Watch the full interview below or listen to the full episode on your iPhone HERE.
Stu: This week I’m excited to welcome Justine Switalla. Justine is a woman’s health, fitness and wellness coach who’s on a mission to impact and empower females around the globe. She believes that with the right support, attitude and tools anyone can overcome their personal road blocks and, ultimately, achieve their goals.
In this episode we discuss the mindset, nutritional and physical strategies that have consistently produced results for her clients, enjoy 🙂
Audio Version
Questions we ask in this episode:
- How important is it to work on our mindset if we want to crush our goals?
- What strategies to do use to help with positive mindset?
- How important do you think it is to create time for ourselves?
Get More of Justine Switalla
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- Kimmy Smith – Understanding Postnatal Wellbeing
- Lesley Maxwell: Body Sculpting and Weight Training Over Cardio
Full Transcript
Stu
00:03 Hey, this is Stu from 180 nutrition, and welcome to another episode of the health sessions. It’s here that we connect with the world’s best experts in health, wellness and human performance in an attempt to cut through the confusion around what it actually takes to achieve a long-lasting health. Now I’m sure that’s something that we all strive to have, I certainly do. Before we get into the show today, you might not know that we make products too. That’s right, we’re into whole food nutrition and have a range of superfoods and natural supplements to help support your day. If you are curious, want to find out more, just jump over to our website that is 180nutrition.com.au and take a look.
00:41 Okay, back to the show. This week I’m excited to welcome Justine Switalla. Justine is a woman’s health, fitness and wellness coach who’s on a mission to impact and empower females around the globe. She believes that with the right support, attitude and tools anyone can overcome their personal road blocks and, ultimately, achieve their goals. In this episode we discuss the mindset, nutritional and physical strategies that have consistently produced results for her clients. Over to Justine.
01:14 Hey guys, this is Stu from 180 nutrition and I am delighted to welcome Justine Switalla to the podcast. Justine, how are you?
Justine
01:21 I’m good thank you, how are you?
Stu
01:24 Very well thank you, very well. We haven’t had a good chat in a long time, so really, really keen to dig in to a little bit more about what you do and how you help people. And specifically in health and fitness and mindset and motivation today. But before I delve into all of the questions that I’ve got in my mind right now, I’d just love it if you could tell our listeners a little bit about who you are.
Justine
01:50 Sure. I mean I guess I’ll just start with my fitness journey. I started about 15 years ago. I used to be a dental nurse and I didn’t like the nine to five grind, didn’t really enjoy the job and decided to find my passion which was in the fitness industry, so I began in a gym selling memberships, so I really didn’t have any sort of direction as to where I wanted to go with it, but I just knew I wanted to be working in a gym. So I literally started at the bottom. And then from there I became a personal trainer, a group fitness instructor. I got into all the Les Mills classes and teaching Body Attack and RPM and then I did my first sort of fitness modeling show back in 2007 I think, like forever ago. And did that for a couple of years which sort of grew my name in a different sort of field in the industry and got me in with Oxygen Magazine. And yeah, so it sort of just snowballed from there and I loved what I did and I always sort of went out to do things I guess, and do things well.
02:49 I’m a bit of a perfectionist for myself, I like to set goals and achieve them and I felt like I really found my purpose. So I guess, throughout the years it sort of evolved onto the online sort of scene, so now I’m an online coach, I don’t do any personal training in the gym as such anymore because I had a little boy five years ago, so once I got pregnant I was like, well I need to come up with a way to be able to stay at home with him and then still create an income. So I created Fit Healthy Mums and then my Mind Body Overhaul program, which is sort of the crux of what I do now. And my passion now really is, sort of throughout the years I guess I’ve learned a lot the hard way, I’ve done everything wrong, learned from my mistakes and now I’m really passionate about sort of steering women in the right direction, focusing on mindset, healthy relationships with food, with themselves, training, putting it all under the same umbrella, not focusing so much on aesthetics, but more so what’s going on for women internally.
03:45 And the more I’ve worked with these women essentially over the last five years, the more I’ve realized how important it is that this sort of work is done for women because I think there’s so much emphasis on the exterior, on the training and these days women just live such high-stressed lives, they’re doing the work to sort of get ahead. So that’s just become my absolute passion and emotional and mental transformations are just as exciting to me as physical ones. Yeah.
Stu
04:13 Great. Fantastic. Wow, well look, we follow you closely online and you’ve got a really engaged and passionate tribe and it definitely appears to be that you’re making some great changes in lots of people’s lives as well, which is so inspiring and empowering. So I would like to know, before we get into the questions, what a typical day looks like for you. And I’m sure a lot of your followers and readers and ours as well are just intrigued as to, you know, do you spend a whole day at the gym? Tell me what your day looks like.
Justine
04:54 I mean every day is different for me, I think the thing with my life is that it’s very random and that one day things will pop up. And now my son is in school, so I’ve kind of got from nine until three to get a lot of my work done outside of the time that I’m with him, obviously. I am a single mum, I’ll throw that in there, that happened about two years ago, so I’m sort of juggling work-life balance and being a mum as well. But I guess it’s usually just wake up Leo, get ready for breakfast, get him to school. I’ll then go and do maybe a Pilates class or I’ll go straight to the gym and do a weight training session. I’ll come home, I jump online. Admin, emails, I might have an appointment or a meeting with someone. And by that time it’s time to go and get Leo from school. I bring him home and then I’ll probably jump on and do some client calls, one-on-one calls because he’s a little bit older now and he’s quite self-reliant, so he’s not … he still comes in and annoys me sometimes, but my clients love him because he’s really cute. And they understand that I sort of can’t be in three places at once.
Stu
05:50 Of course.
Justine
05:52 And I just make it work. And yeah, it’s sort of get dinner ready and get him fed and showered and then it’s chill out time for me, usually with a glass of red wine, so it’s sort of like … like I say, sometimes I might have a shoot that will come up and I have to sort of organise things and go off and do that, but that sort of work is quite sporadic, so I focus on what I’m doing in the here-and-now with my clients. With my own training I only train three or four times a week at the moment, so I do a combination of strength training and Pilates. I’m actually just coming out of the back end of it, a lower back strain, so I was doing F45 as well and not Pilates and I’ve switched F45 for Pilates for a while.
Stu
06:29 Got it.
Justine
06:30 Yeah, again, it was sort of like … I should know, but I think it got to the point where my strength training and F45 were getting quite too much. Only five days a week, I still had two full days rest a week, but running around doing everything else on top of that and my lower back just went, nah, done.
Stu
06:45 Too much?
Justine
06:45 So I was like, oh, back to the drawing board. Yeah.
Stu
06:48 Got it. Okay. So your clients … and you cover lots of modalities in terms of strength and fitness, motivation and mindset, what do they struggle with the most?
Justine
07:02 It’s definitely the relationship they have with themselves. Women put themselves under so much pressure for perfection. So they have to have the perfect relationship, the perfect job, they have to be the perfect mum, they have to have the perfect body and it just becomes this constant state of stress and overwhelm because they end up not actually being present in their own bodies, not able to move forward with anything and they under eat, they overtrain, they can’t sleep, they start to get anxiety or depression and their relationships suffer. So it all comes down to this desire to be, I guess through social media and what it’s created, as this idea of the perfect woman and what she should look like. And I feel that my job as their coach is to sort of bring it back to self love and really the words that they say to themselves on a daily basis, how they treat themselves, how they think. All these things that are so important. Yes it’s important what we eat and yes it’s important to go and train, but I would rather them worry about their relationship with themselves and the food they’re putting in their mouth before they get to the gym, do you know what I mean?
08:05 So I believe in movement and I don’t … if my clients don’t get to the gym in a whole week but they go for a walk and they stretch, I’m happy. But then they’ll do that and then they beat themselves up. “I need to go to the gym.” I’m like, “No, you don’t.” You know, we’ve got to start bringing it back to the fundamentals of mindset and nutrition and on my tier of importance, training’s last. And that’s something that, if you can’t do it all, take that one out and just focus on the top two because you’re still going to get a great transformation through just doing those two alone.
Stu
08:36 Great. Fantastic. Well look, I’m going to selfishly ask a few questions as well, because I’ve got a very female household. So I’ve got three daughters and they’re embroiled in this world of social media as well and I can see … I was raised in a time pre-internet, pre-social media, all of these distractions and now I can see that people are continuously distracted. We’re shown all these images of happy people that are polished and primed for Instagram, so if we were going to dial into mindset and if we could see that, perhaps, we’re starting to come off track by spending too much time on social media and worrying about the way we look, things like that, what strategies do you typically work on to try to lift that mindset into a better place?
Justine
09:27 Yeah, I guess you really need to … it comes back to, again if you’re happy, you can actually see things on social media that don’t affect you, so you’re triggered by things on social media through what’s going on within you. So you might see the perfect couple and you’re like, oh, I wish that I was in that relationship. Or the perfect body, I wish I had that. So you’re not actually in a strong enough place to just see these beautiful photos and go, oh cool, yeah, awesome, you know?
Stu
09:51 Yeah.
Justine
09:51 That’s a reflection on that person looking at it, but they take it because they’re not happy in that certain area of your life. So, again, at the beginning unfollow people and really if you’re that touchy when it comes to looking at that sort of stuff and affected by it, you need to start unfollowing people that make you feel that way. And it’s not even that person’s fault that’s posting those photos, it’s just how the person reacts to it because it’s all about the reaction around it. So unfollowing people and having boundaries in place with social media. And starting to really do the work on yourself. If you’re triggered by something, you need to acknowledge what that is and then try and find the cause and start to work through that. So it could be, again, I say relationship a lot because that is one of the things that really struggle in today’s world with social media and just with the stresses in everyone’s lives. Whether it be body image, so now if you’re not happy within yourself we need to start doing the work to move forward and start to love the skin you’re in regardless of how it looks, do you know what I mean?
Stu
10:48 Yeah.
Justine
10:50 It’s a self-process, it’s a journey I’ve been on over the last … more so over the last sort of five years to be where I am today. I’ve hired coaches and mentors and had healers and I’ve done so much work to get to where I am today. And it wasn’t an easy process coming from an industry where everything’s driven by how you look, so I was trapped in that space for a while. And I thought I had to have abs to be liked and I thought that I had to be … it wasn’t about what I was saying, it was about how I looked, so I struggled for a period there and I didn’t have much self-worth and all the confidence that I have now. So, again, I took a step back and that is when my marriage broke down and I knew that I had to do something and it all came back on me. It was no-one else’s problem to fix, it was my own. And you can either step up to do the work and get the help that you need, or you stay stuck in that space and it’s not a nice space for anyone to live in today. Sad, lonely, unhappy, not feeling confident and I think, yeah, like I say, it all comes down to you and taking that first step to reach out and get help.
Stu
11:53 Brilliant. No, fantastic. And it’s good to know as well because you mentioned about a lot of people’s drive to get abs and the perfect body as well. And oftentimes, when you are in that state of showing your abdominal muscles, you’re actually not at the most healthy, are you?
Justine
12:10 No, no. Definitely not. And I mean I’ve done everything, like I said, I’ve cut carbohydrates, I’ve been told to do this and that throughout my competing years. It wasn’t until I got pregnant and after Leo that I started eating more and doing less and realizing that I could actually be healthier and fitter and stronger that way. So it was like I went through that process of training, instead of 10 hours a week I was doing, say five hours a week, which I still am an athlete so I need to commit to that sort of time in the gym, I do love it, but I was doing 10 hours prior to that, before Leo. Teaching classes and doing weights and walking and just everything because I was just more, more, more. I was in that state that I needed to stay lean and I was scared to drop the ball because I thought that would ruin how I looked. So that’s why, I guess, I understand the processes behind the need to try and look a certain way to fit in. But you know … and now I’ve learned so much about nutrition, especially that if I do have a photoshoot I just start tracking my food, I reduce my calories, I’ll get a little bit leaner and then, again, I go back into a maintenance phase. But I never used to sort of have any structure in place if that makes sense. It was all over the place and that’s why I was under-eating and over-training and absolutely worn out and miserable. So you see these photos of me and I’m lean, but I wasn’t happy, I had no social life. Whereas now I feel like I’ve got the balance right. And if I need to make sacrifices for a short period I can and I will, but then I’m back to being out with my friends on the weekend, drinking wine, having fun, training, spending time with son and I’m not obsessive about if I have some pizza or a piece of cake.
13:49 Because, again, I’m 80% … I know I’m probably going to talk about this later on when it comes to nutrition, but throughout the week I’m really good. And on the weekends I don’t let me hair down completely because I like eating healthy food, but I might have cheese and wine and platters and extra here and there, but that’s because I’m in a maintenance phase right now. So when it comes to weight loss, obviously things are a little bit different. So yeah.
Stu
14:15 Got it, not that’s great. Well look, let’s jump into nutrition then as we’re on that topic already because you mentioned the phrase earlier as well, eating more and training less. And to a lot of people that’d be like, what? How’s that going to work because I want to look a certain way and that just doesn’t work with me in my brain. So how does that … tell us about your philosophy then on nutrition because right now we’re trapped in an age where we’ve got so many different types of diet out there. Keto, low-carb, high-carb we’ve got Mediterranean, Paleo, primal, vegetarian, vegan, the list just goes on and on and on. And oftentimes that just creates anxiety.
Justine
15:03 And more confusion.
Stu
15:03 And more confusion. So what’s your philosophy on nutrition?
Justine
15:09 Yeah, well back when I created my business I worked with a nutritionist and she’s all about real food, just eat real food, which is … it’s not rocket science, but it became this, I can’t eat this and I can’t eat that, just eat real food. Anything [inaudible 00:15:24] or processed, stay away from. Real food. So that’s sort of the principles that I live by today, plus protein being key. So needing protein with every meal. Most women when they come to me are under-eating in protein, plus they’re under-eating in general. So they might be sitting on around 1000 calories when they should be having 1800, so what I then do is I adjust their macros accordingly to make sure that they’re getting enough protein and their energy balance from carbs or fat. So some women need more fat, some more carbs, so I usually can tell by their body if they’re hormone resistant or sensitive, we might reduce carbs initially. It’s specific to the individual.
16:06 But what I usually tend to do is I will put them on a, say, 1200 calorie diet which is close to what they were currently doing, but building them up slowly. So it’s almost like I’m reverse dieting them, even though they weren’t even at the maintenance calories. And then, from there, they start to lose weight and they’re eating more and that’s because they’re still in a calorie deficit. So it’s building them up, but they’re losing weight because of the adjustment through the macros and the protein and the movement and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, so that’s why I say by eating more because most women are eating, they’re not eating enough. And then I do build them up and then I might reduce them slightly again to shake things up, it just depends, it’s all sort of personal but I hope that sort of explains it in a way that people will understand.
16:49 What I think is missing is that people don’t understand the value of food. So MyFitnessPal is a great tool, all my clients use it, I use it, it’s free to download and just get an understanding of what’s going in your mouth.
17:00 Because you don’t know, everything adds up. And you might be in a calorie surplus and not even know it, because you’re not adding in the little extras of the butter that you’re using and the almond milk in your lattes. Because it all adds up, and if you’re going to that point where you’re overeating, you’re not gonna be able to lose weight
17:18 But, again, it all comes down to understanding how much you’re eating, and in knowing how much to eat, which the common person probably wouldn’t understand that side of things, and that’s where I come in.
Stu
17:29 Okay, no, that makes perfect sense. So tell us then your thoughts about carbohydrates, because right now they are getting really bashed. It’s low carb with fasting, can’t eat them, gonna make me fat. What do you think?
Justine
17:46 I lean out best with carbohydrates, because they are actually lowering calories and fat. So if I’m trying to lean out, I like my carbohydrates. And I’ll have more white rice and fruit, sweet potato, those types of things.
17:59 Because my body fuels off carbohydrates quite well … The only reason you don’t is because you could be hormone resistant, and if that’s the case your body doesn’t accept carbohydrates that well, and you will store them. So it’s a process of elimination. And initially I’ll reduce carbohydrates with a client if that’s what I feel. They’ll start to lose weight, and then I might increase them.
Justine
18:20 But if they start feeling really energetic on more fats I’ll keep them on more fats. Again, it’s like there’s not one size fits all when it comes to this sort of thing. It comes down to the individual and what they start to thrive on.
18:33 I don’t believe in cutting out any food group at all. So like the Keto for me, I think I’d lose my marbles. I don’t know, I’ve never tried it, to that degree. I think people think they’re doing it and they’re still not, because they’re still having little bits of stuff that’s not putting them into that state. So, yeah, again, people are going to get great results through anything, but it’s because the eating still eating less, in a calorie deficit, it’s not because they’ve dropped carbohydrates.
Stu
18:59 Got it. No, that’s good. Absolutely right. That is excellent advice.
19:04 And I guess, how do you feel? You’re gonna make these changes. If you feel like crap week after week then change something, do something different.
Justine
19:15 Yeah, but I think people get so stuck on the one thing, or they listen to x, y, z on social media and preaching this and that, and this is the next best thing, and it’s really confusing, but you don’t need to go to any extreme. It’s just understanding food, fueling your body with the right foods.
19:31 I always say carbohydrates around training. I just made a protein pancake. I love them with your 180 coconut protein. It’s my fave. And I had that every morning with a banana and some oats, and it’s a very carby meal, but I just went and did Pilates. So I make sure that when I come home, I’m refueling with a protein carb meal straight afterwards.
19:50 If you train in the evenings, you can have carbohydrates in the evenings. This whole thing, you can’t have carbs after six o’clock at night. Some people sleep better if they have carbs at night. It’s being body aware. This is the thing, people are just losing track of being able to tune into you’re own intuition, and listen to your body, listen to your body, because our bodies will tell us what’s going on, but we don’t tend to listen to them unfortunately.
Stu
20:15 No, I completely agree. And of course we are also very unique, because you mentioned carbohydrates and sleep. Now if I don’t have any carbohydrates in my evening meal, I just don’t sleep well. And I am very insensitive to carbohydrates. So I can eat a truckload of carbohydrates, and it’s been shown that that’s fine. My body can just handle that, because I’m genetically lean.
20:41 But I think when our body sends us signals, and we just need to be open to deciphering what those signals are. Because what works for you, more than likely will be quite different to what works for me. Things like that.
20:56 So, just to end on nutrition, is there anything then that you try and avoid religiously, or any foods, drinks, or types of nutrition that you’ll find that your clients typically get hung up on, stalls their goals?
Justine
21:17 To be honest, no. My real goal is to help women not beat themselves up, if they do have something that they shouldn’t. So temptations are everywhere. It comes down to willpower. Some people aren’t strong enough, and they’ll go and have something, and then this is when the wheels fall off completely, and they’ll just self sabotage and eat crap food for the next three or four days. And then they just want to give up.
21:41 So I don’t label good or bad. I don’t have a cheat meal. I don’t have a cheat day. It’s just not what I normally eat, and that’s okay. I’m trying to install those things and habits into my clients rather than, “That’s bad, you shouldn’t eat that.”. Because I think if I do that, then that’s going to create more problems.
22:02 But at the end of the day, like I said before, just trying to cut back on processed foods, initially alcohols. We want to really detoxify the body, in those first early stages of a weight loss journey as well. So you want to make sure that you’re cutting back on those things that gonna hinder those results, that our internal organs are, our liver’s healthy, our gut health is healthy.
22:21 So it’s not just about the outside as you would know, it’s about what goes on inside and people want these outside results quickly, but they don’t know that just eating healthy is going to be helping their internal organs as well. So it’s sort of like, gotta nurture the inside to nurture the outside.
Stu
22:42 No, that’s good. Absolutely. And we have the saying as well that one salad will not make you slim. In the same light that one bad meal, a pizza, a burger, a chocolate cake, whatever, will not make you fat in that way. So it’s those long term habits. If you continue to eat really well, then it is going to be more beneficial on your body. And the same thing will happen if you continue to eat lots of processed and fast food.
Justine
23:11 Yeah, I give my clients a daily calorie allowance, and I give them the meal guides, and the recipes that they can use, but over the week, if they know they’ve got something coming up like a wedding or a birthday, then they’ve still got their weekly calorie amount, they can just eat less the day after.
23:25 What tends to happen on the weekends is people go mental, so they’re eating this amount throughout the week, and then they go way, way over their weekly calorie allowance on the weekend, and that’s why they can actually start to drop the weight.
23:36 So it’s about making people aware that, if you know that you’ve got something coming up, you don’t have to miss out on it. You just have to be smart on either side of that event. Or look at your week and structure it out, and rather than thinking, “I ate so well this week, Monday to Friday,” and then Saturday, Sunday, you just gorge on everything.
23:55 Then what’s confusing for people is they think that’s the 80/20 rule. And I’m like, “Don’t know about that.”
Stu
23:59 Yeah, not quite. Not quite.
24:07 Training, often can be quite a confusing topic, because, again, like the protocols with diet, there is such a myriad of different types of training out there. And one of the issues that I’d like you to talk about today is lifting weights. Because typically there is a little bit of a fear, from the female camp, that I’m not gonna lift weights, because I don’t wanna look like the female version of Arnold Schwarzenegger. What are your thoughts on that?
Justine
24:43 I really do feel for women that feel that way, because I understand their fear. It’s not just fear around the weight training. I think it’s just going into the weights area where all the big, grunty men are, and they’re all pumping iron in the mirrors. It’s intimidating.
24:58 I can share my experience, in that the last two years I’ve been doing really heavy lifting, strength training, power lifting type training. And I haven’t done hardly any cardio, and I’m probably the strongest and leanest I’ve been. And that’s without doing cardio.
25:14 I don’t eat in a surplus. I’m not gonna get massive. This is what we need to understand. Lifting weights is beneficial for changing the shape of your body. Women like to say toning, but I think toning is just when you get shape. So it’s less curve for your shoulders, a little bit of a waist, booty, creating curves. And that’s what weight lifting does. That’s what it’s done for me, because I used to be very up and down. Now I’ve got shoulders, I’ve got a bit of a booty. I’ve got the tapered, because of the legs.
25:45 But to look at me with clothes on, I’m still very petite and small. I’m only five foot six, I think, and 58 kilos. There’s not much to me, but sometimes in my photo shoots, when I’ve got high heels on and I’m looking … People are like, “Ah, you’re massive.” And I’m like, “I’m actually not.” So it’s that perception as well, but I’ve been lifting weights for ten, twelve years. But I feel like women need to, A, if they do feel fearful of that is to get a personal trainer, or reach out to get the support around putting them on a program, so that they feel safe, and not intimidated, and confident, to be able to do that, and just trust that you have to eat a shit load, like a lot, a lot, to get massive.
26:26 So if you’re not eating … Like these big bodybuilders, they’re eating so many calories to get massive. It’s impossible to get massive if you don’t eat like that.
Stu
26:38 It’s so hard, with the training, and the sheer amount of food that you have to continually force feed yourself together with a very smart supplement regime as well. You’d have to be so gifted in the hormone department and genetics to be able to put weight on just like that. So, yeah, it’s really interesting.
26:59 So you’re thoughts then about the benefits of lifting weights, over say just grinding the treadmill for an hour every day. Why do you lift weights?
Justine
27:13 I lift weights, because I love feeling strong. I love that Leo can jump up at me, and I can catch him and carry him down the stairs, and put him over my shoulder. And I can pick up eight bags of groceries. I can carry those groceries to the car. Just those things, that make life easier. And not just in the gym when I’m achieving those goals, but it’s outside of the gym.
27:33 And, again, I’m not one to say, “Don’t do cardio.” I believe in all forms of fitness, or health, or movement. Pilates, walking, yoga, weights. And you’ve gotta choose something that you enjoy. But, like I say, if you really wanna transform the shape of your body. Obviously bone health, to avoid osteoporosis, those types of things. As we age we shrink.
27:54 And I feel like our generation, or my generation, I’m 40 next year, and we’re a lot more smarter with how we can live a longer, more healthier life. Whereas as my grandmother’s, they started shrinking. And they didn’t do weights, and they didn’t have the information at hand today to be able to be like that.
28:14 So, yeah, it’s something that I feel women, if they feel comfortable enough to go in and do weights, it’s very important. Like I said, feeling strong is empowering. It’s a physical feeling of knowing that you’re strong enough. I love that feeling. And that’s what I try and preach to my clients as well. It’s that feeling of being strong. Really for women to feel like that, I think it’s very empowering.
Stu
28:40 Yeah. I think so. And there is so many advantages to being strong, and metabolically lean as well, which is a bi-product of lifting weights.
28:49 Had a great conversation with a longevity expert a couple of months ago. And I asked him a question at the end, “From everything that you have know, in terms of nutrition, exercise, supplementation, mindset, if we want to live as long as possible, what one piece of information could you offer me?” And I thought he was gonna talk about the magic pill. He said, “Lift weights.” And that was it. It’s amazing. It really is.
Justine
29:17 I know.
Stu
29:21 We touched on nutrition and training as well, and right at the start of the podcast, you spoke about creating a bit of time for yourself in the evening. Like you said, when everything is done it’s your time. How important is it to create time for ourselves?
Justine
29:43 I feel like I’m saying this to my clients every five seconds. Women especially, I can’t speak for men, but women don’t put themselves first. So it’s making sure everyone is fed, bathed, looked after, got what they want, before they actually take a moment for themselves, to see if they’re okay. Women aren’t checking in with themselves. They’re not listening to the signs. They’re not listening to the exhaustion that comes with frustration and sadness.
30:13 It’s so important. And I just say, “It literally is only five minutes. And we all have five minutes to spare in our day.” So I tend to do it, because I’m home during the day, it’s usually in the afternoon. I might go lay in my bed, and put some meditation on and just lie there. Meditation is something that people think they have to be good at. It’s not. It’s just lying and breathing. You don’t have to overthink it.
30:37 I have a very overactive mind, and I just lay there and try to breathe into my body, and reconnect with myself. And if I do it at night time, I might lay on my Shakti mat. I don’t know if you’ve heard those, but they’re the acupressure mats.
Stu
30:50 Yes, the prickly mats.
Justine
30:51 Yeah, it’s like a bed of nails. But when lie on it … You don’t wanna get off it pretty quickly, because it is quite sharp, so you’re stuck there for 15 minutes, kind of like … It’s just having a bath once a week. I even say just going out and going for a walk, or doing something where you’re not in your same environment with the same noise in your head, same noise around you, is to change your state.
31:14 And try and set aside, start with two, three, five minute a week. That’s it. Then see how that goes. Because if you’re not checking in with yourself, and you’re really suppressing your own needs, you are going to burn yourself out. And burn out is rampant with women today.
Stu
31:36 You mentioned meditations, which again, like you said, I don’t know anybody that doesn’t really struggle with meditation. It’s such a … Especially in today’s society when we got so many distractions to what we’re trying to do, is be calm. So meditation. Then you’ve got your acupressure mat as well. Any other tools, or tips, or strategies that you use?
Justine
32:00 [inaudible 00:32:00] in bath, like lying in a bath and having a magnesium soak is great. [inaudible 00:32:05] helps with anti-inflammatory. And magnesium is great for the body, for repairing and everything, it’s such a great supplement.
lie and breathe. Just lie down somewhere and breathe into your body. Taking deep healing breaths. Go for a walk. Sit in the sun, lay in the sun. Just try and take yourself out of the state.
32:36 I feel like lying down and closing your eyes, and trying to disconnect is probably the best way. Otherwise you’re gonna be distracted by what’s going on around you.
Stu
32:46 Closely related then, so time for yourself and stress. We’re all busy. If you ask anybody how they are, invariably a number of them will say, “Yes, it’s all good, but I’m so busy.” And we are, it seems as a race, continually switched on, with the email, and the social, and all of the other responsibilities that we have around our lives. Much busier than it seems we used to be.
Justine
33:14 I know.
Stu
33:17 How do you manage stress? How do you tell your clients to manage stress, when they are perhaps genuinely busy?
Justine
33:26 I am a queen of lists. So what I try and install in my clients is, we do weekly intentions. And what I do is I usually get up in the morning, and I write a list of what needs to be done. Not what … I don’t need to worry about Friday, because today is Tuesday. So when I Tuesday’s list. And I feel like I know I’m gonna get stuff done, so it takes the overwhelm out of creating more thought processes behind what needs to be done. I just focus on what’s a priority on that day.
33:56 Obviously outside stuff that you can’t control, like your kids running around, and all that
34:00 … that sort of stuff, but, again, that comes down to you, and I guess a lot of moms do live in a very high-stressed state, and the kids are stressed out. I say this because I’m in a great place, and I’m not a highly stressed place. I have moments where I have lots of stuff going on and bad stuff happening or setbacks, if you want to call them that, but I don’t get stressed out around Leo, even when he’s annoying me because I’m in a good space, if that makes sense.
34:27 So again, it comes back to what we spoke about earlier is really starting to look at what’s going on within you and if you’re yelling and screaming at your kids and feeling overwhelmed, then we need to look at the cause of why that is. Is it because you’re sleep deprived? Under eating? Over training? Is it because you just don’t like yourself and you’re saying horrible things to yourself and it’s retaliating on people around you because how you feel about yourself, you will retaliate against it. So it’s sort of like, stress can be anything. It can be an emotional, mental, physical form of stress. So I guess we’ve gotta look at the training aspect. Are you over training? Can we reduce that to lower the stress? Again, like we spoke about, time for yourself. Are you taking time out for yourself to really calm and breath into body and be connected? Are you doing the work around yourself to make yourself happier? Putting yourself first? Like people say, women struggle to put themselves first, but most highly successful driven women have most of their shit together. Not that we have it together all the time, but we’re the sort of ones, I guess live in a calm state because we’ve done a lot of work on ourselves and that sort of carries on into our every day life.
35:41 So, it is a hard one to master and I do feel because I do know we are in this constant state of stress in the moment, and there are some forms of it that you might need to go and speak to someone or you might need more outside support. You can’t do it alone. So, that’s the other thing, some women feel like they don’t need that a priority so they don’t try to outsource help and support and that’s going to just make things worse. It’s a big topic of conversation. It’s a big subject and it’s not one right way to do it, but I guess just trying to bring it back and focus on what needs to get done and what’s important; focusing on yourself and work on yourself to not try and live in that constantly low.
36:25 Some women, I’ve noticed, they get so used to living in a stressful state that they then create more stress. It’s like they’re addicted to stress, and they don’t know what it’s like to have it in your lives. and we’re just so busy but again, it’s different for every individual and I suppose it’s just coming down to understanding your needs and where you’re at and what you need to do to try to live in a non-stressed out state because stress will hinder your weight loss and fat loss results.
Stu
36:57 Absolutely. And I guess one thing we haven’t touched on yet, but I’d like to, is sleep as well. Stress will absolutely hinder your sleep, which in my minds eyes, perhaps, I wouldn’t say perhaps, is the most important parallel is because if you’re not sleeping, your body isn’t restoring and detoxing and your memories aren’t consolidating and it just sets you up for all mental health issues moving forward without quality sleep.
37:28 So, first up, how do you sleep? Do you sleep well?
Justine
37:32 Yeah, well, it’s funny. I did a webinar last night to my clients and this was a big topic was sleep because it’s what we struggle with.
37:40 I’m very much an early night person. So from nine o’clock I start to shut the house down. I get myself ready for bed. I’m usually asleep by 9:30. I’m up at 6:00, 5:30-6:00, it just depends on the season or if daylight saving or whatever, but I guess for me it’s making sure, being consistent with a routine rather than one night going to bed at midnight and the next night trying to catch up. So you go to bed early and then you just have a bedtime. I know, yes, we’re going to have late nights if we go out, but be as consistent as you can with that routine when you go to bed because your body will get used to that and stick with and have a bedtime ritual where, don’t have the TV on. If you struggle, don’t have your phone on. Turn it off at 9:00 or 8:00 and read a book if it makes you sleepy. Do some earphones in or do some meditation. Listen to some sleepy music if you sort of struggle with that as well.
38:38 What happens is, if you’re waking up and you’re still tired, that’s when we’ve got some problems. If you’re waking up and like I want to get up, your body is in a very good state; it’s recovered.
38:51 If you’re waking up tired, we could have a problem hormonally or adrenal and it’s something that needs to be addressed. Because if your adrenals are gone, it can lead to chronic fatigue and you don’t want to go down that path. So, yeah, it’s definitely something that does get neglected, but I think people think they’re going to miss out on something.
39:16 I turn into a pumpkin after 9:30 so I’m gone.
Stu
39:18 I think you’re likely miss out on something the next day if you don’t get a good nights sleep because you’re so fatigued. It’s like jet lag. Nobody wants to feel like that. So many people do.
39:34 Good advice. That’s all I can say.
39:38 We are just kind of coming up on time, but there’s a question that I always like to ask every guest towards the end of the podcast and that is, in everything that you’ve learned about optimizing yourself, being the best version of yourself, nutrition, mindset, motivation, sleep, exercise, all that stuff, if you could offer three top tips that you think would make the biggest impact on our overall health, what might they be?
40:11 The biggest thing I think jumps out at me is support because if you find a support system or people around you that really encourage, motivate, and inspire you it makes the journey so much easier because we already live in an isolated world today so creating a space where you feel supported.
40:29 So for me, like I mentioned before, coming out of my marriage I then took on a mentor for six months who coached me once a week and I created a support system somewhere else because I felt like I was lacking in that area. To be able to propel me forward, so if I didn’t have her, I would have been on my own and I’d probably would have been miserable and didn’t feel like I could get ahead. So finding support is crucial.
40:53 I guess the next the thing is goal setting and trying to get into the habit of creating goals and setting intentions and working toward something. I think, for me, I love having goals and setting goals and achieving them because it gives me a sense of purpose and if you don’t have purpose in your life, you’re sort of just living the nine to five grind and living for the weekends. You don’t really have a reason to get up out of bed every day. It’s just groundhog day, and then you end up quite depressed and that’s why people end up overweight. They come home from work. They sit on the coach. They have a couple of beers, and it’s just that continual cycle.
Justine
41:31 So setting fitness goals, but not just fitness goals but also career goals in three, six, 12 months and then checking in. And then goals change as well, so as you evolve you’ve gotta keep checking in with them. You don’t write your set of goals and then go okay, cool. They’re over there and then two years later, oh that’s right. I wrote these goals. I’m not actually where I wanted to be. So you’ve gotta keep checking in with yourself and that again comes down to support and maybe having accountability. So accountability around your goals as well.
42:05 And I guess the last thing is establishing a really healthy relationship with yourself and trying to love the skin you’re in regardless of what goes on outside of you and how you look. Because in today’s world, everyone is striving, like I said before, for perfection; to look a certain way. They feel like once they get to this body type, they’re gonna be so happy. Life’s going to be amazing. It’s all rainbows, butterflies, and unicorns. Unfortunately, if they don’t love who they are at any stage of their life, it doesn’t change just by how you look and I can speak from example.
42:41 Because I used to look amazing in a bikini but I wasn’t happy with who I was. That’s something that I’ve learned. It’s just that. Those three things are the most important things because, obviously nutrition is really important, but again, I sort of want this to be about lifestyle. It’s not about diet and training because when I coach women, I feel like the meal plans and the training programs are the easiest thing to give my client and they can follow those.
43:11 But it’s all the other stuff I’ve mentioned that they struggle with.
Stu
43:16 And purpose is so huge. That really is the key to living a long and healthy life. Like why? What are you doing? What do you want from it?
Justine
43:26 Let’s get a change. Let’s get a failure and I can tell you here and now in 15 years, I’ve had a lot of success times but I’ve also[inaudible 00:43:37] and I’ve also had a lot of knock backs and no’s and setbacks, but that drives me to keep going and I’ve just learned to be a bit more thick skinned around, “Okay, I’ll try that and if it doesn’t work, I might lose a bit of money but who cares. Let’s move on.” And that’s how I’ve been able to create my business, how it is today on my own and I’ve got a couple of girls who support me and my business which has really helped to propel it forward even more and then that gives me the ability to help more women, so that’s like my purpose is getting those emails for my clients saying they’re on top of things, and they’re feeling good and it’s not about their weight. and they’re starting to love themselves.
Stu
44:17 That’s great and it shows as well. When you’ve got a purpose and a mission and you’re happy and healthy, that shows and then that will in turn rub off on the people that you interact with and you can see that through your following as well and the level of engagement and I think passion and emotion that comes through in all of the comments.
Justine
44:35 Well, I think with me, my follow is really they’ve been on a journey with me and have watched me evolve so it would be quite amazing to have watched my transformation and that’s not my physical transformation that was pre-mom, post-mom and the emotional stuff that’s come up in the last five or so years with me, but I keep it real.
44:54 Like if I’m not in a good space, I don’t post happy pictures. I try to keep everything as real as possible because people need that. They need to know that I’m struggling or that I’ve had hard times, but then again, I don’t talk about everything because I want to keep a little bit to myself that’s personal; I don’t want to talk about it but I just won’t go on my social media and I won’t post anything if it’s not relevant to anything that’s got to do with where I’m at in my life because there’s not many of us, but as many of us out there that need to be as authentic as possible and try to keep it real for people so that they don’t feel like they’re failing because we’re all sort of failing in some areas, at certain times, but it’s how you come back from it and move forward.
Stu
45:41 Definitely. So what’s next? What do you have in the pipeline for this year?
Justine
45:46 Well, I guess my first retreat is happening in two weeks time. I’ve got some women coming to a house in not Rose, but Mornington Peninsula, which I’m really excited for. That was a big goal of mine, last year, and I can’t believe it’s happening in two weeks. I feel like I’ve just got to keep the momentum up within my business and I’m looking outside for I guess bigger opportunities for me, ideally, I do like talking. I do like presenting things; more sort of media work, but I’m not focusing on that as such, because it’s very sporadic and it’s very cut throat, so I just keep applying for things and putting myself out there for bigger jobs and if they come along, they come along, but then I’ve got my own business.
46:27 So, Mind, Body Overhaul, at the moment is my main focus and that’s just getting the women in and coaching them through the transformation and, I guess for me, last year after my marriage ended, it was all the year of getting my business back on track and getting me on track. So now I feel like this year, I feel like it’s really gonna be a good year and already has. To a degree, the momentum and the hard work and grind I put in last year, sacrifices I made, have made this year sort of a lot more easier with the flow of things. So I feel like, like I said earlier, sometimes my life can be quite random. I don’t know quite what’s going to happen, but running more retreats and doing talks and running workshops and seminars, I love connecting with people face to face. So the big goal for this year is to keep that. I love working online, but if I can get more face to face work, doing retreats and keynote speaking events or whatever, then that would be amazing as well.
Stu
47:25 So, for everyone and anyone that’s listening to this, watching it on YouTube on podcast, or reading it on the blog as well, where can I point them to find out more about you and your work?
Justine
47:40 Sure. So, I’ve got two websites. One is justineswitalla.com and then I’ve got my Fit Healthy Mums. So that’s fithealthymums.com and my Instagram handle is just my name justine_switalla and Justine Switalla on Facebook, so there’s probably the best point of call or everything I do, are on my websites anyway. The programs that I sell, the coaching program that I do, and lot’s about me as well. There’s lots of information on both websites.
Stu
48:17 Fantastic. We’ll add all of those links in the show notes as well and shout out to our audience. Thank you so much for your time today. Loads of gems in there that people are gonna get so much from in terms of applying to it to better their own lives as well.
48:33 So again, really, really appreciate the time.
Justine
48:35 Thank you.
Stu
48:37 Look forward to talking to you again sometime soon.
Justine
48:41 Cool. Thanks.
Stu
48:41 Fantastic.
