EP #142: The Joy of Healthy Indulgence & The Founding Story of Honey Mama's with Christy Goldsby, Founder & Head of Innovation at Honey Mama's

Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endorphins, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. I'm your host Stella Steffanopolis, and this week I had the pleasure of speaking with Christy Goldsby, who is the founder and head of innovation at Honey Mamas, which is a healthier alternative to at least my favorite type of desert, which is chocolate. But what makes them unique is that they're the original refrigerated truffle bars, and you may have seen them across many popular retailers. They're stocked in over 6,000 locations nationwide. And what I love about the company and the product itself is the commitment to nourishing your body from a place of joy and centering around this concept of healthy indulgence, which I think is a really interesting idea to bring to the top of our minds, especially right now, is we're moving into the holidays, because the holidays usually signal to lots of desserts, lots of sweet treats, lots of alcohol, drinking the whole thing, being festive around holiday season. But I do think that there's a way to indulge with a healthier perspective, and that's exactly the approach that Honey Mamas has taken in the way that they've developed their products and the way that they've branded their products. And I can definitely attest that I think the chocolates are delicious. But aside from my own personal plug and love for the brand, it was such a pleasure to get to sit down with Christy today to talk about the founding story of Honey Mamas, how it originated actually from her own struggles with an autoimmune disorder and disease. And of course we talk about the concept of nourishing our bodies and how to kind of walk that really nuanced line around indulging, but also doing so in a healthy way, and how to develop perhaps a healthier relationship to "sweet treats and desserts." Recognizing that it's important to fully savor all the pleasures that life can bring you. We also talk about Christy's perspective on joy and happiness, and of course what brings her endorphins besides chocolate, which fun fact, there are studies that do show that chocolate does bring you endorphins. So it's very full circle, very in alignment, but with that let's dive right into the interview. But before we get into it, reminder to like Ray and review this podcast on whichever listening platform that you prefer. Hi Christy, thank you so much for coming on to Everyday Endorphins. It's so great to have you here. It's so nice to be here. Thank you for having me. I feel like a part of your aura and energy is living in my fridge because I have dozens and dozens of Honey Mamas in my apartment, which means every day I have just needed a little sweet treat. And it's been the perfect non-alcohol nightcap. I guess is having chocolate literally every day and it's delicious. So that has been a big endorphin boost for me as of lately. And I just have a lot of questions. So I'll start with one of the most basic ones. How did you get interested in the health and wellness space and where did this whole inspiration around creating a chocolate company come from? It really ties into what you just shared about how you've been enjoying like the little head of chocolate every day and that's really at the root of it, where my interest was. I got interested in the health and wellness space in college. I was really wanted to study nutrition and I sucked at science pretty hardcore. I loved the social sciences so I ended up getting a degree in sociology and I was also interested in psychology and all of the things like about like what you were just talking about before the show started about positivity and positive psychology. And so that's totally my orbit. And anyway, I have always been a mover and athlete, you know, somebody who takes care of their body. I naturally like healthy foods. Like I've always just been that person who loves salad and loves like, you know, I choose stuff that just tastes good and happens to be healthy. And so I've always kind of had that in my core being and then I had a bakery for a number of years with my mom and my sister and my husband. And my mom was really the creative force behind that bakery. We were doing a lot of the recipes that we grew up eating, family recipes of incredibly delicious, high quality, you know, cakes and pies and cookies and things like this and Portland Oregon and we had a brick and mortar space. And so my interest of starting honey mamas really intersected with my health and wellness journey, my kind of own health and wellness core being in an interesting way because I was owning and running this bakery in the early 2000s. I had two little kids at the time and my best friend at the time had an autoimmune disease called myocenium grovis. The doctors could name what it was but they didn't have a cure for her. And they just told her it was debilitating and it would continue to get worse and that, you know, they were giving her just kind of random, I don't know, it was very, she felt very hopeless. And I was at that time, you know, I've been running the bakery, I was fairly exhausted, I was run down all the time. She said she was going to do this cleanse to try to see if that would, like, if there's a way that food could impact her autoimmune disease. I did the cleanse with her as a support and this cleanse was called the body ecology diet and it was all about gut health and the candida and like understanding kind of like how these things that are going on in our body can completely impact all sorts of things, not just our physical health but our mental health, our emotional health. And so three weeks into this cleanse together, my energy levels were phenomenal. I was super clear thinking I had energy for my kids, I had energy for my business, I felt I was having like kind of a, like a lot of anxiety during this time as well. And it was just this really amazing moment where I had this huge aha around food as medicine and she discovered she was a celiac during this process. She completely turned her autoimmune disease around and was able to manage it through the foods that she ate and it was really the seed of the beginning of honey mamas because it kind of was like, you know, when you're doing things in your life and everything just feels like lined up, like it's like, oh, this makes absolute sense to me and it's something that's kind of synthesis of what you've been interested in or maybe moving towards for a long time and just didn't know it. Anyway, so that was really how those kind of worlds of like my interest in nutrition but sucking it at science and not really being able to pursue that, not, you know, do it and wanting to really do that in college and then really being able to have all of a sudden these years of experience running this bakery and knowing what that looks and feels like to put recipes together and to do that on a larger level than home and also what business feels like and then having my friend go through this extreme experience, I just started the feels were really starting to turn for me around gut health and how there really wasn't anything like this in the grocery store shelves at that time and this is 2010. So I was feeling just super inspired to figure out some way to kind of fill in it that I saw kind of beginning to sprout in the grocery stores around food as medicine and like just simply better for you and but take these my background and kind of really put those into play all those pieces. Yeah, that's such an, you know, an interesting story because you have like that business perspective from the bakery but then also this like personal tie to health and well-being and senior friend struggle with her autoimmune disorder and when you did that cleanse were you at the time were you facing any health issues or you just wanted to kind of see how it could improve your life because you mentioned energy levels improving and you know, I think that's actually something I struggle with like I've noticed my energy levels can be really low and I'm like super dependent on coffee and now I've become I guess addicted. I'm like I definitely have one to two cups a day which isn't horrible. There are people that do like three to five for sure but even with coffee I'm like why do I feel not energized? Maybe I need to do this cleanse and reconsider like take a deep dive into my diet because I definitely could have a better stocked fridge. That's for sure but I'm curious like what your health felt like at that time and maybe what intentions you had going into that cleanse. So the part that I left out about my story was that at that same time I was pretty much splitting from the bakery like we were having family problems running a business together surprise surprise which we remedied you know but still like it was a challenging moment. So I was having a lot of anxiety I'm sure it was coming from that I was very close to my family and so I was I'd all honestly like for my whole life I think I had had periods of kind of depressive episodes that not like huge and it wasn't something that I was you know treated for and medicated for but I was pretty you know low grade and it was and it would hang around sometimes and during this time of my life you know my girls were young they were missing middle school and active. And I was, so I was going through stress and strain personally and not feeling great and really drinking too much. I was really trying to manage my stress with a drink or two and just trying to kind of do the regular things that we do. You know what I mean? I would exercise and all that but it just wasn't helping. And I think my cortisol levels were so high because I had been stressed out chronic stress for so many years, running the bakery, raising the two kids. And this is something I think that we like what you're saying like you're tired. We all walk around with a tremendous amount of stress and you know just list this age that we live in is a whole topic, right? Like this is it we got there's a lot of information. There's a ton of pressure to live up to. And I think that even during the 2010s, you know, it was different like social media was not happening like it is now. But my life was in a place where I was stressed and and I needed a change and I think so emotional was dragging my the emotional stress was definitely dragging on my energy and my thinking and all of that. I also discovered I had Hashimoto's at that time. So Hashimoto's is an autoimmune disease that affects the thyroid. So I don't know when I developed that but that is something where you have to eliminate like gluten dairy gluten and dairy primarily. So that in itself was a huge aha. And I was able to kind of eliminate those two things pretty regularly. I mean I'm very very strict about gluten. And when I've backslid, I pay for just the inflammation, the response that happens in my body when I backslide and eat gluten. I mean I really don't but often on for years I would I'd love a beer or like you know good bread or whatever. And so it's hard to always stick to that severe diet. And anyway that again those were huge and like hugely impactful in kind of thinking about you know I pretty much immediately after I had done this cleanse with her started thinking about what could I do that's gonna address this. And it's not just solving my problem but I know that this is common this is more common than I know if like that I'm having this experience I'm not living in a bubble. You know. Yeah no absolutely not. I mean it's fascinating just to hear your story but also how there's so many stories that are you know reminiscent of this truth that stress really impacts our health and our wellness our gut health and our gut microbi- like everything is all very interconnected. And you know I'm curious like is it possible to live a life that's completely stress-free? I don't think so. I'd love to crack the code to how the blue zones do it. Yeah. I don't even know if the blue zones live completely stress-free lives. Like I think to it's your extent we need some sort of level of stress but maybe it's when it becomes chronic or like debilitating that's when it starts to negatively impact our health. So how do we find that balance? How do we walk that line? It's very nuanced. Yeah totally non-sequitur but it's kind of something I want to you know or maybe just like it is make sense but like the whole blue zone thing I think it's interesting because it's like okay maybe you can't mimic the life of living on some sweet little Japanese island somewhere in garden all day and have community with your friends half the other day and then walk up hills all the time. You know it's like I feel like if you can just pull right pieces from that and I just moved into a neighborhood where I can walk a pill for 30 minutes straight every morning and I just have been loving it and I was thinking about the blue zones you know I was like I may still live in like United States in a fast-paced you know city and everything else is going on but I can there's this little piece of sunshine and nature that I can grab in the morning and just walk because I remember that being one of the things like a lot of them like one of the things that threaded them together was that they all lived in like really hilly areas I might be wrong but that was my that's a memory from what I learned. I actually haven't watched the series which I need to do but I really like your point around holding on to like one quality maybe that is representative of a lifestyle of being in the blue zones and just seeing how you can adapt that into your life and I think that's really representative of just like how we can incorporate better health and wellness practices into our lives because of course it's not realistic that we can just move to a remote island in Greece or Japan or wherever and healthiest lives and thrive every single day I wish that was the case but we can't do that so I like your point around finding like one small practice that you can replicate in your environment in your ecosystem and kind of gravitating towards that or using that as like a daily anchor that maybe is grounding and actually helps you feel more in alignment with yourself. I recently got back from vacationing in Greece and in Italy and I'm kind of in this like post-Europe honeymoon phase where I'm like get me out in New York like I want to go back to Europe it's healthier happier and maybe one day that'll be an opportunity or a possibility but in the you know immediate future it's not and so this is a good reminder for me actually to think about well what are some things that I like made me feel healthy and grounded while I was in Greece and in Italy and and how can I translate those practices into my lifestyle in New York City and coming back to food and nutrition I think it's well-known that the quality of food the produce is much better in Europe than it is in America and maybe this is like a reminder for me to think about how I can urge myself better here in New York and kind of adopt more of that Mediterranean diet and lifestyle into my routine but when we think about just how nutrition impacts our health and our wellness you're talking about this cleanse that you were on this program that you were doing and how that experience informed your inspiration to start honey mama so walk us through the inception of that idea so when you were thinking about marrying health and wellness with something more of like a guilty pleasure like chocolate desserts and sweets what did that look like for you the creative brainstorming process ideation well I'll start with the fact that I immediately went straight to I wanted to do a highly functional product because I was so impacted by adding one of the core principles of this diet was fermented foods and it was just like cultured vegetables and adding fermented foods to every meal so that there's this digestibility thing happening so your gut is like you're putting premium gas in your tank every day just by having simple foods and then eating these fermented foods so that to me I felt like was there was nothing like that of the grocery stores and long story short I ran into all sorts of issues trying to start that idea I was having licensing challenges I was not able to find the right space I just nothing was working right and I ended up dropping that and going this is not the right direction for me so I need to kind of go back to the drawing board and how I ended up getting into more of like this treat space I think was after realizing the fermented foods thing was just like I was very disappointed because I was like I thought this would be it because I was like there's not cultured vegetables on the market like it seems like such a great idea and so I was kind of just trying to sit with myself for a minute and what came up for me was I started playing with a raw like raw foods essentially just you know the like date and pecan nut you put it in your blender and you make a crust for like a cheesecake and then you use like cashew nuts that are soaked overnight to cream and then you make this like beautiful like cream cheese kind of you know cheesecake thing and with this fresh blueberry compote on top with like maple syrup is the sweetener like those types of things and I started getting really into like the amount of nutrition that is in these just like same vibe of a dessert that I've been making at Bligardini at my bakery where we're adding processed flowers and you know like everything a refined sugar cane sugar and I I had learned that you know through that diet through that cleanse just how all of those things actually are pulling the energy from myself and pulling the energy away from my vitality instead of giving me my vitality when I'm eating them and so this kind of raw food focus had my that whole light bulb thing was happening where I was like okay this I like like this seems really fun and like and they're delicious and so I kind of just ripped on that for a while and where I ended up kind of going with that was that was a I couldn't land on one or two products like I really knew I wanted to launch something in the grocery stores because in the consumer products worlds that's where people are shopping to take their food home and I had had that business experience with the bakery and we had sold gourmet cinnamon rolls and pecon rolls to like whole foods and new seasons market and these these local area stores and I understood what that was to create a product for a grocery store it's different than making it at your bakery that you're gonna sell that day and I understood the buyer relationship so on that level and kind of like what the margins could look like so that really quickly had kind of come into my consciousness when I was like saw my life change from this cleanse saw my friend Jen completely here yourself through changing her diet. And so I thought, okay, this feels like, like, I could start like a very simple product line and have it be on the grocery store shelves. So anyway, just a little backstory on that. And so the simplicity of the product needed to be there. And so I hadn't kind of hit that yet until a friend of mine gave me a recipe that I called bird suet that it was so full of like coconut oil and really just so full of unrefined coconut oil. That it was just kind of melted in your hands when you tried to eat it, but it tasted incredible. It made you feel incredible. Her nutritionist had given it to her when she was breastfeeding and couldn't like get enough energy for she was just like, you know, new mom breastfeeding all this stuff. And it was like a protein kind of bar. And I rift on that and took it from kind of this like bird suet highly functional protein experience. And I started kind of taking this element of like what I grew up with, which was, and my grandma used to make fudge every year and send it to us in the mail. She was, you know, didn't live in Portland. And it was this really incredible texture and taste experience like during the holidays that I would always look forward to and, and you know, like the cakes that we would make at the bakery and brownies. It's like how I went that, you know, and so I was able to kind of transform this protein, this raw protein bar idea and turn it into that simplified the ingredients down. And really looked at what I had learned from the body ecology diet was how impactful unrefined oils were choosing oils. I got super turned on to coconut oil at that time and like the benefits of it. I tried all sorts of like different sweeteners like I was trying coconut sugar and, you know, low glycemic sweeteners that had a, that weren't refined sugar that had less of an impact on our system. And when I ate honey, I felt the best like honey for me for whatever reason was just like hit all the marks on like after I ate it, whatever I was putting it in, I just was like, okay, this sweetener I want to use. So I kind of was just doing this thing where I was grabbing these elements of what I had learned with what I'd been kind of working on and I put sprouted almonds, unrefined coconut oil, raw honey, Himalayan pink salt and cocoa powder together in a food processor and created my first honey mom as bar and that was I literally took one bite and I saw the packaging that my first packaging it was one of the coolest experiences I have ever had and I ate it at like about three or four in the afternoon when you're having that energy dip. And I was kind of freaking out because it was so good and I was like I could make like four four flavors of this and I could put this at the grocery store and people would eat it. 100% I mean I'm like addicted now it's delicious all the different flavors are so good. I love chocolate like it's definitely my guilty pleasure and speaking of guilty pleasures I think what's really interesting about your product is that it is in the treat space but it feels guilt free because it is made with ingredients that are actually good for you and I don't know how much research you've done in like sugar certain foods that impact your cortisol levels and how that affects our hormones but I've dealt a lot with hormonal issues and have been told to have you know a diet that consists of a low glycemic index with certain foods and to refrain from sugar and I think I've struggled with like putting guilt on having desserts or eating certain types of foods versus others and I think a lot of women struggle with this too with body image and needing to eat healthy foods and you know it's interesting when we even just talk about this label of healthy foods sometimes what may seem healthy may actually not be good for your system and for your body even if it's considered like a healthy vegetable or whatnot depending on your gut microbiome and what's compatible with you and so I'd love to talk a little bit more also just about like your thoughts on being in the treat space but having this healthier alternative and kind of getting rid of the guilt around indulging in something that tastes good you know we're meant to savor and enjoy life and what a shame that that would be if we restricted ourselves from experiencing you know the wide range of pleasurable foods and experiences. I just think that all of that like honestly like when we had the bakery people would walk by the booth we had a farmer's market booth that we would do and people would I just remember a few times of people going oh I can't even get close to your booth because I just can't eat that and I I just remember thinking to myself and this was before I did like a ton of research on it well just nourish you know this whole like nourishing foods and all of that stuff and I just thought to myself but yet even though I'm not like a science food scientist I know enough I'm intuitive enough to understand and I believe I think that we also are really impacted by how we feel about what we're about to eat and the flavor and the pleasure principle around like enjoying something delicious I know that impacts our health like in a positive way if we're if we're feeling so good about something that we're about to do or eat so anyway I that's just a little antidote to the fact that my whole reason for starting honey mamas was so that it addresses exactly what you just said which is you are trying to find a way to have something that's a treat without feeling that you're doing something bad or wrong you know which is a lot of other podcasts but it's so with so much flip and pressure that's put on us I feel like women especially to be perfect and all this BS and so much of that happens through food and with honey mamas the pleasure of eating it is so high the textural experience I feel like is a really big part of that and because of its people will laugh about this because they'll be like well I eat a whole bar but you know the fact is is like you think they're big bars that we make and really it's into you know it's nutrients dense and so it's like a little should kind of be able to go a longer way rather than eating you know 500 calorie piece of cake that's full of processed flowers and processed sugars which are immediately going to spike your glucose and immediately talk about impacting your hormones but instead give you something that has 100% pure cacao unrefined fat coconut oil that's going to be an excellent delivery system for the honey which is the sweetener in the bar which and those both happen to be antifungal anti-bacterial you know all of these really great qualities and then the nuts or coconut I use in some of them and having that as be the base so that's got nourishment in it so nothing in the bar everything is nutritive in the bar and whether or not you eat the whole thing and it's a 330 calorie snack that happens to be what is that it would be like this 10 grams of sugar per but that's all coming you know so that's all coming from honey I think that my heart of hearts was wanting to exactly do what you're talking about where being in that space and being able to say this is something that you can eat like a treat I couldn't call it chocolate because I don't have cocoa butter in it it's just been a really interesting experience to be a treat in the grocery store be in the fridge next protein bars mind you is where we are you know where we are in the fridge but to be able to convey to people this is actually healthy it's a really healthy like nutrient rich option from say a snickers bar or a Mars bar or something where you're going to have all of these really negative impacts on your blood sugar and everything else right away it's this really nice opportunity to eat something that's nutrient rich and yes it's still as calories and I would never try to make something that didn't have that like life we like to eat sweets most people enjoy to have a sweet at least once a day and so how can you do that in a way that's life giving and it's really been an interesting thing I'm 11 years into the business and you know we're just now trying to crack this code from going from growing the business in the natural grocery channel which is like the whole foods of the world to more of like the Kroger vein you know and like Costco in these places where we can impact more people and I think that our work there is around creating a little bit of maybe a smaller product and just tweet you know kind of speaking we're trying ultimately we're really kind of playing with and and working on like how can we brand it from the shelf where people immediately see that as like an alternative to the snickers you know so as you and I are speaking we're really kind of playing with this idea right now Cocoa Truffle bar I used to call them nectar bars like it's just been a whole process to try to name it make it something people know what it is it's in the fridge it's been an interesting process but it's you know it's working so far clearly I mean it's it's an exciting place to be right now with these thoughts that you have around how to bring the brand to the next level and how to get people to see it like maybe like maybe like a healthier alternative to a snickers like to influence consumer behavior to move away from the process stuff into like something that tastes equally as good but is actually going to fuel you so what an exciting point to be in right now and just going off of kind of what we've been speaking about how we can really transform our mood through food, you made a really interesting point earlier around how the mood that you have before you actually consume the food is just as important, right? And feeling excited about what you're going to consume is kind of half the battle. You know, I found the moments in life where I felt the most confident about my body and the healthiest in my body and the strongest is when I've actually had a really positive outlook and healthy relationship to what I was ingesting and consuming and kind of took the emphasis away from maybe like sticking to a specific diet or needing to be healthy, quote, unquote, and more so tapping intuitively into how I feel when I eat something. It speaks to a lot of what we've been talking around around like mindset and having that healthier outlook on, you know, what we consume and how we structure our lives and on that, you know, vein, I'd love to kind of hear a little bit more about your top five hyper functional ingredients, you know, to elevate your outlook on life. So taking this metaphor away from the food space, like what are those qualities or ingredients that you, you know, think really contribute to having a healthier outlook on our lives? Yeah, food specifically. It's an interesting question because there's a lot. There's so many. I would probably say always starting with like proteins. So these would be my top five. I think I would say protein fat, protein. So protein being like fish, meat, eggs, tofu, fat, cod liver oil, unrefined coconut oil, olive oil, then I would say cacao on whatever form you take it straight up 100% chocolate, you know, in a honeyvon must-bar, however, pure cacao, I would say fermented foods for gut health or probiotic if your body can't handle fermented foods. I would say sweeteners. So I choose honey personally, but it's any, it's like limiting the sweeteners that you use and making them like dates are a great sweetener. Something that is coming from a natural source and easy for your body to assimilate, staying way far away from the all the crap that's like an artificial sweetener. You know, I think something that really doesn't get talked about a ton is just like hydration is just like a key like water and hydration and having it be you know electrolytes in your water where you're actually staying hydrated. So I mean, I know that we all hear this and we know this, but being like having eating whole food ingredients, eating whole food ingredients, staying away from ultra processed foods, you know, being mindful of your sweeteners, staying hydrated. The whole mushroom game I'm fascinated by, I take like a seven mushroom blend every morning I put it in my smoothie that's just like got all the good mushrooms in it, but I'm not super well educated on it, but I'm really jazzed on what mushrooms do for us and collagen. I feel like that's just great for gut health. You know, I love your response because it's very simple and it breaks down health into like those basic building blocks. And I think we tend to over complicate health in our lives and what we need to eat and how we need to exercise and all these things, but at the end of the day, it's really I think coming back to those fundamental basics and keeping it simple and like easily mentally and physically digestible, I guess. Like the more simple the better, and I think that also probably ties into the philosophy of the blue zones as well and you know, at least the diets that they carry. But you know, as we transition in this interview, Kristi, I want to ask a few questions about happiness because that's really what the podcast is about. And I know we started this interview with kind of alluding to the joy and endorphins that I feel from having honey mamas because truly it's something I look forward to if I want a sweet treat. Now I've like a fully stocked fridge of them since delicious. And so, you know, my first question that I have for you is how you define happiness in your life and what that looks like to you. Happiness to me comes in the form of connection, I think, would be the first word that kind of comes up for me because I think at the root of it, there's like a sense of connection to yourself that feels good, that feels where you're able to be present with yourself and trust yourself and like yourself and be kind to yourself. So that for me personally is like a pretty strong root of happiness is to I've really worked on a lot of that over the years of not being so hard on myself about things, being just a little bit more, I don't have to know everything or be everything or do everything, and just like take a chill pill in that zone. So happiness I think is starts with that self-acceptance and that truthfulness to self. And then, you know, extending from that, I would definitely say being and connecting with myself and with other people in a sense of ease and joy, probably some of my happiest moments are with my daughters who are now 27 and 24 and they're probably around your age. Yeah, I'm 25 some right in the middle. Yeah, you're right in the middle. It's such a cool age, honestly, for me to have children in this age because they're both just living their lives and, you know, so anyway, there's just a ton of happiness that we have a deep connection and that feels like really core to my sense of happiness. And I know it sounds kind of cheesy, but it is I think having a sense of gratitude really goes a long way or a sense of happiness and trying to be myself the most, instead of trying to be someone else. I mean, I think that that like it doesn't matter who I'm with or what I'm doing, like that's when I'm at my happiness is when I can there's like a state of play that's occurring on some level or and that can kind of come in lots of different forms. Right. I mean, these are all science-backed responses actually. Connection is so critical to our well-being, the strength of our interpersonal connections directly ties to our sense of subjective well-being. And then of course, if you have good company that you surround yourself with, that's going to encourage you and inspire you to invest in yourself and to connect with yourself and to have that strong sense of self. So it's for lack of a better term interconnected. And I've noticed too in my life, I feel at my happiest when I feel like a sense of being content. And at ease, with the way things play out, not feeling in resistance to things I may want to change, but rather like accepting how things are and leaning into the natural flow of life's events. And the final question that I want to leave you with, Christy, is something that I ask every guest on the podcast, what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins every day? Is there like a practice, a habit, a ritual, something that you look forward to that just brings you incremental joy? Well, definitely chocolate. Definitely chocolate. And that's usually happens in the afternoon or evening. I dance, I dance for years and years with a group of women and it's not something I do every single day, but I would say that is one of my best endorphin places. One of the things I do every day, though, that is endorphin producing is I get out and I go walk. It kind of doesn't matter with the unless we're having really bad eyes or something. So I used to run for years and years, and then I just got it when they heard of my joints and stuff. And I just do great, just really great walks and I think being outside. So for me, any opportunity where I'm as close to water as I can be, you know, like talk about when I was in New York, I would go to the water and I would walk along the boardwalk and I would walk as far as I could, you know, I had a great little walk like in that big, the bigness of the city. I will find the natural spaces. And so I think those are kind of the huge, huge ones for me of just like endorphins being connected to the natural world. And at work in the office too, it's just like the in between moments with the team of having like playful getting loose. And I get a lot of happiness and I don't know if that's endorphins, but it feels like endorphins from I think in that coming back to the connection piece, you know, I really like the people that I work with. And that feels like, yeah, that's pretty huge. I love that. I mean, I love asking this question, because it's more a philosophical question rather than what are certain specific things you do that actually boost your own endorphins because it could be serotonin, it could be dopamine. But for the purpose of the podcast, it's endorphins. And I think, you know, for me, it's also like being near water. I love walking down the west side highway. I think there's a study that shows that people who just see water like are happier. So I love being near the water for sure. And movement is a huge one. I love to dance also. I think it's a really like fun way to just be a part of self expression. And rhythm is really important to me. So I can relate to that one as well. And really everything you're talking about, it's like being in those flow like experiences, which I've also talked about extensively on the podcast. There's a lot of cool science emerging in that area of flow, flow like states. And how do we reach peak performance? So I totally agree with everything that you shared. And also chocolate, that is now my newest endorphin is having honey mamas. And we're can my listeners have their very own endorphins and their fridge where can they find honey mamas? The best place to find it really is at your local grocery store. We're in the refrigerator. So we're going to be in like the grab and go or like in the grab and go fridge, usually next to like perfect bar. I don't know if you're familiar with that protein bar brand, but we are usually shelved right next to those guys who we love. Or we're also in like the dairy yogurt set sometimes. and grocery stores. So it's definitely in like the healthy snacking grab and go fridges is where you'll find our products. And we have honeymomas.com is a great place to go and we will do like limited time additions, a sales online. And then you can also type in yours if code and find it at the store right by your neighborhood. Amazing. Right now I'm loving the peanut butter one and like the coconut one. I forget the whole name but it's so good. Yeah coconut fudge. Yes. The coconut fudge. Delicious. I think I also tried the mocha. If I'm remembering correctly that was really good. So yeah, everyone out there listening, hit up your local grocery store and have an an endorphin filled fridge of honeymomas. Thank you so much, Christy. It was a wonderful having you on the podcast. Thank you so much. Stella. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Everyday Endorphins. If you liked what you heard and you want to continue to follow along, make sure to like, rate, review and subscribe to this podcast on which ever listening platform you prefer. If you want to stay plugged into Everyday Endorphins outside of the podcast, I'm on Instagram, I'm on TikTok and you can also drop your email to subscribe to my newsletter. It's the Everyday Endorphins upstack where I talk about the interviews that I've done that month. Any events happening in New York that I've hosted and just a stream of consciousness of my thoughts. Thanks again for tuning in and reminder to keep spreading endorphins and finding the things in life that bring you joy. Until next time.