Hello, I’m Alli Aldaz.

My interest in how our thoughts shape our lives isn’t entirely academic.

In my last year of college, my health suddenly changed. I developed severe digestive problems, began having panic attacks seemingly out of nowhere, and lost enough weight that finishing school became difficult. Searching for answers led me to look more closely at my own health and, eventually, to a much broader curiosity about the relationship between thought, attention, behavior, perception, physiology, nutrition, and health.

Then, at 26, I was diagnosed with pulmonary carcinoid cancer in my right lung.

I underwent surgery to remove two lobes, recovered, and returned to a life in which I thought very little about cancer.

Nearly a decade later, a second tumor was discovered by chance in the same location.

In 2025, at 35, I underwent a completion right pneumonectomy: the removal of my entire right lung. The experience only deepened a curiosity I’d had for years: how much do our thoughts, beliefs, expectations, and what we’re told shape how we experience our lives and what we believe is possible?

When we imagine a different future, life can reorganize itself beautifully around it.

Again and again, I keep finding myself returning to four things: thoughts, meditation, movement, and nutrition.

Most of what I learn comes from books, podcasts, research, and people who have spent far more time studying these subjects than I have. The ideas I share come from many places: books, podcasts, research, old wisdom, and people who have spent years asking the same questions that fascinate me. I gather the pieces that stay with me, connect them, and give them a new life through illustrated stories, quotes, and images. I could wax poetic about each of these four foundations, and probably will. But what matters most is putting them into practice.

1 Thoughts. Your brain is constantly changing in response to what you repeatedly think, feel, notice, and do. Repeated patterns become easier to return to, shaping what you pay attention to, how you interpret what happens, and the choices you make. But those patterns are not fixed. Through neuroplasticity, the brain can learn new ways of thinking and responding throughout life. Become aware of the thoughts you practice most, question the ones that keep you tied to old patterns, and deliberately strengthen the ones that support who you want to become and the future you want to create.

2 Meditation. Follow a guided meditation every day. Who guides it matters less than doing it consistently. Use that time to slow down and practice gratitude. We are forgetful creatures, and even the things that deeply move us can fade once ordinary life takes over. A daily practice gives us a chance to remember, reset, and choose again.

3 Movement. Move your body. Walk, dance, lift heavy things, and stand tall. The body is constantly responding to what we ask of it. Challenge your muscles and bones and they adapt. Challenge your heart and lungs and they become more capable. Movement increases blood flow to the brain, supports neuroplasticity, improves metabolic health, and influences the chemistry involved in mood, energy, and stress. Even the way we carry ourselves can influence how we feel and interact with the world. Movement is a signal to you body: I want to be here. Movement is not something extra we add to life. It is part of being human.

4 Nutrition. Build your diet around real, nutrient-dense foods, with animal foods at the center. Prioritize meat, eggs, quality animal fats, and other highly bioavailable sources of protein and micronutrients. Keep sugar and refined carbohydrates low, support stable blood sugar and metabolic health, and leave highly processed foods behind. Our brains, hormones, nervous systems, and microbiomes do not exist separately from what we eat; nutrition provides the raw materials the body uses to build, repair, regulate, and function.

These four foundations are where I keep returning, but Thought Loops wanders much further. One week might begin with neuroscience or psychology; another with consciousness, an ancient idea, or a question we still don’t have a very good answer to. I’m interested both in what we know and in the edges of what we don’t.

A few things that fascinate me but don’t usually make it into Thought Loops…