How Food Saved My Life — And Why I Built The Larder

By Augustine, Founder of The Larder

I didn't come to this way of eating because I was curious or it was trendy.

I came to it because my body was failing and nothing else was working.

Before

For years I did everything I was told was healthy.

I ate carefully. I restricted. I exercised. I pushed through. I followed the advice of doctors, nutritionists, and wellness experts. I tracked, measured, and managed. I tried every protocol that promised results.

And I got worse.

Not slowly. Not subtly. I got measurably, undeniably worse.

Before my collapse I was gaining weight despite eating 'clean'. I was exhausted despite sleeping. I was inflamed despite doing everything 'right'. My body was running on fumes and willpower alone — and eventually, willpower ran out.

In 2021, I collapsed. Literally.

In a body that could no longer stand, regulate, digest, think clearly, or function. I was severely iron deficient, chronically inflamed, and metabolically unstable. I was dealing with MCAS, POTS, IBS, ME/CFS - that relentless fatigue that sleep doesn't fix. Chronic infections had become my baseline. My nervous system had stopped regulating itself. My energy was gone. I was exhausted but suffered insomnia and woke 6 times a night. I had rashes all over my body and my joints were so inflamed I couldn't walk up stairs. 

I wasn't this sick for a lack of discipline or effort.

It was a fundamental mismatch between what my body needed and what I was feeding it.

The Long Road Back

Recovery was slow at first.

Eleven iron infusions gave me enough ground to stand on again — literally. I cut toxic relationships from my life and felt some relief. I took more supplements than I can count. Each one helped a little. None of them fixed it.

I was managing. Not healing.

The real question — the one that changed everything — didn't come until 2024.

I stopped asking how to manage my symptoms and started asking something more dangerous:

What if the food I was eating was itself the problem?

The Shift

I assumed like most that a plant-heavy diet was healthy. I had been eating tons of leafy greens and fiber and was known to say 'eat the rainbow'. 

But what if this was all incorrect - well meaning but incorrect?

So I decided - out of a desire to not just survive, but to thrive - to peel (pun intended) my diet back to the most nutrient dense and hypoallergenic food possible. 

That meant all carbs must go.

Then I did something more radical. I removed plants entirely.

What I gave my body instead was animal-based nutrition — fat and protein in their most bioavailable, least complicated form. Meat. Animal fats. Butter. Bone broth. Simple, ancient food that humans have eaten for most of our existence on this planet.

The shift was not subtle. It was remarkable.

Within days, the food noise disappeared. The constant hunger, the cravings, the obsessive thinking about what to eat next — gone. My blood sugar stabilised. My brain became steady and clear for the first time in years. All my pain receded. Digestion quieted — after thirty-five years of IBS symptoms, I became regular. And I slept deeply - all night long.

And without exercise — without stepping foot in a gym — I lost thirty pounds in thirty days.

I wasn't trying harder.

I wasn't restricting more. In fact. I was eating more calories and certainly more fat then I ever had.

My body was finally allowed to function the way it is designed to function when insulin is low, fuel is stable, and it isn't being fed toxic plant defence chemicals.

After

Over the months that followed, my body repaired itself in ways I had stopped believing were possible.

I released over one hundred pounds without restriction, tracking, hunger, or obsession. Chronic inflammation resolved. My nervous system stabilised. My energy returned — real energy, not the caffeinated simulation of energy I had been running on for years. My mind cleared enough to finish writing a book.

But the most profound change wasn't aesthetic or even clinical.

It was trust.

My body stopped feeling like something I had to fight, manage, or override. Food stopped being a math problem. Eating became simple, grounding, and sufficient — it became the fuel it was always intended to be.

That's when I knew this wasn't a diet.

It was a return to metabolic sanity. It was proper human nutrition.

Why The Larder Exists

I am a midwife. I have spent twenty-five years walking alongside people in the most vulnerable moments of their lives. I understand what it means to need support and not have the capacity to ask for it.

The people who need ketosis the most are often tired, sick, overwhelmed, overweight, embarrased and already stretched thin. Asking them to source, cook, and assemble every meal from scratch is often the very thing that breaks them.

I know this because it almost broke me.

The Larder is food as infrastructure.

Pure animal-based. Low-carb by default. No seed oils. No sugars. No fillers. No ingredients designed to confuse or deceive. Food built so you can eat freely and stay in ketosis without having to think about it.

This isn't about willpower.

It's about removing friction.

I built The Larder so people don't have to figure this out alone — or fail because the system around them makes consistency impossible.

If you're dealing with weight that won't move, energy that won't come back, blood sugar that won't stabilise, or a body that feels like it's working against you — this food is for you.

You don't have to have it all figured out to begin.

You just have to begin.

— Augustine

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