Episode Transcript
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Megan (00:07):
I've worked with.
Folks one-on-one whohave a weight loss goal.
And I've been doing this for a few yearsnow, and what really helped me come to
this career was my own pretty significantweight loss of a hundred pounds from
over the course of about one year.
So from experience, I know from experiencethat the scale number changing doesn't
(00:33):
really automatically do anything for us.
The world feels more open to me, right?
So it's not necessarily a lot oftimes when people are thinking
about weight loss, they're onlythinking about the surface level.
Outcome, which is the scale number goingdown or the close size numbers going down.
(00:54):
But what I want to make sureeveryone understands more closely
is how does the change servethe life that they want to live?
Abhra (01:04):
Hello everyone.
I am Abru, and this is Stories and Stanza.
Let's dive into what makes us humanthrough intimate conversations about
creativity, failure, and resilience.
Let's begin.
Hello everyone and welcome to anew episode of Stories and Stanza.
And today with me, I have an amazingguest, Megan, and who has been here
on the show a couple of times, andwe create a small series called Our
(01:28):
Relationship with Food on this podcast.
Welcome back, Megan.
How are you doing today?
Megan (01:33):
Thank you, Abhra.
I'm doing great and I'm reallyhappy to be back because our
conversations always leave me thinkingabout them for days afterwards.
Abhra (01:42):
Thank you so much.
And for listeners, we have done twoepisodes before, so what we have
done now is Stories and Stanza isalso a blog, so you can read about
the episodes as a blog, so you havea pointer to what we have discussed.
I will put a link to the previous twodiscussions, here somewhere in the pointer
(02:05):
if you're watching on YouTube, and ofcourse in the audio podcast description.
So you can read about whatMegan and I discussed last year.
And today we wanted to take anext step and expand that series.
Our relationship with food thatthe title Megan came up with
it and I absolutely love it.
And what we want to explore todayis mind, body connection in light
(02:29):
of our relationship with foodand our weight loss journey.
For the listeners who are joiningus for the first time would you like
to tell a little bit about yourself?
Megan (02:40):
Sure . My name is Megan Gaul.
I live in New York andI am a health coach.
I've worked with.
Folks one-on-one whohave a weight loss goal.
And I've been doing this for a few yearsnow, and what really helped me come to
this career was my own pretty significantweight loss of a hundred pounds from
(03:01):
over the course of about one year.
Now it marks about almost seven yearsthat I've main been maintaining a
healthy weight range for the firsttime in my adult life for about
that six or seven year period.
And that journey made me take stock ofso many of the ways I was approaching
(03:24):
my career and my relationships.
And it really helped me grow inthe ways that I was approaching
all those things and make a lotof big improvements to my life.
And so.
Eventually, after a few years ofmaintaining this weight loss, I said,
I wanna help other people do thisbecause I know there are a lot of people
struggling in the same way that I was.
(03:46):
So that's what I do now.
And I was, connected with you Abrabecause I learned about your Fail With
Me series and it really spoke to me.
'cause even if you hear a successstory, what we see as a success story.
There are so many small failures init, or sometimes big failures that are
(04:07):
really valuable to hear for anyone who'sstuck in the middle of their success.
So that's what brought me to you.
Abhra (04:16):
Wonderful.
And for our listeners, the reasonwhy I call this fail with me is
that when you try to see any kind ofmotivational series, it just says that
there are these 10 steps to success.
But life is not all about success.
It's about understanding whatour failures are telling us.
(04:36):
And that was the motivationbehind the series.
And today we have a very interestingtopic to explore with Megan,
which is the mind body connection,why I am bringing this up.
It started from a beautiful.
A message that I came acrossfrom one of my favorite writers
and speaker on this subject.
(04:58):
Her name is Lisa Feldman Barrett.
And I'm sure you have heard about thebook called how Emotions Are Made.
So I got a very beautiful quotethere, is that our mind feels all the
emotions, but our body keeps the score.
So if we are not feeling well, thatmeans there are signals from all over our
(05:21):
body, which is telling us something and.
The other way around that if yourbody's not feeling energetic,
somehow that your mind is not there.
Feel augmenting it,supporting it, energizing it.
So that's something we want toexplore in our conversation today.
(05:42):
So Megan as, a health coach, I wantto hear from you, how does this
mind body awareness speak to you
Megan (05:51):
when you were sharing
the quote from Dr. Barrett.
The, main thing that always comes upin my brain is how when you notice
these differences in how your bodyfeels, that can be an indication of
something that's going on in your mind.
(06:12):
And what I always think of is the factthat myself and many of my clients at
the beginning of our journeys, whenwe're like, we're feeling very stuck in.
Feeling heavy.
We have all these emotionaleating habits that we're doing.
A lot of a, what a pattern I've noticedis that a lot of people don't notice
(06:33):
differences in how their body feelsor their mind feels at that time.
They are in a state of, it allfeels the same and it all feels
anxious and frantic, and I neverfeel in charge of what I'm doing.
And for me right now, onthe other side of that.
Having done a lot of work to bringdown emotional eating, I notice that
(06:57):
I have such a heightened abilityto feel differences, to actually
feel the emotions in my body.
I can feel my chest tighten now whenI'm scared or anxious, I can feel
lumps in my throats when I'm sad.
I can feel I can feel a pitin my stomach when I'm very
(07:19):
nervous or I'm feeling ashamed.
But at that time, bef, when I wasin the midst of this overeating,
emotional eating habits, I didn'tnotice those feelings at all.
And what I think I was doing, and what Ithink a lot of my clients were doing was
ignoring everything the body is doing.
(07:42):
And something you said inone of our conversations was
hoarding coping mechanisms.
And I think that's what we were doing.
We were trying to prevent ourselvesfrom feeling whatever was happening
in our bodies and our main copingmechanism became, well, let me eat.
'cause when I'm eating Idon't feel uncomfortable.
(08:05):
I feel great.
I feel like that's a delicious taste.
Or I don't have to think about.
My problems or how uncomfortable I am.
So that's what comes up for mein my brain when you say that.
Abhra (08:18):
That's wonderful.
For, our listeners, I would like to saythat I did a little bit of weight loss
journey myself, which is close to about20 plus kilos, which should be around
Megan (08:33):
Congratulations,
Abhra (08:34):
Around 50 ish, 45 to 50 pounds
and I can say this today very confidently
that I don't feel the same way.
At when I started.
Now I understand myself a lot betterwith a lot of clarity, and that is
something we are exploring today.
(08:58):
It's such a interesting subjectto, to understand that one.
Healing is not possible without the other.
A lot of times we see that people havea weight loss goal, but they do not
succeed or, they want to work towardssomething and then they give up.
(09:21):
They think that the strategy is wrong.
But I guess rethinking is, needed.
You have worked with so manypeople with this, and you, share
such valuable insights withpeople in your run, your sessions.
And of course I encourage ourviewers to follow Megan's sessions.
If.
(09:42):
The time zone permits is
one of the things before going intomore details is that we are talking
about the MINDBODY connection.
How do you see this froma strategic point of view?
Like you are telling someone thatyou need to follow this, or this
is what would work best for you.
(10:05):
But a lot of times peopledo not strategize well.
Right.
That they jump into a journeyand then something doesn't
work out and then they stop.
So how do you recommend that welook at our weight loss journey
objectively, and I'm saying thatnot to drastically reduce weight or
(10:25):
anything to maintain a healthy way that
. Megan: So the question is how
do I help people look at it?
Strategies?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Megan (10:32):
Strategically.
Yeah.
I love that.
Yeah.
So.
One important thing I do withalmost everyone is we do an exercise
at the beginning to understandwell get under the surface of
what they're looking to achieve.
So from experience, I know from experiencethat the scale number changing doesn't
(10:57):
really automatically do anything for us.
But what we notice is our experienceis different at different weight.
So one client might mention likeI, am now able to take a flight
anywhere easily, and I don't haveto ask for a seatbelt extender.
I can simply just use the, comfortablechair they have and I don't have
(11:19):
to make accommodations for myself.
The world feels more open to me, right?
So it's not necessarily a lot oftimes when people are thinking
about weight loss, they're onlythinking about the surface level.
Outcome, which is the scale number goingdown or the close size numbers going down.
But what I want to make sureeveryone understands more closely
(11:42):
is how does the change servethe life that they want to live?
For clients who love theenvironment, sometimes their.
Motivation is I wanna enjoy nature moreand get out and feel better on my walks.
I wanna hike further.
I want to volunteer toclean up the trails.
(12:03):
Like there are so many more
powerful motivations tochange consistently when
you get in touch with those.
Reasons to change that areunder the surface level that
are actually meaningful to you.
So that's one big strategy I employ.
(12:24):
We look at the deeper reasonsfor the person to change.
And if once you have that, you can thenconnect each hard action that you do.
Like I didn't want to get up and prepare
healthy breakfast, butnow you can connect.
(12:46):
Well, this is a helpful action for meto take because I value the environment.
I want to feel healthy enough toenjoy the outdoors and nature.
So it is crazy how easier, how mucheasier those daily actions are to
support your weight loss when you have.
(13:07):
A deeper reason to change.
So that's one big thingI do with everyone.
And so everyone has, it looksdifferent for every single person,
but it helps them it helps them getmore connected between their their
weight loss actions that they're doingwith their body and their reason in
(13:28):
their mind for doing those actions.
Abhra (13:32):
Thank you for sharing that.
We did a fantastic episodeon understanding the data
points of weight loss.
I encourage anyone who is curiousto go back and understand the stats
that Megan shared in that episode.
So that's one of the fantasticdiscussions we have had.
(13:54):
So to dive a little bit deeper into this.
I wanted to bring in something that Ihave learned from some of my guests.
I recently interviewed a journalingcoach and he taught me something
very interesting that when weare journaling, most of the times
(14:16):
we journal just at a superficiallevel or more at a event level.
But when we feel something, whenwe observe something and if we try
to get a little bit deeper thatask these questions, why, then
we understand our true patternsand we can recover from that.
(14:36):
I wanted to overlay that in ourconversation in this weight loss sort
of journey because I have done thatquestion to myself as in I am eating this.
I like to eat this.
And I applied this to some of myfavorite foods that I like to eat this.
I like the taste of it.
(14:57):
I like the feeling of it,but do I really need that?
Do I really need thatin that certain portion?
And then I realized that more we ask thesequestions, we feel that once we achieve
that understanding of physical and mentalwellbeing, balanced, then we know that.
(15:22):
This is a certain amount weneed, not more than that.
We are good enough and we are in away, building our awareness and we
think that this is just right for me.
Then we realize that everythingelse is superficial, everything
else is not needed, and.
This is probably easier said than done.
(15:43):
This is something that has to beexperienced in the firsthand, that
someone who has gone through a weightloss journey and then they can probably
relate to it a little bit better.
But as a coach how, do you say that?
Can.
Get into these habits, can we dothis kind of self check-ins and can
(16:07):
we build in like better habits andgradually work towards our goal?
Megan (16:13):
That is such a great question.
And the way you explained how youask yourself that question when you
said do I really need this, that.
Actually puts a pin right in what I wouldsay is the strategy to help someone get
more in the habit of listening to whattheir body really wants, rather than
(16:39):
the old portions that they used to have.
So this is what what I really like todo to help people, and I guess I'll
say specifically, the reason I likethe way you worded the question is
because it is a question normally.
If you've ever experienced your yourbrain doing this kind of thing where
(17:00):
it says you shouldn't have that,we should put that down now, we
should put that back in the pantry.
You really should get out for a walk.
You should get off your phone.
You should go do your work.
All of those are what our brainnormally does when it's trying
to get us to hit a goal, right?
It's, you should do this.
It really reminds me of a parent that.
(17:24):
Is very impatient with their child.
But the question that youasked was, do I need this?
And it was a genuine questionthat you asked to yourself.
And I think all of us can remember a timewhen an adult talked to, when we were a
child and an adult talked to us like thatin a respectful way and in a curious way.
(17:46):
Like, what do you think about that?
We felt respected and we felt like wereally wanted to behave ourselves, right?
We wanted to do the right thingwhen someone treated us that way.
So that's what I recommend myclients do when they're pursuing
a change in their food behavior.
Instead of saying you should, or makinga very rigid plan for the day, like let's
(18:11):
say they write down grilled chicken andbroccoli for dinner, a protein shake
for lunch and oatmeal for breakfast.
No snacks, no alcohol.
Instead of saying that, and thenall day, their brain says, well,
you said you weren't gonna havecookies, so put the cookies down.
Well, you said you should have grilledchicken, so stop ordering the pizza.
(18:36):
Instead of that, what I reallylike to have clients do is write
a generous plan that allowsthem to ask the kind questions.
So for example I wrote downin my plan today, I wrote
two alcoholic drinks
(18:59):
a, chocolate treat, andwhat else did I write down?
One other kind of, oh, itwas a, sweet iced coffee.
Alongside all the meals that I hadplanned and every time I came across
a, the time in the day when I wouldnormally have that iced coffee, I got
(19:20):
to ask myself would I like the icedcoffee or am I willing to skip it today?
It was a question rather than.
You should not have the icedcoffee, and what that has done is
allowed me to, overall, I'm usuallygonna choose the choice that is
great for my long-term health.
(19:41):
Like I know I can have the icedcoffee anytime with the milk and the
sugar, but I don't need it today.
I'm willing to wait till tomorrow tohave it, and then I'll ask myself again.
It really helps you connect againwith, with some kind of calm sense
of, well, if I didn't have tosay no, I'm now free to choose.
(20:05):
So what would I like to choose?
So I really like the way youasked the question, do I need this
Abhra (20:11):
fantastic.
And.
Once I understood that I could switchthat perspective and instead of asking,
no, don't do this, that what we justexplained that do I really need this?
What made me think about it issometimes my wife says this, or my
(20:33):
daughter says this, that, I go toclean the house, this looks dirty and
this I'm going to sort things out.
When I do that, I often findthings that I don't need
and then we are hoarding in away, if we look at our own health.
(20:56):
Then also we are holding a lotof things which we don't need.
Like it's it's not needed for us.
That's how I
created that question that do I need this?
Do I need this?
Megan (21:15):
It's the Marie Kondo style.
Yeah.
Like, does this spark joy?
Abhra (21:22):
Yes and going back to some of
the things that I learned from Dr.
Barrett's book and the podcast as well,that we get all these signals from our
body and then our mind is interpretingthem as emotions or labeling them as
(21:46):
good feeling, bad feeling, et cetera.
So a lot of times we get these signalsfrom our body, but we don't know.
It's like we do not understand themas a coach, how do you look at that?
And I will share my ownexperience as well, like when
(22:07):
I had that unhealthy situation.
I was not sleeping very well.
I was not digesting very well, andI was angry and upset from most of
the things around me, and now and I.
Back then I used to think that I wasblaming everything around me, but
(22:29):
now I feel very differently as insomething, even if something unfortunate
happens, something negative happens.
And I'm just curious as to whathappened, what does this mean?
And I'm sure I can go around that.
So I'm never upset or never angry,and I, sleep so much better than I
(22:52):
used to before I had my weight loss.
So I think in different ways, my body gaveme signals that you are not at an optimum
level and you need to take care of this.
And I was ignoring those signsand I was not feeling well.
And since we are exploring the mind bodyawareness, I want to hear from you as a
(23:15):
coach that, how do you think about this?
How do you feel about this and howdo you work with people around that?
Megan (23:25):
Well I think we talked a
little bit at the beginning but.
You mentioned, how do we interpretwhat the body is telling us?
How do we tell?
And I think the first step at leastit was for me, was acknowledging that
there were signals to start with.
I think I mentioned earlier,and I don't think I'm alone in
(23:49):
experiencing this, but I felt.
As though every moment had thepotential to be frantic and anxious.
So I, think other people livein this kind of chronic, their
nervous system is activated.
And there's a lot of reasons thatcould happen for some people.
It's feeling, having some traumas intheir childhood, always feeling unsafe.
(24:14):
Or feeling like they're aboutto be rejected, by, people in
relationships or by their work.
So there's a lot of reasonsbehind that, but what that.
State does is it's so uncomfortable tobe that nervous all the time, is that
your body starts to, or your brain startsto say, I'm not gonna listen to my body
(24:37):
because it's very uncomfortable in there.
It's it's always tellingme there's something wrong.
And so the brain kind of learns toignore, and just go on an autopilot.
I, for me it was.
Someone tells me at workto do something, I do it.
No questions.
I have to make sure it's perfect.
(24:58):
I see food.
I eat it immediately.
Like it's not somethingthat I have to question.
I just it looks good.
I'm going to eat it.
It was a lot of autopilot.
So the way that I started tonotice signals in my body.
Was for me personally, I beganto do short guided meditations.
(25:22):
And if it wasn't a guided meditation,then it was a short breathing practice,
maybe just five minutes each morning and.
I noticed at that time because I hadnothing else to do that I was able to
notice some a feeling in my, at firstI, didn't feel anything in my body when
(25:43):
I was prompted by the guided meditationto feel what's happening in your chest,
feel what's happening in your head.
I didn't feel anything atfirst, but then slowly I was
noticing with a little stillness.
That there are some, thereis some tingling in my legs.
Oh, there is a pit in my stomach today.
And I didn't know exactly whatthose all meant right away.
(26:06):
And it really, and I think you mentionedthat you feel very differently now.
So my thought is that thecommon denominator is practice.
I think that we just have to keep puttingin those calm moments and almost like
almost like you're in a class whereyou're learning another language.
You just have to slowlyeither try some things or.
(26:30):
Listen and just absorb andas just kind of practice.
You can't learn Italian if youdon't practice with your desk mate.
So I think that was key for me.
I had a solid meditationpractice that helped me.
And then not just during the meditation,but other times in my day, it was
(26:53):
easier for me to then say, oh,there's that same pit in my stomach.
Yeah.
And then I could start making connections.
And the brain is not always right.
Sometimes we're anxious about somethingand our brain associates it with
something completely different thanwhat we're actually anxious about.
But I think the building of the awarenessis a wonderful start because then it lets
(27:17):
you have the space to ask those questions.
Like you said, do I really need this?
Would I choose this if I were ina perfectly calm and happy place?
So yeah, I think practice is the big one.
Abhra (27:31):
That's wonderful.
And I really like how you do yourwalking groups and you go on walks
and you share your experiences.
Do you want to tell our audienceabout how do you see that and
how do you build that into habit?
Megan (27:47):
Sure.
I, so yes, recently since the weather'sbeen getting warm, I've been doing every
few weekends we do a small group walk.
So I put up some flyers in my neighborhoodand whoever wants to come can come and
join me and we'll just walk througha local city park or a state park.
And every so often we'll stopand we'll just talk about.
(28:10):
My expertise, is health and habit change.
So that's what we tend to talk about.
But I was someone who never really wantedto move my body when I was 230 pounds.
I felt like I mostly justwanted to be seated or in bed,
like one of those two things.
And I think part of it was mecutting off connection with my body
(28:34):
like we were talking about and.
The way that I started to change that,firstly, it took a long time to be ready.
So if you're in that placewhere you're not feeling ready.
You can ask yourself the question, am Iready to take a walk today or am I ready
to do a short stretching activity today?
(28:56):
And remember that the answer can be no,you don't have to be ready right now.
So that was helpful for me to know.
I didn't have to start it all at once.
But then when I was ready Istarted with very short walks
around my neighborhood and.
They sometimes were 15 minutes.
Eventually, sometimes I would havebusy days and I would just do five, but
(29:21):
five minutes is better than skippingthe habit because when you do five
minutes, you're still honoring thatI am a person who walks every day.
I am a person who moves mybody in whatever time I can.
So I think a good.
(29:41):
Way to keep your walking consistent.
If you're new to it ishave a minimum walk.
So even if it's just one time around ablock or down the street and back again
for five minutes, whatever it is for you.
Define that minimum.
You can write it down somewhere, buthonor it on the days where you're
(30:03):
not feeling wonderful, and thenyou find that your consistency is
so much better than it used to be.
Abhra (30:13):
That's so true.
I can say that walking hasmade a big difference to me.
And I see walking not justas an exercise or activity.
I see this as a mindfulness exercise aswell, that you take that time away from
your, and then you are purely focusedon your thoughts, and then you can just.
(30:38):
Ask some of the questions to yourselfand then you make sure that you are
aligned with what you want to do.
Megan (30:47):
Yeah, that's another wonderful
thing that soon became apparent.
When I started walking everyday, I soon noticed that I was
calmer in my everyday life and.
Part of it was me realizing thatas an introvert, I really do love
having time by myself outside.
So I was missing that.
(31:08):
And that was a nice wayto honor that alone time.
And the second benefit I noticedwas it was it helped me notice
how much my brain was doing.
That didn't help me at all.
So I'm an overthinker.
I, have had this habit of lettingmy brain just run and run on
(31:32):
a problem that I can't solve.
And I'm sure a lot of people can relate,but once I heard another coach say, just
notice how many times, how often yourbrain is in the future or in the past as
opposed to in the present, and that means.
How often your brain is thinking aboutthe next few hours or what you have to
(31:53):
do before you go to bed, or what youhave to get for a gift for someone before
next month comes, or in the past, whichis I wish I hadn't said that in that
conversation, or I wish that boyfriendhad stayed with me two years ago, but.
You it Once I heard the coach saythat I noticed it during a walk, and
(32:19):
I swear I was only thinking about thepresent maybe like 3% of the time.
Every other moment my brain wasin the future or in the past.
Rather than thinking about.
The walk at that moment and what I wantedto get out of the walk and enjoying
the bird sounds around me and noticingflowers or neighbor's yards or what
(32:43):
was pleasant about the walk or evenwhat was unpleasant about the walk.
I wasn't even present.
And I think, I'm sure that a lot ofthe, your guests and a lot of experts
you've talked to, have talked about theimportance of being present when you're
trying to connect your body and your mind.
And walking really helped me notice verydistinctly, oh, I'm often not present and
(33:08):
I can use this walk to practice presence.
Abhra (33:13):
I would share something with
you and audience here, because that's
something we covered in, one of theepisodes from from a doctor actually.
So he's a gastroenterologist andhe gave me a beautiful thought
about how to meditate and when we,are stuck in this overthinking.
(33:35):
And he said that you cannot possibly.
Stop your mind from thinkingnegative, it will do that.
So think about being in aroom which has two doors.
So from one door, your thoughtsare coming in, and from one
door the thoughts are going out.
So you just have to be there.
(33:56):
Let the thoughts come inand let the thoughts pass.
But if you keep one door closed, it'lljust come and rotate within the room.
Within your mind.
Yeah.
So you cannot let that happen.
And I feel walkinggives me that semblance.
Like it I have my thoughts,but they come and go.
So they are not getting stuck with me.
(34:22):
Thank you so much for sharingyour walking practice.
I'm sure that it would help peoplebuild in some, good routines, let's say.
Coming back to what we started, and ofcourse it goes back to our theme of fail
(34:45):
with me that we sometimes fail and thenwe just give up and things like that.
But we are also talkingabout anchoring our emotion.
With journaling and planning, et cetera,so that we make sure that, okay, it's
okay to fail at one moment, but we keepfocused towards what we want to achieve.
(35:09):
And what are some of yourthoughts around that?
Like how we can maybe do this check-insor journaling to make sure that, okay,
we have failed, but we are not losingsight of the bigger goal in front of us.
Megan (35:26):
Well, I'm a very
utilitarian journaler.
But I do use so I'm a bigplanner, so I love to, to plan
and then reflect on the plan.
And it felt very unnatural to meat first to do some more creative
and really wonderful journalinghabits and journaling practices.
(35:49):
It felt unnatural to me.
'cause I always thought Iwas just, let's, stay focused
here, let's be type A about it.
But when I listened to your,other guest about shadow jour,
shadow journaling, oh my gosh.
It made me really want to try this,that creative process of almost.
(36:13):
Writing a story with a character asdeep as you can make it emotionally,
as deep as you can make it.
Because something stuck out to methat he said, which was, you, can't
be, it was something to the effectof you can't, write a character
that's deeper emotionally than youare because it's coming from you.
(36:35):
So it made me really wanna try it.
But in any case, a lot of my clientsto work on a goal, one big utilitarian
way to journal that I love is toput intentions in the morning with
how you plan to fuel yourself.
Put the foods, drinks and snacksyou intend to have on the left
(36:56):
side, including the generous, funfoods like the ice coffees and the
chocolate, and then on the right side.
At the end of the day, reflecton which you were successful with
and what you switched what youstrayed away from your plan with.
And I really like this because it buildsup awareness of when your your lower self,
(37:21):
your lower brain is, taking over and goingagainst your intentions in the morning.
But what I, the other thing Ireally like about this is that.
My clients really take it in the directionthat they wanna take it, and we stay
flexible with journaling to make surethat it reflects their unique strength.
(37:44):
So one of my clients lovedputting a win every single day.
At the bottom, she, it's basically almosta gratitude or a self gratitude practice.
She would write.
I was very proud of how I. Stuck tomy intentions when I was going to
the restaurant later earlier today.
(38:04):
And then I had another client whoreally liked to write down every single
day, very repetitively write down hergoal in the same sentence every day.
So she was almost using an affirmationin a way and keeping that long-term goal.
Very present in her thoughts sothat she didn't go three days
(38:25):
without thinking about it, whicha lot can happen in three days.
You can drop the ball on alot of your healthy habits.
So I think that, those, you canuse journaling very strategically
in a utilitarian way, but you canalso add very creative ways to.
(38:48):
Get a little bit deeper andremind yourself of why you're
doing what you're doing.
So I think that it's so flexible.
You can make it work for howeveryou like, to keep yourself
reminded of your higher goal.
Abhra (39:03):
That's amazing.
We can go on and on about thissubject that is very close to my
heart and I've seen the benefitsmyself , but in the interest of time,
we will try to wrap this discussions.
We talked about mind body awareness.
We talked about journaling.
We talked about rewiring ourmind to a healthier habits.
(39:25):
And for anyone listening, if theywant to walk with you, Megan,
how can they reach out to you?
And you have a program thatyou wanted to talk about.
Megan (39:35):
I do.
Yes, thank you.
So my one and only service is myone-on-one coaching program, and
that's for anyone who wants to loseweight, but they want to do it in
a way that really reflects them asa person and doesn't doesn't just.
Fall away as soon as they stopworking with me, but stays so that
(39:59):
they can keep the weight off andstay at that healthy weight range.
So what I wanted to offer in caseanyone was listening and that's them.
But you know, of course you canget to that by going to my website,
which is partake meal planning.com.
But if you're someone who would reallylike to just understand what it's like
(40:21):
to work with me first, or if you hadquestions about like, our conversation
today and you know that there'ssomething in here that is holding you
back from weight loss, but you don'tquite know how to take action on it.
I do have I created something calleda mind body weight loss audit call.
So I decided to set aside two timeslots in my week coming up and I guess
(40:47):
it will be the week that this releases.
And what we'll do on this 45minute call is uncover the
specific habits or beliefs that areholding you back from weight loss.
And outline two to three very clearnext steps for you and send you off with
homework to actually get started on.
(41:09):
The weight loss thatyou're looking to achieve.
So if you wanted to get one ofthose two spots, I'm gonna give it
to the first two people who messageme on Instagram with stories 2025.
Abhra (41:22):
Wonderful.
So my
Megan (41:23):
Instagram, yeah, my
Instagram is partake foodie.
And we'll put that in the, shownotes if that's okay with you.
Opera.
Abhra (41:32):
Yes, of course.
We'll put this in the show notes and.
We will convert this episodeas we have done in the
previous ones into a blog post.
So I got this request from some peoplehere in Melbourne that you are doing
all this podcasts and they are halfan hour to one hour long and there are
beautiful discussions, but how do we.
(41:53):
Take something away from it andwe listen to a podcast and then
we are busy, then we'll forget.
So how do we make sure that we do not losethe knowledge that you're bringing in?
So that's why I have convertedmy podcast to a blog as well.
So anyone who wa, and it's a freeblog, so it's on Substack, so you
can go there and read about it.
(42:13):
The wonderful strategies that the guesttalks about, and that it's, summed up in
a way that what are some of the takeawaysand then follow as per your interest.
And to wrap up today'sdiscussion, I wanted to finish
it in a very positive note.
(42:34):
So this is something youknow Megan, I would like to
hear from you is that in our.
Weight loss journey.
Sometimes we become very harsh criticsor sometimes we can self sabotage our
objective.
So what would you like to say, someonewho wants to get into the weight loss
(42:55):
journey and is feeling, not feelingup there because of maybe harsh
criticism or the sabotaging process.
What would you like to say to them?
Megan (43:08):
I would love to say to them, you,
you do not have to do everything at once.
You can go as slow anddeliberately as you like.
You have full permission to startwith the easiest thing, and you
don't have to start, like right now.
(43:29):
You really don't.
You can ask yourself the question.
Am I willing to do this?
And that's going to lead you to theright answer for you, so listen closely.
Okay.
Abhra (43:41):
Wonderful.
And I can really say that this hasbeen a, like, shine of positivity for
me the, weight loss journey and themental wellbeing that came with it.
So I hope that anyone listening to thisepisode was benefited by this discussion.
And thank you for talkingabout your program, Megan.
(44:02):
I'm sure anyone listening in would.
Be interested to work with you andthank you so much for your time today.
Megan (44:11):
Oh, thank you for having me.
I love it.
Thank you so much.