Podcasts about so catherine

Nicola chats to Catherine Sykes, ACT's new Safeguarding Adults in Unregulated Sport Officer.What is unregulated sport? Some might say that technically all sport is unregulated. So Catherine begins by explaining just what we mean when we say "unregulated sport and activity". She also explains what we mean by "unaffiliated".Essentially, Catherine is here to support grassroots sports clubs, as well as sport and activity organisations in fields such as eSports and wrestling. Catherine explains the sort of support she can offer to such sport and activity organisations, and outlines what she intends to achieve in her new role.

Why stick to any one genre? Our guest this week is Catherine Newman: memoirist, middle grade novelist, etiquette columnist and now the author of How to Be a Person: 65 Highly Useful, Super-Important Things to Learn Before You’re Grown-Up. While she’s at it, she writes a cooking blog, co-authored a book on crafts for kids and edits ChopChop, a kids cooking magazine. And she pens frequent funny essays for everything from O to the New York Times to the Cup of Jo website. In other words, she’s putting a pastiche of writing together and making it work with an insouciant disregard for any and all advice about self-branding or owning an niche or sticking to one topic or identity.In fact, I’d argue that “insouciant disregard” might just BE her brand. This episode also includes the immortal words “I’ve never had to kill anything during the podcast before,” uttered by Jess—so that’s a reason to listen right there. But there are plenty of others—this is a real nitty gritty episode on building a career and getting things done.#AmReadingKJ: Henna Artist by Alka JoshiRecipes for a Beautiful Life by Rebecca BarryJess: Sure Shot by Sarina BowenAnimal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara KingsolverMissing You by Harlan CobenCatherine: Know My Name by Chanel MillerSea Wife by Amity GaigeThe Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell’AntoniaThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Hey writers KJ here. Usually I write down what I'm going to tell you in our pre episode, promotional blurb, whatever you want to call this, and I will say right away that of course we are, as always sponsored by our friends at Author Accelerator, who we love. This week, instead of writing down some great reasons why we love them I just wanted to take a minute to read to you from the email that I got from Jenny Nash this week. This is her weekly email that goes out to anyone who's on the Author Accelerator list, or read every single one of those and I cannot say that about almost any other weekly email I get, there a couple. Anyway, Jenny writes, "I was speaking with a writer this week who could see the light at the end of the tunnel on her novel. She was almost done and she was terrified. She could feel herself panicking and turning to other shiny new ideas. Anything that wasn't this almost done idea. Being done would mean that her work could be rejected. Being done would mean that her work could be judged. Being done would mean that her limitations and weaknesses as a writer would be on display for everyone to see. Being done would mean that whatever she had on the page was as good as she was able to do. Even if it wasn't anywhere close to the perfect story in her mind. Being done would mean that she would be exposed." I could really, really relate to that. And I think I'm not the only one. A lot of us start to let things go the minute we get anywhere close to the finish line, because the finish line is scary. And if that's the place where you are maybe now is the moment when you want to reach out and see about working with a writing coach. You might not need much a few weeks, a little bit of a push, a little bit of help, just to take that thing that you're working on, and get it through to not the almost best you can do (which you know allows a lot of room for imagining other things) but the actual best you could do and then make a real decision about what it is you'd like to do with it. If you're game for that, you should head over to authoraccelerator.com and click your way through to all the great places because we love them and there's also a lot of other good stuff there. While I'm here I also want to say that this episode includes a couple of small swear words here and there and also some weird commentary on vaginas. Because this is one of our dearest friends we're interviewing this week and we got a little bit weird. So letting you know that so if you have tiny ears around that you are concerned about? Honestly, it's no big on this one. I don't think that it will bother you, but I wanted to give you a heads up. Alright. Enjoy it. This is a great episode. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 2:51 Now it's recording. KJ Dell'Antonia 2:53 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess Lahey 2:57 Alright, let's start over.KJ Dell'Antonia 2:58 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. And this is #AmWriting. The podcast about writing all things, from fiction, to nonfiction, pitches, proposals, emails, essays. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your writing work done. Jess Lahey 3:27 I'm Jess Lahey, I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and the forthcoming book The Addiction Inoculation, Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence, who the subtitles are always so tricky, and you can find my work on the old interwebs at The Atlantic and the New York Times and The Washington Post and lots of other places.KJ Dell'Antonia 3:58 I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters coming out on July 1 of this year, which is 2020. For those of you listening in the future, when I hope things are not what they are now, but that is not what we are going to talk about today. We have a guest, our guest is Catherine Newman, who we've actually been trying to record with Catherine since like since like our 10th episode. But wait, I want to tell you about Catherine, she is a memoirist, a middle grade novelist, and etiquette columnist and now the author of How to Be a Person: 66 Highly Useful, Super Important Things to Learn Before You're Grown Up.Jess Lahey 4:57 It's actually 65, but I think that we should invent a 66 while we're here.KJ Dell'Antonia 5:22 Okay, no, I wasn't done. I wasn't done - because while she's at it, Catherine writes a cooking blog, she co-authored a book on crafts for kids, and she edits Chop Chop, a kid's cooking magazine, which I didn't even know till I just recently read her bio because I never read the bios of my friends because I'm supposed to know all this stuff, but I didn't. And she pens frequent funny essays for everything from O to The New York Times to The Cup of Joe website. In other words, she's putting a pastiche of writing together and making it work with an insouciance disregard for any and all advice about self branding, or owning a niche, or sticking to one topic or an identity, and in fact, I would argue that insouciance disregard might just be Catherine Newman's brand.Catherine Newman 6:10 Oh, my God, that's it. I just feel like that's the mic drop. I'm so happy. I also feel like you just fully explained all the problems I have. It's my insouciance disregard.Well, I loved your intro. My intro really would have been you know, this is Catherine Newman for me is the writer that, not only a person I adore and know personally, but as a writer she's the one who always figures out the new way to say the thing I have been feeling and yet felt so cliched that I never wrote it down. She always has some new amazing way to state it and then I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, how has no one ever said it that way before?' and it's so true and perfect and beautiful. And you know, for a lot of writers that write about parenting and this whole racket that we call life, often if they have a favorite piece, I often will say let me guess was it by Catherine Newman because her pieces just rank as people's favorites.Jess Lahey 8:00 We love your stuff. But you guys, you and KJ have a much longer relationship than you and I do, Catherine. So KJ, tell them where you guys met.KJ Dell'Antonia 8:09 I don't know where we met. I know that Catherine wrote for me at Motherlode but it must have been Wonder Time. The late great that says that it's not the greatest like the more I say the name now that it's gone, the dumber it sounds, but it really was. Yeah, okay. Soft sigh of regret. And while we're having soft sighs of regret for demises of magazines, I hear Family Circle just tanked. I mean, I know that was like in the fall, but... Catherine Newman 8:49 I know I always feel like I'm there on that tiny little island of sinking magazines.Jess Lahey 8:57 I'm just about to send out an email today saying Hi, want me to write anything? Anything you got - I'll write that thing.KJ Dell'Antonia 9:40 Great. Okay, so here we are, finally, at last.So okay. 65 (not 66) Highly Useful, Super Important Things to Learn Before You're Grown Up. Why that after a resume that includes two parenting memoirs, one crafting book, and one middle grade novel that was my middle grader at the time absolute total favorite, he even reviewed it for Parenting magazine. Yeah, he still looks back on that with fondness because he has a hard time finding books that he likes. Anyway. And so from there you thought I know, the best thing and the easiest thing for me to market next would clearly be a book of useful things to learn before you're grown up. I don't think that's really how you did it.Catherine Newman 10:37 Yeah, no, no, I know. Isn't that crazy? Really, the dirty truth is that I pitched it as a much worse book. I wanted a book, I went to the library to look for a book, I don't know if you ever end up writing this way where it's like, oh, this thing doesn't exist that I assumed existed. But I went to the library to get a book for Bertie, because I wanted her to do more helpful stuff in the house, but she didn't know how to do it. And she didn't want to be taught how to do it by anybody. So this is, second child has been wanting to do it by herself since she was two. And it's really hard with a person like that, who doesn't want to be shown how to do something and then you ask them like, 'Hey, can you clean the bathroom?' And she's like, 'I don't know how to do that.' But then if you try to show her she's pissed. So for Bertie it worked, so I went to the library to get I assumed like DK had made one of those like photo illustrated guides to chores, you know...KJ Dell'Antonia 11:52 I might need that, there are things I don't really know how to do. Truth. Catherine Newman 11:57 So I went to get that book from the library, like I walked in confidently, talked to the librarian and they were like, 'Yeah, we don't have a book like that.' So I was working with Story at the time (the publisher)and who I love and my editor there is an old person from Family Fun who I used to write all this fun stuff with. KJ Dell'Antonia 12:22 That was also a fun place to write.Catherine Newman 12:25 Oh my God, so fun. So she and I had worked on a piece that I think killed me called Chores Fun. So I pitched her the book Chores Fun and I wanted it to be photo illustrated, step by step, DK style. And she was interested, but needless to say that got higher up over there and they were like, 'No...'KJ Dell'Antonia 12:50 And me, I want that book. I would buy 500 copies of that book. Catherine Newman 12:58 So they then said, you know, can you expand it so it's not just that? And so the other thing I really had wanted to write was, I want to say etiquette, but I don't mean in the like uptight, sort of like how to talk to the Queen of England sons, just the like how to communicate sense of etiquette, like how to be a person who needs to communicate with other people. I had wanted to write a book about that, too. And so we sort of merged those. And the book for me is primarily that but then we broke it down a little so it seems like it's many more topics than communicating and like cleaning a bathroom. So there's some stuff about cooking, and some stuff about money, and some stuff about just general skills like you know, changing batteries and that's how it came to be. And so I have found both of my kids with galleys of the book open to learn whatever it is they need to do. Bernie has used the book to tie a necktie and swears it works. And when I had asked them to clean all the bathrooms at Thanksgiving, I went in and the book was like, propped up on the counter in the bathroom.Jess Lahey 14:16 Oh my gosh, that's so brilliant. KJ Dell'Antonia 14:17 I had not thought of that. We've been cleaning bathrooms like crazy around here and yeah, I discovered that one child claimed to have been taught to wipe the toilet with a Clorox wipe and then flush it. And when I tell you that we're on septic I can also tell you that that ended extremely badly with men in the basement and saws. Oh, God, yeah, that's not how to clean a toilet. And I really didn't tell her that either.Catherine Newman 14:47 No, I can imagine.KJ Dell'Antonia 14:49 Anyway, I have now taught this skill, but I feel that it needs refreshing so I'm gonna prop that up. Jess Lahey 14:57 I'm gonna do the same thing. There's that forgetting of things that technically they should know. And as we've talked about a bajillion times for me - that one was laundry and we solved that with the dry erase markers on the washer and dryer with all of the instructions and the bathroom one seems to be the next frontier that we have to handle around here.KJ Dell'Antonia 15:22 Well, the truth is that in this moment, any of us who did have someone who sometimes cleaned for us whether that was frequent or infrequent, don't have that. Anyway, most of us are, even if there's stuff that maybe we didn't have to do before, or we were teaching our kids to do it but they didn't necessarily have to do it I could kind of poke at it and that was fine because the person who really could do it was gonna be there in two weeks. So now it's like yeah, this is how you clean the toilet. Jess Lahey 16:17 Here's the nice thing about this book also is that there are so many times when you show a kid how to do it and you're being a little overly controlling or they're like no one else does that, no one cleans behind the toilet seat, Mom, you can show them a book and say, 'Look, this is how an arbiter of how these things should be done is actually doing things. KJ Dell'Antonia 16:55 So what has it been, like getting out there to share this book that is, in many ways, so different than from what you've done before?Catherine Newman 17:18 I could ask you the same. You know, it's funny. The funny thing for me is that my first two books were so intimate that actually, it was really like trial by fire in terms of publishing. So when people would blur together sort of criticizing the book with criticizing me as a parent or even just me as a person, because the memoir genre kind of invites that and it was really little nerve racking, honestly. And so then after that there was fiction, which is so delightful because it's fiction. And there was a book I did with my friend Nicole, that craft book, which is so delightful, because a) it's a craft book, so no one's gonna, like take my character apart over it and b) it was with a friend. So you know, it's like how I used to love co-teaching when I was teaching, like it's so dreamy to have a partner in something because you're not stranded. So this is none of those. This is not a memoir. It's not fiction. I don't have a partner in it, but it doesn't feel dangerous to me. It just feels like oh, kids need to know how to do stuff. And I feel pretty good about it being useful. So I don't have like weird shame, you know the memoirs for me, I promoted them with shame. I mean, I had blathered on and on about all my deepest fears about parenting and my kids and then I had to go sell it and it was so humiliating and I just am feeling a delightful absence of shame around this book. So I don't know if that's what you asked or how I ended up there. So I'm feeling pretty happy. I feel like it's coming out. I actually weirdly feel like the timing for my book is good because lots of kids are home. Jess Lahey 19:46 I'm in total agreement with you on that one. Catherine Newman 19:50 And I feel like lots of parents genuinely need help. So it doesn't even feel artificial. You know, sometimes you have to teach your kids stuff even though it'd be much easier just to do it. I know you both know that because You both have talked to me about that, but I feel like this moment where I can say hey, I am well to welcome someone make dinner you know it doesn't feel like a learning avenue it's just real life and the kids are in it with us and they're old enough to see it, it doesn't feel contentious and so I guess I feel like this is actually not a bad moment for a book like that. You know, I'm so glad I don't have some book coming out about I don't even know. I think we're lucky like KJ I weirdly feel like this about your book too, that your book even though it's fiction, and it's like this total romance, it's so perfect because it offers something that people need in this moment, like I needed to read about these feuding fried chicken places. And it was like this ace in the hole for me that I knew I could just relax and read it and it was so that it was like the most incredibly pleasurable comforting diversion. So anyway, I feel like it would just be terrible to be coming out with a book that was like entering the workforce or you know, something that was like so not the moment for it...KJ Dell'Antonia 22:06 Thank you for saying lovely things about The Chicken Sisters, I'm super excited to share it. And I am kind of with you, I had a lot of angst around How To Be a Happier Parent because I kept going, it's happier, and not better, either. I felt like, you know, who was I to talk and to say those things and so I felt a lot of stress around that, that I don't feel. You know, it's a fun novel. That's what it's supposed to be. And it is that and it's got pretty yellow cover, and I am looking forward to everyone being able to buy it.Catherine Newman 22:54 No one's hoping to solve a problem with it, except maybe just wanting to be diverted. You won't fail, you know...KJ Dell'Antonia 23:17 Did you find people pushing you to do something else that was more in line with what you've done before? You know does your agent say like 'Well, could you just write another memoir? Or a collection of essays perhaps.'Catherine Newman 23:51 The funny thing is I'm a terrible pitcher. Like I really like for people to come to me and be like, 'You know what we need?' And I'm like, 'Sure, you know, because I am, as I have said for 20 years, I'm just a writing tramp. I will write whatever, as long as it doesn't like conflict with my politics, you know, but I've written you know, whatever copy to say that the tampons not gonna fall out of your body without ever using the word tampon or body. I mean, give me whatever and I will write it. Like I even like being assigned weird stuff because then it's like doing a crossword puzzle. You know, it doesn't ask that much of you emotionally. But, all of that is to say that I am not dying to publish another book of essays or another memoir and maybe at some point, I will. I mean, I have a lot of interest in all of us doing an anthology about like menopause. That would be really, really funny. But, I feel like something collaborative that was like more a collaborative essay project. And I feel the same way about writing about older kids. I would love to do it collaboratively. But I definitely don't want to write a whole book about it. My guess is if I do another book after this, it'll be an adult novel. Adult novel always sounds like it's porn... I have an adult novel I want to write that I've been sort of writing and it's that thing where now I don't know how to write it because I'm starting to lose track of the world before the pandemic, even though I lived in it for 50 years. So I don't know, that's always lingering around as a thing I want to write and then, you know, I want to write another book in this genre for Story for sure. And I wouldn't be surprised if that something happened, I don't know if it would be a follow up, or we would have to see, I guess.Jess Lahey 27:25 So for writers that are wishing they can cobble together this Higgledy Piggledy, a little writing here, a little writing there a little of this genre. How I mean, I know it's impossible to say, I'm assuming you're not going to say, Oh, yes, I had this all written out. 10 years ago. This is exactly the path I have designed for myself.Catherine Newman 27:44 You mean when I was getting a PhD for 10 years, but I then went on to not use? Yeah, that really wasn't the plan. Jess Lahey 27:52 Yeah, that was while I was at law school, learning how to be a juvenile attorney. So you know, for those writers who look to us to have some sort of takeaway about how to create a life around writing for themselves? I mean, do you have anything you could share for us in terms of how you've managed to cobble together this really interesting career?Catherine Newman 28:15 Well, thank you for calling it both Higgledy Piggledy and interesting because I think of it really as both of those. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, nothing that you haven't heard on this podcast before. I feel like the old improv yes and advice I do think about, I say no to nothing. Again, only if it conflicts with my politics. So I've never been proud and I continue not to be, I will write most things and I will work on most projects and I will give it away if it's a worthy cause. I'm more than happy to write something for someone doing something that's important. So I ended up with tons of relationships and I know you're both the same that for both of you that sort of one of the treasures of your writing and publishing life is these ongoing really well nurtured relationships and I don't I do it as well as you guys, truly. But that said, I do maintain relationships with everyone I've ever written for and they end up who knows where like, you write the shitty Kotex copy and then that person goes to O Magazine, I just feel all the time like people move around so much. And as long as I make myself easy to work with, and available, then I feel like I get a lot of assignments just because those two things turn out to be, I think marketable skills weirdly.Jess Lahey 30:10 I find it shocking that you say you're not as good at it because we had never met, I admired your writing so much, and you agreed to have coffee with me never having met me before when I happened to be in your town. So I disagree that you are not very good at cultivating these relationships and you know, whenever I talk about your writing, people talk about the fact that they really admire you as a writer, so I think that you do a really good job of that.Catherine Newman 30:42 Well, thank you. I loved the idea too, that you like called me out of the blue. I totally was already stalking you. KJ Dell'Antonia 30:58 Catherine, I think you have a gig right now that a lot of writers would both kill for and also feel like well hey I could do that, I could weigh in on etiquette issue real simple and getting a column is kind of the gold standard of what people want that's hard to achieve and I get a lot of questions about it and I'm not at all helpful. So I would like to give you the opportunity to be not at all helpful - like how did it happen?Catherine Newman 31:36 Oh my god, it was so like a one thing and another and it was exactly the thing of an editor I'd worked with somewhere unglamorous ended up at Real Simple. And then I wrote something for her there and their etiquette columnist was leaving, they asked me to audition which was so nerve racking. so I The question was something like my cousin without talking to us named her twins after my twins like what would you do?So I it was just luck but a lot of my luckiest things (seemingly luckiest things) come from having said yes to really outrageous things either low paying things or things that I wrote for a good cause. I would just say for me, I think almost everything good in my career has come from a certain openness and willingness. You know, it's like when my kids were little and they were writing thank you notes for shitty presents, you know that they didn't like and weren't happy to get and I would say there's always something true you can say that's gonna be real, like someone gave you a gift that in and of itself is something to be thankful for and you can express that. That sounds so corny, but whatever. That's how I am. And I think like almost any opportunity I'm given to write I do feel like there's an opportunity to make some kind of meaning out of it, if that makes sense. Either to take pleasure in the writing or to say something funny or to get a little philosophy into it or a little politics into it. And so I guess I think of even the weirdest stuff as an opportunity, which I think is a head game I play with myself because I'm never going to be successful enough to not need to keep writing all this stuff all the time. You know, I am just constantly writing and that feeling I have of everything being a little bit of an opportunity, you know, we're all writers, because we're curious about the world, I feel like at bottom, that's probably the main thing we all have in common. And you can always express that, you know what I mean? Even if it's something that feels sort of random. So that's a long way to say that I think every writing gig is an opportunity. I mean, unless somewhere wealthy is grossly under paying you then don't do that. Like they can't do that. That's wrong. But I just mean, you know, some of the stuff that isn't like a perfect fit or isn't high profiler isn't very glamorous, those things have always led to other things for me, almost, almost inevitably, in a way that I feel like is karmic in the true sense of what you put out into the world comes back to you.KJ Dell'Antonia 34:51 We talk about things in that category a lot because we make a practice of getting annoyed with each other whenever we say I got lucky because yes, we have been lucky but yeah, fortune favors the well prepared. You know, Dax Shepard can't ask you on his podcast and Kristen Bell can't share your book unless you have written it and perhaps presented it to her. Yes, some things land and some things don't. But if you don't throw any paper airplanes up ain't nothing gonna hit.Catherine Newman 36:05 I feel like it's partly luck and partly this other gendered thing, which is I am a pleaser and I have really mixed feelings about that because on the one hand like I have raised Bertie to not be a pleaser...KJ Dell'Antonia 36:25 You wrote about that for me at Motherlode and it's such a hysterical piece and it made people so delighted and so angry at the same time.Catherine Newman 36:32 Yeah, but I am such a pleaser and that has served me really well in my career. And I never as a feminist, I always have really mixed feelings about it because some of it feels really gendered to me that I'm friendly. Let me say as a side note to my own comment that I was just making. I think one of the beauties of freelancing is that you can't take any of your relationships for granted and you shouldn't anyway, I mean, I really feel that right. If you're in a workplace, you should always be nurturing your relationships and taking care of everybody in that way. But freelancing, no one ever has to hire you again. It reminds me a little bit, if you will, of waiting tables, which I was excellent at. Where you're always gonna do best if you were your sort of best self if what you put out is the best version of yourself it's gonna bring you the best work and connect you to the best people. And the truth is, it actually makes my life good because I mostly have positive interactions and that's so much better for me than getting into bed at night and be like Oh God, I had the worst interaction with somebody. So if something's kind of weird I'll like die about it. And I just feel like freelancing I mostly have to be somebody that people would want to hire. You know, I know I keep sounding like such a w***e. But there it is.KJ Dell'Antonia 38:21 That's kind of how it works some of the time. So Catherine, what have you been reading?Catherine Newman 39:59 So truly The Chicken Sisters was my segue back into reading but I wanted to mention a book that actually I was reading right before that, which was (I don't know if you've talked about it on the podcast), but the Chanel Miller book, Know My Name. I admired it so much. I just love her and I love her as an illustrator and I just love everything about her. And as a memoir, I thought the gift of being able to write about something so terrible, with so much love and optimism just blew me away. Like, it's everything I ever sort of wanted to be as a writer. And that book just killed me. I thought it was so incredibly good. I almost wanted to read it again to study it.Jess Lahey 41:32 I didn't know she was a writer, so I was a little nervous. And then I was so blown away, especially towards the second half. I found there were a few moments in the first half where I wasn't totally with her, but then it just picked up steam in terms of it felt to me almost that she got to be a better writer during the process of writing it and at the end of it I went off for a walk in the woods by myself because I had to sort of just process that book. It was exquisite. It was so well doneCatherine Newman 41:59 I had honestly just the exact same. I read it because I felt like this kind of moral obligation as a feminist not to turn away from the story, was so I felt like I should read this book. I picked it up with a dread of obligation. And then it's just sang, it was so beautiful. So that book and Bertie read it after and was crazy about it. And so that book, I have other books, but I want to hear what you're reading, too. Jess Lahey 42:47 KJ, you want to go next?KJ Dell'Antonia 42:57 I've started some books. Okay. I'm going to tell you that I'm rereading a book, because I can tell you with confidence that I love this book and I have enjoyed it. I think this is a multiple read. I've read this many times because it's just soothing and kind of wonderful. And I think I've talked about it on the podcast. Catherine Newman 43:15 Can I guess? Is it I Capture the Castle?KJ Dell'Antonia 43:19 No, but I do like that. No, not at all. It's a memoir, and it's called Recipes for a Beautiful Life by Rebecca Berry. She wrote it in like 2008 or it takes place in like 2008 so it's got a lot of the the economy crash in there as she and her family are moving. We all know I'll read anything in which a family moves to a small town in a rural place and makes a new life for themselves. Anyway, I have really enjoyed that. So that is what I can guarantee for you. I have started The Henna Artist and I really like it so far. I'm gonna mangle her name so I'm going to look it up for the show notes. At chapter three I'm really liking it, but we all know how that could go, but I don't think it will.Jess Lahey 44:22 Well I have to start with I listened to the audio of Sarina Bowen's newest book Sure Shot and I got to talk about it with her because she did some really interesting things in there and we were talking a little bit. We were talking about authors who are gardeners and they plant seeds for new things and Sarina just did an exquisite job in this book. I love her books from just a listening to the story perspective but I also love watching her go and sort of planting the seeds for the books that will follow in the series because she writes books in a series and this is one of the Brooklyn Bruisers hockey books and I just from a technical perspective adored listening to Sure Shot her new hockey romance. But it's funny KJ that you said the thing about small town and comfort and making a life in a small town thing because my comfort listen this past couple of weeks on and off has been Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver because I've been prepping my gardens, I've spent so much time not writing as much but doing a ton of gardening and so listening to Barbara Kingsolver while I do that has been has been just wonderful. And the last thing I just finished last night was another Harlan Coben, this one was called Missing You and it was really clever. And we have to try to get Harlan Coben on the show because he does this thing that Sarina had told me about that he's known for, which is the the climax at the end of the book, except it's got two peaks, not one. Like you think you've hit the climax and you have the answers and then he hits you again, with a second sort of twist climax. And it's so it's his thing. He does it over and over and over again. And he's so good at it. The guy plots a book like nobody's business, so I'm dying to talk to him. So if anyone out there knows Harlan Coben, I would love to talk to him about how he plots his books. But anyway, so that's been what I've been listening to and it's been all listening. A little bit of reading books in hand but mostly listening because I've been out in the garden. Catherine Newman 47:25 Can I mention one other book? I just so what I just read is my friend Amity Gage's book, Sea Wife. And it's not at all comforting at all takes place on a sailboat. And it's a young family, a married couple and kids on this sailboat and it's a kind of a thriller and kind of a mystery. And I feel like it's one of the best books I've ever read about parenting even though it's a novel, and I tore through it but it's very breathless and like terrifying so...KJ Dell'Antonia 48:10 Well that has its place at the moment, too. Because then you forget where you are. Catherine Newman 48:15 I was really caught up in it and it's also just incredibly lyrical. Like some of the sentences I would read twice just because it was so gorgeous. So I'm recommending that as a total escape-like thriller.Jess Lahey 48:54 I went yesterday, I have to say I went yesterday to pick up a book from the Vermont Bookshop in Middlebury, Vermont, and there was no one at the shop but they had this beautiful cart outside the door with everyone's orders labeled and covered with some plastic and it was just the most delightful way to get out and and go 'shopping' even though I couldn't shop it worked really nicely. Booksellers are working so hard to make that work. Catherine, thank you for being so patient with us while we worked out the details of how we were going to have you on the show. It shouldn't have taken us this long, but we're very happy that you were patient with us.Catherine Newman 49:48 Oh my gosh, my pleasure. Talking to you is a highlight of my week and life.Jess Lahey 49:55 Well, and I'm going to recommend that people go ahead and preorder How to Be a Person...KJ Dell'Antonia 50:03 They won't have to preorder it will be out by the time this is out.Jess Lahey 50:07 It's just such a delightful book. It's such a fun read, I'm going to be giving it as like part of a baby gift. I'm going to have copies around to give to people constantly. I have a neighbor I'm giving it to as a gift. So I'm so excited to have just multiple copies around the house.Catherine Newman 50:26 You guys are so supportive I could cry. Jess Lahey 50:33 Oh Catherine, where can people find you if they want to find out more about your higgledy piggledy career?Catherine Newman 51:06 CatherineNewman writer.com I think.Jess Lahey 51:44 Until next week, everyone, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Catharine Arnston is the founder and CEO of a company called Energybits which produces some of the world's best Spirulina and Chlorella products.   Catharine has a 30-year career as an international Attache for the Canadian and British Governments, publisher of an international magazine and founder of three startups. But in 2009 when her younger sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and advised by her oncologist to change her diet to an alkaline one because it would help her heal, Catharine put her career on hold to help her sister. In the process, she discovered algae, the most alkaline, nutrient-dense plant in the world that no one seemed to know about. Catharine knew algage would be a game-changer for the world if she could just help people understand it and so she founded her company Energybits.   Algae s a multi-billion dollar crop in Asia where it has been used for decades. Algae is endorsed by NASA and the UN as the most nutritionally dense food in the world. There are over 100,000 studies documenting its benefits, some of which include increased energy, improved focus, strengthened immune system, reduced inflammation, removal of toxins, enhanced longevity, improved sports performance, removal of hunger and revitalized skin and hair health. All this from a 4 billion-year-old, single-cell organism that has forty vitamins and minerals, the highest concentration f prten n the world, ne calres and one ingredient. The only thing wrong with algae is that it is virtually unknown outside of Asia.    This podcast interview is set to help change that in our corner of the world By the end of this interview you will be rushing out to get yours.   Workout Fuel Give your body the protein and micro-nutrients it needs to perform without sugar or artificial sweeteners. The Perfect Travel Food Bits are easy to pack and eat on the run. Whether you travel by plane, train or automotive, Bits have your back. Daily Greens in One Minute Making sure your family eats veggies doesn't need to be a struggle. Think of Bits as your daily greens insurance! plate No More Hangry Spirulina is a cultivated algae that has been consumed for thousands of years by the indigenous peoples in Mexico and Africa. It has the highest concentration of protein on earth - triple that of steak - as well as the second-highest concentration of an Essential Fatty Acid called GLA (second only to mother's milk). Spirulina is loaded with antioxidants and unique phytonutrients like phycocyanin and SOD. Chlorella algae are harvested in freshwater tanks and have been used for over fifty years in Asia. It has a remarkable ability to help remove toxins and help build the immune system. All naturally. Chlorella contains over 40 nutrients, including all the B vitamins, iron, zinc, and many minerals. It offers so many benefits we would never have enough room here to list them all. "When it comes to nutrient density for omnivores, vegans, vegetarians and anyone looking to optimize their diet with dense quantities of protein, amino acids, fatty acids, DHA, antioxidants and more, you simply cannot beat chlorella and spirulina. But not all algae is created equal, which is why I swear by ENERGYbits® as my go-to algae source, bar none." LAND Algae produces 100x more protein than cattle and creates zero waste. This efficient nutrition protects our land. AIR Algae provides over 80% of earth's oxygen and even removes CO2. Thanks to algae, we breath deeper and better. Ohmmm. WATER Water is a precious resource. Algae farming uses 20% less fresh water than  WORRY-FREE SOURCING SAFE. Energy bits grow their algae outdoors in carefully monitored fresh water tanks fed by triple-filtered spring mountain water. You can't find a water source or algae that is purer or cleaner. PURE. Energy bits use sound vibrations to crack our chlorella, passing the chlorella through a sound chamber. Most chlorella companies use an older technique to crack the chlorella. They tumble it with glass beads that leak lead into the chlorella.   If you live in the USA or Canada use the code Lisa at checkout for a 20% discount at www.energybits.com. If you are in Australia you can order from www.eatcleanlivedirty.com.au  but the discount code won't apply.   We are hoping in future to bring this product to our NZ customers so stay tuned.      We would like to thank our sponsors for this show:   www.vielight.com   Makers of Photobiomodulation devices that stimulate the brains mitocondria, the power houses of your brains energy, through infrared light to optimise your brain function.  To get 10% off your order use the code: TAMATI at www.vielight.com     For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com    For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/runningpage/ Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body.   Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics/ Get The User Manual For Your Specific Genes Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise? Discover the social interactions that will energize you and uncover your natural gifts and talents. These are just some of the questions you'll uncover the answers to in the Lisa Tamati Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There's a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the "future of personalized health", as it unlocks the user manual you'll wish you'd been born with!  No more guesswork. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research. The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyze body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home   For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit:  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/mindsetuniversity/ Develop mental strength, emotional resilience, leadership skills and a never quit mentality - Helping you to reach your full potential and break free of those limiting beliefs.    For Lisa's free weekly Podcast "Pushing the Limits" subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcast app or visit the website  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/podcast/     Transcript of The Podcast     Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by www.LisaTamati.com. Speaker 2: (00:13) If your brain is not functioning at its best, and check out what the team at www.veilight.com do now, be like producers, photo biomodulation devices. Your brain function depends largely on the health of the energy sources of the brain cells. In other words, the mitochondria and research has shown that stimulating your brain with near infrared light revitalizes mitochondria. I use these devices daily for both my own optimal brain function and also for other age related decline issues and also for my mum's brain rehabilitation after her aneurism and stroke. So check out what the team do at www.veilight.com. That's V I E L I G H T .com and use the code Tamati at checkout to get 10% off any of their devices. Pushing The limits this week. I have a wonderful guest, uh, who you're about to hear from Catherine Ernston of www.Energybits.com. Now, Catherine is the CEO and founder of a company that deals with spirulina and chlorella. Speaker 2: (01:18) Doesn't sound very interesting, but I can assure you this interview will have your mind blown as to how beneficial spirulina and chlorella are for your health. Um, and we will do a really deep dive. There's um, did you know that spirulina has 64% protein, that it has over 40 vitamins and minerals, that it is backed by the United Nations and by NASA they use it for astronauts in outer space. It is an eco-friendly crop. It's got over 100,000 studies done on it, showing the different benefits of these, uh, blue green algae. Um, and the founder, Katherine Amston, got into this through her sister having breast cancer. And through that she decided she wanted to help her sister and started to look at the plant based diet. She started to look at what alkalizing diets were all about and she stumbled across Algie and found out just how powerful it is. Speaker 2: (02:21) And so for the past decade, Katherine has been on a mission to let them world know just how important the nutrients I'm involved with a spirulina and chlorella. So it's a really, really interesting conversation. Make sure you stay to the end. Right. I just want to remind you too, I have my book, we'll link this coming out and just a couple of weeks time from the time of this podcast. It's the story of bringing my mum back after a major aneurism and left her with massive brain damage and hardly any higher function left. And we were told that she would never do anything again and that she wouldn't be with us long at stage. My mum had no ability to speak to communicate. She had no memory. She had no ability to control any bodily function, so the lights were on and no one was home. And this is a book about the desperate search for answers and looking outside the box and everything, the protocols, the therapies, the doctors, the research that I did, uh, and the work that I've done with her over the past four years to now have it back to full health again. Speaker 2: (03:25) So it's really heartwarming and amazing book. I've spent two years in writing this book and I really hope it's going to help thousands and thousands, if not millions of people. If I had my way, there's so many people suffering out there from brain injuries who need to know. Um, and this is not just for strokes or aneurysms, but across the board, all different types of brain dysfunction, whether it be Alzheimer's, dementia, strokes, uh, concussions, uh, aneurisms, all of these things. Um, this is a real good book if you facing any of those things, but also for anyone who wants to know about mindset and mental toughness and overcoming massive challenges when the odds are stacked against you, um, and who hasn't faced situations like that. If you're a human, you sort of get check these things at life. So I'd really love you to go over and check that book out. Speaker 2: (04:15) It's on my website now available for preorder at www.lisatamati.com hit the shop button and that will take you through to my shop with my books and my jewelry collection. So make sure you check that out. If you do that now you would also get access to mindset you, which is my online mental toughness and emotional resilience course, uh, that's valued at $275. You'll get that for free if you order the book before it launches on the 11th of March, but only up until then. Okay. So make sure you go and do that now. Um, and I really appreciate that right guys over to Catherine Amston Speaker 3: (04:53) well, hi everybody. Welcome to the show. Once again, it's wonderful to have your loyalty back with us for another exciting episode of pushing the limits. Today, I have the amazing Kathryn Anson with me. How are you doing Catherine? I am a well and wildly excited for being here. Now, Katherine has been traveling for the last couple of weeks, then conferences, so and so have I. So we're both sitting here very tired but very passionate about what we do. So Catherine is in Canada, sorry. She is a Canadian but she's living in Boston. Um, and she is the founder and CEO of a company called ENERGYbits, uh, which, uh, is a company that deals with spirulina and chlorella. So we'll start there. Katherine, can you tell us a little bit of your background and why you ended up down the spirulina and chlorella? I know algae who knew algae could become the love of my life? Speaker 3: (05:51) Uh, well I, you know, I started with a traditional career. I have an MBA, was doing international business, blah, blah, blah. And then my younger sister in Canada in Toronto, uh, developed breast cancer. And fortunately her oncologist advised her to change her diet to an alkaline one because they said it would help her with her healing process. She was going to do the chemo, but they didn't tell her what it was or why it worked. So she called me. Cause of course I love my sister, but also I'm just a really good researcher. I probably should have been a scientist. I said I have no idea what I'll go on a diet is, but you know, I know how to get on the internet and we'll figure this out. And it turned out to be mostly a plant based diet because of the phytonutrients and mostly the chlorophyll that helped build your immune system. Speaker 3: (06:34) And so when you're doing chemo, having a strong immune system is critical. I mean it's important at anytime, but certainly when you're doing chemo. So she did change her diet. She did heal from her, uh, breast cancer and 10 years later she's still cancer-free. And in the process of helping her with her research, I read about 10 books on plant based nutrition. Now this is 10 years ago, nobody was talking about plant based nutrition then as they are now, it's mainstream now. And I was like this outlier and I said, I was crazy, blah blah blah. But I just saw the science. I said, no, this is, this is important stuff. Somebody should tell the rest of the world that, well I have no nutrition background, but I saw what it did for my sister. I know I can help other people. I'm going to give it a shot. Speaker 3: (07:16) I have no idea how I'm going to do it, what kind of education I'm going to get. But I gave up my 25 year corporate career for a year for a health coaching certificate. But you know, gave me a little bit of science. Um, after I graduated, I taught nutrition for a year at corporations and hospitals anywhere who would let me in, cause I put a curriculum together and to try to teach people how to, you know, to incorporate more greens into their diet. And I learned two important lessons from that. One is that everybody knows they do need to eat more greens and to most people either don't like them or it's too much work or their kids or their husbands won't eat them. So they're, they're stuck. So I thought, okay, if I'm going to help people get healthier, prevent all these chronic illnesses or recover from them, I've got to find something that's green, fast, easy, doesn't require any work. Speaker 3: (08:11) And back to the internet. I went and I started digging around trying different things and I found the algae. Now I found it for my sister originally but hadn't really dug deep into it. So I dug deep and I was like, Alison wanted landfall in the rabbit hole because I found out that algae is the most nutrient dense fit in the world. It's the most alkaline fluid in the world. It's the most studied food in the world. There are 100,000 studies documenting the various athletics, um, physical, mental, any aspect of algae. It pulls out toxins, you name it, but there's 100,000 studies. And the problem is this knowledge hasn't gotten out of the scientific community and into the consumer world, but it has an Asia where it's a multibillion dollar industry and they've been using it for 50 years. And you know, in Japan, they don't take supplements. Speaker 3: (09:03) They just take chlorella, algae every day. And I point out to people that in Japan they have some of the best longevity, the lowest cancer rates, the best skin and hair. And I think a lot, you know, some of it is I attribute to the algae. So when I started seeing how powerful algae was and how easy it was to take, cause you could just swallow it and you're done. Um, and you know, it's endorsed by the United nations as the answer to world hunger is adores by nationals, the most nutrient dense food in the world. And they feed as the astronauts. I thought, okay, that's it. I'm spending the rest of my life to help people understand algae because I think it's the last chance we have to get nutrients into our bodies at the same time. By the way, we're also helping the environment because it's ecofriendly sustainable and we can talk about all that as well. So it's been a very exciting, challenging ride because everyone in my family and my friends thought I was off my rocker, but, um, but I, and I was on a show called shark tank. I don't know if you're familiar. Yeah. And, um, they made fun of me of course. And they said, we don't think you're in love with being an entrepreneur. You're just in love with algae. And I said, well, you're right. I am in love with algae and if you knew as much as I did about algae, you wouldn't love it. Speaker 3: (10:15) Oh man. There I am. 10 years later, uh, I feel algae is my, my, uh, super child that I'm, I'm helping to coax into the world. Uh, and it's about to be discovered in a big way. In fact, um, here in America there's a, um, uh, fast, uh, food. It's healthy food. It's called sweet greens, very, very healthy chain. They've got a hundred, a hundred and some stores. And just today they announced that their, um, their, their biggest effort this year is they're going to create a kelp salad bowl. Kelp is, they said, wow. You know, 2020 is the year of Kelp. And of course, kelp is part of the algae story. It's all part of the same family. So it's like, okay, we're getting closer. I have to stop you there because you need five minutes. You've just given us a condensed version of 10 years and there's a number of areas we can go down the list. Speaker 3: (11:09) So, uh, we talking, so algae, so the blue green algae, we're talking spirulina in chlorella and in particular, right? We talking spirulina being one of the most perfect foods on the planet, the most nutrient dense. Is that correct? Yes. So, um, I'll step back a little bit cause it really helps me, it took me a while to figure this out. So I'm eager to share the simplicity of it. It's like anything, once you know how to do something, it's easy. But until then it's a big mystery, right? So algae is just another food group. You know, we have fruits and we have vegetables. algae is a its own food group and it subdivides into two subgroups. So let's take fruits for example. Um, you might have bananas and apples as two subgroups. Well, within algae you have, um, seaweed or kelp and micro algae. Speaker 3: (12:02) And then taking the analogy of the fruits with apples, there's different types of apples. There's granny Smith apples, there's delicious apples. Well within the micro algae category, there are two main types. There's blue green and green, and one blue green algae is spirulina and one green algae is chlorella. Now these two are really the only two that are harvested as a crop. So it's number one to point out that algae, spirulina and chlorella are not a supplement. They are a food crop. And also equally important is they are not grown in the ocean. They are grown and cultivated in fresh water. It's called a hydroponic. A lot of lot of farmers grow hydroponic salad and tomatoes. algae is the same way. It's just grown in fresh water. Now I mentioned this because there are thousands and thousands and thousands of other strains of blue, green and green algae all growing in oceans, lakes, swamps, warming pools, your aquarium. Speaker 3: (13:08) And those are all poisonous and toxic. So if anyone is listening to this and they, and they go online and they read about toxic blue green algae, yes. That if it came from the ocean, not spirulina or chlorella, they are not toxic. And the reason why is cause algae will absorb whatever's in the water. So if it's in a contaminated water supply, of course it's going to be toxic. And I spent, I've spent a lot of years making sure that because we sell our products from doctors and functional medicine and wellness clinics, so they needed to be sure ours was pure and clean. So we do third-party lab tests here in the United States by an FDA approved lab. We even test for neurotoxins. Well, I think I'm the only company, algae company in the world that proves that there are no neurotoxins that are algae. Speaker 3: (13:58) So I just mentioned this because people will go to the internet and they'll start Googling algae and they'll find some information about toxins and then there'll be panicked. And I want to assure you there is no, there are no toxins. Certainly not an R spirulina or chlorella because we grow them very carefully and monitor them and test them, but they're grown in fresh water. It's a crop, not a supplement. Gotcha. And now if we go into the breakdown of, of the spirulina in the, um, chlorella or as far as the, the, it's, it's packed with protein. It's packed with um, pretty much everything to sustain. When I, when I started looking into it, I'm going, well we actually, we don't need to eat anymore. We can just say spirulina. That's true. She didn't live forever on spirit and although the only nutrient it does not have is vitamin C, which is really interesting. Speaker 3: (14:55) But other than that, or not much vitamin D, but other than that, in fact I'm the one and I should put a press release about it. I would about this. I know, I noticed, I saw it years ago, I saw a chart that identified all the nutrients in mother's breast milk, especially all the amino acids. Yes. Gosh, that looks awfully familiar. And sure enough, I checked our amino acid profile in spirulina. Exactly the same aminos. Exactly the same portions. So, and that helped explain to me why in Japan if babies are born and they cannot digest mother's breast milk, the only thing that keeps them alive is spirulina and water in it. Now I understand it's because the nutrient profile is very similar to two mother's breast milk. But of course, everyone knows mother's breast milk is the perfect food after the age of two, it's a little tough to get right. Speaker 3: (15:44) And actually I was just, I've just been reading a study on um, uh, brace, smoke and its anticancer properties with the, uh, what is it? The LBM and the, the, Oh, there's the name of it. One of the, and I wonder if part of it is cause it say well, you know. Yeah. Um, so, uh, and we can talk to, I would like to explain to your listeners the difference between the two allergies because they, they do completely different things in your body. But just while you're talking about the cancer thing, um, as I mentioned, spirulina is a blue green algae and chlorella is a green algae. And the rate, the reason why they're called that is because spirulina has two pigments in it. The one that everybody knows is chlorophyll, which is a green pigment and that, and chlorella only has the green, but spirulina has another pigment in it that's blue and it's called phycocyanin. Speaker 3: (16:34) Now, the interesting, and we won't dwell too much on this, but the interesting thing about phycocyanin as it relates to cancer, is that it has what's called anti-angiogenesis properties. I know that's a mouthful, but basically what it means is that when there are cancers or tumors, they find a way to literally hijack the blood vessels to reroute them to feed the cancer or the tumor. And there are different nutrients that will stop that process. Cause that process where they hijack the blood vessels is called angiogenesis. And so something that's anti angiogenesis stops that process. And this pigment called phycocyanin has been proven to be able to do that. Well, if you have a blood cancer, obviously it's not going to help because there's no cancer or tumor. Everything else, it's, it's very powerful. So, um, but aside from that, spirulina is generally known as an energizing algae, um, and it has the highest concentration of protein as you mentioned in the world. Speaker 3: (17:39) Now, this is why in 1974 the United nations had a global conference on spirulina and, and endorsed it and it, and still does as the answer to world hunger because it has three times the amount of protein in it that animal protein. And of course it's a crop that you can grow. So it still is the answer to world hunger. And if I can get my company growing and we get to be as big as I want it to be like, believe me, that will be one of the things that I try to help accomplish in my lifetime is to teach other people in other lands to grow this, to feed their, you know, their countries and yeah, people. But so, so the reason why spirulina is so energizing, number one is it has all this protein and the proteins already in amino acid form, which means your body as an athlete, you know this, you have your, you already doesn't have to break down the protein to get access to it. Speaker 3: (18:34) And what's even cooler is that, and most people don't know this, but spirulina is technically a bacteria. It does not have a cellulous wall. So the reason why this is important, particularly for athletes is because again, there's nothing for your body to break down to get access to the protein and the other Koreans. So it's absorbed virtually instantly. And uh, so normally do you get all the aminos? It's loaded with B vitamins, which convert the glucose into energy. And it also has the highest concentration of iron in the world. Iron carries oxygen in your blood. It helps my body. I know. It helps your body. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's pretty cool. I can, I can go even geekier on the oxygen today cause I've got, you know, like a lot of athletes have anemia, like problems since runners, amino acids are a part of, you know, the, the things that I get my all my athletes on so that they can get access to it. Speaker 3: (19:32) So anything that, um, and, and since listening to you on, um, our mutual friend boomer, uh, Edison's podcasts, I've had my husband now who's training for an ultra marathon in four weeks time. I'm tasting this Berliner and his regime as it was for us, for his training, um, and finding fantastic results. And I've never, I never made the connection before between, okay. You know, I knew about spirulina, I knew the basics, but I didn't understand it could actually be the perfect food for endurance athletes. It is the perfect, we in fact field, so many Olympic athletes during the associate winter Olympics that I sent two of my team over to Sochi and because I'm Canadian and we were getting known by the Canadian Olympic teams, we had full access to the Canadian Olympic village and I had a previous Olympic athlete on my U S team here. And so we got complete access to the us Olympic village as well. So it was pretty, it was pretty cool. Speaker 3: (20:32) Uh, athletes who competed in that winter Olympics were metaled and they publicly, uh, I have declared, you know, the, you know, congratulate us for helping them get there. So it was, it was a pretty low, yeah, we interested to tastes of it more, uh, with your products and the, um, in the, in the super long distance. And endurance's which is my background and we train a lot of experts in that area. So how would, what sort of results you could get if you were doing like mega long distances? Cause uh, digestive issues are a major problem for ultra endurance athletes like GI pain. Um, jeez, because all your bloods in your muscles of course, when that's right in your yeah, it's not doing well as far as, so the big problem comes in, how do you get enough energy in while you're running for two days, three days, whatever the rice is. Speaker 3: (21:24) Um, and this could be a perfect solution for a whole, well, April, it is the perfect solution. And in fact, I used to speak at triathlon clubs about this and they used to at first nail me because they said, well, I don't believe how anything with one calorie per tablet can give me energy. So I had to do the deep dive in the science and I have all the answers. Why not only that, I have anecdotal evidence because I can give you a list of, you know, 20 ultra runners who were run a hundred miles only on our algae and water. That's it. Nothing else. Wow. And to your point about the, um, anemia, um, I've learned for a long time, there's something called the foot strike. There's something about when the athlete's foot hits of Ash halt, it causes the iron to dissipate. And it's a real problem for, for Addie. Speaker 3: (22:18) Yeah. Yeah. That's Brenner's, Vimeo, yadda. Well, this is my answer. I'm really excited because I have to have constant, um, like iron infusions. Um, Oh, Oh, Oh. And my, my, and I'm not alone in this problem. There are a lot of female athletes especially, um, who are always at the bottom means, and of course their performances in and P because you can't carry enough blood and enough oxygen and, okay. Well we'll, we'll get you hooked up with some our cause. So, so the, uh, so the spirulina, you also have to be sure you take enough of it. We'd say we recommend 30 tablets for someone who's going on a run. Oh wow. Okay. So you know, if you only take three or four or you can, if you're just a mild runner, you know, he can take three, four. But if you're going to do a, you know, more than three or four miles, we suggest the full 30 tablets and there is never, this is why the athletes love it. Speaker 3: (23:11) Not only do they get the energy, it's steady energy. It's not a rush. It's not a crash. It's just steady. It's not just physical, it's mental. Because you also know as you fatigue, the first thing that goes is your focus, but you never get stomach distress because it literally gets absorbed into your bloodstream before it hits your, your GI track. It's that because there's no, you know, selling as well. Yeah. Yeah. The protein is already in aminos and all the other, um, the iron and the B vitamins and they make it three. Everything is attached to the amino. Everything just gets absorbed so quickly. It's, it's, um, it's amazing. So it's also got a mega three. So does it have B12 or is the B12 missing? Yes, it does have. B12. Um, and I'm, I have to admit, I'm on the fence. I don't promote the B12 because I honestly don't know whether it's functioning as a B12, but it's there. Speaker 3: (24:07) Cause we do the, you know, the lab test and it does have a mega three, so it's a sustainable source of, of Omega three. And it's also vegan of course. excuse me. So, uh, it's, uh, it has things like boron, which helped with your, your, uh, mental focus in the telomeres, um, and helps with coordination. So there's, I have a document I'll send you that itemizes about 20 different reasons why spirulina is the perfect fuel in every single possible way. Um, so it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's super excited to try have half of our athletes and I've always seen what being like my husband obviously not dosing him up enough. I think I need to get more. Yeah. Well and, and you just, um, and so when you go on the long runs and then every, you know, hour, a couple hours, when you're starting to feel a little fatigued, take another 10 or 15 you'll, it's like anything, you kind of have to play around with it and see what works for your body. Speaker 3: (25:05) But in general, spirulina is that energizing algae helps with your physical energy, your mental focus. It satisfies hunger. So we have a lot of people who are biohackers keto, paleo who use it for intermittent fasting because it is ketogenic. It does not decrease your ketones or both. We've had a test that I was just at a Quito conference where I, I saw boomer, uh, and, and so it's very in embrace it also a lot of people when they're on the keto diet or they're not eating many greens cause they don't want the carbs. Uh, so this answers your solution cause there's zero carbs but it has the highest concentration of chlorophyll in the world, but you need to maintain your health. So it's truly the perfect food. And, um, as I say, spirulina, I will say it doesn't taste very good. So people either swallow it or put it into a smoothie. So that's your best way to, it's totally chewable. I, I do eat mine, but you know, it's my company and it's sort of like my dropped, so to sneak. So don't feel we, in fact, we have these sassy stickers that we send, we give out at particular, you know, some only select events, but then the sticker says it's okay to swallow. Speaker 3: (26:25) We have a sense of humor, right. Probably not as bad as much nutrients as both of those things. Well, you know, there is so much nutrition that um, even if you take five a day, it's probably more nutrition than your body is getting an entire week. It's that crazy. Yeah. So between protein and the 40 vitamins and minerals and all the B vitamins and the Omega threes, it's off the charts, the antioxidants and we, it really, it's off. The antioxidants was an interesting one. So it helps. So it can help your LDL your cholesterol, LDL and your triglyceride profile too, can't it? Yes. Yes. oxidation. I understand. So it can help reduce the oxidation effect that, yeah. Yep. Absolutely. And while we've had people who, who have the first normal blood pressure reading after even two days of taking the spirulina, it's that fast. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty, Oh, all drug free. Speaker 3: (27:23) Noninvasive, just nutrient dense mother nature at her best. It's, it's pretty cool. Ready, simple answer. Like, so some of them were like a brain injury, like my mother. Um, what sort of like dosages would you say for here? Like if I had not been giving her enough? Probably. Um, and is it safe to go to a higher amount because it is only a food, isn't it? Yes, it, I tell people, well, you can't, you can't overdose on salad. Um, so we sell single servings of her of 30 tablets. And originally we were telling everybody to take 30 tablets a day or 30 tablets before a workout. Um, that's because we were working initially with elite athletes and that's how many it took for them to feel the improvements. But now we're really working with a lot of consumers who are very nutrient deprived. So any small amount will will make a difference. So we're suggesting three or four or five a day, but you know, feel free to take 30. And I personally have about a hundred a day and half for the last eight years. So, so there's no bloody good. Speaker 3: (28:28) You would be surprised how old I am. Um, so for my age, I do look very young. I was in LA recently and I took a sub, a train, a rapid train. I was in a suburb and taking the train to, into LA and um, seniors could ride for 35 cents and I qualified as a senior. I'm a senior now. Why? To go just and, and I'm very much like into the, like I'm, I'm, I'm getting old too. I'm 51 at the moment and I'm like, I want to age like a superstar. I don't want to give the normal aging things. I'm like, Oh no, it's not. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not aging gracefully and nor should you and I'm way over, I'm way over that. So, uh, so obviously you're doing something right. So blue, green algae. Speaker 3: (29:28) So chlorella. So, and also by the way, fear Lena was the first life on earth almost 4 billion years ago. Chlorella developed about a billion years afterwards. And it does belong to the plant kingdom, although technically it is not a plant. It's a sea vegetable because it doesn't have any phytates or um, any of the anti-nutrients that you know, that, um, can cause some problems with people. So it's, it's its own little category. So chlorella, unlike spirulina, does not give you energy, but what it does is it build your immune system and pulls out toxins. So it helps you cover from anything. It helps you recover from any kind of illness. In fact, it prevents them. Uh, and it does this in a number of ways. First of all, it has the highest concentration of chlorophyll in the world. Remember, that's what got my sister her. The oncologist advised her to change her diet to an alkaline one because of the chlorophyll which builds your immune system. Speaker 3: (30:27) Chlorophyll is a fat-based pigment. And why that's important is because your health starts at the cellular level. So it's the cell walls and the mitochondria. Now if the cell walls are not healthy and they need healthy fats to be healthy, um, that causes, um, disruption in your homeostasis and nutrients can't get in and toxins can't get out. So chlorophyll, you know that people always say how greens are cleansing. Well, this is what's cleansing about it. It's the chlorophyll that heals the cell walls. So did you can get in and toxins can get out and at the toxins. And if neither of that is happening, your mitochondria is suffer, your ATP is lower. You start to get rogue cells that don't communicate that which lead to cancer cells and it's a downward spiral from there. So chlorophyll is very important to maintaining your health. And there is nothing in the world that has more chlorophyll than chlorella. Speaker 3: (31:22) It even has 25 times more chlorophyll than liquid chlorophyll because liquid chlorophyll is made from alfalfa sprouts. It has a, I think 200 times more chlorophyll in spinach, a thousand times more than you know, cabbage. And I have this all on a chart from the Linus Pauling Institute showing all the different concentrations. Um, so, so chlorophyll very, very important. But in chlorella. Second, chlorella has never, I said spirulina has no celly. This wall with chlorella has the hardest in the entire plant. Kingdom is that hard cell wall that attaches to toxins and pulls them out. So oppose that led mercury. Aluminum athletes use it after any kind of sport because it pulls out lactic acid so your muscles aren't sore the next day. Um, people use it for, um, after drinking wine, beer or anything because it attaches to the alcohol. Well, the, the chemicals, the toxins that are released by the alcohol and pulls them out. Speaker 3: (32:21) So you are sober in an hour and a half and you never have a hangover. Seriously. I know. It's crazy. Good old chlorella. So it pulls out toxins. We have customers who use it to pull out excess chemotherapy after their treatments. You need to wait two days after your treatment because it will identify the chemotherapy as a toxin. And we want you to be sure to get your treatment and then pull it out. But they used it at a Chernobyl Hiroshima Fukushima, because in Asia, they all know that chlorella is the only thing that pulls out radiation. So in fact, after the Fukushima disaster seven years ago, the entire Asian supply of chlorella was bought up and there was nothing available for two months because it takes a month, bro and a month to dry and all that sort of stuff. So, um, so it's been documented, um, all around the world for pulling out toxins. Speaker 3: (33:15) We work with, um, a biological dentist who use it to, um, when they pull up, um, AMA grams because of course it's mercury and they use it for themselves as well as their patients. Cause of course they're inhaling the fumes from the feet. Wow. Chlorella also has the highest concentration of RNA and DNA in the world, which is important as you age because this will help your, your own RNA DNA to grow back healthier. It has something called chlorella growth factor, which speeds up the growth of yourselves. So if you injure yourself or have surgery that combined with the RNA and DNA and all the other stuff, you heal literally half the time. It's unbelievable. It's really unbelievable. Chlorella also has the daily requirement of a vitamin called vitamin K too. Now, listeners aren't familiar with K two. It's a very important vitamin only discovered 25 years ago. Speaker 3: (34:08) Um, they attribute a lot of heart, a heart disease and Alzheimer's to too much calcium in your blood vessels or your brain wrinkles in your skin from too much calcium. Um, uh, kidney stones. How much calcium, cause we're all taking calcium and we're all taking of calcium going into the softest. It's absorbed in the wrong places. Zorba in your bones. So what's happening is gathering in your soft tissue like your blood vessels, your brains and only K2 will activate the two proteins that move it out of soft tissue and put it into your bones. So at the same time, it prevents osteoporosis, which is a classic problem for, for women. Um, and the only places you can get K2 from naturally from food is grass fed animal protein. I know you guys have a lot of grass fed animals in New Zealand. Um, there's a disc called natto, which is a Japanese dish, which is really slimy and nobody likes to eat it. Speaker 3: (35:06) But I found out I did lab test. It's also in the algae, there's twice as much in the chlorella as there is in the spirulina. So it has your daily requirement of K2 in the chlorella. I mentioned this because, Oh, in general, I want people to understand that spirulina is an energizing algae and chlorella is a wellness and health and detox algae. It's a wellness LG. So if you want to recover from anything or prevent any illness, chlorella is your answer. Um, and spirulina will always give you energy and help keep you focus. So there's two of them. Yeah, I didn't understand that distinction. And I mean I've hooked into the, the um, vitamin D Kate in K2 and vitamin a, um, combination to get the calcium out of the soft tissues and then to the bones where it shouldn't be. Yeah. I didn't realize that the K2 was incorrect. Speaker 3: (35:59) So that's a real, yes. Well, I think I'm the only one that I think I'm the only one that knows that as I'm this closet researcher and I'll be, cause I need to know the answers. I need to know why this works so well because nobody else has explained algae the way that I explained it. And I could only, as you know, you only become um, you become a good teacher when you have dug deep into complex matters and then you, you find a way to simplify them for people. So I was, I needed to go through the complexity and now, I mean simplify them for people so they don't have to, but I have the research in case they want the backstory so they know that it's all legitimate and documented and all that sort of stuff. So I'm pretty amazing. And so in people, when people ask me when to take the algae, well you could take either of them alone, together with food instead of food morning, noon, night. Speaker 3: (36:57) However, in most cases people want energy in the morning and during the day, maybe before a workout, before an important meeting or a school or whatever. So take your spirit, you know, whenever you want energy and take your chlorella at anytime you want to eat it. Uh, but certainly at nighttime, because if you've done a workout, it will pull up the lactic acid. If you've had any wine or cocktails, they'll pull the alcohol out. Um, it helps your, your body goes through detox cycle when you sleep anyways. So this Patil is facilitates the detox. Speaking of which, uh, about the brain health. You know, when you're sleeping, your brain has a lymphatic system of its own. What? And so the important, one of the many important reasons for getting a deep sleep is it will not activate. And unless you're in that, I think Delta, whatever, again, number one sleep pattern. Speaker 3: (37:49) So, so it washes your brain. And so while it's cleaning out these talks as it's pulling out things like aluminum that caused things like Alzheimer's. So if you have the chlorella in your system while you're sleeping, it will facilitate that cleansing process, not only of your body, but of your brain. I mean it's going to happen anyways. But the true, you know, street washing, if you want to say of your brain occurs when you're sleeping, yes. Go. So it's important to have the chlorella when you're sleeping. I think every single person in the world should be taking chlorella every single day because, um, I was reading, there's something like 280 chemicals in America that have been released since world war II and about 200 of them, of the 200 have been tested. So there's, we're surrounded in our, in our air, in our clothing, and you've got to get those things out, uh, and were there also buried in ourselves. Speaker 3: (38:42) So, um, until you get rid of them, they're just going to cause silent damage and inflammation. So it's in all of us is adding to the aging, you know, we, we, we have in this society, we have this belief that aging is inevitable, but you know, like there's so many aspects to it. And if we tackle them one by one, I'm sure you know, if you're a divest Bree fan or not, I don't know. But yeah, not attacking all the different pillars of aging and you know, one of them being like this sort of stuff, getting into this stuff, getting the right nutrients and the right amounts at the right times and understanding we don't have to age like how our grandparents aged or even our parents age, you know, we've got a chance at it in this day and age that we can change our, uh, you know, the time that we are going to be healthy for and the time that we going to live for. Speaker 3: (39:33) And you and I being, you know, North of, uh, 40, both have a vested interest in making this crackly. Yeah. Well, um, the other good thing about chlorella is it actually tastes pretty good. So, um, particularly if you put a little sea salt on it or eat it with the best is if you eat it with macadamia nuts, which is great because macadamia nuts are loved by the keto community. And when you eat macadamia nuts and chlorella are at least ours, it tastes like you're eating potato chips. I swear to God, it is unbelievable. And so if you can learn to like my tastes pretty good with almonds as well, or banana chips or coconut chips or whatever, but the macadamia and the chlorella and a little bit of sea salt is the magic just snack guys. And not only is it a healthy snack, it's truly a healing snack. Speaker 3: (40:27) You can be pulling out toxins and you can be building your RNA and DNA and you can be cleansing yourselves at the same time. I mean it's, that's why I call it efficient nutrition. It can do all of these things so effectively in such small quantities like nothing else in the world. So it's pretty funny. I'm now starting to see why you are so passionate about, Oh, I know with all that responsibility to share this. So funny. You know like you, you with your sister starting off of the studio. I've been on a journey with my mom and ma and my own health as well. And you just like, you get the answers and this is why I do this podcast and you're like, I want to share this one. Everybody knows this. I go like dog. And so you like this, what we try to give your knowledge to, to people and to share it and, and you just can't have a big enough impact fast enough. Speaker 3: (41:20) I know, you know. Well, I'm so glad you know that podcasts have developed because people like you, um, have an audience that is eager to learn. I'm eager to, I'm eager to educate, but you know, the average person on the street doesn't want to learn. They want to go home and eat their crappy food and watch TV. You know, I don't even know. I haven't had a TV in 10 years. And it's like, why would you watch television when you can learn about the science of things that are going to change people's lives? I mean, seriously. Here may, I'm sitting on the plane in between conferences and I'm either listening to a recording from some scientific lecture or, or I'm, uh, reading something and every moment is filled with stuffing things in my brain. And sometimes it gets to the point where I have to actually stop and go, no, I am going to just watch a movie or something because the brain fried. But I'm like, uh, time is short and I've got so much to cram in there. Keeps popping out the other side. I know that, right. Speaker 3: (42:25) Well that is shining in that. And I'm so grateful to folks like you and also other vendors who are trying their best to get products to the community that wants to preserve their health or, or encourage their families to preserve their health. Because we're so surrounded with sugar and carbs and toxins and, uh, we have to be proactive too and take charge of our lives because nobody else is gonna do it for us. And ICP, all the people with walkers. And I'm thinking, that's not going to be me. So, yeah. And, and, and, and that's, we've, we've lived, we've grown up in a world where you were told, the doctor knows everything you're like of doctor is God and what they say goes in and, and this nothing, nothing. He gets doctors. Um, but we cannot give up a responsibility for our own health to somebody else because that busy, they've got a hundreds of patients, they've got 10 minutes to see you. Speaker 3: (43:23) They are definitely influenced by the pharmaceutical companies. You cannot rely on that as being the only place that you get your information to ask to be responsible. And we live in a day and age where we can be responsible, we can go, we can't access the studies we can. And not everyone's a science news like we are. Um, but you can still find some really good information even on a surface level. Um, and this is why it's important that people take ownership of their own health in ways we even eat better, get connected with nature, you know, understand what these rhythms in our bodies so that we can optimize it. Well, it's a, it's a great time because, um, uh, you know, I'm also a Reiki healer and I've just, I've been interested in nature all my life and, and it's, and I do yoga and I also do high intensity workouts and it's not woo woo. Speaker 3: (44:15) Like, it's just, you start to understand that we're all connected and if you treat your body, uh, holistically and the environment holistically, you will just feel better and you'll be more loving and you'll just, everything will work better. So anyways, I truly believe algae is part of that solution. Also from an environmental perspective because you know there are a lot of the oceans are being overfished for their fish oil. The algae. Where do you think the fish get the Omega three from? They get it from algae. They only can, yeah, that's where it comes from. So go to the bottom, the original source of the mega three, get it from the algae yourself. By the way, almost all um, fish oil goes rancid in the PR and the production basis three a day and the Omega three and algae never goes rancid. Speaking of which, our bags, we have to put an expiry date on it. Speaker 3: (45:07) So it's usually two or three years out, which is pretty long and its own right. But technically it never goes bad cause it's just a dried vegetable. And you could keep this for 10 years and open it up and still be fine. Absolutely fine. So mom, and that's because algae is a unique, um, as I said, it's not really a plant. Um, I read recently a group from national geographic went up to the Antarctic and they took a chunk of ice that was carbon dated to almost 4 billion years old. And they took it back lab. Yeah. And they, some of it in a Petri dish cause they saw some algae was attached to the ice and they, and they put on it and the LG started growing like over 300 years old and starts growing again because LG never dies. It just goes dormant. Isn't that crazy? It's amazing. So if we ate the LG thin, perhaps we won't ever die. It would be great to have people taking it because I'm going to live forever. So I need friends who are going to be with me, take my allergies. I'll have someone to hang out with. Speaker 3: (46:11) You got to have that attitude at least. So we can't lie. We can, we can do me and Dave Asprey will be the last one standing and stuff. And with the chlorella, I, um, I remember you saying on boomers podcast that it does have a hard cellular wall. So the way that it's broken down that cellular wall so that you can digest it as a human, um, has implications from where you should get your core hours. Yes. Well, thank you for mentioning that. So I, um, first of all, the whole, um, LG industry has started with chlorella in Japan and there's a company called sun chlorella that started this all but 50 years ago. And I'm very grateful to them because it took them 10 years to figure out how to grow chlorella for mass consumption. And they, and they, that they're the ones that found out that you had to crack the cell wall because it is so hard. Speaker 3: (47:06) Um, and if it wasn't cracked, your body would not be able to absorb the nutrients. So, uh, it still will pull out toxins, but you won't get any of the nutrients. So they developed and patented a technique called dynamo, which, um, virtually the entire industry uses, uh, chlorella industry because of course, spirulina has no cell wall. Um, and they, they tumble the chlorella with glass beads. Now what happens is the glass heats up and there was always concerned that led from the glass leaked into the chlorella and they always declined and said, no, that didn't happen. Didn't happen. But, um, about 10 years ago, just when I was starting the company, the state of California tested their chlorella and did find it had excess amounts of lead in it. So they said, well, you can either stop selling here or put a warning on your package, which is what they did. Speaker 3: (47:55) So by sun, chlorella and America, you'll see a warning on the package. But the bigger problem is it's not just them that uses this technique. It's virtually an entire chlorella industry. So when I started the company 10 years ago, I, I heard that this was a potential problem. And I said, there's got to be another way to crack the Corolla. We've got to find some, but some other way. And there was a new technique that had just come out and that's what we use. It's um, you pass the chlorella through a sound chamber and it's the vibrations that crack LA chlorella. It's very similar to how an opera singers voice can crack a class. So it's the vibrations that are cracking the cell wall. I told this to somebody recently and they said, Oh well your, your chlorella has good vibrations. Yes. Yeah, we're all, we're all buy, buy, buy, buy, buy bations cause I'm also a regular so I owe all about energy and I if you haven't, if your listeners are not familiar with dr Joe Dispenza, um, yeah, yeah. I would encourage you, cause DePaulo him as well is incredible. And we sent him some product actually recently. My dream is to have our stuff at his seminars. I hope to go to one soon. He's, he's, he is, he's unbelievable. Unbelievable. He, he has between him and algae, I think we can, we, we have a future, we have a future and maybe add in a couple of others. Like I'm Dr. Bruce Lipton and divest and yeah. Speaker 3: (49:30) Yeah. Oh man, those guys, I, I'm so grateful to them. I've been reading their books for 20 years and I'm now getting to learn even more. And it all makes sense when you start to read about these different techniques and what everyone's doing. It all starts to make sense. So, and this is an exciting age to live in and I, we're getting off track, but the science is catching up with the Woodward community community where it was considered, you know, these, some of these things were considered like Reiki and like other things. Then it was a bit off the beaten track and no science. And now the science is actually proving a lot of the Eastern rights and things and you know, Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, medicine, um, course, you know, acupuncture, all of those things. And now I've got scientific backing that they are actually, um, and this is a really interesting convergence now and that's what I loved about Dr. Bruce Lipton's work toe was he actually managed as a, as a molecular biologist to connect the spiritual world. Speaker 3: (50:30) Even with the cellular bio, you know, biology and epigenetics. It was a visit and sign book there. The biology of life. I love that, that book. Um, and to see it all coming together. And I think as we get into quantum physics and things that are coming up down the road, I think, wow, you know, there's into the quantum realm, it's going to probe. A lot of these things have real value in real science behind it. Well, and as a small segue, that's one of many reasons why I'm in love with algae. Cause I tell people, Hey, before algae earth was just water and gas, there was not anything living on earth 4 billion years ago. Now I don't know why spirulina showed up, but it did. It's a single cell organism. And after, and it releases, oxygen was growing. So after a billion years, it released enough oxygen that other life forms could, could grow, which brought chlorella, which then brought more oxygen to earth, which allowed more life forms. Speaker 3: (51:31) And then eventually we had life in the ocean. And then we had terrestrial life. And then the old, only 800 million years ago did life. Humans show up. But there's gotta be, I think there's something mystical about allergy because it was the first single cell life on earth. Um, and it's still here and it's, you know, they would prove that it's got something about it. It doesn't die. It doesn't, you know, it's, it's been around a long time. They might be something more to it even then than the size of it. Right, right. So I, I'm Kiffin I know you're, you're, you're extremely tired and busy. Um, I'm gonna wrap it up there in a moment, but I, I just wanted to talk about where people can get your product and make sure that they're getting a good quality supplements. And, um, Catherine's been doing this way obviously for a very long time. Speaker 3: (52:24) A new company is energy buts.com. Um, and so anybody who's in America, Canada, we're asked you ship to, or we don't ship internationally, although ironically, we stopped shipping to New Zealand and Australia and we have a, um, a distributor who has a lovely couple, uh, Chris and Fria, they have a website called, uh, eat clean, live dirty.com. Dot. A U and they sell our products through their website, the eat clean live durney.com dot. A U. But if you buy, if you live anywhere other than a event that's usable and for Australia, you can buy from our website energy bits.com and we ship internationally into Canada, obviously throughout the U S uh, and when you shop on our website and use the discount code, Lisa L I S a could be uppercase or lowercase, it doesn't matter. Then you get 20% off your purchase and it works on everything all the time. But that's only on our website. Not that you need energy, but unfortunately Kiwis and Aussies, you have to just support the um, uh, eight clean lifts, dirty a website and you don't get the discount. But if you do, if you live in the States or Canada or anywhere else, you can get a 20% discount. So that's a really, really con thing. Thank you very much Catherine for that. Speaker 3: (53:52) And I'll, and it's very concentrated, so it's very high quality. If you also live in the United States, you can purchase from Amazon. We sell everything on Amazon, no discount codes work. And also on Amazon, we sell little pouches that have 30 tablets. On our website. You can only buy large bags that have a thousand tablets or boxes that have single single servings. But on Amazon you can buy for a $4 single serving and tested out if you'd like before you met to a large bag. And um, I'd also encourage people to come and visit us on Instagram. Our handle is at energy beds. Same with Facebook, it's in it at energy bits, um, or Twitter. And if you come to our website, you'll see we have two brands of spirulina. One is called energy beds, but we have a second brand of spirulina called beauty beds because it also builds your skin and hair health. Speaker 3: (54:41) And we wanted something that would be appropriate for spas and a little bit more girly, but it's exactly the same product, just different packaging. And then the chlorella we talked about, that's called recovery. That's, and then we have a fourth product called vitality bits, which is 50% spirulina, 50% chlorella in general, particularly if you're an athlete. We encourage you to buy them separately because you want to split, you know, load up on the spirulina before your workout and during your workout or run. And then you want to take the chlorella afterwards and then, or if maybe you had a little extra to drink extra chlorella or maybe you've got, you're sick and you're detoxing extra chlorella. But that way you have more control over the two different allergies cause they do completely different things in your body. That's important distinction because I didn't understand that really. Speaker 3: (55:30) So that's, that's really good. So endurance athletes, go and get your spirulina and chlorella and do it separately and have the S the spirulina before your workouts, the Corella after or in the evenings to you repeat it. So www.ENERGYbits.com I'll put the show notes. Of course you can get on my website, at least@tammany.com on the podcast, under the podcast button. We would have this all available for you. Um, and if you want to reach out to Katherine, can they reach you somewhere or just by your website? Yeah, they can. The customer carrot energy bits.com. I've written about a hundred papers on different aspects of LG white helps with different things. I'll send you a ton of stuff, Lisa, and you can put, you can post things. I'll send you a PowerPoint about widescreen for athletes. Um, yeah, like I said, we were, we were a sports nutrition product when we first started because the runners discovered us and then they told everybody else and that was that. And we'll, we'll keep spreading that word to the runners down on Stan, the sins of the world. So Katherine, thank you very much for your time today. I really appreciate it. I know you're super busy lady. Um, wonderful that we're connected. I'm sure we'll stay connected. Um, so yeah, all the best with your big mission in life to solve world hunger. And I tell people we're tiny but mighty and you will be too when you do geology. Fantastic. Speaker 1: (56:53) That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at www.lisatamati.com.  

Some of us are attracted to online entrepreneurship because of the freedom it affords us to travel, living the digital nomad lifestyle. Others of us choose web-based businesses because we want to get off the hamster wheel and spend real quality time with our kids and partners. Today’s guest is combining both of those perks and embarking on an RV adventure with her husband and two small children, traveling the country to visit family while maintaining her online venture, brb Yoga. Catherine Middlebrooks began a yoga practice in college. Ten years ago, she earned a certification to teach and began a successful corporate yoga business. After a move to Nashville, Catherine transitioned into a ‘regular job,’ using her master’s in experimental psychology to work in market research. But when her daughter was born in 2012, Catherine and her husband made the decision to be more intentional about their lives and start their own online business. At the same time, Catherine was struggling to find time for yoga. As a new mom, she didn’t have 75 minutes to spend at a studio, but she knew she needed the mindfulness and calm a yoga practice provides. So Catherine developed a program of shorter, precisely designed classes to pull her out of the overwhelm and help her embrace her new life and body. She created brb Yoga to help other moms make time for self-care and restore their core strength. Today she discusses how she niched down to serve a very specific population of new moms, the challenge of maintaining her relationship with her husband as they build a business together, and her upcoming family RV adventure! Listen and learn how to employ Facebook ads to generate traffic and apply a project management system to make the best use of your time.   Key Takeaways Why Catherine’s digital format works for new moms interested in Yoga Struggle to find time to attend class Looking for program that serves post-partum body   The value of identifying a need in the marketplace Women with abdominal separation not served by traditional fitness industry Catherine created Heal Your Core program for niche audience   Catherine’s struggle to attract ideal clients Started w/ ‘quick, efficient online yoga for busy moms’ Realized not specific enough Gained traction after designing specific products (i.e.: Beginners Bundle) Landed on serving women with diastasis recti Relies on Facebook ads, targeting companies that serve same population Alludes to pain points of ideal client in marketing   Catherine’s tips for employing Facebook ads Invest in course early on Don’t drive traffic to sales page Give value first (e.g.: blog post)   Catherine’s biggest challenge as entrepreneur Maintain relationship with husband while building business together Make sure work brings family closer together   Catherine’s upcoming RV adventure Decided freedom and family were priority Started online venture with travel in mind Designing trip so both have daily time to work, spend time with family Obtaining booster for RV (internet connection) Will continue to blog, nurture Facebook group, email   Catherine’s best advice for aspiring entrepreneurs Create structure Consider Scrum project management process Establish weekly objectives Ensure that time/energy driven by you, your goals   Resources RV Entrepreneurs Facebook Group Scrum Project Management The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport   Connect with Catherine Middlebrooks Website

  How author and artist Catherine Holland made a conscious decision not to die, and food that helps you focus 5 hours later. At the end of this episode I'll share with you a magical yet easily available food that helps you focus 5 hours later! But first, let's get to our story. Our guest, Catherine Holland I'll let Catherine tell you her story, but what I will tell you now is that she's an author, a breath coach and an artist whose most recent book is called Indestructible Soul: How I decided not to die. She's got quite a story, and I'm really looking forward to her sharing it with us. So Catherine, welcome to the Clean Food, Dirty Stories podcast! I'm really excited to have you here today! Now you've got quite a story which I believe starts with something pretty dramatic, right? I mean, people are going to hear 'I decided not to die' and they're going to think 'oh my goodness!' They're going to want to hear what happened, right? Catherine: Yes, well what happened is that I learned that it's a choice. Me: Wow! Catherine's story Catherine: So this is quite an exciting thing when you're dealing with the population. People I know, people I don't know, people in Facebook land and whatever. This idea that it really is a conscious and deliberate choice, and that the part of us that's doing the choosing is not the human part of us. So this has all been very practical for me, because of my breathwork. I've been practising breathwork for a very long time. To put it in perspective, I've ridden a bicycle all my life, I still ride a bicycle many miles a week. And at some point I decided I wanted to ride a motorbike. My brother rode a motorbike, I used to go on the back. And I never dared to ask because I suppose in a way because I'm a girl, I knew that my parents or at least my mother wasn't going to allow it to happen. So I wasn't going to face the fight. I did ride horses which is just as safe or dangerous as riding motorbikes, but let's not go there. It started with a motorcycle (motorbike) Fast forward quite a long time, I was in a job with a nice team in a print department. I said to them, I fancy learning to ride. And then I saw one for sale in the paper. Unlike a car, and because it was a 125, it was a learner bike and the owner was getting rid of it because they'd passed the test and they wanted a bigger bike. It all made sense, so I bought it. I rode it up and down the back alley, trying desperately to work out how to use the gears. Riding a motorbike when you've never ridden one is quite difficult. I had learned to drive a car so I understood the theory, but when you're trying to balance this wretched thing that falls over as soon as you stop...It has no reverse gear, so if you get into a pickle you can't get out again. The crash...and the decision I was tootling up and down. It wasn't very heavy so I could push it to turn it around. I took my CBT and I was out on the road practising and I got struck by a car. A car crushed my leg and within a couple of minutes I'd lost half my blood. I was aware of lying in the road, wanting someone to hold my hand, and I was then aware of travelling towards a tunnel which went up and to the right. In my head were two questions: Do you want to go back and see your children grow up, or do you want to carry on where there's no pain? Sorry, they were the other way round - do you want to carry on where there's no pain, because I could feel the pain once I was hit and it was so big that I couldn't tell where it was coming from. Me: That's what I was going to ask you, yeah. Catherine vs a BMW Catherine: And so in my mind of course, any person who knows anything about motorbikes and injuries, they worry about breaking their back. But I wasn't going fast enough to do something like that. The car had accelerated into me. It was a BMW. An accelerating BMW can go quite fast, so they weigh about a ton and a half. So you know, me against a ton and a half of metal...Anyway I didn't know where I'd been hit, I didn't know what was hurting. But I did know when I was being asked the questions that it wasn't hurting anymore at that point. It was really, really tempting to carry on where there was no pain. Had I had not had children I would have definitely carried on because they were the only thing that brought me back. Nothing else. Me: How old were you if I may ask? Catherine: I don't tell because I don't give my age. People including me have judgments about age. Me: How old were your children, then? Because that's the reason I asked. Catherine: My children were late teens. So my oldest one was university so she might have been 21. I think the youngest was 15, but I tend not to analyze stuff. Dates I don't analyze, I don't have a birthday or a reminder of it, it's not my style. Apart from people's birthdays that I do need to remember, I don't memorize dates. I don't do anniversaries, especially deaths, it's not my thing. And besides, that was my own death! Preparing not to die So I was dead not for very long. But long enough to have seen and felt what it's like. And it's really, really lovely. Really wonderful. So I'd had some really good experience in my breathwork practice, which I'd been doing for about a dozen years at that point of knowing that subconscious travel is beautiful. And I think that helped me to be prepared and not too shocked by the experience. I think it clearly helped me emotionally, psychologically, but also hugely physically. Obviously my arteries that were damaged must have closed because I didn't die. Police arrived on the scene fairly quickly, as did an ambulance. They put a tourniquet on my leg, so I don't know, I might have still been bleeding heavily at that point and that's why they put it on. That's what made me think, "I thought they didn't use tourniquets anymore". Of course later I thought of course they do! If your life's at risk, losing a leg is a minor detail! But I haven't been drinking, Officer... So the policemen asked me questions. I didn't have any other injuries, just the bit where the car had driven into my leg which I didn't realize at the time that the injury was, even. I remember the policemen asking me how much I'd had to drink and that sort of thing! But before that and before they arrived, when I was hit, my eyes closed at that point. They didn't really open again for about 5 days because I didn't have the energy. I was aware of this female voice saying to me, "Oh, you're OK!" as I lay in the road. I opened my eyes and I saw this bleached blond woman looking at me. She was clearly drunk, she got back in the car. Her husband didn't get out of the car, he was driving. They were about to drive away and the passersby didn't let them go. So in her mind I was all right and they were going to get back in their car and drive away! Me: What happened to them? And for the driver... Catherine: They were arrested, well he certainly was. He was charged within 5 days because he'd pleaded guilty but I didn't find this out for 6 months. He pleaded guilty, he had a ban for 6 months which was the time it took me to be, well I still had a fixator screwed in my leg. It took me two years to recover. I'm still left with an ankle that doesn't bend properly which I have to keep working on. It's been a big effect on my life, but that man, it's a really funny thing. I didn't have the energy to be angry with him. My kids were furious, they wanted to go around and knock on his door. And that's OK, I brought them up to be non-violent people. People used to say to me, "What do you wish had happened to him?" And my answer is, still is, that he wouldn't be allowed to drink alcohol again. Because I think that's a really fair thing for somebody who's caused that type of injury by drinking and driving, because when they went to the pub they must have known they were going to go home. And it was only half past ten at night, it wasn't particularly late. Clearly they'd intended to drive to the pub and back again. And they weren't just a bit drunk, they were very drunk. The scariest moment in the hospital Me: And when you were in hospital, you mentioned that for you, you really needed to have a lot of focus and perseverance. Can you say something about that? Like how does that come into it? Was that to do rehabilitation? Cause you said you almost lost your leg, so... Catherine: So I was taken by bumpy ambulance to hospital, to a very rich hospital thank goodness, and I was put into a bed by the nurses' station and sort of patched up at that point. The orthopaedic surgeon said "Right, you're going to be going to the operating theater, I'll save your leg if I can." And I said "You have to! You've got to! I'm a climber and a dancer and a cyclist!" And then I burst into tears. Me: That must have been so scary! Catherine: Indeed it was, I do remember it. Putting things back together again Catherine: Two days after that I had another operation for skin and muscle grafting where another surgeon, soft tissue surgeon Mr Sohardi, stitched back the tendons which had been pulled away. Almost every tendon in my lower leg had been broken. So he did the jigsaw puzzle of putting them all back together. But he also did something which, well it might have been Mr Gotswani, I think. It was to take part of my calf muscle and strap it over the gap. There was a gap in the bone about the length of my forefinger. The bone had been so smashed to smithereens, there was a gap in my shinbone. They laid the muscle across there so that the bone would have blood supply because they believed that if it didn't, the bone would die. And then I'd have a different problem because I'd have dead tissue from the inside and then I'd still have to have an amputation. So it made my leg look very strange but I had all these skin grafts taken from the other leg and put onto that leg. After the first operation I had bandages from the top of my thigh right down to my big toe. Which surprised me a bit. And then I had this huge steel handle sticking out which was screwed into my leg. It was screwed in below my knee and just above my ankle. The screws below my knee were horizontal because the bone is wider there. Steel inside and out And yeah so I had this steel thing in my leg which was very weird indeed. You could actually pick my leg up with it, which was very odd. But the idea was to hold the bone steady so that when it started to mend itself, it would be the right length. The bone had been so smashed up. When I had a look on the x-ray, what Mr Gotswani had done was to spend 6 hours to painstakingly take each piece of bone with tweezers out of the wound and putting it in between the gap. I later understood because I later did training in injury treatment that the little cells in your body that notice when there's damage, they pick up and break down all of the broken bits of bone and rebuild them into the form that they should be. He was giving them the best chance because there was such a big gap. He wanted to make sure that there would be suitable material available for my body to pick up and to mend, which it did beautifully! Because the next x-ray I saw two weeks later showed it to be one bone again. And all the bits that had been put in there were like flowers, like a bunch of flowers all sticking out at funny angles. They were gradually being reabsorbed by my body in correct formations. Mental focus Me: So then where did your mental focus come in? Catherine: So my mental focus became completely absorbed by this extraordinary process that was happening. I can only liken it to a feeling you get when you're in the bottom of a ship. If you've ever been in a big ship, even on a ferry, a big one. Where they have an engine room that's enormous. And the whole place is pounding and shaking, with the energy. The pumping of the energy. That's what my body felt like. The whole thing is focused on this energy. I'd lost about half my body weight, my skin and my face was the color of my pillowslip which as my daughter pointed out was white. What else happened? My leg was about half an inch from top to bottom, a couple of centimeters. The thickness of my leg was reduced to a couple of centimeters. And my legs are quite strong, I'm a cyclist. So my leg was sort of spread out like a big sheet of liver. Very strange. So yeah, this pounding feeling was the total focus of my body was mending. Me: Oh I see, yeah. Laying on of hands Catherine: And my body was really helped by somebody laying their hands on the bandages. It gave me a feeling of transferred energy. It was very, very helpful. Me: So did you ask people to do that? Catherine: Yes, if they asked me what they could do, I'd tell them. And my daughter taught my dad to do it. He doubted very much that he would know what to do and that it would be helpful, but of course my kids just said "This is what you do, Granddad. This is what you do". And my son brought his friend in, so yeah there were these two 15-year-olds who turned up and that was really lovely. So yeah, my son showed his friend what to do. He said "Richard, this is what you do". So everyone just took turns laying their hands on the bandages. It was very strange because I had 6 tubes going in and out of my body. I had blood at the beginning, I had morphine, I had an oxygen mask and all sorts of stuff. But of course what the staff didn't realize was that I'd already made the decision to live. I was parked opposite the nurses' station thinking they needed to keep their eye on me in case I was going to die. Because in the time, I don't know, I think it's the following 24 hours that's the pivotal time, but for me I knew I was gonna live. I'd made the decision, it was upwards from where I was. Even though from the outside I was pretty comatose. Smearing (not painting!) Me: But now you cycle and everything, right? Catherine: Yeah, I can do everything now. I can't climb very well now because to smear you need to be able to bend your feet up. Me: Smear? What's... Catherine: Smearing is when you're climbing a rock that has very high friction like millstone grit. It doesn't have many gaps to put your feet in. So you put your feet on it and with your rubber climbing shoes you stick to it because it's like sandpaper. I can only put the tip of my toe on because I can't bend my ankle which means I can't put my foot flat on it. Which is annoying, but anyway. I can climb. I climb better on stuff that's got good holds, but I do so much climbing now for other reasons anyway so that's OK. The best thing was I had no doubt at all I would take my bike test. I'd been riding for 3 weeks, I'd taken my CBT, I'd a test booked for some months later because I'd been having lessons. Obviously I had to cancel that test! Total focus on healing But my mind was really only focused on getting well. Fortunately because my children had been brought up by me, they were incredibly capable. The older one had just finished her university degree. She came and sat with me every day and brought me food. She also made me a nightdress because I didn't possess one! And if there was anything going on that I needed my attention drawn to... for example when they put an x-ray up in the lightbox. She would say "Mum you're going to want to see this. I'll tell you when to open your eyes". Because she was completely aware that I could only open them for half a second. You know about computers and RAM? Well I was seriously lacking in RAM because everything was focused on the processing of my leg. Me: Of healing, of course. To eat or not to eat Catherine: I couldn't keep my eyes open, I couldn't read, I couldn't write. That went on for weeks, it was quite interesting. And I didn't eat. I didn't eat for three days. Me: Oh, but speaking of food, sorry, I know that you wanted me to ask you about the food. You were craving a food, I think? I have no idea what that could be. Catherine: Well at that point I just ate a few, I think it was three grapes and a segment of satsuma. The nursing staff were worrying about me not eating, saying "We're going to have to drip feed you if you don't start eating soon". I said "I have eaten! I've had three grapes and a segment of satsuma!" I really felt I was making progress because I could feel my body coming back to life. And because I'm a real big eater and I'm very keen on my food, it kicked in really, really hard. So yeah, I started eating big time. Interesting food cravings And my daughter knew that the sort of food that was available wasn't going to be my preferred option for getting well. So the two things I craved most, because she brought me a salad every day that she made herself. I was craving broccoli and a particular type of smoked tofu that has sesame seeds and almonds in it. And doing my homework later I realized of course that those are powerful healing foods. Unfermented soya isn't so good for humans. I did eat a lot of it at that time but I hadn't done my homework then. But I was really aware of how important raw food was. I'd actually been raw for a number of years since reading Leslie Kenton's book Raw Energy. That was interesting. There was actually one meal on the menu that I was OK to eat which was...I don't know what the religion was, but there was some traditional group that was common in that particular hospital that had a sort of beans and rice type meal. There were two varieties. You could only have an option of two, so every other day I had the same dinner. But I was pleased that it was something that I actually considered food because the other options I didn't consider nourishing at all. Me: But it is good that you managed to recover so well. Catherine: I had to have lots of conversations with lots of different people about lots of different things that went on there. Me: I'll bet, yeah. Welcome to Trauma? Catherine: Something quite funny was that once I did open my eyes and came to, I opened my eyes and opposite my bed on the wall it said "Welcome to Trauma". Me: Oh, that's not very good! Catherine: If I'd been in my right mind, I would have laughed. But I wasn't. There was a part of my mind that knew that one day I'd find that funny. So I was sort of aware. And then I realized that for the staff there, it wasn't a joke. The unit is actually called the Trauma Unit and they shorten it to Trauma, as in "Are you going to Trauma?" So they put "Welcome to Trauma!" For a long time I was going to call the book that, but some people said they wouldn't read it if it said that. It took me ages to think about what to call it. What Catherine feels gave her the choice to live or die Me: We have to wrap this up for today, but I really appreciate you sharing your story. And I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who may or may not know that in some situations like yours, dying can be a choice. Right? Catherine: Indeed. And I do believe that if you look after your health and your diet really well, that's when you have the choice. I did the homework afterwards and I realized why I'd had the choice. And it wasn't chance. It was hard graft on my part and dedication to it, to a really super lifestyle. Me: I did want to ask you about your book because you've written in more detail about your recovery and everything. For people who do want to know more about you, where can they find you? And your book? And your art? Where to find out more about Catherine Catherine: Yes, well I have my own website and I also have quite a big Amazon presence, Kindle presence. My own website is catherineholland.co.uk and you can find the information about my book on there. But because I wish to sell on Kindle, I don't so much have the availability on my website, but it's also a print book. It's an actual printed, hard copy book which you can't see, but... It's a really nice little book, people love it, it's got a picture of me on one of my bikes that I got after I passed the test. And then on Amazon I have about 15 titles so 4 of those are real paper books. The rest of them are Kindle guides. Me: So people can look there and see what you have, super! Well thank you so much! Which brings us to our food tip for today! A food that helps you focus, 5 hours later So, I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that I'd share with you a food that helps you focus 5 hours after you eat it. And that food is... blueberries! Benefits of blueberries You've probably heard already that blueberries are a great brain food, but do you know why? It's because they help boost the flow of blood as well as oxygen to the brain, plus they have a load of antioxidants which are believed to help protect against cancer, heart disease and dementia. I'll link to an article in the show notes where you can read more about the actual study. What I will say is that if you pop some blueberries in your mouth, eat them and then are expecting an immediate 'brain rush', you'll probably be disappointed. It doesn't work like that. Researchers found that the blueberries didn't make a difference an hour later. Not even two hours later. The big difference - and we're talking 15-20% of increased focus and performance - came 5 hours later. They measured this and you can check it out in the notes if you want to. How you eat blueberries Now how do you eat blueberries? Well, that's obvious, you grab a handful, right? Or you pop some in a smoothie. But did you know that your blueberries don't have to be fresh to deliver maximum benefits? Frozen fruit and vegetables don't lose that much nutrient content if they're frozen soon after they're picked, which is often the case. So keep a bag of frozen blueberries in your freezer, and the next time you feel like a smoothie, toss a handful in your blender along with a banana and some preferably plant-based milk. It's deliciously purple, and kids love it too. And if you'd like more recipes to tempt you to use even more blueberries for even more focus, I'll link in the shownotes to some of my 5-minute recipe ebooks to inspire you. Have YOU got a story to share? If you've got a true story to share, and you'd like to know what food could have saved the day in your situation), I'd love to hear from you! Got a question, or a comment? Got a question, or a comment? Pop a note below in the comments, that would be awesome. You can also subscribe to the podcast to listen 'on the go' in iTunes. I hope you have an amazing day. Thank you so much for being here with me to share in my Clean Food, Dirty Stories. Bye for now! RESOURCES Catherine's website: catherineholland.co.uk Catherine's books: On Amazon Scientific study on blueberries and their effects on cognitive function: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01289860 Article that mentions the above study (in less 'science-y' language): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1212579/A-bowl-blueberries-day-keeps-brain-active-afternoon.html My 5-minute recipe ebooks: https://rockingrawchef.com/5-minute-recipes/   Catherine Holland is an inspiring author, breath coach and artist practising rebirthing breathwork for 27 years. She has three children. When she was learning to ride a motorbike her leg was crushed by a car and she died for a short while, long enough to witness the experience and to know that we do not disappear when we die. She writes about this in her most recent book, Indestructible Soul: How I decided not to die, which can be found with her other titles, on Amazon.