Who Is Grain Free ME — And Why Does Any Of This Exist

I started cooking for myself when I was eight years old.

Not because I was some prodigy. Not because anybody taught me. Because the food everyone else ate made me sick. I didn't have words for it then. Nobody did. I just knew that if I wanted to feel okay, I had better be the one standing at the stove.

That pattern followed me my entire life. People tried. Family tried. Partners tried. Someone would make something with genuine love and care, something they were proud of, something they wanted to share — and my body would respond in ways that were confusing and embarrassing and sometimes frightening for everyone in the room. I didn't understand it. They didn't understand it. I wasn't trying to be difficult. They weren't trying to hurt me. Nobody knew what was actually happening.

So I just quietly took over the kitchen. Every time. "Oh no, let me cook." It was easier than explaining something I didn't have words for yet.

Looking back now I can see those moments for what they were and honestly my heart goes out to every person who ever tried to feed me. They were being kind. They were sharing something that mattered to them. And I'd end up sick. That had to be confusing and painful in ways I couldn't appreciate at the time. The relationship damage that undiagnosed conditions leave behind — on both sides of the table — is something nobody talks about enough. That's a conversation for another page. But it's real, and it runs deep, and it deserves to be said plainly.

I learned to fish young. When you catch something worth eating you figure out how to clean it and cook it. That's just what you do.

By the time I moved to King Lake in 2014 I had an Idea of where I wanted to be in 4 or 5 years. Within 3 I had Sixty hens. Six breeding pairs of meat rabbits. Aquaponic gardening. Greenhouses I built myself. Starting around 2,500 seeds every year. Building and selling rabbit hutches. Doing automotive work, home repairs, woodworking for people in the area. Raising my kids in the middle of all of it.

I wasn't doing it as a lifestyle brand. I was doing it because it made sense. Local food from sources you know and trust. Skills that actually transfer. Work that produces something real.

The 2019 March flood took most of it.

Then six months later my body crashed completely. ME/CFS onset. Never recovered to the baseline I had before. By the time I came out the other side of 28 doctors, 100 plus blood draws, MRIs, CT scans, and no answers from any of them — I had figured it out myself. Severe celiac disease. Hereditary fructose intolerance. ME/CFS. Avascular necrosis in both hips.

The dietary piece was the first thing I could actually fix. Grain free. Not just gluten free — grain free. The reactive hypoglycemia resolved. The systemic symptoms quieted. The parasitic draws on an already broken battery got smaller.

The battery is still broken. ME/CFS has no cure and anyone telling you otherwise is lying. But removing what was making it worse changed everything that could be changed.

I cook from a stool now on moderate days. Wheelchair on bad days. 2,600 step daily ceiling. I build everything in the system with that ceiling in mind because that ceiling is real and most recipe developers act like it doesn't exist.

The people I'm building this for are people like me. People who already know how to handle hard things. People who just need the right information and the right system and they'll figure out the rest. People who have been failed by every existing option and are still standing at the stove anyway.

Grain Free ME is the garage where broken battery people can still get their hands dirty and build something that matters.

Nobody else is building this yet. And somebody has to.

Grain Free ME provides non-downloadable video instruction and process demonstrations in gluten-free and low-carbohydrate cooking. These videos are built for people living with ME/CFS, severe celiac disease, hereditary fructose intolerance, diabetes, and other autoimmune conditions — no assumptions about energy, tools, or ingredients. Watch the real crash-day process videos on the Grain Free ME YouTube channel.