The Holistic Mom’s Blueprint For Raising Healthy Families

Tight budgets, limited time, and challenges at home don’t have to stop you from embracing a holistic lifestyle for your family. Last week, leading advocate for holistic health Dr. Madiha Saeed joined Dr. Sandi to share her blueprint for realistic, holistic living that helps families thrive.

Dr. Madiha, also known as “Holistic Mom, MD,” specializes in helping parents prioritize health and well-being amid modern parenting chaos. She believes that every parent can nurture their family’s health and well-being, but competing priorities can make a holistic life feel out of reach.

During this webinar, Dr. Madiha guides families in introducing healthier eating and living habits into their routines without needing a huge budget or lots of free time to make it happen. She discusses diet and nutrition, sharing some of the changes she saw in her own house when she started replacing processed foods with whole foods. Her kids not only stopped snacking constantly but also started making healthier food choices on their own!

Recognizing that one approach might not work for every family, Dr. Madiha shares her tips for making healthy shifts suitable for tight budgets, kids with developmental challenges or disabilities, and busy families who need on-the-go solutions. She also highlights the power of gratitude in setting your family up for success and the importance of parents setting a good example as self-care role models.

Health coaches, do you work with families or parents who might be asking some of these same questions? Dr. Madiha and Dr. Sandi discuss how health coaches can integrate this knowledge into their practice, supporting parents and helping them problem-solve when family-related barriers come up.

Parenting has its challenges, but creating a healthy life for your family doesn’t have to be one of them. Check out the webinar and then use what you learn to move forward with more balance, health, and joy for your family’s flourishing.

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The Holistic Mom’s Blueprint For Raising Healthy Families

Transcript

Patty: Dr. Saeed is really doing so much great work in the area of healthy families. We’ll also dive into what it really means to be healthy caregivers as well, and moms a lot of the times are those caregivers. She’s known as HolisticMom, MD on social media, and she’s written a series of children’s books. I want to let her tell you a little bit more about all that. She is the director of education for Documenting Hope and KnoWEwell. So, if you guys are from the pediatric community, I’m sure you know those organizations. And her children host a holistic kids’ show, and I think a lot of us who are interested in working, or have kids, in pediatrics really want to know how to involve them in a fun way in taking care of their health. So, I’m so pleased that Dr. Saeed is with us here today. And welcome to the FMCA community.

Dr. Saeed: Thank you so much for having me. I am so incredibly honored to be here. This is my huge passion to spread this message that this entire holistic functional medicine integrative lifestyle can be fun, right, and can be doable and cost-effective. I mean, I love coaches because they’re absolutely necessary to actually taking what we know in the science to practicality, right? Because we can be sitting and talking about the science all we want. I mean, I’ve written eight books, working on the ninth. So, like, I know science, but how are we actually going to bring this to life? And so thank you so much for this huge honor. And I go ahead and start my presentation.

A little bit more about me. I was born and raised in Naperville, Illinois. I’ve been in the Midwest almost all my life. And what is crazy is that I had all of the same bad habits that had led most adults and children down that road to chronic disease. I was taking cans of soda to school every morning and I was drinking all of the juices, eating all of the cereals and the strudels, and everything new that came out, it was in my fridge.

But I struggled with weight issues, hair loss, struggled with severe digestive issues. But I was just told that was my new normal. Just continue on that hamster wheel like everybody else. I was stamped with a diagnosis, I was given a medication and I lived on with life. But the thing is I continued that way until residency. And in residency is really where the highest stress, the terrible food the constant environmental toxins, we’re, like, bombarded with all these different ways and my body could not handle it. I was a new mom, a new wife, a new resident all at the same time. Me and my husband were both working 80-hour work weeks.

And that is when again, trying to keep my head above water, my chronic conditions continued, and lupus, Hashimoto’s, severe digestive issues until one day that hamster wheel that I was on just trying to keep my head above water came to an abrupt stop. My husband had this gut inclination, “Can you go check up on our child in daycare?” I walked back down there and thankfully it was attached to the hospital and I walked into every mother’s worst nightmare. The daycare provider was actually sitting in that same rocking chair back and forth, back and forth. The eerie silence was broken by my child’s mm-mm in the back. And in the corner, there was my child. He was wrapped…arms and legs were tied down in a receiving blanket, his pacifier was in his mouth, his Winnie the Pooh blanket was tied so rapidly around his face that his eyes were bloodshot, his face was swollen, and I immediately rescued him and I ran out. On that day, on that day, the God universe saved my child. On that day, I made a solemn promise that I promise I’m going to take care of these kids the best that I know how but then I had to take a step back as me as a family physician. My husband’s a family physician. My brother’s an interventional cardiologist. My sister’s a pediatric ICU physician. I have all these doctors in my family, but none of us really knew how that we could truly take care of ourselves.

And this is where it was like an aha moment that I needed to take control of my own health, and that’s when, as a physician, I went to one doctor, another doctor, trying to say, “You know, I have all these chronic health conditions, severe fatigue, irritability, digestive issues. I was then also diagnosed with lupus and Hashimoto’s.” And I knew that lupus could one day take my life, and I’m like, “I’m not going to let that happen.” But then what was their solution? Their solution was they were going to give me more medications, and specifically those medications, side effect was death. And I was like, wait, that’s what I’m trying to prevent.

So, how am I supposed to, like, take care of myself if I don’t even know how to take care of myself? And the only way that we really knew how to take care of ourselves was through these medications. And that is when I changed my entire world. Right out of residency, I joined this medical practice where under one roof there was me, an OBGYN, an internist, an exercise physiologist, a nutritionist, counseling, chiropractor, massage therapy, health coaches. And that’s when I, like, saw, I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, you can actually treat somebody from the inside out and not just compartmentalizing it that we have been taught in residency?”

And by doing that and slowly incorporating that, that’s when I started HolisticMom, MD, because I’m like, if it’s good for me, then it must be good for my children. And this is something I want to implement not just with myself, but as a family, like, together. And so especially I continued… Again, I wrote a couple of books and then the pandemic hit. And before that, the kids were enrolled. Obviously, we were talking about it. I was incorporating it. But when the pandemic hit is really when my mission turned into our mission, because they were home. So, guess what? We talked about it even further. We got them involved. And that’s when they started the podcast, and now they have a book deal. So, there’s so many things… Like you’re probably listening to that story and you’re like, “Oh, my God, I can’t even do any of that. Like, that’s too complicated. Like, how did you even get everybody involved?”

But that is where the dynamic needs to stop. It’s because of the fact that unfortunately we are living in a society where we look at all of the things that everybody else is doing, then we’re like, “Wait, wait. Like, I don’t have that in my life.” So, we’re focusing on all the things that we’re doing wrong, or we’re focusing on all the judgment, especially us as moms. So, let’s, like, bring this back to moms for a second, right? Because us as moms, if we work, we get shunned down upon. If we don’t work, we get shunned down upon. If you put your kids in a hundred different sports, then you get shunned down upon. And then if you don’t, then you’re also looked down upon.

It’s like we never get a break, and that is where we need to now shift this. And especially when you look at the health world, there’s so much. There’s thousands of books written on health and trying to incorporate all of that into your everyday daily routine. You know, I feed a family of nine on a daily basis. I have nine people that live with me. And so it’s a lot. And trying to incorporate all those pieces into my everyday daily routine and then get judged, it’s too much but we need to start focusing on the positive what we can do, right? So, focus on what you can accomplish because we do have the power. And it really starts with educating and empowering. Specifically us as coaches, we educate and empower them, right? And that is really powerful.

I mean, when right out of residency, when I joined this medical practice, and I had this one patient. And she had myasthenia gravis, psoriasis, lichen planus, Sjogren’s, Hashimoto’s, mood disorders, ADHD, hormonal issues, digestive issues. And she worked at a Family Dollar Store and she also… at the gas station, right? So, those are her part-time jobs. So, she was just coming to me because she was on the highest dose of Mestinon and they wanted to put her on Imuran. And she looks at me and she’s like, “I just want to do something that’s cost-effective, that can help to lower my chronic…like, help put me back in charge of my own health.”

And so just everything that I want to talk to you today is just that. It’s easy, fast, cost-effective, doable for anybody, no matter your age or demographic. And Eileen specifically, when she started to incorporate these simple changes, simple, and these are again, like bells and whistles, like we can look at all these things in the functional medicine world and say, “I do all this and I do all that,” but the simple basic things that we empower our patients and families with are the most powerful. So, just by doing those basics that are cost-effective, time-effective, and fun, now she no longer deals with myasthenia gravis and was even able to find her soulmate as a scuba diver instructor. Like, how crazy is that, right?

Unfortunately, we are not alone. Our state of our children were suffering. Their mental health is suffering. And we really have to recognize what is actually going on. And we know that chronic disease is on the rise because of all of this toxic load, but either we can be led or we can lead, either we can make these decisions for our families or we can let someone else to make these decisions for our families. Because guess what. The world around us is doing an amazing job trying to manipulate our brains, our taste buds to fit their agenda, right? And this is where we need to take charge. As a coach, when you talk to your families and with your own families, we need to show them that, yes, right now, the lifestyle that you guys are living is actually being manipulated because the food industry, right, and then now the cell phone and the social media and the technology is all leading us down a different path that is not of health.

And so this is where I started to educate and empower the world, especially in my residency because I had these babies and I knew I needed to start parenting them that way. So, I started learning more about parenting, and I started educating myself. So, I’ve been studying now parenting for the last 15 years. And then I wrote my next book called “The Holistic Rx for Kids: Parenting Healthy Brains and Bodies in a Changing World,” because I realized that when you start to raise holistically your family, you can…the kids and family, actually their brains start working better. Their bodies start working better. You know, they’re able to make better decisions. And guess what. That overall it’s a win for you. It actually decreases your stress.

So, let’s go on and talk about all of these different pieces briefly. So, the blueprint to healthy families. So, this is where role modeling, educating and empowering, being mindful, helping them optimize their decision-making capabilities and gratitude. So, it does start with us role modeling those behaviors at home and having fun with it, right? We all know, like, the basics of we’re supposed to be eating well, we’re supposed to be exercising. We’re supposed to be going out in nature. Like, we know all these things, right? This is stuff that we’re supposed to be doing, but how can we actually start doing it? We need to start to develop your healing routine and talk about it with your families, right? Like, in the morning, immediately when you wake up in the morning, the first thing you shouldn’t be picking this up, right? Like, we shouldn’t be picking up our phones. Meditation, gratitude, and develop those with your children and talk to them about it. And focus on the basics, keeping it super simple, because remember all of those key pieces that we talk about with our patients are really cost-effective, if not free.

So, like, you’re eating real food. Sorry. I got overly excited there. So, eating real food. Social health. Obviously, if you have to pay for your friends, that’s not good. Sleeping, stress management, gratitude, these are all free. And then in the other cases, we just make healthy swaps, and we’re going to talk about that. But we know that when a child is born into this world, they have all of these cells and very limited connections. And every touch, every emotion, every experience, every hug, every connection that you have with your child can actually start to form these connections in the brain. And then if a child has more of a balanced life, we have more balanced brain and connection. An imbalanced life, imbalanced brain and connections.

So, even with those routines, starting off young together with meal time, right? Family meals is somewhere that anybody can start. And again, focusing on that real food, gardening, cooking together, getting the kids involved in every step of the way, like starting a garden, we know these things are important for us, but then once it starts to become more of a schooling at home, right, then as parents, we’re like, “Okay, we need to do this because the kids need to know where their food comes from.” Get them involved, and it gets them busy. And you’re doing something together because remember that food… Good nutrition is essential for children and us. Food is they’re just molecular information that is actually talking to our cells, and it determines who we are. We are food. You know, even our mothers are food. Like, literally every cell of our body was developed from food. Like, we need food.

And so that is the number one tool that we have to impact our brains, and our bodies, and our social health, spiritual, mental, emotional, but unfortunately, most kids are not eating enough veggies. They’re eating more processed foods. That’s leading to higher calorie consumption and then leading to insulin resistance, leading to excessive eating where a child or you are unable to eat, right? You know, when you go to a… And this is something I talk to the kids about. When we go to a restaurant, why do they give you that fluffy bread and/or the corn chips? It’s because those processed starches go and inhibit the hormone that helps us satiate, which is leptin levels that basically, guess what, now we are uncontrollable eating. We have to keep on eating. We don’t know when we’re to stop.

And so us as parents and caregivers, we don’t want to be in the kitchen all day long. So, believe me, getting them to eat real food so you can stay out of the kitchen, so you don’t have to deal with all of this craziness is good. But this is what I really want to emphasize, and I feel like this is one huge piece of the puzzle why we cannot get our families on board. And it does take time and it does take education and commitment. It doesn’t happen overnight. Is the connection between… And it’s a strong connection, unfortunately, that we as children also have, that we have to, like, look within ourselves first and role model these ourselves.

And then that’s the only way we’re going to be able to take this to our families is we have made a connection between fun food and fake food together. For example, let me explain. If we go to a birthday party, don’t worry about the ingredients. Don’t worry about the oils that they used. We’re having fun today. When we go to the amusement park, it’s like, “Oh, don’t worry about the ingredients. Don’t worry about the oils. We’re having fun today.” If we go out to eat, “Don’t worry about the ingredients. Don’t worry about the oils. We’re going to have fun today.” So, Halloween celebrations, all of the fake food is directly connected to fun.

And we, even as practitioners, we do this too, following that 80/20 rule, right? But the thing is, in some cases, we need to show that that fake food has really no part of our lives. And that 80/20 shouldn’t really. pertain to fake food and chemicals, because the fact that we can still have fun with real food. And that is where I think the key piece, because right now your children, your families and us are putting together fun food, fake food, but the only time that mom, our aunt and uncle really care about the real food is when we’re home and that’s pretty boring, right?

And so helping us find that connection that, “Well, guess what, when you go out to eat, let’s go look for all of the fun restaurants that are organic, non-GMO. When we go to an amusement park, let’s see if we can find some organic non-GMO. And if not, then I’ll buy you treats. So, you’re still having fun but it’s with real food. And that is what is really going to help us go take this to the next level and really create change for our families is to educate and empower them. And the way that we’re going to educate and empower them is by writing here and reading the ingredients, starting with your eyes or just flipping over the package, helping them read those ingredients.

And that’s why I have my fourth children’s book is coming out in August called “Fake Food vs Real Food: Food Label Detectives” Adam’s Healing Adventure Series. And to teach the kids that this food, like when they start reading the labels, they’re like, “Mom, what is Red #40? What is this? What is that?” Go and educate yourself about it because the food industry is made up of chemical companies using commercials and gimmicks to keep us hooked. And kids know that the shiny, all these things are like, oh, the prettier it is, the more color it is, the rainbow, it’s prettier, we want that. How do they know that? Because the fact that this food system is spending billions of dollars creating customers for life, promoting sickness into old age.

And if you can connect that memory… Like, for example, Easter with its candies, and Christmas with the cane, right? The cane. And so it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, we’re going to connect now what people are feeling with the junk food, right?” They’re holidays and fun and family with junk and fake food. And then we do the same thing with Ramadan. Like, I said something about, like, we drink this in Ramadan. It’s like one month where we just fast, and it’s supposed to be a very spiritual time. But, you know, food companies have connected that with an artificial colored drink. And if I just mentioned it, now people are, like, outraged. And that is what you want to educate your children that, like, we have created… The food companies, they’ve even created these foods that are connected to even different events so then you form this connection and then it gets you addicted into life.

But this is where… Educate your families and look at the ingredients. And, look, you can find, you know, Easter eggs and, like, all the Easter candy that’s healthier, that’s organic and that’s what we want to try. You can still have that but change it up. Show your kids and your families the ingredients of these and then the ingredients of different ones, and then to have them taste it, and then they’ll show you that the real food one tastes a hundred times better. It may take some getting used to because obviously sugar has manipulated our brains. All this fake food is leading to insulin and leptin resistance, dysfunctional brain, body behavior, leading to overeating. We know that food is a number one driver of chronic disease. It’s destroying our balance. Educate your families about these things. Show them what those ingredients are doing. And if they don’t know what something is, have them go and research it themselves.

Along with all of these colors that we talked about, how it is hijacking our brains and our children’s brains. GMOs. Teach them a story. My kids love the story. My 10-year-old, he comes home one day and he’s like, “Oh, Mama, they were all telling me that I was eating… The food that I eat is weird.” And I was like, “Oh, so what did you say?” And he was like, “Oh, I said, well, at least I’m not eating pipe cleaner glyphosate.” Tell them where these things are coming from and how the GMOs and how glyphosate is really destroying our bodies. Teach them about artificial sweeteners, sugar, and to know that you are going to have to take charge.

Us as coaches and practitioners and moms and caregivers, we are going to have to take charge. Why? They’re not going to learn this in school. They’re not going to learn this at their doctor’s office. They’re not going to learn this when they’re out and about in a pub gathering most likely. Where are they going to learn this? You guys are going to teach this to them. Why? Because of the fact that a sick child is probably the most profitable invention in the history of mankind in America, as Casey Means said. So, he recognized that if we feed into the system, if we don’t educate and empower our children, someone else is. And when you have a sick child, they don’t die. You just feed them more medications. They get sick. They go into the hospitals. And it actually just feeds the system.

So, this is where we need to take in charge. And I was even thinking about this for a second. I was like, “When did it turn from Autism Awareness Month to Autism Acceptance Month?” Why are we accepting autism, right? And it’s all feeding into that system. We need to start to educate our children. And how? By making it simple, easy, cost-effective, focusing on two words, real food, because real food really does optimize our overall health and to help the climate and the planet. It lowers insulin resistance. It balances hormones. It keeps your gut healthy. But then how are you going to actually take that?

So, now that the kids are educated and your families are educated, right? First, you got to start with yourself. We talked about that. You had nothing that’s… And then educating and empowering yourself and then your family is just like what I did. It was very powerful. But then specifically being mindful. And especially with us in this day and age, we are stuck on our devices where there’s a hundred different messages that you have to respond back to and then all these notifications. And your attention is divided now a billion percent. So many different places our attention is divided.

And so we need to bring that back to mindfulness. And how is that? By educating ourselves and our families to start to look within, right? How do you feel at this moment? How are you emotionally, physically, psychologically, spiritually, mentally, emotionally? How are you feeling at this moment? And as soon as your body starts to get off balance, as coaches, we have provided them one. They know why that it’s getting off balance. It’s not like your body is bad, so we’re going to fight it with the conventional. Unfortunately, that’s what we’ve been taught in medicine is like, as soon as your body gets off balance, it’s bad. It needs to be put back into balance. I mean, that it needs to be basically fixed with a medication, and that’s the only way.

No, baby, your body… And this is what I’ve taught my kids. Our bodies cannot talk to us in any different way. The way that it can talk to us is if it starts to…if we’re starting to feel symptoms. And those symptoms could be due to chronic inflammation. And let me tell you about that. So, educate them about different acute versus chronic. What are all the different things that can cause it? And so if your body is off balance, it could be some of these pieces that are out of balance. And the food, and then leading to that leaky gut. It’s leading to that chronic inflammation. It’s leading to mitochondrial dysfunction. What’s happening with the foods that we’re eating? Maybe their hormones are out of balance or insulin is too elevated because the fact that cornflakes is raising your blood sugar level higher than sugar is. Isn’t that craziness?

And just a story in this piece, And I showed this to my kids, and I’ve talked to them about being mindful of their symptoms and how they’re feeling. So, you’re teaching your children how to be mindful in multiple different levels of awareness all at once. And then as soon as their bodies go off balance, we’ve given them the tools that they need to help put them back into balance. And so I first saw this when I… And that sounds like, “Oh, my God, this is so powerful.” So, my 5-year-old, when he was when he was 5 years old. Now, he’s 8, but he came down one day and for breakfast, he started eating… When I came downstairs, I saw that he was eating a bowl of sauerkraut and I was like, “Gus, why are you eating a bowl of sauerkraut?” And he goes, “Oh, Mama, I woke up this morning feeling a little agitated. And I think it’s because I had like the organic sugar at [crosstalk 00:29:08] yesterday. And that probably messed my hormones. And it probably like… My guts probably are not happy. So, I’m coming down here so I can feed this… I am giving myself sauerkraut so I can help the good bugs in my belly. And that can help me, my brain feel better. And so he was able to connect to like hormonal imbalance, like too much sugar. To his gut and all of that and actually he had the tools that he needed at his disposal as a five-year-old. Can you imagine if adults can do that? That would be so powerful. That would be so mind blowing. And to understand that those, like what’s going on in your body when you eat processed sugars versus if you eat real food. If you process your body is like… The insulin goes up and down. You have those hangry episodes it leads to increased hunger, appetite, excessive eating. Because there’s no nutrients, they’re constantly hungry.

And so, again, focusing on that real food can help them satiate and they’re happier. And this is where, “Okay, Dr. Madiha, I get this now but it’s really expensive. That food is so expensive. When I go to the grocery store, it’s terrible.” But this is what we have to recognize, that cheap food has been made to be irresistible, has it made for us to continue to want to eat it. So, it may be cost-effective at the beginning, but guess what? Now you’re spending more money on the food quantity while real food may be cost-effective… I mean, sorry, may be a little bit more costly, but in the long run, you’re eating a lot less of that food. So, your families are satiated. They only need like… They don’t need to be snacking all day long. If they truly have their vegetables, clean protein, healthy fats, they have periods where they’re not eating. Isn’t that shocking for kids?

My oldest is 16. I have five boys and my youngest is 18 months old, 19 months old. And so I have this huge span. Obviously, the younger one is not there, but [inaudible 00:31:32] they’re all home. Guess what, they’re not snacking. I come downstairs yesterday. Especially I know my 13-year-old. I’m like, “Did you even have breakfast today?” He goes, “Oh, no, I didn’t eat it. I’m good.” He was intuitive to his body, right? And you’re not constantly, “I need this, I need that. I need this, I need that.” And I actually bought… I stocked the house when I found they’re all home. But they’re satiated. They’re getting things themselves because the processed foods makes them eat more. And there’s not that constant struggle in my house that, “Stop eating this, don’t eat that. Don’t eat this, don’t eat that.”

decision-makingSo, remember to educate our families about, when you start to eat more fake food versus real food, your body gets off balance. And so as soon as your body feels a little bit off balance, we have given them the tools that they need to help put their brains back into balance. And that comes to the next piece, optimizing their decisions. And that decision making is when your bodies are off balance, there’s two main pieces of decision-making. It’s your prefrontal cortex and your amygdala. And you need both of these pieces to make a rational decision. But unfortunately our imbalanced lifestyles are leading to this chronic inflammation that’s affecting our brain, affecting our emotions, our actions. But if you have a family that’s, again, this balanced lifestyle, guess what, you have balanced brains.

But unfortunately, because of our imbalanced lives, that’s leading to imbalances in our brains. And that’s why living an optimal lifestyle, living a balanced lifestyle will help us to make our kids even make those rational decisions. And a balanced child is like a huge benefit to society. So, they’ll make better impacts on decisions, decrease their chronic illnesses, even heal the world.

The next thing, again, we talked about briefly at the beginning was gratitude because, again, instead of all focusing on all the things that the kids can’t have, we’re going to focus on the things that kids can have. Focus changing our subconscious, instead of being negative all the time to thinking positive, because remember society is not going to get you to buy the next new thing unless they tell you how miserable the thing that you have right now is. And they’re doing it in all these subliminal messages that, oh, my gosh, that, oh, you won’t… What? You don’t have this? You need to… How are you going to live life? How are you…? You know how the next new iPhone with 10 cameras? You need this in your life, right? And so changing our subconscious from immediately thinking negative to thinking positive. And how are we going to do that? Immediately when you wake up in the morning, say 10 things that you’re thankful for every day.

Over the last 15 years, I’ve been practicing this type of medicine, I have found that that is the most powerful thing that we can do as physicians, coaches, practitioners, you know, even caregivers, moms, is change our subconscious and it starts with us. Change our subconscious from something negative to positive. So, that is where you’re going to start, but the things is take it one step at a time, one day at a time to recognize that real food is one piece go down the last. I have my families grow some vegetables, clean protein, healthy fats to get that fiber, the protein, and the healthy fats that they need, and stock up for success. Yes, they can have everything in the house, and guess what. When they can have chips, they can have cookies? They can have everything? You decreased the connection that we have subconsciously made with real food. Is that we’re constantly fighting with our families. But guess what, if you stock the house up for success, we’re not, there’s, it eliminates that fight. And now you’ve now the kids, even if families have like a positive connection with the real food, eating the rainbow with all of its benefits, easy ways of shopping like making a list, obviously frozen, there’s like Costco and Sam’s Club that has a lot of things joining like a farmer’s market, joining a CSA. Less expensive cuts of meat. Even at Whole Foods, they have like a whole chicken that if that you can stock up. Even cooking, I like to cook in bulk and then just leave it. So, guess what? Like, it looks like I cook all the time but it really… I don’t because the fact that I have lots of leftovers, but finding those substitutions. So, whatever your fake food is, finding those healthier alternatives to it.

So, for example, artificial color, you can use turmeric and beets and spirulina. I like for bright blue or green, right? And then we have a candy, get organic candy soda. There’s like sparkling water or even OLIPOP or the flours that you have—almond flour, coconut cassava flour, tiger nut flour, chickpea flour that we use even for holidays. So, remember, we talked about real food can be fun food. So, even during the holidays, swap out like… And remember, you’re like, “Oh, no, that gets really expensive.” No, because the fact that when you make a pie with almond flour, they don’t eat the entire pie, right?

When you use real food ingredients, they actually are satiated with a little bit. So, you can cook a little bit that goes a long way. And I have fun with it. Increase the color. Think outside the box. I use, like, almond flour. In my family, like, I love using almond flour, right, or cassava flour or tiger nut flours. Like, different types of flours, experiment with it. But if I’m on a rush, I’ll take a box of almond flour. Simple Mills has like all of these different brands that you can like quickly whip up. This is when I’m like in a rush. And with just one box, I can make a lot of these little, little muffins. And you can put in tons of vegetables and the ground beef. And I make these broccoli sprout sliders. Super simple. And you can even make pizza muffins with that. I use instead of the regular pasta, I use lentil pasta. And I cooked for, like, 26 people and paste. And I just didn’t like a cooking demo demonstration and a retreat. And I had 26 people come, and I only used four boxes of the lentil pasta. That was three dollars each. That’s said. Twenty-six people. And you just pack it with tons of vegetables and broccoli sports.

And then now you’re like getting the big bang for your buck but again you can still have fun. I love to fry with avocado oil or coconut oil or ghee, but I use chickpea flour or cassava flour. I’ll fry my fish with one fourth cup of cassava flour, one pasteurized egg, a little bit of water to make that paste, some spices, dip the fish in there, shallow frying, like a little bit of avocado oil, both sides. Delicious fish and chips.

Oh, my gosh. So, here, do you see how we’re still having a lot of fun, but we’re using real ingredients? Especially like we have like… I love stuffing chicken with as many vegetables. So, I take this cashew cream and I’ll put almond milk in there and then I’ll mix it in with tons of vegetables and then I’ll stuff the chicken. Easy. Stick it in the oven, bring it out, and you’re done. So, these are things that you can do on a daily basis and even with drinks. I love my blue spirulina. It is a little bit more costly, but I only use a little bit so it lasts me like a year. It lasts me a long time. And you just mix that into your water with a little stevia or honey or just leave it plain. And now it’s like a blue drink for everybody to enjoy. It’s so delicious. Delicious desserts. Right? Again, you make all the desserts at home. This is cheaper than going out and buying a dessert. Like, this cake, probably outside, it would have been, like, a few ingredients, and probably be, like, 100, it probably cost me, like, 15, right?

So, that’s what I’m trying to say, that, like, it’s really easy, and you can use, like, the rainbow. Look how pretty that is. The rainbow cake and multiple layers. Again, I use almond flour crust. I use organic. You can make your own buttercream at home using maple sugar. It’s so delicious, and you can color it with all these different things. These are simple things that I’ve done. Even my first one-year-old birthday cake, that you can do and just even use regular fruit. Beautiful, cost-effective, and delicious and nutritious. And then even you can supercharge. Again, as many colors as you possibly can. Things that we normally don’t use like jicama and watermelon radishes, our beautiful and delicious and crunchy. And are packed with sulfur containing vegetables, and then also like the prebiotic fibers.

So, another thing that I love to do to take my normal recipes and really pump it up. And you’re like, how did you take those… For all of those people, how did you make just four box, three box, three, four boxes? And actually I brought home probably a box, so I only use three boxes. Because of the fact that the sauce… I will put in all of the vegetables in that sauce. I’ll take frozen cauliflower. I’ll put in broccoli sprouts that you can even grow yourself, it’s so easy, or get microgreens. And I’ll put that in everything and then I’ll put in mushrooms and then… So, as many vegetables I can go into the sauce and that goes into the pasta. And even again, we make cookies and cakes and pancakes but I use, like… Again, we want to make every bite count. How are we going to increase the phytonutrient power of each bite is sprouts, spices, and then also your, like, different things like Himalayan Tartary Buckwheat, fermented foods. I get like fermented vegetables. I could say that I make all these. I used to make it. It was a very difficult. I didn’t have enough time to do all that now. But guess what, you can go out and get all of these ingredients…like, farmers markets has all these here.

So, all the different colors of the rainbow and I’ll get it from the farmers market and then the kids will have that, making a smoothie with all the weirdest things that you possibly can get like amla, and zucchini, and aronia berries, acerola berries. We have cauliflower can all go… Camu camu, maca. So, increase the biodiversity by just putting it in a smoothie. And that’s what I do. I stick everything, even some of their supplements, I even put liver and organ meats capsules. I’ll dump it out into the smoothies, and then I’ll serve it as a beautiful acai bowl. And the kids are so excited, but not realizing they’re packing their gut microbiome with all these diversities. And then we know that spices have so many…are packed with polyphenols and phytonutrients. And going out and about. We do the same thing.

So, I take my electric skillet. So, if I’m feeding a family of so many, I take my electric skillet everywhere we go. It’s a ceramic. And, yes, I even took it to IFM at the Bellagio. And it’s easy. Like, we made eggs. I just bought a carton of eggs, and I would just mix that up. And I just slowly like simmer. Especially in a hotel room that doesn’t even have it, you can just slowly heat it like an iron, right? Slowly heat it, and it’ll cook, and it’ll warm up all your food. And because there’s no flames, there’s nothing, so it’s very safe and so easy. And even I can stick into my backpack and take it with me everywhere we go. It is so much fun because guess what, now I don’t have to worry about running around and trying to find really healthy, nutritious meals along with… If we do go out, we find like organic and then find other places that are as ingredient as obsessed that we are.

So, again, we’re still having… If you’re noticing, I’m still connecting fun with real food. And that’s why when the kids go out and about, they don’t feel deprived. And I even take it to conferences. Yes, I am that girl that like, I want to show people the power of how much fun this is. So, when Dr. Jeffrey Bland was here a couple of months ago, I took food for all of them there because it was so easy and fun. And seeing the joy on people’s faces makes me so happy. Even the kids are packing their own foods. Zen is 13, but he has been packing his own food, vegetables, clean protein, healthy fats, eating the rainbow. They know all these things. And therefore, when you give the kids those autonomy, my job is to like cultivate the soil that they’re growing up in, right? And the kids now make their own decisions on what they want to eat. And I make sure that it’s obviously there…

Again, that helps our brain and our body. We’re making school lunches. We concentrate on two words, real food.

Dr. Saeed: So, we want to make sure that you make every bite worth it. Even when you have a picky eater, find out what they do eat and make an easy swap, right? If they do chocolate chip cookies, I say, yes, keep them eating chocolate chip cookies but let’s swap it out with, like, almond flour and a different type of chocolate. Maybe stick in some Himalayan tartary buckwheat in there. And then sometimes deficiencies can cause it like zinc deficiencies. Accept slip-ups. We’re all human, but the first place to start is make a list of your families, caregivers anybody in your families or your own real food, like fake food that they absolutely love, and then find a healthier alternative.

And then quickly in the last like two minutes, I’m just going to really run by this because even detoxifying can be cost-effective. We know that that’s a huge piece of the puzzle, but when you eat real food, sleep, stress, manage, gratitude, all of that can help optimize your detoxification systems. Peeing, pooping, perspiring, all of that is cost-effective. Moving your fluids, hot and cold showers, massage. I love putting houseplants in everybody’s rooms, right? Those mother-in-law’s tongue, like those are difficult to kill, right? So, those little snake plants, I put them in every, every room of the house making sure the kids get out, getting those early morning sunlight, social wise like keeping people around them that are going to lift them up, not drag them down, making sure they’re sleeping properly, talking to your families about the importance of sleep and helping them develop that routine. So, just like we do it with kids, we should also be doing it with us. Stress management techniques. Simple things that we can be incorporating.

Remember, put all these things into your healing routine. Find a way to do this with your families. Help them find getting together in prayer, meditation, going out in nature for hikes, belly breathing together. These are simple things that anybody can do, because remember our health is the biggest blessing that we have. And we need to educate our families that these are simple things that we can incorporate everyday daily routines and our healing routine together, that can lower chronic inflammation, that is cost-effective and doable, because my mission is that if we can incorporate these things into our everyday daily routines, we can really optimize our health and wellness. Can you imagine where our children will be able to be? And we’ll be able to go? And humanity as a whole, if our brains and bodies and our physical, mental, emotional, psychological, spiritual, we’re all functioning the way that they should, we’d be able to truly fly. And that’s when I started, I’m like, you know, to be the change you wish to see in the world, I started out with myself. I took that to my family. And now we’re helping them create that change and empower themselves. And now they love to talk about it. They’ve done over 150 episodes of their podcast. And their book is coming out next year. But remember that each one of us as health coaches, as caregivers, as moms, we need to start with ourselves. Because if we show people that this is so much fun, it’s doable, cost-effective, this is something that any one of us can do simple things. And if we incorporate ourselves, we can be that change that can create that ripple effect to heal the world from the inside out. And so this is where I’ve tried to make it because I’m very passionate about all of this. I’ve tried to make this as easy as I possibly can is to have those resources for you guys and have it for your families And then I’m like, “Oh, I have the adult books. I have the children book.” I knew the teen one, so hopefully the teen one is coming so I can get all walks of life to really create that life, that family of changemakers. Thank you, guys, so much.

Patty: Thank you for all those great tips, and there’s definitely a lot of areas that health coaches can go and work with their clients in that area. So, I’m going to start with some of the questions first, and of course, here at FMCA, we train in not only our coaching skills and the functional medicine principles but also positive psychology. So, we always want to be bringing the positive side of changes out or celebrating the wins and definitely not having fear or any type of shame around these types of lifestyle decisions, which can be difficult for some people and changing that around. And so one of the questions that has come up is what if a parent is coming to them as a coach to try to help their child, but the parent doesn’t have that… Living what you were talking about the healing routine or things that are or they don’t want to implement things for themselves. So, do you have any tips around, you know, I guess approaching the parents and getting them to know that this is a family goal versus just a goal for their child.

Again, it doesn’t… I have to tell you it does not happen overnight. My husband was not completely on board when we first started. But I started to… Again, educating. I think starting there like just talking about it and not just… And then, like, for me, I always found those replacements, like, somebody of parent or somebody is not completely on board. I would be like, oh, yeah, you can have this, but check this out too. Like, this is awesome. Just taste it. Like, it’s really tasty. And then I’ll just have it sitting there at the table or… So, educating and then showing them that example. And then slowly but surely… If you’re as excited about something, usually people slowly but surely come on board. They’re like, “Okay, well, what is all this excitement about?” Obviously, if somebody’s like, oh, they suck. Like, look, taste this. Like, I’m miserable. Then no one’s going to want to join you. But when you’re like, “This is so stupid. We’re going to do this together,” it really does make a big difference of the positivity. And then slowly but surely getting them on board.

Patty: Yeah. And I think too just maybe sometimes we as parents are… Culture sometimes were thought to think of others before we think of ourselves. And so giving a parent permission to think about themselves and they’re the captain of the ship and so that they have to take care. I think that’s also…

Patty: Absolutely. Start with yourself. That is where it really starts to then… You know, we worry about everybody else, but we would have to start with ourselves first.

Dr. Saeed: Yeah, absolutely. So, a lot of us in this community, let’s start out and the kids are younger, and they’re getting a lot of great nutrition, and then they start going at. And when I make your older, and they’re going out and on their own, and there may be… Even if they’re educated starts to then we worry about everybody else, but we would have to start with ourselves first.

Patty: Yeah, absolutely. and then this is so a lot of us in this community, we will start out and the kids are younger and they’re getting a lot of great nutrition and then they start going maybe when they get older and they’re going out and on their own and they’re maybe even if they’re educated, maybe not making some great choices. I know how you would do this from the coach approach, but just if you… I don’t know if you want to weigh in on that a little bit.

Dr. Saeed: Oh, absolutely. So, remember, I think the difference there is that child at least knows what to do, right? Versus a child that doesn’t know and so this is where, as I mean, obviously, there’s only so much we, as parents can do, and then they have to start to fly on their own and their own wings, but they’re going to have to make those mistakes. We made mistakes and we came back. Like, we had to learn it ourselves. For me, I didn’t even know. I just had to learn it myself and come back. But if you provide them with that baseline, they go out and do their things. One, you’ve provided them at least with the knowledge base that they have, right? That is powerful. And then two, that when they do come home, they’re able to talk… We’ve developed that relationship that if something were to happen, you’ve developed a relationship with that child. That is important that you can then guide them. But also that mindfulness key is super important. That gratitude and mindfulness because I find that they’re less apt to make those decisions if they live in a world of like, “Everything sucks. I’m never going to get better,” because if a child is truly grateful for the body that they have, they wouldn’t be destroying it on a regular basis. But this is where, for me, like that food stuff, we don’t even talk about really. That gratitude is what I really try to hone in on, because if they can live a life of gratitude and positivity, they’re apt to be making better decisions later.

And so for me, like, they make their decisions. They’re mindful. They’ll come back. They’re going to have to make their mistakes. They’re going to be able to feel how Red #40 feels versus something colored with beet feels. And is it tasty? They’re going to have to make those decisions on their own, but to help them for me, as a mother, as a caregiver, as a practitioner, I really hone on that mindfulness and that gratitude because if they have that, no matter what they deal with in the outside world, they’ll be able to reign it in if they’re truly mindful.

Patty: Yeah. Well, thank you. That’s great. Yeah. And obviously we’re… That’s very much keeping within the positive psychology type piece there because that’s the time, right? When they get older, they want to go out on their own and make some other decisions for themselves.

Dr. Saeed: They want to do that. Absolutely.

Patty: Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you. And I want to be mindful of your time. I know you need to head to another meeting.

Dr. Saeed: Yeah, I can do a couple questions but…

Patty: Thank you. Okay. Well, I know we have… People are asking for your recipe and if they’re in your books.

Dr. Saeed: Yes. So, they are in my books. I have lots of them. In the back, specifically for, like, the kids ones, but, yeah, they’re all in, like, the back sections of the ones that will work. And then in my Instagram, you can see what I do on a daily basis because remember I’m not perfect but I try to make things easy, doable, cost-effective. Like yesterday, everybody had lentils and salad for dinner because I have been so busy working… Our book is due to the publisher July 1st, so I’ve been working with the kids with the editing and I didn’t have time to cook. And I was like, “Okay, we’re all going to have lentils and a salad and a sauerkraut,” right? So, that’s what they had with some fruit. But the thing is simple things that you can incorporate every day daily routine are all in my book.

Patty: Yeah, wonderful. Thank you. Well, thank you for being with us and sharing so many things that has worked well for your life. And I know that, as coaches, we can be so instrumental in helping families make changes especially if all of us typically do have something that we are hoping to improve in our health. And so I appreciate all the great information that you gave them today. So, thank you very much.

Dr. Saeed: Thank you so much, you guys. Thank you, guys, so much for your time. It’s such a huge honor and blessing.

Patty: Yes, thank you.