Caroline Potter ’12, formerly Caroline Cheatum, was a junior at Hillsdale College when her health began to deteriorate, and no one knew why.
“We went to a lot of doctors, but no one could solve it,” Potter said. “Then, over Christmas break, I found out I had Type 1 diabetes.”
Potter, her family, and the doctors were shocked. Not only is Type 1 diabetes usually diagnosed in children and young adults, but she also had no family history of the illness.
“No one could figure it out, how I had this, but I did. My blood tests all showed it,” Potter said.
Potter’s illness compelled her to take control of the situation and find a way to a “happy, healthy, and insulinfree” lifestyle. The search led her to a career as a nutritional therapy practitioner, blogger, and personal chef living in Hawaii.
After her diagnosis Potter went on insulin, but still felt ill constantly. She began researching and decided to focus on her diet in hopes of finding a way to treat herself that didn’t leave her miserable and exhausted. She cut out all grains, starchy carbohydrates, and refined sugars and, working with a nutritionist, slowly worked herself off of insulin.
“Senior year, second semester, I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do after college,” Potter said. “So my nutritionist actually suggested this program offered by the Nutritional Therapy Association. I really didn’t want to go back to school after Hillsdale, but I felt really called to start that program.”
So she did. Right around the same time she got engaged, planned a wedding, and moved to Hawaii with her husband, who is in the U.S. Navy.
She began her blog, “Colorful Eats,” to fulfill the “community outreach project” requirement for her program nearly a year ago.
“I wanted to present the joyful side to cooking and nutrition,” she said. “I thought of the name because I think there’s just so much color in the world—I wanted to convey this idea of discovering something beautiful.”
Through beautiful photographs and recipes so delectable, blog fans might not even notice how healthy they are.
“I don’t think of how I eat as restrictive in any way,” Potter said. “My husband and I don’t just sit around and eat salad all day. You know, I’m making cookies all the time. I’m making brownies all the time. There’s so many things you can eat, it’s just learning about how to do things the healthiest way.”
Recipes on her site include chocolate hazelnut cakes with blackberry cream and chocolate ganache, goat cheese chicken alfredo, zucchini fritters, cheesy bacon griddlecakes, and sandwich bread.
Each recipe is accompanied by notes explaining her substitutions (the sandwich bread is made with coconut flour, for example) as well as equally decadent photographs.
Potter started taking photos a year ago, when her husband sent her a camera from Japan while he was deployed there.
“I just opened the box and started teaching myself. It hasn’t even been a year. It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s a great creative outlet for me,” Potter said. “It’s fun to teach yourself something.”
But Potter’s work has caught some definite attention, and her photographs are slated to be featured in “Redbook,” “Healthy Recipes,” and “Sweet Dreams” (a German food magazine) over the next few months.
Colorful Eats has expanded beyond Potter’s original recipe blog too. In addition, it provides information on Potter’s nutrition counseling, menu and meal planning, pantry cleans, and even “grocery store and market tours,” in which Potter meets clients at their local store and takes them through the aisles, showing them what to buy, what to avoid, and how to interpret labels.
“A lot of what I do is encouraging people, every day. A diet isn’t a threeweek trend, it’s a lifestyle you’re creating,” Potter said. “Food has such a big impact on your daily life. It can make the difference between feeling horrible and feeling really great and having energy to pursue your passions. It’s worth the choice.”
Potter currently has one eBook, “Festive Eats,” available for sale on her website www.colorfuleatsnutrition.com and plans to release another in early May.