Tamara Grieve is a mother of two, a wife and a qualified nutrition and health coach.
Obviously I am blessed to have a mother and mentor like Denise Hales, but my wellness journey started because of my kids.
From an outsider looking in, my kids were normal children, but as a mother I knew they both had underlying issues.
My eldest child suffered anxiety and had a huge lack of confidence. He would spend most nights crying himself to sleep. My youngest child had always been my “wild child”. Yet she lacked concentration skills, and was classified at the time as being borderline on the spectrum. She had lots of OCD tendencies and would only eat white foods such as yoghurt, milk, chicken, hot chips, bread, and pasta. (You relate right?! #nightmare)
Being a GAPS practitioner, my mother recognised that my children both had gut issues and she recommended I put them on the GAPS protocol. But to convert to full GAPS at that time in my life would have been way too stressful! Both my husband and I ran our own businesses and my headstrong daughter would have made my life a living hell. I could barely get her to eat chicken breast let alone feed her bone broth!!
But I knew I had to do something, and doing nothing was NOT an option! So with the guidance of my mother I started my own journey to educate myself and decided to take baby steps.
First I needed to get my family to quit sugar (I couldn’t expect my kids to make changes alone; as parents we needed to step up and be the good role models).
The journey was long and slow and to be truthful, it was often painful… Actually it was bloody hard most of the time (let's not sugarcoat it here #nopunintended).
You see, I had spent their entire lives to date feeding them what I perceived to be “good” food: Packaged yoghurts, “healthy” chips, processed meats and cheeses, flavoured quick oats, juices…. aaaggghhh so many hidden sugars.
Little did I realise that over the years I had been slowly poisoning my children and had created complete sugar addicts!
BUT I endured the pain from watching my addict kids detox from their drug of choice; going from sugar free, to gluten free, then dairy free, and slowly (very slowly) incorporating all the goodness, nutrients, probiotics and hidden bone broth into their diets... we began to see results. YIPEE!
I can assure you that all that pain, hard work and perseverance was worth it in the end.
5 years on, my son no longer suffers anxiety and has gained so much confidence. My daughter, although will always be wild (due to her genes), is more calm, more focused in class, no longer lines things up in an OCD manner, and is eating much better than I could have imagined (so many coloured foods have been added to her palate).
Also an added bonus of eating well and healing their guts was the eczema that they had both suffered their entire lives completely cleared up. As well as ZERO doctors visits in 4 years! #healthandwellnessgoals
We have come ahead in leaps and bounds. I am committed to my children, their health and giving them the best start in life. Now we know better, we will always do better!
Don’t worry, they aren’t always gluten, sugar or dairy free nowadays. But I know how to manage their diets and take control when I need to.
Healing the gut is one thing, maintaining it is another. It’s something that you have to work on each day, and it involves keeping the inflammatory foods to a minimum (dairy, gluten, sugar) and fuelling the body with loads of goodness (prebiotics, probiotics, natural fibres, and bone broth etc).
It was seeing the results in my kids and studying nutrition that led me to create my social media alias “Roar Foodie”.
“Roar Foodie” is a platform where I share daily recipes of healthy nutrient rich foods that the whole family can enjoy.
One thing I learnt along my journey was that my kids don’t have to go without. I can cook anything they want. I just make it from scratch instead of buying it from a store! I make my own sauces, paleo breads, jellies, you name the comfort food and I can create a healthy alternative that still tastes amazing.
I’m feeding my family just as my grandparents ate. Whole, real foods made from scratch with LOVE!
I have seen firsthand the power of healing the gut. It LITERALLY changed my life and my kids' behaviours!
Getting Gut Happy is something I am so passionate about and I want to help educate others on the importance of gut health, hence I studied to become a nutrition and health coach.
I’ve also spent the past couple of years working alongside my mum delivering ‘Fermentation’ and ‘Food is Medicine’ workshops – helping to educate and ignite passion of nutrition and gut health to others.
It only seems fitting that we join forces to create Gut Happy to help those in need of change and gut nurturing! xx