EP 99: Physically & Mentally Taking Care Of Your Body As A Mom with Katie Muller | Pt 2

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Hey, you are about to hear part two of a two-part conversation. If you haven't yet, be sure to listen to part one, which aired last week.

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Hello.Hello. Welcome back to the Think Happy Podcast. This, my friend, is episode 99. That means we have today's episode and then next week we'll be celebrating episode 100. Have you, have you, listener, submitted your entry for the giveaways that we're doing to celebrate? This is not a drill. You literally have one week left. So to enter, leave a rating and review on iTunes, then go over to Spotify, leave a rating there, take a screenshot of both of them and then DM me those screenshots. So that means you can enter up to two times, one for each platform. So giveaways are going to be happening October second through October sixth. And I have more than $1,200 worth of giveaways waiting for you. So go get those entries in now. There's going to be giveaways from various ladies and small businesses that you've heard on the show before. There's going to be a free session with Carly over at Balance to Mom Nutrition, a free consultation with Katie Hillburn Interiors, a free DIY plan with Jordan over at Wildly Organized, a free call with Stress Coach Elizabeth over at Emotionally Healthy Legacy. And of course, Drumroll, the grand...

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Wow, tongue tied at the Drumroll. Who does that? I do that. Let's try this again. Drumroll, the grand prize, is one-month free inside of Think Happy's newest program and community, MomLife, plus 64 ounces of Kirbeans, coffee beans and coffee mugs donated by Kirby and Luke over at Kirbeansp. So again, go enter now, leave that rating, leave that review, take those screenshots, send me those DMs of the screenshots so that you can officially be entered to win one of these amazing giveaways. And tip, be sure to screenshot before you hit publish on those ratings and reviews because it might take a day or so for the reviews to actually be visible. And now one more quick thing. If you're interested in learning more about mom life, my new mom-only community and coaching monthly membership, head to thinkhappyco.com/momlife or just shoot me a DM on Instagram, okay? So I've built mom life with the primary goal of meeting moms where they are and supporting them in some of the areas they need most help with. So that's going to look like optimizing your time, getting through endless to-do lists, building sustainable routines, and most importantly, keeping your cup full as a mom.

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So to get all of the information on mom life, head to thinkhappyco.com/mom-life. And with that being said, let's get to part two of my conversation with Katie, but first go submit your ratings and reviews for the giveaway. Enjoy. I'm going to put myself in the listener's shoes right now. I just have a feeling that there are a lot of women right now listening to this and who just are really resonating with this notion of replenishing ourselves and serving ourselves first and pouring into ourselves, keeping our own cups full. So for those women, do you have any tips or words of encouragement to share?

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My superpower is simplicity.

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Oh, Katie.

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That's a good one. I'm very much a simple person in all areas of life. You walk in my door, I don't have decorations in my house because I just don't really get there enough to do it. I don't make super fancy meals because I'm just a very simple person in a lot of areas. And I think it really, really helps me and my clients in health journeys, because again, if you look on social media, if you look on the Internet, if you Google like, how do I need to lose weight or whatever else, there's thousands and thousands of different answers about every question that you might ask. And so the one question that I always ask my clients, and I think this is a really big part of keeping it sustainable and making it maintainable for the clients, is I never want to tell you what to do before I ask you what you think you should do. So we're working on this together. So the number one question that I say to anyone is, in the days that everything just feels really, really hard and you have no idea what to do, ask yourself, how can I just best serve my body today in any format?

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And sometimes like today for me, that meant I was going to sleep in. Other days, that means I'm going to wake up earlier and go for a run first thing. Sometimes that means I'm going to, I don't know, make a really well balanced dinner for my family. Other days that might mean I'm going to go get an ice cream cone. But it's always still answering the same question of how do I feel right now and what can I do to make my body feel better? And if you actually sit down and sit with yourself in that thought for a little bit, you know that sometimes if you eat an ice cream cone, it's probably going to make you feel not good, bloated or uncomfortable or who knows what. And other times you know that if I eat this ice cream cone right now, it's just going to make me happy and that's okay too. Both of those are okay. But it's again, just simplifying it of like, okay, do I actually know what I feel best doing? Do I feel my best when I sit on the couch all day? Or do I feel my best when I go for a walk or when I go to the gym or when I do a home workout or a yoga video or whatever you want to do.

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But it's always just bringing it back to one question. How can I serve my body today in any capacity?

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Yeah. And it's just meeting yourself where you are because as humans, we're fluid. So it makes sense that each day the answer to that question could be different. What we need each day is going to change just with the nature of being human. I have a story to share with you that is actually extremely similar to the example that you just gave about the ice cream. And so, back story, my two and a half year old Eleanor has been potty trained since about February. So let's call it like six or seven months. But she has refused to poop in the toilet. And so literally, for six or seven months, I had to let it go because I was making it worse. Well, she has known... She talks about it literally all the time, all day long, talks about it. And we have incentivized her, which I never thought I would be a parent that incentivizes things like pooping in the toilet. But she has known that when she poops in the toilet, we'll go get ice cream. Well, the other night, this literally on two or three nights ago, dinner was almost ready, like in the oven, about to be on the table.

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And she comes up to my husband and me and she told us that she had to go poop. And we looked at each other and we're like, Yeah, all right, you have to go poop. Sure. And so I take her to the bathroom, sits on the toilet. And granted, it was like the smallest little poop I've ever seen in my life, but freaking pooped in the toilet. And so the first thing she said was, Can we go get ice cream? And every part of me wanted to say, Eleanor, it's almost time for dinner. And also keep in mind, my husband and I had just gotten back from four nights at an all inclusive in Mexico. So I was eating very healthy, very clean, just like totally cleaning out my body. I was like, ice cream doesn't sound good right now. And how do you tell her no? She's freaking pooped in the body. And she was so excited. So what did we do? We literally and we went to get ice cream and I even ate some and it was just so much fun and she was so happy. And just sometimes you go get the ice cream.

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Absolutely. Yeah, and that's exactly it. It's taking away the morality of is it right or wrong or is it good or bad? It's not good or bad. It's bad if you do it because you know you're going to feel bad afterwards, physically feel bad. And that even brings in the emotional eating side of things too of the good or bad or should I, should I not and the guilt around it that could come from that situation. You could have approached that and been like, dang it, I was trying to eat really, really well and now I had this ice cream and I failed and whatever else, but you enjoyed it and you were happy. And I think people typically only think of emotional eating as a bad thing, where it's like, oh, I emotional eat for comfort or I emotionally eat when I'm stressed. But you can also eat because it makes you happy. And it's not like emotional eating is not a bad thing. It's a bad thing when you don't know what emotion it's bringing.

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Right. Right. Right. Yeah, there's a difference. Emotional, I feel like just has this negative connotation, just the word emotional, but it just means feeling emotion. And there's good emotions.

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There's a lot of emotions that you can be feeling. Yeah. So I feel like getting started on the path of serving ourselves and especially serving ourselves first can be a really daunting path for someone who maybe hasn't really thought about it much before. And I don't know if you agree with this, but I feel like we live in a society where we get praised for just going, going, going non-stop and burning the candle at both ends. And I find myself thinking, how do we flip this narrative? How can we lift each other up and celebrate each other when we take breaks and when we pour into ourselves? And so my next question for you is, how do you teach or how do you coach moms around taking care of yourself as a woman, as a mother in a way that honors what your body needs and what your body wants? How do you teach and coach around that?

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Yeah, we wear busy as like a badge of honor.

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Yes, we do.

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I'm going to ask you, how are you doing? Oh, I'm just so busy.

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It's a bragging right? How busy I am, how little sleep I get. And we need that to flip.

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Absolutely. Yeah. I try as much as possible to take busy out of my vocabulary, because number one, yes, my schedule is quite full some days, but it's full because that's what needs to happen. That's just life as a mom, that's life as a business owner. And busy just again, automatically puts like a negative spin on things. And so when you talk about like, okay, how do you coach a woman to serve her body to actually be able to do those things in this hustle and grind culture, again comes back to how can we simplify things. So in every aspect of what I do, like my whole thing is like, how do I get the best bang for my buck in my work? How do I simplify what I'm eating? And so things like I have a perfect meal cheat sheet. How do I create a perfect meal by just ticking some boxes? And so when we're thinking about nutrition, for example, I feel like nutrition for a lot of women is the bigger struggle. You can stay active. Maybe you don't have a lot of time for your workouts. So yes, we need to be efficient in what we're doing as far as I don't want you spending two hours working out every day.

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That's just not realistic. So half an hour, 45 minutes, four times a week is plenty for workouts. And then I usually just say, hey, stay active with your kids. Kids, which isn't usually a problem. But the nutrition side of things is typically where a lot of women tend to slip, because again, we use busy as almost an excuse to not put in the effort. So things like going through the drive through instead of packing a snack for after lunch before soccer practice or whatever or after school, things like that. And again, it just needs to be simplified. So when you think about creating a meal or a snack or any time you're going to eat, there's four components that you need. There's protein, there's carbs, there's veggies, sorry, there's fats, and then there's color. So protein, carbs, fats, color. Those four things are all you ever need. If you can look at your meal and look at like, okay, number one, where is my protein source here? Look at my cheat sheet of do I have one of these sources or a different one if I didn't list one? Do I have a carb source?

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Do I have some fat? And then your color would be like fruits or veggies. If you have all of those four things and then we learn about like, okay, how do we portion it correctly for your body? You can make any meal you want. It doesn't matter. You can stir, fry, you can throw it in the oven, you can put in the air fryer, you can have it in a salad form. You can have just like crackers, meat, cheese and carrot sticks. Like that is also a well-rounded meal. It's just figuring out how do we again simplify your meal to make it well-rounded in whatever scenario you're going into for both you and your kids.

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That feels very digestible. Okay, that was not supposed to be a play on words. That feels like it would be very easy. That's such a good nugget for people to take out of this like those four. So healthy fat, protein, carbohydrate and color are the four on the cheat sheet. That's brilliant and just so easy to remember also. As I'm sitting here, I'm drinking the most delicious cup of Kirbeans coffee. Kirbeans is a wife and husband duo who turned their passion for coffee into a business. They are so sweet and it makes me so happy seeing their business thrive. Now, let me tell you why Kirbeans is thriving. To put it simply, it's because their coffee is amazing. Think Happy has had the honor of getting to pick a Think Happy Signature roast. These dark, roasted Mexico beans smell like a good day waiting to happen. When brewed, they create the smoothest cup of coffee you have ever tasted. It is even still good after being preheated. If you're like me and frequently get pulled away from your coffee, you know that's important. And I have a special treat for you. Think Happy listeners receive 15% off their order of Kirbeans.

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Head to Kirbeans coffee. Kirbeans is spelled K-I-R-B-E-A-N-S and use code Think Happy at checkout for your 15% discount. Again, that's Kirbeans. Coffee code Think Happy for 15% off. This whole conversation has me thinking about myself personally. And one thing that I've noticed in my own life right now is finding love and finding... See, love isn't even the right word and acceptance isn't the right word either. But finding that for my new body, my body that has served me and served two babies so, so well, but just does not look the same as it did before children. And I literally feel like a hypocrite right now because I know how blessed I am to have this body. And I know that I have a why. And I am healthy. I eat foods that serve me well, and I exercise, and I get good sleep. But there's still this part of me that struggles. And I guess what I'm getting at is the confidence side of things that you had brought up earlier in this conversation. And I share that just because we're all human and we're not perfect. But it brings me to the question of how does confidence play into health and wellness specifically with moms?

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Yeah, that's a tough conversation because your body does change, but I think we're really set up for failure from the get go with how people speak about it. The amount of times through pregnancy that people were telling me like, Oh, you'll never have your body back or You'll never be the same, or Oh, just wait until the third trimester. That's when you're really going to start packing on the weight, or things like that where it's just talked about so negatively. And we really don't have enough people speaking about pregnancy in a positive light, because all you ever hear again is the fear side of things like, Oh, your body is going to change. You're going to gain weight. Labor is going to hurt. Kids are crazy. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

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There's always the just wait aspect.

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It's always the just wait, exactly. But what if we flip it and say just wait until you have the appreciation for what your body is doing, or just wait until literally, actually, scientifically, postpartum is your best time to put on muscle mass and your best time to get in your best shape because of all the extra nutrients your body had through pregnancy and can now use, as well as your added blood plasma levels. That's a huge, huge benefit to be pregnant. And I can confidently say that I am in better shape now than I was pre-pregnancy because I have that appreciation and because my body has changed, but it's changed in a good way. So this takes me back to what I was talking about earlier, where it's not a bad thing to want to lose weight because there's also a side in the fitness, wellness industry right now that says like, Oh, you should only be happy with your body. You shouldn't want to change yourself. You shouldn't want to do all those things because it's bad to have esthetic goals. It's not bad to have esthetic goals. It's bad if you're going about it because you hate your body right now.

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It's a good thing if those esthetic goals come from, I know that I could probably be treating my body better because we all know that there are probably certain things in our lives where I could probably eat out less or I could probably have a different dinner, or I could probably make my breakfast a little bit more well rounded. And so confidence doesn't come from a smaller number of confidence doesn't come from looking a certain way. I can say that because I've been there. I've been about as small as you could get. And it's not what makes you happy. In fact, it makes it way, way worse. Confidence comes from knowing that my body has what it needs to feel its best. And it comes from understanding how to do that. So I need to know again, obviously like we've been talking about the whole time, why am I doing this? Am I trying to lose weight or trying to look a certain way because I hate where I am right now? Or am I trying to do this because I genuinely know I could probably feel better than I am? And the how and actually understanding the how is really, really important as well.

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Because, again, my biggest thing with anyone coming in to work with me is like, I don't want you to just be enabled for a few months that we work together. I'm like, sure, okay, you see some great results, you feel good, you leave and you're like, what the heck did we just do and why can't I do it again? So figuring out again, how do I actually understand again, why am I eating more protein? What does it actually do for me? Why am I making sure that I don't cut out carbs? I've been told that I shouldn't eat carbs my whole life, but now you're telling me I should include them like why and how and what does this mean? So the confidence, just like anything, like if you're going to go and give a speech on stage, you're never going to feel confident giving that speech on stage if you don't actually understand what you're talking about. So with your body, it's the same thing. I'm never going to feel confident in my body if I don't even understand my body, if I don't even know what I should be giving it and how I should be moving it and all these things.

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So the confidence comes not from looking a certain way. It comes from understanding what I need to do in order to get my body to its most optimal state.

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Yeah, that is insanely powerful. And so I hope you don't get annoyed with me.

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Because I'm going to.

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Ask how just one more time, because again, this is the last time I'll do it. I'm putting myself in the shoes of a listener who I'm picturing in my head right now, and she's just nodding along and listening to this conversation. And she's like, I get it, I get it, but how do we do that? Do you have anything for her?

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It's a tough question to answer because I have a very strong belief that we are not meant to do anything by ourselves. And I think one of my biggest mistakes was doing it by myself. It took me way longer to get to the point where I am now by myself because I didn't want to ask for help. And so the number one thing that I would tell anybody in this again, sounds weird coming from a coach, but it's like when you know you want something, find someone who has it and ask them how they did it and learn from them and actually be willing to open yourself up to say, I don't know at all and that's okay, but I'm going to ask for help and find somebody who does and actually put the effort into that. Because again, I could... It would take me hours and hours to tell you like, Oh, this is everything I learned in school, everything I learned in my certification and whatever else. But the reason we go to doctors is because we don't know how to get better from strepthroat. I'm like you had a few or whatever.

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I don't know how to do that by myself. Can you please help me? Or we go to school. I don't know how to become a doctor again if we just stay on the same track. So can we learn how to do this? Like there... We're so willing to learn from teachers, from professors, from the very traditional school system, but we're not willing to learn from business coaches. We're not willing to learn from coaches in any sort. But if you think about anyone, like again, a doctor, you think about an artist, like a singer or a professional athlete. If you go and ask them, How did you get to where you are right now? They're going to tell you, Well, I've been working with coaches for the last 20 years.

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Yes, it's so true. I've never thought about that before. And they still thought about that before.

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The best athletes in the world, you're like, Oh, well, I just want to do it by myself. If you said that to them, they'd be like, Are you kidding me? I don't even do it by myself. You can't. So be okay with humbling yourself enough to say like, I need to either seek out this information and learn about it for myself. And it's probably going to take me a lot longer or I can find somebody who does know what I want to know and learn from them.

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Yeah, yeah. And I know that we're starting to get close to time here, but it just... I'm bringing this back to moms. And it's okay to invest in yourself, whether that investment is a time investment or a financial investment. If you don't have as much time, you might need to look at making more of a financial investment to help bridge that time gap for you. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm sitting here, as we're recording this, in my closet office, and it was an addition. My husband and my bedroom, we added on to our house earlier this year, and we didn't sit there and think, Oh, well, we need a bigger house because we're having a second baby and we don't want to move. So we should probably just do this on our own and build an addition. No.

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You're going to find someone who can help you out.

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You go to people who know what they're doing.

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Yeah, it's so true. It's one of those things too where it's different because specifically with wellness of any sort, whether that's fitness, nutrition or just like personal development, it's so much more personal. Like if you're asking a construction worker to change a toilet out because your toilet is leaking, you're not going to feel like, oh, I should know how to do that. But when it's like, oh, I want to become a better person, I feel embarrassed to look for help for that because it's me. I'm trying to improve myself. And then I have to admit to somebody else that I'm not as good as I want to portray.

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There's some standard that you're holding yourself to.

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Exactly, yeah. Some arbitrary probably standard that you're holding yourself to.

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Exactly, yeah. And where does that come from? We get so caught up in I should be like this or I should be further ahead. I should know more about this. But if we just took out that word should, who is telling you you should be further ahead? Who is telling you you should know more about this?

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Because I don't know, like who is telling you?

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My girlfriend and I, we always joke about they, how like, oh, well, they say that X, Y, Z. And it's almost always something to do with parenting and raising children. Oh, well, they say that kids should be getting their first tooth by blank. Who the heck is that? And they don't know my kid. And who is they telling me these rules and where did they come from?

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Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We just have this set of rules or guidelines or something that like this life book that says you should be at this chapter by now.

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But- Written by that.

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Yeah. It's just a weird standard that we we hold ourselves to that really has no ground.

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Yeah. This has been such a wonderful conversation, Katie. Thank you so much just being here and pouring into us. And I just cannot thank you enough.

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Yeah, well, thank you for having me. This is a lot of fun.

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Of course. Okay, I have one final question. Do you have a life or happiness hack that you use in your life that the listeners might want to try out in their own lives?

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Yeah, the one thing that I can think of that we do daily to just connect because especially as moms, you get very caught up in being a mom and being in your house and whatever else that we sometimes forget that life is more than just keeping a perfect house and keeping perfect kids. But one thing that we do every single day is just go for a walk, get outside with my husband and my son, and we give him a cup of cheerios to keep him happy in his roller. And he sits there, he eats his cheerios and he babbles away at who knows what. And that's like the one time of the day that my husband and I can actually connect and talk about our days, talk about what we envision for the future or who knows what. But it's just like a half an hour, 45 minutes, where you can be disconnected from your phone, disconnected from any stimulation outside and just be a human and move, fresh air movement always helps.

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I love that. That's a great one. Well, thank you so much. If the listeners want to connect with you, which you guys absolutely should, where can they find you?

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Yeah, I guess two places. I'm on Facebook, Katie Muller. Pretty simple. And then my Instagram also I hang out there a lot is katemuller.Pt.

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Got it. All right, my friends, well, thank you so much for listening into this conversation. Go find Katie. Go hang out with her online. And I will be back in your ears next week with episode 100 of The Think Happy Podcast.

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See you soon. Thank you for joining me for this week's episode of The Think Happy Podcast. I would so appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review. And if you just can't get enough, find me on Instagram at thinkhappy_co, that's co, and online at thinkhappyco.com. I'll be back in your ears next week with another episode of The Think Happy Podcast.