Blog Posts and Articles

I’ve been working with Jill, coaching clients, and writing for the Healthful Elements blog for a while now, but if you’re new to this space, I wanted to introduce myself.

Hi, I’m Laine. This is me laughing. >

[Photo credit: Anna Rajdl]

I’m a functional nutrition health coach, a health educator, and a long-time (and still occasional) health journalist. I’m really, really glad you’re here.

My passion is helping others (you!) adopt healthier habits without crying wild monkey tears of refined pain.

You know what I’m talking about.

Implementing lifestyle medicine to get healthy is seen as a process that to some feels like sucking all the joy out of living. “If you take away my sugar/wine/French fries/insert-favorite-unhealthy-food-here, why not just kill me now?!” 

I said the same thing for many years.

My pleasure/poison was sugar. Even when I first started my career right out of college – and I wrote and researched about health all day (and many hard-working, freelance-filled nights) – I refused to change my own habits. Oooh, I thought, give up my three-times daily chocolate chip-cookie habit? You have to be kidding!

That all changed in my mid-30s, when a chronic condition-turned-acute-health-crisis forced me to change my ways.

I feel lucky it did.

Today my chronic condition is in check, yes, but more than that, I feel better than I ever knew was possible – in ways that I hadn’t even known I was feeling badly.

Here’s an abbreviated list of what happened to me when I started taking everything I knew about health and putting it into actual practice in my life. (None of these relate to my underlying chronic condition, which now stays pretty quiet, too.)

• My chronically congested sinuses and post-nasal drip cleared up. I’d always thought that congestion was just “my thing.”

• I stopped waking up every morning with a pounding headache, another symptom I thought was just “something probably everyone experienced.”

• I stopped getting a second wind at 11:15 at night – and then staying up until 2:00 am and sleeping until 11:00 am.

• The depression and anxiety that had been my constant companions in life eased considerably. They still float around me – a little like an airplane circling the airport, waiting to land – and they require other ongoing support, but they are so much more stable than they used to be.

• My skin was always pretty clear, but I’d occasionally break out. Even those rare breakouts stopped happening.

My passion now is helping others feel this good.

I want to help people not just ease their autoimmune or other chronic condition, but also to feel better than they ever have. 

Contrary to popular belief, aging isn’t synonymous with slowing down, feeling worse, and giving up.

We’ve been told that as we get older, we should just expect to get diabetes, or low thyroid function, or adrenal burnout, or carry extra weight. It’s what comes with age, the doctors say. Just get used to it.

That is Just. Plain. Wrong.

While turning around an unhealthy ship can initially be challenging – if for no other reason than lack of knowledge (“Okay, fine! I’ll eat gluten-free, but then what the #&*@$ can I eat?!) – it gets easier and more enjoyable with time.

This is also when coaches are invaluable because it’s hard to make the changes that matter most, and in the right order, if you rely exclusively on the School of Google. Remember, Google gives you information but not education.

It’s also tough to do without support – at least at first. But once you start feeling better, there’s NO stopping you.

At that point, I could say to you directly, “I want you to stop your new healthy habits,” and you would cackle loudly like the Wicked Witch of the West, and say, “Going so soon, My Pretty? I wouldn’t hear of it! Why my little party’s just beginning!”

I intended to keep my introduction short (oops), because my goal was to write about surviving the holidays. For even the most committed among us (me… and soon to be you!), the holidays are notorious for derailing our best intentions.

But since I got so carried away with how good we can all feel with a few key changes (I told you… this is my passion!) I’ll save my holiday survival guide for the week after Thanksgiving. Yes, Thanksgiving is part of “the holidays,” but it kind of snuck up on us and in the vein of walking our talk and honoring work/life balance, Jill and I are taking most of next week off.

Meanwhile, though, I want you to dream big. I want you to think about what you would do if you felt well again.

Where would you travel?

What activities would you engage in?

Would you change jobs?

Start a business?

What would your life look like?

Be specific, and don’t put limits on your dreams, because you can feel better again – and the life you want can be yours.