The Impact of Nutrition on Mental and Physical Well-Being with Susan Greeley, of SENS Wellness — Castle Connolly Private Health Partners

I do want to mention how they feel too, because we now live in a society where teens and young adults are suffering from anxiety and depression at an alarming rate. And we're seeing that over the course of the life cycle, more adults too, suffering from anxiety and depression. That's tied to their nutrition too, of course.

Welcome to the Mind Body Space Podcast, where you can stress less and boost your performance and wellness down to the cellular level just by listening. Hi, I'm Dr. Juna Bobby MD, a Juna Bobby MD, passionate about sharing evidence-based tips to keep you and your family well. For the past 10 years, I've been teaching the science of resilience to high-achieving individuals at many different schools and organizations, and currently I'm on faculty at the Juilliard School Pre-College Division teaching gifted students how to stress less and perform at their best. I started this podcast because I wanted to share what I learned with my students, fellow parents, educators, and anyone who's interested as I explore fascinating topics like neuroscience and meditation with experts in education, medicine, and psychology. Your support makes this possible. Please subscribe and share with a family friend, anyone who needs to stress less, boost performance, and be happier. If you have questions for my guests or for me, or if you have a topic that you'd like us to cover, please head on over to mindbodyspace.com/podcast and ask away, and we will answer your questions on the podcast on the last Friday of every month.

If you need a good night's sleep, head on over to my YouTube channel, Fall Asleep Easy, to drift off and sleep like a baby. Hey Susan, how are you? Thank you so much for joining us today.

Hi Juna, thank you. It's great to be here with you.

So today I have Susan Greeley. She's an MS RDN and she's the Senior Vice President and National Director of Wellness at Sense Solution Wellness Program. Can you tell me a little bit about Sense Wellness?

Oh, of course, Juna. Uh, so my full-time role is with Castle Connelly Private Health Partners, and I run what's called the SEN Solution Wellness Program as, um, part of my role. We focus on 4 pillars of health and wellness being sleep, exercise, nutrition, and stress management. I have created a team of board-certified health and wellness coaches, and my, our organization, CCPHP, Castle Connelly Private Health Partners, partners with physicians, exceptional physicians, and we work collaboratively with all of our physicians to really support the health and wellbeing of our members who are patients, essentially. So it's providing this exceptional level of healthcare.

A lot of people are familiar with Castle Connolly. You guys do that ranking with doctors who are nominated, right? By peers.

Well, that's Castle Connolly. Yes. The founders of that. Did start this company, this organization as well. And Castle Connelly Top Docs is a peer-nominated program platform to designate exceptional physicians as well. But CCPHP, we're a concierge medicine organization. And what we do is really help physicians practice the way they're meant to practice, which is deliver this excellent level of care and not see 50 patients a day, not see, you know, I'll say not that every physician sees 50 patients a day, but many see well over 25 or 30 a day.

Mm-hmm.

And it's hard to keep them straight. So in the, uh, concierge medicine model, that means physicians see fewer patients and can spend more time with each patient. So the Sensolution Wellness Program fits in there in that we offer it to all of these concierge members. And I describe it as that extension of the physician's care. My team of health coaches and I. Work with the, the patients as well. Let's say you as a physician see somebody and you recognize that they do need to lose weight and lower their blood pressure. Mm-hmm. And/or sleep better, combine all of these pillars of wellness together. And that's what my team of health coaches and I do, um, in collaboration with the physician. So that's wonderful. That level of care. It is. That collaboration is something that you really can't even put a value on.

So you truly have a wellness program incorporated into the concierge medicine practice. And that's exactly right. Um, I had the privilege of being on your podcast cuz you host podcasts as well, right?

I do. As part of it, I am the host of the Sense of Wellness Podcast. I focus on all things health and wellness. You came on and talked to me about stress.

Yeah.

And building resilience. And you and I are both very passionate about helping people live better.

Yeah.

Quite honestly. Right. You and I could talk forever.

That's so the Castle Connolly Top Doctors is something that's Everybody, as a New Yorker, we always look on that list. It's a very well-trusted list because it is peer nominated, right? So the doctors on that list are peer nominated. They're not all in your private healthcare program. I think that's what we're trying to distinguish, right? Because that's a separate list. Right, exactly. Mm-hmm. Completely.

Yeah, completely.

Okay. My husband gets on that list, so it's nice.

Nice. Very nice. Good to know.

All right, great. So, uh, yeah, thanks for being here. And I know you and I connected because we're not only passionate about prevention, but we're also moms. Passionate about being a mom and keeping our kids well. So tell us a little bit about that, cuz I'm always impressed by you. You're always like throwing things on the stove and, you know, sautéing fresh vegetables for your 4 children, right? That's double how many I've had. So I'd be on the phone with you and you're always like, I'm sautéing some broccoli, I'm roasting some kale. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Last night it was fresh Swiss chard out of my farm box that I love with mushrooms and garlic. It was fabulous. And I was trying to get Tried to get my son to eat it. He didn't really take to it, uh, along with the homemade beef stew. So yes, I do love to cook. I'm very passionate about that and eating well. It's important. And that comes from my background. So I do have 4 children myself, 4 boys. I always clarify it's not just kids, it's 4 boys. Uh, at this point, I guess 2 of them are men. They're full-fledged adults. 21, 19, 15, and 11 are my boys.

I know.

Uh, so I came from a family of 8 myself. I'm the youngest of 8.

Wow.

Youngest. I don't even know if you knew that. I'm the youngest of 8.

No, I did not know that.

Yeah. My mom cooked for 10 people day in and day out, and my dad lived and breathed moderation and all things health and wellbeing. He really did.

Wow.

It was from my father that I first heard, uh, you know, the Hippocrates famous saying now that everybody knows, let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. I really grew up with that philosophy and understanding of the connection between food and your health.

Mm-hmm. And, and was he a physician?

He was not. No. However, what can I call up my dad for? My father, both of my parents have passed away, Juna, from terrible chronic diseases. I could mention that.

Oh, I'm sorry.

But he, yeah, he was so healthy his entire life and then he ended up with Parkinson's, with dementia.

Oh no.

Which is terrible.

Okay.

But he was an athlete. He was a state champion high hurdler. He was a businessman, traveled the world. Um, yeah. And loved and supported his family of 8 kids. That's all I know. Put us all through college. Wow.

That's amazing. That's amazing. Yes.

With my mom's support, of course.

Mm-hmm. And so she was the cook though. And yes, you learned to cook with her cuz then you went on to, um, earn a degree in nutrition, right?

I did. I did.

So tell us about how, what led you to that? Were you already a mom by then or was it before?

No.

Okay.

No, I did my undergraduate in dietetics and German. And this is kind of funny. Juna, that something people probably don't know as well, that I spent my senior year of high school in Germany as an exchange student. And the food in Europe is very different than in the US. And I, I grew up with home-cooked meals and my father believed in whole grain breads and I did not have soda. I have to call it pop growing up in the Midwest. I did not have soda pop my entire childhood. And, uh, so I grew up on home-cooked meals, whole grain breads. Real whole fresh foods. And then I went to Germany and it was the same over there. And I embraced that. And you see the difference in people understand, again, fundamentally the connection between diet, nutrition, and health. And having that experience at that point in my life was also very formative. I was interested in studying chemistry. I thought I did want to go to med school. And so I started out as a chemistry major. I've always loved food chemistry and biochem. And again, that connection to the human body and human physiology. And food and cooking. So I also loved home ec growing up and it was just this natural pairing for me, you know, between human physiology, biology, human functioning, and food and cooking. I have an undergraduate degree in dietetics and master's in nutrition communication. In between those two, I did my dietetic internship. So after a 4-year undergraduate program in studying dietetics, which encompasses all of those biological sciences. A lot, ton of chemistry. I think I spent all of undergraduate in some sort of chem lab. It seemed to be.

So you did undergrad in dietetics and then you went for a master's degree in nutrition and then you became a dietitian. Became a dietitian. Then I went to Tufts for your master's in nutrition science and communication.

It's actually a school of nutrition science and policy. And the master's was nutrition communication. Oh, I love that. Yeah.

Great.

Yeah.

So they taught you to talk about nutrition at the policy level?

I would say both translating the nutrition science into messages that say the layperson, that the population can understand. Aren't we all bombarded by nutrition studies, messages in mass communication? There's a lot of conflicting nutrition information and advice. Right? So that's what that master's degree is really geared towards is communicating accurate nutrition science.

I love that. You're so articulate, so much more articulate than I am. So that makes so much sense that you did a nutritional communication master's degree. Okay. So that is very cool. I love that.

Thank you. You and I both, and every physician, dietitian, it's the healthcare field. We are educating people about their health and their wellbeing. That's what we do all the time. And so I completely agree with you that it's a much-needed skill. Not everybody has it. We talk about bedside manner and communication skills. You know what? So back to my dad for one second, because he was a very wise man. And I do remember him saying, if you didn't know what to study, be an English major because communication is the foundation of everything you do out in the real world.

That's really great advice. It's true because everything you're doing is communication. Even if you go into business, you have to be able to persuade people. Communicate yourself clearly and even as a student to speak in relationships.

Yes.

I just love that background.

Yeah.

That's why I always ask people what they studied and what their life was like because it makes so much sense when you put it all together. In a master's degree, isn't it more about somebody's really ill and you're trying to get them like Ensure or protein supplements or, or, you know, those thick shakes they give you in the hospital?

Oh, I know them well.

Yeah. TPN. You know, it's total parenteral nutrition. That's all we knew. And we never learned nutrition in the sense that, oh, it can keep you well.

Okay. I love that you bring all of that up. That is the clinical dietitian experience. And that's what I did. I trained at the Brigham and Women's in Boston and did TPN, total parenteral nutrition. That is where somebody who's sick and can't use the GI tract needs to receive their full nutrition through typically the main line, right? They put in a central line, we call it, and receive full nutrition that way.

Or as a radiologist, we used to put, uh, JPEGs, the balloon— Okay.

So that's a tube feeding.

We put the tube into their stomach from their abdominal wall.

Bringing up my former life.

I know.

Exactly. I know. I still like all that. And sometimes this comes up in people's personal lives. There are various ways of feeding people without using— you either have to avoid the GI tract or you need to, like, you have the food delivered lower in the GI tract and various, you know, avoid certain organs. We—

but you and I are into prevention, so we don't wanna even get to that place.

Exactly. Okay.

Um, and we, we like to talk, you know, we like to teach our kids how to eat properly, stay healthy, and avoid these long-term chronic conditions.

And that's, I knew that early on, even though I had that background. And it's very important to, you know, I have so much experience in the few years that I worked as a clinical dietitian. And then I went off to, and I knew I wanted to go and do this nutrition communication degree because I wanted to educate the larger population on how to stay healthy, on what proper nutrition is. And teaching people is really what I love to do. Teaching them how to, how to cook, how to eat better, how to actually select food, how to weed out the misinformation that is out there and even ultimately feed my own family.

So let's talk about the misinformation.

Yeah. Let's talk, let's talk about misinformation. Let's talk about feeding kids and families, not just my family. I love to help others. There is a lot of misinformation out there, conflicting information.

Do you go for the plant-based diet or do you go more for omnivore?

I'm an omnivore. And if somebody chooses to follow a plant-based diet for X, Y, and Z reasons, you know, it's very personal, individual, then absolutely I can help the person. So coaching really is based on helping. It's, um, call it client-directed. So when you're coaching somebody, you're helping them implement their, their goals, like work towards their goals, but they need to decide what those goals are. As a dietitian, I make recommendations and do a bigger assessment and all that. And I still love to do both, but right now in this world, so I don't know if you want to focus on children or teens as far as this plant-based world goes, used to be more veganism.

Let's focus on teens, especially a lot of teen girls. They are not eating a lot of meat. They'll do weird things like mono meals. I realize that mono mealing is the worst.

Which, what is that?

It's just, you just eat one type of, one meal a day. No, you eat one type of food. Oh, so you might eat such as bananas, you might eat watermelon. So mono mealing was one of those things where, you know, these YouTubers and influencers, they're like, oh, I'm gonna eat watermelon for 10 days or something like that. But it's such a terrible idea nutrition-wise. And, and maybe you can elaborate on that. And also there's another thing where teen girls might wanna be really healthy, so they just eat salads all day long, you know, and they think salad's great. And I used to think salad's great, but you need different kinds of fiber. You might find a kid eating, like a teenager eating popcorn cuz they think it's light and healthy and, and you won't gain weight, which is kind of true, but, and then they're just eating raw salad and then they have horrible GI problems. There's so many girls with irritable bowel syndrome, not just girls. And so when you're eating all that fiber, Fiber, it depends on what types of fiber. You have to have a mix of things like grains, cooked vegetables, and raw vegetables. You can't just eat raw vegetables and popcorn.

Well, you touched on so many things there, Juna Bobby MD, and I think the most challenging issue present day is social media and that influence of these— I don't even know what to— they're not even just influencers. It's people with crazy ideas influencing in a harmful way. Quite honestly, and they succumb to it. That's the problem. So those monomeals, I hadn't heard of that term quite honestly. And that is frightening to me that, so that we have to differentiate between where kids are in the life cycle. If they're done growing, maybe it's not as harmful as if they are still growing. So if a teenage girl who is still growing decides to just eat watermelon for 10 days, clearly I don't need to tell you or listeners that That's not a healthy balanced diet. Mm-hmm. And you would be lacking in most micronutrients and macronutrients. So we have the macros, carbs, fats, protein. I can also throw fiber in there and of course water. And then we have our micronutrients, all your vitamins, your minerals. Now we add in this list of phytonutrients and you and I could do multiple episodes on nutrition and, um, any one of these aspects. The most important thing is to educate them on what their body needs and how their brains and bodies function on balanced nutrition. We do need carbohydrates, we do need fats, we do need proteins every single day.

Mm-hmm.

And when you exclude any group of macronutrient alone, so let's say you're eating just watermelon for several days, it's carbohydrate. It's all carbohydrate. Uh, lot of water in there and some potassium and some folate and some vitamin C. Probably not the worst thing.

Watermelon's probably not the worst thing.

It's not the worst thing. But you, popcorn would be bad.

You're just eating popcorn every single day though.

Popcorn would be terrible, but you're also not getting a supply of amino acids from protein and, and growing tissue in general as kids are growing and developing. And our brains are also developing. Then I can't even say how, how detrimental that can be. You know, it takes constant education. And I think for parents, they need to know what their kids are watching and what they're doing and why. Most importantly, children too, teenagers need to understand why they're doing that.

Yeah.

Right. Why are they doing it? To be cool? Or are they doing it to lose weight? And why do they even need to lose weight? What does their body need? So nourishing those teenage bodies, you know, when, especially for, but it's girls and boys where we're putting calcium into our bones, sometimes into the third decade of life. People don't realize that. Right?

So I'm thinking, since you're a mom of 4 boys, I know that boys are, uh, affected by social media lately too. And I heard that there's a lot of, um, anorexia, eating disorders, uh, going on with men also. I don't know, have you heard that or is that something that you've run into?

I, I have heard this. One of my friends who is a dietitian works with eating disorders and eating disorders in general are on the rise. And I do believe that we're seeing more of it related to the pressures in society, the pressure to have these perfect bodies.

So understanding like the myths and not being influenced by influencers, maybe with your, you know, talking to your teens about it. What other advice do you have about getting, let's say, 4 guys like you have in your household to try new things and to be involved in whole foods? Like, it sounds like you didn't have a rebellious phase with your parents. You actually embraced whole foods, but how do you do that in your own home?

That's my siblings. That's a great question. I wanna take a step back and actually mention some very, um, alarming statistics.

Mm-hmm.

And that's this study.

So we, oh yeah, I love, I love alarming statistics. This statistics.

Okay. So we survey how Americans eat. And in 2021, a report came out that, uh, children between the ages of 2 and 19, so pretty much all children in this country now consume two-thirds of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods. So I wanted to talk about that and how I focus on good nutrition in my home. So ultra-processed foods, I think Doritos and Snapple, and I say those two specific foods because they're available in the cafeteria at my kids' school. And so when they have these accounts for lunch, it, it really does bother me. It's frightening to see the types of calories that kids are eating. So what I try to really instill in them in the home is that it's whole foods first.

Yeah.

We need real food. All human beings need real food. And what does that mean? Why are we even talking like that? Because we have so much ultra-processed food in this country. If 70% of their daily calories are coming from packaged food that is void of micronutrients and fiber and good fats. Then we need to do a lot better.

And now we're distinguishing between whole foods, processed food, and ultra-processed. Correct. Because ultra-processed—

there's minimally processed. There is some sort of processing. When we say processed foods, that's not entirely bad. There's minimally processed foods, and that could be something like your frozen fruits and vegetables. Of course they've been processed. It could be yogurt.

It could be my cashew milk, but it only has cashews.

Yes.

And water.

Yes.

So that's exactly, that's just two ingredients.

Love that you say that.

Mm-hmm.

Know the ingredients. Doesn't mean that you're never going to eat packaged food.

So processed is anything that you're not taking off a tree or from the ground. You could be processing it by blending it or mixing it, but that doesn't mean that it's bad for you necessarily. Peanut butter is processed and if it's just peanuts, and then you have the processed food, which is a little level, a little above that. So maybe it's got like 4 to 5 ingredients and maybe it has some preservatives, right? But then you have the ultra processed, which like you mentioned, Doritos, which used to be one of my favorite childhood foods. I stopped having that. I had Cool Ranch Doritos one day and it was terrible. So I've never had Doritos again since then.

But I was going to ask that. And do your kids eat that? Like, do you let them have that?

I don't think my kids have ever had—

even though they ate it.

No, they definitely tried it, but I don't think they've ever eaten it on their own. No, that's insane. So it's amazing cuz I used, it's a good thing it used to be something I ate all the time. But anyway, Doritos are delicious because it's ultra processed and it has almost no identifiable natural food because, and you can put it on, you know, correct. So you can identify ultra processed by the length of shelf life, like how long it's gonna last, right?

Because it has multiple, typically multiple preservatives, highly refined grains, typically what we call bad ultra processed oils as well. So it's a combination of that the salt, sweet, and fat, you know, flavor on the palate. And so think of that, you don't even know that there's some sort of sugar in your Doritos as well. When they have these flavored foods, there's a combination of a sugar, an oil, and then the saltiness. And that typically comes from multiple preservatives and flavor enhancers.

Mm-hmm. And not to mention the crunch because the crunch makes it addictive too. So the texture, all of that, all of that, the feeling, people love it, attacking all of your senses.

Right. Right.

And it does.

That's funny. It's, it is hijacking our brains. Many of those ingredients do have an addictive property and unfortunately food addiction exists.

Yeah.

And then you have people trying to fight that addiction and then they get into these vicious cycles that lead to some sort of disordered eating. So back to that, it's, it's understandable how it does happen. And the earlier children have these types of foods, these ultra-processed food calories, they develop a taste for that. And it's very hard to get them away from those foods. They don't know what it tastes like to have a fresh peach. I don't know why I say peach, but it's my favorite fruit when it's in season. Right now I have these, what are they called? Cotton candy grapes in my fridge. And my son wanted them because they taste like cotton candy. And I started to laugh. To me, they don't taste like cotton candy, but I never eat cotton candy and I don't want him eating cotton candy.

So that's, that leads me to all of these very highly sweet sweet fruits now. I was gonna investigate into that, but I do believe that there's more sugar in those. So I don't know how we're probably gonna find out that that's really not great for us either. Cuz you know, I'm buying these giant blueberries that are super sweet, giant cotton candy grapes. Yeah. The sugar content is definitely higher. And for sure we're probably gonna find out that, oh, it's probably not the worst thing cuz it has fiber and all these other things, but it definitely has more sugar, sugar than the other fruits. Manipulating fresh fruit.

Oh yeah.

Definitely.

Like, why are we manipulating fruit?

Because it's, we are looking for that consistency. So like fruit, yeah, you might have a sour grape and then you're like, oh, I don't like grape anymore. You know, your brain is saying that, but Doritos tastes exactly the same every single time. So they're trying to replicate that with fruits.

Yeah.

So again, it might be a little more healthy, but maybe not so great.

Well, you're bringing me to a, a topic that I like as well. There's my thought on feeding my family, which is is eating seasonally. And that to me needs to be a priority for everyone and, and in your home and in your family. Now we ship fruits and vegetables around the globe, and that's really true. They don't taste as they're meant to taste. I love it when I hear about a new fruit that I've never heard of because I haven't traveled to Central America and encountered— I can't even name a fruit that I don't know of because I haven't been there, but they exist. And that's important to teach these kids that we need to eat seasonally and locally as much as possible.

You're right. And when, yeah, because some of those apples, for example, they've been in storage for like 8 months and then they don't have the same taste. Yeah.

And they've lost their nutritional content.

Mm-hmm.

They, they have exposure. So vitamins are very sensitive and the micronutrients, so vitamins break down very easily and quickly when exposed to air and light. Minerals in foods don't, we could talk about, you know, the science behind vitamins and minerals too. Lots of I love talking about this.

There's so much for us to talk about. I wanna spend the next 5 minutes talking about how to convince your teenager or your tween. I saw a comedian talk about their little kid, like fighting them for blueberries.

Nice.

And so kid, little kids love berries and fruits and stuff. Yeah, they do. But once they get into school, they have that outside influence and it's harder to control what they're eating and what's around them. So what is your recommendation to get people on board? What are your top 3 behavioral motivational interviewing skills that you can share with us to convince your tweens and teens and everyone else to eat healthy around you?

I think number 1 is have these discussions in the home. If the parents care and they're the best example, even though they're more heavily influenced by their peers, deep down, they really are watching what mom and dad are, you know, their parents are doing. And so having these open discussions and having having those foods in your house is really important, meaning the healthy foods. Have the bowl of fruit on the table, have the salad with dinner every night. Do have home-cooked meals, have family meals. I think that's gone by the wayside and we know how invaluable family meals are for, you know, that's where discussions come up and talking about these things. You can see if your child is eating well, if they're losing weight, if they're gaining weight. So I would start there in the home, have discussions about it. But if they, you know, my, my own kids talk about why are, why are they requesting X, Y, and Z food? Why are they wanting the cotton candy grapes? Because a friend told them about it. So sometimes it's a good thing. Sometimes it's not a good thing. And then, you know, now I see a switch in the age group too, when they get to high school. And like you said, with social media, they actually are more interested in nutrition and some of these things. Well, how do I get the six-pack abs and how do I build muscle and how do I look beautiful? Well, nutrition comes in there and not just eating the junk food. And, um, I'm going to throw Starbucks drinks under the table too, even though I go to Starbucks all the time, like these 800-calorie sugary drinks that kids are downing all the time, like coffee drinks that aren't really coffee drinks, things like that.

But I like what you were saying about beauty and what you want to look like on the outside. Start where they want to start. And talk about that. And you know, if you wanna have clear skin and exactly, you wanna control your hormones, um, and not feel bloated, or if you wanna get those muscles, right? You need to eat those whole foods. And those are, you know, that's a great starting point.

Yeah.

Know what they want and start from there.

Exactly. Mm-hmm.

And then how they look.

Yeah. That's a big one.

That's more important than how, yeah.

And then how they feel. That's a big one for everyone, I think. Right? Yeah.

Huge. Yes. I do wanna mention how they feel too, because we now live in a society where Teens and young adults are suffering from anxiety and depression at an alarming rate.

Mm-hmm.

And we're seeing that over the course of the life cycle, more adults too suffering from anxiety and depression. So that's tied to their nutrition too, of course.

Mm-hmm.

And then you mentioned IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, and that's directly related to what they eat and then how they feel. Mm-hmm. The bloating, the cramping. I work with, uh, several college students, young women who go off to college and guess what? Next thing you know, they are diagnosed with IBS because they have so many stressors on them and their diets have changed dramatically. And they're, as you mentioned, they want to eat so healthfully, but it ends up not being necessarily so healthful because they're eliminating so many foods and, and eating very restrictive diets, whether it's a whole bunch of salads every day or just the popcorn. Like those are really good real life examples of what young adults do, honestly.

Yeah. And most, most people don't know that popcorn, I mean, popcorn is fiber, but it's insoluble and it's rough. So some people can have real problems with popcorn.

Yeah, they can.

Yeah. Yeah. They can.

The bottom line is, you know, bring it back to balanced diet.

Balance.

What is that?

Yeah. Balance is not taught to a lot of people in our society.

Yeah.

Like in general, our society is very unbalanced and extreme.

Mm-hmm.

When it comes to diet, nutrition, and I hope I answered your question, Juna.

Yeah. So that whole thing with the rainbow plate is like a, uh, you know, make sure that you have a variety of different colors and different types of food on it. That's awesome.

And I can assure you they don't.

Yeah.

I just wanted to mention one more thing, like if in the home, um, also involving the kids in deciding what kind of healthy meal you're gonna have, even if you just only give them choices between healthy things, and then also involving them in preparing. The food. Mm-hmm. Do you find that that's helpful for your clients and—

Very, very. I don't like to say, oh, do you want this or this or this? No, no, that just backfires. Have them come take a stake in it, I wanna say. And my kids do. I love seeing them take, right? I love seeing my teenage son make a protein shake for himself and he came and he is like, mom, where's, where's the flaxseed? Like, oh cool. I didn't even know he knew what flaxseed is.

That's great.

Of course I have it in my fridge. Uh-huh. Flaxseed, hemp seed, you know, you name it, I've got it. Uh, frozen berries go in the protein shake, get some yogurt. And then we discussed different, in my house I have literally probably every plant-based milk and I have what I call the most expensive milk on the planet, A2 milk. It's funny, it's like, these are, it's how I educate my kids, but I also get a local farm box and I base meals on that.

So, oh, I like that.

Yeah. They love meat and potatoes. And I just got potatoes this week in my farm box and that Swiss chard that we started, I mentioned at the very beginning. So even if they don't eat the Swiss chard, I know at least they're getting these local organic potatoes that they're in season with. Same with the garlic, the onions. I really do like them to see that I'm getting foods from the area and the local farms.

And they're more flavorful.

They're so flavorful.

We're going to wrap it up, but It was so much fun talking to you and I wanted to—

this is fun.

Can you tell them about your cookbook that you have? Yeah. It's so cute.

I do have a cookbook called Lighten Up.

Yeah.

It is a Cooking with Trader Joe's cookbook called Lighten Up, and I call it a good carb guide to managing your weight, I guess. But I have easy, delicious recipes. I love helping people remove the stress, make it easy to eat well on a daily basis for themselves and their families. And then, as I mentioned, I had you on the Sense of Wellness podcast. I love talking all things health and wellness, food and nutrition. So thank you for having me, Juna Bobby MD.

Of course. And that Trader Joe's book, was that in collaboration with Trader Joe's or was that yours? It was not.

My publishers were two young moms who went to MIT and created a publishing company. They partnered with Trader Joe's and I have to give them a shout out. Years ago, they were brilliant and. It got in on this Trader Joe's trend when Trader Joe's was just becoming trendy and new and known, and they were making all their own baby food and they decided to start writing recipes themselves. And then, you know, fast forward, they needed a dietitian to write a cookbook and a diet based on Trader Joe's. So anyway, my, my book Lighten Up fit into a series of cookbooks that they were doing at the time. And I'm proud of it. I'm working on the next things eventually. In my busy life, in my day job, in my work at CCPHP, I actually do write recipes and put out a lot of overall wellness information for our members and the public, honestly.

But yeah.

You do a great job with that. Yeah.

Thank you.

So tell us where they can find you on the internet or your LinkedIn.

Sure, sure. I'm on Instagram as FoodMedRDN. So because I'm passionate about food is medicine, um, and RDN. So FoodMed RDN on Instagram. I am on LinkedIn, Susan Greeley, and Twitter. I'm on, I have all the social media handles and do check out my work website, which is sens.cchp.net. So sens for sleep, exercise, nutrition, stress, .ccphp.net. And my personal email, uh, website, I'm sorry, is susangreeley.com.

That's wonderful. So if anybody has any questions for Susan, you can always go on Mind Body Speak www.themediterraneandiet.com/podcast, and you can enter your question right in there on that page, and we'll make sure that we get back to you.

Excellent.

This is awesome.

Yes, I will.

Next time we'll have to talk about your favorite recipes. I love it.

Great evening. Thank you for having me, Juna.

Thank you so much.