Hi, I’m Michelle

I’m a Certified Health Coach, the creator of Green Food Crush, and a lifelong student of nutrition and healthy living. I’m also a wife, mom, gardener, and backpacker, and I never seem to get tired of learning about the human body and how remarkably God designed it. My faith in Jesus shapes how I think about health and how I care for the body He has given me.

For more than 20 years, I’ve been fascinated by how our bodies respond to the way we care for them. That curiosity has changed how I eat, exercise, rest, and live, and eventually became part of why I created Green Food Crush.

Today, I share what I’m learning in a way that is practical and easy to understand. You’ll find a strong emphasis here on whole-food, plant-based nutrition, gut health, movement, sleep, mindset, and the small daily choices that can support health over time.

The more I learn about the human body, the more amazed I am by what happens inside us every single day.

My goal with Green Food Crush is simple: to help make healthy living easier to understand and easier to put into practice.

Why I Care So Much About Health

About 20 years ago, a woman walked into the dental office where I was working wearing a bright orange T-shirt that read, “Got Carrots?”

My first thought was that maybe she owned horses.

When I asked, she told me she was following something called the Hallelujah Diet. She talked about eating an abundance of raw plant foods, drinking fresh juices, cutting back on processed foods and sugar, and the changes she had experienced in her health.

Then she began telling me stories about other people whose lives changed as they altered how they ate and cared for themselves.

I was fascinated.

She also talked about eating the foods God created for us, and I couldn’t stop thinking about that.

I couldn’t stop thinking about our conversation.

That conversation changed the direction of my life.

I Started Researching

I went home and started researching.

The more I learned, the more questions I had—and the more fascinated I became.

Not long afterward, someone close to me was diagnosed with colon cancer, and my interest in health became much more personal. I began reading everything I could find about nutrition, chronic disease, lifestyle medicine, and the ways our everyday choices can influence health.

Until then, I had thought of many illnesses primarily through the lens of genetics, aging, and chance.

What amazed me as I kept researching was how many people made remarkable improvements in their health simply by changing how they ate and lived. Some had done it alongside medical care, while others had needed very little — or none at all. I had no idea the body could respond that dramatically.

It also gave me hope. I began to understand that although we can’t control everything about our health, we can make choices that matter.

There were things within our control.

I became an avid student—reading books, watching documentaries, attending health summits, studying nutrition, and learning from physicians, researchers, and health educators worldwide.

My Own Health Journey

In April 2018, I discovered a lump in my breast.

By that point, I had already spent years learning about nutrition and lifestyle and listening to people tell their stories of making dramatic changes after serious health diagnoses. I had followed Chris Wark’s work @chrisbeatcancer for years and had listened to countless interviews with people who believed changes in diet and lifestyle had played an important role in their recovery.

So when I found the lump, I made a very deliberate decision. I chose not to have it medically evaluated then. Instead, I gave myself six months to completely change how I ate and lived, using many of the same principles I had been studying for years.

I moved to a whole-food, entirely plant-based diet overnight and soon began eating fully raw plant foods. I stayed fully raw for about three and a half years because I felt better eating that way than I ever had before. Today, I still eat a high-raw, plant-exclusive diet, and a couple of times a year I return to fully raw eating for about six weeks, often following Dr. Brooke Goldner’s protocol. I continue to enjoy it because I genuinely feel so good eating that way.

Within weeks, I began noticing changes. Arthritis-like pain in my hip disappeared, as did severe pain I had been experiencing in my thumb. My asthma stopped flaring the way it once had. I had much more energy, my anxiety improved, and I lost weight without intentionally trying to.

After approximately four months, I could no longer feel the breast lump.

Because I never had the lump medically evaluated, I do not know what it was, what caused it, or why it disappeared. I share this as my personal experience, not as evidence that diet or lifestyle treated a medical condition, and not as a recommendation for someone else to make the same medical decision I made.

What I can say is that the experience changed the way I lived. I had spent years listening to other people describe what happened when they changed how they cared for their bodies. For the first time, I was experiencing significant changes in my own health, and it made me want to keep learning.

Why Being Healthy Matters to Me

One of the things I’m most grateful for is being able to fully participate in the life God has given me.

For me, good health means being able to spend an afternoon working in the garden and still have energy when the sun goes down. It means hiking mountain trails with a 25-pound backpack, lifting weights, working hard, learning new things, and having the energy to serve and show up for the people I love.

A Lifelong Dream Fulfilled

For most of my life, asthma quietly shaped what I believed I was capable of physically. I stayed active. I hiked. I exercised. But I often felt out of breath, and I assumed I would always tire more easily than other people.

Years ago, my husband and I were hiking in the Sierra to see the fall colors when we passed a group of backpackers heading into the wilderness with big packs on their backs. I remember looking at them and feeling this huge sense of longing. I wanted that kind of adventure.

And almost immediately, I thought, I probably couldn’t do that.

I had spent so many years getting winded easily that I had come to expect certain limits from my body. Backpacking just didn’t feel like something I was built for.

Over the next few years, though, that changed. As I changed the way I ate and cared for myself, I noticed a real difference in my energy and stamina. Things that once felt out of reach began to feel possible.

Years later, I was the one carrying a 27-pound backpack into the wilderness, spending three days out there, and eventually standing on the summit of Mt. San Gorgonio, Southern California’s tallest peak!

Standing on that summit meant a lot more to me than just reaching the top. I thought back to those backpackers in the Sierra and how amazed I had been by what they were doing. I had wanted that kind of adventure so badly, but at the time I wasn’t sure my body could handle it.

For years, I had underestimated what my body might be capable of. Today, in our mid-50s and early 60s, my husband and I are stronger, healthier, and more active than we were years ago. That’s a big part of why I care so much about staying healthy enough to keep doing the things I love.

Why Green Food Crush Exists

Over the years, I’ve noticed how many people genuinely want to feel better and take better care of themselves. The problem usually isn’t a lack of information. If anything, it’s the opposite. There is so much nutrition and health advice out there, and much of it seems to contradict something else.

Most people don’t need another complicated set of rules. They need a place to begin, a better understanding of why something matters, and practical ideas they can actually use in everyday life.

That is why I created Green Food Crush.

Here you’ll find approachable information about whole-food, plant-based nutrition, gut health, movement, sleep, mindset, healing, and the everyday habits that support a thriving body. My goal is to take things that can feel complicated and make them easier to understand and put into practice.

You’ll also find something I care deeply about: wonder.

The more I learn about the human body, the more extraordinary it becomes. I still find myself learning something new and saying out loud, “Wow, God, You’re amazing!”

My hope is that Green Food Crush helps you understand your body a little better, appreciate it a little more, and feel encouraged to care for it well.

I’m Here to Help

Healthy living doesn’t have to begin with a complete overhaul. Sometimes it starts with a green smoothie, a handful of broccoli sprouts, a walk outside, a bowl filled with more plants, an earlier bedtime, or simply drinking a little more water.

You can start small and build from there.

If you’re wondering where to begin, head to my Start Here page. From there, you can explore the topics that interest you most and build from wherever you are today.

I’m glad you found Green Food Crush, and I hope something you discover here leaves you a little more curious, a little more hopeful, and a little more excited about caring for the remarkable body you’ve been given.

I’m not currently offering a formal coaching program, but I do believe God has a way of bringing the right people into our lives at the right time. If something you’ve read here speaks to you and you feel like you could use a little extra encouragement or support, you’re always welcome to reach out. I’m happy to leave that door open and trust Him with what comes next.

Michelle
Creator of Green Food Crush

Contact me: michelle@greenfoodcrush.com