About Lisa

My husband and I recently began monthly “healthy habit” challenges to establish certain wellness practices that we wanted a more regular part of our lives.  Each month, we decide on a practice, set up a simple daily habit and hold each other accountable to do it every day for a full month.

Earlier this month, we were both getting the springtime itch to do a whole-foods cleanse.  But since we were having such success with the month-long model, we decided to weave cleansing into our healthy habit for May.  I reflected on these two models of cleansing and thought I’d share a little insight as to why you may choose one over the other.
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Written by contributor Lisa Bryne of WellGrounded Life.

A mother, Anne, who was taking one of my courses on stress and our hormonal health emailed me this question,

“I start my day with steamy hot coffee and half & half.

The morning ritual is so comforting to me. Sitting, cozy on the couch with hot coffee, a blanket, and my Bible. Love it!

But, I need to ask the question, is this caffeine contributing to the [stress] problem? What are your thoughts on coffee and caffeine?”

Coffee, and whether it is friend or foe, is a hugely popular question I get from many women, and I can understand the confusion.

So let’s take caffeine – and in particular the question, “Should I give up my morning cup of joe?” – and work through the three-step strategy I use when women are confused about health information.
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Written by contributor Lisa Byrne of WellGrounded Life.

Most of us don’t give our body much thought until something goes wrong and it causes us pain or discomfort.

But when you begin to tune in, you’ll find that your body actually has exquisite ways to communicate all sorts of important information with you. And one of the ways it does this is through cravings.

When our body begins to generate strong cravings for certain kinds of foods, we can be sure it is trying to communicate something to us.

At first it can feel confusing to figure out because sometimes our cravings often don’t make sense.  I can remember a woman I was working with asking me, “I have such intense cravings for foods that I know aren’t good for me…it makes me wonder why I would want to trust my body at all?”

I can understand that perspective from the first glance.  But when we look a little deeper and trust in the process, we can identify what is out of whack by using our cravings as signals.
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Written by contributor Lisa Byrne of WellGrounded Life.

I think the most common issue moms share is sleep deprivation. Personally, before having children, I assumed severe lack of sleep was limited to the early infant months. Little did I know just how long the broken sleep goes for while raising kids.

Between middle-of-the-night spooks, bed wetting, bathroom trips and sick days—most mamas are not clocking in anywhere close to the 8-10 recommended sleep hours.

So I began to feel that familiar struggle between what I call “my ideal and my real.” My ideal was to both be well rested and have an intentional morning routine—and if possible, one that begins on my own terms, preferably before the kids wake up.

My real was chronic nights of sub-par and broken sleep and a complete abandonment of attempting any morning routine at all.

This is where I needed a strong dose of my own medicine. I believe that as mothers, we need to kick ideal out the window and come to terms with the life we are living in order to create strategies that actual move us forward… instead of waiting for the perfect conditions to exist.

The old familiar all-or-nothing trap is one I fell into for a long time. Since I was already sleep-deprived, I put off creating a morning routine that would set a cadence for my day in a way that I wanted.

And as it often happens—while I was teaching one of my courses, a light bulb went off in my own life.  While it may not be the most perfect scenario, I could still create a robust and effective morning routine with my kids awake and around me. 
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