Wellness Unfiltered Episode 6 Transcript — Living Healthy on a Budget

Recorded Friday 10 April 2026. Hosts: Lee Holmes and Irene Falcone.

[00:00] Intro: The Affordability Crisis

Irene: Well hello out there! You're Lee.

Lee: And you're Irene.

Irene: And these are our fellow hosts, the cicadas. And this is Wellness Unfiltered. Yay! Today we're discussing affordability in wellness and beauty — how to live healthy and wealthy in the cost of living crisis.

Lee: People don't need anyone to tell them it's tough. They know. What they need right now are actual ideas. And neither of us is speaking theoretically — we've both been single moms building careers from scratch, watching every single dollar. These are habits we still use today.

[~02:00] Backstories: The Harbour Bridge and the Purple Suit

Lee: My financial wake-up call: I was driving into my English teaching job and didn't have two dollars for the Harbour Bridge toll. I put my foot flat and the boom gate hit my windscreen and flew over my roof. Police sirens. Taken to police HQ. Fined $108, reduced to $55 because I was crying. And I thought: I need to learn how to make every dollar stretch. That was the beginning.

Irene: My story is very different. My first advertising job — $13,000 a year, sleeping on a friend's floor in Lane Cove. My boss pulled me aside: "You're an absolute superstar, but you don't look the part" — and gave me a $1,000 cheque. I went to Paddington, walked into Scanlan Theodore, and spent the entire thousand dollars on one purple wool suit. I still have it in my wardrobe today. Everything I buy is the best quality I can possibly afford, and I keep it forever. Never fast fashion. Not once.

Lee: Frugality isn't one-size-fits-all. My instinct is to find the free or nearly-free version of everything. Irene's is to buy one extraordinary thing and make it last a lifetime. Both approaches save money in the long run.

[Food Segment] Freezer Hacks and Renewable Tables

Lee: Wednesday nights are absolutely the best time to shop — that's when markdowns happen. End-of-week stock being cleared. You load up, portion it, freeze it, and one smart shop carries you through the whole week. The freezer is the best preservative. I call it the "renewable table" approach: cook once, eat four times. A roast chicken becomes a stir-fry, becomes a broth. A pot of lentils becomes a soup, a side, a fritter. Nothing wasted.

Irene: Batch cooking isn't just a money saver — it's probably the best way to stay healthy. When you don't have something in the freezer, you end up eating junk or ordering Uber Eats.

Lee: Protein at breakfast — eggs are still one of the most affordable complete proteins. Start with protein, stabilise your blood sugar, and you stop making impulse food decisions by 10am. For organic shopping, use the Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen as your guide — not everything needs to be organic. Frozen organic blueberries are nutritionally identical to fresh and a fraction of the price. Grow your own herbs on a windowsill: coriander, basil, microgreens. The return on investment is remarkable. And soak produce in water with apple cider vinegar if you can't afford organic — it removes most pesticide residue.

Irene: Should we give the Renewable Table e-book away free?

Lee: Yes! We'll link it in the show notes. Free for our listeners.

[Coffee and Chai]

Irene: Coffee is getting more expensive. Justin saved $3,500 a year by buying a coffee machine with beans — not pods. Nespresso pods are not good value and not good for the environment either.

Lee: For me — I don't drink coffee. I make a batch of homemade sticky chai. I've never tasted better, to be honest. I'll add the recipe to the show notes.

[Gut Health]

Irene: For years I had adrenal fatigue, chronic tiredness, skin issues. When I finally focused on gut health, everything shifted. My hair's never looked better. Is hair connected to gut health?

Lee: Absolutely — skin, hair, nails, energy, mood, immunity — the gut has a role in every single system. Nearly 80% of your immune system lives there. The affordable gut foundations: fermented foods, legumes, garlic, coriander, bone broth from your roast chicken carcass. These are not exciting. They absolutely work.

[Budget Beauty]

Irene: You do not need an expensive cleanser — you wash it straight down the sink. Put all your money into your serum. For everything else, use your kitchen. Overripe strawberries have natural AHAs — mash and apply as a chemical exfoliator. Crushed lentils as a face scrub (Lee learned this in India). Mashed banana as a hair mask. Coconut oil as makeup remover, cleanser, and full-body moisturiser. And the most underrated beauty product in existence — free — is water.

Lee: On Saturdays I do a little home spa: shave my face with a dermablade, feet in a bucket with magnesium salts, serum on fresh skin. The dermablade removes dead skin so effectively your serum penetrates at a fraction of the usual dose — you use a quarter of the product.

Irene: Sunscreens are non-negotiable. That's one thing we cannot find in the kitchen. If you can only afford one thing and you're going outside, wear SPF. Pure zinc oxide sunscreens are affordable and effective.

[Household Bills]

Lee: Phantom energy: every appliance on standby adds real dollars. Turn off at the wall — takes 30 seconds. Audit every direct debit quarterly. You'll find free trials that rolled into paid plans, streaming services you forgot, apps you haven't opened since 2023.

Irene: I set an alarm three to four days before any free trial ends — "do you want this or not?" is literally in my alarm. And I always call to negotiate: electricity, internet, insurance, bank. "I'm reviewing my expenses — is there a better rate available?" The worst they say is no. Most of the time they don't want to lose an existing customer.

Lee: Petrol: buy midweek (Tuesday or Wednesday — the low point of the pricing cycle). Buy at night — petrol is cooler and denser after dark, so you genuinely get slightly more for your money. Keep your tires inflated. Open the window instead of aircon for short trips.

[Business Hacks]

Irene: Three business tips from my PhD in failure: first, audit your Shopify apps ruthlessly — most are unnecessary. Second, ditch the ad agencies. Ad agencies sunk my last business — I was spending $30,000–$40,000 a month. I do everything myself now with AI. One weekend and you can learn Facebook, email marketing, Google Ads. Third — and this sounds counterintuitive — pay your bills early. It improves supplier relationships, gets you the first offers, and sends a signal to the universe about your cash flow.

Lee: We launched this podcast ourselves at 1am. I taught myself how to upload to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Substack from scratch. No agency. No studio. It just takes a little while to propagate — and then it was there.

[~34:38] Womansplain: Fighting Man Flu Season

Justin: High five for the turmeric with eggs idea — I've been using normal turmeric but I'll switch to Golden Gut. And the protein-forward breakfast has saved me so much money on mid-morning snacks. My question: it's Man Flu season. What can you do?

Lee: Sleep first — people sleeping fewer than seven hours are significantly more likely to get sick. The immune system does its most important repair work during sleep. Zinc directly inhibits viral replication. Best food sources: pumpkin seeds (a small handful is a clinically relevant dose), red meat, chickpeas, hemp seeds. Garlic: air-fry whole bulbs — demonstrated antiviral and antimicrobial properties, and genuinely delicious. Vitamin C consistently from food — capsicum, broccoli, parsley, citrus, Kakadu plum in smoothies. And once you feel it coming on — act immediately. The first 24-hour window is critical. Zinc lozenges, rest, sleep, hydration.

Justin: The peer-reviewed research I've seen suggests men recover faster when comfortably prone on a couch, in front of back-to-back footy, with someone cooking for them.

Irene: I don't think that is a real study, somehow.

[~44:32] You're On Speaker: Kaya — Paramedics and Kittens

Kaya: My superpower is being unflappable — quite good with gore and high-stress situations. I've just done a massive life 180: 15 years in fashion, now studying to be a paramedic. Placements start end of year.

Irene: Paramedics are doing the most important job. The stories my husband told me from 30 years in the police — what you all put up with — absolutely amazing.

Kaya: I also do cat fostering for the RSPCA — I specialise in neonates, little babies without their moms. At the moment I've got a little girl who turns six days old today. I have to wake up every two hours to feed her with a five-mil syringe.

Lee: You are an actual angel. Stop the pod right now.

Kaya: My question: we're constantly assaulted with misinformation online, especially from celebrity and influencer brands. How do we tell who genuinely cares about what they're creating versus who's just cashing in?

Irene: If a celebrity or influencer is making money off a product — don't buy it. If they're genuinely talking about something they love, with no kickback at all, you can probably trust it. That's the only filter you need.

Lee: My red flag is when the hero ingredient appears at the very bottom of the ingredients label — less than 1% of the formulation — and 90% of the budget went on a glass bottle and a celebrity photoshoot. They're not selling you a product. They're selling you their lifestyle with a beauty filter on.

[~54:51] The Rant: The Wellness Industrial Complex

Lee: I am fired up about the wellness industrial complex that's draining your wallet while pretending to save your soul. Not worth your money: $80 jade rollers, $50 detox teas, gym gear loaded with microplastics (those leggings and mats shed tiny plastic particles every time you sweat — linked to hormone disruption and inflammation). Ditch them for second-hand cotton. Also: Himalayan salt lamps collecting dust, wireless earbuds marketed as focus enhancers, and blue light blocking glasses at boutique prices — the cheap amber-tinted ones from the pharmacy work just as well. Real wellness is free and dirt cheap: second-hand cotton, a daily walk, water, garlic when something's coming on, fermented foods, legumes, bone broth. That's it.

Irene: I'm saving up for an Oura ring. I'm probably going to get both the Oura and the Whoop, actually.

Lee: Of course you are.

[Outro]

Irene: Share your frugal tips with us on Instagram @WellnessUnfilteredLeeIrene. How good was Kaya? And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Until next time!

Lee: Keep on keepin' on. Bye! Mwah!