DORÉ

You might remember the delightful Mia Rigden from last summer when she showed us three delicious Essential Recipes. Well, she started 2019 off with a bang by releasing the gorgeously designed Well Journal. It’s no secret we love journals of any kind around here so we asked her a bit more about the story behind hers…

What prompted you to create The Well Journal?
I have all my clients journal about their food choices and I am always amazed by the profound benefits (increased energy, fostering a better relationship with food, weight loss, glowing skin, improved confidence…I could go on) that come with being more mindful of your food choices. That said, I was struggling to find a way for clients to log their meals that felt more holistic, and wasn’t centered on calorie counting or prompted feelings of guilt. My practice is about loving food, not shaming it, and I wanted to create something that was positive, empowering and helped people connect the dots between how they eat and how they live. There is no shortage of food tracking apps, but there is something about pen to paper that I feel helps make a connection. Don’t get me wrong, I love technology, but sometimes the old school way is more effective.

What were you insistent upon when designing The Well Journal–what components were most important to you?
It was important to me that The Well Journal was a positive, uplifting exercise, so the design was a really integral element of the concept. I worked with my friend Ashley Steen of Willa Creative in Venice to create something that felt elevated and premium; something you would want on your bedside table and enjoy looking at. We chose fonts and colors that were more fashion and beauty oriented than what you typically see in the wellness space—we wanted it to be chic. The Willa Creative team works with a lot of female founders and has curated a portfolio of brands and products that they would personally want to use—they really nailed that intersection between design, function and wellness, and made the project really fun to work on!

Beyond just logging one’s food — what else does the The Well Journal prompt you to log, and thus think about and be mindful of?
The Well Journal starts with a goal setting section, followed by pages for daily entries that go beyond food to include how you’re feeling, how you slept, if you worked out, mediated, took your vitamins, how many servings of vegetables you ate, and what you’re grateful for. Nutrition is so much bigger than what we eat, and I wanted to make sure that the journal entries were reflective of other areas of our lives beyond food.

Why is journaling an important component to one’s overall wellbeing?
It’s really a mindfulness exercise. We can’t change things we’re not aware of. My hope is that people will use The Well Journal to learn more about themselves and their habits. For example, you might find that when you have cereal for breakfast you’re hungry an hour later and crave sugar all afternoon, or that somehow you’ve started drinking six cups of coffee a day, or that when you get a good night sleep you are way more in control of your food choices. This is all really useful information that we can use to empower ourselves to make positive changes without harboring feelings of shame or guilt that, in my opinion, are too often associated with food.