Christa 0:00
Welcome back to another episode of The Wild and well collective Podcast. Today, I wanted to break down some of the non sexy but non negotiable aspects to really creating a healthy life that I know that you're searching for and that you want, and that maybe you feel like could be a bit overwhelming to start or to stick to. More importantly, I think what I find in a lot of my patients is that it feels like a lot all at one time. And you might have that same feeling when you're scrolling Tiktok, or you're scrolling reels, and you're seeing all this like health jargon thrown at you, right what you should do and and then you sit back and you're like, Okay, that's great, but how is this actually going to stick in my life? How do I actually move the needle in healthy habits? How does it become an easy habit, which means unconsciously, you just do it every day. It's not really something that you have to force yourself to do. You don't even have to fight with yourself anymore, it just kind of naturally happens. What? What is that? So I want to break down the six top pillars that I view as non negotiables for myself and my patients and really what I think every human should be focusing on. And then Shereen are going to kind of talk about how to break this down into kind of tangible and doable actions to really make this kind of a part of your life. So I'm going to introduce the six that I really hold true to. Number one is going to be hydration. Number two is going to be nutrition. Number three is toxins in your life. Number four is movement. Number five is sleep, and number six is stress. So we're going to go through each one of these, and Cherie, I want to hear too, like we're going to I'm going to give a tip, and then Sheri will give a tip on each one of these sections of like, how can we really make this, yeah, just more doable. So let's start with hydration. And I'll start my way that I started to drink more water, because I was really a terrible water drinker. I was like, if I find myself like, oh my gosh, I've had water. I've had coffee and tea all day, that's not it's fluid, but it's not actually water. And our body is made mostly of water, so water is super important. It's a stressor, actually, to the body, to not have good hydration. So I love my morning coffee. And the first thing that I started doing was a non negotiable for me, was I'm going to drink this 30 ounces of water as I'm driving my kids to school before I'm allowed to have my coffee. And I, you know, it was hard at the beginning, and I had to be conscious about it, but now it's like I feel guilty if I haven't had two or three of my, you know, big 30 ounce filled so that's one kind of way that I started to just started out slow. I had to be conscious about it. It wasn't like it naturally came at the beginning, but now it's kind of become a habit, like we drink water before coffee. So that's my tip on how I started to kind of incorporate more hydration. What about you? Shree, well,
Sheree 2:57
I mean, if you were watching this, you would see I have a giant drink bottle, that's about 68 ounces or two liters, depending what you are in the world listening to this, I've never had an issue with water, like I grew up, and it was like, just that was really the only option you had when you were in the household. We didn't have soda. We didn't drink fizzy, like that was special occasions and that sort of thing. And so I just got in the habit. And I watched my mom like I witnessed my mom. My mum's always been a great example for health. So when I speak to people and I'm like, What do you mean? You don't drink it's really it's really hard for me to it was initially really hard for me to understand. And so what I've learned over time is sometimes people just want that flavor, or they're like, it gets colder and it gets harder to drink water, and I will happily sip on a glass of warm water, and people think I'm a little bit nut. Little bit nutty for that, but adding something like lemon to it, or adding some fruit or one of the biggest things now that I get my clients to do is actually add electrolytes, because, yes, we need to drink water to hydrate, but we also, especially if we're coffee drinkers or tea drinkers, or any kind of caffeinated beverage drinker, you are dehydrating your body by putting that in, and so by adding in the electrolytes, you're not only getting the water in, it's a lot easier to drink because it's generally got like a nice little flavor to it, but you're also rehydrating some of those key nutrients that the body needs, like your sodium, your potassium and that sort of thing, so that you're actually getting the water into the cells, because we can drink water to wear blue in the face. But if we don't have the key electrolytes to actually help the body absorb it and do what it needs to do, get it across the line, then we're not going to feel hydrated the skin's not even going to look full and everything like that as well. So that's one of my easy go to tips. And if you don't want to go out and buy an electrolyte powder, bear in mind. Look at the sugar content for those and that artificial sweeteners and that sort of thing that gets snuck in, adding some lime juice for your potassium, adding a sprinkle of salt into a glass, and maybe few kristas in Christmas position before your cup of coffee. Have that when you start your day. It's so simple, so simple. Yeah, yeah.
Christa 4:58
And just care. Get around with you, like, make sure it's something that you can move with you, and it's there and, and, yeah, and you'll find, over time, give yourself three months. I think most habits take about 90 days to really kind of instill there. You'll realize that now you don't even think about it. You're just, I'm thirsty, like I get up in the morning, my body actually wants to drink water. So next, moving on, let's talk about nutrition. And this could be an entire, you know, full day conversation, but I think the important thing is, how do we make better choices for our body on a daily basis? And I think for me, number one, it starts with my why, and that is not to be a five pounds thinner, necessarily, it is to nourish my body. So when I start to think about, how am I nourishing my body with this What's if food is medicine, which is, which it is, how am I medicating my body at the moment? Am I nourishing my body with antioxidants and with healthy fats, reading labels, being really aware? So it starts with a why of what I my intention around my body. Now, Am I perfect? Absolutely not. I love to eat. I feel like food is is just one of the elements in the joys of being a human right. We get a variety. We get to be social with it. So I absolutely love food. I think that it's kind of an 8020 principle for myself, 80% of my meals are typically number one the same breakfast and lunch. I'm not real picky about I like more variety in the evenings. I think that's true for most people, and so because I don't care as much around my workday of breakfast and lunch, I ensure that whatever I'm consuming during that time is healthy. So I'm looking at seed oils. That's that's a challenging one, canola oils, sunflower oil. There's so many oils in products that you might even not know, like granola, for instance, can have canola oil, and that builds up over time and can really affect our cellular health. So reading labels, but mostly trying to keep to natural foods, like from an animal or plants like organic, where I can free range, where I can if you're not eating animal protein, then stick to organic, whatever you're consuming. So for me, it's the why, and it's also just really keeping that 8020 in mind. 80% of my meals need to be on point with where I know I'm offering nutrition to my body. I'm not entertaining my body, right? Of course, there's 20% where I'm enjoying myself and living life, because you have to find this balance of finding what you can actually stick to, but committing to something, and then underneath that kind of your why. That's what helps keep me on track, and what I always teach my patients to wrap their mind around. It's not an all or nothing situation. I love
Sheree 7:42
that, and I think that applies for all of the habits that we're about to go into, or we've even just shared, like this idea that we have to do 100% all the time. It's like, if you just do 1% of change every single day, you're going to move the needle far more than the person that goes in organs blazing 100% for the first couple weeks and then burns themselves out because they're trying to change everything in all six of these pillars all at once. It's too overwhelming for the body, it's too overwhelming for the mind, and then you feel like you've failed, and it's just this big negative loop in this negative cycle, and we want to break that, and that's why trying to give you a couple tangible tips here. And the thing is, you might listen to this and go, Oh, I like that one. Pick one, like Chris has listed off about seven just then, pick one. Maybe it's the seed oils. Maybe it is the read. I'm going to learn how to read labels. Maybe it is like for me, my go to is, where's the protein, where's the greens? Honestly, you're kind of covering majority of your bases and the other stuff's going to start to fit in that point around the food, you're probably going to have cooked the protein and the greens in some type of hopefully healthy oil, and then your carbohydrates, you're going to kind of fit into a meal most of the time. Or if you are out, they're naturally going to be in a meal. So it's like, if you have ticking the box of Protein and Greens, you're pretty much going to be ticking the box of what your body needs. And if you just start with something as simple as that, that's always my go to that's how I get that 8020 because 80% of the meal is taken care of in some respect with that, and then the other 20% it's like, cool. So it doesn't even necessarily have to be the breakfast, lunch, dinner thing. It can also be from that perspective, or 80% of your meals each week are beautiful and balanced. I always say to my clients, if you think about say, we have five small meals, that's two snacks and three main meals a day, right? Just for the sake of my math brain, seven days a week, that's 35 meals. If you were to say, Be off or have a treat, or, you know, have a meal that maybe doesn't fit into what you would normally classify as being a really healthy meal, three times a week, you're still eating 32 meals and snacks that are really amazing and nourishing your body. So from that perspective, you can. Yourself a little bit more credit and a little bit of like, compassion. That doesn't have to be perfect all the time when you do the math in that way.
Christa 10:06
Mm, hmm, absolutely. Yeah, a lot of it is mindset around how you're treating your body and how you're showing up for yourself. Sometimes, when I've made my kids lunches, and then I'm like, I need to put my salad together or whatever, but you have to say, Well, how am I showing up for myself tomorrow? Like, show up for your future self today, so that it's easy, you know, purchase healthy things. So a lot of times it's just a matter of convenience. So just make it convenient. Think a little bit ahead to make some of these choices easier. Okay, so let's talk about toxins. So this is a big one. I think this one can be feel really overwhelming, because it can feel like, oh my gosh, I've got to completely get rid of all my cooking equipment. I've got to convert all of my beauty products, my cleaning products. And so what I say to this is, just as you run out of something, look into a cleaner version of that. So if you are getting scratches on your Teflon pans, you need to expose, get rid of them. You need to get rid of that, and you need to replace it with either a stainless steel or a cast iron pan. So those are kind of simple things. If it needs to be replaced, replace it with something that is less toxic. As far as beauty products and cleaning supplies and even some of the foods that are overly processed, there are some really great apps. I know there's how you pronounce it, Yuka app, y, u, K, A, you can look up that app on any Apple device. I'm not sure about Samsung. There's devices such as that that I share with patients, because you can easily scan, like bar scan, and then it'll tell you this has this amount of toxins in it. This is a healthier replacement. So that could be a good guide to as things run out, replace. That's kind of where I say, start with those things, as things are running out, look to replace with cleaner.
Sheree 11:58
Yeah, exactly. It's not to shift into that low tox kind of situation, and from the other perspective of toxins, is also looking at how much are you clearing out your toxins? Is your elimination pathways working effectively? And my absolute go to because it's been a number of years I've been on this journey now, most of my products are switched out. That I will change. I'm still gonna get my hair dyed. I'm still going to do certain things is like saunas. Saunas have been my go to get your sweat on. We're not eliminating our toxins enough and get sweating. It's really not most gyms, a lot of gyms, will have a sauna as part of it. It doesn't have to be an additional expense on top of it. A lot of people be like, Oh my gosh, I have to go and fork out, like $45 or how much it is in the States, but like different it can end up being very expensive. You're just specifically going for a sauna session. But look for somewhere where they have them get your body sweating more. That is one it's going to be one of the key ways to start to eliminate your toxins. I will actively spend about 60 minutes a week in a sauna, whether that is split up into 415, minutes, 320, minutes or two, half an hours. I mean, obviously it's better to have a little bit more repetition throughout the week, but I make sure I get my 60 minutes in so that I know I'm sweating, especially in times like, you know, over here in New Zealand, we're going into winter, it gets even harder to get that real sweat on, so Saunas are even more important during that time.
Christa 13:22
Yeah, there's a effort where I just heard this recently. But either we are filtering our body via air filters, water filters, filtering what we decide to put in our mouth and on our skin, or our body has to filter it for us, and so either way, it has to be filtered and to decrease the burden on our body, because toxic overload can create a slew of of symptoms in our body and in our mind, and how clear we think day to day. Yeah, so we've gotta take kind of some ownership over what we're exposing our body to as far as toxins go. Alright, so number four, let's talk a little bit about sleep. So sleep is another big, massive topic, so let's just make it more simple, and I'll share with me, I don't have a problem sleeping, but I know a lot of my patients do, and so what I recommend is just to start paying attention to caffeine intake past noon. If you notice that you're sensitive, cut that out, and then really creating an environment of calm, so making sure that your bed is comfortable, making sure that you're not scrolling, keeping yourself awake. And I think the biggest thing is lot of times we cannot change our morning routine like we have. We have a non negotiable time that we have to be up, so that gives us the evening to kind of work around, and sometimes that does mean we have to give up maybe that next episode on something that you're binging. But again, it comes back to, how am I serving my body? How am I serving my health goals in this and so really advocating for yourself to sleep seven to eight hours, depending on where you feel good, in a clean, quiet. Dark, cool environment. So those are where you want to start being consistent with that. I will say the more difficult side to really getting your circadian rhythm in on point is to go to bed and wake up approximately within an hour at the same time, which can be really hard on the weekends, sometimes depending on your social life, but it can really help your body to naturally get tired 10:11pm and or earlier, and then naturally wake up. And, you know, most people are between five and 7am so you know, if you keep that consistent, your body will naturally kind of fall better into that circadian rhythm. Yeah,
Sheree 15:34
and there's a lot, there's a lot to unpack there. And again, it's like, pick one thing, start implementing. A lot of people don't even have a nighttime routine. That's one of the things I've learned working with clients. Make a case, what's your nighttime routine? They're like, What do you mean? I just like, maybe wash my face and brush my teeth and I get into bed and I just kind of hope I fall asleep. And sleep is such a huge foundational part about health, like the other pillars we've got going on here as well. And the first thing that I actually start with a lot of my clients is looking like Krista said the screen time. But if it's something like, okay, you know you don't get home too late or you it's the only time you have with your partner. If you are going to be watching screens and then trying to switch right off, is it putting on blue light blocking glasses? There's a function on, I'm sure it'll be on Samsung or Android device as well. There's a function on my iPhone. I now have it set it up where I can triple click the side button and my screen actually goes red. So that helps, because it's actually stopped it's blocking the blue light. I have it set up so that I have Do Not Disturb mode from eight o'clock in the evening until eight o'clock in the morning. So unless it's a phone call from someone in the list that I have allocated. I am not going to get interrupted interruptions. I can still check things if I want to. I can still go into the apps that are being shut down, but it's automatically, without me having to think, without having to use willpower creating this routine for me, that I'm not inclined to be Doom scrolling until two or three in the morning. I don't have to delete my Instagram app. It just automatically shuts itself down for me, and it just takes that will, like that willpower or that decision, away from you, so you don't feel like it's this overwhelming when we think about blue lights, when we think about all of this that's going on, that communicates to the brain that there's a party going on, it's igniting your cortisol. And if cortisol is up, melatonin is not being produced. That's your sleepy hormone, and so that's what starts to throw off your circadian rhythm. So if you are like, pick one thing that's going to optimize melatonin production, whether that is dimmer lights, whether that is blue light blocking, whether that is making sure you are doing some sort of calming breathing before you get into bed. Or once you're in bed, maybe it's reading a book and it's switching the brain from feeling overwhelmed to distraction with like a nice fiction novel. It's something to really wind the body down. That initial step of actually choosing to incorporate a nighttime routine makes a huge difference.
Christa 18:00
It really does. And sleep is so important and pivotal to really everything else next. Let's talk a little bit about exercise so you either love it or you hate it. I feel like people fall into to two buckets. If you hate it there, you might have some other you really gotta dive into your why and make it fun. Make it enjoyable. Being consistent, though, even if you do enjoy exercise, it can be hard sometimes to take time for yourself and really make it something that you can do consistently. So as I've shared before, I don't necessarily do everything perfectly, like I am not doing these kick ass perfect workouts an hour to an hour and a half every day. The reality is, most days, my workouts are 30 to 40 minutes and but I do it almost every single day, even on the weekends. Consistency is key if you don't have 30 or 40 minutes that you can commit to. What studies have shown is that it's actually even more effective for the body to have movement snacks, as we call throughout the day. So that means every hour, or every hour and a half to two hours, you're taking 10 minutes to walk up and down the hallway, walk up and down the stairs, if you have a walking treadmill to be walking and working. So there are different ways that you can incorporate movement throughout your day. It's actually better to be doing that rather than do a workout, even if it's an hour, crazy workout, and then you're sitting the rest of the day either in your car, at your desk, on your couch, in your bed, if you really start to pay attention, movement is a problem for most of civilized most of civilization, unless you have a very active job. Most people are not moving their body almost 90% of the day. And that's just fascinating to me, and I've started to pay attention to my own routines. And although our mind is active and removing, we really need to be moving our body. I say start where you are commit to at least half of your week. Let's say four days a week that you are committed to intentional. 30 minute exercise blocks at a minimum, and again, you've really got to make it enjoyable. If it's you want to listen to music, you want to listen to a podcast while you work out, or you just like the environment you like have a friend if that kind of motivates you. But that's where I that's what I always recommend, is don't make it over complicated, and get out of that all or nothing approach when it comes to moving your body, because something is better than nothing.
Sheree 20:22
This is a tough one for me as well. Like I mentioned with the water as a personal trainer, I love movement. In fact, I find myself like craving movement. It's a rare occurrence for me just to not do anything, and there are definitely days like, to be honest with you, weekends are chill time. Sometimes I'll just go for a walk. Sometimes I'll do just whatever I feel like, maybe it's a yoga class, it's super casual, but it's very unheard of for me to do less than five proper exercise sessions, and we're talking at least four weights a week. You've got a couple yoga sessions, and you're getting walks in on top of that. Like, I move my body all the time, but that is ingrained in me now, like we're talking about this has become an absolute habit. And in my job, I have to work with people to get them into this habit. And one of the ways that you've talked about Kristen, and we've actually talked about in other episodes as well, is this idea of moving throughout your day, which might be the key starting point, I used to say. And this used to be a big trend in the industry, just go for five minutes to the gym and get your body moving. And it's like, yeah, but the gym may also not be your happy place. One be really intentional with for me, it's actually looking at the step count, because I've got the actual exercise, the training component, so nailed. I didn't realize I was only averaging about 5000 steps a day, which is not enough for your metabolism to be healthy, being intentional with that, like you've mentioned. The other thing is, find what lights you up. There are days that I decide I don't want to do my weights and I will go and dance. I will literally just dance and throw my body around for half an hour, and it does. It's no coordination. There's no specific class. It is literally just me moving, and that helps me connect to my soul. I feel good. I get endorphins from it. Other times it's like I'm choosing to go for a walk with my friends. It is really finding and starting to tune into what your body needs. And it becomes less about exercise being this punishment, because we're working towards this goal of, like you say, being 510, pounds lighter and more about this. How can I make movement enjoyable? How can I let movement be my medicine as well? Like, food is medicine and movement is medicine. How can we come back to that ethos of like, I move my body because I love it and I love moving my body.
Christa 22:40
Yeah, absolutely. I think the key thread here is find something that motivates you to keep going to it, and generally, something that feels good, something like music, a podcast, socialization, the type of movement. But find something and then your why, kind of combining those things, I think you'll find that commitment to regular movement isn't as difficult as you thought. And then finally, I want to talk about stress, because this is another pillar that just really can affect everything else. Stress is a complicated one, because it can be really multifactorial. Sometimes it is things out of our control. Some of it is in our control. So I guess deciphering between those, and even for the elements of that are creating, what we say is stress. It's a matter of how we perceive it and work through it with stress. I think every single human being can relate to stress levels. There's different periods of time in our life that stress is higher, but what I would recommend is always having a moment of gratitude and prayer meditation every single day. So I liken this to why women do maybe a Lamaze class before they're in labor, because the time to learn how to breathe is not when you're in labor, right? It's you practice this in a more calm setting. And so that's exactly how meditation, prayer, moments of gratitude work together, like we need to practice this on a day to day basis, so that when we are in moments of an anxiety attack or just feeling really overwhelmed, you know how to go back to your breath. You know how to feel that into your body. And gratitude and anxiety are not friends. They cannot be in the same room together. So where I would say to practice is taking just 10 minutes. If you can do this twice a day, that's amazing, first thing in the morning, and definitely in the evening, as you're winding down to practice, a moment of set a timer for 10 minutes, maybe put some meditation music on, or if you want to just be outside in nature, but just really thinking upon all of the things that you're grateful for, your body, your family, your dog, your jaw, whatever it is, whatever really brings and lights you up. Maybe it's just what you're looking at the moment, but really tuning into daily mm. Uh, meditation and really focusing on your breath and allowing the sensations of focusing on positive and on gratitude, what that does inside of your body, and taking note and this element that this practice will tap you into that parasympathetic nervous system that rest and digest. And we want to practice this daily, so that when you are feeling stress of life kind of creep in. You know what it feels like to be the opposite, and you can get there more quickly.
Sheree 25:29
Stress is, I would say, my biggest weakness. I am a high stress person, and I know that. I know I function really well under pressure in the sense that I will get more done if I feel like there is a time crunch. I think back to when I was at university, like college, it was like, Simon's done, you stressed. And so I programmed my body to think that it was thriving. Think that like this, a type overachiever personality, needed stress to function, and it did a number on my hormones. And I think when we are in this space. We're in the stress. So maybe you ask someone that just knows you've got so much on your plate, having little aids throughout the day, or little things that you do. I was actually saying this to a client yesterday. I take ashwagandha every day. I know I work long hours. I know that my brain is on probably a lot more than other people's, because I know Krista, you'd be the same like when you're running a business, when you're doing high performing things, I stress my body, and we stress our bodies even more with exercise, because exercise is a form of stress, and so if you factor in all of these different stresses, not to mention all the other pillars we've just talked about are negatively affected by too much stress. It really needs to be a priority. And a lot of the time you'll get an eye roll like, Oh, great. We're talking about stress again, and it's if you're not living in that parasympathetic state you are dysregulating your body's ability to eliminate toxins. You're probably going to be dehydrating yourself. You may skip movement, or you may be over stressing yourself with movement. You're going to make poor choices with your diet, like the list goes on. And so we have to start with this as a foundation. And something that Krista mentioned before is that perception of stress. So if you can have some intentional time, morning and evening, fantastic, but also be aware of when you start to notice the tightness in the chest, the shallow breathing, maybe the shoulders hunching up, or the jaw clenching. Maybe you're even just driving from place to place, like you can feel when you get overwhelmed in your body, and when you start to pay attention to this more. It can be as simple as going I'm going to take five breaths right now it's five to six breaths for us to shift from sympathetic to parasympathetic state, that is it, if it's intentional, diaphragmatic, belly breathing, and then make a decision, then operate from that place, because you're going to now be able to tap into a different space in your mind and choose or move forward or take action from a calmer state, which then is also going to reduce your stress. If we're constantly reactive and we're constantly living from the stress got like, oh my gosh, you know, that's what's going to create even more stress in your life. And it's this awful snowball ripple effect, whereas, as we can have a reverse ripple effect, where you're having positive, calm and intentional choices and actions taken by simply bringing awareness to your breath and your state throughout the day as well. And that's something that on top of the ashwagandha, which is really calming and helpful for me, keeping caffeine to a minimum is another big one for me, but actually just going okay, I feel the overwhelm creeping in right now. It's a stressful time, and we go through sprints and seasons in life. I'm going to take five deep breaths and then move forward. Yeah,
Christa 28:49
I love that. I afrogand is my friend and l theanine.
Speaker 1 28:54
Yes, I always forget about that, but yes, I love l
Christa 28:58
theanine. And yeah, and just, I think you wrap that up beautifully with stress, because that's stress, because that's a big one. So I hope that you all have found this helpful. It health and longevity and creating a more beautiful life in general, full of productivity and vitality, is very simple, yet we make it difficult because it does. It does require us to self reflect. It does require us to set some goals. It does set. We do have to be accountable to ourselves, and so it can become more difficult when we find overwhelm in all the pieces. So I hope that breaking these down into kind of seven categories, take them as you will, maybe jot something down in each category and say, This is what I'm going to focus on one at a time. So maybe it takes you six weeks to hone something a whole new area in each one of the new habits in each one of these areas. But our goal here was just to make this more tangible for you. And it is doable. It does not have to happen overnight. These are elements that and if. And I focus on every single day, some days we do better than others, and you don't have to be perfect again. It's just really acknowledging that there is support out there and that you can just do it step by step as your awareness and your commitment expands. So I hope you found this helpful until next time.
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