Episodes

Today Jennifer sits down with her life coach, Helen McLaughlin, to talk about how you can reframe situations by recognizing your thoughts and feelings for what they are. They unwind the between peace and happiness, discuss the merits of assigning greater meaning to your positive thoughts, and delve into how the brain creates the thought patterns that can have so much control over us.

Helen and Jennifer tackle hard questions like: How can we use our thoughts and not focus on them too much? How do you get out of negative cycles of thinking? What advice do you have for people who are using food or alcohol to deal with uncomfortable feelings? 

In this episode Jennifer talks with fellow dietitian Sarah Krieger about how she discovered hypnosis and how she integrates it into her nutrition practice. In her current practice, the majority of her clients are seeing her for hypnosis, but are being treated for some type of nutrition issue in the background. Most clients come to her looking for help with weight loss, but she has also used hypnosis to change people’s behaviors around smoking, phobias, sleep, and sports performance. 

If there is something that you want to change about yourself or your life, hypnosis can help you do that. From weight loss to worrying about politics to dealing with difficult family members around the holidays, hypnosis can help you to change your thoughts, habits, and reactions. 

A couple of weeks ago, Jennifer spent a weekend in Nashville at a 3 day music fest – with the goal of letting loose and just having fun.  This past alcohol-free year, has been an exercising in re-discovering what fun means and she is here for it! 

Research shows that play is good for physical and mental health and helps adults to develop better coping mechanisms and manage stress better. 

In this episode, Jennifer talks about her own journey of building playful habits and gives you tons of resources that you can use to delve deeper into this topic and start adding more play into your day.

Nine months into her sober living journey, Jennifer reflects on alcohol-free firsts and some awkward moments. Surviving summer, concerts, and canoeing with 3 rowdy boys, she feels like she’s hit her stride and is feeling more and more confident in her ability to navigate without the help of alcohol.

Jennifer also share her favorite non-alcoholic beers and some tips for handling social situations that typically revolve around drinking. 

When Jennifer’s mastermind group asked her to choose her favorite productivity book to share on their most recent retreat, choosing Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman was a no-brainer.

With ideas like doing nothing, finding novelty in the mundane, and choosing your failures in advance, this isn’t your average productivity resource. Burkeman reminds us that we only have, give or take, 4000 weeks to spend so we better find the time to enjoy it. 

In this series wrap-up, Jennifer provides a raw and emotional life update. As she continues to work through her foot injury, Jennifer talks through her thoughts on the Boston Marathon, her recovery, and what’s up next.  

Accepting this change in her relationship to running while focusing more on wholistic self care has brought up thoughts and feelings that have been hard to move on from. In the second part of this episode, Jennifer talks about rumination and how to get unstuck from thoughts that may be getting in the way of enjoying the experience of your life. 

Jennifer and her good friends and fellow sports dietitians get together to talk about how athletes (and other active people) can practice self care to optimize performance and to promote overall health.

Jennifer, Sarah, and Kelly talk about how athletes can maintain healthy bodies and minds when it comes to their training and fueling. They talk about the biggest problems they see in their own practices, their best advice for optimizing training (pssst…all of them said rest), and this group of active moms commiserate about meal planning for their families. 

In this episode, Jennifer calls in the Omega-3 experts to answer your questions, clear up confusion, and give you their favorite sources of this essential fatty acid. This one digs deep into nutrition, but taking care of your health and meeting your body’s needs is one of the deepest, truest forms of self care.

Omega-3 experts from GOED Omega-3 join Jennifer in this conversation and force her to put her dietitian hat on as they delve into the best Omega-3 sources (think SMASH! Salmon, Mackerel, Anchovies, Sardines, Herring) and walk you through how much and what you should eat for optimal health.

If you have ever wondered what Omega-3s are, how much to eat if you’re pregnant, if the mercury in fish is bad for you, if you should take supplements, or what DHA and EPA even mean, download this episode right now. You’re about to get some knowledge.

Wellness culture can make us question if we’re using the right cosmetics, eating the right foods, exercising the right amount…the list goes on and on.  In this episode, Jen and guest, JC Lippold, unpack the root causes of shame in the wellness industry.

JC is a teacher of movement and mindset, a community engager and social movement trailblazer, a theatre director, and a full-time leadership and change coach and consultant. He believes that everyone is enough, is doing enough, and is trying enough and is passionate about spreading that message. 

From walking through the shame cycle to exploring what being enough really means, this conversation will shift your perspective on the messaging coming from wellness professionals, the media, and even your friends and family. 

Over the past couple of months, Jennifer has been exploring her relationship with alcohol and drinking. Now, after 2 months without a drink, she fills us in on her history with alcohol from high school to college to having her kids, and talks about the challenges of not drinking in a culture built around alcohol.

So many of the books and podcasts out there talk about really extreme situations, but there are a lot of people that want to change their relationship with alcohol but don’t have what society would define as a “drinking problem.”

Jennifer and Dr. Kreikemeier having been collaborating on the Got Good Gut Health? program and on this episode they talk about everything from Dr. K’s hot yoga to the pros and cons of at-home microbiome testing.

Dr. Kreikemeier shares his own self care journey navigating his medical career through the pandemic, how he found a better and healthier work life balance, and how he became a disruptor in the medical community. 

And on top of that, we got him to give away his top tips for maintaining good integrity of the gut, so you should probably listen just for that!

Research has shown that journaling has positive effects on sleep, stress, and overall happiness. You don’t need to journal every day to see the benefits – you only have to journal when you feel like it. Isn’t that an easy form of self care?

Jennifer talks about different forms of journaling and how even writing out a task list can be a form of journaling. As long as what you’re writing is helping you to organize or work through the thoughts in your head, it’s journaling. 

Do you write things down? Do you keep a journal? I’d love to hear about your journaling practices. 

This episode was inspired by Mr. Rogers and his uncanny ability to give his undivided attention and listening ear to everyone he met. It makes you want to be a better person – a better listener. 

When you get down to it self care is about meeting your needs and when we serve others well, we also help meet our own needs. In this episode Jennifer explores what it means to be a good listener by an examination of bad listeners and shares some tips for parents trying to be good listeners for their kiddos. 

After a running injury sidelined her from her favorite sport and method of self care, Jennifer found myself in a comparison trap. At the same time, one of her clients was struggling not to compare himself to other runners while he was struggling to find time for training with a 5 week old baby at home. 

Jennifer decided to approach her comparison with curiosity and learned about herself in the process. In this episode she talks about the injury that led her down the comparison trap and how she used curiosity and acceptance to find her way out. 

Whether you are comparing your athletic achievements, work, parenting, relationships, or anything else, staying curious and giving yourself grace will help you to accept and move past these feelings. 

When you’re a baby you know how to take care of yourself and your body, and the Feldenkrais Method teaches self-referencing as a way of bringing you back to your internal guide.

In this episode, Jennifer talks to Sandy Weiss, a physical therapist and Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner, about how the Feldenkrais method can be used as self care. Whether you are looking for a deeper connection with yourself or trying to heal a stubborn injury, the Feldenkrais Method has something to offer. 

Sandy walks through a Feldenkrais lesson that you would learn in a class and can be done sitting. The only rule is that you have to keep it slow and easy.

Sometimes you have to change up your self-care routine. It could be because you got a new job, moved to a new house, or got an injury or illness that stops you from doing an activity that you once enjoyed and included as part of your self-care routine. Jennifer has always identified as a runner, but after getting an injury and having to take a long break from running, she is struggling to find a new self-care rhythm. 

Jennifer and therapist, Pattie Cashman, talk about how to identify the triggers that are creating obstacles to accepting feedback, looking at your family history to understand where your triggers come from, and what to do if you realize that you’re shutting down in the middle of getting feedback.

Welcome to the new season of the Love You More Podcast! I’m so happy to be back. 

Since we’re kicking this off during Thanksgiving week, we’re going to talk about Mindful Eating and how you can make eating a time for self-care. At a time of year when things can be stressful and there is delicious food all around you, there is no better time to talk about enjoying food while also honoring your body. 

In this episode, we talk about how to know if you’re hungry, how to enjoy your meals mindfully, and look at how mindful eating can be the ultimate form of loving yourself more.  

All season long, we’ve talked about self care practices that can help you to feel healthier, happier, and more fulfilled. We’ve talked about eating well, exercise, getting enough sleep, feeling our feelings, but we haven’t talked about how to stick with these practices in a meaningful way. 

In this episode Jennifer talks through questions, practices, and resources that will help you to turn your self care actions into long-term healthy habits. 

Planning meals, grocery shopping, and cooking nourishing meals for you and your family are deep level self care behaviors that can be especially challenging to fit into a busy schedule. The key is to figure out what works for you and allowing the process to change and grow over time. It may actually become something that you look forward to and cherish as self care time! 

Jennifer and Sara share tips and tricks for meal planning, including your family in the planning and cooking process, and how to overcome the most common barriers to getting to the store and getting healthy food on the table. 

For most parents, summertime is a big transition. The schedule is looser, kids are headed off in all directions, and there is an added pressure to enjoy everything and have fun. Plus, there’s worrying about the kids at sleepaway camp and the guilt that comes with not parenting perfectly. 

This episode is a quick one that explores ways that we can care for ourselves when life feels a little out of control. Jennifer gives some good ideas for continuing your deep self-care practice even when your schedule goes out the window. 

Shannon is an intuitive eating expert and somatic experiencing practitioner who works with her clients to help optimize the self-discovery and healing in the process of creating a new relationship with food and body. She’s also one of my best friends! 

In this episode we talk about how to deal with the guilt around self care, Shannon’s professional journey, and somatic experiencing techniques you can do today.

With her whole household down with the flu, Jennifer and her son are both struggling with hard feelings. In this episode, Jennifer uses Mark Nepo’s writings to explore how you can experience your feelings without labeling them as good or bad.

Accepting and experiencing your feelings is the highest form of self care and one that is so often overlooked. Whether your going through hard things right now, if you’re sick and quarantined, or if you’re feeling pretty good, this episode is definitely worth a listen.  

At a time when 2/3 of Americans want to change the relationship they have with their smartphone, there has never been a better time to evaluate the control your phone has over you. This episode outlines how you can start to change the way you use your phone with the goal of paying more attention and spending your time more intentionally. 

Jennifer is trying 10 techniques to change the way she uses her phone – join her to revamp the relationship you have with your smartphone. 

Were you taught self-compassion as a kid? I know I wasn’t. I was definitely taught to treat other people nicely, but no one ever talked to me about treating myself kindly. Self-compassion can make you healthier both mentally and physically, and generally makes people happier overall. 

In this episode we look at how we talk to ourselves and I’ll give you some well-researched ways to start cultivating a self-compassion practice.

Kelly is a sleep expert that walks us through how we can improve sleep from infancy into adulthood. She explains why we have trouble falling and staying asleep and gives us real world solutions to improving our sleep. 

At a time when 1/3 of Americans are getting less than 7 hours of sleep per night, people are scrolling social media in bed, and we seem to just be getting busier and busier, good sleep is needed now more than ever.  Are you getting your 8 hours??

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been taking a critical look at the role alcohol plays in my life, the role that it plays in my clients lives, and the role that it plays in society. 

Does drinking add to my enjoyment of life? Does it make me healthier? Does it make me a better mom? These are the questions that I’ve been asking myself. Join us to talk through answers to these questions and for ideas to start cutting down on your own alcohol consumption.

After reading Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, I found myself evaluating how I deal with stress and if I was doing everything I could to avoid burnout. Are you suffering from the 3 warning signs of burnout? Do you know how to deal with stress in a healthy and productive way?

We’ll talk through the signs of burnout and 5 easy changes you can make to help deal with stress, feel better, and avoid the negative long-term effects of stress and burnout.

An important component of self care is nourishing your body in ways that feel good, reduce disease, and provide your body with the nutrients it needs to function optimally. Incorporating more plants into your diet is the key to all of those. Whether you want to learn about the benefits of a plant-based diet, want to learn easy swaps you can use to get more fruit and vegetables in your meals, or are struggling to manage a diagnosis this episode is for you! 

Between the Great Pause, working from home, kids doing at home learning, sick family members, and constant up and down news cycles, COVID knocked a lot of us off of our normal schedules. This has left lingering affects on our nervous system that makes it harder for us to deal with stress.

This episode focuses on developing self care routines that help you to meet your needs daily without having to make constant decisions. We will talk through the importance of self care routines, why they work, how to set them up, practice them, and how to sit with the good once you have a routine in place.