Bari Tessler Linden is Leaving a Luscious Legacy

I was disconnected from the most basic sense of knowing when I was truly hungry and when I was truly full. ~Bari Tessler Linden

Bari Tessler Linden is a financial therapist, coach, and mommypreneur. Founder of the Conscious Bookkeeping Method, Bari teaches people how to build their own bridges between money, body, mind and spirit. Along the way, they eat chocolate. Needless to say, I fell in love with Bari when she told me her son, Noah, called himself a chocolate expert at age three. But even more than her extraordinary skills at guiding people gently and consciously to greater clarity and power around money, I was drawn to Bari because she is a living example of what it means to savor the art of motherhood as she explores her passions and grows her business. Bari is leaving a luscious legacy in more ways than one.

We all have a story. Can you tell us a little bit about your food history? Where did your love of food (& chocolate) begin?

I think my love of food and chocolate began at birth, but like most of my peers, I grew up on a steady fare of the SAD—the Standard American Diet with lots of processed food and sugar. I remember eating Entenmann’s donuts for breakfast, which started my love affair with chocolate! I did not grow up learning how to cook from my mom. She was much more interested in our playroom, dress up clothes, and supporting all of our interests like sports and dance classes (which she was great at).

As a teenager, I began to get stomach aches, and they continued into college. I loved food, but I still didn’t understand what or even how to eat. I was disconnected from the most basic sense of knowing when I was truly hungry and when I was truly full. At one point, I basically tried not to eat for a year, but mostly I tended towards overeating. My weight fluctuated a lot, taking my self-esteem on a roller coaster along with it. My stomach aches, on the other hand, were consistent.

Gratefully, I went to live in Israel for a year right after college, and I came across two essential resources that greatly improved my life.

The first resource was Dance-Movement Therapy. At first  I thought I made up the field! ha. I realized right away that this was going to be my career or at least the next step in my life’s work.  And, I was quickly introduced to a contemplative practice called Authentic Movement. It taught me how to listen to my body and get in touch with my sensations, my impulses, and the choices that were right for me. It was a revelation to be able to clearly sense my hunger, to really enjoy my food, and then to feel that I was full.

The second was a whole-food/macro-biotic diet. This was a radically different way of eating. I remember thinking “I am not supposed to eat white foods—no white rice or white flour. How odd!” But I gave it a try, and my stomach aches went away!

For the past twenty years I’ve experimented with a lot of different diets—vegetarian, blood type, paleolithic, and others. I do best on paleolithic diet, but I’m not rigid about it. Oh, and I eat chocolate just about every day!

What was your “food life” like before and then after the birth of your son?

My husband and I are both entrepreneurs who pour our time and energy into our businesses. We like simple and healthy meals that are quick and easy to make. Before the birth of our son, I used to cook four or five simple dinner meals per week for us. A few staples were:

Salmon, kale, and quinoa.
Buffalo patties, green salad, and sweet potato.
Quinoa spaghetti with broccoli, olive oil, garlic, and sea salt.
And, I could be found often at the Whole Foods sushi bar or a nice Bistro restaurant.

After the birth of Noah, I was in the kitchen much less at first. As he’s gotten a bit older, I often find myself in the kitchen even more than before he was born.  Not always cooking but certainly preparing our meals. Good food is just so important for my family’s health and well-being.

I recently took a local nutrition class that steered me towards more nutrient-dense foods like greens and steeping my own nettles tea.  This has been very helpful as I am still getting my full strength and health back and now I have even more jobs (like getting my son fed in a healthy way).

I do see a time in the future when I can take in-depth cooking classes to increase my comfort and creativity in the kitchen and also help me get Noah more involved in the kitchen. It is clearly a work in progress!

What is/was your biggest struggle once you became a mom?

My biggest struggle as a mom has been the lack of sleep. I have always been a great sleeper and have seemed to require a lot of sleep. I am just starting to get some good sleep again, and my son just turned three. So, the sleep really affected my desire for exercise and ability to lose the pregnancy weight. But with more sleep my exercise has increased, and I am feeling strong and relatively vibrant again.

I work with a lot of women who want very much to nourish their families but they confess that they are actually feeling pretty lonely in the kitchen. Does that happen to you and how do you cope with that? Does your husband participate in the shopping or food prep?

I am the only one preparing and cooking in the kitchen these days. Although, my husband helps with the grocery shopping and with the cleaning, (plus all his contribution in other areas of the house and in our collaborative business ventures). And, he’s also gotten into the lovely habit of sweeping and mopping the floor every evening before bed so I can wake up to a clean kitchen. Ahhh, that’s nice!

What are some of your favorite go-to meals and how do you organize your meal planning?

I am not a planner at all when it comes to our meals. I am a planner in other areas but not here. It is a spontaneous endeavor for now.
Favorite go-to meals:
1. sushi
2. sprouted bagel with salmon, tomato, and onion
3. lamb stew with peas and rice
4. homemade burritos: rice, black beans, goat cheese, zucchini, salsa
5. baked chicken and kale
6. quinoa spaghetti with broccoli, olive oil, and himalayan salt
7. sprouted bread with sliced turkey, avocado, cucumber, and nori sheets
mixed green salads with carrots, beets, tomatoes, avocado
9. grass-fed burger patty, sweet potato and broccoli

Snacks:
1. hummus, almond or rice crackers, and avocado
2. goat cheese and almonds
3. goat yogurt and berries
4. hard boiled eggs
5. Organic Dark chocolate

What do you do when Noah doesn’t like what you’ve prepared?

Well, Noah just turned three. So, I feel we are still figuring out how to get him nourished in the best way while still learning about what he likes to eat. One day he loves olives, salmon, quinoa and avocado (And, I am in heaven and feel like I have rocked my job as a mommy) and the next day he won’t touch any of it. We continue to introduce new foods to him by giving him a few small portions and different options on his plate. It’s still a learning process for us.

I love the way you’ve combined a Master of Arts in Psychology with your bookkeeping and money management skills to create a conscious business model where you help people change their relationship to money so that they can work with their finances in a way that honors their values. People often tell me they can’t “afford” to eat well. How would you (do you) address that struggle?

It’s all about priorities and values. If you can make this a priority and a value then you can figure out how to afford to eat well no matter where you are at financially. And, I know we all go through different life and financial stages and phases. So we are constantly needing to re-evaluate what stage we are in (new motherhood, new marriage, newly separated, starting a brand new business, or at a ripe-seasoned phase of your business) and how this affects our finances and what needs to be adjusted.

For example, maybe you forgo all organic for a period of time and do 1/2 organic when money is tight. I’ve played around with that… sometimes all organic, sometimes some or none but still eating well throughout the different phases. And cooking at home certainly can reduce spending in this category. Also, planning better (unlike how I am doing it right now) can certainly help reduce costs. Finding a less expensive grocery store or farmer’s market can assist, too. In my town, shopping at Vitamin Cottage, which is all organic, costs significantly less than at Whole Foods. If you have Trader Joe’s in your neighborhood, that could be a similar option.

It’s interesting for me to note that my desire to want to eat all organic when I was in my twenties was one of the main drives in my life. It motivated me to leave my counseling job (due to the low pay) and figure out a way to earn more money with my work in the world. It was a significant catalyst that led the way for my Conscious Bookkeeping Method.

And, of course, I love it that you allow yourself therapeutic doses of chocolate each day. I work with a lot of women who create rigid rules around food consumption. For example, they attach themselves to the label “sugar addict” and then they vow to, never again, let a crystal of sugar pass their lips. What insights/advice do you have for these women?

We each need to find our way here, and most of us go through different phases over a lifetime. I typically do not like to be too rigid about anything. It does not work with my personality. Yet there was a time in my life when I did eliminate all grains for a few years. It was a conscious choice because I was having stomach aches again and wondering if grains were contributing. Plus, my husband had been reading all about paleolithic diets and decided he was going for it. I was resistant at first, but knew that I needed to either join him or be mad at him for months!

Eliminating grains did eliminate my stomach aches, and now years later I can comfortably dabble again with quinoa and white rice, both of which I really enjoy (Note: I ate so much brown rice as a vegetarian in my twenties that I now can’t stand it!)

So, I do want to honor that there may be a time and place for being more all-or-nothing with our diets. Although, for the long term, that simply wouldn’t work for me. I’m grateful that I can eat only one rice flour chocolate chip cookie or part of a cupcake and not feel the urge to eat the entire box. I like to enjoy food, experiment with different tastes, try to find a balance, and follow my desire and intuition for well-balanced healthy eating and exercise.

And how do you approach the “sugar issue” with your son? (I love it that he calls himself a chocolate expert!)

Well, since his mommy is a chocolate expert I was not surprised when my son (close to his 3rd birthday) revealed to me he was a chocolate expert. It was a pretty hilarious moment, since I had never heard him use the word expert before, nor do I recall ever calling myself a chocolate expert, which is a fact.

So, we TRY to have him eat a good meal first, and then he can often have a treat afterwards. Treats are miniature coconut ice cream sandwiches, little bites of organic chocolate, or fruit sweetened gummy bears. Noah likes his treats!

“Treats” following a good meal is fine in our household and even sometimes we do the treat first before the meal and he eats a bigger meal following the treat. Or it really is a journey and we naturally gravitate towards a middle road on the parenting path. But we really try not to give him regular processed sugar because the few times we have it clearly leads to him having a big (and loud!) meltdown when we do.

Can you tell us a little bit about the work you do as a mommypreneur. I know that many of my readers would be interested in both your story—how you were able to create a business that gives you an opportunity to spend lots of time with your son and your husband, and your Conscious Bookkeeping Home Study Course, which I think is absolutely brilliant!

After getting a Masters in Somatic Psychology in my twenties and realizing that the missing piece in my education was anything and everything to do with money and finances,  I decided to learn as much as I could about money (practically, psychologically and spiritually).

I’ve been running my Financial Therapy and Coaching business for over a decade. For the first five years, I grew the business locally. During the next two years, I combined local services plus online adventures. In the most recent chapter of the past three+ years, I’ve worked almost exclusively online. I started as a one-woman show, then collaborated with and supervised a team of consultants under my umbrella, (Quicken & Quickbooks trainers and Financial Coaches who help with planning and taxes) and have now transitioned back to a one-woman mommypreneur show with a new team close by  my side, which includes a copywriter, editor, and virtual assistant.

The benefit to being an older mom is that I was able to grow my business for seven years before I got pregnant with my son. The benefit to being a younger mom is that you can have more kids! So, I was able to create a successful foundation, including navigating tons of challenges, which then helped me relatively quickly revamp my business model when Noah arrived. I did my best to figure out how to work only 10 hours per week online/by phone offering my favorite and most lucrative services for the first few years of my son’s life. I basically committed to not leaving my house for work for the first three years so I could parent in the ideal way for us. My husband also works from home. I am very grateful for this.

I knew I needed to simplify my business model but also get savvier about it. I was searching for the key to being a mommypreneur-extraordinaire. So, I let go of my team and overhead expenses and went back to a one-woman show, which has been really lovely for the last few years. I revamped all of my services so that I could offer my private Financial Therapy by phone and offer my Conscious Bookkeeping Method: Tools for Financial Transformation courses via telecourse. I’ve been able to continue to grow my business nationally and now internationally.

My recent Big Step was taking my decade-old Conscious Bookkeeping Method curriculum that I had been teaching in live classes, teleclassess, and private sessions and finally create an online home study program version that was launched this year.

Now that my son just turned three, my business is in expansion mode. I am starting to give live presentations again. Once again, I have a team working with me. I have a virtual assistant, a copywriter, an editor, and my amazing husband (who brings his tech wizardry and marketing vision).

We recently launched a new Wake Up With Mint Course, a multi-media training course for the fabulous and simple online bookkeeping system, Mint. This course also includes our Money Practice Guide. My husband, Forest, and I collaborated on this which is just thrilling for me. (I have secretly and not so secretly wanted him to join my business adventures for a while… and hope to do more with him)

And, we also have an upcoming Free Video Course: Tools For Financial Transformation, launching on October 4th, which I am sooo excited about.  I have lovingly crafted a 4-part video series that presents my comprehensive Conscious Bookkeeping vision in lively, bite-sized morsels of transformative genius.  If you’re ready for a jump start into a more conscious and fulfilling relationship with money, (and we all can use some more love and support in this area) you won’t want to miss it!

I invite all of you to hop on over and get your free ticket.

Do you have a favorite food or recipe that I can include in my Conscious Bites Newsletter and on the Chocolate for Breakfast website?

Gluten-Free Chocolate Zucchini Bread
adapted from MyMansBelly.com

Ingredients
2 cups shredded zucchini
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup coconut oil
1/4 cup canned pumpkin
1 cup organic cane sugar
6 – 8 tablespoons plain yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cups chocolate chips (Ghirardelli chips are gluten-free.)
1 1/2 teaspoon espresso powder

Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.
Add all dry ingredients to one bowl and stir, with a fork, for 3 minutes to evenly mix all of the dry ingredients.
Add all wet ingredients (including zucchini) into another bowl. Stir to thoroughly combine the ingredients.
Once everything in the wet bowl is mixed, begin to fold the dry ingredients in with the wet.
Continue to fold ingredients until well combined.
Lightly oil or butter 4 small loaf pans or one 8″ loaf pan.
Pour the batter into the loaf pan(s) and smooth the top of the batter.
Bake for 50 – 60 minutes or until a toothpick, inserted in the middle of the loaf(s) comes out clean.
Let cool.
Remove from pan, slice and serve.