[00:00:00] You are listening to Episode 251 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast.
Welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place for creating the peace of mind you need to be the best mom you were created by God to be. If you want to bring more balance, more joy and more peace to your motherhood, this is the place for you. I'm your host, Certified Life Coach at Catholic Mom, Danielle Thienel.
In the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, let's get started.
Hello, everyone. Thanks for joining me. This is Danielle, your host of the Peaceful Mind Podcast. And today we are going to be talking about why getting healthy feels so hard and what to do about it. But before we jump in, I just want to tell you that if you're listening to this podcast, when it is first coming out, which is at the very end of 2024, and you are someone who is thinking about the holidays, we just had one, and then we've got some more [00:01:00] upcoming and then the new year. If Physical health is something that is on your mind and you want to prioritize and have some goals towards attaining better physical health in the new year, then I'm excited to announce that I right now am running an inaugural program called 10 percent Healthier and I want to just talk to you about it at the beginning of this podcast in case you are interested now would be the perfect time to join me to get more information you want to go to daniellethienel.com/health and that link to it will also be in the show notes of this podcast. But basically, it is a 10 week program to work with me personally in a group setting, one on one where we are going to unlock 10 percent more physical health for you in just 10 weeks.
So in this program, [00:02:00] we're going to focus on what I think is the winning formula. And in the rest of the episode, I'm going to talk to you more about this formula and it can combat your feelings about it being so hard to be able to see these improvements in your health like you want. So we are going to aim to make a huge difference in your physical health and to your overall physical well being by focusing on both the biology and the psychology of getting healthier with lots of small goals, adding up to really big, huge results and effects.
So in this program, you're going to have my personal expert coaching. We're going to actually not just work on the mindset, which is so key, right? This is part of the formula, but actionable tools, right? And I'm going to be supporting you along the way because I'm also personally on this journey myself.
As [00:03:00] many of you, if you've been listening to the podcast, know that I recently had a big milestone birthday and it's one of those birthdays that just has you reevaluating your health. Once you hit this age, you then open yourself up to all these other kinds of things that will come your way and you're now eligible for certain tests and shots and things like that.
But again, in this program, I want you to be able to go to daniellethienel.com/health to find out more, but just know if you're somebody who want to know how to have sustainable health changes, when you realize that it's your mindset that is holding you back we're going to have some breakthroughs there.
You're going to have some practical health tools and techniques, some that you might know about some, and you might not have tried before, and then I'll be there to support you through them. And we are going to just show you the power of small wins, which we're going to talk about a little bit more in this podcast.
I really do believe that the secret ingredient to becoming healthier is to [00:04:00] have mindset coaching, to have support and accountability, to not do it on your own, and to really follow a proven small step framework, because I really do believe that small changes really are the most effective to it being, like, long lasting.
And with this group, with this program, we are going to focus on how really not being overwhelmed by it all, but making 10 percent improvement. Imagine if you, if you worked out 10 percent more, if you dropped your cholesterol levels by 10%, if you upgraded your water intake by 10%, if you If you slept 10 percent longer than you are right now, like all of these things are going to add up to big change.
So I would love for you to explore more about this program. And there is inaugural first time I'm running this program pricing [00:05:00] and it will just help you have real momentum in this new year and just having the support in this new year. If physical health is something that you want.
With all that said, I really want to help you kind of see why it's so hard for us when we decide we do want to take on helping our physical goals. And then all of a sudden we're just like, Oh, like how do we overcome this obstacle when we're looking to make these physical changes in our life, but our brain tells us that it is so hard and makes us want to retreat, right?
Sometimes retreat to the couch, to the refrigerator but our brain definitely goes back to our past attempts, or it's looking around now and saying, okay, it's going to be hard because I don't have enough time. And because I have like more kids or I'm just spread too thin right now, but the really the bottom line is, we're always going to be wanting to [00:06:00] put a focus and a priority on our health.
And if that one time thing was the obstacle, your brain tells you, I don't have enough time for this, then go ahead and listen to last week's podcast where I announced my new book, The Divine Time Solution, and if you haven't already, go ahead and get your copy to that. You will again have access to that in the show notes.
Okay, but today, let me give you some real help. If you're noticing how getting healthier somehow feels harder than it should. Like, you know, you should drink more water, but somehow days go by and that water bottle just sits there untouched on your counter.
Or you plan to move more. You're like, now's the time. This is the time. But then soccer practice runs and grocery store trips or another week passes without those walks that you planned. You're not alone in this, okay? Just the other day. And I found myself, I've even printed out a tracker for the amount of water. And I have [00:07:00] just the other day looked back and I saw that I only have two little water kind of check boxes when I really want to do five.
Okay. So it feels hard. And let's just talk about why this journey feels so challenging. This is my philosophy, and then this is where my new 10 Percent Healthier program hits right on this first part,. This is what I believe, and I see it in my coaching practice when there's other goals to be had, is that we're all trying to change too much at once.
We decide on Sunday night that starting tomorrow, we're going to wake up at 5 a. m. and I'm going to drink a hundred ounces of water all day, right? I'm going to work out for an hour. I'm going to meditate and pray for an hour. And oh, and all while I'm doing that, I'm still managing like what I have on my to do list for my family and my children and my business and all of that.
So, when we [00:08:00] inevitably can't maintain a, what I'm calling like a complete lifestyle overhaul, then we feel, we feel overwhelmed and then we feel like, well, might as well not even make that change. We'll just keep life like status quo. But here's the thing. This is where my cyclone mom metaphor comes in.
This is what I've learned both personally going through it myself and through working with other busy moms that the problem isn't you, but it's, it's the approach you're taking towards getting physically healthier. The massive health overhauls that we attempt, they're actually just setting us up for failure.
So let me share something personal, right? I've mentioned when I turned 50, I realized I wanted to build more muscle strength. And my first instinct was to commit to hour long I'd say gym sessions, but like I have weights here and at my home [00:09:00] and I had actually joined something a couple of years ago where it was, you know, a long term, like video that you watch that helped you build your muscle strength.
And so my brain told me, Oh, I need to just do that. And I had just too much stuff going on the last time I attempted it. Right. And then my brain told me, well I watch my son, right, my teenage son, I watch him go to the gym every day. My brain told me the same thing. It's like, well, I've got to do it. Like at least five days a week, maybe I take the weekends off, right?
I saw how I went right back to that thought that I needed to do so much and I catch myself being in what I help you listeners find out is that like overwhelming all or nothing thinking because I really looked at what I was working on right now in my life and what was my priority priorities and these hour long commitments, I just know in my [00:10:00] gut they're impossible to upkeep for me.
So here, so here I am like, okay, you've hit this certain age, you see yourself in your body and what it can do and how you see it in the mirror and you know that what you do want is more strength, more body tone And you want to get this resistance training. That's so important at this time of your life.
And then my brain was like, okay, now we're going to just go all in and we're going to just do that. And it said every day and it said hour long, right? But then thank goodness I've reached this point where you see actually works. Is instead of trying to transform my routine in such like I'd say like a 180, I just want to aim what would it look like if I added a small increment of those things back to my life and I'm calling it 10 percent better, right?
What if I started out with just [00:11:00] 10 minutes of weight trainings a day, just 10 minutes. Now some of you may hear that what my brain. Used to think, and it would just be like, that's not enough. Okay, well, I'm happy to report, right, that it has been working for me that for the past three weeks. And by the time this episode comes out, I believe I'll be able to say that it's six weeks consistently, I decided to do 10 minutes of weightlifting a day.
And then I did tap into my son who, who goes to the gym and weightlifts, you know, his help on what he thought was, you know, a good routine pattern and it's like arms and shoulders one day, chest and back the next day, you know, lower, lower body the next right. And he just, and I've been doing 10 minutes and this compound.
Increase in focusing on my health in smaller chunks has what has allowed me to reach my goal of [00:12:00] becoming stronger, and it was not at all as hard what I actually was fighting is that thought that my brain was saying not enough. But I was going in with an experiment of, okay, what if it was just a small amount each day or each of the five days of the week, and then if I did it for several weeks on top, I have been feeling so much stronger, it works, right?
I just started with 10 minutes of weights a day, just 10 minutes. That's, that's what I could do even on my busy days, right? Even when things got a little crazy, it wasn't, you know, a complete transformation to my dedication of working out on my body for an hour, right? But it was about small, achievable improvements.
So for you, what if that's adding one extra glass of water each day? What if it's a five minute walk after lunch, which you can check out movement and helping your like [00:13:00] glucose levels if you walk after you eat? What if it's going to bed 15 minutes earlier? What if it's adding one vegetable to your day?
This is what I want you to see when we think that getting healthy feels hard and so we don't. I'm saying that one of the steps of what to do. It's about seeing that the power isn't in the size of change. It's in the fact that you choose something that you can actually sustain. Another reason why getting healthier feels so hard is.
That we focus on just the actions that it will take, or at least our brain thinks that it takes, would be necessary to becoming healthier, as opposed to prioritizing the mindset behind taking the actions of getting healthier. So, It's normal, right? Our brain tells us, okay, we [00:14:00] look in the mirror, we say, okay, this is a problem.
I'm not strong enough, or I have, you know, a little bit more weight on, or you, you look and you're like, yes, I desire to drink 64 ounces of water a day, but I only have 10%. Or you look at the blood work numbers that come back from your doctor and in my case this year, it was a higher cholesterol number than I wanted, right?
And I look at that and I focus immediately. My brain goes, Okay, this is an emergency. This isn't good. What do I need to do? In order to change this and as soon as that happens your brain will go think of all the things that it needs to do right in my case with the cholesterol was like oh okay I've got to cut out all those certain kinds of foods that means that I'm you know I'm going to be unsatisfied all the time or all those fun things that are like rich or like that I like on a regular basis I'm going to have to stop that and that's going to be so painful and so hard and so then your brain it will then [00:15:00] have you saying.
Yeah, let's just forget it, right? So instead, what I want you to see is that it is normal for it to do that little kind of freak out and go into like, yep, I just need to get into action and do this. But what I want you to see. Is that if you stop and really find out what your beliefs are behind that, what your mindset is about the changes that you would have to make in my case, like to lower my cholesterol, when I'm believing I will have to cut out all those foods, you want to stop and pause.
And you want to just question that. Like, is that true? Could it just be less of the foods. In my case, I'll tell you what happened is I did realize that when I have my cup of coffee in the morning, I was putting heavy cream in it as my cream. And when I got my cholesterol numbers, My brain wanted to be like, [00:16:00] all right, well, can't have coffee anymore or can't have any, you know, cream in it at all.
And I did the shift of like, how could I just make it a little bit easier to affect my cholesterol in a positive way? And what are some other options or ideas? And that's where it came from. You know, you go to half and half and then there's the like oat milk options or almond milk options or things like that.
I'm not positive what the outcome will be. I haven't redone my numbers yet, but at least I'm stepping into experimenting and at least I have this new action, but it's coming from this more of this place of ease. Having to give it up altogether sounded so, like, overwhelming and so detrimental to my brain.
But it wasn't until I have to stop and pause and question what my brain was saying. This is why I want you to see that what makes it hard to get healthy is literally our own human brain [00:17:00] keeping us from making changes, telling us that it'll be so hard, so much that we believe it, that it'll stop. And this is where, when you have mindset awareness, when perhaps you're getting coaching, perhaps you're doing some exercises to journal or to kind of just gain and notice what your brain is doing.
This is how you make your health goals more tangible. Easily attainable. And the last point that I want to bring to you about what to do when getting healthy feels hard, when you've decided this is a priority and this is a goal for you, and that is we decide to go it alone. Right. It is like, I'm going to go make all these changes and we either keep it to ourself, right?
Because if we do that, then we'll be like, no one would be the wiser if I don't follow through on this. [00:18:00] Or we maybe have are carrying around some embarrassment or shame about it. Maybe we think I should be able to do it alone. Maybe we go in and say, you know, I've already, I don't know, in my case, maybe bought access to an app and, and we're thinking I should just use that myself that, you know, can't waste that money that I already spent there.
And I want to offer that when we take on physical health wellbeing goals, that we want to make it less hard and difficult and more likely to achieve it if we decide not to go it alone. So if that can look in so many different ways, but just think about how what you've done in the past when you've joined with somebody else, when you had a girlfriend and you guys decided to walk together and meet.
She was expecting you. So you more were more likely to show up or walking with a friend [00:19:00] could be more fun because you can catch up and talk about things and learn new things and that kind of thing. So notice how I really want to show you if you are someone who your physical health goals. Are you thinking like if that is something that you want?
Are you thinking that I should be able to do this by myself? That is often something that makes you going down the path of getting healthier or harder. So today on this podcast, your takeaways that I want you to leave with if you are somebody you just want to know why is getting healthy why is it so hard? Right? We have so much at our disposal to be able to take advantage of getting healthier. Isn't this, they always hear this. It's like the billion, gajillion dollar industry, right? And I just wanted to simply offer what, what I think you all, if you want, this could do about it. And that is number one, that we don't go for a total overhaul, that I want you to think [00:20:00] that if you have health goals, that going for a Incremental, small changes over time will add up to the big overhaul that you're after.
Number two, if you can take the focus off from the action of what you should do and put it more towards getting clear and understanding and notice and becoming more aware of your current mindset and then tackling that as your obstacle. Then I, then I guarantee that if that happens, then you are going to more easily and more likely and probably in a more enjoyable way, take the action that right now you would think is the answer to getting more physically fit.
And then the third thing to make getting healthier feel less hard is to not embark on the goals and journey alone. It's to get the support, some guidance, some accountability. What [00:21:00] sounds fun? Who can you, who can you talk to it about it? Who has the same similar goals so that you can bounce ideas off of each other or just making like finding a partner to do the actions of whether it's like working out, tracking your water talking about, like, getting more sleep and, and that kind of thing how can you not go it alone?
Okay, everyone. So, those are what I want to offer that's going to help you what you can do when feeling healthy gets hard and you want to actually get more healthy for some reason if you find yourself in your life at that point right now.
If you're looking for what I said and offered said, yes, those are the three things I can see has been keeping me stuck before, then, then go ahead to daniellethienel.com/health and just look what I have to say there about this new program that I'm going to offer where you, it's going to be a small group.
Okay, I'm looking for no more than six participants at this [00:22:00] point and it's an inaugural group. So the investment is the lowest that it will ever be offered and you will get the answer to what I've offered here, where you will have the support, the guidance, the expert coaching, it will be with me. And you will, so you won't have to go it alone.
And the purpose of this is to show you we are not going for a total overhaul. I'm trying to offer today on why that is actually the best path to make changes in your physical health is to do it in actually 10 percent increases. So go check that out. If you're interested, if not, and you have your own goals right now, consider those three points to what to do when getting healthy feels harder.
And as always, I'm wishing you much peace and peace of mind on any of your journeys through your goals. [00:23:00] And if you want more support on any of those in the categories of time, money, emotional well being, physical health, spiritual well being, relationships, your career/business, I would love to connect with you.
And you can always find all the details on how to do that in the show notes or at my website. Thank you so much for being here, for being a listener, for those of you that are listening in real time. This is the end of a year, and so this is always a really good time to kind of evaluate your goals.
And I just wish you so much wonderfulness at this time of year. And of course, any listeners, whenever you're finding this podcast. And as always, I will see you next week, and may peace be with you always.
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Become an empowered mom who knows how to bring about the changes you desire, no matter the circumstances. Whether you need one-on-one guidance to get there, prefer a group coaching program with like-minded women or a self-study course I've got you covered. Explore my private one-on-one packages. Join my Busy to Balanced group life coaching program or delve into my signature course Divine Time. To find out which path is right for you. Let's meet and see what's the best fit. Schedule a free call with me.
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Until next time, peace be with you always.
