Thanksgiving At A Time Of COVID, Social Media Pressures, And Finding Joy In Food

Nov 25, 2020

MGU 152 | COVID Thanksgiving

 

Thanksgiving is coming up. In this day and age of quarantining, when better to talk about food and the comforts it brings than now? Jason Wrobel and Whitney Lauritsen reveal their plans for Thanksgiving and recommend some great food and finds that you can get even while on lockdown. They share some vegan and plant-based menus and restaurants and, finding joy in food, impart some advice to keep our mental state just as healthy as our physical as we fight through this uncertain time. Plus, Jason and Whitney discuss the influencer world and how social media conditions people to use vanity metrics as a sign of worth, digging deep into the pressures that surround us.

—

Listen to the podcast here

 

Thanksgiving At A Time Of COVID, Social Media Pressures, And Finding Joy In Food

“I love bundles because they love me so much. I love bundles because you know they’re going to touch my soul, you know.” That is my bundle song, Whitney, because I am excited about this new vegan bundle we are part of, so I had to sing it.

I was hoping that you are going to rhyme bundle with trundle or some crazy words like you do when you rhyme purple with durple. I like it when you do or say any things like that. I appreciate you making this fun because this is our intro for an announcement that we have about participating in The Plant-Based Bundle, which is happening for a limited time. We decided to submit our course, The Consistency Code, in this incredible bundle sale. Mainly because we wanted to remind you that we have a course in case you missed that when you launched it in 2019. It is one of our favorite projects we have ever worked on. Normally, it is $197, but you can get it now for $50. In addition to enrolling in Consistency Code, you will also get over 60 eBooks and other programs related to plant-based living to fitness, including recipes, meal plan. It is great. We made it easy for you to check it out at Bundle.Wellevatr.com. We will tell you more about the Consistency Code, but we want to dive right into this amazing show we have for you.

—

This episode will be centered around food, which is a great thing. I was telling Jason about this meal I wanted to order on Postmates. I got into Postmates because I’ve been self-quarantining myself. This is a good place to start the episode because you may have heard that I was waiting for my third COVID test results. Technically, it was my fourth COVID test, but my third in a series of three that I took after returning to Los Angeles from a long road trip. I’m happy to say that my third test was negative like my second test was. Although I’m still self-quarantining because I had a positive test when I first got back from Los Angeles. I’m doing a full two weeks. During this time, it hasn’t been that bad. I don’t know if it’s because I’m introverted, decompressing from being away for so long, or all of the above. I don’t mind it. I’ve been getting into Postmates and believe it or not. I signed up for my own Postmates account for the first time.

The only time I’ve experienced Postmates was through my friends. I’ve waited for years to sign up for an account because I’m not somebody that orders delivery that much. It’s usually a little pricier than it seems worth it. I would much rather pick up food and save some money, but it’s been a nice luxury to have food delivered. As Jason can attest, I have discovered many incredible plant-based options in Los Angeles that I didn’t even know existed. If you have not explored some of these delivery services like Postmates, I highly recommend it. I don’t know if this is common knowledge, but there are restaurants or food businesses that are Postmates only. Maybe they’re not specific to Postmates, but they are only available for delivery and pick up. You can’t go there as an actual storefront. You have to order online and my mind was completely blown. Did you know about this, Jason? What is your history with Postmates? I wish they respond in this episode, but they’re not.

I’ve been a super casual user pre-pandemic, but what I do, I get conservative financially, so I will go through all of the services. I’ll go through Postmates, DoorDash, Grubhub, Uber Eats, and Caviar. There are 5 or 6, depending on who’s got a 20%, 30%, or $20 off coupon. I will cycle through and I’ll wait until they email, DM, or text me and offer. I’ll then go with whichever one I have. I’m not a brand loyal user of these food delivery apps by any stretch. I find them all in terms of their service to be pretty equal. I’m the bargain hunter. That is the word that I was searching for.

For a lot of these delivery services, including some of the ones that I’ve received during this recovery period from surgery, I’ve been taking a combination of different CBD, CBN, and THC tinctures to manage the pain. They also have the same thing where there are 5 or 6 delivery services that will bring you CBD or THC products. The same thing with that I got a 30% off coupon and it saved me a crap ton of money on my order. When it comes to any of these deliveries before COVID, I didn’t use these, but I’m like, “Whoever’s got the bargain, that’s the one I’m using.”

I think that makes complete sense and I will probably be doing the same thing. Part of the reason I hadn’t signed up for Postmates is because I want to wait until I felt like I needed it. When you sign up, you get all these special deals like $100 of delivery credits. They have this new free trial you can do on their unlimited delivery service. You better believe I signed up for those. I also used a friend’s Postmates code. I will be putting my Postmates code in. That way it’s like Russian roulette.

We are living on the wild side, aren’t we? Russian roulette by changing up affiliate links. We are dangerous here.

Oftentimes, we include referral links or affiliate links, which means we get some credit. On Postmates, for example, they’ll give you $25 if somebody signs up with your link. If you feel like signing up for the first time, use one of our links. I think you get some credit, maybe you get $25 off your first order or we get $25 in credit on Postmates, something like that. In full disclosure, we often use these types of links because if we’re going to talk about something, it’s nice to get some perk for referring it to you. It’s either at no additional cost to you, it’s the same price as you would normally pay for something, or you get some perk too, which is our favorite thing to do. We sprinkle in discount codes whenever we get them.

The reason that I wanted to start this episode talking about Postmates is not just to share the update on my COVID results, which by the way, people not only want to know what my results are, but they want to know how I’ve been doing. We’ve been talking about this openly in the last few episodes. I’m doing great. I didn’t have any symptoms. I don’t know if I ever had COVID. I don’t know if it was a false positive. There are many different opinions on COVID testing. I’m going to sit in the unknown, keep quarantining, be mindful, wear my mask, wash my hand, sanitize, and go on with my life. I’m grateful that if I did have COVID that it was a mild case and I didn’t knowingly pass it on to anybody because I’ve checked in with everybody I saw in the past few months. I went through and contacted anyone I could think of. I also contacted restaurants and places I stayed. Everybody’s been safe. No one has symptoms and no one’s tested positive, which I’m incredibly grateful for.

The other reason I bring up food is because Thanksgiving, Jason. I’m curious what your plans are for Thanksgiving. I’d love to discuss that and food in general. There’s a bunch of food I’ve tried and I love to talk about it. It’s nice talking about food for anyone who’s trying to figure out what to order. Maybe you’re about to go into quarantine and we can share with you some snacks. We can share with you some more universal things that aren’t super location-specific that you might want to try out anytime in the near future. Jason, what are your plans for Thanksgiving? Your plans may well change, but what are they, Jason?

My Thanksgiving plans are going to be a bit modified for multiple reasons. Number one, because of a variety of factors, my mom is not going to be coming out. She usually doesn’t come out to LA from Detroit for Thanksgiving. She usually reserves that for Christmas and the week before New Year, but Kitchen Mouse, one of my favorite restaurants in LA, they have an entire feast. I shared it with you, Whitney. I shared it with my girlfriend, Laura, who is a gluten-free and dairy-free. It seems to be, as far as I can tell, one of the only organic fully gluten-free Thanksgiving meals one can order in advance.

At this time, I’m still rehabbing from my surgery after my motorcycle accident. I’m not able to chop anything yet. My right arm is still weak and weird and like a weird gangly T-Rex arm. Rather than expending a lot of energy trying to make a feast or make a meal, we’re going to order something from Kitchen Mouse. They have like a yuba tofu, almost like a “Turkey breast” oven roasted thing. They’ve got Jerusalem artichoke, mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, gravy, and stuffing. They have all the sides you would want. The plan at this point is to perhaps go over to Laura’s mom and her stepdad’s house. They have a house here in the Los Angeles area and a beautiful outdoor patio where we can eat outside and be physically distanced.

People are really conditioned to use vanity metrics as a sign of worth. Share on X

The plan is to hit up Kitchen Mouse and get a feast from those guys to make it easy. I like putting a lot of effort into the holidays for meals. It’s one of my favorite things. My mom and I have a tradition going back many years of vegan Thanksgiving. It used to be an event in Detroit where people would come to my mom’s house because there was nowhere else to get vegan Thanksgiving food. We used to pack people in my mom’s house but being far away from her, that’s not an option now. We are going to get care out from Kitchen Mouse, probably do a small four-person thing, get a COVID test before going. I want to keep healing, Whitney, and keep it simple, low effort with maximum return.

That’s fair enough. It’s nice to see that as an option. Are you going with the full package that they’re doing that’s $140? Did you find a way to make it less expensive?

No, I’m doing the full monty. Here’s the deal, we know there are going to be leftovers. There always is. For me, if I spend $140 on a venerable, smorgasbord of vegan, gluten-free goodness, I know that is not going to be the Thanksgiving dinner. That’s going to stretch out to maybe even three days. To me, between myself and Laura, for family indulges or they make stuff themselves, I don’t see that as one meal but as multiple meals out of the same kaleidoscope of foods.

That’s fair enough, once again. I’m drooling thinking about this and I have yet to figure out my Thanksgiving plans. Hopefully, something comes together in time. Otherwise, maybe I’ll be picking things up from Whole Foods. There’s a great article I’m looking at from LAist.com. It’s called The Best Nontraditional Thanksgiving Takeout for 2020. It’s not entirely vegan, but there are a lot of great places on here, restaurants that we like, like Cafe Gratitude, Gracias Madre, doing a vegan Mexican Thanksgiving. They do holiday tamales. There’s some creative stuff on here. Maybe I’ll do that. It’s interesting because 2020 certainly is different than previous Thanksgiving, and Jason and I were talking about how sad it is to not go to the potlucks that we usually go to.

Oftentimes, we do something together around Thanksgiving, Jason. Part of me was like, “Should we try to do that again?” After getting my positive COVID results, it’s made me want to be extra mindful and not see anybody unless I either need to see them or I desperately want to see them. Since we talk so often, I feel like a connection with you that doesn’t require seeing you in person. Although I’m also feeling anxious to see your animals.

I was like, “She’s got to bring this up.” We were tangential. Whitney was like, “I want to come to see Dems.” We have a whole sub-language around our animals. If you’re an animal lover or a pet parent, you probably have cute baby voices and languages specific to them while we do too. Whitney was bemoaning the fact that she hasn’t seen Dems in a long time and she needs to come over and see all of our Dems.

Jason, more people talk in those voices than I realized. Growing up, my mom had all weird things that she would say to our animals, and my sister and I would be embarrassed and self-conscious about it. Bizarre nicknames that made zero sense. To this day, she still does this, but growing up, we were like, “This is weird.” The older I get, the more people I meet and hear them talking to their animals or other animals in all these voices. The ultimate source for discovering that you’re not as weird as you think you are is TikTok where people do all bizarre videos about their animals and have all these nicknames. I bet you, the term Dems is something that other people refer to their animals with. I thought for so long, Jason, that was our thing, but every once in a while, I see other people using it.

I am excited and disappointed, but it makes sense. People are weirdos. You have to embrace your weirdness fully. Other people are like, “You have cute baby languages, sub-languages for your pets, too.” I have five animals at home and I speak in slightly different voices to each one of them. The tambour, the inflection, the pitch, the nicknames for them are different. Not only is it like, “You have an animal voice.” It’s like, “I have five different animal voices.”

You have to share some of them, Jason. You have to go through each of your animals and try to say, “Please.”

How am I going to do this? “Winky, he named winked and he’s a combat boy. He likes his butt getting spanked. His hair is rough. He’s a woodland creature who emerged from the primordial ooze. He’s a little rough run. He named Winky boy.”

You love to speak to him in a Russian accent as well.

He loves it. It’s our language. It’s a pseudo-Russian Ukrainian cat language. “There’s my Di. She’s a queen. She’s made of clouds. That’s why her name is Claudia because she’s fluffy as a cloud. She’s got vampire’s teeth. She’s a black clouded vampire cat. We love her because she’s the queen. Her name is Claudia.” Bella Boncheeto, my newest nickname for her is Boncheeto, which has changed into Cheeto.

You’re just telling me this for the first time.

MGU 152 | COVID Thanksgiving

COVID Thanksgiving: Sometimes, you do something that you think is really helpful, kind, and generous, and still, somebody doesn’t like it.

 

We call her Cheeto because it was Bella bonkers. My girlfriend, Laura starts calling her, “You Bella Bonker,” and then Bonker then Bon Cheeto, and now just Cheeto. There was the etymology of how nicknames work in this household. I’m still waiting for laughter. I’m assuming you’re laughing on the other end, Whitney.

I am, but I don’t want to interrupt you because you still have two more animals to share.

Baby Julius is a tiny orange cat. They are the theme songs to Julie’s the nutcase. He’s the baby of the bunch. He’s only three. He still thinks he’s a baby cat. He’s got to move and he’s a bit nutty. Lastly, we have Kayefa. “He’s a Panda. He’s got one tooth, but it doesn’t hold him back in a knife because he’s got chubby cheeks.” He’s also got the best cheeks in the business. If you want to see the fluffiest cheeks on a cat, this side of the rabbit kingdom, he has hay rabbit fur.

You’re also forgetting his best nickname. We have bizarre phrases and then last but not least, what about Evie’s nicknames? You came up with most of them.

That’s true. Javier, Gob Gob, Cop Cop, Frankenstein.

That’s my favorite.

It’s usually Bear, Job Job, or Gob Gob.

You like to say that the crocodilla.

It depends on the position of her body and her face and what expression she makes. She’s a dog pig. If anybody’s resonating, leave us a damn comment because we know you’re feeling this. We know you have nicknames for your animals. Write to us and send us stories about your animals and brighten our day.

Send us pictures, hopefully. We love hearing about these crazy stories. We love knowing that we’re not alone. Instagram is a good place to connect with us, which is @Wellevatr. I could go on a little tangent about this and then I want to come back to food. I have some fun Thanksgiving food news to share with you, Jason, that I discovered, but I want to go on a little Instagram tangent. We’re trying to post more frequently on Instagram. We’re gearing up for a project which you’ve heard about in this episode. It depends because we’re using a cooler feature with our show where we can insert in timely promos and then remove them so that way you don’t hear about things after they’ve expired. It is helpful to listen to the show when they see episodes come out. If there’s anything timely going on, you’re only going to hear about it for that short period of time and then we’re going to remove it. This is something we’re working on. As we’re getting close to our anniversary with the show, we have a lot of cool things coming up for you. If you’re reading later, we apologize that you missed it all but stay tuned, please.

It feels like ten years.

That’s because we have done more in these than a lot of shows do.

By the end of year one, we’ll be close to 160. That’s crazy as hell. Think about that. That’s nuts. We need to pat ourselves a pat on the back, which is hard for me because I’m only using one hand, but when I can use both hands, I’m doing it. I’m slapping myself on the back.

There are so many things that are abundant, delicious, and amazing when you're eating a plant-based lifestyle. Share on X

We have crossed 150 episodes. When we get to our anniversary, that’ll be our 160th episode, which is nice to have a solid round number. That’s still fairly far away. Even though we do three episodes a week. We hit some of these milestones fast. It’s funny that we have friends who have been podcasting for years, that haven’t done this many episodes because they only released them in seasons or they only do once a week. It’s fascinating, this whole podcasting world. We have been posting more frequently on Instagram and I found it amusing that we lost a follower after this post that we did. We don’t have that many followers so I can easily tell when we gain or lose them versus my personal account, Eco-Vegan Gal. I can’t even keep track.

I don’t even notice unless the number drastically changes. I’m not going to notice if a couple of people unfollow me. I noticed that on Instagram and I found it amusing because the post we put up was positive. It was made to be helpful. We’re not advertising anything. To me, it felt like, “How could this possibly bother anybody?” For some reason, somebody saw it and they were like, “It is time to unfollow these people.” It makes me think about how you can’t please everybody. Sometimes you do something that you think is helpful, kind, generous, and somebody doesn’t like it. I think about this stuff all the time. I also have been thinking a lot about how much people obsess over numbers.

For example, I’ve done a few projects. I’ve specifically asked people not to use my Eco-Vegan Gal account anymore because I’m trying to slowly transition away from that. I want to bring more awareness to the Wellevatr Instagram account as well as my newest one @WhitLauritsen. Both of these accounts are about mental health and authenticity and are better expressions of who I am now versus Eco-Vegan Gal. As much as I try to make it, who I am now, it still always feels who I was years ago. It’s hard because my brain doesn’t know how to fully keep Eco-Vegan Gal relevant, but I also don’t fully resonate with being called Eco-Vegan Gal anymore. That’s the main reason and not to go into that much in-depth, but I’m bringing that up because people still want to reference me as Eco-Vegan Gal and it’s because I have more followers there.

My friends, for instance, I did a project and specifically said, “Can you please use my new account?” I don’t know if they were multiple people involved and they didn’t fully understand, but they referenced Eco-Vegan Gal and never referenced my new account. I was like, “I’ll let it go.” That happened again with you and me. We’re working on a project. I was going to bring this up to you, how everything I’ve done is through the Wellevatr account. It’s always me and Jason in our combined project as well as Wellevatr, which is the parent company. They posted us on the account and it’s @EcoVeganGal and @JasonWrobel. They also included our combined following on there.

I was cringing for two reasons. One was, why are they using those accounts? We want them to use Wellevatr. I’ve been meaning to bring this up to you offline, Jason, but you might as well give me your opinion. I want to get back to food. There’s a lot more to say about food, but we like to go on tangents and talk about things that make us uncomfortable. What made me uncomfortable, Jason, is when they shared our combined following on this page. It gave me this icky feeling like, “Why does anybody care what our numbers are?” I’m not going to reference what this page is, Jason, and I can tell you later or you’re welcome to guess or assume. The whole page is all these other people that are collaborating together and their social media followings. I thought like, “Why are we operating in this world, whereas part of somebody’s bio, we share their Instagram followings? It doesn’t feel like it has any relevance and yet it’s being used in this way.” That makes me feel icky and simultaneously like, “Wellevatr’s 900 followers isn’t enough. You had to use our other accounts because it’s a much higher following.” That makes that more valuable on this page or whatever.

I think people are still conditioned to use vanity metrics as a sign of worth. One of the reasons that I have been backing away from the “influencer world” and doing a lot of social media is because I’m sick of the paradigm. People are like, “If you want to win, you’ve got to play the game.” Maybe you don’t want to play the game anymore. Maybe too many people are caught up in exactly what you’re talking about, which is leveraging vanity metrics and numbers in a macro sense to indicate the worthiness. If we’re in a group of people and it’s like, “Here are all these people. Here’s what they’ve done. Here’s the size of their followings.” Not only is it setting up the comparison trap instantly for people as if we need more of those late in our world, but I think a lot of people are caught in that paradigm. They’re still focused on what they perceive as an ROI or the glamor of association with the right people.

I’m growing tired of it. I had a negotiation process. This was early March 2020, right before the first quarantine and the first lockdown happened. I won’t name the brand. I don’t like to throw people under the bus. I don’t like to make a habit of it, especially publicly, but this brand, I was going back and forth with them on negotiation to appear on QVC. They wanted to fly me out to Florida. They wanted to train me and have me go on QVC to rep this brand and also do some YouTube, Instagram, and social media stuff. It was a hybrid. It was like a QVC promo being a spokesperson, combined with some social stuff. We’re going back and forth on the rate and I had someone advising me that you and I both know on what to do rate-wise.

The CEO of this company kept bringing up other influencers that he works with and how much he pays them and how much bigger they are than me. Therefore, I ought not to get paid for what I’m asking for. “The vlogger is getting $30,000 a month and here’s how big she is, so I can’t in good faith pay you that rate you’re asking for because you’re not as big as her and the scale doesn’t make sense.” I’m like, “Cool.” My mind is like, “How can I say, ‘No, thank you, but also fuck you?’” because of these mentalities that are damaging. He’s like, “I’m paying this much money and she’s got 1.5 million followers and you only have 50. There’s no way I’m going to pay you this.” The guy was an absolute dick. The more I get into conversations and sense that people are obsessed with vanity metrics and use those as a negotiating tool to not pay you what you think you’re worth, then I’m long gone from those conversations. I do not suffer fools anymore. I used to suffer fools. I don’t suffer anymore on that particular topic.

You should’ve seen the look on my face because it’s interesting to compare how we feel about ourselves. When we hear somebody else sharing these stories, I get immediately on the defense for you, Jason, because you’re talented and experienced. You are beyond your numbers. It’s easy for me to have self-worth issues and think, “My numbers aren’t that high compared to this or that so I can feel bad about myself,” but hearing these stories from somebody else makes me frustrated because it is true. It happens a lot. It’s going to continue happening for a while, even though we’re in this time where we’re trying to value people for more than their appearance. We should be valuing people for more than their gender, sexuality, race, age, all of these other factors.

Unfortunately, it’s been revealed to us in many different ways how as human beings, we keep coming back to some measurement in order to determine somebody’s worth. It’s a cultural thing. It’s a historic thing. We’ve been doing this in many different ways for many different reasons and it’s incredibly aggravating. As human beings, we’re trying to find a way to qualify things in a way there’s some innocence to it. There’s also the fact that people get used to these things. This becomes the norm. That’s why I would like to talk about this because it’s not like we are stepping away from that world is going to necessarily change anything for other people or if it does, it’s a slow process. We need masses of people protesting this and speaking up against this.

What came to mind is the times where actors have stood up for one another and said, “I deserve to get paid as much as somebody else.” They’ve shared these horrific stories about the differences in their wages between two different actors who are technically having the same amount of screen time and have as much talent and experience. Yet, they’re getting paid differently because maybe their agent was better at negotiating or maybe there was a perception that this person was more valuable. This thing happens all the time. It’s certainly not just within this influencer world. It’s also sad because it has negatively affected me that I don’t enjoy posting on social media as much as I used to.

This is something I’ve been reflecting a lot on and also rebelling against. I’m trying to go back to who I was and why I started when I started doing content creation back in 2008. I was doing that for fun, for joy, for the desire to make a difference, to educate people, be better educated myself, and connect with other like-minded people. It wasn’t about the numbers. I think the numbers have done us all a huge disservice. It’s not only challenged us in terms of our self-worth because for me, the number of times I’ve heard that my numbers aren’t high enough or I don’t deserve X, Y, Z because of my numbers, that have affected my self-worth, even on a logical level. I know that it shouldn’t. It’s the emotional effect of that type of rejection and qualification and this classism or whatever like how we want to say that somebody is better than someone else because of something superficial. It’s disturbing and it’s hard not to be affected by it.

It’s also caused me to struggle because when I don’t feel good enough, it’s hard for me to create. Creating has always been from the heart for me. When my heart hurts, when my heart feels weak, I don’t have as much heart strength to create an authentic way, and then my brain gets confused. I don’t know how to operate anymore. Am I operating out of this desire to please others and to prove myself? Am I operating out of a place of true authenticity? Does this feel like me? Does this feel like what I want to do? Does this feel like what somebody else thinks I should do and somebody else is suggesting to me? It becomes incredibly confusing. That’s coming back to me wanting to create a new name for myself, which is my own name, which is owning myself versus this old Eco-Vegan Gal name.

MGU 152 | COVID Thanksgiving

COVID Thanksgiving: We should be valuing people for more than their gender, their sexuality, their race, their age, and all of these other factors.

It’s bizarre that people insist on referring to me that way when I’m telling them, “No, I don’t want to be referred to that way. That’s not me anymore.” You might ask, “Why do I even keep the accounts there?” It’s because I see those accounts as a service to others. I see that my work with Eco-Vegan Gal was never about those metrics. My work with the Eco-Vegan Gal was about creating content to help people learn about veganism, eco-friendly living, and all the other elements of health and wellness I’ve covered. I’m not going to close that stuff down because that’s for them, but I do want to move into something different. This show is one of my greatest joys. I hope that eventually, as we cross this one-year mark, that people start to realize that this is what matters to us. This is where we want to put our efforts.

It is a tough thing because my perspective on it, I want to get back to talking about food again quickly because we set that precedent at the beginning, but in summary on this subject, social media metrics are another mechanism of training, like credit scores or bank accounts or what they’re doing in some Asian countries, in China in particular, they’re doing social credits. You have a social score. You have all these social accountability factors and then they give a score as a citizen of the nation. I don’t want to talk about any post-apocalyptic doomsday stuff. That’s not the point of what I’m saying, but there is a nefarious ultra-capitalist training that we have in many aspects of our life, from our value as influencers or content creators in terms of what we are to be paid based on our numbers or how someone perceives them.

Our creditworthiness, which to some degree, I get it. If people deem you risky, they don’t want to loan you money, but we are bound to numbers and we are psychologically obsessed with our hierarchical pecking order in a society that we think that the numbers are who we are. We think we are our credit score. We think we’re the number of zeros in our bank account. We think we’re the number of digits on our social media accounts. It becomes problematic when we intermesh those with our identity. If we can disassociate in a sense of the Sophie’s would say, “Be in the world, but not have it. I have a credit score, not I am my credit score. I have a social media account, not I am my social media accounts.” There’s a healthy level of disassociation that has to occur at some point because if we start to get pulled into the narrative, which is that these things make us who we are, that’s when things get dangerous.

That’s when our sense of self becomes extremely fragile because it’s dependent on these externalized measurements. Where I’m at is I feel like social media in some ways is not this innocent thing. It’s this psychologically nefarious thing that’s training us to feel good or bad about ourselves based on an arbitrary set of comparison metrics, much like these other systems in society. Do I think psychologically, we might feel better for being on it less? We go back to our many conversations. I endeavored to do that. I endeavored to use it less, use it more mindfully, and to keep disassociating my sense of self from it. I think mentally, that’s one of the healthiest things we can do.

—

I promise you that I was going to tell you more about the Consistency Code.

We launched this in 2019, right before the New Year. We had an incredible time with our clients and our friends and everyone who enrolled. For you, we have a special offer. It is a four-week video coaching program. The segments are pre-recorded, the whole cracks of the Consistency Code why we decided to put this together and have been promoting it. I am extending this to you as a special offer because it is going to help you find direction and develop the consistency that you need to stick with healthy, fulfilling habits as we found over and over again. Not only for ourselves but for the people we worked with. You can have all the aims, the goals, and the habits that you want, but if it is not consistent and you are not integrating it into your daily practice in a way that is sustainable, the compound benefit won’t be there. By being consistent, you start to prioritize your self-care. You start to improve your time management, you eventually boost your self-confidence. It is about creating self-discipline and the focus that you need to stick with healthy, fulfilling habits in 2021 and way beyond.

It is not about a New Year thing. This is about relandscaping consistent metrics in your life and frameworks that help you stick to what you say you are going to do. The consistency that we know is the key to everything like losing weight, getting physical and mental strength, making more mindful and healthy food choices, getting more energy in your life, and being more present. We talked a lot about presence and mindfulness. The Consistency Code in four weeks helps you to anchor all of those things. It is on special for $50. It ends on November 30th. We love you to join this program because it will give you the tools, the framework, and the perspectives that you need to gain that higher level of consistency in your life.

You can get this course at a special price of $50 which is 25% of what it normally costs you, plus you get a whole slew of other amazing programs in there as a bonus. You can sign up for this at Bundle.Wellevatr.com. You can also go to Wellevatr.com and find The Consistency Code. We made it super easy for you. We promise, if you can’t find this, send us a message and we will point you in the right direction. Make sure to do that before it ends on November 30th.

—

I’m looking forward to diving back into food because, Jason, I have to share with you that you might want to consider some other options for Thanksgiving, considering that you still have time to choose. Let’s say somebody is reading this the day before Thanksgiving, I wonder how many of these places would allow you to still order with that short amount of notice. I bet you a good amount of them. I found another great article from VegOut Magazine. That is all about where to pick up a vegan Thanksgiving in LA. It is making me hungry. Some phenomenal restaurants are on here. I’m not going to spend the time going through all of them, but I would say that the most exciting one I’ve seen on here, that surprised me because I associate them with a specific type of food. They even referenced this in the description and it says, “Isn’t this an Italian restaurant. It sure is,” but they’re offering all the classic Thanksgiving foods like Candied Brussels Sprouts, especially the Smoky Potato Chowder with Shiitake Bacon Bits. Who do you think this is?

That’s Pura Vita. I didn’t know that they were doing all these.

It says that you’re supposed to pick up the order on Wednesday. You might be able to sneak in an order at some of these places. Don’t give up hope if you’re a super last-minute planner. Although I imagine most of our readers are planners because we tend to think ahead on these things. We want to talk about these restaurants because, besides Thanksgiving, they’re phenomenal places to go. If you’re living in or visiting Los Angeles, Pura Vita is one of my top choices. Their pizza is the best gluten-free vegan pizza I’ve ever had aside from Verde, which we’ve talked about before in Baltimore. I want to put that out there, Jason. Speaking of food, did you finally get your Spark Change delivery box?

No. It may be at my mailbox though, so I need to visit. I haven’t been in many cars lately.

I’m sorry, I can’t wait any longer to talk about some of these products. I want to give them some shout-outs. There’s going to be a good number of shout-outs in this episode. If you go to Wellevatr.com, you will find this episode and you can see everything we’ve referenced. You can easily check them out online on social media, you can order things from them, whatever you’d like to do. As promised, I’m going to mention some brands that you can order throughout the United States online. You might even be able to get to different countries as well. If not, this exact brand, you can probably find a similar product because there are certainly amazing plant-based foods all over the world. What we are have referenced is a shipment of products we were each sent apparently, although Jason hasn’t even got his, which is weird, because mine was delivered in early November. There is a lot of amazing products there. One of the brands that I’m pretty sure you’ve tried before. Have you had Solely Fruit Jerky?

Getting proper tests done is really the best way to find out what your body's deficient in. Share on X

No. I know of its existence. I have not had it yet.

You are in for a major treat because they send an incredible box of every single one of their products. I’m not super into dried fruit in general, but I love these. Solely Fruit Jerky is that they have minimal amounts of ingredients so this is dried mango with chili and salt sprinkled on. That’s it. It’s good. The other one I liked is the pineapple and coconut. It’s those two ingredients. That one had a great texture. They also sent some that were drizzled with cacao. You’re going to love these, Jason. I can’t believe you haven’t tried them before.

It gives me more incentive to go to my mailbox and pick up my mail then because it’s probably there.

The other thing that I was like fascinated by is BUSH’s Best, the name of the company. Do you remember their baked beans? I think that’s what they’re known for.

I used to eat the hell out of those as a kid.

Those aren’t vegan, right?

No, I don’t think they call them vegan. They are vegan, but I think they call them vegetarian baked beans. They have a veggie version, but I don’t think they call it vegan. I think they call it vegetarian. If you spin it around and look at the nutrition facts panel, you’re like, “It’s also vegan.” Maybe they’re afraid to use the vegan word because it will alienate too much of their customer base.

They included their new Bean Chips, which were surprisingly satisfying. I loved the flavor. I like bean chips in general, but I remember looking at them thinking, “Am I going to be into these?” I was for sure. They’re all vegan ingredients, also included were tolerant foods, red lentil pilaf. That was one of the highlights of the box. I need to eat dinner because all this food talk is getting to my head. Two more things I wanted to shout-out were Lundberg, which you love. They have great rice products. They now have rice cake minis in some fabulous flavors, like an Apple Cinnamon. They sent three different flavors. One was a Buffalo Ranch that I was excited to see was vegan. Maybe it was a Buffalo sauce.

It’s the sauce that gives it the flavor.

That you would typically dip into ranch dressing so you could see why I made that connection. Those are good. Lastly, I already mentioned this, but The Republic of Tea sent a wonderful assortment of teas, including some holiday teas that were lovely. It was a great box. I can’t wait until you get it. The things I haven’t tried yet, which I also think I mentioned before is Flora’s Plant-based butter and the new Daiya cheese shreds, but you’ve tried those, Jason. Laura, your girlfriend, makes some incredible grilled cheese with them and then report back on what she used exactly.

It was Parmela Mozzarella. It was Violife Feta and it was the day of shreds on gluten-free seated bread with the Flora butter. It was ridiculous. It was top five grilled cheese all time. It is easy.

What bread? I thought you were going to check and see what bread it was too.

She brings a variety of bread over because she’s gluten-free, dairy-free so I don’t remember what brand of bread it was.

That’s disappointing to hear, but I’m excited to try that butter. I have to get mine because it’s stored in another fridge that I’m not allowed to access until after quarantine. Also, I wanted to give an update on Nutiva because they sent me over their new squeezable coconut oil, which I would say I wasn’t expecting to come in handy as it has because I noticed that I’d be cooking something and you need to get out like another utensil to dip it in. Let’s say a cooking spoon or spatula, if you use it in something else, you don’t want to dip it into a fresh jar of coconut oil. The squeezable pack has been insanely handy because you don’t have to dip anything in it.

MGU 152 | COVID Thanksgiving

COVID Thanksgiving: It’s been revealed to us through history how, in so many different ways as human beings, we keep coming back to some sort of measurement in order to determine somebody’s worth.

 

You just squeeze it out into whatever you need coconut oil in. I love that. They sent me the unrefined so it has that strong coconut flavor that I enjoy, but the product that I’ve been going crazy over is their Vegan Ghee, which is a combination of coconut avocado, turmeric, and these are oils, except for the turmeric powder. There’s maybe one other ingredient in there. They might use some natural flavors to give it almost that buttery ghee flavor. That is fabulous. It is good. I look for every excuse to put it on something. I’ve put it on gluten-free bread. I’ve put it into soups. I don’t know why but it adds a nice texture and flavor to the soup. I’m trying to find every reason to experiment with it.

It’s been exciting because I have never knowingly had ghee before I went vegan. I’m ordering Indian food and luckily this Indian restaurant marks their dishes as vegan or not. Sometimes you go to restaurant Indian restaurants, you need to tell them not to include ghee in the food. I probably had it before I went vegan, but never thought much about it. Ghee became this huge health trend. Now that I’m vegan, I’ve felt like I’ve missed out. Have you ever felt that way, Jason?

Maybe with only a few things. It’s rare for me to feel that way because I feel like there are many things that are abundant and delicious and amazing when you’re eating a plant-based lifestyle. There are few things that fall into that category for me. There might be a few French baked goods that fall in that category. For some reason, baked goods sometimes feel to me like, “If we only had a vegan version of blah-blah-blah.” For me, ghee is not one of those things I’m ever like, “I wish I had ghee.”

Another restaurant worth shouting out is Ladurée, which has brought a lot of our vegan pastry dreams to come true, which is neat. Every once in a while, you’ll go to a fancy restaurant and they’ll have incredible dishes. There are also places like VeganEssentials.com. They sent me a bunch of things for my road trip. That’s a great online shop to go to because they have pretty much any vegan food you could imagine on there and interesting things. Lastly, on the topic of vegan French food, Jason, remember that restaurant in New York City we went to.

It’s Delice & Sarrasin. It’s on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village.

That place is cool.

It has an adorable ambiance. The food is dope, but the ambiance is cool too.

I’m glad that they’re still doing well. It’s been tough to see restaurants go out of business during COVID because we’re all trying to support one another. That’s the other plus side to using Postmates for example, is I get to support all these restaurants versus making food at home. Certainly, it’s nice. It’s more economical. Often, it is a little bit more nutritious and less processed when you make food at home. A lot of these businesses do need our support, especially as 2020 is coming to a close. I think we’re going to go through another phase of people staying in more and trying to avoid COVID. Hopefully, more people will quarantine or maybe we’ll even be required to quarantine for a few weeks, maybe longer.

On that note, Jason, I’m curious, there have been a lot of rumors going around about the possibility of the entire country in the US going on lockdown. Have you thought much about that? Would you mind that? Are you going to prepare for that at all? What are your feelings if that happens? Do you feel like that’s a good thing and is that going to affect your life much? What would you do if you had to stay at home for another 4 to 6 weeks, as some people are speculating?

Physically, it’s not a stretch because I’m healing from my post motorcycle accident. I’m in recovery from surgery, so I can’t do much anyway. It requires a lot of energy for me to exert myself and do even basic things. I get exhausted doing simple things like cleaning the cat box or putting dishes away. I read that the Governor of California wants to impose phase three lockdowns, which are going to be similar to the original lockdown we had here in the State of California. From a perspective of physical needs, because I’m in recovery after surgery, it’s not that big of a deal for me to think about being indoors for 4 to 6 months. Mentally, it’s a different story. It is a combination of the time change where it’s getting dark at 5:00 PM here in Los Angeles, combined with feeling alienated from friends because of the COVID uptick and not being close to my family. My mom is in Detroit, my family’s there, and friends are being more cautious here for their own reasons. Mentally, it will be challenging because of the sense of physical alienation from the people I love during the holidays. I love the holidays. I’m not a psychopath. I don’t put $5 million decorations on my house. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I didn’t mean to imply that’s psychopathic behavior. Let me retract that.

I love being with the people I love over the holidays. It’s simple to me. Physically, a 4 to 6-week national lockdown, to me, wouldn’t be a big deal because of food, water, self-care, meditation. I can be indoors, but I’m a little bit worried psychologically about what it might do to me of not seeing the people I care about, especially during the holidays. I’m worried about feeling maybe a little lonely and disconnected from people. That’s where my worry comes from. I’m more worried about the mental side of all this than I am necessarily my own physical health. It’s not that I’m being reckless about my interactions, but my peace of mind, the fear of feeling super disconnected from people I love, that scares me more than anything else, the mental health side of this, to be honest with you.

That’s an important thing to address, and that’s a huge theme of our show. Even when we talk about seemingly light or superficial things like what food we enjoy, that’s a huge part of our mental health and wellbeing. As I’ve been self-quarantining and decompressing from my travels, I’ve gone through many ups and downs with how I’ve been feeling. Sometimes I feel energized, exhausted and burnt out. Sometimes I want to sleep for ten plus hours. Sometimes I sleep seven hours and wake up feeling rested. It’s been all over the place for me. I would say that food is the one thing that I get excited about and look forward to. It’s important to address why we talk about these things, why we love food. Having something wonderful to enjoy and look forward to is important to me when I’m feeling low. Having Thanksgiving to look forward to, soon Christmas as I celebrate, and maybe even New Year’s, which feels simultaneously exciting and daunting, it’s creating this environment where I can thrive and making sure that I have what I need to feel my best. Do you feel that way with food as well when you’re struggling? Does food help you cope? Does food help you feel better?

I think it does. The more mindful I am of what I’m putting in my body, it has an absolute effect on my mental state and my physical state. The fact that I’m super weak and in recovery, we had a gluten-free probiotic nan with this cauliflower squash soup with a little bit of gomashio on top. It is the simplest thing in the world, but that soup and it was nutrient-dense. I remember saying to Laura, I could feel the joy returning into my body for the first time in a long time. I haven’t felt a lot of joy since I had my accident. I felt a lot of pain and suffering. It’s been hard. To have that meal, I had two moments. One was the meal where I could feel joy in my body through the food, which was amazing to experience. I was hanging out with my cats and my dog, they were all laying in the sunshine.

We've got to be willing to change. We've got to be willing to evolve. Share on X

I had this moment of feeling so much love for them and gratitude. I think food, companionship, and togetherness are the things that are nourishing to us on a physical and mental level. When we are deprived too much of those things, it can be detrimental to our health. To echo what you’re saying, I’m trying to eat nutritious food because it makes me feel good in my body. I want to feel good in my body. I want to feel joy, excitement, a sense of peace again. It’s a long road integrating those emotions back into my body, but that meal, it was the first time. I had a joyful moment with food for a long time and it felt good.

There’s joy in food and many benefits to it as well. I get excited when something tastes good and makes my body feel good. I also simultaneously try not to be too rigid about the nutritional benefits. This comes back to intuitive eating, which I’ve been observing within myself since I started reading about that, which was either at the end of 2019 and/or the beginning of 2020 when I was starting to open my eyes to anti-dieting culture and intuitive eating and all these different perspectives. I have been healing for me, given my history with disordered eating, that idea around eating what I want and not second-guessing at as I have.

For instance, I had a craving for Indian food and it felt good to go on Postmates and find an Indian place that I don’t think I’ve ever been to order from there. I’m excited and anticipating it. It feels like a reward, even though I don’t like to look at food in terms of a reward. It’s nice when you have that to look forward to and you get to relax. I like to watch a TV show or a movie when I eat. That feels peaceful to me. I’m hoping I have some extra food leftover for a snack or a meal and to savor it. As I’m sharing this, I’m looking forward to it. I hope that I have a Thanksgiving experience to look forward to and the same for the readers.

That whole process alone brings me joy and relief versus the times where I’ve been super rigid about what I’ve been eating. Yet, at the same time, I’m also going to, at some point, ease myself back into some more different level of mindful eating. I struggle with a lot of food sensitivities and they’ve been bad. I haven’t mentioned this to you, Jason, but something I’ve been eating and I don’t know what it is, or maybe something is going on with my body. That’s not specific to a certain ingredient, but I’ve been getting weird acute hives after eating foods. I don’t know what it is. I’ve been starting to track my food simply observing when I eat something, how long it takes. Almost after everything I eat, 30 minutes later, I will experience itchy skin and light hives that last for about ten minutes and then go away. I’m experimenting with eliminating certain foods to see if that’s the culprit, I’m getting more regimented with taking probiotics, drinking more water.

I’m going back into this detective work around food, which causes me a bit of stress. It helps to ease my way in and not look at food as an enemy, even when it is affecting me this way and knowing that I’ve been through this before. I’ve been struggling with food sensitivities for many years, if not my entire life. That’s why it’s important to find joy in it because sometimes our bodies go through changes and we don’t understand them. We can feel scared or out of control. I’m always seeking more of a balanced relationship with food and not letting it rule me or affect me, but looking at it as something that makes me feel good.

We always talk about how we view life as an ongoing experiment. What worked for you years ago might not necessarily work for you now in terms of your dietary choices, the products that you’re using, depending on how your body is evolving and aging. It’s interesting, you bring this up, Whitney, and I’m glad that you’re being vulnerable about your skin issues to echo back a concern that I had been dealing with for a few years. I’ve mentioned this a few times, my battle with eczema, and interestingly enough, once I cut out all powders in my life, protein powders, collagen boosters, spirulina, chlorella, any powdered nutritional boosters like I would put in my smoothies, my oatmeal, my chia porridge. If you all have been longtime fans, you all know I used protein powders, spirulina, chlorella, goji powder, all that stuff like crazy. I’ve often been criticized in my career for using “too many superfoods.”

Before the pandemic, this was maybe February. I remember eliminating those things from my diet. Legitimately, I have not had a knock on wood an eczema breakout since the beginning of the pandemic. I’ve had a few tiny little flare-ups, but it’s nothing like it was. It was horrifying. It was to the point where I was like bleeding, scabbing and couldn’t sleep. Interestingly, talking about the elimination diet, once I removed all those protein powders, superfoods, like powdered stuff, it has not come back at all, which to me is fucking miracle.

That’s part of the detective work I mentioned, you can go the route of working with a medical professional, which is the ideal way to go. It does often take more time and money to do that, and you can get all tests done. You can also do some research on it. I will say it’s been tough figuring mine out because it seems like no matter what I eat, I have this reaction, which makes me think maybe something’s off with my gut. Maybe I ate something and it’s having an ongoing effect and other food is agitating it. There are many questions here and I’ve been through this before. One thing that was great for me was something called the low histamine diet.

I’ve had food sensitivities for so long. That was one of the closest I ever got to feeling like it was a nice ideal diet for me, but also the vegan keto diet, which I wrote a whole book on that made me feel great. I’m thinking I want to go back to eating more of that way. I don’t want to be strict when it comes to keto. We had a guest on and we were talking about counting carbs. Some people will only have 20 total net carbs a day, which is extreme for me. I was more in the 50 total net carbs a day, but even that felt limiting. I look at it as more of a moderate carb and only eating certain carbs if I want them. To me, it’s almost like combining vegan keto and intuitive eating together.

I’m not going to be strict if I want to have a sweet potato or rice, I will. I know that I tend to feel better eating lower carb. I don’t know if that’s going to bring my body back to a better place. I’m not quite sure what’s going on at the moment and I’m not going to pretend to know. These subject matters are interesting because if you share them with other people, other people want to give their advice and say this or that works. I think an interesting subject matter as we start to wrap up this episode, Jason, is how coming back to social media, you could share something about your health, and people will chime in with their opinions, even when you’re not asking for them. They’ll make a lot of bold statements about what you should and shouldn’t do. Suddenly, you’ve got all this conflicting advice from people.

I’ve gone down that road. That’s why intuitive eating has started to feel a good thing for me is I can combine different pieces of advice, my experiments, my personal research and my previous experience with eating by simply tuning into what feels good and right for me. Unless there’s a huge medical urgency, I don’t need to go and seek out the advice of a professional. I can do a lot of this stuff on my own. If I need to, I can consult with somebody and do a blood test of you. As you’ve talked about many times, Jason, getting proper tests done is the best way to find out what your body is deficient in, or if you’re struggling with something, as opposed to throwing darts at a dartboard with a blindfold on.

It’s supercritical. For all of us to get the individual picture of exactly what our body needs, it is this meeting of intuition and science. What you brought up, Whitney, is great because to get a blood panel test on, then you have a snapshot of what’s happening with your internal physiology. There are food allergies and sensitivities we’ve talked about in this episode. This is an ongoing thing. If you’re a mindful, sensitive person who wants to be healthy and thrive, this is an ongoing journey that has no end. I believe there’s not a point we arrive to where it’s like, “This is exactly how I’m eating for the rest of my life.” Some people may feel that way.

I’m sure there are going to be more tweaks to come with my lifestyle and my diet as I go on, as I’m sure there will be with you. There is some hybrid between science and intuition, trusting our bodies, listening to our bodies, experimenting, not being too attached to the outcome we want. We’ve got to be willing to change. We’ve got to be willing to evolve, even if we have to nash our teeth because there have been many things like, “That thing I want to eat, but I know when I eat it. It makes me feel like shit. I’m not going to eat it. I’m going to kick and scream a little while, but there will be a day where I don’t miss it anymore.” That’s the thing I’ve found is anything that I have been irritated that I’m missing.

MGU 152 | COVID Thanksgiving

COVID Thanksgiving: Food, the right companionship, and togetherness are the things that nourish us on a physical and mental level.

 

Once I start to build consistent new habits of eating better things that serve my body better, I tend to not miss the old stuff. Once I get into a flow of consistency of eating meals and foods and things that make me feel good, it’s almost like I stopped lamenting all of this stuff that I used to miss. It’s got to be that consistent practice of eating what makes my body feel good, getting a blood panel test, listening to my intuition, experimenting with new things. That’s every single day. When we talk about consistency, that doesn’t mean like, “Maybe I’ll be mindful once a week.” No. It’s every day, every single meal. That may sound vigilant, but I personally believe if you want to feel your best, you do have to be that mindful and vigilant.

I’m glad that you brought up too about eliminating certain things from your diet in order to see how it makes you feel. I’m noticing and I’m suspecting that one of the things that are irritating me is chocolate. I’ve been through this before, as I mentioned, this low histamine diet. When I first experimented and discovered that in 2016, chocolate was one of those things I had to remove. It was a huge bummer. I am scared that chocolate is causing some of these reactions, but I also wouldn’t be surprised because I’ve noticed some food sensitivities to chocolate for many years. I started experimenting with carob as an alternative, and I was trying all these.

You took it all the way back to 1983 with that one. That was some early ‘80s health food store shit right there.

I’m curious to see where that is at right now. Is there another option that serves as an alternative to chocolate besides carob? It isn’t bad. It’s not the same to your point. It also reminds me of the times when I tried to find a lot of coffee alternatives, which carob can be used as a coffee alternative and even cacao. I’ve tried a lot of different things and they did not taste the same. I was so grateful. I decided to go back to drinking coffee. I love coffee and that doesn’t seem to bother me. Although, I haven’t looked up to see if that’s considered okay, if that’s “allowed” on the low histamine diet. You can read all these rules about keto, low histamine, paleo, high carb, and low carb. There are all these different diets that you can experiment with, but I’ve always found that if one of them calls to me, I look at the guidelines, and then I use the intuitive side of it. For example, if I find out that coffee is “not a lot on a low histamine diet,” I’ll still drink it anyway because I think it feels good to me. I don’t think that’s the culprit. I would rather have coffee, Jason, than chocolate, believe it or not.

That is where you and I differ. That is where you and I take up opposite ends of the fight. I’m team chocolate all the way. Coffee, I could take or leave, but to each their own. I also had a piece of chocolate. I mentioned this in a previous episode that I haven’t been craving sugar as much. I’ve essentially not been craving sugar at all. It was good chocolate. I had a piece of it and my reaction to it was like, “Who are you now? What do you mean meh? That’s your response to this chocolate. Who are you becoming? We don’t even know you anymore.”

—

This would normally be the time that we do a brand shout-out but in this episode, we are going to shout-out ourselves, which is not something we do often. Technically, this episode is sponsored by us, with our program The Consistency Code. We have mentioned it a few times in this episode. I want to remind you again because you might be out daydreaming, multitasking, or you may not have sat down to be considerate. We want to let you know one last time to check out this incredible sale that we are part of. It is The Plant-Based Bundle, we have the Consistency Code in there. Normally, it’s $195 to participate in this program but it is only $50. Plus, you will get $2,000 worth of other amazing programs. If you are interested in The Consistency Code, we encourage you to check it out. You can click at Bundle.Wellevatr.com. Jason is going to close out this little self-promotion with a song. What have you got for us, Jason? It should be even better than the one that you sang before, though that was good.

We need to have a good theme song like, “The Consistency Code, The Consistency Code. If you are young or you are old, you got to feel real both, whether it is hot or it’s cold. The Consistency Code, you got the goals you want to do but you don’t know where to turn to, you’ve got Consistency Code.” Again, that’s Bundle.Wellevatr.com.

You reminded me of Adam Sandler. You did that on the spot. You did not practice this. This is improv.

I prepared nothing.

That’s impressive.

—

Rather than lamenting my travails with chocolate and things that I miss from years of your, it sounds dramatic. I’m sure I’ll love chocolate again. I’m sure that I will integrate it back in. My whole thing is listening to my body and being consistent with the principles that Whitney and I talk about. The thing that we try to do is practice. The reason it’s called the practice is because the programs and the courses and the things that we offer are things that we employ in our life. You’re never going to hear us talk about things that we haven’t thought about experimented with practice or moreover use consistently in our lives. Even though I’m lamenting, “I don’t like chocolate,” and it’s a minor thing, but I’m realizing that the thing that I’m wanting to be consistent with and be on it is with listening with my body.

Most days, it’s not asking for a lot of food. It’s asking for ultra nutrient-dense foods, small portions, easily digestible, don’t eat to close before bedtime, and tons of water. I’m eating almost like, I don’t want to say monk-like, it’s not quite that level of minimalism, but I’m definitely in this consistent mode of eating minimal list. That’s how I feel I like it. I like the simpler meals. I like the fewer ingredients. I feel like on the other side of this whole thing, this whole experience that I’m in from healing from my accident, I’m going to be minimizing my life in different ways. This is a tangent because I know we’re getting to the end of this episode but I rewatched a documentary called Minimalism. It reinspired me to be like, “I want to eat simpler. I want to live simpler. I want to reduce my material load. I want to have lower overhead.” I’m in a mode where I’m examining how I can simplify many aspects of my life, not just my food.

That minimalism video inspired a purchase I made once. I’ll give one more brand shout-out for that amazing carry on bag that I have called Pakt. This episode had nothing to do with this, but since you brought that up, I’m going to shout it out because we love promoting brands that we love. That bag is phenomenal. I brought it with me on my road trip and I didn’t use it that much on the road trip because it didn’t serve the right purpose for my car and camping. What I did use it for was holding all of the things that I didn’t access often. I had a bunch of things that I didn’t need during my camping experiences, but I would use when I arrived at my parents’ house. I fell in love with that bag all over again so I did a whole video on it.

Look for elements of comfort, whether that's food or connection right now. Share on X

I don’t know this stillness and this opportunity. If we are going to have a national lockdown, as we mentioned for the holidays, maybe it’s an opportunity for us all collectively to face things that are uncomfortable. If you think about all the distractions that have been stripped away at various points, sports, going out to movie theaters, live music, eating out at restaurants, which is coming back and forth and maybe going away again. Also, being able to see family and friends. There are a lot of distractions and things that we carry our bodies through this physical world doing. By virtue of having all of these events and these actions stripped away or made less available to us, not that they’re not completely, but the considerations involved, maybe we get to sit with ourselves and we get to sit with our painful thoughts.

We get to sit with our uncomfortable thoughts, our addictions, our mental health issues, and our shit. I certainly am taking this time to just sit with myself and see what comes up. To be honest, this might be for our next episode is like, “What’s been coming up for you during quarantine?” Sit and be with yourself a lot. It’s too much because we’re at the end of this episode, but there’s been a lot of stuff that I’ve been avoiding. It’s almost life is like, you can’t run from looking at these things anymore. You can’t run from your material addictions, your lack of self-worth, your lack of self-love, how much you beat yourself up.

You can’t run from the dissatisfaction you feel in your career anymore. It’s hardcore. If anything, yes, it’s important to look for elements of comfort, whether that’s food or connection, but I also don’t want people to run away from doing the hard work, because if you’ve got shit coming up in your life to deal with, you’ve got to deal with it. This is not going to be a period where we stuff it away and ignore it. I’m saying that as a pep talk and a beacon of hope because I am going through my own mess of sorting through my emotions and perspectives on things. If you are too, we always love to hear from you. You’re not in this alone. We do this show partially to let you know what’s going on in our lives but to offer some hope that whatever you’re struggling with, you’re not struggling with it by yourself.

If you want to shoot us an email, our email is [email protected]. We’re on all the social media networks. Thank you to all the new followers on Instagram. We love you and welcome you. We’ll be posting more content there soon. You can follow us on all the social media networks, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, TikTok, and Twitter. With that, we always appreciate you getting uncomfortable with us, learning with us, growing with us, evolving, experimenting, failing, starting over the whole enchilada that makes this human experience what it is. We thank you. We love you. We’ll be back with another episode soon.

 

Important Links

*We use affiliate links in our show notes. This means we receive a small sales commission if you purchase an item based on our recommendation.

 

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

Join the This Might Get Uncomfortable community today: