Somewhere between the surgery date and the six-week check-up, most women get handed a pamphlet and a pat on the arm. This site is what the pamphlet left out.
Health Food Home is about life after a hysterectomy, the part nobody quite walks you through. The weight that won't come off. A recovery that looks nothing like the leaflet promised. Hormones, food, moving again, mood, sex, and that long stretch where every test comes back fine and you still don't feel fine.
Who's behind it
I'm Mallory Milne. I own this site and I'm the only person who writes it. I had my hysterectomy in July 2020.
I kept my ovaries. Everyone told me that meant my hormones would carry on as normal, and for a while they did. Then they started failing years ahead of schedule, and not one person, before or after, had breathed a word that this was even possible. Working out why, on my own, in a study I found at midnight, is what started this whole thing.
I'm not a doctor and I won't pretend to be one. What I've got is the surgery itself, years of reading the real research, and no patience left for advice that ignores everything a hysterectomy changes.
Who it's for
Read on if any of these is you:
- You've got a surgery date, and the hospital leaflet answered maybe a tenth of what's actually keeping you up at night.
- You're six weeks out and "cleared," and nobody explained what cleared is supposed to feel like.
- You kept your ovaries and were promised nothing would shift hormonally. Something shifted.
- Your ovaries came out, and menopause arrived the same afternoon as the surgery.
- The weight has piled on since surgery, and every plan that used to work does nothing.
- You're a year or two past it, and something new has turned up that no one warned you about.
- Someone you love is in one of these lines, and you're trying to figure out how to help.
What you'll find
Eight big subjects, each with a home of its own:
- Weight Loss: what changed, what actually works, and what the research will and won't back up
- Recovery: the first few weeks, plus the surprises that show up around month six
- Hormones: ovaries kept and ovaries removed, treated as the two different situations they are
- Diet & Food: eating for the long haul, not just the recovery weeks
- Exercise: getting back to moving without landing yourself back in bed
- Mind & Mood: the grief, the mood swings, the body-image days, the crying at TV ads
- Sex & Intimacy: the questions you'd sooner type into Google than say out loud at a follow-up
- Before Surgery: getting ready, from someone who has been through it
There are also free tools: a recovery timeline built around your own surgery date, a prep plan for your specific operation, and a report you can fill in and print for your next appointment.
How the research is handled
Every medical claim here links to where it came from, with the year on it, so you can weigh a 2025 guideline against a 2011 study with your own eyes. The guidance contradicts itself constantly, recovery timelines most of all. Where it does, you get the whole range with both ends named, instead of an average squashed out of numbers no medical body ever recommended. And where the evidence is thin, you'll hear that from me, rather than a guess dressed up as a fact.
The full version is on how this site handles medical claims. What this site can't do for you is set out in the medical disclaimer.
What you won't find
- Miracle anything. No cleanses, no resets, no fifteen-day fixes.
- A neat number waved about as the answer when the studies behind it can't agree with each other.
- Advice reverse-engineered from something I'm trying to sell you.
- Before-and-after photos, or a body held up as the one you're supposed to be chasing.
How to reach me
Email me: hello@healthyfoodhome.com. I read everything that lands there and answer what I can.
Things I'm always glad to get:
- A correction. If something here is out of date, badly sourced, or flat wrong, I want to know. I fix it and note the change on the page, with the date.
- A question nobody has answered for you. It won't get a personal medical answer, but it might well become an article, and several already have.
- Something that helped you and isn't on the site yet.
What I can't do is tell you whether your symptom is normal, whether your recovery is on track, or whether a treatment is right for you. I haven't examined you, I'm not qualified to, and a stranger's guess is the last thing you need at 3am. For any of that, your surgeon's office or your GP is the call to make.