Bite-Sized Balance Podcast with Wendy McCallum

Susan Hodgson is an Irish expat coach helping women navigate new territory with their drinking amidst the challenges of living abroad and trying to find that elusive feeling of "home". She lives near Paris with her French husband and three kids who enjoy correcting her grammar and complaining about holidays back to the Donegal rain. Susan shares her story of becoming alcohol-free, and Wendy and Su...

Melissa Chureau is a purpose and mindset coach, lawyer, and podcaster. She helps women move beyond imposterism and perfectionism to create space in the mind, and uncover our true, integrated selves. As a lawyer for 20 years, she has witnessed many people who work and live out of alignment with their values and purpose—often because they don't know their worth, regardless of their successes. Many f...

Michael Amster, M.D., is the co-author (with Jake Eagle, LPC) of the new book The Power of Awe. Dr. Amster is a pain management specialist and awe researcher who teaches at the UC Berkeley Greater Good Science Center. He's also a long-time meditator and yoga instructor. He joins host Wendy McCallum to share what he and Jake discovered a few years ago about the amazing power of "microdosing awe" an...

Julia Anderson shares her incredible story of leaving the narrow experience of her evangelistic Christian upbringing (including its purity culture) at the age of 19 to raise her newborn daughter and create the independent, successful life she craved. Julia is now the CEO of the Canadian Partnership for Women and Children's Health (CanWaCH) and has over 15 years of senior and executive-level experi...

As a best-selling author and speaker, Meg Geisewite is changing the narrative on the mommy wine culture, hustle culture, and our pro-drinking culture. In Meg's debut book, Intoxicating Lies: One Woman's Journey to Freedom from Gray Area Drinking, Meg flips the script on the five most intoxicating lies we tell ourselves about alcohol.   In this episode, Meg shares her story of being an ordinary, wo...

Emily Lynn Paulson is the author of the new book  Hey, Hun: Sales, Sisterhood, Supremacy, and the Other Lies Behind Multilevel Marketing  and  Highlight Real: Finding Honesty & Recovery Beyond the Filtered Life. She is also a speaker, recovery coach, and the founder of Sober Mom Squad, and has given two powerful TEDx talks, both challenging the status quo of parenting, alcohol use, and feminism as...

Amy and Matt Edwards are the hosts of the Alcohol-Free Marriage Podcast. Amy is also a certified coach who helps high-achieving women get out of the shame and blame cycle when it comes to their relationship with alcohol. They join host Wendy McCallum today to share their story of quitting drinking as former craft beer enthusiasts and starting the podcast – the ups, the downs, and some of the joyfu...

Tabbin Almond is a certified coach living in Devon, England, who is passionate about removing the stigma and creating meaningful employee support around alcohol use disorder. She is committed to changing the corporate wellness conversation to include alcohol as an important factor in employees' physical and mental health. Tabbin has a book in the works called The Wellness Conversation We're Not Ha...

Host Wendy and her friend and colleague Sarah Baillie discuss a 2011 article from The Atlantic (by author Sandra Tsing Loh) that is still a very relevant and hilarious read for women in midlife, no matter where they are when it comes to the hormonal transition of perimenopause and menopause. They discuss what it would mean if fertility was actually the "Big Change" and menopause was just a "return...

Scott Pinyard is the owner and coach at Modern Coparent, a company dedicated to helping people find peace while coparenting. He has years of coaching experience both in private practice and as the Head Coach of This Naked Mind. Scott's focus is in helping people through challenging growth with compassion, patience and humor. Scott shares his personal story of modern coparenting and how he came to...

Amanda Lee is a domestic abuse survivor and the author of the new book One of The Lucky Ones. 1 in 3 women have experienced physical violence by an intimate partner. This extraordinarily common form of abuse silences victims and paralyzes them with terror, a pattern Amanda is all too familiar with. In this episode, Amanda shares her dramatic story. Like so many women, over time her fairy-tale roma...

If you recently saw the revised drinking guidelines in Canada and gasped, you're not alone. Most Canadians are drinking more than two drinks a week, the new low-risk maximum. Ann Dowsett Johnston is an award-winning journalist and the bestselling author of Drink: The Intimate Relationship Between Women and Alcohol , a book named one of the top 10 of the year by the  Washington Post. Ann is also no...

Are you stuck in a job, habit or relationship that's not serving you? Maybe you're struggling with whether you should stick it out a little longer in case it gets better? In this episode, Wendy shares the approach she uses with coaching clients who are feeling unsatisfied and unfulfilled to help them gain clarity, get unstuck and start taking action to create the life, habits and relationships the...

Jenn Salib-Huber is a Registered Dietitian, Naturopathic Doctor, and intuitive eating advocate. Jenn provides health and hormone education to women in midlife without a side of diet culture, so they can make peace with food, aging, and hot flashes and find the confidence they deserve in midlife.   Jenn and Wendy discuss the concept of "undieting your life", body neutrality v. body positivity, the...

Fellow This Naked Mind coach and friend Christy Osborne joins Wendy to celebrate her five-year anniversary of quitting drinking. Wendy shares her alcohol story, including her "last straw(s)" and talks about everything that has changed for her (big and small!) since she had her last drink. Christy and Wendy discuss some of the surprise gifts of going alcohol-free, how they parent and role model aro...

Wendy and her best friend Megan, who have five young adult children between them, reflect on their transition to an empty nest together this fall. They share the story their unique lifelong friendship, and their shared experience entering motherhood, midlife, and now empty nesting together. They recount some of their favourite parts of living without kids again and some of the unforeseen challenge...

In today's episode, regular co-host and bestie Dr. Sarah Baillie, N.D., joins host Wendy to talk all things teenager. They share their top insights and tips as experienced parents of teens, including strategies to diffuse tension, improve communication, and re-frame the teenage years to increase the joy and decrease the common frustration around parenting young adults. It's an honest, raw, and fun...

How many years have you made New Year promises only to find yourself making them all over again 12 months later? Wendy shares her Top 10 Tips for making lasting habit change in 2023 and every year thereafter in this bite-sized solo episode. With these strategies you'll make permanent, meaningful change this year instead of giving up when "life gets lifey", as it always does. Learn about trying dif...

Wait! Before you say, "But I don't have a problem with alcohol", know this – Wendy's tips in this bite-sized solo episode are critical to making permanent, meaningful change in ANY area of your life. Whether your coping mechanism of choice is red wine, salt and vinegar chips, cupcakes, or Nordstrom Rack, there's something in this episode for everyone. Learn the 3 C's of making change with an exper...

In this episode, Wendy talks to Mary Byers, author, speaker, and coach, who helps organizations and individuals set priorities and develop winning focus, about Mary's experience with her "One Word Year" experiment. Mary explains how she has let one word guide her each year for the last decade, and how that's helped her to concentrate on what's most important, simplify her focus, and improve her li...

It's the 100th episode of Bite-Sized Balance! In today's episode of 'the little podcast that could', regular co-host and bestie Dr. Sarah Baillie, N.D., joins host Wendy to celebrate 100 episodes of Bite-Sized Balance, the "fake" podcast that Wendy started over two years ago. They each choose a handful of episodes that stand out for them from past seasons and discuss why you should give them a lis...

Sara McElroy is a former hustle culture devotee, ex-chief marketing officer, the Wall Street Journal's poster girl for pandemic career burnout, and a two-time member of the Great Resignation: class of 2021 and 2022. Following a stress-induced shingles diagnosis in early 2021, Sara decided to hit the reset button on her life; she quit her hard-won CMO job and trekked to Peru's Sacred Valley to rese...

Kelley Kitley is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and therapist with over 20 years of experience in the field, a sought after international mental health media expert, a mom of four, and a bestselling author of her autobiography of survival "My self." She has appeared in hundreds of publications, podcasts, live news, and radio shows including The Today Show, The Chicago Tribune, Self magazine, Sh...

Racquel Reid is a certified This Naked Mind coach with a unique story of recovery. In this episode, Racquel shares her drinking story and explains why her life got smaller 11 years ago when she first stopped drinking, and how after years of feeling "abnormal" and hiding away from the world, she rediscovered her power and magic and has built a life beyond what she could have imagined. Both in the "...

If you need a good laugh and a little levity, tune into this episode, where Wendy and Sarah share the list of "Pet Peeves" that they've been accumulating together over the last year, including petty yet universal annoyances like the perpetual "goaty" smell of dishtowels and empty ice cube trays left in the freezer, but also inexplicable, less rational irritants like mimes (in general, in person or...