I asked Lia Bartha, certified Pilates instructor and founder of B The Method, to do a round of “This or That” with me, which sounded straightforward until we actually started.
Protein or fiber? Creatine or collagen? Walking or running? Squats or sit-ups?
Choose one.
What I liked was that Lia didn’t always seem particularly interested in declaring a winner. Sometimes she picked one immediately. Other times she wanted both. And sometimes the real answer was basically: why are we choosing?
If you know Lia, this probably isn’t surprising. She’s the founder of B The Method, the low-impact movement practice she developed after years of classical Pilates training and her own experience with scoliosis and dance injuries. What I’ve always liked about her approach is that it’s less about punishing the body and more about understanding how it works—how one part affects another, when to strengthen, when to protect, when doing more isn’t necessarily better.
Wellness right now has a way of turning everything into a horse race.
Protein is everywhere. Creatine is having its moment. Walking is suddenly being discussed as though we only recently discovered it. Then there’s collagen, electrolytes, cortisol, cold plunges, zone 2 cardio, fiber—which is finally getting some overdue attention.
I read all of this stuff too. Probably too much of it. And I’m absolutely capable of hearing about one compelling study or one person’s life-changing morning habit and wondering whether I should immediately start doing the same thing.
But so much of what we do for our bodies doesn’t really work on an either/or basis.
Protein doesn’t make fiber less important. Walking doesn’t cancel out strength training. The fact that creatine has interesting research behind it doesn’t suddenly mean collagen has no place.
They’re doing different things.
It occurred to me afterward that this is also very close to the way I think about bodycare — and a big part of why we built iota the way we did.
I spent years in beauty, where we’re very good at falling in love with one ingredient at a time.
There’s always a hero.
Retinol. Vitamin C. Hyaluronic acid. Peptides. Ceramides. Whatever the ingredient of the moment is, we have a tendency to talk about it as though this might finally be the one that changes everything.
When we started working on iota, I kept thinking about how differently we understand nutrition.
You wouldn’t eat spinach every day and assume you had nutrition covered because spinach is good for you. We understand that a healthy diet is made up of different things doing different jobs. Protein does something. Fiber does something else. Fats matter. Micronutrients matter. And no single one of them has to be miraculous.
That idea ended up becoming a big part of iota.
We formulate with proven actives, ingredients derived from whole foods, and support for the skin microbiome—not because more ingredients automatically make a product better, but because skin is a system. Different inputs can contribute in different ways. The formula has to work as a whole.
And, importantly, you have to actually want to use it.
That part sometimes gets lost in conversations about wellness too. The theoretically perfect thing that you hate doing is probably not going to help you very much six months from now.
It’s why scent and texture matter to us at iota. Why Lia cares about making movement feel good enough that people keep coming back to it. Consistency is not the sexiest part of taking care of yourself, but I increasingly think it may be one of the most important.
Watch our full conversation with Lia Bartha here:
Body Intelligence explores the rituals, philosophies, and conversations helping us care better in modern life.