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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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🦋Sweetness, Pleasure & Permission🦋
Sweetness has never been just one thing for me.
🦋It has been comfort.
🦋It has been safety.
🦋It has been joy.
🦋And sometimes—quietly—it has been rebellion.
I grew up cooking at the elbow of a Southern—and Southern Baptist—woman who used baking as a love language. She was the full stereotype in the best possible way: incredible food, generous portions, and recipes that mattered. Holidays didn’t revolve around gifts; they revolved around mandatory dishes. The ingredient list was longer than the present list, especially with nine people living in that house at Christmas.
As with all stories about good intentions, there were times that it was hurtful.
Sweetness meant belonging. Until it didn’t.
It meant care. Until it didn’t.
It meant, you are loved enough to be fed well. Served with a little dallop of guilt for those of us who whose shapes were larger than average, and appeared to be enjoying more than our share somewhere. It was a balancing act, with far-reaching consequences.
Later, when sweetness became something to fear, restrict, moralize, or “overcome,” it didn’t just challenge my habits—it challenged my identity and my connection with others. The small comments became loud voices telling me that something was wrong with me.
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For a long time, I believed that enjoying food meant losing control. I was either being accused of losing control, or I was starting to because at some point we speak or think things into our life.
That belief cracked during a quiet season when I chose to do a 100-day challenge—just for me. No announcement. No cheering section. By then, I had already been a Certified Trim Healthy Coach for a year, and I knew something important: real change doesn’t begin with accountability to others. It begins with accountability to yourself.
I stayed 100% on my plan for those 100 days.
And it was hard—not because I was starving, but because of the emotions. Feeling left out. The frustration of skipping “just a bite.” The constant effort it took to abstain. It taught me something essential:
Enjoyment wasn’t the enemy.
Desire for off plan foods wasn’t my biggest challenge.
Unexamined deprivation, without tools to replace the habits that served those feelings was.
Abstinence can teach discipline—but it doesn’t automatically teach peace, without real tools.
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Feeding a large family reshaped how I approached sweetness entirely.
When you’re feeding ten people, cost and waste matter. I had to figure out how to use the least amount possible of the most cost-effective sweetener to enhance flavor into something everyone enjoyed. That process led me to pure monk fruit extract powder, after discovering that my beloved stevia was contributing to migraines and other symptoms associated with the rag weed family of plants.
Erythritol simply isn’t as sweet as sugar and doesn’t stretch far enough, in my experience, even when blended with pure extract powders. So I use monk fruit extract powder in almost all of my baking and sweetening. The only exception is when a recipe needs powdered sweetener for texture—usually frosting. That’s a structural decision, not a sweetener preference.
People disagree with me about this all the time. It’s like they all got it from a cookbook I’ve never come across before. They’ll argue, sometimes with intense devotion to their theory, that granulated sweeteners are necessary for “bulk.” But granulated sweetener dissolves when heat or liquids are applied—it becomes a liquid measurement in the end. Gluten-free and Trim Healthy desserts are already notoriously wet. I’ve never had a failure because something was too dry or not dense enough using my approach.
That doesn’t mean my way is the only way.
It means it works for us.
And that’s the point.
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If you believe wanting sweet is a moral failure, I want to say this clearly:
That’s diet culture talking. Real food is morally neutral.
Tradition and culture are things we choose, and mine don’t include punishing myself for wanting a treat—or enjoying it. I always frame it this way for my clients…”you need a something that reminds you why you LIVE this way.”
As someone who lives with binge-eating disorder, moralizing food and existing in depravation mode is the fastest way back into a cycle of shame and rebellion.
Shame doesn’t produce restraint. It’s more fattening than sugar ever will be, because it produces secrecy, and the cycle doesn’t stop until you break it.
We make the best decisions we can that align with our current goals—and we don’t consult people who aren’t affected by those choices. When we indulge, we use our tools to find balance again.
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Finding your sweet spot goes far beyond dessert.
One of the most beautiful parts of this lifestyle is that it truly is the “Burger King” of lifestyles—you can have it your way. I always say “my personal plan” because my choices are my own. But this is also where people feel the walls closing in.
Because food freedom requires something of you.
🦋Preparation.
🦋Planning.
🦋Follow-through.
And many of us want the benefits of freedom without the systems that support it.
We are a desire-focused culture. That isn’t a flaw—it’s a signal. It means we need a WHY strong enough to increase motivation without tying it to something fragile, a person who isn’t going to be an integral part of our plan, or a short-term goal without a long-term impact on us.
Your sweet spot isn’t about how sweet your food is.
It’s about alignment—between desire, capacity, and purpose—so food can be enjoyed without becoming the battleground again. It’s about balance.
That kind of permission doesn’t come all at once.
It’s learned through faltering.
And it’s worth learning slowly, no matter how long it takes. That’s why picking a lifestyle as opposed to a diet is so valuable.
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Feeding Others While Protecting Yourself — leadership, boundaries, and staying nourished without erasing yourself.
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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.
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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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