Lauren Bosworth: From Reality Star to Founder of Love Wellness
If you have always been a fan of Lo Bosworth ever since you first saw her on The Hills, and wondered what she is up to now, there is even more reason than ever to admire what Bosworth is doing. She has launched a personal wellness brand for women, Love Wellness, to help women fight symptoms that plagued her when she was younger and achieve total wellbeing.
As a female founder and entrepreneur, Bosworth has translated her fame into launching a website and a line of cleverly named natural products such as Bye Bye Bloat and UTI Don't Think So, that are formulated with a doctor's guidance and are designed to help people get back on track and propel them along their wellness journey.
Bosworth's company sells personal care products and offers advice to treat symptoms and help women solve their most personal health problems. The journey started for her right where she lived. We caught up with her as she drove through, you guessed it, the hills, and the canyons, above LA, with her Mom in the car. We lost service more than once but she patiently waited to careen around the next little mountain and get our connection back. This is a story she clearly wants to share.
Q: Why did you start your company?
LB: Around 2015, I was suffering from vitamin deficiencies and wasn't well. I was dealing with depression and anxiety as well as infections. I was constantly going to the OBGYN.
I spent a lot of time in the personal care aisle of the pharmacy and there were a lot of medications carrying messages that we have been exposed to our whole lives. It wasn't until my doctors put me on a more holistic approach and I realized there was a need for a new product that was clean and good for you.
Q: What is Love Wellness?
LB: The company is focused on women's personal care guided by doctors. Our products can be range from ingestible beauty to digestion products. The personal products we have are clean, safe and extremely effective. Love Wellness offers new versions of what has been on the shelf for a long time but catered to women's personal biology.
All the supplements are user-specific, not a one-off product. Bye-Bye Bloat is pretty self-explanatory but is a product that aims at debloating. Either from digestion or PMS or both. Metabolove aids in digestion and curbs cravings, Lights Out is all-natural with magnesium and organic valerian root and melatonin for can help you get a better night's sleep.
Q: Are all your products vegan?
LB: Not all products are vegan because some have gelatin and probiotics from dairy sources. The vegan-friendly products include Mood Pills (which help with irritability, and contain Vitamin B6, GABA, Organic St. John's Wort, and Organic Chasteberry.); Lights Out; Sparkle Fiber (for digestion); Metabolove; UTI Don't Think So (with cranberry fruit extract); Sex Stuff, (personal lubricant); pH Balancing Cleanser (feminine hygiene); and Do It All Wipes (soothing cleaning wipes with Organic Coconut Oil, Organic Aloe, and Chamomilla Extract for use anywhere).
Q: Do you have any doctors that work with you?
LB: We work with Dr. Jodie Horton who is is an OB-GYN. When it comes to the vitamin and supplement space, food scientists are the ones who make the formulations and you can work with the guidance of doctors based on your own studies and research and decide how much of those ingredients you want in the formula. Food scientists put the formulas together.
Q: What advice you can give our readers?
LB: It's really important to go back to the basics. That's what we try to explain at Love Wellness. In addition to providing women solutions to fit their lifestyles, I encourage people to drink enough water, move every day, eat real whole foods, and get enough sleep! No one wants to go to the doctor and be told you need to make basic improvements –but these baseline improvements help.
Nothing is more important than taking good care of yourself, and health is a huge part of that. When we talk about overall health and you look at our food system, the things that are processed and have antibiotics are having such a big impact on our gut health.
Q: Okay speaking of the basics: What do you eat for breakfast?
LB: I start my mornings with my Fab Four smoothie, (I think this actually might be Jen Garner's smoothie.) It's loaded with fruit, cacao powder, chia seeds, and protein powder. Kelly Leveque gave it to me and I love it.
Q: What do you have for lunch?
LB: Generally I order a microplate or mushroom platter from Souen, my favorite restaurant in the East Village. The microplate has squash, seaweed, broccoli, kale and carrots. All the vegetables are steamed and it comes with a little bit of brown rice. The mushroom platter is sauteed and I get a side of brown rice or avocado with it.
Q: What's your typical dinner?
LB: Dinner can be a little all over the place. I have three go-to dinners which are: Vegetables with olives and dip or cheese; Protein with roasted vegetables or Cheese Pizza from Joe's in Greenwich Village.
Q: What is your favorite form of movement?
LB: I love The Class by Taryn Toomey and The Sculpt Society by Megan Roup. Both classes just went digital. Taryn launched an app the week before March 12th. I do that almost every day and supplement with a workout from The Sculpt Society.
Q: What was did you get out of being on The Hills?
LB: The obvious answer is that I had a built-in audience that I could talk to about my personal journey. I also was able to gain wellness and understand brand awareness.
Being on television helped me to learn to tell my story. It's interesting to participate in something like that because it means that you are a public figure and you have to learn to navigate the press and public opinion and how to manage all that. This translated into my career as an entrepreneur. It turned me into someone who is very careful above all else and that level execution is across all the brands.
The second thing that is really important is we promoted being body positive. The show was fun and educational, but mostly, we really tried to strike the right tone with women.
Now, everyone is living their own reality show.
Q: What is your mantra?
LB: "What is.. . not What if." It's a mantra to help manage my anxiety. If you keep saying "What if" you are creating stories in your head of what could happen, good or bad. Saying "What is ..." allows you to stay in the present.