One day last year around this time, I got home from walking my dog, Sadie. The trees had just started to bud, so there were hints of green and purple throughout Riverside Park. The sun was out, and I'd only needed a light jacket. It was starting to look and feel so beautiful outside, and yet, I realized as I stood in my kitchen, wondering what to make for dinner – I felt awful.

Heavy, dragging, like I was carrying fifty extra pounds. Closed-in, cramped. I felt like winter, and I wanted to feel like spring. That's how I knew it was time for a detox.

I usually do a detox once or twice a year, and always in the springtime, for precisely that reason: I need to shed that heavy winter feeling. I want to blossom, open up, to spring into a place of lightness and freedom and movement.

Recently a friend asked me what detoxes did for you. "Are they really useful?" she said doubtfully.

Her question made me think. Here's what I told her:

• Detoxes make you feel lighter. This is true...

Last week, I heard from "Gina," an old client I'd lost touch with years ago. Gina wanted to meet for coffee, and so we met at a vegan café on the Upper West Side.

"I wanted to thank you in person," she said as we sat down.

"For what?" I asked. I'd only coached her for one session before she moved, so I didn't know if I'd had a real effect on her.

"It was you who first encouraged me to start exercising," she said, "and that has changed my life – my work, my mind, my emotions. Everything."

Then she told me her story.

When we'd first met, Gina was struggling. She loved her work as a research professor, but she felt she was missing out on pretty much everything else: friends, family, romance, her mental and physical health. Lately, she'd been feeling tired and foggy, and was having a hard time focusing.

I know what it's like to not be able to focus! When she told me that, back in our first coaching session, my first question was this: "Are you exercising?"

"Ha!" she had...

What if I told you that what's causing your slump might be in the food you eat?

No, this isn't some conspiracy theory. What we eat has a real impact on our gut health, our brains, on every single aspect of our bodies – which includes how we think and feel.

I saw this clearly a few years ago when my friend "Tara" called me, sounding desperate.

"I don’t know what to do," she said, sounding close to tears. "I feel exhausted all the time. The littlest things make me break down crying. I can barely function at work…I need help. Something's wrong."

Tara had a history of ups and downs, and had tried various treatments. But something still wasn't working. We talked, and our conversation turned to food.

"How are you eating?" I asked. "What's your diet like?" I wondered if something in her diet might be exacerbating her current state.

"Not great," she said. "I know I should be eating better, but I'm so tired I can barely cook, so I just eat junk food most of the time....

This is Part 1 in a series about Identity and how it affects our decisions. Stay tuned for more!

Last year, a woman named Andrea came to me for health coaching. She wanted to lose weight, so she expected that we’d spend most of our time talking about diet and exercise. But she soon learned health coaching tends to involve your whole life, not just your body.

At our first session, Andrea was shy. She felt self-conscious, and she didn’t have much faith that she could change her eating habits, since she’d tried before and failed.

“I just can’t bring myself to eat salads all the time,” she said. “I know they’re good for me, but, I don’t know. That’s not who I am.”

That’s not who I am.

“Well, who are you?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I love to bake. I have a serious sweet tooth,” she said. “And I’m Italian, so I grew up eating pasta and bread. And I love visiting my family and having a...

A few weeks ago, my family took a trip down to Houston to visit my husband’s dad and stepmom. While we were there, we saw our friends Edward and Istra. They’re one of those couples who create this amazing synergy in their pursuits – which, in their case, is doing (or rather conquering) triathlons.

Edward got into them first, and he actually went professional for a while. His wife Istra started doing them soon after, and now, she’s just finished her third Ironman.

If you know me, you know that nothing fascinates me more than people performing at their best. Overcoming challenges, digging deep into their mental and physical resources to accomplish amazing things. Having a done a few sprint triathlons myself, I can appreciate how much stamina, dedication, and strength it takes.

The other day, at Whole Foods buying groceries for dinner, I passed by a display of chocolate bars. “Maybe I’ll bring one home for Kaya and Ty,” I thought, and began inspecting the labels. I decided on my favorite – dark chocolate with sea salt (yum!).

By the end of the week, the chocolate had disappeared– but they’d never touched it. I don’t know if they even knew about it. Piece by piece, it had been my little treat.

This wasn’t the first time that had happened. But recently it dawned on me how ridiculous it is, that I have this rule: I don’t buy chocolate for myself. I can buy it for my kids, though – even if they don’t get any of it.

It makes no sense, and yet it’s dictated my shopping choices for years!

We all have our own “rules.” They dictate our behavior. They reflect our beliefs. And they help – or hurt – our goals. Sometimes, like my chocolate rules, they’re unconscious...

Last week, I had the privilege of bringing Moticise to a big event here in New York. We did the Mindset Reset workout, and it went great – one of those events where you could really feel the energy in the room, especially when they got to their feet, shouted their goals out, and did some boxing affirmations (that’s my favorite part).

After the workout, one woman came up to talk to me.

“I know what I want, and what I need to do to get it,” she said, “but…” And she gave me a laundry list of reasons it wouldn’t work. “I know those are limiting beliefs,” she went on, “but I don’t have a clue how to get rid of them. How do you change your beliefs?”

Naturally, I knew exactly how she felt. Who hasn’t been there before?

Changing your beliefs is a huge part of finding success and being fulfilled. That’s why I spend so much time learning and teaching new ways to do it. I’m...

This week, my good friend Karen Jacobsen, the GPS Girl, came to hang out in the Moticise studio. We had a great Twitter chat and Periscope video (you can catch it here) on her signature topic – recalculating.

“No matter where you are in life, it’s never too late to recalculate,” she said. “The first step is to notice when you’re off course.”

That got me thinking about times in my life when I’ve had to adjust my course. Most recently, it happened around food. Recalculating – realizing I needed to make a change – liberated me from a lot of self-induced stress.

I’ve long been an aspiring vegan, and in the past few years, I’d come to dread dinnertime. Trying to cook healthy, plant-based meals that everyone would like, every single night? It just reminded me how much I was failing both myself and my kids. I wanted wholesome, plant-based, delicious, fun, together time.

But in reality, it was more...