Anna Heinauer | Photograph by Adam Williams
Editor’s Note: This is from the monthly column for We Are Chaffee’s Looking Upstream podcast, written by Adam Williams. The column is published in two newspapers local to Chaffee County, Colo.: the Chaffee County Times (Buena Vista) and The Mountain Mail (Salida).
‘We Are Chaffee’ with Anna Heinauer
If you missed the word in last month’s column on what’s new and improving with We Are Chaffee’s Looking Upstream podcast, here’s the gist: Looking Upstream keeps growing and connecting our community, and now it is moving up to weekly episodes.
After more than two years of releasing new podcast conversations every other week, which also air at 2 p.m. on Tuesdays on KHEN 106.9 FM community radio, the weekly flow that will rev up in September will double the goodness.
Twice the number of guests and stories and insights from within our Chaffee County community. More than twice the opportunities, I’d say.
To this point, the podcast/radio show has primarily been about getting to know people in our community by digging into the human experiences beyond the surface-level matters of what they do and what their community face is.
As we go weekly, I want Looking Upstream to continue being about the humans at the heart of it all. But now, with twice the air waves, I’m also looking to tackle some of the big issues of our time and place head on.
Issues like housing affordability, which I recently talked about with Read McCulloch, executive director of Chaffee Housing Trust. That episode will be available next month. And like nutrition, which was the focus of my recent talk with Anna Heinauer. That episode is out already.
Heinauer is an integrative nutrition health coach. She also is co-owner of The Lettucehead Food Company in Buena Vista, along with her husband, Adam Heinauer. She and I got into many things nutrition on the podcast. From our conversation:
“The program I went through, the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, they think of ‘primary foods’ as actually not the food that we eat, but sleep and anything from your stress levels to your career, things that really fuel you as a human,” Heinauer said, “and understanding that you could have the cleanest diet in the world, you could exercise all day, but unless you’re really taking time for yourself, unless you are prioritizing all these other items like sleep and relationships – you need all that to really have optimal health.
“So it’s a more holistic approach, where it’s not just counting calories or how much protein you’re getting in a meal. It’s understanding that food is the foundation in so many ways, but there’s also many other aspects that we need to be thinking about to optimize our health.”
So we got down to the basics and I asked Heinauer questions like: What is nutrition, really? And why should we care about it? And why should we prioritize whole foods and buying local produce? And so on.
We talk about why the food pyramid chart that so many of us grew up with is bogus and what nutritional guidance has replaced that pyramid. Actually quite a while ago, as it turns out. It seems that I was a bit out of the loop on that one.
We also talk about some keys to dietary discipline and cultivating wellness success over time, and the real costs of our nutritional choices in the short- versus long-term. And I ask about some tricky foods, foods that seem like they’re healthy choices, but might not always be quite what we think they are.
I also wanted to know why when I stop running and being ultra active I gain lots and lots of weight, while someone else in my family can subsist on cheeseburgers, and no veggies and no exercise, and never not be thin. Which is to say, Heinauer sheds some light on the role of genetics and bio-individuality in our health journeys besides the nutritional choices we make, food and otherwise.
I also learned of the slow-food icon who inspired Heinauer to write a children’s book, “Alice and the Garden,” which got some extra shine from a Hollywood notable, by the way, via her famous holiday gift guide a few years back. That, I did not anticipate. It’s a reminder of the amazing things that pop up when we get curious and venture into a conversation with our neighbors.
Speaking of reminders, Looking Upstream has a new website, wearechaffeepod.com, where you can listen to the show, see photos of the guests, get web links to more information about them, and read a transcript of the conversation, if that format suits you.
As always, Looking Upstream is available on all podcast players. Like Apple, Amazon Music, Spotify, Pandora, etc. And very soon, with new episodes coming your way every Tuesday.
’Til the next episode, as we say at We Are Chaffee, “Share stories, make change.”
Adam Williams is host, producer and photographer for We Are Chaffee’s Looking Upstream podcast. Listen at wearechaffeepod.com. Follow @wearechaffeepod on Instagram.
