During the holidays, we sat down with eating psychology and nutrition expert Elise Museles. Her transition from a legal career to focusing on food and wellness was driven by her passion for helping people.
Elise's explains "food stories" - how our relationship with food is shaped over time, influenced by our culture, experiences, and personal narratives. All three of us, just like you, have events in our past that likely influence how we've viewed food, historically.
Since Elara was seven months pregnant during this recording, Elise emphasizes the importance of embracing body changes during pregnancy and avoiding societal pressures around weight gain, including the need for self-acceptance and support from loved ones during such a transformative phase of life.
Elise also touched upon the challenges men face in their food stories. Everyone, regardless of gender, has a unique relationship with food. Her anecdotes and client experiences highlighted the universality of these issues.
There are practical ways to improve one's food story, with Elise advocating for awareness, identifying major themes, and understanding the origins of our food behaviors. This can help change narratives and habits in a compassionate and non-restrictive manner.
Elise shares her personal wellness practices, including her morning routine, nature walks, and matcha ritual, which contribute to her holistic well-being. She stresses the importance of proactive stress management and maintaining a healthy relationship with food.
Finally, Elise shares a significant life lesson taught by her father: the freedom to change one's mind. This advice resonates deeply with our conversation's theme of evolving personal narratives, especially regarding our relationship with food. Elise emphasizes that personal growth involves recognizing that our beliefs and behaviors can change over time, and it's perfectly acceptable to shift our perspectives as we gain new experiences and insights.
We're excited to bring Elise back in a future episodes, to dive deeper into her expertise on matcha.
More:
Elise's Once Upon A Food Story Podcast Episode with Diana and Elara: https://elisemuseles.com/podcast/create-a-feel-good-morning-routine-and-matcha-ritual-with-diana-weil-and-elara-hadjipateras/
Amy Schumer bit Elise referenced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_kCIA3G0TA
Elise Museles Website:https://elisemuseles.com/
Once Upon a Food Story Podcast: https://elisemuseles.com/podcast/
Elise on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elisemuseles
Elise's Book Food Story: https://www.amazon.com/Food-Story-Rewrite-Think-Live/dp/168364719X
Intro: Welcome to The Matcha Guardians podcast, brought to you by matcha.com. Here we focus on the biggest trending health topics of our time, featuring the greatest of upcoming wellness advocates. Now, here are The Matcha Guardians, certified nutritionist Diana Weil, and medical journalist Elara Hadjipateras.
Elara Hadjipateras: Hello, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of The Matcha Guardians.
Diana Weil: We are so excited to introduce our guest, Elise Museles. She holds four certificates in holistic health and integrative healing. She's on the Environmental Working Group board of directors and has been a National Institute of Health grant recipient for five years in a row. She's a sought-after speaker, a wealth of knowledge. She has been the host of the popular Once Upon A Food Story podcast. Definitely check that out.
Her work has been featured in O, The Oprah Magazine, Forbes Health, Self, ELLE, Well + Good, The Chalkboard, Mindbodygreen, as well as other outlets. She is incredible. She knows everything, I'm convinced. I cannot wait to get started. Elise, I just want to jump off right on the bat of you were an attorney in the Department of Justice and now you are talking about food and wellness. I'm just fascinated about how that happened.
Elise Museles: First, I just want to thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here with The Matcha Guardians. That's a big role to fill. To answer your question, I have always been interested in health and wellness. It wasn't even called wellness back when my interest started. I grew up in LA. I practiced law, I practiced immigration law. I feel like the common link is that I helped people, I helped people feel better. A lot of the cases that I worked on were people who were coming over for asylum or they were coming to unite with their family members.
It was just bringing people together to have happier lives. Hopefully the work that I'm doing with health and wellness is the same thing, to help people feel happier and healthier, and better about themselves. There's that. I want to say that I probably always was meant to do what I'm doing now. I just had a little detour. Of course it taught me a lot of things, like everything, all the different chapters we go through. I've just always, always had this passion for taking care of ourselves. As we were talking before we hit record, it used to be about being skinny when I grew up in LA. Now I'm just so thrilled that we see the value in feeling good and being healthy.
Elara: Absolutely. Our topic of our podcast today is food stories, which actually is this really cool term, Elise, that you've come up with. Could you just delve in a little bit more into how you came up with that and what the exact definition is of a food story?
Elise: Sure. Your food story's written over years and years. The way that it came about was in like 2013. I was seeing a lot of clients one-on-one, and I asked them. I'd just gotten certified in eating psychology. Even though the conversation was so much about what we were eating, I knew that there was also this missing piece in the nutrition puzzle, the way that we think about food and just what goes through our mind when we're eating. I would ask people, tell me about your relationship with food. I across the board got the same responses like, that's complicated, or the eye rolls, or “do you have to ask me that?”
They just were very clipped and didn't want to go into it. I knew that there was a better approach. At that time, that's when Oprah was really talking about story. We had Brene Brown. People were really talking about story and the value of story. There was money story, love story, life story. We're like, we have a food story. We are born into a food story. Whether we like it or not, we inherit so much of our thoughts and our beliefs, and our habits, and our likes, and our dislikes right away from the culture we are brought up in.
I started thinking about it as a story that we have different chapters and that there are villains and that there are heroes in your food story. And that there are themes, big themes that run throughout, and beliefs, oftentimes limiting beliefs. I tested it out. I would ask people, tell me about your food story. It was just such a different way of thinking about it. Most people said, I've never thought about a food story.
Then we talk about memories and they remember why they're doing things that they're doing or when it started. It lifted a lot of the shame that so many of us feel around food and our eating challenges because we realize it's not just us and food. There's a whole dynamic that plays into the way that we relate to food. It's just built on that. My podcast is Once Upon A Food Story. The other thing, it's so interesting to hear people's food stories. It helps us think of our own, when we all are sharing different parts of our food story, even if they aren't the same. I bet you are thinking about your food story as I was talking. [chuckles]
Elara: You read my mind, Elise. One of the things that popped up into my head is, I am Spanish and Portuguese. My father was born in Spain. My mother was born in the US but her parents came over to the US from Spain and Portugal. One of my earliest memories of food is spending a summer in Spain and having to learn Spanish in order to basically be fed. One of the first words I learned was leche, milk. To this day I am a big milk drinker, big fan of dairy. That was just the first thing that popped up into my head. Diana, what about you?
Diana: It's interesting. Mine's actually a little bit more negative, which I think is what Elise was touching on with this shame and diet culture. I remember, I guess this is a long-winded answer, but I remember seeing a dietician when I was 13. We were at boarding school and I just was sad. It was like, what can we throw at me being so sad? I saw this dietician and I remember she asked me what was the first memory of being in my body? My memories were very-- it was like I remember pinching the little fat on my belly. Those were the memories that I had of being in my body.
It's so closely tied with food. I love that Elara is like milk, yay, milk. [chuckles] Mine was a little bit more negative, which I think is why the food story idea, Elise, and talking about it, and giving people the opportunity to think back through their food story and how food relates to their body. And that food can be this wonderful, positive, delicious cultural thing that doesn't have to be pinching skin on your body. I think it's really fascinating. It leads me to wonder what is your food story and/or have you found a way to help people improve their food story? What does that look like?
Elise: First, I just want to respond. Isn't it interesting though that we have negative and positive parts of our food story and it's okay, there's room for all of it, and especially growing up with all the media and the messaging, and everything. Then I just want to respond to you, Diana, because when I think of you and see what you share, I think you have such a joyful way with food right now. Whatever the pain was before, you're in a whole different chapter. You're just like happiness around food whenever I see your posts. I feel that way.
Diana: I think probably because I worked through it for myself. I saw food as the enemy and then I was like, wait a minute, this is silly. Food is literally fueling my brain. Thank you for saying that. Because it has been, I had to work through that.
Elise: That also gives people hope too. My food story, I'm going to give you an abbreviated version because I know we have a lot to talk about. As I mentioned, I grew up in LA. I'll just tell you a few pivotal things that really defined my food story. The first was when I went to a doctor and I was nine and I was told that if I lost 5 pounds, that I could get my ears pierced. Back then you got your ears pierced at the doctor's office and I really wanted to get my ears pierced. I went on my first diet. At the same time, my dad was a sleep eater, which sounds so crazy.
He would literally wake up in the middle of the night, eat, and then in the morning he would feel not great and realize that he had eaten and wanted to do something to disrupt that behavior. We had the old fashioned, like the refrigerators that you pulled handle. He locked a bicycle lock around it. It had absolutely nothing to do with us, absolutely nothing. I have a brother and a sister. It really had nothing to do with us. To this day, I can hear him at the top of the stairs, "Want anything before I lock up?" Basically, the message was that food was kept under lock and key.
He would give my mom the key and she would hide it so He wouldn't go sleep eat. Our parents, and I always want to say this whenever I talk about food story, that our parents, whoever your main caretaker was, they did their best with what they knew. Nobody wants to pass the message on, food is kept under lock and key. We know differently now. I know differently than when my kids were even younger than-- I might not say things exactly the same way. Our parents did the best with what they have. Anyway, the message was that. Then I spent many years in a very controlling relationship with food thinking that there was a perfect diet out there that was going to give me the perfect body.
I became obsessive with it. I never was diagnosed with an eating disorder. I know now with all the information, that I had some form of what's called orthorexia, which was like an obsessiveness with doing everything the right way, and eating healthy, and all of that. When I became pregnant, I started to take care of my body differently. It really took, when I went through the certification in eating psychology, did I realize how much harm my thoughts were having on my stress levels, and then that was impacting me in a physiological way.
What I mean by that is when you think stressful thoughts about food, whether they're true or not, like, "This is going to cause that," or, "I shouldn't be eating this because it's bad," and I'm definitely putting “bad” in quotes, because that was my language then and not now, what happens is you create a stress response. You raise your cortisol levels and then you have a whole cascade of hormonal effects. Your metabolism isn't working as efficiently.
You're basically putting your body in the sympathetic state when you having all those stressful thoughts, and it's fight or flight. When I realized that, oh, my gosh, what I'm thinking is having a negative impact, and all the quinoa and kale, and great foods that I'm eating. It really stopped me in my tracks, and helped me change my narrative around food. Those are the tools that I use with people you asked about helping other people with their food story. It's not just about what you're eating, it's how you're eating and what you're saying to yourself while you're eating. I hope that answered your question.
Diana: Yeah.That was beautiful.
Elara: Now, Elise, just going back to your story, so in your opinion, one of the pivotal moments of turning the page, entering a new, more positive chapter in your food story was when you were pregnant. I'm actually, to all the listeners and viewers out there, I'm actually currently seven months pregnant. It just made me think a little bit about weight gain during pregnancy, this taboo topic that can really be sensitive for a lot of women.
I know that during the first trimester when people would ask me how I was feeling, I really love that question. One of the other top five questions I was often asked was, how much weight have you gained? I was a bit taken aback by that, because I was like, why does it matter? As long as you're healthy and you're generally eating the right things, you're moving your body, you feel good, your baby is healthy, I don't think there should be such a fixation on the scale.
Elise: I agree with you.
Elara: Could you just tell us a little bit more about that?
Elise: I think it's hard at the beginning to see the changes. I also think that it's like a miracle, that it's really pretty incredible what can happen with the body. It's that push-pull for so many people. I wish that we didn't ask those questions, I wish that the conversation afterward wasn't about, and I'm putting this in quotes, because I wouldn't say "bouncing back". That's another thing that, your body will do what it needs to do.
Maybe it needs to hold on to some weight so that you can breastfeed or whatever. I wish there wasn't that pressure that we put on ourselves and that our society puts on us. It's really up to us to just start changing the conversation. What do you say when people ask you how much weight? I can't even imagine asking that question, so I can't even say it right now.
Elara: I'm very honest about it. The first thing I'm going to say is that Google is wrong. Google tells you that if you're generally a healthy weight, you should be gaining, I don't know, something like 25 to 35 pounds. Guess what? I am, eight weeks away from my due date, so that puts me at 32 weeks, I have gained almost 60 pounds, which I know for a lot of people that sounds like a lot. I literally had an appointment this morning with my OB-GYN, stepped on the scale, I had been guzzling water because every time you go for an appointment, you have to pee in a cup and do all these different tests.
I was like, oh, there's some water weight, blah, blah, blah. He told me he goes, "Your weight gain is perfect, you look great, the baby's healthy." My husband, he thinks that I'm radiant, that I look fantastic, I think that that's a really important thing to have as far as a base. The fact that my husband, I can tell, still looks at me with such admiration and looks at me like I'm beautiful like I was a year ago, that means a lot, having that partner support. I feel for women who are in a different position where maybe they feel a bit judged by their close loved ones.
It's really important to have the people around you supporting you, versus, I have brothers that they look at me after a couple drinks and they go, oh, my god, Elara, you're enormous. I'm like, I know, I feel enormous. That's usually my reaction. Or I have a friend who I saw for the first time the other day and she looks at me the first thing she says is, oh my god, Elara, you got fat! I was like, yes. Yes, I did. Because before I was, and Diana can attest to this, before I was pregnant, I was very fit, I was very low body fat naturally. I didn't really have any breasts.
Quite frankly, I love my more female shapely figure and that's what I tell people. I love having larger breasts and larger hips, it's fun. I know that it's not something that's necessarily permanent and there's this incredible thing going on inside me that my body is doing. As you said, Elise, this is the process, this is part of the food story, it's part of the journey. I'm just enjoying it. If I want to have a Shake Shack burger like I did three days ago, I have it. I do not limit myself. Then, of course, I have my healthier days. I just think you got to embrace it. YOLO. I just tell people, yes, you're right and I'm okay with it. I hope that you're okay with it too.
Elise: I feel like it's a chapter in your food story, and if you end up having another pregnancy, that it might be totally different. That's the thing about a food story, body story, pregnancy story, whatever you want to call it, there are different chapters and they aren't necessarily the same. It's funny because I was thinking about how I end a lot of things with "right now".
I don't know how that really evolved, but I do because I think that we get so stuck in our ways and how we think it should be, or it was, so it should be that again. If you end it with, if you think about “right now,” this is how I'm feeling at the moment, and this is what's right for me at the moment, and then you're not like, "I'll always be this way, or it has to be this way," it's very abstract what I'm talking about, but doesn't it make sense to you?
Elara: Yes.
Elise: You say, oh, this is how you feel right now, and I think it's great. Something you said, since it's close to the holidays, it made me think about how a lot of people have a hard time with their relatives or with going places and the uncomfortable conversations about foods. The same thing, is like, the uncomfortable conversations or comments about your pregnancy and your body.
Not their body, your body. You always have the option to change the conversation or to do what you do and say, you know what, I actually feel good, or, I'm working on this right now, or, I'm taking care of myself in the way I know best. That's the end of the conversation, right? I don't want to go any further. There are ways to, I think, stop it without being rude but also asserting how you feel.
Diana: Definitely. Absolutely. I've worked with clients in the past who have avoided going to the doctor because they don't want to be weighed. I always like to remind people that when you go to a medical professional, that consent is involved. That you don't have to be weighed if you don't want to. That it is okay to tell your doctor to not weigh you.
I always like to put that announcement out there. Elise, we've been talking about this from a woman's experience. I think there's a myth out there that maybe men don't experience this as well, or that they don't have their own food story. I'm just wondering what you've noticed, maybe different patterns between men and women, and what men's food story looks like.
Elise: I'm so glad you asked this question. I haven't really talked about it. First of all, I have two sons. At first I was like, oh, maybe I was given sons because of my past, that this might be easier. The truth is everybody has a food story; men, women, we all have a food story. I like to tell this story about this 80-year-old client, a man who came to me. I was so short-sighted at first. I was like, "This isn't my typical clientele, I usually have younger and women." I wasn't sure I could help him. His son brought him. His son had gotten in touch with me and I was like, this is beautiful that the son wants to help him at 80 years old, like how can I not help him?
The long and short of it is, that he had had diabetes for 40 years. He just said, I don't know what to eat because every time I go to the doctor, it's been like drilled to me, is what I can't have. I can't have this, I can't have that. I said to him, what do you like to eat? He almost started crying because he's like, nobody's ever asked me that. In all these years, nobody said, what are the things you like?
Here, I guess, to answer your question is, until forever, you have a food story. We came up with things that he liked, that he hadn't had in years. And it wasn't about not adding things; it was about adding in things that he could have. I think that we all deserve to feel food in our bodies and to enjoy food, and enjoy it in a way that feels good, and to have these shared experiences with food no matter, men, women, or however you identify.
Elara: Now, Elise, would you say among your clients, there is a pattern that's emerged as far as an age that people tend to go through their worst chapter in their food story?
Elise: I feel like when we're younger, we might have had a very bad chapter, feel we don't have the wisdom. Like what Diana was referring to earlier about being uncomfortable in her body at such a young age. I think a lot of us reach a point, and it might not be in our 20s, it might be a little later in our 30s and 40s, we're like, I can't do this anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. I see a lot of new moms or moms of seven, eight, nine, like I do not want to pass this down to my kids. The truth is you've got to help yourself before you can help your kids.
Sometimes I'll have moms come to me and they'll want to help their daughters, and I'm like, we're going to work together first. Because they see things. Kids are like sponges. They'll notice. They'll see you looking in the mirror and scowling at yourself. They'll notice that you're not eating at dinner or whatever your patterns are. We want to be that example. We don't have to be perfect because there's no such thing, but we want to be the example. We want to feel comfortable before we can help others. That's an age I think when people really want to work on their--
It's health. It's not even just food. I think as a member of the Environmental Working Group board, we see a lot of people come in when they have young families because they're now realizing, I've got to clean up my act because I don't want my kids to be exposed to the same things too. The caveat is you don't have to be a mom or a parent to work on your food story. I just think that's a big entry point where people want to write new chapters.
Diana: If someone does want to start working on their food story, if they're listening to this and they're like, maybe my food story is a little negative and I want to change the trajectory, what would you say are your top three tips for someone to maybe start working on their food story?
Elise: That's a really good question. I think also just acknowledging that you have a food story, because some people will say, oh, I don't have a food story. We all have a food story. Some have more of a positive food story with a few negative chapters, and other people can remember struggling from as far back as they can remember. I think it's acknowledging you have a food story and just letting it sit. That language, that concept sit with you. Then identifying, what are some of the big themes? Because our story happens over our lifetime so you can't positively wrap your head around every part of your food story.
What are some big themes? It might be that you never eat meals or sit down to meals. I don't know, that you start over again every single Monday, have that all-or-nothing mentality. There are some pretty common themes. Actually, the second chapter in my book, Food Story, is about the eight most common themes, or that you get overwhelmed or confused, which is very easy to do. Just start really thinking about what your major theme is. Then one step further with that is to figure out when it started. Because so often it's not even about the food.
It could be that your parents were going through a divorce, you moved at that time, you were bullied at school, and then wanted to cover up or something. Sometimes just tying it back to where it all began gives you so much insight. Then here's that right now thing. That's not my story right now. That was my story then, but it's not right now, and so it can help you release some of those things. I have to think of a third one.
Diana: Those are really good. Those are the two that you can give us?
Elise: Yes. Less is more then.
Elara: Going off of the theme of “right now,” Elise, if I have a friend that I suspect right now may be in a negative chapter of their food story, what's a smart and thoughtful way that I could approach them or have a conversation about it with them?
Elise: It's so tough because you have to be ready to do the work yourself. You might be able to alert your friend to what you're seeing, but is your friend going to be defensive? I think it's really, really challenging, and that maybe your intention should be, I just want to create awareness for her right now, and that I'm not expecting to be able to heal everything, but this is a good starting point. I would always come from the angle of being worried about and concern, and even sharing some struggle you might have gone through so that she feels less alone.
It's not like a defensive, you are this way. Just say, I'm concerned about this and I remember when I felt this way too, or when I was struggling, and I'm here for you, kind of thing. As opposed to putting them on the defensive. Oftentimes people won't acknowledge that there's a problem. I don't want to get too far into eating disorders, but you see that a lot with the eating disorders. I would rather talk about a disordered behavior, which it requires a different support, and I feel more qualified to talk about that too. You're talking about restricting or just having a distorted body image or something like that.
Diana: One thing that I also think can be helpful, talking about the mother-child relationship where you model good behaviors. I think that that can also be helpful with your friends, that if you don't talk negatively about your body in front of your friends, or you don't talk negatively about food, or if they come to you complaining about their weight, maybe that's just a subject that you shut down in a-- not mean, but just don't give attention to. I also think that maybe that can be helpful as well. Or at least that's something that I try to practice in my own life. Because I'm not interested in hearing about how little someone ate that day unless they're coming to me as a client and we're working on it together, and then I'm all for it. Tell me about it.
Elara: I think that really strikes a chord with myself and my own food journey that I never really considered food anything less than fuel because I was an athlete at a young age until I got to that high school college age where it was actually my friends, not my mother, not my father, not my brother's grandmother that ever commented about what I was eating. It was my friends that started to do it. There was a lot of, are you really going to eat that? Isn't that a lot? How are you going to burn that off? Then listing what they ate during the day.
I would just, why are you telling me this? Over time, it did for a period of time impact me in my eating. I thought, oh well am I going about eating the wrong way? Should I be concerned with these things and X, Y, and Z? One of the things I love about my relationship with Diana is that we celebrate food. We've never been the type to call each other up and say, oh my God, I feel so bloated or I just overate so much. That's never been our rhetoric, which I really value.
Diana: Yes, I agree.
Elise: I think it's so hard, and it's true that your friends really influence. There was a skit a long time ago. It was with Amy Schumer. It was all talking about food guilt. It was a group of women sitting around the table, I don't even remember, it was on YouTube. They were all talking about how guilty they felt like they ate their kids' muffins. it was a whole thing about food guilt. We definitely can egg each other on. Even though we think that we're speaking the same language and being supportive, it does have a negative impact. I do think the conversation is changing.
I don't know if you're feeling that, but I do think the conversation is changing a little bit, but it's up to us to say, “Can we talk about something more interesting or to actually change the topic and not partake in that?”
Sometimes I'd rather go on a walk with a friend, than sit and eat, and discuss all of that. I just feel like we have better conversation than when everything is centered around food. I think the awareness is always the first step. If you know that your friend group is going to be talking about that, just divert it. There's something I talk about called food noise. Food noise can come from the media; it comes from diet culture obviously.
It's just all the conversation that we hear. We will never, ever, ever get rid of food noise. It's just too much a part of the dialogue, but you can change how you respond to it. That is the same thing, the food noise coming from your friends. Food noise can be like, you walk into your kitchen and you have protein powder from some cleanse that you did. It's subconsciously, it's still in your body where you see it and you're reminded of, oh, I didn't follow through with that, or some sort of feeling. I always try to get people to think about where their food noise is coming from because it's all around us, and be able to reduce some of it as much as you can and then think about how you're going to react to it.
Elara: I think that's wonderful, especially changing the setting with your friends. You don't need to go out and it always be over a big meal or a girl's night. You can take a walk, you can take a yoga class together, you can walk the dogs together. You can go shopping. There's a lot of different things you can do outside of just breaking bread together, which is a really good point.
Elise: I love to entertain and have meals together too, and I think that's really important. If you know that it's going to be triggering, divert.
Diana: To change the topics a little bit, speaking of diverting, one of the-- You do so many things, which I don't know how you have time for any of it, but one of the--
Elise: I don't.
Diana: One of the things that you do is that you create recipes. I just am really curious what that process looks like. How do you go about, if someone is wanting to get into cooking and they are trying to develop a recipe or want to take something that they like and make it their own, how does that process work for you?
Elise: I have to tell you a little secret, I don't cook from recipes when I cook for myself. I'm such an intuitive cook, I guess. I'm not a chef, and that's what I think makes my recipe so relatable is that I am not a chef, so things are pretty simple. I like to just toss it all together. Of course, because I develop recipes now, I do follow recipes when I'm creating them. When I'm just cooking for my family, there's not even a recipe in sight. I think that that's a really freeing way for people once you get the hang of it, that your soup base is going to have onion, garlic, carrots, and celery, some broth. You know what I mean? Do either of you cook intuitively or do you follow a recipe?
Elara: I'm an intuitive cooker as well. For better or worse, I have learned that the one thing I couldn't get away with cooking intuitively was dumplings. That did not work out well the first time, although I did execute it on the second attempt. I know the general baselines of what to do if I'm making a soup, if I'm roasting something, and then I love to just work with what I got.
Elise: I love that
Diana: I'm a recipe follower.
Elise: You are?
Diana: Yes.
Elise: That's good that we're all different.
[laughter]
Diana: I get scared. you guys talking about just cooking freely, I'm like, that sounds terrifying.
Elise: That's good.
Elara: Sometimes it ends up better and sometimes it ends up worse. I guess that's the trick of it, is sometimes I'll make-- I made penne alla vodka the other night from scratch, a sauce, and my brother loved it. He said, "What did you do?" I went, "Oh, well, I don't really know." I generally did a little bit of this, a little bit of that. I added pancetta this time. Usually, it's a vegetarian dish. Sometimes you can't replicate it where there's some beauty in that, but you're also like, oh, I wish I could make it just like I made it that night.
Diana: Elise, how do you start? How do you do it? Give us steps, teach me.
Elise: I want to talk about where I get inspired. I think that'll help. I get inspired when I travel a lot, because I think when you travel, and most of the time you're not cooking as much, if you're cooking at all. I get a lot of inspiration. I just came back from Portugal and Spain. In Portugal, they tell me-- Elara, if I'm right, I took cooking classes everywhere I went. The chef said that the Portuguese start every lunch and dinner with a soup, that they start with a really simple pureed soup. It's even water as a base, and then let's say pumpkin and chestnuts, or whatever the season is that the soup is just vegetables pureed.
I was like, that is such a great way. It's so cozy. It's warming, it's a good way to get vegetables. It's a great way to start a meal. Now, I'm going to be making a couple pureed soups because of Portugal. That was inspiring for me there. Or if I go to a restaurant, I may not try to do a copycat, but it just will be like, oh, I never thought of these flavors together, or adding this nut into my salad. I pick up little things here and there and then make it my own.
The farmers' market, that is my number one source for inspiration. I would recommend it. If your listeners have a farmers' market near them and they have access to it, it is such a great way to stay local, to support the farmers, but just to be around the food that's nature intends us to eat right now at that time. My farmers' market days are always the most inspiring. If I'm in a food rut, I go to the farmers' market, I come back and I've got lots of ideas. Does that help?
Diana: Yes. I'm still intimidated. Maybe I'll be inspired tonight.
Elara: Diana, how often-- I know there's some people that say on a Sunday or Monday they do meal prep and they know exactly what they're cooking for the whole week. They buy all the groceries on Sunday. Everything is lined up. Is that the extent to what you plan?
Diana: Yes, I'm that person.
Elise: You're organized.
Elara: It's financially responsible and/or organized. My husband would love if I actually cook that way versus being like, I don't know, I'm going to go to the supermarket and figure it out, and it's going to be a surprise when you get home.
Diana: I pick a couple recipes for the week and then I go to the grocery store. I'll modify. I'll taste the recipe and be like, oh, I think it needs a little bit of this, or a little bit of that. Looking at a pantry and saying, "What am I going to make for dinner tonight" gives me so much anxiety. I'm like, give me my recipes. Elise, I need you. I need the recipe developers. Thank you.
Elara: What about social media? Do you both either use social media for recipe inspiration? I have a little saved category under Instagram that I just save recipes. If I'm really, I don't know, looking for inspiration, I'll dip into that reservoir sometimes.
Elise: I save too. I think there's some really talented content creators out there. There's so much going on, on social media sometimes for me at least with all this-- It's harder to go back and remember. I wish that it was an easier process somehow. I do think that there are great ideas floating around, and if someone is looking for inspiration. The only problem with it is just make sure it's a trusted source.
Because a lot of people are-- I go through a whole process. I have to test my recipes before I'm sharing them with the public. I'm not sure everybody is like that, and the worst is if you make something and it just doesn't taste good, you spend all this time shopping and paying for the ingredients, and cooking. I am a little selective about whose recipes I will make.
Diana: Everyone knows though that Elise tests her recipes, which they are good. [laughs] It's a trusted source for everyone listening.
Elara: Tested and approved. Jumping to another topic that just popped up into my mind, I am going to mention first that food challenges. Right now, my husband and I, we are members of a CrossFit gym and they have a food challenge going on. I am not participating for obvious reasons of being seven-plus months pregnant. The challenge in place is that you have to eat at least 800 grams of fruit or veggies a day. It just got me thinking, in your opinion, Elise, also Diana, what are your thoughts on food challenges? Can they be a good thing? Is it something that can maybe help people jump-start their food journey in a healthier direction? Especially during the holidays when a lot of people feel like they fall off the track?
Elise: I have mixed feelings about it. My biggest concern is that when it's unrealistic or life gets in the way because we're human and that happens, then there's the guilt and the whole spiral about not being able to do this successfully and I can never follow through, or what's wrong with me, and all of that. I think that part's really hard. I also think there's something about a challenge that's fun. It could, like you said, jump-start, but is it realistic? Even the word "challenge" can be a little triggering for people too. Maybe there's a realistic way that you can go about changing your habits.
I always say small changes have a big impact. It could be, I'm going to add in one new fruit this week, or I'm going to make sure that I eat greens at least one or two meals. Whatever is realistic, I feel like that is easier than actually measuring and having to have the 800 grams. When you said that, I'm like, no, for me. I think it has to be something that naturally fits into what you're already doing. You could add one more vegetable into your smoothie, or one more healthy fat onto your salad. I think if you're habit stacking, that that is a much more successful method for success.
Elara: Totally agree.
Diana: I think we're a very similar mindset here. I think the problem with the 80 grams for me is that--
Elara: 800. It's 800.
Diana: 800 grams, is that that requires measuring and logging. To me that can lead to obsession, kind of what Elise was saying. Sometimes I will "challenge", I'm putting in quotations, maybe the challenge is to get five vegetables a day and three fruits, but that doesn't require obsession or logging, or weighing. That can just be a mental of how many vegetables did I get? It doesn't have to be perfect. Like Elise adding in spinach or whatever, adding one more green. Whereas that can be something that you're challenging yourself with, but it's not whipping out the food scale, logging, obsessively tracking. I think that that can go down a negative road for a lot of people.
Elara: This brings me to another question. It's the holiday season. What are just a few tips that you would give someone that's going to be attending a lot of holiday parties to just stay balanced and have a healthy relationship with food?
Elise: I'll start with one. It might not be what people like. I used to be, make sure you eat beforehand and have all these-- I'm sure they're helpful and effective, but I also think that what's even more important is that we have to give ourselves some grace. The holidays come once a year. You don't want to feel terrible in your body or terrible about yourself, but at the same time you don't want to miss out. Because something that I really have learned the hard-- I've learned this year, my dad died about six months ago, and it's like, you can't get those experiences back.
I would just hate for someone to miss out because they're worried that they're going to "indulge". I'm going to put that in quotes. It's so much more nourishing to spend time with people you love than to restrict yourself and not even go there, whether it's physically be there, or even be there and mentally be in a different place. I'm not saying, oh, just go crazy and then come home and feel bad about yourself. It's the holidays and you're human. You can make choices that feel really good in your body, but you don't have to expect yourself to eat exactly the same way you do the rest of the year. That's my advice.
Diana: That's very good advice. To piggyback off of that, what are things that you do every day? Talking to you, I think you're healthy, not just physically but emotionally, like mind, body, you've done a lot of healing. It's very clear that you've done a lot of work. I'm just curious, there's that quote of, it's not between Thanksgiving and New Year's that we need to really focus on. It's between New Year's and Thanksgiving. What are the things that you really focus on between New Year's and Thanksgiving on a daily basis that are important for your life?
Elise: Actually, I would say that I focus on them all year round. I don't think like, oh, throw in the towel and don't try to feel good. Forget about your habits. How many parties are people going to? If you go to five parties and the parties that-- you know what I'm saying? I don't forget all my good habits come Thanksgiving and then start them up again in January. I try to do my things every day. All right. Morning routine is key. I can't even stress enough how people say it's trite. Whatever. The way you start your day sets the tone for the rest of it.
For me, it's really about not being reactive. That means- and it's really hard not picking up your phone first thing, responding to emails- first taking a few breaths, doing what you need to do so you can get into your body. I go to nature. I'm so fortunate that I live in the middle of Washington, DC and I still have nature all around me. I have a dog which forces you to go outside early in the morning. I go outside, I get sunlight in my eyes, I move my body, breathe in fresh, clean air. Amazing. Such a good way to start the day. Movement is definitely my therapy.
I am obsessive about getting movement in every day, but not in a way that's punishing and not in a way that I'm tracking. I do it because I am such a better person. I think everything about me is better when I move my body. I feel more connected. I don't want to say I'm compulsive about it, but I just know that that's going to help me in my day. Then I have a matcha ritual, which is one of my favorite rituals. It's my me time. I know I'm flooding my body with nutrients. I used to have at a different time of day, and now Diana, you and I have talked about this.
I'm an 11:00 AM-ish. It's not always exact, but my matcha ritual. That's my break in the morning after I've gone through my other stuff and emails. I'll sit in center with my matcha ritual. I also think it's really important just to be proactive about your mood and to not wait until you're stressed to do the things that you know are going to help you de-stress. I think so many of us make that mistake and we're like, oh, I'm stressed. I need to take deep breaths. Or I'm stressed, I need to go for a walk or whatever. What about going for a walk or taking the deep breaths because you don't want to get stressed?
I think that's been one of the biggest changes for me. Then also not being obsessive with food. I know what foods make me feel good. I know what foods don't work as well in my body. I'm making the choice to eat the things that make me feel good because that's how I'm going to be in my optimal state. Not because I'm punishing myself or restricting, but at the end of the day, don't we all want to feel good and think clearer? It's not hard for me to choose the healthier option because it's coming from that place.
There's not pressure. It's like I want to feel fit. The thing I'm really bad about is boundaries. No, I work too late, and so I am still working on that. I wouldn't say that I've cracked the code on social media, and some of the things that are habits that aren't serving as well. I'm always a work in progress with those things, the boundaries with the screens and work. I hope I answered that. There's so much more to the day. It's really, at the end, the bottom line is being proactive.
Diana: I think that that is a perfect opportunity. You mentioned matcha, which you are such a matcha expert.
Elise: Expert, I don't know, but lover, yes.
Diana: Lover. Matcha lover. I think we have two questions that we want to end on, but then we're hoping that we can bring you back to be our matcha queen. Elara, do you want to end on our questions?
Elara: Sure. What is a life lesson, Elise, that you have had to learn the hard way?
Elise: I mentioned it earlier, but it is because it has such a profound effect on me, which is how perfectionism is really-- there's no such thing as being perfect. That the chase for perfection, it's not life-giving. It takes away from your life. I think just recognizing that we're humans and that we do things that don't serve us, or we don't do things that might be Instagram-worthy or-- that's okay. It's all part of it. Just growing from those, whatever the mistakes along the way and not beating ourselves up. That's something I've had to learn the hard way, because I am definitely tough on myself. If I were going and living my life over again, I would really try to release that whole mask of perfection.
Elara: Absolutely. I think that's something that a lot of people can relate to. Wanting to be the best versions of themselves. Going back to the statement you said earlier, it's about being here right now and living in the now, and enjoying the present moment.
Elise: That's so true. Because perfection you're always in pursuit. You can't really be totally present if you're trying to achieve the unachievable.
Elara: Achieve the unachievable or you're analyzing the past to project a positive future instead of just right here today together. Then for our second life lesson question, what is a piece of advice maybe you learned from a family figure or a friend that you live by that you would say is something that someone said to you and it stuck and it's kept you in so many ways on a good track?
Elise: I actually have something that we have really talked about. It's nice because it's coming full circle. My dad said something to me in passing, and it wasn't even meant to be a big deal, but it really stuck with me. That's, you're allowed to change your mind. Think about that right now, what we talked about. This is true for me right now. It might not be true for me later.
You're allowed to change your mind about how you say things, the way you approach things, your philosophy, your limiting beliefs that so many of us are stuck in it. I believe that, I've always believed that. Maybe it's not true for you right now. You can change your mind. The last chapter of my book is all about evolving. Evolving your food story. You can change the way that you do things. You're allowed to grow and evolve and not stay stuck. That's it. You're allowed to change your mind.
Diana: Ooh, I got chills. That's a really good one. You have been just such a wealth of knowledge, so many life lessons here. Where can people find you? Where can people learn more from you?
Elise: Thank you so much for having me. I love your dynamic and I'm very excited about your podcast. My website is my name. It's elisemuseles.com. I have a podcast. I'd like both of you to be guest on my show. It's called Once Upon A Food Story, and you can listen to that wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm on social media as by name, Elise Museles. Instagram is probably my preferred platform. You can get on my newsletter and my book. Food Story is available where all books are sold. I think I covered it all.
Diana: We'll put it in the show notes as well so you can go find Elise. Because she is, just like I said before, just such a wealth of knowledge and has so many life lessons to teach us. Thank you very much, and we're bringing you back.
Elara: We're bringing Elise back. We're definitely going to be talking about all things matcha at some point later on this season. If you have any other ideas, topics that you think would be really fun to pick Elise's brain, let us know in the comments below. We'd love to hear.
Elise: Thank you again. I really appreciate being part of it, this fun conversation. We covered a lot of ground.
Outro: Sit, savor, and live well with new episodes of The Matcha Guardians every Wednesday. Follow our show for free on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're listening right now. Leave your questions and comments below. Find us on Instagram at The Matcha Guardians, or click on matcha.com.