Christina is the special guest chef and recipe provider in our Nourish Yourself coaching program that runs only once a year. We recently put out an AMA on Instagram asking what questions and anxieties are particularly present for you in this precarious post holiday moment when the New Year, arrives along with RESOLUTIONS SELF CARE and of course DIETS.

We got so many wonderful questions, from what is ‘balanced eating’ and how do I get there, to how to handle other peoples' body/diet talk. Today, we discuss your questions and provide (hopefully) some answers.

We will be doing a part 2 early next month (when maybe a few dry-January/Whole 30 plans haven’t shaken out as hoped). Feel free to comment with more questions to be answered in that episode!

These are also the questions that are addressed in Nourish Yourself, our seven-week anti-diet coaching program that aims to equip you with the information you need to empower yourself around food and gain the confidence to make choices that work for YOUR life and YOUR body.

Our winter 2025 course starts in March and enrollment opens in February—you can sign up for the waitlist here to be notified.

During Nourish Yourself you get 7 Weeks of gentle focus, redefining the patterns and thought processes holding us back from ease and joy around food, cooking and even grocery shopping! The course also features Live Virtual one-to-one sessions with Cadence and a LIVE VIRTUAL GROUP COOKING CLASS with Christina Chaey to ground us in our own personal skills and goals.

Let go of anxiety and overwhelm around food and 'diet'. Get the information and tools you need to find what works for you, your life and your body. FULL INFO HERE.

I’ve also written about food and nourishment in these posts:

Literally Everyone Else Lives on Carbs

Guacamole Fulfillment

and 7 Decades of Self Denial

Curious about working with me? Please check out my other offerings…

Virtual Run Club enrollment is currently open and closes Jan 10th. Each series we start with a group coach call. 9 out of 10 participants begin by saying how much they hate running or are terrified to start. It’s a truly beginner friendly program. Many VRC alums have gone on to create non-obsessive, joyful running practices, and even inspired our next level up Virtual Marathon Training Club.

I also teach beginner strength and stability via Kettlebells and Pilates as well as several restorative classes and workshops including Anti-Anxiety Cardio and Fascia Release™ .

All my programs are designed to gently shift our bodies into balance without the shame or ‘sweat is fat crying’ mentality that infects so much of mainstream fitness. I hope you can find something here that supports you.

You can also find plenty of free support on my IG HERE

Transcript

Cadence: Hello, I’m Cadence Dubus. This is Busy Body podcast and today I'm here with Christina Chaey. I'm super excited to kind of co-host this conversation today with Christina because we are collaborating on the Nourish Yourself program which is rolling out this winter/spring to support everyone. Christina, introduce yourself and why you're here today.

Christina: Oh, sure. Hi, I'm Christina Chaey. I use she/her pronouns, and I am a recipe developer, a writer, soon-to-be first-time cookbook author. I have my first cookbook coming out in early 2026. I write a newsletter on Substack called Gentle Foods where I write essays and contribute recipes really around a very aligned topic of you know kind of nourishing yourself and just meditations on I think finding peace with cooking and just finding ritual and practice in that process.

Cadence: That's exactly one of the reasons why I reached out to you to do this program together, because your focus is very much in this space of accessible eating that's still delicious, exciting, interesting, not rote, you know. And also makes space for mistakes or jazzing up something from your pantry, like there's a lot of options. It feels very scalable. I really like cooking and I like eating, but looking at your recipes, I'm like, oh, I could literally take it to this next level. Or I can imagine someone who really is like, I've never really cooked something more complicated than like stir-fry. You also have options and you're very like clear about that in your Substack, like try this breakfast thing it's like three ingredients and I've been eating it all week and I feel like somebody who's like kind of looking at you aspirationally would be like okay, maybe I can try that, you know, and then you know see your photos from like the big holiday meals and stuff that you make that are really like, okay, I can see why she worked at Bon Appétit. And understand that there's a scale to go to, but it doesn't feel at all like, oh my god, I could never and I just follow her to be wowed all the time.

So I wanted to bring that in because I really felt and feel like food appreciation and kind of food awareness, food knowledge is such an important aspect of developing peace around food. And knowledge in general, that's such a part of my brand, like how your body works, understanding why things happen, understanding what pain is, understanding what cellulite is, like understanding these things so that they aren't haunting us or kind of like hanging over us in some way. So that's a really important aspect of the program is that you really bring this like, you can do it, here's just ways to make hummus not be the most boring thing for you.

Or, like, we literally do a live cooking class with you, which, you know, I think everyone experiences, like, oh, I'm doing it. It's happening. Like, I just made a meal that's going to last me several days, and it wasn't the scariest thing I ever did.

Christina: Right, totally.

Cadence: So we did an AMA that you beautifully articulated on your [Instagram] stories. We wanted to answer some questions today that are very much in line with what we talk about in the course. And the people that ask those questions, those are our peeps. These are who we hope are going to join.

Christina: Yeah.

Cadence: Talk us through what you put out there.

Christina: Yeah. And thank you for that lovely introduction. You know, Nourish is something where I feel like I never took that course with you when you were running it, I think maybe a year before we started working on it together, but I wanted to. I was very intrigued by it. And even as someone who works in this industry, who has worked in food and worked in food media and restaurants and whatever for the last decade-plus of my life, it's just funny because I'll read a description of the Nourish course on your website and I’ll be like, I need that! And all to say the things that we're talking about today, the questions that we're examining and hopefully trying to shed some light on, one: I feel like I want to emphasize to people like these are not the right answers. We're not coming with right answers. We're not coming with like definitive science or whatever. Like that's not what I do. I feel like what I try to do is examine sort of like the emotional and the stuff that we kind of hold on to that's like behind the questions. Like, okay, what are the things that we're really feeling that are driving some of these anxieties and fears and guilt? And how do we look at these things with a bit more compassion? And I feel like that's something that you share as well.

Cadence: Another way to say we're not giving the right answers is that really the way that I teach and coach people is what is called in the industry “client-led,” meaning my role is to be like a shepherd, a guide. I really believe people have the answers in them. I think we are all beautiful, sentient beings and really we kind of know. We're like plants growing towards the light. We kind of know where we want to be.

Often we don't have the resources which could literally be knowledge, straight knowledge. So that's literally what's in our course. Like the three workshops that people get, one is just like, what are carbohydrates, protein, fat? What are they doing? How do we digest them? Did you ever sit down and really look those up and