Category: Lifestyle Medicine
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Laughter is no joke
It was weekly ritual. The giant bucket of popcorn was balanced precariously between the cinema seats. Even with my brother’s monster appetite there was no way we’d make more than a small dent in it, but that wasn’t the point. It was time to relax. Sweat beads slipped down the shiny glass beer bottles in…
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Go to sleep
A while back, I conducted a little experiment on myself. For three nights I went to sleep at the same time as my preschooler – 7.30pm. I wanted to see how I would feel if I slept more, so I just closed my eyes and drifted off a couple hours earlier than I usually would…
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In defence of milk
“Milk please,” my preschooler directed politely. “In my red cup, with a straw,” he added with a smile. I shook the bottle of organic, non-homogenized milk, so the cream would disperse from it’s lump at the top of the bottle, then I poured it into the specified red cup. He slurped it up happily, delighting…
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Lockdown getting you down? Get cooking!
I smoothed the homemade berry pie filling over the top of the New York cheesecake I had made. My chef’s knife slid carefully through the berries, dragging streaks of purple and read over the creamy lemony middle, and then crunched through the biscuit crust. I gently tugged the slice free from its cake prison, tipped…
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There’s vegan and there’s vegan
Many years ago, I visited a friend of mine for a few days while she was staying at her parent’s place over summer. Her mother had recently gone back to Weight Watchers, and her father was enthusiastically supporting his wife. They were the most welcoming, delightful family, but I was devastatingly hungry the entire time…
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Fresh air
It rained this weekend. As all parents, school teachers and early childhood educators know, rain is not conducive to calm when there are children involved. Cooped up indoors and already fighting through the mind fog of another growth spurt, my own three-year-old burst into tears over things like “I wish I had green eyes like…