Speaker 1: Why is it so hard to get real answers about
Speaker 1: your health. If you've been told that everything looks fine,
Speaker 1: but you know that something's off, well, you're not imagining it.
Speaker 1: That's why I created Vitality three sixty to help you
Speaker 1: better understand what's going on inside your body so that
Speaker 1: you can take the targeted action needed. With a functional
Speaker 1: health approach plus testing, we go beyond the guesswork to
Speaker 1: uncover the root cause of your symptoms. I've teamed up
Speaker 1: with doctor Jasmina and incredible Integrative GP, and together we
Speaker 1: will help you decode your body's signals and answer the
Speaker 1: questions such as why am I always exhausted? What's really
Speaker 1: causing my stubborn weight? Am I inflamed or insulin resistant?
Speaker 1: Or missing out on key nutrients? Because when you understand
Speaker 1: your body better, you can transform your health. Visit v
Speaker 1: three sixty dot health or check out the show notes
Speaker 1: for more. So at the start of the school term,
Speaker 1: I put together some new healthy habits for me and
Speaker 1: for the family, so you know, really simple ones, things
Speaker 1: like I set us a family goal of only one
Speaker 1: takeaway meal on the weekends.
Speaker 2: Which is actually a lot harder than it might sound.
Speaker 1: I also set myself a goal that I wanted to
Speaker 1: do one yoga class on the weekends. I'm so stiff
Speaker 1: as a board, and I just keep putting off yoga.
Speaker 1: I love yoga, so I'm like, yes, I can easily
Speaker 1: find a spare hour on the weekend, you know, just
Speaker 1: the other ones, the usual culprits of you know, less
Speaker 1: screen time for the kids, etc. So we have been
Speaker 1: off and running, and it's been going really well. That
Speaker 1: last week, Tim went away. He's gone away for two weeks.
Speaker 1: And I got to Friday afternoon and he'd only been
Speaker 1: gone at that point, like three or four days.
Speaker 2: I've still got a while to go.
Speaker 1: As I record this, he went away and I got
Speaker 1: to Friday afternoon and I was just done. I had
Speaker 1: food in the fridge ready to cook for dinner, nice healthy.
Speaker 2: Did I cook that healthy meal?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Did I order chargrul Charlie's over Uberroots?
Speaker 1: Yes? Did I get to my yoga class on the weekend?
Speaker 1: There was time for it. It was a really busy weekend,
Speaker 1: but there was time. On Saturday afternoon I could have gone.
Speaker 2: Did I go to yoga?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Did I lay on the couch and watch.
Speaker 1: Trash TV for a couple of hours, yes, And I
Speaker 1: just got to the end of the weekend, the kids
Speaker 1: had spent more time on screens than I had intended.
Speaker 2: And I just thought, ugh, Amelia, what have you done?
Speaker 1: Like you actually did have all the ducks lined up
Speaker 1: to have a good, healthy weekend and to hit these
Speaker 1: new healthy goals that you kind of set for you
Speaker 1: and the family.
Speaker 2: But honestly, I just I felt too overwhelmed. I was
Speaker 2: just done. And now I look back and I think,
Speaker 2: what could I have done differently?
Speaker 3: Was that okay?
Speaker 2: Maybe it was okay, but I just thought what happens
Speaker 2: when we just feel too overwhelmed to change? This is
Speaker 2: healthy her with Amelia Phillips.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had the best of intentions to make
Speaker 1: that healthy change, only to get to crunch time and
Speaker 1: just feel too overwhelmed or maybe too exhausted to follow through?
Speaker 1: Or maybe you've made the change. You start the year
Speaker 1: of so well, You're exercising regularly, you're doing your strength training,
Speaker 1: you're eating your protein, you're eating well, only to get
Speaker 1: a few months in and the overwhelm of life just
Speaker 1: zaps any motivation you had. This struggle is real, my friend,
Speaker 1: I see it, I hear it all the time. I
Speaker 1: experience it in my own life. Yet some women do
Speaker 1: manage to strike that balance to make healthy changes stick
Speaker 1: amidst the chaos of life. I'll never forget watching politician
Speaker 1: Julie Bishop jogging around Parliament House on this cold, dark,
Speaker 1: rainy morning before a huge day of media engagements in questioning,
Speaker 1: and remember watching her jogging and then seeing all these
Speaker 1: media clips and this huge day she'd had.
Speaker 3: I remember thinking to myself.
Speaker 1: If anyone had an excuse for skipping their workout today,
Speaker 1: it would have been her.
Speaker 2: But what made her show up?
Speaker 1: What made her do that early morning, cold dark run
Speaker 1: before such a stressful day. What is the answer when
Speaker 1: we are feeling that wired yet tired sense of overwhelm,
Speaker 1: What is going on in our brains? And how can
Speaker 1: we override it or maybe even work with it to
Speaker 1: still make the healthy changes that we want. To help
Speaker 1: us navigate this tricky task, I am joined by world
Speaker 1: leading habit change expert Gena Cleo. Doctor Gina has a
Speaker 1: PhD in habit change. She's an assistant professor at Bond University.
Speaker 1: She's also an accredited dietitian and the founder of the
Speaker 1: Habit Change Institute who I love the sound of that.
Speaker 1: She's written the best selling book, The Habit Revolution, and
Speaker 1: she runs courses through her Habit Change Institute. Do you
Speaker 1: really help us transform our productivity, our health, our mindset,
Speaker 1: and our lifestyle habits not just short term but long term,
Speaker 1: doctor Gina, thank you so much for joining us Onhealthy
Speaker 1: Herd today.
Speaker 3: So good to be with you, Amelia, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: When someone says I'm just too overwhelmed to even start,
Speaker 2: what is actually going on in our brain at that moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when we're overwhelmed prefrontal cortex, the logical part of
Speaker 3: our brain, the one that's responsible for planning, decision making,
Speaker 3: and self control, it's essentially going offline. We shift into
Speaker 3: survival mode. And you know that survival mode makes it
Speaker 3: really hard to start something new or to create a
Speaker 3: new healthy habit. And survival mode is very much run
Speaker 3: by a stress response. It's not laziness or a lack
Speaker 3: of willpower. It's neurobiology. The brain is literally prioritizing threat
Speaker 3: management over long term goal pursuits. And that's actually a
Speaker 3: really important reframe I think for so many of us
Speaker 3: who can be a little bit hard on ourselves.
Speaker 1: Oh my God, I love that, Like I've just had
Speaker 1: a full brain unlock when you said that that this
Speaker 1: is actually a stress response, and to think of it
Speaker 1: in that way straight away from me, because I've had
Speaker 1: such a raw experience of it. It's literally, we're recording
Speaker 1: this on a Monday, and I'm talking to you about
Speaker 1: something that happened yesterday. Over this last weekend, I have
Speaker 1: had a lot of shame around it, you know, because
Speaker 1: of my expectations not being met. But when you just
Speaker 1: said it's actually a stress response straight away, I go, oh,
Speaker 1: poor darling, poor me, How good.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad to give you that gift because I
Speaker 3: really do see it like that, that self compassion, that
Speaker 3: understanding of our brain, I think can be the most
Speaker 3: liberating thing. And yeah, oh it's beautiful that. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: we're like five minutes in and here we are having
Speaker 3: a great time already.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: I know. All right, let's just wrap the episode up.
Speaker 3: Now we're done. I'm done.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go away, and no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: please stay stay because I want to talk about overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: because it's funny. I often think of overwhelm as a
Speaker 1: time issue.
Speaker 3: It's just like I've got too much on.
Speaker 1: But interestingly, and using my example again from the weekend,
Speaker 1: I actually can't use it as an excuse because I
Speaker 1: have been very organized and I did have the food
Speaker 1: in the fridge, and I did have the time. So
Speaker 1: if it's not a time issue, is it a cognitive
Speaker 1: load issue or is it that stress issue that you
Speaker 1: were just talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is mostly a cognitive load thing. You can
Speaker 3: give someone a completely free Saturday, like you said you
Speaker 3: had time on your Saturday afternoon, but you can give
Speaker 3: them all the time in the world and they will
Speaker 3: still feel overwhelmed if their mental bandwidth is maxed out.
Speaker 3: The thing with our cognitive resources is it's finite. We
Speaker 3: don't have an unlimited amount of it each day. And
Speaker 3: modern life like mental load of a family, work, making decisions,
Speaker 3: digital noise, all of these things actually drain that tank
Speaker 3: fast and like faster than when we were living I
Speaker 3: guess in caves like in natural times. And this is
Speaker 3: rarely you know, a real barrier. It's mental space. And
Speaker 3: when we have less cognitive capacity, we will feel more
Speaker 3: and more overwhelmed, even by the tiniest.
Speaker 1: Things in the work that you do. Do you see
Speaker 1: and mums in particular, because my audience is predominantly mums.
Speaker 1: Do you see the cognitive and emotional load of parenthood
Speaker 1: underrepresented and under recognized as a stressor and as something
Speaker 1: that takes up so much load? Because sometimes we can
Speaker 1: get to the end of the day, my husband says
Speaker 1: to me, well, you know, so let's talk about what
Speaker 1: you accomplished today, you know, in a work sense, because
Speaker 1: we work together and sometimes my list is very small.
Speaker 1: But on a cognitive and emotional level, I've you know,
Speaker 1: talked three children off the ledge of a meltdown, or
Speaker 1: I've you know, scheduled so many things. Do you feel
Speaker 1: for a lot of parents that that can be really underrepresented?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and it's in themselves. It's not realizing even how
Speaker 3: much self regulation it takes to wrangle three children to
Speaker 3: make sure that they're you know, not pulling each other's
Speaker 3: hair out, and that they're eating on time and all
Speaker 3: these things. It's constant. It is relentless, and when you
Speaker 3: look at it from a productivity lens, it doesn't look
Speaker 3: like you achieved all that much, but actually it's kind
Speaker 3: of like a duck and your little legs are just
Speaker 3: being like non stop under the water, doing all the
Speaker 3: things and doing it while regulating your own nervous system
Speaker 3: through it all, and that's huge.
Speaker 2: I think the.
Speaker 1: Challenge for a lot of us mums is that we
Speaker 1: really want to continue to grow and improve and evolve
Speaker 1: as a person.
Speaker 2: We've got our health goals.
Speaker 1: A lot of us are entering that perimenopause and menopause period.
Speaker 1: So we have these habits that we want to change.
Speaker 1: We want to make new, healthier habits. Maybe we want
Speaker 1: to break some old habits. What's the best way to
Speaker 1: go about this? Like, are we better off just having
Speaker 1: a table flip moment and having a clean slate and
Speaker 1: just starting a whole bunch of new habits at once,
Speaker 1: or is that going to be something that backfires?
Speaker 2: How do you, as a habit.
Speaker 1: Change expert, suggest us mums in this big cognitive load
Speaker 1: and stress period of life, tackles this healthy habit change
Speaker 1: that we want to make.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the first thing is to start so so small,
Speaker 3: so small it feels like you can't say no to
Speaker 3: doing it, and when you think of that, make it
Speaker 3: even smaller. Like I worked with someone who hadn't exercise
Speaker 3: in decades and his task was just to put his
Speaker 3: sneakers on first thing in the morning. That's it. That's
Speaker 3: all I wanted him to do. And once he did that,
Speaker 3: it obviously then cascaded into walking out to his letterbox
Speaker 3: and then down the road and round the corner and
Speaker 3: run the block, and it went to bigger and better things.
Speaker 3: But the entry point, like the first time we do anything,
Speaker 3: is usually the hardest, right. It's the first yoga class,
Speaker 3: the first time you eat kale, the first time you
Speaker 3: decide to put your phone down and get to bed
Speaker 3: on time. It's always the first. And so if we
Speaker 3: can reduce the barrier to entry by making that first
Speaker 3: step so achievable, that is how we win. That is
Speaker 3: how we move forward. And I would also say, just
Speaker 3: pick one thing. It's so easy to have this like
Speaker 3: list of ambitions, like you know, I want to excize
Speaker 3: more and eat better and save more money and yell
Speaker 3: at my kids less. So like there's all these like
Speaker 3: wonderful ambitions, great goals. But one of the most common
Speaker 3: reasons why we fall off the wagon is because we
Speaker 3: try to do too many things at once, and changing
Speaker 3: our habits is all about consistency, not intensity. And so
Speaker 3: when you're trying to do too many things. You don't
Speaker 3: get the consistency in there because it's impossible to do
Speaker 3: that many things in one day all the time, and
Speaker 3: so you lose use the momentum and the consistency of
Speaker 3: some of the habits, and then when we're falling off
Speaker 3: the wagon, we feel like we're failures and it's really
Speaker 3: icky cycle. So just focus on one thing at a time,
Speaker 3: write it down and just focus on that, and then
Speaker 3: use a habit tracker every single time you do it.
Speaker 3: Give yourself a little tick on a habit tracker, just
Speaker 3: like you would give a child a tick for or
Speaker 3: like a gold star for doing their chores. We don't
Speaker 3: grow out of that reward learning as adults. So that
Speaker 3: little tick gives you a nice head of dopamine. It
Speaker 3: feels great, and it makes you want to do it again.
Speaker 3: What's a habit tracker? So habit tracker is essentially like
Speaker 3: think of a diary and it's like a grid and
Speaker 3: essent to you just write down what the habit is
Speaker 3: that you want to create or do, and you give
Speaker 3: yourself a tick on every day of the calendar month
Speaker 3: or year or week that you actually do the habit.
Speaker 3: So it's just like a little like check, yeah, I
Speaker 3: did it. And you use paper based ones, and there's
Speaker 3: app based ones. I've got a whole list of all
Speaker 3: the app one of the blogs on my website.
Speaker 2: Well, I might get you to pop that link.
Speaker 1: You send me that link, and I'll pop that habit
Speaker 1: tracker link in the show notes if anyone wants a
Speaker 1: fun little app. Because I do agree with you these
Speaker 1: elements of positive reinforcement can make a difference. And do
Speaker 1: you believe in setting a weekly intention, like at the
Speaker 1: start of the week, kind of sitting down and really
Speaker 1: particularly with the new habit, the habit you're trying to
Speaker 1: make or the habit you're trying to break, consciously going okay,
Speaker 1: this week, I'm going to put my sneakers on three
Speaker 1: mornings a week or something like that. Yeah, and look
Speaker 1: and might that intention might be the same week and
Speaker 1: week out. It's not necessarily have you don't have to
Speaker 1: make it bigger and better every time, but it is
Speaker 1: about being conscious about it and aware of it.
Speaker 2: So if you have to stick your habit tracker, you know, on.
Speaker 3: Your fridge, or put it the app on the first
Speaker 3: page of your phone, if that's where you're going, If
Speaker 3: you can use a digital version. Yeah, you need to
Speaker 3: be aware of but because at the start creating any
Speaker 3: new habit, sometimes we forget, We just like get, we
Speaker 3: just do what we've always done, and we forget to
Speaker 3: do the thing that we actually said we would do.
Speaker 3: So those little reminders do help those little intentional moments.
Speaker 3: But once it starts becoming more organic and more natural,
Speaker 3: you probably.
Speaker 1: Don't need to set the intention every week. Again, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I've heard that a huge proportioning possibly even up
Speaker 1: to forty or fifty percent of our daily habits are habitual.
Speaker 1: And so once something shifts from that new into the
Speaker 1: habitual category, that's when it becomes effortless or at least
Speaker 1: not as effortful. So I imagine if you've been doing
Speaker 1: the same thing now for a few weeks, hopefully that
Speaker 1: kind of ticks the box of being Okay, well, now
Speaker 1: this is a habit.
Speaker 3: I'll move on to.
Speaker 1: Something like For me, exercise totally easy. I wake up,
Speaker 1: I exercise my five days a week, no problem. Adding
Speaker 1: a yoga class on a Saturday that's totally new to me.
Speaker 1: I'm still getting my head around the yoga places I'm
Speaker 1: going to. Where's my yoga MAT's dusty in the garage.
Speaker 1: It's still it requires the effort, But get me to
Speaker 1: a five am CrossFit class and I'm there with bells on.
Speaker 3: That's exactly it. And it's actually up to seventy percent
Speaker 3: of everything we do every day is completely habitual and
Speaker 3: trying to do something new use as cognitive energy, right,
Speaker 3: uses mental resources, and so when we're overwhelmed or exhausted,
Speaker 3: that's the last thing we want to do. It feels
Speaker 3: like too much sometimes.
Speaker 1: Why is it so hard to get realancewers about your health?
Speaker 1: If you've been told that everything looks fine, but you
Speaker 1: know that something's off, well, you're not imagining it. That's
Speaker 1: why I created Vitality three sixty to help you better
Speaker 1: understand what's going on inside your body so that you
Speaker 1: can take the targeted action needed. With a functional health
Speaker 1: approach plus testing, we go beyond the guesswork to uncover
Speaker 1: the root cause of your symptoms. I've teamed up with
Speaker 1: Doctorasmina and incredible Integrative GP and together we will help
Speaker 1: you decode your body's signals and answer the questions such
Speaker 1: as why am I always exhausted? What's really causing my
Speaker 1: stubborn weight? Am I inflamed or insulin resistant or missing
Speaker 1: out on key nutrients? Because when you understand your body better,
Speaker 1: you can transform your health. Visit V three to sixty
Speaker 1: dot health or check out the show notes for more. So,
Speaker 1: then what's the answer when we are in this busy
Speaker 1: season of life and we do have a lot going on,
Speaker 1: how do we navigate this tricky time of trying to
Speaker 1: make these healthy habits but they're not wanting to add
Speaker 1: to the stress and the load of it all. It
Speaker 1: feels like such a delicate balance.
Speaker 3: It definitely is. And you know, I actually say to people,
Speaker 3: when you're really stressed, I don't think it's a very
Speaker 3: good time to create new habits because those two parts
Speaker 3: of our brain don't work at the same time, the
Speaker 3: learning centers and the stress centers. They don't work simultaneously.
Speaker 3: So if you're really really stressed, your learning centers are
Speaker 3: shut down. You are in survival mode. So if it's
Speaker 3: more like an overwhelm or you feel stuck, exhausted, a
Speaker 3: little bit behind, then I would say to just stop. Seriously,
Speaker 3: just pause, do a cognitive offload, write down everything that's
Speaker 3: taking up mental space, and then ask yourself, what's the
Speaker 3: one health behavior that we have the biggest ripple effect
Speaker 3: on everything else. Usually it's going to be sleep. I
Speaker 3: was just.
Speaker 1: Thinking that, and interestingly, it's what I have been struggling
Speaker 1: with that just this last week because hab he's been away,
Speaker 1: I've been having to go to bed a lot later,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, is it any coincidence that my sleep
Speaker 1: has not been good and therefore, yeah, my care factor disappeared.
Speaker 3: It's not coincidence at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean when you don't sep well, I feel like
Speaker 3: nothing goes well. Yeah, Like we just can't emotionally regulate
Speaker 3: as well. We're craving foods that we don't normally crave.
Speaker 3: We're less active, We're literally like our body will be less.
Speaker 3: We just want to sit down more because we're just
Speaker 3: more tired. We just get less shits about anything. Really,
Speaker 3: We're just like just like just getting through it. So
Speaker 3: I would definitely, I've been sleep is like the most
Speaker 3: underrated health habit ever. But I would just pick You'd
Speaker 3: pick that one thing, not a whole program and not
Speaker 3: a big plan, just one thing, and that's going to
Speaker 3: be your entry point back into that looking after yourself again.
Speaker 1: And if you're feeling a little bit strung out like
Speaker 1: I am at the moment, then, is what you're saying,
Speaker 1: Sleep's a great place to start because if you take
Speaker 1: that little bit of cognitive effort and organization to go
Speaker 1: to bed earlier, for example, that for me is my
Speaker 1: fix when it comes to sleep, that will hopefully then
Speaker 1: have a ripple effect once I've slept well for a
Speaker 1: few nights to then give me the motivation and the
Speaker 1: energy to maybe make some other changes or at least
Speaker 1: not feel so overwhelmed you feel like that's the best
Speaker 1: bang for buck exactly.
Speaker 3: That's exactly it. It has got such a nice ripple effect,
Speaker 3: and it happens organically, you don't have to force it.
Speaker 1: And just circling back to that tiny habits approach that
Speaker 1: you're talking about. The example you gave was just putting
Speaker 1: your active where on, just putting your sneakers on and
Speaker 1: seeing where that goes.
Speaker 2: Can it also play out across the week.
Speaker 1: So, for example, say someone's trying to eat less sugar
Speaker 1: or trying to prevent that after dinner snacking, and the
Speaker 1: thought of doing that forever every single night just feels
Speaker 1: like it's too much. Would a tiny method of that
Speaker 1: be I'm just going to do it on a Monday
Speaker 1: and Tuesday night.
Speaker 3: Alcohol is another example.
Speaker 1: I'm just not going to drink on a Monday and
Speaker 1: a Tuesday night for someone that drinks seven nights a week.
Speaker 1: Is that another example of kind of bringing these habits
Speaker 1: down to their simplest forms.
Speaker 3: Spot on. Yeah, it could be reducing the frequency that
Speaker 3: you do it. It could be the intensity. So I'm
Speaker 3: going to drink less each night, or I'm going to
Speaker 3: drink less on these two nights. It's really just about
Speaker 3: doing a tiny bit less of the habit you don't
Speaker 3: want to do, or a tiny bit more of the
Speaker 3: habit that you do want to do. Rather than looking
Speaker 3: at overhauling you know, your whole life, well, the whole
Speaker 3: habit itself. It's just about these subtle, little shifts that
Speaker 3: are just gentle. They don't feel like they're doing much,
Speaker 3: but they really are. They are telling your brain I'm
Speaker 3: someone who shows up, who can look after myself, who
Speaker 3: does the things that I say that I will do,
Speaker 3: And that sense of the change of identity is really powerful.
Speaker 1: It's so good to hear you say this because I think,
Speaker 1: particularly with our diet and eating, there is a lot
Speaker 1: of all or nothing mentality going on, where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm on the diet, I'm on this eating pattern, and
Speaker 1: everything is going to change my breakfast, my lunch, my dinner,
Speaker 1: the foods I choose, the foods I don't, which when
Speaker 1: you think about how many food choices we make in
Speaker 1: a day, it's a lot.
Speaker 3: It's over two hundred over.
Speaker 1: Two hundred food choices in a day. But for a
Speaker 1: lot of us, eighty to ninety percent of our eating
Speaker 1: is probably pretty good. There might just be that, you know,
Speaker 1: for me, it was always the after dinner. The sweet
Speaker 1: treats after dinner just had such a hold over me
Speaker 1: up until about a year ago, and so that was
Speaker 1: my point and area that I really needed to focus on.
Speaker 1: Everything else seemed to be fine. So is that another
Speaker 1: example of really whittling it down to that one part
Speaker 1: of your diet for example?
Speaker 3: Exactly? Yeah, it's just one thing. Like instead of saying, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm going to like cook every night, it might just
Speaker 3: be I'm going to choose one healthy swap or I'm
Speaker 3: going to drink one extra glass of water today. It's
Speaker 3: the time I'm going to add greens to my dinner
Speaker 3: on one night this week, or however much feels achievable
Speaker 3: to you. And every person's starting point is going to
Speaker 3: be different because all of our capacities are different, and
Speaker 3: also within each person, our capacity changes week to week,
Speaker 3: and so I think creating dynamic goals is really important.
Speaker 3: It's like, yeah, I want to do this, but like
Speaker 3: for you Amelia, for example, your husband's away for a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks, your capacity is going to be less
Speaker 3: at the moment, and so your goals may change throughout
Speaker 3: that time, Like, yes, I really wanted to go to yoga,
Speaker 3: but man, I think I just needed to rest. Even
Speaker 3: though I had the time, I obviously didn't really have
Speaker 3: the capacity. So it's just moving things around and always
Speaker 3: leading with compassion.
Speaker 1: Oh that's such a good point, and I actually want
Speaker 1: to get you on another episode if that's okay, to
Speaker 1: talk about the shame spiral, because it is definitely something
Speaker 1: that I see a lot of women go through and
Speaker 1: I experience it myself. I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 1: the all or nothing mentality that so many of us have,
Speaker 1: particularly if we're a bit of a perfectionist. How do
Speaker 1: you suggest we tackled in a voice that says, well,
Speaker 1: if I can't do it properly. If I can't go
Speaker 1: and do the whole yoga class or the whole workout,
Speaker 1: then what's the point in putting my shoes on in
Speaker 1: the first place?
Speaker 2: Why even bother? If I'm not going to do it?
Speaker 1: Really well, what do you say to an all or
Speaker 1: nothing mentality like that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Oh, man, I recognized that voice all too well
Speaker 3: because I was a chronic all or nothing person. Really, oh,
Speaker 3: big time in all.
Speaker 1: Areas of your life, or you like a bit of
Speaker 1: a high achiever, a bit of a perfectionist.
Speaker 3: Many died in exercise.
Speaker 1: Died an exercise, okay, didn't exercise?
Speaker 3: Was it like died a specifically? I would like when
Speaker 3: I was younger, and I was I was twenty kilos
Speaker 3: heavier than I am now, and I would like write
Speaker 3: myself this meal plan. I was a dietitian before I
Speaker 3: studied habit I saw that. I was like, yes, she's
Speaker 3: perfect for this episode. Oh awesome, And you know, I'd
Speaker 3: write myself a meal plan. And if I even had
Speaker 3: like an apple that wasn't on the meal plan, it
Speaker 3: would be like right ruin the day maize or bingee
Speaker 3: emotionally eat the rest of the day and I'll start tomorrow,
Speaker 3: or sometimes I'll be like I'll start on Monday and
Speaker 3: then ruin the entire week, which is just outrageous. Think
Speaker 3: it's really important to recognize it as cognitive distortion. It's
Speaker 3: not truth that all nothing voice is essentially trying to
Speaker 3: protect you from failure by keeping you from trying. But
Speaker 3: the research shows that any dose of a healthy behavior
Speaker 3: is better than none. You know, like a ten minute
Speaker 3: walk is still good for your heart, a healthy meal
Speaker 3: still matters. So we reframe the question from did I
Speaker 3: do it perfectly? To did I do something? Something is
Speaker 3: all always better than nothing every single time, and making
Speaker 3: that the goal that I showed up, that I took
Speaker 3: the first step, that I did something different, because that's
Speaker 3: still pretty hard to do.
Speaker 1: I love that, and don't think as well, if you
Speaker 1: look backwards on your progression and the achievements you've made historically,
Speaker 1: you look back.
Speaker 3: And go, I have made some progress. I mean, look
Speaker 3: at you.
Speaker 1: You you know, your twenty kilos lighter compared to back then.
Speaker 1: And for me, I look at my habits now compared
Speaker 1: to even eighteen months ago, and they're so much healthier
Speaker 1: than they were.
Speaker 3: I find that retrospectively going on.
Speaker 1: Actually, I am like those those habits that didn't seem
Speaker 1: like a lot. Now I've been doing them for a while,
Speaker 1: they are really paying off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean you mentioned before that you'll get
Speaker 3: up exercise easy, like it's just something that you do.
Speaker 3: I'm sure your life wasn't always like that. It's something
Speaker 3: that you created intentionally, and now it's just like part
Speaker 3: of who you are and what you do. And it's
Speaker 3: exactly the same with me. I live a lifestyle now
Speaker 3: that maintains these healthy habits, and I don't have to
Speaker 3: grind through it anymore. It's just something that I do
Speaker 3: because of consistency and not because of all or nothing.
Speaker 3: It's not about intensity ever, It's just about showing up gently.
Speaker 1: So if you were my habit change coach and I
Speaker 1: came to you and said, you know, I had these
Speaker 1: great intentions and then I had this weekend that I
Speaker 1: just had and completely fell off the wagon or whatever
Speaker 1: it might they, how would you kind of coach me
Speaker 1: through that and get me, I guess, back on track
Speaker 1: and also prevent something like that happening again.
Speaker 3: Well, firstly, I'd remind you that setbacks are part of
Speaker 3: the process. It's not if you fall off the wagon,
Speaker 3: it's when you fall off the wagon. It's inevitable. And
Speaker 3: it took me a long time to really get in
Speaker 3: my head because I'm like, no setbacks are optional, Like
Speaker 3: we make the choice not to do the thing that
Speaker 3: we said that we would do. But also life be lifing,
Speaker 3: Like sometimes life just happens, right, and you have a
Speaker 3: Saturday afternoon when you're free and you don't go to yoga,
Speaker 3: Like it's just what happens. Sometimes it's all about viewing
Speaker 3: those setbacks as data, as stepping stones, Like I think
Speaker 3: of Thomas Edison right, who invented the light bulb. Homeboy
Speaker 3: took a thousand attempts at creating the light bulb. That's
Speaker 3: a lot of failures, but he so famously said to
Speaker 3: a journalist who asked him how to feel, he was like,
Speaker 3: I didn't fail a thousand times. The light bulb is
Speaker 3: just an invention with a thousand steps. And that kind
Speaker 3: of mentality is everything, because the most successful people in
Speaker 3: the world also fall off the wagon on their habits.
Speaker 3: We might not see it, but I could guarantee you
Speaker 3: one hundred percent that they do. The difference between the
Speaker 3: people that succeed and the people that don't. Is that
Speaker 3: the people that succeed know how to get up after
Speaker 3: a setback and have that, you know, Thomas Edison mentality
Speaker 3: of I'm going to try again. I just go again.
Speaker 3: I just get up and I keep going. And it's
Speaker 3: all about how quickly you get up and not letting
Speaker 3: yourself fall. Like when you fall, it's not a complete relapse,
Speaker 3: it's just data. You just have a bit of compassion
Speaker 3: and you'd start again. So that's what I would say
Speaker 3: to you, like, I hope you had a great weekend,
Speaker 3: now let's begin again. I love that.
Speaker 1: And I think, coupled with the reframe of it being
Speaker 1: related to a stressor, that this overwhelm is like a
Speaker 1: stressor as you mentioned at the start, rather than you know,
Speaker 1: just a moment of lack of willpower or laziness or
Speaker 1: all those other words that we tend to throw around
Speaker 1: in our inner voice. I really see that as a
Speaker 1: big step in compassion, which I think so many of
Speaker 1: us really really need.
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed, So.
Speaker 1: Doctor Gina, For a woman listening today who is feeling overwhelmed,
Speaker 1: she's feeling defeated, and she wants to start again, what
Speaker 1: is the one thing that she could do this week,
Speaker 1: you know, not next month, this week to help regain
Speaker 1: her momentum again.
Speaker 3: I would say to pick one habit, just one, and
Speaker 3: make it so small almost feel silly, and then do
Speaker 3: it every day for at least a week, so seven days.
Speaker 3: Don't add anything, don't optimize it, you don't try to
Speaker 3: improve it. The idea is just to prove to yourself
Speaker 3: that you can show up consistently, because what overwhelm steals
Speaker 3: most is your belief in yourself. And the only way
Speaker 3: to get back is through small, repeated evidence that you
Speaker 3: do follow through. So just one week, one habit, and
Speaker 3: that's it, Doctor Gina.
Speaker 1: I just love your simplistic method because it just feels
Speaker 1: so achievable and so doable. I'm like, yes, I can
Speaker 1: do that. I can do this one small thing. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for your time today. Oh thanks for
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