Liz Moody Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from County Cork in Ireland. I'm at the Ballymaloe Festival of Food presented by Kerrygold. I moderated a panel of amazing Irish farmers yesterday and got a tour of the Ballymaloe Cookery School. I know lots of you want to go there, and I had a beautiful dinner at Ballymaloe House. I've bumped into so many of my favorite Irish chefs and creatives, lots of whom you've heard on our show, like Darina Allen and Ali Dunworth. Check out my Instagram feed and stories for more of my visit. I had the best time and I can't wait to go back to Ireland.
Let's jump to today's show. We have a great guest for you. It's Liz Moody, author, journalist, and host of The Liz Moody Podcast. I think this is Liz's third appearance on the show, so obviously we love Liz. She's probably the closest thing I have to a guru. She's genius at sharing solid, simple, actionable advice for physical and mental wellness. At the end of the day, Liz wants all of us to lead happier, healthier lives, and that is awesome in my book. Liz joined me at Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center to talk about her early writing career, some of the wilder experiences from her younger days, her best advice, and the importance of community and positive aging role models. Stay tuned for our chat.
Today's show is presented by Ladurée. Some gifts whisper, a Ladurée gift speaks in fluent French. Whether you choose Ladurée as the perfect companion to a graduation bouquet, as a hostess gift for that sun-drenched Memorial Day soiree, or as a delicate surprise slipped into a picnic basket, celebrate each moment with Ladurée. With its heritage rooted in 19th-century Paris, Ladurée has long been the authority on the art of sweet indulgence. Their macarons with the crisp shells and soft, whisper-like ganache filling are more than a delight. They're a gesture. Some of you know how much I love Ladurée and especially their famous macarons, my favorites, the vanilla rose and caramel macarons, as well as the Marie Antoinette tea flavor, trust me on that one. A box of Ladurée macarons is really one of the chicest gifts around. I discovered Ladurée and fell in love with them when I started spending a lot of time in Paris back when I worked for a French beauty brand, and you could say it's been one of my more enduring love affairs. Another thing I love is the Ladurée boutique and cafe in Soho, right here in New York City. It has a beautiful walled courtyard that's like a secret garden right in the middle of the neighborhood. Stop by for breakfast, lunch, or afternoon tea. Then pick up some macarons or other gorgeous Ladurée patisserie on the way out, whether it's a birthday, an engagement, or just a Tuesday, there's always a reason to gift beautifully. This season, make your gifts as memorable as your moments with Ladurée. Visit ladurée.us or any Ladurée boutique for more.
A little housekeeping. We are about to reveal the covers for the new issue of Cherry Bombe's print magazine. It's our first ever power issue, and we've got covers with, ready… the one and only Gloria Steinem, chefs and empire builders Jody Williams and Rita Sodi, chef Mashama Bailey of The Grey in Savannah, and culinary creative Sophia Roe. Yes, four covers, all shot by the amazing photographer, Jen Livingston. We're so thrilled to celebrate all these incredible women. You can purchase a single issue or subscribe. If you're a subscriber, you can choose which issue you want to receive. We'll send you all the details. Visit cherrybombe.com for more.
Now let's check in with today's guest. Liz Moody, welcome back to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Liz Moody:
Thank you so much. It's such an honor to be here.
Kerry Diamond:
Springtime in New York. It's such a nice time to be here.
Liz Moody:
Yeah. I'm not taking credit for bringing the weather, but I'm kind of taking credit. It happened when I happened.
Kerry Diamond:
You can take the credit. We were talking off mic earlier, and I said, "How do you describe yourself?"
Liz Moody:
I think it's tricky because people don't like the idea of self-help, and I have a little bit of that chafing of it too, of like, "Oh, is this a book that you buy and you put in a paper bag cover so that nobody sees what you're reading?" But I think that chafing is from the idea of people telling you that you are not enough, and it's like, why are all of these people from outside of me telling me how to live my life and how to feel good in the life that I'm creating for myself? And that's not where I come from. I come from the place of, you are enough, exactly as you are, and I want you to overcome any problems that are keeping you down. I want you to feel as good as you can feel in your body and your mind every single day. I'm going to help you help yourself, and I'm going to come from a place of like, you are already so wonderful.
Kerry Diamond:
That comes through loud and clear in everything you do. You are a terrific communicator and a brilliant synthesizer of all this information. You started as a journalist and realized that you, I don't think you've ever called it a gift, but realized you had this gift for taking a lot of information, studies, reports, all these things, and synthesizing it into very usable advice for humans like me. When did you realize you had that gift?
Liz Moody:
The gift that I realized that I had young, was curiosity. So I started my journalism career when I was 16 years old. I walked into a local newspaper office and I said, "You should have a column for teenagers and it should be written by me." And they were like, "Okay."
Kerry Diamond:
Where was this?
Liz Moody:
This is in Modesto, this is in my hometown. And so I wrote that column for a few years, and then I was traveling, I want to say in Morocco, and I got an email that said they wanted to syndicate the column nationally with McClatchy. And so then I was running around trying to find a fax machine in this small village and trying to... I was like, "Oh my gosh." And so then my column ended up running for six years total. It was such a great training ground because I had to write a column every single week no matter what. I met my deadlines when I was traveling, when I was on drugs throughout college.
I was sitting there, and it was a really, really incredible lesson in craft in the fact that if you want to do something, the most important thing that you can do is do that thing. I know so many people who are like, "I have a book in me. What's the difference between me and the people who have published books?" And I'm like, "The people who have published books write. They write every single day." They find a spot in their schedule. They have a word count goal or a minute count goal, and they are writing. And so that column was really helpful for me. And in that column, I realized that I just had so many questions about how people were living their lives.
I was traveling around and I was like, "What do these people in Turkey know about living that I don't know about living? What do these people in Germany, what are these people in Argentina..." And I wanted to kind of get their little secrets and see how I could apply those secrets to my own life. That's when that really began for me, was with this curiosity. And I think that's been the through line for my entire career is I'm so curious, I'll be like the 2-year-old, "Well, why is this true? Why is this true? Why is this true?" And I'll follow it all the way down. And you get incredible information that way. Everybody has so much to share if you approach them with curiosity.
Kerry Diamond:
So 16, you were writing a column?
Liz Moody:
Yeah. It's called Out Of My Mind, which my dad came up with and he was real proud of.
Kerry Diamond:
You obviously weren't a teenager after a few years, but you still continue to-
Liz Moody:
Yeah, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
... write this.
Liz Moody:
It was called Out Of My Mind. So it started in the teen section of the newspaper. It grew from that and it ended up being in the Sunday section in the spot that Dave Barry used to occupy before he retired, if you're familiar with him. And then it ended up being nationally syndicated. And so by the time I graduated from college, I had six years of professional writing under my belt.
Kerry Diamond:
And you were paid for this all through high school and college.
Liz Moody:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, not much, but I was paid.
Kerry Diamond:
Enough, enough.
Liz Moody:
It was not Carrie Bradshaw. I didn't have Manolos.
Kerry Diamond:
It wasn't $3 a word or whatever.
Liz Moody:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
You said a few things, Liz, when you were talking about the years of writing, and you said something I need to go back to, when you were on drugs in college, party drugs?
Liz Moody:
Yeah. I went through a real phase where I lived in Amsterdam for a little bit, and so I was in coffee shops a lot. I was smoking a lot of weed.
Kerry Diamond:
Medicinally?
Liz Moody:
No.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay.
Liz Moody:
Just for fun. I love how you're trying to find a reason. I was like, I was doing a lot of coke. I was doing a lot of MDMA. Medicinal, no.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, okay.
Liz Moody:
That was just the phase of my life that I was in. It's an interesting time to look back on, 'cause I was a real party around-the-world girl, and a lot of that came from low self-esteem. It came from wanting to fit in with a group of people that I didn't necessarily feel like I fit in with, wanting to feel like a cool girl, but I don't really regret those years either. I'd like the brain cells back. If I could talk to myself doing whippets when I was younger and be like, "Stop. You're going to want those later." I would, but I don't regret them. I think I had some interesting life experiences and it's all part of my story.
Kerry Diamond:
We'll be right back with today's guest. This episode is presented by Meridian Printing, the family-owned printing company based in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Meridian has printed Cherry Bombe magazine for the past several years, and it's always a pleasure working with the team at Meridian. They are meticulous and professional and care more than any other printer we've ever worked with. They are amazing partners. When I wanted to print three covers of our icons issue, they said, no problem. When I wanted to put a Molly Boz poster in every copy of our Molly issue, they said we got it. And they were amazing about helping us get the pink shade just right for our Ina Garten issue. If you have an idea for a magazine or a zine or maybe you want to do books on demand, you should talk to the team at Meridian Printing, visit meridianprinting.com for more information.
But you were writing this column about getting advice from lots of different people and places. Were you taking your own advice? Were you taking the things you were learning and applying them to yourself?
Liz Moody:
So it was a mix. I fancied myself as sort of like a Dave Barry meets a Bukowski figure.
Kerry Diamond:
I know who both of those people are. You have to tell the audience who those people are.
Liz Moody:
So Dave Barry is this comedic writer and he would just do these little slice of life columns, and he was really funny and sort of warm and heartfelt and kind of what was going on in your city, that type of thing. Bukowski, on the other hand, would write about his crazy adventures he'd have, and that was sort of the way that he was exploring the world. And so I fancied myself as an observer, an explorer, an adventurer. I would be always looking for stories in my life. The nice thing about my column is there was absolutely no guidelines. I could write about anything that I wanted any single week as long as I turned in 800 words by the end of the week.
So it was a mix of like, oh my gosh, I had this adventure where I got kidnapped in Morocco or I got lost on the streets of Berlin or something like that. Or it would be like I ended up in this small town and these people took me in and I got to see the way these people were living multi-generationally and that was really interesting. So it was all part of the story. And I like to share this because even though nobody really asked me about this part of my life on podcast, but I like it as part of my life because I think there can be this narrative of clean and it's all just like very, "Oh, she's this person who writes books and lives a healthy life and wakes up at 5:00 AM and she's drinking her smoothies and blah, blah, blah." And it's like, no, life is messy. We all have these adventures that feel so circuitous and so tangled at the time. And then we look back and we're like, "Ah. That is why that was the way that it is."
Kerry Diamond:
Kidnapped in Morocco.
Liz Moody:
Yeah, just like a little. I don't like to talk about that one too much because I love Morocco so much and I love the people of Morocco, and it was 100% a result of my own stupidity.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, okay. Where is your Netflix series? I mean, you talk about Carrie Bradshaw writing her column and I don't know, I could see a show about those Liz Moody years.
Liz Moody:
Maybe it's in the future. I will say I'm loving “And Just Like That,” even though I find the storylines somewhat subpar compared to the original series.
Kerry Diamond:
Wait, what? You like that show?
Liz Moody:
Okay, because wait... Wait for it. I'm going to give you a real Liz Moody take on it, which is that if we have positive aging beliefs, it adds 7.5 literal years to our lives. 7.5 literal years if we believe that aging is a good thing. This is from research from Dr. Becca Levy at Yale, and so many of us don't feel that way. All of the examples that we are presented of aging are people being like, "The good years are behind me. I'm having to get all this plastic surgery just to look like I looked 10 years ago. I'm getting phased out of work. Nobody listens to my opinions."
And Just Like that, again, the storylines sometimes could use some work. I'm an original “Sex and the City” fan more so, but it is one of the only examples on television of women who are in their fifties and I believe even sixties, some of them who are wearing outfits that make them feel phenomenal. They are falling in love. They are starting new phases in life. They are having adventures. And I think that is so, so important for women to see and to internalize and to know is possible. So my Netflix show might be me as an 80-year-old frolicking naked on a beach somewhere just to let people know that they can.
Kerry Diamond:
Amen. Sister. Okay. But I've got to challenge you on a few things. I need to first say I am a giant Sarah Jessica Parker fan.
Liz Moody:
Okay.
Kerry Diamond:
I have loved her since “Annie.” I loved her in all the movies she did before “Sex and the City.” I loved her during “Sex and the City.” I just don't like that show. I think the writing is just spectacularly awful. I rarely come out and say bad things like that.
Liz Moody:
I'm so invested in the characters, so you could put them in a white room-
Kerry Diamond:
I know, but I'm... Same-
Liz Moody:
Not doing anything, and I'd still watch it.
Kerry Diamond:
I still watch it just because I love Sarah Jessica so much. She is the nicest human being.
Liz Moody:
Can you think of another example?
Kerry Diamond:
Yes. A million. Don't you think it's kind of like a golden age for-
Liz Moody:
No.
Kerry Diamond:
... women? Like, all the Nicole Kidman stuff, all the Cate Blanchett stuff, “Bad Sisters.”
Liz Moody:
I think I love “Bad Sisters.”
Kerry Diamond:
“The Studio” with Kathryn Hahn, “Agatha” with Kathryn Hahn.
Liz Moody:
And I think the more examples the better because I just think that we internalize what we see, and this is why curating your social media is so important. Curating the books that you read, curating the TV shows that you watch, we are internalizing that these are the possibilities for our life. So more of these possibilities is better. And I'll take a few storylines that could use some massaging to have these-
Kerry Diamond:
More of a diplomat-
Liz Moody:
... examples on my screen.
Kerry Diamond:
Eva Longoria has a new show on CNN, “Searching for Spain.”
Liz Moody:
Ooh.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, I'm trying to think of some other examples. I don't know. I'm older than you. I mean, I'm in my mid-fifties now, but I finally feel like I see representation.
Liz Moody:
Do you feel like you enjoy being in your mid-fifties?
Kerry Diamond:
Love. Love.
Liz Moody:
Why? Do you feel like you internalized any of the messages about what women can and should be as they get older or had to push back against any of those?
Kerry Diamond:
That's a good question. I regret having been part of the beauty industrial complex when I was a beauty editor. But today, I mean, I color my hair. Might I get plastic surgery one day? I can't say. I don't do a lot of treatment things today, more because time and money. Maybe if I had the time and I had the money, I would do stuff. Maybe I'm lucky in that I don't internalize a lot of that. I also think Cherry Bombe's had a lot to do with it. I just interview one kickass woman after another.
Liz Moody:
Which again is about curating. I think anybody listening should be trying to do that as much as they can in their own life, curating the women that we're exposed to. One of the things that Dr. Becca Levy said when I interviewed her was that we cultivate these positive aging beliefs by surrounding ourselves with examples that this is possible. So you've lived a life where you've really gotten to do that. And I think for many of us that life has to be a lot more intentional. We have to work for that.
Kerry Diamond:
And I think my mom's a good example also. She still works. She's in her seventies and I think that's kept her really vibrant and involved and connected to the world around her. But I do think all these amazing women, I mean, Cherry Bombe, back to you and your life story that we might or might not see on Netflix one day, you did hit a wall at a point in your life, I think, was it when you had moved to London?
Liz Moody:
Yes, when I had moved to London and I'd been living in New York and had a really thriving, vibrant community here. And then I moved to London for my now husband's graduate school program. And suddenly I was severed from community in a way that I never had been before in my life, but I didn't know the importance of community yet. So I did not identify that as a problem. I was working on a book and just spending more or less every single day by myself. I've always had tendencies towards anxiety.
I was always kind of nervous about everything. And then when we were in London, that anxiety began to ramp up and up and up and up. I began having panic attacks all of the time, and I didn't even know what they were at first. I would just be out in the grocery store and I'd have my cart and then I would be overcome with this wave of discomfort and I'd have to leave my cart in the checkout line and scurry home. Slowly, those panic attacks became so frequent that I became unable to leave my house and eventually unable to really leave my bed. And that was for a period of months that I was agoraphobic and just in bed because everywhere else was so uncomfortable and bed was the only place that felt safe for me.
Kerry Diamond:
Why do you think that happened?
Liz Moody:
So I do think the lack of community in hindsight is something that I really, really realize the importance of, it's kind of like when you don't realize how good it feels to be healthy until you're sick and then you're like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to appreciate every single day that I don't feel sick." When it was taken away, I realized the power of that in my life. And there's so much research to corroborate that now. The world's longest study of human beings, the Harvard School of Adult Development Study found that the single greatest factor in terms of us living our longest life and our happiest life is the quality of our relationships, so I cut that off.
I cut off the quality of my relationships and I think we can kind of hear that and go, "That sounds right. But then when we live our lives day to day, we do not live like that is true." We schedule our gym time, we schedule all of our meetings. We come home tired, burnt out, ready to scroll on our phones because we cannot give the people in our lives our energy because we've given it to every other part of our lives. And I do think there's elements of necessity to that. We all have to make money. The world is making it increasingly difficult to live, and there's systemic issues that definitely need to be addressed. And there are things that are within our agency, there are things that are within our power that would make us feel significantly happier, that do not take that much time, and that would help us reprioritize ourselves to the things that really do matter at the end of the day, the things that our 85-year-old self is screaming at us to prioritize.
Kerry Diamond:
You have two amazing episodes on those topics that I really recommend. Everybody goes back and listens to. One is on energy and one is on burnout.
Liz Moody:
Yeah, those are both new.
Kerry Diamond:
I think they were two separate ones.
Liz Moody:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Really, I just learned so much from those two episodes. I mean, I made a note to go back and listen to them again, and I rarely listen to episodes a second time of anybody's show, even my own shows. But really everyone will benefit from listening to those.
Liz Moody:
I think energy is the base habit that we all need to be thinking about so much more because we're sitting here berating ourselves, like, "Why can't I meditate? Why can't I meal prep?" It's like, 'cause you don't have the energy. Be gentle with yourself. Stop yelling at yourself for not having the ability to do these things. Work on the underlying energy. Let's get you that back.
Kerry Diamond:
Two questions about the London years. Were you working?
Liz Moody:
I was working remotely, and then I had saved up enough that I was writing a book.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. How did you pull yourself out of this?
Liz Moody:
Okay, so the only thing that I really knew how to do at that time was to reach out to experts and to get information. And so I was laying there in my bed. I had my computer propped up next to me and my cat was on me. I started reaching out to people who I really had no business reaching out to, heads of neuroscience at Ivy League universities and things like that. And I was like, "What's going on in my brain when I feel this anxious? What's causing this in my body? How can I begin to mitigate some of these reactions?" And 99% of the people didn't reply, which is very fair 'cause they're busy, important people. And I was reaching out to them out of nowhere, but a very small percentage of people did reply. And this goes back to my core life philosophy, which is never be the one to say no to yourself.
Kerry Diamond:
One of my favorites.
Liz Moody:
I love this so much. This is how I got my book deal. This is how I got my husband. This is how I've gotten everything good that's happened to me in my life is because I say, "Yes, that person could say no to me." And my husband could have looked at me and been like, "Why is this girl hitting on me at this bar?" But he was like, "Oh, she's kind of cute." Let somebody else say no to you. And so this was an example of I could have said, "Why would these people want to talk to me? Why would these people want to help me?" And instead I said, "I will let them say no. They can say no and that's fine, but I'm not going to say no to myself." So those 1% of people started to say, "Oh, well these are nutrient deficits that you might have. These are the powers of meditation. If you move your body, that was something that came back a lot, like, that can have a really huge effect."
And I kept asking, what are the outsize effects for the littlest inputs because I don't have the energy or the ability to do a lot of inputs right now. So very slowly, I started to piece together these little tiny actions. I think I started with meditating in bed and that felt really, really good. It just felt like giving this overactive brain that I had a break, a little bit of a moment of pause. I started to eat more nutrient-dense foods, which actually made a huge difference. Our brain needs that fuel, our cells need that fuel. Little by little, I started to feel a little bit better and then I would add in another little thing and then I'd feel a little bit better and I'd add in another little thing.
But it wasn't honestly until I got back to New York, I had structured my day. I took a full-time job that was at an office, which I was very nervous to take when I had anxiety. I built so many cushions into my life so that if I was anxious, I wouldn't have to go to this thing. I could wake up late, all of these things. But often what anxiety wants is structure. You need to be in this place at this time. You should do this thing in the same way every single day. And so I'd taken all the structure away from my life. So when I got a job in an office, again, I had that structure back. I had the community back. It was a long process though, I'd say a year and a half, two years until I really felt like myself again. And I like to be honest about that too.
Kerry Diamond:
And your boyfriend stuck by you through this all?
Liz Moody:
Yeah. I'm really grateful too. I don't know if he knew the severity at the time, particularly some of the more intense habits I was doing in his coping mechanisms, but he did. I think it scared him. And also I think a big mistake often we make when people we love are hurting, there's this metaphor I love, which is that empathy is you're walking by a hole and you see somebody in that hole and you get into the hole with them and you're like, "Oh my gosh, we're in this hole." And compassion is you're walking by a hole, you see somebody in the hole and you go and get a ladder and you help them get out of the hole. I think he learned a lot in that time about getting the ladder versus getting in the hole.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, so you're back in New York.
Liz Moody:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
You're working as a journalist. What happened next?
Liz Moody:
I had a wonderful few years and that's when my two cookbooks came out and it was just a really wonderful time in my life.
Kerry Diamond:
Now I want to talk about Liz Moody's greatest hits, your best advice. I can share some of my favorites after you give what you think are your most impactful pieces.
Liz Moody:
Okay. So not even questions, just like go with some of my favorite things.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, if you had to pick.
Liz Moody:
The first one that came to my mind is that reading for just six minutes decreases stress by 68%. I think this is a fascinating statistic because we often think that for a habit to have an effect, or at least I do, I'm like, "It has to be hard. It has to take a long time. It has to kind of be a slog to have it be worthwhile." It's this false, almost puritanically rooted narrative that we have to suffer to have things be good in our lives.
But reading is actually a really enjoyable habit and doing it for a very brief amount of time has a profound impact on our brain. So reading for just six minutes can decrease stress by 68%. For me, I use that as both motivation. If I'm feeling a little bit amped up, I'll take a little reading break in the middle of my day. This can be fiction. This can be nonfiction. I think they both have really, really powerful benefits. Fiction helps us get in the heads of other people in a way that we cannot in our real lives, and it makes us better people as a result of that. And then nonfiction, we can learn, we can grow all these things.
Kerry Diamond:
So you're obviously not talking about reading emails.
Liz Moody:
No, I am not talking about reading emails. I think a huge thing about emails that people do not talk about enough is emails are essentially letting other people create a to-do list for you. Emails are letting other people create a to-do list for you. So if you are in your email first thing in the morning, all you're doing is letting other people control the tasks that you're going to do that day. I think having very strict boundaries with emails is another incredible thing that almost everybody can benefit from. If you're listening, you're like, "My boss wouldn't let me do that." Whatever. Talk to your boss, say, "I would like to check my email three times a day. When are the best times for you to do that?" But it goes by the same system that social media does where you get that slot machine effect, you get that variable reward system, but by and large, it is causing us stress, it's causing us anxiety, and it's decreasing our attention span. So add in reading in any way that you can, even for brief periods and decrease email would be one.
Kerry Diamond:
Email's the most stressful thing in my life.
Liz Moody:
And yet we check it obsessively.
Kerry Diamond:
You said something great, it was you or your guest on, I forget which episode it was, but about email that reading your email and acting on your email are two different things because we think just because we've looked at our email, we've achieved something, but we haven't because most of them require some kind of action even if the action is delete. So setting aside that time to really do email properly instead of just dipping in and out in a non-productive way, which I think is-
Liz Moody:
Which just makes-
Kerry Diamond:
... what I do most days.
Liz Moody:
Yeah. I do too. I have this idea that I'm someday going to get an email that's like, "You've won $5 million and you're the queen of the world," and it never happens. So I'm always checking. I always think it's going to be great news. I'm like, "What great news have I ever gotten by email? Where's this assumption from?"
Kerry Diamond:
And they'll probably write back if you don't respond the first time.
Liz Moody:
Well, that's a fascinating thing. Have you ever had the experience where you go on vacation and you like don't answer your emails for two weeks and you'll see these chains happen and then it's solved. Like, if you ignore it for a little bit, people tend to solve these things themselves, which is fascinating.
Kerry Diamond:
I've been reading at night before I go to bed as part of an attempt to get off my phone because I do too much scrolling and reading and all that on my phone before I go to bed. So now I try to put my phone as far away from my bed as possible and read a book, and then fall asleep.
Liz Moody:
This is another thing that I really, it's a simple thing, but I think we overlook it a lot, which is make the habits you don't want to have as hard as possible and make the habits that you do want to have as easy as possible. So many of us sleep with our phones, right by our beds, and then we think we should have the willpower first thing in the morning to not scroll. We may have that willpower first thing in the morning, but we do not have infinite willpower. You are just using up your willpower for the day by trying to stay off social media. You're dangling like a donut right next to your head and then you're saying, "Don't take a bite."
It's such an insane use of our reserves. And so I would say if you can put your phone in another room, people really hate this, but that's 'cause we're addicted. I think we would do really well on a societal level to step back and say all of these little reasons I'm coming up with, it's 'cause I have an addiction. I'm addicted to my phone. My phone is designed to be addictive. I need to treat it like an addiction instead of justifying like, "Well, it's my alarm clock. What if there's an emergency call in the middle of the night?" I grew up in the nineties. There's ways to deal with these things.
Kerry Diamond:
I grew up in the eighties. There are ways to deal with these things. I love what you said. We do not have infinite willpower.
Liz Moody:
No.
Kerry Diamond:
That is a great thing to remember folks. Okay, next piece of advice.
Liz Moody:
The next piece of advice is to let our actions lead our emotions.
Kerry Diamond:
Let our actions lead our emotions. Explain that.
Liz Moody:
Often we let our emotions lead our actions. So we'll be like, "Am I in the mood to go to the gym? Okay, I'll go to the gym. Am I in the mood to hang out with a friend? Okay, I'll hang out with a friend." And in fact, it should go the other direction. If we set up our actions so that we are just going to the gym at the same time every day, we're taking the decision fatigue out of it, again, we have a very limited reserve of willpower. We don't want to use it up on that thing. We will feel better. It is always when I'm sitting there and I'm like, "Ugh, I'm so sad. I'm just feeling in a funk. I'm down. I'm going to wait until I feel better and then I'm going to take a walk. Then I'm going to make myself a salad, then I'm going to call a friend."
When in fact, if I just let my actions lead my emotions and I did any of those things, I would not be sitting there in a funk. And if we don't have the inputs that are going to change how we feel, we are not going to feel differently. And yet we continue to sit there and expect for this different feeling to magically wash over us. A little trick I do is I ask myself if I were feeling the way that I want to be feeling, what are the actions that I would take? And then also, I really, really like to set up my routine so that it's not even a question. I go to the gym same time, same way every single day. I eat largely pretty similarly most days that I'm not thinking about, "Hey, do I want to have this or this or this or only healthy today or not?" I'm eating pretty much the same thing.
And then another thing I think people overlook to what we talked about earlier is I have standing friend dates. So if I'm going on a walk, I'm calling a friend. I do that anytime I'm on a walk, I'm scrolling through my phone book. I'm like, "Who am I going to call on this walk?" I have standing dates with friends. I have a game night that's once a month with some friends. I have a book club. I have an articles club with my husband where every single Wednesday we each read an article or listen to a podcast separately, and then we come together at dinner and we talk about, we present it like a book club or here's some questions that I have about it that it brought up for me. And it means that we're not just sitting there in front of the TV and eating our food together. So I think ritualizing and routinizing these things so that we're not having to think about it. Then we have these actions built into our life that make us feel the way that we want to feel.
Kerry Diamond:
That also connects to your... You have a thing, I forget exactly what you call it, open folders?
Liz Moody:
Yes, open folders.
Kerry Diamond:
That's sort of like a sub-piece of advice to what you just said.
Liz Moody:
Yes. Oh my gosh. Open folders. So open folders are all of those things that accumulate in your brain all day, all week long, "I need to return that package. Did I call that person back? Did I answer those emails? Like, my desk is such a mess. I really want to clean it up." These are all creating these open folders, and these open folders are sapping our energy because we're task switching in these little ways all the way just to be like we're doing the thing we're doing. And then we think about, "Oh yeah, I have to return that package."
We're doing the thing we're doing. "Oh yeah, I have to return that package." It's taking up so much mental energy. So I do life admin days. I do it every two weeks, but whatever cadence works for you where you just go through and you go through all of your open folders, and I keep a note on my phone. So anytime I think of something, "Oh, got to return that package," write it down in the note. I know I have a day scheduled to handle that thing. And then I come back on that day and I do all my little things.
Kerry Diamond:
So all the things you mentioned earlier, going to the gym, working out, eating healthy. Those could be open folders, like, "I should go to the gym. I should meal prep. I should eat healthy. I should do this."
Liz Moody:
Yeah. I think a really interesting thing in life that I'm realizing more and more is that life should be a mixture of novelty and routine. So all of the things that you want to do regularly that you're kind of yelling at yourself a little bit, that you're not doing, those should be routines. You should take the decision fatigue out of it. Again, you should make the habits that you want to have easier, but then you can get caught in the cycle of, "Well, I go to work, I go to the gym, I come home and I eat the same dinner and life feels the same." And you look back and a year has passed and two years have passed, and you're like, "What's going on here?"
And that's where the novelty comes in. There's really interesting neuroscience that shows that when we do novel things, our perception of time slows down because our brain has to create neural connections. So your brain is a book, when you're a kid, you're writing new pages of that book every single day. Everything is memorable. But as you get older, you've already gone to the grocery store, you've already seen a helicopter, you're not writing those new pages. So novelty forces your brain to write new pages in that book. So we perceive that book as larger. We perceive time as going slower. I think that the secret to a really satisfying, fulfilling life is routinizing all the things that we want to do every day, but then filling our life with intentional, novelty, interesting experiences with our loved ones, with ourselves that break up that sense of monotony and make our lives feel really long and satisfying.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. One more piece of advice. Oh, I know a good one. The one that I think has helped me immensely, hydration.
Liz Moody:
I mean, so 85% of us are dehydrated at any given moment. There's also research that shows that you become more hydrated if you sip water throughout the day instead of having these moments where you chug, chug, chug, and then you go about your life and then you chug, chug, chug. And also, we want to eat a lot of our hydration too. So not to be another person telling you to eat your fruits and vegetables, but that is an advantage of eating your fruits and vegetables. But when we are dehydrated, I like to picture my brain like a sponge. And when you wake up in the morning, your brain is a dried up sponge and you really need to hydrate it to fill that sponge with water so that it can work optimally. So when we are dehydrated, we're not thinking as well. We're feeling tired all the time.
It's just such an easy solution. My husband, whenever I have anything wrong with me, he's like, "It's because your shoulders are tight." And I'm like, "It's not 'cause my shoulders are tight." And he's like, "Well, if I rubbed your shoulders for a second, would all these problems go away?" And a lot of the time they do. These simple little things are often the things and we're kind of feeling around in our brain. We're like, "Should I break up with my partner? Should I move to a new city? Should I quit my job?" And it's like, "Maybe I should drink a glass of water and go for a walk around the block in the sunshine and then see how I feel." This is something else I love to point out to people is that our brains do not make good decisions when we are stressed.
The part of our brain responsible for creative problem solving, for solution making turns off when we're stressed, because our brain is like, we're running from a lion. We don't need to be doing that. We are focused on one thing, one thing only. A lot of us sit there in these moments of stress and discomfort in our lives and we're like, "Oh, I'm stressed. I'm uncomfortable. I got to come up with a solution for this." That is the worst moment to come up with a solution because our brains are not functioning in that moment. And so the best thing that we can do if we are stressed, if we're uncomfortable and we're like, something's got to give something's change. Get yourself into a state of comfort, decrease the stress, and then approach the problem with that part of your brain turned on, you're going to get so much better results.
Kerry Diamond:
Great advice.
Liz Moody:
Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
But yeah, I realized I was-
Liz Moody:
Dehydrated-
Kerry Diamond:
... frequently-
Liz Moody:
... all the time.
Kerry Diamond:
... dehydrated when the pandemic started, when I was home and could really start to pay attention to how my mood, my emotions, my energy level were impacted by food and drink.
Liz Moody:
Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah. So what's your secret to hydration? 'Cause water is so boring.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, it actually came from Christina Tosi. Maybe it was a Jubilee, even when she talked about one of her secrets was staying hydrated, but this was like 10 years ago, she said she just chugs water in the morning, so she knows she's taking care of it. So if the rest of the day gets crazy busy-
Liz Moody:
Then you've like at least had some.
Kerry Diamond:
Yes.
Liz Moody:
Yeah, I think that's, again, I think it's slightly better to sip throughout the day, but also, I'm not a fan of letting perfect be the enemy of the good in any way you can get water. For me, it's got to taste good. So I'm like with my electrolyte powder all day. I'm also-
Kerry Diamond:
I know you love your AG1-
Liz Moody:
... teas-
Kerry Diamond:
... and your electrolyte powders.
Liz Moody:
... and herbal tea. Anything that makes it tasty.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm fine with plain water. I should be the spokesperson for New York City Water. I think New York City has the best water-
Liz Moody:
It needs a spokesperson.
Kerry Diamond:
I love my tap water.
Liz Moody:
Oh my gosh, you're the only one. I remember when I first moved here, I was so hungover one morning and I went to the tap and poured a glass of water and I needed it so badly and I tried to drink it and I could not 'cause it tasted so... This was before I even cared about health. I was just like, "This tastes so bad. I cannot physically bring myself to drink this."
Kerry Diamond:
Don't talk bad about the New York City water. No, I love it. I chug it in the morning. I do have to remind myself still though, but I do feel so much better when I do it.
Liz Moody:
This reminded me of a tip that people are going to love, which is that coffee actually continues to come up in podcast episode after podcast episode as a health food, as one of the best things that you can consume for your health.
Kerry Diamond:
Don't break my heart. It is a health food.
Liz Moody:
I thought of that because a lot of people are like, coffee is dehydrating, and people have this general idea because they love their coffee so much. I think that it's a bad habit. It's something they should get rid of. It's also the drug that the most people in the world are addicted to, but it decreases all cause mortality. It actually has a decent amount of fiber. It has as much fiber as a glass of orange juice, which is really interesting. It has chlorogenic acid, which has been shown to be anti-cancer. It helps with decreasing risk of dementia, all these different things. Over and over and over, in podcast episodes, I will ask doctors and experts and researchers what has outsized benefits, like, what foods are kind of the really special ones? And coffee comes up more often than any other foods. If you're out there drinking your coffee, you can feel really good about it.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, thank goodness. I was afraid you were going to tell me you had to stop drinking my coffee.
Liz Moody:
No, enjoy it. Enjoy it.
Kerry Diamond:
I love my coffee. I noticed one of your sponsors has a Pu’erh tea, and Alice Waters was just talking about that when we interviewed her the other week. I can't remember whether she had high cholesterol or something, and started eating more whole grains and drinking Pu’erh tea.
Liz Moody:
And it helped?
Kerry Diamond:
And it helped.
Liz Moody:
That's amazing. That's another tip I will have for people is, we try to share information on the podcast that's as broadly applicable as possible. And a lot of it's about mindsets and habits and routines and really most people can benefit from it. And also, I like people to listen and kind of get to file away all these little tools that they can pull out when they need those tools. I think we over index on this broad information and sometimes we under index on personal information. So I do encourage people, go get your blood test, find out about your personal health as much as possible, because then even if your doctor isn't necessarily going to be the most helpful, sometimes it will be and that's absolutely amazing. Often it's hard to find doctors who are as receptive as we would like them to be to that information, but at least you have it and then you can seek out information that's specifically applicable to your situation. I think sometimes we are like, "My gut feels a little weird," and it's like, "Go get some tests about that.” Like, let's have the information for you.
Kerry Diamond:
Trust your gut.
Liz Moody:
Yes.
Kerry Diamond:
Last thing we'll talk about is sleep. I know you're a big believer in sleep. Who's not? When I became fully menopausal, my sleep was just the worst. I guess, perimenopause and menopause, I realized I had to do something about it. I was like, "I've either got to go see a doctor, go on sleeping pills. I've got to figure this out." So I got an Oura Ring and I know they're expensive and I'm not being endorsed by Oura Rings, but it's the first time I used something to track my biometrics and it's been life-changing.
Liz Moody:
What has been life-changing about it?
Kerry Diamond:
It just made me aware of all my bad habits and how I was sabotaging my sleep every night. I didn't really understand the phases of sleep, the REM part of your-
Liz Moody:
The deep.
Kerry Diamond:
The REM sleep, deep sleep, all that. And I'm a night owl and I was doing a lot of that revenge-
Liz Moody:
Revenge, procrastination, bedtime, scrolling.
Kerry Diamond:
Right. I'd work all day and then feel like I didn't have any time for myself, so I'd stay up really late. I just realized all those bad behaviors were contributing toward me not getting the amount of sleep I needed and not going to bed at the time I needed to go to bed. And the ring has helped immensely.
Liz Moody:
A few quick and dirties there. One, I do think that so many people would benefit from taking these micro moments to themselves throughout the day. So many of us feel like the only time we get for ourselves is late at night, and then we're sacrificing our sleep, which is sacrificing our next day to have this moment of me time of self-care, when really it's doing the opposite. So I do think scheduling and even intentionally putting it on your calendar, this is 20 minutes. It can be for scrolling if you want to scroll. It can be for reading, it can be for taking a walk around the block, but feeling like you've taken care of yourself all day long can be immensely helpful. Two, deep sleep. You get more of that early in the night.
So the earlier you do go to bed, typically the more deep sleep you're going to get, which is the type of sleep that really cleans out your brain and makes you feel really, really rested the next day. So I do think that's helpful. Three, the colder that you could make your room around 64, 65 degrees, that's going to help immensely with deep sleep, particularly. I know that every man out there is probably like, "It doesn't need to be cold." No, but it should, like, make it colder than you think it should be, and then completely dark at night. That actually impacts REM sleep a lot. So if you can get an eye mask or blackout blinds, even little lights in your room or little bits of light seeping through the window, that's going to impact the quality of your sleep, even if the quantity is there. So you're going to feel less rested in the morning.
Kerry Diamond:
Huh. I probably need to work on that a little bit 'cause I don't even have curtains.
Liz Moody:
Oh.
Kerry Diamond:
And Brooklyn's so bright.
Liz Moody:
You're in New York. Yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah.
Liz Moody:
You really want to crawl into your little cave at nighttime and sleep in your dark cold cave. That's what your brain would like you to do. The last thing I do want to say about sleep, because I'm a person who struggled with sleep a lot over the years is the most helpful thing for me with sleep, 'cause we live in a society that's like, "Sleep is so important. You're going to die if you don't sleep." And it gets very pressureful. And then when you're up in the middle of the night not sleeping, you're like, "Oh my God. There's all these negative effects on top of the fact that I'm really uncomfortable." So I like to remind myself of all the incredible days that I've had after a night of no sleep, and I compile that into a little kit of proof points that I have in my brain.
I think about the day that I went to Disneyland and I had a really fun day, even though I didn't sleep at all the night before because I was, this was like a year ago, but I was so excited I was going to Disneyland the next day, so I was like, "Oh my gosh." People are going to be like, "Were you eight?" No. This was like a year ago. But I was so excited and I didn't sleep, and I was like, "Oh, I ruined this great day for myself." But it ended up being phenomenal anyway. I didn't sleep at all the night before I went on “The Today Show,” and I did really well, and I did an interview that I was really proud of, and I think we all have that if we look back in our brain, and also we can notice them going forward. I didn't sleep last night. Look at this great day I'm having anyway, that can be really helpful for taking some of that pressure off.
Kerry Diamond:
Absolutely. I just had such a fundamental misunderstanding of deep sleep. I thought deep sleep was related to how long you would sleep, so I was like, "Oh, I can make it up on the weekends and I'll sleep like 10 hours on the weekend," and that's not the case. It has to do with what time you go to bed. So that was a really important unlock for me. And I will say, I know Oura Rings are expensive and not the solution for everybody, but for me versus having to take sleeping pills or something, it's been the solution for me.
Liz Moody:
Well, and also if you don't want to get an Oura Ring, the number one thing people usually notice is, "Oh, my drinking impacts my sleep." So there's your life hack is I feel like people are like, "Oh, my glass of wine that I have with dinner actually does have an impact on my sleep." That's the big realization I hear people have with their Oura Rings. But you can also just pay attention. You can really try to note what are you doing, and if you work out late, some people could do that and it doesn't impact their sleep. Some people can't do that. Noticing these things for you because we are also bio-individual.
Kerry Diamond:
Before I let you go, we're not going to do a full speed round, but I'll ask you the final question. If you had to be trapped on a desert island with one food celebrity, who would it be and why?
Liz Moody:
I think I would choose my friend Justine Doiron. She wrote the Incredible cookbook, “Justine Cooks.” Her food perspective is phenomenal, but also I think why people fall in love with her is her storytelling. She'll make these recipes, but she'll tell you these really wonderful stories while she's making them. And she's like that in real life too. And I feel like if you're on a desert island, you want the food, right. So she'd make me the food and I would really enjoy that food, but she'd also give me the entertainment by the storytelling, and you've got to pass the hour somehow. We also were on, not a desert island, we were on Governors Island together yesterday at that spa there, and it was wonderful.
Kerry Diamond:
So that like being trapped-
Liz Moody:
Yeah, it was-
Kerry Diamond:
... on a desert island with a food celebrity.
Liz Moody:
It was a test case, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
She's been on the podcast before and it was honestly one of my favorite interviews. She seems very emotionally intentional. She's been through a lot.
Liz Moody:
She has been through a lot, and she digests and processes life in a really beautiful way. And that's something I'm looking for more and more in my friendships is I want people that I can have really intentional, meaningful conversations with, that I can take a little bit of time and feel like I'm getting maximum emotional satisfaction out of that time. And so she's really one of those people for me.
Kerry Diamond:
Tell folks how they can interact with the world of Liz Moody, because it's expanding. You've got Substack, so many things-
Liz Moody:
Yeah, we do. Yeah, so the main way is my podcast is called The Liz Moody Podcast. We have two episodes a week. Every Monday, you're going to get a little bite-sized solo episode that's going to give you habits or routines or mindset shifts that you can take into your week and feel really motivated. And then on Wednesday, we have long form in-depth interviews with experts. We talk about gut health, we talk about hormone health, we talk about longevity. We talk about depression. We talk about how to eat for fat loss. We literally have a very wide spectrum of anything you can think of, we probably have an episode about it, money, everything there.
And then we also have a substack, it's called The Takeaway. We have three a week, lots of deep dives on there too. We're doing this week all the things I do to help with my fear of flying. So hopefully that helps somebody else out there. And then I'm on Instagram, I'm @lizmoody, and you can see how I'm applying all these habits and routines that I talk about in my real life, in a joyful way, in a way that makes it fun. Our motto is that if wellness is making your life worse, it is no longer wellness. So we're all about being stress-free and really improving our lives, not adding more to dos to them.
Kerry Diamond:
Well, thank you for improving mine.
Liz Moody:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Don't forget to listen to Cherry Bombe's baking podcast, She's My Cherry Pie, hosted by Jessie Sheehan. New episodes drop on Saturday mornings, wherever you get your podcasts. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Joseph Hazan is a studio engineer at Newsstand Studios. Our producers are Tarkor Zehn, Catherine Baker, and Jenna Sadhu. And our editorial coordinator is Sophie Kies. Thanks for listening, everybody. You're the Bombe.