4: How to Start Your Clean Living Journey | Jordan Lee Dooley

Welcome to the ever be podcast.

I've actually been doing that for about a decade now. It started with an Etsy store, ironically, um, when I was in college back in 2015. So almost 10 years ago, and it was really just a Christian Etsy store. And I did a lot of hand lettering. I did a lot of like scripture, a lot of, um, I would make like decor.

I made journals and a lot of things that I would use, um, hand lettering and design for, but it was all faith based and then that just kind of slowly evolved into writing and storytelling and sharing more online. really have just done that for the last decade, and it's kind of followed my own journey. It's grown and evolved with me as I've gone from college student to newlywed to, uh, struggling with fertility for years and being refined by suffering for sure.

Um, and then now in my, you know, journey as a, as a mom. So. It's just kind of grown up with me and evolved as I've evolved and the Lord's just taken me through different seasons. But that's what I do now. I spend a lot of time on social media, on my podcast, um, and I'm writing my third book. So, uh, I have a lot, a lot of time spent doing that.

I wanted to share it anywhere I could. And so that was really cool that at that time, you know, social media was starting to become more of a space. I feel like blogging was still on the newer side and it's now turned into a lot of other things. podcasting and whatnot. But at that time, you know, I was just like utilizing that as an outlet. And it also naturally like promoted my Etsy store.

Um, and it's cool the way that I've been able to, to utilize storytelling and also like biblical principles as the foundation of whatever it is that I'm talking about in that season, whether I'm, you know, in a season where I'm sharing a lot of my wellness journey or a season where I'm sharing my, um, My business journey or whatever it might be. So it's always kind of been the foundation.

I always say a lot of times I think on online, we tend to try to make Christianity or the gospel, um, like a, a niche, like a genre. Like I'm a Christian fill in the blank. Right. And I feel like. The fact of the matter is like, if you've been transformed by Christ, like you're a Christian, everything like you're so, so I had to kind of shift from making it like, uh, if you think about like books on a bookshelf, right?

We often think like, Oh, faith, family, fitness, like these are all categories in our life. And they're all, if you look at them as like different books, right? All different topics in our life. But I think the Lord really challenged me in my work, especially through my journey with. Suffering and miscarriage and all the things that faith isn't necessarily like a genre, or it's not a niche.

It's actually like the bookshelf that holds up all the other things in our life and all the other categories. And it just seeps into everything. It bleeds into everything. It's the foundation of everything. And so that's kind of the way that I try to approach when I share, um, anything that I do. It's just like, it's all going to be biblically based. It's not like faith is this like little category of what I talk about, if that makes sense.

Um, there was a lot of, you know, buzz happening on Instagram podcasts that I was listening to stuff like that. And I found it all very interesting, but at the same time I found it really overwhelming and I wasn't really even sure what it was really where to start. So let's break it down. Let's start real simple. What does clean living really mean or holistic mean? What, how would you describe that?

Um, it really just means trying to utilize when it comes to your everyday products and the things that you are putting on and in your body from like a food standpoint to a product standpoint. It's just trying to choose products that have slightly better ingredients. A lot of our conventional products Unfortunately, have a lot of questionable, potentially harmful ingredients. Some known carcinogens, um, hormone disruptors, things that can really impact our body.

Now, in the tiny microdose that they might be in, you know, a counter spray, if that was the only exposure we had, probably shouldn't be too concerning.

But when you consider the fact that a lot of these types of ingredients are in all of our personal care products or the majority of, uh, personal care products, conventional personal care products, as well as the majority of, um, Household products, the majority of, you know, and then we're exposed to things in our environment that we almost can't control.

There's just so many, um, different exposures to environmental concerns and toxins and things that can impact our body, our fertility, our hormones, our overall health. So clean living in a nutshell is just trying to choose. Cleaner products, which is unfortunately not really a very regulated term. So what might be clean to one person isn't necessarily clean to another. So the idea in a nutshell is trying to choose slightly better ingredients.

And the reason a lot of these, we can maybe get into the reason why a lot of these conventional products have maybe concerning ingredients, but the point is. It's just trying to make better choices and being a little bit more thoughtful of what are the ingredients and the products that I'm using on a daily basis that I'm exposed to and the things that I can control. Cause there's a lot of things in our external environments that we can't control.

So what's within my control and how can I make slightly better choices to utilize products with slightly cleaner ingredients. The holistic piece of the conversation, again, very, very interchangeable, but I look at holistic living and holistic health, not so much, you know, I think a lot of times you hear that and you think like, kind of like woo, woo, you know, um, Just like all the hippie to be everything. Right.

And that can be true to a degree, but I really think, you know, when you think about holistic health, and this is something I really had to, I guess, uncover and walk through personally, because for a while health to me was I work out and I eat salads. Right. And then I was like, wait, so why are my hormones mess? Why am I having, you know, recurrent miscarriages? Why am I having symptomic acne at age 27 or whatever?

So it was an interesting kind of shift for me where it's like health is so much more than fitness or lifting weights or exercising or eating, you know, greens. Right. But that's kind of what health culture pushes. That's what we see a lot. That's at the forefront. Um, but holistic health is a. holistic, quite literally, like if you think about it as the whole person, body, mind, soul, spirit.

So I guess the soul soul and spirit are kind of the same, but if you're thinking about mine, your, your mental health, your emotional health, your physical health, and your spiritual health, I kind of had to realize sometimes some of the things we do to pursue health, um, let's say physically can actually be harmful to us emotionally or mentally, cause we're stressing out about it. Right.

Or some of the things that we might be doing to like, feel better mentally are actually hurting our physical health or vice. So the idea is like holistic health is actually pursuing wellness in all of those areas and taking a more, I would say like natural approach. The way I see it is like, how can I get, you know, one to 2 percent closer to how God originally designed us to live?

Cause I think in our modern culture of speed and convenience and quick fixes and magic pills and potions and all the things that we're kind of promoted to or sold to all the time. And that's in our face.

It's like, we've just gotten so far away from like the, the, Basic fundamental design that God had in the garden, you know, and so I think holistic health is like kind of trying to In the best way we can in our modern culture without stressing or being perfect about it Leaning a little bit back into wait, what did God create and how are we originally designed to live and how could I maybe?

Lean into that and try to get a little bit closer back to that in today's world where we're just so far away from it So that's kind of the way I define those two things

I know you've done so much research, um, and I've learned so much from you, but what really led you to go down the path of research and implementing more of this natural lifestyle?

And then I got on that for like a very short period of time when I first got married because my doctor told me that was a good idea. And then after like six to 12 months, I was like, I don't want to be taking this. Um, and that was interestingly enough when I feel like things kind of like had a domino effect. So looking back, I'm kind of curious as to like the role that played and it really made me rethink a lot of things on that.

Um, but, and then I've really changed my view on birth control as a whole since I was 22, but that's another conversation. Um, all of that said, you know, that coupled with, I was a little bit frustrated with what was going on with my skin. So I was like, Hmm, maybe I need to start investigating. And then I just started having miscarriages and I was young and healthy. And then I just stopped getting pregnant altogether for a bit there. Um, and so it almost didn't make sense.

You know, a lot of doctors were like, well, you're young, you're healthy, it's a flu. And something in my gut was just like, you know, call it the Holy Spirit. I was just like, Hmm, I don't know. I don't think so. Like this doesn't make sense, you know, so I started investigating. I started working with integrative doctors. I started, um, just really digging deep. This was back in 2019, 2020. And I feel like that's kind of when things started.

People, more and more and more people were talking about this. I don't know if it was coupled with just what was going on with COVID and people wanting to be more health conscious, but I feel like in the last four years, it's become more of a, you common conversation on social media. But at the beginning I was like digging to try to find information. Um, but that was really what kicked it off was struggling with acne and wondering why.

And I didn't totally dive in at that point cause it was annoying. It was an inconvenience, but it wasn't totally disrupting my life. But then when I started losing babies and I was walking through heartbreak and trying to make sense of what was going on and also support my body, you know, just from a healing perspective. from pregnancies and losses standpoint and try to support my fertility.

I was like, Whoa, there's a lot of things that I'm consuming and doing and coming in contact with and using every single day that could be having a negative impact. Like, what can I be proactively doing just in my everyday life, um, to better support my body and my body's ability to support a pregnancy. So that was kind of what really kicked it off about four or five years ago.

Um, so what if, Yeah. if someone is, is here listening and they're kind of at the beginning of this journey as well, I know when I was first starting, I would hear people talk about, like you said, like, Like different things that are affecting our fertility, our health, um, our gut, our wellbeing, and it could be environmental toxins. It could be, you know, harmful toxins in our products. It could be the food we're eating. Where should someone really start?

Like just make a few healthier swaps in areas that like, I think about the things that you use every single day or that you're using most often. So for example, something I often recommend starting with her that I started with is like deodorant, feminine care products, those types of things that are coming into contact with kind of intimate areas of your body and also in absorbent areas of your body. Um, and that you're using often, right. Um, and regularly.

Um, so anyways, I actually have a freebie. I don't know if this is helpful. I can give you a link to it, but if you guys want to download it, I'll, I'll make sure you guys have a link for the show notes, but it's basically just, here's your first five swaps that you can consider. And here's the ones I would start with as a woman. And also here's kind of the process to go through swapping in general, because I think it can feel like, Oh my gosh, I have to like overhaul everything.

When in reality, it's like, start with the things we're using the most, which are most likely going to be these four or five products that I generally recommend starting with such as deodorant, et cetera. Um, And then once you've kind of found your, you know, lower tox, less harmful, um, staple for that, your switch, your everyday go to, then you move on to the next one. And I generally say like, it can be really helpful to start with the things like your personal care products.

So that's kind of where I recommend a lot of people will say like your laundry detergent, there's not like a perfect or right answer, but I think of like the things you're putting on your body every single day, um, the things that you're, you know, even thinking about like. The things your food are coming into contact with. So one of the first five swaps I often say is like maybe eliminating like plastic food, storage containers, things like that.

So, um, just those, those things that have, you know, really been linked to, you know, how they can affect hormones. A lot of them are, but what are the things that we're using most and most often in our lives? Let's start with those.

And then I moved to cleaning products and stuff like that and kind of moved from like, like my personal bubble and then to the outer bubbles, like in my home. Um, so that, that's great advice.

But I guess my point is when you're trying to do both at the same time, you're like, well, what I put in my body is, you know, important. You can almost feel like you're trying to learn and do too many things at once. That's where it's like just compartmentalized and it's hard. I think as women, cause we want to like, think about everything. Um, and I know I do that even now. So it's like, this is the focus for today. Let's start with that.

And then we can actually like, feel like we accomplished something. Cause otherwise you just kind of feel like you're spinning your wheels, not like doing a lot, but not actually like making a significant impact. So

Like. I remember when I first started learning, I was very skeptical. I'm like, what are, what are, why are these things bad? Why is everything all of a sudden bad? What are the things in them? Maybe, I don't know if You have a few like ingredients or what their impact is. Like, why are these things bad? Go

And pretty much everything that you're trying to figure out is like, well, where's, what's driving a lot of maybe decisions behind quality or ingredients or safety or all the things. And I don't think it's that any of the companies or conventional products are like actively trying to harm anyone. It's that these, you know, https: otter. ai They're not actively trying to harm anyone, but they are actively trying to increase and maximize profit, right? They're a business and they're a corporation.

And so a lot of times, a lot of the ingredients that end up in products are the ones that are the cheapest and like the cheapest to mass produce so that you're able to have high inventory, keep things stocked and also keep costs low. And therefore a product. Profit margin high, right? The, the products that use more naturally born natural ingredients, or even like there are synthetic. This is the thing I think in the natural living world that people get really confused by.

There are synthetic ingredients that are not harmful necessarily. So it's not always like it has to be like you picked up a rock from the earth and stuck it in your makeup and that's what makes it safe. It's actually like there are synthetic ingredients that are harmful and there are natural ingredients that went in certain ways can be harmful depending on how it's processed and all of the things.

So when it comes to like what makes them bad, it's that a lot of times these companies that are prioritizing profit are choosing lower quality ingredients. Ingredients that like, for example, parabens is something that is very, like there's, there was actually recently a study done and I found it really fascinating where when women. Um, switch to their natural or their personal care products for 30 days, uh, and they just avoided things like phenols, phthalates, and, um, parabens.

Those are three kind of red flag ingredients to watch for. Um, they saw a significant reduction in breast cancer gene expression. It's like they measured before and after that intervention of removing those types of products. So things like that, parabens, phenols, um, phthalates, uh, undisclosed fragrance, which can essentially mean fragrances is not bad. Like a product having a smell is not what makes it bad.

It's when there's a blanket term, like blanket term fragrance, it can mean that there's 3000 ingredients or potential chemicals that could be used to make that fragrance that we don't know what they are because they don't spell it out on the label. Cause it would take up way too much space in the label. So they just put fragrance.

Um, and a lot of times that's like, well, is it, Fragrance made with ingredients that are not going to be harmful, or is it fragrance made with ingredients that could be harmful? So it's a big question to say what makes them so bad because every ingredient is so different in the potential effects that it can have.

But a lot of these ingredients, such as parabens or, um, undisclosed fragrances or things like that, uh, certain preservatives, which is what a paraben basically is, it can have endocrine disrupting, uh, effects, which means it's affecting hormones. Some of our, some are known carcinogens or can be linked to carcinogenic properties. Um, some are allergens and irritants. Like there's just different effects that these different products have.

There's actually a really interesting website that is specific to beauty, but it's really helpful for kind of educating. It's called the campaign for safe cosmetics. And it helps kind of break down like, Hey, here's why this ingredient is concerning. Here's what it typically shows up in. Here's products. You're going to see it in most likely or most often. Um, so anyway, that's kind of a helpful, uh, educational resource too, but hopefully that kind of answers your question in a shell.

Cause it's a big question that we'd have to almost go through every ingredient, but yeah, examples

Here's what you might, how it might appear on a label might show up as like peg dash one or might show up as, you know, methylparaben or different names that basically mean this is in the paraben family or this is in the, um, you know, quote unquote like harmful preservative family that you might want to avoid. So hopefully that's helpful. I'll, I'll, I'll include that too.

And you can look up what those ingredients are and how they affect human health. Um, that's just going to be a really simple way to avoid unnecessary exposure.

I think in the wellness world, it can get really overwhelming just in general, but also if you're going into the wellness world with like a health problem that you're actually trying to address and find answers for, it can be even more overwhelming because you just see, you know, all these things.

That you should be doing all these supplements that you should be taking all these different types of, you know, eating regimens and all this, all this different type of advice, but your page has been refreshing and it's kind of a sense of like rest in peace in the midst of the noise to be like, yes, you know, there are changes that you can, that you can make, but it's okay to have a grace based approach and be patient with yourself and know that it's going to take time.

So what does this mean to you? And what can it look like for women who are wanting to pursue that?

You know, and that's kind of the, the heart of, well, behind what I share is like, what this looks like and the capacity each of us have and the potential. The commitment each person has is going to vary person to person, situation to situation, budget to budget, circumstance to circumstance.

And so I think that's an important nuance to the conversation because I think otherwise it just creates this culture of like shame, of like, well, if you're not doing it all, you might as well do nothing, right? Or like, if you aren't doing it all, you're basically doing nothing. That can be the lie we begin to believe. And we can think the handful of changes or, you know, steps in a healthier direction we try to make is entirely pointless because we can't change all this other stuff over here.

Um, And I know for me personally, I'm kind of an all or nothing person, especially when I uncover something that is like eyeopening for me, or I'm passionate about something. And when I was like on this mission to like fix my fertility and like fix my body and my hormones and whatever was going on in whatever, in the, in my body internally. I think I just kind of like went straight into the deep end. And so for at first, I was very intense with it.

And I tend to be somebody who like reaches for control, and it felt like something I could control. It reminded me a lot of when I was in college, and this is where I think sometimes it can become a very stressful and even like an idle, um, a stressful thing and an idol because it reminded me of when I was in college and I got really into fitness and I started running and logging miles and nothing wrong with running and logging miles, right?

That's like good for our bodies to an extent, but it kind of became an obsession. I felt like there was a lot of areas of my life that were spinning out of control or just not in my control. I had walked through a breakup. My grandma passed away. I moved away to college for the first time. All of that was happening within the same year. And I just suddenly felt like there was, Um, like nothing I had really strong control of.

And so I think fitness and like controlling my calories and things like that became a means of control. It started with good intent to like support my health and it turned into, I'm grasping for control. Flash forward a decade, I was in this place of, or almost a decade, I was in this place of no longer struggling with control around fitness and calories and those types of things and body image, but more like my body isn't functioning how it's supposed to.

It's got all this acne, losing babies, like what the heck is going on? And, and so I think. unknowingly in my pursuit to try to support my body better. It then tipped from better stewardship to obsession and idolatry. And so I had to kind of reel it back. And it was really humbling for me because through my wellness journey, I think I made a lot of, I mean, I was able to clear my skin. I supported my fertility.

I think it only helps my body when I finally was able to carry a pregnancy to have a lower toxin burden and have made a lot of these changes. But I had to shift to a more like, okay, Lord, the Lord, you're in control because, you know, it was really humbling. There was a time where. I kind of came to this realization. I still had to have support from modern medicine, such as blood thinners and things like that in my pregnancy to support pregnancy.

So that was like one of those moments where I was like, okay, I think all these healthy changes have absolutely been beneficial and helpful for various reasons. My skin is showing that like there's been a ton of benefits and I think it's only helped my fertility. However, This lie that I think the wellness culture has started to make me believe that you're in control of your fertility and if you just change all these things and avoid all of these things, you will fix it.

Like, that seeped deep into my brain. And then when I realized, like, that's not actually the only solution. Like, I still need some support from modern medicine. Not even that, because modern medicine isn't always the solution either, it's ultimately that God is sovereign over it.

There were so many times in my pregnancy where I had to make, and in my journey, that I've had to make concessions, or I've not been able to do things as clean as I would have liked to, or as natural as I would have liked to. My birth, I was, it wasn't as natural as I would have liked. And it was just like one act of surrender after another.

So it's like, I think when it comes to wellness and it comes to making swaps and clean living and all these things, this grace based approach really means like stewardship in the best way you can, but with a heart posture of surrender because we aren't in control and we don't get to like, we can make all the swaps in the world and we may not get the result or the outcome or the fix or the healing that we expect physically. Yes, our bodies are designed to heal.

I believe God made our bodies perfectly. But this, this lie that you can heal yourself if you just eat all the right foods and avoid all the wrong things and do all this, like, it totally cuts God out of the picture, even if we do it as Christians. And so that's where it's like, ultimately I had to come back to, He is sovereign over it all, which means that I can do the best I can with what I have, where I'm at with my budget and my time and my life and all that.

But if I need to make, like, just the other night, it was like one of those moments we had to, Order carry out and it all came hot food and plastic and I was like, ah, that stresses me out for a second. I had a moment because I try to avoid eating hot food out of plastic for various reasons. And I was just like, Lord, cover it. Like sometimes you just have to release it.

And that's where it's like, if I tried to do everything perfectly and didn't make those concessions or those, you know, not concessions isn't the right word. What's the word? Compromises. Um, where it was like, this is what we got to do for life. And I got to feed my family. And this is what we had to do because we were traveling. And you know, it's just like, I think we can get, so the more we know, the more stress we can get.

And it's like our, our intent and our heart for being better stewards can really quickly turn into forgetting God or sovereign over the details that we can't control. And so that's kind of where I'm like, you have to take a grace based approach. You got to do what you can, where you can and like celebrate the progress and not aim for perfection.

But, um, you know, I think as you uncover like, Oh my gosh, all this stuff is in my products and all this stuff is in our food and it can like start to be really happening. And you can almost feel it. I'm sure you've heard this phrase that people kind of nonchalantly say, like, everything's going to kill you. Right.

And I think people say that either as a way to dismiss having to make any like intentional changes like everything's going to kill you, or it's like, Oh my gosh, everything's going to kill you. And you kind of freak out. Right. It's like one or the other. It's two extremes. And. That's it. I feel like the Lord really challenged me to remember like, yeah, it is because we live in a fallen world and we live in a world touched by brokenness and sin.

So there will, we could choose the most perfect products in the world. That doesn't mean we're going to avoid death. It doesn't mean we're going to avoid sickness. It doesn't mean we're going to avoid suffering. It's going to find its way toward us or to us in one way or another. We will be touched by the, by the, You know, fall essentially of mankind because we can't escape that on this side of heaven.

And I think sometimes in our effort to pursue wellness and to be better stewards of our body, it's like we're longing for Eden. We don't wanna be touched by infertility. We don't wanna be touched by illness. We don't wanna be touched by disease. We don't want our families to be touched by death. So we like insulate.

And it can almost quickly, and that doesn't mean like we shouldn't do anything, but we, I think, try to do everything or, or the fear of like, oh my gosh, everything's gonna kill us, or everything's gonna cause infertility, or everything's gonna mess up our hormones. It's like, yeah. It is. And I think I actually felt more peace in my journey when I came to accept that, like not from like a place of like laziness, like, well, everything's going to kill you, so I'm not going to do anything.

But instead from this place of like, yep, ultimately I'm going to be touched by disease and death and brokenness and suffering on this side of heaven. So the sooner I can remember that and make peace with that, the more like freedom I can pursue a wellness journey from, because it's like, okay, I'm going to do what I can to like mitigate risk and support my body where I can, but like. I'm not getting out of this thing alive. Last I checked the like death rate was a hundred percent.

So if I can make sure I'm investing in eternity as much as I'm investing in my product swaps and the things that I'm doing in my temporal life to support my body, that's, I think the sweet spot. And that's where we're able to do it from a place of so much more joy and freedom.

You know, how do we see that this is more than just a trend and it really is something that we're called to do as Christians?

Um, simultaneously, I think the other part of the conversation, as much as this can become an idol and a fear driven thing, and as much as we need to keep a realistic, you know, uh, surrendered perspective and heart posture toward it, um, The reality is, you know, I think about my, like my life now as a mom, but this applies to anything that you're being called to do.

I know that the mornings I wake up from poor sleep, you know, don't eat first thing in the morning and I'm now hangry and tired and like overwhelmed. I'm not the best me and I'm short with my family. I'm crabby. I'm like more critical, you know, things like that. I'm frustrated. Um, And so I realized like when I feel like crap, just in that like temporal short, like I eat breakfast and I'm better. Right.

But like in that micro example, I think that's a micro example of a macro reality that when we aren't taking care of our body, when we're not well rested, when it's, you know, when our hormones are all a mess, when we aren't nourishing ourselves well, when we aren't proactively supporting our bodies. And feel kind of like crap. We are, we are not as equipped to show up for our calling and just steward our calling well. So yes, we don't want to make it an idol.

Yes, we want to keep a surrendered heart posture that God is ultimately sovereign over the things we can't control. But that doesn't mean we neglect it altogether because if we do that, we're going to feel like crap and we can't show up for our calling very well when we feel like crap, we're not going to be very patient. We're not going to be very kind.

We're not going to have those fruits of the spirit as well as we could if our bodies were well supported because our bodies and our souls are so integral. And I think sometimes as Christians, we almost like. separate them. Like your body just carries your soul. It's like, okay, true kind of, but also like they're like inseparable. And so the spiritual element is so impacted by the physical and vice versa.

So I could be in the Bible every single day, all day and be spiritually nourishing myself, which is the most important thing. However, If I physically feel like crap, those things are going to be like incongruent and misaligned, right?

So, um, I think it's really just fundamentally coming back to caring for the vessel that God gave you to carry out your calling on this earth, whether that's to parent children right now, to host a podcast, to write a book, to show up to a job and, you know, be a light there, like whatever that looks like in this season, how can you make sure that you're not just like, Giving your body a bunch of junk that isn't actually fueling it well. And that's actually maybe creating a lot of imbalance.

That's making it harder for you to show up with patience, kindness, self control, gentleness, humility, all of these things that we want to, that we want to like exemplify as Christ followers. Right. Um, so it's really just, if you look at it from that lens, it makes it a lot more, it gives it a little bit more of an eternal perspective than just, Oh, I just want to clear my skin. Those things are great too, but really what's the like heart of the matter. Yeah.

Um, but the safes or the first five swaps guide and my label reading cheat sheet, I would say, So those are going to be great resources to not only make your first five swaps, but also just to be able to be a little bit more equipped and empowered with knowledge when you're at target and you're considering which deodorant to buy or which shampoo to buy.

You can just check the back of the label because I could tell you all the best brands and all the things, but you have to do it works for your budget and consider what like is most important for you. And also brands change, products change. So it's better to just be able to say, can I check these things? So those are the two things I would honestly recommend starting with. If you just want a really simple, like. Where do I even begin? Starting point.

You're not ready to have like a PhD in this stuff.