Sara Gottfried > Sara's Quotes

“Weight gain, mood swings, fatigue, and low libido aren’t diseases that can be “cured” with a quick injection or a pharmaceutical. Most of these problems can’t be permanently solved by eating less or exercising more. They are hormonal problems. They mean our bodies are trying to tell us that something is wrong.”
― Sara Gottfried, The Hormone Cure: Reclaim Balance, Sleep, Sex Drive and Vitality Naturally with the Gottfried Protocol

“● We make changes when the pain of staying the same (same weight, same mood, same stress-crazed schedule) is greater than the perceived pain of change. I discovered (as have my patients) that there is a way to make those changes that is safe, proven, effective, easy, and, most importantly, fun.”
― Sara Gottfried, The Hormone Cure: Reclaim Balance, Sleep, Sex Drive and Vitality Naturally with the Gottfried Protocol

“Science has proven that while your genes control your biology, a rather simple, nondrug formula of nutrient-rich food, targeted supplements to address missing precursors, and lifestyle changes can keep your genes in perpetual “repair” mode.”
― Sara Gottfried, The Hormone Cure: Reclaim Balance, Sleep, Sex Drive and Vitality Naturally with the Gottfried Protocol

“What do you want?"
"Just coffee. Black - like my soul.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Bones

“Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?”
― Albert Camus

“DO YOU HAVE OR HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED IN THE PAST SIX MONTHS . . . — PART A — ■ A feeling you’re constantly racing from one task to the next? ■ Feeling wired yet tired? ■ A struggle calming down before bedtime, or a second wind that keeps you up late? ■ Difficulty falling asleep or disrupted sleep? ■ A feeling of anxiety or nervousness—can’t stop worrying about things beyond your control? ■ A quickness to feel anger or rage—frequent screaming or yelling? ■ Memory lapses or feeling distracted, especially under duress? ■ Sugar cravings (you need “a little something” after each meal, usually of the chocolate variety)? ■ Increased abdominal circumference, greater than 35 inches (the dreaded abdominal fat, or muffin top—not bloating)? ■ Skin conditions such as eczema or thin skin (sometimes physiologically and psychologically)? ■ Bone loss (perhaps your doctor uses scarier terms, such as osteopenia or osteoporosis)? ■ High blood pressure or rapid heartbeat unrelated to those cute red shoes in the store window? ■ High blood sugar (maybe your clinician has mentioned the words prediabetes or even diabetes or insulin resistance)? Shakiness between meals, also known as blood sugar instability? ■ Indigestion, ulcers, or GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease)? ■ More difficulty recovering from physical injury than in the past? ■ Unexplained pink to purple stretch marks on your belly or back? ■ Irregular menstrual cycles? ■ Decreased fertility?”
― Sara Gottfried, The Hormone Cure

“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
― Nora Ephron

“What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications.”
― Nora Ephron

“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.”
― Nora Ephron, I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

“Whatever you choose, however many roads you travel, I hope that you choose not to be a lady. I hope you will find some way to break the rules and make a little trouble out there. And I also hope that you will choose to make some of that trouble on behalf of women."

[Commencement Address, Wellesley College, 1996]”
― Nora Ephron

“The desire to get married is a basic and primal instinct in women. It's followed by another basic and primal instinct: the desire to be single again.”
― Nora Ephron

“Hormonal problems are the top reason I find for accelerated aging,”
― Sara Gottfried, The Hormone Cure

“The “calories in, calories out” mind-set is the old-school approach of a one-sided conversation with the body: You need to eat this, not that. Submit to my will. The problem is that coercion doesn’t work for women, who don’t like to be forced, deprived, or disempowered. The outside-in approach tries to beat you into submission. It’s a boot camp for your body, when what a woman’s body really needs is three days at a spa. The female body responds far better to the coax than the shove.”
― Sara Gottfried, The Hormone Reset Diet: Heal Your Metabolism to Lose Up to 15 Pounds in 21 Days

“Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.”
― Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

“We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realize that we are apes.”
― Richard Dawkins, A Devil's Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love – Essays from Renowned Scientist Richard Dawkins on Evolution and the Examined Life

“American political opportunities are loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest.”
― Richard Dawkins

“The laws of genetics apply even if you refuse to learn them.”
― Allison Plowden

“I believe that we don't choose our stories," she began, leaning forward. "Our stories choose us." She paused and took a sip of water. Her hand, I noticed was steady.. "And if we don't tell them, then we are somehow diminished.”
― Dani Shapiro, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life

“I’m going to suggest something radical here -- something that is much easier said than done. We must not separate our life from our art. Louise Gluck recently spoke of this in an interview with William Giraldi in Poets & Writers: 'You have to live your life if you’re going to do original work. Your work will come out of an authentic life, and if you suppress all of your most passionate impulses in the service of an art that has not yet declared itself, you’re making a terrible mistake.

I’m often asked about motherhood and writing. About teaching and writing. About making a living and writing. Beneath all of the questions is a deeper question, thrumming: Can I have a life and be a writer?

"I’d like to answer a resounding yes to that question, though with the caveat that this requires a daily practice, a daily awareness that perhaps we need not delineate between life and art, draw a line down the center of our days and put our work on one side and everything else on the other. Sarah Ruhl offers this: 'I found that life intruding on writing was, in fact, life. And that, tempting as it may be for a writer who is also a parent, one must not think of life as an intrusion. At the end of the day, writing has very little to do with writing, and much to do with life. And life, by definition, is not an intrusion.”
― Dani Shapiro

“According to ayurveda, we become what we surround ourselves with. And so it stands to reason that we have to be discerning about what we surround ourselves with." Steve Cope [p. 85]”
― Dani Shapiro, Devotion

“It wasn't getting easier because it isn't supposed to get easier. Midlife was a bitch, and my educated guess was that the climb only got steeper from here. Carl Jung put it perfectly: "Thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life," he wrote. "Worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will by evening have become a lie."
... I was writing a new program for the afternoon of life. The scales tipped away from suffering and toward openheartedness and love. [p. 182]”
― Dani Shapiro, Devotion

“Still writing?" I usually nod and smile, then quickly change the subject. But here is what I would like to put down my fork and say: Yes, yes, I am. I will write until the day I die, or until I am robbed of my capacity to reason. Even if my fingers were to clench and wither, even if I were to grow deaf or blind, even if I were unable to move a muscle in my body save for the blink of one eye, I would still write. Writing saved my life. Writing has been my window -- flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence -- my way of interpreting everything within my grasp. Writing has extended that grasp by pushing me beyond comfort, beyond safety, past my self-perceived limits. It has softened my heart and hardened my intellect. It has been a privilege. It has whipped my ass. It has burned into me a valuable clarity. It has made me think about suffering, randomness, good will, luck, memory responsibility, and kindness, on a daily basis -- whether I feel like it or not. It has insisted that I grow up. That I evolve. It has pushed me to get better, to be better. It is my disease and my cure. It has allowed me not only to withstand the losses in my life but to alter those losses -- to chip away at my own bewilderment until I find the pattern in it. Once in a great while, I look up at the sky and think that, if my father were alive, maybe he would be proud of me. That if my mother were alive, I might have come up with the words to make her understand. That I am changing what I can. I am reaching a hand out to the dead and to the living and the not yet born. So yes. Yes. Still writing.”
― Dani Shapiro, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life

“Fermented foods contain natural probiotics, or healthy bacteria, that can take your health to the next level. Nearly every culture has a version of a fermented food: yogurt, kefir, miso, and fermented vegetables, including sauerkraut, pickles, and kimchi.”
― Sara Gottfried, The Hormone Reset Diet: Heal Your Metabolism to Lose Up to 15 Pounds in 21 Days

“Deep Sleep is good for weight loss: Sleep increases glucose metabolism and is linked to better blood sugar control, boosts secretion of growth hormone, which— along with cortisol— regulates belly fat; activates cellular repair and mends injury;
normalizes cortisol levels during the day and improves memory.”
― Sara Gottfried, The Hormone Reset Diet: Heal Your Metabolism to Lose Up to 15 Pounds in 21 Days

“Women are wired to take on others’ needs. Own your role in stress, establishing boundaries on what you can reasonably accomplish within your current bandwidth and reduce your stress load.”
― Sara Gottfried, The Hormone Reset Diet: Heal Your Metabolism to Lose Up to 15 Pounds in 21 Days

“Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'

I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”
― Lewis Carroll

“To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart and to sing it to them when they have forgotten.”
― Arne Garborg

“Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. Practice tonight at hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can calling the good energy with a smile.
(From Ketut Liyer, the Balinese healer)”
― Elizabeth Gilbert

“Yoga is the cessation of the movements of the mind. Then there is abiding in the Seer's own form.”
― Patanjali, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“Doctors are men who prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in human beings of whom they know nothing. —Voltaire”
― Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer