This week on Field Notes, we enter the land of: Ultra-Processed Food.

According to certain very serious doctors on the internet, UPFs are now:

Cool.

Not dramatic at all.

So naturally, I’ve decided to test whether cutting them out for a week will:

• Improve my migraines
• Reduce my exhaustion
• Fix my yo-yo weight history
• Or simply make me feral and resentful

Because unfortunately… most of the things listed as “ultra-processed” are the things I actually eat.

• What actually counts as Ultra-Processed Food (and how inconsistent the definitions are)
• The claim that UPFs are worse than tobacco
• The inflammation / microbiome argument
• The counter-argument from registered dietitians
• Whether the research is observational or causal
• Food anxiety vs legitimate health concern
• My chaotic personal diet
• Growing up on enforced raw spinach
• Cheese-based GCSE breakdowns
• Yo-yo weight cycles and hyper-palatable food
• Ozempic changing the household food dynamic
• Whether non-UPF eating is realistic with children
• Why I eat like a 19-year-old boy with a student loan
• And whether “whole foods” are actually practical in real life

My current diet includes:

• Fistfuls of turkey
• Salt & vinegar crisps
• Tuna pasta
• Mushroom coffee
• Minimal fruit
• Suspiciously little fibre

Meanwhile the internet is telling me my gut lining is dissolving and my liver is weeping.

So this week I attempt to go:

👉 UPF-Free (or as close as I can manage)

And we’ll see whether:

• My energy changes
• My migraines shift
• My mood improves
• Or whether I simply miss crisps

• Are we pathologising modern food?
• Is this another wellness panic?
• Or is the hyper-palatable environment genuinely wrecking us?
• Can a busy parent realistically cook everything from scratch?
• And why does cutting processed food feel so emotionally loaded?

This week’s dilemma:

“I’ve narrowed it down to three husband contenders. How do I choose?”

Featuring:

• The Strong Stomach Theory™
• The Chap Olympiad
• Escape room testing
• Vomit resilience
• And a brief detour into secret families

You’re welcome.

If you’d like to improve your life without becoming insufferable:

Join the book club / self-improvement group chat over on Substack.

This month:

👉 Atomic Habits by James Clear

You’ll get:

• Weekly practical breakdowns
• Private podcast episodes
• Cheat sheets
• Knowledge topics
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Join here:

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@field.notes.pod

Share this episode with someone who:

• Owns at least three types of oat milk
• Is suspicious of emulsifiers
• Or eats crisps in the car and calls it “lunch”

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This week’s Field Report is the follow-up on vagus nerve regulation, still-face parenting, and trying to soothe our fried nervous systems.

I tested the homework:

Ice water dunk.

Breath work.

Humming (unfortunately, in public).

• Vagus nerve stimulation device - https://shorturl.at/Q0YQQ
• Breath work app - https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/breathwrk-breathing-exercises/id1481804500
• Gospel Sunday Service Choir track - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qre8LJVd3o (wait for SIA to come out and sing with them, it gets me every time. Also look up 'sunday service choir' on youtube or spotify and enjoy the full album. I love 'rain' and 'father stretch' the most.

📚 Join “Actually Trying”

Private podcast episodes, book breakdowns, and practical self-improvement without becoming unbearable.

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Follow on Instagram:

@rosehoneymorgan

@field.notes.pod

New episodes every Monday (deep dive) and Friday (Field Report).

• Full head ice dunk attempts (and whether they calm you down or just make you feel mildly feral)
• Why breath work felt surprisingly effective
• The school gate humming incident
• The still-face experiment and why scrolling in front of your kids hits differently
• Why regulation starts in the body, not the brain
• Whether overthinking (and over-ChatGPT-ing) makes stress worse
• The new vagus nerve stimulation device you can clip to your ear
• The gospel choir soundtrack that fuelled my public “moment”
• Why humans used to regulate naturally (and now need calendar reminders to breathe)

Public humming.

Misread eye contact.

A minor wellbeing check from one of the two hot dads.

We move.

Regulation is physical.

You cannot reason your way out of stress when your heart is racing.

Long exhales > spiralling thoughts.

Unclench your jaw > rewrite your narrative.

Body first. Brain second.

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Vagus Nerve Tips, Stress & Still Face Parenting

This week I force you to join in with whatever the mad reels tell us to do - so concentrate.

My algorithm is obsessed with vagus nerve regulation: calm your nervous system, soothe your vagal tone, stop being on edge, stop snapping, stop doom-scrolling and just… relax.

So naturally, I decided to look into it.

In this episode I unpack why modern life feels so dysregulating, why scrolling feels calming but actually isn’t, and whether humming, cold water, jaw unclenching and breathing like an ancient human might help — or whether we’ve officially lost the plot.

You may need to unclench your teeth while listening.

• Why “just calm down” doesn’t work

• The Still Face experiment — and why blank-facing kids backfires

• What the vagus nerve actually does (without wellness nonsense)

• Why your body has to feel safe before your brain can think

• The most common vagus nerve tips from Instagram

• Which ones felt useful, which felt weird, and which I’ll actually keep

Including:

• Humming & singing

• Breathing out longer than in

• Jaw and tongue relaxation

• Cold water on the face

• Slow movement instead of checking out

No ice baths. No candles. No pretending we live in a monastery.

Probably not.

Humans have always regulated themselves through:

• movement

• rhythm

• cold exposure

• shared calm

We just used to do it naturally — now we have to remember.

I’ll report back on whether any of this helped in real life, or whether it joined the long list of things that sounded promising and didn’t survive a weekday.

If you want help actually applying this stuff (without becoming insufferable):

👉 https://rosehoneymorgan.substack.com/subscribe

This month’s book:

Atomic Habits – James Clear

You’ll get:

• Weekly breakdowns you can actually use

• Private podcast episodes

• Cheat sheets & summaries

• Anti-brain-rot knowledge topics

You can also join free for the notes via email.

Follow along on Instagram:

• @rosehoneymorgan

• @field.notes.pod

And come back Friday for the field report.

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Want to actually try this year? Join me at - https://rosehoneymorgan.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve started Actually Trying - a private Substack podcast + newsletter for people who are sick of collecting advice and never applying it.

Each month includes:

• A realistic book club (starting with Atomic Habits by James Clear — no perfection required)
• An Anti-Brain-Rot Club to relearn things we probably should already know
• Weekly private podcast episodes
• Cheat sheets, summaries, and notes delivered straight to your inbox

New private episodes drop every Wednesday.

You can listen in your normal podcast app.

In this episode of Field Notes, I go somewhere my family would deeply prefer I didn’t: signs from the universe, communicating with the dead, near-death experiences, and whether any of this is actually real — or just a very effective placebo.

This all started after I listened to neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr Tara Swart on Diary of a CEO, where she calmly (and alarmingly confidently) explained that she believes it is possible to communicate with people who have died — not as a spiritual guru, but as an Oxford-educated medical doctor with a PhD in neuroscience.

So naturally, I had to investigate.

• Why humans have always searched for signs, meaning, and messages from “elsewhere”
• Dr Tara Swart’s experiences after losing her husband — and the science she believes supports them
• Near-death experiences that are genuinely difficult to explain (including the red MG story)
• Whether consciousness might exist beyond the brain
• The placebo effect — and why “even if it’s not real” doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t work
• Famous placebo studies (fake knee surgery, antidepressants, pain relief)
• The reticular activating system (RAS) and why asking for “signs” might simply train your brain to notice more
• Manifestation, meaning-making, and why modern life feels spiritually hollow
• Whether looking for signs can help with grief, loneliness, and uncertainty — even if you remain deeply sceptical

I’m going to ask for a specific, offline sign — not from Instagram, not from scrolling — and I’ll report back on Fridaywith what happened.

If you’re not into the idea of signs from the dead, I also talk through an alternative:

connecting with future you — the older, calmer version of yourself who already survived whatever you’re panicking about now.

Probably not.

For most of human history, we’ve consulted gods, oracles, ancestors, rituals, astrology, omens, and stories to make sense of the world. When societies lose shared meaning systems, anxiety and loneliness tend to rise — which might explain why manifestation, astrology, and “signs from the universe” are having such a moment.

This episode isn’t about convincing you to believe anything.

It’s about asking whether meaning itself might be useful — even if it’s a little bit made up.

• Friday: Field Report — what happened when I asked for a sign (plus a story involving a psychic)
• Next week: Ask Guru & Granny — the new listener Q&A segment with:
• a chronically online take (me)
• a chronically offline take (Old Ma)

Send your questions to: rosefieldnotespod@gmail.com

Or DM me on Instagram: @rosehoneymorgan

(Anonymous is absolutely fine.)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week’s Field Report follows on from Monday’s episode on Main Character Dressing — specifically the idea of “dressing for the life you want.”

So naturally, I committed to the ultimate test:

I dressed as a Clean Girl.

And so did Old Ma.

What followed was… humbling.

Scraped-back buns. Stark white activewear. An identity crisis involving my hairline, forehead, and general facial geography. Turns out Clean Girl Dressing is not for the faint-hearted — or anyone with a large skull, ginger hair, or a low tolerance for belts.

In this episode, I report back on:

• What Clean Girl dressing actually feels like in real life
• Why scraped-back buns are basically a humiliation ritual unless you’re a 9 or 10
• Whether wearing white really does change behaviour (spoiler: it does, slightly)
• Why clothes can affect confidence, posture, and how willing you are to steal your children’s snacks
• The unexpected psychological impact of feeling “seen” vs wanting to disappear
• Why everyone needs a symbolic power item (boots, hat, gilet, etc.)
• The problem with buying “nice pieces” instead of full outfits
• Why belts are medieval torture devices
• And what Clean Girl taught me about hygiene, confidence, and hand-washing (sad but true)

Find of the week:

• The concept of a power outfit — clothing that lets you walk into places like you own them (post office, returns desk, life in general)

Fail of the week:

• Wearing nicer clothes under the coat
• Belts
• Stiff blouses
• Thinking I could style “mid-range” outfits without buying the full mannequin look

• How to get a workout done without creating a third outfit or extra laundry (sports bra under pyjamas = elite behaviour)

From next week, we’re officially launching Ask Guru & Granny — the new listener segment where we tackle your problems from two perspectives:

• Chronically online (me)
• Chronically offline (Old Ma)

If you’ve got a dilemma, spiral, life question, or quiet panic — send it in.

📩 Email: rosefieldnotespod@gmail.com

📲 Instagram DM: @rosehoneymorgan

Tell us if you want to be anonymous or named.

Neither of us are licensed therapists.

My mum’s main qualification is “a life well lived” and decades of being deeply unimpressed by nonsense.

You can see:

• Old Ma’s Clean Girl attempt
• Aesthetic references
• Power item discussion

Over on the podcast Instagram:

👉 @field.notes.pod

I’ll be back on Monday with another experiment — and yes, it may cause a domestic incident.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re told to dress for the life we want — not the life we have.

That if we change how we dress, we’ll change how we feel.

That confidence, motivation, discipline, and even happiness might be hiding in a blazer, a slicked-back bun, or a pair of cowboy boots.

But… is that actually true?

Or is this just another internet reinvention fantasy dressed up as self-improvement?

In this episode of Field Notes, I look at main character dressing, aesthetic identities, and the idea that clothes can function as behavioural cues — through humour, cultural anthropology, and lived experience.

This one is for anyone who:

• feels permanently scruffy, flat, or half-alive
• knows they care about how they look, but can’t seem to follow through
• suspects there’s something psychologically real going on here… but also something deeply ridiculous

• Main character dressing — what it actually means, and why it’s everywhere

• Dressing for the life you want vs dragging yourself around in leggings and a fleece

• Why clothes can genuinely affect mood, confidence, and behaviour (without becoming delusional about it)

• A gentle roasting of men in tracksuits (you can sit with us — just behave)

• The aesthetics currently doing the rounds online:

• Clean Girl
• Tomato Girl
• Mob Wife
• Cottagecore
• • Why switching aesthetics can feel like trying on identities
• • Whether “rehearsing” a version of yourself helps — or just makes you overthink everything
• • The anthropology of adornment, status, and signalling (including a Copper Age man buried with a solid gold penis sheath)
• • Why Old Ma is always dressed properly — and why she might be onto something

This episode also sets up a new weekly segment starting next episode:

Ask Guru & Granny

Each week we’ll answer listener questions using:

• a chronically online take (me)
• and a chronically offline take (Old Ma — archaeologist, control group, deeply unimpressed by nonsense)

You can ask about:

• identity
• work
• confidence
• relationships
• motivation
• or anything you’re quietly spiralling about

Send questions to: rosefieldnotespod@gmail.com

Or DM me on Instagram: @rosehoneymorgan

Tell us if you’d like to be anonymous or named.

(Neither of us are licensed psychologists or counsellors. My mum’s main credential is “a life well lived” and decades of not indulging bullshit.)

I’ll be actually trying this in real life:

• testing different aesthetics
• seeing whether clothes change behaviour, mood, or self-control
• and reporting back honestly — including whether it’s worth the laundry, the sensory overload, or the effort

Photos, visuals, and Old Ma’s homework will be shared on the podcast Instagram.

📸 Podcast Instagram: @field.notes.pod

(behind-the-scenes chaos, visuals, and things that didn’t make the edit)

If this episode made you laugh, think, or feel mildly called out — share it with someone who’d enjoy being part of this group chat.

See you on Friday for the Field Report.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.