WELLTHY Generation Podcast!

83. The Secret to Wellness You are Missing: As You Change, So Should Your Wellness

• Naihomy Jerez • Episode 83

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Learning to feed ourselves properly as adults isn't something to be embarrassed about—it's a necessary skill in our modern food environment. Wellness must evolve through life's changes, from hormonal shifts to new parenthood to temporary disruptions.

• Understanding how food works in our bodies is essential because our food landscape has changed dramatically with processing and additives
• Female bodies experience continuous hormonal shifts requiring different wellness approaches throughout life
• Permanent changes like parenthood, grief, and aging demand reimagining our wellness strategies
• Temporary disruptions (injury, relocation, caregiving) require flexibility rather than abandonment of wellness
• Collecting data about your body's responses helps create personalized approaches for each life season
• Building a "wellness toolbox" with multiple strategies allows adaptation when circumstances change
• Real wellness evolution takes time—my perimenopause adjustment took nearly two years of consistent effort
• Having support from someone who understands both science and practical application makes transitions easier

I'm currently enrolling new one-on-one clients for three months of coaching, a total of 12 calls. My three-month coaching package offer is open until July 20th. If you've been wondering what's wrong with you and thinking it's silly to learn how to eat, DM me, email me, or book a free consultation call. I have five slots open.


Thank you so much for listening!


Speaker 1:

Hey friends, welcome back to Wealthy Generation Podcast. That's W-E-L-L-T-H-Y. Wealthy. So, if you haven't heard or are not aware, I am currently enrolling new one-on-one clients for three months of coaching, a total of 12 calls and I'm here to talk about that, but not and it's part of the story, right. So I've been having conversations with women who are interested in joining me for one-on-one coaching. They are kind of new to my community, but kind of not. They've been following me on Instagram or listening to this podcast for a while now and we've recently connected on consultation calls, which has been amazing.

Speaker 1:

And something that I keep hearing, or has been a common thread, not just with these new women that I've connected with, but throughout my coaching career, is that there is embarrassment around the fact that we need to learn how to eat, and it's this kind of confusing moment where you're like, wait, I've been eating all my life. Moment where you're like, wait, I've been eating all my life. If I were not eating, then it would be a problem. But to actually understand how to feed oneself is kind of a different process, and if you haven't listened to my episode with Carla she is a former client my episode with Carla she is a former client. This is one of the things that she mentions on the podcast episode and I can link it in the show notes, where she says and I'm not going to quote because I'm not directly reading, but she says something to the effect of it took me 31 years to learn how to feed myself. So it is this common thread of how do we feed ourselves to feel well in our bodies, to feel energized, to promote our wellness, to be at a weight that's healthy for us. And I say it that way because there's one thought of the weight we think we should be and there's another weight where our body is at its most optimal right, and that number might not be the same, or if you want to achieve weight loss or something like that right. So to learn how to feed ourselves is like this concept. That shouldn't be a concept, at least we think, and it's with all due right. It is a new concept. It is a new thing that we have to do for ourselves. The same way we learn about money and we learn about I don't know stranger danger, and we learn about music and our culture and things like that, we also need to now, in this modern world, learn how to feed ourselves, because things have changed so so much when it comes to food.

Speaker 1:

And something I also want to tie this back to is the ever changing wellness and how sometimes we have to learn how to feed ourselves. More or less, depending on what our goals are, depending on the season that we are in life, depending on how we're feeling, we might have to make certain adjustments to how we eat. So it's not even like you learn one way of eating and then that's it. We don't learn anything else. True, wellness is really ever evolving. There are circumstances in our lives that for well, if we're not aware of it, we don't know, but that really shaped the way that we feed ourselves, the way that we need to feed ourselves or should feed ourselves. It just changes.

Speaker 1:

And I think that in wellness culture there's this rigidity to wellness where you follow one thing and usually we're following one thing within another, which is trends. So we follow one diet or one way of eating and we do that, but it's not sustainable because it's so rigid or it doesn't fit our lifestyle and it makes us more stressed out. Then it is helpful, and then we continue to hop around doing the same thing, depending on the trend that's happening, like right now. It's I don't know. It's like Pilates and we're running marathons and it's clean eating and mindful eating and organic and raw, and there's all of these little buzzwords that happen. Oh, and not to mention the pharmaceutical industry with weight loss injections or surgeries, things like that. So there's so much to navigate in wellness, things like that. So there's so much to navigate in wellness that we're like, okay, let's try this, let's try that, and then it kind of goes out the window until this new trend catches your eye and you go ahead and re-engage.

Speaker 1:

Right, but what about if we would always be engaged to a certain extent? What about if we were accepting of the fact that the way we eat does need to evolve? We need to first learn the foundation and the basics of how food works in our body, what different categories food fall under, how eating certain kinds of foods affect us on the inside and affect us personally. Right, there's a general way of how food responds to the human body, but then there's the more 100% nuanced way as to how it affects you specifically, which is a whole, nother different story that no one talks about. It's just really general.

Speaker 1:

So, when we're discussing this, I just want to share a little bit about how, what I want to highlight certain parts of general life that might I don't want to say might that will cause a change in how you eat and your wellness, whether it's voluntary or involuntary, where you're making actual mindful choices in changes or you're not noticing that this is happening because the outside circumstance of your life is pushing you in that direction and you're not kind of aware that eating is a thing yet or that it changes. So you're just going along with the flow and temporary circumstances where these changes might happen and things that we don't have control over. And I'll give personal examples. I've been on my wellness journey now for almost nine years, so I've been through a lot of different I don't know life circumstances where I've had to adjust my wellness.

Speaker 1:

And I just want to normalize this because I think there's a lot of shame and guilt that happen when you can't stick to the one plan that you have decided on or chosen or have been doing for a while and then it no longer works or fits and you make it mean that your wellness is over or that you can't continue on your wellness and it's kind of like hands up in the air surrender. I can't do anything about it, but I want you to know that you can do more about it. You can do things about it. You can always pivot, you can always take a more like a pause and see what your actual resources are at the time or what can you do right, sometimes I'm not going to lie it's annoying to do that, I am a habit of creature. And once I find a specific way that works for me and that I get comfortable in, when that time change, that time comes, when my life is like all right, this no longer a good fit, then it's kind of annoying to go back to the drawing board and, you know, do research and find what's going to work and that transition period that needs to happen. But it doesn't mean that it can't be done. And the more that we go through life experiences, we can kind of get a little bit more of a handle on what the changes looks like and have a little bit more grace for ourselves when these moments do come up.

Speaker 1:

So number one, as the basic foundation umbrella of everything, is we. Yes, we need to learn how to eat at this big age, at whatever age we are in, and we haven't learned we need to, and the reason why is because it's not as innate as before, where we just ate from the earth, right, there were home cooked meals being made. Everything was minimally processed. Foods were not being made at factories, they were being made by local shops or at home, you know, and there was not much to think about. Like we, we like, those were the foods that we were eating.

Speaker 1:

But as we have evolved into modern society, where there's like monocropping, where there's big farming, right, there's no longer small farms, there's like farmland upon farmland, where there's just one crop being grown, like corn or soy or something like that, where now there's major major food companies, where a lot of food is being made in factories with ingredients that are subpar and modified chemicals, where there's less home cooking going on, there's less nutritious food available, there's food deserts and all these other things, then it means that now we need to sift through all this information, let alone the way that society is set up, where how we work is kind of different, how we show up in our lives is a little bit different, it's very capitalistic, where everything revolves around money, not necessarily the wellbeing of our communities. So we need to sift through all of this information to be able to understand technically what's actually food that nourishes us and that supports our wellness, and what is food that does not and it's just created for big profit for these companies. Okay, so there's a difference there. So that's the reason why we actually need to pay attention and learn how to eat because our lifestyles have shifted, the food has shifted and it's greatly impacting our health, and not everything that you see or that you can put in your mouth is food right. Food nourishes us, it supports our health, and a lot of the times that's not happening. So to sift again through this information to know what is in the supermarkets or whatever is actually a really big feat, and not a lot of people know like this is not what doctors are being trained on. This is not what our parents are learning. Right, they come from very unique backgrounds where most likely they were. Maybe they fall in that first bucket where food was radically different and lifestyle was radically different, even in just the past 50, 60, 70 years. Okay, so that's the main reason to learn about food and having no shame to learn about food.

Speaker 1:

So now I want to go into some, like the evolution of wellness, like how it just evolves without it being your fault at all, and how to ride that wave so that we're not pigeonholing ourselves into wellness, looking just one way and then thinking that it's hopeless and that you know there's no solution or there's nothing that you can do where you currently are, in the season that you're in. So I kind of categorize this as forever changes, as things that happen in your life that kind of stick forever. And then in between that there are temporary changes that happen, and I'm going to go through a few of those that cause us to have to shift our wellness strategy, whether it's movement, food, all those kinds of things. So the very first one I feel like it's a forever change is being born female, point blank. Like if you are born female, you your body is ruled by estrogen and you have a vulva. Like your life is an evolving wellness period.

Speaker 1:

Why? Because as we age, we go through so many hormonal changes that are involuntary to us. We are, you know, as soon as we're maybe a preteen to an early teen, we start to menstruate and then we're in our childbearing years and then we go into perimenopause and then we hit menopause and we're post-menopausal. So just those hormonal shifts that are involuntary to the female body requires our wellness to flow with that, and what usually happens is that we this teen, early twenties, maybe early thirties era, where we were able to make fast changes with our bodies without putting in much effort whether that was weight loss, mostly weight loss, right, um, and it was really kind of it felt easy and most people feel like they looked their best right. But as we start getting older and our hormones start to shift, so does our wellness strategy, and that is never taken into consideration. A lot of the research that's out here is based on men, and the women's body is rarely studied, and part of the reason why is because they say, it's been said, that we're too complicated. Duh, we are complicated.

Speaker 1:

We go through so many hormonal shifts, not just throughout our lives, but on a month to month basis, so to me, our needs becomes really intricate and very delicate, and we're not taught these things. We avoid these kinds of conversations. Shame is brought on to us about these conversations. So if our moms are not learning, if our grandmas are not learning, if this stuff is not being taught in school, our doctors are not sharing with us, then where do we get the information and a lot of it is stereotypes, a lot of it is you know, if it worked for one person, maybe it works for me, but I think it creates this very toxic environment where we don't actually know and then we get blamed for not knowing or for not being at our best or for not feeling well, and I think it's super unfair. So I think that that's a forever change right there. Now, if we want to add to this forever change is becoming a parent.

Speaker 1:

Pregnancy is a whole nother animal, because it's another huge hormonal shift, physically and mentally. And becoming a parent is a forever thing, right. Whether, no matter what, like, if you're pregnant, you have a child, if you're raising this child, if not, it's part of your lived experiences, it's part of your body changing in different ways and it not quite being the same ever again. You're not the same ever again, right? So this is another forever change where things shift so violently and there's little support on here and now you're also raising other humans that bring in a lot of the temporary changes that happens to us. And it's all the phases of the kid, right. The kid is a newborn, then is a baby, then it's come school, they get sick, right. So there's a lot of uncertainty that comes with becoming a parent because all of a sudden, your schedule and your timeline is not really yours anymore.

Speaker 1:

For as much as you think it will be, it will not be, because you don't have control over certain things. You don't have control over your kid catching a cold and having to stay home and changing your plans. For example, my kid broke his arm and elbow and that completely changed how wellness looked for me, because he needed a lot of care and attention. He was five years old. A lot of care and attention. He was five years old, so a lot of things that he would do on his own. Now he needed support in. So not only was the time of his him being in a cast and having so many doctor's appointments, but also physical therapy, occupational therapy, so that he can regain movement, correct movement in his arm. And that was another nine months, right. So I don't have control over those things.

Speaker 1:

What happens to my wellness is that it needs to shift, it needs to pivot, okay. So I want you to think of this almost like the Russian dolls I don't know if you guys have ever seen them where there's one doll inside of another and there's a bunch of different sizes and they go all into one one another. So this is like the bigger dolls, like the forever changes, and then the ones inside are like the little temporary changes that we need to adjust to. Another thing that happened with my wellness and how it's had to shift is when they went to school. Right, when they went to school, my schedule revolved around their school schedule and that's how I've had to run my business, run my wellness. All of that because there's just, there's just that's my responsibility and my wellness needs to adjust with that.

Speaker 1:

Another big example of forever changes is grief and trauma. Right, they forever change you and it brings up a lot of emotions and it brings up a lot of that has to be done, right. So this also impacts your wellness and because it impacts your motivation, it impacts your self-confidence, it impacts how you feel. So sometimes we're not up for doing our full wellness how we expect it to, because we're sad or because we need a break, or because we need other types of support, or because we have traumatic stress in our bodies where doing certain things really triggers us, right. So I want you to see how these lived experiences that you kind of don't have any control over, really affects our wellness and we try to separate those two things and it becomes this toxic cycle of thinking that we're not good enough, that we're not disciplined enough and that we're never going to get it. And this doesn't work for me and that is simply not true. This is why I really support my clients in building a toolbox for flexibility, for options that we have as things shift and change in our lives. Things shift and change in our lives.

Speaker 1:

I want to bring up other temporary changes, like moving from one place to another right Like that takes up a lot of time and energy. The school season, the regular seasons, if you go on vacation, if you get hurt I know that I sprained my ankle really bad at one point and I had to completely change my wellness routine because I couldn't be on my ankle. I had to give it time to heal. If family members get sick and you need to show up for them. If you're having a medical procedure done and you need to rest for four to six weeks. If you become a caretaker for a family member, if you're getting ready for something right Like a big test or a promotion or something like that and these are just like quick examples that came to me off the top of my head, where I we assume that because we have to change how we're eating or how we're moving, that we broke it. We broke our wellness, we broke our progress, we broke our commitment to ourselves, and I hope that it gives you some, I guess, relief to understand that if we do not learn how to navigate our wellness through these life changes and understand that we need to find new ways of adjusting, then we're going to feel like we never get it and it's not meant for us.

Speaker 1:

Another time where I've had to change my wellness within these nine years has been as I've gotten older, as I mentioned, with aging. When I started my wellness journey, I was 30. And when I turned 37, and I had been able to maintain everything for about six years, like my weight, the clothes I wore, my energy, how I looked, like everything was stable for six years and then it was not. I gained about 30 pounds in three to four months. I gained a lot of belly fat, I was tired, I was frustrated, I felt like everything was falling apart, and what I do know is that perimenopause starts or you can start feeling symptoms around age 35. So I was like, oh, is this the start of perimenopause for me? Or more obvious symptoms? Is it because I was on antidepressants? Is it because I was on thyroid medication? Is it because I experimented with testosterone hormone therapy? All of these things were going around around that time.

Speaker 1:

But I knew what the changes I needed to make for a perimenopausal woman. I knew what those things were, so I was taking it very relaxed before then because it was working for me. But because I started to experience all these changes in such a small amount of time, I started to adopt more of a perimenopausal lifestyle and it took me a while, a lot of consistency, but it took me, I think, almost two years of consistent work and tweaking and adjustment to be able to get back to feeling how I was before. And I don't want to shy away from how long this took in the timelines, because it's very real. And one thing that we are in our wellness journeys a lot of time is very impatient because we live in the microwave wellness culture, society right, and sometimes I'm navigating and trying to implement these changes with everything else going on in my life. So even if I wanted to go at 100, life has me at 75. And other things popping in and out of my life that are unexpected, that kind of slows down the whatever progress I want to make.

Speaker 1:

I know in the last two months in April and May was one of those slow down times for me. In April I sprained my ankle again and I caught COVID and it took me like I don't know two plus weeks to recover. And then in May school activities started to ramp up for my kids as the end of the school year and I also got a yeast infection that knocked me out. So these are moments where I just have to adjust my wellness. I switched my eating to help my body heal from the yeast infection. I had to switch my movement because I really did not have energy and I felt like my body just needed rest to focus on healing. And I know, because I've done it time and time again, that I'll go back to what I was doing before. Another switch I had to do was I had to switch gyms and I had to do research and I wanted to find a personal trainer to support me with the changes that was happening with my body and how I was feeling. So what I want for you to remain consistent in your wellness journey is knowing that you will always figure it out. I don't want to say that you'll always have the answers, because you won't, but you will always figure it out. You would always give it a chance.

Speaker 1:

When I was feeling pretty defeated in these two years where I tried to figure out myself again, something I continuously told myself was that I believed in the science, I believed in the result. I believed in the doctor's research and the science that I was following, who had studied this at length and who had taught me these strategies Right. And I knew that part of the package was remaining consistent on even if no matter how long it took and collecting data. Okay, collecting data, I would track what I ate to a certain extent not not all the time, right, but I just wanted to see what was happening. I switched my food around Um. I implemented again certain aspects of perimenopausal lifestyle a lot of them and I got a body composition exams done to see how I was doing. I was not just monitoring my weight number as a whole. I even got a DEXA scan, which I have an episode about on the podcast as well. I got blood work done just to make sure I had data to continue to make decisions for my lifestyle changes.

Speaker 1:

And if you're so overwhelmed right now by what I'm telling you, I'm so sorry. That is not the point of this I really want the point is for you to know that wellness evolves and that there's always something that you can do. Whether you know what that is or not. At the moment that's a different story, but what I do encourage you to do is to stay curious, stay asking questions and not to give up on yourself, because there are so many factors that affects our wellness and it just keeps evolving. And that is something that I speak with and I process with my clients at length, because the beauty of working together for three months or six months at a time is that kind of a lot of life happens, right, especially in six months. A lot of life happens, a few seasons change and we get to together, work through the wellness evolution and flow and find how we're going to continue honoring their wellness while the outside circumstances change that they don't have much control over, and how do they stay committed and on track with their goals? And, trust me, it's happened time and time again.

Speaker 1:

So if you find yourself, let's say, you're a new mom and you're trying to go back to the routine you had before you had a baby and you're finding that it's difficult to do that because you don't have the same amount of time. You don't have the same amount of time, you don't have the same energy as before. Your priorities have 100% shifted. Because now you have a little human to take care of, then your wellness is not lost, it just needs to be re-imagined. And sometimes it's hard to see what that can look like. If you are a new parent, if you I don't know if you are kind of at a loss at what other choices you have, right, I think that that's a big deal. Or if you moved somewhere new.

Speaker 1:

I know that one of my clients moved from California to the East Coast and they were at a total loss with their cross country drive Sorry, there's cars outside making a lot of noise. Here we go. Okay, there were a lot of changes happening for her and then she had to kind of read, not kind of. She had to rebuild her wellness in a new city. She had to find new restaurants and new places to work out and do yoga and cafes. So again, it's not lost, it just has to be re-imagined with the understanding that wellness is shifting.

Speaker 1:

With the understanding that wellness is shifting, I for myself have like, if I need to make changes, taking my age into consideration and where I am in my hormonal journey as a female, I kind of have an idea as to what my next steps are to make changes and to try out to see if it works for me. Right, and that's just because this is what I study, this is what I help women with, this is what I focus on. However, in other areas of my life, I also have that one person who I'm like. If I have to ask a question, if it comes to money or career or whatever, I can reach out to XYZ human to support me with that. Okay, so that's a lot of what I do with my clients not only teaching them the science behind things, teaching them the foundation about food and wellness and hormones and stress and how it all works, but also how do you apply it, because we can know a lot of information, but if it's not being applied appropriately, then it's probably not going to work in the way that you expect it to.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of right things out here in the internet and wherever you find your information internet and wherever you find your information. There's a lot of right things, but are they right together? Are they right for you? Are they right for you in this season? Those are all question marks. Okay, that kind of disappoint us or discourages us when it doesn't work as well. So another thing I help my clients do is kind of put the puzzle pieces together of what works for them in this season. I debunk a lot of wellness things that are set out there that might not apply for them or we have different lived experiences and cultures, so it's seen different and it is super, super helpful and a lot more peaceful and relaxing and loving and graceful and accepting when we start to see wellness from this angle. All right, all right. I hope this was helpful.

Speaker 1:

I do want to invite you, if this has hit home for you, if you've never considered wellness as an ever-evolving thing and you're stuck in your 20s and early 30s and just wishing and hoping for these moments, or you have something going on like a wellness concern or your numbers on your blood work is not so good and you know that you want to work on your stress and your hormones and you want to learn how to eat at this big age, or you know that stuff but you don't know how to apply it and pivot it into this new season of your life, whether it's a forever change for you or a temporary change for you, or circumstances that fluctuate on a pretty regular basis and you don't know how to switch it up, then I really, really do invite you to reach out to me. Let's chat. You can DM me, email me, book a free consultation call where we can discuss all of this. My three month coaching package offer is open until July 20th. After that I'm going to retire it for a little bit, so I invite you to go ahead and, if you're curious at all, contact me to learn more about it. And if you're curious at all, contact me to learn more about it. I have five slots open. I had a total of six. One is officially taken. There are a few that I'm waiting on confirmation on, but officially I still have five spots open until July 20th.

Speaker 1:

So I invite you, if this has hit home for you, if you've been wondering for so long what's wrong with you and thinking that it's silly about learning how to eat, and why do you always fall off the wagon. These are just some of the reasons why it is. It's not on you, it's just learning the skill of flowing, pivoting and being flexible with your wellness journey as life is happening. All right, my love. Thank you so much for being here for listening. I appreciate you. Remember to subscribe and to rate and leave a comment if you are enjoying this episode or share it with a friend. I cannot wait to see you next week. Talk to you later. Bye.