036 Optimizing Food
A Chiropractor Told Ashley She'd Be Crippled at 50. She Was in Her Early Twenties.
That was the moment.
Not a dramatic health scare. Not a number on a scale. Just a chiropractor being honest with a young woman about where her trajectory was headed if nothing changed. Figure this out now, or your body will make the decision for you later.
Ashley was already compounding the wrong things. Not moving enough. Eating cheaply because that's what a tight budget demanded. A lot of processed food, a lot of bread and pasta, a lot of the stuff that was easy and affordable and quietly working against her. The chiropractor's words landed because they were true — and because she was young enough that fifty still felt distant enough to be abstract, but old enough to understand that the distance was shrinking.
That was the beginning of a food journey that has now spanned nearly twenty years of marriage and counting.
The Compounding Problem With Food
One bad meal will not matter at fifty.
That's actually true, and it's worth saying out loud because the guilt around food is real and often unproductive. One meal, one week, even one season of eating poorly is recoverable. But zoom out across a decade, and the daily decisions about what goes into your body start to shape what your body becomes. Arteries. Inflammation. Energy. Labs. The stuff you can't see until a doctor shows you the chart.
Josh and Ashley aren't dietitians or nutritionists. What they are is two people who've been paying attention to this for almost twenty years — who went from eating frozen processed food on a tight newlywed budget to an intentional, whole-foods kitchen built incrementally over time. Every change they've made fits the same framework they apply to everything else: daily anything, compounded. Not a dramatic overhaul. One swap at a time, until the swaps become the standard.
How It Actually Started
The first real shift came from necessity.
Ashley discovered she had a gluten intolerance around the same time the chiropractor conversation happened. And she made the same compromise most people make at first — not quite gluten free, mostly cutting back, occasionally rationalizing. Until the way she felt without it made going back feel pointless.
She's been fully gluten free for fifteen years now. In the early days, the alternatives were miserable — gritty bread, grainy pasta, everything tasting like it was made from sand. That's mostly changed. But the bigger change was simpler: cut the processed staples and just eat meat, vegetables, and rice. That's where it landed, and everything since has built on that foundation.
Josh found out through a genetic test that he doesn't process enriched flour well. Another easy swap with a clear reason behind it. And then the ingredient audit started — looking at what was in the pantry and asking, why is this here, and is there a better version?
Seed oils were one of the bigger ones. The science debate around seed oils is ongoing and Josh acknowledges it might be partially bro science. But his logic is simple: if there's any doubt and the swap is easy, why wouldn't you? So the oils in their kitchen are now olive, avocado, and wagyu tallow, and butter. Artificial sweeteners came next — harder to cut out than expected given how many products they're hiding in, including most energy drinks and anything labeled sugar free. Maple syrup and honey came back in their place, because simple carbs have a role in a balanced diet.
These changes didn't happen in one year. They happened across ten.
Ashley's System (The One That Actually Works)
Ashley does the cooking, the shopping, and the meal planning. She's clear that this is because she loves it, not because she's the wife. Whoever enjoys it should own it. In their home, that's her — and anyone listening whose husband does the cooking and planning should take note, because that's just as valid.
The single biggest upgrade to the system wasn't a recipe or a diet philosophy. It was Walmart and Sam's Club pickup.
Sounds mundane. It isn't. Going into a store means walking past end caps, impulse sections, and things that looked good but weren't on the list. Doing pickup means buying exactly what you planned to buy — and the Walmart app keeps a frequently purchased list, so the things you always get are one tap away. The running cart doesn't reset, so you can add things throughout the week as you run out of them. Ashley knows her weekly grocery budget and watches the total build in real time.
The impulse buys that don't happen are almost always the less healthy ones. You have to actively search for the thing you weren't planning to get. That's friction working in your favor.
She plans meals for the week on Sundays, orders pickup or delivery, and picks it all up on the way home from church. One weekly decision instead of five scattered, distracted ones. If the order doesn't hit the thirty-dollar minimum, she doesn't place it — because two items from a convenience run cost more in impulse decisions than they're worth.
On the produce question — Ashley grew up as a garden girl and was convinced she could pick better produce than a Walmart employee. Two watermelons in a row from delivery have been better than anything she picked herself. She's converted.
The Organic Transition (Without Going Food Broke)
Switching to organic everything in one month would double your grocery budget. Nobody should do that.
The approach that actually works is prioritizing. What do you consume most? What has the highest pesticide risk? For Ashley, fruit — and especially berries — is the non-negotiable. The porous nature of berries means whatever's on the outside gets in. That's worth the premium. For other items, she watches for sales, checks the weekly Aldi ad, buys ahead and freezes when the price is right.
They bought half a cow from a local butcher early in their organic meat transition. Cost-effective, higher quality, and it solved a chunk of the protein question all at once. Aldi consistently has competitive prices on organic chicken and beef. Sam's Club has their own version. You find what's available where you are and you work with it.
The mental model is simple: pick the thing that matters most to you, transition that first, let the budget adjust, then look for the next thing. You'll get there. It just takes longer than you want it to, which is exactly how every lasting change works.
When Neither of You Wants to Cook
This is a real situation and there's no value in pretending it isn't.
Ashley's answer: meal delivery services. The market for healthy, chef-prepared meals shipped to your door is genuinely good now. If you hate cooking but you're willing to let someone else solve the meal problem at a reasonable price point, that's a legitimate optimization — especially compared to eating out several nights a week, which adds cost, adds salt and seed oils, and removes control over ingredients.
The other option is using a meal kit service as a cooking school rather than a convenience tool. Josh has a friend who subscribed to Hello Fresh specifically to learn flavor profiles — what goes together, what complements what. He started making five kit meals a week, then two, then none, because he'd internalized enough to cook from scratch. Now he doesn't use the service at all. That's the hack: use the structure until you don't need it.
Ashley's own cooking education came from watching cooking shows and reels with no pressure to follow anything exactly. She rarely follows a recipe — she reads four, understands why each one does what it does, and combines them. Josh can't replicate what she makes because she doesn't fully know what she put in it. That's not a bug; that's the creative process in a kitchen that's been active for seventeen years.
Roles, Alignment, and the Thing That Actually Matters
Josh's role in their food system is research. Ashley plans, shops, and cooks. Josh tracks his macros, tests different dietary approaches, and brings her the things he wants to try. Their goals are the same even when their responsibilities are completely different.
That alignment is the whole game for couples trying to do this together.
Ashley said something in this episode that's worth sitting with: your spouse can be the person who helps you succeed with food, or they can be the one who gets you off track faster than anyone else. Both are true because the stakes are intimate and daily. If one person is trying to make changes and the other isn't invested, or worse, is actively working against it, you're fighting the wrong battle.
The conversation to have isn't about macros or seed oils. It's about goals. Do we want to feel better? Do we want to be healthier at sixty than we are now? Are we on the same page about why this matters? If yes, the how gets easier to figure out. If not, no food system will hold.
When Ashley dislocated her elbow and couldn't cook, Josh had to learn their kitchen. They prepped together in the evenings — one watching a show or listening to a book, both in the kitchen. A hard season became a good one. That's what aligned goals make possible.
Start With One Thing
If you take nothing else from this, take the question: what is the lowest hanging fruit?
Not the most ambitious change. Not the most dramatic overhaul. The one thing you could do this week that would move you in the right direction without blowing up your budget or your family's dinner table.
Is it cutting back on soda? Swapping one oil? Trying pickup instead of walking into the store? Starting to track what you eat so you actually know what's in there — Ashley discovered she was under-eating for her activity level and didn't know until she looked.
Pick the one thing. Nail it. Then find the next one.
Because if one bad meal doesn't define your health at fifty, neither does one good swap. But a thousand good swaps over ten years? That's a different body, different energy, different labs — and a different conversation with your doctor.
Growth happens when you take action. Daily anything changes everything.
Resources
Related Episodes
Episode 22 — Optimize Your Movement — The other half of this conversation. Food and movement are inseparable. → Watch on YouTube
Episode 29 — Optimize Your Sleep — Nutrition and recovery work together. The health picture isn't complete without this one. → Watch on YouTube
Episode 30 — 17 Years, A Look Back ft. Ashley Negron — The elbow season mentioned here gets its full context in the anniversary episode. → Watch on YouTube
Episode 34 — Optimizing Your Travel ft. Ashley Negron — Where Ashley talks about the one exception to their food rules: vacation. → Watch on YouTube
Products We Use
💧 LMNT Electrolyte Drink — daily hydration, especially on training days (referral link)
⌚ Whoop Strap — Josh uses the Whoop AI to connect food logging with recovery data (referral link)
Listen to the Full Episode
This post is drawn from Episode 36 of the Optimizing Beyond Podcast: Optimizing Your Food ft. Ashley Negron.
🎧 Listen on your favorite platform ▶️ Watch on YouTube
Connect With Josh & Optimizing Beyond
If this resonated with you, share it with someone who needs it.
Daily anything changes everything.