Abundant + Aligned
Welcome to the Abundant + Aligned podcast. We welcome women who are ready to live the life of their dreams. Here, we talk all things mindset, manifestation and entrepreneurship. We are on a mission to create abundance in all areas of life and playing small just isn't our jam! So if you are ready to expand your mind to the possibilities, turn off autopilot and live with intention, you are in the right place! We are abundant and aligned.
Abundant + Aligned
Optimise your biology: Health hacks for high-achievers with Monique Took
What if the key to scaling your business was actually hidden in your biology?
In this eye-opening episode, Jess sits down with Functional Health Practitioner Monique Took, who helps high-achieving women unlock their next level of focus, energy, and success by optimising their health from the inside out.
They dive deep into the science behind female performance, how to fuel your body for mental clarity and productivity, and why understanding your biology might just be the ultimate business advantage.
If you’ve ever felt like your energy, focus, or stress levels are holding you back from executing at your highest potential, this conversation will completely shift the way you see your health, your business, and your daily habits.
This isn’t about hustle culture, it’s about high performance through alignment.
Monique shares a refreshingly grounded perspective on functional health for women who want it all: the thriving business, the calm nervous system, and the energy to lead powerfully. Her science-backed, women-centred approach will help you optimise your biology so you can show up in your business and your life with more focus, confidence, and vitality than ever before.
Connect with Monique Took:
Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/itsmoniquetook/
Podcast → https://open.spotify.com/show/5qb5D2uORkiFXSj72nLfcK?si=8731c88aeb2b4c6a
🫦 The leading mindset academy for women in business - JOIN THE WAITLIST. 2026 waitlist here.
Further Resources:
- Follow me on Instagram for daily mindset tips and lots of BTS content of my life (building a 7 figure business, living by the beach, my daily routines and travels)
- Browse the free resources - meditations, manifestation tracks and more
- See what's currently open for enrolment here or browse courses available on demand here
Welcome to the Abundant and Aligned Podcast, a place where you will come to realise anything you desire is possible. I'm Jess, Mindset and Business Coach, and I'm on a mission to lead women to a life far from average. In this show, you can expect conversations around manifestation, subconscious reprogramming, entrepreneurship, and the daily habits of a woman living a life that is both successful and fun. Imagine a TED talk but over wine. My wish for you is that you experience an unlimited flow of money, a business that attracts your dream clients, and the freedom to spend your time how you choose. And if you stick with me, that will soon be your reality. I'm honored to be on the journey with you, so let's get into it.
SPEAKER_00:Like soft living is I'm sorry, but it's kind of boring. I'm also not gonna hustle my ass off working 24-7 Alex Hormosy, like plow the world down.
SPEAKER_01:So they can actually achieve the success that they desire. So it's a conversation that I know a lot of women probably need because my audience are full of high achievers who want a lot of money, they want all the clients, and the last thing we want is for that to come at the sacrifice of their health. So I'm excited for our conversation. You also have a podcast in Her Era, which the marketing for that has just been gobsmock gobsmacking.
SPEAKER_00:I am a girl that does not do things by halves. I love for me, if you're gonna do something, you may as well do it right. And you know, I think I work with a lot of women, high achievers, execs, etc. And you know, you're the big believer in like you attract premium clients when you're branding and your marketing match it. And so if I want my clients to feel a certain way, that my branding and marketing has to also reflect.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, everyone, go and have a look at the In Her Era trailer. It's a whole live. I'll link all these in the show notes below. Um, so there's the podcast to go and listen to after the conversation, but as I've mentioned, I've got a series of questions here today that's really gonna help our audience know how to look after their body and optimize their health so they can achieve incredible results in their business. Now, the reason I pulled you onto the podcast was I saw a reel, you were on your podcast talking about the 2025 trends that give you the ick. And I was laughing so much at that. So I'd love to actually start there. Where are you going wrong by getting so caught up in some of the trends? And given my audience are full of women, I would love to know what trends we may be following that are actually just for the guys.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I love this question because it's so true. Like on social media, we are constantly bombarded by I think every random health trend, every gut powder, every probiotic that you should be taking. And at the end of the day, a lot of it is just like really good marketing because there are actual studies that say that the advice online, there is only 2% of the advice online, especially around nutrition and diet, is actually factually correct, which is crazy because a lot of millennials and Gen Zs these days are getting the information solely from social media. So there is a huge kind of lack and deficit. And I think we've we kind of are in this generation where we're losing trust with the medical system. And like I can go into my story a bit later, but I obviously I, in my own health journey, had that happen as well. And it's very common, and I see it a lot of the time with the clients I work with, is we're given the pill or we're given, you know, a prescription for low mood, low energy, how we're feeling. But at the end of the day, that's not the issue. We haven't attached what's going on actually inside of our body and why those symptoms are there in the first place. So a lot of the trends that we're seeing and they're popping up, they are in a way similar because they are similar band-aids. They're not actually addressing like the root cause and why those issues are there in the first place. So a lot of the trends, if we your second part of the question is around men versus women, it's so interesting and something I love talking on as well. But a lot of the research that is done on trends or health things like HIIT workouts, ice baths, etc., like 75% of the biomedical research is done exclusively on men, which is wild considering like 50% of the population is women. And some research is done on menopausal women, and that's understandable, is because their hormonal profile is similar to, once you hit that phase, a 24-hour pattern like a man's. Versus a menstruating woman, we have a not only a circadian rhythm, but we have an infraadium rhythm. We have a 28-day on-average hormonal profile. So when we are given advice online, a lot of it is yeah, exclusively designed and tested on men. So when people are given, like, I don't know, workouts from Jack from the gym, like he's not taking into consideration your hormonal profile. And it can actually cause a lot of hormonal imbalances. So I'll use certain ones as an example just so that your girls can have like tangible strategies because I am a tangible girly. Say we did um ice baths as an example. I'm not saying don't do ice baths because the benefits are there. But as women, we have to modify the way that we do it. So a man has a different stress tolerance to women. Our ability or our cortisol will spike higher than a man's when he does an ice bath. So say we did an ice bath, our cortisol dramatically higher. And if we did it in our luteal phase, because we are cyclical, our stress tolerance in our luteal phase is even worse. It is higher. So that means if we are then doing an ice bath in our luteal phase, that cortisol response shoots up. Whereas a man, he's a lot more, he can have all the benefits without us them getting this like huge cortisol spike to our women. And if you think from a biological perspective, women's bodies are designed to be reproductive humans. So our bodies will prioritize our ability to reproduce over anything else. So any huge spikes to cortisol and huge um, either whether it's hip workouts, ice baths, etc., our body will do a metabolic, like will adapt really fast because that is not what we want. It's unsafe for our body. So for women in terms of ice baths, you ideally want to be doing it in the first half of your cycle when you have a more resilient response to stress. Your baseline cortisol isn't higher, but also we don't want to be going lower than 10 degrees. The ideal temperature studied for women is around 10 to 15 degrees. So it's not like push as hard as you can, go as low as you go. It is a smaller, higher window. So the other one is HIIT workouts. Like, do you know how many times? Like, I think we've been in this era of like fit, there's been F45s, fit stops, all this trend of like high intensity, like go hard or go home seven days a week. But for women, it will actually do the opposite effect of what we want because of our tolerance to stress. So we can actually find if you do HIIT workouts seven days a week, instead of reducing your cortisol, your baseline cortisol levels, it will gradually increase it. So your baseline cortisol actually stays higher with back-to-back hip workouts. Versus if you did more of a polarized training, which ideally for women we want to be doing, you're not going to be having these elongated spikes of high cortisol that just lasts the whole time. So it can take like around 24 hours for our cortisol to get back down. So that is why I always tell women if you love a spin class, if you love, I don't know, a fit stop class, I love that for you, but maybe do fit stop class and then a cortisol conservative. Maybe you're going for a walk along the beach, maybe you're going to a Pilates class, but it's having a polarized approach and you're not going to be seeing these huge spikes in cortisol, which can then lead to increased weight weight gain, increased um issues with your energy, like you're wired and tired, but like you feel so exhausted despite you like on all the time. So, in terms of our biology, we can do the same things, but we need to adapt.
SPEAKER_01:So the because I love a spin class, and I love actually let me come back to hot yoga, hot Pilates, because I can imagine that it would put our body into quite a high cortisol state, especially the one I go to. It is hot. But spin class, I love a spin class, and I do like cardio. However, obviously there's moments in the month where I'm more inclined than others. So you're saying those more high-intensity trainings to the parts of our cycle. So ovulation, I'm assuming the follicular phase of our cycle is that correct?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so if we look on a cyclical approach, our body, if you kind of spit split it up, it can be split into four phases, but let's go follicular and luteal phase. So the first half of your cycle, your follicular phase, you will have more energy. You will have a lower stress tolerance. So you will be able to handle more high intensity workouts, more um spin classes, et cetera. Like you can do more in that half. In the second half of your cycle, in your luteal phase, you want to kind of be prioritizing more of your lower intensity strength training, et cetera, because your cortisol baseline is higher. So our tolerance to stress is is less because just think about your baseline is higher. So the window for your stress tolerance is reduced. You've also got, um, you're not able to utilize the energy from your food as effectively in the second half of the cycle, which is why a lot of women feel like if you go to a spin class as an example, why is it in the first half of the cycle? You you're just on the beat. You can do it. The second half, it's like this is so much harder, despite you doing exactly the same things, because you're not the way you use energy is different in that half of the cycle. And so I when I talk to women, I ideally, yeah, you want to be doing more of that higher intensity workouts in that first half, and then in that second half, doing more strength-focused or more um, yeah, cortisol conservative. So you're doing more of a polarized approach.
SPEAKER_01:How come the cortisol baseline changes throughout the month?
SPEAKER_00:Just our hormonal patterns. Because of this, if you think about the way our hormones work, so we're talking estrogen progesterone. So estrogen is our dominant hormone in the first half of the cycle, and progesterone is our dominant hormone in the second half of the cycle if we have a balanced hormone and it hormonal profile, and it's progesterone's effects that can make our stress tolerance a lot less. It can also cause muscle breakdown in like using your muscles for fuel instead of like gaining it. So, yeah, progesterone's effects is what can contribute to it.
SPEAKER_01:Makes sense. Okay, going back to some trends. I almost got sucked into the CMOS trend, and then I did a reel as to the ineffectiveness of CMOS, and that's really no benefit. I'd love for you to roof on what CMOS is if someone has seen something trending around that and why you wouldn't jump up and down about it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so for basically CMOS is a certain type of algae moss that has all these claims. Like, I don't know, you've seen claims online where it's like it cures cancer and it magically loses weight. Like at the end of the day, it's an expensive slime. Like it's just it is has been shown to be a form of prebiotic. So in terms of like fueling your gut health. When we talk about a prebiotic, it is a food that your gut bacteria can consume to then produce all these really beneficial substances that your body can use, um, that your gut bacteria does so much in terms of your energy, your immunity, your um cognitive through the gut brain axis. So, in terms of that, that is, you know, where some of the claims are. But you could just eat oats and an apple and asparagus and get the same effects, and you're getting a more diverse range of prebiotics than just like expensive slime. And it's not very well tested. Like, I'm never going to promote something that's not well tested in the literature and the research. So is it really that effective?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, which makes sense. And this is why conversations like this are so important because as you've mentioned, we see it all over social media. I'm not one to go and do my own research. I'm a little bit, I guess, naive when it comes to things like that. As we all are, we're bombarded by this information. So that's why I love having these conversations, just to actually look at what these things are and why they are effective or not effective. Which actually brings me to creatine. I see that a lot. What is it? What are the benefits, and is that worth it?
SPEAKER_00:Uh creatine is actually a trend that I really love. I'm excited for this one because I think it's been in the male industry for a while, like the bros at the gym using creatine. And I feel like this year, especially, women have been using it a lot more, which I think is really good. So, in terms of creatine, it is a naturally occurring amino acid in our muscles and our brain and um and in our gut. So the body produces it, it helps the body produce energy during things like high-intensity exercise or heavy lifting. But women um have less creatine stores than men naturally. So actually, women respond better to supplementation than men, and that's why for women it's actually super, super beneficial. So if we pair creatine with high-intensity training or heavy lifting, because I'm the biggest advocate that women should lift heavy for neuromuscular adaptations, for bone health, for longevity, for everything that muscle strength can give us. So if we are pairing that with creatine, we are really seeing meaningful gains in terms of strength and power and lean muscle mass. And yeah, it is so, so beneficial. And there's also emerging evidence in supporting cognition and memory and um the way the brain processes speeds really quickly. So there's evidence in that as well. So I'm actually a really, really big fan of this trend. And especially for women, when we go through different hormonal phases, whether that's perimenopause and menopause, it can be really, really hormonally supportive during that phase.
SPEAKER_01:And is that a supplement you have daily?
SPEAKER_00:For me, no, it's actually I do not take it daily, but it is one that I like for me, I'm an acne-prone individual. So for supplements like that, I have done my lab work and my testing. So I know that I drive high a certain hormone called DHT. There are some evidence to suggest that testosterone at the creatine can increase DHT. There's no clinical evidence, but it is something that I have to be aware of. So that's my little caveat. Um, but it is something that I really recommend for, you know, a lot of women that are training or they're doing strength training because it does just amplify their results so, so much better.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting. I love what you just mentioned then as well. Like you don't personally take it because of some blood work that you've had done that has told you this information. And I think this is why working with individuals like you are so powerful for everybody because we can sit here today and have all of these conversations about benefits of certain supplements and um nutritious diets and habits they could implement. But at the end of the day, everybody's hormonal profile is different, as you've mentioned. Our biological makeup is so different. Having this lab work behind every decision can be so powerful.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, 100%. And like for me, personalization is the number one needle-moving factor in your health. Like, I can tell very generalized advice that I see across the board for all women, but the thing that will give you, generate more focus, more energy, the results that you want as a woman that has big goals, who wants that income, who wants to do big things with their life, we need more of a personalized, tailored approach. And for me, I can use myself as an example. When I was 21, I had basically the worst health people have seen very, very quickly, very rapidly. I lost, oh, I think it was 16 kilos. Was it 16? Yeah, kilos very fast. I got down to 38 kilograms in six months. Very tiny. I had the hormones levels of a woman in menopause. I was turning yellow. I had severe gut issues, like so much pain, then running to the bathroom every time I ate. I was covered in cystic acne. And I remembered specifically sitting in a doctor's office, them telling me that I would never have children.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:And they didn't even know what was going on because looking at my results from a blood work lens, things were kind of normal, except for potentially my hormonal profile, which was in metaphors, but they didn't know what was going on. So it would be like, give me the pill, give me a prescription. And so, like, I didn't settle for that. Being someone who was a high achiever who's an academic, and I had big dreams to do, I couldn't get out of bed. So if they weren't going to fix me, then I would. So I went on this journey. I got to, you know, study undo top experts in Australia because this was the time where gut health wasn't a thing. No one knew about nutrition. Like it was like follow the food pyramid. There wasn't that type of advice online. So I social media wasn't even really a thing. It was like Facebook and they're posting random statuses. So it's for me, my information was like purely driven by science papers and experts in the field. So what I found out was my gut health was an absolute mess. One of the worst guts this top expert had seen, like she brought in people to look at my gut. And she was like, I don't even know how you're getting out of bed and getting through the day. And because of my lab work, because I knew exactly what was in there, exactly what was going on, we could then, you know, with my research and my knowledge and guided by her and other top experts, I could then tailor and create this system where I was able to heal myself from pretty much rock bottom. Like not a lot of people, if you saw me during that time, Jess, you would it was a very hard time. And to be able to heal myself, to now be the girl that can go from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. without missing a beach, who has so much energy and still at the end of the day has so much energy to give to her partner. Like, not a lot of people can say that they not only recovered, but their health is so next level that they can do and be and do the things that they want to do in life. So for me, personalization is so important and your lab work is so important because it gives you those insights that nothing else will give you.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, that is a wild story because looking at you today and obviously following you on social media, you do have such a healthy life. And I've seen clips of you saying that you get through your day without needing three cups of coffee. And as you've mentioned, you can pour into your business all day and then pour into your partner and not be at capacity by 6 p.m. But it's really interesting that there's been this dramatic contrast from where you've come from to where you are today. What I'm sure you've done so much to get your health to where it is today. But if you could put it down to three habits or three things you implemented to heal your gut and get you from there to where you are today, what was that?
SPEAKER_00:That is a great question because obviously it wasn't that time where there wasn't as much information online. My and I think I was the biggest guinea pig on myself. I did really random things. I like did enemies where I would stick like a tube up my bum so that I could go to the toilet. Like I would do some really wild things. So my gut is a very, very extreme case in terms of how it was healed and what was going on. So I had to go through a specific diet, which was called a GAPS diet, which really eliminates very triggering food. It was a lot of like bone broths and stocks to be able to heal and seal my gut lining. Then it was I had removed, I had to remove certain foods at the time that were triggering for my gut that were feeding the bad bacteria and then slowly reintroducing them to then re-feed and build up my population. And so once your gut then I got my gut to a good level, because you could you look at my body and weight gain was an issue, um, hormonal issues because I had cystic acne, your gut is quite literally a lot of the center of your health. So once I kind of could heal my gut, then I could focus on my hormonal profile. Then I could was able to absorb the nutrients that I was eating from my food because my gut bacteria wasn't eating. So if I could talk about women in general, because I am an extremely extreme case for women, if they're wanting to focus on their gut and really support their gut, one thing that I would always recommend it's not the powders that are going to heal your gut, it's not the$90 probiotic. We want to be making sure that we're feeding and supporting your microbiome. So that is the collection of your gut bacteria and organisms in your body that make up, you know, there's trillions of them in there. So we want to be supporting and protecting the balance of your microbiome. So one thing that I always recommend is feeding them, and they eat fiber. So feeding them with prebiotic fibers to increase the diversity. So when you look at your diet or what you're eating during the week, a lot of people pick the same fruits and vegetables every single week. But your bacteria love the different varieties, and that's what increases diversity. So trying different fruits and vegetables, aiming for that 30 plant foods a week, whether that's fruits and vegetables, whole grain, nuts and seeds, like eating a whole food-based diet to build up that ecosystem, because the more you support your gut, the better your immune system is, your hormones are, the more energy you have. It's linked to your brain health. So the more you're able to produce your happy hormone serotonin, because 90% of your serotonin is produced in your gut. So the flow-on effect from your gut is huge. So yeah, if I could say that one thing that could really support it is expanding your diversity, so feeding it what it needs.
SPEAKER_01:That's interesting because I'm definitely one of those people who gets the same grocery list every single week. I mean, I eat good, I eat a healthy diet, but it is the exact same. So that's really interesting to know that we should be diversifying the fruit and vegetables that we are eating in the week.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Now we all know I'm assuming a lot of my listeners know about cycle thinking in business and how powerful it is to align your business and your productivity with the four different phases of our menstrual cycle. But I would love to know: is there anything else about the female biology that we should know that would help with our performance?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love this question. Yeah, this is really, really great because as I said, our bodies are so, so different from a man. So if I talk about work specifically and how you construct your day, because I work with a lot of women that do so much in their day. So if we take a cyclical approach to the way we work, so in the first half of the cycle, so you've got menstruation, which is when you are bleeding. So this is when we want to be kind of like a little bit less on. We don't want to be doing like podcast episodes, we don't want to be doing huge launches, maybe not filming content. This is where we're really good creatively in terms of our cognitive performance. Um, we're able to think and think bigger picture. So this is really good ideation time in your follicular phase. So that first, you know, first half after kind of when you menstruate. Your follicular phase is includes menstruation, but I like to separate the two. So after you menstruate until when you ovulate, so around day 14, like think of this like you're on, period. You have so much more, I guess, energy because of your oestrogen rising. You have a lower, um, your your cortisol baseline is lower. So you're able to handle more stress than in the second half. So you're able to do more, it's a lot more intense. You can do a lot more, I guess, work launches, maybe batch posting content, um, recording content, so that you can post it later when you're not feeling the best. And then your luteal phase, that's when, you know, everyone can feel this in your luteal phase. That second half of the cycle, our brain's not processing enough. Our we're a lot more snappy or we we can't handle what we could in the first half because our baseline cortisol is higher. So in that second half, that's when we kind of want to be pulling back a little bit. Maybe it's more think about it as this the structure that you need. You have a more structured day because you don't have to think as much when you have structure. You've got like time blocked or et cetera. So it's doing more admin tasks, more tasks that are more routine in that second half of the cycle, or executing on the plans that you set in the first half. So it's a lot less cognitively loaded. So, in terms of a women's profile, that is how we can really optimize our cycle. But there's also what anyone can do from a biological lens in terms of what we call an ultradian rhythm. If you want me to talk about that. So basically, a lot of people I think with high performers is that we just try and push through and we just have so much to do, so we keep going. But our bodies have a thing called an ultradian rhythm. So, what that is, it's our brain's ability to go into peak focus and then peter off. So, if we talk about what we want to do in terms of our structuring our day, our brain will only focus for 90 to 120 minutes of peak focus before our brain starts to wane off. And that's what the old trade-in rhythm is. So when you are task blocking, which is another thing that I recommend with my clients, or things to then focused on one particular task, setting those blocks for 90 to 120 minutes and then having, say, a 10 to 15 minute break to allow your brain to then recharge almost, to then go into the next block, you will feel much more alert and much more cognitively enhanced because you've you have that set amount of block. You're using your biology to your advantage. And it's the same, for example, if you find, I see this all the time, people just try to push through, but they're actually not like 100% focused. They're like scroll, oh, I'll just check Instagram or I'll just check that email because that their brain biologically is not in that peak zone. We've kind of we've lost, we have this uh hormone that or brain chemical that builds up that gets us kind of drowsy, unfocused after a certain period of time, after that 90 minutes. So, what I always say to do is when we're in that 90 to 100 minute block, it's no distractions. Like it is locked in because as soon as you go and check your phone, you check your notifications, your brain actually has it's it's like a system that it reboots. It has to offload the task that you're doing. So maybe you're writing a proposal or a project, your brain knows this is formal. This, I've got to use this. This is what we're thinking about. And then you have to offload that and load up the programming for say texting Sophie. So then you're it's informal. Your brain's not going to use the same. So it's got to offload your previous task, unload onto your next task. So there is a lag between the two tasks. So as soon as you switch back to the other one, your brain's like, oh wait, now we're back. So there is actually, there's been shown that it's it can take like 20 minutes to reboot your brain up to peak focus that you were just in by switching a task. So when I say those blocks of 90 to 120 minutes, so 90 minutes, two hours, like let's lock in. Let's turn off notifications, lock in, maybe in your break, that's when you check. And then the next block's your focus. I guarantee you will be more productive than if you just push through.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, that is really interesting to know how the brain does actually go through this rhythm. And I'm also such, I'm so guilty of just picking the phone up and having a little scroll or quickly responding to a text message. And you're right, you immediately lose that flow that you were just in, whether you were drafting an email or working on something. It takes a little bit to get back into it. That is really interesting. And then when let's say we have our 92 120 minute block, and then we have our little break, is there an optimal break time where we should recharge our brain before we get Back into another work blog.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so I can't remember the actual guy who did the research, his name, but they are suggesting around 15-20 minutes to then go. But as with anything, any advice, any science, it's bioindividuality. And that's why personalization is important. Like for me, 90 minutes is too short. I need two hours to like be in the zone. So I'm not going to do 90 minutes. And for me, you know, a 10 minute break is really sufficient enough. And during that break, we don't want to be sometimes like scrolling on our phone where it's stimulating. Maybe it's going outside. Maybe it's going for a walk. It's resetting our nervous system to then be able to go into the next task so much more focused.
SPEAKER_01:Which actually leads me to something I've seen you talk about on your social media, the parasympathetic reset throughout the day. Can you talk about that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I really love implementing this with my clients because, you know, as women, we do all the things and it's really hard for us to switch off. And we can't just go for a massage every day, and we can't just, I don't know, go to Italy for two weeks to feel relaxed, like love to. But how can we implement little micro shifts or micro resets into our day? So these is what I call, you know, parasympathetic reset. So we all know from, I guess, grade eight biology, you've got your sympathetic system. So that's your fight, flight, stress response, and you've got your parasympathetic, your rest and digest. This is where our we are calm, we can think clearly, our digestion system's really good, our hormones are balanced. And a lot of the time, women operate in sympathetic because we are constantly going. We are constantly on. We feel guilty when we rest. So what I like to do is adding these little things in. So whether that's in between client calls, can you take a moment and do four rounds of box breathing? I'm sure you've you talk a lot around box breathing, but just four rounds will switch you into a parasympathetic state. Can you do a walk around the block after lunch? Not only good for your blood sugars and your digestion, but also it gets you into a really more calm nervous system state so that when you go into the next half, you are actually more energized and you are also in a more calmer state. You're able to focus and critically think a lot better. Maybe you do a known screen hour. My favorite thing, which I have implemented in my life, definitely for the last year and my clients, is a decompression walk. So what that is is at the end of the day, we basically, you know, you finish your work, you shut down your laptop, and you go for a decompression walk. And what that does is it signals to your brain that we are no longer in work mode. We are going to transition into home life. And I know that a lot of people, it's like, oh, I have to add a walk into my day. My partner has definitely dragged me to my decompression walk because he's like, Monique, you know it makes you feel good. And it does. I feel I feel so much better in the second half. So I'm able to give more of myself and my best version of myself to my partner, to the things that I love, because we don't want our work bleeding into the rest of the day. It's a really huge, beautiful signal to your brain that this is now when we rest and we recharge. So that is something that I implement and my clients implement. But yeah, really love.
SPEAKER_01:I love the idea of that because it is really easy. Just because the laptop's been put away doesn't mean that the brain has turned off to what needs to be done tomorrow or should have done that. You're still kind of thinking about work. So I really like that. It's like a line in the sand work day is over. Now we can be in that soft, you know, receivership energy as we move into the rest of the night. So we're sharing some incredible habits and some knowledge that's going to help the women listening be more healthy and more relaxed in their body. But let's talk about the ones who maybe have not been doing practices like this and their body is stressed and burnt out, and they are finding it really difficult to switch off at night, their mind is constantly taking over. I would love for you to share what's really happening in the body when a woman's body is stressed and burnt out, and what are some signs they may be missing that it could be getting quite chronic?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I love this question because I definitely think as high-achieving women, I know a lot of your women in the audience, a lot of women I work with, we are constantly on. We don't know how to rest. And I guess, yeah, we can meditate, we can go to massages, we can, but your baseline is still on. And just like you said, it's like constantly thinking, constantly ticking. And I am I am one of I'm the perfect example. That is me to a T. And rest for us can feel unproductive, it can feel unsafe because our we are kind of driven by doing. We are driven by driving and sympathetic. And but when we are in this constant output, in this constant doing, and this constant stretch, it is keeping our cortisol and our stress levels elevated. And I do want to also mention, I talk about cortisol very negatively, but cortisol is good in the correct amounts. Cortisol is the thing in the morning that gets you up, it gets you going, it's your cortisol awakening response. It allows you to drive when you need to. But when you are chronically high all the time, a lot of women I work with, they don't feel stressed, but their baseline cortisol is high. Does that kind of resonate with you as well? It's like no one feels like I don't feel stressed, but even on my lab work, I have chronically high cortisol because I it's almost like I've normalized what high cortisol is. And that's why for me, parasympathetic resets are very, very important for me. Your body has a thing called an allostatic load. So how I like to describe this for people is like a rope, you know, like tug of war. You've got that giant rope, and people are tugging on it, they're tugging on it, and little bits will start to fray, like the hairs kind of come off. And that will be like little signs and symptoms that are happening in your body. And then over time, your body will kind of snap. That rope will snap because your body is a very good at adjusting what it needs to to keep you alive, like its whole job is to keep you alive. So your body will can't handle anymore. So that rope snaps. But before the snapping, so I could use my story as an example, I had no one would know what would have happened to me, but it was little bits over time and my rope snapped. So, as for women, we can get like little things when our system is never switching off. So, for example, a huge one is you're not hungry in the morning. So it can be a really big sign of cortisol dysregulation. Maybe you have no energy, you're just really low. You need a nap by the middle of the day, 11 a.m. in the morning on cue. Mood swings because your cortisol baseline is so high, it's almost like your stress tolerance is such a tiny, tiny little threshold. So anything will set you off. Whereas, you know, when people are like, it's not that bad, and you're like, it's the worst thing.
SPEAKER_01:It is.
unknown:It's the worst.
SPEAKER_00:Because our stress tolerance is so much higher than I guess other people. Other things that are affected is your immune system, your gut health, your hormones. So we're talking PMS, acne, um, yeah, severe period pains, irregular periods. I always call cortisol as like your queen hormone. It will override every system in your body. So when we may get these little signs, and we're going to be thinking, oh, I have a gut issue. Oh, I have a, it's just my hormones, like hormone or acne, it's just my hormones. But have we looked at what is happening in terms of your cortisol and how high your baseline cortisol is? Because you were driving sympathetic and constantly on the whole time.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, wow, wow, wow. And so, how can we manage our cortisol levels? Is there something we've spoken about the parasympathetic um rest reset throughout the day, but beyond that, is there something that women can be doing to really avoid themselves getting into this chronic burnout and avoiding the cortisol baseline just being far too high?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I love that question. And I guess I want to take it back for a moment before I answer that question is the whole point of optimizing your health, I guess, is not just to feel better. It's for high achievers, and why I am very niche is because I want you to be able to have so much energy, so much focus, so much productivity in the day so that you can do and be whatever you want, so that you can have the dreams and the success that you want. Because a lot of people don't realize that your health is will be your ceiling on your success. Because even if you have the best strategy and the best mindset, which you are like the queen at Jess, even if you have the best mindset and the best strategy in the world, like if you cannot execute it because A, your stress levels are so high and you're like completely wiped at the end of the day, or your health is off, it doesn't matter if you're the best strategy. It will just sit there on a table because you can't execute on your goals. So if I then zoom out and we talk about like how can women help prevent chronic stress and chronic burnout, we want to be optimizing every single system in the body. So I work from a very, very systems-based approach. I think, you know, when you go to someone and they're like, I have low energy, they're like, oh, we'll give you this supplement to fix your energy. Like, yeah, but have we checked your hormone health, your gut health, your nervous system, like your detoxification pathways? Because every single thing is interconnected. So if someone is, say, chronically stressed or they feel chronically stressed, I want to be looking at, well, where can we optimize your body so that your system isn't stressed? So things like eating a really high protein breakfast so you're not fasting and your system is stressed. So maybe that's really getting good quality sleep, not just the hours that you sleep at night, but the quality of your sleep, so that when you wake up in the morning, your cortisol has been able to, it's not on this constant up and down cycle overnight. You actually feel recharged. So I guess when we talk about chronic stress, it's not just like meditating and will feel better. It's like really looking at a systems-based approach. And then your stress as a result will start to kind of help reset because you're not stressing your body with every kind of like habit that we've kind of picked up and doing, as well as adding in nervous system work, subconscious work. I guess, you know, Jess, you talk about this a lot, but you know how your subconscious and your perceived stress can really influence your stress as well as those parasympathetic resets. They are also the add-ons to working from a simple, like a system-based approach.
SPEAKER_01:And I love what you said, like the mindset work is not going to work if your body isn't at a level where you can receive the information we're trying to reprogram your mind with, or meditation. I'm huge on meditation, but if you are constantly wired because your cortisol levels are so high, you will struggle to get into the meditation state that we need you to be in in order for this work to even work. So it really all needs to work together. And I know you approach business like this too, but business should be such a holistic approach. Oh yes. It's it's it's the biological makeup of us, it's the hormones, it's our body, it's our mind, and then it's the strategy. And honestly, the strategy should be coming last because none of it would matter if you're not healthy and your mindset's trash.
SPEAKER_00:I completely agree. And I think that's why, you know, I love what you do, and because when you and I, you know, for example, we work together. It's such a holistic approach. If you take a woman in your community whose her health is optimized, her mindset is incredible, it's just expanded her capacity to be able to perceive what she can do, her subconscious mind, as well as the strategy. We have a woman that can do really big things.
SPEAKER_01:Literally, yeah, like so powerful, so powerful. And I love what you said before. We're not sitting here trying to water these women down. We're not saying, don't be ambitious, don't work hard, don't rest more than you're working, especially for the women listening to this. They are so passionate about their work. And when you love what you do, it is easy to sit in the office all day and put the big hours in. It is easy to prioritize work on the weekends because you genuinely love what you do. So we're definitely not saying stop being passionate and stop being ambitious, but we're saying make sure you're fueling your body and your mindset with what it needs so that you've got the vessel to create the things that you have been put here to create.
SPEAKER_00:A hundred percent. I literally just did a podcast episode on this. It's because it's that whole comparison between hustle culture versus like soft living. Yeah. But like we are, and I know the women in your audience, we're ambitious women. Like soft living is, I'm sorry, but it's kind of boring. Like, I don't want to be baking bread all day. Like it's not me. I am a girl that's like I have goals. I want to do big things with my life. So I'm not going to be soft living, but I'm also not gonna hustle my ass off working 24-7 Alex Hormosy, like plow the world down. Like it's also not us. So having that, I call it like soft hustle. Like, how can you add softness to your hustle? How can you prioritize your health so that you can sustain the level of drive that you want? The reason why I can go from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. and still drive and still be motivated and still do what I want is because I add softness. I add supporting my health to it. It's not a, I'll get to it later when I achieve X thing. It's the thing that will get you the result that you want.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I love this. And we don't need to look at it like two extremes, as you've mentioned, you're either the soft girl or you're in hustle mode. Shock us, but there's actually a middle ground. It is just realizing that we can take bits from both sides of those extremes and find this beautiful balance. And I am someone, and I'm hearing you're the same. I do believe in balance. I am someone who believes we can achieve balance in our day, in our week, and in our life. But you have to take responsibility for having this balance. As I mentioned, go hard throughout the day, pour yourself into your work. But at six o'clock, put the laptop away, get to it tomorrow. That's when you want to be coming down and slowing down at night. Um, but yeah, it's just this conscious effort to live a balanced approach. But I do believe it's possible.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. And I think when we think about balance, it's like the you know that that woman that holds the scales, like don't remember her name, but she holds the scales and everyone thinks it must be even. But as women that are high achievers, if we're driving for something, if we want something, yes, we will kind of like think about it, it will tip that little bit for. If you have momentum, you're going forward. So the balance will be a little bit skewed. But how can you rebalance in a way to then come back up so that you can sustain the drive when you need to? So it's not about constantly driving. It's like how can you add those moments to rebalance, to bring you back to then, like you said, switch off your laptop at night. A lot of women are like, oh, but I'm gonna miss like three hours of productivity. I guarantee you'll be way more productive the next day if you allow your body to reset, if you add little luxuries into your life, if you add that softness so that your nervous system, your brain, can then recharge. Like so many people are like, I survive on five hours of sleep. No, you don't. You don't even know what it's like to survive on good quality eight hours of sleep because your brain, your lymphatic system, like detoxes overnight. You're completely not even getting it. So yeah, I'm the biggest advocate of all my side tangents of like, you can do and be whatever you want as long as you have the ability to sustain it through your health, through your nervous system, through your, you know, all the work that you do, Jess.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I actually saw a reel the other day and it really pissed me off. It was an entrepreneur sharing her journey in business, and she was saying the reality of growing a business is you have to be prepared to sacrifice your health and sacrifice going to the gym, and you need to just be balls to the walls within your business. And it really pissed me off because it is not true. And you and I are proof that you can build a really successful business while still making time for yourself, going to the gym, eating good foods, being a healthy woman. Um, and yeah, that again, that's why I'm so passionate about these conversations because the unfortunate truth is the wrong people are looking at the wrong pieces of content and believing these stories and truly thinking they have to sacrifice themselves and their health in order to get to these levels of success.
SPEAKER_00:And I guarantee she'll be the one burnt out or really unhappy at the end of the day because she sacrificed and plowed down everything to get to where she wants. And she might get there, correct. But at the end of the day, we are women that want sustainable success. We want to feel good along the way. It's about the journey, it's how you feel. It's not just like get to the dex destination and move on and plow everything out of the way, and your relationships suck because you don't prioritize them, like haven't had sex in a year because like who has time? Work, work, work. Like that is not the life that we want.
SPEAKER_01:Nah, no. And I like I just love being booked out isn't a flex. Being in this hustle mode is not sexy at all, and it's not the kind of success that we are here to create. Um, and with that being said, to wrap us up, you've touched on a few things. So if you've spoken about this, that's fine. But if entrepreneur, if entrepreneurs could implement three nutrition or wellness habits, what would that be?
SPEAKER_00:I love this question because I'm such a tangible person and I want, even in my podcast, it's like, what can they do? Yeah, give them the things. Give them the things. So I guess three things. I'm the biggest fan of microaction. So what can you implement into your day that becomes a habit that will make it stick? Because look, I can hand you a 32-page PDF with all the things that you could do, and I guarantee that you won't do them. You'll just like, it'll just come off the calendar because it's not sustainable and it won't stick. So three big shifts I see. The number one thing that has made the hugest difference with my clients is protein for breakfast, high protein for breakfast. As women, um, we have been told that we don't need enough protein. And I'm sorry, but the guidelines are wrong because they are telling you survival levels. Do we want to survive as high-performing women? No. We want to be thriving. We need to achieve big things and we need the energy and the ability to sustain it, not just to like not get sick. So starting your day with high protein breakfast first thing in the morning. So a lot of the time, a lot of conventional breakfasts are like cereals, toast, veggie, like this is why women at 10 a.m. aren't needing a nap or they're exhausted or they're reaching for the second cup of coffee. But if you have protein, we're not getting these huge energy spikes, so your blood sugars are not spiking skyrocketed, crashing back down, and then you're like, oh, I'm the deadest person in the world at 10 a.m. If you have protein and say fibre or etc. for breakfast, you're able to then sustain it because your blood sugar isn't spiking and crashing all over the place, which means your energy isn't spiking and crashing all over the place. So maybe starting your day with an omelet with avocado on sourdough. Maybe it's I am a big fan of adding. If you love a smoothie, instead of just having, I don't know, banana, blueberries, and milk, add protein powder, add almond butter, add cheer seeds, add flax seeds. What can you add to increase the nutritional density to mean that you've got higher levels of protein, maybe some fiber and some fats, which means your blood sugars and your energy is more sustained throughout the day. Number one shift I see in all my clients. Number two is sleep. Sleep is everyone's like, oh, I get eight hours or like whatever. But sleep is like the most important thing. I guess the biological hack that you can do to be more productive during the day. Your hormones reset, your cognition fires up, your dopamine reserves, recharges overnight. I talked about it before, your lymphatic system. So your ability to learn, to be able to store memories, to be able to execute is determined a lot of the time by your sleep. So things that you can do to improve the quality, not just the amount of hours, is not looking at your phone before bed. And I know that this is everyone knows this, but we all still do it. Like we're scrolling TikTok in bed or whatever. But when you have the blue light, it suppresses your melatonin, your sleep hormone. It's keeping you stimulated and awake, which means you fall asleep slower. It takes you heart longer to get into a deep sleep state where all those cognitive processes and the recharges of your body happen. Another one I will say as well, in terms of sleep, that everyone gets wrong is eating two, well, ideally three hours before you go to bed. A lot of people eat way too late at night. And what happens is your brain and your body will prioritize your digestion instead of your brain's detoxification. So if you're prioritizing your digestion, it means that your brain won't do all the things that it needs to do. And why a lot of people wake up like groggy or tired because your brain hasn't done the recharging that it needs because you've been digesting your food all night, especially if you've had more of like a higher blood sugar meal. So it's like spiking all over the place. So huge shift in that one. And the last one, I guess, is what I talked about is that working in terms of your day and how you structure your day. So for high achieving women, it's how can you optimize the energy that you have in the day, knowing that you have a lot to do. So instead of looking at that giant to-do list, let's block it down. Let's break the task up into those segment tasks, like looking at this will take 60 minutes, this will take 30 minutes, whatever. I split things into three categories, then I will put them into blocks. So then you've got, then you can use your ultra radian rhythm, use your biological advantage to then be able to optimize your blocks. So then you work for 90 to 120 minutes, then you work for the next block. So you've got your little parasympathetic resets in between, you've got your blocks of focus. That means you are utilizing your brain to its most advantaged capacity instead of bleeding throughout the day, bleeding your energy throughout the day, so that when you get to 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., you feel so good because the amount of productivity you have achieved in the day just because you've been utilizing that biological advantage. So if I could say three things, they're like health, like what you eat, how you sleep, and then how you structure your day can be really helpful for high achievers.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like we just got the ultimate roadmap to how to optimize our health as high achieving women. And I love the idea of doing these blogs. I did not know that our brain did that, and I think that's going to be very effective for me. So that's something I'm definitely implementing. Um, oh my gosh, I've just learned so much. Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. Now, can you please share where they can find you? Because as we've shared throughout this episode, it's it's a very generalized conversation. But I wanted to bring Monique on today for all of you to realize that health should be a part of the business strategy. And to make this even better, getting that personalized support and actually getting those blood works done behind the scenes so that all of the things we do speak about is actually for you. So yeah, share where they can find you and what you've got going on behind the scenes that they could tap into.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so my I'm most active on Instagram at It's Monique Took is my handle. I also have my podcast in Her Era. I obviously work privately. I have private health partnerships that I work one-on-one with clients, but I also, you will hear this first. I have a very exciting, more community-based system where I've collated all the information and the data that I've done with my private clients and I've kind of synchronized it down into more what women need as high achievers. And it's kind of gonna be this has not been done anywhere in the world. It's very exclusive. I want it to feel really, really good. Like you're entering like the country club of high performing health. So that is what is coming in October. Um, but yeah, I'm so excited for that because I, for me, health is so important. It's the foundation of your success and the woman you want to be. So having a space and a community that people can come to, yeah, that is that's what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_01:That is a vibe, the country club for high-achieving women. We will be keeping our eye out for that. I love that. Well, I will link all of this in the show notes below so that you can go and find Monique and reach out, get on some wait lists if any of this does interest you. Monique, thank you so much for jumping on today and sharing your knowledge and your wisdom with all of us. I am very, very grateful.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I love this episode. Thank you, Jess, and thank you for everything you do. You truly are doing such amazing work. And I know the women in your space are so lucky to be working with you.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you. I appreciate that.