Have you ever gotten to the point in life where you think, “I can’t keep going like this”?
Not to sound too dramatic, but that’s where I was at the end of 2016. I was worn out, wrung dry, fed up. It’s not that my life was bad – in fact, blessings overflowed. A fulfilling career, a beautiful family, great friends and coworkers, and many creative endeavors that stimulate me – no, that’s not just a string of clichés; that’s my actual life.
So what was the problem? Somewhere in the push-and-pull demands of daily deadlines, set against the exhausting backdrop of a national conversation that had everybody screaming at each other for far too long, I had stopped taking care of myself in any meaningful way.
Too little sleep stressing over this and that. Too much coffee to stay awake. Too much sitting on the couch and no energy to exercise. Too much forgetting to eat, then starving and grabbing the first thing I could shove in my mouth.
Of course I know better. Most of us do. But that doesn’t mean bad habits can’t take root and erode our vitality. I was dragging myself through most days, becoming increasingly lackluster and joyless in spite of an otherwise abundant life.
That’s how I was when I walked into Risa Groux’s office in Newport Beach. Risa, a respected holistic nutritionist, is a petite powerhouse of a woman armed with profound knowledge about the nutrients in food and how to use them to your body’s best advantage. She’s best known for creating the Newport Beach Cleanse – a vegan, non-GMO, all-organic regimen that she bills not as a “diet,” but as “the perfect kick-start to a healthy lifestyle.”
I was skeptical – I’ve done a lot of health and fitness reporting in my career, and have been on just about every diet known to mankind. And whenever I hear that something is supposed to be the “perfect way to (fill in the blank),” my cynical self says, “Yeah, right.” But I was just so tired, so done with feeling bad, that I was willing to try anything.
I will be forever grateful I did, because you know what? Risa Groux isn’t selling snake oil. She doesn’t talk about weight loss; she talks about nourishment. She talks about gut health and rejuvenation, about putting your body in the balance it was meant to be in. She talks about the importance of sleep and regular exercise, and how neither is possible when your body is not being fed right. She doesn’t want you to eat just this or that; she wants you to transform your life.
Nourishing myself, as Risa would say, has meant eating vibrant, delicious food, never feeling hungry, having more energy than I’ve had since I can remember, and no longer waking up at 3 a.m, unable to sleep for the rest of the night. I don’t even want to collapse on the couch. I’m riding bikes with my son, going on long walks with the dogs, hiking with my husband. I’m laughing more and feeling up for whatever the world throws at us in 2017.
I’m done with resolutions. I’m all about rebooting and looking anew into the future. And it’s in that spirit we offer this issue, dedicated to helping you find new ways to inspire, inform and reimagine a happier and healthier you in this new year.
Onward.
