Navigating Nourishment Podcast

Do you wish you had a Menopause Adventure Guide!? In this episode of Navigating Nourishment, we're busting a few menopause myths wide open. We share a new approach that might be worth investigating. Three reasons you'll want to listen: 1. Discover why menopause is NOT just about hot flashes - there's so much more happening that no one talks about 2. Learn how to work WITH your changing body instead of fighting against it, saving you years of frustration 3. An invitation to gain practical, actionable insights from women who have already navigated this journey and come out stronger on the other side Whether you're just starting perimenopause or deep in the midst of hormonal changes, this episode will give you hope, humor, and helpful strategies to reclaim your health and energy. Get ready to see menopause in a completely new light. Links we promise in this episode: Debbie's Menopause Adventure Guide book interview with an expert what menopause is Want to join the menopause group? Want to meet One-to-One?

What habits are tripping you up? What habits do you want to start? Let's start with One Habit Stronger. Welcome to Navigating Nourishment, where health coaches Wendy and Debbie break down their Five Foundations of Health into simple, achievable steps. In today's episode, we're diving deep into how small, consistent actions can transform your well-being. Whether you're feeling overwhelmed by health advice or looking for practical ways to improve your lifestyle, we'll show you that meaningful change doesn't have to be complicated. Join us as we share our personal commitments to nutrition, sleep, movement, mindset, and connection - proving that one small habit can be the start of something powerful. Wendy references CoolSonics app to reduce her hot-flashes. We highly recommend!!! If you want to learn about it more, we interviewed the founder: Energy Medicine via Audio Files with Geoff DePaula Part I

In this heart-centered episode of Navigating Nourishment, hosts Wendy and Debbie open up about the passion projects that fuel their own self-nourishment—and how they hope to inspire others to do the same. Wendy shares her soulful new path as a meditation teacher on Insight Timer, where she’s already published 12 beautiful guided meditations and is committed to sharing one each week throughout the year. Her series, Grounded With Wendy, is designed to bring moments of peace and clarity to anyone seeking calm in the chaos. These meditations are free. Debbie introduces her empowering book, How to Be Healthy: 30 Tiny Tweaks That Transform Your Wellness in Minutes a Day—a 90-page guide filled with simple, doable steps for feeling better without the overwhelm. She also gives a sneak peek of her next project, The Menopause Adventure Guide, a practical, uplifting resource for navigating menopause with grace and confidence (no medical jargon—just real-life support). Throughout the episode, they reflect on how powerful it is to share from the heart—and how much they appreciate your reviews and feedback to help their work reach those who need it most. Listen to Grounded With Wendy meditations here. Grab Debbie’s book How to Be Healthy here. Thank you for listing, rating and reviewing Wendy's meditations on Insight Timer. And thank you for purchasing and reviewing Debbie's book. NOTE: If you don't believe you are "good at meditating," we invite you to read this post.

Do you ever read an article or two and feel frozen and confused about the different advice on health? In this Navigating Nourishment podcast, Wendy and Debbie discuss the confusion and contradictions in health and wellness information, using two articles as examples. The first, from a USA Today syndicate, briefly mentioned the challenges of a vegan diet without providing adequate detail. The second, on menopause, misleadingly stated that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is dangerous, ignoring its benefits for women within 10 years of menopause. They emphasize the importance of individualized health advice, exploring different options, and consulting multiple healthcare providers. Wendy and Debbie encourage listeners to stay curious, seek expert opinions, and take small, consistent steps in their health journey. Some of the key take-aways when you are feeling frozen and confused. We cannot emphasize enough the importance of individualized health advice and the role of healthcare providers in guiding women through menopause. Ask multiple healthcare providers about HRT to get a well-rounded understanding. Talking about health concerns can help alleviate confusion and anxiety. Remember the importance of intuition and personal research in making health decisions. Related links that address frozen and confused topics like HRT and Vegan Eating: Podcast about HRT Menopause Menopause explained Veganism Discussed

Rituals can help us create a more intentional life. Intentional and meaningful rituals can reduce stress, improve well-being, and foster a greater sense of purpose. In this Navigating Nourishment podcast, we share examples of how clients have transformed mundane tasks into intentional practices, and encourage listeners to reflect on their own habits and consider ways to make them more meaningful. The key takeaway is that small, intentional changes to daily routines can have a significant positive impact on one's overall mindset and quality of life. In this Navigating Nourishment podcast, we reference this Harvard University study by Dr. Ellen J. Langer. You can hear more about it in this NPR report. What rituals can you create for a more intentional life? You might also like this blog about Understanding Habits. If you are looking to start a meditation ritual, Wendy has become a meditation teacher on the app Insight Timer. You can listen to Grounded with Wendy here.

Setting a list of 25 Intentions for 2025 vs a list of resolutions can be a breath of fresh air. Especially if you have ever set a list of resolutions for the new year and found it to be full of unrealistic expectations. Too much pressure and too 'pie-in-sky ideas that fizzle fast. We've been there! This year, we share some of our top intentions and hope it inspires you to expand your list beyond the trite and obvious things that suck the life out of us and make us feel small. Welcome to Navigating Nourishment with Debbie Peterson and Wendy Bright-Fallon. Hello 2025! A little reminder before you dive in. Let's go beyond shame and guilt and beating ourselves up as we create our intentions. Let's reframe what caring for our body and soul looks like and feels like. It's not about deprivation and guilt - drop those thoughts. In our coaching, we start from a place of gratitude and love. Only then can we be sure to shape how we want our coming year, months and days to unfold in a realistic and attainable way. Our Lists Most of the things on our lists have a direct link to deep rooted, beautiful, important values. Some of our overlapping topics include nature, health, family, growth, service. In this podcast, we each share a new adventure we are working on. In fact, we both get a little vulnerable (meaning excited and hopeful!) by revealing projects we are working on independently. They are rooted in the value of caring deeply for our fellow humans walking this path called life. Listen in and learn the new ways we are sharing health and wellness wisdom in 2025. We hope you'll join us. Debbie's Newly Published Book: How to be Healthy: 30 Tiny Tweaks That Transform Your Wellness in Minutes a Day Journal Idea Need additional ideas? Sometimes it takes some journaling before we can get clear on our top 25. Here is a link to our favorite journaling prompts when we are setting new intentions. No matter if it is a special occasion like a new year, a birthday, or a random Saturday, refreshing what we focus on matters.

Wendy and Debbie share a Thanksgiving Gameplan to help you rethink how you come to the table this Thanksgiving. We cover fasting, detox, post indulging ideas, and finding joy at the table. Debbie 00:00 Here we are just about a week away from Thanksgiving, and we wanted to give a game plan for Thanksgiving, because people tend to have these ideas about what they're going to do in order to be able to indulge on Thanksgiving, and lots of people end up not feeling so great. You don't have to indulge. Wendy 00:21 Just the idea that you're going to over indulge is a tradition or a pattern that might be a family pattern or influence just because of the community that you celebrate with. And I think the first idea is that you don't actually have to over indulge. Debbie 00:44 Exactly. That occurred to me several years ago when I realized this is just another dinner. There just happens to be a lot more people gathered. And then I really enjoyed it, and I ate slowly, and I didn't over indulge, and it was so much more enjoyable. I tasted the food and it was wonderful. And ever since then, I've been enjoying my Thanksgiving dinner so much more in the past several years because of that. Wendy 01:09 Coming to the table mindful can be a game changer for people. So number one, you don't have to indulge. Debbie 01:22 Yes, you don't have to fill up your plate. Maybe with small amounts, and if you want to add a little bit more, do that. This year doesn't have to be a huge, over indulgent feast. Don’t skimp on eating that morning. So another thing I know people do, and I probably did this years ago, is I would skimp on eating the day before and again earlier part of the day on Thanksgiving to save space for the meal. Wendy 01:57 But what happened when you “saved space?” How, how did you feel coming to the table? Debbie 02:02 Well, then you're coming to the table starving, right? And that never works out well. Wendy 02:10 It's not a recipe for wise decision making when it comes to our choices of food? Debbie 02:15 Just like it's not a good idea to go to this food market starving. You end up spending a lot more money. Wendy 02:21 We make fun of this word hangry, right? Hungry + angry, but that's the truth. And if you're in a social situation and you're hangry, tensions are high. So just don't skip on your breakfast. Don't skip meals the day before. Just eat normally and feel good going to the event. Feel good and well nourished when you come to the table already. Debbie 02:47 And that will almost guarantee that you won't overeat. If you're mindful the day of, you won't be so starving that you'll just be shoving things in your mouth. You don't want to come to the table super hungry. You want to come to the table ready for a meal, not hangry. That's not a good place, right? Connect with Nature Wendy 03:05 This is a quick podcast, but a couple more ideas. Plan on going for a walk after your meal with or without your family. Go out into nature and get super connected with the outdoors, if that's a possibility for you, because that can help with your digestion. Debbie 03:32 Absolutely good for your digestion. That was sort of a normal thing for humans to do for so many years. So get up and go walking, and maybe you won't feel that coma tired that a lot of people feel after Thanksgiving. Enjoy and savor. Let go of guilt. Wendy 03:52 I think Thanksgiving can be a time of special foods, and maybe we eat a little bit more rich foods. Maybe we do actually have more dessert and options on the table. So we're not saying don't have fun with all that. We say, go all in and enjoy the cranberry sauce or the extra stuffing, and enjoy every bite. Really savor the time at the table with people, and maybe you could even spark up some interesting conversations and have that feed you at the same time, right? Debbie 04:30 It's one meal, and it's with people you probably don't see every single day and food that you don't eat that often, so enjoy it all. There's no guilt, there's no shame, just enjoy it and not too much. Simple. Detox or not? Then after Thanksgiving, I know a lot of people feel like they have to go do some kind of detox. They get online and there's probably a bunch of ads about detox because most people over indulge on Thanksgiving, but our bodies do that naturally. We have a couple podcasts on that and a couple blogs on that. Your body's continually detoxing, and you can only help it along by eating real whole foods and not over indulging on the next day and the next day and the next day. So just let your body do the whole process of getting rid of the extra sugar or the extra simple carbs that you ate, your body will take care of it. Put Wendy 05:29 Put the faith back into your body, because it's resilient. Detox ideas aren’t wrong or bad - that’s not what we're saying. It's just most of the time, it's not necessary, Debbie 05:47 Exactly Question habits & Recognize peer pressure Wendy 05:50 What we really want to say is: question everything. Just because you've done something every Thanksgiving for the last umpteen years, doesn't mean you have to be that way this year. Debbie 06:03 Right! And that's another idea. A lot of people feel pressured to eat certain things over Thanksgiving, especially if somebody brought something and wants you to have it. And I know when the sweet potatoes come to my table, I don't eat them. And it's not because they're not nourishing. They're wonderfully nourishing. It's just not my favorite food. And there's 15 other foods on the table, so I bypass the sweet potatoes. Nobody gets offended at my house. You can eat what you want to eat. Don't feel peer pressure to eat something you don't want to eat. Remember that too. That's important. Wendy 06:40 There's a lot of peer pressure around drinking alcohol at every celebration, and there are so many ways to celebrate without it. Happy Thanksgiving and we hope this Thanksgiving Gameplan was helpful! Debbie 06:51 We’d love to hear about your Thanksgiving stories or ideas or anything surrounding Thanksgiving that you want to talk about with us. Wendy 07:04 We have some clients who actually come to us with some old family recipes and ask: How can I upgrade this just a little bit? And that's a fun thing for us. We can play around with recipes for people. Share it with us. We'd be happy to give you our feedback. Debbie 07:26 So this Thanksgiving, remember that connection and gratitude nourish us just as much as the meal itself. Take the time to savor each bite and each laugh and each moment that will never be there again. Enjoy yourself and listen to your body. And here's to a holiday that's filled with mindful choices and joyful memories, Happy Thanksgiving.

On this episode of Navigating Nourishment, Wendy and Debbie dive into the pressure many people feel to look great for major life events, like a daughter's wedding. Rather than focusing solely on appearance, they emphasize the value of feeling strong, energized, and confident. Together, they challenge the pitfalls of diet culture, which often prioritizes looks over genuine health. Instead, they advocate for sustainable lifestyle changes—like nourishing the body with whole foods, staying active, and getting quality sleep. Sharing inspiring client stories, Wendy and Debbie showcase the lasting benefits of these habits, reminding listeners that true wellness is about feeling great from the inside out, not just achieving short-term results. TRANSCRIPT edited for readability Wendy 00:05 One of our clients recently came to us and said, Oh my gosh, my daughter's getting married, and I've got to look my best for this wedding. All the family is coming to town. What should I do? Debbie 00:16 She had a year to plan and wanted to look fabulous for her daughter's wedding. Wendy 00:24 And it's so exciting, right? Weddings, and to look our best when all eyes are on you because you're the mother of the bride, and you want to shine. Debbie 00:37 Yeah, of course, you want to shine for your own wedding and then when it's your kids, it's like, your second chance to shine. So that's what we want to talk about today, on Navigating Nourishment. Wendy 00:49 Welcome. I'm Wendy Debbie 00:50 I'm Debbie, and this motivated us to talk about this, because I think both of us have known people in our families or our friends or clients who have been motivated by an event and decided, oh, this event is coming up, my reunion, this wedding, this vacation, whatever it is, and I really want to look good. I'm going to take off 15 pounds… Wendy 01:16 And this goes to one of our taglines. How do you want to look, feel and perform? And we're talking about the 'look' part in our society. We are really heavily concentrated on how we look, and there's nothing wrong with that. We all want to look good and don't want to take that away from anyone. That's part of the tagline. So, of course, we want to look good too. We represent health and wellness so we show up to play the part of a health and wellness coach absolutely. But it's leaving out the part about feeling your best and performing your best, and that's the gap we see in the diet culture. And to unpack that just a little bit - we want to help people question the motivation behind looking good, what it looks like, how you do it, and ultimately: Is this concept a temporary concept or a concept for life? People often sacrifice their well-being for temporary weight loss Debbie 02:18 We are tapping this in the age of those quick weight loss drugs that people are taking that make you lose your appetite, and so people are dropping weight. And I don't want to shame anybody. I don't want anybody to feel that we're saying that's not the right way to go. However, let's talk about the habits that go along with that, with any kind of weight loss or motivation to look good, it can be an opportunity to have that motivation to do things that really nourish you, as opposed to starving yourself and not nourishing yourself on purpose, so that you can take off the weight and look good and inside not really feel great at all, because you're sacrificing and you're depriving yourself of nourishment just for the sake of fitting into that dress or that suit. Aligning goals with personal well-being and feeling good inside Wendy 03:16 Or you're skipping social events, or you're beating yourself up at the gym and sweating it all off and not nourishing yourself while you're sweating, right? There are so many ways that we can look good and do it in a sustainable way that's so nourishing and gives us what do I want to call it? I want to call it this light that we're looking for too, because we've seen people in wedding pictures that might, on the surface, look ‘good’ because it's a definition of ‘skinny.’ But they also have a lot of shiny makeup on. We ask: how is their energy level? How is their clear thinking? How is their temperament, to their partners and their families? There's so much that goes on when we're sacrificing and depriving ourselves that we don't often talk about in the diet culture. It's all about: what's the goal, what's the weight, what's the number on the scale, you know, and it's not really going inside and saying, Is this in alignment? Do I feel ok? Do I feel good doing what I'm doing? And it's a hard subject to approach, because our culture is so demanding of us looking like each other or looking a certain way. Use events as motivators to start habits that can become long-term Debbie 04:38 What I like about an event coming up is that a lot of time people really want and try to have habits that are going to make them feel better, look better, and perform better. They're trying to eat real, whole foods and trying to work out more often and get better sleep. They're trying to do it all. The habits that help them look, look, feel and perform better. And they keep getting sabotaged or self-sabotaging - going back to old habits over and over and over again because they're not fully motivated. Because it's really hard to think of that future self who's in shape and feels great and eats real, whole foods and all the rest. So these events give people an opportunity for a short term, it's happening somewhat soon, and it's a motivator. So we want to use these events almost as a way to get people to start these habits that will stick so that they can continue the habits after the event. This happened for a client of ours, who I saw recently, and she had taken some weight off, and I said, “Your skin looks great and you seem to have great energy. You look really good.” She said, “Yes, I took some weight off. I'm doing really well.” And she told me about all the habits that she learned about in our group that she had been in. She said, “Thanks - You taught me all of these habits that I continued. And my daughter's getting married at the end of the month, and I feel great.” And I’m imagining she's going to look and feel great at the wedding and perhaps party all night long because of it and not and not suffer for it. So she is a success story that brought me to this idea of talking about this. Because that's exactly a great way to think of this as a motivating factor to get where you want to be. And she'll continue those habits. Wendy 06:50 What you just said is so important, she'll continue. And because she feels so good, it's not just for her. She realizes what feeling good in her body is and also looking good. Like you said - she has vibrancy. We're here to question our intentions. The opportunity here on this podcast is to rethink how you approach un upcoming event that could trigger you to say, I want to look good for this, and I also want to feel good and perform well leading up to it, during it and after it as well. Debbie 07:45 Yeah, exactly. It's a tall order. Encouraging small, consistent steps towards health and wellness goals Wendy 07:46 But who wants just to temporarily look good and then the next day, you know, throw it all away because it's too hard, and you've deprived yourself so much. I mean, that's not a sustainable way, right? Debbie 08:08 I think for a lot of people, that's what happens. They starve themselves, they deprive themselves. They're working so hard to get to this look that they can't wait till it's over, so they can go back to eating what they want to eat, and doing or not doing movement. They work so hard to get there… And the benefit of doing it in a way that nourishes you is exactly what you said: You feel good. That's the ideal - to feel good and look good. That's all we want. So that's our curiosity for today. Questioning people's behavior and maybe we can influence some of our listeners in a renewed way. And if you have family going through this, be curious with them. Wendy 09:18 And if you have a story to share about your success or not success in this area. Or you want help with that event coming up and embrace the idea: I want to feel good and look good too. Give us a buzz, and we'd love to support you on that journey, Debbie 09:38 That's what we do best. We help people with their habits, and we hold them accountable, and it's getting people on the path to feeling good and looking good. So that wraps up this episode of Navigating Nourishment. We hope you find our discussion helpful. And inspiring. Wendy 10:00 Remember your health and wellness journey is a marathon, not a sprint. Remember small, consistent steps over time can lead to significant, lasting changes. Debbie 10:10 If you enjoyed this episode, please share, subscribe, rate and leave us a review, because your feedback really helps us reach more people. Wendy 10:19 You can follow us on social media for more tips, updates and inspiration. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Nourish Coaches. Debbie 10:28 and for more resources, visit our website at NourishCoaches.com and there you're going to find some show notes, additional articles, links to other shows and podcasts. Wendy 10:41 Thanks for joining us today. Stay nourished, stay healthy, and we'll see you next time on Navigating Nourishment.