FP How We: Wellness

Our monthly home office wellness series turns within, as we talk all things Eat Pretty with Jolene Hart …

This post comes to you from Certified Health and Wellness Coach, Jolene Hart.

As a health coach and author, I help my readers and clients look and feel their best via the beautifying powers of food and self-care. Together we look beyond the surface of the skin, into the various ways we nourish our beauty — beginning with our meals and extending to mindset, movement, energy, sleep, and all of the unique needs of our individual bodies in each season. Beauty, as you’ve heard before, is so much more than skin deep, and I love watching my clients build a dynamic and very personal lifestyle of beauty that reflects that, supporting their lifelong beauty and wellbeing in the process.

I shared my approach to beauty with the Free People Home Office this month, amidst vases of wildflowers, linens hand-dyed to match the covers of my Eat Pretty book series, and an abundance of fresh lemons (one of my absolute favorite skin foods) for beauty food inspiration. A sunlit space, the glow of a summer afternoon, and a room filled with the magical creative energy of FP employees made this event so special!

Whenever I share my work, I also tell my personal story, almost a decade’s worth of skin issues, and my exhaustive search for a product, prescription, or treatment that would heal them. Not only did I make it my job to figure out why chronic eczema and cystic acne were taking over my skin, it actually was my job to give beauty advice, as I was working as a magazine beauty editor at the time. After several years spent seeking and testing promising skin treatments and services, my skin was unchanged. Desperate, I left my magazine post and used my journalist role to search for answers — delving into various fields of study including Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, genomics, aesthetics, dermatology, and integrative nutrition to learn more about our bodies and our skin. My own frustrating experience inspired my second career as a coach and my beauty nutrition-focused coaching practice Beauty Is Wellness, and that personal journey has kept me passionate about eating for beauty every day of my own life.

During my visit, I challenged the Free People staff to rethink their own approach to beauty, beginning with their meals and extending to the sources of energy in their lives that influence their own mindset, stress, and emotions. We named some of the qualities that describe a universally ‘beautiful’ person — vibrant, energetic, fresh, glowing — and I asked the group to use those qualities as a guide when choosing their own meals. The foods we eat break down to become our bodies on a molecular level, so choosing foods naturally high in energy, vibrancy, and freshness strongly adds to the visible beauty of our bodies, even as it supports optimal physical function.

I shared other qualities that are essential to keep in mind when choosing foods for beauty — qualities like seasonality, anti-inflammatory value, and color — and explained the vital role that blood sugar balance plays in achieving radiant, youthful skin, balanced hormones, good moods and your healthiest weight. One simple strategy that I believe all women should know to support their blood sugar balance is to eat a meal that satiates the body and provides slow-digesting energy. To achieve this, it’s ideal to include a combination of protein, healthy fats, and abundant vegetables on your plate every time you sit down to a meal. This illustration of an Eat Pretty plate, taken from my book Eat Pretty, Live Well, helps visualize what those foods might look like together.

 

 

Above all, I encouraged the FP team to listen closely to their bodies, by watching their skin as well as their energy, digestion, hormone balance, and stress levels, to find the foods and the habits that best support their beauty and body. We’re all uniquely made, so it’s important to recognize our own needs by seeing and feeling those telling manifestations in our bodies. I’ve found, as have so many of my readers and clients, that building a lifestyle that supports your beauty from the inside out not only helps you look and feel your best, it teaches you so much about your body in the process.

So many thanks to the amazing FP staff for inviting me to share this message, and for providing so much creative inspiration as always!

+ Want to learn more from Jolene Hart? Check out these articles here and start your journey to healthy living today! 

Photo by Magdalena Fountoukidis.

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Love the illustration of the eat pretty plate! It’s so useful!

Charmaine Ng | Architecture & Lifestyle Blog
http://charmainenyw.com

6 years ago

Love it!

6 years ago

Her work is revolutionary for re-defining health and wellbeing! Love it.
Stellar Glow Wellness

6 years ago

Her work is rejuvenating. This is really very informative blog.