Rewire Yourself to Eat and Live with Joy with Ideas From Food Psychology and Nutrition Expert Elise Museles
Show Snapshot:
Want to make more nourishing food choices—zero fad diet required? Rewire yourself to eat and live with joy with ideas from certified health coach and eating psychology expert Elise Museles who shares a blueprint for healthy food habits from her new book Food Story: Rewrite the Way You Eat, Think, and Live.
The premise of Food Story is simple: you get to choose your story.
If you have a complicated or fraught relationship with food (which can look like deprivation, overindulgence, overwhelm, hyper-focus on eating “perfect”) you can choose to write a new food story.
Plus, we dish on recipes to boost mood, fuel radiance, and sharpen brain focus.
In This Episode We Cover:
1. What’s a Food Story? And why everybody has one.
2. Need a “permission slip” to love yourself? Elise has ideas to help.
3. How to release stress and shame around food and unlock joy and ease.
4. Two pivotal food lessons that drove Elise to rewrite her own food story.
5. How diet culture, media messaging, and even well-meaning family members all add up to overwhelming “food noise.”
6. Healthier food habits that don’t have to be hard (aka deep breathing can help you rest and digest). Plus, other science-backed smarts for better nutrition.
7. Tired of struggling with deprivation, overindulgence, overwhelm, a hyper-focus on eating “perfect? You can choose to write a new food story.
8. Fuel better health incrementally with tiny changes.
8. From law to nutrition, to podcast host and author—How Elise wrote a brand new career story in midlife.
9. Recipes to fuel radiance, boost focus, and power mood. Plus, a chia seed pudding with lemon zest not to miss.
Quotable:
Everybody has a food story, even if you don’t think you do—it’s written over years and years. All the memories of food, the messages you received, all the meals that you’ve eaten; all of it comes together and forms your food story. For many of us, we’ve received messages from diet culture about food and body and it doesn’t always translate in the most positive way.
Many women don’t feel completely at peace, or like we’re good enough. When someone goes through my “Food Story Method,” you learn to release stress, learn that food can be joyful, that food is your friend. The book is a permission slip to love yourself.
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Transcript
Katie Fogarty (0:04):
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. We are midway through January which means we are about three weeks deep into being bombarded with marketing for diets, fitness overhauls, and an endless blitz of messaging about our food and weight. And I get it, we all want to look and feel our best. And after the holidays which can be a time of indulgence, we often look to January as a time to reset. If you are interested in making better food choices and having a healthier relationship to food, no fad diet required, stick around.
My guest today is certified health coach and eating psychology expert, Elise Museles. She joins me to talk about getting rid of the stress and confusion around food and embracing a more joyful, relaxed way to eat with ideas from her new book, Food Story: Rewrite the Way You Eat, Think, and Live. Welcome Elise.
Elise Museles (0:58):
Hi Katie, thanks so much for having me.
Katie (1:00):
I’m so excited because I know a lot of us are gonna get tremendous value from this show. I want to ask you, you say your book, Food Story, is a permission slip to love yourself. Can you tell us what you mean by that and why you wrote the book?
Elise (1:13):
Sure. Okay, well I’ll try to not take too long to answer that question. I’ll start with why I wrote the book and that will lead to why it’s a permission slip. First let me say, your food story—everybody has a food story, even if you don’t think you have a food story, you do—is written over years and years, it’s all the memories of food, the messages you received, all the meals that you’ve eaten; all of it comes together and forms your food story. For so many of us, we’ve received messages from diet culture and just from well-intended parents who may not have known better, just about food and body and it doesn’t always translate in the most positive way. I’ll ask you Katie, how many women do you know who feel completely at peace and have never struggled with their relationship with food in their whole lives?
Katie (2:12):
Very few. I know a lot of friends, family, different conversations, yeah… People are always wanting to be a little bit different or to have challenges. I know a lot of people.
Elise (2:26):
Right, and it’s not necessarily anything diagnosable, it’s just not feeling comfortable or totally relaxed, or at peace or like, very confident that you actually have what it takes to make the choices that are right for you, so often we’re looking outside of ourselves. So, I came up with the concept of food story because I was working with clients one on one and I would ask them about their relationship with food. I had transitioned from just what to eat and had started going deeper with people. So often my clients would look like they were up against a wall and say, oh gosh, that’s…
Katie (3:01):
That’s a hard one, right.
Elise (3:03):
Yeah. Or, “Don’t get me started,” or you know, “Can we change the subject?” Everyone seemed to look defeated so I’m like, I have to figure out how to talk about this in a way where people are thinking about it and not feeling defeated automatically. This is in 2013, there was a lot of conversation, Brené Brown, Oprah, people were talking about story. So it was like, you have a relationship story, you have a money story, you have a love story, there were all these stories, a life story, of course we have a food story. It’s one of the first stories that begins, right when we are born.
So, I started thinking about your relationship with food, instead of just you and food, what makes up a story? There’s themes, there’s characters, there’s plot twist, and chapters, the list goes on. So, I started asking clients, tell me about your food story. And people would be like, “Food story? Wait I never really thought about it as a food story.” So, that’s how the whole concept evolved and I really think that it is a story, our relationship with food is so much more than us and food but it just opens up a whole new world, you’re able to release some of the blame and the shame that we oftentimes have around our health and eating challenges because you realize it’s not just you and how you relate to food but that all of this evolved because of so many different factors in your life.
So, that’s how I came up with Food Story and it’s to help so many of us, who just don’t feel completely at peace, or like we’re good enough, or we’ve taken in a lot of the messages that we’ve received, probably almost our whole lives and felt like we don’t have what it takes to make those decisions about what’s the best choice for us. So that, to me, when you can reclaim that power, that’s loving yourself, that’s respecting yourself. And so when someone goes through my “Food Story Method” in the book, you know, and learns to release stress and learns that food can be joyful and that food is their friend, that’s where the permission slip to love yourself comes in.
Katie (5:24):
I love that metaphor. I think that we could use that "permission slip" in so many areas of our life. It’s fascinating that you’ve done this with food because the idea of even telling ourselves a story is so important also because we can look at food and we assign things to it; it’s a treat, or it’s a cheat meal, it’s an indulgence. And food is actually none of those things. Food, at its core, is proteins and chemicals and we tell ourselves all these things about it. So, you help people tell yourself a healthier story around food. What are some of the themes of your own food story?
Elise (6:04):
Okay, all right. So, I grew up in Los Angeles so I don’t know if I could stop right there [Katie laughs] and that tells you enough but I grew up in LA, I went to an all girls’ school.
Katie (6:18):
You’ve said two things already that make us understand that it’s hard. I grew up in New York, I went to an all girls’ school too and we grew up in an era where we consumed women’s magazines and they tell you all sorts of things about food.
Elise (6:31):
Right, it was women’s magazines and also, everything was fat free and diet, there were so many labels attached to it. I love how the conversation is really shifting to how you feel now, but it was really about how you looked back then. Everything was about how you looked and being “skinny,” I’m putting that in quotes and that was really at the core of all of our choices around food and so, my story is really a story about seeking perfection, you know, with food and beyond too. But my food story was all about if…I’m almost embarrassed to say it out loud, but if I find the perfect diet, then I have the perfect body—which you know, I don’t believe all of this right now—then my life will feel perfect and I’ll be much happier. And that was kind of like, the premise of my food story.
Katie (7:32):
Which is an impossible dream. Perfection is not even possible. So, when did you shift that story?
Elise (7:40):
Yeah, so what’s interesting though is that I thought that, “I’m just interested in health,” instead of seeing it as seeking perfection. So, I didn’t recognize it as a problem because I was making healthy choices and I was doing all the right things so I didn’t see it as an issue. So, I’m gonna share two really pivotal moments for me in my food story and I talk about both of them in the book but I think it will be really interesting for the listeners.
So, the first one is when I was in law school—so I was a lawyer before I ended up going into nutrition—I was graduating and my then-boyfriend and I had reservations at this restaurant that took three months to get and it was such a big deal. We went and it was a French restaurant and it was of course like back then, I had all my rules, my self-imposed rules, it was cream sauce and all the things I wasn’t allowed to have, they weren’t on my plan. And to make a really long story short, I could see how pained he was because I was making faces and at one point the chef came out and asked if everything was okay because he said, you know, people come here, they eat their food, nobody just sits and pushes food around on the plate. And it was like, really huge because my boyfriend at the time actually broke up with me at the table and we had been talking about getting married and we had been together, we were living together. So, it wasn’t just like, a passing thing.
But what was so memorable, pivotal, just incredible about that moment is that I didn’t realize how much my distraught relationship with food was affecting him. Because it wasn’t like I was talking out loud about it, or bringing him in. But energy is everything, he could feel my energy, he could feel my stress, he could see that I wasn’t comfortable, so it was just a huge wake up call for me to realize: our food stories are not our own.
Katie (9:46):
This sounds so devastating, what a devastating moment at that table.
Elise (9:50):
Oh it was, it was. And you know, it took a little while to realize and to understand you know, how devastating it really was. But the good part about this story is that was my husband, and we did get back together. But I moved back to California and really like, I started cooking and I knew I had to change. That cost me what was my relationship with the person I was in love with and supposedly marrying. Obviously there was a happy ending but it could have gone any way and it was that moment that I realized I had to do something different, that I couldn’t exist like I was and it wasn’t just affecting me, it was affecting those around me too. I changed for me, not for him, but it was because of what happened that I had that wake up call. So, that was one huge pivotal moment. I mean, do you have kids?
Katie (10:54):
I do, I have three kids. I have a daughter who is 21, and an 18 and a 14 year old son.
Elise (11:04):
Yeah, so one of the things he said to me that night was that we talked about starting a family and there’s no way that I can drag them into this and bring kids into the world watching this. So, we know we pick up habits and things from our parents and our caregivers or whoever but you don’t really realize how much of your food story you inherit and also that you pass down.
Katie (11:35):
Absolutely. You’re modeling stuff for your kids and everyone in your life when you’re eating your three meals a day or your snacks, or you’re relating to your food, or you’re grocery shopping, there’s so many messages that you’re sending. I was raised by a mom who really did a great job of never talking about diet, never talking about food as an issue. I remember at one point very unkindly saying to my sister, “You’re fat,” and it was the angriest I’ve ever seen my mother. She said, “We don’t talk about people’s bodies like that, that’s a terrible thing to do.” And I was like, ashamed. I felt such a sense of shame that I had used that as a weapon and it really stuck with me and I feel grateful because I know that women in my life that have struggled with food issues, it’s come from the people around them and I feel grateful that my mom raised me that way, and I’ve been trying to raise my daughter that way but it’s tricky. I know that we have to be careful because our kids are watching us and we have to model good behavior and I feel like, you said everyone’s got a food story and I have to think more deeply about what mine is, but I feel grateful to have been raised in a home where I was allowed to sort of have a healthy relationship with food and body and I dunno, it’s interesting, I need to think more deeply.
You said you have two stories to share. We have to head to a quick commercial break but when we come back I want to hear the second one.
Elise (13:01):
Okay.
Katie (13:02):
We’ll be back after this quick break.
[Ad break]
Katie (14:07):
Okay Elise, we’re back. You shared such a powerful story about your wake up call with your husband around food in that restaurant but you said you had a second pivotal moment in your own food story. What was that?
Elise (14:19):
Okay. So, I think this will really be relatable to a lot of people who’ve read blogs or maybe even have their own, you know, whatever, Instagram account where they’re sharing foods or talking about things like that. But for me, my second wake up call was when I got certified in eating psychology and what happened was, I had already started my health coaching practice, I left law, I had kids, and I was making their own baby food and doing all the things and I felt really good about that I was eating, that I wasn’t worried so much about eating perfectly. But what had happened is that I created this community and I had put all this pressure on myself to be a role model for my kids, to walk the talk for my community, and to be eating all the right things, you know, and showing it in such a positive way. I put so much pressure on myself that it actually became a stress. And so I want to back up for a second and explain what I mean by that but it was like the most ironic thing because even though I was eating all the kale and the quinoa and making these beautiful green smoothies and had been taking beautiful photos of it, I was still that perfectionism that I had about finding the right diet was now about being a role model about the right diet. I don’t know if this is making sense.
Katie (16:00):
No, it makes total sense. You gave yourself this new set of pressures.
Elise (16:05):
Right. And so, what happened is I read this book called The Slow Down Diet and it’s not a diet at all. It was all about how like, you know, when we rush through meals, when we multi-task when we think stressful thoughts—I’m not talking about all the stress that we all have ongoing in our daily lives—this is self imposed stress; should I be eating this, am I going to get bloated, am I doing the right thing for my family. All those little stresses that we might pass off because we have these thoughts continuously and we don’t even recognize them or even hear them because they’re just kind of like, background that we always have going on in our minds.
So, I learned the science that when you are having those thoughts, it creates a stress response in your system. I’m gonna get into the science for a minute because I needed the science like, to really explain it, to give me this wakeup call. And what happens is; your cortisol raises—even from these thoughts that we think aren’t that big a deal but they are, our bodies are perceiving it as stress because we’re not relaxed—then your metabolism shuts down or slows down, you don’t absorb as many nutrients, our digestion doesn’t work as efficiently and not to mention that you don’t get as much pleasure from your food. So, when I learned all about that, that whole stress response and the science, I was like, oh my gosh, I’m eating all the things, but it didn’t matter because I wasn’t, you know, assimilating and absorbing and getting the most value and nutrients from my meals.
So, it was such a huge wakeup call for me because like I mentioned, that’s self imposed stress, I have the power to change those thoughts, I realized I have the power to put my body into a relaxed state before I ate. And that doesn’t mean that I’m oblivious to our daily stressors because like I said, we all have them, especially right now. But I could do things that help me come to the table without feeling so stressed.
Katie (18:22):
This is so fascinating, I love this, this is so needed during this moment in time. So, what were those things? In your book you have an entire chapter on this called “Don’t Bring Stress to the Table” which is such a biggie. So, what are those things that you did in your own life and what should our listeners be thinking about so that they can derive all the nutrients and the health from our foods and our meals?
Elise (18:48):
Okay, so you want to put your body in that rest and digest state. So, how do you do that? You have to feel more relaxed when you get to the table. So, there’s a couple things. One is, I just wrote down some of the thoughts because like I said earlier, we’re not always aware of what we’re thinking. I needed to be conscious of what was going on in my mind, so I’d write down the thoughts without judgement, I wouldn’t even like, examine them at that moment. I just would write them down and later looked to see like what was I… You know because when you look at it not in the moment, you can have a little bit more clarity and realize, that sort of doesn’t make sense or, I don’t really need to worry about that. So, that was one thing.
And then, I talk about this in the book, this is the simplest advice that you can receive. Everybody has access to this. You can do it when you’re driving you can do it at a restaurant, you can even do it at a party: just take three deep breaths. It is so powerful, it helps you put a barrier between like, what’s going on outside and any stresses that you’re feeling, and you know, reconnects you to your body. Even if we just take a breath right now, you feel your body relax. It’s so, so powerful and so easy to do. So, that is my big huge tip for our listeners. Before they sit down to eat, even if you don’t think you’re stressed, get in the habit of taking three deep breaths.
Katie (20:28):
I love this piece of advice and I hope everyone who is listening is taking three deep breaths right now because on last week’s show I had Patricia Ladis come on who is a licensed physical therapist who has worked with luminaries like Serena and Venus Williams. She talked about the power of breath to stabilize your core, your pelvic floor, and she explains how breath is so key and how we’re often breathing incorrectly and we are physically changing our bodies with our inadequate breath. If you can learn to breathe more correctly, if you can incorporate healthy breathing into your life every day it produces such wonderful transformation for your body. So, I love the idea of linking it to your meals in some ways. To say, when I’m sitting down for breakfast, when I’m sitting down for lunch or for dinner, to really think about how I’m breathing because it’s helpful for your body on so many levels. This is such a great tip.
Elise (21:29):
Yeah and you know, I just want to add in that my dad was diagnosed in 2018 with lung cancer and he had part of one of his lobes removed and he has not been able to take, you know, he’s here, so that’s amazing, but he hasn’t been able to take deep breaths since that. And I can see that his stress levels are so exacerbated because he just can’t get that air. It’s such a gift and we don’t think about what a gift it is and I just want to share that with the listeners, that we get to take three breaths. That this is, you know, something that we can do every day.
Katie (22:12):
Yeah, it’s a tool in our toolkit and so to take advantage of it. That’s so powerful. I’m sorry to hear about your father. Are there other recommendations that you’ve made to him or to the people in your community about how you combat stress? Modern life is stressful. Besides the breathing, what are other recommendations that you think works?
Elise (22:33):
Okay, so I’m going to give you two more.
Katie (22:36):
We want them, yes.
Elise (22:37):
One is that alongside the breathing is a mantra. There’s also a science about why, what a mantra can do to retrain your brain. Sometimes we feel silly, but it’s like: I’m nourishing my body. You can pick a word, three words, a sentence and you just repeat it over and over again. And it just helps your brain get into a better state and it’s an easing, no matter how old you are or your age, our brains can always, they’re malleable, you can retrain your brain. So, just pick a few words that work for you. Katie what would you say?
Katie (23:13):
You know, I did this a couple years ago and I used the word "appreciate." Somebody in a yoga class suggested this and you’ve just brought that memory back. I would say appreciate at different times in my life when I felt stressed out and also when I felt grateful. I was reminding myself in the good and the bad, appreciate what you do have in this moment of stress, or when something joyful happened, appreciate, so I could really focus on retaining that moment. But I have to admit that I’ve let that go. I’m gonna come up with a new word, I’m coming up with a new word, a new mantra. But appreciate is good I think.
Elise (23:47):
I think it’s really good and you know what’s funny? I have these foundations in the book and I use the word appreciate instead of gratitude because sometimes I feel like there are these buzzwords and then we latch onto them as a culture and they get used over and over again so then they aren’t impactful anymore, you know? So, I think appreciate is actually really good because we don’t say it a lot so people are like, “Huh.” But if you say gratitude, it’s like, “Okay yeah, I’ve heard about gratitude a lot.”
Katie (24:16):
Right, exactly. It feels kind of buzzy. But appreciate also feels very, almost like, tactical. Like I’m doing something, I’m appreciating this. There’s agency, you have to take ownership over that mantra. It’s a word that sort of puts you into action which was one of the reasons why I liked it. So, what’s your other tip?
Elise (24:37):
Okay, so this one’s gonna be really hard, especially for busy people.
Katie (24:39):
[laughs] You’re very honest, I like that. We can do hard things Elise, bring it on.
Elise (24:46):
We can do hard things and it’s not the hardest thing but okay. It’s funny, I didn’t write this in the book but I wrote about something like this in the book but I’ve been talking about this a lot on podcasts because we eat and, we eat and drive, we eat and run out the door, we eat and answer emails, we eat and you know, scroll. Think about it.
Katie (25:08):
Yes, this is my life.
Elise (25:10):
Right. And I understand it feels like multitasking, we’re busy, we can get stuff done, it’s more efficient. But I’m gonna challenge that. Because you don’t get the most out of your meal when you’re “eating and…” you don’t appreciate, to use your word, when you’re “eating and…” and you know, you actually don’t feel as satisfied. So, I could go on about multitasking because I really, I’m not the best all the time and not multitasking.
Katie (25:39):
Elise, you wrote a book, you have a podcast, you coach clients, you have a family, you definitely multitask. [laughs]
Elise (25:47):
Well but I do try, when I eat, to not multitask. To really just eat. So, that’s my tip, is to just eat. That doesn’t mean you have to put the table cloth out and the candles and make it a whole entire experience. It really can be seven minutes. I was gonna say ten, but I’ll say seven. It can be seven minutes or five minutes where if you make yourself a smoothie, you’re just having that smoothie. You’re noticing the texture, the taste, whether you’re full, whether you even like it. I mean all those nuances we miss when we’re multitasking. So I’m gonna say, don’t “eat and…” just eat. And that’s my tip.
Katie (26:26):
I love that tip and I’m definitely gonna take that on. Those two tips that you gave us are so doable. This notion of breathing, taking these sort of resets, just sorting of sitting down and being present when you have your meal, even if it’s only for seven to ten minutes. And one of the things that I love about your content and your Instagram and your website is that you make wellness and healthier choices feel really manageable. I love a concept that you shared recently on Instagram which is of "12 Tiny Changes" that you can make that add up to big impact. I would love it if you could walk us through this idea of these 12 Tiny Changes.
Elise (27:05):
Okay, I’m so glad you saw that post. I love this whole idea because it’s really exciting, we’re in January there’s all this energy and enthusiasm, especially around feeling better and trying to improve our lives and that’s great. But what happens is we make these huge proclamations; I’m cutting out all sugar, I’m gonna go do yoga every day, whatever, fill in the blank, with whatever that is for you. You know what the statistics are; most of us end up by February or earlier, following through with our best intentions. So, I love this idea of small changes. I actually, the 12 Tiny Changes came from when I first got on Instagram, I did this 12 Tiny Changes and I started it in September. Because in so many ways, September feels like the new year.
Katie (27:56):
Oh, I love September, yes. It’s fall, it’s a fresh start, back to school.
Elise (28:02):
I honestly think this is how I grew my Instagram. So, I started it and the whole concept is, if you make one change a month, and they’re not all tiny, but it just sounded good, tiny changes. But when you focus on the one change—as opposed to focusing on everything that you have to do for these huge changes—you focus on the one change for a month, by the end of a year, or by the end of 12 months, that’s a dozen or more changes that you’ve made. And you know, action inspires action. If you start feeling good then you want to go do other things that help you feel good. So, some of the examples that I give are for me, this is at the beginning I always focus on better sleep. It’s probably of all my wellness habits, it’s the one that I struggle with most. Each time I focus on it, I learn more about myself, I might have to redo things that came undone during the year, or I have a different approach. I really started getting this year, into circadian rhythms, which means that you teach your body when to be alert and awake and when it should be winding down. So, I really make a huge effort to go out in the morning and get sunlight for 20 minutes, usually it’s longer because I have dogs, but I’m in the sun. I don’t have sunscreen on, I know some people may need to do that, but I’m just getting that sunlight on my face.
Katie (29:31):
I love that. Elise where do you live? Because I’m in cold, freezing New York right now. [laughs]
Elise (29:35):
I’m in DC and we go into—
Katie (29:38):
Oh, you’ve got the snow right now so that’s, yeah. So, no matter where you live, you should be outside getting some sunlight every morning right, to reset those circadian rhythms.
Elise (29:48):
And it could be even just, if you’re not like, you don’t want to go exercise or take a walk, or you can’t, you could just have your coffee or your matcha or whatever, in the sunlight. So it doesn’t have to be— I mean movement is great, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be a movement thing, just getting out exposed to sunlight.
Katie (30:09):
I love that, I love that, that’s so important. When I saw that post and I thought about this concept of tiny changes, first of all, I loved it because that sounds doable and we like doable. I’m gonna share that I started focusing on drinking more water, which you know, in theory is easy but I go through the day, I have coffee, maybe I have wine at night, I do drink water, but I realized I’m not drinking, I’m not as well-hydrated as I should be, and I know that’s so important during the winter months. We’re inside, we’re getting all the dry heat. And it felt really doable and I’m happy I’m doing it. And every time I have a glass of whatever I’m literally congratulating myself. I’m like, look at me, I’m doing something healthy! And it feels great. So, I think that your notion that when you’re in action--and progress begets progress--I feel inspired to do other things because I feel like I’m doing something good for myself. So, thank you for sharing that wonderful tip.
Elise (31:11):
Also, I love that you brought up the water because I can’t tell you how many people I’ve worked with and I say, how are you doing with hydration? Well, I could be better. And you know if you look at statistics, we don’t drink enough, we really don’t drink enough. And it’s something, once you start thinking about it and doing it, it can change the way your whole body functions. The way your skin looks, you feel energized, and it’s so simple but most of us don’t drink enough. So, I love that you brought the water up and I hope that our listeners are encouraged to make sure— and you can find fun ways to hydrate too, juicy.
Katie (31:53):
Yeah absolutely, juicy ways. So, this is a good switch here. Your book has so many wonderful prompts and sort of questions to ask yourself, to relate to your own food story, to figure out what you’re bringing to the table, how you’re interacting with food but you also include recipes in your book too and I want to make sure we focus on those. There are 35 recipes. They’re organized by mood and that was like, I was surprised when I first saw that. Because you often see recipes organized either by meal, or by substance, it’s vegetarian or the meat dishes. Why did you organize your food by mood? And can you tell our listeners some of what the moods are that you touch on?
Elise (32:41):
Sure. And I’m really glad you asked the why question because I felt like the reader probably has tried everything and just like you mentioned, has seen all the books with the breakfast, lunch, dinner, mains, vegan, you know, whatever. I really wanted to do something different because the subtitle of my book is Rewrite the Way You Eat Think and Live so I had to give them a different approach. So often we think about what food will do to us, am I gonna feel bloated? Will I feel sleepy? Am I gonna have a reaction? We kinda think about what might happen or what could happen. But food you know, it can do so many things for us so I wanted to give the reader that narrative shift, not thinking about what food could do to you but for you. So, food really does affect your mood. There have been, there’s a whole emerging field of nutritional psychiatry but I’m not a psychiatrist. So, I studied all the different nutrients and how it relates to specific moods and I came up with seven moods for the book that I thought people really wanted to feel. So, they are: happy, focused, radiant, strong, comforted, I’m leaving one out, calm, oh, and sensual.
Katie (34:19):
Sensual, that’s right.
Elise (34:20):
Yeah. The recipes are in Sensual are actually really, really good. So, I did all the recipes according to mood and what I asked the reader or the listener to ask themselves is how do I want to feel. And then you can choose nutrients, recipes, dishes, things in your pantry to go along with the mood that you want to feel.
Katie (34:46):
This was such a wonderful and fun way to approach food. I wish we had time to cover all of them. Because it’s January and we’re spending the month sort of focused on getting after what we want to get to, this month I’ve been talking to sleep experts and goal-setting experts, these are the topics that we kind of focus on during our January reset. If we wanted to bring greater focus to our month, what are a recipe or two that would help us do that?
Elise (35:14):
I’m so glad you asked that. It must be in the air because I was thinking about that this morning. For me I always turn to my matcha, I have a matcha latte recipe in the book but I always use matcha for focus. It helped me write my book for sure. It’s also that whole ritual that keeps your mind really zen and focused on what you’re doing. But there’s also nutrients in the matcha to help with focus. So, that’s one. And also, I have a guacamole recipe in the book, it’s called Genius Guacamole with Toasted Seeds. Avocado is a great focus food, the healthy fats are great for blood sugar stabilization and then the seeds just take it to the next level. Plus, it tastes amazing.
Katie (36:00):
What kind of seeds are we talking about? I’m intrigued.
Elise (36:02):
Sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, and hemp seeds. So, they all are so nutrient dense and have specific you know, the omega fatty acids for focus. I love this guacamole recipe and I actually just bought all the ingredients. I’m gonna try to do something with it on social media.
Katie (36:24):
Oh my gosh, I’m linking to that in the show notes. It’s funny because my daughter is vegetarian and gluten free and allergic to nuts and seeds, so I can’t put the seeds in. My boys absolutely love everything with gluten. One of the foods that we make a lot is Mexican because we can have corn tortillas, those are gluten free. Mexican is very gluten free and can be very delicious vegetarian and guacamole is the big thing, so I’m checking that recipe out. And when she goes back to college, I’m putting the seeds in it for the rest of us. [laughs]
Elise (37:00):
Is she allergic to hemp seeds?
Katie (37:02):
You know, that’s a good question and I don’t know. She’s had allergic reactions to sesame. She’s got nut allergy as well so we tend to stay away from nuts and seeds in general because of her problems with sesame. But one of the lovely things about your book too is that there are so many recipes that are available to people no matter what type of food choices that they’re making because you really do have a lot of options that could be gluten free or could be meat free, that was one of the things that I noticed. Your Instagram is also full of really fun recipes. I saw the Tahini Turmeric Latte the other day. It was a freezing cold day which is why I think I focused on it. I’m putting your Instagram into the show notes as well because I want people to be able to dive into all of your recipes.
We’re coming near the end of our time. We’re gonna close with a speed round but before we do that, I want to hear a little bit about your career pivot. I find it fascinating that you were a lawyer, that you then completely reinvented your career. I know that the women that listen to this show are doing the same thing. I’ve had so many career switchers on, people who used to do one thing and then became novelists, people who were stay-at-home moms and then launched a very successful events company. And the women that listen to this show too are reinventing their lives, they’re either taking on new careers, or new passions, or their families are changing. So when you made the switch from law to food, how did that work? What made you realize, "I need a change? "
Elise (38:34):
Yeah, so it wasn’t overnight, I just want to say that. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and was like, okay I’m in the wrong field, I’m changing. It is kind of interesting that all those examples you brought up because I think I’ve done almost everything. [Katie laughs] I practiced law, I practiced immigration law, I loved it for a while. When I was a mom, a few years in, the laws just became so stringent, it’s really hard to keep families together, and I wasn’t waking up feeling great about what I was doing. I just kind of had that itch, I know that’s a word that we use a lot, that there was something else. So, I did take time with my kids in between. First I went from full time, I worked at the Department of Justice, then it was part time because the government is actually quite good with allowing you to do that. And then it was like, this isn’t feeling right anymore.
The entire time I was very interested in health and wellness, borderline obsessive about health and wellness. I knew that I wanted to do something but I didn’t know exactly what it was going to be. So I did, I consulted, I did events as you mentioned, I loved doing events actually because I’m such a detail person. And then, my family moved to California, which is where I’m from, I mentioned that, for my husband’s work and it was for a year. It ended up being a year but it was like, “a year but maybe it’ll be more,” you know. And so I was in LA, around all my family, but I’d left all my commitments in DC; I was involved with the school, and I was on boards, and I did all the things. So, then I got to LA and even though I had my, you know, it was the place I grew up, I knew people and all of that, I didn’t have those commitments anymore and I got to think, what do I want, what do I want my life to feel like now?
And I had been carrying around, you’re gonna laugh, this is 2008, 9, 2009. I had been carrying around a brochure from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, this is when they had brochures. I kept feeling called to it, but I was like, I’m a lawyer, I don’t know. And then I did yoga teacher training when I was in LA, never intended to teach yoga but I wanted to get deeper in my practice and it gave me so much clarity about myself; I love teaching, I didn’t love teaching yoga, but I just knew I liked teaching, I like connecting with people in a deep way, and I knew that, I just learned that I had to go do something like that, where I was going to work with people and really help them with some of the internal stuff.
Katie (41:24):
This story makes me so happy. You said something that I truly, deeply believe; that we all know inside what it is we want to be doing. You were carrying around this brochure, you were called to something. And even though it felt maybe improbable, given what had been your career to that day, you knew that you needed to realize this and I think that people who are listening to this show who are thinking, I want something different but I’m not sure what it is: you know. The woman who came on and became a novelist at 56, said I knew when I was young I was going to be a writer, but it just took her decades to get there. People know what they want to be doing and I love that you realized that.
Elise (42:03):
I think so too. And so to make a long story short, we were coming up to like the end of that year in LA and I said, okay well if we go back to DC—I loved LA, I was from there, my whole family was there—if I go back to DC I’m definitely gonna do this program because at that point it was a hybrid, it was partially online and partially in New York and it’s so easy to get to New York from DC, so when I found out we had to move, I enrolled. That was that. And I never looked back, I never thought— Yes I looked back and say, oh I wish I had done this sooner, but I didn’t look back and say I did the wrong thing. And I do feel like this is my calling, I don’t regret practicing law, there are so many things about my training that help me and I think I’m a better writer and I think linearly because of what I learned in law school and as my career at the Department of Justice.
Katie (43:04):
And you can read your contracts, you can read your book contracts. [laughs]
Elise (43:08):
I still ask my husband to read them just in case.
Katie (43:12):
Elise, you know it’s funny I was thinking about my own career a little bit over the holiday as I was doing some work. I have had multiple pivots, like you I’ve done probably five different things and I was really asking myself, how did I get here? And why is this podcast taking off? What’s going on with this project? And I landed on this realization for myself at least that I think I’ve been able to transform and do new things because I’ve gotten better at asking. And when I say asking, I mean both asking myself what I want, which is what you did, and also asking more of myself. But what I’ve really been able to do as I’ve gotten older and into midlife is I’ve gotten better about asking other people to help support me in my ideas, in my projects, in my goals, in my dreams. I’m wondering how you land on this notion. Do you feel that you are good at asking yourself for what you need and want or asking other people? You’ve become an incredible success in this field. What role did asking play in that?
Elise (44:11):
Ooo, that’s a really good question that I haven’t really thought of. I definitely put a lot of pressure still on myself but I do ask myself what I want. And I’m going through that now because I feel like I’m doing too many things. Do I want the podcast to take more center stage or focus more on group programs? So, I am going through that reflective time where I’m asking not what should I do or what would make the most money or anything like that but what would make the most sense for me? So, I do ask myself that. Asking other people, I don’t know if I’m as good at—
Katie (44:49):
I’m saying I’m getting better, I’m not good, I’m getting better. [laughs]
Elise (44:52):
Yeah, well I’m good at communicating and I’m good at now—this was a really hard one for me because I’m a people pleaser—I’m good at saying no, but not in a rude way at all but just like, no when it just either it doesn’t feel right, or no when I know that I’d love to do it but I just don’t have the bandwidth and I’m not going to feel good about the way I’m doing it. I think that no is really hard because you want to do it, but you know you have boundaries, you know there’s only so much you can do in a day. So, in that way, I’m asking people to understand.
Katie (45:33):
Yes, I love that. We’re gonna end on that note; no is a complete sentence, we need to get better at saying that sometime. Let’s do our quick speed round before I have to say goodbye to you, I could talk to you all day, this has been fun. So, speed round is a quick one or two-word answer. So, let’s do it. Writing Food Story was _____?
Elise (45:51):
Cathartic.
Katie (45:52):
The tiny change you’re going to make next month _____.
Elise (45:55):
Continue flexing my no muscle.
Katie (45:58):
Nice. Favorite stress-buster _____.
Elise (46:03):
Can I say two?
Katie (46:03):
Sure.
Elise (46:05):
The deep breathing. Because it’s so easy and accessible, and yoga.
Katie (46:08):
Love it. Okay, go-to snack for energy _____.
Elise (46:14):
Apple and nut butter, love it. With cinnamon for blood sugar balance.
Katie (46:19):
Ooo, okay recipe that you make to fuel radiance _____.
Elise (46:23):
Ooo that’s a good one… Chia seed pudding with lemon zest.
Katie (46:29):
Yum, yum, yum. Recipe that powers happiness _____.
Elise (46:34):
I love the Happiness Breakfast Bowl in my book.
Katie (46:38):
Fabulous. All of these are going to go into the show notes which listeners can find over at acertainagepod.com and before we say goodbye Elise, how can our listeners find you and keep following your work and find these yummy recipes?
Elise (46:50):
Okay, well my website is my name elisemuseles.com, Instagram @elisemuseles and also my book is available wherever books are sold. You can get in online and hopefully, maybe in independent bookstores. And it’s Food Story: Rewrite the Way You Eat, Think, and Live. Those are the main places. Oh and my podcast, Once Upon a Food Story, and I hope that Katie will come on and be a guest.
Katie (47:14):
I would absolutely adore that, this has been so much fun, thank you so much, Elise.
Elise (47:18):
Thank you Katie and thank you for everything that you’re doing to help us all feel better about aging and midlife.
Katie (47:26):
Thanks, Elise.
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. All January long, we are featuring guests who have ideas for rebooting our systems; from sleep, to goal setting, to faith, to nutrition. Missed a show? Sign up for our weekly newsletter, AGE BOLDLY to be notified every time a new show drops. AGE BOLDLY also shares weekly doses of micro joys, midlife inspiration, and news not to miss. you can sign up on our website acertainagepod.com
Special thanks to Michael Mancini who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then: age boldly, beauties.