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This post reflects aspects of long-term marriage, neurodivergence, PTSD, caregiving ,trauma, faith and recovery after infidelity. Find a gentle guide on engaging with this type of post in greater detail in my content notice.
Please engage gently — for yourself and others.
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My Trim Healthy Lifestyle, Lived in Real Life
This is not an outline for you to follow. It’s a life-story that has been lived.
What you’ll find here isn’t a version of Trim Healthy polished for the internet or reduced to rules, routines and rigid control. It’s what happens when nutrition meets real life: grief, caregiving, motherhood, marriage, trauma, diagnosis, faith, doubt, and the long work of staying when it’s hard.
I didn’t build this lifestyle in ideal conditions. I built it inside real ones. Messy moments of marriage and motherhood. Losing track of myself, and beginning the process of finding a new version of myself again, now.
This collection exists because health that only works when life is calm isn’t health that lasts, and I don’t have the capacity for that.
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What This Collection Is
This is a grounded, lived account of how I practice my Trim Healthy Lifestyle in real life:
🦋With a large, completely gluten-free family.
🦋With seasons of pregnancy, loss, postpartum, and recovery intermingled throughout.
🦋With real trauma, advocacy, and nervous-system challenges that my family will be navigating for the foreseeable future.
🦋With joy, sweetness, and permission…because you HAVE to find these moments.
🦋With long-term commitment instead of short-term intensity, because I’m a a lifestyle kind of gal.
🦋It’s about nourishment that adapts without collapsing, because every lifestyle is more than food.
🦋Structure that supports instead of suffocates. Everything needs room to breathe.
🦋And learning how to stay present inside a body and life that didn’t come with instructions. There are no crystal balls for adversity.
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What This Is Not
This is NOT:
🦋A before-and-after story. I’m an accomplished begin-againer trying to take steps towards my wellness goals with grace and patience.
🦋A list of rules or food morality. I believe that food is morally neutral.
🦋A promise of fast results. I only promise real life accounts.
🦋A demand for perfection, because I am not perfect.
🦋A replacement for medical or therapeutic care…see my Content Notice
If you’re looking for a lifestyle to dominate your body into compliance, this won’t resonate.
If you’re looking for something that can withstand real life, keep reading.
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Who This Is For
This collection is for you if:
🦋You’re tired of starting over…and over, and over.
🦋You’ve tried to “do it right” and still felt depleted & defeated.
🦋Your life includes caregiving, complexity, or chronic stress. I see you, friend.
🦋You want food to support your life—not become another demand. You already have a lot on your plate, and not the one you eat off of.
🦋You need permission to grow slowly, and stay consistent, in a way that works with your life.
It’s especially for mothers who carry responsibility quietly and wonder if they’re allowed to matter too. Let me tell you, you are.
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How to Read This Collection
Order matters here for better understanding.
These essays are meant to be read in sequence, not skimmed for tips. Each piece of my journey builds on the last—layer by layer—until a fuller picture of where I’ve been and why emerges.
You don’t need to agree with everything, because my story is not going to be yours.
You don’t need to adopt every practice. There are a thousand ways to get to the place you want to be.
Just read with curiosity instead of judgment, first. Then, decide which parts align with you and where you’ve been or where you’re going.
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— The Collection —
🦋My Origin Story🦋
The Why Beneath Trim Healthy
Why this lifestyle became non-negotiable for my family—and how grief, recommitment, and listening to my body changed everything, for me.
🦋The Parts I Quietly Struggled With🦋
Where “on plan” wasn’t enough
Perfectionism that I couldn’t outrun, restriction that I had to reframe, disordered eating and body dysmorphia, and the cost of survival-mode wellness.
🦋Finding Sweetness, Pleasure & Permission🦋
Why Wanting Was Never the Problem
Undoing food morality tied to my upbringing and diet culture, honoring tradition and still honoring my own lifestyle, and finding my “sweet spot” with treats, without shame.
🦋Feeding Others While Protecting Myself🦋
Leadership Without Self-Erasure
Mega-Motherhood in all its facets, food boundaries that define everything for us, systems that I am constantly tweaking and reevaluating, and staying nourished…mind, body and spirit…while being everyone’s caregiver in my home.
🦋Stress, Trauma & the Nervous System🦋
Why Food Was Never Just Food
Containment, grounding myself when my world was out of control in ways that I couldn’t change quickly, understanding that carb-forward comfort was exactly what I needed and not a byproduct of disordered eating, & Learning to listen to a body under pressure instead of becoming consumed by it.
🦋Letting Go of Old Identities🦋
From Outcomes to Nourishment
Releasing labels that I could and embracing the ones that keep my family healthy, redefining maturity by experiences that brought a deeper devotion to my mission, and choosing a lifestyle I can grow old with because I am a lifetime kind of gal.
🦋The Long Game🦋
Health That Withstands
Measuring progress without the scale, catching momentum as my short-term goal on the other side of a stressful season, and committing to a lifestyle instead of a passing phase.
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A Gentle Invitation Forward
If this collection resonates, know this:
🦋You are not behind. Nobody is keeping track, except you.
🦋You are not failing…faltering is expected.
🦋You are not broken because your life unfolded differently than you thought it would. We don’t get to choose our story, but we get to choose how we respond to it.
Health is not something you achieve once.
It’s something you practice—again and again—inside the life you actually have.
Everything I build beyond this point exists to support that kind of steady, humane wellness.
You’re welcome to stay, and watch it unfold. I look forward to seeing you here.
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WELLNESS THAT WITHSTANDS
Rooted. Resilient. Restored.
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Nicole Burch is a CertifiedTrim Healthy Lifestyle Coach, author, and holistic family life mentor who helps women and families rebuild from the inside out. Through her work, she guides others toward resilience, restoration, and peace—teaching that true healing begins at home. As the owner of Life in the Treehouse, Nicole helps women and families overcome burnout, find food freedom, and create sustainable wellness that lasts. Her work weaves together the practical and the profound—showing that peace is possible even in the busiest, most complicated seasons of life.
Whether she’s helping clients balance blood sugar, restore energy, or reconnect with joy, Nicole’s mission remains the same:
to help women and families live Rooted in Rhythm—anchored in peace, balanced in body, and guided by grace.
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If you’re seeking nourishment for body and soul—gluten-free living, Trim Healthy knowledge and support, or peace amid the chaos—welcome home.
This is where resilience takes root.
Disclosure, Privacy Policy and Terms of Service, Content Notice & Trauma Informed Reading Guide, and my Affiliate Disclosures Below
I am celebrating five years of being a Certified Trim Healthy Lifestyle Coach. I have lived an abundance of seasons within just these five years. I was a nursing mom, pregnant multiple times, survived a traumatic pregnancy loss in 2022, lived in survival mode from 2022-2025 while being an ambassador for survivors of sexual assault and facilitating the legal aspects of a criminal trail against the perpetrator for those assaults, almost died due to pulmonary embolism after my eighth child was born in 2023, and somewhere in there lost and gained 80 pounds after identifying binge-eating disorder as a new challenge. I KNOW too well that life slows down for nobody and no situation, and every meal is a new opportunity to be a begin-againer!
Join my FREE Trim Healthy Facebook group: Trim in the Treehouse for mentorship, and support.
Nicole Burch is a Certified Trim Healthy Mama Lifestyle Coach, independently offering services based on the THM plan. This coach is not an employee or agent of Trim Healthy Mama, LLC. Coaching services are independently managed, and THM is not responsible for results, business practices, or claims made by this coach.
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Affiliate Disclosures
As an Amazon Associate, I may link to specific products that I believe in and trust. This is an affiliate link, and I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.
As a Trim Healthy Affiliate I may link to specific products that I believe in and trust from Trim Healthy Mama, LLC. If you make any purchases through my link I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.
As a Queen of Thrones Affiliate I may link to specific products that I believe in. If you make any purchases through my link I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.
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© 2025 Nicole Burch | All Rights Reserved
Designed with love to support families in building lives that are anchored in peace, balanced in body, and guided by grace. by: Nicole Burch
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