Well. Being.

"The person who consumes from better sources, gets better thoughts. The person who asks better questions, gets better answers. The person who builds better habits, gets better results." James Clear

How’s your 2023?  At writing in black and white, it’s full steam ahead on goals while striving to maintain that wellness should not usurp joy. Or lead to greater stress. Routines – which are proven to lead to healthy habits, help you achieve goals and maximize your time while minimizing depression – are best when they are anything but routine.  Despite my lifelong mantra of Less Is More (this very newsletter’s December topic), routines are one thing that just might benefit from more.

More Reading

With research touting benefits from strengthening connections in the brain, improving memory and concentration and even helping you live longer (shoutout to emotional connections), reading is the MVP of routines.  And it feels good.  But stop scrolling.  Far from being engaged reading, social media is also contrary to a book’s benefits of reducing stress levels and preventing age-related cognitive decline. 

Need book recos?  Look no further than “NYC’s most powerful bookfluencer Zibby Owens” who reads 400 books annually and delivers a dynamic podcast with authors daily.

More Sustenance

What better way to nourish ourselves than with learning (and living out) proven wellness philosophies from visionary doctors and certified nutritionists – rather than influencers who are responsible for significant misinformation. 

While incredible women are changing the narrative about aging – spreading joy and the spectacular benefits that comes with trips around the sun – I hear from others about the aches along their journey.  This is when self-awareness and digging into wellness and nutrition is vital.  Not for aesthetics, but rather longevity.

I highly recommend tuning in to Dr. Taz' podcast for insights as she combines conventional mainstream with Chinese and functional medicine, Ayurveda, nutrition, herbal therapies, fitness, and homeopathy – you can glean information that may guide you for discussions with your own medical practitioner.  #Themoreyouknow.

While digestive health is still paramount, our metabolic health (the ability to regulate blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol without medication) is taking precedence post pandemic.  You can’t get through the day without seeing at least one Continuous Glucose monitor.  This is where nutritionists can help.

I recently joined Sarah Wragge, founder of Sarah Wragge Wellness, on an IG Live to talk about my experience with her nutrition approach that balances blood sugar, fuels our lives and empowers us as women.  Having worked in fashion and raised on Kate Moss’ “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” mentality, this transformation was long overdue. Happy to answer any questions.  Her next 6-week method class starts in March.

Two highly recommended books for your TBR pile:

Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar

·      Huge takeaway is that there are incredible hacks to when you eat and what you do before/after meals that don’t limit your life yet stabilize your blood sugar.

Fast like a girl: A Woman’s Guide to Using the Healing Power of Fasting to Burn Fat, Boost Energy, and Balance Hormones

·      Key learning is that variability is essential and intermittent fasting is not the one size fits all solution once thought.  Learn what works for you.

More Feelings

I love when a brand breaks the mold.  Take Care/Of Vitamins’ “Do Less, Feel More” stance yields to break culture (which thankfully is replacing hustle culture), reminding us to home in on what’s most important for our well-being.  As this is very personal, the vitamins are customized, based on your lifestyle, habits and goals. It all starts with a quiz you can’t fail.

More Complete

Elise Loehnen, of former Goop fame, has raised a more well-rounded basis for which to gauge our lot in life – a quest for wholeness that surpasses the (very capitalist, she notes) wellness industry.  For Oprah Daily, she writes:

“I believe that our quest for wellness is not actually about health at all. I think we’re on a hunt for wholeness...Many of the trappings of wellness live within this larger construct—there’s no need to burn it all down—but a shift is required before we burn ourselves out in an endless quest for self-optimization. The promise of wholeness is quite beautiful, precisely because its fulfillment does not live out there. Wholeness is something only we can adjudicate—there are no exterior standards to validate this achievement, no one to tell us we’ve arrived, that we’re done, that we look “whole.” There’s no prescribed checklist. Wholeness is an interior sense of feeling in integrity, of feeling complete.”

I love the concept of striving for wholeness, yet don’t feel this aspiration needs to come in the absence of learning (or sans markers that may act as beacons to guide rather than judge) that Elise feels detract from the meaningful nature of being whole. 

But we can all agree that en route to finding balance (and our ideal selves) we need self-compassion and “…really being in our bodies…shifting our attention from how we look to how we feel.”

In addition to becoming whole, that is true freedom.