Welcome everyone to another episode of kiss
the ground. Today's guest is Autumn Smith,

a mother, cofounder of Paleo Valley, certified eating psychology coach, former

fitness trainer, Yogi and all around
wellness warrior. She started Paleo Valley with

her husband, Chaz, and brother
Matt and their good friend Matthew, after

suffering from acute digestive issues since she
was a kid. Together they discovered that

good food is truly a key to
thriving health, a revelation they were determined

to share with the world. Paleo
valley creates products free from problematic ingredients and

also include ingredients that help you feel
your best. Today, Autumn is here

to discuss her dietary journey, the
vital role food plays in our mental health

and how regenerative agriculture is imperative to
gain the nutrients needed to stay tuned,

eat well and live vibrant. My
Life, my purpose was to be a

protector or to care for mother,
for nature. Soil really is the nutritional

bank account for our distance. Together
we can do something that we've never done

before. We can rebuild our ECOS
system. Are degraded soils and are degraded

water cycles. Freedom to me is
the ability, the right to be all

of who you are. I think
we can all do our roles, even

if you're not a farmer. From
the words of Roomy, let the beauty

you love be all that you do. There is hundreds of ways to feel

and kiss the ground. It all
started when I was probably about ten years

old and I started to develop digestive
issues like irritable ball syndrome. I was

bloated after meals. Sometimes I'd wake
up in the middle and they in excruciating

pain and when we went to doctors
they just told me, you have it

irritable ballasty German. There's not a
lot we can do. It's a stress

related condition, and so I just
kind of went along my let with my

life, and we didn't always know
it then, but we now know there's

a gut brain connection. And when
I got into high school I started having

mental health issues as well, depression
and anxiety on top of my digestive issues,

and it really just snowballed. And
then I decided I should use substances

because I was so anxious and just
having trouble managing the unpredictability of my symptoms,

and I did that basically until I
met my husband. Autumn was a

fitness trainer when she met Chaz in
two thousand and seven fell in love had

a beautiful wedding ceremony in San Diego, California, but Chas noticed that his

wife's digestive condition wasn't improving and the
experts they went to didn't have the solution,

so he took matters into his own
hands. We tried the Paleo Diet

because he got on Google and found
some people were having a lot of luck

changing their diet, which seemed like
a really like a revelation at the time

that what I was eating could potentially
be causing my symptoms, and I was

amazed thirty days after I started just
eating whole foods, it was nothing crazy.

My digestive symptomes went away and when
I maintain that lifestyle over the course

of the next year, my mental
health was better than it ever been and

I was just so inspired by the
healing power of food that I really just

dove in. Autumn quitter job as
a trainer, got our master's degree in

holistic nutrition and became an fdn practitioner. I'm working on my doctor now and

I'm just really trying to figure out
how I can understand in articulate this message

in a way that helps as many
people as possible. And we went into

food production because we saw a big
gap in the ability and to have tools

to make a whole foods really helpful
lifestyle realistic for most people. According to

the American Art Association, Approximately Forty
seven thousand Americans have a metabolic disorder.

That's about one and six people.
I know digestive issues and stress disorder issues

like anxiety, they're at an old
time high, especially in our post pandemic

world. I know before the pandemic
was about forty million people are suffering from

anxiety. I know today it is
a lot more people. Probably you know,

six out of ten people are suffering
with anxiety today, and so I

think that most people probably could tie
some of their symptoms to what they're eating.

I would say that probably is true
for almost everyone alive today. I

mean it depends on what the Diet
is that you're consuming, but if you're

consuming a standard American diet, I
would say there's probably some level of health

that could be improved simply by upgrading
the quality of your Diet. Growing up

autumn had experimented with Vegan and vegetarian
diets. Though many people can maintain strong

gut health while following these practices,
for autumn it was only contributing to her

nutrient deficiency and unstable blood sugar,
because I didn't really know what I was

doing, and so I did try
that I found I needed more animal products

for me personally, and there is
some interesting research around depression and anxiety and

that red meat is actually protective,
which is the opposite of the result that

they thought that they would find in
some research by Dr Police Chaka. But

then, when I found Paleo,
what I did was just eat whole foods

right, and it wasn't so much
about the quantity, it was more about

the quality, and that worked for
me for a while. But it wasn't

until I really did that and learn
to stabilize my blood sugar, because I

was still drinking a lot of fruit
juices and I was still eating a lot

of dried fruit and my blood sugar
was a still a little unstable, and

so I went more of the Kido
route and that worked for a while.

I liked that, but it wasn't
something that I wanted to maintain for very

long, and so what I do
now is I monitor my own feedback,

like my sleep, energy, hunger
cravings. There's this awesome little and acronym

called Schmeck. Is Your Schmeck and
check the one of my friends, Dr

Tad Jade Tita, uses to kind
of dial in your diet. But then

also like actual bio markers and feedback. I do continuous glucose monitoring, you

know, and there's a few other
things that I look at just to make

sure that what I'm eating right now
is still working for me at this point

in time, because your dietary needs
are going to change throughout your life cycle

and throughout the seasons, and I
think ultimately we all have to be able

to just tune in and keep an
open mind, try and not listen to

the Dogma and really just find exactly
what it is that's working for us and

be curious about that too. Autumn
starts her day by fasting after about twelve

to sixteen hours. She says she'll
break the fast with something like bone broth

or protein powder, and then I'll
go into a more of a late lunch

situation. A lot of leafy Greens, like a huge plate full of all

the veggies that I can find.
I often call it my kitchen sink salad.

I just everything that's in my kitchen. I try and make as many

different colors as possible and then I
have a really high quality source of animal

protein or fish, wild fish or
whatever. And then dinner will be a

little bit more protein based, but
then also again at least half the plate

is fruits and veggies, and mostly
Veggies, and then I will probably do

some sort of dessert, berries strizzled
in all of our coconut oil and then

frozen, something like that. We
have this little ice cream maker where we

make ice cream sorbay out of fresh
fruit and I think that's you know,

a lot of dark chocolate. I'm
kind of a dark chocolate girl, and

I drink a lot of my green
smoothie is pretty much a daily staple.

I just fill it up like half
of the blender with leafy Greens and then

I do some cucumber and salary,
which really helps to kind of moderate the

bitterness, and then a little bit
of lemon and some strawberries, maybe a

blueberry protein powder, and so mostly
it's vegetables for me, organic when I

can, and just really high quality
sources of animal protein and then some fruit.

That's what it usually looks like.
We talked about regenerative agriculture and soil

health on this podcast, which ties
directly to how much nutrients we consume in

the foods we choose to eat.
That's one of the reasons I became so

passionate about this is because when I
started working with people and running labs and

just having them do a dietary intake, I realized most people are not getting

enough nutrients and when I looked at
the data, it showed that the new

tree levels in our soil have been
on the decline and mostly not necessarily in

our soil, but because of the
breakdown of the soil biology, the plants

aren't able to access them and that
you know, you we'd have to eat

adorn just today to get the same
amount of vitamin A that we would get

from one that our grandparents ate,
and so I think that's pretty consistent and

I know the same thing goes for
animal products. Dr Christine Jones talks a

lot about this. I think it's
something like two times the amount of meat,

three times the amount of fruit and
four times amount of vegetables. You

need to consume that our grandparents did
in order to get the same nutrition.

It's the passion for nutrients and health
that drove autumn to start Paleo Valley,

but it was also founded as an
effort to support a brighter future for her

son, Maverick. Once my son
came along, came into this world,

I really got serious about I don't
want to see a day where his generation

has a nutrient deficient food supply and
also didn't want to see a day where

our environment imploded and collapsed and so
that his future wasn't going he deserved.

And so that's when we got into
ogendative agriculture. We were already making a

beef stick. We learned about the
nuances in grass beating and grass fed operations,

just beef production, and we realize
about the potential forward generative agriculture and

how it kind of revitalizes that relationship
between the nutrients in the soil and the

plants that need them and can probably
and increase the nutrient density of our food

supply. And so we were really
excited about that and that is exactly one

of the reasons we went and founded
our companies. When Autumn worked as a

fitness trainer. She learned new ways
to reclaim her health, but then she

went on a sevenmonth world tour and
found it challenging to maintain a healthy diet

while traveling. Sometimes we were in
a different country every day, and so

when I got back to America,
I was like, okay, well,

I think education is important, but
I think providing the tools is even more

important. And we started with the
grass fed beef stick because I had learned

about that research and I felt like
I was under eating protein and I knew

protein was very important not only for
physical fitness but mental fitness and just,

you know, longevity. And so
we started with the beef stick and we

ferment them. We only source from
American were generative farms, because we're really

sticklers for not only how our food
is impacting our bodies, but also the

planet, because you can't really take
those apart. What we do to one,

we do to the other, and
so and then we also just ordered

just offer or just added organic spices
ferment them so we can avoid all unnecessary

preservatives, and that was our flagship
product. And then we just kind of

realized, wow, we just need
to make these super foods in organic form

and grasp fed for more accessible.
So we have a beef stick and then

you come in five flavors and then
we also have Turkey sticks and we're working

on chicken and fish right now,
so that's expanding. And then we went

into super food bars because as a
fitness trainer, just someone who likes to

be on the go and is busy, and as a mom, I needed

a high quality source of protein and
nutrients without all the junk, and I

didn't find enough of those. So
we use grass fed and finished Collagen and

again from regenerative farms, and which
is most people don't when they source our

Collagen, it's usually grass fed,
but then grain finished. And then we

went into you know, we have
a whole food vitamin C's actually the most

potent on the market. We have
an oppisite of vinegar complex, which is

kind of like our blood, sugar
and digestion support. We do organ meats,

so we have an organ complex because
we believe in eating those to tail

and organs are some of the most
nutrient dense foods on the planet. And

then we have a tumor complex as
well, and we have so many new

products in the works. So a
lot of products and we're going to continue

to expand. But we started wild
pastures probably five years into the life of

Palio Valley. Wild pastures is Pale
Valley's sister company. It works with family

farmers in the US to deliver high
quality, ethically raised and regeneratively grown meats

delivered right to your doorstep. And
we bring it to people's doorstep for wholesale

prices, because we were finding that
most people wanted to support were generative agriculture,

but they didn't know how, they
didn't know where to find these people

and when they did find products,
they were too expensive. And so we

believe that it is impacting the people
were consuming or the people were consuming our

products, not only with their physical
health, but also the health of the

planets and, of course, were
improving animal welfare. Bottoms. Initiatives are

all about regenerative agriculture, healthy living
but, most importantly, ease. She

strives to make all her products affordable
and accessible, for example, even going

to a fast food restaurant and getting
a burger that you can feel really good

about eating. Actually, last night
we just had the opening of our Burger

restaurant. That is all based on
regenerative agriculture as well. So that's our

newest business baby. We're just trying
to create a man for Red Degenerative Agriculture

and meet Americans where they are.
We want fast casual food, you know,

Burgers and milkshakes that don't have sugar
in them and fries that are cooked

in tallow, which is a far
more stable fat than the vegetaboils at most

restaurants. So we are really just
trying to in every way create a demand

and in accessibility for regenerative agriculture.
So Wild Pastors Burger Company is now open

and Boulder, Colorado, where people
can get access to a hundred percent grass

fed, grass finished beef, all
organic produce and great gluten free options.

The USCA is said about ninety five
percent of us are deficient in at least

one nutrient, and when we're looking
at food, most of us are paying

attention to the macros, be carbs
in the proteins and the fat. But

what most people underappreciate are those micronutrients
and the vitamin C, the vitamin A

and the vitamin D and zinc and
magnesium and the fact that these are not

like we should get them kind of
nutrines like it's a good idea. It

is an actual requirement. When we
don't have magnesium, our blood sugar control

is worse and that can lead to
things like insulin resistance. When we don't

have enough vitamin C, the supports
our immune system in over twenty ways.

When we try and mount a response, it won't be as powerful as it

otherwise could be, and so I
think we all need to pay more attention

to this. And there's one simple
exercise that I have a lot of people

do that is really mostly it's about
awareness, but also about education, and

it's just going to chronometer or chronometer. It's a software, just chronometercom and

for three days, seven days,
put in everything that you consume into that

software and it's going to show you
not only your carbs, protein and fat,

but also your micronutrient levels, and
so you can begin to see patterns

in the nutrients that you're most often
missing and then make adjustments accordingly. Because

B twelve, vitamin C, be
six, be nine, zinc, all

of the minerals. They are in
far fewer quantities today and I think they

are actually more important than ever.
And so if we can restore that those

levels and the soil biology that makes
them available to the plants. We're going

to eat more nutrient dense plants,
we ourselves are going to be nutrients sufficient,

our immune response is going to work
better, we're going to be able

to tolerate the foods that we're consuming
better, with a less of a blue

blood sugar and in insulin response.
So metabolically will be more healthy, will

have less inflammation in our body,
our immune system work better and it's just

a simple step that we can all
take that I hope we all do take,

because I just I know I'm obsessed
with food and it's had to improve

our health, but I just don't
think there's anything more important than our health

right now. I think it's a
little bit different for everyone. What I

encourage you to do if you're someone
who has your diet really dialed in,

you do your chronometer exercise, you're
not suffering from any symptoms, you're not

getting sick frequently, you don't have
metabolic issues, you're feeling pretty good,

your fatigue, your energy levels are
high. You can probably just get away

with doing the chronometer exercise and if
not, you might want to do blood

work and then kind of try and
identify which of those nutrients that you might

be sufficient in or deficient in and
then just making those corrections. But I

just think cultivating more awareness around this
is very important and, yeah, just

something I hope everyone does. Autumn
says supplements are not necessary for a healthy

diet. You can get all your
Nu Trans from foods you consume, but

it can be tricky if you're not
able to access high quality food. Then

supplements are the next best thing,
especially with high quality supplements and things that

are clean and and just raised properly. And so the most common ones I

see is vitamin D, of course, very important. Hard to get from

food. You can do fatty fish
and egg yolks, you could do sunlight.

That's definitely a big one. Zinc
is also one that's very, very

important and a lot of people have
kind of decreased level of that. I

work with and that's, you know, shellfish and animal products and meat and

just see food in general, nuts
and seeds, all of those vitamin C

surprisingly I see a lot of people
don't have enough of that and most people

don't appreciate that we all need bearing
amounts and when we're stressed or when we're

exercising more, we're actually going to
need increased amounts and you can get that

from fruits and vegetables. And probably
the other one I really see a lot

of is folly and be twelve,
and that is going to be things like

animal products and shellfish and leafy Greens
and liver and Lake coombs and so but

everyone, honestly, is very different. I've noticed if you're eating standard American

diet, magnesium is going to be
a big one too, and you probably

going to be deficient in more than
one. But those are the big ones

that I see. A common misconception
is that mental health and our diet are

not correlated. It actually couldn't be
further from the truth, as autumn saw

with her health, seeking antidoppressents to
help curb her chemical imbalance wasn't the answer.

The answer was food. So the
thing I see move the needle most

quickly for most people is balancing your
blood sugar. Because what most people don't

understand is if your bloocher is going
up and then coming down really quickly,

which happens very often with the standard
American diet, we are going to our

bodies going to see that as an
emergency and it's going to create stress hormones.

That is going to bring our butcher
levels back up, but the experience

of stress hormones is going to make
us feel anxious. There's also been research

to suggest when your blood sugar levels
are really high that, at least in

diabetics, people feel angry and really
restless. So there is a clear association

with our physical and physiological experience and
our emotional state. And so doing things

like switching from a sweet to a
Savory Breakfast and pairing twenty to thirty grams

of protein rather than needing carbohydrates alone, just, and I call them naked

carbohydrates, just pair them with a
little bit of protein and just aim for,

you know, protein snacks rather than
carbohydrate snacks, and take a walk

after meals, just making small steps
to improve the way that your blood sugar

response is is happening. You can
wear a continuous glucose monitor. There's so

many things you can do around that. The second one I've noticed was certain

foods. Gluten, namely for me, was very it created anxiety and for

a lot of the people I work
with. I'm not going to say everyone,

I don't think that, but I
have seen some people are exquisitely sensitive

when it comes to Glutin you don't
even have to have digestive symptoms. They

can all be strictly neurological and the
other important factors. They can be delayed

by time. So I had one
client who would have gluten and it wasn't

until about four days later that he
would feel really anxious. But through time

we were able to make that connection. And the last one is a lot

of the B vitamins and vitamins C. I've noticed people who are doing a

paleotype diet. They are often,
I found, low in a few of

the key be vitamins, full late
and be twelve specifically, and we found

rates of B twelve that are low
can be detrimental to mental health because it's

very, very important for our neuro
transmitters and also just keeping our brain really

healthy and energy production. There's also
there was one little case study where a

woman came into the hospital and she
started out being just depressed but then moved

to becoming catatonic and they didn't know
what to do with her. They did

electro convulsive therapy, they did end
presents and they actually ended up giving her

be twelve injections at a different hospital
and that was a remedy and she actually

gained regained full capacity and functioning.
I know that was a lot, but

autumn breaks it down into three easy
steps that you can follow to help discover

what foods are right for you.
It starts with stabilizing your blood sugar.

So first thing is just reducing your
consumption of process foods and simple sugars.

Right. We know soda, Energy
Drinks, you know those carbohydrates, cookies,

crackers, cakes, all of those
are blood sugar nightmares. So if

we want to stable bletcher, those
are going to work directly against us.

The second step is identifying inflammatory foods
and eliminating them from your diet. Sometimes

that's Glutin. Sometimes you might benefit
from a food sensitive tivity test or just

an elimination diet, and then also
making sure that your nutrient bases are covered,

specifically those b vitamins I found,
and magnesium. Really if you're more

on the anxiety side of things,
those three steps can be really, really

powerful. You can also look into
adding specific antidepressent foods into your diet,

like leafy Greens or at the top
of the list, and also really colorful

vegetables so I try and get at
least one serving of leafy Greens a day

and then also as many different colors
vegetables and fruits as I can find.

And then the other ones that were
really surprising. The third tip is going

to be organ meats, which I
know it's not palatable for a lot of

people, but literally they're one of
the most depression protective foods, and seafood

and beef. Like I said,
there was that research that women who did

not eat the recommended amount, which
was about three to four servants a week,

had two times a risk for anxiety
and depression. So that just looks

like cutting out processed foods and then
eating a leafy Greens and as many different

colors for some vegetables every day as
you can, and then experimenting with organs

if your fee, if it's your
thing, we have an organ complex if

you don't want to taste them,
and then beef and high quality animal products

and seafood. MMM, beautiful.
Thank you. Yeah, it's interesting.

I I didn't an eat. I
didn't. I had my first hamburger at

thirty five years old and I'm now
forty one and I've continued to experiment eating.

You know, a little bit more
high quality meet in my in my

diet after being a Vegan vegetarian for
most of my whole life. And it's

interesting because, you know, some
people think that the the body will reject

it or doesn't want it, but
I actually, you know, it's pulled.

Did you get sick the first time
you had it? And I actually

didn't. I've actually been surprised that. You know, I've been slowly just

integrating it into my diet when I
when I come across you know, and

can you know, access really really
great quality, high quality meat and protein.

And Yeah, it's actually been relatively
feeling really good in my body after,

you know, many, many years
of an all plant based Diet.

So and I and and I know
that for each you know, each individual,

it's different. But I also know
that we can be stuck in ideologies

and Dogmas and and and and not
explore and not even allow ourselves to experience

the potential values or benefits of,
you know, takeing a slightly different path

or being flexible, flexible in our
approach to, you know, what could

be the most healthy diet. Yeah, I love that and I echo that

because I was a yoga teacher for
a really long time and remembered the principle

of a himsa like do no harm, and so it was a real struggle

for me at first, but once
I, you know, got a little

more protein and notice the stability,
I thought, okay, this could work

for me. And one thing I've
seen a lot of people in our customers

at least, do who are making
that transition is starting with something like the

Organ Complex. So it's not even
something that you have to eat necessarily.

It's just like you can actually swallow
it. And I know everyone's journeys different,

but I've just heard that that's that's
really worked for some people that we

work with. Autumn says her company's
only source products from regenitive farms because nourishing

our bodies is equally as important as
sustaining the earth. So what does that

look like? So we work with
the greatest people, one in particular,

he's our pig farmer and he's actually
working with Yale right now. So he

raises pigs mostly and he's adding in
trees and they're doing research to just see

how much more carbon they can have
sequestered. He's also done research around how

much grass can we feed to a
pig and what can we do about the

fatty acid ratio? Like most conventional
work, has a thirty five to one,

ll Maga six to Omega three fatty
acid ratio. This is really nerdy,

but generally that's believed to increase information
and so he tinkers with the Diet

to see how much grass we can
feed and then can we bring that inflammatory

ratio down. So that's really cool. We work with another farmer right now

who is trying to get enough land
so that he's able to grow all of

the grain on his operation that he
will then supplement to the pigs and then

give the pasture about six years in
between, or he brings animals and integrates

animals into the operation to give the
land time to recuperate. And another one

of our farmers actually was a gmo
seed salesman for a while and he and

his father, and we it was
his father, actually develop Parkinson's at the

age of forty and so he has
taken multiple plots of land and generated them

from conventional practices into regenerative thriving practices
and when you see the pictures it's so

dramatic, just the before on the
after. These are just like lush and

bio diverse and the birds are coming
back and bioversity is increasing. He he

actually says he sits in on his
deck and just listens and can hear like

hundreds of different animals and beings and
sounds on any given night and it just

makes his heart so happy. So
we have farmers and ranchers throughout the country

and we want to eventually keep everything
within the bioregion, even though we have

very strict standards, of course,
grass fed and grass feeding. They're always

being rotated on pastures, they're not
using antibiotics or hormones of any sort and

pesticide use as little as possible.
Sometimes they're going to help the farmers transition,

which I think is really important,
and then cut that use down.

But everyone is, you know,
measuring their increased biodiversity in some way through

soil fertility, increases in biodiversity,
the way that the water is holding or

the soil is holding water, and
on and on. So I I could

not have come upon a more passionate
group of farmers and ranchers and we just

feel very lucky to work with them
all. Finding regenerative farms is not an

easy feat. Today we're in the
early stage of regenerative agriculture, but we

increasingly see more farms earned certifications like
land and market and regenerative organic certification,

which make it easier to identify these
farms that value ecological principles. Well,

originally it was the people just producing
our beef sticks started teaching us. Okay,

well, there's a lot of nuance
here and you know, some companies

or farmers and ranchers they don't understand
these practices and but this is what we're

totally capable of and this particular farmer
had been in the game early, long

time. And what we're working with
now is the American guests feed association.

They do all the standards for our
beef production and our biggest farmer and the

one who manages most of it,
is in the process of purchasing a huge

plot of land that will then be
analyzed initially by the Savory Institute and their

program and then they will follow the
parameters and make sure that everything is increasing

on their farm as it comes along. But historically they have been associated with

a graspbeed association and following their standards. So we have, you know,

our beef producers and our pork producers
and our chicken producers, and they've sometimes

changed and sometimes they've introduced us two
different ones and different people who are doing

specialties. And you know New England
or Arkansas are you know Indiana and Iowa?

We've worked with a lot of different
people and through that, you know,

we've all kind of come together and
they've kind of come together. So

I think we've been a part of
it, but they're also have been some

preexisting co ops that we're working with. But yeah, we just kind of

did a little piecemeal thing so far
and more and more people are waking up

and transitioning, so we're just excited. If you're out there and you're doing

it, we'd love to hear from
you. Being a father of a three

year old son has some challenges,
especially when it comes to food and getting

them to eat a nutritionally balanced diet. We've been explicitly committed to wanting his

nutrition to be good so that his
teeth and his jaw form correctly and so

well. I had autumn on the
podcast. I was happy to ask her

expertise on how she did, knowing
that she was a mother of a six

year old son. As well.
I totally get how you always think,

oh, he's going to be the
healthiest get around and he'll never argue and

oh my little guy gives me pushback
all the time. But he knows like

protein first, because when I said
him out to school I got to make

sure that it is blood suggars balanced
or it's just a totally different day.

So our beef sticks really come in
handy for that and I all am kind

of in my head tracking how many
grams of protein he has. You know,

twenty, thirty, forty grams a
day is somewhere that I try to

live. But we're also he doesn't
love vegetables and a lot of women and

mom's really worry about that and I
think it's important to keep introducing them and

to let them try them and just
to not make it like a forced thing.

Sometimes that works against us, and
so that's our rule. We just

try different vegetable all the time or
like get every meal. He has to

take one bite, but we're not
going to make him eat it. That's

why we did our Greens powder and
then we have fresh fruits and vegetables and

we call it as Ninja juice and
as he drinks it. We tell him,

oh my I think, did your
muscle just get a little bit bigger?

And he maybe at stakes he's starting
to not believe that anymore, but

up until that point he definitely believed
it. And then our college and powder.

He's not big on protein and I
think that's something I hear from a

lot of MOMS and DADS. And
so our college and protein powder I can

sneak into a shake that I give
them with berries and you can hide like

Zucchini pretty well and things like cucumber
pretty well and salary and into not only

shakes but like into meat balls and
two soups and Stews, and so you

can kind of help them eat vegetables
and protein in a way that doesn't feel

like they're having to eat those things. And then we also make like little

honey balls. It's just gluten free
oats and honey and then a protein powder

and peanut butter or almond butter and
with then then you get protein there,

but also, you know, super
food bars. He eats those up as

well, and the aryakey is his
favorite of the beef sticks. So I

do think nutrition it makes such a
difference for kids and as a mom,

we made these products with your kids
in mind and so they're very helpful.

He also takes our vitamin C every
day and he makes fun of me.

I also give him cod live royal
because I think the vitamin A and the

vitamin deer are really important, and
and probiotics, and I try and make

him do one fermented food to every
day just to make sure that his microbiome

is in tiptop shape. But the
most fun thing we do, I think,

because sometimes it can get a little
overwhelming if he's always eating foods it

is friends, or never eating and
going to school. That's a whole nother

can of worms. So what we
do is fun food Friday and he gets

to go out and we have a
dessert, we have whatever it is mavericks

really wanting that particular week and we
may get a celebration and of food and

we don't keep junk food really in
the house and so when whatever is there,

I'm comfortable with him consuming. But
yeah, having him have a little

freedom is really important too as a
parent, and I found the more that

I push it on him the worse
it goes. Is So offering making it

requirement to try things but not necessarily
eating all of it and having the fun

food Fridays really work for us.
Of course we need to nourish our kids,

but we also need to care for
ourselves. So I asked autumn how

her and her husband, Chazz,
prioritize their health on a daytoday basis.

Well, this has been a work
in progress, let's just say that.

But right now what we do is
we actually don't work like as much as

even my parents did. You know, from nine to thirty when he's in

school, those are our work times. In the morning we put our phones

away, we wake up and it's
just like that is our time to be

together as a family and to read
and just to be present with one another.

And then we send them up to
school. And I have kind of

organized my life in a way that
I know how much I can get done.

Three hund and ninety minute chunks of
really focused work and then one hour

of a lot of exercise or movement, whatever it is I'm feeling that day.

Yoga, if I'm overwhelmed, like
I have been lately, or dancing.

I danced pretty much every single day. I think it's like it's like

my natural antidepressent was just also good
for the soul and to get rid of

whatever it is you're dealing with.
And then at night we come together and

we walk home from school and then
again it's family time and we've noticed a

huge increase in his aggression, aggression
and just like anxiety and not feeling well

when we give him screen time.
So right now we're experimenting with no games,

no screen time, no phone time
for mom and Dad, and we

also go to bed very early,
protect our eyes from the light, protect

those okay, Maadian rhythms. And
I also just carve out at least fifteen

minutes every day where we go sit
on the grass outside, since it's nice

and Colorad all right now, and
we do our grounding and we just kind

of just connect with one another in
the middle of our work day to to

make sure that we're staying connected even
when the little guy is not around.

And the last thing is right when
we wake up in the morning. I

usually wake up a little bit before
him and I have to stay in the

bed because I'm colose sleeping, but
I do some kind of like breathwork and

then when he wakes up we do
our three things that were grateful for.

So I think because our own bosses
were able to kind of create that work

life balance and I think we've done
it relatively well. I used to just

go for the whole six hours and
not look around or do take my eyes

off work, but now I realize
I need to give myself some breaks,

connect with my husband and then just
make sure that family times a priority when

when works done. Autumn and Chazz
have been married for ten years. They

started their company, Palea Valley,
after just one year of marriage. So

we were married for a year and
it was really my husband's vision when we

got married. He's like, I
want us, when we have a child,

to be with that child a lot, and so how can we create

a life where we are kind of
in charge and doing something that we love,

but also prioritizing our lifestyle? So
it was really kind of his vision

and I'm just the lucky recipient of
that vision. HMM. And and how

do you guys delegate responsibilities within the
business? How do you kind of see

the rules? Oh, he is
the mastermind. He is like behind the

scenes pulling all the strings and he's
very I don't he's a genius when it

comes to strategy and so he does
a lot of that and then what I

do is a lot of the education
and a lot of the outreach and we

work together on the marketing and but
he does a lot of logistics and the

strategy and I'm just kind of out
there meeting people and trying to represent the

company well mostly, and learning.
I learned. I mean I'm in a

due girl program right now, so
just try and keep up to date with

what people are meeting and, you
know, and all of the food related

and research related responsibilities or mind to. So how does autumn kiss the ground?

I kiss the ground through our companies
and through just that commitment to being

that fifteen minute commitment every single day
where I go outside and I kind of

take the time to recognize the relationship
that I have with the Earth beneath me

and how it is serving me and
how inspiring me to then go ahead and

serve it as well.