The Buena Vida Podcast

Tabbetha Lopez, Ph.D.: Nutrition Without Restriction & Building a Lifetime of Balance

• Lacy Wolff • Season 4 • Episode 4

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In this episode of the Buena Vida Podcast, we’re joined by Dr. Tabbetha Lopez—a registered dietitian, licensed dietician, who holds a Ph.D. in Kinesiology and is a former collegiate athlete—for an inspiring and practical conversation about nutrition, movement, and well-being. Dr. Lopez shares her personal journey and professional insights into how we can shift from a restrictive mindset around food to one that’s rooted in balance, joy, and sustainability.

Together, we explore:

  • How to ditch diet culture and embrace a more balanced mindset around food
  • Practical, science-backed strategies to eat more fruits and vegetables
  • The psychology of emotional eating and how to navigate it
  • Why food is more than fuel—and how to cultivate a positive relationship with it
  • What it really means to live a “good life” when it comes to health

Whether you’re just starting your wellness journey or looking to reset your relationship with food, this episode is full of empowering takeaways and real-life strategies.

Resources Discussed:

Dr. Lopez:

It's really about consistency, so that 80-20 rule I use a lot. If we can choose healthy foods 80% of the time, then that 20% is kind of a wash.

Lacy Wolff:

Hi everyone and welcome to the Buena Vida podcast, where we explore what it means to live a good life through health, well-being and balanced choices. I'm your host, lacey Wolfe, and today I am honored to be joined by Dr Tabitha Lopez, who is a powerhouse in the world of health and nutrition. Dr Lopez holds a PhD in kinesiology and she is also a registered and licensed dietitian with a deep passion for helping people build sustainable, healthy habits. Her career has spanned clinical, outpatient and bariatric nutrition, giving her a unique perspective on the challenges people face when it comes to food and well-being. Her journey goes beyond just nutrition. Dr Lopez herself was a collegiate athlete. She was a dancer at the University of Houston all throughout college and she also was a Houston Texans cheerleader. Her background in movement and performance gives her a holistic and interesting view of health, and I think she does a really great job of connecting the dots between nutrition, fitness and overall well-being.

Lacy Wolff:

In our episode today, we're going to dive into practical, science-backed nutrition strategies and how to develop a healthier relationship with food. We'll talk about shifting from restrictive dieting to a balanced mindset. Dr Lopez will also share strategies for integrating more fruits and vegetables into our diet and why that's important, and her thoughts on emotional eating and how she actually works with patients to manage emotional eating challenges. We will, of course, wrap up with our Buena Vida question what does living a good life mean? And she has some really great insight into what living a good life is. I think so if you've ever felt overwhelmed by nutrition advice or you've struggled to find a realistic approach to healthy living, this is a great conversation, so let's dive in. Here we go. Good morning, dr Lopez, and thank you so much for being a guest on the Buena Vida podcast. I am so happy to have you. I think nutrition is one of the most confusing and controversial issues when it comes to health, so thank you for being with us.

Dr. Lopez:

Thank you so much for having me Lacy. I look forward to this conversation.

Lacy Wolff:

Yeah, I'm really hoping you can help kind of clear some things up for folks and that we can get into some strategies and things that can really help improve health, just simple things that we can all do to improve our health through good nutrition. So let's get started. Tell us a little bit about yourself. You have a very interesting background. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about you? Where did you come from and how did you get into the world of dietetics?

Dr. Lopez:

So currently I'm an assistant professor at Sam Houston State in the College of Health Sciences. I am the director of the graduate program in dietetics, which means I am training the future dietitians that we're putting out into the workforce, and so we get to do a lot of activities with them community outreach things like that to kind of give back and provide that nutrition education into the community.

Lacy Wolff:

Yeah, and I was so grateful for the opportunity when I met you. It's because of the work you're doing to support the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, who is also in Huntsville, which I mean it's just amazing work that y'all are doing there and so wonderful that you have these grad students that are fired up and passionate about supporting their community. So I love that. Yeah, so you worked in clinical, outpatient and bariatric settings. You talked about how you worked a lot. You have a focus in obesity and disordered eating. What are some of the biggest challenges that people face that you've seen from that work?

Dr. Lopez:

That's tough and maybe I maybe I should go back and tell you a little bit more about how I became a dietitian, because I think that influences my trajectory as a dietitian. So I actually did not even know you could be a dietitian. I didn't know that that was even such a thing. I actually was a college athlete. I danced for the University of Houston for four years and then I decided to pursue cheering for the Houston Texans and during that process is actually when I was working with a personal trainer and I was working with a dietitian and found out that you could be a dietitian and so was very interested in both, decided to go back to school to do both. So I got all my personal training certificates while I was going to school to get my nutrition degree worked as a personal trainer, was a level two Pilates instructor of every certification you can imagine, worked up as the lead educator for Lifetime Fitness. So I was training all of the trainers for Lifetime Fitness and then during this whole process realized well, maybe you know, I should just be a nutritionist, maybe I don't have to be a dietician, but as I'm working with all these people, I realized that I could not help half of my patients, half of my clients as a personal trainer, with nutrition, because they all had disease states. And that's what really is significant about a dietitian is that we use medical nutrition therapy to treat disease states with food. And so, just as a plain nutritionist, I couldn't help half of my clients that I was training with food, and so that was really my motivation to kind of go back and be a dietician. Of these disorder eating behaviors from healthy individuals to my overweight and obese clients, like kind of the whole spectrum, even kids that I had worked with. So that kind of like directed my path when I later became a dietitian. So, yes, I worked in the clinical setting. Clinical, you really get to see a little bit of everything. I think my outpatient setting has provided me with the most experience dealing with individuals and their individual issues relating to food, and so we do see, you know, misinformation is huge. People are bombarded with the internet and all this nutrition advice that's out there.

Dr. Lopez:

Sustainability and what I mean by that is like sustaining long term change will come to me lots of patients and be like okay, well, I did this, I did this for a couple of months and it worked really well and I was achieving my goals, okay, great, like why did we stop Right? And like identifying those barriers and trying to work around those barriers that prevent that sustainability of change. Emotionally it's probably another really big one. I think a lot of people my concern with emotionally eating is a lot of people don't realize that they're doing it, and so my counseling sessions tend to be a little deep and we kind of pull on those little heartstrings a little bit to kind of get that out of like okay, well, I, the patient, is experiencing overeating, but why are you experiencing that overeating? Like what else is going on during that time that's causing you to overeat, right? So sometimes it turns into a little bit of a counseling session too.

Dr. Lopez:

You know there are some deeper issues and I really think the other thing is probably lack of access to nutritious foods. High calorie, low nutritionally dense foods are readily available to us. They're everywhere, so it's easy just to grab a bag of potato chips right, and then keep doing whatever it is you're doing, so helping people get access to healthy food and knowing how to use healthy food right, right, absolutely. Sometimes we make it really complicated, yeah for sure.

Lacy Wolff:

And, yeah, you laid out so many things there that I think all of us can relate to, because, even if you can't afford good food, it's harder to because you have to buy it, you have to make it, it's additional effort, whereas the readily kind of what we call ultra processed food is just so easy. It's right there in that vending machine. You know if I'm not so, yeah, when it comes to and you talked a little bit about, I want to come back to you said medical nutrition therapy. Can you explain for people that have not any experience with a registered dietitian what that looks like and what it is?

Dr. Lopez:

Yeah, so what it means is that we treat diseases with food, and so maybe that's including certain foods or excluding certain foods. It depends on the disease state. Maybe it's managing those macronutrients like your carbohydrates, your proteins and your fats, so adding more of those or taking out some of those, like, depending on the disease state. And that's really. You know where we, as dieticians, work with the medical team. So we're trained to understand disease states. Look at lab values, understand what test values mean, how we can impact someone's diet which will impact those lab values.

Lacy Wolff:

And do you think that when you treat someone's disease state with food, is that as effective, or could it be more effective than pharmacological treatment sometimes? Or what are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Lopez:

Sometimes I don't want to step on any of my medical team's toes. We try to work in partnership. Okay, sometimes we as dieticians can't necessarily cure the disease, but we can improve the disease status. Ok, I'll give you an example. But diabetes, for example, a newly diagnosed diabetic, may be initially on medication and then we would hope, as dieticians, to work with that individual to change their behaviors and their dietary intake and over time we'll actually improve their blood sugar and we can even get them off that medication. So sometimes maybe that's a temporary solution. We get them on medication to stabilize them while we're making those kind of behavioral changes.

Lacy Wolff:

Right, and that behavior change, like you said, is the hardest part.

Dr. Lopez:

It is, and then sustaining it right Once we make that change.

Lacy Wolff:

So let's talk about that behavior change. I think that's a really good transition into the next thing that I wanted to talk to you about how can people actually work to shift their mindset from a more restrictive dieting, like one thing we think about all the time like I'm going on a diet to this idea that we could just eat well, forever right, having a balance and sustaining those good behaviors. How can we shift that mindset? How do we do it?

Dr. Lopez:

Yeah, so the first thing I really work with patients on is that this is not a diet. We are starting a lifestyle change and that's really how we have to look at it, because a diet like the whole 30, not to pick on one, but the whole 30 has like start date and an end date, right, and so it's like you can do anything for 30 days, right, but no, what we really want to do is develop that consistent change in ourselves and our intake. So that's rule number one. There is no diet. This is a lifestyle change.

Dr. Lopez:

Also, understanding, I think, that health is not perfect. It's really about consistency. So that 80-20 rule I use a lot. If we can choose healthy foods 80% of the time, then that 20% is kind of a wash. So I think you know giving ourselves some flexibility and some grace, you know, around food, I think also like balance All food is good food. It's just how do we balance it in our day, and so we spend a lot of time talking about that. Sometimes I'll use the analogy of like a bank account. You know we got to balance our bank account and like okay, and so that patients tend to be pretty receptive about balancing your bank account.

Lacy Wolff:

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense Because I mean there's there's's gonna be days where you're gonna go into a deficit, but then tomorrow maybe you save a little more.

Dr. Lopez:

So yeah, yeah, or even just on a day-to-day basis. I think sometimes people think like, oh well, if I'm on a healthy diet, that means I can't go out to dinner. No, it just means maybe I have something light, maybe I have a salad with grilled chicken on it for lunch so I can save more of those calories that I'm going to need for a dinner restaurant. And so kind of like figuring out how to balance your day and what's important to you, kind of within some constraints.

Lacy Wolff:

I love that you picked on Whole30, because my husband and I we call it whole life. We're always like whole life diet because it can't be for 30 days, so I don't know if anyone it's a much better perspective.

Lacy Wolff:

Yeah, it's a great nutrition. I mean it's good, but can you do it forever? Is the question always when we start anything. So, all right, let's talk about some of the conflicting nutrition information out there. I know there's a. There's a lot of like diet recommendations. There's a lot of people who kind of call themselves experts that may not have training in nutrition online. We look at Instagram and things like that. What core principles like what? What are some things that everybody could benefit from when it comes to nutrition and kind of bust through some of that misinformation.

Dr. Lopez:

Oh, oh gosh may open a whole can of worms for me here. What is it? So? I think balance is a big thing. I think a lot of the misinformation we hear are extremes. We should be having no carbohydrates, or we should be having all carbohydrates or no fat, right? They're the extremes when you really look at the biochemistry of the body and how the body functions. The body needs carbs, proteins and fats, and it needs a good balance of those, and so it's not the extremes. Your body doesn't want those extremes, and so if we can balance out those macronutrients pretty well in the body, it functions at its highest capacity, and we see that across normal people, we see that across athletes right, sometimes we weigh a little bit more in one than we do in the other, but really they're all kind of pretty level.

Dr. Lopez:

I think the other thing that I would want people to know is about supplement use. There is not a lot of research on supplements. Supplements are not regulated by the FDA, and so there are a lot of supplements on the internet. There's a lot of supplements on TikTok. Please be very careful, whatever it is that you're choosing to take or to try, because they're just, they're not regulated, and so really you don't know what it is you're putting in your body and it kind of along those same lines there, like there is no magic pill Otherwise, as a dietician I would not have a job.

Dr. Lopez:

So there is no like magic powder. I won't pick on anyone in specific. There's no magic powder. You mix in your water and then you lose 20 pounds. Like it doesn't happen, unfortunately. Unfortunately, I mean, for all of us. It doesn't happen. I think those I've been. Oh well, there's dietary patterns, so like when we when I say dietary patterns, I'm thinking like keto or those whole 30, those kinds of diet things. There is no one size fits all solution. You have to figure out what works best for you and maybe it's a combination of that, like you mentioned your husband and you follow like the whole 30 as a lifestyle, which is great and maybe that would work for somebody else, but maybe we need to modify it a little bit more.

Lacy Wolff:

I follow it, but I also make sourdough bread, Tabitha.

Dr. Lopez:

You have modified it so that it works for you Exactly. Yeah, no dairy, no simple carbohydrate, no potato no, it is potato. You can eat potatoes, but no rice no pasta, anything like that.

Lacy Wolff:

And we took that and we were like, okay, but I'm going to eat yogurt, I'm going to eat cheese.

Dr. Lopez:

It's creating a, and so it's not even at all the whole 30 really creating a, and so it's not even at all the whole 30 really, but you have taken something that worked for you and modify it to make it more consistent for you, and I think that is what, as an outpatient dietitian, that's my goal is to learn about my patient and help them find something that works for them, and so that's very individualized.

Lacy Wolff:

Yes, that makes sense. So you talked a little bit earlier about emotional eating being one of the main issues or challenges that people face. How do you help people that? How do you work through some of that for people that may be dealing with it?

Dr. Lopez:

Yeah, I think the first thing is awareness, so helping people develop that awareness of what's happening and so what I use. There's a couple techniques that we use. I usually start with just making them think for like 15, 30 seconds before they go to the kitchen and get that snack. Just stop, give me 15 seconds, think about why are you going to get that snack? Like, what are you feeling right now? Like, are you feeling true hunger? Like your stomach is growling, you have some stomach pains. Like you're feeling lightheaded, like you have true hunger. Please go get that snack. Right, I want you to eat, but if you're sitting there going, I'm not really hungry and I'm just stressed out with work and I can't believe I have to do this. I can't believe I have. You know this is going on right.

Dr. Lopez:

Then, like, do we really need this act? Is this? And then, like, is this not going to solve that problem? Maybe temporarily, for the next five minutes, but after that no. And then we start working on okay, now we've identified those times Like okay, I emotionally when I get stressed out at work. Okay, now we've identified that and we're getting better at picking up on those times when you do that. Now, what can we do instead of going to get something to eat? Maybe it's going for a little walk around the building, maybe it's breathing techniques, maybe it's, you know, calling your friend and venting for a couple of minutes Like everybody's different right. But what is that? What is something else that we can do to release that that would actually probably be more productive and may actually work than just pulling out something and eating it Because really it seems like we eat for all kinds of different emotional reasons.

Lacy Wolff:

I think there's the cliche like eating the bucket of ice cream when I'm sad, but we also eat when we're happy to celebrate, and we eat because we're bored. So there's a lot of emotional triggers.

Dr. Lopez:

Yeah, and a lot of habits that we develop too. That's something else we work on. I always use the example of there's people who get in their car because they eat in their car. That's a trigger for them, so they get in their car. Their brain says I'm hungry, I want to eat, and so they'll actually tell you that when they get in their car they're hungry. And I'm like are you really Like? You just left lunch 20 minutes ago. Are you truly hungry? And I feel hunger? Left lunch 20 minutes ago. Are you truly hungry? And I feel hunger. But their body has created this habit where their mind thinks oh, we're in the car, we should eat now. Yeah, so trying to figure that piece out can be challenging too.

Lacy Wolff:

Wow. So yeah, you're, you kind of serve, as I mean it's like a nutrition therapist.

Dr. Lopez:

You're right. Sometimes I feel like we do a lot of counseling. Yeah, my patients and I ask a lot of personal questions, but I need to understand my patient in order to help them and make those recommendations.

Lacy Wolff:

Yeah, that's great. I'm sure so many people could benefit from sitting down and talking with a dietitian like yourself, and I think that's one of the things that I will be putting in the show notes are the guidelines for our health plan for people actually want to work with a dietitian. We also have a program called Wonder Health that I've been through several times personally. That's really helped me with a lot of the things you're talking about with understanding hunger cues and what emotions are driving this eating behavior, like putting my fork down in between bites, because the habit of just eating fast is something that I struggle with personally. So I'll put all that in the show notes. If you're listening and you would like some resources, we will have those available. So I wanted to kind of talk to you. I know you said you have a PhD in kinesiology and that is a great love of yours is a study of exercise and movement. How does exercise or physical activity help support a healthy diet and how can that also help us with our long-term health?

Dr. Lopez:

Yeah, you know we need exercise. You know, the thing I see most frequently is that people just struggle with exercise and I think actually it's very similar to diet in the fact that we put a lot of rules around what exercise looks like and I have to go to the gym, I have to spend an hour there, I have to break a sweat, like all of these things right, whereas we lose the point that actually just movement is so important to health in our bodies. And so, even if we can, just some of my patients are like, okay, they're very set. I had a patient yesterday let's set a goal of walking 2000 steps a day. Can we do that consistent?

Dr. Lopez:

Like it doesn't have to be a lot, it can be something small to get us started and then over time we can slowly increase that. Maybe it's taking five minute walks at the office, you know every hour, get out of your chair, go walk for five minutes, then come back at work. Maybe it's instilling, something like that. So I think being more open-minded about what physical activity is is a great place to start. But then you know, as people get more into consistency of working out, then we can really tailor it to what their goals are and what they're trying to achieve for themselves.

Lacy Wolff:

Yeah, that makes so much sense and I think it's interesting because when you're doing more physical activity, you are going to be hungrier, and so often do you find that people may be overeat because they are moving more, or does it help support eating better? What are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Lopez:

Oh, it depends. It depends on the patient first, because we want to. So if the patient is getting hungrier and like loss of adipose tissue, increasing fat, is our goal, right, then there's other things that we can do, like low calorie foods that we can help support them with. We can change up the timing of meals, things like that, to help support them. So we don't necessarily increase the caloric intake coming in, but sometimes we want more calories, right? If I have a patient who's trying to build mass or build muscle mass, we want those additional calories. So the strategies may be slightly different for that person. Right, we may be trying to figure out how to get more calories in. We deal with that with athletes a lot like our college athletes and we're trying to get, you know, four or 5,000 calories in them a day. And you're like my gosh, I don't. The kids are like.

Dr. Lopez:

I can't eat anymore. It's so much food. So it just depends on what their goals are and what they're trying to achieve. But there's strategies around both things that we can help patients with.

Lacy Wolff:

Yeah, and I guess eating at that point for the college athlete kind of becomes a job and then when you stop doing that sort of movement and you've built those habits of eating so much, then that can become a disordered eating pattern, I guess.

Dr. Lopez:

Yeah, yeah, and we see that a lot, especially, I see it in college kids. You know, those kids that were playing high, intense sports in high school, you know, practicing three, four days a week. They could eat whatever they want when they wanted it right and, like, still had great performance, maintain their body composition. And now we've transitioned to college and they're still eating the same amount, but they're not exercising, they're sitting at a desk for long periods of time, you know, in class or studying. And so how do we adapt those eating behaviors to their new, you know behaviors, physical activity behaviors, right?

Lacy Wolff:

Or how do we find that happy medium, that classic freshman 15 that we maybe could relate.

Dr. Lopez:

We just published a study. We're doing health screenings on college students and we just published a study. We're looking at blood pressure in college students and we assumed that some college students had high blood pressure um based on stress and poor diet quality and poor physical activity. That was kind of our assumption. Well, 60% of our sample could be diagnosed for hypertension. Wow, Really scary when you're 20 year, know 20-year-olds, yeah, wow.

Lacy Wolff:

What do we do with that? I mean, can you, are you working on an intervention for them?

Dr. Lopez:

Yeah, we're still collecting data. That was some preliminary data we had, but, yes, the next step will be. You know how do we encourage healthy eating behaviors on campus, and so we work very closely with the food pantry to make sure they have access to healthy foods. We're publishing a cookbook with the American Heart Association that should be coming out this summer, and the fall we're starting a cooking show and that'll be actually available to the public, and so we'll be using the recipes from the cookbook, but also just minimal resource recipes, things that are easy to make, that you don't need a ton of ingredients for. A lot of our recipes can be made in the microwave, because most people don't know, in a dorm you only have access to a microwave, so we've gotten really creative in making like microwave recipes for our students too.

Lacy Wolff:

I love that. So yeah, meet people where they are. That's, that's the goal.

Dr. Lopez:

Yeah, I mean I'm glad you said that that's a huge thing that I follow in my practice as a dietician is I've got to meet the patient where they are. And yes, there's this ideal, you know, healthy eating, healthy physical activity goal. That's up here. But we got to start from wherever that patient is Absolutely.

Lacy Wolff:

I know that. You know, I used to do a lot of health coaching in a clinical setting when I worked for the army and I remember someone told me if you start from a place of judgment, people will feel it. Someone told me, if you start from a place of judgment, people will feel it. And I think that's a really important for any of us that work with people, meeting them where they are. But I totally digress here.

Dr. Lopez:

No, and I'm glad you said that too I think a lot of people think, as a dietitian, that we're just going to tell you what you should be doing. Here's some carrots and some celery and that's what you should eat the rabbit diet I would say. But no, I think if you find a really good outpatient dietician, they're going to meet you where you are and they're going to help you achieve your goal, and that's ultimately what what we should be doing is helping that patient achieve. You know, whatever helpful it is that they have set for themselves.

Lacy Wolff:

Yeah, absolutely. We have no idea what people's experience was until the you know point they walked in that door, I guess, just taking it all in so well.

Lacy Wolff:

I wanted to ask you. We have a challenge coming up with ERS, with our new Buena Vida platform, and it's a simple challenge. It's called Five to Thrive. The goal is to get five servings of fruits and vegetables on a daily basis. So I ran a report. We've had about 8,000 people complete our health assessment. Only 6.5% of our population are eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables. So that's where we're starting from, and the goal here is to make eating more fruits and vegetables a habit. Can you talk a little bit about just the benefits of fruits and vegetables and why that can be so helpful?

Dr. Lopez:

Yeah, so fruits and vegetables is really where we get all of our vitamins and minerals from, and so we leave them in our diet so we don't develop any of those deficiencies, right?

Dr. Lopez:

So protein is great, carbohydrates are great, but really, you know those green vegetables, orange vegetables, your antioxidants from your foods. That's where we get all those good things to protect our body and to make it healthy. The other thing that we really get from fruits and vegetables is fiber, and so I talked to many, many people who have GI issues, and so that fiber support is so important, and a lot of people don't realize how much fiber they should be intaking. So women should be having like 25 to 28 grams of fiber a day, and men like 28 to 30 grams of fiber. Just FYI, that's a lot of fiber and that's right. Consciously intaking that much fiber, you're not getting that goal, and so that's where that five servings of fruits and vegetables comes in is that we're trying to increase people's fiber intake and that fiber can really help regulate GI symptoms, help people relieve constipation, some other issues that they may be having down there, so it is really important.

Lacy Wolff:

Yeah, yeah. So many benefits to it, but it does seem very difficult for most of us. How do you, do you have any strategies for getting more fruits and vegetables in your diet? Like I mean, I know we can. There's the books where you sneak it in. But, like, how do you help people to like fruits and vegetables or find ways to make it a part of their life?

Dr. Lopez:

So that's actually interesting. There's actual research about bitter taste is what vegetables are, and we're not born with bitter taste buds. We actually develop them over time. And so I always find interesting patients who are like well, I don't like vegetables. I'm like, well, do you eat a lot of vegetables? Or have you eaten a lot of vegetables in their past? No, usually the answer is no. So they never actually developed those taste buds for bitter foods. So there is like a biological reason why I don't like them. But you can develop those taste buds. We just had to increase our intake of them.

Dr. Lopez:

But I think trying to include them like putting spinach in an omelet, putting asparagus in an omelet those are easy ways to add them into breakfast. I think breakfast is probably that one meal that we really don't think you can have vegetables in, right? We're like, oh gosh, bell peppers, mushrooms in an omelet, all those things count, onions count, right. So adding those things like in the omelets and into your tacos, quiches are kind of old school. But burritos, breakfast sandwiches, sandwiches, things like that, adding those vegetables in to those things, I think also, you know, I know cauliflower is really trendy right now, but if you cook it the right way. I cook mine in a skillet with olive oil and kind of roast it in the skillet a little bit. Most of my rice dishes are at least half cauliflower rice and I serve them to people all the time and they have no idea. So I think if you it's not, bad.

Lacy Wolff:

I mean, I think that there's a mental barrier we have to overcome, maybe yeah.

Dr. Lopez:

If you cook it in the skillet and make it a little bit crispy and not mushy. I think it's a big texture issue for people, but then also think you don't have to fully take your rice out. Maybe use half cauliflower, half rice, right, you know that's another way. You're sneaking in, you know, one or two servings of cauliflower into your fried rice, or something like that.

Lacy Wolff:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. We started using spaghetti squash instead of pasta and I don't mind it. I actually think it tastes good. It doesn't taste the same as pasta but it still looks the same kind of on the plate. I don't know. It just fulfills that mental desire for pasta somehow, but tastes really good. I like really all squash, but yeah, that's great. Well, I wish everybody had the opportunity to sit down and do a one-on-one with a person like you to really access a, you know, the support of a dietitian. But I am grateful we get to bring you to everyone in our health plan at least so, and I look forward to seeing those resources. I hope we can share your cooking channel. I think that'll be wonderful to put out to our health plan participants as well. I want to close with my one question that I ask every guest and that is related to our title. Our program is called Buena Vida, which means a good life. So, dr Lopez, what is a good life for you?

Dr. Lopez:

So I really think a good life is about joy and how you find joy. I find joy in giving back to others. We didn't talk about this at all, but in my job I do a ton of service for the community and helping with food and food resources. But in my personal life, you know, I'm a sustaining member of the Junior League of Houston. I volunteer for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. I've worked for many missions and organizations in Houston as a volunteer, and so giving back and really helping others is how I find joy and I really think that's what makes it a great life.

Lacy Wolff:

That's amazing. Well, thank you for all you do for all of us. Thank you for the support you're providing for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice as well. I know that they are extremely grateful for the collaboration of criminal justice as well. I know that they are extremely grateful for the collaboration, and we at ERS are so happy to know you and to be able to reach out information that you are putting together through Sam Houston and your amazing program. So, thank you, dr Lopez. It's really wonderful to sit down and talk with you and I know this is going to help a lot of people. Thank you very much, people. Thank you very much.

Lacy Wolff:

What an insightful conversation with Dr Lopez. I really loved how she broke down nutrition into simple and sustainable strategies and emphasizing the importance of balance, whether it's in the way we eat, the way we move or really just the way we think about health in general. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend or colleague that also might find it helpful. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast Wherever you listen to podcasts we've got some great episodes coming your way and also don't forget to check out our show notes for the resources I mentioned in our episode, including the eligibility requirements for HealthSelect participants to see a dietitian, links to register for our Healthy Lifestyle and Weight Management Programs, wonder and Real Appeal.

Lacy Wolff:

And the link to join Buena Vida, our well-being platform, where you can access tools and resources to improve your health and support your health, including communities and our 5 to Thrive Challenge that's coming up in April, including communities and our 5 to Thrive Challenge that's coming up in April. Through our Buena Vida program. We believe that small, consistent choices can help lead to a healthier, happier life and I'm so grateful for your time and for you as being with us. So until next time, take care, stay well and keep living the good life. Take care everyone.