Meet Kate Doubler: Cooking Her Way To A Healthy Life
Kate Doubler is the author behind the blog Real Food RN. A busy working mom of three young children, a Nurse and a Real Food blogger. In today’s interview, Kate shares how she turned her passion for healing into her full time job.
What inspired you to start your blog?
I was very frustrated with our state of health and how little we were doing to address it in the hospital setting. It seems that symptomatic management is the key to healthcare, not finding the root cause.
I went back to school for nutrition at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN) to learn about how food can heal your body. It was so amazing to me that I just decided to put some of my recipes online in the hopes to inspire others to take their health into their own hands.
It's all about preventing disease, not managing it!
What/who are the biggest influences in your life?
The authors and natural health practitioners behind all of the books and podcasts that I have devoured over the past 10 years.
The work of Dr. Weston A. Price was one of the major influencers in how we originally started to change up our diet. We moved on to Paleo and I learned a lot from that whole community.
Now we enjoy a diet that is a combination of the two worlds of the Weston A Price Foundation and paleo. It's real food.
What do you enjoy about being a nurse? What challenges did you have to overcome?
I loved connecting with people!
I was not the best at being a "professional" because I would sit and really talk with people. I wanted to hear their story and know how I could help them.
In nursing school, they taught us that we had to be very professional and impersonal. I never liked that teaching. I loved to see people get better, especially when we would save lives during code situations. I loved it when I could inspire someone to read a good book on nutrition and start being proactive.
The challenges that I had to overcome were that I was pretty powerless in my career. I had to pass medications that I thought were detrimental to my patients health.
I had to follow standards of care that I did not agree with. I also had to follow orders, and it was very frustrating. We taught nothing about diet and lifestyle. We just gave them medication regimens.
How has your blog impacted your career?
I was able to cut down and stay at home with my kids working a "job" (my blog) that is a real passion for me!
I get to be home with my kids every single day while doing something that I absolutely love and that inspires me every day. I get to interact with people from all over the world and they truly touch my heart! Best job ever, truly my life's work!
From being a nurse, blogger, a soon-to-be-podcaster and full-time mother -- how do you manage your time and work life balance?
I get up really early every morning -- 4:30 -- to work. It may sound early, but I am so excited to get to work that it does not bother me at all. I get a lot done before the kids get up, then I work here and there throughout the day.
Between kid activities and during naps, I batch cook a lot, which saves time in the kitchen. I am a very big systems person, so I create systems for everything in order to make my life more efficient. I also have 2-4 days per month where I go to a coffee shop and work on bigger projects, uninterrupted.
What do you hope to accomplish through realfoodrn.com?
I hope to inspire people to want to live a better life, of their own accord.
I want to pull people out of the herd mentality of consumerism and medications and open their eyes to healthy living habits like: real food, detoxification, regular movement, hydration, getting chemicals out of their homes, improving their mindset, and everything that creates a healthy and harmonious life.
What advice do you have for nurses entering motherhood?
Take a look at every single area of your life and detox it. What do you eat? Is it healthy for baby? What do you put ON your body: skin care and personal care products. Are they healthy? How do you live your life? Do you work super long shifts or the night shift? Is that healthy?
When you find unhealthy behaviors in your life, change them as soon as you can. Life gets busier with kids and the sooner you are able to make changes, the better they will stick. I stopped doing nights, double shifts, eating junk, using toxic personal care products, and using toxic cleaners in my home.
It did not happen overnight, but it was completely life-changing! I actually put together a page with the resources that I wished I had found before I got pregnant with my first.
You can learn more about Kate and her real food movement on her blog, Real Food RN, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
