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Motivation is the key to consistency. Right?
In this episode, Kelly Scott, founder of the Wellness Boulevard will share:
- When motivation backfires
- Exercise intolerance from too much fear-based motivation
- How to motivates ourselves in supporting ways that gets results
More About Kelly Scott
Kelly helps women diagnosed with autoimmune disease or chronic illness feel better, heal naturally, and live a life without restriction (literally). She is the Founder of The Wellness Boulevard, a community and membership site with restorative Yoga practices, traditional and walking meditations, and classes on a variety of healing related topics. As an eating disorder + autoimmune disease warrior herself, Kelly’s been immersed in the fields of health and wellness for over a decade.
Mentioned in This Episode
Transcript
[INTERVIEW]
[00:00:47] AS: Welcome everybody to season 8 of Insatiable. Today we’re here with episode 6. This season’s theme is consistency. It’s no secret that consistency is the key to success. Many of us have so much health knowledge and are aware of the latest and greatest food research and have the best of intentions, and then real-life happens. We fall off track, lose motivation and get discouraged.
Convention tells us consistency is about will power, discipline and hard work, but research in adult development theory points elsewhere. 15 years ago, I discovered functional medicine and reversed my irritable bowel syndrome, depression and a host of issues. I was amazed at the power of food is medicine and felt amazing. But even all of these great results couldn’t stop my binging and overeating. So I ended up on a quest to discover why can’t I stick with feeling amazing knowing how powerful nutrition is?
This led me to grad school to study adult development and how we change ingrained patterns and behaviors. I came to realize inconsistency is a symptom, just like depression and binging. It’s not the problem, but has various root causes depending on the individual. Not only is falling off track and invitation into deeper healing and radical results. I found that when it comes to consistency, a lot of the common beliefs we have around being consistent are what actually causes us to fall off track. Thinking we need more motivation is definitely one of them and what we’re going to get into with today’s guest.
In this Insatiable season, we will look at inconsistency as a symptom, not a problem. We’ll explore what happens after the novelty of some “new plan” has worn off and why real-life trips us up. What are the various root causes why we lose motivation, want to be “bad with our food” and tell ourselves, “Chuck it. F it.”
Today we are going to talk about when motivation backfires. Now, you might be thinking, “What? How is that possible?” Kelly is going to help us discern between fear-based motivation and genuine inspiration when it comes to making healthy choices. We’re also going to discuss how fear-based motivation makes us think we are being good, yet sets off a spiral events that cause us to fall off track and feel awful about ourselves. It makes us feel our efforts and successes are never good enough.
We all know that feeling of, “But what if I just ate a little bit less, or I still want to lose 10 more pounds to feel great.” Kelly knows about this topic firsthand as an eating disorder and autoimmune disease warrior. She helps women diagnose with autoimmune disease or chronic illness, feel better, heal naturally and live a life without restriction, literally.
She’s the founder of The Wellness Boulevard, a community and membership site with restorative yoga practices, traditional and walking meditations and classes on a variety of healing related topics. Thank you so much for being here today, Kelly.
[00:03:50] KS: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited.
[00:03:53] AS: Yeah. So, this is going to be really, I think, mind-blowing for people, because often we think, “I need more motivation. I need more motivation.” I hope that people that are open to this idea that there are different kinds of motivation and you’re going to really bring that point home today.
But before we get started, I would love for you to share your story about how you kind of arrived here, because I have so many clients and I’m sure a ton of listeners who have a chronic illness, like anxiety, depression, or some form of arthritis, who also struggle with binging or feeling out of control around food. I think navigating that, I know food can help my chronic issue and I’m struggling with disorder eating as a really different ball to untangle then if you’re just someone who’s like, “Oh! I just need to learn about nutrition and I’m all better. Great!” So, tell us how you arrived here.
[00:04:45] KS: Yeah. That – I mean, exactly what you just said there is one of the things that I love to talk about most, because it’s exactly where I found myself. So, about 14, 15 years ago at this point, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease named Takayasu’s arteritis, which is inflammation of the blood vessels, and I was young. I was a young teenager when I was diagnosed. Really didn’t know what to do with that information. Once I was officially diagnosed, it was recommended that I was put on a medicine called prednisone, which in my case was a miracle drug, and that felt better instantly, but then came with its own host of additional problems.
One of those symptoms I guess that came from that medication for me was an increased appetite. So I was this young teenager eating way more than my brother, an older teenager was eating, because I literally just couldn’t get enough food. I needed that food, because I had lost weight prior to my diagnosis. But because I was young and so impressionable at that time, I didn’t know how to handle that. I didn’t really know to recognize that I needed that weight. I didn’t know what to do with this new appetite that I had been given, and I definitely didn’t know what to do with the 5 pounds that I gained in the first week of this medication.
I basically freaked out for lack of a better word for that and became very, very afraid of continuing to gain weight. All I could see was sort of this spiral that I was falling into and this like just continuation of weight gain that would probably never end.
So, I started to control my food a little bit more and to try to pull back and control that appetite that I felt was completely out of control. I wasn’t necessarily trying to lose weight. It was just that intense fear of not gaining anymore.
Through that, I really spiraled into an eating disorder, and we’re literally talking now within that same year diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, diagnosed with an eating disorder. Went for treatment for both of these at the same time, obviously, different forms of treatment. While I was out of the grips of both the seriousness of pieces of the autoimmune disease, because it was being managed with medication and the seriousness of pieces of the eating disorder, because I had also gone for a treatment. Neither was fully healed. So I still had an unhealthy relationship to food and disordered eating habits, and those lingered for a very long time.
So, if we fast-forward a couple of years. I got to a place where I was starting to learn a little bit more about health and wellness, because at this point in my life I really thought like what I ate, how much I worked out, only things that mattered, absolutely nothing else. As I started kind of diving online actually into this online world that I was learning from other women who had kind of walked similar paths to me. I realized that maybe there is a little bit more at play here. Maybe there were a couple of other things that mattered.
As I did that, I would look into not just how much I was eating, but what I was eating and to maybe like toxins, or meditation, just a bunch of these other different ideas, and it really blew my mind wide open and I got really excited about it. I found intuitive eating and I really found a way to work through a lot of the disorder eating habits that I had picked up after both of the diagnosis.
So, I was getting really excited. I felt like I was kind of gaining some freedom back when it came to food. I had a lot of freedom from the medication that I was on and the treatment that we had been working with while I was not in remission. I was managing it well. I got to the point where I said, “Hey, maybe I can get off medication.” As I started doing that kind of a research, I would land upon paleo diets or autoimmune protocol, and articles written from experts that advice we eat a certain way if we want to heal from autoimmune disease, or chronic illness. I would read all these stories of other people who had done it before me and the incredible results that they saw, and I get super excited, because maybe there’s this potential, this possible thing that I can do to get off medication and really feel better. Every single time that I tried to do that and follow one of these protocols, I bumped up against so much resistance, so much restriction and deprivation and ultimately it didn’t work. I think a lot of that was because there was still so much tied up from the eating disorder, from the disorder relationship to food. I have so much freedom that I finally found with something like intuitive eating, and it was so difficult, because I thought that I had to let that go.
I think a lot of us do. You said, kind of find ourselves in that place, where we’re trying to get better. I know today we’re going to talk a lot about motivation, because the reasons that we’re all trying to “get better” are very, very different, and I think those “reasons” are the motivation that we have will greatly impact the actions that we take, and more importantly, the effectiveness of those actions that we take.
So, that’s kind of where I found myself of I wanted to feel better and I wanted to take these actions, but I could never get myself to do it. I couldn’t get myself to do it consistently, and I got so frustrated to the point where you kind of begin to think that you deserve the symptoms and it’s your fault.
[00:10:03] AS: Yeah. Oh my God! You said so much I think that we can all relate to. I mean, first of all, I was on prednisone with my chemo, and I probably would have gain weight too. It was interesting. I obviously was like vomiting all the time, so I lost a ton of weight, but my face was so big. I remember looking at pictures, my cheeks were like massively big from the prednisone, and it does make you hungry. I’ve had some clients with arthritis, and they need the prednisone too, and it’s like, “How do we manage that?”
I think what you’re speaking to is this gray area of – Especially, there’re two camps in the world. There’s like https://alishapiro.com/wp-content/uploads/placeholder-vertical-1-1.jpgtern medicine, where you treat everything with pills and pharma and the body is a machine and they’re putting you through a formula. Then you get into this online world where, again, for everyone listening, it’s a business. A lot of people want to complain that healthcare is a business. The wellness world is a business too, and they show you the exceptions, not the rules, because that’s what people also buy, “Oh! This easy protocol, just do 1, 2, 3, eliminate gluten, dairy, and your arthritis is gone.”
I think we get stuck between those two and it’s like we think those are our only choices, versus what you brought up, was such this interesting question, and this actually came up in our Truce With Food group about when is being healthy actually about – When is being healthy feel like deprivation? What do you then?
I think to your point of thinking that it’s when we’re focused on weight, we think it’s just diet and exercise and we’re not looking about emotional health piece. I found it really interesting in your story, which happens with a lot of my clients, and I think of a lot of listeners reflect. The disordered eating, whether it’s going to Weight Watchers, whether it’s bulimia, whether it’s anorexia, whether it’s overeating and binging. It always occurs around an event that makes us feel very vulnerable. In your case, it was a diagnosis, right?
[00:12:03] KS: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:12:05] AS: And that vulnerability of uncertainty, we’re like clinging to some form of safety. So, we try so hard with these absolutes that either the wellness industry is offering or the medical industry, right? Both places have something to offer. We have to learn to go back into the heart of uncertainty. In your case, especially with our bodies, which feel so scary.
[00:12:26] KS: It does. It does feel really scary, and I think that’s why part of the conversation has to be that it’s safe to be where we are to begin with. Because what’s so scary of uncertainty is the uncertainty that we’re not safe where we are right now. We’re not safe where we’re going. So part of the conversation has to be like it’s safe to be sick. It’s safe to be at a place where I don’t feel well. I think so quickly with autoimmune disease and chronic illness in particular, is that we’re so focused on the end goal on feeling better, because there’s so much attached to what can happen when we feel better or what we think is going to happen when we feel better or what’s supposed to or why we’re supposed to get better. There’s so much meaning attached to that that it can sometimes be really difficult to feel like it’s safe to be where we are.
Of course, there is seriousness to physical illness and I am in no way trying to ignore that or not represent that, because there is danger to that to be had. But for many of us, especially with chronic illness, we’re in that management state, which means we’re probably out of maybe some of those initial dangers, and now we’re at this point where we’re kind of dealing with chronic symptoms that don’t feel good and we want to feel better. But we’re not necessarily also having the permission to be where we are and still be super valuable and super worthy and super okay and super ahttps://alishapiro.com/wp-content/uploads/placeholder-vertical-1-1.jpgome.
[00:13:45] AS: Yeah, and I think you bring up such an important point that a lot of times people think self-acceptance means resignation. To your point of saying like, “This doesn’t mean that it’s never going to change. But it’s like, “Wait. We need to be where we are right now so we can assess next steps.” Also, it’s not helping the situation to be in shame and to guilt ourselves and to put all these pressure. If that worked, okay, do it, but it’s not working.
[00:14:14] KS: Exactly.
[00:14:15] AS: So, let’s just be here right now and kind of not – I always tell my clients. What we embrace dissolves, and what we resist persists. So we’re adding this extra layer of tension, of stress, that then we have to work through that on top of, okay, the real issues that brought us to this place. So, I love that you talk about. That’s such a powerful statement. It’s safe to be here. It’s safe to be here right now.
[00:14:39] KS: Absolutely, and that guilt and that shame, that’s also often going to influence motivation, and that’s where a lot of I know what we’re going to talk about today comes in with like the fear-based motivation. It’s often going to be influenced by some of those emotions that are super difficult to sit with.
[00:14:54] AS: Yeah. So, let’s get right into that. You use this concept called fear-based motivation, and I want you to define it for people, because as I was hearing your story, I think to people on the surface, if it wasn’t in this context of this interview they’d say, “Oh! She was really inspired. She saw these people on the internet and learned how they could reverse things,” and it looks on the surface like you’re really inspired and this is a health effort. But below it, you discover, “Oh! Not so healthy.” So, tell us about fear-based motivation.
[00:15:28] KS: Yeah, absolutely. I think when we kind of take it a bit more general and then maybe kind of tying it back to my story after. But it’s really just a question of – And I say just. I mean, there’s a lot that goes into this, but it’s the question of, “Are we making changes and adapting “healthy” lifestyle practices out of love?” So, because it feels good, because we want to honor the body and we want to feel good in this present moment, and maybe also in the future, or are we making those changes and adapting those practices out of fear to avoid pain, to guarantee survival, to control body, shape, size or function?
It’s an important distinction to be made, because taking that action out of fear cannot only lead to situations that are not going to be in our best interest, like deciding it’s better to maybe kind of starve ourselves than risk eating something “off plan”. But it also puts that body itself in a chronic state of danger. Our brilliant response to danger is going to be do whatever it takes to survive and turn off anything not essential to that survival, like the daily housekeeping and the daily maintenance that is actually so critical to not only like flourishing in this moment, but also to repairing and healing the body from past trauma.
[00:16:47] AS: Yeah. I think you articulated it so well, and it’s kind of counterintuitive in the sense that what you’re saying is we need to focus on the short term. Is this feeling good today? We have to be unattached to the long-term outcome, which goes total – The first episode of the season was about willpower, and I like read the Oxford Dictionary definition of willpower. The definition of willpower is like you bypass short-term temptation for long-term success.
I’m like when it comes to your health, that’s so backwards, and I think you showed to your point why that is so backwards. We actually have to focus on feeling good now and even feeling better, right? Moving in the right direction versus expecting some sort of miracle. Waking up the next day and everything being gone. The sad cloud that they have on the big pharma commercials. Maybe there’s one sad cloud instead of four.
[00:17:45] KS: And being able to celebrate that is progress. You’re absolutely right.
[00:17:49] AS: Yeah. I’m curious what you have seen in the Wellness Boulevard and with yourself about what are some of these reactions that the body does when it is in basically danger mode, and it looks like it’s backfiring on us, but it’s actually doing the best it can to support us to what we’ve given in.
[00:18:10] KS: Yeah. I think that’s a great question, and I think you can kind of take it in a lot of different ways, because if we’ve got sort of fear in some capacity running the show, then we’re going to make decisions that are not necessarily in the best interest of our bodies, and our body is maybe trying to tell us that through a variety of different ways.
So, some of us might take the exercise, which can be a huge conversation in and of itself and do things that don’t necessarily feel good now, because we’re told that this is what’s going to get me to health. I think that’s really where it lies, is it tends to be when we’re doing things that we’ve been told are going to get us to health or get us to that great place. So we’re not necessarily turning into the body and saying, “Hey, what body do you think is going to get us to feeling a little bit better?” Instead, we’re kind of putting all of that power of that expertise and sort of giving the voice to everybody else outside of us. When we start to do that, we’re essentially bypassing all of that intuitive knowledge that we have and saying, “I don’t care how I feel in this moment. I don’t care how my body responds.” Whether that’s with, for example, exercising, signs of overtraining, which is signs of overstress, because stress is cumulative.
So, we could have headaches and – Gosh! We cannot be sleeping well at night and anxiety and depression can be more prevalent. Whether that’s signs of overtraining or that’s the body kind of shutting down and storing fat, because we’re not feeding it enough. Whether that’s feeling restrictive and deprived, because we’re following a “healthy diet” that’s supposed to be really good for us and yet we have some other factor or contributing environment that makes it not practical for us in this moment, because maybe for example with me, the eating disorder had been affecting the choices that I was trying to make now because those choices felt restrictive and it felt based in deprivation, which is more of a mindset versus like an actual what I’m eating and what I’m not eating.
So, I’m not sure if I’m 100% answering your question here, but I think that a lot of people will notice that they feel worse as they start to adapt some of these practices. I’ve had members at the Wellness Boulevard who have taken on an autoimmune protocol, for example, which is kind of supposed to be like the gold standard of natural healing for autoimmune disease or chronic illness or at least that’s the thing that I put up on the pedestal of like, “This is how I have to live if I’m ever going to get where I want to go.”
I think a lot of us do do this. So I’ve had members who will come and say, “Oh my gosh! I’ve been doing this diet for 6 months, 9 months, a year, and I don’t feel any better. I feel worse.” Then we’ll kind of have a conversation. We have one class inside the boulevard that talks about the side effects of restriction, and I’ve had members watch that class and then like, “Wow! I wish I had watched this before. I spent all these money on doctor’s appointments and tests and all these other things, because, literally, you just named every symptom that I’ve been having since getting on something like the autoimmune protocol.”
It does not mean to say that the autoimmune protocol doesn’t work. It just means that there are other factors that play here and it’s important to be checking in with ourselves, which is that like, “What’s the motivation we have here? Is it love? I just want to feel good in this moment and I’m honoring my body and I’m respecting my body,” or is it fear of, “I have to listen to somebody else tell me what to do, because I’m afraid of continuing to be sick, or because I’m afraid I can’t trust myself, or I’m afraid I’m out of control, or I’m afraid of what’s going to happen if I don’t do this.”
[00:21:32] AS: I think that is such a dynamo point. I was just in a session with a client this week, and she was talking about the fear isn’t when you overeat at one meal. It’s am I going to keep going? To your point, when you were gaining weight from the prednisone, it wasn’t the weight that I had gained. It was, “Is this going to keep happening?” That fear is so strong, and if we – Yeah, it’s really strong, and I think that’s why I’m a big believer in like no one can tell you what works for your body, but we do need experts to help guide us. You want the expertise in someone to figure out how to figure out what works for you, like you and me.
[00:22:08] KS: Yeah. Have one for us.
[00:22:13] AS: I think, kind of circling back to kind of this idea of when is healthy – The idea of healthy really feels deprived. I think the Truce With Food group, and we’re kind of discussing, is I said, “First of all, I think it’s people’s definition of healthy. They think it has to be perfection. They think it has to be no sugar. All the healthy fats, never eating out.”
First of all, it’s our idea that makes us feel so restricted. Then in the Truce With Food framework, we work simultaneously – Well, first we start on some of the emotional stuff of why we feel so deprived, because I’ve found in my research and with clients that deprivation around food is just a metaphor for feeling emotionally deprived. If we have fear guide our choices, we are getting none of that return on the investment of feeling good. Then we’re obviously deprived emotionally in our lives or meaning, of people just say they’re stressed, but then you’re not just stressed. You’re also missing ease and relaxation and meaning and fun and play.
So, I’m kind of going on, but your point about that fear kind of drowns out anything that could be joyful to celebrate of our progress or the moving forward and it almost like creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of then, “Oh! I got to cutback even more.” So the deprivation just grows rather than trusting, moving in the other direction, that you don’t feel deprived and you can feel satisfied with where you are. Am I making any sense?
[00:23:41] KS: Absolutely.
[00:23:42] AS: Okay.
[00:23:43] KS: Absolutely.
[00:23:44] AS: You take over the show, Kelly. I’m going to be quiet.
[00:23:49] KS: No. You’re absolutely on point. When talking about deprivation, there’s an element of emotional deprivation, a term first introduced to me by Isabel Foxen Duke, to it that a lot of us aren’t necessarily exploring, which is going back to the conversation at the very beginning too of there’s a different aspect of health and just physical health, which I think – I mean, that blew my mind wide open when I first heard of that. I end up realizing that my emotions, my thoughts, my beliefs, for example, could influence my physical body and my physical health, which is why we can open the door past just food and working out and things like that.
I think part of the deprivation restricted conversation also kind of goes to not necessarily making sure that we know the cause to begin with. So, a lot of us are cutting out foods because we think that that’s going to be the thing that helps us feel better. It’s going to be the thing that kind of like reduces that symptom, and we haven’t necessarily explored if food, let alone, all of those different food groups that we’re being advised to cutout, or that cause to begin with, for our particular body, our particular situation, our particular season of life.
So we’ve got to look at emotional deprivation, like you said. We’ve got to look at the causes for us individually with ideally, yeah, help from somebody kind of guiding us through that. We also got to look at are we eating for weight and not for health? I think a lot of us claim that we’re eating for our health when there’s still a part of us that’s eating for weight, and whether that’s weight loss or not to have a weight gain or just to look a certain way to kind of like shape that body. I think that’s something that we have to address.
Then I even think there’s this concept of, again, choice versus force. So, is somebody else telling you what to do, and that’s my gold standard and I will not do anything different? Because that’s more of like a forced conversation. I’m forced to do what somebody is telling me to do. Versus I feel like I have a choice in every single moment. I think that makes a really big difference.
So when we kind of look back at that willpower of short-term, pushing it off for long-term gain. Part of what makes it possible to eat any kind of way that you want without feeling restricted and deprived is feeling like you have a choice in the matter, and that choice has to come every single moment.
[00:25:58] AS: I love that you say that. I mean, I’m a big believer. I mean, I’m always talking about choice, and it reminds of a client who, she went on the candida diet for some issues, and it worked really, really well. Some of the issues started to come back. Not in the same way. Maybe not the same intensity, but they were coming back a little bit.
So she went back on the diet and wasn’t getting the same results. She was like, “I’m trying so hard.” It was her choice when she was getting the results. It was like this is meaningful for me to keep going. She felt like she was failing because she would go off the diet here and there when the results didn’t come. It was kind of like, “Oh! I’m trying so hard.”
I was like, “Okay. That tool isn’t working for you anymore. It worked for you then. If it’s not feeling good, and you don’t want to choose to continue, it’s time to look elsewhere.” I think that’s an important point for people to listen, is that sometimes these tools or these AIP or candida diets or whatever, they can only take you so far. If you’ve cleared up enough of your candida or inflammation, you may have to start looking elsewhere, that the diet isn’t the thing anymore. It might be your environmental toxins. It might be molds. It might be your sunlight. It’s probably your emotional health. Because there’s always an emotional component to autoimmune issues, or any gut issues. So, I just want to point that out to people too, that like sometimes these protocols can only take you so far, or they work for a limited time and then it’s time to go deeper.
[00:27:27] KS: Absolutely. I think one of the questions that we failed to ask sometimes is, is this even having the opportunity to work for me. So we tend to always say like, “Well, if this isn’t working for me, then the tool is definitely wrong or I’m definitely wrong.” Typically, we start with I’m definitely wrong. I’m the one that’s doing something wrong.
Sometimes we might say, “Okay. Fine. Maybe it is the tool.” But one of the questions that’s also can be really important to kind of ask ourselves is like are we even giving these tools a chance to work? I don’t mean that in terms of like, again, something else we’re not doing right. I mean that in terms of like there are other conditions that may be at play that could be impacting the effectiveness of these tools that some people love and see great results from. I feel like it can be such a relief when we start talking about them. So I talk about them as hidden stressors, but is basically like these environments are conditions that could kind of be affecting how well everything is actually helping us feel better. That’s kind of an important conversation, because typically we’re taking on these tools. Whether it’s diet, whether it’s a certain exercise practice, whether it’s going toxin-free. We’re doing this to reduce the stress on the body and to increase the amount of time that we spend in that parasympathetic nervous system and that relaxation responses. Dr. Herbert Benson coined it.
So we’re hoping for all of these tools to help us kind of like do those two things so that the body could essentially hopefully maybe heal itself and do what it does best. So, there could be that kind of at play too, whereas you’re taking on this tool and it used to work for you and it doesn’t work for you now, kind of exactly like what you were saying, Ali, is there something else at play in this season for why this might not be able to be as effective as it once was.
[00:29:15] AS: I love that. It’s kind of like – The big discernment is like – And for the science nerds. Is this moving me to parasympathetic dominant? Which means rest and repair, or am I going back to sympathetic or fight of flight I think is a great question and almost like the body will tell you. Because if ultimately your tools are going to be only as effective as you can relax the body, and then when the body is relaxed, then it can make the most of nutrition. Then it can make the most of your sleep. Then it can make the most of your exercise. But if you’re keeping it in that fight or flight, it’s being counterproductive.
[00:29:53] KS: 100%
[00:29:53] AS: So we’re going to take a short break to hear from our sponsor, but when we come back, I do want to focus on something that you alluded to earlier. I think a big spot where people do feel, an obvious spot where people feel emotionally deprived is exercise, and I think this is a really big, important part. Then we’re going to get into scarcity mindset, which is another big thing that when we’re exercising and eating well and not get results. We start to think we’re not enough. So, we’re going to pick Kelly’s brain bout that when we come back. But first, a message from our sponsor.
[SPONSOR MESSAGE]
[00:30:33] AS: It’s that time of year again. The live version of my annual group program, Why Am I Eating This Now, opens for registration August 5th and begins August 13th. This program will help you unlock your keys to consistency. With your nutrition goals and with a small group of 15 people, we will get to the root causes of why you fall off track. Together we’ll transform those patterns and behaviors. No willpower required.
To learn more, check out episode 6, season 5, where why am I eating this now participants, Dr. Tina Boogren and Laurus Brawley discuss how using adult development theory, which is not therapy or coaching, made the program so challenging, life-changing and different from anything they’ve done before.
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[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[00:32:49] AS: Okay, Kelly. So we are back. Before the break from our sponsor, we said we’re going to talk about exercise as a place where we often feel emotionally deprived and it very can be counterproductive. What I often hear, you had so wonderfully coined this term fear-based motivation, that we can start to think about what our food choice is. But with exercise, I think it starts – It can be almost sometimes a little tricky, because it sounds quite noble. We can say to ourselves, “I want to burn off the calories so I can eat more at the picnic,” or “I’m going to drag myself out of bed so I don’t feel guilty and exercise this kind of run in the morning. Sets my day up perfectly.”
[00:33:35] KS: Absolutely.
[00:33:36] AS: So, I think sometimes even though we don’t really like that stuff and we dread it and maybe it makes us feel a lot more tired three, four hours down the road, but we’re convinced that we’re being good, and often in terms of weight loss, that we often don’t know it’s depriving us or setting us back.
So, can you start to help us understand how over-exercising is actually going to inhibit all the great effort we’re doing around the other things in our lives?
[00:34:04] KS: Yeah. This is such a good one to kind of dive into, because you’re so right, and that we think that we’re doing the right thing. After all, exercise is supposed to be really good for us and so many of us are like told to get out there and exercise and move more. There are some of us, and I was kind of one of those people who just I really love to exercise and that it was like the number one thing that could clear my head and sort of give me that mental reset for the day.
So it was a big part of my day both because it made me feel good and because it kind of relieves, I thought, some of my stress. Just to kind of give you guys a little bit of a story and more personal example. I started practicing kind of like a cross-fit hybrid boot campy type of a thing, a workout about – I don’t know, about a year ago, a little over a year ago, and I loved it and I did it five days a week and it was amazing and it was wonderful for the first couple of months. I got to excited about going to this practice. Sure, there was a little bit of that sort of learning curve that came from it being a more intense movement, and I have been doing it a while, but it was giving me such a high, because in fact that like exercise high that comes that I sort of like didn’t worry about it. I figured it was just kind of like this is new for me and my body’s got to get used to this.
After quite a few more months of going regularly and consistently, doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing. I got to the point where I had headaches all day long. I couldn’t fall asleep at night. I was hungry constantly. I was sore every single day, and you don’t necessarily need to be or should be sore every single day from your workouts. I was tired constantly, like so much more than I had been. I finally kind of said, “Whoa! Maybe I’m working out a little bit too much for my body,” and I honestly hadn’t thought that that was something to consider until I realized, and it was from reading the paleo approach, I think, where I was introduced to the concept of stress being cumulative.
So that it’s not that we have these like stress buckets of, “Well, exercise a stress, but everyone tells me it’s a good stress. I’m supposed to do it.” So it’s not like I have a certain amount of stress that I can put towards my exercise practice in one bucket, and then a certain amount of stress that I can handle from work, and then a certain amount of stress that comes from having an autoimmune disease or a chronic illness, and then a certain amount of stress over here from maybe family, friend, dynamics, social events. As long as they all kind of stay in their buckets, I’m good.
Instead, when we’re talking about stress, we’re talking about stress stacking on top of one another being this cumulative concept, which means that at some point if I kind of keep stacking stress, I’m going to tip over into that point where I’m just way too much in sympathetic nervous system and that chronic stress state. Again, it’s not that stress by itself is bad, because short-term stress is really great. That’s why exercise can really be great for us. That’s why work is great, and that it makes us productive and we’re doing things. But it’s when we get to that point of more chronic stress that we’re going to start to see some of those negative consequences or just those physical impacts on the body.
So that’s what happened for me, where I had a certain amount of stress in my everyday life. I could handle it physically. It seems to be okay for my body, and then I added this very intense exercise practice on top of that and sort of tipped myself over into you just have too much stress now. My body physically told me that and basically said, “Hey, I can’t tolerate your current exercise routine.” The workouts are too intense. Maybe they’re too frequent. Maybe they last too long, or maybe they’re just the wrong type of movement for the body. But my body was just basically saying like, “This is too much. This is not okay for me in this season.”
I think that it can be a really hard thing to hear because exercise is supposed to be this really good thing, because maybe we’ve gotten really great benefits from it in the past, because there’s till maybe, like you were saying, some of the sort of weight implications that come alongside with it.
[00:38:08] AS: Oh, yeah. I think most people view exercise as almost like an insurance plan for whatever they’re going to eat.
[00:38:14] KS: Yeah.
[00:38:15] AS: I know I did for like a decade. For my whole life it was like, “Okay. I burned this many,” and tracking that.
So, what are some of the signs and symptoms you’ve seen inside the Wellness Boulevard? Thank you so much for sharing about your headaches and all that stuff, because I don’t think most people realize how much control we have of our headaches. But what are some of the signs and symptoms you’ve seen that people are over-exercising?
[00:38:42] KS: Yeah. So, I think, certainly headaches could be one. Just a big increase in appetite could be one, because there’s just a lot of exertion happening. Again, like soreness. If you’re constantly sore if you’re constantly tired, if you’re having trouble sleeping at night, if you’re a little bit more anxious or maybe feeling some depression. These are all things to be thinking of and those are more physical symptoms.
I mean, we’ve also got more of like the mental and emotional side of it, where you feel guilty for not going to the gym. You feel guilt for skipping an exercise practice. You feel like you have to be able to go do that if you’re going to be able to go eat or go out with people later. It’s really difficult to maybe rest. It’s really difficult to go to a yoga practice and just lay on the mat, especially like a restorative yoga practice. It’s really difficult to pull back.
For example, when I was in the thick of it and trying to kind of get out of this myself, there would be time where I would have to say like, “Sure, maybe I could use a higher weight here, but I choose not to.” If it’s really, really difficult to not choose that higher weight or not run the extra lap, then there might be something going on upstairs in our brains when it comes to kind of like what’s motivating us here. Because if it’s really, really difficult to pull back, to rest, to take a day off, to take a couple of days off, to do a yoga practice, to just walk instead of run. If that’s really, really difficult, then that kind of ties back into what we were talking about before of what’s driving the ship here. What’s running the show? Is it some capacity of fear-based motivation and a lot of those questions we talked about before, versus I just want my body to feel really good in this moment and in the next, if at all possible.
[00:40:20] AS: I love that, coming back to those questions to help ground you like, “Wait a second. What is my goal here? Is it to not feel guilty or is it to do something that’s going to move me closer to my goal of feeling good, resting and repairing, replenishing and restoring.” That’s such an important point, because when we get caught up in that spiral, we kind of forget the overarching goal. It’s like we’re just avoiding the uncomfortable feelings of guilt or whatnot.
I would say too, I’ve often noticed that for myself, especially when it’s time to change up exercise. I seem to change up with the seasons. By the way, you keep using that word and I think it’s so helpful for people. For you guys listening, when you fear like, “What if I can never get back to my favorite workout, or what if I can never eat this again?” if you are experiencing success, say, like on a candida diet.
Understand all of these things are tools. They’re not forever. So there’s a season for them. I think there’s some safety in that. This isn’t forever no matter what it is. So, I just want to like thank you for using that word, Kelly, because I think it’s really helpful for people to think about things in terms of seasons rather than forever and ever, because forever and ever feels overwhelming, at least to me.
[00:41:37] KS: To me too. I love that you just pointed that out.
[00:41:40] AS: Yeah, and I will say that I’ve noticed with myself, I will start to like – So I like to change my workouts during the season. I hate the heats on the summer. I like to do more weight workouts in the spring and fall when it’s cooler, although it’s been really muggy. I tend to do more outdoor stuff. In winter, I tend to more like weights, and I never do a ton of cardio, but HIT training, because it warms me up, hot yoga.
But if you find yourself avoiding your workouts or skipping it, it maybe because you’re bored, not because you’re lazy, but nature is always changing, and I think we think – We talked about this in episode three of this season with Diane Sanfilippo about consistency is not doing the same thing all the time at all. We think it is. But consistency is continuing to check in and knowing how to know your body and make those changes as you get healthier or as you have setbacks. So I just want to kind of plug the season’s concept. So, thanks, Kelly.
Another thing, because I think also what you’re saying here is we have to get really honest with ourselves. We have to get honest with where our body is at and not what we think we should be doing. I know, for me, checking in with how I feel after the workout is always a truth teller for me.
When I was still struggling with my weight I did this really intense workout when I was living in Philly, and everybody loved it and I felt like I was succeeding at it. But I had to be really honest that every time I got done with it, I could barely finish it, even though I was in a much better shape than I am now. I could barely finish it and I wanted to take a nap. I could tell – The days I did that, I needed a nap. Like not just a 15-minute nap. I was dragging. That was a huge sign for me that like, “Okay. You can’t do this workout. It may feel like you’re getting this high. The long-term “benefits” are not there.” So, maybe that can help someone else. I just wanted to share that.
[00:43:36] KS: Yeah, and I so appreciate you sharing that, because I think it can get kind of murky when we start talking about that, because, well, isn’t exercise supposed to make you tired? Isn’t it supposed to make you sore? Isn’t it supposed to make you some of these things that we may be experiencing that we now can say is exercise and tolerance, or over-exertion.
So, it can be hard to recognize that that may be a symptom, that that may be kind of like a warning form the body saying like, “Hey, this isn’t working for me.” It can be hard to really recognize that, because we think or have been told many times that like you should be sore. You should be pushing hard. Maybe you need to be tired after you finish. You should feel like you got a good workout in.
So, I love that you gave that story to us too of it’s okay to question some of these things, even things that maybe you have been told. Because, really, at the end of the day, your body is going to know best. It might take a little bit of time to hear what your body might be trying to tell you or really decipher between what’s true for me and what’s not true for me. But it’s at least okay to start asking some of those questions.
[00:44:39] AS: Yeah, and I found that like – I mean, granted I’m pregnant right now, but like even would help me get pregnant is I felt really energized after moving my workouts outside and just walking for longer periods. Like not we’re at hour and a half, I would take my dog to the park. But being in nature and the sunlight and outdoors and like moving for that long, I was like, “Well, I actually have more energy than when I come back for this.”
It’s not just like – That’s been such a telltale sign for me that I’m on the right track, or like I was doing bar classes last year, and those felt really good. They were challenging enough, but I felt like I had more energy. I was like, “Oh! That’s so weird.” You can actually get restored from – That’s how I feel often with weightlifting and the HIT training I do with the weights. It’s like, “Oh my God!” and that’s how I know that weightlifting and what actually works for my body versus like I used to just do a ton of cardio, and I don’t get results with a ton of cardio, which is so exciting for me, because I don’t like it.
[00:45:42] KS: Well, it’s so interesting that you bring up that question too. I grew up as a competitive athlete. I was a swimmer and I swam for college. So, you would never would have asked me, or a coach never would have asked, “Do you feel energized after this workout?” Because that was not the goal. The goal was to feel drained, and tired, and like you got a good “good workout in.”
So it’s a totally different ballgame when we start to say, “No. No. No. No. It’s okay for your workouts to leave you energized.” In fact, maybe that actually is the point to them, especially depending on where you are right now, and it brings me to kind of one of the other things that I’ve been sort of playing with over the past couple of years, is maybe there’s a difference between physical activity and exercise, and that we all can benefit from physical activity, moving the body in some capacity, whatever that could look like, whatever is possible for you right now. But maybe we all don’t necessarily need exercise in different season, because I think that the two bring different connotations with them.
[00:46:42] AS: To your point earlier, we have to look at this in context of the other stressors in our lives. When we’re in high school, we don’t have – I mean, if we are privileged, we don’t have bills to pay. We don’t have a job. Your whole life is about making yourself like – You’re supposed to push yourself then physically, because you don’t have – I mean, this wasn’t the case for me, because of the cancer, but most people are relatively healthier when they’re younger. You don’t have the DNA. Your telomeres are still replicating at the same rate. I mean, it’s just such a different ballgame of when you’re growing up. The stressors in your life, again, if you’re privileged, are very different than once you get kicked out of the nest. At least that’s been my experience.
[00:47:29] KS: Totally with you on that.
[00:47:31] AS: I want to lead this to kind of the third point that I really want to address, because this comes up in my work with my clients, and I often talk about the three stress styles and comfort eating and when we’re in our stress patterns. They create a sense of scarcity. But I think what’s so interesting is when we’re using fear-based motivation, plus we’re over-exercising or exercising unaligned for the season of our lives, we end up not getting results. We just get setback after setback. Then we eat, because we’re frustrated, “This isn’t working!” and it creates the sense of, what you call scarcity mindset, “I’m not enough. My results aren’t enough. I’m not moving forward fast enough.”
Talk to us about this hidden stressor and the way that this often creates motivation and kind of feeds into. If we think of it as a spiral, into more fear-based motivation.
[00:48:32] KS: Sure. I think this one is so interesting to me, because it was kind of like the last – So, with the hidden stressors in general. They’ve all just sort of bend things that some point or the other I’ve experienced. I watched other people experience. So, there’re kind of like different conditions, environments, things that we may find ourselves going through. With scarcity, it was the last piece of that “puzzle” for me, because I had never really thought about it in this way.
The way that you introduced it to us just now I think is a great way to kind of start the topic simply because it can be really easy to not see results and think we’re only ever going to not see results. I think that’s kind of the heart of this. Personally, for me, that looked like I’m always falling apart. That was the phrase that run through my head constantly.
I might potentially be about to get sick, “I’m falling apart. I’m falling apart. I’m falling apart. I’m falling apart.” I might notice maybe a new mole that’s popped up, “I’m falling apart. I’m falling apart. I’m falling apart.” I might notice my eyes are watering and that’s unusual, “I’m falling apart. I’m falling apart. I’m falling apart.” Everything I could possibly notice that may be “wrong” I saw, and I took hold of it and I would get on Google and I would research and I would have to know what this thing is. It was kind of this sense of health hyper-vigilance, which I think is super interesting, because that’s kind of a natural side effect, if you want to use that word, of being sick. Because you kind of are being told to get hyper-vigilant about your body and start to notice signs and symptoms, but I had never realized that that could become a thing that was affecting my results. I had never realized that something that was so crucial to the beginning of the diagnosis, of understanding my body and noticing when something was wrong and being able to communicate to doctors and providers that something was wrong. I had never thought that that tool, which had become so crucial and necessary could then turn into something that was holding me back from having the thing that I wanted, which was health.
I never realized that this concept searching for problems and continuing to sort of pack on evidence possibly that things aren’t going to work, that they’re not working now, that they may never work, that it’s not possible for me to have what I want. That no matter how much I try, I never get any better. I never get anywhere. I never make any progress. When you kind of put those two things together, you can get into this place of feeling in this “scarcity mindset” of, “It’s just not going to happen to me. No matter what I do, I cannot possibly heal. No matter what I do, I’m always falling apart. No matter what I do, I’m never going to be able to get where I want to go.”
I think what’s kind of interesting about this one in particular is it’s not tangible, because we’re not talking about diet, literally the food that we’re eating. We’re not talking about exercise, literally the movements that we’re doing. We’re talking about these thoughts and these beliefs that we hold and the things that we’re saying to ourselves around our bodies, around our health, around our capacity to heal, around what it would mean to heal. So it can make for a very interesting conversation when we dig into it, because there could be this whole world of things happening that we never would have even thought to look at.
[00:51:48] AS: I mean, this is in essence like a metaphor for my work, right? It’s like when is the mountain a mountain and when is it a molehill? It’s really, when you’ve had owned this, when you’ve had trauma, if your trauma hasn’t been physical in terms of like an illness or cancer, there’s emotional trauma and you start to think every stress is the end of the world, and that’s why we can’t speak up, and that’s why we have compete and accommodate. That tool you – What you’re describing as a tool of discernment is so challenging, because it’s so matrix-y, right? Because there are times when you need to know when this symptom is leading to something else, or when this situation really is high-stakes. But unfortunately, after we’ve gone through battling our body and the longer we do it without getting support around it, the more molehill start to look like mountains. Then that becomes the issue that we have to work on as well, and we all have to work on it. Whether you’ve had trauma, whether you’ve had illness or whatever, because it affects – No on rides for free. We all get bumped around in life.
But I think that’s such an interesting point, and it reminds me on our episode two of this season. We had Toko-pa Turner whose whole book is on belonging. We had this big discussion about inner scarcity when it is an inner condition and how we’ve – It’s really a reflection of exiling certain parts of ourselves. To your point about can we be where we are? We tend to want to exile the part that is struggling, that is scared, that is what we think of as weak, or bad, rather than kind of welcoming it in. The more we can do that, the more we can really appreciate – We start to feel more whole and then we can look at our progress and our map to what we have to do moving forward in a much more realistic light rather than always kind of from this scarcity, this is a mountain, not a molehill mindset. Does that clear even if you haven’t listened to the episode I did with season 2? I don’t know. I mean, episode two. Is that clear, Kelly, or is that –
[00:53:54] KS: I think so. I think it is. I mean, I think, yes, it’s very important to welcome in these things that we so often don’t want to look at or don’t want to have to admit or don’t want to have to go there. When you’re talking about beliefs and thoughts that are coming between your own ears, there are a lot of those going on there. There are a lot of things that we’re thinking or believing about ourselves. Because, typically, when we’re talking about like, “I don’t want to look at the part of me that is sick.” It’s exactly what you said. I don’t want to look at like the weakness I’ve associated with being sick, or I don’t want to look at the vulnerability I’ve associated. I don’t want to look at what it means or what I have made it mean to be sick or to be where I am right now or to be in whatever situation I’m in. I don’t want to look at what I decided that means about me.
That’s what could be so difficult and what we turn into this big mountain, because when we start to go there, it’s terrifying, because it could be messing with our sense of belonging. It’s messing with our sense of self. If you can hear this right now, I am so, so sorry.
[00:54:47] AS: Raining like cats and dogs. I feel like I’m on Noah’s imaginary arc in my health. It’s like torrential downpour for like days.
[00:54:57] KS: Okay, good. Here too. But, absolutely, we can start to think of these things as mountains, because it’s scary to look at these beliefs that we’ve made about ourselves and these things that we’re thinking to ourselves. So if we can get compassionate enough and have a little bit of grace for ourselves and find that really courageous moment to say, “Okay. What’s running between my ears right now? What do I actually believe about myself? What do I believe about my capacity here? What do I believe about the actions that I’m taking and the impacts that they could have for my future?” and we start to look at these things. It can be, like I said, really scary, because that takes a lot of courage to do, but it then can also be the thing that helps us move forward, because were starting to address some of those fears that we have. We’re starting to address some of those maybe like limiting beliefs that we’re holding. Some of the conditions or patterns that have been passed on to us that even necessarily like we thought we believe, but we had sort of taken from situations or environments that we’ve been in before.
[00:55:53] AS: I love that. I mean, can you unpack that? That’s a really powerful question, and I would love for you to kind of go into a little bit more detail, because I think it’s a great tool to end on. But one of the beliefs you said that we have to ask ourselves when we’re monitoring this kind of self-talk of, “I’m always falling apart. Nothing is working,” which is totally, again, like when we’re feeling vulnerable, it’s like we spiral.
You said – I just think this is like a billion dollar question. What is my belief about my capacity to heal? Can you just – I’m going to let you take that.
[00:56:26] KS: Yeah. No. Yeah, what is my belief bout my capacity to heal from kind of a lot of different standpoints. What do I believe about myself to have what I want? What do I believe about my capacity to have what I want? Because, essentially, so much of us fell into this saying, “Well, I want to be health,” which means I want to heal. I want to get better. I want to feel good. So then we’re kind of asking this question of, “What do I believe about my capacity to get what I want, to have what I want? Am I worthy of that? Am I deserving of that? Is that actually a thing that happens to someone like me?” We’re talking a little bit about our identity, like who we think that we are.
It’s also a question of like, “What do I believe about my capacity to heal in terms of like, “Do I have what it takes to do what I think it takes to heal? Do I have what it takes to follow through on these actions I’ve decided are the only way I get to health?” That’s a super loaded question, because, for example, I had for a longtime convinced myself that the only way I was going to get to health was always eating the AIP diet, the autoimmune protocol.
If I asked myself, “What do I believe about my capacity to heal?” That was really, “What do I believe about my capacity to follow the autoimmune protocol for the rest of my life?” I don’t have much faith in that. Then all of a sudden, I’m not enough. I’m a failure. I’m not worthy. I can’t have this, because I can’t do that.
So, we’ve decided we don’t get what we want, because we’re not willing to do the thing we have believed or we have taught ourselves to believed or we have been pushed to believe is what it takes to get there. So I think it’s a couple of different ways that we can take that question. We’ve got to ask what do we believe about ourselves to have what we want. What do we believe about ourselves to do the things that we think it takes to get where we want to go? What do we believe about what’s going to happen if I ever get what I want?
So if we talk about that sense of belonging, it’s, “Well, am I going to lose a sense of my identity? Maybe the only sense I’ve ever known.” If you’ve been chronically ill for a while, that becomes a part of your identity, and then the question is, “Well, am I going to lose that sense of safety and security from having that piece of my identity? Maybe a misguided safety and security, but still, that sense of safety and security, and also probably a sense of belonging of like, “Well, that’s how I fit in. That’s how I can move to this world having this problem, or this challenge.”
So, then, it’s the question of, “What do I think is going to happen if I were to get what I want and does whatever I think might happen feel safe to me. Does it feel like I can handle that? Does it feel like I would be okay with that?”
[00:58:54] AS: I love that question, because it’s like do I have the capacity to get what I want? We often realize that kind of like you can get what you want regardless of your weight. The perfect health isn’t going to guarantee – Like, you’re certainly still going to die. We all know that, and it is helpful to be in less pain, but I think sometimes we end up putting our life on hold thinking, “I can’t do that until I figured this out,” or whatnot.
[00:59:23] KS: 100%. I love that you brought that up. One of the ways that I was introduced to a lot of these to begin with, I had turned to a coach, because I was working with a coach, and I said, “I want to feel better. I’m really tired of not feeling better.” We’re all at some point probably over this. She said, “Okay. Great. Why do you want to feel better?” I said, “Because I don’t want to be at a doctor’s office anymore. I don’t want to take medication. I don’t want to be on the phone with insurance providers and trying to get referrals, and I don’t want to take tests anymore. I’m just tired of all of those things. I don’t want to spend my time in that way.” She was like, “Okay. Great. How do you actually want to spend your time?” I said, “I want to spend my time working. I have these dreams I want to chase, and this business I want to build, and these things that I want to do, and that’s where I want to spend my time.” She said, “Okay. Well, why can’t you do some of that stuff now?” I was like, “Oh! I just don’t have the time for it. I don’t have the time for it. I have all those doctor’s appointments I just told you about.” She said, “Okay. Fine. So, what else can you not do because you have to go to these doctor’s appointments?” I kind of sat there for like 30 seconds, because I was like, “Well, I still walk my dog, and I still hang out with my husband, and I still sleep how long I need to sleep, and I still eat the way I need to eat and, well, I still exercise.” I went through these list of things and I said, “Oh, I don’t cut anything else out.” She said, “Okay. Well, is that the only thing that you’re then choosing to let go off when you have to go to this doctor appointment or when you have to get this test done?”
It was sort of her sort of leading me into this conversation of, “You’re essentially saying you can’t have what you want. You can’t run a business. You can’t chase your dream. You can’t do these things until you’re not sick anymore.” Yet, that’s the only area in your life in which you’re saying that that is true.
So, is it actually true, or is that just what you have decided is how it has to be? Is it more coming back to the same thing we’ve been talking about? Is it more of that fear running the show? That maybe it’s just actually really scary to go do these things. So it feels a little bit easier to say, “I just don’t have time.” Does that make sense?
[01:01:33] AS: Oh! 100%. Well, and if we think about am I moving towards a rest and repair state versus a stress state, the very thing that will give you meaning and fulfillment will be your medicine. That’s not able to saturate that side of the scale or like rest and relaxation. Not that running a business is – This gets a little bit nuanced. They’ve done studies that where actually people who feel like they’re pursuing meaning, their bio markers are higher than people who are just seeking healthier.
So, we know that when we’re doing things that are meaningful to us, even if they appear stressful, that actually improves our health. Whereas procrastinating on this stuff just leads to more stress and it builds up almost what we expect then will happen from this panacea that never pans out, right?
[01:02:22] KS: Yeah, which is crazy. It’s crazy to think of it in that kind of capacity, because that’s where stress gets like so interesting and so nuanced. But I think it’s also that thing of like we think that we can’t live the way that we want to live until we’re healthier, until we’re well. So, there may actually be things that like, “Well, it would be nice to feel better to do some of these things.” Absolutely! But sometimes, just like you were talking about with weight, we get to that point where it’s like, “Well, I can’t have that. I can’t do that. I can’t be that until this other thing locks into place first.”
[01:02:56] AS: Yeah. I think another question I’ll add to your series of ones that are so good is what am I willing to unlearn about myself, including what will take to be well? Because I know my journey has been largely unlearning. I think what I’ve unlearned in this medical, industrial complex. But that’s been my path, right?
[01:03:18] KS: Oh, absolutely! I think that’s part of where if we’re starting to look at like what we believe it takes to be healthy, that is absolutely also then a conversation of like, “Well, what am I willing to unlearn here? What am I willing to decide is not actually true for me? How am I willing to look at this differently and see other paths to getting where I want to go?”
[01:03:38] AS: I think this ties up the interview perfectly and nicely, because so many people think health has to be about deprivation, right? Really, I think the biggest unlearning that I’ve learned is health feels amazing and it’s full of freedom, food included.
I was telling you before we got on this show, like I have a sweet treat every night and I’m still feeling better at 40, I’m having the time of my life. So, it’s like, yes, it doesn’t mean – Well, most of the time. But, to me, that’s part of eating well. But it’s listening to my body. It’s feeling good after exercise. It’s having meaningful work. It’s getting outside. It’s walking my dog. It ends up being these simple things that are really hard to accomplish in our world by I think, but they can be done. I think the obstacle is the path, right? Learning fear-based motivation, learning how to move our bodies in ways that really work and stepping and examining our scarcity mindset I think are all – You gave us more than enough to chew on. Excuse the food pun.
Kelly, where can people – I’ll have all your links to the Wellness Boulevard and stuff in the show notes. But where can people find you if they don’t want to go to the show notes? By the way, people, there’re also transcripts. I always forget to tell everyone. Transcripts for all the episodes.
[01:04:59] KS: Oh! Super useful.
[01:05:00] AS: Yeah, and I forget to tell people, and it’s useful. I’m sorry. Where can people find you?
[01:05:06] KS: Absolutely. You can find me at thewellnessboulevard.com, on social media The Wellness Boulevard, the website, the blog, that’s going to be the easiest and the best place. So just thewellnessboulevard.com. You could contact me there. I’ve got a quiz over there that you could take if you’re thinking like maybe you’ve got some kind of hidden stressor happening at play here. You can take that and see what you can find. But I would so love to kind of get to know you better. Thank you all for listening, and that would be over at thewellnessboulevard.com.
[01:05:33] AS: Wonderful. Thank you so much for being here today, Kelly.
[01:05:36] KS: Thank you so much for having me. This has been a blast.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[01:05:42] AS: Thank you, health rebels for tuning in today. Have a reaction, question, or want the transcript from today’s episode? Find me at alishapiro.com. I’d love if you leave a review on Apple Podcast and tell your friends and family about Insatiable. It helps us grow our community and share a new way of approaching health and our bodies.
Thanks for engaging in a different conversation. Remember always, your body truths are unique, profound, real and liberating.
[END]
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