Meet Stephanie Weaver
Stephanie Weaver is a writer, TED talk coach, and speaker. The Migraine Relief Plan was published in February 2017 by Surrey Books, debuting as a best-seller in five Amazon categories including low-sodium cookbooks. The book has since been translated into Spanish and Bulgarian.
Stephanie first developed educational programs and materials after earning her master’s of public health in health education at the University of Illinois. After graduation she worked for Northwestern University Medical School and Chicago Children’s Museum as a health educator.
In 2010, Stephanie began to research, develop, and publish recipes that successfully addressed chronic fatigue and other health conditions via her original blog RecipeRenovator.com. Since her early 20s she’s tried a range of special diets to address her health problems—including gluten-free, sugar-free, anti-inflammatory, vegan, vegetarian, and paleo.
Research for The Migraine Relief Plan began in 2015 when she was diagnosed with a migraine variant called Meniere’s disease. She collaborated with physicians and an international panel of volunteer migraine sufferers to test the plan and its recipes. She has authored nearly 400 yummy, gluten-free recipes suitable for a variety of special diets on her website MigraineReliefRecipes.com. Her recipe collections are also available on Kindle under titles including Twenty Terrific Low-Sodium Condiments.
The Migraine Relief Plan Cookbook was published in July 2022 and debuted as the #1 New Release in Pain Management, Gluten-Free Diets, Vegan Diets, and Low-Salt Cooking.
Stephanie lives in Oceanside, CA with her husband Bob and their Golden retriever Daisy, who is part of the Golden Retriever Lifetime Health Study. She writes, coaches TEDx Talk speakers, and speaks publicly about what interests her: estrangement, forgiveness, publishing and the writer’s life, living well with chronic illness, mindfulness and gratitude practices, and finding meaning in our stories.
You can learn more about Stephanie at StephanieWeaver.com.
My Migraine Story
2010 was a turning point.
I started a health-related blog then called Recipe Renovator to share what I’d learned about the power of diet to heal chronic conditions, including previous diagnoses of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. The blog helped me hone the skills I’d been collecting for more than twenty years. My college studies in film production and design gave me the foundation to assemble how-to videos, podcasts, webinars, and design my own websites. In the process, I rediscovered a love for photography, writing, and developing educational programs in nutrition.
In 2014 I was diagnosed with a new health opportunity: migraine attacks with vertigo. I was too dizzy to ride in a car and vomited at the doctor’s office. It turned out that the “weather headaches” I’d had for thirty years were undiagnosed migraine attacks. The new vertigo symptoms did have a silver lining: I finally got a diagnosis. As had happened earlier, traditional doctors weren’t able to offer much relief.
At my diagnosis appointment the neurologist gave me a migraine food trigger handout and suggested I follow it, yet he couldn’t explain why these particular foods were problematic. I broke down in tears when I saw that 75% of what was in my refrigerator—all “healthy” foods—were in the do-not-eat column on the handout.
I became my own health advocate. I immersed myself in migraine literature, reading every book available as well as researching articles at the medical library of UCSD. After reading more than 100 articles and three dozen books, I began to implement my own changes. Within a few weeks (and medication for the vertigo) I began to feel enormously improved. It was time to share what I’d learned as The Migraine Relief Plan. Would it help other people? I had gone from 3-5 migraine days a week and a dull daily headache to 2-4 migraine days a month. But maybe this would just work for me? I started with a free online 8-week class to guide others through the program step by step. Everyone in the first group, and then the second, began to see improvements in their migraine patterns, some quite dramatic. In 2016 I got certified as a health and wellness coach to make sure I fully understood how to help people reach their wellness goals.