The Bossticks - The Wellness Mama, Katie Wells - On All Things Wellness, Optimization Of All Areas Of Your Life, Effective Parenting, & How To Build An Online Platform You Control

Episode Date: May 3, 2019

#186: On this episode we sit down with our friend Katie Wells. Katie is the founder, creator, and voice behind The Wellness Mama brand, blog, & Podcast. On this episode we are talking all things wellness, how to optimize all areas of your life, effective parenting, and how to build an online platform that you actually control. Katie and her team have been an amazing online platform and resource connecting men and women all over the world primarily around the topics of health and wellness.  To connect with The Wellness Mama click HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by FOUR SIGMATIC We have been drinking this company's mushroom-infused elixirs and coffees for over a year now. When we need a break from coffee but still need that extra morning jolt and focus the Mushroom Coffee with Lion's Mane and Chaga is the way to go. Lauryn also drinks the Mushroom Matcha which is a green tea designed as a coffee alternative for those of you who want to cut back on caffeine without losing focus and cognitive boosts. This stuff doesn't actually taste like mushrooms, it's delicious. All of these blends have a ton of nutrients and amino acids to give you balanced energy without the jitters. To try FOUR SIGMATIC products go to foursigmatic.com/skinny and use promo code SKINNY for 15% off all products. This episode is brought to you by GOMACRO Enter promo code SKINNY for 30% of your order at check out. We love these all natural, plant based, and organic bars. We keep them in our bags on the go and love that they are a completely natural and farm produced bar.  This episode is brought to you by Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning space offering more than 20,000 courses. Join the millions of students already learning on Skillshare today with a special offer just for our listeners: Get two months of Skillshare for free! That's right, Skillshare is offering The Skinny Confidential listeners two months of unlimited access to over 20,000 classes for free! To sign up, go to www.skillshare.com/TSC.  Produced by Dear Media 

The following podcast is a dear media production. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her.

Most of us are pretty much used to burning carbohydrates. And that's the preferred method. If we have it in our body, that much fasting, your body has to burn fat. So you're burning body fat and you're making ketones. But the benefit beyond that is the body then remembers that switch more easily. So you can go back and forth between burning carbs and burning ketones, which gives you dual fuel sources, which is more efficient for the body, for one. But a lot of people tend to notice that it can improve hypoglycemia over time.

But again, I would say work with a doctor who has experience in that. Boy, oh boy, am I excited for this episode, Michael. I am ecstatic for this episode, Lauren. I won up to you on my excitement. excitement. That clip was from our guests of the show today, our friend, the wellness mama, Katie Wells. On this episode, we are talking all things wellness. I know it's been a while since we've done that. How to effectively build an online platform and how to set up effective systems to optimize all areas of your life. Guys, my name is Michael Bostic. I'm a serial entrepreneur and

brand builder. Most recently, the CEO of the podcast network, Dear Media, focused on amplifying female voices in the podcast space and growing rapidly. Across me is my, what are we talking here? Flames, fire. Super hot. Super hot, sexy wife. Lauren Everett's. I'm Lauren Everett. I'm the creator of the Skinny Confidential, but enough about that. Let's talk about the new book I got you. What did you get me? Oh yeah. What do you mean? Oh yeah. Do you know what though? You don't realize it. So that book is men are from Mars and women are from Venus. It's for men and women to understand each other. I think you thought that it was just a book for men to understand women. It goes both ways, buddy. Totally goes both ways. Unfortunately, I'm the one that founded at an antique shop in Reno while we were going to a brothel,

but that's a different story. And it's six bucks, and I picked it up, and I'm the one that gifted it to you. So you get to read it first. You can highlight the shit out of it, and then I'll take a peek. If there's one thing I've learned reading that book, it's that. Uh-huh. You need to read that book. No, Michael. Yep, that's true. State some of your plans that you've highlighted. You're going to take me on a picnic.

The book told me that it's always the woman's fault. No, Michael. And it said that- Michael, is that really what you got from it? It also said that you should just do whatever your husband says, love him up. No, Michael. Give him unlimited sexual favors and never complain or whine.

That's exactly what it said. You found it in the antique shop. I read it. That's what I got from it. You might need to do a second pass through to make sure I was accurate. I actually want you to study this book every single morning for 15 minutes. Like you do stoicism. I don't give a shit if I have the eternity of time to study this book.

Men are never going to figure out women ever. Period. End of story. We can't. It's impossible. I've been millions and millions of men before me, billions. And they've never figured it out. I'm not going to figure out either.

I'm just going to have to try to do my best, Lord. Rule number 11, give her four hugs a day. There's 100 rules. And at the end of 100 rules, the last rule 101 is give this to your wife to add more to the list. As if there wasn't, there's already 100 rules. They wanted to give another second down. Today I've only had three and a half hugs. Well, the day's not over.

It also says, I still have an hour and a half. To hold my hand with and never let your hand go limp. I will do that, but I'll not let another thing go limp. I'll keep that hard for you forever. Okay, thank you. That's enough of that. Speaking of brothels, we were actually in a brothel all weekend with Alice Little. We weren't speaking about brothels, but that was a nice transition. We were. We were speaking earlier about it and I just want to like bring it full circle. I don't think anybody was speaking about it. Oh yeah, we were talking about the ghost. Okay, go back. Okay. So we were in Reno this weekend. We were interviewing Alice Little, who is a badass. She is a legal sex worker. She's smart. She's well read. She's sassy. She's funny. She's pretty. And I'm so excited for that interview. too. We have a lot of interviews that are coming. We have Jessica Alba coming. We have Mark Manson coming. We have Kalil Rafadi coming. We have Alice Little. We have a lot of really, you know,

we're like, we're like building it up. You know, and we're saying like, it's coming. Winter is coming. Podcasts are coming, but you have to brace for them. You know, you got to get ready for them. I got to, you know, it's like building up, building up. Dun, do, do, do, nothing. All right. So, because we have a lot of stuff coming down in the pipeline, guys. Get excited, right? A lot of phallic remarks. But you should be in your car, wherever. We're like cheering right now. Like everyone's like fired up. There is a lot of good episodes coming.

And Michael doesn't know this, but I'm recording two solo episodes next week. So sorry, babe. You're going to have to put that in there too. That's fine. But today, guys, we are interviewing one of our good friends, Katie Wells, the founder, the creator, the voice behind, the wildly popular blog, brand resource podcast, wellness mama. Do you know what's so funny is how I initially met Katie was I'm constantly. constantly Googling and researching on the internet for things like, you know, chlorophyll benefits

or, you know, how to make the best, healthiest chocolate chip cookie. And I kept coming across Katie's blog. And this is like back in 2011. Wellness Mama was always popping up. So funny because right before I met her, I googled benefits of salt rock lamps. And there was a whole post that she did so in depth, so informative. I got so much information, obviously cited her. Like always. And then we ended up meeting in Finland. Of all places, we ended up meeting in Finland. We met a lot of amazing people on that trip in Finland.

It's a little bit of context, guys. The beginning of this year, we went with the four-sigmatic team to Finland and chased the Northern Lights. Lauren was a little irritated at first because she didn't realize that it was negative 20 degrees Celsius there, and I didn't tell her until we got there. Remember I thought I was going to wear a cardigan? Yeah, it was ridiculous.

But the way we met Katie, Katie literally lives up to her name, the Wellness Mama. She had all sorts of vitamins for us. She was basically like a mother for the whole group. Lauren was not helping me at all. She was mostly just complaining and hitting me in the cold. But Katie was there keeping us level, keeping us set up. Katie gave us some amino acids, some melatonin. Yeah.

I got to the point in the trip when I didn't even know what she was giving me. I just trusted her and was like, I'm just taking it. She seems to know what she's doing. and knows what she's talking about. So just whatever she gave me. Who knows? Just took it. And you never know.

It could have been a Roofie. Whatever. It worked. Whatever. So we're super excited to have her today on the show. So who is Katie Wells? As we said, Katie Wells is the founder, creator of the Wellness Mama brand podcast, blog, you name it. Wellness Mama is an online resource for women and moms who want to live a healthier life.

Katie, with the team of researchers and medical advisors, analyze a wide variety of topics and summarize the information in a clear and usable way. Their goal is to present practical tips, real food recipes, natural beauty and clean tutorials, natural remedies, and other information to make your life better. And she does not fail to deliver. With that, everybody, welcome our friend Katie Wells, the wellness mama, to the podcast. Lauren, during this quick commercial break, I want to talk to you about a little known fact. That's not a little known fact, but it's a fact that I found out. Americans drink a ton of coffee, no surprise there, but did you know that if you're listening to this episode and to me talking right now. Chances are you're one of those coffee drinkers because over 64% of Americans drink

coffee staggering, not surprising, see a lot of you jitterheads running around. What was surprising to me, Lauren, is that we are not the biggest coffee drinkers in the world. Interesting factoid, Michael Bostick. That mantle, that crown belongs to Finland, the Finns, the Finns. Data shows also that the Finns and Finland are the happiest country in the world. You know that? Wow. I'm not sure where that comes from, but it's out there. Coffee, happiness, correlation. I think so.

What do you think? I think it's great. All right, keep up, born. So, Finns know their shit when it comes to coffee and the Finnish guys and the team behind one of our favorite brands, Four Sigma really know their coffee. They grew up foraging for mushrooms in Finland, and they knew that mushrooms were some of the most nutritious and delicious foods on the planet. So they decided to experiment by adding them to beverages.

They all know we love, and that is coffee, mushroom copy. It's the best. It contains half the caffeine of real coffee, has a ton of nutritional benefits and adaptogenics. It contains two mushrooms, Lions Main and Chaga, which helps you think and gives you a powerhouse of antioxidants. No sugar, Lauren, you'll like that. They don't cause jitters. They just give you mental boost and it tastes delicious, not like mushrooms at all. They come an individualized packet so you can keep them in your bag, your desk, pocket.

Keep them on the go, Lauren. Keep a little bit of purse if you want to. Add them to hot water and boom, delicious, nutritious. mushroom coffee. So I know how to spice up mushroom coffee in a hot second. You want to get a frother and you put your mushrooms in there with a little bit of almond milk and cinnamon. It is so good over ice. Like you can't go wrong. So get your frother. Get out the little pack. Get yourself a boost. Energy, focus, sleep, relaxation. They have products for all. So check them out. Go to foursigmatic.com slash skinny and enter promo code skinny for 15% off your entire order. Again, that's 4Sigmatic.com

slash skinny and enter promo code skinny for 15% off your entire order. It's the best. Try guys. Enjoy and be happy like the Finns. This is the skinny confidential, him and her. Awesome. I think I fucked it up when I was back there. Just seeing Katie reminded me to take my amino acids that I would have forgotten to take had she not been here. Because when we were in Finland, you were like the local, I'm not drug dealer, but the local pharmacy. Like you were giving me digestives, I think, zinc. It's true. By the end of it, you guys didn't even question.

I could just hand you pills and you would take them. Yeah. When I'm around you, I just feel calm. We're there and you're like, okay, you're going to take this melatonin. Like, we're freezing our ass off in the middle of nowhere in Finland. Okay, you're going to have this. You're going to have this. It's very much living up to the wellness mama name for sure.

Yes, you did live up to the name, like full-hearted. You could have given me anything. I'd be like, cool, she told me to take it. I'm taking it. Well, maybe not anything in Finland. Yeah, that's true. You never know. You got to be careful with what you're talking about there. Well, still, if you would have given it to me, I probably would have taken it. So, Katie, introduce yourself to our audience. Tell us how you got started on this journey. Yeah, so I'm Katie from wellness mama.com. I am a mama six. That's the wellness mama part. And basically, my story is I got really sick. And my background was in journalism.

So it was trying to find my own health answers. And this was before so much of what we now know, health-wise was so mainstream. And I was finding out, it sounds so simple now, but like just the connection between diet and health and how you feel and realized there were a lot of people that needed to know that. And it was so new at that point. I just wanted other moms to know because I figured I wasn't the only person feeling like that. And just with the research background, that was my default to research to figure out what was wrong and then to write about it. Just with journalism, that was always my outlet. And so kind of just started from there and realized that there were a lot of moms and a lot of women in the same place at the same time, and the community just sprung up from there.

What year was this that you started? Actually writing heavily online? So technically started in 2006, but 2009 is when I got consistent. So still very early. Very early. Yeah. Wow. What advice would you give to someone that's looking to break in the space now in 2019? She's like run for the hills. I think it's like a very much more competitive market now across the board, as you I know I've talked about as well. I think consistency always is the key. It's like my husband always says doing the right things long enough consistently. But I also think right now niche sites do a lot better. So wellness mama's very general. And I know you also talk about a lot of different topics. It's so much harder to be a general site because even you and I are up against sites that are backed by billion dollar VC funds that

just have unlimited content writers. But we're seeing niche sites like pregnancy or like Hashimoto's or very niche topics go crazy right now. And I think Google's prefering that. And I think people prefer that. because if you are pregnant, you want to read everything about pregnancy, or if you have Hashimoto's, you want to know everything there is to know so that you can get better. So that would be my advice is find your place, your thing, your way that you're going to change the world and start there. When you were starting out in 2009, what did that look like? Like, I really get into what that looked like. Oh my gosh, so not glamorous. Even now, I should joke if anybody sees this video, like my hair is brushed, which is abnormal. I'm not wearing yoga pants, which is abnormal. But in 2009, I had three kids, three and under.

and my life was crazy busy. I had Hashimoto, so some days I was so tired. I would put them in one of their rooms to play and, like, sleep in front of the door. So they couldn't get out and, like, run in the street. I was just so tired. And so I was in that, like, researching my own health answers. And then also learning to blog, which has always been mission first for me, but was even more so then. There was no, really, the business side as much back then.

It was just the content and wanting to learn and to write. So that was very much our life back then. and I spent a lot of my time, first and foremost as a mom, as I still do. And then the time that I had left, both after the kids were asleep or when they were napping, I would research and write and build the community on wellness mama. How long did it take for you to really build a brand that was monetizing and sort of, I guess, build a brand in general? Like I said, it takes years and it's a marathon, for sure, not a sprint. We definitely had moments where things would grow rapidly thanks to a Google update or to partnerships that we did with people.

but it was very much a slow, long process that grew over time. And I remember even the first time, because for years, my husband, who was in the tech and SEO side, would tell me, you know, link to things on Amazon if you're going to talk about them, just in case someone buys it. It's an affiliate thing. And I did that. And then one month, when finances were still really tight, I was balancing the checkbook and was like, where did this extra money come from?

Why did Amazon give us money? Did we, did the kids buy something and we returned it? Like, what's going on? That sounds like me. What? Why does Amazon give us money? And then I realized, oh, it's because of affiliate commissions and realized that was one of my pivotal, like,

oh, this could actually be a business as well. It's just something I love. And that's always been my core focus, because I know there's a lot you can do to monetize. And I think in the blogging world, you have to find the path that works best for you. But for us, I loved in-text affiliate links because they just felt natural.

It wasn't pushy. It was like, if you asked me where I got my shoes, I would tell you, but I wouldn't come up to you and be like, you have to buy these exact shoes right this second, unless you asked. You know what? We talk, as you can imagine, to a lot of people in this space.

We were talking in Finland. I think, and I have been since then, I use you as an example of someone who's really done it right because you understand how to build platforms that you actually control. Your husband may be helping you. Building a blog site where you're running SEO and actually controlling that platform

or somebody like Facebook or Google or Instagram cannot take that away. Building a platform like a podcast where you control that. And email list, I know your email list is massive. I think a lot of people listen. They're building these businesses and they're kind of building them in straw houses, like relying so heavily on Instagram or Snapchat or Facebook, all these things that could, as you know, change in an instant. I think it's so important

to understand, like, if you're going to come into the space, build platforms that you can control for 10, 20, 30 years because like you said, it just starts to roll into something bigger and bigger and bigger every month. Can you speak on that a little bit and like why that's been so important to you? Absolutely. I think you're spot on. I think a lot of people, it's sometimes faster and easier to grow on social media, but like I'm sure you guys have experienced over the years too. Facebook can change an algorithm and your reach can go down to 90% less than it was overnight. Or like today, Instagram's down. Instagram's down. Exactly. And so like you said, a perfect analogy, you're building like

straw house or you're building it on sand. I view social media as something that points back to your main channel. And the main channel, the platform is the mission for me. I think that's the other key is truly at the end of the day, it has to be heart-centered. I think a lot of people, and speaking of the VC funds and the people just putting out content, they may be able to grow quickly based on either search traffic or paid media, but they can't connect with an audience the same way that someone like Lauren does or like, I hope I do as well, because we're actually speaking to the person. And we care very deeply about the person we're speaking to. This is you. Exactly. We're speaking to the people that we've been or that we still are in some ways. And we care

so much about the mission and what we're teaching and what we're the community that we've built. Like you said, like nurturing that community, that it's just a different level, I think. And so I think especially back to the point of someone starting from scratch, I think that is a key. And it sounds like idealistic and simple, but you truly have to be in it for the mission and have something that's helping people beyond just making money. What are some tangible steps that you've taken to build your community? So for years, I mean like eight years, I was answering every comment, every email myself, and I think that is so overlooked. People just want to post things and have them take off and go viral, but the relationships are built in the real people and putting in the time. And when I first started,

I probably knew the top 200 commenters by name. I would recognize their comments. I knew to the point, like, this one has three kids and her youngest son has autism. Like, I had a relationship and still do. I mean, there's more of them now. So I don't know every single person by name, but I really cared about the community. And then when I was writing, it was so much easier to speak to them because I could see them. I could visualize them. I knew who they were.

And I really wanted to help them. That is one of the best tips that has been on the Skinny Confidential podcast when it comes to building a blog. I think everyone should go re-listen to that, go back a little bit. That was really, really powerful. Well, listen, on this side of it, because a lot of times, you know, as you were aware, I sit on the other side of the table, like, you know, working with influencers and podcasters and brands. And it's not always the largest macro number that move the needle the most when it comes

to advertising or, like, promoting products or talking to an audience. Like, like, you have to have that connection to the host or to the personality or to the blog. Like, you know, I would take someone like you or Lauren 10 times over somebody that's, you know, maybe got all these millions of followers. Because like, do those people really care? Are they just, are they there as passive audience? Are they there to kind of get some entertainment? Or are they like really actually there to engage it and be influenced?

Right. Like I think this word influencer has been thrown around all over the place. But like who actually has influence, right? That's an interesting question to ask. And I think anybody that's looking to build a brand online should really think like, do you want to have millions and millions and millions of passive followers or do you want to have an extremely engaged community? That's where people are getting a little bit confused, I think.

Absolutely. And what is influence? Because I think it's become conflated with Instagram likes or Facebook likes. And to me, influence is people actually doing the thing and making a change long term. So for me, when I was in that my own health crisis, my oldest son was only six weeks old. I read in Time magazine that for the first time in two centuries, the current generation of American children would have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. And that's my kids. And that's if you guys ever have kids, that's your kids.

And it made me really mad because I was reading about how they were going to have such higher rates. of disease, they're going to die earlier. And it really, like, that kind of lit a fire in me. And so that was my, that's the influence I wanted to have, was to change those kind of statistics, to change the lives of these women who were like I was suffering with autoimmune disease and couldn't figure out how to get answers. It wasn't that I cared about the Facebook likes or the Instagram likes. Those were just, to me, a metric showing I was actually hopefully helping people do

the thing. You work with your husband, Seth, who's here. Hi, Seth. How does that work? How does that look? especially when you have six kids in the mix. Yeah, so I think we talked... Six kids in the mix.

This is Chris Jenner. Seth, you are a busy guy, my friend. We're good at a few things. Yeah, so I think we talked a little bit in Finland, but we've had to, in the years, develop really strong systems, and that's what makes it work. So on the business side, thankfully, we have very complementary strengths. I'm more of the creative writer side,

and I can assimilate information pretty quickly, and so I love to research a lot of topics and then turn them into blog posts that are usable, that answer a single question and it can help the audience wherever they're landing. Whereas Seth is really good at the big picture strategy and the SEO and the tech, which is great because that's what gets the message, the influence out to the world. But we haven't always worked together. And I know when he first started working more, focusing more on Wellness Mama, we had to kind of have some of those relationship conversations and put some boundaries in place.

Even on little things, when he had a corporate job, I was able to you know, clean the house completely and make dinner right before he got home and like, you know, get dressed right before he got home. Whereas during the day, I was like a disaster. The house was a disaster. And so when he first came home, he was like, what is going on in the house? Why is in such a mess all a sudden? And it was like, well, it's actually always been like this. You just came home in the afternoon. To little stuff like that. But happened to me today, I was, I came home, I was like had a lunch break. And I came home and I said, what are you doing here? Get out. I was like, who are all these people? Get out. Get out.

Get out. What is going on in here? Yeah, leave. You're like, this is my house right now. your not supposed to be here yet. But all the way, too, in the business, realizing we had to have our own kind of sectors that we both had autonomy in. And I think that's whether it's husband and wife or your partner that you're working with or even employees or anyone you're working with, people need to have autonomy and the ability to move in their thing that is their job. And so we had to kind of define our roles and then not step on each other's toes and realize, like when it comes to the tech side and the marketing, he's the boss in that sector and he has veto power. And when it comes to the content and the creative and understanding the audience because I and the audience,

that's my veto power. And so we both defer to each other. It took some practice, but we both defer to each other in those areas. And then beyond that, we both are pretty system oriented. So our household has systems, the kids are involved in the systems. Can you speak on, we talked about this in Finland, speak on the laundry system. So to be fair, it goes back to a need. I think a lot of things are because of a need. So I hit a point a few years ago where I was probably close to a nervous breakdown. Just I felt like the business part was great. It was running. I had systems and it worked. But at home, I felt like I was drowning all the time. Even though things were mostly getting done, I was stressed out at the edge of my temper all the time. And I realized in business, I have

checklist systems, deliverables, goals. Everything runs by systems. At home, I'm trying to manage eight people's schedules in my head as well as meal planning, as well as the household, all of it in my head. So it felt like all of those loops were running all the time because I had to just think about them. And so when I was doing laundry, I was thinking about everything else that had to happen and when it was going to happen. And there was never a point where I felt mentally calm. And so I realized I needed to implement the same systems in my personal life that we had implemented in business and run it like a team. So that it meant getting the kids on board and giving them goals, objectives, deliverables, and tasks. And also that Seth and I had the same thing. So one of our

core principles with our kids is that we don't do anything for them that they can do themselves, which means when they're capable of doing laundry, to your point, they do their own laundry. So everybody from our five-year-old up is capable of doing their own laundry. The three-year-olds still need some help, but they do their own laundry. And if they run out of clothes, it's because they didn't do laundry, which is teaching a great natural consequence in life because all of us as adults, if we don't do laundry, we run out of clothes. And so I was able to hand off the things to them that didn't need to be my job in the first

place. And in doing so, we're also giving them life skills. I didn't want them to be those kids that get to, you know, college or a career or whatever it is in their life and don't know how to cook or do their own laundry or sew on a button or change a tire. So we just kind of started really valuing autonomy and them as well and making them feel and actually be a valuable part of the team. Well, I think that's really a really solid advice. So Lauren and I just started recently talking about kids, what that would eventually look like. We're just starting to explore it. He's talking about kids with himself.

Trying to anchor baby or get some of that skinny confidential. No, I'm drinking rosé with my pink. yeah, but you're having the conversation one-sidedly. What do you, you've been six children now. It's a lot. What's the most, when young parents are talking to you, and I'm sure you get a lot of feedback from your audience, what is the common across, like, what is the biggest challenges that they're coming to for saying, like, we're struggling here, I'm a new parent, this is difficult. What does most of those conversations look like? The new parent question is a huge one. And I think, I feel like most moms now are, there's

overwhelm is a huge problem for women in general, but moms especially. And for years, when I was in that kind of nervous breakdown phase on my own, I thought, like, other moms must have it together. And I'm just, I am like late to this party. I have not figured it out. And then once I figured it out and I feel calm, really pretty much all the time, you mentioned that Lauren before we started, I pretty much am always calm. I realize other moms are not necessarily always calm. I would like mention it to friends, and they'd be like, oh, no, that's not normal. And I realize, I think overwhelm is a tremendous problem. And it's partially because women in today's world, thankfully we have all these new opportunities, but we still have all the old obligations.

Like we're not giving up the management of the household or the emotional responsibility of the kids just because we can now also have a career and also do all these other things. So there's just more that falls on us. But I also think the new parent thing is a really unique part of life. Just those first couple of years with a baby, you feel like you're in a fog. You're not sleeping. It feels like it's never going to end. And I can say for sure right now with six, but having some older ones, it's so much.

much easier than when I just had three toddlers. It's like night and day, not even a comparison. I would never go back to one or two kids. It was so much harder. But I feel like so many parents make all those decisions when they're in that early phase where you just literally feel like you're dying all the time or you're so brain fogging, you're running into walls. And I think it's partially systems, but also at that point realizing it's just a phase and it will pass, but you do have to go through the sleepiness and the baby phase. So having been through that now multiple times, what would be your biggest piece of advice for people that are maybe going into that phase or in that phase. Yeah, I would say to systematize your life to the degree possible before, because adding a

baby is like adding eight extra full-time jobs and a lot of chaos to your house. Oh, God. So systematize everything you can before that. Katie, you're not helping my cause over here. I'm trying to. But you guys are good at like building a team and outsourcing. So put in supporting staff if you can, like especially if you know that you have other obligations, bring people into support in whatever way that you can, but also have systems going

into that for meal planning, for keeping up with the house for business so that as needed, you can either hand those off to other people or automate them. I want you to strap on some tits. I don't know if that's going to help us at all. I think that actually might cause more problems in a lot of other areas. I also think on just kind of going off on a tangent on what you were saying is that nowadays, like I think that maybe like 10 years ago, if you were a mom, you had to just be a mom. and now it's they're starting with the internet.

I think women are seeing that, no, you can be a mom, but you can also be interested in singing in the choir. And you can also, you can also have, you know, your own company. And you can also, you know, maybe be a mom blogger, whatever it is. I think that social media has really allowed women to see that they can do a lot of different things. But with that, I'm sure, comes a lot of stress if you're a mother. Before we get into that, I am going to give you the hot tip of a sense. how to not make your partner hypoglycemic.

How many of you have been at the airport or on a long drive or I don't know, just maybe out exploring, taking a walk, maybe to the farmer's market and maybe this actually happened to me? And your significant other gets hangary because that happens to me a lot. I come prepared. And what I do is I put macro bar minis by go. macro in my purse. I have them on me at all times. They're in my office. They're in my purse. They're at Dear Media. They're everywhere. Michael, did you know that little fact?

Lauren has me covered. I do have you covered, huh? When you get a little upset, a little grumpy. It goes both ways. Yeah, I just pull out my macro bar mini. All right, guys, so these are made from simple, high quality ingredients. They're certified organic, vegan, gluten-free, kosher, non-GMO. They're clean, They're raw. Most importantly, in my opinion, is they're soy-free too. So you know you're giving your significant other and yourself a little boost of energy and it's healthy. What I love about Grow Macro is their mission is to spread awareness for a balanced plant-based lifestyle with products that have positive effects on the world. So you just know you're covered all around. I am personally obsessed with their coconut almond butter chocolate chip. That's my favorite bar.

I think that's my goals too. I mean, you also like the peanut butter and chocolate chip. I like the peanut butter chocolate chip. But I'm a huge fan of the coconut almond butter chocolate chip. So cool things about the company that make them really unique. Their mother-daughter owned. They use 100% renewable energy in their production of their bars. Their bars are made of sustainably grown ingredients. They're plant-based, like I said, and they're available in over 25,000 stores nationwide.

So if you want to solve the world's problems and have your significant other not be grumpy, then definitely check out go macro. They have ingredients that are grown. not made, sustainably grown ingredients, which we love. All you have to do is go to go macro.com and use promo code skinny for 30% off plus free shipping. So all you have to do again is go to go macro.com, use promo code skinny for 30% off plus free shipping. Yeah, absolutely. And I also want to speak to the fact that even if you, what you want is to just, like you said, just be a mom, that is enough and that is amazing. And that is an incredible accomplishment in life. I think also

there is the pressure in society today that you have to do all these extra things. And then not only are you supposed to be a mom, which is like a side lot. Of course you're supposed to do that, but you're also supposed to have a career and you're supposed to look perfect all the time and you're supposed to never get stressed. And you have to bend over, clean the kitchen, do your nails, brush your eyebrows. It's a lot. I'm not saying it's not. I agree.

I mean, shit. You need help. You need a team. Listen, I've learned a few things in life. And the last thing I'm going to come on here and say is that it's easy being a mom. That's the last thing. I will be torn apart. I have a question that's maybe a selfish question.

How do you find time with six kids and a husband and running your company and then have time to write content and write two books? So when it comes to the systems and the scheduling, I think we fill whatever time we give ourselves. So I realized if I gave myself eight hours a day to work, I would work for eight hours and I would find stuff to fill that time. So I kind of realized in journalism school I could get an article out in 45 minutes for a newspaper. So I'm like, I should be able to do that now. So I realized I needed to put the most important things on the schedule first. And since mom and one. This is Ivy Lee method.

Somewhat, yeah. So, but like I would consider the family my primary job, not the blog. And so those, the non-negotiables of family went on the calendar before the work stuff did. So family dinner is a non-negotiable. We eat dinner together. We hang out with our kids during that time. I make dinner every night. That's not negotiable.

That goes on the schedule. Same with self-care. Things like occasional massages or just spending time outside or spending time with my husband. those things go on the schedule, they're not negotiables. Or anything related to the kids and homeschooling, those go on the schedule and they're not negotiables. So the time that's left is work time. And that's usually only a couple hours a day.

And so I was able to, once I started getting really efficient, fit everything I needed to do into those couple hours a day versus just trying to make an eight-hour workday, which we don't all actually need. I feel like that's the beauty of the internet or things moving towards more virtual and digital platforms is we don't have to just sit in an office for eight hours because that's what's always been done.

we can be really efficient in less time, but it requires extremely good use of time and systems and not like jumping on Facebook when I need to write an article and having that singularness of focus, just like I do at home, like when it's time for laundry, it's time for laundry. When it's time for dinner, it's time for dinner in work. When it's time for writing, I write. When it's time for podcasting, my podcast, and everything is very structured. Well, it's important that you mention that because I think a lot of times when you structure yourself like, I need to work an eight or nine hour day.

It actually can become unproductive, right? Because you're sitting there and you're like, okay, well, I'm just filling this time. and maybe there's, maybe you don't need to fill that time. Maybe there's like, you can get something done in four hours and do something else that could help you in other areas. I think we've just been trained for so long, like, okay, it's an eight-hour day. It doesn't make sense for everybody. It makes sense for some, not for everybody.

I'm curious of a day in the life, but I also am curious within that, with your business tips, but also your wellness tips. So, like, are you drinking something when you wake up? Like, walk us through, like, a typical day because it sounds like you're so structured and meticulous about how you plan your day. And I would love to know how you do that from start to finish. Absolutely. So I will say most days, I don't do anything every single day, including take supplements.

So even though I was the pharmacy in Finland, usually on the weekends I take a break from supplements. Pharmacy. You know what I just noticed? You're wearing the oral ring. I am wearing the oaring. Oh, God. Here we go. Are you wearing it too?

Do you love that thing? I haven't taken it off since Finland. I haven't either. I do love it. I had it before Finland and then I got another one in Finland. It's the best. I track my sleep now. Anyway, sorry, I don't want it to really, but I just noticed that.

I hear every day about everything he does. I'm like, Lauren, are you not wearing your or not wearing. It becomes like a game. Yeah, but Michael's like a little more obsessed with the whole game thing. Well, because it becomes like, oh, wow, my sleep was really shitty that day. What happened? And then I'm like analyzed. Oh, my heart rate's pretty good then.

Not so good here. I don't need to hear every detail of your life. Anyway, sorry. What's derailing here? You should wear it because it will make you, it'll like reinforce the things like, oh, I drink dry farm wine and I'm totally fine this morning. See my aura range? Do you really look at it every day? Mm-hmm.

I do. But I don't obsess about it. But it does help you see things like, oh, this new supplement is actually helping my heart rate variability. Or my sleep is terrible when I do this. You guys are more. I feel like both of you guys are more into analytics than I am. Well, now I got analytics from my life. Yeah, it's like I have to hear every analytic of every minute.

No, but the other day I got like five and a half hours of sleep. See? Here we go. And I was like, what did I do? I was like, why did I not get sleep? Why did I get up? So now I can go back and like figure out that. Well, you got it.

I think we should, as humans, able to figure that on our own, but this machine helps me a little more. So I'm going to go with it. Okay, you go with it. Okay. Can we go back to you? I just derailed you completely. I have heard enough about the ring. So on the daily routine thing, kind of two core principles for me are both personalization and variability.

So I think that's one thing in health that's going to be a big trend is that we're all going to have to figure out what works for us. And I think looking at health experts, I think a lot of us have figured out our thing and what works for us. And the problem becomes when we try to make that prescriptive and say everybody should do it exactly like I did. So before I go into my day, I want to say like this is what I do and it's what works for me. It's not going to be something people should copy at face value. but maybe we'll give you some inspiration for figuring out your things. I just wanted to preface with that. And then when it comes to the variation,

I think our bodies are so good at adapting. So if you give it the same inputs every single day, it's going to regulate to that and then either downshift or upshift based on those inputs. So I think mixing things up or taking a couple days off of anything, it's just like with working out, you wouldn't work out every single day without ever taking a rest day. Same thing with supplement, same thing with any part of your routine.

But for the most part, like a kind of an average day would be getting up, getting the kids ready for school. We need specifics times. Oh, for specific times. I try to let myself wake up naturally. So unless we're flying or have a hard schedule thing in the morning, usually around seven is our wake-up time. And sometimes the kids will be up before we are.

So back to the independence thing, they're perfectly capable of making their own breakfast, and they do. That is going to be my kids all the way. Don't wake mom up. Go make your own breakfast. Figure it out. Lauren will have a 12-month-old in their cooking eggs. I'm going to be like, go figure it out.

it's going to fall on me, but as soon as they can cook, I agree. Well, and there's a great course called Kids Cook Real Food when you get to that point. Yeah, Michael had Grandma cooking in pancakes at 19 years old, so we're going to be doing that. I'm going to have you guys on speed dial and be like, boom. I'll just print out my system files and send them to you. Oh, okay, please. Send all the files this way. I'm a big fan. I think you mentioned this too about lemon water in the morning. That's part of my routine. And then usually either celery juice or green, some kind of green drink, if I'm not fasting.

Sometimes I won't eat till lunch or sometimes even later. So this would be obviously a non-water fasting day. I'll also sometimes fast for five or ten days. So this would be obviously not one of those days. But lemon juice and celery juice in the morning. And then if I'm hungry, I'll eat protein in the morning. If not, I'll usually get work done and push it out until lunch. And so during that time, the kids will be working on schoolwork

and I'll try to get my work in during the morning. And then lunchtime usually with a family. That's a big priority in our house is lunch together, dinner together. And then in the afternoon, either doing things with the kids, If there's podcasts that need to happen, those go in the afternoon. Appointments go in the afternoon if there are any. And then also things like working out, spending time outside. Those are core non-negotiables that go on the schedule, especially sunshine being outside, things like that.

Is this all written down in your calendar? To some degree. Most of it, if it's fully automatic, if my body's completely integrated it, it gets taken out of my calendar. But when I was implementing it, I'm trying to make it part of the routine, it was always in the calendar. So even now a new thing in the calendar after Finland is the gratitude alarm. Did you hear that going off at all in Finland? It was from Travis and our little group. Every day there was an alarm set in his phone.

And when it went off, he would be like, what are you grateful for? And it was his daily reminder to be grateful. So now I did that when I got home. That is so cute. That is a good tip. I don't know if you told me that. That's such a cute tip. It takes one second and it brings light to whoever you're around.

And it spread. So I do it no matter where I am. So if I'm at a mastermind event, my phone will still go off. And whoever I'm with, I'll be like, what are you grateful for? And then we'll talk about it. And then so many people have integrated it. And now they text me when there is goes off. and say what they're grateful for.

That's kind of cool. I'm grateful that we all got to meet in Finland. I am too. So, special. I'm grateful that the ring might go missing tomorrow. I would not do that. That's going to mess me up. I'm going to have to go into a tailspin.

Okay. Go on. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not done. I want to hear her nightly routine. Okay. Well, and then also in the afternoon or evening, we do sauna pretty often.

So if the kids are outside playing, my husband and I will go into the sauna. We have, we're kind of sauna obsessed. So we have a barrel sauna, and we have an indoor infrared sauna. And I'm kind of a geek on this. So everybody thinks like infrared sonnas are so great. And they have their benefits, certainly, but you hear all this marketing that they raise the core body temperature more or they detox the body more. But every study I was finding was on old school

traditional saunas, most of them out of Finland. And so I wanted to kind of test on myself. Do they actually do infrared saunas cause you to get rid of more BPA or heavy metals through the skin? So I've been kind of testing that. So we have both, but both get pretty hot. What I've found so far with the sauna is it's actually the heat that's the benefit. So both of them get you hot, but the traditional barrel sauna gets you hotter. So ours can get up to almost 200 degrees. And then we have a cold plunge as well. So that's regular part of our... Which indoor sauna do you use? We have had several, actually. So we have a sunlight and solo pod, which is one that can fit in the closet. That one actually will raise my core temperature the most. So if I feel like I'm getting sick, I'll lay down in that for over

an hour, raise my body temperature a couple of degrees, basically induce a fever, and then not get sick. We also have the infrared smaller, like clear light, just infrared multi-spectrum sauna. It doesn't get quite as hot, but that can fit more than just one person in that little pod. And then we have a six-person barrel sauna. Okay. I got to check one of those out. So you cheated in Finland because you had all this experience when we did the hot cold. I had, but not that cold.

So ours, the coldest. I don't think anything was that cold. It was 38. In Finland, Terro verified, it was 22 degrees and it only wasn't frozen because it was moving. And then the air temperature was negative 24. So you know, you get out of it and you stick to the ground. because it's so cold. It was so cold.

Yeah, different level cold. And I am intense. I love intense everything. Like intense people, intense, intense situations. It was intense. And we were packed in there with like,

I don't even know how many people were in that sauna. You froze your balls off. Yeah. Well, and I remember that because you are intense. You were so excited. I was like, I don't want to do it because I knew of the cold.

I knew it was coming. You'd want longer than me. But you were like, all gung-go, you were like totally into the intensity. I loved it. No, you did it for like a minute or something.

I did. That's crazy. I was like my body was hot pink for like 30 minutes. Oh my God. Before I warmed back up. What are three wellness tips that you would give someone that doesn't know where to start? So let's see. I'm trying to give someone that are free. They don't cost money. I would say first thing in the morning, well, as soon as possible after waking up, especially if you're in California, go outside and get sunshine. Even if you're not trying to tan, the sunshine hitting your eyes, hitting certain receptors in your eyes early in the morning signals your cortisol response. So you're actually going to get better sleep and you're also going to regulate things like estrogen, progesterone.

it's going to impact all of your hormones. All of us can do that. So if you drink coffee or whatever, do it outside. I mean, we would all say drink four-sigmatic coffee outside in the morning, but get the sunshine in. Even on a cloudy day, you're going to get so much more light hitting those receptors than inside light. I think the lemon water in the morning is also a huge tip.

That's really how it's had a big impact on me. I would say, use a straw or be careful, it's not getting on your teeth or switch with water after. And then I think beyond that, it does really get into personalization. I would say, like, you know the basics. Move every day, hydrate. But I think beyond that, you really have to get into the nitty-gritty of what's working for you and maybe use things like the aura ring to help figure it out. Yeah, I'm going to get your o'ring.

You know, there's something really, I think, smart that you say, and I identify with this, I was with a buddy actually today. And he was saying, you know, he's in a funk right now. He's a little depressed. He's like, I'm depressed. He's like, I don't know why. He's like, my business is going well. He's like, I get up in the morning early.

He's like, I do my gratitude. He's like, I go on a hike. I work out. I read. He meditates. Like, everything is, like, moving in the, the right direction in terms of the stuff and the steps he's taking. He's like, I'm depressed and I can't figure out why. I was like, well, it sounds to me, from my own experience, that he's kind of made

every process robotic where it's like doing this, doing this, doing this. And so it becomes so so repetitive. And like, you said, your body kind of just adapts to all of it. And I was like, maybe try something that knocks you out of that routine completely. Something different that just like you're not, that's not normal, that you're not implementing. Like, you know, we just met, you know, Joe and I was like, hey, maybe I'm doing movie tire or something. Like, there's There's things that just take- Hold on. He is doing Muay Thai because of Joe. No, say, well, just to go off in a tangent for one- no, no, no, I go every more, I go like a couple times a week to his gym now and do that. And I was like, it takes- Is that cool? Yeah, it's really cool. His body has completely changed. I'm not joking. He's annoying because he works out once and it's like, he's like, it's so

annoying. But you know, like, doing things. But his body has completely transformed since you started doing Moitai-doing things like that. I'm like, okay, I go there. I have to focus so much because I'm Logan on the totem pole. I'm not, you know, there's guys and they're just kicking ass. And like, it takes me completely out of all my other routines and I think it helps with mood and all sorts of things. So I think it's important for people to understand. Like you could be doing all the right things, lemon water, meditating, reading, sonates, but you could still fall into a rut if it becomes like routine. Does that make sense? Guys, I want to take a quick break and talk about one of our favorite show partners. Every time I see them on the schedule, I get excited to talk about them because I love when people level up.

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Skillshare.com slash TSC to start your two months now. That's Skillshare.com slash TSC. Free learning for everybody. Enjoy guys. Absolutely. And there's so much psychology and science to back that up, actually. So both the brain being adaptive in that it has to learn how to automate different processes as we need it to. Like if we had to think about walking or breathing, like when you're a child, you're learning how to walk, you have to actively think about that. But as soon as you learn it, your brain outsources that. And then it doesn't have to think about it anymore. And they've done some really cool studies where you have different areas of your brain tied to different movements, different patterns. So to the degree that if you permanently sewed together a couple of your fingers, your brain would shut down the area that used to be part of one of those

fingers that was needed for differentiation because it's no longer needed. It adapts that quickly. Whereas you then unsoed them, you wouldn't be able to move them separately anymore because the brain had connected them. And you would have to train to get them to separate again. And then the brain would rebuild that area of the brain. So we know the brain only keeps that neuroplasticity and keeps that edge when you're out of your comfort zone. So all those cliches about you only grow at the edge of your comfort zone and all that, they're actually true. They're backed by psychology. So by adding the Muay Thai, you probably are increasing your neuroplasticity and you're also actually like changing your comfort zone, changing your life in other ways besides just working out.

Because it's one of the only things that I do now. It's like I did boxing when I was a kid. So like I had some shit, but like the stance is completely different. You got to worry about getting kicked in the head or knee in the face or elbowed in the jaw, whatever. And so like I, I did, I do it. I'm I'm constantly just sitting there and like, okay, I can't, I don't have the ability during that to think about anything else where maybe someone like Joe, who we know, he could do that and like it's systematic for him. Like he's, he doesn't have to think because he just, it's robot, it's robotic. I mean, I'm sure.

And he has to do other things to get out of his comfort zone. Like maybe he has to do yoga to get on the edge of his comfort zone. But yeah, I love that you're working out with Joe. We joke about that. Some of us from the trip of like, remember that time we made friends with that stone cold killer? Like, I love Joe. He's so like such a kind person. Fuck, don't piss that guy off.

He's, no, definitely don't. No, he is. He's really cool, humble down. I'm going to have him on this show and talk as I get a little bit further into the training, but like everybody in there, like they're just working so hard, kicking ass, and it's just typical. But when I was talking to my buddy, I was like, you know, all of us at a high level know, yes, read, workout, walk, sunlight. But I think you have to do more to push the limits in order to not fall into a funk or to get complacent. Absolutely.

And also just, yeah, anything, your body, your mind will adapt so quickly. even on a degree of they call it hedonistic adaptation, something Tim Ferriss talked about a lot. Even you just get used to a comfort level and then your brain and your body adapt to that. And so anything below that, even though that was once your gold standard, anything below that now seems difficult and like so hard.

So I think once in a while it's really important to get yourself in situations that take you out of that comfort zone and kind of reset your adaptation to those things and then you can be grateful for them again. That's so true. Remember your sunset story? Yeah, we talked about it. Well, it's not my story.

Oh. And I think Tim Ferriss first told the story. It was from, fuck, I can't remember. But it was like, and I've told it on this podcast. You've probably heard it. Where it's like, you know, you wake up one day and you have a great day and you see this beautiful sunset. You're like, wow, life can never get better than this. And then the next year, maybe next year, you see that same sunset. Well, I'll finish it for the audience. Like, you see that same sunset and maybe you're drinking like a really nice beer and you're with a nice girl and you're like, wow, can't get better than this. And then maybe you're on a, you're in a nice hotel and a resort. Can't get better than this. And then maybe five. finally one day you're on a boat and you have a cigar and like things are going, you have a bunch of money and you see that same sunset. Then the next year you go back and you just see a normal sunset and the same suns that that made you so extremely happy that you said life could never could never give better actually upsets you. And that's, I think, it's called experience stretching. But it's the same thing I think with experiences in life and just like, you know, there's a hill that I run it. I remember when I first started doing it was like, wow, I'm never going to make it up this fucking hill. And now it's like it's just a natural hill.

And like it's normal. But so you have to, I think you continuously have to find things that push your comfort zones and push the boundaries. think when you're a business owner and you it's you're working in chaos all the time and you we've got so much going on with social media and all the shit we're doing all the time to do something that takes you out of that is important and like sometimes like you know maybe a workout or even something like doing laundry you're still thinking about all the facets of the business so sometimes you need to shock your system into something that's like what like with michael's doing with moitai like it's like he can't concentrate on anything besides the task in hand yeah anything that was like anchored you in

present moment has a really good effect. And I mentioned fasting earlier. That's one of my... Yeah, talk to us about that. So it's, I'm not giving this as medical advice. Definitely if you're going to do it, like I do it, talk to your doctor first. But we've worked up to where we'll do usually once a quarter like a five-day fast, but also start the year, this year we started the year with a 10-day fast. And when you take away something that you take so much for granted and that's so part of your daily routine as food, it totally resets many of those markers in your brain. And when I say I fast, I mean, we only drink water. We're not coffee, not green tea, only water. Sometimes electrolytes.

But not only does it have all of these benefits for autophagy, for resetting the body, for increasing mitochondrial function. And people like Dr. Walter Longo and Rhonda Patrick have written a lot about this much more eloquently than I could. But it really resets, I feel like your gratitude center and your brain and that adaptation. And that first bite, like it could be a blueberry or is like sourcrow. It tastes like the most amazing thing in the world when you have not eaten in 10 days. and then for weeks afterwards, you're so grateful for every bite of food you put in your mouth

and just for the experience of eating and the community, you realize how much are like community centers on meals and that shared experience. And it just totally resets your brain. It makes you so much more grateful. Is that hard to fast for five days? Ten. Ten. Ten. I think you said five. We do five regularly. Ten is the one we do like once a year. It's the long one. It is definite, but it's all mental. The first two days you're really hungry and kind of grumbly. And if you're used to caffeine, then you have a headache or you're just out of it. Days three through five, for me, I get in such a zone, probably because the ketosis where I can get so much work done. My head is so clear. And you actually save a ton of time when you're not eating, not that I would

recommend that as a way to save time. But I'm just really efficient when we fast. That's why I like intermittent fasting too. It saves time. Exactly. But then by the end, definitely, I think probably your body's trying to speak to you. You go in phases where the first couple of days, your body's kind of like, okay, whatever, we can go for a couple days without food. And then you get more mentally clear, probably because your body's like, go hunt or gather something. Good gosh, we're starving here. And then by the end, you kind of do get irritable to the point that a lot of people even experience insomnia those last few days because realistically, your brain's probably like, we're going to die if you don't get up and find some food. So I'm not going to let you sleep,

go kill something. So are you miserable the entire time? Or is it like, you just get, no? Seth. He's more miserable. I think guys get hungrier or maybe, I don't know. Oh, Michael's middle name is hypoglycemia. I feel like I would have a difficult time. It's like, I can't, I mean, you go like a couple hours without eating and it's like the world is ending, man. I've done, I think three days is the long as I've done. Did you have any improvements? It was one time.

It was like a juice fast too. She's not talking about a juice cleanse. She's not talking about this with the hypoglycemia. Oh, some people who do water fasting notice the hypoglycemia gets better because it makes you more adapt. So back to the variation and adaptation, most of us are pretty much used to burning carbohydrates. And that's the preferred method if we have it in our body, that much. fasting, your body has to burn fat. So you're burning body fat and you're making ketones. But the

benefit beyond that is the body then remembers that switch more easily. So you can go back and forth between burning carbs and burning ketones, which gives you dual fuel sources, which is more efficient for the body, for one. But a lot of people tend to notice that it can improve hybolycemia over time. But again, I would say work with a doctor who has experience in that. Talk to us about the wine that you've recommended me to drink and how there's no sugar in it. And it's organic, no sulfates. I am such a snob about this. When you try it, you're going to become one too.

I used to think sulfites gave me a headache, and that's why red wine gave me a headache. And I found out in interviewing Todd, who you're talking about dry farm wines, he's their founder, that white wine often actually has more sulfites than red wine. Red wine, especially in America, often has dyes in it. So there's two dyes. I think they're called ultra red and mega purple. I might be reversing those. But they literally add dyes to the wine because Americans want wines that are bold and red and deep.

and really strong flavors and sweet. So they add sweeteners and dyes. So here's a trick. If wine dyes your teeth, it has dyes in it. Dry farm wines, red wines do not dye your teeth at all. You can drink a lot of it. Other than it, there's a couple varieties. Yeah, if you think about that, when we're overseas, you don't, your teeth don't get

died and we drink a lot of red wine over there. That's interesting. I've never thought about that. Yeah. So people who think like, oh, I can't have red wine because of the sulfides, you probably are actually sensitive to the dyes, not that. Not to mention there are over 80 additives that are approved for use in wine that don't have to be disclosed on the label. So many wines are not vegan. People think that they are.

They can use all kinds of animal products in the refining. What kind of animal products are using a wine? Egg whites, fish bladders, like a bunch of kind of interesting ones, which most of it gets removed, but there are still traces of it. They do, a lot of American wines, especially add sulfites for preservatives or even just for cohesive taste. And there are, it is important to know, there are tiny amounts of sulfites that naturally are occurring in grapes, but those don't bother people typically unless there's another underlying issue going on. We're talking about extremely trace amounts. In America, they add sulfites to a lot of the wine to preserve them longer. Also, so they found in drive-farm wines, they lab test every batch. They found that in America

there were no wines that were not contaminated with glyphosate. So they all had pesticide and herbicide residue in them. And that, a lot of people are sensitive to that as well. So if you're having this negative experience from wine, it might not be the alcohol or the sulfites. It might be something that's been added to the wine that you don't even know is there. And they don't have to is close it on the label. Another thing people don't realize is in America, they actually either are adding sugar or they're adding excess moisture to the grapes, which leads to a sweeter wine with a higher sugar content. So the name dry farm wines comes from the idea of dry farming, which just like it sounds, they don't water the grapes at all. Even in Italy, which is like California,

it does not rain very much, but they don't water it. And that makes the roots of the wine go so much deeper. So the grape has to work harder and it gets to a different level of minerals deeper in the soil. So you end up with this much more complex taste, but less moisture in the grape. So you end up with less sugar in the final product. No hangover. No hangover. So dry farm wines are maximum 12.5% alcohol, no sugar. So they define that as less than one gram per liter. Like no residual sugar, like it would be considered no sugar on any tracking device. And it does not, I've tested it. It does not raise your blood sugar and it does not pull you out of ketosis. She's tested it. How have you tested it? You told me earlier. With blood tests. So I have a meters that

measure both ketone, blood ketones, and blood glucose, and it does not change either one. Even if I've been fasting, it doesn't change either. I'm going to bring this out to restaurants, I think, because we went out to a restaurant the other night and Michael, Michael had a Pinoir, and he was literally sick for a day. I felt like shit. It's probably because it was filled with dyes and all these things she's saying. Whatever it was. Well, God damn, Katie.

You're a wealth of knowledge. I don't even need to have Google anymore. I actually have a random question, and I don't know if this is like just throwing it out there. What is the most interesting study? because it seems like you read a lot of studies and you do a lot of research that you've read in 2019. It could be with anything. Ooh, that's a really interesting question.

I don't know. I read a lot. I have to think about that for a minute. I think while the ones that I seem to be seeing trends on, I think that are going to be increasing wellness trends. We're seeing a ton on CBD in general. Like there's a lot of studies coming out on CBD. I go to bed now at I went to bed last night at 10, 15. I used to go to bed at 2 in the morning.

Whoa. But I smoke a pen, like two hits. No, there's so much. many. Oh, big timer. Take it easy over there. So gnarly. We just came from Expo West recently. There's so many CBD products. Like I feel like it's going to be in everything from water to like your shoes anymore. So I think CBD, there's a ton of studies coming out on that. There are actually a ton of really cool studies on fasting and time restricted eating, which is what they would call intermittent fasting. Just because, you know, people tend to freak out if you like you don't eat meals because they think

you're supposed to eat six times a day. But if you think about it logically, throughout human history, most people did not eat regularly. And so they're finding just to have the to. Exactly. And they didn't die, nor did they have all these weird things that we think are going to happen to us if we don't eat every three hours. And so they're finding like, like again, it's a different window for everybody, but just so many studies about if you can eat within an eight hour window or a six hour window, how much that changes, both your mitochondria, your DNA, your telomeres, they really seem to have long-lasting effects. There's a celebrity trainer here who we did a podcast with him, Jorge Cruz, and he's really like pioneering intermittent fasting.

We talk all about it. I think it's, you know, when I, when I, when I, when I, when I, when I, I think about logical, I don't understand dieting, but I just say eating habits, that makes a lot of sense to me because when you bring up, like, how we've evolved as humans, like you said, we didn't always have the ability to eat, like, walk into the kitchen and grab something out of the fridge. Like that would just, you know, we had to hunt and gather. And so it makes a lot of sense to me. You know, I don't know. I think we talk a lot as like more maybe a marketing tool, like three meals a day because

obviously gets you buy more products and gets, you know, those breakfast cereals and great jingles. But do you really need that? Like you said earlier, sometimes if you're not feeling so hungry, you can push it out to lunch, and that's okay. Like forcing ourselves to eat when we're not hungry just seems a little bit unnatural. You don't want to tell people not to eat, but. Exactly.

Listen to your body at the end of the day. But I think also like things like snacks are largely marketing messages because they certainly didn't have those throughout history. We weren't just like going around eating all the time. And in fact, if you look at the data, most Americans think they eat three meals a day. But if you actually look at it scientifically, they're eating 17 times a day because in science, they would define a meal or an eating event as any time you're putting food in your mouth. And so many people walk around and just put a handful of almonds in their mouth or sip on a smoothie.

So we really aren't having times that we're not eating. It's like the reverse. It's not that we're not eating enough. We're eating all the time. And it's when we're not eating that our liver gets a break. So if we're constantly eating, our liver is constantly engaged. And I know many experts like Dr. Allen Christensen have talked about this epidemic rise in non-alcoholic fatty liver, where our livers are actually like getting congested and fatty and clogged because we're overusing them.

with this constant influx of food. I also think there's something to be said about cortisol, like with Americans. You said something interesting. You said people are shoving almonds in their mouth. And I remember when I was told that you have to have snacks, I was that girl shoving almonds into my mouth or putting a hard-boiled egg in my mouth as I'm getting on the elevator or whatever it is. I think there's something, I have a girlfriend who is French.

Her name's Ingrid. And she always says that she sits down and she takes her phone away. And she turns on like Bossa Nova or whatever music she wants and she eats and she concentrates on eating. When we're when Americans sometimes I feel like we're shoving stuff into our mouth just to get it in our mouth or when you eat a salad, like how many times are you standing up eating the salad? Like she would never do that. She was she's so specific about how she eats and making sure her cortisol levels are down. Can you speak on hormones? Yeah, absolutely.

I think when we look at patterns, Americans especially the Westernized world were really bad on cortisol and Europeans do. they're better than we are. And when you look at cortisol patterns in places like France and Japan, where people typically have like lower rates of these health problems, they have better cortisol rhythms. Not that it's a panacea, just fixing your cortisol is not going to fix everything. But when we have like population-wide changes in things like cortisol, I think it's worth paying attention to. I think there's a lot of factors. So both we know things like food, light and stress can all signal your cortisol and change it. But I think we a lot of times do all of that wrong. So for instance, if you just look at it biologically, you kind of need more

carbohydrates if you're going to eat them at night because that's what you need to like replenish glycogen and have a good sleep cycle whereas you need protein in the morning to signal the right rise of cortisol in the morning and to make that pattern work correctly and a lot of people do that reverse they essentially eat dessert for breakfast whether it be cereal donuts whatever and then in night they're eating like this really protein heavy meal or like or mixing proteins and carbs i like that Lauren's like glaring at my go right now but i think also we really underestimate how much light impacts hormones, especially for women. I mean, we know the obvious things.

Like, if we don't get enough light, we get seasonal effective disorder, or we feel really depressed in the winter. That happened to me in Finland. Did it? I was a little, like, by the end, I was like, oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. But how even on a daily basis, like I mentioned, the getting daily early morning light, that signals correct cortisol patterns and how many of us never actually do that. We don't go outside, hardly at all, much less intentionally for an amount of time to signal that.

And so there's ways that you can kind of hack that using a $10,000. in lux or higher light in the morning still not as good as outdoors but better than not so like finland we should have been doing that salt rock lamp those are two so those are great at night so the reverse is also true you want to avoid light after sunset okay which none of us do learning something today we're all looking at our blue light phones at night and when you think about it biologically blue light is like outside right now the sky is blue and it's signaling that it's daylight and we should be awake when you're looking at your blue light on your phone at 10 p.m and it's hitting those receptors in your eye, it's signaling that you should be awake because it thinks it's afternoon and then you try

to go to sleep. Melatonin is a really tough hormone to create. So when you're looking at blue light, it suppresses melatonin. Speaking of interesting studies, they actually did one where they just shined blue light on the back of someone's knee and it was enough to suppress melatonin. So like our bodies, even our skin, our eyes are very sensitive to blue light, especially at night. So it's a good rule of thumb. You want to avoid blue light after dark or wear things like blue blockers, which helps some. Taylor, you got to turn off that porn at one in the morning. What the hell are you doing back there, buddy? Taylor, you got to turn off the porn at one in the morning.

Oh, Christ. Things are hitting his knee. Yeah. This has been, we got to do this again sometime because I know we're going to do it again soon and in our podcast, but we got to do this more regularly. We're going to go on your podcast now, so you've got to pimp that out. But before we go, what's a book, a podcast, a resource that you would recommend to our audience. So if your audience can handle the science, Dr. Rhonda Patrick, I don't know if

you're familiar with her. Amazing. Her podcast is amazing. It's very sciencey. I really love hers. I don't listen to a ton of podcasts, but I do listen to hers. Any interview with Walter Longo is really, really good. I like a lot of Tim Ferriss's episodes and then the occasional Joe Rogan, especially if it's like Joe or someone we know, is super fun. As far as books, I love the four agreements. I know you've, you have that mentioned before. I think that's a really short, easy read that's great for a lot of people. I'm currently reading the drama of the gifted child, which read that before you have kids.

I wish I had read that before I had kids. Fascinating look at psychology. I think that would be a good place to start. And then I just kind of have a list. I've gone through a lot in the last couple of years. I think Sapiens is great for people who haven't read it. It's so good. Yeah, so start with those.

Where can everyone find you? We're going to be on your podcast, pimp your podcast out, your Instagram, everything. Yeah, so like you, it's all the same. The Wellness Mama podcast. The blog is WellnessMama.com and on all the social media is, wellness mama. You guys follow Katie. She is so interesting. Honestly, you're one of the smartest people we've had on here. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. You guys are so much fun.

Thank you, Katie. Guys, if this podcast or any of our podcasts have brought you any kind of value, please make sure that you're subscribed and you rate and review the show. It takes five seconds on iTunes, and it really helps the show grow. Also, if you want a pink, sparkly, adorable TSC pop socket, leave your favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram. A TSC team member will drop into your inbox, get your address, and send you one out. They're so cute, you need one. Everyone has one. It's like adorable on the phone.

And with that, we'll see you guys next week, right, Michael? Yep, next Tuesday, one of the most powerful episodes that we have ever done, if not the most. So, stay tuned. Oh, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, like I said, that Game of Thrones. I can do it.