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.