Natasha grew up with a deep appreciation for real food. With a mother born on a farmhouse floor in Portugal, her earliest memories involved hand-shaping sourdough bread and slow-roasting whole animals in village brick ovens near Lisbon. Yet, growing up in Ontario, Canada, the modern food environment inevitably crept in.
By her teenage years and into her 20s, Natasha’s father brought home standard processed convenience items. Although she wasn’t critically ill, she was far from optimal. Natasha battled severe, chronic rosacea across her face, carried low muscle mass, suffered from Raynaud’s phenomenon in harsh Canadian winters, and struggled with persistent anxiety and disrupted sleep. “I was always itchy, always bloated, and always anxious,” she recalls.
The Failure of the “Rainbow” Diet
Driven to find answers, Natasha left a soul-crushing job in banking and went to the Institute of Holistic Nutrition, earning her designation as a Certified Nutritional Practitioner (CNP). When she relocated to Vancouver in the 2010s, raw veganism was heavily promoted as the absolute peak of health and environmental stewardship.
She dove into the plant-based lifestyle, only to find it entirely counterproductive. Her chronic digestive bloat didn’t improve, her muscle mass stagnated, and the constant fermentation of complex fibers left her GI tract raw and volatile. By October, facing the damp cold of the Pacific Northwest, her body staged a coup. “I felt this literal call in my head,” Natasha says. “It just said salmon. Let me have salmon.” Breaking her vegan protocol with wild fish marked the beginning of her slide toward ketogenic and ancestral nutrition.
The definitive lightbulb moment occurred in 2017 while watching The Magic Pill documentary. Immersing herself in the metabolic research of Dr. Jason Fung and Professor Tim Noakes, the ultimate puzzle piece clicked: “It’s metabolism. It’s the mitochondria. That’s the root of everything. How do I fix that? You get the blood sugar down.”
From Tissue Paper to a Steady Log
Natasha realized that feeding the body constant carbohydrates was like trying to heat a home in a Canadian winter by throwing tissue paper into a wood stove—it required non-stop feeding and resulted in wild energy swings. Shifting to animal fats and proteins was the equivalent of putting a heavy log on the fire, providing long, sustained, unshakeable fuel.
She eventually advanced from clean keto to a strict keto-carnivore protocol, removing all remaining plant defense chemicals, oxalates, and lectins. The transformations were comprehensive:
- SKIN AND CIRCULATION RADICALLY OPTIMIZED: Her lifelong rosacea cleared completely, allowing her to abandon full-face makeup entirely. Her circulation stabilized, mitigating her Raynaud’s flare-ups.
- THE ARRIVAL OF “KETO ZEN”: Her chronic anxiety and baseline stress vanished, replaced by an even, unphased mental clarity that she calls “keto zen.”
- ELITE STRUCTURAL RECOVERY: Trading yoga contortions for heavy resistance training and Pilates, Natasha achieved a stronger, more defined body composition in her late 30s than she possessed as a teenager, experiencing zero delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS).
Troubleshooting the Baseline: The Dairy Tweak
As a practicing clinician running Pacific Northwest Metabolic Health (pnwmetabolic.com), Natasha uses her own N=1 trials to refine protocols for her clients. Recently, she executed a strict two-week experiment eliminating all residual dairy from her diet—cutting out the cheese and heavy cream she used to top her ground beef.
The immediate result was a dramatic shedding of stubborn fluid and subcutaneous fat, exposing defined washboard abs she had never seen before. She also discovered that an animal-based framework was the ultimate tool for managing Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) stemming from historical mechanical trauma, as it completely deprives bad gut bacteria of the plant materials required for inflammatory fermentation.
Reclaiming the Land
Now living a highly sustainable, rural lifestyle, Natasha buys whole cow shares from local grass-finished ranchers for $9.50 a pound hanging weight, grinding her own nutrient-dense organ meats (heart and tongue) to fuel her active days. She is even obtaining her formal licensing to become a regulated hunter, integrating fully into what the local land provides.
Using her financial background to track data, she successfully guides metabolic clients through insulin resistance, menopause, and fertility issues. In one remarkable case, Natasha transitioned an 88-year-old grandmother to a customized ancestral framework—resulting in a 42-pound weight loss and a staggering kidney function reversal, watching her eGFR numbers surge from a failing 40 up to a vibrant 62.
For Natasha, real medicine isn’t found in a prescription bottle; it’s found by stepping fully into your ancestral design.
“Nothing tastes as good as healthy feels. A challenge is just another opportunity to find something new about yourself, get out into the world, and feel strong in your mind and body.”
