SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hello and welcome back to Empower Your Menopause. We're actually on episode 45, which is quite incredible really. So thanks for staying with us. Thanks for listening. We are, of course, the podcast that helps you take charge of your health, your hormone, your happiness if you're a woman who's 40 and above. So it's coaches James and Julie here from Fabulous Beyond 40. And today we decided to break down one of the most misunderstood health habits out there, particularly when it comes to women over 40. We've talked before about how it's a really busy time of life and how it gets even busier now with everything else that's going on. And so that thing is rest. So if you've ever felt guilty about actually slowing down, this episode is, I guess, aimed at you. For many midlife women, it seems that they still believe that rest equals laziness in some way, or weakness, or falling behind. But the truth is it's a real biological necessity, a nervous system reset, and dare we say, even a rebellious act of self-preservation, the way that things are going these days. So in this episode, we're going to challenge toxic productivity, we're going to explore the science behind rest and recovery and help you reclaim your downtime as part of a tower, powerful tooth for your true powerful powerful tool, even mixing my words up there, for health and growth at this time of life. So, Julie, let's just jump straight in and let's start calling out some guilt, shall we?

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah, absolutely. And I I can totally relate to this because I I have been through this myself. I still go through this myself. I think all of us do really. But you know, we live in this hustle culture, right? We have to do more and more and more all the time. Companies are downsizing and piling work onto the employees that you know the work still has to get done. We still have families to to kids to raise and families to take care of and the house and the bills and the garden and our communities and so on and so on. And when you look outside of yourself, it looks like everybody else has got it together. So then there's all that extra pressure on on ourselves to do it all and get it all done. We don't know what goes on behind the scenes for other people. We don't know what kind of support they have or don't have, and we don't know, you know, when that perfect smile goes away and the front door closes, what kind of chaos ensues. Um, because we're looking at this kind of superficial expectation from the media and society in general. And and we we have decades, we have a lifetime of conditioning that that has taught us to believe that the busier we are, the more productive we are, the more value we have as a citizen, uh, as a person, as a human being. And that's just not true. We we have there's just so much stuff going on. There's so many things that pull at our emotions, that pull at our attention, that pull at our energy, and all these demands on our time. And we we look at rest as something that's a negative, as something that, as you said earlier, James, and as something that's lazy, right? And oh, I I don't have time to rest. I used to have a sign on my uh cubicle when I sorry, my my office cube, because cubicle means something else in the UK. Um, I used to have a sign up on my office cube that said, I'll have plenty of time to rest when I'm dead, which you know we kind of live by that, but but the truth is we need to earn rest. When we moved to Italy 11 years ago, I was surprised because I I remember seeing how much holiday time Italians had and how many public holidays and the sauntering and easy-going Sundays that that are in most people's schedules. Italians work as hard as anybody else, but they also understand the importance of downtime and rest. And that's very sacred, and that's a protected part of the culture. There's still siesta time in throughout most of Italy where businesses shut for a few hours in the middle of the day. You know, not all businesses do this now, but there's still that tradition of going home, having a leisurely lunch, resting afterwards, taking Sunday as a really proper downtime day. And we've we've adapted somewhat to that. Unfortunately, we still have enough of our own culture with us, but we've adapted to that somewhat because it it makes us feel so much more restored. And we're learning to do that without guilt. And I if I could teach anybody one thing, it would just be you know, rest is not lazy. It's it's really essential. And if you believe that, then I think it's time for an upgrade. I'm sure you have stories about this with clients as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Yeah, well, it it's interesting because I mean, on the first instance, some people who are listening may know that I was brought up in Greece, and so I'm very familiar with that Mediterranean culture of taking naps in the afternoon and things like that. I'm not sure that's the same in Italy, but at least in Greece, you know, that gap is actually a break in the working day where people tend to go for siestas, and many of them will often go back to work in the evening. So, probably not offices, but definitely shops will reopen again 5:30 to 8:30 in the evening, and and therefore it's kind of like a split day routine. So just because they're sloping off for an after a couple of hours' sleep in the afternoon doesn't mean that they're just giving up on work for the rest of this. That's the first thing to say. I smiled when you said, you know, I'll rest when I'm dead. That's always been my mum's motto as well. And both her and a brother who was incredibly productive until later life used to joke with each other that when they pass away, they want their ashes to be put into an egg time, and so they can't continue working after they've died as well. So that's kind of like the crazy uh things that we can convince ourselves about. I was talking to a client the other day, and if you're listening, you know who you are. I'm not going to name you, obviously. Um, but this lady was messaging me via Instagram, which is the first channel that we set up our communication with. She's one of our clients now at Fabulous Beyond 40. And she was saying, I'm sure you guys could do some wonderful things for me, James, if I could find five minutes to spare. And my first reaction was, Well, if you feel as though you can't find five minutes to spare, you definitely didn't need to start working with us as quickly as possible. Um, but I directed her in uh pointed in the direction of some of the materials we do. We have a bonus session in one in our or one of our bonus sessions in our Club Fabulous Beyond 40 membership is a training called Make Time for Me Time, which shows you a little bit on how to do some time blocking so you can actually be more productive with the time that you do have. You know, nobody can create more hours in the day, but you can use your time more efficiently, and quite often when we do say that we haven't got time to do anything, it can actually be that we're and we're gonna get onto it in a little bit, but that idea of productive procrastination whereby we're being busy for the sake of being busy rather than being busy because we particularly need to. Um, and it is worn like a badge of honour. I see it all the time, you know. That client who was who was messaging me, she she's no different to most of the most clients that come to us, and in fact, one of the things that I things that I always find interesting, and again, it's the same call out, is that almost 90% of people come into our world say, I will work with you when I have the time, and that time never comes, you know, Monday never comes, next month never comes, work never gets less busy. Uh you know, you've not nailed a promotion, the kids have have come back from holiday, you've still not started working on yourself, and so it it all just equates to me and shows to me how important working on yourself, finding that time to have some downtime to be able to rest and recover and make sure you're in the right headspace is absolutely critically important. And I'm just saying that because you know, this is an idea of as trying to do a client grab of trying to get more people to come in and say calling them out and saying, Well, you know, if you've if you've not got the time, you do need us. I mean, if they haven't got the time, they do need us, but um, but aside from that, it really is just a fact of a combination of modern day life, women's natural caring um natures, and this idea that people have to be everything to everyone. I absolutely agree with you that none of us know what's going on in anybody else's lives, and I would challenge anybody who's sitting here now thinking, oh, my friend does have it down pat, sit down and have a conversation with that lady and see if she really does have it as all figured out, as you've convinced yourself that she does, because I can guarantee that unless she's wearing her pants outside of her nylons and she's got a cape on her back, she probably doesn't have it as figured out as you as you think she she does, right? So it's a challenge, isn't it? And it's a challenge for many, many different reasons. I mean, there is the mental reason, but obviously there are huge physiological reasons why rest and recovery are so important. I know that when I used to teach and do more personal training with with clients, you know, 10-15 years ago, people would say to me, How many days a week should I work out? And the truth is, quite often your schedule should be more determined by how many days you should actually rest. When you're not resting and you are working out, then all you're doing is leading yourself to potential overtraining syndrome, potential injuries, and all those kinds of things. And so the physiological physiology of rest rather is really really important for me. So, you know, it's not just about sleep either, is it? It's not just about sort of like saying, right, you know, it's 11 o'clock, I'm going to bed, I'm going to get up at seven in the morning, therefore I've had eight hours. It's everything else that's going on, it's physical rest, it's emotional, it's mental, it's sensory recovery. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, of something that we've talked about and in many podcasts before, there are real physiological reasons why actually de-stressing, resting and recovering is super important. If one of the things you're looking for is better hormonal balance at this time of life as a woman over 40. You know, when we're stressed out, when we're not resting, when we're not recovering, our cortisol levels, that stress hormone goes high at times when we don't want it to do. What does that lead to? Well, it leads to a couple of things: increased belly fat, more chance of burnout, poorer digestion. On top of all that, if you're in the perimenopause phase, or you're in that phase just before menopause where estrogen is slightly slightly declining, or if you're in perimenopause and it's going up and down, well, then your estrogen for the rest of your life is going to start coming from two areas. One of them is from your adrenal gland, one of them is from your body fat. So if your adrenal glands are not dealing with or not helping produce cortisol, uh sorry, oestrogen, but they're working on cortisol instead, then what you have is you know, estrogen is not being produced there because cortisol is the priority, and therefore most of the estrogen production is shifting over to your body fat. And what is the other number one complaint that we get from so many people who want to work with it is I can't get rid of my seven body fat. Well, you know, it's actually creating this vicious circle, isn't it? And we just it just doesn't get realized, I think, by so many people, and it's not that they're purposefully turning their back on this, it is often quite often, because they do feel as though things are so busy that they don't have the chance for downtime. Then, of course, the other thing that happens is you've got all these challenges. Well, then on top of all that, then melatonin and estrogen get disrupted and everything else, and then you also get poor sleep and poor mood on top of your exhausted body. So it's another of these concepts I always feel that it's like a layer upon layer of onions when you layer your clothing during winter or uh when the weather's inclement, you can keep peeling back and back and back and try and get down to the nitty-gritty of things, or you can keep adding more and more layers on, and your your your onion just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I suppose one of the things that is really important to talk about here, and I'm gonna pass this back to you because I think I've talked long enough, is the idea of it strikes me that sometimes people tend to confuse rest versus numbing out. And I'm not saying that escapism, you know, watching a bit of TV and things like that, catching your favorite show, doesn't have its place, but I think there's a difference there, and I'd be keen to see what your thoughts are on when is rest rest and when is it just as a zone out of whatever's happening in your life.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

Yeah, for sure. This is and this is really important because proper restorative rest is going to give us um a sense of rejuvenation, it's going to give us a sense of calm. Whereas numbing out is going to give us a sense of apathy, it's going to give us a sense of of yeah, basically just I feel numb. Um in we we love to distract ourselves, right? Say, oh, I and I used to, I remember because when I was coaching with you, I used to say, oh, but this game on my phone helps me relax, right? No, it doesn't. They're designed to trigger that dopamine hit to excite your brain. So doom scrolling, um Netflix, binge watching, those kinds of things are distractions, not actual rest. And I'm not saying there isn't a time and place to do that once in a while because sometimes that's what you want to do. But true rest might be actually taking a nap and giving yourself some restorative sleep. Maybe going out for a nice leisurely walk, not on your phone, not listening to something in your earbuds, you know, just taking in the sounds and the sights and and enjoying some nature with with no particular, you don't have to meet a specific mile time, you don't have to have this many steps, just go out and and enjoy a nice walk. Doing things that put you into a state of flow. Maybe that's creativity for you, maybe that's uh I don't know. It could be some, it could be anything, journaling, artwork, needlework, cooking, you know, anything that that really just helps you lose sense of time when you're when you're doing it. We all have something like that, whether you know, maybe it's playing with kids or grandkids or your pets, or I love to do that with gardening. I mean, I can lose an entire morning and in what feels like 20 minutes when I get in my hands in the dirt. The the important thing to know is your brain needs space. It needs time away from stimulation. And and by stimulation I mean reading emails, reading your Kindle, reading what watching your phone, watching TV or movies, um, playing games on your phone. We don't ever give our brain time to just not just to process what's there and time to rest and relax. And it's one of the reasons I think why we have difficulty with sleep so much is because our brains never have that break time. And I would challenge you to try getting up once an hour, whether it's two minutes or five minutes or 10 minutes if you can, or eventually work up to that. And just take a quick walk around. If you're working in an office, take a walk around the office without reading anything. Take a walk outside and just take a breath of fresh air. Uh, just get up and stretch, maybe do a few squats, get your body moving, shift some energy. I and I know I I still battle with this myself, but when I'm when I take a break in the afternoon to go out for a walk, I'm always way more productive. I say I don't have 30 minutes or 60 minutes to spare to do that. But when I do that, I'm way more productive in the time when I come back than I was or would be if I just stayed on and kept and kept pushing through. And I and I will I will tell you some interesting and kind of shocking statistics that I've read. And that is the average phone user spends over three hours a day on their phone. And that's obviously not always all at once, but that's just checking the time, checking for messages, checking notifications, playing a game, scrolling on social media, you know, whatever it is. That's the average user. Can you imagine? Heavy users are more than four hours a day. What would you do with that time? You say, I don't have time. What could you do if you clawed back even a little portion of that time instead of picking up your phone? I mean, I've so so I like to say, look, when I do this activity, do I feel refueled? Do I feel recharged? Do I feel restored? Or do I feel the same? Do I feel more drained? Do I feel flat? Because that will give you a good indication of whether that activity is actually helping you. One of the best things I've ever done for myself was to start leaving my phone in a different room when I go to do some work. Because it just doesn't distract me. And I know if you have young children and there's certain situations that that maybe you need that phone nearby to get calls, but stick it in a drawer, put it, you know, put it someplace, and maybe schedule time on your calendar when you're getting when you allow yourself to go that time to check it. But it whatever you're doing, it should make you feel better, at least a little bit. Yeah, wouldn't you say?

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Oh, absolutely. Um, it's a real challenge, isn't it? Uh, for for people, I think. This this idea we have become, and you know, I'm as victim to it as much as the next person is, where your phone almost ends up becoming like one of these old mythological creatures. I can't remember which one was which, but it was the succubus and the incubus, wasn't it? Where they kind of come to you and they drain your your power away just as you're getting in in into bed at night. And uh, you know, some used to postulate that they were the reason for sleep paralysis and things like that. And your mobile phone is actually the modern version of that to to a point, is this thing that many people it's incredible, myself included at times, pick up just before going to bed and do doom scrolling before sleep, and then wonder why we have disrupted sleep when you know we've been watching sort of like crap falls on YouTube at one o'clock in the morning or whatever it may be. Um, so I think that's question's a really good one that you've asked there. How do I feel? Do I feel restored or do I feel drained? And I think that's something that is just a really, really good way of checking in with it with ourselves. I think it's a probably a good time to talk a little bit as well about actual rest and how it all works out in midlife health. I mean, you know, it almost feels as though to tell people that rest is important is a little bit superfluous, but it's clearly not because we see that people are challenged with it. But let's, you know, rest. Well, midlife is a huge period of recalibration anyway, isn't it? Particularly for women. There are lots of changes that are taking place both physiologically and psychologically that can come in here. And rest is the thing that gives our brains chance to get our heads around that, help us recalibrate, reorganise the information, consolidate memories, sort out the wheat from the chaff. What do we really need to know? What do we not need to know? They're all the kind of things that help when that rest helps with. Are we uh emotionally and mentally tired as well? Because rest certainly supports your your cognition by helping ease that mental mental overload, and then also physiologically helps reduce inflammation. Most bodily processes that we consider to be negatory, negative habits. Some kind of an inflammatory element to them, and the menopause is no different to that. So resting helps reduce some of that chronic low-level inflammation that can be there, that can also then be the root cause of so many other illnesses going forward. It helps preserve things like muscle and bone health, which are critically important again during midlife. You know, osteoporosis is a real challenge for women over 50. Sarcopenia, that is muscle loss, a real challenge for women over 50. And so rest can help with that. And then also, you know, just backing and forwarding a little bit here, but you know, the emotional idea of processing things like being upset, having identity shifts, rage, all those kind of things. So it's really important, I think, for all that that we kind of try and remodel, reframe maybe rest in our minds about it being a worthy use of our time rather than our rather than our luxury. And as such, uh, it it needs to be a priority for people. If you aren't prioritizing rest, then everything else can quickly um spiral out of control. So it's it's critically, critically important. So I know we've skirted around this a little bit, Julie, but why don't we talk about some ways that you've come up with that can help our listeners reclaim some of their downtime and actually make this a priority, make it a worthy use of their time rather than being seen as a luxury.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

Yeah, absolutely. And I I think the first thing to understand is we talk about time management. We can't necessarily manage time, it's going to march on, whatever we do, but we can manage how we use our time and energy better. And I like to look at energy management over time management because that's really what it comes down to. If we don't have the energy to do the things we need to do, it doesn't matter how much time we have or how little time we have, we're not going to be able to do them. So managing our energy, I think, is the first place to start. And what is productivity? Is it somebody else's idea of things? As you mentioned, productive procrastination. I it's an easy place to slip into throughout the day. And I often find myself asking out loud, do I really need to do this right now? Because it's easy to get distracted, especially if we have some tasks ahead of us that maybe we don't really want to do or that aren't particularly pleasant or they're unfamiliar, and we're a little bit hesitant to have to go through the learning process. So that I think the easiest place to start, I love the concept of the five-minute habit, starting with micro moments of rest. Take five minutes. You do have five minutes, you can find five minutes. I know you can find five minutes to go to the bathroom. And even if you have to take that five minutes in the bathroom, it's still a starting point. And whether that's doing some breathing exercises, you know, maybe just put the phone down somewhere else. One of the things we do in our house is we have phone-free meals. Whether we're in the house or out someplace, the phone does not go on the table. Um, if we decide we want to look something up, we will ask permission and then it gets put away immediately again because it's just such a distraction. It also helps you be much more present with the people you're with. We say, you know, when we lose someone, we think, oh, if only I had some more time with them. Well, let's have that time now. You know, what matters to you? What's really a priority? And and the other, I think the the other big thing about this is that nobody's gonna give you the time. You have to take it. So if you don't make yourself non-negotiable, and I I was working with a a coach for some time a couple years ago, and the very first thing that we did looking at my week ahead was schedule my time, my time for my workouts, my time for my meals, my time for breaks during the day. That was the first thing that went into the calendar, other than appointments that were hard scheduled, like doctor's appointments, that kind of thing. And but those were the things that everything else got scheduled around. And when I started to live that way, I was surprised at how much more energy I had for everything else. So make yourself a priority because nobody else is gonna do that for you. And if if you were talking to a friend, what would you advise them, right? They're saying, Oh, I just I just need some time to breathe. Wouldn't you be harping on them to take it? So, so you need to be your own best friend there and and do that for yourself. And it, if this feels hard, it it will feel hard at first. So start small, start with that five minutes, start with a daily walk, start with whatever feels good to you and make it small so that it is doable, because otherwise it's gonna feel overwhelming and you're gonna say, Oh, never mind, I don't have, I just can't do that. So start small because you can always build. Um, and if you're if you're still resisting that, just ask yourself, what what am I afraid will happen if I stop doing this thing? You know, especially something as simple as the phone at night, in bed, before bed. What are you afraid will happen if you stop doing that? I think that's yeah, I think that's a a place, it's a place to start. You have to be like any other skill, you have to build it.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Yeah, I I I absolutely agree with you. I think more often than not, time is often the ex is is an excuse that we tend to put up, isn't it? I don't have the time when really what we're saying to ourselves is this is a barrier we're putting up because we're a little bit scared to try and take a change, and we're a little bit scared because of what we think people might think about us if we if we do take that to do take that change. But the benefits, of course, are as we've talked about, rest is not optional. These are your takeaways, by the way, folks. It's not optional, it's not lazy. Nobody's looking at you for taking five minutes and thinking that you're you're you're lazy. And aside from that, if you're even more productive when you come back, you can play catch-up on the five minutes that you think you've just lost. And I'm for those not watching on YouTube, I am doing air quotes with my fingers. Um, and then finally, I think rest is how your body builds, your brain recharges, your spirit recalibrates, so prioritize it. And I love that idea as well, Julie. It's something that I try and do as well is that every week schedule my time in my calendar before anything else goes in, because we have to put ourselves at number one, and I think that's even more important with all the societal pressures that women fought in above or going through the menopause transition go through as well.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

For sure. And one of the one of my favorite sayings is you know, try the rest is important so you can give everyone the best of you rather than what's left of you.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Absolutely. So we're coming up to the end of the episode then. If you're tired of powering your way through and you find the way to treat your body with the care it deserves, why not join our coaching community or reach out to us? We're here to help you work with your biology and not against it. One way to get some of that support is uh set aside 90 minutes of your time next Friday, the June 6th. Uh, that's at 6 pm UK, 1 pm Eastern if you're in the States, or 10am if you're on the Pacific Coast. We're hosting a free workshop. It's our most requested one. It's called Five Steps to Master Your Menopause Weight Loss. Energy plays a big role in this, and we can help with that. So join us for the live interactive session. You're going to leave with a personalised plan, it'll help you take the stress out of eating, it'll help support your hormone balance and support weight loss in midlife as well. So if you want to join us on that, the URL is weight loss, all one word.fabulousbeyond40.com and register, and we will see you there next Friday. It promises to be an excellent session, so we hope you will make it with us and we'll put that URL in the show notes as well. So in the meantime, we are coaches James and Julia, Fabulous Beyond 40. Reminding you to stay strong, stay fabulous, and this week stay rested as well. Okay, take care, we'll see you soon. Bye now.