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Hello and welcome to today's Up2Trive.
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Manage your mind, mindful moment.
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Welcome to Up2thrive, your go-to podcast for women's wellness in midlife, designed to educate, support, and inspire you to live your very best life.
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And now your host, Dr.
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Karina Sims.
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Well, I have just wrapped up another 12 weeks of my midlife health and body reset program.
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We actually ended up doing 13 weeks because when I was in Canada, our catch-up time ended up being 3.30 in the morning there.
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I did the first one, but after a bit of pretty wicked jet lag that took me about a week and a half to get over, I just couldn't put my body through that.
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So we did miss one week, but we made up for it when I got home with a bonus week 13.
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Now at the beginning of the 12 weeks, I get the ladies to complete a little well-being survey just to kind of get an idea of where they're at when they start the program.
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And then at the end of the 12 weeks, we do it again so we can see the progress in numerical form.
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Now, of course, they're already feeling and seeing the progress by the end of the 12 weeks, but it's nice to see the difference in the different parameters from things like how strong you feel, how confident, how comfortable you are in your clothes, how well you're sleeping, how mentally clear you are, what your relationship with food is like, to how optimistic you are about your future health and quality of life.
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I think it's really rewarding to see progress in all of those things, both for them and for me.
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Now I've been running the program for 16 months now, and this is the first group that I've done the survey with, and I just finished going through the results.
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I am absolutely blown away with them, but of course, they've also given me some things to reflect on.
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What I found really interesting was that some of the biggest improvements that the ladies had weren't necessarily in the areas that you might expect.
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So, yes, the women were feeling better in their clothes, happier with their bodies, but they were also feeling stronger, more confident, more positive about their health, and prouder of the way they were looking after themselves.
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And it's also got me reflecting on what I've learned about what actually helps us to make changes in our lives.
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Most of us already know a lot about what we should be doing to look after ourselves.
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We know we should be eating well, moving our bodies, building muscle, getting enough sleep, managing stress, all those things.
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And if we don't know something, we've got Google, Instagram, podcasts, chat GBT, books, we are definitely not short on resources.
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In fact, I think sometimes we have so much information, we are overloaded.
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And I think that in itself can become our biggest problem.
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One person tells you to eat more protein, someone else tells you to eat fast, someone else says avoid carbs, then there's cortisol, gut health, supplements, hormones, cold plunges, 10,000 steps, zone two cardio.
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Oh my goodness.
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Where do we even start?
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One of my girlfriends was recently talking about all the things that she's doing to look after her aging body, and she joked that she pretty much needed to quit her job just so that she could have time to fit all of this stuff in.
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Now, she's a highly motivated woman who has been incredibly active her entire life.
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So if that's how she's feeling, I can only imagine how overwhelming it can be for a woman who hasn't been active her entire life.
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And I think because I I know I've been guilty of it myself, sometimes we can get so caught up in trying to work out the perfect thing to do that we end up just not doing anything much at all.
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Or at the other extreme, we decide we're gonna change everything.
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On Monday, we're gonna eat perfectly, we're gonna exercise five days a week, get eight hours of sleep, meditate, drink two liters of water, and never eat another biscuit.
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We all know how that ends, right?
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Because life doesn't stop just because we've decided that we're gonna get healthy.
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You could see I have air quotes.
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We've still got jobs to go to, families to look after, aging parents, relationships, washing, cooking, unexpected things that come up, life life, and somewhere amongst all of that, we're trying to build a healthier life.
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But I think that there is a really helpful way for us to look at this when we're trying to create any kind of habit, really.
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What if you thought about building a healthier life or creating whatever health habits you're wanting to create in the same way that you look at building a brick house?
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You wouldn't turn up on day one with a truckload of bricks and expect to have a finished house by the end of the week, would ya?
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You'd start with a plan, you'd work out what the foundations needed to look like, and then you'd start laying the bricks.
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Load full transcript
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One brick at a time.
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Some days you'd make really good progress cracking along, listening to some good tunes, and other days it's gonna rain.
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Or something else is gonna go wrong, and you're not gonna get much done at all.
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But that doesn't mean the bricks that we've already laid just disappear, right?
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You wouldn't knock the whole thing down and start again on Monday.
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You just pick up where you left off.
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And I think that's such an important thing to understand when we're trying to make changes to our health, especially, because many of us can be pretty impatient.
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I know, because I'm one of those people.
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We want to see results now.
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We want to know that what we're doing is working.
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And if we don't see the changes we're hoping for quickly enough, especially if we're relying on a scale, my least favorite progress indicator, we can start questioning everything.
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Should I be eating less, exercising more, trying something different?
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And before we know it, we're off looking for yet another solution.
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We've wandered off into the weeds, and we all know there's some pretty thick, tall weeds out there.
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When the whole time what we really needed to do was just keep laying the bricks, right?
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Just start where you left off.
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Now, I'm not suggesting we should blindly keep doing something that isn't working.
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Of course, we need to reflect, reassess, sometimes change directions, that old scientific method.
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But we also need to give things enough time to work.
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And this is where I think having a simple framework is so helpful.
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Not a rigid set of rules, just a few things that you know matter that you can keep coming back to.
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Those are the same principles that I use in the program.
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We've got a very simple framework, that's what we use.
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So if, for example, you're wanting to improve your health in midlife, you might decide that building strength is important to you.
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I hope that that's where you're at.
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You don't have to go from doing nothing to lifting weights five days a week in a gym, right?
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You might start with two days a week.
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And to start, your goal might be just to turn up.
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Maybe it's five minutes.
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Learn the
exercises, get comfortable, start building confidence.
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Then as that becomes part of your routine, you can start challenging yourself a little more.
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And slowly something really interesting starts to happen.
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And I know because I watch it with the women that I work with, you stop being someone who's trying to start exercising, and you become someone who exercises.
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Not because you're always motivated, not because you love every minute of it, but because it's become part of what you do.
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And I think that that's where some of the most meaningful changes can happen because you're not just changing your behavior, you're changing the way that you see yourself.
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And that brings me to something else I've been thinking about the value of having people in your corner.
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I don't think we talk enough about this.
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We often think that making changes to our health should be something that we should just get on with ourselves.
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And of course we can't.
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But that doesn't mean that we have to.
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It's not the only way.
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There's something really valuable about having someone help you work out what matters, remind you of what you're working towards, and help you see progress that you might not be seeing yourself.
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And there's something equally valuable about being surrounded by people who are working towards similar things.
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People who understand that sometimes life gets in the way, people who celebrate your wins, even the little ones, who remind you that one difficult week does not undo everything that you've achieved.
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Sometimes just knowing that someone else is showing up makes it a little easier for you to show up to.
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Now I don't think that support necessarily has to come from a formal program.
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It might be a friend you walk with, a gym buddy, a partner, a group of women you meet for exercise, or someone you check in with regularly.
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The important thing is finding something that helps you keep moving forward.
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Because one of the things I've noticed over the years, both in medicine and in coaching, is that we can be incredibly good at seeing what we haven't done.
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The workout we missed, the food choices we weren't happy with, the number on the scale that hasn't changed, the things we still need to improve.
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And sometimes we're so busy looking at all of that that we completely miss the changes that are happening.
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Which brings me back to those questionnaires.
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What I loved most wasn't just that the numbers had gone up.
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It was what those numbers represented.
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They were feeling more confident about knowing how to eat in a way that supported their goals.
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They were feeling more in control around food, they were feeling prouder of the way that they were looking after themselves, and they were feeling more positive about their health journey and more optimistic about their future health and quality of life.
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And I really love those last two because when you think about it, that's pretty powerful.
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To go from feeling a bit lost or frustrated with where you're at to feeling more confident about where you're going.
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And I can tell you that some of those changes happen so gradually, I imagine that some of them didn't fully appreciate them until they stopped and took a look back.
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Because that's often how change works.
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It doesn't always arrive with some big dramatic moment.
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Sometimes it's just quietly becoming your new normal.
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And that's what I would love for you to think about today.
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Maybe there's something in your life you've been wanting to change, something you've been putting off because it feels too big, too complicated, or you're not quite sure where to even start.
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Instead of asking yourself how you're going to change the whole thing, ask yourself this one question.
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What's one brick that I could lay this week?
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One small thing that would move me towards the person I want to be.
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Not the person someone on Instagram thinks I should be, not the person I was twenty years ago, but the person I want to be now with the life and the body that I have today.
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And if you've already started making changes, maybe take a moment to look back.
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Not at what you haven't achieved yet, but at all those bricks you've already laid.
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Because you might be further along than you think.
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And remember, you don't have to build the whole house this week.
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Just lay the next brick.
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Hey, before you go, just want to let you know that the Midlife Health and Body Reset Program doors are open as of the day that this podcast drops for one week only.
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And then we'll get started with the next group for the next 12 weeks.
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I'll leave the link to check it out in the show notes.
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Don't miss out.
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I hope you've enjoyed this manage your mind mindful moment.
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And if you have and you can think of someone else who might enjoy it, please pass it on.
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And don't forget to write and review the podcast to make it more visible to those who might get something out of it too.
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Have a great week, everyone.
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And until then, I hope you opt to thrive.
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The Opt to Thrive Podcast is designed for information purposes only and is not engaged in the giving of medical advice.
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The information provided on the podcast should not be used for diagnosing or treating a health problem or disease.
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In no way should the information provided by Op to Thrive be considered medical advice, and at all times the advice of the medical professional should receive recommendations from Opt to Thrive.
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If you have or suspect you may have a health problem, you should consult your healthcare provider.
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The views expressed in this podcast are purely that of Dr.
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Stand and do not in any way reflect those of the institutions to contract the medical services.
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Thank you for listening to OpTotrive.
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If you've enjoyed listening, please write and set the podcast.
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You can visit our website at optocrive.com and leave a comment for any subjects you would like to hear more about.