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The Life of And podcast is for high-achieving women and working parents who are ready to stop living a life of “have to” and start designing a life they actually want. It’s a space where we talk honestly about the things we’re often afraid to admit — even to ourselves. The exhaustion. The ambition. The loneliness. The joy. The tension of wanting more without losing yourself in the process.
If you’re in the thick of it — feeling stretched, tired, hopeful, driven — this is your invitation to take a breath, get real, and find your way back to your own Life of And.
[00:00:00] Lisa Smith: I remember asking him, can you prevent cancer? And he said, in many cases you can prevent cancer. And it blew my mind and I decided then that's what I was going to do. I was gonna help people be so healthy that they would never get cancer.
[00:00:17] Tiffany Sauder: I'm Tiffany Sauder, entrepreneur, wife, mom to four girls and a woman figuring it out just like you.
[00:00:23] Tiffany Sauder: If you're tired of living a life of have to and finally ready to build a life of want to, then you're in the right place. Come on, let's go build your Life of And.
[00:00:40] Tiffany Sauder: This year has been a year of taking my health just a lot more seriously. Not in a, I wanna look great in a bikini way, though that might be a great byproduct, but in a way where I wanna have the energy of my 25-year-old self and live until I'm 102 kind of way. As I enter these like scary perimenopause, menopause years, I'm gonna be 45 this year.
[00:01:01] Tiffany Sauder: I've stepped into them with a bit of trepidation, honestly, like. I'm not medical, I don't know all of these words, all of these acronyms. I'm not like reading every book on the New York Times bestsellers about like hormone replacement therapies. Like I really don't understand it all. But conversations like the one that I just had, help me remember that we have a lot more of what we can control than what we don't control when we're going through these seasons of like figuring out how do we become our healthiest self.
[00:01:30] Tiffany Sauder: So today I am taking it back to a powerful conversation I had with Lisa Smith. She's a functional medicine expert, a mom, and a host of the Pretty Well podcast. When we talked, it was still very much working through an understanding of all these new words, and my conversation with Lisa was helpful and untangling at least a little more all the things so I could take control.
[00:01:50] Tiffany Sauder: Lisa does an incredible job of sharing the one test that she recommends to give you the biggest bang for your buck. There's a million different things that you can do, like thousands of vials of blood that can be drawn, and she really. Brings it down to the one test that she thinks really helps. She talks also about the mindset shift that's gonna help you stop crash dieting and the everyday trick that I now use at almost every dinner party to help me feel better in my own body.
[00:02:15] Tiffany Sauder: I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Lisa, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me.
[00:02:21] Lisa Smith: Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Tiffany.
[00:02:24] Tiffany Sauder: So Lisa, can you, I find that people who are in this line of work got here because there's a story that led them here. So can you walk us through your personal journey or your exposure, or how did you get to the place where this is like your passion and this is how you wanna help people?
[00:02:42] Lisa Smith: Absolutely. It started when I was little. I'm talking really little elementary school. My grandfather was a surgeon, he was a cancer surgeon, and he didn't live in our hometown. We would go visit him every Thanksgiving. And every Easter. We would never buy the Turkey Tiffany. They would bring, the patients would bring the Turkey, the patients would bring the ham at Easter, and, and every one of those holidays, someone would say, your grandfather saved my life, or Your grandfather saved my wife's life.
[00:03:14] Lisa Smith: And then they would leave. They'd drop off the food and. He would turn to whoever was listening and he would say, you know, I'd so much rather help my patients prevent this horrible disease than try to help them heal after. And that as a little kid seemed like magic. I remember asking him, can you prevent cancer?
[00:03:37] Lisa Smith: And he said, in many cases, you can prevent cancer. And it blew my mind and I decided then. That's what I was going to do. I was gonna help people be so help healthy that they would never get cancer. Well, that's what I thought then. Then I took a very deep, very windy road, detour into all different things, sales and different industries.
[00:04:02] Lisa Smith: And then I had babies and when I, I got married and had babies, and when my kids were babies, I got to stay home. And I started realizing that my passion was still to have a private practice and help people be their healthiest that they could possibly be. It broadened beyond cancer because looking at our society, there's so much chronic illness beyond cancer that we can help with that it just became my, my single-minded focus in terms of what I wanted to do for a living.
[00:04:33] Lisa Smith: So I started doing all the research. I went back to school. I got a couple more degrees, and then. A couple other certifications and then became a dietician, and I opened my practice and then I started seeing clients and saw massive transformations in life just through some very simple changes. I. So that's kind of it in a nutshell.
[00:04:57] Tiffany Sauder: There's kind of two things I wanna talk, talk about. One is like definitely where to start. I feel like really smart and capable in life, but I would say when it comes to this world of functional medicine and all these different labs and poop tests and like, there's a vocabulary to it. Honestly, to the lay person is super intimidating and there's like all these things and then you think you figured it out and then you learn about different qualities of vitamin.
[00:05:24] Tiffany Sauder: Like it's been described to me that I need about a thimble full of information on any one topic. And this is not a thimbleful topic, you know what I mean? Like there's a lot of depth. So how do people get started and how can we take away? It's like accounting. Like accounting by itself is not actually that difficult.
[00:05:43] Tiffany Sauder: The concepts aren't that hard. The vocabulary is kind of hard to learn. Does that make sense? And I find is maybe the same thing in this world of functional medicine is there's a vocabulary to it. That to me is kind of intimidating and figuring out where to start, what tests make sense. If I get that back, how do I react to it?
[00:06:03] Tiffany Sauder: Like how does somebody who says, look, I know. The way that our healthcare system is not necessarily set up to make me healthy. It's set up to keep me from being sick or to get me better once I am. So where do you start?
[00:06:18] Lisa Smith: I look at every person as a puzzle, and each of our puzzles are very unique. Now we have some common pieces to the puzzle, but there's so much that is.
[00:06:29] Lisa Smith: Personal and unique and tailored to the in individual. So I used to start putting pieces in the puzzle and then I would test as needed. So I would do this extensive health history and nutrition history and lifestyle and all the things, and start putting the pieces of the puzzle, and those are very important pieces that hasn't changed.
[00:06:47] Lisa Smith: Then I would. Cherry pick tests a lot of that. Well, with my in-person business, that's Integrative Wellness Center in Pennsylvania that I sold a lot of those tests. I would, I would just choose as needed based on the information I got. And some of that was just to save my clients and patients' money.
[00:07:08] Lisa Smith: Because a lot of functional, no, not a lot. Some functional medicine practitioners. We'll run a slew of tests and it it'll be to the tune of thousands of dollars. And truly, that's not right either, in my opinion, because those tests change. When you change one thing in the body, all the other things have a ripple effect, so you can't work on a.
[00:07:32] Lisa Smith: Five tests at one time, you, it's just you can't, so you would be taking so many supplements you wouldn't even eat. My system now is a, is different than it used to be. I used to just do one or two and I felt like that was not complete information until I started getting a bigger picture. So now I look at some very specific test.
[00:07:51] Lisa Smith: One is a gut test. Another one is called an oat test, which looks at metabolites. That tells us what's going on from a detoxification standpoint and and vitamin deficiencies and that kind of thing. Then if needed, I'll also add on a hormone test or. Potentially a food sensitivity test, but that can change once you start healing the gut.
[00:08:14] Lisa Smith: So if you do it all at once, you're kind of wasting that person's money because if it changes after you heal the gut, we kind of want it down the road and see if there's anything residual that you need to deal with. You start with the big picture of what's happening in your life. What are your symptoms?
[00:08:30] Lisa Smith: Those tell us a lot. What is your health history? What's your nutrition history? What's your trauma history? All those things go into the, the, the puzzle or the ball of wax, and then you add on a couple very specific tests that help us to dial it in and personalize then the plan or the protocol with the person.
[00:08:51] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, I think that does make sense. I think in my, in my situation, like I think I feel good, but do I was sort of one of my questions like maybe I've assimilated to the way that my body feels in a way that I'm not noticing. So some of what I. Wanted to do. As I started dipping my toe in the water with this was just to get a baseline of like, Hey, I know that as I start getting to the season of life in perimenopause and Meno, like I don't know what's gonna happen, but does having baselines make sense for me to kind of know where I'm starting from?
[00:09:25] Tiffany Sauder: The thing I wanna give people as a, through this line of questioning is I think it can feel very obtuse. Out there in the world of where do I start? And maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe this is sort of like if your house is a mess, it doesn't matter what room you start cleaning, just pick one. I got like.
[00:09:47] Tiffany Sauder: Just decision fatigue I think of like, okay, yeah, I can like mail order this poop test. Maybe I should do that. There's like this sensitivities thing I could do that I could go to a functional doctor that my friend went to and get my labs done and I, I'm like, Hey, I'm moving fast. There's lots of people. I don't have time for a thousand appointments and so I either freeze and don't do anything or.
[00:10:10] Tiffany Sauder: Because I'm an achiever, I do all of it. And then when I do all of it, you're even like put into more decision fatigue. 'cause it's like, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I wanna be healthy, I wanna do right by my body. But it has to work in the context as we talked about before, we push record here in in the rest of my life.
[00:10:28] Tiffany Sauder: So if that's where somebody is at, they're in a busy household, it's crazy, but they're like, I've got to make sure that I'm doing right by myself. Where to start. For that person. Okay.
[00:10:41] Lisa Smith: What I recommend you do is you find somebody who you trust, look, look at people online or whatever, find someone you trust, who that's what they do for a living.
[00:10:52] Lisa Smith: You're not doing your own taxes, right? Why would you? There's somebody who knows exactly what you should be doing. There is an order to it. Yes. The poop test is important. That's one of the main three that I I run because it tells us what's going on in the gut. But it's important in context with other things going on.
[00:11:10] Lisa Smith: So when we try to, even myself, when I try to DIY it, I know what I'm, I know what I'm doing, but it's kinda weird on yourself because you're like, that's not a big deal, but mm-hmm. That's because we downplay our own. Things because we're busy and we're doing things for other people and for ourselves and our companies.
[00:11:31] Lisa Smith: So it's most beneficial to have an experienced set of eyes taking a look with. With goals in mind. Okay, here's your baseline. This is great. This tells us where we are. We wanna go here, how do we get here? And then that person develops the roadmap for you to get from here, which is not bad, but either you wanna stay consistent and stay where you are healthwise, or there are a couple things you can dial in that gets you even somewhere else that you thought, oh, this is even better.
[00:12:03] Lisa Smith: I didn't even know this was possible. Mm-hmm.
[00:12:05] Tiffany Sauder: Help us be wiser, Lisa, if we're gonna go out and find people that we think look good on the outside. What are good questions to ask? What does someone experienced know to ask that maybe when you're at the beginning of the journey, you just don't know? Because I'm gonna look at pictures and probably see if they have the vitality that I'm wanting.
[00:12:26] Tiffany Sauder: I, those would be things that, again, I'm just sort of making it up, but is there are credentials important? Um. Years of experience, how do you think about that?
[00:12:36] Lisa Smith: So yes and no, uh, credentials matter in one sense and not in another sense. So it matters that that person. Is passionate. So like you said, you're looking at them and you're seeing, are you really passionate about this credentials in the sense of what kind of training have you done in functional medicine, holistic health?
[00:12:54] Lisa Smith: What kind of experience has that person had? And you have to be a little careful. There are people who will say they have experience that they don't. In the town. I moved from someone started brand new in my field and said that she had helped hundreds of people around the world. I'm like, wow. In six months.
[00:13:11] Lisa Smith: That's a pretty tall order, you know? So you just have to be careful. 'cause people will say things. So you look at reviews, you look at what they're posting. You look at their website, are they certified in functional medicine or what is their education? Do they have master's degrees? That doesn't matter.
[00:13:28] Lisa Smith: You're just looking, you're looking for some combination of do they have master's degrees or do they have a doctorate, or do they have a functional medicine certification? Did they used to be a chiropractor and they pivoted to this. Were they a dietician or a nutritionist? Were they something else in the community?
[00:13:45] Lisa Smith: The medical community. And they decided to pivot to this. Mm-hmm. Because they, they're passionate and often what I look for is, what is their backstory? Did they have, almost everyone who's really passionate in this field has a story that they have been through health, some pretty dramatic health things, and they've walked themselves through it the hard way.
[00:14:07] Lisa Smith: And it's taken them a long time and lots of practitioners until they put it all together and now they have something proprietary that is really effective. So I look at those things and then the other thing I look at is. What are they charging you for? What you're getting? So if out of the gate they say, we're gonna run five different functional medicine tests, well, that's overkill.
[00:14:29] Lisa Smith: Three's good. Mm-hmm. Two, three. Two or three. That's good to start with, with the ability to order more as needed, but outta the gate, you need to get your foundational answers first. Start working on those, see what shifts, and then go from there.
[00:14:46] Tiffany Sauder: I wanna take a quick moment to thank my partners at Share Your Genius.
[00:14:49] Tiffany Sauder: For the past four years, they have been an incredible part of my journey. Behind the Microphone, share Your Genius is a content and podcast production agency that helps leaders and brands bring their message to life. So whether you're trying to find your voice, develop a content strategy, or get your leader behind a microphone, they're gonna help you make it simple, strategic, and impactful.
[00:15:10] Tiffany Sauder: What are the biggest challenges you see? Your clients or patients have when they're getting started or trying to implement? Like what gets in the way?
[00:15:20] Lisa Smith: Oh yeah. Life gets in the way and decision fatigue gets in the way and a couple things. So it depends on the person, different people. Some people are just hard charger.
[00:15:32] Lisa Smith: Some people come in and they say. You tell me what to do and I'm gonna do it, and they do it and that's that. Everything else we damned like I'm stay the course. But then some people were like, well. I got a vacation or I got the kids coming home, or I work really long hours and, and I'm a mom and a wife and I work long hours outta the home and then I'm still doing the cooking, but my time is this much when I get home and my energy is less.
[00:16:01] Lisa Smith: So real things in life. It just depends on the person. And then some people, this is really interesting. Some people just like New Year's resolutions, they start outta the gate and they're going strong and in a month their follow up consultation, they're like, I feel great. This, this works. Like it's changing my life.
[00:16:22] Lisa Smith: And in two months they're like, well, I kind of fell off the wagon. I got tired of doing it. And sometimes that's an identity thing. There's some self-talk involved there that says, I'm just not motivated, I'm not driven, I'm lazy. And those are not truthful, but they've been ingrained. And the brain as patterns and those, those we need to unpack in them, re uh, and address and rewire so that, no, that's not your identity.
[00:16:48] Lisa Smith: You're not stuck there.
[00:16:50] Tiffany Sauder: I can relate with being a very energetic starter and not always quite a passionate finisher. For sure. I have found one of those areas where ultimately there's like a cosmetic result and that your skin looks better and you feel better, but it is about. Little decisions over long periods of time that are very sustainable is the name of the game here.
[00:17:14] Tiffany Sauder: This is not Botox and fillers. You know, it's not a convenience thing. I have had to look at and be like, I wanna be healthy for a long period of time. This is me being kind to my 64-year-old self. This is me being kind to my future self so that I've laid a lot of really good groundwork instead of waiting for some kind of a crash in my body or.
[00:17:36] Lisa Smith: Yes. A bunch of adrenal
[00:17:38] Tiffany Sauder: fatigue or I don't know, like, and, and the discipline of that is not my natural wiring. Yeah. And so I do think you have to get to a place where you're like, I am taking this seriously and I've gotta put some traps in place so that it remains that.
[00:17:55] Lisa Smith: And to also be gracious with yourself, knowing that perfection is an illusion.
[00:18:03] Lisa Smith: It just doesn't exist. So to know, you know what, okay, I fell off. I love, I love the saying that says, well, I blew it. For lunch today. I, you know, so, so I blew it with my diet today if I don't prescribe diets, but let's just say I blew it, so that means I just might as well eat whatever I want for the rest of the week.
[00:18:26] Lisa Smith: Is like saying I dropped my cell phone, I might as well just stomp on it. You know, it's, you just pick it up. It's okay. Yeah, it's all right. And you didn't necessarily blow it. You chose to have pizza and coke for lunch. It's not a big deal. Like it's, is it what you wanted to do? Maybe, maybe not. But does it?
[00:18:45] Lisa Smith: Does it matter in the long run? It really doesn't. You can go home and make a beautiful salad and have some grilled chicken and throw a sweet of data on there, and you can. Take the phone back up and move on. I think with that freedom, when we stop, like self shaming, we let ourselves take a deep breath and go, it's not, oops, it's not that big of a deal.
[00:19:04] Lisa Smith: It really isn't. It's a big deal. If I do it for the next three months, then okay, my trajectory's going the opposite way that I want it to, but now and then, no it's not. And I used to, so for years I taught a 13 week weight loss program. That I wrote and it was amazing. And people got so, because it addressed more than food, it addressed all the things, stress and sleep and hormones and lifestyle and all self-talk.
[00:19:31] Lisa Smith: And I found that often it would go over a holiday like Thanksgiving, right? And people would be like, well, I would say, okay, Thanksgiving's coming up in two weeks. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna eat the pumpkin pie or are you not? People would look at me like deer in the headlights, like, is this a trick question I don't really wanna supposed to?
[00:19:48] Lisa Smith: And I'd be like, of course you're gonna eat the pumpkin pie. Thanksgiving comes once a year. You're gonna do all the things you're just gonna do. Maybe not like the big plate you did all in the years past. You're gonna start with smaller servings of everything. You are gonna decide what you wanna have seconds of because it only comes once a year.
[00:20:02] Lisa Smith: Same with a birthday or Christmas or whatever.
[00:20:05] Tiffany Sauder: But I also think that can become. Excuse. 'cause we are in a, like a hallmark world where there's like not 21 days that can go by without something needing to be celebrated. And I have had to learn that 'cause I love to be fun and have fun and to kind of decide which ones are my holidays, so to speak, and which ones can I go and have fun, be fun, but those aren't necessarily my holidays to indulge in.
[00:20:34] Lisa Smith: That's a good point too because you know, I do say, I said that as a blanket statement and it doesn't work in two situations. One is just like what you said is if everything's a holiday and everybody's birthday needs to be celebrated and all the things, and the other is, there are some people who say, I'm all or nothing and I can't be that person who has three squares of dark chocolate at 3:00 PM.
[00:21:00] Lisa Smith: Then that satisfies me and I'm done. I need the whole bar, and then I need the ice cream on top of it. Mm-hmm. So we have to know ourselves. That's where we really personalize it, because if it's someone who says I'm all or nothing, well then what we have to do is provide other options. And this is the same even with, you know, the every holiday situation that you brought up is.
[00:21:19] Lisa Smith: Find your substitutes that let you feel not deprived, but that still fit into your framework of, these are still my healthy choices, but it allows me to feel like I'm having something special when everybody else is eating cake and ice cream. But it isn't necessarily that I have a recipe I love for almond flour, chocolate chip cookies, and I use Stevia sweetened chocolate chips.
[00:21:41] Lisa Smith: The Lilly's brand, they're really low sugar. They don't have flour, they have almond flour in them. I'll make a big batch of those when there's something special going on, and then we're all glu. We have to be gluten free in my family, but it gives us something special that, oh, I'm still enjoying dessert.
[00:21:56] Lisa Smith: I'm just not enjoying the same thing, but I'm still in the celebration.
[00:22:01] Tiffany Sauder: My silly one. I go to a lot of events for work and personally and I love that. I love to get dressed up and go places. Yeah. And I love to hold a glass, like I love to have something to hold. It's like social and so like holding nothing feels very wor weird.
[00:22:16] Tiffany Sauder: And so I have learned putting club soda. In a wine glass with no ice gives me the same sensation as a white glass, like a glass of white wine. I don't actually really need the wine part like at all. Yeah. But the like the glass is very feminine. I like the whole, like literally it's like I had wine all night long and I have learned, it's so silly.
[00:22:38] Tiffany Sauder: It's like tactile. It makes me feel connected to the experience in the way that I want to, and it's just club soda, like who cares? So I, I've learned to just kind of be. A little bit picky and order it like that. Like I want a club soda, no ice, and a wine glass, and that's how I'm gonna do my evening. So it's like silly, but it's helped me be relevant to the environment without feeling like I've got this.
[00:22:59] Tiffany Sauder: Glass with all this ice on it that gets wet. Then I have a napkin around it and it's like sweating. I hated all that. Yes. Again, it's so stupid, but it's like how I've solved for the fact that I want that to be my life. I don't want to say I, I don't wanna not go.
[00:23:15] Lisa Smith: That's an ideal example. It's that thing.
[00:23:17] Lisa Smith: It's figuring out those things for us each individually that says, I'm not, I don't have to restrict. I just need to shift. What am I choosing? But I still get to choose. And I still get to have fun.
[00:23:30] Tiffany Sauder: So actually, Lisa, you mentioned your kids and the cookies. I, I'd love to know, as you were raising your kids and you have all of this knowledge and context for functional health and nutrition, what was important for you to teach them as they're launching into the world of college and pizza at two in the morning?
[00:23:51] Tiffany Sauder: That's. Part of it sometimes. What's important for them foundationally for you, and how do we think about that in our own families and, uh, their education with nutrition and understanding their bodies?
[00:24:01] Lisa Smith: Yeah, I got lots of pushback like the ground when they were growing up because. I remember one of my kids saying, when do we get to be normal?
[00:24:11] Lisa Smith: And I was like, Hey, normal's overrated. You get to be normal when you're 18. Until then, we're doing it this way. Like, but, but the things that I, the, the big rocks in the jar that I put in when they were kids was that we really focused on real food. Not a lot of processed, like we didn't do tons of different chips and.
[00:24:32] Lisa Smith: Candies and sodas and so not the ultra processed foods. Not that we never did them, we did even now like do I buy potato chips? I do. I have potato chips around for whoever wants them. But I buy Sate brand that uses avocado oil and I know every ingredient, and then it's a treat. So it's not like we didn't do treats, but I was very selective about what those would be.
[00:24:56] Lisa Smith: And we primarily focused on Whole Foods, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then our snacks would still be like, I would, they will still laugh about this when I was making dinner and they may be watching a show so I could get dinner going or they might be playing a game or whatever. I would always take them these little bowls of like cut up vegetables and they would eat 'em because that's what they knew.
[00:25:18] Lisa Smith: Uh, but they also had snack foods. I was just really careful about knowing when I would read the ingredients. Some really good rules of thumb, whether it's for. A family or whether it's for just one person individually, make sure that you know all the ingredients in the list, the ingredient list. If there are chemical names in there that are this long and they're all consonants with a couple vows sprinkled in there, if you don't know what they are or how to pronounce them, don't eat 'em.
[00:25:46] Lisa Smith: Mm-hmm. They're not food and they're not good for your body. Your body knows exactly what to do. With protein, carbohydrates, fats, water, vitamins, minerals, knows what to do. But when you start throwing all these toxins and chemicals and things in that, the body was never meant to process, oftentimes those things will get stored in our fat cells.
[00:26:06] Lisa Smith: You know, the body will try to break 'em down, but sometimes the body just stores them, and so then we're carrying more toxins in our body that's being sequestered away. That was my big focus. And then the other thing that I focused on was making sure they got protein at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, because nothing spells meltdown like giving kids pancakes and syrup.
[00:26:29] Lisa Smith: At 8:00 AM by 10:00 AM there's fighting, there's crying, there's all the things are falling apart. So yeah, you can have your pancakes, but I want you to have eggs with that. Or I want you to have like one egg and a piece of sausage with that. I want you to have some kind of protein that's gonna keep that blood sugar from spiking and crashing and all of the things that go with crashing blood sugar that nobody wants in their house.
[00:26:52] Tiffany Sauder: I have learned my kids will eat what they can see and reach. It's just like we do, like you walk in and you're hungry. Like whatever they can reach, they'll eat. And so being thoughtful about when they get home from school, having. Our nanny or whoever put out fresh veggies and fruit, if they can see it, if they can grab grapes, they will grab grapes.
[00:27:13] Tiffany Sauder: They will do that over chips. If it's just more accessible. That's what I have found and we, we have all girls, I have this thing about foods being off limits and restriction, like just being thoughtful about that in their relationship with food. Same. It's very powerful to say it's accessible. But I could choose.
[00:27:28] Tiffany Sauder: I don't have to have it. Yes. So that's a little bit of a side thing on it not being eradicated from our household. 'cause I want them to be able to be around it and be like, yeah, that's a treat. That's cool that that's there every single day. I don't need to have it every single day. So
[00:27:45] Lisa Smith: I completely agree with that.
[00:27:47] Lisa Smith: And because I, I was always afraid of. Restricting things and then causing there to be tension with certain foods and then some disordered eating choices. That was always a concern of mine too. So I do remember when my kids were smaller, people would be like, oh, I know what you do. I bet your kids never eat candy.
[00:28:07] Lisa Smith: And I would say like, I bet my kids eat more candy than most kids. Like we always did have candy, but I would know again, if it was chocolate. I bought organic chocolate. It's not perfect, but it, it's better. I would buy, did we do s'mores? Yeah, we would do s'mores like in the summertime with a fire pit. I didn't wanna restrict either, because I figured when they would get outta the house, first of all, they might need to go wild and try all the things they couldn't have.
[00:28:32] Lisa Smith: So I didn't wanna do that. Secondly, but I didn't wanna put those unhealthy, restrictive thoughts that, you know, this is bad, I'm bad if I eat this food, because that, those are hard things to dig up and root out of your life once they're in there.
[00:28:47] Tiffany Sauder: You were saying now that their kids are at college, there's been some.
[00:28:50] Tiffany Sauder: Things that you think about?
[00:28:52] Lisa Smith: Yeah, so the protein thing has served them so well. One kiddo is off campus, so she's cooking for herself and one kiddo's in the dorms, and they both are like, yeah, no, I have to have my protein in the morning. They get to choose whatever. That is, what that looks like. They both are like, no, I feel so much better if I get protein at breakfast, protein at lunch, protein at dinner.
[00:29:14] Lisa Smith: I'm just, even my energy's good. I think clearer. It's really cool how that is carried over. And now they both laugh because they're like, Ugh, what have you done to us? Like, we lecture our friends about what they should be eating from breakfast. Like, oh no, you don't have any eggs in that. You, you gotta get some protein.
[00:29:33] Lisa Smith: They're like, we're like these little parents. And I said, no, your, your friends are gonna thank you for that early. They'll be, they'll be thankful in the long run.
[00:29:42] Tiffany Sauder: They will feel a lot better. Yeah.
[00:29:45] Lisa Smith: Mm-hmm.
[00:29:45] Tiffany Sauder: Totally. Yeah. Yes. I always like there to be just like something really relevant and actionable. And so it was, we're recording this on a Monday morning.
[00:29:53] Tiffany Sauder: Our family had a massive weekend. Our daughter got baptized. It was so special. It was tons of family in. We had like 70 people at our house last night. You know, and as people do, they stay, which we love so much. And so you wake up Monday, you're like, whew, I gotta get through the day. So what I wanna do is kind of like drink coffee all day long and have a bagel and some sugar.
[00:30:14] Tiffany Sauder: 'cause that's what my body is telling me that I want. But in a day like today, like use me as the patient. If I was calling you Lisa and we're working together and it's like, Hey, how do I set myself up for success on a day like today when my body. Needs to do the day. I, I need to, it's Monday. We've got things I need to do, but it's tired.
[00:30:35] Tiffany Sauder: How do I respect that and fuel it well and set myself up for as good a day as I can have on a daylight day? Because busy households, this is how it rolls sometimes. So. What's your advice?
[00:30:48] Lisa Smith: So the first thing I ask, so you're say You're my client. Tip. Tip. And I'd say, do you like protein shakes? Do you have any at home?
[00:30:56] Lisa Smith: Do you like them? If you do, I would say make your, make it easy on yourself. Make sure it's a good clean one. I coach people on, I. How to figure that out. Like what's a clean one? Don't just go to the big box store and buy them. They're full of junk. Right now I'm using one called Ora Organics. It's ORA.
[00:31:13] Lisa Smith: Organics. Okay. It's super clean. I love it. Another great option is Truvan, Bonnie Harri. Who is the food babe? She has her own line. Truvan. T-R-U-V-A-N-I. Okay. Very clean. Those are two great ones. I have probably four other ones that I really like as well. But I always have them on hand and so do like, so do my kids and my husband.
[00:31:35] Lisa Smith: I don't love protein shakes. I, full disclosure, I don't, I'd rather eat food every day of the week, but on a morning, like this morning, like your morning and my morning has started out of the gate pretty, you know, there's a lot on the plate today. It's just simple and I promise you I feel better all day long because if you get the right amount of protein in the morning, your cravings, I.
[00:31:59] Lisa Smith: Just come right down. The cravings are often driven because we have these blood sugar spikes and crashes. Then your brain is saying, I need fuel, and it just, the quickest, cheapest fuel is sugar and fat. So it drives those cravings, right? For sugar and fat car, simple carbohydrates and fat. And so even great example, you coming off this big weekend, your brain is saying, I need sugar and fat.
[00:32:24] Lisa Smith: A bagel turns to, to glucose pretty quickly, right? When you eat a bagel and then say some cream cheese or something on it, it's, that's comforting and it's fuel. So I wouldn't say don't have it if you really want it, but I would say make sure you add some protein on with it. So for me, busy morning I get a protein drink in, or I'll make scrambled eggs a couple times a week and I'll throw feta in or kale, some kind of green arugula, but I'll make like a double batch and I'll put half of it in the fridge and I'll nuke the rest another day.
[00:32:56] Lisa Smith: Just super fast. Makes it simple. And I then I have some really good recipes. One is like egg bites, like the Starbucks egg bites. But you can make them at, yeah, yeah, you can make 'em at home and freeze 'em. Pop 'em out. Grab those on the road. So my first question for people is, what do you like? If someone says, I hate protein drinks, then I'm not gonna tell 'em to start with a protein drink.
[00:33:15] Lisa Smith: I'm gonna give them food options that are readily available that they can grab and go and run out the door.
[00:33:21] Tiffany Sauder: So on a tired day, start with protein. Yep. What else do we need to do today?
[00:33:26] Lisa Smith: Yeah, so I would start with protein. I would enjoy that coffee or tea to get the, get the brain waking up, get things going.
[00:33:34] Lisa Smith: Check. Yep. The things going. Yeah, I would. And then as you plan out your day, I would plan breaks into your day. So if you have a very busy day, if it's a day that you're working at your office for long stretches, make sure to set a timer on your phone. Get up every hour and walk. Walk around. Mm-hmm. Make sure you're hydrating, make sure you're getting good, filtered water.
[00:33:55] Lisa Smith: And then make sure you're getting, getting that blood moving every hour.
[00:33:58] Tiffany Sauder: That's a good idea and it would also just gimme something to look forward to. Like when you're sluggish, it's like, okay, I'm gonna lose, move my body for seven minutes and come sit back down.
[00:34:07] Lisa Smith: Exactly. Whatever it is, whether it's a quick walk, whether it's some squats, you know, whatever it is.
[00:34:13] Lisa Smith: I would also recommend you throw a little deep breathing in there, because that's gonna bring the cortisol down. The cortisol is that main stress hormone and deep breathing. This is so cool. There are in the bottom of our, you can't see me, the bottom of our lungs. So our lungs go from pretty much our collarbone way down to our lower abdomen.
[00:34:32] Lisa Smith: And just in the very bottom, there are specific oxygen receptors that aren't anywhere else in your lungs. And when the oxygen hits that very bottom part of your lungs, it switches you out of fight or flight. Into rest and digest. So it brings that cortisol down immediately. It's a biochemical hack, it's a biohack.
[00:34:53] Lisa Smith: So I would say make sure to work a little bit of deep breathing, even if it's only 10 breaths of box breathing. It's effective. So protein, get your coffee or your tea, get some activity in there just every hour. Some deep breathing, some good hydration. And then what do you love? If you love some kind of music, I would at lunchtime or at some point in the day, turn on a, a song or two you like, that'll reenergize you, and then have something to look forward to at the end of the day.
[00:35:24] Lisa Smith: Whether it's having that club soda and hanging out, debriefing your day with your husband or. You like to cook together, just something to look forward to at the end of the day that, that you're grateful for. And then recap what one thing from the day that you're grateful for.
[00:35:39] Tiffany Sauder: Well, it feels like the best reason to be tired, so I feel, uh, it was a really special weekend, and so thanks, Lisa, for I'm gonna do those things.
[00:35:46] Tiffany Sauder: I do feel like I was very aware driving in, I was like, okay, I'm gonna talk to Lisa today. All the things that my tired self wants to do is going to feed the wrong. It's gonna give food to the wrong things. And so how do I create this pattern interrupt for myself and say, Nope. How do I feed even my tired self?
[00:36:06] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah. So that I can, I, I don't wanna say like, be my best today, but like, give myself the greatest opportunity to have a day that I'm not fighting myself. So thanks for that advice. Lisa. I know you're starting an online practice and so if someone is at a place where they're beginning their functional health journey, how can someone find you and better get access to.
[00:36:28] Tiffany Sauder: Help and some of your advice as well.
[00:36:30] Lisa Smith: Absolutely. So the first way is to Lisa A. Smith Wellness. It's lisasmithwellness.com. That website is just being launched, so if you see anything glitchy. Hang in there. It'll get cleaned up, but we're just working through, it just started last week, so it's coming together.
[00:36:48] Lisa Smith: Just still has a little bit of a ways to go. So the ways to work with me will be on a wait list right now until I get everything, everything laid out and get the foundation down. But I already have the programs and packages. It's just putting all the pieces together so it's done well. And then the second way, just for great advice, much like your.
[00:37:10] Lisa Smith: This fantastic podcast that you host. I have the Pretty Well podcast and the mission of Pretty Well is to give. In any given episode to give listeners at least one thing or multiple things they could take away, and you said it earlier, Tiffany, do small steps consistently and they're life changing. So the mission is every single episode would have at least one small step someone could take away today that could be life changing if they did it consistently going forward.
[00:37:41] Tiffany Sauder: Awesome, Lisa. Well, thank you. Thanks for blessing my day with this conversation and giving me some ways that I can show up a little better for myself, which means I can show up better for the people around me, which is really, I think, the goal in life. And excited for this next step of your journey. No doubt.
[00:37:57] Tiffany Sauder: Successful follow you. Before we go, I wanna challenge you. What's one small choice that you can make today that will make your future self proud? Whether it's adding protein to breakfast, or just choosing to breathe deep at a red light. Lisa reminds us all that it all stacks up. If this sits home forward to a friend or leave a review, let's make this season the one where we finally take our health seriously on our own terms.
[00:38:22] Tiffany Sauder: Until next time, keep living your Life of And thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the Life of And this is your weekly reminder to keep making bold choices, saying clear yeses and holding space for what matters most. As always, if you like this episode, I'd love for you to drop a review and share it with your friend.
[00:38:40] Tiffany Sauder: It's the fastest way that we can grow the show. Thanks for joining us. I'll see you next time.