Congratulations.
Here's some good news - it's never too late.
Welcome to The Own Your Health podcast.
I'm Cyndi Lynne, and I can't wait to
help you step into your health power.
So today I want to talk about and debunk
one of the most frequent comments I hear from
my clients and from people who write in for
advice and work with me on social media.
And that is, it's too late.
Well, it's never too late.
And without buying into that excuse,
I can certainly understand it.
It feels like perhaps you've gone down
a long path for a long time.
You're way down the path of treatment, of
a diagnosis, or you're way down the path
of 30 years of eating a certain way.
And so when I make the suggestion that someone
makes some changes, and very often it's to their
treatment plan, to how they're managing a particular illness,
to how they're working with some of their everyday
habits, I hear, you know what?
It's just too late.
Now, that may also mean that may be the code word
for it's too much work to learn something new now.
And that is absolutely something I can help you with.
So let's look at some of the most common phrases
I hear it's too late to change treatment plans,
it's too late to get my family to start eating better -
they never change.
It's too late to start an exercise program.
How can I go to the gym when
I can't even walk around the block?
It's too late to save this relationship.
It's too late to have a good relationship with my kids.
It all seems to have fallen apart.
It's too late to get my dog to behave.
That's one I've encountered very recently.
And we have this excuse of it being too late too.
When I think truly, most of the
time, it's a combination of things.
It's too much work, and I don't know where to start.
Where do you start making changes to
something that you've been doing for years?
Where do you start making changes that allow
you to own your health, your behavior, your
activities when you've been perhaps outsourcing them for
years, when you've been letting the doctor make
the decision, when you've been letting the family
make the decision, when you've been letting other
people manage your calendar inadvertently, probably?
How do you start to make those changes?
Well, the good news is that you don't have
to undo there's very often a sense that you
have to go back and change what was done.
And we can't we can't change the past.
We can only make a decision to get
the information we need and change moving forward.
So that's the first obstacle that we really
address is that we can't change the past.
Maybe you have been eating really
poorly for the past 30 years.
You can change that in your next meal.
Maybe you never have taken a
supplement to help you feel better.
You can get the information, and
you can change that today.
Maybe you have been down a long course
of treatment for your diagnosis, and you feel
like, okay, I've signed up for this
and this is the path I'm on.
And this is the one I hear the most about, just
because the work I do with clients. It's sort of like
that train is running and it's going fast, and it's heading
on the tracks, and there's just no way to stop it.
But you can.
And when we decide to make a change, when
we decide to take ownership, it doesn't mean that
everything we were doing before has to stop.
Maybe it gets altered a little or maybe even we
continue to do the things we were doing and we
add a meaningful behavior that allows us to do what
we were doing with intention and with understanding and with
information so that we have the confidence of knowing that,
yeah, we made this decision because it's the right decision,
not because it was the default, not because the train
was just running down the tracks.
So I want to get specific with a few of these examples
so that you have something to work with on your own.
I also want to be mindful of the time.
My intention is to do short blurbs that you can listen
to on your way to work out walking the dog.
I really want this information to be consumable, and that's
a theme within my program as well, a very consumable,
bite size information that gives you what you need to
apply the information to your own life.
So we started a little
bit with changing treatment plans.
So say you've had a diagnosis, it's been managed in
a certain way, maybe, and this is a common one.
You're on an awful lot of medications, and you're
starting to wonder if you still need each one
of those medications now that you've maybe stabilized or
now that your symptoms have subsided, or now that
you've made some other changes to your lifestyle.
And this can be something as
simple as blood pressure medication.
If you truly make changes to your lifestyle, to your
stress level, to your weight, to your diet, you may
not need all of the medication that you needed before.
And so owning your own health can be simply a
matter of raising that question next time you go to
your doctor's office. Saying, okay, I've been on this dose.
I've lost 30 pounds.
I've got my blood sugars under control.
How about we consider lowering the dose?
And very often it's difficult
to stop medication outright.
It's difficult for physicians to do it because
they don't want to write that prescription, they
don't want to take that responsibility.
But it's much easier to say, okay, let's cut
back on the medication, see how the results are,
and then we can move forward from there.
And perhaps the next cycle, the next time
around, you can ask the same question and
eventually reduce or get off a particular medication.
The same is true even for chemotherapy.
There's cocktails that are prescribed that may work
first course, may not work second course.
Shifts might be necessary.
And it's not necessary for you to
know everything about every chemotherapy drug.
I can promise you, nobody does.
But you can raise the question
saying, okay, we did these things.
I seem to tolerate this drug.
I didn't tolerate this drug.
What about a different combination?
What about staggering them?
What about timing?
What about you get to ask, what
about what are the other options?
And it's very easy for a physician to just put
you on what you were on before or put you
on the latest protocol, and it's up to you to
advocate for yourself and to ask these questions.
Is all of this really necessary?
Do we have to do it all at the same time?
Can we start it in stages to see
what I tolerate, and perhaps then which ones
are causing me the worst side effects?
And that's perfectly legitimate questioning, and that's
part of owning your own health.
So when I say own your own health,
it doesn't mean you go and say, all
right, I'm not taking any more medications.
I'm not going to the doctor anymore. No.
It means being a really good consumer. For a lot of us
it means being as picky about what we purchase for
and engage in, for our vehicles, for our home appliances,
for our restaurants. Really looking at it with a critical
eye and saying, okay, what's for me? What isn't for me?
What do I want to try?
What don't I want to try?
What are the consequences?
And then you can make an informed decision.
And I encourage you to hold off on a decision
until you feel like you have the necessary information, right?
And I can tell you that, ironically, even if
you proceed with the same medication or the same
course of treatment you were on six months ago,
you're going to feel better about that.
Being informed and knowing that you
chose that, that's very empowering.
And that's what we're about here, really empowering you
to own it, to own your own health.
Another one of the comments that I hear
often is, I've been wanting to make changes.
I've been wanting to introduce a lot more vegetables.
I've been wanting to really cut back on the
carbs, but my family will never go for it.
So there's a couple of things that work here.
You can only own your own health, and to some
extent in infants or a small child's health, right?
Once kids get to a certain age, they're going to
be engaging with the outside world in their own way.
Spouses have their own lives.
They are separate beings, even though you are in a
very strong relationship with them and you can't necessarily own
their health, you can just support them in taking action,
asking questions, doing these kinds of things.
And I know many of the women I work with,
they're very strong in terms of research and asking questions.
And they've developed these abilities and they
support their family and they support their
spouse, sometimes even their parents in taking
these actions and making these choices.
But ultimately, those individuals have
to own it themselves.
And that's also true for what you
consume, what you put in your body.
So the first thing I encourage clients to do is to
own their own food, own what they put in their mouth.
So there may not be any way to stop your
significant other, your spouse, your adult kids from bringing the
doritos and the ice cream into the house.
You can choose and own what you put in your mouth.
You can choose and own what you cook.
So you can make a healthy meal,
you can sit down and eat it.
You can also make a healthy meal and make
additional food that you don't necessarily want to eat.
And that's up to you with regard to where your
boundaries are and how strongly you feel about providing what
each of the individuals in your household may want.
There's a lot that goes into that.
And in fact, we could probably do a
whole episode just on what it's like to
be responsible for someone else's nutrition. Okay?
But in terms of owning your own health,
owning your own nutrition, it's about what goes
in your mouth and what doesn't.
You may not be able to get your whole family to
drink all of their water and their electrolytes every day, but
you have full control over doing it for you.
So I encourage my clients to start with themselves.
They very often set a good example, and people are much
likely to follow someone who's already doing it than to embark
on a whole new plan that mom has just come up
with, or dad has just come up with saying, okay, now
this is the way we're going to eat.
People fight back, right?
You do what you need to do to own your
health and eat what you need to eat and leave
the rest and watch what happens around you.
It's a very interesting experiment, and at the end
of the day, you're the one that's in control.
The third example I want to talk about
is exercise, because that's a big one.
Now, owning a company that was
originally called the Reluctant Athlete.
That's me, right?
I don't love exercise.
I don't love what is commonly
thought of as formal exercise.
And that was part of my problem, is that
I saw exercise as this highly separate, requiring loads
of energy, tons of separate time, separate clothes.
It was just this activity that was so far outside
of my life, and I didn't want to take time
out of my life to do this far out activity.
When I started to realize that exercise was movement
and how you chose to move your body,
my mindset started to change around it a little bit.
It was when I started taking shoes to work, and that
was back in the corporate days when I wore heels.
You'd take tennis shoes, socks to work, and
you'd go for a walk after lunch. Okay?
And if it was super hot, you really
couldn't because you weren't dressed for it.
But most of the time you could
take a short walk after lunch.
And it was like, okay, now is this
going to get me an Olympic spot? No.
Is that my goal? No.
But getting more movement.
So really I stopped using the word exercise with
myself in my mind, started movement and asking myself,
how can I squeeze in some movement?
What kind of movement can I get here?
Well, I have dogs.
I love walking the dogs. You can do all kinds of
things while you're walking dogs.
And that's exercise and it all counts.
And that in fact, should be a whole nother
episode about what is exercise, what counts as movement,
how much do you have to do?
Because there's all different we've touched
on this in previous episodes.
There's all kinds of different recommendations out there,
all kinds of different guidelines and rules.
And again, it all depends on your specific goal.
So when someone says to me, I can't go
to the gym because I can't even walk around
the block, I ask a couple of questions.
Do you even want to go to the gym?
That may not be a goal for you.
That may be one of those shoulds that's
going on in the back of our minds.
I should be doing this and I should be doing that.
I should get a gym membership and I
should go every day and I shouldn't should.
And I like to remind people not to
should all over themselves, but we do that.
So the first question is, do you
actually want to go to the gym?
Now, if they do, then, okay, let's find one that's
suitable for your level of activity, what you're currently doing,
because we start where we are and one that you
actually want to go to and then find you a
personal trainer there who can work with someone with your
body type, your body conditioning, and whatever current health issues
you have going on.
And it's real interesting because there's a perception
out there that personal trainers are for high
level athletes and only for high level athletes.
And that couldn't be further from the truth because
the folks who need it the most are the
ones who don't know how to move their bodies,
whether it's walking and yes, people do it wrong.
I see people in my office all the time with
hip trouble and knee problems because their gait is off
and they need to relearn how to use their body.
So absolutely having a good personal trainer to
start you off to show you three or
four exercises, the proper way to do them.
Where you start, you very often hear about
exercise progression, but there's also exercise regression so
that not everyone starts out with push ups,
or not everyone starts out with full squats.
There are ways to regress these exercises so that
you can eventually build up to some of these.
And you need to find someone.
And I can help you find someone by
helping you create the questions, the interview questions,
looking at resources, looking at profiles of personal
trainers, visiting the gym with you.
Those are the kinds of things that if you're local, but
those are the kinds of things that I work with people
in the program to help them find what they want.
If they truly want to go to a place, go to a gym.
If they don't want to go to a gym, if their answer
is no, I have no desire to go to a gym.
It sounds scary, and I don't
even want to walk into one.
I'm like, great.
There are tons of things you can do at
home and outside with very little equipment, and you
can start out with just body weights, and there's
certainly a place for building on that.
But when I'm talking to someone who truly can't walk
around the block, we have to start where you are,
and you have to start where you are.
So when we talk about setting goals
and saying, okay, what is your goal?
It may be your goal to comfortably
walk around the block, say, three times
a day, morning, noon, and after dinner.
And with that being your starting goal, there are
many ways we can work up to that.
So that's one of those things where it's never too
late to own that it's never too late to start.
And if those are the excuses, if that's the first thing
that comes to your mind, then I really want you to
think about, is it just because it seems overwhelming?
Because I don't know where to start?
We can help with that.
If it seems like too much work, think about how much
work it is to put it off, to have that little
message in your head saying, I should, I should, I should.
The shoulding all over ourselves takes a tremendous
amount of energy, and in fact, those messages
play sometimes long after we actually turn the
habit around and start doing the activity.
So I really want to encourage you to
stop using the excuse, it's too late.
And all right, I know right away there's going to be
people who are arguing, and there are certainly things it's really
too late for me to train, to be a ballerina.
All right, I'll give you that.
It's too late for me to become
a gymnast if I ever could have.
So there are definitely things that pass us by in
life, but for what your goals are for what you
want, because what you want is what's important.
And what you want for your life
is the basis of owning it.
It's the best reason to own your health is
to get what you want out of life.
So look at those things that you want.
Ask yourself if you're using the
it's too late as an excuse.
And if you try on it's a lot of work or
it seems overwhelming or I don't know where to start and
any of those ring true, then you got this.
I can help you.
There's loads of folks out there who can
help you, and you can get there.
You can own it.
So thanks for listening.
Check out the show notes for
more information about the program.
If there was any of this that rang through, because
there is so much more, this is the work that
we actually do in the program to help you sort
this out and any other support that you need.
My contact information is there as well.
If you like this, please share it.
As you know, I'm starting out on this.
I love listeners, just like in the office, I
love referrals, and if there's topics you want to
hear about it, reach out and let me know.
Looking forward to next time.
And until then, let's own it.
