Practicing nutritionist and dietitian, Marieke Rodenstein focuses on the physical and emotional impacts of diet. Marieke who is a GAPS practitioner and Mindd practitioner, has experience in sports nutrition and is an expert for “Quit Sugar Program”. Her work brings to light the health of the gut in achieving overall health and preventing “modern” diseases. Marieke’s work has a particular focus on children.
Marieke tells her story about why she became involved in nutrition:
As a teenager I was an elite level distance runner and triathlete, and I dutifully followed a very high carb, very low fat diet, but due to over training and under nourishing my body I started to experience a lot of health issues.
I started to get stress fractures in my femur, which is the thickest bone in your body, because of low bone density. I developed anxiety, depression, eating disorders, chronic fatigue, chronic constipation. I should have been thriving, I was a teenager, it was the prime of my life, and I was really in a bad way.
I went to different doctors and psychologists and psychiatrists, and their idea was to put me on medications, on antidepressants, which actually just made me worse.
The big turning point for me was the work of the Weston A. Price Foundation, which is all about traditional and ancestral food. So I started to apply those traditions, that way of eating to my health, and then I started to improve, and I continued to improve and then I really started to focus on my gut health.
Dr. Maarten Stapper is Marieke’s father and was the instigator of her return to health through nutrition.
