Habits That Will Change Your Life (they're changing mine now)

In this episode of the Ms. Michaela Mae Show, Michaela gets real about one of the biggest blocks keeping people off camera and out of the game — body image insecurities. After a difficult season that included grief, emotional eating, and feeling completely depleted, Michaela shares the mindset shifts helping her show up anyway, even when she doesn't feel ready. She opens up about body dysmorphia, the difference between self-hate and self-love as motivators, and why she's committed to documenting her transformation in real time — for herself and for anyone who needs to see it.

Michaela also breaks down the simple, budget-friendly daily habits that have dramatically improved her energy levels in just a few weeks — including hot lemon water for liver and kidney support, kelp for natural iodine and thyroid balance, magnesium citrate for sleep and stress, and morning pages journaling for mental clarity. She discusses why she's shifting away from all-or-nothing thinking and moving toward self-compassion as the foundation for sustainable change.

If you've been waiting until you look a certain way to start showing up — this episode is for you.

LINKS & RESOURCES

• Natural Calm Magnesium Citrate — available on Amazon and at most health stores — https://amzn.to/4uEuN7O
• Kelp supplement — available on Amazon (approx. $16.99 for a 90-day supply) and at Fred Meyer/Kroger stores — https://amzn.to/4nXw72Y
• Higher Up Wellness 100-Day Speaking Challenge — search "Higher Up Wellness" on social media
• Morning Pages journaling method — three pages of free writing first thing in the morning. Get the Artist's Way by Julia Cameron — https://amzn.to/4f8xKZk
• The Barn Off of Colfax Lane by Michaela Mae — https://amzn.to/4wVvVoR
• Subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify
• Leave a comment on YouTube to help the show reach more people

SEO KEYWORDS

body image insecurity, showing up online with body image issues, self-compassion for weight loss, how to start a podcast with body image issues, holistic wellness habits, natural energy boosters, kelp iodine thyroid, hot lemon water benefits, magnesium citrate for sleep, morning pages journaling, personal development podcast, healing from burnout, emotional eating recovery, sustainable healthy habits, survivor mindset, Ms. Michaela Mae Show, women's wellness podcast, personal growth podcast, trauma healing podcast, holistic health for women

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Well, hey you, and welcome back to another episode of the Miss Michaela May Show. I'm your host, Miss Michaela May, and I don't know exactly what the title of today's episode is going to be, but I'm gonna tell you the two topics I'm gonna cover, and we'll see what the title of this episode is gonna be by the end. But the two topics I'm gonna cover is one, recent habits that have changed my life and really helped increase my energy. And then two, why it's important to show up when we don't want to. And I'm gonna actually start with that topic because one thing I was really inspired by, I think this was back in 2022. I think I've if you guys have listened to the show for a while, it's no mystery that I'm a Miley Cyrus fan. I love Miley. I grew up in the Hannah Montana era, and I actually didn't follow Miley's career for a long time, and then in 2020, she had gone on the Joe Rogan podcast and I had listened to it, and that was really that interview. And then also the Plastic Hearts album just really reignited my love for her, if you will. And she in 2022 did a live album, I think it came out in 2022, did a live album called Attention. And so it's the whole concert, which is really cool because we get to hear her talk in between tracks to the audience exactly as she did at the concert. And one of the things that really inspired me about that album and then about what she did at that concert is she just said the quiet part out loud. She said like she was nervous, you know, she hadn't been on stage in a while, and so she just said it out loud. And that's why I wanted to start with this because there is so part, like such a big part of me that doesn't want to show up right now. One thing I've struggled with like my entire life is body image and being insecure about my weight. And definitely even when I had like lost a bunch of weight, I felt I definitely like looking back, I definitely had body dysmorphia because I thought I was so overweight. And now looking back at pictures, I just wasn't. And right now, again, if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that like I lost my horse in December, and a bunch of other stuff that I haven't talked about publicly yet unfolded. And it's been a really, really hard season for me. And I was joking, but it's like, you know, when you say a joke that's not really a joke, but it's a joke, um, but it's also real. I was talking to someone and I said, you know, I've learned a ton of emotional therapy tools, and I have all of those at my disposal, and like sometimes I still lean on food, and definitely in this last season, I leaned on food a lot, and I've just felt so inflamed. I've felt really crappy, and I that's also why I wanted to loop the habits into this episode because I'm gonna talk about what I've been doing to help get my energy back and help get the inflammation out of my body, and because I was at a point where I didn't even have energy to exercise, and so that's why I knew my first set of habits I needed to build was to just get energy back into my body. And but now that I'm on this trend where I'm getting energy back in my body, I don't want to show up yet because I'm still so insecure about how I look, and it still bothers me how I look, especially because I had worked so hard for so long to be fit, to eat really healthy, and then just set of circumstances after another, I lost those habits, not gonna make excuses or not, you know, it just happened. And, you know, one thing I've been trying to tell myself like the only thing we can do to change the past is to make a dis different decision right now. So I can't change the past. I just gotta deal with where I'm at now and move forward. And and it's still really hard. It's still really hard to think about, you know, I was a pretty consistent CrossFitter for a long time, and I was hardcore paleo for a while, I counted macros, like you name it, and I've probably tried it. And so to know that I put in all that time and effort and it feels lost. I know it's not lost because all everything I learned is still there, and I can, you know, call on it anytime I need to, and there's a part of it that it does feel lost. And so I don't want to show up in a lot of ways, you know. I want to like go underground, I want to get back in shape, I want to before I start showing up online again, like whether it be virtually on the podcast or whether, you know, it be creating yap, what they're calling yapping videos now, I want to wait until I feel like my body is at the image that I want it to be, and I know that's not gonna help any other area of my life. Like it's just not gonna serve me, it's not gonna help me. And I was really struggling with it yesterday because I decided to do there's a creator online who um it I think his name is Michael, it's like S M-O-A-K. I don't know how to say it. Smoke or smock or something like that. Um, but his brand is higher up wellness, and he has a speaking challenge where he says, like, don't overthink it, just turn the camera on and for 60 seconds, just yep, for a hundred days, and then at the end of it, you know, see where you're at and just go for it. And once I heard about it, because I only heard about it a few weeks ago, I just knew that was what I needed to do. Like, I just needed to get back on camera. I needed to get back to consistently creating content, I needed to get back in the flow. And again, I also just didn't want to because I do have like I there is a part of me that does want to wait until I feel like my body image basically is worthy of being on camera. Like, that's like the stuff that I'm telling myself. And so that's why I want to talk about it today because I wanted to tell you, because I know there's other people out there who want to start a podcast, want to start a YouTube channel, or want to start yapping on camera that are not doing so solely because of how their body looks and solely because of any body image insecurities they also have. And this is what's helping me get over that, as far as not get over the, but like do it anyway, basically, is is what I'm getting at. And so two of those things is knowing that there are people out there who need to see me showing up as I am now. And as I continue to go down this path and my transformation unfolds, I was thinking, like, how powerful is that gonna be? How powerful is that gonna be that I will have because I've I've seen people do it. There was a creator that I used to follow that she did. She had this, you know, she started talking on camera and sharing her voice and her thoughts that have nothing to do with her body image. Again, it's easier to see on someone else sometimes than it is on our own. And then she did go on a health journey. She did, and we gotta watch it unfold on camera, and it was super powerful. It was super powerful for me. And so I keep telling myself, well, what if I can do the same for somebody else? You know, someone can visually watch my transformation happen on camera. Like, how powerful is that gonna be? So that was the first thing that was really helping my mind get over this block. The second thing is I'm actually gonna tie one more thing into that. I had someone do that for me even when I was in like early elementary school because I I my body had started to take excess weight on from a really young age, and we'll we'll get into that in some other episodes. My I have a bunch of thoughts and opinions on that. And so I I was kind of like my family has struggled with body image issues for so long. There was this narrative of like if you are a certain weight, there's just things you can't do. And I watched this girl who was very similar body image to mine, or body, like we had similar, we were the same height, like had the same like excess flub around our body, and she ran one of the fastest mile times when we were in elementary school when we were running the mile. I thought, you know what, if she could do it, I could do it too. Like, she was athletic because I was at the point where I wasn't really even doing sports because the way it was like perceived in my family was like, well, if you're overweight, like you can't do sports, which is just not true. Um, and that was the way I perceived it. May not be like my family may not have meant to take it like or put it off that way, but that definitely was how it was put off. And then I watched her do it, and I thought, I'm gonna do it too. If she can do it, I can do it too. And so kind of continuing on with that same theme of the first thing I've been telling myself to help myself like show up even when I don't want to, is how powerful it is to see someone and how powerful it it has been in my past to watch someone do something regardless of what their body looks like, and then and it happened when I was in CrossFit. It was the same thing. There were people of all shapes and sizes showing up, it didn't matter. And how inspirational it is. And so there are people that need us to show up as we are right now that need to see that and need the encouragement and need the inspiration, and I know that, and that's why I wanted to share that with you today because that's one of the the big things that's helping me like get over this mindset block. And the second thing is more personal, but the second thing is is I I envisioned like two courses of action in six months. Would I be happier, more satisfied, more proud of myself if I went off camera, like really hunkered down, focused on just my health and stuff, and and did and went that route, or would I be more happy and proud of myself if I started showing up now? And it was undeniably yes to show up now. Like when I really played that situation out, like in six months, would I be happier if I showed up now or if I went kind of underground and got healthier? It was undeniably yes for me to start showing up now and how proud and happy of myself that I would be in six months from now if I started showing up now, because I can start building momentum. And you know, I always think of that metaphor about launching the rocket is the hardest thing. And that momentum we need to launch a rocket is the most amount of effort and energy we'll have to put into it. And then once that momentum keeps like going, it can be easier to keep. I know the game is changing in a lot of ways, but once you have a certain amount of audience and connections, even if you pause, it is, I believe, like simpler to reignite that in a lot of ways. Once you have that foundation laid. And so that was the other thing I was thinking. I can start building momentum now. And in six months, I will be so happy and proud of myself. And so with that, I was like, I have to start showing up now. And so that was one of the for me, having like a checklist of things I can do is really helpful. And so that was why when I heard of that higher up wellness speaking challenge, I thought I'm going to do it. Because I in six months, which you know, a hundred days is a little over three months, so I'll already be halfway through. I can even extend it to 200 days if I want to. Like, even in that three-month span, like I've watched people's with this speaking challenge, I've watched their personal brands online completely change. And so I know that even though it's hard in that, you know, six months for me now is going to be so happy. I started now and not in six months. So those are the two things that I've really been thinking about and wrestling with and that I wanted to share with you. If you're struggling too, you know, if you're thinking about, you know, do I want to build a personal brand online, do I want to do things online, which I have for 10 years now, and I really have more momentum. I have things that I want to do this fall that to have my personal brand and my online presence be at a certain spot would really help me in that six-month time frame. And so if I started it in like at the end of that six months, you know, I may not be where I want to be in six months. And so if you're just struggling with that, I wanted to give you those things to start thinking about and start just, you know, what do you want to do now? And what would your six month from you now be thankful that you started today? So that's the first little bit of this episode, as far as, you know, why it's important for us to show up as we are and why it's important for us to show up now and the things that I've been telling myself and and talking to myself with to get over some of these insecurities I have it and am using them as the reason as to why I show up or don't show up. So this is that is like part one of this episode. Let's so let's get into part two because I have studied holistic healing and different remedies, whether it be emotional healing remedies, physical healing remedies, mental healing remedies. I've studied all of these things since I was 19 years old. Um, I'm 30 now. And there are really simple things that can make a really big impact on our health. And it's it's one of those things for me, like I know what to do. Now I just have to do it. And the difference between what I'm doing now versus what I've done in the past, in the past, I've really been all or nothing mentality. I've really been like hardcore paleo, hardcore macros, hardcore keto. You know, I've lost weight the hard way. I've exercised and I've taken myself into burnout. And I'm doing my best not to do it again because it has never, for me, it has never been sustainable. Because it was, and I I would argue, I'm not gonna go too deep into this in this episode, but my motivations were not where I would like them to be now. I'll just put them that way. They were good, good then and it worked then, but I would like to find a different motivation than I had in the past. And the the one thing I will say on that is I felt like more of my motivations were external, and I'm really looking for internal motivations this time as far as like how I want to feel and why having these habits and things in place is actually like an expansion of my being and like an expansion of my soul, and not just to like look good for other people. Like I want to look good for me, and so I am working on you know, transitioning my motivations for wanting to do things, which for me is not an easy thing. I I don't think it's easy for any of us, but I'm just telling you where I'm at, honestly. And but one thing that was when I was really getting started that was feeling really overwhelming is I was thinking about like what I wanted, and I was thinking about it through the lens of how I used to be. And it was something like I just I'm not gonna do it again. I'm not gonna track my food obsessively. I don't care what anybody says about calories and like I'm not doing it because it's not worth my mental health. I've dealt with eating disorders on and off, and I'm just not doing that to myself again. Like I refuse to treat myself like that again, and I refuse to go that insane again. So now it's like, you know, if you want something different, this is a quote that I heard from my friend. I don't know who the original sayer of this is, but this is not my quote. Like, if you want something different, you have to do something different. And ultimately, what I want differently is I want to feel differently on this journey. I don't want eating and diet and all of these things to feel like a chore. I don't want it to feel like a part-time job. I want it to feel like, no, this is how my body's designed to eat. This is me nourishing my body, this is me supporting my body, and this is what my body needs to be nourished and supported. And I want to trust my body, like, because I truly believe through learning different emotional um modalities and stuff like that, the body always has a reason for putting excess weight on. So, how can I get aside from excess eating? Like everyone's like, oh, it's just eating too much. Every single one of us knows someone that if that was true, like if I always think of it, it's like I can't remember what the exact thing was, but some point in science when I was in high school, it was like N1 equals N1 or something like that. I'm not a science-y person as far as that stuff goes, but I always, when I'm looking for the absolute truth, in that absolute truth, like N1 always has to equal N1. And one of the things that we have in our culture is we say N1 equals N1, but when we actually look at the data, like we'll let's specifically go deeply into this with this whole weight thing. So we want to say to ourselves, like excess eating always causes weight gain. Like that's what we're saying. If you are fat, if you have excess weight on your body, you eat too much, period. We all know someone, like if you've been someone who has excess weight on your body, I can guarantee it, you know someone who eats more calories in a day than you do. You know someone who is more sedentary than you, who eats more calories and is still thinner than you. So that already blows the N1 equals N1 out of the water because now we have proof against that. We have proof, we have evidence that there are people who can eat more calories and somehow weigh less. So therefore, the theory of eating more um creates weight gain and all possible it's literally just not true. And are there obvious like diet things and are there ways you can support and can you manipulate weight off the body by putting yourself into a calorie deficit? Obviously. Obviously, people do it. And also, I know people that are in a calorie deficit that don't lose weight because there's other things in place. And so anyway, I'm gonna get off of that high horse for a moment or that tangent or what or that pedestal that uh soapbox. There you go, that's the word I'm looking for, if you will. But in that, I've really had to look at that like objectively and differently, and and I don't want to go down that route again because it was really, and this is the like internal motivation that I'm talking about changing, like it was fueled by self-hate, and we all know that any form of hate, whether it's hate towards ourselves or hate towards another person, it's like drinking internal poison and it just doesn't work. And so I'm really trying to come from a place of not even self-love, because I think when we've been in a place of self-hate for so long, I think self-love is too big of a jump. I think it's like, you know, when you haven't ran or walked very far, going from self-hate to self-love is like asking someone who hasn't walked or ran in a long time to go run a marathon. It's just it's it's too big of a jump. And so I think in between that though, we can create stepping stones to get us to where we want to go. So if my diet and exercise, which it has been in the past, has been fueled by self-hate, okay, I want it to be fueled by self-love. I'm not there yet. I'm not gonna make myself right or wrong about it. I'm just gonna be honest about it. And but I'm gonna break it down in other steps. So maybe self-love is too far, but maybe self-compassion I can do. Maybe self-understanding I can do. And now I can use self-compassion and self-understanding to as stepping stones to get me closer to self-love. And so for me right now, it's self-compassion that I've really been working on and really been focusing on again with not beating myself up for letting my habits go to the wayside, not being mad at myself. And when I do catch myself being mad at myself, saying, I get it, it's hard, like really just talking to myself, like one, like how I want to be talked to by other people, but you know, I want, I'm really trying to just change my internal dialogue because I have been someone who beats myself up so hard, and really switching into it's like if I was talking to a friend, what would I say? And sometimes there is some tough love in there. It's like, okay, yeah, you don't want to go walk, but genuinely you need it today, so go walk, or you know, whatever that is. But that's what I'm really trying to to do right now is transition that. So, with all of that, that was my big first step. Like instead of going on another crash diet or trying to create some crazy workout routine that I know is not sustainable for me right now, I was so exhausted and fatigued and inflamed that I just wanted to start by getting energy back into my body. So I felt really depleted. And then I just thought, what simple habits can I do that feel doable that I can use to start getting energy back into my body today? And it may not show up for a couple of days, but at least the start of it will be right now. And so the habits that I have started incorporating into my day right now is I drink lemon water first thing in the morning. I specifically do hot lemon water. Lemon water does a bunch of things. One, it naturally will flush the liver and kidneys, and so fatigue tends to become there can be multiple sources of fatigue, but one of those sources is a sluggish liver. So by drinking hot lemon water first thing in the morning, it just gets it gets the liver going, it gets the kidneys going, it gets the digestive system going. Like it does so many things for the body, and it's something simple that we can all do. And if lem like straight lemon is a little too harsh, you can start have the goal be to get to just pure lemon water first thing in the morning, but you can start by adding honey or some kind, preferably honey, but some kind of sweetener, maybe some maple syrup. I don't know if that would taste weird, but try to make it a low glycemic sweetener is what I'm saying for blood sugar reasons as well. So that was my first start. It was like, okay, I can go get, I don't like juicing, if I'm being honest, I don't like juicing lemons first thing in the morning. So I went and got just pure lemon juice and I just squirt some in my hot water in the morning. Um, or I pour some because the one I get in a glass bottle. Um, that was the first thing I did. The second thing that I did was I heard a doctor talk about some thyroid symptoms, and one of the things he said was one of the symptoms of your thyroid being off is this ongoing depression. Like you just kind of feel depressed, you can't really get out of it no matter what you're doing. And that was how I felt, and that's where I was. And so I started on kelp. I've been on kelp, I think three weeks now. It's been a complete game changer. I have had hard days, obviously. Like I was talking to a friend, I had a couple of rough days last week where I was crying a lot, and then I had a like a bit of a confrontation moment. I think I said that right, maybe I didn't, with a family member. And even though it was like that depression didn't come back, and because that depression like wasn't over my head, I felt like I was able to navigate those a lot better than I typically do. So that has been huge for me. My feet aren't cold at night. I'm sleeping better. So getting on kelp, because kelp is a natural, the I think it's the highest natural source of iodine, and iodine helps. Balance the thyroid. So I got on Kelp. And also you can find Kelp. I don't know because I know in I'm in the Pacific Northwest we have Fred Myers, but Fred Myers is just Coger's brand. I I got it there, so it's it's you can get it on Amazon. Like it's pretty easy to get. You can get some for less than 20 bucks. Like I got mine for $16.99 and it's a 90-day supply. And so you it's something you can do for less than 20 bucks that's super simple and it's super good for your body. So I started with the lemon water and the kelp, and then the only other thing I added for now is I am experimenting with something, but I'm not gonna tell you what it is yet because I don't want to say anything until I'm done with my experimentation. Um I'm two weeks into it. No, I think I'm only a week into it, maybe 10 days. Um, I'm gonna wait till I'm done with that before I share it with you because I yeah, because I don't want to recommend anything. I can't recommend wholeheartedly. All of these things I feel like I can recommend wholeheartedly. And then the last thing I'm doing is magnesium citrate at night. Again, to help me sleep. Um, magnesium citrate's really good for the thyroid as well. And we're just chronically deficient in magnesium in our culture right now because our soils are so deficient of magnesium. And to be honest with you, because I've gotten into emotional and mindset work to help heal the body, I was really hesitant to start doing physical things again. And the one thing I had to remind myself is one, it's all just a form of support. And if you don't even have the energy, you can't properly do the emotional and mindset work to heal the body in the first place. And then two, the one thing that mindset work and emotional healing in regards to using those two things to help heal the body, the things that they don't do is they don't cover deficiencies. Like if you have a deficiency in your body, no amount of emotional work or mindset work is going to fill that deficiency. Like you have to go supplement with it. You have to go get a supplement to fill those in. And so if my thyroid, if my body's just deficient in iodine or is not getting those things, like I need to go get a supplement. Our bodies are chronically deficient in magnesium because of the soil. So at this point, you can go get tested if you wanted to to see where your magnesium levels are at. But nine times out of ten, our culture, like people in our culture are just going to be deficient of magnesium. So it's a pretty safe bet to get on that. And the one thing with magnesium that I want you to remember is the source matters because our body has a hard time absorbing certain forms and sources of magnesium. So natural calm's magnesium citrate that goes in hot water before you go to bed at bed at night is one of the easiest forms of magnesium for our body to absorb because sometimes it's not what we're taking, it's if our body can absorb and digest and um take in what we're taking. And so, as far as that goes, I do recommend natural calm because our body can um take it in very easily. And I notice a big difference with taking it within a couple of days. So it's also something, especially if you have high stress, high anxiety, you can see results. If you take it even for three days, you can see results really quickly. The one thing with magnesium is go low and slow because too much, so magnesium like activates the systems in your body. So if you take too much at once, you can get diarrhea. And so just take it low and slow so you don't have um. I learned a lot of this stuff from Dave Asprey, and he always said, so you don't get disaster pants. And so just take it so you don't get disaster pants in the morning. So that is all I have for today's episode. I just wanted to share again some things that I was, you know, juggling with mindset-wise, because I just felt like you, like someone out there is dealing with it too and needed to hear that. And then also just these really simple habits that take maybe 25 minutes out of my day that have really changed my life. The one habit that I didn't mention that has also really helped me is I am journaling about three, they're called morning pages. I take three blank pages in the morning and then I do free write, and that's really helped quiet my brain down as well. So if you do want something else to do, that is something I would add. And and that takes me about a half hour, 45 minutes in the morning, depending on how stubborn I'm being with what I'm writing. But um, yeah, all of those habits combined maybe take me the the dietary habits take me maybe 20 minutes. Again, the writing takes me about a half hour to 45 minutes, depending. But they've all like, and I think what's so inspiring about it and what's really helped me is we can feel drastically better within a week, which is insane because we think like, oh, it's gonna take a long time, and maybe some of the physical results will take a long time, but how we actually feel in our body can shift within a couple of days when we put our body, like when we support our body with the right things and when we create the a healing environment in our body, whether it's with the lemon water because it helps with the kidneys and the liver. I don't think I mentioned this earlier. It also helps alkaline the body, and disease can't be created in a body that's alkaline. So it's also a simple way to alkaline the body, which helps the cells and like so many other things. And it's something all of us can do. You know, we can go get lemons at the store. And, you know, some people live in places where you could go pull a lemon off the tree. When I lived in California, I had a lemon tree outside of my apartment, which was amazing. Sometimes I just open the window and grab a lemon. And so these are things that we can do that are really simply. Again, all of these things, if you go grab a notebook, if you go grab a kelp, if you go grab some lemons, like you can get all of those things for 20, 25 bucks, depending on what you get. So these are really simple things you can do at home. They're budget friendly. Anyone can start today. So I just wanted to inspire you and also for us all to remember to not overestimate the power and simplicity, because I think that's something that I tend to overlook too, is the simple shifts that we can make in our life really can have a big impact. So thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the Miss Michaela May Show. I'm your host, Miss Michaela May, here with my Corgies, Tank, and Willie. If you found value out of this episode, I would be highly appreciative if you would subscribe to the show and also leave me a review because by you leaving a review on the show, whether it's on Apple or Spotify, or leaving a comment on YouTube, really helps me get the show out in front of the people who need to hear what need to hear it most. There we go. I almost got through that without a symbol, but not quite. So thank you for listening to today's episode and myself and my Corgies and I will talk to you later.