Good Day Google+ - Do You Want to Build a Snowman?

Hey everyone, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to Good Day Google Plus. We were just having so much fun talking in the green room, I lost track of time and saw that I started just a little bit late. So thank you so much for joining us. We've got a fun show for you. We are missing one guest, but I think we'll keep you entertained with who we have here today. We're going to have some fun talking about food and crafts and Italy. So it's, it's going to be a good day on Google Plus. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave them in the comments section and we will do our best to get to them and answer them and maybe a few shoutouts too. And while we're here, let's say hello to a few people. Becky Limo is in the house, she's checking in. Candy is here, how you doing Candy? I'm glad to see you. Dave Pipe is in the house already and we have a few others showing up as they start to trickle in. Kim Boltman, they start to trickle in to say hello to us. So let's get moving right now, we're gonna say hi to everyone. And see how they're doing. And let's start with Vivica. How you doing today?

Hi, Chef. I'm doing great.

And you are in Milano, is that correct?

Yes, Milano, Italy. And this should be called Good Evening Google+ today because it's 7 PM right here.

I know, I know. It's funny, when I had my logo designed, my designer came back to me and it had sunglasses on a sun with a coffee cup. I said, do you watch my show? I said, but it's close. So it's good afternoon or buongiorno Google+. Buonasera. Buonasera, almost. That's right, it is 7 PM, so we're past buongiorno. You've been having a good trip in Italy, I hope?

Yes, fantastic, thank you. And I've actually for once been very lucky with the weather, and it only really snowed and rained for a couple of days, and the rest has been beautiful and sunny. Chilly but sunny, and that's great.

That's good. Yeah, as long as the sun's shining, it's not too bad. So we'll get back to you and we'll talk about what you're doing. And let me say hi to Kelly. Kelly, it's been a long time. I'm glad we finally got you on.

Thank you so much for having me.

And it's been since— I haven't seen you since St.

Louis, and that was almost 2 years ago, right?

Yeah, time flies when you're having fun. You were one of the few people that actually took to heart what I said when I told you what to do, and it seemed to work for you.

Yes, it did. Thank you for being so helpful, I guess, you know.

Well, I find people who want to kind of pay it forward, so I always enjoy helping people, but they sometimes look at me like I'm a little crazy. So there's a whole other issue altogether.

We're all a little crazy.

My wife will attest to. But thank you so much for showing up today, and I hope you're staying warm in St. Louis. It's got to be a little chilly there.

It is very chilly, but staying warm indoors, that's for sure.

That's it. That's all we can do. So we'll come back and talk to you in a little bit. And my new friend Corey, how you doing?

Hey, Chef, doing great. Thank you so much for having me on. I am honored to be here.

Oh, I'm so happy you could come on today. I know you took some time out of work to do it for me, and I really appreciate that.

No worries. Yep, I'm here in the Garden Theatre dressing rooms. I work at the Garden Theatre in Winter Garden, and as you can see, the dressing room area where our actors get all ready, that's, that's where I am. So I've got my computer, my laptop on my I'm happy to talk about some food with you.

That's pretty cool. I love— my first meeting of you was at Bess's conference, the big conference that she had. I remember when they pulled the names out for winning prizes, and you won the prize from the Dairy Council. You went up there, and I don't think you knew they had the microphone there, and you're going, "I'm vegan." I am.

It's funny. My blog is Real Iron Dad. I run realirondad.com. My blog is about food, family, and fun, but I am a plant-based triathlete, and plant-based, vegan, kind of synonymous. The whole conference had gone by. I had met all these amazing bloggers and people, and yeah, there was a random drawing, and I won the Florida Dairy Farmers gift basket, which was full of milk and cheese and dairy. I'm going up to the stage to accept it, and I'm thinking in my head, "Oh my goodness. I'm going to have—" pictures, professional photos published of me holding this dairy basket. I walked up to Bess Auer, who runs Gotta Get Blogging and FL BlogCon, and I said, "Bess, I'm vegan. I can't even be seen next to this. Please, this is my entire brand." She's like, "What?" On the mic to 500 people. "You're vegan? So you don't drink milk?" I'm like, "Oh, Bess, no, no." I actually refused it and gave it away to another baker. Blog. It was hilarious.

I know, it was so funny. Just the look on everyone's face, it was like, who would have figured? I guess the only worse thing would have been if the cattle association had given away something and you had won that.

I would have taken a live cow, I guess, as a pet. I can do that and give it to a nice farmer.

Don't tell them that because Bess might have them do that.

Oh no.

That would be funny. Too much, too much. We got to get Adam involved in that. Adam Abbott. I'd like to see him riding a cow. He would probably do it.

Yes, yes.

Only unfortunately, he would probably be naked, and that would be the bad part. No, we can't, we can't.

No, no, got to keep it PC around here. PC.

All right, so we'll come back to you in a little bit. Let's go back to Vivica and talk to her about what she does. You are a food blogger, and I love the name of your blog, The Nourished Caveman. Why don't you tell us why you call it that?

Yeah, that's kind of one of the funny stories. Like when I was working as a nutritionist already and working for a practice for a doctor of chiropractic, and her patients kept asking me for recipes. And I was coaching patients and working with patients, and they're like, so what do we eat? What do we eat? Constantly, like, what do we eat? And finally I was like, I should just write down the recipes somewhere that I can access them so it's easy. And so I was like, well, I should just start a blog. You know, everybody has a blog nowadays, so why not? That was about a year and a half ago, so quite recently. And I remember waking up in the middle of the night, one of those things, you know, when you wake up and your brain starts going. And I was like, wow, what should I call this blog? And I've been really active in our local Weston Price chapter of Chico. I live near Chico, California, and we have one of the biggest Weston Price chapters. Of the United States. And I studied the work of Dr. Price, and at the same time though, I was doing sort of more of a Paleo diet. So suddenly I had this idea like, "Oh, Nourish Caveman." It's like nourishing traditions plus the Paleo caveman. And it's kind of funny because I thought it was funny. Nobody else really thought it was funny nor got it. Nobody asked me about it. They're just like, "Oh yeah, that Nourish something blog." At least it was a private joke between me and me, but the name stuck. Now it's like a year and a half later, and the blog has really kind of taken off beautifully. I'm very happy, although I have slightly changed my direction because I am not doing just a Paleo diet anymore. I'm really, really strong on traditional foods. And being from Italy and having grown up in a very traditional food environment, I was lucky enough to be in Italy when we really ate local foods and, you know, regional food. So for me, that's a big part of my personality and myself. But last year, about a year ago, I found out that I was Marching happily towards diabetes. I thought I was the healthiest person in the world. I'm a nutritionist. I'm doing so great. I'm eating this healthy diet, counseling patients. And yes, I had 140 glucose in the morning. I was like, oh. So my whole life kind of changed, and my lifestyle definitely changed. And I started doing a ketogenic diet, a therapeutic ketogenic diet. Especially for people with carbohydrate sensitivity. And I kind of just really threw myself in it, and it became my life and my lifestyle. And since then, it's really grown into a thing of its own. I've been on a ketogenic diet for a year now. I have felt better than ever. I lost the weight that I gained through the paleo diet.. And I feel much better. My inflammation is down, and of course my blood sugar is back to normal. So a lot of good things. And so by doing that, I also— a lot of changes came into my life. I quit my job and I started my own little practice that is principally a long-distance practice, and I work with a lot of people that come to me through the blog. So in the last year, actually in the last 6 months, I created a program for kind of a complete health transformation. And it's especially targeted to people that have the same problem as I do. So they are carbohydrate sensitive, they are very insulin— very or a little bit insulin resistant. Just happens I'm very insulin resistant, so. It's not fun, but yeah, I got to kind of deal with it. Because I don't do pharmaceutical drugs and I am slightly phobic of doctors, so I try to be as healthy as I possibly can so I never have to see one. The blog is now— yeah, Nourish Caveman became a keto blog and it's doing really well. I've been busier than a person should legally be.

Well, that's good troubles when you're busy. That's not something that you're unhappy about. I'm glad to hear that you are busy. I think our lives take us in different directions all the time. I think one thing about anyone's diet, no matter which type it is, what fits your lifestyle, what fits your medical needs, is the biggest important part of it. I think a lot of us wouldn't have problems if we ate more whole foods. And ate more real food. I think that's been the downfall of our diets altogether.

Traditional foods, like, we started out— everybody started out from a pretty good point. I think in the last 50 to 100 years, things got kind of gone wayward, like, how do you say, like, you know, didn't go so well for the healthy side of eating.

I know. I saw a post that said everything our grandparents ate was organic. We didn't have to worry about it as much, and now we do. I'm really thankful I got to go to ShiftCon back in October and learn so much. Although I did tell Leah, I says, "I have a new doctor thanks to ShiftCon." I have a naturopathic physician that I see now who I refer to as Dr. Evil. I went gluten-free on my own because I was following the tenet of I don't know what gluten is, but evidently, it's delicious. I was eating way too much gluten, so I decided to go off of it. I felt much better almost instantly doing that. She's running more tests on me, and then Dr. Evil found out I was also allergic to dairy and soy. Oh, wow. Nice. This is just something we learned in the last few weeks. I went back to get some other checks, and I was talking to her other doctor there. He says, "How you doing? What did you do?" "when you learned about that?" I said, "Well, I went home, and I ate all my cheese." She was taking a drink of water at the time and almost spit it out across the room. I went, "Oh, not all of it.

Don't worry." Might as well if you have to be off the cheese, right?

Now I'm off dairy. I'm off soy. Soy was hard because it's in so much if you don't look for it. Who knows? I may become vegan by the end of this. I might be joining Corrie over there. Especially if I could look that good, too.

That's very nice of you.

Thank you. Lifestyles, you know, it's all about lifestyles and changes you need to do. So, well, thank you for sharing that. Now, Kelly, I guess you're— you get to eat everything, right? Are you okay with everything?

No, I probably need to lose some weight.

I'm not a poster boy for that either.

Yeah, I haven't found any allergic allergies to foods and things yet, but I think with age, things start to change, so who knows. I dread those days.

Yeah, my happy-go-lucky. At least it didn't hit me when I was a chef as much. Now, I think because I can cook and I know foods, I can get around a lot of it, and we can still eat pretty darn good. Yeah. Tell me about what you do at Live Laugh Raw.

Live Laugh Raw was more or less an accident. I'm originally from the East Coast, so when I moved to St. Louis with my husband, it was kind of to keep the family in the loop. And seriously, it was— if you go way back, it's bad. It's very, very bad. And you know, the more I was trying to get acquainted with other bloggers, I started learning a lot. And fell into doing it as basically a job. And it's really just, it's a creative lifestyle blog. I really like having variation. I share travel and food and crafts and DIY projects, and it's a creative outlet that I love, and I don't think anyone complains about doing what they love at home without a boss. So you get to be the boss. So between that and I also have an Etsy shop, which isn't huge, but it has peaks and it keeps me very, very busy. I probably work way too much according to my husband.

So tell me about the Etsy shop, because I saw that and I was interested about what, what are you selling in there, or how did you do that?

Well, I started it, I don't know, it was one of those whims again. Couple years ago around Christmas time and it did really, really well and I thought, wow, this is something I can keep up. Probably my best sellers are pennant banners. I have a lot of photographers that purchase them and so that can be— you can make a lot of money fast selling those and I like having other things. I mean, as a crafter, I like having supplies that I'm trying now to offer to readers because sometimes you have to buy things in bulk and you don't need 100 of everything. So I'm starting to kind of expand on that a little bit. But so it's a little bit of paper goods, vintage finds, pennant, the pennant fabrics, but everything is kind of— I try to keep it with a vintage-y feel because that's really something I'm passionate about. And it's called House 129 based on our house number, 129, so that's kind of where that came from. I like symbolism in a lot of things.

Well, that's pretty cool. So you've kind of established yourself, and you know, do-it-yourself— I can never say DIY because I go DIY— do-it-yourself bloggers have really become a big thing because so many people have some time to do things at home and are looking for a way to create stuff without paying an arm and a leg for it.

Right.

So many things now are laminate. I mean, it's hard to find good solid wood pieces, and when you do, it's astronomical. So it's easy to convince my husband, you know, to jump on board. And we've worked with some great, you know, brands to give us the machinery and whatnot to be able to build a lot of our own things too. So that helps. But it is nice and it's rewarding in the end when people compliment you on something and you can say you made it. So it's a fun, fun, fun journey, that is for certain.

Yeah, I guess it makes you feel a little bit like Laura Ingalls or Pa Ingalls on the— I made it myself. I tried that one time. I'm not real handy or real technical. It's lucky I had some skill as a chef or I don't know what I would have done. I'm thankful to people out there like you that can do it, or at least teach me how to do it a little bit.

Well, it's nice to know you're inspiring people. That's, I think, part of the reward in blogging, whether it's food or crafts or DIY. People like seeing that it's doable by everybody else who's just an everyday individual as well.

Do you get people commenting that, "Wow, I tried that and it worked"? I do.

I get tagged. I actually get tagged a lot on Instagram where people have done something and they'll be like, you can find the tutorial, and they tag me. And I get so excited because I'm like, oh my gosh, it's not just going out there to the universe and not being seen. I mean, people are actually doing it. It's a lot of fun.

So that's cool. I had somebody— I posted something on Instagram and said, where in Orlando can I get that dish? I went, well, You gotta come to my house actually, because I didn't get it anywhere. Wow. So that, you know, every now and then when you get something like that, that kind of makes you go, hmm, okay, I'm all that and a bag of chips. Yeah, that's funny. But, well, good, you know, I'm glad it's working for you. And let's move over to Corey and talk to Corey a little bit. Hello. You know, I'm so glad, like I said, we got Bess is just Gotta be one of my favorite people in the whole world. She brings so many people together that, I mean, I would have never met you, you know, some of these other, like the fashion blogger, like Jay, that was there, and otherwise you're never gonna run into them. And it's a great way to get us all these different minds together in one room.

It is. You know, Bess's mom, ironically enough, was my second grade math teacher. Wow! That is how I know Bess. We go way, way back and we're good friends. As I was starting on my journey to complete an Ironman triathlon and become a triathlete and everything, her husband Joe is an avid swimmer and a biker, and so I was consulting with him on, "Hey, what the heck am I supposed to do to buy a bike and everything else?" It's just funny that on that journey is kind of how Real Iron Dad evolved. And, you know, the site is here to help busy parents just like me. I have two young— I have a third baby on the way that's going to be here in about 4 months, so very excited about that. And it's, you know, people like me, people that are super busy like me, borderline overscheduled lives, don't think that they have enough time to make a healthy choice when it comes to their meals. Oftentimes, food is the first thing to go because it's so easy to stop by McDonald's or a fast food chain and put junk in your body. I don't know about you guys, but I think of my body as a Mercedes-Benz. I want to put the highest octane fuel in my body to keep it running as best as possible. You just can't put the normal old 87 or even lower. In your body and expect it to run as well as it possibly can. Now, how did you become a vegan?

Was it when you became a triathlete, or was that prior?

My journey to being vegan started in 2006, about 6 months before my wife and I were getting married. She was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, which is a bowel disorder. With ulcerative colitis and Crohn's, My wife and I also run a support group for the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of America here in Orlando. We found that there weren't resources. There weren't a lot of resources out there. The doctors don't know how to tell you how it was caused, and they still don't know exactly what the cause of it is. We were told that we— well, we, my wife was told she had to take a low dose of chemotherapy for the rest of her life, and that's just how it's going to be. That was unacceptable for me because over time, you take chemo or high-level pharmaceutical drugs for the majority of your life, you're going to see repercussions from that. Yeah, the disease that you're trying to control is going to be put at bay, but just like Vivica said, pharmaceutical drugs, they'll deteriorate your body over time. We changed our diet. We felt that eating plant-based, vegan, very anti-inflammatory, alkaline-producing foods made the the disease go away. She's had multiple colonoscopies. They can't find the disease at all. Like I said, she's pregnant with our third child right now. The doctors, I think it's a miracle. I don't think it's a miracle. I think it's directly associated with diet and lifestyle. Dr. Pompa: Absolutely.

You hear so many success stories from people, whether it's they went plant-based, whether it's they went paleo, whether it's they went gluten-free. That have cleared up things that have puzzled doctors for most of their lives. A doctor you go to really doesn't have a clue sometimes is what it is, unfortunately. When you do that, your body is fixing itself.

Dr. Pompa: It's true. I think Western doctors—you can call them Western doctors. Any medical doctor, they're not trained in preventative medicine. They're trained to the problem, and the way that they cure the problem is with pharmaceutical drugs. So it's not really their fault that they're pumping us full of pharmaceutical drugs. It's just what they learned in school. So I think it starts at the legislation level, and once the country starts to take a look at the food pyramid and do some analysis and correct how our kids are eating in schools, it's a trickle-down effect, to use a legislative term, that that will eventually lead to a healthier America. Unfortunately, on my podcast that I have on iTunes, I just interviewed a dad that was a firefighter for 6 years, and he said that the number one call he gets is diabetes related to obesity and heart complications. It's no coincidence. All of this is happening because of the food that we're eating. I can't agree more that eating real food is very important.

Yeah, absolutely. Like I said, for me, it was an eye-opener when I went to ShiftCon. I went there to talk about Google+, and I'm sitting in the back listening to these other speakers going, "What the hell? What are they putting in our food?" It was like, "Oh my God." The biggest thing for me was before, some of the experience I've had with people that were not carnivores or were not— weren't always pleasant. It was almost like they wanted to burn a cross on your lawn. Everyone I talked to there was like, "Fine, it's your life. It's your decision. Do what's best for you," or like, "When you use all that up, try something better." I met people that changed my whole outlook on that as well. It's easier to accept change, I think, when people don't feel as threatened by it. That was my journey.

I agree. I'm a donor to PETA. PETA's got a bit of controversial history there with all of the, you know, not picketing, what is the word I'm looking for, the protesters, you know, the protesters outside of SeaWorld, there are protesters everywhere else, and I just, that's the one part about PETA that I don't necessarily jive with, is you know, you're not going to see me creating negativity around, you know, my choice for myself. I will broadcast what works best for me. I try very hard not to make judgments on how other people eat, because I don't think that that's going to be productive at all. I want to create an environment that is welcoming for people that want to try a plant-based diet or want to try to make healthier decisions, and I don't think that shaming people or using scare tactics are things that are going to be very welcoming. I try to keep it as positive as possible, but still informational.

Yep, absolutely. I would say a spoonful of honey, but you can't eat that, is better than a spoonful of vinegar.

Yes. Honey is one of those things. I don't feel like bees are harmed in the process of making honey, but I need to do some more research because apparently there's a documentary on honey and how it's made that would change my perspective. We'll see. I'll give it a shot.

We do need those bees. I was at a forum for about beekeeping, and the problems that we're running into with the bees disappearing from us. We're all pretty much screwed if the bees go away. People don't realize that. These are something that they should make everyone watch, I think, in school. There's certain movies, like I saw one on the pork industry that made me never want to eat pork again. I mean, on how they're raised. Ethical treatment, I think, a lot of times is the reason I don't eat certain meats. It's not philosophical or it's not anything else that I've learned. It's just how, as a person, you know, I don't feel it's right. More like that. So, yeah, we have a question here. Dave Williams wants to know, do you hold HOAs for ostomates?

For ostomies? Do I hold meetings for ostomies?

Yeah, well, he's talking about Hangouts on Air, so I mean, what we're doing right now, I guess he's thinking maybe that would be a valuable tool.

Yeah, there is an ostomy association that I'd be happy to connect him with if he'd like. I'm sure you'll have my contact information, Dennis. Sorry, my lower third is not working right now or I'd have it up, but if you'd like, just reach out to me at realirondad.com and I can connect him to the ostomy association of the Orlando area. If he's not in Orlando, then I'm sure that we can point them in the right direction for sure.

Okay, sounds good. Yeah, and any information you guys want to leave in the comments section later is more than welcome, any of your links to your blogs and things too. And here's Coach Moore saying bravo to you, Cory. And now Cory, why don't you tell us a little bit about your journey to become an Ironman and become a triathlete. How did you decide that was something you wanted to do? Now I thought about it at one time and I thought I'd give it a try. I was running I was biking, but when I took my bike into the water, I hadn't realized you were supposed to swim.

Well, you know, the journey to Ironman has been a very fun one, and I wouldn't be able to do it without my wife. It is a significant amount of time, and the only time to find— at the time my kids were 1 and 3 years old, my 2 kids were 1 and 3— I had to carve out mornings. So that means waking up at 4 AM in the morning and running, biking, swimming until about 7 AM. Then I'd come back and I'd stay in my bike shorts and I'd be prepping breakfast for the kids and changing diapers and making bottles and stuff like that. Again, people kept calling me Iron Dad and I thought that was really funny. An Ironman triathlon, for those that don't know, is 140.6 miles. It includes a 2-mile swim in the ocean followed by a 112-mile bike and then a 26-mile marathon after that. I think it's like less than 1% of the population has even attempted to complete an Ironman. It was intense. It was one of the biggest things of my life. I trained for about a year. I did the half Ironman 6 months before I did the full Ironman, and then I took 2013 off. 2012 is when I did the Ironman. 2013 I took off, then 2014 I did 3 more races. And now again, here I am, 2015, I will be taking off because I'm having another child, because I am a father before I am a triathlete, and a husband even before that. So I gotta make sure my priorities are in place, and then, you know, I enjoy it. It's a lot of fun. I've had a blast.

Have you done them in this area, or do you go elsewhere for the competitions?

I don't like to travel because packing your bike on a plane, it's just not fun. You have to get a special case. And stuff, so I do stay local. I did the Florida Half Ironman. Lance Armstrong did it when I did it before all the controversy. Then I did the full Ironman in Panama City Beach. It was a wonderful experience, just a lot of soul searching you do in the 15 or so hours that you're doing that race.

Let me ask you, have you gone up to anyone and go, "I am Ironman"?

No, but they do scream your name at the end. They say, "Cory, whoa!" "Voron, you are an Ironman!" There's no better feeling than that, for sure. That's got to be.

Hats off to you for that. The most I ever ran at one time was 11 miles. That's a lot. Yeah, for me, was a feat that I couldn't believe. That's a lot. To do that. Of course, it took me an hour to do it, too, so it wasn't like I was running a monumental speed.

It doesn't matter. I think it's all about doing the best job that you can, and that's what we're all trying to do, right? I mean, we're trying to make the best decisions that we can and be as healthy as we can and constant continual learning and education and just keep making improvements every day. Sounds about right.

Sounds good to me. So you guys, have you— do you know anyone that's done anything like this, Kelly? Vivica, do they do that in Italy, Vivica? Do they have those Ironman races, do you know, or marathons?

I haven't lived here for the last 20 years. I'm over on you guys' side, so I'm sure they do. They have marathons. I don't know if they have full-on Ironman. I've heard that there is, yeah, regular marathons, and of course lots of bike racing. You know Italians and their bicycle racing.

They're pretty obsessed with that. The hills of Tuscany are always great for the bike racing, I think.

The Giro d'Italia, I'm sure you guys have heard of that.

Yep, there's races worldwide, yeah, it's amazing.

Not this time of year in St. Louis though, huh, Kelli?

No, we've had a mild winter, but recently we're getting a lot more snow, and it's been -4, I think, the last couple days. We just stocked up on firewood, so we'll be posing around the fireplace this weekend.

It was funny, I was watching the news last night, and I try not to watch national news too much because it's depressing a lot. So they were talking about sledding accidents and all the sledding accidents that were happening because the kids are out and they're not wearing helmets. And I'm thinking, boy, kind of like sucking all the fun out of sledding if they make you wear a helmet. But it does make sense. It does make sense.

But I never wore helmets when It just seems like everything changes. It's a crazy evolution, but things that we never thought of when I was a child, today, I mean, it only makes sense. I guess I was a lucky one who didn't have any accidents.

I know. My mother smoked. The child seat was her arm. We didn't have seat belts, so that was the seat belt. We all kind of lived through it, but I think things have changed so much. Probably there's so many more people on the road and so many more people doing things that it's getting crazy. In Florida especially, when I moved to Florida, I learned right away that driving was a different experience. I figured out why. It's because every half block you can turn. In New Jersey, we'd have to drive 2 miles to get to a jug handle to turn. Here, you can turn almost everywhere, so you cut across 4 lanes of traffic to do it.

Did you live in New Jersey at one point then, Chef Dennis?

Oh yeah, for most of my life. I'm from Texas, but I lived in Ocean City and the Philadelphia area and drove with all the maniacs. And that was kind of crazy driving. Orlando's— Not so bad. —intense.

That's because of all the tourists. I mean, nobody knows where they're going, so they're constantly looking at their GPS and going, woo, woo, woo, woo.—

and it is kind of— there's a lot of traffic and it's crazy, but it doesn't seem like— I mean, I would be gripping the steering wheel when I was driving in Philadelphia. Then you could never find any place to park. Like, we'd go in the city to eat, and it was like, then you'd be driving for half an hour trying to find some place to park the car. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Here, it hasn't gotten that bad. And we had a joke when we first moved here is no matter where we were going, it was 45 minutes away. It's like, how far is that? It's 45 minutes. Winter Park, how is it 45 minutes? Yep. Everywhere we were going was 45 minutes, so it's— but it never seemed like a bad drive. Not like 20 minutes at home was like, you know, white-knuckled, kind of ugh. So I'm thankful for that. Small miracles. Yes. So you guys all have blogs. Any new plans for your blogs? Anything happening exciting or any branding changes or—

looks like Corey is nodding yes.

All of us, I think, yeah, a couple of yeses. So you guys know I just launched about 4 and a half months ago, and so I'm steadily growing, just hit 500 followers on Twitter, so I was happy about that. But we've got a YouTube channel and All the stuff you can see on the website. New developments, I just went through Whole Foods and shot Iron Dad's Ultimate Guide to Grocery Shopping. I got approval from corporate to walk through and kind of guide some of my busy parents on some things that I use that work out really well for me. And so that will be a 4-part video series that's going to launch very soon. And in addition to that, I'll have a little bit of a downloadable PDF that you can bring with you to the grocery store on your smartphone and just kind of help you navigate through the store there. Super quick read and lots of fun. And then in the summer, I'm going to be writing 6 children's books and working with a publisher on that to get those out to help encourage kids to make healthy choices when they're eating and having fun. And trying to make it a lot of fun with a lot of neat illustrations and stuff like that. So good things to come. Exciting. That's great.

I'm so happy. How did you decide you wanted to write children's books?

I work a lot with kids. I work with a company called Dramatic Education, and they go into schools and help kids with self-confidence and motivation and kind of interpersonal communication by using the arts. So I'm an arts guy, I have a theater degree, and they use— I write programs in bullying, anti-bullying programs, and puppetry. Improvisation, musical theater, and it's great, you know, and I think that I understand kids and I sure enough have enough of them, so— yeah, I just relate to them and I think that I can help out, so I hope these books can help kids make a good decision.

How long have you been podcasting?

We are We are 15 or 16 episodes in. It's been about 10 weeks. And man, next Wednesday, I mean, not to put a plug out there, but this is a big deal for anybody that watches The Walking Dead. I have a close friend of mine that is going to be making an appearance on the show. And we're going to be doing a podcast with him. So I can't talk anymore about it because the show premieres on Sunday. But if you— this is season 6 of The Walking Dead. So if you are a big fan of the show, you will not want to miss this Wednesday's podcast. We're going to hear everything about behind the scenes and his experience with— again, he's going to be one of the main characters on the show. So very, very excited about that.

Oh yeah, I'm a big Walking Dead fan. Me too. I was a little disappointed with the first episode of season 6. Oh, well, it hasn't come out yet.

You mean season 5? Season 6 is what's coming out.

Oh, well, what was just out? We started the new season. Which one are we in? Oh, did it already start?

Yeah. Oh, well, see, I thought it was this Sunday. See, I don't have cable, so I can't watch it.

Oh no, yeah, it started. It started about, uh— The third episode.

You can go ahead and tell us now, Cory.

No, I can't. No, see, because that means that he's not in the first episode then.

Oh. The first episode was a lot of flashbacks and kind of artsy, kind of— yeah, there wasn't any real meat to it, I should say, because everyone was getting eaten except one person. Would that be a plant-based diet, the zombies?

No, absolutely not. It tastes like chicken though, I think.

Oh, terrible. Stop it. Stop it. Greg Trullio and Carolyn Capernaum had me on. They had Walking Dead shows for a while, and I had zombie cooking team on my lower third for that. Ah, awesome. They were funny. Well, yeah, podcasting seems to be the new thing. You know, not new, but it's been around for a while, but more bloggers are getting into podcasting, and that seems a good way to reach a lot of different markets. Yeah, it's been wonderful.

My favorite part is just connecting with amazing people, and that was one of my main reasons for starting the blog, just to connect with amazing people. And I mean, look, I've got 3 amazing people I'm connecting with right now. So it's been a great journey, and I love it. I just can't wait to someday, you know, make it my full-time gig. But right now I'm just having a blast and trying to produce content that people will truly enjoy that is going to help them in their lives. And I think as long as I stay on that, that mission, that everything else will take care of itself.

At least I hope so. Yeah, absolutely. Sounds like you're on a good route. Does anybody do cooking videos here, or do you do DIY videos, Kelly?

I've done a couple videos. I think I just need to try to— I think I need to work on that more, get more comfortable with it too. I know this year that was a goal, is to try to bring more video content because that is a very popular means now for blogging and even monetizing your YouTube videos. But I just, I don't know, I say this every year and then December 31st rolls around and there might be one video. So I have to get to that point. That is a goal this year. But I've been listening to more podcasts, which I find interesting for myself because I've never gone that route. And so that's kind of getting me— it's got some wheels turning too. I love reading books that— and I'm reading one now, how— it's a John Maxwell book about positive thinking, like how successful people think. And oh my gosh, I think I'm 5 pages in and I'm ready to conquer the world. So, you know, I like reading things that keep me thinking ahead. So I think there's a lot of good things ahead. But you know, you have to really plan and be prepared for that, and that can take time. So you have to also have the patience to wait it out and, you know, make that happen. But I'm excited to hear more about the podcast and that too. I might actually hit you up, Corey, on how that all came into fruition. Feel free.

I am very happy to help.

We have someone in Orlando, I think it's a real big podcaster too. He was at Beth's That's his thing.

Yeah, Lou Mongiello with the Disney— he's got a Disney blog, Disney travel blog, and he's one of the most successful bloggers or podcasters out there. He's huge. He tells families where to go when they're at Disney, where the hotspots and stuff like that. He's not officially affiliated with Disney, but a wonderful guy, super amazing podcaster. But yeah, great, great resource.

Are you both— so Chef Dennis and Corey, you're both in Orlando? Correct. This is— I'm sorry, I'm going to probably say it wrong. Are you in Orlando or where are you located?

No, I'm in California, in Northern California. Okay, very good. I'm just on vacation right now. I gotcha.

So it sounds like Orlando has a great network.

We really do, and a lot of it is due to this woman we refer to, Bess Auer. She is just a superstar and a champion of other bloggers. I mean, she really puts it out there. She started a new thing called Gotta Get Blogging for the area to get us together to work together. She's really a good community builder and gives a lot of herself and her time to people, so we're fortunate. And, and Vivica, you were talking about you do cooking shows, videos. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?

I actually have 2 cooking videos. I started out as cooking videos, but then it quickly turned into nutrition. So now I have a little kind of thing that's called Nutrition in the Kitchen, because I am really terrible when I just speak about nutrition in front of a camera, and like, I think my audience will fall asleep in like 3 seconds. So it's not easy to keep people like engaged and interested when you're talking about pretty dry subjects sometimes, like physiology or, you know, what works in your body, what doesn't. So I decided to make it practical and more hands-on. So I do it from the kitchen and we talk about foods and different, you know, real practical solutions to different issues. So most of the videos so far are of course pretty closely related to the kind of topics that they talk about. For example, like how to fight sugar cravings with the right snacks or eating the right foods. Because a lot of people have problems, especially when you are insulin resistant or you are carb intolerant. You have a big problem with sugar, and you are both addicted to sugar, but it kind of, you know, it's really bad for your body. So you're trying to resist eating the sugar, and it's not easy. It's, uh, I think sugar is pretty much like at the level of pharmaceutical drugs and even street drugs. As far as like how addictive it can be, it's a big problem. And you know, coming to Italy, I really see the difference because in the United States, unfortunately, they put sugar in everything. Like all the packaged foods have sugar in it, all the, you know, pre-made foods. So that's, for me, it's a really big step to like make everything yourself as much as you possibly can. And I think I really agree with Cory on a lot of his pointers. And even though we have kind of different food perspective, but I think we also have a really big overlap as far as like eating fresh whole foods. And the kind of keto I do is keto paleo, so it's really based on like whole foods and real foods and lots of green vegetables. And, you know, people sometimes think that, for example, a Paleo diet is a high protein diet, and kind of it is, but a ketogenic diet is not a high protein diet. It's mostly fat, and some of the best healthy fats are like coconut oil, so they're vegetable fats. But so I incorporate all that into the shows that I do, and I still think that I have a lot to learn as far as making good videos. But in the meantime, if you have to wait till you're perfect, you'll never do anything. So I just throw myself in there and trust, start swimming.

In fact, the session we were on Sunday, that's what the keynote speaker was talking about. Don't wait for perfection, just do it. She does a blog post a day And if she waited until it was perfect, she would never put it out. So sometimes you just gotta do it.

Yeah, most of the time, especially in our world, I think, you know, if you really just sit there and refine your skills, technical skills especially, they— technology changes so fast, you guys, that by the time I'm good at something, that something is obsolete already. So the technology is just like, it's a constant struggle to keep up with the technology, and I just very recently started to delegate some jobs out to real professionals when I need a more professional look, because I come to the level where I really need, you know, to look professional, especially like soon I'm launching my program to the public. And I was like, I cannot look like I made it myself in my kitchen. Like, it has to look good. So, you know, like my first blog I did it myself. The second version of the blog I did it myself. It showed. And then by the third version, I just hired somebody because I wanted to look nice and not, you know, I cannot do everything. It's just there is so much to learn, you know. You learn one thing and then there is the other one, it's already changed and like, oof.

I hear you. And you know, with your blog, it's really a personal thing too. And I know what I thought I liked 2 years ago, 6 months later I'll look at it and I'll go, why did I do that? I need to change it and do this. It's kind of a work in progress, I think, for all of us most of the time. As we improve, as we grow, we want to change the kind of look of things a little bit. You know, I'm ready for a new change right now on mindset. Yeah, well, that's great. Yeah, go ahead, anybody? No? Okay. Show's going really well. We've got a lot of nice comments. If you guys get a chance later, you can read through them. They're all leaving us. Coach Moore's in the house. Elena Bellamattis coming in from London. Coach is in Texas. Candy is still here. Heidi is here from Italy? Italy. Heidi's in Italy. She's here. We've got a lot of nice comments from everyone. If you guys have any projects, we're getting ready to wrap up the show, but any last calls to action you'd like to give us, now's the time to do it. Anything you want to share with us? Vivica, anything new you have on the horizon or anything you'd like to share with us or calls to action?

Yes. I actually am I'm super excited and a little bit scared about this, but I am about to go public with my program. I am doing an 8-week program for health transformation, and it's quite in-depth, and I work both as a nutritionist and as a coach with my clients. And this is going to be— I already done like several local programs for local people where I live, and I did 2 long-distance programs. And that is all by invitation only. And now I'm ready to launch it publicly, so it's a big thing for me, and that's why the website had to look good. But it's called the Healing Foods Method, and it's going to be probably just on my blog at first, and then eventually it's going to have its own site. But yes, and it's a program that is mainly designed for people that have either prediabetes or insulin resistance or carbohydrate intolerance, and they know, like, they cannot really succeed with either a conventional diet or they want to, you know, take a handle on the situation. And yes, I cannot say too much for liability reasons, you know, you can't say the word C-U-R-E or, you know, those kind of words in public. But there is a lot that can be done to alleviate it. I'm really passionate about this, being— living this myself on my own skin, and I really want to try to help as many people as possible to get off the meds, get into a healthy lifestyle, and you can make a huge difference just with diet and lifestyle changes and be out of that really kind of sad machinery that is our pharmaceutical/medical establishment these days. We have alternatives. There are great alternatives. Either you go keto or you go vegan, but just go do something for yourself that is healthy and positive, and you can change your lifestyle.

The body is an amazing machine if we only let it do what it's supposed to do. Kelli, any calls to action?

Anything you'd like to share with us? I can't say there's anything too exciting in the next— I mean, the real soon future, but of course I would love for any of you to connect with me on social media or over on the blog. Always love meeting new people, and if I can be of help in ways, I would love to. But just stop by and celebrate food and crafts and everything else with us over at Live Laugh Roll.

Sounds like a plan. We'll have to keep on you about doing some videos.

Yes, you need— somebody needs to hold me accountable to this. We'll have to get you to do it.

We can talk more about that. Yeah, absolutely. Cory, any calls to action or anything you've got coming up?

Sure. If anyone is interested in learning how to host vegan or vegetarian guests at your house, feel free to check the blog in a few minutes. I'm going to post a post. I knew I was coming on with Chef Dennis, so I wanted to have a post just for you. My wife, believe it or not, Iron Mom herself, is going to be contributing an article on how to host vegan and vegetarian guests because the thing that we get the most when we go over to anyone's house is, "How do I— and what do I feed you people?" That's the answer to that question will be on the blog today over at RealIronDad.com. Vegandad.com. Go check it out. That's good.

I want to share that on Google+ too, because that's a big one. Really, it is.

It's funny that you said, "What do we feed you people?" That's what she wanted to call the blog title, but I said, "You know what? I don't know if that's really great for SEO. We're just going to call it How to Feed Vegan Vegetarian Dinner Guests or something." You can always call it that on the blog title, but then in the—

where goes on to get searched, you can give it that name. Every now and then I'll give it a cuter name in the title.

Not a bad idea.

I love it though, I love it. So everyone please feel free to leave your links for what you're going to do. If you have any calls to action, leave them in the comments for the readers when they come back, and feel free to go through and answer any comments or questions that were directed to you. And thank you so much for helping me spend a good Friday on Google+ and in Florida and making my day a little brighter by getting to talk to you all. So have a wonderful weekend and I will see you all real soon. Alright, bye-bye.

Thank you. Thank you. Bye-bye.