Your life has some problems in it.

As does mine. The world is full of problems.

Some of them we just accept because they don’t seem solvable to us personally (world peace), or we know we could do something but it’s not exactly a priority (example: my oven door hinge which has been broken for 19 months and counting).

But then there are all of the problems we do want to do something about solving. As unpleasant as it may be, you probably will do your taxes, whether on your own or with a professional. If you get a flat tire on the car you need to get to work, you’re going to get it fixed. The dog needs to be neutered for his health, so you call the vet to make an appointment.

Some of these problems we have the choice to solve by doing the work ourselves (the taxes being a better example than the dog neutering), or hiring someone to do it for us. You can get out your receipts, pay a nominal fee for Turbotax, and work your way through filing a tax return....

This question is stationed prominently on many people's minds. Paradoxically, the more you read about nutrition and diet, the less you might feel like you know how to feed yourself. When did it get so confusing? You have to eat something, so what should it be?

Let's go through it, in a comprehensive, science-backed way. We'll answer the question of what to eat, depending on your goal. A woman wanting to run a faster marathon needs to choose differently than her friend who wants to lose weight, and their pal who is worried about preventing cancer has different priorities completely.

• For weight loss, your most important task is to eat things that help you create a calorie deficit.
• For sports nutrition, your most important task is to eat foods that help you take in enough energy, carbohydrates, and protein for optimal performance and recovery.
• For disease prevention, you want to choose foods that are high in some nutrients, and low in others
• For mending a disordered relationship...

Everyone know what to expect from the actual holiday, but that first day back at work, WHAM. It's often something that blindsides people with how demoralizing and tough it can be. 

The difficulty of the post-holiday return to work is often a complete surprise to people. My clients often worry whether it is a potential indicator of a greater, more serious, problem. There can be a lot of stress, frustration, and regretted food behaviors on account of these feelings.

It has led me to think more about how I can help people predict these not-so-obvious emotional and nutritional challenges. How can these peak frustration days be... more manageable?

The first day at a new job many of us expect to be tough, but I see that difficulty and overwhelm persist for about two weeks. Similarly, planning for how a person wants to eat and drink while on vacation is common, but frequently the returning home can be a rocky re-entry. And if you ever wondered if...

Using your body's cues to guide your eating is reliable and more effective for losing fat than counting calories or avoiding carbohydrates. But it is not easy. "Eat when you're hungry and stop when you're satisfied" is one piece of weight loss advice that is, while technically true, more irritating than it is helpful. That's because it's a gross oversimplification.

If you were seeking instruction on how to change your car's oil and someone said "take out the old oil, and put in clean oil", you probably (and justifiably) wouldn't feel very... helped.

To successfully change the oil in your car, you'd need specific action steps laid out clearly and explained. Managing to eat well is arguably more complex than changing the oil in your car, which is why we actually teach our clients how to do each skill.

In this article, I'll share some information on how you can adjust your meals in terms of composition to achieve greater satiation and satiety. These terms actually are two different...

A lot of things aren’t ideal about working the night shift, but you knew that already.

Noting being able sleep is obviously the big one.

But then there’s also the wacky nausea-hunger hybrid you get when you’re suuuuuper tired. There’s the fact that nothing but candy can sound good at 2 am, and you brought tuna salad for “lunch”.

There’s the crazy hunger the following day.

And the heartburn from too much coffee.

If you work some day shifts too, there’s a weird long day and a weird short day on either side of your night shift as you transition into and out of vampire schedule.

There certainly are a handful of challenges, but don’t make the mistake of confusing difficulty for impossibility. It’s not impossible to eat nutritiously or practice healthy habits with night shift work, you just need a system.

Trick 1: Don’t Think About “Eating 3-4 Meals a Day”; Think About Eating Every 4-6 Hours You are Awake.

This...

You wake up, only to realize you weren’t sleeping.

You were… off somewhere. Possibly you were caught up in replaying what happened that day. There was an argument, a stinging comment, a decision that didn’t go your way, or an unfair twist of fate.

And what the hell are these crumbs? Oh yes, now it’s coming back… while you were wading thigh-deep in unpleasant emotions, you decided to eat. And now the food is gone, and you barely remember it. And you’re still upset.

In this circumstance, a lot of our clients focus on undoing “the damage." They're concerned about the calories they took in, and how they’ll gain weight unless they do something. They plan a killer gym workout at 5 am. They chop up lettuce for the following days. Or they just head to bed, knowing in the morning things will seem new again, and they can forget the overeating and start fresh.

Heightened emotional states can trigger eating for a number of reasons:...