A Tidbit About Me – Episode 1: PaleOMG Uncensored Podcast

Hiiiiiiiiiiii! If you’ve been following me on snapchat, you know that this first podcast has been such a stressor to me. Learning new skills when it comes to technology is so intimidating to me….and obviously not extremely hard since EVERYONE has a podcast. But it’s effing hard to me, ok!? I think I’ve figured it out. Is it live on iTunes or whether the hell else you listen to podcasts? I have no clue. But I’ll figure that out for you guys soon and update this post as soon as I know. Just understand, I don’t listen to podcasts myself. I didn’t even know where you looked for a podcast until this weekend when I HAD to actual figure it out, so this is a whole new world to me!

I’m warning you now, this podcast is not my best work. I was trying to figure out what to start with so I just decided to talk about what I know best: myself. Which isn’t that thrilling, but I thought it would be a good start to let you know how I got started in paleo, with PaleOMG, writing cookbooks and just creating my own business all from being obsessed with food.

Episode 1 Links:

• Find out more about Crossfit here
• My first blog post talking about body issues
• My first cookbook ‘OMG. That’s Paleo?‘
• My second cookbook ‘The Paleo Kitchen‘
• My third cookbook ‘Juli Bauer’s Paleo Cookbook‘
• Search more than 650 free recipes here
• See all my fashion posts here and on instagram
• For beauty posts, click here
• Hair tutorial coming soon!

Episode 1 Transcription:

Juli Bauer: Hey guys! It’s Juli here from PaleOMG. If you have no idea what PaleOMG is, that’s totes fine, because I’m going to give you a little background of me today. And if you hear any slurping or whining or barking, it’s this Frenchie that’s at my hip and will not leave me alone. These dogs are so needy; similar to me.

So anyways; my name is Juli Bauer. I run the blog www.PaleOMG.com, and I’m just going to kind of tell a little bit about myself. I’ve been asking my readers what I should podcast about, and have had all sorts of awesome ideas, so I thought I would just kind of start with my background and what really brought me into PaleOMG and then we can go from there, and hopefully I’m going to record a podcast every single week, which would be sa-weet.

So, anyways, my name is Juli. I am; how old am I; I am 28 years old. I run the blog www.paleomg.com which started out as a food blog, and then it’s really changed into all sorts of things; fitness, fashion, beauty, travel, and I just kind of keep expanding because I keep getting cool readers who ask me to do different stuff and that’s what I do.

Background on me is; I grew up here in Colorado, which I still live here in Colorado because I love it so much. I grew up in Golden as an only child. I know; surprise, surprise, if you’ve read my blog, you obviously can tell. But I grew up with a ton of insecurities. I honestly was one of the most insecure people I think I’ve ever met, and I hated it. I hate being so insecure. I would look at myself in the mirror and I hated what I saw. I just didn’t like anything about myself, and I was constantly battling those insecurities up until college, probably. And after college, really. But once I went to college, I decided I wanted to study health and exercise science, because I was always interested in exercise but I never found what I really loved. I never enjoyed myself in the gym, I just knew I should be working out; I knew that was important. Just like brushing my teeth, just like getting up and showering ever day. Those things you need to do. You’ve got to take care of your family; you’ve got to go to school. So exercise was just one of those things I did because I knew it was important.

But it wasn’t until the end of college I found out about Crossfit through Crossfit.com, and I couldn’t do; even though I was working out on a regular basis, I was climbing the Stairmaster for one to two hours, or on the bike, or on the elliptical. I couldn’t really do many other movements. I couldn’t do a pushup, I couldn’t do a pull-up, I couldn’t do any sort of Olympic lift. So I started looking at all these movements online, and I saw all these amazing women who were all shapes and sizes and they were just kicking ass in these competitions; in these Crossfit competitions. And it was so inspiring, because I would go into a gym and be so insecure about how I looked, and I saw these Crossfit competitions and these women who weren’t obsessing about that; they were obsessing about what their fastest time was in a workout, or how heavy they got in a lift.

So they were so inspiring to me, and I wanted to be like those women. So I started trying out movements on my own. I would look up just YouTube what an overhead squat was, and I would start trying it by myself. I started pushups on my knees, and pull-ups on the assisted pull-up machine, just doing a handstand hold. I just started getting better and better and seeing results and really seeing my body change. It was so quickly. I thought I was working out hard before, but I saw my body just doing such different things, and muscle tone, and leanness. I felt so good, I had so much energy.

So once I started competing, I wasn’t the strongest and I wasn’t the fastest, so I knew I needed to really plug in my diet. So I looked on the Crossfit.com website, and saw they were talking about both the Zone and Paleo at the time. So paleo was very scary to me. I had Loren Cordain, who wrote the Paleo Diet, as my professor freshman year. I was like; there’s no way I’m going to do that as a college student. I mean, at that time I was eating pizzas, and you know those cookie pie things that’s just like a gigantic cookie with frosting. I mean, I was eating all the time. I never had any sort of hunger cues. I just ate because it made me feel good. And at that point, I was really insecure and I needed something to make me feel happy in my life, and food was it.

So when I started looking up the paleo and the Zone diet, I decided Zone was going to be the best route for me. Zone is kind of like Weight Watchers; how Weight Watchers has points, Zone has blocks. So you’re just pretty much figuring out how much food you need. How much protein, how much carbs, how much fat. And dabbling in that. It’s just portion control more than anything. So I started doing that, and my body started to change even more. I was like; ok, this food thing really is important.

When; just a little more background, growing up I had all kinds of stomach issues. I was in and out of the hospital constantly, and I really thought stomach issues were just a normal thing; that feeling like you were going to die was a normal feeling. And I was in and out of the hospital all the time, and when I decided to cut some of the grains out of my diet, very slowly, because I was like, maybe I could do this paleo thing. I took one slice off my sandwich, and had an open faced sandwich. Then I was like, ok maybe I can take oats out of my diet. I started taking oats out; it was a very, very slow process. The more I took these grains out of my diet, the better I felt. I had so much energy, I slept better, my stomach issues went away 100%, and all this depression that I had been fighting growing up just dissipated. It was crazy. I was like, the clouds opened up and I felt so good.

So I finally was like; ok, I have to do this paleo thing. I don’t want to, I can’t cut out bread; there’s no way. I can’t do it. And I did it. I slowly took it out of my diet; when people say you have to go all or none, I don’t think that’s true. I think you can take it out slowly and figure out what other foods you can have instead of bread, instead of crackers, instead of packaged food. Slowly, you can figure out what you need in your diet.

So I did that. I slowly started cutting those foods out. I felt better than ever, and since I had no idea how to cook, I had to teach myself. So I started looking at blogs, and this was probably 6 or 7 years ago, and there weren’t many paleo blogs out there. So I was like, ok well maybe I should start cooking myself. And I started just mixing things together, and trial and error. I started getting some good recipes, some really crappy recipes, and definitely took some time to start figuring out how to cool.

Once I started making all these recipes; sorry, my dog is distracting me with all the snorting and barking he’s doing, at nothing. Anyway, I started making these recipes, and I would bring them to my friends, because I was just cooking for myself at that point. So I would bring them in to my friends at the gym, and at one point, one of the gym owners at an old gym I was at asked me to start the nutrition blog. So that’s what I did. I started writing about nutrition just on their website; just talking about pre and post workout, and really learning stuff along the way. I started sharing recipes, and my own recipes, and then once I left that gym, I really wanted to keep blogging because I was having so much fun writing. I always; my favorite classes growing up were writing classes, but I hated writing a certain way, I just wanted to write how I wanted to write, and that’s what a blog made me able to do. I was able to be exactly who I wanted to be, and write how I wanted to write, and not get a C on a paper because it wasn’t within the parameters of what the teacher said. I was able to do exactly what I wanted.

So that’s what started www.PaleOMG.com. And that was about 5 years ago, 5 or 6 years ago. It was just so much fun. I started slowly sharing recipes. I barely talked; if you look back at my first recipes on my website, I barely talk about anything. I just say, here’s the recipe, where it was inspired from, and that’s that. The more people started; oh I remember what it was. I talked about just something that was very therapeutic to me was talking about the issues I had growing up. So body issues, and at that time, I started Crossfit and I had lost 30 pounds when I started Crossfit and paleo, and I had gained over 30 pounds back because I was competing, so obviously I had gained muscle and my body had really changed. And that was something challenging on its own. So I just talked about this on my blog, and talked about seeing beauty in a different way. And I had all these women start talking on my blog, and it was being shared around other people, and all these other people connected with me. And I thought I was so alone in this feeling, and I wasn’t.

So that’s what really made me start talking about other things in my blog; I would literally start talking about anything. To an annoying thing I saw while I was driving, to something at the supermarket, to a new snack, to a new workout, to people I was dating, to breakups. I talked about it all on my website, and I really took on this family; that’s what I see it as. I took on this family of people who comment on my blog on a regular basis. It really made me want to blog more often. So I started blogging probably once a week, and the more comments I got and the more feedback, the more I saw people cook my recipes, the more I wanted to do it. So I really started making a ton of recipes, and I think probably 3 years ago my first publisher contacted me about doing a cookbook, and I made my first cookbook. And then I went with a different publisher the second time around, and the same publisher the third time around, if that makes sense. So I used two different publishers. I was able to put all my thoughts and all my recipes into books, and that’s so crazy that I have a few published books out there at this point. So that’s been the past few years; just blogging and writing cookbooks.

So that means, honestly, I probably have over 1,000 recipes that I’ve put out into this world, and that’s insane. 1,000 recipes in probably 5, 6 years, and I don’t want to stop that any time soon. I absolutely love cooking and I love coming up with new recipes, and I love never getting bored. I don’t want to get bored, and I don’t want other people to get bored. So I really kind of hold myself accountable for coming up with new stuff, so people always have something to come back to.

But probably about 2 years ago, I started sharing some outfits that I was wearing on book tour, and I got like 10 times more likes than my food photos! So I was like, ok maybe I should look into this fashion thing. Because paleo and Crossfit gave me so much confidence; I didn’t know I could have that much confidence. Fashion really did the same thing. I was able to show that confidence on the outside, as well. Fashion made me hold my head up higher when I was walking around, you know. So I started dabbling in fashion.

So every week I have on my blog my weekly workouts, and then I do a couple of recipes, and then I have my Fashion Friday’s, as well. So I’ve been able to work with different companies. I go shopping way more often than ever. I think some people think that you just get free stuff all the time, and that’s not it! I’m buying plenty of clothes just so I can put that out into the world and show you guys how to dress a scarf or how to wear a dress with booties. I just think it’s so cool when women show how to really rock an outfit. It’s hard to find an outfit just off the runway. It’s cool when you can see how women really turn those trends into daily life.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve always wanted to get into beauty. So if you’ve been following along anywhere, you’ve heard me talk about filming my first hair tutorial, so I’ve been doing that. And then I’m going to do all kinds of different tutorials. Maybe cooking; maybe how to dress a scarf. Kind of all kinds of different things I’m going to bring to you.

More than anything, I’ve made this blog my business, and I think what is so cool about the world that we live in now is we’re able to do anything. I grew up thinking that I wouldn’t like my job, because that’s what I saw in the world. People being very unhappy at a desk job, and complaining about it when they got home, and I thought that was what it had to be. And I am so lucky that I have been blessed with this opportunity to be around such cool people and have this opportunity to talk about different stuff that really has influenced me, and hopefully influenced others. And I want to show other men and women out there that you really can be your own entrepreneur. I went from making nothing out of college; I was well below poverty line, and I was still making paleo food. And it was not perfect paleo, that’s for sure, but I was still making it work. And now I make a living off of something that I love. So I want people to know that that’s totally possible. And I wanted to talk about those different things because a lot of people ask me; how do you cook paleo on a budget? And I totally did it. So that’s one of my topics I’m going to get after soon.

But I wanted this to just be a baseline, so if you’re just starting off on my blog, or starting off on this podcast and you have no idea who I am, this is me. And this is a boring podcast. This is like, “Hey this is my cookie-cutter podcast.” But I swear it’s going to be more interesting. It’s going to get better. But I’m sitting in my bedroom facing the wall right now, recording on headphones. I’m just trying to get my life together on this podcast.

So this is me. You can find me at www.paleomg.com. And feel free to comment on my blog if you ever have any questions, or if you want me to talk about something on my podcast. I see comments on my blog first and foremost, and those get responded to right away versus social media or iTunes or whatever else. But I can’t wait to talk to you guys more. I can’t wait to hear your feedback. I can’t wait to answer questions you have, and I’m hoping to do a podcast a week, and we can just talk about stuff, and hash it out. And if you want to know my real personality, just follow me on Snapchat. Everything is PaleOMG. Follow me on Snapchat; I’m very bitchy there. I do cuss a lot. Please don’t tell me not to cuss, just don’t. But I love you guys. I hope to see you soon, wherever you are in this land. Let’s talk soon my friends.