You cannot trust anything that's coming out of like my taste buds during pregnancy, which has been really interesting in developing a cookbook.
This is the Pursuit of Wellness podcast, and I'm your host, Mari Llewellyn.
Olivia, welcome to the Pursuit of Wellness.
It's amazing to be here.
Thank you so much. I am a pal girl, which I actually don't even know if I've told you this.
I had no idea. So it's fun to be, you know, on the other side of the camera.
round that's so sweet and guys just if you're not watching on camera olivia is literally about to give birth like we talked about doing this episode and you were like yeah if unless i'm giving birth that day and like literally you were like i might be cramping so i can't believe you're here right now and you look amazing and congratulations and we're all so happy for you thank you yes for context i'm due in two days this is crazy that you're so like kind of the most pregnant that you can be which is insane because you literally have heels on and you look good like this is insane like you look
amazing i'm glad that we're recording in the morning because by the end of the day i'm not sure if the heels were yeah it's like a downward spiral what time are you in bed nowadays last night 9 30 and i've been letting myself sleep until 7 30 yep as it's been amazing like the last week i just committed to you are not going to be an early riser you need to like like sleep as much as you can now before this baby comes out and like completely wrecks your schedule.
Like rest up, honey.
How much has your routine changed from before you were pregnant to now?
I was definitely a lot more rigid in my habits and routines and everything was like super systematized.
And I think one of the main takeaways from pregnancy is I'm building a lot more flexibility and less rigidity into my schedule.
It's like, OK, I need to give myself some margin i can't run at the same pace that i was running and i'm sure you can relate so well to this where you're like in the zone in work mode for so many years that you start to operate like a machine and pregnancy does not really allow for that it's like that masculine feminine vibe that everyone talks about and some people don't like that word but i feel like yeah i was was in fight or flight for so long and this like going through IVF and pregnancy completely shifted the way that I approach my life for the first time and it's kind of nice because it
really does force you to change your perspective on how you do things like such a release of control yes and realizing that part of that release is actually very liberating yes at first I held tightly to to like, no, I want to maintain like the same level of putting out content like I was.
And I want to be working out like I was before, eating like I was before and realizing that I could release some of that rigidity and nothing would really change all that much. Like work kept going on at a normal pace and I felt really good.
I felt really strong.
It's just, it's helped me be more flexible in my mindset about everything.
thing yeah which is a great learning lesson to bring into the rest of your life as well and i can't wait to talk about like workouts and pregnancy nutrition before we hop in you have 1 .6 million followers you have an amazing food page honestly i think your page is my favorite to follow it really is because you post you make food fun and i feel like you focus on gluten -free dairy -free refined sugar -free most of the time but the food is still so delicious and fun looking where did your love of food begin i'm so glad that that is what comes through on my page first of all yeah um it's been very intentional
for me to create a space where like food is fun it's joyful it's healthy and it happens to be gluten -free dairy -free refined sugar -free it's not like all right we're starting with the rules and now we're trying to force it to be interesting i really want food to just be an enjoyable part of everyday life it started because very similar to your story, I have very acne prone skin and I battled it from the time that I was 10 years old until like my mid twenties when I was getting deep cystic acne that I just like could not figure out how to fix.
Um, so I really made a lot of diet and lifestyle modifications.
And one of those was switching to a gluten -free dairy -free refined sugar -free diet, really trying to limit inflammatory foods and but still eat joyfully like i felt like a lot of the content that i was consuming at the time was okay if you're going to eat quote unquote healthy it has to look a certain way chicken and rice chicken and rice yep like you're boiling things you're steaming things like that is the extent of the excitement that we're getting into and i was like that is is not enough for me.
So I started to share content around the time of like my mid twenties, um, started to get really into cooking, started sharing content and realize that there is this whole community of people who wanted to eat this way and experience joy and like eat healthy.
And maybe they were dealing with the same skin issues as me, or maybe it was just a desire to feel good or other health issues, but it started to reach so many people.
And it was really really exciting.
And the last four years of really devoting myself to like building a business in the food content space has been incredible and very exciting.
I think that is how I found your page.
I think it was because I was struggling so badly with acne and I tried some crazy diets.
Like I've spoken about it on the podcast. Like if you even go back and look at my podcast videos from a year year ago my acne was so so so bad and I went through phases of like full keto only eating meat like crazy shit honestly and now I'm like what was I doing like none of it helped but it was like this control factor of like if only I eat like this then maybe my skin will get better and it ended up being some gut bacteria that I needed to do antibiotics for which was crazy yeah so none of the diet things actually ended up helping but eating gluten -free dairy -free refined sugar -free made me
feel better. And it definitely helped with the inflammation of my skin.
So I feel like that is how I ended up on your page.
And I'm sure how so many people find your recipes, but like, when I think of your recipes, I think of the brownies, the nachos, like it is really fun and colorful, which is so cool.
And I love that because I went through a phase on my page of doing a lot of recipes, like maybe for like six months.
And that was the hardest content that I've ever had to produce.
It would take me the entire day.
I would have tripods here, tripods there, like, Like I'm running around making sure my angles are good.
I ended up like hiring someone to help me.
And I was like, I don't think I can keep doing this.
What is the actual process of creating a new recipe and then shooting it?
Someone actually recently asked me if they were trying a bunch of different things with their content.
And they were saying like some of my lifestyle stuff does well, but like my random recipes that I'll share do like really well.
Do you think I should dedicate more time to recipes?
the bees and i was like well i am biased because that's just my preferred creative art form like i love to cook that's um a unique differentiator for me but that is by far the hardest type of content that i do yeah and if i'm gonna whip out every now and then i'll put like a day in the life or um what i eat in a day or that type of content and i'm like oh my gosh this is so easy so great yeah like a collage i'm like oh my i should really start incorporating more of this So it is definitely a heavier lift, but it has just happened to be the thing that I feel like is what I can offer uniquely to my
platform. But in terms of process, my process has gotten much more expansive as I feel like there's more pressure and more eyeballs on my page.
In the beginning, it was easy to just, this is what I'm having for dinner tonight.
I'm just kind of throwing things together, pulling things out of my pantry.
It's delicious. It's fun.
um but now i do feel this pressure that everything needs to be tested yeah so it's like i'm i'm going through the process making the recipe multiple times and then i have a recipe tester who tests the recipes before you film before i film to make sure it's actually good make sure it's good and like poke at it a little yeah ask me questions like okay if someone is going to substitute this type of flour what's going to be the outcome like you need to be specific about like does it fall fall apart if you use almond flour exactly yeah and those were things that were very much a learn as I went because I
am a home cook I'm self -taught I didn't go to culinary school I didn't learn about like the chemistry of different flours and it's been a really good learning process as people have given me feedback that like I tried this and it was terrible and I'm like oh well what did you change about it and they're like roughly everything okay sounds like a you probably like okay it's a a little bit of user error here um but it's good for me because now when i have my blog posts written i can be a lot more specific about like okay if you're going to make this substitution it's going to be cakey or it's not going
to have the same rise or whatever it is yeah so um yeah it's a lot of like me personally making the recipes getting them tested and then shooting them and it's like a whole process it just seems so detail oriented and then even the aesthetics of it like for bloom when I used to like do the props for the shoots like I used to be behind the camera and I would help have the lettuce and whatever fruits we were using food styling is really really difficult it's so hard yes because the food looks good for about two minutes yeah you're like okay it has to have the perfect sheen on it and I have so much
respect for food photographers yes and for projects that I work on like my ebooks and um a future cookbook there is no way I am shooting those photos because it is an art form it's so hard to make food look good for like a long period of time yeah they're like spraying things and putting like nail varnish on fruits like there's all these tricks so many tricks look better my last ebook shoot we had like a basic matcha latte in it yeah and I'm holding the matcha and the food stylist is like don't accidentally drink it because we put Windex on the glass oh god to make it like really really vibrant
and clean yeah okay thank you please don't drink windex do not drink windex that's my worst nightmare actually drinking windex that day was the day that I found out that I was pregnant oh god like I can't even imagine I'm like sipping on windex like no no no no oh god but yeah like that's what it takes because food looks good in real life but when you put it on camera you almost need to like zhuzh it up and that has been one of the biggest learnings I feel like in my content creation because I am not someone who is naturally driven by the aesthetic I don't really have like a great eye for food
styling I always say like if you come over to our house and you think it looks nice it's because of Kyle like Kyle has much more of like an interior design eye does he he does he's like very much into the aesthetic and yeah I'm so grateful for that I'm not either like no these I see these girls with like gorgeously curated feeds I mean honestly I would think that you are because your feed is so gorgeous but that is not the way that I lean honestly no I love having help in that regard yeah even like Kyle will help with like what I'm gonna wear he loves having a little bit of a say and like it's
really cute that is where is he from originally Pennsylvania where in Pennsylvania Montrose okay it's this little town down in northeast pennsylvania i went to school in philly so i kind of know some of the areas okay where are you from originally eugene oregon okay yes i read that did you grow up around horses i grew up not really around horses but like out in the country yeah okay so some of our neighbors had horses um but it was like a lot of cows chickens sheep yeah it's very cute gorgeous it's gorgeous we're actually gonna go this summer after baby's with the baby with the baby have her meet
the family and spend a little time away from the Texas heat which will be nice I was kind of like thinking about having a baby in this heat and I feel like it would be really tough because it's not like you're going outside at 3 p .m it's insane I'm a little bit worried about being like freshly postpartum in the 100 degree weather yeah because yeah I think you want to be taking them outside you want them to get vitamin d and that light in their eyes in the the morning but like my gosh i'm gonna be a hormonal mess and just like sweating one thing i've been obsessed with for my skin for a very long
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Code pow. Like, how do you even begin to think think about your life postpartum like I'm sure it's really difficult to even know what to expect like how are you kind of approaching that I've been talking to a lot of women who I who have businesses I'm trying to educate myself on like what they're doing what they wish they would have done differently with their babies um in the beginning and overwhelmingly what it sounds like is it's really hard to go back to work no matter like how late into it you phase back in it's just really hard and I do feel grateful that I work from home yeah so like going
back to work is going to look very different that is such a privilege um it's been a balance of like baking in that flexibility like we talked about like I'm not giving myself a super rigid Okay.
After eight weeks or after three months, I'm like going to be fully back in the swing.
Yeah. Um, I've prepped enough content to give myself like a couple months of time off.
Yeah. So I'm planning on at least two months of like stepping away, which will be really nice and just bonding and soaking in cuddles and us learning each other and how to breastfeed and all of that stuff, all the things, all the things that you have to start learning.
Um, so I'm definitely looking forward to taking my first ever break from content in four years.
I was thinking over the weekend, I haven't not posted like the most I've ever gone without posting is four days.
Yeah. So what is that going to look like?
Are you going to like delete social or just not go on?
I think I'll still have it.
I will still be posting like all of the content that I prepped.
And then then every week my sub stack is going to go out so I will be like promoting my sub stack but that's one of those things that like I have assets that I have built so that I can put post out on my story and I don't have to be like recording something live you're prepped I feel really prepped and it's been a lot of work to like my assistant Chelsea is here and she has been so helpful like editing videos and making sure I have time to review them before the editing is a lot it's a lot it's honestly actually one of my favorite parts of everything i love editing but it's i mean even with recipes
especially it's tough do you still edit your own videos well depends what it is if it's a podcast clip my producer darby helps but if it's like a vlog or something i'm making i will edit it for sure i do love the editing and that was hard for me to turn over because i felt like yeah well this is where i'm like part of my creativity comes in yeah but in the first trimester when I was a horizontal person it was hard for me to like keep my head up and I was like sitting down in between filming different recipe clips like I was so tired yeah I finally released that I was like holding so tightly to
it before I finally released it and had Chelsea start helping with editing and she's like such a whiz at it she's so good I'm like why did I hold on to this for so long wait I okay I want to talk about the beginning of your pregnancy.
So when did you first get pregnant?
September. It was like a wedding weekend from one of our friends, which was really cute.
Oh, that is cute. And were you guys trying?
We were. Yeah. We had decided like, okay, I think that we're ready to do this.
Okay. Tell us about the moment you found out you were pregnant.
And then I want to hear about your first trimester.
I had just come from an ebook photo shoot and I was like, gosh, I'm so tired.
weird I don't maybe it was just because being on camera all day you're natural it's a lot so you're tired and I was kind of poo -pooing this idea that maybe I was pregnant and I was supposed to get my period that day and I was like oh maybe like the stress of building up to this photo shoot and launching this ebook like I'm just you know maybe I won't start today um I should have been clued in by the fact that my boobs were insanely sore like way more than normal PMS symptoms but I was having having all of those normal PMS symptoms I was like a little crampy it was like a little in my soft girl
era a little crying yeah I got home from the shoot and I told Kyle I was supposed to start my period today but I didn't and he was like I think you should take a test just so we feel like I don't know just so we know for sure I had these little flimsy paper Amazon the pregnancy oh I don't know I forget what they're called it was the packaging pink yes I've used those okay I think I've used every single test on the market.
You're like, I'm a pro at this test. I love that you know the brand name.
Oh, I know all the brands.
Yeah. Well, I took that little flimsy guy, peed on it and only like one line developed, which was negative.
Yeah. And so I was like, okay, well now I have this flimsy little stick that's covered in pee.
What do I do with it?
So I just like set it in my sink and then popped in the shower.
Yeah. got out of the shower and a second small line had developed and it was like not enough for me to be fully convinced those tasks take a minute okay i didn't i didn't know that so i was like oh negative like moving on with my life but i sent a photo to my sister because she um for context she gave birth three months ago so we're three months apart in our pregnancies that's so special it's really cute so every trimester that she was just popping out of i was just entering ring into that's awesome to have someone to talk it was really nice it's like such a good resource but I texted her and I
was like is this positive and she goes very positive oh my gosh so I ran into the laundry room where Kyle was and I was like babe it was positive and he goes take another like so just we need to prove this like you need to take another so I took another one of like the flimsy little paper ones it was also positive and so I was like okay now it's it's time to bring out the big guns.
The clear blue. It's time for the clear blue.
It's time for the clear blue.
Cause you want to see that pregnant, like the word. I need to like, make sure that this is solid.
Um, so I had one clear blue test that had been in my drawer for like five years from right after Kyle and I got married.
I had a little, oh, am I pregnant?
And like bought a pack of two.
Yeah. And so literally it was like so old and it was positive.
I was like oh my gosh like this is insane it was kind of a full body experience as i'm sure you know it's like yeah well what now yeah yeah this is crazy because you don't feel pregnant yet no you certainly don't look it you're just like the first thing for me too though like but i wasn't sure if it was hormones or not yes like i was like is it just from my ivf meds or like i didn't know but i do think that's like a telltale sign for a lot of people yeah i really should have been like like, more in tune with, like, obviously this is because it's hard to believe it is a thing that you dream about.
And then it happens and you're like, how is this real?
And then you like keep taking tests to like prove to yourself that you're still pregnant.
I took one every day, I think for three weeks.
I'm sure. Yeah. Because it's like, and then you schedule like your first appointment.
Yeah. And you really want to be pregnant at this appointment.
So I was like, I'm just gonna keep taking tests.
And how long did you keep it secret?
Because I feel like you You didn't talk about it publicly until like for a while, right?
I think I was 22 weeks pregnant when I finally announced.
Oh my God. So you really held that in.
I held it in for a long time.
And I just, I was so used to having a platform that was like very focused on food and less focused on my lifestyle that I didn't really know how to talk about something this big and personal.
personal and it like, it felt so sacred to me that I wanted to keep it just close to my heart for a while.
Kyle and I got married before I ever had a platform.
So it was just like, I had never had any sort of big moment happen personally publicly.
And I wasn't sure how I was going to react to that.
And also how my audience would react to it because like they're very much here for recipes.
And I think that was reflected in, you know, it was obviously like a moment when I finally did announce where there was a lot of support and it was so sweet.
Then I also lost 7 ,000 followers that day.
No. So it's like, clearly there's an audience that was very much 7 ,000 with a lot.
And it's like odd that I even know that, but I was very curious.
Yeah. How my audience was going to react.
That is really interesting.
Yeah. Because I guess, yeah, your, your page is very food focused.
I feel like since being pregnant, maybe it's shifted a little little bit.
I definitely talk more in my stories about lifestyle.
Yeah. I had always woven those elements in but it was like what we're eating on date night and it was still like food adjacent.
Yeah. And then now I'm much more open about talking about pregnancy and things that are definitely more personal and the response has been incredible in stories.
I just think once things hit my feed people are a little bit resistant.
Well also because you don't know like what algorithm it's landing on and if you hit men or some other group of people it could just go downhill so quick i can always tell when one of my videos isn't going to my followers and it's going to like the for you page yeah because then i'm like getting comments rogue crazy comments i'm like okay this has gone too far it's like the cons of anything going viral i stopped reading comments on viral videos so long ago because they were the most heinous yes and like the least reflective of my audience or of myself so i was like you know what yeah viral videos
i don't look at them they're almost like not meant for us to see yes i feel like i've had a few podcast clips go viral and people have i mean obviously people come on this show and have strong opinions about things and talk about certain topics that are kind of controversial and that comment section is so scary that i just wouldn't even go there yeah um and i think that's like a healthy method Honestly.
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i started my business when i was selling my five dollar pdf workout guides shopify was the first place i went and we fully scaled my business from there to where it is now which is absolutely insane shopify has been there for us every step of the way it's a powerful set of tools that helps you start and manage your business whether online or in person it's designed to make life easier for entrepreneurs from beginners to big brands by providing tools that simplify selling you can easily sell on social media manage your operations and even collaborate with other brands it's an all -in -one hub for managing
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only because I have a friend who she was doing fashion content and then she got pregnant and she was like the meanest comments you will ever get are like mom shaming type comments and and just a lot of unsolicited advice on what to do with yourself with your body with your baby with what you're eating and like everything becomes a moral decision suddenly when you're pregnant and so the unsolicited advice has been interesting interesting um i was definitely very particular a couple months after i got pregnant like i started to notice that everything was affecting me so much more i was like really
soft i feel that way now oh my gosh everything was making me cry every like piece of advice that felt um triggering was like really upsetting me yeah so i've been very intentional about stepping away from my dms which has felt really strange because for the longest time i've i loved being like so connected with my audience and i still definitely pop in there pretty frequently but i'm not like looking at that request folder as much yes like if someone has moved out of the request folder and like they've you know they're contributing to conversation in a positive way then i'll engage with that but um
yeah the request folder is like a little bit scary so scary and i think that's the best thing you can do to protect your peace especially like when your hormones are all over the place and you're emotional like i i think i looked in my request folder this morning and i had a crazy message crazy like it's always about my dogs oh which yeah they're the loves of my life like it's crazy what do they even possibly say about your dog so we have a bigger older dog named lulu an angel we've had her for 11 years and she's older and it's tough for her in the heat here so we always have her go to our greg's
parents house on long island because it's cool she can swim she grew up there she loves it and she also hates traveling and we travel a ton in the summer and my small dog Arnold loves traveling like he'll go anywhere but people think I'm like abandoning Lulu even though she like lives the best life yeah she's obsessed with her having like the ideal summer she's having she's summering on in the Hamptons like she's fine but I get these heinous DMs about how I'm horrible to my dogs and I shouldn't be a mom anyway gosh that's so sad I laugh at it I'm like this is a crazy message to send someone but in real
life I feel like I've been so much more emotional lately and like a little bit irritable oh my gosh I went through and this was around like 16 17 weeks I got pregnancy rage and I can't imagine you with pregnancy everyone I tell they're like no like you're so sweet that sounds funny I was like like so easily irked by everything and I remember one day I told Kyle you are not doing anything but I am so mad at you like you are being so wonderful everything about you is making me angry right now the way you're breathing the way like you're walking when you put your hand on my back that one time like
sometimes that gets me too I'm like don't touch me don't go near my hair other times i'm like please touch me yes oh i just want cuddles i feel like truly bad honest about it like at least you were up front but it is a really crazy like out of control feeling yes i've noticed it come in and out and like yeah it just feels also it's tough with your partner because i don't know if you felt this way but i feel like everything about me is changing like the way i look the way i feel my life the what i think about everything and greg's life Exactly the same.
Yeah. And it can be a little hard to not like let resentment like bloom a little bit, but I've tried to be very aware at least of like where I'm feeling annoyed that, you know, he's able to carry on his normal life and he doesn't have these like oppressive emotions sometimes where I will, I'll be in church and I'll literally just start like sobbing out of nowhere.
nowhere and i mean i guess it's emotional you know they're like are you okay and then after one service we were leaving and i was still crying and he was like so where do you want to go for lunch and i'm like i'm not even hungry i can't believe that you're not sad you should be sad you should be sad too and he's like about what when i was going through ivf and we actually go to the same church and i would go to those services i would be crying like low key by myself because it just it is really moving sometimes the water works were you there on mother's day i don't think so that was it was like
last month but oh i knew that mother's day was going to be like very yeah sobby for me so it was it was very much a no makeup day i was like we're going in bare tissues no makeup seriously what kind of workouts have you done during your pregnancy and then we'll talk about nutrition so i had just taken up running right around the time when I got pregnant that quickly fell off no more running and it wasn't like doctor prescribed like I don't want you running anymore I just quite physically could not run I was gonna say I see a lot of pregnant girls still running and I'm like how because my boobs
hurt too much I was so fatigued that I could hardly go on our normal walks so I'm like very impressed by pregnant women who continue to run and I think that's it's very empowering it's very cool to watch just wasn't my journey.
Um, so in the beginning I was walking, doing LaGree and doing strength training.
So LaGree, I was doing like twice a week, um, strength training twice a week and then like daily walks.
And I would say things started to change for me with LaGree around 13 weeks.
I started to feel like, Oh, I'm not able to engage my abs in the same way, which was so so much earlier than I expected to kind of lose that control.
So 13 weeks, I, um, I was still going, but I started meeting with the instructor before every class.
And like, she was telling me all the modifications that I needed to make that day.
It was funny. Cause by the end of pregnancy, I was modifying the whole fricking class.
I was just like, I'm like taking my own class.
Like why am I even here?
It's a lot of abs. That's what scares me.
Cause I was doing former.
trauma right and that's like so intense and it's so much abs I'm I don't even think I could do it right now I ended up stopping at 30 around like 33 34 weeks because I was so heavily modifying the ab series and it was like I was doing the same three moves you know they're moving everyone through like this series of nine moves and I'm like I'm just gonna be over here doing like bare the whole time and barely lifting my knees off of the platform.
Around 20 weeks, I had to stop walking and that was so hard on me because I love walks.
It was the way I was getting outside, the way I was clearing my head.
It was really good for my mental health, but I developed SPD, symphysis pubis dysfunction.
I haven't heard of that.
That one's a fun one.
What is that? off basically the relaxin that's flooding your system makes your pelvic area very loose so the muscles are um under constant stress and you I was just so incredibly sore in that area and when I describe the pain it feels like a strained hip flexor but like across your whole pelvis wow okay so that was really hard and I started seeing a pelvic floor physical therapist and she was like Like, unfortunately, walking is one of those exercises where it's, like, very passive shearing of that area.
So it's kind of one of those things that pregnant women have to give up if they develop this.
That sucks. So it's, like, a little bit heartbreaking.
But I was like, okay, how can I figure out another way to move that's going to be compatible with this change in my body?
So Kyle and I bought bikes.
And that was so fun.
We started, like, biking around the neighborhood at night in exchange for walking.
just regular bikes just like beach cruisers you know I've kind of been dying to go on a bike ride actually now that you say that well you do have bikes yeah we have bikes we have like the blue je bikes okay we're going to Aspen for a month soon and I want a bike there so you just reminded me that I should do that okay do it that's and that didn't affect your pelvis area no that was like totally fine for me around 26 weeks I started doing Evlo Shannon Ritchie's program yeah so she she has a prenatal specific um part of her evlo program and so i started like really getting more into strength training
and i love evlo i was i like overnight became an evlo girl like oh my gosh this is the best thing um it made me feel really strong but it was like movements that felt so safe for my current season which i started to lose that feeling about lagree i was like i gotta modify so much of this whereas evlo i wasn't modifying anything it was specifically for like that week of pregnancy that i was in i've been weight training too it feels really good does like because you can focus on different parts of your body without like targeting this area too much you feel strong you feel empowered i haven't tried
evlo i should um that's awesome but i was yeah i was thinking of looking into some kind of prenatal program program because I'm doing things that feel safe, but sometimes I'm like chat GPT and like, is it okay if I do this?
Is it okay if I do that?
You know, as part of Shannon's program, she is currently pregnant when she's doing it and she's recording the class in the week of, you know, gestation that she's teaching for.
And she's a doctor of physical therapy.
So there's so much information given about like how to safely do the exercises.
And I feel like I learned so much about my body, not just my pregnant body but how to operate in like a strength training setting yeah through her program and you come with so much more knowledge about strength training I mean I'm whatever whatever you're doing is clearly working thank you yeah it was very empowering to just be like oh I'm like actually getting stronger yes throughout pregnancy which is not really the rhetoric of working out during pregnancy you kind of feel like all right I'm just gonna gonna progressively lose muscle I'm gonna progressively feel like less strong less empowered
to move my body but um that hasn't been the case for me yeah it kind of flips the narrative like I feel like when I first got pregnant I was so nervous of doing something wrong because my IVF clinic was like don't lift too heavy you know at first they're very conservative obviously because they want to make sure it worked but now that I'm in this sort of of like normal era of being pregnant i'm just noticing how good it makes me feel and i'm not thinking about the same things anymore like previously maybe i wanted my abs to show or you know what i wanted muscle to show and now i think about being
strong for childbirth i think about having a kid and being strong i've even heard science that your actual fetus will be stronger if you're stronger yes which is amazing like wild crazy so like the baby's kind of weightlifting too I don't know, whatever.
But it is kind of amazing.
And I think it's cool that we're talking about it because I was a little bit nervous to post that I was weightlifting because I was worried about the feedback because people are so sensitive about everything.
Yes. There's a lot of opinions about how you should be moving or not moving during pregnancy.
And I think this has helped me tap into intuition.
It's like a balance of being informed and intuitive about the movement.
yeah like okay where can i go to get good solid resources around how to safely move and also like what feels good for me yes how do i just like listen to oh you know what this one this doesn't feel good anymore this feels awesome gotta listen to your body a hundred percent i'm so excited to share that this podcast is sponsored by the real real the best place to shop shop authenticated luxury bags clothing watches and so much more i have personally used the real real for many many years i've sold a lot of my luxury items on there and made a lot of money back from it which is amazing i feel like
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Did you read Expecting Better?
No, but I've heard you talk about it and I'm like, is it too late to read it?
well you're about two days so I was curious because it's a lot about food and it's about the statistics of so obviously at the beginning they're like don't eat deli meat don't eat sushi whatever all the things they say and this author Emily Oster I think her name is breaks down the statistics of these actual foods deli meat and why why doctors tell us not to eat them and the actual likelihood of getting sick or whatever it is and that was really interesting to read because it kind of like busted a lot of the myths that i had in my head and it's not that i like ran and ate sushi i still haven't
eaten sushi even though i miss it a lot actually but it helps you make your own decisions about what you're eating and what you feel safe eating have you like with your recipes and things like that are people like oh you shouldn't be eating that or do people say things like that?
There's this morning tonic that I am obsessed with from Alchemy Juice.
Oh, yes. Yeah. I love that place.
And it has butterfly pea powder in it.
And someone was like, that can send you into labor.
It made me have contractions.
And I'm thinking, oh, gosh, maybe I shouldn't be drinking this.
But it's also the smallest amount.
It's literally for color.
Just to make it blue.
Yeah. Exactly. So I'm like, OK, let's be realistic.
I'm drinking it like two days a week and i've been drinking it throughout my whole pregnancy clearly the baby's still in there we're doing fine we're doing fine she's nice and snug i will occasionally get comments like that or and these ones i find really helpful i'm doing this postpartum series of this is what i'm prepping this is what i'm filling my freezer with oh love that that's been really fun there are certain things like parsley sage rosemary and thyme that you're not supposed supposed to be introducing during breastfeeding and like i made this really delicious like tuscan chicken bake
and i put thyme in it and so it is helpful every now and then when people are like you know maybe you don't actually want to be eating that in postpartum and again it's like such small it's like what is the reasoning behind that it can reduce your milk milk supply got it so it has there's something in those herbs that like can possibly negatively if no i don't want want to be like fear -mongering anyone like oh my gosh we're just talking this is this is just the feedback that i'm getting in my game i didn't know that yeah and is there certain things you can eat to increase milk supply i'm sure
yes so i actually recently made some like lactation support cookies and this was another thing that people were like literally anything you post about pregnancy and i'm sure we'll find this about motherhood as well people are like that's ridiculous like like you're clearly anti -science or something i don't know i'm like i just posted a lactation cookie it's literally an excuse for me to eat cookies during postpartum i've heard of lactation cookies like they sell them at like erwan and whatever yeah exactly and it has like oats flax coconut oil and brewer's yeast and all of those are supposed to
help like with milk production great and i'm like make it a cookie make it a cookie exactly like oh sounds delicious that is is a really cool series though i love that idea like having food prepped and ready yeah because they say the best thing you could give a new mom is food that's ready to go i'm like kind of looking forward to that like definitely having some options available but recently i had a friend ask like what's something that i can do for you in postpartum and he has always been like a very very generous gift giver.
And one of the ideas from my assistant actually was, why don't you have like a chef prepare her a few days worth of meals?
So I actually reached out to Taylor, your friend.
And I was like, I know that you were doing this last year.
I don't know if that's still an offering of yours to do like mommy meals.
She did. Oh, I hope she's by the way, she loves you.
And she's a hundred percent listening to this episode right now.
We love of you Taylor I love her so much she has been um part of my cookbook recipe testing team so cool and I'm like I am one of those people that falls in love with everyone that I work with it's like I should probably be the best possible person for you to reach out to for that by the way so thorough and she loves cooking and she like gives the best feedback I feel like such good feedback my writer and he's like helping edit some recipes too he said that um the two testers we have he was like this is the dream team of testers like i'm so impressed by them he's been so so impressed by taylor i'm
like oh i was following along on the journey and seeing all the recipes she was making so excited for your cookbook wait when does the cookbook come out not until march of 27 which feels like a million years 27 i know traditional publishing like it is a long haul but i've heard we talked about that a little bit because i've always wanted to write a book and i was kind of like asking you some questions that's so interesting yeah Yeah.
So not even next, you have to get through all of next year, all of next year, which I'm kind of grateful for because I will have by that point, like an almost two -year -old.
Wow. I know it's crazy.
That's crazy to think about.
So we'll have like maybe a little bit terrible twos on the cookbook tour.
Yeah. That's going to be a journey for you.
And with pregnancy nutrition, was there anything that you were hyper fixated on throughout at the beginning cravings?
Cravings are always like such a fun one to talk about.
out i feel like i had um kind of boring cravings in the beginning yeah i really craved herb salads no way like so random god your body probably wanted the nutrients it wanted herbs or something so bad so i there's this salad that i have on my blog it's like an herby quinoa salad i made that literally every day no way my poor assistant was probably so tired of eating this salad but i was like i like chelsea we're having the salad again tonight but that's funny because i'm like kind of turned off by salads right now i am now too third trimester i don't want a vegetable it's very annoying yeah but like
first trimester i wanted herb salads um berries and citrus healthy queen obsessed with oranges citrus is a big one for me like lemon anything obsessed i was going through bags of oranges like i was so obsessed with oranges and orange juice and one of my things i didn't want was like a flavored beverage except for if it was orange juice yep like i wasn't drinking electrolytes anymore because i just couldn't juice too actually and i never used to drink it it's got to be the vitamin c because yeah i wasn't like a big juice drinker before yep like maybe on vacation cabo would have like orange juice
at brunch you know what's funny about orange juice i feel like it had really bad pr for a while and everyone's like oh my god it's full of sugar why are we drinking it and now it's having a resurgence yes because people are mixing like creatine with their orange juice and it's like considered ancestral now oh we love a rebrand orange juice got a new pr team and it's going great i'm so happy for them i know i know they deserve better pr we hopped on the bandwagon we did also apple juice sounds really good to me right now oh yeah like in the fall like i wanted like crisp apple juice yeah just like
something tart yes is really really good yeah but other like food fixations I read the book real food for pregnancy oh I should look at that was a good book it very much just um solidified that the way that I was already eating was very healthy for pregnancy so I didn't really feel like I had to change much um you know I've always been like very conscientious of protein intake and trying to eat variety and trying to have a lot of like micronutrients from herbs and vegetables and fruits and so in a way it was like oh the things i have been doing are like good for building a little baby inside of you
so that was good um there were some specific things like i tried to incorporate some liver once a week into like a ground beef taco bowl or something like that so that you would mix it in the ground beef okay my husband's dying for me to do the liver thing and i used to swallow a chunk of frozen liver every day impressive disgust no disgusting so disgusting and i can still picture the taste of it and i just i don't know how to go about it i was buying force of nature ancestral blend yeah that helps and then mixing it with ground beef okay so it's like i don't really know how much liver i'm getting
though yeah just thinking about it you know yeah the if i had come off of years of eating raw liver then I would feel the same way I had never got into that thing like Kyle got into it and I was like babe it's really hard for you to watch you choke this down like it's clearly so unenjoyable I really get upset when Greg does disgusting things because I'm like you're really grossing me out and making my life really hard like it's seriously disgusting he was eating sardines last night just out of a cat a tin and I was like please like do something different with the sardines like he was just eating
them whole with the head you know I did that in like the second trimester suddenly sardines sounded really good to me good for you how were you eating the sardines shannon ritchie actually turned me on to they're like boneless skinless sardines which boneless was like a huge priority what's the brand i want to say it's like crown prince and they sell it at costco okay i think i know what you mean i just ordered a ton of boneless whatever okay sardines from europe or something and i'm supposed to be eating those well they're i actually found them to be very palatable especially if we're comparing
it to liver okay yeah like so much better i guess you could like mash it up and like yeah and like kind of make it like a little um tuna salad -esque yeah vibe i was just eating them straight out of the can because i was like these are actually kind of good your body must have been like i need a sardine yeah i you cannot trust anything that's coming out of like my taste buds during pregnancy which has been really interesting in developing a cookbook because i'm like okay thank god i have like recipe testers because like this tastes really good to me and people are like we don't eat herbs oh my
gosh the sardines they have such good omegas in them they're apparently amazing have you seen the videos of little babies in their high chairs just downing sardines no i'm inspired though i want to give my baby so i mean someone's gonna give me shit for this i don't care at some point when the baby can eat solids solids i want to put sardines because apparently it's really good for them i know my friend rachel has been doing like liver and i'm not sure she's been doing sardines but her kid eats so well i'm like rachel you're doing a great job like come feed my baby i gotta go check that out because i
actually love watching like baby nutrition oh you're gonna like she has i think a whole highlight on like what she's been feeding her baby ever since she introduced solids at six months i'm like thank you for doing the lord's work it's so interesting it's so interesting Interesting.
Have you heard of Dr. Rhonda Patrick?
Yes. Okay. Obsessed with her.
She's amazing. I think she is a two -year -old, maybe a three -year -old now.
And she's the one who inspired me to eat fish eggs.
I've been eating fish eggs.
That's right. When I can, when I can, some days I'm like, it's not the day I can't.
Yeah. But I think she feeds her child really well.
I would love to like see that menu.
Yeah. And I'm sure you're going, I mean, I can't wait to see what you feed your child.
I'm really excited for that phase of motherhood, like starting to do solids and introduced little foods and so excited to think about olivia thank you so much for coming on the show this was such a pleasure i'm so glad i caught you before you um gave birth and her water didn't break on the show i know unfortunately i thought we were gonna have like a really fun moment like a really dramatic like i'm going for social i was laying in bed last night i was like oh my god what if olivia gives birth on the show would be iconic so honored to have you here can you tell everyone on where they can find
you online? Where can they get the eBooks, all the things, Substack?
I am at Olivia dot Adriance on Instagram, and then just at Olivia Adriance everywhere else, hardest to get an Instagram name.
And then my Substack is called Extra Scoop.
You can also just search Olivia Adriance on Substack.
And it is surprisingly devoid of food content on Substack.
I talk a lot about like the behind the scenes of building a content business and transitioning out corporate america into working for myself so a little bit of a different taste everything is linked in my bio on instagram that's where you can find me i love that and good luck thank you yes so soon hopefully bye bye thank you for joining us on the pursuit of wellness podcast to support this show please please rate and review and share with your loved ones.
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You can also watch the full video of each episode so on our youtube channel at pursuit of wellness podcast love you power girls and power boys i will see you next time the content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only it is not a substitute for individual medical and mental health advice and does not constitute a provider patient relationship as always talk to your doctor or health team
