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Latham Thomas on Pregnancy Cravings and Seasonal Raw Food

Latham Thomas (via tendershootswellness)

Latham Thomas is a certified holistic health counselor and the founder of Tender Shoots Wellness.

People come to New York to be successful, to be someone, or just to really be themselves, but in the midst of that it’s hard to maintain your health. There’s a different rhythm to the lifestyle here. I’m vegan and I eat raw food but I’m open that way. I believe in seasonality and really listening to your body. There’s a lot of extremes. Some people are really into raw, and that’s all they do. My thing is I don’t like to be extreme with anything. I like to move with internal rhythms. Your body calls you to have certain vegetables. When it’s freezing out you need root vegetables to ground you in this contemplative season. Mango slices and coconut water aren’t sustaining when it’s cold and you’re in New York City. The food that we eat informs us and gives us information about our environment. When you’re eating food from other places that’s out of season, your body is confused. It can’t tune itself to where it is.

The inspiration for Tendershoots Wellness was the birth of my son. I had a background in nutrition, but I felt like there were limited resources and information, so I wanted to pull stuff together for myself and other moms.  When I was pregnant I started noticing that I wasn’t having any of the symptoms. I wasn’t craving things. I wasn’t having morning sickness. By the end of my pregnancy I gained 14 pounds and the baby was 11 of them. I wore the same clothes all the way through. Your doctor says you have to gain 35 pounds and eat tons of dairy and all this stuff they push on people that you really don’t need. I wanted to be debunk some of those myths and demystify the experience.

I like to box and run, but primarily I teach and practice yoga. I also dance, more like Afro-Brazilian. I used to teach a Capoeira and yoga fusion class with Brett Hoebel. Sometimes I take some of those elements into my class now. It’s yoga but there are dance elements. I like being in a studio, where everyone is doing the same thing. There’s this energy where everyone comes for the same purpose. I enjoy that vibration. Everyone has some sort of an offering from their heart that they're bringing.