Low-Friction Kitchen: Small-Space Tweaks That Make Cooking More Enjoyable

Once people learn that I am a professional recipe developer and nutritionist with a focus on meal planning, they often assume that I have a sprawling kitchen and walk-in pantry. In reality, I live in a small house with a small kitchen, and I don’t even have a dishwasher!

That’s right, I have developed over a thousand recipes and have hand-washed every single measuring cup, bowl, and pan along the way. Over the years, I’ve had to find ways to make my limited space work to reduce the friction of cooking and keep the joy in making and eating. Here is how I make it happen.

Mental Health, Meal PlanningAmber HansonApril 21, 2026meal planning

4 Reasons to Work with a Licensed Nutritionist (It's Not About the Number on the Scale)

If you’ve considered working with a nutritionist but aren't sure if it’s for you (or if you’re worried I’m just going to put you on a scale, hand you a rigid meal plan, and send you off with a belittling lecture), let’s clear the air.

Here are four reasons to add a licensed nutritionist to your care team and how, together, we can make food feel good again. Because you are allowed to eat what you enjoy and enjoy what you are eating.

Meal Planning Made Real: Spring Refresh

Seasonal changes always tend to be a little bumpy. Be it what to wear or what to eat, it is hard to remember what worked last year. Spring, as we transition from long dark winter to brighter days, can feel particularly jarring.

From a diet-culture view this is also the time that “spring detoxes” start to gain steam. Diet culture is predictable; it capitalizes on these moments of uncertainty to make us collectively feel bad about our bodies and worried about our health.

But we aren't doing that here. Instead of a "cleanse," let's talk about a refresh.

Gentle Nutrition, Mental Health, Meal PlanningAmber HansonMarch 16, 2026meal planning

How to Meal Plan Without the Burnout: A Gentle Nutrition Guide

This post was first written in 2021, but my view on meal planning has evolved since then. Through my own recovery from rigid, orthorexic eating patterns and my work as a clinician, helping others find confidence in food without restriction, I’ve learned that a “perfect” plan is often the enemy of a sustainable one.

I still contend there are as many ways to meal plan as there are meals in a week. The key is finding what works for you.

The single biggest factor in long-term health isn't a specific diet but rather eating a wide variety of foods consistently. To do that without losing your mind, you need a system—not a set of rules.

Gentle Nutrition, Mental Health, Intuitive Eating, Meal PlanningAmber HansonMarch 10, 2026meal planning

How to End Daily Dinner Decision Fatigue with Flexible Meal Planning

Whether you are single and cooking feels like a hassle for just one person, or a parent fielding a million questions a day (why do we have eyebrows?) along with alllllll the household food opinions, we’ve all been there: staring into the fridge, too tired to think, too hungry to wait (bonus points for a toddler in meltdown).

And that is just dinner. It is easy to feel resentful of the fact that we need to eat so many damn times each day.

Gentle Nutrition, Mental Health, Meal PlanningAmber HansonFebruary 27, 2026meal planning

Why Weight-Inclusive Care Matters in a Weight-Centric World

The beginning of each new year is always a fraught time to have a body. Just yesterday, I took the annual health survey required by our health insurance to “unlock” the activities needed to fund our HSA accounts, I was immediately confronted by everything I hate about the New Year.

Nowhere in this survey was there an option to say you were happy with how you are currently eating, moving, sleeping, or managing stress. It was simply assumed you need to be trying harder.

Intuitive EatingAmber HansonJanuary 28, 2026perimenopause, respect your body

Intention is Everything: Reclaiming Healthy Behaviors from the Grips of Diet Culture

As you begin to explore the anti-diet or Intuitive Eating arena, a specific kind of confusion often sets in. You might find yourself wondering things like:

"If I’m anti-diet, does that mean I’m never allowed to eat a salad or go for a run again? Am I a 'bad' anti-dieter if I actually enjoy vegetables?"

It’s a valid question. Because diet culture has hijacked health behaviors for so long, we have been conditioned to believe that kale and cardio are merely tools for body manipulation. Why would we ever hold a plank if not to shrink our waistlines?

Navigating the Emotional Barriers to Anti-Diet Eating

If you are anything like me when I first embraced intuitive eating and started rejecting diet culture, you understand in a logical, big-brain way why diets don’t work and in theory why an anti-diet approach makes sense. Yet still, there is resistance.

I have found in this work, knowing the facts isn’t enough. We also need to process some intense emotional hurdles because diet culture gave us a powerful, albeit faulty, psychological safety net.

Ditching Diet Culture: Anti-Diet Eating Takes Effort (and That's Okay)

When people first hear about rejecting diet culture, the idea of intuitive eating or adopting a non-diet/anti-diet approach, the reaction is rarely, “Cool, tell me more, this is the answer I have been looking for.”

More often, the idea sets off flashing red warning lights and a loud “Danger, Danger!” siren, followed by a list of objections that might sound suspiciously like your own internal monologue.

Approaching food and your body through this lens requires deep work to unlearn and untangle messages so ingrained you might not even realize they are there.

Gentle Nutrition, Anti-Diet Starter PackAmber HansonOctober 29, 2025gentle nutrition

How to Manage Blood Sugar for Insulin Resistance & Perimenopause: A Gentle Nutrition Guide

My first true nutrition “a-ha moment” was learning about the blood sugar rollercoaster in a group nutrition class. It felt like the secret to fix my body, the one I was hoping to learn in my dietetics undergraduate program, but didn’t. When I started eating to stabilize blood sugar, I almost immediately felt less anxious, slept better, and had more energy.

I learned blood sugar can impact everything from your energy levels to your mood and is particularly relevant for those with insulin resistance, Type 2 diabetes, PCOS, or those navigating perimenopause.

Gentle NutritionAmber HansonSeptember 19, 2025gentle nutrition

What is Body Image? Self-Perception is More Than Appearance

An overly simplified definition of body image is how you picture yourself in your mind’s eye. This often has strong focus on appearance – looks, height, shape, size, and other physical attributes.

And, yes, how you picture yourself is part of the equation. However, that definition falls short of the complex (and sometimes contradictory) way you think, feel, and perceive your body in this world. These beliefs about your body can be both positive and negative and can change over time as you are exposed to new information or experiences.

Body image is a deeply personal internal experience that can be heavily shaped by external influences.

Nourish Your Body with Fiber: A Gentle Nutrition Guide

You might be surprised to learn that fiber is actually a type of carbohydrate. Despite what you may hear from some health and wellness influencers, carbohydrates are an important part of a balanced diet and fiber is a key reason why.

Gentle NutritionAmber HansonMay 31, 2025gentle nutrition

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