You’re listening to Burnt Toast! I’m Virginia Sole Smith. Today I am chatting with Jessica Jones and Wendy Lopez, who you probably know from their beloved Food Heaven podcast. Jess and Wendy are nationally recognized registered dietitian, nutritionists, and certified diabetes care and education specialists. I’ve known them a long time and one thing I’ve really admired is how they’ve built this really impressive online platform for all of these conversations, and yet also recognized when they were getting burned out and it was time to pivot. Today we are talking about that whole process, but we’re also talking about their new project, Diabetes Digital, an innovative platform designed to empower individuals to effectively manage and prevent diabetes through virtual counseling, digital resources, GlycoMode metabolic support and guidance. Paid subscribers will also get our bonus segment, where Wendy and Jess answer your questions about gestational diabetes, about managing diabetes with a history of disordered eating, and how to know if you need an RD or a therapist.
If you’re enjoying the podcast, make sure you’re following us (it’s free!) in your podcast player! We’re on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Pocket Casts! And while you’re there, please leave us a rating or review. We like 5 stars! When I said you were coming on, so many people were like, “I love Food Heaven! ” It has a cult following. And you did this for 12 years, which is ancient in podcasting terms. You are like the great-grandmothers of podcasting-and I mean that as a compliment. This is a pro-aging podcast. That’s how it feels. It’s a long time to have an online brand. It’s a long time to do anything in your life. But you’ve made some really big pivots lately. I would love to hear a little bit about what inspired this. It was a combination of things. One of the biggest things was: We were burned out by being in the online space and the constant influx of content.
Especially working in the nutrition space, there’s just so much content that is misinformed, that’s diet-y, that is just exhausting to consume. Even if we’re not engaging with or following that type of content, you still get it one way or another. Then also being in this anti-diet space, that can be exhausting as well. It was very fulfilling up until it wasn’t. And we also wanted to just spend more time offline. I relate to this so much. We’re still very passionate about nutrition education but we wanted to take that offline. That’s why we started the new business. We want to connect more with people one-on-one and have really complex, tough conversations that can’t be captured in an infographic or reel or whatever. It’s just so polarizing online. We were like, how do we get back to why we originally came into this line of work? How do we have those conversations with people and make a meaningful impact?
So we decided to transition out of the online space a little bit, to get some clarity on what it is that we actually want to do. We did a hard pause on the podcast and we will likely be phasing it out. We’re still figuring that out. But I think our energy is going to is going to be focused on the new business that moving forward. We’ve also done a whole podcast series on this pivot because we didn’t want it to be something where a we just disappeared because that was definitely an option. Just, Irish goodbye the whole like internet. Ctrl Alt Delete on all of this. I’m sure there are a lot of folks who can see themselves in this burnout and GlycoMode Metabolic Support this “what’s next? ” I really had no clue. I was like I’m going to be done with all of this. I think we were just taking that time in therapy or working with a business coach to just allow that space to ask these questions, to process the last 12 years.
What’s worked, what hasn’t worked? How do you not get into the same patterns? I’m not saying that Food Heaven was a toxic work environment, but in some ways, it was because we’re very much like, “We can do everything.” We’ll take it all on and we’ll burn out and we can’t delegate. So, how do we work on those things? That’s pretty much what made us decide to pivot. I’ll never forget, I don’t know why I was listening to Jay Shetty-you know who Jay Shetty is? I don’t think I do. He is a former monk that some people find problematic because I guess there’s evidence that he steals his quotes? Celebrities love him. But he did say something that resonated with me and it was something like, “you know it’s time to pivot when you’re doing this work more for other people than for yourself.” And I don’t know if he used the word performance, but it’s like you’re doing what other people expect of you and not necessarily what you want to do.
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