The Healthy Celiac Podcast

Small Habit Makeovers for Lasting Health and Joy with Celiac Disease Ep. 149

• Belinda Whelan, Casey Cromwell • Season 1 • Episode 149

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Today I'm sharing the magic of small, manageable tweaks to your daily habits that can lead to monumental gains in well-being. I'm breaking down some health ambitions into bite-sized, achievable goals.

It's time to embrace the path to a happier, healthier you.

Blog Post Mentioned
How to Make an Epic Green Smoothie
www.belindawhelan.com/post/green-smoothie

Want to know how I've nailed living with Celiac Disease? Ultimate Celiac System has all my exclusive tips, secrets and insights.
Find out how Ultimate Celiac System can support your Celiac journey here
https://belindawhelantraining.com/ultimate-celiac-system

Wish you could get gluten free meals on the table fast that the whole family will love? Check out Meal Plans Made Easy
https://belindawhelantraining.com/gluten-free-meal-plans-made-easy

Brand new to Celiac Disease and want to avoid some of the easy mistakes too many people are making?  Grab your copy of 11 Mistakes People Make Living Gluten Free here www.belindawhelan.com/ebook

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Speaker 1:

Alrighty, welcome back to this week's episode of the show. I am excited to share this info with you today because it is completely free for you to make some easy changes, and I'm not even joking when I say that often the biggest changes to our lives and our health are quite simple, and I think we get too caught up in, you know, thinking we have to do these huge, amazing changes to be able to get results. But I promise you it's these small, little incremental changes that you can make in your life that make a huge difference overall and for the long term. So when I'm coaching clients, when they first come to me, so we have our initial meetup where we work out whether we're going to actually work together, whether we're a good fit for one another, and then the second step is to sit down and have a really good chat about what is to come over the next six months. So obviously, we're not spending six months together today, we are just spending this episode. But it's up to you to go out and create these action steps for yourself.

Speaker 1:

But what I do is I sit down with my client and we go through what they want to achieve with their health. So for everyone it's completely different. So someone might want to lose weight, whereas the next person might want to put on weight. They might not even have any goals around weight whatsoever. They might simply just want to figure out how to feel better, how to get an exercise routine, how to change their lifestyle so that they're happier. There's so many different things that make up what my health coaching entails and supports people with. So for you, like I said, it could be weight loss, it could be weight gain, it could be any of these other topics. So the first thing that I do is I sit down with my client and we work out what they want to achieve. So this is your number one step what do you want to achieve? What do you see your future being? Do you see your future being healthy, where you can run after your future grandchildren or your current grandchildren? Do you see your future being a couch potato? Because if that's you, you should probably turn this episode off and not listen, because that's not who I help. I help people that want to make a difference to their future.

Speaker 1:

It's not about short-term gains. It's about future. It's about how you want to live in this world for a long time. So let's look at the future and go okay, I want to be healthy. I want to have, you know, an amazing body that does what it needs to do to be able to get up every day and have the energy that I need to be able to go out and enjoy life, rather than being full of aches and pains and overweight and not living your fullest life. Okay, so when you grab some paper and pen after you've listened to the episode, you can go back through it if you need to and watch and write down notes. But just listen first and then afterwards go back and grab a pen and paper and write down what you want to achieve with your goals.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so that's a very, very first step. And then what I do with my clients is I get them to break down those goals. So let's just say someone wanted to lose 10 kilos. We would break those kilos down into actionable steps. So there's no point going yep, in six months I would have lost 10 kilos if they haven't put any steps into place. So it could be a matter of okay, let's work out how many kilos a week that could be over the six months time that is going to be achievable. So breaking it down into smaller, little, bite-sized action steps is much more achievable than having just this big goal and just expecting it to happen. So that's your first step working out what it is that you want to achieve in a period of time.

Speaker 1:

The next step would be to look at what you are doing with your nutrition. So if you, if you've never tracked what you eat in a day, it is very, very enlightening. Okay, it is an eye-opener when you write down what you eat. So many of us we eat absentmindedly. We do it without even thinking. We don't even focus on what we're eating. If you have children, you are probably guilty of eating the food that they don't eat, or their leftovers on their plate. Or when you're preparing snacks for them, you're probably guilty of grabbing a bit here and there and not even realizing it. So all of these things add up to the foods that we consume in any given day. So when you start to write down what you're eating, you are much more conscious of what you're putting in your mouth, and I know that the first time I ever did this, it actually stopped me from eating certain foods. It made me very aware of what I was about to eat, that I was like I don't actually want to write that down, that I've eaten that, so I wouldn't eat it. So it's a really great way to even stop you from eating foods that you probably know deep down aren't the best for you. So that's a great tip is to write down what you're eating on a daily basis. Do it for a little while. You'll get into the rhythm of seeing what your habits are and you can start to see where some of those habits are not so great and you might want to start eliminating some of those foods and bringing in some healthier foods.

Speaker 1:

So you know, I teach my clients some simple swaps of what to eat and what not to eat. So, for example, one of my clients she was a big chocky eater, so she would sit down at night and she would eat almost a block of chocolate. So normal chocolate is not ideal because it's full of a lot of sugar and it's definitely not something that we need to be consuming on a daily basis. So what we did was we swapped out the chocolate for a handful of healthy nuts, and when she would eat those nuts she felt satisfied. She didn't have the chocolate cravings and she was able to change that habit quite simply by swapping those over. And then I did teach her as well about the benefits of dark chocolate and which dark chocolates to look for for when she did want to have some of those treats as such, but it's still good for you. So you know, making new little habits, changing out these not so great habits, can be a big game changer as well. So, like I said, when you start to look at what you're actually eating, it can really help you to change those habits and form new habits for the future.

Speaker 1:

So, tracking them, you can do this a number of different ways. You can type it in your phone, you can write it on a piece of paper. You could grab one of my daily health trackers, which are available on Amazon. You know. You can buy apps that you can download and you can track what you're eating on those. I don't recommend tracking calories. I'm not a big calorie counter, so you'll never hear me talking about counting calories, but I do like to have people focus on what's going in their mouth so that they're aware of you know whether they're eating too much junk and not enough nutritious food, things like that. So in the beginning this is just an awareness thing. So with my clients. I'm not completely overhauling anything in their diet, so in the beginning, I'm not creating a whole new diet and lifestyle for my clients. It's simply for them to see what they're doing and for me to see what they're doing also. So this can be good for yourself to analyze. So writing everything down and having a look at what you're doing, all right.

Speaker 1:

The next thing would be a very simple one, because so many of us do not eat enough of these, and it's adding in dark leafy greens. So when you add in more dark leafy greens to your diet, you'll notice the benefits pretty quickly. So if you think you don't like dark leafy greens, then you can try them in a smoothie. Ok, you can add them to a green smoothie that tastes delicious. It's not something that you like. Tastes like a salad and a glass. Green smoothies are really, really tasty. So I'll pop a link below and in the show notes for you to check out how to make a green smoothie that tastes delicious, because my very first green smoothie that I made was disgusting, because I didn't know what I was doing and I put kale stem in it and it was so chunky and gross. So when you have a bit of a formula of how to make it, you'll be on the right track to making a delicious green smoothie.

Speaker 1:

So adding in green leafy vegetables is incredible. That's probably the first tip that I give to my clients when they first start with me is just that one addition to their diet, because you can do this very easily. So if you were getting up in the morning and let's just say you were making your breakfast and it's something to say like I don't know bacon and eggs, you could add a side, or maybe some baby spinach leaves sauteed in garlic. That's a really simple one. The green smoothie, like I said, or if you're having a salad, you could add lots of beautiful green leafy vegetables. At dinner, you could add in some cruciferous vegetables. Something like broccoli is a really great choice as well. So it's just adding things in to start with. Ok. So that's a really simple way that we can up our nutrition without pulling anything out of our diet too quickly and making it hard on ourselves.

Speaker 1:

The next one is to figure out what type of exercise you like, because if you don't do any exercise, it's likely because you don't know what you enjoy. Time is kind of irrelevant. I'm going to be really nasty here and say please don't use that as an excuse. Please don't ever use time as an excuse. You need to make time for your health and your future and that includes exercising. Even if it's 10 minutes a day, you can squeeze in 10 minutes a day. I promise you you can find the time to get 10 minutes worth of exercise and build upon that.

Speaker 1:

There are free video. Well, they're not free because you have to be on Netflix. Sorry, I shouldn't say that, but on Netflix there are 10 minute workouts you can do. There are 10 minute yoga classes that you can do. There's stuff all over YouTube. There's so much that you can do in 10 minutes to get your heart rate up, to get your body moving.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, you could. Instead of staring at the TV and sitting on the couch, you could watch a workout and do the workout with it. You could be at work and you might have a 30 minute lunch break. How does it take you 30 minutes to eat, or do you have a spare 10 minutes? Do you live in a building? Could you go up and down the stairs a couple of times during your lunch break? Could you walk to work a little bit further from your car. Just these tiny little steps to start with, just to get more movement into your life. These are obviously not going to be enough long term, but just to get your body moving, just to get it started.

Speaker 1:

Now, I recently moved to a new gym. You might have heard me talk about it. I've been going to this other gym for a couple of years. It was getting a little bit boring, little bit stagnant. I was a little bit over the classes. I was kind of dragging my feet in the end making myself go there. I was just a bit yeah, just a bit done with it. And then found a new gym which is like super amazing and they have an infrared sauna, which I personally used to have my own infrared sauna at my other house and I miss that. So I've got that option now and they do reformer pilates. I have had friends tell me for years but Linda, you've got to try reformer pilates, you've got to try reformer pilates, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Never got around to work because it was at a physio. I had to go book in with a physio and go do reformer pilates. So it wasn't easy for me to go to do a class, whereas at my gym. It's easy because they have these reformer pilates classes and I am absolutely obsessed. I freaking love it and I'm basically going three times a week to do a reformer pilates class because I'm just enjoying it so much and I'm really starting to see an improvement in my physique. I'm starting to see changes in my body that I wasn't getting at the other gym from the classes that I was doing there. So I'm really, really happy with that. But that's the thing. You know, if you get stuck in a rut and you're not doing something that you're like, you're less likely to go. I have been to the gym so much more in the last couple of months than what I was going at my other gym. I was just, you know, I was maybe going once or twice a week to my other gym, whereas I'm going maybe four times a week, sometimes five times a week, to my new gym because I'm really loving it and I'm really loving the way that I feel when I go there, when I've been. So, yeah, I absolutely love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.

Speaker 1:

Reform a party doesn't mean you have to go do reform and parties. You might find it boring, you might find it You're not coordinated enough. But maybe you love sport. Maybe when you were younger you used to play basketball or you used to play netball or you played soccer, and you don't do any of those activities anymore. Find a team to join and go do it again. You'll. You'll love it.

Speaker 1:

You know, your body might not be as good as it was when you were younger, but go easy on yourself, just do what you can and get out there and get some physical activity and just enjoy yourself, because I personally think that when you enjoy something, you do it more. You do enjoy it more, which means you're going to get up out of bed and you're going to go do it. And that's another thing. If you can't find time, could you get up 10 minutes earlier in the morning, 20 minutes earlier in the morning, and find this time to exercise? Because I bang on about this the more healthy things that you do for your body and your lifestyle, the better you feel. So it could be that you do need to go to bed 10, 20 minutes earlier at night so that you can get up in the morning and do that workout or go to the gym. So look at that as something that becomes positive.

Speaker 1:

In the beginning it might be hard, it might be a bit man I want to do this but once you get going you do feel really good. So when I first started at my new gym I was nervous, I'm not going to lie. It was different. I'd been in my little comfort zone and my other little gym for two years and this was something new. It was big, lots of people and just noisy and just different. It's a really different environment to what I was going to before. So I must admit I was overwhelmed. And one of my friends has since joined and she hasn't been yet. And I keep saying to her come with me, just come with me, so that you're with me and I can support you. And she's so nervous. So people do this. They get a gym membership and the nerves hold them back. So you might need to buddy up with a friend, you might need to go with someone else to help you get over that confidence line and make you, you know, push through that barrier of feeling better, to get that confidence.

Speaker 1:

So look for something that you enjoy and you know if it's, if it's nothing like this or you don't have the finances to do it. Walking is amazing. I cannot bang on about this enough. Walking is fantastic for your health. People don't think of walking as exercise enough as it should. But walking is phenomenal for your health and if you can do it with a friend, even better, because you're getting that time where you can communicate and enjoy someone else's company and you might feel safer. If you don't feel safe, walking on your own depends on where you live. I feel 100% safe in my area that I go walking.

Speaker 1:

So again, it's looking at what's holding you back. So a good thing to do is ask yourself a question so why don't I want to go for a walk? And then, if you say something like I don't have the time, ok, why don't you have the time? Where can you find the time? Answer that question, all right. What else is stopping you from going for a walk? You might go. I don't have good shoes? Ok, can you go buy some new shoes? Can you go look for a pair of decent walking shoes? Or, you know, could you go for a walk barefoot on the beach, like this? That's usually. We can break through these barriers. What is holding you back? Ok, stop with the excuses and really see what is holding you back from achieving your health goals, because often it's tiny little piss, poor excuses, that kind of don't fly, they don't need to be there. So we just need to break down those little barriers and work out what's really stopping you and once you get through them, then you have the capabilities to get out there and and feel your best All right.

Speaker 1:

So the next one we touched on that a little minute ago was sleep. If you are getting enough sleep, your whole world changes. I can almost hear the what is it? The song, the little on the background. That is how I feel when I get sleep. I am a different person and I've said this quite a number of times on the show. I mean, we're almost into the third year of this show and I know that I have blamed my children continuously for broken sleep. And you know, over summer I get lots more sleep because they sleep better. Winter they seem to wake up a lot. So in summer I just naturally feel better because I get more sleep, and sleep is number one in my life. It has this flow on effect.

Speaker 1:

So if you're getting to bed late and it's by choice and you get up in the morning and you feel like rubbish, then that's on you to make a change. You need to change that habit so that you have more energy in the morning. One of my best friends she stays up till God knows what time of the night. She stays up all hours binge watching shows. She readily admits this. She just loves staying up late because there's no one around to annoy her. And then she gets up early in the morning and goes to work. I could not do that. I could not survive on four or five hours sleep. I need a good, at least eight hours of sleep and solid sleep. So when you get good sleep, like I said, it has this flow on effect. So if you have a good sleep, you're more likely to get up and make a healthy breakfast and more likely you'd want to go exercise. You're positive, you feel better, you're happier, you're nicer to the people around you, so then they're nicer back to you. It just has this amazing flow on effect.

Speaker 1:

So let's just recap what we covered off today. So the first one is to sit down and work out what it is that you want to achieve. What do you want to change in your life? And I know the word change is scary to a lot of people, but change can be for the good. Okay, so it could be changing bad behaviors, changing to good behaviors, changing our old habits. Change doesn't always have to be, you know, scary and bad. So what is it that you want to achieve? So writing that down, okay, writing out what you want to do, figure it out and go from there.

Speaker 1:

The next one was to add in some green leafy vegetables into your diet and figuring out how to eat more healthy foods, because it will make a big difference. Number three was to track what you're eating and start to see what you are actually putting into your mouth. Number four was to add in some movement and some exercise into your daily routine. And number five was to make sure you are getting enough sleep. So take on board what you want from this episode. It might be all five of these steps all at once, or it might be one at a time.

Speaker 1:

You might need to write these down so that you can refer back to them, or you might be like, yep, I'm doing this, I'm going to make these changes, and if you do, I want you to let me know, so you can write a comment below if you're watching this on YouTube, or you can send me a DM over at the Healthy Celiac on Instagram and I'd love to hear from you.

Speaker 1:

I want to hear your results, I want to hear what your goals are, what you're achieving. It absolutely makes my day when I hear from you. I promise you, I love, love, love getting messages from you, so please keep them coming. One of my love languages is words of affirmation. So when you write to me and you tell me that I've helped you, you are talking my love language, my friend. So please keep those messages coming. I kid you not, they make my day. So thank you so much for tuning in and I look forward to talking to you again on the next episode of the Healthy Celiac podcast. Have a fantastic week and I'll talk to you again soon. Take care, bye.

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Belinda Whelan

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