From Eating Disorders to Empowered Nutrition w/ Karin Adoni
Welcome to Journey to the Sunny Side, the podcast where we have thoughtful conversations to explore the science of habits, uncover the secrets to mindful living, and of course, your own mindful drinking journey. This week, I'm joined by Corinne Adoni, clinical nutritionist and author of three books on clean living. In part one, Corinne shares her powerful journey through eating disorders, how she rebuilt her health, and why food, much like alcohol, can become a way to cope or control. Her story offers deep insights into mindfulness, balance, and what it really means to heal. Corinne, thanks so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm gonna throw you the million dollar question just for listeners just meeting you. What do you do in the wellness world?
Speaker 2:So what do I do? I've been a nutritionist for the past twenty years. So I guide and help people, especially women, but overall people losing weight, balancing their hormones, lowering their blood sugar level, balancing for metabolic syndromes, feel better. I teach them how to eat well, how to remove toxins and ultra processed food from their diet. I help teenagers who need you know some guidance in losing weight, women during menopause, postpartum, during pregnancy.
Speaker 2:I also have my own supplement line. I have recipe books and I also I'm a content creator also on social media as well.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Yeah. Very busy. I checked out some of your social posts and stuff. And I'm gonna ask you because you you specifically focus on a few things, but the kids have these natural sodas, the poppy things.
Speaker 1:And so I'm gonna ask you whether these probiotic sodas are okay. Okay. But we'll do that in a minute. But, you know, before you got into into all that you're doing right now, it sounds like you went through your own story that led to where you are. So can you share a little bit about that before we get started on a little bit more of the action based stuff?
Speaker 2:Of course. So, basically, I I suffered from eating disorders when I was I don't know. It's not even a teenager. It start I remember that it started when I was 11. And I wanna say the hardest time was, like, 11 until the age of 20.
Speaker 2:So it was, like, long nine years of struggling with eating disorder, more leaning toward anorexia the majority of the time. I was, like, hospitalized for, like, day, a few times throughout those years. I always wanted, like, there's something with, like, this type a personality that you always wanna be in control. So there, I always had, like, a thin line between where do I, you know, how much the disease is taking over control over my life versus like, I don't wanna seem like I'm in, you know, I'm struggling or I'm in a need or anything of that. But definitely it wasn't easy.
Speaker 2:And we're talking about a world before social media, internet was just developing. So there was not the influence that you had today. So to have eating disorders back in the day was really something within yourself and and maybe with like, you know, your surrounding and your experiences and whatever it is. But for me, it was like I would weigh myself tens of times a day, even wake up in the middle of the night. I had a scale in every room, even in my car when I was growing up and I got my license.
Speaker 2:I would take I would go to the gym twice a day. I would run seven miles just, you know, to start off my day. I would take any pill for, like, weight loss, legal or illegal. I did any diet in the book, the apple diet, the cabbage diet, the nothing diet. And then when I was 20, before I started school, like university, I went to travel the Far East with my good friend.
Speaker 2:And that was the first time. And prior to that, I'll just add, I went to therapy. My parents sent me to a psychologist. But when you don't wanna help yourself, no one can really help you. And a lot of people think that like eating disorder is about being skinny.
Speaker 2:Now when we're talking about the spectrum, we all have sometimes a relationship with food. But there's a difference between having full on eating disorder and being on the spectrum when having some sort of like disorder relationship. But when we're talking about people that take it to the next level like I did, how you look or the food is an outcome of something much deeper. It's the result, it's never the reason. So it's not like, oh, just eat or it's not about being skinny.
Speaker 2:It's probably a trauma or an emotional thing. And the struggle, it's completely mental. And the struggle coming out of it is one of the hardest things I think I've ever done. And I remember when I was hospitalized a few times, the girls that were there with me, some of them are not alive today or some of them still struggle and don't live a normal life. So going back to my trip, so I went with my good friend.
Speaker 2:We went to Thailand. It was great. It was so much fun. And I think that was the first time for me as like more of an adult person to actually be present and enjoy the situation without all the, you know, distractions that I had. The gym and the scale and the pills and whatever I had.
Speaker 2:And then I came back home and it all came back. All the demons came back. Because sometimes, yes, when you change your environment, when you change the situation and then you go back, it all comes back. And then I needed to make a decision whether I'm taking control over the disease or the disease will take control over my life. And that's where I was like, okay, whatever it means, I'm now choosing me.
Speaker 2:Because if this is the life that I'm supposed to live, this is this is a no go for me. And again, I was 20, I was young, but I did like other than going back to therapy and not lying to my therapist and actually being honest. It was also about I I quit my job because I was working in fashion and marketing, which was a very unhealthy, you know, environment for me. I had a group of friends which I love. Some of them I even grew up with, but some of them were not healthy to where I was at the moment.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't even about them. It was me needing to like change everything in my environment. And then I was also already enrolled to, like, business and marketing school. I dropped and I switched to, like, nutrition because I said, I'm doing this for myself. Healing, it was not even making a career or anything out of it.
Speaker 2:So that's where it started. And then slowly and gradually, you know, the process of healing started. It it's it's not a quick fix. It's not something that happens overnight. It's like years of therapy and self work and self awareness and, like, being more conscious and aware of everything.
Speaker 2:And then with the years when I graduated and I opened my own practice and clinic and business, I fell in love with also finding myself healing and treating and helping other people as a part of my own journey. And then in turned into into a career and to myself, you know, that's like how I see my destiny, like, you know, the self fulfillment that I do for people.
Speaker 1:I can identify with so much of the story even though our paths are completely different as far as, like, the subject matter. But as far as now finding a mission driven motivation into what you do, because that's exactly why I'm here on the podcast and like why I I struggled with alcohol in a different in a different substance, but also in similar mode in that you're just talking about food in that food for you was like the symptom and same with alcohol is the symptom of something deeper going on in your life that needs some repair. And there's also a big spectrum of that same with alcohol. There's a spectrum. There's people that can tune into a podcast and start thinking differently and positively and make some adjustments in behavior and can go right back to exactly where they've always wanted to be around it.
Speaker 1:There are some people that are just gone fully in a in an extreme side, and sometimes those take extreme measures to self correct. And so, like, I love this that we're going have this conversation because I think we kind of we get each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Definitely. And I always say that, like, you know, it's an addiction and, like, you know, the therapist bible and whatever it is and psychiatry, they don't define food as an addiction or whatever it is when we're talking about the other. But just because food and a lot of things related are you have to eat in order to sustain yourself and be alive versus like alcohol and drugs, which you do not. But the addiction and the problems are not so different to what people think. It's just it's it's labeled differently.
Speaker 2:You know, drugs and alcohol are labeled differently. They do different side effects, but food has a lot of side effects that people don't get.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So I think this is gonna lead into a really good conversation. And it's also very much around mindfulness, which
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:We think we talk about mindful drinking here, but the broader subject of the podcast is just mindful living, which, obviously, like you just said, you have to eat to live. So let's get into what you're focusing on. And I think it's really relevant to a lot of the to everyone listening, but also specifically to women that are listening. What got you focused on things like hormones and gut health?
Speaker 2:So first was the gut health because basically everything starts in your gut bacteria. So it's like when your microbiome is out of balance, first of all, your immunity is weak. 70% of your immune system is in your gut bacteria. So your gut bacteria is weak, your immunity will be weak. Your immunity, your inflammation will be high and it's like a domino effect.
Speaker 2:And we know the gut microbiomes, it's science and on the field for years that we see the connection from like an infant to like antibiotics that takes it out of balance to ultra processed food, stress, water, not enough fiber, like everything that has got to do. And we also know that ultra processed food medications and whatever it is I'm talking about, like abusing it more, is also takes the balance completely off. And then it shows. It shows on your skin. It shows on your mood swings.
Speaker 2:It shows on your motivation. We've even seen studies showing that like a bad gut bacteria or unbalanced one is correlated to your motivation, to depression. Okay. When we're talking about like mental problems and half of the population suffering from that. So that was very clear and that's known for many years, which can be correlated to you know feeling bloated, fatigueness, bowel movement that isn't working properly, weight loss, diseases.
Speaker 2:And then in the past few years, I want to say seven years, eight years, give or take, I started going and taking a deeper dive into hormones. So it started more with working with my clients on menopause, which is a very it's an area in women's life which is not talked about and not touched enough, especially eight, ten years ago. That is one of the hardest times in a woman's life where all the hormones completely change and she, like, loses herself in a to a certain extent. Like, sleep is being deprived. Weight loss becomes impossible.
Speaker 2:You gain weight. You like, everything. And then I started taking a deeper dive, like, so many women in the Western world, you know, go through menopause symptoms so badly versus people in Japan, people in Africa, like people that the Western world isn't or isn't so strong and ultra processed food isn't so significant and medications and hormonal disruptors. And I started looking and taking another layer and I'm not like diving deeper and deeper and deeper. And then I started saying, okay, so it's not specifically just menopause.
Speaker 2:It's all the hormonal disruptors that we live in. So it's from the water we drink, it's from the birth controls we take, the lotion that we put on our skin, the laundry detergent, the cleaning products, the fragrance, the perfumes, everything can create like a domino effect into our hormones, which leads to fatigueness, tiredness, bad skin, feeling bloated, feeling lack of motivation, PMS, infertility. Infertility is crazy for men and women. So a lot of those things all of a sudden came together. And I was like, okay, hormones are kind of the big boss of your body.
Speaker 2:And if you don't treat your hormones, nothing else will fall into place. So I tied it up even more into like, no, it's not just your estrogen and progesterone specifically and how you produce it. And there's like, why do girls get their period now at nine year old? Like, what changed? And then they're just saying, oh, it's because they inject antibiotics into the meat.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, that can just be the sole reason. It has to have something behind it. And then that's what led me today into talking about more nontoxic living. And when I guide my groups and my clients and everything, I tied it all. It's not just what you eat.
Speaker 2:It's what you put on your skin. It's the laundry detergent that you use. It's the shampoo you wash your hand. And, again, it sometimes can be overwhelming, but if you take it one step after the other, like, even small swaps, like, you give your kids medication, maybe give it without red 40. You know?
Speaker 2:Like Yeah. Even simple stuff that makes a huge difference.
Speaker 1:No. That's great. I love that. It makes total sense as far as, like, the hormones and the gut. And so let's do a little bit of, like, a one zero one zero one for each of those as we go through these.
Speaker 1:And one of the things that, really that you said makes me think is, like, were a lot of information that you threw out there, and sometimes it gets so overwhelming even for me. Like, I'm, like, a health guy. I look in everything, but I, like literally, at some point, I have to shut down all the, like, the Instagram posts because it's like, oh, this is, like, screwing you up, and then you do this. And then you go over here and it says to do this and it's actually
Speaker 2:contradicting the other And it even is worse than your cortisol spikes. And you're like, dude, let me just shut it off and let me go eat like a hot flaming Cheetos or something. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, literally everything is messing me up or killing me in some way. And then and then something else is telling me how I'm a bad parent. But but that's a whole other conversation. You know?
Speaker 2:I am. So I get it.
Speaker 1:But let's start out let's start out with hormones. So, like, what's a subtle sign that and hold on. Let me let me take one step back. If I don't ask the right question, you correct me.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:But I'll start with what are the subtle signs that a woman's hormones might be out of balance?
Speaker 2:Fatigue ness, unexplained tiredness, waking up in the morning not feeling refreshed, disrupted sleep, lots of bloatingness. And I would say anything with men's like, your period is too heavy, your PMSing, ovulation off, or anything of that kind definitely is a sign. But, like, fatigueness, tiredness, bad skin really goes into that.
Speaker 1:Okay. And so what's the first step that somebody if they recognize some of these things? Because, you know, it's hard to know, like, fatigue, tiredness, that could be gut thing too. Right?
Speaker 2:But it's also kind of so okay. So let's put this. So let's say we're talking about now hormones and gut. So when I say, what would be, like, number one that I would do? First of all, I would look into food.
Speaker 2:So I would remove ultra processed food as much as we can. Even 80% would be like a huge change. That What are
Speaker 1:common sorry to cut you off. What Sure. But before you move on, what are the common bad actors when it comes to
Speaker 2:I'll tell you in a second. I'll finish Okay. And then if we remove ultra processed food that affects your gut bacteria and your hormones, they kind of go hand in hand, if that makes sense. The main thing, food coloring, I mean, like crazy. Industrial seed oil, so canola, soybean, and all of those.
Speaker 2:Glyphosate, which is basically what is pest this pesticides that is sprayed. High fructose corn syrup, that is also like a big player into that. Those would be like seriously the main, like, listen, the list is long, but those would be like the main ones.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, it's definitely here in America in everything because like I was living last year mostly in Spain. And my You probably felt amazing. I felt I felt great. And this is the second time I've done this too.
Speaker 1:So, like, I've actually done this twice in my life. And I'm like, when I move to Spain, I could, like, I could eat, like, the unprocessed, unbleached, decent soil bread and not, like, gain any weight or feel terrible. I always felt good after meals. I didn't have to I mean, yes, they do have processed foods, and, yes, they do have seed oils, but it's
Speaker 2:But it's different.
Speaker 1:It's different. And and the no high high fructose and everything. And the diet like, there's a lot more regulation. And as soon as I come back here, I feel bloated, slow. Like, literally everything, like, health foods I would eat would make me feel sick.
Speaker 1:The unfortunate thing is now that I've been back for three months, it just feels normal now. Yeah. But I know it's not.
Speaker 2:You know? It's not. Like you need to make in America, in The US, such an effort to eat healthy and clean. Like you need to go into the details of everything. You need to go source it from like specific places, specific markets.
Speaker 2:You you pay a lot more to just eat real food. Where in Europe, it's just the food.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:It's just the food. That's just the food. And that's exactly where the the problem is I came back from Italy last month. We were there for like almost a month. You know?
Speaker 2:Like me and my husband and the kids, like my husband literally and he's like on a very, I I wanna say 80% strict diet here in America. We eat organic, we eat meat, we eat fish, we eat fruits. There, pizza twice a day and pasta and wine and and everything. Even the wine, by the way, is completely different. And we asked even some of the people who went to like this winery and we had sommelier and whatever.
Speaker 2:And then we said, can we get those wines in America? Like, there's wines made from Italy. And then they said, no. No. When we do The US regulation, we need to add bunch of stuff into the wine for it to be in American standards, which is like a different word.
Speaker 2:Like, we need to add tons of mhmm into the wine in order for it to be. So if you want Italian wine, you buy it in Italy and you take it with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's crazy, but not surprising either. And, yeah, my diet could be way more whatever I wanted. So I don't wanna I don't wanna go too deep into people saying, oh, well, that's nice, but we're not there right now. So what does that do to me?
Speaker 1:But it is true. Like, it goes and, the the thing that I've noticed especially is it's extremely hard to eat healthy here. And part of the reason is the deceptive packaging and making people think that things are healthy, which actually brings me to this because of my I'm guessing it isn't, but my wife likes to buy Poppy. Something that's not Coke, you know, for the kids at least have a treat. So where does this rate?
Speaker 1:So to clarify anybody not on video, I'm holding up the Poppy soda, prevo soda.
Speaker 2:It depends because the flavors kind of change, so it depends on the ingredients. So, like Oh, so So Poppy is not bad. Olipop or Spindrift are considered cleaner. But in on in full honesty, is this better than a Coke or a regular soda? 1000%.
Speaker 2:Yes. Could it have some ingredients that are not 100% to the people who are extremely strict? Yes. But for the majority of the people, this is a much better alternative.
Speaker 1:Great. Alright. So I feel better about that, but I'm not I'm still more of a water guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Water
Speaker 1:guy. It's soda and coffee. Yeah. So soda, water,
Speaker 2:and coffee. Yes.
Speaker 1:That's where we'll pause for part one of our conversation. We've heard her powerful story and how it shaped her mission. In part two, we're going deeper, sharing practical ways to support your hormones and gut health, simple swaps to cut through the overwhelm, and a rapid fire round of her best tips. So stick around. Part two is coming up next.
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