Morning Talk with Johanna Ljuggren
Tell us briefly about yourself and what you do
I have created the platform DetoxLife and with it I want to present a sustainable way of relating to life. Today, DetoxLife stands for how I removed all the needs I had to achieve an ideal, instead I chose life.
Many people probably think that it’s about eating healthy and exercising, but I rarely talk about the nutritional content of the food I prepare. For me, food and health are an art form, a way of expressing oneself with color, taste, form and words. Then it will be wellbeing for the soul.
What does sustainability mean to you?
KKnowledge and interest! To learn how I can consume less, where the products I buy come from and how they are made. We must educate ourselves and learn, dare to listen to things we do not always understand and to what feels far away from our direct world. If I become interested in a product, I find out who it is that represents the brand and who they work with.
It is no longer enough to just talk about sustainability and the environment. For me, sustainability also means diversity, which is just as important. In almost every context, I am still the only Latin American woman in the room, at meetings and on modelling assignments. I know there are a lot of women like me out there but where do they go, where is their voice? I realized a while ago that the term “birds of a feather stick together” may not be accurate anymore.We need odd, different people together with strategic and practical. We just have to learn to communicate with each other. I have an extremely great need for authenticity, I feel physically bad when I see how people try to fit in and lose their own voice.
In what way are you trying to contribute to a more sustainable world?
Every day when I wake up I say my mantra "How can I live this life more truthfully"? We will always need to consume food, clothes, etc. to survive, but now we must do it consciously.
When does your alarm clock go off?
I wake up at 4-5. I never set an alarm but wake up by myself, unfortunately. I have an alarm ringing when I should have slept eight hours, which I rarely do. For the past year, I have been practicing to sleep more, to improve my mental health. I have slept too little all my life and in the end it leaves its mark. It is not easy to change such a pattern, but I want to.
What does your morning and evening routine look like?
Morning coffee, BBC and P1, yoga and meditation. Not always that arrangement. Read the news and the articles I want to read and then review today’s schedule. In the evening there will be yoga at “Du Calme” if I have time and I prefer to eat at home on weekdays.
What are your top recommendations for a good night's sleep?
Read a good book, drink chamomile tea, listen to meditation classes. Eating a good dinner before bed usually helps. Meditation, yoga, good food and books help when I’m in town. In the countryside there is silence and starry nights. The luxury of the future is nature, silence and natural darkness.
What do you prefer to eat for weekend breakfast?
Tacos, eggs, any green juice or smoothies. Waffles, pancakes or croissants, sourdough bread or oatmeal with hazelnut milk. In the winter I like miso soup with rice and pickled egg yolks.
