Sleep coach Christine Meyer is back for the 2nd part of my 30-day sleep challenge results.Raise your hand if you’ve ever been personally victimized by your own bad sleep habits. This episode is all about my triumphs, from enjoying my evening ritual of Sleepytime teas to sleep-inducing hypnosis audiobooks played through headband headphones.

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These are some of the items that we discussed using during my sleep habit makeover challenge (links to Amazon):

Daytime Sleep Helpers

Evening Wind Down

In bed/Sleeping

I hope these items help you create a wind-down routine that works for you! And if you’re not sure which things would help you the most, connect with Christine for a Sleep Strategy Session so she can put together your own personalized Restful Roadmap!

Christine Meyer is an Ace Certified Health Coach, Certified Health Education Specialist, and a Licensed Physical Therapist Assistant. She has over 14 years of experience in the health and wellness field and helps mid-life women go from foggy to focused, by helping them restore their restful sleep. Her coaching focuses on lifestyle changes, which includes stress management and time management skills. She is a wife, mom, and new Grandma and resides in Southern California.

Laurie: Welcome everyone. I’m here with Christine Meyer, who is a sleep health coach, to recap the results of my 30-day sleep challenge. Welcome back, Christine. How are you? I’m doing well, thank you, I am drinking coffee, but this is it for the day and I’m done, I promise.

And I never I wouldn’t say never, very, very rarely even especially since, like the last month do I drink coffee in the afternoon, but I just there was some left over and I hate to. I hate to dump it out Like I can’t. I just can’t. So it pains me to throw out coffee. I just love it.

So part one is my backstory of how you were on the podcast. I realized I sucked at getting good sleep. I did some of your things. It improved a little bit, and then I got an Apple watch and I realized I really sucked. And then I was like, oh okay, I got to do something about this. And then we connected and then we did our session and then you gave me a plan. That’s part one, and so now this is part two where we’re doing the wrap up. So the recap of the strategy session and the action plan, and then summing up with the challenge week by week. So I don’t want to go day by day because that’s going to be a three day episode, no one will listen to it. Week by week what went well, what didn’t, and then the changes that I noticed each week, and then the biggest changes I noticed from the beginning to the end I do. I do feel like a bajillion times better than I did when we had our session. I think it was like two months ago now, night and day.

0:01:57 – Christine
Really.

0:01:57 – Laurie
When we had that session, you asked me what my struggles were, what my challenges were, what I wanted to get out of the challenge. How did I want to feel at the end of it? Like what was the goal, what was I trying to do? And I had told you and I just watched it, I just rewatched it to recap and I was, like I remember, feeling like just drained, like I had no energy, and talking about how it affected my mood, it affected my activities, it affected my work. It was just everything. It was like a like a bicycle wheel, like the spokes, like it just touched everything. And now it’s completely different. But I wanted to be. I wanted to be popular in my house again. I wanted to be somebody people wanted to talk to, people wanted to spend time with. I wanted to want to go and do things and just not be too tired to do it. And so putting this plan that you gave me into place really helped me kind of get on track with habits and boundaries. And it was little things. It was a lot of little tweaks, but they’ve made a big difference. So after the session, you gave me a plan and I said, okay, I’m going to put this into action.

And what happened was I had said I wanted, I wanted a few things. I wanted to read at night, I wanted some aromatherapy, and there was something else that I wanted. But when I went to start the challenge I was like, oh, I don’t have any of the things I need to do that, so let me go buy them. So I went on Amazon or I went shopping and I bought a little essential oil diffuser for my oils and there’s a funny story there that I don’t really have time for but basically I turned it on, used the oil and my husband was like, oh my God, it smells like a nursing home in here, Like what is happening. He immediately nixed whatever I was cooking up in there and he’s like no, no, no, whatever this is, ditch it. Like I’m not living this way. So I was like, no, I get it.

And then the other thing was I wanted to read in bed and you had said if you have a table lamp, that’s fine, not an overhead. And I have a table lamp. I had one on my nightstand but it was too small, like I had to read, like all hunched over and leaning over, and it was not conducive to good sleep. So I got one of these little USB rechargeable book lights with a little clip on it so I can clip it on my book and then read. And it’s a tiny little thing and I can just keep it in my book. It’s a doubles as a bookmark. So and I’ve read like two whole books in the two months, which is like sadly a record but it’s. But it’s that time and I get to read and relax and it’s just mine and I read my silly books and it’s, it’s fantastic.

But I had to go and buy my stuff that I needed. I already had a sound machine and I already had a weighted blanket and I already had a weighted face mask which I was kind of using intermittently. But those were the things that I wanted to help me in my plan. So once I had gone shopping and picked up everything, then I was ready to start. The goals were sleep goal number one create a relaxing bedroom environment. Sleep goal number two establish a nighttime routine.

A little bit of a delay there, but it’s okay, it worked out because week one of the challenge coincided with the time change. So my plan was to start my wind down routine at 9.15 and then lights out at 10. And in my brain and in my body it already it thought it was already later. So I was kind of getting sleepy anyway around that time. So I said, oh, this makes it really easy to like excuse myself and say I’m really tired, I want to go to bed, you know, and go up to my room and start my wind down. So that worked out great. What was kind of a funny offset was that my dog doesn’t understand time change and so she was still waking up at what she thought was six o’clock but really five o’clock. But if I hadn’t been going to bed earlier I would have been going to bed at 10 o’clock and getting up at five. It did work out for the best that I was going to bed earlier because I was still getting up early with the dog, but that first week I was tired enough to just kind of to go with it lights out at 9.15.

The other part of the changes that I was implementing was switching to decaf drinks after 2 pm, and we had talked about how I was drinking coffee and I would have a soda in the afternoon. I’ve cut out the soda. I do miss it, but I have seltzer, I have herbal tea and I have some other like fun drinks to have that are caffeine free, and so that hasn’t really been that much of a disruption. The other thing was getting more activity. I haven’t really done more activity, but I have the same level of activity of walking my dog twice a day. So that was one thing.

The third thing was turning off screens in the evening, because I was a notorious shut. Off the computer, go right to the phone, have the phone on basically all night until lights out, like I would be scrolling in my bed and then staying up too late watching reels and then going to bed. So putting the phone away, putting the laptop away, no devices after a certain time. That was one of my things and I liked that because it actually had a side effect of reducing my stress in that if I’m not on my phone, I’m not on my computer, I’m not doing work. So it helped me to kind of set that boundary around not doing work after hours, which you know as a as somebody who’s self-employed, somebody who owns their own business. It’s really easy to. I’m just going to check this email. Oh, I’m just going to do this. I’m just going to do this. Two hours later you’re still on the device.

You’re still doing work and you should have gone to bed an hour ago, so I really liked that. It helped me to be like nope, I’m off the clock, no devices can. Can’t help it.

0:07:44 – Christine
Yeah, you’ve got that buffer zone there. You know you’ve got some work boundaries and now you can prepare to transition for Tibet easier.

0:07:52 – Laurie
I definitely felt less stress, because that was one of the other things we talked about was kind of a brain dump, like I was having trouble turning off my brain and I had said I wanted to do like journaling before bed. But what happened that first week was when I, when it got to be 915, that first night that I was supposed to start this, I went into my room and I looked at my list because I’m very black or white, like when somebody gives me a checklist, it’s like you do all the things, that’s doing it right. If you don’t do all the things, you’re doing it wrong. So I looked at this list and while, as somebody with ADHD, I love lists because it helps me stay on track, I also get overwhelmed with lists because if I see everything at once, I go oh, too much. And that’s what happened that first night.

It said yoga journal, read lights out. And I was like, oh my God, like this feels like too many things. I can’t, I’m going to do one thing. And then that’s when I messaged you and you said pick one or two and then add one later and I was like okay, I’m going to start with the reading, because I know that’s easy for me to do, like I can just lay down, open my book. I know it’s going to make my eyes tired, I know it’s going to help me fall asleep. We’ll start with that and, to be honest, that’s working. I would like to do journaling or yoga, maybe like some restorative yoga or yoga nidra, at some point.

0:09:18 – Christine
But right now this whole situation is good. It’s important to keep in mind, because we can have all these ideas and you’re going to like one thing and maybe not another. Or I go through stages where I’m reading for bed, but then after a while it’s like I’m going to start doing yoga before bed, and so you can just kind of switch it up. The main thing is that you’re doing something for yourself, you’re keeping that routine. It doesn’t have to be like this rigid checklist all of the time. So it’s good to have that, that you know that menu of options that we talk about in coaching.

0:09:43 – Laurie
Exactly, and so that’s why I keep the plan out and I said, okay, when I’m kind of like over reading at night, I’ll add in the journal or I’ll print out some prompts and maybe I’ll just write a sentence or maybe I’ll just kind of like dabble in between the three. It doesn’t have to be a do this, do this, do this. You’re not trying to give me another job here. Yeah, you do what feels good, exactly. So I got ready for bed you know pajamas, brush my teeth, do all that stuff lay down my weighted blanket and turn on my little book light, read my book, went to sleep. So that first week, that works great.

The second week, I’ll tell you, I wasn’t as tired. At nine o’clock when it when it that time to start to wind down rolled around, I was like, oh, I don’t really feel tired. But I was like, oh, I’m not falling for this again, because I know that just because I don’t feel tired doesn’t mean I’m not tired, right, this is the line I give my son all the time. He’s like I don’t want to go to bed, I’m not tired. I’m like well, you might not feel it, but you are. But I have to tell this to myself Because I was like I don’t really feel that tired. And then, lo and behold, I would start the routine. I would read the book and I was like, oh yeah, I’m falling asleep, I’m tired. How about that Sneaky? It snuck right up on me.

And then by the third week, I’m going to tell you I was like pumped. Like after dinner I would have my tea, I had my sleepy time tea and I stocked up on all the different kinds of sleepy time tea. I didn’t know they had different types of sleepy time tea. They have variations. And I was like give me all the sleepy time. I love me some sleepy time, like everybody, just get in the basket, let’s just go. So I’d have my tea in the evening and then my son would go to bed and at 9.15, I’m like hell yeah, I’m out of here, I’m going to go do my thing, I’m going to wind down and I’m going to be in bed by 10. And it just felt so good, like I didn’t feel like I was being punished, I didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything. My husband was a little sad. On the other hand, I think he was kind of like I could use some quiet time.

I could use some time to myself. So I’m not totally broken up about it, it wasn’t. It was like he was like, eh, he was kind of like eh, eh. And I did have a few nights I wouldn’t say it was like a hundred I went to bed at, you know, on the time that I wanted to. There were a few nights that I did end up staying up later than I intended. Um, like, I maybe went downstairs to get my water or I forgot my headphones and I would come downstairs and my husband would be watching something fun and I would sit down and then the next thing I knew it was 11 30 and I was like this was not supposed to happen, but whatever, back. And then the next thing I knew it was 1130. And I was like this was not supposed to happen, but whatever, back on the horse the next night, not going to let it derail me.

One of the issues that I was having was waking up in the middle of the night, like three or four, and not getting back to sleep. And you had said, if that happens and you’re awake for more than 15 minutes, go somewhere else, like, get out of bed, go in another room, go sit like in a chair and I was like, okay, I can do that. One of the things that I thought I would be a good idea was to get these Bluetooth headband headphones and then connect it to an audio book. That’s hypnosis on my iPhone, but my phone was in the other room but I could use my watch to turn it off and on. I thought I was pretty slick with this and that worked great. And my son loved my headband headphones so much he wanted a pair, so I had to get him a pair too. So now we’re all headband headphone nerds over here and they’re awesome and they’re actually good for like walking and like and running and stuff because they’re comfortable. I have freakishly small ears.

So those earbuds never fit. Everything hurts. These things are great. So I’m a huge, I’m a huge fan of these. And that worked out really well because I would wake up. Am I falling back asleep? Sometimes I would, and if I wasn’t put on the headband, start the story lights out and I’m telling you this book. It’s called the Rabbit who Wants to Fall Asleep.

I listened to this at bedtime with my son for like two years, before I even knew what the story was about. This book would knock me out. I was like what is this even about? This rabbit wants to fall asleep. But then what happens? I don’t even know, I have no idea. I couldn’t even tell you.

And then by the fourth week, my husband was like you know what? I think I want to go to bed early too. I don’t know if he was lonely or he just saw like how much better I looked or felt or seemed. He was like you know what? Maybe I’ll do that too. So he’s starting to go to bed, not with me, but just earlier than he had. So but I will say like I noticed a huge difference between starting the challenge in the end, in my energy. I’m waking up without an alarm and I’m waking up awake, mm-hmm, I’m not dragging myself out of bed, I’m not hitting snooze, I’m not, you know, depending on coffee to wake me up, none of that. And it feels so good. So this has been a great experience and I’m so thankful and glad that you helped me get to this place. This has been amazing.

0:14:54 – Christine
I’m glad it’s helped you and, like you said, it’s not just your morning, but your whole day is different. Your personality is different, you’re more pleasant to be around. So sometimes we don’t want to admit that, but it is hard. So that’s great to hear, it’s great to hear. And, like you said, it was just like these small little tweaks. You kind of experimented with what did and didn’t work and you’ve you’ve got the routine with other options, in case you decide I don’t want to do this anymore, totally fine.

0:15:22 – Laurie
Exactly, and my goal was, you know, to do this for a month. I want to get caught up on my sleep. I want to develop some, some good habits around, you know, during the day, like things that I’m eating or drinking or doing that impact my sleep. Things I’m doing right before bed that impact my sleep, and then things that I’m eating or drinking or doing that impact my sleep, things I’m doing right before bed that impact my sleep, and then things that I’m doing after I’ve already fallen, it’s like in the middle of the night, that can kind of be impacting my overall sleep quality.

And I’ve achieved that, like I’ve done all these things and I said, okay, I’m going to do this for 30 days, and if I get to the 30 days and I don’t want to go to bed at nine o’clock anymore and I don’t want to do all these things, I don’t have to right, it was an experiment, it was a challenge to see, like how this could impact how I felt my overall everything. And I’m going to tell you like I’m going to keep doing this because it’s awesome when my son goes to bed, I’m excited for my wind down. That’s like my time to take it easy and just, I love having the boundary around that time and it’s just for me to unwind and ease into sleep.

0:16:25 – Christine
Yeah, and how do you feel this has affected you business wise, as far as, like, your creativity, your focus, your productivity? Do you know changes there?

0:16:35 – Laurie
It’s much better. I’m a little less distracted. So I do have ADHD, so I’m not going to say everything’s great, but I will say like being exhausted, like my whole issue before was that I would be sitting here with a list of things to do and just already tired when I sat down. And so looking at this list, it was like I already have trouble focusing on what I’m doing, but now I don’t have the energy to focus on what I’m doing. So while it helps my focus a little bit but that also you know that’s myths but having the energy to point my flashlight in one direction for an extended amount of time in one direction for an extended amount of time huge difference.

0:17:19 – Christine
Right, yeah, that’s great to hear.

0:17:28 – Laurie
So definitely impacting, like my productivity and my energy, when I sit down at my desk. And also, I had a podcast interview this morning. This is my second one today. Now a couple of months ago could I have done that? No, I would have been on the couch. I would have needed a nap after that. So this is definitely an improvement. Awesome, I need some kind of I need some outside eyeballs on what I’m doing to help me figure out. You know how I can kind of make some adjustments, make some tweaks that work for my lifestyle, work for my preferences.

0:18:13 – Christine
And just help me to get to a place where I am getting not only enough sleep but good quality sleep. So that’s what we do in my 60 Minutes to Better Sleep session is first thing I have you do is fill out that questionnaire that you filled out. It talks about your sleep hygiene, your stress levels, your lifestyle habits, your physical health because medical conditions and medications can have an effect as well and then we meet together and I talk about you know what’s standing out for me as far as you know, not only what your you know sleep sabotagers might be, but what you’re doing well that you want to continue with. And that’s where we come up with that 30-day plan. Typically, we’re going to pick no more than four things to focus on over the next month. You can implement them all at one time but, like you said, it can be kind of overwhelming. So I recommend, maybe every week you do one, maybe two things that you want to add in there.

Like you said, prepare for it, get everything that you need and just start to notice maybe keep that journal each day of how many hours you slept, how you feel, and it’s a subtle change. Like you said, it’s not like all of a sudden you wake up one day and wow, everything’s great. It’s just kind of like gradual. Over time, like you said, you noticed week by week things were a little bit different, and now that you’re at the end of it you just notice this huge change. And so that’s what we do, is work together. You know, I’m not telling somebody what to do. We’re deciding together. I’m saying here’s what stands out for me. What do you want to work on? What do you think is going to work best? We come up with that plan. I send a great little roadmap summary to you and then we can do like periodic check-ins to see how things are going and then, beyond that, if more coaching is needed on a regular basis for that, then we can definitely continue on with monthly coaching.

0:19:51 – Laurie
Awesome. So you mentioned keeping a sleep journal, so talk to me about that, because that’s something that you’re going to have available for any of the listeners who want to start tracking their sleep or understanding, maybe, what their obstacles are or what’s standing in their way.

0:20:07 – Christine
Yeah, you can find like sleep diaries online. They’re huge checklists of everything you’ve done throughout the day, which can be kind of overwhelming to look at the next day and connect all the dots. But with this journal, it just has a different prompt each day, just asking you a question, and it could be a question about your sleep, your stress levels, what you ate that day, just kind of you know things that you want to maybe take a look at and how did it affect your sleep. And it gives you more insight to maybe where, again, those sabotagers are. Maybe you don’t know how it’s affecting you and it gives you more insight to maybe where, again, those sabotagers are. Maybe you don’t know how it’s affecting you and it allows you to figure out more on your own those areas that you might need to dive into a little bit more.

Is it sleep hygiene? Do I need to work on my stress levels? That’s a huge one for people. Are there some medical conditions or medications that I’m taking that might be affecting it? So it’s good to look at so many different areas. That’s why I do like more holistic coaching, because improving your sleep isn’t just a one-shot deal. It’s not black and white. I can send you a checklist and that’s. It’s great for general ideas. It’s like a kind of like a little baseline blueprint, but everyone’s going to be different.

0:21:19 – Laurie
It’s like a kind of like a little baseline blueprint, but everyone’s going to be different. You just said something that that’s important is that you know sleep doesn’t just happen by itself. It’s not in a vacuum. So many things can impact your sleep and then your sleep can impact so many other things. Everything is connected, but sleep is one of these foundational like. If you’re not getting sleep, that trickle down is going to be substantial. It’s going to be more of an impact than you know maybe some other self-care practices that you’re ignoring. But sleep is foundational and I’m telling you, when you focus on it, when you’re intentional about improving the quality and the quantity of your sleep, it’s going to help you in other areas.

So now that I’m getting more sleep and I have more energy, now I have the energy to work out more and I have the energy to do things and I’m not stressed out at work, so I can take time off to like do fun things that I want to do, that that fill up my cup, like connecting with friends or going going to Costco by myself, with friends, or going to Costco by myself. No one tells you that. You know, when you become an adult, that one of the greatest luxuries is going to Costco alone. I don’t care what anyone says, I think like to me. That’s like I’m like Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music, just like spinning around. I’m like, ah, exactly, exactly. But it’s nice to just be able to have the energy to know like I’m not so stressed that I can’t take time out for myself during the day.

The other thing that I was going to say is that if we have listeners who are not ready to book a call with you, I’m going to be setting up a challenge where they can do their own 30 day track, your sleep challenge and see, you know, maybe, maybe, make some adjustments and tweaks, look at some of the things that I am doing and see if that helps you. And then you know, all of Christine’s information will be inside the challenge so you can connect with her that way. Christine, I’m going to be putting the link to the 30 day sleep journal and all of your social media links in your website inside the show notes, so I’ll have all of your links in the show notes for anybody who wants to connect with you. They can do that and see all of the good things that you have available.

0:23:30 – Christine
Awesome, I really appreciate it. I’m so happy to hear about your progress there. I know we’ve been kind of checking in here and there, but it’s so great to just hear at the end about your journey and how it’s helped you.

0:23:40 – Laurie
Thank you, Christine.

0:23:42 – Christine
You are welcome.

0:23:44 – Laurie
Thanks for listening and if you liked this episode, go ahead and leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts, and be sure to subscribe so you’ll be notified when the next episode is live. When the next episode is live, check out our show notes for this episode, where you can find any of the links and resources that were mentioned during the show and connect with a health and wellness provider committed to helping you ditch diets and achieve results without restriction. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you in the next episode.

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In this episode, I’m letting you listen in on a private sleep strategy session that I did with a sleep coach to prepare for an upcoming 30-day sleep challenge. I was struggling with chronic exhaustion because I had garbage bedtime habits and I needed to do something to turn it around. I decided to embark…

Christine Meyer is an Ace Certified Health Coach, Certified Health Education Specialist, and a Licensed Physical Therapist Assistant. She has over 14 years of experience in the health and wellness field and helps mid-life women go from foggy to focused, by helping them restore their restful sleep. Her coaching focuses on lifestyle changes, which includes stress management and time management skills. She is a wife, mom, and new Grandma and resides in Southern California.

0:00:00 – I don’t think there are enough people who talk about the importance of sleep. You know, people will do like nutrition or workouts and stuff like that, but it’s like if you’re not sleeping, you can’t do anything else. I mean, it just trickles down into everything.
0:00:13 – (Laurie): I’m Laurie Mallon, and this is the results without Restriction podcast, the show where results have nothing to do with weight and everything to do with setting and reaching health and fitness goals that focus on what we’re achieving and not what we’re doing losing. We’ll talk about deprogramming from diet culture and get expert advice on reclaiming your relationship with food and movement. Join me on this journey to get results without restriction.

Welcome, everyone. Today’s episode is a little bit different. It’s part one of a two part episode where I’m sharing my experience participating in a 30 day sleep challenge that I recently completed with the help of sleep sleep health coach Christine Meyer. Now, you may remember that Christine Meyer was previously a guest on the show. If you listen to that episode, you’ll hear me admit to Christine that my personal sleep habits are not that great. They finally caught up with me a few months ago.

I found myself chronically exhausted, and it was having a negative impact on pretty much every area of my life. So I reconnected with Christine and she agreed to help me with my 30 day sleep challenge. The 30 day challenge started with Christine and I meeting virtually for a better sleep strategy session so that she could understand my current sleep situation and struggles. Then she sent me a restful roadmap, which was a summary of our call and printable action plan for me to use during the 30 days of the challenge.

This episode is a recording of our strategy session. In the next episode, I’ll be recapping my challenge experience and reviewing my results with Christine, so be sure to check out that episode after you listen to this one. So now have a listen in on my virtual sleep strategy session with health coach Christine Meyer.

[Beginning of the Consultation Recording]
0:02:02 – (Christine): Welcome. Basically, what we’re going to do is talk about your sleep habits. You know, what’s going well, what are you struggling with? And at the end of the session, we will decide together four action steps that you can start implementing over the next 30 days to help you with your sleep, and then I’ll be sending you everything we discussed and the goals that you’re going to be working on. Tell me what’s motivated you to seek help with your sleep.
0:02:27 – (Laurie): I’m so tired, christine. I’m tired all the time. I was at the point where I was just so tired all the time, and I was like, oh, my God, I’m dying. Like, something has to be seriously wrong with me because why do I feel like this all the time? And then I got an apple Watch, and I started wearing it to bed, and my watch was like, oh, by the way, you have a double digit sleep jet. And I was like, well, shoot, I had no idea my sleep was. Was that bad. Like, I know sometimes I stay up a little bit late or sometimes I get up too early and it’s like, we have pets and I have a kid and, like, things interrupt my sleep. So I was like, I didn’t realize it was that bad.

So I was like, okay, I need to do something about this. And then we had our podcast, and I was like, I definitely want to do something about this. Did a few things, and I can see when I do these things, it gets better. When I don’t do these things, when I do my own thing, that debt climbs. And I’m like, what I need is a routine, a habit. I need a block of time that I dedicate to establishing really good, like, sleep hygiene or, like, a nighttime habit. Because I’m getting to the point that when that sleep debt is getting high, I’m just useless during the day. I’m just counting the hours until it’s socially acceptable for me to go to bed.
0:03:41 – (Laurie) Like “please let my son go to Bed soon so I can go to bed.”
I need to be more consistent and more intentional about what I’m doing during the day and in the evening to get better sleep.
0:03:53 – (Christine): So when you’re doing the things you need to do, sleep is good. And you notice that when you don’t do the things you need to do, it’s not so good. What keeps you from that consistency of being in a routine?
0:04:04 – (Laurie): When I make the choice to go to bed early and I don’t have my phone at night and I get caught up, my sleep jet gets under 5 hours, I feel great. And I’m like, oh, I can stay up and watch tv with my husband or watch a movie after my son goes to bed or something, and it’s like, I can’t keep doing it because then my sleep debt climbs up, then I’m exhausted, and then we do the whole thing over again. So, yeah.
0:04:27 – (Christine): So you tracking your sleep debt kind of contributes to that pattern. It sounds like looking at the numbers and seeing what you’ve accumulated or if it’s going up or down, would that be right?
0:04:38 – (Laurie): I’ve made the observation that when that sleep debt goes down, how I feel, I feel a certain way. And when I feel that way, like. If I didn’t, if I saw the number and it said like four and I still felt like shit, I wouldn’t stay up. Like, I would be like, “oh, I really want to go to bed.”
But it’s like I’m just having the Awareness of how I feel And when I feel good and I Have a lot of energy, then I start thinking I can stay up and party like I’m 46 again.
0:05:06 – (Christine): So it’s keeping those patterns in place even when you’re feeling good. But a preventive measure in a way, right.
0:05:12 – (Laurie): I want it to kind of just be a routine where I’m not, you know, maybe staying up and watching a movie is a once a week thing or it’s like a Friday night thing, but it’s not like a bunch of nights in a row until I feel like I just am exhausted again.
0:05:26 – (Christine): So there’s an inconsistent sleep schedule. Like you mentioned, you go to bed at eleven, but that sounds like that can vary quite a bit.
0:05:32 – (Laurie): It can vary. When I’m really tired, I’ll go to bed. Before my son even goes to bed, I’ll just say, “peace out, I’m going to bed. I’ll see you guys later.” My husband’s like, “bye, go to bed.” If I’m really tired, I put myself to bed. But then I’m like, two days later, I can be up at 11:30 doing whatever, watching a movie, doing stuff on the Internet, like scrolling facebook.
0:05:52 – (Christine): How does this affect your day to day life? All of the inconsistency and kind of the back and forth with that.
0:05:59 – (Laurie): It affects how I interact with my family. I’m not popular here because it affects my mood and I’m just cranky, snippy. I don’t have the energy for things that I’d like to be doing, which is getting back into running and lifting. The idea of working out when I’m too tired is just, I just can’t because I just want to sit on my couch and just go to bed.
0:06:21 – (Christine): Okay, so the sleep and the moodiness affects others in the, in the household there?
0:06:26 – (Laurie): Yes.
0:06:26 – (Christine): All right. And how long have you been experiencing this?
0:06:30 – (Laurie): Probably like, since COVID hit as a parent, I already had like, a certain level of, like, low grade chronic stress. But then with COVID and then, like, things going on in the world, like, it just kind of got worse and I found myself waking up a lot at night. So even if I went to bed early, I was still waking up randomly and 2 hours later I can’t get back to sleep. So it probably started around three years ago where it got bad. But if I’m honest, my sleep hasn’t been great basically since I had my son nine years ago. I just kind of accepted that’s, that’s where we are, so.
0:07:02 – (Christine): Okay, so I did review the questionnaire, obviously, so I’ve got a lot of that information from you. We’re going to, you know, dive in deeper into, into some of those areas, but definitely want to call out, you know, things that you’re doing that are helpful for sleep and. Sounds like you exercise on a pretty regular basis, would you say?
0:07:20 – (Laurie): Yeah, I walk the dog twice a day for half an hour whether I want to, and I’m like a zombie or not. That’s like the bare minimum. Sometimes I do other stuff, but it depends on my energy level.
0:07:30 – (Christine): Okay. But it sounds like you want to do more. And like you said with the like weight training,
0:07:35 – (Laurie): I want to get back into running now that it’s cooling off, but I’m just like.
0:07:38 – (Christine): Okay, alcohol sounds very infrequent. You said maybe once a week, if that I can be a sleep sabotager. Uh, for sure. Especially in the evening time. Sounds like you’re limiting caffeine to early afternoon. Or would you say on the days you’re tired you are drinking it later in the day?
0:07:55 – (Laurie) I try not to really just try to pay more attention. I used to have two cups of coffee early. Between like seven and ten would be like I’d have my coffee done and then I would have a soda between like around lunchtime. And then I would try to just do water or other drinks, non caffeinated or tea or something in the afternoon. But on the days that I was really tired, I would make the mistake of like, I’m like, hey, I really need to like pep up here a little bit, have a later cup of coffee again. That keeps me up later, and then we kind of start the cycle all over, so.
0:08:30 – (Christine): Right, gotcha.
0:08:31 -(Laurie): But for the most part, I try to keep it well before, like the after, like mid afternoon, so.
0:08:38 – (Christine): Okay. It doesn’t sound like you’re eating late at night. You said your last meal is about 6630 and it sounds like you’ve got some outlets for first stress management. Aside from the exercise you’d like to read, I think you said you connect with your friends. You did rate your stress at about a seven out of a ten. You said you manage it fair? Tell me more about that.
0:09:02 – (Laurie): I’m just always in a probably that, like, low grade level of I’m always thinking about stuff. It’s hard to shut my brain off. So I think that is kind of like what I’m referring to. Like that I’m always trying to remember stuff. Did I forget this? I also have ADHD, so that’s like my default. Always trying to keep track of the sticky notes in my mind. Constantly running through that loop of what did I forget? What do I need to remember?
0:09:27 – (Christine): When you say manage it fair, I.
0:09:30 – (Laurie): Feel like I could do a better job of actively trying to relax, like doing a little bit more to turn it off. I don’t really try to turn it off. I just wait till it. It wears down.
0:09:43 – (Christine): Right.
0:09:44 – (Laurie): And I just kind of don’t know. But if I was like, you know what? I’m going to shut the door on this. I’m going to focus on this. That’s not work related. It’s not news, it’s not. It’s not stressful. It’s like fun. It’s like some kind of activity or game or whatever. That’s just for the purpose of relaxing, reading my book or something like that. So getting better at that intentional flipping of the switch of my brain is now in this mode.
0:10:11 – (Christine): Right. There’s that difference between, you know, doing things to manage stress, but like you said, also just unplugging and doing things that are not stimulating the brain as much and slowing down there. So. Okay, so it sounds like you wake up in the middle of the night at least one or two times a week.
0:10:31 – (Laurie): Yeah, probably. Well, so I’m not great about drinking water. It’s one of my things I want to be better about, but I’m not great about remembering to do it during the day. So I’ll like, get to be like, 04:00, 05:00 and I’m like, oh, I need to drink my water. And then I’ll start drinking water. And I try to stop before 08:00 but I feel like I’ll wake up at least once to pee during the night.
0:10:54 – (Christine): And so how often does that happen?
0:10:56 – (Laurie): Probably almost every night. I also have pets. I have a dog who sleeps on my bed. That probably wakes me up because she hears the cats. They can’t be together as a dog will eat the cat. So she hears the cat, she wakes up, she Wakes me up. So sometimes that’s what wakes me up, too.
0:11:17 – (Christine): Gotcha. And your husband snores as well, is that right?
0:11:19 – (Laurie): He does.
0:11:22 – (Christine): All right. So we’ve got some noise there. How long does it take you to get back to sleep when you’re awake In the middle of the night?
0:11:27 – (Laurie): Sometimes it’s easy, and then other times I’ll lay there for, like, an hour and a half.
0:11:32 – (Christine): Okay. And what do you do to try to lull yourself back to sleep?
0:11:36 – (Laurie): Sometimes I count backwards from 100. Sometimes I just try to remember things that I’ve memorized in the past, just to not think about the things that I know are going to hype me up. So I try not to think about, like, work stuff or the state of the world or things like that. I’m just, like. I try to go to, like, boring routine, like ABCD, like, just things that are going to kind of bore me.
0:12:03 – (Christine): So it sounds like you’re from what I read in the questionnaire, your sleep can vary anywhere. You’re in bed maybe about seven and a half hours, but you’re sleeping maybe six to seven. What’s different on the nights that you’re getting less asleep?
0:12:15 – (Laurie): I fall asleep pretty easily. So if I’m not getting sleep, it’s either because I went to bed too late, I stayed up because I waited too long, and then I didn’t feel tired, or I’m waking up in the middle of the night, and then I can’t get back to sleep. Those are my two big things. But once I lay down, like, and I turn off the light and take off my glasses, I fall asleep pretty quickly. I don’t ever lay there going, oh, hey, I can’t sleep. But it’s just when I wake up a few hours later and I go pee and I’m like, oh, I’m awake.
0:12:46 – (Christine): Okay. And you read in bed before you go to sleep? Table lamp or overhead lights?
0:12:52 – (Laurie): It’s just a little table lamp.
0:12:53 – (Christine): Okay. In the evening time, you tend to have the lights on in the house?
0:12:58 – (Laurie): Yeah.
0:12:59 – (Christine): All right. And you wear, like, any blue light glasses at all when you’re reading?
0:13:03 – (Laurie): No.
0:13:04 – (Christine): Okay. And you have regular, like, led light bulbs in your. Your lamps?
0:13:10 – (Laurie): I assume so.
0:13:11 – (Christine): Okay. All right. So what’s worked well in the past, you said, is reading. And what else? When you get in a good routine, what’s. What’s that look like for you?
0:13:22 – (Laurie): Tea in the evening, like after dinner? Yoga. Nidra read my book, and then, you know, lights out. So that’s usually, like, a good. For me. That’s been helpful.
0:13:35 – (Christine): Okay. And what would it take for you to get back to that and stay consistent with it?
0:13:42 – (Laurie): I would have to set a boundary and say, this is the time I’m going to do this. This is what I’m going to be doing. You guys like people in my house. You do whatever you want. Don’t involve me. I’m busy. I’m going to be doing this. I’m doing my yoga, I’m going to read my book, and I’m going to bed, so.
0:13:58 – (Christine): Okay. And then you said you’ll still make space for, you know, having an occasional late night for the tv.
0:14:04 – (Laurie): Yeah. So, like, once a week on a weekend, I don’t have to get up early the next day for school or for work out. I can sleep in a little bit.
0:14:12 – (Christine): So, based on what we’ve discussed so far, like, what really stands out for you? Is there anything that kind of jumps out at you, aside from the routine? Anything that we discuss that you feel needs to be part of your action plan?
0:14:26 – (Laurie): My room could probably be a little bit more relaxing, a place I want to go. And it’s easy for me to relax. Like, there isn’t a pile of clothes in the corner. There’s a bunch of donation stuff sitting on top of my dresser, and, like, making that space relaxing.
0:14:44 – (Christine): All right, so room environment, routine. Anything else?
0:14:47 – (Laurie): I think I would like some, like, aromatherapy, something next to my bed that smells nice because I mentioned I have a dog. So sometimes I go in there and I’m like, hmm, kind of smells like dog in here. Doesn’t bother me, but I’m like, it could be better.
0:15:01 – (Christine): And that kind of goes in with the environment of the room. And your nighttime routine with would get, you know, could be infusing that. So anything else I think, too, what.
0:15:13 – (Laurie): Would also help me is kind of a brain dump before bed. Like, I want to make sure I do this tomorrow, or here’s what’s happening tomorrow. I know I need to do this, this and this, but just someplace where I can just kind of get it out and then it’s safe. I’m not relying on myself to remember it because.
0:15:33 – (Christine): Right. That’s what kind of stands out for me with a lot of, this is, like you said, stress management, having those relaxation moments where you’re just unplugging and not doing and even, you know, not even just in the evening time before bed, but maybe even taking some kind of a timeout during the day. A lot of times we’re go, go, go, go all day, and it’s like, okay, it’s time to relax at night. And it. It doesn’t always work that well because we’re kind of wound up. We’re in that mode.
0:16:02 – (Christine): So how do you feel about doing something during the day to, even if it’s just a very brief moment, to just kind of step back and do some kind of unplugging relaxation type of activity or exercise? You mentioned yoga, nidra, and actually, those can be very beneficial. Midday as well, because it helps you to kind of, you’re unplugging, relaxing, but at the same time being aware. And so that could be something again, you know, looking at things that are more unplugging, where you were just calming your body and your mind and just being, like, calm in that moment.
0:16:43 – (Christine): Yoga, nidra, a meditation, deep breathing. Just something where you’re just basically your mind and your body, you’re being still, if that makes sense.
0:16:52 – (Laurie): Okay. Yeah. I could do ten to 15 minutes restorative yoga in the afternoon, 15 minutes before I go to get them from school. I can just shut the computer off a little bit early and do that.
0:17:04 – (Christine): Yeah. Yeah. And again, it doesn’t have to be anything really long. You could be sitting in your chair doing, you know, neck stretches, time of thing, but just anything to just kind of be in that decompressing moment. Because if you think about everything we do from the moment we wake up, it’s going to. It’s going to go with us to bed at night. Learning to just decompress during the day as well so we’re not carrying it all into the evening time can really be helpful.
0:17:29 – (Christine): Taking those self care moments.
0:17:31 – (Laurie): Okay. I like that sometimes it’s just taking.
0:17:34 – (Christine): A few deep breaths, just closing your eyes and stopping what you’re doing when you notice you’re getting wound up. I call it a mental timeout.
0:17:40 – (Laurie): So I never get wound up. Christine. I’m holding my hand.
0:17:45 – (Christine): Some relaxation during the day, making the environment more relaxing, having that routine. And this is all going to help with your stress management and. Right. It’s all wound up together there. The other thing that stands out for me is, you know, not getting. Being able to go back to sleep at night. It’s fragmented. What do you feel about doing something like a breathing exercise, a body scan some way, again, to not keep the brain active. What a lot of people do is they’re thinking, I need to get back to sleep. And then your brain is still thinking, you know, and it’s more stressful. So maybe, again, doing some kind of relaxing activity.
0:18:27 – (Christine): It’s actually recommended. If you can’t get back to sleep after 20 minutes, you should get out of bed, go into another room where it’s quiet. And again, you could do those activities. It could maybe be reading under low light, but doing some kind of breathing, listening to relaxing music until you get sleepy again, and then go back to bed. Because what can happen is we start associating the bed with not sleeping. If we’re laying there tossing and turning so many times, you know, it can kind of start affecting you, you know, mentally, that you’re worried about not getting back to sleep. So basically, about 85% of the time that you’re in bed, you should be sleeping.
0:19:03 – (Christine): And when I looked at your, your numbers, you know, it kind of varied from like six to 7 hours. But sometimes your sleep efficiency is, you know, basically anywhere from 80% to 90%. I don’t like hyper focusing on numbers, but that’s just to kind of give you a, an understanding of what that is. So you’re in bed seven and a half hours, but maybe only sleeping six to seven and a half. And so it may seem counterproductive to get out of bed when you can’t sleep, but it actually can help with you, you know, sleeping more while you’re.
0:19:31 – (Laurie): Actually in the bed. You know, if not getting out of.
0:19:34 – (Christine): The bed is not an option for you, you could just focus more on relaxation type of activities.
0:19:40 – (Laurie): Can I get out of the bed? But like, go sit in a chair in the same room and like a meditation or something over there. You can try that.
0:19:47 – (Christine): Another option too, like I said, is, you know, do just kind of, if you’re going to stay in bed, is focus on just doing those relaxing type of activities. Just focus on relaxing versus focusing on trying to sleep. That would be my suggestion for that. And then with the noise, obviously we can’t change some of the environment around us. I don’t know if you’ve tried earplugs or anything like that to help you sleep at night.
0:20:10 – (Laurie): We have a sound machine that we run in the room. Seems to be helping. I find it comforting if I wake up and I hear my husband snoring, that can kind of keep me awake. But what I do then is I pretend it’s the dog snoring and then it doesn’t bother me. I had pugs for twelve years, so I always found that, like, it was very. A comforting sound to me. The other thing I meant to tell you is I have a weighted blanket and I have one of those weighted eye masks that I like to sleep, like, with on my head.
0:20:36 – (Christine): Okay, whatever works for you. So your top four tips would be to create that environment in your room with aromatherapy. And you said cleaning up clutter.
0:20:49 – (Laurie): Yes, it’s cluttered.
0:20:50 – (Christine): Okay. How else could it become more sleep conducive for you?
0:20:54 – (Laurie): I don’t think there’s really much else other than making it smell better and just knowing it’s cleaned up and tidy.
0:21:01 – (Christine): It’s true. I mean, there’s actually research to show that having a cluttered room can actually contribute to stress and sleep. Just, it’s a subconscious thing, but it’s, it’s a real thing. So that sounds like that’ll be very helpful for you. So sticking with your routine of the reading, the quiet time, yoga, nidra. Now, routine includes like a sleep schedule. You know what would be an ideal one for you? Not that it has to be rigid and set in stone seven days a week, but I. Ideally, what time should you be going to bed and then waking up?
0:21:35 -(Laurie): Ideally, I’d like to be trying to at least sleep seven and a half to 8 hours. We get up at 630. So if I’m asleep by 10:30 with no interruptions, ideal. However, I’m going to have at least one interruption during the night. So I kind of want to give myself, like, padding. So if I could be starting my routine by 9:15 and then in bed, turning off the light at 10:00 I think would give me that buffer, like that time to unwind and then falling asleep early enough that if I do have some kind of interruption, it’s not gonna throw me off my schedule too much.
0:22:13 – (Christine): Okay. And are you always waking up at the same time?
0:22:16 – (Laurie): Yes, except on weekends, not as much, but during the week, that’s our standard. Everybody gets up at 6:30.
0:22:23 – (Christine): Okay, so 9:15, start the wind down routine. Be in bed by ten. How confident do you feel that you can do that on a scale of one to 10, being most confident, I.
0:22:34 – (Laurie): Give it a nine. It’s a matter of just prioritizing it and making it, establishing the habits.
0:22:42 – (Christine): Okay. And then it sounds like the brain dump will be part of the nighttime routine then.
0:22:48 – (Laurie): Yes.
0:22:48 – (Christine): And you may, just might need to experiment with it. And it’s, it may change. You may find, well, I don’t like doing it this at this time. And nothing has to be really rigid, but it’s knowing that we have kind of like that menu options of things to do. And you just know this is your time for you to wind down. What do I feel like doing tonight type of a thing? It’s perfectly fine. Sounds like the brain dumps going to be definitely part of that for you. So you can, you know, keep the brain from thinking too much. You know, even if you wake up in the middle of the night, it can definitely help with that. And then during the day, finding some time for some kind of relaxation would be the third one. Right.
0:23:25 – (Christine): And then we’ve got if waking up in the middle of the night, maybe going and sitting in a chair, if you can’t get back to sleep after 20 minutes, you said maybe do a meditation. What do you think you might do during that time?
0:23:37 – (Laurie): I think. I think a meditation might be good. And then trying to go back to sleep.
0:23:42 – (Christine): Okay, so how does that sound to you?
0:23:45 – (Laurie): That sounds good. That sounds doable. It sounds like really simple, like things that I can implement. Right. Nothing or nothing here is like heavy lifting.
0:23:56 – (Christine): And it sounds like you’ve got good support from your husband. If you tell him he can help hold you accountable, you can feel not guilty about it. He’ll reap the benefits.
0:24:06 – (Laurie): That’s going to be his biggest motivation, that I’ll just be overall in a better mood and more agreeable.
0:24:12 – (Christine): So what I’m going to be sending you is a summary of the four suggestions here and the tips as far as you know what you can do. And then there will also be like a resource page for some apps for meditation and breathing, some of my YouTube breathing videos. Another one’s a website for managing stress. But is there anything else that you feel would be helpful?
0:24:36 – (Laurie): I think that would be good. What I’m afraid of is overloading going too much in the opposite of like now. You know, I have a few things to do, but I’m so anxious to solve this problem. I’m going to try to do too many things. So I kind of want to keep it the handful of things I’m going to do.
0:24:50 – (Christine): As far as the session today, how was that for you?
0:24:53 – (Laurie): Very good. It really helped to kind of verbalize and reinforce, you know, why it is that I want to do this.
0:25:00 – (Christine): Okay, good. I will give you our summary and everything.
0:25:04 – (Laurie): This is great.
0:25:04 – (Christine): Thank you, Christine.
0:25:05 – (Laurie): Okay, you’re welcome. See you later.
0:25:10 – (Laurie): Thanks for listening. And if you liked this episode, go ahead and leave us a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts and be sure to subscribe so you’ll be notified when the next episode is live. Check out our show notes for this episode where you can find any of the links and resources that were mentioned during the show and connect with a health and wellness provider committed to helping you ditch diets and achieve results without restriction.

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In this episode, I’m welcoming Teri Patterson (The Sober Nutritionist) back on the show to talk about Dry January, what it is, and how taking a mindful break from alcohol and approaching it with curiosity can lead to a new awareness about how alcohol is impacting your health and wellness.

Teri Patterson is a Functional Nutritionist and a This Naked Mind Senior Coach. Teri blends her knowledge of nutrition with her passion for living an alcohol-free life into a unique business as The Sober Nutritionist.

Teri’s mission is to help her clients discover how drinking less can be the key to better health. Teri is also the host of the popular podcast The Sober Edge, Inspiration for Alcohol-Free Living and the creator of the brand-new SELF Experience, a place for women after alcohol who want to build a life by design, not by default.

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Laurie: Welcome, everyone. Today, Teri Patterson, also known as the Sober Nutritionist, is back on the show, and she’s here to chat with us about Dry January, what it is, and how taking a mindful break from alcohol and approaching it with curiosity can lead to a new awareness about how alcohol is showing up in your life and impacting your health and wellness.

Welcome, Teri. 

Teri: It’s so nice to be here. I’m excited to be back on your podcast and having a conversation around dry January.

Laurie: You are like my expert on very compassionately examining our relationship with alcohol and what it means and how it shows up and looking at all the ways that it’s impacting the different areas of our life. So I’m excited to dig in with you as we’re coming up to January. And a lot of people will be participating in the Dry January. So I really want to get some information out there for people to help them participate successfully, however it looks for them. What we’re going to start with is in case anybody doesn’t know what is dry January and why it’s becoming more popular in recent years.

Teri: Yes, we see the roots of dry January actually from 2013 when a British organization called Alcohol Concern, they actually started a charitable fundraiser around taking a 30 day break from drinking alcohol. And the reason they picked January was of course, because traditionally people might want to make some healthy changes.

But the other interesting part is they did it because the pubs and the bars don’t get as much business during January. So they thought, Oh, this is a good time for people who aren’t necessarily going out to the pub so much. To take a mindful break from drinking. And so that’s really the roots of it. And it was done to help raise money.

And, uh, it’s been fascinating because the movement has grown since then. And now it is absolutely huge. And I was looking up some statistics because what we see in the United States, it’s really interesting in these last few years as awareness. around taking a mindful break from drinking has become more popular.

We see these dry January numbers just increasing exponentially. So in 2021, we had about 13 percent of the American populations say, yes, I’m considering, or I am going to participate in dry January. And in 2022, 35 percent of Americans said they wanted to participate. So you can see that the awareness, the wellness conversation around taking a break is really growing.

And to support that, we’re seeing a lot of companies jumping into the non alcoholic beverage industry, seeing big names now like Heineken Zero, for example. Everyone is coming out with their own version of an alcohol free product to support this movement. 

Laurie: I have noticed that, Teri. I’ve seen so many ads just in the last year popping up everywhere for non alcoholic versions of alcoholic drinks for people who want to feel like they’re still social or they still can have that drink, but without the alcohol impact.

I was going to say too, that In January, we tend to see a lot of, like, the pendulum swing. So, like, December is a big month for indulgence. People like to eat a lot of special foods and, and they tend to maybe not move as much. They’re out of their regular routine. And by the end of December, people are at a point they’re like, I just want to get back into doing the things that I normally do that make me feel good.

Sleeping more, moving more, eating the foods that I’m used to eating on a regular basis that make my insides feel good. We see that pendulum go from like really enjoying to [00:04:00] restriction. I’m going to start a diet. I’m going to start cutting out all these foods starting January 1st. I have a resolution. I’m not going to do X, Y, Z.

If you’ve been a big drinker over the holidays, it’s probably one of those things that people are just like, Oh, I really overdid it. Maybe I need to take a break, or maybe I need to kind of look at what this means.

Teri: Exactly. And so we often want to be like, it’s like an alcohol timeout, you know, so I’m going to take this time out and alcohol is the enemy and you know, and, and I’m, I’m deprived.

I’m sitting over here in the no fun corner, not drinking for the month of January. Right. And so. It, again, when we go back to mindset, it’s really powerful to think about what we’re gaining versus what we’re giving up because we can maybe look at it as deprivation and that’s just not going to serve us in the long term.

So it’s so much more powerful to say, Oh my gosh, I found new ways to honor my body. 

Laurie: 100 percent because when I went vegan, like 150 years ago, it feels like, at the time it was more like. I approached it with curiosity. What would happen if I took 30 days where I didn’t consume this? How would I feel? Would I feel better?

I’ll give myself permission. As soon as you say, I can’t have, I can’t, like it’s off limits. Your brain goes, Oh, I have never wanted that more in my entire life than I do right now. But if you kind of approach it with here’s, you know what, I’m going to see how it feels and just keep my mind open and be aware of like what’s going on here and there and just make note.

How does that feel in my body? Right. So approaching alcohol the same way, what you’re gaining could be, you know, better digestion, better sleep, more energy, more friends, more clarity, like all of these great things can come from this that you wouldn’t experience necessarily if you don’t take that break or approach Dry January with that curiosity. I love that you mentioned that.

Teri: It’s also interesting too, as you say, we, we want to be mindful that when we go from indulgence to restriction that, you know, we need to have time for our mindset to catch up. And one of the things I really love about dry January is it’s no longer feels like something that gets sprung on us. January 1st, we now see a lot of opportunity to sort of prepare and think about it and plan and have some intention behind it.

And we’re also seeing that it’s not, uh, you’re not an outlier. Any longer when you choose to participate in dry January, I think if you pay attention, your listeners and all of us will notice more people say, Oh yeah, I’m going to take a month off.

I’m going to, um, you know, participate in dry January and it’s now seen as positive. It’s no longer like, Oh, I have a problem. I need to take a break from alcohol.  

Laurie: I love that. It’s just taking a step back and saying, I’m not the only one doing it. We’re all doing this together. It’s a positive thing. It doesn’t automatically mean, you know, you have any kind of label around your alcohol consumption, but we’re being curious about how this is showing up for us.

So you talked about a couple of things that I really want to dig into. When we participate in Dry January, we go the 31 days, cutting back on alcohol and examining the impact that it’s having, what are some benefits, either mentally, physically, after the end of that experience?

Teri: So it depends on if people really are able to go 31 days not drinking, you’re going to have different effects than if you cut way back.

Like, let’s say you have your couple glasses of wine every night, which is perfect. Very common. And let’s say you decide I’m only going to drink once a week. You’re going to experience some benefits for sure. Because anytime we take what is basically a toxin out of our system, we’re going to feel better.

Uh, and if you are able to go 31 days with no alcohol, you’re going to exponentially feel even better. And so one of the things I think is really powerful is just notice if it feels challenging. To not drink. That’s one of the first things that happened for me was I thought, well, I’ll take a break and cut back because I realized that, you know, I was drinking more than I wanted to.

I was feeling kind of crappy a lot of mornings. I just didn’t like that. My brain kept saying, well, when’s the next drink? When’s the next drink? So when I tried to cut back, that’s when I realized, oh, this might be a little bit more of an issue than I thought. So I think inviting people to just get really curious about, is this, A challenge for me.

Is this feel hard? Am I feeling more cravings mentally, physically? And so I think that is a really important part of this. And then once we do cut back, we’re going to start seeing things like we’re going to have more energy. We’re going to have less anxiety. One thing that people don’t often realize is that alcohol creates more anxiety because of the adrenaline and cortisol releases in our body.

And so sometimes we think, well, when I drink, I feel less anxiety or I drink because I’m stressed. And initially because alcohol is both a stimulant and a depressant, we do get a little bit of that buzzy euphoric feeling. And we might feel like, Oh, I’m not so stressed, but that lasts a very short period of time.

And then the depressive. Parts of alcohol last much, much longer. So we’re actually Increasing anxiety when we drink so people often notice. Wow, my mood feels a little lighter they’re gonna notice things like potentially within a couple of weeks, you’ll have hopefully better sleep and We’re going to notice less brain fog lots of different effects.

Laurie: That’s really interesting the beginning of your comment was depending on what the goal is. Is it to abstain completely? Is it to cut back? Can we talk a little bit about how to realistically set a goal for dry January and what that might look like?

Teri: Yeah, I love this question. This is so good because I like to think of rather than setting a goal, which sometimes looks like very black and white, you know, I succeeded if I made it 30 days, I failed because I only made it 10 days and then I had a drink.

I like to help people set an intention and an intention allows us to have sort of, how do I want to feel? What is my motivation behind taking a break? And so for people to be successful, I think it’s really powerful to bring in some curiosity because curiosity helps us suspend judgment. And what I love about this is you said, I want to participate in Dry January.

I would ask to tell me why. And you might say, well, I hear there’s a lot of benefits to cutting out drinking and I’ve been drinking a little bit more than I want to, or I’m noticing that. I’m thinking about alcohol more than I want to. And so we can start right there and say, well, great. How do you want to feel at the end of January?

And you’d say, Oh, I want to feel proud of myself. I want to feel motivated to take on more health challenges. I want to sleep better. I want to be able to go to the ladies book club and say, no, thank you when they pass the wine. So I think those are all really important things to bring in. So we’ve taken it from a very black and white, I’m going to go 31 days without drinking alcohol into something that is personal to you, the individual.

And that can make a huge difference in how we follow through with that stated goal. 

Laurie: I do see this too with eating and creating these food rules and things and they start out with black and white, I’m going to do this, I’m not going to do this. And then three days in, if something is such an ingrained habit that they didn’t even realize, and it’s so.

It’s hard for them to not do the thing they want to do or to do the thing they don’t want to do. It becomes a failure point and it’s completely devastating mentally and it throws off the whole experience. Then they’re quote unquote starting over, they failed. So I love that you’re saying, look at the intention.

How do you want to feel? Let’s Let’s reverse engineer this process from where you want to end up instead of trying to power through something that might not really be a good fit for you. And it might actually set you up to be worse off than maybe you are now. And, and really feeling worse about yourself, about the whole thing.

So I love that you’re, you’re reframing it as a, an intention versus a hard and fast goal of XYZ, I’m going to do this, I’m not going to do this. So I love that. Let’s talk about some of the misconceptions that people might have about participating in Dry January.  

Teri: I think a lot of times people will have a mindset that if I can take 30 or 31 days off, that means I don’t have a drinking problem.

I’m going to prove to myself that this is not an issue. And what I find sometimes is you can go probably 30 days with just willpower. You can avoid all the usual places. You can suffer through this idea of depriving yourself. And then on February 1st, let’s bring out the cocktails because I did it. Let’s celebrate with alcohol.

This is something that. people will do because they are not building in the tools behind the taking a break. So we can change our behavior for a short period of time, but [00:14:00] willpower, as we know, will run out. And so it’s really important to have The mindset, the habit change, the intention, you know, the routines to get support in all of these areas if we want to make this more successful and we want to come out the other end, you know, saying, wow, I learned a lot about my relationship with alcohol.

I’m more curious in these ways. I have some maybe work to do over here. I felt really good. Um, and so, you know, If you’re considering dry January, I invite you to just look at the why, you know, am I trying to prove I don’t have a drinking problem? Well, anytime we ask is alcohol a problem for me, that’s a clue, right?

And so if that’s you, if you’re saying, wow, you know, maybe. This is a problem. I invite you to reverse that. Instead of asking, do I have a problem with [00:15:00] alcohol? Ask yourself, is alcohol adding anything to my life? Is alcohol serving me? Is alcohol making my life better? And that again is just an open ended curious question that allows us to say, huh, yeah.

Maybe it’s not. Maybe it used to be fun. And now I find myself drinking even though I don’t want to. And so we might think that dry January is this proving to ourself that, you know, I’m okay. And the reason I started there, Laurie, about your question is because a lot of clients have shared this with me.

Like I told myself, if I could take a month off, then all bets were off. I’m fine. And so I think the other misconception is that you’re, you have to go 31 days. Or that February 1st is now the goal. And so I invite you to stay mindful throughout the 31 days. Oh, I drank [00:16:00] on day seven. Oh, I drank on day nine.

Oh, I didn’t drink again until January 27th. And pay attention to those times when you felt like I really want to drink or I must drink, you know, or it just happened that I found myself with a drink in my hand. Like these are things that we can use during the month that look very different than the myth of I’m going to get through 31 days with, you know, no problem or to prove something to myself.

And it’s also really powerful to just allow that if you have, we call them data points. So if you have a drink, it’s information. What happened? Like if you’re running a marathon and you trip on mile three, you don’t start back at mile one. You just keep going. And so it’s helpful to drop the myth that if I have a drink, oh, well, I’m like half the other population.

I drank on day 10. It’s over. No. Use that information to guide you in the next 20 days. 

Laurie: That’s really helpful, Teri, and I love that you mentioned your data points, because I was just going to say, I remember from our past conversation, instead of having that all or nothing, black or white, oops, I tripped and fell, it’s over, I’m starting from the beginning, approach it with curiosity, look at the situation, what were the conditions, what was the environment, what was the mindset, and then just look at that information and see what you can pull out of there.

I love that. One of the things that might be a challenge for somebody is that They are approaching Dry January. They want to participate. They don’t know anybody else who’s doing it. They don’t have a support group. They don’t have a bunch of friends that they can hang out with. 

Teri: Well, I think what you’re mentioning here, Laurie, is really powerful is to have some support outside of ourself.

You know, one of the things that, uh, comes up when I’m working with clients around this journey is we spend a lot of time beating ourselves up in our own head. And so we could start to create a lot of stories around, oh, it’s not going well, or you’re never going to be able to do this. But when we’re in a group, we have the other person saying, I believe in you, I’m cheering you on, this is going well, you’re doing it.

And so it is so helpful to be in community during dry January, and it’s not hard to find a dry January community. There are going to be lots of opportunities. So I think we just start with asking Google, you know, what is available in my area? You could do it online. You can do it maybe in person. There might be a blended atmosphere where people say, hey, We’re going to have, um, hiking every Saturday morning during dry January so that you have a reason to get up at 6 a.m. Or 7 a. m. As opposed to, oh, you know, I drank on Friday night and now I, I’m going to sleep until 11 and I didn’t make the running group. So setting up a little accountability and a little companionship is really helpful. Laura McCowan has a group called The Luckiest Club. You can join that. I think it’s very inexpensive, $25 a month or something, and you could join that for dry January.

There’s free smart recovery groups, uh, that will be featuring some things for dry January. I did my first dry January as a leader, not an individual. And I guess I did my first dry January without even thinking about it in 2016 because I wasn’t drinking by then. But in 2020, I worked with This Naked Mind in their live alcohol experiment for January, and there was about 3, 000 individuals that came at that time who wanted to go through a 30 day program.

It’s very inexpensive, uh, to have coaching support, to see other people also experiencing this. One of the things that can happen, Laurie, is when we are drinking and overdrinking or drinking more than we want to, or questioning our drinking, we often think we’re the only one. And so when we see other people say, Oh yeah, you know, somehow five o’clock is really hard, or I do great, you know, Sunday through Tuesday.

And then what is it about Wednesday? And so when we have this support, it helps us get out of our own way. And helps us, you know, again, have that accountability and that support where other people are also going through the same thing. And we don’t feel so isolated. One of the other things I’ll say about having some accountability or some support is, uh, if you Don’t tell anyone, then no one knows if you’re doing well, no one is noticing.

No one’s cheering you on. Um, for example, I just recently, um, have been going through a health challenge of my own, so I had some food sensitivity tests and I can’t eat eggs right now and I can’t have dairy. And so I was talking to my daughter about a recipe to make some Christmas cookies and she was like, “Mom, You can’t make that. It has butter!” And I was like “Oh, you’re right!” But if no one knew I was trying to cut out dairy, I could just go about my business and pretend it wasn’t really happening. You know, and my brain, because we’re humans, we want to avoid discomfort, seek pleasure. I don’t make the cookies with butter and pretend I don’t have, I’m not supposed to be giving up dairy.

So some of that. External accountability is really helpful to just be like, Oh yeah, it’s like going to the gym and you’re in a group class versus going to the gym and just looking around and saying, well, I’ll do five minutes on the treadmill or I’ll lift the five pound weight. But when you’re in the group, it’s very different.

The instructor saying, pick up those 10 pound weights. You know, do this, do that. So use that as a motivation to help you through this dry January. 

Laurie: So don’t do a secret dry January, make it, share it, share it with those around you so that they can help you, cheer you on, be those extra eyeballs and ears and shoulders.

Teri: And remind you of your, of your intention, like, gosh, you know, um, Let’s go for a walk. You don’t need a glass of wine right now. Let’s take a walk. And if you still want a glass of wine, have a glass of wine. But, you know, having that, I love the word secret. Yeah. Don’t, you know, save the secret Santa for December and have an out loud, public dry January. 

Laurie: Loud and proud dry January. I love that.

Teri: People want to know, like, what do I tell people about not drinking? So dry January is awesome because people just say, Oh, I’m doing dry January. And everybody’s like, Oh, okay. It’s not that you have a problem. Everybody’s doing dry January. We touched 

Laurie: on this a little bit, but maybe we can dig in a little bit more.

You said over here in the no fun corner. Right? So if we start to feel like, oh my gosh, if I take out drinking, what am I going to do? 

Teri: Yeah, there is a huge myth out there, Lori, that sober is boring. And I like to say if sober is boring, you’re doing it wrong. Because what we realize is that we have. often built alcohol into all of the activities.

I mean, for example, you know, oh, we’re going to go on a picnic. Oh, get that special bottle of rosé so I can drink during the day. Oh, we’re going to baby shower. Well, we have to have mimosas, you know, oh gosh, we’re going to have pizza and watch the game. I need a beer. And so, What we’ve done is we’ve really trained ourselves to rely on alcohol, and then we see alcohol as the fun factor, but that’s not true.

Uh, I had a client who was very concerned in her mind. She thought, well, if I give up alcohol, you know, what really bothers me is I have this memory that I was in Italy and I was sitting out on the terrace with my husband and looking over the vineyards and the little old wizened old winemaker came out with this very special old bottle and he poured us this drink and it was magic.

You know, the moment was magical and I, I just can’t imagine never experiencing that again. And so what I told her was, I said, okay, so let’s imagine this. Let’s look at that bottle of wine that he poured for you. And I want you to think about taking that bottle of wine into your closet. And I want you to sit in the dark and close the door and have a drink of wine.

And then I want you to come out of the closet metaphorically and imagine being on this terrace in Italy. And. You can smell the flowers, you’re experiencing the warm afternoon sun, it’s a beautiful vista, you are sitting across from your husband who you are just gazing into his eyes thinking this moment is so magical, and the little old wizened man comes out and he pours you this special juice that they make from these old apples.

And you toast each other and you think, I’m, this moment is magical. So tell me, Laurie in that moment, was it the wine? Or was it the experience? So when we think about, you know, well, I have to have alcohol to have fun. We have to ask ourselves, is that true? What happened when I was 10 and I was running around in the backyard playing with my friends and we were playing doorbell ditch and laughing and hoping we didn’t get caught or running through the sprinklers.

Where is that person? That person is still inside of us. We just decided that we needed alcohol. So we had fun at some point in our life without alcohol and we can get there again and much of it is a mindset shift. 

Laurie: Absolutely true. I love that. February 1st, Dry January is over. 

Teri: Now what? First of all, February 1st is not the, you know, you don’t put the key in the lock and now I’m out of jail.

Imagine February 1st as the time to just ease into the information that you’ve gained and allow yourself to say. Okay. Wow. You know, that was really interesting. And now I’m at a new place. Now I have more information. I have new experiences and I really want to see what this means moving forward. And for many people, it will be a place of new awareness around the impact that alcohol has been having.

And, you know, I have lots of clients that come to me and they say, well, you know, I’m here at this place where I’m drinking more than I want to, that, you know, things are happening that I don’t like, I don’t feel as good. Now that I’m older, perhaps, you know, alcohol is having more of an impact. But they say, I don’t want to stop drinking forever.

And so, you know, this is a really important awareness when we say, well, what are the benefits of alcohol? If we took alcohol out for a month and we felt better and we found socializing wasn’t as hard and we enjoyed the community aspect. that. Do we really want to go back to putting a toxin in our body on a regular basis or every day?

So, you know, I invite people on February 1st to explore. Well, what does it mean? And one of the best ways I think to do this is to journal and to really write down like, okay, here’s how I felt during this month. Here is the good, the bad, the ugly. And what do I want to do with this information? Uh, you know, really design Your February rather than just default into the old patterns.

And that again, takes some intention. And so while dry January, it might be like, uh, people think, well, it’s a month without alcohol. What if it’s a month exploring your relationship with alcohol? And then there’s more to do maybe in February and March and April.  

Laurie: I love that Teri, because you said January doesn’t have to just be a month without alcohol.

It could actually be a month with …Whatever we’ve been not doing because of alcohol, what are some activities or, or things have you been putting off or not interested in doing or not had time for because you’ve been doing all of these events or activities that are based on alcohol, what can you kind of fill in and explore and try?

And maybe that becomes things that you do in February. And I like that you were talking about journaling because then it gives you a chance to revisit who you were on January 1st, why you started it, what were you thinking, how are you feeling, and be able to look back and revisit. Each of these different points, maybe you did have a drink, what was going on, it’s so much, it’s so much easier to recall and go back to that when you’ve written it down.

Ask me how I know. Instead of trying to like remember and just kind of think at the end, like, Hmm, how did that go? Well, guess what? 

Teri: I don’t remember. You know, Annie Grace does have the 30-Day Alcohol Experiment as a book. So that’s a good resource as well. It’s not a journal, but there’s questions and there’s, you know, a 30 days, like each day it talks about something different, like alcohol and socializing, alcohol and anger.

Laurie: That’s a great resource. I’m glad you mentioned it. I will put the link to that in the show notes as well. Terry, we’re going to wrap up and I was hoping that you could give us your top three tips for participating in Dry January. 

Teri: Tip # 1, I’m going to take a page from your playbook and say, write down your intention.

What do I want to experience during the month of January? Why? How will I know if I was successful? And I invite you to redefine success. So I’ll know because I was I was paying attention. I brought in awareness. I asked questions. I made new choices like those types of things. So I invite people to really explore Their intention and their why behind taking a 30 day break and then write that down.

And that can be the very first tip is to set that intention in writing. How do I want to feel? What is my motivation for doing dry January? And then the second tip would be, ask some questions when you feel like drinking. What am I thinking alcohol will provide in this moment? Am I thinking that, oh, I’m feeling a little social anxiety and alcohol will help, or I’m bored, or I’m lonely, or I feel sad? stressed?

All of these things are going to be really powerful to start to untangle where alcohol started to become our go to.

And then the third thing that we touched on is that community aspect. Don’t do this. In secret share with someone you maybe you’re not a joiner. You don’t want to join a big group although I invite you to consider it but have some support somewhere [00:31:00] so that you have someone cheering you on someone to help keep you accountable And someone to share some of these thoughts with because if this is brand new for you, there’s going to be a lot going on because our brain has defaulted to alcohol perhaps for a long time.

And so you deserve to have that support You know, the NA beverage, the non alcoholic beverage industry is really growing. So have some fun with maybe some mocktails or some special hop water or some kombucha or some teas. Enjoy having an adult beverage. If you had a ritual of pouring a drink every night, just change what’s in the glass and allow yourself to just say, wow, it feels really different when I have that sparkling tea versus my, you know, my, uh, hard cider and enjoy that. There’s so many resources out there and you’re going to find a lot more popping up as we get closer to January. So have fun with that.

Laurie: That’s a really good tip to have something prepared, have a plan for when you normally would have something, swap it in with something else, try it out.

Those are great tips, Teri. 

Teri: I don’t have something specific to Dry January, but I do have a program that I’ve recently created called Stop Drinking in Your 50s and Beyond. And it is a six week program. And in that program, it’s a self paced program. And so, uh, it, what it is, is for Every week you have five days of activities and then two days of application.

So on three days a week, you have a short video, no more than 10 minutes. And then one day a week, you have a journal prompt. And one day a week, you have kind of a tactic to work on. And so I really believe that to make this a journey that is successful, you need to have knowledge, application and some tools.

Laurie: Teri, I’m going to be putting all of your links into the show notes and I really do appreciate that you shared your new program information with us and I’m going to be putting the link to that if anybody wants to learn more. You’re on social? Yes. Okay, perfect. I’ll be putting those in the show notes with all of your information so our listeners can connect with you in all of the different places where you are.

Thank you, Teri. 

Teri: Yes. Thank you, Laurie. And good luck to all of your listeners if you decide to try Dry January. I’m cheering you on.

​

In this episode ‘The Healing Power of yoga’ Tashya Knight, certified health educator, health coach, and yoga instructor shares her journey into healing power of yoga, emphasizing its role in her wellness and the surprising benefits she experienced.

• Key Takeaways
• Quotes
• Resources Mentioned
• Join Tashya for a free class
• Connect with Tashya
• Episode Transcript:

The discussion covers the physical and mental health benefits of a regular yoga practice, busting yoga myths and highlighting its impact on physical, mental and emotional health.

Tashya elaborates on the importance of self-acceptance, self-confidence, and spending time with yourself in yoga. We dive into Tashya’s approach to yoga as a healing practice, particularly in addressing trauma and promoting breath awareness and how finding the right yoga style, teacher, and studio are important to create a positive and welcoming experience.

• The power of Yoga as a Holistic Wellness Practice – it’s not just as a physical activity but a holistic practice affecting mental and emotional well-being.

• A regular yoga practice has diverse health benefits including stress management, anxiety reduction, improved sleep, lower cortisol levels, enhanced cardiovascular health, and even potential relief from migraines

• It’s important to approach yoga with an open mind and curiosity. Each person’s body is unique, and yoga should be personalized to meet individual needs. Modifications and variations are encouraged, promoting a sense of self-acceptance and self-confidence

• Restorative yoga is a practice focused on rest and relaxation. The poses involve the use of props and aim to calm the nervous system, providing an opportunity for deep relaxation and self-care

New Study Explores How Yoga Reduces Stress

The Effect of Yoga on Stress, Anxiety, and Depression in Women

Exploring the therapeutic effects of yoga and its ability to increase quality of life

Effect of Yoga on migraine: A comprehensive study using clinical profile and cardiac autonomic functions 

Tashya hosts a virtual Saturday morning restorative yoga class, so no matter where you are, you can join Tashya at 10am Eastern for an hour of self-care as you start your weekend.

Want to join Tashya for a virtual yoga class?

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

About Tashya: 

Tashya is a former educator with a Bachelor’s in Education and a Master’s in Health Promotion.
After finishing her degree, she became a certified health education specialist (CHES). Combining this with her health coaching certification she has created programs, curriculums, lessons, and experiences on the subject matters of mindfulness, yoga, wellness, SEL, self-care, and empowerment.

Enrolling in a yoga teacher training allowed Tashya to do the hard work of healing herself by applying yoga philosophy, meditation, and aspects of her wellness coaching. She removed herself from toxic behaviors and relationships. Using her own experiences, she has been able to create programs that empower women to thrive as their best selves.

After leaving the classroom, Tashya worked for several different non-profit organizations teaching kids cooking classes, nutrition education, social emotional learning skills, girl’s empowerment, yoga, mindfulness, and self-care practices. She is a professionally trained and certified health coach and yoga instructor.

Tashya is a passionate advocate for promoting wellness and empowering young people and adults to know their worth and practice self-care on a daily basis. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY where she continues to teach yoga, coach clients, and write about various wellness topics.

Laurie: Welcome everyone. Today I am talking to Tasha Knight, who you may recall has been a guest on the show already, but this time she’s back to talk to us about the benefits of a regular yoga practice. Now you might also remember that Tasha is a former teacher turned certified health educator, health coach, and yoga instructor. And she discovered yoga while she was working on her master’s degree in health promotion. And now she’s on a mission to empower individuals who are interested in taking a more holistic approach to their wellness journey. Welcome back, Tasha.

Tashya: Thank you, Laurie.

Laurie: What I would like to do is start with kind of like your backstory and how you got into yoga and definitely like your journey to becoming a yoga teacher. Can you tell us about that?

Tashya: Yes, absolutely. I actually came to yoga through meditation first. People usually come to yoga first and then find their way to meditation. But I was in grad school and my master’s is in health promotion. And I had one semester, we had an entire class on meditation. So we were learning the philosophy.

We were learning background and all of that. And we had to practice different types of meditation. So I started practicing the meditations. This is not about meditation, but the usual thoughts, I can’t do meditation. I can’t say it and had a lot of misconceptions about it. really began to understand and dive into it a little bit more.

And then from that started a meditation practice and then thought, Hey, maybe I should do a yoga class. So I took a couple of yoga classes and I actually wrote a blog post about this on my website. I didn’t like yoga and I didn’t think that I could do yoga. And I thought like, I can’t slow down. I can’t sit still. I can’t get quiet. I’d rather do a different type of movement, something a little more hardcore. Because I had been practicing the meditation, I found that when I showed up to the yoga class, it, I was able to practice it. I was able to connect to the breath and find that because I had learned how to slow down in the meditation.

Did I ever think I was going to be a yoga teacher? No. If you had asked me ten years ago, that wouldn’t even have been on my list of goals or aspirations. For some reason, I just felt like that was the next step for me. I was already a health coach. I had already gotten the degree in health promotion. I was already, you know, helping people and being of service in that way.

And then I started getting ads for this yoga program that was specifically for educators. And as you know, Laurie, I used to be a teacher. And so I thought, of course, I’ll go learn how to be a yoga teacher around my people, around other educators. And that’s what I found myself doing. So I ended up taking a yoga teacher training that was specifically for educators, very social, emotional learning based learning, how to incorporate that into your classes.

And I loved it. And I started to dive more into the philosophy and more into deepening my yoga practice, deepening my meditation practice, learning how to breathe better and all of that. And now I can’t imagine my life without yoga. I can’t imagine not sharing this. with other people and helping them to calm their anxiety.

It’s helped me with my depression. It has helped me with stress. It has helped me to just calm down in a world where I am constantly busy, busy, go, go, go. And this has just given me another tool for self care and to feel better in my life.

Laurie: Okay, so you already dipped your toe here into my next question, which is how can a yoga practice contribute to overall better health? And you mentioned some things that have been helpful for you. People may have a like a preconception about yoga, which is you go, you do some stretches, you lay on a mat. How does this help? But some very specific studies have been done on how yoga can help you physically and mentally. I just want to make sure people are aware of that.

Yoga has been shown to help lower cortisol levels, which is a stress hormone. So it helps with stress management, which is a huge factor in improving mental health. It’s also been shown to reduce anxiety and depression symptoms. It has been shown to help reduce chronic pain, reducing chronic inflammation.

It’s also been shown that it can help with your cardiovascular health, and this is amazing that it actually can impact your heart rate, your blood pressure, your cholesterol. It’s also been shown to help you sleep better, and because a lot of yoga practices incorporate breathing, it can actually make your lungs stronger.

So it might help if you have any kind of chronic lung conditions. And then the last thing I’ll note is that it has been shown to help with migraines. So if migraines are something that you struggle with, there’s a study that has shown that yoga may help to reduce the number of migraine headaches that you are experiencing. I think that’s amazing that all of this can be done through yoga. What are some other ways that yoga can really improve physical and mental health when you have a regular practice?

Tashya: Well, I think that it, um, allows you to spend time with yourself, right? So it improves your self acceptance. I think it improves your self confidence, right? Because your. listening to yourself, right? Like when I say, I say often at the beginning of a class is I’m just your guide, you know, your body and your mind’s better than I do. So what you need to do to make yoga, it’s all about you and it’s yours. So finding ways to use breath, right? Connecting your breath to your movement It allows you to find ways to get quiet, to slow down, to take a minute, right? That’s just yours. It also allows you to move your body in certain ways.

And I know that we have spoken before about trauma, and it allows you to move some of that through your body. It builds a more, um, stable foundation for yourself, helping you with balance, helping you with flexibility, with mobility.

And as we start to get older, um, we, some of that gets a little lost, right? So helping to build that strength and helping to build that balance and flexibility and mobility for yourself is really important for physical health. And it’s important for emotional and mental health because you’re doing that check in.

You’re taking time to listen to what’s coming up for you. And then hopefully not brushing that aside or stepping it down, hopefully taking some time to, um, bring that in. There’s more aspects of yoga than just the movement, right? There’s the meditation, there’s the breath work, there’s the learning to sit.

There’s also the living in your values. How are you showing up off the mat? And that’s a whole nother class in itself. So I won’t dive into that. So maybe that’s a, uh, another interview, but, um, I just think that it helps you in so many different ways in showing up for your life and connecting to who you truly are.

Laurie: I love that.

Tashya: I just really want to use yoga as a healing practice more so than a workout. Thinking from a trauma informed lens, how can we use yoga as a way to move our trauma through our body? Because we store it, I don’t know if you’ve ever read the book, The Body Keeps Score, by Bessel Van Der Kolk. And talks a lot about how we are not able to process the trauma.
Whether it is repressed memories, and sometimes it’s not even that. We know the trauma happened, we remember the trauma happened, but we don’t allow ourselves to deal with it. It’s more of a like, okay, that happened, stuff it down, move on. We wonder why our bodies are sick, our minds are sick. And so we wonder why that is.

And it’s because we’ve allowed that all to be trapped in. So my goal with yoga is finding a way to use it into connecting to your breath, moving your body. Yes, it stretches you, which is very important, but also using that just to learn how to breathe better, how to, you know, cause meditation is part of yoga and how to calm our nervous system down.
How to find a way to cope with our stressors. That’s a little bit more healthier than some other avenues. That is really how I approach yoga. A lot of people are like, Oh, it’s too slow. So I don’t want it as my workout. Yes, it is slow because it’s asking you to slow down. You’ve lived your life in a form of, you know, whatever goes on in your daily life, taking some time to yourself.

So, you know one of my big things is about finding self care for us. And it doesn’t just mean. Put on a sheet face mask and take a bubble bath or, um, it can be, I mean, I do those things. Not right now. It’s a little hot these days, but you know, once it becomes colder and winter, that’s definitely something I enjoy.

But finding one hour in your day where You sit with yourself, or you have that gentle movement, or you are working on your breath, or you’re thinking about some of the topics or, um, statements that maybe I bring up during the class as you’re moving, that is you taking care of yourself. That is you giving yourself self care.

That is you giving yourself love by allowing that one hour of slow down in that one hour of just you. We focus more on the movement of the body in yoga and the breath is really what’s so important. Something that I say to folks who are runners or cyclists, or they do something a little bit more of a high intensity workout rather than yoga, working on your breath helps you to have endurance for that. It allows you to stay in those workouts longer because you can recover your breath quicker because you’ve learned how to deepen that inhale and exhale so you can stay in that exercise a little bit longer than if you were breathing more shallow.

So that’s also another point that I like to bring up to people who tell me that they, you know “I can’t do yoga” or “I don’t like yoga and I don’t want to do it” and I’m like “Do you do others sports or other movement? because this breath alone will help you to feel stronger in that as well.”

Laurie: That’s a really good point.

Tashya: I think that’s something people don’t realize that, that breathing is such a big part of a yoga practice. When you’re talking to people about yoga and they tell you “Oh, I can’t do yoga. I tried it. I don’t like it.”

Laurie: What’s kind of like your number one tip for getting into a consistent yoga practice?

Tashya: The different styles are very important for yoga. And I also think a yoga studio and yoga teacher is really important because, um, If you go to a class and you already have those preconceived notions, right, of not wanting to do the yoga or having something about yoga already in your mind and not being for you or you’re not good at it, when you go and you find a teacher that is really welcoming or a teacher that makes yoga accessible, right, that normalizes using props, or normalizes you listening to your body and you figuring out what works for you.
Nobody shows up to a class of any kind and knows everything the first day. When I used to teach, I would say to students, like, you all didn’t show up to kindergarten, knowing everything. You all didn’t show up to third grade knowing all the answers, right? That’s why you’re here. The same applies to yoga, right?

So when I hear people say, “Oh, I’m not good at yoga”. Oh, neither was I. And you don’t have to be good at yoga. That’s not what it is. And something I like to say often is it’s a practice. So you’re always going to be evolving, you’re always going to be learning something new in yoga if you have an open mind.

And I think that’s really one of the most important things, is showing up with an open mind. Taking all of these other misconceptions or myths about yoga and placing them to the side. And just allowing yourself to be open minded on, how could this help me? What could I learn from this? Going in with that beginner’s mind and what is my mind saying to me?
What is my body saying? How is my breath helping?

Keeping that open mind as you go in and finding a teacher who you vibe with. You are not going to walk into every yoga studio and vibe with every single teacher there. You can walk into a studio and only find one teacher you like. You could walk into a studio and not find any teacher you like.

And the style of class also matters. My tip is play around. Go to a few classes, try a few different teachers out, try a few different styles out, and have that open mind, and allow yourself to absorb what is being said, what is being done, what is being taught, and then make your decision from there.

Laurie: I’m going to share my, my experience with yoga, which is kind of like what you just described in that, you know, I tried it when it was really popular. I went with friends to a class and I was really intimidated. I am not bendy. I am not flexible. I was just really embarrassed because I couldn’t do. any of the moves. Like you said, you don’t go, you don’t show up on the first day knowing everything or being, being able to do everything. But that’s kind of how I felt that not being able to do any of that made me feel like I shouldn’t be there. So I went to yoga. I wasn’t good at it. So I stopped doing yoga. So when you don’t do yoga, you’re not good at yoga. So, you can’t expect to be good at yoga when you don’t do it. That math doesn’t math, right?

So, I love your advice of being willing to approach this with curiosity, like, how could this work for me? What styles appeal to me? What is it that I like about yoga and what is it that I want to get out of it?

And then, I think it was probably about five or six years ago, I went with a friend to a beer yoga class. It was just supposed to be fun. I like beer. I like my friend. I’ll go. I’ll hang out on my mat while whatever. It was a really big class in the brewery and It was this teacher said something to me that flipped the switch. We’re doing something I’m over here. Like, I don’t know, maybe it was triangle or it was a warrior pose. And I was sucking at it, hardcore. And she said “listen to your body, do this If it feels good in your body” And I was like “Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, wait a second….“

Because I had gone in with a very black or white “here’s how you do a move. If it looks like this, you’re doing it right. If it doesn’t look like this, you’re doing it wrong.”
But she’s telling me, I can modify this for what works with my body. And that was like a light bulb went off over my head. I was like, I can do yoga for my body. I can approach this in a way that, that works for me. And after that, I was hooked. I was like, okay, I can now give myself the space and allow myself to be a beginner and to be, and to learn and to, to grow in a practice.

Tashya: So I love that that is your advice to kind of, you know, approach it with a curiosity and a willingness to, to just do what works for your body. I love that you had that experience with that teacher, because that means that teacher was. welcoming, made it accessible, spoke to you as a person rather than, I’m at the front of the room, I know what’s going on, and this is how yoga is supposed to be.

That teacher made it about you, and that is what yoga is. The truth is, all of our bodies are built differently. All of our flexibility is different. Our mobility is different. Just our bodies in general, our bone structure, it’s all different. I’m really glad that even though you gave up on it for a little bit, that you still had an open mind and you went to another class and you found a teacher who embodied what yoga actually is.

Kindness, compassion, letting people be themselves, and tapping into who they are, rather than being at the front of the room telling you how you are supposed to be.

Laurie: Maybe the beer helped, right? It kind of loosened me up.

Tashya: Also that, sure. Yeah, it probably did.

Laurie: Um, but it was just like, I just felt like I finally had permission to just do yoga for me.

Tashya:I have a yoga client who comes every Saturday morning to my virtual class and for the past few years. And when I first, a few years ago before she came to the first class, when we were messaging about it and she said “I can’t do yoga. I’m not good at yoga.” I said to her “well, you don’t have to be good. Just show up.”

She now comes every week, if she took a vacation or, you know, during holidays when we don’t have class, she’ll say the following week, you know, I missed it. My body can feel that I didn’t do it. She can feel that she missed a class and she doesn’t want to miss a class. So I just think back to, and I’ve watched her also improve, in how she approaches the poses and how her flexibility has grown and her willingness to evolve her practice has grown and I’ve watched all of that and I just think back to the first initial speaking with her.” I’m not good at it I don’t think I can do it” and then now too It is part of her weekly routine and she she is there and I love that Improvement for her.

I just love watching that and one of my other favorite stories that I like to talk about is I started teaching restorative back in January, and at first I said, “no,  I don’t know how to teach restorative. I can’t do that.”  And I also was like, “and that’s too slow. We’re just laying here in restorative. That’s not my bag.” And the more I started teaching it, I’m hearing from the students at the end of class, thank you so much for that. That’s exactly what I needed. I feel so good now I’m going to go home and get some rest.

Like, and I could see the change in their posture and in their body and I could see it in their faces that at the end of class that was exactly what they needed. And that also changed my view of restorative and and allowing myself touse restorative as a healing practice. So I was already versed in a flow.

I already had my own practice, but even as a yoga teacher, I still had some type of misconception and I had to come in with an open mind and curiosity, as you said before, and so I love seeing that evolving as the more people practice. Can you talk a little bit more about restorative yoga? Just kind of like a description of what it is.

Restorative yoga, you’re only going to do about five or six poses throughout the whole class and you’re using props. So you’re using a bolster, blanket, blocks, a strap, whatever it is. And you’re using that as a support. So restorative is rest. You are using these, and you’re holding a pose for six or seven minutes, and you’re just allowing that prop to support you.

You’re allowing your mind to really relax. And you talked about something earlier when you were, uh, um, citing those studies. And with restorative, it is really calming your heart. It is calming your nervous system because you are sinking into this. You are deepening your inhale and exhale. There’s no stress being put on your body.

There’s no stress being put on your mind. It’s just allowing you that freedom to just slow down to come to a full stop and to just rest. And so then when you’re learning to breathe and you’re learning to find that support, when you go into a stressful situation, you can pull those tools back out.

Restorative yoga is it’s just really a time to rest your mind and rest your body, which I think is something we all need in our time right now where we’re constantly on the go and just giving ourselves that time to just really rest. So Tasha, right now you teach a virtual class on Saturday mornings, which is a gentle flow.

Laurie: Talk to us a little bit about your virtual classes.

Tashya: I had first started that it was going to be for beginners, people who are new to yoga. But then as I started to teach, I evolved my virtual class to be more of a gentle flow rather than just for beginners. We’re not going to be doing any handstands.
It’s really just starting your Saturday morning very gently, breathing, doing some gentle movement, waking up your body, right, because we all know by Saturday morning, it’s really hard to get up and it’s really hard to get the day going. And so how can you just. Find that time to ease into the day. Also giving yourself an hour of self care at the end of the week.

Maybe Saturday is the start of your week. I don’t know. What is it that you can do that’s just for an hour on a Saturday morning, very gentle to wake yourself up. The reason why I like it being virtual is that it’s very accessible to everyone. You could roll out of bed at 9 45 and click on the Zoom link at 10 a.m. and you’re there. No one’s looking at you. You don’t have to show up in a certain way, wearing certain leggings. It doesn’t matter. You can be in your pajamas in, uh, in sweatpants. Just coming there and just finding that nice way to wake up. You could be anywhere. A lot of my clients who come on Saturdays have not been in New York City. They’ve been in other states. But it’s easy because it’s on Zoom and there’s no stress or pressure to leave your house, to get dressed, to go somewhere when you can just do it right from your own home and feel comfortable. Right now, Saturday morning is the only virtual that I have, but I have been wanting to add some evening classes.

Tashya: So an evening virtual flow, you know, gently after work, and then also a restorative. So now I’m kind of putting feelers out to see if there’s some interest in those. As my business expands and so hoping that eventually that those will be some offerings and I can also put in the evening because not everyone can come to a Saturday morning class and sometimes people prefer something in the evening, especially midweek with everything they have going on.

Laurie: Very good point. What I’m going to do, Tasha, and you’re going to be giving our listeners a coupon code for a free class so they can join you, try it out, see how they like it. I’m also going to be putting all of your information, like your website and your social links in the show notes so that our listeners can get in touch with you and follow you.

Laurie: Thank you so much for being with us today.

Tashya: I always enjoy talking to you and happy to come on again and talk about lots more wellness topics.

CW: as the title implies, this episode describes a guest’s lifelong struggle with eating disorders

In this episode I chat with Debbie Lesko, an anti-diet and eating disorder awareness activist, who shares her personal journey of recovery from an eating disorder and how she became an advocate for body positivity and intuitive eating. She emphasizes the importance of rejecting diet culture and the harmful effects of intentional weight loss. Debbie also discusses the benefits of embracing an anti-diet mindset, such as freedom from food restrictions, improved self-esteem, and a healthier relationship with your body. She provides practical tips for transitioning away from dieting, including changing language around food, cleaning up social media feeds, and finding joyful movement.

• Is Recovery from Eating Disorders Using Intuitive Eating Possible?
• Key Takeaways:
• Quotes:
  • Resources Mentioned:
• Need help?
• Finding Recovery: A Personal Journey
• The Anti-Diet Movement: Rejecting Diet Culture
• The Power of Community and Support
• The Benefits of Ditching the Diet Mindset
• Looking ahead…
• Frequently Asked Questions About Recovery, Anti-Diet Living & Letting Go of Diet Culture
  • 1. Is recovery from an eating disorder possible at any age?
  • 2. What does it mean to be “anti-diet”?
  • 3. Isn’t weight loss still a valid health goal?
  • 4. What are the biggest mindset shifts when leaving diet culture?
  • 5. How do I explain my anti-diet stance to others without feeling awkward?
  • 6. What’s a good place to start if I’m just beginning to unlearn diet culture?
  • 7. Is Debbie a therapist or licensed professional?
• Episode Transcript

Looking to speak with someone about eating disorders concerns for yourself or a loved one?

About Debbie: 

Debbie Lesko is a 67-year-old grandmother and an eating disorder awareness and anti-diet fat liberation activist. She has been on a journey of recovery from her own eating disorder since she was eight years old. Debbie is the host of the “Diets Don’t Work” Facebook page, which is a community that supports and educates people looking to ditch the diet mindset and approach health without a harmful focus on weight.

In a world obsessed with weight loss and diet culture, it can be challenging to find a path to true health and well-being. But there is hope. Debbie Lesko, an anti-diet activist and eating disorder awareness advocate, is on a mission to help others break free from the harmful cycle of dieting and embrace a new way of approaching health. In our conversation, Debbie shares her personal journey to recovery and offers valuable insights into the benefits of ditching the diet mindset.

Debbie’s story is one of resilience and determination. From a young age, she was subjected to the harmful messages of diet culture, constantly being told that she needed to lose weight to be accepted and valued. This led to a lifelong battle with an eating disorder, with multiple hospitalizations and treatment centers along the way. But it wasn’t until 2017, when her job threatened her employment if she didn’t seek treatment, that Debbie realized she needed to make a change.

“I can’t leave my granddaughter,” Debbie recalls. “I can’t die. That would just hurt tremendously.” This realization became the turning point in her recovery journey. She sought treatment at Rosewood Eating Disorder Centers and immersed herself in various modalities, including intuitive eating and the Health at Every Size (HAES) approach. Through this process, Debbie discovered a new way of approaching food, movement, and self-acceptance.

Being anti-diet means rejecting the harmful messages of diet culture and embracing a new approach to health and well-being. It means letting go of the idea that weight loss is the key to happiness and self-worth. As Debbie explains, “Anti-diet does not mean anti-health. It’s pro-health.” It’s about focusing on nourishing your body and finding joy in movement, rather than obsessing over numbers on a scale or restrictive eating patterns.

One of the biggest pitfalls people face when trying to leave the diet mindset behind is the language they use around food. Debbie emphasizes the importance of eliminating labels like “good” or “bad” when it comes to food. “All food has nutritional value,” she says. “Your body knows what to do with it.” By reframing our thoughts and language around food, we can begin to develop a healthier relationship with eating and nourishing our bodies.

Recovering from an eating disorder and embracing an anti-diet mindset can be challenging, but Debbie emphasizes the importance of finding a supportive community. Through her Facebook page, “Diets Don’t Work,” Debbie curates a collection of posts and resources that promote body positivity, intuitive eating, and eating disorder awareness. The page has grown into a thriving community of over 4,500 members who share their experiences, ask questions, and support one another on their journeys to recovery.

Debbie also highlights the importance of cleaning up our social media feeds and surrounding ourselves with accounts that promote body positivity and reject diet culture. By curating our online spaces, we can create a more positive and supportive environment that aligns with our values and goals.

So, what are the benefits of embracing an anti-diet mindset and rejecting the harmful messages of diet culture?
Debbie shares three key benefits:

Ditching the diet mindset and embracing an anti-diet approach to health and well-being is a journey that requires commitment and self-compassion. But as Debbie’s story demonstrates, it is possible to find recovery and live a life free from the harmful cycle of dieting. By rejecting diet culture, reframing our thoughts and language around food, and surrounding ourselves with a supportive community, we can begin to embrace a new way of approaching health that focuses on nourishment, self-acceptance, and joy.

As the anti-diet movement continues to gain momentum, it is important that we challenge the harmful messages of diet culture and promote a more inclusive and compassionate approach to health. By sharing our stories, supporting one another, and advocating for change, we can create a world where everyone can embrace their bodies and live their lives to the fullest, free from the constraints of diet culture.

Let’s support Debbie in her mission to spread awareness about eating disorders, promote body positivity, and empower others to embrace an anti-diet mindset. Together, we can create a future where health is not defined by weight, but by the joy, nourishment, and self-acceptance that comes from living a life free from diet culture.

Yes. As Debbie shares in this episode, she found recovery at 63 years old—after decades of struggle and multiple treatment centers. Recovery is not limited by age. It’s never too late to heal your relationship with food, your body, or yourself.

Being anti-diet means rejecting restrictive eating, body shame, and weight-focused health messages. It’s not anti-health—it’s pro-health, pro-body autonomy, and pro-informed choice. It also means refusing to moralize food or tie your worth to your size.

Weight loss is a personal choice, but it shouldn’t be the default measure of health. Anti-diet living focuses on behaviors (like movement, nourishment, sleep, and mental health) rather than manipulating weight, which is largely out of our control. Debbie emphasizes informed choice—and understanding that weight loss diets statistically fail long term.

According to Debbie:

It’s okay to set boundaries. A simple, “I’m not discussing diets or body size anymore—let’s talk about something else,” is enough. Debbie reminds us that it’s not your job to justify your healing. It’s your right to protect it.

A great place to start is by educating yourself with trusted anti-diet resources. We recommend exploring the Top 12 Anti-Diet Book Club Picks—a curated list to help you understand the science, the history, and the liberation of leaving diet culture behind.

No. Debbie is a recovered peer, advocate, and anti-diet community leader. Her work is not a substitute for medical or mental health treatment, but her lived experience and curated resources offer powerful peer support. If you need clinical help, she may be able to point you toward qualified professionals who align with anti-diet values.

I just want people to know that recovery is possible. I was 63 years old when I found recovery. I had psychiatrists tell me I was hopeless.

I had therapists say, I can’t treat you anymore because you’re just so determined to fight us on everything. And here I am, I’m trying to help others now because I have found a better way. And it is anti-diet, health and exercise, intuitive eating.

It does work. You just have to let it, and recovery is possible. It happens.

I’m Laurie Mallon, and this is the Results Without Restriction podcast. The show where results have nothing to do with weight and everything to do with setting and reaching health and fitness goals that focus on what we’re achieving and not what we’re losing. We’ll talk about deprogramming from diet culture and get expert advice on reclaiming your relationship with food and movement.

Join me on this journey to get results without restriction. Today, I’m here with Debbie Lusko, who is what I call an anti-diet activist and a superhero. And she’s the host of Diets Don’t Work, which is a large Facebook community that supports and educates people who are looking to ditch the diet mindset and approach health without a harmful focus on weight.

Welcome, Debbie. Thank you. Thanks for having me here.

I’m pretty pumped to talk to you because this is a departure from our normal episodes. Normally, we are talking with coaches, nutritionists, trainers who are in the field helping clients, whereas you are an activist. Do you consider yourself an anti-diet activist? What do you call yourself? Eating disorder awareness and anti-diet, fat liberation activist.

I really wanna promote eating disorder awareness because it, of course, affected me personally, and that’s kinda what I wanna get out there. I’m gonna call you an anti-diet and eating disorder awareness superhero. Okay, this is my passion.

I wanna get the word out, and I go through Instagram and Facebook, and I pull the best of the best and share those posts. I want one place where I can come and see all the various encouragements, anything like that in one place. And that is why I have my page.

But there’s no income for me. It is strictly a labor of love. I say it in my bio.

If I can reach one person, then it’s all worth it. If I can stop one person from running down the track of an eating disorder, then that’s what I’m here for. You curate a lot of valuable posts from other coaches, dieticians, people in the anti-diet and health at every size to share this information with your audience.

You’re having a significant impact without even having a certification or anything like that, but you’re really out there sharing this message about being anti-diet and anti-intentional weight loss and how harmful all this diet culture messaging is and how pervasive it is. I like to get the backstory. So you can tell me how we got to this point where you became the anti-diet superhero that you are today.

Thanks, yes, and I appreciate the name you’re calling me. That’s a fun name to have. That story is that I am a 67-year-old grandmother and I have had an eating disorder since I was probably about eight.

My parents, my dad in particular, was very concerned about what other people saw and he wanted his children to look perfect. And so I was told I was fat and I had to lose weight from a very young age. I can remember being restricted food when I was four years of age.

But that persisted and finally at about 17, I said, fine, you know, fine. You want me thin? I’m gonna be thin. And I did and I lost a lot of weight pretty quickly.

Of course, was hospitalized within six weeks of dropping a lot of weight. And I told my parents that I had a mental disorder. And this is back in the early 1970s that we’re talking about.

And it’s even before Karen Carpenter or any of the names that had eating disorder. This is before that. So they didn’t really know as much in the 70s.

They probably had it in at some kind of DSM book at that point for anorexia, but they didn’t really know what to do with it. So they just told my parents to get me counseling and we did. In fact, I mean, they set me up with the church pastor, said, here help her.

And he did for a little bit and he was very good, but I was determined to make my father proud of me and continue on losing weight, which I did. I was always on a diet from the time from eight years of age till four years ago, I’ve always been on a diet. I was determined to stay that way.

So I’ve been in numerous treatment centers over the years and the most recent one was back in 2017 here in Arizona. I went to Rosewood Eating Disorder Centers, which I can highly recommend. And I don’t promote very many centers, but they’re where I found recovery.

During the course of all the treatment centers, I died a couple times. I remember going to one where I died in the elevator going up to the center and a doctor was with me at the time and he had to do CPR to get me back. And I fought them on it because I said, you should have let me die because I don’t want to be fat.

I don’t want to be fat. You’re going to make me fat. And I was very belligerent with the team at that center and said, no, I’m not eating.

And I tried and they put on some weight on me and I went back home and I immediately turned around and did the same thing all over again. And then in 2017, I got to a point where my job was kind of saying, you can’t go on like this. I was abusing drugs, laxatives, not eating.

My job figured it out and said, you have to get treatment. If you don’t, you don’t have a job. And even then I was still on probation because my job slipped.

I was in the bathroom all the time. I was not eating. I had no comprehension for what I was doing.

As an accountant, you kind of need to know what you’re doing. So I went to Rosewood and I spent almost a year and a half with them in all of their various modalities from inpatient to a residential to PHP to outpatient. And I did all the modalities and I kept saying to them, no, I’m not, no, I’ve put too much weight on.

You cannot make me put on any more weight. And I did, I put on a lot of weight in recovery. I got to a point where they handed me the book Health at Every Size.

And I got through the first chapter and I handed it back to my dietician saying, nope, nope, nope, can’t do this. This is out of the question. There’s no way I want to do this.

I can’t be happy in a fat bond. Proceeded to continue into treatment. And then in 2019, I found Intuitive Eating.

I read the book, was with a dietician now with a different dietician who was promoting it. And I went, okay, I can do this. And we talked about body image and I went back to Health at Every Size and I went, okay.

And by this point I had put on twice what I started out. I mean, I had put on the full amount of my body weight. And so I was very upset with my weight, but in 2019, it was January even, January of 2019.

And all of this stuff on social media was bombarding me, get on this diet, start this gym, start this, start that, the various new year’s resolutions. And I’m like, I’ve got to do something to fight that. I have to figure this out.

Cause I can’t go back to dieting. Cause if I do, I will die. And I had a beautiful granddaughter at that point.

She was four years old and I can’t leave her. I mean, I moved from Pittsburgh to Phoenix because of my eating disorder, but I stayed here because my family was here. And I couldn’t be without my granddaughter.

I thought, nope, I can’t do that. I can’t die. That would just hurt tremendously.

I was very focused on finding reasons why not to go on a diet. And at that point, diet, some work was born. I did it as a selfish venture.

I had to find the reasons why diets don’t work. Why my body was okay, just as it is as a fat body. And I had to find those reasons.

And all of these posts now talking about anti-diet and health at every size and fat activism and eating disorder awareness. I thought it all out and I started reposting them. And by April of 2019, I had my own page with diets don’t work and it has grown ever since.

And I still do the same thing. It is just as much a part of my recovery as it is for everybody else. It keeps me focused on what I’m doing, what I need to think about, and knowing that I can help others is an added benefit.

It keeps me going, but I’m also helping others. Debbie, I’m not gonna lie, that was a little bit emotional. The part about what would save your life right now, because you got to a point where being in a smaller body was worth it to you.

It was life in a fat body or death, and you were making a choice. And then you finally had that, this is something I need to live for. Like this is the thing that I need to focus on.

What I’m doing is not working. It is going to kill me and I cannot keep doing this. So that was kind of like your turning point.

I had to find something to keep me going and the page has definitely kept me going. And I like that because it’s almost like it’s therapeutic. It’s keeping your mind on the right things.

You’re not just helping yourself now, you’re helping others. Right, exactly. And I’m not saying that it’s been easy all along.

The past four years have been full of ups and downs and we had COVID in there and that kind of threw a wrinkle in things. But for the most part, I have stayed on top of it. And I’ve got a wonderful support group.

I’ve got my dieticians who are a blessing to me and we have a support group that I am part of. And if I didn’t have them as well as the page, there probably wouldn’t be a page. I’ve got a therapist now or again, and she’s helping me process some of the things that happened to me as a child that still hold on to me.

It’s been four years of ups and downs, but I’m on top. I’m on top of it now. I can honestly say I’m recovered.

Sure, there’s little glitches that come in every so often, but I am not gonna say I am in recovery because I honestly believe that I have recovered. But God’s grace, I have recovered. Let’s talk real quick about what it means to be anti-diet because let’s be honest, the term anti-diet has become a catchphrase, right? It’s become popularized.

It’s been co-opted by the intentional weight loss brigade, because everybody knows diets don’t work. So we can’t talk about diets, but we still wanna sell the magic of weight loss. It’s gonna solve all your problems and make your life better.

We still wanna make that promise, but without that dirty D word, right? So being anti-diet, what does that mean? Anti-diet means rejecting all the diet culture, rejecting the idea that a diet is going to cure your self-esteem, your body image, your health, any of that kind of stuff. Anti-diet does not mean anti-health. It’s pro-health, as a matter of fact, diet.

And I use that word, but it really encompasses restrictions for the purpose of changing your body, your body size, your body weight. That diet is restricting any kind of food group, any kind of calorie restriction. And even though people say we’re not going to count calories or we’re not gonna track food, we’re gonna change you so that you eat just good food, end quote, there is no such thing.

So it’s rejecting the diet mentality of good foods, bad foods. It’s rejecting the idea that you have to earn your food. It’s rejecting that you can only look a certain way and you have to be this way to be a worthy person.

Everybody’s worthy, no matter what their size, what their color, what their shape, no matter what they are worthy, whether they can move, whether they can’t move, whether they’re disabled or not. It’s all part of that anti-diet. Yeah, I do get approached by health coaches who want to be on the podcast, who are quote, unquote anti-diet.

But when I dig a little further, they’re using weight loss as an outcome, as a metric, but they’re using these Jedi mind tricks to kind of sell you on the same harmful behaviors without the title. So we’re still restricting things. We’re still using the terms good, bad, clean, dirty.

We’re only eating these types of foods. Like we’re still vilifying sugar. We’re still vilifying carbs.

We’re still making it out to be there’s a right way and a wrong way, but we’re not calling it that. So I always have to dig and I have to say, okay, you’re saying you’re anti-diet, but are you actually still peddling weight loss, which is really the harmful silent partner in all of this? Yes, absolutely. And that is the biggest problem with so many of the diet programs that are out there.

New weight watchers and Jenny Craig, which has coming back again. And they all want to try and tell you, you can eat whatever you want as long as it stays within this point value or you can eat whatever you want as long as you count it as part of your daily intake. They’re still tracking everything that you eat.

Doesn’t matter. They have to get you to reduced calories that you’re taking in if they’re going to promise weight loss. And the terrible thing about it is, no matter how many calories you reduce, you are harming your body.

You are setting your body up for organ failure, for dizziness. There is a whole list of things that happens when you start restricting calories. No matter what the reason is, no matter how you go about intentionally losing weight, it’s not going to stay that way.

95 to 98% fail. No matter whatever you want to call it, lifestyle change won’t work. That is absolutely true.

Statistically, we have studies. We have so much science behind the inefficacy of intentional weight loss through these needs. The sad things to me are that, one, coaches and trainers are still being taught to use this as a metric, to use this as a selling point, to use this in marketing, to use this as a basis for health.

To help their clients get healthy, it has to be around reducing their body size, which is, it’s unfortunate. Medical personnel. Yes, exactly.

Doctors, they’re still all using BMI, which is bullshit. They’re still using all of this kind of weight-related information, which does not have any relevance to behaviors or actual health outcomes like your A1C, your blood pressure, your VO2 max. Like any of these actual indicators of health have very, very little to do with the size of your body.

For me personally, as a former health coach and personal trainer, I went through these trainings and they would teach you, here’s how many calories they should be eating. Here’s what their healthy, quote unquote, gonna use your quotes, the healthy body weight. And it’s like, this is so gross.

Let’s stop teaching this to the people who are then, as experts, pushing this information on the general public. I love that there are people like us who are just like, no, we’re not doing this. And there’s signs to back us up.

It’s not like we’re just making this up because we feel good about it. We just wanna be fat, leave us alone. We’re gonna make up some studies like this, right.

That’s what people think. They just want us to be lazy. I’m all for making sure that people have all the proper information as to why diets don’t work or why lifestyle changes don’t work.

Whatever you wanna call it, any kind of restriction. Make an informed choice. Right, and I will point out that, first and foremost, everyone has body autonomy.

So whatever you choose to do with your body is your business, right. You absolutely can make that choice for yourself, but make an informed choice. Make sure you’re actually getting factual information about the choices that you do make.

Right, that’s what I want people to know is I wanna give you the information and make it an informed choice. When you see people who are kind of new to the anti-diet space, they’ve had that lifetime of chronic restriction or weight obsession, things like that. They’re like, I’m done with this.

I want to move into intuitive eating or health at every size, anti-diet movement, but something’s tripping me up. What are the pitfalls that people tend to fall into when they are leaving the diet mindset and finding a new way to do things? I think one of the big things is calling food bad or dirty or unhealthy or treats or junk food. All food has nutritional value no matter what it is.

And your body knows what to do with it. So one of the biggest thing is I want them to eliminate any classification of food, whether bad, whether good, whether dirty, whether clean, whatever you wanna call it, it’s just food. Some foods have more nutritional value than others do, but it doesn’t make them any better than something else.

They demonize sugar, they demonize carbs, they demonize fast food, pizza, hamburgers, whatever it is, it’s all just food, period. You’re gonna get energy from whatever you eat and that’s what it turns into, it turns into glucose. One of the biggest mistakes is just calling it bad and I shouldn’t be eating this, it’s naughty.

I’m not being a good person if I eat this and I hear it on radio, I hear it at church, I hear it in the grocery store, in the hairdressers. I was a bad girl, I ate ice cream for dinner last night. No, it doesn’t make you bad.

Your worth is not determined on what you eat. That is the number one thing, is get rid of the labels on food. Two, clean up your social media.

Find the anti-diet accounts, get rid of any of the weight loss, keto, get rid of those accounts. Follow me, I have a ton of people that you can follow every single day. You can find somebody new on my stage.

Clean up your social media. The next time would be get rid of the clothes that don’t fit. Find the clothes that are comfortable.

I want you to feel nice in whatever you’re wearing. Get rid of that idea that thin is beautiful and fat is ugly and get clothes that fit. Get clothes that fit.

Oh, and exercise. Find the joyful movement. Find something you’d like to do.

If it’s a chore, don’t do it. If you hate running, don’t do it. Find something else.

Go dance, go play tennis, go play anything that you like to do. I have rheumatoid arthritis that has developed over the years here. And I used to be a runner.

I used to run marathons and used to run all the time. I can no longer do that. I loved running.

I loved running. I still wish I could go running, but I can’t. I have found swimming.

I have a pool in my backyard. I go swimming every day. And that is my movement.

That is my exercise. And it satisfies the movement in me. And I still can do it.

Or dancing or chasing down your kids or running around the house, cleaning and laundry and all that. Those are all movements. You’re getting benefit from any of that kind of stuff.

I love that you pointed these out because a lot of the things that kind of keep people stuck when they’re trying to move out of that diet mindset, there are things that they don’t realize that they’ve incorporated into their thoughts and patterns that kind of keep them stuck. So can I recap real quick? So you said one, examine their language that you’re using around food, get rid of the vilifying certain foods, the clean eating, dirty, whatever. Food is food.

Start looking at all food as energy. And yes, some foods have different nutritional values. Some have more fiber.

Some have this, but it’s quantified. It’s not qualified, right? There’s nutrition and everything. Eat what you enjoy and lose the language that kind of keeps you in that diet mindset.

So the second thing you said was get rid of the social media accounts that you’re following that keep you stuck in that. Obsessing about body size and what you’re eating and anything with a before and after picture, gone. I’m showing you my six pack, that kind of vibe, gone.

And I love your feed so much because I do find great accounts follow from it. And that’s kind of how I found you. And I was like, wow, this is like a goldmine of really great accounts to connect with.

I can say now my feed is just full of anti-diet, all that every size, body positive, larger bodies being active and just loving life. And I’m just, I’m thrilled. It’s made a huge difference in my social media experience.

The third thing you said was clean out the closet and get rid of the clothes that you’re hanging on to, your skinny jeans. Right. I used to have a pair of jeans I called my judgment jeans.

And my dietician of course went, no, you need to get rid of them because I would put them on to determine whether or not I’ve put on any weight or have I lost weight. They were judgment jeans, got rid of them, had to get rid of them. And buy clothes for your today body.

And find things that you feel good in as you are right now because confidence and positive self-image has nothing to actually do with your physical body. It’s all up here. And if you’re constantly putting on clothes that used to fit, but don’t, like that’s just gonna keep you stuck in that mentality.

So I love that you mentioned that. And then the other thing you said, having that moral kind of like connection with the food, like food is good or bad. It’s neither.

And you’re neither good or bad for eating it. If you eat a donut, you’re not bad. If you eat a donut and then you roll a bank, yes, you’re bad.

Yes, yes. The donut alone is not what does it. So we could be here all day talking about the benefits of ditching the diet culture and moving into a new head space of loving your body as it is being respectful of it and caring for it and finding ways to feed it and move it that you enjoy.

So what would you say are like the top three benefits of ditching diet culture? You’re going to find that you actually have freedom, which is food. You can eat what you want, when you want it. You’re no longer focused on the numbers of the food or exercise.

And here you are thinking about numbers all the time. And all of a sudden, they’re gone. I can go out to dinner with people.

I can go out to dinner with friends. I don’t have to worry about whether or not they’ve got something I can eat or not eat or is this going to fit into my plan today? You’re not thinking about numbers. You’ve got more brain space.

I have more brain space to go play with my granddaughter. And that may sound very elusive, but you really will find you’ve got more things that you can think about. You have more time.

I have more friends, more availability for friends, and I can talk to them without worrying about saying something wrong as far as diets are concerned, more self-esteem. You’re not fighting with your body anymore, respecting your body for what it does and how it is. That act of constantly changing your body definitely destroys self-esteem because it never does what you think it should do.

And when you give that up, you can be the person that you’re meant to be and you don’t have to fight with it anymore. You give up the fight. I’m not saying give up the fight for health.

I’m saying give up the fight for making it a shape that you think is acceptable. So freedom. Essentially, what I’m hearing is you get a lot of freedom in your head, in your calendar, and the way you feel about your body is just you’re not confined anymore to routines or thought patterns or restaurants or activities, how you feel about your body because you’re told to feel that way about your body.

Right, right. That’s very freeing. It was amazing to me when I went through this and pretty, it was very gradual, but when you realize how much time you used to waste trying to control something that inevitably was never gonna change, but just obsessing about how much, when, where.

I get a little angry when I think about how much time I did waste on all that, but we’re here now. So, but yes, it’s very freeing to finally let all of that go. So Debbie, you have a Facebook page, Diets Don’t Work, and you have a group.

You have a private group that people can join. Is a private group. You have to get to it by going to the Diets Don’t Work page.

You can get to it through there. You can always message me through the page and I will get you into the group. It is a private group where people post questions.

The group has almost 4,500 members in it right now. So you get quite an assortment of answers. The group is moderated heavily.

So you’re not gonna get a diet answer. You’re not gonna get, oh well, just tell them to quit eating sugar. That won’t happen in the group, I guarantee you.

It is a anti-diet, non-intentional weight loss group. I’ll put the link in the show notes and if anybody wants to join. Just to reiterate though, you’re not a therapist.

You’re not a counselor. You’re not a certified coach or anything like that. You’re not giving medical advice.

You’re not, this is more of a peer support group for other people who have been in this space. And when you come in to ask questions or get support, keep that in mind that if you do need a referral for a therapist or something like that, Debbie probably has resources to share, but just keep in mind this is a peer group and there will be no sneaky like weight loss answer, diet talk that sneaks in so that this is a safe place to talk about things in the anti-diet world. Exactly.

Perfect. And you have a website. Website, diets-don’t-work.net. I will put a link to your website in the show notes as well and they can visit you there.

They can sign up for your newsletter. I’m so thankful for you, Debbie, because I know that it’s hard. It’s hard to live with this every day and you are recovered, but it’s still something you’re doing every day to stay there.

It’s not like a switch was flipped and now I don’t have to work on this anymore enough to think about it after care. You’re in this every day reminding yourself, these are the messages I need to hear. These are the people I need to be surrounded by.

These are the things I need to continue to reinforce. That’s right. Absolutely.

And that’s exactly why I do what I do. Please just know that you’re helping so many people every day and that the work that you do is very, very important and it’s so impactful. I appreciate that.

I really do. Debbie, let’s wrap up. What I like to do at the end of every episode is have my guests give me their top three tips for whatever their area of expertise is.

Yours is recovering from eating disorder and ditching the diet mindset. Can you give us your top three tips for doing that? One, get rid of the scale. Two, change your language around food, around your body.

Three, get rid of all your apps that monitor your weight, monitor your food, monitor exercise. Get rid of them. You’re gonna do it with joyful movements.

You’re gonna do it with intuitive eating. You’re gonna do it with better mindset. One thing that we did not even touch on and then maybe this would be a second episode is, because you actually did mention a little bit about how people wanna talk about your diet and people love to talk about why.

Why is this interesting? I don’t know. But what they eat, what they, you know, how they’re, what they’re doing to their body. But finding friends who share this approach to health and letting people in your life know, listen, this isn’t a conversation topic I engage in anymore.

Depending on how comfortable you are with being straightforward about you’re not discussing diets anymore. You’re not talking about body size. We’re not talking about weight loss.

Making sure that the people around you know, listen, I’m, this is no longer an important thing to me. It’s actually very harmful. I’d like to talk about something else.

And maybe just having in your back pocket, like topic changers or like ways that you can say, listen, you know what? I don’t really wanna talk about that. Can we talk about something else?

 Realistic & holistic wellness with Megan Caldwell, personal trainer and health coach, who helps busy moms prioritize self-care,  move past overwhelm and exhaustion to find strength and confidence in both mind and body.

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Megan shares her journey of transitioning from a stay-at-home mom to an entrepreneur, running a fitness franchise for moms. Despite the success she found, she was burnt out, putting her own wellness on the back burner.

Recognizing the importance of holistic wellness – meaning it’s more than just fitness – she now focuses on five pillars of health: movement, hydration, nutrition, sleep, and stress management, because taking care of yourself, creating habits, and finding systems that work with you and the season of life that you’re in are critical to maintaining your physical, mental, and emotional health.

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Welcome everyone. I am here with Megan Caldwell. She is a personal trainer and a health coach who helps busy moms prioritize their own self care and find ways to truly feel like their best selves and every aspect of their lives.

00:46 As a wellness and empowerment coach, she helps her clients move past overwhelm and exhaustion to help them find strength and confidence in both mind and body.

00:55 Welcome Megan. Good morning. How are you? Okay, Megan. Let’s dig in here. What I want to do is start with your best story.

01:02 Tell me how we got to this point. Yeah, I find it so interesting. When we take a look at our own stories, each of us have our own stories.

01:09 I started in my professional career in education. So as a high school special education and math teacher, I was also a basketball coach.

01:16 Very engulfed in my career and loving it and had my first kid. And as those of us that are moms know, perspective change priorities change and my own health was suffering as I was trying to balance motherhood with balance and balancing career.

01:31 Brand new mom. I had actually stepped into a new role working at a university coaching and teaching teachers. And I got to a point where for the first time I really felt my own mental health suffer. I was having anxiety and panic attacks. And I got to a point where I said, I can’t do this anymore. So my husband and I picked up camp.

01:48 We were in Los Angeles and we moved up here to just outside Portland, Oregon, which is where we had family. And I said, I just want to be a stay at home. Just want to stay at home. I just want to raise this baby.

01:57 I just want to be a stay at home. I eat the hardest job in the entire world because I learned that I would not be my best self in that full time stay at home.

02:07 So four months after moving up here, I had the opportunity to own and operated a fitness franchise for moms called fit for mom.

02:14 And I took that on and I dove in and it was awesome. I could bring my kids to work. I ran the business out the whole my groove from a small thing into this great big entity here in Portland where at one point I had a team of 14.

02:25 I was nationally recognized by the organization. All these great things. And two more babies into that space while I was in that role.

02:33 This entrepreneurship and it was such an amazing season of my life. And from the outside, it looks like I had everything put together.

02:41 I had three healthy kids. I had a marriage. I had, you know, this really successful business and underneath the surface.

02:49 I was just pedaling constantly. I was putting my own wellness on the back burner again. And I hit burnout for the second time in my first two careers.

02:59 And I had women in the and asked me weekly, Megan, I don’t know how you do it. You’ve got it all put together.

03:04 And here I am leading these other moms and women and I’m saying, oh, yeah, I know it’s hard, but like I’m doing it and I’m leading.

03:11 And so it didn’t take me till I was about five years ago where again, I hit a low and I recognize this is not where I want to be.

03:17 I don’t want to be putting my kids on iPad so I can continue to serve others. I don’t want to be disregarding my marriage.

03:25 I want to feel good. And what does that even mean. So I got to the point where I’m I didn’t, I didn’t even know what I needed.

03:33 But what I learned is I needed to prioritize my own wellbeing first. I started seeing a therapist. But when I started taking care of my own sleep, my own fitness, my nutrition stress management boundary setting.

03:46 Time management, all these different pieces. When I started taking care of this, I was able to start to shift to see what does Megan need because I know I can be successful, but how can I be successful and also to care of myself?

03:57 Because I truly believe that when we as women take care of ourselves first, then we can serve better. Where this led to is I ended up selling my fitness franchise.

04:07 I recognized in my own journey and the work I was doing in the fitness space that wellness is more than just fitness.

04:12 So I truly believed when I was in the fitness franchise, that if women just came to my classes, like all the problems would be solved.

04:18 Everything would be good. You’re going to hit your goals and again through my own journey and just the work that I’ve done with women.

04:23 It is more than just fitness. It’s taking a look at our own holistic being, identifying what are our needs, what are our desires and then setting up sustainable habits to keep us feeling the way that we want to feel.

04:35 So a lot of it got me to this point on my own journey, again being in the fitness space and recognizing that movement is a piece of the puzzle.

04:45 But what else is needed here. So I now kind of preach five pillars of health. So movement and fitness is one piece of it.

04:53 Hydration kind of has its standalone pillar because it’s got such benefits and it’s one of those domino habits I call where when we have hydration in place.

05:01 And oftentimes other things on the place. Nutrition we’re taking a look at how we fuel our bodies rather than to pry our bodies.

05:07 We look at sleep. And then the biggest piece of the work I do in my coaching work across the board I’d say is stress awareness and stress management figuring out how we move through obstacles because we could have the best plan in place for fitness and nutrition.

05:20 And again, when your kid gets sick. When the life happens when you move it could all go out the window.

05:27 All of the things that you mentioned fitness, nutrition, hydration, stress management boundaries all those things. I love these because these when I was a coach this was these were all part of my program called results without restriction which was not about looking at what we can take away and what

05:44 We can force ourselves to do. But what are we adding what are we what are the things that are outside the gym or outside the kitchen that impact health and wellness.

05:54 So I love that that is is part of your program as well. I love that you include boundaries and time management because a lot of people do not recognize how those two things can impact your physical mental emotional health and that you are protecting your resources you are protecting your energy.

06:15 You are protecting your piece when you have boundaries and it is a critical piece of self care. So I love that you have incorporated those hydration.

06:26 I am the worst at drinking water. My husband is always like never I have some kind of physical. Oh, I have a headache.

06:31 Well, I feel tired of this. How much water have you been drinking? Finally bought a big like half gallon joke and I’m like, okay, this is happening.

06:39 This is what I’m going to do. And I started drinking two of those a day and I was like, is this what people feel like every day?

06:46 It was such a difference. Tell me more like how did you feel like a brand new person? My husband was like, I do not even want to hear it.

06:53 I do not want to hear it because I have been. He was the prepping the few for years. He has been saying it for like a decade and I’m finally like telling like I’m coming back to him.

07:03 Like it’s brand new information. I’m like, did you know that if I drink all this water and when they I feel so much better?

07:08 My stomach felt good. I don’t know how else to do more headaches every day from dehydration. Because one of those things that people often like hear hydration and they just think it’s so basic.

07:19 Like what is that actually going to do? What our body is made up of like 90% water or something, right?

07:24 It’s like something crazy like that. And so this is exactly like the aha that and it doesn’t always just take a week or two for women to figure out how to make it work.

07:33 I do find the vessel, so the water bottle and having it accessible can be like one of the easiest ways to help consume more water.

07:42 But that’s exactly what I work with with my clients is figuring out how to certain actions, especially when we get into hydration and nutrition is how to certain things actually make you feel, right?

07:52 Because you could be told that like X number of ounces of water is what you need per day. I know for a fact I need close to 100 ounces.

07:59 If I go less than that, I just feel parched and that is just me building this habit over time. I have other women who are trying to build up from 16 ounces a day to 24 ounces a day, right?

08:10 And just figuring out what is that number that you and your body needs first, what you’re told you should be doing.

08:16 Well, if the other part of it that was key for me was having a big container that I didn’t have to keep refilling because if I have to keep refilling it, it’s not going to happen.

08:25 And when I brought this joke home, it’s like a half gallon, he laughed at me and he’s like, you have a million water bottles.

08:32 Why don’t you just use those? And I’m like, because they have a whole 20 ounces, I have to keep getting up.

08:37 I have to like if I have to refill it, that’s just not going to happen. He can’t wrap his head around why that’s hard for me.

08:41 And I’m like, I can’t either, but listen, this is just where we are. This is what I need. And it works.

08:47 For me. So for me, it was making it so super, stupid, easy to just have it there and not have to like even make more work for myself.

08:55 Like don’t put speed bumps like on your own path to success. Like make your, make your, make your plants easy to water.

09:01 Okay. Just like make it super simple for yourself. But then stress management. I love that that is a big part of your program because when you’re not doing that that has such far reaching impacts physical mental and emotional.

09:14 I don’t think people realize that having an active stress management strategies in place can have that much of an impact on their physical health because it trickles down to everything.

Totally. And we know, we know for a fact that that increased stress and increased cortisol levels will lead to other health challenges down the road.

09:34 And so even if it’s thinking about those longer term thing, I work with a lot of women who have anxiety who have ADHD who have kind of these higher levels of sensory input if you, if you will.

What you need for stress awareness and management when you’re out and about at the grocery store is going to be different than when you’re doing work in your office.

And not only that, but there’s like that chronic low grade stress and then there’s like life event stress. And I think that the chronic low grade stress is so sneaky because you don’t even realize like you recognize when oh somebody close to us passes away that’s stressful or somebody’s a job or something like that that’s an event that you can recognize okay this is stressful. The constant little things that are like what’s that phrase like death by a thousand cuts it’s cumulative.

And I think that was a really big aha in my own journey is when I was working with with my therapist is she brought that to my forefront to say Megan you have been living in this state of stress up here that it’s not surprising that you have trouble making decisions.

That’s not surprising that you blow up at your kids when they do nothing it’s not surprising that conversation with your husband’s tens right because when we are in this constant state and again it doesn’t mean yes there’s a cute as you said like acute life events.

The death of a lump one a big move of whatever it is that will trigger great levels of stress but it’s more of all of these just like the hustle of everyday living that over time really catches up to people and that’s where I find women speak me out is they say I don’t want to do this anymore right.

I know that I can do this but I’m at a point where I don’t want to it doesn’t feel good.

I think too another factor in there is like social media so we see everybody everybody dying for the award of most busy look how many things I’m doing look how.

I’m going to be showing you a highlight reel where she’s doing all these different things of course she’s snapping like a twig as soon as she gets home but she’s not showing that so we are all kind of comparing our behind the scenes to everybody else’s highlight reel and we’re feeling kind of bad about

ourselves about what we feel like we should be able to handle. Totally and I think that so many women suffer from that is just that comparison truly is the thief of joy right if we’re constantly comparing ourselves to the rest of the world to other people’s highlight reel.

Yes, then when we see that and we feel that we’re like only down here we self sabotage right we continue to engrain stories that do not serve us.

12:07 One thing I work with women we talk about just even measuring success is how do we measure progress and not just again a over perfection right perfection being what you see on that person’s Instagram.

12:18 What are our measures of success because very well what you’re seeing on the screen isn’t even how you want to measure yourself.

12:25 It’s a little tricky to because we have die culture we have socialization of like how we’re measuring success are always these numbers right but there has to be like a qualitative way to look at how we’re improving different areas of our life versus a quantitative and saying how do we measure how we’re

12:42 improving our how we’re making progress without getting into. Numbers that aren’t necessarily indicators of health or indicators of anything right that’s that’s really helpful.

12:52 Right, I totally agree there’s one exercise I do with clients which I call the joy exercise which is really figuring out like what are the pieces that are missing in your life that you want that will bring you joy and for some it’s like peeling back the layers to say well I really think it’s this I 

13:06 used to do this and recognizing okay that actually doesn’t serve me or in the season of life I’m in I can’t do that activity right and it’s figuring out ways exactly that at the end of the day.

13:15 I want my clients to feel good right and we know that feeling good isn’t going to be a number on the scale it’s not going to be the size pants that you’re wearing again in this culture where we are constantly trying to rise to a certain standard.

13:29 What happens when you hit that number what do we often do we then try to go up to the next and the next and it’s like we’re constantly striving rather than also just recognizing where you are how you can be happy in that moment.

13:40 Right it’s never enough when you’re like okay well this feels good well what about more and what about more. And then we’re constantly on that that hamster wheel of going to the next thing not to mention we’re socialized to think you know that if you hit this number the pantsize the scale that’s going

13:56 to be some kind of measure of happiness measure of you as a person. And yes we do live in a society that treats people better the smaller they are so they’re they’re going to always benefits just by society by achieving these things but it’s not it has nothing to do with your happiness and your life

14:15 and the things. Right because we know that sometimes the people that look that standard are the most unhappy right it’s figuring out what are what are those things that make you tick what are those things that are going to really make you feel good and make you feel like you are thriving.

14:27 All right Megan talk to me about your program to help people can work with you what does it look like.

14:32 I have been loving the work I’ve been doing in the wellness and empowerment coaching space that’s what I call myself a wellness and empowerment coach.

14:39 Because again I want to walk alongside someone until they feel that they can just take it on their own. Currently I’m taking a new one on one clients in my holistic wellness coaching which I do primarily virtually so you can be anywhere and I have what I call the best self package it’s how do we help you feel

14:54 like your best self and kind of as we talked about today. Take a look at some of those basics like the hydration nutrition movement and then we do get into the boundary setting and really it’s tailored to whatever a woman needs so I have someone who really like to dive deep into that nutrition space

15:09 and work for it’s mindful eating and I have someone where I just do a lot of work around organizational and time management stuff.

15:17 It’s everything not just fitness it’s not just foods you do a lot of mindset work and empowerment and why that is integral to building a practice that’s sustainable over their lifetime empowerment.

15:30 I’m curious if people use that word to describe what they want it is what they want they want to be empowered but are they using that word are they like man you know what I could really use some empowerment today.

How can I how can I get empowered but but the thoughts that they have that mean that are more like man I wish I just felt like I wasn’t always like at the end of my rope I’m not always exhausted.

I wish I could like offload this on to somebody else or I wish I could just kind of like clear my schedule and take some time for myself.

Yeah, I find that women don’t often use that word empowered or empowerment but more so we’re hearing it kind of exactly like you said more I want more of a sense of control.

Which comes down to kind of again with the way the brain works in terms of that all or nothing mindset is we want it this way or this way well, how do we find that happy medium right.

I also find women and just in the work I do at the crossover between wellness coaching and craning clients physically training clients is just the feeling of strength and this feeling of energy right because one of the number one.

I guess challenges that the woman I work with face is just this constant feeling of exhaustion and like we’re constantly spinning the wheels.

So how do we work to change things so there’s not so much brain power. And that face so we do feel more empowered and we feel more in control, if you will, of of what we’re choosing to do with our life.

The human brain is such an interesting thing, which has evolved over millions of years and we just naturally as humans are brain goes to the negative as a safety mechanism to try to protect ourselves as human and keep us safe.

And so part of the work that I do with women is helping them shift that mindset to adopt a more positive mentality not to say that there’s not space for negative thoughts and for pain and for all of that, but just learning how to reframe certain situations so we can continue to move forward in the direction we are wanting to go. So is this kind of like a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. Yeah, absolutely exactly that you know fixed mindset being that you are set in your ways, but the cool thing, especially I’ve got a background in education is human brains are adaptable and malleable and so just being able to recognize that we have the power to change our brain change our thinking just as we do any other habit that we’re looking to change.

Right, so it’s not a change in all of these kind of grooved in patterns like neuro plasticity it’s the power to be able to go in and say this is the way I normally would approach like not even meaning to but just my default mode of when this happens.

18:09 What I think this is how I feel you can reprogram that that is mind boggling that you can change the reaction to have to something just by observing the pattern of what you normally do and stopping it and saying this is how I want to think about this and then you start to do it.

18:26 Exactly, and I think that we live in this culture and society were constantly on the go I work primarily with busy moms who are just like holding all the roles and constantly go go go so many expectations that oftentimes we don’t even take the time to.

18:40 I think that we do have the power to make those changes in brain and in body. Something that I’ve noticed and that something you’re doing physically can change where you are mentally like it really changes your state when you do something physical.

18:57 I do believe that movement is one of those kind of keys to unlocking women’s health when we can figure out how to insert regular movements intentional movement and purposeful movement as I call it.

19:08 Then we start to see some of the other shifts in their wellness happen to just such an unlock for a lot of people kind of connecting to the things that we’ve already talked about the brain piece and the thinking piece with the movement piece of this what I find.

19:24 With a lot of the woman the woman that I work with is that we have these beliefs as to what fitness what exercise needs to be, just based on the way that we are raised.

19:34 So we have this notion that it has to be a 60 minute class it has to be hard and sweating it has to be at the gym it has to be all these things and so then we fall into this all or nothing mindset of well.

19:45 I didn’t make it to my 60 minute class so I might as well just start again tomorrow or I’ll try again tomorrow as opposed to recognizing the power of again a lot of the woman I work with our working moms.

19:55 And just being able to take. 3 10 minute breaks throughout your day or 5 minute breaks even to just get up and move your body is that walking up and downstairs putting your laundry in is it a light stretch.

20:07 And again just working to shift the mind because when we change the mind we can then help change those actions for long term success.

20:14 For me it’s like lifting weights. If I can just take a few minutes take a few minutes to lift some weights my whole day is different.

20:23 Yeah and there’s so much research behind obviously just the power of movement whether it’s strength training whether it’s going out for a leisurely walk and just the power of moving your body and the endorphins come up and you know clearing the head some.

20:36 I think also you know there’s this the saying I guess that motion changes emotion. It’s even something as simple as okay you’re sitting at your desk your work done a work project you’re getting really frustrated you’re feeling anxiety come in as you can’t figure it out even just to physically remove

20:51 yourself from that space and change your location. Right it’s the physical movement and then it’s also just being in the front space can have so much power that’s why my watch is always like alright.

21:01 It could happen to go somewhere else for like five minutes you don’t have to do anything just go be somewhere else for five minute stand up just stand up.

21:10 Yes, we’ll look a little bit different when you sit back down. Totally and I think that one thing that I’ll often share either with clients or if I’m doing you know presentations or workshops is just to remember that as human beings again we talk a little bit about the human brain but as human beings

21:22 we are naturally born to be moving creatures. Hundreds of years ago we are hunters and gatherers and so just naturally our body doesn’t care for the sedentary lifestyle and over the last couple hundred years what do we do.

21:35 We sit at our jobs we sit in consume social media or TV or even sit and read right do we just have such a sedentary lifestyle that our body actually craves it and so I love this because we just covered physical activity impacts mental state and then the way you think about how you move.

21:53 Can also impact how often you do it and it’s a kind of like a back and forth like change the way you think about what activity needs to be you’re gonna do it more often you’re gonna have that physical movement that’s gonna change how your brain is kind of working at the moment and it’s going to snowball

22:10 . It totally is and it like comes down to that concept of the chicken and the egg right where which one comes first which one do you need first and I feel like for a lot of people changing up here can be really challenging.

22:21 So why not start by just trying to move your body start with five minutes and then see where that goes because it’s hard to just change the thoughts to then change that behavior right kind of take action and learn from it.

22:33 Like whatever new habit you want to have do something this big and then just let that momentum push you to keep doing other things and keep it going.

22:43 Building sustainable healthy habits is at the base of my holistic wellness coaching. I see so many women come in and saying I want to feel better I want more energy and they’ve tried all these extremes in the past with work for so long right we can do an intense workout program or eight or 12 weeks.

22:56 And then what happens is eventually life happens you get sick you travel some variable changes and then we fall off and need to come back and that’s why my approach is start small use habit stacking.

23:10 You know again success build upon success so we can just find tiny success recognize it and celebrate it. Do you do online and virtual personal training.

23:19 I do majority of my business is online and virtual a lot of strength based personal training as we know that’s so important especially as we age, I we have a lot of the wellness coaching work into it.

23:30 My training approach in the in the physical space but it’s all about functional movement. It’s what type of movements do we need and how come against strength so we can continue to enjoy the activities that we want to be doing one more 70 right.

23:43 Yeah, as we get older things are things are different. Yeah, they’re much challenging there are things I need to be doing so that I can keep moving it’s not always going to be this easy.

23:53 My target market is busy moms who are feeling overwhelmed and I help them find that confidence find that strength in both body and mind.

24:00 So I do some in person personal training but most of the stuff I do is be a zoom either personal training and the wellness coaching as well.

24:08 I love that now you do like real time zoom session like most of my clients I work with one time a week and and we’ll do one live 45 or 60 minute session depending what we’re set up on.

24:19 And then I do use an app where I can program and other workouts for them as well to do on their own time I also have a big of live recorded workouts from my group fitness virtual classes so often direct women.

24:34 To some of those as well for those that prefer to like work along with something as opposed to just check exercises off the box.

24:40 It’s nice to at least feel like you’re working out with somebody like when you’re home alone, but at least you feel like you have some kind of support.

24:48 You have a free gift for our audience it is the weekly wellness tracker can you talk to us a little bit about what that looks like.

24:54 Yeah, this is something that I created based on different trackers different planners that I’ve personally used that I’ve used with clients in the past.

25:02 I find oftentimes when women feel so far off track or want to work towards some type of change one of the easiest ways to plan and see success is using some type of tracker.

25:14 So I’ve set this up pretty simple. You can track kind of my five basic wellness areas or you can put your own stuff on there and I use it as both a planning tool as well as a tracking tool when I say tracking.

25:29 I want it to be a space where you check it off or you put the sticker on to celebrate because as we’ve talked about like our brain wants to see success.

25:37 And I love this even more so I know that some women start with this with me and then move into an app or move into the regular planner but having of your wellness and one space can be really powerful.

And I am one of those physical write out my so I can check things off because I have tried to get into apps for it but something because it’s so easy right you have it on the app it’s all organized you can like, but what something about seeing it on a piece of paper checking a box putting a sticker seeing it done. It has so much more of a mental impact

I agree yeah and I think the physical writing of it there’s research behind that just says that that will ingrain more into your into your brain into your psyche you know like to help you find success like yes apps definitely have a place and for some women that is what works at the end of the day, I don’t works for you.

Megan, what I like to do at the end of every episode is have my guests give us their top three tips.

The first one is just to remember the season of life that you’re in oftentimes we are comparing ourselves back to our past cells And so remember what’s within your control, because it’s very easy to get caught up on everybody else’s ish or things that are outside of our control so to just remember when making change remember the things that we do have the power to control.

My second one is giving yourself permission, I think, as busy women, especially moms again we are constantly in this giving mode that is what society preaches to us is that We should be meeting everybody else’s needs, we should be giving all the time give yourself permission to prioritize yourself. 

You have to until you give yourself permission and recognize that you can take time for you, you can put your own needs first it’s really hard to make change, because otherwise you’re doing it in a resentful state. I heard a lot of should so having that thought we’re like I should be doing this I should be doing that should that be like that should be a flag.

We could talk a whole episode on this constant of shooting ourselves give yourself permission and identify what are the things that you actually want to do what you need and want to prioritize.

And then I think the last piece of advice is just don’t feel like you have to go it alone. There is such great power and accountability and camaraderie whether it’s finding a group support whether it’s having an accountability buddy or if you are ready to take it to that next level, finding a coach, finding somebody who can help guide you and see your cheerleader, give you tools and support and help you work through the change that you’re looking to have.

We know for a fact that motivation is going to come and go. So if you’re feeling motivated to start something, reach out, find a buddy, find a coach, right, because when you come to your lower points, that’s when you’re going to want to have some systems in place and have some other links, I have your website, I have all of your social media links, I’ll be putting those in the show notes as well as some of the links, some other things that we kind of mentioned like some studies you talked about.

So I’ll put that in the show notes as well and a link to book a call with you and connect with you directly.

Megan, thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Laurie, this was fun. I’ll see you next time.

VIEW THE TRANSCRIPT

In this episode I sit down with certified health coach Kim Darroch to explore the benefits of creating an anxiety-friendly life and how making holistic lifestyle changes can minimize the impact that every day stress has on your physical and mental health.

In this episode I chat with Kristen Koeller who is an ACE Certified health coach, a group fitness instructor, and a personal trainer. We sit down to talk about the highs and lows of life  and the value of approaching these times with a growth mindset that allows us to move through the peaks and valleys with curiosity and be open to what we can learn from both.

• Episode Transcript

Welcome, everyone. I am here with Kristin Keller. Kristin is an ACE certified health coach, group fitness instructor, and personal trainer.

She has struggled with her own self-esteem, food, and body image issues for most of her life. She’s passionate about using her own experiences and her education to help others free themselves from restrictive diet culture and heal their own relationship with food, movement, mind, and body. Welcome, Kristin.

Thanks for having me. Excited to be here. Kristin, we have an interesting topic today and I think this is something that is important, especially in the age now of social media and highlight reels, and we’re going to be talking about peaks and valleys, highs and lows, cycles in life where you have times for growth, times for expansion, times to retreat, and times to reflect.

So just kind of working through and being transparent about what it looks like to be okay with kind of riding these seasons and never going to be the never ending high and the low is a failure, right? So this is just cyclical and how we can kind of learn to adjust and go with it through life. Kristin, you are a health coach and you’re a personal trainer and you are a group fitness instructor. So you have a lot of experience helping people identify and achieve health and wellness goals.

But what I’d like to do is talk about how you got to this point where you are a health coach, a trainer, a group fitness instructor, and why this particular area is important to you. 

Yeah, absolutely. I think my whole career path is kind of in line with what we’re talking about today with the peaks and the valleys.So going way back to the beginning and how I ended up in the work that I do growing up, just like a lot of us, I struggled with my body image. I struggle with my relationship with food constantly, just being really self-critical, always being really self-conscious. And that kind of held me back from doing a lot of things throughout my life because I didn’t want any attention on me

.And it was always just like constant secret striving to change myself and kind of be what I thought other people wanted to be to me or what other people would accept me as. And that was all the way up until my early 20s. When I went to college, I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

You know, you always heard like, oh, you’ll figure it out once you get there. So I was in my last year of college and I still had not figured anything out after changing my major about 10 times. I finally was like, I’m just going to finish this psychology degree.

And if I decide I want to do something else, then I will come back and figure it out then. Otherwise, I’m going to be here forever. 

My last semester of school, I took a class called the Psychology of Living Well.And that was the one class that really changed everything for me. It was really all about the psychology of happiness. And our biggest project for that class, we had to make our own.The only requirement for that project was it had to be something in line with improving your quality of life. So with it being my last semester in college, and like I mentioned, I kind of let my self-consciousness hold me back from doing a lot of things my whole life. My last semester of college, my project was just to go do all the things I had been missing out on for the rest of my, you know, three and a half years in college.

So I was trying different things. And one thing led to another. I decided I was going to run a 5K.And that really spiraled into finally achieving the weight loss that I had always been striving for in the past, which I thought was great at the time. I felt great. I finally did this thing that everyone praises.

Everyone compliments you. I always had an interest in like how to eat well and live well and move well. But it wasn’t really in the healthiest context.It was the context that I knew that we see a lot with diet and weight loss culture. I was really into going to the gym. I was trying different things.I graduated from college and decided to go use my psychology degree working in the Department of Social Services. 

But really, I remember one time I tweeted, like, what do I have to do to just spend all day in the gym, right? I had to kind of turned into one of those gym rats. Eventually, long story short, I went and got a job at the gym.That’s how you spend all day at the gym. You go work at the gym, right? As I started working at the gym, I was working on my personal training certification. So I was like, I don’t know what I want to do with my life.

But I guess I’ll just help other people that know what they want to do with their life be healthier while they do it, which turns out that that is an actual career. But at the same time, I started experiencing the side effects, I guess, of rapid weight loss and the weight loss that we tend to see in our diet and weight loss culture. Your survival instincts start kicking in when you’re not eating enough to keep up with how much energy you’re putting out.

And I started struggling with overeating, binge eating, just kind of losing control around food, which then just really plummeted my image of myself that I had built up so high. All of a sudden, it was like, I have no self control or no willpower. 

Why can’t I do this anymore? And I didn’t understand that.I started honing in more on nutrition at that point. I’m going to work on cleaning up my food, right? So I did that for a while. And I’m still just really struggling with just the up and down and like being quote unquote on track and then being off track and kind of the yo yo dieting.

And I just did not understand it. And it really sent me into a depression again, because I just did not understand what was wrong with me. I felt like something was wrong with me. This had been happening for on and off for a few years.

 Eventually, my depression had gotten so bad to the point. Like I went to therapy a few times.I tried that my depression eventually got to the point where I decided to go to the doctor and try some medication. And I think that was, you know, like the little bit of the push I needed to get my mindset in a better direction. And I started implementing more self care tools.

And I know self care is kind of the trendy thing right now, but I’m not talking like wine and a bubble bath type of thing. Like changing the way I talk to myself, working on affirmations, doing meditation and yoga, practicing gratitude and journaling. And that is when like the light bulb kind of went off for me that you can exercise, you can eat “super healthy”. But if your mindset isn’t in the right place, it’s not going to work. 

So that’s how I eventually came into health coaching. You know, I got my person training certification. I’ve never actually done personal training a day in my life. Just didn’t resonate with me with where I was. You know, as I grew through that, I was managing our juice bar at the gym for a while, trying to just get deeper into the nutrition side of things. And then eventually, you know, I came to this revelation that it’s more than diet and exercise. And that’s where health coaching came in. You know, it’s such a more holistic approach to incorporating your stress management, getting good sleep, getting good rest and recovery. And then also changing the way we look at food and exercise. I don’t really like to use the word exercise anymore. I like movement because it changes your mindset around it, right? 

A lot of times you think about exercise and it’s like this grueling, unenjoyable thing. And as a health coach, I focus on helping people find movement that they enjoy and to work on their relationship with food. So it’s not in that that diet and weight loss driven perspective. Being able to enjoy your food, enjoy your movement, find you find balance in it all.

So that’s why, you know, health coaching really, really spoke to me and clicked with me more so than, you know, going into personal training and focusing just on the exercise or going I at one point was actually enrolled to go back to college for nutrition and dietetics. 

And then I, you know, I just have that light bulb. It’s like it’s not one or the other, just these two things.There’s so much more to it when you get that that mindset piece to it. That’s more. That’s the foundation that we can then build those other healthy habits on top of.That’s a great story and so common. We live in a world like that. You said you did the 5k, your body got smaller.People praised that. 

We live in a society that glorifies the shrinking down of people, of women in particular. It’s nice to get that recognition .It feels good when we’re getting that, that positive feedback, right? So you mentioned when you were working at the gym, you were on track, you were off track, right? Because you were restricting and then you were feeling out of control, trying and your body was doing what bodies do after restriction, trying to keep you alive. And it made you feel out of control. 

So you had that, that moment where you’re like, I mean, they’re on or I’m off that black and white thinking that is really super common because we’ve been programmed to thankless and you can eat well.You can eat poorly. That’s a very, very common, like diet culture view. And then the self blame, right? Your body is doing what bodies do.And we feel like it’s some kind of flaw in our lack of self-control or motivation. You don’t want it bad enough, like all these gross sayings that we have around why you haven’t achieved your goal yet. You must not want it enough.

You must not be disciplined enough, right? So gross. And then all this escalates and it impacts your mental health. So for you, that was a trigger to go, look, I’m going to go take care of all of me, not just the physical and you implemented self care. And I do love that you pointed out self care has become one of these popular sayings. And we think it’s manicures, bubble baths. It’s not, it’s preserving and protecting our resources, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, all that. Understanding what was important for you, for your mental health, for your physical health, all of that together. It wasn’t just food, sleep, stress management, meditation. 

That is, that is such a great way to regulate the nervous system, to help keep everything even.So I love that you did that. And then you moved into the health coaching. You know, you recognize that you don’t have to be a registered dietician and helping people just with their food or just with that.But it’s, it’s getting that holistic view of behaviors and not just outcomes. So I mean, I see a lot of people with their goals are get stronger, get faster. But a lot of times we’re so hyper focused on the outcome.We don’t think about what we need to do, be and have what we need to become in order to get there. And that’s what health coaching does. 

And I think too, one of the things that I experienced, that I think a lot of people experience is like you have this, if you have a weight goal and your goal is that number or shrinking or getting smaller or whatever it is, you can get there and still not be happy.Because the way you talk to yourself and the way you’ve been talking to yourself for years doesn’t change just because you’ve changed your body. Right. How you talk to yourself, how you treat yourself, how you see yourself, yourself, image and yourself, esteem.

If you’re hinging it on the shape and size of your body, no matter what you do, you will never be happy. Let’s talk a little bit what kind of things you do now. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I am a group fitness instructor also. So after getting my personal training certification, I stumbled into the world of group fitness and found that that is where I actually thrive. 

Last year, one of my coworkers and I actually started a program called Awaken, where we meet with people at six o’clock in the morning.We take them through yoga and meditation and then different morning routine tools to implement in their mornings. A lot of the things that I started implementing when I kind of discovered you know, that self-care aspect of things and the power of starting your day with time for yourself and with intention rather than hitting snooze a hundred times and rolling out the door with a piece of toast in your hand, which is, you know, that’s fine sometimes. But if you’re looking for some peace and serenity in your morning, taking a couple extra minutes to like gather yourself and remind yourself how awesome you are is really helpful.So I do we do that on Zoom. 

So that way, you know, we can still roll out of bed right before class. And then I do my one on one health coaching.I’m part of the Phoenix program. So I teach pound via the Phoenix and the Phoenix is a sober active community where the only cost for people to attend is 48 hours of sobriety. I teach some classes at our local addiction care centers or one of our treatment centers.

So we do some yoga and meditation and we can type things over there too. This is a good segue into our topic of having these rhythms, right? Where we do a lot and then maybe we step back and we take time for us and then we can come back refreshed and energized. But you can’t give if you don’t have anything to give, right? So we all need these kind of seasons or downtime to recharge our batteries.

That’s something that you have experienced recently. Yeah, this year has been full of challenges. It’s been a really, really hard year.

The year was off to a really good start. We started our online Awaken program last October. So we were a few months into that in January.I went to Mexico for a couple weeks, had a one week of vacation and then one week of working while we were in Mexico. So that was cool. And then as the year kept going, we just kind of, you know, felt like I was struggling a little bit more without really like a specific cause.In retrospect, I think it was waking up and leading a class every single morning at 6 a.m. Was starting to take a toll on me, but I didn’t realize that because I, you know, I love yoga and meditation. I love the class I lead. And so how could that be bad for me, right? And then in the end of March, we found out that my grandma had cancer and my grandma, she babysat me and most of my 15 cousins.

Every summer growing up. So she was a huge part of my life growing up. She was 87.She was still living by herself, raised seven kids by herself when her husband had a brain tumor from the time. I think my mom was in like, I don’t know, first grade up until he passed away her freshman year of high school. So my girl was just this amazing, strong woman.We found out she had cancer again at the end of March. And honestly, I was like, like my dad called me and told me she was going to the hospital. And I wasn’t worried about her at all because I was like, she’s been so strong this whole time.Like, and then a couple weeks later, we found out that it was everywhere. 

There was nothing that could be done. The first day of May, she went to the hospice.A couple weeks later, I was trying to manage my stress in a healthy way. I decided I would go rollerblading for the second time ever as an adult. A couple of things.If you want my three tips for rollerblading, if there is a sign at the top of the hill that says 8% grade and it’s your second time on rollerblades as an adult, probably don’t go down it. Number two, make sure you know how to use your brakes before you rollerblade down a giant hill. I don’t think I have a third tip.

Anyway. I feel like that second tip should have been the first tip. I practiced a little.I did a little practice and I was like, yeah, I got this. I stood at the top of the hill and there was a fence on one side and I was like, should I use the fence to walk myself down the hill and then go where it’s a little flatter. And I stood at the top.I was like, ah, girl, you got this. And I ended up at the bottom of the hill on my back. 

So I got a concussion.I messed up my neck and my back, which really impacted my work because a lot of my work was really physical. So I couldn’t teach classes for a while. You know, the timing of it was okay because it did give me kind of more reason to not be at work so much.So I got to spend a lot of time with my grandma. But, you know, it messed with my body. It messed with my head.You know, it’s supposed to be on screens and stuff when you have a concussion. I couldn’t exercise, which is my work and my stress relief. 

And then at the end of the month, my grandma passed away.So I had all of these things going on and it just kind of spiraled me down into this depression again. And at that point, I really started beating myself up again because I remember thinking like I have this figured out. I knew how to be happy and how to take care of myself. And this is my job to help people do the same thing, right? 

To achieve this, you know, this level of self-love and thriving. And here I am falling apart physically, but especially mentally. Like I’m not doing any of the things that I teach in my morning routine class anymore. My meditation, my yoga. I thought I had this figured out. This obviously isn’t the solution. So now what? You know, it almost felt like it was like that was my last resort and I don’t know what to do next. So I must be a failure. This must be all there is.It was a couple really, really tough months, mentally, even, you know, up until last month, you know, I started going back to therapy and working on my meds and stuff. And I think all of these things helped me come to that realization. Like I just had to cut back on everything that I was doing.

So that was, you know, my high and low just from January to like mid-summer this year. But that’s something I experienced in the past too, you know, when I thought I had things figured out the first time I lost the weight and got all the compliments and did the big thing that everyone wants to do. It’s like, oh, I got this figured out.And then my body started rebelling against what I was doing to it. And I was like, why can’t I do this anymore? I have this figured out and now I don’t and now I’m failing again. 

So it was really that a lot of that highs and lows of I got this.No, I don’t. I got this. No, I don’t.And so now coming into, you know, this season, really realizing like they’re always going to be the highs and the lows. And instead of, you know, beating myself up for coming back down, realizing that there are seasons of growth where you’re learning more and doing more. But then you need the seasons too where you process everything that you’ve learned or, you know, you face some challenges and accept that that’s part of life.But also realize that that doesn’t mean you’re a failure. That just means you have more to learn to take with you as you move forward. 

Kristen, recapping like you’re the highs. Things going great. Your work is going great. It’s fulfilling. It’s busy. And then you have a family situation. You have a medical situation. And now you’ve found yourself without the tools that you normally use to manage your stress that you’re experiencing a lot of. And it kind of compounds, right? Like it kind of piles on top of each other when you cannot manage that stress. So as you’re going into that, the valley, right? So you had your peak and now you have your valley. And you’re recognizing that your mental health needs attention. Being able to identify looking at your situation saying, okay, here’s where I am. Here’s where I need help. And I think that only comes from experience of having highs and lows and knowing what works for you. 

So if we only have highs and we look at these lows as failures or times where like what’s wrong with me? I thought I had it figured out. I love how you put that, that it just means, you know, there’s times of growth.And now we need to draw back. And as women, we tend to overextend to do all the things. We sign up for all the things.It’s hard for us to say no. I don’t know what you’re talking about. We want, we want, you know, we just want to help.But sometimes it’s to our detriment, right? It’s to the point where we’re overextended. And if we don’t recognize, if we don’t have a conscious boundary that we’re like, look, we know this is what we can handle. Everything outside of this just is too much for me.Your body, your mind tends to send you a message and say, listen, too much. Step back, take a break. Yep.

And I think I, you know, you’ve probably heard this somewhere within your work, but like the universe will like, first, it’ll send you a message with a feather and then it gets heavier and heavier. Eventually it will drop a piano on you. Right.And so I think I was ignoring those initial signs of like, hey, you need to, you know, you might be taking on too much hair. It’s funny to say this now. At the time, it didn’t really like occurred to me how crazy it is.I was teaching 15 to 20 classes a week. I rationalized that as like, well, most of them, I’m just doing like 10, 15 minutes of yoga and some meditation. 

You know, it’s not like physically exerting me.So which I was like, it shouldn’t be exhausting me the way it is. But now in retrospect, you know, when I tell people that they’re like 20 classes a week, like, is that a lie? I think, too, that it’s really easy to look at somebody else’s situation and say, oh, no, too much going on. You’re doing too much.But we can’t look at our own. We rationalize it, right? Because it’s hard for us. Health coaching can be so powerful because you get that outside perspective.You might have a thought, like, maybe this is too much, but you come up with these other things. Like, no, you know, for me, it was like, teachers teach all day, every day and they’re fine. 

Why can’t I do it, you know? So I went to therapy and she was like, Kristen, you got a lot going on, you know? So like having that outside perspective, like you said, you can’t see it within yourself.And so many times I go to therapy and she says something to me. And then I say, you know, I just said the exact same thing to my client an hour ago. Did resonate with me until you said it to me.But in the midst of it all, I do remember saying to her, like, I know what I should be doing, but I’m not doing it. What is wrong with me? And she said, Kristen, isn’t this a beautiful reminder that you are human? I was like, oh, yeah, Nancy, it’s beautiful. 

But it is, you know, like looking back at it, you know, it’s like I was going through very human things and not being understanding with myself that this is part of life and that the way you handle it is okay.It’s okay if you need to step back and process what’s happening and, you know, take that time to learn from it and grow from it. It doesn’t always have to be and it can’t always be learn and learn and learn and grow and grow and grow always going up. Like there are going to be these times where you have to come back into that valley and rest and recuperate and process everything.

And it doesn’t have to be like, like I’ve had a lot of highs and lows this summer, right? Like our little roller coaster, right? But in the grand scheme of things, you know, it doesn’t have to be like these really high highs and then crashing down into that valley. You can ease back into that valley and ease into the rest. If, like you said, you listen to the universe or whatever the signs that you’re giving because I decided, I ignored the feather signs from the universe until the universe was like, you need a break.We’re going to push you down on your roller blades and make you take it. 

So if you, you know, you keep pushing that off, then you might come crashing into that valley. But there are alternatives if you, you know, you stay tuned in with yourself.You give yourself that grace to be human to know that valleys will come and you can ease into them gently instead of pushing and pushing and pushing until you fall apart. This is going to be so helpful to so many people because it’s so hard to look at your own situation and say, yeah, I deserve a break. I need a break.

I’m going to take time because we’ve been conditioned to think that’s selfish. And if you don’t feel the feather, you’re going to get the piano and you’re going to be forced into this valley whether you want to be there or not. And you might as well go there voluntarily without a concussion so that you can actually maybe enjoy it.

It’s not a punishment. It’s not meant to be a bad thing but we all need this time, like you said, to grow and reflect. And there’s always going to be them.And like you said, they don’t always have to be high highs and low lows. 

But the more awareness you have, the more we can kind of keep them moderate so that it’s not so dramatic. We’ve kind of been hinting at the growth and the fixed mindset.Can we talk a little bit about what each one of those looks like and how it can impact how we’re living day to day? Absolutely. 

So I think looking back at this year and you know my challenges in the past in general, had I gone into those with that fixed mindset where this is just the way it is and I can’t change it. I would have stayed stuck rather than being in that growth mindset where you know there’s something to learn from what you’re going through.You know there are resources that you can access to get help out of that. To know maybe you can do it by yourself. 

Maybe you need some help.Whatever it is, just knowing that there is more to come from where you’re at. Having that mindset that this isn’t it, that I have more power over my circumstances than just staying in that fixed mindset like this just is what it is and this is the hand I’ve been dealt and there’s nothing I can do with it. That determines whether you stay down in that valley that you crashed into or if you start climbing your way back up again.A lot of us have been conditioned with fixed mindset. 

Like a lot of us just have that, especially as you get older, things don’t seem as pliable, possible. You know we don’t allow ourselves to daydream, to imagine what could be.And having that growth mindset of, okay this is a situation that I’m in. What are the possibilities here? What is the lesson? What if? Like kind of just looking at all the different parts of what’s happening and saying well what if I do this? How can I, anytime I’m having a moment where I’m like well this sucks, this is not what I wanted. 

How can I approach this and make something else happen in this particular situation? What are my options? And I just allow myself to be ridiculous.It doesn’t have to be realistic. I think I have this revelation in the last couple years when I was reading a book and it occurred to me like there was once a time where people didn’t believe in electricity or flying and now we have electricity in airplanes. 

So like if we can go from like, like really thinking about all of the things that didn’t exist in the past like somebody was like you know what I think I can fly this giant thing through the air with a ton of people in it. Like there are so many things that we haven’t even discovered that we can do. Same thing with electricity. 

Somebody figured it out. Somebody was like hey I think we can make this thing illuminate and make it easier to see in the dark. There was a time where nobody thought of that. So what else is out there that we haven’t created or discovered yet? Thinking about it in those terms and that I mean that’s only airplanes and electricity. There’s a million other things out there that once we didn’t know about or didn’t exist until someone created them. 

So realizing that we don’t have to go as far as flying people through the sky. But if somebody can do that like what can you do within your own life to be in a better place than where you are or be happier than where you are right now.I love that. Kristin we talked a little bit already about the work that you do. I want to talk about how people can connect with you as a coach in your classes and things like that on social.

So tell me a little bit about what it looks like to work with you as a coach. Yeah absolutely. The best way to you know if you want to do a consult I do free consults. The best way to set that up you’ll share that calendar link that I have. You can schedule something directly in there. You can email me Kristin at KellerCoaching.com. 

Beyond that though I really utilize Facebook my Facebook page Kristin Keller Coaching.If you just kind of want to get a sense of who I am and what’s going on and then if you’re local or you’re looking for a great place to vacation in South Dakota coming to any of my classes I post about those on my Facebook page my Instagram as well. My pound classes my body pump classes. 

Awaken is a virtual class on Zoom so people can access that from wherever. We also have the Phoenix virtual platform that you know there are live stream classes on there for people all the time. So it’s a really great resource. I will include that in the show notes along with your website socials and your calendar link for anybody who wants to connect with you directly. Kristin this has been absolute gold and a delight. We’re going to wrap up but what I like to do is have my my guests grace us with their top three tips. 

Gladly for my top three tips for living well.

#1:I would say be kind to yourself because you can’t achieve a positive result from a negative mindset or negative motivation. So if you are beating yourself up trying to reach your fitness goal or whatever it is like we talked about once you get there it’s not going to be good enough. 

So practice being kind and gentle and understanding with yourself.

#2:  I would say slow down. We are in such a rush, rush, rush culture always feeling like we have to be doing something and have to be running somewhere and that’s putting us in this low level of stress all the time and when we are stressed out that’s just going to hold us back from whatever we want to do. So incorporate stress management slow down with your life as much as you can.

You know find some moments throughout the day just to sit and breathe and rest when you need to because rest is more productive than we’ve been conditioned to believe. We need rest. Rest is not unproductive. I’ve worked with clients who don’t get enough sleep because they feel like they need to stay away and be productive and rest is productive. Maybe not that instant gratification that instant result of getting

In this episode I chat with Tanya Stricek, the Mindful Nutritionist, a midlife health expert, and the host of The Fullness Podcast.

We talk about the challenges women face being in that midlife phase while living in a size-obsessed world and the benefits of incorporating a mindful eating and weight inclusive approach to aging and health.

Let’s talk about how we can shift the focus away from size and weight and onto habits and behavior and all the ways we can bring joy into our daily lives.

Ready to Undo your diet mindset?

In this episode I chat with Nourishment Strategist & Mindset coach, Shanique Allen. She’s on a mission to help women liberate themselves from the obsessive pursuits and mindset of diet culture so they can reclaim nourishment, health and joy in every aspect of their lives.

• Mentioned in this episode:
• Connect with Shanique:
• Episode Transcript

I’m Laurie Mallon and this is the Results Without Restriction podcast. The show where results have nothing to do with weight and everything to do with setting and reaching health and fitness goals that focus on what we’re achieving and not what we’re losing. We’ll talk about deprogramming from diet culture and get expert advice on reclaiming your relationship with food and movement.

Join me on this journey to get results without restriction. I am here with Shanique Allen who is a nourishment strategist and a mindset coach. Shanique is on a mission to help women liberate themselves from the obsessive pursuits and mindset of diet culture so that they can reclaim nourishment, health, and joy in every aspect of their lives.

Welcome Shanique. Thank you for having me on. I am so glad to be here with you.

I don’t meet as many people who are as, what’s the word, vociferous about being anti diet culture as I am. Like I know a lot of people kind of tiptoe around, okay we can talk about being healthy and we’re just not gonna talk about diets, we’re not gonna talk about, but you are, you are adamantly anti diet. You are like, we’re serious here.

We’re gonna take it head-on. We’re gonna talk about the damage that being, being exposed to diet culture messaging can have on our long-term wellness. So this is why I’m really, I’m really pumped to talk to you.

What I like to do first with all my guests, I like to dig into your backstory and what kind of brought you to this point. Well I’m gonna try to sum this up because that is one, like we could spend the entire time talking about that. But I call myself now a nourishment strategist and mindset coach and really what that is, is I kind of help people figure out how to nourish themselves in the simplest of ways possible that suit their life without the noise of diet culture and the toxic diet behaviors and restrictions in mind.

But really what I’m about is about changing everybody’s mind about what it means to pursue health and be your quote-unquote healthiest self. I’m a former athlete, former personal trainer and in a nutshell, I kind of went cold turkey in giving up all of that and all that I had learned up to that point about health and what it meant to pursue health. So two things that brought me here.

One, my own experience of burnout which I kind of mentioned to you in us talking before and a series of other life-changing transitions all at once while I was engaging in dieting and restrictive eating practices. And it became really overwhelming and was affecting my mental well-being in ways I hadn’t experienced before. I mean anxiety wasn’t something I had struggled with before and it wasn’t until starting to experience that that you know I started to recognize that kind of something was off.

But it came to a head when my mom got sick and I became her caretaker. Now I don’t know if you’ve ever heard caretakers talk but it can be a thankless and really stressful job. And it became clear to me in trying to rigidly micromanage my body through food and exercise and take care of myself and my mom, those two things were at odds.

And I wanted to be present because caretaking was a full time job mentally, physically, emotionally. And I also didn’t want to return to the life that I had experienced or to the burnout that I was actually just now recovering from at the time. So I decided to just ditch everything.

Go cold turkey. And I’m like I’m not gonna do this anymore. I had to at the same time broaden my perspective.

I started to ask questions. What does being healthy mean? Like what is that and what does that look like for me? What can that look like for me now given the fact that I no longer resonate with a lot of the things? Or I was now at odds with a lot of the things I had believed up until that point. So I had to broaden my perspective.

I started questioning some of the beliefs and paid more attention to the things that felt more nourishing to my body and my mind rather than following this set of rules that I had been following for years. And the things my body said it wanted were rest, gentleness, kindness, compassion. Did I say rest? Yeah that was one of those things because coming from hustle culture and diet culture it was no pain no gain.

More is better, right? So for me it was going against everything to slow down. Coming from burnout and especially burnout going through that, that was what forced my hand. Like I don’t want to go back there.

So that’s one. And then the second thing is in working with nutrition clients, much of their struggle was never about food or not about food at all. Rather it was about their mindset, the beliefs, the perspectives they had around health that led to habits around food and habits around themselves.

Certain habits general in life. So in trying to build different habits, much of the work centered around making space for things that added value, things they needed, things like rest, sleep, getting support or help, creating better boundaries. They incidentally knew a lot about food.

Like much like me, they had done the diets, they had gone through, you know, they’d explored the whole gamut. So they know what healthy, what quote-unquote healthy food is from their perspective. But also a lot of it was skewed around, you know, diet culture and what it should be versus what they could allow it to be given, where they were, what they had access to, those types of things.

And for what I recognize for most of them is that because in working on the beliefs and the perception and the mindset issues, when they felt out of control, cleaning up the diet and changing their body was the best way to reign things in, to reclaim some control. So in working through that, a lot of my clients recognized that it was not about the food, but it was about nourishment instead. So we started focusing on nourishment and the many ways it could look for them.

So that’s how I ended up doing the work that I’m doing now, helping clients explore nourishment from a place of self-awareness, from a place of compassion, a place of kindness versus a place of managing my body to fit an ideal. I want to thank you for your air quotes. I know listeners can’t hear it, but you did air quotes around when you said healthy and unhealthy food, because what does that even mean? We’ve been so indoctrinated with clean eating, alright, that’s air quotes, and what we should be eating.

And we’re kind of conditioned now to feel good and virtuous when we eat foods that have been classified as good or guilty or shameful when we eat the foods that are unhealthy or classified as bad. So I love that you are wagging your finger at the, we’re not doing the should thing, we’re not doing the healthy unhealthy classification here. And that it’s an individual approach, if I’m understanding you correctly, that each client, you’re not saying, listen, forget diet culture, but here’s this kind of general way we can approach this.

But you’re working with clients individually to say, listen, let’s figure out what feels good for you, provide you with nourishment, and not just food nourishment, emotional, physical rest, sleep, stress management strategy. So all of these things that are working together to help us feel better. Yeah.

The other thing that you said, and I have this conversation with so many people so often that when things feel out of control, when we feel overwhelmed and burnt out, when you’ve been in that diet cycle, you go straight to let me fix the body. Let me fix the food. Let me fix my let me get my food on track.

Let me get it under control. So that I now feel like I can handle everything else. Isn’t that so funny? Like that’s such a pervasive mindset and approach to what what we are reaction to to feeling kind of like that that out of control feeling with things going on in the last two years.

I mean, haven’t we all felt a little bit like things are kind of happening that we don’t have control over? So I can imagine you know, this is this is really big for your clients to have that kind of mindset shift to move away from let me focus on my food and my my physical appearance to get a handle on things to to kind of feel more in control about what’s happening in the world. I love that.

And I’m just gonna throw this into that you all you also have your own podcast and I’m going to be putting the link in the show notes so that my listeners can check out it’s called on diet yourself.

I love this so much. And so we’ll be linking to that too. So you can hear more about that.

Let’s dig in a little bit about what it looks like when you work with clients when you want to approach health, right? So a client wants to be healthier, they want to feel better. What does that look like? If you were to take like a sample client without a focus on weight and quantitatively food? What does that look like? Well, let me say to begin with, before we talk about health, wellness in general is a is the thing. It’s the thing that we want to, you know, bring to everyone’s attention.

So any client I work with, or anyone in general, when I speak to them, and they talk about quote, unquote, health, the assumption is that health is guaranteed, and you have full control over it. So it’s the thing you need to focus on. But let’s broaden it a little bit and say, let’s talk about your wellness.

And if we approach it from that perspective, you can see where health falls in to the whole, the whole picture. Because chances are a lot of people focus on health, when there are so many other aspects of their wellness that requires being addressed, that needs to be addressed. And they have trickle effects into health.

So we’re talking about your career, your spirituality, we’re talking about your physical well being, we’re talking about the social relationships that you have, we’re talking about your environment that you live in, we’re talking about, you know, what you have access to your, whether you’ll do home cooking or, or not, whether you have access to that, whether you’re financially stable.

So before we address health, one of the things I always want to, you know, get a pulse on or get a reading is let’s look out, let’s take a zoom out for a little bit, give me an idea of what your whole wellness is. And I, I tend to use a, what we call the circle of life.

And this is, this was coined from the Institute of integrative nutrition, where they have this whole circle of life. I mean, it’s split into different, like, I think it’s 12 of them. But what I do is get a, get a reading from folks, give me an idea of the things about your wellness and what you’re satisfied with and what you’re not satisfied with, or what are the things that are giving you joy, or you’re happy with, and what are the things that you’re not happy with.

And when they take that reading, then it gives me an idea, okay, well, guess what, now we’re going to need to define for you what it is that you want to work on, redefine your, your approach to your health through the lens of wellness. And when people do that, it kind of sets them back like, Hmm, I never thought of it this way. I was just focused on this one little tiny piece.

And then there are these 10 other things or 12 other things that I’ve not considered, which might have a significantly more important impact on my whole well-being. Because even though people talk about health, they then talk about well-being. And I’m like, well, well-being is your wellness.

This is the entirety of your being, not just your physical health, but all the other things that impact it. So how can we redefine it in the context of what is important for you and your total wellness. And then we can pick a few things to zone in on.

And I mentioned before that health is not guaranteed, nor is it something that you have total control of. And this is something I also bring to client’s attention because we’re talking about, sometimes you have people who have autoimmune conditions, some people you have certain conditions that you have zero control of. And no matter what you do with your health, the things you, the actions you take or the things you do, you’re not going to move that needle at all.

So we set that expectation at the beginning and said, okay, fine. And even if you do certain things, even if you don’t have those conditions, even if you do all these other things, there’s no guarantee that it’s going to lead you to this penultimate healthy destination. We’re using quotations here, quote unquote, healthy destinations, because that’s the thing about your health and your wellness.

There is no destination. There is no, I get to this place, sit down and put my feet up with a cocktail in my hand. That’s not what it is.

So I help clients take that broader look first and then zone in. And then the other thing I do is taking a look at the things that matter in their lives. What are the things that add value and how can we honor them as best as they possibly can? Recognizing that they will shift.

It’s not a matter of when or if, it’s that they will shift from season to season, or, you know, you move from one phase of life to another because no one stays static. And then what are the things that allow you to show up, not just as your best self, because there’s this emphasis on your best self and we all can’t be our best selves every single day and to want that and to think that is something I think we set ourselves up for, not failure so much as disappointment.

I invite people instead to be your whole self because it includes the days you are your best and the days you’re not and how you can show up even in those not so best, quote unquote, best days.

Because when you remove your hand size or your weight on the scale or the number on the scale, you will find that they do not hold the key the way that culture has tricked us into believing. So health in and of itself within the context of wellness is just one small piece that wellness covers a lot of things. And even health, if we’re looking at health specifically, it will differ for everyone.

It will look different than everyone and there’s no one way to approach it. So in a nutshell, when you ask me about how I approach health without a focus on weight, I zoom out first before I can zoom in. I love that because this takes into account everything because we can’t just look at things piece by piece.

It’s a holistic approach. And when you move something over here, it impacts something else over there. You’re taking their individual assessment for what’s important to them right now.

How do they want to show up better? How do they want to feel better in their lives, not just physically? Taking a holistic approach makes you a little more adaptable and resilient, capable of weathering shifting seasons. And the reason I say that is because one thing I noticed about those who are focused entirely on just diet and exercise is that when season shift, life shift, life transition happens, that becomes like carrying water in a wicker basket.

Can’t hold because that’s the only thing they know, whereas other things might be required.

So if we’re taking that broad picture approach and drilling inwards, it’s easier or I’m using easier loosely here, because easy is relative. But it’s a lot more, you have more tools in your in your bank, basically, to adapt to, you know, be more resilient when the seasons shift. And that’s something that I experienced and it’s something I have my clients experience.

When things shift, they’re like, Oh, God, what do I do? No, my diet is off, my exercise is off. What do I do when those aren’t the only two things? There are other things that might benefit once those shifts happen. So I want to highlight that holistic approach kind of lends itself to a little more adaptability and resiliency in folks.

What would you say are some mistakes that people make when it comes to approaching their health or their wellness? Or myths that they’re believing outside of like the obvious, you know, your weight is your health and things like that. What are the things that people come to you and they’re like, Okay, I did not, I was not doing that. I didn’t even think of that.

Number one is thinking they need to overall, then it needs, there needs to be a overall for it to be impactful, like burn the house down. Now granted, there’s some instances and in some cases, that just happens. I mean, I’m a classic example, I literally burnt everything I knew to the ground, like I’m going to go the opposite direction, cold turkey and go the opposite.

But I probably sometimes say maybe I was in the middle of a existential crisis at the time. And sometimes it’s warranted. But for the most part, when it comes to improving, quote, unquote, health, people are of the misconception that it needs to be this grand gesture, this grand overall, they need to burn everything to the ground.

And then, you know, suddenly, they’ll just have this quote, unquote, discipline and willpower to make their way through all these know, this tunnel that they’ve now set them to put themselves in because I call it a tunnel. Because they’re the rules are the walls of this tunnel, I would say. And they just going to go down this tunnel.

And it’s going to lead them to this bright open field of all their dreams. Rubbish. No.

No, if you can picture it, can you? Yes. And you know what, I’ve been in this I’ve been in this imagined I’ve pictured myself in this imaginary tunnel that all I have to do is stay in this tunnel, stay in the walls. And then at the end, all my dreams come true.

It’s magical. I’m leaping through a field like, like the lady from what do you call it? Sound of music? Sound of music? Yes. Thank you.

Yes. Like that’s me. The hills are alive.

All my dreams are coming true. Everything is fantastic. I love everyone.

No one’s annoying me. Yes. And then I just live happily ever after.

And I understand everything that you’re everything you’re saying is like hitting home for me. Definitely. So it’s instead of burn it down, take on a whole new lifestyle where this is how we’re living now.

And this is what we’re doing. And then we’re getting in the tunnel. And then life is great.

Small changes, small, simple. And I don’t want to say it’s not stupid. And people say it’s so it’s so small.

It’s stupid. I’m not going to say that because no, none of these changes that you make are stupid. If there are changes that one you can do, that’s impactful.

And I mean, it’s so tiny, you think it’s irrelevant. And I’ll give you an example of something that’s super tiny. One simple, tiny, tiny thing is misconception.

People need to add vegetables to all of their meals. Like, okay, I need to have vegetables, every single meal, like a serving of, you know, steamed vegetables or raw salad or whatnot. When if they look at maybe say somebody makes a stew, you’ve already have vegetables in a stew.

A stew hardly is ever made without vegetables. And I’m like, let’s let’s just change your perspective. Instead of thinking you need to add necessarily this whole new salad to your stew, you’re having stew, okay, I need to have a salad too to make it worth it or to make it quote unquote count.

What about all those vegetables you do have in that stew? So notice no change has been made here. It’s just reframing, you know, what you think, quote unquote, healthy eating needs to be. And if a stew has vegetables, it’s loaded with onions, tomatoes, it’s got your beans, it’s got, it’s got so much nutrition already in it, that you feel like, okay, it’s not enough, because I need to add some vegetables.

Let’s rethink that. But don’t you already have vegetables in there. So you’ve already, you’re already giving yourself the best nutrition possible.

So when I say making, you know, small steps, it’s not just about necessarily adding something or changing something. But it’s literally changing the way you look at something. So that’s, that’s, that’s one thing, you know, health, the mistake that and it’s worth talking about is narrowing it down to diet and exercise that that is the end all be all of improving your health.

And it happens very often people go into the doctor’s office, and that’s the first recommendation that’s made. And tie that into that is the whole equating your health to the size of your body. If you have an ailment, or if you you have some thing pops up on your doctor’s like, well, you know, you need to work on the weight or it needs to be exercised.

And like, why is that the first thing? So it’s challenging those things. First of all, your weight is not a behavior. That’s the first thing.

How about we talk about health promoting behavior as well. So it’s the mistake people make, I want to say here is narrowing down, working on your health or improving your health to just diet and exercise as the only two things you can do when there are so many other things.

So take a broader look to the other mistake that people make when it comes to improving their health, is that you need to and I see this often is that there is a certain sense of moral climbing, that if you’re working on whatever it is you’re working on, and you’re suddenly now improving, then it makes you better than somebody else who is not.

And you will see this and people are not aware of it, because people will say it in some very insidious ways without even realizing how impactful it is not just to them, because if you’re judging yourself that way, you’re judging everybody else that way. So it’s recognizing improving your health means coming off of that moral pedestal that that culture tends to put. The efforts you make to improve your health suddenly makes you superior to other people.

And that’s a mistake that’s not just made once you’re in there, it’s made even before you get there, because people think she’s better than me, because she’s working on that. And then when you make improvements, you’re now suddenly better than somebody else. So that’s another big mistake that I see.

And it’s under the guise of, you know, I want to motivate people or I want to help others, but it comes across as judgment. Absolutely. Some internalized healthism there that we’re all we’re all under this obligation.

You don’t owe getting healthy to anyone, anyone at all. So I love that you brought that up, because I feel like that particular message is something we need to be talking about that moral high ground. And the thing is, people will not, people will say or people doing that will not think that they’re taking that stance.

I might, well, how can you not? Because if you are, you know, doing this thing, and it’s creating this change in you, your statement is, well, if I can do it, you can too. Suggesting that by not doing it, then, hmm, you don’t want it, you’re less than. So we have to be aware of that, but also the language.

And this might be a separate point. The language we use around our health, our bodies, ourselves, is one way to shift our health. And I’ll tie that to examining the relationships that you do have.

Toxic ones, for instance. Examining those things, because those words matter. And they matter not just to who you say them to, but if you say them to yourself.

Again, I go back to saying, if you think this of yourself, you judge yourself one way, you judge other people. So if you use words to yourself, what’s to stop you from using it? Or it’s ingrained that you might just end up using it to define or describe other people, or use it to, or say it to other people. Moms do this with their kids.

Friends do this with, you know, with each other. The, I know in the Black diaspora, or the Caribbean diaspora, or even I forget the diaspora, but where I’m from, mentioning somebody’s weight as a form of greeting is normal. Like, you know, they will talk about your weight openly and, you know, quite condescendingly.

And that’s normal. And it’s a conversation. And you’re sensitive if you bring up any, you know, resistance to that.

So environment is something to examine. So examining your environment, watching your words and your language, not narrowing down health to just diet and exercise, and taking small tiny steps or looking for small adjustments or small shifts, either in habits, or in deed and in mindset. I love that you brought up talking about other people’s bodies, shapes and sizes and changes therein.

I would love if we could just normalize not pointing this out as a good or a bad, you have no idea what’s happening behind the scenes. Let’s just not. It’s very ingrained, we would love to see it.

But the reality is, it is so ingrained. There are several ways we’ll need to address that. Because like I said, it’s in different cultures.

I mean, societally, it’s just a normal thing to do. Comedians joke about people’s weight on stage, people make self deprecating statements about themselves. It’s in the advertisements, it’s in the books that you read, it’s just pervasive.

And by us talking about it is one way to address it. And calling it out also, we have to be cognizant though, that there are people who don’t feel safe in doing that. So we have to recognize that that’s a whole other element to just shifting the conversation around challenging diet culture in general, that not everybody is in a safe space.

And safety is important to a lot of the things that we can and should do. And it applies to health as well. Accessing health or, you know, it’s not people aren’t always in a safe environment to even think that, you know, going to the gym is possible or even have access to the gym.

Some people just do not. And we have to be cognizant of that as well. I like to call it privilege, privilege of safety, which we do not all have.

And those as practitioners and us working in the space, it’s important that we acknowledge that and we call it out, because that’s the only way that we’re gonna start shifting the dynamic and the narrative. Okay, that could be its own episode. I do love that you brought that up.

And that is a really important point. I’d love to talk now about what it looks like to work with you in terms of the programs that you offer as a coach. The main way that people work with me is to apply to work with my On Diet Your Nutrition framework.

So this framework is really for women going into or finding themselves in new and different phases. I love talking about phases just because I’ve been through them and I know women especially go through them. And you realize your whole health matters more than restricted food or punishing your body.

And you want to support and the guidance to explore and nourish those other aspects. This is the one-on-one coaching program that I offer. I also offer a short-term single session.

It’s called the Nourishment Strategy Session. And those are for busy folks or folks who already know they know quite a bit about nutrition. But they’re feeling a bit overwhelmed about nourishing themselves right now.

They know all the things. These are the people who know all the things like, okay, where should I be going? Or what do I need to be doing now, given either, you know, they’re busy or they’ve had so much change recently, and they want a strategy to make it simpler. So those Nourishment Strategy Sessions are available.

Those are one-off sessions. And then you have applications to my On Diet Your Nutrition program. Perfect.

So you have resources and services available for people wherever they are kind of on this journey. If they are ready to get started, they can apply, you know, have a call with you and see if you guys are a good fit to, to start working together. If somebody is kind of in information overwhelm, they know all the things.

They’re like, look, I just kind of need one and done to get pointed in the right direction. They can connect with you on that. And then you also have your newsletter where you are showing up weekly and you are providing tons of value and helpful information.

And I, you mentioned it earlier, my podcast, which is out, Season 1 is out, Season 2 is coming up in two weeks, On Diet Yourself. It’s a podcast about shedding the weight of diet culture rules, learning to tap into your body’s needs, nourish it with peaceful eating habits, and reclaiming trust in yourself.

You can find it on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts. Fantastic. Shanique, what I’m going to do is I’m going to put a link to join your email list.

The link to your podcast and a link for the application and also to schedule a session with you. The last thing I do, and I’d like to finish with your top three tips. One, include more risk, taking time off to do nothing or don’t regulate.

Improve your quality of sleep if it can’t affect the quantity. That’s something that I, you know, people seem to think that I just need to sleep more when quality can also be positively impacting. Two, setting boundaries.

Recognize your limits and your boundaries. Start honoring them and enforcing them. Become your biggest advocate.

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