This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 194 / Key Components of Healthy Living (And It’s Not About How You Look) with Alyse Gaulin

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

I’ve spent most of my life worried about my health instead of being grateful for it because I didn’t “look the part” of the healthy, fit woman.  So, when we do an episode about health and wellness, I want us all to focus on the being and the feeling of health, and set aside the external stereotype of what health looks like. I want us to think holistically because the mental, emotional, social and physical are all connected. And mostly, I hope you take a nugget away with something you can do to FEEL better and LIVE longer. I’ve invited Alyse Gaulin, a certified coach, and co-founder and CEO of Own It Coaching to be our guest. After working her way up the corporate structure in the retail industry, Alyse knew it was time to listen to her heart and follow her passion to change people’s lives. Together with her husband, Justin, they built Own It, a health coaching company designed for high-achievers to reclaim ownership over their health and with a mission to make health a habit. Your body knows it’s worthy and valuable because it exists and because you’re here. It often knows before your brain does – it has internal, ingrained wisdom, that intuition that knows what it knows even if your mind has forgotten. Let’s hear it for our bodies! And how about we listen even just a little more, and take care of it, even just a little better. Connect with Alyse: Website: www.ownitcoaching.com   Book: www.thepowerofownershipbook.com   Like what you heard? Please rate and review  Thanks to our This Is Woman’s Work Sponsor: Head to https://ouraring.com/tiww - it has been the best wellness and self-discovery tool I’ve invested in. Instead of one-size-fits-all, it offers one-size-fits-YOU solutions and helps track your stress throughout the day (it also tracks your sleep, recovery, detects early signs of sickness, and can help predict your period)!

I have never had a piece of technology have such a profound impact on my well-being until I got my aura ring. Let's be real. Most technology has me wanting to chuck it out a window. So as somebody who's committed to my own self-discovery and longevity, this little wearable has been a game changer. If you're on a journey to prioritize your health and reconnect with your own body, I can't recommend the Oura Ring enough. It's not just a wearable, it's a partner in your wellness journey. Check out the link in show notes or go to OuraRing.com forward slash T-I-W-W to get your own. I am Nicole Kalil, and we've done a handful of episodes over the years on This Is Woman's Work that would fall in the health and wellness category because I believe our health, physical,

mental, emotional, and social is of vital importance as humans. And because I have this belief that as women and as young girls, teenagers, and all through our lives, that we get far more messaging about how to look good than we do about how to feel good. Even today with so much more information available to us, with hundreds of thousands of health and fitness podcasts, a growing popularity of alternatives to traditional medicine, we still have this idea of what being healthy looks like. And I don't fit that visual. So I always struggle when we cover a topic like this. And I'm beginning to realize that it's not because I don't care about health and fitness. It's because I have head trash that people are going to judge me about doing a podcast about health and wellness when I don't look like that

ideal. I'm overweight, bordering on obesity, according to the BMI calculator, which is one big mindfuck, if I'm being honest, because I've been fully tested in every possible way, spent thousands and thousands of dollars, went to one of the top wellness centers in the world, all to find out that I am, in fact, healthy. I don't diet, but I eat mostly healthy, organic, unprocessed foods, and I don't eat a ton of gluten or sugar. I love my cheese, of course, but after several tests, I'm okay with that because I don't have any dairy sensitivities. I hate working out, but I do it three to four times a week. I've seen a therapist many times for many reasons. I have a coach. I drink lemon

water to start my day, take supplements. I try natural remedies before medication. I've done some detoxes, some colonics, some wellness retreats run by well-known doctors. And as I sit here today, I can honestly say that I've just recently in the last year or two accepted myself that I am healthy. I've spent most of my life worried about my health instead of being grateful for it because I didn't look the part of the healthy fit woman. Ironically, until my early 30s, I actually did look the part in my size four clothes with curves and a flat stomach, but I had an eating disorder, drank too much, and definitely had some mental and emotional issues that I needed to sort through. So when we do these episodes, I want us all to focus on the being and the feeling of health and set aside the

external stereotype of what health looks like. I want us to think holistically because the mental, emotional, social, and physical are all connected. And mostly, I hope you take a nugget away of something that you can do to feel better and live longer. So today I've invited Elise Golan, a certified coach and co-founder and CEO of Own It Coaching to join us. After working her way up the corporate structure in the retail industry, most recently as an executive at Christian Louboutin, Elise knew it was time to listen to her heart and follow her passion to change people's lives. Together with her husband, Justin, they built Own It, a health coaching company designed for high achievers to reclaim ownership

over their health and with a mission to make health a habit. Elise, thank you for being here today to talk about a topic that's always a little challenging for me. I want to start with the first question. How do you suggest one determine whether or not they are in fact healthy? It's very individual for every single person. One of the things that has made building our business very hard, quite frankly, but really valuable for all of our clients is that it is not a one-size-fits-all model. At the end of the day, health is not a one-size-fits-all model, right? Every single person has a different body type, has a different mindset type, has different beliefs, has different backgrounds.

Everything is different, right? We are not made to be one size fits all. And so when it comes to understanding how you are healthy, ultimately, what I would say is how much energy and vitality do you feel? Do you wake up every single morning ready to take on the day? So many times, like you said in your introduction, it's so easy to get caught up on the looks. And if we don't have that perfect size 24, I mean, heck, it's probably size 22 now. I don't even know if that size exists,

but this model figure body, then we're not considered healthy and we're not considered attractive and we're not considered fit. Health is just not that way, right? Like you said it, you went through this entire process to ultimately learn at the end of the day, you are healthy. And that is what your own version of healthy looks like. So I would say if you can confidently wake up every morning with your body feeling good, with your mindset in a good place, having a strong understanding of your emotions and being spiritually and socially connected, that for me is the greatest definition of health. So if you can say, yes, I feel like I am a good place in all of those areas, then you are likely healthy. But if you're drained and you're experiencing

symptoms or you may have emotional fatigue or mental fog or insomnia when you're waking up, then likely something deeper is going on that might want to be investigated. All of that was great. And I like the focus on energy and vitality. And I feel like there's been, and maybe it's just because I'm not in the industry, but it feels like a recent uptick on a focus on longevity. And you talked about being spiritually and socially connected, which I love.

I mean, I feel like, again, that's sort of recent. I don't remember as a young kid, people talking about that in relationship to our health. Is there anything that you're focused on in your guys' work as it relates to longevity or anything that you're learning that might have been a surprise to you in that space? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things that a lot of our clients come to us for is for longevity. And I cannot tell you the amount of people who are, I would probably say, in their early to late 50s who are like, it's too late for me, right? Like I can't build longevity right now. The best time for you to start on this journey is today. Doesn't matter how old you are. And so I think that's something that we've really start to come to understand is regardless of your age, you can continue to

build longevity. It's all about lifestyle, right? If you can continue to build longevity. It's all about lifestyle, right? If you can continue to make the lifestyle choices that are designed around you and that are best for you, that's what's going to build your longevity. I think one of the really interesting things is about the idea of retirement, right? Retirement was actually founded in Germany because the average death age was 67. And so they put this number on that when you turn 65, you retire because, right, they were only on retirement pensions for on average two years. Now, what happened is the US adopted that. And so now everybody is retiring at 65 and we find so many people end up passing away earlier than expected, even though they might be in good physical health because they don't have

a greater purpose that they're striving for. They don't have something that they're waking up for every single day. And so when it comes to longevity, it's not just about the physical, it's about what does your environment look like? What does your mindset look like? Do you have a greater purpose in life that you're waking up for every single day? Okay. So that information about retirement is fascinating and I couldn't agree more. And it actually aligns with my research on confidence. We see in the age of, like in their 60s, women's confidence surpasses men's, generally speaking. And a lot of that is attributed to men having so much of their purpose being around what they do for a living. And when they retire, it's almost like they lose their identity and they lose

their confidence, or as you said, their purpose. Exactly right. Yep. That's so interesting how much that plays out in longevity and in confidence. Okay. I want to switch gears because I cannot let you go without talking about the four vital components to your health. So you've identified four vital components and I'd love to hear more about those, especially because I feel like there's so many mixed messages out there and conflicting opinions. So I like this boiling it down to four vital components. So tell us about that. Yeah, I love that question. So really within our system, we call it the four pillars of ownership and it consists of building, fueling, renewing, and repairing.

So within each one of these, there's two key foundational principles that make up them. So let's take fuel, for example. The two things that we really focus on in fuel are nutrition and hydration. Makes sense, right? We have to fuel our bodies not only with good food, but also make sure that we're well hydrated. The crazy thing is probably more than 60% of us are walking around clinically dehydrated without even realizing it. So it's vitally important to really understand both your nutrition and hydration. Build that consists of movement and mindset. Renew is all about self-care in our environment. And then lastly, repair is about sleep and our immune response. So really within Own It, our entire Own It system is built around these four pillars.

And like I was saying earlier, one of the great things that we've realized is it's not like you come into our world and it's like you fit into this box and this is exactly the habits that you have to adopt and the lifestyle you need to acquire in order to be healthy. What we're doing is we're actually utilizing each one of these pillars to say, you know what? This one might be your lowest hanging fruit or your greatest opportunity. And let's work together to co-create something that works for you to be able to create long lasting habit change over time. Because ultimately, if you're going to come in and we ask you to do something that you're not bought into, you don't agree to, it doesn't work with your routine, doesn't work with your schedule, you're likely not going to

do it. Why do you think so many people go on these yo-yo diets? Because it's not sustainable, right? And so our goal is to create long-term sustainability. We don't want people coming in and doing these short-term three-month don't want people coming in and doing these short-term three-month sprint things that are going to get them immediate results, but then walk out a year later being like, well, I just wasted my money, right? Really, our goal is to make sure that we're creating long-lasting habit change so that your entire lifestyle is fully designed for what ideal health looks like for you. And I think that's the other cool thing with our Own It system is you get to speak into it. You get to decide what health looks like

for you, right? At the end of the day, so many times as women, health or certain workout programs or certain diets or even supplements, right? That industry has totally blown up over the last five years, are kind of forced on us or strongly suggested on us. But the nice thing with what true health really looks like is it's co-created with an expert and you. Okay. Again, I love all of that. That speaks to me and to my preference and my experience, especially this idea of going after the low hanging fruit first. I actually just did an episode a couple months ago about pendulum swings. And I think that that's one of the things that happens when we do a detox or start a diet or do a program is like we go from where we are

to this sort of huge swing ideal state and it's not sustainable where I think our opportunity is often to find that ultimate landing point where we want to stay for the long term. But then doing that often begins in my experience, and this is more on the business side, but with starting with small wins, things that you can implement somewhat easily that are a little bit of a stretch. And I like putting it in that concept of low-hanging fruit. So could you give us a few examples of what you might mean by that? What might be some low-h hanging fruit opportunities for our listeners? Yeah, absolutely. So I know I kind of listed off those four pillars, right? I'll remind you quickly again what they are. It's build, fuel, renew, and repair. And made up of fuel is hydration

and nutrition. Now, the beauty is nutrition isn't all that complicated. There's a couple really simple things that we can do to start to change our nutrition overnight. And it's not actually about what you're putting in your body. Yes, of course, we really want to focus on organic whole foods, whole foods if possible, right? If you're putting chips and snacks and carbs, if that's the only thing you're, you're feeding yourself with, then of course, you're not going to get the type of, of, um, nutritional result you're looking for. But, you know, let's say you are generally healthy, right? Of course, I,

I will tell you, I have the biggest sweet tooth. I eat chocolate every single day. And so it's about figuring out what your moderation looks like, right? It's not, I don't eat a chocolate cake, but I have, you know, a few chocolate covered almonds every single day. So a few things that we can do right off the bat, assuming what we're putting in our mouth is generally healthy, is what we like to call a 3-2-1 rule. So three hours before bed, stop eating. Two hours before bed, try to eliminate any blue light. And one hour before bed, no work. And so we can really get ourselves into a state

of what we call parasympathetic nervous system. It's a much more relaxed state. And you'll actually start to notice that over time, when we cut off that three hours before bed, no eating, it affects our entire nervous system. One of the things that I've started to notice, if I eat too late, if I'm putting food in my body too late, I get a terrible night's sleep. And I don't even know it, right? I wear a biometric data tracker, like a whoop band or an aura ring, something like that. But I've started to notice that if my eating habits are off and I'm eating too late, that it actually starts to affect all the other areas of those four pillars. Yeah. So I got an aura ring a little over a year ago and there's been a lot of really great

self-discovery moments, but that was one of them is when I eat too close to when I go to bed, it affects my heart rate, my sleep, my readiness the next day. It is wild how obvious it is and how this ring happens to know that that one night, it's so obvious. So in that three, two, one, I would say for me right now, the two hours, no blue light would be my biggest opportunity because I don't work in the evenings. And I've really, because of my aura ring, stopped eating quite a bit before I go to bed. But we like to sort of relax and zone out in front of the TV in the evenings. Both Jay and I give a lot throughout our day. And so it's really, I mean, honestly, a lot of nights we just sit there and hold hands, zone out in front of a show. But I think that

would be our biggest opportunity for both of us. Yeah. No, that's amazing. And with blue light, it's actually way easier than we realize. One of the easiest things is just grabbing a pair of blue light blocking glasses, throw that on, make sure your phone and if you have an iPad or even your TV, they now have blue light settings where you can still be watching TV, but it removes the blue light. And so it's allowing you to get into that parasympathetic state before bed. Great tip. Let's talk a little bit about stress and how that impacts our health. In advance of our recording, you had shared that our body doesn't know the difference between mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual stress. Tell us about that.

Yeah. So the interesting thing is you could, I'm going to use some really exaggerated examples here right now. So you could run a marathon while at the same time, another person could be going through a really difficult divorce and your body could both be in the same stress state. Our body doesn't understand a different type of stress. And it goes back to, I kind of want to connect it back to what we were just talking about, is there's one number underneath everything that tracks the stress in our body. And it's called HRV, which stands for heart rate variability. So when we were just talking about your aura ring and you wake up in the morning and your body knows, it's because your HRV knows. It's your HRV that's picking up

on the stress on your body. So when you go back to eating, let's say you eat an hour and a half or an hour before bed, you're actually putting stress on your body through your digestive system. So your digestive system is working later than what was actually designed to work. Same thing with going back to the more exaggerated example, right? When we are pushing our body physically to the max in a marathon versus when we are pushing ourselves emotionally to the max by going through a really, really difficult time in our lives, like a divorce, our body, our HRV is going to show up with the same results. It's going to show that we are deeply, deeply stressed. And so at the end of the day, our body doesn't know the difference between these. It just reads stress as stress,

regardless of what it is. Okay. So this was another big moment of self-discovery. The Oura Ring started tracking stress fairly recently, like within the last six months. And you know, you're the same. We do work that involves a certain level of stress. And so I've actually had the thought of like, maybe I've become numb to stress because I wasn't always aware of when I was feeling stressed out. And it's been really interesting. I do manage my stress fairly well in my workday. Where I'm the most stressed, according to my ring and my HRV, is in the evenings between five and six o'clock. And I've been really thinking about it. And ultimately what it boiled down to is mom guilt. I firmly believe that hour when I make the transition from being in work mode to being in home mode, and I still have sort of a running mental to-do list of should I need to do at work that didn't get done. But then I'm trying to be present and engaged at home and like asking the questions and doing the things. And I think that it boils down to not being

present and in my mind feeling like I should be doing more here and better here and showing up differently here. And that stress is like measurable, which was wild to me. So couldn't agree more about the mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, all contributing to ultimately the same experience. Okay. If somebody is listening and they're like, great, where do I start? Like if there's one thing, if somebody wants to, you know, begin the wellness journey or to improve their health or just do something that would make a tangible difference, what might you suggest? So I would say it's two things. It's answering that question that I kind of posed earlier when you asked me, how do you define health is, do I feel like I have that energy and that vitality every morning? Right. And I would say

really just taking an assessment across those four areas of emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical. Where would I, if I were to give myself a one out of 10 rating on each one of these, what would I give myself? One being the lowest, 10 being the highest. So that's a really easy place to start. It's just a super subjective assessment. The second thing I would do is we've talked a lot about data, heart rate variability, wearable trackers, biometric wearable trackers. I would highly suggest every single one of our clients that we work with wears a whoop band. We have done, our founder, Justin has done so much research on basically every single wearable under the sun. I'm married to our founder, Justin. And there was a period of time where he literally had like six different elements on at once, just comparing the results

of everything. The top two gold standard in the industry are really aura ring and whoop. So if you're going to get one, if you're going to invest in one, invest in one of those. And I would say start to look at it. And the best number you can look at is your HRV. A lot of the other data, it's good, but some of it is just noise, like the readiness score on Oura Ring or the recovery score on Whoop. They're good, but again, they're all calculated off of HRV, which is the single number that starts to measure our stress within their body and the resiliency that we're creating towards it. And so a lot of people say, well, how do I know what's good, right? We want to increase our HRV over time. The higher heart rate variability we have, the better. So that's

what I would say is start to just take notice of your habits and compare it back to a very objective number, which is their heart rate variability. And for us, we always say we like to combine the subjective with the objective. So if you're combining that subjective score, that total rank that you would give you around spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical and start to compare it. And maybe every month come back to it. Okay. I've noticed these habits. I've made these few changes. Now this month, maybe I went up two points in physical or I went up three points in spiritual, right? Continually come back to that while using that objective baseline of the heart rate variability that you can grab through a wearable device. I appreciate it wasn't a one-size-fits-all answer. Thank you.

Nothing we do is one-size-fits-all. And I know that Justin has a book coming out, and I'm going to say that you all have a book coming out because I'm sure you contributed, even though it might be his name on it. And tell us a little bit about the book and who it's meant for and what people can get out of it. Yeah, absolutely. It's called The Power of Ownership, Redeem Your Health, Live Life by Design, and Break the Relentless Pursuit of Normal. That's the name of the book. And really, if you as a listener have enjoyed anything that I've been talking about, this book is basically a blueprint of how to start to create

your own health journey. It walks you through the four pillars. It walks you through heart rate variability in depth. But what I will say is when I say it walks you through these things, he does a really good job of storytelling throughout. So it's something that could be a heavy read. It's actually a very, very light read. And I would say I'm one of those people out there who would be the most critical of something that comes from either Justin or I. And when I first read it, I was like, this is amazing. It's really, really – he wrote it all all himself and it's a very, very well

written book. But it walks you through really this entire blueprint for health and holistic health, right? So walks you through heart rate variability, the four pillars. It includes this entire breakdown of physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional. And it ties it back to tools that you can start to pull in, right? So if sleep is your lowest hanging fruit and your biggest opportunity, there's a bunch of tangible tools that you can start to use to level up in that area.

If we talked about nutrition, if that's what it is for you, there's a bunch of tangible tools to really be able to level up in that area. So the nice thing is it's laid out in a way that it's not a one-size-fits-all model. As you're going through it, you can really start to pick and choose what works for you and what resonates for you. Well, I think Justin should bring you along to sell the book to everybody because I'm going to get it. And I'm sure a lot of people listening are as well. So go to thepowerofownershipbook.com to get your hands on the book. Is it up for presale now? It is. Great. That site is live, up for presale. Awesome. And then we'll put other ways to connect with ownitcoaching.com and Elise in show notes.

Thank you so much, Elise, for your time, your wisdom, and just breaking it all down in a way that feels real and approachable and not focusing on how we look. Thank you. Thank you so much, Nicole. It was such a pleasure chatting with you today. The pleasure is all mine. Okay. Here's what I know. We all have the opportunity to feel good in and about our bodies, no matter their shape, size, color, age, stage, or abilities, because your body doesn't care what it looks like. It doesn't care what other people think about it. It cares about how it feels and functions. It's actively working to support and

heal you and to keep you around. It craves connection, nourishment, movement, and recovery, not attention, compliments, likes, or any sort of external validation. The part of us that cares about what it looks like exists entirely in our mind, which is great news because we all have the ability and the opportunity to change our minds. Your body knows it's worthy and valuable because it exists and because you're here. How about we start listening to our bodies? Your body often knows before your brain does. It has internal ingrained wisdom, that intuition that knows what it knows, even if your mind has forgotten. Let's hear it for our bodies.

And how about we listen to it even just a little bit more and take care of it even just a little bit better? Because that is woman's work.