Feel and Function Well: What Does That Mean?

Hey there, I'm Amy Connell. Welcome to Grace Health, the podcast for women who want simple and grace-filled ways to take care of themselves and enjoy a little chocolate. I'm a certified personal trainer and nutrition coach who wants you to know your eating, movement and body Don't have to be perfect, you just need to be able to do what you're called to do. I am continuing this season, trying to do a few more solo episodes on just the foundations of what is important here in the Grace Health space. One of those is this concept that I have said a lot lately, especially as I have been going more into, like as I talk to other people. Then this summer, as I was writing my new book for young women called your Core Strength, I said it so much that I went through and counted I thought, ooh, I wonder if this is going to be too many, because I mentioned it 16 times and I have an entire chapter on it. What is that? That is this concept of feeling and functioning well, I say it so much I thought it might be appropriate to actually dive into that a little bit. Let me start with a story. We have an audio visual system in our house that connects all of our TVs and our speakers and our internet. It all runs through one central location and it sounds super great and it's a total pain in the butt. I will just say that I just want a Bluetooth speaker and I want to see some wires, because it's a total pain in the butt because, as electronics do, they go out and then we have to have someone come out to repair it. We also have internet and connectivity issues and we had one provider and then we changed a provider and then we would do that we needed different equipment. Hopefully we are not alone. Hopefully you know what I'm talking about. Then someone else has to come out and troubleshoot that as well, without a doubt, every single time someone new comes out and it's a new person. Every time they say that the previous tech did something wrong. Whatever it is, it was connected differently, it was used the wrong wires, it went to the wrong place, something about it is wrong. I don't really understand enough about how it all works To give examples. I'm just telling you that it has happened so much that my husband and I just joke about it. We're like, of course they were wrong, someone else was wrong. I realize how ridiculous the sounds I'm just owning that. I hear the words coming out of my mouth and it's embarrassing to say, but hopefully you know what I'm talking about Now. What does that do with our health? What does it have to do with feeling and functioning? Well, there are so many professionals out there in the health space who say that their way is the right way and everyone else is wrong. This program is the right program, this way of moving is the right moving, this way of eating is the right way of eating and everyone else is wrong. Now, not everybody does fit into that and I have tried to be very hard to be discerning about the kinds of conversations we have on here about that. They might be right for some people, but they can't be right for everyone. They're just not going to be. There's just no one size fits all when it comes to our health, because God designed us differently on the outside, on the inside, and so we can't have a one size fits all health program or health plan. This is one reason why I included discernment in my Grace Health statement of values which came out a couple of years ago. It was season 12, episode 25, but we've got to use our critical thinking skills. We have to discern what's realistic, what's sustainable, what makes us feel well and function well and what doesn't. I'd like to think it's like my clients. I don't have no two of my clients have the same goals, and even if they have a lot of the same goals, their bodies are different and so we have to work differently within that, and so I don't train them the same and I don't think that we need to take all of these health things, and I talk about this in my book, your Worthy Body. We can't just take something and blindly assume that because it worked for someone else, that it would work for us. I do think a good litmus test on just about everything is do I feel and function well? Because even if a program has a million reviews on Amazon that are all positive and everybody else is saying that if you are eating that way or moving that way and you are not feeling right and you are not functioning well, it's probably not for you, because you're probably not going to continue it. And that's the whole point is, we want these realistic and sustainable expectations of ourselves, and that's one reason why we have a lot of conversations about intuitive eating, because in my opinion, that's very reasonable and sustainable and realistic. So if you've been with me a while, you've heard me talking about feeling and functioning well and you know that I firmly believe and you heard me say this at the very beginning of this episode we take care of ourselves so we can do what we're called to do. We don't need to look a certain size, we don't need to weigh a certain size, we don't need to have the same size body that we used to have or that we want to have, and what our future self, what we think we're going to do like we have what we have, and we are using our body, our God given body, to go out and do what we're called to do. So I wanted to take this concept of feeling and functioning well and give you some things to think about and dig into that a little bit, because sometimes it can be a little subjective and I think feeling better is a bit more subjective. So let's talk about that one first. Do I feel better? What does that mean? So I have this never ending. I don't even know what to call it Like. I just find that I get into habits and sometimes I do habits mindlessly, because it's just what I've always done. One of the things that I will do is I, for whatever reason, end up eating a pretty large lunch and it has a nice protein in there, it has a nice vegetable, it has a nice you know carb or whatever. And then I have a piece of chocolate and a cookie, and the and, and, and, and, and, and I end up, for whatever reason, just eating a lot of things that, in turn, an hour and a half or two hours later, make me not feel well. I'm crashing. I am in desperate need of a nap. I maybe just am foggy in my brain. I don't feel like I have that same staying power that I might have mid morning. I'm not feeling as great. Was any of those things wrong to have? No, I'm cooking Cookies. Fine, do whatever. But I think it's important to marry that with how do they make you feel and how much? How does the quantity of that make you feel? So, feeling better is subjective, for sure, but some here's some other ideas and some other things to get you thinking about how it might make you feel better. Maybe you have more energy to do those micro callings, those daily micro callings, and those are what I've talked about, the five types of callings. It's in my book, your Worthy Body, and then I believe I have an episode about it. I'm pretty sure I do. I'll link to it. I just don't remember. Off the top of my head, maybe feeling better is increased immunity and getting sick less often. I will say in hindsight, the last several years, especially through COVID, I feel like I had number one just maybe good genes, I don't know but also, you know, eating lots of plants and quality protein and all of that kind of stuff. I went three and a half years without getting sick. I knock on wood, wear some wood. I've never had COVID. So that is a good thing of feeling better, right, having fewer mood swings. Now, understanding that, like, if you're still getting periods, pms, yeah, that can definitely do a number on us. But if we're not going up and down, and up and down, and up and down, then it might be because we're a little more stabilized, because we're giving our body the nutrients that it needs. It's that we are not having blood sugar spikes and crashes. But those mood swings can be an indicator that we have fueled our self well and therefore we feel well. I had a client one time and I said feel well to feel well. That doesn't mean that there's, you know, bad foods or something like that, but let's just kind of give some thought to like what makes us feel well. Maybe you have less stress and shame over what you eat. I mean, that makes me feel better if I'm not like beating myself up over having dessert or having something because I think it's bad. I've definitely have been on the process of releasing that. I'm not perfect and it's a journey, however, releasing that man. I feel a lot better when I am not kicking myself because I think that I shouldn't have had something. Now let's talk about functioning better. So that's the second one Do I feel better? Do I function better? I have a client who is. I asked her permission for this story and she said yes, and I don't think she would mind if I shared her age. But she is 60 years old and she and her husband own a business and she works out with me twice a week. She just moves a lot. She gets out and kind of has that high need, that non-exercise activity thermogenesis, which is a formal way of saying just like movement. That's not formal exercise, I mean, she just takes great care of herself. I'm so proud of her and I really honor what she does. So she's at work and they had this big piece of equipment that they needed moving it was about 70 pounds and she said, Amy, my husband said, hey, can you lift that? Can you help me with that? And here she is getting this 70 pound piece of equipment with him, with her husband picking it up, chevin' it on her shoulder, throwing it in not throwing, but, you know, placing it in the truck or whatever it was that needed to be moving it, and the way that she was able to do that and she wasn't sore, she didn't throw out her back. I mean, these are the kinds of things that we want to be able to do, that we can actually see the fruits of our labor, of our literal labor. So this is a great example of functioning better. You know other things too, like, yeah, you may be stronger. That is a great example of functioning better. Maybe you get less winded when you are out, either for a stroll or walking for fun, or maybe, if you are out doing something different that you normally get winded for, maybe you're able to get on the ground and play with your grandkids and pick them up and carry one on the hip and one in a car seat and take them into daycare for your, you know, for your son or for your daughter who's doing that? Like these are things that are really important, that we're able to do, and if we are not doing what we need to do to function well, well that's a can be a recipe for again throwing your back out. It might be a recipe for tripping or falling. We talked about balance earlier, especially in episode one. Like these are the things that are important for us as we get older, not so much what size we wear. You know another thing about functioning better Because you sleep better, and you know me, I talked about this in episode one, this this season as well. Sleep is almost everything. So if you're sleeping better, then you're gonna be better primed and better ready for your day. And then the other thing, too, in terms of functioning better I'm just gonna say this because this is the thing that I say your bowel movements might be better. If you are eating lots of fiber, if you're drinking your water, if you're moving, if you're kind of doing the things to Take care of yourself on the inside, then everything else is gonna move along the way that they need to, because if if you're having like 30-minute poop sessions, something's probably wrong, something probably needs some attention and that's a good thing to work with a registered dietitian on and you can talk with me about it, something like that. But you know, these are little things that we don't really give a whole lot of credence to. However, that's huge. That's huge. So those are just some of the ways that we can Function better, to identify if we are functioning better. I've used this example in the past and I think it's worth saying again. You know, as we are getting closer and closer, like I, statistically at my age, like I've crest the the halfway point of the length of my life, I mean I would love to live until I'm 90. If I do that I'm, I'm more than halfway there. So let's kind of think about when we get to the end of our life and we are slowing down and we know that we're going home. Imagine your last few days on earth and are you going to wish that you had spent the bulk of your earlier years and your time and your energy worrying about your five or ten, 15 pounds? Or Are you going to wish that you had cherished the body you were in Did the things you love with the people you love, because you feel and function well. I cannot stress the benefit of feeling and functioning well and changing that mindset to that which is also enables us to do what we're called to do, which is another Crux, another cornerstone of everything we do here at Grace Health. Now, you may define feeling and functioning well differently than I do, and I would actually love to hear that, so head over to the Grace Health community Facebook group and Tell me what it means for you to feel and function well, because your life goals and your stages are. They may be different than mine, but when we feel and function well, we are able to live out the purpose and the calling that God has for us, which is really what it's all about. Okay, that is all for today. Go out there and have a great day.