Liz talks very great big nutshells, kids on the internet, pandemic impulse purchases, and pregnancy undies.
TRANSCRIPT
This is episode 1, topic: congratulations, it’s a podcast!
Today we’ll talk about:
Liz In A Nutshell (A Very Great Big Nutshell)
My Kids On The Internet
Pandemic Impulse Purchases
Sending Out The Bat Signal
And my Weekly Overshare
LIZ IN A NUTSHELL
I know there are folks out there who have followed my … career? Let’s call it a career. In the real food world, from my early days as a cartoon cave girl (or even before, when I had a blog called Jerselizabeth) to my transition to real human face on the internet, to my Skintervention Guide, renamed Purely Primal Skincare, to my book Eat the Yolks, to the podcast I co-hosted for 8 years, The Balanced Bites Podcast, and to you I say hi, thank you thank you thank you for being so kind to me, and for sticking with me, and even more thanks to those who popped in to my DMs to make sure I was OK when I took a little more than a year off to grow and raise my now-almost-one-year-old. Which is absolutely, utterly NUTS that I have a six year old AND a one year old. Time began to accelerate exponentially after I became a mom. That is for SURE.
For those who are new to my schtick, or who need a review, here’s my story in a very great big nutshell. And I mean a BIG nutshell, because I’m going to give you not just my resume, but also all the context. Some people might call it a life story, but I call it PERTINENT INFORMATION.
One night in 1982, my parents had a glass of wine and…just kidding.
More than a decade ago, I started working out at the gym of the giant of fitness in Kansas City, Michael Rutherford. He introduced me to Crossfit-type, functional fitness concepts, which led to discovering the Paleo Diet, which led to my husband and I getting CrossFit Certified (that felt important at the time, but ended up being less important than I thought it would be) and me starting a blog for friends and family called Jerselizabeth, which talked about many things, INCLUDING the food we were eating. I have always been a writer and an investigator, but this was something I truly enjoyed writing about and investigating.
So this is an interesting moment for me. I had never for a minute thought I wanted to work in the nutrition world. I always wanted to be a writer, but I never thought that *I COULD DO THAT THING.* To me, being “a writer” was like saying I wanted to be a movie star. It just wasn’t something that happened for people. But, in college, I studied writing, education policy, and even did a semester interning in Washington, DC. Nothing having to do with nutrition, whatsoever (although I did my fair share of dieting and whatever the opposite of dieting is during those years).
Anyhow – the blog turned into MOSTLY food (this is when you didn’t have to be a professional photographer, marketer, and fashion influencer to have a blog) and was renamed Cave Girl Eats and it started taking off. I got lots of inquiries about our way of eating, and I figured, if people wanted help, maybe I should make myself official.
So I went back to school, to the Nutritional Therapy Association’s Nutritional Therapy program, which was the BEST decision of my life, because it gave me confidence in not just assessing the available science around food and health, but also in how to translate it to ground-level. I connected with some amazing professionals and scientists and learned to ask the right questions. I was gaining confidence in how to take care of myself and let’s be honest, that’s a big thing! Even the smartest people in the world do NOT believe in their ability to make good health decisions for themselves. From here, I was able to resolve my own decade-long battle with bad skin, including acne and eczema, and along the way I learned to give fewer … we’ll say Trucks … about diet culture, about all the crazy things I’d done in high school and college to try to battle my body. I was learning how awesome food was, how awesome my body was, and on top of that I was becoming a trusted resource for people looking to do the same.
During this time, I worked several jobs which tied-in with my love of writing, wellness, AND an old passion for bringing resources to at-risk communities through non profits. I worked as a writer for what is now Steve’s Original and Steve’s Club National Program, which brings fitness programming to at-risk youth; and I wrote programming for The First Twenty, which brings fitness resources to first responders. I started cohosting the Balanced Bites Podcast, I wrote a first-of-its-kind skincare guide, I moved from New Jersey back home to the midwest to a 15-acre homestead and started raising farm animals, and at some point in there, I was gifted the amazing opportunity to write Eat the Yolks, which is a nutrition myth-busting book that made the WSJ bestseller list. Oh, and I had my first baby, which was the catalyst for starting to do some parenting projects that still exist today.
So that brings us closer to the present. We have since sold our farm and moved to a tiny lake community to be close to family during this child-rearing stage of life, which, side note, I’m feeling a LOT of FOMO about all the friends that are now moving to land and getting their flocks and herds and gardens going – it was an AMAZING moment in my life and I hope there’s another little farmstead in my future … we had another baby, we made a major pandemic impulse purchase, and now I’ve plotted my re-entry into the world of thoughtful wellness, which I love and that uplifted me for so long.
So why another podcast? I can’t answer that other than to say, it felt right. I recorded my own audiobook for Eat the Yolks, and from that point I thought it would be great to record my blog posts as audio for the hearing-impaired or even just for the listening-preferential. I wanted to start writing again, because writing is part of how I process my experiences, and I thought this was a nice complement to that. And as I’ll continue to say, there are plenty of educational, expertise-y, and soapbox-y podcasts out there. This isn’t that. This is personal, talk-it-out, none-of-us-are-alone-type stuff. This is the type of podcast I enjoy listening to – listening to another human being human, not being “expert,” and hopefully picking up helpful tidbits along the way.
Will anyone listen? Who knows! But it’s really not about that. If I’m going to do something, I have to do it the way I want to do it. I can’t do anything just as a “business decision.” It has to work for me, it has to feel like it makes sense. And this makes sense to me. I took more than A FULL YEAR OFF. That’s not a good business decision. But it was the right thing to do for myself and my family, and we all agreed on that, and we made it work.
So that’s Liz in a Very Great Big Nutshell (side note: there will be lots of obscure movie quotes in this podcast, it’s inevitable, so have your dated pop culture detector fired up) and this family talk brings me to my next topic for Episode 1 –
MY KIDS ON THE INTERNET
More specifically, why I don’t put my kids on the internet. Well, their faces, anyway.
Now, this is only going to get more difficult, because we have done something as a family that I NEVER thought we’d do, which is to…this is the big reveal…my Pandemic Impulse Purchase…
PANDEMIC IMPULSE PURCHASES
WE DECIDED TO BUY A SPRINTER VAN AND CONVERT IT TO A CAMPER.
WHAT WHAT WHAT WERE WE THINKING.
I want to address something quickly, and that is the fact that the pandemic has been incredibly hard on people economically. I want to be sensitive to that while also sharing our reality. We economize on a lot of things. We are not flashy people with flashy stuff. In fact, our kitchen cabinets are mostly falling apart and our refrigerator is 35 years old. But THEY ALL WORK, so we go with it. When the pandemic hit, we knew we’d be homeschooling for that year, and we decided we could make this purchase work not just as an investment, but as a sort of travel school. Of course, at the time, 1) the baby hadn’t been born and our worlds hadn’t been rocked yet and I hadn’t tried to homeschool with a newborn in tow and 2) we didn’t think about how long the customization process takes. So, while we ADORE the company that’s converting our van, it’s been a long process.
But again. Now that things are opening up, I’m still so excited about it, but I still have that twinge, that chuckle, of like…who actually does this? Not me. Not me. But we’re doing it. Similar to how we felt when we bought our farm and my husband started processing our turkeys. Who does this? I guess we do.
I’ll be sharing adventures in the van once it’s all good to go. Truly, with air travel being what it is right now, and I can say this because my husband is a pilot, this is NOT political, I have NO intention of putting myself through keeping a mask on my baby once she hits that magical age of 2. I think this is the way for our family to continue exploring this amazing world until everyone is old enough to tolerate air travel again.
SENDING OUT THE BAT SIGNAL
I have had some amazing things come in to my life because of writing and podcasting – it’s a good way to send a signal out into space and hope someone with my sense of humor signals back…in fact, one of my very best friends in life, one of my bestest soul sisters came out of some of the stuff I was putting out into the universe. So please, if you’re into me like I’m into you, let me know! I don’t mean leave me a podcast review or a comment (obviously that helps me, but what do you get out of it?) I mean actually reach out and say hi. I don’t bite!
WEEKLY OVERSHARE
I’m going to go easy on everyone this week for the weekly overshare, but I just want to lay it out there – we’re going to “go places” with this in the future. Just be prepared. For this week, my overshare is this: I am still wearing my pregnancy underwear, almost one year later. And that is OKAY. In fact, I highly recommend it. These days, you almost don’t need “maternity clothes” since stretchy yoga pants is basically the uniform of my generation; pregnancy panties, though, are a must. I got mine from Kindred Bravely and I have no plans to put them away any time soon. The. End.
Before I wrap up Episode 1, I want to ask you to join me, message me, communicate with me, whether that’s via Instagram @realfoodliz or by going to Liztalks.com and signing up for my email list, where I communicate directly with you about even more fun stuff.
That’s it for episode one – I hope you ENJOYED it, I hope you’ll stick with me as we talk, food, beauty, families, babies, birth, exercise, friendship, marriage, and LIFE- THANKS for listening – have a fantastic day!
