The Party In My Plants Podcast

This week marks the two year anniversary of my mother in law’s passing, and in her loving memory I’m re-airing this story about how my magical engagement overlapped with her tragic death, and how that taught me to live the crap out of my days and share my non-crap food even more. There’s nothing really funny about this episode, it’s more like a chapter from a Nicholas Sparks book with a dash of a Tony Robbins seminar and a sprinkle of the trailer of the movie Serendipity. That made absolutely no sense but really, life doesn’t make much sense, and that’s actually what this episode is about. How good people die. How even sick people stubbornly stick to their ways. How ‘waiting till you’re ready’ is both mature and wise but also foolish and wrong. Here’s my [hopefully inspiring] story of how I got engaged while cancer stole the life of my fiancé’s mother.    Links related to this episode: The full show notes with all the deets from this episode! Get my FREE #EATMOREPLANTS course! Where you can go to submit a que

Today’s guest comes from one of my favorite non-food spots in NYC: Hey Day, an amazing facial shop! I popped my facial cherry at Hey Day over a year ago and not to be dramatic, but it’s been transformative. I had no idea how much I’d enjoy being scrubbed and polished and getting the crap literally squeezed out of my pores, and I never could have predicted how much I’d learn about taking care of my skin. If you’ve never been to Hey Day, or gotten a facial, you should wash that fact away ASAP! But until then, enjoy this surprisingly delightful and terrifically informative chat with Jeni Sykes, the incredibly well-spoken co-founder and head of skincare at Hey Day and definitely get ready for some of the most tangible info that’s ever popped out of an episode.   You’ll learn:   Some signs your skin might want a facial. What really IS a facial (and what it’s not). Everything you need to know about SPF. The shocking reason your skin is extra oily in the summer. Really how to exfoliate. And loads much more!   Link

The truthful tale of my book deal was anything but a straight, direct, easy line. It involved a lot of both woohoo AND boohoo, plus a surprising amount of woowoo …. all of which I dive into in this story. So if you press play on this episode thinking you’ll snag a copy and paste formula for getting your own book deal, this probs isn’t the perfect episode for you, but if you’re open to hearing how achieving great dreams is completely possible with more hustle, heartbreak and some spiritual shiz sprinkled in, this episode might just do it for ya.   Links related to this episode: The full show notes with all the deets from this episode! Where to buy Four Sigmatic Shroom Products and save 15% with code: “PARTYINMYPLANTS” Steal my job! ANd scope out the exciting and impressive curriculum for The Institute for Integrative Nutrition! Get my FREE #EATMOREPLANTS course! Where I’d much appreciate you leaving a review for the show in iTunes!! How to work 1-on-1 with me! Where you can go to submit a question for the show

My guest today is like that lovably fiery, charmingly nerdy and way-smarter-than-you best friend we all wish we had. With her first bestselling book, Come As You Are, Emily Nagoski, a health educator with a PHD changed the conversation around sexuality for women of all orientations and now Emily has a bone to pick (a big bone to pick!) with another hot-button topic: burn out.   Leave it to Emily to get to the science behind the biggest health issues affecting women today and articulate the cause and solution waaaaaaay better than anyone ever has before. What’s especially notable about this new book is that she has a personal connection: after ignoring symptoms of burnout and stress, her twin sis Amelia got so worn down that her appendix actually burst. This not only stressed to Emily how mega-serious stress can be, but it also led Emily to bring her expert-from-personal-experience sister in to co-write the book with her.   In this episode, we got oh so real about oh so many things that’ll impact how you live

If Caroline Dooner’s name rings a bell, it’s probably because you’re heard of her book, or her massive movement called the “The F*ck It Diet.” Yes, she may have given me more than one anxiety attack as I listened to her long and yo-yoing journey with dieting, but the way she now shits on the inherent flaws of dieting and diet culture (which she backs with so much sound science thank you very very much Caroline) is SO relatable to SO many people. As a fellow past-life comedian, Caroline’s humor, coupled with her compassion, (with again, lots of research) allows her to fearlessly call out all the BS and misinformation that makes us make eating so hard for ourselves, so be prepared to wage no more wars with your grub after you listen. Matcha latte cheers to making “the f*ck it diet” the last diet you ever try!   Yay! Press Play to hear: How Caroline Dooner, author of The F*ck It Diet, fixed her tainted relationship with food Your hunger is there for a reason and why you need to stop ignoring it Why diets make p

You know that saying “put your money where your mouth is?” well my guest today puts her science where her mouth is. And puts nutritious plants in the bodies of athletes. So they can put trophies on their mantels and pride in their hearts..? Well, Angie Asche is a sports dietitian and one super smart dairy free cookie. Angie’s been a plant partier herself since 2011 and for the past five years, she’s been running her own private sports nutrition practice called Eleat Sports Nutrition. She advises athletes like pro sports players, gymnasts, ultra runners, figure skaters, and even every day type-a athletes like myself. Her husband, Cody Asche, also plays baseball professionally in the MLB so I got to pick her brain on how these guys manage to eat healthy when they’re always on the road traveling to different dugouts and stuff! Since I’ve dramatically upped my own athleticism in the past couple of years, I may have rapid-fired every question about planty sports nutrition I’ve ever had and Angie demystified it all

My guest today has zero time to waste on not taking action to better our planet earth. And this convo with Max La Manna will be a zero waste of your time. Max is a plant based chef and a pro at zero-waste living. He’s going on 600 days of producing no food waste! If his Instagram rallies and role modeling how to eat plants without plastic packaging doesn’t inspire you to start making small efforts to better the health of the planet, nothing will. And don’t worry, if you feel like “bah humbug I doubt MY small efforts even make any diff!” we cover that. Or if you feel like” could this zero waste lifestyle BE any more overwhelming?” we cover that too. I love, finally having a chat about how eating more plants is fantastic for even more than just our own inner health, and Max is so the man to give us the why and the how to start living a more sustainable green lifestyle NOW! Oh, and yes, we cover the situation with those freaking straws!   Don’t procrastinate to hear:   Simple tricks to cook environmentally-frie

Trust me when I say that if there’s a voice that can cut through all the BS around beauty standards and body image pressure, oh my, it’s today’s guest. Anuschka Rees whole motive with her hot off the press book, Beyond Beautiful is to help women stop obsessing so much over appearance, stop attributing their self-worth to their looks and start to recognize that the value of beauty has been INFLATED to the max in our society. Chatting with this girl literally settled my stomach (I’m not exaggerating!). In a pistachio nutshell, instead of worrying about if you’re beautiful and learning to see beauty in your “flaws”, she wants you to take beauty out of the equation altogether! Just knock it on out.   This chat literally schooled me - I learned some history, became more media literate and actually have started to have so much more pride in the fact that, honestly, I kind of naturally don’t give two hoots what I look like and I kind of always thought that was so lazy or unladylike but now I realize it’s actually aw

My guest today is a girl after my own heart, a fellow champion of flicking off the balance police and saying IMA DO THINGS MY WAY! Nealy Fischer, founder of the Flexible Chef and author of Food You Want: For the Life You Crave, gives some killer tips on how to bend without breaking and not just in an uncomfortable yoga way, but in an eating way, too. Nealy’s fascination with flexibility came out of necessity - she’s a mother of four, living a life that often takes her on planes, trains and automobiles around the WORLD. Still, she manages to practice what she preaches, which is eating awesome, fresh and planty things so you feel awesome, energized and confident. This was a great talk. Take notes because this bendy lady’s got some top-notch advice (minus the whole sardines in the airport thing…gross, Nealy…)   Press play to hear: How to abandon diet mentality and embrace flexibility in your food relationship How to bend without breaking in your kitchen, at your dinner table and in your workout Tips for food pr

Hey! I’m in Italy right now guzzling allll the wine and pretending to like the tannen's and terroirs and hints of tobacco in it so I figured now’s as bene as time as ever to re-air this grape chat all about wine! So today’s guest used to just be a regular person. Or a civilian, as she calls it. Not too long ago Bianca Bosker was just a run of the mill boxed wine drinker, not giving any thought or sniffs to wine that she’d sip, until one day she discovered something that forever changed the way she viewed fermented grapes: she stumbled upon the secret world of sommeliers and became, well, obsessed. I’m not going to spoil the rest of the story - I’ll let Bianca tell you her tale but if you’ve been curious about how to feel more comfortable ordering or buying wine, which wines pair perfectly for plant-y dishes and whether wine really has any redeeming health qualities, I think Bianca, the New York Times bestselling author of CORK DORK is the perfect person to satiate your thirst for vino knowledge.   Get buzzed

Hey! I’m in Italy right now ringing in my 30th birthday by eating all the pizza and allll the pasta, so I wanted to re-air this charming chat with a couple whose love affair with cooking healthy food was sparked by a love affair with Italy! So Sonja and Alex Overhiser, known on the interwebs as A Couple Cooks, are a writer and photographer duo behind the award-nominated food blog, A Couple Cooks, and the co-authors of the inspiring (to me as a soon to be also author) cookbook, Pretty Simple Cooking, which was named one of the “best vegetarian cookbooks” by Epicurious. And which lives on the SPECIAL FAVORITE COOKBOOKS section of my cookbook library, I’d like to add. Their plant-forward approach to eating and their joy-filled approach to cooking, mixed with their humble approach to love is what makes this couple pretty simply awesome. It was tricky tricky business scheduling this interview with BOTH Sonja and Alex but I just couldn’t settle one half of the couple cooks and I’m so thrilled I get to share both of

Today’s guest may be an expert in sleep but here me this: our chat is not a snoozer! Jennifer Hanway is a sleep expert, a pro on all things gut health and a holistic nutritionist who blends decades of personal experience with education to help busy folks get their wellness in check. She also splits her time between London, Boston and New York so she’s her test subject in keeping oneself energized and feeling awesome despite time zone changes and routine disruptions. This is actually the first time I’ve had a sleep expert on the PIMP podcast so I didn’t want to snooze and lose -- I grilled Jenny about naps, bedtime routines, insomnia, jet lag, my husband’s personal sleep habits and really anything related to ZZZ’s I could think of. So listen up and prepare sleep like a little teeny adorable baby tonight!   Stay awake to hear:   Why your ALL DAY habits impact your sleep more than the two hours before sleep How to get quality over quantity nights of rest Three three pillars of wellbeing and how to get them on p

I said it at the end of this chat but I’ll say it at the front, too: this was one of my favorite episodes yet! Liz Moody, wellness writer and editor extraordinaire for mindbodygreen, goop, Vogue and Glamour basically debunked, demystified and defused the whole wellness trend game in about one hour.   Liz’s brand spanking new beautiful book, Healthier Together, is on shelves as of this month and it’s actually not a cookbook for couples. Liz’s whole M.O. is to is that building community and spending QT with people is a huge wellness hack. After studying all the meditation, green smoothies, gluten-free paleo granolas and infrared saunas, Liz realized that positive relationships are an essential part of the health equation. In this chat, she makes a great argument for being healthier together, not unhealthy alone… and she grants us permission to hate salads AND eat dessert every day but I’ll just let you get to all that yo’self.   Press Play to hear:   How community deficiency is the most overlooked wellness dow

It’s a rare day when I meet someone that makes me seem quiet and tame, but today’s guest is that rare gem alright. Alison Faulker, known on the webs as the enthusiastic, bold dancing chica behind Awesome with Alison, The Alison Show and Alison’s Brand School, all projects in her empire that aim to help you build what you feel called to build, be who you want to be, and feel as awesome as you already are! But it’s not all air humps and dance parties (although she has thrown many a 900 person all-female dance parties, FOMO MUCH?), Alison is balances all of her yays with her nays of getting hit by a car, depression during pregnancy, self doubt on fleek and anxiety out the wazoo. She knows it’s not always easy for life to be awesome and that’s why she’s obsessed with sharing all the tools in her belt and life lessons from tantric sex. This chat rocked my avocado socks and I hope it rocks yours, too!   You betta press play so you can hear:   Wussup with thought work and how it’ll change everything for ya How to b

Chances are you’ve probs thought about your relationship with food once twice or thirty nine hundredithe times. Maybe it’s a good relationship, a bad one or just one in need of a little TLC. If someone asked you “so uh, what’s your food story?” would you even know where to start? What genre would it be? Is it an empowering memoir? An anxiety-inducing thriller? Downright horror? Is it all just fiction?   My guest today is all about food stories. Elise Museles believes that Your food story impacts everything from how you eat, when you eat, how you feel about your body, the choices you make around food, anxieties you may have around cooking or eating… the list goes on and on and on and ON! Basically, our food stories are the CONTEXT that explains why we eat the way we do. As Elise, a certified eating psychology and nutrition expert explains: our food stories, unlike the Harry Potter stories, are ALWAYS a work in progress.   Links related to this episode: The full show notes with all the deets from this episode!

My guest today is the bees knees. And not just because she’s a beekeeper. Though Carly Stein is, and Carly Stein is also the founder of Beekeeper’s Naturals, a line of busy bee-powered wellness products that she can swear on her tonsils will uplevel your life. Carly left her career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs a couple years ago when she got stung by passion and stuck on a mission to bring the healing powers of the hive to regular people like you and me who don’t even know what a hive really is but like to take care of our health! After hearing Carly’s story (“How I Built This” style), learning a lil about bee culture and understanding a lot about how the goo’s and jellies the bees use to thrive can really help us thrive too, I can’t stop buzzing! I guarantee you won’t be buzzless too.   Get ready to hear:   How a bee product unexpectedly saved a college girl’s health And then how Carly Stein, said college girl, started a company bringing more bee products to the masses Carly’s experience navigating her au

Today’s guest is a badass and a half. Not sure what that means, but I guess I said it because what she does for a living is badass, and she herself is a badass, totaling to one and a half parts of badass. Or I guess that’s really two parts badass. I’m really not great at math. By day, Isabel Foxen Duke helps women stop feeling crazy around food - specifically women who are trapped in “diet land.” And by night, she practices what she preaches, which is intuitive eating, health at every size and filtering her social media to maintain a positive body image. She also eats a lot of Burmese food, which, in case you dunno, means grub from various regions of Myanmar. (MY_ANN-MARR). I could’ve talked with Isabel for hours and hours, which is why this episode is especially long, because as you’ll hear, I needed my own crash course in diet culture with a side of fat phobia 101. I am so jazzed up about the work Isabel does and I love more than anything her tell-it-to-em-straight, no BS tude, dude! K now put on your suspe

It’s all great to educate and inspire based on personal experience, but it’s also great to have solid profesh research to back that jazzzz up. My guest today brings both to the table full of healthy food.. and to this energizing chat. Robyn Downes is the creator of Real Food Whole Life, and the host of the top-rated Feel Good Effect podcast who also holds a Master’s degree in education with an emphasis in behavior change who, at the doctoral level has researched the crap out of how people create and sustain lasting wellness. What I heart most about Robyn is not just her willingness to be honest and vulnerable about her shtuff, not just her mission to embody and amplify a gentle approach to wellness, (hence her motto, #gentleisthenewperfect), but her super nerdy professional research background which she draws on to share cutting edge science-based, (and life-tested) radically simple solutions for wellness. I think this couldn’t be sexier. She says the opposite. I’ll let you listen and be the sexy judge.   Get

Today’s guest seems like that woman who has it allllll figured out. That’s probably because Dr. Darria Long IS that woman who has it all figured out! :-) This is a woman who’s a successful ER doctor and ON TOP of that, a regular media expert, author and MOM. Or MOMMY -- I dunno what her kiddos call her. I met Darria backstage at The Dr. Oz Show! She was this peppy little lady who, at first glance from my peripheral in my makeup chair, I figured was some Zumba instructor about to make Dr. Oz all sweaty on TV, but then I learned that she’s a graduate of Harvard and Yale and someone Dr. Oz refers to as the "make-life-better-for-women-doctor.” Darria’s brand new book, Mom Hacks, is a simple, digestible and to-the-point guide for moms buckling under the pressure of raising little humans while maintaining the health of your regular-sized-human-self. Oh and if you’re only a mom to an animal..or a snake plant, don’t skip this chat because this sucker here is stuffed with tangible advice that’ll leave you deep breathi

My guest today believes in saying yes to saying no. Carley Schweet is a self care coach believes that boundaries might be as healing as berries! Ok, that’s not a direct quote but after hearing how Carley talks about the expense on our emotional, mental and physical wellbeing a lack of boundaries can have on us, you’ll see why adding boundaries to our life can be berry-esque. Carley has been teaching women how self caring the RIGHT way (like not just in the Insta-friendly, sorry, bubble baths...) which has helped her clients break off toxic engagements, improve sleep, ask for raises, quit jobs and learn to be more rebellious.   Before she was the wellness coach she is today, Carley was living in NYC working in the fashion industry and suffering from a major case of burnout. After an ah-ha! moment, she changed directions, launched her coaching business a year later and later became the author of “Boundaries with Soul.” Currently, she lives in a house in the country just outside of Seattle where she has a yard,