Nara Smith: When My Body Felt Like a Betrayal, I Turned to the Kitchen

Personally is Glamour’s first-person series featuring deeply personal stories from women shaping culture in their own words. Below, Nara Smith—model, lifestyle creator, and the author of the cookbook Homemade—reflects on how her health journey has completely changed her relationship with food for the better.

It all started with my grandma. When I was really young, she would cook a lot. It was very simple cooking—traditional German meals, nothing fancy whatsoever. But because the ingredients were so good, it tasted really good. Or maybe it was just because my grandmother made it. Who knows? One of my first memories is of her making oatmeal, and when she died, there were a lot of meals I never made again.

When I was growing up in Germany, my dad cooked a lot. We’d go grocery shopping every Saturday morning, which was always the most fun part to me. Meanwhile, my mom approached food in a very medicinal way. She used ingredients to cure sicknesses. If we had an ear infection, she’d have us lie on hot onions. When we had a sore throat, we ate garlic and honey. When we felt nauseous, we’d be given salt and sugar water. Both of these approaches helped me look at food as a way to nourish your body—for enjoyment and also for health.

But when I started modeling, my relationship with food and my body became very complicated. The restriction of food was hard for me, and I got really in my head about it. I became a vegetarian for a few years because meat felt dangerous to me. I went vegan for a while too. Then I met my husband, Lucky. On one of our earliest dates, he said, “Just try a piece of my steak.” So I did. After that I started eating meat again. With him, I felt like I was free of all these limitations I’d put on myself. I didn’t care as much about looking a certain way anymore because I felt accepted and understood, like I didn’t have to fit a specific mold to be loved or desired or to even find happiness.

Food became fun again, but we were eating out a lot in the beginning of our relationship. When I moved to America, three months after meeting him, I realized, Oh, I’m an adult now. It was time to learn how to cook and take care of myself. But a lot of the ingredients that I grew up loving aren’t the same in America. The tomatoes don’t necessarily taste like the tomatoes I’m used to, and now a strawberry is all of a sudden white in the middle? It was a humbling experience to know that I took what I had in Europe for granted. I had to reevaluate how to nourish my body; everything I was eating had so many ingredients in them that I wasn’t used to, and I wasn’t responding well to them. I was bloated all the time. I had very bad GI issues. My body didn’t feel good eating whatever I wanted anymore.

When I had my first daughter, I wanted to feed her well and make sure she was taken care of in that way to the best of my ability. As I thought about it, I tapped back into how I grew up and what I ate as a child. I realized it was very whole-foods-based, so I started to learn more about ingredients: what they do for your body, what kind of nutrients you need to feel your best. That opened my eyes up to cooking and getting creative in the kitchen. I liked making simple ingredients taste really good for her.

But when I had my second baby, everything changed. After he was born I had this tiny patch of eczema that I thought would go away. I didn’t think much of it at the time because I’d had eczema when I was younger and it went away. This time it didn’t. It kept spreading. The patch got bigger and bigger. I went down a spiral, because it felt like I couldn’t control this skin condition. I tried creams and all these different things. Eventually I read a book on nutrition that opened my eyes to the concept of inflammatory food. I started eating things that were noninflammatory and came up with a whole meal plan for myself, but that didn’t quite work because it just added a whole new layer of stress. My life was already stressful with two young children, and the eczema kept getting worse and worse. I would flare up so bad. I’d wake up with my eyes swollen shut. I couldn’t move my hands. My scalp was bleeding. Everything was inflamed. I remember being so upset and crying and feeling like my body was betraying me. I couldn’t figure out what it needed.

I did everything I could. I took digestive enzymes. I cut out dairy and gluten. And the kitchen became scarier to me, which was not how I grew up. I grew up in a way where food was fun. You could eat whatever—in moderation, obviously—and now I was back to all these parameters and boundaries. I was checking the labels of everything. It was very anxiety-inducing. This is around the time I started sharing food content online. It was mostly salads and soups, and I wasn’t making things from scratch yet. I was just sharing meals that I was eating that felt safe and approachable.

After a month of waking up inflamed every day, I told Lucky, “I’m going to Germany to find answers because the doctors in America don’t seem to hear me.” All I was getting was steroids and no explanation about what was actually going on. I met with all kinds of doctors in Germany, from a general practitioner to a homeopathic doctor. Eventually I got diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. It had triggered my eczema, but I had all these other symptoms too: I was tired all the time. My hands would turn purple, and I would get odd rashes on my face. Everything felt discombobulated.

When I got that diagnosis, it felt like I could finally breathe. I had answers, and now I knew how to approach it in a way that felt more manageable. I realized that when I'm restrictive and cut everything out, I’m not able to nourish my body the way I need to. I thought maybe the best approach would be eating clean and making things myself so I could still enjoy what I like. I love food, and I love eating. It’s a huge part of my everyday joy. So when I got back to America, I started making things from scratch. And then I started sharing how I was making them. And that’s how everything evolved.

My videos were born out of all the different elements of my life. I enjoy cooking, so I learned how to do it from scratch. I love fashion, so I’d wear clothes that are fun to me. I also had kids napping while I was filming my content, so that’s how the ASMR voice began. The videos were very unintentional in the beginning—it was just an accumulation of things I loved that I wanted to share with the world. Now it has evolved into something more intentional. I pick the recipes and outfits in advance, and I put more thought behind it. But I still love pushing boundaries when it comes to my videos. Doing fun, quirky things is a creative outlet for me, and I gravitate toward recipes that are a little unexpected or more technical in being.

When I started to write my cookbook, Homemade, it forced me to look inward and think: What do I actually do on a day-to-day basis? What meals do I want sitting on someone else’s counter? What meals mean the most to me, and how can I share the personal parts of myself with the world? My grandma being such a massive part of the book wasn’t really in the forefront of my mind when I first thought of Homemade. But the more I sat with it, the more I came up with recipe lists, and the more I realized how much of her lived within my everyday actions and the way I approach food, she became a huge inspiration. I include a lot of my German upbringing and the dishes she used to cook. Did I nail her flavors? No, I made them my own.

I’ve learned there is something very satisfying about putting food on the table that you know someone likes. It’s my love language. Maybe that’s also why I spend so much time in the kitchen and having people over to cook for them. It’s my way of showing that I care. I find so much joy in creating a tablescape and a moment for everyone to gather. Everything moves so fast in our world. So if I can create a very intentionally slower dynamic at home, especially around food and meal times, that’s special to me. That’s how I bond with people in the best way.

My content is not about perfection. People have this misconception sometimes—rightfully so—that I’m very perfect. With this cookbook, I want people to be more open to giving themselves grace and not thinking it has to be a certain way. I didn’t start off as a professional chef. I’ve never gone to culinary school. I’m just a home cook who wants to nourish her body and her kids. These are meals to have fun with, so give yourself grace if things don’t end up working in the way that you want and be really proud if they do.

Everything that I went through, from childbirth to eczema and the autoimmune disease to where we are now—I’m grateful for every single thing that happened and every version of myself I’ve been throughout. I would not be the person that I am now, having the insight and perspective that I do, if I hadn’t gone through everything that I did. In a way, it’s taught me how special all of these moments are, and I don’t take food for granted anymore. I want people who read this cookbook to find as much joy in the kitchen as I have, and I want them to push what they thought was possible for themselves. Venture out. Try something new. Make a harder recipe, or an easier recipe. Just as long as you get in the kitchen and have fun.