EP #111: The Science of Healthy Eating with Ariana Korman, R.D. Chief Operating Officer at Juice Press

(gentle music) Welcome back to another episode of "Everyday in Dorfens." Actually, this isn't really a welcome back, given that I have been off the podcast grind for a little bit. And if you've been following for a while, you are probably well aware, either on Instagram or just if you've followed along the show. Here on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show, that I have been taking a break from releasing episodes for the past few months. So it's not necessarily a welcome back, but more so, welcome to a brand new season. After a brief hiatus, I'm so happy to be back behind the mic and recording. For those of you who don't know me, I'm your host, Stella Stuffnopoulos. And "Everyday in Dorfens" is a show that primarily talks about mental health, but more so humanizes happiness. And if you've listened to the past 110, 111 episodes, I hope that you have gained something actionable that you can really implement into your life on how to become just 10% happier. And if you're new to the show, I'm really excited for you to come along the listening journey. And if you're based in New York, I would love to meet you in person, come out to some of my podcast wellness events, come to my yoga class. I love connecting with everyone who cares about these topics. So regardless of how you found the show, if you've been a lifetime, as in three year lifetime listener, thank you for being here and for tuning in to this new season. And before I dive into this special guest who has come onto the podcast before, I'm so thrilled to have her here again, I just wanted to share some of the cool things that I've learned while I've decided to take a step back. The irony here is that also from taking a step back, I've actually felt even closer to everyday endorphins, the message I'm trying to communicate. So food for thought, because sometimes we need to step away to actually realize what we're trying to do. I digress. The first thing that I've learned is that disconnecting can help us with reconnecting. So for me, taking a hiatus was a little difficult, but necessary. I think that I needed to put myself through that discomfort to just be reminded of what it felt like to have fun again and have fun without doing a podcast all the time. Secondly, space sometimes gives us the opportunity to live our values. So like I mentioned, stepping back really allowed me to reflect on the wisdom that I've gained from my guests. And it gave me time to actually embody this philosophy on happiness that I try to promote, I try to share an advocate. And lastly, I can't take credit for this phrase. It was actually something I heard from Alex Lieberman, the co-founder of Morning Brew. But he said that it's critical to diversify your purpose portfolio. And I thought a little bit about that, because so much of my purpose was derived from interviewing, producing episodes, building this brand, the podcast. And the minute that I decided that I was feeling a bit burnt out and I needed to take a step back, I felt like my identity was kind of bruised. And it's interesting because we tend to place a lot of our purpose towards our career, our job, maybe relationship, but I don't think that's the healthiest thing to do. So taking the intentional break forced me to find joy in other areas of my life by reconnecting with old passions, developing new ones, strengthening my relationships, spending more time with friends, and it helped me to find more balance other areas of my life. So all of this goes to say that I've learned a lot in the past few months. I'm excited to share all of that with you through the podcast, through Instagram, through the launch of a newsletter. So stay tuned. But I want to shift gears and now finally introduce my guest for this week on the show. Ariana is the chief operating officer of Juice Press, and she's actually been on the podcast in the past. The last time we spoke, we talked a little bit about implementing your nutrition goals and how to stick to them in the near. So it was a pretty timely episode when it was released. This time around, I wanted to have Ariana come on to the podcast to dive a bit deeper into the science of healthy eating and how to actually make eating healthy food enjoyable, which can be really difficult to do, especially for young adults living in New York City, working maybe an appropriate job. It always feels like time is escaping us. We don't have time to cook. We don't have time to plant our meals. It can feel really out of our ability to kind of control the food that we're eating. So Ariana shares great practices for finding a bit more balance in just creating a healthy lifestyle around nutrition. One final thing that I wanted to share before we dive into this interview is that I am so excited to be partnering with Juice Press for World Mental Health Day on Tuesday, October 10th. One of my favorite nonprofit organizations, Project Healthy Minds, is hosting their second annual World Mental Health Day Festival in Hudson Yards. And the day is going to be filled with so much incredible programming from soul cycle classes, sound bath meditations, panels with executives, the list goes on. And Juice Press and I are partnering on behalf of this episode to support Project Healthy Minds. So if you're in the New York area, definitely swing by Hudson Yards on Tuesday, October 10th. You can grab an Everyday Endorphins smoothie, Everyday Endorphins juice. These are all Juice Press products that are going to be donated in support of Project Healthy Minds for World Mental Health Day. So go show some love. And without further ado, I will get into the podcast episode. [MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, Ariana. Thank you so much for coming on to Everyday Endorphins, around two. It is so good to have you here. Thanks so much for having me against Stella. It was a blast the first time we chatted. I'm really excited to be back and keep the conversation going. Yes, and I feel like nutrition is one of those topics that is always going to be important and always going to resonate because it's really foundational to our health and well-being from a physical and mental health perspective. Last time you came onto the podcast, Episode 93, everyone should go listen to it. We had talked about how to stick to your nutrition goals in the new year, which I felt like was a super timely topic because when we have our New Year's resolutions, they often kind of fail within the first month. What we discussed in that episode is something that will continuously resonate because keeping a good diet and staying healthy is always kind of a challenge when we're constantly making choices around the foods that we eat. So that episode is always going to be important in my eyes. But today, what I wanted to have you on the podcast, this round is talking a little bit more about the science of healthy eating. So I had read an article recently kind of about this and like what the optimal protein, carb, fat intake, and I know that this is something that could be really bespoke to each individual, but more generally speaking, what would your perspective be on keeping track of these different intake levels in our body and how can we think about consuming the right amount of carbs, the right amount of proteins, fats, et cetera? - Yeah, and that's a great question. I think one important caveat to always mention is that everything like this is variable based on your age, your goals, your activity levels, what's going on in your body at the time, if you're pregnant, if you're breastfeeding, all of these different things, how stressed you are, all factor in. I think protein is probably the easiest one to start with because it doesn't vary quite as much. And I think that it's also kind of a hot topic, people are really into tracking their protein, getting protein shakes, protein cookies, now it is like protein everything. So the American Academy of Dietetics recommends 0.8 to 1 grams per kilogram of body weight per day. So we're in America, we weigh by pounds. An easy way to find kilograms is just your weight in pounds divided by 2.2 and that's your kilogram. So that's what they recommend. I don't personally agree with that. I believe a little bit higher than that. They recommend 1.2 to 2 grams for athletes. I think a great place for kind of the average person is 1 to 1.2 grams per kilogram. So an easy way to do that, if you're 150 pounds and you divide that by 2.2, that's 68. So that's maybe like 70, 75, 80 grams per day. You can think of like 20 to 25 grams in a meal. A snack could be something like 5 to 10. Obviously not all of your snacks are going to be protein snacks. But I think that's a really easy way to think about it. But also definitely, though, depend on your goals, if you're trying to build a lot of muscle, you might want to eat more protein if you're someone who works out really aggressively every day. You definitely want to have more protein because you want to be able to rebuild your muscles as you're breaking them down through exercise. If you're sick or recovering from anything, you need more protein. So your body burns more protein when your immune system is higher. So if you either have some sort of cold or sickness or you're recovering from a surgery, or you really have anything going on in your body that takes a little bit of extra power from your system, definitely more protein is key. So as I said, that's the easiest one. Carbs, I would say, I don't really want to give a number because I don't really believe in counting carbs. I personally believe that-- and professionally believe that counting carbs is really useful for a medical reason. So if you have diabetes or something where you really are required to count carbs that you know how much insulin you need or set your balance thing different things throughout the day, that's obviously a totally different conversation. But for the purposes of this conversation, we're talking more so about, you know, generally healthy individuals. I think it's really more important about what your carbs are made up of. Carbs are sugar, carbs are fiber. There can be complex carbs, simple carbs, and that's way more important than what your total carb number is. If you have a total carb number in a meal of 30 and all 30 of that is sugar, that's very different from 28 of that being fiber and two being sugar. So I think that, you know, when it comes to carbs, that's really more important. I think that counting carbs can be very trendy sometimes. I do think it's become a little bit less trendy than it was maybe like two or three years ago. When a factor, and there were a lot of diets out there where people were really trying to get net carbs as low as they can, I think what's really important is again, what your carbs are made up of. If you're having simple carbs, so those are things like in white bread or refined flowers, there's nothing bound to those simple carbs. They're called simple because it's literally just the carb. And when you digest it, it goes straight into your bloodstream. It spikes your blood sugar. It doesn't keep you full. It then creates a blood sugar crash. And that's kind of what you want to avoid. Your complex carbs are like your whole grains, your oats, your brown rice, whole grain breads, things like that, quinoa, corn, all of these different things. And that's totally different from having a white bread or a white rice. You will have fiber in there. You're also, when they simplify the carbs, they're taking out that external shell that protects the carb. And that shell actually has almost all of the nutrients. So when you're having that simple carb, you have basically shed all of what's good about that plant because carbs are plants, but you're shedding everything that's good about it out of there. And all you're keeping is the carb. When you have brown rice, you're keeping that shell. That's why if you think about what brown rice looks like, it does actually look like it has a little bit of a hard external shell on it. The taste is a little bit harder. And that's because that shell is what includes the fiber, all of the vitamins, all the minerals, iron, all of those different things are in that part of the grain. So again, I guess just to conclude on the carb topic, I don't recommend counting carbs I think it's again way more important what your carbs are made of. Try to minimize the sugar, minimize the added sugar. Now it is the labels. I think we talked about this in our last conversation. Labels actually show added sugar as well. So some things are natural sugars like lactose. If you're having yogurt, it has to have sugar in it, but you want to look at that added sugar number, get that as low as it can be, get your fiber higher. And then that's really how you want to look at that. Again, and also sorry, just a side note, the fiber recommendation for women is actually 25 grams per day, which is pretty low. In my opinion, I think if you're someone who's eating a lot of fruits and vegetables throughout the day, you should easily surpass that for men, it's 38 again, relatively low. So just another note on that. And I guess that is very similar because again, it's much more important what type of fat that is saturated versus unsaturated. I think a lot of people now who are in SLA trained in nutrition do understand what the difference is, whereas 5, 10 years ago, that was really not the case. But I think avocado is being so trendy, olive oil, nuts and seeds, things like that, and sparking that conversation about healthy fats. Now I think more people kind of know that and you can't compare a tablespoon of butter to a tablespoon of avocado. It's just not the same thing. So again, just focusing on those unsaturated fats, which is anything really that's liquid at room temperature. You can think about how it is in room temperature is how it is in your body. So olive oil, liquid at room temperature, you can imagine it passing right through your veins, not clogging anything, really smooth, something like butter, it's solid at room temperature. So it's solid in your body, it's blocking your arteries, it's creating this plaque build up in your veins and your heart, things like that. So focusing on almonds, fatty fish like salmon that has amazing omega-3s, olive oil, avocado oil, all these different types of healthy fats is way more important than how many grams of fat. And a lot of the fat is also very individual based on your digestion. We all make different amounts of lipase, which is the main enzyme that helps you digest fat. And you know, certain people can have a really high fat diet, doesn't bother their stomach. I personally am someone where if I have a lot of fat without other macronutrients in one sitting, it does really give me a stomach ache. But again, that's very personal. It's totally dependent on your own body. Yeah. Okay, tons of great things to work off from what you just mentioned to go back to protein. I find that really interesting that we actually need to consume more protein than I initially thought. And I'm sure that number, ballpark estimate, probably differs between women and men, also how our diets can impact like our hormonal health for women, which could be an entirely separate topic, which is something I'm also really interested in. But I've two follow-up questions from what you just talked about. So the first being, how can you ensure that you're actually getting a sufficient amount of protein, carb, and fat into your diet, especially looking at vitamins and nutrients? I recently did blood work and I'm super vitamin D deficient, an iron deficient, which I don't understand because I feel like I eat a pretty balanced diet. So my first question here is, how do you actually make sure that you are intentional with what you're eating and that, what you're eating is actually fueling you properly? Yeah, no, that's a really great question. Iron is a really tricky one because there are so many factors and it actually is very common for vitamin D and iron to be linked deficiencies. Vitamin D probably, we don't, especially in New York City, we do not get enough vitamin D. We walk outside, but it is almost always indirect sunlight. We have massive buildings blocking us. The best source of vitamin D really is the sun and you don't need to necessarily be outside. Obviously, you don't want to get a burn. You don't want to expose yourself to harmful radiation. But being at cyber five, 10 minutes, indirect sunlight can get you the vitamin D that you need and we just don't get that in New York. It's really hard to actually get a sufficient amount of vitamin D just from food. So that's why being outside is so important. And iron in particular is actually a very, very tricky one because a lot of iron is not very bioavailable. The iron that we get from plants, which is non-heam iron, is actually very, very low in terms of bioavailability. So we grow up thinking, oh, spinach has iron, but it's actually extremely low and the amount of your absorbing is very low as well. Heam iron, which is what comes from animal products, is the most bioavailable form. But obviously, there are a lot of complexities with encouraging animal based diets and it's not to say that animal based is the way to go. But if you are someone who is having an iron deficiency issue, incorporating chicken, incorporating some other animal product that can get a little bit more bioavailable. And actually, iron is one of those nutrients that has a lot of binders that can prevent the absorption. So, fight teeth, which are in tea and coffee, actually both bind to iron so it makes it harder for your body to absorb it. So if you are someone who drinks tea all the time, you can't get a coffee right now. Yeah, if you're someone who's funny, I just had this conversation with my mom because she is not anemic, but her iron stores are low. And I finally convinced her to stop drinking coffee with breakfast and to have it two hours after she finishes her meal and two hours before her next meal because she was always drinking it with like breakfast or lunch. And I was like, you're basically negating any iron that you're eating. That's interesting that you bring this up because my follow-up question was going to be around how can you ensure that you're actually absorbing the nutrients that you're ingesting in your body. So, maybe the timing of when you drink your coffee can affect that, which I had no idea about. Coffee tea and actually calcium as well binds iron. So if you are having foods with calcium like yogurt or something with the foods that are high in iron, you're binding a lot of that iron. If you're someone who takes a calcium supplement, which I don't know if you do, my mom does that mostly because she's in that age of women where they start taking calcium because of osteoporosis risk, but taking that totally separate from when you're having your iron, I told her to actually take it right before bed when she had already finished dinner for a couple of hours and obviously wasn't going to be eating again until she woke up. So something like calcium foods with that, but then you can on the opposite side put things into your foods that help you. So, vitamin C actually helps the viability of iron. So if you're cooking, putting a squeeze of lemon in what you're doing or having lemon water or having other types of citrus, taking a vitamin C supplement, which is also good for day, taking a vitamin C supplement with what you're eating can really help with that. And even actually cooking and cast iron, which sounds crazy, but the cast iron pan, the iron does actually leach into the food and you do actually get a lot of iron that way. Okay, so cooking a cast iron pan. I drink coffee with my breakfast, have more vitamin C, very helpful next steps for me personally, but I think more broadly speaking, this just goes to show really how nuanced I think in complex, creating a healthy diet for oneself is because there's all these factors that go into what you're consuming, when you're consuming it, how you're eating it, and how you're properly digesting it. And I think it creates like a cascade of effects because when we were talking about vitamin D, for example, I love Dr. Hubert Mann, I listen to his podcast, he's so big on getting like 5 to 15. minutes of morning sunlight. And clearly not only is vitamin D helpful for your body and your physical composition, but also your mental health makes you happy being in the sunlight. So there's all these inter-connectivities. And if we talk a little bit more about the relationship between our mood and our food and what we're eating, I think that is a really nice segue into discussing a bit more of the microbiome that got microbiome. So I think we might have talked a little bit about this in our previous podcast, but I want to dive a bit deeper. There's so much research out there that supports what we eat impacting our mental health, our brain health, because a lot of the serotonin is actually pretty centered gut. But before we even go there, what is the gut microbiome? That is a great question and a very hot topic as well. Basically your digestive tract has microbes in it. Those microbes are your gut microbiome. It's good bacteria. It's bad bacteria. It's both on the key is really to make sure that the balance is optimal. You'll never 100% get rid of the bad bacteria and you also don't want to because you can have overgrowth of good bacteria. But the key is like anything in life, these two factors compete for the same resources. So you want to have a good balance where the good bacteria is balancing on the bad bacteria because if they're eating the food and they're eating what fuels them, you'll have less bad bacteria. So naturally, you're gut microbiome. It has 70% of your immune system. As you said, it produces 90% of your serotonin. It is massively important. It actually has the same neurons and neurotransmitters as your brain. So your brain is your central nervous system and your gut is your entire nervous system and they all they talk to each other. That's what the gut brain connection is. That's why when you get nervous, your stomach hurts. That's why when you're anxious, you might not want to eat anything or you might eat everything. When you're nervous pooping, people always talk about that. Constipation when you're a dresser in your life and you're not in your current environment. So I think that was a long gut microbiome is, but there's so much research out there on them. Why is it important? And a lot of people, myself included, often will eat for pleasure. Like, oh, this tastes good. I want it now. But when we think really about how foods can impact our bodies and our mental health, I think it's important to kind of create this shift in mindset around rather than just eating for pleasure. Like, how can I eat for purpose? That is also pleasure. So how can we make eating good food for us? Also, something that's a fun activity and endeavor. Because I growing up, like, the food that I, you know, maybe always wanted was like the sugary processed, whatever. I think this is something that most kids can resonate with. But then like, the vegetables were like not the fun thing. So how can you kind of bridge that gap where it starts to be a fun activity to put food into your body that is going to support your gut microbiome. It's going to make you feel better. It's going to make you feel healthier and happier. Yeah, that's a really good question. I think a lot of the foods that maybe when we were younger weren't as cool or delicious have gotten a little bit of a glow up. So does the like brussel sprouts, which are now so popular, you can get them at any bar. And you never would have guessed that 15 years ago. But I think cooking method is really important. Cooking it in a way that makes it taste delicious. Air fryer's are amazing. I think that's a really great way to get little kids or if you're just someone who really doesn't like vegetables to eat them because it doesn't use anything that's actually frying it or making it more harmful. But it's just really a very small connection oven. But it makes it crispy and delicious. You can use spices to make it taste good. Mixing it into a smoothie. I am a big fan of smoothies and I always add a little bit of like cauliflower in there that you don't even taste, especially just because you brought up young kids, you can kind of sneak in spinach and kale and things like that and cover it up with strawberries and bananas, which are also really good for them. And they won't even notice. But I think again, and I think we did talk about this last time we spoke, but if you really don't like something, don't eat it. There's no one food that's a magic food that if you don't incorporate it into your diet, you are not going to be healthy. That just doesn't exist. The key to one being healthy and two having a healthy gut is variety. So there really is no one food. So the key is to just find as many healthier foods that you also find delicious and you also find fun to eat and just eat those. Eat the rainbow, which as cheesy as that sounds, there's a reason that people say that because actually the colors in fruits and vegetables signify different vitamins. Vitamins have colors a lot of them. You know, vitamin C is yellow orange. That's why like lemons, oranges, grapefruit, that's all vitamin C, B vitamins and A vitamins, they all have different colors, K vitamin, all of this stuff. So just eating a wide variety of colorful fruits and vegetables, grains that are high in fiber, whole grains, these are all going to help your gut flourish and they're also going to make you happy. You want your sour tone to be high, you want to have your anxiety low, your gut health helps you sleep, which as we know is very, very clearly related to how what your mood is like and anxiety and depression, all these different things. So just making sure that you focus on what you actually enjoy and making that fun. Whether it's cooking with a partner or someone who makes that experience fun or making, you know, your own pizza at home, out of cauliflower and egg and things like that in the crust and using plant-based cheese and making your own tomato sauce and you made yourself a delicious pizza that's really good for you and just trying to work with things like that I think. Something kind of just came into my mind as you were sharing the last portion around trying to make cooking fun. I think that's something that's really difficult being in a place like New York City when there's so many restaurants at your fingertips, often on the go and people often talk about how they just don't have enough time. So how do you incorporate the time to actually sit down and cook a meal and obviously we know that cooking is healthier than going out to eat all the time and of course it doesn't really break the bank when you're eating more meals at home. But what advice would you have for like young professionals in particular and around how to kind of navigate that balance because it is healthier to cook at home and I think what you were kind of alluding to is that there's also this community building aspect when you're cooking with someone else or you can kind of appreciate more the meal that you're making because you're putting the effort behind it but how do we kind of carve out that time to create those experiences that are a bit healthier for us but also can impact all different areas of our health, not just our looking at it from a nutrition perspective. I think what's important is that it's not a hundred, it's not all or nothing. It doesn't have to be I cooked this meal 100% from scratch. There are little ways that you can save time, make things easier especially also in New York City we most of all of us have tiny kitchens and it's very hard to cook an elaborate meal with basically no counter space but you can go to the grocery store, you can get pre-cut vegetables, you can get a bag of mixed greens that are already kind of put together and just finding these little shortcuts where you're not necessarily cooking it from scratch but you still are putting in your effort, you're making it fun, you make shave off 20, 30 minutes by getting pre-cut cauliflower and maybe you're getting chicken that's already cut into little tenders or you're getting little things like that where it just makes the clean up easier, it makes the cooking easier, you don't maybe need as many pots and pans and things like that because none of us have space for that but I think like finding those little things one really easy meal that I make all the time is I get hearts of palm pasta from whole foods and they're allery like pre I guess spiralized is what you would call it so you know it really doesn't take much prep I put it into a pan with olive oil, I put tomato sauce in and then I cut chicken with like chicken desert into little pieces and I toss that in and then I add spinach and I have like this really yummy kind of like spaghetti chicken greens type of meal sometimes I'll throw like frozen broccoli in there and it just that prep actually took such little time because so much of it was kind of pre done for me and there's a very big difference between that and then some of the other like pre-made types of meals that are dramatically more expensive but something like the hearts of palm I think is like $2.99 for one serving of it which you know obviously it's more expensive than doing yourself but it's not like it's $10 for the pasta or getting frozen I love frozen vegetables I think that was like the greatest invention ever for someone who lives in a big city and also if you're someone who's either single or eats a lot of meals alone or whatever it is it's like sometimes hard to go grocery shopping for one person but something like frozen vegetables which obviously I think we would all prefer fresh when possible but it just makes it easier because you're not worried about having to finish it before it goes bad it takes a lot less time to cook because it's pre-blanched it's pre-cut it's just easier you can stock your whole freezer with frozen mixed vegetables and not think about it for two months so I think that's like genius or sometimes I'll do like a little breakfast for dinner and I'll toss like a frozen vegetable mix into a pan with some eggs and that's kind of my dinner and I enjoy it and I think just finding like kind of those little shortcuts that are still cooking but it doesn't make you feel like you have to make this gourmet meal every time you want to have dinner. Yeah like little efficiencies that also amount to feeling like you made a gourmet dinner at the end of the day right? I am so curious to hear how you incorporate all of your learnings being a registered dietitian, being the chief operating officer Thank you. press working in the health and wellness industry at large. All these experiences that you've accumulated, how does that inform your own take on nutrition and diet in your personal life? I think maybe you touched a little bit on it just now talking about like what you eat for breakfast or lunch or dinner but like how do you essentially try to practice what you preach or rather than preach just what you're kind of exposed to day in and day out? Yeah, I think I am someone who feels really strongly that while you want to optimize what you're eating, you don't want to take over your life. It's really easy especially if you are educated in nutrition or that's your profession to kind of go insane, always thinking about how to make everything as optimal as it can be but mental health is health too and if it's going to make you go crazy and think about what you're eating all the time that's also really not healthy. So I really try, I'm relatively regimented with my breakfast just because it's easy for me and I like to not have to think about it in the morning when I have a million other things in my head. When it comes to lunch, you know, I usually will eat at work. My work for juice press, our office is in the back of a store so I have pretty easy access to really healthy food all the time at work. I'll usually have a green smoothie with some almond butter with some protein. I do try and get in all of my meals protein carbs and fat definitely prioritize that in my meals with my snacks. I really try and just go based on how I'm feeling. If I'm feeling like I'm a little bit lightheaded and I feel like maybe I haven't had enough carbs that day then I'll go for something a little bit more carb-focused and cyber. I mean if that's not really what I'm feeling but I feel like not satiated then that kind of tells me that I didn't have enough fat. Yeah, in the day, because fat's kind of like what really satiates you. So I'll go for maybe some nuts or a snack that I can buy in juice press that's a little higher in fat. And then when it comes to dinner, I'm someone who eats kind of smaller dinners and I think that's just because I snack all the time during the day. So usually when it comes to dinner and not quite as hungry, I also work out in the morning so I'm usually way more hungry in the morning because I just worked out and then by the end of the day I'm not quite as hungry. So I, you know, I usually just still go by how I feel but also what I eat in that day. If I have for whatever reason not had anything green that day then I'll probably make a salad and then put some chicken or something on top of it. If I feel like I've eaten a lot of vegetables and I might make something maybe a pasta or something that's a little bit more quote unquote indulgent because that's kind of what I feel like I can do at that point. I really just try and take every day and just balance the day as best as I can but I definitely do not hyper focus on making sure that everything is as optimal as it can be. And when it comes to thinking about just as you're talking before about making sure that you're really absorbing your nutrients and things like that, I don't really believe that if you don't have a deficiency of some kind that you really need to obsess over that, our bodies are pretty good in general at absorbing nutrients but obviously if you're deficient in something that's a different story. So I again, like I don't really think about that much. I definitely also take digestive enzymes or things like that. If you typically that might be something that leads you to that as if you have really bad digestion after you eat, that might indicate that you're deficient in some of the digestive enzymes and if you take them, it'll help you digest and help you absorb the nutrients more. But I guess that was a long-winded answer of me saying that I have all this information in the back of my head. I think about it. I try not to think about it too much. I try to just enjoy what I'm eating. I try to focus on everything tasting good. If something doesn't taste good, I really just won't eat it. There's no food that is so healthy that if I don't like how it tastes that I'm going to eat. So I also always love to have a little dessert at the end of the day and I think that's something that makes me really happy. And I think as we said, like enjoying what you're eating is so important and you want to eat with purpose, but you also want to enjoy it and whether that's I love like ice pops, those are something like the I love outshine ice pops. Like they're small. They're kind of the perfect size and I really love eating those good pop actually came out with gluten-free vegan like ice cream sandwiches that are amazing, made with oat milk. We'll have to try it. I have a big sweet tooth. I think going to bed, feeling satisfied is so important because if you go to bed and you obsessed all day about what you were going to eat and you really aren't satisfied, you're going to wake up and you're going to feel deprived and your necktay is probably not going to go so well. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, I really love what you said because I think it's a good philosophy for life and it's something I can even resonate with as well, like working in the mental health space with my podcasts and also being a yoga instructor. I'm constantly around a these conversations that touch on all aspects and pillars of health and wellness, but then be teaching yoga multiple times a week like I'm constantly moving and being very physically active and teaching. So I'm constantly just in the yoga practice and being so close to it, it's hard to kind of take a step back and not obsess over and I think specifically in the health and wellness space, there's so much noise being thrown at us. Do this, do that. This is good for your health. This isn't even looking at the different diets that exist. Keto, intermittent fasting, low, I don't even know the rest of them. There's so many. It's very easy to lose your sense of intuition and also I think it's hard to navigate that balance of accumulating this knowledge and academic understanding of what you're doing and talking about, but also not obsessing over it and getting too tied into it and like needing to perfect every little area. So I think like taking a step back and having a sense of lightheartedness with it, I think is also super important, especially in health because the irony is like when you think too much about it or you try to perfect everything, then you're causing stress in your life and the stress is actually what's going to hurt your health, right? I think stress plays a huge role in a lot of chronic health issues and it also I think is super linked to my eating habits as well because I find that when I'm stressed, I reach for the quick carbs, the sugary things that are not actually like fueling my body. A hundred percent and also if you're so obsessed with every little thing, Tant is our if you do something that wasn't "approved" of what you want to do, you're going to be upset, you're going to feel guilty, you're probably going to just give up for the day and that's just going to spiral. There's no point and I think to your point as well, it can be really overwhelming, especially if you are someone who is heavily involved in the wellness space and when I was in school studying nutrition as an undergrad, I definitely did not like that so many of our classes, especially back then which was way before health at every size and all these movements that were not as focused on calories but all of our classes are focused on calories. Everything we were talking about was how many calories per day someone should be eating all these different things and it really bothered me that it was reducing food to numbers and that's another reason why I don't really believe in carb counting or counting your fat or focusing so much on those numbers because food isn't numbers. There are so many things that are more important than how many grams of fat are in a food, you know, that fat if it's five or ten grams that is truly not going to make a difference in your body at all. It's are you eating a wide variety of phytonutrients and vitamins and minerals and all these things that are fueling you and does it taste good and is it giving you energy and does it feel good in your body and that's so much more important and I think that when you are being hit with all of these articles and trends and does this really work and does that really work and so many of them are not really based in science they're based on hypotheses that are so not tested yet or the tests are so preliminary and it's purely correlation not causation and I think especially with nutrition because there are so many variables when it comes to what people are eating it is really important to take any of these studies with a grain of salt unless they are a controlled trial in a lab where the subjects were completely being controlled in what they were eating and obviously even then there's variability because everyone's body is different but when they talk about people who ate this were healthier for this reason it's like okay well what else were they doing? Were they eating this because they generally had a healthier diet also and people who have healthier diets in general are more likely to be physically active and they're more likely to not smoke and they're more likely to do all these other things and have all these other lifestyle factors that are impacting their health and I just don't think it's healthy too as you're saying like that in and of itself is going to create the stress that is going to hurt you in the end it's just not healthy to obsess like that yeah when you try to control every little thing I think it kind of blows up in your own face rather than just maybe focusing on one change and letting that be the dominant effect where everything else naturally starts to fall into place and I think that the health and wellness industry in particular now is super like oversaturated and just there's so much out there where I think it's over complicating really how to be healthy I think we need to go back to the basics I don't know if this is something that you've thought about recently or if you share in this perspective but just kind of instead of over complicating things we need to just go back to simplifying and I think it kind of ties into this idea of maybe it's intuitive eating or but more broadly just coming to that sense of intuition like listening to your gut metaphorically and physically speaking yeah listening to your body cannot be underestimated if you think about an infant or a toddler they listen to their bodies and when we grow up we somehow lose that and we start focusing on this is what I'm supposed to eat this is when I'm supposed to eat this is how much I'm so see. and we forget about everything else. A little kid eats when they're hungry, they stop when they're full, they often want to just eat candy, but for the most part, they are listening to their bodies. And it's interesting, like if you kind of junk food for a while, you actually find that you crave vegetables and you crave fruits because your body is telling you, "Hey, I really need this." And I think that we, as young kids, are often taught not to listen to our bodies because we're told you can't leave the table until you're done with your dinner, but maybe you're not hungry anymore. Or we're told, "You have to eat your vegetables before you can have dessert." And that's internally telling us that vegetables are bad, and we have to eat them even though we are supposed to hate them. And it's telling us that dessert is good, but we have to do something to deserve it because we can't just have it when we want to have it. And it's really all of these subtle cues, and I do think that parenting is changing a lot, at least in the nutrition space, and how nutritionists are recommending talking to your kids about healthy eating, and then growing up, and instead of saying, "You have to eat this broccoli," saying, "Oh, do you want broccoli or carrots for dinner?" And giving them that choice where they feel like they have power and they have a choice, but you're still getting the deep-teat eventual. But they're not hating you and hating the vegetable because they don't feel forced to eat it because they chose it. Now looking back, we can kind of see how, as adults, we've developed this sense of, "Oh, that's a bad food." "Oh, I can't have that." Or, "Oh, I was really good this week, so now I can have what I want to have." But why can't it all kind of just be mixed in? I really want this right now, and I haven't had it in a while, so I'm gonna have it, and I'm gonna have it in moderation. Or, you know, I'm actually really craving just a salad tonight, and that's really what's gonna make me happy instead of forcing yourself to eat the salad. And if you don't like salads, then don't eat them. And find something that you do like. But I think just, yeah, going back to basics, listening to our bodies always will tell us what to do. - Yeah, that's a really good point that you bring up. Like, how can you create that sense of autonomy so that you feel in control of your health? And I think that's a question that I've been seeking and answer forth actually throughout every podcast, indirectly. So I love that you bring that up 'cause I think it touches on all aspects of our health and well-being from nutrition to exercise and whatnot. So love that answer. And we haven't recorded actually, it's been almost a year. So a lot of time has passed since we've caught up like over recording screen. Obviously, we both know, everyday endorphins is about mental health and happiness more so too, finding those endorphins in life. And since we've lost spoken, I'm curious to hear if you've had any revelations or anything of particular insight to leading a happy life, like finding happiness in the day to day. If there's anything that's maybe change your perspective or if there's anything that you've learned over the past, maybe eight or nine months now since we've spoken on how you define happiness. - I would say, especially 'cause it's summer recently, I've been really trying to take a lot of walks with friends. Last time we spoke, it was pretty cold outside. So that was happening less frequently. But I think that's something that has brought me a lot of happiness and a lot of endorphins. And I've been trying to do weekend walks, after work walks, even for like 10 minutes, just to feel a little bit more connection. I think that and also trying to stay connected with friends that don't live near me. That's something that's gotten increasingly important to me as I don't know if it's a perspective change or exactly what happened, but most of my friends are also based in New York, but I definitely do have friends that are in other parts of the country or the world. And just making sure that connectivity still happens because there's really nothing that kind of replace that feeling. And as humans, we just need that connection and making sure that you maintain those friendships even if there is some sort of distance. Yeah, I think creating the space to keep relationships alive when you're not physically together is super important and also really rewarding too. It's kind of a skill to be able to stay in touch with people, right? And so putting effort into that is difficult, but I think super rewarding, also depending on the type of friendship that you have. But I love those responses. And I think also seasonally, like the activities that we do shift outside in the summer, it's warmer, we want to be out more. I feel like we're more social beings, but then in the winter, we tend to kind of hibernate and be indoors. And I always used to think like, oh, the winter's horrible. I just want it to be summer. But time goes by so fast. I'm like, it's already kind of approaching fall-ish. And then it's going to be winter. And I don't want my happiness to be contingent on the season. So I think something I've actually been thinking about is like, how do I find joy in the months where we're actually stuck indoors more? Like, how can you find pleasure from that and connection? And instead of just focusing on summer being the most joyous, happy month, how can you find ways to connect with people when you can't be outdoor dining? Come verbally, right? Yeah. I think that's important. I think you brought up a good point where in the summer and this goes back to Vitamin D and being outside, like it is so easy to get a little boost of Vitamin D or sour tone or whatever it is. Yesterday, I was just sitting outside for a couple of hours in my laptop. And I was so happy even though I was completely alone, not really talking to anyone. I'm just doing work, but I was outside in the sun. And I was so happy because I was just like calm and peaceful. And the sun was warm. And I'm sure the Vitamin D was so open into my body. But how do we find those types of activities that do kind of spark that same feeling even when it's not as easy as just walking outside? Yeah. So check in with me, come to summer. So we do many of this exactly. Well, with this into you, Ariana is something that I ask podcasts that we did, your response to this question was running. But if there's anything else recently, that would be what would it be? I will change my answer a little bit. I trend. And it is so fun. I am the eye coordination athletic type of person. But my parents, we went to play with them for Mother's Day. And it was so honestly, it was one of the only times I've completely forgotten about any three hours. And since then, I've been playing. And it is so easy. And it's just like no matter what, you can just jump in and give it a try. And it's really fun. Well, that is very promising for me because I tried a tennis camp once, realized I had literally no hand eye coordination. So I've always been like, I don't want to touch pickleball, tennis, whatever. It's been easier. I'm not a tennis player. But I do think it's a big trend. Like a lot of my friends are playing pickleball. They're loving it. It's a fun activity. So maybe I should give it a try. Love that response, Arianna. And again, it was just such a pleasure having you on the podcast. Where can my listeners follow along, connect with you, and just stay up to date with any exciting things that are happening with Juice Brass? Yeah. My answer is re-ar-i.com and K-O-R-M-A-N, underscore RD. And that is the best place to find me. Well, thank you so much. It was so great having you around too. Thanks for listening to this episode of Everyday Endorphins. If you liked what you heard, make sure to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever platform you prefer. You can also follow along the Everyday Endorphins Instagram account to stay up to date with episodes, future events, and all things related to mental health, well-being, and happiness. Don't forget to keep spreading Endorphins and find things in life that bring you joy every day. Until next time. [MUSIC PLAYING]