A Little Less Toxic with Shawna Holman

This week on The Less Stressed Life, I’m so excited to welcome Shawna Holman, founder of A Little Less Toxic and bestselling author of A Healthier Home and her latest must-read, A Healthier Home Cook.

In this episode, we talk about Shawna’s journey to health, from chronic sinus infections and sepsis to a thriving, balanced life. Shawna shares her A-L-T (Assess, Let Go, Level Up, Time) framework for creating a healthier home, simple strategies for reducing toxic load, and the beauty of balance in making sustainable changes.

You’ll also hear about the emotional side of health challenges, from overcoming trauma to the powerful connection between stress, inflammation, and healing.

✨ Here’s to less stress, less toxins, and more joy! 

Interested in Shawna's books? Check them out here: https://www.alittlelesstoxic.com/books/

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Shawna’s A-L-T framework for reducing toxins and creating a healthier home.
• Why removing (not just adding) is key to a low-toxic lifestyle.
• How trauma, stress, and toxic exposure interact—and how to heal.
• Sustainable swaps: Simple ways to upgrade your cleaning, personal care, and home products.
• How to avoid “greenwashing” and make informed, budget-friendly choices.
• Progress over perfection: Why balance is the ultimate goal

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ABOUT GUEST:
Shawna Holman, founder of A Little Less Toxic, is the bestselling author of “A Healthier Home” and her newest title, “A Healthier Home Cook.” After enduring years of debilitating health issues that nearly cost her her life, Shawna embarked on a journey to detoxify her life and heal. Her holistic approach, focusing on small, sustainable changes, led to a complete health transformation. Shawna now shares her insights and practical tips with a growing online community, encouraging others to adopt healthier lifestyles. A passionate advocate for true wellness of body, mind, and spirit, Shawna balances her roles as a wife, mother, and educator with her mission to inspire and support others in their health journeys.

WHERE TO FIND:
Website: https://www.alittlelesstoxic.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alittlelesstoxic/

WHERE TO FIND CHRISTA:
Website: https://www.christabiegler.com/
Instagram: @anti.inflammatory.nutritionist
Podcast Instagram: @lessstressedlife
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lessstressedlife
Leave a review, submit a questions for the podcast or take one of my quizzes here: ****https://www.christabiegler.com/links

NUTRITION PHILOSOPHY:

• Over restriction is dead
• Whole food is soul food and fed is best
• Sustainable, synergistic nutrition is in (the opposite of whack-a-mole supplementation & supplement graveyards)
• You don’t have to figure it out alone
• Do your best and leave the rest

SPONSOR:  
Thanks to Jigsaw Health for sponsoring this episode! Try their MagSoothe or MagSRT for better sleep and less stress. Use code LESSSTRESSED10 at JigsawHealth.com for 10% off—unlimited use!

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TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Shawna Holman: before adding anything else in, removing is going to be one way to make your home and life better. a little less toxic and make things healthier, right? There's so much more about removing things that aren't serving us than buying things to your point about budget, right?

[00:00:12] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm your host, Christa Biegler, and I'm going to guess we have at least one thing in common that we're both in pursuit of a less stressed life. On this show, I'll be interviewing experts and sharing clinical pearls from my years of practice to support high performing health savvy women in pursuit of abundance and a less stressed life.

[00:00:42] Christa Biegler, RD: One of my beliefs is that we always have options for getting the results we want. So let's see what's out there together.

[00:01:00] Christa Biegler, RD: Today on The Less Stressed Life, I have Shawna Holman, founder of A Little Less Toxic, and also the bestselling author of A Healthier Home and her newest title, A Healthier Home Cook. After enduring years of debilitating health issues that nearly cost her life, Shawna on a journey to detoxify her life and heal.

[00:01:17] Christa Biegler, RD: Her holistic approach focusing on small, sustainable changes led to a complete health transformation. Shares her insights and practical tips with a growing online community, encouraging others to adopt healthier lifestyles. She's a passionate advocate for true wellness of the mind, body, and spirit, and balances her roles as a wife, mother, and educator with her mission to inspire and support others in their health journeys.

[00:01:39] Christa Biegler, RD: Welcome to the show, Shana. 

[00:01:41] Shawna Holman: Thank you so much for having me. 

[00:01:42] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, absolutely. Congratulations on your new book coming out, A Healthier Home Cook. So how long ago did A Healthier Home come out? 

[00:01:50] Shawna Holman: A Healthier Home came out in 2023. 

[00:01:53] Christa Biegler, RD: Oh, wow. You've been a busy worker bee. Just writing and testing and writing and testing.

[00:01:58] Christa Biegler, RD: So I think we're all trying to figure out what to cook for dinner every day. One of the funniest things I've ever seen that sometimes cuts to the heart is I wish my mom would cook me dinner. And then I remembered that I was the mom.

[00:02:10] Christa Biegler, RD: So that one slaps me in the face all the time, but I'd love to start with, I think your bio is compelling when it talks about how toxic burden, some version of debilitating health issues that nearly cost you your life. I'd love for you to share your story about how all of this started for you, if you'll start us off with that. 

[00:02:29] Shawna Holman: Yeah, I think you'll be especially interested in this based on what you do, and I wish I had you in my life. 10 plus years ago because it would have saved me a whole lot of heartache. But the reason I share what I do now is hoping that it can help someone else not feel alone once they're looking for some solutions and hopefully prevent some issues is my backstory is that I was a regular child of the eighties and nineties where I grew up with just the conventional things that everyone else did, or mostly everyone else did a lot of process packaged foods and.

[00:03:01] Shawna Holman: Packaged cleaning products and household items, everything was scented, everything is, needs to kill 99. 9 percent of everything else and everything needs to be like, so simple you just throw it in the oven and you sit down in front of the TV and eat it, and that was all normal for all of us. And I felt fine, or at least I thought I did until I started to not, and there were some signs and symptoms along the way that I think I just took to be normal.

[00:03:28] Shawna Holman: Because they did start to become pretty common for a lot of people, but they really aren't normal. So there I am in my late teens, early twenties, having things like. heart palpitations and joint pain. And in my later 20s when I was in college, I started getting what I, we first thought was a sinus infection.

[00:03:45] Shawna Holman: And so I got my first sinus infection and I went to the clinic at my college and they gave me, the five day Z Pak of antibiotics and sent me on my way and it did clear it up. And then within a month or two, I can't remember exactly how long it took, but I got another one. And then I did the same thing and they prescribed the same thing and it went away again, but then it came back again.

[00:04:07] Shawna Holman: So now I'm going to other doctors and to make a long story a little bit shorter, I spent five years with these recurring and chronic illnesses. either infections or migraines. We never really figured out what it was but they got progressively worse, closer together, and more debilitating over time where I was, I went through every ENT in my program.

[00:04:30] Shawna Holman: I saw different primaries. I had CAT scans. I had septum correction surgery. I saw allergists. I did everything trying to get this to go away. And the solution always was only. Here's some antibiotics and steroids or, use these dust mite protectors, but there was really no root cause approach at all.

[00:04:50] Shawna Holman: Even as I continue, this went on for five years, like I said, and I'm like my late twenties, there's no reason for me to be feeling like this. And it just got progressively worse without solution. I'm getting a little more. Hungry for a solution, but still I have no idea where to turn. All these professionals are handing me off to other specialized professionals and no one has any answers for me.

[00:05:11] Shawna Holman: And at the tail end of this five years, I spent the last full year in 24 hour pain and it would ebb and flow how bad it was. And again, I didn't know if it was migraines or sinus infections. I was just in a lot of pain in the frontal region of my face. And it also included other things that I just thought came with the territory or maybe were just normal for me, including brain fog and skin issues and the joint pain and the heart palpitations, all these things continuing.

[00:05:41] Shawna Holman: And so I spent this last year in tremendous pain. And I wouldn't take the antibiotics all the time because I just instinctively knew it was probably not a good idea to do every single time they wanted me to do it. Maybe I can ride this out a little longer or I would take longer to try and go to the doctor if he were in further between because I knew they were just going to put me back on these meds.

[00:06:02] Shawna Holman: It was in the spring of 2013, I was on antibiotics and steroids again. And I had a little hangnail and it started to feel infected and I cleaned it up really good, but it was pulsating and throbbing and I could tell this thing is infected. And I told my husband and obviously it was alarming for some reason.

[00:06:22] Shawna Holman: It just felt like it sent off a little alarm in my head, but it was late at night. We cleaned it up and went to bed. And then when I woke up in the morning, it didn't hurt anymore. But I had a tender spot in my underarm on the same side. And then a little later that day, there was a new tender spot on my forearm.

[00:06:39] Shawna Holman: So in my head, the alarm went off again. There's a line that's going from my thumb up my arm, under my arm and the next spot's my heart. So if this is an infection that's getting to my heart, I probably need to do something about it. And so I ended up in urgent care. And they tried to slow it down or stop it with stronger antibiotics, and that didn't work, and I ended up in the emergency room that night with MRSA and sepsis, and I was on a week of IV antibiotics, and if you're not familiar with those things, I had a resistant strain of staph infection that's resistant to almost any antibiotic that's known to man, and it was in my blood, so I had blood poisoning Of this infective infectious bacteria.

[00:07:19] Shawna Holman: And if I hadn't gone in that night, I would have lost my life. I don't even want to say most likely have. I would have died. At this point, I'm desperate. I'm on more antibiotics. for I'm on the week of IV antibiotics. Now I have to take a month of oral antibiotics. I'm so fed up and no one is helping me.

[00:07:36] Shawna Holman: There are no answers. Now I'm seeing infectious disease specialists. I'm back at primary and they literally can't tell me anything. don't want to keep taking these meds. I feel like they're making me weaker. What do I do? And they just are literally shrugging their shoulders and saying, you just have to take them.

[00:07:51] Shawna Holman: And so I went home and my mom was also obviously very freaked out and desperate. And she's a nurse. And she saw a nutritionist talking about inflammation on TV, and she sent me her information. It sounded like, hey, inflammation can be, headaches, joint pain, brain fog, trouble sleeping, acne, all these things that I'm experiencing.

[00:08:13] Shawna Holman: I'm checking the boxes. I'm like, I'm inflamed. I had no idea what Inflammation could really be or that's what I was experiencing. As soon as I finished up all these medications and I want to throw in there too, while I'm on all these antibiotics, the strongest known to man, I'm still in pain.

[00:08:30] Shawna Holman: They didn't touch my pain. I'm even more desperate. But as soon as I finished them, I did an elimination diet. To try and figure out what was contributing my pain or if any of this could even help me But within days of eliminating some very basic things that are in so many of these products I was pain free for the first time in over a year and not only that my skin was cleared up I had better energy.

[00:08:55] Shawna Holman: I was thinking clearly sleep was better. I just Felt like a new person. And that was, like I said, in the beginning, it was in the spring of 2013. And it just was this huge awakening for me and it changed my life. And I've been on a journey ever since to just like my handle is on social media, my websites make things a little less toxic, didn't need to be, it was extreme in the beginning to make some of these changes, but I always have approached it in a way that was sustainable because I knew this was going to be a lifelong journey for me.

[00:09:25] Shawna Holman: And so I've just taken. Small and sustainable steps, mostly along the way. And I've just been continuing to put one foot in front of the other for the last, what are we at now? 11 years. 

[00:09:36] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. At that time, not everyone knew to check for mycotoxins and even now that's like exactly what it sounds like you were exposed to, which would cause like massive inflammation throughout your entire body.

[00:09:47] Christa Biegler, RD: And so often it comes in telltale signs as it comes in through the sinuses or it comes in through the skin. And I just deal with it all day, every day, cause I'm working with skin issues and inflammation, and it is like, The most inflammatory substance that is very commonly people are exposed to and under stress it becomes more virulent, I would say, like it becomes much more active and much more challenging for people.

[00:10:09] Christa Biegler, RD: And so anytime we're able to like reduce toxic burden and toxic load, it's going to make all of that better. And to your point with the elimination of foods, there's so many, it makes us look so reactive to so many foods, but like to your point also. We have a food environment that's a little foreign to our body anyway to digest.

[00:10:25] Christa Biegler, RD: And so all of these things, it's there's a lot of there's not just one thing, right? It looks like lots of things. And your story is like the perfect example of something I see. quite frequently. And when you are, like you, you said, I was actually looking up numbers of MRSA because I remember when I was in my internship, we talked about MRSA all the time and how common it was.

[00:10:41] Christa Biegler, RD: And actually I can't find any great numbers about how common it is, but that's always our concern, right? It's that we're going to become resistant to antibiotics. And this is the big concern. And if for example, you were exposed to mycotoxins and whatever your college, I would always, wonder just because the way you told that story also like this stuff started to onset I think when you went to college right so very commonly people move to a place or a dorm or something that is moldy and they it's a very common time that this starts to happen and it may even be an increased time of stress so I wonder if that came up in your story there's another guy I've interviewed I want to say he's a farm d and his name is it's john kim but he also ended up in the ER for like basically coronary issues, as this healthy young man, essentially the story reminded me like a little bit parallel, it looks a little bit different on everybody, but then there's some telltale things.

[00:11:30] Christa Biegler, RD: Tell us a little bit more about after you did, after you, Thankfully had such a reduction in pain, which I mean, humans believe what they experience and they see and they witness and that would have pulled you a hook line and singer right. It's Oh my gosh, I just got out of like years of pain in a handful of days.

[00:11:50] Christa Biegler, RD: Oh my gosh, I want more of this. So what started to happen next for you. 

[00:11:54] Shawna Holman: Yeah then I just got really excited and I realized that everyone around me had inflammation. 

[00:11:59] Christa Biegler, RD: No, yeah, once you see it, you can't unsee it, right? 

[00:12:02] Shawna Holman: No, I'm telling them, I just learned that these things can be contributing to inflammation in your body.

[00:12:07] Shawna Holman: And so I'm telling everyone I know and everyone else is now reading this book or trying to take these steps or do the elimination diet to see if it can help them. And I started seeing these. really simple changes really help the people around me. And it was just really encouraging. And then my pain did not return.

[00:12:24] Shawna Holman: I very rarely would get even a headache after that. And so I just kept sticking with it. And I didn't intend to, ever write a book or do anything like that, but it was just that whole, it was really an organic kind of thing where I was just sharing with my friends and family and it was like the Wayne's world effect, they tell two friends and they tell two friends and it just spread like that.

[00:12:47] Shawna Holman: And yeah, I've done, and then, once learning about the food, I started reading ingredients on everything I was using and just became more aware of what I was putting in on and around my body. I didn't learn about the mycotoxins and things like that till many years later when I did have some symptom recurrence.

[00:13:03] Christa Biegler, RD: I have a similar story actually to that. So we'll talk about your, I had initially like lots of skin issues and that cleared up as I reduced toxic burden on my body and corrected things that were going on in my gut. And later they represented and then it's like you start to learn the more, the more you're like, Oh, actually.

[00:13:20] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. That's a bit, that's another symptom. So tell us how that kind of recurred, which I think this is important because something that is human is to think that once we close a book or a chapter of something like this is something I was seeing in clients because I really love to study the emotions of things.

[00:13:36] Christa Biegler, RD: And so I find that we tend to want to flee or run away or even be in denial about certain topics that seem really scary, like all of us, cause we are all avoiding pain all the time. Yeah. Yeah. But the other thing is we want to fix something and never really have to work on it again.

[00:13:49] Christa Biegler, RD: That's a really common feeling because it's painful and it's I don't want pain. So I'd like to go away from pain and I want to even outsource and get help from someone else. This is just what I see, right? Like I want to outsource so I don't have to have that pain. And the reality is there's a little more to it than that.

[00:14:05] Christa Biegler, RD: So tell us about your recurrence. 

[00:14:07] Shawna Holman: Yeah, I'm looking back, you can put the puzzle pieces together totally, but I think for me, there was a combination of some pretty serious trauma, toxic burden based on the food and products in the environment And I think it was mold exposure or maybe I also got diagnosed with Lyme disease later in life too.

[00:14:27] Shawna Holman: And I know those can go together. I believe it was that whole like kind of trifecta. It was like a little bit of trauma for a lot. A little bit of toxic soup and a little bit of exposure. Exposure to some things, and it is the body out of balance, right? If I had less of any of those things, maybe I could have been a little more resilient to any of the other things, but most of us have all of those things going on.

[00:14:50] Shawna Holman: Yeah, and I think it's a matter of time for most of us, but. Or we're going to see some symptoms arise or recur. So for me, it was after had spent many years pain free and then I had two kids back to back, I'm like the books, it was like a full season is 16 months apart two little kids at home. And also during that season I started getting some symptoms after having not any sleep for a while there, and then also had another traumatic experience.

[00:15:18] Shawna Holman: Not to get into like too many details with that unless we want to, but I had my grandfather was killed and his killer was unfound for many years and then he finally got brought to trial and that was in 2018 and I sat through that trial and spoke to him and it was a really traumatic experience.

[00:15:39] Shawna Holman: things. I saw him on the night that he was killed. I saw his body. And then I had to wait all these years. It was 15 years before it got brought to trial. And now I had to sit there with this killer and hear all the stories of the witnesses and see the pictures and relive it. And it brought that trauma right back to the surface.

[00:15:55] Shawna Holman: And so once the trial ended, my body just and then I just went into a total crisis mode and I saw some symptoms reoccur at that point. And then it looked like it was multiple sclerosis. And so I was going through all the testing for that. I, again, with CAT scans and things like that, just seeing all the different specialists and thank God it wasn't MS.

[00:16:15] Shawna Holman: And then my symptoms cleared up, but during the course of that, trying to discover what's going on, if it's not MS, what the heck else is causing all of these really bad symptoms. awful symptoms. And then that's when I learned that Lyme is the great mimicker of so many things, including MS. But I didn't test for it right away because I was feeling better.

[00:16:35] Shawna Holman: And then when the symptoms started to peak up again, then I sought some help with people who understand. 

[00:16:40] Christa Biegler, RD: Thanks for sharing this just because it's like we're humans. And so I felt a little better, so I didn't test and that's okay. Like I actually have pretty conflicting opinions about whether testing is necessary.

[00:16:50] Christa Biegler, RD: I will just say that right off the bat, because we pretty much only like tests that validate how we're feeling. Otherwise, we're like very frustrated by them, case in point, like all of your experiences at doctors that may not, and it's appropriate to get workups and rule out negative things. That's the good news, right?

[00:17:06] Christa Biegler, RD: It's if you rule out all the really serious stuff like MS, or even if you had it right, there's still opportunities. And so that would be always like one of my mantras is there's always options. There's always opportunities. There's always options. I never want anyone to ever feel stuck that they're just stuck in something.

[00:17:19] Christa Biegler, RD: Transcribed but to your point, it's we're just not a human experience. Sometimes we're like more desperate than others. And my God, your trauma was intense. And so often people have an unrecognizable trauma, but yours is like very front and center. And big, and probably at that time, I wonder if it was like the hindsight was 2020 I wonder if at that time you realized how much the trauma was playing into the health exacerbation, or if you saw that A year later, or whatnot. 

[00:17:44] Shawna Holman: I think was a little of both really?

[00:17:46] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. 

[00:17:46] Shawna Holman: Because there was some that was immediate with a anxiety and panic attacks.

[00:17:49] Shawna Holman: It was like a PTSD TSD. Not like it was PTSD. 

[00:17:52] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, it was. So 

[00:17:53] Shawna Holman: I was in all that. So it wasn't a surprise when other symptoms started coming later because I knew my body was completely out of balance. 

[00:18:00] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, no. And to your point, when we have increased stressors generally, like the very easy physiology of it, although I am obsessed with emotion stored in the body, another conversation for another day, in general, nutrients are depleted under stress.

[00:18:14] Christa Biegler, RD: And so when nutrients are depleted, your body cannot function in a certain way. And I wonder if this is part of your story. For me, I felt validated by the genetics of stress. Oh, my detoxification abilities are actually just like not a hundred percent. They're actually like quite not awesome at all, like maybe 50%.

[00:18:31] Christa Biegler, RD: So I am going to be a person who's more susceptible to having skin issues or toxic burden buildup or whatnot. So detoxification is one of my favorite topics, but to talk about it in a very sustainable way, in a really real way, that's not all about restricting everything in life, which Has a place to help us like learn and understand things part of your story that I heard I just want to differentiate what I'm trying to say here is in your story, you did an elimination out which were like all the rage in the early 2000s.

[00:19:00] Christa Biegler, RD: And in general, if you've never changed your diet, it's highly recommended to Give it a try. There's so much growth and development that can come from that and potential positive results. But sometimes people go on an extremely restrictive diet for months and months and months and months.

[00:19:12] Christa Biegler, RD: And it actually causes more stress to their body. So I just want to differentiate that because in a few days you felt better and it was like, okay, and you said, I went about this in a very sustainable way. Whereas sometimes when we're restricting, we do it out of the, I think this extreme fear and scarcity almost.

[00:19:26] Christa Biegler, RD: And then we sometimes we communicate signals to our immune system and our body of lack of safety. And so sometimes that kind of bites us a little bit here and there. And again, I love a Louise Hayes statement. All experiences are good experiences.

[00:19:38] Christa Biegler, RD: We all learn more from our challenges quite often than our successes, but back to detoxification. Love this topic. Love to make it sustainable. And I think there's an external and an internal piece. And I think you speak to both of those kind of on your online platform, but you definitely help people again with the sustainable, like shifts toward especially external toxicants, right?

[00:19:59] Christa Biegler, RD: Like the pollutants, the crap, the toxic soup of our environment. So I'd love to like frame that up. And talk about a framework you've used or talk about some of, if, even if you want to use your story of things that how you started to make that shift, because something that people sometimes say, and I'm guessing you've heard this as people are like, wow, I'm overwhelmed by like how much there is to say.

[00:20:19] Christa Biegler, RD: And I think you just do a beautiful job of making it simple. So where would you start if someone asked you, where do I start? 

[00:20:27] Shawna Holman: Yeah, thank you, by the way. Yeah I think that it can be different for everyone, but I think let's start with what you're using the most, but that can be overwhelming because you use it the most and you rely on it and you trust it.

[00:20:40] Shawna Holman: But so for me, it was food, right? And I love what you said about really do not. Promote or support any kind of extremes. I think it's just I always refer back to this like balance scale, right when we're out of balance That's when things are going to fall out of alignment We're going to fall out of place and we're going to put our body into a stress state So some of the things can seem extreme at the onset, but you don't have to approach it in an extreme way So for me it began with package reading.

[00:21:07] Shawna Holman: I started reading ingredients and there were just some things that I just decided these are no longer going to be a part of my experience right now. Food dyes, artificial flavors, things that are in a lot of things. So this eliminated a ton of stuff from my grocery cart right away, but it didn't limit me.

[00:21:25] Shawna Holman: In the beginning, I remember people saying gosh, what can you eat? I was like, are you kidding? I can eat meat, fruit, vegetables, like good perspective. I'm eating everything. I'm just eating real food. And that, that can seem extreme to some people, but what a sad state of affairs when real food is extreme.

[00:21:44] Shawna Holman: So yeah, I don't like extremes. And I think that we all have to find what is going to be the approach that we can actually continue to track with and sustain. And that can look different for everyone. And I always tell everyone, do what you can with what you're able and as it makes sense.

[00:22:00] Shawna Holman: sense for you because all of our situations are different. Like maybe your spouse doesn't support these kinds of things, or maybe your budget, or maybe, you have different your schedule is, it just depends, but the things that you're using, the most are going to have the most impact.

[00:22:14] Shawna Holman: And that's usually going to include your food because you're eating all day, every day. so if you can make a little bit. Less toxic choices about what you are feeding and fueling yourself with that is going to be a big help. And then there's things, like personal care products and cleaning products that we have on in around us all day long too.

[00:22:34] Shawna Holman: So we just start to pay a little more attention to those. And my approach has always been as something begins to run out or wear out, I don't wait until it's completely gone because Now I'm in a situation where I need something right away. So I'm going to grab either what I'm familiar with or what's on sale.

[00:22:50] Shawna Holman: Or if I'm trying to make a better choice, I'm probably going to be fooled by clever marketing. The greenwashing on labels and things where it's like, Oh, this is paraben free. Okay. But what else is? In it, so I like to leave myself that little bit of time. Like my shampoo is two thirds gone.

[00:23:04] Shawna Holman: It's time to start looking for one that is a little less toxic. And a lot of times those are going to be purchases that you might make online because they're not carried in the local stores. And so you give yourself that little bit of time to research and find a product that is, A little less toxic than the one that you already have and then make that swap one at a time and then just keep going.

[00:23:25] Shawna Holman: Like I said, it's a lifelong, I don't even want to call it a pursuit. It's my lifestyle and the way that I try and support my body and do it in a way that is within the parameters of our budget and our needs and our preferences. And just, yeah, keep making those little swaps along the way. 

[00:23:41] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, I want to also disclaim going back to the very beginning of what you were saying, I want to disclaim that I also came from an experience of elimination and restriction, which is how I've arrived at balance, which is the base of life is real whole foods and Perfection is not really attainable, so there will be encounters with not real whole foods, and I get to decide how I want to feel about that situation and not freak out about it, and just decide whether I want to participate or not participate in that moment, but realizing that the majority of my time is my lifestyle, right?

[00:24:15] Christa Biegler, RD: It's the little things. Another way to think about this. So I think that's really like assessing, and I love how you just say as we use things up one way I like to talk about it is thinking about what touches your skin the most, and you brought up food, so I won't continue on that path, but I have some specific food questions also that are just like timely and trendy right now.

[00:24:34] Christa Biegler, RD: But thinking about. What touches our food and what touches most of our skin, right? Because sometimes we get hung up on something like blush, but then we're slathering everything else all over our skin and body. And it's which ones spend the most time? So your laundry detergent touches all of your skin technically, right?

[00:24:49] Christa Biegler, RD: Because your clothing is washed in it and your sheets are washed in it and you spend All of your days clothed in your laundry detergent. So that's a very good opportunity. And I don't know about you, but I've been on our journeys have very similar timeframes for the duration in the years, actually very parallel.

[00:25:07] Christa Biegler, RD: And the options are better now, aren't they? Or is it, are they better? Because we're more experienced. Like I used to test all these things and there was like all this terrible shampoo and deodorant. And I'm like, it's not actually so bad now. There's actually more options. 

[00:25:19] Shawna Holman: Yeah. 

[00:25:20] Shawna Holman: Yeah, in 2013, the options were very limited.

[00:25:22] Shawna Holman: 11 years later, it's amazing because of people wanting change and making change. We're seeing so many more alternatives, which can be a little overwhelming sometimes too, like which one's good, but that's a good problem. I was making my own laundry detergent in the beginning because nothing was.

[00:25:41] Shawna Holman: I couldn't understand the ingredients and none of it seemed like it was actually saying it was as clean as it, was claiming. But then my homemade stuff wasn't working so great either. So eventually I found some that were a little less toxic and yeah, the options now are way better than they were then.

[00:25:57] Christa Biegler, RD: Totally. I know people ask me about laundry. I always think Oh, maybe I'll make a list of the products I use, but then things do change, right? Things do change quite a bit. And it's almost hard to keep up with it. And I think your perspective is really on the optimistic side, which is how I like to be also.

[00:26:13] Christa Biegler, RD: It's we have an option. We can say if there's five or six options for laundry detergent, that could be overwhelming, or it could be like, Oh, Awesome. There's more than one. Love that. Love that for us. Love that we don't have to make our own laundry detergent now or our own deodorant. And there is, just a factor of it's like when you were trying your makeup before you still have to try and see if there's one that you like.

[00:26:33] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah. Let's talk about something that you said earlier, which was greenwashing on labels or in other words things that look healthy that maybe aren't like the absolute best. What are some filters that you've had to use? I think this is also a question of, and this comes up in a lot of places and I have my own answers to it.

[00:26:49] Christa Biegler, RD: People are like, what about this supplement? Or what about this thing? Or what about this thing? And it's like, how do you navigate some of that? 

[00:26:56] Shawna Holman: Yeah, I think that's why I like the one product at a time approach instead of going it's time to overhaul my bathroom, because you're not going to have the capacity to vet every single ingredient on every single product.

[00:27:07] Shawna Holman: So but taking it one at a time where I can turn something I just what I always say, like you can look at the front of a package. But it's not telling you the whole story. You always want to turn everything around and to touch on what you were saying earlier. I don't have my allegiance in any kind of brand or even like a product line within a brand because they can change, companies get bought out by bigger companies or they just, change their values or just start changing their formulation for any kind of reason, and so it's really important to, Continue to turn products around and look at what's inside of them and allow yourself that grace window so that you can actually read it and make an informed decision before you buy its replacement. But yeah, a lot of times what it says on the front isn't, never the full picture.

[00:27:49] Shawna Holman: And if you turn it around, you'll get a better idea of what's inside so that you can really determine for yourself if that's something that you want to spend your money on and use in on and around your body. 

[00:27:59] Christa Biegler, RD: You just said something, which was another question, which I alluded to earlier about being trendy.

[00:28:03] Christa Biegler, RD: In recent weeks, we saw a beloved natural health company get bought by another brand. And I see your coming head on with that on social media. And what are your thoughts about that in general? 

[00:28:15] Shawna Holman: I think there's pros and cons, right? Because now this company is going to probably get shared in a lot more places and it might become much more accessible to people.

[00:28:30] Shawna Holman: They're probably going to bring in, it's like Shark Tank stuff where they bring in their other people. Now that we have a different distribution line and we have different sourcing and they might be able to make this product much more accessible and reach a lot more people. And hopefully it doesn't change.

[00:28:43] Shawna Holman: Hopefully the ingredients and the quality of those ingredients remain the same. But that's on the con side, right? We don't know what's going to happen. We're going to continue to read the ingredients and see if they remain the same, but we also aren't going to know if the ingredients that they're sourcing are the same quality.

[00:29:00] Shawna Holman: There's so much unknown. And then one of my issues with it is now when I was investing in this small company before, and also it felt like a win. Like I'm investing my resources into this small company that's doing things well, and it's providing us with some whole food nourishing ingredients for some, convenience items.

[00:29:20] Shawna Holman: Now I'm lining the pocketbooks of some major conglomerate, right? So I don't feel great about that anymore. It doesn't feel like a win anymore. So I think, yeah, you can look at it from a bunch of different angles. I don't think there's just like a one way to look at that. 

[00:29:36] Christa Biegler, RD: I thought it was interesting. The first things I heard or I saw online was like, a big wellness influencer, like I'm never buying this again. I was like, that's a bit harsh. For a company that has been so kind to us. Let us just remember that we are all like human beings and there are real humans behind this company that were offered a lot for their blood, sweat, and tears for years.

[00:29:57] Christa Biegler, RD: And we don't know what will happen. It may make it very accessible for people. And what it, and so there's just so many ways to talk about it. If the company, I think at the bottom, at the end of the day, most things are money driven, but we are also encountering, I don't know how this will go.

[00:30:09] Christa Biegler, RD: I know you're involved in this too, but we're encountering a movement. Where there's a grassroots effort to really speak up against artificial colors, which is actually really exciting, right? Because if they have enough people saying I want this, then you're finally compelled to maybe shift that.

[00:30:27] Christa Biegler, RD: Because for years, I'll never forget, I've told this story a couple of times. I worked for a, I was an intern for a food company. Out of college. And I remember I shadowed the kind of the chef team for a whole day or longer. And I remember they told me about product development and how they were making a product that was they were trying to make a product for a busy mom on the go to make her like, to feel like she had a healthy option.

[00:30:51] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm like, Story of our lives. The end. Yes. . This was literally in 2007 or oh eight. And what is so funny is they like started, the chefs like made this gold standard product like based out of, they started with Cook's Illustrated, which is like the very tested versions of recipes and they manipulated it enough to make their own.

[00:31:10] Christa Biegler, RD: And then they made a prototype and the prototype was fried cookie dough. Because they had to use a prototype from other things that they already had, and it was like, this is the food science part, which is let us figure out how to make, it's almost mind boggling a little bit, like how these little tiny micro shifts have landed us where we are, and it's like a little bit crazy to us.

[00:31:30] Christa Biegler, RD: But I know I know it's not new to us, but some people are, and it's not really probably new to the audience either. But something that is fascinating is how in Europe the same kind of product is not the same as the one in the United States. And so I always say let's not assign a lot of blame, we have the opportunities to make better choices.

[00:31:44] Christa Biegler, RD: And thankfully we have some things that are better choices, but when you started, you did have to make something. So tell us a little bit about things that you still like to make because you've found that you enjoy it. Maybe this is not your laundry detergent. Like you found one that you can buy, but what is something that you actually make at home now?

[00:32:01] Christa Biegler, RD: Because it brings you joy and it's something that's become ritualistic, et cetera. Yeah, 

[00:32:06] Shawna Holman: food. 

[00:32:07] Shawna Holman: For sure. I love cooking and I didn't use to, like I said, I grew up in a conventional nineties house where, both parents worked and then my dad died. My mom's a single mom working many jobs.

[00:32:16] Shawna Holman: I didn't learn to cook, under this like holistic, like idealistic. Idea that, we think that happens, like you're learning under grandma in the kitchen. It wasn't happening. I learned to cook by watching, Rachel Ray and Emeril Lagasse and stuff on TV.

[00:32:30] Shawna Holman: And then just trying things out myself at home. But yeah, food definitely. Then there've been a lot of things that You know I gave up from my former way of living where I'm like, I'm not going to eat crunch wraps every week anymore, but I can make it at home. Or, like I did Chick fil a sauce or all of those things that I've enjoyed.

[00:32:47] Shawna Holman: I'm like I can make that at home. And so I've really enjoyed trying to come up with my own creations to satisfy those kinds of desires, and I find that I enjoy them even more. And I feel feel great afterwards. So food's been really great. I do some, my own cleaning products still, like I've made a it's just like white vinegar and water can clean just about anything in your whole home.

[00:33:09] Shawna Holman: And then I just leveled that up a little bit and put my used lemon rinds in my vinegar. And I let that infuse under my sink for, either a few days or up to a few months and then use that vinegar and the water, and now it smells a little nicer and it has a little better cleaning power too.

[00:33:24] Shawna Holman: That's one I've been making for, over a decade now. Try and think what else, but yeah, I'll do stuff like that. Like a ant spray, with peppermint essential oil and water, or, do the water and Borax and sugar, and you put that in a cotton ball and the ants take it and yeah, stuff like that.

[00:33:39] Shawna Holman: I love doing things myself when I can with basic ingredients that you already have around your home. That won't make you feel like junk and aren't going to cost you extra money. And a lot of these things I started doing because, my husband and I, we were newly married and I'd been sick. So I wasn't working as much as I would have liked to.

[00:33:57] Shawna Holman: So we're basically on one income and And living in Southern California, it's like one of the most expensive places to live. So a lot of this was necessity. It was like, all these products are expensive and I don't really have the capacity to just keep trying different ones that aren't going to work the way that I want them to.

[00:34:15] Shawna Holman: And I'm not even sure that they're as clean as they're claiming. So I just started making stuff myself and some of them I've continued, but like the laundry detergent one, no, I ended up finding out, or I read several places that it's like the homemade one you're making isn't actually a detergent.

[00:34:28] Shawna Holman: It's more of a soap. And so it's not going to do the same job. And I was seeing that to be true. So that one, I stopped making myself, but a lot of things I still like. 

[00:34:35] Christa Biegler, RD: I'm glad you brought up vinegar and water and lemon peel because it's so simple. And to your point, like that is the conversation is this lifestyle more expensive?

[00:34:43] Christa Biegler, RD: And it's it can go both ways, right? So if we buy convenience, natural products, it can be expensive. And if you stick to what's on sale, and what's in season, then it's really not. I actually like love to judge myself on this all the time at the grocery store. I was like, I really I live in a food desert with an amazing grocery store for being a food desert.

[00:35:01] Christa Biegler, RD: And my produce costs, like the expensive stuff is like actually the protein, which is fine. That's just like generally accepted as true for me. And I'm willing to spend money on protein because I value the protein, but. The produce, like I can really truly do economically or I can make, I go through ups and downs.

[00:35:18] Christa Biegler, RD: Like I just have, I just keep reusing the same soap containers and put some Dr. Bronner's in it with water and call it a day, right? Like good enough for me and not that Dr. Brown is like the cheapest thing, but when you're just not using not very much, I'm adding water. It works. It's fine. I heard you say some words that are part of a framework for you, which is you level up.

[00:35:37] Christa Biegler, RD: And so you have a four part framework, assess, let go, level up, and time. So will you just run through those really quick as a, using that as a lens or framework to making little less toxic swaps? 

[00:35:48] Shawna Holman: Ah, sure. 

[00:35:49] Christa Biegler, RD: So a while back my college aged daughter shared with me that she was tossing and turning and waking up several times per night after a period of stress. We started her on magnesium and her sleep immediately improved. I personally think magnesium should be your first thing to try if you're having trouble sleeping or staying asleep, especially tossing and turning, and it's a no brainer if you have any restless leg issues.

[00:36:13] Christa Biegler, RD: The thing about magnesium is that there's a lot of types of magnesium that will give you symptomatic release, but I like to steer my clients and loved ones to a more absorbable form of magnesium because most big box magnesium is magcitrate and that will push bowels that can be damaging to your teeth if it's used daily and it's not the most absorbable.

[00:36:33] Christa Biegler, RD: Rather, Jigsaw Health makes one of my favorite great tasting magnesium powders called MagSue that has magnesium glycinate. My favorite calming and absorbable type of magnesium. It's available in both a Great Tasting Powder and to go packets. And they also make a product that's great for slow release, especially if you have restless legs, called MagSRT.

[00:36:55] Christa Biegler, RD: So, if you are not falling asleep easily, or if you have disrupted sleep, you can try at least 200 mg of great magnesium, like MagSoothe or MagSRT, especially if you have restless legs. It works better to take this at least 20 minutes before you go to bed to allow it to kick in and you can get a discount on all of Jigsaw's amazing products, including MagSoothe at Jigsaw Health with the code LESSSTRESS10.

[00:37:20] Christa Biegler, RD: Now you can use LESSSTRESS10 as many times as you want with every order at Jigsaw Health, which is honestly pretty unheard of with coupon codes, so enjoy the magnesium from Jigsaw with my code LESSSTRESS10.

[00:37:34] Shawna Holman: When I was writing my first book, A Healthier Home, I was just, I wanted to come up with a, It's a very easy to remember approach that matches what I already do.

[00:37:42] Shawna Holman: And so my, my social media handle is a little less toxic. So I took that A L T. And so I turned that into kind of like an acronym, right? So you do the A is for assess. So you look at what you have and you think, do I actually need all these things? Because a lot of times we have cupboards and drawers full of things that we haven't used in months or sometimes even years.

[00:38:02] Shawna Holman: And they're just taking up space and contributing to indoor air pollution for no good reason. And cluttering up. So just eliminate things without that would be the next one, right? So we assess what do I need? What things do I have in here? Are these actually serving me? And then you're going to do the next step is L, which is let go.

[00:38:19] Shawna Holman: And you start to remove things because before adding anything else in, removing is going to be one way to make your home and life better. a little less toxic and make things healthier, right? There's so much more about removing things that aren't serving us than buying things to your point about budget, right?

[00:38:35] Shawna Holman: We don't have to go buy all these things to fix our life. A lot of times it's just removing the things that are hindering us in our balance or in our health. So then I'll let go of things that was like, okay this shampoo has been in here for two years. I, it came with me on a move. I don't need to like keep this in my cupboard or this sauce or seasoning or whatever it might be.

[00:38:54] Shawna Holman: Maybe it's even just old clothes. And then after that it's level up. So that's what I was talking about earlier where. I give myself some wiggle room and I will look to see if there's something that is a little less toxic that I can replace this item with when it runs out or wears out. And if I can't find something that is better ingredients, that's within my budget, then I know I'm doing the best I can.

[00:39:19] Shawna Holman: And I can continue to make that exact same purchase or something that's the exact same cost or something like that. So I always know I'm making an informed decision to get the best I can. Like I said, to Do what I can with what I'm able and as it makes sense for me. And then that next step is T is time that this is just a lifelong lifestyle that it's a pursuit of wellness, right?

[00:39:40] Shawna Holman: That I'm just going to continue to make these steps. over and over again for the rest of my life. I'm not going to arrive at this perfect health. None of us will not this side of heaven. So what I can do is make choices that are going to help to keep me in balance and moving in a better direction, because one way or another, we're going to make those really small choices over time.

[00:40:01] Shawna Holman: And it's, it can lead us two different ways. So I'm just going to continue to make those better choices that I'm able to, and over time, watch what a big difference it can make. 

[00:40:12] Christa Biegler, RD: What are a few of your favorite recipes that are in your new cookbook? 

[00:40:16] Shawna Holman: Oh boy, the one I oh man, I don't know. That's really hard.

[00:40:20] Shawna Holman: So this book has it's 75 plus I need to count exactly how many recipes but they're really just the ones that I make all the time for my family So the some of them came about when I was You know, trying to figure out how to recreate things that I wasn't eating anymore because of the ingredients they had and a lot of them were, I'm now feeding these two small children and myself and my husband on very limited time and energy and, but I still want to make it really delish.

[00:40:46] Shawna Holman: I love food. I love food. So they're really just like our family favorites, things that I've needed to recreate so that I could make it home with my own ingredients, like instant pudding in there or whipped cream, caramel corn. But then, trying to think one that we've been making a lot is this, I called it chicken salad pasta salad, but we came up with a better name in the book.

[00:41:07] Shawna Holman: It's a Sonoma style chicken salad bowl, but it's a really good chicken salad, but I mixed it with pasta. So it would be like a bigger, heartier dish instead of just, chicken salad, a scoop with crackers or whatever. So many good hearty soups and stews. Just there, it's a lot of good stuff in there.

[00:41:24] Shawna Holman: I don't know if I could pick even a handful of favorites. 

[00:41:28] Christa Biegler, RD: Is there a product line? Do you see a product line in your future also? 

[00:41:32] Shawna Holman: I really 

[00:41:33] Shawna Holman: don't.

[00:41:34] Shawna Holman: So I didn't intend to be whatever this is that I am. I had no desire to be like and I'm putting air quotes, but an influencer. And I have been really encouraged and motivated by the other people that want to join and do these kinds of things too.

[00:41:52] Shawna Holman: It's been really inspiring to see change in people and it really encourages me to keep sharing. And I never, I thought I never wanted to be an author. I do think I have some stories and I like writing and I would have done it very privately, but I feel like I have a task set before me and I can either accept it or reject it.

[00:42:14] Shawna Holman: And with the, both of the books, I felt like this is something that I feel called to do right now because it can help people. And I also want to leave a legacy for my kids so that one day when mommy's gone, they have all my tips and tricks and recipes so that they can continue to. Use them with their own families and hopefully it'll help other people along the way, but I never saw myself as being a business owner or run.

[00:42:36] Shawna Holman: I don't feel like I am wired that way. So I'm just doing the best I can 

[00:42:43] Christa Biegler, RD: and doing it well. I love your why and your mission, right? So help feeling impacted by, it's like I put this out into the world and get it back exponentially. 

[00:42:53] Shawna Holman: And I'm so thankful for the people that are making better products and running businesses.

[00:42:57] Shawna Holman: That is not something I feel like I could ever be equipped to do. So I'm so thankful for them. And I love to get to support them with my resources and share about them on my platform and help support them and encourage them that way. I just don't know if I could be one of them, but God bless them. 

[00:43:13] Christa Biegler, RD: Yeah, for sure. You mentioned it before, where can people find you online? 

[00:43:17] Shawna Holman: So I'm mostly on Instagram. It's a little less toxic and I try and show up there and share things that I think might be helpful. It's mostly shenanigans and chaos, but a little bit of learning and experience along the way.

[00:43:30] Shawna Holman: And I have a website also a little less toxic. com and my books are sold everywhere books are sold. 

[00:43:37] Christa Biegler, RD: Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on today, Shana, and sharing your very relatable story and what you did to overcome it and how you've operated optimistically. What is the mantra doing what you can with what you're able as it makes sense for you.

[00:43:52] Shawna Holman: That's right. 

[00:43:52] Shawna Holman: Thank you, Christa.