#53: Biz Sherbert

"I’m a writer who sleeps in a time when most writing sounds like the Adderall it was written on."

Welcome to Health Gossip

Today’s guest is Biz Sherbert (@bizsherbert). Biz co-hosts the wildly popular

Nymphet Alumni

podcast and, as of last month, writes the now-wildly popular American Style newsletter.

She’s also one of few contemporary fashion / youth culture writers whose work actually feels like it has soul. (Sorry!)

Could this be due to her anachronistic sleep habits? Her intuitive Cancer moon? Or, perhaps, her penchant for a slice of homemade strawberry cake before bed?

Dear reader, there’s only one way to find out…

Health Gossip with Biz
Libra Sun/Cancer Moon
Responses logged April 17, 2025

HG: What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?

BS: Being healthy is less about what I put into my body and more about knowing what makes life feel like a smooth ride. Of course, life is never a smooth ride. But what makes it feel like it is?

For me that’s minimal disturbances of the mind, body and spirit. In technical terms, this often means no fight-or-flight. I can measure this through the quickness of my heartbeat, but also through things like how bothered I am by minor disturbances. How quickly am I able to recover from bigger ones, and what does that look like? Do I feel moved by life’s pleasures or are they of no interest to me? Or worse, do they feel like a sort of joyless opium against discontent or malaise?

Health, right now anyway, is about being in touch with my body and heart and feeling, if not always peace, then a sense of belonging together.

2019 phone note

By far the most important consideration for me in matters of the body (mind, spirit) is sleep. I think if you don’t have sleep you have very little. I know this isn’t true for some, but it is for me.

Sleep is important to me personally and professionally. I’m a writer who sleeps in a time when most writing sounds like the Adderall it was written on. Last year I was working on a magazine assignment with a very tight deadline in LA, mostly writing from the Hollywood hotel I was staying at. It was the sort that has a DJ up on the pool rooftop but also down in the lobby. The air conditioning was seemingly broken in my room so I was sleeping very hot, sharing a bed with my friend and a bunch of designer clothes for the shoot accompanying the piece. I tried to write in the lobby with little success, and eventually realized I needed to take matters into my own hands. So I moved us from the hotel in Hollywood to a cottage in Laurel Canyon that was listed on Airbnb. My friend knew I was working against the clock to write this assignment, so she thought it was funny when the first thing I did when we arrived was announce I’d be taking a nap. “I know myself,” I said. I was able to get proper sleep on demand at the cottage, which apparently was built by Harrison Ford when he was still a carpenter. The piece was filed on time and “I know myself” entered my friend and I’s shared vocabulary. Use it — it’s the only reason you need to leave the party, it’s the only reason you need to stay.

HG: How would you describe your current lifestyle?

BS: I’m working all the time right now but my work is somewhat bohemian in nature. So I’ll write for the whole day and then repeat, but I’m transcribing interviews and writing about a concert I went to.

Right now I think my life is about enmeshment of work and leisure, which sounds a bit Notting Hill but it’s true. So I try to find a flow and balance between going out, seeing things and people, which I need to write and to live, and writing and sleeping enough to be able to write well.

HG: How do you start and end your days?

BS: Every morning I have Nespresso with milk (sometimes whole milk, sometimes half and half, sometimes over ice) if I’m at home. Every night I eat something sweet right before bed. I hate when I don’t have this. Right now it’s a piece of milk chocolate with hazelnuts in it or a little bit of this delicious strawberry cake I bake in a cast iron skillet.

HG: Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?

BS: I was a somewhat poorly child, if I was born a few generations ago I would’ve been sent to the seaside to convalesce. I once came across the grave of Anne Brontë in Scarborough, in a rocky graveyard near a cliffside, and thought about moving there.

It wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I stopped getting sicker than other people when I get ill. I don’t know why. It was around a year and a half after I moved to England, so perhaps my immune system finally stiffened up after moving around a lot in my early twenties (I really do believe that germs are somewhat local).

It’s made my life better on a practical level, but it’s also changed my understanding of myself. In general I feel much hardier and more resilient than I did when I was younger. In part because I have more experience, so I trust myself to get through whatever life throws my way. But I also trust my body more, which is wonderful.

HG: What's your relationship to self-healing?

BS: I think it’s been important in my life. For me, it comes back to the idea of trusting myself and knowing that I might feel totally unresolved or at a loss with what I’m facing, but that doesn’t mean I’ll always feel that way. That could be frustration with patterns in my personal life or not achieving whatever is on my health agenda. So, understanding self-healing as a squishy thing that will always be there for me. But I also believe in the power of healing that comes from external forces — other people, community practices, the divine. I don’t think we should try and fix everything on our own. That is unhealthy.

HG: Do you work with any practitioners, texts, or modalities on a regular basis?

BS: I really like this verse which I think I read in the Bible and then wrote down in my notes app, around six years ago. I saw it again in All About Love by bell hooks a few months ago: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” I think it’s good to meditate on words and carry them with you. There’s another inscription I hold dear, on a handmade postcard I got from a garage sale in New Orleans when I was on a walk with my roommate at the time. It was also around six years ago that I found it. The postcards read: “Do the work where you need to & Soften elsewhere.” This little dogeared note has traveled around the world with me and I always have it somewhere in my room. The sight of it comforts me and is a reminder to do as it says.

HG: How do you reset?

BS: Break the loop. Whatever the loop is. Since a lot of my work is quite heady I like to do something physical. Whether that’s stretching, sitting outside, going on a walk or exercising. Or even cooking. It just needs to be something that switches up how my brain and body are interacting. Going from air conditioning to ambient air. Focusing on moving versus thinking.

HG: When do you feel the most nourished?

BS: When I’m laughing with friends!

HG: What types of foods are you typically drawn towards? Do you have a favorite meal?

BS: Steak is my favorite food and I used to eat it at least once a week. Not so much anymore, but I don’t think I could live without animal protein. Or I would at the very least be unhappy and a lesser version of myself.

HG: What advice would you give to your younger self?

BS: Chin up buttercup.

HG: To the person reading this?

BS: Same thing!

HG: What would you like to see or create more of in the world?

BS: More love! I think our time is defined by judgment and cynicism. I want to see more acceptance in the face of difference.

What Biz is reading:

“I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe.”

What Biz is listening to:

Bonus recommendation:

“An eye mask is great help for falling asleep and staying asleep, especially if you’re the traveling sort. I have had a couple and somehow have used a very drab standard issue grey one for the past year. Until my sister told me to buy a Manta Mask, which is a fancy eye mask that has adjustable foam eye cups (sorry) so your eyelashes aren’t all smushed and the light doesn’t leak in. It’s a bit ugly, not at all Breakfast at Tiffany’s, but it does simulate a deprivation chamber in a good way. Maybe try the silk one?”