Small Steps

In all times of our lives, joy can be a vital part of our health and healing. And it can also feel a bit hard to access, or maybe even feel for a lot of us. This episode talks about how we can start to notice, feel and then create more joy in our lives, as well as honoring the full spectrum of our emotions, not just the bad.

Small Steps in the Show:

• Check in with yourself on how your joy is
• Start noticing joy in your life
• What can it look like to you?
• Check in to see how and where you feel it
• Notice when you're in the joy and see if you can savor it just a little longer
• Consider ways you can create joy more in your day to day and try to make more space for joy
• Consider setting daily intentions to create more joy or opening the day with "How can I create more joy in my day today?"
• Record the joy in your day in whatever way works for you
• Extend yourself so much kindness and compassion as you work on this

Mentioned in the Show:

Buy my Enamel Pin

Small Steps #50 with Vanessa Checchio Lima

Dr. Tee Williams

Shirin Eskandani of Wholehearted Coaching

Small Steps #30 with Shirin Eskandani

Wholehearted Coaching the Podcast

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As we continue to move through and live in uncertain times, it can be helpful to check in with ourselves to see how we're doing and taking care of ourselves. This episode invites you to take some time to check in with you and create small steps that can be supportive for you during this time.

Small Steps in the Show:

• Set aside some time to think or journal on some or all of these questions
• Choose one or two small step answers from your questions and try then throughout the week or weeks
• Adjust them as needed as you try them out
• Consider doing this check in again in a few weeks
• Have so much kindness and compassion for yourself as you check in and make adjustments and move throughout this time

Mentioned in the Show:

Buy my Enamel Pin

Small Steps #25 How are You? A Self Care Check In

Small Steps #31 How Do You Feel? A Rest Check In

Small Steps #45 What Do You Need? A Busy Check In

National Suicide Prevention Hotline, US

Crisis Services Canada

Open Path Collective (lower cost therapy and teletherapy)

Inclusive Therapists (lower cost therapy and teletherapy)

BetterHelp (teletherapy)

Talkspace (teletherapy)

Small Steps #79 Taking Care of Yourself in Uncertain Times

Small Steps #80 Tips and Tricks for Working from Home

Small Steps #81 Ways to Lower Stress and Anxiety

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Dealing with and sitting with your stress and anxiety can be a lot in normal times, and in not as normal times it can feel even more difficult. This episode talks about how you acknowledge your stress and/or anxiety, ways to work with it and lower it, and how you can take steps in your day to day to make you a little more resilient.

Small Steps in the Show:

• Recognize that you're feeling stress and/or anxiety
• Identify where you're feeling stress and/or anxiety in your body
• Take a few deep belly breaths
• Try a few ways to soothe yourself
• Consider getting support from others
• Invest in ways in your day to day that help you take care of you
• Give yourself a lot of kindness and compassion as you move through your stress and/or anxiety

Mentioned in the Show:

Buy my Enamel Pin

National Suicide Prevention Hotline, US

Crisis Services Canada

Open Path Collective (lower cost therapy and teletherapy)

BetterHelp (teletherapy)

Talkspace (teletherapy)

Dr. Tee Williams

Brené Brown

Self Compassion by Kristen Neff

Small Steps #73: Ways to Drink More Water

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More people are working from home, which can sound great, and if you're new to it, feels way different than you imagine. In this episode, I share my work from home tips and tricks you can try to make working from home work for you, especially during these corona times. (There are additional considerations for noncorona times too!)

Small Steps in the Show:

• Check in and see which considerations could work for your life and working situation
• Try 1-2 small steps for a week
• See what works for you and what doesn't and adjust
• Give yourself a lot of kindness and compassion as you move through this time

Mentioned in the Show:

Buy my Enamel Pin

Small Steps #79: Taking Care of Yourself During Uncertain Times

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Edited by Eilise Bonebright

With the world being a bit upside down right now, it can be difficult to think about what to do and how to take care of yourself. This episode talks about the noise that's out there that could be in the way of you taking care of yourself and many ways you can take care of yourself and others during this time.

Small Steps in the Show:

• Check in with yourself and how you've been doing for the past few weeks
• Ask yourself what you need
• Consider trying a few of the ways to take care yourself (and if possible, others) for a week or so
• See how those ways feel and adjust
• Consider muting news and social media if you see more and more messages that don't align with you and what your body needs at this time
• Give yourself a lot of kindness and compassion as you move through this time

Mentioned in the Show:

Buy my Enamel Pin

Neghar Fonooni

National Suidice Prevention Hotline, US

Crisis Services Canada

Avatar the Last Airbender Show

Small Steps #62 with Jessie Mundell

Group workout classes on Zoom from Everybody Gym

Pregnancy and Postpartum workouts from Liz Winters and Jessie Mundell

Free Dumbbell Workouts from Steph Gaudreau

Free Fitness Classes with Vanessa Checchio (Bachata and Barbells)

Yoga and Sound Meditations from Yoga Bliss

IGTV on Eating Changes During Corona Times

Small Steps #76 with Naomi Katz

Small Steps #58 with Kayla Nedza

Zoom

Marco Polo App

Open Path Collective

BetterHelp

Talkspace

A List of Restaurant Relief Funds

Domestic Worker Aid Fund

More Relief and Recovery Funds

Reclamation Ventures Wellness Relief Fund (for wellness and fitness instructors and businesses)

Mia Mingus

Mutual Aid Hub

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Oftentimes what's described and accepted as "healthy" leaves out a lot of foods and dishes from most cultures. While we've been lead to believe that we have to leave our cultural foods behind to be healthy, there's a lot of talk about and look at how we have health AND our cultural foods and traditions. This week I talk with Krista Linares about how we can do both and reclaim our cultures.

About Krista Linares

Krista Linares is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist specializing in diabetes management and prevention and serving the Latino community. Krista is passionate about Latin foods and flavors and believes the emotions and community that can be found in food are just as important as the nutrients.

Her company, Nutrition con Sabor is driven to see Latinos better represented in the health and wellness world, and promote health equity for Latinos. Krista focuses on dispelling myths about Latin culture and cuisine and, most importantly, empowering Latinos to incorporate their traditional foods and ingredients into a balanced meal pattern for both emotional and physical nourishment. Krista holds a Master of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and currently works in private practice.

Small Steps in the Show:

• Find your local grocery store, international grocery store or small market that will have the ingredients from your culture and feel like home
• See how you can add a vegetable from your culture to your plate in any form (garnish, condiment or sauce, etc)
• Find a dish from your food memories in a restaurant or make that dish and see how that feels emotionally and in your body

Mentioned in the Show:

Buy my Enamel Pin

Balanced Latin Plate Freebie

Balanced Latin Plate Guide in English

Balanced Latin Plate Guide in Spanish

Raíces at the Table

Krista's Website

Follow Krista on Instagram | Facebook

Get the full show notes here!

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Interested in working with Aimee? Find out information here.

Edited by Eilise Bonebright

A lot of people are passionate about learning more about nutrition to help themselves, their families or their community. In this episode I share my experiences becoming a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, how the program has evolved and how you can make the program a little more manageable if you enroll.

Small Steps in the Show:

• Figure out what you want from a nutrition program
• Look into the program's websites as much as you can
• Contact the admission departments to see if they can connect you with an graduate to talk to
• Read as many graduate reviews that you can find
• See if how the programs runs works with your schedule
• Give yourself time to make a decision that works for you

Mentioned in the Show:

Buy my Enamel Pin

My Review of the Nutritional Therapy Program

Small Steps Podcast #3: One Size Doesn't Fit All

Nutritional Therapy Practitioner Course Overview (affiliate link)

Video Speed Controller Plug-In for Chrome

VLC Media Player

IIN vs NTP comparison from Autoimmune Wellness

Career Development Course

Apply for the NTP Program (affiliate link)

Enter my name, Aimée Suen when you sign up to tell them who sent you!

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As more people learn about diets and diet culture can be harmful, they're unsure of how to find what to do next. Intuitive eating is a great option and often gets misunderstood or misconstrued. In this week's episode my guest Naomi Katz, Intuitive Eating Lay Facilitator in Training, and I dive into the pillars of Intuitive eating to clear up common misconceptions and get into the nuance of it all.

About Naomi Katz

Naomi is a body image and self-trust coach in Asheville, North Carolina. She owns Happy Shapes Coaching, offering local and online programs designed to help women ditch diet culture and regain autonomy in how they see and treat their bodies. After starting her career as a personal trainer and nutrition coach, she realized that nobody gets comfortable in their skin by making changes on the outside.

Now she helps women build healthy relationships with themselves from the inside out. Her coaching focuses on shifting the attention off of appearance to better cultivate true self-acceptance, self-trust, and confidence. She's currently training to be an Intuitive Eating Lay Facilitator, so that she can help women apply these concepts to their relationships with food.

Small Steps in the Show:

• Consider reading the Intuitive Eating book and/or working through the Intuitive Eating Workbook
• Ditch or reduce your use of diet culture accessories (trackers, scales, macros, measuring tapes etc)
• Track other things that are meaningful (sleep, mood, hunger)
• Notice how you talk about other foods, movement and your body
• Notice how often you use the term "should" when you talk about foods, movement and your body
• Consider do some digging on where those shoulds come from
• Notice where diet culture and the diet culture mentality is popping up in your life

Mentioned in the Show:

Buy my Enamel Pin

Small Steps #17: What is Diet Culture?

Intuitive Eating

Jen Sinkler

Intuitive Eating Book

Intuitive Eating Workbook

Body Neutrality article by Steph Gaudreau

Small Steps #62 with Jessie Mundell

Naomi's Free 7 days to ditch diet culture email course

Naomi's Website

Follow Naomi on Instagram | Facebook

Get the full show notes here!

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Interested in working with Aimee? Find out information here.

Edited by Eilise Bonebright

With the internet, 24 hour news and what seems like a never ending amount of content, we are able to learn so many things about so many things. That can be great, but also confusing when viral, controversial or scary news comes out about disease, disease prevention, potentially harmful products and more. This week I share some important considerations you can use to figure out what you want to listen to or not.

Small Steps in the Show:

• Take a deep breath and check in with yourself, especially if you feel the fear and panic
• Consider doing a bit of digging to understand more about the context and bigger picture of the study, content, or product-related thing/suit
• Check in with yourself. How do you feel about it? Look into the consideration questions
• In your own time, decide on a stance to give yourself some ease and close the loop.
• Know that this decision isn't set in stone and could change as you grow and learn more
• Offer yourself as much kindness and compassion for yourself if this feels overwhelming or scary and you're unsure

Mentioned in the Show:

Buy my Enamel Pin

Article I wrote about this subject

AHA study about coconut oil

Thinx underwear article

Kristen G. Roberts of Trestle Law

Small Steps #21: The Power of Words around Food and Food Lists

The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz

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With the amount of busyness, neverending work or so much happening on our phones, it can be easy to forget to take the time we all need to connect with ourselves and the people we care about. In this episode I talk with Three Gems Tea, a tea company with the mission of helping you slow down to enjoy amazing tea with yourself and others in an approachable way. We talk about how they came to create Three Gems Tes, what gong fu tea is and how to connect with yourself.

About Three Gems Tea

Three Gems Tea helps you discover the magic of a shared tea break by bringing you loose leaf teas, thoughtfully designed teaware, and bite size portions of tea education. Their first collection includes a range of single origin, direct trade oolongs — from bright & grassy to dark & woodsy — and a reimagined gong fu tea set, hand painted by artisans in China's ceramics capital, Jingdezhen. They're making it easy to fold tea time into your daily rituals, as a delicious way to hit pause and connect with yourself and the people you care about.

Small Steps in the Show:

• Read a physical book or magazine that's not on a screen that's not related to your field or that's fiction-related.
• Cook creatively and intuitively for others or yourself
• Take breaks outside and be in nature
• Take a moment when you're out to connect with yourself
• Move your body in a fun or silly way (maybe a dance class)
• Have a tea ceremony with friends or family

Mentioned in the Show:

Buy my Enamel Pin

The Cosmos

Diana's Cookbook, Jia!

Three Gems Tea's Website

Buy Three Gems Tea

Follow Three Gems Tea on Instagram | Facebook

Get the full show notes here!

Follow Aimee on Instagram | Facebook | Pinterest

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Interested in working with Aimee? Find out information here.

Edited by Eilise Bonebright