Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: I have Nicole Berry with me here today, which I'm so excited about. Nicole is the founder of Bunberry March in the West Village in New York City, which is a total gem of an establishment. Pure heaven for anyone in this lifestyle. You can get the best fresh pressed raw juices to order, bee pollen skincare products, well, pretty much the bee's knees of impeccably curated cleansing lifestyle goodies.
Two years ago, Nicole published her fabulous cookbook Body Harmony.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Oh, I love that you have it.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Also, the founder of the popular wellness platform at Bonbury, where the world gathers for her lifestyle inspiration and recipes galore. And Nicole does all of this while running a bustling household with two young children and her husband and. And living the cleansing lifestyle herself.
In terms of a little contextual background. Before launching her own wellness brand, Nicole worked on the editorial team at Elle magazine and served as associate features editor at Vanity Fair.
She has contributed to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Conde and Ass Traveler.
The website bonberry.com, which Nicole birthed in 2013, was her way of combining her passion for wellness with her affinity for high end editorial content.
That was the beginning of what would become a pathway of her iconic self expression in this category 11 years ago.
Today, Nicole partners with leading global brands and is an educator and guest curator across a range of luxury hospitality partners including Auberge Rosewood and the Ritz Carlton.
Nicole has been featured in Vogue, New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and Forbes.
So who is this dynamo that seems to have endless energy, inspiration and innovation while raising a family in the West Village in New York City? Welcome, Nicole Berry. I'm so happy to be with you and have you with us today.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Thank you, Natalia. This is so full circle and I am so honored to be here and to have this conversation with you.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Oh well, I'm just delighted. It's long overdue and it's. It's such a gift. So Nicole, when did you start cleansing? Tell us your story. What led you to this lifestyle?
[00:02:21] Speaker A: Yes, well. Well, first of all, I just have to say the full circle moment of you holding my book literally almost brought tears to my eyes. Because where it all began was when I found your book roaming around in a Whole Foods when they used to sell books. And I found your book, the Raw Food Detox Diet.
And so that led me into this entire path and really true, like life path, in all senses of the word life. So for you to be holding my book and us having this conversation is just so wild to me. It gave me chills so it's crazy.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: Talk more about this book in just a moment. It is awesome. It is truly awesome. Body harmony.
[00:03:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So where it all began, you know, I was far from a child who grew up like with a hippie macrobiotic mom. I have friends who grew up in this whole lifestyle. I was born in New Jersey and my dad was American, kind of eastern European descent and my mom's Korean and. But I grew up a very much western lifestyle. You know, all the snacks, all the typical American kid in the 80s and 90s, how one grows up and we can talk about it more. But then as I became a teenager, preteen, I think I started to struggle with my relationship with food, not only physically, but emotionally. And I used food as a coping mechanism for different types of trauma that was going on in my life. And I had a very tumultuous relationship with nourishing myself and with food, right? Not, not even counting the physicality of it all or the processed foods. Just like the way I used food to either hurt myself or help myself. It was very difficult, right? But I think I white knuckled it all the way through my teens and twenties, college, early twenties, to the point when I was working, as you said, at Elle magazine, and I was working in my kind of quote unquote dream job, living in my dream city, all the great things. But I was really, I think things were starting to catch up with me big time with my relationship with compulsion, not just around food, but around alcohol, drugs, shopping, right, all of those things. And I hit rock bottom. Truly. I think that I couldn't white knuckle it any longer.
So I was really just in this moment of seeking, right? Seeking help for like spiritually, very much spiritual seeking.
[00:04:52] Speaker B: Also.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: I lost my father, who I was very close with, and he was kind of like the rock in my life at the age of 20.
So this was all kind of catapulting me into a space of just true rock bottom, right? Really just seeking, bringing, being kind of at on my knees, so to speak, looking for answers. And so I did find two things happened during this moment. I found your book Rau Detox Diet.
And then I also read an article in the New York Times about women in self help. I don't, I don't think wellness was even like a term back then. It was like self help, you know, women. And that Gabrielle Bernstein was one of the women who was mentioned in there along with a few other women. And so I started to devote myself while having a full time job. But I started Making it my full time job to heal and to find all different modalities of healing, whether that was emotional, spiritual and physical. And like so many people, I was hunting for answers, diets, things like that for so long.
But when I picked up your book, something about it, and it was not the technicalities of the food combining or the recipes really, that was definitely a huge aha. But I think the fact that you could just let go of all the kind of preconceived notions of dieting, of portion control, of restriction and all that, what came through most through that book was abundance. Abundance of life once you shift certain things. Right. And, and that was just kind of, it kind of blew my mind. And so I quickly flip flipped to the back of the book to see like, where does this person live? Where is. And sure enough, you were in New York and I was in New York and, and back then you were still taking personal clients. And so I think I either emailed you or called you or faxed you, whatever was the form of communication back then. And you know, we set up an appointment and I remember coming to your apartment and kind of telling you a lot of this, but maybe probably being a lot more timid and shy because back then I was very shy and kind of uncertain of myself. Right.
And, but I got it, I got, I understood what you were saying and I was so excited to dive in. And I remember you saying, I will always remember you saying, you know, I think you really have this and I think you're going to stick with this for the rest of your life.
Like that. Literally you said that. And I was like, you know what, I think so too. And I don't know, 15, 18 years later, here we are.
And you are definitely right, I did stick, not only did I stick with it, but it really just created a whole new life path for me. And, and obviously it didn't come overnight. There was, I didn't know this was going to be my work. I didn't know I was going to be writing a cookbook or starting or sharing recipes or. I didn't even know about social media really. I think social media was my space back then, although I did not know that's where I was going. I did have an inkling and I think you probably did too. Just like an intuitive intuition that this was a good fit for me.
Wow.
[00:08:13] Speaker B: You know, it's extraordinary. I'm so happy to hear this. This the way you're telling it now and, and to flashback and flash forward 18 years is, is, you know, it's a huge thing and to have children and in that time and build, build a business, all these things. I want to talk about the recipes and your inspiration and innovation with all these recipes and I really want to get to that because it's a huge part of what you do. And I simultaneously want to dig into the things that you touched on with regard to the way we cope before we get the knowledge that liberates us.
You know, for both you and I, it was this knowledge, specifically the, the white knuckling, the, the sense of, you know, how am I going. These. We don't know how we're going to find out of it at the time if we get back in that headspace, which is a headspace that almost everybody else is in because they're still in the bad process, you know, and, and here we are in our own way reaching out to say, to sort of throw the, the lifesaver out there and say, come on in. It doesn't have to be that way.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Right.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: But that head space and that mind space, that heart space and how, how heavy it feels and how we kind of have to drag along with us because we don't know that there's another option.
I suppose I just want to get into that a little bit more before we move into the recipes and that aspect of it because it's so profound.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:47] Speaker B: It's up our Life force.
[00:09:49] Speaker A: Yeah. I think that for me personally, my healing was 360. Right. So I couldn't have gone to the place where I am today without going through all different modalities of therapy. Right. Traditional therapy, meditation, all different sorts of things. Journaling all of those things was also a catharsis for me and Life Force. We always talk about kind of like cleansing ourselves, cleansing our energy, purging. And these are also important. And I find that emotional energy is just as important. And I think it goes hand in hand.
And we'll talk about the book later. But that's really what Body Harmony is about. Because I could have done a book about food combining plant based living, cleansing. Right. And, and share a hundred recipes around that. But for me that's not the whole story. And that at least it wasn't for me. And so it's so essential. That's why it's a plant based guide into intuitive eating. Because I had to. And this is again for me who dealt with so much confusion and murkiness around how to nourish myself spiritually and emotionally. I had to address that first before I could even go into and Then maintain and sustain this type of life. But then there's like, the chicken and the egg. Because I also feel that I wasn't fully healed when I got into this. And I, I, it kind of is like, similar to getting married or, or finding a life partner. I always remember thinking, hearing my friends, we have to be whole before we, like, bring in our life partner, because you don't want to be codependent and you don't want to do this. Well, I met my husband when I was not fully healed emotionally at all. I was a mess.
And I was like, oh, no, this is not going to be the guy, because I'm not fully healed. But then what I realized is he gave me space to heal and he allowed me to, like, grow. And we've grown together, you know, and so you don't have to be fully healed. So how it relates to food and life source is that I was not fully healed with my compulsion when I found your book, When I found food combining or Gil Jacobs or colonic therapy, however, I still started, right? And with the knowledge of knowing that I'm not going to use this as another compulsion. I'm not going to, I'm not going to abuse this, but I want to start, I don't want to wait any longer, right? And so as I started to cleanse and we started so slow, like, if I could, I remember exactly kind of the program you gave me to start.
It was not jumping in all in. It was not like going into a juice fast by any means. It was so gentle and transitional.
Like, you know, when you, you're trying to take care of a newborn baby, like, it's so gentle and easy. It allowed me the space to heal, like, emotionally, but also start to cleanse physically my cell so that I actually was able to be more clear about what I want. Like, my, my healing was actually, like, happening all at the same time because, like, as my cells got cleaner, I started to kind of see my emotions almost in a, in a cleaner way and able to understand them and give space to them, while at the same time I couldn't go too fast because I didn't want to use it as another regimented abuse of, of, of, you know, what I used, what I did for so many years. You know, I did every diet under the sun, but this was different because it was so slow and there were stages and I was, I don't know if you did this, you know, deliberately, but you, or the, the lifestyle was, gave me space and gave me time and was patient and I Was not in a rush by any means. So also, like, I would mess up, right? I would make a mistake and do that. And it was. I was able to do that and say, oh, okay, but here's the foundation. Let me just get back on, you know, and without judgment and without. You know, these days, I think everybody is so rigid, so rigid in, like, how they should eat and regimented and everything. And we're going back to this, you know, this world where it's like, if you mess up, you know, you might as well just throw in the whole towel, you know, Whereas there's really a lot of beauty and space, space and patience in this lifestyle and so many shades of gray, which I think is why my recipes and my content is. You know, people resonate with it because it makes them feel good, but they don't feel like they are disciplining themselves in a way.
[00:14:28] Speaker B: Oh, I love. I love what you're talking about. The process and. And it is unfolding, and we have to trust that there is this inner intelligence, that it is guiding the process. If we can just create that space, we'll figure it out along the way. We just need, like, as we start to put the pieces together, there's something in us. It's like, oh, okay, I see my next step. And then for you to. To have the space to see your next step rather than have someone saying to you, this is your next step. This is what you need to do next. Because it's like a child who helicopter parent. The child never feels empowered or confident later in life, whereas the parent who lets the child make some decision make plenty of their own decisions. And despite the fact that they know that they might stumble and fall in various metaphorical ways, they will ultimately learn how to do things themselves. And we are very capable if we just given. If we're given the right direction at large and the reminder to take our time.
And I really hope that everyone listening really hears that really lands for them, because I think there's so much pressure that we've learned to impose upon ourselves which has created that compulsion which has led to those kinds of compulsions. And this is the opportunity to say, look, here's. Here's a path that will enable you to heal if you let it, if you don't project those same kinds of strictures onto this path. And it's funny how you knew not to do that. You knew not to bring that to this work. And that was. That was a stroke of genius.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Well, I think for me, I just had had enough, right? I Think that it comes a point where hopefully in everyone's life where you just have had enough of the BS and just like the restriction. And I just didn't want to live that way anymore. So I kind of like forced myself to not turn it into something else. I was not gonna let.
I. My healing was too important, my peace was too important to sacrifice anymore. So I knew if I want to do this and if. If it does actually make me feel good, I need to take it so slow and steady. And I just think that, like, transition is so underrated in this life. Like the transitional period. I think that you do such a beautiful job in your, in your books to really highlight transitional. Transitional. It's almost transit easy. Transition is probably doing us better than going into like full force, jumping into it. And I know that, like, in this day and age, we want results and want to be fast and quick, and it can be fast, but it's got to be in the right way, otherwise it could backfire. And I was gonna say something. I forgot what I was gonna say, but, oh, like, I think that when it comes to food combining and I don't even. The cleansing life, however you want to call it, life force and all that.
When I started to write my book, I kind of had this quandary where I wanted to talk about intuitive eating and I also wanted to introduce them to the life. Right?
And how do I reconcile these two things? Right? Intuitive eating could sometimes is perceived as eat what you want, whenever you want. You know what I mean? Just follow your, like, just go.
Just never restrict yourself. Never do anything like that. And so eat junk food. Eat that because your body's craving it, right?
Versus, you know, the life. And I, when I sent this proposal to my editor at the publishing house, you know, she said straight up to me, well, I don't get it. If you listen to your intuition, aren't you going to eat like junk food all day? And I paused and I was like, that's so interesting that you said that because you are. You're on. You're working under the assumption that our intuition is telling us that our true intuition, deep down is to want junk food all day.
Like, what is that tells me more about you than it does about what I'm saying. And what I'm saying is that our true, like, divine intuition is absolutely not to dull ourselves and fill us ourselves with that. But we, because we've deprived ourselves for so many years and we've dulled our senses emotionally, spiritually and physically from all the, like, processed Foods as well.
We don't even know what our intuition is. We don't. We, we, we are so far from our North Star that we now are thinking that cravings are something junky, right?
So I'm like, this is kind of hard to describe in a book, right? This is very complicated. But what I realized is that when we start cleansing and cleansing ourselves and, and eating in a certain way and doing, you know, releasing, eliminating continuously in all different ways, the shifts become really visceral, right? So when we eat, when we like live a good day of, of cleansing, you know, you feel it immediately. And that is related to intuitive eating because it's not actually contradictory of intuitive eating. It's, it's in line. So to be. To eat intuitively is to eat in a way that your body like feels amazing immediately, right? And that's what this life does. So I was like, wow, that's what it's all about. And so it was tricky. But I, you know, starting the book with an in, like an introduction on my past, my compulsion, which a lot of women and men have dealt with before, I feel like it's very universal to have issues around food.
Starting it with that and saying how far off my course I was. But then when I was introduced to this life, I was able to slowly bring myself back and they're very much in line. So this life and intuitive eating is very much in line and not contradictory.
As long as we start taking away the blocks that we've kind of accumulated over the years.
[00:20:22] Speaker B: That is the best definition explanation of intuitive eating I've ever heard. And I'm so glad you clarified it for everyone because I do think that most people are coming from this idea of like, because, because they don't know what a cleansed body feels like. It doesn't. You don't know what it feels like until you have it not drawn to those sorts of things. But.
[00:20:42] Speaker A: And that's why it's like kind of like the chicken and the egg. And it's not going to be like, okay, you're going to fully heal yourself spiritually first and then go into to the life or vice versa. It kind of has to happen altogether. If you're coming with a lot of these things and don't be afraid to start, it's going to be messy in the beginning. And it was messy for a long time for me. You know, I wasn't perfect. I definitely had to kind of undo all that discipline and restriction around myself. But I did it within the frame of the life.
So what I love was that I was able to enjoy things that I wanted to indulge in, but I did it with the frame in the framework of the life. And that was kind of gave me a safety net for a period of time where I could fully indulge in, like, undo those restrictions and undo that kind of like rigidity. But I didn't go so far off that I didn't know where to come back too, if that makes sense. And then slowly as I transitioned, like you said, my cells began to clean. I was like, oh, wait, my cravings are not. No, are no longer this really hyper sugary or salty or whatever thing. It's actually this and that. And then slowly, slowly, slowly I started to just like kind of go into a different level until.
Until it just became my norm, you know, and it became the way that I live. And it was very natural, flexible, organic. It never was a hard switch ever. And so I. I so admire, you know, your work and anyone else's work who's like, really focused on the life because it's difficult, because people are coming with so much emotional baggage, you know, that it's different for every person. The transition into living a full of vitality. Life is absolutely accessible, but it has to be, like, tailored to you personally because then it won't be sustainable and then it won't be something that you chose on your own. This was very much something I chose every single day on my own until it became who I am.
[00:22:37] Speaker B: That's exactly how it should be done.
Everyone listening, please take note. Nicole's explanation of this and her journey is the perfect example. This is exactly how it should be done. And even the word intuition.
So intuition to the tuition part is.
Is. Is where we get the word tutor from. It's our tutelage and it's within the tutelage within. So essentially what. It's what we were talking about in the very beginning, which is that if we allow there to be space, that we'll find our way. Our internal compass, our internal intelligence system, is going to know what to do next. And that's why we don't have to put any pressure on ourselves. And that's why it has to be just a general dedication to the life and appreciating the value of the basic tenets, the basic principles, and then letting them work for you and letting them bring forth that internal, that intelligence, both in terms of what you will be drawn to in your life as well as what the cells know they need to do while you're getting on with Living this more elevated life experience and existence. And what I love about the way it worked out for you is, is that.
I mean, from the little bit that I know is that it translated into an enormous amount of creativity, and that's how we know we're on the right track.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, again, like, I. I feel like I really was reborn through this life. I think that I came into this life a completely different person. And the more I shed physically, you know, all of the energy that I was holding on to, I was able to. I just. I started to gain so much more confidence and of myself and my own intuition and. And.
And feeling really secure in my feelings. And really important is that, like, I was a student and still am a student for so long before I started to, like, share things. I very much.
I was in, you know, journalism before. I'm a listener, I'm behind the scenes for so long, and I wasn't ready to just be like, hey, I just started this new thing. Everyone come along with me, you know what I mean? Because I needed to learn and really integrate it into my system first. And so I was doing this life for a few years before I started the website. And the website bonberry.com was more, again, learning. Right. I was all about interviews. So we came to interview, we interviewed Gil. We interviewed anyone, even people not in the life, but just learning what people do, what are their habits, what are their wellness habits. And then as I was, you know, living this life, I do love food. I love the taste. I love the excitement of just like making a recipe. So I was like, how can I have fun with what I know and make it delicious and fun for myself, really, at first. And then I. We started sharing the recipes on the website and that became really popular. And. And the more I started, it was again, it was very slow shift into.
It was creative, but it was always just my creative outlet. It was never meant to be like, my work.
I think I was still freelancing and writing for magazines two years into opening my store. So that was like just up to three years ago.
And I remember my editor emailed me and I was a freelance writer. And they're like, can you do a story? Can you do this cover story on Reese Witherspoon? She's coming out with this movie or her clothing line or something. And I was like, in the stock room with like, hundreds of boxes. I have, like, customers upstairs. This. That I have the website. I have two kids. And I was like, thinking to myself, I'm like, I have to say no, like, this is time, I have to say. No, this is. It was still like my side hustle, even though it was very much my full time job.
And I called a friend who I worked with at Elle magazine and she was equipped to do the job. I'm like, can you take this job? And she, she's like, actually, yes. And it all worked out. And I knew that my editor would never call me again after I, like, kind of bailed on this assignment. But I was like, okay, that's it, you know, this is now going to be my life. So it was all very slow. But yes, like, as the more I started getting into this life, the more I felt confident, the more I felt more aligned and trusting of my kind of like creative sparks. Whereas before maybe I would have been like, oh, I'd love to start a website. Wouldn't that be cool? But like, I kind of like, was more motivated to do something about it when I had those creative sparks.
Wow.
[00:27:07] Speaker B: Well, it just goes to show that, I mean, one needs to know one's own pace and how one operates. And I love. Okay, so the, the recipes that you share and that you develop are also the, the spectrum of them is, it's so balanced, it's so inviting because you're, you know, you've got raw, you got cooked, you've got vegan, you've got fish, you've like everything. And it's all so innovative. And I believe it's, it's a lot of it is inspired by and, and you learned a lot from your Korean lineage.
[00:27:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it just again, like, I think growing up in kind of a mixed household and having so many different types of foods, like with my dad's side, like, we would go to like Carnegie Deli all the time and like the, all the, like Jewish American delicacies was very much part of my youth and growing up and formative years, as was Korean, you know, traditional going. I used to go to Korea with my mom all throughout my life.
And so I think I just kind of loved the discovery of flavor. Right. And I did not want to sacrifice that sort of joy that I have around food for the life. Like, I wanted to see, like, how can I put this together? And it was very easy actually. Like, I was like, it wasn't that difficult to shift some recipes around. And what's really funny is that my mom got into this life because of me. And my mom's Korean, like born and raised in Korea. And she could not understand in the beginning. She's like, what do you mean I can't have rice with my fish? Like, rice and like, you have to. You know what I mean? In Korea, it's like rice with every meal. But she slowly understood after, like, trying it for a little bit, it was very difficult for her to understand.
She understood and she herself, like, kind of wound back the clock and looked at least 20 years younger, you know, once she started getting into the life. And again, there's like, it doesn't mean she's never going to enjoy, like, the way that she grew up again. But for the most part, she lives the life and these, these habits can be shifted and you can do it in a way that still feels indulgent and comforting. Like, for me, I also say, like, yes, I used food as like a compulsion. But I also need to redefine what emotional eating means. Because emotional eating, we think of, oh, it's really bad, we binge our emotion. We don't feel our emotions that we eat instead, which could be true, of course. And that's. I dealt with that for a long time. But we need to honor joy around celebrating over a meal, right? And I have so many in my book, I say I have so many joyful memories around food with my dad and my mom and my daughter, who's now five, I see her, she has the same thing with me. She, like, loves to cook. She loves to taste something. My son could, like, survive on air and like, forget that he even is like, needs food. But my daughter has that joy around food and.
And I want to honor that. So how can we honor that joy and also not sacrifice our physical, our vitality, right? And so that's really, hopefully what my recipes are and what you said about kind of letting people discover on their own and tutelage and being this yourself teacher, my approach to this life. I think that my, like, place in this whole world, there's so many teachers and amazing you, Gil, Mike Perrine. Like, all these people are such amazing teachers.
And I had to think about, like, where do I fit in here? Like, I don't necessarily want to be teaching word for word, the life. What I want to do is provide as many recipes and foundational options for people so that they start cooking me recipes and they start eating the way in this, like, what I offer, whether it's through the store or whether it's through my recipes making it themselves. And all of a sudden they start feeling a lot better and they don't quite know why they think it's okay. It's like, sure, it's plant Based or healthier and whatever. But no, each recipe is designed in a really specific way. It's kind of by accident that they start to feel better and that's kind of where I want to be. That's.
I don't feel like I want to tell people what to do and give them a regimen. I just want to say, hey, here you go, here's a website, here's a book, here's a store.
Pick what you want and hopefully you'll start to shift. And you might not know why, but I know why.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: I love that. See, we must all do what, what is most, what we're most passionate about. Yeah, we just bring gifts and then we just share our gifts and it's perfect. I mean, so innovative though. I mean there's. You've got sweet potato, glass noodles, pepperoni made from sun dried tomatoes. I mean it's so innovative, so clever. So, and, and you make it look so easy. I think that's one thing. Like when I watch your videos on Instagram.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:59] Speaker B: She's got kids on the other side of her. She's got a bunch of very specific ingredients.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: Very carefully chosen and selected. And like you're just, you know, you're just rocking it out and you make it look so easy and, and you inspire a sense of it being easy. Like, I think when people watch you, like, I could do that. Like, yeah, she makes it look like I can do it. And, and the fact that it's, it's such an elevated palette that even though it's accessible and it looks easy, the end result is something so gourmet.
And that's where this all just really shines because people do want to be able to benefit from the life and also feel like their palate is being served, that they're not losing that joie de viva that they would have with food before. So it's really, it becomes a win win. And that's what. And so everyone who's listening as well, just to remember that it's not to live the life or to not one or the other. Now this beautiful food, this delicious scrumptious gourmet experience while you're living the life. And that's, that's a huge gift that you've provided.
[00:33:14] Speaker A: Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I always think the recipes are easy because I don't have time. Right. Like, I don't have time to like have a thousand steps. And usually most of my recipes are.
I don't like plan out a time to film a recipe unless it's like something very specific. It's usually I'm like, okay, I have 45 minutes. The kids are home from school. I like, da, da, da. I have to make something. And so that's usually what where my, my recipes result in. So it is efficiency, tasting good and also making you and supporting your fit, Your, your vitality too, because that is just as important. You know, it's those, those three things. Convenience is, is key, for sure.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: And the preparation, especially being a busy mom.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that also. So I'm also a big one proponent of meal, not meal planning or meal preparation, but like component preparation. So, you know, making sure that I go to the grocery store earlier in the week, being stocked with as much produce as possible possible, because I don't plan my recipes. Like, I literally just, I'm like, I sit, I. I go to the kitchen, I'm like, oh my God, I have so much time. Like, what. What am I craving? And that's, that's a big one for my intuitive eating and healing from former, like, compulsive disorders is that I never plan what I'm going to eat, like, days later. So when I see these, like, videos online of people like, meal prepping for like the next seven days, you know, more power to them if that works. But that, that to me is the antithesis to intuitive eating. Because how do I know what I'm going to be craving? Like Thursday, when it's Sunday? I just, I won't. And so that dulls, in my opinion, our intuition, and it dulls that tutelage. It dulls that inner knowing. And it, it's. It, it stems from mistrust. It did. And fear of ourselves. If you're meal planning days in advance, you're telling me that you don't trust yourself, and I'll get into convenience and working and busyness in a second. But essentially you're telling me that you don't trust yourself. So you need to put these little, you know, boxes and know that you're going to be eating. That's another thing with like, meal delivery services and that sort of thing.
Again, I respect if that works for you, but I personally don't do it because it dulls that sense of intuition. And I just want to honor that so much. So, yes, there is a little bit of a frantic moment when I'm making dinner. I'm like, I don't know what to do, what to make, but at least I'm making what I want in that moment. And it heightens that inner knowing and trust at each Meal. And that's so important to me. That said, as a working mom, I totally understand being pressed for time. So a lot of produce, maybe like pre wash, pre chopped. But again, I don't really pre wash my produce because again, like as we know, like it kind of kills it too. So. But I try to be prepared so that I can make something quickly. And I make my recipes easy enough so that you can make it within like 30 minutes, 20 minutes.
And that's my approach. So having the right ingredients, of course, like really good olive oils, you know, good seasoning, garlic, you know, things like lemons. Like making sure that I have a stocked pantry so that I can then make what I'm craving in that moment at each time, if that makes sense.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: No, totally, totally. I think your, your dry goods and your pantry, as long as that has your basis in it. And then you just need to get the fresh produce you can match based on what you're feeling.
[00:36:45] Speaker A: Like, I always make sure that I have like every type of herb, like cilantro, basil, dill, parsley. So like I can open my fridge and be like, am I craving something Asian today? Is it like, like a Thai type curry? Okay, I have cilantro, you know, and that it. Or if I'm craving something Italian, I have parsley, I have basil.
That's kind of like how I approach cooking a meal for myself. Like, what do I want today? Like, where am I going to order from? You know, from the, you know. Okay, let's. We're craving Italian. Great, let's make this, you know, we're craving something more comforting and like spicy. Okay, we're going to make that.
That's how I approach it. And if you have the proper ingredients, you can really make it quite quickly.
[00:37:26] Speaker B: And do you make adjustments for different desires in the household? So if one kid or your husband wants something different.
[00:37:35] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we could, I am sure we can get into, I think becoming a mother, I think is the biggest learning curve for me. Like in my. So I've been doing this life for like we said 15, 18 years. Right. And my son is going to turn nine.
So six years or how are. I can't do the math. But six or seven or eight years into this life, I, by the time I was like eight years in, I'm like, I have gotten down pat.
I'm living in the Garden of Eden. I know I can heal everything under the sun. I am invincible. Right. And then I got pregnant. And that was probably the biggest learning curve for me because what happened was I was really sick with my son pregnant. Like, I was just very nauseous.
And all the things that I had learned and thought I had gotten under my, you know, just thought I was completely healed physically and spiritually started to come back up. And I actually thought. Was searching when I was in my first trimester, eating disorders and pregnancy, trying to understand if that is something common or am I going crazy. That. And I hadn't. I didn't go back, but I started having those old compulsive feelings. And.
And what came up was just like, you know, morning sickness and this and that, but nothing about eating disorders and pregnancy. And what I realized is that it.
I have to go slow again. I was no longer, you know, I had to really, like, go turn, go back like 10 steps, 100 steps and say, okay, go easy with myself. I'm, you know, what I. What I know, like, I was not. I did end up juicing throughout my pregnancy, but there was a period where, like, I couldn't, you know, and just like, being easy and gentle with myself. And there was a lot of guilt. There was a lot of guilt because I thought I had come so far, right?
And then my son was born and I was again garden of eating. This child is going to be, like, invincible. I know all the things, you know, and I, you know, breastfed him until, like, well over like a few years. My daughter too, you know, all of those things. I was doing everything. And then I was like, the first type of any sort of milk that he's not going to have. Besides, breast milk is going to be like raw goats kefir from the perfect farm in, like, Pennsylvania. I, like, got it somehow, you know, the shady way of getting, like, raw milk. And I gave it to him and I was like, feeling so good about myself. And 10 minutes later, he starts, like, projectile vomiting over and over and over again. It's like, what's going on? Okay, that didn't work. And then another time, he caught a piece of one thing and he started vomiting again. And I was like, okay, so he. He can't tolerate this right now. And so again, I had to backtrack and say, okay, you can't live necessarily your life, like, on from this paradigm of thinking that, like, I know all and this is how it's going to be.
You know, it made me realize that I have to go slow and shift things for my son, for my pregnant self, for any of my readers and community as well. Because I. When I started off on social media, I think if you look at my Social media posts. I was probably a lot more like radicalized or strict. As a 20 something who thought she knew everything about cleansing versus now a mother of two, who knows how tough kids can be, how tough pregnancy can be, the trials and tribulations of life, what people are going through, emotionally, physically, financial stuff. Like I've grown a lot as a human and I know that life can be very struggling, can be very challenging and things that we don't know what people are dealing with. Right.
So I've gotten a lot easier for the fact of I don't want people to get afraid of this life. I don't want to push them away to feel like it's too radicalized or too hard to hold on to. No, you can live maybe in the middle, but also kind of still shift into a way where it's like we're still living hopefully a more cleansed life and feeling good and really just, you know, I, I want people to feel the way that I feel and, and know that it's possible. But I also don't want to scare them off by being too radicalized and too strict.
[00:41:50] Speaker B: I think that flexibility is so important and, and to exemplify a lifestyle where there's so much space for all sorts of things, whether it's, it's the, the joy and the pleasure of, of being able to make and create beautiful recipes for your family or just whatever it takes. We are all so different and we all, we need to, we need to feel, we need there to be space for our spirits. I love that you did that and I love that you created something that has so much flexibility.
And as a mother, we know that there has to be a lot of, a lot of flexibility because we have one idea about our life, but we.
[00:42:24] Speaker A: Also are holding space, just something entirely different. And I love that like this, this life also allows you to like play hard and play gentle, you know, like that flow you can really like. There's certain times of the year where I do want to be, you know, more on it and really like focus on my physical vitality. And there are other times of the year when I kind of want to go easy and be a little like more like hibernation style. And so I, I listen to that and I never just stay in one place. I think that's essential, like stagnancy. Like we don't want to be stagnant in any areas of our life. So we kind of have to like be like flowing easy. And I think that this life really supports that.
[00:43:02] Speaker B: It does. And speaking of children. I know you've got to go and yours, so I won't keep you any longer. But I do, I would love to do a part two exclusively on focusing on children and mothering, child rearing. I think it would be so valuable.
So in the meantime, I could speak for hours.
[00:43:23] Speaker A: This went by so quickly.
[00:43:25] Speaker B: Went by too quickly. In any case, everyone can find Nicole's amazing book. You're going to love every single recipe in here. They're just gorgeous recipes. And you can hear more about her intuitive eating approach. It's, it's wonderful. And then if you're so fortunate to be near the Bonbury Mart, it is such a fabulous store, such a gem. Nicole, what are the cross streets again? Just remind me.
[00:43:47] Speaker A: West 11th street in the West Village in New York City.
[00:43:50] Speaker B: So, yeah, it's awesome.
[00:43:52] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:43:53] Speaker B: Yes. To be continued. And to be continued.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: Too fast.
[00:43:58] Speaker B: Inspiration light. And thank you for, thanks, Natalia.
[00:44:01] Speaker A: Thank you for everything. I mean, this again, this is so, such a full circle moment. And I'm so grateful, truly, from the bottom of my heart because it's, you know, it's, it just takes one person to really open up a whole opportunity in life. And it's, it's the work that you do is so it. I don't know if you know, but it really has changed so many people's lives.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: Thank you. And you're doing the same, so that's a lovely thing to say. I appreciate it so much. Love. To be continued.
[00:44:29] Speaker A: Bye.
