A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak with Julie Daniluk an amazing woman who also happens to be a Holistic Nutritionist, public speaker, author, and TV host. Ms. Daniluk is on a mission to help people create what she refers to as “Juicy Vitality”, or being fully alive. Her most recent book, Slimming Meals that Heal Inflammation focuses on inflammation as the root cause of most diseases. Unlike many ‘diets’ and eating plans that focus on a particular way of eating (raw, vegan, paleo, etcetera), Julie focuses on the deeper cause of inflammation. I managed to give Julie the longest interview ever (what can I say – I’m super curious!)., however, she was more than gracious and shared with me her insane passion for nutrition, her honest views on health and of course, some great anti-inflammatory tips! Since I had such a long interview there will be a follow-up post which includes Julie’s five unconventional anti-inflammatory foods. Stay tuned!

Michelle Lall (ML): Can you tell me a bit about how you became such a prominent Holistic Nutritionist?

Julie Daniluk (JD):  A big part of it was my commitment to learn and to share and to heal because I was so sick at one point… We have a breaking point where we can’t live on white rice or white sugar or white flour anymore. And we have to find our way. The biggest thing that changed my life was working at the Big Carrot Natural Food Market for close to sixteen years in the end. .. Every day I was so lucky I got to figure out what is this latest coolest superfood that has just come to my path. I was probably using quinoa a decade before it was popular. That came out of being in the right environment…My stand is for awakened vitality on this planet. Like I am absolutely wanting juicy vitality for every human being.

ML: How did inflammation become your message, there are so many things out there in nutrition, so many diets – what made you boil it down to inflammation?

JD: I came up with the idea of the book about five years before the word inflammation was popular. I was sitting with a whole bunch of science on my honeymoon of all things. I was flipping through a book that was describing Advanced Glycation End Products [AGE] and how eating sugar causes inflammation in the body. But it wasn’t popular science yet and I thought to myself Inflammation is in the background in every major disease state in the entire universe but nobody is talking about that. So, I contacted this agent who is an amazing literary agent and I said “Rick I want to do a book on inflammation” and he said “you are insane no one even knows how to spell the word inflammation, Julie it is never going to fly” … so I went away from him and I wrote the entire book myself instead of trying to get a book deal. I wrote the whole thing front to back and it took about five years and then I came back to him with a completely finished manuscript and he knew it was amazing and he knew it was the time because Dr. Oz had just started to use the word anti-inflammatory.

ML: There are so many health books out there, so many people are saying that the paleo, vegan or raw diet is the way, but inflammation ties into everything together really well.

JD: I believe there are seven billion diets for seven billion people. I believe that no two people can eat the same because they have a different fingerprint they have a different nutritional  makeup and people consistently think that you can ramrod people into paleo or ramrod everyone into raw. There are a lot of people with a damp and cold digestive system where a cold damp raw produce makes them feel terrible. Let’s match their constitution to what they need.

ML: Why did you think it was really important to explain (inflammation) in a more scientific way? A lot of books don’t talk about the science.

JD: I think the reason why I offer the science is because there [are] so many books out there that offer solutions as ‘take my advice’…My core belief comes from  my yoga instructor which is don’t believe me just try this on and take a  look at the science and then tell me how you feel in a month and that I feel adds validity to it. That is why I think the book is so well received and sell[s] well. I think you have to back it up in this day and age because I really find that  doctors get on board if there is science and if you want to have integration where we are truly complementary to the medical system we have to somehow work within the medical model of proof. Proof of the benefit of anti-inflammatory foods just helps everyone relax and trust that it is worthwhile taking it on or why would they do it? It is one thing to say how and it’s another reason to say why and …[if] you can answer the reason why then you have people far more enrolled to truly take it on.

ML: At the Toronto “I Can Do It” Conference from Hay House you were talking about the “Live It” as opposed to “Diet”. Do you still think that a lot of people are still dieting?

JD: I think the anti-diet movement is brand new. I think just in the last year the new message is don’t diet. Before last year the diet craze was a billion dollar, multiple billion dollar industry. It’s so huge…the guy who wrote the “Oh My God Diet” made millions of dollars just instantly from the stupidest book saying to people … ‘pop is fine and broccoli is a carb so don’t eat it’ and just  atrocious health information and totally ungrounded and  yet they make millions of dollars …that’s a really great example of how bad the diet industry still is and how there…still will be  diets, there will still be people wanting a  magic pill wanting it to happen in a week wanting to lose  all the weight it took them years to gain…I realize that we are in the infancy of people understanding the detriment diets do to us; metabolically like  when you starve yourself at all your thyroid just [makes shrinking noise] and  I think it will be another year or two before it becomes common knowledge of the deprivation of caloric restriction. So, I think we have a lot of work to do but luckily a lot of nutritionists are screaming it at once.  I mean Joy McCarthy came out with “Joyous Health: Health without Dieting”, “UnDiet” by Meghan Telpner, Brad King just put out a book called “Dirty Diets”. The NO DIET movement is getting large! (We even have buttons!)

ML: Your first book was about inflammation. Why focus on SLIMMING meals that heal?

JD: I went into slimming meals that heal because people kept emailing me that they lost weight as a side benefit. They didn’t mean to lose the weight or they kind of liked the idea of losing weight but …that wasn’t their intention of the anti-inflammatory plan. They were in it to lose the pain and they got the weight loss as a side benefit. That’s why I wrote slimming meals that heal because I purely was shocked that people were like “Wow no caloric restriction, no cutting of carbs and I lost fifty pounds. How is it possible?!” …I wanted to go scientifically [to] investigate how could you lose weight without caloric restriction.

ML: Cortisol gets in the way of weight loss. What are a few things that someone could do to start reducing their stress or reducing this hormone or getting it more in balance?

JD: This is perfect segway into my six bonuses. I couldn’t fit it all into the book so I decided to create six extra bonus materials that  live on my website so if  someone wants to buy the book they get six stress busters for free. …

• one of the biggest ones is my brother Shambu he is a wonderful yoga instructor and he created  a wonderful yoga nidra which is a  meditation for stress relief and that’s up on my  website….
• another one is emotional  freedom technique which is from otherwise known as the tapping solution from Nick Ortner and Jessica Ortner. Jessica actually created a weight loss tapping technique for my website so you can download that as well.
• You can download some great workout tips that are anti-inflammatory … to work out without injuring yourself by Brent Bishop
• and then there is a great weight loss cortisol reducing night time meditation that you listen to in your sleep by John Gabrielle and he is on my website as well….

You want to release the emotions, you want to use yoga, you want to use self-hypnosis, you want to use workout tips to reduce stress and if there was one herb that stands above the others as a great cortisol reducing tool I would have to say my favorite herb is ashwagandha which I talk about in the super roots in the book. Ashwagandha is an Indian herb that dramatically reduces our stress and rebuilds our thyroid function so it’s great for weight loss and metabolism and also helps support your adrenal function.

ML: How would you encourage a newbie to try healthy eating or a holistic lifestyle?

JD: I think the most important thing is to try things on instead of taking things out. So if you’re not ready to go on a gluten free trial or you’re not ready to forget your favorite coffee in the morning … the first step is purely to embrace things that may eventually push out the negatives. So if you’re not ready to let go, don’t worry about it just embrace the positive and you’d be shocked that the positive will encompass your mind space enough to eventually give you the willpower to knock out the negative so that you are not having to force yourself to do anything because forcing is temporary whereas organic movement is something that will last.

Be sure to SHARE this article which any one suffering from inflammation or in need of some slimming. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this article in which Julie shares her top 5 unconventional anti-inflammatory foods!

~Michelle

Holistic Nutritionist.