Just As Well, The Women's Health Podcast - Anna Victoria on Infertility Struggles and Making Healthy Changes Last

Episode Date: July 23, 2020

So, we thought we’d try something a little different this week. After all, aren't some of the richest sources of inspiration for positive change often found when listening to smart, switched on people share their personal stories? We're confident that will be the case with this week's guest: personal trainer, global fitness superstar and founder of the Fit Body App, Anna Victoria. At the age of 32, she has already been on her fair share of health journeys and here she chats to Women’s Health’s Editor-in-Chief Claire Sanderson about the lessons she’s learned along the way. Expect an unfiltered account of Anna’s struggles with unexplained infertility and IVF plus how, now she’s pregnant (and due any day now) she plans to raise a strong, resilient and self-confident little girl. They also discuss Anna’s personal evolution from someone who thought nothing of eating Maccies thrice daily (yep, really) to a woman who lives and breathes a healthy lifestyle so much so that she’s been able to amass a 1.2 million-strong community of women around her passion and knowledge for living well. Oh, and there are tonnes of tips and tactics you can apply to optimise your health - no matter what stage you're at on your own journey. Join Women's Health on Instagram: @womenshealthuk Join Anna Victoria on Instagram: @annavictoria Join Claire Sanderson on Instagram: @clairesanderson Topics: From IVF and infertility to pregnancy: one woman's journey to motherhood Pregnancy workout pro tips What to know when starting a fitness journey Why the 80:20 nutrition rule is so important for mental health Raising strong girls: how Anna plans to do it Like what you’re hearing? We'd love if you could rate and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, as it really helps other people find the show. Also, remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, so you’ll never miss an episode. Got a goal in mind? Shoot us a message on Instagram putting ‘Going for Goal’ at the start of your message and our experts could be helping you achieve your health and wellness ambition in an upcoming episode.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You are listening to Going for Goal, the weekly women's health podcast. My name is Roshin Derbyshoyne. I'm a senior editor on Women's Health, and this is your weekly chance to plug in, be inspired and get expert advice on how to achieve the health and wellness goals that matter most to you. How are you all doing out there this week? We're getting tons of episode requests coming through, so it's so heartening to know that even with everything going on, you lot are thinking of ways to

improve your health, fitness, emotional well-being and self-esteem. To quote people much cooler than myself on social media, we love to see it. So next week, we'll be getting to those and we'll be back with an episode that guides you towards a specific goal. But for now, we're going to do something a little different and a little simpler and a little more stripped back. Because, as those of us in the business of storytelling, though, some of the richest sources of inspiration for positive change are people talking about their own personal journeys. And I'm sure you'll agree that is 100% the case with this week's guest. Anna Victoria is founder of the Fit Body app with 1.2 million followers watching her every move on Instagram.

She's one of the world's leading fitness influencers. And as you'll hear, she's also among the most articulate. In today's conversation, she opens up to Women's Health's Editor-in-Chief Claire Sanderson about everything from her gradual transition from Daly McDonald's Eater to someone who genuinely loves living a healthy lifestyle, to her battle with unexplained infatility, and how now she is pregnant and her daughter's due any day now, she plans to nurture her daughter's self-esteem.

Oh, and she also introduces us to a get-it-done workout concept called robot mode that is absolute genius in its simplicity. Enjoy, guys. Over to Claire. Hi, Anna. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited, chat. We are talking in afternoon time here in the UK, but you are in America. So have you got a particularly early early early to chat with us today? Yeah, I have. But that's great. Getting a good, an early start to the day is always a good thing. You're just weeks away from giving birth to your baby girl. Yeah, I am 30, I'll be 37 weeks on Friday in just a few days. Wow, exciting. But how are you feeling? I know how tough these last few weeks can be. Yeah, you know, it's funny because I'm so. such a glass half-fold type person that like it's hard for me to complain about something I'm so excited about but like also considering we struggle to conceive a lot but I do think that that it's

also important to like be okay with acknowledging that it's hard you know and it's not feeling great and that's I'm getting to that point where I'm like I'm so happy but I'm ready to not be pregnant anymore you know the tiredness kicks in doesn't it you know what's so funny is I'm still able to work out, thankfully, and I'm feeling okay in my workouts. It's through the rest of the day, like just even walking to the mailbox, I'm, I get exhausted. I don't, I don't know how, you know, there's such a difference because during my workouts, I'm fine, but in the day-to-day, yeah, the fatigue is strong. Well, I remember when I, I have two children, mine are eight and four now, but in those last stages, when you're laying on your bed,

and you're a bit like a penguin that's fallen over because you can't sit up, so you, you have to kind of roll yourself out of bed or get your partner to sort of kick you in the back to get you out of bed. Exactly. Yeah, my husband is now, like he has a second job as helping me get up, you know, and down. It is wonderful, wonderful news because you have been so very open about the agony and pain you went through in your journey to conceive your daughter. and you have given such a beautiful interview to Woman's Health magazine, which is out on August 5th. And I have to say, when I read it, I cried. If you could, let's take us back to your, when you first started realizing that conceiving a baby wasn't going to come quite as easily to you as you'd hoped it would do. Yeah, it definitely was at the one year mark.

So I would say prior to that, you know, I had in my head that just the snap of the fingers, you know, and I would get pregnant. I'm one of seven children. My mom had no issue conceiving any of us, my sister, you know, my oldest sister that has two, same thing. Um, so I just figured like, you know, it wouldn't be that hard. And, um, I remember being told, oh, it can take up from six months to 12 months for a healthy couple. And I remember thinking, ha, okay, yeah, sure. You know, like, it's going to take us like probably three months. And, you know, it was at that one year mark that I was thinking, okay, we should have conceived by now. And it really was also taking a toll on our, on our marriage. It was getting stressful. It was, you know, making the process not fun at all. And so, you know, we started

going to a fertility clinic and talking to a reproductive endocrinologist. They ran, you know, all of my labs, did all this blood work, did multiple exams, and everything kept coming back, quote unquote, perfect. They couldn't. find any reason why we haven't conceived. We hadn't conceived by that point. And so I was diagnosed with unexplained in fertility, which is both like a blessing and a curse because, you know, nothing's wrong, but at the same time when nothing's wrong, there's nothing to treat. And it makes it a bit more difficult to, you know, to have a successful pregnancy. So, so journey was invasive and often painful and crushing disappointment. And, you know,

anxiety. You can take us through the process because I'm sure there's many women listening that will empathize or maybe going through the same thing themselves at the moment. Yeah, you know, we started with doing two IUIs, which are intrauterine insemination. So it's like one step, you know, below IVF. And, you know, these weren't, it wasn't as invasive. You can think of it kind of very similarly to like what a pap smear would feel like. But what was really hard about the IOUIs was the hormone medication that they put you on. I was on let's resolve. And just mentally and emotionally, how it impacts you is actually a lot more than you would think. And then again, how that impacts your relationship. You know, like there's a lot of little intricacies of trying to

conceive that impacts your relationship that make it, you know, definitely the hardest part about the process. And when it's supposed to be such a beautiful thing, that you're creating a life, you know, I would say that's definitely the hardest part of it all. And so for that reason, after the two IOUIs were unsuccessful, we decided to take a break and to just not try and just go back to being a normal married couple, enjoying each other's time. And if we hadn't conceived by that fall, we were going to do IVF. So at this point in time, this was spring 2019. we had been trying for almost a year and a half. Fast forward to the fall, we still hadn't conceived. And,

you know, they always say, like, oh, when you stop trying, it's going to happen, you know, or just stop, stop thinking about it. And that is like one of the most, I don't know what the right term is for it, but it's, it's very dismissive and almost puts a bit of, like, of the blame on the woman for saying, well, you're just too stressed and you're just worrying about it too much, and that's why you're not conceiving. And personally, like, I'm someone that does my best work under stress. Like, when I'm stressed, it's go time. And I, that's when I normally shine. And in my, in my professional life anyways. And so just knowing that, I was like, you know, but that's not me. I'm not panicked. I'm not super stressed about it. So it was really hard to hear that and very

dismissive. And it didn't happen. You know, again, and that's, it's kind of hard when people tell women like, oh, just stop trying and it's going to happen. When you tell them that and they stop trying and it still doesn't happen, you know, it kind of sets them up, you know, to have false hopes. So then we started IVF. And I think that this was, this was challenging in a different way from the IUIs. I actually feel like mentally and emotionally, the hormones did not affect me. me as much during with the IVF medication. But physically, this is where IVF is really serious because you have for the egg retrieval, you have three to four injections in your stomach, sometimes in your legs or in your glutes a day for about 10 to 11 days. I'm not a fan of needles. You know, I could never

do my own injections. My husband did all of them for me. So, you know, it's just, it was a different part of the process and still emotionally trying because you just don't know how it's going to end up. It's a very expensive process. Thankfully, ours was successful on the first IVF cycle. And we even have some frozen embryos on ice for when we're ready for the next ones. And you know what I have to say, as I was going through the process prior to conceiving, I had several women reach out to me that said, you know, I know this is hard to hear right now, but when you do conceive, you will understand why it took so long because this baby is who you were meant to have. And she wasn't ready two years ago, you know? And I had heard that and I was like, that's really beautiful, but it's hard to like be okay, to still be okay with the process in the meantime because you just want the baby now, you know. But as now I'm pregnant and thinking about our daughter, like it is something that looking back, it makes me go, okay, it was all worth it. So you opened up about your journey and about your struggles on social media.

Was it early 2019 that you did a video to your audience to be honest about what you were going through? And I imagine that opened the floodgates of women reaching out to you. Absolutely. It was, I believe, February 2018. It had been, you know, a little bit over a year that we've been trying. And I always knew that at some point I would talk about our TTC journey. I never, I really kind of was holding out hope that we would be pregnant and I would share about it, you know, that it had been a year. And each month was passing that we weren't getting pregnant. And it was like, you know what? I just need to talk about this now because obviously it's not happening. And I just with my platform, what I've always strived to do is to help women understand and know that they're not alone in any struggle in life. And like that initially started with my fitness journey and sharing about my personal fitness journey and those struggles and then, you know, of my clients and the

woman that I that I help and turning that into something to be empowered by. And then like I just, I just knew that in that moment, I couldn't, I almost felt. bad that like I couldn't be invested in my own fitness journey and not even some other women because I had this really big struggle going on and I kind of felt like I was just hiding like a big dirty secret you know not dirty but like just that I was not being true to my audience and so I shared about it both as a I think I feel like it was a form of therapy for me to be like to get the weight off my shoulders and to share about it and also to hope fully help women that were going through the same thing. And what I didn't realize is there are

thousands countless women that that night that I shared, I actually had an event to go to, and I couldn't be on my phone. It might have been for the better because I came back to my phone a few hours later to thousands of messages from women saying, like, I had no idea and I'm going through the same thing. And it just helped them feel like they're not alone. Yeah. So it was a little overwhelming, definitely in a good way, but also a sad way to know that there's so many women struggling. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear off about transferring your business when the time comes. Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do,

business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us, and Contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk, business. So your pregnancy, you've charted your pregnancy journey as well, all through your social channels, and you've filmed yourself doing workouts from your fit body app. So you mentioned also in the interview with Women's Health, there's quite a contentious issue working out when pregnant.

I did twice. I had two very healthy pregnancies. Very easy births as well. so I can support that working out, you know, especially cardio and lifting weights, etc. is so good for a healthy pregnancy. But you did come under some criticism, didn't you? Yeah, you know, pretty much as soon as I announced I was pregnant and the first workout video I posted, I started getting criticism. And then it even ramped up once I started showing more and I was more visibly pregnant. And it really shocked me because I had heard about it that woman

criticize or people criticize women that are pregnant who are active. But obviously this was my first experience with it. And it was just really, really upsetting because, you know, I know, first of all, I'm a personal trainer, you know, and I have, I got clearance for my doctors. I actually was on bed rest for my first trimester. So I wasn't working out until I got doctor's clearance. And when I did start working out, I eased into it, you know. But I think that there is, I think it's just an education piece, you know, that's missing, that people don't know that it is so safe and it is very beneficial to your pregnancy to work out. So I try to, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, you know, and use their messages as an opportunity to share that education and that information.

it's a little hard sometimes because like it stings, you know, to not take it personally. But yeah, I even just the other day got a message of like, you're so selfish, you know, like you only care about yourself, like your poor baby. And I'm just like, I don't understand how someone can make that connection. As a personal trainer, what is your advice to women who are pregnant and who want to remain fit and active? Yeah, first and foremost, they need to get their doctor's approval. And then as long as they have that, typically as long as you don't do anything new, like if you typically do strength training, like don't go try to run a marathon or vice versa. You know, like you need to do what your body is used to. And that's, you know, pretty, I would say that that's kind of the umbrella advice, except for once you get into different trimesters, there are certain things that you want to do. And I just want to take this moment to say, please pay attention to your pelvic floor health and your core, your overall core strengthening,

because after the first trimester, once the baby starts growing, you really want to be sure to avoid any crunching related move that could cause diastasis recti, which is ab separation. Something really important that a lot of women, as I've been talking about it on my Instagram, they're like, I had no idea. And that they're pregnant and that they're noticing what is called coning, which is where their stomach literally looks like a cone if they try to sit up, that is one of the first signals that you have ab separation. And it's, yeah, and it's nothing that can't be fixed, but it is something that it's an, it's an injury. So after your pregnancy, you will have to have dedicate a period of

time, probably, you know, a good few months to healing that ab separation. So it's just something that a lot of women don't know about that it's good to be aware of and to seek out a pelvic floor specialist to guide them on that journey. If I can take you back to the beginning of your fitness journey, so before you launched the Fit Body app, and when you were by your own admissions, someone who had junk food a lot was not at all engaged in a wellness journey, and you decided around 2012, I believe, that something had to change to benefit your health and you had sleep issues. Can I take you back to that time and how you felt, how that Anna was so different to the Anna that I see before me now.

Oh, goodness. Yeah, absolutely. So it was November 2012. My boyfriend at the time, now husband, and I had moved to China. And, you know, prior to that, I was in school. I got my bachelor's degree. I was working full time, going to school full time, and I was just eating McDonald's three times a day. That is pretty much what I grew up on, what I loved, you know, and it was causing health problems. But I didn't know that. There was, there's, you know, a little. lack of, you know, nutrition education, you know, in the United States and just also within my family. It wasn't talked about. So in my early 20s, I started having digestive and GI related health issues that I just kind of chalked up to, well, this is life, you know, and I didn't

realize that there was a connection with food and how you treated your body, what you put into your body. So when we moved to China, my boyfriend, Luca, at the time, who was born and raised Rome, Italy, you know, they eat very fresh, whole natural foods. He was the one that was like, you know, you might want to start looking at what you're eating. And it took me a while to ever accept that. Like I was like, no, I'm good. I love this food. I feel, I look fine. I quote unquote look fine. And but I did realize that, you know, okay, I'm, let's give this a shot and see how it goes. Probably not going to be worth my time. So we start. out on our journey to learning everything that we could about eating healthy and working out.

And this was pre-instagram, pre all the apps that are out there. And so it was just good old-fashioned Google. I just tried to research as many peer-reviewed studies that I could. And to be honest, I hated it. I hated the journey. I hated going to the gym. I hated eating healthy. I mean, of course, if you go from eating, you know, McDonald's three times a day. And it was a really tough process mentally and emotionally, more than anything. And I remember even one specific time that he was like, okay, it's time to go to the gym. And I flailed back on the bed and I was like, I don't want to go like a five-year-old child. I truly did not want to do it.

But, you know, I set out to do this and I wanted to stick to my word. And within I would say about four to eight weeks, I started to feel better, more energized. I had a significant reduction in bloating and swelling in my body. And that's kind of when I was like, okay, maybe something is happening. I still didn't love the process by any means. I would say it took me about six to nine months before I was like, I get it. This is a new lifestyle for me. And that's a long time. So I can take you back to the Anna, who unbelievably, was really reluctant to go to the gym and having, you know, childhood tantrums about it.

But those emotions, they must be, well, I know they are shared by so many women who know they have to make changes. And they know it will make them feel better eventually. But they see such a big hurdle in front of. of them and that could be motivation, it could be confidence, hugely, hugely impactful, low confidence, you know, the confidence to actually step foot into a gym who don't know what you're doing. So there's two really important points. And I think the first is to not focus on motivation. I think that we romanticize being motivated. And we think that that is the key to getting in a great workout, but it's really about being dedicated because motivation is fleeting. It's unreliable. It comes and it goes, I'm motivated probably 50% of the time, you know, and this is

something that I love doing. It's just that I would love to also watch Netflix, you know, instead. So, you know, 50% of my workouts wouldn't happen if I only relied on motivation. So it's really about acknowledging, I say, almost in a way, removing the emotional piece from it and just looking at it as this is something I promised myself that I would do, regardless of how I feel about it. I need to get it done. And just focusing on being dedicated. The other piece is what I call robot mode. So this is kind of like a mental place that I learn to tap into when I am watching Netflix and I'm like, oh, I really need to stop this episode and get my workout in. It's really hard to do that. And so what robot mode is is where the second you think about working out, you get up and you do it. Because the longer that you think about it,

the more time you give yourself to make excuses about why I can do it later or one more episode. And, you know, I look at later as never, you know, because later is going to turn into a cycle that, you know, just, yeah, it's just not, it's not going to happen. And it's, so I, for me and for my community, they very well know the term robot mode and channeling that mentality of just, getting up, getting it done. And a lot of times you'll be done so much faster than had you ignored that and just stayed on the couch, you know, or stayed doing whatever you were doing. And you'll feel so much better for it.

So definitely dedication over motivation and robot mode. It's absolutely true. I'm someone who loves fitness, always has done. But unless I get it done in the morning, it will get done. And I love it. But excuses come in the way. And especially women, I think we're our own worst enemy a lot of the time because we put everyone before ourselves, don't we? We put our partners, our children, the house, the weekly shop, cooking dinner.

We do all that. And then we come so far down the pecking order. But if we can go into robot mode more and just get it down, we're better humans for everyone around us. And, you know, what I have found too is my, I'm the same way. I have to work out in the morning. If I open up slack, it's game over. I'm probably not going to work out. if I start getting into work. So as long as I get up and I do my workout first thing in the morning,

the rest of my day, I'm so much more effective at everything that I need to do. My mind is sharper and clearer. So it really is a form of self-care that benefits not only you, but really everyone that you interact with and have responsibilities to for the rest of the day. So when it comes to working out, never should work out for the aesthetic reasons. It's health overall looks, you know, at time after time, However, we all have been in lockdown in the UK. I know you have in America and some people are not feeling their best. They're feeling sluggish. They feel that they may have, you know, gained a few pounds.

Least of our worries if we're healthy, I must stress. But, you know, we just want to be the best version of ourselves. So what does a typical exercise regime look like for someone who's now trying to make a few changes because they're maybe not feeling their best? Yeah, I would say I always recommend. and starting with a full body workout, something that is not going to be too taxing on any one muscle group because then what happens is if you do only a legs and glute session, then you can't walk for a week. And that can really, you know, knock you off of that routine that you're trying to

establish. So anytime I go off track or haven't been working for a while, what I recommend is a full body workout, I do also recommend having something that is a balance between strength training and cardio, prioritizing strength training. If you had to choose between one over the two, I would say in the beginning to have it be more focused on strength training. And that's kind of how I design my workouts in the Fit Body app. There are a few different programs, but Tone, for example, is kind of like one of the main programs. And it's where it's 30 minutes a day, three circuits that are strength training based, but moderate intensity. So the weights aren't so heavy to where you can't keep up the pace or sacrifice proper form.

And that kind of gives you both of those pieces of that like strength training and that cardio component to kind of, you know, check both boxes off at once. So that is what I typically recommend for someone that is trying to get back on track because 30 minutes is very doable for the large majority of us. And I would say beyond that in terms of like frequency, I think three times a week is a very realistic starting point. And, you know, my thing is, even if it's only one time a week, that's still great. You know, like, I want people to know that, like, just moving their body, period, it is something that they should be proud of and just doing their best. And another

important concept that has helped not only my community, but me personally, is that your best is going to look different at different points in your life. And I think that that is something that during this coronavirus situation that we're all in is really important to keep in mind because a lot of people might be used to going to the gym and working out five times a week at home, just aside from access to gym equipment. But the emotional stressors that we're all going through, you know, for many different reasons might prevent us from having that same routine. And so if two or three times a week, is all you can do now, like, and that's your best right now. That's something to be proud of

and to strive for and to, you know, not compare your life now too much to what was pre-coronavirus. And if you are working out, you are doing more than a lot of people because there's too many people in the world who don't do anything. So that's such a great point. Yes. Yeah. Just, even if you can just get up and walk, you know, get your steps in. LIS training is so amazing just for that just keeping you ticking over. And I think in lockdown, certainly in the UK, that's one thing that I've missed is not having that opportunity to go walking. You know, I used to walk to my office and walk up and down the tube and stuff. And I think that affects your mental health a bit as well, doesn't it, not having the fresh air and the social interaction. Oh, absolutely. And I think that

that is one element of where working out during this pandemic has been so important for a lot of people in giving them some sense of a routine, but also moving their body when you're not able to go outside and walk, and how that has benefited your mental and emotional health or how it has for many is, it's really important in something that, you know, as hard as it is to work out kind of under these circumstances, it's something that's incredibly beneficial. So can we talk about nutrition? We all know it's a hugely, hugely important part of holistic wellness. So you're a big advocate of a balanced diet, not necessarily carily counting an intuitive approach to food. Can you go into some detail about your own approach and the advice you would give others? Yeah. So I would say that my approach can be

very easily summed up in 80-20. So 80% of the time, I prioritize whole natural foods and a balanced macro ratio. The other 20% I go back to my, you know, pre-fitness days of, you know, eating McDonald's. It's not, to be honest, I really don't have McDonald's that often, but I indulge, you know, I will go out and have, well, these days we can't go out, but like, we'll make really, you know, delectable homemade meals that would not be considered, quote-unquote, super healthy. They're also not to the other extreme, but, and I think that that 20% as much as the 80% is important for your physical health, that 20% is important for your mental and emotional health because you should never feel like you need to eat healthy 100% of

the time. I do think that there's such a thing as too much of a good thing being bad. So I think it's really important to allow yourself those indulgences, allow yourself to go out with friends and family once it is safe again and enjoy your favorite foods. And know that that's not going to negatively impact your physical body. Also because, you know, of how mental and emotional health plays such a role in our physical health. I will say, with all that being said, I do also value the science-based approaches to fitness and to overall seeing progress. If someone does want to lose weight. That is whereas someone who would come to me, you know, if they wanted to have that conversation regarding, you know, what do I need to do to see results? I will let them know

this is the science. This is what it is in terms of caloric deficit of what you need to do. I'm a numbers person. So I actually love calculating macros and all those things. But I think that it's, it's important to know that while this may be the science and what is needed, if you want to see physical results. Physical results are not everything. What's your favorite breakfast? Oh, you know what? It's so funny because I think my breakfast is probably the most boring meal of the day. It's like the one meal that like I for sure can eat healthy every single day of the week, which I have two to three eggs and oatmeal with cinnamon and goji berries or blueberries. I do love pancakes though. If I were to be having a, you know, an indulgent breakfast, it would definitely be loaded pancakes. You are soon to have your daughter and you are bringing her into a world that where young people are under so much pressure these days with social media and we've done some research at Women's Health about body confidence through a campaign that we did last year called Project Body Love and in it it's, we found that it's the younger women have the worst body confidence

and it's actually the older women, the perimenopausal and older women. So going into their 50s have the best body confidence, which surprised me at the time, but actually, the more I've dug into it, I can understand that you become more accepting of who you are and how fantastic you are, but it's the younger women who are really struggling. So have you given any thought as to how you might communicate with your daughter about women and about body confidence in her body? Yeah, I would say I've thought about it since way before I ever got pregnant. You know, it's something that has, I would say that since I got into the fitness industry and I saw how prevalent body confidence issues are, that it became a concern to me for one day, you know, when I, when I get there.

And, and I have to be honest, I was raised by a single father. My mom was still in my life, but she moved actually to Mexico when I was 10 years old. And so I had more just like a long distance relationship with my mom. And my dad never said a word about my body ever, even if, you know, I could have lost a few pounds. I definitely was never overweight. And I feel like that probably had had the biggest benefit to me growing up than anything. And so I take from that and I think about how I'm going to speak to my daughter about her body. I'm not, you know, I'm probably not going to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, to talk about how her body looks. I, I do, being someone who, who has, you know, who focuses so much on health and fitness and moving my body, I do want to instill those values in her, but not to such an extreme to where

there would be shame involved if she didn't work out or eat healthy. I'm very conscious of I don't want to create a complex for her or for any of my children, even boys. Boys can go through the same body image, you know, issues. So I think that that is probably where I'm going to start at the very base and just really focus on, you know, talking about food for what it can do for our body, not for what it can hurt, how it can hurt our body, and hopefully just have that built-in balance where we still do have some not so, quote-unquote, you know, health. theme meals, not use those terms, though, and just, you know, have that be a part of our life. Because I, I spoke to my husband about it, because with him being Italian and them having food be such a big

part of their culture, I asked him, like, how was your family with, you know, going to McDonald's? And he's like, well, it was, you know, a maybe once or twice a month thing. And it wasn't spoken about as, ooh, let's go have junk food. It was just, oh, let's just go have McDonald's. And that's it. And then you move on from it. You don't turn it into a thing. So I think that, this is all going to be easier said than done, I'm sure, but that's kind of where I hope to start. Yeah, I'm a mum of a little girl and I'm trying so hard not to replicate my insecurities, which I have and I've had lifeful insecurities onto her, even though she is a mini-me in every way. She is, if you look at pictures of me at that age, she's my identical twin.

But equally in our build as well, I was always a bit bigger than my friends. And it's such a hard balance because she's like me. She will eat and eat and eat. Like I would still do, but I have a level of control now. But it's very hard to manage that without causing insecurities and complexes, which very much could lead to a damages. cycle of low body confidence. Right. And today we have social media, which, you know, I mean, I don't want to say that social media is to blame for everything because I do think that there's an

amazing movement of body positive influencers and people who are saying, I don't fit society's, you know, norms of what beauty should be, but I love my body. And I think that it's amazing that those voices are being amplified. But at the same time, you know, they're also. exist the other side of the spectrum. And we, you know, as, you know, mothers, obviously are, you know, you have so much more experience than I do. But we can only control so much of the messaging that our children get. And that's, that's, you know, a bit of a concern, but I guess we can just do our best. And, yeah, it's something that has definitely been a pretty big, you know, focus of my conversation with my husband. But fingers, fingers crossed.

And she'll be here soon. Well, we've run out of time. That's gone so quickly. I'm so thrilled for you. I really am over the moon. I do hope you can join us at Women's Health Live next year. You would do to be there this year and it was all cancelled. So we are fingers crossed putting it on next year.

So you can bring Luca and the baby. Our babysit is fine. I can look after a baby in the corner. Thank you so much for your time today. It's been an absolute delight. And everyone who's listening, please do look out for Anna's interview, which is in the issue of women's health on sale the 5th of August. It really is a beautiful reader and well worth it. Okay, thanks Anna.

Thank you so much, Claire. It's an honor. Thank you. Bye. Oh, thank you so much to Anna for coming on going for goal. And thank you to Claire for that brilliant conversation. As Claire mentioned, Anna has penned a truly moving feature in the September issue of women's health that comes out on the 5th of August, which is all about her. journey with infertility and IVF. And as Claire said, if you are going through infertility struggles, you're going through IVF right now. I think it will be a really helpful read. Remember to rate and review on Apple Podcasts and subscribe for free wherever you get your podcasts, so you never miss an episode. I'll be back next week with another goal-getting episode. If you have

enjoyed this one, well, you've obviously been doing something a little bit different. We'd love to know your thoughts, so definitely get in touch. The details of how you have you. how to reach women's health are all in the show notes. That is all for me. As I said, we'll be back next week. So catch you then. Bye.