Joyful Cooking: Transforming Health with Real Food Stories and Nutrition Advice for Midlife Women

What if the secret to joyful cooking lies in embracing real food and transforming your relationship with nutrition? Join host Heather Carey in this enlightening episode of Real Food Stories, where she sits down with Lynn Bowman, the inspiring author of “Brownies for Breakfast. ” Lynn’s journey began in her late 20s when she was diagnosed with diabetes, but instead of letting it define her, she turned to the kitchen, discovering the power of whole foods and joyful cooking. Together, they delve into how Lynn’s culinary transformation not only improved her health but also created a nurturing environment for her three children as a single mother.

Throughout their conversation, Lynn shares invaluable healthy eating tips and practical cooking techniques that make nutritious meals accessible and enjoyable. She emphasizes the importance of involving children in food preparation, fostering a love for cooking that can last a lifetime. This episode is packed with nutrition advice aimed at those navigating the challenges of processed foods, limited resources, and the ever-evolving landscape of food beliefs and culture.

As they explore the connection between saturated fat and glucose levels, Lynn advocates for a plant-based approach to diet, encouraging listeners to embrace mindful eating practices that promote not only health but also joy in every meal. Heather and Lynn discuss the significance of family food traditions and how they can be adapted to fit a healthier lifestyle, especially for women experiencing the unique challenges of menopause health and midlife changes.

Are you ready to ditch diet fads and myths that have clouded your understanding of nutrition? This episode sheds light on the seven pillars of abundance in culinary wellness, empowering women to take charge of their health through joyful cooking. Discover how to nourish your body while enjoying the process of creating meals that celebrate both health and flavor.

Whether you’re looking for weight loss stories, insights on perimenopause nutrition, or simply want to find joy in cooking again, this episode is a treasure trove of wisdom. Lynn’s personal food journey is a testament to the power of real food and the impact it can have on our lives. Tune in for an engaging discussion that will inspire you to embrace your own personal nutrition journey and cultivate a healthy lifestyle filled with joy and nourishment.

Join Heather and Lynn as they remind us that cooking can be a source of empowerment, healing, and connection, making every meal a celebration of life and health. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to transform your kitchen into a haven of joyful cooking!

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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. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Real Food Stories. Today, I had a really fun conversation with Lynn Bauman, who is the author of Brownies for Breakfast. It’s a delicious cookbook for people who are diabetic and want to eat much less refined sugar, sugar in general, and carbohydrates and… and everything that goes with being mindful when you have diabetes. Lynn has lived with diabetes for a very, very long time, has a lot of wisdom to share, and all sorts of really delicious recipes in that book. I actually made one of the recipes. I’m going to link it in the show notes too for you to try before you buy the book. But I think you’re going to want to buy the book once you… try this recipe. So take a listen to my interview with Lynn Bowman.

Speaker #1
Hi, everybody. I am with Lynn Bowman today, who describes herself as a snarky grandma who isn’t a reality TV star or an MD and doesn’t particularly like to cook, but she is living proof that you can cook,

Speaker #0
eat, sleep, laugh, and walk your way out of type 2 diabetes along with other chronic ailments. And because of her wisdom and experience living with a chronic illness, she wrote a bestselling book called Brownies for Breakfast, a cookbook for diabetics and the people who love them. Her book is a cool, fun, beautiful guidebook for anybody who wants to reverse chronic disease and eat healthy. So Lynn, I want to just jump in right into your story of getting diagnosed with diabetes and how you have managed your health since. We both know that there’s so much confusion around what to eat, especially when you get handed a clinical diagnosis from your doctor. And what I do know is that most doctors have no clue about food. They are not trained in food. They are trained in other medical things, but not food. So tell me how you went from a diagnosis to actually writing your beautiful book, Brownies for Breakfast.

Speaker #1
It was a long and bumpy road, as you can imagine. You know, I was diagnosed when I was having my babies. I was in my late 20s, early 30s, and the medical care was not what it is today. The understanding of diabetes was not what it is today. And having just been through the birthing process with my youngest daughter, once again, I am so impressed. with how much better the OBGYN medicine is today. I mean, having babies now surrounded by women, professional women, your lactation coach, your OBGYN is probably a woman. All these fabulous women are making the process just a completely different thing than it was when I was giving birth. But my first baby was 10 pounds, boy. And- After he was delivered by emergency C-section, eight weeks late. I mean, just unbelievably late.

Speaker #0
Wow. That’s a long time.

Speaker #1
Yeah. Because I had just been screaming, like, get this baby out. You know, something’s really wrong. And the doctor stood around and went, well, you know what? You probably have gestational diabetes. Well, thanks. You know, now. Right? And of course, I didn’t know. anything about that, but I made it my business to learn. And I had two more kids in pretty quick succession and they were fine. And I was, I had three C-sections, but I going back further, I didn’t even realize at the time that this was what was driving me, but my mom had died when I was 18 of a chronic disease. And so that my whole life kind of ended as I knew it then, you know, my family was essentially blown up and gone. My older siblings were gone. My dad married someone else very quickly. My dog had to be given. I’m literally ever. The house was gone. Everything. And so I was that girl kind of on the sidewalk with my luggage going, OK. And I realized, and I don’t mean that as an awful. dreary beginning of the story, but what it was was my deep understanding of what chronic disease can do to a family. It can ruin you financially. It can blow you up emotionally in every possible way. So when I was diagnosed with a chronic disease and told, as they told us at the time, it’ll never get better. It’ll get worse. It’ll get much worse. And so, you know, when you’re in middle age, it’s… going to start getting bad and then it’ll get really bad. And so don’t eat a lot of carbs, don’t eat a lot of sugar and don’t gain weight, try and lose some weight. Well, of course, as you said, the medical community was not about nutrition at all and not about healing with food in any way and not understanding at the time that because diabetes is a disease of um Well, it’s a lot of things, but it’s a hormonal thing where your endocrine system can’t deal with fat to a great degree. That’s one of the problems. And when your endocrine system is off, as many folks find out the hard way, you can’t lose weight. You’re desperately trying to hang on to every bit of fat for the wrong reasons. So. And I’m using kind of lay language for this stuff because I know I get tired of all the cellular biology and so on. What I want to know is what do I do? How do I fix this?

Speaker #0
Exactly. Right.

Speaker #1
And so what I began to figure out was that I could keep my weight under control and my kids fed and all of us. if I cooked and made good all some food for us and didn’t eat sugar and a couple of other things very basic things and i think the difference was that i was willing to spend a little time in the kitchen because i was not about to give in to this chronic disease and not be there for my kids i was a single mother very quickly unfortunately of these three little ones and so i just did one of those, I am going to be on my feet standing here, you know, no matter what. And I was determined to keep my health.

Speaker #0
Did you have some direction or guidance about, let me get back into the kitchen, let me cook? Because I have to imagine around that time that you were raising three young kids, the boom of processed foods, you know, was coming about?

Speaker #1
Well, processed food boom was really almost when I was a kid, Heather. It was the Betty Crocker stuff and the Kellogg’s stuff and all that. And our mothers were thrilled that they could do all this fast, good stuff that the kids would eat. And they didn’t have to cook all day. They didn’t have to be stuck in the kitchen. And my mother and her friends sat around and smoked pell-mells and played cards a lot in the kitchen. And they were, you know. yay, right? They were liberated. And I’ve stories about women who said that the happiest day, a little earlier, the happiest day in their lives was the day they got their automatic clothes washer because, and the youngins won’t relate to how much of our time as women was spent washing and ironing and drying clothes. We didn’t have clothes dryers. We didn’t have clothes washers. And so that was your day. That was everything that you did. And it was exhausting work and it was a lot of it. So fast forward now, my kids were born in the 70s. I already had a career. I had this long, crazy resume because I did a bunch of different things, but I was a working woman. And when my kids came along, I had to support them. I didn’t have an option. I was the sole support of my children. So I had no choice but to do the best I could to work, to get child care. another discussion, which was almost impossible, but I managed to make the money that I needed to make. So my cooking was two things. It was going to be healthy and it was going to be fast. Well, three things, healthy, fast, and then ultimately cheap. I didn’t have any money. So what you figure out when you’re trying to make food healthy, fast, and cheap is whole food, real food. And nothing processed because, and I was pulling it out of the garden. And I mean, greens have never, collard greens have never been expensive. Or a bunch of cilantro has never been expensive. Carrots, please, none of it. And yes, it’s Ghana, but that’s not the food that costs you money. And then the other thing is what really costs you money is the dentist. Because you’ve rotted your teeth because you’ve been eating sugar or holding. a sugary coffee up against your gums all day.

Speaker #0
Well, not to mention all the other health issues, right? That you could create for yourself by eating processed junk food.

Speaker #1
But just even people don’t even think of the dentist as illness. You know, it’s just, well, it’s just your teeth, but it is the gateway to your body and the cause of a great deal of illness and people. And it’s a thing. If you’re a parent, you know what it costs. I mean, because all the checkups and the cleanings and. everything. My kids still tease me because they grew up knowing that they would not be forgiven for ignoring their teeth. No matter what, no matter what you’re doing, you will go to the dentist, right? Twice a year. So, but I was a terror in that way with my children. I was really tough about it because we couldn’t afford for anyone to be sick.

Speaker #0
Sounds like it. You were a single mother, three young kids working, providing for them. And I imagine money was tight. And then you’re really trying to lean on real whole unprocessed foods.

Speaker #1
We were the first big fans of the little crock pot when it came out. It saved my life because, of course, early in the morning, I put it all together, plug it in, and then we’d get home and there would be a lovely hot meal already when we got home. So I learned all these things. hacks, Heather, because it was always about, you know, when you come in the door with three little screaming people, you got to make things happen in a hurry. And I also taught them to be my team. You know, they were cleaning up, they were cooking, they were gardening, they were doing all the things it took to keep us going together. I was not their servant. I was their teacher. And I think that’s a mistake so many parents are making today. I see it happening a lot. I think it’s vitally important that kids learn early where food comes from and what it is and why it matters and how you fix it and why you want to eat the green stuff.

Speaker #0
And know how to cook because a lot of kids, their mothers are saying, just get out of the kitchen. And these mothers are not cooking a lot as it is. They’re doing a lot of takeout and, you know, quick fixes. So they don’t learn how to cook. And so then there’s generation after generation of people who don’t.

Speaker #1
So it’s learning. It’s also learning how to be at the table. We have a couple of generations of kids who have grown up eating out of a bag in the back of a car.

Speaker #0
I mean, that was one of my goals, you know, with my kids, too. I’m like, before you go to college, I mean, even just, you know, way back in high school. But before you go to college, I need to know that you can go and cook yourself a good couple of meals, not just one meal, not just not macaroni and cheese out of a box. But I mean, like a meal. It was my goal, my whole goal in life.

Speaker #1
few basics that you know, that if you know how to make a pot of pasta and you know what you do with beans and a few little things, you’re done, you’re good. You know, that’s really all you need to know. And so that progression led to this book because my kids were always saying, ma, people need to know this. You know, you need to tell people how easy this is. You need to tell people how to do this with their kids. And at our house, when you got up from a meal, you didn’t get up empty handed. You took your stuff to the dishwasher, to the sink. You know, you didn’t dare leave the kitchen until things were handled because I’m not going to be stuck in there cleaning up after you, you know, kind of deal. So to me, it all goes together, just like our bodies are all one system. We were talking about that before. And you can’t like pick apart, you know, what’s going on in your ear from what’s going on in your hand. It’s all a system.

Speaker #0
Right. It’s all connected.

Speaker #1
Your kids need to understand food, food culture, food. regeneration, all of it. And I love seeing that now the high school age kids, or even younger, college kids are so deeply into regenerative agriculture and things like that, that weren’t even a thing. You know, we didn’t have that word when we were in school, but we’re going back now to try and regain this understanding of what the soil really is and why it’s important. important and why that affects what you’re eating and how it affects what you’re eating. Because health all begins with that, what you’re breathing and what you’re eating and how you’re moving.

Speaker #0
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it does seem like there is a lot more awareness, but I certainly still have some people, even people my age, who don’t really connect the fact that vegetables are grown in the ground. It’s really fascinating sometimes because I think like you, I have been in my kitchen and the cooking healthy food for so long that it’s just unimaginable to me to not have a garden or not have a cooking consistently. And yeah, it’s, we still have work to do with getting people educated and back into their kitchens. So it sounds like you, you know, you really cultivated a habit despite. The fact that you were a single mom, a working mom. And I know that that takes a lot of energy. And then you have to come home and cook. And was there a system of meal planning that you were doing? And was there no meal? Okay.

Speaker #1
I mean, my husband accuses me of always optimizing everything. I come from a family of engineers. And so they think that way. But yeah, I didn’t do anything without doing three things. You know, I was doing, you know, moms, right? I mean… multitasking, that doesn’t even begin to describe what you end up doing, but it becomes habit and food was always important. It was also important because that’s how I entertained. And I realized how much friends appreciated being at your table and eating your food. And so, and I couldn’t go out. I had these kids and, you know, didn’t have the money to just go running off. So my kitchen, became my social life too, which gives you a bit of a different outlook on life. And again, so it led in many ways to this. I was a writer and that was how I made my living. So it all kind of came together. And then, you know, my kids pushed me to do this and I had the book about half written and my health had maintained. I was doing pretty good. You know, no one was discouraging me. It was fine. But I still had, you know, 10, 15, 20 pounds that probably could have gone. And I just happened to see that there was this plantrition conference going to happen in near my home in Oakland. And I, you know, it’s so funny when we listen to those messages, the little voices whispering in our ears. It was very unlike me to do it, but I just went, I’m going to that. I’m going to go to that. And it was a conference of a thousand doctors from all over the world, including some names, T. Colin Campbell, who many of you listeners have read. And I know you have, Heather, and Ornish, big name in kind of maverick nutrition, heart disease, healing heart disease with food. I was mesmerized looking at the data that I had never seen and that so many docs have never seen. All of the data, the latest stuff and some old stuff reintroduced, but the numbers about what eating plants does for us and what eating meat does for us. All of the data that could be gathered in one place in support of healthy eating. So fascinating, absolutely fascinating. Lots of interesting people there and lots of great conversations. you My husband picked me up and I got in the car and said, guess what? And, you know, what every man dreads hearing from his wife, right? What? I said, I’m a vegan now.

Speaker #0
No more meat. That’s the dread.

Speaker #1
So it’s an experiment. And for a year, I did not touch any animal food whatsoever. I mean, cold turkey. And I didn’t eat sugar anyway. But the big difference in my diet was I stopped eating animal foods of any kind. When I went back and got my, and I had had my numbers because I did that done. So I knew what the beginning point was. And when I went back to my physician, I had dropped a number of points. My hemoglobin A1C was down in normal range, normal, no diabetes. And, and my weight had dropped and I was not dieting. I was eating as much food as I wanted. but just by eliminating animal foods. Now, I will tell you, I’m no longer vegan. I eat a whole food plant-based diet, sort of Mediterranean, but not measuring much of anything. I just, I eat good food, the best food I can find. And I eat a small amount of animal food. I try to limit the animal food, but there are certain things like chili verde. um that i fall prey to every once in a while and it’s delicious and i enjoy it and that’s okay it’s habit that makes you healthy it’s not what you do once a week or once a month it’s what you do every day and so if if you’re every day eating and another thing that i’m finally hearing nutritionists and docs say i’m happy to say is that the diet that is the best diet for you is the diet you can stay on. It’s the program of eating that you can stay on for the rest of your life. Because otherwise, it doesn’t matter what it is, it’s not gonna work because you’re not gonna stay with it. In six weeks, you will no longer be a paleo person or a carnivore person or whatever it is. Or maybe you make it for a year or two. But it’s long-term what you can continue to do that is gonna be your best. diet.

Speaker #0
That’s right. I absolutely believe that, that you have to be, have a little bit of a flexible attitude. So it sounds like for you, going vegan helped you to move the needle, you know, so to speak, you know, and really prove that when you reduce your animal intake, animal product intake, that you got good results with your diabetes. But sometimes that’s not easy to maintain. Plus, you have to be really careful as a vegan, right, to make sure that, you know, you are eating as best as you really can.

Speaker #1
And that takes us off in all kinds of directions because more people are more aware now and have watched the YouTubes about carnivore. What is it in paleo? What is it in keto? What is it? And so on and so forth. And a lot of kind of not great information out there. but, it just takes some good sense, I think, to see your way through most of it. And the thing that I actually learned that was new to me at that conference. And since then, I’ve done, of course, a lot more studying about it is that there is a relationship between saturated fat and your glucose numbers as a diabetic.

Speaker #0
Yeah, let’s talk about that because, you know, in the world of diabetes, we’re always so focused on carbohydrates and sugar. And so you’ve mentioned this connection between meat and animal products and diabetes a couple of times. So tell me what your thoughts are on that.

Speaker #1
Some controversy around it because these docs out there with their big books and their systems and their programs that you pay them a thousand dollars and you respond. There’s unfortunately money to be made. convincing everybody that their way is the best way. But there is a great amount of data supporting the fact that one, at least of the big reasons contributing factors to diabetes is saturated fat preventing the uptake of glucose in your cells. Again, I am not the person, I’m not going to do a lecture here in microbiology, but I would encourage anybody out there who is diabetic or thinking about becoming diabetic or who has a diabetic family member to study up a little bit about it. And I know my book, I list the sources that I think are pretty reasonable sources. One that comes to mind immediately is Dr. Michael Greger, G-R-E-G-E-R. wrote a good book called How Not to Die. Another one, How Not to Die. I think he’s very readable, sensible, and he’s all about the data. He’s all about events, but in a relatable way. So that’s a good one that I can recommend. But the best one is my book because I don’t do any cell biology at all. I just ask you, you know, for Pete’s sake here, eat some good food. Right.

Speaker #0
Well, so let’s talk about your book, because I know you said before that a big part of you cooking in the kitchen and getting into your kitchen and everything was because that’s where you were entertaining. It was your social life, right? You were a single mom and and so that you would have friends come over. And that’s such a great point too, because… food is not just to be thought of as medicinal and healthy and stuff, but it’s, I mean, culturally we entertain with it, right? Food is to be enjoyed and, and life.

Speaker #1
Yeah. Connection. It’s always been connection. And I think it probably always will be connection. And, and so, and we love people with food. That’s, and now that I’m a granny, I think I can say that with some authority.

Speaker #0
Yeah, I mean, we celebrate with food, right? I mean, we, we, you know, food is to be enjoyed. So I know in the book, you said, I’ve learned how to have fun in the kitchen, despite a medical diagnosis. Now, not everyone loves to cook like you and I do. I love to cook. I know you love to cook. And, you know, some people, I think when they get diagnosed with a medical condition, and then they’re handed that list of like, here’s what to eat, not what to eat. And they’re forced to change their own. old ways in their kitchen and they got to redo things. So what would you recommend to someone who was newly diagnosed like you were, and you know, just how to have a little more lightheartedness and fun in the kitchen because it should be fun. This is not like a,

Speaker #1
you’re going to be there. So enjoy it. And, and I want, I don’t love to cook. I’m okay with cooking. I mean, if I had someone who would just do it for me all the time and put my, yeah. that’d be good, but that’s not how we live anymore, right? That’s just not a reality. And the other reality is you can’t be healthy if you don’t cook your own food to a great extent. That’s just a given. You have to cook. So have fun with it. Make it as easy as you can make it. And of course, my way of having fun with it is sweets. Why not eat some fabulous sweets for breakfast or dinner? or lunch anytime you want.

Speaker #0
So you call your book brownies for breakfast. So I was wildly curious. Do you eat brownies for breakfast?

Speaker #1
I eat brownies whenever I feel like it.

Speaker #0
That’s great. Good. I mean, but, but your brownies are obviously healthier and very mindful of, of sugar. And I know I was, you know, looking through your book and you have just a lot of really interesting recipes, brownies, donuts.

Speaker #1
And this secret has Thank you. things that at first surprised people. First of all, I am an advocate of a good sugar substitute. You hear a lot of people saying, you know, sugar substitutes haven’t been proven this and that. Well, they’re all different kinds of sugar substitutes. It depends on what you do. My favorite now is allulose. It’s a natural product. It’s made from food. It’s not a bunch of chemicals. It’s one thing. It’s allulose. and it’s very sweet and it looks like sugar. It cooks like sugar. It eats, it doesn’t upset your stomach. It doesn’t cause problems with, I mean, it, it just, it passes all the tests and it’s, and I make most of my sweets with that. Very easy to work with. So once you have that out of the way, okay, I’m not using sugar. I’m using the sugar substitute. The next thing to know is that if you use pumpkin puree or squash puree and nut butter, and you can use cashew butter or almond butter or peanut butter if you want that peanut butter taste. The combination of the pumpkin and the nut butter are like oil, butter, and flour, but not. But you’re eating good, whole food. And so these brownies, I guarantee you, and the secret is don’t tell people they’re healthy. Don’t tell anybody they don’t have sugar in them. Just bake them and put them on the table. And then when they say, oh, my God, these are the best brownies I’ve ever eaten in my life. You know, oh, and they’re healthy. So much of how we receive food is in our head.

Speaker #0
Right.you you i’m serious don’t damage it to to begin with by saying it’s healthy it’s sugar-free no yeah if you told people like well these brownies are made with almond butter and pumpkin right there allulose right they’re just gonna go oh no thanks that’s okay and they’re made with cocoa just plain cocoa and very simple how many how many ingredients not many i put cinnamon cinnamon’s a great spice for your health uh and Tastes fabulous. So a little bit of cinnamon. So chocolate, cinnamon. You can use eggs or egg substitute if you’re vegan. This can be a vegan recipe. Hello. And it’s high protein, high fiber, high in every dang thing you should be eating. And it’s a brownie. So it’s better than those stupid bars that you’re buying at the store for $3.50 a piece in paper and so on. Also, My brownies are going to cost you maybe 50 cents a piece.

Speaker #1
Everything’s cheaper when you cook it at home. I mean, everything.

Speaker #0
Not to mention healthier. The expense of food is no small item now. I mean, this is a serious situation, actually. But fortunately, it’s a serious situation that I’m hoping will drive everybody out to the garden and into the kitchen to eat better food. Because better food. actually it’s going to cost you less. I have a pesto recipe that really shocks people because you make it out of your carrot tops and other stuff would be throwing away. But that’s some of the most nutritious food you can eat. A thing I advise in the book is to try hard to eat dark greens three times a day,

Speaker #1
which,

Speaker #0
wait, how do you do that? You know, you can do it and you’ll find that you love it. it makes things taste better. Because the thing that most of us are not doing right in our diet is not enough dark greens.

Speaker #1
Well, not enough vegetables in general, right? Because you talk in the book, and I know this too, that we want to really try to make half our plates vegetables if we can, but especially dark leafy greens, right? We really want to emphasize those just for the sake of our health. And you have to know how to cook. I think that’s where people get tripped up is they’re like, well, what am I supposed to do with a bunch of kale? Like, I have no idea what to do with it. And that’s where a good cookbook comes in. Right.

Speaker #0
And that’s the answer. It’s so easy. Soup, soup and more soup. And soup is a thing we as Americans don’t eat enough of, don’t make it often enough. And it’s freezable, you know, it’s reheatable. It can sit in that fridge for a week and you can eat it and you can throw pasta in it one night. You can throw garbanzo beans in it the next night with some feta. And the next night you can make it a tortilla soup. And in that soup, you can take all of the stuff in the back of your crisper, the kale that’s kind of gone and the spinach that’s not so great. I put it in the soup. Nobody will know that it didn’t look pretty. It’s still good food. It’s fine. As long as it’s not rotten. You know, it’s just tired. There’s a recipe for red pepper soup in the book. There’s one that’s called genius soup, which is truly genius. And it’s so simple and it’s got all of your leftover vegetables in it. And there’s mushroom soup. People don’t appreciate how nutritious mushrooms are.

Speaker #1
Very nutritious. Yeah.

Speaker #0
Food. And mushroom soup has like four ingredients in it.

Speaker #1
Well, there’s no bad vegetable, right? I mean, we want to like try to include all the vegetables, but definitely dark leafy greens for sure. But soup is such a fantastic way, I agree with you, to get in a lot of vegetables. It’s freezable. It’s versatile. Really, I emphasize the same to my clients.

Speaker #0
And you feel like you’ve really eaten something, you know? It’s a way to get full in a pleasant way.

Speaker #1
I know in your book, you’ve got lots of shopping tips, specific ingredients, you know, to add into your kitchen, how to set up your kitchen, the right equipment, all of these things matter. You know, if you’re not set up properly, and it doesn’t have to be complicated, right? It doesn’t have to be tons and tons of, you know, fancy, weird equipment. It just has to have, you have to have some basics and know how.

Speaker #0
And it’s thrift store aficionado. You know, there’s very little that you can’t find in a good thrift store. set up a great kitchen.

Speaker #1
Yeah, absolutely. So I am really excited to try some of the recipes in here. The book is beautiful to even look at, and it’s a really nice addition to my cookbook collection. Is there any other, just as, you know, a final, like final thoughts, any like grandma wisdom that you want to impart? Because I know you’ve been, you know, you’ve been doing this for a long time. And I know that you’re, you said your kids kind of pushed you into finally finishing the book and, and any takeaways, you know, just from all of your years of experience and, and, and dealing with diabetes and eating healthy. And,

Speaker #0
well, I think the proof is in the pudding. I’m 77. And I’m still working out three times a week and, you know, hiking and I can carry a grandkid and I can scrub a floor if it comes to that and deal with the big dog that you see in the background. The bad news is I’m going to be around, I think, for quite a while to annoy, continue to annoy everyone in my family. But that’s that’s what I want for everybody. If you’re going to be. in your late 70s, in your 80s, in your 90s, have fun, right? Be in good enough shape that you can enjoy the whole process. Because we don’t want anyone having, I mean, there are a lot of things that happen that we can’t prevent. But a lot, most chronic disease is preventable and reversible. So it’s a decision that you make. I was fortunate that I could make that decision. early in my life. But whenever you’re making it, be conscious that you are choosing health.

Speaker #1
Right.

Speaker #0
Advice. By putting sugar, you are choosing health.

Speaker #1
Yes. Very good advice. Thank you for that wisdom. Where can people find your book?

Speaker #0
It’s on Amazon. Unfortunately, the hardcover has become very expensive because of… you’ve seen the book and it’s a lot of photographs and so on and Amazon raised the price, but you can, you can buy the, the paperback reasonably on Amazon. And then also there’s a downloadable ebook, which is the offensive option, which is a way a lot of people like to see their recipes now. Anyway, if that works for you, I recommend that, but yeah, Amazon and please go to my website and sign up for It’s lynnbowman.com, L-Y-N-N-E-B-O-W-M-A-N.com and sign up for Lynn’s list because then I send you my latest, most fabulous, just off the presses recipes. The recent one that I want everyone to try is orange snack cake made from a whole orange, including the peel. It’s fantastic.

Speaker #1
That’s delicious.

Speaker #0
It’s so easy and super nutritious. So things like that, when I’ve… discover them or create them, I like to share with everybody through Lynn’s list. So please sign up. I’m on YouTube and Instagram and all of that.

Speaker #1
I will put all of those links in the show notes so people can definitely access them. Well, Lynn, thank you so much. This has been a really fantastic conversation. And I know people are going to be really excited to get your book. Lots of really interesting, healthy recipes.

Speaker #0
I love it when people send me messages on my websites and I answer them all. So thank you. Okay,

Speaker #1
great. Good to know. Thank you very much. Thank you. 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.