What I Stopped Doing for Better Health & Simpler Wellness

In this episode, I’m sharing what I’ve stopped doing to improve my health and simplify my wellness routine. While the industry often focuses on adding more, I’ve found that doing less—and being more intentional—has made the biggest difference.

I share the shifts I’ve made that have helped me feel more balanced, more in tune, and less overwhelmed in my day-to-day.

If you’ve been feeling like wellness has become too complicated, this episode will help you reset, refocus, and reconnect with what actually works for you.

Thanks so much for listening! If this episode resonated with you, make sure to subscribe and leave a review. New episodes drop every Tuesday morning, and you can follow me on Instagram @Stephanie_Monge to stay connected and come along for the journey.

Transcript

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I feel like the wellness industry is constantly telling us what we can add to our routines to optimize our lives, what supplements to buy, what routines to follow, what new habit we need. And while those things can be helpful at times, I think the biggest shift in my health actually came from removing certain habits that were quietly working against me. So today I'm gonna share a few things that I personally stopped doing that made a noticeable difference in how I feel physically, mentally, and even with my skin. Sometimes health is actually about simplifying. Some of these things may seem small, but when you stack them together, they really change your baseline. The first one is something I see all the time working in aesthetics is over-exfoliating my skin. A lot of times people will think that if you have acne or overproduction of oil that you need to exfoliate more. When in reality, you're kind of doing the opposite. So if you have a huge production of oil and then you're constantly exfoliating your skin, what's happening is that you are stripping your skin of its natural oils and telling your skin kind of to shut it down. So then it wants to produce even more oil because you're stripping it. So then your oil production kind of goes into, let's say, fight or flight, so to speak, and it wants to produce more and more and more. So I think that being really simple and strategic about how you're exfoliating your skin and what you're using to exfoliate, making sure that it's going with your skin type. This is something that I personally was doing before I started aesthetic school. Like five or six years ago, I was using retinol every night. Although some people's skin can handle that, I think that it's super personal to everybody's skin. I personally have pretty acne-prone skin. So exfoliating my skin three to five nights a week is just a little bit too much. I think I max can do three, but more than that is way too much. And there are some skincare companies that that is in their protocol, but I think it's so important with any skincare that you use to still listen to your skin. You'll see on packages many times it's saying, you know, use this daily, use this every morning, use this twice a day. And although maybe the average person can, again, listening to your skin and what your skin can handle, when I exfoliate my skin too much, I break out even more. Your skin actually has something called a skin barrier, which is basically the protective layer that keeps moisture in and irritants out. So for some people, when you overexfoliate, that barrier gets damaged. And then that's when your skin can become more sensitive, reactive, inflamed, acne-prone, and dehydrated. There's also a huge difference between dehydrated skin and dry skin. So dry skin is lacking sebum, which is oil, and dehydrated skin is lacking water. Although they can sometimes maybe feel the same. Dry skin is requiring oil-based nourishing products, so like oils and heavy creams, whereas dehydrated skin needs water-binding hydrating ingredients. So, for example, hyaluronic acid. This is where ceramides and peptides come in. I personally have dehydrated acne-prone skin, and ceramides are my best friend. They help repair the skin barrier's structure to lock in moisture. Ceramides act as the protective outer layer, which are lipids, to seal in hydration and soothe irritation. And peptides act as building blocks to boost collagen, which help to improve firmness and elasticity. Brands that I really love for this are Ola Henriksen has a great moisturizer. It is the Ola Henriksen peptide moisturizer, and then Dr. Jart has a ceramide moisturizer that is also amazing. I also really love Road. I have seen some controversy on the ceramide glazing milk, but personally my skin doesn't have a problem with it. But I have seen some people say that it clogs pores. But I think a simplified routine and focusing on hydration and barrier repair is super important. I see this a lot of times with my patients. They'll have a great base of a skincare routine, but they're exfoliating every single day and it's actually stripping their skin and therefore leading to more breakouts. So super important to make sure that you're prioritizing hydrating the skin before you're adding in excessive exfoliation. The second thing that I have taken out, which we've talked about on another episode, is drinking too often. So I'm not saying obviously that you can never drink and that it's inherently bad. But when I started paying attention to how my body felt afterwards, I think this is obviously so personal how much alcohol intake that your body can take without too much side effects. But for me, I've really had to cut back because it really affects my sleep quality and the inflammation in my body and also how balanced my hormones are. So even if you sleep, let's say you drink and then you fall asleep super fast and you still sleep eight hours, alcohol can actually still disrupt your rum sleep, which is your deeper restorative sleep. And as someone who already pays attention to things like hormone stress and energy levels, I just noticed like the less frequently I would drink, my mental and physical stability just improved so much. And my energy increases. I feel like it affects my skin so much, my cycle, and just like the inflammation in my body. I feel like most of us are already dehydrated. So this dehydrated me even more, which then contributed to just like dullness in my face and breakouts and yeah, like inflammation. So I'm just being much more intentional about it. I think there's a time and place for everyone to, you know, have your times where you're just like not caring about it. Like in college, I definitely was drinking a lot. But now as I've honed down on my routine and started to try and be more intuitive with my body and just what affects it, I have definitely tried to be more minimalistic about when I choose to drink, which definitely at first can be uncomfortable if everybody else is drinking, but it's really just like a muscle that you practice using. And it's, I don't know, there's something kind of satisfying about once it's done, being proud of yourself that you did something that was hard. So yeah, just yeah, not necessarily drinking just because everybody else is drinking, but like listening to when you want to do it and just yeah, being a little bit more picky about when you choose to do it. Number three is something that I've actually been having a difficult time with as of lately. And this is late night scrolling. So I've personally been pretty good about boundaries with social media during the day and in the morning because I've set up a structure for how I post because I'm trying to be more consistent. So I feel like during the day I'm super productive, but then at night I kind of tell myself, like, oh, like, you know, I want to unwind, which obviously scrolling is not unwinding, but that's what your brain like kind of tricks you into thinking, just to kind of disassociate from your day and distract, really. Whereas I could definitely be doing something better, like a puzzle or reading or cooking or whatever it may be. But I have been telling myself recently that I want to, I don't know, I guess craving that disassociation. And then I find myself scrolling for like 30 to 40 minutes, which completely like takes away from I'm I'm being counterproductive to like telling myself all day, like, no, I'm good, like I want to scroll less. Like, I my intentions with social media are just to create more than I consume. And so then when I schedule my posts or like I'm, you know, I'm good about what my stories and whatnot. And then at the end of the day, I'm like, oh well, I've been so good today. Like, this is my reward. Like, no, babe, like we're not doing that. I know that everybody struggles with this. I try to at least make sure that when I do scroll, I do it on the couch rather than in my bedroom. Cause I find like when I do it in bed, I don't know, I like my bed to kind of stay as like the safe space of relaxation. So I do still, I'm like lying to myself right now. Like, it's okay, I still do it on my couch. But I think that part does matter. But I think that like that's not everything. I I do still think I need to be better about keeping my boundaries around how long at least I scroll for, especially when I do it before bed, it really does affect my sleep and like how high my heart rate is, how long it takes my brain to like wind back down. Because especially when you're scrolling at night, it's like your brain is processing so much new information and the feed is so wonky. I do have a tip for this though. I think on your phone, the algorithm is so random, it's not necessarily always your followers. It can kind of just be like an ad and then someone you've never seen before, but like it's just like feeding you random things that it thinks you would like. I have my iPad mini, so I keep all my socials on my iPad, and I don't have them on my phone, and that's why I'm pretty good about during the day not scrolling so much. My scrolling is usually on like Pinterest or like YouTube Shorts, but for the iPad, for some reason, it has like an extra section on it where you have your regular home page and you can do like for you page DMs, like all of the regular pages on Instagram on your phone, but it has one separate feed that you can go to like on the side, and then that feed is separated into three. So one of them is who you're following, and that's the whole entire feed. But then it also has a friends section, which is people that you follow and they follow you back to, which I think is so cool. And then it has another one that is most recent, so it will show it to you in chronological order, which is so smart. I don't know why this is only on the iPad and not on the iPhone. I think it's so much better. So I think that like helps too not to be so addicting and just like it feeding you things that pretty much are addicting because it knows your algorithm and it's gonna keep putting you into that. But I really do enjoy that little hack that I can do on my iPad. But yeah, this is one that I really need to be a little bit better at, but not scrolling during the day really has helped me a lot. I just need to get better about it being at night so that I can be in a more relaxed state of mind and not such a stimulated state, especially when it's coming time to wind down. Number four is skipping meals. This was a big one for me, and I was kind of getting in the habit of not necessarily like sometimes I would skip lunch completely just because I would get so consumed by my day and my to-do list that I would forget to eat and not eat lunch until like 4 p.m. And then by the time for dinner, I'm still kind of full. So then I just have something like really light that is so bad, not only for digestion, but also for the hormones, making blood sugar imbalanced and unstable, which leads to things like mood swings, fatigue, cravings, all of these things. So I have started, and this is also something that I'm working on to prioritize eating not only consistently, but at similar times of the day. Also, something that has been helping me so much is not trying to make up super creative meals every single week. I think that I have so much going on just day to day. It used to be such a priority for me to be creative in the kitchen, but right now at this time that's not serving me. And so I'm, you know, coming to terms with that and adjusting that. So, what has been helping me so much is eating the same thing every day. And honestly, I'm at the point now where I've cooked for myself for so long that I know how to make things super yummy. And so I don't actually get sick of eating the same things because I make them so good and they're just so simple and whole. I'll actually share this with you. So, this is as of like the last week or two that I've started to do this. I get the English muffins from Food for Life. They have a bunch of nuts and seeds in them. Protein, really great. I have like this English muffin little kitchen gadget that it makes it super easy to do. So I'll do an English muffin with Canadian bacon, because obviously less fat than regular bacon and more protein. I do a piece of cheese American, some spinach, avocado, and an egg. And then I use hot sauce from the local hive. It's from Whole Foods. It's a honey hot sauce, and I get the original one. It's so delicious. It doesn't have any refined sugar in it, and I'm obsessed with like a sweet and spicy hot sauce. So I put that on everything, honestly. So that's breakfast. I'll do a matcha at home. Lunch, I do always as of lately, and it's so good. It sounds so boring, but I promise you it's delicious. I do sweet potato in the oven at the beginning of the week. Making it in the oven and flipping it halfway through. I didn't know how much of a difference it made, but wow, so good. Beef with onions and garlic to get in more nutrition and avocado. So simple. I'll meal prep the beef, put it in one container, sweet potato, put it in another container, and then at work I'll make it into a bowl, put both in, and then once it's heated up, I'll add the avocado in, drizzle it with olive oil, salt, and hot sauce. And it's so good. And you can also add more nutrition into this by adding some arugula. You could do some cottage cheese if you like. Just so simple, so easy. It really satiates me. And then for snacks, I'll do like a little lunch box situation with pistachios, raisins, beef sticks, and then maybe like carrots and ranch, pita chips and hummus. I can vary week to week for that part, but love something with a dip. And then for dinner, same thing. So obsessed. Can't stop eating it, never get bored of it. Couscous. So I thought, I don't know why I thought that couscous was a pasta. Couscous is actually a grain. And so as long as you're keeping the serving size what it's supposed to be, it's not bad. And it has nutrition. So one serving of couscous, cook it. Don't add any seasoning to it until after it's done cooking because then it holds that flavor more. I just do olive oil and salt. And then I do an arugula salad with lemon, olive oil, salt, parmesan cheese, and avocado. Delish. And then I'll either do steak or I'll do chicken. So good, so simple, so easy. And I just never get sick of it. It's pretty balanced. You can also do an extra veggie like broccoli or green beans or something like that. But that has really been keeping me consistent with not eating out during the week and making sure that I am eating on time is super important. Your food and the way you're nourishing your body really does contribute into your energy and your mood and all of these things. So making sure that you're not underfueling really takes some of the stress off. It really helps your hormone levels and your digestion. It really is such a foundation for things that you can do for your health. And last but not least is taking too many supplements. There is such an influx of the supplement world. And I'm gonna kind of go off on another tangent here because, first of all, I'm gonna start with the fact that supplements are not a regulated industry for the FDA. So please, please do research on the supplements you're taking, the companies that you're purchasing them from. It is so important. But also, it is a beautiful thing that we're focusing more on health and wellness, I think, in the past couple of years. I mean, I saw a billboard the other day that said Miami is becoming one of the capitals of health and wellness in the whole US, which I think is so cool. And it's great, but also I think there can be such an overconsumption part of that too. And although, you know, there's great supplements that can be good for everyone, like CMOS or vitamin C or chlorophyll, things like that. I think that we can kind of go off the deep end sometimes with it too. And they can absolutely be helpful, but I think we need to be more intentional with it. Actually, taking supplements that our bodies are lacking. The whole point of supplements are to supplement what your body needs. And so going into a professional and getting your blood work done and then taking supplements based off of what you actually need to supplement is so important. And this is something that I'll admit I've done in the past is like, oh, my body is lacking iron, like I'll just eat more steak. But in reality, the amount of iron that my body needs supplemented can't be satiated with just a steak a day, something like that. So I think it's really important for you to get a personalized breakdown of your blood work and a consultation with a doctor that can help you better understand what your body is needing. And also another part of this is that I think that a lot of people will get really excessive about how many supplements they're taking, of course, without knowing if they really need them. But also the supplements don't replace a healthy lifestyle. You need to have foundations of health, like the whole foods, sleep, stress management, movement, sunlight. These are all the foundations of a healthy lifestyle. And taking 10 to 15 supplements, but then sleeping like crap and eating like crap. Once the foundations are in place, then the supplements can be supportive. And again, focusing on supplements that your body actually needs. So these are a few of the things that I'm working on removing from my life to better optimize my health. I think the bigger takeaway is that wellness doesn't always have to mean adding more things into your life. I think really honing down on the foundations and removing the habits that can be quietly draining your energy. Health can actually be really simple, but it's about paying attention to your body, noticing what helps you feel better and letting go of the things that don't. If you enjoyed this episode, feel free to share it with someone who might need the reminder that wellness doesn't always have to be complicated. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode, and I'll talk to you next Tuesday. Bye.