Simple Roots Radio

Do you feel overwhelmed by health advice? Confused about what to eat? Unsure which information to trust? You're not alone. Health has become a fight too many people are leaving feeling defeated and ready to surrender. I've come to learn that the answer you're looking for is rarely in the place you're looking. It's often the opposite of what you think. Regarding health, we spend too much time chasing the wrong thing and not enough time understanding the right things. What I mean by that is, we often chase down a system or work to perfect the perfect plan while overlooking the basics. Truth be told, none of these ‘healthy' things are wrong, but they only work to the degree you have the capacity to benefit from and maintain them. Listen to the podcast to better understand how to use the domino effect to make health simple. You will also get the five critical elements to the cycle of health! If you want to let go of the confusion and create health, learn to use these five elements to your benefit.   Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/362.   Be sure to join me in the Summer Walking Club.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here.

Rest is essential. Although you know that, especially now, as we've shifted into what some call the “rest era.” Our internal thermostat works tirelessly to maintain balance, or homeostasis, making rest a natural response to work. But now that we've moved beyond hustle culture, the question becomes: Are you resting too much, or are you relying on the wrong kinds of rest? The truth is, excessive rest can lead to problems. Just like overworking, over-resting—especially the wrong type of rest—can leave you feeling stuck, unmotivated, or even more tired. Health is a delicate balance of work and rest, and not all rest is created equal. Too much rest and not enough work can lead to a bored body. {Find out if your body could be bored here}. In the podcast, I explain the difference between real rest and artificial rest and how that relates to feeling tired or exhausted. This is an important conversation, especially in a world that nearly worships rest, yet few find the benefits they seek. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/361.   Be sure to join me in the Summer Walking Club.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here.    

We're living in what many are calling a “rest era.” After decades of hustle culture and the relentless push to “be a boss,” it's no surprise that we've swung in the opposite direction. Rest became a necessary cure for burnout. But as with all things, the pendulum can swing too far, leaving me to question: is your body bored? The law of balance proves the pendulum will always swing in the opposite direction to the same degree you pulled it out of balance. Naturally, we're going to see a big pull towards rest, considering how hard we pushed. Unfortunately, health, even life, doesn't work based on extremes, but through the balance of both work and rest. You need both work and rest to fully thrive. Rest, while essential, isn't meant to stand alone. It's the balancing act to work. Without enough work, rest becomes stagnant, leaving us with a new kind of stress – a bored body. Your body was designed to work. It thrives on movement, effort, and engagement. And while it might feel comforting to settle into rest after years of overexertion, this comfort can lead to imbalance. Life, after all, is about rhythm—an ebb and flow that mirrors the patterns found throughout nature and within our own bodies. In this podcast, I discuss specifically how to determine if you're living in extremes, creating a bored body, and how to change your body to promote health.   Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/360.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here.

The lymphatic system is a powerful part of your immune system—think of it as your body's built-in drainage and defense network. It helps regulate fluid balance, supports your immune response, and even plays a role in absorbing fats and fat-soluble vitamins from your digestive system. Like many systems in the body, the lymphatic system thrives on movement. But unlike the circulatory system, it doesn't have a central pump like the heart. Instead, it relies on muscle contractions, deep breathing, and physical activity to keep lymph fluid moving. Without regular movement, lymph can become stagnant. When this happens, it can lead to a variety of health issues, including swelling or lymphedema, fatigue, brain fog, a weakened immune system, puffiness around the face and eyes, cellulite, skin breakouts, headaches, and even a decrease in sexual performance. In this episode of the podcast, I interview lymphatic health expert Leah Levitan. Leah is a certified lymphatic drainage specialist and the founder of Lymph Love Club, where she teaches people how to care for and support their lymphatic systems. During the episode, we discuss the effects of stagnant lymph, swollen lymph nodes, and how to stimulate lymphatic flow at home. Leah also walks us through the first part of her five-phase plan for draining fluid from the head and neck. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/359.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here.

Growing up, I often heard my mom say, “Stand up straight!” At the time, it was little more than an annoyance. But now, as an adult working to repattern years of poor posture, I understand the wisdom in her words. So, Mom, you were right. Posture, or more specifically, your postural patterns, influences much more than just how you look. It has profound biological impacts. Like any sense, your posture constantly sends signals to your brain about your environment—or at least your perception of it. These signals shape how your cells respond, influencing everything from movement to mood. Body language experts have long observed how posture reflects emotions like confidence, sadness, or fear. But what's exciting is that posture is not fixed. Patterns that were learned can be unlearned and repatterned. In this week's podcast, I sit down with body posture expert John Friend, a veteran in the field with over 40 years of experience. John introduces us to Bowspring, a body practice designed to align the body with its natural design. Together, we explore how proper posture can transform not just how you carry yourself but how you experience life. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/358.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here.

Water isn't all created equal. While water generally looks the same, it's far more complex than we previously understood. Not all water behaves the same way, and its behavior can change how it acts inside your body. I say it often, but let me repeat it here: Health is not what you do to your body but how your body responds to what you do! Health is ultimately up to your body, which means we must stop assuming that what you do has a positive or negative response based on what it's believed to do. There are too many variables for any person or study to prove this conclusively. Health truly boils down to your awareness and the energy exchange within your body. But let's get back to water. For years, we've recognized the three main states of water—ice, liquid, and vapor. But research has uncovered a fourth phase of water: structured water. This gel-like state forms near hydrophilic surfaces and operates with a different energetic field than the standard states—ice has a lower energetic field than vapor. You might be wondering, why does this matter?   Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/357.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here.

A healthier mind doesn't start with healthier thoughts. It happens through nourishing your body – your body builds your thoughts. Learn how to use micro-resourcing to change your thoughts. The last thing you want to hear when you're struggling mentally is to “do more” or “try harder.” At least, that's how I used to feel. When your mind is already gasping for air, being told to add more to your plate can feel like the final blow. Yet at the same time, you want to feel better, creating a frustrating paradox—too overwhelmed to take action but desperate for relief. I know that space well. I lived in it. And the shift didn't happen when I mustered up enough energy to push through one more strategy. It happened when I started to understand why my mind was struggling in the first place. The Mind-Body Connection Over the years, I spent time in therapy, determined to feel better. I did the work, but the relief I expected never fully came. It confused me because I didn't have major trauma (what many call “big T” trauma). Instead, I had accumulated “small t” traumas—yet I still couldn't get my mind to function the way I wanted. I was floundering, searching for answers. That's when I started studying the connection between the body and mind—their deep, energetic interplay. And what I learned changed everything, including my belief that you can “think yourself healthy.” For years, I clung to the idea that mindset alone could fix everything. If I couldn't heal, I figured it was because I was broken. But the truth is, changing your mind is only possible when your body has the resources and capacity to support that change. Your mind and body aren't separate; they function in a loop. If your body is depleted, your mind struggles. If your mind is stressed, your body suffers. It's not a chicken-or-egg situation—it's personal to each of us. Understanding this connection is the key to shifting your mental state. In my latest podcast episode, I explore this in depth, including what the Minnesota Starvation Experiment revealed about how nutrient depletion affects mental health. It's a must-listen.   Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/356.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here.

Ten years ago, my life as I knew it fell apart setting the stage for what has now become my healing journey. What started as an extreme second case of mono spiraled into gaining 30 pounds in less than two months, a stage one kidney failure diagnosis, and days where getting out of bed felt impossible. But this triggered some lessons that I have learned in my health journey. This came after years of following all the “right” health rules—eating well (although never enough) and moving my body multiple times a day. I followed the script, yet I ended up sicker than I could have imagined. Looking back, I often forget how sick I was. If you had told me eight years ago that I'd one day forget the weight of that struggle, I wouldn't have believed you. There were countless moments when I thought I'd never get better. Sometimes, I even forgot what it felt like to be well. Honestly, I question if I ever truly knew what wellness felt like. Before I got sick, I spent years pushing my body to extremes, chasing "skinny" instead of healthy. I assumed that being skinny automatically meant being healthy. I now know that isn't true. As I took time to look back and reflect, I realized this decade has been a journey of rebirth, more than just transformation. Reflecting on the ten years since my life changed, I've uncovered lessons I never expected to learn—lessons born from both struggle and health. I share the ten most profound lessons I've learned from this healing journey on my podcast. Make sure you listen to get all ten. Keep reading to get a glimpse into the most transformative realization I had in those ten years.   Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/355.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here.

I was the child who, as my family said, "had a weak stomach." For most of my childhood and part of my adult life, I struggled through numerous gut-health issues. Nothing was severe, but it was always persistent. It ranged from vomiting to excessive bloating and GI-induced headaches. I also seemed to react to a random array of foods consistently. These issues are, at least partially, responsible for why I got into the health space. I've worked in the health space for the last fifteen years, and gut health problems and remedies have skyrocketed. I've seen clients who are sensitive to nearly every food, even foods considered to be the healthiest. Age no longer seems to be a factor. Within this time, I've also witnessed the birth and high promotion of probiotics, which recently flipped gears to the warning against them. Similar to most situations in health, there doesn't seem to be a good answer as to why we're here and how we get ourselves out. We can certainly put some blame on the massive influx of "toxins" or highly-processed foods (many of which are also considered to contain toxins). This, of course, stresses the GI system and strains your gut bacteria, creating an imbalance. But you could also blame our eating patterns and our movement away from our circadian rhythm, eating the majority of our calories at night and failing to practice any sort of light hygiene. You could also blame our farming practices, the depleted nutrients in our soil, or our overly sanitized environments void of healthy bacteria. There are a lot of fingers we can point and arguably should point, as these all can cause an excess burden on the body. But to simplify it all, I think that burden points directly at our "problem." We don't have the resources to deal with the burdens. Most gut issues happen because you're under-resourced and overburdened. You may struggle with gut-health issues simply because you don't meet your basic and foundational needs on a daily and consistent basis. In this podcast, I share more about the needs you need to meet, how your lack of food consumption or low energy available states are destroying your gut, and why supplementation is not the best answer. Listen to the podcast to learn more.   Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/354.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.  

One thing most overlook in working towards sustainable weight loss is the process of building healthier structure. Weight loss isn't always about loss, but rather expansion. Let me teach you how. Growing up, I saw many people attempt weight loss. Some succeeded, at least temporarily, but few paid attention to where the weight came from. Health was reduced to the number glaring back at them from the scale. In those days, health was about weight loss, and weight loss was about all forms of “less.” While both statements have some truth, they're not the whole truth. This is why health can feel so confusing. It's both partially true and incomplete—both this and the opposite of this. Health is best lived at an optimal weight, but weight loss doesn't always lead to health. Likewise, weight loss often involves “less”—but not in the sense of restriction. Instead, it's less in the way of expansion: less energy-draining foods, less resistance, less working against your body. It might sound contradictory, as if I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth. But when you begin to understand that it's not one or the other—but a combination of what we do and what we're working against—you start to make meaningful progress toward your goals. At the end of the day, all goals align with the most critical element of health: the expansion and protection of energy. When you expand your energy, you create healthier structures, and healthier structures produce healthier functions. This aligns with the biological principle that energy builds structure, and structure determines function. In the context of weight loss, this means we should focus on building and maintaining healthy structures—like bone density, organ health, and muscle mass—rather than fixating on the number on the scale. Your optimal weight is not just about reaching a specific number; it's about achieving, retaining, and supporting a body made of healthy, resilient tissues. Don't get so consumed by weight loss that you overlook the most critical aspect of achieving a healthy weight: the kind of tissue you're losing in the process. Listen to today's podcast to learn why the structure of your body matters more than your weight—and how you can build a healthier structure for lasting health.   Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/353.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.  

The topic of metabolism tends to focus on only one small piece of a very broad system, your weight or how metabolism can change your structure. And while metabolism can influence how you look—positively or negatively—it's much more than that. A true understanding of metabolism starts by looking at the bigger picture. Metabolism is the sum of all life-sustaining biochemical processes in your body. It governs how you create and conserve energy, which directly affects how you heal, rejuvenate, remove waste, build, and preserve. It's not energy itself but determines how your body generates and utilizes it. Think of metabolism as a thermostat, constantly working to maintain balance. It's influenced by external factors and, in turn, influences internal systems, making it one of the most critical aspects of your health. And here's the kicker: metabolism isn't static. It's not something you inherit and can't change. Instead, it's dynamic, always adapting to your actions and environment. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/352.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.  

Have you ever felt like health is an endless puzzle—where every piece you find adds more confusion instead of clarity? Each step forward feels like two steps back, leaving you stuck in a cycle of frustration. I've been there, too, in the endless negative loop created by a faulty health story. When you're in this place, it's easy to feel like a victim—like your body has failed you and no system marketed to "fix" you ever works. This mindset traps us in a cycle of confusion and defeat, where problems seem bigger than solutions, and health feels out of reach. I don't want to dramatize this. In fact, this is about stepping away from the drama of health and looking at it through a clearer lens. I understand what it's like to feel stuck and want health but never quite achieve it. What I didn't realize then—and wouldn't have chosen to see—was how much my beliefs and the stories I told myself shaped the outcomes I experienced. Here's the hard truth: many of the struggles we face in health aren't just real problems—they're amplified by the stories we believe. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/351.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

The health space often boxes everyone into a single narrative: if you're overweight, you must be overeating. But that's not always true. In fact, undereating can lead to many of the same problems as overeating. Surprisingly, most people today are underfed—not just in quantity but in quality—leading me to ask: are you eating enough? One of the most comprehensive studies on the effects of undereating is the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. This yearlong study documented what happened to participants during prolonged semi-starvation and explored the process of refeeding. I believe it offers a great understanding of the impacts of under-eating and how to better understand the effects of food on one's physiology. Inside this podcast, I dive deeper into the Minnesota Starvation Experiment and discuss why undereating is a hidden problem in the health space. I also explain how chronic undereating leads to metabolic adaptation, triggering a cascade of health issues.   Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/350.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

You can't change if you don't have the capacity. No matter how much you will it, plan for it, or research it, the only way to create change that lasts is through resourcing your cells with the capacity to change. As the first month of the new year comes to a close, it's a perfect time to evaluate how is your 'attempt' at change working? For many, the initial drive and motivation to stick to New Year's resolutions are starting to wane. But even if it's not the new year as you read this, understanding the process of change—and how to make it stick—is vital. The truth is that most people struggle to change not because they lack willpower but because they lack capacity. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/349.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

I've spent more than a minute in the health space. I've tried my fair share of extremes. At one point, I even quit health altogether. While I don't discount any part of that journey, I can't help but wish I'd known ten years ago what I know now: the three non-negotiables required for health. A few years ago, after “quitting health,” I realized something important: I still wanted to be healthy. It wasn't my desire for health I was over. I was over the approach we're told to take to get there. Through years of research, experimentation, and frustration, I uncovered a truth that's radically changed my perspective: The problem isn't you—or your body. The problem is the system you're trying to use to get healthy. You might be thinking, I've changed my approach, tried different things, and still, nothing changes. I get it. But here's the thing: nearly every approach to health—even when wrapped in positivity—stems from the same flawed foundation, restriction, deprivation, and scarcity. Sure, some approaches focus on addition, like crowding out the bad with the good. While that's better, our skewed understanding of what it takes to get healthy often twists even the best intentions into forms of restriction. And this, my friend, is what needs to change. Because health doesn't thrive in restriction, health grows through expansion. In this episode, I'm breaking down the three non-negotiables for health—the principles that will shift you from surviving in restriction to thriving in expansion. I'll also share one simple way to get started living this approach today. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/344.   Be sure to take my Free Energy quiz.  Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

It might be overdone, but I must say I love the newness of a new year. I know, it really doesn't change anything. January 1st is no different than any other day of the year, but I think it causes reflection, and that (hopefully) changes things. I've been reflecting a lot over the past few weeks—what's working well, what isn't, and what I want to take into the new year. And, I must say, I've found some interesting points, including a newfound love for being right where I am. It might sound unexciting, but I'm actually loving my current reality. I need to celebrate this because I've spent nearly every other year of my adult life wishing for the next season. Not out of hate for my present but from a belief that something better was always ahead. I lived life like a chase, which ultimately meant I wasn't living it well. Last year, I committed to breaking up with this mindset, to fully live in the present. While difficult at first, it's been one of the greatest experiences of my life—one I didn't even realize I needed. The beauty is that contentment and change can coexist. Contentment is not the same as complacency. So, as I reflect back on what is working well, what isn't, and where I want to grow, I thought I'd share some updates. My life these days involves less five-year planning and more pattern-shifting and system-building. In fact, moving from goal-setting to pattern-shifting has led to more health changes this year than in the past five years combined. Listen to learn the five things that are working well and that I'm taking into 2025.   Learn more about today's episode: https://thelivingwell.com/347.   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.  

Every Sunday brings a moment of alarm. The moment my phone sends a notification of screen time averages for the week. I can't say I'm surprised. I know I spend more time than I would like on my phone. But the amount is still disturbing. Have you ever considered what you could accomplish or genuinely enjoy if you reclaimed that time? Looking back, I can't say my screen time ever feels worth it. Most of the time, I can't even remember what I was doing on my phone fifteen minutes ago, let alone justify the hours I spend scrolling through the week. It's embarrassing, but I know I'm not alone. Recent statistics show the average person spends about 4 hours and 37 minutes on their phone daily. And that doesn't include time spent on computers or watching TV. Rather than justify it, I've decided to take control, inspired by my friend and author Hannah Brencher's book, The Unplugged Hours: Cultivating a Life of Presence in a Digitally Connected World. On her 33rd birthday, Hannah realized something had to change. She challenged herself to spend 1,000 unplugged hours over the course of a year. In a recent podcast episode, I interviewed her about this journey—what she learned, what surprised her, and whether she plans to continue. If you're ready to rethink your screen habits, give it a listen. It might inspire you to live differently in the year ahead.   Learn more about today's episode: https://thelivingwell.com/346.   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.  

This is a recording of my latest live class as a part of The Weekly Fill for paid subscribers. Do you want to be a part of participating in these live classes and submitting your questions to have Alexa answer them? Subscribe to The Weekly Fill here to get the information on the next live class is ready to be scheduled. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. It is the only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Learn more about today's episode and get the free download for my Health Sugar Guide: https://thelivingwell.com/345.   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Food has a lot of power in the health space. It might even be the reigning king, but sometimes, it's distracting you from more important issues. Take sugar, for instance. It's not the villain in the story. In fact, there are many benefits of sugar (some may surprise you). Spoiler to tip one: Your body needs sugar. Unfortunately, our use of processed and modified sugars has led many people to overconsume them, creating a cascade of health problems associated with sugar. But to clarify, those problems exist not because you consumed sugar but because it causes instability or a rise in your blood glucose levels that are outside your homeostatic balance. I think it's important to clarify the problem - that sugar is not the problem but the instability or spikes in your blood glucose - when you understand this, you can focus more on blood glucose regulation and less on restriction. Inside this podcast, I teach you the benefits of sugar, including why you need it, what happens when you eliminate it, the addiction behind it, and the real problem (that is less about sugar and more about stress). Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/344. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Forgiveness is not the sexiest tool in the health space. In fact, most wouldn't consider it a health tool, even though it has a massive health impact - arguably just as much (if not more) than what you eat. Research has found that forgiveness changes your mind and biology. It improves heart health, immune function, hormonal flow, and reproductive health, to name a few. Unfortunately, most people aren't great at forgiveness, especially forgiving themself.  Honestly, I wasn't any better. My stubbornness is partially to blame, but I also misunderstood what forgiveness meant, keeping me stuck holding on to my pain and anger. It kept me holding onto the hurt that ended in bitterness. Thankfully, I didn't stay here.  After years of studying and living in a posture of forgiveness, I have new thoughts and research on why it's one of the most remarkable healing tools we have at our disposal. Not to mention, it's free! In the podcast, I present a new view of forgiveness, using it to gain health. It helps you heal from bad diet advice, but more importantly, it helps you forgive, which is the epitome of good diet advice. If you want to be well, you have to forgive.  Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/343. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.  

There is a lot of bad diet advice out there, and while it's easy to blame diets, at the root, bad diet advice is not the problem. The problem is our need for diets. A problem stemming from generational beliefs about health that have created the idea that your body is the problem. I'm certainly not attempting to put everyone in the same box. But regardless of where you fall, understanding generational beliefs, challenges, or trauma is worth talking about. We all have them, regardless of our environment. While parents and grandparents are the main culprits of these beliefs, the culture and environment of our childhoods also play a defining role. For many of us, there was no escaping the health storyline the media portrayed. Historically, these health beliefs have spanned everything from magazines to TV and magazine ads (even for kids). The confusing and mixed messages of the dieting era: Growing up in the 80's and 90's, I was exposed to an entirely different set of beliefs than culture portrays now. The same would be true of our grandparents generation. There was always a belief about health, but that belief has shifted throughout the generations, bringing a world of confusion. Currently, we exist in a tangled mess of two very large extremes—the beliefs created at the peak of diet culture in the '70s, '80s, and '90s that skinny was in and how you looked determined your worth to the 2000s when health shifted to body awareness, and strong was the new skinny. I'm not saying what message is true or if any are, but rather proving that regardless, we've all been shaped by these cultural ideas. There is no escaping them. If you fail to change them, they will become your beliefs.  In this podcast, I discuss generational beliefs about health and the trauma they have caused. I also show you how to let go of these unhealthy beliefs and establish new (and true) beliefs that will change your health and your health legacy.  Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/342. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.  

If you're breathing, it's assumed you've been exposed to bad diet advice. Growing up in the '80s and '90s, I lived through what some consider the peak of 'crazy diet advice.' From cabbage soup to grapefruit diets and liquid fasts, the '90s were anything short of one wild idea to the next that might help someone achieve their desired outcomes. Bad diet advice didn't just emerge in the last few decades; history proves it has been circulating throughout different millenniums. It's part of our history and still part of our culture. Yet, under the surface, there is more to dieting than meets the eye. It may feel like an approach to reach a better destination, whether through weight loss or another metric, but dieting creates a sense of safety, no matter how artificial it may be. It feels strange to combine dieting and safety—even contradictory. But if you dig deeper, you'll find that people seek diets to create order in what feels chaotic or dysregulated. They seek a system that provides safety when they don't feel safe. Safety is a human need (not a wish), and diets provide just enough safety to keep people needing them. In the podcast, I share a shift in understanding diet culture. I also share where it's led us astray and how to use it to better your life. Bad diet advice is only bad because we misunderstand what we need. This is different from your average conversation about bad diet advice. It's deeper and yet more profound. Listen to the podcast to understand the full story. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/341. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.  

Self-confidence doesn't exist. Only holy confidence does. I spent most of my life looking for confidence in a place it doesn't exist. I lived chasing an idea, attempting to prop myself up enough to believe I had what it took, and if I believed it, then I would be confident. It's similar to assuming you'll be more confident when you look a certain way or secure a set amount of money in your bank account. While those may bring some confidence, they don't make you confident. Unfortunately, I chased a version of confidence that left me getting swallowed in the pit of endless self-help books, leaving me longing to uncover what my problem was. No amount of self-help led me to true confidence because true confidence is not found in self-power or self-perfection. It's found in something outside of yourself, which stems from recognizing, even owning, the weaker parts of yourself.   Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/340. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

The idea of discipline used to repulse me. It felt like I was forcing myself into a box I didn't choose. In many ways, discipline equated to hate. I assumed self-disciplines were the same. Instead, I stuck with setting goals. But as my life progressed, I quickly realized that setting goals is one thing, and meeting them is entirely different (learn what has and hasn't been working in my health here). Ironically, achieving my goals required self-discipline. As I started to study self-discipline, I came upon a new understanding of discipline. One that is more about protection and purpose, even pushing you forward, and less about dictatorship and punishment. In all areas, growth requires self-discipline, which creates the action to birth the outcome. I realized I needed to incorporate self-discipline to achieve my goals. All good things in life take work. That work comes from healthy self-disciplines. But honoring that and even living it means you must change your view of discipline. I share more about that inside this podcast and the five self-disciplines that have changed my relationship with my husband, God, and myself. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/339. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

It's easy to assume nutritionists don't struggle with food. But it's often the opposite. At least it has been for me. Recently, I took a very unexpected break that happened for a million and one reasons, including some current health struggles (or what I labeled as health struggles based on what I saw on the surface).   Luckily, the space gave me time to reflect. In this podcast, I share my current health struggles and my wins. As much as it's easy to miss the wins, I don't want to discount that regardless of what I see, this is what I know. Listen to the podcast to get my vulnerable conversation about what I'm dealing with. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/338. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

  If it feels like we've been here twenty times over, asking what is good and what is bad food. While it might seem elementary, food is still the most debated topic in health. The health space seems to continuously change what food they claim is ‘good.' It's like the flavor of the day. Fifty years into the bloom of the health era, we're still asking the same question: what should we eat? It's the same question I asked when I set my life path as a nutritionist. I wanted to help break the noise and define what foods create health. But that path was harder than anticipated. It wasn't straight or clear but it felt narrow, even elusive.  Many people find themselves in the same boat. Just when you think you have it figured out, your ideas about what is healthy change again.  Yet, the longer I've been in the space and recognized patterns, the more I've realized it's really not about a list of healthy and unhealthy foods. It's about what your body needs. Your diet is personal. JUST BECAUSE SOMEONE SAYS IT'S HEALTHY DOESN'T MEAN IT'S HEALTHY FOR YOU.  Of course, I know that's not as sexy as telling you exactly what you should eat. I do hope you can see the freedom that health isn't as complex as we've made it. It's just showing up daily and feeding your body what it needs to thrive.  With all of that said, there are still some frameworks to follow. A set of boundaries that helps clarify what is more healthy and potentially what is less. In this podcast, I lay out that framework by teaching you how to determine the difference between healthy and unhealthy food. That begins by learning how it interferes, influences, and alters your internal energy. Inside the podcast, I break it all down. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/336. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Even after getting my nutrition degree, I spent a lot of time thinking that health was a to-do list. I believed health was the product of what you did or didn't do. And in a lot of ways, this is true. But there is something more true. What is more accurate is that your body isn't just responding to what you do. It's responding to your perspective of what you do, your essence, how you show up, and your motivation. It's really about responding to how safe or unsafe you are, which is determined by your presence. I invited Jessica Ash to come on the show and talk more about embodying your healthy masculine and feminine energy, how this reacts inside your biology, changing your metabolic output, and how it changes your view of life. Learn how to embrace your feminine side through the four feminine archetypes. Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/335. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

We might be living in our rest era, but are you really resting? Or maybe you're resting too much. Rest is essential, but like hustle culture, too much of anything can become toxic. If you're resting too much, your body will get bored. Just like if you're not resting enough, your body will get sick. Both lead to similar results. In this podcast, learn all about rest, whether you're resting too much, and the difference between real rest and artificial rest.  Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/334. Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Weight loss isn't one of my favorite topics, but it is important. I decided to answer the question of how to lose weight in a way that helps you understand why the traditional way hasn't worked and what will. There are many ways to lose weight, but not all are healthy. If you want to keep it off, you must choose the healthy route from an expansion form of health, not reduction. Body fat, like all biological components, serves a purpose and is necessary for our well-being. However, it's all about balance. Excess or insufficient body fat can lead to issues. The key to achieving a healthy weight lies in understanding the purpose of body fat. This knowledge will help you comprehend why your body might be reluctant to let go of excess fat. In this podcast, I explain how to lose weight, where it goes, and what a healthy body weight looks like. You'll also learn why doing hard things is important (because your body thrives in work). Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/333.   Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

When I lost my health, doing everything right, and by everything, I mean eating all of the ‘right' foods and working out at least once a day, I realized everything right wasn't right for me. No matter what anyone said, the best health plan didn't pan out for me. At the time, I had no idea how much of a blessing this was. It felt like a battle I had lost.  My body failed, and everything I knew about health was wrong. I was left with nothing.  But a few years into my healing journey, I started to realize it wasn't necessarily what I was doing that was wrong. I had just failed to recognize how it was influencing my internal state. I lived fixated on the external metrics of health. What I could count, measure, or time. It was always about what I did and never about how my body reacted to what I did.  It was always about doing more and attempting to arrive at some far-off destination. But this was wrong. I was wrong. Arguably, the entire health space has it wrong. It's not about what you do. Health is about how your body reacts to what you do. This understanding eliminates the idea that there is a to-do list or a perfect health plan that will fix you. Things aren't good or bad, healthy or unhealthy; they can be either, depending on how your body reacts. How your body reacts is understood through the foundations of bioenergetics. In this podcast, I introduce the study of bioenergetics and how it connects your entire lifestyle, proving that health is more than what you eat and how you move. Health is everything about your life, from the air you breathe to the relationships you interact with. Proving why even the best health plan might not work for you. Everything may be separate, but it's all connected, and we need to focus on that connectedness.  Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/332.   Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Today, I interviewed Dr. Jolene Brighten, asking her all of your hormonal questions, including if you should take hormone replacement therapy, how to prepare for menopause, how to tell when you're in perimenopause, what blood sugar has to do with your hormones, and so much more. Listen to the podcast and check out Dr. Brighten's latest book, Is This Normal: Judgement-Free Straight Talk About Your Body. Hormone replacement therapy is becoming increasingly common. The conversations are so familiar it feels like if you're not on hormone replacement therapy, you might be doing something wrong. It's the same for all other hormones. Everywhere you look, someone else is telling you they're a problem, making you assume you have a problem, even if you don't.  I'd even argue that hormones are one of the most wrongfully villainized body processes today. But that's a story for another day. The reality is that we encounter a lot of chatter about hormones. Nearly all of it is negative, making you believe that you probably have some hormonal problem, even if you don't.  I know all too well it's easy to fall into this predicament. Not long ago, I found myself questioning if my hormones were the problem and perhaps I needed some form of external therapy to fix it.  Listen to today's episode to learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/331.   Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Hormones are the conversation everywhere right now. Honestly, it's easy to fall into the trap of believing you probably have a hormonal problem just because it sounds like everyone does. But the common causes of hormone imbalance are not what you think. Just the other day, I was on Instagram, and ten posts in a row made me think my hormones were out of whack. How must someone who doesn't study nutrition feel if I'm overwhelmed by the fear-inducing information? When it comes to hormones, there are many thoughts, ideas, and modes of healing. But I want to show you that most hormonal issues are actually a deeper issue that stems from your nervous system response. Hormonal problems are very real and need attention. It's good to get them measured once in a while. But I think we need to look harder at how we heal them because it rarely has to do with our hormones. On this podcast, I've continually made clear that hormones are messenger molecules. They don't write the message your actions take but only ship it. This proves that the problem is rarely with your hormones, but what message is your body sending that requires a different flow of hormones, and why? In this podcast, you will learn how your hormones function and the control that powers them. I also share the three most common root causes of hormone imbalance—you might be surprised to hear what they are.  Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/330.   Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

I was sitting in an old lecture hall, daydreaming about health. As my professor scribbled on the whiteboard different caloric equations, I couldn't help but question if there was something more my education had failed to teach me.  I couldn't understand the idea that health, or at least weight, could be summed up into basic equations. There had to be more. I just couldn't put a finger on what it was.  As I sat through those lectures, my questions ran deeper, but my understanding was slim. I had come here to find the answers to why so many people all over the world, especially those I loved, still struggled with their health no matter how many times they attempted the ‘perfect equation.' I can't say I ever found it in my college education, but I am grateful for the path that led me to look deeper. The path led me to understand, not only for myself but for a world of people, that health is not about what you do. It's about what you perceive about what you eat.    Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/329.   Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

I know a thing or two about stress. No matter how much I hate it, or at least hate to admit it, I find a lot of comfort in being stressed. Somewhere along the path, I attached the idea that stress is a measurement of productivity keeping me stuck in the stress response. If I wasn't stressed, was I being lazy? Learn more about this and how to get out of this response in today's podcast.   Learn More: https://thelivingwell.com/328 Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

There's a lot of chatter in the health space about seed oils, which has opened up all kinds of room for confusion. But today, I want to clarify the answer to the question: Are seed oils bad for you? Not to throw shade at another food. We all know we can't possibly risk losing one more staple in our diet and feel okay about it. We've shamed sugar, potatoes, carbs, and even fats. Fats were the first food on the chopping block as the health industry began exploding in the early 80s. It was the same then and the same now. Researchers were trying to identify the cause of our rising health problems, which seem to grow exponentially every year. The study responsible for the correlation made between fat consumption and rising disease has since been debunked. But that study opened the door to a fear of food we've repeated over the following decades. The food industry willingly and quickly picked up on this fear, leaving you turning to their "healthier" options like factory-made butter known as margarine. Ironically, the same fats we once thought were the vain of our existence we now understand as critical to survival. But the part that leaves me most upset and you most confused is that we've misunderstood how our body responds to fats. We've neglected to understand the role of certain fats inside the body, which is the only way to identify what is good or bad for you. While this is a personal question, like all concepts in the health space, in this podcast, I provide an overarching framework on if and how to consume seed oils. Learn More: https://thelivingwell.com/327 Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

The rain was pounding on my window to the same degree that tears were streaming down my face. I had just left a counseling session talking through my sense of self-identity. I was desperate to uncover who God made me. The problem was I had spent most of my life trying to be something others would respect. I wanted to be something that others would need. You could say it's part of being an , but more likely, it's birthed out of the broken places in me. I had picked up the desire to be needed. The issue was that I had spent most of my life striving to earn others' respect. I aimed to become someone others would rely on. You could attribute it to being an enneagram two, but it's more likely rooted in my own brokenness. I adopted the longing to be needed. Out of this, my identity became a conglomeration of many different things that masked who I was more than it helped me live true to who God made me. From there, I created my own form of identity crisis. I struggled to understand myself and my purpose, creating this gaping wound that seemed to fester in all areas of my life. In many cases, leaving me feeling worthless while also falling victim to anything promising to help me 'become.' There is a lot of chatter in the world about self-identity. It's the theme of the self-help industry that has taken over bookshelves worldwide. I don't disagree; we need to understand ourselves (to have a solid self-identity) to live our best selves. But it's not so much about understanding who you are but whose you are. It could be the word 'self' in self-identity that throws us for a loop, leaving us chasing what it was never intended to be. But your self-identity is less about amplifying yourself and more about your connection to something greater. It's recognizing your place not as an independent being but interconnected with God. Your self-identity is your sense of self, not your created self but your God-created being. Understanding this changes things because when you change your self-identity, you change how your body responds to all of your life. That includes the food that you eat. Learn More: https://thelivingwell.com/326 Listen To The Rest Of The Health School Episodes: https://thelivingwell.com/health-school   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Health is difficult, and not in the way you think. It's difficult not because you don't know what to eat but because it's emotional, making healing less about food detox and more about emotional detox. It might feel like food complicates things. But it's not food but the reason you eat what you do. If you remove the emotional aspect, eating healthy food would be easy. But it's not or hasn't been, like exercise and every other health tip on the planet, because there is an emotional attachment. All of life is emotional or at least stirs an emotion inside you. That's because humans are emotional beings. Emotions are part of the human experience. Even when you don't think you're feeling anything, you are. You've likely become great at suppressing, numbing, shoving, or distracting yourself from what you say you're not feeling, making it appear like you feel nothing. I say this because I, too, lived this. But you can't escape emotions. They are part of you, as are your fingers and toes. However, you can learn how to use them to improve your life and health. This is where health and happiness coexist. On the podcast, we explore emotions and prove why they are responsible for biological functions. Inside, you'll learn the connection between cellular health and emotional health and how to boost both. Learn More: https://thelivingwell.com/325   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Calories tend to be another controversial and somewhat confusing subject. But I'd argue that is only because we don't understand how they interact with our bodies. If you've ever wondered if calories matter, the answer is yes and no. Let me explain. Calories are a metric of energy often used to describe the nutritional value of food. Technically, a calorie is a unit of energy equivalent to the heat energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by one degree Celsius. Our simplistic view of calories does not determine nutritional value. It's the nutrients within those calories that truly matter. Calories are only significant to the degree they influence energy levels. Understanding this is much easier when you break through the misunderstanding of energy and thus understand the role of food. In this podcast, we dive deep into the misinterpretation of caloric energy while diving into the only thing that matters: your internal energy. Calories cannot change you, but they can influence your internal energy, which matters more than how many calories you consume. Learn More: https://thelivingwell.com/324   Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Metabolism is a sexy word in the health space. Everyone wants that flourishing metabolism. The same one we assume is why some people can eat anything and never gain an ounce. It's easy to envy those people while hating our bodies for not functioning in the same way. But truth be told, this understanding is a bad perception of your metabolism. Yes, it does change the structure of your body, which is why a higher metabolism is associated with a lower waistline. But you can't misrepresent metabolism by thinking it will help you eat anything you want and never gain a pound. Learn More: https://thelivingwell.com/323 Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

How do you get healthy? The typical approach is certainly not working. In fact, it seems to be doing the opposite. It's not making you healthy, but there is something that is. Learn the key to living healthy so you can stop asking the same questions. The first episode of the new podcast series, Health School, starts with quite a bang. I share what I consider the most critical element of health, yet the most overlooked. That is energy. Discover the profound impact of energy on our biology, mind, and soul. This understanding will revolutionize your perception of health, empowering you to take control of your well-being and make it simple. Learn More: https://thelivingwell.com/322 Don't forget to track where your energy level using: This FREE energy quiz to determine your metabolic output. This FREE download to track your body temperature and pulse rate. Take things to the next level: Get health advice that works delivered straight to your inbox. The only place guaranteed to make you healthier and happier. Join The Weekly Fill here. Ready to go deeper and take back your health? Learn how to nourish yourself in a way that is personal to you while also helping you to fully embrace all of you. Take back your hormones, get more energy, and learn how to thrive inside Health Made Simple. Follow my day-to-day life plus mini tidbits of health encouragement on Instagram.

Your body's not that sensitive. It can be, but only because it's been pushed into forms of dysregulation so long it's turned to survival. Survival means your body will do anything to keep you alive, even if that means it works against what is healthy. It's not the intended design. The intended design is to thrive. But when forced, it will revert to survival. I had to learn this the hard way. For years, I believed my body was just overly sensitive. It tended to react to everything, from foods to different beauty products and even occasionally the sun. My body felt overwhelmed in all areas. I could find nothing that would settle. While I knew how sensitive a body could become, it wasn't my own health that made me confront the question as to why our bodies seemed to become so weak. It was one of my clients. He was only a child but had taken a few tests out of desperation to realize his body was reacting to everything. Not just environmentally, but nearly every food was causing a chain reaction inside his body. What was supposed to nourish him was slowly killing him. At a loss for how to feed him, his parents came to me for help. When I laid eyes on him, I could tell his body was overwhelmed, but I also saw something beneath the rash on his skin and the dark circles under his eyes. He had life in him. He was just so undernourished it couldn't surface. It left me questioning how to nourish him when he couldn't consume anything that would sustain him. Here, I began in-depth research into food sensitivities. I wanted to know why we are experiencing them more frequently than ever before. What I found was alarming and provides a solution to health the health space has repeatedly overlooked. In this podcast, I highlight why we are becoming more sensitive but also remind you this was not the design. You were not designed in weakness but strength. Your body can heal and thrive amongst several healthy and even unhealthy things. But it can only do that when it has the nourishment and support. You must change the paradigm and see your body as good to get healthy.   Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/321

For decades, health has existed in a black-and-white space. It's been a series of rash and often unrealistic lifestyle changes, leaving one to believe the extreme lifestyle is the only one that will help you reach your goals. It's also why resolutions have become such a focus of the new year. They bring the hope that you can change. The more extreme those resolutions, the faster things will change. But change rarely comes. You can blame yourself, or you can blame the resolutions. But I'd argue neither is wrong. The failure happens because of the process or lack thereof. On the podcast, I teach you how to create a process you'll love based on the habits lived out by the healthiest people on the planet. It begins by learning how to romanticize the process and not the destination, knowing if you stick with the process, the destination will come. Check out these resources to get you started building better patterns and setting healthier resolutions: Upgrade Your Wellness Routine With This Tip 5 Ways To Guarantee Health Success 15 Healthy Habits To Take Into The New Year Why I Gave Up Finding Myself (Real Story) The Power of A Habit   Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/320

  I spent many years attempting to hack my behavior. Forcing change, trying to make something budge. It's the typical approach to life and health that appears like it should work. Logically doing something should create something different. And it does, but only if you change the pattern because your pattern produces the outcome you experience. If you have a problem, that problem was birthed out of a pattern. Change requires shifting the pattern, and that starts by understanding the pattern (learn your pattern here). When you know the pattern, you can influence it by creating better skills. Skills reinforce behaviors, even those you want to change. I am skilled at sleeping past my alarm. I'm skilled at waiting too long to prepare food until I'm ravenous and will eat anything. I'm skilled at overthinking, worrying, and anxiety. I'm skilled at things that reinforce the outcomes, creating the problems I want to change. Changing this requires influencing the pattern with better skills. Part two of this podcast mini-series teaches you how to transform the goal into skills you need to develop to create a better outcome. Change requires you to focus on developing the skills you need to create change. Ask yourself what skills you want to develop this year. I'm not talking about your average skill, like getting skilled at weightlifting. But the everyday mundane skills necessary to influence your patterns.   Learn More: https://thelivingwell.com/319   Additional Resources to get you started building better patterns and setting healthier resolutions: Upgrade Your Wellness Routine With This Tip 5 Ways To Guarantee Health Success 15 Healthy Habits To Take Into The New Year Why I Gave Up Finding Myself (Real Story) The Power of A Habit

I'll be the first to admit I've set many resolutions. Yet I've never achieved a single one. At least not that I can recount. Yet, I keep going back to the same approach, hoping one of these years it will work. I never blamed the act of setting resolutions for why they didn't work, but I always blamed myself. In the last few years, I re-evaluated the traditional resolution approach. I even begged you not to set resolutions, claiming it's not the answer to what you are seeking. But then I started to question if that was another extreme approach that neglected the answer. What if resolutions do work, but the problem is how we work or don't work to achieve them. What if the answer was our actions? The problem is we're attempting resolutions with the wrong approach. Inside the three-part mini-series, I'm breaking down the three important steps to set the resolutions and actually achieve them. It begins by understanding you don't have a problem. You have a pattern. And that pattern feeds or enables the problem. When you know what pattern you are living in, you can break it to create a new one. That changes everything about your outcome. Learn more by listening to this episode and be sure to read the blog post to get all of the details: https://thelivingwell.com/318   Additional resources to get you started building better patterns and setting healthier resolutions: Upgrade Your Wellness Routine With This Tip 5 Ways To Guarantee Health Success 15 Healthy Habits To Take Into The New Year Why I Gave Up Finding Myself (Real Story) The Power of A Habit

Leaky gut seems to be a national crisis. While diet is certainly a factor, the larger issue is stress or the lack of safety inside your physiology. Maria-Victoria Albina of The Feminist Wellness Podcast came on this podcast to share the response of the nervous system on our GI tract and the fight for safety within our biology. We talk about the polyvagal theory, co-dependence, and how to regulate your nervous system to heal your biology. Healing your gut is more than a food issue. It's a lifestyle response.    OTHER RESOURCES TO CHECK OUT:    7 Signs Your Nervous System is Dystregulated:  https://thelivingwell.com/317   5 Ways To Use Your Nervous System To Get Healthy: https://thelivingwell.com/5-ways-to-use-your-nervous-system-to-get-healthy/   How To Feel More Energized And Stop Storing Body Fat: https://thelivingwell.com/how-to-feel-more-energized-and-stop-storing-body-fat/   How You Heal: Regulate Your Nervous System: https://thelivingwell.com/how-you-heal-regulate-your-nervous-system/   Put An End to Schedule Shaming and Create A Life You Love: https://thelivingwell.com/2024-nourished-planner

It's easy to get sucked into the black-and-white trap of health. It's either good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. Leaving many people attempting tasks and eating foods that perhaps are healthy for some but not others. The problem with this picture is it diminishes the secret of health. That secret is what your body is doing with what you provide. And that shifts the focus from perfecting the external ideas to understanding how your body reacts. Health requires internal awareness. Of course, health takes work. You're going to have to do things to create it. But don't get so lost in doing that you miss how your body is responding. Pay attention to what your body needs and do more of that. And remember, anything out of balance becomes unhealthy—even healthy things taken to a new level become unhealthy. In this podcast, I share three healthy things making you unhealthy. It's always about balance.     Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/316

My therapy journey began because I wanted to stop feeling. Most therapy begins because you want to change how you feel. At least feeling the things you didn't want to feel. Just like I wanted emotional control in the form of only feeling what I wanted to feel and never feeling what I didn't. Arguably, we'd all love that superpower. To feel the good without ever experiencing the bad. But it doesn't exist, and for good reason. All feelings are valid. They have a purpose, even the painful ones. But most people have gotten good at avoiding or numbing feelings as a way to deal with them. But it never deals with them. It just masks them. Feelings are part of being human. You were created to feel, which means you should feel. The journey to healing is not by suppressing the feeling but by learning how to feel without being controlled by the feeling. CHANGE HOW YOU FEEL BY UNDERSTANDING WHAT YOU FEEL. When I went to therapy, I didn't know how much control I had over how I felt or at least the ability to change it. I spent so much time trying to run from feelings and create a life where I wouldn't have to feel the things I didn't want to that I missed the beauty of healing emotions and using those feelings to create a better life. I realized the superpower we're looking for is not diminishing our feelings but creating better ones. It's being able to feel everything while using what you feel to shift your actions because you know how to heal them. Emotional regulation is the superpower. That happens through healing your nervous system. I brought Mandy L. Harvey on the podcast to talk about emotional regulation, healing from trauma, and how to feel without getting hurt by what you feel but using it to thrive.   Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/315

Health has been hard. I want to emphasize the has as a past-tense explanation. Because while it might have been difficult, it doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to live complicating health. It's only difficult because we've let it become that. Perhaps not you personally, but the endless external ideas about what health means are overwhelming, even confusing, but only because we've neglected to understand health for what it is. And in the process, we've over-romanticized the outcome of health that we've neglected the process. When you romanticize the outcome while hating the process, you create a fantasy of health rather than the reality of it. I get it. The end goal is enticing. I don't think anyone can argue that we'd love to rock our skinny jeans and never have to worry about getting sick again. We'd love to arrive at that destination of health forever and always. But health doesn't look or work like that. Honestly, I think that's more of a gift than we let ourselves believe. Health is a flow. It's growth and movement that is changing as we change. Because of that, it requires you to embrace the process. The process of living health makes it personal and practical. In this podcast, we talk about romanticizing the process of living healthy and the top five ways to stop complicating health so you can start living it.   Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/314

Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) seems to be trending right now. While traditionally, I shy away from the fads of the moment. I had my eye on this one. Rather than another shot in the dark, continuous glucose monitoring offered tangible results in real-time. Unlike the scale, CGM opened up the internal workings of my biology to understand how it responded to what I did. In real time, I was able to see how my body was responding. More than what I do, health is truly how my body responds. Understanding this piece of data allowed me to create change, not on ideas, but facts. It helped me feel better than I have in a long time. I loved it so much that my husband also decided to take it for a test spin. Inside this podcast, we talk about our results (some that were shocking) and the changes we've made to help regulate our blood sugar. And we both share our opinions on whether continuous glucose monitoring is worth the investment.   Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/313

Food can be such a fight. In one breath, you genuinely enjoy food and want to enjoy the process of it. But in other, it's terrifying. Your mind races with questions on what to eat, how much, will this make me fat, or what if it's not good for me? There are so many messages and ideas it's hard to imagine thinking anything but dread when it comes to food and your body. But this is not the intended design of food. Food isn't to be feared. It's to be enjoyed and used to nourish yourself, just as your body isn't to be hated but loved and cherished for its role in helping you live your life. It may not be a common thought, but you can experience food freedom. You can have the best of both worlds, enjoying food and loving your body. In this podcast episode, I interview Jessi Jean, Mind Body Eating Coach, on what it looks like to experience food freedom and how we get there. If you intellectually know how you want to act with and around food but can't seem to get yourself to do it, this podcast is for you. Learn how to change your patterns to stop emotionally eating.   Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/312

Managing blood sugar is not a new conversation, but it is worth having, especially considering the health benefits you could experience by learning how to lower blood sugar levels. Common thought has been to eliminate sugar and restrict all carbs, but blood sugar management is more than just a food problem. It's a lifestyle. I interviewed Dr. Casey Means on the podcast to discuss blood sugar regulation and what she has learned since co-founding the company Levels. Levels provide an easy-to-use app connected to a continuous blood glucose monitor to give you results in real time. I took it for a test run and was shocked by the results. Inside the podcast, I ask Dr. Means about the diet and lifestyle recommendations she has found to be the most successful in regulating blood glucose levels. I was surprised to hear her number one tip had nothing to do with food.   Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/311