Transforming Heart Health: Shelly Loving’s Journey to Healthy Eating and Cooking for Midlife Wellness

Have you ever faced a life-altering moment that shifted your perspective on food and health? Join host Heather Carey as she dives into a poignant conversation with Shelly Loving, a passionate nutritionist and chef whose culinary journey was sparked by her husband’s unexpected heart attack. This episode of Real Food Stories unveils the transformative power of healthy eating, illustrating how a personal crisis can lead to profound change in our lives and kitchens.

Shelly’s inspiring story showcases her commitment to learning healthier cooking techniques that not only revitalized her husband’s heart health but also enriched her own well-being. Together, they tackle common nutrition myths and food beliefs that often cloud our understanding of healthy eating. Listeners will gain valuable insights into the simplicity of nutritious meals, proving that healthy cooking doesn’t need to be daunting or complex.

The duo shares practical healthy eating tips for navigating the holiday season, encouraging you to savor festive foods without guilt while making mindful choices. Shelly emphasizes the importance of gradual changes in our diets, like eliminating inflammatory foods, to promote long-lasting health benefits. With her philosophy that healthy eating should be both simple and delicious, you’ll feel empowered to embrace a lifestyle that nourishes your body and spirit.

As they explore the intersection of food and culture, Shelly and Heather discuss how our personal food journeys are shaped by family traditions and societal influences. They touch upon the significance of mindful eating practices and the role of nutrition in women’s health, especially during midlife and menopause. This episode also highlights the importance of self-compassion and balance, reminding us that indulgence can coexist with a healthy lifestyle.

Whether you’re on a weight loss journey, seeking midlife nutrition advice, or simply looking to enhance your culinary skills, this episode is packed with actionable insights and heartfelt stories. Join us to discover how to cultivate a joyful relationship with food, embrace your body’s changes, and empower your menopause journey through the art of cooking for wellness. Tune in for a nourishing experience that celebrates the beauty of real food and the strength of women supporting women!

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. Hey everybody and welcome back. I am really excited about today’s guest because Shelly Loving is a fellow healthy foodie and I love nothing more than sitting down with people who can talk the talk of getting into your kitchen and eating healthy while simplifying things. Now Shelly has a Pretty compelling story as to why she even got into this business in the first place. Her husband had a massive heart attack when he was much younger, and she spent years learning how to prepare and eat healthier meals without the complications, overwhelm, and the time-psychic methods that I think a lot of people assume is going to happen when we start eating. But that is absolutely not the case. Healthy eating does not have to equal complicated or confusing. In fact, it actually ends up being the opposite. So I’d love for you to tune in and listen to Shelly’s story about how she got into the business of healthy cooking. And we cover a little bit about the holidays and how to just keep it real. this season without going crazy, being overly restricted, and what you can do come January to just reset and get yourself back on track. Give a listen to my conversation with Shelly Loving.

Speaker #1
Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Real Food Stories podcast. Today, I am with Shelly Loving,

Speaker #0
who is a fellow healthy foodie, and I’m so excited to talk to you today, Shelly. Because as you know, we’ve talked before, healthy eating and most importantly, cooking, healthy cooking is really my first love of my business and my career. And I know that it’s your whole business and career as well. So we know, both of us, how incredibly confusing food can be. And I wanted to talk about holiday eating because we are just right in the heart of the holidays. And I know you got into the healthy cooking world because you told me that a few years ago, your husband had a massive heart attack, which I can only imagine was shocking and a really, really big wake up call for the two of you to eat healthier. Now, you and I are definitely both on the same page when it comes to knowing that our health starts in the kitchen and knowing what to eat and keeping it simple because it does not have to be complicated. And it. this is the essential, I think, theme. It does not have to be complicated. It can really, it needs to be simple. Otherwise, we’re not going to keep up with it. So I’m just so curious, tell me what happened with your husband, how you got into this. And then I want to talk about healthy holiday eating.

Speaker #1
Yeah. Thanks for having me, by the way. This is, I love talking on podcasts to share my story with as many people as possible so I can help prevent what happened to my husband as much as possible. I feel like since we got a second chance at life together, it’s now my mission to pay it forward and educate others because I know there are certain entities like the government that are not going to do that. So I want to make sure that I’m like rallying for other people. So my husband, he was not overweight. He worked out five days a week faithfully at the gym. No heart disease history on either side of the family. So I’d say that because people wait till it’s too late or they think only if they have one of those three things that they can have a heart attack or they can have cardiovascular issues. And it’s just not true. So when it happened, we were shocked. We thought he had the flu. Like a heart attack wasn’t even on our radar. And when they said he had 100% blockage in one of his arteries, we were like, What? Like my husband was laughing. Like he never lost consciousness. He didn’t fall over or kill over. We went to a dock in the box on a Sunday. and they told us he had 100 blockage because by the time we got to the doctor he put his thumb on his chest and he’s like yeah my chest does kind of hurt i looked at him and i was like what because it didn’t hurt when we started this two hours ago and so he had the widow maker uh that’s the one where it’s called the left to get sciency on everybody it’s called the left circumflex artery, which I didn’t know anything about. And it was completely blocked. And the reason it’s called the Widowmaker is it doesn’t give you the typical heart attack signs. And that’s why a lot of people are dying from this is because you don’t feel like you’re having a heart attack. You don’t get the chest pain. Your arm doesn’t go numb, all the things. And people wait too long and then they kill over. So there was a perfect storm for us that day. And he got a stent put in. And then afterwards, his doctor told us he was going to be on seven prescription drugs for, you know, for infinity. And he didn’t use the word affinity. He just like, here’s your seven prescription drugs. And we were like, well, how long has he got to take those? He’s like, what do you mean? And we were like, well, I mean, like how many days? He’s like forever. And we’re like, no, Both of my husband and I were like, no, we’re not doing that. So we got home and we were like, we had to make a plan. And he also had sleep apnea. So he had to go take care of that. And I said, if you’ll, you know, we kind of agreed since I was the cook in the family. I said, if you’ll. handle that sleep apnea stuff. I’ll handle the food parts and we’re going to make some massive change in our house. And so we made life changes. Not only did we change what we were eating, but we stopped life for a year and traveled the whole coast of Florida in an RV. So we were able to kind of get back to the center of what’s important. And that gave us, allowed us time to really find what’s important and what we were eating was super important. So I got real passionate about it as I was Googling it to death on how to eat healthy. What’s a heart healthy diet. quick recipes for hearts. I was just hitting dead end after dead end and controversy after controversy and all the information was contradicting. And I finally decided to go to school to learn the things. And I did. And I went to two nutrition schools and a culinary school within three or four years. And I physically watched my husband heal. Like within two years, he was down to like two or three prescriptions. And now nine years later, he’s on one prescription drug. Excuse me. So it works. You know, we are a testimony, but here’s where I had my aha moment. And this is when I decided to make a job out of it, our career out of it. I ate what I was feeding him. I thought I was well, and I was sick too. So as I started eating these foods, you know, anti-inflammatory recipes using anti-inflammatory ingredients, I started feeling good. And I was like, well, wait just a second. I didn’t know that I was sick. I didn’t know that I had these. I thought these little ailments were just normal, you know, dull headaches, fatigue, brain fog, adult acne, joint pain. I thought all of those things were just in my destiny, right? My mom and my mom and both my grandmothers have arthritis. So I just thought I was destined to have achy joints. But yet I was only 37 years old, 38 years old. And I was like, I just thought this was my destiny. So when I cleaned up my diet, all my ailments went away, all the small ones. And I was like a new person. And I’m like, okay, my husband’s reversed the damage to his heart. I’ve never felt better. We were both down 20, 30 pounds, not on a diet, just eating an anti-inflammatory diet. I was like, we’re onto something. And there’s not enough people talking about this. So that’s why I do what I do. Now I created Shelly Can Help. And I help people at the Everyday Home Cook. I just teach them how to make recipes using anti-inflammatory. inflammatory ingredients that are quick, simple and delicious. So I can’t wait to talk to you because I feel like we are so well aligned. And I most people that interview me are, you know, don’t know this and are curious and you and I are right. So it’s going to be like talking with a friend. So thank you again for having me.

Speaker #0
Oh, yeah. No, I was happy to find you as well, because I agree that on this podcast, I don’t come across a lot of people who are fellow foodies and who really get the. Being in the kitchen and the importance of that. And, you know, because once it clicks, it clicks, right? And it sounds like you also started this journey with just Googling. And I know so many people do that too. How to eat healthy food, how to gain my energy through food. And then you were inundated with tens of thousands of Google posts and websites. and it’s so confusing. It is so incredibly confusing to just the average person who’s just trying to eat healthy.

Speaker #1
And so many things are contradicting. So one site would say, don’t eat red meat. One site would say, be a vegan. One site would say, count your carbs. You don’t want your blood sugar to spike. All this, everything was different. And I was like, I don’t want to do any of those complicated things. What do I need to do to keep it simple? So. Now, and no matter what people’s ailments are, it all starts with inflammation. So whether you have high blood pressure, diabetes, dementia, whatever your issue is, big or small, up to cancer, whatever it is, it starts with inflammation. So if we can get the chronic inflammation down in our bodies, then we’re setting our bodies up for healing so that we can take whatever steps we need to do to heal.

Speaker #0
Exactly. Yeah. And it can be. really pretty simple. But when you go on the internet and right, there’s this kind of diet and that kind of diet and it’s vegan. And it’s, I mean, it’s, it is just absolutely crazy making. So I don’t blame anyone for being completely confused.

Speaker #1
And fortunately,

Speaker #0
that’s where people like you and me come in. So we can demystify healthy eating. It doesn’t have to be complicated. So I’m just curious, how were you and your husband? eating beforehand? Could you say you were eating an unhealthy diet?

Speaker #1
Knowing what I know now, yes. But I would have considered myself to be an average American wife and mother who would get on Pinterest, go buy the ingredients, make the meal. That was it. We weren’t extreme fast fooders. We did not eat out seven days a week. We ate three meals a day. So, and I did cook some. So I would consider that your pretty average family, right? Where you try to strive for, you know, you think, oh, well, I’m getting a can of green beans in here. So score, right? And so not that that’s bad, but we’ll talk about that later. I just didn’t know what I didn’t know. And there are so many people out there that don’t know better. And like Maya Angelou says, once you know better, you do better. And so. Yeah, we didn’t eat super unhealthy. We would eat out a couple of days a week, go through the drive-through maybe once a week for lunch, and then I would cook the rest. But what I was using in my recipes was not happy. Our bodies were not happy with it over a long period of time.

Speaker #0
Yeah, and you said that you also felt not great. But I think that’s such a really good point too, is that people get used to feeling a little like below optimum. And that’s just how we’re supposed to be feeling. We’re supposed to be feeling tired and low energy and achy and our joints kind of hurt. And you don’t really connect it to the food that you’re eating. But food is the one thing that we need to do. And we do do every single day, all day, you know, like breakfast, lunch and dinner. So it definitely influences how we feel without a doubt.

Speaker #1
things that cause chronic inflammation. It’s the one thing that we have complete control over. We have complete control over what we put in our mouth three to five times a day. So to me, making very tiny, small changes in that, very tiny, small changes in that, and having people start feeling better, it’s life-changing. I tell people all the time, you don’t know what feeling good feels like, so you feel good. You don’t know what not feeling bad feels like to you don’t you wake up and you feel great. And most people don’t know what that feels like. And we did it all through just small, small changes in our food. It wasn’t drastic. You don’t have to be a vegan. I’m not against that if that’s what you want to do and it works for you. But it doesn’t take extreme diets like that in order to live a healthy lifestyle.

Speaker #0
So tell me about then the simple, couple simple steps that you took after. your husband’s diagnosis and right. Because we’re talking about simplifying things. This is healthy cooking does not equal complicated. Like I don’t want to be in my kitchen for six hours a day and be like, you know, slaving in there and making, you know, I want to keep it really simple. So because I’m busy, you’re busy, right? I mean, we’re, we’re working and, um, but you can still keep it healthy. So let’s talk about just a couple like simple, healthy. things to start with.

Speaker #1
Yeah. So one of the, there’s four or five food groups that cause chronic inflammation in our body. So as I learned these in nutrition school, I would eliminate them just one at a time. So the very first food that I eliminated, because I thought it might be causing the biggest problem after going to school, I had no idea was I, we eliminated dairy and We eliminated, we had, you have to go cold turkey in order to see if there are benefits to not having it. And just eliminating dairy alone for three weeks. it both of us couldn’t believe it we had more energy the whites in our eyes were brighter no brain fog at all no stomach bloating and so i would say like one of the simple things i did was just kind of relearn how to buy ingredients for your everyday staples at home you know like instead of buying a nestle coffee make coffee creamer let’s use some coconut milk instead You know, those little tiny things. So I think that was the biggest step for me was once I started eliminating the inflammatory foods, replacing some things in my pantry one at a time that would make my recipes easy to throw together. Right. I was looking for recipes where I could say, OK, here’s a recipe I’ve had for 10 years. It’s calling for heavy cream. And in nutrition school, I learned, OK, well, I can soak some cashews in 15 minutes in hot water and put them in a blender. That’s cashew cream. Boom. Easy peasy. And I’ve eliminated dairy. So I would say that’s probably what I did first was just slowly swap out some things in my kitchen to make the recipes quick and easy to whip together.

Speaker #0
Yeah. I think having a well-organized kitchen and when I say well-organized, it doesn’t have to be 20 different oils that you cook with and 20 different vinegars, right? It’s just the basics.

Speaker #1
and and the best of the basics yes i totally agree like like you said like i teach anyone that follows me and becomes a client i teach them there you don’t have to go buy 17 oils and when they ask me what about this oil that well i’m like you need two to three good staple oils in your kitchen one for heat one for not heat and they all need to be a good source of healthy fat that’s it don’t over complicate it don’t you know and you don’t have to have the matching containers in your pantry. That’s not what we mean by organized kitchen, right? So… And I tell people, don’t clean out your pantry and start over. Do not do that. You’re setting yourself up for failure because then you have to go and spend a bunch of money on new products. You’re going to bring them home and you’re going to have no idea what to do with them. So I tell people, as you buy onesies and twosies to try new products and or create different recipes, you’re going to crowd out the bad stuff. It’s not going to get, here’s a really good example. So I had this can of Crisco that I’d had in my pantry for years and we moved and I took it with us. And we were in this house and I still had it like after four years. And now I’ve been on the journey for like a year of this healthy eating stuff. And I looked at the can of Crisco and I’m like, I am never going to use this again. Never. If the world came to an end, I will not be using Crisco in my recipe. So why am I hanging on to it? So then what did I do? I crowded it out and I threw it away because I knew what I was going to replace it with. So did that answer your question? I hope it kind of went on a tangent. But yeah, it does. People. Don’t do your pantry and start over all at once.

Speaker #0
Yeah, no, that’s a really good example. And I always say like, right, I use the words add in, add in and then just start crowding. Once you’re adding in, you’re crowding, you’re just not giving space for the other ingredients that just are not serving you like the Crisco. I don’t even know they made Crisco anymore.

Speaker #1
This was in 2018. I don’t know if they do either.

Speaker #0
That’s too funny. But yeah, I mean, but that’s a great example, right? I mean, it’s something that you used to use. Maybe you grew up with that. That’s just, you know, you use shortening to make baked goods. And now you know that there’s other ways you can use other healthy fats to substitute and crowd out. Um, what about meal planning? And I mean, I’m a huge proponent of meal planning. I cannot live my life without it. you know, impart that information unto my clients. And, and I know for some people, it feels really overwhelming to start meal planning, but I feel like to maintain a consistent, healthy eating, you know, diet or whatever you want to call it, you know, is that planning my meals out at the beginning of the week is, is incredibly important. What about you? Do you meal plan?

Speaker #1
I do. So I kind of have a Yes. And answer your question. It’s super important. As a matter of fact, this morning, I went on Instagram live, like very spontaneously, didn’t show my face because it was like 730 in the morning. But whenever I’m doing a quick meal prep recipe, I think, oh, wait, I could show this really quick. And I was showing him how easy it was. But I think it’s so important. And I try to teach in my meal prepping classes. I try to teach. You’ve got to make it work for your life, your schedule, your. family dynamic. You can’t, I can’t tell you make seven chicken breasts, seven steamed broccoli servings and seven brown rice servings. Nobody likes that. It gets boring. You’re going to fall off the bandwagon. And so I really do encourage people to make it work for you. Maybe that is one dinner a week. Maybe that’s all you can do right now. Plan ahead, get the groceries for that one dinner and follow through. So whether you’re meal planning seven days a week or whether you’re meal planning just, I’m going to make two breakfasts ahead of time because mornings are the busiest for us. That is meal prepping. So I just encourage people, please do what works for you, but do something. Because you cannot expect to go to your kitchen three times a day and make a meal and that be successful for you weekend and week in and week out. So, yes, huge, huge proponent for meal prepping, but not in the overwhelming, overstimulating sense at all. It’s not an all-in thing.

Speaker #0
Yeah, exactly. I think that if you don’t have a plan, some kind of a plan in place, it’s too easy to order in, order pizza. I mean, if you want to have… pizza night every Friday, that’s fine. Just factor that into your meal plan. And then hit the other days when you do have time. And yeah, I mean, and then there’s all sorts of, we can do maybe another podcast on meal planning because there’s so many tips and tricks.

Speaker #1
And I tell people that my number one excuse that people tell me why they don’t cook healthy, I’m putting that in their quotes is because they don’t have time. And it, that excuse is such an old book excuse now. Like there’s no that is not an excuse If I were to take that person and hire them as a one-on-one client, which I don’t do, and I was going to, first thing I would do was make them show me their schedule. I want to know what you did from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day this week. And I promise you, I will find you an hour and a half where you could make some meals because we’re not going to use time as an excuse anymore.

Speaker #0
Yeah, no, exactly. I always, right, I said, find your pockets of time. Like, I’m such a morning person. I. do my best cooking at 7 a.m. then 7 p.m. do not ask me to cook but 7 a.m. I’m typically cooking dinner I don’t care if I have to eat later but I am that’s my energy is best and so I say the same thing to to my clients too so I’m I’m just curious when you started switching up your food and your diet with your husband did you feel like it was like a restrictive thing or Did you feel, you know, did he, how was he feeling about it?

Speaker #1
Well, I think one thing we have, we had going for us, which kind of sounds like an oxymoron, but he almost died. So there was a sense of urgency on his part to not be on seven prescription drugs for the rest of his life. He didn’t even want to be on one. So he was very, very willing and open to be my, he was my. He still is. We joke. He is my eternal guinea pig. I am always experimenting in the kitchen and he is so open to try. Now, I will say when we first started this journey, there were many foods that he didn’t like, like mushrooms. He wasn’t a big fan of mushrooms. He did not like cabbage. There was, you know, these foods. And so what happens when you start cleaning up your diet a little bit at a time, your taste buds start. opening up and expanding and your body starts craving foods that it knows that it needs. So as we were cleaning, and I tell people all the time, as you slowly eliminate some of the processed foods in your body, your, your, your tongue is no longer numb and it starts opening up and fruit is sweet enough. And alternative sweeteners like, you know, coconut sugar are sweet enough. And so I tell people, if you are cleaning up your diet and you’re starting to try some new recipes, reintroduce some foods you think you may not have liked. Because I’ll tell you, through this experiment and my husband being willing to eat and try anything, there are so many foods now that he and I both love that we didn’t like before. So I’m very fortunate that he was so willing to get on board. But it was only because of our tragic health scare. It’s harder to teach people who have just been like, oh, I went to the doctor and got some bad blood work. Or my husband has type 2 diabetes and he won’t change what he’s eating. It’s a little more challenging because you didn’t have that jolt of an almost dying scare to put you into overdrive. So I’m fortunate, not fortunate that he almost died, but fortunate that he was so willing to try, thankfully, because now he’s never felt better in his life.

Speaker #0
Yeah, I mean, great point. You have to be willing to try and you have to believe that food is going to help you and you can’t try to dodge a bullet. your entire life if you have something chronic, you know, just like diabetes or or something like that. I also have a husband who’s very open to eating anything like that.

Speaker #1
And how great. I mean,

Speaker #0
I have a lot of clients who say that, you know, their their spouses are very picky and they’re not. open to trying things and it just and and I also agree with you that once you start eliminating process more processed foods which are so hijacked with flavors natural flavors and things made it’s jammy yeah I mean it just it really does hijack your taste buds and so you have to learn how to lower your threshold for sugar you know where like pineapple tastes sweet enough organized. grapefruit, you know, and, and any of the snack foods and processed foods and, you know, salty snacks and everything. Once you start lowering that rate, you can, it really changes things a lot.

Speaker #1
I tell people you’re, I refuse to push ropes. You can’t push a rope. And I stopped doing one-on-one work temporarily because I was pushing a bunch of ropes and people were throwing money at me, but they weren’t doing the work. And so I have decided to… not you can’t I’ve learned no matter how much money someone pays me and no matter how much they say they want instant change you know that doesn’t work you can’t help somebody that is not fully committed to at least trying to do the stuff and so I tell people your willingness to feel better and to heal has got to outweigh your addiction to the flavors of the processed food It has to outweigh it until that scale is tipped high enough to where you’re so sick of feeling sick, or you are tired of being overweight, or you’re tired of being tired, or you’re ready to get off some meds until that scale is higher than your love and passion for the instant gratification of the taste of fast food and processed food. It’s not going to work. It’s not going to work.

Speaker #0
Yeah, no, exactly. There definitely has to be a willingness to change in mindset. Yep. too bad sometimes when people just get a health scare. I mean, listen, it worked in your favor, but you know, it’s, you hope that people don’t have to get to that point where, you know, they, there’s something really dire is threatening them and, you know, they can just start now. So work in progress, right? I mean,

Speaker #1
that’s what we’re doing, right? We’re here to help people one at a time. So that’s, that’s what I can keep doing.

Speaker #0
So here are the holidays. And I know for so many people that they go down the I’ll think about this later. You know, I’ll let me I’m I need to enjoy myself and let me worry about it come January. And then they are full of regret. I mean, because I know this because I used to do this years and years ago. So, I mean, I’d be like, all the choices and the… the fun cocktails and the, and all the food choices, everything. And I was like, I am not even going to give this a thought until January 1st, but then January 1st comes, you are full of regret. Maybe you’ve gained, you know, five pounds. Yeah. Now that you have to worry about that. And it’s, and it’s really, can be really punishing. You can be really hard on yourself. So I, of course, and I don’t think you’re talking about this either is we’re not. here for perfection with our food.

Speaker #1
Oh, no, no, no. Gosh, no. I’ll teach balance. Like if it’s Thanksgiving day, eat, enjoy, enjoy your grandmother’s pumpkin pie, do the things, have the wine, you know, but I tell people the holidays is a few days. Let’s say you have Thanksgiving day. You have, maybe you have two Christmas parties and Christmas day, and you’ve got new year’s day or new year’s eve and new year’s day. I mean, less than a week out over three months should you have excuses to go, you know. all full out and eat whatever you want. So I like to try to teach balance on those moments when it’s not a holiday occasion or a special event to really focus on your health.

Speaker #0
Definitely. Yeah, no, I mean, right. It is only a couple of days, like if you really think about it, but then, you know, maybe throw in a few holiday parties and, and it can cause a lot of, you know, regret and sort of not damage, but, you know, like a weight and you’re just feeling like crappy in January. I agree. I mean, it’s we’re not supposed to, you know, be restricting on Thanksgiving, but we can still be mindful of what we eat. Right. I mean, you know, it doesn’t it doesn’t mean that we have to.not eat all day so we can like, you know, chow down at dinner and just feel like we are so stuffed. I mean, that’s not really serving us either. So what are your tips or what are your thoughts about just like making it, making like something like Thanksgiving or like Christmas dinner, just a little bit healthier, right? Again, we’re not doing perfection. We’re not like, We’re not saying I’m not allowed to eat. this or I’m on a diet. There’s nothing like that. But there can be some ways to do it a little bit healthy-ish.

Speaker #1
Definitely. So right now I’m in the thick, I think you are too, I’m in the thick of teaching cooking classes for corporations virtually right now if holidays are my busiest time. And I’m teaching a class later today, healthy holiday recipes. So one of the recipes is, this is a perfect example to your question, I’m going to make, I’m going to show people how to make a healthier version of sweet potato like baked sweet potato like candied yam sweet potatoes we don’t have to have marshmallows on top to make it a delicious sweet potato dish what about marshmallows on top of the sweet potatoes i really i would love to know he’s not even food there’s it’s not food there’s

Speaker #0
nothing in the marshmallow that represents a natural food i see things are so sweet as they are like on their own i did

Speaker #1
to teach people like if they’re used to them being super sweet you know add in some maple syrup to them if you want on that thanksgiving sweet you know don’t be adding a bunch of white sugar and marshmallows and so i you know in my recipe i do this beautiful i crush up almonds and i i toss them with cinnamon and a little bit of maple syrup and a pinch of sea salt and i roast them and then i put them on top of the mashed sweet potato casserole dish and then i bake that in the oven and then you get the crunchy on top it’s still sweet but you’re also getting protein and fiber. And you can have a delicious side dish without it being inundated with horrible ingredients. So that’s just one example of what you could do as, you know, just switch out a few of the ingredients in your traditional recipe. And it’s still going to be delicious.

Speaker #0
Right. I mean, Thanksgiving, for example, I mean, a lot of the side dishes are vegetable based. Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes,

Speaker #1
green beans,

Speaker #0
green beans. but we don’t need to top them with those fried onions in the can or cream of chicken soup yeah right let’s not okay yeah so we can so we can still enjoy these things but keep them a

Speaker #1
little bit healthier of healthier versions of things i mean i think even with like a lot of you know a change it doesn’t just yeah three ingredients and you can make it a little healthier and still enjoy it it’s still going to be delicious. I’m not going to make a recipe that doesn’t taste good. That would be a waste of time and calories. And I want to exactly delicious. So that’s what I try to teach. Quickie is delicious.

Speaker #0
Right. Healthy food. There’s no reason to link healthy food with boring or bland. Right. And I mean, I wouldn’t still be doing this right now if my healthy food didn’t tastes delicious. I mean,

Speaker #1
that’s too much.

Speaker #0
Yeah. Exactly. I love eating. I look forward to eating. It’s like, you’re like one pleasure in life.

Speaker #1
Me too.

Speaker #0
I, you know, I think other things that we could do is I, like I said before, like not to skip meals, right. And, and not to like starve yourself until the meal, because I think that that then leads to just overeating in general.

Speaker #1
Yep.

Speaker #0
healthier versions of appetizers, maybe. a crudité, bring your own appetizers with you rather than whatever’s going to be presented there.

Speaker #1
Here’s my secret. Whenever somebody asks me to bring a dish, well, a lot of my close people now know what I’m up to. But if it’s a crowd that I don’t know everybody, I don’t tell anybody what’s in it. I just make it delicious. And then when it’s on the table and they start eating, they’re like, what is in this? I’m like, guess what? It’s actually all really good for you. So eat all you watch. You know, so it is a little trick when I go to parties, I don’t tell people that I’m using healthy ingredients or they won’t even eat it, which is sad. But yeah, exactly. And you want it. You want a healthy option at this party that you’re not in control of. Take something healthy and delicious and don’t tell them it’s healthy.

Speaker #0
Yeah, no, that’s that is a great, great idea to just write, come with the food. And I think people don’t know what they don’t know. You know, so if they always know sweet potato. casserole with marshmallows, they don’t know that there can be a different version of it and that it can be even better tasting. Any other thoughts about the holidays?

Speaker #1
I just teach balance. And, you know, I try to tell people what I learned in school, which is try 80 to 80, 20 rule 80% of the time, really focus on your health and try to feed your body, the healthy fats, the fibers and the protein, healthy lean proteins. And then the 20% of the time I tell people plan your week moments. If you know Friday night, you’re going out with the girls or you’re going to Thanksgiving on Thursday, maybe Monday through Wednesday, really pack in those, drink your smoothies in the morning, have a. you know, two fibers with your with your protein at dinner, like plan a little bit of ahead. And so on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, enjoy it. Take one healthy side if you want, but save that 20% for these special events like holidays. And I tell people, please do not beat yourself up. Please show yourself grace and forgiveness whenever you do eat like crap, because tomorrow is a whole new day. You got to do it all over again. So There’s no reason to have shame and guilt around making bad food choices. And that can be very important during the holidays. Don’t make it three months worth of bad eating. But on the Thanksgiving day, have to show yourself a little grace and enjoy your friends and family. And then Friday, you know, drink your smoothie full of greens and protein.

Speaker #0
Yeah, no, I mean, that’s right. An excellent point is just to be really forgiving with yourself. I always tell that to my clients. I mean, it’s just one meal. And that doesn’t mean that you blew it or you can’t do this. You can’t eat healthy. You’re not capable. Other people do it and something’s wrong with you. And I think same, especially with like getting, you know, it’s January 1st. And that doesn’t mean you have to panic and jump onto a detox diet or something radical like that, that you probably won’t even. follow through with anyway.

Speaker #1
Or you’re into some expensive diet program and you’re paying thousands of dollars for processed food that they’re paying you to eat. So you’ll drop a bunch of weight. Please don’t. Whoever’s listening to this, please, please, please do not do that in January. Please.

Speaker #0
Yes. I’m going to have a couple more podcasts to just remind people to definitely not do that, to keep it, you know, healthy, but keep it real. We’re just, it’s just a couple haulers.

Speaker #1
We can help them in January. please don’t buy those expensive diet plans. They do not work sustainably. No,

Speaker #0
I mean, healthy eating really is. It is so simple. It doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to buy expensive diet packages and online detoxy things. And I know, I wish everyone knew that.

Speaker #1
I know, but that’s what we’re here for. We’re going to help them.

Speaker #0
Exactly. So what do you think is just, you know, just to wrap up, what’s your best the best part for you about just healthier eating? Besides, you know, I know you helped your husband significantly, but do you have other health benefits? I know you sort of briefly mentioned that you had some health wake up calls. I mean, that you really were kind of sick as you described it.

Speaker #1
Through this journey of my own personal story, I’ve really learned to not listen to the noise. And what people are telling me online about the latest fad or, oh, my gosh, now you need to fast. And oh, my gosh, now you need to do keto. And so what I’ve learned with me personally, not my husband, me, I have learned to really listen to my body because my body tells me what I need. So if I am out, like, for instance, we had company in town this weekend and we ate out a lot and I didn’t eat great the whole time. I did not. that out I did make some choices where I did make some good decisions, but one night I had lasagna that has gluten and dairy in it and I tore it up. It was delicious and I enjoyed it, but I knew because I ate that lasagna the next morning, I can’t have dairy or gluten. I have to eat a nutritious breakfast or my stomach is going to kill me. So I have learned over a nine year relationship with healthy eating. I know my limits. And when you listen to your body, because everyone is so different. Everyone is different. When you listen to your body, and it’s not an overnight fix, you can’t start listening today, and it’s going to tell you what you need. But everybody has different intolerances that they don’t know they have until they eliminate it. And so that would be my biggest takeaway for me on my health journey is I now have learned, okay, if I’m going to have a whole grain bread sandwich at lunch, definitely not going to have any gluten at dinner. or for the next 24 hours because I know what my body can handle. The person listening may not have a gluten allergy at all, but they’re super inflamed and they’re getting bad blood work, maybe want to eliminate dairy completely for a few weeks to see how, dairy or gluten, to see how they feel. So long answer. I really learned how to listen to my body and I know what my body needs, but you have to be willing to do some hard work in the beginning to learn how to eliminate things one at a time so that you can reintroduce them slowly or not at all if you feel great, right? It’s everybody’s different. So that’s my biggest takeaway. I’m really, really proud of myself for learning my boundaries with what I can eat and when I need to reel it back in.

Speaker #0
Yeah, that’s great. I think being in tune with your body is one of the most important skills you can learn, right? Everyone’s different. How I eat during the day, I mean, how I need food, you know, what I need to eat at lunch versus breakfast or dinner, whatever. I mean, we’re just really in tune with it. And that’s a really important skill to have.

Speaker #1
It also changes with your different phases of life too. Like if you, let’s say someone decided they wanted to do keto five years ago. It may not work for you now. So don’t be afraid to change things up. You know, we have hormones. We age. We go through, females go through peri and menopause. Men, testosterone does, you know, plummets every day. We have babies. Our kids leave the house. Like all of these things are happening. And I just encourage people to always be open to reassessing, shifting, and improving the way that you eat. Thank you. Don’t just think, okay, well, I did this diet five years ago and it worked. So I’m just going to keep doing that. No questions asked, because that’s when your body’s be like, this isn’t, this isn’t working for me anymore. And so you can kind of have some really bad symptoms if you do that. So I encourage people to be open to doing some shifting throughout your life. And as you’re, as your phases change.

Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, we go through seasons of life, right? I mean, you and I think we’re both in midlife. I might be a little older than you, but, you know, menopause, perimenopause, you know, it’s it all it shifts a lot. And so what even what you could get away with when you were 25, 30 years old, you can’t get away with it anymore. So there’s right. So we have to pivot and what, you know, see what works with us and what doesn’t anymore. So, yeah, that’s another one we could probably do lots of podcasting on is just that, you know, women in midlife and how. they could be eating for their optimal health.

Speaker #1
Definitely. Most definitely.

Speaker #0
Shelly, thank you so much for being here. This has been a really nice conversation. I also want to add that you are the author of a cookbook, What’s on Your Fork, right? Which is just a lot of simple, healthy recipes. And I’m imagining you can grab that from Amazon, right?

Speaker #1
You can Amazon or barnesandnoble.com and it’s just all anti-inflammatory meals. So there’s over a hundred meal ideas in there. Something that’s special about the book is I have a notes section on every recipe. So if you see the recipe and let’s say you’re allergic to bell peppers, well, mark it out and write it on the side. What did I do instead? Right? Like, how am I going to change this recipe? Because I encourage people to take my recipes and make them your own. So there’s places you can write in there. There’s lots of stories. My story is in there. But yeah, it’s just a kind of like a cookbook meets food journal type book. But yeah, it is on amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. Thank you for bringing that up.

Speaker #0
Oh, yeah, fantastic. I will link that in the show notes and, and also how to just get in touch with you.

Speaker #1
Yeah, awesome. Please. Thank you so much for having me. And I love talking to like minded people. So let’s do this again. So we can us. tell people more things.

Speaker #0
Definitely. Yeah. Well, happy holidays. I hope your holidays are as healthy as can be. And we’ll talk in the new year.

Speaker #1
Yeah, let’s do it. Yeah, we did. Wonderful holiday yourself.

Speaker #0
Okay. Thank you. You too. And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get. the word out on real eating, our real bodies, and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.