Heart to Heart with Hads

What happens when the health coach needs healing?

• Hadlea Shaw

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Have you ever felt like you're failing because you can't maintain the same level of intensity year-round? The truth is, life moves in seasons, and learning to adapt your approach accordingly might be the key to sustainable progress.

Today's heart-to-heart dives into a vulnerable moment—receiving positive autoimmune markers while simultaneously parting ways with a long-term fitness coach. This convergence sparked an important realization: different aspects of our lives experience different seasons simultaneously. While my client relationships flourish, my personal health journey faces challenges. And that's perfectly normal.

I explore the misconception that having our own struggles somehow disqualifies us from helping others. In reality, no two people have identical issues, and my ability to guide clients remains intact despite my personal health battles. This mindset shift proves crucial for maintaining professional confidence while navigating setbacks.

The concept of the "stress bucket" offers a practical framework for understanding why pushing harder isn't always better. Your body perceives all stress—whether from work deadlines, family obligations, or intense training—as simply stress. When your bucket overflows, something has to give. This is why strategic planning becomes essential.

I share a practical approach to mapping your year by quarters, identifying periods of heightened demands, and adjusting health goals accordingly. This isn't about making excuses but making intelligent choices that support long-term success. Perhaps summer's social calendar makes it less ideal for strict nutrition plans, while winter's relative quiet offers perfect opportunities for focused training.

Whatever challenges you're facing, remember that adaptation isn't weakness—it's wisdom. Take time to assess your current season, adjust your approach accordingly, and keep moving forward. And if you're dealing with something that feels overwhelming, don't hesitate to seek expert guidance. Your journey doesn't have to be perfect to be powerful.

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Speaker 1:

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Heart to Heart with Hads. I hope you guys are having a fantastic week. Today was like 65 degrees all day and it felt so freaking nice, because I don't remember the last time it was this cool and it was almost like holy crap, it's fall, let's go so slay. Anyways, I had a little bit of a mental breakdown earlier today. First things first. I got some labs done. I got autoimmune lab markers done and they showed up as positive. So like some sort of autoimmune and I know this is common, this happens a lot, but a lot of autoimmune can be caused by gut.

Speaker 1:

I've been working with my coach for a long time. You know shout out, dan. We've been working together for fitness and today we parted our ways and it was really sad for me because that's been somebody that I confided in with my health for the past three years and so it felt like this was kind of a like coach breakup in a sense. I don't know how to explain it, but it's just kind of hard whenever you've put so much into somebody, like he's put so much into me and I put so much of my trust in him. So it's kind of just a bittersweet moment, but I just kind of wanted to use that as my talking point of the day Of there's seasons for everything and just appreciating every single season that you're in and not every season is going to be sunshine and rainbows and butterflies, and I feel like I've been in a season of non-sunshine, rainbows and butterflies for a while. I guess different aspects of your life bring about different things. So, for instance, I moved out of my mom's and while that was something that was sunshine and rainbows in the sense of like I'm moving out on my own, I'm, you know, spreading my wings, it was also sort of scary in a season of growth because I had not fully lived on my own. And now we're approaching three months and I'm starting to finally feel good and at home. And it's taken a really long time for me to feel that way, but I feel that way now and so that's exciting. But, as I'm saying, there's different aspects or seasons in your life. But, like I would say, you know, within my clients and my job, my career, it's sunshine and rainbows. I love it, it's going so well and it's going to continue to flourish.

Speaker 1:

Now, when it comes to my own health, it's not been sunshine and rainbows and butterflies. And for the longest time I thought okay, well, if I have problems, then I'm not fit to help other people with their problems. And that's not true, because no two people are going to have the same issues. And just because I can't resolve my own doesn't mean I can't resolve others and still help them get to their goals, because I'm literally doing it every single day. But there's just this thing that'll creep up in my mind and then it kind of just plays a trickle effect on everything else. So I've been really just kind of sitting with the negative emotion that I have towards my how I'm feeling about my own health issues and I'm not going to let it define me or an impact me or affect my ability to keep showing up for myself and my people. Yeah, it causes issues. Yeah, it's makes me nutrient deficient, which sucks, because then I don't have as much energy and all sorts of things. But I'm actively working to bring down the inflammation I started.

Speaker 1:

Today I can share with my meals. I have had three meals and it's been rice turkey, olive oil, carrots was one of the meal rice turkey, coconut oil, strawberry, blueberry not a lot, not a lot of strawberry and blueberry, and then for dinner I had rice, chicken, carrots, olive oil, and then I had some grapes and a kiwi, and that's all I'm going to have today, and it's not a lot of food. But whenever you're trying to kind of starve out the bacteria, you need to make sure that you're not adding in more bacteria. And so what I found was that whenever I don't have a lot of potatoes and vegetables and fruits which is all the things that you would think would be healthy my stomach feels better, and it's because whenever you're, when you give your body foods that are like potatoes and vegetables and fruits, those things can ferment in your gut and cause issues if you already have some bacterial overgrowth going on. Now, this is not for those who don't have bacterial overgrowth going on, and so how do you know you have bacterial overgrowth going on? That's if you're eating all your fiber and yet you're still constipated or you have diarrhea or you have gas that's persistent all the time. That's how you know there's fermentation going on plus bloating. Now, if you simply add fiber in, you know, do all the things that you need to do in order to make sure that things are properly moving, then that doesn't apply to you. You don't have some sort of dysbiosis going on. You just didn't have enough fiber to have persistent daily bowels. So there really is a difference between some gut dysbiosis going on and then just overall making sure that your gut is running smoothly, that you're having the daily bowel movements.

Speaker 1:

Now I don't want to make the whole podcast kind of topic about this, but I basically wanted just this podcast episode to be on how to persevere through each season and how to kind of set goals through each season of your life. I actually recently had a client come to me not come to me shit or check in and I was like, okay, so kind of where's your head at with where were you wanting to move forward from here? You know, as far as your goals go, and things like that. She's like I don't really know. I just know that Q4, which is the holiday season October, november, december is going to be a very hectic month for me. She has a job where there's a lot of things that she does during the holiday seasons to make sure that things come to life a lot of things that she does during the holiday seasons to make sure that things come to life.

Speaker 1:

And this brought up a really good point for me, because there's always going to be seasons in our life where we're going to have the capacity to push and there's going to be seasons in our life where we don't have as much capacity to push and we have to pull back a little bit more. So say, you are in this season wherever things are really stressful and there's a lot going on, you maybe can't be as consistent with nutrition because or consistent in the sense of I can't be hitting my macros and eating my meals at this time and going to the gym this many days a week and and that's okay, that's going to happen, and so it's kind of just puzzling the pieces together of like, okay, during this season of my life, I'm going to prioritize this. In this season, I'm going to prioritize this, and it's kind of just auto regulation is what my one of my coaches, dr Lakin, said, and I was like you know, this is really cool. This kind of goes back to the cycle syncing too.

Speaker 1:

Whenever you're in different seasons of your menstrual cycle, you focus on productivity over being more my gosh, I think I have to sneeze. I sure did Productivity over more chilling out, relaxing calm. Chilling out, relaxing calm. So I would say. The same thing goes for whenever you're in seasons of life and I'm not saying that it's a cop out for you to just not care about anything just because it's going to be a busy season, just because your kids doing competitive sports from fall to winter or whatever it is. It doesn't give you an excuse, but you can change things around in your life to make other things more of a priority.

Speaker 1:

So right now I'm going to have to focus on okay, I'm probably not going to be able to train super hard in the gym because I need to get this inflammation in my gut down. I'm probably not going to be able to spend a ton of money on things that aren't really getting me towards my goals, because investing in your health is a lot and that's a sacrifice. And a lot of people don't really think about that until you know they start to not feel good or they want to improve their health and it's like, okay, I'm going to actually have to cut back on things so that I can prioritize this thing. That's only going to help me later on down the road, and I think that's hard for a lot of people to grasp because they think, oh, this is just not the right time. Not the right time to do this, and the reality is there's never going to be a right time.

Speaker 1:

You just have to figure out what is your biggest priority in that moment. And it may not be your health, and that sucks, that's okay. It may not be your fitness, which it should be. Your priority should always be making sure that you're in good health, so that not only are you supporting yourself for later on down the road, but you're making sure that you feel good, so that you can support your kids and your husband and your whoever, so that you're feeling good for them, so that you can show up for them and that you're not always down in the dumps. I know that because I'm not feeling good them, so that you can show up for them and that you're not always down in the dumps. I know that because I'm not feeling good, I'm affecting Brock, I'm affecting my mom's worrying about me, or my sister is worrying about me because I've told them hey, this is what I'm dealing with now. Or you know just anybody in my circle. They're already thinking about me, worrying about me now. So I don't really even know where I was going off with that tangent. If I'm going to be so for real right now. I'm looking out the window right now and my mind is just going 90 miles a minute here.

Speaker 1:

But all that being said, seasons you're talking about seasons of life and just doing things that are going to fit within that season, that are not going to make things so crazy and so much worse. And back to one of my clients. I'll just say her name, haley she. When she said that to me, it kind of clicked to me of like, hey, more people could actually realize this. But actually kudos to her for being in tune with her body and knowing, hey, I actually probably shouldn't put my body through a hard, stressful cut right now. I probably shouldn't be, you know, going super freaking heavy at the gym, making my intensity through the roof, because your body only perceives stress as one thing. And so whenever you're having the stress from working you know 12 hours and are used to eight hours and you know going home and being a mom and then going to the gym and training super hard and then adding a calorie deficit on top of that, your body's just like whoa, this is too much. There's such a thing as a stress bucket. Whenever your stress bucket gets too high, it overflows out of the sides and that just makes things worse. So really working on okay, what can I, what's actually going to fill up my stress bucket? Quote unquote per se. It quote unquote per se. That's not going to make me feel like a total freaking scum bag.

Speaker 1:

So the biggest takeaway from this I think I've already mentioned just focusing on what you can do within your season so that actually supports you in your priorities. But I feel like a a big takeaway from this and some like an actionable step that you could do, is sitting down and writing out okay, where do I want to be in 12 months from now within my health, within my wealth, like health, wealth, relationships. I think that's it really. I mean, like those are the three things I guess emotional well-being could be thing like specifically be so clear cut with what you want so that you can do actionable steps to get there, and then, after you have that, write down the seasons or quarters so January, february, march, april, may, june, july, august, september, october, november, december. Like put those in four different kind of categories and put in those things what you have going on, what your kids have going on.

Speaker 1:

You know what's going to be going on at work. Is this more, oh, summertime, or is this more holidays? Things could get a little bit more stressful at work, or whatever it is for you, and so that way you can really see, okay, where can I really allocate my time in each of these spots for each different thing, so that I can get closer to my goals. Okay, maybe during the holiday season I'm a little less lenient on my nutrition, because I want to make sure, because spending time with my family and going out to eat in parties is what I prioritize. Now, for me, I don't prioritize going out and going to a lot of holiday parties. That's not something I do, and so for me, I'd be fine if I did a cut during that time, because there's only a couple holidays in there. I know a couple holidays aren't going to ruin all of my progress. Now, maybe summer for me, that's when I'm a little bit more traveling, so I could be a little bit more relaxed on my nutrition.

Speaker 1:

Everyone's different, and so that's why I think it's cool to kind of break up okay, how can I be most consistent in these months or how can I invest here, because I'll be making more money here. There's so many different things and once you can just be strategic and really think about where your priorities land throughout different parts of the year, then I feel like it will kind of take more of the stress away from you, because you won't be thinking I have to be 100% on all the time and if I'm not, and I I'm so stressed out about this event and that event and whatnot. And so I really just came up with this because I loved the idea of it and I don't know if a lot of people really think about things in this way, but I do and I'm like, oh, I know September is the last month of this quarter. I really want to close out this quarter strong, but you know the last kind of quarter of summer going into quarter four, which is usually, you know, big quarter, you know holidays, all the things, and that's usually big. But I want to end this one really, really strong. I want to give it my. But I want to end this one really really strong. I want to give it my all. I want to give September my all, go all in, do all the things, whatever it is. So I hope this kind of helps you guys.

Speaker 1:

Just remember that you can do thing in seasons, and sometimes things will come up and you don't even know and you have to adapt to it and really really not let things get to you that are out of your control. And this kind of goes back to what I was saying in the beginning of like I'm sitting here, I'm the walking embodiment of what I do. I'm literally health with heads. That's who I am, and there's some things that are simply out of my control. If I am so overly stressed, that's going to impact my gut. And, yeah, I can control my stress to an extent.

Speaker 1:

There comes a point in time where it's like, okay, I'm doing everything that I can and the only thing that would really make me less stressed if I was on a vacation for six months right, and that's not feasible. So doing little, tiny, actionable things but at the same time, that's not always going to be what works best. So now it's once I can finally figure out what's going on with my gut. It's going to be about working to manage my stress better so that it doesn't come back again. We're going to have little stressful periods in our life and it's how we can manage them over time and in the moment, so that we don't keep relapsing over and over and over again. So I know I kind of talked about like 10 different things in this.

Speaker 1:

I really just wanted to share what was on my mind and kind of the insights and takeaways that you could probably get from this and things that I've learned about myself and how I can really adapt and not let things get in my way. Yeah, it's okay to sit there and be sad and mourn and feel like shit, but then you have to get up and you have to do something about it, because you cannot sit there and be depressed. So this is your sign If you're dealing with something and you're sick and tired of it, go take action, go get help from somebody who knows what they're doing. That's what I did, that's what I'm doing. I inquired with a coach who is very, very well versed in functional medicine more than I am and so I think it'll be great for me. I'm going to be able to learn from him, as he's teaching me what to do.

Speaker 1:

So hope this guy, hope this guys, hope this helps you guys. It gives you guys some good insight, gives you a little bit of motivation, a little bit of spark on. Okay, what can I do from here to get to where I want to go next and not let little things stop me or get in the way of me getting to where I want to be. So love you guys. Bye.