Coaching Call – Transformation Challenge Week 2: Stress vs Relaxed — Mind/Body Connection with Breath — Video Transcription
Hello, hello, everyone. Glad you are with us tonight. This is week two of our NewYou90 challenge, Get Back Into Your Skinny Jeans, or as I like to say, feeling good in your own skin. That is what this is all about. It’s being able to step into who you truly are, authentically, coming from your heart, coming from your spiritual being, coming from that person who you truly are instead of the one that has walls built up around you. That is what Getting Back Into Your Skinny Jeans is all about, right? It’s that transformation. Not only the transformation physically, but the transformation that takes place mentally and spiritually as well. It’s huge. All right. So, we have a full docket tonight. We are going to be talking about the head phase and the gut phase of digestion. So, the head brain, the heart brain… Excuse me, the head brain, the gut brain, and the heart brain. And then, we’re going to be moving that into cleanse day. And then, we are going to be going into… We’re also going to talk about power of pause and how that relates to all of that. Are you all ready? All right. Let me bring up my slideshow for you guys so that we can get rocking with this. And hang in there with me. One second. All right. We are in our NewYou90 challenge. This is so much fun, isn’t it? Let’s see. All right, now we are clear. So, I want you to pause for just a moment and take a deep breath, relax. Relax. You don’t have any other place to go for the next 30, 35 minutes. You can be here, be all present here with you right now, with all of us in this moment. Another deep breath. Clear the mind, clear the rush. Sometimes, when we’re sitting down, we’re running in the door, about to get on a call, we are rushing, and there’s that rush, that physiology that’s rushing through our body. I want you to pause right now and take some deep breaths, and feel that rush, and watch it move out of the body. You are where you need to be right now in this moment. Mono-focus right here with me right now. Don’t do two things at once. Don’t be answering your emails while you listen to the call, don’t be trying to fix dinner at the same time. Right now, give yourself 30 to 35 minutes to mono-focus and be right here. And as you do that, you will feel that rush, the rushed physiology just slowly leave the body and move right on out. And now, you’re left with peace and presence. All right. Here we go, rolling right along. We are going to talk about digest tonight. I want to cover this again. We’re covering the topic of slow because it is so vitally important. We can set ourselves up for failure or we can set ourselves up for success. And the way we set up ourselves for success is by adopting slow, because in slow is where everything happens, is where awareness comes into place, mindfulness comes into play, and we get to see things we normally wouldn’t have seen before in our behaviors, in our thought processes, in the emotions that come up about food, about cleansing, about nourishing our body, showing up as us. So many things happen, but it only happens when we’re slow, when we’re aware, and when we’re mindful. And this is the place where our body is in full-on digestion. And that is what we really want because when we’re digesting fully, we’re digesting food, we’re digesting our thoughts, and our experiences, our beliefs, we are running on all cylinders, and our body is burning fat, our body is being healthy, and vibrant, and alive, and that is our focus. Yes. So, we have several phases of digestion. And the first one I want to address is the head phase. It’s called the cephalic phase digestive response, CPDR. Cephalic phase digestive response. This is the digestion aspect that happens in our head, in our head brain. Did you know that the digestion of carbohydrates begins in the mind? So, this is an interesting tidbit I haven’t shared with you yet. But when you think about a forbidden food, the body releases insulin. Even if there is no sugar on the tongue, no carbohydrate on the tongue for that insulin to act upon, it is still released. So, think about that for a moment. You’re visualizing that forbidden food, what you are deeming as a forbidden food. Let’s see, we can pick a chocolate sundae, we can pick mudslide brownie or something like that. When you envision that and you allow the salivary glands to secrete, that is telling you that insulin has just been signaled to go throughout the body because it’s telling the body, “Get ready, sugar’s coming down the pike, and it’s got to have something to play with.” But what if you did not eat something sweet, you just are thinking about it all the time? You’re still having that insulin go throughout your body. So, the idea here is for us to get to a place where we are okay with who we are because, really, that’s what food’s all about. When we’re craving foods that aren’t healthy for us, it’s really that sign that we’re wanting to go into hiding…for the most part, maybe not all of you, but I know this speaks to a lot…to go into hiding, and that is what we want to eliminate. So, by going through this process of all of these coaching calls with me, I’m going to teach you different aspects of mind, body, nutrition, and eating psychology so that you begin to not think about and dwell on those foods that are forbidden to you. And you will also learn that as a lifestyle adaptive program, those foods that you love that you do want to keep in your life, you will learn how to have a healthy relationship with them so that insulin is not being secreted all the time when you fantasize about them [Laughs], all right? So, as we go through the program, that responsibility and that respect for that food will come into play, I promise. All right. So, when there is excess insulin in the system with nothing to play with, it results in fat storage and the use of muscle for energy. When we are restricting ourselves, this can happen. So, in this program, you want to feel nourished, not restricted. So, that is the reason why we go through these 12 weeks of learning all these different aspects around food, and around body, and around nutrition, so that you get to a place where you are living freely, naturally, without that feeling of restriction. All right. So, the head phase of digestion is where we have taste, aroma, pleasure, satisfaction. This is the place that when your meal is put before you… You want to take a moment, close your eyes, breathe a couple of breaths, 2, 5, 10, whatever it takes to get you to focus and to relax. It’s that visual stimulation of the meal, so the senses are coming to life. This is the head phase of digestion. You will increase your digestive power by 30 to 40%. Think about that. If you eat mindlessly, you decrease by 30 to 40%, but if you are mindful and if you’re there with your food, you just increase your digestive capability by 30 to 40%. That’s huge. That is huge. So, digestion begins in the head. So, you start your meal by being all there, all right? If you fall asleep at the plate, which means mindless eating, you will lose some digestive power. All right. I love this. “Him? No, he doesn’t want a treat. He says I can have two.” [Laughs] That’s so sweet. I love that. All right. Break it up. Here we go. Now, we’re moving to the gut brain. The gut brain is the enteric nervous system, E-N, enteric nervous system. The gut brain is huge. This is a big part of where we can lose a lot of our digestive power, is not in understanding and knowing the gut brain. So, it is housed in the mucosal lining in the stomach and esophagus and small and large intestines. It’s all over. We have these brain cells all through our gut. It senses everything. It triggers our emotions, are here, all of our senses, everything is focused in the gut. Our gut brain… There’s more neural traffic that takes place from our gut brain to our head brain than the head brain to the gut brain. More neural traffic, more communication. Your gut is in charge of your life, you guys. When you say, “I have a gut instinct about it,” you are correct. You are correct. We respond to events and experiences from our gut. And I know you know this. When you’re nervous, you feel it in your gut, right? When you’re excited and happy, you feel it in your gut. When you can get angry, you feel it in your gut. Our gut brain, a lot of who we are resides right there. A lot of the way we react and respond in our life resides there. So, there is 100 million nerve cells, more than what is in our whole spinal cord. Such a fascinating, fascinating organ that we have here. All right. So, in the gut brain, our gut brain will tell when we’re hungry and when we’ve had enough by sending off the hunger hormone. So, when we’re hungry, our stomach growls, and it sends ghrelin up to the head brain, it says, “I’m hungry.” And then, when we have had enough food to eat, the gut brain sends leptin up to the head brain, it says, “I’m done.” We want to hear these signals. If you experience no hunger signal at all, you never have a growl in your belly, you never feel that empty hunger feeling, if you don’t have that, it’s time to wake up ghrelin. One way to do that is to get it on circadian rhythm, which we have talked about that in the past, and we are going to spend a lot more time with that next week, circadian rhythm. But to wake up ghrelin and leptin, we’ve got to be in alignment with circadian rhythm of the sun. Another way to do it is to get the cortisol levels balanced out, which is going to bed, is the circadian rhythm again, but it’s falling asleep by 10 o’clock, and it’s waking up eight hours later, getting in that rhythm of sleep. That will help wake those up. Also, slow wakes it up. Slow, aware eating, being mindful while you’re eating, listening for the signal, chewing thoroughly, 15 to 20 bites, breathing between bites, that all helps to wake up the gut brain so that you hear ghrelin and leptin. So, we have a tremendous amount of power that goes untapped through the gut brain. I hope this is helping you to understand this a little bit more. When we are stressed, our digestive system shuts down. When we are relaxed, our digestive system is turned on. When you eat in a relaxed state, it will help you to reduce food sensitivities, allergies, and digestive upset. That is huge. So, eating in a stressed state increases food sensitivities, and allergies, and digestive upset, all right? So, if you have any of those, consider eating slowly, being mindful, being there with your meal. Don’t do two things at once, don’t answer your emails and eat at the same time. Do one thing, and that’s eat and be aware. You can listen to music. But reading will sidetrack you because it pulls your attention from the meal. Watching a TV show sidetracks you, pulls you away from a meal. Listening to music is very good. It usually is more soothing. Okay. All right. So, here is that slide again. If you want to burn fat, you want to relax. So, on the left side is the sympathetic nervous system. That is our stressed state. And this is the place where you do not want to operate from in your life at all. You want to utilize your fight or flight system, the sympathetic nervous system. You use that when it’s really necessary, when you are running for your life, when you are having to save a child, when you are in a place… It’s always nice to have a little bit of that sympathetic nervous system rev when you’re going to perform and do something. It’s more of a… Because you’re excited, it totally transforms that energy to where it’s not harmful to you because you all know that the sympathetic nervous system, if you operate that on a day in and day out basis, constantly, all the time, that causes free radical damage, damage to the cells, causes aging, disease, inflammation, etc., etc. So, we don’t want to operate there. But when we perform and go through our life in a relaxed state, when it comes from love, and truth, and perseverance, and surrender, and gratitude, when we’re operating from that place, that is the place where digestion is in full force. We burn fat, we have optimal state of assimilation of all nutrients, our immune system is strong. Healing happens here. And we have the metabolic enhancer of oxygen. Maintenance and repair occurs. So, that, you want to operate in relaxed state. So, what this means for you is this, when you’re stressed about something, you can’t get it out of your mind and you’re thinking about it all the time, all the time, that is a mild state of anxiety, and that is a sympathetic nervous system response, which is a mild state of fight or flight. You feel threatened, so that’s where you’re going, is sympathetic nervous system. The other side of that is you’re relaxed, you’re sitting out on your back porch, you’re rocking in your chair, reading a book, being with the sounds of nature, breathing deeply and evenly. That’s a relaxed state. That is when your body is operating in parasympathetic nervous system response. Okay. So, those are the two places our body lives as far as the nervous system goes, okay? I hope that was helpful. All right. Moving right along. So, remember, it’s not just what you eat. And on the NewYou90 plan, TruHealth system, we are nourished in beautiful ways. [Laughs] We are so nourished with good nutrition from the shake, from the supplementation, the cleanse days, the food we’re eating, the low-glycemic way we’re doing this. Our what is spot on. But, remember, it’s also how you’re showing up at the table, how you’re eating. You’re eating slow, you’re eating responsibly, okay? So, your relationship with food is vitally important. If you have had a love/hate relationship with food, let’s work on that these next 12 weeks. Let’s work on the relationship with food so it’s one of nourishment, not one of the enemy. We don’t want the enemy. Food is not our enemy. Food is grounding. Food is nourishment. Food helps us to be here. It grounds us, and we want a healthy relationship with it. So, stick with me these next 10 weeks. After this week, we’re onto 10. So, stick with me the rest of this time and you will totally transform the way that you are with food and your whole relationship with it. All right. Remember, you can eat the most nutritious meal in the world, but if you’re in a stressed state, your body will not benefit from that nutrition. Yes, it’s true because you’re in that heightened state so your digestive system shuts down. No blood flows in the gut, it’s in the head, in the arms, in the legs so you can think fast and run, get away from the bear as fast as possible. Digestive system has shut down about 60 to 70% when you’re in a stressed state. So, do not eat in a stressed, hurried, rushed way. Be with your food. If all you have is five minutes to eat, then you eat slow the whole five minutes, all right? Yeah. All right. But nourishment is not limited to food alone, it includes all the ways we feed the many needs we have. All right. So, let’s go to this, the power of pause. I love, love, love, love this technique. It has saved me, and I want to pass it along to you for it to save you as well. So, in week one, I gave you a video, and it was about the freak-out dance. And it’s freaking out when you lose your keys, freaking out when you’re running late, freaking out when you forgot your lunch, it’s sitting on the cabinet and you left without it, it’s a freak-out dance over any little thing, and you know what that looks like. “Oh, my gosh, I can’t believe I just did that.” Whether you do it out loud or you did it in your head, you still did it. [Laughs] That’s the freak-out dance. It is a sign of heightened alert, you’re operating at a high level of stress. If you react that way, then you are operating in a sympathetic stress response. In the relaxed state, in the parasympathetic stress response, you are responding to life. When you’re operating in a stressed state, you’re reacting. There’s shallow breathing here, you’re tense, you’re gripping life, and you’re in that reaction mode, not the responding mode. When we’re in reaction mode, we don’t think before we speak. When we’re in the responding mode, we pause, we breathe, and we respond with clarity and from the heart, from the center of our being, When we respond, it’s from the center of our being, your authentic self, right? So, we want to respond in our lives. So, it’s a simple technique that is going to change the way you show up. It will. The way you respond to mishaps that happen to you, it’s going to change the way your body metabolizes fat, it will change the way your body heal and repairs, it will change your clarity of thinking. Oh, my goodness, it’s going to get so clear. You will increase love and acceptance for yourself as well. So, in a nutshell, it’s going to change the way you live your life, it’ll change your life completely. All right. So, we use the power of pause at any situation, if it’s with food, the way you manage your time, matters of the heart, the way you feel about your body, the first thing you say to yourself when you see yourself in the mirror, power of pause works wonders right there in that moment. Exercise and movement, talking yourself out of your workout. Why is the mind trying to talk you out of it? Something that you set into play. Power of pause. Pause in that moment, breathe… I’m going to walk you through all the steps here in just a minute. That it works wonders when you’re trying to talk yourself out of something you know you need to be doing. It’s any place where you tend to judge your actions or talk yourself out of something, sabotage any of those behaviors that pop up like that. So, it will put your body… This whole process put my body in a place to heal and repair, to finally leave anxiety behind, judgment, criticism, perfection [Laughs], to push those to the side, eliminate them, and to just be. It also allowed my body to go into fat mobilization instead of using muscle for energy. So, when I was going through that deep state of anxiety, my body became in almost an anorexic way, you could say, because it was burning muscle like crazy, and I lost all of the muscle. I’ve been a power lifter and lifted weights five days a week, we’re talking hour to hour and a half workouts, I had some muscle size. After that, did not have any muscle size. It all left. So, power of pause saved me on that anxiety, saved me. It brought peace and calm. So, I hope it does this for you as well. So, remember, it is time to surrender because when we surrender, we are in a relaxed state and our body’s burning fat. [Laughs] Yes, it is time to let go. So, these are the steps. Power of pause. Pause is the first step. And it’s to give yourself time and space. So, let’s say, for some reason, a craving hits you, and it’s not even conscious, it’s subconscious. And you go to the refrigerator or the pantry, and you swing it open, and you’re just looking for something. It’s like you’ve got this rush about you that you just can’t wait to get that food in your mouth, for some reason. You pause, you catch yourself in your way. Okay, pause. Stop. Give yourself time. Take a deep breath. Remember, the oxygen is the single most metabolic enhancing nutrient and it heals the body. Deep breath. Give yourself time and space so that you can be directed to the next step. Now, you have just caught yourself with the pantry door wide open or the refrigerator, with these wide eyes, deer in headlights, trying to find something that is going to comfort you, something that’s going to fill in that gap, fill in that space, fill in that fear that you don’t want to face, whatever it is. And this can happen with food, it can happen with time management in your office. Deer in headlights, need to make a call, but, golly, you don’t want to. And so, you put the phone down and you find something else to do really quick because, gosh, you don’t want to do that call. You’re sabotaging your efforts. Power of pause. You stop, catch yourself right in the moment. Deep breath. Accept yourself for what you’re doing. You’re getting to know yourself and how you are in certain situations, how you are under stress. Food is a way we respond to stress, sabotaging our efforts in making calls for our business is sabotaging our success and putting it on the hook, right? In a relationship, closing off your heart and not opening up the heart fully, that’s sabotage, that’s operating in a stressed state under fear. You see how this affects you not only with food and your food behavior you’ve had in your life, it’s affecting your business… The way you operate in stress affects your food, business, your relationships, your spiritual life, opening up your heart and living from the core of your being. But we use food, we use eliminating exercise from our life, eliminating movement, we use those as the things that hide us, we use them as excuses to cover up our pain. Power of pause faces that. Power of pause allows you to just let it flow through, watch it, let it flow through so you can move on, and heal, and not use that sabotaging behavior anymore. So, let’s go back to the pantry. You are deer in headlights, and you are looking in there, trying to find something to comfort you. You’ve just stopped yourself, and you’re paused, and you’re catching, “Oh, my gosh, what am I doing?” Question yourself, “What am I doing? What am I needing right now? What do I need? Am I showing up as the core of who I am? Or am I trying to hide, am I trying to cover something up?” Those are good questions to ask yourself in that moment of crisis, so to speak, the moment when you catch yourself living in that stressed state in fear, anxiety, worry, frustration. All of those show up in our food life, the way we feel about our body, and how we feel in our own skin, the way we feel in our business, the way we feel in our relationships. Worry, frustration, fear, upset all show up there. Catch yourself in the moment. Pause. Take a breath. Accept and be open to where you are right now because it’s okay. You’re learning. You’re learning who you are. You’re learning your cover-up technique [Laughs], your sabotage technique, you’re learning it. All right. So, I just kind of went through this. How do you use this power when you go to your pantry and fridge? Fidget, I said. That’s so funny, autocorrect did fidget instead of fridge. [Laughs] My slang for refrigerator. Answer a need that’s driving you. Practice a moment of pause, and breath, and accept who you are in this moment. So, is your action a reflection of who you are at your core, or is it a reflection of a need that you have? If it is a reflection of who you are at your core, then just rest in that for a moment. Rest in it. It’s okay. You’re learning about an insecurity you may have, “Wow, I’m insecure in there.” Well, why is that showing up? Another great opportunity to ask an important question, “Why is that showing up? Why is insecurity showing up? What does it have to do with?” Most likely, it didn’t have anything to do with food, it never does. Food is just the cover-up. Food is the cover-up. You eliminating the exercise for the day is a cover-up. Yeah. Where is that insecurity coming from, if that’s what’s coming up for you? Find out about it. Ask questions. And if it’s a need you have, what is that need? Again, it’s not going to be in the food. The need you have is not for food because we know, from this system, eating low-glycemic, taking TruHealth products, you are not in any way nutrient-dense… I mean, nutrient-deficient. Nutrient-deficient. You are nutrient-dense. So, most likely, it’s not a nutritional deficit that you have going on, it’s something else. Ask that question, what it could be. And if you need help with this, please reach out to me. This is very powerful, very powerful, and it takes thought, and it may trigger some things in you. So, feel free to reach out to me, I’m here for you. Pause, breathe, and accept. Those are the three steps. And when you accept, you’re allowing that feeling of insecurity, frustration, whatever it is to just flow through. Just observe it. Observe it, and then ask questions, “Why is that showing up?” Yeah. Great. Okay. So, the heart brain. When you are going through all of this, our heart brain is just as important. When we nourish and focus on our spiritual heart, our physical heart is going to be taken care of. It will, it will be taken care of. So, taking care of our spiritual heart is vitally important. And there is a book by Dr. Cynthia Thaik. I have it on the very last still. My Vibrant Heart. I have it on the last slide. My Vibrant Heart by Cynthia Thaik. And it is a beautiful book about the heart brain, and I highly recommend that as a great read. But be the master of your life, ask questions. Ask questions. The ones that I just taught you on the power of pause, those are vitally important questions. When you find out what that frustration is, the root of frustration, the root of anger, the root of irritation, the root of insecurity, when you find out that root, and you allow it to just flow through you, and eliminate it from your very being, your heart brain is healthier. It’s so vibrant. When we release those feelings that are categorized under fear, our heart brain can thrive, and we can begin to hear those messages as well. All right. So, when we are on our cleanse day, I’m going to give you… These are those tips from cleanse day that I gave you, and I’m going to show you how this works into the heart brain, and the gut brain, and the head brain. The cleanse day is the four TruPURE, the one TruPLENISH smoothie, fresh vegetables and fruit all day, no fat or additional protein. This is the one day when you don’t do your essential fats except for what’s in the TruPLENISH smoothie, okay? Drink water all day, it helps flush those toxins. Hear me. This is a day of rest. No exercise, because you’re cleansing. And when you’re cleansing, it gives you the opportunity to cleanse the emotions that are in your heart, stored in your heart brain, the ones that are under fear, irritation, frustration, anger, anxiety, angst, all of those, right? Cleanse day is the perfect opportunity to cleanse those from not only your physical body where they’re stored, but also your heart brain, because we want our heart to be healthy as well, and we know that anger is stored in the heart, fear is stored in the heart, frustration, all of that. All right. This is a great day for quiet moments and meditation so that those can come out. So, when you are in your cleanse day and you feel a little hum in your body… And when I mean hum, I mean more like a rev. It could almost feel like you have a little Pacman at the back of your jaw and you want to chew on a food or something that you have craved in the past. And all of a sudden, it hits you out of the blue, you haven’t craved it for the last two weeks. Why all of a sudden today? It’s because it’s cleanse day. [Laughs] And the emotion behind that craving is coming to the surface. So, what are you going to do about it? You’re going to stuff it back down so it keeps coming up for you? Or are you going to allow it to surface, ask questions about it, “Well, where’s that craving coming from? Am I feeling insecure, anxious, frustrated, irritated? Is that craving connected to any one of those fear-based emotions?” If it is, process it, let it go, surrender it so that you do not have to have that craving and that emotion linked together anymore. The cleanse day is the perfect opportunity to not only cleanse the toxins from your body, but to cleanse the fear-based emotions that are connected to food cravings. Perfect time to do this. Yes. So, listen to those when they come up. Do not try to breeze through cleanse day and not think about it, put blinders on and just head right out and just, “Can’t wait for midnight. Can’t wait for midnight.” [Laughs] Don’t handle cleanse day like that. Relax and be with cleanse day, allow the toxins that are stored in your adipose tissue and the fat, allow those to be released and, along with it, allow the other cravings and toxins to be released as well. It can be a really fun day. All right. Get quiet within, be open and willing to release what is no longer serving you. Do this, and you’re going to receive so much from your cleanse day, so much more than you ever bargained for. If you have a craving that comes up on cleanse day that is linked to a fear-based emotion and you are having difficulty processing that, will you please contact me? I want to help you with it, okay? If you are having issues with a craving and a fear-based emotion, contact me, and I’ll help you walk through it. We will emotionally regulate it so that we disconnect that connection. All right. So, here’s your home play. Love home play. Continue slow, eating, living, and thinking. Slow. You’re breathing deep. Whatever morning ritual you need to put into play so that you begin your day slow, I highly advise it, whether it’s tai chi gong, whether it is yoga, whether it is just a deep-breathing meditation or mindful moment. This ritual can last three minutes, it can last five minutes, it can last 30 minutes, whatever it is that you need. Do that. Slow. Visualize every day the future you. How do you want to be at the end of this 90-day challenge? How do you want to show up physically? [Coughs] Excuse me. And how do you just want to be in your… The presence of you, how do you want it to be? Confident, feeling good in your own skin? What does that look like, feel like? Visualize that, be in it, love it. [Laughs] Love every moment of it. Do the food activity that I put in the email. Do that with your family in contest, who can eat the slowest. And then, the power of pause, practice that, all right? The books that I am recommending for this week is Your Vibrant Heart by Dr. Cynthia Thaik, and also Digestive Wellness by Lipski. Those are two great reads that support the material that I went through today, all right? And of course, my book, Join Me in the E.N.D. Zone covers all of it as well. As we close today, I want to remind you that you are a strong, healthy, and fit individual that makes wise decisions and brings calm, confidence, and empowerment to not only yourself, but to all those you meet. Yes, that is who you are. Step into that, be that. Be the person, be the woman, be the man who shows up 100% in your life as you from your heart. Eliminate those fear-based emotions and step forward in confidence, in love, in empowerment. And be strong and confident in your food choices and in the way you live the TruHealth lifestyle. You’ve got this. You’ve got this, and I’m so proud of you. Keep going, keep pressing on. And we will talk later this week or next week on the next coaching call. Until then, have a wonderful, wonderful evening. See you later. Bye.
Recorded and current as of January 14, 2019
Always consult with your physician or other qualified healthcare provider before embarking on a new diet or program. This program is not recommended for pregnant or lactating women. If you are taking medications, have a health condition or are planning a medical procedure, consult your health professional before beginning this program. It is also not recommended for children under the age of 18. If you have any specific questions about these matters you should consult your doctor or other healthcare provider.