Lisa Byrne is Leaving a Luscious Legacy

I started the Luscious Legacy Project just over two years ago to provide moms with a resource, a beacon of light when the kitchen feels a little daunting and they are leaving anything but a luscious legacy.

I wanted to give women an opportunity to read about real moms with the same challenges. Moms who are doing their best to nurture and nourish their children in the midst of a busy and productive life.  Lisa is one of those moms. Lisa Grace Byrne is a mother to three and founder of WellGroundedLife.com, an exceptional online community where she equips busy moms to live vibrant lives. She is also a speaker, author, coach and teacher. I asked Lisa to share her experiences both in the kitchen and as a mom nurturing both herself and her family.

Lisa, can you tell us a little bit about your food history? Where did your nourishment story begin?

It’s one of my priorities to help my kids have a
simple, clean relationship to food rather than
try and teach them to eat “perfectly.”
~Lisa Byrne

For most of my childhood, food was functional for me. I never associated it with negative experiences, but I also never associated it with warmth or gathering or connection…or even delight. Until adolescence when I learned that I could use food as a way to feel in control of my life (particularly when my parents were going through a divorce). I struggled with anorexia and bulimia for a number of years.

But in terms of food and my nourishment story, that began in early motherhood as I worked through, and out of, postpartum depression. It was in that passageway that I began to more deeply and intuitively understand the possibility of food as a tool of true nurture and nourishment.

What was your most powerful insight around feeding your children during those early years?

When my children were old enough to eat solid foods, I began to feed my children homemade, organic, freshly prepared, healthy foods while I grabbed my next cup of coffee and buttered roll from Quick Chek.

It was one of the first ways I started seeing how disconnected I was in the grand equation of care that I was establishing in my home. I would spend hours making sure healthy foods were part of my family’s diet, while I opted for the crap.

As I began to move myself back under my own umbrella of care, food was one of my first entryways back. It was a way for me to physically represent to myself that I mattered, that my needs were important, that I was important enough to be taken well cared of.

Some days all I did was have a warm cup of water and lemon with me all day, slowly sipping it, but it was a signal early on that I needed gentle nurturing back to wholeness even as I was caring for and raising my little ones, that sacred dance all mothers need to find in their lives if they are going to stay well over the long haul.

What was/is your biggest struggle with food as a mom?

Not to use it as an outlet for reward, or at least not mindlessly use it as a reward. So often the days were just so long and demanding I found myself reaching for foods that felt like a reward for all the hard work I was doing. And the truth is, when I am doing this consciously, it can be a beautiful reward. I can light a candle, I can lovingly plate my favorite meal or dessert, I can take in the goodness and delight of food and feel cared for.

But what I was doing was opting for some artificial flavored dairy creamer in my coffee and calling it a treat. I was reaching for quick “escapes” via sugar that kept me feeling sluggish and stuck. That was an area I had to do a lot of healing around.

I work with a lot of women who end up feeling pretty lonely and frustrated in the kitchen. How did you cope with these feelings?

Well, for me it wasn’t so much lonely, but definitely frustrated because all of a sudden it felt like I was always in the kitchen. I was always making a meal. Dinner came every-single-day and once a sense of choice got removed (whether I wanted to cook or not), I started dreading it.

I think to deal with it, I went through a lot of iterations. At first, when they were very young, I would continue to cook healthy, freshly prepared meals for them, but I’d shift into crappy convenience food just as an outlet, I think, masking as ease.

Then, I’d ping pong the other way and start trying to cook meals that my husband and I enjoyed pre-kids just to have a sense of normalcy again but I found myself becoming a short order cook because the kids didn’t want those meals.

I’ve gone from eating out a lot to fine-tuning a ‘meal plan and prep schedule’ that kept a flow to the week without spending so much time in the kitchen.

Really, dealing with meals is similar to how I deal with keeping myself well…I try to key into what I really need (a break, more variation, less time in the kitchen) and shift accordingly in a way that truly serves me and the family.

In your book, Replenish, you talk about how food can becomes a weapon in our lives. How did that play out in your kitchen?

It’s really important to me to support myself and other women in ways to stay vital and well that don’t become obsessive. It’s equally important for me to keep that as a consistent message to my kids as they grow and need to learn the tools to keep themselves well and healthy.

It’s one of my priorities to help my kids have a simple, clean relationship to food rather than try and teach them to eat “perfectly.” So, we embrace a wide range of foods. We keep to simple rules like we need to feed our body healthy foods before we have treats because then our healthy bodies can handle the treats without making us sick. It means allowing my children to have a good amount of choice in the foods they eat. It means not punishing with food or around food.

It also means allowing their interests to help me think outside the box. For example, I started to notice that the kids were so much more receptive to the idea of a snack than a meal. So I started “snack plates” for dinner some nights. On a plate I cut up some cheese, add cut veggies and fruit, maybe some dip, a handful of nuts…stuff we happen to have around and call that dinner. In truth it is just as nutritious (maybe more?) than a typical dinner but it felt fun and light and good to the kids. When I find a lot of tension around food, I shift. It’s not worth it to create power struggles with food; they’ll just learn to recreate those power struggles internally in their own life later on.

If you could leave my readers with a few pieces of wisdom from your personal journey or the collective wisdom you gathered in your book, what would it be?

1. Your body and mind were designed for wellness. The fastest way to experience that wellness is to understand your design and then start working with yourself instead of against it.

2. Perfection keeps you small and hidden. Strive for your personal best. Give yourself permission to shine a little brighter each day.

3. What doesn’t bend, breaks. Stress keeps you tight, tense and rigid. Not only in your body but in your mood, in your choices, in your thoughts and in your relationships. When you can consistently calm yourself from within you begin to feel a sense of space, flexibility and fluidity…and that is when real transformation starts to take hold.

Do you have a favorite chocolate recipe you’d like to share with us?

In truth, my favorite way to eat chocolate doesn’t require a recipe.

I love dipping high quality dark chocolate into a small bowl of freshly ground peanut butter. It doesn’t take much of this combo before I am thoroughly satisfied and it comes together quickly, a pretty crucial requirement for me to really feel like it’s an indulgence.

But here is a recipe I do love to make when I’m hosting a special dinner or bringing the dessert to a gathering. It always gets rave reviews.

Chewy Surprise Brownies

Ingredients

1½ cups carob chips or semisweet dark chocolate chips
2 cups garbanzo beans, drained & rinsed
4 eggs
1 cup sugar or 3/4 cup brown rice syrup
½ teaspoon baking powder

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a small bowl, melt chips in double boiler or microwave for 2 minutes.
3. In a blender or food processor, combine beans and eggs.
4. Add sugar, baking powder, and chocolate, processing until smooth.
5. Pour batter into a 9″ or 8 x 8″ greased pan and bake for 45 minutes or until inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Lisa Grace Byrne is a mother to three and founder of WellGroundedLife.com, an exceptional online community where she equips busy moms to live vibrant lives.  She is also a speaker, coach and teacher with a degree from Cal Poly State University in Biochemistry with an emphasis in Nutrition and Metabolism. She holds a Masters in Public Health from Boston University and is a Certified Holistic Health Counselor through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and Columbia University.

Lisa’s debut book is now available. Learn more about Replenish: Experience Radiant Calm and True Vitality in Your Everyday Life HERE.