cracked and started a blog!

Hello! My name is Graci Galland. Welcome to my tiny little corner in this large world of nutrition/food blogs. If you follow this or my Instagram, my hope is that you’ll get something out of it that is a little different than the thousands of others. 

You wont necessarily find beautiful pictures on every post… I am a food fanatic, health and wellness fanatic, eating psychology fanatic, fitness and yoga fanatic, gospel fanatic and family fanatic, but I am not a photographer… really, at all. Please, bare with me.

I’ve been a little overwhelmed when it comes to the thought of doing a blog because I feel like I need beautiful photos (and lots of them), perfectly articulated posts, infinite knowledge on cooking, and pretty much the answer to everything. Ha! I know that sounds silly, but this blogging world is very intimidating, yeah? But I have a handful of wonderful friends and strangers that follow my Instagram account @wholegraci, which is getting a little lengthy and hard to find recipes on, so I finally cracked and decided for all of you lovely people, but mostly myself, I would compose this fun little space where it will be much easier to find the recipes and advice you are looking for. I hope you find it as interesting and addicting as I do. Our bodies are magnificent, lovely, smart, beautiful and strong-so here is a little bit of my knowledge on how to eat, live, heal, move, touch, give, and receive to keep them whole, the way God intended, which will be vastly different for each and every one of us.

Just a quick note: don't take everything I write for gospel truth, these are my opinions from my research, schooling and own experience. None of the recipes I post will be 100% perfect and scientific every time. Cooking/baking/raw treat making is a hobby I picked up a few years ago while attending The Institute for Integrative Nutrition and I have never gone to cooking classes or culinary school, or anything of the sorts. I am self-taught, and I kind of like it that way. My life, drive, and knowledge ebbs and flows just like anything and I don’t claim to be an “expert” in any area of these fields. After all, I am only twenty! I love to read, learn and most of all teach and help others learn and get excited about living a more “whole”istic life. I want to be my best self and help improve the lives of others. Lets get back to our roots. Yeah?

There is no science that can determine exactly how much one person is supposed to look or weigh at any certain point in life. There is no science that can tell you exactly what is the healthiest food or way for you, or me or anyone to eat now or ever. We as humans change from day to day, month to month, year to year. Therefore, our bodies, our weight, our eating patterns, our diets, our exercise routine, everything about our lifestyle is going to ebb and flow, whether we like it or not. Working against that flow, against that rhythm of life, trying to control our bodies, control the way we look, how much energy we have etc…is completely going against nature. I say this, because I have been in that cycle. I am still in that cycle. 

Growing up my diet was similar to most young children/teens. My mom had a lot of knowledge about health and tried her best to implement it in our home, but kids will be kids, we all know that. When I was 17 I started IIN and became more aware that cliff bars, sandwiches on store bought “whole wheat” bread, cold cereal, and ordering the salad when we went out to eat instead of the pasta, didn’t necessarily make up a healthy diet. I slowly became more knowledgeable about whole foods, different “diets” and “superfoods”, and tried many different ways of eating. This, in the course of 2 years went from discovery, to craziness, to orthorexia nervosa, to anorexia, to tiny bouts of bulimia here and there, to compulsive exercise, to binge eating, to fear of food, to stressed living, to not giving a shit, to caring too much, to detrimental body hate and negative self-image and so on…. I suspect many of you know how this goes. Like I said, I still get stuck in that cycle. I still have down, depressing, stressful days where my relationship with food and my body is so off. I will, we all will, for the rest of our lives! I often have moments, no matter what I look like, of extreme hatred of my body and appearance. Why do we do this to our bodies (us women especially)? We all know better. That is where eating psychology comes into play. And that is exactly why, after becoming a health coach/nutritionist, I decided to attend The Institute for the Psychology of Eating. Here, along with tasty, healthy recipes that you can tweak to match any way of eating or lifestyle you are living at the moment, you will also learn with me on my journey through this amazing maze of psychological hell (at times) we call eating.

None of us will ever arrive to perfect health, wellness, and balance. Not in this life. But I do believe that the right knowledge will come to you, if and when you need it; if only we can slow down, if we are following our own spiritual path and are really learning how to be close to, listen and love these bodies of ours, unconditionally. That means without question, no matter how much you ate, how hard you did or didn’t exercise, how much time you have to cook homemade meals, how stressed or fast-paced you are, how much cellulite is or isn’t on your ass and so on… it's hard to do, but the least we can do is try. I would love for this to be a space where you can try and learn from me & with me. Where there is no shame, guilt, judgement, negativity or fear. Where you feel 100% comfortable asking me questions &/or relating to the story I-and so many others are living! I won't always get this personal because I don't feel it's necessary to share every little bit of my life online, but my goal is to post my opinions (and yummy recipes), without fear of what others may think or say.

I thank you for reading this if you got through all my rambling. Now lets make some good food!