Roses are red, Violets are blue.

Happy Valentine's Day dear reader, yes, that’s you! 

It’s a day to share your love with others. 

Start with your friends and family; your sisters and brothers. 

But don’t forget about loving yourself first. 

Love your curves, your flaws and the parts you think are the worst. 

If loving yourself doesn’t feel quite right; 

Try accepting yourself today and start step into your light. 

Forget the lure of Intermittent Fasting and Noom. 

You don’t need to change your body to live a life in full bloom. 

Find pleasure and joy in the foods that you eat. 

Find ways to calm your nervous system and do those on repeat. 

Self care isn’t selfish, try a few deep breaths a day. 

Your life is a gift, don’t let time slip away. 

It’s not time for a new plan that ignores your desires and cares. 

Don’t spend your life wishing and hoping and...

As a brand new mom it seemed impossible to find time to shower during the day let alone do anything "productive". I had no idea what was going on in the world because what was happening inside the four walls of our house was all consuming. 

At a certain point in time, I realized that I wanted to consume some sort of worldly knowledge in addition to being able to recite every baby board book by heart. Enter, The Skimm. A daily email that covers daily news in a short, sweet, digestible format. Thank you, news nerds, I can now hold a conversation about crypto and inflation in addition to being able to sing "Let It Go" or is it "How Far I'll Go"? 

As my go to news source for nearly a decade, I was thrilled to see that they've been highlighting topics like fatphobia which they state as a "public health problem". They even created a guide that covers topics like fat stigma, body positivity, think privilege, BMI and diet culture. Cue the confetti! It's...

Our boys are obsessed with numbers. 

Digital clocks, digital thermostats and phones don't stand a chance against their number hungry brains. 

They've taken their ability to read numbers competition to nutrition labels, too. 

"How much is your cereal?" one child will shout. 
"150!" gloats another child. 
"Oh, man, that's a LOT....yesssssss!" brags another. 

They go from cereal box labels, to bread, to granola bars, to gold fish packets to salad dressing. Each boy boasting the caloric contents to their brother and, of course, the higher the number the better. 

"Mom, what is a calorie anyways?" asked one of the boys. 

"Well, it's a measure that tells you how much energy a particular serving of food will give you. If you eat something with not very many calories and you're really hungry, you're probably going to be hungry again pretty quickly" I explained. 

"Oh, that's weird" he proclaimed as he ran off to build another tower in the living...

I hate it when people try to sell me on something when they’re really using a thin veil of lies to cover the real truth. Like when you get those calls about the warranty on your car. 

“I’m calling you about very important information regarding your car’s extended warranty” says robo-call in her monotonous voice. 

Except robo-call isn’t selling me a warranty. Oh no, she wants to pocket thousands so she can take her cash winnings to Vegas or go buy some Bitcoin or an NFT.

You know who else is deceiving you with their "product"? Every so-called weight loss expert out there.

Here's an example straight from a fellow life coach: "we will be learning how to embrace and love our bodies. To eat in a way that fuels our bodies because we love them. To reward our bodies for all the hard work they do with the kind of care our bodies crave". 

Oh, that’s a good one. Did you see what she did there? She wrapped her diet program promising...

Our son burst in the car from school with an exciting parent assignment. He was to construct a vehicle with homemade ingredients that would travel twelve feet via balloon power. An instruction sheet, one balloon, two thin wooden sticks and one plastic straw was included in the “starter” kit.

With two days left until the due date we did what every good parent would do…..we got to work googled. 

From what we found, this vehicle assembly looked easy enough thanks to a few gatorade bottles and caps we had leftover from a marathon basketball Saturday. 

Guess what, it wasn’t as easy as it looked. Needless to say my son was getting extremely mad. 

“Ok, buddy. Instead of getting upset, let’s just get curious. What part is working? What’s not working? What could we change? Did your teacher give you any ideas?” I questioned. 

He paused. Silence. He walked away. An hour later…..

“Dad, let’s try another plan...

I've always been slightly obsessed with flowers. 

For as long as I can remember, my dad could recognize a flower on any walk, hike or trip we took. I was amazed and intrigued by his ability to identify just about anything and was enthralled with every flower shape and color we came across. 

All the tables at our wedding were named after flowers. 

I love fresh flowers (PPL*) in the house thanks to Trader Joe's. 

I even took a few flower arranging classes and secretly fantasized about owning my own flower business. 

So when my mentor and teacher, Isabel Foxen Duke, mentioned a flower analogy, I leaned in. 

She said that her friend and fellow anti-diet activist, Virgie Tovar, likened (I'm paraphrasing here) various body sizes to all the different flowers in a field. There doesn't have to be only one, most beautiful flower. A field has many different types of flowers all requiring different amounts of sunlight, water and...

I grabbed my paper plate filled with crackers, cheese and apple slices and found my spot on the rainbow rug next to my bestie, Debbie. We proudly wore our brown sashes filled with crafty patches commemorating all our Brownie triumphs. Our meetings always started with that catchy tune, the Brownie Smile Song. 

"I've got something in my pocket that belongs across my face. I keep it very close at hand in a most convenient place. I'm sure you couldn't guess it if you guessed a long, long while. So I'll take it out and put it on, it's a Great Big Brownie Smile!" 

I thought back to this song when my daughter said she was going to put a candy cane in her pocket today. I asked her why and she said she didn't want to go to school but if she had a candy cane to munch on, that would make her happy. 

I said, "Yes, you absolutely should put that candy cane in your pocket. Great idea!"

Food gets such a bad wrap for bringing on any feeling other than satisfying basic...

Standing on tip toes to make sure Alexa could hear him, my son shouted, "Alexa! Please play "Stretchy Pants"! 

The girls, my mom and I laughed as we tossed together the final ingredients for our pumpkin bake. We all laughed and sang along with Carrie Underwood. 

Listen here, but you'll get the idea with this verse:

Just when I thought my days of belting out “Let It Go” from Disney’s Frozen were long gone, our one year old has fallen prey to this cult classic. Nearly everyone you know has at least part of, if not all of, this song memorized. Just in case you need a refresher….

Let it go, let it go
Can’t hold it back anymore
Let it go, let it go
Turn away and slam the door
I don’t care
What they’re going to say

Aaaaaand we’re back to 2013 just like that. It’s fitting to sing this song around this time of year and all year, really. Mind Body Monday's anti-diet journey in a nutshell is all about Letting. It. Go.
Letting go of society’s unrealistic ideals of beauty and thinness.
Letting go of trying to control your body size (we’re animals, after all).
Letting go of worrying about what other people think about your choices around food and body.
Letting go of trying to control your food. 

When you’ve been on this journey for a...

Ever since I can remember, I've been plagued with terrible motion sickness. Just like your favorite holiday movie title, I've been sick on Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Don't forget about boats. Forcing me to sit on a boat in the waves ranks high on my top nightmares list. 

Recently, my motion sickness has been EXTRA bad. Like run-out-of-my-barf-bags tucked-in-the-fetal-position-on-the-airplane-bad. As you can imagine, this isn't a very feasible scenario while trying to manage six kids. While I've dealt with this situation my whole life, I felt like I had crossed the line of "normal" and needed to find out what *might* be wrong with me. 

My doctor recommended a trip to an ENT. I also made an appointment with a neurologist. It felt good to be doing "something" towards solving this problem just having the appointments booked. 

I walked into the ENT with high hopes that she'd have the answer. ANY answer. 

After a quick conversation...