The Liz Moody Podcast - Answering Your Qs: Friendship Hot Takes, Communal Living, Body Image, & Dealing with Failure

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

How can you crush body image fears before a wedding? How can you plan more gatherings that don’t center around eating and drinking? And what does it mean to be fully present with a friend? Today, Zack and I are answering your burning questions about New York, raising children, career burnout, and more. Tune in for science-backed tips, hot takes, and to hear Zack’s thoughts on my favorite baby names. As always, I’m drawing on my research and interviews with experts in my answers. Let’s tackle your questions! Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome. Join Liz Moody in New York City for the Your Best Life Intensive Event on May 11th. Check out the previous episode of The Liz Moody Podcast discussed today: How to Figure Out Your Dream Career (And Get It!) Kids Or No Kids? Sharing My Choice And ALL The Reasons Behind It This episode is sponsored by: Puori: Go to puori.com/LIZMOODY and use promo code LIZMOODY for up to 20% sitewide.  Seed: Go to seed.com/lizmoody and use code LIZMOODY for 25% off your first month. ZocDoc: Go to ZocDoc.com/LizMoody and download the Zocdoc app for FREE and book a top-rated doctor today.  The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 326. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Liz Moody podcast. Today, I'm joined by a very special guest, my husband, Zach. Hello. And we're going to be getting into some questions that I haven't seen yet, but I've been told are quite juicy. Yeah, they're great. Okay, let's do it. Ask me anything.

These are sent in by listeners. These aren't just Zach Peppering Mead question. Yeah, these are the audience, audience questions. So we are recording from New York today. Concrete. Yeah. My listeners keep being like, stop trying to sing Liz. What was the song you were saying in that?

Concrete jungle where dreams are men of. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So on here is what do you miss most about living in New York? Walking. Hands down. Because you can't do that elsewhere.

Well, no, it's just it's, there's a difference between forcing yourself to take a little walk. Like, oh, I'm going to go take my like silly little mental health walk and needing to walk to walk to get things, to get places to see people. We walked today to dinner. We walked to see our friends. We walked to get macha. We walked to the grocery store to pick up a few.

things. We walk to this podcast studio to record this episode. I've taken 20,000 steps a day since we have been here. And I feel so good when I'm walking that much. And I also love having everybody out on the street. We came at the perfect time of year. It's warm. Everybody's out in the cafes. But feeling thousands of people around you moment to moment just gives an energy and a vibrancy to daily life that I really, really, really miss. What do you miss the most? I miss being close to people and being able to, like, get there. We have friends that where we're staying, like we have like three friends that work within like three or four

blocks of us. And it's crazy that you can just like kind of orient yourself to just have kind of people in your life all the time and it's lovely. And I was talking about this with a friend recently, but the difference between living 15, 20 minutes from somebody and living walking distance from somebody is immeasurable.

We talk all the time about the benefits of communal living, the benefits of cultivating community. And that is so much easier when you have this culture of I can just drop in. I can pop in for 10 minutes to have a little glass of water or a tea or a coffee with you to talk about our day. And it doesn't have to be a planned meetup. And I think when you have urban density like this, it's much easier to cultivate that sense of community. Next question. Can you talk more about your dreams for communal living? Oh, I can. I love my dreams for communal living. I think this has come up on the podcast recently because, or maybe on Instagram, people keep asking me, like, are you nervous? if you only have one kid because if you haven't listened yet, Zach and I did an episode about our decision about whether or not we wanted to have kids and our conclusion that we wanted to have

a kid. So I'll link that in the show notes if you want to listen to that. But people have been peppering me with a question, are you worried that that kid is going to be lonely? Do you feel the pressure to give that kid sibling so that kid has community? And I say that kid is going to have so much community, but it doesn't need to come from my uterus. Like I don't need to bear community for my child. I can create community in so many other ways. Same as childless people can have beautiful communities in their lives. And so I very much intend my biggest dream is to really have a proper commune. My big dream is a big property and everybody has their own sort of like tiny house on the space. So maybe four or five. I don't know. We never really talk about the number

of people, but a few different family groups. I'd love my sister to be there. She knows. She knows. We have a few different friends that we've talked about this with. But then you get all these benefits. First of all, your kids, if you have any, are growing up with other children. And they're really creating those strong bonds, even if they're not sibling relationships. But also, you have all these multi-generational relationships.

Your kids are growing up with other adults that they can go to for advice and for wisdom and for play and all of these different benefits. And then the adults are having all of these different relationships that I think are so incredibly beneficial. And you're sharing things like the labor of preparing dinner and scheduling chores and all of these other things. You're kind of deluding all of that labor across many different people. So I feel like it's so beneficial. And my favorite, favorite, favorite way of hanging out with people is when you don't have the pressure of like, I'm sitting down for dinner, I'm sitting across from you and we have to make sparkly conversation for two hours. but we're both on our laptops and we look up every, you know, 20, 30 minutes, make a fun little comment, have a conversation for a few minutes, and then we return to work.

And I think communal living really allows for that type of loose social interaction. Are you worried about losing listeners when you have a kid? That's a question. No, because I don't feel like it's going to impact my content very much. I don't plan. People are concerned. People are concerned. They ask that on Instagram too. I don't intend to ever show my kid in content.

I have huge problems with people doing that just ethically, morally. Kids can't give consent, even if they think they're giving consent, they can't. And the internet is forever. So I don't intend to show a child on camera or have them be a storyline. I think that I might do a small amount of parenting content, of pregnancy content. But I would do that anyway. Like when I did the fertility episode that we have, I had not made up my mind about whether or not I wanted to have a kid.

That was just a very highly requested topic. and it was something that I thought we could get into the science of in a really interesting way. And I think that there's a lot of conversations like that that could be had around parenting topics. But I would cover those whether or not I was a parent. So I don't see my content changing in any way. Except for maybe, you know, like one of the reasons we're becoming parents is because we hope we change as people in some way. So maybe there will be subtle shades. That people will like less or more.

I like that the fear is like losing listeners when you have a kid. Because it's not like the content's worse. It's more like people are like, eh, I'm over it. Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe if there were listeners who were just in it to find out our decision. Oh, there you go. Which I know I saw some Reddit threads about people who were bummed that we decided to have a kid. Interesting. Yeah.

Interesting. Do you have any hot takes about friendship to share with us? Is that a question? What are some of your hottest takes about friendship, question mark? I have one that I've been thinking about a lot lately, actually, which is I don't think. we're truly vulnerable with our friends. I think we have these topics that we've decided are safe to be vulnerable about. Like for me, it's my childhood, it's my anxiety story. And these are the things that I'll kind of open up about, but they aren't uncomfortable for me to open up about.

I have friends where it's their relationship and they're very happy talking about the hard times in their relationship, but that's almost become a comfort zone of its own versus this deeper level vulnerability. The things that almost make us feel ashamed or embarrassed to say out loud, those really uncomfy thoughts, feelings, shame that we have inside. And the reason I think that this is important is because when we don't go to those places, we don't get the catharsis of sharing those things and having people say to us, you're lovable, even with that. I love you no matter what I accept that part of you and that part of you and that part of you and that part of you.

I accept all of you. I think because those thoughts feel so, so scary, because sometimes those thoughts feel burdensome, many of us and not all of us, but I think many of us stop short and we, almost perform the pseudo vulnerability that I think social media in many ways has made more tolerable. There's a lot of like the therapy speak and blah, blah, like we've normalized a lot of the conversations that we didn't used to be able to have it all. And that feels like vulnerability. But I think if more of us pushed ourselves to say those real secret, hard shame things to our friends, we would experience both an unburdening and so much more of a sense of self and other love,

but also deeper friendships. Like I think we would feel more connected in our friendships if we took it to that level. Do you think there's a reason people kind of share those pseudo or like not really kind of quite so vulnerable things more, like why they're comfortable with a specific set of kind of smaller things? So I don't think it's performative in any way. I don't think it's manipulative in any way. I think two things are going on. One, I think that we have normalized in a way that has never before been normalized on a societal level talking about things that used to be completely off the table.

Things like childhood trauma, depression, anxiety, ambivalence about being a parent, all of these things used to just like we weren't allowed to talk about them. And now we are. So they feel vulnerable because they are vulnerable. They're things that were not part of the conversation for a really long time. And then the second part is, I think there's scary places to go ourselves. And that's why I think it's so important that we talk about them with friends. Every time I've gone to one of those places that I'm even scared to touch in myself and I share it with you or I share it with a friend. And that friend presents me every single time.

They've presented me with nothing but love and acceptance, even when I'm so scared and I think that there is no way. Like I'm like, this time's going to be different. There's no way they're accepting this. It is so healing. That is why it is healing. is because these are the scariest parts of ourselves. And somebody is saying, I love you no matter what. And we're wondering if that thing is the no matter what every single time.

We're like, is that the no matter what? And it never is. It never, ever, ever is. But until we share those things, until we plumb those steps of ourselves and share those things, we don't get to experience that. The number one rule of habits is to make the things that you want easier and the things that you don't want harder. yet so many of us want to eat healthier, but so few of us actually take the steps to make eating healthier easier.

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Visit Timeline.com slash Liz and save up to 39% on your mitochondere gummies. That is timeline.com slash Liz. We have somebody who has body image stuff coming up. They have a wedding that's around the corner. They know how they look is the least important thing out there, but they still struggle. Do you have any advice for them? Yes. This is very practical advice.

It's not going to be like a mindset thing. It's to schedule another photo shoot. I think one of the reasons we put a lot of pressure on our weddings in terms of how we look is because it's one of the only times in our lives where we have the hair and the makeup and the pretty dress and we're taking pictures with our loved ones and capturing this special day. And if we captured more of our days, I don't think we would put as much pressure on the aesthetic component of weddings and then we'd be free to enjoy the.

experiential component of weddings. And also, the days that I wish I had more memories of, like, I have our wedding video. I have our photos. I actually wish I had more photos than videos. So like maybe that's that aside. But I also, there's so many of these simple, normal days that I wish I had captured more. Like invite a friend with a camera over to capture a Sunday morning at your house. Hire one of the services like flytographer, not sponsored by them, but they have photographers all over the world, I think. So you could be on a vacation and do a little hour or two photoshoot on that vacation. And then you'll be able to remember that vacation in a really special and different way.

I think if we capture in an intentional way, not in just like having our phones out all the time because, you know, I'm less into that. But in an intentional way, in a way that we can get dressed up in a way that we would like, et cetera, more of our lives. We'd put less pressure on our weddings. That's a good point. Although, I don't know. I want to push back on the professional versus the amateur stuff too, because I think like, Home, like the home movie, like, it is the things that, you know, pop up on your phone. It's like, remember when XYZ and it was from 15, 12, 10, 8 years ago, and it's just like some little clip.

You know, we've been doing like a bunch of those reviewing them, especially like ones with Bella in it and stuff like that. And it's just like, it's like, I didn't need anybody like coming in to make that. Although we did a little baby photo shoot with Katie. remember she had just gotten cancer and Katie and we were like Katie can you come over and take some photos and we told it was the day we found out that she was going to

live the oncologist was like she's definitely going to live longer yeah we're like Katie doesn't even need to come and then we're like we might as well she came over here anyway we took these photos and she's not a professional but they were more posed it was the family I'm so grateful for those photos I agree and I'm just saying

both yeah both I agree with both Also, to a derivative of a point you said, in 10 years, you're always going to think you look so freaking hot. Oh, yeah, sure. Like, there's no world in which you're looking back on those photos in 10 years and you're not like, I look so freaking hot. So the more that you can channel your future self looking at the photos versus your present self judging yourself in the photos, I think the better. And I promise, promise, promise your future self thinks that you look banging right now. I have an inverted situation right now. like I've lost some weight recently and I was looking back at photos where I hadn't.

And I was like had all the sympathy and like love in the world for that person I was looking at in those photos as well. So I think there's like space for that too, which is like you're not always on like necessarily like a downhill slope too. You can like look back with like love and grace at at, you know, any time. I think it's okay too. I love that. We talk about this a bit actually. So this person is wondering how you can cultivate a personal life where you're not just eating and drinking with your friends. And they put in the caveat that, you know, more fun activities and more active activities can be more time consuming, probably more resource intensive fiscally or any other type of thing.

Yeah, I feel that. That's actually something we started the episode by talking about what we miss about New York. Something I don't miss about New York is how much the social life tends to default towards eating and drinking, which is really fun when you're here on vacation. But that was something I had a hard time with when we were here both financially and health-wise and all these other things. And it is something that I have a bit of a hard time with when we come back. I mean, yeah, I'm back here now being like, oh, I, that's, that's like a lot of, you know, fill in the blank type of food for me. Yeah. But I think that the solution here that I have found in my life works best for me is creating

recurring plans in the category of different types of plans. So instead of having your happy hour that you go to every single Thursday, maybe you have a tennis match that you have with your friend every single Thursday. Maybe you have a soccer league every single Thursday. I have book club once a month. I have a podcast meetup that I have once every other month. I have a game night that we have with some couples friends that's every single month. So I think creating these recurring plans of things that are outside of the eating and the drinking where you don't have to think about it. You don't have to have any decision fatigue. There's just these things anchoring your calendar. And then you can build a

other activities around that. I think that can be really helpful. And then the second thing that I would recommend is to have a folder or something, a list, a notes post on your phone where you keep track of novel activities. So I get Sunset Magazine, for instance. I love Sunset Magazine. I love Sunset Magazine. If you're not from the West Coast, it's like a West Coast Living magazine.

I used to think it was for older people. And maybe I am an older. And then I grew older. I love it. It's so calming to me. is the most peaceful experience reading Sunset magazine. But they will often have like, there's this fun, different experience in California or Nevada or whatever. And if I read something in Sunset, I'll write it down on my phone. So I'll remember the next time that I want to do something

novel, I will consult this list in my phone. If I see something on Instagram, if I see something on TikTok, if a friend tells me about something, I'm always adding it to this list in my phone. So in the moment when I'm facing down a weekend and trying to think of something fun and different to do, I'm not starting from scratch. I'm starting from this list that I've curated over time. We just did our annual baby goats observation. Observation. It's not observation.

That's why it's wonderful. It's interactive. It's interactive. You're cuddling. They trample upon you. You are being trampled by the ghost. Yeah. And that was found through, did you search like farm animal cuddling on Google? Yeah, I search animal, animal small baby.

No, I think I should search baby animals for one of our anniversaries. Anniversaries. maybe like six, seven years ago. And because it's seasonal, the goats being born into life, we basically put on our calendar. And generally, we take either a new group of friends or the same ones every year, at least once. We try to introduce new people to the baby goats. As you'll learn at the baby goat farm, there's actually two different birthing periods normally. So often there's like new goats, then you have a lull, and then more new goats.

Yeah. I will say try just Googling stuff. You can Google stuff. If you have an idea of a thing you might like and you don't know if it's real, like baby animal cuddling or organic farm herb picking or cocktail making class or whatever it is, if you're like, I don't know if this thing exists, just put it into Google. Like see, it might. It probably does.

Yeah, now it's like I don't even need to know what I want. I just think they need a category like, hey chat, now give me like a bunch of things I might want to go do. And now I can put those into Google. Yeah, you can also ask Chachy BT like, hey, I want to do something different tonight that's not going to a bar restaurant with friends. Give me some ideas in this neighborhood in this city. Seriously. The time consuming element of planning a, you know, novel activity, a non-food, non-drink activities like at an all-time low right now. So use it. Yeah, I almost feel like it's harder to find a good restaurant or bar to go to from all the options. Certainly noisier. Yeah. All right. Some quick fires. Yes. I need a new career. Where should I begin?

Listen to our How to Figure Out Your Dream Career and actually Get It episode with Susie Weld. She has a framework that helps you figure out what you're good at, what you like to do, and then what the market is set up to reward at any given moment and how much reward you need based on your values. She talks through that framework in the episode and she says at the intersection of that Venn diagram is your dream career. Oh, love that. I will link it in the show notes. Yeah, that's a good equation. What are baby names you love but won't be using? Oh my God. I shared my baby names on the internet. I got ripped apart. That's because they're insane names. I like crazy names. Everybody's like, that's not just a baby you're naming. That's like an adult who has to go to work and get a job. And I'm like, adults are not going to be named Brenda and Jessica in 40 years. Like those will be stranger names. All of these babies. In 60 years, they're going to be cool again. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So I'm just going to read some. And Zach, you can rate them out of five.

as I read them. Is five good or bad? Five is the best. Okay. Domino. One. Meadow. Two.

Moxie. One. Sonoma. But that's Nomi for short. Two. No. Okay. Nova.

Two. Saffron, but Ronnie for short. Three. Oh, okay. Loomie. Negative one. Loom. Oh, I already said loom.

Okay. Arizona Two Three because you were born there Zoh No I wasn't born there I just Oh yeah

Two Colorado but cocoa for short Two because You know I just Can't you just Appropriate all these states I love Colorado

North Dakota Sunday but with an E Like the ice cream That's that's a hard pass Sunday What about with why just it's not even an e uh with a with a with a why it's it's better with a e or a why it's it's better with a why and it's still a two okay so we're still working on yeah absolutely not okay do you have a

quickfire answer for what's the best advice for dealing with failure know that it is part of your story we are all of our stories when you watch movies or when you read novels the things that people go through make sense when they're looking back on them. Things rarely make sense in the moment. And I'm not a person who's like, things happen for a reason or whatever. But I do think that we contextually make sense of things in the story of our lives because our lives change direction based on what we do. These things have meaning. Not everything happens for a reason, but everything has meaning in our lives because we make it have meaning. We react differently to quote unquote failures than we do to quote unquote successes. And that changes the direction of our

life. So inherently it has meaning. But we don't know that meaning until we're looking back. We cannot know that meaning in the moment. So some of the biggest failures of my life, I'm putting that in quotes, one of the biggest failures of my life that I felt like absolutely a failure was when I was agoraphobic and I was bedridden with anxiety and I could not sell my novels. And I really was like, where is my life going? We moved with your parent shortly thereafter. That period of my life is when I created the foundation for the career that I have now. I would not be where I am today, concretely. I would not have the career that I have if I had not gone through that period of my life. But I had no idea in the moment because we cannot see in the moment. So my best

advice for failure is to know that it will create meaning, to look for opportunities to create meaning, and to know that it will contribute to the story of your life retrospectively. Love that. Okay. I think that's all we have time for. this episode of the Liz Modi podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. To anybody watching, to anybody listening, if you know somebody you think would benefit from any of the things shared in this episode, if you know somebody who needs to hear a list of apparently not great baby names or anything else that we talked about in this episode, please, please, please share a link to the episode with them. Sharing is the best way to support the podcast. It's how we

can continue to produce these episodes for you. And it is so, so appreciated. If you have not hit that follow button yet, please do so. Do it on Spotify. Do it on Apple Podcasts. Do it on YouTube. We're now on YouTube. So if you're watching this, hi, hello, you can also watch video episodes on Spotify. But following the podcast means that it will show up right in your feed and you will never have to go searching for episodes. You'll never have to look or maybe miss that episode that might completely change your life. We are able to keep this show completely free for you to listen to. thanks to our amazing partners. You can find a list of all of our active codes at lizmoody.com slash codes.

You'll get discount on products that I love that I think are wonderful for you, and you will support the show. So we immensely appreciate that. Also, if you haven't yet, be sure to check out our newsletter. It's called The Takeaway. You can find that at Liz Moody.substack.com. We just did a deep dive into Botox. We did a whole look into the no-tox community if Botox is actually causing harm.

We interviewed a bunch of different doctors and experts about the, claims that you see circulating on social media to find out the real science, what's really going on. And we also explored alternative. So if you're interested in that, make sure that you head over to lizmoody.substack.com. You're going to get takeaways for every single episode, as well as bonus content that you will not find anywhere else. You can also come hang out on Instagram. I'm at Liz Moody. I share how I'm using everything that we talk about on the podcast in my real life. And that's all we've got for today. I love you. And I will see you on the next episode, the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented

solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional. The mattress that you sleep on is one of the highest exposures that you have. Like, if it's off gassing, you're breathing that in for basically a third of your life, and most conventional mattresses are loaded with synthetic foams, flame retardants, microplastics, and more. Plus, if it's not comfy, you're going to be tossing and turning, you're going to be really hot. And sleep is the foundation of health. It is so important. Because of all of this, if I were not going to invest in any other part of my house, no other things in my house, I would invest in my mattress. And in fact, I have four years well before I had

much money to spend on any of these things because it is such a big needle mover. The birch mattress is incredible. It is made with organic cotton, natural. latex and ethically sourced wool. So it has literally no off gassing. You can not smell anything right when you unbox it. It has no microplastics, no synthetic foams or flame retardants. And the wool makes it so breathable, which if you've listened to this podcast for more than five minutes, you know that I run very, very hot like I am a furnace. Zach has basically accepted that sleepy next to me is like sleeping next to like a little fire. And the birch mattress has been a game changer for that. It's made me sleep so much better like I can see my sleep score going up because I'm not

hot all night long. It's also hypoallergenic, which is really worth paying attention to if you find yourself waking up stuffy or congested. Dust mites in a conventional mattress can actually impact your breathing and your sleep quality without you even realizing it. And again, we need to be able to breathe to get good sleep and getting good sleep is the foundation of our health. And then comfort wise, Zach sleeps on his back and then I sleep on my side and my stomach. So we have two completely different styles and we both wake up feeling really good, no aches and pains. CNN actually named the Birch mattress, the best mattress for side sleepers and Wired named it the best organic mattress period. So there you go.

Birch has options for every kind of sleeper in your household. They have three firmness layers. I like the Lux Natural, which is the medium one. And then parents, they even have a Birch kids' natural mattress. Birch ships right to your door. It sets up in minutes and it comes with 120-night risk-free trial. So if it is not for you, they will pick it up for free. You have nothing to lose here. I want all of you to enjoy a deep, restful night's sleep with a new mattress from Birch. Go to birchliving.com slash Liz Moody for 20% off.

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thyroid dysfunction, mood changes, and more because of their impact on our endocrine systems. Luckily, you can just make one simple swap and you can eliminate all of those risk factors that you get from common household cleaners. Branch Basics makes cleaning products that are plant and mineral based, completely fragrance-free, and made safe certified, meaning they are screened against thousands of known and suspected harmful chemicals. And best of all, you literally use one product, but you mix it with different amounts of water to make your kitchen spray, your bathroom cleaner, your laundry detergent, your produce wash, your glass cleaner, literally everything. It does not smell. It does not give me headaches. It does not give me rashes or itchiness from clothes because you are. Remember, we're using this for laundry. We're using this for literally everything. And it works so well. Everything gets so clean. And I know that I'm

protecting myself from all of those long-term issues too. And I'm protecting my kittens who are much tinier than me. So anything they're exposed to has a much greater impact on their little tiny systems. And they're running around on their little paws and then they're licking them. So I'm protecting them too. Branch Basics is now available at Target, Target.com, Amazon, and branchbasics.com, so it's easier than ever to make the switch. And if you want to grab their premium starter kit, you can use code Liz Moody for 15% off at branchbasics.com. That's code Liz Moody for 15% off the premium starter kit at branchbasics.com. And when they ask you where you heard about us, please make sure to mention the show. That is branchbasics.com and use code Liz Moody.