384. Beyond Calories: Ditching Diet Culture to Heal Your Gut and Fuel Your Life With Best-Selling Author Elyse Kopecky

This week on Hurdle, Emily is joined by Elyse Kopecky—three-time New York Times best-selling author, educator, and co-author of the Run Fast, Eat Slow cookbook series with Olympian Shalane Flanagan—for a conversation that dives deep into the power of real food and the journey of turning personal struggle into a successful, mission-driven career. Elyse opens up about her intense personal history with a low-fat diet mentality as a young athlete, which led to severe health complications like athletic amenorrhea, low bone density, and stress fractures. She shares the pivotal moment in her 30s—while living abroad—when she realized that simply introducing healthy fats like butter and high-quality dairy allowed her body to heal and regulate naturally.

We discuss the key to her philosophy: Indulgent Nourishment, which promotes celebrating whole, delicious food as the true opposite of deprivation. Elyse shares why focusing on real food, rather than counting macros or calories, is the best path to a healthier life. We also dive into the non-negotiable role healthy fats play in hormonal and brain health, how to spot misleading packaging on food labels, and the truth about high-protein fads and refined white flour. She also talks about the full-circle journey of leaving a successful corporate career at Nike to go to culinary school, and ultimately launching her own company.

OFFER
You can snag a coupon code for 15% off your Superhero Muffins order by using HURDLE15 at checkout, here.

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QUOTABLE MOMENTS

• “Raising kids that are watching me do something that I’m so passionate about is the biggest gift of all in this whole career journey.”

• “I think so many Americans have no idea how good you can feel.”

• On her philosophy: "You don't need to stress about like measuring things and counting macros, all you need to do is get in your kitchen and cook."

• “Real food does not cause weight gain. Let’s just like stop even thinking that.”

• On the longevity of her message: "I think that's why our books continue to sell well is because the nutrition messaging is still upholding 10 years later."

• “You’ll have a horrible stomach ache if you eat when you’re super stressed.”

• On her pivot: "I think if I had known what I know now about the world of grocery and retail and how complex it is, I probably never would have started the company. But I think it's always been my thing like I jump into it."

• On the surprising benefit of her injury struggles: “Sometimes those lowest points of your life ... will teach you the biggest lessons. So your low points or your failures can become your greatest success in life.”

IN THIS EPISODE

• Pivoting to CPG: The decision to launch the direct-to-consumer Superhero Muffins baking mix.

• The Low-Fat Lie: Elyse's experience suffering from athletic amenorrhea, low bone density, and stress fractures due to not eating enough healthy fats.

• The Power of Real Fat: Why healthy fats (like butter and olive oil) are essential for hormone balance, brain health, satiation, and absorbing fat-soluble vitamins.

• Dieting & Deprivation: How to shift the mindset from deprivation to "Indulgent Nourishment".

• Label Literacy: What red flags to look for on ingredient lists, including artificial sugars, refined flours, natural flavorings, and cheap protein fillers like refined gluten.

• Protein Obsession: Why high-protein diets are often overdone and the importance of balanced meals that include healthy fats and complex carbohydrates.

• Gut Health & Stress: How high stress and not eating during a "rest and digest" state can destroy your digestion and prevent nutrient absorption.

• Stress Combatting Tip: Using movement—like a short walk or quick sprint—to lower cortisol levels before

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Raising kids that are watching me do something that I'm
so passionate about is the biggest gift of all in
this whole career journey.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hey, hey, Emily, here, you are listening to another episode
of Hurdle, a podcast featuring the mindset, secrets, and true
stories of the most inspiring women in sports and wellness,
empowering you to live a healthier, happier, more motivated life
and of course conquered your own hurdles. This week, I
am thrilled to welcome an individual whose journey embodies resilience

(00:42):
and passion and the power of food.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
And that is Elis Kopecki.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
You likely know her for her best selling cookbooks, including
Run Fast, Eat Slow, that she co wrote with good
friend and olympian a friend of the show, Slene Flanagan.
And today we are getting into all things food, nutrition
and getting very excited about Elisa's new superhero muffin mix,

(01:09):
available direct consumer on the website.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
Superhero Muffins dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Now listen to the end of this intro because I've
got a coupon for you anyway. In today's Chad, Elise
opens up about the intense personal journey that led her
to becoming a champion for real food and intuitive eating.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
As a young.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Athlete herself, she struggled with severe a dire related complications,
including low bone density, stress fractures, and even health issues
stemming from a low fat diet mentality. She shares the
poignant moment she realized her unhealthy eating was wrecking her system,
leading to profound pivot in her life. We dive deep
into why indulgent nourishment is the opposite of deprivation, the

(01:51):
non negotiable role healthy fats play in hormonal and brain health,
and the shocking truth about white flower and high protein fads.
Elise also shares her incredible full circle story of leaving
her corporate job to go to culinary school, only to
realize her real calling was in the launch of her
brand Superhero Muffins, we discussed why it's okay to jump

(02:13):
in before you have all the answers, and how that
bravery fueled by delicious food can leave you to the
ultimate dream job. Make sure you're following along with Hurdle
over on social It's over at Hurdle Podcast. You can
also check out Ihartwoman's Sports over at Iheartwoman's Sports and
me Over at Emily Abodi. Listen to Hurdle with Emily
Abody on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you'd

(02:37):
get your podcasts. Was so fun to catch up with
Elise for today's episode. We met when she came to
New York to run the marathon with Saline, and I
promised you a coupon code, and I'm going to stay
true to that.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
If you head on over to Superhero.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Muffins dot com, you can use the code Hurdle one
five to get fifteen percent off your order today. I'm
big on the chocolate banana, but I have the apple
sn in the pantry ready to make this weekend again.
That code at checkout for fifteen percent off is Hurdle
one five. With that, let's get to it. Let's get

(03:10):
to hurdling.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Today.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
I am sitting down with Elise Kapeki. She's a three
time New York Times best selling author. She's an educator,
inspirational speaker, co authored Run Fast, Eat Slow, Run Fast,
Cook Fast, Eat Slow, and Rise and Run with Friend
of the show, four time Olympian and New York City
Marathon champion Selene Flanaga, and Elise.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
Welcome to Hurdle. How are you.

Speaker 4 (03:38):
I am great.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
I'm so impressed you got the cookbook titles correct. Most
people say it the opposite way, they say run slow,
eat fast. But so excited to be here on the
Hurdle podcast. Longtime fan, and I'm so happy, like years
later after we've met, that you're still running the show.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
Still running the show over here.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
I know it feels like you were just in New
York yesterday when it was the fiftieth anniversary.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
How are we feeling over there? At least you've got
a lot going on.

Speaker 4 (04:05):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, it's been so long since I ran the New
York City Marathon. It was such an incredible experience and
I have not run a marathon since because it could
never be topped. So I was like, I'm just going
to retire from my one road marathon and call it
amazing good. It's been so busy over here, so many
new projects going on, and I've done a big pivot
from writing cookbooks. So it's been an exciting year.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
A big pivot from writing at cookbooks, not going to
hold back any longer. The pivot is you are now
in CpG. You're bringing superhero muffins to cabinets.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Everywhere. What's it been like, how are we feeling?

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Yeah, it's been crazy. We launched just forty five days ago,
our Superhero Muffin Mix. I swore I would never start
a food company. I had experience developing recipes for Picky
Bars several years ago, and like the first thing out
of my mouth when I started working for them was like,
I'll develop recipes for you guys, but I would never
do what you're doing. But here I am ten years

(05:04):
after starting Run Fast Eats Slow.

Speaker 4 (05:06):
I just couldn't.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
I told my husband one day, I was like, if
I don't try this, I'm gonna regret it ten years
from now. So I just as a mom of two
young athletes, I got so frustrated with the amount of foods,
packaged foods that are pushed at athletes and kids and
busy people that have zero nutrition. So I felt compelled
to start our own baking mix line. We launched with

(05:30):
Superhero Muffin Mix, which you can see here. I've got
three flavors, but we have lots of other ideas to
expand the category. But we really want to stay in
baking mixes because it still inspires people to get in
the kitchen. Add whole food ingredients to our already whole
food nutrient dense mixes, and they're still cooking and they're
turning out something fresh baked for their families. But they
can do it in five minutes instead of the usual

(05:51):
like forty five minutes that it takes to prep superhero muffins.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
Wow. Okay, A lot to unpack here.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
First and foremost, I love the mentality of I knew
that I would kick myself if I didn't try. What
was the straw that broke the camel's back for you
to say, you know what?

Speaker 4 (06:10):
Game on probably two things.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
One. I can't go anywhere without getting called the muffin
mom or the Superherr muffin Lady. Even get stopped in
like random airports within Bend. Every time I go to
the grocery store, someone's like, oh, hi, I just made
a batch of such and such superhero muffins, or you know,
I get people messaging me saying like I ran my
best marathon ever and I ate a superhero muffin before

(06:34):
women saying like I used to not be able to
eat anything before running, and now I've discovered Superherr muffins,
and my digestion feels so much better. So one it
was like everyone constantly coming up to me and giving
me their superhero muffins story. And two it was I'm
not going to name brands, but there's other muffins and
other mixed companies that the packaging is so misleading. They

(06:56):
talk about it being like high protein, low sugar or
or low carb or something, or they perceive it. They
use colors that look vibrant and healthy, pitched to kids,
and then you look at the ingredients and it's all
this gut disrupting ingredients that are terrible for athletes, or
fillers or cheap additives, or natural flavors which are actually

(07:17):
not natural at all. So all the misleading packaging and
taking my kids to soccer games and them getting handed
these packages of different treats and cookies and muffins and
bars that like I would look at the outside and
think from the front of the package it's healthy, but
then look at the ingredient list and realize how harmful
these ingredients are for young athletes.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Let's unpack what the bad things are.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
I think that's a really good place to start, because
so many people are listening to you being like, what
am I buying. Am I buying something that is actually
completely wrecking my gut? So what should we be mindful
for when we're shopping at the store.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
You want to when you're looking to buy something, package
to save you time, which is fair. Everyone needs to
save them some time around here. You want to look
at the ingredient list, not the nutrition panel. The ingredient
list should be ingredients that you could source in your
own kitchen to cook something yourself. It's okay to buy
quick fix, shortcut things if the list of ingredients are

(08:16):
foods that you recognize, but a lot of packaged muffins
or store bought muffins or treats like either they're making
a health claim, like they're saying they're keto, and then
they're using sugar alcohols which are really gut disrupting or
artificial sugars which are really not good for our digestion,
or they're using they're saying, oh, high end fiber, and
then they're using like chickory root, which is refined in

(08:38):
a lab, or other fibers that are refined in a lab.
You don't want to any of those fiber drinks or
added fibers are super gut destroying and digestion matters, Like
if your digestion is not dialed, your energy is not
going to be good, your sleep's not going to be good,
you're not going to feel good exercising, you'll feel bloated.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
All the time.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
And most importantly, what people don't think of with digestion
is the more you can enhance and boost your digestion,
the more nutrients you can absorb from your food. So
if your gut health is off, you're not going to
be able to absorb micronutrients, so you could become anemic
or low in other nutrients because your body is not
optimized to digest and absorb the good foods.

Speaker 4 (09:19):
That we're eating.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
So you want to look at the ingredient list you
want to avoid a lot of products are just white
flour or refined flowers, which basically is processed by our
bodies as a sugar. Muffin mixes are notoriously mostly just
wheat flour and sugar some form of sugar, whether it's
cane sugar or an artificial sugar. So you want to
avoid any of those artificial sugars or overload of like

(09:44):
just cane sugar, and starting your day especially you don't
want to spike your blood sugar levels first thing in
the morning. Then you want to watch out for any
of the fillers that are like cheap and inexpensive that
big food companies are adding just because it keeps their
margins low. And any natural flavors that are natural flavor
is very misleading because it usually when a product says

(10:07):
like natural blueberry flavor, it could mean that there's like
ten ingredients behind that labeling of natural. So yeah, those
are the things to look out for, but mainly you
should know what the ingredients are on your package. Anytime
it sounds like it is, you know, some weird protein concentrate,
it was probably made in a lab and our bodies

(10:28):
don't know what to do with it.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
Yeah, that's we don't have time for that. We're busy enough.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Like you said, there's no reason for us to be
dealing with all of this wonky digestion, something that you yourself
are extremely familiar with, because I know that for quite
some time you too struggled with your diet and nutrition
for sure.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, I really want to help the next generation because
I suffered so much as a teen and young athlete
all through high school and college, I suffered from athletic
amenorrhea from not eating enough healthy fats, which led to
low bone density and stress fractures. And then I suffered
from IBS and anxiety directly related to what I was eating.

(11:07):
As soon as I discovered a better way of eating,
when we moved abroad to Switzerland, everything changed, Like my
all my health issues went away. I think so many
Americans have no idea how good you can feel like.
We're just all used to like walking around feeling like
sluggish and low energy, and everyone's not sleeping good, and

(11:28):
everyone is stressed, and everyone is, you know, suffering from
various like ailments and diseases, and so much of that
is one hundred percent related to nutrition. A lot of
people like talk about like oh I got to exercise,
I got to sleep better, I got to reduce stress.
But if you don't nail nutrition first, the rest of
those are going to suffer. You're not going to have

(11:49):
the energy to work out and exercise if you don't
nail nutrition, You're not going to sleep good. If you
don't nail nutrition, your stress levels are going to be higher,
your anxiety is going to be higher. If you're not
eating the healthy fats and balanced hearty food.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
You mentioned you suffered from athletic amenorrhea. Talk to me
about how this really manifested for you.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
I suffered from athletic amenorrehea. I didn't get my period
at all during high school. It wasn't until I was flagged.
I ran D one cross country at UNC Chapel Hill
in the first month of school. We met with a
team doctor and they couldn't believe I had never gotten
my period before, so they put me on Instead of
addressing the root cause of that issue, they immediately put

(12:30):
me on birth control, which meant I got my period,
but it didn't address the issue, which was that I
wasn't eating butter, I wasn't eating olive oil, I wasn't
eating all.

Speaker 4 (12:40):
These good fats.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
I always had a huge appetite as a kid, but
my mom thought like everything had to be low fat.
So I grew up in the eighties on all the
classic like snack weell cookies.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
Isn't it so funny that snack well is always the
first thing that comes up when someone talks about the
stuff that they ate when they were trying to eat
no fat growing up.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
I mean, I had no idea that I was doing.
My mom had no idea that she was doing more
harm than good. She was trying to feed me what
she thought was healthy for an athlete, and meanwhile I
was like hungry all the time. I could eat like
an entire box of snack Wells because it had zero
actual nutrition in it, so you're just left like hungry.
So I would be like, you know, late night snacking

(13:21):
on cereal and fat free skim milk. And she bought
like the you know, low fat, fat free yogurt and
fat free salad dressing and everything was fat free, and
it made me really sick. So it wasn't until I
even through college, no one once told me. Of all
the doctors I saw for my issues, not one doctor

(13:43):
said all you need to do is eat fat. It
was always like take this supplement or this this will
make your stomach feel better. There was even a point
where they were like, you should because you have IBS,
you should take like a depression pill. I forget what
it's called, like an antidepression medication. It was like crazy,
the stuff that was thrown at me versus like one
doctor acknowledging like that nutrition can make all the difference.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Isn't it wild that you just want to feel seen
by these people and you want to feel validated for
your experience, and oftentimes they're doing exactly what you say
that they did for you.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
They're just putting a band aid on the real problem.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, I mean I have some like just crazy stories,
Like I remember being sixteen and my mom taking me
to the doctor and the doctor like looking at me
and saying, well, maybe she doesn't have a uterus. I'm like,
and then I had to get an ultrasound. It's like,
come on, people, Like, it's amazing. I mean, there's a
lot of really good doctors out there, but it's amazing
how little nutrition training most medical doctors in our country do.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Right, And so you said you moved to Switzerland, but
before that you did experience a slew of other complications
from a lack of healthy fast in your diet, including
you said, some stress fractures.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Yes, so when you're not getting your period, your estrogen
is usually the cause of it. So I had really
low estrogen, which led to low bone density. Because I
went to a D one school, we had access to
good medical teams, So I had a bone density dexas
scan done and it came back that I was osteopenia.
I think they call it like pre osteoporosis in my twenties. Well,

(15:21):
actually then I was probably eighteen, which is really scary
to be. You only have a small window of time
to build up your bone density. Once you hit like
your mid twenties, you're already at your maximum for your lifetime.
So I've kind of screwed myself for life. But I
was defined as osteopenia in college in low bone density
and from those stress fractures directly related to that. I

(15:44):
have to say, though, although it's not all doom and gloom,
I have not had a stress fracture since college, and
I've run higher mileage than I've run in college. When
I was trained for the New York Marathon, I was
running a lot more on roads. Right now I run
more trails, so that can also help. But I haven't
had a single running injury knock on my counter since

(16:06):
since college running and I am still running every day,
and so I attribute it to I was able to
get my bone density up. It'll never be like as
high as it could have been. I did have a
Dexis scan done recently, but it's much better than ever expected.
And I attribute that to eating foods like full fat
Greek yogurt. The full fat dairy is better for you,

(16:26):
it's easier to digest, it's less processed, it has more nutrition,
it's got the good fat in there and the good
protein and calcium. So I eat like yogurt every single day.
I eat foods like traditionally made like bone broth, and
lots of like soups and stews, and I'm not afraid to,
you know, eat these really foods that our culture has

(16:47):
said is unhealthy, like really hearty meals. Has really helped
me with my bone density and also other areas like
mental health and everything else.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yeah, you actually.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
Bring up a really important point, which is the mental
side of things. Not to go into my personal health history,
but I went through a time period where I was
trying to sort through some things with my care team,
and the frustrations that go hand in hand with not
understanding or having a full grasp on what's going on
with your body, they can be insurmountable.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
Yeah, it really is hard to find the right care
when you're dealing with something stressful like a health issue.
For sure, it still is. I bet I feel better
at age forty four than I ever did in my
young twenties.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yeah, I love to hear that.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
So you move to Switzerland and your diet changes completely,
what are the first signs that you experience or symptoms
perhaps that show you that something good is happening for
your body.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
When I met my almost husband and we moved abroad
to Switzerland, we got married while living abroad. We knew
we wanted to start a family when we came back
from the US, and I had had like years and
years of doctors telling me that I was going to
have trouble getting pregnant someday. So I decided to go
off birth when we moved abroad, and then had I
had gone off of it multiple times in my twenties
to kind of see if I would get my period,

(18:06):
and I never did, so I was back on it.
But then we moved abroad, I was eating butter and
like you'd go to the market and shop and there'd
be only like one choice for like grass fed ground beef.
There wasn't like the ninety nine percent fat free meat.
So we were eating like butter and cheeses and full
fat dairy and grass fed meats and good quality eggs

(18:27):
and within I would I don't remember the exact amount
of time, but within three months of living in Switzerland
we were on this big hike. I remember the exact moment,
and I got my period naturally for the first time,
and my husband and I were both in tears. In
your thirties, yeah, yes, yeah. And then we came back
to the US a couple. We were in Switzerland for

(18:50):
just a couple of years, came back to the US,
decided we want to start a family. Into like our
big shock, I got pregnant, like our first month trying.
So it was like a true testament to how much
changing your diet can really impact your hormones and your
estrogen and your overall fertility and health.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Yeah, it's so wild because someone might hear this story
and be like, wow, it sounds kind of nice not
to have your period in your thirties, but it's not
nice for someone who wants to feel quote unquote normal, right.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, I mean it's a huge As women, we are
so lucky to have that period every month as a
sign of health and vitality and that things are working.
I think a lot of male athletes suffer from same
similar issues. But they don't have that little sign every
month that things are on track. And I'm like super
proud to say that, despite still loving running and training

(19:41):
and training for the New York Marathon, I've never missed
a period since except for when I was pregnant. Obviously,
but obviously everyone hates having their period every month, but
I also kind of celebrate it because I'm like, I'm
doing fueling my body with the right foods, fueling my
body with the right foods. And this is also related
to a top that you talk about pretty regularly.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
The idea of indulgent nourishment.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Let's talk a little bit about this for the audience
specifically that may be stuck in a diet mentality. How
do we define indulgent nourishment and why is it essential
for us to really think about moving away from deprivation
and toward this kind of fueling.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah, so, indulgent nourishment is a phrase I came up
with ten years ago when I was writing our first cookbook,
Run Fast, Eat Slow. And I love going back and
flipping through the early chapters of that cookbook because everything
I was writing about back then is still true to
this day. There's not like I think that's why our
books continue to sell well is because the nutrition messaging

(20:45):
is still upholding ten years later. Unlike these diet trends
that come and go so indulgent. Nourishment is all about
celebrating eating real food and delicious food, and teaching people
that healthy food does not have to be bland and boring,
and you don't need to count macros or calories to
eat right. Cooking should be enjoyable, eating should be celebrated

(21:06):
and delicious and not getting bogged down in any diet trend.
Basically like keep going back to like the roots, Like
you don't need to stress about like measuring things and
counting macros. All you need to do is get in
your kitchen and cook. Anything you're going to cook in
your own home kitchen is going to fuel your body
and you'll be eating much more balanced than people who

(21:29):
rely on ultra processed foods. The shocking thing is over
half of American's diets is ultra processed foods, and those
foods just leave us constantly hungry, constantly reaching more for more.
They're designed to be addictive, and they don't leave you
energized or feeling good. They give you a quick hit,
a quick dopamine hit, a quick energy spike, but then

(21:50):
they just leave you angry the rest of the day.
And I'm not completely I'm all about balanced. So it
doesn't mean you can't ever have like your favorite chips
or your favorite can, but like, just having balance and
trying to cook the majority of your meals at home
is the way to go if you don't want to
stress about dieting.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Right, Like, we are what we do most of the time,
and obviously there's going to be a time and a
place for indulging and enjoying something that may be a
little bit processed.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
I mean a hinge of the holidays right now, but.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Oh yeah, I mean my kids eat ice cream like
three out of seven nights a week, and I really
want my kids to not I don't say no to
anything they can have. Their friend gives them a lollipop,
I don't like throw it out in the trash. I
just try to offset it with like, let's have some
apples with peanut butter before we eat that lollipop, so
you that you feel you feel good, so that there's

(22:45):
not left like feeling angry.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
I want to bring this back to fats because for
so many years fat has been completely vilified. You speaking
about how fat can be such an important part of
a well balanced diet. So let's talk a little bit
about what the non negotiable roles of fat, like olive
oil and butter and nuts, what those roles in a
diet can be for everyone, ranging from hormonal balance and

(23:26):
brain health to fighting inflammation.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yeah, I mean, fat is so important. It's a great
source of energy. It's going to balance your hormones better,
Like your body can't even like manufacture and create these
important hormones without right amount of fat in your diet.
If you're using like good quality fats like butter, olive oil, avocado,
nuts and seeds, yogurt, dairy, good quality dairy, those fats

(23:51):
are going to help with like everything from satiation is
so important. If you eat a meal that's like white
meat chicken, breast, rice, and broccoli, and there's no sauce
on there or no fat on there, you're going to
be hungry the rest of the night, and you're going
to be reaching for the chips and the chocolate and
the snack foods. But if you take that same dinner

(24:11):
and you add a really delicious sauce one you're getting
like the good healthy fats so that you feel satiated.
And two, fat is a carrier for flavor, so everything
you eat is going to taste better. So adding fat
or adding a homemade sauce is going to make you
feel more satiated and energize and less likely to have
sugar cravings. Supports our brain health, It supports our digestion,

(24:33):
it supports our hormones. Fat is one of the basic
important building blocks macros for nutrition. But then also a
lot of micronutrients are fat soluble, so your body can't
absorb a lot of vitamins without fat in your diet.
So if you're taking a supplement, you want to make
sure you're taking it with something that has fat and
in it, or else your body can't absorb the fat

(24:55):
soluble vitamins.

Speaker 3 (24:56):
You mentioned macro nutrients.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Obviously, fat protein carves a lot of people stick scared
of carbs and now because of the way of the
world consuming way too much protein, talk to me about that.

Speaker 4 (25:10):
Oh man, the protein obsession is out of control.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
You're obsessed. My coffee must have protein foam on it.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, I think it's important. Protein is important, But we've
taken it too far like we typically do. It's crazy
to me. I feel like the more obsessed we've become
with like nutrition or diet trends, that more unhealthy we get.
So we just rely on these like protein supplements, which
most of them are like super hard to digest, and
you're not even absorbing the amount of protein you're consuming,

(25:37):
Like you can only absorb so much protein in one meal,
So the protein obsession is driving me nuts. I do
think it's important for someone who maybe has zero knowledge
to be to spend some time being aware of what
does have protein, because you do want to incorporate protein
into your meals in every snack, but don't you don't
need to take these like you know, forty gram protein

(26:00):
bars or twenty gram protein drinks. If you're eating a
balanced diet, you're getting enough protein. But it is good
to be aware that, like maybe you want to switch
from whole milk yogurt to greek full fat greek yogurt
because it's high in protein, or you want to incorporate
eggs into your breakfast routine, or you want to incorporate
meat and like a lot of people you know, want

(26:21):
to eat vegan, which it can be done in a
healthy way, but you it's really hard to if you're
not eating a small amount of like meat or fish,
to get enough protein just from beans and rice and
lagoons and things like that. So yeah, just being aware
and learning, but then not counting or weighing or obsessing
over it. A lot of companies are using gluten as

(26:42):
their protein source, so they're adding gluten is already hard
to digest, and then they're adding like refine gluten as
a protein. Gluten is actually a protein, but it's hard
to digest and it's a very cheap ingredient. So a
lot of companies, a lot I'm not going to name
which one, but a very popular pancake mix the main
protein that they're adding is like a refined gluten. So yeah,

(27:05):
just be aware of a lot of these protein powders
also have the artificial sugar alcohols and the weird flavorings
and a lot of other ingredients. So if you my
favorite protein, if you do want to add like a
scoop of protein to your yogurt bowl in the morning
or to your smoothie, I like single ingredient protein powders,
especially pumpkin seed protein which is I buy like an

(27:26):
organic pumpkin seed protein that is just one ingredient, nothing
else in it, and that one is minimally processed and
easy to digest.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Never have I ever heard of pumpkin seed protein, but
you have opened my eyes now to this.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
I just said, a.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Huge fan of pumpkin seeds in general. And so that's
the other thing is by adding the pumpkin seed protein
powder instead of just a handful of whole pumpkin seeds,
which is way cheaper, you're getting the protein, but you're missing.

Speaker 4 (27:53):
Out on a lot of the micro nutrients.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
So pumpkin seeds are an incredible super food for athletes.
They're high in iron, they're high in minerals, they're high
in zinc, they're great for your immune system. They're got
healthy fats and protein. But when you do just the
protein powder, you're missing out on the healthy fats. So
it's like a trade off, a trade off.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
And what I really appreciate about the conversation that we're
having on protein is you're saying the best way to
be mindful of your protein intake is to simply be
mindful about what you're keeping in your home. It's not
about weighing things or reaching for supplements all the time.
It's more so just keeping options around which are going

(28:34):
to help you get to where you want to be.

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Yeah, and then eating balance nutrition, So like I can
easily get in enough protein in my diet at dinner
by having a chicken breast or a burger, But if
I eat just a plate of protein and vegetables, I'm
not going to feel good afterwards. You want to eat balance,
so you want to have your complex carbs in there too.

(28:58):
If I sit down and eat just like a plate
of eggs in the morning, I feel gross. Like if
I have that same plate of eggs, but I have
some of like my favorite sourdough bread with butter and
an avocado, like, I feel so much better. So cook
your dinner but also include rice or sweet potatoes or
pasta so that you're getting your carbs, you're getting your protein,

(29:18):
and also adding in a sauce or a fat like
avocado is great. It's you really want to feel good
after eating. So many people have lost touch with that.
They when you take math out of the kitchen and
you stop obsessing over counting, you can get back in
touch with listening to your hunger signals. Our bodies actually
know what we need and can tell us what we
need if we get the like packaged foods out that

(29:41):
have all that. You know, we crave the salty snacks
or the sweet snacks because that's what we're used to.
But once you get that out of the out of
your like every meal, every diet, every day diet, like,
you can get back in tune with listening to your
body's hunger signals.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, I mean, you're really highlighting the blatant truth here,
which is that so many people have lost touch with
their natural hunger and fullness cues.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
So let's expand on this a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
What would you say is one simple practice that the
listeners can adopt today to help them reconnect with their
bodies inherent wisdom about when and how much to eat.

Speaker 1 (30:19):
It's so important to just have a healthy relationship with
food and not being afraid of it. I mean, something
I always want to put out there, but like I'm
afraid to say it on Instagram, and like, like, real
food does not cause waking. Let's just like stop even
thinking that real food is. It should be delicious, it
should fill you up, you should feel satisfied and energized.
It's the other stuff that keeps us snacking or that's

(30:41):
cut breaking havoc on our metabolism. It's not the real food,
like the artificial. If someone is trying to like diet
and lose weight and they're leaning towards buying something that
has that is a sweet treat but made with artificial sugars,
your body is like tricking your body and thinking it's
your body's thinking it's getting the cat and it's not.
So then you're just like constantly in a state of

(31:03):
hunger and like reaching ended up like end of the day,
you're just reaching for all the like quick fixed snack foods.
But real food does not Like just getting people to
enjoy and celebrate real food and not think of it
as a villain. Real food should be amazing and delicious
and we should never think like it's causing harm to
our body when we're cooking wholesome meals.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
And just to reiterate, for like Clarity's sake, we're talking
real food.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
We're talking unprocessed foods.

Speaker 4 (31:33):
Or minimally processed foods.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Like you could argue that like yogurt is processed or
pasta is processed, and I'm not I'm a fan of
celebrating carbs, and even like more refined carbs like pasta,
we don't have to be afraid of it, or having
your favorite like local sour dough bread with butter in
the morning, Like, don't fear those carbs, because we need

(31:55):
as athletes and active women, we need both the simple
carbs and the complex carbs very important.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
And I'm sitting here and I'm learning so much from you,
and I'm thinking that it is so wild to pivot
a little bit, that you weren't always interested in being
the kind of person that would be sitting here talking
to me in this way today. I know that you
have a background as a digital producer at Nike and
now you're a cokebook author. Talk to me a little

(32:24):
bit about that decision for you to step away from
an in house job and go out on your own
and get into this arena.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Yeah, so it's kind of a crazy story. But I
worked in digital marketing at Nike for almost ten years,
and I was fast tracked there. I mean, in my
low twenties, I was already making six figures. I had
they sent me abroad to do a stint at their
office in Amsterdam for two years, and then I was
back in Portland working at the Nike headquarters and learned

(32:53):
a ton. It was kind of like a ten year
MBA program. I learned so much, so I really appreciate
that time. But when I came back from later working
abroad in Geneva, Switzerland, I knew like after ten years
of like the grind of corporate it was pretty high stress.
Every day felt like a lot. I just wanted to
do something completely different, and I became so passionate about

(33:15):
nutrition and cooking from living in Europe and traveling all
over Europe and being inspired by the food culture over there.
So I decided to quit a very successful career and
go to culinary school in New York at the time.
Once I graduated from culinary school in New York, I
went to a program that was focused on nutrition and
culinary arts, so you learned how to become a chef

(33:35):
or also but like a nutrient like a chef focused
on nutrition. So we spent half of the time in
the classroom studying nutrition, the other half of the time
in the kitchen cooking. When I graduated from that program,
I was like, I just made the biggest mistake of
my life. Like I moved back to Portland. I had
no car, I was living in like a small apartment

(33:56):
and I'm like, what was I thinking? I had no job.
I was like, how is this going to crossover? I
really like I did not like culinary school. I had
to do an internship at a very high end restaurant
in Portland as a helping assisting a chef, and I
just like really hated the grind. I hated being going

(34:17):
from like being a leader at Nike to being an
intern in a kitchen restaurant, working till midnight and being
treated like I was at that point. I was in
my thirties and I was being treated like as I
was an eighteen year old, like hustler in a kitchen restaurant.
So anyways, dragging the story on, but it was a
huge regret of mine that I had left my career
and gone to culinary school. But I found a good

(34:39):
opportunity of crossing over my digital marketing career and helping
chefs in Portland with social media. So that kind of
kept me afloat for a little while. And then one
night Slaine Flanagan, who is my dear friend of twenty years.
We were college roommates and college teammates. We were sitting down.
I cooked her an amazing dinner and she was starting
to really amp up her mileage to train for her

(35:01):
first marathon. And cooked her this amazing meal, and she
was like telling me about now that she was training
with such high mileage, she was just hungry all the time.
And I looked at her and I was like, maybe
you just need more butter in your life, or some
kind of phrase like that. And we're just sitting around
the table eating this amazing dinner and she's raving about
all the dishes I had cooked, and on a total whim,

(35:22):
without any thought behind it, I just said, maybe we
should write a cookbook someday. But I didn't think it
would ever happen. It was just kind of like a joke.
And then like we did like six months of like
text messaging back and forth of like, oh, if we
wrote a cookbook, like no one would probably want to
publish it, we could maybe we could self publish it.

Speaker 4 (35:40):
What would happen? But then it took.

Speaker 1 (35:42):
When my daughter was born, like I knew I needed
to do this thing that I felt really passionate about
So that's when I was like, Okay, let's make this
a reality, and I pitched. I wrote a fifty page
book proposal, found an agent, she pitched it out to publishers,
and we had like ten or twelve public sure's been
on our first book. So I was like, Okay, we're
not going to have to hustle and self publish.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
Wow, Okay, what a story.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Talk about feeling the fear and doing it anyway, and
so many different aspects of this story. I first wanted
double click on the decision to go to culinary school.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
When you made that leap, how did it feel?

Speaker 4 (36:26):
Well?

Speaker 1 (36:26):
Culinary one, It was really hard because my husband and
I were newly married. We knew we wanted to start
a family, and I moved to New York City and
he was in Portland, and we had just moved back
from living abroad, and it was a pretty stressful time
in my life. I had saved up enough to afford
culinary school, but I had not saved up enough to
afford New York City life. So I was CouchSurfing with

(36:48):
friends and I got, honestly the sickest I've ever been
in my life. I had like a you know, horrible
flu or cold that lasted for weeks, and then I
suffered from major stress and like digestion issues and slept
on a friend's couch for several weeks. I stayed in airbnbs.
I eventually like bunked up with a friend that had

(37:08):
like a really good extra space for me in room
in her apartment. But it was just a weird, weird
time in my life, and I really regretted starting the program,
but felt like I had to see it through. And then,
like just the New York City lifestyle was so different
from anything I'd been used to in the hustle in
the kitchen, and I felt like the people in the
class like were all wanting to be like top chef.
It was very competitive and cut throat. So I didn't

(37:31):
really love the non supportive environment after years of working
on like the Nike Women's team, where it's all like
everyone is supportive of each other.

Speaker 4 (37:39):
Yeah, it was a hard decision.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
It took a huge a lot of support from my
husband to give up, you know, put on hold a
lot of like the dreams that we had, and also
give up like that steady salary that was like a
really scary thing.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
Yeah, and so I'm sure that once you got that
job in Portland and you got back in the kitchen
and it wasn't as glamorous or what you had thought
it was to.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
Be, that also came hand in hand with a lot
of emotions.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, I find like a lot of things in my
life I'd jump into without knowing, Like I had no
I went to culinary school with zero plan of what
I was going to do as my career, like I
and I tend to do that, Like I jumped into
starting this CPCHG company and now a year it took
us a full year to get our SuperH muffin mix launched.
I think if I had known what I know now

(38:30):
about like the world of grocery and retail and how
complex it is, I probably never would have started the company.
But I think it's always been my thing, Like I
jumped into a career at Nike without knowing anything about marketing,
and I jumped into you know, I've always just like
gone for it and not thought it through and it's
worked out so far. But yeah, sometimes I mean there's

(38:51):
always like stress and hiccups along the way. But I
think for a lot of young people, like if you
don't just do it and start. You're never going to start.
It's better to go in blind and figure it out
as you go.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
Why do you think that is?

Speaker 2 (39:04):
Why do you think that you have this tendency to
just jump right in.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
I was like an extremely shy teenager and very timid,
but the sport of running like gave me so much confidence,
and I think that plays out into everything I do
in my life now. Like it taught me like work
ethic at a really young age. It taught me like
not to be afraid to get on that starting line
and put yourself out there and give it. You're all

(39:31):
not knowing like if you're gonna win or anything. So yeah,
I don't know if the answers your question, but a bit.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
I mean, obviously sport played a really big part in
teaching you that it's worth to go into uncomfortable places, right,
But sport also, as you spoke about, because of the
injuries and the complications that you experienced, really knocked you down.
But what happened ultimately is that you also got up.
So this is where I see it coming from.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
For you.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
It's like I learned that I can jump in and
something not ideal might happen, but I'm still going to
be able to get out on the other side.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yes, you're so insightful and so smart. Yeah, totally, Like
it was the lowest point, like not being able to
run in college and having to quit the team because
I had repeated injuries. Running was everything to me and
to walk away from running on the team in college
was like giving up my family and my friend group
and my identity. But then to be if that had

(40:29):
never happened, if I had not suffered from all those injuries,
I would not have found this career path that I'm
so passionate about that gets me excited to jump out
of bed at five am and keeps me energized and honestly,
like now having being a mom to two young kids,
raising kids that are watching me do something that I'm
so passionate about is the biggest gift of all in
this whole career journey.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
The note on if I knew when I started this
company what I know now, I wouldn't have done it.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
What's been the biggest hurdle to this entire process for.

Speaker 1 (41:17):
You, Emily, Everything is a hurdle when you're starting a
food company. The biggest hurdle overall is that I'm going
up against big food companies that spend thirty two billion
dollars a year on marketing. Like, I am really struggling
as we are a two person team. It's myself and
my husband. My husband left his career in the outdoor

(41:37):
industry to do this together, and I have so much
I want to teach people and educate people and share,
but we don't have the resources yet to hire like
PR or marketing or social media support or any I
could easily fill jobs for ten people with the amount
of work that I'm doing right now, So a lot

(41:58):
gets dropped, like I can't, you know, post on social
media consistently or do all the media outreach that I
should be doing, and things like that. It's just really
hard as a small food company because most food brands
that are on our grocery store shelves have huge marketing budgets,
huge teams behind it. So there's that, and then a
lot of people don't realize how expensive it is to

(42:18):
get into retail stores, Like we've had retailers reach out
out to us and be like, we want you on
our shelves, but then you find out that you have
to have this like commerce system back end thing, and
you have to pay for If your product is going
on their shelves, you have to pay for shelf space,
You have to pay If they're going to like run
a promotion on your food product, you pay for that discount.

(42:39):
You pay for everything. So a lot of food companies
that are small and grow too fast end up going
under because they can't. They end up, like years into it,
they're not turning a profit. So we're kind of trying
to be like really mindful of how fast we expand.
So right now we're just direct to consumer through our
website Superhermuffins dot com, but some big ideas for twenty

(43:01):
twenty six and are definitely hoping to roll out to
grocery stores and retailers.

Speaker 2 (43:05):
I want to get very specific about Superhero Muffins and
why this is what we're considering to be the Holy Gril, right,
So what is it about how this particular product sets
you up for the day that makes it great? And
also what can we learn from that foundationally for anyone

(43:28):
whether or not they're going to have this mix in
their cabinet.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
I'm a big fan of breakfasts, so I'm a big
fan of first breakfast and second breakfast for active women.
So Superheromuffins feels that what should I eat as I'm
racing around and trying to get out the door for
a run. It gives you just the right amount of
balanced nutrition of both complex carbs and simple carbs, and

(43:51):
a little bit of protein and a little bit of
fat and something that's light and easy to digest before
you run out the door to your workout. Whether you're
getting up at six am and running by six thirty am,
or if you're going to the gym or whatever you're doing,
it just gives you that energy boost. It jumps up
starts your metabolism, it wakes up your digestion, and it
gets you out the door. So I'm really into educating

(44:14):
women on the importance of eating, not fasting, but eating
something small before you work out in the morning. You'll
train better because you won't feel like twenty minutes into
your workout that you're like absolutely starving or you have
zero energy. So the SuperH muffin mix is made with
nutrient dense ingredients, no added refined sugar, so it's sweetened

(44:35):
with real fruits and veggies, dehydrated fruits and veggies and
date powder, so made from whole ground dates and dates
are an amazing source of simple carbs for athletes. It's
really going to energize you, but not because dates also
have the fiber in there. You're not going to get
that sugar spike and blood sugar spike that you get
from refined white sugar. So I'm a big fan of dates.

(44:57):
So we're using date powder in our superher muffin mix,
and then dehydrated ground up fruits and veggies like the
apple cinnamon one has dehydrated apple and dehydrated carret pieces,
and then almond flour and oats.

Speaker 4 (45:10):
I'm a huge fan of oats.

Speaker 1 (45:11):
You could sit down and eat a bowl of oatmeal
and get the same energy benefits as a superhero muffin.
But I find that, like as a busy working mom
trying to get my kids out the door by seven
twenty and like go for my run either before they
get out the door or as soon as they're off
to the bus, I don't have time to sit down
to a bowl of oatmeal that feels like so much
effort to eat in the morning. A superhero muffin I can,

(45:34):
like I eat one every single morning, and I'm sitting
at this counter packing school lunches and eating it while
drinking coffee, and then I typically try to run. This morning,
I ran with some neighbors at six forty five am,
still a little bit dark, but I don't like to
run in total darkness. But as long as the sun's
coming up, I'm out there. So it just helps me

(45:54):
get out the door faster versus like the effort of
eating a bowl of oatmeal, and like before the New
York City Marathon, and I was like, I'm gonna eat
a bowl of oatmeal that did not appeal to me
at all, But I had packed my own superhero muffins
and I ate two of those before the marathon and
felt amazing the whole race.

Speaker 2 (46:10):
Why is this at every household? Seven twenty is like
the time it's growing up. I also had like, I
remember when I got my first job in New York City.
To get to the train on time, when I was
living in Milford, Connecticut, I needed to leave by seven twenty.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah, like our schools. Luckily we're only five minutes from school,
but the bus comes at seven twenty. School out here
starts so early seven forty five, so I'm like dragging
my kids out the door, handing them a superhero muffin
on their way out the door.

Speaker 3 (46:38):
Everybody gets a superhero above it.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
Most runners rely on. I have a lot of women
or men tell me I was eating like a bagel
before every run, but I always got a side stitch.

Speaker 4 (46:49):
Like the typical foods of.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Like eating a bagel or eating a English muffin with
peanut butter, like those can be hard to digest because
most bagels on grocery store shelves are made with a
lot of refined gluten. So even if you're not allergic
to gluten or you're not celiac, eating foods that have
all that refined gluten is really hard to digest because well,
they add all these additives to store bought bagels because

(47:12):
that's what keeps them like soft and chewy for like
three weeks on store shelves without having to be refrigerated.
So yeah, superhero muffins don't have any of that added
their gluten free and just whole food. Every ingredient can
pronounce and understand and know what it is.

Speaker 2 (47:27):
Can we talk a little bit about white flour again
because you mentioned that before, is like something that maybe
I should be weary of, and I have been.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
They're not superhero muffins, but making those like.

Speaker 2 (47:37):
Four ingredient bagels, and they've been on my back burner
for a while now. So is starting my day with
white flour in my bagel maybe not my bestmo.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
So white flour is a simple carb. It's processed the
same as sugar once it hits your digestion, so you're
basically it's sugar. I'm not completely again and sugar or carbs.
Like I eat pasta. I've tried the whole grain pastas
and my kids won't touch them, so I eat regular pasta,
which is also made with white flour, and we buy
sour dough bread from a local bakery which also has

(48:12):
white flour in it.

Speaker 4 (48:13):
But it's what you eat with it.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
So if you're having fiber in it to balance that
blood sugar spike and fat, So if you're eating it
with like a bagel with some almond butter and a
banana or blueberries or something, you get like the fiber
and the fat in there, so you're not getting like
the blood sugar spike on an empty stomach.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
So basically I'm just gonna make the Superhero muffin mix
that is now in my kitchen and you'll be good.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
And then we have like I eat the regular Superhero
muffin mixed before my run. But we have versions on
our blog on our recipes on our website for like
a high protein muffin where you can make it with
instead of adding water, you make it with Greek yogurt
to increase the protein and that's really delicious.

Speaker 4 (48:52):
For like a post run.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Recovery, some really big on like get in your carbs
before your workout and then follow up with a meal
that's balanced and has higher protein and good fiber from
like fruits and veggies.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
I love that. I love that.

Speaker 2 (49:05):
I also think it's so relatable when you were talking
about how you feel as though you could hire probably
ten different roles to support you right now.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
As someone who's also.

Speaker 2 (49:14):
Been building on her own for a while, I can
really relate to that. I also believe that someone hears
that and they think, okay, but what do you do? Like,
how do you manage it? How do you not get angry?
How do you move forward? What comes to mind when
I say all that to you.

Speaker 1 (49:36):
This is why I can't sleep past four thirty or
five am because I just wake up and I'm like,
oh my gosh, my to do list is so long today,
Like I need to jump in before my kids wake up.
So I haven't quite figured out the system behind that yet.
I do hope that we can hire more help in
the near future. Yeah, I don't have a good answer

(49:57):
if someone else does, like I guess maybe some AI
tools could help me save time, but I haven't figured
that out yet either.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
So sometimes I feel like the best thing, at least
for me, is to ask myself, like, what's within my
power to navigate within this situation?

Speaker 3 (50:12):
Right?

Speaker 2 (50:13):
So, yes, the overwhelm is gonna come and I'm gonna
feel it in so many ways. But then I just
ask myself, Okay, what can I do right now?

Speaker 3 (50:22):
Or okay, like what can I do today?

Speaker 2 (50:24):
And so by breaking it down into little doables or
smaller action items, then I'm able to like slowly chip
away at the overwhelm instead of letting it chip away
at me.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
Yeah, that's a really good point. I need to do
more of, just like planning out my whole week versus
like diving into each day thinking everything has to be
done that day.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
But this is in your nature. You're the person that
just dives in and says, we're going to figure it out.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
I mean, the biggest challenge for me is I try
to be working mostly done working every day by two
thirty pm when my kids walk in the door from school.
And then I've become soccer mom and dance mom. So
it's like I can work, but I can work in
very short bursts. Like a lot of people say it
takes them like twenty minutes to sit down and focus.
Oh no way, Like I get five minutes here and there.
I'm sitting in my car working while my daughter's at

(51:11):
her dance class. Like I'm like the very antisocial mom
at any kids activity that like doesn't chat with the
other moms because I'm usually like hustling back to my
house to get in like a tiny bit of work
before I go back to pick them up.

Speaker 4 (51:23):
Or I'm working in my car.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, there's a lot happening there. And oftentimes when there's
a lot going on, that's when the stress can really
impact us. I know you shared a lot about how
stress has impacted you over the years. I'm sure many
people listening to this can also relate to stress impacting
them dealing with digestion issues. What can we do if

(51:45):
this rings true for us, how can we combat the
effects that stress has on our digestion.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
Yeah, so my non negotiable is getting out for movement
every day. So starting my day with a run or
a yoga class is like my non negotiable. I think
why I'm so consistent with running. I started running at
twelve years old and I'm still love running at forty
four is I don't think about it as like a
physical benefit or weight benefit for me, It's one hundred

(52:15):
percent mental health. Like I feel so much better when
I'm outside at sunrise and in nature and start my
day with a morning run.

Speaker 4 (52:22):
I don't run far or fast.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
Like my workouts are always less than an hour, so
like forty five minute run and then I start my
work day. So that's my like non negotiable for balancing
my stress levels. But then in terms of supporting digestion,
it's so important. If your body's in a constant cortisol
fight or flight mode, you're not going to digest, So
your body can't actually digest unless it's like resting. So

(52:47):
that's why my cookbook is called Eat Slow. So taking
the time to sit down and eat meals at the
table without your phone in front of you, not eating
like constantly. I'm guilty of eating my car but not
eating like full meals like while driving. Being aware that
if you walk in the door super stressed from your
day and you're like hustling to sit down to dinner
with your family, like just go for like a ten

(53:08):
minute walk that can really lower your cortisol levels, wake
up your digestion, and like reduce your stress before you
sit down to eat. You're gonna have a horrible stomach
ache if you eat when you're like super stressed. So
I'd rather do like five minutes of meditation or yoga
or go for a little walk if I've had like
a really stressful day before I sit down to a

(53:29):
big dinner.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Wow, that last tip is kind of mind blowing.

Speaker 4 (53:34):
Yeah, totally.

Speaker 3 (53:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
I mean so much of us have constant high quartersole
levels and then we're just not digesting or absorbing the
nutrition from our foods.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
Wow, I'm like, Okay, for the foreseeable future, before I
eat anything, maybe I should just do two minutes of
box breath and see.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
Yeah, like honestly or honestly, like if you can I
can tell when my cortisol levels are high, like right
before bed or something if I I try not to
like look at email, like right before bed, but if
I see something and then my work brain turns on.
The thing that works is like movement. So do ten
push ups or twenty push ups to like move that
cortzo through your body. Like you can get rid of

(54:14):
so much stress by going for a walk or moving
or like not even going for a full run. You
could literally just like your neighbors will think you're crazy,
but just like a sprint down your street for two
minutes and then like you'll feel amazing because you're just
moving that quartzo.

Speaker 4 (54:30):
Out of your body.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
Yeah, man, gotta do some quick sprints before bed the
next time.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
You know what I'm saying, Yeah, we're.

Speaker 4 (54:36):
Going for a walk after dinner can be really good too, for.

Speaker 3 (54:38):
Oh, I love I love a posting.

Speaker 1 (54:41):
I'm not good at it because it's so dark and
cold here right now this time of year in the summer.
I love it, but it's so hard. I want to
be in my pj's at six pm. I don't want
to go for a walk.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
You and me, both, you me both Alice Before I
let you go. Today, I've got to ask you, in
the chaos that is starting this come from scratch and
building with your husband, have you taken a step back
and are you proud of yourself?

Speaker 1 (55:06):
People who like people with my mentality that are like
always moving forward. It's so hard to I'm trying to
take more time to absorb like the emails I get
from people of telling me my cookbooks have changed their life,
and take time to like read the letters and the
cards and the emails and the Instagram messages and like
really appreciate and absorb it.

Speaker 4 (55:25):
But yes, I'm.

Speaker 1 (55:26):
Super proud of this career that I've chosen. And I've
seen the impact it's had on my daughter of her
watching me. She was super shy too, and now she
can get up in front of a microphone, in front
of dance on stage in front of hundreds of people,
and she's eleven. So I've seen how much my career
has impacted her. I used to beat myself up a

(55:50):
lot over being like a working mom that couldn't be
volunteering at school, but it has resulted in my kids
being extremely independent and extremely confident. So I see them
watching me be passionate about my work and especially starting
the company. They've been there every step of the way,
and they are have like these little entrepreneur brains that
have turned on in the process.

Speaker 4 (56:10):
So I'm super proud of that.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
It's so natural for us to pick ourselves apart for
the things that we feel like we should be doing. Now,
someone comes maybe to your Instagram page and they see
this New York Times bestselling cookbook author and now the
founder of this brand. But when you look in the
mirror at least, what is it that you see looking
back at you?

Speaker 4 (56:33):
I see a mom honestly.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
First, first of all, like a mom who has a
level of care and passion that maybe is what drives
me to want to be a change maker. But number one,
a mom is always what I see over like a
career woman or anything else.

Speaker 2 (56:51):
Yeah, it's so special and clearly your passion for being
a mom is really coming through. And your daughter and
your son seeing you doing something that excites you. I
think it's such a valuable thing to witness and be
along for the ride on.

Speaker 1 (57:06):
Yeah, it's been quite the journey for our whole family,
and we're really excited for the year ahead.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Well, right now, Elise, you have an opportunity to offer
yourself a piece of advice. Let's go back to when
you were working in that kitchen in Portland. You're stressing
out a little bit. It's impacting your digestion yet again,
and you're worried what did I do here? And is
it the right thing? Knowing what you know now, what.

Speaker 3 (57:30):
Would you tell your younger self?

Speaker 1 (57:33):
I would tell my younger self that everything happens for
a reason and will make sense someday in the future.
So sometimes those lowest points of your life, whatever it is,
the challenges that we all cross, will teach you the
biggest lessons. So your low points or your failures can
become your greatest success in life if you channel it

(57:54):
and take opportunities as they come to you and jump
into two new opportunities and do it without fear.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Jump in and do it without fear at least. Coopeki
so happy that you were able to come sit down
with you today. For those that aren't following along with you,
just yet, give me the details?

Speaker 3 (58:10):
Where are you online? Where can they find the muffins? Everything?
All right?

Speaker 1 (58:14):
So I'm on Instagram at Alisco Pecky. My name is
hard to spell, So you can't spell that. You can
look for at run Fast, Eat Slow, and then Superhero Muffins.
Our website is superhero Muffins dot com.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
Superhero Muffins dot com.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
I'm over at Emily a Body and at Hurdle Podcast
Another Hurdle Conquered.

Speaker 3 (58:33):
Catch you guys next time