back to basics | restricted diets
Help! I’ve been put on a restricted diet! What do I eat? As I’ve mentioned before, my work in nutrition services at the local medical center provides plenty of food…
back to basics | nutrient density
What is nutrient density? It’s a measurement of how nourishing a food is (or isn’t). March is National Nutrition Month, and so our Back to Basics theme continues with a…
back to basics | macronutrients cocktail
What do I mean by “macronutrients cocktail?” I’m not talking about the ratio of gin to vermouth or cream and sugar to coffee. March is National Nutrition Month, and so…
back to basics | nutrition 101
It’s National Nutrition Month! What do you mean you don’t celebrate it? Our first quarter Back to Basics theme continues with a deeper dive into secondary foods nutrition—the value of…
back to basics | in summary…
Earlier this month, we kicked off the “Back to Basics” series, digging into my principles of healthy eating. If you recall, my five principles are as follows—we’re leaving the first…
back to basics | mindfulness + gratitude + food
Earlier this month, we kicked off the “Back to Basics” series. This week, we’re taking on my fourth food rule: practicing mindfulness and gratitude around our food and, perhaps more…
back to basics | portion moderation
Earlier this month, we kicked off the “Back to Basics” series. This week, we’re taking on my third food rule: portion moderation. If you recall, my “food rules” are as…
baby steps | crowding out
Here’s a great way to think about making the better choice most of the time: don’t make the choice! The Integrative Nutrition® principle of “crowding out” is sort of like…
find the middle path
Who knew you could connect the Buddhist practice of seeking the middle path to an HR webinar? I recently attended a webinar run by MediKeeper, and one of the resources…
baby steps | portion awareness
As with “meal plan,” the words “portion control” can strike panic in anyone on a health journey. It brings up visions of weighing and measuring every BLT (bite-lick-taste) that goes…
baby steps | eat your veggies
Happy Springgg! Let’s talk about veggies. How are you doing with our Baby Steps to Health challenge? If you’re just tuning in, you can find the first three challenges here:…
baby steps | DGLs + PFCs
Hey hey—it’s already March?!? Before we dig into DGLS and PFCs, how are you doing with our Baby Steps to Health challenge? If you’re just tuning in, you can find…
a healthy lifestyle in 2022
[W]e’ve lost ground in other [health] areas, and a lot of them are a function of the fact that we don’t have a very healthy lifestyle in our nation. Particularly…
holidays: “strategery” + tactics
What is up with the holidays? I kid you not: Halloween decorations have started popping up in stores in August. I wondered, in 2020, whether this was because so many…
food energetics | the powerful side of nutrition
Food energetics: it’s a topic I write and speak a lot about. Let’s call it the spiritual side of food and nutrition. If that sounds crazy, consider this: Food is…
eat your dark green leafies
When the cat’s away, the mice … eat dark green leafies? This past week, I experienced a sort of preview of coming attractions: being an empty nester. With my daughter…
emotional eating | trust yourself completely
This week we finish off the emotional eating series with a look at another topic that is closely linked to emotional/stress eating: self-trust. How do you feel when you have…
emotional eating | how are you hungry?
In the style of health coaching I practice, Integrative Nutrition®, we talk a lot about primary and secondary foods. The majority of my clients come to me because they believe…
energy detox
Zzziing! As my acupuncturist friend’s hand flew up and she jumped back, we both got a reminder that human bodies are not just matter—we’re energetic beings. I felt the electric…
crowding out
“I’m not going to give up my [diet Coke/chips/ice cream/etc.], so don’t even ask me to!” When a client’s goal is weight loss, this sentence comes up more often than…
winter is coming—and so is delicious winter squash!
Yeah, yeah. I know: it’s pumpkin spice season. Pumpkin everything season: seriously, when did Halloween decorations start appearing before the first day of school?!? But I’d like to put in…
a season of incredible plenty
It’s bound to happen in the fall, the season of plenty: an adult version of elementary school lunch plays out in the land of the CSA pickup. The boxes are…
are beans truly Instagram-worthy?
Are beans Instagram-worthy? As much as I appreciate good food porn, I admit to feeling that part of the reason Americans no longer cook from scratch is that we feel…
you say soft serve, i say … creemee?
You say soft drink, I say soda. (Just please don’t call it pop.) You say soft serve, I say creemee. Tomayto—tomahto. Potayto—potahto. Philly cheese steak, Cincinnati chili, Chicago-style pizza, New…
6 ways to tame the kohlrabi monster
For some reason, when my kids were little, they invented a kohlrabi monster, who lived in the (then unfinished) basement of our house. It did have the effect of keeping…
control issues: what’s 1 thing completely in my power?
Irrespective of our political leanings, many (most? all?) of us seem to be feeling our world has spun out of control. As I’ve written about recently, it is stunning to…
w(h)ither the food system?
The pandemic has certainly made very clear just how many of and how deeply our policies and systems are flawed and how tightly they are intertwined: just for starters, in…
12 tips for grocery shopping safely during the pandemic
What has the pandemic made possible? was the question I raised in last week’s blog post, and this week I’ve been paying attention to just that—from the halls of government…
life after dairy | chocolate
What else to write about around Valentine’s Day but chocolate?!? (Fun fact: one of my most popular posts, also appropriate for this time of year is Because taxes. (And because…
Hey, Baby, what’s your sign?
Have you been fortunate to catch a glimpse of the moon these last two nights? She was so full and bright, I didn’t need a flashlight for the early morning…
“Long sleeps the summer in the seed.”
I’ve known since my junior year abroad that I’m a four seasons girl. I spent that year in Taiwan, where there are two seasons: “hot and humid” and “cool and…
Someday is not a day of the week
I spent part of this holiday weekend watching “old” movies: A Fish Called Wanda with my son, who appreciates 1) anything with the word “fish” in it, 2) Monty Python,…
Am I in climate change denial?
To everything there is a season…. Some of you might know where in the Bible that line comes from. And I know at least half of you went there: turn,…
Greatest hits | What’s for dinner, Mom?
As summer winds down, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the recent changes in our family life are playing out in the kitchen. My daughter spent her first summer…
Back to the kitchen
When my husband took his job at University of Michigan, we had just bought a house in Southern California—and I mean that literally: the morning of the day he found…
Let’s get this party started!
How is it already May 31?!? That means tomorrow is the start of our month-long anniversary celebration of community! (Catch up on the details of that if you missed them…
Meet Tania Elfersy of The Wiser Woman
From the moment I read one of her blog posts, I just knew that Tania had to be the first person to do a Q+A in the (Sorta) Secret Sisterhood…
#eatmorekale
Spring is here—which in Michigan means the temperature still dips below 40ºF and yet the upper limits (in the 60s) are starting to show up more often than the dips….
Vitamin P(ee)
One of the principles of Integrative Nutrition® is the idea of bioindividuality: what is healthy for one person may be toxic to another, whether we’re talking about secondary foods (what…
Healthcare policy, healthcare agency
In the months leading up to and following the 2016 election, I stopped reading and listening to the news and I purged my social media channels. That doesn’t mean I…
Health coaching learnings … from Netflix?
Helllp! I seem to have fallen into a Netflix trap, one that features crime dramas from the UK: first there was Shetland, then there was Hinterland, then Broadchurch, and now…
Advance? Retreat?
If you’ve followed me for a while, you’ve probably come across my Kale + Kryptonite exercise, which is a tool I use with my clients to help them assess the…
Spring into health
Spring has sprung, the grass is riz…. My father used to recite the poem every year around this time. In Michigan, it’s still blustery, and the the grass is not…
What’s for dinner, Mom?
what’s for dinner, mom? For a working woman, that one innocent question at the end of the day can cause a lot of stress. (Yes, yes, I know men cook,…
Sweeten it, naturally
I recently conducted a survey of my virtual community to learn more about you, and one of the requests that came up most frequently in response to my question about…
Food porn fast
‘Fess up: did you binge watch the first season of Tidying Up with Marie Kondo on Netflix? Because yeah, I did. And I read the book in 2015. I saw…
Survey says…
My brain and I are on vacation this week, so instead of struggling to come up with a new post, I’ve decided it’s your turn! I’m always interested in providing…
What’s your value?
This month, I’m taking a look in the rearview mirror at 2018 and a peek ahead at the road ahead in 2019. I invite you to hop in and take…
Rearview mirror | What we learn from reaching (or not) a goal
It’s definitely wintry in Ann Arbor, and our seasonal diet has shifted from the cool leafy salads and quickly grilled foods of summer to heartier root veggies and slowly simmered…
New + improved?
Full disclosure: if you love Black Friday, this post is likely to piss you off—maybe read it anyway? america, the privileged Last weekend when I was grocery shopping, I discovered…
Come up to the lab…
If your mind immediately filled in that blank with “and see what’s on the slab,” you’re proof that campy movies never die. THAT one has been entertaining college students since…
Soup weather
what happened? That’s right: I’m baaack! Thanks to everyone who reached out and said, “What happened? Are you alright? I didn’t see a new blog post last week!” Yeah, I’m…
Yes, I am.
This week, I’d like to revisit last week’s post, Full stop. Why? Because I can and because it sparked a lot of responses, not just a couple in the blog…
I can hook you up … with some good bacteria!
“I fed my sourdough this morning.” “What? What sourdough? Who’s got sourdough? I want some!” “Liza got it for me.” “Oh! That reminds me, Liza, can I get some more…
Oxymorons, their opposite … and hot breakfast
If you’re a working mom … ha, what is the opposite of an oxymoron? I mean, if an oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two seemingly opposite ideas (living…
Fl!p Your (Airbnb) K!tchen
Airbnb has been around since 2008, and as usual, I’m a late adopter—this summer’s trip to Scotland was my first time taking advantage of it. From Edinburgh to Inverness to…
Who are you comparing yourself to?
I recently walked the Dexter Ann Arbor 5K in 40:49 (beating last year’s 52:12 by a long shot despite the pouring rain)—I had meant to run this year, but some…
Al Perkins teaches portion control
If you’ve followed me for a while, you know that in addition to being a health coach, I have a side hustle that used to be my full-time job and…
