WHOOP Podcast - The Power of BioSyncing with Angela Foster

Episode Date: January 10, 2024

On this week’s episode, WHOOP VP of Performance Science, Principal Scientist, Kristen Holmes is joined by Angela Foster. Angela is an award-winning nutritionist, health & performance coach, keynote speaker and host of The High-Performance Health Podcast. Kristen and Angela will discuss Angela transitioning from a lawyer to a high-performance coach (3:45), the drive to start looking after yourself (9:33), creating a new identity (14:05), expanding goals and knowledge (17:36), training your self-awareness (22:15), aligning goals to who we want to be (26:35), the process of BioSyncing (29:37), improving nervous system balance (32:19), ensuring everything is in alignment (37:38), women measuring success and growth opportunities in business (42:13), obstacles women face (47:13), how to ask for help (50:01), and using data in health and wellness (55:09).Resources:Angela's WebsiteSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks. Welcome back to the WOOP podcast. We sit down with top athletes, researchers, scientists, really the best of the best to learn how to perform at your peak, how to unlock your own best performance. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder, and CEO of WOOP. This week's episode, The Famous and Talented Kristen Holmes, are Principal scientist, the WOOPVP of Performance Science, is joined by Angela Foster. Angela is an award-winning nutritionist, health and performance coach, keynote speaker, and host of the High Performance Health Podcast, a former corporate lawyer turned industry leader in

biohacking and health optimization for women. Angela is the creator of biosyncing, a blueprint for high-performing women who want to optimize their health, performance, and longevity, by working with their female, male physiology, bio-individuality, and step into their most empowered future self. Kristen and Angela discuss transitioning from one career to another, how to prioritize looking after yourself. Angela really touches on the importance of connecting your mind, body, and spirit, training yourself awareness, the process of biosyncing. It's all about ensuring your life and goals are in alignment. That's powerful. The opportunities for

women to grow a business and society and how to properly measure success. If you have a question was answered on the podcast, email us, podcast at whoop.com. Call us 508-443-4952. A reminder, you can try Whoop for free. Sign up for a free 30 days. You get the full Whoop experience. That's at whoop.com. Here are Kristen Holmes and Angela Foster.

As an award-winning nutritionist, Angela Foster has become one of the industry leaders in biohacking and health optimization for women. Angela regularly gives keynotes to large fitness health and wellness events, including the Health Optimization Summit, the Biohacker Summit, Dragonfly Live and Elevate Fitness Conference. She also delivers health optimization and performance workshops to large corporations and senior leaders. Angela has been featured in various media, including The Huff Post, Runners World,

Live Strong, Natural Health Magazine, and numerous health and wellness podcasts. Angela's podcast, the high-performance health podcast, is a top 1% rated global podcast. Each week, Angela interviews the world's top experts in the areas of health, performance, and longevity to help listeners create lasting transformation. Angela, welcome. Thank you so much, Kristen. I'm really excited to be here. I'm super excited for our listeners to get exposed to your insights. I really want to focus on, you know, what it's like to transition from kind of one job to another. I'd love to dig into that. You have, as someone who's done this, as you've done this as

a lawyer and transitioning to a high performance coach, would love to dig into how that happened and just some of the things you learned along the way. Optimization and also growth strategies, you know, beating, beating obstacles and how you think about that personally and how you coach others. So really excited to dig into this. You know, we've had a chance to speak and, you know, know, your background and, you know, you've had a lot of ups and downs. I'd love to kind of start there. You know, what got you, you know, you were, you're a lawyer. Talk a little bit about that experience and what made you decide to transition to a different path. Yeah, sure. Thank you. So I started out as a lawyer, right? I went to law school, graduated, and then started training, went into

corporate law, which in London is kind of, you know, all the things that we track on look at sleep, looking at HRV, you know, optimizing those parameters. As lawyers, we kind of totally disrespected sleep. It was just everything to get the deal up. So it was pulling off all nighters, weekends of work. You know, we might do kind of 85, 90 hours straight with just one or two hours of sleep. And I kind of, I think in my 20s, I felt pretty invincible, right? And I was on that career path, very ambitious, wanted to make partner. And I was ignoring lots of things along the way. So I did have kind of little warning signs with my health. So I developed PCOS. I had endometriosis. But I kind of, it felt like at that time, you know, there was just a pill or

some surgery or something for everything, right? You know, just a way of solving it. And I was into fitness and a little bit into nutrition, but not majorly. And I was really kind of focused on my career and then I had this goal after kind of having surgery for the endometriosis where the medical community kind of said to me if you want to start a family now is the best time because it will probably regrow so I ended up going for both these goals at the same time of like I'm going to make partnership this year and I'm going to see if I can fall pregnant which probably sounds crazy looking back at it and I thought you know maybe one of them will come it and it turned out that both did. So I made partnership at eight months pregnant with my first child. It was quite a

stressful pregnancy. And then I, just because of the kind of gynaological problems I've had, I was told not to wait too long. So I had my second child. When my first child was 12 months old, I was already three months pregnant right due to go back to work. So it was very kind of like close together. I just made partnership. And I guess nothing prepared me for the fact that I was going to struggle with postnatal depression. I wasn't that kind of person. I didn't see it. I was in of denial. And with my second pregnancy, I was sort of Googling prenatal depression thinking, is this a thing? Because I was really struggling with my mental health. And I found some stuff about it, but I sort of ignored it. But the kind of short story version, I guess, is that I struggled

with postnatal depression after every pregnancy. And then when I had my third child, it became very entrenched. And that's what then led to a diagnosis of major depressive disorder with bipolar episodes and it was really, really hard to kind of control. And I got to this point where my daughter was two years old. I was still struggling. They were transitioning me off medications. I've been having a lot of therapy. And I'd sort of created a prison in my own mind, if I'm honest. I had really felt trapped. I felt sort of worthless. I actually genuinely felt at that point my kids would be better off without me. So I kind of was having these thoughts of suicide and things. I'm wondering, how am I going to navigate my way out of this? Because I'm going to leave my kids

without a mother and I don't want to do that. So I just felt so conflicted. And I think, you know, we know now, right? We now we have technology and things to help us understand the nervous system. What happened was it had a really profound effect on my immune health. So when my kids got a cough, I ended up getting pneumonia, they were treating it with repeated courses of antibiotics. And it wasn't working. And so then they sort of called me in. I had a chest x-ray. And all I heard the doctor saying is, you know, your lymph glands are really enlarged. They're really big. They kept talking about this. So in my mind, I was like, like, what does that mean? The lymph, like, what does that mean? Could I have cancer? Like,

what does that mean? So he was like, well, we can't rule it out without a CT scan. So they kind of rushed me through. And it ended up that actually, it was just very severe pneumonia. And that's why my lymph glands were so enlarged. So the CT scan showed that. It was viral and bacterial. And I was rushed straight through to hospital, to a bed. You know, they were preparing a bed, most likely in intensive care, they thought at that point, because they thought they might have to intubate me. And I was neutropinic, so my white blood cell count was so low. It was viral and bacterial. And that's when it kind of struck me, like, what is going on? Like, how have I found myself here? And really, really interesting when we look at the mind-body connection, because when I was told

that, I remember actually finally finding a sense of peace and looking at photos of my kids. I hadn't been able to go and pick them up from school. Couldn't tell them, you know, mommy's not coming home tonight, all the next. And I looked at photos of them and I felt this profound sense of love and responsibility towards them. And I was like, I've got to get a handle on this. I've got to get well and be there to see them grow up. And within 48 hours of me making that decision, my white blood cell count started to rise. It was kind of nothing short of extraordinary. And I never ended up having to be intubated. The antibiotics kicked in. My immune system kicked in. And it was slow, but I made a recovery. And that was really the beginning of my journey of

thinking, right, how can I get truly, truly healthy, like mind, body, spiritually healthy? And that's kind of where, I guess, what is now high performance health and everything I've created began off the back of that. Gosh, so that's that one choice you made. Maybe talk a little bit more about that. You know, we have a lot of agency over our mind. But when our body is, when our physiology, you know, isn't in order, it's hard to talk ourselves into a better future. You know, how did you, you know, once you made that choice and realized that, you know, you had quite an uphill battle at that point, right?

I mean, your health was in a very bad place. And I think that can be daunting. Maybe I'd love to hear, like, what were your, you made that decision lying in the hospital bed, what was the next step for you? So, you know, you go home and would love to understand just some of the nuance to transitioning back home, you've made this decision to get well. What did that actually look like? So at first, I guess, making that commitment, I realized I'm going to have to start looking after me, right? I can't keep kind of hating on myself, if you like, because I think for anyone listening to

this, I think what's so difficult if they themselves or they know someone who struggled with depression is there's so much self-loathing and almost shame and self-destruction. So I had to get a handle on my thoughts. And then I also wanted to understand, well, how can you? can I energize my body appropriately? So I went to see a functional medicine doctor, did some tests, saw them to kind of optimize. Obviously, my gut health needed a bit of work because I had so much from all the antibiotics. Yeah, exactly to get that back on track.

And then I started. I think that's one thing that folks don't actually realize, even with their kids, you know, how quickly we push the antibiotics and don't really realize the second and third order effect of that. And not saying, I mean, antibiotics are incredible, right? an amazing invention. But I'd love to talk about that a little later. So just want to put a pin in just to help folks understand, you know, what the calculus is around taking antibiotics maybe versus not or other solutions. You know, it's really trying to avoid a situation where

you're getting sick, frankly. But we'll come back to that. Yeah. So I, it's a very good point. And I think, so when I was thinking about that, I was thinking about my nutrition. I'd been thinking obviously about how to feed my children appropriately because they were young and I was kind of cooking for them things and now I had to start taking care of myself and I think that's such a common thing right of mothers with young children I'd had the three of them in four and a half years it was all very quick three C-sections you know and I wasn't really taking good care of myself so how do I start to do that and I had um I kind of found a clinical psychologist who was helping me and who's a little bit more spiritual in nature and then I found Dr Joe dispenser's

book, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, and I realized, like, it dawned on me, this is what I've got to do. I've got to break the habit of being me and create a new self. And that's kind of become a really core part when I'm coaching people is how do you step into your future self? And I'm not saying it's like, you can do this in a rush. You know, it was a transition. I was in the hospital back in 2014. It took me years to then kind of rebuild my health, but also train at the same time. and then slowly transition off. And it wasn't actually when I look at the antipsychotic and the antidepressant medication I was taking,

you know, I was in a bad place where I was washing that down with wine at night and, you know, just to get to sleep, I couldn't sleep. And I transitioned off all of that medication, I think, back end of 2019. But I utilised it to allow me to do the work because I think that's the thing you were touching on a moment ago is when you're in that place mentally,

how can you build that mindset and that new future? And sometimes medication can be a tool, I think, to help you do that. And then, you know, I then had to get myself to a point of resiliency where I felt I could come off the medication. Because the thing with medication is, as you withdraw off it, each level that you step down and I did it very, very slowly, you would get, I would experience symptoms of depression. And so controlling that mood was very difficult. And I was kind of going against the advice of a psychiatrist who'd said to me, you'll be on bipolar meds for the rest of your life, which is disempowering, right, in itself. Yeah, totally. So it was a bit of a journey, yeah, but I think it for me is connecting the dots between mind, body, spiritual health. I think all three of those are so important.

Yeah, I agree. And Angela, you mentioned identity, you know, and we think about, after you've made that decision, that, all right, I need to actually create a new future self. And, you know, was it, when you were thinking about your identity creation, did you think about it? it in terms of, all right, I am a person who, blank, fill in the blank, you know, and did you start, you know, I think when we're trying to form a new identity, we have to practice being that person. So I guess I wonder, you know, how did you, because I think for a lot of folks, especially kind of going into the new year, we're, you know, thinking about what we want 24 to look like and, you know, and oftentimes to your point, like, it really does, you kind of

have to start from scratch, you know, and really think about, you know, who do you actually want to be in the world. And I wonder, you know, from your standpoint, you know, had this huge uphill climb. How did you redefine your identity? And then what frameworks did you put in place to practice being that new person? Such a great question. So I think I looked at it and my first thing was, because my big why behind this was, I want to be there as a mother to see my children grow up. So what kind of mother do want to be? So being really intentional with that. And when you're looking ahead and, you know, as you say with New Year, we look at different things and we think about what we want to achieve. And sometimes we will limit ourselves because our kind of our old programming gets in the way and what you see is a gap. And as soon as you see that gap, the tiny part of the brain called the amygdala fires and now you have a kind of fear-based response and you start revising expectations of who you can be or what you can achieve. And I think there's some research I've seen around if you ask the question instead, what if, then it kind of engages the refrontal cortex and it kind of opens up your mind to a world of more possibility.

So I was thinking like, what if I could, you know, really get well, what if I could be like this? What would that look like? And how can I then start to take the steps? So it's like visualising that person. So if I want to be really healthy and there for my children, I want to be in better health than I've ever been before, what does that model look like and what does she do? So I need to bring her from the future into the present moment. She eats in a different way. She exercises in a different way. She takes care of herself so much better. She prioritizes her sleep, right? So I started to bring those things in. And at any time that anything feels big and scary, then I would bring it back to the present moment. Because anxiety is often fear based around the future and depression can obviously kind of be quite past based in many respects. So when I could bring it back to the generous present moment, as Joe Dispenser calls it, I felt that sense of calm return. And I can only control those choices through present moment attention. attention, right? And so that's what I was doing, but then visualising who I wanted to be. And I think giving myself the patience and the grace of time, I remember my psychologist saying to me, you know,

maybe you're setting your expectations too high. And my immediate response was, I wasn't working, given up my job, I was spending time my kids, like, how can you say I'm expecting too much of myself, right? At this point when I was really depressed, I was like, how can you say that? I used to run multinational deals and now getting out of bed and taking my children to school is an achievement and that's all I seem able to do. And so I kind of had to sort of also lower my expectations of myself for a bit while I allowed myself to heal. So there was that combination. But I think looking at that future self and modeling it and thinking, well, what does she do and who is she? And then starting to take steps in alignment through present movement focused attention is the

way that I did it. I love that. I love this framing of kind of what if. I think that brings in an element of curiosity. And so maybe if you want to talk about approaching, you know, when I think about setting goals, for example, and I think you break up a really great point that sometimes they can be self-limiting. And I think, and oftentimes we set goals and they don't come to fruition, right? And there's a lot of, a lot of evidence in the literature that that goal setting can be very barbed wire in terms of it actually being the right path to change. So if we're thinking about kind of creating this new identity and we're asking these kind of what if questions, how do you think about the role of learning and curiosity as a way to kind of back into change?

I think it's a great way because I think you're kind of expanding your knowledge and your skill set, if you like, at the same time as expanding what's possible for you. So I think that, and I think this is the thing is, I've had to sort of work very hard to condition my mind to positive thinking. And it's still something that I still, I think the thing when you've had sort of bipolar episodes as well is that you swing. So you swing between being really happy, like I could be super mum, and then I would be like the crashes that would come. And people learn that. So because of that, I learned this mechanism of like, how can I, keep it stable and control it. And through that, I learned to always spend time each day on something

that was mindset-based, right, that was causing positive adaptations, if you like. And I think for anyone who's trying to achieve a goal, if you do that, you know, I've heard someone say in the past, you know, it's really difficult to feel depressed when you've got Tony Robbins in your ear, right? But if you, anything you listen to, right, that is going to help you feel more upbeat, all of a sudden you feel like there's a world of possibility out there. I also think that it's not just thinking your way into it or visualising it. Also, exercise for me is a tool. And it's quite funny because I love strength training because it,

and I just got my results yesterday. Weep sent me the annual review and said, hey, you're in the top 5% of strength trainers. And I was like, it's amazing. Probably because I'm obsessed with strength training, maybe I need to work a bit more on my aerobic fitness. and so it kind of like it creates order in my mind right so what i what i think is when you wake up in the morning you don't have to have a fixed morning routine as such but have a way of thinking like

what if you ask the question how do i want today to be who do i want to show up as and what can i do that's going to help me step into her right now and often if your mind isn't on board moving your body is going to facilitate the mind right so we can use both sometimes we want to use the mind to influence the body and sometimes we're going to use the body to influence the mind. And so for me, exercise is a very powerful way of doing that because you feel like you did something and you achieve something first thing. Now you feel empowered and that again opens you up to more possibility. And just visualising what you want to happen, I do really genuinely believe like some of the synchronicities that have happened in my life and in kind of building

a new career have been because I allow myself to dream. And we don't do that. Why do we restrict ourselves like that as adults, you know? Remember looking back at my 11 year old in the car a few months back and she was really quiet. We had, she was, Mommy, turn the music up. And then she sort of had her eyes closed and I thought she'd fallen asleep. And I said, did you have a little nap on that journey? She was like, no, I was just dreaming. And she like, she dreams about her gymnastics and things like that. And I thought, I remember that as a kid, right? I remember dreaming and children see a whole world of possibility. But as we become adults, and I think almost more so as we become mothers, we can start to restrict and go, yeah, you know, I'll just look within these bounds or

this box. But we want to step outside of that as much as we can. And I think dreaming is part of it. Oh, I love that. Yeah, I think those little impulses that we felt when we were young, we need to, to honor those as an adult as well. So it's, but it's hard to do. You know, And, you know, when we have a lot of responsibilities and we're kind of rushing from one thing to the next, it can be challenging to actually really lean into those impulses and, and honor them. I think what, you know, what you're, I think, talking about is creating space for the self and creating space for, for dreaming and creating space for connecting your thoughts with your actions. And I wonder, you know, I think with just modernity and our connection to technology and, you know,

there's always something right there to distract us from the present. And you talk about the, you talk to mention the present a lot, you know, which is such a sweet spot for really, I think, our mental and physical and emotional health. But it requires, I think to stay in the present requires a great deal of self-awareness. So how do you, what are some strategies that you found to be helpful to keep yourself in the present? And really, how do you, how do you, you train that self-awareness, you know, in spite of all of the responsibilities and roles that you have in your life and in all the distractions that invariably, you know, you encounter across the day and across a moment? I think one of the ways, because there are a few

different ones. It's such an awesome question that. I think one of the ways is by understanding feelings that you feel, because that was something I had to do to retrain my thoughts, right? So when you sense of feeling in the body, is it really created by what's going on at the moment or is it created by a thought? So as you start to understand, well, where did that feeling come from because that's led to so that there's an emotion there and that's from a thought? What was I thinking? And then you'll realize you're going off track. And it might be, again, that you're simulating something that's fear-based or anxiety-based and you're not in that present moment. So I think that day-to-day of being in touch is really important. I think also there are tools

that we all know about, right, breath, work, meditation, things like that that specifically train the mind, which I was doing as well. And I think they become ever more important in a world of distraction, you know, like even when you think about Instagram at the moment, what are we seeing now? Not any content that you consume for any length of time, you're seeing like looping reels, right? You're watching something. You don't even realize that three seconds it's finished and it's just looping you again. And so it's this world of distraction, you know, to get attention. And so I think we have to train that attention for sure. And then, understanding that while we're visualising our best outcome, we're stepping into our future

self and bringing her or him into that present moment, we can only control the process. So how do we do that? And I use like a routine myself and with my clients that I call at the end of each day, you cap off your day, which is easy to kind of remember. So the first thing you do is celebrate the wins because you're going to remember peaks and ends. So even if something amazing happened today, if something really bad happens this afternoon, you probably won't remember it and you'll ruminate and talk about that over dinner and kind of almost extend and squeeze more juice out of that lemon than perhaps you need to. So if you celebrate the wins and end it on a peak, if you like. And then the A is appreciation, right? So what can I

appreciate what's good in my life? And we'll quite often do this around the family dinner table together, right? Celebrate what happened today? What went well? What did you learn? We also celebrate anything you learned. And then what do you appreciate? What are you grateful for? And then the P is prioritize because you want to control the process and the only way you can control the process because it's the only bit you have control over that present moment attention and process you don't have control over the outcome so what am i prioritizing tomorrow and then you repeat that the next day because then you can see well did i follow those priorities tomorrow do you see what i mean so then you're bringing you're making that visualization experience a

reality because you are prioritizing the actions that person takes so that's kind of the the mechanism, if you like. Oh, I love that. Cap, I'm going to remember that. You mentioned the feeling in your body and then connecting that to emotions. So, you know, when I, when you think about the root of emotions, you know, you have, I think you, you have kind of fear-based emotions and you have trust-based emotions. And when you are in that moment of trying to understand...

what's happening in your body. So you're getting this, maybe it's, you feel anxiety, anxiety or stress, which all of us feel that at different points during the day. We worry about the future. We worry about the past. We worry about what's happening in the moment. That's kind of anxiety. And I would say anxiety is kind of chronic. And stress is really your body's almost giving you energy to kind of do what's next. But I think both of these, how stress and anxiety manifest in the body is is really a comment on what matters in that in that moment so how do we transform the stress and anxiety to a place where we can think about it from where we can funnel kind of trust-based emotions like positivity and optimism and as opposed to the fear-based emotions

you know jealousy and envy and you know how do you think about you know those those kind of from a macro perspective, but then from a micro perspective, how do we actually strategically deal with those feelings in the body and how do we transform it in a way that allows us to do that next thing that is in line with who we say we want to be? Such a good question. I think there are differences, right? So it's quite nuanced depending on the situation that you're in.

So like when we look at something that we're going to do that is a big event, right? We're going to do like say someone's going to go and speak on stage or something like that, there is anxiety, but then there's also excitement and anticipation. And I think it's about, I think Kelly McGonagall has done work on this, right, about turning it into excitement because really what we're saying is we value this thing, right? It's really important to us. And so then we're kind of almost scared, are we going to mess it up? But actually, if we can reassure ourselves with preparation is key, but reassure ourselves that we, with things that we've done before. And if you think, like, when we were talking there about capping off your day,

we're effectively creating a daily record of things that we can celebrate that we've achieved, right? And what that's doing is providing evidence to ourselves that we can deliver on our goals and we can achieve the things we say we're going to do, which is actually helping self-esteem and self-confidence because that's helping what you consciously want to do go into that sort of subconscious programming that I can do this. But then in that moment, what are you going to do? Yes, you might think, well, how do I channel this into excitement? sounds great, doesn't it? But then you're about to walk out and you're like, oh my God, here

I am. I think then it's about bringing yourself back to that present moment, right? And using your breath is the easiest and most scientifically proven segue to bring yourself back to the present. I think when you try to resist something, in my experience, that's when it becomes problematic. And, you know, the saying goes, what you resist persists. And some days we do just get that kind of anxiety-based feeling, right? And you think, I don't even know why. Why is it? I just feel like that today. I'm not sure. Something's kind of making me slightly edgy. And maybe it's your hormones as well for women because we are fluctuating throughout the month. And particularly, you know, if you're in your 40s like me, you're encountering those years where you're seeing disruption as

well. And so there's a very kind of real thing. So I think it's about supporting ourselves, yes, with the right mindset, but then also in other ways and thinking, where do I need to give myself a bit more support and that might be even using things like adaptogens right that help support adrenal function that there's so many layers to that anxiety but i think if we compare ourselves to others which was one of the things that you brought up that really is the thief of all joy because i think we have to believe that everything is happening to us in the timing that's right for us and that we're learning and we're growing along the way as that's taking place that's beautiful so part of your messaging and ideologies is this power of modality called biosyncing

so maybe if you can talk a little bit about you know what exactly is that and and how do you bring this modality into into your coaching yeah so biosyncing is something that I formulated because I wanted to so if I track back a little bit right where I had had all that experience I'd had high performance, I'd achieved, made partnership, then I'd completely kind of destroyed my health. Then I had the luxury of creating some time to focus on my health. High performance health was about, how do I bring these two worlds together? That was where it began. I was like, there's got to be a way. And then I realized that if you want sustained high performance without burnout, then actually what we need is to have optimal health because it's the foundation,

which is why when I'm speaking to clients and program members and organizations, I would say to them, what if you embody the mindset of an athlete? Because an athlete prioritizes things so they don't have this wandering baseline, right? They prioritize their mindset alongside their nutrition, their sleep, their recovery, their fitness and all of these things. And then it was like, how do I create this in a framework that helps women and really gives them something like pillars, if you like, that they can work off? And so biosyncinging I found was the powerful sort of trilogy of syncing with your future self, as we've been talking about, sinking with your female physiology. And by that, I don't just mean like sinking with your cycle because

you might be someone who's going through perimenopause and there's disruption, but sinking with or postmenopause, wherever you are in that process, so you can support your hormones because we're so different than men in terms of those. And then sinking with your bioindividuality. So we, you know, we look quite a bit in my programs at heart rate variability and biofeedback and things, but also thinking like I'm an individual with my goals. There are seasons in life. where am I at this point? And what is suitable and works really well for me may not work for someone else. Someone asked me the other day, I keep reading that everyone who's really successful gets up at 5am. Do I need to do that? Like I'm not an early morning person? Of course not, right? We're all

individual. So what's your optimal time to access a flow state, to get deep work done? And understanding that you want to sync with that. So what works for me isn't necessarily going to work for you. But I've found that if you follow those three pillars, we can affect change. I love that. So as it relates to, I mean, you work with folks to help them improve their autonomic functioning and increase autonomic control. And so this notion that we actually have control over our nervous system to a degree is kind of a novel concept. But I imagine your practice is this is work that you're actively engaged in. So maybe just quickly, how do you educate folks on the nervous system just at, you know, high level?

And then what are the, what would you say are the strategies that you would coach on to help people get back into kind of nervous system balance? So basically, when we're looking at the nervous system, I guess the simplest way that I explain it to people is when we think about our heart rate and we know that our pulse is beating. at a certain number of beats per minute. Then we can also look at a metric known as a heart rate variability, which obviously shows on Weep as well very helpfully. And that heart rate variability is more variable. So if someone has a pulse of 60 beats per minute, we wouldn't expect to see their heartbeat, one beat every single second.

We'd expect there to be kind of varying intervals between heartbeats. And those intervals can show us how well that nervous system is operating in terms of the balance and how much we're engaging in both our parliaments. sympathetic nervous system alongside our sympathetic nervous system. And so it's a kind of easy way to look at it. And if you think that when there is disorder, it could be outside or it could be through your thoughts, the heart itself tries to create order because it's sensing that disorder. So now it becomes more rhythmic in nature. So it's like a really early warning sign to us. And if you're looking at that and you're looking and you use whoop and you look at your overnight scores and you see my heart rate

variability is dropping, then I need to prioritize potentially a bit more recovery here, and then what does that look like? So what we do is to work with individuals to see what's going on during the day and how can we improve heart rate variability. And I know you've done, I was listening to actually to interview Dr. J. Wiles, who I love, who's also been my show, and he's been, you know, I won't repeat everything he's said because he was talking about all of the things you can do in terms of good hydration, like limiting caffeine, And all the things we can do to improve heart rate variability, what we've found, and when we're looking at that trilogy of female physiology, bioindividuality and your future self, is that when you're in resonance with your values and your purpose and you're living that, your heart rate variability seems to improve because you come into sync, right? And so it's really, really been fascinating. And that's different for everyone. So we might see a mom who is stressed and pushed for the school run and she's doing breakfast for her kids, but actually her heart rate variability looks really good because she's

really, like, she's dedicated this period of her life to raising her children and being with them and she's finding so much pleasure in that moment. And how simple is that? Yeah, and purpose. How simple is that if you could just do more of what you love and that's in alignment with you? I've seen, you know, people who love their work and it's so kind of mission inspired and fulfilling that they can work crazy hours and yet they'll build capacity overnight because those activities are in and of themselves that they're intrinsically renewing and rewarding and so it's amazing and so they'll build capacity whereas in an individual who is struggling with that job or it's not an alignment they're going to feel very depleted and you see it kind of go down across the week so part of that is

understanding you know what do I want to achieve and what are my values and are they in sync with each other because if not something needs to change here right either we we need to reassess what are your values driving you at this point this season in your life, or we kind of need to re-look at the goal or get them to line up some way because also then life just is more in flow and it feels much smoother, much easier because you're not kind of pushing a rock up a big hill in every sense of the word. I love that. And I think so much about values. And that's really been for me the most grounding framework, you know, to think about, it helps me make decisions. It's, you know, when I understand

what it is that I care about, what I believe in, and I can, and I understand how those values track to specific behaviors and whether or not they're in alignment versus not. It really creates so much freedom. And I don't know, it sounds so simple, you know, to really think, okay, what it is, you know, what do I value? And, you know, I think first your identity, you know, when we think about, you know, the four components of habit formation, you know, identity creation or, you know, who do I want to be in this world is such an important. thing to reflect on and to answer. I think the second part of that is, what is it do I actually value? You know, what do I really believe in at my core? And your values and your identity can change.

These are very fluid, right? And I think that's important for folks to know, to understand. But if we're not, I think, engaging in the process of introspection to really, you know, write, right down, you know, what do I actually value? And then you can kind of see, you know, run, you know, do a little exercise where you can look at, all right, these are my roles and behaviors over the course of the day. This is what I say I value what actually lines up versus not. You know, and the more misalignment, I think this is what you're saying, the more misalignment between what I say care about and my behaviors, the more dissonance I'm going to feel in this manifests in the autonomic nervous system. You will have a lower heart rate variability relative to whatever your potential

is if you are living in a misaligned state. So, I think when people think about, oh, I want to improve my hearty variability, they immediately go to, I need to exercise more, I need to do all of these kind of things where a lot of it is just understanding what it is that you really care about and making sure that you have an outlet for those things that you care about and your behaviors are in alignment as often as possible. Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I think when you start to, when you don't understand your values, it can lead to behavior as well. So we see it as you say in the autonomic nervous system, but it leads to behavior that you didn't anticipate and you consciously didn't want to create. So an example I could use that maybe makes it really practical. I decided, so I'd given up alcohol for like 30 days, 30 days no alcohol numerous times. And then I decided it's now been like over 500 days. However, it didn't start that one. And I still haven't figured out whether I'm a non-drinker or not, but I decided, because I kind of don't want to break a streak. That's just crazy, isn't it? I know. No, it's, it's pretty funny. So it started as 90 days. And when I was first doing this, it was back in the summer of last year. And I'd made that commitment of, I don't want to drink alcohol. However, I also had this very romantic relationship with fine wine with my husband. And we really enjoyed it and laid it down.

visited vineyards and all of these things, and we would have a conversation. And from my kind of legacy lawyer days, I'm still, I didn't realize at the time until I gave up alcohol could be a little bit of a workaholic. And the alcohol for me was something, it was hitting one of my values, which was to spend time with my husband in a shared experience, right? We sit down, it's only a small amount of alcohol, but we loved the tasting notes, thinking about the wine, chatting, having great conversation. It would provide a distinction between work and the end of the day. So that is a value that needed to be addressed. And what that really is as well is a hidden commitment. So I had this new commitment to give up alcohol. But what I hadn't appreciated was

there was a hidden commitment to spend time with my husband there. So, you know, and the universe kind of abhors, a vacuum. So if you remove something like that, it's going to get filled with something else. So at first, I could then just work on because when you run your own company, right, there's never an end point where you don't need to work. There's always work. So I realized had to address this because I'm not spending time with my family. It was summer so we ended up going out with our dogs doing nature walks and spending time through a different route. But I had to understand that. And I think when we're looking at this, values are important and understanding what those hidden commitments might be. And they're not the same as resistance because we also encounter

resistance, right? Resistance is where we want to do something, but then we feel it's like almost too hard to do it, right? So we're resisting it. It's often where we most need to go. But a really easy example is you decide that you want to take up running and it's the middle of winter and now you've got to get out of bed in the dark and the driving rain or snow and go out running. And there's so much resistance, right? And we're like, how do I step into the future me? Yes, it's not really a hidden commitment. Is it to your bed? It's resistance in that point. But then there are also hidden commitments. So it could be that if you've decided you're going to do that and say someone sets a kind of almost impossible goal

if I'm doing it seven days a week, well maybe that's fine during the week and the kids are in bed or your husband's gone to work or whatever it is or your partner, but then at the weekend you have a hidden commitment that you love to have breakfast together and maybe you cook pancakes or something at the weekend

and now it's conflicting. And I think the more we can understand and separate these things, the better we can achieve our goals because there are distinctions. And when we don't draw the distinctions, we just get annoyed with ourselves because we're like, well,

why am I not following through? Why am I not doing what I intentionally he wanted to do. Yeah, and I feel like this is like so much of the work that people need to be doing, you know, not just in January, but, you know, quarterly almost, you know, just kind of sitting down and reevaluating. And I love this notion of, of hidden commitments versus resistance. And I think that's kind of going a layer deeper, which, you know, and when you go a layer deeper and you really understand where's the resistance, where are these hidden commitments, and you can make that, you can distinguish that. You can kind of create an infrastructure where

where you're honoring those hidden commitments in a way that's aligned with your values. And then you can address that resistance and stay ahead of it almost and be like, all right, I know it's going to be 18 degrees tomorrow morning at 5.30 when I wake up. I know that that's going to create a lot of resistance. I'm going to go in the basement and do like a little hit workout. You can kind of stay ahead of these things. When you're aware that there's this dynamic underneath that is really suburb. consciously kind of pushing you in different directions. So just to switch gears a little bit,

you know, where do you see are the biggest opportunities for, for women to grow in business and society just as a whole? Do you know what I guess I see is for women? And thank you for that, is to really step into leadership roles. I think that we are, we are leading in so many respects, like naturally, you know, I think particularly for all the moms out there that are listening, to this, that is a leadership role. I was just doing some work with a very large kind of multidisciplinary firm around their partners who were coming back from maternity leave and looking at how do I manage the double, right, the parent partner double. And really what we were looking at there is both of these roles are leadership roles. And if you can get the values we were

talking about to line up for both of them. So how is that partner role supporting or someone listening, how is your career supporting that role as a parent? How is the parent role also supporting you in your career aspirations is so much easier to do. And I think that, yeah, just understanding as women that naturally I think we are wired towards high performance because we take on so much, but we need to look after ourselves. And if we can truly embrace it and do many of the things we've been talking about, then we can really live out our dreams. And we don't have to separate them or put them on hold. Maybe we take a little bit of time out for a period, but then we can give ourselves that space.

We don't have to be in the always on framework. Do you know what I mean? I had a few years out. I took time to rebuild myself. It's not overnight by any stretch of the imagination and give ourselves permission to do that, but then to sort of powerfully step into those roles as much as we can because then we can create a different future

for the next generation because, you know, we will remember like back to the 1980s when I was very young, you know, it was all the power suits and you had to kind of billethe. and the shoulder pads and behave like a man. That was what was always on TV. Do you know what I mean when I look back? And it's changed now, right?

It's really, really different. And I think it's, the world's giving us permission to kind of embrace that femininity at the same time as achieving a state of high performance. And I just, the reason I love supporting women so much is to help them do that because it creates a ripple effect, right, in the world because of all the people we can impact effectively. I couldn't agree more.

you know, I think people think a lot about success and how do you measure success? Such a good question. So sometimes, I guess it depends where we're looking at success, right? So I measure success by kind of tiny, small increments every day. That's why I think journaling is so, is so powerful because we do get these big quantum leaps at times, right? And you think, wow, that just happened. It's amazing. But I don't think that should be the, expectation. I think if we're measuring like, am I getting better every single day and am I delivering on my priorities because you're building that momentum. I think James Clear has done work on this, right? Where he talks about, you know, if you commit to getting 1% better, then by the

end of the year, you're like 37 times better or something. And that again comes back to sort of controlling that process, if you like, right? So that's a kind of, it's a more subjective analysis. And then when you get your wins and acknowledging them and stepping into them, then you've got to step into a new level of you, right? So when these quantum leaps happen, and I think that's the bit pit where people can struggle, if you like, because if you still have a mindset of sort of being down here, and then all of a sudden you jump to this new level of success, I think we need to kind of let our lungs adjust to the altitude, if you like, when you get there, and just let things breathe and go, okay, this isn't the new me. Do you know what I mean?

It's a bit like someone who's accumulating more wealth. It's like, oh, this is a new normal for me in my bank balance, because otherwise we can almost do things on a subconscious level that kind of destroy that process, if you like, because we're not comfortable being there. So we've got to get used to that new version and then keep up leveling to step into the next version of ourselves. So I think looking that, but I think reflection is one of the best ways because, and this is something at this time of year, like at the end of the year or early in the new year, and I like to do it every quarter, like I think you were saying every 90 days. That's my preference too, because if you don't, if you have the experiences with no

reflection, how did you learn or how do you change? I think the reflection is the most key part. There are other things, right, that you can measure objectively. Like if you're, if you're weight training or you're doing things like improving your VO2 max, of course you can actually measure the data and see how am I performing. People will measure, right, their social media performance or their downloads on a podcast. Of course there are objective measures we can have. But sometimes if we feel like those things are not happening as quickly as we want to, then you also want to be measuring yourself as a performer. And are you getting better and growing? Because if so, ultimately that's going to come in time. What are some of the

big obstacles you see for women in particular? I think that for women, I think, you know, there are obstacles obviously sometimes within the workplace that we see in terms of women being given positions of authority and things like that. But I think that a lot of the obstacles is how much challenge women have. I don't think the female body was really conditioned to the amount of stress that we're taking on. And I think it is so much because we're the ones that's carrying everything around in our heads. So, you know, you might have two parents. that are working with children and they're both pursuing careers.

But I think as women, we're the one that's carrying around the fact that there is the Christmas concert or the party or that the child's upset or off sick and all these things on top of everything else we're doing. And I think also for women in their 40s, they're going through a series of hormonal changes and in their 50s, maybe they've also got aging parents. I think all of these things are challenges.

And then we don't give ourselves permission to spend some time on self-care and relaxation. and then obviously we see that as we were talking earlier reflected in our physiology, but then we see that reflected in behaviours that we didn't want. So we might find ourselves eating things that we didn't want to or we're trying to. Because really what's happening there is our body is motivating us to get that result, right? If you have a ton of carbohydrates or some wine, you're going to force yourself into relaxation. And I think that's the biggest challenge.

And I think it's unfortunate that we're seeing so much hormonal disruption. Like all across the decades, if you think about it, there's, there's so many women with PCOS, endometriosis, fibroids, all of these things. There are so many fertility issues, then so many women struggling with like perimenopausal symptoms and things. And if we could give ourselves, like look after ourselves more and prioritize, I think we'd see better benefits across the board for women. And I think we need to be supporting women and supporting each other. I don't want this to obviously turn into everything all about women because, you know, men are doing amazing things too. But yeah, that's

From my perspective with women, I think. Yeah, I think, you know, just kind of going back to, I think some of the obstacles we put in front of ourselves, you know, this notion of asking for help. Can you talk a little bit more about that? You know, when we think about our core psychological needs, you know, self-efficacy, the feeling like we have the skills and resources to do what we need to do to, you know, kind of live our values and fulfill all the roles that we have in our life in a way that feels. really good. And I guess I'm wondering your perspective on, you know, how do we actually go about asking for help, you know, to ensure that we have that, that feeling of self-efficacy, that we can, we can do the things that we need to do in our life to be successful and whatever that means to us. Such a good question. And I think, you know, what's wrapped into that as well is, like, women feeling that they have to do something in order for them to be a good, whatever it is, right? So it's almost like, I must do this in order to be a good mother. And then it's, I see it from both angles as well where you might have a working mom who's thinking, I'm not

spending enough time with my kids. I should be there every night to put them to bed. I should be reading this or I should be doing this. I should. And these should so, like they can really put a heavy load on an individual. Whereas another mom who is like, her kids have now just gone off to school, for example, and she's taken some time out and taking a break from her career is looking at the mum that's working and going, oh my God, like, I should really have something of my own. I should be showing my kids what it's like to be a working mum and an ambitious mother who's achieving things and modelling that future, right? And I think it's about understanding, and this is why I say it's so kind of bio-individual to you, like what is in alignment with

you right now and give yourself permission to do just that? Because there is no right or wrong and stepping into that version of you and then thinking about like if I if I if I if I want to start something new because that's a common thing when people maybe people listening to this and they're thinking they're in that situation and they've taken some time out and now they want to go into a new role or what I often get asked a lot is you know well how did you go from being a lawyer to this how did you create that transition is starting to think about if I want to do this what skills do I already have that enable me to do that and if not where might I need or to upskill a bit to enable me to do that.

And it's going back to that belief, right, that we can. But we've got to believe it's possible for us. And so then really kind of chunking it down and thinking, what needs to be true. And then also thinking, right, maybe I don't have to do everything, giving yourself permission. So in order for that to be true, maybe I have got to get more help at home, you know.

Like I genuinely, this sounds crazy, actually do love to do ironing because it's really satisfying seeing the cruises. but I never do it. It would be really nice, wouldn't it, for my kids to think, my mum irons, my clothes so beautifully, right? And I love to do it. I don't have time,

and I'm completely fine with that being wholly outsourced because, you know, there's going to be years to come where I can just concentrate on those perfectly iron shirts if I want to, do you know, to me? Totally.

But it's, now isn't the time, so give myself permission. You know, if a friend can offer to pick up the kids from school, great. Or, you know, if you need a nanny, like, give yourself permission to follow your dreams because actually the whole family benefits when you do that because you're

as I say you're more in sync that's kind of the core of biosyncing and then everything kind of flows so much better and there's so many benefits you know I love that all right well this has been such a a fun conversation I I want to end we ask this question of all of our guests what are you obsessing over right now I well I'm so I'm always obsessing over over um over high performance right on what it takes to get to a new level. That's definitely the case. But I am obsessing now on how can I, funnily enough, for next year for me, I'm kind of obsessing on getting like a lot more aerobically fit at the moment.

I'm just kind of obsessed with that and my recovery because I think that I'm definitely one for pushing too hard, you know what I mean? So I'm thinking about those things. But for me, I think the biggest thing for me is just reading and learning and like renewing all the time, I think that the more we can do that, because I think it is such an exciting time at this point, right? And I think everything that, you know, when I look at what you guys have brought out in the last year and all the things I've been able to track, and this is just going to become more so. And we can really take charge of our health for high performance. I think

it's so so exciting that, yeah, I'm just constantly obsessing with that, I guess. I love it. Well, it's a perfect answer, of course. Yeah, I think this notion that you know we the science is so good right with with the whoop technology you know what underpins all of our features is just it's so you know it's just based in a lot of rigor and and i and i think i think when we can track certain elements of our our health it can very much reduce stress and because we know if we think about it from the standpoint of all right this is where things are going well this is where i could improve like you you automatically know where to apply your effort, you know, so you're not in a position where you're, you're, you're guessing all the time as to

where do I need to focus my, my energy. And, and I think that's, that's always kind of my rebuttal to people are like, oh, data. And, and I said, well, you know, it's, it's, would you, don't you want to just know? So just be curious as, just to finish off this conversation, you know, what, because you're, you're, you're helping people understand and learn their body and you're using, you know, whoop with your clients. And how do you help people understand or how do you help people think about the role of data in in their life and how it can be really empowering versus not so and i think that's such a good distinction you're making there because some people say well won't i be obsessed right and and will i worry about it and i think not if you see it as empowering because if you see it as

an extra thing so you always want to check in with yourself and see how you feel but also understanding that um having data gives you something to work with objectively right and when we were talking before about resistance, am I not following through on something because it's resistance, it's a mindset thing, or am I really under-recovered because those things are different? Or am I such a high performer that I'm going to push regardless? And when I'm in the red, I'm still going to go work out and do something I'm laughing because that would be me that would still push. We've kind of got wind of the fact that I had COVID last week just before I did. And so I, yeah, on like Thursday morning and I had a whole day of like present.

and workshops. And it came up. It was in the red. Your body temperature is going up and there's a few breathing disruption. I was thinking, what is this? And my eye was getting really swollen. And I was like, maybe I'm coming down with something and weep news. I was like, okay. And then I tracked it across the weekend. I gave into it. I was very good. And I kind of rested loads and went kind of into the yellow. And then Monday morning, I felt amazingly good. And I was really curious. I was like, I feel great. I'm ready to go back in the gym now. And I looked and it was like 91% recovery. know, in the green, your HRVs trending up and everything. And I thought, I did the rest.

I did what I should. And so I think personally, that's really empowering for me. If you can see that data, because sometimes with the best will in the world, we are biased by decisions. And I'm not saying we should hand everything over to data by any strategy imagination. I think we should check in with ourselves. But I think it's also useful to have that as a metric to understand. And so I kind of use both.

And I think it's empowering. And I think it's also fun, right? and fun to track things in real time and see, can I really, you know, get my heart rate up in my sprint? Am I pushing as hard as I think I am here? Let me have a look, you know? So I think data, I'm very data-driven. I think it's a really important part.

I love that story you just told because I think what that's an example of, a really powerful example, is just the ability to course correct. So seeing, like, if you had not, if you just kind of pushed through and you're kind of like, oh, I don't feel great and kind of push, push, push. I mean, I wonder, you know, Monday would you have been in the green had you not had that insight? And I think, you know, one of the questions that I was hesitant to ask, I just wonder, you know, Angela, as you think about, you know, that moment where you were just absolutely on the brink, you were having suicidal thoughts, you're, you know, getting admitted into the hospital. you know, what if you saw that decline, you know, three to six months earlier and had the opportunity to, of course, correct? Do you ever think about that? Like, you know, you didn't have

this knowledge of your body. I'm just kind of wondering, like, yeah, how you think about that. Yeah, I have thought about that because I think, you know, when you see things like the effects that alcohol can have on the body, the effects that lack of sleep can have, the depression that you can see in heart rate variability, you know, the nervous system. and understanding it, what if I'd had access to that information? And I could see that, because I couldn't, at the time, I couldn't understand when, you know, I would have those good days. And like I was saying to you, I was like, super mom.

And then we learned over time, they proceeded the biggest falls. But what if I could see the polarization of what it looked like on my nervous system, that, you know, this is how I can feel here and this is what it's like. I think it would have been an extra tool, definitely for sure, because I couldn't see it. And I think that's the difficulty with mental health, right? Is that you can't see it and nobody else can see it. And people who are struggling with mental health are often really busy and good at hiding it. And I was really good at hiding it.

My friends definitely didn't know that it was taking my son an hour and a half. I feel embarrassed to admit it, an hour and a half to pull me out of bed because I couldn't face the day. You know, and the arm tugging and, mommy, please, when I go to school? and how had I ended up in that bad place? And I think that if just understanding that and seeing that, and what if we went back even before that and as a lawyer I could see, this is what's happening when I'm pulling those all-nighters and those weekends because there was a background, I think, of adrenal dysfunction, right?

And then you deplete everything with the pregnancies and the postnatal. There's a whole series of events. We could have seen that much earlier, I think, with something like that, which, you know, that wasn't available back then, for sure. for sure yeah those declines can be kind of slow and insidious you know and yeah i mean that's one of the reasons i think i value the data so much you know um well thank you for sharing that uh really grateful uh for this conversation you're just such an inspiration to to me personally and just love all the work that that you've done to to support humans and human flourishing so thank you

Thank you so much, Kristen, and for giving me the opportunity to share it. Thank you. Thank you to Angela Foster for sharing her insights on women's health and her biohacking tips for performance optimization. If you enjoyed this episode of the WOOP podcast, please leave a rating or review. Please subscribe to the WOOP podcast. You can check us out on social at WOOP at Will Ahmed. If you have a question, you want to see answered on the podcast. Email us, podcastWoop.com. Call us 508-443-4-9-5-2.

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That's just W-I-L at checkout. All right, folks, that's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. We'll catch you next week on the W-W-W-W-W-WP. podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.