Food is Everything. It shapes how you look, how you feel, how you think, and ultimately — how you live. Every system in your body runs on what you put into it. But most of what we’re told is “food” today isn’t actually food at all.
We’re living in a world of fiat food — ultra-processed, nutrient-depleted products designed to look cheap while hiding the true cost of inflation. Real, nourishing food like grass-fed steak from your local butcher is priced like a luxury, while fake food pumped full of seed oils and fillers is made artificially cheap. They’ve quietly stripped the nutrients out of our food to protect the illusion that everything’s “affordable.”
I didn’t understand any of this when I left home for college. I thought I was eating well. I thought I was making smart choices. I was doing everything “right”, at least according to the mainstream. What I didn’t realize was that I was slowly destroying my body.
This is my story of waking up to the truth about food — and taking my health back.
When I moved out for college, I was on my own for meals for the first time. As a college athlete, I knew fuelling my body mattered, but little did I know, I had no idea how to actually do it. I was 18, heavily influenced by what I saw online and what my friends were doing. The internet screamed one thing: hit your protein goals, keep your calories low. So that’s what I did.
My diet turned into a rotation of protein shakes and bars with ingredient lists I couldn’t even pronounce. Outside of that, I relied on packaged meals from the grocery store, the kind labeled “healthy.” They looked clean on the outside, but were filled with preservatives, seed oils, and artificial additives. As long as the label said “high protein,” it felt like I was doing the right thing. But I wasn’t. My body knew it before I did.
After a few months, I became severely constipated. I would go an entire week without a bowel movement, over and over again. The pain was constant and consuming. I felt bloated everyday, like there was a brick sitting in my stomach. I tried adding fiber to my diet, drinking more water, taking laxatives, but nothing worked. My stomach was distended, my energy was gone, and I started to feel like my body was turning against me. But still, I didn't make the connection. I was "eating healthy" right? High protein, low calorie. I couldn't see that my gut was shutting down, because I thought I was doing everything right.
Eventually, the internal issues started showing up on the outside, and nowhere was more obvious than my face. My acne became the worst it had ever been, painful and inflamed. I tried everything the internet recommended: new face washes, topical treatments, and expensive skincare. I was ashamed of how I looked. I wore makeup everyday to hide the redness and texture, desperate to feel normal. But, none of it worked because the problem was not skin deep. My skin was a reflection of the damage happening inside my body, and I just did not know it yet.
The truth is, we're being fed poison that wrecks not just our gut, hormones, and metabolism, but our skin, our confidence, and our mental health. Instead of being offered real solutions, we're told to fix these problems with even more poison: harsh topicals, and pharmaceuticals. When these skincare products don't work, the next step is Accutane. Accutane is a drug so strong it can cause birth defects and liver damage. I have friends on it. I see what it does. It's all part of the same system: create the problem, then sell the "cure". The system is broken, and the only way out is to stop playing by its rules.
Around the same time, the skin on my body began to change. I developed dark patches on my stomach and back, almost like leopard spots. This was very concerning to me as a young girl and beach volleyball athlete. I would look at myself in the mirror and cry. I went to the doctor, but she brushed it off without offering any answers (thanks, Canadian healthcare). She barely looked at my skin before prescribing me with medication to cure skin fungus. I used this medication for a year. My skin only got worse.
I was tired of cycling through medications for skin fungus (that no doctor confirmed I actually had) and seeing no results, so I finally pushed for a biopsy. The diagnosis: EDP - a chronic, incurable skin condition. My doctor told me nothing caused it, and nothing could cure it. It was just something I would have to live with. But I couldn't accept that. I spoke with my (based) parents and they pushed me to make a radical shift in my diet. I cut out dairy, seed oils, and gluten completely. I want to clarify - high quality dairy is not inherently bad - but in my research, I found that there could be a link between EDP and dairy, so I removed it to see how my body would respond. I focused on real, nutrient-dense foods: high-quality eggs and grass-fed steak everyday. I eliminated all industrial cooking oils from my kitchen and started cooking exclusively with grass-fed butter and beef tallow.
That changed everything.
The “incurable” skin spots disappeared completely. What started as a desperate attempt to heal my skin turned into a full body transformation. My acne cleared. I lost 10 pounds without even trying. I was finally having regular bowel movements. I had energy again. Mental clarity. Confidence. For the first time in years, I felt like myself.
That's when I started waking up to the bigger picture. It wasn't just about food anymore, it was about the system. The healthcare system that offered me pills instead of solutions. The nutrition classes that pushed food pyramids built by corporate lobbyists. The "experts" who told me nothing was wrong, when everything clearly was. It all clicked: the system isn't broken, it's functioning exactly as designed. And it's not designed to make you healthy.
My experience with fiat food, and all the horrible side effects that came with it, taught me one of the most important lessons of my life: question everything. It forced me to stop blindly trusting the system. If I hadn't gone through all of it - the gut issues, the acne, the diagnosis, the healing - I genuinely don't think I would see the world in the way I do now.
It opened my eyes to the way governments operate, how the health industry profits off sickness, and how deeply broken the food system really is. But more than that, it helped me understand why Bitcoin and Nostr matter. Why decentralization matters. Why sovereignty matters.
Everyone has their own story. Their own moment when they realize society, the economy, and health are not what they seem. For some, it's money. For others, it's politics. For me, food was the crack in the illusion. And I'm grateful for that. Because once you see it, you can't unsee it, and from there you can finally start taking your power back.
In the end, all of these problems are symptoms of broken money. When money is manipulated, everything built on top of it becomes distorted. From our food supply to our healthcare to our freedom. That's why fixing the money fixes the system. Bitcoin is a lifeline. It's how we reclaim truth, health, and sovereignty.