• Why you should stop making New Years resolutions

    Why you should stop making New Years resolutions

    When I was 19, my older brother bet me that I couldn’t go three months without consuming added sugar. My stubborn adolescent self began the challenge immediately. For the next three months, I watched wistfully as my family ate perfectly ordinary things like spaghetti and cheese toasties (added sugar in the spaghetti), my mum’s homemade Read more

  • Overindulging and the holidays

    Overindulging and the holidays

    Every year someone asks me how they can avoid overeating during the festive season. I could give them a yarn about only making one or two desserts for Christmas, instead of five, as the more varieties of food on offer, the more you’re likely to eat… But I think giving answers like that, even if Read more

  • An explosion of eating disorders

    An explosion of eating disorders

    I’ve worked in the grey area of disordered eating for a while, often seeing young athletes who reluctantly come to see me with their concerned parent. It’s an area that I love, because seeing these teens get better is so rewarding. It used to be that occasionally a parent would drag their teen along for Read more

  • Growing older doesn’t mean growing old

    Growing older doesn’t mean growing old

    My preschooler shuffled around on his seat until his face was almost pressed against the glass of the gondola. The whir of the cables serenaded us over rocks, grass and the odd sheep, until a small shudder rocked the gondola and we stopped. “Why have we stopped?” My son asked, clearly slightly worried that his Read more

  • Stressed out? Change your mindset

    Stressed out? Change your mindset

    A while back, I wrote a small piece on stress management as part of a larger resource. I started off by writing all the usual stuff about how chronic stress kills. But as I was writing, I was thinking to myself how utterly unhelpful it is to tell people to just avoid stress. It’s totally Read more

  • What is lifestyle medicine?

    What is lifestyle medicine?

    Today I received confirmation that my fellowship to the Australasian Society of Lifestyle Medicine has been approved: I’m officially a fellow. While it’s a big deal to me, I know it means next to nothing to most people, because most people have never heard of lifestyle medicine! Let’s change that. Lifestyle medicine is a branch Read more

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