In this profound conversation with Indi, the Founder of The Monday Food Co, we discover the reasons why she went sugar free with this ‘bare it all’ conversation around her health journey that led her on the path of establishing The Monday Food Co, nine years ago. 

 

“I’d always been quite unwell, from a very young age my mother said that I didn’t have bowel movements and unfortunately that didn’t change as I was growing up. My bowels had completely stopped working. I had to use suppository’s to be able to have a bowel movement; not even laxatives would work for me.

 

It got so bad that I felt like I was slowly killing myself through my bad diet and non existent bowel movements. It was very apparent that my body wasn’t working properly, I had a period for five years with spot bleeding consistently before and after each bleed. I suffered from malnutrition and anxiety with my bad health. 

 

I LOVED sugar and had a massive sugar addiction, I wouldn’t eat lollies as such, but my daily routine was a 1kg block of Cadbury chocolate…DAILY! and I could have eaten more than that, but I gave myself that limit per day.

 

I think that my body was craving everything that it shouldn’t have, to feed the bad bacteria that was in my body. I went to a doctor who did microbiome testing, and this test found that all of my gut flora was not in good health. I had a lot of bad bacteria in my body. This can be passed through to you whilst in the womb, for instance if your mum had bad bacteria then that carries through to you. Although microbes are so small they require a microscope to see them, they contribute in big ways to human health and wellness. So clearly I needed a lot of time to heal that many years of unhealthiness and fuelling this bad bacteria.

 

After this discovery, it was the beginning of my health journey; I went on the GAPS diet and was super strict with that for six months. I had no sugar, and would start my morning off with a bone broth (which I still do now) and I would have boiled meats and green veggies, there are six stages to the GAPS diet that I went through. It wasn’t easy, especially as this was the first time I gave up sugar but it was the first time my entire life that I started to have regular bowel movements without a suppository and my period regulated.

 

When I went on the GAPS diet I felt like there was nothing out there ‘product wise’ that could offer me delicious food without the sugar. On the GAPS diet I slept better, I stopped craving sugar, I had more energy, it changed everything for me. I wanted people to have access to products that support a low sugar diet. With carbs also turning into sugar in the body, hence why I have Keto products. That’s when I started exploring the option of setting something up for myself and others that were in the same boat as me… and The Monday Food Co was born. I was supported by all of the local businesses in the Byron Bay area who were more than happy to get behind my products. I began with perfecting the best granola without the sugar. At this time you really could only buy granola that used sugar as the sweetener. For me, the importance of flavour and something that I would eat everyday meant I had to absolutely nail the recipes. I would never put anything on the market that myself, my friends and family wouldn’t eat and love. That’s always my motto and values. 

 

I then moved into creating refined sugar free bake mixes because there was nothing on the market like it. 

 

I was fortunate enough after healing my body and having suffered through quite a few miscarriages, to have my daughter Wynter with my husband Josh; but I had really bad fourth degree tearing with the birth of her. I then had to go on three courses of antibiotics because of infection, and everything started to go back to being bad with my health again. At this time, I had some tests done and got diagnoses with Gerd, which they put me on medication for. 

 

I since then have suffered from more miscarriages and a molar pregnancy, and recently had my gall bladder removed; which was ruined from the previous years of an unhealthy diet and bad bacteria. I feel like this has now been the final turning point for my health to get back on the right track again. It’s not easy to stay on top of it all especially whilst running a business with a young child and health problems but, my health journey has got me to where I am today. 

 

I have worked out what works for me and it’s taken many years of self research and different testing to get it right. I realised it was up to me to fix my health and that I need to be committed to doing what it takes to heal my body.

 

I was diagnosed with Dyslexia and ADHD as a child and medicated for that, but this is a whole other story and one that I would love to talk about in another journal entry. 

It’s always a lot to talk about your own personal health journey but I am grateful to be able to share it, to give others an insight into what I have overcome and why I create the products that I do. I love it when customers feel comfortable to reach out to me and share their health journey and how my products have helped them to eat nutritious and yummy foods without the sugar.”

 

Indi xx