Made For Living Well
340 episodes - English - Latest episode: 3 days ago - ★★★★★ - 423 ratingsSimple Roots Radio is hosted by Alexa Schirm. A nutritionist by trade, Alexa has rebelled against common misconceptions about nutrition, and has, instead, created a realistic health-style that will allow you to live a healthy, satisfied and more simplistic life.
Forget dieting for good as Alexa interviews health experts, lifestyle influencers and every day people on what strategies have worked for them and help you implement a plan that can be achieved for life. It’s raw, its funny, its real and unfiltered. It is Simple Roots Radio.
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Episodes
#327: Are Seed Oils Bad For You?
April 15, 2024 17:12 - 18 minutes - 27 MBThere's a lot of chatter in the health space about seed oils, which has opened up all kinds of room for confusion. But today, I want to clarify the answer to the question: Are seed oils bad for you? Not to throw shade at another food. We all know we can't possibly risk losing one more staple in our diet and feel okay about it. We've shamed sugar, potatoes, carbs, and even fats. Fats were the first food on the chopping block as the health industry began exploding in the early 80s. It was ...
#326: The Healing Power of Self-Identity
April 09, 2024 18:34 - 24 minutes - 33.1 MBThe rain was pounding on my window to the same degree that tears were streaming down my face. I had just left a counseling session talking through my sense of self-identity. I was desperate to uncover who God made me. The problem was I had spent most of my life trying to be something others would respect. I wanted to be something that others would need. You could say it's part of being an , but more likely, it's birthed out of the broken places in me. I had picked up the desire to be need...
#325: Why You Need An Emotional Detox
April 04, 2024 10:41 - 26 minutes - 34.6 MBHealth is difficult, and not in the way you think. It's difficult not because you don't know what to eat but because it's emotional, making healing less about food detox and more about emotional detox. It might feel like food complicates things. But it's not food but the reason you eat what you do. If you remove the emotional aspect, eating healthy food would be easy. But it's not or hasn't been, like exercise and every other health tip on the planet, because there is an emotional attachme...
#324: Do Calories Really Matter?
March 25, 2024 13:38 - 23 minutes - 31.6 MBCalories tend to be another controversial and somewhat confusing subject. But I'd argue that is only because we don't understand how they interact with our bodies. If you've ever wondered if calories matter, the answer is yes and no. Let me explain. Calories are a metric of energy often used to describe the nutritional value of food. Technically, a calorie is a unit of energy equivalent to the heat energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by one degree Celsius. Our simpl...
#323: How To Build Metabolic Flexibility: Three Truths + One Lie
March 18, 2024 09:14 - 23 minutes - 31.9 MBMetabolism is a sexy word in the health space. Everyone wants that flourishing metabolism. The same one we assume is why some people can eat anything and never gain an ounce. It's easy to envy those people while hating our bodies for not functioning in the same way. But truth be told, this understanding is a bad perception of your metabolism. Yes, it does change the structure of your body, which is why a higher metabolism is associated with a lower waistline. But you can't misrepresent met...
#322: How To Get Healthy: The Most Important Thing
March 13, 2024 12:26 - 21 minutes - 30.3 MBHow do you get healthy? The typical approach is certainly not working. In fact, it seems to be doing the opposite. It's not making you healthy, but there is something that is. Learn the key to living healthy so you can stop asking the same questions. The first episode of the new podcast series, Health School, starts with quite a bang. I share what I consider the most critical element of health, yet the most overlooked. That is energy. Discover the profound impact of energy on our biolo...
#321: Your Body's Not That Sensitive
February 19, 2024 16:14 - 42 minutes - 49.7 MBYour body’s not that sensitive. It can be, but only because it’s been pushed into forms of dysregulation so long it’s turned to survival. Survival means your body will do anything to keep you alive, even if that means it works against what is healthy. It’s not the intended design. The intended design is to thrive. But when forced, it will revert to survival. I had to learn this the hard way. For years, I believed my body was just overly sensitive. It tended to react to everything, from...
#320: 10 Habits of The Healthiest People
January 04, 2024 20:54 - 41 minutes - 48.4 MBFor decades, health has existed in a black-and-white space. It’s been a series of rash and often unrealistic lifestyle changes, leaving one to believe the extreme lifestyle is the only one that will help you reach your goals. It’s also why resolutions have become such a focus of the new year. They bring the hope that you can change. The more extreme those resolutions, the faster things will change. But change rarely comes. You can blame yourself, or you can blame the resolutions. But I’d...
#319: Five Health Skills You Didn’t Know You Needed
December 18, 2023 14:33 - 27 minutes - 36 MBI spent many years attempting to hack my behavior. Forcing change, trying to make something budge. It’s the typical approach to life and health that appears like it should work. Logically doing something should create something different. And it does, but only if you change the pattern because your pattern produces the outcome you experience. If you have a problem, that problem was birthed out of a pattern. Change requires shifting the pattern, and that starts by understanding the patt...
#318: Psychology Of Setting Resolutions You'll Keep
December 06, 2023 16:16 - 32 minutes - 39.8 MBI’ll be the first to admit I’ve set many resolutions. Yet I’ve never achieved a single one. At least not that I can recount. Yet, I keep going back to the same approach, hoping one of these years it will work. I never blamed the act of setting resolutions for why they didn’t work, but I always blamed myself. In the last few years, I re-evaluated the traditional resolution approach. I even begged you not to set resolutions, claiming it’s not the answer to what you are seeking. But then ...
#317: How Your Nervous System Impacts Your Digestion
November 16, 2023 18:27 - 1 hour - 71 MBLeaky gut seems to be a national crisis. While diet is certainly a factor, the larger issue is stress or the lack of safety inside your physiology. Maria-Victoria Albina of The Feminist Wellness Podcast came on this podcast to share the response of the nervous system on our GI tract and the fight for safety within our biology. We talk about the polyvagal theory, co-dependence, and how to regulate your nervous system to heal your biology. Healing your gut is more than a food issue. It's a lif...
#314: Three Healthy Things Making You Unhealthy
November 01, 2023 16:07 - 42 minutes - 49.2 MBIt’s easy to get sucked into the black-and-white trap of health. It’s either good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. Leaving many people attempting tasks and eating foods that perhaps are healthy for some but not others. The problem with this picture is it diminishes the secret of health. That secret is what your body is doing with what you provide. And that shifts the focus from perfecting the external ideas to understanding how your body reacts. Health requires internal awareness. Of cour...
#315: Change How You Feel Using A Body Scan
October 26, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 66.6 MBMy therapy journey began because I wanted to stop feeling. Most therapy begins because you want to change how you feel. At least feeling the things you didn’t want to feel. Just like I wanted emotional control in the form of only feeling what I wanted to feel and never feeling what I didn’t. Arguably, we’d all love that superpower. To feel the good without ever experiencing the bad. But it doesn’t exist, and for good reason. All feelings are valid. They have a purpose, even the painful o...
#314: How To Stop Complicating Health
October 17, 2023 19:45 - 41 minutes - 48.1 MBHealth has been hard. I want to emphasize the has as a past-tense explanation. Because while it might have been difficult, it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t have to live complicating health. It’s only difficult because we’ve let it become that. Perhaps not you personally, but the endless external ideas about what health means are overwhelming, even confusing, but only because we’ve neglected to understand health for what it is. And in the process, we’ve over-romanticized the outcom...
#313: We Tried Continuous Glucose Monitoring (Levels) for 30 Days, This Is What We Learned
October 05, 2023 18:13 - 53 minutes - 59.8 MBContinuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) seems to be trending right now. While traditionally, I shy away from the fads of the moment. I had my eye on this one. Rather than another shot in the dark, continuous glucose monitoring offered tangible results in real-time. Unlike the scale, CGM opened up the internal workings of my biology to understand how it responded to what I did. In real time, I was able to see how my body was responding. More than what I do, health is truly how my body responds...
#312: Five Reasons You Can't Stop Emotionally Eating
October 02, 2023 18:05 - 54 minutes - 60.5 MBFood can be such a fight. In one breath, you genuinely enjoy food and want to enjoy the process of it. But in other, it’s terrifying. Your mind races with questions on what to eat, how much, will this make me fat, or what if it’s not good for me? There are so many messages and ideas it’s hard to imagine thinking anything but dread when it comes to food and your body. But this is not the intended design of food. Food isn’t to be feared. It’s to be enjoyed and used to nourish yourself, jus...
#311: Lower Blood Glucose Levels With These Doctor-Backed Tips
September 21, 2023 17:55 - 1 hour - 74.8 MBManaging blood sugar is not a new conversation, but it is worth having, especially considering the health benefits you could experience by learning how to lower blood sugar levels. Common thought has been to eliminate sugar and restrict all carbs, but blood sugar management is more than just a food problem. It’s a lifestyle. I interviewed Dr. Casey Means on the podcast to discuss blood sugar regulation and what she has learned since co-founding the company Levels. Levels provide an easy-to...
#310: How You Heal: Five Simple Ways To Change Your Health
September 14, 2023 19:13 - 40 minutes - 47.5 MBGetting healthy requires hasn’t been easy. But are you overcomplicating what should be simple? Here are five truths to change your health. I’ve spent some time pondering how many things in life I overcomplicate. The conclusion came to nearly everything. In the past, I have complexified my health routine, how it should look to spend time with God, and overthought nearly every hard conversation I’ve ever had. I spend so much time in confusion that I suffocated any new idea or thought that ...
#309: How You Heal: 5 Radical Truths About Forgiveness
September 06, 2023 16:35 - 1 hour - 66.8 MBForgiveness is hard. It’s messy, overwhelming, and scary. And it often feels better left alone. Yet, it is one of the most powerful healing modalities we have. Forgiveness is considered one of our most significant forms of freedom. Learning to embrace forgiveness as a way of life changes the entire outcome of your story. I know firsthand the power of forgiveness. I also know how difficult it is to forgive. At least until you learn what true forgiveness is, outside of what you’ve been told....
#308: How You Heal: Eat Healing Foods
August 30, 2023 14:20 - 59 minutes - 65.2 MBHealing requires you to consume more healing foods. Foods that make you feel light and alive. Learn the difference between negative energy foods and positive energy foods designed to help you heal. Food isn’t just food. It can be, but it’s also so much more than that. Yet, at the same time, it’s nothing like what we have understood it to be. Common thought leaves you believing food can change how you look and even how you feel. In a roundabout way, it can. But your body ultimately dete...
#307: How You Heal: Emotional Mastery
August 14, 2023 15:20 - 1 hour - 70.2 MBIt feels ironic I am writing a post on emotional mastery. If I’m honest, I still have more moments than I’d like to admit where my emotions get the best of me. But, I do realize, like all things in health, perfection doesn’t exist. Emotional mastery is not about never feeling but acknowledging how you feel and controlling your feelings so they don’t control you. It’s here your entire biology shifts from stress to health by learning how to manage your emotions. YOUR FEELINGS RUN YOUR BIO...
#306: How You Heal: The Human Energy Field
August 03, 2023 16:20 - 59 minutes - 64.8 MBOne of the leading problems in the health space, really in life, is how we segment everything into specific parts or systems. We separate our work life from our home life and health from our spiritual life. Even within the body, you have endless systems you work to fix. This separation of the parts of your life is preventing you from healing. Healing requires you to understand no matter how unique each is, they are all connected. In the process, we overcomplicate health by segmenting it in...
#305: How You Heal: Healthy Ego + Self-Love
July 20, 2023 15:29 - 1 hour - 71.3 MBLove heals. Specifically self-love. But it requires a healthy ego that works to connect your mind, body, and soul. Learn how to heal your ego inside this post. I got into the health space wanting desperately to fix people, believing if I could fix them, I could fix myself. I didn’t call it that at the time. Honestly, my heart hurt over how much time people invested into the health space that seemed to take more than it gave back. Growing up, I watched countless women I know give everythi...
#304: How You Heal: Regulating Your Nervous System
July 12, 2023 13:56 - 1 hour - 63.1 MBI’ve long lived looking for something that would ‘fix’ me. A resource that would make all of my problems disappear. Some call it the easy button. Others are looking for the pill or the quick fix. No matter what it was, we’d all agree it needed to create healing without the pain and potential for failure. I used to think it was the work people (including myself) tried to escape by seeking the easy solution. But after walking through my healing journey, I know it’s not the work I’m afraid of...
#303: How To Heal: Shifting Your Perspective on Health
July 03, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 67.6 MBHealing wasn’t a part of my plan. My goal in nutrition was to prevent anything that would require healing by preventing disease and injury. I believed I could control myself from needing to heal by living healthy forever, not knowing that health is a daily healing, not the prevention of it. When I crashed, I was forced into healing. The only other option was to live stuck in my illness. Before getting sick, I had spent so much time trying to prevent health problems by securing the arri...
#302: Unlocking the Secret to Lasting Health: The Importance of Safety
June 15, 2023 13:13 - 57 minutes - 52.3 MBMost people want to live healthy. The question isn’t about desire. It’s how do you achieve it? I got into the health space to save people from their health struggles (namely weight loss). I thought if I could help you lose weight, I could make you happy, and this passion fueled my work. But five years in, I realized many people are fighting through health, doing all of the ‘right things’ and not getting results. These same people have poured their lives into something that has never giv...
#301: Five Ways To Guarantee Health Success
May 31, 2023 19:17 - 47 minutes - 54.3 MBChange is hard, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. Learn the secrets to making change happen in this podcast episode. Discover the five ways to guarantee success, including self-discipline, consistency, and pleasure. Find out how to think abundantly and live confidently to achieve your goals to guarantee health success. Change is hard. Even good change can feel impossible. But on some level, don’t we all want to change? The question is how? How do you do the things you know you should? ...
#300: The Language of Health: What Does It Mean?
May 18, 2023 14:42 - 49 minutes - 56.2 MBThe connection between our body, mind, and soul is wildly understudied. Yet understanding the connection and communication between the three is vital in changing your life. Inside all of us is a specific language that directs your outcome. This doesn’t mean your body is speaking a foreign language, but the language of health is what you speak about yourself and how you speak about the world around you. Think of your language as your perception. That perception creates your reality. Take ...
#299: Shame: The Silent Destroyer of Your Faith
May 12, 2023 09:00 - 42 minutes - 49.6 MBLearn how shame affects your identity and how God’s love can replace shame with a new story through the powerful example of the woman at the well in John 4. Discover the difference between guilt, sin, and shame and how to confront your deep places to allow God to change your story and shift the way you live. I grew up in a culture of scary faith. Not only did I constantly question my salvation, but I also lived by checking off the boxes of being a ‘good’ Christian girl. It felt like an imp...
#298: How Do You Find Happiness?
May 04, 2023 14:29 - 1 hour - 65.8 MBYou’ve been told wrong. Happiness isn’t a place. It’s a way of life. Learn how to find happiness in the backward approach to living with joy. There’s a healing benefit to happiness. Research has shown happiness boosts your immune function, heart health, and productivity. It also changes the way people experience pain. The question is, is it happiness that changes your biology or happiness that leads you to engage in healthier activities? The answer is both. Happiness seems to be the el...
#297: What Is Homeopathy? Should You Try It?
April 28, 2023 09:00 - 50 minutes - 56.9 MBWhat if your body isn't the problem? I know that doesn't fit the health space's stereotypical norm, but the message invigorates me. A message that reminds you that your body is for you. Your body wants to be well, and it has the tools and resources to live well. More than trying to change your body, the secret to living well is learning how to support your body. That is exactly the path of homeopathy. Homeopathy is a 200-year-old system of medicine that uses diluted forms of natural subst...
#296: Seven Unpopular Health Opinions I Believe
April 27, 2023 16:27 - 44 minutes - 51.4 MBHealth has been washed down and overcomplicated. It wasn’t until I quit health that I realized health for what it is. Learn my unpopular health opinions that changed my health inside. Five years ago, I quit health. I got into the health space to save the world from its health problems. The problems the health space seemed to be capitalizing on and the same ones that seemed to follow you around like your own shadow. These were the problems I was determined to fix. I seemed to be making pr...
#295: Is Adrenaline Dominance Your Problem?
April 19, 2023 18:27 - 52 minutes - 48.1 MBA few years ago, I heard a presentation on adrenaline dominance, and I never forgot it. It was one of those moments that shifted some understanding in me, helping me make sense of what didn’t fully make sense. Adrenaline is a hormone most commonly associated with the body’s fight-or-flight response. The adrenaline rush of the body helps you react in dangerous situations. But there is another purpose of adrenaline that is less commonly talked about, to ensure the brain has received enough f...
#294: How To Like Yourself (And Why You Should)
April 13, 2023 09:00 - 1 hour - 69.8 MBShould you like yourself? In this honest post, I share how to distinguish between self-like and self-obsessing and why learning to love yourself matters. There are some, perhaps even Biblical assumptions, that all humans love themselves and potentially a little too much. But I still questioned, does loving yourself mean liking yourself? Or does a dislike for yourself take self-love and turn it into a self-idol? There’s no doubt the world is fascinated with self. We’re all concerned with ...
#293: Therapist Advice: Healing The Mind-Body Connection
April 06, 2023 09:00 - 53 minutes - 49 MBWhat does it take to get healthy? I've asked myself this question numerous times, but it wasn't until my health crashed that I realized how my emotions were impacting my health and how my health was impacting my mind. I had to address the two-way street of my mind and body to experience the healing I longed for. The mindset and health spaces often overlook this intimate connection between your mind and body. But understanding each and how they work together proves the health of your body ...
#292: On Learning To Heal with Dr. Ed Cohen
March 30, 2023 09:00 - 47 minutes - 43.8 MBYou want to be well, but do you know how to get there? The western world of medicine has confused healing and made it about fixing. But healing has to be the goal. Learning to heal will teach you what medicine doesn’t know. “Do I even want to be well?” I found myself asking that question after years of treatment that helped me get better, but treatment I had become addicted to. Not by choice, although I don’t think anyone becomes addicted on purpose. But I honestly couldn’t live without ...
#291: Why You Can't Change: The Backward Law and How to Overcome It
March 23, 2023 09:00 - 43 minutes - 39.5 MBChange is hard but not impossible. The problem isn't what you're doing. It's your perspective behind what you do. Learn why you can't change inside this post! Change is hard, almost impossible. Especially if you continuously focus on the fact that you struggle to change. I don't know how many times I have made a promise and committed to the fact that I was going to change but didn't. I was going to stop. I was going to try harder. I was going to wake up to my first alarm I was going to...
#290: The Power Of Healthy Thoughts
March 09, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 65.1 MBI’ve thought of many things, most of which were never true. Or at least it never came to fruition. Although, I still let my mind wander into the black hole that can take a common headache and make it a death sentence with one quick conclusion that it must be brain cancer. Looking back, it seems silly to have thought such things. But there are other normalized thoughts that are just as silly, but because they’re normal, they get overlooked. In time, they become our reality. What you think...
#289: Doctor-Backed Tips To Reduce Headaches
March 01, 2023 10:00 - 43 minutes - 40.2 MBI’m a headache person, or at least I used to be. When I got too tired, fell out of my normal routine, or got close to the menstruation point in my cycle, I could almost guarantee a nagging headache would surface. Sometimes they were more of a nuisance than a day-altering issue. But other times, it left me stuck in bed with a full-on migraine. If you’re a headache person, I know the struggle. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Over the years of healing my body, adding energy, and chang...
#288: The Benefits of Reverse Dieting for a Healthy Metabolism
February 23, 2023 10:00 - 56 minutes - 52.2 MBTo diet or not to diet? That’s the million-dollar question that has flipped in the last decade. The number of people looking to diet or jumping into one has fallen drastically. Not because they don’t want health but because they’ve watched dieting fail time and time again. Yet, I’d have to argue most people still want to achieve health. The question is, how do you get it without jumping into another diet program? Reverse dieting could be the answer. But to understand reverse dieting, y...
#287: Tired? Here's How To Get More Energy
February 14, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 72 MBIf you're tired, you're not alone. Most of the population falls somewhere between exhausted and just going through the motions. Being tired seems to be the American way of life. But it's not supposed to be that way. Energy is something we all have. It's inside of us. The first law of thermodynamics proves this by stating; energy is neither created nor destroyed but only altered. You have what you need. Even if it feels like your energy is lacking, it's not. It's just being suppressed or ...
#286: The Connection Between Your Mind and Metabolic Health - Part 2
February 09, 2023 16:52 - 43 minutes - 40.3 MB“Just think more positively.” I heard that advice over one thousand times in my healing journey. It’s the mental health advice heard worldwide – just think better. But when I put it into practice, disciplined practice, I didn’t feel any more optimistic. In fact, I felt like I was falling further into a dark place, not just because of my thoughts but because what was supposed to work wasn’t. If it didn’t work, what was left? I know so many people who want to change. They need to change. ...
#285: The Connection Between Your Mind and Metabolic Health - Part 1
January 31, 2023 13:42 - 45 minutes - 42.1 MB“Just think more positively.” I heard that advice over one thousand times in my healing journey. It’s the mental health advice heard worldwide – just think better. But when I put it into practice, disciplined practice, I didn’t feel any more optimistic. In fact, I felt like I was falling further into a dark place, not just because of my thoughts but because what was supposed to work wasn’t. If it didn’t work, what was left? I know so many people who want to change. They need to change. ...
#284: Is Intermittent Fasting Bad For Your Metabolism?
January 24, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 56.5 MBFasting is one of the oldest recorded health practices. Arguably it has been around since the beginning of creation, first noted as a religious practice more than a health practice. But even most religious traditions have incredible health benefits. Like prayer, singing, connecting, and seeing beyond yourself. I’d love to dive into all these at some point, but today we will talk about intermittent fasting. There seems to be controversy popping up with intermittent fasting, questioning if i...
#283: A Health Update + How I'm Moving Forward
January 12, 2023 10:00 - 1 hour - 78.9 MBHealth hasn't been easy. Truthfully it's not for the majority of people. Yet, I can't help but think it shouldn't be this complicated. I've often been my own worst enemy. I seemed to be a master at creating a self-fulfilling prophecy surrounding my happiness and the health of my relationships. Yet, I couldn't imagine that was the case for something I had worked so hard for, given up so much for, and genuinely invested in my life. I couldn't imagine I was the one self-sabotaging my health. ...
#282: Interviewing An Enneagram Nine
December 12, 2022 22:05 - 46 minutes - 42.8 MBWant to get healthier as an enneagram nine? Let your enneagram number be your guide. Inside, I share the enneagram nine health tips that include an ultimate guide on how to get healthy based on your enneagram strengths and weaknesses. Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/enneagram9
#281: Enneagram Nine Health Tips
December 12, 2022 22:00 - 38 minutes - 35.8 MBWant to get healthier as an enneagram nine? Let your enneagram number be your guide. Inside, I share the enneagram nine health tips that include an ultimate guide on how to get healthy based on your enneagram strengths and weaknesses. Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/enneagram9
#280: Interviewing An Enneagram Eight
December 12, 2022 21:05 - 51 minutes - 47.6 MBWant to get healthier as an enneagram eight? Let your enneagram number be your guide. Inside, I share the enneagram eight health tips that include an ultimate guide on how to get healthy based on your enneagram strengths and weaknesses. Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/enneagram8
#279: Enneagram Eight Health Tips
December 12, 2022 21:00 - 30 minutes - 28.4 MBWant to get healthier as an enneagram eight? Let your enneagram number be your guide. Inside, I share the enneagram eight health tips that include an ultimate guide on how to get healthy based on your enneagram strengths and weaknesses. Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/enneagram8
#278: Interview with an Enneagram Seven
December 12, 2022 20:05 - 52 minutes - 48.3 MBWant to get healthier as an enneagram seven? Let your enneagram number be your guide. Inside, I share the enneagram seven health tips that include an ultimate guide on how to get healthy based on your enneagram strengths and weaknesses. Learn more: https://thelivingwell.com/enneagram7