Navigating the Pillars of Lifestyle Medicine

Join host Juli Reynolds, a nurse coach and aromatherapist, as she delves into the principles of lifestyle medicine and her personal experiences with the wheel of life assessment and the Growth Day app for overall wellbeing. This episode covers the six pillars of lifestyle medicine, including nutrition, sleep, stress management, avoiding substance abuse, and fostering social connections. Juli also shares insights from Dr. Shefali's pioneering work on conscious parenting, emphasizing mindful and emotionally intelligent decisions in raising children. Tune in for practical tips on wellness and parenting, and discover strategies to improve various aspects of life and relationships.

00:00 Welcome and Introduction

01:15 Nutrition Guidelines

02:23 The Importance of Sleep

03:39 Managing Stress Effectively

05:21 Avoiding Substance Abuse

06:33 Building Social Connections

08:21 Reflecting on Parenting

09:56 Discovering Conscious Parenting :

>>>> Go here: Episode 185 of the Mel Robbins podcast 😊

14:51 Final Thoughts and Call to Action

Transcript

0:59

welcome to another extraordinary week. I'm Julie Reynolds and I'm your host. I'm a nurse coach and aromatherapist founder of re imagine wellness. And this week The intention is to talk about lifestyle medicine and I got derailed in my own assessment. So I have shared before that I use the wheel of life assessment in my coaching practice. And I also, I personally use the growth day app to do daily life scores or weekly life scores while we're coming up on the end of a month. And so this is when I like to evaluate the month and see how I'm doing on all of the different aspects of overall wellbeing. I use the lifestyle medicine Pillars to do this, to really examine how I'm doing now. Lifestyle medicine, again, focuses on preventing treating and reversing chronic disease through lifestyle changes. And we are getting to a place in our culture that this is being embraced. We have the lifestyle college of medicine that is really advocating for physicians or for providers to be able to prescribe lifestyle. So let's talk a little bit about the specific guidelines that are set up by the Lifestyle College of Medicine and how we address each one of these pillars. So let's, I'll start with nutrition. And first of all, the nutrition how they're recommending is to eat a variety of nutrient dense foods, including fruits and vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, healthy fats, and to limit the intake of processed foods, added sugars, saturated fats following dietary. Guidelines like the Mediterranean diet. So their recommendation is all focused on vitamins and minerals, phytonutrients, antioxidants, getting the right amount of fiber and healthy protein. if you're eating three meals a day to have the plate would look like half fruits and vegetables. a quarter of a whole grain quinoa, something like that, and a fourth of protein, of nuts, seeds, beans, that kind of thing. They steer clear of red meats. So in following a Mediterranean diet, that would be probably fish a week, a couple of times a week but staying away from red meat as much as possible. So That's what the guidelines of the Lifestyle College of Medicine, and this would be the things that you're going to follow most of the time. All right. Nutrition, sleep, seven to nine hours is what they recommend. And interesting, the American Heart Association used to have central seven, and now they have eight. In 2022, they came out with, they added sleep to this saying the seven to nine hours of good sleep would also help is going to help with heart health. Now after nine hours of sleep, they start to talk about some of the risk factors and that there's a lot of reasons for that, but seven to nine hours of sleep is the recommendation and quantity versus quality. That's another thing. But the, but we're talking about maintaining that consistent sleep habit and or schedule even on the weekends, my schedule alternates. And so my sleep habits then do too. So this week I had one of those schedules and I stuck to my sleep schedule and I just rearranged my work so that I could try to stay on my regular sleep schedule. And it really did help me. Maintaining a consistent sleep schedule. Even on the weekends and then creating that environment and a practice of good sleep hygiene, like limiting screen times before bed, for example. How many times do we have to be told how screens are bad for us before we start to eliminate them? It's hard, isn't it? Stress management is pillar four If you don't have a go to practice for stress management, everybody needs something. So just pick something, mindfulness, breath work, aromatherapy exercise is a good way to manage stress, but just have some go to that you can have in the moment. I love breath work for this and aromatherapy as well. This is what my aerobic cognition practice is all about, is having that go to, bringing our tools together to work for us. But again, practicing mindfulness, meditation, yoga, and hobbies that you might engage in that bring you joy and relaxation. And then just developing the coping strategies for managing stress So their recommendation is to build to a place where you're doing 20 minutes or 45 minutes. Of some kind of stress reduction practice, and that might be yoga and it might be some breath work or meditation. The Remicade ignition practice would, would be great for that as well. deep breathing or progressive muscle relaxation is another one that a lot of people find very helpful. And when we talk about breathing and muscle relaxation, we have those with us all of the time too. So we don't have to remember to take them with us. We don't have to have a certain amount of time designated for those. So those are good ways to tap into stress management on the go. One app that I could recommend for this would be The headspace app, it has all sorts of tools in there and guidelines. And this is how I got started with mindfulness and breathwork as well is just having that a guide to even in the moment. And we all have our phones with us all the time. So it's there with you all the time as well. Now, one of the pillars that I also mentioned was substance abuse and that is avoiding tobacco products and limiting alcohol consumption to moderate levels up to one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men. And studies, as you probably know, are all over the place with, is this good for us or not? And the American Heart Association is saying one glass for women, two glasses for men. But if you have not, if you do not drink, you do, should not start. So that is where that is because there is still, there are still some studies out there that connect alcohol use with diabetes. Cancer. So there's that J curve on the research with with alcohol. So just be mindful of that seek some support for quitting tobacco and reducing alcohol intake if needed. And because neither one of those are things that I really need to work at. I also look at my screen time. I look at. food, sugar is caffeine, those kind of things. And what kind of substances specifically am I really leaning on or numbing with? And that's how I evaluate myself in that pillar. And then the sixth pillar of lifestyle medicine is social connection. And that's where we foster those strong, positive relationships with family and friends, our connection to the community. And we can engage in social activities and community groups and look for opportunities to connect with others and build that support network. the College of Lifestyle Medicine actually also set us some guidelines or a target for us to connect with, make a meaningful connection once a day with with someone in your community. And this would be probably a high quality. Connection and maybe you can't do this every day. Shoot for seven times a week that you're connecting in a meaningful way with other people. Now there is also I'm actually reading a book by Bob Brooks about meaningful connections and the social connections he advocates for having one charismatic adult is the term that he uses. To to connect with on a regular basis. And that is just that, that one person, that adult that you can make that meaningful connection with that, that energizes you and makes you feel good. And you just gather strength from that individual. And so if you don't have that person, maybe you can start scanning your environment and looking for that person that Maybe you can connect with and then just looking to see, like, how can you be that person for someone else as well? So I mentioned, I use the wheel of life assessment where I rate each pillar on a scale of one to 10 to reflect that current satisfaction or performance in that area. And that gives me a visual representation and helps me just identify the areas that need improvement. I started to get particularly stressed in my role as a parent and wondering, just reflecting on, have I equipped my adult children for everything? Have I set them up to really become who they're created to be? And how, where did I get in the way of that? Where did I manipulate the process? Where was I too controlling? I started going down that path and really looking at just as they are stepping forward and figuring things out and how I really, unless they ask, I try not to give them any advice. I try not to coach them without permission. And that is a rule that I've set. I don't know if I do it perfectly. You'd have to probably ask them, but I try to respect and honor the adults and the amazing men that they are, and knowing that they're going to make their own mistakes and they're going to, as they go for their dreams. And I just really was reflecting did I set them up as best I could? And we're, Where could I have done better? And, oh, I hope I didn't really mess them up in certain areas. And it's just really started to stress about that. And I ran across as I do, I usually turn to books or podcasts for guidance. And I joked because with my husband, I actually said, is it okay if I just hit record and say, Hey, tune into Mel Robbins podcast because that everybody needs to hear it. And. And yeah, so that's almost what I did today. Mel Robbins. interviews, Dr. Shefali and Dr. Shefali is a clinical psychologist from Columbia University. She's an expert in family dynamics, and it just caught my attention. And so I listened to it. I actually listened to this podcast twice and then I got her book and I am already like, Three chapters into her first book that I had sitting in my Kindle that I didn't even realize I had sitting there. And I, so I'm going down the rabbit hole of this and in a way of managing my stress. And you guys, this, everybody has to listen to this. So this is why I had intended to talk about lifestyle medicine because we, I had visited that before and I was evaluating my own practice. And then I thought, Oh, I just really want to share this podcast. So go to go. to Mel Robbins podcast and listen to Dr. Shefali. as I said, she's an expert in family dynamics. She's known as the pioneer of conscious parenting movement, there is a book on conscious parenting. So if it resonates with you, but it will change the way you think about yourself and your life and your relationships in a whole new way. She's all over the podcast world interviewing on this topic, So conscious parenting is really just making mindful and emotionally intelligent decisions in raising children. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we tend to repeat. The patterns that we learned from our parents and even more is probably that we tend to make our decision that our decision-making is we might not even be aware of it. So seeing our children the whole person and that parenting relationship is a relationship, not a transaction. Really looking at the bigger picture, being curious and what are our own triggers and what are the things that are going on in us. And this kind of speaks to a parent's tendency maybe to. Want to live out Their dreams in their child's life or seeing children as the extension of ourselves and then being a reflection on. Our self-worth and, or definition of our self-worth. And that's a lot to put on any human, really. So. Now that I'm talking about this, you might not like this podcast at all. But because a lot of the things are, we're just not aware of and that it just really puts us back in that place where you have to kind of dig deep. And look for the thought that you want to want to have versus the thought you're having. About whatever that relationship is that you're struggling with. For me, in all of my questioning, I noticed that I was making it all about me. And how do I turn that to make it about them and about how I can be that. How we can provide that space of just unconditional love and being the cheerleaders and certainly being a source for wisdom, hopefully it, when they need it or when they ask or help or support when they ask or when they need it. Because they have agency and they can seek support. Where they feel like it's helpful and they'll know the difference and just building that relationship. And again, I noticed that all of the things that I was stressing about was. We're dreams that I had or pictures that I had expectations that maybe I had keeping them as in a place where they don't want to be and let them grow out of that. Anyway. It's our adult children are not really a reflection on us as people. And that's a hard thing to even grasp because we've invested so much. But we're investing in amazing humans and watching them become who they're created to be. And we didn't really create them. So I was just a vessel. So hopefully. Hopefully a good one. Hopefully a strong one. Hopefully they weren't too many cracks. Anyway. Probably a conversation that I will have with them to find out, let them be able to tell me what cracks or what. Where I, where I'm broken that I don't see anyway. So maybe you like that podcast or not, but regardless, I think everybody needs to listen to it. So if you are struggling with. A parent, or if you're struggling with your relationship with your children. Or have you heard a parent? Trying to figure it all out. This is really a freeing way to do this. A very healthy and mindful way to approach parenting. I think it's really beautiful. Beautiful work that we can do. So we can really let go and parent ourselves, focus on that, and then just be that unconditional space of encouragement unconditional love and safety for our kids as we really are meant to be. That's how I, that's how I detoured when I was evaluating my stress management techniques and my going through my own thought work process. I reached out for some support for a different thought about my parenting and a different thought about Letting go of my inner child stuff. And I discovered Dr. Shefali through Mel Robbins. And so I want you to listen to that podcast and I'd love to hear what you think and how that resonates with you. And I'd also love to talk to you about how you incorporate lifestyle medicine into your day to day. Maybe there's an area as you evaluate and you assess where you are on all of these pillars of lifestyle medicine. Where are you with these? How are you doing? I'd love to talk to you if you're stuck on one or want to have a different thought about one of these areas, then click the link below, schedule a time for us to chat. it's a 20 minute chat. we'll get on the phone or on zoom and we'll chat about What you want to move the needle on, what you want to have a new thought about. and I'll share some of my resources with you. I'd love to chat with you. I'd love to hear your stories. If you have recommendations, I'd love that too. So let's do this together. And, links are in the show notes, share this with a friend. And as you do these assessments, celebrate your wins. Give yourself some credit. give yourself the validation that you deserve We don't have to wait for external validation. you are amazing. And just that you are showing up here to listen to this tells me that you are dedicated to making extraordinary your default and showing up in the world the way that you were created for. So Celebrate that. just as you are, just as you are right now in this moment, as you get up every day to default to yes, you're extraordinary self.