Made For Living Well

  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 o...

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 y...

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...

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 exter...

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...

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 neglec...

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 abl...

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 d...

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 reg...

Getting healthy requires hasn't been easy. But are you overcomplicating what should be simple? Here are five truths to change your health. I've spent some time pondering how many things in life I overcomplicate. The conclusion came to nearly everything. In the past, I have complexified my health routine, how it should look to spend time with God, and overthought nearly every hard conversation I've...

Forgiveness is hard.  It's messy, overwhelming, and scary. And it often feels better left alone. Yet, it is one of the most powerful healing modalities we have. Forgiveness is considered one of our most significant forms of freedom.  Learning to embrace forgiveness as a way of life changes the entire outcome of your story. I know firsthand the power of forgiveness. I also know how difficult it is...

Healing requires you to consume more healing foods. Foods that make you feel light and alive. Learn the difference between negative energy foods and positive energy foods designed to help you heal. Food isn't just food. It can be, but it's also so much more than that. Yet, at the same time, it's nothing like what we have understood it to be. Common thought leaves you believing food can change how...

It feels ironic I am writing a post on emotional mastery. If I'm honest, I still have more moments than I'd like to admit where my emotions get the best of me. But, I do realize, like all things in health,  perfection doesn't exist.  Emotional mastery is not about never feeling but acknowledging how you feel and controlling your feelings so they don't control you. It's here your entire biology shi...

One of the leading problems in the health space, really in life, is how we segment everything into specific parts or systems. We separate our work life from our home life and health from our spiritual life. Even within the body, you have endless systems you work to fix. This separation of the parts of your life is preventing you from healing. Healing requires you to understand no matter how unique...

Love heals. Specifically self-love. But it requires a healthy ego that works to connect your mind, body, and soul. Learn how to heal your ego inside this post. I got into the health space wanting desperately to fix people, believing if I could fix them, I could fix myself. I didn't call it that at the time. Honestly, my heart hurt over how much time people invested into the health space that seeme...

I've long lived looking for something that would 'fix' me. A resource that would make all of my problems disappear. Some call it the easy button. Others are looking for the pill or the quick fix. No matter what it was, we'd all agree it needed to create healing without the pain and potential for failure. I used to think it was the work people (including myself) tried to escape by seeking the easy...

Healing wasn't a part of my plan. My goal in nutrition was to prevent anything that would require healing by preventing disease and injury. I believed I could control myself from needing to heal by living healthy forever, not knowing that health is a daily healing, not the prevention of it.  When I crashed, I was forced into healing. The only other option was to live stuck in my illness.  Before g...

Most people want to live healthy. The question isn't about desire.  It's how do you achieve it?  I got into the health space to save people from their health struggles (namely weight loss). I thought if I could help you lose weight, I could make you happy, and this passion fueled my work. But five years in, I realized many people are fighting through health, doing all of the 'right things' and not...

Change is hard, but it doesn't have to be impossible. Learn the secrets to making change happen in this podcast episode. Discover the five ways to guarantee success, including self-discipline, consistency, and pleasure. Find out how to think abundantly and live confidently to achieve your  goals to guarantee health success. Change is hard. Even good change can feel impossible. But on some level, d...

The connection between our body, mind, and soul is wildly understudied. Yet understanding the connection and communication between the three is vital in changing your life. Inside all of us is a specific language that directs your outcome. This doesn't mean your body is speaking a foreign language, but the language of health is what you speak about yourself and how you speak about the world around...

Learn how shame affects your identity and how God's love can replace shame with a new story through the powerful example of the woman at the well in John 4. Discover the difference between guilt, sin, and shame and how to confront your deep places to allow God to change your story and shift the way you live. I grew up in a culture of scary faith. Not only did I constantly question my salvation, bu...

You've been told wrong. Happiness isn't a place. It's a way of life. Learn how to find happiness in the backward approach to living with joy. There's a healing benefit to happiness. Research has shown happiness boosts your  immune function ,  heart health , and  productivity . It also changes the way people  experience pain . The question is, is it happiness that changes your biology or happiness...

What if your body isn't the problem? I know that doesn't fit the health space's stereotypical norm, but the message invigorates me. A message that reminds you that your body is for you. Your body wants to be well, and it has the tools and resources to live well. More than trying to change your body, the secret to living well is learning how to support your body. That is exactly the path of homeopa...

Health has been washed down and overcomplicated. It wasn't until I quit health that I realized health for what it is. Learn my unpopular health opinions that changed my health inside. Five years ago, I quit health. I got into the health space to save the world from its health problems. The problems the health space seemed to be capitalizing on and the same ones that seemed to follow you around lik...

A few years ago, I heard a presentation on adrenaline dominance, and I never forgot it. It was one of those moments that shifted some understanding in me, helping me make sense of what didn't fully make sense. Adrenaline is a hormone most commonly associated with the body's fight-or-flight response. The adrenaline rush of the body helps you react in dangerous situations. But there is another purpo...