Raising Healthy Mothers

How long should you breastfeed for? What happens when your baby is eating solids? And how do you prepare to return to work if you don't want to stop breastfeeding? In this episode of Raising Healthy Mothers I talk to Sally Rickard, IBCLC, who specialises in helping families maintain a breastfeeding relationship as they transition back to work or study. We discuss... What an IBCLC means and how the...

For most of my mid-to-late 20s I followed a fairly strict Paleo diet. In many ways, it worked for me. I looked and felt my best.   But things changed drastically for me when I became a mother.   Suddenly I didn't have TIME to cook all the food from scratch. Suddenly I had a fussy toddler who refused most of the food I believed was best for him. Suddenly my body wasn't the most important thing to w...

Is good gut health the key to feeling more energised and healthier?   This week on Raising Healthy Mothers I dive into why gut health is the foundation to more energy and good health, especially in motherhood. I discuss... How stress and sleep impact your digestion Why mindful eating is key for a happy gut What to look for in your poo The 5R programme for good gut health The importance of how and...

Ever wondered if you're wearing the correct bra size? Have your boobs changed since becoming a mother but you can't face going to get properly fitted? And have you started to avoid the mirror because you struggle with how your body has changed? This is the episode for you. This week I talk to Chantelle Garood, an expert lingerie fitter who shares her journey into the lingerie business and how she...

What does a nutritional therapist actually do? If you think we sit around reading food diaries and telling you off for eating cake, think again.   In fact I celebrate cake in the diet!   In today's episode of Raising Healthy Mothers, I'm doing something a bit different and lifting the lid on how I support the mums who come to me for help with their exhaustion and what a typical week looks like for...

How adventurous are you with veg? Would you know what to do if you got a kohlrabi in your veg box? And what do you do with the REST of the celery once you're sick of dipping it in hummus? This week's guest on Raising Healthy Mothers is writer, food educator and chef Ceri Jones, whose cookbook It Starts with Veg has just been published. In this episode we discuss... Why she wrote a vegetable-focuse...

How fulfilling are your days? Do you feel like you run around like a headless chicken, rushing from one thing to another, never feeling like you actually finish anything? The further I get into motherhood the more I notice my mind becoming scattered and my life becoming less organised. And the net result is rarely feeling like I've 'finished', that I can really sit down and feel truly relaxed. The...

This week I am running a workshop on sleep for mums called Get Better Sleep and so I thought I would give you a little sneak peek into what I will talk about at the start of the workshop. I will get a bit technical and science-y here so bear with me – I think it's important to understand how incredible our bodies are when it comes to creating sleep – with the hope that once we understand it, we ca...

One of the things I've always struggled with is getting to grips with mindfulness. The concept makes sense to me - when you practice being in the moment you are able to be more present in your everyday life.   But the reality is I struggle to make time for those 10 minutes of practice!   So it was a huge lightbulb moment when today's guest on Raising Healthy Mothers helped me to understand that mi...

Welcome to season 11 of Raising Healthy Mothers!   This episode was recorded on Monday 6 May, which was International No Diet Day, and I wanted to mark the day by telling you exactly why I NEVER tell my clients to count their calories.   In this episode I lay out 5 reasons I stopped counting calories, and what I tell my clients to focus on instead, even if weight loss is their goal.   I reveal the...

Welcome to my special series Rediscovering You, a 7-day special running in conjunction with Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week 2024. It's our final day together in this special and we're finishing this week with my favourite little to-do because it's something that will give you a mindful boost while you're doing it, and it will take you through well beyond just the one day because it can be us...

Welcome to my special series Rediscovering You, a 7-day special running in conjunction with Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week 2024. It's Day 6 and we are lightening things up a bit by finding a project to sink your teeth into. A hobby, some decluttering or a project that gets you in the flow and pulls you out of your head, clears your mental load a bit. Doing that thing you've always want to d...

Welcome to my special series Rediscovering You, a 7-day special running in conjunction with Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week 2024. Today on Day 5 we are learning the importance of loving your body and embracing it with kindness – for our benefit and that of our children Download your free workbook to accompany this special series - journal prompts, scripts and daily emails with tips and actio...

Welcome to my special series Rediscovering You, a 7-day special running in conjunction with Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week 2024. Today on Day 4 we are finding out how what you eat affects your mood and energy, why mothers often end up struggling with food, and what to eat to keep your mood steady and give you the energy you need as a mother. Download your free workbook to accompany this spe...

Welcome to my special series Rediscovering You, a 7-day special running in conjunction with Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week 2024. Today on Day 3 we are diving into self-care. This is such a tricky concept for so many of us, and I think one of the biggest problems is we lose sight of what self-care truly means to us. So in this episode I offer an interpretation of what self-care could mean to...

Welcome to my special series Rediscovering You, a 7-day special running in conjunction with Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week 2024. Today on Day 2 we are looking to the future to work out the sort of mother you want to be and what family life needs to look like by working out what's the most important thing to you. By the end of the episode you will arrive at a single word or image that will b...

Welcome to my special series Rediscovering You, a 7-day special running in conjunction with Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week 2024. Today on Day 1 we are establishing where you are right now. We can't re-discover yourself if we don't know where you are today! Using the Wheel of Motherhood we will assess which area of your life needs most attention out of the 8 areas that make up a healthy moth...

A short and sweet episode from me today asking: Where are you leaking your energy in motherhood?   In my workshop on cycle tracking and energy in motherhood, I go into the concept of Energy Leaks and how you can find more energy if you plug where it's leaking away from you and instead invest it more wisely.   It's a brilliant concept I've borrowed from Alisa Vitti's book In the FLO and put my own...

Cycle tracking can offer incredible insight into your body's response to changing moods and energy, allowing you to harness it in a way that means you can be productive at the right time – and cut yourself some slack when you simply can't be gung ho.   However, what do you do if your cycles are irregular, you don't have a cycle at all or are on contraception that means you have a withdrawal bleed...

I am currently in the ovulation phase of my menstrual cycle, also known as the summer phase. This when oestrogen is at its highest.   I am correspondingly full of energy, I am feeling sociable and  confident I am feeling strong and choose heavier weights when doing a workout.   And... obviously... my libido is high.   But just three weeks ago though, I was in tears, freaking out about where my bus...

How many toys do children really need? Is independent play a good thing? What effect does screentime have on our children? This and many more questions came up during this week's episode on Raising Healthy Mothers when I chatted to Alexis Ralphs of 100 Toys, ex-primary school teacher, turned stay-at-home-dad, turned toy seller, turned course creator. I was curious to know how imporant play is as a...

What does it mean to be an empowered mother? Why do women often feel helpless and disempowered in their motherhood?   This week on Raising Healthy Mothers I'm talking to Kristy Mia – doula, yoga teacher, nutritionist and motherhood coach – all about her definition of empowerment in motherhood. We discuss: Walking the fine line between setting boundaries in our relationships and accepting wisdom an...

How much do you talk to your children about where food comes from? This was a question I hadn't thought about much until someone posed a question about separating the imagery of an idyllic farm in the books we read to our children from the realities of animal husbandry. It got me thinking hard - because as a passionate sustainable meat advocate, I care deeply about my meat. Where does meat comes f...

I recently ran a survey on my mailing list to find out what the main struggles are with low energy in motherhood. The results didn't surprise me - the no.1 issue that comes up is TIME. Getting to bed early enough, fitting in the activities, procrastination. And many who did the survey reported these all had a knock on effect on how much they were able to look after themselves. Eating enough, sleep...

Why do we feel so on the go constantly as mothers? How is it that we just feel so busy all the time... yet still find the time to spend 20 minutes scrolling on Instagram?   And what do we do when we're scrolling on Instagram? We're enviously watching other mums on Insta who somehow manage to fit in a full 1 hour morning routine before their kids wake up, or have done a complete do-over of a vintag...