Cheryl Malik is the creator of the 40 Aprons website. She is an amazing recipe developer and food photographer. Today, we are going to talk about healthy clean eating and her new book The Paleo Instant Pot Cookbook.

In this episode of the Clean Eating for Women podcast, we talk about:  

• Cheryl’s health journey
• Healthy clean eating
• The Instant Pot Cookbook

Some highlights of this episode on how to make veggies taste delicious:

1. 40 Aprons is actually the fourth name of Cheryl's blog. She finally decided on this name, because she didn't want a blog that wasn't tied down to a specific type of eating. Plus, whenever her friends traveled they would bring her a new apron, and she had at least 40. [02:01 ]
2. Cheryl tells her story of how being vegan stopped working for her. Cheryl and her husband were thinking about having children, and she got a blood test and found out that she had hypothyroidism. She also noticed that healthy fat might be a solution and started eating coconut oil. She finally discovered she was missing nutrients from not eating animal products. She switched to non vegetarian clean eating and started getting healthy right away. [15:26 ]
3. Carrie shares how when she was vegan, and she was eating a lot of soy she eventually developed Hashimoto's and had to have her thyroid removed. She also talks about the Weston A. Price foundation and the importance of eating a more rounded diet. [23:41 ]
4. Transitioning from vegan to Paleo. Cheryl had no problem eating meat again. Even when she was vegan she craved steak. The hardest part for her was the ethics. She decided that eating meat wasn't the hard part it was the factory farming that she wanted to avoid. She spends her money at very deliberate places. [25:31 ]
5. Cheryl explains how she got involved with The Whole30 diet. Some friends of hers tried it, and they lost weight and felt amazing and we're even sleeping better. Cheryl and her husband also tried it and they ended up feeling a lot better. It also made her TMJ go away and she lost all of her baby weight. [29:49 ]
6. Then they transitioned into a Paleo diet and it was very doable. After time, they transitioned into more of a primal diet. They had already spent a lot of time healing the gut and eating nutritious food, so now they just eat what works for them. [34:36 ]
7. The Instant Pot changed Cheryl's life forever. Her first recipes were horrible, but then she decided to start thinking like a pressure cooker. When you're on the Paleo diet or the whole30 diet, you spend so much time in the kitchen that having something like an Instant Pot makes things a lot easier. [38:09 ]  
8. All of the recipes in her book are whole30 compliant. She also tries to optimize the Instant Pot cooking to cut down on the time spent in the kitchen. Everyone should have an Instant Pot. One of her favorite recipes is Zuppa Toscana - an Instant Pot take on her super popular Whole30 Zuppa Toscana recipe. [39:59 ]  

Links mentioned in this episode:

• 40 Aprons
• 40 Aprons on Facebook
• 40 Aprons on Instagram
• 40 Aprons on Pinterest
• The Paleo Instant Pot Cookbook
• Cheryl@40Aprons.com
• Podcast #16: Traditional Diets & Health with Hilda Labrada Gore
• Weston A. Price Foundation
• Whole30 Zuppa Toscana (Paleo, Dairy Free, Gluten Free)

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