About Me

Hi there!

I’m Maria, a Registered Dietitian-Nutritionist with a longtime passion for nutrition, cooking, and wellness. I am also a wife and mom to two boys, ages 11 and 13, who provide me with first-hand experience of the joys and challenges of feeding a family.

About Hälsa Nutrition

I started Hälsa Nutrition in 2014 as a way to share my love for healthy cooking, eating, and living with individuals and families near and far. My goals for this site are to support you and your family’s journey to health and well-being by:

inspiring you to cook more often,
helping you learn to listen to your body, thereby becoming a more intuitive eater,
giving you a variety of family-friendly, healthful recipes,
sharing my advice on what works with kids and picky eaters,
providing you with evidence-based nutrition information,
offering helpful wellness and organizational tips, and
adding a touch of Nordic to your diet!

My own experience with feeding a family

During the first several years of motherhood, I struggled with making this ideal family dinner image I had in my mind a reality. I was sleep deprived and often too tired to prep meals and cook. My kids became picky eaters and dinner time was more stressful than joyful.

Eventually, however, I realized that it was not about having perfect eaters or the perfect family dinner. It was about doing my best to:

get a healthful meal on the table,
expose my kids to a variety of healthful foods,
cook only one meal,
sit down together,
be patient,
let go of expectations, and
make eating a joyful experience.

Instead of focusing on what my kids weren’t eating at the dinner table, I focused on making conversation about how their day was or anything unrelated to the food. I stopped nagging and I did away with the “you have to try it” rule, which just wasn’t working for us.

I also read up on the “division of responsibility” by Ellyn Satter. This principle is KEY to raising good eaters who also have a healthy relationship to food. In summary, it states that parents decide what, when, and where to eat. Children decide whether to eat and how much.

These days dinner time is much more pleasant and my kids have gradually gotten less picky. While my Instagram pictures may make it look like my family eats very well all the time, remember those are just pictures. There are plenty of dinners that don’t go as planned and plenty of mornings when my kids eat just cereal for breakfast.

Summary of my nutrition philosophy:

Nutrition is a fascinating, ever-evolving field. Fads come and go. New research is always coming out. Yet, there is so much that remains the same. I believe that some of the most important aspects of a healthy diet are:

eating a variety of whole foods,
but realizing that all foods have a place in your diet.

Find a way of eating that makes you thrive. In general, I tell my clients to aim to eat “healthy” foods 80% of the time. Additional tips include:

making most of your food plant-based (veggies, fruits, whole grains, legumes, beans, nuts, seeds),
adding more healthy fat (extra-virgin olive oil, avocado, nuts, seeds, fatty fish),
getting adequate protein at each meal (not just dinner),
cutting back on added sugar, white flour, and processed foods (but not eliminating it entirely),
consuming daily probiotics (yogurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha)
practicing mindful eating,
becoming an intuitive eater,
tuning in to the effects of food on your body,
enjoying meals together as a family when possible,
finding joy in eating and cooking,
and cooking at home more often.

The goal of my blog and counseling services is to help and inspire you to eat well and cook more. Whether you need help feeding picky eaters, determining what eating habits make you thrive, or just some inspiration to get in the kitchen, I am here to help. I also love to help people say goodbye to dieting. Forever. This means no more restrictions, no more guilt, no more obsessing about what to eat. Freedom.

From Sweden to the USA

In case you were wondering, the word hälsa means “health” and also “to greet” in Swedish. I was born in Sweden and moved to New Hampshire with my family when I was 7. Although that was a long time ago, it helped spark a serious interest in food and diet. I found the different diet of my new American friends fascinating. (Maple syrup, hostess cakes, peanut butter, jello, and fried chicken—these were just some of the foods I had never tried before!) Meanwhile, I remember my classmates looking at my lunches with equal curiosity—whether it was a long baguette sandwich or leftover korv (sausage) stroganoff.

But I attribute most of my love for food, nutrition, and cooking to my mom, who always cooked delicious, nutritionally-balanced, Swedish meals. She was a home economics teacher in Sweden and has some serious kitchen talent. I’m still learning from her and working on being as effective in the kitchen. (While I’m proud if I cook 4 or 5 homemade dinners a week, she did it consistently, and flawlessly, 7 days a week!)