Melissa Ramos-Sexy Food Therapist and Poop Whisperer (Thesis Sample)

Alex: Welcome to the Cravings Whisperer Crave Cast. I’m Alexandra Jamieson. I’ve been a chef, author, and functional nutrition coach for over a decade. It’s time to find out what’s really behind your cravings, so you can get the health, energy, body and life that you really want. Hey, everyone, Alex Jamieson here, the Cravings Whisperer with the Crave Cast as I am now calling it. You know what a podcast is, anyway, this is my Crave Cast and I have with me the beautiful Melissa Ramos, all the way from Canada. Canada to Brooklyn, right here, streaming live, yay! So, Melissa has some of the best titles to put on any business card I have ever seen in this whole health and food business we’re in. You are known as the Sexy Food Therapy Nutritionist. You’re also an acupuncturist, and I’ve actually seen a picture of you that said ‘Poop Whisperer’. This is the Cravings Whisperer, Poop Whisperer… all the whisperers in the podcast.  So, you’re a nutritionist, you’re an acupuncturist, you’re a healer. How did you get into this in the first place? Tell us about your journey to get here as a healer.
Melissa: For sure. So, I started out as an advertising executive, so completely opposite… In fact, I even advertised for some of the biggest packaged food companies there is in the world. It was almost like I worked for the devil. I found myself getting sick, and not really understanding it, and it was something that felt like it almost happened overnight. Kinda weird, because all of a sudden I would eat something and I would have really bad digestive issues, my joints were starting to hurt, I felt like I was almost eighty… And, I was like, "I’m not supposed to be having these pains in my mid-twenties, this doesn’t make any sense!" So I was having pains, and then the depression, and the acne; I had acne pretty much everywhere on my face except on my eyes, which is kinda crazy. So, I began to study nutrition, I went to see different practitioners to try to get to the root of the issue, because I didn’t find that the Western medical system was working for me at the time. In my current job, the more guilty I felt, because I felt like, "This is really bad! My current values don’t align with what’s being said about these foods, and they claim that they’re trying to make it really challenging." So, I ended up making this massive leap into switching careers. I went off to study acupuncture afterwards and, when I ended up moving in with a bunch of girls in a home in [inaudible] here, I called it the estrogen den, because it was just a house full of girls. I started writing a silly, little blog called ‘Sexy Food Therapy,’ which at the time was really just writing about my dating life and how I emotionally ate the right way.
This has kind of evolved after that, because all of a sudden people started to read it, a lot of people started to read it! I went from shooting pictures with the very first iPhone that came out, with the really bad camera at the time, to investing more into cameras and so forth. And, the business just started to [inaudible] and it evolved, and now my specialties really are in digestion ovarian cysts, because I had a lot of health struggles with ovarian cysts, I actually almost died from a ruptured cyst that tore off a piece of my right ovary. Digestion and hormonal balance are the key things that I really work with women towards, and helping them understand that this isn’t… that they shouldn’t look at it like, "I’m gonna do this for two weeks and then it’s done!" This is a lifestyle, and I think that people really don’t realize how good they’re intended to feel. 
Alex: Hmm. You know, that’s such a good point. So many people that both of us have probably worked with over the years… they can be a little confronting to start to make changes that are so widespread in their diet. And they think, "Okay, I’m just gonna do this for a little while, to deal with this specific problem." And, as they start to feel better, do you ever see them confront their own level of comfort with feeling good?
Melissa: Yeah, and I think that they end up getting faced with that comfort of feeling good, and they think, "Oh, wow, this is, I can’t even believe I feel this way!" And then the opposite happens when sometimes they’re confronted with the things that surface. It might not be pleasant, sometimes it’s emotional stuff, emotional baggage, sometimes it’s really weird physical reactions, especially skin reactions as your skin is the largest elimination organ that you have. So you kinda get a bit of both, and I find that they’re equally powerful, because one is just making you feel so good, and the other one is "Wow, I really have to do deal with this, but this is really [inaudible]" But, it’s a part of the journey and I think that people have to embrace both sides for sure. 
Alex: What I love about the title of your blog is that, originally, it was about dating and eating emotionally the right way. Tell me about that. What do you mean by ‘emotionally eating the right way’? 
Melissa: Yeah, so, basically that’s how the business started out initially. But ‘emotionally eating the right way is about, if you’re going to be heartbroken, sometimes your immediate response may be not having an appetite at all, or we begin to actually crave really terrible things, which might be like a big bag of chips, or a big carton of ice-cream, or cookies, or so forth. I got to a point – I have a sweet tooth, I am definitely more sweet than a salty kind of chick – but, I looked at it, like, "How can I make these things that I traditionally love, which truthfully are cookies, because I  love cookies, how can I make really good cookies in a really healthy way that I almost fool myself into thinking that it’s bad for me. I started to make these recipes that were [inaudible] and favorites, and into something that was healthy so that people were emotionally eating the right way. In addition to that, food has energetic properties to it, and especially it’s why I love Chinese medicine so much, because it does talk about how, for example, chocolate heals the heart because, by nature, chocolate is supposed to be bitter, it’s not supposed to be the candy stuff that people get at their local convenience store. But, bitter [inaudible], which is therapeutic for the heart. So, I think that it’s embracing different flavors and profiles and colors and so forth, and that’s how you emotionally eat the right way. 
Alex: Okay, so, I have this perspective on cravings which may tie in perfectly to what your business originally started as, and I’m sure has evolved as well, around the things that we crave. You had sugar cravings, you still have sugar cravings, I still have sugar cravings and it’s just a lifelong part of our food and health journey. But, there are other things that we crave. And, you were dating and eating in a new way. So – tell me about the breadth of your cravings, and how you see those things interact. How was dating for you at this point when you were healing your body, as these were things going on at the same time? What was going on?
Melissa: Yeah, and I mean it is true, because I had so many digestive issues and it got into my skin. All these things were happening, and I was still healing as I was going through school and my studies, so, as I’m dating and getting this wealth of emotions from stress from studying at the [inaudible], stress from going on a really, really bad date where you’re just like "Oh, my God, I wish the ground would just open up and swallow me in a hole, because I don’t wanna be here! Get me out of this date, this is so absolutely uncomfortable!" But, I would go home and I kinda started to look at, and repurpose my thoughts about food in a very different way. It was about like, "How do I make this into a pleasurable experience?" So, I would come home, and I would make food and sometimes a roommate, when I had roommates, would come in, and I’d be like,
"Do you want any food?" because I really believe in the community of spirit. So, it’s sharing that food, and this really bad experience that I had, and this really poor date. Or, maybe a really great day, and it was not just eating the food, but it was the process of the food. I know that a lot of people think, "Oh! I hate cooking. I don’t have the time for it." But, I think that the way to be able to love it is to be able to see how will this act serve my current values. So, my values at the time were my studies, and my values at the time were possibly finding love, the right person – and if I ate well, I would definitely be more energetic for school, I would definitely be more vibrant on a date, I would feel sexier. All these things. So, I was thinking I have to make this a value, and not just go and get takeout, because we all know how we feel after we eat this stuff.
We end up feeling just heavy, and that was the last thing that I wanted to feel.  So, I think that people have to really shift their perspective. It takes time, but, when you do, you actually make that connection, you’re like, "Oh! That’s powerful!” 
Alex: I love it. I call that whole framework you’re big mode. Your big motivating desire. Like, whatâ€&t...