Biography of Gretchen Brooks Nassar
Who am I?
Hi, I’m Gretchen Brooks Nassar, the woman behind Food For Your Soul and The Best Diet on the Planet.
How did FFYS Come to Be?
I’ve always been passionate about finding the “right career.” I always believed that work should be pleasurable and we should do what we love. In 1995, I thought I’d found my promised career. I was on my way to becoming a psychotherapist. While driving to school (Antioch Graduate School), I began falling asleep at the wheel. This seemed to happen every time about 20 minutes into my drive, even after a good night sleep. This marked the beginning of my life with CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome).
When CFS entered my life, it became my life. With it, I had to leave behind graduate school and what I thought was my career of promise. Soon, I would lose everything of value and would live as a sick person, with an illness nobody understood and nobody could cure. That began my healing journey. Since I couldn’t work or go to school because I was too tired and unable to concentrate, I threw myself into my healing. I began studying healing, read books about CFS, and learned about Herbology, Aromatherapy, Homeopathy, Ayurvedic Medicine, Energy Work, and Nutrition. I struggled with numerous health conditions that underlay my CFS including: Hypothyroidism, Hormone Imbalance, Adrenal Fatigue, Candida, Nutritional Deficiencies, Constipation and dozens of symptoms.
At night, while I so needed to get my sleep, instead I would wake to insomnia. Every night around 3am, I would wake up unable to fall back to sleep. I would lay in bed, wishing I could fall to sleep, but instead a midnight muse would visit. The muse shared positive messages about my illness and about healing, messages I wrote down in my journal. Eventually these messages would become my book: CFS is a Call For Soulwork.
During the days of CFS, I struggled. I struggled with extreme loneliness, fatigue so all encompassing I was lucky to get anything done. I had compromised thinking and my memory was shot. Basic tasks left me feeling like I was losing my mind. Standing in line at a bank, for example, would cause great stress, as the simple act of making a deposit challenged my compromised mind. Returning to a parked car or finding a classroom, would leave me lost, disoriented, and panic stricken. It was a dark time, made worse by misunderstandings between me, family, and friends and a complacent medical world.
Fortunately, my muse helped me through, as did my determination to heal. Somehow, through it all, I maintained a belief in my ability to heal, and I learned how to embrace my illness while still fighting to get better. I also found myself connecting to spirituality and the Divine.
Over time, I went through countless healing modalities, treatments, and healers. I saw Medical Doctors, Acupuncturists, ND’s, Massage Therapists, Energy Workers, Herbologists, and Nutritionists. I suffered through the yeast-free diet, the elimination diet, and the insulin-resistance diet (succeeding at each), and managed to get off caffeine and sugar. As I made these changes, I began feeling incremently better. With each step toward better, my motivation and resolve grew bigger.
After reading Robbins, Diet For a New America, I knew I couldn’t eat meat and so I tried veganism, settling on vegetarianism. Countless years prior, I had eliminated red meat from my diet, and never looked back after I stopped eating poultry. I rubbed on hormones and swallowed thyroid hormones, drank bitter, nauseating Chinese teas. Like so many with CFS, I tried many, many treatments and remedies, some helpful, many not. But I never gave up. When something wouldn’t help, I’d try something else. When one thing got healed, I went on to the next.
My healing journey also led me to seek out health schools, trying a Master’s in Holistic Health at Clayton College (a Distance School) and weekend Aromatherapy program. Eventually, I would complete a Master’s Degree in English at CSU to teach English as a Second Language and taught ESL for a couple years. During this time, I was still on the path to healing myself and knew that my promised career lay in healing. When I found the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, I knew I was home.
At the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN), not only did I find my promised career as a Health Coach, but I also joined a community of healthy, driven, soulful people. There, I studied with the health greats and learned over 100 dietary theories. I learned from Andrew Weil, Mark Hyman, David Wolf, Neal Barnard, T. Colin Campbell, Michio Kushi, Marion Nestle, Paul Pitchford, Eric Scholosser, and Geneen Roth to name a few. In 2007, from IIN and the AADP (American Association for Drugless Practitioners), I became certified as a Holistic Health Coach.
Before CFS, I received my BA in Psychology and while in Graduate School I studied Counseling Psychology. Over the years, I gained an extensive background in psychology, a field that came easily and naturally to me. I also enjoyed teaching and spent 4 years as an ESL teacher working with CSU students from all corners of the globe. But more rewarding than any of my degrees or work experiences, was my year at IIN and my discovery of Health Coaching!
Ultimately, I learned about an amazing way to eat and live through IIN’s 6-month program. I learned about, what I like to call, the Best Diet on the Planet. And, I healed my CFS! I healed and overcame a serious chronic syndrome, CFS, as well as Hypothyroidism, Hormonal Imbalance, Candida, Insulin Resistance, and Nutritional Deficiencies. And, more recently, I healed a 15 year bout of insomnia!
Reflecting on my life, I realize I’ve spent almost as much of my life ill as healthy. I know what it’s like to be ill, depressed, and to feel like nobody understands or cares. Some of the best years of my life, I spent very ill. That’s no way to live. Nobody should have to live that way. But, we’re not taught how to live healthy; we’re not taught how to take care of ourselves; we’re not taught how to enjoy food and understand our bodies. And, we’re not taught that we are our own best healers. I had to learn all of these teachings on my own, through my muse, my healing journey, and through IIN. And I’m excited to say that: through the Best Diet on The Planet, you’ll learn how to integrate these values too!
I want you to understand: everything I teach, I’ve tried myself. I practice living healthy and eating healthy everyday. I love helping people get healthy and helping animals and the planet in the process. I love food and think you should too. I know this work makes a difference, because it’s made every difference in my own life. I’ve also personally helped it change others’ lives too, and know of thousands whose lives have been transformed simply by changing what and how they eat!
© October, 2011 Gretchen Brooks Nassar
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