BE THE BEST YOU
Lifestyle guru’s recipes may help find your Zen
It’s a foregone conclusion that summertime in South Florida can make one hot, as in steamy and gross, which means it’s often hard to also feel hot, in the sexy, self-assured and non-gross way. But bestselling cookbook author, food writer, yoga instructor and healthy lifestyle coach Jules Aron swears it’s possible.
“Make tiny little changes,” says Aron, 44, whose latest books, “Fresh and Pure” and “Nourish and Glow,” were released in March and offer plantbased recipes for food, drink and natural, homemade beauty products.
Here are some of her suggestions for staying cool in all this heat, as well as some thoughts on finding the best you, in this season and any other.
You are what you
eat: During the hot summer, Aron suggests keeping food “as light as possible,” drawing on fruits and vegetables “and more raw foods, things that are easy to digest. I do less cooking during the summer, and save that for the winter months.”
She starts her day with some lemon water to help digestion, and extends that lightness even to happy hour, preferring wine cocktails or Negronis or things involving fruit.
Also, you are what you
wear: Her favorite warmweather outfits are airy, breezy caftans. She also keeps her makeup minimal and follows an oiling routine in the shower that keeps her skin cool.
“Spearmint is good for the summer, with essential oils. It cools me down,” she says.
Start small and have some fun: Living in Florida, the land of the 12-month beach body, can make the pressure to be healthy and slim “so serious, very stressful” Aron says. What she wants to do with her books is introduce healthy foods, with mostly commonly accessible ingredients.
Grow fresh in Florida:
Aron’s recipes are centered on delicious, fresh ingredients. She’s a big fan of West Palm Beach’s Celis Produce, which sells organic goods. But she also has suggestions for herbs you can grow at home, without “the need for outdoor space,” so you always have them on hand, like “basil is great” she says. “Mint and basil grow like crazy. They’re pretty easy to maintain.”
Keep it simple: Aron’s cookbooks are full of gorgeous pictures, something she swears by. “If I open a cookbook and it doesn’t have pictures, I close that book,” she says. “I want to be able to see what it’s supposed to look like.”
Focus your next chapter on ones you’ve
already written: Aron, a Montreal native who studied journalism at Montreal’s McGill University, was in the fashion magazine business before deciding the “whole corporate thing wasn’t for me. It was very ‘Devil Wears Prada.’”
She returned to bartending, something she’d done earlier, and began studying yoga, Ayurvedic science, martial arts and healthy lifestyle coaching. Still stuck for a solid direction, Aron holed up in a remote upstate New York cabin with her late beloved dog, Dolce, and “made a list of the things I knew how to do, and kept looking at it. Suddenly all the pieces started to form.”
Those pieces became 2016’s “Zen and Tonic,” her first cookbook, featuring health-friendlier cocktails. “Once I knew what was meant to be, I was laserfocused on doing what I needed to do to make that happen.
Soak up the sun: There wasn’t a “direct route” from New York to the Sunshine State, but the Canadian knew that “I wanted to be by the ocean.” On a road trip with Dolce to visit her parents, who live in Florida half the year, she fell in love with West Palm Beach. “The lifestyle is beautiful. The pace is an island pace. And being near the ocean is so important. I feel alive when I’m near it.
There’s no timeline for changing your life: Aron believes that little changes to routine can not only be small steps toward health but even to your destiny. “I was 40 when I wrote my first book,” she says proudly. “It’s never too late. If you do what you love, keep pressing and feel out what you want to do. You don’t have to fit into society’s mold if you don’t necessarily fit there.”