The Art of Being Health in an Unhealthy World with Pilar Gerasimo

Welcome to Mama Goddess. I'm your host, Alexandra J. Johnson. This podcast is all about rocking your goddess life, creating vibrant health, and celebrating motherhood and family life. It's about living an authentically awesome life. Let's have. Hello, and welcome. I'm Alexandra J. Johnson, and today we have one of my favorite people in the world. Seriously, I love this woman. Her name is Pilar Gerasimo, and she is a healthy living expert, and she is also the founding editor of Experience Life magazine. She's an author. She's just one of the most extraordinary human beings that I know. And I'm not just saying that. My husband and I say this every single time we talk about Pilar, we're like, she is one of the most extraordinary human beings that we know. So with that, I want to introduce you and welcome Pilar.

Thank you so much for having me. That is, like, the nicest introduction ever. You guys are extraordinary people in your own right, and also among my very favorite people. So it's a mutual admiration society.

Yes. Yes. Delicious. Cool. I'm thrilled to be chatting with you, and I love your perspective on so many ideas, but I would love to start off with health. What is health? So many people want to be healthy, and so many people are talking about health, but what does health mean to you?

Well, I think it's a really good question because I do think people define it very differently. And I have always had my own instinctive self of what health feels like and looks like for me. And for me, it's always been associated with a sense of expansion and possibility. It's like when my vitality is high, everything seems possible, and I wake up and I feel like I could take on a day, I could take on the week, I can take on my next big goal, and anything that could come my way, I can invite and play with, you know, because I have the energy and the vitality and the resilience to do it. I think healthy also looks, in a way, like expansion. It's radiance. You know, it's what comes through our eyes and our skin when we're healthy and through our smile and our energy and the way we carry ourselves. And I know when I'm unhealthy, I often feel more contracted. Like I'm conserving my energy and my mood, and everything becomes more internal, and I actually end up with blocks to the world. You know, like, things are painful or they're irritating. When we're healthy, I think we just tend to be more open in general, and the sense of of embracing the life experience around us is happening. Of course, it also has to do with things like immunity and metabolism and lowering inflammation. But when we get into the technical parts of health, I sometimes think we miss what really the fundamental principles of health are, which is that it should feel like your life is just jamming and everything is great. It's mental and emotional and spiritual and social. All of those things.

Yeah. Okay, so I love this because we can get really focused on, on the macronutrients and are we following the right diet and all of this, which can then stress us out more. Right. I mean, it's just like people get so lasered in. I gotta do it perfectly. So how do we have more of an expansive relationship with our health?

Yeah. Oh, that's a very interesting question. Wow. Well, first I think it starts with. Well, I say starting where you are. You know, it's not realistic, I don't think, for people who have been chronically ill and overweight and depressed for 15 years to anticipate that really anything that they'll do is going to completely get them to, you know, zero to 60 in one day. But noticing what happens when you make even a small change can be incredibly motivating. I've had, and I'm sure you've had the experience of watching people go on like an elimination diet thinking that it's a two week experience, but by day two, they're feeling radically different. Usually I feel a little worse initially cause they're offloading all this toxic stuff. But I've had the experience of watching people transform within two or three days and sometimes even within a few hours of eating differently than they would have normally eaten. Like, I've changed people. I've suggested I don't change people's breakfasts for them, but I've suggested that they change them. And people will sometimes call from work and go, oh my God, it's 10:30 and I'm not out of energy yet. I'm actually feeling pretty good. Or my day went differently because of how I ate in the morning or didn't eat what I normally eat. And so I think it's really important to have expansion. And the positive expansive experience of being healthy comes in part with the sense of potential that you have to start where you are, knowing that it is possible for you to be fully and totally and extraordinarily and optimally healthy. And even an incremental change in your daily behavior is gonna have a change in how you feel. And I often overlooked, because we focus on the external goal of a bikini body or a certain amount of weight loss or something like that. And we don't pay attention to the changes that are happening that are subtler. You know, you can look in someone's eyes and see that they're clearer, you know, 24 hours when after shifting something that they've been eating or you can just feel that their energy is different or their mood is lifted. So I often really recommend to people to focus on the bigger why of why they want to make a change in their health and then start thinking about the incremental changes as connected to that. So you have a sense of purpose about the changes you're making. And just the fact that you're making changes feels like a rewarding result. You can focus on your action rather than the outcome. I do think too, Alexandra, your point about the complexity of health and fitness information being overwhelming is really important. And a lot of times I think people, it's sort of like without a great, without a great filter or sieve, it all hits you with an equal amount of importance. And you're worrying about ratios and intermittent fasting and resistant starches and you know, carb loading and acid alkaline balance and people just go bonkers. And I really always recommend starting with the simple things first. Seemingly simple, you know, whole foods is just one thing. And if all you do is focus on eating whole foods rather than processed foods, you're like 90% of the way down the road.

Totally. I love that too. And I love what you're saying too of like how you feel and not focusing on the outcome, especially for women, that there's so much focus on the weight or the bikini body. And, and I know for me, you know, I used to be in fitness modeling, so I was very interested in how I looked and what I was doing in relationship to that goal. And I think when you have those outcome goals, you miss out on how you actually feel because you're, you can't you just get so, I don't know, talk to us about having a deeper why of like that's more nourishing for us.

Yep. Well, it's interesting in my own experience, I too, I mean like, I think most women in our society, we're very appearance oriented society. And I think one point that our mutual friend Cindy Joseph makes is that we are often our value is just based on our appearance. And so I think initially when I started out in my health and fitness pursuits, a lot of it was focused on how I wanted to look. And I found I was more successful when I translated that into a why. Why do I care how I look? Yes. I mean, for me, I cared how other people saw me. But one of the things I realized is that implicit in that why I'd like to look better, there were deeper why, which is that I wanted to look like I had my act together. And the reality was I actually wanted to have my act together. The body was really just an expression of who I wanted to be. Someone who did exercise and take care of herself and manage her priorities, and someone who was walking her talk, and someone who was living in accordance with some values that really had nothing to do with my appearance. Like, you know, eating food that was more responsibly raised. And as I kind of dug into my motivations, I started realizing it wasn't just about the external appearance part of it. That was a bonus, and it was a payoff of living the life I really wanted to live anyway. And I. For me, it worked way better to focus on, Let me make my goal, living a life I would be proud of. You know, at any hour of the day, could someone, a great unknowing, you know, some great omniscient being, look down on me in my life and say, that is a person who's living in integrity with what she cares about? And I figured, you know, the body will come. And really it did for me, you know, and I had to adjust my own notions of what my ideal body was. In part, I think that came much easier, though, after I adjusted for the whys that mattered more to me. And for me, it really also was about how I felt and wanting to have the energy to pursue bigger goals. You know, I had professional goals I wanted to fulfill, and I needed energy and focus for those I knew I wanted to show up in relationships. And I think one of the things I recognized in my own romantic life was that the shame I had about my body and the insecurities I had about my own body were really limiting my willingness to be involved and to be exposed and to be available and comfortable, you know, with other people, particularly in a romantic or sexual place. It was like, I can't be hating on my body and loving this experience. So I need to sort of reclaim ownership of a healthier body image for that reason as well. All of those things went hand in hand, but I don't think we talk deeply or honestly enough about those things. And I think sometimes we go the other direction and say, oh, it doesn't matter. We shouldn't worry about what we look like. And for most of Us. I don't think it's realistic or necessary. I think focusing on. Does my appearance reflect and express the internal truth about who I am and how I live and how I take care of myself. That's more interesting when people do that. Interestingly to me, they become way more beautiful than when they're just focusing on purpose, perfecting the external part of them, because it comes through.

Yeah. And there's a level of. I know for me, there's a level of self consciousness when I'm so worried about how I'm gonna look, you know, and early in my 20s and now I'm almost 35, and I'm like, I'm done with that. Isn't it? Like, I'm not gonna be concerned about that. I don't have time to be so concerned about what the hell I look like, you know, and there is. I do wanna look nice and things like that, but. But it's just not where I want to put my energy. And I think for me, there's also owning that that's not where I want to put my energy. You know, I spent a lot of time trying to be this fitness model, and I'm like, it's not an integrity with my soul. That's just not where I want to put my energy. So it's. Can you talk about that? Of like, finding our. Finding our authentic body image, Finding our authentic expression of who we are.

Yeah. Well, it's really interesting. A while back, someone asked me about the definition of authenticity because it's a word that we bandy about a lot. And what came to me was, if you're doing things out of a fear of other people's judgment, what they're going to think of you or how they're going to think of you, you know, that tends to lead you down paths of inauthenticity. I think, with. When it comes to things like body image and our sense of beauty, it's very interesting to put. I think the valuable focus for me is my best expression of myself and my best expression of my true personality. You know, it's taken me a long time and I, like, I used to be so obsessed with my appearance. I wish I had all the hours back that I spent looking in a mirror, you know, and looking at my butt in the mirror, trying to see, you know, like, oh, my God, do earrings look better? Or these other earrings? And I mean, it's just. No one cares. People look at you and they see who you are, and no amount of Spanx undergarments or the Right under eye cover up is going to really significantly and substantially change your appearance. The biggest change to people's appearance, in my view, comes when they get healthier. I've never seen anything like what happens when people change their lives in healthier directions. And they, some of it is that they might lose a significant amount of weight or get a lot of inflammation out of their body. And you've seen what happens when people's puffiness goes away and you see like their essential. My sister Andrea calls it their essential self. You see what's behind all of that packaging that was like, it was like unnecessary. And it's not just about fat or weight. It's about what's the real essential. You and how you like yourself. Whether you like yourself 10 pounds heavier, thinner, it's up to you. I mean, there's all sorts of ways to be beautiful. But I really regret in some ways the amount of focus I put on perfecting my appearance through just through cosmetics and, you know, interventions that were designed to disguise something about me and what I saw as my flaws. Now, to be fair, I still wear makeup, I still like doing my hair. And I think it's. But it's different now. I'm not totally horrified to be seen without makeup. And it's been lovely to have, you know, some of the people who I've been closest with say, you know, I actually think I like you best with your plain, sweet little morning face on, you know, like, oh, no, I've got this. You know, and they're like, shut up, you're cute that way, okay. And I can see that in other women. It's funny how we look at ourselves and we're such harsh judges of ourselves, but you think about how often you look at your friends, you know, when you're working out or they are, you have a slumber party or something and you all get up and everybody's just cute as a button. And you love them because they're adorable and wonderful. And that's really how it works. Anybody who's judging you because they think you could have applied your mascara more artfully, you know, is that really somebody who you care to please? Yeah, I don't think it works so well. Most of the things we do to disguise our so called flaws are kind of pointless.

Totally. And it's like trying to, you know, there's deficiency in our, there's deficiency in our nutrients, you know, with our, that we can have when we eat healthier and change that lifestyle. And there's also deficiency in like self worth. You know, when we start filling up on that self worth and you know, like, we're no longer deficient and we're not beating ourselves up like that. To me, you can tell, you know, I can tell when I look in the mirror, you know, if I'm healthy, doing the things that keep my body healthy. And also, is my mind healthy? Like, am I filling myself up with positive thoughts and like, not beating myself up because I can have a rough day of thinking, like, I'm not so great and I look worse in the mirror. Like, it impacts.

Oh, there's no question. I mean, like, graphic demonstration, okay? This is me at my worst. Like, I'm slogging through my workload and I'm by myself and I'm depressed. I'm like, not a great look, right? It's just like. And I think, you know, that's why so often there's a great Joni Mitchell song that borrows a French phrase that says, happiness is the best facelift. And I think, you know, that's really true. Happy people, and happy women in particular, tend to be much, much more beautiful than the unhappy, very well made up version of themselves. And I also think, you know, the. It's really interesting to me how health and happiness go so much together that as we get healthier, we just naturally become more beautiful. I mean, you get healthier, you get happier, and then you get happier, and it gets easier for us to be healthier suddenly because we're not having the crazy cravings that come from stress and anxiety and misery. You know, how often do we have a bad experience and the first thing that we want to do is go eat at ourselves? It's just like plugging up a hole that is really a psycho emotional hole. But food will work. You know, if you don't want to sit with it, you can just beat at it. And then, you know, you feel worse and you look worse, and it's sort of this vicious circle downward. And I think what's really fun is to look for the moments of intervention where you recognize, oh, my God, I'm doing it. I have bag of chips or cookies and I'm eating at myself. I'm not even enjoying this anymore. I'm just. And you can take that moment and be like, well, this is really interesting. You know, it's a choice moment. And you basically can go either way. You can be like, I think I'm good. I can stop here and figure out what's really going on with me, or I can just keep on eating and then I Can see how that feels afterwards and just like use it as an experiment and see. And oftentimes it's like, yeah, how many more times do I really need to do this before I remember that it doesn't help.

Yeah, totally. And it might be, or sometimes it does.

You know, let's face it, sometimes there's nothing like a gluten free donut at the end a really crappy meeting to.

Just make you feel like, that's awesome. Okay, so I would love to talk about that though. The. Because this is a big issue for women, the kind of addictive behaviors around health. And you know, there's the overeating, there's not eating when you're hungry. So talk to us a little bit about listening to our body. Like, how do we even start to listen to our body? Because I know for me I lean towards overeating. If I felt emotions, food was my go to. If I felt stressed, scared, overwhelmed, it was like, I need to eat. And I still have moments, you know, I still notice that I've been working on it for freaking 15 years. But there's still that part of me that if I feel it, oh, you know, I can have a little bit of chocolate, I can have a little bit. So how do we get to that place where we truly are nourishing and listening to our bodies and not trying to force it or run away from emotions?

Yeah, well, I think the first answer is pace. I think anytime we do something quickly, we're probably going to be doing it unconsciously and we're probably not going to be able to keep up with our own bodily experience and our own mental and emotional experience to notice how it's feeling. That's actually one of the most common causes of overeating is eating too quickly and not really tasting anything and not really chewing anything and therefore not really assimilating anything, not giving our body a chance to register. I think sometimes we, it's. It can be more helpful in the midst of an extreme craving or like, if you're gonna stress, eat to say, okay, I'm gonna eat whatever I want to eat than it is to be like, I will not eat it, I will not eat it. And you're just sitting there all you can think about you. It's in some ways almost like you're still eating it. You're just doing it sort of invisibly, but you're experiencing the same stress and negative, awful repercussions. They're different repercussions, but they're equally awful. I think it's interesting sometimes to notice when you have a really strong craving for something and allow yourself to have it and do it, though, at a pace and at a consciousness and with an insistence on doing it lovingly. And I'll tell you what, it is really hard to eat an entire bag of anything when you're doing it slowly and consciously and lovingly if you're giving it to yourself as a gift and you're not doing anything else. So that means no driving, no watching tv, you know, no talking with a friend while you're filling your face with nachos or whatever it is that you're doing. Put it on a plate, sit down, light a candle, make it a ritual, and see how much you really need of that thing. The interesting thing for me when I've done this is that that's when the tears come. That's when the feeling comes up. And you can keep a feeling down, you know, as long as you want. It's up to you. But the amount of fuel, ammunition, ballast, it takes to keep it down tends to grow over time. And I've become more accustomed, I think, as I've gotten older, to just noticing, is this a sad hunger? Is this an angry hunger? Is this a scared hunger? You know, is it a confused, just too much overwhelmed hunger? Like the I feel sorry for me hunger is a particular one that I get where I've worked too many hours and put in too much, like, outward. I put out too much energy and then I'm like, hungry. I think in some circumstances, like I said, that may be not a terrible time to eat. The question is, how do I eat? What am I eating and with what, with what intention, with what experience? That is an art form. And I think if there's one skill set I think particularly women would benefit from having, like, in the pantheon of healthy skills, and I talk a lot about learning the skills of a healthy person, learning to eat consciously with awareness not just of your physical sensations, but of the emotional sensations that come up. It's really. It turns eating into a ritual, which I think we need more of in our lives. And then the ritual itself has a nutrifying quality, and it has a satisfying. There's a satiety that comes with awareness and ritual and conscious choice that I don't think can be replaced by even cream cheese frosting.

Totally. That's so beautiful. I love that. The pace. I've never heard it said so brilliantly. I think that's. Yeah, I really love that.

But I think it's true too, you know, not just of eating, it's even with like exercise. I've noticed sometimes, you know, the ways we approach virtually everything we do. I mean, we tend to do everything in a rush. We're trying to get through this thing so we can get on to the next thing. And we have our conversations that way and we do our work that way. And you know, I think that's one of the things that causes cravings in other places is that if we do nothing at a pace that can be pleasurable, then we look for pleasure other places. And that whole, you know, the kind of cliche about stopping to smell the roses, I really believe for, I mean again, all people, but particularly women, we have an appetite for beauty and pleasure and sensation. And when you're moving really fast, you can't feel anything, you can't taste anything, you can't smell anything, Nothing registers. And at the end of a 12 hour day where your body just goes, hungry, still hungry, you know, I love.

That because there's the hunger, the physical hunger that we need, but then there's also the hunger for pleasure and relaxation and beauty and things like that. I know for me, as you were saying that I know that especially as a mom and you know, the role that I'm in right now, there's like always things to do and it's, you know, you think I gotta do this and I gotta do that and if I do that, that's when I get hungry or I want to go make something to eat or whatever. You know, it's like, wow, I just, I've been spilled.

Conscious drinking there. Just poured that right down.

Well, we need a little bit of humor.

That's exactly what happens, right? You go like, ah, yeah. One of the things that I teach a lot in my workshops is some stuff about ultradian rhythms, which I think is a little known biochemical, neurological field of study. Are you familiar with them? Most people aren't and it's very interesting. Can I give you a little primer on ultradian rhythms for a second?

Because how do you even start. Spell that though? What? How do you.

So it's like ultra.

Ultra.

Okay, Ultradian. So E, you mean. Sorry, U, L, T, R, A D, I, A, N, Ultra D, N. So just for context, you know what a circadian rhythm is, right? Like the 24 hour cycles when you get jet lag, it's because your circadian rhythms get thrown off when people have interrupted sleep. Yeah. So that's the circadian rhythm once every 24 hours. But it turns out that the human body Also goes through cycles that throughout the day occur many times, so many up and down cycles of energy. Typically every 90 to 120 minutes we'll have an energy peak followed by an energy trough. And what happens is that. So for example, you get up in the morning and you get some coffee and your breakfast and you start building your energy level and then you start doing whatever you're going to do and you move into productive mode. And as you move into productive mode, as you reach sort of the top of your productivity, you start to accumulate the byproduct of all that energetic output. It's like when you run a car, fuel gets burned and exhaust comes out the tailpipe. Turns out when we're working and burning energy, we produce metabolic waste and it builds up in our tissues and bloodstreams and it also, a similar effect occurs in our brain neurologically. There's like all that information that we're taking in sort of piles up in our mental inbox. And what happens is as the stress builds, we become distracted, we become tired or fatigued, we become a little bit moody or snippyish. Sometimes we feel hungry. There's just that sense of like lack of focus is often the first symptom or wanting to take a rest. You get that just like, oh, why am I tired all of a sudden? That's your signal that you're going into an ultradian trough. If you respect it and take a break, it can be, you know, Ideally it's a 20 minute break. Ideally you'd like lie down and just like ma rest. The reality is in most of our lives that doesn't work so well. But taking even a 10 minute break, getting up, changing your scene, going to get some water, making some tea, taking a little step outside to get the mail or do some filing or fill your stapler instead of just trying to mono focus on your task, is enough to give your body and your brain a little rest. And what it does, that lowered trough area, there's what they call an ultradian healing response that occurs during that time. It's very interesting. Your body takes advantage of that 10, 20, whatever minute break to detoxify the metabolic waste that's built up to regenerate energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate. I think it's called adp. Adp? Yeah, yeah, adp, which is the fuel your cells use for energy. And neurologically what happens is that your brain starts to file all that information that you've taken in. It starts making neurological connections which then actually makes the Information usable. If it's just sitting there unsorted in your inbox, you really can't access it very well. So this is one of the reasons why people often get their best ideas in the shower or jogging or sitting on the toilet or like cleaning the refrigerator, whatever. It's like, oh my God, big aha. That happens because your brain has suddenly been freed up to do this interesting sorting and associating work. So here's what happens. If you take the break, you get the benefit. If you decide, oh, I can't take a break because I have to do all this other stuff and you push through that trough place and force yourself to remain at a high level. You go for sugar, you go for coffee, something you can force your way through it, but what happens is you miss out on that. And so the next energy peak isn't as high and the next one after that less high, and you sort of have a negative trend until the mid afternoon when people get that horrible crash or toward the end of the day, they're just dead and they're good for nothing. They're sitting in front of their computers or trying to play with their children. But they're hopeless cases. And what the research has shown, and interestingly I should say the best research in the area has been done by the Defense Department, by the military, because they had really figured, I think they started observing probably anecdotally, that people make a lot more mistakes after a couple of hours on a job, particularly a job that requires a great deal of attention. So if you're diffusing a bomb or you are a night watchman or you know, you're like supposed to be inspecting something, you really can't do it for more than an hour and a half or two hours before your error rate skyrockets. Now this is important for another reason is to get back to health. When we force ourselves through and we don't take those breaks, what happens is we never get any of the repair work done that normally occurs during the day. So our immunity gets lower, our inflammation gets higher, our body doesn't have a chance to do any of the hormonal regulation that it would normally do during those times. And it's really a significant contributor to disrupted metabolism, disrupted immunity, and to mood and mental problems. Whether it's lack of focus or depression or just nasty moods. People get snippy. I'll tell you, they miss a few ultradian breaks, you start to get real snippy. But it also drives cravings. And one of the things I've really noticed. I tested this out. When I am taking breaks more frequently, I am much less hungry, much less. And so getting in a little snack and a little water makes all the difference in the world. That's management, energy management. How about that?

That is great. So, okay, so I know that people watching, there's the idea of like, oh, that's great, I should be taking more breaks. And then we have that part of us, right, that's like, like when you're in it, you're like, I don't have time to take a break. I can't do this. I've got to get it done. I've got to push through.

So.

What do we do about that? Because I have it and I've been really working on it and I've been noticing like, okay, if I take a 20 minute, what we call napitation, it's like, yeah, meditating, actually I'm just sleeping. But just having that down like you, you feel so much better. But there's this idea of time scarcity that we don't have enough time to do that. So what do we do about that?

Well, a couple things. One, I'm a big fan of the experiment. I really believe that if you just make it an experiment, it can be very interesting. Trying to commit to, okay, for the rest of my life, every 90 minutes I will take a 20 minute. It's not going to happen. But next time you conceivably, can you even take a five minute break, see what happens? You know, and again, it doesn't. You don't necessarily have to like lie down on a yoga mat in your office. You might just close your eyes and take some deep breaths. You might go outside your office building and just walk around the block and come back in. You might just switch tasks. Sometimes it's as much as like, I'm going to take a break from the report I'm trying to write or the spreadsheet that I'm analyzing and just go through some mail and, or empty my recycling container or like I said, go get a cup of tea and just notice how that works. You may have to experiment to find out what kinds of breaks work for you. I have actually more times than I probably would like to admit, decided that what I really needed to do is lie down. And I have been known to lie down on my floor in my office at a yoga mat there, or if I'm working at home, just like plop on the couch, shut my eyes and just do some focused breathing. I rarely can do it for 10 minutes because I feel like, ugh. But doing it for five even can make a huge difference. And. And I really think that if what you're trying to do is have maximum productivity during the course of a total day, the payoff becomes really obvious, you know, because I think honestly, I probably am most productive in the morning. If I don't take breaks, my afternoon is largely hosed. I can sit there and I can do stuff, but it's not as good and I make mistakes. The other thing that happens is that people create conflicts with other people. And I think this is an unconscious attempt to create a break. Is if you create a conflict, you're kind of now involved in a conversation with someone or you're gonna go gossip about the conflict you just had and it becomes a kind of enforced break. You know, it's like it's justified now because it's important or it's an emergency or because you're pissed. But I think it's very interesting to do the experiment of if you choose to take proactive responsibility for managing yourself, your body, mind, even in small increments, see how that goes. And whether you like it or not, what I found was that it helped me so much and it improved my creativity and my productivity and my general sense of well being, that I was more willing to do it. I still can't say that I do it every 90 minutes, but I'm more apt now to notice the telltale signs of a break that needs to happen. And it is, it's like heavy eyelids or a feeling of just malaise or of fatigue or like, oh, I wish I didn't have to do this. I don't want to do this. When I start feeling that, I'm like, yep, it's been two hours, you know, So I will say I think it's fair to push back when people go, really, come on, it's unrealistic. But we have to start somewhere. Because the other thing I like to ask people is, okay, so you're doing it the way you're doing it, and how is that working for you? I have a rash, I have digestive problems, I'm a bitch by five o', clock, you know, whatever, fill in the blank. If it's not working, then you have to be willing to experiment and try something else, or you're really just choosing to be a victim of your circumstances. And I don't mean to blame anybody. Including the true victims in our world, some of whom are really kind of in a forced situation. But most of us, most of the people listening to this. Have a lot more choice than that. And choosing to be empowered by your own choices is a much more interesting way to live. And it will set a model in place for other people who will follow it. And you'll suddenly find yourself surrounded by other, less crabby, tired, useless people.

Totally. I love this. And we've been implementing this more. Like, we're really good with. Brian and I are really good. My husband and you know that I'm just telling other people that.

One guy.

I remember that in the morning, we're really good. We have our, you know, we call them blissiplans. We have our blissiplans, but then at the night, we noticed that we didn't have, you know, like, whether he was working and I was with Emerson all day or whatever we were doing. We didn't have, like, things in place, like PM blissciplines, rituals. And we started having arguments, like, right before we were going to bed. Like, you know, we were just, like, irritated, and we're like. And then we're just like, yeah, you're the problem, and whatever, you know, and then we're like, wait, this is not working. So we've had to implement, okay, you watch Emerson for 15 minutes. I'm gonna go decompress. I'm gonna watch Emerson. You go meditate, you do whatever. And it totally. We just have so much more harmony. So it's like, I totally get what you're saying, and I can see the benefits in it. And I think that there's sometimes we are addicted to our victim ways of like, oh, poor me, or oh, I have it so hard when we actually do have the choices. You know what? I could be on my email for 15 minutes or I could lay down.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, so I'm so glad you said that, Alexandra, because I think you're getting at something that I think is one of the most overlooked aspects of health and fitness, which is. And happiness, for that matter, which is respecting natural rhythms and building structures that support them. We fail to structure our lives. We allow them to be structured. For us, it's a completely artificial construct. This notion that we should get up in the morning and go haul butt, you know, for 10 hours, and then expect that we're going to be able to go home, be a normal human, and then go to sleep, shut completely down, and have a great night's sleep. I think a lot of the sleep disruption we're experiencing is because we aren't building in structures and rhythms throughout the day. And you're right that it's I think by the mid afternoon most people are desperately craving a change of pace, a change of venue, a change of rhythm, you know, and it's, it comes, we get end up smoking or we end up having a soda, or we end up getting a venti coffee or we end up having a candy bar or we end up getting in an argument or we end up just playing Angry Birds, you know, and just feeling like completely chaotic. But we do and we do have choices. So again, a great experiment on your part to notice that even building in 15 minutes of a conscious practice can be transformative to your relationship to your day. I'm the book I'm working on right now. I'm really focusing on those structures and giving people lists of things that they can choose from in the beginning, middle, end of their day as sort of interstitial things that they can do mid morning and mid afternoon. Knowing that not everyone can do all of them all the time. But we have not been educated in how to manage our energy and our days. In many cultures and tribal cultures, in the nomadic sort of savanna environments that we grew up in, those patterns were built into the way of life. You know, food gathering and then, you know, there were just. You'd get together and you'd do some stuff together and then you'd go apart and then you'd come back together and you'd go out and you'd come back. It was Nothing lasted for 10 hours in a row, you know, much less 12 or 14, which a lot of people do. So it's working against natural rhythms is always going to have a cost. And many times the cost is our cell tissue. You know, it comes right out of our body. It's not pretty.

Yeah, I love that you brought that up too because as you're talking about that there's the, and you're talking about it earlier, the ritual. So there's like a ritual. How this can play in is we have the ritual of nourishing ourselves, you know, so we have breakfast and we have a break and then we have lunch and we kind of can. There's, you know, because in so many people don't have time to make lunch, they don't have time to make dinner. And I love this idea of really taking the time to do it. And it's part of the restoration and the rejuvenation rather than like a waste of time.

Yes. And again it comes back to that pace thing of if what you're doing is opening two microwave hoagies and throwing the package in the Garbage and sticking in the microwave and standing there in front of it and then pulling them out and eating them. There is not much ritual to be had and there's not much pleasure to be had. It takes not actually much longer to have a thoughtful experience of taking a plate out of the cupboard and taking some greens out of the refrigerator or you know, reheating some things that you had last night, but allowing yourself to smell it, cook, allowing yourself to stir it, allowing yourself to taste and see how warm it is. Those are all sensual experiences that are part of it. And I agree we miss out on a lot of what could be little rituals because we just fail to ritualize them. You know, how many things would be more interesting if we lit a candle first? And. And I think too a lot of self care can be a really lovely ritual. I remember way back when you did a great little video on skin brushing and you know the difference I skin brush but the difference between me skin brushing like this.

You know, because I'm.

In a rush and I have to get to work and I'm like ah, one more thing I gotta do, excuse my language, doing like a beautiful, like I'm going, I'm now brushing myself and this is. And doing it at a pace and a rhythm. It takes 0.03 seconds longer probably to do it. What I call the real way to do it and breathe. Just breathing while you do anything at all completely changes it, including listening to another person. It's very interesting. I've begun experimenting with using listening opportunities and conversations as ritual experiences and using them. It's almost like mini Ultradian breaks. The difference of listening to someone from like I'm breathing while I'm listening to you. I'm making a deal with myself that I'm not thinking about what the next thing I'm going to say is. I'm processing and allowing myself to actually be like neutrified by the interest I have in what you're saying. That's a great little snack that you can have with almost anyone any time of the day. And it's then noticing the difference in the interaction with them and oftentimes their gratitude at having been heard is really lovely too. So it's those kinds of things I think that we just have to re educate ourselves and re experiment ourselves into appreciating again and not buying into the fact that, you know, nutrition just is one thing and it comes in a vitamin bottle or in, you know, this.

Food.

Object that we can create other experiences for ourselves. Bathing rituals, self care ritual, you Know, even applying makeup can be a really fun ritual if you do it the right way and you create an environment of beauty to do it in. You know, I've been decluttering my bathroom the past few days because I realized that, like, all of my products that sort of started spilling out of the drawers and it was becoming a toleration, you know, like, I'd open the drawer and I was like, dig through something. And it was like, aha. But when you have a clean, clear, lovely, decorated sort of space, anything can be more pleasant, including some of the most mundane activities. Activities on a daily basis.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Because there's bringing the beauty into the mundane, you know, and that it is. Can be a ritual because I think that's a lot of complaints for people in general, especially with families and you have kids, you know, it's like you're always doing something. You're picking up the toys, you're making the food, like, whatever. So that's been my practice too, is, okay, great, I'm in this. This is. I signed up for this. I am now a mother, and this is part of my life. So how do I actually bring that awareness? And it's. It's fun and it can be challenging. And I always. When you're talking about slowing down and with the food, I always joke with Emerson because, you know, he's a toddler and he. When he's hungry, he's like, ready now? And I'm like, I tell him consistently, emerson, we are a slow food family and we cook our food and it takes a while, so you're gonna have to play for 10 minutes while I make your food. But it's like this joke that I think is funny. He might not think is so funny, but.

Hey, listen, good girl does what she can have a carrot.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, mean, that's right. And we do that with ourselves, too. I mean, our urgency is sort of self created. And it's fun to notice where there can be little windows just to give ourselves. I think it goes back to how we consume anything and everything. You know, there's a great Zen saying of, like, how you do anything is how you do everything. And many times it's interesting to look at the daily practices that we have that are sort of enforced. You have to go to the bathroom, for example. A lot of people don't really think about it, but, you know, you go to the bathroom, I hope, a few times a day. How do you do that? Like, I realized I was actually at one point in my life, a putting off, going to the bathroom when I knew I had to go because I was telling myself this ridiculous story of like, I'm too busy to go to the bathroom or this isn't the right time. My body thought it was the right time. So when I looked at how you do anything is how you do everything. I was doing that in a lot of areas of my life. It wasn't just about the bathroom. I did that about eating. I did it about self care. I did it about sleep and taking breaks. And it was showing up on my face. You know, I got a rash. I talk about how, you know, it's funny. Your body will throw you all these symptoms until it finds one that you can't ignore. It's like back pain. I just blew that off, you know, stomach problem. Now I can get through that, stick it on my face.

Okay, now I notice totally it was.

Just a way that my body was trying to tell me it wasn't happy with what I was doing. And I think when you go looking for clues, when you notice that your health is suffering or your weight is not so great, or that your mental state isn't what you'd like, you can look at almost anything in your life and go, how am I doing that? And is it true that I'm doing it. It elsewhere? And it will. You'll find it's very. For me, at least, that was the case. It was like, yeah, I'm rushing, I'm unconscious. I'm kind of constantly and chronically anxious and I'm not paying attention really to what I'm doing. I'm so future focused that I'm not in the present moment. And that had great costs, you know, a lot of waste, a lot of mistakes, a lot of arguments and a lot of damage to myself that I then had to invest more time and energy in repairing and reversing than I ever would have invested in just taking care of myself.

That's a great point.

Yes. My mother used to say, stitch in time saves nine, you know, or hate makes waste. It's really true. There's. I wrote a fun feature many, many years ago called the High Cost of Being Hurried. That's about an experience I had breaking my own foot as the result of being in a frenzy of rushing and, you know, not good enough. And actually there's another piece I wrote more recently that I like called An Ode to Lost Eyelashes that was about my experience with stress and how stress speaks. And it really, you know, like I said, our bodies are talking to Us all the time. And, you know, we're sitting there worrying about the size of our butt or whether, you know, some part of us is perky enough and we're not paying attention to the most fundamental messages that our body is sending us. We do it at our peril.

Yeah. And then when we do, listen, this has been part of my practice, and even now, still part of my practice is when you are listening to actually follow the guidance and not like, yeah, oh, I'm tired. I shouldn't be tired. Why should. I got like 10 hours of sleep. I shouldn't have been, you know, or whatever the story is. I'm hungry, I shouldn't be hungry. You know, and it's like, okay, my body's telling me I'm tired, I'm hungry, I need to break. Like, listen to it.

Yeah, well, there's a whole school of thought about that, you know, And I'm still exploring my own beliefs and preferences around all this stuff. But I really love Byron Katie's work. You know, loving what is philosophy and challenging your own beliefs about how things should be is so interesting. Every time that word should comes up for me, I know it's like a trigger to examine whatever's going on. And I should all the time. I mean, I'm a shoulder. I have, like, judgments, I have ideas, I've got preferences, I've got, you know, attitudes about stuff. And it's when I challenge them, like you said, like, I shouldn't be tired.

Oh, really?

Is that true in Byron world? Like, can I know that that's true and what is going on? I mean, if you do have a belief about, like, you know, energy at work in the universe, how often it has been the case, pace that when I listen to those instincts and those patterns and rhythms, great things come as the result. You know, I take the break and I sacrifice the five minutes of productivity and I have a $25,000 idea, you know, or I take the break and I go to the coffee shop and I meet super cute guy. Or I, you know, something happens. It's just strange. Like, you go, I'm gonna take a break and I'm gonna flip through some stuff on my desk, and you find the bill that otherwise would have been late or the money that you forgot to cash the check. You know, just odd stuff like that. And I think it's very interesting to start noticing the rewards that come almost as an act of faith. I think when you. When you take. When you have the faith to pursue what your bodies and instincts and emotional Mental as well as physical messagings are from your body. Again, not something that's taught in our culture. In fact, we're very much taught to ignore them from grade school on. Think about how we're educated in school. No, no, no. This is this time. Nope. This is this time.

You can't go to the bathroom right now. Are you sure you need to go to the bathroom?

This is the time when we pay attention. Even though you had breakfast 100 hours ago and it was sugar cereal and you're a mess now, we do it to our kids in school, but we do it to ourselves all the time as adults, too.

So, yeah. Such a beautiful reminder to trust ourself. And I think. I think we've talked about this, you and I before, too, and Brian, of getting to the place where we really trust ourselves. I can trust myself. I'm okay. It's gonna be okay. If I trust myself and actually follow my own intuition, my own body's wisdom.

Yes.

It's, like, revolutionary, right?

It is revolutionary. It's totally revolutionary. It's funny, you know, I'm so imperfect at it. You know, it's. It. But my mistakes are so instructive when I don't do it. I get reminded every time of, like, why that isn't very effective. So it's. I think it's a lifelong learning process. But it is interesting, too, to always. I often will turn it around and imagine if a friend said to me, you know, I know it's odd that I feel like I shouldn't be tired, but I am tired. I, like, feel like I need to take a break. What would you say to that person? Like, oh, you wuss.

Yeah.

No, like, oh, we'll take a break. Good idea.

Yeah.

Are you feeling okay? Take a break. So it's. It's rare that we would be as harsh with someone else as we are with ourselves. And our inner taskmasters can be so ruthless, and our inner judges can be so nasty, our critics. And I find that because this is a very natural tendency for me, like I said, judging I can do. I'm really good at that. You'll notice I'm an editor for a living, excellent at finding the things that are wrong. And it's a heavy load. It's a burden. And my life has gotten better in direct measure to my ability to challenge it. And I'm not perfect, and I still pay the price on it. And it is part of who I am. I kind of. There's parts of me that I like about it. There's Payoffs to noticing errors and fixing them is fun for me. But when I start directing that energy at myself, it's inevitable that I'm then going to do it to other people. And I don't really like my, I don't like that person that I become when I peevish at myself and then redirecting it at other people. It comes back at me every time.

Yeah, totally. And that the judging, I'm the same way when I find myself really judging myself and being really critical. Like I start noticing, oh, what other people are not doing right. And I got lots of opinions about it.

Totally, yeah. And then back full circle to the beginning of our conversation. When you're in that mood, that is when you are the most likely to make an unconscious, self sabotaging choice. Whether it's about your food and exercise or your sleep or your relationships. And it is, that's what puts people into this negative spiral where they find themselves contracting right around their frustration and around their self loathing and their dissatisfaction. And at any moment, you know, you can reverse direction and come back up into the expanding cycle. It takes one conscious choice. Typically. That's it. Just one of like, I need to breathe, I need to take three deep breaths and ask myself, what is my best choice now? Like, what is going on? Like, what is asking for attention? That can be the beginning of a total landslide difference in how your day or your moment goes. And, and again, it's really an important healthy living skill that I think is overlooked in the vast majority of health and fitness magazines and in the media. It's all about nutrition and exercise and now maybe sleep, you know, side of meditation. But how to integrate that into your day is also really important. And I do think having a structure of a daily practice for mindfulness is great in the morning, at night, whenever you can fit it in. But looking for those opportunities during the day to do it, it is priceless.

Yeah, just what you said. There's the pause. Just taking that pause, like literally asking yourself that simple question and breathing 5 seconds, 10 seconds, and it can totally shift everything.

Yes. You know, it's funny, I've done that recently, well, for the past few years too with food, and noticed that if I take a few bites of something and then force myself to pause just for a moment to notice, did I like the way that tasted? Because sometimes I'm eating things, I don't even like the way they taste, you know, But I don't want to do that anymore. And do I still want it? Like, am I still hungry? For it. And it's strange, after usually half dozen bites, something diminishes in its pleasure for me and its satisfaction significantly so that I'm like, not that interested in eating it. And if I don't pause to notice, I just eat until I'm done and usually feel kind of ugh afterwards.

I love that you brought up that point. I just did this the other day on tasting it. And then like, do I even like it? There's certain chocolate that I like, but there's other ones that have like lower sugar and they're like whatever. I would say they're healthier. So anyways, I got one of those and I was like, you know what? I'm just going to enjoy this. As you said, just ritualize it, eat it. And I'm like, this is not even that good. Like, normally I would just eat it all and just be done with it. And like, felt like I had my guilty pleasure, but I was, I tasted it. I'm like, why have I been eating these? They're not even good, right?

I know. And like, wouldn't it be better to just get the one that you actually enjoy and eat that? It's like, this is my beef with diet foods in general. And I know there are people who really like, like 99% dark chocolate. My sister Andrea being a classic example. I feel like I'm eating like a mot ball or something when I eat it. It just is too. I just don't get any pleasure out of it. I don't. I'm sorry. There are other chocolates I like to eat, but this is just like a life lesson to really allow yourself to have the thing that you want. And diet food is so unsatisfying. I mean, God, those fat free everything, it's all cardboard, you know, I refer to it as extruded foods. These foods that are basically some type of flour or starch mixed with some type of vegetable oil, usually really industrial. And then they throw in what are sugar and flavorings and chemicals and salts or whatever it is that's gonna make it taste like something, anything. And then it's extruded into a shape like a cluster or a stick or an O or a, you know, some disk or a puff. And there's all these different shapes of food, but they're all made out of the same basic ingredients. And then when you just decide to take the fat out or it's gonna be sugar free and fat free, you're now left with just, just this basically like paste, this extruded paste. That I swear to God does not taste good. But it is marketed like it's delightful and it's a snack you will enjoy. And you put it in your mouth and it's like a packing peanut. It just sucks all the moisture out of your mouth and it turns into, like, glob. And then you swallow it and you're like, mmm, yes, I definitely need to eat these entire bag because that certainly didn't satisfy me. The bane of my existence, the extruded food.

That is awesome.

I love that it's not paying attention.

Yeah. Okay, so I am curious. I have kind of two more topics questions for you on the food. I'm curious because we've talked about this, the fat, and I know this is a big one for women eating fat, and there's this restrictive and low fat and things like that. And, you know, the last time that we got together, we talked about it and I talked about how I have increased my fat to ridiculous amounts and I've never felt better. So can you talk about fat and why women should be eating fat?

Yes, I can. I would love to talk about it. I too eat a lot of fat, and I have found it has helped every aspect of my health and beauty and my fitness for that matter too, because it turns out that fat is super important for a lot of functions in our bodies. And I won't go super technical, but it's necessary for the repair of our tissues. It's really helpful for satiety and satisfaction, and it's really important for balancing blood sugar. When we eat food that has sugars and flours and starches and things that put our blood sugar up and we don't eat fat or protein, there's nothing to prevent that from going straight into your bloodstream. So fat has a lovely moderating tendency in terms of managing your blood sugar, which helps then manage the resultant hormones like insulin that come out, which have a big impact on your metabolism and your fat storage and other stuff. So we have been told a hideous series of lies and we've been terribly misled over the past 20, 30 years, really, about fats. But specifically in the past 15 to 20, low fat diets, in my view, are not a good idea. They're not necessary. I think it is conceivably possible for some people to be healthy while eating a low, lower fat diet. But I don't think it's probably as much fun, it's not as satisfying. I think it's much harder to do. I don't think that there's a reason for most people to do it, except maybe in some very specific medical cases or with relation to drugs that people are taking with particular protocols or at certain points in a phase of like a metabolic, you know, if you're certain fitness routines. People don't want to eat fat right before they do them. But generally speaking, all fats that come from whole foods and that are minimally processed, including saturated fats, which have been pilloried for a long time, I really believe, based on all of the research I've done as a journalist, are good for us and healthy and perfectly permissible in whatever amount is appealing to us. There are a lot of people who are interested now in ketogenic diets which are, and maybe you've experimented with them really like 80% of your calories coming from fat. On the one hand, I don't think anybody needs to do that. If they like to do it, it's up to them. It can be very challenging to eat that way in social situations. On the other hand, if you actually look at a plate of food that is 80% fat and look at what the plate still can look like because vegetables are so low in calories, you can still have a plate full of vegetables with all kinds of other fats from avocados and nuts and healthy, humanely sustainably grown animals, and you can have fat galore on that plate and it not look like that much fat. So it's not like it's just sucking marrow bones all day. Although I do like the occasional marrow bone. But my experience both as a journalist and as a health seeker has taught me short story, fats are good, fats are healthy, fats are great for women. And I will say from a beauty standpoint, I think skin and hair and everything else in our bodies, I mean, just eating the fats is great. But then what happens with your hormones really makes a difference in a lot of that beauty stuff too. So I really would counsel anybody who's been stuck on a low fat diet and not loving it to consider exploring incorporating significantly more whole food based fats. The only fats that I really think people need to avoid assiduously are trans fats, which are hydrogenated oils and industrially processed vegetable oils of most kinds. And that includes most of the soybean oils and canola oils and safflower oils that you see in processed vegetables foods. I also wouldn't eat a lot of foods that are fried in mystery oil because it's almost always bad. That said, I will eat some fried foods if they're Fried in oils. I know what they are, and I happen to think they're okay. My mother has been known to make things in lard and. Or in bacon fat and. Or duck fat, all of which I'm totally for and will eat. That's me. Some people don't like them, and that's fine, but I think that there's a real danger in not eating enough fat. And most of the experiments I've seen people go where they've incorporated more fat. Everything gets better, not worse. And again, pro experiment. Try it yourself before you go crazy trying to analyze all of the research on this, because the research is incredibly complicated. And I personally, as a journalist, don't feel like I can parse it all and go, oh, I totally get it. I think it's better to just try and see what happens. And you can get your blood tested, you know, get some blood tests, see what your triglycerides and your cholesterol are like in one month and two months later, after eating a relatively high fat diet with, you know, eggs and bacon and olive oil and coconut oil and nuts and seeds and don't restrict the calories, don't even worry about it and see what happens. Two months later, you'll know how it works for you.

Totally. Yeah. I mean, my cholesterol used to be. At one point when I got it tested, it was 99 when I was vegan. And I thought following the people that I followed and, you know, the doctors, that. That was like, good.

Yeah.

Which is crazy. And then now it's probably like one. I think it was 165 or something the last time. And my triglycerides, once I stopped eating so much sugar, even fruit sugar dropped down to, like, 30. It's just. It's been amazing. And as we talked about, I've had skin issues for literally on and off. And it literally. I thought it was fat, so I didn't. I mean, I had avocados and I had a fair amount of fat. I wasn't low fat, but I eat like 150 grams of fat and my skin doesn't break out anymore. It's like crazy. And it freaking tastes delicious.

Yeah, it's wonderfully satisfying. And then it's weird how then you don't crave other junk foods. I used to have a lot more cravings for carbohydrates and sugars, and they just vanished, really, when I started eating more fat. And I, you know, again, I don't. There's so much pushback from doctors and medical quarters and they have their reasons, and I understand it. They've been educated to read this literature a certain way, and they're very convinced of their position. And I'm all for that, and I'm not a doctor, but I frankly don't think most doctors know anything really about nutrition. They don't know much. Most doctors don't know much. I'll put it that way. Way. I'll qualify it a little bit. But I do think we have a right to experiment with our own bodies and see what happens. And I think the fat experiment, the protein and the fat experiment have been very interesting to me in that when I eat enough of those things, I really don't crave. Most of the other stuff that I know causes inflammation, blood sugar and hormonal imbalances, metabolic disturbances, fat acquisition, and what has come to be known as diabesity, which is this horrible conglomeration that occurs when we accumulate too much belly fat, in particular. But the skin thing is so interesting because it's really about inflammation. Our body is either toxified or inflamed when our skin breaks out. And adjusting your diet by getting rid of junk and just eating more whole foods, including more fats, is usually a pretty speedy cure for a lot of those. That and getting rid of dairy and gluten are probably the most common big payoff changes that I see people make. And not everybody needs to do those things. But if you are having problems with your skin and. Or your digestion and. Or your weight, I would start there.

Yeah, totally. I had to take out all grains for me personally. Not everyone. Everyone's gonna have their own, but, like, whole grains for me, like, I would have them and my face would break out the next day. I mean, it's crazy.

Yeah, it is very personal. But I, too, have done a lot better eliminating most of them. I mean, I still enjoy them when I want to enjoy them. It's like there's quinoa in a salad. I eat it happily. There's millet in something. I eat it happily. I can't do weaker wheat or gluten because I have a celiac gene that gets very unhappy when I do that. But the benefit for me of eliminating them has largely been that it just eliminated a whole lot of junky foods that I didn't really want to be eating anyway. So it's neat to see the transformation in you over the past few years has been amazing. You're always beautiful and radiant and a healthy person, but your radiance and expansive beauty now is so rich. And lovely. It's great to see asking me that question. One of my topics and the scientific literature is very interesting right now. There's a few studies that have come out, Annals of internal medicine. And if you just search on saturated fats and see what the most recent stuff is, we have a few things@experiencelife.com that we've done past few years about saturated fats that are very revealing. But lots of meta analyses of all of the data to date show there's no really no significant connection that they can see that's causing between saturated fat intake and heart disease or obesity.

Yay for coconut oil.

Yay.

Awesome. Well, thank you. I could talk to you for hours, of course. So I think we'll wrap it up, but tell us where we can learn more about you and your work and connect with you and all that goodness.

Oh, great. Well, let's see. I just launched my own website for the first time. That's pilargerasimo.com. hopefully my name is somewhere on this page so you know the stuff for people. But there people can find out about me and my work and my background. I have some collected writings and they can also get download this cool manifesto for thriving in a mixed up world that I wrote in partnership with Experience Life magazine. I'd also recommend experiencelife.com People are interested in the magazine that I started in 2001. It's a whole person healthy living magazine and it's no gimmicks, no hype, and pretty cool. And then revolutionaryact.com which is a sister project that we it's a health advocacy project that is really all about how to be healthy in an unhealthy world. And folks can get really cool access to new resources and access to a cool mobile app called 101 Revolutionary Ways to Be Healthy. That's one of my favorite digital toys to date. And it's good for iPhones and androids and Kindles and just about everything else. And of course then there's social media where I am on Twitter and Facebook and Pinterest and Instagram and I welcome new friends in all of those places.

Fantastic. Awesome. Well, thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your amazing radiance and wisdom and awesomeness.

Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's always such a pleasure talking to you and I love the breadth and depth of the topics that you talk about and just think you're a real gift to the audiences that you speak to every day too.

Oh, thank you, thank you. Well, lots of love. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mama Goddess sending you lots of love and blessings. If you'd like to connect more, go to mamagoddess.com until next time, keep rocking it and have an awesome day.