Ashley says she's lucky that she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia at the age of 30. It's a diagnosis that isn't always easy to get, but at a young age Ashley felt she still had a lot of options to try to treat her illness without medication. After consulting with her doctor, Ashley decided to adopt a low-inflammation diet (lots of vegetables and fruits, no fried foods and minimal processed foods), along with a low impact exercise regimen of yoga and walking 10,000 steps per day. In this instance,...
Apr 03, 2017•43 min
"It's like 1000% or nothing at all." ~Rachelle Rachelle was in a snowboarding accident when she was 15 years old that cost her the use of both of her legs. After 18 years of battling both illness and body image issues, she is finally in a place where she is healthy and has a better relationship with food, and she's ready to feel strong and fit again. She'd also love to lose 20 lbs. Rachelle believes that being in a wheelchair makes getting enough exercise too difficult and time consuming to be p...
Mar 27, 2017•1 hr 4 min
With her first pregnancy, Sarah felt a lot of pressure from her doctor to restrict her eating to avoid weight gain and other adverse consequences to her baby. However, she found that abiding by these rules was virtually impossible for her, given how her body responded to hunger and fatigue while she was pregnant. This led to both extra stress and shame. Even though she was warned she might have gained too much weight, Sarah found that losing weight and making better food choices was much easier ...
Mar 06, 2017•51 min
Nicole loves to run, and has recently upped her training to include half and full marathons. While she has never run with the goal of weight loss, she has noticed that when she trains for longer races she has a tendency to gain unwanted fat around her midsection that she isn't happy about. Nicole's hypothesis is that the extra fat is a result of the additional refined carbohydrates (e.g. bread and pasta) that she eats during training periods. She said that she has tried to fuel her workouts with...
Feb 27, 2017•56 min
Jason is an old friend of my husband's who also happens to be the editor of this podcast. Since he's started listening the show he's become more and more health conscious, and when I launched the Mindful Meal Challenge he decided to give mindful eating a try. Jason is a perfect test subject for mindful eating, because as he was already trying to get his healthstyle in a better place he already has a set menu for breakfast and lunch. This means that what he was eating didn't change, so any change...
Feb 20, 2017•45 min
Peg had a regular habit of drinking a couple glasses of wine every night and felt like it was a problem, like something that she needed. Not only did this habit impact her general wellbeing and ability to be at her best for herself and her work, she also knew this wasn't the person she wanted to be. At the same time, Peg knew that she couldn't just stop drinking all at once. So she decided to try slowly, a method that worked for her in the past to overcome bulimia. Kaizen is the Japanese princip...
Feb 13, 2017•34 min
Amy has been working on her healthstyle for over a year. Slowly she has changed her eating, exercise, sleep and mindfulness habits, and she finally feels like she's in control of her health. Now she's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Amy is a natural worrier, always ready for something to come along that negates all the hard work she's done. She knows this is a tendency of hers, yet it's hard not to feel like there's some truth behind her fears since even successful diets have always left her...
Feb 06, 2017•38 min
Rachel knew that having a baby would make it harder to maintain her healthstyle. But it's now been 18 months and she still hasn't found a way to regularly make the best choices and ends up eating out 2-3 nights per week. Her issue is that her old healthstyle––which she loved––required an amount of time and energy that simply aren't realistic for her anymore. She and her husband love to cook elaborate meals, but trying to fit it into their new baby life just isn't working. We also identify a few ...
Jan 30, 2017•38 min
Graham started his foodist journey back in 2013 when he borrowed a galley copy of Foodist I had given to a friend. He had just decided to try and start getting healthy and by eating more Real Food, cutting back on processed foods, and being more active he proceeded to lose 40 lbs in a couple of months. Four years later Graham is now down 60 lbs from his original weight, defying the odds of a dieting industry that has a 95% failure rate. Today we talk about how he got started and how is journey h...
Jan 23, 2017•40 min
Over the past nine months Agata has had some success in being healthier, but is disappointed that she hasn't lost much weight. She started slowly by being more active and noticed she had more energy and looked more toned. Despite the benefits she felt, her wedding was approaching and she still hoped to lose some more weight. Agata decided to focus more on her diet, although she didn't want to be too strict, so she started eating more vegetables and cut down on processed foods. She enjoyed this a...
Jan 16, 2017•43 min
After a move from Chicago to California, Mary found herself slowly gaining weight to the tune of 1 lb every 3 months. After awhile she was dismayed to find she was up 15 lbs, and wanted to find the reason. She tried several things to cut back a bit on calories without any luck. Her last resort was her evening routine of drinking several glasses of wine, a habit that's proving more difficult to break than any of the others. This worries Mary for a few reasons. Obviously she wants to lose the weig...
Jan 09, 2017•53 min
Jane is a wellness coach and has a deep and technical knowledge of nutrition, so by nature she eats super healthy and enjoys it. She also suffers from Celiac disease and has many other food sensitivities, so has to restrict her foods even more to avoid serious health problems. Her biggest issue is that because she knows so much about nutrition she feels guilty eating anything that contains starch, because of a lingering five pounds she'd like to lose. This tendency to moralize her food choices a...
Jan 04, 2017•41 min
"It's been the easiest 33 lbs I've ever lost." ~Angela Angela just discovered Foodist a few months ago after a lifetime of being overweight and chronic dieting. By changing the way she approaches food and health, she's been able to lose 33 lbs in what she calls the easiest weight loss of her life. Despite her success, Angela still has progress to make and is trying to figure out some of the more subtle aspects of her healthstyle. Today she asks a question that every foodist must grapple with at ...
Dec 12, 2016•36 min
Shelbey came to me wondering why she has the habit of overeating when she's alone and supposed to be studying. She sits down to eat and turns on the TV, planning to finish dinner and then hit the books. But instead she usually keeps eating through the entire show until she feel so sicks she can't do anything at all. To her credit Shelbey has already thought through possible psychological reasons she's doing this, but hasn't come up with any answers. She's a very hard working woman who is always ...
Dec 05, 2016•41 min
Serena had always enjoyed cooking dinner and it was a Home Court Habit she highly valued. Then when her schedule got a little crazy her cooking habit fell by the wayside. While struggles like this are pretty normal when life gets busy, what stumped Serena was that her cooking habit never resumed even when her schedule got back to normal. Often what stops you from maintaining a healthy habit is that you view it as a chore rather than as something you enjoy, but this wasn't the case for Serena. Sh...
Nov 28, 2016•29 min
Overall Libby is happy with her healthstyle. She stopped dieting, focused on Real Food, and cut out most of the processed foods (sugars and refined grains) from her daily habits. Her energy is up, her body is happy, and the chronic headaches she's suffered from for years have abated. While she feels great from these changes, Libby has only lost one pound over the last couple of months and in her perfect world she would lose another 5-10 pounds. This brings up an interesting question: Is it okay ...
Nov 07, 2016•54 min
After years of yo-yo dieting, Ashley had finally got off the dieting rollercoaster after discovering Summer Tomato and Foodist. She learned to embrace the foodist lifestyle and joyfully lost weight without dieting. Things were great. Ashley's new habits were working great until she had a shift in her work life that enabled her to work from home. While she loves her new freedom and flexibility in her day, some of her more structured habits like lunch and snacks have fallen back into disarray. Tog...
Oct 31, 2016•31 min
"With the hustle and bustle of working and being a mom and trying to fulfill all these duties I completely lost myself." - Rebecca Although she had never been completely happy with her physique, after having three children within five years Rebecca found herself over 100 lbs heavier than she was before starting a family. It wasn't until she ran into a friend who had lost 100 lbs of baby weight after working with a personal trainer that she changed her mindset and decided she needed to start inve...
Oct 25, 2016•59 min
Elizabeth wishes she could form a more regular exercise habit, but every time she tries she finds herself lacking in motivation. While she describes herself as "not inactive" she wishes she did more "proper exercise" a few days a week. Sometimes she is able to put together a good streak, but inevitably her efforts are undermined by feeling she isn't up to the task. If she feels uncomfortable with her body or finds her workouts too hard, she starts to feel like a failure. This perfectionist strea...
Oct 17, 2016•50 min
Keli has a great healthstyle, but there are a few lingering bad habits she'd like to break. After lunch and after dinner, she finds herself reaching for more (often not-so-healthy) food even though she is no longer hungry and it makes her feel sick afterward. While she doesn't have any particular health or weight loss goals, it bothers her that she maintains this habit even though it is something she doesn't like. Together we investigate what is triggering her to keep eating and develop strategi...
Oct 10, 2016•33 min
Over the years Saba has learned to eat healthy by cutting down on processed foods. But her new healthstyle has caused her to forego nearly all the foods she loved as a child since she has moralized them as "bad and unhealthy." Now she uses her "good behavior" to justify overeating "healthier" snacks like nuts, even though she eats so much she feels sick afterward. It's a cycle she would like to break. Saba's issue combines both food moralizing and emotional eating, which makes both issues more c...
Oct 03, 2016•1 hr 13 min
"I call it adding life into living." When Mark realized his poor eating habits had been left unchecked for too long, he decided it was time to start taking his health seriously. Besides having gained a significant amount of weight, he was also suffering from digestive problems and low energy. To address these issues he decided to focus on Real Foods and cut most processed foods from his daily habits. Mark's process was pretty simple. He got rid of the processed foods from his house, started eati...
Sep 25, 2016•55 min
Linda knows that cooking dinner more often would make her healthier and happier. But it feels like so much work for her to make the effort since she lives alone. Sometimes she manages to throw something healthy together, but other nights she just sits down with a bag of potato chips and calls it a night. For Linda one of the big obstacles is that when she does make the effort to cook one of her favorite recipes she ends up with way too many leftovers and gets tired of eating the same thing. Ofte...
Sep 11, 2016•46 min
Julie came to me with a mystery. Her eating habits are excellent at home and even in restaurants, but when she gets into a dinner party situation it doesn't matter what food is served or how hungry she is, she turns into a mindless eating machine. What could be going on here? We first explored whether she was actually satisfied with her normal eating routine. Is it possible she was still restricting herself too much and experiencing the What-the-Hell Effect at parties? This didn't seem to be the...
Aug 31, 2016•45 min
As a lifelong healthy eater, Sherry wasn't trying to lose weight. Sure she would have been happy to drop 5-10 lbs, but she was comfortable with her body and health. She even thought she was a mindful eater until a stressful event in her life caused her to start a consistent yoga practice. Yoga, it turned out, became a catalyst to help her relieve stress and let go of difficult emotions. As she developed this talent during strenuous yoga poses, she noticed it began to translate into her eating be...
Jun 12, 2016•37 min
Ruediger faces one of the most difficult questions related to weight control, which is how to maintain your weight after achieving significant weight loss as a result of strict dieting. Although he has already made huge progress finding an exercise regimen he enjoys, food is more difficult for him. He has only ever known subsiding on lots of junk food or restricting his calories to just 500 per day. Switching to a more moderate approach based on Real Food and not counting calories is appealing t...
May 30, 2016•54 min
As a grad student, Cailey knows how important it is to bring her lunch to work instead of buying something on campus. Not only would she eat healthier, she'd also save a lot of money. Her problem is she has trouble motivating herself to prep healthy lunches every day. And even when she manages to bring something, it is usually unsatisfying so she's not inspired to bring her lunch again. Although this is a straightforward problem, there are several subtle mental and logistical blocks Cailey ident...
May 23, 2016•38 min
"I always wanted to be that person who went to the gym regularly and ate whatever they wanted, I just didn't know this was how you got there. That person was in me all along." Bonnie grew up loving all kinds of foods, especially junk food. She never liked dieting and had come to accept that she would probably always be a size 12. Fear of developing diabetes like her father eventually prompted her to create a New Year's resolution to try to be healthier. She slowly added exercise and changed her ...
May 16, 2016•1 hr
Mallory had a pretty solid healthstyle before a new job disrupted her mornings. She now hits snooze so many times that she barely makes it to work on time, making it impossible for her to have a healthy breakfast or get in a morning workout. With her day off to a rushed and frazzled start, poor choices plague her through lunch and dinner. Her workouts are suffering and she is fed up. In this session we examine both her morning and evening routines until we uncover the real reasons behind her rel...
May 08, 2016•35 min
Bugra was a university student in Turkey weighing over 350 lbs when he decided he needed to make a change. He moved to America to begin a masters degree program and started to count calories and exercise to lose weight. While he was able to lose some weight while dieting, he eventually realized the changes he'd made were not sustainable and that his poor nutrition was costing him energy and mental focus. His grades suffered and he gained much of the weight back before discovering Real Food. Ther...
May 03, 2016•44 min
