[00:00:00] Cecily Mak: Alcohol in the process of metabolism in the body, it produces acetaldehyde. I'm pronouncing that wrong for sure. So some of your medical people can correct me in their minds and, but it's, it's acetaldehyde. It's a DNA damaging carcinogen that is a byproduct of metabolizing alcohol in our systems. Even one glass of wine is going to create some of this.

[00:00:22] So just by having alcohol in our systems, we're releasing. A carcinogen into our bodies that harms our DNA.

[00:00:33] Jenn Trepeck: Welcome to Salad with a side of Fries. I'm your host, Jenn Trepeck, talking wellness and weight loss for real life. We're here to clear up the myths, misinformation, bad science and marketing to teach you how to eat and how to cheat.

[00:00:47] Are you ready? I'm having salad with a side of fries.

[00:00:51] Hey, friend. Welcome back to Salad with a side of fries. I'm Jenn Trepeck, your host and health coach here with you every week for wellness without the weirdness, [00:01:00] and often with the topics that we cover, I'll have episodes recorded or interviews planned, and then people will start asking about the topic or it will start coming up in conversation.

[00:01:13] Today is one of those episodes because someone recently said to me. It was something along the lines of no one talks about the connection between alcohol and cancer. Well, we did mention it in our episode January, 2025. We did dry beyond January for two episodes. And if you're a long time listener, certainly if you've worked with me, you have heard me say, we get healthier each day.

[00:01:42] We keep alcohol away. Now we have the perfect guest to speak more about the alcohol cancer connection, and of course some fantastic insights to help us in our daily lives as well. So let me introduce you. She's a mom, entrepreneur, investor. [00:02:00] An author of UN dimmed, former tech executive to Silicon Valley Tech Startups.

[00:02:06] She's a co-founding general partner at Wisdom Ventures, where she backs founders and their companies focused on human connection and wellbeing. Her work centers on helping people and leaders operate with greater clarity. Agency and presence in a culture full of dimmers, the habits and norms that quietly dilute our attention and impact.

[00:02:27] She lives in Mill Valley, California and now joins us on salad with a side of fries. Thanks to the magic of the internet. Without further ado, I give you Cecily Mak.

[00:02:38] Cecily Mak: So good to be here. Thank you for having me. What a treat.

[00:02:42] Jenn Trepeck: Absolutely. I'm so excited to have you here and I wanna get into it. We just have one more bit of housekeeping super quick, and then we'll start with your story or you know, really your mom's story.

[00:02:53] Cecily Mak: Yeah.

[00:02:53] Jenn Trepeck: And then yours. So great. Awesome. So friends, join us in the Happy Healthy Hub. Being a member of the [00:03:00] Hub is the next best thing to working with me as your health coach. You get a recipe each week delivered to your inbox, curated articles and additional discounts from me and our partners. You get interview episodes like this one in full video, including some behind the scenes content, access to the community board where we can interact, ask, and answer questions, and so much more.

[00:03:19] All of this, by the way, is yours for just $12 a month, or if you pay for a year upfront, you get two months free. So a year for 120 bucks. Amazing. So your recipe this week is for hot pink coconut slaw, so it's beautifully seasonal. You could certainly leave out the coconut if that's not your jam. This is a great one to start, now, take you into spring, pair it with your favorite protein.

[00:03:45] So delicious. So to get this recipe plus this episode in full video access to our community chat, where you can ask me anything, go to a salad with the side of fries.com/membership. From there, you'll click subscribe. Now, follow the [00:04:00] prompts to enter your payment info, create your login to access the hub and all of your benefits.

[00:04:04] Remember, you're going to a salad to the side of fries.com/membership. This supports your health and this show, so we can keep doing this together every week.

[00:04:13] Cecily Mak: Okay, Cecily.

[00:04:15] Jenn Trepeck: The work you do now was not your original plan in life. No. You were an attorney.

[00:04:21] Cecily Mak: Yes.

[00:04:22] Jenn Trepeck: And tech startups at that. And then your mom passed away in 2011.

[00:04:28] So will you share how that sparked this turn toward the work you do today?

[00:04:34] Cecily Mak: Yeah. Thank you so much. It's funny, I've written about this, I talk about it. It's a big theme in our family and it's always very moving to have an opportunity to speak to it from a place where it might be supportive of other people.

[00:04:49] So thanks so much for having me on. I will say in 2011, I wish I could point to that. Time 15 years ago and say, then I realized that I had this greater work in the [00:05:00] world and I made this very intentional career shift, and I educated myself and equipped myself to be of service. That is sadly not the case.

[00:05:09] My mother passed away in 2011 of stage four esophageal cancer. She was diagnosed with just a mere 30 days before she died. She declined all treatment and frankly, we all know she probably had a lot of awareness around this illness and symptoms for many months, possibly years before seeking medical care.

[00:05:29] She had. Navigated years of depression and dependency on a variety of what I refer to as dimmers. Hers were alcohol and prescription drugs to help her feel less of the pain. She was enduring lifetime pain really, and I kind of did my role of being her daughter and helping her transition, and very quickly went back to my life and routines, which were full-time working mom with two little [00:06:00] kids.

[00:06:00] Four in one at the time commuting. Not only into the city, you're into Silicon Valley, but often traveling a lot for business and living this very fun, vibrant, demanding social life. I was married to a DJ at the time. We were out every weekend. We took the kids to Burning Man later. I mean, we were very socially active and I carried on that treadmill for another five or six years until I had my own little wake up call.

[00:06:31] It was the end of my marriage, I realized I was not as clearheaded or clear hearted as I could be in that moment, and with the encouragement of a friend, I took a 30 day break from what I thought at the time were typical social drinking habits. And in that 30 days, I realized how dramatic that shift, that removal of that one thing from my life was, it changed my sleep pattern, it changed my physical [00:07:00] mental health.

[00:07:00] My relationship started shifting, and that was really the beginning of the path that I'm on now, because I got curious, what is this about? Why have we never talked about this in my family? Why did I never consider that alcohol was maybe playing a big role in some of the struggles I had been facing?

[00:07:21] Again, you know, like some of your other recent guests, I've loved listening, listening to your show lately, I never had a DUI never had a rock bottom, never had a pattern of blackouts. I was a very typical kind of social consumer of this product that's so pervasive in our culture. And yet removing it had so many benefits that it, it made me wonder what's going on here.

[00:07:45] That sparked years of getting to where we are now. So that was about eight years ago. I stayed on the path of living alcohol free and I did all kinds of research and experimentation around how and why [00:08:00] people stop or not, or slow down or pause, and health benefits and mental, social, physical, all of it, and.

[00:08:07] I ended up ultimately discerning that there was a gap in the market, in the conversation, in the dialogue for the 80 to 90 million Americans who are questioning our relationship with alcohol, and we'll get to it later, but I end up writing a book about this and on we go, and then to get to the specific item around the link between alcohol and cancer.

[00:08:29] Again, it wasn't in 2011 when I lost my mother to. Cancer that was likely attributable to her decades of alcohol use. It was in 2023 when I myself was treating breast cancer. Five years after stopping drinking and I was trying to understand why I had breast cancer. There wasn't any in my family. I didn't have a lot of the, you know, likely risk factors, none of the genetics, et cetera, [00:09:00] and to my absolute shock and awe, it was in that process that I really grokked and discovered this clear link between alcohol and cancer.

[00:09:11] We can get into the intricacies of how I got to hear from there, but um, yeah, it was much later.

[00:09:16] Jenn Trepeck: Right? So, okay, I wanna back up for a second because this is so not the point of our conversation, but I would be remiss if I didn't go back to ask you this. So even with your mom's story and her choice to decline treatment and then thinking about your own experience and treatment, and so at the time.

[00:09:36] How did you sort of grapple with her choice to not pursue treatment?

[00:09:43] Cecily Mak: Well, frankly, it was at the end of many, many years of my family and myself trying to help her live a healthier life, and she had made it very clear, both with her communications, but also her actions that [00:10:00] extending her life or living a healthier life were not.

[00:10:03] Really a priority for her. She had endured such loss and heartbreak and pain. Through a death in the family, a very painful divorce impacts on her identity, financial security, social scene, all of it that I think she was deep in a downward spiral of depression for many, many years by the time the esophageal cancer diagnosis took place.

[00:10:28] And frankly, just practically speaking, there's not a ton you can do with a stage four esophageal cancer diagnosis, any treatment in that area of your body. Is going to materially diminish the quality of life you have remaining. And so she just opted to ride it out and, and I respect her decision, but it was hard.

[00:10:49] I think for years I had probably pre grieved that I had a mother that didn't want to live and thrive and be healthy. I had gotten used to that since I was a teenager. [00:11:00] And it has informed meaningfully if there's a silver lining on this, the way that I now mother, the way that I take care of myself and the conversations I have with my sons who are now 14 and 18 about what kind of a grandma and hopefully great grandma I'm going to be, that's part of the family formula of wellbeing is how do we take good care of ourselves so we can live long, healthy, thriving lives.

[00:11:24] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah. So thank you for that. I think it's super helpful for people to hear. I think especially for salad with the side of fries listeners, that's probably the antithesis of how we would approach something,

[00:11:34] Cecily Mak: I'm sure. Right? I'm sure. And the pendulum swings, right? I mean, exactly. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of this community actually comes from families that maybe didn't prioritize health and wellbeing for

[00:11:44] Jenn Trepeck: sure.

[00:11:45] Cecily Mak: So we're all kind of in this space of let's embrace it, doing it a little differently.

[00:11:50] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah.

[00:11:50] Cecily Mak: I want to feel differently than my, you know, parents or elder relatives do at later years when I'm at that stage. And we have such beautiful resources [00:12:00] and options available to us at this stage, many of which you platform and highlight and offer through your work.

[00:12:04] So, makes a lot of sense.

[00:12:06] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, for sure. And I love that you pointed out too, how many people don't identify. With, you know, being an alcoholic or this like AA model and that you were looking for that kind of support. So as you mentioned, you know, encourage everybody, go back and listen to our episode with Dr.

[00:12:25] Sherry Price, you know, just tremendous. And Cecily and Dr. Sherry Price have resources for that Cecily's book. Do you wanna just share a little bit about the book and maybe how that plays into what happened with your cancer diagnosis and learning about this connection?

[00:12:40] Cecily Mak: Oh, certainly. So when I popped out of this kind of alcohol habit I had for so many years, I had a lot to understand and a lot to digest.

[00:12:50] I love one of the comments that Dr. Price made on your episode where she said part of her work as a coach now is helping people [00:13:00] feel their feelings.

[00:13:01] Jenn Trepeck: Yes,

[00:13:02] Cecily Mak: after so many years of not because we go to these things to soften the edges of life, and when we remove those, I refer to them as dimmers. When we remove our dimmers, and it could be alcohol, it could be Netflix, it could be food, it could be your email, workaholism, generosity, perfectionism.

[00:13:23] I don't care what it is. When you remove the thing that you go to for a quick hit of relief, then you have to be with all your stuff. You have to feel sometimes compounded years or decades of disappointment and other feelings, and so. A big part of my journey, which was not planned, was writing about this experience between 2018 and 22, and I ended up pouring my soul and heart into a 370 page memoir that detailed the 10 years from when my mother was diagnosed.

[00:13:56] I'd start with the moment in the car in front of Safeway, getting [00:14:00] her, depends, diapers, a handle of vodka, a can of peaches, and cottage cheese. Which are the only foods she could get down. That's the opening of that memoir. It goes all the way into 10 years later in this completely rewritten life that I live now.

[00:14:15] I spent four years writing this book, I thought, okay, I'm gonna leave my final big COO job. I'm gonna find an agent. I'm gonna book the deal. I'm gonna bring this offering to the world. And for those of you out there who have been on a book journey, it doesn't always go as planned to say the

[00:14:33] Jenn Trepeck: least, right?

[00:14:34] Cecily Mak: To say the least. Like step one, surrender. Like be as flexible and adaptable and also equally attuned to your own values as possible from every moment along the journey, right? And so I got this memoir, which I had polished with the help of two editors into the hands of a handful of agents, and the message was pretty diverse.

[00:14:55] I mean, one wanted to shop it and sell it quickly too. [00:15:00] Didn't really engage. And two said, there's something really interesting here, but no one really cares about you. You're sort of a nobody. And memoir only works for people who are well known and people wanna read their story.

[00:15:10] Jenn Trepeck: It's a very humbling, truthful moment.

[00:15:13] Cecily Mak: I had in parallel been crafting what I had envisioned being a second book, which was a capture of how I did what I did, the framework that I developed to break up with alcohol, my primary dimmer. That wasn't dependent upon an initial label or diagnosis or commitment to a lifetime of sobriety or recovery, which is what everything I found out there seemed to hinge on.

[00:15:44] And so I kind of converted my book pitching process to work on the second book, and we pitched the second book on the eight awarenesses, which is my rewrite of the 12 steps. Truth be told. And there was enormous interest. I had [00:16:00] five major publisher offers in a week. We picked the best one and ran with it.

[00:16:04] And so in January, Flatiron of McMillan published Undimmed the Eight Awarenesses for Freedom from Unwanted Habits. And it is a book that exists because I've had to write my memoir first. The memoir project of four years, 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM most days writing birthed this book. The memoir will probably never see the light of day, and I'm absolutely great with that.

[00:16:31] It's very intimate anyway, but the eight awarenesses really captures a lot of the stories of how I shifted this existing framework that works beautifully for people who are addicted in many cases. I wanna be very clear about that. The 12 steps of AA has helped supported, arguably even saved millions of people in it's almost a hundred years of community building and connection, nurturing and support, providing [00:17:00] many people in my own life.

[00:17:01] And I went to a number of AA meetings early on just to kind of understand what was out there and get some support from that community. And I have most certainly benefited from Al-Anon meetings over the years as well, supporting the family members around somebody who has an alcohol use disorder. The system didn't match my experience, which still felt like choice.

[00:17:21] And so this book on dimmed is really about how do we change our relationship with something we've been using to soften the difficult experiences of life in a way that is more based in agency and freedom than failure and surrender.

[00:17:39] Jenn Trepeck: Please. Yes. Thank you. And so, you know, and we'll come back 'cause I wanna highlight a couple of the tools in your book.

[00:17:48] But

[00:17:49] Cecily Mak: yeah,

[00:17:49] Jenn Trepeck: I believe the difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it is understanding why.

[00:17:55] Cecily Mak: Yes. And

[00:17:55] Jenn Trepeck: I think this cancer connection. [00:18:00] Maybe a piece of the why that's missing. And so for those who are unfamiliar, alcohol is in the category of group one carcinogens. So for context, like other group one.

[00:18:16] Carcinogens. And by the way, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, there's over 130 agents in that list. But others that we know already, that we've talked about for million, like tobacco, UV radiation, like the sun or X-rays, certain HPV infections, asbestos, you know, that's just naming a few that I think people are very familiar with.

[00:18:41] So. As we think about that, not only am I curious about what you've learned as far as that connection, like HPV for example, we are so familiar with, and there's a vaccine with asbestos when it shows up, there are mandates to remove it and all of those things. So over the [00:19:00] years, like there's so much legislation even around tobacco and all these things.

[00:19:02] So I'm curious in your opinion, like based on all of your research and your experience. Why isn't there more conversation about alcohol being on this list?

[00:19:13] Cecily Mak: Thank you for platforming this. I am so grateful that anybody who is listening to this is getting clear information because it is not coming through our expected channels.

[00:19:24] We should be getting this from our doctor's offices and public announcements and other things that support healthy policy in the United States and beyond. Only one in four women. Today in America are aware of the link between alcohol and breast cancer, a proven CAUSATIONAL link, and the reasons for this.

[00:19:49] Are not as clear as we would like, are a source of enormous fascination for me. I, you mentioned at the top I was an attorney. I'm still a licensed attorney, [00:20:00] have been for 25 years. I have a fierce advocacy vein in me and I like getting to the bottom of things. Since I made this discovery, while treating breast cancer myself, wanted to get to the why and there are many theories.

[00:20:14] The one that I am pursuing now, which I think we should all be paying some attention to, is if in fact the big alcohol industry has been following a playbook similar to the one that Big Tobacco did for decades. There is ample science and research. That directly links alcohol with deadly diseases and other disorders.

[00:20:40] It's not just cancer, heart health, brain health. Other issues in our physical beings are very much attributable to alcohol use and it's not talked about. It's possible. I would even venture to say likely that the economic interests of the big alcohol industry have prevailed in [00:21:00] keeping some of these disclosures and important information out of the eyes and ears of the citizens that are their consumer base.

[00:21:09] America has some of the most liberal laws in the world around alcohol. We permit alcohol advertising. In sports, in parks, in public places, and public transportation. If you go to Europe, for example, you won't see the absolute vodka or beer ads in public transportation or anywhere near where children might be.

[00:21:32] I was sitting on a playground once a couple years ago in Boston, and there was a huge absolute vodka ad over the playground. Wow. This is illegal in many, many. Evolved countries around the world. I don't know how many of you saw the French Olympics. There was not a single alcohol ad throughout the entirety of the Olympics in France a few years ago because the government has decided that the public [00:22:00] interest outweighs the commercial interest of the alcohol companies and has made it very difficult.

[00:22:07] For marketing to reach the young impressionable minds of the next generation. And this isn't a culture that in some ways celebrates wine. So I think it's fair to say that there has been a reasonable amount of effort and most certainly a significant amount of spending in lobbying and other efforts to limit labels.

[00:22:28] Another fact that I love to call people's attention to is if you look at the labels on. Alcohol products today in the United States,

[00:22:35] Jenn Trepeck: like the Surgeon General's warning that.

[00:22:37] Cecily Mak: Yep. Surgeon General's warning from the 1980s. Thank you so much for the current information. It says something about not drinking while pregnant or operating machinery.

[00:22:48] Jenn Trepeck: Right?

[00:22:51] Cecily Mak: Like this isn't just like 50 years of neglect. There are people who have been fighting in Washington DC to have that updated. [00:23:00] To resemble like some of our more evolved neighbors and explicitly call out some of the risks associated with alcohol. And there are many, many millions of dollars spent on Capitol Hill every year by the big alcohol industry to.

[00:23:16] Battle those efforts to bring more accurate, updated disclosures to the American population. So this is an area that that is going to be getting a lot more attention both. For me. I work with a nonprofit, the United States Alcohol Policy Alliance. On the board, we are exclusively dedicated to limiting harms, attributable to alcohol with national policy, state policy, local policy changes.

[00:23:39] But the more that we as consumers can be informed about these risks. And use that frankly, as a means to make more informed decisions about what we do, the better off we're gonna be. I'm not advocating for abstinence. Very few people are, that's not the message here. We're all grownups, you know, like do you, [00:24:00] if you wanna enjoy certain things, enjoy them.

[00:24:02] But I don't like hearing that people wish they knew and they didn't. I was at an event a couple months ago, I was actually at Breast Cancer Awareness Event down in Silicon Valley, and, uh, a woman came up to our table, our, our United States Alcohol Policy Alliance table, and she was in her, I think mid sixties or so, and she said, I wish I knew.

[00:24:22] I said, what do you mean you wish you knew? She said, you know, my kids tried to help me get off of booze for like 20 years, and I was in and outta rehabs and programs, and I'm finally sober now. I've been sober for seven years, gave her a high five, she said, but I now have stage three breast cancer and my treatment isn't really working.

[00:24:43] It's not going well. It's an aggressive cancer, and I have three little grandchildren. I really think that if I knew about the link between alcohol and cancer, I would've stopped more easily than I did. I think it would've accelerated my journey to health. And so that's [00:25:00] what we can do is just help people know, like, you don't have to go to zero.

[00:25:04] You don't have to commit to a life of sobriety. You don't need to go to aa. You don't need to know you have a problem. But it does make a difference if you have two glasses of wine a week as opposed to seven or 14. Cumulatively over time, it does affect our long-term health. So that's the invitation.

[00:25:22] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, and I appreciate that two versus seven is a meaningful difference and it doesn't have to be zero or.

[00:25:30] Something. So you've done a lot of work with, you know, Vik Murphy and some of these things. Do you have any understanding on the mechanisms of the connection, like is it the damage to the liver that then translates into our body's capacity to not detox other things? Or like, do we know clearly from the research what the physiology is?

[00:25:54] Cecily Mak: So there are really five primary things, and I'm not a physician, but I [00:26:00] have done a fair amount of research on this. 'cause I think it's important for us to have kind of basic level knowledge, even if we are not in the medical profession, right? Yes. We wanna get to that gritty why

[00:26:11] Jenn Trepeck: we all have these bodies that we're supposed to know how to take care of.

[00:26:13] Cecily Mak: Exactly. And you know, luckily we have so much information available at our fingertips and you know, I think there is a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding about alcohol just burdens the liver. It goes way beyond that. So alcohol in the process of metabolism in the body, it produces acetaldehyde. I'm pronouncing that wrong for sure.

[00:26:36] So some of your medical people can correct me in their minds and, but it's, it's acetaldehyde. It's a DNA damaging carcinogen that is a byproduct of metabolizing alcohol in our systems. Even one glass of wine is going to create some of this. So. Just by having alcohol in our systems, we're releasing a carcinogen into our bodies that harms our DNA, which is important [00:27:00] to our long-term health, wellbeing, recovery, healing, and beyond.

[00:27:03] Second alcohol increases the estrogen levels in our systems. Now, that might not seem like a problem, particularly for those of us who are in midlife and navigating estrogen drops. However, the vast majority of breast cancers in the United States are estrogen positive. Breast cancer, meaning the food for the cancer cells is estrogen.

[00:27:28] And so increasing estrogen levels. In addition to a variety of other maybe positive or negative factors, if you do have a predisposition or you do have an existing bundle of cancer cells is only like further feeding and advancing that many cancer cells evolve in our bodies and we, our immune systems battle them down.

[00:27:49] But if we're drinking something on a regular basis that's creating food for them, the likelihood that those cells are gonna bundle and grow and become a tumor and more problematic are higher. [00:28:00] Overall alcohol also generates meaningful amount of oxidative stress, which as you know, just further burdens the body and can cause all kinds of other systemic issues.

[00:28:10] It impairs our regular kind of daily ability to prepare our DNA. So it's sort of like putting a series of steps or obstacles on the path to just our regular 24 hour cycle of healing and recovery that we go through as human beings. And then finally, and this is one that I think warrants a lot more research and understanding, it makes tissues more permeable to other carcinogens.

[00:28:36] So. We might be doing a good job of managing our exposure to a range of carcinogens on a, you know, daily, monthly, weekly basis. We're keeping plastics out of our systems. We're thoughtful about, you know, what chemicals we allow in our homes, but it's impossible to do it all. Alcohol just kind of further weakens our natural barriers.

[00:28:56] To those toxins. So the kind of [00:29:00] broader systemic effect is, can be quite significant. In my case, I'll never know if alcohol contributed to my breast cancer, and I certainly don't blame alcohol for my breast cancer. I'm thankful that I learned about it in my healing process, but I do believe that my elevated estrogen levels over many years, which I was able to track and document with the support of medical professionals, was probably attributable to.

[00:29:24] To alcohol, and I can tell you not a single doctor or nurse. In 25, 30 years of regular check-ins and doctor's appointments asked me about alcohol as a potential contributing factor to high estrogen levels. Remarkably, when I was going through my breast cancer treatment, I just gave a talk on this recently at the Ignite Conference.

[00:29:47] I had probably 25 or 30 visits to clinics in the UCSF Breast Cancer Treatment Center in the first quarter of 2023 while treating my own, and I was asked. [00:30:00] Dozens of questions. Did you smoke for how long? Birth control. When did you have your first period that, how many pregnancies, toxins in your home? Like I mean, dozens and dozens of questions.

[00:30:12] And because I was aware of this, I was waiting for somebody to ask me about alcohol. It's like right being crystal clear sober on a Saturday night at 11 o'clock and being pulled over by a cop and just waiting for them to ask you, have you been drinking? So you can say no, I'm crystal clear, sober. There's something kind of victorious and fun about that little lap, and I was waiting for one of these physicians to ask me about alcohol.

[00:30:33] Nobody ever asked me about alcohol, not once. It's not in the dialogue. Yeah, and it desperately needs to be in the dialogue.

[00:30:40] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah. Well, I hope that's what we're creating here. And as you were saying before with this woman's story, like it's all about informed consent, making an informed choice, even if that choice is two glasses of wine, making that choice.

[00:30:56] So I wanna shift into some of the [00:31:00] insights from your book and some of the practicalities of how we can move in that direction, understanding this why. Right. Really quick, let's pause to highlight our partner for this episode. Lemme ask you something. Have you ever done all the right things? I put that in air quotes for your health, and yet still felt confused and frustrated, or like it shouldn't be this hard, like you're constantly starting over or waiting for something to finally click or stick for that matter.

[00:31:30] So that stuck feeling, it's not a motivation problem. It's certainly not a willpower issue. It is what happens when health is built on rules instead of understanding, and that's why I wrote Uncomplicating Wellness, not to tell you what to eat or how to move or what to eliminate. Rather to help you understand how to think about wellness for yourself, what matters, what doesn't.

[00:31:54] How to stop outsourcing your trust. It's science, it's context [00:32:00] and sanity without the pressure to do everything perfectly. So if you want wellness to feel clearer and calmer, more sustainable, this book is for you. Text the word book BOOK to 8, 3 3 8 0 1 0 5, 0, 0. To learn more, it'll give you a clickable link.

[00:32:18] Again, text the word book, BOOK to 8 3 3 8 0 1 0 5, 0, 0. Cecily, so your book, the Eight Awarenesses of Freedom from Unwanted Habits. I love the idea of unwanted habits. I think it's so relatable something many of us can identify with. You know, whether that's alcohol or anything else, but I think oftentimes when we hear that the first step to something is awareness.

[00:32:45] It can sort of elicit a little bit of an eye roll.

[00:32:48] Cecily Mak: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:32:49] Jenn Trepeck: So how do you talk about awareness in a way that helps us get there?

[00:32:55] Cecily Mak: Yeah, sure. I think it's really a way to [00:33:00] invite, just like turning the lens a little bit from outward facing to inward facing. Honestly. We spend so much of our lives and orientations focused on external stimulation, external input.

[00:33:13] Everybody else's opinions, everybody else's thoughts. What's good, what's bad, what Influencer Profiler said what this week, the awareness invitation, frankly, it's rooted a bit in my many years of learning about and practicing. Buddhism is a subtler kind of turn of. Our attention to something maybe inside or our perception or what lenses we're viewing the world through, or maybe more importantly, what lenses we're viewing ourselves through.

[00:33:42] And I chose this word because it, it really reflected how I felt about this shift when I was trying to figure it all out on my own. I saw the AA model, I saw the 12 steps, and it was very prescriptive and there were a lot of, it felt like a lot of rigidity to me. And I wanted something [00:34:00] that was much more flexible and fluid and committing to an awareness as opposed to committing to a step felt very liberating and safe and adaptable to my experience.

[00:34:13] So that's the genesis of that, that word.

[00:34:16] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah. And I love when you talk about one of the awarenesses being choice and choosing what you consume. You talk about it, you know, things, products, people are all part of that consumption. Practically speaking, like how does that show up every day? How do we help people with that choice piece?

[00:34:38] Cecily Mak: So let's unpack it a little bit. The first awareness is really about clarity. My life is better clear. We have to first choose, and you asked about this with my mother at the beginning.

[00:34:47] Jenn Trepeck: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:47] Cecily Mak: My mom never chose to live with clarity. She was actually choosing to live with the opposite of clarity every day.

[00:34:54] And so this invitation would not. Necessarily be something I would want to [00:35:00] impose on her. It's not a fit for somebody who's not curious about living with more clarity. So that's the first awareness. The second one is choice As you call out, and this one is so juicy and so fun to play with. The awareness statement itself is, I choose what I consume.

[00:35:14] It's not, again, just about alcohol. It could be what we watch, what podcasts we listen to. I've loved that. I listened to your podcast this morning instead of the news, by the way, and I came back from my walk. I'm honored. I was thinking like that was so much more nourishing than the latest drama from Capitol Hill.

[00:35:32] So. Thank you for helping me nourish myself with something that's not that. So I choose what I consume. It also could be what people were around. It could be how we spend our discretionary time to a degree. And the awareness is realizing that we're not actually victims of most of our consumption. Right, and it's so easy to feel that way.

[00:35:55] So easy to feel like some external thing made us do something or consume [00:36:00] something or drink something or smoke something, or spend time with people we didn't want to, and that it wasn't our own choice that got us there. And this first came to be when I paused alcohol and I realized how many times a day I was choosing to not drink.

[00:36:16] And if I did choose to have a drink, how many micro decisions there were in between the moment of the idea and the actual having something enter my body. Right is go get the thing, bring it home, open it, prepare something, or go to the restaurant or the bar or the house or whatever. And there are all these moments that we have where we can decide, is this actually in alignment with how I want to feel later today or tomorrow or this week?

[00:36:48] Is this something that is consistent? With the commitments I've made to myself about how I'm going to nurture, tend to my own vitality or whatever it might be. And it also means that when we [00:37:00] don't follow through with our commitments to ourselves or goals, we can't sit there and pout about it and point the finger to somebody else camped out in this little victim orientation.

[00:37:11] We could take a little personal responsibility also with a lot of self grace and compassion and say. Hey, like that's what felt like the right thing to do in that moment and onward we go. Now I'm aware of how it made me feel afterwards, whatever it might be. And so it's really important I think, for us to all just at least at minimum, be reminded of how much agency we do have if we're in this group.

[00:37:35] Of people who are trying to shift change and don't expect perfection, just go with it. Be aware of each moment and recognize every single step along the way. We have an option to shift course if we so choose.

[00:37:47] Jenn Trepeck: I love that because again, it's that ownership of the choices.

[00:37:51] Cecily Mak: Yes. We all have that in us, and I had two fantastic conversations with women in the last week on this topic.

[00:37:59] One was telling me [00:38:00] about how furious and enraged and disappointed she was with herself for having a glass of red wine on Saturday night. My whole conversation with her was just get off the cliff girl. Like, it's okay. You're fine. Right? You chose in that moment with what you had available to you, given the context and circumstances to have a glass of wine, like, it's okay, nobody's gonna die.

[00:38:23] You didn't fail. There's no like clock that you have to reset, like you're just, you had a glass of wine. Deep breath. Here we are like, move on. Like, that was one, the other one. And she loved that. She laughed and you know, maybe she'll have another glass of wine, but it doesn't help to beat ourselves up in these moments.

[00:38:39] The other one was this wonderful woman in her seventies who approached me at one of my events recently and, and she said, I just. I'm so sad because I stopped drinking, you know, five or six years ago, and I feel so great and I've lost weight and my skin looks awesome and I'm more fun and blah, blah, blah.

[00:38:56] She said, but I'm doing this Long Trek [00:39:00] across Spain this summer, and there's this thing that we do at the end of the longest days where we get a. Bottle of rose and we open it together and we sit on the cliff and we watch the sunset and we have a glass of Roseanne. I just don't know how I'm gonna do it without, and I said, did you ever have like an alcohol addiction or problem?

[00:39:17] Is this like a big medical issue for you? She said, no, I just know I'm, I'm happier without it. And so I've been five or six years without it. I said, oh, please go have that glass of rose. Like really just enjoy yourself. Let that be a conscious choice in the moment because it's aligned with what. Makes you feel alive and connected and in community and you're not doing it three times a night, seven nights a week.

[00:39:40] It's a once in a while thing like, enjoy your life, you know? Same thing goes for the chocolate chip cookie. Have the chocolate chip cookie. Sometimes it's okay. We've gotten so hard on ourselves. So it, the choice goes both ways.

[00:39:53] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah. Well, and that makes me think of number six, judgment. And so I wanna ask this question both in the context of.[00:40:00]

[00:40:00] Judging ourselves like this person. But then also in this piece of, as we think about our community and the people that we care about, and you know, I see it all the time with food. I watch people judge other people's food. And so what's your recommendations and guidance around the judgment, but then also this piece of sort of allyship.

[00:40:26] Cecily Mak: I think that there are, you mentioned it's important to be aware of both judgment of others and judgment of self. Right. And sometimes we have to get really familiar with mastering, overcoming one before we can even access the other. My experience in Gring, this one and this, this awareness, was originally called do you, which I love was I was driving my little kid around.

[00:40:50] To practice or something, and he saw somebody smoking on the sidewalk in our little health conscious Northern California community, and he made this really kind of wild. [00:41:00] Comment about if he were the president of the United States, he would make smoking illegal. And I asked why. And he said, well, it's gross and it's unhealthy and people shouldn't be allowed to do it.

[00:41:09] And then I dropped him off and he went to practice and I sat there and I thought, oh man, I am really, I am really making a monster here. I was in that similar encampment around alcohol. And had a lot of judgment around people in my life who were, and I'll use this word consciously, still drinking, meaning I already had the assumption that they would stop someday, which is also super judgmental in and of itself.

[00:41:31] And, um, I had to kind of get 'em back in the car after practice and say, how would you feel if we made candy illegal? Because it's unhealthy and it's bad for your teeth and it's got food coloring and whatever. And he was horrified. And we used this as an opportunity to see like, look, we're all full of a myriad of choices that we make every single day and we have no idea why some people are doing some things or others, and it's none of our business.

[00:41:58] And I really think that [00:42:00] that's super important when we get into this exploration around healthfulness or alcohol or, you know, I love the work you do around helping people eat better, be more conscious generally, while also giving a little bit of space just for the colors of life, have the fries sometimes, that we just really have no idea where anybody else is.

[00:42:22] I mean, I have a good friend who has a daughter with a severe eating disorder. And her eating a small basket of fries is actually a family victory. Like we don't know where people are, and I had to learn that uncomfortably in my own way. Now, once I did and I could apply that kind of hand on heart, none of my business send this person love feeling, then I finally had a little bit of an opportunity to extend that to myself.

[00:42:50] That's where really beautiful healing happens for people who've been using dimmers for one reason or another. We can kind of resolve with our external relationships and our [00:43:00] external choices, but there's something very beautiful that happens if enough time passes and you stay with it and you realize we actually deserve that same unconditional.

[00:43:09] Grace and love ourselves. In my case, I had been really beating myself up over being kind of checked out for a lot of the early years of my kids' childhood. I was overworked. I was traveling a ton. I was drinking a glass or two of wine every night when I was home. Skipping through bedtime stories, you know, just kinda like not present.

[00:43:29] The most beautiful thing we can give our loved ones is our presence, and I was not present. That same kind of non-judgment that I learned to extend to other people, I was then able to kind of pull that into myself and see, look, doing the best you can under the circumstances. Like I didn't know how to handle the level of stress and pressure I was living with at that time.

[00:43:51] This was my self-medication. And luckily I learned enough to have another decade plus of parenting left and have conscious conversations with my kids [00:44:00] about it, but one thing at a time and that that's one of the best things we can do for ourselves.

[00:44:05] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah. I appreciate your stories. I remember having my own moment of that, of recognizing other people, judging someone, and how I looked at that and was like, you have no idea.

[00:44:18] Like maybe this is the one time that person or whatever, you know? So,

[00:44:21] Cecily Mak: yeah. And then we're judging the judger, by the way. Right.

[00:44:23] Jenn Trepeck: Exactly.

[00:44:24] Cecily Mak: You see that?

[00:44:24] Jenn Trepeck: Exactly.

[00:44:25] Cecily Mak: Like I'm judging you for judging someone. Yeah. Right. It's like such a vicious cycle we can get ourselves in and then Yes. That's why the word awareness is so wonderful.

[00:44:33] 'cause we see ourselves do that. I mean, I, I come from a family where we don't take responsibility for very much of our own. Like something bad happens is something outside of the family that caused it. Right? I had to really like undo that orientation in my adulthood. But watching our minds do that, that's why meditation is so cool.

[00:44:49] Like there are a thousand reasons do meditation. It's the hardest thing ever. And I'm sure you've had this conversation. Yeah. But. Watching something bad happen in my life now, it's silly. It could be dropping [00:45:00] an avocado in the driveway and it rolling under the car and I can't get to it. Watching my mind go to whose fault is it that the avocado just fell?

[00:45:10] Who can I blame for the fact I didn't have the bag that I usually use? You know, whatever. Like, that's like, it's so cool to get into that space where we just take a little more personal responsibility and it, it softens so much.

[00:45:22] Jenn Trepeck: Yeah, I love this. Well, I'm super excited 'cause all of that, by the way, even reminded me your story of number seven in your book of time.

[00:45:29] Right. So yes, I highly encourage everybody. A final thought, something to wrap this up before we do our rapid fire off topic questions.

[00:45:38] Cecily Mak: Oh yeah, sure. I am often asked if there's, you know, one kind of takeaway from some of this work that I've done. I think that the most important and potent nugget is to listen to ourselves.

[00:45:51] We all have a really good intuition of what's good for us. And sometimes that might mean having the fries, by the way. [00:46:00]

[00:46:00] Yes.

[00:46:00] Cecily Mak: But, uh, but we know, and it's often a little voice inside that's sort of whispering to us when we first wake up in the morning that like, this is how I'm gonna do things today differently than I did yesterday.

[00:46:11] Or I know that my closest loved ones would be better off if this subtle shift was made in our lives. We tend to pile on all these ways to dim that out and not wanna hear or feel that discomfort or that signal. And I just invite us all, and I take this medicine myself every day. What is it that my true inner guidance is telling me to do?

[00:46:35] And is there something tiny that I can do today to honor it? It could just be a very small thing. It doesn't have to be a lifestyle change forever. Just some small little step in that direction I think is one of the most beautiful things that we can do. I love it. Beautiful.

[00:46:50] Jenn Trepeck: Alright, with that some sillier off topic questions.

[00:46:55] Cecily Mak: Yeah,

[00:46:55] Jenn Trepeck: I

[00:46:55] Cecily Mak: love it.

[00:46:56] Jenn Trepeck: Alright. What's the best thing you've done for your health this week? What's the naughtiest [00:47:00] thing you've done related to your health this week? So you know the salad and fries if you will.

[00:47:03] Cecily Mak: Yes. So good. The best thing that I did for my health this week was I actually managed to eat very little sugar, which is super hard for me and I don't know how I did it.

[00:47:14] I was traveling too, but I just like decided no part of it's probably that I'm getting married soon and I'm like, I gotta be like in really good shape.

[00:47:23] Jenn Trepeck: Sure. I'm like very motivated, but like not have sugar right now. Congratulations, by the way.

[00:47:27] Cecily Mak: Thank you. The naughtiest thing I did for myself this week. I mean this is a habit and I'm speaking to it consciously is probably a scrolling media before going to sleep.

[00:47:37] It's just not nourishing, not good life medicine and uh, it's not terribly grave, but I'm super aware of it, how it affects life. I'm trying to not do that

[00:47:48] Jenn Trepeck: for sure. Alright, if you weren't a lawyer, author, an advocate and podcaster, what would you do?

[00:47:56] Cecily Mak: I think in a parallel life, I'm an artist. [00:48:00] I was a really creative kid and it kind of got hammered out of me in education, and I think I would add more creativity.

[00:48:06] Today my work is around actually primarily helping startups in the tech and wellbeing space, and I really love that work. So kind of doing what I dreamed of doing, but I'm still missing on the, uh. Kind of having a hut in the woods somewhere with like unlimited art supplies and just being able to be expressive every day, maybe in another 10 or 20 years.

[00:48:30] Jenn Trepeck: Right? The next turn. Alright, your favorite book on any topic other than your area of expertise, or you could give us a fiction book.

[00:48:39] Cecily Mak: I'm not gonna remember the author right now, so I apologize for that. But I read this book, loving Frank, which is historical fiction about Frank Lloyd Wright told from the perspective of his mistress, and it is a spec

[00:48:52] Jenn Trepeck: that

[00:48:53] Cecily Mak: spectacular, spectacular read.

[00:48:55] Jenn Trepeck: Love it. If you could cure one ailment, disease or sickness, what [00:49:00] would it be? I

[00:49:01] Cecily Mak: mean Alzheimer's and dementia. And I can say that I haven't even had it affect my life personally, but it's affected people who I love, their loved ones lives. And that's gotta be one of the toughest things to be the end of your life when you're living in the joy and delight of your memory and your relationships, and that gets taken away and there's beautiful, beautiful research and medicine getting us in that direction.

[00:49:21] I would love to see that progress in my lifetime.

[00:49:24] Jenn Trepeck: Yes. If you were a superhero, what would be your superpower?

[00:49:27] Cecily Mak: I think to stop time.

[00:49:30] Jenn Trepeck: Ooh. I don't think anyone has said that.

[00:49:32] Cecily Mak: Yeah, like I would love to be able to like right now be like, and then have the spaciousness of the moment until I'm ready to start it again.

[00:49:40] Jenn Trepeck: What's your biggest pet peeve?

[00:49:42] Cecily Mak: Bad grammar.

[00:49:44] Jenn Trepeck: I totally get it. I think it's, I, I totally get it. I think it's part of my problem on dating apps.

[00:49:50] Cecily Mak: If I had met anybody who I have ever loved digitally before we met, we would've never had a relationship. Right. So I should tell you that right now.

[00:49:58] Jenn Trepeck: Exactly. Alright, [00:50:00] last one.

[00:50:00] In your opinion, what's the next frontier in wellness?

[00:50:04] Cecily Mak: So this is my area of work now. I love this question. I'll try to keep it tight. I think a lot of bespoke individual empowered healthcare has been in the category of wealth care. Yes. For the last five or 10 years. You know, here I'm with my aura ring and I get my function health tests and.

[00:50:22] I am resourced and I can really make informed, empowered decisions about my health and wellbeing because I am resourced and it's not available to enough people, and I think we're gonna see reach and software and AI and pricing come down in a way that is going to make these same tools available to the masses so that we can make.

[00:50:44] The best decisions for our individual wellbeing in a very accessible language, specific level of sophistication, specific way, so that we can all make more informed choices about the lives we lead. [00:51:00] I love it.

[00:51:01] Jenn Trepeck: Well, thank you Cecily Makk. Appreciate you. Thank you for being here. Tell everybody how to connect with you, where to find your book and your work, everything.

[00:51:09] Cecily Mak: Oh, thank you. Probably the best and easiest stop is my website. It's cecilymak.com, C-E-C-I-L-Y-M-A-K. I link to my Substack, which is a biweekly. I link to my IG at Clear Life Journey and my podcast is und dimmed. My book is und dimmed and I love hearing from people. I try to respond to everything. So if any of this resonates and you have something to share, please don't hesitate to reach out.

[00:51:37] Jenn Trepeck: Love that. Yes. And we will put links to everything in the episode notes for everybody. So super quick, we will just, you know, preview our bonus episode. So on Friday we're talking about Dunkin's protein latte. So last year we explored Starbucks protein latte and I caused a bit of a scene in Starbucks trying to get the information and well, friends.

[00:51:57] I did it again at Dunking. [00:52:00] So that's what I do for all of you. So we're gonna find out. Everything I learned on Friday and this week's bite-sized bonus episode. Be sure wherever you're listening, click the plus sign or the follow button and then your app will alert you when it goes live. Cecily, thank you again for being here.

[00:52:15] Cecily Mak: Thank you, Jen. What a joy. I love your work. Thank you for continuing to do what you do. This is such an important perspective and place and I, I'm grateful to have been a part of it.

[00:52:24] Jenn Trepeck: Well, likewise, I appreciate you and friends. If you are not already a member, join us in the Happy Healthy Hub. You'll go to a salad with the side of fries.com/membership.

[00:52:34] This shows your support for this podcast, this community, and your health on top of this week's episode. Full video with behind the scenes pieces and your 24 7, ask me anything in the community board, you'll get this week's recipe for the hot pink coconut slaw. So until next week, remember, as I often say, we get healthier each day.

[00:52:50] We keep alcohol away, and now we know even more about why and how. Well, friends. That's it for today's [00:53:00] episode of Salad with a side of Fries. Congratulations for making yourself and your health a priority. Thanks so much for joining us. Be sure to click subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast platform.

[00:53:10] Share us with a friend and we'll be back next week. Always remember you deserve it and you are worth it. Happy, healthy.