Dr. Kellyann's Bone Broth Breakthrough

Dr. Kellyann's Bone Broth Breakthrough

Chapter 1

What’s That Magic?

What’s that special magic that some women have?

You know the ones I’m talking about. They have a magnetism that draws people to them. Even when it seems like everybody else is battling bloat, constipation, thinning hair, crepe-y skin, and belly fat, they look and feel amazing. Theirs is an ethereal beauty that transcends weight, height, or age.

When you see someone walking through the world with this kind of beauty and energy, you want to know more about her, to get closer. You want to talk and laugh with her. You want to know about her workout, her makeup, her hairdresser, her posture, her life. And you want to know what the heck she eats. I mean, is this an edamame-only situation? Or does she only eat before noon? What is the combination of nutrients nourishing her to this totally boss life? Like bystanders from the diner scene in When Harry Met Sally, you’re thinking, I’ll have what she’s having, because she is flourishing.

Women like this are beautiful, but what they’re all about runs even deeper. Their attitude, confidence, fitness, humor, strength—it’s all a part of that “it factor.”

Years ago when I was living in London, I would pop on the Eurostar for a quick train ride to France. I loved it there because I was so enthralled with the sexy culture. I kept hearing a French saying: “je ne sais quoi.” Technically it translates to, “I don’t know what,” but it’s used to describe an indefinable, attractive, extraordinary characteristic (as in, “She had an irresistible je ne sais quoi”).

The woman with je ne sais quoi walks down the street and feels light on her feet, at peace with who she is. She radiates positive energy. Her eyes sparkle. You know whatever is happening on the inside must be good because, on the outside, she’s magnetic. I fell in love with this idea—and I became desperate to help my patients find it. Yes, I wanted them to reach a healthy weight and get their biometrics in order, but after we achieved that, I wanted more for them. I wanted them to have je ne sais quoi.

I always want you to take your health journey one step further. When I say I believe you can have it all, that’s not lip service. And I’ve seen it enough times to know you can do it. This is a touchstone in both my personal and professional life. When I’m helping a patient achieve a transformation, there are all the deliberate steps we take to reach a goal, and then there’s that moment when the je ne sais quoi comes into play. You start moving through the world with a little more ease and confidence—and then, there it is, just as surely as if you’d flipped a switch.

Hard to believe it was a humble, ancient food that helped me get to this place in my life and bring so many amazing people through their own transformations, but that’s exactly what happened. Reading about, cooking, sipping, and sharing the benefits of bone broth were all changes that opened me up little by little to a new lifestyle—one that makes me feel refreshed, attractive, and strong.

This is the concept that inspired me to write these pages, to dig into what happened to me—what has happened to thousands of patients and readers who’ve had breakthroughs like mine. I did it because I know full well that the “it factor” women we admire have doesn’t just happen on Day 21 or 30 of a diet or fitness plan. In fact, that’s when it’s just beginning. That’s when the momentum of those first successes starts trending toward a version of her who doesn’t just tentatively look better and feel better. She is better. The changes are obvious on the outside—but they’re also soul deep.

That kind of breakthrough, built on the small act of adding one nourishing, replenishing thing to your life to kick off that cascade of good things, is what I want for you. I believe you can achieve it and maintain it. And I’m here to walk you through the growth and changes that will make it possible.

Are You Interrupted?

True confession: I’m a closet profiler. Call it a gift or call it a curse, but if I’m meeting you, talking with you, or even watching you walk down the street, chances are I’m trying to understand your mood, your story, and your energy. My intentions, I promise, are good. After more than two decades of guiding people through health and beauty transformations, I’ve learned to embrace this habit that helps me triage new patients and clients.

In other words, I see you. When I see a woman who’s walking on air, I want to jump up and down for her, ask questions, and take notes. When I see someone who’s obviously feeling low, I wonder what’s dragging her down and what it would take to lift her up.

I know there’s a way, because I see some of the most extreme cases imaginable:

•Women who are 50, 80, or even 100 pounds overweight

•Women who are so addicted to sugar that it comprises the bulk of their diets

•Women stuck in self-defeating patterns of overexercising, overeating, and overstressing

•Women who put themselves last for so long that they become neglected in every way—their health, their diet, their happiness, and their sense of self-love

•Women who are waking up as empty nesters, nearing retirement and not sure how to spend the second half of their lives

•Women who still aren’t sure who they are or what they want

These are women whose best lives have been interrupted, and it’s my job to show them that if they give their bodies the right raw materials, they are going to perk up. They are going to feel better. That’s why when a woman approaches me for help, I feel confident, hopeful, and happy. I know she’s going to gain ground. I know because I see it every day, and I know because I’ve been an interrupted woman myself. I found a way to turn back the clock on my aging, on my weight gain, and on negative feelings that were dragging me down.

Strange but true that my entire turnaround started with a single superfood—one that’s turned into an entire health movement and food category.

Bone Broth Beginnings

I’m often asked if I invented bone broth. I definitely didn’t because it’s been around in some form for thousands of years. But as a doctor who is utterly fascinated with the history of human nutrition (high five to all my fellow science geeks!), I kept finding references to soups and stocks, broths, and even meat-based “teas”—all with the common element of long-simmered bones and cartilage. These references were across continents, cultures, and centuries: long life soup in China, pho in Vietnam, brodo in Italy, cow foot soup in the Caribbean. There’s even a soup attributed to Hippocrates, father of modern medicine. These dishes were (and still are) largely synonymous with nourishment and healing, with soothing, and sometimes even with survival. In these many forms, bone broth is an ancient food born of ancient wisdom.

It’s fair to say I got a little bit obsessed about this. In truth, I still am. Maybe it was because I was at a crossroads in my own life. I was achieving professional success, but the happiness I thought would come with my accomplishments was missing. Instead I felt stressed. I was tired. And I was aging at warp speed, watching the hollows deepening under my eyes, the wrinkles in my neck getting more prominent, and my hair thinning. Alongside those physical changes, I could almost feel the spark that’s always been an elemental part of what makes me dynamic waning.

For a while I played the blame game. I blamed my fatigue on my busy life as a working mom and celebrity nutritionist with a busy clinical practice. I blamed my belly fat on my pregnancies. I blamed my wrinkles and sagging skin on my years of sun exposure. I blamed my inability to lose weight on my aging metabolism. All the while, like so many patients who have come to me for help—often as their last resort—I could feel my momentum going the wrong way. I felt like the clock was ticking to make a change.

So in 2012, with kids to raise, a practice to run, bills to pay, chapters to write, and my body confidence in free fall, I followed the thread of logic I was beginning to form around bone broth as a big idea. I started simmering bones in water on the back burner of my stove. I tinkered with times and temperatures, and with adding herbs and vegetables. I stirred and tasted and seasoned. And then I lined up Mason jars on my kitchen counter and filled them with the liquid hope I’d been brewing.

Of course, the real test came when I started drinking the stuff. As a physician and a nutritionist—and as someone who’d studied women’s dietary habits for two decades—I knew a lot about putting together a diet plan, about making sure my body is nourished. But my early experience with bone broth was in a different league from anything else I’d ever experienced. By the third week of sipping my homemade elixir every day, I was floored by what was happening in my body.