CW: Disordered Eating
Thanks for listening to Wellness, Community, Magic, a podcast with a pro-donut, anti-racist, Glenda-the-good-witch agenda. In this episode, Elizabeth Moore and Ashley Brooke James join Laura Lea for another delicious episode on peanut butter, pizza, and comfort food. They talk about bio-individuality, the difference between health coaches, dieticians, and nutritionists, and making just about anything into a pizza.
If you swear you can't cook, this episode is for you.
Join us next week for a discussion about decolonizing yoga.
Links:
Simply Balanced Meal Plans, Use Discount code SimplyLL25 for 25% off the annual membership
Laura Lea's Instagram @lauraleabalanced
Full Transcript:
[00:00:00] We would like to open this episode with a trigger warning, as it contains discussion of eating disorders, body image issues, and/ or weight loss or management. If this does not feel safe for you at this time, please skip the episode and come back to it if and when you're ready. If I'm feeling anxious, if I'm feeling down, if I can turn it into a pizza and I can add a little, I always keep tomato paste in my refrigerator, my pantry. Tomato paste is a great substitute for a pizza sauce. And I actually like it better sometimes because it has really concentrated flavors. You just need a little bit. And then I do almost always have some kind of a cheese.
[00:00:37] That was the voice of Laura Lea Bryant, a certified health supportive chef, author and creator of LL Balanced and Simply Balanced Meal Plans. The goal of LL Balanced is to dispel common misconceptions of healthy eating as radical, expensive, and deprivation based with simple comfort food inspired and family-friendly recipes.
[00:00:57] In addition, Laura Lea hopes to increase [00:01:00] awareness about the relationship between food and mental, emotional, and physical health. Today, we're talking about bio-individuality, the difference between health coaches, dieticians, and nutritionists, and making just about anything into a pizza.
[00:01:16] Hi everyone. We're your hosts, Ashley Brooke James and Elizabeth Moore, co founders of TRILUNA and this is the Wellness Community Magic podcast. A podcast with a pro donut, anti-racist, Glenda- the- good- witch agenda. We're here to take on diet culture by making self-care realistic, sustainable, and inclusive. So settle in, get cozy and join us on our journey to build community and redefine wellness.
[00:01:41] Let's get started.
[00:01:46] First question, as always. Always. Liz, you know, I'm going to let you ask it today time. Okay. If you were a donut, what kind of donut would you be? [00:02:00] Okay, so I, I can't remember what I said in my answer, but I'm going to go with a PB and J filled yeast donut with a crumble topping. And that is a big change for me because I used to be like cake donuts all the way and then I had Connie and Johnny here in Nashville and I fell in love with like really good yeast donuts. But now that's, that's what I'm imagining.
[00:02:30] So since we're talking about that, how do you feel about this peanut butter on peanut butter reese's that has just come out? I mean, I love, peanut butter is definitely one of my like desert Island foods, but I want the chocolate with the peanut butter. I'm not saying I won't try it when I stop at a gas station the next time but I don't know if it'll be my favorite. It does seem a little bit like a classic that doesn't need to be messed with.
[00:03:00] [00:02:59] Yeah. It's a lot of peanut butter and I I'm sure they have figured out the formula, but to me it just seems like it would be a little dry. So what are your thoughts on cookie butter? So to me, they're sort of like different categories. So peanut butter, I'm never not in the mood for peanut butter. I think it goes with everything.
[00:03:19] Cookie butter, it to me, is a mood but it's incredible. Like the speculous cookie butter from Trader Joe's. It does need a little bit of like a savory pairing with it, you know, good sourdough with like some flaky sea salt. That sounds really boujee for cookie butter, but it, it's, it's next level. I, yeah, and I also think on like an apple or something that's tart helps cut the sweet for me to.
[00:03:46] Yeah. It needs that kind of pairing. I like that. If something is heavy, it has to have like a citrus or a vinegar or something to help cut it or I just like. Same thing with peanut butter. Peanut butter is too [00:04:00] thick for me. I got to have something to cut the texture. Well, I'm going to go ahead and tell y'all right now I'm already hungry and I know that the appetite is going to continue to build as we talk about food, because that's what we're talking about.
[00:04:14] We're talking about food and all types of different directions. First question for you, Laura is what are some of the common misconceptions around food and nutrition that you've noticed and how do you combat such deeply rooted beliefs? Yeah. This is such an interesting question. I think it, to me, it has sort of an umbrella answer first, which is this idea that health can fit under some kind of a dogma, which I know y'all are really, I like that you actually use that word anti or the phrase anti dogma.
[00:04:54] I think that is probably the overarching issue that I see that gets in the way [00:05:00] of people improving their health is that there's so much information overload and so many ideas of what's right or wrong and this notion of being on or off the, you know, the bandwagon. And I think that if people really had a better sense of their own bio-individuality and became their own health guru, obviously with the help of medical professionals, when necessary, we would eliminate like 95% of these barriers to entry in just making some, some improvements.
[00:05:29] And, and then that sort of dovetails into just small changes. I know it sounds so trite and cheesy, and I'm really bad at it too. I think probably all three of us and a lot of these listeners are really smart Type A kind of people, perfectionist, and we want to make these big leaps, but it really is the small, consistent changes that are so impactful at the end of the day, but they're not sexy and they're not glamorous, but they work.
[00:05:54] Yeah, that's something that I think we see a lot in, in the wellness field is like when you go [00:06:00] into trying to find food, relationships and diets, where the end result is weight loss, what you are looking for is a quick fix, because you want to see those results quickly. You want to see this happen overnight.
[00:06:13] And I, of course, I've done this all my life. I come from a history of eating disorders, which is how I landed here in the first place. But I would follow these groupings of food, paleo gluten-free, South beach, whatever it was at the time. And rather than listening to my body, I was being dogmatic about the rules of this one specific thing.
[00:06:32] And as it turns out, some of those foods inside of each of those like quote unquote healthy pairings were unhealthy for me. And it took me divorcing myself from dogma to actually start to build a relationship with the foods that best serve me and my health. Yeah, absolutely. No, I totally agree.
[00:06:51] My, one of my best friends, her name is Leanne Ellington. She teaches a transformational course called Stressless Eating and she always says [00:07:00] that every diet works until it doesn't. And that's so true because usually what catches up with you is either the restraint or, you know, the inflexibility or just the fact that it just didn't work for your body even if it works for millions of people.
[00:07:15] Yeah. And one thing you said on your intake form is wellness is a fluid awareness of what serves you and what doesn't serve you and realizing your best self. And that, that changes over time, hour to hour. It really does. I mean, I've had a very emotionally stressful few weeks and it was amazing that when I actually was listening to my body, I really wasn't craving like traditionally healthy foods.
[00:07:39] I really didn't want vegetables, salads, a lot of fiber, that just wasn't sitting with my gut because it was tied up in knots. So for me, for a couple of weeks, health really looked like, you know, I was making egg and cheese sandwiches on, I mean, it was on like a grainy bread, but it's not, you know, sort of going to be at the pinnacle of a, of a traditional [00:08:00] health meal.
[00:08:01] But that was just was what was sitting with me and then chocolate peanut butter smoothies and that sort of thing. And now I'm adjusting. I'm feeling a lot better so I can kind of incorporate some more veggies and it's feeling good now. Yeah, that's, that's so important. I mean, we talk a lot about adding in the sort of things that you need in your diet, rather than focusing on restriction.
[00:08:24] It's like, if you feel like you need something specific, you can add it to your diet and maybe it pushes out something else and maybe it doesn't, and that's totally fine. And if we're seeking comfort and things that remind us of home and remind us of what it's like to be comforted and to be with family and to be with loved ones, I think that's kind of beautiful.
[00:08:44] Yeah, I do too. It goes back to the primary foods, right? We, we really believe in primary and secondary foods and our primary foods are things that feed our soul and then the secondary foods are the things that we actually put [00:09:00] in our mouth, but we feel like if we focus on the primary foods, the secondary foods become more, they're just better.
[00:09:07] Yeah. You know, they're, they're pleasing to the soul. I have something that we may or may not want to talk about. And so I can ask it and if you're like, Oh, I don't want to go there then we can not go there. Okay. So I started my journey into, um, being a wellness professional. I put that in exaggerated air quotes because I started as a health coach.
[00:09:29] And that entailed a lot of what I ended up feeling like was being an underpaid and under-qualified therapist. Yeah. And I realized through my journey that I have, I actually have caused harm as a health coach, unqualified health coach. And I was thinking about this the other night. I did this, I went to Bali and did this detox training, which was just like, this most horrible science, just completely [00:10:00] false, weird, weird stuff.
[00:10:01] I met someone who was a breatharian and who claimed not to have eaten in five years. Like it was like all kinds, all 10 ways of weird. And I came back so confused in myself and my body. And I started teaching detox classes, like eating only raw foods for a week and then doing a juice cleanse and all this kind of stuff.
[00:10:19] And I had this one person who took my course, who was like, I can't do this, like this isn't working for me. I can't make this happen. And you know, my advice then was kind of just like, well, y'all like, you know, just like figure it out and like find your own way. And it's okay like if you, if you like mess up, you can get back into it.
[00:10:37] And I think back on that now. It was such horror because I know that that wasn't the advice that she needed. And I wonder, and you've spoken pretty openly on your Instagram lately about your journey from more traditional modes of health into this kind of like all inclusive and I wonder if you would talk a little bit about that journey?
[00:10:57] Yes, definitely. Oh my [00:11:00] gosh. I have so many feelings, just even imagining what that experience was like for you and that detox language and the raw vegan culture and all of that. And I definitely, I've been doing this for eight years, and for sure there have been times, especially in the first few years of my career where I was, I don't know that I ever espoused anything that was really like extreme, but I definitely was pretty dogmatic about things like no dairy, no gluten and didn't leave a lot of wiggle room for that.
[00:11:32] And I would teach classes on those things and I am sure whether it was, you know, harmful in the sense of, I sort of accidentally helped somebody restrict a whole food category or even just for myself, I think kind of digging myself deeper and deeper into these ideas that I learned in culinary school.
[00:11:52] I had, I went to an amazing school, but it definitely, and maybe it's not like this anymore, but they definitely had some pretty [00:12:00] strong ideas about what is considered healthy. And I took that and I ran with it without doing any of the research or even checking into my own body. I digest dairy like totally fine. I have no problem with dairy. I actually don't even have a problem with like crappy dairy. Um, but I was so sure that there was a right way and a wrong way.
[00:12:21] So I do, I mean, I am, one of the things I'm working on in therapy is the difference between guilt and shame. And I'm learning to have, you know, to say, okay, I feel a little guilty that I did that, but not to have shame around it because we're all doing our best at any given time and all I can do is now show up with what is an even larger community and say, Hey, you don't need to necessarily restrict anything. You just do what works best for you and try to help people now. And I don't think we're alone in that. I think the health food world just started to snowball and you all asked a question which maybe we'll get to, but [00:13:00] this makes me think of it.
[00:13:01] Something along the lines of in the health food world, what is the one thing that I would change, I think is one of the questions. And I would change, and again, I did this myself, is that everyone is an armchair dietician. Everyone's an armchair therapist and we really need to stop that and we need to be very, very careful about staying in our lanes and referring to medical professionals.
[00:13:24] Because dieticians got a bad rap for a while because they, they do still talk about some kind of, what we consider anything to be antiquated notions of health, but they still went to school for this and they've done clinicals and they have so much more knowledge than so many of these armchair nutritionists and therapists and health coaches. And I'm not saying that there aren't people who can help if they're just a coach, but you just have to be really, really careful with that.
[00:13:52] Yeah. And I think that is a really important conversation that we've been having recently is like, what is the difference between a dietician, a nutritionist and a [00:14:00] health coach. And in this field, those three categories have been at war with each other for years. When really I think that we need to be working together to create an ecosystem for help.
[00:14:13] Like health coaches and nutritionists should be getting information from dieticians. Health coaches should be helping them implement it. Nutritionists sit in the middle trying to make all of that work together instead of this like back and forth of hating on each other for, for different reasons. Right. Because everybody has their niche, right? Yeah. With that being said, can you tell us the difference between what you do, which is a health supportive chef and a nutritionist or dietician?
[00:14:39] Yes. So I agree. I will just echo that I think everyone should have a team. And now we are living in a time where, while not everybody has access to a team of professionals around them financially, or even in terms of access to the internet, most people do have access to the internet. And thankfully, especially with 2020, There [00:15:00] are a lot more services that can offer things like therapy, like chatting with a doctor who can help you for a lot less money.
[00:15:06] Um, you, you know, obviously do your research and make sure it's legit but I do recommend that people have a team, but I also recognize that that is a privilege so I would say as a health supportive chef, I'm honestly not sure. I feel like I could've given you a really clear definition eight years ago, but again, it's, now this becomes really kind of ambiguous fluid thing, but I feel like my job is to just explain to people.
[00:15:28] One, to sort of explain the nuances of different types of food, how not necessarily that, you know, your something is going bad is going to happen to you if you eat industrial ground beef, you know, from a factory farm, but that there are nuances and you can get pasture raised beef, if you can afford it.
[00:15:45] And that it might be something that could, uh, be a little bit more anti-inflammatory and sort of just explain some of those details that might be able to improve somebody's health without telling them that they need to do that. And then the other part of what I do is [00:16:00] offering recipes that are mostly whole foods based, which I personally think whole foods.
[00:16:05] There's no sort of moral judgment. It just is what it is. It's data, you know, it's pretty close to what comes out of the ground. And so I try to make recipes that are mostly whole foods based that are still going to be sort of comfort food inspired. I actually love, Ashley, what you said about primary and secondary foods.
[00:16:21] I think that y'all's notion of that would really like, you know, put people in a tailspin in a good way, because we would think of primary first as eat the rainbow and all the nutrients, but really that primary first, and I think of this too, what is going to excite you? What's a dish that's going to sound good to you? And then once you're excited about it, then I make it taste good. You know, as opposed to just saying, I'm just gonna make it super nutrient dense and you have to find a way to, to like it. But I should also say just, I'm not, I'm so what I'm not is I'm not anyone who can give you any kind of medical advice.
[00:16:55] I can't smudge, um, sort of like disordered eating or certainly eating [00:17:00] disorders. I can't suggest supplements to you, or really anything, anything suggestive about something that a person might specifically change about their health routine. I think that's a really important distinction. I mean, and I went to a health coaching school, which is where the primary and secondary food came from.
[00:17:18] I have some questions now about how well accredited that was a, that's a whole nother conversation, but I think the role of a health coach is, and we now don't do individualized health coaching because I have found in my experience, it is almost impossible to do one-on-one health coaching without some sort of disordered food behavior, history of eating disorder and/ or relationship with food that needs attention coming up.
[00:17:47] It just always did. And I always felt like I am not qualified to continue this conversation with you. You need to seek someone who can actually do this for you. What my job is, is to take or what our job now, is to take the [00:18:00] advice of professionals and say this is how you implement it. This is how you do it in your everyday life.
[00:18:05] This is how you make health more accessible in your every day if you want it. This is a tool. We are here for it to give you tools for wellness. We're not here to pass moral judgment on you if you don't want to use them. We're not here to tell you that you should or should not. We're just here to offer them if you want to accept them and use them and make them fit into your own life.
[00:18:26] Absolutely. One of the things that I remember most about our first walking date, Laura, is that, you know, we had a lot of social justice things going on last year and you were looking for a way to reconnect with the community, be the community and so your approach on that was to cut out some of like the boujee inspired meals and break it back to a place of normalcy. Can you talk to us about that and your [00:19:00] approach moving forward with that?
[00:19:01] Yeah. I had a very humbling experience in 2020 where I realized that, and this kind of goes back to aspousing things sort of inaccurately. I spent I think the majority of the last eight years telling people that my ingredients and my recipes are accessible and they're actually not to most people. Most people can't afford the ingredients that I use in my recipes. Now in my little community they could, and that was my world, but actually on a, on a bigger scale, which is what I would like to have access to, most people don't.
[00:19:41] And even, you know, things like uh, there is, um, there's a plant-based culture that tries to say that everybody can eat a vegan diet and that's, that's also just not true. There's a lot of people who have to rely on milk and cheese to feed their families. So it was really humbling for me to go shopping for some of the [00:20:00] ingredients because shelves were cleared out and I had lost all of my streams of income.
[00:20:04] So not only could I not find a lot of those ingredients because they are such specialty ingredients, but I couldn't even really be spending a lot of money on almond flour and coconut flour at that time. So I thought, yeah, how can I, how can I make an impact through what my skillset is? And that is to, um, I actually started these, these meal plans, the Simply Balanced Meal Plan community, which is digital meal plans that are batch cooking style. Which again, for a lot of people who are really busy especially if they have multiple children, the idea of making something once and then eating it throughout the week, while again, not sexy and not glamorous, is actually a much better fit for people than having to be in the kitchen every single night after they're working all day.
[00:20:47] And so that was one of the reasons I created these meal plans is for this batch cooking style but also because I wanted to make all the meal plans using ingredients that you can find at Walmart. So I think I shopped for some of the [00:21:00] plans that Aldi, which is also definitely a much lower price point, but I try to make sure there's nothing specialty in there. And if for some reason I did use, I don't know, let's say I used dates, which are not super accessible to a lot of people, I'll come up with an alternative for it.
[00:21:15] So I really don't do very much. And actually Walmart, one of the things I created is a What's Healthy at Walmart Guide, because Walmart actually has chia seeds and almond flour and a lot of specialty ingredients. But there's also the education component. If someone's not familiar with it, then they're not going to buy it or know what to do with it. So I actually still kind of stay away from all of that stuff in my meal plans. And that's just taken on a life of its own. I'm continuing to grow that. And that's really where my heart and soul is. And if I write a third book which I'm hoping to, I want to shop for all of it at Walmart and make sure that these are ingredients that, someone who's close to the standard American diet, has access to and understands.
[00:21:53] I love it. I feel like clapping on a podcast is weird, but I would clap to that.
[00:22:00] [00:21:59] So y'all see why I like fell in love. I was like, this is beautiful. I love this, but that's a journey. That's a journey I've been on too. You know, when I first started, I was like convinced that I had to have chia seeds in everything. And I had to, and I was, I was gluten free for seven years and it did have a major impact on my health at the time.
[00:22:17] Now I eat gluten and it's totally fine but for whatever reason, when I cut it out in the beginning, it helped me a lot. And so I've, I've kind of had to backpedal thinking like I, when I first went gluten-free there was nothing. There was, there weren't like gluten-free cookies in the supermarket. So I had to figure out how to just not have those products. And so I kind of learned how to eat around it. And then once all those products came in, I started using them a lot. And so I had to kind of unlearn. And of course, like being gluten-free played into my desperate fear of carbohydrates that I had developed as a young woman in America with an eating disorder.
[00:22:56] So there has been so much unlearning, but you know, we also have, I have a lot of [00:23:00] grace for like we say, non diet but that is like, we don't want you to go on a diet because you feel like you don't like your body or you don't like your size or whatever. If you want to that's fine. It's totally your perogative.
[00:23:11] But also if you have food issues or if there are, you have food allergies, you have auto-immune disease, your relationship with food can be really, really important and also really difficult to navigate if you have a history of eating disorders. Um, and so I've had to actually go into ED therapy to kind of figure out how to navigate the messy tangled web that has all of those things in one space.
[00:23:36] Yeah. So Laura, you mentioned Simply Balanced Meal Plans. Can you tell me how that was developed and tell us, like, just tell us what the subscriptions look like. Just tell us all the things. Yep. So yeah, so really the two, the two main premises of the meal plans is one, this batch cooking style. And it's not for everybody, [00:24:00] but the people who need it really, really need it.
[00:24:02] As much as I love to cook, I don't want to be stuck in my kitchen every single night, especially on really, really busy days. So the idea is every month I release these meal plans and they're digital, and it gives you an ingredient list that you can get it pretty much any grocery store. And then the ingredient list is going to turn into anywhere from four to six recipes that you'll prep and you'll cook on the weekend and then you eat them throughout the week.
[00:24:24] And I try to be really thoughtful about the type of recipes I develop. So they are ones that kind of get better with time or add a fresh component to it to make it a little bit more exciting and interesting. But it's, it's been so fun and rewarding because even, I mean, I'm getting husbands reaching out to me saying thank you because I do one major kitchen cleanup for the week and one major, one major grocery shopping trip.
[00:24:47] And the other thing that I tried to do is use up all the ingredients so you're not going to be left over with half of an onion or sort of like, uh, I'm not going to tell you to buy a jar of pomegranate molasses and you use one tablespoon. And if for some [00:25:00] reason there are leftovers, with every single meal plan I come up with really detailed notes and tips for how to use those leftovers, how to store, how to freeze, how to reheat.
[00:25:09] And it's interesting. So, so I've been doing that now, um, for probably nine months. And I do think that the meal plans get more and more fun over time, but people definitely have their favorites. But the number one question I get is why don't you release them weekly? Now, realistically, part of it is because for me to release them weekly, I wouldn't be able to put the kind of quality time that I put into them out.
[00:25:30] But the other reason I do it, and again, it's like, I understand that there are a lot of fancy meal planning apps out there which are basically a big database. They do an algorithm that aggregates and spits out, here's five recipes to make Monday through Friday. But those don't teach you how to become a more proficient cook.
[00:25:50] All it is is giving you something to follow every night which means that as soon as you don't have that in front of you, you're not going to know what to do. I, I encourage people to take these meal plans [00:26:00] and make them week after week and repeat them so that you start to actually build your skillset, build your pantry, be able to customize it to your body.
[00:26:08] Well that didn't really make me feel good last week so maybe I'm going to switch that rice for cauliflower rice or something. And so I'm really trying to give people a sense of empowerment and control in the kitchen so that if you don't have your meal plans you've learned so much about it. So, yeah, it's been, it's been awesome.
[00:26:24] And, um, I, I do, I have a discount code for your community if you do want to share it. Y'all are more than welcome to, but there are two options. There's an annual membership, which is what the discount will be for, but we also have a free one month trial and then it's $9.99 after that a month and people save up to $75 a week on their grocery list because I am so careful to make sure that these are really inexpensive grocery lists. We're talking like 50 bucks for the entire week. You're welcome to sort of jazz it up and add things, but people are saving so much money. So it's, it's free for a month that people want to check it out.
[00:26:57] It sounds amazing and it also sounds [00:27:00] like the exact reason why we put you in our most recent project which is The Art of Home Cooking. That whole book is about learning how to cook even if you are not a chef. At least once a week someone tells us, but I can't cook. I don't know how to cook. I can't cook. And I come from a family where my, that was what my mother says to me still every day.
[00:27:22] I don't know how to cook. I don't know why you love this. I don't get it. But we put in this book, we put like the basics of flavors and the basics of how to balance them and how to fall in love with the process of cooking. And so you were just such a natural and perfect fit for this workbook and we are so excited to have you in it and it comes out.
[00:27:43] It will be out by the time this launches. We're so excited. And the whole thing, I don't know if you know this, maybe you do it by now, but the whole thing is inspired by like a day in Greece sitting on the beach eating [00:28:00] all of your favorite foods with your favorite people until the day just goes by and all of a sudden you're drinking a glass of wine and you've been sitting at the same table for like five hours.
[00:28:08] What I would give for us to be doing that right now. Oh my God. She just made me want to just go somewhere else. And if y'all could see Laura's face right now, just her eyes got really, really big and I love it. I love it. I mean, we have been talking about going back to when we were six, sixteen, twenty one recently, and just kind of revisiting purpose and what we were meant to do in life.
[00:28:39] And we feel like, we just did a speech on purpose and productivity, and we really talked about having multiple purposes in life. And, you know, you have the meal prep. A lot of people don't know you have cookbooks and things like that. So what would the 16 year old self, what would your 16 year old self [00:29:00] say to you now looking at that you have two best-selling books and you have meal plans later? What do you think that 16 year old you would say?
[00:29:09] I, first of all, thank you all for including me in this. It is truly an honor. And I think, I can't believe it's taken us so long to collaborate and connect, but now I do feel like maybe I'm overstepping, but I want to have a longterm relationship with you all and let our communities really intertwine. And I just love that. To me that's the best thing about this, this crazy world is finding these connections. So thank you. We're in this together, forever. You're stuck. You're stuck. I feel the same way. I love that.
[00:29:39] I love this question because, because I've been working through and in therapy with this idea of not enoughness and my own sense of self-worth is something that I do struggle with. But when I put myself in the shoes of my 16 year old self I'm really proud of what I've done. And I think it's awesome and it's [00:30:00] so much cooler than what I thought I was going to do. I would have said that's an amazing feat.
[00:30:06] The idea of even writing, you know, one book or even an ebook would have felt, I think intimidating and the fact that I've put these two books out in the world is really cool. And that I've impacted a community of people and, um, brought joy and health to their life. Whatever that means to them is so awesome. And it's uncomfortable for me to even say that because I do, I have such a hard time receiving any kind of positive reinforcement and giving it to myself, but I'm learning that that is not selfish, that's self care. And it also helps the people. It helps people, you know, and so it's sort of this, like, it's just a win-win. So I loved thinking about that even though it was a little uncomfortable.
[00:30:48] What did your 16 year old self think you would be doing right now? So I thought it was going to be a lawyer. I like, we called it mock trial and it was really fun. It was these [00:31:00] like murder cases, you know, these fake murder cases that we would bring to trial and at 16, that was super cool. And that's all I knew of being a lawyer. And then when I moved to New York after college and started working at a law firm, I realized that very, that's like 1% of lawyers actually get to do cool, fun stuff like that.
[00:31:16] Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just knew that wasn't the right fit for me. So that's sort of where I would have imagined myself. So, how did you go from being a lawyer to being a chef? That's a great question. You know, it was really, gosh, it was so haphazard but basically what happened is I moved to New York and I started a job as a paralegal and about three, I mean, it couldn't have been more than three or four weeks into what I thought would be the beginning of the rest of my life, I realized that I didn't want to be a lawyer.
[00:31:48] And looking back, maybe it was the context of 2008 in a corporate environment, but I just knew that wasn't for me. I mean, I remember the associates coming up to me and like whispering to me, don't do it, [00:32:00] like runaway! I just realized it wasn't for me and then I had this deep kind of sinking feeling in my gut which carried over into the next four years where I suffered from really, a lot of anxiety. And I'll just like, give a trigger warning. I did suffer from a lot of disordered eating and, and was really, um, not well in that way. And honestly, I think it just took enough times of the definition of insanity, just doing the same thing over and over again until I finally tried something different.
[00:32:30] And eventually after about four years of living this, you know, partying, New York life, eating takeout all the time and over-exercising and all of that, I just took a break and I stopped going out and I stopped really drinking. And so I was by myself a lot and most of my friends were still doing that. So I was, I was on my own and I started, I had this like North face backpack and I would put it on and I would go wander the city and I would check out the farmer's markets. And I would sit in cafes and I, I just got to know myself and [00:33:00] I really fell in love with fresh food and started cooking.
[00:33:03] Doing that for, I mean, it was probably six months and all of a sudden I realized I was just so much happier. I felt purposeful. My anxiety was so much better. And I know that's something that y'all talk about. And Ashley and I have talked about it a bunch is just that, that mental health connection. Because it's a more prevalent topic now but back in 2011 people really were not talking about the connection between your body and mental health; between what you eat and mental health.
[00:33:33] Yeah, I think that it is such a beautiful thing that both you and Liz shared something that is very beautiful is that you are going through this and you both found your way back to building a good relationship with food by changing your mindset and getting in the kitchen and cooking. I just think that that is just so powerful instead of just like leaving it alone and allowing yourself to go down this dark hole, you were like, look, [00:34:00] I'm going to take this opportunity to build a different relationship with food. I'm gonna get in the kitchen and make amazing food and feed myself and others and build what we talk about, what's feeding our soul and I just, I thank you both for being open today and sharing this information. But I think people can learn a lot from that by changing the perspective of things and building a relationship.
[00:34:27] So that's such a beautiful thing. Why did you decide to focus on mental, emotional, and physical health as it relates, well, I guess this is a reason, as it relates to food, right? Yeah, it was, you know, it's, it's interesting. Cause there was, there's a woman named Kimberly Snyder who was one of the leaders and, well she was one of the first people in wellness and she, she definitely, she's she's vegan and, and she has some, I think.
[00:34:56] I know she's been a health coach or dietician to a lot of [00:35:00] celebrities, but she was still one of the people talking about food and your mental and emotional states in the beginning and I didn't hear anyone else talking about that. And I had had this incredible, almost miraculous response to eating better and taking better care of myself in my brain and my anxiety.
[00:35:18] I, I'm not going to pretend like I haven't struggled with anxiety since. I think in some ways it is part of you always, if it is, it is sort of, I think in my nature but I can really combat it and help mitigate it when I'm taking better care of myself. So that's really what, it was my anxiety that really got me interested in that connection and reading Kimberly's books early on and it was a total light bulb moment for me.
[00:35:42] And then seeing how I carry that into my year in culinary school and the relationship's important. I'd become kind of antisocial and I think that was the missing piece for me and my mental health. And I started to form these really close friendships with my culinary school classmates and that just filled in that gap. And just [00:36:00] showed me that it's, it's this amalgam of all these different things matter when it comes to the way you show up and how you feel in your heart and your body and your soul. And I can be, honestly in the last two and a half, three years I have eaten like way less traditionally healthy than I did in probably the prior five to six years. And I hands down felt better in my body and in my brain.
[00:36:26] And, um, so much of it as the thoughts that we, that we, the things we think about what we're doing and not just the thing itself. Yeah. That's a really good callback to, to both your and our philosophy of bio-individuality because you can have healthy foods.
[00:36:44] Like for me, restriction is unhealthy. If I'm restricting in any way, I go immediately back into my disordered habits. So like what might be a healthy diet for someone can be an anxiety spiral for me, you know? And so it's like, I think it's really important when we're [00:37:00] having conversations about mental health that we continue, like we're doing now, to check back to it being such a personal and deeply individual process, right.
[00:37:11] When, you know, I think it's easy in wellness and we see this all the time to make these large general statements or assumptions about mental health or about, you know, like sugar is bad, but like, is that true? Like. Right. If I do not have a problem with sugar, then is sugar bad for me if I eat it?
[00:37:30] You know, like, and so I think we, we, we make all these broad generalizations when really it's such a nuanced conversation. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, this has been amazing. It has been full of vulnerability, openness, real conversations, and. Just like the first time we met, I feel, I knew it was going to be this way when then when the three of us came together.
[00:37:55] So we appreciate you. The world wants to know. I want to know, [00:38:00] what is your go-to dish? Okay. So I am going to say that my go-to is anything that I can turn into a pizza. So basically anytime I can find something that can make a crust, whether it's like a burrito, whether it's nan, whether it's a cauliflower crust.
[00:38:20] If I am feeling, if I'm feeling anxious, if I'm feeling down, if I can turn it into a pizza and I can add a little, I always keep tomato paste in my refrigerator, my pantry. Tomato paste is a great substitute for a pizza sauce and I actually like it better sometimes because it has a really concentrated flavor so you just need a little bit.
[00:38:37] And then I do almost always have some kind of a cheese. So you can, you know, you can sort of healthify it and you can add veggies on top, or you could use, you could do a kind of a cauliflower crust, or you could just get the 99 cent Trader Joe's pizza dough and make a pizza.
[00:38:52] But, um, yeah, anything that I can make toppings and slice it up and hold it with my hands is the best. That's a [00:39:00] great answer. It is a wonderful answer. We've been really on a heavy frozen pizza kick lately so I think that sounds better. Yeah, that sounds a lot better. Have you had the Trader Joe's the new, like garlic pesto pizza from their freezer, from the freezer section?
[00:39:15] It's so good. I need to make a Trader Joe's run. Yeah. We appreciate you so much. We appreciate you for collaborating with us on our first collaboration because there will be many more with you. We cannot wait until everyone gets their hands and eyes on this box. Laura has not opened her box yet.
[00:39:37] She has it. So you guys have to check out Instagram to figure out like. Yeag, we're going to, I'm so excited to get into this. So people will be able to, I know I'm going to keep it on my IGTV so whenever people hear this, they can go and check it out. Well, Laura Lea, we love you. And we appreciate you. I'm excited.
[00:39:56] I'm excited about the book. I'm excited about the [00:40:00] boxes. I said the book; I'm excited about, we have a book. We wrote a book. I mean, we wrote a book, but I meant to say box because you have to buy the box to get the book. Not really, but I just want you to buy the box. I want you to buy all the things, but Liz, I think that's it and that's all.
[00:40:18] Thank you for listening to the Wellness Community Magic podcast. If you liked this episode, leave us a review or drop us a message and tell us your favorite part. You can find us on Twitter at wellness_pod or online at TRILUNAwellness.com/podcast. Tune in next week for more tough but necessary conversations about the future of self-care.
[00:40:38] If you're interested in learning more about TRILUNA or ordering one of our wellness gift boxes for a loved one or yourself, check out our website at TRILUNAwellness.com. [00:41:00]