650: Navigating Family Dynamics Around Food Choices and Health With Functional Medicine Coach Dr. Sandi

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Katie: Hello and welcome to the Wellness Mama Podcast. I’m Katie from WellnessMama.com, and I really enjoyed this conversation that was very wide-ranging and full of a lot of really relevant life advice, but also touches on the psychology of eating and topics like how we can encourage our kids to want to eat healthier foods. But I’m here with someone named Dr. Sandi, who trains people to become functional medicine health coaches. She also helps practitioners and businesses hire them. And she has done so much work in that world for decades as founder and CEO of the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, which is a collaboration with the Institute for Functional Medicine. And she’s a leader in this field, an educator. She’s a licensed clinical psychologist for over 40 years, and she was also a pioneer in the use of breathwork and biofeedback and taught courses in the psychology of eating. She ran clinics for diagnosing and treating anxiety and ADHD. She is the author of how to Become a Health Coach, the Career That Can Bring People Joy and then some other books as well. She’s board certified in functional medicine and proud to serve as a member of the Forbes Business Council. And she mentions and we talk about the greatest joy in her life is being a grandma to twin babies.

And I actually love the direction that this conversation went because we talk about her work as a health psychologist and developing healthy psychology around eating and a healthy relationship with food and how we can nurture this in our families. But we also get to talk about and she’s very vulnerable and truthful about some of the pitfalls that she fell into as someone who cared about health and how that actually created some struggle and tension within her marriage. And within her family and what she would do differently if she could do it all over again. As well as some of her top lessons of a 50 year marriage, of raising children and now being a grandmother. And it was so fun to talk to someone with such wide ranging and beautiful life experience and who was willing to share so openly about what she learned from that life experience. So, without further ado, I want you to meet and enjoy this conversation with Dr. Sandi. Dr. Sandi, welcome and thanks so much for being here.

Dr. Sandra: Oh, thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Katie: Well, I am excited to learn from you today, and in our communication before this episode, it looks like I have many things I can learn from you and that our listeners will learn from you. But I also have a note in my show notes that you once taught disco dancing. And I just have to hear a little bit about this story because I will admit, dancing is my scary thing of the year that I’m trying to get out of my comfort zone and do, so I want to hear about this experience.

Dr. Sandra: This history, well, it was 1977, and disco was all the rage. Saturday Night Fever was the hot movie with John Travolta. And I was living in a suburban community north of Chicago at the time, and I belonged to an organization of women, and one of them was a dancer. And she taught this class disco dancing. And it was at the neighborhood rec center. And she said, oh, I’ve got so many other things going on tonight. I need a substitute. And so I volunteered and jumped in. And my motto has always been do stuff scared, or just I have a very good quick start. And so I often don’t think about the consequences, which can also be a negative. But I just jumped in, and it was a lot of fun. I taught some line dances, and it was great. And then they asked me to continue, so I taught it for a while. I also taught belly dancing for a time and took belly dancing in the early 70s. So I always love dance. In fact, I still take dance. I take ballet a few times a week, and I take tap, and it’s great. And I’ve always said there’s no such thing as embarrassment or shame, not comparing yourself to others. And so the ballet I’m the worst person in the class, and I don’t care.

Katie: Well, I love so many life lessons that I didn’t even expect in that answer. And I love the motto of do things scared. I’m actually belly dancing is the one I’m attempting to tackle this year, and I’m learning very hands on how much that bodily movements, which I knew logically, but really help us also repattern our nervous system. And I love your approach, if you’re like, no embarrassment, no shame, just being in your body. I think that’s a lesson I’m just beginning to learn as an adult after more than 35 years. So I love that you got to talk about that as well. And I would guess a lot of our listeners may already be familiar with you, but for those who aren’t, can you also just share a little bit about your journey within the health world and the work that you do?

Dr. Sandra: Sure. Well, where I am now is not where I started out, and that’s a life journey for so many people. So I started out and this was back in the 60s, when you’re going to college at that time, typically you can be going into teaching. You can go into nursing. You could be a secretary. Well, I chose teaching. I always wanted to be a school teacher, and that was my major. And then I didn’t do so well in student teaching. I couldn’t control the classroom. And so I shifted, and I did a lot of shifts in my life in my career, and so I decided I would stay in school and I would master in learning disabilities. I got a degree and would you know, I landed my first job in teaching a classroom with kids who are not only learning have learning disabilities, but behavior issues as well. So eventually, I had to learn behavior management techniques, and that led to a strong interest in stress, which really wasn’t talked about. We’re talking this was 1971/72, and I still have notes from that era where I would do workshops for parents and for teachers. How do you control stress?

And I started teaching breathing techniques, and at that time, we didn’t call it breathwork. It was just breathing. And that led to thinking, well, I’ll go back to school. I always love learning. And so I got a PhD in clinical psychology. But at the time, and to some extent, it still is about what’s wrong with you? And that just never sat well with me, even when I was in learning disabilities. And I spent some time in teaching teachers how to teach kids with special needs, and I always focused on their strengths. I do these really long batteries of testing for kids, and everyone was just focused on what’s wrong with them and how do we remediate the deficits? And my focus was, well, he’s really good at sports, and he’s really funny, and, yeah, his score on that test wasn’t so good, but he laughed out loud in his answer. It was so creative. And so then back then, I was picking out this Strikes approach, which we now refer to as positive psychology.

So I became really a health psychologist, and I was integrating breathing and relaxation techniques and imagery and ways to look at what you’re thinking and change those thoughts. And I was working with people who had physical issues like migraine headaches or irritable bowel or insomnia, and they were coming to me for what we call self regulation strategies. People were getting better compared to the psychologists who were only psychotherapy. And it’s just you spend this session in your head, and then you end up feeling worse when you got out. And so I was really focused on how you can make yourself feel better. And that led to an interest in nutrition.

I was always interested in nutrition because of my own issues. And so I studied with the Institute for Functional Medicine IFM, and as a psychologist, it was out of my scope of practice to do a lot of the things that the doctors who go through IFM are taught, like interpreting labs or prescribing medications or even supplements. But I had a lot of people at the time come to me. They were in my local area, and they were saying, I’m a health coach, but I love what you’ve been doing. Can you teach it to me? And so decided to take a chance, talk about doing self scared, decided, hey, I’m going to start a program to start training health coaches. At the time, I had Elise, who is my business partner and co-founder, she was working with me. We had this small little office in the northern suburbs of Chicago, no windows, and we were just dreaming big. Like, what if we collaborated with IFM instead of just training local health coaches, what if we really went remote and trained around the world?

So IFM liked the idea. They had wanted to start a health coaching training program for a while, but they felt the right person hadn’t come along to run it and organize and develop it. So that’s what I did. And I was 65 at the time. And of course, there were a lot of naysayers, including my husband, who said, what do you need this for? This is a huge project. Like, this is the time of our lives. We could be traveling, and you’ve been a psychologist for 40 years or so, just retire or just see a few more clients and then take it easy. But I had a mission. I really felt I saw the health of our country. I saw kids suffering, getting worse. And so I had this mission to see a health coach in every doctor’s office. And so that is what drives me. I just wake up every day thinking about this mission, and that is really just so tied to my purpose, my identity. And so it’s been a wonderful journey.

Katie: I love that story, and I hope some of you guys are watching on video, because I will have said I would not have guessed your age correctly. I would have guessed many, many years younger because you look phenomenal, for what it’s worth.

But also, I think we’re very aligned because that is actually what originally got me into this health world as well, was reading that our kids, for the first time in two centuries, would have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. And that’s sort of the mission that got me on this path to hopefully help change that. And that keeps me awake at night and gets me up in the morning. So I love that that was part of your purpose and driver as well.

I also seen in your work and you mentioned in our prep for this interview, making a differentiation between positive psychology and not happyology. And I think this is a good foundational piece before we go into some of these other parts of psychology related to nutrition. Even so, I would love for you to expand on that a little bit.

Dr. Sandra: Sure. So positive psychology is really the study of what’s right with you and not what’s wrong. It’s evidence based. It’s a lot like studying functional medicine. They’re looking at how do people thrive? What are the characteristics? What are the components of a life well lived? And to come up with this, it’s the researchers Marty Seligman. In the mid 90s, he and a team of researchers went around the world. They looked at different cultures, religions, and psychology, literature, philosophy, and they came up with this concept called Perma. What is perma? It’s an acronym. And the P is positive emotion. So these are the five elements we need to thrive.

P is we need to experience happiness, joy in our life. The e is engagement. You might consider it like flow. We have activities, things that we’re lost in. So if I’m speaking to you right now, and I’m so engaged and right now, this is my world, I’m in a flow state. And then the R is relationships that are giving you meaning, that are filled with love. And the M is meaning. We need meaning and purpose in our lives. And the A is achievement, no matter how small, and we may discount it. I got up, and I made my bed. That’s achievement. And so these elements of Perma are what make life worth living. And how we thrive.

How we get there, is through our character strengths. Character strengths are these traits that we all have that allow us to thrive. And some are of the heart, and some are of the mind. They’re things like bravery and curiosity and love of learning. One of my tough ones is zest. Like, I’m always moving around, which is why I thought I had ADD when young because I can’t sit still. I danced all the time. But it’s zest. It’s energy for life. Creativity is another one, spirituality. So this is positive psychology, but some people misinterpret it as happyology, and they go overboard, and it’s like, I must be happy at all times. Well, no. Anger, sadness. These are natural emotions, and we have a balance of them. So we experience other feelings that you might consider more negative or on the darker side or unpleasant. But it’s not like I must be happy. Sometimes we sell ourselves a bill of goods thinking, we must be happy all the time. Or we see these self help books or these quotes on Instagram about you can do it 100%. Well. No, sometimes there’s failure. And when you accept that and move on and learn from it, that is a component of a life well lived. You’ve achieved something. You’ve achieved a recognition. You’ve tried something, you’ve learned something. And so that is really what positive psychology is. It’s deeply tied to physical well being. So when we talk about flourishing, it’s really not just emotional, but it’s mental and we don’t separate the two.

Katie: I think that’s such an important foundational piece. And I’ve thought of that in relation to parenting as well, which I know we’re going to get to touch on a little bit also. But with the idea if we are outcome focused and focus on something like happiness, for instance, then anything that is not happiness feels like a failure. And especially in our kids, I could see that creating more stress. Or if we think we’re only supposed to be happy, then anything besides that feels like a deviation from the path when really all of those emotions exist together on this path of life and aren’t, and then we can hopefully not have that same judgment of happiness, good, sadness, bad, and the simplistic categories we tend to put things in.

And there are so many directions that we can go with this. I know that you work as a health psychologist and that you do something called integrating cognitive behavior, behavior principles with positive psychology and mind body strategies, which is a mouthful, but I know that you can explain that and kind of walk us through how that relates to physical and mental health.

Dr. Sandra: Sure. So what we see, particularly in healthcare people are in silos. They have their way of practicing medicine. They have their orientation. And if you read the psychology literature or self help books, you see that one person has a system and they’re going to say, okay, do it my way, and another person has a system that is saying, do it my way. And that’s where we got all these disciplines. And it can get really confusing and overwhelming, particularly as a parent, you’re looking at parenting techniques.

So a lot of what we hear in the self help world comes from these disciplines, particularly cognitive therapy. So I had the great fortune to study with Dr. Albert Ellis. He was one of the developers of the field along with Aaron Beck and a few others. And the idea is that we disturb ourselves because of our thoughts, how we interpret events. Now this is pretty commonplace right now. A lot of people talk about this, but how to do it is something that a lot of people don’t go into. And so it’s really learning how to think scientifically instead of being ruled by our emotions.

So when I was practicing as a psychologist, I would have people prove it. For example, they might say something like or something happens in their life and they say, I failed again. I can’t do anything right. We would take that thought that they just said verbalized or they thought to themselves it was self talk and we would pull it apart. We put it under the microscope. What do you mean, prove it? Just like you were on a witness stand? Where’s the evidence? How did you come to that realization? Now, many people think that’s, well, I have to spend ten years in therapy doing trauma work, like how that happened, but it’s really not. It’s looking at from a scientific, like, approving method. It’s that old logic approach where 100% of the time, you mean your entire life, from the time you were born, you’ve never did anything right. And then they’ll say, well, no. I said, okay, just if there was one exception, then your statement, I never do anything right, it’s all or nothing, means 100% of the time. Every waking moment from the time you were born, you’ve not done anything right. No, that’s not true. Okay, then let’s modify that statement instead of never, sometimes, occasionally, I’m human like all the rest of us, and so I will make mistakes, and then you deal with, okay, that’s building resiliency. How are you going to move on? What are you going to plan for in the future? Maybe when a certain situation that you just interpreted as you made a mistake, you could rehearse it in advance. We do that a lot. You used to do that a lot when I was working with parents, where you rehearse before I open the door, when I come home from work, this is what I’m going to say. No matter what my child is doing or saying, this is how I’m going to react or not react.

And so you have problem solving approaches. So that’s the cognitive side. It’s a mental process. It’s logical reasoning. The positive psychology is the emotional side. The positive psychology is having a sense that you have these essential traits. You were born with them. You were born with courage. You were born with curiosity, with love of learning, with forgiveness, with humility, with perseverance, with perspective, with love, justice. There’s 24 of these strengths. You have them, and when you start using them, that is nurturing. You’re nurturing yourself. Every cell is welcoming that. And then we integrate the mind body part. What is that? It’s having an awareness. So if I’m talking to you right now, and I am all like, okay, I’m going to change my posture. I’m going to release some tension in my shoulders. I’m going to take a soothing breath. So I have paired those physical techniques with the thought changing, with the positive psychology sense, and the three of those are the recipe for truly flourishing and thriving.

Katie: I love that, and that was so beautifully explained. And I have a note also in the show notes that if you had to do a Ted Talk in a week, it would be, I think, something along the lines of how to refuse to make yourself miserable about anything, which I absolutely love that title. And as you just touched on so often, that is within our own story and our own interpretation, not the reality of what’s actually happening.

And I also love that you called out some of those specific qualities, because things like courage, curiosity, love of learning are sort of core principles in my house and in my homeschooling with my kids. And something I really tried to pay attention to calling out in them from a young age instead of just saying, like, oh, you’re smarter. Oh, you’re pretty, saying like, OOH, I loved how courageous you were when you just did that. Or that was a really beautiful, curious question, or things like that, just like just reinforce those things in a positive light for them. And I know that this goes well. Before I guess we move on, is there anything else related to that idea of how to refuse to make yourself miserable about anything that you want to touch on? Because I think that statement is incredible.

Dr. Sandra: Well, I want to acknowledge Dr. Albert Ellis, who I trained with, and that was one of his books. I think it might be out of print. You could still get up and use copy. It’s how to stubbornly refuse to make yourself miserable about anything. Yes, anything. And when I was working as a psychologist, just about everybody I saw read that book. He had books parenting, and I did workshops on it. And really, that is the sense of empowerment and I know you love to talk about. You’re the primary care provider, and you are in charge of your mental health, your thoughts. You can change them now, they may occur split second, automatic, but you catch them like you have a safety net, and you catch them and you blow them up and you look at them and you rework them. So instead of what if you say, So what if? So you imagine the thing that you fear happening. Like, what if I make up a split? If I say something that’s really off on this podcast and maybe it’s so horrible that you decide you’re not even going to air it. Okay, what’s the worst thing that can happen? It won’t be aired and people won’t learn about work I do. Is my life in danger? Will my life go on? Will I remember this five years from now? How about ten years? How about 20 years? Unfortunately, I’m 73, so I have that long perspective to see that all the things that I made myself miserable about in my 20s, in my 30s and so on, are irrelevant.

Katie: It’s such a great reframe, and I think it also sort of leads into the next thing I’m excited to talk to you about, which is that you are also an expert in the psychology of eating. And I think this is going to be a springboard into a whole conversation about food habits within family and developing a healthy relationship with food. But I guess to start off broad, can you just kind of define for us some of that idea of the psychology of eating and how that relates to having a relationship with food?

Dr. Sandra: Yeah, there’s an old saying you are what you eat. You want to have a personality test and I spent many years giving people those kinds of personality tests. What you eat us, what you put on your plate, how you eat, when you eat, your thoughts about eating. It’s like a Rorschach, which is the famous inkba test. You learn about somebody from how they eat. And we know and I used to teach this for many years. I still teach this section in the functionality Coaching Academy. And it’s what we bring when we sit down to eat. We are bringing our personality. This is formed even with little kids. The picky eater, the child who refuses to eat becomes the bad child. The messy eater, the OCD has to have everything in a certain way on the plate. The rebellious eater, every teen goes through that, if you’re vegan one of the biggest mistakes I made was raising my kids vegan. It was in the 90s. Low fat craze. They’re going to change.

That’s one of the ways we express ourselves through food. Our identities are shaped through food. Also our family messages about food. Food is love, food is caring. Food could be withdrawn. There’s also our friends. We know that when we are with certain friends, we tend to eat all the social pressures you’re out to eat. And what will people say if I order this? If I don’t order this, you’re judged and or fear of being judged. There’s also gender differences. Actually saw this in a Facebook group the other day where someone said, yeah, but guys would never order a salad. Well, okay. And I did some research way back and yeah, there’s guys who are kind of the traditional male way of being would have certain guy food. You’re not going to serve little cucumber sandwiches when you have a bunch of guys for the Super Bowl party.

Speaking of that, there are holidays, there are nationalities, there are cultural religious associations. So these all shape what we eat and how we eat and who we eat with. Food is joy and that’s a big part of the psychology of eating. It’s also emotion when to stop, how you feel about stopping, how you blame yourself, how you hate yourself if you’ve eaten something that you’ve been told you shouldn’t. There’s also carrying things too far, which is orthorexia where you are so afraid of foods. And I’ve certainly been guilty of that where every, look at a menu and every single thing represents danger. And all this is played out in the family and I have seen it personally and it is something that if we can focus on healing this part, it could really start to heal relationships.

Katie: I agree so much. It seems like we see extremes in the nutrition world and in people’s eating habits. And like you, I noticed that actually when I started helping some male athletes with their genetics and their nutrition, I was like, wow, men have a different language around food and body image than women do. And they were focused on the positive of trying to eat enough calories to actually nourish their body. So that was already, I felt, like, a healthier approach. They didn’t use words like lose weight, which I’ve always thought psychologically we don’t want to lose anything. Like our brains kind of wired not to want to lose something. And they use words like they got cut or they are leaner or things that tended to have a more positive connotation than a lot of the words that women use.

And it just for the first time kind of made me pay attention to the language I was using when it came to the foods that I was putting in my body and what I was hoping my sort of physiology would look like as a result of that. And I know that could probably be a whole episode all in and of itself, but I think this springboards into for those of us who are parents and we’re wanting to both model and raise our kids with a healthy relationship with food and also healthy eating habits. What would be some of the principles you would give parents in sort of guiding that? And I have some as well, but I really want to hear yours.

Dr. Sandra: Yeah, I think first and foremost is to give up the rigidity, that character strength of humility, to have an appreciation of what you don’t know, to avoid dogma, to to focus on that what you think is true right now. The science will change. So I look back on what I knew in the 80s, in the 90s, so when my kids were born in the 80s, I read a book by John Robbins, diet for a New America and this is horrible, the way they slaughtered the animals. I’m going to stop eating nate. And that morphed into chicken and other animal foods eventually. And then I was reading the things that were really agreeing with my beliefs and so I it was macrobiotic at the time. I was in a food co op. This was many years before Whole Foods. And so I would drive like 45 minutes to this little health food store. They didn’t have very many back then to get groceries. I had a food co op. We had a big truck come down from Madison, Wisconsin. And so there was a bunch of us who thought we were right and we were so self righteous.

And what we didn’t realize is that the science is going to change. And that’s one of the when I look back, that was one of the biggest mistakes that I made. Why did I deprive my girls of those omega threes? And eventually I started introducing seafood and then of course, when they went to college, I have a picture of my daughter. You just tasted steak. I was on a date and we went to a steakhouse, and, oh my God, it’s so good. And then my other daughter who was like, all this beef jerky. Wow. And so that was their way of rebelling.

And others would do the opposite, where they will be in a Carnivore household, and they’ll come home and they’ll announce that they’re vegan. And so I went through all those trends. I was a raw vegan for a time. Never felt sicker in my life during that short period of being a raw vegan. But it’s seeing how things have changed and the relationships that were compromised, though, with my husband, he never bought into that. And I remember one argument that we had, and I was saying, like, all you want to eat, like, you have this belief that you have to have an entree, and the entree has to be steak or chicken or piece of fish and then little bit of vegetables. You can just have the vegetables on your plate. Why do you need all this? And the one vegetable he liked to eat was cucumber. Fast forward to today. What’s the typical meal that I am eating? It would be a steak. Because what I’ve learned is when you’re metaphors and you’re old like me, you really need so, so much protein and animal protein, especially. And so now I go out to a restaurant and I order I’ll order a steak, and my vegetable is cucumbers. Like, Melanie Allen talks about, like, eating cucumbers. Like, oh, my God, he got it right. And I was so sure.

And it caused so many arguments. Particularly, I remember the day my older daughter was two, and he snuck her out of the house, and he went or maybe she was three or four, because I stopped eating meat when she was two. And so he went to this very popular hot dog place in our community. I threw a fit, “You gave her a hot dog?” But I looked back, I thought it was the worst thing, but the worst thing was compromising the relationship. My daughters will talk about, like, they will go out and they used to go out to a restaurant and be afraid. They knew that even if I didn’t say anything out loud to them, they knew how I felt. They knew that I was disapproving of what they ordered.

Or Thanksgiving. I remember one Thanksgiving with my late sister in law, and this was, again, it’s the height of the low fat vegan craze. So we were sitting at dinner, and they were eating the stuffing, and they were, this is really good stuffing. And my sister in law said, yeah, I put in chicken fat. And I like, had a fit, I think I took it off or wanted to take it off their plates. Or even if I didn’t, they knew it was like it ruined the whole tone of the event. So how would I redo that? Would say, you don’t compromise the relationship.

The good feelings that you have by being with family are healing, are positive for your well being. Physically. And emotionally, the stress that I was experiencing and what I was passing on to them was so much worse than if they had just enjoyed the stuffing and the turkey instead of the awful tofurkey that I had brought for their portions. I think that would be the biggest advice to really to not be so sure and to choose yourself how you’re going to eat. Be that role model for your kids, but also not be that person who won’t allow your kids to have a cupcake at the birthday party now unless they have celiac or known food allergies that’s different. But if you’re doing this for other reasons because you think it’s going to be healthier, the damage that you might be doing will be far less positive. It’ll be unhealthy.

Katie: I think that’s, well, every point you’ve just made is so important, but especially that idea of staying in humility and realizing that we might not have all the answers and in fact, we statistically likely do not. I know even in just the 15 years I’ve been in the health world, I have seen evidence change on so many things, and I’ve changed my opinion. And I now have respect for people in the health world who are open about like, I got new information that showed a different perspective, and I considered it, and I changed my mind. I think that actually shows a good character, not a lack of character. I think that actually helps us all grow in the process. And I also love everything that you said about always putting that relationship first, because my next question to you was going to be what about all the women who I get who ask me, how do I make my husband eat this way? And my advice had always been, first of all, start with the language of that. Your husband is an adult and he is an autonomous human being, and you can’t make him do anything, nor can you technically make your children do anything and respect his ability to make his own food choices.

I kind of look at it like the division of responsibility where I consider myself responsible for making sure there’s nutrient dense food available in my house and making sure my kids have food to eat. It’s their responsibility to choose to eat that food or not, to choose if they’re hungry or not, and to listen to their bodies. And that means if they’re at a friend’s house and there’s whatever the food may be, it’s their decision and choice to eat it or not. It’s also their decision and choice if they don’t feel great after certain foods and they learn that lesson, then versus I think that really just touches on your point that you made so eloquently of put the relationship first. There’s nothing, certainly in the food world that should come where it all come into play with our love for our family members.

Dr. Sandra: 100%. You said that so well, so how can I make my husband eat the way I wanted him to eat? So that based on cognitive therapy, breaking that down. How can you make someone can you make someone can you get into somebody’s brain and make them do something that you think is desirable? That would be as nutty as thinking that you can make the chair, the chair that’s over there get up and take a walk. You can’t make that chair do anything. You can’t walk. You can’t make somebody change their mind. You can listen to them. You can ask questions. Why do you like that? But also, you can sometimes have a sense you don’t know when change will happen.

So a number of years ago, we’re having a live event, and Dr. Tom O’Bryan was a speaker. We’re having a graduation to celebrate our graduates. And so my husband was there, and Dr. Tom mentioned something to him. They were talking and said, I have, like, a quarter, half a couple of blueberries every day because blueberries are really good for your brain. And something clicked, and my husband heard that, and that was from then on, every single day he has those blueberries. I have nothing to do with it.

Sometimes hearing from reading an article, somebody that is a neutral source because our relationships are full of layers and layers of emotion. He’s the little boy, and I’m telling him what to do. I’m his mommy. That relates back to that or the more I try and make him I’ve been married 50 years, and so the more I’ve been trying to make him change for 50 years, it’s not working. All that’s done is create conflict, create arguments, create resentments, and it is what he chooses to change. But what I have learned is that I focus on what he’s doing well. Okay, he may not change his eating habits, but if I hear something about a supplement so, for example, urolithium A, Timeline Nutrition, I’ve been really hot on that. And I just said, allen, do you want to try this? Oh, sure. Order it for me. So that is something that he will do as opposed to changing food habits. But it is something that and the other thing I look at well, at least now he buys organic. If he’s buying something that I might think is highly inflammatory, but he got it. It’s an organic version. Okay, that’s something.

And so you take little steps towards change, and we teach this when teaching coaches, and that’s something else that people can benefit from, working with a coach if it gets bad enough. And so but the the main thing is to dissect that I can’t make him change. What is he doing right? The same that positive psychology perspective. You look at what’s right as opposed to always zeroing in on what’s wrong.

Katie: Yeah, I can see that general being generally good advice that ripples over into so many areas of life. And like you said, I’ve said on this podcast so many times that we are each our own primary healthcare provider because we’re the ones choosing the inputs that we put in our bodies and our lifestyles every day. But in a sense, I think moms are also kind of like health coaches because we’re also guiding our families on these topics. And I do feel like you’ve mentioned in that example, what we model is going to be much more impactful long term, especially with our kids, than what we say and what we insist on.

And I think the two parts of that are I try to give my kids as much independence and respect for their independence as possible while also making sure that every single day they hear me tell them, I love you unconditionally. There’s nothing you ever have to do to earn that, and there’s nothing you can ever do to take away from that. So that hopefully they learn to take responsibility for their own choices and they learn that I respect those choices as they make them.

But it also makes me think of that idea that you can’t be a prophet in your own hometown kind of idea. And I realize even with my teenagers, as amazing and respectful as they are, if they hear something from someone else, whether it be in a podcast or another health expert, they’re like, mom, did you know? And then they internalize the thing I’ve been saying or doing for so long. And I’ve noticed in my friend’s kids, I can say those things in passing and they’ll go home and tell my friend, hey mom, Miss Katie said I should take creatine. Can I take creatine? Or whatever it may be? And they listen. So I think it’s just a funny progression how that happens. And it seems even more important with a life partner or spouse making sure you keep that level of respect and not kind of defaulting to that parent child dynamic of trying to tell them what to do.

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But I can only imagine you must have a plethora of lessons from 50 years of marriage, and I’m curious if any more come to mind for people who are much not quite as far down that path or many fewer years in than you are.

Dr. Sandra: Yeah, so, well, that is, number one, that you cannot make them change. And if you’re trying to, you could always flip it to say, how has he or she tried to make me change? And what do I do? I don’t like that. And so that’s number one.

Second is the things that usually bug us about our partner are things that actually will lead to a good long term relationship because there’s a theory of relationship that has to do with taking, throwing off the part of you that is underdeveloped. And let me give you an example. So I didn’t grow up in a home that where finances were discussed. My father and mother were working people. He died when I was nine, and my mom had a hard time making ends meet. So I didn’t grow up. I didn’t know what the stock market was until I took a course in college, really, in economics. But I never liked that side of it. I never liked financing, balancing budgets. So I tended to be a spendthrift. I tended to and that was being a quick start as well, and being impulsive, like buy something. Oh, no, what did I do? I spent too much money.

So my husband was the exact opposite. He was the cautious one. He knew how to keep a budget. I can’t tell you how many times I would throw something away because I’ll just say, oh, I don’t need to open this up, throw it away, because I do things so quickly. And he will go and he’s taking out the garbage and he’ll, he sorts through it and he’ll say, this was a refund check. I think he wanted to keep this. And so that’s an example of like, I would rely on him, like I was ready to sign a contract. He would look at the fine details and this extended for quite some time, and it works really well. And I’m not saying that this is a traditional kind of marriage where a woman like my mother in law didn’t do nothing. And when she was widowed, she was totally adrift. So you want to certainly take charge.

And I was working and I was handling money, but there are never things that I like to do. But the things that would annoy me, and this is what I’m really saying about it, that these are the habits that he had that would drive me crazy. He could never make a decision. He just waits so long and let’s do it already. And you are buying a new toothbrush. You’ll go to ten stores. And it’s annoying that he is so slow moving, but what I’m thinking about is how many times that benefited me.

So when you have these, like this old saying, opposites attract. So you look at how you complement one another, and if he didn’t have that trait that annoys you, how would your life have been worse your relationship? Because usually those are the things we’re saying, if only he would change, if only she would do, then my life would be better. But again, you can’t make them change. And I always go to, well, how is he trying to get me to change? And I don’t like that. And so that works as well.

The other thing that has worked in 50 years of marriage is we’ve always had our designated spaces. And that is I always had my space where I always had like, a home office. It was just that separation. And we always were okay with separation. There are some couples who have this, we have to do everything together. And so that is something that you can work on to make really respecting those differences and agreeing to disagree. And now at this point, I really look at all of those things that would really annoy me. Eating habits and exercise. Fitness is just something that I’m so committed to. It’s like brushing my teeth. He doesn’t; he likes to just sit on the couch and watch TV. But it’s focusing on what are the core values that we really share. And even if he doesn’t exercise, if I’m going to be nagging him about it and try and make him do it, then the stress is more deleterious.

That was a life lesson learned. And we can’t do it perfectly, though. So sometimes I will get aggravated and it will be frustrating and then let go. And the number one thing really overall is forgiveness. So somebody’s doing something, it’s annoying to you, you forgive and you say it’s a mistake. How many mistakes have I made personally? And what would it be like if somebody didn’t forgive me?

Katie: I love that. And as an extension, I read from your bio, you’re also a new grandparent. And I know many parents, run into sometimes tension with their adult children when grandparents enter the picture. And that I’ve only experienced this so far from the child having children myself, interacting with parents and in laws. But I now have older teenage children, so I can imagine in the next decade at least, I might be on the grand law side as well. So I’m curious if by extension of that, you have any lessons that you’ve learned on the relationship with adult children and their children to help us be aware of that and to navigate that in a healthier way as well.

Dr. Sandra: Absolutely. Well, first of all, and I’m probably going to tear up, there is nothing more beautiful in life, in my life than seeing your adult child as a parent. I mean, that is just like words can express the love that comes from seeing that. Grandparenting is very important. There are some studies that show that when there’s a relationship between a grandchild and a grandparent, that grandchild thrives, they do better, there’s less depression, greater sense of well being, and they look at those relationships with fondness. And then this gets back to the things, what gets in the way.

Well, this never was an issue because like my parents, when I was born, they lived upstairs from her parents. Grandparents lived together, they lived down the block. They saw each other so frequently and now often there’s great distance in between. But it is really crucial to have the relationship. And this leads back to the psychology of eating and all those food battles. So the grandparents, they’re going to bring jelly beans for your kids and maybe you’ve decided no sugar and you get really upset and really aggravated again. It is what you are doing to ruin that relationship, to have those rules, it’s worse.

So kids will recover if they ate too many of those jelly beans that grandma brought, but they will remember the trauma of the relationship being severed or compromised. So grandparents there’s actually, I belong to a grandma group and it’s this wonderful group and everybody talks about this experience. For example, what is the number one issue that grandparents may have? It’s time; knowing, having that perspective, we don’t have much time in our lives and so we want to have time with our grandchildren. Whereas the parents, you’re working, you’re busy, you’re saying, I don’t have time for all these family get togethers, or my kids have all these activities, they don’t have time to be with grandma and grandpa. And so really having those honest conversations about time.

And often so many grandparents are long distance and this is a new field and there are solutions to being a long distance. So to keep that relationship and we’ve got technology with FaceTime, but there are ways to have activities and expressions of I love you, you are being very specific and having you got mail; kids can get things in the mail from grandparents. And there’s many ways that that relationship can be nurtured. But it is a very, very special relationship that all too often I see get compromised because of these other issues like the food rules or the boundary rules, that as an adult, I have to have boundary with my mother or my dad and so they can’t see the grandchildren. And these are the kinds of things that are really harmful and kids will remember long after they’ve processed the junk food that the grandparents may have brought over.

Katie: That’s a good reframe and a good context and perspective, I think. And you’re right, that imbalance of time, that’s probably really important to keep in mind for the grandparents and for the parents of the young children of that imbalance and which parts of time feel difficult in each of those. And it seems like there’s also some very positive overlap where I know when I was a young overwhelmed parent, having grandparents close by when the times they visited was a lifesaver, because I actually got a little bit of time back in my schedule for some self care once in a while. And the kids loved, of course, time with their grandparents.

But like you said, that’s not always available in today’s world with more space between kids and their grandparents. And so I love that there are ways you talk about to bridge that gap as well. I also know we’ve come very full circle and got to touch on a wide range of topics, but I want to make sure we also get to go back and touch a little bit on the health coaching side a little bit more, because you’ll have done such a great amount of work in this area. So maybe letting listeners know how they can find a coach if they’re looking for one and or become a coach. Because I know many moms are actually turning to that, not just to direct their own family’s health, but as a way to be able to help others, even with the time constraints of being a mom.

Dr. Sandra: Yeah. The world needs health coaches more than ever. We have such a crisis. There are six in ten people, are metabolically unhealthy, have been diagnosed with at least one chronic disease. Health coaches are needed because our providers are leaving the profession. It’s estimated in the next ten years, over 120,000 providers will leave. People are struggling to get appointments with their doctors, and there are many things that are lifestyle related.

People need an ally, they need support. And what does a health coach do? Well, as you say, an individual is a primary care provider. And health coaches teach them how to be that. They teach them how to be the CEOs of their own health, how to navigate the world of health, where there are so many conflicting opinions to trust, their sense of where they want to be and ask those questions.

With a coaching, this process is active listening. It’s 100% where you are with that person and you are guiding them, but being so client centered, you’re 100% attentive to what they want, where do they want to be, what do they want their health for? What gives them the greatest joy and then breaking down? Like what steps do they want to take now to change, to perhaps do something different? And the health coach is the advocate.

There is a strong need in medical practices. They are hiring health coaches like crazy. Digital health companies are hiring. And so there’s never been a better time to enter this field. And often I hear people saying, well, I would like to go be a nutritionist, but I need an advanced degree and it’s so expensive. Well, health coaching is a lower entry point financially as well as the qualifications. You don’t need a healthcare background. Some of the best coaches don’t have that. We also have medical doctors and nurses who are studying with us to be coaches.

But the common thread is you have a calling to serve, you want to help someone to thrive. And it’s what also we find is the process of studying health coaching, particularly these functional medicine positive psychology principles. It’s so much a life transformation. And they’ll come out and they say, by the way, I just wanted to be a coach and learn about functional medicine, but who knew that it’s life changing that I have transformed how I deal with issues that I was having with my family. And so it is crucially needed. We are seeing the future of health coaching so bright with on track for insurance, for reimbursement codes. So it’s just a wonderful time again, because our health care crisis, this is real. And mental health coaches support emotional wellness and they can specialize, they can work with moms, they can work with moms of kids with special needs, they can work with elderly people, they can run groups. So it’s just a really exciting profession.

Katie: And I know you gave us a link specifically for the audience to learn more about that. So that will of course be in the Show Notes at wellnessmama.FM for you guys listening, you also have just a wealth of knowledge online. So I’ll make sure we put all those links so people can find you and keep learning from you. And a couple of questions I love to ask at the end of interviews. The first being if there is a book or a number of books that have profoundly impacted your life and if so, what they are and why.

Dr. Sandra: Hands down it’s The Will to Meaning by Viktor Frankl. He was a holocaust survivor. I have many family members who were lost in the Holocaust, but what he says has to do with what really gives somebody meaning and purpose and it boils down to love and community and that sense of connection with others. That’s what helped him alive in the concentration camp, really focusing on love of his wife and so finding that meaning and the meaning of sorrow, why we have tragedy and be able to contrast that experience when we are finding love and it can be love is tied to your meaning and purpose, connection, community. I’ve read and reread that book so many times.

Katie: I love it. I will make sure that is linked in the Show Notes as well at Wellnessmoma.FM and lastly, any parting advice for the listeners today that could be related to many of the topics we’ve touched on or entirely unrelated life advice.

Dr. Sandra: People just say I want to change, this has to change, he has to change, I have to change, my kids have to change. And this comes from Gestalt therapy. Many years ago I studied that. It’s a humanistic type of psychotherapy. And the saying is when you accept what is, you change. So you come to this acceptance and that’s a profound sense of peace and it’s a physical sense as well. You accept it, that doesn’t mean you like it. And just that initiates a change process because now you have a different perspective and then that allows you to go in and actually do the work on a specific thing that you want to work on changing.

Katie: I think that’s a perfect place to wrap up and a kind of beautiful thing that puts a pin in a lot of the things we got to talk about today. But I am so grateful for your experience and the many thousands of people that you’ve helped and your time and sharing with us today. So thank you so much for being here.

Dr. Sandra: Thank you, it’s been a pleasure.

Katie: And thanks as always to all of you for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time your energy and your attention with us today. We are both so grateful that you did, and I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of The Wellness Mama Podcast.

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.