Naming My Hashimoto Players and HEP strategy Blog Post #4

The day I stopped saying "I feel like crap" — and started learning my body's actual language.

Today I was talking to my physical therapist about the flare-ups happening in my body — and I realized how far I've come.

If you'd asked me five months ago, "What does a flare feel like?" I honestly wouldn't have known how to answer. I would've said: I don't know... What do you mean flare? I feel like crap all the time.

When you feel bad every day, symptoms become background noise. You normalize the fatigue, the aches, the brain fog, the mood swings — because you've been told you're fine by ‘professionals’. It can't be that bad. And the one that always shut me up the fastest: other people have it so much worse than you — stop making it about you. That when things compound - we stop noticing the details, stop being able to name what's happening because it's just... constant, and when we've been handed enough shame about it we stop trying.  It’s exhausting.

Now that I've been slowly cleaning up my eating in a way that's actually sustainable, the HEP way, I'm finally hearing myself clearly. I'm starting to understand the communication my body has been trying to give me all along. 

While working with my physical therapist I told her that I was finally understanding what my body has been telling me after eating certain things. I have an understanding of what food is causing what in my body responses— and that gives me the power to choose differently, if I want. I know my specific Hash players now.

Knowing what's causing what isn't just self-awareness. It's power. It's information you can actually work with — on your own terms.  That is a really BIG deal! 

Two Kinds of People

During our work together that day, we continued the conversation on self awareness.  

There are two kinds of people. One kind says: I never want to feel this way again — so I'm not going back to the choices that made my body fight me. 

The other kind says the same thing — I never want to feel this way again — and keeps doing exactly what they've always done. Because constant discomfort becomes familiar. Continuity is easy to cling to, even when it hurts.

That second person used to be me, not because I didn't care and definitely not because I didn't want to change. But because I was overwhelmed. Hashimoto information can feel like a firehose: cut this, add that, do everything, do it now!  When I couldn’t do do it all at once, my brain went: I'm already failing, so what's the point? So I would circle back into survival.  

I don’t think I am unique to this cycle, and so I built a way out of it.

The Hash Eating Project Is Built for "One Small Thing”

This is what the Hash Eating Project interrupts: the belief that this is just what I do, so this is what I'll keep doing.

Instead I framed it around the idea of what's one small thing you can swap to feel better today — without burning your life down?

For me, it came in waves. Tiny shifts that actually stuck.  And keeping those shifts until they felt like the norm. 

I have to give credit where it's due: my husband was instrumental in the beginning. He makes most of the meals in our home, and he was the first one to take the leap with me. He literally hand-wrote a list of foods that could support me before we even knew how to incorporate them well.

We didn't have a perfect plan; we had intention and that only took us so far.

I was still eating inflammatory foods without understanding what they were costing my body. I was shrinking what I ate — but I was so inflamed. My rings were tight on my fingers. The number on the scale kept rising. I felt like I was being eaten alive from the inside out, even with the diagnosis, even with the effort. Every system I had looked at wasn't a starting point — it was a dive in headfirst, do all of this, do only this. 

It was so overwhelming and unrealistic in my world. I work full time, wife, mom and caregiver.  My plate is full and suddenly shifting it all at once does not work.  I don't think my world is the exception, I think it's the norm.

I tried and failed the different programs for Hashimoto's; continuing to feel like crap regardless of how little I ate.  Taking my medication and restriction food, but still my body was screaming at me.  

That was my breaking point.

Asking for Help 

My husband and I were driving through a car wash. I was done, and it was only 9am in the morning. Everything felt like a mountain. No energy. Lifeless. My body was fighting me and I couldn't understand what I was doing ‘wrong’.  

I looked at him and said: "I need help. I don't know how to do this.”  This statement out loud was so vulnerable and raw.  I am hyper independent and admitting not only to myself but someone else that I needed help was ground breaking.  In that moment he didn't try to fix it, or minimize the feelings. He didn't shame me. He leaned in and asked,  "Of course. What can we do?"

And my answer wasn't complicated. It was one small, real starting point:

"I need to eat breakfast before work. Let's start there and see what happens."

That moment — asking for help and being met with partnership instead of pressure — was the real birth of the Hash Eating Project.

Why This Isn't Like Other Hashimoto Diets

I'm not selling perfection.

I'm in the trenches. I'm doing this in real time. I keep learning the same thing over and over:

It's easier when you're not doing it alone.

Sometimes healing starts with food. Sometimes it starts with rest. Sometimes it starts with one brave sentence:

"I need help.”

Want the tools I use to track this?

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I'm so glad you're here.

Elena