My guest today is Jolene Hart, CHC, AADP, who teaches women to use nutrition and lifestyle choices to look and feel their best from the inside out. She’s the author of Eat Pretty, and a health coach certified by the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and the American Association of Drugless Practitioners. Jolene is also the founder of Beauty Is Wellness, as well as a former beauty editor and contributor to publications from InStyle and Allure to The Huffington Post, Organic Spa and Prevention. jolenehart.com

 

The MP3 of this interview has been lost, but will be placed here if we can find a copy.

TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Nutrition for Beauty: Look and Feel Your Best from the Inside Out

Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Jolene Hart, CHC, AADP

Date of Broadcast: August 04, 2014

DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world and live toxic-free.

It’s Monday, August 4, 2014. We’ve got a little overcast here, so there might be a thunderstorm, but I’m crossing my fingers that everything is going to be fine, that we’re going to have power and we’re going to have a wonderful show.

Today our show is a little bit different, but it’s also right in line with things that we’ve been talking about. My guest today is Jolene Hart. She’s written a book called Eat Pretty. It’s about nutrition for beauty inside and out. I think that I was captivated and decided to have her on the show.

When I went to her website, she had a recipe for a cherry chocolate smoothie. Now, the idea behind all of this is using nutrition and lifestyle changes to make your body more beautiful instead of toxic things. The thing about this cherry chocolate smoothie is it has no sugar, no sweetener of any kind and it is absolutely delicious.

I had been looking for a way to eat chocolate without having any kind of sugar or sweetener. The combination of the cherries and the cocoa in this smoothie with the other ingredients has a lot of nutrition. You get your chocolate fix, you get all the benefits of all these great things and you’ll look more beautiful too. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Hi, Jolene.

JOLENE HART: Hi Debra. Thank you for having me.

DEBRA: You’re welcome. So tell us. I see from your bio that you’re a former beauty editor and a contributor to publications like InStyle and Allure and Organic Spa and Prevention. Did you start out in the regular beauty world and then decide that you were going to take a little different direction?

JOLENE HART: I did. I started out working in magazines, and I worked in fashion and then in beauty. During that time, when I was working as a beauty editor, I was also dealing with a lot of skin issues of my own.

So, I had been consulting dermatologists and aestheticians and just trying to figure out what the root was of my cystic acne and the eczema that was on my body. Really, I tried every product that crossed my desk. And as beauty editor, hundreds of products would cross my desk in a month and I was always looking for something that was going to solve these issues for me.

It wasn’t until I took a step back from products and really overhauled my diet and my lifestyle that the changes happened so quickly.

This book, Eat Pretty, was really the book I really needed at that time in my life. So just being able to share this message was really important for me. I did, like I said, take a step back from my position as a beauty editor to really look at beauty from the inside.

DEBRA: I think that that’s very smart. And I’ve noticed in my own life that – I have had a lot of acne as a teenager and things. I noticed as I cleaned out my act in my life, suddenly my skin just cleared up. And I didn’t do it because I was looking for a solution. I spent all of my teens on tetracycline.

JOLENE HART: Me too. I spent many years on tetracycline. Now we know that being on an antibiotic for that long can be really detrimental to your digestive system. But still to this day, teens and women in their 20s and 30s and older are being put on those kinds of medications. So I wanted to share that there are other things that you can do because I really wish someone had told me this back then.

DEBRA: I wish that someone had told me that too. And that’s actually how I started writing my first book. I needed a book to tell me how to live without toxic chemicals and there were no…

JOLENE HART: That’s really interesting.

DEBRA: Yeah. It was the same kind of thing of having a personal problem, figuring out the solution, and then not having there be anything to guide me.

I do want to just say that it’s interesting that you showed up to be a guest this week because your message of healing essentially from the inside out and having that show up as beauty in your body is something that I’ve been looking at in other areas with other products. And there’s a big difference that I’m seeing. I’m starting to look at this through a different lens, so to speak.

There are so many products now that I’m aware of where what they’re talking about – and beauty products especially fall into this category, but I was looking at nutritional products or products that say that they’re going to handle your blood sugar issues or whatever it is. So many of them are just saying what we’re going to do –

Oh, I was watching one on TV about a new weight loss pill. What it does is it changes the receptors in your brain to tell your brain that you’re full. Now, that’s just like trying to handle something on the outside. It’s like if there’s something wrong on the inside, put a cream on it or a lotion or take a pill. Even a lot of natural remedies are looking at things from this direction.

But the point being – one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on – is that what I’ve come to, after all these years is if you do handle the things that build health in your body, if you remove the toxic chemicals, if you don’t put garbage in your body, you’re going to be healthy, you’re going to be beautiful, you’re going to be energetic. All the things, all these products, all these toxic products, all these drugs are trying to – you know, people are trying to be sold all this stuff, but the true answer is exactly what you have in your book.

JOLENE HART: I agree. And I feel like a lot of these other products you’re talking about, they may work, but also bringing in these extra ingredients and extra toxins or products can throw your natural balance off in your body.

So I like it bring it back to zero and look at even a pattern of seasonal eating, which even goes beyond what we look at today in the grocery store. It ends up being so intuitive for your body and you end up getting the freshest and the best foods for your beauty just by eating simply with the seasons. That’s probably the most basic you can get and yet it really does work.

DEBRA: It really does. That’s something I’ve come to a long time ago too. But let’s just like look through your book. Her book is Eat Pretty. It’s a beautiful book. The design is beautiful. I’m really enjoying looking at it.

The first part, you want the reader to rethink beauty. How do you want us to rethink beauty?

JOLENE HART: You really think about beauty from the outside in. And I, of anyone, was so guilty of this as a beauty editor. It was my job to recommend products that would make you look more beautiful and make you look your best and I wasn’t looking at my inside the way I should have been.

So rethinking beauty and turning everything around and realizing that – I like to mention the name of my company, Beauty is Wellness. It really is that glow that you have, the energy and the vitality, and your body running at its best. It really does come from the inside out. So take a minute and rethink the way you think about product and you think about your beauty regimen because you might be looking at things the wrong way.

DEBRA: Yeah. I was just thinking about you being on this morning and about how we’re so oriented to wear make-up and that that’s what beauty looks like. But I think that somebody who is very healthy is so gorgeous.

JOLENE HART: We all just want that glow. I’m sure you would feel the same way, but as an acne sufferer, I have lived by my make-up. I wouldn’t go out of the house without a concealer layered under a foundation. All I wanted to do was to be able to leave the house in my bare skin and feel like I had a glow and like I was beautiful. It really took a long time to get there because I was looking at things the wrong way. I was looking at make-up first.

DEBRA: I am happy to say that I don’t wear make-up. I don’t wear foundation at all anymore. I only wear it when I go on TV or I’m giving a speech or something where I need to wear it professionally. But I don’t wear it anymore because I don’t have anything that I need to improve about my skin. Not that my skin is absolutely picture-perfect beautiful, but the thing is it has its own healthiness to it. And if I put the make-up over it, it doesn’t have that healthy look anymore.

JOLENE HART: I agree. And of course, here we are in the depth of summer. Nobody wants to be layering on make-up either. You want to be able to go in the ocean and go on the pool and not having make-up dripping off your face. You only want to feel like you’re naturally beautiful.

DEBRA: And we are naturally beautifully. And with that, we’re going to go to the break. When we come back, we’ll talk more with Jolene Hart about her book Eat Pretty.

. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. My guest today is Jolene Hart. She is the author of the book Eat Pretty: Nutrition & Beauty, Inside Out.

She is also a health coach certified by the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and American Association of Drugless Practitioners. And she’s the founder of Beauty Is Wellness.

I love that name, Jolene, because beauty is wellness. If you’re well, you look beautiful. That’s just the way it is. You can go to her website, JoleneHart.com and right on the front page is the recipe for that luscious cherry chocolate smoothie…

JOLENE HART: You’re making me want to make it.

DEBRA: I’m just in love with that

JOLENE HART: It’s so amazing because like you said, the cacao powder has so many benefits for your skin, so you don’t have to feel guilty. There’s no added sugar, and you have the great benefits of the fresh sweet cherries which are in season right now. It’s a healthy indulgence.

DEBRA: It is. It’s thick and smooth and it’s just delicious. I feel like I’m eating a treat that is actually making my body more healthy.

So speaking of foods making your body more healthy or not, tell us about some of the foods that most people eat that don’t make your body healthy. These are the ones that we should be eliminating or reducing in our diet. And tell us what the food is and something about how it’s harming our beauty.

JOLENE HART: I call this list beauty betrayers because many of these foods taste wonderful. They’re often staples of our diet, but they’re not serving us well.

So I’d never say eliminate 100% of these foods 100% of the time because of course, when you deprive yourself, you always want them more. But just being aware of certain foods that don’t serve your beauty well that may speed up the aging process or increase inflammation is very empowering for you so you can help balance your diet.

One of the big ones is sugar. Sugar does speed up aging. It does cause inflammation. I have a huge sweet tooth, so creating dishes like this cherry chocolate smoothie that are healthy and that help balance that was really important for me in finding a diet that would support beauty.

Another one is refined and processed foods. These foods are not living fuel for your beauty. They are meant to sit on the shelf for weeks and months at a time, and often they’re really devoid of nutrients.

So you want to go for those nutrient-dense colorful fresh foods to give yourself those anti-aging biochemicals, to give yourself the building blocks of great beauty. Really, the food you’re eating becomes your body on a molecular level. So you want to choose the best fuel.

When you sit and you think about that for a minute, that everything you put in your mouth is what your body is using to defend, to repair, to detox, and to create new skin cells, you want the best for yourself. You think, “Okay. Maybe, I can skip that vending machine snack this afternoon because it’s not doing me any good. It’s actually hurting me in my quest to look my best.” So just knowing this information is really helpful in aligning the way you eat.

DEBRA: I’m sitting here thinking about times in the past when I would get those things out of the vending machine. I would always take the opportunity when I go out, I would always take that as an opportunity to give myself a treat and go to the ice cream store or I would stop at a bakery or…

JOLENE HART: Right!

DEBRA: …or get a candy bar from a vending machine or whatever it was. I know it was just like I didn’t know any better and I wasn’t making the connection between what I put in my mouth is what my body turns out being. And that’s so important.

JOLENE HART: I have the same story…

DEBRA: It’s one of those things that something is so obvious, once you see it, you wonder why you didn’t see that before.

JOLENE HART: I know. I mean, I have the same story, but it’s not just you and I. So many women and men…

DEBRA: It’s everyone.

JOLENE HART: We all do this. And food is also a stressor for so many of us. There’s guilt involved. We’re obsessing about calories.

And so eating in this style, eating pretty is the way to make each meal during the day a pampering experience. The same amount of pampering you can get from a facial or buying a new lipstick, you creating these meals that nourish your body and make you look your best is really a pampering experience. So that’s what the book’s message is at the core.

DEBRA: I love that. Last week, I was talking with someone, as you were mentioning earlier, about the antibiotics outside your digestive system. You were talking about how could we eat in a way that would feed the microbes in our digestive system.

When I started thinking about that after I found out that antimicrobials and antibiotics were destroying our microbes, I started asking myself, “How can I feed my microbes?”

Now, it’s the same thing where it’s like, “How can I sit down in a meal that feeds my microbes, that feeds my body, that feeds my cells.” It’s not about depriving ourselves of the foods that we’re accustomed to. It’s about completely turning it around and saying, “How can I find the foods and love eating them and love preparing them and knowing that it’s an act of love for my body that I’m doing this?”

JOLENE HART: Absolutely, I couldn’t say it any better. And those fermented foods or foods that do support your gut health are so at the core of this book as well. The state of your skin is a direct reflection of your digestive system, of how well you’re breaking down and assimilating those nutrients, of how well your body is cleansing and eliminating. So what you’re doing is so important for your skin and your beauty as well.

DEBRA: I’m looking at a page here, it’s page 21 in your book where you have this list of things that foods can do. They can create free radicals or neutralize them. I’ll just let you give us the list instead of reading it myself. It’s interesting.

JOLENE HART: I don’t know if you want me to read more from the list, but just thinking about – you know, you sit down in a meal and you have a choice. Is your plate going to create those aging molecules in your body or are the foods you’re eating going to turn off the aging? Are they going to turn on genes for disease or are your foods going to switch off those genes and protect you from disease?

Every time you sit down, you have those questions in front of you and you can make a plate that makes you neutralize these free radicals, that protects you from sun damage, reduces inflammation, balances the pH of your body. There are so many incredible benefits you can get versus actually causing more damage in your body.

So I think for me that was another bottom line, when I sat down to think about what I was eating.

DEBRA: Yeah. Me too, me too. This is what we’re conditioned in our society to think, that you can just put anything in your mouth, food is fun and all of these things. But for me, I got down to deciding how can food help me be healthier? How can food help me have the energy to do what I want in life? And we can make those choices every day.

We need to go to break. And my guest today is Jolene Hart. She’s the author of Eat Pretty. And you can go to her website JoleneHart.com and try that cherry chocolate smoothie. We’ll be right back.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Jolene Hart. She’s the author of Eat Pretty. You can get more information at her website, JoleneHart.com.

Jolene, you have a section here called Nutritional Genomics and Epigenetics. Tell us about that.

JOLENE HART: I think this is such a fascinating area of study that I think in the future and in maybe my next book, we’ll be able to explore a little bit more. As I was saying before about the foods that you eat turning on and turning off your gene action, a lot of us don’t think about having the ability to control our genes.

We think you’re born with genes for a certain eye color or a certain hair color, but there are genes for disease and for certain actions that rebuild your beauty that are turned on and off with your diet. So nutritional genomics and epigenetics are two areas of study that help us to relay our diet to the way our genes perform.

So eating in this manner – eating pretty, and eating with the seasons, and eating these fresh whole foods – is at this point we know is a wonderful way to turn on those genes for longevity and for disease prevention. So that’s something I think is really important.

And I hope we’ll study this more in relation to beauty specifically in the future because it would be really interesting to know what foods can encourage maybe [inaudible 00:28:06] to increase or encourage skin healing or hair growth.

DEBRA: I think that we’re moving in that direction. There’s a book that you might be familiar with. It’s called Deep Nutrition. Do you know that book?

JOLENE HART: Yes.

DEBRA: That was the first book that I read that showed – she actually has pictures in the book of what our face structure should be looking like and what it looks like when people actually eat whole foods and how it looked in the past.

And then if you compare that to how people’s bodies look now and how their faces look, people who have been raised on processed foods and things like that, it’s almost like our faces are deformed from the natural state. I think that was fascinating.

And that book too goes along with the same diet program that you recommend – I should say eating program. I don’t want to use the word “diet” because it has such negative connotations. But it talks about you and I and deep nutrition. We’re all in agreement about how to eat.

So tell us how to put together an eat pretty plate.

JOLENE HART: So there are a couple of qualities that I think you should look for when you’re putting together a plate. We talked a little bit before about the freshness of your food, the wholeness of your food, making sure you are getting living beauty fuel for yourself.

And to do that, look for seasonal foods and look for colorful foods. I have a chart in the book about a lot of the different phytochemicals and what they can do for your beauty. And so just eating that way is a wonderful foundation.

But beyond that, make sure you have the wonderful eat pretty plant-based – and I also recommend some animal-based proteins, which can be the building blocks of your beauty and are essential for repair.

And make sure you have plenty of healthy fats because I think a lot of us skimp on foods that we think maybe will cause us to gain weight. Actually, those fats like avocados and coconut oil and walnuts are so essential for producing hormones, for absorbing all the fat-soluble nutrients in your fruits and vegetables, and for making sure that your skin is well-moisturized and supple. So you don’t want to skip on those things.

So have a great balance of proteins and fats and then just load your plate up with those wonderful fresh seasonal foods that are anti-inflammatory. Inflammation can be a precursor to not only blemishes, but wrinkles and redness and sensitivity. So making sure that you have those anti-inflammatory foods is also a key for eating pretty.

DEBRA: You’ve got a great chart here. Obviously, this chart exists in other places, but you’ve done a good job of putting together in your own way from your beauty benefits viewpoint about the different nutrients and the food sources for each nutrient.

And I was actually, just the other day, wanted to put these together for a different reason, not with the beauty benefits, but I’m really interested in how I can get all the nutrients that I need to have from foods that I eat as the number one source rather than taking a multivitamin.

I take whole food vitamins right now or whole food supplements, but the first choice is to just be getting enough nutrients from my foods and know that if I want to make sure that I have vitamin A that I eat butternut squash or to have vitamin E in my diet to eat almonds. I think that I have a pretty good variety of things that I’m eating because I’m eating a lot of whole foods and fresh foods. But what I didn’t have down was knowing, “Okay, if I’m eating kale, it’s a good source of this vitamin and this vitamin” and being able to go through and make sure that I have all the vitamins.

So you’ve got a great chart here that makes it easy to do that.

JOLENE HART: It helps me as well. I have a similar eating style where I do take a whole food based supplement, but I aim to get all of my nutrition from whole foods.

So I don’t think we know at this point how compounds work synergistically in the foods that we eat. So I think it’s short-sided to think that I can just take a biotin supplement to get my B’s, my B7. I think we need to get all these vitamins from the foods because they do come with other compounds that help us to break them down and assimilate them. So it’s always best to get them from the food source.

DEBRA: I think so too, because there are co-factors. Even all those are included in the whole foods. I’m just becoming so much more aware of food and plants and just the things we put in our mouths, having them be natural and whole and getting all those nutrients.

This show is about toxic chemicals and not being toxic, but there’s this whole other layer beyond something not being toxic, but being life-giving.

JOLENE HART: I agree.

DEBRA: And that’s what we’re talking about today, moving into that realm of having there be life-giving foods that are building life in your body.

JOLENE HART: Absolutely, living fuel. And for so long, I didn’t cook with fresh foods. I ate for convenience. And for many, many days, that just meant eating packaged foods and processed foods and nothing that [inaudible 00:33:50] is probably the biggest step that I took toward healing myself.

DEBRA: Good. It’s about time for us to go to break. I’m scrolling through your book as we’re talking, and you have a wonderful chapter here. You call it the Eat Pretty Pantry.

You go through a list of different foods and describe what it does to help make your body more beautiful. We’ll talk about that when we come back.

JOLENE HART: Great.

DEBRA: You know what? We still have another minute…

JOLENE HART: Okay. Just as a preview…

DEBRA: Wait. No, never mind.

You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Jolene Hart. She’s the author of Eat Pretty. Her website is JoleneHart.com. When we come back, she’s going to tell us about different healthy foods and how they make us more beautiful.

= COMMERCIAL BREAK =

DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. My guest today is Jolene Hart. She’s the author of Eat Pretty: Nutrition and Beauty, Inside and Out .

Jolene, tell us about some of the foods in your Eat Pretty Pantry.

JOLENE HART: Absolutely! Well, the Eat Pretty Pantry Pantry are really the foods that you need as a foundation for all these healthy meals. So personally for me, it’s so much easier to eat in a healthy way if I have those components of a meal ready when I get home.

So you go to the farmers’ market and you buy whatever is in season. And then, you come home with these fresh foods, but fresh vegetables are not on their own a meal. So, having these healthy gluten-free grains, these wonderful fats and proteins to cook with in your pantry makes it easy to put together a meal in 30 minutes or less. And this is something that I rely on every single week for my family.

Some of my favorites are gluten-free grains like buckwheat, quinoa, and millet. They’re so rich in beauty minerals. Some cheese seeds and hemp seeds are wonderful for creating smoothies. You’ll see those in the cherry chocolate smoothie.

Other things like walnuts and lentils and gluten-free oats and gluten-free oats, wonderful stuff like coconut oil and olive oil –I go through all the reasons why these are wonderful ingredients for your beauty and how they can help contribute to your daily meals – and even some unknown ones like sea vegetables and how important those are for your body.

DEBRA: This is just a wonderful resource because you’re taking something that—as we said before, the diet that you’re talking about is not unique to you, but what is unique to you is to show people how to use it to improve how their bodies look.

And that’s something that everybody wants. It’s it’s something that a lot of toxic chemicals are being used. You’re showing how this applies in a very organized way, in a very delicious way. You’ve done an incredible job with this book. I’m just so pleased with it.

So tell us now about your seasonal approach.

JOLENE HART: It really is amazing. It wasn’t something that I picked up on right away. But as I was eating fresh foods and realizing that the most nutrient-dense and the freshest foods are what is in season at certain times of the year, I also started to compare their benefits to what my needs were season to season.

For example, here we are in height of summer and we need a little bit of extra UV protection because we’re getting more sun exposure, we need extra hydration and we all want to stay slim at this time of the year, because we’re wearing less clothing and we’re wearing our bathing suits, if you look at what’s in the Eat Pretty Beauty Basket at this time of the year, the foods target those exact benefits.

So you have foods like watermelon and tomatoes that are naturally UV-protective for your body. They’re not something that you can use to replace sun screen, but they’re a wonderful underlying layer of protection for your skin that will amplify the benefits that you have from your natural products.

You have foods like celeries and cucumber and coconut water that are great for hydrating you. And as you’re digesting those foods that are naturally high in water, you’re actually hydrating better than if you are just chugging water. If you’re chugging water, you’re going to be just getting rid of it as quickly as you’re drinking it. So having those slow digesting foods is going to keep you well-hydrated and keep your electrolytes in balance, which is so important if you’re working out or you’re sweating a lot.

And then also, you have naturally diuretic foods. You have pineapple which is great for a flat belly. Again, cucumber is wonderful as a diuretic just to keep the water retention out this time of the year and help you to feel slim as well. No one wants to feel like they had extra water they’re carrying around when it’s near 92° outside.

So it’s just amazing that the foods – and this continues each season. Everything that you really do need in a season is coming from the foods that are ripe at that time of the year.

DEBRA: Isn’t that a beautiful symbiotic relationship with nature?

JOLENE HART: It’s incredible.

DEBRA: I used to have no awareness of nature at all. I was a hardcore consumer living in the industrial consumer world and it was just like, “Oh, nature is some place I went in summer camp.” And then I went through this big transformation where I really started seeing that we really are creatures of nature and everything that we need to be healthy and happy is all in the natural world.

As the seasons change, different plants come up and those are the things that we need to support our health at that time of the year. But also from place to place, eating locally, that as we eat the foods of our place, it helps our bodies live in that environment better.

JOLENE HART: I absolutely agree. Perhaps we were overcomplicating it earlier. We didn’t realize.

DEBRA: So we just have a few minutes left. Anything you’d like to talk about that we haven’t covered?

JOLENE HART: Well, after we go through all of the seasons in the book, I have a section called The Essential Beauty Players, which didn’t want to lose the section. It doesn’t have to do with eating per se, but I do talk about digestion and hormone balance, getting better sleep and your emotions and how they relate to your beauty because all of these areas are part of the beauty conversation. And food does relate to each one of them, but it’s not strictly food.

So learning how to balance your hormones through self-care and through meditation and learning how your moods can affect the way your skin looks, I think this is all so fascinating. I wanted to make sure that it was part of Eat Pretty because I didn’t feel like this information had been represented fully in the media or in other books that have been published.

And the first chapter is, again, digestion. You and I could probably talk an hour about digestion.

DEBRA: We could probably talk an hour about digestion. Digestion is so important. We did talk about digestion on this show because not only is it just important for health, but because of the toxic connection that if your digestion isn’t working and having things moved through your body, what happens is that the toxic chemicals that come in your body get processed by your liver and then get dumped into your intestines in order to be removed from the body.

And if they’re just sitting there because your intestines aren’t moving, they get reabsorbed by your body. So good digestion, in addition to really getting the nutrients out of the food is just essential to getting the toxic chemicals out of your body too.

JOLENE HART: And your skin will shoulder some of that toxic waste burden as well, the waste-removal burden. Maybe you’ll see skin issues of rashes popping up and hives or swatches. You don’t know what’s going on. And your skin is taking on some of that burden because you’re not digesting well.

DEBRA: Fascinating subject. Wow! So if you were to tell people one thing that they could do at the end of the show to get started on this, what would that be?

JOLENE HART: Make it fun! Go to your farmers’ market today and see what you can find, what’s the freshest, what’s ripe right now and bring it home and start cooking with it. Make it a really fun, beautiful, like I said, pampering experience for yourself and start rethinking the way you see your daily meal.

DEBRA: Spa meals, but not spa meals in the sense of having them…

JOLENE HART: Bird food.

DEBRA: Bird food, yeah. No, these are really nutritious. This is not about just eating lettuces. It’s not a diet like that. It’s a spa meal in the sense that you’re feeding yourself for beauty and healthiness.

JOLENE HART: …and start feeling incredible.

DEBRA: Yeah, yeah.

JOLENE HART: But it is really important to listen to your body and find out how your body reacts to these foods because my optimal plate is not going to look the same as yours and it’s not going to look the same as my neighbor’s. So really do hear that connection to your body and hear how you respond and look how you respond in the mirror.

DEBRA: So what do you eat? That’s probably a different list of foods than what I eat, but what do you eat?

JOLENE HART: I’m happiest on a Pescetarian diet. I think there are a lot of benefits to eating fish and pastured eggs even though they are animal products.

But personally, I’ve had an allergy to wheat my whole life. So when I finally went gluten-free, that was one of the last things I needed to do to really feel great, to get my energy back. And for a long time, I had been struggling with absorbing certain nutrients. And once I took the gluten out, for me, that was the epiphany moment of everything finally feels good.

But eating seasonally and eating fresh makes me feel my best. I obviously splurge now. And then like I said, my sweet tooth is probably the biggest downfall, but I never feel my best if I don’t go back to this style of eating.

DEBRA: Yeah, I totally agree with you. Gluten was a really big thing for me as well. I love bread.

It was interesting because I gave up sugar a long time ago. And it was much easier for me to give up sugar and then go to the natural sweeteners like honey and maple syrup and things like that. And then finally, what I’m doing right now is no sweeteners. The only sweet things I’m eating is fruit. So that’s why I love your smoothie so much. But it was much more difficult to not eat bread and butter. I could just eat bread and butter everyday for every meal and nothing else. I love bread and butter.

JOLENE HART: You don’t think about it, but those carbs in your body also turn to sugar. So that was maybe a hidden source that you are getting your sugar-craving satisfied by, but it wasn’t serving your body either.

DEBRA: But now, I make biscuits and pancakes and all those things from almond flower. And so it gives me the same satisfaction without giving me the reaction to the gluten. For me, eliminating gluten actually made my thyroid not be crazy anymore. Within 30 days, my thyroid went to normal.

So anyway, we’re at the end of the show. Thank you so much, Jolene.

JOLENE HART: Thank you. This is wonderful.

DEBRA: Thank you. Her website is JoleneHart.com. The book is Eat Pretty, a wonderful subject.

This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. You can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to find out who’s going to be on tomorrow and to listen to past shows. This show will be archived immediately. Be well.