EPISODE 27: TAKING YOUR HEALTH JOURNEY ONE SMALL STEP AT A TIME WITH JENNIFER NAGEL
Live Date: Monday, October 5, 2020
Show Description: Today, Heather is joined by body transformation expert, Jennifer Nagel. After 15 years in higher education and some major life transition, including a promotion, a divorce, and single parenthood, Jennifer found herself with horrible wellness habits that left her health at risk. At 33, she knew she had to find a better way to live, and she began educating herself, learning how to live a healthy, balanced life. Now, Jennifer educates high performing women how to both prioritize and streamline their health and fitness routines so that they can be more productive in work and business. Heather and Jennifer talk about taking small steps that equal big wins, finding flexibility in the rules we write for ourselves, how to emulate self-care for your kids, layering habits to build a healthy lifestyle, the Three M Method, and other important topics around our health.
Biggest Takeaways:
If you find yourself in a place where you feel the pressure to be everything to everyone, Jennifer wants you to remind you to relax the rules you’ve created for yourself. You have to be flexible with these rules that you’ve self-imposed and take care of yourself first. You can rewrite the rules to fit into a healthy lifestyle.
When Jennifer considers situations that will take her time and energy, she asks herself two questions. If the answer is “no” to either of those, she passes on the opportunity. Those questions are:
Is it aligned with who I want to be, and who I am?
Does this make me feel like I’m doing something really good?
Jennifer believes there are three components that make a huge difference to one’s health and wellness, which she calls the Three M Method:
Meals: This can be nutrition, of course, but also understanding the habits behind diet culture and why we fuel our bodies the way we do.
Muscle: Strength training helps with bone health, confidence, and helps burn more calories throughout the day.
Metabolism: This involves your hormones, including what we eat, stress levels, and sleep.
Quotables:
“We help the people we were five years ago.” – Jennifer Nagel 1:39
“I’ve learned myself the hard way about burnout. When I’m really trying to take on too much and not taking things a little bit at a time and trying to manage all of these different things and go 100% in health and fitness and then flame out, burnout, not feel very good.” – Jennifer Nagel 3:12
“I deeply understand what you’re saying about the burnout component. And, I think this year, more than any other year, we can’t have one more thing that feels daunting or intimidating, or like another thing to add to our to-do list, right? So these little victories, these smaller things, as opposed to unrealistic goals that we’re not going to hold true to. I think that is meeting women right where they are right now.” – Heather Adams 4:09
“When I first started my own journey, it was difficult to find someone who understood because I wasn’t making excuses. I wasn’t saying, ‘Oh, I can’t do this because…’ But these were real challenges that I had to overcome. Something as simple as I couldn’t go to a gym because when my daughter was with me, I can’t leave a four-year-old in the house. So what do I do? Or I only have 20 minutes, or I’m going to get on a plane and you know, for weeks at a time and how do I adjust to those challenges? And those are real things that women, moms, working women – there’s a lot of caveats that we experienced that are not necessarily talked about when people are looking at their latest and greatest exercise or fitness or health program. And, that’s why we take a lot of time understanding our individual client.” – Jennifer Nagel 12:24
“Working hard towards something that feels good and aligned is so much different than working hard and killing yourself over something that isn’t really aligned with who you are.” – Jennifer Nagel 16:07
“I think there’s something to that pivot that changes your internal narrative too, in your head of the experience that you’re bringing to everybody else and the best version of yourself that you’re bringing to everybody else because it’s allowing for this quality of life that you want.” – Heather Adams 18:54
“Do one thing. Just find one thing. And like I said, make it small because the real critical piece is that you need a win. You need a win right now.” – Jennifer Nagel 29:59
“Pick the one thing that you think will help you feel at least like you got something done and let it be small – something you can accomplish in a couple of minutes. And the key is to celebrate it. Celebrate the crap out of it. Celebrate it like you just won a million dollars or graduated from a Ph.D. program or something. Because it’s that action that’s going to lead you to the next win. – Jennifer Nagel 30:31
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