Welcome!

I’m so glad you’re here.

I’m Nealy. A wife, mom of four, home chef, globe-trotter, yogi, teacher, and founder of The Flexible Chef. Here at TFC, we ditch perfectionism and get flexible. No, I’m not talking about busting out into splits while your chicken is sizzling on the stove (although, you can if you want to)! What I really mean by “flexible” is learning to let go, give yourself a break more often, inhale confidence, and bend the rules so you can live the life you crave both in and out of the kitchen.

After 25 years of experimenting with various restrictive diet and fitness fads—like that time I crunched my way through the cracker diet or sipped my way to skinny with the lemonade diet—I’ve learned that living such a rigid life is exhausting. And when you’re willpower is constantly tested, you’ll eventually find yourself elbow deep into a vat of cookie dough. Sound familiar?

With The Flexible Chef, I share my creative solutions to empower you to become more confident, savvy, and more chef-like in your kitchen and in your life.

I share my secrets for customizing and healthifying your favorite classic dishes so they fit your lifestyle. You’ll begin to mix, match, and substitute ingredients, creating unique masterpieces that taste so good your diners won’t even realize it’s good for them. Just take my Cauliflower Pizza Steaks or Gluten-Free Breakfast Pancake Donuts, for examples. Yes, I said donuts! Part of becoming a Flexible Chef is allowing yourself to indulge in both tantalizing salads and drool-worthy desserts. So get ready!

As you scroll through my blog, don’t forget to check out my latest cooking videos where I shine a light on flexibility in the kitchen and show you step-by-step how to make amazing meals when you’re faced with limited time and resources.

Stepping out of the kitchen, I show you how to slot yoga and exercise into your full schedule, maintain a household filled with picky eaters, host an uncomplicated dinner party with flair, and live an all around awesome life on your own terms.

I promise to deliver inspiring advice with integrity and, more importantly, a great deal of love.

Be The Chef Of Your Life

Take charge and create your own recipe for success rather than following someone else’s guidelines. We can elevate each other from being a mere cook to a masterful chef. I like to think of life as a laboratory—we all must be prepared to conduct our own experiments. How much dessert can you handle? What type of exercise suits your life and your body type? What is it that you yearn for, and are you living your potential to the max? Asking great questions is the only way to get great answers.

Know Your Middle

Flexible Chefs have a strong foundation, value system, and sense of self. We know our priorities—the type of food we need to eat on a daily basis to make us feel great, the amount of regular exercise we need to do to make us look amazing, and the way we organize our time between family, friends, and work. These values are our middle. When we splurge on yummy treats or throw our whole selves into intense work, we veer slightly off course. But a true Flexible Chef knows how to zig and zag between extremes and then bounce back to their middle to enjoy life.

Bend the Rules

Flexible Chefs give themselves the freedom to break the rules without sacrificing on excellence. Again, when one zigs, one must also zag. We don’t deny ourselves the good things in life (like a piece of ooey gooey chocolate cake on occasion)! We bend for the purpose of creating our most masterful life… of course, without breaking.

Live Masterfully

Flexible Chefs aren’t just one thing. We hold each other accountable for being everything we want to be without sacrificing excellence. We’re moms, career-minded women, happy homemakers, and everything between. We tap into our potential to live an extraordinary life – full of flexibility and creativity.

Ditch Perfectionism

Flexible Chefs can’t do it all, and we certainly can’t be everything to everyone all the time. We ditch perfectionism and the idea of an air-brushed life, and inspire adaptability. We swap it for flexibility and know the best way to bend without breaking is to be cognizant of our center.

Chase Grace

Being rigid is exhausting. Flexible Chefs gracefully zig and zag over their center, never beating oneself up for veering too far off course. We quickly realign toward our middle and let go of any resentment. At any moment, we can get back to our middle and start fresh (and stay flexible).

Customize the Classics

True Flexible Chefs are creators, customizing classic and sophisticated dishes to fit their lifestyle. Recipes are seen as suggestions, meant to be customized to fit our lifestyle. We practice flexibility by mixing, matching, and substituting ingredients toward our own center. We’re the master creator of our lives – in and out of the kitchen.

Inhale Confidence

It takes confidence to define your middle and be comfortable enough to zig and zag over it without feeling like you’re losing control. From afar, it might seem The Flexible Chef doesn’t have a chaotic day. That’s not the case. We just know how to inhale confidence and exhale flexibility. And if you’re anything like me, you might literally be deepening your breathes with yoga.

Know That Flops Aren’t Failures

Flexible Chefs know that practice breathes excellence into a dish, yoga pose, or any task they’re trying to master. Flops are expected along the journey, but we know that our flops are also the key to a masterful life. We save the over-baked bread and make garlicky croutons and breadcrumbs. A barely salvageable cake that’s inches from the garbage pail can be recast as a key ingredient of an elegant trifle. We reframe flops to be flexible (and successful!) finishes.

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