Managing Energy with Chronic Illness

Living with chronic illness, chronic pain, injury, or unpredictable health symptoms can completely change the way you think about energy. Some days you may feel capable of doing almost everything on your list, while other days your body forces you to slow down. Learning how to work with those fluctuations instead of constantly fighting them can make a huge difference.

In this episode of Wellness in Every Season, Autumn talks with Gaylene Gomez of Compass Rose Nutrition & Wellness about managing your energy when your health doesn’t always cooperate.

After navigating her own health challenges—including a neck injury, spinal surgery, and a cerebellar stroke—Gaylene had to rethink what wellness looked like for her. The strategies that once helped her stay active and productive had to evolve as she learned how to listen to her body, recognize signs of overdoing it, and build routines around the energy she actually had.

Together, Autumn and Gaylene explore four interconnected pillars of health:

• Nourishment
 • Movement
 • Sleep
 • Mindset and stress management

You’ll hear how weakness in one pillar can ripple into the others, why pushing through fatigue or pain isn’t always the answer, and how chronic illness may require redefining movement, productivity, and progress.

Gaylene also walks listeners through a simple Four Pillars self-assessment to help you identify where your body may need the most support right now. Rather than trying to overhaul your entire life at once, you can start with the area that needs the most attention and allow those changes to create a positive ripple through the rest of your wellness.

This episode is especially helpful if you are navigating chronic illness, chronic pain, injury recovery, fatigue, unpredictable energy, burnout, or simply a season where the routines that used to work for you no longer do.

Your body changing does not mean you have failed. Sometimes wellness means learning how to support the body you have today while continuing to build toward the life you want tomorrow.

Connect with Gaylene Gomez & Compass Rose Nutrition + Wellness

Website: Compass Rose Nutrition & Wellness

Free Resource: Four Pillars of Health Quiz — discover which pillar may need the most attention to help you improve your energy and overall wellness.

Instagram: @compassrosenutrition

LinkedIn: Gaylene Gomez | Compass Rose Nutrition & Wellness

For more wellness tips and exclusive content, join my newsletter! Sign up now at https://wellness-in-every-season.kit.com/5-days-to-mastering-mornings-and-evenings receive a free 5-day guide called "Awaken and Unwind: 5 Days to Mastering Life's Mornings and Evenings." 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Today we are talking about how to manage energy with illness. Welcome to Wellness in Every Season. We talk all things wellness regarding the environment that you spend a lot of your time in, your physical health, your intellectual health, your financial health, your spiritual health, your professional health, your social health, who you have relationships with, your emotional health. This is a really big umbrella, so expect all kinds of topics within all of these amazing dimensions of your wellness. Let's dive in. Right before we hit record, Gaylene and I were talking about how we both have to manage that within ourselves. So no, you are not alone if you have to deal with anything chronic and knowing that from one moment to the next or one day to the next, your energy levels can be all over the place. And honestly, you still have the same energy level fluctuations depending on if you're female, your cycle, or men, they have their cycle and it changes throughout the day where women have a 28-day cycle. So welcome to this episode. Know that it's for you no matter what. And please share this because so many people struggle with understanding their energy levels and what to do. And without further ado, I would love to welcome Gaylene Gomez. She is with Compass Rose Nutrition and Wellness. She talks about what led her down this path is that she struggled with low energy due to poor health choices. And then she had a more serious medical stuff happen. But she had to dial in her healthy habits, mindset, and routine so that she could get herself back on track. And that's what I'm really excited to talk about. I'm really going through that journey myself a year and a half after the car accident and having that affect my back and my neck all day long, and not knowing if I'm going to be flared up enough where I have brain fog or where I'm going to be. And it sucks. When you're doing everything you feel that's right and your body kind of feels like it's betraying you. So welcome, Gayleen. And I'm so excited for this conversation since I'm living it and I know so many other people are.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Yeah, I think it's going to be such a great conversation because it's it affects more people than we even realize. And once you're going through something difficult, it's nice to know not that other people are suffering, but other people are going through difficult times as well. We often can look at, you know, the general public in a grocery store or something and not even realize what people are going through. And so whether it's, you know, an invisible health condition or visible, there's so many people going through so much. I look forward to our conversation today.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

That reminds me of how many people do you see and you're like, that I want a body like that. I wish I looked like that. Or I wish I felt like that. Or you see somebody who parks in a handicapped spot or a place maybe they shouldn't park to get closer. And you're like, how rude of you. Like you're disabled at all. We all have these type of judgments, or we all have felt like we're judged. Where when we either walk a mile in their shoes or whatever, and we realize, oh no, no, actually, we don't want this because there's chronic stuff going on.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

You never know what someone's going through. And I've even heard it framed a little bit differently, even outside of their health. We don't know maybe that they're going through a divorce or the family member just passed away, or you just never know. And when you are someone cuts you off in traffic, you have no idea what happened in their day that led to that point. And so, yes to everything you said. Absolutely. It's widespread. We're all going through something, we're all dealing with something, might look different or feel different or be different, but we're all going through something in our lives. And having the conversation around more of the energy of it, I think is valuable because when we're not feeling good, we just want to curl up in bed. And there is things we can actually be doing to improve it. Ooh, so tell us. It is a loaded question. There is so much there to work with. And even in my own life and health, it's evolved over the years. And so today I have a little bit more of a structured plan that can work for anyone, or anyone can take pieces from it because what works for me might be different than what works for you. But what we'll talk about today is something that can actually help everybody. And is it okay if I start with just a little bit of my background of kind of what got me to this point where it can make sense as I run through it? Yeah. So yeah, I had horrible lifestyle choices. I was eating popcorn and iced tea and thinking that could sustain me through my day of being very active. And I had a very active life in my 20s, into my 30s. I was very heavy into different activities and sports and traveling the world, and I had an amazing life. And I was not fueling myself properly. So the fatigue was just exhausting. And it affected my gut health and all these things. I started studying nutrition. I'd already worked in the health and allness space, but I started studying nutrition for my own health. And I kept saying to my husband, everybody needs to know this stuff. These are things that we all really need to be doing for ourselves. We can feel better. And it worked for me. So I helped other clients and I started my own business. And this is now years later. I had a snowboard accident. I had a neck injury. I had spine surgery. A few months after spine surgery, I had a tear in an artery in my neck, which led to a cerebellar stroke. So I went from this healthy, active, vibrant, loving sports, traveling the world, working in nutrition lifestyle that was sure, it felt great. And I thought fatigue was just I was tired by three o'clock and needed a nap in the hammock type thing, to actually having a serious health condition and truly getting that level of deep fatigue that it's feels almost impossible to pull yourself out of. And when I started reflecting back into how I help my clients with their fatigue, really took me back to what I call the four pillars of health. And I needed to really immerse myself back in what I was teaching other clients so that we can start looking to see what I could be doing to get myself feeling better. And so the four pillars that I work with back in the day when I was just lightly fatigued, all the way through my personal health crisis and with all of my health and wellness coaching clients, the four pillars I do is nutrition. So I'm a certified holistic nutrition consultant. That is my main focus, is what we're fueling our bodies with and nutrients and eating properly. But we can't just eat healthy and hope for the best. We also need to move our bodies. Again, if we're staying in bed all day, even if we're not feeling like it, we need to get our blood circulating. Those nutrients that we eat need to be delivered to our brain and through our bodies and to our muscles. So movement is the second pillar. The third pillar is sleep. Absolutely. Without getting proper restful sleep, we're not healing, we're not recovering, we're not renewing and refreshing ourselves and our body and our brain and our muscles. There's so much happens when we're actually asleep. And it is often pushed to the bottom of to-do list in this modern life. And then the last pillar is our stress, it's our mindset. It's how are we handling what's coming at us? Because when we are on stress, when we are in that high alert, when we are putting a lot of pressure on ourselves or when we are overstimulated, our body is also not healing the way it needs to. So if anyone has any type of chronic health condition, that itself is stressful. Never mind if you're running late for work or if you have kids that are sick or something else going on in our life, life happens and there will be more stress. So this isn't about removing it, it's about having tools as to how we handle it. And so those are the four pillars that I've been working on throughout my career and with my clients that have really transformed things for me and for the women that I work with.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

From all the people that I interview, it keeps going back to the sleep and the stress the most. So it's maybe that's where I've been working on the most. So it's when you buy a new car, you see that car everywhere type of thing. I feel like that's coming up a lot from the 239 episodes that I've had. And it's interesting because we live in such a society where as soon as we have a free moment or we're waiting in line or whatever, we're instantly grabbing our phone, working on a to-do list or whatever, instead of just focus on the breath or focus on what I'm hearing. If you happen to be out in nature for a hot minute, do you hear birds? Do you hear bugs? What do you hear? Do you feel the breeze? And we absolutely don't pay attention to our sleep. How many of us get six hours and we think that's good enough?

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Sleep is one of those interesting pieces that a lot of women have come to me over the years. As my career has kind of evolved and grown and changed, I work with busy women who are tired of all of those fad diets and quick fixes and they're truly ready to make lasting healthy changes. They're ready to make themselves and their health more of a priority and really start to learn the things. But oftentimes what has happened is they come in, they say, I already do everything I need. I already eat a salad for lunch. I already cut my calories, I already run on the treadmill every morning. And they think that's enough. And so once we actually start looking, I have kind of a little quiz and we could do it here together of the four pillars to see where like people are gonna most benefit from. But when they come in saying, I already do everything right, and then we get to the sleep question, we get to that sleep question, and they are really skimping on sleep. They're going to bed really late and pushing snooze in the morning and they're exhausted when they get up. And then their answer is, but I don't have time to go to bed earlier. I'm busy. My to-do list takes me till midnight. Once we can start making some shifts to that sleep, then they start hitting their health goals. Whether that health goal is energy or it could be like around weight loss, it could be also be around hormonal symptoms, like maybe menopausal symptoms or PMS symptoms, or it could help on honestly anything. But when we start dialing in that pillar, they're like, oh, I guess I wasn't doing everything, right? I was eating healthy or what maybe they first in mind had as healthy. So my goal with the nutrition side is usually let's add more nutrients. It's not cut back and only eat salad. That's not my approach at all. My approach is let's make sure you're getting all the vitamins and minerals and nutrients that you need to thrive. And then also let's look at your movement and your sleep and your stress. Because when we dial all of these in together, we're limitless, right? We have all the potential and we can start really truly feeling our best. So you're not gonna take the joy out of my life and like food is meant to be joy, right? Like there is absolutely so much happiness and pleasure in food. And I think that there should be, it should be something that is family time, and maybe you like cooking with different spices. Before Claude, we started chatting a little bit about gardening, and I love having a veggie garden and growing my own foods and trying new recipes. And so absolutely, I think food should be joy a hundred percent. Joy is different than also eating an entire bag of chocolate chip cookies in front of watching Netflix every night. So the way that I approach food, I never want to remove joy from what we eat. And I also think there's plenty of room for chocolate chip cookies that brings a lot of people joy. And so if we are getting all of those nutrients, there's room for cookies as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

I love that. And I think that also goes with exercise. I was talking to somebody who he's a coach and he also facilitates the pickleball league that I'm in. But I was asking him, I was like, it's obvious you play a lot of sports, which one's your favorite? And he was saying pickleball is not something that you play every day. And I'm like, at first it's like, and then it's like, no, I'm the same way. I like having a variety in that. And the reason why I started pickleball is I wanted a challenge, and it absolutely is challenging for me. And it's something that I could easily drop in whenever, because there's people around, so I have people to play with. It doesn't need to be a whole like I need seven people to play type sport, plus I needed opposing team, so an extra seven people, you know, whatever. And it made me think about I wanted something like a class or stuff like that where I feel like I have to be there and I'm getting the social impact. And yesterday I didn't sleep well, talking about sleep. I woke up super early in the morning, and my brain and my body were like, Nope, you're awake for the day because you're too sore to lay down anymore. Great. So I was not going to go to the gym. And I realized if I took that out, it would ruin everything else that I had planned because I'd already been in that area at a specific time, like my Sam's Club order and all of this stuff. Um, so it makes me think about that for other people. There's so many other people that I've worked with, just like what you were saying, that if you have it be too routinely, it gets boring, and then you don't want to do it.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

And actually, something else came up for me as I you saw, like I was like eager to jump in and say something. When you said it kind of ruins everything else, let's also look how lack of sleep can ruin everything else. So if you don't get enough sleep, you're not probably gonna wake up and make a really healthy breakfast. You're probably gonna grab like coffee and a muffin at the coffee shop on your way to the office or on your way to work. If you didn't sleep last night, are you going to have the energy to get that exercise in? It's easier to pass up if you're tired. And if you don't get the exit in, are you gonna have a good sleep tonight? Maybe not. And we can look at it on all the different sides because it is so interconnected. If we say you had a great sleep last night, you woke up feeling great, you got up and you had a big glass of water, you made a healthy breakfast, you looked at your schedule for the day, your stress feels more manageable, your to-do list is easier, you're like, I can tackle this, I have the energy, I'm gonna fit a workout in or just go for a walk, I'm gonna spend some time in nature, I'm gonna make this other healthy meal, I'm gonna get myself prepared for the week. You think about how everything is so cyclical. If we miss one of these pillars, it all kind of falls apart, just like your other projects or your other things on your to-do list. If one thing is removed from it, they all start to suffer. So yeah, exercise, but it doesn't even have to be something big like that. Go for a walk in nature for 10 minutes. Since my stroke, I have had a really hard time exercising and I can no longer do my exercise, it was different. I was more the different a different kind of sport. So mountain biking and snowboarding and that kind of sport, which kind of takes the whole day, right? Like I can't do those things anymore. So actually, just on the other side of my plants here, I have a recumbent bike and I live in the country, so I can go for a walk in nature. And my exercise has just changed the way that I do it. So I still have to schedule it in because how fun is it to go from mountain biking to riding a stationary bike in my loft. It's maybe not as exciting, so you don't prioritize it. So you have to still build things into your schedule. And if I'm tired, I'm gonna skip it. So, yes, the exercise and the sleep, and then, like you say, getting all the other things done, all your other errands, all the other things you were gonna do today, all connected.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

And I slept better last night. So today I had time in between appointments, so I went for a walk twice. Good for you on top of already weightlifting in the morning and going to the sauna and everything else. So it makes sense. And it brings me to the question of let's talk about stress now and how stress fits in there and especially with sleep and with eating. And what was the other thing? Your other pillar. I'm missing a pillar.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

So there's nutrition, movement, sleep, and then the last one is stress and mindset.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

Yes. So movement and stress. For me, I know, and we talked about how we both can't sit in the chair for very long. I've noticed that if I'm stressing and trying to finish whatever thing is in my brain that I want to get out in the world, I'm not moving. I'm sitting still, especially for deep thinking. I tend to have my desk in the chair position instead of standing up. I wanted to let you know that there are some amazing things happening behind the scenes here that I'm very excited about. The first one is I am opening my podcast up for sponsorships. So if you are an aligned brand with wellness, reach out to me. You can find me wellnessevery season.com slash podcast slash sponsor. I also have something going on for you listeners. If you've been listening for a while, I interview people who are aligned with wellness and they talk about the healing modalities and different modalities that they do, but it is in a very descriptive sense. I am making it so that you have the chance to experience it during a recorded episode, and other people get to experience it alongside you so that we can really see how it works. Instead of just this zoomed out experience, we get to really zoom in and experience it. So you can find out more about that at wellnesseveryseason.com forward slash listener wellness guest. So, how does this work for everyone else, especially clients and then your personal experience?

SPEAKER_01 18:59

Yeah, I think even with the way you were explaining it now, everyone can kind of see themselves a little bit in that explanation, right? We think through how does that affect me? And the way that I used to be is that I had the personality and the energy to push through, right? Push through. And nowadays I don't have that ability to push through. If I do, my symptoms flare up and I really suffer on the other side. So now it's more about creating boundaries and limits and understanding how much I can handle. One of my big problems is my eyes, and you'll see I'm actually wearing kind of special glasses. And so if I push through, my symptoms will go from dizziness to nausea to just feeling horrible. And it's something that it takes a while to recover from. So the goal then is to never push through. And when we think of stress, the stress could be physical stress that you have pain and actual symptoms, right? Maybe it is the nausea or the dizziness or neck pain or back pain. When you push through, you're causing stress on your body. And so when we have stress manifesting as physical symptoms, we can, when you push through, what is your way of suffering? So with our stress, we start looking into our nervous system and our sympathetic nervous system versus our parasympathetic nervous system. We don't need to go too far down this rabbit hole, but our sympathetic is our fight or flight response. It's that your body is always in that like heightened state of reaction. And we need to get ourselves out of that heightened state of reaction so that our digestion works properly, so that our brain works properly, so that our body can manage our day-to-day life things. And when we are in that heightened state of stress, especially if it's chronic, if it's something quick, like you can't find your car keys and you have a minute of stress while you look for your car keys, that's one thing and the stress goes away. But if you're in a really stressful job and a stressful home life and stressful health condition, and you're always in that heightened state of stress that your body never really gets to come down from, it absolutely affects all those other pillars again. Right back to our sleep. If you're really stressed at night when you try to go to bed, you're not going to be able to fall asleep. If you're really stressed, you're probably thinking, I don't have time to exercise. If you're really stressed, you're not like enjoying that healthy, joyful meal cooking in the kitchen. And so stress is so interconnected to all of these pieces again, that probably anyone listening can think about how you just think back to earlier today, think back to yesterday. We've all had something stressful happen in our life in the last 24 hours or the last seven days. You can probably list multiple things from losing your keys to a death to a job to a whatever. And so then we think about that whole cycle. If we're really stressed, how are all of these other pillars? So, for anyone that does have a chronic health condition, we need to actively try and get ourselves. out of that stress. We can get ourselves out of it with things like exercise, right? A walk in nature. We can get ourselves out of it with things like sleep, but we can also get ourselves out of it with things like nutrition and have a big glass of water and do some deep breathing. There's so many things we can do, but we have to try. It's not going to happen on its own in most cases. We really have to be involved in taking this turn for ourselves, right? We have to make the decision to prioritize whichever of these pillars are out of whack so that we can then get ourselves back into a nice cycle again.

SPEAKER_00 22:40

I had a question I was holding on to it. It's gone already. Give me a second.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Could I do that little exercise I was talking about of the four pillars? It's just like a nice quick little thing.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:51

And so I think it's really helpful for people to have a self-check-in, right? It's like, okay, well you're telling me I need to eat healthy and go to bed early and manage my stress and exercise. So people think that's a lot. Like I've already said I don't have time for all of this. And so I want to remove some of that pressure by whoever's listening to just pick one of these things, but it's going to look different for what I need to focus on and what you need to focus on. So the little exercise that I have, I'll make it really quick. Some of you might be seeing this on video but you might just be listening. So if you have a little pen and paper, draw a quadrant. So just draw yourself like four squares. And in the top left square, you're going to write nourishment top right do movement. Bottom left do sleep bottom right do mindset. But basically you have these four different sections of nourishment, movement, sleep and mindset. And all you're going to do is go through a little bit of a self-assessment to decide where you are at and we could say the last seven days. Now a lot of people say oh I used to exercise all the time so I'm going to give myself a high score there. We're not doing it as what we used to be because we're all on this journey. It's where are we at right now? So under the nourishment pillar if you were to give yourself a score scale one to 10 in the last seven days 10 being I ate really healthy I ate a variety of protein and carbs and healthy fats and nutrients and fruits and veggies and I'm like top of my game under the nourishment pillar. Bottom a number one is going to be that you ate at McDonald's three meals a day seven days in a row. So you're probably not a one or a 10, but you're giving yourself a score just based on how your last week has gone. How well have you been prioritizing your nourishment? And so when you think about it, you're just going to pick a number maybe the last week was a really good week and you actually did quite well. Maybe the last week you've been traveling and eating out all the time and it has been a really big struggle. So give yourself a score under the nourishment. And then the same thing under movement. In the last seven days how well has your movement pillar been so autumn's already worked out a couple times today but I don't know how her last seven days has gone. So same thing 10 if you give yourself that score of a 10, it's like you're getting a variety of strengths and mobility and cardio and most days you're getting a decent amount of exercise in versus a score of a one is you've been laying on your couch eating that bag of cookies and watching Netflix for the last week straight. You haven't moved at all. And sometimes that happens yeah absolutely eating just in pain that was me. Movement can be different and that's why it's your own score. So for me movement these days is did I get on my recumbent bike every day? Even though it's maybe not the same kind of movement that I would like to be doing or that I used to do it's how is my movement? What do I score myself? And then we're going to do the same for sleep. So our sleep pillar is not number of hours it's not saying that you did eight hours of sleep so you get a score of an eight it's really about your sleep journey. It's are you going to bed at a consistent time every night? Do you have a wind down routine when you go to bed? Are you tucking your phone away and listening to a guided meditation before bed? Are you having a hot bath? Are you using some essential oils? Do you have a nice wind down bedtime routine? And then what is your quality of sleep? Maybe you got six hours but you were up every hour on the hour. What about in the morning? Are you waking up feeling rested and ready for the day? Or are you hitting snooze on your alarm three times? So with this sleep one 10 the score of 10 is that consistent solid sleep every single night one is like I have terrible sleep. So again probably not a one or a 10 everyone's going to give themselves a score somewhere along that list. Is our energy level involved in this equation too for sleep or so what we can kind of do, yeah, like when we start thinking about your energy level if you're waking up and you're not feeling rested I would affect that on your sleep score for sure. And then the last one being mindset and a lot of people don't resonate with that word as much. So we could change it to stress. And keep in mind we're not giving ourselves a high score if we're really stressed. We're using the same chart. So scale of one to 10, it's how well are you managing it? Do you have the tools and you're actively working on your mindset and your stress levels and you're carving out time every day to be able to do this for yourself well that's a 10. If you're like I'm stressed out and I'm not doing anything about it. I'm just really on the struggle bus, that's a one. So giving yourself a score one to 10 on those. So giving everyone a second to complete that as an exercise no pressure to share it. But Adam, do you want to share which one is your lowest score? Even just the topic sleep. Sleep. So that's what everyone wants to do is identify which pillar you gave the lowest number to it doesn't matter too much what the number is, but it's your own assessment. So if your lowest number is sleep then what I would say to you for the next week is that's the pillar you need to dial in so that all of these other pillars can start to benefit. Because we've already talked about how they are going to affect everything. So if you had like a couple good nights of sleep, how would that benefit you?

SPEAKER_00 28:18

That would benefit my movement, which is my other low one. I actually have my appointment with my physical therapist tomorrow. So I will be talking to him about this and how my body has been waking me up in the middle of the night and what can I do about it? Yeah. Can he show me some of the pressure points that he's working on because he's a Sasha physical therapist. Yep. So it was weird. I had my first appointment with him two weeks ago and it was pressure points type. But all of a sudden I had energy for days. Amazing yes I'm going to try to get in every week instead of every other week to make point of this because all was crashed out. So sleep and movement went way down. So we will definitely be sleeping tomorrow.

SPEAKER_01 29:01

Exactly. And so once someone listens to this as an exercise and you identify what your low score is then it's like okay now I need to figure out what to do about it. You're like okay I'm getting crappy sleep but now what? So your project then is to dive into that and figure out how you can get better sleep, right? And so regardless of what anyone's pillar is that's the one thing to spend your limited energy because we all have our limited amount of energy but if you could just get that pillar doing better, you can see how all of the other pillars were benefit. Same thing if somebody's low pillar is movement, then I would suggest try and just get in a little bit of just slow, easy walking or try you're trying to take a step in the right direction as to whatever one of these pillars you gave yourself a low score on. And then do the exercise again in a week or in two weeks and just using your own kind of scale, see how you're doing. And it's like a continual journey to try and improve right I'm in constant pursuit of what is best for my health. So I'm continually re-evaluating where I land on my own four pillar checklist. And then this is what I've really implemented for my clients as well.

SPEAKER_00 30:11

Something that I've been thinking about is movement and stress. And so many people are that super coiled spring and they think that's just the way of life and they think that fast movement will help.

unknown 30:28

Right?

SPEAKER_00 30:28

What do you say to those people that have a lot of stress and maybe are runners how does that correlate yep and of course I'm going to say it depends.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

I actually have quite a few clients who are runners and I see that they added a lot into their identity right I am a runner. That is a thing I do I am a runner. However when I look at it I still want to assess is that running creating more stress in your body are you fueling yourself properly to be able to run like that are you getting up an hour earlier to run when really you would have been benefited from a little bit of extra sleep because your sleep pillar is so low. What is their running or the exercise actually doing to your stress? Is it putting more stress on your body? Are you giving your body that time to heal? So if it is a healthy person, that is how they love to burn off steam by all means. And if it feels good and they feel good after and they feel good during that's one thing. If it's something that people are putting pressure on their self to be able to do that or they're pushing themselves through and it's creating more stress in your body and your health and you're overdoing it, then that's another story. So really being able to tune into your own body and actually spend a little bit of time checking in with yourself and how does this truly make me feel and is this the best use of my time and energy and is there a healthier outlet? And sometimes that answer is yes but sometimes running is like the best thing for them. What is each of our way of getting through a stressful period it's going to look different for me than for you than for the next person. So if it's truly a healthy outlet and exercise for some people is by all means. Especially with someone with a chronic health condition I worry that it could be contributing to them overdoing it and putting their body in a state of more stress. And so I just would want to be careful of that.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

I wonder about that for myself with doing pickleball. I've noticed that when I work out differently throughout the I'm not a slur duty but pickleball is also my self-therapy of getting some childhood stuff. I still act like it's dodgeball when the ball's coming fast. Yes get extra points for making sure that ball doesn't hit me. So I have a very big freeze response because of childhood abuse. So there's a aspect of it.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

So I've definitely been starting to have that well is it good for me is it not what I would say is also do like a self-check in as you go to do it and see if you still feel flared up if you go shorter. So how long are you normally playing pickleball in an average game? Are you normally going and playing two or three games or are you playing one? Are you playing with someone who really brings out the side of you that makes you hard on yourself or are you just casually chatting and playing one game and you go home feeling well. So even when we pick one thing like pickleball, there's still all types of levels to it, right? Like there's pickleball where I live and some of them are super competitive and really going for it. And then there's people that are just chatting and it's leisure and they're getting fresh air and sunshine and a bit of movement and it is a de-stress I would check in with yourself the next time you play of like how am I feeling in the moment? Am I truly enjoying this? Am I using it as a way to burn off steam? Am I feeling more stress while I'm doing it? Should I stop earlier? I have really had to tune into little signals that my body gives me just before I have a flare up and we all have different ones. And sometimes you push through that and you don't even notice you've pushed through it until you're already in a flare up you're like oh crap I overdid it again. So we need to backtrack and think through like you're doing and self-check in is this causing a flare up what specifically about it is is it the person I'm playing against is it the level of activity is it that I'm playing in the hot sun like you have health conditions. So think through the actual logistics of which part of that is pushing you overboard that's making you flare up and then picture another day of pickleball where you didn't flare up what was different that day I think that also goes with nutrition.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

Yeah and even so we talked about movement and even stress like having that you have with sleep too but having that like with food am I flared up what happened and having that did I overeat did I push through when I shouldn't have I've been thinking about that as I've not been as hungry lately and reflecting like what's going on okay I'm recovering from this okay knowing that this is a for now thing. That goes back to the question that I was trying to think of earlier. How many of your clients said I did well in say my 20s and 30s having this lifestyle and it's no longer working for me but I did not have something like an accident that made this change. I think no longer working and why why is this normal? I'm hoping that this will help people that are watching and listening to reflect for themselves of what's not working and that this is normal and okay and we're supposed to evolve and trying to get kind of that conversation in their heads for them.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

Yeah and that's fair right hopefully you haven't been through what I've been through or what Autumn's been through. Hopefully you're listening and you're like I don't relate to either of you amazing I'm so happy that you don't and you probably still are not feeling the same way you did in your 20s. Our hormones change our bodies change you've also maybe been sitting at a desk for 20 years now hunched over in a bad position or maybe you have a really stressful responsibility on you with finances or family stress takes a toll in our body hormones take a toll in our body if you don't eat bad for a day or a week in your 20s no big deal. What if we don't eat bad for a week once a month and now we're in our 40s it takes a toll it adds up there's so many things that can contribute to it. When we look at all four of these pillars or anything else in our life if we lack movement for a little while it's not a huge deal to our muscles we can bounce back. If we lack movement or we maybe exercise differently maybe had a knee injury that took you out of doing some hip exercises or now maybe you can't play pickleball or tennis because of a bad knee injury or something like that. There's so many different variables that maybe you haven't had a big health crisis, but maybe you have had physical stress or emotional stress or mental stress that has taken a toll. And if not those, then we have hormones, we have all of these other things that absolutely contribute. So I think once we go through those four pillars again, people could self-identify and say, you know what? Actually I'm not really great at getting enough sleep. Well maybe that's why you don't feel your best. Right. When we're in our 20s we do bounce back a lot faster. But as the years go on there's more and more piled up including time. Even just all of the time of these things deteriorating or piling on takes a toll as well.

SPEAKER_00 37:50

So think of it like your bank account how much in debt are you or how much in the positive are you? Depends if somebody's really stuck and they want to work with you or they want to get into your world but they're not ready quite yet tell us both ways to get into your world either slowly or take my money I want to work with you now.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

That's how they can get yeah so I am a health and nutrition coach. I've now been doing this for 20 years. So I am very well versed in helping you at whatever level you're at. If you are just kind of finding me for the first time, which you probably are through autumn here, the best thing to do would actually be to take my quiz. And so autumn will have that but it's a four pillar quiz. So with you really identifying which pillar you need to work on, I'm going to give you a little three step plan as to how to get yourself managing that pillar better. And the quiz is totally free to take and that would be the best first step into my world because you're going to get a little project plan regardless if you work with me as a paid client or not. Once you take the quiz, it puts you on my email list. So hit reply to your email that gives you the results and tell me what you got. And if you want more help, I absolutely will have a way to support you in your next steps. So I work with busy women that want to do better and they want to feel better and they're really just feeling stuck either with not knowing what to work on or the motivation to actually do it or the know-how or maybe you feel like you're doing all the right things already and you'd like some help identifying which piece or how to actually get yourself out of that little funk. And so if you want to work more closely with me, I have different levels of coaching programs, whether we work really closely privately one-on-one for the next 90 days or whether you join my community in a more membership capacity where I run group weekly or group monthly challenges. I have different live events and live trainings and different programs. And for example I have a seasonal reset coming up so there's always different ways to to work with me at different levels. So the first step would be to take the quiz, get your answer and then hit reply to your email and we'll chat more after that.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

You really thought about busy people because you simplified everything so it's not lots of hoops they need to go through in order to work with you.

SPEAKER_01 40:04

If health feels really hard or really expensive or like it's going to be really time consuming, we're just going to keep avoiding it. And I don't want us to avoid it. I want this to be so simple that if you just make a couple little changes, you can start getting your energy back, you can start feeling better, you can start seeing improvement, you can start enjoying your life more and look forward to all the things that are still to come but we need to take some little steps to get there. So yes, I've tried to make things as simple as possible. And what I feel through the way you're talking is that there is hope in this I think you and I both know what it's like to be bedridden after some type of health problem. And we need to actively be involved in our own health journey. So there absolutely is hope but it truly is up to you to find the steps to get yourself moving forward. We can't hope that someone's going to swoop in and save us. We really have to start prioritizing things for ourselves. And so finding the motivation or the support or the coach to start moving yourself forward.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

And for anybody who needs a little bit of motivation this is something that came up for me during one of my walks today think about visualizing your optimal self, your ideal self, the lifestyle what does that look like? Use that for your motivation for me I really miss hiking and I want to be able to hike during any time of the year instead of only during certain times of the year. And bouldering included in there I really love being able to climb boulders. I feel like I'm my best kid self when I can do that. And I want to feel energized when I'm done and I want it to be five or 10 miles. I miss that. So that is what my visualization is what is yours what is my and I vote for the hiking I absolutely love hiking.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

I live in the mountains and after my health stuff I have also been very limited on what I can do and the energy to do it. And so I do short walks I am doing the steps that I can do to get myself back to the point where I can also enjoy hiking again.

SPEAKER_00 42:12

So maybe one day we can go hiking together if we're listening we're going to make it a whole thing we can all go together. Yeah Falcorn at the end exactly think about that and then think about what kid part of you can also be involved with that. Like what can bring joy along with that it's amazing how movement can really get you to start thinking creatively again and reduce that stress. Because when you have stress it just it's not even a door it's this thick wall. You can't even really see through it to be creative and to be your best self. Thank you for this conversation. I told you half an hour and it's an hour I loved this conversation because all of us want to do better than we are doing with the pillars. And it's that really great chance to check in and how can we make this a little bit better? Because when we are working well on all of these it goes back to the study that I did on blue zones. This is where you have that longevity where you can live well for a very long time and have the lifestyle that you want that you don't need to vacation from of course vacationing is awesome. Love travel but where you come back from vacation and you want to come back to your life that's the goal.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Absolutely I love that thank you for chatting today.

SPEAKER_00 43:37

Thank you if you enjoyed this please like subscribe please share this episode so that we can help other people really recalibrate every aspect of their lives so they can be the best version of themselves. And I will see you in the next episode. I want to have my quick disclaimer here that this is not a one size fits all. If you want one-on-one coaching let's talk and we will make sure what wellness means to you is really put into your life put into practice I am using my undergrad in applied health and my life coaching experience to bring this podcast to you.