The Art of Stress-Free Living through Fitness and Food Wisdom | EP218

Embark on a transformative journey with Catherine Chapman and Julie Clark as we uncover the keys to a stress-free life through motion and nutrition. Catherine, with her innovative Ploxing—a blend of the control of Pilates and the vigor of boxing—shows us how to shake off our stressors through powerful movements. Meanwhile, Julie, our nutritional therapist, takes us beyond the usual health advice to reveal how our diets can act as our allies in the stress battle. Their expertise promises to arm you with strategies for a calm and healthy existence, leaving you feeling empowered and in control.

In this episode, we pull back the curtain on the seldom-discussed symbiosis between our well-being and the world around us. Discover the surprising benefits of cold plunges and the restorative embrace of the natural world. I share with you this curated selection of expert tips to build your personal stress-relief toolkit—from the simplicity of a deep breath to the gut-busting joy of laughter and its profound effect on our parasympathetic system. Let's navigate the journey to tranquillity together, where each step is a milestone towards reclaiming peace and fortifying our overall health.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:51

You're listening to the Mindset and Action podcast, the place to be to grow and streamline your business. I'm your host, donna Eade. Let's jump into the show. ["june Borzenko"]. Every day brings a choice to practice stress or to practice peace. Joan Borzenko, welcome back to the podcast. Everyone, I am so glad to have you here today, and I have got not one, but two fabulous guests with me today, and I'm so, so excited to share them with you Now. We've been talking a lot about slow business and soft ambition this year, and decreasing stress is probably top of the list of things that we need to lean into and slow down and soften. So stress is said to be leading risk factor of heart disease and it's the biggest killer in the United States. So we can't avoid it. How do we manage it? I'm bringing on my fabulous friends today to talk about this. They are the hosts of the far too fabulous podcast, catherine Chapman and Julie Clark. Welcome to the show, woo.

Speaker 2: 2:05

Thank you for having us.

Speaker 1: 2:07

I'm so excited. So this is Catherine's second time on the podcast she was on. I think it was episode 26 or 27. We did a little mini series back in lockdown and that's when the podcast was called something completely different. So I'm excited to have you back on. I'm excited to have Julie here. So, yes, I would love to know a little bit about you both for the listeners before we dive into this topic. So, catherine, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 2: 2:37

My name's Catherine Chapman and I'm from Whitstivall and I am your friendly vitality coach. Yeah, so yeah, I live in Sydney, whitstivall. I am completely nuts about anything fitness and wellbeing. By trade, I'm a nurse and a Pilates coach and then, through lockdown, lots of other training to do with life coaching, breath work, eft, meditation all sorts of stuff appeared in my toolkit and I use that to help wonderful women to build incredible fitness and wellbeing foundations on which they can build the life of their dreams. Love that love that and Julie about you.

Speaker 3: 3:27

Wow, I don't know how to follow that. That was unbelievable. I'm also from Whitstivall, but I'll start with that. I've been a nutritional therapist for I'm in my 24th year. I originally started off as an engineer in the construction industry, so I had a rapid change there due to ill health. So my passion around health is being able to take control of your own health. I think a lot of people tend to not realise that. And yeah, I absolutely love working with families and children, and that usually includes the mums as well. And, like Catherine, I've got lots of extra things that I do Kinesiology, eft, breath work. Genetics is a big thing for me now, which is a fascinating area to work with. So, yeah, that's me really.

Speaker 1: 4:14

Fabulous, and I'm going to say fabulous a lot. This just to sort of get into everybody's heads. They need to go and listen to the Far Too Fabulous podcast for more from these two, because they talk. It's just a great conversation that they have over there. So, getting into this topic of stress, let's come to you first, catherine. Exercise is something that actually puts stress on the body, so how do we balance that and what can we do with regards to exercising for stress relief?

Speaker 2: 4:43

Yeah, I mean it does put a stress on the body. However, the opposite to that the not doing exercise, the not stretching, the byproducts of not exercising, putting on weight, all those sorts of things are generally far more of a stressor on your body. Your body needs to move, your body wants to move and it wants to be able to do that easily and freely. So I mean the obvious thing that jumps to mind for anyone that knows me if you're after some stress relief, you come and do Ploxin with me, which, for anyone that doesn't know what Ploxin is, it's stand-up, pilates and boxing, kind of think box exercise to amazing music and it was created by incredible females for incredible females. And so that high I mean literally that high that buzz from the music, from doing it together, from the great moves, is absolutely a stress buster. And that kind of boxing that I will often be heard saying, imagine whoever you want in front of you, or whatever you want doesn't have to be a person. Obviously believe it is your husband, that's fine too. So you can imagine whoever you want in front of you and that's a great. That's a great fun stress reliever.

Speaker 2: 6:08

And on the other side, doing something super, super calm, doing some, just some stretches, doing some. You can join the meditation, you could join breath work within that stretching or doing the Pilates when you. Often when we're doing a Pilates class, we create a nice flow and we will be doing moves that we're familiar with. So we can just disappear into our bodies rather than being up in our brains with that. You know, monkey mind going nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh. We can just disappear into our bodies and just flow with that movement. And I will just Fe紅 this Although we will be obviously building muscle, strengthening ourselves, stretching, really working all those joints, it's not as much of a stressor on the body and the benefits are massive. So that's where I would send people.

Speaker 1: 7:07

Brilliant Love that and Julie diets. Is food something that can help us with our stress levels and, if so, what can we do to our diets to help us to relieve the stress? Because, I'm stressy.

Speaker 3: 7:23

Does that work? Yeah, lots of people do that. Let's just comment on what Catherine said. First, though, because I think sometimes we forget what stress is actually on the body. So our body doesn't know that we live how we live now. It still thinks that it's set up for us to be living in a cave and having to go fight for our food. So when we're under stress, our body actually wants us to fight, fly or freeze, and if you think about what fly is and fire is, something like Ploxin is mimicking that. So it's like the body expects you in a lot of cases to move in order to dissipate those stress hormones.

Speaker 3: 8:05

So, it can be a stress, but it can also be a massive stress reliever. So, yeah, I'm not suggesting that we go crazy. Especially at certain times of our you know our life, you know menopause of women, we need to be a little bit careful not to push that stress up, and I do see a lot of people doing more exercise and eating less. That's a massive stress, so you've got to get the balance right. So I think, yeah, what Catherine said about the balance between doing something that's slow, something that's relaxing, but also that mimics fighting and fighting and be a massive benefit to the body.

Speaker 1: 8:41

Yeah, and you actually mentioned that in one of your podcast episodes recently, actually talking about the stress on the body and eating less and exercising more and what that actually does to the body. So we'll definitely link the podcast in the show notes so people can go over and listen. At the time of this recording, I think there's four or five episodes to listen to. They'll probably be probably about 10 by the time this goes live, so you can go and catch up quite quickly. They're all fantastic episodes, so definitely head over and listen to that. So on to the diet stuff, julie.

Speaker 3: 9:15

Yeah. So again, to have an understanding of how the body works. When we're looking at diet, when we're under stress, what we're doing is we are pushing a hormonal response from the adrenal glands, and the adrenal glands are the boss of the endocrine system because they deal with your survival. But your body is clever and there's a whole orchestra involved in the endocrine system. So when the adrenals are really taking control of everything, certain other things will come to play. So the thyroid will automatically slow down to conserve your nutrients and to make you safe, your blood sugars will push up in order to fuel you, to fight off light. So when we're looking at diet, what we've got to look at is what that does to the body. So and our minds.

Speaker 3: 10:02

So we will naturally crave more sugar because our body's looking for more fuel. But actually a lot of our stress doesn't involve any output of energy, because we're sat in a traffic jam or we're worried about a bill, or we've got a relationship issue or whatever it is. We're not using the energy. So when we're looking at food in order to help stress, we've got to look at the habits no-transcript that we've turned to because we're under stress first and it's about looking at what am I doing? That's going to be detrimental. So the more stressed you are, the less sugar you want to eat, because that's just you're going to be in a vicious cycle.

Speaker 3: 10:45

And then, when you're under stress, your body's in the far slowly accelerator, flat down. So you've got to fuel your body with the nourishment that it needs. So there's not any specific foods it's looking at. You know, am I cooking from scratch? How much processed food am I eating? How often am I turning to sugar? Caffeine is going to pump the adrenals even more. So you're looking at how hydrated am I? Am I eating good vegetables and fruits and whole grains and quality protein? So yeah, there's not anything in particular, but what I would finish saying is that a diet that is low in nutrition is a stress, and lots of people forget that.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Yeah, yeah, and I think in this day and age it's so easy to not do this Like. I feel like and I don't know if you feel like this, being in your industry, julie but I feel like it's been spoken about so much how you know you need colour in your diet and you need different fruits and vegetables and you need to have that nutritional diversity. Yet everybody still goes for the easy stuff and I feel like everybody knows, and then people still don't even really know or even realise that the stuff that they're eating has no nutrition in whatsoever because it came out of a can or a packet.

Speaker 3: 12:02

Yeah, because, again, a lot of people are in survival mode, aren't they? And they're trying to do what's quick and easy without really being an awareness, and we've spoke a lot about awareness. That's the starting place. Really, you've got to be aware Most people that are stressed are going to have issues with their digestion, because stress turns off digestion. So you've got to look at right, what am I eating? I put it into an environment that can't cope very well and I've got a high demand on my nutrient levels that something's got to give and it always does when you're stressed, which is why it's the biggest cause of, you know, the big diseases.

Speaker 1: 12:39

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree. And it's funny because I was on a call this week where I was talking about decision fatigue and how people can get really fatigued with making those decisions like what are we going to have for dinner, what are we going to have for dinner? And it's just. There's so many decisions that we're making and I can't remember I think Katherine mentioned it at some point sometime about how many thoughts we have going through our head in a day, and it's millions and trillions. It's like ridiculous. And choosing what's for dinner is just another one. And when are we making that decision? 6.30 at night, when we've worked all day and had all that stress, and how are we going to do it?

Speaker 1: 13:16

And I talked about how I actually have a menu that is a month long and some meals are repeated because I like them, but generally it's just one month's worth of meals and I have that every single month for six months and then I change it up in the spring-summer. So I'm only actually making decisions once every six months about what I'm eating and I then can plan and make sure that those meals are a variety, nutritious and got lots of fruits and vegetables mixed in there, and it takes that I don't have to think about it. When my daughter comes home and goes what's for dinner, I go check the menu. Just check the menu, because I don't cook either. My other half does it, so he does the shopping, he does the cooking. I just plan the menu and it just takes all that sort of that stress of deciding out of it as well. So maybe I'll go into that in more detail. When I change over to my spring menu, I'll do a podcast episode on my meals so you can see what I do. So that'll be cool.

Speaker 3: 14:14

I think how planning is seriously underrated. It can take a bit of effort to do, but it actually doesn't take that much and it is such a huge reliever of stress. You know exactly what food you're getting in the supermarket. Everyone knows what's for dinner. I even have a meal plan that is my I'm really busy meal plan, so it's got meals on there that I know that someone else in the house could cook, because I do all the cooking If I'm really busy. Someone else could cook those meals. And I've even got a shopping trolley saved in my online shop for busy week and everybody knows that that is the it's a busy meal plan. Mine must be busy this week.

Speaker 1: 14:57

I love that. That's so good. Yeah, and I. You know people often turn around and sort of shoe away from doing those kind of things because they're like, oh, it's going to be boring. Like me, I have the same meals every month. I'm like I like the meals that I put on my plan. They're diverse in the weeks that they're on so I don't get bored of it. But you know people go, oh it's boring doing a meal plan. It's the same meals every week or whatever. I'm just like look at what you eat for your lunch and then come back to me because I've bet you you're eating the same sandwich that you've eaten for the past 20 years, with the same packet of crisps and the same yogurt.

Speaker 3: 15:35

Yeah, we buy the same things in the supermarket every week, don't we? Yeah?

Speaker 1: 15:38

absolutely absolutely great topic.

Speaker 3: 15:41

If you're out with meal planning, of course I can do that for you.

Speaker 1: 15:45

Yeah, exactly exactly, and their details will be in the show notes. So if you want to reach out to them for helping their specific areas, you are more than welcome to. So give us some top tips, ladies, a couple of tips from you, each in your area of expertise, of things that we could take away and do to start implementing some stress relief through exercise and nutrition.

Speaker 2: 16:06

Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe and breathe. I would so agree with that.

Speaker 3: 16:13

I would so agree with that. That would be on my list as well.

Speaker 2: 16:16

Just, it's the first thing, it's the easiest thing, it's my, it's my go-to when I can feel myself getting stressed. I am acutely aware of how dangerous that additional stress is and, like Julie said, that our bodies don't know that we're worrying around and I head, whether it's real or not, it just takes it that it's real. So to just be able to just stop and just let go of your belly and do a lovely, big, big, deep breath, it's, it's like a reset of your, of your whole system. It's so simple, it's so easy. So, yeah, definitely. And the more that you again start to recognize, more than your awareness, that you're in that, that almost that fight or flight situation, you can get better and better recognizing it and then better and better just trying to release it and eventually your subconscious is very, very clever, it will do it for you. It will go oh, hang on, I know what we do at this situation. Oh, I'm pretty. So, yeah, it's not to be underestimated. It is simple, yet not simplistic.

Speaker 2: 17:38

I can't remember who I heard that. I heard that on a podcast fairly recently and it's brilliant. Obviously, like, like Julie's highlighted, the, the, the gung-ho, fast, fun exercise to get rid of, get rid of all that energy and that stress that you've got built up in your body and your mind because your body's going to hold on to, that is just a fantastic thing to do. So if you and it's that reaction as well react to those feelings, don't just sit in them. We get very, very used to feeling like that all of the time. We especially women, unfortunately, we we get very used to feeling stressed all the time. I've often talked about us wearing it as a little bit of a badge of honor and so noticing that and actioning, doing something about it, the lovely flowing movements and and within that, meditation as well, is such a such a massive part particularly for me, is a massive part of stress relief.

Speaker 2: 18:46

And again, you often hear people say, oh, I don't have time for that, or I don't know how to do it, or I can't do it, and it just it takes such a small amount of time to have such a massive, massive benefit. And you do need to, you do need to practice it very definitely, and the last thing that I do for stress is my is cold water therapy. If I can, I will go and throw myself in the cold sea. The cold of the better as far as I'm concerned, and with nature as well, get out and walk in nature. I've gone way past five now. I'm not walking nature.

Speaker 2: 19:28

That, for vibration levels, literally on a physical level, is brilliant. You don't need to do anything, you just need to go out into nature. You need to take yourself away from all of your gadgets and all of the things that causing that stress. It will naturally bring your vibration levels back down to a more normal, more normal level. So I'm going to throw myself in the sea or, if the sea is shitty, sorry, yeah, let's not get on that tangent.

Speaker 2: 19:58

We could be here all day, or the tide is out, which it happens in, which was well, I've got an ice pod out in the garden, so I use that and and again. It is a stressor on the body. However, in balance, what it does for me and my mental health is is is invaluable really.

Speaker 1: 20:22

And I think a practice in that that what you said about the subconscious picking up on that stress when you're under that stress, breathing through it, because I know that when you're in the ice pod, or probably in the sea as well, there's that moment where your body's like oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, and you have to breathe through it. And then when you get to that other side of just breathing, I've seen like my friends also got an ice pod and she records herself, like sitting in it, and she literally shows you that moment where her body just kind of goes.

Speaker 2: 20:49

Yeah, it's so tranquil. I mean being in the sea and regardless of what the sea is like if it's really really choppy, you can't think about anything else other than keeping your head above water or when it's really really still that lovely tranquil feeling. And still I did a post, I think, the other day about being in my pod when the wind was blowing like crazy all around the garden and I was just sitting in the pod, quiet, breathing, and the contrast was bonkers, but it was just nothing.

Speaker 1: 21:21

Love that, love that Julie. Any tips to add my love?

Speaker 3: 21:26

I was just thinking I can get that same sense of feeling in a hot bath with my candles on.

Speaker 1: 21:31

Me too.

Speaker 3: 21:34

All valid people it is. It is, again, just thinking about what stress is doing. When we're under stress, we're not thinking straight, we can't make good decisions. So if we're running a business or we're running a household or whatever it is, we need to be aware of that, that our decision making is going to be compromised. So my tips would be because I know that digestion is compromised when you're under stress just try and slow down your eating. Your stomach doesn't have teeth, so use your teeth and break down your food to help. The fact that you haven't got those enzymes coming in. That's going to help you absorb your nutrients better. So that's my first tip. My second one would be just to laugh, because laughing triggers the vagus nerve and the vagus nerve you need for rest and digest. Parasympathetic nervous system puts you out of fight and flight. So just to find something. I always watch Phil and Holly on the smorning their bloopers. They always make me laugh, always make me laugh out loud.

Speaker 1: 22:41

So find something you can laugh at. If my mother had wheels, she would have been a bike. That's one of my mum's favorites.

Speaker 3: 22:55

So laughing look at that, look how much we're laughing and we've just yeah, you can't be stressed when you're laughing, right, or you could sing or dance or anything that triggers vagus nerve is going to help. The other thing that I would do is just pick one thing, because when you're stressed you're overwhelmed. Just pick one thing that you can do that you know will help you, whether that's improving your breakfast, drinking more water, getting enough sleep, do something that you know that you can do. That's going to help that stress response in the body.

Speaker 1: 23:29

Brilliant. Thank you so much, ladies, for that information. There's lots of takeaways there for you. If you need them written down, they will be in the show notes, so go over and check those out. Go and check the ladies out on their podcast Far too fabulous and I will see you in the next one. Thank you, ladies, for coming on the show. Thank you, we'll see you next week. Bye for now.