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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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🦋Stress, Trauma & the Nervous System🦋
Why food was never just food
My body hasn’t always signaled overwhelm the same way. Many times the signals were subtle, and other times my body was screaming for release from the weight it carried.
What’s changed just as much as the signals themselves is my awareness of them.
Early in my life as a wife and mother, I mostly ignored what my body was trying to say—not because I was resilient, but because I didn’t know how to listen, yet.
I wasn’t raised to “lose control.” I believed staying composed meant staying regulated, and honestly I don’t remember anyone using words like “regulated” or “dysregulated.” What I didn’t understand was that a body under control and a regulated body and mind are not the same thing. They respond, differently to added stressors because one has released the tension and the other is compounding it.
I knew how to hold it together. I was really good at it, on the inside but my face was a different story.
I didn’t know how to move through things. I just had to move on.
No one I knew went to therapy, and then when my husband was struggling in the military therapy was a by-word nobody wanted association with because it could jeopardize your career, even though they assured the soldiers it wouldn’t.
No one talked about nervous systems, the mind and the body were disconnected culturally for me at that time. And no one “used their words” the way I do now, and wanted to then—or the way we intentionally teach our children to today. Our children have an “uncomfortable” amount of honesty and direct communication available to them, and it makes my inner 12 year old jealous sometimes.
So my body spoke louder. I couldn’t ignore her anymore.
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When everything feels unstable, my body doesn’t ask for novelty.
It asks for grounding. Again, i didn’t have an understanding of what that looked like, but because I was very Intune with my “cravings” while I was pregnant, I followed that lead.
🦋OATMEAL
🦋SOUPS
🦋RICE
🦋QUINOA
🦋POTATOES
🦋BANANAS
🦋APPLES
🦋BLUEBERRIES
Gluten-free, nourishing carbohydrates—our brand new version of comfort food after our children were diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Warm. Predictable. Energizing. And, truly satisfying for me.
This were the first fuel type I truly mastered when I began separating fuels on Trim Healthy—not because it was trendy at that time, because I actually felt like I was breaking a rule by eating so many healthy carb-forward meals. But because they were possible with our childrens’ food boundaries, satisfying, and comforting. Easy to make gluten-free and dairy-free. Flexible enough to be Crossovers for my kids, and myself through seasons of later pregnancy and nursing. Supportive without being complicated because adding fruit to a meal was like having a “God made” dessert sitting on my counter when I was still very apprehensive about baking with the gluten free ingredients and sweeteners.
Long before there was language, and evidence, for carb-forward eating in the Wisdom Book that Trim Healthy published in 2024, I was already doing it. I felt better this way. So I listened, and it was working.
That was one of the first times I trusted my body instead of overriding it, as an adult.
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I’ve always been a volume eater. As a child, teen, and adult. Pregnant, postpartum, nursing, or none of the above.
Trim Healthy gave me permission to stop apologizing for that, but it also gave me direction for it by showing me how to increase the volume without sacrificing my goals.
For most of my life, I’d been told I ate too much—or too many “fattening” foods, since the 1990s was the “fat free” and “low fat” generation. Letting go of that narrative was freeing. At the same time, living with diagnosed binge-eating disorder has required a different kind of attention to how volume eating shows up in healthier ways.
I don’t need to force hunger cues as much as I need to respect fullness, but through the stresses we’ve been going through, and treatments of my disordered eating I have experienced the need to fuel my body without hunger cues and it was unsettling for someone who has never felt that before.
Reasonable doesn’t always come naturally—it’s something I practice, every single day, sometimes every single meal. Awareness, not restriction, is what keeps me balanced.
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Containment of my disordered eating tendencies, for me, doesn’t look like tight control.
It looks like paying attention to my mind, by body and my spirit. It looks like a delicate balancing act in my life.
🦋Adequate Protein.
🦋Healthy Carbs.
🦋Superfood Fats.
🦋Adequate Hydration.
🦋Non-Starchy Veggies to give me the volume I crave.
🦋Fueling often enough that I’m not hangry—but not so frequently that I slide into bingeing.
This isn’t a destination, because I assure you I haven’t “arrived.” It’s just collecting tools. It’s paying attention to my needs.
It’s a skill set. One I’m still building. One I expect to keep refining, forever.
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Trauma changed my relationship with control and trust in ways that crept up on me. Not just with people, but with myself.
Years of trauma—and re-traumatization—while advocating for my husband and my children compounded slowly, because it seems that mental health, neurodiversity, and food boundaries must be challenged if they aren’t fully understood. Each system navigated, many times through methods that mark me as a “bully” because i call out mistreatments instead of letting them stand.
Each injustice addressed, many times with a lot of time and effort. Each assault responded to, even if I was advised to “let it go.” The weight added up.
Infidelity did something different, but the same.
It dismantled my sense of safety in a way nothing else had. Love was never the problem, but trust was broken. Trust wasn’t rebuilt through words—it was rebuilt through years of showing me that change was present, not telling me it was.
Fourteen years later, I don’t think we’ll ever be fully out of recovery mode. It’s not a “negative” projection of our future, it’s an educated assessment of our humanity. And that makes sense when sexual addiction crosses into infidelity through apathy and ignorance. Ongoing vigilance isn’t dysfunction—it’s wisdom gained through experiences nobody ever wants to endure. It’s reasonable, as long as it doesn’t cross the threshold into control issues.
But layered trauma eventually tipped the scale into a control issue for me. But, not within my parenthood, or my recovering marriage.
The control I relied on to survive, within myself, stopped working. My nervous system was overloaded, and I was missing the signs which meant they were stacking within me. Clinical overwhelm and binge-eating disorder peaked during my long-term advocacy experience trying to facilitate justice for the abuses my children experienced at the hands of a pedophile. And for the first time, I couldn’t muscle my way through it. I was not okay.
So I chose support, because I needed to be supported too so I could continue advocating and caregiving.
Individual counseling, which I had always believed I didn’t need. I thought I was “fine”…but there’s an acronym for that in therapy world and it described me to a tee.
Proper providers, because I don’t work with people who don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t let people “practice” on me or my family very long anymore.
Language for what was happening instead of domination over it. I found that the duo of amazing providers, and my ability to describe the recurrent feelings, or lack thereof, that I didn’t like was the key.
That wasn’t failure on my part.
That was regulation. That was self care.
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This is the part of wellness that doesn’t photograph well.
Food doesn’t heal trauma, I’ve tried it that way—but it can stop adding to it, if it’s nourishing to the mind, body and spirit.
Structure doesn’t erase overwhelm, sometimes it adds to it—but it can create safety, and meet vital needs.
Listening to your body isn’t indulgent when your nervous system has carried more than its share. It’s the true definition of self care.
For me, Trim Healthy became less about control and more about containment, and facilitating balance—a way to eat that supports a body doing the brave work of staying present in a life that hasn’t been gentle.
And that shift changed everything in every part of me.
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Letting Go of Old Identities — releasing outcomes, labels, and the versions of ourselves we thought health required.
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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!
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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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