Best Health Practices....Breaking Through the Confusion and Deciding What's Right for YOU

Confused by all the mixed messages about health—protein vs. plants, heavy vs. light weights, fasting vs. frequent meals? You’re not alone. In this episode, I share six best practices that have worked for me and my clients to simplify eating, strength, sleep, protein, tracking, and mindset. You’ll learn how to cut through the noise, stop second-guessing yourself, and confidently choose what’s right for your body and life.

✨ Enrollment closes today for my Ready for Change group coaching program—the last group I’m running this year. Don’t miss your chance to join us! Learn more and enroll HERE

Interested in speaking with me about how we can work together? Click here to head to my website: https://www.modernbodymodernlife.com/ and schedule a free consultation with me.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Sarah, welcome to modern body, modern life, the podcast for women who want to feel powerful, healthy, strong and confident, inside and out at every age. On this podcast, we talk about becoming a woman who is fully in control of her eating and movement, so weight loss, strength and energy become permanent. We also talk about something bigger, becoming the woman who takes her deepest desire seriously and goes after more in every area of her life. I'm body and life coach Courtney Gray, and I believe you can get in the best shape of your life at any age, and when you do, it becomes a catalyst for everything else, your relationships, your confidence, your joy, because when you feel like you and your body, all of life gets better. Let's get started. Welcome to the podcast episode 97 best health practices, breaking through the confusion and deciding what's right for you. Do you feel like because I know I feel like this, that there is so much advice and opinions and quote, unquote guidance from doctors and coaches and gurus and friends on how to lose weight, on how to be healthy, on what we should be eating and shouldn't be eating, and moving our bodies and excluding and all of the things that sometimes you're literally like, I don't even know what to do, because some of it you're hearing, you're like, that makes sense. And then other people you you really respect them. So it there's just so much so in this podcast. This is not going to be another one of those. Oh my god. Courtney is telling me one more thing to do. This is going to be a podcast where I break down what the best practices I see from working with so many women who are trying to not only up level their bodies and their health and their eating, but also their lives. What's worked with my clients? Works worked with myself, and I'm going to give you some studies and some research in here. I'm going to tell you who I follow in the industry, who I kind of look to as the guidance for who has something intelligent to say in the matter. But then I'm also, most importantly, I'm also going to help you figure out how to get out of confusion if you're in any or if you ever get in any, and how to really figure out how to make a powerful decision in what's right for you. So today, September 16, is when this podcast is coming out. It is the final day to enroll in my ready for change group coaching program. It's a four week coaching program. It's actually the last group coaching program I'm starting for the rest of the year. Other than that, if you want to work with me, I do private one on one, coaching you and I every week, up leveling you. But this is the last group coaching program I am running for the year. I'm very, very excited, and there is still space available for the Wednesday 4pm Pacific Time group. I would love to have you. There are links everywhere to enroll. My Website, modern body, modern life.com, the show notes, all the things, but let's dive into this lovely podcast. So what I want to offer you today are six best practices that have worked for me and for my clients. But even more than that, I want you to feel like you are just more clear on what you know is going to be right for you. Here is a list of all of the chaotic back and forth things that I am hearing, and that can get quite confusing, and you might be hearing these things too, especially on social media. I feel like I will come across a reel where someone will be talking about how we shouldn't be eating vegetables because they're toxic and all that. And I'm like, oh God. And then the next one is how we should be actually not eating meat. We should only be eating vegetables. And it's a crazy my sister and I call this. It's a crazy maker. So here's a list of a bunch of really kind of wild things I'm hearing. The first thing I'm thinking, I'm going to talk about protein, but I'm hearing more protein, more protein, more protein. But then I'm also hearing like, don't get it from shakes and bars. Don't well, don't eat too much saturated fat. It's just very chaotic. More protein. There's a little bit of truth to it, but it's confusing and chaotic and overwhelming. And then I'm hearing a lot of plant based versus then meat based. I mean, there I was seeing this one woman online that she does not even eat any plants or fruits. It's literally her whole diet is meat. And then there's people making fun of her, and people saying it should be plant based, all that. And then you I'm hearing, you know, red wine is healthy. Then I'm hearing alcohol is poison. I'm hearing, I already said about the fruits and the vegetables. I'm hearing intermittent fasting is good for you, but no, you should be eating small meals throughout the day. You shouldn't be eating, you know, you shouldn't be intermittent fasting. I'm hearing no cardio, no weights, no heavier weights, no lighter weights, high repetition, low repetition. I'm hearing a protein shake before you workout. No you have to have it within 30 minutes after you workout. I am hearing you need to do free weights. At the gym, and you need to lift really fast. No, I'm hearing free weights. You have to lift really slow. No, you should be doing machines at the gym. No, you shouldn't be doing any machines at the gym. You should just be doing body weight. Oh, my God. And then, God help you if you are in menopause. Because the guidance on everything, I just said, it's almost like, well, if you're in menopause, well that fucking changes everything. With everything with everything. I just said, it is wild. I'm hoping that you're laughing right now going, yes, there's even so many memes and reels I have seen where my son just sent me one the other day, where there's a girl sitting down to eat a plate of pasta, and then all of a sudden it like overlays with this video about this guy. How is he talking about pasta? Is horrible for you. So she, like, pushes away the pasta, and then she gets a plate of, like, more meat. And then there's an overlay of a video of some other random person talking about how meat has toxins in our body and our our gut microbiome can't process the meat. And then she pushes that away. And it's, it's just, it's chaos. Last week on the podcast, it was a really great if you did not get to listen to last week's podcast, if it intimidated you because it was long, I promise you it is worth the listen. I really dove into one of the core concepts I teach my clients and I teach you here on this podcast. It's called a thought model, and basically it teaches you how important your thoughts are, because your thoughts make you feel a certain way, and that determines what you do or don't do with your day, which determines the results you're creating in your life. And so if we think about everything I just said in and we put it into this model, we think about the thought really is, I don't know what to do, like, Oh my God. I don't know who to listen to. I don't know what is right. And I'm telling you, I have felt this way too. With all this information, I have a very like do what is right. Do it the right way, due diligence, type of personality. And so I with all of this information, it was getting a little chaotic for me, and I had to go back to what I'm going to teach you on this podcast to figure out what feels right in my body, what feels right aligned with my life. But if we think about the model, and we think about the thought, I don't know what to do, that thought makes us feel confused, sometimes even frustrated. And what happens when we're feeling confusion or frustration is we are staying stuck, and we're usually not making a decision, we're usually not moving forward. Sometimes that even makes us do even more research. You know, are you one of those people that you're like, I haven't made a decision yet because I'm doing research. I'm reading about it, I'm thinking about it, I'm getting different opinions about it. Sometimes, that's just a fancy way of saying I'm confused, and it's safer here to not make a decision, or sometimes we we start, we make a decision, and then after like a week or two, we feel like we're not seeing the results. And so then we switch our strategy, which is never a good idea, right? We really need to give something time to see how it's going to feel in our body and how it's going to work for our body and our life. So the difference between what I'm going to present to you today, as opposed to this just being one more thing that makes you feel confused is I'm going to go over what's working for me and my clients, but then I'm going to help give you the coaching you need to decide what is right for you, and it's it's going to be perfect for you. So let me first dive into who some of the people are that I follow, that. I get my guidance from like the people in the industry. There's so many people saying, Do this, do that. I thought I would just give you some of the people that I really trust and I like them. I like their branding. I like the way they talk. I like that. There's all very researched back, and you'll know that all of these, all these people, are doctors. So there's Dr Peter Attia. He wrote a book called outlive. It's a great book. It gets a little in the weeds. It gets a little hard to read sometimes, but that's because he is a doctor, and he's really into the science and the research of it. So that's a good thing. But the book is called outlive, and he's very focused on longevity. He's into the biohacking and into really, you know how to eat and move and live in a way that is going to not only have you live longer, but live well longer. And then there's Dr Stacy Sims, who is a doctor. She's also a scientist. She's really into working out and movement. She's extremely buff, if you see her, she's no joke, and I really like what she says. She talks a lot about how most of the studies done historically on the body have been done on men, and so she's really bringing in new research into women and women in menopause, women in aging, and really understanding a woman's body because it is different from men. So I really like Dr Stacy Sims. I always have to remember when I'm listening to some of Dr Stacy Sims guidances, she seems to be more talking to athletes. And although I would love to consider myself an athlete, I'm not a college athlete, and I'm not I'm not a person that does triathlons and those kind of things, although I do work out consistently and. Push myself hard. I don't know that I would actually say I'm an athlete, so I always have to make sure I'm looking at her work through the lens of, how can I apply this to me? But knowing that I'm not working out more than an hour a day like many athletes might be. Then there's Dr Mark Hyman. He is a functional medicine doctor. He's all about the gut microbiome and what we're eating and how food is medicine. He has a lot to say on the state of our food system here, especially in the United States, and I've just had a lot of great knowledge that has come from him. My son actually, for Christmas, no, my son for my birthday, bought me his cookbook. So yeah, I really like Dr Mark Hyman. And then the last one is, there's Dr Mindy Peltz. She's kind of the newest one. I haven't really dove too much into her, but I really like what I've seen from her. I've listened to a podcast on her. She's very down to earth, and she's really a doctor who is into a focus of hormones. She talks a lot about intermittent fasting, and I do like to intermittent fast time to time. And so she talks about the power of intermittent fasting and how you can make it work for you, and how to do it in a healthy way that actually helps your body. So there's four people that I follow on social media, and I listen to their podcasts. Sometimes I buy their books, just in case you're looking for information. Okay, so let me dive into these six best health practices that have worked for me and my clients. So the first one is up leveling your eating. First of all, let me just say none of these are going to be like, Oh my God, I've never heard this information, right? You're going to be like, yes, Courtney, I know this, but I want you to stick with me, because I hopefully I will convince you that these practices are working for me and my clients, and I hope that you listen to this podcast from a place of knowing like, yes. Maybe this is the call out I need Yes. Maybe this is the truth that I really do believe, up leveling your eating. When I say up leveling your eating, what that means to me and the way I teach is doing better overall, not doing perfect, not doing better for a week, not doing a cleanse, not doing a 48 hour fast, but you becoming a woman who eats less, because most of us are eating more than we need. Maybe a woman who eats less, in particular, of sugar, maybe a woman who drinks less, snacks less doesn't have to be eating while driving really up leveling your eating in a way that you now just are a woman who eats differently, not a woman that eats perfectly, not a woman that goes on a diet, not a woman that does well all week and takes off on the weekends, not a woman that gives herself a quote, unquote cheat day, because There's nothing to be cheating from just a woman who a best health practice is becoming a woman who eats better overall. And this, the beauty of this is this is something you can build on over, over, over time. You know, you've heard me say that a long ago, when I took out the creamer from my coffee, I didn't go, that's okay. I'm never doing creamer again. I started out slow, until one day I thought, I think I can do this, and then I cut it out. And I've done that with many things in my life. Can I go a day without dessert? Can I go a day without tortilla chips? Can I actually not eat bread, but I or I can have a tortilla so it's like, how can you do this in a way that works for you? I've had some clients say Courtney. I know that you don't eat dessert every night, but I love me some dessert. So what I'm going to do to eat better is I'm just going to eat a very small portion of dessert every night. Beautiful. Maybe you like to snack. Maybe you can snack better. Maybe you can just do better. So that is the first one up leveling your eating by doing better overall. The second best health practice is building your strength. And here is one thing I see, and I'm going to say this with love, because I coach a lot of women, really, from the ages of 19, even sometimes younger than that, up until 85 and I have seen, and this is a generational thing, I've seen, especially women. So I'm 48 right now in 2025 the women, for some reason, over the age of I want to say 60. I think this is a generational thing. They just don't lift heavy. I don't know if it's because lifting heavy when they were younger wasn't a thing, it wasn't a focus, it wasn't something they did. I don't know what it is, but for some reason, if I have a client who's 51 she has no problem going and saying, Yeah, I need to lift heavier and do a farmer's carry and do this and do and lift, and literally lift a heavier barbell in the gym. But women, for some reason, if you're older than 60, this might be you. This might not just notice that, for some reason, there is a aversion to lifting something heavy. You might know this is you at any age, actually, this you might know this is you, is if you have been starting to lift weights, amazing. I love it. But if you find yourself still lifting those five pound weights, maybe you find yourself still. Those three pound weights, those seven pound weights, are you ready to get stronger? You're not going to get stronger unless you actually lift more. So more can be one of two things. You can either go up a weight, go to a heavier weight, or you can do more reps. But overall, what you want to do is you want to go to your own next level in terms of building your strength. If we keep, if we go to the gym and we keep lifting eight pound weights and we do a rep, you know, six reps, at some point we need to go to eight reps, or we need to go to 10 reps, or we need to actually go to the next weight up. Maybe, if you're eight pounds, you go 10 pounds, and maybe you only do three reps. But so there's a lot of different ways to get stronger, and what you want to do is just go to your own next level. And if you need to hire a personal trainer even one or two sessions to do this in a way that you feel safe, I think that's an amazing investment in you. And I will share one thing is, like, for a long time, I was worried about lifting heavier because I was worried I was going to hurt myself, and my son said something to me that was really very helpful. He goes, Mom, he goes, you're probably going to hurt yourself at some point over the next few years. If you really want to get as strong as you want to, you are probably going to hurt yourself. And he goes, but you're not going to hurt yourself, like in a crazy way. It's just going to be, oh, I think I kind of pulled something. And then you're going to go to physical therapy, and then you're going to get better, and you're going to get even stronger because of it. It would be better for you to potentially have a small injury on the way to getting stronger, as opposed to not getting stronger at all, because then when you fall, or when you catch yourself, or whatever, then you're really gonna injure yourself. And I really saw so much truth in that. So if you have that worry, like I might injure yourself. I really want you to say, how can we go slow? How can we do this? Just increase the weight a little bit, or increase your wet, your reps a little bit, and just go to your own next level. I did this with running where I was like, Oh, I was so worried. I'm not really a runner. I'm worried I'm gonna hurt myself. And I thought, You know what? I think I'm gonna go for a long walk and I'm gonna run for like three minutes at a time, very slow, and it was beautiful. And I got stronger and stronger and stronger, and then I could run for like an hour and a half. It's amazing, but you have to be willing to push yourself out of your comfort zone. If you keep doing the same thing you're doing, you're not gonna get stronger. And this is like mentally and physically for all women, but for some reason, especially for 60 and above, I really see they have an aversion to lifting heavier. And I want to encourage you, you are stronger than you think, and you have the you have the capability of lifting heavier. I want to encourage you to do that. And the third one is sleep. There is tons of research out there that talks about how sleep is so important for recovery, so important for brain health and body health and all of the things. So ask yourself, are you doing your best to get a good night's sleep? There are a lot of studies that show us how to sleep well. There's a lot of studies that show us the importance of shutting down your phone or any kind of device, whether it's the TV or the Kindle or the phone, any kind of light in our eyes for like a half hour. Is it a half hour or 45 minutes before we go to bed? There are there's so much research saying that we should stop eating earlier so we can go to bed more with an empty stomach so we don't feel like we're stuffed. I mean, there's so many things we can do to make our bed experience and sleep experience better. Are you doing them? And how could you do better? Not perfect, but how could you do better to get better sleep so your body can heal itself while you sleep. And what is one thing you could do to make it better, right? None of these things have to be perfect. What is one thing you can do? For most of my clients, they know they start going, Oh, I'm not sleeping very well, and they know what they need to do to create a better bedtime experience. And maybe it's not even just that they don't sleep well. Maybe they're just not sleeping as many hours. So how can you get yourself to bed earlier? I am the if you and I are friends, you know that I am the master at getting myself to bed earlier. I put a lot of stock into sleep. I just think it is so important for my recovery. Okay, so number four best health practices is more protein. Now you've been hearing this, and you're probably like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I have found with my clients, most women, I haven't coached enough male clients to be able to make a statement. I coach a lot of men, but not necessarily on eating, but most women I see are not getting enough protein, especially for some reason when, again, when I look at the age difference, especially women who are 60 and older, not getting enough protein, and what they are getting for protein, sometimes it's the bars and the shakes and so I really want you to get radically honest with yourself about your protein. Now I know you're probably like me, and you hear like a. Is it that so many of the experts are saying is that we need one gram per desired body weight? For some of us, we hear that and we're like, that's not possible. And I'm going to say I totally agree with you. But again, in the effort of doing better and not being perfect, how can you get more lean protein that actually comes from fruits and vegetables, especially animal products. If you eat animal products, if you don't eat animal products, then then you're going to have to really figure out how to get that protein from plants. And you probably already know that there are certain plants, like peas, for example, that have a higher quantity of protein than other vegetables. But most people that I help are meat eaters. And so how can you get more protein now, one of the biggest excuses I hear from people when we start talking about getting more protein is that they will say, I really don't like eggs. I really don't like chicken breast. And I'm going to tell you what I tell them, and I say this with love, who cares? Who cares if, right now, in this moment, an egg doesn't sound good to you. Who cares if chicken breast, it doesn't sound as great as chicken thigh. Now, I know out there in the world, you could buy cookbooks that make everything taste great. You could have people say, No, I'm going to teach you how to cook in a way that's going to taste amazing. Yes, if you want to spend the time learning how to do that, learning how to make eggs taste great, or chicken breast taste great that then do it. That's awesome. But I think the fastest way to getting over yourself and becoming a woman who takes control of herself is going, you know what? I really don't like eggs very much, but yet, here we fucking go. Let's have some eggs for breakfast, because it's going to give me the protein I need. And even though eggs isn't going to be a party in my mouth, the party is going to be in my health and my body. The party is going to be how I feel, because I feel really good when I'm getting enough protein. Oftentimes, what you are going to find is, if you're not getting enough protein, it's possible you're getting a lot of fat and carbs, and that's probably not helping you. So when we get out all get rid of the snacks, and we get out of the fat and carb intake, and we actually up your protein, you will probably feel better. So when you hear, Oh, you need to be eating a gram of protein per body weight, I think put that aside, because that sounds extremely stressful, and I want to suggest you just try to get more lean protein and have it not be a party in your mouth, and have that be okay. Number five tracking. So there is a lot of research that talks about how we as humans think we are doing so much better than we do. There is one thing called the Dunning Kruger effect. It's named after two I think they're psychologists who studied people's beliefs about their own like self competence and the study, it actually didn't focus on eating, but it dove into how people drastically overestimate their performance in all areas. This study didn't focus on eating. But again, this podcast isn't all about eating. So we as humans overestimate how good we are doing, how good we are living, and so many studies have found that people consistently overrate how healthy they eat. They underestimate their total calorie intake. One study in particular, it was actually done in 2023 so it's pretty recent, found that only four that only 15% of adults could accurately assess the quality of their diet. What does all this tell us? It all tells us that we think we are doing better than we're doing. We state to our coaches and our doctors that we're doing better than we're doing. And I think in many ways, we kind of convince ourselves, on a subconscious level that we are doing better than we're doing. There are many people that are frustrated with the state of their weight and their health, and they tell themselves stories like, I eat clean, I eat really well. I hardly ever have this. I hardly after ever have that I move my body a lot. I get I'm an athlete, or I get a lot of exercise, or I guard it, or whatever. And those things, it might be very true to you, but if you have not tracked those things, we don't really know that they're true. And this is for me too. If I really want to dial into something in my life, I track it. When we track, we are accountable. So I just started a 21 day meditation practice last week, just for fun. There's a woman called Gabby Bernstein. I think she's just lovely and amazing, and I love her voice. She kind of has, like, a really great voice, and so I got her app, and I'm doing this 21 day meditation practice just for fun, and I skipped a day. I didn't even know I skipped a day until I logged on yesterday and I saw that I had skipped the day before. We think we are doing so well, but unless we track, we don't really know. So tracking is a way you can get radically honest with yourself. And let me just say right now, tracking is kind of a pain in the ass. It just is now. This meditation practice tracks it. For me, that's beautiful, but if you're tracking like your food in a food app, it's a pain in the ass. If you're tracking like I'm now tracking my workouts in a workout app, it's a pain in the ass. It's not fun. But I'll tell you what's fun is seeing faster results. It's becoming the next version of you that is what fun is what is fun? Most things that are not fun in the moment end up being fun for your future self. And it's the opposite is also true. Most things in the moment that are fun don't necessarily help our future self, something just to be thinking about, Okay, number six. Number six. Best health practice I suggest is a daily practice of managing your mind. When you manage your mind, you can do all the other five practices. And so when I say managing your mind, this can look a lot of different ways. It can be journaling, it can be meditation. It can be breath work. I'm going to suggest whatever you do, you do in the morning. I'm also going to suggest that it can only take five minutes. One of my new clients, who's starting in my group for September, my ready for change group. I met with her already the other day, and she said, I am not a journaler. And I said, do not despair. And here's what she said, and this is so fascinating. And I get this all the time. She said, I just whenever I go to journal, I don't know what to write. And I'm like, I totally get that. I hear it all the time. Many people are intrigued by journaling. There's a part of them that resonates with it, but they don't know what to write when they go to journal. And so in my programs, just so you know, there are prompts to help you figure out what to journal, and none of this journaling takes a long time. And the reason that journaling can help you manage your mind is it will get you actually into your own thoughts, into your own emotions, into your own desires and what you're trying to do with your body and life, it is going to reconnect you with what you truly desire. That's what journaling does, and there's many different ways to do it. There's also meditation. The beauty of meditation is it helps you focus your mind. And many people think with meditation that they're not good at it because they've tried, they've tried two or three times, and they keep thinking of their grocery lists and the fact that they're annoyed with their husband and all that. But meditation includes all of that. What it is is you start thinking about how your husband's annoying, and then you actually go, Oh, I'm off track again. And you bring it back. Meditation is the beauty of bringing it back, and what you're learning by bringing your focus back is how to focus, even if you think you're quote, unquote, doing it wrong. Meditating. Meditation can be really powerful. You get really good at saying, What do I want to think right now? On purpose, that was the question I left you with on the podcast last week. When you can have the awareness to think, I have a choice in this moment of what I think, and then you can say, What do I want to think and feel right now? Meditation is going to help you access that part of you. Meditation is going to help you in the middle of chaos, go, what do we want to focus on right now, I'm going to I'm in chaos, but I'm going to draw my mind back to what I truly want. That's the power of meditation, breath work. I love breath work because I feel like breath work is the combination of mindset and body, and so many of us are disconnected. We're in our mind, or we're in our body, or some of us are not in our body at all. Breath work really is the bridge to connecting both, and it really helps us process emotion. Really helps us process emotion. And why is that important? If you're hanging on to stress or anger or fear, your body is hanging on to it, and that's how we get disease, that's how we get injured, that's how we end up becoming a toxic person who then habitually feels these feelings all the time, because we've never processed through those feelings and released them, preferably doing some sort of a managing of your mind. Daily practice in the morning, I think, is the best time to help you do all the other best practices. I always say that it helps you kind of put a stake in the ground like this is what we're doing. Oh, that's right, Courtney, this is what is important to me every morning. And I will tell you, sometimes you can do one of these three. You don't have to do the same thing every morning. And maybe you have a different way to manage your mind. Maybe you pray, maybe you talk to someone who's passed on. This is maybe you look at your vision board. There's so many different ways to manage your mind, but it really is deciding what you want to think and feel and do on purpose. Those are the six best health practices I have seen in my own life, and I've seen work with my clients. Now I want to remind you that none of this has to be done perfect, none of this. Has to be done all at once. All of this does not have to be done all at once. As I went through those six, was there one that you resonated with? Was there one that you thought, yeah, I've been telling myself for a while, I need to do that. Then I would focus on that one. And if all of them felt resonant, or maybe all of them you're curious about. My suggestion would be to focus on the first one, up leveling your eating. And here is why we have to eat. We don't have to go to the gym, we don't have to worry about our sleep. We don't have to strength train. We don't have to eat more protein. We don't certainly don't have to track we do not have to manage our mind. But you as a human being, it is required for you to eat or you die. And so that is something that we are going to be forced to be doing either way. And that's why getting good at that one sleeping, I guess we have to do either way too. But the eating, if you can make some headway with the eating, it is going to affect every other area of your life, because you will find when you start feeling in control of your eating, all of the other things get easier, because the mindset it's going to take to eat better is going to help you with every other area of your life. So if that's an area you want to focus on, if there's one you want to focus on, I would focus on up leveling your eating. Now, how do you decide what's best for you? If you're hearing all these different things coming at you and someone's telling you to do this, and you're hearing this doctor say, to do this, how do you know what's best for you? There's a few different ways. First recognize, number one, that your primitive brain doesn't want you to decide what's best for you. Your primitive brain doesn't want you to get out of confusion. Your primitive brain wants you to go, I don't know. I'm thinking, I'm researching, because once you've made a decision, then you have to change, and that's when the hard work starts. That's why so many people are unclear of their next step and they don't know what they're going to do. Is because that's a beautiful little safety bubble that keeps them from really doing anything. If you don't know what to do, you don't have to take the first step. Then you pop. You can't fail. But So recognize your primitive brain is going to give you thoughts like, well, maybe this isn't a good time. I'm not sure about that. Well, I'm going to look into those doctors first that Courtney listed. We'll see if, if you're if you're having to do more research and all of that, that's your primitive brain telling you that you know what, it's safer for you not to make a move. So that's the first thing. So another way you can decide what's best for you is to be willing to experiment with consistency. And what that means is experiment, but give yourself time to see if your experiment is going to work. I wouldn't suggest saying, You know what, I'm going to try to eat more protein, just like Courtney suggested. And four days in, you're like, oh, you know what? I don't really think this is working. We don't know. We don't know if it's working. And we don't know if it's working in terms of making you feel fuller, helping you not snack, actually help you lose weight, making giving you strength and building lean muscle, we don't know after four days, so I suggest you experiment with consistency. I just went to the gym this morning, and I purchased this test. I actually don't have the name of it in front of me, but it's one of these tests. It takes like two minutes. You stand on the thing this sensor, and it tells you how much you're not only you weigh, but it tells you what your weight, to muscle, to fat, to all the things ratio is. Because I'm really trying to build muscle. I'm increasing my protein, I'm taking creatine. I'm trying to build muscle right now, and I'm taking this test now. And he said, When are you going to take the test again? I said I was thinking at the end of November. And he goes, that's the perfect time, and that test is going to show me, okay, Courtney, your experiment is, let's lift heavier. Let's take creatine, which is not only helps build muscle, but I'm hearing so many people say it's really good for our brain health and all the things and aging and everything. And so can we do that? And can we actually take the test again after a few months and say, how'd it go? Have I gained muscle? How? Where's my fat in all that? Is my fat? More does? Is it less? Where are we at? I'm giving myself time. I'm giving myself an experiment, but I'm being consistent with it. Another thing I'm doing is I'm experimenting with creatine. I tried to take creatine years ago, because I've heard a lot of really good things about it, and it made me extremely nauseous. And so when I was talking to my girlfriend, who's a doctor, about this, she says, Well, did you take it on an empty stomach? And I'm like, you know, it's been so long I don't remember. And she goes, it could have been that you were taking on an empty stomach. It could have been that you were taking too much. Maybe try taking half, and I would really take it with, you know, right after, before, after a workout. So I thought, You know what? I'm gonna try this again. I'm gonna experiment. I'm gonna be consistent, unless I start feeling really sick, which I have not. I've not felt nauseous, but I'm this is my third day in I'm not feeling nauseous. And last time I did it, I felt nauseated right away. So, so far. It's going really well, I'm going to experiment. Let's see how it goes, and then I'm going to decide if it's right for me. So I encourage you to experiment with consistency, and then I also encourage you to choose your thoughts intentionally. And one of my favorite thoughts for you, and I think this thought for myself, is I know what's best for me. We are all so different, and so many of these experts, and I'm saying that, quote, whether they're a doctor or not, a lot of what they're telling us to do is based on research. That's a very generalization. It's a generalization of what people what people, the results people are getting, but you know what's best for you, and you might be like, but I don't know, but you can decide that you do as long as you're willing to experiment with consistency, and as long as you're willing to do the mindset work to understand that your primitive brain doesn't want you to make a decision. If you know those things, you know what's best for you. Another thought I suggest for you is, I'm going to try this, and I'm going to see how it feels. I'm going to see how it feels in my body. I'm going to see how it energetically feels. I'm going to see mentally how it feels. Do I like does this make sense to me? I'm an intelligent woman. What do I think? Oftentimes, we delegate our power to the experts, but you are the expert of your body. And if you don't feel like you're the expert of your body right now, that is an option for you. You can become the expert of your body just by deciding that that's important to you and deciding that you are so I hope this podcast was a beautiful kick in the pants. I hope you choose to really up level your health practices and what you want to do for yourself, and if you at all, have been in confusion like I have been many times. I hope you really decide to get out of the confusion and decide what you're going to do for your body. I hope you have a great Tuesday for information on how we can work together. Head to modern body, modern life.com, to schedule a consultation with me. I'm currently coaching women privately, and I offer group coaching programs you.