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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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🦋Letting Go of Old Identities🦋
From outcomes to nourishment
Before I ever touched a Trim Healthy plan book, I believed health had a very specific look.
🦋A certain body shape.
🦋A certain number on the scale.
🦋A numerical result that mattered more than how I got there.
If the numbers improved, it counted as success—no matter the cost to all facets of my present and future health. We all know that not every wellness plan actually facilitates wellness. Health felt transactional; I had to restrict something to get anything of value in return. Performative, because nobody taught me what a real “why” should be, which meant it was not for me. Like proof that I was doing life correctly according to a social hierarchy that didn’t make room for what I really want out of my wellness.
That definition didn’t survive my real life, so it wasn’t achievable or sustainable for me.
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When I helped facilitate my children’s recovery after years of malnutrition caused by undiagnosed celiac disease through the use of the Trim Healthy concepts of nutritional wellness. And later when I began living a Trim Healthy Lifestyle for myself—my understanding of health changed completely.
Health stopped being an outcome.
It became a practice of nourishment.
A long one. A lifetime journey instead of short-term satisfaction.
One that adapts to seasons, honors capacity, and doesn’t collapse when life gets complicated. I needed that. The consistency, continuity, and commitment to a long-term outcome that didn’t settle on numbers alone as a metric of success.
I’ve watched bodies rebuild slowly. Specifically, my children regain many aspects of the wellness that was damaged by years of autoimmune damage. I’ve seen nutrients matter more than numbers in myself and countless Trim Healthy Mamas. I’ve learned that healing isn’t loud—and it’s rarely linear. I know it hasn’t been for myself or my children.
That kind of knowing changes you in every way.
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People often talk about “ditching labels” as one sign of healing. Definitely within the disordered eating, and body dysmorphia communities.
That hasn’t been my story.
We don’t get to release the gluten-free label. Ever. It isn’t optional, practical, or sustainable if they are to be successful in managing their lifestyle in the future, and pretending otherwise would harm my children. So the label stays—visible, inconvenient, and frequently misunderstood.
🦋People say things without thinking. I really think that many are well-intentioned.
🦋They make assumptions, without understanding.
🦋They form opinions, because everyone has them.
They have a right to be wrong. I don’t have a commitment to their understanding or agreement. I have a commitment to facilitate the wellness of my family and myself.
There was a time when the critical labels hurt deeply—too strict, obsessive, controlling. I’ve never been very successful at pretending I’m not hurt when I am. Praise wasn’t much better, because it was an unnecessary validation for a journey they were never going to experience. Both tried to define me as a mother, a wife, and a woman. Neither actually understood what it costs to protect a family’s health over the long haul physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
Now, I don’t absorb either. I know what I’m doing and why it matters. It’s my mission.
I don’t need permission or applause to steward what’s mine to the best of my ability.
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Maturity in wellness doesn’t look like doing more. That’s a works-based thought process that I have never been able to get behind even in religious culture.
It looks like staying. I’m not talking about our journey through adultery recovery, I’m talking about a wellness lifestyle.
I want a lifestyle I can grow old with—not a fling I have to recover from. I’ve done that and I don’t like it. I’m a long-term wellness kind of woman now. Ask my husband how committed I can be—he’s been with me since 2007, and we’re still going stronger than ever.
🦋This way of living isn’t about being impressive. I live parts of my life out loud, but I don’t do it for the applause.
🦋It’s about being faithful to what works, for my family. I believe God led me here, first for my children, and then for me when I was ready.
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I’ve chosen less in order to have more life, even though less doesn’t really look like less when multiplied by ten.
🦋Less stuff. I’ve never been a “stuff-person” but I live with people who are.
🦋Less noise. I share how i handle the soundtrack of my life HERE.
🦋Less emotional labor carrying other people’s expectations about my body, my parenting, my marriage, or my choices about facilitating wellness.
🦋If you want unsolicited opinions, have more than two kids.
🦋If you want them amplified, have eight.
🦋If you want to see other people’s control issues, false humility and deep soul wounds; try to restore a marriage after infidelity and then tell people where you’ve been, or share your journey of advocacy for survivors of abuse.
I’ve had strangers question my decisions more freely than my own family ever has. Learning to release the need to explain myself has been one of the most freeing shifts of my life. It has allowed me to continue to share for the people who need to hear that they’re not alone in the adversity of life.
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Past me wouldn’t understand present me. Not just the youngest version me, but the me that began walking through all of these seasons. I am never the same person at the end, as when the adversity began. I can’t be.
The youngest version of me wouldn’t recognize the steadiness.
The ability to stay unbothered—or even content—inside situations that once would have undone her.
She wouldn’t understand how I hold space for injustice, religious trauma, or the slow repair of a marriage without being consumed by them. She wouldn’t understand how I feed my family, how I parent, or how I’ve stopped reliving what can’t be changed.
But she would understand this:
Redemption is real. Hope is precious. God never meant for the adversity to break me.
And sometimes health looks less like transformation and more like integration—learning how to live well inside the life you already have, instead of chasing the one you thought you were supposed to want. I’ve had those thoughts, especially in the beginning…if I’m honest I still do.
That’s the identity I’ve kept.
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The Long Game — measuring progress without the scale, catching momentum, and choosing health that withstands.
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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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