Episode 405 Topics: Adding good foods instead of restricting “bad” ones, feeding kids (and talking to them about food), intuitive eating, alcohol, self-judgment, organizing digital clutter, and Bloom!
Transcripts are automatically generated, so may not always accurately reflect the words/phrases used or the individuals speaking.
Welcome to the new Balanced Bites Podcast! I’m your host, Liz, a nutritional therapy practitioner and best selling author bringing you candid, up-front, myth-busting and thought-provoking conversations about food, fitness, and life. Remember: The information in this podcast should not be considered personal, individual, or medical advice.
I have spent YEARS researching whether a good multivitamin is truly necessary for overall health. The truth is, there are a LOT of opinions out there, including from people like me, who love to ask lots of obnoxious, overly detailed questions. But the truth is, if I’m paying attention to how I FEEL, my answer was clear: I will be taking my multivitamin, and it will be from the brand Needed. Needed third-party tests EVERY batch for performance and quality, which is incredibly rare in the supplement industry and incredibly important to me! To get started with Needed, head to thisisneeded.com, and use code balanced for 20% off your one-time order or your first three months’ subscription. While you’re at it, add Stress Support to your cart. I’m loving that one, too.
Hi friends, welcome to episode 405 where I get to talk to Kath Younger, a registered dietitian and the woman behind the website Kath Eats.com, she’s actually one of the original “healthy living bloggers” who has been doing this longer than I have, since 2007 to be exact. I have had the pleasure of getting to know Kath over the last few months as part of a business mastermind group that somehow I got invited to – I’m not contributing much, I’ll be honest, but I’m not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth, there. Kath is just the coolest businesswoman and mom, she’s a mom of 2 boys, she’s been featured in O Magazine and Shape Magazine and she’s even appeared on Access Hollywood, and here we talk everything from feeding kids to drinking, self-judgment, intuitive eating, and even organizing digital clutter – because Kath is the jack of all trades, apparently, and she is the founder of the organizing digital clutter course. Kath is also the founder of the new Bloom course, which is live as of NOW, cart closes on February 27, 2023. Bloom walks you through 6 weeks of cultivating calm, building positive habits, building more nutritional quality into your dietary choices without getting lost in the minutiae, and it also offers a platform for community and connection – I highly encourage anyone, especially busy, overextended moms like me, to check out Bloom before cart close on the 27th. Go to realfoodliz.com/bloom or the show notes for a link. You can also grab her digital clutter course via realfoodliz.com/digitalclutter.
As usual, and I hope you all are enjoying this, we forego all the formal introductions and just drop you right in to my chat with Kath. I hope you’re able to get to know her better, and I hope you’re as inspired as I was to learn more about what she’s got to offer. Here’s my chat with Kath Younger!
[00:00:00] Liz Wolfe: The dermatologist asked me today what I do for a living and I still don’t have my elevator pitch cuz I’m not an RD like you, I’m not a registered dietician and I don’t really use my nutritional therapy credentials in a way that.
Makes sense to anybody that’s not like right within our community. And so she was like, what do you do for a living? And I was like, I uh, uh, uh, just had no idea even how to communicate. So what do you, I mean, you’re a registered dietician, so I don’t know, what should I tell people? I do. I hang on to
[00:00:31] Kath Younger: registered dieticians.
If I lead with registered dietician, people assume that I work in a hospital. Mm-hmm. . So my go-to is blogger. Um, I heard, I’ve heard a lot of people say content creator. I do not identify with influencer at all, so I would never use that. Um, but I say blogger or sometimes I say I own a healthy living website.
Because if you say blogger, people are, Oh, do you blog for a company? Yeah. And if I say I own a website, then people, [00:01:00] sometimes it makes more sense. Um, because I do consider my blog or my website, I guess I should say, to be like my home base.
So to me that’s like you. Mother Earth with all the moons going around it. .
[00:01:12] Liz Wolfe: Mm Oh, I like that. I like own a website. It sounds legit. Because when I say, sometimes when I say I’m a blogger, I’m like, do people even know that that’s a real thing anymore?
I guess people from my. Age range, know what blogging is, but do, do the youths, do the youths even know what blogging it’s influencing now?
[00:01:30] Kath Younger: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s because I would say most influencers don’t actually even have websites. . Mm-hmm. . So I, I agree with you. I think if you say blogger, people are kind of like, okay.
Whereas I think the, the, the older generation, thinks about like blogger the name when it was, was it Google’s blog platform? Yes. I think that actually is the first one I started on before I went over to wordpress.com and, Yeah, I consider myself kind of a grandmother in this industry.
[00:01:59] Liz Wolfe: [00:02:00] Well, I wanna talk to you about that because you, so I always think I’m such a granny because I’ve been doing this since like 2011. You’ve been doing this since like 2007.
[00:02:08] Kath Younger: I know. So, I got really into food and nutrition after graduating from college and I started following, this self magazine, registered dietician who had a website and, well, she didn’t have a website.
She was a blogger for Self Magazine and she was sharing all of the meals that she was eating and,, it was called Eat Like Me. And I was like, this is so cool. I’m getting so many fun ideas and I was just so into following her. And I Google. You know, websites eat like Me, what I eat in a day, sharing food online.
Z nothing like zero results came up on Google and how, and you know, occasionally you’d come across someone who did it for like, you know, one month of meals and then they just stopped doing it because yes, it was hard to do.
And so I was like, well, I’m gonna create one of these. It’s [00:03:00] just like a little hobby. And so I started doing the same thing that she did, which was posting my breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day. And really just because a couple people in my life, my real life had said, Um, oh, like you’ve gotten healthier, you know, will you share some meals and recipes?
And I was like, sure, this sounds fun. And you know, of course I was like 24 and childless and had all the time in the world. And so that’s kind of how it started. It started as a, a food diary and it stayed that way for five full years. So pretty much every single meal that I ate for five years is on there.
And it’s funny because I have a 15 year history now, and only a third of that was spent photographing every meal, but I still. Like identify with that. And I think it’s just cuz like that, that’s my roots and I feel like that’s how people know me the best is, um, you know, someone who shares all their meals.
But I haven’t been doing that for 10 years, basically since I became a mother. And I started, you know, eating with one hand, standing at the kitchen counter . [00:04:00] Um, then it became impossible to photograph and now I’m so. . It’s so funny. If I go out to dinner with someone that I haven’t seen in a while, a family member or something, they’ll say, oh, I’ll wait for you to photograph that.
And I’m like, oh, I don’t do that anymore, . But people still think that I, I’ve photographed every meal and I probably should get back into it, but at the same time, you know, there’s so much more going on online these days that nobody cares about what I’m eating. I don’t care. I care about what you’re eating.
You put it
[00:04:29] Liz Wolfe: out there for me, content is king, right? You’re supposed to post 76,000 times a day. You might as well put a, you know, a picture of your chicken sandwich up there. So starting out in 2007 and you’re posting your meals like every day for five years, which wholly consistency. By the way,
[00:04:43] Kath Younger: yeah, and it’s funny because I was so dedicated that if I missed a meal, like people, people were like, oh my gosh, did she, is she okay?
Is she sick? One time, I, I was actually sick with a fever and I had my husband post for me just so people [00:05:00] would know that I was still alive, , and I mean, I would come home from a. At midnight and put up a recap of that wedding at midnight. Like I have no idea where I got that kind of energy and dedication, but it, I, I don’t have that anymore.
Let’s just put it that way.
[00:05:16] Liz Wolfe: kids have a way of beating that out of you very, very quickly. And the whole it. I laughed just a second ago when you said, you know, standing at the counter eating with one hand. Cause I’m thinking, I feel like my eating habits changed quite a bit or have changed quite a bit over the years, especially since having kids and I think maybe.
First real shift in dietary habits or like the form my food comes in that I eat was like when I would be carrying my little ones, like in a or, well, the second one didn’t love the carrier, but my, especially my first one in the baby carrier and her head would be right here and I’d be like trying to eat soup and it’s just like pouring this hot soup on her little tiny head, which is just, you know, inches blow my mouth close enough to kiss right is also close enough to burn with soup.
[00:05:56] Kath Younger: . I know smoothie. You gotta have
[00:05:58] Liz Wolfe: a straw smoothies. Yes. [00:06:00] Before kids and before the level of busyness that I have now, which is a sort of scattered busyness.
It’s not like, wow, I have a lot to do with work today. Like boom, boom, boom. We’re getting it done. Today it was like, go to the dermatologist, pick up this one and take this one over here. Both kids have to be a gymnastics at the , same time, but they’re in two completely separate locations and I gotta get a meal in and it’s all disparate.
Kind of like all over the. . And so with that, it’s just a little bit different. All of these habits are changing and I forgot where I was even going with that, but I feel like you and I totally resonate
[00:06:30] Kath Younger: on this topic. Yeah, you were just saying, smoothies are so easy.
[00:06:33] Liz Wolfe: See how quickly I can let an idea just fly right out the window.
[00:06:37] Kath Younger: It’s just, and I love smoothies too because it’s the, it’s one of the very few meals that all four people in my household, like so we can make a vit. Of all the same, usually flavor, and we have like all four. It’s such an efficient meal. Mm-hmm. , um, unlike, you know, my, my four and a half year old will wake up and be just proclaim that he is, does not like apples anymore.[00:07:00]
Everything else is just, Uh, you know, a gamble each day, but smoothies are consistent for sure.
[00:07:06] Liz Wolfe: Well, if you have it tiered properly, you can actually, even if everybody has slightly different preferences,, you can be like, all right, here’s the base and then this one gets this thing and then this one gets this thing.
And you just kind of do like a little waterfall thing where, you know, yeah. All the stuff that I get, I add the creatine and the young reds and stuff like that. Very last, but the. Goes to my toddler who will do Greek yogurt, strawberries, and a little dash of milk. And then I add a little bit of extra protein powder.
And then you, no, we’re just on down the line with everybody. Yeah. And then they take two sips and they forget about it and it’s goes to waste
[00:07:40] Kath Younger: And then you only have to wash the blender once, which is any, yes. Anytime you can, you can batch your cleaning is always a good thing. Yes. That’s
[00:07:47] Liz Wolfe: always helpful.
So
[00:07:48] Kath Younger: how old are your kids? Um, four and a. And 10 and a half. I don’t know why I felt the need to throw the halfs in,
[00:07:55] Liz Wolfe: so we’re in a similar stage of life right now. Can you tell me [00:08:00] exactly how, this is gonna be a very direct question. How are you educating your kids around good nutrition and what the body needs without giving them a complex?
[00:08:09] Kath Younger: If I knew the secret to that, I would probably write a book. I, so when I was on my early health journey, I started out, , you know, eating a hundred calorie packs and Splenda and you know, if we think back to like when we were growing, Whole diet culture was always about deprivation and what you aren’t eating.
And like, don’t eat that and don’t eat that, and don’t eat that. And just don’t eat, you know? Yeah. And so when I educated myself on nutrition, I suddenly had this huge light bulb moment that nutrition is not about what you don’t eat, but it’s about what you do eat. And so with my children, I try to do the same thing and rather, I mean, they eat a lot of sugar because they’re kids and the sugar is thrown at them all day every day.
Yeah. Just like field trips and their [00:09:00] classmates and like, Someone walks in the door and they’re like, here’s a lollipop. Um, yeah. So they eat all of that. But for me it’s like,
[00:09:06] Liz Wolfe: who’s bringing lollipops to your door? Can you give me their number?
I would like a lollipop to come to
[00:09:11] Kath Younger: my door. A lot of people, , , I mean, even they, they go to their favorite, um, restaurant in town and you get a free lollipop at the end. Yeah. So absolutely. Last night they walked in the door with two lollipops. Um, so for me, it’s like my focus for them is making sure that they understand.
Nutrition is about what you are eating. So rather than say, don’t have a lollipop, I’ll say, did you have some salad with your dinner? Or, um, what vegetable would you like to have with your lunch? And, you know, the, the choices are limited. My little one likes carrots, bell peppers. Apparently at school, he has a much healthier diet than he does at home.
He, uh, I had a can of black beans. He was like, Ooh, black beans, I eat those at school. And I was like, yes. Another healthy food to add to his diet. I [00:10:00] put them on his plate and he had zero, like no interest at all. He would not even touch them. So, I know at school he eats a lot more diversity of foods.
And then my older one is actually, he’s at, like I said, 10. He has become recently a very sophisticated eater. , he loves seafood, he loves mussels. He will eat sardines., I think his favorite food is crab. , and so he suddenly, it, it’s like at the age of 10, the world of adult menus is now. His favorite.
And so, you know, we’ll go to a menu. We actually were in Disney World, um, earlier this month and there’s kid menus out the wazo, right? They have, I mean, pretty decent kid menus, like a lot of proteins and then sides that included fruits and vegetables and all these good stuff. And I’m, and he, um, I was like, okay, what do you want on the kid’s menu?
They have steak and salmon. And he’s like, well, I wanna order off the adult menu. And, you know, it’s three times as expensive. I hate to squelch that because he’s becoming such a, an [00:11:00] adventurous eater. So I guess circling back to answer your question, focus on what they are eating and, , they don’t have trouble eating carbs and french fries and that kind of stuff, so I, I’m always, what can you add to your meals to make it healthier?
Um, and that’s the same advice I give to adults who are, are trying to get healthier. I always say it’s easier to add than subtract. So, you know, don’t, don’t take away, if you love having a sandwich for lunch, don’t suddenly force yourself to eat like a plain salad with no dressing and nothing good on it.
You know what swap, what things can you swap in? Like still have your chips on the side, but add carrot chips and belfer strips to go with your chips. You know, have a fewer chips and then add a couple vegetables so you kind of mix it in together.
Yeah,
[00:11:41] Liz Wolfe: When I was working with nutritional therapy clients, one of the things I would say is like, let’s not think about all of the, you know, quote unquote bad choices you make, which we can reframe this idea of bad choices in a million different ways.
And. We can talk about all the emotional turmoil that it causes some people to even think about things in terms of healthy and unhealthy [00:12:00] and, you know, acknowledging all that. I also found it very powerful to say like, we’re adults. We know that certain things nourish your body and certain things don’t.
It doesn’t mean those things can’t be eaten. They’re lollipops are delicious. I mean, I love a lollipop. I mean, I don’t really love a lollipop, but you, you know, I love something in that genre. But one of the things that I found really powerful. Don’t worry about what you’re going to eat later, that’s quote unquote not good for you.
Let’s think about what you don’t mind eating right now that might actually nourish your body and make your body feel like, oh, actually I’m not really into that lollipop right now. So whether it’s, eggs for breakfast or avocado toast or something like sourdough with butter, something that’s really delicious that also can be quite nourishing, that might actually.
Bring your appetite to a place where you realize that your craving for one thing was not actually physiological and it can be physiological. The craving for carbohydrates has many physiological reasons behind it. And you know, [00:13:00] that’s a whole nother conversation. But just starting out with the idea of , yeah, you can have that, but just maybe have a couple other things first to put you in a good place so that whatever you have later doesn’t screw with you as much.
Does that
[00:13:11] Kath Younger: make. . Yeah, totally. . And I always think too, just the snowball effect of making good choices, if you’re just like low energy, go for a walk and that walk, it’s like that book if you give a mouse a cookie. Oh, I love that.
Like if you, if you take a 10 minute walk, that’ll boost your mood. And that’ll maybe make you wanna, you know, instead of having a, a diet Coke at 3:00 PM you wanna have a hot tea, and then maybe that will influence your dinner choice and your next choice. And your next choice. And it’s like, once you kind of get that snowball going, It’s hard to turn the momentum off.
Being healthy, feels so good. That it’s, it’s rewarding. It’s, that self feedback
[00:13:46] Liz Wolfe: system. Yeah. I don’t have that problem. My body, I’m pretty sure just wants me to be unhealthy. all . No, it’s interesting though, because you do, through this, I don’t wanna call it a struggle, but it’s a lifelong thing, right?
This is not like a problem that you solve all of a sudden and [00:14:00] everything’s, everything’s fixed. It’s this lifelong journey to sort of level up your tendencies, your awareness. Your thought processes, your self-awareness, and just slowly kind of realizing that your baseline has changed. This idea of what works in finger quotes, it’s never, nothing has ever worked for me. It’s been a long process of just cultivating a greater sense of. and self-awareness and my relationship with food to just slowly change my baseline over time. Mm-hmm.
[00:14:34] Kath Younger: What I tell people is look like, think of your daily habits as your foundation. So if you’re having, you know, a behavior, if you’re doing a behavior like once a week or one once a month, like it doesn’t really affect your health as much as something that you’re doing every single day.
So things like drinking alcohol or having, you know, fast food meals or that kind of stuff. If you’re doing that every single day, [00:15:00] you might start to notice this cumulative effect on your health over time. But if you’re doing that every now and then, who cares? When you’re hungry, you need food and your body wants food.
It doesn’t care the nutritional value of the food. It doesn’t, you know, it, it doesn’t even know and it’s going in your mouth. It’s just like, yes, I’m hungry, feed me. But over time and that cumulative habit effect, , that’s when your body will eventually start to notice. You’ll, you will feel, you won’t feel as great.
And I also tell people just like, focus on how you feel afterwards. Mm-hmm. . And the more mindful you can be about that cause and effect relationship of every time I eat X, Y, Z. I have tons of energy and that changes person to person. That’s why we have like the paleo diet over here. And then we have, different type of diet over here that loves carbs.
And it’s like some people love carbs and some people do well on low carbs, and that’s just so situational based on their own bodies that you have to really ask yourself , how do I feel when I eat that kind of food? And it drives me crazy when people try to blanket [00:16:00] any diet, across individuals because it’s so different.
My body loves dairy. I have no problems with it. Like Greek yogurt is one of my top 10 f favorite foods. I love ice cream. I love cheese, and I don’t have any issues with it. So, you know, don’t tell me that I can’t have dairy because you don’t eat dairy. So I, that bothers me a lot. And it’s why, you know, we, we’ve seen so many diets come and go, and I think you probably agree real Food is really the only diet that has stood the test of time.
The nutritional quality of real food is superior and people will probably feel their best, any real food, but it’s so broad. It’s like you get to choose within that category of millions of options, what feels good to you, what you like, how you like it, like all those things.
So it’s the least restrictive, but the most healthy options.
[00:16:48] Liz Wolfe: It has been really interesting being in the health and wellness world over the last decade plus. And I imagine you’ve noticed this too, where there was a time where we were quibbling, like over chickpeas, like that’s not [00:17:00] paleo, but it’s, it’s a legume, so like our legumes.
Okay. It’s not actually a grain or be, and you know, antinutrients and all this. And in the end it’s like the paleo framework has sort. It’s ubiquitous now, right? So there was this time where we were really quibbling over everything. Somebody once told me tomatoes had too many carbs, and I was just like, I give up.
Mm-hmm. . But now it kind of informs the choices that a lot of, a lot of people are making. And a lot of people who are in the paleo world, very, very entrenched in the paleo world, are now, , rebranded to like a real food focus. And then you get to start answering the questions, well what is real?
What is it across different cultures? What is it across different periods of time? And it becomes a really interesting question if you let it be, if you’re not. Wanting to just quibble over what is and is not, , acceptable on a given diet or plan.
[00:17:51] Kath Younger: Right, right. Yeah. And even though I say, you know, Kathy, it’s real food, I still.
Whatever I want. You know, again, it’s [00:18:00] back to that like foundation and so when I go to the grocery store, like that’s my, should I buy this or not? Like, you know, yes or no, but if I’m going to someone’s house, like I’m not checking an ingredient list. If I’m, you know, at an ice cream shop, like, that’s fine because those are things that I don’t do all the time every day.
[00:18:18] Liz Wolfe: I had a huge, huge BR Brunch is my jam and people need to know how I do br and I know brunch is like so sex in the city circa 1999. I don’t care. , I love, we just called a late breakfast. I, whatever you wanna call it.
I love it so much cuz I love breakfast food. I love the sweet and I love the savory. So this is how I do brunch. . If you go out to brunch with me, you will be so happy and you and I are gonna have to do brunch sometime when we all get together for like a business mastermind, we’re gonna have to do brunch.
Cuz what I do is I will get like a whole plate of savory stuff for myself. I had like a huge omelet, hash browns. It came with a biscuit. I love a biscuit from scratch. And then I always order something like really sweet and delicious for the table.
So if I want my [00:19:00] omelet, my hash browns, and a giant plate of Belgian waffles. That’s what we get. And then we’ve all got like multiple dishes and it’s just, it’s a happy, it’s a very happy time for everybody. I think a lot of times people will, I love that you say, I eat what I want. If I want something, I will eat it. And I think just that idea. Releases, or at least for me over time, has released a lot of the tension that I had around what is a good choice and what’s a bad choice.
Just being like, if I want it, I’ll eat it and sometimes I don’t want it, and sometimes I do. And I have found so much of that clenching around food has released over the years removing that fear that if I allow myself to have something, that it’s gonna turn into this.
Tail spin of bad choices, right. That it’s gonna ruin my life. So that’s, and that’s the emotional side. That’s the, that’s the thinking side of what we put in our bodies, which is, which is a huge part of what we eat and how we eat.
[00:19:55] Kath Younger: I started, uh, or I coined its term the squiggly line effect. Probably [00:20:00] could have thought of a better term, but it, it’s like the dec decade more old and people who have followed me know what I’m talking about, but it’s the idea.
Some days or weeks or months or seasons, you might eat more than you need to. And then others, you might eat less than you need to. Maybe it’s based on your cycle. Maybe you’re on vacation one week and then you come back and you, I come back from vacation and I want that, that first salad is like, you know, a fresh shower on a July day.
Yeah. Like it tastes so, so good. If you’ve been eating a lot of salt or drinking too much and, it all balances out in the end. It’s kind of the beauty of intuitive eating and like you’re saying about brunch, like maybe you quote unquote, ate too much.
In the morning, but you know, whether you ha whether you’re a person who has like 10 mini meals per day or two or three larger meals per day and, you know, we can sit here and debate about the metabolic effects of 10 mini meals versus three big meals and whatever.
But like, it’s kind of negligible in the [00:21:00] grand scheme of life. And going back to kind of what feels good for you, your body is smarter than you think it is. Uh, that is something that I have embraced over time and I think that when we stop, like you said, controlling the who, what, where, when, why, how we or we are eating, and just let our bodies tell us what it wants.
Some days you wake up really hungry. Some days you don’t wake up really hungry and just like listening to your body. Um, that’s when intuitive eating just becomes this like natural thing that it was when we were toddlers and we didn’t care when our next meal was because we were just too focused on, you know, the blocks we were playing with or whatever.
And we knew the meal would just appear when we were ready for it. Um, and as adults we have to put a little bit more thought into it cuz we’re the ones that are doing the prep, but. At the same time, it’s just kind of like asking yourself what you want in the moment. Um, and again, going back to that, how do I wanna feel?
Do I want, and is my body asking for something like really rich and heavy because I’m really hungry? Or do I want something lighter? What’s gonna have me feeling great at the end of the night today? [00:22:00]
[00:22:00] Liz Wolfe: My word for all of this is definitely curiosity and, and detaching judgment from this process, because that’s a process of getting to know yourself and your body and paying attention.
Because a lot of us, for many, many years, even decades, we’re just not paying attention. And this idea that you can eat something and feel really good or you can eat something and feel really bad. Tends to come packaged with a lot of judgment that I don’t think is entirely necessary. I think it’s okay for us as adults to say, I ate that thing and it made me feel like crap.
And rather than saying that means I’m a bad person, that means I’m never gonna make a good decision again in my life. That means I should just quit now. That’s the problem, that attachment of judgment and those really complicated feelings to it. And that’s difficult to untangle and a lot of people need professional help to be able to disentangle themselves for those feelings of judgment.
But to say something made you feel like crap it’s just acknowledging the truth of a situation and saying, I’ll try and make a better decision. , you know, I don’t like feeling this way, so I’m gonna do something different tomorrow.
That’s fine. That’s, [00:23:00] that’s being an adult, that is a rational line of thinking. It’s being able to detach all the additional self-judgment and spiraling from it. That I think is probably step one for most people, even above and beyond maybe choosing a vegetable instead of
[00:23:14] Kath Younger: Taco Bell. Mm-hmm. . Yep. I went on a, a vacation with my husband back in December, and I think this was probably the first vacation in my life that I didn’t over-indulge, and it wasn’t, it had nothing to do with.
The shape of my body or how I wanted to look or, all it had to do with is, I said, I wanna feel amazing every day of this vacation. I mean, everybody knows that feeling where you’re just like so full that you, you don’t even wanna think about your next meal.
But then here’s, here it comes, here’s your reservation. Um, and similarly with alcohol, , you know, it’s so easy to over drink and then you just feel terrible and you can’t sleep and then you’re tired. And I just said, [00:24:00] I’m going to be mindful of all of these things. And I, it was the, like one of the best vacations I’ve ever had because I just had a smidge of mindfulness.
I still had cocktails, I still had like croissants at breakfast, but I just. What would put me over that limit of feeling bad and I stuck under that limit and it was just such a success story and I, I just turned 40, so it’s taken me a long time to get to that point, but, , I think like you’re saying, rather than say, you know, after you have a situation where you, you do eat some, a food or too much or whatever, that makes you feel bad rather than, than scolding yourself.
Just really practicing that mindful. Feedback on your, on yourself so that you try not to repeat the same mistake over and over again.
[00:24:43] Liz Wolfe: So pertinent to what you just said about vacation. I was just at the Super Bowl. I was just in Phoenix on this kid free trip with my husband. We did the Super Bowl, we did the Waste Management, Phoenix Golf, p g A golf tournament. And it’s just, it’s just a smorgasboard of craziness [00:25:00] and. I had maybe two drinks the entire weekend, so I didn’t drink at all at the golf tournament, which is basically a culture of drinking that entire golf tournament is, and of course the Super Bowl, I mean, it is like, I was gobsmacked it.
I mean, the people in our section were just like every five minutes getting a new beer, bringing it, you know? And it was just crazy. And I just realized that given the situation, given that I wanted to feel. throughout the entire weekend. I didn’t, I don’t celebrate hangovers like I used to in college. Like it used to be kind of funny, like how hungover could you get and how many burritos, you know, everybody would go eat in the morning
but it was interesting, and I’m sure that comes with maturity and with age, but even one drink. I felt like I woke up at two o’clock in the morning, I couldn’t get back to sleep again. And that’s all tied into the liver and what alcohol does to your body. , it was really interesting because I actually expected to have more drinks than that. On top of that, I also don’t like using public bathrooms, so that was part of it too. I was like, you know, just writing that line of dehydration sort of intentionally.
And another [00:26:00] thing that came to my mind from my weekend, as you were speaking, you used the word over-indulge, . And I wanna just challenge people, I guess, to sort of take the emotion out of the word, over-indulge. Like you were saying earlier, using a blanket statement that you want to apply to everyone, there is no generally agreed upon threshold for overindulging, right? It’s highly personal. And there was one night when I. Had dinner and ate way too much for me.
I overindulged, I was uncomfortable. I couldn’t sleep. I felt gross and I was like, Ugh, not gonna do that. I’m not gonna do that again. That did not feel good. And it wasn’t bad food. It wasn’t good food, it was just food. That I really enjoyed, but I ate more than my.
Then my body even won it just because it was in front of me. Mm-hmm. . And that for me was overindulging. And another thing that you talked about earlier that I really liked about this idea of, of making this blanket statement that applies to everyone and everything for all of time, is that A momentary decision is a snapshot, right?
We’re [00:27:00] also talking about choices over the course of time, over 5, 10, 15 years, not just what you do in a day. What you do in a day becomes meaningless in the grand scheme of things if you allow it to remain meaning.
I don’t know. I feel like I just went through like seven different, like nutrition related vortex. I apologize for
[00:27:18] Kath Younger: that. , . No, I love it. And going back to alcohol, I actually, um, this past fall just decided that I was drinking too much. I think it was kind of leftover from Covid. I know a lot of people started drinking too much during that time cuz it was like the only exciting thing at the end of the day.
. I’ve never been someone who drinks too much in one sitting, but just like the frequency I was, you know, it makes me feel like an adult to have a glass of wine with dinner each night. And I just, you know, the nutrition part of my brain was like, this is not the healthiest choice. And then, you know, every day it was just like, well, I’m doing it cause I’m a grownup.
And so I decided I was gonna make a change and I discovered all of the amazing [00:28:00] non-alcoholic drinks that are on the market. These. I feel like this is an industry that is up and coming and I am here for it because like I said earlier, it’s so much easier to add or swap a habit than it is to remove a habit.
And I’ve been a huge fan of the athletic brewing beers. I think they taste. So real. I will not drink a real beer at my house ever again. Like as long as I can have one of those, like I don’t need the real thing. , and the Shirley Wines, I’ve been really into, I wrote a whole blog post if anyone wants to look it up, called The Best Non-Alcoholic Wines and Beers.
But that was just like a really. It was a hard thing for me to change until it wasn’t, you know, until I realized that there were such good substitutes and replacements. So, I just wanted to give a shout out to the, the non-alcoholic industry for doing a good job and making palatable products.
I mean, even four or five years ago when I was pregnant with my son, the options were terrible. So there’s, it’s like the newest thing, that they, they’ve just like come up some really good ones.[00:29:00]
[00:29:00] Liz Wolfe: I’m really interested in this. I haven’t tried a whole bunch of, of non-alcoholic products, but there’s one, and I can’t remember the name of it, was some kind of like adaptogenic, bubbly, like in a champagne bottle.
And it is fun because you feel like you are participating. I mean, there’s. To a point, I’m happy to say I don’t have to do what everybody else is doing. I’m okay with that. But at the same time, it’s nice to participate in some way that is analogous to what everybody else is doing. And the benefit is if you’re drinking non-alcoholic stuff, everybody else gets sloppy and starts to look stupid and you keep your wits about you.
[00:29:32] Kath Younger: Yeah. And you know, you, you probably are the same, but for me it’s all about sleep. I just sleep so badly when I drink. Yeah. And I value sleep more than anything else these days. So that was kind of one of my big reasons why. But I still drink regular alcohol, just try to stick to when I’m outta my house at restaurants and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah, I do
[00:29:52] Liz Wolfe: too. I think at the Super Bowl, it just felt that if I were drinking that it would be. [00:30:00] Just for the sake of participation and not something that I also wanted to do for myself. So opting out of it was really interesting and I actually had a really great time. So that was, that was interesting.
Okay. I wanna shift gears because I don’t wanna forget to talk to you about this. Really, you have two things that are really interesting to me. You have a conquering digital clutter course, and then you also have this new release that you, that you’re releasing, like I think. Right when this podcast airs, and it’s called Bloom, and I don’t wanna forget to talk about Bloom because I’m really interested in what you’re doing there.
But could you do a quick detour and talk about your digital clutter course, because I’m also very fascinated by this.
[00:30:35] Kath Younger: Yeah, so I have always loved home organizing., and I have a series on my site called Home Neat Home where every house that I’ve lived in, I’ve kind of shared behind the curtains of how I’ve organized my linen closet and how I’ve organized this drawer.
And people love, it’s just like back to when, you know, I was first thinking it was so cool to see how, what other people were having for lunch. Like people love to know how you, how I organize my sock drawer or whatever. Yes. It’s drawer porn, . [00:31:00] Yeah, totally. Um, and so, I was just looking for another way to pivot my business in during the pandemic, basically.
, and I wanted to create an organizing course, but I just, at the time, I just didn’t feel like I had pretty enough pictures of my drawers to make a course out of it. I don’t know, it was kind of weird. I’m gonna do that someday. And so I, I realized that digital organizing was a strength of mine too, and it was so much easier to share digital organizing in a digital.
, cuz I could screen share and , show like the exact actual apps was a lot easier than taking like a million photos of my house. And so I created the course. Digital Clutter, it’s all about organizing your email files calendar to-do list. Paper, , going cloud-based, , digital photos, that’s the one everyone is, is dying to kind of crack the code on.
And so it, it walks you through a system to set up and, , get, you’ll get to inbox zero every night. , you’ll have a way to [00:32:00] simplify, sort, and save all of these different categories. , and I actually have a free workshop if people just wanna get a taste for what it’s like. And if you go to digital dash clutter, Dot com slash workshop.
They can check that out. Or you can just Google Kath Eats Digital Clutter, and I’m sure you’ll be able to find it that way as well. Did
[00:32:19] Liz Wolfe: you just say inbox zero?
[00:32:21] Kath Younger: Yes. , have you heard
[00:32:23] Liz Wolfe: so? I don’t believe you. Can you can you expand on that? Because I think, let me see what my inbox says right now. It’s like 1,565 or three 33,687.
Am I a
[00:32:35] Kath Younger: lost? Oh my gosh. Well, um, I have seen your kind before and, uh, . I can tell you that I could have you at inbox zero in probably 15 minutes. What? , and y yeah, you need to take my course. , I, sorry, I’m going to, this is insane. I teach you how to sort through the priority emails and then everything else, you know, we probably both [00:33:00] get a hundred emails per day from just like random, , lists we’re on and like all this kind of stuff.
And, , so the, the process is just like, if you’re gonna do your closet, you’re gonna simplify. You’re gonna sort and you’re gonna save and. . , once you have a system set up for your inbox, it’s super easy. Like, I literally go to bed with zero in my inbox every night. I
[00:33:19] Liz Wolfe: don’t even know. I can’t what I what would that even feel like?
I feel like I have just blocked this out and I have multiple inboxes too, like that’s not my only inbox that has like 33,000 emails in it. And I know most of them are not important, but I also don’t know how to delete most of them. You know, and one fell swoop. Can you give like one, it doesn’t have to be around email, but could you give like one little tidbit to people?
Okay,
[00:33:42] Kath Younger: well it, I will give you, uh, an email one cuz it’s directly related to that. So Gmail has two option. I’m assuming you, you use Gmail? Yeah. Um, you can either archive things. Or you can delete things. So archive means take this email out of the inbox, but [00:34:00] keep it in my forever email folder called All Mail.
And then if you’re gonna delete something, Gmail will literally delete it and in 30 days it’s gone forever. So I would not tell you to delete your 33,000. I would tell you to. And this is how you’re gonna do it. In 15 minutes, you’re gonna archive your 33,000, so they’re no longer in your inbox. They’re still in your email.
So if you need to reference that later on, you can search for the sender, the subject line, the content. I will. Occasionally, like need to pull up like the Pottery Barn couch behind me, a receipt for, uh, what I paid for it or what the, what the exact like fabric name is. And I can search my email for Pottery Barn sectional 2015 and like get that information so I don’t have to see it and feel it and look at it, but I know it’s there if I need it.
So your 33,000 emails would all just get archive. . And then if you did, if you were like, oh, oh gosh, I like, I needed that email [00:35:00] for summer camp, or some reason, you would just search for it and be able to pull it back up. Oh my
[00:35:05] Liz Wolfe: gosh. That’s brilliant. I had wondered what in my phone app in particular, why I can never delete anything.
I mean, I guess I probably can, I just don’t know how, but I will swipe over and it’ll just show archive and I was like, well, do I wanna archive? I dunno what that
[00:35:17] Kath Younger: is. What is that? Yes, you do . You do. Ok.
[00:35:20] Liz Wolfe: This is very, very helpful. Well, I imagine that you bring that same. Detail orientedness to bloom as well.
If you’re okay with it, I would love to have you share a little bit about it here. And this is more nutrition and lifestyle focused. And feel free to weave in any kind of inspiration for even doing Bloom in the first place.
Cause I know that’s, it’s a huge undertaking to do something like that. So you know your inspiration for it, what you’re actually doing with it, and who it’s.
[00:35:48] Kath Younger: Yeah. Well, it actually covers a ton of the topics that we’ve, we’ve touched on already in this, in this, um, podcast. So intuitive eating, um, listening to your body, feeling amazing, [00:36:00] getting your energy back, being mindful.
All of those kind of things are woven together. Um, and I guess the inspiration for it comes, or it came about six months ago. I was feeling kind of blah and I was feeling kind of like. I used to be this healthy person, you know, like we laughed about earlier when we had all the time in the world at age 24, and I identified as a healthy person and I had kind of lost that in, in motherhood and having two kids and being more involved in my career , I just.
Felt like I wasn’t prioritizing my health. And so I didn’t decide I was gonna suddenly spend, you know, three hours at the gym and like do all this meal prep. I was just like, I am going to wake up every day and I’m going to look at my life through the he the lens of a healthy person. What would the healthiest version of myself do today?
What would give me the most energy today? What choices would make me feel amazing today? And so it’s really about a mindset shift. I can happily say that I feel so much [00:37:00] better than I did six months ago, and it’s because of this shift in mindset and changes. And so I, about two months ago, decided, okay, this would make a great, online program.
And so I, I put it all together and it, it’s really like, the 15 years of what I’ve learned, , about like healthy living, all kind of put together. And so it, , it goes through six weeks of habits and, , the first week is all about rest, cultivating calm in your life and kind of setting the stage for, , all the other things that we’re gonna tackle.
Week two is intuitive eating. Week three is what to eat. So kind of that real food and um, nutritional quality and that kind of stuff. Uh, week four is creating balanced meals. So meals that leave you satisfied and, um, have a balanced. Amount of different macronutrients. Um, there’s no counting involved, so I’m not gonna go tell you to count macros or calories.
It’s more holistic. Look at [00:38:00] this plate. You know, do I have some protein? Do I have some fat? Do I have some high quality carbs, vegetables, fiber, like those kind of things. Um, week five is all about finding movement and exercise that you enjoy and love doing, and that again, makes you feel great. There’s a lot of that.
What makes you feel great Theme? . And then week six is blossom. So putting it all together and, , I called it bloom because I feel like so many people just feel like this wilted flower and, you know, you used to be vibrant and amazing and energetic, and then you just kind of like shriveled away for a while.
And so, , I think especially like coming out of winter, it’s just the perfect timing. , the program starts on March 1st and , the cart opens on February. 17th if that, , maybe is today. And, , it’ll be a 10 day window. And there are two choices you can do the self-study, which is, , each week is, is unlocked as you go.
So it’ll still be paste six weeks, but it’s kind of more [00:39:00] on your own. , you know, there are journals and logs and things like that to complete, , just to help you kind of connect that food and mood. , pieces together. , so there’s the self-study and then there is the program plus the community, which is for those that need a little bit more accountability and support and, , friendship and, you know, all that fun stuff with discussions and questions and challenges and that kind of stuff.
So that is an optional add-on to it. So I’ve
[00:39:27] Liz Wolfe: done a lot of online programs and oftentimes I feel sort of like I have to choose the self-study because there’s, there’s so much going on and I just can’t imagine adding one more thing. But I’ve also noticed that when you are actually in a paste program, that you tend, you, I should say me cuz everybody’s different, I tend to engage more.
Mm-hmm. , I tend to actually kind of hit the benchmarks that I wanna hit rather than be like, well I’ll get to that when I can get to that. So, It’s, it’s one of those things that I actually do kind of recommend. If you can’t engage that way, it’s, it’s always a good idea.
[00:39:59] Kath Younger: Yeah, [00:40:00] totally. I agree. That’s why I wanted to do both.
I wanted a lower price point, and then I really think that the, the community is called the Garden, by the way, where you can blend with other people. So I just love the themes and, um, so I wanted to do that. Cause I, I know that so many people have been asking for that kind of just accountability groups, like you’re saying, are so much more effective, um, for seeing actual changes and, and that kind of,
[00:40:22] Liz Wolfe: It’s that community.
It’s that community thing that’s part of being healthy. I mean, we know that there is science to support that. Finding a community and being engaged with that community is actually very supportive of health. And so I love that. One of the things that you just said also about finding movement and like exercise that resonates with you and that you love.
I love that so much and that’s, that’s really what the athletic mom team did. With Athletic Mom, which is my fitness program, finding. Like pickleball or tennis or walking, just something that brings you joy versus feeling like you have to slog through a workout because it’s what’s [00:41:00] best for you.
Yeah, that’s boring and that sucks. Some people have the personality types where they really crave that and they wanna do it. I’m not one of those people, so unless I have, you know, real accountability to everything from mobility , to my strength programming, where I’m gonna show up and when it’s either.
or I need to really be doing something that I love. So I love the idea of finding movement that resonates with you versus just feeling like, well, you have to do this. You have to check this box, because there are things that almost everyone would benefit from doing. Right. People our age and our bracket.
Mm-hmm. . We need to focus on building and maintaining muscle for the long haul, but sometimes that’s not the entry point that’s gonna resonate and that’s gonna inspire a lifelong habit of moving your body and maintaining muscle through the right nutrition choices and exercise. It’s like you find the thing that does it for you.
For example, my dad, who’s 68, he found pickleball and he is like, all right, I need mobility. I need to be lifting weights. I need to be doing all these things. I need to eat more protein. And that was the entry point for him.
[00:42:00] So 100% I resonate with that. Finding something that you really want to do and letting that be your entry point.
[00:42:06] Kath Younger: Yeah, my mother-in-law’s the same way with pickleball. She is absolutely obsessed with it. And I play on, um, a couple adult soccer leagues and, uh, you know, that team sport, you know, when I’m out there running, that is the highlight of my week.
And who would’ve thought it’s a workout, but I will never be on an elliptical ever again. I mean, yeah. I won’t say never. Somebody will snap a picture of me at some hotel gym at some point in my life, . But like days, my days of just like going to the gym to do cardio, like I, I, I’m not doing that anymore. So,
[00:42:38] Liz Wolfe: no, no.
Every once in a while I’ll hop on our Nordic Trek bike, the off-brand Peloton we call it, and I’ll do that because I do know that. You know, maybe I don’t feel so great, or I feel like I need to really get some circulation going, or I need to move my body in a certain way. But those, those sessions are few and far between.
And oftentimes it’s just that adult decision that I have to make in the moment where I’m like, I didn’t do [00:43:00] anything today. I didn’t do anything yesterday. I’m feeling very stagnant, and I know that moving my legs like that is gonna get things circulating throughout the body. But in general, for me, it’s gonna be tennis, it’s gonna be running around with my kids, it’s gonna be taking a long walk around the lake, something like.
That’s the most rewarding for sure. I wanna ask you a quick dietician question before I let you go. Cause I know you and I both have to pick up children, where exercise and eating fit together, and I don’t mean in a calories, and calories outweigh something that I’ve been hearing lately.
Is that taking a walk after a meal is actually a really good idea. Whereas I had always thought you have a meal and then you rest and digest. Have you seen any of this chatter around why like a good walk after a meal is actually good for your body and do you have any feelings?
[00:43:53] Kath Younger: I can’t think of a time when a walk is a bad idea.
So , I think I’m on team walking after a [00:44:00] meal. I would have to crack open some metabolism textbook that I haven’t looked at in a long time to be able to give you a scientific answer for that. Um, but I mean, you know, you think about like Thanksgiving day, like. You have your meal and everybody goes out for a little hike around the yard.
So I think it’s, it’s kind of going back to that squi squiggly line factor. You know, what makes you feel good? Like, I think when you’re really full, Or, you know, you don’t have to be full for what you’re saying to, to be practical, but you know, if you’re, if you have a satisfying meal, like, I think it, it, it makes you feel like you’re digesting faster if you do a walk.
So I can’t speak to the metabolic effects of it or anything like that, but I do think that don’t swim after a meal. I think that is a myth. Yeah, we
[00:44:44] Liz Wolfe: don’t, we don’t believe that anymore, I don’t think.
[00:44:47] Kath Younger: Yeah, I, I mean, don’t quote me on it, but , this is the quote
[00:44:50] Liz Wolfe: that I will be using for the reel for this podcast, , is you can eat a whole lot and then swim.
My gut tells me that you’re right, and I don’t know why it’s, it’s just that we [00:45:00] just, I don’t break things. Sometimes I don’t. I think we all do this. We’ll sort of take something for granted and not really break it down into its component parts. So for me it was always like, well after a meal you let your body digest.
Like why would you get up and exercise? Well, it’s not exercising. A walk is like invigorating. Every part of your body, you’re probably actually kicking your digestive system into gear, right? With a nice leisurely walk versus like, you know, getting on the Peloton and doing some cri, which will stop digestion in its tracks.
And I don’t know why, but I never thought about it that way.
[00:45:30] Kath Younger: Yeah, I would not do anything that would cause like acid reflux or, or anything like that, . But I think a walk is pretty mild. And it also might just be because a lot of people do kind of feel like a slump of energy after a meal. And that probably is because the blood is being diverted to the GI tract.
Mm-hmm. . And so to, to combat that like sluggish feeling, the best thing to do would be to energize yourself with a walk. I, I loved going for a walk at like three in the afternoon, cuz that is my, like, I will just like sit and close my eyes if [00:46:00] I’m on a couch, but yet if I’m out walking, like I, I feel like I have tons of energy.
So, yeah. Um. , I always say like, you know, if you’re feeling sluggish, like that is the best thing to do. And you know, it’s, it’s not just the moving of your legs, it’s the fresh air. It’s hopefully you have sunshine. Of course it still works on a cloudy day. But, um, I think just like getting outside, it’s just like the most energizing thing that you can do.
Yeah. For sure.
[00:46:25] Liz Wolfe: Okay, well I hope you’re not late to pick up the kiddos. Thank you so much for bearing with me this morning. I was late, everybody. I was late because of my dermatologist appointment, but Kath stuck with me and I’m grateful for that. Thank you for coming on. I hope you come on again soon and I’ll share all of the details for Bloom and for the digital clutter course as well in the, in the introduction, which I will record separately.
[00:46:45] Kath Younger: Sounds great. Thank you so much for having [00:46:47] Liz Wolfe: me. Thanks, KA.
Thanks for listening to the new Balanced Bites Podcast! Before you shut down your podcast app, PLEASE take a moment to subscribe and leave a review! It’s a small thing you can do that I appreciate more than you can imagine! And speaking of what we can do for each other, if YOU have a question you’d like to have tackled on this podcast or an interview you’d like to hear, submit the details at balancedwithliz.com. Let’s keep unpacking, unraveling, contextualizing and nuance-ing the important questions together so we can be empowered, informed, active participants in our own health and happiness.
