What the Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know | Melissa Hartwig on Health Theory

hey everybody welcome to health theory today's guest is melissa hartwig she's the multiple time new york times best-selling author of whole30 food freedom forever and several others she's a former drug addict who turned her life around nearly 20 years ago and has since channeled her energies into helping millions of people change their relationship with food she's been so successful at that that the entire food industry is now being shaped by her influence and she's partnered with hundreds of brands to make foods that are whole 30 compliant that's pretty extraordinary as somebody who is a part of the food industry i know how hard it is to get people to change but what i want to start with is the impact that you're having on people at like a really personal level yeah and one thing that i found really intriguing researching you is that you buy flowers for yourself once a week i do why yeah it's kind of something that i've been known for always buy yourself flowers i'm a big advocate for self-care it's not all pedicures and treat yourself and like spending money on things you don't have and eating food that makes you feel like crap afterwards like those are not actually forms of self-love i like the idea of doing something that it's just for the sake of making you happy flowers make me so happy to see a fresh bunch sitting on my table and i'm just a big advocate for finding things in your life that bring you joy and make you feel like you're taking good care of yourself why do you think that's so important and why do you think people struggle with it so much i think this idea of self-love and self-care has been featured around this like through the media through advertising you know this decadence and this luxury and like well we know you can't afford it but like treat yourself or you know the woman like lying in bed just feeding yourselves chocolate and like that's a form of self-care but we all know now where that gets us right it's this feeling of like pleasing in the moment in the moment it satisfies but then there's guilt and then there's shame and then there's stress that results in that and that stress leads to further over consumption of the thing that we're getting into trouble in the first place whether it's spending money or drugs or food or whatever i love your notion that there is a bs type of self-love that isn't really self-love and you've gone on your instagram feed i thought it was really cool you listed out all these things that you were just talking about where it's like that's not really self-love it's not really self-love yeah so how do you help people find that thing that is for them the correlate for you of buying flowers i talk about food a lot because food is the foundation of the whole 30 but whether it's food or shopping or whatever it is you use for that like in the moment numbing or self self um coping skills or uh to relieve anxiety to relieve boredom like it's not actually about the thing right very often it's about what you think that thing represents for you and if you are able to through therapy through self-analysis through something like the work by byron katie whatever your practice is maybe it's through a whole30 where you're just increasing your awareness around some of these issues and your emotional relationship with this thing if you're able to step back and say what am i actually looking to fulfill in this moment right like the idea of buying myself a really expensive piece of jewelry is fine but what i really want is just to like feel like i treated myself a little bit and see something pretty and i can accomplish that just as well with a bunch of flowers very often people who are buying things or eating things or drinking things aren't actually looking for the thing they're really missing some form of connection and so i talk about kind of that substitute of like it's not about the cookie it's about the connection and you know could you get this feeling that you're looking for by reaching out to somebody going you know for a walk meeting somebody for coffee i think a lot of it is just about pausing it's about awareness it's about connecting with someone else and having these conversations and then you you have to actually learn other ways to self-soothe because so many of these behaviors have been ingrained you know since we were like kids you went through arguably the most dramatic kind of learning a new way to self-sue that i can imagine going from using drugs to getting off of that yeah what was that process like and then what were some of the actual real mechanisms that you learned that you're still using yeah so the process was incredibly long because just stopping using drugs is nowhere near enough to actually lead like a fulfilling life and to be far away from your addiction what do you mean by that oh so so many of our practices around addiction and recovery are focused on just not doing the thing right so when i was in rehab i was chain smoking cigarettes and drinking all the caffeine and eating all the sugar but i wasn't doing heroin so i was doing better um my first stint out of rehab i was clean for a year and then went back to it and you think like wow you have a year how do you go back after a year of it's because all i had done in my life was just stopped using drugs i hadn't like changed enough about my life about my mindset about my self-worth or how i thought about myself so all i did was stopped using drugs and like that's not enough when i went back the second time and kind of on my own volition and cleaned myself up that's when everything changed and by that i mean i changed everything i adopted a growth mindset that i was a healthy person with healthy habits i changed my friends i changed where i hung out i changed the clothes i wore i changed the music i listened to there were just so many aspects of my life that i knew had to completely change so that i could shore up the fact that i was no longer using with all of these like buffers so that if the stress came or if the temptation came i had all of these like defense mechanisms built in and i discovered now in hindsight that like i stopped using drugs and started shoring up my self-worth and self-value but i was using food really similarly to the way that i use drugs and then when i kind of got my food stuff in line through the whole 30 i realized i was kind of using like money and shopping the way i used to use drugs and it was really through an enormous amount of like therapy and analysis and connection and like just digging everything out of the box and throwing it out into the light and being willing to look at it that i was able to get to a place now where i feel like i'm recovered talk to me more about the growth mindset and the way that you referred to the growth mindset earlier i find really intriguing which i forget the exact words you said but it was something like um not i choose to be happy but you were like i am healthy i eat healthy or something like that um i read uh a study in a book can't remember what book but it talked about kids and cheating younger kids and cheating in school and in tests and long story short what they figured out is that the kids who said i don't cheat versus the kids who said i am not a cheater those who adopted the idea that they were not a cheater actually cheated less when given the opportunity and i read this a long time ago and it really fit in with this idea of growth mindset being the key to kind of everything that we often think that our traits are fixed i'm not athletic i'm not the smart one i'm not the outgoing one i'm not the funny one and like those traits are fixed and set whereas growth mindset is you know i can change and i can grow and i can develop new skills and new habits and and flex my personality and like become whoever i want to become so kind of combining those two ideas this idea of i am a healthy person right it's not i'm going to eat healthy or i'm going to go to the gym it's i'm a healthy person and so i was able to frame all of my behaviors and decisions around this central notion that i am a healthy person so when it came time to you know am i going to go out with my friends knowing that they're going to be like out super late drinking and i'm not going to drink with them but i'm still going to be tired and like does this fit my notion that i'm a healthy person and sometimes the answer is yes sometimes it's the social benefit i get from that interaction is going to outweigh that i'm going to be tired the next morning but it gives me like a framework a linchpin something to hold on to when i'm thinking about decisions and actions like is this going to serve me i am a healthy person will this serve me and so i i created that and kind of clung to that it's been incredibly helpful for me going forward in every aspect of like my career and my personal growth and motherhood and um just everything that's really incredible talk to me a little bit about what you were saying um you said that you're going through this process and you're having to pull all of this out and really look at everything how do you transform that into tactics like i know when you went through one of your book tours you would already split with your husband but you guys decided to do it together you're a new mom like you said it was one of the most stressful times in your life how exactly did you cope with that and get through everything like in that moment for many people that struggle with addiction that would have been an easy time to slip back so what were those buffers that you had in place i'm a huge fan of therapy any form whatever you happen to like find take what you like i've done you know traditional talk therapy cognitive behavioral therapy i've gone through the work with a trained therapist i've seen i spent time with the shame and shaman i saw someone who read my tarot cards like i've you know worked with an energy healer like i will try anything and everything in an effort to just sort of like feel like i'm healing from an emotional and psychological and spiritual level but i took everything i learned into practice and what was very helpful at that moment was the work by byron katie this idea that it is not the experience that is stressing us out it is our reaction to the experience and i decided to put that into practice during that time frame and realize that i could still choose in this moment to be happy that i was going through something really stressful that it was public that it was emotionally challenging and draining and i was physically tired but i could still choose to find the moments of like happiness and joy in my day talk to me about how even in the middle of a storm you can choose to be happy well byron katie and the work has been incredibly important to me she essentially kind of asks your it's the idea of differentiating what's happening from your story about what's happening right so we're here having this conversation and like you make a funny face and my story about it is oh he didn't like that answer i better change it when really like you just got a calf cramp or something like that you know if i can tell myself a story about a situation i can just as easily tell myself a happy one as a sad one so the story was you know going through this divorce and it was very difficult and it was very stressful but my story was oh my gosh all the things that i thought i had like given up on the idea of having in a marriage right like well you know my marriage just isn't like this and he's just not like that and i guess i can live without these things like i can have those things now and that was an incredibly freeing thought and it really helped me kind of move on from being stuck in like grieving what i had to being hopeful and optimistic about where my life was going i knew it was the right decision we both did and i just chose to tell myself a different narrative about it what do you say to people that said well you're just lying to yourself in any given situation i think you can still choose how you respond to it and i think it's you know the the stressful thoughts that come up i still question them always can i find this can i find some truth in this so you know a difficult situation where somebody says you know you weren't there for me or you're being really selfish the first thing i do is always ask myself can i find it is this true and if i can find it then i can at least acknowledge like you're right i can see ways that i haven't been selfish i'm really sorry about that but at the same time i'm not running off with it adopting that as part of my self-worth i'm a selfish person and i'm no good and i need to put everything in my life on hold to accommodate this person so there's there's certainly a practicality about it but there's also the acknowledgement that i do have a choice and how i want to see this and view it and if i can make a choice that makes my life that much better why wouldn't i do that i love what you said about self-worth talk to me more about that so from what you said it sounded like you see your self-worth as something that you construct maybe partly from a story that you're telling yourself about yourself but what are elements that you do let become part of your self-narrative and your self-worth i think very often and i fell prey to this for a very long time our self-worth comes from the stuff that we like do or have i'm a fit i'm fit i exercise i run my own business i'm a single mom i um eat healthy like i am successful at my job whatever those things are the danger in that is that if those go away like who am i right maybe i break my leg and i can't go to the gym anymore or you know maybe something happens at work and i'm not as successful in my position so what i had to do a really long time ago was figure out who i where my self-worth comes from and but it's the things you can't take away i'm generous that's part of my self-worth i give i like to give a lot to my community and if i have something to offer and you ask me for help i want to give that to you um i'm considerate i think of my friends and and empathetic and i've had to work very hard at being empathetic it does not come naturally to me but i've worked hard at it and i think i'm really good at it now and that's part of my self-worth and these are all things that again can be part of my growth mindset i wasn't naturally empathetic but i worked at it and now i think i'm very good at it but there are also things that nobody can take away it doesn't matter what my life looks like whether i'm homeless or a billionaire or successful in my job or you know can't find it it doesn't matter i can still be all of these things and those are the characteristics that i identify with myself worth now it's extraordinary um i want to dive into that notion of um as you're trying to pull yourself out of that and you're determining what are going to be the things that you're going to make part of you and you realize i value empathy but i don't have empathy how do you train that like that seems so impressive to me and i i really think people are going to hear that and resonate and be like but how do i yeah go down yeah i mean i didn't have empathy for other people because i had little empathy for myself i saw emotion as weakness i saw expression of emotion especially as weakness gosh i went through a period of time where like you would never get through to me you only saw whole30 melissa and she was perfect um and so you know if i don't have empathy for myself in them as some of those situations it's impossible for me to actually connect with somebody else about their situations and if i wasn't willing to be authentic and like show up authentically whether it be a one-on-one conversation or with my social media community obviously i wouldn't be able to connect with anyone so i had to learn empathy for myself i had to be okay with the fact that like i wasn't perfect and that came pretty quickly and easily and it was a real relief to shed whole30 melissa and just show up as me that part was easy but i had to get comfortable with the idea that like it's okay to express your emotions and it's okay not to have it all figured out and it's okay to share that with people that you love and it's okay to ask for help that was a big one you know it's okay to let people like support you and shore you up and once i did that with myself i found it so much easier to offer that to other people because if of course you don't have it all figure out nobody does i don't either and of course you need help sometimes so do i so you know any anything i offer to anybody else has always had to come through me first that makes a lot of sense you talk a lot about connection which i really love talking about somebody who's writing books about food but that in that is always this like you need to connect you need to connect i was reading one of your posts and it was about food but like your your last piece of advice was repeated three times connect with other people connect with other people and i thought wow that's so interesting yeah what what makes that so powerful i think um especially in today's age of social media and where so much is done online we feel more connected than ever i'm on three different accounts i'm you know messaging people i haven't seen since high school i maintain entire relationships including with the people i'm closest to like my you know partner and parents and sister via text message i rarely get on the phone i'm rarely facetiming unless it's with my child i think we feel really connected but we're less connected than ever there's no proxy for this in person social connection the stress meeting mediating effects the oxytocin boosting effects just how good it feels to actually connect and you know we learn skills like empathy through this connection through mimicry and through reading body language and facial expression and the less we do of that i think the more disconnected we feel and the more disconnected we feel the more likely we are to turn to some of these other behaviors as a way to like self-soothe or cope or fill a hole so i encourage people to connect for a couple reasons one shame and guilt like live in the dark secrets live in the dark for me to show up to somebody in my life and say like i'm really in debt let me tell you about what's going on with my finances or gosh i made a huge mistake at work or whatever it is we're feeling ashamed about or uncomfortable that's incredibly powerful for us to move through them i think we're denying ourselves the stress-mediating impact of being one-on-one especially when we're trying to make really big changes like changing our diet which is hard and emotional and and really intimidating for a lot of people why wouldn't you want to share your experience with that with someone else and ask for their support and allow them to support you yeah now that makes a ton of sense so really fast because i want to talk you're one of the most extraordinary examples to me of like the human ability to change and i want to talk about it in the framework of how you help people go through whole30 so like super fast give us the what is whole30 what are the rules and then i want to talk about your process for helping people actually make those radical changes yeah so i describe whole30 like pushing the reset button with your healthier habits and your relationship with food so we're not a diet we're not a quick fix we're not a weight loss program we're not even prescriptive the basis of the whole30 is that there are foods that are in your diet maybe even the healthy stuff that could be having a negative effect on how you look and how you feel in your quality of life and the best way to know how these foods work for you is to pull them out of your diet for 30 days and then reintroduce them one at a time very carefully and systematically like an experiment so you know all the dietitians say there is no perfect one-size-fits-all diet and i agree but everybody then says okay cool like how do i figure out what works for me whole30 is how you figure out what works for you you do this 30-day experiment where you eliminate really commonly problematic foods things like added sugar alcohol grains beans peas soy and most forms of dairy you pull them out reintroduce them one at a time after the 30 days is up and then you compare your experience and that's what lets you figure out how those foods are working for you okay that makes sense so you've talked about like making sure that you prepare and that you're really committed and don't go into it like half ass what what is the process of making grand change in your life habit i mean from my perspective at least in the research i've done habit research actually shows that black and white rules are easier for the brain to follow the idea of moderation is very difficult for many of us especially when you're talking about foods that are designed to be over consumed like sugar it's really hard to moderate the thing that is constantly making you kind of crave more so the rules are very black and white and there's a lot of practical advice we give to people going into it so it's you know announce your commitment to someone i'm doing the whole 30 and i'm starting on this date because that accountability and support is going to be huge for you seeing the commitment through do some planning and preparation so clean out your pantry even though right now you feel super jazzed about the program and you're like i'm not even going to want the chocolate future you is going to be so happy that you got rid of it when the cravings hit so you know do some of this basic prep do some meal prep but i'm also talking about things like how to talk to friends and family about your intentions here because you might be surprised to find that the people who should be supporting you the most get really defensive or really critical of you trying to make these changes and if you're not prepared for that it can really throw you off your game and i'm talking about thinking about potentially stressful or difficult situations and creating a plan for how you're going to handle them and thinking about what will i do in the absence of these foods that i used to use to comfort or reward or self-soothe like what else could i do and making a list and kind of in the beginning literally going through your list of things when you feel like you're tempted and don't want to give in to that craving so there's a lot of psychological stuff that you should do to prepare for something like this too because it's it's about food but it's not really about food why are people defensive about changes you're making to your diet i think it's a couple things it's in part because they think they should be doing better too and they don't have the motivation to do it and it's almost like i'm doing it why can't you do it right you make people feel a little bit bad maybe you were there like binge food buddy maybe every time you guys went to brunch it was like i don't want the pancake i don't want the pancake well maybe we could share it and they're afraid they're going to lose that right and then they're going to be you know the only one who has to make the decision about ordering the pancake or not ordering the pancake it's very emotional sometimes people get very attached to their sounds weird they get attached to their disease or their condition to the point where you suggesting that you might be able to improve your symptoms with dietary intervention is almost like a threat to them because they've been so attached and conditioned to it and they like the idea that this is something that happened to them and to accept the idea that they can improve symptoms with diet also means accepting that maybe their symptoms became worse because of some of their dietary and lifestyle factors and that's a tough pill to swallow um there are a lot of reasons but they're almost all emotional and you're never gonna win an emotional argument with logic so how do you win an emotional argument like so i know you get asked this all the time and this is one of the questions i get most asked when i talk about the changes that i made in my own life from a diet perspective is inevitably there's someone that you love very much and you know that they're making choices that are going to end their life quite frankly far too soon but yeah if you just try to like hey you should change that it's obviously counterproductive so how do you begin to have those so you know stages of change model like pre-contemplation if you don't think there's a problem there's nothing i can do to do to convince you that there's a problem right and if so if at that point you know if that's where we are where you don't understand why you would need to change your diet at all the only thing i can do is lead by quiet example that's it if they're in the stage where they're contemplating making the stage or maybe even the change or maybe even preparing but just not pulling the trigger yet very often what you'll see are people saying i would do the whole 30 but like i i don't have time to meal prep that much or i would do the whole 30 but i don't have time to grocery shop three times a week and what you you're going to want to intuitively do is answer that with a solution oh i'll mail prep for you i'll grocery shop for you i'll create a list for you but invariably what happens is they just come back with another excuse because they're presenting something that sounds very logical but it's really emotional and at that point in the conversation i find the most helpful thing to say is what about this makes you like nervous then what you're doing is you're opening up a dialogue and whether that actually leads to them making the change or not what you're not doing is trying to like force feed logic down their throat when they really need to have an emotional conversation you're getting to that thing that you were talking about earlier where it's there's something under the surface and the struggle that i've had is how do we ever get the change in behavior if we're locked in like an identity battle right like the person is associated with whatever's going on in their life and um and this is a big one and i'd love to hear your take on this like i deserve to be able to eat this that's something that i've combated a lot like it's not fair that i can't eat this and i work so hard or i've gone through so much um how do you handle that i deserve it it really goes like all the way back to the to how you're thinking about this dietary intervention from the beginning so if you're thinking about a program like the whole 30 or whatever healthy reset you're doing if you're thinking about it like a diet like through the diet lens which is kind of all we've known up until now up until really whole30 is this idea of deprivation and restriction for the sake of weight loss and you know requiring like tons of willpower if that's the framework by which you're thinking about it then like yeah of course you're restricting and then you're going to want to like you know there are all these um psychological kind of things that happen in the brain where it's like yeah you know you see the end is on the horizon and the brain sees reward and it drives up this kind of reward seeking behavior and i think it goes all the way back to the beginning with the idea of you can you know you're you're a grown-up you're a grown-up with like car keys and a credit card you can go you can eat whatever you want you have to decide for yourself is it worth it and do i want it yeah you can eat the donuts of course you can you can eat 12 donuts if you want to but like is it worth it when you eat those like do you is it going to help you look and feel exactly as good as you want to look and feel is it are the consequence is going to be worth it physiologically and psychologically and and do you actually really want it because i think very often we give ourselves permission to or i deserve to eat this and then we go out and eat it and we might not even want it or we eat more than we want to getting to that place is hard though which is why i always recommend kind of a reset first this idea of like getting back to a baseline where you're in control of your food instead of food controlling you and i feel like that really requires some kind of intervention like the whole 30 like we need help to get back to that place but then moving forward you can change the framework where it's not about what you deserve it's about you creating your own rules about what you do and don't want to eat based on you know the kind of life the quality of life you want to live so do you sit down and talk to people at all about like what are your values what what's guiding your desire to change this because when you talk about that and you may be the person that talks most i think cogently about hey there's no right or wrong here there's only do you want to do it in fact somebody asked you a question about hey i'm going to dinner at a friend's house and i know they're going to cook this thing and they're going to be so weird and like hurt and upset if i say i'm not going to eat it you were like well maybe you eat it then yeah and we have to differentiate between you really have a reaction versus you have a preference like do you talk to people about like really making concrete like hey my having a great relationship with my friend is more valuable to me than avoiding foods that i just prefer not to eat yes i do and that's really all wrapped up in like is it worth it conversation so is it worth it is not just um is it going to make me gain weight i think that's what the worth it conversation has always been up until this point is like oh i'm still trying to lose five pounds can i really afford to eat this doughnut and like that is the last that's not even part of this conversation it is you know when i'm done eating it is gonna make me feel bad about myself because i know that the last 10 times i ate it it made me feel bad and like i'm just kind of blocking that out now or if if i eat this is it going to make me feel worse physically then it's going to make my host happy it's a very big picture conversation before you start the whole 30 we have this giant list of what we call non-scale victories all of these things that have nothing to do with body weight that are impacted by food and it's everything from you know your skin and your exercise performance and your recovery and your digestion to things like your self-confidence and your relationship with your um your family you know your how much time you're spending with your kids and your husband and your uh focus and attention span and you go through before the program starts and you check off all the ones that are important to you so that you can then use that along the way to say oh yeah this is why i'm doing what i'm doing and you can go back at the end and say well yeah that really did improve and i got all of these extra things that like i didn't even know i wanted but now that i have i'm unwilling to give them up you said something once that you think that one of the things people may realize is they're reintroducing the food into their diet is that they're actually having an emotional reaction to food said another way that eating a certain food actually generates in them the neurochemistry that makes them feel sad or happy or whatever i've never heard anybody talk about that before we have such intricate connections between food and emotions and pathways in our brain between like pleasure and habit and and reward are so closely entwined and what i find are that emotionally people eat a food and it takes them to a place where um you know for some reason eating this is like well you know i know it doesn't make me healthier but like it was totally worth it it was delicious i ate as much as i wanted and i'm good with it whereas eating the same amount of this is like i'm a big fat pig i need to go to the gym a million times to like work this off it like puts you back in that diet mentality i used to ask my consulting clients like what's your first um memory about food what's your first memory of food and so many of them were like you know when mom and dad fought dad would take me out for ice cream or uh you know my mom would never let me eat anything unhealthy so he still had candy under my bed and like eat it under my bed all by myself and it's crazy how much these things come forward with us into adulthood and how much we even pass them on to our kids ah that's really interesting and i i've i had not heard anybody talk about that before you hear a lot of people talk about emotional eating and i get that and whether it's to celebrate or whether it's to soothe like i get foods neurochemical benefit is really really tremendous but for some reason it never hit me that oh just like literally at the food level it's not just the context oh yeah but actually at the food level that there is specific neurochemical reactions oh big time yeah big time we used to do when we did our seminars we would ask people uh whole 30 seminars we would say about dairy like what's the one if you had to give up dairy for the rest of your life what's the one food you wouldn't want to go without i'm not kidding overwhelmingly in like 150 seminars all but one group all said the same thing geez overwhelmingly and and like the research on this is like not super bomb proof but it's evidential that there are factors in cheese called casomorphins which can bind with morphine-like receptors in the god and provide like a feel-good feeling so again cheese not sue okay i'm not gonna like you know live and die by the science on this but tons of links to seasonal affective disorder depression anxiety ocd like oh yeah big time man this stuff gets like every time i have one of these conversations it is more complex and i know how complex it is but even like seeing just how much this spirals out and that's what i love about the whole 30 is it's n of one right you're saying hey like just because it works for me doesn't mean it's going to work for you exactly walk people through that explain what end of one is explain why it's so important yes the idea of n equals one is this is how you figure out what works for you you pull stuff out you put it back in and no one can take that experience away and you've got this very kind of very concrete experience and then you get to decide what you do with that that's the most important thing you know you get to decide like oh i brought ice cream back in and my migraines came back like but i really like ice cream so it might be worth a migraine once in a while awesome i'm not going to decide that for you that's your call but at least you're making an educated decision which i think is the most important part there are a lot of really practical challenges too like you go to a wedding and you don't know what food is going to be served or you're at a restaurant you get accidentally like dosed with something you know it's happened to me a couple times like right before a big media appearance or something where i'm like really adamant about know this know that and it shows up and i'm like yep there's definitely gluten in that and that kind of stinks because now i'm feeling kind of foggy so yeah there's practical stuff with it too speaking of practical stuff so we this never occurred to me i can't believe this we were at a um italian restaurant we've been there multiple times every time lisa's like it really upsets my stomach i don't know what it is yeah so we go back and she there's a bottle of olive oil on the table and she says is this pure olive oil and they said yes and she said can you just ask the kitchen please for me if it really is and they come back and said it's actually half olive oil half canola oil yeah which that's yeah pretty common with olive oil yeah because she can have olive oil but she can't have canola oil so how do you teach people to navigate the realities of being out and about in the world how can people like prepare themselves so for most people what their their limitations are not anywhere near that sensitive but i think really understanding like what you're because there's there for everybody maybe there's a list of like hard-nosed like mine's goat cheese never under any circumstances will i eat that because it makes me so sick for some reason just goat cheese in particular makes me so sick so like i'm super adamant about that if if it meant offending like the pope himself who offered me some goat cheese i would be like i'm sorry your holiness but i really can't eat that i think approaching it just very pragmatically like no you don't have to apologize for your food preferences you don't have to explain your choices to anybody it's just like is there goat cheese in this salad okay great can you please leave that off or you know i'm going to ask a few questions about this because i avoid certain foods is there this this and this like the bigger a deal you make out of it oh my gosh i know i'm the weird one and i'm so sorry and i know it's so weird that i'm not eating bread and i'm sorry i have to ask this question like the more everybody else is going to notice you just just do your thing yeah respect yeah all right we got to talk about your guns homie no we got to talk about it so you've you've referenced that working out for you is like going to church yeah what do you mean by that it is time i have set aside just for me so that's self-care it's like just you know my time um it it feels really good for me to move even if my workout isn't super you know hardcore or badass like it just feels good to get in and move it's a nice transition between waking up and feeling like i'm prepped for my day and i have figured out over the last six months that like i process things stress um negative emotions worry fear i process them physically first like i it's really hard for me to drop into like a therapy session or some work or some meditation if i'm still feeling all of these like feelings in my body but if i can physically move first kind of like a toddler throwing a tantrum i get it out of my system and then it's like okay now i can do some of the like finer work i have access to some of the most beautiful mountains in the country i think in my backyard in salt lake city so i'm outside hiking a lot and that is it it kind of spans a wide range some of my hikes are like fitness hikes where it's like how fast can i get to the top and some of them are just can i just go and enjoy and take a bunch of pictures and like share this with my social media audience and some of it you know i never hike with headphones i usually hike by myself almost always um that's interesting why by myself not the by yourself that i get but not even headphones no this is my time to like ground and center and connect with god and i don't want to distract myself with headphones or podcasts or music like i get out there the chatter in my head goes for a little while it shuts off pretty quick and then i just like connect and i ground and i center and i do my hike and i meditate when i get to the top and i'll hang out maybe i'll bring a book i'll eat some snacks i'll hike back down maybe i'll meet people along the way and talk but like that is a very it's like probably the key the center of my like self-care practice is that outside time by myself talk to me about the meditation at the top what kind of meditation do you do what do you get out of that yeah uh my friend todd mccullough of t emac fitness he's a fantastic friend of mine created this four-part meditation so it's his program and he introduced me to it a while ago and i've been kind of resistant i've been trying to get into a meditation practice but could never make it stick it's this four part meditation guided and i just do it in my head i find the guided aspect of it or having something to think about helps me stay in it a little bit longer instead of just sitting and like thinking about being zen in the first part i think about people i think of all the things i'm grateful for and it just turns into this rolling list of gratitude the second part you think about lifting someone up maybe i'm lifting them up maybe i'm grounding them maybe i'm connecting them to me through my energy and through my light in the third part you were thinking about what success looks like for you today and that's kind of where i find my like maxim for the day whether it's to stay connected or stay open or stay grounded or sometimes these things float into my head and i have no idea what they mean but like it just feels right and in the fourth part you're just sitting listening to the sounds around you and i do this meditation in the middle of my gym when i'm done working out so there are people with there are barbells and sleds being dragged and pull-ups and crossfit classes and two different musics going on and i'm just like sitting in the middle of the turf with my eyes closed like listening to everything and it's been one of the most life-changing game-changing experiences to adopt this meditation practice i'm not kidding yeah i love that yeah you've said a few times now like the there's whole30 melissa and she's perfect and i had to let that go and is that out of a desire to really be able to connect with people i wish i could say yes because that would make me sound a lot more no it wasn't it wasn't it was because whole30 melissa became impossible to sustain and i hated myself for it and i thought well the only way people are going to respect me and listen to me and think of me as a leader in this community is if i show up absolutely perfect and i was all like my marriage was also a show at this point and i couldn't let anyone know that so there were a lot of things i was also hiding and it just was way easier to put on this front but it became impossible to maintain i felt like an imposter in my own life i um could never do it right because i was never showing up as myself i was setting standards for other people that i couldn't even meet because the image i was portraying wasn't real and honestly i stopped doing it because i kind of just broke when my marriage fell apart and i was like oh man like i hadn't even told close friends how bad things had been in my marriage because it was so important that i maintain this uniform front of like you know we were the whole 30 couple and we were doing this thing and and i just when it all kind of fell apart i was like all right like this is my opportunity to like let this go and what ended up happening is i was able to connect with people more and that was fabulous and i realized i needed that and loved that and wanted to facilitate that but when i did it it wasn't out of some you know really well thought out or altruistic motive it was like i can't maintain this anymore and i hate it i love that yeah all right before i ask my last question tell these guys where they can find you online so uh everything is at whole30 um it's whole30 on social media w-h-o-l-e and 30. so the website i'm really active on instagram and that's where i talk about a lot of this stuff on my personal channel it's just melissa underscore heart wig all right our last question okay if people could only change one thing to have the biggest impact on their health what one thing should they change i'm gonna be really specific here and say learn how to cook interesting if people just learned how to cook if people cooked more and i'm not even going to get you know i would say do a whole 30 but even let's just roll it back from there if you could only do like one behavior to improve your health learn how to cook more like real whole food i love that melissa thank you so much thank you so much great all right guys like she said whole30 is a gateway to a much bigger profound and beautiful universe of somebody who is sharing truly sharing themselves their journey inviting you in giving you tactics walking you through the difficult things that they've been going through giving you she said at one point we didn't talk about it here but she said at one point that one thing that she's gotten extraordinary at in her life is really understanding does she need to be your cheerleader does she need to give you tough love like exactly in what way does she need to deliver the message so that you're going to hear it and i think that that is part of what is so exquisite about her community is that it's really it's given in a language that you're going to be able to hear no matter where you're coming from and i think she's pretty uniquely able to touch not only women but men as well it's really pretty awesome the kind of community that she's built so if this is something that you're struggling with or if you like that idea of food is that gateway to really adopting a growth mindset and really thinking bigger and going for things like personal bravery i think that you're going to absolutely love what she represents so i highly encourage you guys to become a part of her community get out into her world i think it will change you if you let it i think it will change you for the better all right if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care thank you so much thank you guys so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential