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00:01:34.680 | Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading

00:01:42.440 | your life, money, and travel.

00:01:44.400 | I'm Chris Hutchins, and I am excited to have you here for a conversation with Liz

00:01:48.880 | Moody.

00:01:49.280 | Liz is a longtime writer, editor, and healthy recipe developer.

00:01:54.120 | She's the author of two cookbooks, Healthier Together and Glow Pops.

00:01:58.320 | She was formerly the food director for MindBodyGreen, and she's had her work

00:02:02.720 | featured in Vogue, Women's Health, and many more places.

00:02:06.280 | And last, but certainly not least, she's the host of the hit wellness

00:02:11.080 | podcast, Healthier Together, which features intimate interviews with some

00:02:15.320 | of the biggest names in the wellness world, as well as a few non-wellness

00:02:19.400 | guests like yours truly.

00:02:21.520 | In fact, the episode I did on her show just went live today as well.

00:02:26.040 | And in case you aren't watching on YouTube, we recorded both those episodes

00:02:30.200 | live from the All The Hacks studio, aka my basement.

00:02:34.000 | This conversation is going to be chocked full of all kinds of health and wellness

00:02:38.560 | hacks, but if you hear that and think it might be too healthy for you, then you

00:02:42.640 | should definitely stick around because I happen to know we both share a fondness

00:02:46.920 | for a certain unhealthy cereal, and that while Liz certainly believes in the power

00:02:51.400 | of food to heal and nourish your body, she also knows that a good pasta

00:02:55.520 | carbonara has a place on the table because sometimes it can just heal your

00:02:59.720 | soul.

00:03:00.360 | We're here to talk spices, cold showers, circadian walks, meditation, vitamins,

00:03:07.280 | taping your mouth at night, hacks to make frozen veggies taste great, and a lot

00:03:12.160 | more.

00:03:12.560 | That is a lot to cover, so let's jump in.

00:03:15.280 | Liz, thanks for being here.

00:03:18.440 | Thanks for having me in your house.

00:03:20.280 | This feels very like intimate and fun.

00:03:22.120 | I know I have done almost all virtual recordings online and then two this week

00:03:27.040 | in person.

00:03:27.640 | It feels like the new normal.

00:03:29.000 | Oh, I'm so happy with it.

00:03:30.520 | So I'm going to start by letting you know that I too love Fruity Pebbles.

00:03:34.880 | That is not where I thought you would start.

00:03:39.240 | Is it your cereal of choice?

00:03:40.880 | I wouldn't go as far as cereal of choice, but it's definitely in like the top two

00:03:45.160 | or three.

00:03:45.840 | I only say not of choice because like it's not a healthy cereal.

00:03:49.040 | It's not a natural cereal.

00:03:50.720 | I thought the colors were like, they always say eat the rainbow.

00:03:53.520 | Is that not?

00:03:54.240 | No, that's Skittles.

00:03:55.160 | Also not natural.

00:03:56.360 | But people are not going to listen to any of my health advice from this moment.

00:03:59.960 | Well, actually, I think the opposite, because so often I feel like you're

00:04:04.800 | talking to people who have an opinion about health and ways to eat healthier

00:04:10.240 | and live healthier and be healthier.

00:04:11.560 | And you get all of this feedback that is like you can't do anything fun.

00:04:16.720 | And so I wanted to start with that because when I was reading part of your

00:04:21.440 | cookbook and I was just reading some of the content you wrote, I listened to

00:04:24.000 | some of your podcasts.

00:04:24.680 | There is a lot of advice on how you can live and happier, healthier life.

00:04:29.160 | Yes.

00:04:29.560 | But I also heard that you love Fruity Pebbles, which makes me feel like you're

00:04:33.560 | a normal person and you're not someone who's just like figured out how to never

00:04:37.320 | eat anything unhealthy, which I just is not an option in my world.

00:04:40.680 | I like cinnamon rolls.

00:04:41.440 | I like donuts.

00:04:42.200 | I like Fruity Pebbles.

00:04:43.160 | Do I want to eat them in moderation?

00:04:44.880 | Do I want to use hacks to make it better?

00:04:46.760 | Yes, but I want to at least set the ground with talking about food first, that

00:04:52.520 | you are not this rare person that just doesn't like sweet food and that's how

00:04:55.880 | you're healthy.

00:04:56.360 | No, I absolutely love sweet food.

00:04:58.520 | So I always say that wellness is a tool, not an end unto itself.

00:05:02.280 | So the second that wellness makes your life worse, it's no longer wellness.

00:05:05.440 | And I think a lot of people are like, Oh, I'm like living this really healthy

00:05:09.240 | life, but they're miserable all of the time with all of the things that they're

00:05:12.520 | doing to be quote unquote healthy and healthy includes how we feel in our body.

00:05:16.360 | But also how we feel in our brain.

00:05:18.040 | So if you're like, I can't go out to dinner with my friends, cause what am I

00:05:20.560 | going to eat?

00:05:21.040 | I can't ever eat these like foods that really make me smile and bring me joy.

00:05:25.760 | That's not wellness.

00:05:27.360 | Wellness is actually getting in the way of you living your best life.

00:05:30.200 | So I always like people to zoom out and have that perspective with wellness and

00:05:34.880 | with any of the health tools that I provide my audience with.

00:05:37.960 | I'm like, sometimes I'll say, Oh, here's my night Tim routine.

00:05:40.720 | And people be like, well, what if I am out late drinking with my friends or I'm at a

00:05:44.680 | work party and I can't do it.

00:05:46.000 | And I'm like, then don't do it.

00:05:47.840 | If you can't do it, don't do it.

00:05:49.160 | It's also all designed to help us get optimal sleep.

00:05:51.560 | So if you're super tired and you're just going to fall asleep anyways, good, fall

00:05:55.880 | asleep.

00:05:56.320 | That's amazing.

00:05:57.560 | On top of that, I think there are also a lot of things that you can do to make the

00:06:03.080 | things that feel a little bit more fun, a little bit more indulgent, not feel as

00:06:07.160 | negative on your body.

00:06:08.160 | So let's take sugar.

00:06:09.480 | For example, when I was writing my cookbook, I drove my editor crazy with this.

00:06:13.240 | Cause I was like, for everything, I wanted to have like my very specific perspective

00:06:17.600 | and why I was making the assertion that thing was healthy.

00:06:20.880 | And for dessert, I was like, what is quote unquote unhealthy about dessert?

00:06:25.560 | And the main thing is, is that it spikes your blood sugar.

00:06:27.920 | So you're having a lot of sugar, your blood sugar goes up and then it'll crash down.

00:06:32.200 | You'll feel lethargic.

00:06:33.720 | We've all had that sort of like tired, sometimes you get like a little shaky.

00:06:37.520 | You just don't feel good when your blood sugar rises and then crashes.

00:06:40.920 | So that's the problem.

00:06:42.200 | What can we do to solve that?

00:06:43.600 | There's a few things we can do.

00:06:44.880 | One, you can change the format of the dessert itself.

00:06:47.640 | So I do that by adding fat fiber protein to my desserts.

00:06:51.080 | I'll put in something like Greek yogurt or almond butter or almond flour and just

00:06:55.120 | make it a more stable blood sugar experience from the get go.

00:06:59.240 | But then there's also other fun things you can do too.

00:07:01.560 | So I had a woman who calls herself the glucose goddess on my podcast.

00:07:05.160 | She is amazing.

00:07:06.600 | She's a biochemist who kind of hacks glucose in her body.

00:07:09.920 | She wears a continuous glucose monitor and she, her whole thing is studying the

00:07:14.680 | different effects that things have on your glucose.

00:07:17.520 | So she has a few different like little tricks that she recommends that I really

00:07:21.040 | like. One is if you want to eat a sweet thing like fruity pebbles.

00:07:24.400 | We all love our fruity pebbles.

00:07:25.840 | And I honestly think fruity pebbles like got me through the pandemic.

00:07:28.400 | I'm like, not sure I was in New York for the early parts of it.

00:07:31.720 | And I am like, if I didn't have my fruity pebbles, would I be okay right now

00:07:35.200 | mentally? And I don't think so.

00:07:36.760 | But if you want something like your fruity pebbles, don't have it as a snack, have

00:07:40.920 | it as an actual dessert, which means after you've consumed some other type of form

00:07:45.400 | of food. So after you've had a main course with your protein, with your fat, your

00:07:49.240 | fiber, all of that.

00:07:50.800 | So if you're craving a cookie in the middle of the day, if you're craving your fruity

00:07:54.120 | pebbles, be like, that's not off limits to me.

00:07:56.320 | I'm still going to have it, but I'm going to move it to after a meal.

00:08:00.520 | That's a really great hack that'll just elongate your blood sugar curve and make

00:08:04.480 | sure that your glucose doesn't spike and crash again, eliminating all of those

00:08:08.160 | quote unquote negative effects in your body of eating a lot of sugar.

00:08:11.800 | Another one that I really like is her green starter hack, which is just eat

00:08:16.120 | something green before you eat anything else.

00:08:18.400 | So if you eat something with a lot of fiber, it creates almost like a little stopper

00:08:23.000 | in your intestines and it just slows the absorption of everything else in your body.

00:08:27.720 | So literally you can do this for anything that you eat.

00:08:30.200 | Just eat a little green salad before some vegetables.

00:08:33.320 | If you're out at a restaurant before you go for the bread, which is a lot of carbs,

00:08:36.920 | a lot of stuff that would spike your blood sugar, have a little vegetable side first,

00:08:41.000 | have a little salad first.

00:08:42.080 | You can do that with literally anything.

00:08:44.000 | And that brings me to my last point, which is that I think if we think of wellness

00:08:49.480 | as deprivation based, it's not going to stick again.

00:08:52.360 | It feels like it's making our life worse.

00:08:54.040 | So with every single part of health, I like to think about what I can add to my

00:08:58.920 | life instead of what I can take away.

00:09:00.840 | So instead of being like, I'm not going to eat any sugar and that's going to make

00:09:04.120 | me feel so much better, you think about, I'm going to add a vegetable to every

00:09:08.520 | single meal and I'm not going to take anything away.

00:09:10.680 | And I think if we start to think about what can we add to our lives, we start to

00:09:13.960 | feel nourished, we start to feel taken care of, and we start to feel like these

00:09:19.240 | things are making our life better instead of being dogmatic and taking away from

00:09:23.600 | our experience on this planet.

00:09:24.920 | So is that as simple as I want to order pizza tonight, but I'm just going to like

00:09:29.000 | whip up some broccoli and eat that alongside?

00:09:31.160 | A hundred percent.

00:09:31.920 | Yeah.

00:09:32.120 | So my husband and I eat frozen pizza like quite often for dinner and we'll just

00:09:36.840 | make a little salad that we'll eat.

00:09:38.880 | So we'll get like one of those containers of pre-washed greens.

00:09:42.320 | We'll put some olive oil.

00:09:43.920 | I like to like microplane a little bit of garlic, a little bit of a lemon zest, and

00:09:47.880 | then squeeze the lemon juice and some salt.

00:09:49.760 | And we'll eat that first.

00:09:51.440 | So the thing is you eat the green thing first, or we keep frozen broccoli on hand.

00:09:55.680 | I love roasting frozen vegetables.

00:09:57.560 | Have you ever tried that?

00:09:58.440 | No, but I know from looking you up, it's like you said roasting frozen vegetables.

00:10:04.000 | And I was like, gosh, most people you talk to that have written a cookbook are

00:10:07.880 | like, the only vegetable you should eat is like fresh from the farmer's market.

00:10:11.360 | No, no, no.

00:10:12.040 | I mean, I love the farmer's market.

00:10:13.880 | It's like very much my happy place.

00:10:15.480 | And I think it's a wonderful way to get excited about food.

00:10:19.600 | It feels like a very visceral experience.

00:10:21.560 | You can walk around and like sample things and it feels beautiful.

00:10:24.440 | And I think anything that gets you excited about healthy eating is wonderful, but

00:10:28.680 | frozen vegetables and frozen fruits are phenomenal.

00:10:32.280 | They often contain more nutrients than their fresh counterparts because

00:10:36.240 | they're flash frozen at peak ripeness.

00:10:38.240 | So if you pick broccoli, every bit of its journey from being picked to the

00:10:43.920 | grocery store, it's going to go in a truck.

00:10:45.680 | It might cross the country.

00:10:47.160 | It might cross several countries to get to you.

00:10:49.400 | And then it's going to sit on the grocery store shelf for often quite a while before

00:10:53.840 | we're actually purchasing it.

00:10:55.160 | And every little bit of that way, it's losing its nutrients.

00:10:59.040 | So things like vitamin C especially are really quick to be lost in that journey.

00:11:03.400 | Whereas if you are getting something flash frozen, it's

00:11:06.120 | preserving a lot more of those nutrients.

00:11:08.000 | So I think we should eat fresh vegetables and fresh fruits as much as we possibly

00:11:12.480 | can, but I also think that frozen fruits and veggies can be a really

00:11:15.560 | beautiful part of the journey.

00:11:17.040 | And my frozen veggie roasting hack is like one of my absolute favorites.

00:11:20.880 | So the thing that you do is you put your frozen veggies, like frozen broccoli,

00:11:25.680 | let's say out on some parchment paper, and then you put it in the oven at like

00:11:28.240 | 425 or something like that, but with nothing on it.

00:11:30.880 | I learned this when I was trying all these different ways to roast chickpeas and make

00:11:35.800 | them super, super crispy for my cookbook.

00:11:37.920 | And people were like, Oh, do it with oil at this point, or you should start

00:11:41.920 | with fresh chickpeas or whatever.

00:11:43.080 | And the thing I found that worked the best is you roast them completely

00:11:46.280 | dry, no oil, because the oil traps in the moisture.

00:11:49.920 | So you want all of that moisture to evaporate, and then you add the oil

00:11:53.600 | and then you cook them normally.

00:11:55.120 | So with the broccoli, you want to like literally not touch it, like dump the

00:11:58.960 | bag on the parchment paper, spread it out, put it in the oven, and then roast

00:12:03.080 | it until all of that moisture's evaporated, it's already starting to brown a little

00:12:07.120 | bit, and then you toss it with the oil, toss it with some salt, toss it with

00:12:11.040 | whatever seasonings you want, cook it for five more minutes, and you've got like

00:12:15.120 | beautiful frozen roasted broccoli.

00:12:17.320 | Are there other vegetables it works with?

00:12:19.240 | Definitely anything cruciferous.

00:12:20.600 | So like cauliflower, it works pretty well with Brussels sprouts.

00:12:23.360 | You're not going to get quite the same effect as you would with like a fresh

00:12:27.600 | Brussels sprout, definitely like squash and things like that, that

00:12:30.960 | are chopped and pre-prepared.

00:12:32.320 | Awesome.

00:12:33.360 | You mentioned adding veggies and you mentioned how to do it if they're frozen.

00:12:36.720 | Like, are there other good tips for how to take what you do now and make it better?

00:12:41.040 | Oh yeah.

00:12:41.520 | And there's like a zillion.

00:12:43.480 | So if we're in the, if we're in the realm of like still frozen veggies, which I'm

00:12:48.560 | really into, one of my favorite hacks is to keep a bag of cauliflower rice in your

00:12:53.440 | freezer, and you can buy this at any grocery store, just like pre-prepared

00:12:56.680 | cauliflower rice.

00:12:57.600 | It's just going to be riced cauliflower.

00:13:00.160 | And then you can use that as a sub for ground beef in pretty much any recipe.

00:13:05.280 | Like I do half ground beef and then half the cauliflower rice.

00:13:08.440 | So like a bolognese, you can brown the ground beef and then add the cauliflower

00:13:13.360 | rice in, and you won't know that it's there, but you've just added this like

00:13:16.720 | significant portion of vegetables to your dish.

00:13:20.080 | I also think that cauliflower rice is amazing for thickening soups.

00:13:23.720 | If you're making a soup and it doesn't have as much body, it doesn't have as much

00:13:26.560 | heft.

00:13:26.960 | You can take half the soup and then blend it with some sauteed cauliflower rice and

00:13:31.320 | then pour that back in.

00:13:32.480 | And you'll have this really thick and beautiful and rich soup.

00:13:35.720 | So I think that keeping some frozen cauliflower rice on hand at all times is a

00:13:40.440 | really wonderful hack.

00:13:41.200 | I also love to sub it.

00:13:42.360 | Like I'll put it in for half of my white rice in a dish.

00:13:45.120 | So I'll cook up some white rice, delicious, lots of salt.

00:13:48.520 | That's the secret to making white rice taste really good.

00:13:50.800 | But then I'll saute up some cauliflower rice and I'll just mix them together.

00:13:53.880 | I'm not a person who can do cauliflower rice on its own and pretend that it's

00:13:57.480 | rice because it's not, and it doesn't taste good.

00:14:00.720 | And I need my food to taste good.

00:14:02.440 | And that is like my number one rule of food is that it needs to taste good.

00:14:06.520 | But mixed in with normal rice, it actually adds like a really nice nutty note.

00:14:11.680 | And I think enhances the dish and adds veggies instead of detracting from it in

00:14:16.040 | any way.

00:14:16.480 | I'm going to ask what else?

00:14:18.200 | Cause frozen cauliflower rice, frozen broccoli, both good hacks.

00:14:22.280 | Yeah.

00:14:22.680 | So I would say a few things.

00:14:24.520 | One, use your spices way, way, way more.

00:14:27.400 | Spices.

00:14:28.040 | I always call them the original superfood.

00:14:29.880 | So people are always trying to like go get these like fancy superfood powders

00:14:33.360 | and add them to their lives and enhance their health journey that way.

00:14:35.960 | And that's great.

00:14:36.560 | If that's what you want to do, wonderful.

00:14:38.640 | But spices have so many potent therapeutic properties and they make everything you

00:14:44.440 | eat tastes really delicious.

00:14:45.760 | If there's spices listed in a recipe, I almost always pretty much double them.

00:14:49.800 | Like obviously do it to taste, but people way under season their food and it makes

00:14:55.760 | it healthier and it makes it tastier.

00:14:57.720 | So big fan of that.

00:14:58.920 | Also a big fan of starting every single morning with a green smoothie, which I

00:15:02.160 | would be remiss not to mention.

00:15:03.960 | I'm sort of like known for my green smoothies, both in my personal life, when

00:15:08.680 | I push them on people at all times.

00:15:11.520 | I have a video on my Instagram where I was testing out different green smoothies

00:15:15.480 | until I won over my little sister who hated green smoothies.

00:15:18.200 | And I did, I got her with a pina colada one, which I was very proud of and she

00:15:22.240 | liked it and she drinks green smoothies every single morning now, which I'm

00:15:25.080 | be very proud of, but also in my public life, I have a green smoothie society on

00:15:31.480 | Patreon at patreon.com/lizmoody, which just has all of these green smoothie

00:15:35.520 | recipes.

00:15:36.240 | I think it's a really beautiful thing.

00:15:38.720 | You can integrate into your day.

00:15:40.200 | It tastes like a milkshake.

00:15:41.440 | It takes less than five minutes to make.

00:15:43.240 | And if you do it in the morning, for instance, you will have had more vegetables

00:15:46.920 | before like 9am than most people eat in an entire day, which just makes you feel

00:15:50.920 | really good about yourself.

00:15:51.760 | So I'm a big fan of the all in greens.

00:15:54.600 | What's in these green smoothies?

00:15:56.280 | Okay.

00:15:56.880 | So the formula is greens and you can do like spinach.

00:16:00.520 | You can do mixed greens.

00:16:01.800 | You can do something like arugula, but you need to balance it with, I would say

00:16:05.080 | something that's a little peppery that leans into those notes.

00:16:07.560 | But I'd say for a starter, spinach or mixed greens is a really nice base.

00:16:11.200 | And then on top of that, you're going to do a banana.

00:16:13.640 | I would say we'll make it taste really good.

00:16:15.640 | You're not going to taste the banana, but if you're just going for a delicious

00:16:19.000 | flavor, put the banana in there.

00:16:20.440 | I have some recipes without if you're banana free, but good starter.

00:16:23.280 | And then you want some sort of fat.

00:16:25.360 | So that can be an avocado.

00:16:27.400 | That can be Greek yogurt.

00:16:28.680 | That can be a nut or a seed.

00:16:30.120 | I think like pistachio is a really fun thing to include in a smoothie.

00:16:33.480 | That can be chia seeds.

00:16:34.760 | That can be flax seeds.

00:16:35.680 | That can be hemp seeds.

00:16:36.600 | That can be a nut butter, but some sort of nut or some sort of fat to get the

00:16:41.760 | nutrient absorption from the vegetables that you're putting in.

00:16:45.280 | So something like greens has a lot of fat soluble vitamins in them.

00:16:49.560 | And you want to make sure that you're actually absorbing all of

00:16:51.800 | those vitamins from those greens.

00:16:53.520 | So some sort of fat, and that's also going to help you stay full through

00:16:56.200 | lunch, which is what we want.

00:16:58.240 | That said, if your green smoothie does not make you full, please eat some food.

00:17:02.080 | That's very important to me.

00:17:03.520 | This is not meant to be a diet thing.

00:17:05.760 | This is again, not meant to be restrictive in any way, shape, or form.

00:17:09.000 | If you're hungry, listen to your body, eat.

00:17:11.840 | A lot of people will do a green smoothie with like scrambled egg on

00:17:14.560 | the side or something like that.

00:17:16.000 | I switch it up.

00:17:16.880 | Some days a green smoothie is enough.

00:17:18.200 | Some days I like to have a more robust breakfast.

00:17:20.280 | So I go either way.

00:17:21.240 | So we've got our greens, our banana, our fat, and then you want to add some protein.

00:17:25.160 | So if you're using some nuts or seeds, they're going to have

00:17:27.720 | a certain amount of protein.

00:17:28.960 | You can also add in something like a protein powder.

00:17:31.800 | You can add in collagen.

00:17:33.040 | Again, that protein is going to elongate your blood sugar curve and

00:17:36.560 | it's going to keep you full longer.

00:17:37.920 | So that's really important.

00:17:39.480 | I like to add some frozen berries, usually like blueberries or

00:17:43.600 | blackberries or strawberries.

00:17:45.040 | And then I like to put in like my fun flavor elements.

00:17:48.320 | So this can be spices.

00:17:49.680 | I love cinnamon in smoothies.

00:17:51.200 | I love cardamom in smoothies.

00:17:52.680 | I love cayenne is like a little bit of spice in a smoothie.

00:17:55.760 | I love cacao, which just makes it taste like chocolate, which

00:17:59.120 | is the dream and everything.

00:18:00.720 | I also love zest.

00:18:01.960 | So using like some lemon zest or some orange zest, it has so many

00:18:05.920 | therapeutic properties, the skin of the citrus, but it also tastes

00:18:09.760 | really strongly of that thing.

00:18:11.240 | So if you put like orange juice in your smoothie, putting orange

00:18:14.400 | zest in the smoothie will taste even more orangey essentially,

00:18:18.000 | which is really nice.

00:18:19.160 | And then a little pinch of sea salt, which is just gonna bring

00:18:22.320 | out all of those flavors.

00:18:23.520 | You always want a little bit of salt in anything that you cook.

00:18:26.440 | Even if it's a sweet thing, we put salt in our cookies.

00:18:29.000 | It brings out those flavors.

00:18:30.880 | And it also adds some minerals if you're using a sea salt or a mineral

00:18:34.600 | salt or something like that.

00:18:35.720 | And then I just add water.

00:18:36.840 | I think that blending your smoothies with a nut milk is a huge waste of money.

00:18:40.640 | Like, what are we looking for?

00:18:42.680 | Save your nut milk for your fruity pebbles and use water in your

00:18:46.760 | smoothies, blend it up and drink it.

00:18:48.360 | And then they also keep for, I'd say 24 hours solidly in a tightly

00:18:52.520 | sealed container in the fridge.

00:18:53.800 | So if you want to make a smoothie for two days, which I love doing a

00:18:57.480 | little gift from past you, highly recommend that as well.

00:19:00.600 | I love it.

00:19:01.320 | I want to go back to your previous comment on spices and ask, do

00:19:06.320 | you replace your spices regularly?

00:19:08.280 | I always wonder if this spice rack that I assume we probably bought 15

00:19:12.400 | years ago or something is, have they expired?

00:19:14.680 | Do they go bad?

00:19:15.680 | They don't go bad per se.

00:19:17.440 | Like you're not probably going to get food poisoning or something

00:19:20.480 | like that from your spices, but they will lose their potency in terms of

00:19:24.520 | both flavor and therapeutic benefits.

00:19:26.280 | If you want to know if your spice is still giving you all those

00:19:29.560 | therapeutic benefits, you can literally just taste it.

00:19:31.600 | And if it doesn't taste robust and of that thing, then you've probably lost

00:19:36.360 | a fair amount of the therapeutic benefits.

00:19:37.760 | So there's a few things you can do to prevent that.

00:19:39.720 | You want to keep your spices somewhere as cold and dark and dry as possible.

00:19:44.600 | So in a cabinet, not right next to your stove, not lined up on your wall where

00:19:49.200 | the sun is coming in every single day, just as cold and dark and dry as

00:19:53.760 | possible, and that will make them last longer and then seal them as well

00:19:56.880 | as possible and then use them more.

00:19:58.720 | It's a little bit tricky because I feel like by having them put away, you're

00:20:02.360 | maybe not as inspired to use them.

00:20:04.440 | So take inventory regularly, put them in your dishes so that they're not dying

00:20:10.040 | before you get the chance to use them.

00:20:11.760 | And how long would you say the average spice lasts?

00:20:14.840 | I'd say like a year.

00:20:16.240 | So would you do like a turnover of your whole spice drawer?

00:20:19.760 | I don't because I use them all.

00:20:21.760 | I would say most of the spices in our spice drawer that we don't use a lot

00:20:25.920 | of are like five plus years old.

00:20:28.320 | So maybe before you leave, since we're in person, give me a little spice inventory.

00:20:32.840 | Well, and I would also say that I don't think you need maybe

00:20:36.000 | as many spices as you think.

00:20:37.720 | So sometimes people go and they try to do like this fully stocked spice

00:20:40.560 | rack, but then they realize they're really just using the same five or six

00:20:43.480 | spices on a regular basis and maybe lean into those spices.

00:20:47.360 | And if a recipe has like 45 spices, be like, do I really need all of these?

00:20:51.240 | Can I experiment with getting most of the way there with what I have?

00:20:54.480 | I also think that spice blends are super underutilized.

00:20:57.920 | So instead of buying all of the spices in something, have one or two

00:21:02.320 | go-to spice blends that you're always using.

00:21:05.280 | If you want to like roast vegetables and have it taste really good.

00:21:08.240 | If you're doing a stir fry and you want to have it taste really good.

00:21:10.480 | You have your spice blends that you can go through with that.

00:21:13.040 | And that way you can use it up much more quickly.

00:21:15.240 | I love it.

00:21:15.760 | Now I'm getting hungry and we don't have dinner plans at this house tonight.

00:21:19.440 | So I'm curious.

00:21:20.480 | Pick a recipe from your cookbook that I and anyone listening

00:21:24.480 | can make for a meal tonight that you think will just make everyone happy.

00:21:28.640 | Ooh. OK.

00:21:31.720 | That I can also link to so people can try it.

00:21:33.880 | Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to think.

00:21:35.600 | Yeah. So this isn't up yet, but it will be up by the time that this goes up.

00:21:38.800 | It's a taco salad.

00:21:40.960 | I like salad, but the salad has to take like really, really, really good

00:21:44.800 | if I'm going to eat salad.

00:21:45.880 | And so I'm a big fan of like hearty salads and exciting salads

00:21:49.480 | and things like that.

00:21:50.160 | And I had a taco salad out at a restaurant in the Bay Area

00:21:52.960 | and I was deeply disappointed by it.

00:21:55.440 | And I was like, this could be so much better.

00:21:57.200 | So this is just a very quick and easy taco salad.

00:22:00.800 | The taco meat is plant based, not because I am plant based,

00:22:04.040 | but because I thought it actually tasted better that way.

00:22:06.440 | So I call it accidentally plant based.

00:22:08.560 | It's a mix of pecans and frozen cauliflower rice.

00:22:11.600 | So you can pull out your frozen cauliflower rice and make that with that.

00:22:15.120 | And then it's just quickly seasoned.

00:22:16.480 | And then everything else you're just like chopping up

00:22:18.720 | and you're making a really quick jalapeno dressing, which I love

00:22:22.240 | and pouring it over the top.

00:22:23.880 | It's going to be really nourishing.

00:22:25.040 | It's going to be really delicious

00:22:26.240 | and it's going to make you feel really, really good after you eat it.

00:22:28.760 | All right. We will link to that in the show notes.

00:22:31.120 | Yes. I noticed looking at the cookbook, gluten free, dairy free and plant centered.

00:22:35.800 | Is that because you are gluten free and dairy free, or is that

00:22:39.160 | because you feel like that's a healthier way to live?

00:22:41.640 | Or how did you make that call?

00:22:43.000 | So for a few reasons, if I'm going to be completely honest,

00:22:46.160 | it's because the powers that be at publishing houses like marketing terms.

00:22:50.480 | And so those are easy marketing terms that help people identify.

00:22:54.400 | It's and I get it.

00:22:55.200 | You know, if you're looking at a cookbook cover on Amazon,

00:22:57.320 | you need to be able to tell so quickly whether that's something

00:23:00.280 | that you're going to want in your life.

00:23:01.800 | So identifying terms like that are really, really important.

00:23:06.080 | Also, I'm trying to make my food as accessible to as many people as possible.

00:23:10.400 | And there definitely are people out there

00:23:12.320 | with celiac disease, with allergies and things like that.

00:23:15.600 | So the book says plant centered.

00:23:17.840 | What's the take on plants?

00:23:20.160 | I would say plant forward.

00:23:21.760 | One hundred percent.

00:23:22.560 | I am trying to smush in vegetables whenever possible.

00:23:26.760 | I'm the biggest fan of them.

00:23:28.280 | I've interviewed probably thousands of doctors at this point in my life.

00:23:32.440 | And it's so interesting because they disagree about so many things

00:23:36.920 | about what constitutes a healthy diet.

00:23:38.800 | But the one thing they all agree on is that like more vegetables is better.

00:23:42.880 | 80% or so of your diet should just be like focusing on putting vegetables in.

00:23:47.840 | So I'm like, let's stop arguing over that last little bit

00:23:51.680 | about whether like meat or no meat or grains or no grains.

00:23:55.040 | If we all just got the vegetable part right, we would all feel so much better.

00:24:00.480 | We're arguing about that tiny tweaky bit when we don't have the foundation laid.

00:24:04.120 | And I think that happens with a lot of wellness stuff.

00:24:06.120 | We're trying to like hyper optimize instead of laying the foundation

00:24:10.400 | that would actually make the difference.

00:24:11.640 | So I would say plant forward.

00:24:13.120 | One hundred percent. Vegetables are the foundation.

00:24:15.520 | I'm going to smush them in anywhere.

00:24:18.000 | But I don't follow any food rules with my diet.

00:24:21.880 | And I think unless you have a specific health reason,

00:24:26.120 | something like celiac disease or an allergy or something like that,

00:24:29.520 | I would not encourage anybody to follow any restrictive rules either.

00:24:34.240 | Perfect. And for all those vegetables, do you feel like vegetables, fruits,

00:24:38.520 | anything, do they all need to be organic or what's your stance on organic food?

00:24:42.240 | So, look, I think that we all do the best that we can

00:24:46.520 | within the circumstances that we have.

00:24:47.920 | The reasons to buy organic are a few.

00:24:50.840 | Like, obviously, there's pesticides and things that you maybe don't want in your body.

00:24:55.280 | And then I think you can follow easily something like the Clean 15

00:24:58.320 | and the Dirty Dozen, which you can easily look up online.

00:25:00.720 | And that's basically a list of produce

00:25:04.080 | that is going to be more likely to be sprayed with pesticides

00:25:06.760 | or things that you'd put in your body.

00:25:08.120 | You can also follow easy rules like bananas, avocados,

00:25:11.400 | things that you're not eating the skin.

00:25:13.040 | You probably don't need to spend your money on organic.

00:25:15.320 | But then there's also issues with a lot of organic farming practices

00:25:19.400 | where they're using heavy metals and other things

00:25:21.960 | that you maybe don't want in your body as well.

00:25:23.840 | So I think that it's complicated and it's nuanced.

00:25:27.240 | And the best way to get around it is by knowing your farmer as much as possible.

00:25:33.280 | And obviously, that's a very privileged thing to do.

00:25:35.480 | But I do think if you can go to a farmer's market and ask how they're farming,

00:25:39.920 | what they're using when they're growing, that's the absolute best practice.

00:25:43.360 | And then beyond that, I would say in general, roughly,

00:25:47.080 | if you can afford to buy organic, do it for things that you are eating the skin of.

00:25:51.640 | Like when I was talking about the zesting, if you can get that organic, great.

00:25:55.200 | That's really nice.

00:25:56.040 | And if you can't, then don't sweat it.

00:25:57.880 | There is never a circumstance in which it's worse for you to be eating the produce.

00:26:02.200 | If you're like, I can't afford organic produce, should I be buying produce?

00:26:04.720 | Yes, 100 percent.

00:26:06.120 | It's still the best thing you should be putting into your body.

00:26:08.880 | Do you feel similarly about meats?

00:26:11.680 | I think meats are a little bit trickier for me.

00:26:16.080 | I would say that I lean towards grass fed pasture raised ethical practices.

00:26:21.080 | I'm also a borderline meat eater, as is for ethical reasons

00:26:25.560 | and environmental reasons.

00:26:26.760 | So if I'm going to eat meat, I really want it to have been raised

00:26:30.760 | in as ethical a way as possible, I think, because we're talking about a living creature.

00:26:34.640 | It's a little bit different than when we're talking about a carrot.

00:26:37.920 | Well, you haven't mentioned anything about supplements,

00:26:41.360 | vitamins, that kind of stuff.

00:26:43.800 | Do those have a role in like a healthy lifestyle?

00:26:46.960 | I think they absolutely can and do.

00:26:50.000 | But I think it depends what your goals are.

00:26:52.200 | I hate when you open somebody's supplement cabinet and they have so many of them

00:26:56.440 | and you're like, well, what are these for?

00:26:57.520 | And they're like, I don't know.

00:26:58.600 | It's part of being healthy.

00:27:00.280 | And I think you should be able to point to every single supplement

00:27:03.240 | that you are taking and say, this is the need that it's filling.

00:27:06.320 | This is the problem that it's solving.

00:27:07.920 | So for me, for instance, I don't eat seafood at all.

00:27:10.480 | I take fish oil.

00:27:11.720 | I know that having omega threes in my diet is really good for my brain.

00:27:15.600 | It's really good for my overall health.

00:27:17.400 | So that is why I take my fish oil supplement.

00:27:20.280 | I think that if you're willy nilly attacking it and taking too many,

00:27:25.040 | you're probably not having the positive effects that you want.

00:27:28.240 | You're probably wasting a lot of money.

00:27:30.480 | And it should be a lot more of a thoughtful practice than people are using it for.

00:27:34.480 | Is that the same with like a daily vitamin?

00:27:36.960 | We were talking about this off air a little bit.

00:27:38.960 | I take athletic greens.

00:27:40.320 | I love athletic greens.

00:27:41.920 | I think that something like a daily vitamin, particularly if it's a vitamin

00:27:46.360 | like athletic greens that sourced in a whole food form,

00:27:49.280 | it's a really nice nutritional insurance.

00:27:51.320 | So a lot of us would like to eat a lot better than we are eating,

00:27:55.840 | or we don't have time to make these robust veggie rich meals.

00:27:58.640 | And also, there is some truth to the fact that produce doesn't necessarily

00:28:03.360 | have the same nutrient profile that it would have at one point.

00:28:06.600 | The soil has been really depleted through farming practices, et cetera, et cetera.

00:28:09.880 | So I think that it's a nice practice to have a little bit of insurance.

00:28:14.280 | But again, it's a nice to have.

00:28:15.920 | And if all you can afford is really good produce, like do that.

00:28:19.800 | Your number one thing I want you spending money on is really good produce.

00:28:23.920 | Like if you can fill your diet with vegetables, you will feel better

00:28:27.600 | than almost any other practice that you can add in.

00:28:29.880 | And then everything else, it's bonuses.

00:28:31.720 | It's a little bit of a cherry on top.

00:28:33.160 | So stack your Sunday again, lay those foundations.

00:28:36.000 | And then if you want to add the cherry on top of that, all the better.

00:28:39.800 | And when you say really good produce, do you mean fresh?

00:28:43.080 | I mean, what's the really good?

00:28:44.640 | So I mean, like a diverse, beautiful array of produce,

00:28:48.160 | something that gets lost in the produce conversation often

00:28:51.280 | and in the healthy eating conversation is how much diversity is important

00:28:54.880 | to our health.

00:28:56.080 | So I've interviewed a number of gut health experts, and people are always

00:29:00.320 | like looking for these little gut health hacks.

00:29:02.520 | And it really comes down to eat as many types of plants

00:29:06.000 | as you possibly can on as regular of a basis as you can.

00:29:09.480 | So if you're regularly eating broccoli, maybe try Brussels sprouts,

00:29:13.080 | maybe try cauliflower.

00:29:14.480 | If you're making your smoothie with spinach all the time,

00:29:16.640 | maybe swap in some mixed greens.

00:29:18.520 | If you have pretty much any dish, add some fresh herbs on top.

00:29:22.360 | That's a type of produce, and it's going to make it taste better.

00:29:26.440 | It's going to make it look more visually appealing.

00:29:28.560 | So just as large of a variety as possible, as much diversity as possible,

00:29:32.720 | it's going to feed your gut microbiome.

00:29:34.880 | You're going to be really happy.

00:29:36.680 | It sounds great.

00:29:37.920 | One of our favorite things to do, and I can put a link in the show notes,

00:29:41.280 | but you don't need it, is to literally go to the farmer's market

00:29:44.120 | and just buy all the vegetables and make a crazy big stir fry

00:29:47.160 | with just all vegetables. I love that.

00:29:49.080 | There's probably 10 or 12 vegetables in it at any given time.

00:29:51.960 | And it's really good. Yeah.

00:29:53.200 | And again, it's like about finding the ways to make the vegetables

00:29:56.360 | taste really good, because if you're sitting there

00:29:57.920 | and you're like stabbing a sad piece of broccoli,

00:30:00.840 | you're not going to enjoy the process of eating.

00:30:03.080 | And also, there's some really interesting studies that show that the mood

00:30:06.000 | that you're in when you're consuming food literally impacts your digestion,

00:30:09.600 | impacts your nutrient absorption.

00:30:11.320 | So making food tasty actually technically makes it better for you, too.

00:30:15.640 | I like it.

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00:32:56.880 | OK, let's get out of food for a moment.

00:32:59.840 | Talk about hacks related to health, what you've written about,

00:33:03.000 | what you blog about, what you podcast about.

00:33:04.600 | It's like about being healthier with people.

00:33:06.800 | What have you got?

00:33:08.480 | I know there are a bunch of things you do in your routine.

00:33:11.440 | Let's talk about some.

00:33:13.680 | So a hack that I'm loving right now is to set the bar way lower.

00:33:17.400 | So I think a lot of people think about something like working out

00:33:21.560 | or meditation, and they're like, I don't know, I'm so busy already.

00:33:25.280 | Like, I know these things are good for me, but how do I actually fit them

00:33:28.360 | into my life? And I think that if instead of sitting down and being like,

00:33:31.120 | well, I have to do 20 minutes of meditation to make it effective,

00:33:33.760 | you're like, I'm going to do five minutes of meditation.

00:33:35.920 | I'm going to do 10 minutes of meditation.

00:33:37.880 | First of all, it makes it so much more achievable and attainable.

00:33:41.680 | And if something is achievable and attainable,

00:33:43.440 | you're so much more likely to keep going at it.

00:33:45.640 | You're not going to try to do it for a week, fail and give up.

00:33:48.920 | But then also, most of the time when you sit down

00:33:51.480 | and try to meditate for 10 minutes, you're going to love it.

00:33:53.800 | It's going to feel really good.

00:33:55.200 | And you might even want to keep going or maybe you'll do 10 minutes for a week.

00:33:58.720 | And then the next week, you'll do 11 minutes.

00:34:01.040 | The next week you'll do 12 minutes.

00:34:02.840 | And actually, I had a woman on my podcast who studies focus

00:34:06.120 | and she studies meditation and its effects on your brain.

00:34:08.760 | And 12 minutes is literally the minimum viable dose

00:34:12.120 | to have incredibly potent neurological effects.

00:34:15.480 | So if you're one of those people who feels scattered all the time,

00:34:18.720 | you like go to answer an email and then you find yourself on Instagram

00:34:22.600 | and you don't even know how your phone got into your hand.

00:34:25.080 | Doing just 12 minutes of mindfulness practice

00:34:28.760 | every single day will massively help that type of thing.

00:34:32.280 | It'll help you focus your attention.

00:34:34.240 | It'll help you use your attention in the way that you want to use your attention.

00:34:37.600 | So that's so much less than most of us think.

00:34:41.440 | And by the way, that's not even every single day she does that.

00:34:43.640 | I think four to five days a week was the study.

00:34:45.680 | So 12 minutes, four to five days a week.

00:34:48.200 | Same thing with working out.

00:34:49.440 | I had a doctor on my podcast for a Ask the Doctor burnout edition.

00:34:53.120 | So we talked all about what are the causes of burnout in our bodies,

00:34:56.760 | in our brains, and how can we address them?

00:34:59.160 | We were talking about the minimum viable dose of working out.

00:35:02.000 | And it's anything that gives you a state of change.

00:35:05.760 | So anything that makes it so that you sweat, so that your heart rate goes up.

00:35:08.920 | That is, quote unquote, enough.

00:35:11.520 | And I think that bar is so much lower than get in your car,

00:35:15.760 | driving to the gym, doing an hour class and yelling at yourself

00:35:20.200 | if you're not doing all of those things.

00:35:21.880 | So one of my favorite hacks is anything that you want to do in your life.

00:35:25.520 | Make it easier.

00:35:27.560 | Make it less of a time commitment and make it fun.

00:35:31.360 | That's another really good hack, is that anything that you want to do,

00:35:35.880 | if you can make it enjoyable, which sounds so silly, you're like, of course,

00:35:39.560 | like if you make something enjoyable, it will be easier to do.

00:35:42.560 | But I think there's this pervasive attitude with wellness

00:35:45.840 | that unless you're beating yourself up, it's not really wellness,

00:35:49.520 | that there's an element of suffering involved.

00:35:51.560 | And that's not true at all.

00:35:52.880 | So, for instance, I had Katie Melkman on my podcast and she studies

00:35:57.240 | how we can essentially make the choices that we want to make

00:36:01.360 | and actually stick to them, how we can make those changes.

00:36:03.680 | And one of her favorite things that she recommends

00:36:06.160 | is taking something that you really love.

00:36:08.960 | So if you really love like a TV show or a specific podcast,

00:36:12.040 | like all the hacks are healthier together.

00:36:13.840 | Save the podcast for some time that you doing something

00:36:17.800 | that's a little bit hard for you to motivate yourself to do.

00:36:19.920 | So for me, that's working out.

00:36:21.160 | I hate working out.

00:36:22.120 | If I could just lay on the couch like a potato for the rest of my life,

00:36:25.200 | I would absolutely do it.

00:36:26.360 | But I know that I feel so much better after I work out.

00:36:29.720 | So I say my favorite podcast, I only listen to them when I work out.

00:36:33.560 | And then I get excited to work out because I'm like, oh, my gosh,

00:36:36.560 | I get to listen to my favorite podcast.

00:36:38.880 | You can put on music that you love while doing your taxes.

00:36:43.520 | You can have a little treat like a food that you eat or a favorite wine

00:36:48.400 | or something like that, or a friend that you call when you go for walks.

00:36:51.360 | There's all these ways to sort of pair the thing that you really,

00:36:55.560 | really love with the thing

00:36:56.640 | that you have a harder time motivating yourself to do.

00:36:59.400 | And it makes it fun and it creates that association in your brain

00:37:02.600 | so that you start to love the thing that you thought

00:37:04.640 | you didn't love in the first place.

00:37:06.280 | Does that mean that you wouldn't listen to your favorite podcast?

00:37:08.880 | It does, yeah. Unless you're working out.

00:37:10.280 | She recommends saving the things that like you really love

00:37:13.680 | that really motivate you for when you're doing the hard things.

00:37:16.000 | I like that.

00:37:17.080 | And I know meditation, because I've heard you talk about

00:37:19.960 | it was something that you tried for a while and it just didn't stick.

00:37:22.840 | And I know I have.

00:37:24.120 | And many people have been like, yeah, I downloaded Headspace and I did that.

00:37:27.040 | And then it didn't work.

00:37:27.880 | And you found a way to make it work.

00:37:30.200 | Can you talk a little bit about that journey?

00:37:32.120 | So my meditation journey has been really interesting.

00:37:35.600 | I started meditating during what I like to call my mental breakdown period.

00:37:40.120 | I was living in London with my now husband and I became completely agoraphobic.

00:37:45.680 | I started having panic attacks whenever I left the house.

00:37:48.520 | And that's the beginning of my wellness journey in general.

00:37:51.560 | I was like laying prone in bed and emailing sources

00:37:54.720 | about how I could essentially stop having panic attacks at every single second.

00:37:58.480 | And a lot of them recommended meditation, which really surprised me

00:38:02.760 | because I was reaching out to people more in the hard science arena.

00:38:05.640 | They also recommended foods and supplements.

00:38:07.720 | And that's how I began to cobble together my personal wellness journey.

00:38:12.440 | So I tried meditating with Headspace and it did help a little bit.

00:38:17.160 | I will say that Andy Puddingcombe has like a very soothing voice.

00:38:20.880 | It's a nice, nice British tones in there.

00:38:23.520 | And I was in England and that was probably the only British person

00:38:25.960 | that I was like regularly having interactions with was Andy Puddingcombe in my ears.

00:38:30.920 | So I do think that it helped a little bit.

00:38:33.480 | And then later for a story, I did Vedic meditation training,

00:38:38.000 | which is much like transcendental meditation training.

00:38:40.960 | And that worked for me, but not for the reasons that you might think.

00:38:44.160 | So TM is a mantra based meditation.

00:38:46.600 | So you're you get a secret mantra.

00:38:48.560 | You like go you pay money and then you go to this five day workshop.

00:38:52.400 | They whisper to you your secret mantra.

00:38:54.600 | I don't know where it comes from.

00:38:55.920 | They like tell you your mantra.

00:38:57.880 | And I think the idea is that like if you went to five different teachers,

00:39:00.480 | they like tell you the same mantra based on I don't know.

00:39:03.000 | I literally don't know what is based on like your height or your vibe

00:39:05.680 | or your energy or like your name, but you get your mantra.

00:39:08.040 | You're not supposed to tell it to anybody.

00:39:09.360 | So I don't know my husband's mantra and he doesn't know my mantra,

00:39:12.120 | but he knows my Gmail password.

00:39:14.280 | And then you repeat that mantra to yourself in your head over and over

00:39:18.000 | and over when you meditate.

00:39:19.360 | So one of the reasons that I think it works is because it focuses

00:39:23.640 | your attention instead of being like, don't think about anything,

00:39:27.080 | which makes you think about everything.

00:39:29.440 | You have a thing to think about.

00:39:31.560 | You just think about your mantra over and over.

00:39:33.280 | So I think you could use literally any mantra and it would have that effect.

00:39:36.360 | So hum is a really great starter mantra.

00:39:38.960 | You can just sit there and repeat.

00:39:40.040 | So hum to yourself in your head.

00:39:41.680 | And I think it'll have a really positive effect.

00:39:43.960 | You can also just sit there and watch your breath or you could listen to Andy.

00:39:46.680 | And that's great.

00:39:47.720 | But the other reason that I think that it was so effective

00:39:50.920 | was because it was really expensive.

00:39:52.720 | And I think that making an investment in something

00:39:56.840 | in that way is so motivating in a way that we don't talk about.

00:40:00.720 | So instead of being like, well, I don't feel like meditating today,

00:40:03.720 | I was like, oh, I spent five hundred dollars on this stupid course.

00:40:07.280 | You better meditate to make it worth the money that you spent on the course.

00:40:11.000 | So I do think that to the extent that you have the privilege

00:40:14.200 | to make a financial investment in something, it works for something

00:40:17.000 | like booking a workout class in advance.

00:40:19.360 | Or there's even sites where you can like bet against your ability to do something.

00:40:24.120 | So if you want to quit smoking or you want to work out every day

00:40:27.440 | or something like that, I do think if you can tie your finances

00:40:31.840 | in with it a little bit, it is weirdly motivating.

00:40:34.560 | So I've been a pretty regular meditator.

00:40:38.440 | Again, my bar is low.

00:40:39.760 | I don't think I need to be perfect.

00:40:41.440 | I don't need to do it every single day and I don't break myself ever.

00:40:46.160 | But I do think that putting the cost investment on the line

00:40:49.640 | was a really big motivating factor for it finally sticking.

00:40:52.720 | That's awesome. Yeah.

00:40:54.040 | I know a handful of people that swear by their mantra.

00:40:57.800 | And every time I'm like, I don't understand it.

00:40:59.440 | What is the mantra? No one will ever share.

00:41:01.120 | I should look into it.

00:41:02.320 | Where does the mantra come from?

00:41:04.040 | I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

00:41:05.840 | I have no idea. You should try it.

00:41:07.280 | Do you meditate?

00:41:08.320 | I have spent time with it.

00:41:11.080 | Hotel might have like a breath meditation class.

00:41:13.280 | We'll go do it. It's not I'm not afraid of it.

00:41:15.400 | But I just have not ever found a way to make it stick.

00:41:18.560 | But it's something that it's like on that long list of things

00:41:21.960 | that I want to bring back into life, but has been on the list for years.

00:41:25.000 | I also find it helpful to literally look up all of the health benefits of it,

00:41:28.440 | because the second that you are aware of all of the massive benefits

00:41:31.680 | you can get in your life by doing something like meditating,

00:41:33.800 | it just becomes so much more motivated on the focus episode of the podcast.

00:41:37.720 | We talked about whether you could just do activities mindfully,

00:41:40.520 | like mindfully wash your dishes or mindfully go for a walk.

00:41:43.440 | And that does have a certain amount of benefits,

00:41:46.080 | but not nearly the same benefits as that concentrated dose

00:41:49.320 | of mindfulness of 12 minutes a day, which you talked about.

00:41:52.400 | Interestingly, it's partially like training ourselves to sit in discomfort

00:41:56.680 | and training ourselves to not like the experience in a way.

00:42:01.600 | I like that, like forcing yourself to be uncomfortable.

00:42:04.200 | A few other things that I know you at least regularly do.

00:42:07.440 | Yeah. Cold showers. Cold showers.

00:42:09.440 | I know we talked about this on my when I interviewed you.

00:42:11.920 | You don't do them.

00:42:13.240 | Well, it's funny. Sometimes I want a cold shower.

00:42:15.200 | It's not about if you want a cold shower.

00:42:17.200 | So I don't have a practice of forcing myself to take a cold shower.

00:42:20.200 | But sometimes I'm like, I just kind of enjoy a cold shower right now.

00:42:23.320 | My wife thinks I'm crazy.

00:42:24.560 | When you're in like Colombia or like just in normal life.

00:42:28.000 | Like some days I'm like, I'm running hot today

00:42:30.760 | and I'll take a shower and I'll just like it's not the coldest it gets,

00:42:34.880 | but it's by no means warm. Right.

00:42:36.800 | But I think what you do is not that it is not that.

00:42:39.360 | And I would actually say that wanting to do it.

00:42:41.880 | Almost takes away from the reason that we do it.

00:42:45.480 | And when I explain why, you'll understand.

00:42:47.680 | So first of all, I want to preface, I do not do the whole shower cold,

00:42:50.640 | like I am shampoo weed and washing my body in a nice, warm, toasty shower

00:42:54.640 | like you might think.

00:42:55.920 | And then at the very end, I breathe in really deeply

00:42:59.840 | and I turn the thing to as cold as it gets.

00:43:02.200 | And the idea is you want to be as cold as you can comfortably be

00:43:06.640 | without feeling like you're in any sort of danger in any way.

00:43:09.800 | So I go as cold as possible.

00:43:11.640 | And I do a minute is my goal.

00:43:14.320 | Always, again, kind of having those lower goalposts.

00:43:17.280 | But sometimes I'll go a minute and a half up to two minutes.

00:43:19.920 | I think aiming for 12 to 15 minutes a week is ideal. Not a day.

00:43:24.240 | I mean, I mean, when I heard 12 to 15 minutes, I was like, wow,

00:43:29.000 | I got 12 minutes of meditation today, 12 minutes of cold, 12 to 15 minutes a week,

00:43:33.520 | which is not that much.

00:43:34.360 | And again, you're kind of like habit stacking.

00:43:36.120 | You're in the shower already.

00:43:37.480 | I like it because it's this tiny, tiny, tiny thing that you can do

00:43:41.080 | that will have a big effect on your health.

00:43:42.880 | So you're like, what is the effect on your health?

00:43:44.720 | First of all, if you're vain, a cold shower is going to make your skin glow.

00:43:47.880 | It's going to make your hair really shiny.

00:43:49.480 | So if you want to look really pretty, which I can tell by your face,

00:43:52.240 | you're like, this is appealing to me.

00:43:53.840 | Of course, if that is the goal, it's going to help with that.

00:43:57.840 | So the same reason you see people do like their ice rollers for inflammation

00:44:01.480 | and like face puffiness, the cold shower is going to have that effect.

00:44:04.560 | But basically on your entire body. Wonderful.

00:44:06.960 | The reason I do it, though, is to help balance my dopamine levels.

00:44:10.480 | So do you know, Dr.

00:44:11.840 | Anna Lemke? I do not.

00:44:13.480 | She is a wonderful Stanford professor who basically her entire practice

00:44:18.840 | is devoted to studying dopamine.

00:44:21.000 | And dopamine is the neurochemical of motivation.

00:44:24.560 | I think people confuse it with serotonin a lot.

00:44:26.280 | And I certainly did before I interviewed her.

00:44:27.960 | It's not the chemical of happiness. It's about motivation.

00:44:30.880 | It's about our desire and drive to do things.

00:44:33.520 | And so a lot of the technology that we use, drugs and alcohol,

00:44:37.800 | these things that are like so easy to motivate yourself to do,

00:44:40.920 | it's because they encourage your dopamine receptors

00:44:43.680 | to essentially pump out dopamine.

00:44:45.600 | But when you do that, your dopamine can essentially get out of balance,

00:44:48.600 | which has a number of pretty negative effects on you.

00:44:51.480 | It makes it harder for you to be motivated to do the things

00:44:54.840 | that you want to do in your life.

00:44:56.160 | And it can also make it harder for you to find pleasure

00:45:00.000 | in the simple things like going for a walk or watching the sunset

00:45:04.480 | or just these like little moments.

00:45:06.360 | It's why I think sometimes you'll see like a group of friends

00:45:09.120 | out at dinner together.

00:45:10.400 | And instead of wanting to talk to each other,

00:45:12.080 | they're all like wanting to be on their phones.

00:45:13.720 | And you're doing the fun thing like you're out with your friends.

00:45:16.880 | But that dopamine imbalance is causing you to want to reach

00:45:21.080 | for your technology, even in those moments.

00:45:23.320 | So if we can do things that feel a little bit uncomfortable,

00:45:27.440 | we can bring our dopamine back into balance,

00:45:30.520 | which will make it easier for us to motivate ourselves to do hard things

00:45:34.000 | in the other facets of our lives and easier for us to experience pleasure

00:45:38.280 | in those like smaller moments that aren't causing these huge dopamine bursts.

00:45:43.480 | So hard things include things like cold showers.

00:45:47.280 | So if you can just add in this little moment of being uncomfortable,

00:45:51.960 | of pushing yourself to do something that's a little bit difficult for you,

00:45:57.040 | it has all of these longer outsized positive effects.

00:46:01.160 | By the way, it doesn't need to just be a cold shower.

00:46:03.240 | She mentioned in the episode walking to get groceries in the rain.

00:46:06.720 | The big takeaway for me was that discomfort

00:46:10.480 | isn't something that we're trying to eliminate from our lives.

00:46:13.600 | Discomfort actually has this really positive and balancing effect.

00:46:18.320 | So if you find yourself as the type of person who's always reaching for your phone,

00:46:22.400 | who has a hard time getting motivated, who isn't sure

00:46:26.440 | like where they can find those little moments of pleasure in their life,

00:46:29.920 | I think looking and leaning into those moments of discomfort

00:46:33.640 | can feel really satisfying.

00:46:36.120 | There are also a lot of health benefits of cold water as a therapy.

00:46:41.120 | So you didn't even mention like all that world.

00:46:44.000 | But I know that Cold Plunges and Wim Hof, who some people listening know,

00:46:48.880 | other people can Google, has done a ton of stuff

00:46:51.880 | with the health benefits of cold water therapy.

00:46:55.680 | And I think a lot of that comes down to inflammation.

00:46:58.680 | I think if we can sort of manage our inflammation levels at a base state,

00:47:02.200 | it has these cascading positive effects on our bodies.

00:47:05.720 | But for me, as a person who finds it very hard to do hard things,

00:47:10.840 | I like the idea that I can do this one little hard thing

00:47:13.280 | and I'll make all the other hard things feel so much easier.

00:47:15.840 | I love it. To get very specific, you turn on the cold water.

00:47:18.840 | Yeah. Are you then like showering, splashing all over, getting it everywhere?

00:47:24.040 | Are you just like standing there frozen?

00:47:25.840 | So first I do my face because again, I'm trying for my glowing skin effects.

00:47:30.200 | So I am vain.

00:47:31.640 | And so I first put my face on her.

00:47:33.080 | That's horrible. It's excruciating.

00:47:35.040 | But I do that probably for like 20 to 30 seconds.

00:47:38.200 | Then I do my front and then I turn around and I do my back.

00:47:41.440 | I do try to kind of do right on the back of my neck

00:47:43.800 | because that encourages brown fat in your body,

00:47:46.280 | which has a whole host of positive effects.

00:47:48.600 | Look up brown fat if you would like to.

00:47:50.280 | And then I just try to withstand it

00:47:53.600 | as long as I possibly can until I turn it off and get out.

00:47:56.240 | And again, I give myself full permission to stop at 60 seconds every single time.

00:48:00.360 | I think that keeping it as quick as possible

00:48:03.360 | in the 60 seconds goes by really fast, you know.

00:48:05.840 | I like it. I will. Will you try it?

00:48:08.000 | I will try. You commit to try it for this is another wellness thing.

00:48:11.400 | I think that we often are like, oh, I like did the wellness thing.

00:48:15.680 | Where's my great effect?

00:48:17.240 | But you're not using it long enough and not using it

00:48:19.760 | consistently enough to get those benefits.

00:48:21.720 | So add in your vegetables. Do it for a month.

00:48:24.320 | Do your workout for a month or two before you start sitting around

00:48:27.920 | and being like, why isn't it working? Meditate for a month or two.

00:48:30.960 | So how long are you going to commit to doing your cold showers for? Hmm.

00:48:34.320 | It's funny because we have a hot tub and I was like,

00:48:36.720 | maybe I should just turn the water and just let it get cold

00:48:39.080 | and then just do like the full submersion because funny enough,

00:48:41.960 | you know that you can buy a I know that we in a conversation in a past episode,

00:48:47.080 | I talked about the DIY versus like the fancy, expensive one.

00:48:51.080 | I'm down to experiment.

00:48:53.920 | So this I do think, though, you're immediately trying to complicate it.

00:48:57.960 | And I feel like do the plunge thing later.

00:49:01.080 | Yeah. Transform your hot tub later.

00:49:03.360 | But for right now, literally with doing nothing,

00:49:06.480 | you could take a cold shower at the end of your shower today.

00:49:08.800 | So I'm like, set your bar a little lower.

00:49:10.880 | I'll try it for April.

00:49:12.600 | OK. All of April.

00:49:13.720 | And then will you like announce on Twitter or something how it went for you?

00:49:17.920 | I'll just talk about it. I'll bring it up.

00:49:19.520 | Bring on the podcast. Yeah. Or do it.

00:49:21.280 | Yeah. Stay tuned for Chris's cold shower journey.

00:49:23.400 | I'm going to do cold showers for a month.

00:49:24.720 | Let's everybody should join you to anybody listening.

00:49:26.840 | Who hasn't a cold shower? Join Chris on his cold shower journey.

00:49:29.200 | Yeah, let's do it.

00:49:30.080 | But by the time you hear this, maybe you'll make it. May. Yeah.

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00:52:36.800 | What about circadian walks?

00:52:38.160 | Sounds much more pleasurable than a cold shower.

00:52:40.240 | I love my circ walk.

00:52:42.400 | So the circadian walk is the idea.

00:52:44.720 | I don't know if you've heard of a hot girl walk, but that's just like

00:52:47.360 | I have not heard of a hot girl walk.

00:52:49.840 | It's literally just walking.

00:52:51.160 | And I think there's a lot of different ways

00:52:52.960 | that people are trying to make something as simple and wonderful

00:52:55.560 | as walking like trendy and circadian walks

00:52:58.840 | essentially bring a little bit of science into the age old practice of walking,

00:53:03.560 | which is a really beautiful and wonderful practice.

00:53:05.400 | Speaking of the focus episode, she said one of the best ways

00:53:07.840 | if you want to like regain focus for a meeting or something like that

00:53:11.160 | is just go for like a 10 minute walk, something where you can look a long ways

00:53:14.640 | in the distance, where you're not thinking about anything directed.

00:53:17.920 | And if you have like a big meeting or a speech or presentation,

00:53:20.640 | it'll help massively with reinvigorating that focus.

00:53:23.480 | But a circadian walk, you get the benefits of ambulation of walking,

00:53:27.720 | but also you're going to help control your circadian rhythm.

00:53:30.520 | So this is a 10 minute walk outside before 10 a.m.

00:53:34.320 | to help set your circadian rhythm for your day.

00:53:36.480 | What is your circadian rhythm?

00:53:38.040 | Do you know your circadian rhythm is?

00:53:39.240 | I probably am not going to explain it like you would, but the kind of general.

00:53:43.240 | Yeah, just let you explain.

00:53:45.880 | So your circadian rhythm,

00:53:47.040 | I think a lot of people think about it in the context of sleep.

00:53:49.760 | So it does impact your sleep hugely.

00:53:52.760 | And I would say if you go for a circadian walk again,

00:53:55.440 | 10 minutes outside before 10 a.m. for, I'd say, a week or two,

00:53:59.840 | you'll probably start to notice some really positive effects in your sleep.

00:54:03.240 | But your circadian rhythm also impacts so much more than that.

00:54:07.640 | Pretty much every single part of your body is running on its own little clock,

00:54:12.640 | like your digestion is running on its own little circadian rhythm, your hormones.

00:54:17.680 | So when you set your circadian rhythm,

00:54:19.600 | when you encourage your circadian rhythm to function optimally,

00:54:22.520 | you're actually having all of these downstream effects of it

00:54:25.960 | outside of just your sleep being better.

00:54:28.880 | You do not have to walk.

00:54:30.560 | You can just stand there and look at the sun.

00:54:32.520 | I do think there's like minor benefits to moving your body.

00:54:35.400 | It helps wake you up if you're going to just stand there.

00:54:37.760 | Why not? But sometimes I will if I'm feeling very lazy.

00:54:41.360 | But then I'd say the second circadian walk is the walk that's right

00:54:44.520 | as the sun is going down.

00:54:45.800 | So the number one time if you can do it is in the morning.

00:54:49.640 | Closer to when you wake up is better.

00:54:51.480 | But I would say 10 a.m.

00:54:52.520 | sort of the cutoff to get the benefits.

00:54:54.760 | And then if you can also do it as the sun is going down,

00:54:57.120 | as you're getting those sort of like pinky, orangey, yellow tones of sunset.

00:55:00.760 | Again, that will help kind of encourage your circadian rhythm

00:55:03.720 | to function at its optimal level, which is going to help your sleep.

00:55:06.560 | It's going to help your mood.

00:55:07.760 | It's going to help your hormones.

00:55:09.160 | It's going to help your digestion the whole the whole nine yards.

00:55:12.000 | I love it. What other things in your routine are you doing?

00:55:15.080 | We got cold showers. We got circadian walks. Yeah.

00:55:17.720 | OK, so here's a weird one.

00:55:19.400 | Do you know what hydroxyapatite is?

00:55:21.680 | No, I just assume the answer to all of these obscure questions.

00:55:25.600 | The answer is just so hydroxyapatite is it's a fluoride alternative in toothpaste.

00:55:30.760 | So I do these like ask the doctor episodes

00:55:32.880 | where I do deep dives with functional medicine practitioners.

00:55:35.480 | And I had a dentist on and I hear all the time people are like,

00:55:37.920 | oh, I don't want to listen to the dentist episode because that sounds really boring.

00:55:40.600 | But the more that we find out about our mouths, the more that we're finding out

00:55:45.120 | that it really impacts our entire health of our body.

00:55:48.720 | Like so much so that when I had the doctor on the Ask the Doctor immune health edition,

00:55:52.880 | I said, what's one thing we can do that will support our immune system?

00:55:55.240 | She was like, take care of your mouth because it's impacting your immune system.

00:55:58.920 | It's impacting your cardiovascular health.

00:56:01.040 | It's impacting your brain health, like literally your mouth.

00:56:03.720 | Microbiome is where all of these things are starting.

00:56:06.720 | And fluoride, we're finding out more and more has these really negative impacts

00:56:11.960 | on our overall health.

00:56:13.160 | So you want all the benefits.

00:56:15.720 | It's good for teeth. Nobody's disputing that.

00:56:17.520 | Everybody's like fluoride. Great for teeth. We love it.

00:56:20.040 | Maybe not so much for our overall health.

00:56:22.480 | So if we want the benefits of fluoride for our teeth

00:56:24.960 | without having the negative elements of fluoride for our health,

00:56:28.320 | hydroxyapatite is a fluoride alternative.

00:56:31.360 | It's been used in Japan for 30 years now.

00:56:33.960 | It's very safe.

00:56:35.760 | It's literally as effective or more effective than fluoride.

00:56:39.040 | And tons of studies.

00:56:40.480 | You can find it in a toothpaste called Risewell, a toothpaste called Boca.

00:56:44.320 | There's actually a normal toothpaste that you can buy online

00:56:46.480 | and you're getting all of the mouth benefits while protecting your mouth

00:56:50.320 | microbiome and protecting the more downstream effects of fluoride in your body.

00:56:53.840 | So hydroxyapatite toothpaste, I'd say in a larger way,

00:56:57.000 | making little swaps to the things that you use every single day.

00:57:01.360 | So that's another people are like, Oh, do I have to like wear organic clothes

00:57:05.200 | and do all this stuff?

00:57:06.680 | And I'm like, make over your bed.

00:57:08.080 | You're going to spend 12 hours.

00:57:09.760 | Well, you're going to spend eight hours a day in your bed.

00:57:13.480 | And if you can make your bed this little wellness haven,

00:57:17.120 | then you can skip a lot of the other stuff.

00:57:19.000 | So if you can get a mattress that's not off gassing, if you can get

00:57:23.080 | I have organic sheets, I have a hypoallergenic pillow, things like that.

00:57:27.600 | I have a silk pillowcase so that my hair and my skin looks really good.

00:57:31.600 | I tape my mouth at night to sleep.

00:57:33.960 | I think there's all of these things that you can do while you're sleeping

00:57:37.800 | to essentially enhance your wellness that you're not like

00:57:40.280 | having to think about during the day.

00:57:42.480 | So that was a lot of things.

00:57:44.640 | What is taping your mouth?

00:57:46.040 | Taping your mouth is the idea that essentially when you're

00:57:50.000 | breathing through your nose, you're getting a lot more health

00:57:53.800 | benefits for your body than when you're breathing through your mouth.

00:57:55.880 | And I feel very strongly about this.

00:57:57.200 | I actually had a reconstructive rhinoplasty in October.

00:58:01.720 | I went surfing one time in my whole life and I broke my nose.

00:58:05.280 | I hit myself in the face with the surfboard in Brazil, and I got it fixed

00:58:10.120 | after that and after they fixed it, I couldn't breathe through my nose.

00:58:12.720 | And the effects of not being able to breathe through your nose

00:58:16.160 | are so well researched and so much worse than what we think.

00:58:20.160 | For instance, my really severe anxiety

00:58:22.880 | started pretty closely with the time that I stopped

00:58:26.600 | being able to breathe through my nose.

00:58:27.800 | And I'm not saying it's just that, because obviously there's so many factors

00:58:31.400 | in one's life that you have to consider with something like anxiety.

00:58:33.880 | But I also don't think that it's completely separate or completely unrelated.

00:58:38.080 | So we want to breathe through our nose as much as possible.

00:58:41.880 | It decreases stress.

00:58:43.600 | It takes your body out of this like fight or flight mode.

00:58:46.240 | It helps you think better.

00:58:47.320 | It helps eliminate that foggy brain situation.

00:58:51.400 | It's just generally so good for us.

00:58:53.480 | But many of us have trained ourselves to breathe through our mouths all the time.

00:58:57.240 | If you have a nose that can have air go through it, which I do now

00:59:01.560 | because I had a piece of my rib taken and they built out my nose.

00:59:05.240 | So it's like bigger and has passageways that are wide enough for air now.

00:59:09.000 | So you have a nose that can have air go through it.

00:59:11.800 | A nice practice to do is to gently tape your mouth

00:59:15.200 | and then it forces you to breathe through your nose.

00:59:18.120 | So it's not a physical issue.

00:59:19.920 | It's more of a habitual issue that you're trying to correct.

00:59:22.920 | And if you're worried about it, if you're about suffocating,

00:59:25.520 | there's mouth tapes that you can get online

00:59:27.960 | that very much allow you to breathe through your mouth.

00:59:30.080 | They just encourage you to breathe through your nose

00:59:32.720 | to experience all those positive effects.

00:59:34.800 | And you do this every night?

00:59:36.040 | I do it most nights. Yeah. Wow.

00:59:38.040 | It also helps with snoring.

00:59:39.960 | Again, if we're going from a vanity perspective,

00:59:42.440 | a lot of people have like weaker chins.

00:59:45.040 | You'll start to see a difference in that

00:59:46.640 | if you start breathing through your nose, because it literally reshapes your jaw.

00:59:50.600 | In essence, it'll help with your teeth health,

00:59:52.400 | because when you're breathing through your mouth overnight,

00:59:54.800 | your mouth is drying out and you want to keep all that saliva in there

00:59:58.880 | because that's the thing that's essentially protecting your enamel.

01:00:02.720 | It'll help with your teeth health, which will, again,

01:00:05.000 | have all those downstream positive effects

01:00:06.800 | because of your oral microbiome taking care of that.

01:00:09.360 | Your breath won't smell as bad in the morning.

01:00:11.480 | Not you. I don't mean to point to you.

01:00:13.400 | Wow. I'm sitting here.

01:00:14.200 | I'm like, we're only five feet away and it's afternoon.

01:00:17.200 | But wow. OK, so so much of what we do nowadays,

01:00:20.600 | especially I think about me and work and living at home during the pandemic.

01:00:24.440 | Everything's online. Everything's virtual.

01:00:27.200 | When you came here today, you gave me a physical product,

01:00:30.160 | which I thought was so cool.

01:00:31.480 | And it immediately made me jealous because I was like, gosh, I have a podcast.

01:00:34.360 | I've always listeners. I don't have a physical product.

01:00:36.240 | I wish I could have something to give people yet.

01:00:38.680 | So I need to get inspired there.

01:00:41.040 | If anyone has ideas, let me know.

01:00:43.000 | But can you talk about the deck of cards you gave me?

01:00:46.080 | Yeah. So it's the healthier together deck.

01:00:48.800 | I'm allergic to boring conversation.

01:00:51.320 | I am also extroverted, introvert and introverted extrovert.

01:00:55.360 | So I want to be around people and I want to have the conversations.

01:00:57.680 | But sometimes I think there's a lot of pressure into taking it to those deep

01:01:01.680 | levels. You kind of stay in the like, well, how are you?

01:01:04.200 | What's going on in your life?

01:01:05.920 | What are the world events when actually we really want to talk about

01:01:08.960 | like those foundational things, like the things that make us the people that we are.

01:01:12.960 | So I wanted to create a deck that basically gives you an excuse

01:01:16.880 | to have all the types of conversations that we want to be having

01:01:20.520 | that maybe are harder to bring into our everyday lives.

01:01:23.080 | I actually think it's a huge reason why people love podcasts is because

01:01:27.080 | I just met you, but we're getting to have these sort of like deeper,

01:01:29.920 | more introspective conversations simply because there's a mic in front of us.

01:01:33.560 | So what I like to say about the deck is it lets you get a lot of the benefits

01:01:36.920 | of doing something like a podcast.

01:01:38.960 | It lets us bring the questions of something like a podcast into your kitchen table.

01:01:42.480 | So I recommend having one in your car.

01:01:44.920 | I made it really pretty so you can like leave it out on your coffee table,

01:01:47.560 | leave it out in your kitchen table,

01:01:48.720 | and then you can just pull out a card anytime with a friend,

01:01:51.640 | with your partner, with like your mom and dad on a Zoom date.

01:01:55.000 | Instead of you're just like, OK, we like talked about Aunt Sally last week.

01:01:58.400 | That's so great. I'm glad your golf game is good.

01:02:00.800 | You can pull out a card and really get to know people as people.

01:02:04.760 | And people will surprise you.

01:02:06.120 | My husband surprises me with his answers all of the time,

01:02:09.840 | and it makes me feel closer to him and more connected to him

01:02:13.680 | and love him so much more.

01:02:15.600 | I love it. Funny enough, when we had our au pair first arrive,

01:02:19.080 | the au pair agency sent us a deck of cards with questions.

01:02:22.360 | Oh, my God, to try to get to know each other and your family.

01:02:26.040 | Oh, my God, that's so fun.

01:02:27.040 | The weird thing was that we're good.

01:02:29.120 | Some of them were good.

01:02:30.480 | The strangest thing was some of them are labeled.

01:02:32.920 | This is an au pair only question, and this is a host family only question.

01:02:36.640 | And you would think they would be things like,

01:02:39.000 | what is it like growing up in America?

01:02:41.560 | But some of them were strange,

01:02:44.000 | whereas like the host family no au pair question is what does happiness mean?

01:02:48.360 | And it's like, why is this a specific question?

01:02:50.280 | Why couldn't we all discuss it?

01:02:51.280 | Yeah, that's so interesting.

01:02:52.520 | But I really like that.

01:02:53.400 | But we've tapped it out.

01:02:54.800 | It's not as big of a deck as this.

01:02:56.240 | So I'm excited for this.

01:02:57.920 | The card I pulled out somewhat randomly that I'll share

01:03:01.040 | as an example of a conversation starter is, have you been anywhere in the world

01:03:04.960 | where you've thought the people here really got it right

01:03:07.400 | in terms of living a happy or healthier life?

01:03:09.680 | If so, where was it?

01:03:11.120 | Yeah, so that's one of the questions that actually came directly out of my podcast.

01:03:14.320 | So I like to ask people that at the end of episodes,