DORÉ

When two roommates hit two different types of rock bottoms around the same time, sometimes really good things can come of it. Such is the genesis story of Sakara.

Whitney Tingle was living the fast life on Wall Street while struggling with cystic acne and trying every antibiotic, elimination diet, and laser under the sun to no avail. In the other corner (or room) Danielle Duboise was still struggling with her relationship to food well into adulthood. She had tried every diet, every food fad and even an extreme water fast for seven days that landed her in the hospital with pneumonia. That’s when Whitney and Danielle finally looked at each other and decided their relationship with food needed to change.

Together they began to look at food as a source of healing nourishment. Instead of “how many calories” it was “how many nutrients.” They learned the power of gut health and how necessary plant based fibers were to maintain their individual microbiomes — not to mention everyone’s microbiome is unique and absorbs nutrients at a different rate.

Before Whitney and Danielle ever thought of Sakara as a business, they thought of it for themselves and their own health. That intention of one’s individual health is still obvious at Sakara from the meal plans, to the packaging, to the support group on Facebook (look, when you’re doing a clean detox sometimes you need a little help, or a trick to cure the withdrawal headaches).

I was given the opportunity to try Sakara’s five-day organic meal delivery, and I’m going to be honest, I had my doubts. I’m an eternal skeptic so everything new thing I try is approached with a furrow brow attitude. But Caitlin had been doing Sakara for a few weeks at that point and as someone who thinks about what she’s going to have for lunch for about an hour before she decides on anything — I trusted her food judgement.

And guess what! Who knew I loved plants!

I also had no idea how many plants one could consume in a single week.

Which is another thing that Sakara promotes — it’s not just about the plant consumption, it’s about diversified plant consumption. They really do give you all the colors under the rainbow for one week.

If a whole meal plan seems daunting to you (although, guys, it completely alleviates all decision fatigue which I didn’t even realize how much I would love) Sakara also has this real fun thing called the Clean Boutique which offers such things as chocolate probiotics and clean energy bars (I hate to admit how much I rely on energy bars as a meal option sometimes, not out of want, but out of necessity).

Not to mention DARK CHOCOLATE GRANOLA. Yes, you can eat DARK CHOCOLATE GRANOLA and feel good about yourself.

That hints to something else I love about these Sakara ladies — they don’t promote complete elimination but rather abundance. They still reach for the fries and the martinis, but since they have healed their bodies through a plant rich diet, their bodies can process such foods when and if they do consume them.

If you need any extra motivation to try the Sakara life, you can use code ATELIER20 at checkout to get 20% off any meal delivery program.