“Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your Heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are?” Matthew 6:25-26
Read MoreWhen working with clients, one of the foundational questions we have to address is: How can involuntary behaviors and prevailing thoughts/feelings be transformed? The definition of habit reveals much:
Read MoreI spend this week the same way every year: gathering my recipes, ordering my turkey and planning my shopping. I love Thanksgiving. Growing up, I knew Thanksgiving officially started when my mother’s large, wooden bowl was stacked to overflowing with torn white bread (to sit out and grow stale, overnight, for stuffing).
Read MoreI’ve been thinking a lot about freedom lately as I’ve been working on our program: The Common Sense Transformation. Freedom from restrictive diets. Freedom from obsessing about when to eat, how much to eat or what am I allowed to eat. Freedom from the siren call of the latest lifestyle diet trend. Freedom from the guilt and shame connected to food. Freedom from hating our bodies. Freedom from the circus of our diet culture.
Read MoreIf you are confused about what is good nutrition, what is good to eat, this is for you. If you have tried time and time again to lose the weight and keep it off, this is for you. If you have tried keeping up with the latest “nutrition research” and popular diet advice only to continue to run circles and fall back into your old ways, this is for you. If food, nutrition and body issues dominate your thoughts and influence your actions, this is for you. If you know you need to take a step towards living a healthier lifestyle but feel lost as to how to even begin, this is for you.
Read MoreImagine waking up and not having food rule your thoughts. Imagine not feeling guilty or filled with regret about your food choices. Imagine not white-knuckling your way through a day because today is the day you will start being “good.” Imagine not fearing real food; wondering if a banana has too much sugar or if carbs are making you fat. Imagine trusting that you can eat more than just chicken and salad. Imagine living a life free from dieting.
Read MoreThis is a real text I've gotten from a client: "I'm so frustrated. Paleo, Whole 30, keto..... VEGAN??? I don't know what is good anymore."
This is an astonishing statistic. An estimated 45 million people each year go on a diet, and 44.1 million of them not only fail to reach their goal weight, they regain every pound that they had lost in the process.
Read MoreI grew up in a home where we had liver and onions every Friday. Yep. My Mom, greeted with the joy you can imagine from a child faced with liver as their ONLY dinner choice, would exclaim, “Its good for your blood!” That was my cue. Sit quietly, cut it up into small pieces, bury some of it in my potatoes, stash some in my napkin and move the rest around on my plate so it looked like I ate enough liver to be excused. My Mom was always baffled by my dislike. She loved liver?!?
Read MoreIt sounds like such a silly question, but I can tell you that in today’s culture of food industry false marketing and so many “experts” telling you “eat this, not this,” this question is the most common that I am asked.
Read MoreI get asked all the time what is the ONE thing I can do to improve my health, my waistline, and my relationship with food? As you might imagine there are multiple answers. Many are of value:
Chances are that you, or someone very close to you, suffers from this silent disease. The prevalence of PCOS is steadily on the rise as more and more women find themselves facing that glass wall of frustration and pain. As someone who has struggled with a very similar condition for a decade, take my word when I say that life with an endocrine disorder is far from normal.
Read MoreFunctional foods are foods that go beyond just basic nutrition. They are believed to have a positive impact on your health. Functional foods are believed to not only optimize your health, but they are credited with the ability to reduce the risk of disease. Think super Superfoods...but that seems so old-fashioned now. Rather than super, functional. You say tomato. I say ..... you get it.
Read MoreWhat if I told you if the bulk of your intake is food products and you don’t cook, that you will be over-fat? What if I told you marketing and nutrition labels are not truthful? What if I told you all diets are the same? What if I told you any eating plan that tells you it is not a diet, but is focused on quantity and elimination is, in fact, a diet. What if I told you that quick, deprivation-based weight loss is not sustainable? What if I told you the food industry and diet culture know their promises are lies, but their wealth is built on your belief that you fail because you lack willpower and not because they fail you?
Read MoreHippocrates, the father of medicine, claimed that “all disease begins in the gut.” Well then. If the father of modern medicine believed gut health to be the foundation of well-being, then it is crucial for us to understand the gut’s role, to recognize when its health is compromised and how to restore it.
Read MoreIn the first post I published on this blog, I talked about (more like hinted at) the true measure of the health of a body. True health is not measured by body composition or by muscular strength or cardiovascular endurance. And it’s not even measured by perceived energy or mental clarity, although these are often tell tale signs of what lies within.
If we want to know if we're healthy, we need to take a closer look at our hormones.
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