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The Three Pillars of Wellness

The Three Pillars of Wellness



What the heck is wellness anyways? It means a lot of things to a lot of people.  We're going to put the very large idea of wellness into a usable framework that I call the Three Pillars of Wellness.  Using these three pillars we can start to build a wellness practice for ourselves.  In this episode I'll explain the three pillars and give you lot's of suggestions for small, simple ways you can start incorporating more wellness practices into your life starting NOW!   Wellness is a process and a constant choice. I hope you're encouraged today to make that choice for yourself.  
We'd LOVE fo you to share with the tribe the wellness commitment you're making this week.  Head to community.nononsensewellness.com and share with us!
XOXO
Tara










Full transcription available at the bottom of this post


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Full Episode Transcription:
 Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast, I'm so happy you're here with me. Today, we are going to talk about wellness, what the heck that even means, what it means to you, and we're gonna put it in sort of a usable framework for our purposes here.  I call it the three pillars of wellness, and I think it'll be really helpful for all of us to have a framework that we can actually incorporate into our lives, but before I get to that, I wanna just send out a quick request, if you haven't yet, hop on over to iTunes and subscribe to this podcast channel, and leave a review if you have been finding value in this, if you've been enjoying it and you're excited for what's to come, please leave your review, I'd love to read that on the podcast for everyone else to hear.

And that really is the way that we get to spread this message, we get to spread no nonsense wellness by you guys subscribing to that channel and leaving reviews so other people will listen and hear it too. So thank you in advance for doing that. And the second little piece of business is if you have not joined the conversation over in our community group yet, I really wanna encourage you to head over there, it's a community.nononsensewellness.com, I will link that in the show notes for you as well. That's the place where the action happens, that's where we get to have conversations, you get to ask all the questions, you get to meet the rest of the tribe and meet your people, you can directly message people or you can put things for the group to see in chats, think of it like a Facebook group. Only better and not on Facebook, that is very intentional. I want us to you spend less time on social media and more time building community with the people who really matter, and that is this group, so community dot no on senseless dot com, head on over there.  It's free to make yourself a little account, and then it's super easy to use, so if you have any questions about that first, let me know. 

Okay, let's get down to business. I have this love-hate relationship with the word wellness, and part of the reason is because it's really vague. Wellness means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but I also love it because it's so all-encompassing, and my idea for health and what we're trying to do here is all encompassing, I'm not trying to dissect your life into tiny little pieces and only fix one part. I want us to be able to look at the whole person. And to me, that is wellness, but that vagueness makes it really hard to work with. So WHO... The World Health Organization defines wellness as, this is their quote, a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, I really like that. In other words, they're saying wellness is this active process of making choices toward your personal version of a healthy, fulfilling life, moving through your life in a way that makes you feel totally alive and complete, it's not just the absence of things being bad, it's the presence of things being really great, and I love that definition.
So think of it this way, just like a car, for your body to run well, it requires proper fuel, so we know eating good food, and that also is what you're drinking too. It requires engine maintenance, so that's your body at work and at rest, and it requires an oil change, and I think of this as clearing out the junk, I eat the junk in your mind, also maybe the junk in... You're drunk. If you need that too, I call these areas that's re Pillars of wellness, and they are just a simple framework for incorporating wellness practices into your every day life, just makes it a little easier for us to work with... To keep it manageable. And so when I talk about wellness, I want you to just pick up the thing that you heard, the thing that really resonated for you in that moment, that's maybe the spot that you need to think about working on... Let the rest of it go. Right, we don't need to change all things at once, that's how we get in trouble, and that's usually why diets and things don't work because we try to do too much.

I want you to come, I want to it back and think small. Okay, let's dig in pillar one. Pillar One is what you put in and on your body, so every single thing you put in your body is either contributing to improving your health or deteriorating it, I really... I wanna repeat that because I want you to really, really hear me when I say this, every single thing that you put in your mouth, everything you eat, everything you drink, everything you consume is either moving you towards health or moving you towards sickness, there is no neutral there is no middle ground. I wanna be so clear about this because every single choice matters, I know that sounds dramatic, but it really is true, you're always either moving towards health, are moving away from it, so we all are probably familiar with the idea that, Yes, we know what you put... The food you eat is important we get it. The beverages, I'm drinking is important. We get it, we all know that. But do you really have an understanding of why? Do you have an understanding of how that food is working in your body, why your body is working the way you want it to...

Or not working the way you want it to. Do you have a clear understanding of what is really good for you? When people use the terms like natural or organic or clean eating, what does that even mean? Or General or use ignorance, but most of us, Yes, we are, we have a terrible understanding of those things, but it's not our fault, we are constantly fed this shitty information and just flat out wrong information about food all the time. It's so hard to sift through and find out what is true and what is not. And that honestly is one of the things I feel like I'm here for. That is what I wanna do for you. A lot of people will joke with me because I am that person who will dig into the research, I wanna know all the things, and so most people don't have the time or the patients to do that, and that is totally understandable, but since I like it, allow me, to be that person for you. I'm gonna sift through the junk, I'm gonna give you the no-nonsense answers, because what food is doing in your body is important, and having an understanding of that is super important, the part of what you put in and on your body is what you put on your body...

And in my autoimmune journey, I became very aware of the importance of what's going on my body and how it's affecting my health, so think about all the products that you use every day, your motions, and your make-up and your soaps, and your body washes your hair products, your toothpaste, all of these things that you are using every day, and now think about the fact that you've been using these things your entire life, we use these products on our skin from birth to death, in this country, it is perfectly legal for these products to contain literally thousands of ingredients that are known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors, carcinogens mean known to cause cancer, endocrine disruptors means known to disrupt your hormone system, and we are using these products literally from birth to death, think about the accumulation of toxins that are in your body and what that could be doing to how your body is functioning, this is what you put on your body is so important, the damage to your health is this cumulative effect of toxins. So any wellness practice that we're gonna talk about has to include not only what you put in your body, but also what you put on your body, so a small wellness practice is just maybe small incremental steps of improving what you're putting in your body and what you're putting on it, maybe the next time I go to buy a face lotion, I'm gonna not buy the one that has the toxins in it, and I'm gonna buy the one that's a little bit better, one tiny little product at a time, because things can accumulate for the bad, we can accumulate those toxins in our body, but things can also accumulate, so the good, all those teeny tiny little things, almost ten in little choices that we make, those canal accumulate.

Moving us towards health. Okay, So pillar number two. Pillar number two is how much you move your body, so many of us really complain about exercise, like be honest... You complain a lot about it. I have, we all have. We have all said, at some point, I'm too tired, I don't have time. It hurts, I'm too fat, I'm not motivated. I don't wanna put the strategy pants on, I don't have time for this, we've used all the excuses because in our heads, we've made exercise into this big production... You know what I mean? We've made it into this big thing. So I wanna change your perspective a little bit about exercise, and I think you might find this really helpful instead of using the word exercise or work out, just say the word movement. The word exercise we have made sound so overwhelming, like it's this whole thing that I gotta get my shoes on, they're gonna put on my stretchy pants and I gotta go to the gym and I gotta take this class and I gotta do this, and then I gotta... Come back and then I got a shower and I don't have enough time for all of this, and you know I can make all of this happen.

We make it into this big, huge production, but really, if we just focus on movement, then we can keep it really simple, just asking yourself, How can I move my body today, maybe it's just taking a look, maybe it's doing some yoga in your bedroom, like I did this morning, maybe it's just walking up and down your stairs a few extra times, maybe it's doing 10 squats in the kitchen, and while you cook dinner, maybe it's doing some push-ups against the kitchen counter while you're doing the dishes instead of making it this big production of going to work out, just focus on movement. It frees you up really, it frees up your mind, it frees up your options, and it could look so many different ways, and it creates a lot less resistance, I don't have to find so much motivation to do 10 squats in my kitchen while I'm cooking dinner. I do have to find a lot of motivation to get myself dressed and in the car in the dark to the gym, come back, right. That's a lot more. So keep it simple, and the importance of moving your body probably is obvious to you guys, but moving your body literally improves every single physiological process in your body, your body requires movement.

It truly, truly does. It is the key to health and wellness, you must move, so however that movement looks for you, he's okay, so maybe one of the things that you focus on in your wellness practice is just a commitment to movement every day, however that looks for you. One of the other things we're gonna talk about in this pillar number two is rest, because the other side of movement is sleep and rest, and it is so important, did you know that you can repair your metabolism by sleeping better, it is such an impact on you, we get so focused in this day and age, in this kind of society on doing, doing more, doing more, doing more, that we just really don't rest and restore enough, and restore store does not have to look like booking a spot day or getting massage... It can look like that, I highly recommend him, but it can look just simply like getting an extra 30 minutes of sleep, going to bed 30 minutes earlier, it can look like taking a second to read a book and restore your mind and body a little bit... It could be so many simple things, but rest and restoration are gonna be so important to your wellness practice, so what's one small step towards more rest that you could do...
Now, a lot of you, I know exactly what's happening, your head right now, you're like, Oh, lazy, we equate arrest with lazy, and I wanna really, really have you focus on breaking that in your own head, resting is not being lazy. Resting is because I did a lot of stuff, and now I need to recuperate my body.  That can look a lot of ways for you.  So changing your language about exercise and movement could be really something that you focus on this week, maybe you're not even doing anything maybe all you're doing this week is thinking about changing the language instead of saying no to work out, you're gonna say, I get to move my body today. How am I gonna do that? Right, just change the language. And the actions will change... Oh boy. We're gonna talk a lot more about that too. 

Okay, that leads me into pill and number 3. Pillar number three is the place we're gonna spend most of our time together, I think, and it is what you put in your mind. This is probably the biggest issue that most of us face, managing your own thoughts and emotions, being in control of what's going on in your head, truly, you are the captain of your ship. But so often, we just get really caught on auto-pilot, we just move through our life on autopilot, not consciously really moving in any direction, but just sort of going through the motions is not our fault, totally. Our brains are programmed to do that, that's kinda how we're made, our brain likes predictability and it likes patterns, and it likes to kinda stay in its lane, but if you want to be the captain of your ship, you have to notice how all of these things are happening, and you have to consciously make choices to change the things that need to be changed, so being able to understand and manage our own thoughts and emotions is gonna be so key, not just to our wellness, but to your weight loss, to your job, do your relationships, relationships is another part of pillar three that we're gonna talk about, and that's all relationships in your life, your spiritual relationships, your family, friends, kids, co-workers, your relationships with the world at large, your relationship with social media, how you act and react and interact with the world, around you, that is going to be so imperative to understanding how those things are affecting you, but also how you are reacting to them, your wellness again, remember is relationships are a part of that, this whole system in which you live in which you operate, sometimes we need to change the system.

But the cool thing is, you have the power to change the system. The system does not manage you, you manage the system. makes sense? One of the other things we're gonna talk about in pillar the is managing stress. Stress, white literally ages you faster, like at the cellular level, stress ages you faster, it ages your muscles, your bones, every tissue in your body, your skin... Stress makes you older faster, have I made my point yet? So we need to have ways to manage stress that are useful to us, and not just how to manage, but maybe how to avoid it and mediate it entirely in your life. Can we get rid of some stress... The answers as you can, but if we're gonna talk about a wellness practice, we have to address stress and how we are managing that in our life, and one of the other topics we'll talk about in what you put in your mind, Pillar 3 is emotional eating. This is gonna be a big one, because I don't care who you are. You have been an emotional eater at some time in your life, and that really fits in this pillar because it's about managing your mindset, right, you cannot out-diet a damaged relationship with food.

I don't care what diet you are trying, if you have a damaged relationship with food, if you are eating your emotions, no diet can fix that, we have to fix what's happening in your head, in fact, all those diets that you've tried have just damaged more your relationship with food, so what you think going on a diet is the solution to fixing things actually is probably making an emotional eating or disordered eating problem even worse. So this is a topic that we really have to address and we're gonna address it from multiple angles and in multiple ways, but if you stick with me, emotional eating is something that we are going to conquer together, so one small change maybe you could make under pillar three is just noticing. This is something you'll hear me say a lot because it's that shift from being on auto-pilot to being a conscious driver, noticing is the key, practice being an outside observer of your own thoughts and emotions, how you interact with those around you. You don't have to necessarily change anything right now, simply noticing these things is going to be one major step for you, noticing how I'm interacting with my spouse, how I'm interacting with my kids, what is this meaning for me and why am I doing this? Noticing the thoughts that are running through my head that constant dialogue, are they really nice thoughts to myself or they really mean thoughts to myself, noticing what my brain is thinking as I look at myself in the mirror or by appraising myself, or am I tearing myself down? Simply noticing all of these things makes the shift for you from being on auto-pilot to being a conscious driver, and the only way we're gonna get well, get healthy, lose weight, move forward and elevate in our life is to be a conscious driver, so that's gonna be our constant practice.

So those are the three pillars. Now, you might be wondering, where do I start? Well, where you start really depends on you... There are so many places you could start, but think about the one thing that resonated with you the most, was it something that had to do with what you put in and on your body, was it something that had to do with movement wasn't something that had to do with mindset. Which one of those pillars? Did you find yourself thinking like, Oh, dang it. She called me out on that one. Oh, shoot, that's me. That's probably this place that you wanna start, so all you wanna do is just think of one small thing that moves you closer to wellness, closer to a feeling of being fulfilled and moving through your life with purpose and meaning, maybe it's just getting outside for a few minutes a day, maybe it's those 10 squats in the kitchen, maybe it's calling three friends a week and just saying hi and catching up, maybe for you, it's a small gesture of appreciation for your spouse every day, or reading a book or drinking more water or anything, just pick one small thing and commit to it this week, you're the only one who has to know what it is, if you want to share that in our community group, every week there is a topic of the week, and I invite you to share your small things so that we can share you on because none of us are in this alone, we can't do this alone, we have to do this as a tribe and as a community, so if you want to.
The one thing that you picked that you're either focusing on or noticing or actually doing or not doing this a week, please share with us, we'd love to know so we can share you on, just pick that one small thing and make a commitment, make a promise to yourself, one of the biggest things that we can do in our life is to keep promises to yourself, I bet you're really good at keeping promises to other people, I bet you always keep your promise to everyone else, but how good are you at keeping promises to yourself? So make sure the one small thing that you pick that you wanna work on this week is one small thing that you know that you can deliver on, the one small thing that if you make this promise to yourself, you will keep this promise... Absolutely 100%. We wanna train our brain that we are Promise Keepers, we wanna train our brain that when I say I'm gonna do something for me, I do it, I follow through. Not just when I make a promise to somebody else, I follow through, I wanna train my brain to understand that when I say this is happening...
0:23:13.5 S2: For me, it's happening. And that's why we start small. Pick one tiny thing because big wins are really just a result of a lot of small changes and those will add up over time. I know you can do this, I really encourage you to pick that one small thing and then share it with us in a community group. I will see you over there. Until next time, my friends be well



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