The one thing everyone wants to talk to me about
My body has always been a conversation starter.
Announcements
My company Downland was recognized by Rabobank in its 2024 End of Year Report for sustainable business models. Read the full press release here.
Downland joined Kroger Health, University of Cincinnati, Trinity Health at the Food as Medicine Conference, hosted by nonprofit Urban Farming Initiative. Follow me on LinkedIn for more updates.
Starting in February, I’m dropping a two-part guest series about how being lazy with your yard work is actually good for the planet. Subscribe to Kaizen Life to get the posts right to your inbox.
There has been a LOT going on in the climate space this month, between major climate policy changes during Donald Trump’s inauguration week, ongoing fires in Southern California and probably more that I’ve missed from traveling. I worry my usual tone may be tone deaf. That said, as you will learn in this post, I have never felt that doom-and-gloom messaging prompts sustainable change, so I’ll continue sharing off-beat climate stories that practically intersect with everyday life in an approachable and raw way. I hope this gives you some practical ways to take care of yourself, while taking care of the planet, too. I’ll do a little trolling in there, too, not to worry.
“What do you do for your arms?”
I’m scraping water off my hands with crunchy-dry paper towels in the Whole Foods bathroom. You know, the kind of paper towels that feel like cost cutting. My arms are exposed on a warm summer day, revealing a coveted shoulder cap that Gal Gadot’s personal trainer couldn’t muster.
I give the stranger an enthusiastic, “Omigosh, thanks, girl!” and tell her she should probably be lifting weights overhead, and doing so heavier than she thinks. We part ways with minimal interaction, as polite strangers do.
My body has always been a conversation starter.
What I do with it (How’d you get those arms?), what it looks like (Great hair!), where it is (Get out of that tree!), and what I put in it (Well doesn’t that look healthy?) are common topics.
It reminds me of a large gathering with my husband’s extended family. Our young niece was the center of attention, the first time meeting many family members who cooed about how pretty she looked with her bright brown eyes and long blonde hair.
My sister-in-law, rightfully frustrated after fielding one-dimensional judgments about her young daughter, met the final comment with a defiant declaration: “She’s smart, too!”
Call me an extrovert, but I’d welcome unpleasant or awkward conversations with strangers over silence any day. Still, these topics often overlap with my personal health and wellness choices, and the few sentences exchanged with passersby feel woefully insufficient. A healthy lifestyle doesn’t come from a magic pill or silver bullet or that one time you did a cold plunge.
Health is not one-dimensional.
If I could sit down with every person who craned their neck over my home-cooked lunch in a break room, I’d tell them I’m healthy because of dozens of tiny habits, imperfectly adhered to and evolved over decades to fit my schedule/life/budget. In a time of year when resolutions are already dead, I invite you to start smaller. And because health is not one-dimensional, you will find with many of these habits have changed over time, can save you money and do good for the planet, too.
So if you want to have that conversation, read on. If you want to tell me how you definitely know how to be healthy by proclaiming pursuits of your high school sports team while ultra-processed condiments drip onto your oversized shirt, sit somewhere else in the cafeteria.
2007: Don’t Drink Your Calories
My first conscious effort to start living more healthily began in high school. I spent the summer I turned 16 caring for my grandparents at the end of their life: feeding, changing, bathroom breaks, the works. Seeing their decrepitude motivated me to hedge against sickness, but I didn’t really know how. Living at home, I didn’t have much autonomy over my eating anyway. So when in 2007, when I moved out, I decided to stop drinking pop (AKA soda or coke).
Why It’s Healthy for You
Soda has basically zero nutritional value. Excessive sugar consumption is linked to all sorts of health issues, including diabetes and obesity. Even juices, though often marketed to seem healthier, cause insulin and glycemic spikes because they lack fiber from whole fruit to balance digestion. Liquids go down faster than foods that need chewed, so limiting calories through sugary drinks can control your overall calorie intake. Link, link.
Why It’s Healthy for the Planet
Soda companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have been the world’s top two plastic polluters for years. By cutting out pop, juice or other single-use beverages in plastic containers, you can avoid adding to this pollution and limit your own exposure to inevitable microplastics. Reducing demand for soda also protects our water supply, since Coca-Cola just takes water, injects it with sugar and traps it in plastic. Companies like Coca-Cola already make water access a strategic part of their business, and know a dwindling supply is an existential threat to profits.
How It’s Changed
Today, I mostly drink water, and am currently doing a water-drinking challenge with friends. I have pop on special occasions, like a Diet Coke with Thanksgiving dinner or ginger ale on airplane rides. After struggling with alcoholism, my husband quit alcohol cold turkey in 2019, making alcohol one less way we drink our calories. I still have alcohol myself, but it’s outside the home, on special occasions like a mimosa at brunch or a curated cocktail with a tasting menu. These indulgences are intentional and enjoyable, and on the days I drink my calories, I’m really tasting and enjoying it, rather than dumping down the hatch.
2014: Eat Whole Foods
In 2014, we began a transformative food journey that reshaped what we ate and how we prepared it. It started with a pantry clean-out for our first Whole30 challenge in May, launching us into a Paleo-style diet focused on whole, nutrient-dense foods. This naturally led to more home cooking, where we honed essential kitchen skills, like learning how to use different types of knives properly. By August, we took another step to join a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program, ensuring the whole foods we ate were also local and seasonal.
Why It’s Healthy for You
Whole foods are chock full of real-life nutrients, fiber and antioxidants, all the molecular little goodies that make your bones strong, your hair shiny, your skin clear, your digestion regular and give you the energy you need to do all the other things that give you life to the full. In short, when you eat food from the planet, your body works how it was designed to with less disease and increased regularity. Basically, all the reasons soda and processed food is bad, think the opposite. I personally noticed a major change in the vitality of my skin, hair and fingernails early into changing our diet. Over the years, I’ve found my energy levels and reflexes outperform my peers on the regular.
The forcing function of Whole30 and a CSA meant we practiced cooking—because it is a skill therefore it needs practice. And with practice, we can cook a meal in under 30 minutes. We even lived without a microwave for seven years because we just didn’t need it.
I have a working theory that the death of home cooking is a major contributor to poor health outcomes, recently confirmed by some smart folks working on food access in their communities. Perhaps more on that another time.
Why It’s Healthy for the Planet
In addition to reducing pollution from packaged foods, eating seasonal and local whole foods cut down on food miles. Studies have found that food miles are way higher than originally expected, and a major source of emissions. Besides emission reduction, eating whole foods from local farms mean you are supporting your local food system, local jobs and communities and reducing your reliance on resource-intensive industrialized food systems (see: Coca-Cola’s water usage from above).
How It’s Changed
Today, we eat what we call Paleo-ish, prioritizing whole foods and ingredients that come right from plants and animals, while still honoring our beloved Midwest tradition of Pizza Friday—a cherished indulgence that brings joy and balance to our lives. In 2019, I learned more about balancing food quantity in addition to quality by spending six months tracking my macros (another habit added one-by-one and after eating whole foods was securely part of my lifestyle). I lost 30 pounds, and track my macros for one month a year to reset my intuition of serving sizes. Our local CSA disbanded during the pandemic, and we haven’t found a new one to join yet.
2016: Detox our products
We began transitioning our household products to non-toxic alternatives: using cloth napkins instead of paper towels, using microfiber cloths instead of chemical sprays (which we would apply and remove with more paper towels), using . This included swapping out conventional cleaning supplies and personal care items.
Why It’s Healthy for You
Switching to non-toxic products reduced our exposure to harmful chemicals, improving air quality in our home and lowering the risk of health issues tied to endocrine-disrupting chemicals like phthalates and parabens. Link, link, link.
Why It’s Healthy for the Planet
I think you get the refrain now: Fewer products means fewer plastics. Non-toxic products, if they get thrown away or dumped down the sink at all, are often more biodegradable and come with less chemical runoff into soils and waterways, both in production and disposal. Link.
How It’s Changed
Today, more than just eliminating toxic products, we’re just using less product in general. This audit for chemicals and plastics meant we looked at all the junk under our kitchen sink and found that we really didn’t need it anymore. Remember those made-for-TV product commercials that had a kitchen appliance for every use? We had accumulated a cleaning product for every weird use case, when a microfiber cloth would do the job most of the time.
What’s next?
My New Year’s resolution (which I haven’t told anyone about until now) is to try to get off Amazon. I haven’t had to work this consciously about breaking a habit in a long time, so this feels a bit daunting, if I’m honest. Amazon makes it too easy for me to feel needy for the things I buy and too instantly satisfied with just a click. I’m at a stage in life right now where I don’t have to prioritize convenience, so I’m going to try not to. I look forward to sharing more about how it goes. Send help in the form of comments shouting out your favorite handmade and local makers.
Ditching Amazon is a power move, for sure! However, pulling this off with two young kids and even dogs in this household is virtually impossible unless my wife and I could make oodles more money. Any tips for us slaves of the system?
And I think you missed a Michelle Obama arms opportunity here too - just sayin' 😂