Change the Way You Look at Things

If You Want Things to Change, Start by Changing the Way You Look at Things

My earliest memory of cooking was around five years old. My mom pulled out her Joy of Cooking and we made chocolate chip cookies together. It was measured and calculated — she showed me how to level a cup of flour, how to crack an egg without getting shell in the bowl, how to wait for the timer even when the kitchen smelled like it was ready now.

From that moment, I was hooked. I realized that with oil, flour, and sugar, my options were endless.

I carried that into adulthood without questioning it. I cooked constantly, but it was always about the finished dish — never about what was in it. Making better ingredient choices didn’t cross my mind. Why would it? The cookies tasted great. The food worked. I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

As I got older, I’d notice the extra ten or fifteen pounds. I’d pause, do a reset — eat clean for a month, lose the weight, make adjustments. I did this in my thirties. Again in my forties. It always worked just enough to keep me from asking the deeper question.

A reset was my solution. Until it wasn’t.

The Fog

In my late forties, my mom was diagnosed with dementia. She was too embarrassed to tell me at first. It was on one visit home that she finally sat me down and shared the news. She knew things were about to change for her.

I didn’t realize how much they were about to change for me.

In 2018, I flew home to help my sister and brother move my parents to be next door to my sister. From the moment my plane landed, I hit the ground running and didn’t stop until I got back on the plane. I ran on stress, no sleep, and whatever food I could grab between logistics and emotions.

When I landed back in California, I realized I had lost most of my memory.

I couldn’t remember things about my past. Simple daily tasks felt impossible. I had never experienced anything like it. Since I’d just visited my parents, I jokingly wondered if dementia was contagious.

It wasn’t funny. And the joke didn’t land, even with myself.

What I was experiencing was brain fog — brought on by stress, lack of sleep, and the food I’d been running on. Over the next six weeks, I acknowledged each time a small piece of memory came back. A name. A routine. Something I used to know without thinking.

When it all returned, I made a decision. This wasn’t going to be another reset.

I decided to remix.

The Spreadsheet

I opened a spreadsheet and started recording everything I ate. Not calories. Not macros. Just ingredients. I removed added sugar and refined grains and gave myself one year — no exercise, just food — to see if I could change my body, inside and out, based solely on what I put in my mouth.

In the first six months, I lost 32 pounds.

But the weight was just the thing I could measure. What I couldn’t measure was bigger. The fog was gone. My energy stabilized. My sleep improved. The 3 PM crash stopped happening. I stopped eating on autopilot and started paying attention to how food actually made me feel — not in the moment, but the next morning.

I started researching how our bodies work. I learned that we have 30 trillion human cells and over 38 trillion bacteria cells. That our bodies are built to fight disease — it’s literally in our blood. That digestion begins at our fingertips, and that our moods, sleep, skin, energy, and weight are all connected to the ingredients we choose to eat.

My whole life, I thought calories were a measurement of weight. That cutting calories would cut pounds. Calories are actually a measurement of energy. At rest, the energy we use in a day is the same as running a 100-watt light bulb for 20 hours straight. Our bodies get all of that energy from food. To power 100 watts for 20 hours takes about 2,000 calories.

We put our cars in the shop without hesitation. We fuel them with premium gasoline without a second thought. But we don’t always give that same care to the one machine we can’t trade in.

What I Discovered

It was always oil, flour, and sugar. From the time I was five years old, standing on a step stool in my mom’s kitchen, it was always those three things.

I just changed the way I looked at them.

Better oils. Better flours. Better sweeteners. The dishes didn’t change. The cookies still got made. The satisfaction stayed. But the ingredients underneath were doing a completely different job — fueling instead of inflaming, stabilizing instead of spiking, building instead of borrowing.

Remixology was created to share that discovery. To let people know that we have the power to change things — not through big, dramatic overhauls, but by changing the way we look at what’s already on our plate.

The Part I Don’t Talk About Often

On the one-year anniversary of my remix journey, both my dad and my mom passed away from dementia. Seventeen days apart.

It was the hardest season of my life. But in the middle of it, I discovered things about my parents I hadn’t fully seen — how many lives they’d touched with their kindness and generosity. How many people showed up to say your mom changed my life, your dad helped me when no one else would.

It reminded me how important it is to be kind. To be grateful. To shine light in a dark space.

Before I flew home, I took only three things of my mom’s.

A green oven mitt. An old aluminum ice cream scoop. And her Joy of Cooking.

The same book that started everything when I was five.

Why This Exists

Remixology was created to share my story, provide healthy remix information, and at its very best, shine light in a dark space.

Be well. Enjoy.

Keep remixing,