not be disappointed until next time everyone out there in the internet land i bid you adieu [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Chase Jarvis

Views: 368

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: chase jarvis, chasejarvis, creativity, business, entrepreneur, artist, creative, freelance, photography, career, advice, danielle walker, gluten free, against all grain, autoimmune disease, danielle walker paleo, gluten free diet, autoimmune disease ted talk, autoimmune disease symptoms, autoimmune disease treatment, autoimmune disease diet, danielle walker food saved me

Id: L4rD4W9yoig

Length: 47min 16sec (2836 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 08 2021