A Busy Mom’s Guide to Healthy Eating

Rai Moorhead is a a Master Certified Health Coach with over 15 years of professional and personal experience with health, nutrition and fitness. She specializes in helping women reframe negative thought patterns about eating and exercise into positive affirmations. She is passionate about helping women see that true beauty is beyond the scale and the mirror.

In this episode, we cover all the tips and tricks to support busy moms and their family’s health! Download here or find wherever you get podcasts.

Continue reading “A Busy Mom’s Guide to Healthy Eating” →

Delicious Ways to Make Lower Carb and No Sugar Fit Your Lifestyle

Deana Karim is a mom on a mission. She is bringing delicious, low-carb, and sugar-free baking mixes to the world – and they are truly delicious! Deana is the founder of Good Dee’s, a company that makes mixes for brownies, cookies, bread, and so much more.

Before I hosted Deana on the podcast, I was able to sample some of the Good Dee’s baking mixes. I tried the brownies, cornless corn bread, and devil’s food cake mix. All were surprisingly delicious. They didn’t taste like they were low carb or sugar free. I can’t stand the taste of anything artificial, and I could tell that Good Dee’s baking mixes are only used with the highest quality.

In this episode, we cover how she started Good Dee’s, and why she feels having options to individualize your health goals is so important! Download to listen here, or find wherever you get podcasts.

Key Topics:

Story behind the baking mixes
How she came up with different seed flours to use (even watermelon seed flour)!
The various sweeteners used and the impact on her blood sugar
What makes Good Dee’s mixes stand apart from the others
Deana’s mission with her products
Deana’s favorite mixes and recipe suggestions
Tips to change things up and make it easy to fit your lifestyle!

Find all the Good Dee’s mixes or find a store near you that has them at the website here.

Get 20% off your first order from Ancient Nutrition at ancientnutrition.com – use the promo code sparking at checkout!

3 Things Moms and Kids Need Every Day

With everything going on in the world, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. I recently sat down with my friend, fellow health coach, Melissa McGaughey, and we discussed how to simplify our daily needs into just THREE things we are focusing on for our continued health.

But we didn’t just stop with us and our needs. We expanded the conversation to include the top three things that our kids need every day. You can listen to the entire episode here.

Key topics include:

Our favorite easy ways to include more whole foods into our daily diet
Why sunshine is the best way to “charge your battery”
The types of exercise we’re loving right now
Sleep hygiene and why it’s time to find some blue light blocking glasses
The importance of meditation and intentional breathing
Mindset and gratitude and the impact it makes on our whole body health

No matter where you are in your health journey, this episode will help inspire you to keep going and incorporate tiny habits to make a big impact.

For more on Melissa, head here.

Mom Life During a Pandemic: How We Can Best Support Our Kids’ Mental Health

I don’t have to remind anyone that the last few weeks of this pandemic and period of social distance have been unlike anything experienced or seen in our lifetime. My work schedule has been interrupted, my husband’s work schedule has been interrupted, our social life has disappeared, and my kids are completely thrown off. Field trips were cancelled, basketball season has been delayed, and school went online until…when? Do we even know? Dates spin in and out of my head, fighting for the return of normalcy. Is it April 9th? 21st? Or do we wait for the 30^th to resume prior activities? I can’t even keep track.

This kind of disruption and uncertainty is difficult for me. Change of all kind is hard for me, especially as one who fights to stay mentally stable. I get the opportunity to verbalize that, share about it with my friends (via phone or text only, of course), and have long discussions with my husband.

My kids, however, don’t know how to express their fear or anxiety as well. For them, it comes out in misbehavior, aggression, moodiness, hyperactivity, tearfulness, or even closed off apathy. That is developmentally understandable. As their prefrontal cortexes are still developing, it is difficult for them to access emotions or positive decision-making when they are in fight or flight mode. A stressful trigger, like being told they can no longer see their friends or go to school, is going to take a toll on their bodies. Stress hormones get ramped up, contributing to more fear and anxiety that is difficult to process. Chronic stress can also affect the immune system and its function.

This is true for adults as well. Even though we have the luxury of developed brains, it is still difficult to access our frontal lobe and respond appropriately to hardship when we are faced with extreme stressors.

So what is the solution?

It starts with us.

Continue reading “Mom Life During a Pandemic: How We Can Best Support Our Kids’ Mental Health” →

Moms, You Don’t Need to Get Your Body Back

Dear New Mom in the Age of Internet Perfection,

Recently, my eyes have been opened to the onslaught of messages on social media telling YOU how to get your body back.

I get it. I birthed and nursed three children. My body changed drastically with each one. I lost muscle tone. I retained a layer of nursing-fluff every time, even though I kept thinking breastfeeding was going to be the calorie-burner everyone says it is (which further proves that the calorie in/calorie out idea is completely useless… but I digress).

Even with my last pregnancy, which was by far the healthiest one due to the superior multivitamin, probiotic and other supplements I was on, my shape changed and, for lack of a better word, I was just fluffier than usual.

So I understand the urge to want to hurry and get “back” as soon as possible.

However, I want to pose another way of looking at it.

Your body is amazing. You grew an entire human, and you are now continuing to grow this human. It takes a LOT of emotional and physical energy. You are not sleeping through the night. When you do sleep, it is probably not quality sleep. Your hormones are off, and I’m not talking estrogen and progesterone and all that stuff – your HUNGER hormones are thrown off from your sleep being thrown off. So you may be hungrier than usual throughout the day, a bottomless pit of cravings (and if you’re nursing, that factors in as well).

So this is what I want you to hear:

You don’t need any added pressures. Nurture yourself so you can best handle the changes happening around you, NOT to live up to anyone else’s expectations for what you need to look like or do.

Continue reading “Moms, You Don’t Need to Get Your Body Back” →

Holding On To My Teen

Currently, there are one gazillion articles floating through cyberspace about holding your babies longer because “time passes so quickly and before you know it they’ll be grown.” And yes, those of us with littles need to be reminded of that ON THE DAILY. It is physically exhausting chasing little kids and constantly being puked on, pooped on, peed on. I have holes in my walls and stains in my carpet as battle scars from my two active little boys. I never go to the bathroom alone, and taking a shower alone (or at least without someone screaming at me) is a luxury as well.

As moms of littles, our mommy guilt usually involves thoughts of “Would I give them more quality time if I was working away from them?” or the opposite – “Am I missing out on too much because I work away from them?” Or maybe even the occasional, “Am I screwing them for life up by letting them have candy for breakfast because I don’t want to hear another tantrum?”

But there is something missing in this ongoing conversation topic. When the days of toddler tantrums are over, the years of elementary school performances and participation trophies are long gone, what is left? Does time speed up now that we’re done with those long, difficult days?

I wish.

They tell us “the days are long but the years are few.” I disagree.

The battle scars of the toddler years are nothing compared to the battle scars of the teen years.

Continue reading “Holding On To My Teen” →

Wine Not?

The day started like any other. Kids woke up, ate breakfast, fought a bit, then we headed to the gym (free childcare!) to get some energy out. It’s 500 degrees outside right now and I needed me time. I came home with a recharged battery, but that’s when it all hit the fan.

The soon-to-be-freshman talked back one too many times, so I took away her EVERYTHING. No phone, no technology, no (gasp) music. The 4 year old and 21 month old decided that was a great time to start terrorizing each other. One thing after another. All. Day. Long.

brotherly chaos — My two littlest crazies

By the afternoon, I was done. My yoga breaths failed me, and my emotional capability to deal with ANY MORE nonsense plummeted. I needed a way to cope, to self-soothe. I could raid my pantry, I could tune everyone out and hop on my phone to scroll other people’s lives that looked so much more fulfilling, or… I could open up some wine. Continue reading “Wine Not?” →

My Skinny Shorts Lie

Confession: my skinny shorts don’t make me feel skinny.

Ten years ago, I went on Weight Watchers and lost 20 pounds. I met the man of my dreams in these red shorts from the Gap, feeling more confident than I had in a long time. Maybe ever. I sported a nice tan from spending hours each day at my parents’ pool, and I wore bangs for the first time since childhood, channeling my inner Katy Perry, minus the girl-kissing. The physical attraction I felt for him on that first meeting was mutual. He told me later that he noticed my toned and tanned legs before anything else.

2008, post Weight Watchers, down 20 pounds

2018, the outfit my husband met me in

One decade and two babies later, the shorts still fit, as does the dress I wore on our first date. Though I’m not as toned or tanned, I should feel as confident in them now as I did then, right?

Wrong.

Continue reading “My Skinny Shorts Lie” →