Ep #118: Feeling Good and Making Time for Wellness as a Working Mom with Robyn Conley Downs

Do you feel like you’re constantly not measuring up when it comes to taking care of your own health & wellness?

In this episode with Robyn Conley Downs of Real Food Whole Life, we’re talking all about gentle wellness and how it can help you to be more successful in your health goals. She gives sustainable strategies for eating healthy and movement that you can fit into even the busiest schedule. We talk about the three traps that we get stuck in with wellness and what we can do instead. Finally, we also talk about the tension between accepting your post baby body and using your feelings to make some changes to take care of yourself.

Highlights:

• Robyn’s health journey and how it led to Real Food Whole Life
• What the gentle wellness revolution is and how it can help you take care of yourself
• The three traps that we get stuck in with wellness
• How our all or nothing approach to diet specifically leads to weight gain and why you’re better off doing nothing than a diet
• Tactical tips for eating healthier without feeling overwhelmed
• How to fit in movement now that your life looks different after having kids
• Redefining what you think “counts” for exercise
• Pockets of time where you might be able to fit in movement
• Ways to think about it if you don’t love your post-baby body
• How paring can help you be successful in your wellness goals

Today’s Guest:

Robyn Conley Downs is founder of the mission-driven media and education brand, Real Food Whole Life, and producer-host of the Apple top-rated Feel Good Effect podcast. Holding a Master’s degree in education with an emphasis in behavior change, and 4 years of public policy & health change at the doctoral level, her work taps into cutting edge science around how people create and sustain lasting wellness. She combines this professional research background with work as a certified yoga teacher, specializing in mindfulness and self-compassion, to share science-based, life-tested, radically simple solutions for wellness.

Robyn is a wife and working mama with a mission to embody and amplify the gentle approach to wellness, and lives by her motto, #gentleisthenewperfect. Her writing and speaking resonate with tens of thousands of readers and listeners each week via her robust following. As host of the Feel Good Effect podcast, she has attracted an engaged and loyal listener base, hosting top wellness innovators and thought-leaders such as Gretchen Rubin, Dr. Kristin Neff, Laila Ali, Jonathan Fields, Kathryn Budig, Dr. Rick Hanson, Kelly LeVeque, and Kate Fagan. Downs’s work has been featured in Huffpost, Buzzfeed, Shape.com, among others, and she is a frequent guest on podcasts and wellness websites. Robyn lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and research partner, Andrew, and their daughter Elle.

Resources:

Beat the Sunday Blues newsletter
realfoodwholelife.com
@realfoodwholelifeon Instagram
Real Food Whole Life Community Facebook Group
John Acuff Episode on Feel Good Effect