Ep. 44 - Tackling Winter Wellness, Navigating the Holidays & What it Means to Be Real Online with Dana Harrison

12/05/17 • 59 min

Dana is someone I’ve always really admired online. In a saturated health and nutrition space, she’s a breath of fresh air. She combines practical nutrition knowledge with a dose of YOU DO YOU attitude. I wanted to dive into the topics of being well in the winter and Dana totally delivered. I especially loved our conversation around creating a positive mindset in this season versus just trying to get through it. (aka my strategy in the past.) Dana is kind, honest and practical with her tools and knowledge.

We Talk About:

How Dana got to the work she’s doing now - designing education plans for fire departments
How Dana connected with the firefighting community
How Dana feels about the latest wellness trends
Why Dana loves working with people one on one versus blanket plans for everyone
Thinking about exercise from a community and mental health perspective
How to tap into your own version of health
Paying attention to your body when you’re learning what works for you - using journaling as a tool for that
How to enjoy the holidays without major food anxiety
Being mindful around the holidays with food, stress and actually just enjoying yourself
Starting small then listening to your hunger and go back for seconds if you want more at big meals
Why it takes a while to learn to listen to your internal cues and that’s ok
Remember what you’re celebrating - think about things outside of the food to shift your focus
How to recover the next day from overeating
Focus on adding more nutrient dense foods versus removing foods
How to navigate the stressful parts of the holidays
Appreciating small wins and picking your battles
How to stay active and positive in the cold dark winter months
Get outside and associate joy with the winter weather versus mentally block
Changing your mindset about winter
Winter wellness - how to build up immunity and fight colds
-essential oils, bone broth, rest, botanical steam
Online realness - how Dana defines being real
“I always want to be the same person outside of my phone as I am on my phone”
Food comparison on instagram
When it’s time to take breaks

Connect with Dana

On instagram
On her website

For full show notes visit: inti4thelongrun.com

We Talk About:

How Dana got to the work she’s doing now - designing education plans for fire departments
How Dana connected with the firefighting community
How Dana feels about the latest wellness trends
Why Dana loves working with people one on one versus blanket plans for everyone
Thinking about exercise from a community and mental health perspective
How to tap into your own version of health
Paying attention to your body when you’re learning what works for you - using journaling as a tool for that
How to enjoy the holidays without major food anxiety
Being mindful around the holidays with food, stress and actually just enjoying yourself
Starting small then listening to your hunger and go back for seconds if you want more at big meals
Why it takes a while to learn to listen to your internal cues and that’s ok
Remember what you’re celebrating - think about things outside of the food to shift your focus
How to recover the next day from overeating
Focus on adding more nutrient dense foods versus removing foods
How to navigate the stressful parts of the holidays
Appreciating small wins and picking your battles
How to stay active and positive in the cold dark winter months
Get outside and associate joy with the winter weather versus mentally block
Changing your mindset about winter
Winter wellness - how to build up immunity and fight colds
-essential oils, bone broth, rest, botanical steam
Online realness - how Dana defines being real
“I always want to be the same person outside of my phone as I am on my phone”
Food comparison on instagram
When it’s time to take breaks

Connect with Dana

On instagram
On her website

For full show notes visit: inti4thelongrun.com

Previous Episode

Ep. 43 - Rejecting Extremes, Finding Magic in the Grey Area of Health and Practicing Patience on the Healing Journey with Meg Dixon

Rejecting Extremes, Finding Magic in the Grey Area of Health and Practicing Patience on the Healing Journey with Meg Dixon

Meg is a registered dietitian who works with women healing their gut, balancing hormones and recovering from disordered eating. She believes in the magic of living and eating intuitively. On this episode we dive into so many topics including why health doesn’t have to be your full time job, how to practice wellness without obsession, why there’s so much more to food than calories and labels and why patience and grace is key to healing.

We Talk About:

How Meg became a registered dietitian & how she started her private practice with her friend and business partner Victoria
How they found their niche based on their experience and serendipity
How hormone health, eating disorder recovery and gut health are so intertwined
How to develop your own wellness with living life in mind
Why wellness is so much more than food
How do we pursue wellness with out obsessive behaviors or extremes
How do you start with wellness without that obsessive mindset
Why she wishes she could tell herself that “Being skinny does not equal healthy”
Meg encourages us to challenge expectations of yourself
Why so much of wellness is about being yourself
The value of living in the grey area
Why calories aren’t evil and they aren’t just a math equation
How do we promote a balanced approach to wellness without extremes
How do we get people in the happy grey area of wellness
Food should not be an extension of your morality
Eat based on how it makes your body feel not whether it’s a good or bad food
How binging or restricting is a maladaptive form of coping and how we can handle those emotions without abusing food
Why intuitive eating isn’t accessible right away to everyone and how to get there
Patience is an ultimate healing
Grace and patience is the foundation for healing
You don’t have to have it all together every day
Why you can enjoy your life WHILE you improve your health - it’s not one or the other

Resources

Nourishing Women Podcast https://www.nourishingmindsnutrition.com/podcast/

Intuitive Living Ebook https://www.nourishingmindsnutrition.com/ebook/

Nourishing Minds Nutrition Practice https://www.nourishingmindsnutrition.com/

Connect with Meg

On instagram https://www.instagram.com/meg.c.dixon/

On her blog https://www.rootforfood.net/

For full show notes visit: init4thelongrun.com

Next Episode

Ep. 45 - The Power of Being Present, Showing Up in Relationships & Why Self-Love Can Be Tough Love with Marian Mellen

This episode is like that deep soul filled conversation you have with a close friend, except Marian and I had never met. We dive right into so many amazing rich topics about personal growth and relationships. I will warn you there is some deep stuff in here. I really loved this episode because I actually only asked 2 of my prepared questions and the rest of the time we just riffed and dove deeper.

I loved where this conversation went and for anyone who is passionate about showing up as the full version of themselves, I know you’ll love it too! This is a good one to listen to after you’ve done some yoga or are on a long walk or chillin’ sipping a glass of wine (or coffee, or kombucha or tea). In fact, after we got off of the call I thought to myself that Marian is like a warm herbal tea for your soul. I don’t even really know what that means but it definitely felt real!

On this Episode We Talk About:

How Marian starts her morning
What do you do when you’re under a deadline but want to honor your body when it’s stressed
How Marian got started with meditation and how she reframed it to just “breathing”
Being still and what meditation is and isn’t
What it means to surrender in this moment without the preference on the moment - allowing versus struggling
Can I surrender to a moment without labeling the pain as something good or bad?
How we can’t really be happy until we embrace pain without judgment of it
How our culture has put happiness on a pedestal (and it makes us miserable)
Appreciating what each kind of emotion provides in our life
Control - why it’s an illusion
How we can treat ourselves and others to the best of our ability, without overcompensating and trying to control an outcome
Expectations - how they create a false reality in the future and block us from accepting and embracing what is
Why sometimes self-love has to be tough love
How relationships can be mirrors for our own “stuff”
Ask “why am I trying to resist this?”
Why self-love can be compassionate and disciplined at the same time
Necessary discomfort and why it can be a good thing - there’s magic on the other side of most discomfort
Small talk versus deep talk - how to make small talk meaningful
Navigating how to handle what other people think of you
Sharing your story versus the stories you’re a part of - how do we share our relationships online
We discuss how we’re working on people pleasing