Plan Simple with Mia Moran

On this episode of the Plan Simple Meals Podcast, I’m really excited to talk with Desha Peacock a lifestyle design coach who helps multi-passionate entrepreneurs who seek freedom, prosperity, travel, beauty and meaning create their sweet spot style. She works from her home in Vermont and is the mom to a 10-year-old.

While Desha lives in Vermont, she knows that Vermont winters are not good for her mental health. She knew she desired warmer, sunnier winters—and she made it happen. We discuss how she uses visioning to manifest what she needs. (Not just those warm winters, but a cute and ridiculously affordable summer office space too.)

So we talk vision, but we also get into some of the real logistics—how do you manage your schedule? What do you do with your kids when you need to run a retreat? How do you pull off professional when your family (or the dog) keeps interrupting?

We talk about:

• The power of writing things down, whether it’s appointments in your calendar, goals or dreams
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• The idea of balance as a bigger picture strategy rather than something to strive for minute to minute within our day
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• Using vision books to manifest what we want—and as a gratitude book
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• Our favorite home systems and hacks to save time and avoid fights
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• The importance of having your own sacred space in your home the nobody messes with
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• How to declutter our homes—and our lives—by upgrading, whether it’s new things or more earning
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Desha Peacock is an author, speaker, retreat leader and lifestyle design coach. She’s helped hundreds of people find their “Sweet Spot”— a self-defined place of success and beauty. Her first book Create the Style you Crave on a Budget you can Afford, was listed in the Huff post as “the book to give your girlfriend” and sold out in less than 20 days. It is now in it’s second printing.

LINKS

• Desha’s website: sweetspotstyle.com
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• Connect with her on Instagram @deshapeacock
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Doable Changes from this episode:

• WRITE DOWN GOALS & DREAMS. Is there a change you want to make in your life? Write it down. Whether it’s a goal to lose some weight or a dream to travel more, writing it down—as if it is already real—helps.
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• CLEAR YOUR HEAD. Writing things down also helps solidify even mundane things like when an appointment is or what’s for dinner. When you put things like these, or your latest great idea on paper, you clear your head and make room for other things.
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• UPGRADE TO MAKE SPACE. Work with the idea that for something to come in, something else needs to go out. If something is worn or not your style anymore or just doesn’t get used, trash it, donate it, or sell it to make room for things that you will use. (And if you are weighed down with stuff, start by simply making space before bringing anything new in.)
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REALLY getting healthy as a family can be a big lifestyle change. But no matter how insurmountable it may feel, focusing on one doable change at a time can help you

take small steps toward your big goal.

A healthy lifestyle is really made of lots of little things that when repeated regularly and added together over...

It's not our job to get our kids to eat. It's our job to supply them with the food at regular times. But from there, they are certainly the best judges of their own appetite 

– Jennifer House

On this episode of the Plan Simple Meals Podcast, I’m really excited to talk with Jennifer House, a mom of three and a registered dietitian, who has a private practice helping moms nourish their families with confidence.

Jennifer works a lot with moms around first foods and early feeding. She follows World Health Organization, American Academy of Pediatrics, Dietitians of Canada recommendations to wait until about 6 months to start solids.

We talk about baby-led weaning, skipping the purees and feeding babies what you eat when they are ready. This makes life easier for parents and allows babies to control how much they want to eat. And when you are feeding your baby what you eat, it can help make meals healthier for everybody since we often want to feed our babies healthy foods.

But we don’t just talk about babies, we talk about setting kids up for good eating habits as they grow.

We talk about:

• teaching kids to listen to their own bodies regarding how much to eat (and how hard it is for parents to let go and let how much they eat vary from day to day)
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• how behavior can be an indicator of food allergies or sensitivities
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• ideas for what to feed babies: eggs, chili (rinsed to reduce spiciness), meat from a slow cooker, egg or chicken or cucumber from salad . . .
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• how less parental pressure and more kid control can actually help with picky eaters
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• the ways we influence our kids around food through our own behavior whether it is what we eat or how we talk about food or our bodies
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LINKS

• FirstStepNutrition.com
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• Solid Steps to Babyled Weaning Facebook group
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• The Parents' Guide to Baby-Led Weaning
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• The Importance of Family Dinners
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• White Bean Cake from The Spunky Coconut
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Doable Changes from this episode:

• MAKE A NO YUCK RULE. Practice not saying “Yuck” or complaining about part of a meal they don’t like. Teach your kids to say “No thank you” or simply leave what they don’t like. For your part, resist the urge to make them eat the food they leave to the side.
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• SERVE A FAMILY MEAL. Instead of catering to picky eaters, make a family meal that reflects the way you want your family to eat. You can make adaptations, like rinsing a spicy chili for babies or adding hot sauce for mom, but serve everyone the same food.
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• GET YOUR KIDS INVOLVED IN GROWING FOOD. This can be a windowsill box of herbs or some lettuce in the backyard. Kids get intrigued with seeing things grow and getting to pick and...

We can feel sick, and gradually we feel better. We kind of forget how sick we felt. So, we don’t connect what we’re eating to how we felt. – Maria Quintana-Pilling

On this episode of the Plan Simple Meals Podcast, I’m really excited to talk with Maria Quintana-Pilling, Functional Nutrition and Lifestyle Practitioner. She’s a health coach who teaches live and online cooking classes, and she knows a lot about food, so this is going to be a fun conversation!

Health and how we feel in our bodies is a wake up call to a lot of my guests. That was my story as well. Maria started to dabble in nutrition after being diagnosed with fibroids, and after surgery to remove fibroids, she got really serious about it. She found that the changes she made were more nuanced than some people report, but still profound.

We dive into going gluten-free and dairy-free, including why you might want to try it and how to approach it. We look at the difference between gluten-free and grain-free and why to try one over the other.

We talk about:

• Things you might not have considered when you think about gluten-free (condiments, alcohol, makeup?)
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• How different foods work for different people, how what works for us may change at different stages of our lives, and the kinds of clues your body gives you about foods that may not work for you
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• Why soaking or sprouting grains is important
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• Using pesto and quinoa or rice bowl for more balanced meals
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• Ways of balancing protein, fats and carbs that don’t look like a traditional plate
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• Why detoxes are helpful
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BIO

Maria Quintana-Pilling is a certified functional nutritionist and lifestyle practitioner, certified nutrition consultant and natural chef, specializing in digestive and women’s health issues. She received nutrition training from Bauman College in Berkeley, CA, the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia, AZ, and Holistic Nutrition Lab Full Body Systems. She runs short detoxes and in-person and online cooking classes. She’s is the mom to a 7-year-old son.

LINKS

Contact Maria

Maria’s Urban Spice Nutrition website with summer detox & quinoa bowl recipe

Mia’s Go to Rice bowls

Doable Changes from this episode:

• TRY QUINOA BOWLS. I’ve talked about how I use rice bowls as an easy, adaptable meal, and I love Maria’s suggestion of a quinoa version. Find links to both above. Grain bowls are very adaptable—you can use different grains, proteins, veggies and seasonings. And if you put the different components in separate bowls, it’s easy to adapt for different nutrition needs and tastes. 
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• UPGRADE YOUR SNACKS. Remember that we need a balance of proteins, fats, and carbs. Choose whole food snacks with an aim to include all three. One way to do this is to add some nut butter to a fruit snack.
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• DO A 5-DAY DETOX. A detox gives your liver a break from processed food and refined sugars and other things like caffeine and alcohol, allowing it to do its job better. The first couple of days can be really hard, so it can be usefu l to have the support of a group, but people usually start feeling better around day 3. If you aren’t...

Do your family dinners count?

I was 33 and I had five major dreams attained. Handsome husband, check. Three beautiful kids, check. A design company of my own, check. Home owner, check. A white picket fence, check.

These were dreams embedded deep in my soul, since the days of lemonade stands and doll play, and 90210 episodes.

But all the sudden they felt not enough.

My dreams were changing.

I was struggling in my role of mom.

I was exhausted.

I did not know how to cook, and I was being tested by a long list of home items that simply did not exist before kids.

My new dreams included a full night’s sleep, 10 minutes to take a shower without being interrupted, a day away (anywhere) from my family, I'm kidding, a little, but really, what I most wanted was a personal chef..., who would feed all of us and wash the dishes. But somehow those dreams felt wrong. I was a mom, and moms happily make dinner.

The thing I have not mentioned is I gained 85 pounds in my first pregnancy and did not lose it.

One day at my office, at about 3pm. I remember looking up at a stack of Starbucks cups — maybe five — that had collected over the course of the day. I remember thinking I have to get home soon to the kids. I remember wondering what they should have for dinner. I remember feeling exhausted and wondering how that was possible after all that coffee.

I remember knowing that something had to change.

So that day, staring at the coffee cups, I decided to tackle the one thing that felt tangible, my weight.

And the next day — with a little help from a coach — I changed my food.

I had been on a few diets in my life, but this one was different.

I was eating real food.

I tell people the weight melted off. but I am not sure that it was that it happened so fast or it just did not matter.

Within days, I was off 3 medicines that I took daily, and my energy was off the charts (with no coffee!)

I understood for the first time in my life that what I ate was attached to how I feel.

How could I not have known this?

I had added in foods that I had not known existed 2 weeks prior, or if I did, I would have definitely not known what to do with them - kale, collards, cacoa, nori, saurerkraut. .

I needed to get my oxygen mask on first, and once it was securely on, I turned my eyes and heart to my 4-year old daughter who was not thriving.

She did not pay attention in school, she had a hard time sleeping, and she was covered in eczema. And nothing that doctors were prescribing was working — from therapy or cream.

Luckily, I was able to turn to food. One week after no dairy and no gluten, we had a different child. She was rash free, and her teacher felt she had a new child in the classroom.

Meanwhile, I had dove into the world of food. I did this by talking to every health “guru” who would take my call. I learned so much about food and ingredients from this group, but the thing that stuck out to me most was that lots of their kids rebelled and left the house to eat crap.

And this is when I realized my work as a mom was one part food and one part parenting. My goal became learning how to raise kids who would someday become healthy adults.

And to be clear, by healthy I mean mean using all the tools that are in our control and come from the natural world  to avoid sickness and brain fog  — food, sleep, water, exercise to name a few.

We almost always look at what we need to eliminate when we think of getting healthy, whether it’s our health, our kids health or our family’s health, but it is...