Episode #6 - Unleashing the Power of Tracking: Enhancing Intuition in Training.

Hélène Guillaume is the CEO of Wild AI, an app that helps you to track your menstrual cycle, and turn your hormones into a super power. 

She is a mum and surfer who shares her insights on how to adapt when things are changing in your body, and mind.

Knowledge is power, and understanding how your hormones impact your training, motivation, and moods is a key to unlocking your potential as a woman. 

For far too long women have tried to fit in, and ignore the impact hormones have on their lives. I know I'm guilty of it, but tracking was a game changer for me.

We all want to know when we should push hard and when we should recover, there's no magic bullet for this, or simple answer, but with more data, we can make better decisions.
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https://www.wild.ai/

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Transcript

0:03

[Music] hi I'm Celia boothman founder of LTR coaching and I'd like to welcome you to the inspired triathletes podcast where I'll be bringing you stories from female triathletes and taking on topics that are important to women in the sport hi and welcome Ellen gillon G is that how I say it my mom's French I should have no excuse for my pronunciation but Ellen is the CEO of wild Ai and thank you very much for joining me here today so just to get started I'd like to ask you what it was that kind of motivated you or was there kind of a moment when you like I need to set this app up and and the reasons behind it what your motivations were and what inspired you to set it up yeah uh I think being a woman in sports I felt that all my training recommendations were always basically made for men and at that time particularly training in endur sports like Tron and Ultram Maron running I could really specifically see some differences so for instance cycling one week I would climb uphill like the man I was training with and the week after I would be out of breath and I couldn't understand why was there the differences and there was no explanation anywhere and so I got really being a data scientist by training I got really interested in understanding is there any way for me to understand if there's a difference if there's an advantage to be a woman uh but also like just like our bodies doesn't really look alike and the whole science or like the whole knowledge we had in sports was pinking a trinket and you know like just protocols as women and you know like getting out of the swimming pool I would be uh advised to dring a whole bottle of Gatorade whereas my body is smaller than men and it didn't feel right but I also didn't have any knowledge so I tried to really understand um if I could understand better but also the other other part of it is that I felt that all the messaging towards women in sports was quite negative like women are mood bit with complicated and also in sports we're just not interesting so you know Medias are not interested because we are yeah literally not interesting and so I I like that's pretty uh negative and pretty Grim so is there another way for me to understand my own body is there a great way for me to understand my body and and yeah the answer is yes there is so try to understand that and that's what led me to this cool yeah I remember feeling that frustration as well like when I it was probably when I first started getting into Triathlon and cycling and it was like everything was you just fit in with the men you just you know join this and do it that way and kind of I was often the only woman in cycling time trials and things like that so you feel a little bit isolated and you just want to get on with it but you know that there's something else as well and there's something not not the same like you say so that's really cool it's interesting hear your experiences as well because I think things have changed as well quite a lot since um you must have said how long ago was it that you set up wild a right now was uh six years ago yeah so like I mean was it last year or I can't remember if it was last year or the year before when the British uh football uh lion the Lions I can't remember the name I'm not into football but I know it was all over the paper how they got as many views if not more than the male uh matches so things have changed and improved quite a lot since then haven't they and this will have played a part in that I'm sure raising awareness absolutely yeah um so just so you mentioned that you you thought there was something different did you kind of try tracking your cycle like just on paper or something like that Did you sort of start because you say you were interested in the data did you start like logging that and finding the information yourself before you developed the app was that something that yeah I looked at the very first data set I looked at was my resting heart rate versus my menstral cycle so I would just plot that into um EXO spreadsheets and so that it was Tiny correlation so then I got really interested in that and I opened this Pandora box of what is a female physiology how does it function discover Dr sty Sims and U and from there I convince her to partner with us and re turn the knowledge that is on py into something that is actionable at the fingertip of women in the nap so you know like dra the correlations like what is said in a relation what can we learn from it and how can we turn that into something that is easy and usable that doesn't read like very researchy and that was the the huge work that we did behind wom years yeah so it's so it's sometimes hard isn't it to you read the information and it can be a bit confusing because there are some conflicting things out there as well like some people are saying oh don't it doesn't matter it doesn't make any difference and and other people are saying that it does and I definitely think well I know that it does because my experience that it makes a difference um but how would you I know in the app there's recommendations for nutrition and recovery and that kind of thing so what kind of EX are there any examples that you can give of things that people can do when they are you know if they do notice that some correlation between their cycle and their training and how they perform or how they feel even yeah um generally speaking there's a bell curve uh which is not Val for all women but for instance women with M cycle very often um would have a behavior underlying Behavior it's like a bker so basically uh we have a female Readiness score and what we've seen is that it's it Peaks at Ovation so it goes up until Ovation the Readiness score and then it drops when the P symptoms arrive and then day three of the perod start going up again and that is a very traditional and typical curve of readiness score which reflects everything that is behind um I.E wearable data and manual checking data so from mering heart trate heart diability sleep patterns and how they feel I feel more empowered I have how sex drive I feel more eager to train Etc and uh some women have the exact opposite but let's say for that use case of women who do follow that pattern uh typically around the relation increase fats and carbs the body really needs it it's also when women feel more keen to do high intensity workout where the body is the most ready to do that in the training and then going back going towards the end of the cycle when they might experience uh Prem symptoms for instance bloating they can increase hydration electrolyt and cold water immersion to prepare the body and reduce the negative symptoms and what we see is that women who follow that often they see their negative symptoms going down which is reallying and they track it and then they see it in numbers as well that they have better better symptoms um so yeah yeah and I think sometimes we are you know you were talking earlier about the negative kind of depiction of women in sport there's a negative depiction of having a period in in sport or like well in life really it's like it's seen as or said as being something negative when actually there's a lot we can do to improve our symptoms like you say there's there things we can do and being if we if we're aware of that and we don't go okay oh this is going to be a bad day say okay what can we do to mitigate those symptoms what can we do to improve them so that I don't have a bad day or and if I do have a bad day I know why that's happening rather than like oh just feeling awful about yourself or awful about the training session and kind of beating ourselves up about that because that doesn't do you any good especially when you're in no hormone you need to be as have as much positive input as you possibly can really um yeah and also like changing the messaging I think is important like I think it's like we all have men and women have a daily cycle we wake up in the morning we pumped we go to bed in the evening we're tired and it's a normal it's a normal cycle and we understand it we respect it and sometimes we might go off and you know

part 4: 9:24

a.m. and it doesn't matter and as women we have great in our bodies this natural cycle which also we when we want to get off it it doesn't matter like when if generally speaking we are in balance it actually works really well which is a very important consideration because uh often we get to like oh but then she doesn't perform in certain times that's not true it's overall if you follow this methodology overall your body is more performant and you feel more in touch with yourself as a woman and so like changing the messaging as well is important because it's it's it's it's actually a power that we have can we can harness it's like very much the female body behaves as an athlete like we have you know we perform and then we recover and then if we follow that pattern which is a a shorter pattern than you know typical male mesocycle training for a child learn it's actually it doesn't it doesn't impact negatively your your training at all the opposite it's just a different way to look at it yeah and it's like not b against something and trying to pretend it doesn't exist it's kind of going with it and accepting it and and enjoying the you know having that time it's like when you you don't feel you know certain times I just don't feel like I want to go out and or or do certain things and it's like if I was going to go no I'm GNA go anyway then I feel awful when I go and I don't have a good time whereas okay this is a temporary thing I'm I'm going to probably going to enjoy it more if I do it on this you know another time when I feel like I really want to go and do that thing rather than kind of forcing yourself and sometimes you kind of do have to force yourself to do certain things you know in your training to to get the games I'm not saying we should never do that but it's quite good to be aware and have that input and that knowledge underlying or underpinning everything so that we can kind of make better decisions in training because there are times when you actually do need to back off and I'm not sure that everybody's particularly good at noticing or understanding when that actually happens so it really helps with that um so we've talked about uh your your experience and your personal stories about tracking and is there anything we kind of touched on this but for improving our performance using the tracking um we've talked about how you know listening to your body or having a different kind of training protocol potentially where we actually take into account what the hormones are doing and use that to inform our training is there anything else that you think like helps us to improve our performance as we're track you know as we're tracking or using tracking in I think that tracking is helpful as well generally because what we measure we can improve and so for women who do not have a variable like you can use all but I find it really helpful to have a Tracker so to get start with that and start to understand as well certain metrics like resting heart rate heart bability what do what does this mean and then testing around with works for us because each body is different each each cycle is different and um um and using the app helps going for that and if you have if you use a birth control understand also what is behind so there are a lot of different birth control we cover 148 so if you're taking the pel is it a combined peel proest and estrogen or is it a protestin only is it a copper IUD or is it a hormone IUD and how does it impact the body and how does it impact also your hormonal fluctuations if any and then how can apply to me as a woman in particular so each each use case is quite different um and then women who enter param menopause whether are symptoms that I might be exposed to from like we know the hot flushes but that's that's actually only one of the symptoms there is memory loss there's brain fogs uh the fats that are that don't um like get placed in the same in the same areas of the body and they change so how can we understand those and how can we prepare for it what can we do as well to prepare prepare for aging like for instance osteop posis what can you do you know weightlifting is really important so um yeah I think the educational part is really important um and there is a lot of that in the app it's like the education is quite huge yes for each use case for each each women is quite different as well yeah yeah so that's all the information in the app is going to help your performance by following the guidelines with as far as recovery goes and you know a lot of the stuff I think is is kind of like basic things that people often don't get right like making sure you have rest and Recovery making sure that you get enough sleep and optimizing that time before so that you can get enough sleep so that you can recover a lot of people don't get those Basics right and I think you know it's a reminder in the app isn't it there there are reminders about those basic things about getting enough sleep and Rec to making sure that you have protein and carbohydrates after a session and then there's specific guidelines as to how much in there I think you know for me now coming into param menopause I'm finding it it's lot harder now because I found that I was understanding my cycle and it was like okay I know where I am I I I know how everything is working and now I'll be like God I feel awful and I don't know why and it's just confusing and it it was I I was all right for a bit and then as soon as any stress comes in there's that affects me a lot more and I guess that would that happens for everybody anybody that even you know if you have if you have a normal or a normal I don't want to say normal because there's no such thing but a natural cycle or you have or you're on the pill or whatever whatever sort of stage you are in when stress comes in and hits you then that's going to kind of throw a curveball into it as well so we have to be aware of that and there is um opportunities to record that isn't there in in the app your stress levels and how you're feeling yeah exactly yeah it's it's really interesting time of life B minus because we've been used through a menst cycle for 40 years of so like from 12 to like 52 but like in the in the middle there we in at the end of we are having these pentop posal symptoms and very often we like right now first of all a lot of women never heard the word par menopause and getting more aware of it so how can we prepare for it better how can we be aware of it and uh yeah yeah I think being aware of it and understanding it's G to happen it's the first step and I think there's a lot more people talking about it now which is great and it is getting a lot more information but I sometimes feel like it's it's kind of pushed into hormone replacement therapy um which is fine if that's what is going to work for you but it's not the only solution there's all sorts of other things that you can do and being reminded of that and understanding it as well um I think there again it's like the education and access to information is so important which we really like generally speaking Yeah it kind of like it's it's almost gone so far like because we weren't talking about it at all really and then it everyone starts talking about it and then it went to kind of like everyone should take HRT um and I think it sort of needs to balance back a little bit because we've almost gone like everybody should be doing this because but you can never say everybody should be doing something that's never really good advice when wanted it we we're all different we've all got complet completely different Liv we' got different ways of looking at things as well so and also like the symptoms that are that are linked to it like what's what would I go through if I don't take HRT what would I go through if I take HRT what does it impact me positively and negatively and just being aware then we can take decisions what are the natural um options as well not to use HRT if any and then like being able to take decisions while we yeah just more word basically yeah yeah and I think there's still more there's still more work still more information that we need to get get out there for all women really so that they they don't think it's like a one-sized fit because it isn't it's just everybody is has got different symptoms they have different things going on in their life um they've got different ways of managing stress you know there's just so many things that impact your training on a on a regular basis and if we kind of ignore one of them which is why you know not tracking and not and kind of ignoring your menstrual cycle is I think you're missing a huge part of your life basically if you if you don't do it I mean I think I was doing it quite a long time ago just with um there's an app called hormone horoscope yeah and it was quite good because it just sort of explained how you were feeling and things like that I was like yeah this work this is exactly right because I only started tracking when I wanted to get pregnant which is probably the case for a lot of women they're like I want to get pregnant so I need to know when I ovulate and that's when they start but when I started I was like oh I can see the benefits here of understanding this more whereas I was I was brought up in a time where it was like you know to be good at sport you want to be like a man you want to just fit in with the men and and do what they do so you know we ignored it a lot of the time cool so how has the app evolved do you think since you first started the yeah first of all the product itself has evolved a lot some some women have been using it for a long time and they can see the real Evolution it's pretty crazy how it evolve uh visually like at the beginning we did we had a designer only very late because we wanted to create the best product for women and we we never had much money so uh we yeah so it visually changed a lot and then also we started M cycle and then we expanded to women in par menopause and menopause and then women who use birth control so life stages have expanded Sports have expanded we started definitely with Endurance Sports and Garmin as a Tracker and now we've expanded to plora sports basically you can pretty much add any sport you want and uh a lot of wearable so we integrated with Garmin AA fbits Apple Health Trav TR Peak so quite a lot of options as well and uh yeah so quite a lot and now we have 84,000 women using the app so going really well yeah that's cool that's really good so with so the app to use the app what you do you you download it and then you can input your data and you get a report don't you about your cycle and that kind of information is available for you to look at to see if there's any patterns or or correlations and how much of how much does Wild AI kind of spot those patterns and give you that information yeah so you download the app you choose like your life stage I'm me param POS I use a birth control which one or I'm in mental cycle or Etc and then each of these life stages have a different experience and then uh you can connect with your varibles if you have any if if you don't you can just skip that and then on the daily basis we take the data from WBLS manual input gives the female read score and the recommendations and then you write at the end of each month if you don't have a cycle or the end of each cycle if you do we provide you these reports where you can see these heat maps of symptoms and you can draw correlations by seeing cor like basically heat maps and you can see for instance I have a pain and it always seems to be between like day 15 and day than 20 of my mental cycle and turns out it's probably when I'm ovulating as well depending on like the amount of days of each cycle and then you can actually start understanding that this is ovulation pain so women draw a lot correlations out that which is really interesting and the other side if you have a coach you can also share uh your data with your coach so we have a coach dashboard where they can see all the women it's obviously by optin and data so they can also have a a more informed conversation with their coach with all dat sets trying to understand why certain things happening like so a more in depth conversation and it's very helpful for the coaches um who want to train women specifically with the female physiology in mind and the research that is behind and use a tool that really facilitates that so that's the coach dashboard and now we have the coach Academy as well to upskill coaches which we just seeing that yeah yeah I use it with my athletes to to find out you know just to see where they are in their cycle and it really helps um but you know I have one or two athletes where some people it's more of a priority for us to use it and other times it isn't because there's too much else going on to so it's like it it it sort of changes priority for me depending on where people are and also what's what else is going on in their life basically so we can uh I have got people in some high stress situ situations at the moment and it's it's something else but the other things are are more sort of they're impacting that person more than their cycle is at the moment so it's kind of taking a little bit of a backseat the but it'll probably come back into play a bit later on um so it's really good to have the information there how do do you find I don't know if you'll have this information or not but when people are in param menopause have they reported that they do have kind of like regular symptoms I mean I personally I can tell you that I know I where I am when my period starts it's like okay I understand this B and then it kind of gets a bit like what's going on am I here am I there and then and you know because I've been having like 50 60 days between some cycles and then the next one will be completely normal um but yeah have you if you have the data on whether people do manage to get some kind of feedback or information from in particular is very interesting because it is the time where the traditional symptoms that are quite regular and full time series are actually TR started to change but what is interesting though is that sometimes it is repetitive so we we also it's quite hard to correlate certain things with certain times and so we might have a much longer cycle we might might not ovulate some sometimes and so being able to correlate certain FS that we used to have so forance I'm going back to the same example ovulation pain um we like what what what is really helpful is understanding what is my norm and what is diverting from the norm so if I understand when I'm ulating and one thing that I love have been using while day enough for years myself that I'm so much more in touch with my own body I used to as you said like ignore uh like trying to copy and replicate like having a m body and have no symptoms and I would be very proud of having no symptoms and I realized I was actually not not having any symptoms just that I was like muting them entirely because I it was something negative whereas now I can that I flip the the the messaging in my head which is actually it's the power to have a cycle um I'm trying to understand how I can listen to my body better you know like when you want to pee you feel in your body you want to pee and you're like this is these are symtoms and this is what is happening but when we ovulate we don't feel it but we could because we actually there are a lot of things that are very characteristic some women have Ovation pain but not all some some like the way you feel you feel the way very empowered your sex drob might be very high you want you really want to get out and be very proactive and very convincing so you can track these things and you can be like yeah okay I'm relating and then you can track things physically in your body you can track your cervical fluids you can track condition of your cervix how it's happening inside so like touching and understanding better better the body and so by and then obviously you can track within the late STP and then just looking at uh like if you are relating or not um and so which is more data track and then you can look at your objective data sets if uh you have a varable or if you try tracking your temperature like if you have a aura or if you're tracking manually temperature you can see the body Bas of temperature changing yeah you can actually like if you understand if you track all these things you can start to be more aware and then you you can lose some of these metrics so you can lose maybe the the tracking of temperature and all these things because you can feel in your body and you can recognize that this actually means a relation and what's really interesting when we go from there into per menopause is that we can start understanding that maybe I haven't ovat this month so I would feel different symptoms and we can prepare better as well for the symptoms so if we are lacking certain nutrients because we are in param menopause we can also prepare better so the body is better prepared and we have less negative symptoms such as memory loss Oro bloating or digesting badly certain certain food because we just prepare better yeah yeah yeah that's interesting because I I went through a phase of tracking my temperature and then I did it for a while and then I was like I'm GNA stop doing this now because I kind of know when it is but it's I find it quite interesting to do the to do tracking like that like sort of go in depth for a while um because it does it just gives you feed back and and reassures you as well that you know or you understand properly and I remember using the uh P sticks when I was training a lot but you know checking that I was hydrated properly that's in the Stacy simburg um and she yeah she talks about getting dehydrated and how you can there was PE she had people doing heel reps and then using the peas sticks in between the heel reps to check that they were hydrating properly so I did use them for a while when I was training a lot because I found it I just found it interesting yeah and and then you learn and then you can be like okay fine now I I know some things I can go on my next metric yeah you don't have to do everything all the time because that could be a bit overwhelming and I think some people think they do have to do everything all the time and you kind of maybe get to a point where it's like it's okay now I understand I trust my body you learn how it feels and you learn to trust that intuition a little bit more than you know we've kind of lost touch with that quite a bit I think all of us because it has been squashed I think you know from our society is like you don't want to trust intuition it's kind of like a you know just ignore that ignore that ignore that and we don't want to ignore that because it's often a really good indicator but I think we often need the reassurance from the data that our intuition is right if you see I mean so it's like having the science help you kind of move forward in that way so I found it really useful um and it is quite interesting maybe I'll start tracking my temperature again I find out what's going on but the other day I was like I feel like I'm I should be ovulated because I tra like cervical fluid and I was like this just seems too close to my period as well it's just everything just seems a bit off it's like there's some weird well obviously there's weird stuff going on because it's that's the time of your life when it is everything is changing a lot and it is interesting and kind of disconcerting as well very much TT number two yeah yeah no when it first kicked in I was like I feel like a horrible teenager again I don't like it and yeah I've been I'm just like why am I in a bad mood why am I being so like yeah it's just it's really hard but you know doing making sure that the nutrition is right and I think it is harder as well because things change with nutrition you do have to do things slightly differently and I've always looked after that side of things anyway but you kind of can't get away with not doing that when you and as you're getting into this stage really um and energy levels have been a bit off but I think that's to do with mood as well and just you know the time of year I blame that as well I think it does have an impact though you know we do it's I what I like about tracking and you know you're talking about the natural cycle is it reflects nature and the natural cycle that is the summer and the winter and the seasons as well and it's like it it helps you to become in touch with that which then helps you with your training going okay at this time of year this is what I need to be focusing on so it sort of gets you into that mindset of there are seasons and Cycles with everything and helps you to put those in in place in your life okay so I just want to talk about your surfing because I know you surf now have you found you know what what kind of things have you found give us some personal kind of insights into what you found with in and your experience of Surfing uh surfing so I started surfing three years ago I think and uh I find it it's probably the hardest sport I've ever done but equally the most rewarding so I started as an adult uh I think it's a bit like skiing like if you haven't started as a kid you will never serve as well as kids have like yeah started so that's okay like my ambition in surfing is not extremely high but I love it and I think the like the mix of hormones that happen during surfing is quite incredible like you have the um the unknown because you don't know if you're gonna have a good session or not you don't know if you're G to catch that wave or not uh whereas you know if you're going going for a run or a bike ride it's pretty know like you know your route you know you can predict your your speed and they're very little unknown elements and then because of the unknown like the variable reward uh it creates a lot of excitement and then you have the adrenaline and then the fear and then like just the Bliss of like the sliding and there is I think something very special about sliding I don't know how as humans I don't know the science behind but as humans we love this sliding effect you know like cycling you sliding skiing you slide and surfing and it's very I don't know if it's the internal ear that puts us in a in a flow state which is very exciting and then you eventually catch that wave and then then boom you get smashed so and you always that's you always finish a wave by Falling as well so it's quite hobbling uh and yeah so I really love it and it's uh it's definitely very challenging which I like because it's new and different and yeah so totally but loving it have you found like your fear changes at different times your sort of fear levels yeah definitely uh I think having had like my first baby so before my first baby I had a miscarriage and after the miscarriage I felt I think as a person I felt very unsure so my selfconfidence and my selfworth having think plummeted because of the miscarriage and so when I went back to to the water I really doubted myself which is very weird I do I can't really explain the correlation but it's it's definitely correlated because I could feel like there was definitely a before and an after and I had to work again on my on my fear level because surfing is facing a big nature element that is moving all the time so it's uh yeah as a as a Fear Factor is probably sport I've done which is the scariest and uh and so it's it's highly correlated to how I feel internally and uh and it's also a work a constant work in progress because I might like build it up and so my confidence and my ability rise and then as I said like with the miscarriage then it goes down and I have to build it up again and then I go out in in a day that is a little bit too hard for me and I need to pull back so it's a it's a very interesting relationship which I appreciate a lot because it's uh it's yeah it pushes all the time my capabilities and I can question it a lot but I can work on it and I think it's interesting having done a lot of sports in my life being in a situation where I'm very humbled again and also unlike running or cycling where I know that I can push myself like for instance if I'm cycling with some guys and they're like okay come on like you know like doing a hard bike ride like 120k training with a lot of heels it would be out of my depth but then I would say like okay I'll try and then as I'm writing you know the group emulates this energy and I'm like okay I want to push myself and I want to to go forward that's definitely something I've done in many sports but in surfing I can't like there's you're on your own yeah first of all you're on your own and like when other people are like come on you can do it it's it's it actually it complet it doesn't work with someone else it's like it's me and nature and if I can't do it I'm gonna really hurt myself so it's it's a very different relationship I think to to Nature to the sport to the community as well uh yeah yeah I definitely agree with that I used to Surf um not very much but my husband and I did surf a bit and and understand that and it was I think I used to get frustrated because it was like I start we we were doing it before I had children and then it would be like the conditions were are they going to be any good and there was all that the sort of variable that's why I got into Triathlon because it's like I can just go out and I can run then that's it it's done um whereas now my kids are older I'm getting back into uh climbing which is much more like the conditions have to be right and it takes a lot longer and I've got more time to do that whereas before I didn't and I just wanted to spend my time you know exercising as much as I could basically um but yeah it's really interesting that kind of like it's you do have to really listen to yourself and and how you feel about the conditions and the situation when I started I think I I was so ignorant I did some Je things and scared myself and then I had to kind of back off quite a bit but you know being in the sea and the water is beautiful and you're in Portugal at the moment it's got some massive waves hasn't it yeah yeah there's some big waves out there is it got like there was the biggest wave or something that was th there yeah 100 foot wave it hasn't actually reached 100 foot yet but yeah yeah looks terrifying do you get to watch that you get to see it where you are or yeah I've been I've been uh one day when it was really big and it is really impressive and I had the opportunity as well to get towed into it when it was very small God because although it was small I was three meters it's still away with a lot of water and yeah very iconic place like at the bottom of a cliff with a lighthouse on top and you can feel the Vibrance of the place and like all the water coming in it's crazy yeah it looks amazing I have watched some footage of it and I'm just like whoa looks amazing yeah that's so cool yeah so you've got um a child now then you've got You' had a baby did you say yeah how old are they she's 15 months okay yeah early hard work well done for getting out and surfing with you know that's good that you were managing to do that that's awesome so because you I guess your hormones is going to have changed quite a lot as well and this like tracking has changed with you if you're breastfeeding or anything like that then that would have altered things quite a bit yeah and did you notice that with you know when you were tracking to see those changes yeah I mean first of all I didn't have a period for quite a long time after birth and uh and then when it came back I'm still breastfeeding and definitely feel I mean my body is definitely very different and um my energy expenditure is still huge uh so and I think again it's badly understood so interesting to see what is behind yeah I think you know it's quite often get people and they like they're preg or they're going to have a baby and you just don't know what it's going to be like before you have a baby and then it happens and you're like oh my God what's just happened it's really like disruptive it's a massive change in your life and your hormones have changed and your body's changed as well and you know I was desperate to get back to being fit and losing the weight and you know was just like I put so much pressure on myself the first time around and you know desperate to get back to training and I see so many women doing this um you know desperate to get back to how they were and and how it was before and it's never going to be exactly the way it was before it's going to be a lot different but you can still do a lot and I think the advice that that we get is quite often really terrible you know from the from the health professionals that don't really understand anyway unless you go looking for information there's still some really outdated advice that's being given to people who are pregnant and and after you've had the baby as well yeah yeah yeah so did you have any like what how did your exercise look before you had your your daughter I mean it's changed completely so think post portum I didn't do much and then uh and I uh after that I still kept it very low touch I think there's this crazy emphasis on getting the body back but I it takes nine months to make a baby and uh and probably takes nine months to to like have a lot of things put itself back in place but um I really try not to rush into performers like I try to think of it as a huge New Life stage and likea it and so yeah um going going back to surfing but also uh before the baby I would like I would love waking up before

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00 a.m. for me there was a big um a big take of like a sucess and then after the baby I just like spend a lot of time in the morning like in bed with her and taking care of her and really appreciating this slow day and slow movement so yeah yeah oh that sounds good it's much better than what I did how did you it was back so the first time round I was just like H I didn't like being pregnant because it was like I was my body was changing I'm sort of was resisting it um even though you know that's what I wanted and then when he was born he was born by C and I really didn't want a C-section either I was really angry that I'd ended up having a c-section because I think they made some mistakes with what happened as well and so I was just like I want to get back to run you know I remember like just storming around pushing the pram and and I wasn't in a good place really that after he was born um and yeah I struggled a lot because I was just resisting it it sounds like you came to terms with things or had a much better mindset than I did at the time oh it was it was really tough and I think a lot of people feel like that that like it's just because of the body changing and if you resist that and you don't want it to happen or you you're scared you know I was scared I suppose of of the changes and what was going on and then I just found it really hard to adjust because he didn't sleep and I just you know I didn't know what I was doing I was getting all this different advice about how to look after your baby and how to you know so it wasn't great and then the second time around was fine because I'd done it before and I was like I'm not going to do it like that I'm just going to relax like so like just you know let it gave let the time happen as it was meant to rather than resisting it and it worked so much better so much less stressful but yeah so I think you know from what you've said like it sounds like you've got a really good idea of how to you know listen and respond to your body and intu it what happens and I think sometimes Insurance athletes we don't necessarily do that and that's where we it can help us by using an app like that like wild AI because it does just it gives you that backup and that kind of information that it's so okay this is normal it's not a weakness it's nothing to try and run away from or be H scared of you know accept it embrace it use it to your advantage rather than going yeah and I think we don't give ourselves enough credit as well like when we have a baby it's insane like it's a massive accomplishment and uh this is not how Society portrays us oh it's so annoying they going to maternity losing jobs you know like the pay Gap increas because they leing maternity and it's such negative messaging so instead of saying like thank you for creating the whole of humanity we will support you entirely and have equal paid paternity leave and you know like put real measures in place to really provide to women like what they should have which is a place in society where we do an incredible job it's like we're doing and there we don't really have credit for that and because we don't have crate I think our messaging is quite negative so we're trying to perform all the time and whereas it is a huge performance and so when I look back on my ear like what have I done I'm like well I did create a whole baby so it's like C and um and yeah I don't think I really don't think society and hence ourselves as well gives ourselves enough credits and uh and I was I'm grateful actually there was a woman who was an athlete and she told me she said similar to she had two kids and she said the first kid she took it as a performance and going back to sports was she took it as a performance so I tried to learn from her experience and uh and just enjoy it a lot and uh I think it's it's like after a mass like after my first 100 kilometers ultr Marathon I was I was like so tired like I couldn't move for 24 hours from my bed and uh and I think I I was I was much younger so I could bounce back very quickly but it's it's really important to give ourselves recovery time and this is not it like it's it's it's actually inconsiderate and like stupid to think that the body doesn't need recovery and because female pregnancies and and child birth are not presented as a physical feat and a performance it's like well just go back to it you know you just pop it out carry on six weeks postart good you're good signed off you can yeah sex Etc and and it doesn't work like that no I know it's crazy isn't it it is crazy and it is like you know quite often in the media that's what you see isn't it oh look this person she's got it all she's done it all she's got doing all these things and she's got her babies and and you're like and it's like but what you what you don't s see in that situation as well is all of the support that that person is probably getting behind the scenes and also I don't know whether we should be promoting that mess you know I get really mixed feelings about it because I'm like yeah that's great we're imp we're telling women that we shouldn't stop doing what we love doing but also we do need to look after ourselves as well and make sure that we give ourselves time to recover and also enjoy your family and spending time with them and and being a mother because that is a valuable thing for us to be you know like you say I think we don't Val Val Society doesn't value it and it's just something that's expected of women to to just do and you know you just carry on and and do all this as well it's just becomes like a massive amount of stuff that that becomes an expectation and it and it shouldn't be I think there's there's ways that we can you know be more present and not feel that that's a a failure for not doing everything we can be good at you know being being a mother is one of the most important things really and you do forget how much you're doing like dayt day cool okay so we'll wrap it up here um is there anything else that you want to add to you know people will find you I'm going to put some links down to your yeah app and all that kind kind of thing yeah active woman use the app if you are a coach the coach dashboard and the coach Academy you can upscale yourself the course created with Dr sty Sims so the best you can find in the world and so it's it you will have certificate on like uh training women uh and yeah thank you for having us that's okay and what you have got some supplements as well haven't you that you've just launched I don't know if you want to quickly supplements uh or women who have a master cycle and Par minus minus so yeah okay okay so yeah I'll put those links down below and if there's any other links I'll email over see if there's anything else that you want me to link to you can put them at the bottom in the show notes but yeah thank you very much for chatting to me today it's been really interesting um good luck with your surfing enjoy it and yeah really great that you're enjoying being a mom and and integrating everything really really well thanks for listening today have a great day take care bye for[Music] now