My Lifestyle Gurus

Advice is a bizarre thing.  Everyone loves giving it.  As a rule, most people like hearing it.  And we almost always ignore it.  As part of a memoir I’m working on, I was recently writing about the best and worst advice I’d ever received, and I’m talking actual, specific pieces of advice, not “be yourself” or “think of others” or something that you could see knitted on your great aunt's Davenport.

As a result of this exercise, I started to realize that more than my friends, my families, or my coworkers, the advice that I most regularly follow as an adult is that which I’ve gleaned from celebrities and lifestyle gurus and internet reviewers/personalities.  I regularly tune into television programs and Twitter when I have a specific problem, and I figured all of you do as well, so I’m going to share my personal lifestyle gurus, and hopefully you’ll share yours in the comments.  Here we go!

Suze Orman

Finance: I will never be overtly interested in finance.  I flip past CNBC faster than I do ESPN.  I have no idea what the difference between a 401k and a 403b is.  And when I’m on dates with guys who work in finance, my eyes gloss over while they discuss day-trading or portfolios and I’m hoping at some point they’ll say something about “greed being good” so I can segway over to movies.

But what I do know, I learned from Suze Orman.  The thing I love about Suze Orman is that she’s understanding, firm, and doesn’t get too technical with her advice.  She clearly knows what she’s talking about (she was a financial advisor for a number of years), but she talks with the audience, not down to them.  I watch something like Jim Cramer and think “who wants this?”  Suze’s books are conversational, they have step-by-steps, and they’re relatively risk free.  I’m not someone who is going to become a zillionaire in the stock market (if you are, more power to you, and also call me), but just want to save and not do anything stupid with my cash.  Suze does that, and she also understands that people are in different places in their lives-I love the way that she has sections for people in their twenties/thirties all the way to retirement, and is willing to address, calmly, people who have made poor financial decisions.  Plus, she has given me a basic vocabulary in a subject I knew nothing about, so she’s a solid teacher as well.

Ina Garten aka The Barefoot Contessa

Cooking: Unlike money, food is a subject I’m always willing to discuss.  I love food-if I could do it without dying or going broke, I would just cook and eat all day long.  There’s something so special and magical about going into your kitchen, putting together a bunch of ingredients and creating this attractive, beautiful feast. 

I used to have four cooking guides, but I’m skipping Paula Dean, though admittedly she used to be one of these.  Instead, I stay with my three principles: Ina Garten, Giada de Laurentiis, and Patricia Wells.  The former two are probably extremely well-known to you all from their cooking shows.  Ina is usually my favorite, though occasionally her food is a bit too decadent or filled with cooked veggies for me (I will almost always eat what Giada’s making, but Ina’s recipes are more hit-and-miss).  Before I started watching these shows, and reading Ms. Wells (my copy of her At Home in Provence is covered in cocoa powder, flour, and buttery fingerprints, all the signs of a good cookbook) I knew how to follow the directions on a box.  I could heat a pizza, I could make Mac & Cheese, I could probably figure out how to bake a Duncan Hines cake, but that was the extent.  Thanks to these women and the way that they explain (especially in their books) the combinations of the food and what brings out the best in a recipe, I now cook with confidence, occasionally straying from the recipe to gain my own spin on what I’m bringing to the table.

John and Leon: The Lean Machines

Exercise: I’ve recently (very recently) gotten back into working out, and that’s in part due to the YouTube channel the Lean Machines.  John Chapman and Leon Bustin give us a video each week that actually teaches you ways to work out in your spare time, in a hotel room, around your house, and of course, at the gym.  My big problem with exercising (one of many problems, but this is one of the big ones) is that it never seems convenient.  It seems like a massive hassle after leaving the office, knowing that I have writing and blog posts and movie/TV-watching and cooking ahead of me (all of which I enjoy far, far more) to then head to the gym and run on an elliptical next to some gorgeous man who is likely not interested in me, but in my deluded, electrolyte-reduced state, I think is, and I’m left wondering why I decided to wear that ratty old grey t-shirt instead of something slimming (does Spanx make gym clothes?).

John and Leon invite you to do this at your own pace, though, and throw in helpful hints about supplements and macros.  Once you watch the video for the first time and get over drooling over the fellas (this may take 2-3 times, so keep going with it), I always find at least one workout that I’ll love doing (and conversely, one where John is standing on his head talking about tri’s and I’m positive I would break my neck attempting the same thing).  Plus they’re funny, and relatively empathetic.  And British!

Philippe Cousteau, Jr.

Environment: Generally, this is driven by Al Gore for me-I’ve seen An Inconvenient Truth and read almost all of his books, I recycle and take public transit extremely regularly and generally try to reduce my carbon footprint at every angle.  Environmentalism is something that I feel deeply about (along with civil rights issues, it’s the political issue that I am most passionate about), and though movies like Chasing Ice (another one that I watched with great relish) scare the crap out of me, I watch them to try and learn more about the world around me and to hopefully change it for the better.

David Attenborough's documentaries are probably the thing that most shape my love for the environment these days (Africa is coming up in my Netflix queue, and I'm so excited, and yes, I still get the discs in the mail), but Philippe Cousteau Jr. is probably the more action-oriented of my mentors on the subject.  I love the work he does on CNN and that he takes a less passive role in the environment-his comments are spot on, but occasionally jolting, and his documentaries are always incredibly interesting.

And those are my lifestyle movers and shakers.  I should mention cinematically (since that's the core of this site), I don't really have someone I follow religiously in the same way as these people (I don't know as much about their subjects and enjoy the guidance and the learning), but a day without a trip to the Film Experience is a rare day indeed, and if Nathaniel Rogers or Nick Davis highly recommend a film I was wavering on or hadn't heard of, it gets a yes (this also goes for my brother, who isn't famous...yet).

And those are my lifestyle gurus-tell me yours!  What subjects did I not think of above?  Whom should I try?  And which lifestyle gurus can you not stand (this list begins and ends with Sandra Lee for me, but I have more)?  Share!