Healing with Acupuncture and Psychedelics with Karen Ortiz (Part 2)

where I found having a coach was just invaluable was keeping me on track because there were moments, you know, where it went it got hard and I and, you know, it's easy to make excuses and sometimes those excuses can be really valid, you know, like, again, I was still doing, it was still doing stressful work. I was trying to get rid of a lot my litigation and stuff, but, you know, during the time I was working with her, there were moments where I'm just like, you know, I can't do this anymore. Like, you know, can we pause this?

Can I? This is Tuma. I'm Tuma.

I'm too, got too much stress. It's too hard and she, you know, would get me back focused on what I needed to do and what I need to focus on. And so I think if she hadn't been there, it would have been, you know, easier for me to kind of abandon the path and not stay the course.

And so I think, you know, just having that accountability was invaluable. I welcome to another episode of the Healing Podcast. This is the place where you learn and get inspired to heal in, to achieve higher levels of satisfaction in every area of your life.

I am caring, milling your host and I believe that what we resist, persist and that we cannot change what we don't face. And it was finally when I accepted this reality and invested time, energies and money into myself, in professional support, then my life was completely transformed. And now I'm on a mission to demystify this process for you to inspire you to do this work yourself.

Today we're going to listen to a very inspirational story of Leon Townsend, who is a family lawyer, who felt that she was stuck at a hamster wheel and decided to prioritize her health and her well-being, attaining amazing results. We talked about her health journey, what helped her and how it is really never the right time to prioritize ourselves and her health. But when we decide to do so and focus on planting and watering your own garden, doing the work was exactly what she needed to do to establish the right habits and attain the life that she wanted.

You can learn more about Leon, her law practice, at Townsend Family Law, and her growing Facebook health and wellness group at Leon Townsend Life on Instagram or Leon Townsend on Facebook and LinkedIn. If you enjoyed this episode as much as I did, please share it with your friends and colleagues to help us inspire as many people as possible to invest in themselves and to heal in, to achieve higher levels of satisfaction in your health, in your relationships and in every area of your life. Welcome to the Healing Podcast, Leon, it's such a pleasure to have you.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yes, so to give my audience a little bit of a background on how we met, I met Leon about three years ago in the summer of 2021 time flies.

When she kindly invited me to be a guest on her podcast, "The Worsing Well Podcasts." And we recorded an episode called "Healing Before During and After the Wors," and of course I followed her on social media and was always listening to her podcast and recommending them to my clients. And about a year ago, I started seeing videos about working out with amazing motivational songs and amazing quotes that would be listened to them.

Seeing also amazing results and because health coaching is something that I include on my coaching and I is usually through mind work and nutrition. So healing, you know, not sorry, not healing, but including the whole exercise in bed and your amazing results, I thought it would be amazing if you could come to the podcast and inspire my audience, my clients and I on your new health journey and routine. So congratulations.

It's the results I've seen are completely amazing. Yes, thank you. I'm and I'm really excited to be able to chat about it because it's something that I've become really passionate about.

And so I love, you know, sharing what I've done to show other people that it is possible because I, you know, a few years back really when we connected, you know, during that time frame, I was not in such a great spot and I was burned out, exhausted, overweight, unhappy, you know, out of shape, all these things. And so it makes me, it inspires me more to be able to show other people what's possible if you commit to it in your consistent. Love it.

Love it. And I work with a lot of divorce lawyers. They refer me clients and I speak to them and it's such stressful work.

It is so charging. If anything, I move my practice to more, you know, happy marriages and time management and health coaching because I need it sort of variety and balance from how hard it truly is, how painful and the pain that we hold for our clients. So one of the things that I work with when doing health coaching is like, what is your vision?

Right? What is your why? Like, why do you want to do that?

So if you don't mind sharing with my audience, like, what, what was happening for you? What was the impetus? Like, what made you say enough, you see enough or I want something different?

What was what, what was your, the start of your health journey? Yeah. So I felt like I was on a hamster wheel.

You know, like a lot of, you know, professionals or, you know, people in their work. And I had during COVID and then kind of in the aftermath, I had gained quite a bit of weight. I guess just before COVID hit, I was having some anxiety issues.

And for the first time in my life, I decided to try going on anxiety medication to help me manage my anxiety. And a side effect, I think of that medication can be weight gain. But, you know, so I had that going on.

I was working all the time. I worked every weekend. I was working long days and, you know, as you just touched upon, my work is very, very stressful work.

And I was doing a lot of litigation, which, you know, in family law, that is the most stressful work doing litigation. And I felt like my life is just spinning out of control. I mean, I'd literally gained about 60 pounds.

And I'd already had, you know, some weight, additional weight that I had wanted to lose before that. So when I gained like the 60, 65, you know, it put me up over 200 pounds, which I never thought, even when I was pregnant with both my children, I didn't even come close to 200 pounds. So it's a weight I never thought I would hit.

And I was so tired. Like when I wasn't working, I was so tired that all I wanted to do was veg out, you know, and watch my numbing reality shows or something on TV. And not, you know, I didn't have the energy to exercise.

I didn't have the energy to meal prep or to do anything for myself because I was so burned out. And like, there's a couple, I guess, parts to where I would say I hit kind of a bottom. I mean, one was my daughter and I went on a a couple of days vacation to a local in, like I live in Toronto, Ontario.

This was in an area called Niagara, And we went there and it was in the summer and we were just walking around the town looking in shops. And I was having a hard time just walking around. We weren't even walking at a blistering pace or, you know, anything.

It's just a casual walk and a hot day. And I was out of breath and not comfortable. And, you know, that made me really realize how bad it had become.

And so that really made me realize I needed to do something. And then the other piece of it was that for a period of almost two years, I was literally vomiting every night. Like, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, I'd vomit and I'd go back to bed.

And that was just, it was like it had become part of my life. And I just assumed that it was because of stress and because of the weight gain. And I was so embarrassed about it all that I didn't want to go to the doctor because I thought she's just going to tell me, well, you're overweight.

Like, that's what's causing it. And I can remember, you know, some certain occasions when I'd be up and I'd be sick and I would wake up my kids. And I remember my daughter, like, yelling at me one night saying, like, mom, this isn't normal.

Like, you need to do something. You need to go see the doctor. And, you know, and I did and I discovered I actually had something called a hyetal hernia that was pushing up on my stomach and was causing the vomiting, which I was able to get fixed.

But, you know, I'd been too embarrassed to even look into it because I thought it was always just because of my waking because I'm not taking care of myself. And so those two things, I think, kind of, they really made me realize, like, I don't want to continue this way. And I was miserable, you know, I, you know, I was totally miserable.

And so I started my journey. And before I could even really focus on changing my eating habits and exercising more and all that type of stuff, the thing I needed to do first was just find ways to reduce my stress load so that I could actually breathe and have the energy to, you know, move forward with some of these other things that I needed to do. So that was my initial focus is how can I find ways to reduce my stress load so that I can actually just go.

And, you know, then start focusing on the other stuff. Thank you so much for sharing. It is such a common thing, especially for professional women, not to take care of ourselves.

Yeah. Especially when you add the profession and motherhood. And having so much of our effort, you know, taking care of our kids, are they eating well?

Are they doing their sports and keeping busy? Are they that, you know, whether it's eating their leftovers or eating what they want to be eating, which is what they should be eating, which is high cholesterol and fat and and they're young and they're meant to be. So many is what we end up eating to really find that sense of worth to take care of ourselves, to prioritize ourselves, which is a lot of the work I do.

And I didn't love myself. You know, I think that was a big part of it. I didn't love myself.

And so I, you know, all my love was going to my kids and my clients and being there for everybody else, but me and I didn't love myself and that, you know, that was part of the journey. Did you work with any therapist or coach to sort of help you with that? I did.

I worked with a coach by the name of Kira Foy. Her background is in nutrition. She's a holistic nutritionist and she also does kind of broader coaching.

And when I initially signed up with her, it was interesting because I, I tried to get out of it actually. I signed up and I was moving, I was selling my house and moving to downsize, which was actually part of my stress reduction to get off this hamster wheel of living in a house I was finding hard to afford. And so I tried, I said to her, you know, look, like, I, this is, and I don't think this is the right time after all.

I've got all this stuff going on. I can't prioritize this. And she wouldn't let me out of it.

She, you know, she was like, no, like, there's no right time. And, you know, you, you need, you're telling me all these things that you're, you know, feeling and how unhappy you are and how unhealthy you are and how unhealthy you feel. Like, no, now is the time.

And so I listened to that and I ended up agreeing. And, you know, and I'm so glad I did because she's right. There's no right time.

And if you want to wait for the right time, you'll be waiting forever. I love it. I love it.

And so it's, it's funny in terms of chronologically. So you started reducing your stress load. Downsizing.

Did you change jobs then? Where you're like, okay, I did. I did.

I left, I was with a law firm and I left the law firm and decided to set up my own law practice because I decided, you know what? Like, if I can be in control more of my hours and I don't have to be accountable to a firm for how many hours I'm billing every month because law firms are all about, you know, quotas that you need to be available hours. I felt the, and also like when you're at a law firm, like, you know, they're taking a piece of everything I was making and bringing in.

And I thought, you know, what if I have my own firm, I can probably work less hours and make the same amount because I don't have to give, you know, half of it to a law firm. So I, at the same, I was selling my house and I was setting up my own law firm, like two stressful things actually, you know, because leaving is stressful and, you know, setting up your own business, leaving a firm, setting up your own business is actually stressful. But, you know, the longer, the midterm, to longer term, result of those two things was it was going to reduce my stress, which it did.

And what helped you make those decisions? Those are huge decisions. Yeah.

I mean, I think just because I knew I had to. I was so fed up, you know, it's not all the same, like I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and yeah, I was just so miserable as well. And I didn't want to keep living like that.

I didn't want to keep modeling this for my children either. I wanted to model a happy, healthy mother who's in control of her life, not this miserable, you know, unhealthy woman who is on a hamster wheel. And so, you know, my kids are all, are definitely my why.

But, you know, I'm part of it too. Like I obviously, I'm doing it for myself, but I wanted to model that for them. That was really important to me.

So I knew I had to make these changes. I'll, you know, and I'm like, yeah, I was getting older. I'm like this, I'm going to be 58 this month.

And so this was a couple years back. It was 2022 was when I really started making these changes. And I knew that if I didn't do something, I'm, you know, I'm getting older.

I'm going to start having some real issues. And it's going to significantly affect my quality of life, my mobility, my, you know, just lots of them. And the length of my life, if I didn't do something.

So it was really important to me. I love it. I love it.

A lot of the times when I'm coaching whether it's divorce or health. And I say, why is this important to you? Right?

Why is losing weight important to you? Why is increasing your energy important to you? And you get the, you know, because I will feel better, I will look better.

I will. And I'm like, what are we missing? Who's who's watching?

Right? Who's watching you live this life? Who's watching you being this miserable marriage?

Who's watching you after divorce? Right? Be as unhappy as you were while you were divorced.

There's different sources, but you're unhappy. So who's watching? Right?

And yes, while our why should always be us? If you're a mother, they're pretty, pretty close after. Yeah.

So did you come up with this wise and this impetus and this motivation on your own one day? You woke up and said, "In office enough, I'm tired of being sick and tired." Or did your coach help you?

We're taking the time to think about what's important to you, your values, right? Have you want to live in alignment with your values and all that was that part of your growth or did you come up? I mean, it was a bit of both.

She definitely helped me and I, some of it I did myself. And I think like where I found having a coach was just invaluable was keeping me on track because there were moments, you know, when it got hard and I, and you know, it's easy to make excuses. And sometimes those excuses can be really valid.

You know, like again, I was still doing, I was still doing stressful work. I was trying to get rid of a lot my litigation and stuff. But you know, during the time I was working with her, there were moments where I'm just like, "I can't do this anymore."

Like, you know, can we pause this? Can I, this is Tuma? I'm too, got too much stress.

It's too hard. And she, you know, would get me back focused on what I needed to do and what I need to focus on. And so I think if she hadn't been there, it would have been, you know, easier for me to kind of abandon the path and not stay the course.

And so I think, you know, just having that accountability was invaluable. I love it. Did she work with you on when you were saying about loving ourselves, which that's where it starts?

Like the work that I do is tell me, "How do you feel about your body?" Like, "How do we get to loving our body?" Right?

And most of the answers would be like, "Well, I'm fat. I'm unattractive." Right?

What else is true? What else could be true? Right?

We gave birth. We are a vessel of life. We, this part of the thing is like, if you love this body, you want to feed it well.

You want to exercise it well. You want to keep it living longer. So what were some of those thoughts or negative beliefs that you feel kept you in that place longer?

That I know a lot of people struggle with. And they're all different for everybody. Yeah.

I mean, definitely I would say I've struggled with, you know, body images, shoes my whole life. And I really wasn't overweight until, you know, getting into my late 40s and 50s. I, you know, most of my life, you know, I'm like gain 10 pounds here.

And then I would lose it when I had my children. I lost the baby weight. So it hadn't been a problem for me per se.

But I still always had a negative body image. I always, you know, I can remember back to when I was in my 20s when I probably had a fantastic body. But I still wanted to cover it up because I still had, you know, "Oh, I look fat or oh, you know, I've got this or whatever."

So I had always had that. And, you know, I was kind of raised in a way and my, you know, that you're how you look matters. And when I was married, like I got my ex husband and I split up in 2005.

But he was somebody who's very, you know, he's the kind of person that would say detrimental things about, you know, my weight if I, you know, gained weight or things like that. So I was used to be to, you know, I, you know, hearing, I can remember walking into a room a little while after I'd given birth to my daughter and him going, "C'mon." Because I was like walking in.

And so I allowed that type of treatment, but in the voice in my head definitely, you know, would say those types of things to myself, you know, that you're fat. If you're fat, you're worthless. You know, if you're fat, you know, nobody's going to like you.

And that was definitely a very strong tape in my head for many years. And it's really been a process to, you know, reprogram that thinking. And I, you know, I don't, I mean, I'm not overweight now, but I, I don't base my self-worth on, you know, a number on the scale either.

It's so interesting that we could feel that way in one dimension of our lives, but professionally, you've been kicking butt forever, right? Like, but when I met you, you, you were a bit overweight and you were amazing, right? And starting a podcast and out on social media, which is not easy, right?

Talk about being self-conscious and doing a video and like feeling self-conscious. It's so interesting how we divide those two things, right? Because I, when I met you and I was seeing the work you were doing and you were out there looking for a guest for your podcast and I know you are a successful lawyer.

I would have never think that you feel that way about yourself, right? And it's funny because one of my first clients ever was my, my, my client, my US distributor for my previous company. And she was very overweight and she said, Karen, I want to lose weight.

And I'm like, but you're beautiful and you're the top saleswoman and you were kicking ass everywhere, you know? Why do you want to lose weight? Like, it's so interesting how we can keep those two, two personalities in us, you know, that it won't let us deferment or career.

And that's what I've always, you know, you can be one person or I can be somebody professionally, you know, helping people, being strong, being their advocate. But then, you know, in my personal life, allowing myself to be mistreated and, you know, and then having that negative self-talk about myself, you know, affecting myself worth and not loving myself, not feeling good about myself, you know, it's easy. It's interesting how you can project something else sometimes that is very different than what's going on in your own head.

And what helped you battle all those negative voices and that that part of yourself? Yeah, I mean, it was, it was definitely a process. I mean, I, I've been on, you know, I would say a multi-tiered, you know, healing journey for some time.

You know, I, because I lost my mother when I was young as well. And that's, you know, as a child, I had some hardships and things that I never really got a chance to heal from. And so I think the, the lack of self-love, you know, started back then and then, you know, kind of grew from there and caused me to, you know, be in relationships where I wasn't treated well and things like that.

So I feel like it's, you know, you deal with certain things at certain point in time. It is gradual. So I feel like, you know, my journey of self-love, it's at certain points in time.

I did certain work that helped me and got me to a certain point. And then, you know, other things happened. And maybe it wasn't as much of a priority.

And then, you know, after those other things happened, I did more, you know, healing work and work on myself. And so it's really been a process of like many, many years of work and working with different people. I mean, I have, I have had a therapist in the past.

I haven't worked with one for some time. But I do think therapy is invaluable. I've, I have worked with coaches, different points in my life.

Sometimes, you know, a certain coach is right for a specific time. And I've even had the experience of outgrowing like a coach that I have. And then you need to find someone who, you know, is more suitable at that point that you're at.

And so I throughout my life, I've, I've kind of worked with different people depending on where I was at. And, you know, I've always been prepared to do the work though. That's, that's really important.

It is, it is. And I love that you're saying that one of the quotes you put in one of your reals is that we can go around chasing butterflies. But if we invest in ourselves, if we plant our own garden and we make a beautiful butterflies come to us, because they want to chase our greatness.

And so that's part of doing our own garden is therapy, coaching, self-care, yoga, meditation, working out, walks, good food. It's everything that, that makes our garden grow. So after you did all the hard work and the, the why and the vision and you started working with a coach, what helped you get to the gym as often as you do?

What helped you with those habits? What were those habits that you think if someone is listening to this or the many clients I have that, you know, we're working to get that motivation to just go to the gym, just do it. Get that action first.

And then the mood after like just things fire us. What helped you not only do it, but to be doing it for the past year and getting the results you have. Yeah.

So once I got my stress level under control, it became sort of easier to consistently go to the gym. And so, you know, I would say the initial break, you know, creating the habit is far more challenging than maintaining the habit. Because I'm at a point now where like I love going to the gym.

If I miss the gym, I feel it not just physically but mentally. Like it's more mental to me and how good it makes me feel that, you know, that it makes me want to go because I know how good I'm going to feel when I go. But you obviously have to create the habit and get to that point.

And that's where it can be challenging. And I just, you know, I put it in my schedule. I work out very early in the morning.

I work out generally at six in the morning because I find if I leave it to later, my day gets in the way of it. And I just don't get it in. So I know you have a gym at home or do you know, I go to it, I go to a gym, but I work with a trainer.

I've been fortunate enough to be able to afford to have a trainer. And that's helped me. I mean, I work out on my own too, but I do also have a trainer who's helped me, you know, with a program and to give that accountability.

And so I realized that I need to work out early if I'm going to do it. And what was hard at first as well was just if I'm going to get up at 5. 30 to go to the gym, I need to be in bed by 9.

30 and, you know, asleep by 10. And that was hard because I'd find, you know, in the evening, my kids are up and my house has got to activity going on. And I want to do something.

I want to watch something with them or there's some show on that I want to watch her, whatever it might be, I found it took some level of discipline to start, you know, forcing myself to, you know, be in a position where I could fall asleep between 9. 30 and 10. So that when my alarm goes off at 5.

30, I have gotten a good night's sleep because sleep is very important as well. And so that's the, I started prioritizing my sleep as part of it and making sure that I, you know, went to bed early enough that I could get up. And for me, it was easier to develop the consistency if I work out, like almost every day.

So I tend to work out like five or six days a week. I find if I work out three, three, even four, I just find the date, the, the days where I'm off, it's harder to go back the next day or even like I just recently was on a vacation. And I did exercise at the gym at the hotel vlog's on vacation, but I didn't, I just didn't get there every, every day.

And also, and it was, and I didn't do the same type of workouts necessarily because of what they had. And so I found it was hard again. It's like the habit's been temporarily broken and I have to start it up again.

And so for me, it's just fine doing it every day or almost every day helps with just the consistency. And I read a book, you may have heard of it, it's called Atomic Habits. It's by Gunning James.

Yeah. And that, that looked to me really resonated because he talked about how, like when you're trying to create the habit, it's just more important that you just go. So even if you, you know, go to the gym and you only say for 15 or 20 minutes, but you keep doing it, that's going to help you create the habit.

And so I kind of, I use that mindset that, you know, when my alarm is going off and I'm tired and I don't really feel like going, you know, I say, okay, well, just go. And, you know, once you start your workout, if you're really really that tired, you know, we just work out for 15 minutes and you're allowed to come home. And of course, once you get there and you start doing it, you're not going to stop after 15 minutes.

But if I knew that I had that out, it would help me to just get up and get there. So I think his book is just fabulous for ideas on how to create habits. It is.

Yes, I recommend it to all my clients. One of the things I love to is make it easy. So sleep on your yoga pants or your workout outfit or have it ready.

Have the water bottle right there ready to grab, like just simplify your life to create those cues to reinforce those habits. And exactly like just do it. Like don't wait for your mood to tell you if you should do it because you're always going to be tired, grumpy, hungry.

I just do it because action and activities, what then can set your mood the other way. No, it's very impressive. It's very impressive.

And because I have been very lucky that I learned a ton about nutrition with my first pregnancy because I also gained like 60 pounds and they were really hard to lose. So I just went and read all the books I knew about nutrition and the importance of a high fiber diet and eating things that will make you full and you will, you know, be full and not hungry and got to eat and not eating processed foods and whole foods and with the fact that I do like cooking. So it and so I've been able to maintain my health.

I'm almost 50 and like the same weight my whole life which is great except I need to exercise now because I've had also issues with my knees and hips and I energy that testosterone and premenopause and all that thing. So it's like exercises. Number one, which is one, we read that book a year ago and I'm still, you know, struggling kind of keeping it consistent and my husband was older too.

He said exactly what you were saying and that's why I was nodding that once or twice a week will kill the habit for him but if he works out every day it's just part of the habit. Just get up and go to the gym. Yeah.

And we live in New York City so we're very lucky that our building has a great gym. So it's like two stairs down. It's not a gym that has no excuse.

And sauna and heating room and steam room and all that. How did what else did you incorporate to meet your goals? Like this nutrition plate a big roll of it or you had that under control or how what helped you kind of change what you also ate and how you continue to deal with stress though I agree exercises.

One of the most amazing things to do for stress because it just dumps oxytocin and dopamine and all this happy heart loans and relaxes us. Yeah. I mean nutrition was definitely very important particularly to my weight loss.

You know, it's that old saying that you know if it's like 80% or whatever it is of abs are made in the kitchen not in the gym and like and if you want to lose weight the gym alone isn't going to do it. You need to be eating healthy and so when the coach I was working with because her background was as a nutritionist she worked with me on you know meal plan ideas and for a period of time I was counting macros I don't do that now. I did find it to be a lot of extra work but I did do it for a period of time and the other thing that really helped me a lot is because I am busy and time is always the the challenge as I found someone in my neighborhood who made healthy prepared meals that she delivers to the house someone's house twice a week like once on Mondays once on Wednesdays and so I started using her service and that just helped me a lot because I found then I just always had healthy meals in my fridge and I didn't you know when I did grocery shopping I didn't buy any unhealthy things or unhealthy snacks I had these healthy meals and then if I you know when I was hungry that was all I had to choose from and so it helped kind of change my palate around and helped me not crave sugar the way that I used to and I found that I enjoyed the taste of these meals even you know they were healthy but they were they were tasty and so what type of meals were they were they like the military and diet or a lot more beans or what they were a lot of greens like so they they always had a protein because like protein you know with with you know your health and just with weight loss and and also building muscle like getting your daily protein and take a super important so they always have a protein and you know a lot of greens as well so a lot of them are salads and they might have like chicken or you know another protein you know mixed in with it and she does enough variety that I didn't get sick of it so at first I was doing I was getting meals from her for both lunch and dinner but then over time I just started getting them just for one meal a day and I would do the other meal myself but as you say like it was and it was you know some people might say well that's expensive but I feel like the price of groceries went up so much that it really wasn't much different whether I was paying her for these meals or going to the grocery store myself and buying everything and so for me the convenience of just having it was was very helpful and and I think really did help me to stay consistent on that and then the other thing that that I think helps me is I like there's no such thing as like a completely bad food like I will not if I'm out with with friends and we're at a restaurant and you know like or if I'm out with my boyfriend and he orders a dessert like I'll have I'll get an extra spoon and I'll have like you know a couple of spoonfuls or whatever so I get my little taste of sugar but I don't need to have the whole dessert so just like little changes like that where you know where's before I'd want that whole dessert myself and I eat every last spoonful of it now I can be satisfied just having a couple of spoonfuls and I find if I if something if I restrict myself too much then I want to like binge and go crazy so that's why I don't say okay I'm never allowed to have a cookie or I'm never allowed to have a piece of chocolate like I can but it has to be you know in moderation and not something that I'm doing every day.

An intentional and intentional it's part of the work that I do about loving yourself. You love yourself so much that you go to a French pastry and there's something that's absolutely delicious. I'm going to eat that because I'm worth it and it's intentional and it's happening once you know a month or even once a week like if you have to allow yourself life is short to enjoy good things in life.

It's funny because this friend that I was telling you about we would travel together for business and when I was out traveling I'd order steak and treats and extra truffle oil in the fries and she said why are you so skinny and I'm like because that's not how I eat Monday Friday right I eat really well for breakfast lunch dinner I just you know low carb high high veggies almost vegan and it's you know but when I'm out like he's short but also like if I order I love croissants which are terribly but if I order one and they're still and old I don't eat them but if they're freshly baked and delicious I'm like common over and I might have a half more because life is short and if part of creating that balance where he's coming from a sense of worth versus you know super strict rules that one day will break and like you said you bench and you you're getting to the thing like well I was a good girl a little week so now I'm gonna pick out and eat three pizzas in a row because I deserve it and that's um that's kind of what we want to stay away from um what do you think as we wrap this up is going to help you and my audience keep it sustainable what do you think are those things that are gonna help you kind of stay in the lifestyle of it not being a diet or a exercise routine but like a lifestyle that you actually love and enjoy and like you said when you don't do it you feel like something's up. Well I guess a couple of things so number one is I really have changed my lifestyle so you know the way I eat now the way I exercise um the way I prioritize my sleep you know all it I don't drink alcohol that's but that was something I didn't do before all of this so okay but so I have the colleagues yeah yeah I have a healthy lifestyle and it's something I it's a habit now so I just need to you know maintain the habits and and I motivate it too because I love how I feel I love that you know for the first time in quite a number of years when I get dressed in the morning I don't have to be constantly oh like this is gonna make me look fat and I'm gonna hate how I look in this like it's so nice to just put on clothes and not even have those thoughts in my head and worry about it I mean not that I should have been having them you know anyway but but with that you know but you love fashion you love fashion yeah I love fashion and it's so it's fun lying clothes now um and then the other thing and this is something that kind of kept me accountable or kept me on track during the whole journey and continues to is I love the saying be her now and so I try to live my life that way that okay who is the woman that I want to be like how does she eat how does she exercise how does she dress how does she treat people you know all these sorts of things and I you know I'm a firm believer that if I believe I'm her now and I act like that woman would act that you know then I become her and that helped me you know sometimes when I was tired and didn't want to get up at 530 or I wanted to I was had a bad day and I wanted to emotional eat and think it'd be like what would that woman do in this situation would she go and and eat a pint of ice cream or skip her workout or would she go to the gym and would she go would she not go and get that pint of ice cream and I knew the answer and so that's really helped me as well so I continued to use that philosophy or mantra to guide me where do you get this mantra from is this something I learned in coaching and something that we do is who is this person and what would they do yeah I mean I think I probably did you need it yeah yeah I think I read it I had social media and I'm a big like my coach had made me do a vision board at the very beginning of our working together so now I just do one every year on my own and I was so excited because I truly like manifest it like the things that are on my vision board I've been making happen and so I really believe having not just having it in your head but having it on something that you can look at really helps and so I think that helps keep you accountable and to inspire you I hear you what was the role of connections and relationships you mentioned the boyfriend played in your journey because that's really important too yeah well it's funny because I've been been single a very long time I you know I dated people often I dated people that either didn't treat me well or that I you know was bringing way way way more to the table than they were so I they weren't we weren't equal I you know I clearly had a lot more going for me than they did and so they're just people that you know was never gonna end up being a long-term relationship because we weren't the right people for each other and I found when I really started you know working on myself and started loving myself for the you know for the first real time in my life where I really started to love Leanne then I attracted the healthy relationship and so in last year I met a wonderful man and we got engaged in April of this year and congratulations and he's a wonderful guy and we have a very happy healthy relationship and I really believe that when I didn't love myself I never would have attracted this relationship because I just I wasn't you know I didn't love myself enough to attract someone worthy of of me really you know and so everything you know it's just so amazing how everything just connects all together I feel like it was like the fight I got you know my health under in a better place my career in a better place I've always had a good relationship with my kids and I've great kids so fortunately that was never an issue but I feel like the finding love and finding my person was like kind of like the final piece that I didn't have and then I you know I met him and it's wonderful and you know it's just I'm gonna be 58 and we're you know gonna get married next year so it's never too late to find a person it happened to me Leanne after my divorce I heavy work on myself all kinds of therapy with part of the healing podcast is understanding all the healing modalities and found my person and also celebrated our 10 years together last year in Italy with 135 people and it was it's like it's part of the divorce coaching that I really love and enjoy is that after the divorce I help men or and women work on themselves to plant that garden to love themselves to tackle all of their childhood trauma and negative beliefs and negative thoughts and just despite of being single not single dating it's just love yourself and then there's so many of this amazing stories where they find love and find happiness and as we see as the start of this episode was like who's watching right so I'm so happy you're showing your kids what a happy healthy loving relationship looks like it feels like and it started by you loving yourself and prioritizing yourself and I see some of your real sane I want to motivate others on this journey join my community my group tell us a bit of what's up for you next yeah so I have a Facebook community that I've been building where we have accountability and I share you know things that I'm doing and people help support each other and I'm actually I become so passionate about all of this I'm working on my personal trainer certification and my goal is to start doing things more in the wellness field and because I you know you're talking about how you what you prefer doing in terms of your practice and dealing with the divorce stuff and I kind of find the same thing it's such a negative draining thing I find the wellness that is just such a positive uplifting offset to it so I'm I'm working on building up that area and getting the credentials I need so that I you know can not only share my journey but actually help you know coach people on their fitness and train people and and all of that sounds amazing thank you so much for sharing your journey with us it's really valuable because everything that you've experienced is something that everyone is out there has experience in some sort shape of form and so thank you so much I handle all my episodes asking my guess what's the feeling for you? Healing I think for to me means being able to be the the person that I was always meant to be you know true to myself authentic happy in my own skin you know experiencing joy and surrounding myself with people and things that you know make me happy and and feeling good about myself loving myself.

Love it thank you so much Leanne thank you for your time in doing this.