Rooted in Wellness: Welcome to the LIVE VYTA Podcast!
My Holistic Wellness Journey:
From Disconnected to Deeply Rooted
Hey there! This blog post is a loose transcript of my first podcast episode, adding some details and context to the episode that I may have missed when speaking, and yet I find it important to put out there and share.
The first thing I want you to know?
Wellness is a lifelong journey, and your starting place might not be what you imagine it to be. All that matters is that you start and keep getting back up again, dusting yourself off, letting your heart crack open and heal, over and over again. Suddenly, you’ll look back on the years and be amazed at how far you’ve come.
I recorded this episode because I know what it’s like to do everything right and still not get better. To be told your symptoms are “normal” when you feel anything but. To feel like you’re spinning in circles, trying new diets or supplements, but still waking up bloated, exhausted, and uncomfortable in your own skin. I even know what it’s like to finally lose the weight, and still hate what I see in the mirror, battling exhaustion and frustration the whole way.
My starting place was dark. I know how it is to be in a place where you hate your body, beat yourself up constantly, have no clue what eating healthy even means or why it matters, let alone have enough self-respect to care about taking care of your body. I know the whole spending weekends binge drinking and binge eating, and somehow getting through the week only to repeat the cycle. My starting place was a girl who hated herself, ate a processed food diet, and was on a fast-track to self destruction.
But it got better.
And it took time.
This is the story behind why I do what I do, and it starts with a little girl who couldn’t make sense of her body, her emotions, or her environment.
Why I’m Sharing My Gut Health Story
If you're struggling with bloating, digestive discomfort, or feeling like your body is constantly working against you—you’re not alone. Gut health is one of the crucial foundations for wellness and living a vital life, along with environment and mindset. It’s very hard to make changes if you don’t believe you are worth the change. Sometimes, the belief comes later when you start to feel better on a physical level and the mind shifts, thus the belief shifts.
So without further ado, here’s my story:
Stomach problems from anxiety + a culture obsessed with being skinny
I always had eczema growing up, my arms red and inflamed, and kids pointing to them and asking in the cruel way kids do “why are you arms red?” I remember distinctly going to my grade 2 class and being shamed and made fun of for the outbreak all over my face, and wanting to hide behind a tissue for the whole day.
Then, my gut symptoms began around 10 or 11. I had persistent heartburn—eventually diagnosed as GERD. My doctor prescribed Zantac (which has since been recalled), and while it helped for a while, it disrupted my digestion even more by suppressing stomach acid. However, I didn’t know at the time how important stomach acid was. I probably didn’t even really understand the concept. I just knew I felt different. I was embarrassed and confused, and was already a few years into believing there was something fundamentally wrong with me and my body.
Looking back, the signs were all there: eczema, mood swings, gut pain, constipation, skin issues. But like many girls in the late 90’s and early 2000s, I was also navigating the toxic body image culture that taught me my body was a problem to fix. That being skinny was the holy grail, which unfortunately now in 2025, a lot of people are backsliding into with “skinny-tok,” Ozempic and the rise of the GLP-1s.
I felt shame before I even hit puberty, which happened early for me probably due to the excess body fat I was carrying. I think I was conscious of “not being small enough” or “not fitting in” with other girls by the time I was six. Honestly, no child should feel that distraught about their body at any age, but especially so young.
I don’t remember there ever being a supportive system in place - everything was judgement, shame, and not being good enough, from adults and teachers, peers, and family. At a young age I was told to watch my weight, or that I was getting too chubby, but who fed me? Who taught me how to nourish myself?
Food Anxiety, Disordered Eating Patterns + Ultra Processed Foods
I grew up in a typical Canadian household with the food pyramid guiding our meals: cereal for breakfast, juice boxes in our lunches, toast or sandwiches for snacks. I also had food aversions—probably due to being a little neurodiverse and due to preparation I didn’t enjoy —and avoided most meats, cooked vegetables, and other whole foods. It was beef, bologna, peas, the tops of broccoli, cucumber salad with ranch and honey nut cheerios/other cereals that made the bulk of my diet. Don’t forget the cheese strings and sugary fruit cups!
I thought I was just picky. I distinctly remember always being told to finish my plate (this is actually a really bad idea for those of you starting families - it can lead to distrust within the body)... and when I refused? I went to bed hungry. Though, often I would end up getting a bowl of cereal or two. This is a classic example of how disordered eating patterns emerge with the feeling of scarcity and not being able to “get enough,” then bingeing on safe and special foods because internally, we’re afraid we won’t be fed otherwise.
There wasn’t any talk about gut health back then. No one mentioned blood sugar or inflammation. There was no connection between processed food and gut health, or picking eating, childhood gut problems and mental health. The adults didn’t really know any better than anyone else. It was culturally normal to eat the way I was eating (and still is, for a lot of households).
Teenage Rebellion and Emotional Numbing
By 14, I was drinking alcohol regularly and smoking weed daily. Somewhere around that age is also when older men started taking notice of my body, which made me radically uncomfortable. I remember always feeling this edge of awareness around them, like one wrong move and my life would be over. In retrospect, it’s so insane the culture that so many of us grew up in, normalizing the sexualization of young girls - because you are not a woman at age 14. Or 16. Barely at 18. (No offense to young ladies).
My emotional landscape felt too big to handle. I wasn’t taught how to cope, so I escaped instead. I didn’t understand emotional regulation or the mind-body connection—just that I wanted to feel like life was exciting when I felt trapped by what was going on around me, without a sense of autonomy or of being “seen.” I’d rather live in a live-fast, die-young fantasy world than the world and environment around me. There was also this sense of “nothing matters” within the teenage culture at the time, coming off the heels of Kurt Cobains suicide and the 9/11 bombings. Like the world is doomed anyway, so who cares? I remember teens in my ‘normie’ high school would compete to see who could self-harm the most. It was a wild time. It got weirder when I got kicked out of that school district and went to an alternative school… but I digress.
Being neurodivergent, this led to a lot of problems with being naive about people and experiencing various types of abuse and trauma, including from the psychologists and doctors that were supposed to be helping me “figure out what was wrong with me,” since god-forbid a female could be neurodivergent. That just wasn’t a thing at the time. I had multiple misdiagnoses and was mismedicated on several occasions, along with the other substances I was using. Everyone kept trying to make me into someone else or something else, telling what I was rather rather than holding space for what I am and what I was going through.
The Wake-Up Call That Started My Weight Loss + Health Journey
Things had kind of settled down in my life by my late teens. I had gone to counseling, I finished high school at a pace and place that worked for me. I started building better relationships with people. At a routine doctor visit, I remember seeing the number 240lb on the scale at the doctor’s office and thinking, “This can’t be right.” It wasn’t about the number—it was about how out of sync I felt with my body. How did I get here? Surely I only gained a little weight? How had I become so exhausted and inflamed and lost? Though, the number was also shocking, and spurred something in me.
This led to changes. I had better people in my life who encouraged me and loved me for me, who helped me start getting active and seeing the world a little more brightly. We rode bikes around the neighbourhood, and my body was praised for being the way it was, not belittled for not being the way it could be. I made small nutrition changes, and I started getting healthier. I ended up losing around 70lbs in a short period of time.
This led to a 10+ year journey into holistic health - from working at vitamin stores and holistic wellness shops, to becoming a yogi and powerlifter, doing long-distance cycling;
from struggling with gut health, painful bloating and chronic heartburn;
to eating a Mediterranean diet, to vegetarian, to vegan;
to crashing into major burnout and severe mental health struggles;
to getting to my lowest adult weight;
to learning about pro-metabolic eating and ancestral eating;
to inviting animal foods into my diet and suddenly feeling the light-switch go on;
to gaining weight again thinking it would heal my hormones, only to realize it healed my relationship with my body;
to going back to school and getting my diploma in natural nutrition;
to learning how to truly be in my body and love it at any size and any season;
to finally stop binging and obsessing over food and find a way that works, and is flexible – for the rest of my life.
I’ve been through it.
Now, I’m here to guide you through it, so you don’t have to spend the next 10 years experimenting like I did.
Discovering Ancestral Nutrition and the VYTA Method
It was through various relationships that I learned how to heal. To be honest, I’m still on that journey, always finding new ways to deepen and expand my knowledge and sense of self. I would be lying if I said that I figured it out in isolation.
I’d be lying if I said I was an expert. There is always more to know and more to learn, nuance and context to apply.
That being said, I have a lived experience, backed by education and experimentation.
So many people, women especially, helped me along the way, in ways that they probably didn’t even intend. Allowing myself to become who I am, to be seen, and to be valued by other women, who before had always been my competitors, the standard I was held up to and proclaimed “not good enough.” That was more powerful than any nutrition or wellness change I could have made. We heal in community, whether that is one person or many, whether they are around for one day or plenty.
As I studied holistic nutrition, metabolism, and circadian biology, I realized most women don’t need more restriction—they need reconnection.
That’s why I created the VYTA Method: a seasonal, sustainable, and personalized approach rooted in practical nutrition, not diet dogma.
Why This Work Matters So Much to Me
I’ve felt the loneliness, confusion, and despair that come with chronic symptoms. I know what it’s like to be dismissed by professionals or told to “just eat better” when you’ve already tried everything. I also know what it’s like to start at the bottom, and come from a background of having no clue what healthy even is.
That’s why I created the VYTA Method. I want to offer the kind of personalized, thoughtful support I never had. My approach is rooted in seasonal, sustainable nourishment and practical nutrition that meets you where you are.
For The Woman Feeling Lost In Her Body
If you’re navigating symptoms like:
Persistent bloating, heartburn or constipation
Trouble with hunger cues, food noise, relationship with food
Emotional eating or low morning appetite
Fatigue, irritability, and brain fog
Low energy, “slow metabolism,” and body image issues
Irregular periods or PMS flares
You’re not alone. You’re not broken.
You’re simply missing the right context and support.
Leave a comment if this resonates for you, or send me a message on Instagram @shay.vyta