Michelle Dapper, a Board Certified Integrative Health Practitioner, Gut Health specialist, Culinary Nutrition expert, and mother of two, advocates for a balanced lifestyle centered around healthy eating, active living, and enjoyable experiences. Her philosophy revolves around unlocking individual potential and guiding people towards achieving their personal health goals. Michelle's approach to wellness emphasizes that health and wellness shouldn’t be complicated or confusing. She simplifies what it means and what it takes to be healthy and well. Her focus is on small things you can do everyday that, over time, have a big impact on you physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s also about helping you find what works for you because there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
Michelle Dapper's Personal Journey and Philosophy
Michelle Dapper's journey into the world of wellness began with her own health struggles. She experienced the power that healthy choices have on our well-being by managing her own personal health with food and lifestyle since 2012. She was able to lose the weight, conquer her digestive issues, recover her energy and restore her well-being through integrated nutrition and mindful practices. Through her own experiences and struggles, she has learned how to live her life in a way that fully supports wellness.
Michelle believes that wellness is about taking care of yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally. She also believes that there isn’t one “right” way or a one-size-fits-all approach to taking care of yourself.
She offers her clients a private one-on-one integrated platform for overall improved wellness, that is designed to provide both education and support during your own personal wellness journey. She will guide you through the process, offer alternative ways to help you achieve your goals while creating a custom designed roadmap for your success.
Live Well with Michelle: A Personalized Approach
Live Well with Michelle was developed to provide and create individualized programs to help her clients achieve their wellness goals. Michelle’s services not only offer a holistic approach to nutrition but also to a healthy and balanced lifestyle. Live Well with Michelle aims to take a more proactive approach to achieving and maintaining your health and wellness goals. Michelle’s focus on bio-individuality is crucial to the process. We are fed so much misinformation about how to be healthy and or how to lose weight. It is her mission to partner with her clients to give them clear effective strategies they can implement immediately that will bring about massive transformation to their health, waistlines, and energy levels.
Read also: Health and wellness insights from Michelle Wolf
Michelle understands how difficult it can be to break free from toxic cycles. Having a health coach on the journey with you, makes all of the difference in the world. You don't have to do this alone. Accountability and encouragement can make all the difference whether you successfully reach your goal. Celebrating the small victories along the way with a trusted partner is key to staying motivated.
Live well with Michelle focuses on small, simple ways you can take care of yourself everyday. She tries to simplify what it means and what it takes to be healthy and well. Her focus is on small things you can do everyday that, over time, have a big impact on you physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Training and Expertise
While working toward a more healthy lifestyle for her family, and to find real answers to her own frustration and personal struggles, Michelle came across health coach training and enrolled at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.
During her comprehensive training, she studied over 100 dietary theories, practical lifestyle management techniques, and innovative coaching methods with some of the world’s top health and wellness experts. Her education equipped her with extensive knowledge in holistic nutrition, health coaching, and preventive health. Including: Innovative coaching methods, practical lifestyle management techniques like the use of stress-reducing techniques such as meditation and over 100 dietary theories; everything from Ayurveda, gluten-free, and Paleo, to raw, vegan, and macrobiotics, and everything in between. Drawing on these skills as well as her knowledge of dietary theories, I work with clients to help them make lifestyle changes that produce personal, real, lasting results.
Glucose Management and Weight Loss
One aspect of weight loss and overall health is managing glucose levels. Jessie Inchauspé, also known as the Glucose Goddess, shares science-backed advice for crafting a glucose level-steady life. While small glucose spikes throughout the day are fine and natural, it’s important to keep yourself from consistently entering higher ranges for both short term and long term health. The process is known as glycation, where sugar molecules attach to collagen, proteins, fats and elastin in the bloodstream to form advanced glycation end products (AGEs). In the short-term, it impacts your mood, energy, and hunger. High levels of AGEs can also be linked to inflammation, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease.
Read also: Battling Health Issues
Savory Breakfasts
Jessie’s first and most important hack to keeping glucose level steady is to have a savory breakfast. “Science shows us that if you eat sugar in the morning, you’re going to have a big glucose spike, and then your entire day is going to be all cravings and fatigue.”
She advises, then, to start your day off with a protein source: eggs, Greek yogurt, tofu, or leftover meat and fish from your dinner the previous evening. Then add some healthy fats: she opts for feta and butter, and adds some small cherry tomatoes. She also suggests a speedier option for people on-the-go: Greek yogurt, and a tablespoon of almond or peanut butter free of any extra sweeteners or oils (just read the label on the jar). Jessie says this rule for steady glucose levels applies no matter if you’re eating breakfast at 7AM or having your first meal at 2PM.
“Never have something sweet on an empty stomach,” she says. “When your stomach is empty, your body is super sensitive to anything you give it, and this will arrive quickly into your bloodstream.”
Mindful Snacking
Jessie delves into Vogue France’s office snack cupboard to analyze what’s on the shelves, and offer some healthier, glucose level-friendly alternatives. “Rice cakes are glucose bombs,” she says. “Don’t be fooled by marketing.” Read your labels! She cites that while more sugary snacks provide short term dopamine for a mid-afternoon pick-me-up, there’s an inevitable crash, and long term, they impact your glucose levels, energy, and focus. Heading out on a shopping spree, Jessie offers some healthy snack swaps: sourdough bread instead of rice cakes, jam replaced by unsweetened nut butter, a pain au chocolat dropped for some dark chocolate, fruit yogurt swapped for a simple greek yogurt with frozen berries, and fresh apples over dried fruit.
Restaurant Ordering Strategies
Jessie takes Vogue France to a local restaurant and breaks down how she picks from a menu. Ignore the table bread, Jessie says, to avoid starting a meal with glucose and starch. She looks immediately for a vegetable-based starter, because it’s high in fiber and this protects your body against glucose spikes. “It creates a sort of protective mesh in your intestine when you eat it first during a meal,” she says. So veggies first. For mains: it’s whatever protein you fancy, like a fish or meat, and a tasty carb source like mashed potatoes. Eating in this order, she claims-of veggies, proteins, fats, carbs, sugars-means you can continue to eat the stuff you love with lesser impacts on your glucose levels, and fewer consequences on your physical and mental health.
Read also: Wellness Tips from Michelle Pfeiffer
Post-Meal Activities
A post-meal power walk is an essential though: studies have proven walking for just 15 minutes after a meal lessens your glycemic response.
Cooking for Friends
Jessie sets out the menu: a spinach salad with a miso-based dressing, with baked salmon and baked sweet potatoes, with chocolate for dessert. If you know the Glucose Goddess, you might not be surprised by the base of her mocktail: vinegar. “Why vinegar? Vinegar is an amazing ingredient. It contains a molecule called acetic acid, which reduces the glucose spike of carbs that you eat afterwards.” While you can have it in a mocktail like Jessie, you can also just add a tablespoon of vinegar in a big glass of water or as a dressing for your veggie starter-just make sure you dilute it in some way.