Popular healthstyle blogger Darya Rose comes to TEDxSalem

Darya Rose is a neu­ro­sci­en­tist, author and pop­u­lar blog­ger who has trained her sights and tal­ents on solv­ing the age-old prob­lem of eat­ing healthy and los­ing weight.

Her holis­tic approach to food and health is a breath of fresh air com­pared to the stuffy super­mar­ket shelves of diet shakes and appetite sup­pres­sants.

After receiv­ing her BA in Mol­e­c­u­lar and Cell Biol­o­gy from UC Berke­ley, Rose received her PhD from UC San Fran­cis­co and writes about food, health and weight loss. Her web­site ‘Sum­mer Toma­to’ was one of TIME’s top 50 web­sites in 2011 and if social media is any indi­ca­tor, her mes­sage that “life should be awe­some” is reach­ing far and wide.

Rose describes her­self as a “food­ist”, which is a term for some­one who has aban­doned diet­ing to enjoy life using real food and also the name of her book – Food­ist: Using Real Food and Real Sci­ence to Lose Weight With­out Diet­ing. After going through the mul­ti­verse of diet­ing from a young age, Rose has first-hand knowl­edge of why diets don’t work and the things peo­ple do to make them­selves an excep­tion to that rule.

Almost 10,000 peo­ple have joined Rose for one of her ongo­ing Mind­ful Meal Chal­lenges, and the feed­back speaks for itself.

“The feed­back I get from read­ers and stu­dents is by far the most reward­ing part of what I do. Hear­ing that some­one has end­ed their life­long strug­gle with diet­ing or their kids have learned to love cau­li­flower fills me with pride and joy.”

TEDx Salem VI is your oppor­tu­ni­ty to join Darya Rose as she dis­cuss­es how psy­chol­o­gy impacts our abil­i­ty to cre­ate healthy eat­ing habits. In the mean­time, we offer you a Q and A with Rose.

What is your top food indul­gence and how often do you eat it?

Peo­ple are often sur­prised to learn that I love burg­ers. I’m picky about where the ingre­di­ents come from (espe­cial­ly the meat), of course. But it is some­thing I indulge in about once a month.

Has preg­nan­cy changed your rela­tion­ship with food or your phi­los­o­phy and under­stand­ing of a healthy diet?

Preg­nan­cy has giv­en me much more of an appre­ci­a­tion for the influ­ences of hor­mones and phys­i­cal require­ments on hunger and crav­ings. I’ve learned there real­ly isn’t a lot you can do about how hun­gry you are or what you need to eat while preg­nant, not to men­tion while still nurs­ing. So I’ve been extra care­ful to try and make as many healthy choic­es as I can and stay active.

What is the Mind­ful Meal Chal­lenge and how is it dif­fer­ent than a diet?

The Mind­ful Meal Chal­lenge is designed to help some­one begin a mind­ful eat­ing prac­tice, which is a lot eas­i­er said than done. It’s only 5 days, focus­es on one meal a day, and does­n’t resem­ble a diet at all.

Does your approach work for every­one? Are there mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors includ­ing genes, health his­to­ry and life-long strug­gles with sig­nif­i­cant weight swings? 

I believe my approach does work for every­one in the sense that any­one can make improve­ments in their habits for the health­i­er and keep them. In terms of weight loss, every­one’s jour­ney is dif­fer­ent and there are a lot of fac­tors that can impact how dif­fi­cult or easy it is, includ­ing bio­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions and per­son­al cir­cum­stances. What’s impor­tant is that you main­tain a mind­set that this isn’t a sin­gle prob­lem with a sin­gle solu­tion, and you need to be will­ing to exper­i­ment. Good health is made up of many small, dai­ly habits, but not all those habits need to look the same for every­one. Be curi­ous about your­self, be will­ing to try many things, and most of all have patience. Healthy lifestyles aren’t built overnight.

Any­thing else that read­ers should know?

I’ve taught myself to like dozens of foods I used to despise, includ­ing cilantro (I have the gene!), beets, spinach, fen­nel, egg­plant, brus­sels sprouts, cucum­bers, lamb, liv­er, olives, oily fish, sea urchin, and prob­a­bly a bunch of stuff I’ve for­got­ten. I still strug­gle a bit with nat­to and car­doons, but I’ll eat them.

Darya Rose

Home­town: Orange, CA

Fam­i­ly: Hus­band Kevin, daugh­ter Zel­da, mini labradoo­dle Toast­er + new baby on the way (we’ve play­ful­ly nick­named her Smelda––Smelda Rose LOL)

Hob­bies: read­ing, hik­ing, cook­ing, eat­ing

Favorite Music: The Bea­t­les

Favorite author or book: “Foun­da­tion” by Isaac Asi­mov

How did you name your dog and baby? We named our dog Toast­er, because we were obsessed with Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca when we got him and we’re pret­ty sure he’s a Cylon.

We named our daugh­ter Zel­da, because I played over 200 hours of the lat­est game Breath of the Wild on Nin­ten­do Switch.

TEDxSalem VI

TEDxSalem VI is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag. It runs 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Sat­ur­day, Jan. 5 at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Tick­ets are on sale now for $55, $45 for stu­dents. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.