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The Plant Powered Collective Podcast helps women in their 40s, 50s, and beyond live vibrantly and nourish boldly. Hosted by integrative nutrition coach Lori Willinski, each episode blends science-backed nutrition with approachable strategies for hormone balance, energy, and healthy aging. Rooted in lifestyle medicine and personalized coaching, Lori shares her story of thriving on plants since age 14 and managing autoimmune disease with nutrition. Discover how a plant powered lifestyle fuels not only your health, but also your leadership and your future self.
Lori (00:02)
Welcome to Plant Powered Collective. Welcome to the Plant Powered Collective podcast. I'm Lori Willinski, integrative nutritionist, founder of Plant Powered Collective, and an advocate for putting more plants on the plate because plants give us an incredible foundation for supporting our health today and for years ahead. But I also believe there is no single perfect way of eating that works for every person in every season of life.
There are, however, some foundations eating primarily whole foods, including plenty of plants and a variety of plants, incorporating some minimally processed foods that make eating well practical and sustained, incorporating some minimally processed foods that make eating well practical and sustainable, and limiting ultra-processed foods rather than allowing them to become the foundation of our diets.
From there, what belongs on your plate becomes personal. That's where self-awareness and bioindividuality matter. What foods work for your body, your lifestyle, your preferences, your culture, and your current season of life. Plant Powered Collective looks beyond the plate too. We look at the self because nourishment begins with understanding yourself. The home, because our environment and our systems can make nourishing ourselves easier.
Or harder. On the plate, where we focus on whole foods, plants, variety, and the foods that make and the foods that work for our individual needs, and at the table, because food is so much more than nutrients. It is about relationships, connection, conversation, and the people with whom we share our lives. And today's episode may be one of the best real life examples I've had.
Of how all those pillars intersect. Because I'm redesigning my kitchen, not renovating it. I'm not getting new cabinets, although believe me, they could probably use it. They're 17-year-old builder-grade cabinets, and they've definitely seen better days. I'm not ripping out countertops. I'm redesigning the system of my kitchen. Because the life happening inside my kitchen has changed.
And the system that worked beautiful and the system that worked beautifully for me five months ago doesn't work nearly as well for the life I'm living today. Let's dive into the podcast. I've lived with this kitchen for 17 years. ⁓ I've lived with this kitchen for 17 years. That's a long time to learn a space.
I know where everything goes, I've developed systems without even realizing their systems. And because nutrition is such an important part of my life, I've intentionally created an environment that makes the way I want to eat easier. One of my favorite examples is my refrigerator. I don't hide my vegetables in the vegetable drawers. I want to see them. I use clear containers, so when I open the refrigerator, beautiful vegetables are right there in front of me.
And they give me inspiration. The refrigerator drawers, I now use those for canned beverages. Pellegrino can happily live down there. That system works for me because I've learned something about myself. If I see the vegetables, I'm more likely to use them. I'm inspired by them. I love to create with them. That's such a simple example of something I talk about all the time with nutrition.
Knowledge is important.
But knowing that vegetables are good for us doesn't necessarily mean we're going to eat them. We need to create environments that make the behaviors we want easier. And my kitchen has become a and my kitchen had become very good at doing that for me until my life changed. About five months ago, my father came to live with me. And when another person comes into your home, particularly someone you're caring for.
You're not simply adding another place setting at the table. You're bringing another person's routines, preferences, needs, and foods into the home. You see, my father has dementia and primary progressive aphasia, so he cannot communicate to me what he wants to eat. However, I've known him my whole life, so I know what he likes to eat. And he eats very differently from me.
I'm very plant forward. My father eats meat. He also likes vegetables. And he also likes sweets. These are there are foods in my house now that I simply didn't buy when I was living alone. There is considerably more food, and there is more food in the freezer, particularly meat. And then there are the appliances. I now have a microwave sitting on my counter.
And a toaster all the time. Previously I didn't have either one sitting out. Those might sound like incredibly small things, but when you've lived in a kitchen for 17 years and developed a visual and functional rhythm around how you cook, two appliances permanently appearing on the countertop actually change the way the kitchen feels and functions. And some of the changes are even less obvious. My father gets up later than I do.
Before he moved in, I could wake up, use my kitchen however I wanted, turn on the blender, make a smoothie, move around, make noise. Now I'm conscious that someone is still sleeping. And a blender first thing in the morning isn't exactly subtle. So my morning smoothies are out, at least for now. And I think that's such a good example of what I mean when I say our systems need to evolve.
There's nothing wrong with smoothies. I didn't suddenly decide smoothies aren't nutritious. I didn't lose the discipline to make one. My circumstances changed. The habit that fit easily into my old life doesn't fit as easily into this one. So instead of trying harder to force that habit back into my morning routine, I need to ask different questions. What works now?
I think we do this with nutrition all the time. Something works, then our life changes. The thing that used to work stopped working.
And instead of examining the system, we often blame ourselves. I need to get more organized. I need to eat better. I need more discipline. Maybe not. Maybe the track changed. My kitchen isn't failing me. And I haven't failed at organizing my kitchen. I've created a really good system for a life that I'm no longer living. That's very different. My household changed. The person sitting at my table changed.
The foods coming into my house changed, my responsibilities changed, my mornings have definitely changed. Even the amount of noise I can make at seven o'clock in the morning has changed. So why would I expect the exact same system to continue working? And I think that's a question worth asking beyond my kitchen. Are you are you trying to maintain a nutrition system?
That was built for a life you're no longer living? This brings me to something I've been thinking about a lot lately: our nutritional baseline. Your nutritional baseline isn't the way you eat when everything is important. It's not the gorgeous Sunday when you've done, it's not the gorgeous Sunday when you've gone to the farmer's market, meal prepped, chopped everything, made homemade hummus.
And have an entire refrigerator full of beautifully prepared food. I love those days. That's what my Sundays used to be.
But that's not the test. Your nutritional baseline is what supports you when life gets complicated. And I want to be clear about something here. A baseline doesn't mean anything goes. Remember those foundations we talked about at the beginning? Whole foods, plenty of plants, minimally processed foods where they make sense, and limiting ultra-processed foods.
Those principles can remain remarkably stable even when the specific foods and routines change. Maybe I can't make my morning smoothie right now. That doesn't mean plants disappear from breakfast. Maybe I need overnight oats with berries, nuts, and seeds. Maybe it's whole grain toast with avocado and vegetables. Maybe it's something I prepared the night before. The goal isn't protecting the smoothie, the goal is protecting the foundation.
That's a very different mindset. Your nutritional baseline is a collection of foods, habits, and systems that help you continue nourishing yourself when your schedule changes, when you're caring for someone, when work becomes incredibly busy, when somebody moves into your house, when somebody moves out, when you're traveling, when a relationship changes, when you're becoming an empty nester, when your energy isn't what it normally is.
That's when systems matter. Because if healthy eating requires ideal circumstances, it isn't a sustainable system.
That's my project this week. I'm going to redesign my kitchen. I'm looking at my 17-year-old kitchen with fresh eyes. I'm not asking, how do I get my old kitchen back? I'm asking, how does this kitchen need to function for the life I'm living now? And there is something really and there is a really important word in that question.
how does this kitchen need to function for the life we're living now? And there is a really important word in that question: where we are. This isn't just my kitchen anymore. It's serving both my father and me. And nourishing him doesn't have to look exactly like nourishing me. There's no judgment attached to that. I'm not going through the freezer deciding that everything needs to become plant-based.
Because that's how I prefer to eat. That's not the objective. My father eats meats, he likes sweets. Those foods are part of our home now. The objective is to create a kitchen where nourishing both of us becomes more efficient and easier. So I'm keeping the systems that still work. My vegetables are still going to be visible. That works for me. And for my dad. He likes vegetables. Although he doesn't cook.
He's not able to now. But the freezer needs a new system. Instead of opening the freezer and searching through everything, I'm creating inspiration a plant forward drawer, an animal protein drawer. Now I can immediately see what I have available for the way I eat and what I have available for my father. Simple. Nothing revolutionary. But that's the point. Small shifts can change.
The environment. I think sometimes when we're changing our nutrition environment much bigger than it I think sometimes we make changing our nutrition environment much bigger than it needs to be. You don't necessarily need a new refrigerator. Although I'd like one. My ice maker has been broken forever. You don't need matching containers. You don't need a pantry that looks like it belongs on Pinterest. Although I love that.
It makes me feel calm. It brings me peace. You don't need a kitchen renovation. Although I'd also love that. I have a 17-year-old kitchen. Although, if anyone wants to talk to me about replacing those Vilde-Grade cabinets, that's an entirely different conversation. What I need right now is a better system. Maybe that means moving something six inches. Maybe it means putting the foods you want to eat at high eye level.
Maybe it's moving the cookies somewhere you don't see them every time you walk through the kitchen. Not because cookies are bad, simply because your environment influences your behavior. Maybe it's creating a breakfast area so everything you use in the morning is together. Maybe it's keeping fruit on the counter. Maybe it's putting your beans, lentils, and whole grains somewhere you can actually see them.
Maybe it's having a few easy proteins available for people in your household who eat differently than you. Maybe it's finding a quieter breakfast because someone you love is sleeping. And maybe it's acknowledging that the microwave you have never wanted on your countertop is now used multiple times a day and finding a way for it to belong there rather than being irritated every time you look at it.
This is what our kitchen needs right now.
That is exactly why one of the plant powered collective pillars, the home was
Is part of nutrition. Nutrition doesn't begin when the fork reaches the mouth. So much happens before that. What did you buy? Where did you put it? Can you see it? Can you reach it? Is it easy to prepare? Do you have the tools you need? Do you have foods available for everyone you're feeding? Does opening your refrigerator give you options or overwhelm you?
Your physical environment is constantly creating tiny moments of friction or ease. I want to reduce the friction because I'm already managing a lot. I don't want making lunch to require another series of decisions. I want to open the refrigerator or freezer and have the environment help me. That's not lack of discipline. That's a good system design.
And I think women understand this instinctively in almost every other part of our lives. We create systems at work, we create calendars, we develop processes, we organize teams, we create routines for our family, we build systems for everyone and everything we're responsible for. Yet, when it comes to feeding ourselves, somehow we think we're supposed to rely on willpower. I don't think we should. I talk frequently about becoming the leader of your own life.
This is what I mean. Leadership isn't always the big decision. Sometimes leadership looks like standing in front of your freezer and admitting this isn't working anymore. And instead of criticizing yourself, you get curious. What changed? What do I need now? Who else does this system need to serve? What can stay? What needs to move? What should become easier? That is self awareness.
And self-awareness gives us the information we need to make intentional changes, not dramatic changes, small shifts. So here's what I want you to do this week. I invite you to walk into your kitchen as though you've never seen it before. Don't clean it first, don't organize anything. Just look. Open your refrigerator, open your freezer, look at your counters, look inside your pantry, and ask yourself four questions.
What is working for me? What isn't working anymore? What has changed in my life since I created this system? And finally, I invite you to ask yourself, what is one small shift I could make that would make nourishing myself easier? Just one. Maybe you're going to steal my vegetable idea and get those vegetables out of the drawer where they're slowly becoming science experiments.
Put them where you can see them. Maybe you're going to organize your freezer by how you actually cook. Maybe you're going to create a shelf specifically for quick meals. Maybe you're going to move your fruit. Maybe you're going to rethink breakfast. Maybe you're going to make absolutely no changes except realizing that the kitchen you have actually works really well for you. That's useful information too.
This isn't about creating my kitchen. It's about creating your system.
And I'm going to document this process. Not after it's perfect. I want to take you with me when I'm redesigning my kitchen. It's not going to be pretty because I'm not going to be able to do it in one day. My dad requires too much of my attention. It's going to take several days and it's going to be way messy before it becomes a system.
I'm going to share the evolution of this 17-year-old kitchen with builder grade cabinets and granite that has seen its better days. I'm going to document what I'm moving, what I'm keeping, what isn't working, what I thought would work but doesn't, what I discover along the way, what and probably a few things I'll change my mind about because that's real life.
And I think there's value in showing the process rather than simply showing you the beautiful after. There are two very different people being nourished from my kitchen right now. And I want to create an environment that respects that. Plant forward for me, animal proteins available for my father, food he enjoys, food I enjoy, foods we share, and systems that make feeding both of us a little more efficient, a little easier.
And hopefully a lot more enjoyable.
So if there's one idea I want to you to take away with you blah. So if there's one idea I want you so if there's one idea
That you can take away with you today. It's this.
When a system that used to work stops working, don't immediately assume you're the problem. Look at what's changed. Your life may have changed, your household may have changed, your responsibilities may have changed, your body may have changed. The people sitting at your table may have changed, your mornings may have changed, and your systems are allowed to change with them. You don't have to abandon the foundations.
You can continue prioritizing Whole Foods, you can continue putting more plants on your plate, you can continue using minimally processed foods intentionally and limiting ultra-processed foods. But how you accomplish those things can change. That's not starting over, that's adapting. That's leadership. And that's how small shifts become sustainable ones.
At Plant Powered Collective, we believe nourishment is bigger than what's on your plate. It begins with the self, understanding who you are, what you need, and what works for your bioindividuality. It extends into the home, creating an environment that systems make
It extends into the home, creating an environment and systems that make nourishing choices easier. It comes to life on the plate.
With whole foods, more plants, variety, and foods that support your individual needs. And it is shared at the table, where food becomes connection, conversation, relationships, and community. This leak this week, I'm living with all four pillars right now in my own home.
And if you'd like to come along with me, follow my personal Substack where I will be documenting my kitchen redesign. That's where I'm going to be writing more about the evolution of my kitchen as it actually happens. I'll share what I'm changing, what I'm learning, what works, what doesn't, and what it's teaching me about nourishing two very different people in the same home. You'll find the link to my personal Substack in the show notes.
And before you go, I always love to give a reflection question.
And here is my reflection question for the week. And I invite you to think about it if you choose. Is there something in your life that you've been trying harder to make work when you actually
Is there something in your life that you've been trying harder to make work when what you actually need is a different system?
Until next Monday, stay curious, keep adding plants, nourish yourself and the people at your table. And remember that small shifts made intentionally can change so much. I'm Lori Willinski, and this is the Plant Powered Collective Podcast, where we nourish boldly so that we can live vibrantly.