Drinking coffee before breakfast

Once upon a time I believed that even the tiniest “wrong” choices would negatively affect my body.

The wrong laundry detergent.
The wrong water filter.
The wrong timing of a meal.

The bad food.
Breaking the cardinal “no coffee before breakfast” rule.

I used to live in a carefully curated, “perfect” environment with a long list of rules. Whole-house water filters, air filters in every room, entire cabinets dedicated to supplements, evenings spent avoiding blue-light at all costs and crafting the perfect bedtime routine (I must start CALMING DOWN NOW!!!).

I thought I was protecting myself. Building resiliency. Doing the “right” thing.

But, here’s the irony: I actually feel better now - both physically and mentally - even though I now live in a way where I violate all the “health rules” more than ever before.

For years, I believed coffee before breakfast was pretty much the ultimate sin. A hormone-ruining, cortisol-spiking disaster. The internet told me so. Practitioners told me so. I told me so (as I definitely used to be one of those wellness practitioners!).

I was a pastor at the church of holistic wellness who was on a mission to spread the gospel.

To enlighten people. To tell them how they should live. What they should do. Which wellness doctrine they should follow. To help them!!

Honestly, I think I always loved the whole victim-savior dynamic and the theatrics of it all. The doctrine. The “preaching.” The rules.

The satisfaction of feeling like I was really making a difference in the world by telling people how they should live.

The familiar buzz of certainty and the safety found in doing “all the right things.” Of being a good little rule follower.

Because, when doing all the right things + following the rules “don’t work” and fail to give us the results we want, then we conveniently get to feel pretty validated and justified in our hard-earned victimhood status.

Anyhow, back to the coffee…

I used to love the quiet ritual of waking up, making a latte, adding milk and sugar (like, actual real dairy milk and real sugar - not monk fruit, stevia, coconut, date, or some other sugar alternative). Sitting down with my journal and watching the steam dance upwards.

I denied myself that for years, because I was convinced it was “wrong.” That I needed to eat something first (and not just something, but a whole dang meal with 30+ grams of protein!!).

After learning the framework of GNM (German New Medicine), I decided to play around with ditching some of the rules.

Some things were easier to let go of than others, but what I soon realized was that I actually felt better the more and more rules I let go of. Although, I must say that the whole coffee-before-breakfast thing is one of the more recent rules I’ve broken.

Now, my morning coffee ritual is one of my favorite parts of the day. And my hormones are just fine. My metabolism is fine. My body is fine.

Why did I ever complicate something as simple as just eating when I’m hungry? And not forcing myself to have a massive breakfast until I actually want to eat it?

Because what matters more than any actual “harmful” effect of drinking coffee before eating breakfast is actually my relationship with it. My beliefs about it.

So, it’s not that I can now magically handle drinking coffee before breakfast because I did all the right things to heal my hormones - it’s because my beliefs changed.

The transition from fear-based “shoulds” to radical trust in my body and emphasizing what brings me joy and lights me up.

So, my new belief is that the joy of the ritual trumps the biochemical “should.” Every time.

People often get a little huffy when I suggest that our physiology is controlled by our perception, because they think that this equates to blame in some way (you mean to tell me that it’s MY FAULT I have ______ diagnosis??).

But, ultimately, isn’t everything modulated by belief? By perception?

You can choose to see it as a curse or burden, or you can see it as expansive. Delicious possibility. Freedom.

Anyhow, my complete paradigm shift and freeing-yet-scary-at-times journey of walking away from the safety net of health rules didn’t stop with drinking coffee before breakfast.

I (sometimes) eat after 8pm now. For years I tortured myself with cut-off times, digestion rules, intermittent fasting windows. The constant overwhelm of who to listen to when trying to decide the most optimal times of the day to feed myself!!!! And yet - here I am, breaking curfew, eating late if I’m hungry, and sleeping better than ever.

I eat bread, dairy, pasta, processed foods (even seed oils on occasion!!). The things I used to label “bad.” And funny enough, the moment I stopped labeling them, I stopped obsessing. I eat them, I move on. I feel fine.

I don’t try to hit a certain amount of water intake anymore. No more lugging around those massive bottles that have lines on them to track how much you’re supposed to drink by a certain time of day. IYKYK.

I drink when I’m thirsty. Imagine that!! And, guess what? My body never “forgets” to tell me when it’s thirsty. I am literally 30 years old and I feel like this is some massive… revelation??

I threw out all my supplements. Every last one. Do you want to know what happened? Nothing. I felt no worse. If anything, I felt lighter.

And, probably the most scandalous of all… I often like to watch a tv show before bed. Sometimes I even fall asleep with my little iPad propped up next to me.

I almost feel, idk, guilty even admitting this?!

I used to battle chronic insomnia. I tried every “rule” and hack out there: the blue light blocking glasses, the magnesium, the red light bulbs, the perfect screen-free bedtime routine. Meditating + breathwork before bed. The more neurotic I got (and the more I “perfected” my routine), the worse I slept.

But, when I walked away from all the shoulds and let go of the rules? I started sleeping better than I had in years.

None of this is to say that sleep, nutrition, or movement don’t matter. They do. Covering your basics - eating real food, moving your body, getting decent sleep, and cultivating your social life can all help to boost your overall biological integrity (aka resiliency).

But, the bigger truth is this → it’s never just the thing itself (the straight up biochemical effects from a certain substance or action). It’s your relationship with the thing that has the most impact.

The way your body digests a meal has as much to do with your perception (which stems from your underlying beliefs) as it does from the actual food you’re eating. The way you sleep has as much to do with your beliefs about sleep and blue light exposure as it does with any actual effects from the blue light exposure itself.

Fear poisons even the most nutrient-dense, “healthy” meal.

While peace, self-trust, and ease transforms even the worse “junk food” into a nourishing meal.

I say all this as someone who used to chronically live in fear - every craving was demonized, every “yes” was weighed against a list of invisible dangers.

Now, I live in a want orientation.

What do I actually desire? What would feel good? What do I want? What lights me up? What brings me joy?

Does it bring me closer to peace, or closer to fear?

This is now the only question I ask.

I believe that there is something sacred in rebellion.

The joy of painting my nails, even if the polish isn’t “clean.”
The joy of eating dessert at 10pm.
The permission of staying up late playing games with friends or watching a funny movie instead of winding down perfectly.
The relief of using whatever dish soap or laundry detergent your Airbnb provides.

I used to think rebellion would make me sick. But rebellion transformed my life in the best way possible.

Because it wasn’t just rebellion for the sake of rebellion - it was rebellion against fear.

A step forward in reclaiming my sovereignty as a human being and living life on my own terms.

Playing around with the creation of my ideal life. Of coming home to the deep knowing that beliefs can be intentionally programmed.

We can choose the “operating system” that we want to run on.

And fear, more than any meal timing or blue light or seed oil, was the thing that was making me sick.

Fear is the most potent toxin.

The wellness world thrives on fear (lo and behold… fear is what sells!). It convinces you you’re broken, and then sells you the fix. A supplement. A protocol. A biohack. A method. Someone’s secret sauce approach (which, btw, is the kind of marketing I TRULY LOATHE).

I spent years living small. Spending tens of thousands of dollars in the name of “healing,” shrinking my life, obeying the shoulds.

And the best I ever felt was… mediocre.

My life got smaller and smaller. My joy shrank to fit the rules.

Now? I feel healthier than I ever did when I was living “perfectly.” And the only thing I changed was my perception. My beliefs.

I stepped into a completely different health paradigm - one that is radically different from both the conventional, holistic, and even generic “mind body” paradigms.

If you’re stuck in wellness overwhelm - paralyzed by the noise, terrified of doing it wrong - here are some questions you can play around with:

• What rules do I secretly enjoy breaking?

• What would it feel like to trust my cravings? To play around instead of seeking perfection? To follow what feels good instead of only what feels safe and certain?

This way of seeing - of trusting, of letting go - didn’t come from a supplement or a protocol. It came from a new lens… a totally new way of understanding health and how my body works.

For me, that lens was the framework of the German New Medicine (in Spanish, it’s called “the sacred medicine”).

BTW - if you have never heard of GNM before and are like what the heck is she talking about?? …listen to this podcast episode!).

It’s not a modality or a method. It’s not prescriptive. It doesn’t tell you what “to do” to heal. It’s not a magic pill.

It’s a framework. A way of understanding how our bodies adapt - without fear or blame.

It’s the only thing in all my years of wellness that has actually brought me peace and transformed my view on health (and, thus, actually did transform my “health”).

When I stopped living in fear and viewing my body as the enemy - as something that’s constantly “malfunctioning” - I was finally able to decode the messages from my body about how I was truly perceiving the world around me. I was able to shift out of fear and into peace. Into joy.

And that has changed everything.

Stay curious,

Abigail