Find out what the BALANCE team is doing, eating, reading, cooking and watching to bring balance and joy to our lives…

CHALLENGE: Radio 2’s Big Bee Challenge

We’ve been getting right on board with Radio 2’s Big Bee Challenge, to help protect the declining population of our beloved buzzy buddies. The station is partnering with the Royal Horticultural Society on the campaign to encourage us all to create a better environment to support bees, and they’ve got a new podcast Bees In A Pod (available on BBC Sounds) to help us learn how to live in harmony with pollinating insects. Find out more here.

FOOD: Onken Super Kefir 

A happy gut means a happy mind and the BALANCE team has been getting its healthy, bacteria-filled kefir kick the tasty way.  An Onken Super Kefir yogurt (featuring 14 different live cultures, as well Vitamins B6 and B12) with our morning cuppa has got us skipping our way into a new day with a rather large spring in our steps.  Onken Super Kefir yogurts come in two flavours – Strawberry & Pomegranate and Lemon & Ginger. Grab yourself a pot at Tesco, Co-Op and Ocado – and look out for them in Asda and Sainsbury’s later this year; £1.50 for 350g.

BEAUTY: Tea & Tonic skincare

This is not just any skincare, this is brand new superherbal skincare. Using a combination of eight different adaptogens and put together by a team of herbalists, biologists and aromatherapists, it works to sooth the environmental strains our skin gets put under. Tea & Tonic’s products, from cleansing balms to wellness teas, are also made to order, sustainably sourced and packaged, and can help so many areas of wellness, from sleep to metabolism to immunity, that we’re buying the whole range.

BOOK: Adventure Revolution

Belinda Kirk isn’t one for lying on a sun lounger in Lanzarote, let’s just say. A lifelong campaigner on advocating the benefits of being adventurous with your wellbeing, she’s written a new book on the positive psychological impact of her journeys – from walking across Nicaragua to sailing across the Atlantic – on her life, and those around her.

Adventure Revolution,  out 5 August, £14.99

STAYING IN: The Cookaway

We’ve been getting out of our weekday dinner rut by getting stuck into the brilliant food deliveries from The Cookaway, who have everything from Spanish to Pakistani recipe boxes, as well as a healthy recipe box from nutritionist May Simpkin and a new sushi-making recipe box. Next month they’ll be starting a Malaysian night market recipe box, curated by MasterChef winner Ping Coombes. Dinner will never need be the trademark pasta pesto with broccoli ever again. Deliveries nationwide. Find out more here.

WATCHING: My Unorthodox Life

There’s been a flurry of shows about Hassidic Jewish communities of late and who didn’t absolutely devour Netflix’s drama, Unorthodox? But the latest offering is on a very different tangent, focusing on the life of Julia Haart, who grew up in a strictly religious New York community, married at 19, had four kids and then left it all in her 40s for one of the most dramatic lifestyle changes (seemingly overnight, at that) we can ever imagine, marrying an Italian billionaire and becoming CEO of the Elite modelling agency. It’s bling-ety bling bling and, yes, it’s a guilty pleasure to zone out and rest our over-full brains on, but it’s also got heart and soul as we see Julia’s four kids wrestle with their past and present worlds and their relationship to their religion. One to watch!

DRINKING: Caleño 

We love a good summer cocktail as much as the next person. We don’t love a fuzzy head, dry mouth and world-of-regret feeling the next morning. So praise be for Caleño non-alcoholic spirits and both their light & zesty and dark & spicy flavours, which mean we don’t feel like we’re missing out on vodka or rum even one little bit.