This transcript is AI-generated and [lightly] edited by a human.

Karina Inkster:

You're listening to the No Bullshit Vegan podcast, episode 166. Actor and personal trainer Paloma Kwiatkowski is here to discuss her vegan story, beginning a career in the health and wellness industry, and what it's like moving from big cities to a small town.

Karina Inkster:

Hey, welcome to the show. I'm Karina, your go-to no BS vegan fitness and nutrition coach. Most regular listeners around here know that I live in a small coastal British Columbia town called Powell River in the qathet Regional District, and here we're on the traditional lands of the Coast Salish people, specifically the Tla’amin Nation. And fun fact, in case you didn't know, this show is syndicated on local radio CJMP 90.1 FM in Powell River. So I heard from my friend slash music teacher slash performance partner Walter, that a new vegan had moved to town and that she was an athlete and that she was going to be teaching acting classes at the Academy of Music, of which he's the director and at which I teach accordion and didgeridoo lessons when I'm not coaching fitness clients. So Walter connected me to my guest today and we had a conversation for the podcast. Introducing Paloma Kwiatkowski, who is a professional actor with over a decade of experience in the film and TV industry.

She's also an avid trail runner turned personal trainer, and a vegan with an unwavering passion for cooking and baking. Her favorite meal is soy curl kimchi burritos, which honestly sounds like the best combination of three items I've ever heard of. Here's our discussion.

Hey Paloma, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on and speaking with me today.

Paloma Kwiatkowski :

Thanks for having me.

Karina Inkster:

One of the few people who have been on the show who are actually in my tiny little town, so this is going to be kind of cool and I have to thank our mutual friend Walter for connecting us. He is my partner in accordion crime and the director of the Powell River Academy of Music where you have some programs and I teach sometimes, so he's kind of our connection.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah, I know it's a small town. I'm sure we have other connections than that.

Karina Inkster:

That's true, yes. That's how it works. I'm learning that everywhere I go. I'm connected to people in different ways. You can't go to the grocery store without having a chat with at least two or three other people, so that's cool. And actually moving to a small town is something I want to talk to you about, but why don't we jump in. I want to hear about your vegan story as well. I feel like I have so many questions for you, but I want to jump in with some of your film work. I have looked at your IMDB page, super fricking impressive. This is what you do. This is your main gig, I assume. Can you tell me and my listeners a little bit about your acting work?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah. I started in the film industry right in high school, so I was in grade 12, I was 17. I was always curious, wanted to do acting, but kind of believed that it was something that wasn't achievable. It's something that I don't know, you have to be ultra special to be able to make a career in acting. But then I had a fabulous mentor in high school and I got an agent and I booked my very first audition, which is unheard of, and to be honest, unfair for me because it made me believe that it was a lot easier of an industry than it is. But from there, I just kind of consistently kept booking some projects and worked up my resume and yeah, I got to work on some very cool projects. I lived in LA for a bit because I got a work visa and tried to make it in the American scene as well. So I've had a journey. It's now been 12 years of every now and then I get a cool contract, but there's also a lot of downtime in between contracts.

And so now as I'm getting older, I've decided that I want to be living the life that I want, the best life that's right for me. And so that's why I moved to Powell River, moved to a small town, I figured that I'd enjoy it more than the big cities.

Karina Inkster:

Interesting. Well, I mean that's kind of why we moved here as well. So I want to talk about that. Some things I'm seeing that are sticking out on your CV are things like Riot Girls, Bates Motel, The Professor. I don't think I've seen that one. Percy Jackson Sea of Monsters. I mean, that's a fricking impressive CV, dude. So moving to a small town. You mentioned you lived in LA, you've lived in Vancouver, which is where I'm from originally. So how did you choose Pell River? I mean, I understand wanting to get out of the big city, and that's kind of where my husband and I were at as well.

The noise and the construction and the busyness and being able to have the type of property that we want – quarter acre with a separate building that's my gym, and not costing the 5 million it would in Vancouver. So is that kind of similar to your reasoning for Powell River?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah, similar and also the outdoors. I am super into the outdoors and in Vancouver of course, we have the North Shore Mountains, which are beautiful and accessible and close by, but to access them, you're often stuck in traffic going over the bridge. I lived in East Vancouver, so I was close enough, but there's so much being stuck in a car when you're living in the city and you're getting out to the mountains a couple times a week. Whereas here, every day I'm in the forest because where I live right now backs onto trails. So I have a dog and we go on our morning, walk in the trails.

We went to the beach. I was like, oh, I only have 20 minutes before this interview. I was like, oh, we'll just hop over to the beach. No big deal.

Karina Inkster:

Oh, totally. It's awesome. That's why we moved here too. So same kind of deal. Forest is our backyard and lakes, oceans, open water swimming is one of my things, and so it's just so accessible. I mean, not right now when it's fricking cold, but in the summer, because I'm a cold water wimp, it's perfect. Just like Powell Lake, just down the street, three minutes from my house. It's perfect.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah, it's a pretty cool town. And me and my partner had been here. We had done multi-day hikes. We had done some camping and we were exploring the town and we felt that there was this arts community very much so in the town. So it felt like it was a community that we could connect with people like-minded people, which it's turning out to be true. So that's cool.

Karina Inkster:

It's got kind of a reputation. We'd never visited here before we moved here, but we'd heard about the music scene, we’re both musicians. So it's important to have gig opportunities and concerts and I mean, there's amazing world-class festivals here, which seems so random for a place this small. World-class jazz festival, the choral festival is international. I mean, it's pretty amazing. So you're setting up a program at our music academy related to acting and being on camera. So tell me a little bit about that.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yes, so I'm setting up on-camera acting classes right now just for youth to start. So I am dividing them into age groups of 12 to 14 and 15 to 17. We're just starting out with a six-week series, so it's going to be once a week, learning how to break down a script and getting in front of a camera, recording little short scenes and doing things like not on camera as well, doing some scene study and exercises and all that.

It's something that I was doing in Vancouver that I really enjoyed. It's so lovely to see kids open up, and it's amazing to see kids progress or anybody progress. You could learn anything. If you want to be an actor, you could learn how to be an actor. It's not like you have to have this, you're not born with this talent. I think some people maybe are more empathetic than others or have better instincts, but that's not something that you can't learn. So I'm really excited to bring that, and I'm sure that there's kids here that are interested in that world. And now that thanks to the pandemic, we all do our self tapes from home. So that was also a huge reason why we moved to Powell River. There's literally no reason to be in Vancouver anymore. I was just doing auditions from home. I still do. You can be an actor from anywhere because you just send in self tapes.

Karina Inkster:

Actually, that's a good point. That's one thing I was wondering about the move, how that would affect your job options and contracts and stuff, but probably not at all, it sounds like.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Well, I guess we'll see. But so far, yeah, I guess still kind of new and it's not too far from Vancouver. If I needed to, I can, as long as it's a nice weather day, I can fly into Vancouver at 30 minutes I think it is.

Karina Inkster:

Or worst case scenario, two ferries, six hours of your day. And then there's other things that you're getting your hands into. So the health and wellness field seems to be one of those things. Doing one-on-one coaching teaching group classes. What's that? Is this kind of a new avenue for you?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

The fitness world is totally new for me, but I was saying there's times in between contracts and I would always do little jobs here and there, things that I didn't really care about or was really passionate about. So this year I took a look, or last year, I should say 2023. I guess it's 2024 now. But last year, weirdly, yes, last year I took a look at my life and was like, well, what do I like to do? What could I do that is fulfilling? That's not just acting, that's not just teaching acting. What other things could I do in my life? I was very much into fitness already. I was an avid runner, a big trail runner. And last year I actually injured myself for the first time. I fell on a run and I partially tore my meniscus in my knee.

It was the first time I'd ever had any sort of injury. So I really had to take strength training very seriously for the first time in my life. And I learned all about human kinetics, and then I thought, oh, maybe this is something that I could do. And so I took the course into personal training. I thought at the very least, it's something that'll help me in my life and my body and people around me. But I decided to also do that. So now I've started in Powell River here doing some personal training at Anytime Fitness, and I do some group fit classes at Coast, which is really fun. In fact, it's really fun in a small town because group fitness in a city, you come into the class and it's packed and no one looks at each other and no one talks to one another.

But then when you do group fitness in a small town, everyone knows each other. Everyone's chirping at each other. It's such a fun atmosphere.

Karina Inkster:

Well, that's part of the reason I'm so consistent with swimming at the pool in the off season. So when it's not open water season, I'm at the pool three to four days a week, but it's like hot tub social hour after everyone's done their workouts. There's folks who are going to the gym and then the hot tub, there's folks who are doing swim laps and then the hot tub. It's weird if you don't show up, people notice that the regulars aren't there if they ever miss a day. So it's definitely a different vibe, I think, than where I used to train in Vancouver where no one even talked to each other.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah, there's just such a strong sense of, oh, there's a deer in my yard. Oh my gosh, spooked. There you go. Deer just walked by my window. But there's definitely a sense of community here that you don't get where I never experienced as much. In the city. People look out for each other. People seem to just be more in tune of what's going on in town. Everyone's not so much on their phones. Everyone's connecting and talking to one another here.

Karina Inkster:

Something that we noticed when we moved here was people go to things. They do social events, and when they RSVP to something, they show up. Whereas in Vancouver, I don't know, it's just there's so many options. There's so many competing things. It just seemed like everyone was flaky. But here, I mean, we invited folks to our open house two weeks after we moved, probably just off the street, someone walked by, they're like, oh, yeah, I just live a couple doors down. We gave them an invite. They showed up. That would never happen in Vancouver.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah, it's really nice. I'm really enjoying living here in Powell River.

Karina Inkster:

That's great. Very cool. So let's chat veganism. What's your vegan story? What's the deal? Why'd you go vegan? When was there a catalyst? What is the story of Paloma's going vegan?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

I was actually living in Los Angeles at the time. This was like nine, 10 years ago. And I don't know, I was bored. I didn't have a job at the time. I just had a visa to get acting work. So I was either auditioning or honestly not doing anything. And then I can't remember what documentary started it all, but I watched some documentary about veganism, and I was shocked. I was shocked at the information that I didn't know, and I'd always considered myself an animal lover and seeing what really goes on and factory farms, all that was heartbreaking for me.

And so then I think I spent the next few days just watching, just consuming all this information about veganism, and then just did a hard switch and went right hard vegan from there and haven't gone back.

Karina Inkster:

You must've been pretty young then. A teenager at the time?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah, I was 19, 20.

Karina Inkster:

Well, I mean, nowadays there's so much information available. I think a lot of folks are selectively ignorant, but it's just for sure the information exists and it's easily accessible. I'm going to date myself here. When I was a teenager in the early two thousands, when I went vegan 21 years ago, we didn't have YouTube, we didn't have Netflix. We didn't have social media. I was going to the library and getting books out on how do I get my protein as a vegetarian.

And then it took me a while to realize, oh, wait. If I'm vegetarian for ethical reasons, I actually have to go vegan. So that took a while, making that realization. So yeah, it was kind of a different scene, but that's kind of cool. You just made the switch.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

There was something, I had been dairy free for a while only because it was hurting my guts, not because for any sort of ethical reasons, just because I was lactose intolerant. It was not good. And that was also actually a huge thing just in food in general. I always had these problems with my gut health, and I had had all these tests, and I finally got diagnosed with IBS, which I think is just something that they diagnose you when they don't know what is wrong with you. It kind of seems that way. They're just like, I don't know.

Things hurt your guts sometimes. Just watch what you eat and don't eat those things that irritate you. And I have found actually going vegan, I don't have as horrible as symptoms as I used to pre veganism. So that's a plus.

Karina Inkster:

Yeah, interesting. We had a gastroenterologist on the show talking about gut microbiome and how there's some new research coming out that shows vegans actually might have more robust microbiomes. Could be because of the variety of foods we're eating or possibly the fact that it's entirely plants, but the research seems to be going in that direction from a gut health perspective. So that's pretty interesting.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

And I do try to not just, yes, I'm vegan for the ethical reasons, but also now just thinking about what it is that I'm eating and putting into my body, knowing where meat comes from and dairy comes from.

It's like I can't ingest that. But also knowing, okay, you pick up a package, what is in here? I really look at the ingredients. I really think about what it is that I'm making and eating and try to really have a balance in my diet. That helps me.

Karina Inkster:

Definitely. Well, and that probably also goes along with helping folks with their nutrition and their fitness and having clients and that kind of thing, right?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah, totally.

Karina Inkster:

So what's your kind of go-to cooking method? Do you love cooking? I know you like baking, which is the same for me, weirdly, I don't like cooking that much, but I love baking.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

No, I love it all. I love it all. I love cooking. I love baking. I love making complicated meals. I love challenging myself to make something, especially when it's something like, oh, you could never veganize that.

I go, well, let's see. Let's try. Let's see. Because there's always a way. There's always a way. And then it solidifies. It's like if you can make something just as delicious as the animal product version, why do we still need to have all these? Why do we still need to have dairy in absolutely everything?

Karina Inkster:

Yeah, it's ridiculous. What I think is ridiculous, actually, I mean, this is going down a little bit of a rabbit hole is what I've been seeing lately. A lot of, for some reason, folks who are like, well, you're vegan, so why would you eat plant-based meats that mimic animal meats? You're supposedly against eating meat. Why would you eat seitan? That looks like a chicken wing? Well, basically what you just said, if you can have the same texture, the same taste, the same kind of dish without the cruelty, why the hell wouldn't you?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

And then there's all this science to back that. It's better for your body anyways. It's just like, to me, it's such a no brainer. I don't know why more people aren't vegan, to be honest. In my close circle of friends, I really don't have, the majority of people are still omnivore, and you are getting all the same information that I'm getting, and I'm passing on some information to you, and it's like, how have you not made the switch yet?

Karina Inkster:

Does that affect your relationships or social situations where you're going out for food and stuff with these folks?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

I mean, I try, of course, not to be judgmental or pushy about it, but always, if someone's coming over to my house, our household is a hundred percent vegan. We are making vegan meals here, and I'm definitely the cook of all my friends. So I'm always showing them the great possibilities of veganism.

And to be fair, lots of people in my close circles have told me that from meeting me and eating with me, they have changed their eating habits to include more plant-based options because they see that it's so easy and it's so delicious, and why not?

Karina Inkster:

Hey, that's what I find is most likely to get people interested generally is how delicious can it be, and how little do I have to miss all the food that I think I have to stop eating? I mean, I didn't go vegan because I didn't like the taste of meat or cheese or any of those other products. I mean, if I can have an option that is similar, I'll take it for sure. Is your partner vegan too?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah. Yeah, for the most part.

Karina Inkster:

Well, your household is vegan, so that makes it easy.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah. We don't buy any meat or animal products in the house. But occasionally going over to a family dinner. If someone's made something, he'll be an opportunist and eat something.

Karina Inkster:

So maybe some kind of cookbook project or, I don't know, food blog or something is in your future.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

For sure. I've said that for years, so I definitely would love to find time to do that.

Karina Inkster:

Absolutely. That would be really cool. Clearly you're a more advanced and more interested chef than I am. I'm very utilitarian, which is kind of hilarious, because two of my books are cookbooks, but they're just things you can make under half an hour, with basic ingredients. None of these five course, four hours in the kitchen kind of meals, which have a time and a place, obviously.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a huge thing. When people see how much time and effort I put into what I make to eat, they're like, I could never do that. They don't find it fun. Whereas I legitimately find it fun to do.

Karina Inkster:

Well, I'll just invite myself over to your house then, and I'll have dinner there for the next two weeks.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah, it's my love language. I love to feed people delicious vegan meals.

Karina Inkster:

That's genius. That's awesome. What do you think of the Powell River vegan scene? Do you miss the Vancouver vegan options like I do? I mean, every time I go back to Vancouver, all I do is stuff my face the whole weekend at all my favorite restaurants.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

I've been actually shocked at how good vegan options are here. It's not bad for the small population. Yeah, I mean, you can get a damn good vegan pizza here. You can get, I mean, rice bowls and things, and croissant sandwiches and all the same products. For the most part, most of the products that I eat at home, you can find here.

At first, I couldn't find, I dunno, tempeh and soy curls, but then you find the stores that carry them and you're like, oh, great. So I haven't missed it too much. I didn't eat out a whole bunch when I lived in Vancouver as well, so maybe for me it's a bit different.

Karina Inkster:

Yeah, I mean, we didn't go crazy, but definitely we cycled through the list of probably five to seven favorite restaurants every two to three weeks. Maybe we'd do one. So it was definitely part of the routine. But yeah, Supercharger pizza, amazing vegan options. Was the Wildwood still open when you moved here? They had really good pizza that was vegan too, but they might've closed before you guys moved. No. Ah dang. Too bad. But I mean, we could go get Thai food, we could get Indian food, we could get sushi.

There's decent options. But I do miss the diversity, I think is the right word in Vancouver for sure. But that's okay. Just means more food prep for us, which is probably a good thing overall, net positive, I would say. So tell me about your movie that's coming out. You have something coming out in 2024, right?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

I do have a thriller called The Island Between Tides. It's coming out, it's making its festival run this year. So it's an indie movie, meaning it does its festival run, it gets picked up, and then it gets released properly into the world on streaming or what have you. It's a thriller that I star in. The premise is about this island, this kind of magical island where at first this young girl goes to this island and it seems like no time has passed for her, but for her family, she's been missing for several days, and when she finally emerges, she can see she's kind of haunted by these ghosts, and that's kind of now her life.

And then you flash forward when she's in her twenties, she has a baby, and her baby now is also being haunted by these ghosts. So she takes it upon herself to, I need to go back to this island and figure out what it is that's going on and why this is happening to me. So she does, but then this time, 20 years pass, and she doesn't get any answers about these ghosts. So she returns home and everything is not like it used to be. It's 20 years into the future. So it was pretty fun. It was really fun. We filmed it in Prince Rupert, so I got to be up there for, I think I was there for five weeks, and we shot at some really cool locations. We shot at the historic cannery there that's now closed. It's like a museum now. But it was very cool, and it was very fun to play this character who's just kind of constantly in fear and what is going on.

Karina Inkster:

That must've been pretty intense.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah, it was fun. It was really good.

Karina Inkster:

Well, that's awesome.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

It was a really good experience. So I'm really excited for it to come out.

Karina Inkster:

Hey, let's go back to the vegan piece. I forgot to ask you in, well, actually vegan and health and fitness piece, do those connect? Do you have a lot of clients who are plant-based? Does the plant-based thing show up when you're working with folks in person here? Is there a huge connection?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Sometimes? I actually had a client who told me to check out your podcast because she's vegan and follows your podcast. So I'd heard your name before you reached out to me. But I think that's my only vegan client. But then I get people who are interested, and I'm always telling people for easy tips to improve their diet, is to include more plant-based proteins and include more just plant-based cooking into their routine and sending them recipes and trying to get them to get on board on eating less animal products and see how they feel.

So for sure, but a huge question is always like, well, how am I going to get my protein to do that? It's always like if you're eating enough and you're eating enough variety, you're getting enough protein, you don't have to worry about it. We only need so much protein. You only need, I think it's 0.8 grams per kilogram of your body weight on average. So for myself, I mean, I'm a pretty petite person, but that's only 50 grams of protein a day, which I hit the after lunch, no problem. Probably in your breakfast. Yeah, it's easy. You got some oats, you get some nuts. You have some toast with almond butter, you have some snacks, you have some lentil soup for lunch. Like boom, easy. You've made it over your protein intake.

Karina Inkster:

I think it changes when folks are active because that 0.8 thing is for sedentary folks. So of course it's different for folks who lift and do endurance sports and stuff. But yeah, I mean, the average person who's asking about these things like, oh my god, protein, when they hear you're vegan, I mean, they're not competitive athletes most of the time, so they're probably more on that side of 0.8 grams per kilo. What's your training? So you're lifting your strength training. You mentioned running.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah, I'm running. I'm trying to get back into doing some more long distance trail running. That was what I was really into. I was doing all these big runs on the North Shore mountains, and then I slipped and fell in the snow. So I'm back to running a few times a week, some shorter runs, making sure that my knee is okay. I learned quickly. This happened last March when I hurt myself, and so I took a few months off and in the summer I really wanted to get back into running.

Obviously it's so beautiful and wonderful, of course, brings me so much joy, but my knee was still really bugging me, so I had to really step it down. I make sure that I go to the gym at least twice a week, and I do specific lower body unilateral work, things that strengthen my knee, things that I do, stability training as well, things that just challenge me to make sure that when I do get back into running long distance, I'm able to do it without any pain. And so far so good.

Karina Inkster:

Oh, good. That's great to hear. What about swimming? You should join our swim club. Are you a swimmer?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

I'm not a swimmer. I mean, I know kind of how to swim, I guess, but yeah, I know. That's really great exercise for you for sure. Yep. Conditioning, endurance, it definitely translates into running.

Karina Inkster:

I mean, swimming is kind of its own thing. Very technique focused and form focused, but I find that for whatever reason, I mean, I'm not a runner, but I do find that conditioning from swimming seems to improve conditioning in other sports more than the other way around. I noticed my conditioning for jump rope is really good if I've been swimming regularly, but jumping rope won't get my conditioning good for swimming for whatever reason. It's one direction. I don't know why. Maybe it's just because it's such a different activity and yout breathing is very controlled. You can only breathe at certain points when you're swimming.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

I do a lot of cycling too. I do a stationary bike. I was in the city. I was cycling everywhere, so I was keeping up my cardio. I dunno if you've ever had an injury, but it's really frustrating when I was trying to get back into running.

You're like, you can feel that your cardio's great. You can feel like you can keep going, but you just have this dull, achy pain that's making you stop. It's awful.

Karina Inkster:

I know. Yes, I understand. I'm dealing with a shoulder thing that's been two years now. Overuse from, honestly, probably accordion. It's the left shoulder where the weight of the instrument is. It's related to my bicep. I've seen eight different practitioners. I've done two or three different types of imaging. No one has an exact answer, so it's not something major like a torn tendon or something. I've got all the ultrasounds and the scans and whatever, but it is a longstanding just thing that tells me that I'm done swimming before my conditioning does, so it's totally, I have to listen to the shoulder, not how the rest of me feels. I could go on and swim further, but my shoulder's like, Nope, we're done for today.

Which can be frustrating, of course, especially if you're training for something or you have an event you want to do or what have you. It can be kind of frustrating, but hey, at least I can do it to some degree. I'm happy that I'm not swimming. So yeah, hopefully things keep going in that positive direction. For you. In the running world, have you done races or is there an event on the horizon that you want to do? Or at this point, is it just kind of see what happens as you get back into it?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Right now, I don't want to. I know myself and I push myself pretty hard, so I don't sign up for any races because then I'll inevitably push myself harder than I need to. Last year I did my first event race I had done, I did the Howe Sound Crest Trail with my friend, which is 85 kilometers and 2000 meters of gains.

It was a big day, and we did a lot of training runs for that. And then last year I signed up for the Run Ridge Run, which was 25 kilometers and a thousand meters of gain, and I did great. I got the time that I, I'm not the fastest or anything. I'm not on the podium, but I'm definitely out there. And it was after that, it was after maybe a few weeks after that, I was on some sort of, just a friend of mine were doing a 16 K run, and then I slipped and fell on that one. And I was like, oh. And I had all these dreams of doing these big runs that summer, but alas, I'll have to wait.

Karina Inkster:

Alas. Yeah. Well, you're doing the right thing though. I think that's smart. I think if there was an event, you'd be probably more prone to pushing yourself a little more than necessary at the moment, so that makes sense.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

But I would love to do more race events. They're really fun. You get all the hype with everybody, and there's this community of runners. It's really fun.

Karina Inkster:

I don't know much about the trail running scene here. I know that there's the marathon shuffle that happens as a trail route that some people run and some people walk, but I don't really know what the deal is. I know trail runners who have in the past done Ironmans, and they're just hardcore athletes, but they kind of just do their own thing. It's not necessarily a group or a club or something like that.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah. I mean, I think you just have to find the people that are your pace and that you like to hang out with for long periods of time as well.

Karina Inkster:

Yeah, good point. That's a bit of a criteria there…

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

…and you're suffering a bit to some extent, even though I love it. There is suffering involved. So got to make sure you're around the right people. We’ll see.

Karina Inkster:

That's a little different with swimming, right? Because in a swim club, yeah, you're around people, but you can't hear anything. You can't see anything. All you're looking at is the abyss of water under you, so it's a little different. It's still an event before and after, but while you're swimming, that's basically all you're doing. So it's kind of a different scenario, but hence hot tub social hour when we're at the pool. Well, Paloma, is there anything that we've missed? Any programs you're running? Anything you want to plug that we haven't thrown at our listeners yet?

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah, I'm starting up the acting classes at the Academy of Music, which I'm really excited about. That's going to be Fridays and Saturdays starting the beginning of February, so February 2nd and 3rd. And then if you want to come to one of my HIIT classes, I'm teaching at Coast for all you locals. I teach a 4:45 HIIT class, which is pretty fun. I try to challenge you and try to have a good time, get some glares, but you're there to work.

And then anyone can look up my IMDB and check out my work. There's my work out there and on Netflix and other platforms. My favorite movie I think that I've done has been Riot Girls. You mentioned it earlier, but it's pretty dope. I have a mohawk and it's set in this post-apocalyptic, alternate nineties reality, and it's like campy and cheesy, but it's really fun. It's a really fun movie.

Karina Inkster:

The mohawk's a good look on you, by the way.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Thank you.

Karina Inkster:

It's a good look, very badass.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Thank you. I like it.

Karina Inkster:

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and speaking with me, Paloma. Great to meet you and hear about your work. I haven't even met you in person. And we're in Powell River. We're in our respective podcast studios. Hilarious. But I'm sure I'll run into you at Save On or something random; how it works here, but it's been great to chat. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Paloma Kwiatkowski:

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Karina Inkster:

Paloma, thank you again for joining me. To connect with Paloma, check out our show notes at nobullshitvegan.com/166. Thanks so much for tuning in.