35: My Top Tips For Getting Started On Your Health & Wellness Journey

Hi beautiful people,

I am back after a short break and in today's episode I am going to be going through my top tips for anyone getting started on their health and wellness journey.

I know how overwhelming it can be when you are getting started especially with the endless amounts of information out there, so hopefully these tips help to simplify it down for you.

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Transcript

speaker 0:   0:00
Welcome to the love yourself. Healthy poke cost. I am Melanie Lillis. I'm an eating psychology coach. Nutritional therapist. And I have my bachelor off physical and health education. Throughout this podcast, we are going to be diving into the room off eating psychology, body image, self love and creating a healthy and happy mind. I cannot wait to share my knowledge with you in hope that it's going to President Glee Influence your life. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so sorry. Is being so long in between podcasts, but I have a pretty good excuse. I am currently in Japan traveling for around two months, which I'm really, really excited about, but because I'm traveling, I didn't bring my microphone forecast microphone. So if the audio is a little bit different today, you just going to have to do deal with it. I have no other option. Pretty much, Um, yes. So I want to fill you in with what I've been doing, because even on my instagram, they're explain. If you follow me, you'll notice I have also been kind of quiet on there, and I have actually just come to the end of running my very 1st 6 week bake binge eating online program, which has gone really good. I am really happy with the results that the girls have achieved and just the mental state of that currently at, like where they where they've gotten to. So that's been really, really nice and honestly, that has taken up a lot of my time because I created the course as I went based off where I felt like the girls needed to go, which is a really beautiful way to do it, because I wasn't locked into any specific topic that everyone had to do. I kind of bounced off where they were going and where I believed they really needed to focus on and move in that direction. So I created a new video every single day. There were different strategies to follow. Every single week they got a new program, every wake that was support by May. Every single day I did some live videos. It was a really, really fun time for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I'm definitely gonna be running the program again. So if you are struggling with binge aiding, even just any kind of disorder, dating Patton will self love. This course would be really great for you. So I'm gonna be taking another intake. Very serious. So, yeah, I just feel free to send me an email at hello at their ex brave dot com. And I can tell you much more about the information. Now the other exciting thing. I know I'm speaking for a while, but the other exciting thing is that I've just launched my very nearly books. So I have also been a little bit quiet because I was creating these e books because I get a look of messages, mostly from people coming through my pole cost. And they will say, You know, I have this issue I have. I'm struggling with this and can you give me advice? And I love giving people advice. And I thought, Why don't I just create these a book so I can collect all the information that I know put it out there to get people started on their journey to a better life? Now my main a book is a bait binge. Eating a book in a girl's through. The strategy is that I'm not only using my clients, but that I also used on my own journey through my eating sort of recovery. Um, so that's a really good a book that I thoroughly lack. And in the second, a book is a self love guys. So all the strategies that I love to use to help people to create a positive body image and just really connect and in body mod themselves um, that was the 2nd 1 The third e book is a It's like a recipe book kind off. So why say kind of is because I give you, like, a 14 day kind of like a meal program, and in that comes recipes. Now, I didn't make this programs that you have to follow it to a T. I made this program of this mill kind of program so that you had hates of different options, and I made sure that each day that I put down that you have a really good balance off macronutrients that you're getting a nice balanced diet. In the last, a book that I created is a cravings crush our secrets. So yeah, just pretty much goes through. If you're craving certain foods, what you might be missing, that's a fun little a book as well. So I created four different e books, and you can get them all for just $29. So I will put the link down in the buyer so you can click on their in purchase. And if you do patches him, please let me know how you feel about them. Um, and if they've helped you and all of that, All right, So getting on to the point of this podcast actually had a beautiful girl message may not long ago saying that she was really enjoying my podcast, but she was getting started on a wellness journey. And it could be so confusing when you're beginning your health journey, your wellness journey. And there is so much information out there that you just kind of don't know where to start. So I thought I would create this podcast for anyone who is starting the health journey. I give you my top tips for beginning your wellness. Do anywhere to start what to do so you can grab a notebook and you can write down all these ideas and get started. So the first thing that I would always get someone to do is to assess your current situation. So before starting any kind of wellness journey, you need to take a look at where you're at right now, what you need to do right now and where you want to get to. And I think the best way to do this is by writing some questions out in the notebook. This answering them to get a better understanding off where you're at. So I'm gonna give you a few questions that you can write down. So grab a pen, govern Payback pulls the podcast as we go. Number one is what makes you happy and fulfilled. Number two is what do I need more off in my life? Number three is what is no longer serving May or what do I need less off in my life? Number four is where and when can I commit to my wellness practice each day, so base specific with this? Don't make it up like I'm gonna do it every morning and every night. If you don't have that time, figure out where you have the time and then write that down. Next question is what are a few off the positive or healthy habits that I am willing to commit to in my wellness practice. So, for example, maybe you want to start walking in the morning. Maybe you want to start meditating gardening? I don't know. Reading. Ah, book. Whatever it is, write it down. Anything or one thing are a few things that you want to commit to every day. And the last question is why these practices? So how each of these specific practices helped to improve your overall wellness based off where you're at right now, how will these practices help change your life? So refer to the positive and the healthy habits that you chose him. That is number one, and that gives you it's a really good understanding of where you're at on what your goals are, what you're going to help for the next section, which is setting your intentions. Now I get any client to do this of mine. I get any friend to do this of mine, any off the group, hurting programs like any on my A books. I always include setting intentions because we all need to know what we're aiming towards. You can't really start off and start your wellness practice if you don't really know what your angle is or what you're working towards, and it doesn't have to be. I want to lose this amount of weight. I want to look like this. Don't look like that. I want to do this. It's like, How do you want to feel? Yeah, What do you want to achieve? How How is your life going to change? So take some time to really think. What are my intentions for this program? What what kind of a person I want to be at the end of it. How do I want to feel? Um, anything that comes to mind, you don't have to have a lot. You could just be a few, and it just kind of helps. It's almost like gold setting, but we'll get to go sitting a little bit later. Um, yes, setting those clear, precise intention and these might change over the weeks when you start to improve or whatever, and you can always revisit them. But you need to start off with the intentions right at the beginning. Now the next area that I would get you to work on is to create a mantra that you can remind yourself off each day. Now this is another thing that I get all of my clients to do, and I guess it's almost like a self affirmation. A mantra is a little bit different to an intention, because it's more like a single sentence that you can remember and remind yourself off every morning or remind yourself off. If you are starting to, like, lose focus a little bit, so you're, I don't know, your manager might bay. I am healthy and strong and beautiful, and I choose to make these decisions to make my life a healthier place. Whatever it is, something that peps you up, something that makes you feel good, something that keeps it going throughout the day, um, along your wellness journey, and I loved having a man tried to kind of focus on that ground. You and it brings you back down to what your intentions were and what you're working towards if you don't really know what you're working towards. If you don't have something to remind you of every day, you can easily kind of slip off the bandwagon. So first things first, assess your situation, set your intentions and then create your mantra. Now, the next area that I wouldn't get people to work on is to assess and to clean up your nutrition. Now, I believe this is where people not so much go wrong. But we all kind of want to. As soon as we get the motivation to do something we want to go all in, right? We don't want a slow approach. We don't want to just do it half us. We want to really go all in. But this is the issue. If you ate mate and you ate dairy and you ate processed foods and you say I want to be vegan and then you go, Okay, I'm going big. And tomorrow I highly doubt that's gonna lost. And I'll be very impressed if it does, You can't really just completely flip the world upside down because your body isn't used to that. And if your body is used to eating, mate, nobody's used to eating dairy in the process foods. When you flip it on its head and take hold of that away, it takes some time to adjust. And you may feel really crappy in that process. So what? I would always tell anyone to do is to not change everything at once. Pick a few things. So just say you do want to go vegan. Maybe you take red meat out of your diet and you only have it once or twice a week. Then from there, maybe you take it out and you only have it once a week. Then maybe you cut it out all together and you start to decrease your chicken. You know, whatever it is, just do it slowly. There is no prize for the fastest person, and I've found with any kind of diet change. The people who make drastic changes are usually the first to fall off the bandwagon slow and, you know, discomforting for the body and soft on the body is always easiest in the best in the healthiest way and method to go about it. So have a look at your nutrition. Make sure you're getting in as many whole foods, natural whole foods as you can see where you want to clean your diet up. But then also make sure you know where to replace it. So I'm going to use the Viggen example again because it makes the most sense in my head to explain if you're cutting all made out from your diet, you need to make sure that you're replacing it with a plant based protein. You can't just cut it out and then not replace it with something because you're gonna start getting nutritional deficiencies and then you might get sick and you might feel really crappy and the rest is history. So I would suggest if you are struggling with understanding nutrition, that you go speak to a nutritionist. I'm always here to give you any advice if you need it. But that is the next area I would look at is assessing and cleaning up you nutrition. All right. Next area. Very similar to the first assessing and cleaning up your exercise retain. Now exercise obviously goes hand in hand with nutrition. Obviously, nutrition's a little bit more important, but exercise is just as important for the body. Um, now same thing is interested. It's not. It's so important to not go from nothing to fool stain right? You would have slowly start introducing things. And don't underestimate the power of incidental exercise. What I mean by that is this If you usually take the elevator. Go and take the stairs, right? If you usually I don't know. Go and sit down in the park for lunch. Maybe go for a walk and eat your food and then go for a walk for like 20 minutes. Whatever it is, incidental exercise is awesome, but have a looking exercise, retain and think. Do I enjoy this exercise because you don't want to be doing exercises that a super punishing on your body and that you don't enjoy it because you're more than likely not going to stick to it? So have a look at exercise and think, How can I include exercise that I actually enjoyed doing and ones that I'm going to stick to sew for? May I love snowboarding, so right now I'm here. I'm in Japan for two months and one of these times am I going to go to the gym? And that's fine because I'm snowboarding all day and that for me, that's actually incidental exercise for me because I love snowboarding. It is so much fun, and I don't do it because I'm not a candidate to go burn calories. I do it because it's so much fun, but I'm burning a lot of calories doing that. So have a look at where you can introduce fun, pleasurable exercises that you can stick to. It might be a dance class. It might be taking your dog for a walk. It might be going swimming. It might be going rock climbing, whatever it is. Maybe you enjoy going to the gym. Maybe you enjoy doing weights. Whatever you enjoy doing, that's fine on this. Next. What's not punishing and make sure you're not doing anything at all. Next area. Create a morning routine. Oh, I love morning retains. I have spoken about them on my podcast before. I talk to everyone about morning routines, but I think having a really good, healthy morning retain is so important for having a really healthy, mindful day. I think it sets your day out really right, and it puts you into that really good head space that you need to be in throughout the day. So for May, I'm gonna go through my morning routine, which have already done before, and I also want to talk about how things can change in. That's okay, so first I'll talk about the morning routine and then I'll talk about how it's been flipped on its head right now and what I'm doing instead. So usually when I'm at home, I will always break up and I'll have lemon water in the morning, a really big glass trying to hydrate myself. And then I'll go for my morning walk, either with or without music. But if I am using my music, it's usually some really calming and grounding music. But I don't want to get my heart rate up too high or in increased my quarters old or anything like that. So I just do a really nice, gentle exercise on. And when I get home, I usually do this stretch for about 10 minutes. Um, which just kind of like Not that I need the flexibility or anything like that. But just to get my muscles, you know, opening and opening up my chest. I find that sometimes when I wake up, my body can feel quite tense and so just opening up my chest, opening up my body, I'm feeling a little bit more. Limbaugh just gets me in a positive headspace. From there. I'll go and do some dry body brushing, and this just helps circulate all the blood flow around your body also helps me make it. You know, it kind of makes me feel like because it's such a physical acts like I'm actually brushing my skin and all of that. I just feel like I'm taking care of myself. So obviously there's a difference between self love and self care, and I do a lot of self care and that self care makes me feel really good about myself. And it makes me feel like I'm doing something to make me feel good, which kind of then pushes into that self love category. So I do mind everybody rushing and then I'll have a shower. And to be honest, they used to do my meditation in the morning, which I loved doing. But I found recently well, in the last kind of few months up, I don't know. I just kind of got back after my walk, and I was a little bit too awake and alert, and I know that sounds funny because you don't wanna be a slight when you're meditating. But I was struggling to calm my mind, and then I tried to do it, just as I woke up, but then I was too sleepy. So now I have changed our meditation from the morning to be at night time before I go to bed helps to calm my mind and get get my mind ready for Slate. So after I have done all of that and I have my shower, I will go and have a really healthy breakfast. Now all of that does not take very long. Maybe takes an hour all up on dhe. That's fine for me. I don't mind waking up early to have those practices to make me feel good. Now, as I just said before, it is absolutely being flipped on its head. I want to retain right now. If you could read it in my eyes right now, I'm looking outside the window. It's snowing, it's freezing. I think about minus 10 right now. I'm not going for a morning walk, Let me tell you. So what I'm doing at the moment is I wake up each morning and I start my day with a stretch because it is quite cold here. I feel really stiff in the morning, so I'll do a nice stretch and then in my stretch. I'm doing really slow breathing techniques, really breathing into my belly, slowing down my any kind of stress response. Getting into that relax ation response and remember, have spoken about this before. In your relax ation response. You have ultimate calorie burning capacity, ultimate metabolism. Everything's working as it should, and your feel good chemicals are starting to be released. So do a really nice and gentle stretch, usually for about 20 minutes, and I'm quite soul from snowboarding every day. So that's really good for May on Dhe. Then I'm just having a really nice warm tea and then a shower, and that's that's all I'm doing each morning. But that, for me, is really putting me in a good head space. And I think the difference is I'm on hold a day's right now. I'm pretty relaxed most days, whereas when I might harm and I've got a stressful job or whatever is going on, I need that to keep me grounded. I need that to feel centered in my body. So have a look at your life and think, OK, what are the exercises that could really help me have a good morning routine if you're not sure. Please purchase my e book. The self love guide in particular, goes through all of these different habits as well as the binge. Eating a book said they'll be really good for you. Um, okay, the last area that I want to talk about the second last area that I want to talk about is making weekly goals to take off. Now. Having weekly goals to set off is so satisfying, I can't tell you enough how good it feels to have a goal and to take it off physically with a pen. Now you can either do daily goals. Old weekly goals. I'd like to do wake the girls. I just have a few different things that I write down. It might be have a healthy breakfast each day. It might be do meditation each night. It might be take one night off this week to pamper yourself. Whatever it is, it doesn't have to be extravagant goals and make sure they are attainable goals. But if you can keep ticking off those goals each week, not only doesn't keep you motivated, but because you do keep motivated throughout the weeks, it actually helps to set the habit. The longer you do something, the easier it is for that habit to form. So yes, it daily or weekly goals whatever you want to set, maybe it's getting to the gym three times a week or introducing a new fund exercise or trying a new healthy meal. Whatever it is, write them down and take them off. Now, the last area that I want you to understand is that we are all human when I say that, because I believe whenever someone says, Okay, I'm gonna start a new wellness or a health journey. We compare ourselves to other people that you listen to import costs right now or people that you follow on Instagram or someone who's someone's blood that you've read. And we think I can't attain that. Or maybe I'm gonna try that, and then I might fail at it. And then you feel crappy about yourself and you sabotage yourself. This happens a lot with people who are binge eaters. I'll give you an example. They might eat healthy all day, and then they have one thing that is unhealthy. And even though they've had healthy food all day, that one thing that is unhealthy makes him go stuff it. I'm now gonna binge because I've ruined it once. Whereas if you just have that one little unhealthy thing and then forgot about it, your body would be fine. You'd be okay. All is good in the world. And this happens as well with wellness people with time. Then this happens as well with people who are starting their wellness journey. They start, they take off their goals and they make one mistake and then they're like, I've ruined it. That's it. I can't do this. They're going on healthy food. They give up. We are all human. We are always going to make mistakes. You were never going to be absolutely perfect. And I say that to be encouraging and to not pull you down. I say that because you don't have to be perfect. Pick one thing to change each week. That's all it takes. And be gentle on yourself because changing up habits can take a bit of time. So as long as you're making those small changes, eventually everything will fall into place. So just to recap everything I've said, my wellness tips are to assess your current situation to set your intentions to create a mantra that you can remind yourself off each day to assess and clean up your nutrition, to assess and clean up your exercise routine to create a morning retain, make weekly goals to take off and to remind yourself that your human all right, so I hope you have enjoyed the podcast today. I hope I'm crossing my fingers that it is not a whole nother month in between po costs. And I do apologize now that I am on holidays for two months, I'm sure that it won't take me as long. I also hope this audio turned out okay, Um, if you have any questions or you just want to chat with me or you want to know more about my six week online coaching program to stop binge eating, send an email to hello at bear expressive dot com, or you can contact me on my instagram, which is bare ex brave. And if you would like to purchase my e books, please head down to the Link Blur. I would be sir happy end grateful sending love to you all and I'll speak to you in my next podcast. Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy this podcast, I would be so grateful if you were able to leave me a review. And please follow me on Facebook and on Instagram at Bear Ex brave. If you have any questions or you want to contact me, it'll please email me at l y p h Underscore podcast at outlook dot com. I'll talk to you in my next call cost.