#299: Heidi Farina - She Ditched the Hustle Culture, Changed Her Diet & Reclaimed Her Life
Visit Heidi’s Website
In this inspiring episode, Rip sits down with Heidi Farina to hear how she went from college athlete and biotech manager, to full-time artist and plant-based advocate.
After experiencing deep personal loss and burnout during the pandemic, Heidi realized something had to give. What followed was a powerful transformation rooted in health, healing, and rediscovery.
Heidi opens up about her decision to embrace a whole food plant-based lifestyle, how it helped her reclaim her energy and creativity, and what it really took to step away from a life that no longer aligned with her values.
She shares the emotional journey of balancing motherhood, grief, and self-care—and how she now prioritizes mental health and boundaries while pursuing a life that truly feels like her own.
She discusses
The impact of family’s health history on her wellness journey
The moment she knew she needed to make a major life change
How switching to a whole food plant-based diet jump-started her healing
Finding the courage to go “all in,” regardless of criticism and opinions of others
What it takes to rebuild your identity after burnout and loss
Tips for setting boundaries and creating a life of balance
Why it’s never too late to start over and pursue what lights you up
Episode Resources
Heidi’s Instagram
Heidi’s Website
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Full Episode Transcription via AI Transcription Service
Rey, I'm Rip Esselstyn and you're listening to the PLANTSTRONG podcast. What do you think happens when a former college athlete, biotech manager, and new mom hits a wall during the pandemic and decides to completely rewrite her story? In this powerful episode, I talk with Heidi Farina, who went from exhausted and burned out to thriving as a full time artist. And all of this was because she embraced the power of a whole food plant based diet. I'm going to have Heidi's story right after this word from Plantstrong. This was an email that came to me and read. As I sit here on New Year's Eve contemplating the last year of my life, I would be remiss to not acknowledge and send a giant thank you to not only you, but your whole family. Three years ago, I started down what I like to call a reawakening journey. One that has completely turned my life upside down, reconnected me to the path that I believe I am supposed to be on, and impacted my life for the better in every way. This is how the email from my guest today, Heidi Farina, started. And her deeply personal and transformative story is going to leave you inspired to reconnect with your own health and purpose. Once a Division 1 college athlete turned biotech professional and new mom, Heidi found herself overwhelmed, exhausted, and facing the reality of her family's health history. After the tragic loss of her mother and grandfather to preventable conditions, Heidi began to re evaluate everything from her career to her daily habits. What followed was nothing short of a reawakening that she shares with me today. Please welcome Heidi Farina. Heidi Farina, welcome to the Plantstrong podcast. You are a native Clevelander and so I already like you.
Speaker B00:02:20
That's that Midwest spirit. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Speaker A00:02:24
Absolutely. And you're not in Cleveland right now. Where are you talking to me from?
Speaker B00:02:31
So I'm in Seattle. We've been in Seattle for 12 years. Mm. And I actually haven't lived in Cleveland area probably about 18 years now. Um, so we've, we've progressively moved west. We went from Cleveland to Wyoming, Wyoming to California, and then California up to Seattle.
Speaker A00:02:50
So let's, let's, let's talk for a sec about Cleveland. So, yeah, I think you said you're. You grew up in Twinsburg area.
Speaker B00:02:57
I did.
Speaker A00:03:00
It's not, it's just a skip and a jump. Like we actually. Well, we had a place in the kind of the Cleveland Shaker Heights area, but then we also had a kind of a Weekend place out in Mentor. We would go through Twinsburg. But what, what are, what are some of your fond memories of Cleveland? Like, what did you love about Cleveland?
Speaker B00:03:21
Yeah, Cleveland had some cool stuff. So highly underrated art museum. Like, highly underrated art museum. They have a really good arts and culture there, which I think a lot of people don't think about when they think about Cleveland. This is silly, but there things I miss a lot are things that I don't get out here anymore, so. Cardinals, lightning bugs. I don't miss the humidity and I, I think things like that, like little things, little things about living in Ohio that we don't get out here and haven't had in any of the western states. Really. So really it's like lightning bugs, cardinals, that like frog noise when you go to bed. Yeah. All that kind of stuff is things I definitely miss.
Speaker A00:04:02
Yeah. Yeah. I will always adore and love Cleveland. It will always. It will always have a soft spot in my heart.
Speaker B00:04:10
Absolutely. And I love or no.
Speaker A00:04:12
Oh, well, yeah, obviously I miss the seasons, I miss the snow. I miss downtown Cleveland and all the great things there. Playhouse Square, the art museum, the museum, the Museum of Natural History, you know, but the culture in Cleveland is very deep and very rich. Yes, truly. You know, I, I miss the, The Cavs, the Browns, the Indians. Yeah, actually it's not the Indians anymore. It's the Guardians, I think.
Speaker B00:04:42
Yep.
Speaker A00:04:43
Yeah. Yeah, all that, all that.
Speaker B00:04:45
State. No, my whole family is like Ohio State die hard fans. So.
Speaker A00:04:49
Yeah, but we're not here to talk so much about Cleveland as we are about an email that you wrote to me on New Year's Eve of, of this year, where you were basically contemplating the last year of your life. And it was a really profound email. It was super. You know, I can't tell you how much I love getting emails like yours, but it obviously it meant a lot to you, what's transpired over the last year, otherwise you wouldn't have sat down on New Year's Eve to, To. To write this wonderful email. So let's. I want to talk about your. And as you coined it in your email to me, your reawakening.
Speaker B00:05:36
Yeah.
Speaker A00:05:37
That happened roughly three years ago, which you say it has impacted your life for the better in every way imaginable. So let's start. I think you say that there were two deaths that happened in your life that kind of, to this day, still haunt you.
Speaker B00:05:58
Yeah. One of them, One of them I wasn't around for, but it haunts me anyways. My grandpa, who I Didn't meet because my mom had me. I'm the fifth kid out of five kids, and she had me when she was 36. So my grandpa died before I was born of a heart attack. And I have more details around the health situation now. But basically all I had known growing up was that he died of a heart attack. He, like, went to the hospital, they thought it was okay, and he was gonna make it. And then like 12 hours later, he died. And so that was really traumatic, I think, for my mom. Like, she definitely talked about it to me. But then When I was 19, my husband and I got married really young. We got married at 19 and 20, and we moved immediately to Wyoming. When that happened, when we got married, and she passed from a hemorrhagic stroke at 54. While that first year we were in Wyoming, which was super traumatic for me, I definitely went through, like a pretty rough patch in life around that. But, you know, it was one of those things. I was so young that I kind of didn't think about my own health. I just thought about, like, oh, gosh, like my. My mom has passed really young. She was really instrumental in my life. She's a stay at home mom with me. So it was. It was hard. But I didn't think about the health ramifications or what it meant that my grandpa had died young and that my mom had died young. And so, you know, that's kind of why when I did start realizing my health was slipping, that I started kind of digging into the health line of my family a little bit. Like, I started asking relatives who knew my mom and dad and my grandpa and other people that were no longer in the family, like, what was going on. And what I think I've deduced between myself and them is that I think what the major caveat in my family is, the major hurdle is actually diabetes, I'm pretty sure. So my grandpa, I didn't realize this, but he had some form of diabetes like 10 years before he had the heart attack. And my. My aunt thinks he wasn't going to, like, the most cutting edge doctor, et cetera. And then he had that heart attack. And then my mom, she actually got. I don't know if it was preeclampsia, but we know it was gestational hypertension with me. And she refused to take the blood. Blood pressure medication after I was born because she got it right after she delivered me, and she refused to take the blood pressure medicine. But I grew up in this, like, big Hungarian ethnic family that, like, all we ate was meat and potatoes, like, chicken paprikash, like, every week, Like. Like, it was always like, pot roast, beef stew, chicken paprikash on, you know, white flour dumplings that were homemade. Everything was bacon. You know, it was just like, really heavy, heavy food. And so she wouldn't take the medicine and then never changed her diet. And she had five kids and she was stressed and all those things. So, like, her health just spiraled, but she wouldn't go to the doctor, so we didn't really know what was going on with her. And so the hemorrhagic stroke, in retrospect, I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. She probably had diabetes. She probably had heart disease. She probably had all kinds of things that added to that. But because she didn't. She didn't take care of herself, to be honest. Like, because of that, we. I don't really know what happened, but it. It's a domino effect of all of the health choices, kind of. And then, you know, I genetically tested myself because that's. My background is genetics, and I have, like, a 43% increased probability of diabetes over the normal population. And so I was like, we must have a. We must, as a family, have this, you know, propensity for diabetes. But also, as we know, as you and I know, you can control those things with lifestyle. Right, Right. That's the part that, for me, really started hitting home when I started looking into it is like, oh, my gosh, we can really. We don't have to be beholden to our family history. Right. Like, make choices that have a giant impact regardless of what you were born with genetically.
Speaker A00:10:00
Yeah, no, completely. Yeah. You mentioned diabetes, and we know that diabetes will increase your likelihood of heart disease almost tenfold.
Speaker B00:10:14
Yeah.
Speaker A00:10:14
So. So that's no surprise there with your. With your grandpa and then. And then your. Your mother. I'm sorry to hear about that, because I just can't even imagine, you know, at the age of 19, 20, losing your. Your mother, you know, how kind of. How difficult that must have been.
Speaker B00:10:31
It was hard.
Speaker A00:10:32
Yeah. And you mentioned being, you know, kind of Hungarian roots and. And all the. All the different meat and potato dishes. And. And we were talking earlier, before we went live, about how Cleveland actually has one of the largest populations of Hungarians next to actually, you know, Hungary. I think it's because of an influx of Hungarians that came in after a revolution that happened in Hungary in 1956, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B00:11:01
So my family came a little bit earlier, but I'm Hungarian on both Sides. So they both. They came over at different times, essentially. You know, I'm. I'm not 100%, but I'm like 80% Hungarian, essentially, so.
Speaker A00:11:12
Yeah, well, one of the things that I learned because I dated a Hungarian woman for three years over there is never get in the way of a Hungarian and their food.
Speaker B00:11:23
Accurate. It's accurate, man. I like, actually, this changing my food. I didn't realize how addicted I was to food. That's the biggest thing I learned from all this. I was like, wow, I really. I really was addicted. Like, even though I ate fairly okay, I still. I was addicted to food before this.
Speaker A00:11:41
Well, I think we all. I think we're all addicted to food. It's just a matter of, is it. Is it nourishing food or is it destructive food?
Speaker B00:11:50
Right now I crave mangoes, which is great.
Speaker A00:11:55
Awesome. Have you ever met Cyrus Kata?
Speaker B00:11:59
No, but I listened to your podcast with him.
Speaker A00:12:01
Okay, okay. Because he is. His nickname is Mango man because he just. Oh, God, he can eat 20 mangoes a day.
Speaker B00:12:09
They're such a. They're so awesome. They're the best fruit. They're so good.
Speaker A00:12:12
Yeah. Yeah, Totally agree. You mentioned that you took a genetic test and. And that, you know, genetics was your. Your specialty in the biotech world. What. Do you have any recommendation for those of us that have never done any genetic testing? Is there a certain brand that you would recommend or.
Speaker B00:12:31
Gosh, I mean, it's now. It's so good now. Like, when I was in college, genetics was nowhere near like I. When I started, we were doing pcr, which has been around for a long time, but sequencing now is incredibly cheap. Where. When I started in college and was doing research at the beginning of my research career, it was not incredibly cheap. So, like, 10 years ago, I would have said, go to your doctor and make sure that you ask them to get the test done by, like, a diagnostic lab, you know, but now if you want, you can even go through, like, 23andMe, and they have full health panels that will give you just an overview. And thing is that I think is important to. To think about with genetics is that there's genetics and there's epigenetics, and genetics is what you're born with, and then epigenetics is what you turn on in your genes. And I think it's really important that people, like, if they do these tests, they don't take it as, like, a death sentence.
Speaker A00:13:27
Right.
Speaker B00:13:27
Like, it's really easy. When I saw those results, it's really easy to Go down that rabbit hole of like, oh my God, I'm going to get diabetes. Right. But the truth is, a lot of the things that are potentially going to be a chronic disease you have control over. I, I believe a certain amount of control over. And so those tests, you know, I would say, looking, going, it would be better if you went and actually checked your A1C. Right? Like, go to the doctor and get your A1C testing if you want to know if your genetic background. Because I'm just curious like that. I wanted to know. But the thing I really wanted to test when I started this diet change is I went and actually went to Quest and I booked my own tests and I just pulled the data every, like three to four months to see what my own, what my own body was doing. And so I didn't go to the doctor. I just tracked it myself and said, okay, what's my A1C at? What is my lipid profile at? I used all of those normal test factors that they do in the doctor and I just got them done myself through Quest.
Speaker A00:14:24
Nice.
Speaker B00:14:26
Yeah. I mean, the different. I, I don't know if everyone would want to do that. My background's medical genetics, so I, I felt very comfortable doing that.
Speaker A00:14:35
Well, you should, you should start a side hustle helping people do that. Know, but you know, what I, what you said is very interesting because obviously genetics is kind of just the hand that you were dealt right at, at, at birth because of your mother and your father. And then epigenetics is kind of what you can change, which you can kind of alter, I think, through, well, through diet and lifestyle and other factors. And the cool thing is, is like, we know from the work of Dr. Dean Ornish that you can actually turn on cancer promoting genes and turn on cancer fighting genes. Like, how cool is that? Yeah, just by changing what you're feeding your 20 trillion cells. Right.
Speaker B00:15:22
I mean, I. Mushrooms, Mushrooms go in like every meal. Like, I'm like, we're putting mushrooms at every single meal because it's anti cancer.
Speaker A00:15:30
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, that's really smart. All right, so let's get, get back to your story. You mentioned how in your email to me how you kind of always were a very fit athlete. And so can you tell us a little bit about your athletic background?
Speaker B00:15:49
Yeah, like, there is not a day in my life that I don't remember being an intense athlete. Like, it. It has been. My parents, like, groomed me into it, so they started me ice skating when I was 18 months. I was A competitive figure skater. Not like uber competitive, but, like, you know, went through lessons, learned all the jumps, did a few competitions. Always super, super athletic in that way. And then when I hit high school, I switched into running because I just loved running. And I went to cross country and track, and I did snowboarding. And I actually met my husband snowboarding in high school. And so, I mean, my whole life in. Up into high school was athletics, and big into it, I was in the kind of family. My family was very rigidly strict, not in a bad way, but they were like, if you got a B, you got in trouble. If you got a C, you got kicked off your sport. You had to get your grades back up to get back in the sport. So basically, they knew we were all athletically inclined, and then they motivated with motivated grades with it. But the thing is, after high school, I went into college running. Then after college running, I went into all ultra running. And then at a certain point, I turned that into triathlons, and triathlons morphed into going back to ice skating. And I ended up doing a hockey course with my husband. And now we play ice hockey. I play, like, two to three times a week, and he plays, like, seven to ten times a week. So it's a huge part of my life. Like, I am. There's. There's almost never a day where I'm not doing something highly active. And that's just like the sports. Like, I also. I hike mountains. I kayak. Like, I snowboard a lot. Like, there. There's. It's just a huge, huge part of my life.
Speaker A00:17:31
Wow. Heidi gets after it.
Speaker B00:17:33
Yeah, I love it.
Speaker A00:17:36
You know, it's funny you mentioned ice skating. This last Christmas, our family, we went to the north shore of Lake Superior, and we found a little lake, a little frozen lake, little inland. And we. We rented some skates and we all went skating. And we were probably out there for two hours, just kind of skating around. And I can't. I couldn't believe it was such a cold day, but I couldn't believe how warm I got after about 5, 10 minutes of skating around. It's a workout.
Speaker B00:18:05
It is a workout. It's great. And you don't even. It's fun, too. Like, you don't really notice until you're done. You're like, oh, I'm actually tired. That was a good. That was a good time.
Speaker A00:18:13
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. All right, let's talk about. So three years ago, you wrote to me and said that you were about 33 years old, you were living In Seattle, you had, you had just had your baby daughter and you were in your biotech job and you were absolutely exhausted. So like explain to me like what did that exhaustion look like and feel.
Speaker B00:18:41
Like I was drowning. I didn't even realize I was drowning until I blew it all up. Yeah. So, and, and so it's multifactor. So I had the, I had a baby. Which in itself is exhausting. Right. Like having a baby, growing a baby, not sleeping from that baby, that was all happening. And then when I went back to work and I took a long maternity leave, but I went back to work around six months postpartum. And so what would happen is I'd wake up with the baby in the middle of the night, feed her, go back to bed. I'd be up by 6:30 on my email, doing emails. Then work calls usually start around 8am they'd go until 5 and I managed eight people. So it wasn't like the kind of job where I could just shut it off at 5. If someone had to call me or email me, I had to be there. I had to be doing something for them, which was great. Pre baby, I didn't mind that at all pre baby, but post baby I was like, I actually am exhausted and I just need to nap or go for a walk or something. So It'd be like 5pm and then I would hang out with my kid as much as I could in that time gap before she went to bed, which at that time newborn, so it was like 10pm but that would be 10pm and then at the same time I was getting reinvested into painting and my art was already kind of starting to develop an art business. And so from like 10 to 1:30 in the morning I would paint partly for like mental health of like, I need to do something for me and partly because I really just felt super connected back to art again. And so it just, it was this like cycle of me getting like six hours of sleep max and yeah, putting everybody above myself except for that one period at the end of the night. Right. Like it was like, wake up baby, wake up, work back to baby. And then maybe a couple hours to pain. Um, I was dying, I was really tired. I didn't want to go. Like that's when I knew something was wrong. I didn't want to go to, I didn't want to go work out, which has never been an issue in my life. Like I've always been the person that like was jonesing to go work out and I just couldn't get myself off the couch. We were ordering takeout a lot, which is awful for you in a lot of ways. And then little things started creeping up. Like, I would wake up and my feet would be sore in a way that I'd never had soreness, or I'd get tingling my fingertips, and I was like, something's off. Like, I'm, I'm not good right now, you know?
Speaker A00:21:09
Yeah. Oh, so it sounds like you had a lot of red flags. Yeah, they were popping up saying, heidi, Yep. You need to make some adjustments here, girl. And you, you also in your email mentioned that you're, you're five feet tall.
Speaker B00:21:23
Yeah.
Speaker A00:21:24
And, and that at this point in your life, after the baby, you were about, what, 45 pounds overweight.
Speaker B00:21:32
Yeah, it's, it's interesting too, because pregnancy, I gained, I gained about 30 pounds, but I actually lost most of it after I had the baby. Like, I, I, a lot of it, I think was water weight because I was back down to like 10 pounds from my normal weight. But the problem was I was so exhausted and so stressed once I went back to work that, that's when it started piling on. And I was like, oh, my God, this isn't baby weight. This is like life weight and stress and unhealthy choice weight. So, so yeah, I'm 5 foot and I was like 175, which weirdly, I don't think I looked awful because I think my, like, I'm muscular, so I think it hid okay. But I, I felt awful. I felt really awful.
Speaker A00:22:13
Yeah, well. And so that leads me to one of the things that I love about your personal journey is how you had the courage to kind of take a hard look at your life and where you were and the fact that, okay, Heidi, you're drowning. This isn't sustainable. We gotta make a pivot. And it wasn't, it sounds like it wasn't a, like, abrupt pivot. But like you, you just mentioned one of the things you did to keep from drowning, to basically cast yourself a life buoy, was you went back to a passion that you had from your early days, which is painting. So tell me. I, I, I want to hear because I think this is such an important part of your story. What was it? What was it? Or is it about painting that grounded you and gave you, that allowed you to have that self reflection?
Speaker B00:23:08
Yeah, I'm not entirely sure. So I, I was an artist, like, same way that I figure skated from very early. I, my earliest memories of life were making art, like, very vivid memories. Of making art as a little kid. And I majored in it when I started in college, that's what I majored in. But I grew up in a pretty poor family, and all I could think about while I was majoring in it was like, how do you make a career on art? And I didn't want to live in New York City, you know, And I was like, what? Like, what do I do? Right? I live in Wyoming. It's like, can I even make money on this? And so that's when I switched away from art into science because I. I also loved science. And so I just wanted to switch into that to, like, get a career path. But the art has always been a giant passion. So basically when I was painting at home, what happened is actually the painting started around Covid. So when the world shut down, my job went gangbusters because we made the diagnostic systems for Covid. And so basically I was working, like, while everybody else was. Was working from home. We were. I was out in the field in Seattle at the labs that were finding the COVID outbreaks. We were training them on how to run the systems. I was like, very, very much involved in the first responder type group. And so we couldn't travel anymore. But we were also doing these, like, crazy, intense, work related things due to Covid. And so I was like, oh, I want to start painting again. Just for me, now that we're not traveling as much, because I have to go out in the field and see people in Seattle, but I can actually not be on an airplane as much. So I started painting again around Covid, and that turned into, like a watercolor painting just for fun. Um, then morphed into me getting back into the mediums that I used to do, which is oil and acrylic. And I just realized how much it shut my brain off. Um, like, I could sit there and three hours would disappear, and I felt awesome and I loved what I was doing, and I opened up this whole side of me that I kind of forgot I had. Um, so it was really powerful to remember. Like, oh, yeah, I'm not just like an automated worker bee. I. I'm not just. That's here doing stuff for everybody else. Right.
Speaker A00:25:24
And what side do you feel like it opened up? What side of you? Like, this. Create this. This creative side that you kind of had shut down or creative, spiritual, all of it.
Speaker B00:25:35
I, like, I'm not really. I grew up in a very religious family, and I'm not very religious, But I am what I would call spiritual.
Speaker A00:25:43
Yeah.
Speaker B00:25:44
And I think it opened up like this, like self love, like this need to do something I really loved. That was purely for me, it was purely selfish, which a lot of my life has not been purely selfish. And so, yeah, it kind of felt good to lean into that. As much as that sounds weird, but it was also like that connection point to nature. Like, I. My first, when I switched into science, I actually majored in zoology, genetics, and I was working in wildlife ecology first before it switched into medical genetics. Because that's what I loved most was like being out in the mountains and being out, like that's why we live in the west western states was. I love mountains, I love ocean, I love the ecology that goes with that. So it was this combo pack of like, I can be in the places I love. I can paint them, I can sit and observe them. I can just feel my life. I don't know, I can feel all of life doing this, whereas the rest of my life was like, like sitting in front of a computer looking at data, you know?
Speaker A00:26:43
Yeah, well, so now I love, I love all that. And so what happened in November of 2022? You got the courage to have a certain conversation with your husband, right?
Speaker B00:26:58
Yeah, yeah. I think he was a little bit blown away.
Speaker A00:27:02
You didn't. He didn't see it coming?
Speaker B00:27:04
Not in the way that I. No. So, I mean, I'd been inside, I'd been in Biotech for like 10 years and before that I'd been a scientist in academia. And I'm just really frank. Like, I made a good salary, you know, and. And we live in an expensive place. And so, I mean, he knew that I was starting to paint a lot and then I was like getting people in. Like people were interested in buying it. But he, I don't think he realized how serious I was about quitting my, my job for it. And so I kind of mentioned it and like, he'd be like, yeah, like he. I don't know. It wasn't that he was like dismissing of it, but he wasn't necessarily thinking I was serious.
Speaker A00:27:42
But let me ask you this before you continue, but did you. Did your husband not see or.
Speaker B00:27:50
No, he did.
Speaker A00:27:50
He totally. Did he not read the room that you were, you were drowning and you were not enjoying what was going on?
Speaker B00:27:57
No, he did. He knew that part. I mean, we had multiple conversations about, like, what do we do to make this more bearable? Because.
Speaker A00:28:05
Right.
Speaker B00:28:05
And it's hard because we, we live very far away from family, so, you know, we don't have this, like, Giant support network when we have Kit, like, when we have Isla, and if we have more kids, like, we don't just. We can't just pick up a phone and call someone and say, hey, come over. I need. I'm drowning. Right? So he knew that, and he's been awesome about being like, hey, I'm gonna take her for two hours. You go play hockey. But I don't think he realized, like, how much I was drowning in front, like, and. And to be honest, I wasn't really vocalizing that to most people. Like, I loved my job pre kid, so it was a really hard decision to give it up because I had invested years in what I did, and I had gotten pretty high in the company, and, like, there was a lot to give up, you know, so it was a scary idea. So I don't even think I vocalized it a hundred percent because I was like, am I going to do this? Like, this is crazy. Like.
Speaker A00:28:59
So, okay, so you had this conversation with your husband about, hey, I. What do you think if I, what, paint full time? Right?
Speaker B00:29:07
Yeah. So I basically. I had sold a little bit of artwork just from painting at night and, like, putting on Instagram, and I basically tracked those numbers, and I was like, if I can do this full time, like, I know me, then I can extrapolate this and how much would that be and what. So I basically went to him with, like, a business plan, and I was like, here's what I've done so far. Here's what I think I can do. It's a really big risk. Do you trust me? And, you know, the first conversation, he was like, okay, I hear you. I'm not sure this is a perfect idea, but I hear you. And then I kind of had repeating conversations. And by about three or four months in, he was like, okay, just do it.
Speaker A00:29:50
You're wearing me down. Do it a little bit. Let's be done with it.
Speaker B00:29:55
Know.
Speaker A00:29:56
So let me ask you this. So you decide you're going to lean into it full time?
Speaker B00:30:01
Yeah.
Speaker A00:30:02
So you're not really leaning into it. You're jumping in. Right. What did the people at your work think? Were they like, you've got a. You've got a job when you want to come back in three months?
Speaker B00:30:14
Kind of less. Less direct because, you know, it was interesting. A lot of people were, like, highly supportive, but there was all these, like, side questions where you're like, you think I'm nuts? So it'd be like, oh, tell me about that. How do you make money on art? Or Howard or. I didn't know you could make money on it. Like, just a lot of those kind of questions. So it might have been curiosity, but I think a lot of people thought I was taken off to be a stay at home mom.
Speaker A00:30:37
Yeah.
Speaker B00:30:37
Which I get, I totally get. Like, it's a, it's a weird pivot to hear someone's moving from like full blown hardcore science to painting.
Speaker A00:30:47
So, so, no, totally. So let's talk about. So you, you're, you're jumping like full force into your passion.
Speaker B00:30:56
Yep.
Speaker A00:30:57
You're raising your daughter and as you told me in your email, so you can witness all the milestones. Right. You don't, you don't want to miss those. And then you also wanted to, lastly, you want to focus on your health.
Speaker B00:31:08
Yes.
Speaker A00:31:09
And so you resigned from your biotech career January of 2023. And then like, tell me, at first, like, how did the painting go? What, what, what happened with this new burgeoning career?
Speaker B00:31:21
So, I mean, a couple of things. Like a, it was awesome right off the bat because we didn't have to have a nanny anymore. And so I, like, I got hours with my kid back. Right. Like, I was with her for like every moment of the day, which was amazing. Is amazing. I'm still doing that. But then I would paint in her nap time, which I'm very lucky in that my kid has always been an excellent nap. He's also an athlete. Like, she's hardcore. She's as bad as my husband. And I, like, she's, she's super wild. And so, so when she sleeps, she sleeps hard. And so she'd sleep for four hours. And so basically I would like wake up, take care of her, we'd go do a lot of fun things for the day. And then at like 2:00pm, like clockwork, I'd get from 2 to 6 to paint.
Speaker A00:32:04
Yeah.
Speaker B00:32:04
My husband, when he was done with his job, he usually gets done with his job around like 4:35. He would take over if she was up. But I basically turned it into like 20 to 30 hours a week in nap times and weekends and then just kept painting. And so I would build collections and launch them on Instagram and tell people I was releasing them. And I expected that I would be able to make okay money on it, but it actually took off. Like, I was selling out collections within like three months of starting. And it was, it was awesome. It was awesome and unexpected and also a little bit bad because I didn't focus on my health. That was the whole year that I was Supposed to be like, at home, take care of my health. And instead I was like, screw it, I'm gonna work.
Speaker A00:32:51
Tell me, that first year, were you able to make as much as you were in your biotech career?
Speaker B00:32:58
It was. It was close. It wasn't exactly the same as what I was making in my last role, but I was making this. I made my first year full time art. I made the same amount that I'd made in biotech in years previous.
Speaker A00:33:10
Fantastic. Okay, okay. But so again, you. So, but the one thing that you weren't focusing on was your health was me.
Speaker B00:33:19
Yeah, again, yeah, yeah, yeah. I have an addictive personality. Right. Like, I get sucked into whatever I really want to do, which is usually sports, my kid, or painting. And I was like, oh, I'll. I'll clean up my diet, you know, Like, I knew my diet wasn't great. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great. I knew that, but I was like, I'll get to it, I'll get to it. I'll get to it. And I just kept putting it off. And then I'm not even sure what triggered. I think it was just like I was a year into the art.
Speaker A00:33:55
I know what it was.
Speaker B00:33:56
Yeah, it was. It was the snowboarding.
Speaker A00:33:58
You. You went on a snowboarding trip?
Speaker B00:34:00
Yeah, I was like, what was it? It was. Yeah. Because there was a few things, like none of my clothes fit. I couldn't get into any of my old clothes, which was really ticking me off because I'm cheap and I didn't want to read my clothes. And so I'm really mad about that. But then it was that it was. I was snowboarding and my button popped open on my pants while I like, did a jump. And then I had to, like, tie it with a hairband. And I was like, this is ridiculous. I'm not pregnant anymore. What am I doing? But it was a combo back. Like, the frustration over the had been brewing even before that moment because I knew that none of my clothes were fitting and I was refusing out of, like, pure stubbornness to buy new clothes. So I was like, I look awful. Like.
Speaker A00:34:40
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so. So it sounds like 2024. Well, let me, let me, let me, let me back up for a sec. So I know what happened is. So after that snowboarding trip, you were really frustrated and you said you went and visited a dietitian and you had this aha moment.
Speaker B00:34:59
I did.
Speaker A00:35:00
What happened?
Speaker B00:35:01
I forgot I wrote this much to you. I should have reread that. So there's A dietitian on. Because I'm on Instagram a lot for my job, right? So there's dietitian that kept showing up on my feed, and she's in California. And so I basically, it was. It was not cheap, but not ridiculous. And I was like, you know what? I. I don't have a ton of bandwidth. Like, let somebody tell me how to do my diet and maybe I'll get this fixed. And it's complicated because I've had a lot of roller coasters with how I've eaten in the past. Not like in a. Not in a food. What's the right word?
Speaker A00:35:39
Disorder.
Speaker B00:35:39
Yeah, not in a disordered way. Just more like. I mean, maybe it is. I don't know. It just in a way of, like, I would always kind of be following nutrition stuff, and, like, it always changes online what people are talking about. And so I would be like, oh, let's try this. You know, sometimes with really poor choices. And so I. I called her. We got on a call. She went through my diet. We had, like, two calls. And one of the questions she asked, there were two things. So one of the questions she asked me was, when did I feel best and at my best weight and best health. And I went back to college when, after my mom had died, I'd watched Forks Over Knives because it came out, like, right after she passed. And there's a whole slew of documentaries that were like, vegetarian, vegan at that time. And so I'd watched a few of them, and I was a little bit like, oh, you know, this. This checks out. There's a lot of science behind it. I'm going to try it. And I actually have never loved meat. Uh, when I was about eight, I asked my mom if I could be a vegetarian, and she was like, no, but if I thought hard enough about it, maybe. But, like, didn't re. Didn't really give me any weight to it, but I was. I had enough interest in it even back then that I would like thinking about that just from the animal side, I think. But then in college, I felt compelled from these documentaries to try it. And so I went vegetarian for, like, six years. In that time period, I was not. Not vegan, but I was vegetarian. It was mostly whole foods, and I was running six miles every day. Like, felt awesome. Doing sprint workouts. Just. I remember my energy just being really good. And then I slowly fell off because out of habit, my family had grown up eating a ton of meat. And so when I'd be like, oh, I really want stuffed Cabbage rolls. And I'd be like, oh, I guess I could have beef today. You know, like, it would just kind of slowly creep back in when I was not being vegetarian anymore, so her asking me that question kind of jogged me back to that. And then I immediately went and got your dad's book. Preventing heart Disease, I think is the.
Speaker A00:37:39
One prevent reverse heart disease. Yeah. Yes.
Speaker B00:37:41
Because all of a sudden in my head, like, I can't fit in my clothes. I just had a kid, I'm in my mid-30s. And for whatever reason, I don't know if it's just because I was painting a lot and my kid was little, but I was like, man, like, I don't, I don't want to die at 60, you know, like, I have zero desire to be not in her life. So sorry, got a little teary there.
Speaker A00:38:06
Good.
Speaker B00:38:07
So I basically, like, it was an eye opening moment of like, I'm gonna read these books because I clearly watched the documentaries and have forgotten about them. And for whatever reason, this second time around, when I read everything in a book format, I was like, whoa, this, this, why didn't I put the pieces together? Like, it's not just vegetarian, it's like full blown whole foods, no dairy, like none of the things that have historically not done well with me anyways, you know, and it was just so eye opening. So. So I immediately started kind of twisting my diet. Like, I mean, I basically, that day I went through, that day that I finished the book, I went through and just threw out the food in the house and stopped cold. Turkey minus oil. Oil snuck in there a little bit, but everything else was gone. And I was writing this down in my food diary. And so the second call with the dietitian, she was like asking about some days before I'd stopped eating my traditional way and then asking about the days after I started eating more vegan. Right? And she was basically like, you gotta cut out the lentils. These aren't good for you. Um, you know, you should do these turkey meatballs. You should do that more. And cut out the lentils. Be careful with chia seeds. The fat in those can really mess with people. And I was like, man, I've read enough scientific literature to know that that's not true. Like, like pub publications do not at all back that up. And so I, I kind of lost trust in what she was saying after that second call. And then I was like, forget it, we're going all in. And that's when I read all the books and listened to all the podcasts And I probably spent hundreds of hours in the car driving, listening to podcasts of you and other people, just. Just like revamping my mind. And the more I did that, the more I would then look up literature. And I was like, this all checks out. Like, there's everything points to. Humans across the world generally respond better to this. I need to. I need to pursue it.
Speaker A00:40:05
So, so you. So you took this, this full. This reborn passion for whole food plant based, wanting to be around for decades and decades to paint, to be with your husband, to be with your daughter, and you. You basically said, you put it on the line saying, 2024 is going to be the year of balance for me. And. And you figured it out, right?
Speaker B00:40:30
Yeah, I. I pulled back on the art a little bit. And not. You wouldn't be able to tell, like, I was still launching the same amount of work, but I just, I just. What I did was I went slower. Like, I would still paint the same amount, but I was like, you know what, if an Instagram post doesn't happen every single day, that's okay. If, you know, if I let go of some of the other things, like the social media. I'm not saying let go of it all together because it's a big part of it, but I was like, that. That can taper off a little bit. I was like, also, I have a tendency to, like, I always take my daughter and do fun stuff. Like, I want her life to be very enriched. So, like, we go to the zoo, we go ice skating, we go to the pool. Like, we do something almost every day, which is great. But I was also like, I need to make sure that I get an hour at the gym and also 40 minutes a day to cook. Like, these are things that are just like, we don't need to be doing takeout as much. And so 2024, where I had kind of taken the art and kind of put it in place of the biotech and just supplemented workaholism for more workaholism, 2024 became like, you know what? It's still important to me, and I need to run this as a business, but I also need to remember why I did all of this, which was to have a life that was more balanced and to be a better parent and to be around a long time and to be healthy for everybody and to see my husband more, you know, all those things. So 2024 was it for that.
Speaker A00:41:54
How wonderful. And what happened as far as your health, what happened with your. Your weight, blood pressure, working out all that stuff.
Speaker B00:42:01
Yeah. So I. I got the test. I got the original test through Quest. It was Quest, I think. But basically I got lipid profile, a bunch of nutrient like panels, and then I didn't get a 1C at that time. So I actually wish I would have. Cause I want that data. But I tested that first, and none of it was awful. But none of it was great. My LDL was slightly elevated, and then I switched the diet over. Within a week, I'd gotten that test and switched the diet over completely. And then I was like, okay, I need to give this a few weeks to see how it goes. And the first test back, I dropped from, like, 110 LDL down to 80.
Speaker A00:42:47
Yeah.
Speaker B00:42:47
Somewhere around there. I have to look at the exact numbers. It was a substantial drop. Jump down.
Speaker A00:42:52
Completely. Completely expected and normal. 30 points in your LDL. Yeah.
Speaker B00:42:56
Yeah. And my blood pressure had been for the past couple years post pregnancy. And I think this was because of weight, but I don't know is my blood pressure was like the. So the hypertension's kind of been changing in the medical world. Right. Like, it used to be that 120 over 80 was good, but now it's like pre hypertension. And so I'd always been around 120 over 80. Um, but then it started creeping up to, like, 130 over 82. And I was just like, this is the wrong trajectory with a family who's got hemorrhagic strokes that happen young or did happen to my mom. Yeah. I was like, this is not good. And so my blood pressure went down to, like, immediately, like, 110 over 70. And nowadays it's like 108 over 65. And I'm. I'm guessing it'll go down further over time. Right. Because if you keep calling the diet, hopefully it does, but that's pretty good. I'm happy with where I'm at now.
Speaker A00:43:52
It may not go much lower than that. But listen, 108 over 65 is, like, pristine, gorgeous.
Speaker B00:43:57
Yeah. And even, like, it was weird because I track everything on the. On my watch. And my heart rate, like, I was like, wow, I am. My heart rate dropped a ton because I've always been an athlete. And so it was very clear that, like, either the salt and the diet were kicking up my. My heart rate too, so.
Speaker A00:44:14
And you also mentioned how you were able to skate hard without getting winded again, which felt amazing. You were doing these, like, sprint workouts again, running, and you were doing times back, like, when you were a college athlete.
Speaker B00:44:27
Yeah, it was insane. Like so many things switched over. Like, like hockey had been, I'd always been a really, like a try, try hard at hockey scenario. But like, I didn't realize how much I was gassed until I changed the diet. I was like, oh, I can breathe like really easily while going fast running. Like, yeah, I, I used to run in high school. I ran a 5:15 mile.
Speaker A00:44:50
Nice.
Speaker B00:44:51
Yeah. And in college, like my average is around seven minutes per mile for a 3K or, sorry, a 5K, three miles. And I was back down to like a seven. Like in the past year I've been back down to a 7:30, if not lower. I've gotten down to 7 at some point. But like I can do a sprint again, you know? And I was like, that hasn't happened in years. I haven't done a mile that fast in years.
Speaker A00:45:15
Yeah, and what, and you. What happened to your weight over the last year?
Speaker B00:45:19
Yeah, so I dropped. So the minute I changed. So that's what's so interesting too. So the exercises stayed the same for all these years? Right. Even though I didn't feel as good, I was exercising the same. But the minute I changed the diet, it melted off. Like it went from, you know, kind of dropping steadily for me, making slightly better choices. Like I would lose couple here, five here. I had to have lost 20 in a two month period. It was crazy. It was super quick. And so just everything melted off the minute the diet changes happened. And yeah, I was shocked. Like it, it felt like six months had gone by and I dropped like, I mean I had, I dropped like 40 lbs.
Speaker A00:45:59
And are you at your fighting weight right now?
Speaker B00:46:01
So I'm at, I'm a little bit heavier right now. Because of Christmas winter weight? No, I went up a little bit, but I'm, I'm still within like five pounds of where I am.
Speaker A00:46:12
That's, that's great. That's great. Way to be. Tell me for all the listeners, like, I'm sure they're wondering, like, so Heidi, like, what does a typical day of breakfast, lunch and dinner look like in your household?
Speaker B00:46:26
Yeah, so breakfast is almost always oatmeal. My. It's actually funny. My husband does this diet mostly with me now and he's always like, maybe, maybe something other than oatmeal.
Speaker A00:46:38
But do you do, do you do roll those? Do you do steel?
Speaker B00:46:40
You do a little bit of both. I really love. I don't know if I got this from your mom, but I have done this way before. Like way before I started listening to your podcast. So I, I don't know if it came from like a recipe your mom had out in the world, but I really like the steel cut oats with like turmeric and veggies in it. Like at the savory. It reminds me of congee. Like, I just, I like that savory spicy. So I do that a good amount with steel cutouts. And then kind of our quick go to is oatmeal with like frozen berries in the winter or fresh in the summer. And it'll be like some kind of alternative milk, usually like yours that you make for PLANTSTRONG or soy milk. And then we'll do like ground flaxseed hemp chia. In fact, my husband at one point, this is kind of funny, he's going to kill me for sharing this, but he was like, whatever is making me poop more. Could you, could you stop with that? I was like, no, that's. You're supposed to be. We're adding more flax.
Speaker A00:47:40
That's good. We're cleaning out your colon, man. This is a good thing.
Speaker B00:47:44
He was like, it was like a good month conversation where he's like, I don't know about this. Um, so there's that. And then usually I do a big salad for lunch. It's almost always like a huge salad with like cucumber, artichokes, olives, balsamic, all that stuff your dad talks about for like that things.
Speaker A00:48:04
And like, do you do a dressing on it or is it just the balsamic vinegar?
Speaker B00:48:08
The aged balsamic thick, like it's sweet. I. You know, oil. We do not do oil generally in the house. Like we have it, but I would say 99% of the time we don't use it. Yeah. I will say like when we're traveling or when we're like, it's just hard, you know, in reality when you're out to completely avoid everything. And so when we're out and about, like oil does happen on salads and stuff like that or, you know, occasionally a fry. But yeah, at home it's balsamic aged. You can get like. What's it called? There's a California brand out on the west coast that's really good. It's called Grand Reserve. And it's really great. And it's at like every grocery store.
Speaker A00:48:51
Nice. What about dinner?
Speaker B00:48:54
Yeah, dinner. I actually really love cooking. Like, it's, It's. I used to, I used to be all about cooking and so I really love. We'll do Cuban black bean tacos with like homemade guac and mango salsa and other good salsas. I do that a lot. We'll do, like, ratatouille. We'll do a lot of, like, vegetable heavy dishes at night. You know, like, less. Less of, like, the beans and the carbs and more of the. Well, they're all carbs, but anyways, it's more. It's more like either bean tacos or it'll be like a portobello stir fry or something like that. There's a lot of stir fries and things like that.
Speaker A00:49:33
Yeah. Yeah. What about dessert? Do you guys ever do desserts?
Speaker B00:49:37
Yeah. Yeah. So, man, this is the thing, man. Like, you think. You think back to your childhood. My mom, so funny. She. She made a dessert every single day when I got home from school. Every day. And now looking back, I'm like, no wonder we had health issues. Like. Yeah. So I'm careful about it because I tend to really want to eat sweets if I start eating them. If I don't eat them a lot, we. Then I stay away from them. So what I do is I'll do things like dates with peanut butter and chocolate. Like. Like things that are kind of hitting that sweet spot but without as much crap in them.
Speaker A00:50:14
Yeah, you just gotta. But with the dates and the peanut butter and the chocolate, you gotta call it two or three. You can't go to five, six.
Speaker B00:50:22
Yeah, we actually. We make them. We freeze them, and then I'll pull out like, two and have it with coffee or something. But.
Speaker A00:50:28
Well, listen, it was my birthday just a couple days ago, and instead of having a. We have this amazing place called Mr. Natural, and they have the best vegan birthday cakes. But I was like, no, I don't want a vegan birthday cake. Instead, my youngest daughter, Hope, who's 10, she makes the best pitted dates with chocolate and with peanut butter inside and then enrobed in, you know, chocolate, dark chocolate. And then she freezes them. And so that's what I had. I had like, a. A date peanut butter chocolate cake that she just piled up. It was awesome.
Speaker B00:51:03
That's awesome. I mean, it tastes like Snickers. It really does. Like, it's. Dates are underrated. Super.
Speaker A00:51:09
Totally.
Speaker B00:51:10
Yeah. The other thing is, my mom always made apple crisp, which I love, but she made it, like full butter, you know, tons of brown sugar in it. So we've moved to making apple crisp. But we'll do it with date syrup, and I'll use. I will use a little bit of vegan butter, like the cashew butter. You can find the Miyokos. I'll use that. It gets, like, a very similar taste to the apple crisp. That's, like, for holidays, though, we make that, like, on Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Speaker A00:51:37
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, wonderful. I want. Before we sign off, Heidi, I really want you to tell me a little bit more about your artwork. And, like, do you do landscapes? What do you. What's. What's your jam with painting?
Speaker B00:51:52
So I mentioned this a little bit. I feel like we've talked about a lot. My husband and I met snowboarding, and we live five minutes from the ocean in Seattle. Like, we're five minutes from where orca whales swim. And so, like, I love, like, my favorite thing in the whole world outside of my sports addiction is just, like, walking on the beach and seeing whales pop up or going to the mountains and snowboarding with my husband or other people. And so I paint those places. Like, I paint the places that I go for walks. I paint the places that I go snowboarding. I paint the places that you drive through to get to hockey tournaments in Eastern Washington. So that's. That's what I do. I love it. Like, I absolutely love the state. I don't think we'll ever leave the Pacific Northwest unless we have to. And. And I love painting it, so that's what I focus on.
Speaker A00:52:42
So if people that are listening are interested in your artwork, where. Where's the best place for them to go to check it out and then potentially purchase something from you?
Speaker B00:52:53
Yeah, there's not a lot on there right now, but there will be. There's Instagram, I think. I think she has it up on the screen. It's Heidi. And then I also have threads and Blue sky, and both of those are also Heidi Farina art. And then my website, which is Heidi Farina Fine art dot com. So. But I, like Instagram is where I spend most of my time.
Speaker A00:53:23
You know, you. You. You signed off your email to me by saying how you didn't realize how important it was for you to have a support group.
Speaker B00:53:34
Yeah.
Speaker A00:53:36
And so what was. What was that support group that you lean, that you leaned on? What did. What did that look like for people that are out there that feel alone and also feel like, you know, they. They're trying to make the lifestyle work, and they haven't kind of sunk their teeth in enough yet.
Speaker B00:53:57
Yeah. So your podcast helped a ton. I feel like you bring in the plants. Wrong. Podcast brings in so many varied people. What I really like about your podcast is you've got doctors, you have naturopath doctors. You've got medicinal doctors, you've got researchers. Like, to someone like me, that resonated a lot. I also think it's really nice that you have a ton of people who are either just living life or celebrities. Like there's a variety of people there. So I think that's really nice from a support standpoint. Also your Facebook group, the plant group, that's where I would go like if I had questions. Like at one point I was losing a little bit of hair and I think in retrospect it was from losing weight so quick. And so I was like, oh God, is this diet related? Is this weight loss? Like, what is it? So I just posted and I was like, what is this normal? Has anyone experienced this? And so people chimed in and were like, yes, it's normal. And here are some things and you can look in these supplements if you're worried about it. So that was really helpful. And I also, I think I mentioned in the email, like we definitely stocked up on your PLANTSTRONG foods. Cuz I. There's plenty of days where I still want to get takeout but I shouldn't. So we, you know, we get like a box of your soup and do the soup instead. So yeah, so that's a huge deal. I. And so basically I've joined a bunch of different groups. Years of the main ones, but I've joined other ones on Facebook. Like anything I could find that was whole food plant-based related I found. And then on Reddit too, Reddit has a bunch of whole foods right Groups.
Speaker A00:55:22
Right, right. Wonderful. Do me a favor before we don't, don't go after we say bye. Stay on just for a sec. But I want you to know, Heidi, how much I love getting your email. You're very courageous and wonderful to come on the podcast. Thank you. And talk about your journey. So thank you so much. And I know that there are a lot of people out there that I think this is going to really resonate with them and it'll probably give them the strength to either go in a different position on their career path or, or really embrace the whole food plant based lifestyle. So thank you so much.
Speaker B00:56:03
Thank you. Seriously, I appreciate, like, yeah, I. It's so bizarre to me that your family is in Ohio and so close to where I grew up because I'm like, how weird. Like, it would have been so nice if my mom hadn't known her dad, you know?
Speaker A00:56:18
Yeah. Yeah. Well, hit me with a virtual PLANTSTRONG fist bump on the way out. Ready?
Speaker B00:56:23
There you go. Boom. Awesome. Thank you.
Speaker A00:56:29
Bye. If you're interested in seeing Heidi's art, you can visit Heidi Farina Fine Art or you can visit her Instagram page at Heidi Farinart and I'll be sure to put a link in today's show notes to make it super easy for you. Whether you're in the thick of burnout, struggling to find balance, or simply seeking inspiration to prioritize your well being, Heidi's story is a powerful reminder that it is never too late to start over. From grief and exhaustion to joy, health and creativity, this episode is a roadmap for the pursuit of happiness and the power of being. PLANTSTRONG. Speaking of which, you guys know how this ends. Always, always keep it PLANTSTRONG. The PLANTSTRONG podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, and Ami Mackey. If you like what you hear, do us a favor and share the show with your friends and loved ones. You can always leave a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And while you're there, make sure to hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode. As always, this and every episode is dedicated to my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. And Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks so much for listening.
