Strong Zone Pillars for a Balanced & STRONG Lifestyle

I'm Sheree from Spice Fitness, and I'm going to talk a bit about how we need to have balance in our lives. And particularly for us women, I think we try and be superwoman all the time. And look, I'm talking about myself included here today.

It's not just you. So this is just a little chat between girlfriends today about, you know, how we just need to balance up our lives. And every day I need to relook at what I'm doing and how I'm doing, even the day before this.

Because today, I'm happy, I've been on a bike ride early this morning, I'm feeling good. But the day before, I was thrown by some unexpected news with a huge bill that came in. And we're able to reduce that bill through some things that we talked about with the surgeon.

But it was it threw me and it sent me into a bit of a downhill spiral. And I'm thinking, how did that happen? How did I get that low in one day?

And now I'm great today. Well, it's because I didn't use the tools that I know to de-stress myself. I know how to do that.

I could have taken myself out of the situation or out of the house and got myself on my bike, even though it was cold. And I've gone on a ride, I could have just listened to my app, which is a de-stress app. I could have just done some deep breathing.

I could have just looked more into the situation and not let this whole one thing take over my entire world and my entire mind in the space of a half an hour. And it affected me for quite a few hours till I did get myself back into that place. So just going to look at a bit of balance today.

So we all know that our lives need balance. And any time that we skewed to one side, if we're working too much, if we are not working at all and spending too much time having fun, I mean, there are so many ways that we can go off balance with our lives. And any time we do that, then we get off track with whatever we're trying to do.

We need balance. Balance is important. And how many of you remember having young kids and kind of going, whoa, I think for a while their life does become unbalanced because you're spending all your time trying to look after those kids and deal with them.

Excuse if I squint a bit today, the sun's a bit bright and I've decided to come out on my balcony today. I remember having a five and a half year old, three and a half year old, two and a half year old and a brand new baby and feeling very overwhelmed because my brand new baby was a little bit prem. And so I had a prem special needs, kind of not special needs baby, but she had special needs because she was prem.

She wasn't gaining weight to the degree she needed to. So I needed to breastfeed her, then express the rest of milk off and give her the rest of the milk in the bottle while looking after three older kids. It was huge.

None of them were at school at that time or the five and a half year old may have been in the first year of school, but it was overwhelming and I often couldn't quite get my head around being able to do it. I just had to do what I needed to do at that time. But thank goodness there's a point in time when you grow out of that and you at least have one at school.

So you've got some time to actually get your head back again. And interestingly enough, in those days we didn't have maternity leave. So even though that newborn was only prem and I needed to do this thing around, I was back at work within probably four weeks because I needed to earn an income.

So then it's juggling work and looking after kids all day and going, I only worked 10 hours a week, so two five hour shifts a week in the evening. But I was a nurse in the emergency department at the Children's Hospital in Perth, WA, and I was often out at triage. So it was a real balancing act to try and get my work done and earn a pay, try and look after my four kids during the day.

And me time was kind of non-existent at the time. But thank goodness that does change as we go on. And you know, we may have school age kids and we have activities to take them to while we're trying to work full time and maybe trying to start to get our life in order with a bit of strength training or going to look after ourselves.

It is hard. And often the balance, the scales are skewed.

Kids, kids, kids, kids, us, no, what goes first, we do. Looking after us often will go first because we know that we have to look after our kids. And many of us will have grown up kids.

But then we've got the added burden of aging parents. Aging parents is huge. So you've got parents that are dying or being diagnosed with different diseases.

Then there's a lot of looking after them and looking after your kids at the same time. I had a situation at one time where I had started up a gym. We were running a gym, a very successful gym.

We had multiple people coming through every week, signing up. And there was my mom dying. Now, at the time, I was still working one shift a week as a nurse.

And we had a dog that was not being cared for me because my four teenage kids didn't want to look after her. They didn't also want to give her away either, but they didn't want to look after her. And I was making a four-hour trip up to see my dying mom.

And it was a juggling act. I'll tell you, I was pretty well not doing good. I felt like I couldn't sleep anymore and big bags under my eyes.

Probably my stress levels were high. And I finally, I took one thing out of my life, and that was giving the dog away to a really good home. And I felt like that was a burden off her shoulder.

I couldn't give away my kids, so that was fine. They stayed there. But I could give away our beautiful dog and gave her to somebody who loves her very, very much.

So I think that was a great move. My mom did die in the end, but at least I was able to make the trips up to support my dad in that process. And I felt good about doing that.

But it was a horrible time and a juggling act. You might be a single mother who's working hard, so there's no time at all. And that's where I think, particularly when I had small kids, I had a look at befriending other parents with kids around the same age, and I would often have their kids.

Why not have eight kids, kid each, your kids come over and play with my kids, I'll have eight of them to look after. Then I get a break by giving my four kids away to various families. And so there was a lot of very early on in my life with having kids, I learned to befriend people that I liked as well, and I felt safe with having my kids.

But we would do this juggling so that at least I would get a day off or a few hours off every now and then and my kids would have a ball at somebody else's place. They felt like it was a real treat. And so it's being able to have connections, being able to find people to connect with you so that you can also have some time out.

We all need time out. We all need to smell the roses every now and then and just have time out. And the other thing that I'm in this situation right now, and quite a few of my clients are, are menopausal women.

And often what comes with that is sleeplessness. You might get hot flushes, you might get mood, swinging moods, you might get depression because of the non-lack of sleep, etc. And you've got your aging parents on top of that.

And your kids probably still need you, probably ring you up, mom, can you help me out with some finances? Or mom, I want to come home for the next month and live off you for the month and just have a nice time back at home. So there's all these things and probably, you know, to tell you the truth, we probably juggle things our whole life long.

It probably never ends. So it's really working out how do we keep that balancing act as we go along, particularly when hard times come, what do we do? So and the other thing, just to talk about the superwoman myth.

How many of us feel that we need to be everything and do everything or be everything to everyone else and do everything? And that works to a degree. I believe we can do a lot.

We can have an awesome career. We can raise a family and do it well. But boy, we need a lot of help to do that.

So whether you're not going to support your partner or a supportive partner, I've always had a supportive partner. And that has hugely helped with me being able to have a career and to be able to run a gym as well. He played a huge part in that.

So it's being able to have supportive people around you, I think, means that we can do far more. We are not alone, alone, there's a lone something, lone mountain, lone whatever. We are not a lone wolf in this life.

We need a team. We need teammates. We need our, I don't like using the word tribe, but we need a tribe around us that understand us, help to support us, and know maybe can come around and surround us when we're having a hard time so we can have someone to chat to.

So at Spice Fitness, we look at the four pillars. So four main pillars for a balanced life. And it's more than just taking time out.

So we believe in being strong. So we need to be believing in this body to be a strong body, that we have strength. We need to nourish our body with things that go in through our mouth.

We need to nourish it. We need to be able to restore. That's taking time out and we need to believe.

So our mental health needs to have a great place in there as well. Because without, we talked last week about mental health. So if you didn't see that, please go to the Facebook Live that we did last week.

And on the same day, one week ago, and we talked about mental health and how important it is to have that going. Because without our head working for us, nothing works for us. We can't make decisions that will take us on to the next stage that we want to be, and we can't make them well.

So mental health comes in really important. So it's nourishing our bodies, strengthening our bones and muscles. It's about restoration.

So restoring our body, so stretching out tight muscles and allowing rest to recovery, and then nurturing. So we need to take care of ourselves, our mental health, and seeking some enjoyment from life is really important. And I know not every day we'll be balanced, but you know what, we don't want to go unbalanced for too long.

Because the longer we go unbalanced, the more we'll start to experience something that will be not right. We'll feel that something's not right.

So let's talk about strength first, being strong.

What I found, and I love this with people who start strength training, is when you start strength training, people will often be gobsmacked by the end of the first session or maybe the second session. They say, wow, I already feel different. I feel amazing.

Is that meant to happen so quickly? Absolutely. You think that if you've got a body that's not actively working specific muscles throughout your body, then when you do start working them, you feel awesome.

You start to feel strong from the inside out first before you see any tangible evidence on the outside at all. And so you actually do feel quite good. I had one lady with osteoarthritis that actually was tangible within the first three sessions.

She had thrown away her walking stick because she felt like she didn't need it anymore. She was more upright, could walk stronger. So it can be tangible, it could be intangible, but you just know it, you just feel it.

And what I find is empowering is if you couldn't do something before, so you couldn't lift up a five kilo weight without your back hurting, and now you can, that's empowering. That empowers every part of your body, empowers your head, empowers your thinking processes, empowers your body, and you want to do more. So that's what gets exciting to me.

I remember about a year ago now, I had tried, you know, when you're kids and you go on those monkey bars and you just kind of throw yourself across the monkey bars because you don't need to think about it. And I remember thinking, I wonder if I can do the monkey bars. I couldn't, like, I just couldn't do them.

I couldn't pick up my body weight and transfer my body weight from one hand to the next. So that was a bit of a shock. So then I started to actively do some upper body work and I was thrilled when a few months down the track, I went down to those same bars and was able to pull myself along without putting my feet on the ground.

It's empowering and makes you feel great. So it's all, everything's connected in our body. So my head was connected with my body and I felt pretty good.

I was chuffed actually. I told everyone I could meet, I can do the monkey bars these days. And what I'm doing with my ladies at the moment, we're doing a pull-up bar challenge.

So every week when I train these ladies twice a week, I've got the pull-up bar there and it's intertwined as part of my classes. We don't do the same thing every week, but I change things around. But the pull-up bar is there for all the ladies to do.

And I'm seeing a difference where they looked at it and said, I can't do that. And now they're actually pulling themselves up with no support underneath. They're just doing a tiny little jump from the floor and holding themselves up there for a moment of time, maybe a second, few seconds and letting themselves down.

And everyone I'm talking to at the moment goes, I'm so excited. I didn't ever think I had the strength in my upper body to do a chin-up and or a pull-up. You know, so it is kind of exciting.

The more you do something with your body, with strengthening, the better it gets. I've got a couple of my older clients and I'm going to interview one of those here for this webcast next week, this podcast, sorry, this Facebook Live next week. Janine is in her 60s, late 60s, I think.

She's retired now, but she is more powerful than she's ever been before. Her body is more lean than it's ever been before. Not that she was trying to do that.

She just wanted to get strong so that she could help her husband out in his place where he needs to lug 10 kilo bags of cement. She does that easily now. She can load a whole car up with big loads of cement and drive off down where she needs to go and unload them again with no problem at all.

So I'm going to interview her next week about what it's like to get a little older and actually have your body working well for you. So stay tuned to that next week. And you just think in tribes and villages and back in the day when we're all in tribes, you know, way, way back in thousands of years ago, a thousand years ago or so.

And even in villages around the world today, older people, you'll see them carrying loads of wood on their head from point A to point B. And I often get amazed because we just have this mentality as we get older or sometimes even when we're young that if I can't do it, I won't do it and I'm going to rest instead.

And I think we could learn a lot from just going to sit there for two days in some village in Indonesia, maybe, or Papua New Guinea and watch people in a village and what they do and how they move their body every day.

It's inspirational and something that I love to do. And so where do you start when you're about to strength train? Well, you start small and build up.

So day by day, you're always aiming to increase, build up that tiny bit more, whatever you can't do, try and do more of. That's always my philosophy. If you can't do something, do a bit more of it because that's obviously an area where you're weak.

If you can't do the pull-up bar, guess what? Organize a pull-up bar. Go down to your local fitness place and every day do a little bit of the pull-up bar and you'll be surprised in a month or two down the track where you'll come.

If you're not already walking, then just start walking. It may be to your mailbox and back. It may be that the next week you go down to the end of your driveway and back.

It may be the next week you go down to the local oval and back and then increase from there. Try and add some hills in there. You can make walks work harder for you if you pop a backpack on your back, a nice supported backpack with a big wide waistband.

Pop a couple of milk cartons in there filled with sand or water and actually enjoy just making your body work that bit harder. So find some hills. Make it harder.

You can get a dive belt with those lead weights on it. Put around your waist so you don't look too dorky and off you go. Well, maybe look a little bit dorky, but who cares?

And off you go. So have some leaded weights around. You'll always be making your body work that little bit harder.

Never stop at a point where you go, that's enough. That's the status quo because we won't progress from there. So you always want to be progressing.

So you may find what I love to do with people sometimes is I'll get them to do a specified walk around a route. So you may go from here down to the oval, over to the shops and back home again. Time it.

First week, week one, time it. Week two, see if you can increase the time that you do it in. Week three, see if you can increase the time you do it in again until maybe you started out that walk doing it in 25 minutes.

And by the end of three or four weeks, you're doing it in 15 minutes, say, for example. Well, you know that you've improved with your cardiovascular system and fitness. So always a great thing to do.

So just challenge yourself with things like that. If you have no time, get up half an hour earlier in the morning. Half an hour is neither here nor there.

Or at lunchtime, don't sit in the lunchroom and talk to your workmates and sit there and eat then. Head off. Maybe even do a 20-minute fast walk.

Come back and have that last 10 minutes, if that is all you've got, half an hour and find some stairs. Hey, stair climbing is a great one. If you have nowhere, you can't get out in time and you want to be doing something, stay in your nice business suit or whatever you're in.

Change from your high heels. Put some joggers on. Go up and down the stairs.

Do that a few times. Have a rest. Do it again and see if you can increase even how many stairs you go up.

There's always ways to fit fitness in.

It doesn't need to be a specified big block of time.

Whatever you do will all add up at the end of a week, a month, a year. So whatever you can do, do it. And you don't know what to do.

You don't know where to start. Well, and particularly if you've already been walking for years and walk many kilometers every week, then you probably need to really look at doing some strength training because your body will have already adapted to the walking and it probably won't adapt anymore unless you make it work harder. So you maybe start to run.

You'll adapt it a bit more. You pop some weights on your back, but you'll get to a point where that's sort of nice, but it's probably not giving you what you want to achieve. And so strength training to me is a must for everyone.

Thinking that we lose 3% of muscle mass over the age of 60, but we start to lose muscle mass at the end of our 30s, early 40s. We start to lose it. If we're not actively working to build up muscle mass, then that's what you need to be starting to do.

Don't know where to go or what to do? Find yourself a great gym that when you walk in, they're so supportive. They offer you help.

Maybe they give you a free personal training session. And if it's online, I would feel free to ask the person what their qualifications are because how many people are online who are not qualified in fitness at all, and they are telling you what to do with your body and probably going to give you an injury. There's many times I look at online programs and I get gobsmacked because I look at the form of the person doing a pushup or a plank or whatever, and it's really bad.

And they're trying to teach you. You don't want that. So I guess I'm going to say look at spicefitnessst.wpengine.com because we actually do teach. We teach superb form because we don't want anyone to get hurt. And for $4.95 a week, hey, you can't lose. And you're not stuck in there.

You can pull out if you need to. If you don't like a particular kind of exercise, I actually am one of these people that hate high-intensity interval training, so HIIT stuff. I don't enjoy it, yet I work really hard.

So I take weights instead, and I flick them around and fling them around and do whatever I need to do with minimal rest in between. My heart rate when I take it over here or here is right up there around the place I want it to be. So it is up in my highest maximum intensity of heart rate.

And so I don't need to do HIIT. I actually prefer to do strength training with getting my heart rate up at the same time. So you need to do something you enjoy.

If you absolutely hate doing anything, I've got one of my clients who tells me, Cherie, I've never liked strength training, never. But when I'm here, I actually don't mind it. And she said, I love the results I get from it.

So then she said, that's why I keep coming. I just love it. If you ever say to the group when she's in the group at the end, hey, anyone want to do a two-minute challenge?

She'll always roll her eyes. No. But anyway, she does it anyway, and she's loving the results she's getting.

She's getting married in about a year, and her shape's changing. She's got some nice definition. And I'll tell you, she's a whole lot fitter and stronger.

So there's so many benefits to be had. So yeah, so going on to how to feed our bodies to nourish.

So our pillar number two is to nourish.

So we have a choice every day what goes into our mouth. We do. We have a choice.

I can sit here right now. I can have a beer or two or three. But I'm not going to.

I don't like beer. But I can have a whole bottle of wine every night if I wanted to. But maybe what I need to do is take one glass of wine, put the rest of the bottle aside, don't go near it, and leave that for tomorrow night.

And then if you're still thirsty, still like the taste, just drink it slowly. Maybe have a glass of water and a glass of wine, and have a mouthful of water in between, as long as you don't ruin the taste of the wine in your mouth, and then go back to the wine. So you're making that wine last longer.

So you're avoiding going to the bottle. We have a choice every day of what we eat. I'm a sucker.

I'll tell you, I'm a sucker for chocolate. I am bad, man. If chocolate is near me, I'll eat it.

That's about as simple as it gets. And I know some of you will identify with me, and you're a liar for some of you if you say no. Some of you will be just like me.

And at least I'm honest about it. I have a fit, strong body, and I eat chocolate. I will admit that you'll get lots of fitness instructors out there that go, oh no, all my diet is all clean eating.

But I at least am honest. But what I try and do more than anything, and I did this at the start of last week, I made my own chocolate from cacao and dates and nuts. And I had chia seeds in there and all sorts of nuts, pumpkin seeds and nuts.

And it was great. So I've been eating that all week. And I may only have a square, and that's probably enough to just give me that chocolatey taste.

But it's good for me. And so I don't think you can beat just being organized. And if you know your weakness, you'll know it.

You'll know your vice. Then put something in its place so you're not going to needing to be going there all the time. I don't buy chocolate, by the way, all the time.

But if it's there, I will eat it. And I can choose and you can choose to be organized as well. So if you make sure that your meals for the week are in your fridge, all ready to go, so you've got all the ingredients in there to make nice, healthy meals, then you won't probably stop at McDonald's or KFC on the way home and get that junk food that you really don't need.

You'll actually be organized. And particularly if you're already cooked and you just warm it up over the next couple of days. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

We find that that works for us. And I've always got spinach leaves in my fridge. I've always got nice, fresh tomatoes.

I've got my brie or camembert cheese because it's good for gut health. And I've always got Greek yogurt.

So there's always stuff I can do with the Greek yogurt with my berries. And I've always got blueberries in there.

I can always do snacks with that.

And my main meals, it's easy to cook a bit of meat and then add a whole pile of salad or I've already got my pre-organized food in there. So that makes things a lot easier too. Don't come home from work tired and expect to make good decisions because we often don't.

Unprocessed. I think, look, if we just make some general rules, I personally don't like food plans where someone tells me day one, week one, we're going to eat this for breakfast, that for lunch and that for dinner. I kind of buck against that.

So I prefer some general rules that keeps me healthy. And my rules are as much unprocessed food as I can so that then I'm just trying to eat stuff that's as natural as it comes in life. As it was pulled out of the ground, this is how it would look.

Try and avoid anything from a packet and just try and eat as much like dark greens and colored things as I can and nutrient dense. I mean, OK, so sometimes it's really interesting to look at a packet of Cheezels with it's probably 3000, 2000 kilojoules in there. And look at all the meals I could have in a day for 2000 kilojoules.

So it's looking at empty calorie, empty nutrients like chips, Cheezels, chocolate as compared to if I had spinach leaves, tomato. I've got also sweet potato and all sorts of stuff like that are high in a lot of nutrients for your body. Why would you choose this?

Sometimes I'll choose this, but not too often. I'm hoping that most of my choices will go into the nutrient dense stuff. Mediterranean meals.

If you're a follower of Michael Mosley with his gut health stuff, he believes that the simplest diet and the easiest one is a Mediterranean one. And if you look at a Mediterranean diet, and I try to have this as much as I can, is all that kind of plant based stuff might have a chunk of meat here for me and a whole lot of plant based stuff with a little drizzle of balsamic vinaigrette. And that's a perfect meal and a really great one for your body.

It loves those sort of things as well. And I'm not saying don't eat meat, but I do love, I think I would feel quite stodgy if two thirds of my plate was meat and only a small amount was vegetables or salad. Don't diet.

Don't think about diets. I know that there's all these diets out there. You know, you have the Atkins diet, the paleo diet, the keto diet, which is high fat.

And all of those are good in themselves. There's nothing wrong. And I like to take a bit of all of those things really, as long as they make me feel good.

My bowels are opening every day. I'm happy and I'm getting some nutrients. So I did try a high fat, low carb one for a week.

And oh man, I was not going to the toilet anymore. So I love my fruit. And I actually had a look at something that's containing fruit and veggies and all of those fruits like apples that I know that the keto diet doesn't like to have apples and things like that to hide sugar.

But they contain a certain substance and I can't remember what it was, but it aids in all sorts of things as you go through life. And so I think I'm healthy most of the time. I rarely get sick and I think it's because I eat quite a bit of fruit every day.

But my body does okay with that. Sometimes I know when I've gone too far, I let out a lot of flatulence. So then I've got to be careful and wind it back a tad.

So you can always start to read your body, start to know your body and what works well for you. And you know that every single diet will work and you'll lose weight because we're actually cleaning up our act. We're cleaning up our diet.

So we're taking away the chocolate and chips and maybe a whole bottle of wine every night. We're taking a lot of that away and cleaning part of it up. So anything will work for you.

To also to make sure that our body is well nourished as well. It's easy. Some people will say I find it too hard.

It's just too hard to change the way I eat. But if you make a small change every week, you'll be amazed at where you are in a year's time. So if you make a small change, say this week, week one, I'm going to add greens to every single meal.

I'm not going to change anything else. I'm still going to have my bottle of wine every night and I'm going to have my chocolate where I do right now, but I'm just going to add greens. Next week, I'm going to add this or take away a little bit of this.

I'll still have it, but I'm going to have it. If you start doing that kind of thing, you will be amazed that these small little changes become one big change. They become everyday habits that you do.

So I am a precision nutrition coach, which is a kind of a weight loss coaching. I don't go too much in that. I'm more about health, but just some basic rules they have in there.

Is to include more of bright or deeply colored vegetables, bright or deeply colored fruits, so they are your blueberries and things like that, high fiber, unprocessed grains and lean meats. Simple, just some simple rules and less of sugar, soda and soft drinks, white flour, ice cream. There you go.

Some simple rules for you to start with. Any changes in your diet though, and removing the junk will bring about good results. And weight loss, don't forget, is largely mindset.

If we're in a great place, we probably won't turn to the chocolate. I don't know about you, but if I'm in a pretty scummy place where I think I've worked hard this week, I deserve this, and I'm at the aisles and I haven't had dinner, so I'm still hungry, I'll probably choose the chocolate. But if I've already had dinner and I'm not hungry, I probably won't.

I'll walk by. I've just got to sometimes talk to myself. So if you see a lady in the shop sometimes talking away to herself, going, I don't need the chocolate, Sheree, put it down.

Put it back. Come on now. You know you don't need it.

That would just be me talking to myself. I sometimes have people look at me strangely because I do talk to myself a bit. And why not?

I'm my best coach. You will never get a better coach than you are to yourself. So coach yourself and go, no, no, no, no, no.

That chocolate you've just got, you're about to go home and have dinner now. You don't need it. Put it back.

Put it back now. OK, it's as simple as that. So you put it back and walk away.

Believe, believe, believe. So we need to believe in ourselves, in what we can do, our whole abilities.

We're in constant change throughout our whole lives. You know, change will never end. I know some people that cannot bear change.

Change then throws them into this spiral. But if we accept that change will be there, every day things will come against us or at us or some good things will come too. And that will involve change.

And change is fine. Change is fine. But we just have to accept that it's going to come and be open and adaptable to it.

As a nurse, I've been a nurse for 40 years of my life. You know, I've always seen the huge fear in people's eyes when change comes, including myself, because you kind of go, I don't know if I can add that to my already long list of things I have to do. But you know what?

You get into it and you work out the best way to deal with it. So change will be there. Our jobs are always changing.

Not always, but there'll be things within the job that will change. Our home's changing. We had some people come and live with us through our church.

So some people, our pastor rang us and said, can some people come and stay and live? For a number of months, they'll pay rent. We only charge them low rent.

But having someone in your kitchen for eight hours of the day where normally there's no one and having the smell of fish constantly fill your whole house because they forgot to turn the fan on is change. And it takes adapting. And sometimes you kind of go, ah, but anyway, it's change again.

And we were able to adapt to that. And change will happen all the time. So our children come and go.

They'll go and then they'll come home again. And that can throw some people. So change can throw some people.

So maybe practice with that, some mindfulness, just being present in the moment, just thinking about what is it that I'm stressed about? What is it that's making me feel this way of being anxious about these people in my home? And maybe bring yourself back down to my friend often talks about grounding herself, placing her feet into the floor, hands wherever they are.

I'm not into grounding myself, but she grounds herself. So she takes away that anxiety. So there's so many tools out there for what you can use.

So have some tools at your hand, at your disposal. So if things come across that are really making your mental health or your mindset in an agitated stress state, already have those tools at hand. You don't want to be learning those while you're in that state.

But if you can know about these beforehand, have them at hand so that you can use them and be kind to yourself. I think we're often our own worst critics. So we will pull ourselves down more than anyone else would ever, ever do.

So be kind to yourself, forgive yourself and others around. I think it's a very freeing thing when we can forgive someone that's done some harm to us or slurred our name or gossip behind our back. And as long as they're still not doing it, to be able to forgive that person and even to become friends with them, that's the best way it can be.

So forgive yourself is huge, but forgive others as well. And let go of past mistakes or harsh words that have been spoken to us. That's a huge one for me.

And I think I can safely say this here because my father's not on Facebook, but when my mom died, he got together with a brand new partner who has never lied to me. I think she feels threatened, but I've always embraced her and never said a mean word about her, but she's felt free to freely swear at me and pull me down. And you know what?

That did affect me for a long time. I was on the cusp of madness. I feel a few times I felt like I couldn't stop crying.

I felt like I couldn't cope with life. But I had a paradigm shift one morning. It was a real aha moment where I just thought, oh, how much time do I need to spend around her?

How much time do I spend with my dad? So I'm thinking, OK, I was going up there a fair bit while my mom was dying, but I'm not up there that much anymore. So probably my dad would take up 5% of my life.

So why am I giving them or giving her? My dad was still sweet and kind, although sometimes she would talk into his head. But why am I giving her, this lady that doesn't like me, 95, 100% of my thoughts?

I'm thinking about her day and night. I can't stop crying because she's so nasty and mean when really she's nothing. She's a minuscule part of my life because she's a partner of my dad's, but she's not even my dad.

And I can still go up and see my dad and my dad hopefully can come and I can still talk to him on the phone. So that took away my huge angst where I was crying day after day after day. I felt like I couldn't cope.

I just felt like I was on the edge of just going totally under.

But that little paradigm shift totally changed me. So yeah, that was the best thing that could happen. I would strongly recommend if you are going through tough times, a psychologist or a counsellor, well-trained people.

When those thoughts overwhelm you and you don't feel like you can cope, you can't beat that. Or a really good friend that just really wants to hear and just can just sit with you. And sometimes just having someone understanding where you're coming from can be a huge help.

Cultivate good friendships. I think it's huge. Be there for one another and learn to listen.

Sometimes we can be our best friend's worst enemy. That can be at times. But hopefully that doesn't last for long and you can say sorry to one another and move forward.

And that's what a good friend is when you can just be there for one another through the tough times and the good. Play good music. How cool is that?

When I'm training my clients, we crank up the music. Don't do it so much for older people, but for my younger clientele my age, we crank it up. The girls love it.

They go, whoa, that hour went so quick. Yet they've had a great workout. So music can really change your headspace.

You know, I found that if I'm in a down place, just putting on some encouraging music, oh man, it just takes your head to another level. And you can bring yourself, well, I often can bring myself out of a dark place into a far better place with the songs that I'm playing. If this is one that sounds a bit kooky and weird, but do it.

Just try it out when you're a bit down. Dance like no one is watching. You would have seen that little saying around.

Be free to express yourself. You know, sometimes to a good song, I'll make up some moves on the spot. And suddenly you're dancing, you're throwing your arms around.

And that can change the whole way that you think and feel. So dance like no one's watching and feel free to do it. Express yourself.

Accept that you don't need to be perfect. No one is. I often have guilt.

I'm about to get my friend to take me through some guilt therapy. But I think every parent feels guilt to a degree. You don't feel like you've done enough and your kids are older and you kind of think I didn't tell them this.

I forgot to tell them that. Yet on the whole, you've done a great job.

But for some of us, and I think actually for many parents, particularly with small kids, you will feel guilt. You just feel guilt because that's what we do as mums. We feel guilty.

We didn't do enough.

We probably could have done this more. We could have done that more. We could have said this.

I would love to.

But this is one thing I didn't do with my kids, but I'm doing it with my grandkids. So watch out, grandkids. You've got this in store.

I saw a while back this young girl or I've actually seen a two or three posts of this where they stand their child in front of the mirror and go, I am enough. I am. I love me.

I love my mum and dad. I love everyone. I even love those unlovable people.

And they look at themselves in the mirror and they are talking to themselves about how awesome they are. And I love that idea. So I didn't get to do it with my kids, but I will with my grandkids.

And I think we need to deal with guilt because guilt is something that will trip us up. And maybe when I've learned some tools on guilt, I'll do another Facebook Live and share with you what I've learned. Don't isolate yourself is huge.

Call someone up to go out for lunch or out for a drink. Don't isolate yourself because that can be more isolating. I think sometimes a problem or something that's going on in our life that's big becomes bigger.

It becomes bigger than Ben Hur, like it was with my dad's partner. When we think on it and mull over it and mull over it again and think on it and we let it take over this 90, 100% of our thoughts when it should be reduced to a smaller part of our thoughts if we were thinking clearly. And a friend or somebody good, a good psychologist can help you do that.

So don't isolate yourself.

The last four pillars that we do at Spice Strong or SpiceFitness.com, we actually talk about restoring. Restoring is important. As you work your body, you need to give it time out. Because people can have addiction to the gym and they will go to the gym every day and maybe go to two or three classes.

I saw that in my own gym. I saw people that didn't know how to pull back. They just needed to be there for every class that was going on.

They were addicted and that's not a good thing. So you don't want to become addicted. So you need time out.

You need time where you don't work out in a day. So at least give yourself two or three days in the week where you don't need to work out. Maybe just go for a nice walk.

We need to restore. There was one lady in my gym that decided that she was on this fitness strength quest. So she came and trained out with us three times a week.

But the other days and on some of the days she was coming to us, she was going up and down hills, pounding the pavements. And she actually came to a place because she way overdid it. She came to a place where her whole body just broke down and she could barely walk out the door.

So she way overdid it. We did advise her to cut back. She said, no, I'm not going to.

And I think what was not good for her at the time, she was restricting whole poly of her food as well. So she didn't have food on board. I don't think restrictions are a good thing because you don't have fuel on board.

So making sure you take time out to restore that stretching or restore your mind. So there's a bit of an overlap with the two. And in fact, believing and restoring overlap as well.

So both of these are overlap. I love things like retreats because you can go to retreats and you can have time out. Most women that come to our retreats will tell me I've come to the retreat because I just needed time out.

I'm busy with work. I'm busy with kids. I'm busy with so much.

I barely get time to breathe. And what's good about retreats? Do you know what?

You don't have any housework to do. You don't have kids to look after. Hopefully they're being cared for safely by someone else.

But what is good about restore is that you get to take time out just for you and smell the roses and do whatever you want to do. And just be. Just be.

Just think on life. Just be. And there's nothing better than that.

It's a wonderful thing. So restoring is important. And you don't have to go to retreats to do that.

Quite a few of my clients also. So they just talk about just how good they feel and they would come back to the next one. But you may take time out walking out in the bush or a beach or riding a bicycle.

My time out is getting on my bike. I feel the wind going through my ears. Sometimes it's warm.

But when you ride a bicycle, I've learned the wind gets very chilly. So sometimes it's very chilly wind. But I love the fact that I can stop my bike wherever by stream or whatever and just sit and be.

And I love that. It restores me. It restores my soul.

It just feels great. And I come back feeling revitalized. And if I was feeling a bit down before, it might sound like I'm feeling down all the time.

I'm not down too often. But when I am, boy, it does help. And the other thing I just love is going camping.

Camping for me is like, woo, along with my good friend Simone. We will go camping a fair bit in summer. And it is divine.

It is just taking the cobwebs out of my head, allowing myself. I tell all my clients, don't contact me. Don't want to hear from anyone.

I sometimes let them still meet together and train together without me there. Or I'll have put another trainer in my place. But camping is great.

I just restore beautifully. I come back very refreshed back to home. Camping and taking time out allows me to take time just to think about my life and where I'm at and just breathe.

When I'm camping or when I'm taking time out, I just sit there and I feel just all the beautiful things about life just coming down upon me. And I love to reflect on the good things in my life because that's something we often don't do. We let things that are not good things come at us like I did yesterday when that unexpected bill came.

And yet it was a minor in the whole scheme of things. Really, it was a minor. And so by taking time out, you've got time to just reflect on all the wonderful things.

Gratitude. I've talked on this before, but gratitude, being thankful for the fact that I can talk to you here. I'm alive.

I'm breathing. I don't need to have nasal prongs up my nose. I can walk.

I can talk. I can lift a weight. I can do the monkey bars.

Hello. There's so much to be thankful for the fact I went on my bike this morning. I had a wonderful one hour ride and I saw birds flying around in the air.

The bay was so still and gentle. There were no waves. It was like a mirror.

It was beautiful. So I'm very thankful for that. And you know what?

It does make those bad things much less important. So gratitude, stretching. Always make sure to do some stretching every week because particularly as we get older, we get tighter.

Our muscles get tighter. And yeah, we just need to be able to stretch.

I stretch after every session. I know some people don't. And it's mainly for those areas that are tight.

I even learned a new way to stretch in bed this morning. It was pretty cool. So I'm always learning new things.

So I had a tight hip. So I made a fist. I made a fist and then I put it under my hip and I pressed down with it.

I was like, oh, that's a relief. So I even did this restore in bed this morning before I got up to go for my bike ride. So that's something you can be doing.

So plan your next time out and just do it. So if in a week's time you think, you know what? There's no reason I can't do what Cherie said today.

Let's go camping. The weather's nice at the moment. Go ahead.

Make the date. Do it. Keep to it.

Don't let anything stop you. Just make the time and go do it. Sleep is hugely important.

Something I think as a chef worker for many years as a nurse, my sleep is not the best, but I do try and make it work for me. And not all of us will need the same amount of sleep. I get annoyed when people say, sleep, make sure you sleep.

Well, not all of us sleep well. My friend has gone to a sleep specialist before. You may need to do that if your sleep's really bad.

Things like a warm bath. I love to foam roll before I get into bed. And last night for the first time for months, I listened to my soul time app, my calmness app.

And it was, oh, oh, so refreshing. I'd already foam rolled.

So I already felt refreshed there. So I just, I restored my soul before I went to bed. It was wonderful.

Do something for you that makes you happy and contented.

It could be that you have wanted to learn to do art. So learn to paint. Go along to a learn to paint course and learn how to do it.

And if that's something that you love doing, keep doing it. And be around people who make you laugh. Laughter is like a wonderful medicine.

It is like a medicine. It does the same thing. So take a chill pill rather than taking a chill pill.

Learn to laugh. It's a good thing.

And I just wanted to just state that I know what it's like to be totally out of balance.

When I ran my bricks and mortar gym, so Spice Health and Fitness was in a big shopping center, well, small shopping center compared to the most of Australia. And I was in there sometimes from six in the morning all through the day. I didn't come out for the sunshine.

I couldn't. And I was there till sometimes eight or nine at night till we started to close partway in the day for an hour so I could have lunch out in the sunshine. But I was in there for five years.

And I look back on my time now when we closed down that facility because they wanted more rent of us. And we decided that we weren't going to pay more rent. We're already paying quite an exorbitant amount of rent.

So I now train from a home studio and from several halls. But while I was there, I knew that things were out of balance. I knew that I was not doing anything I wanted to do.

That was when my mom was dying. I could barely find time to get up to her. But I was not going camping, five years of not going camping, not doing anything that gave me enjoyment for five whole years.

So when we closed down that facility and I came out, I actually was lost for a bit because my whole identity was tied up with the bricks and mortar in this shopping center. And yeah, my whole identity was in that place. So I felt groundless.

I felt like I didn't have a place in life anymore. But slowly the wheels started to turn and I started to balance my life up where I started to bike ride. I started to go camping.

I started to do things that actually gave me joy. I mean, I got joy in my gym as well. But now what is good is I run a gym only when I have clients.

I'm not there all day. And I actually can do stuff in between that actually make me feel like an amazing woman. I feel great.

So when I go on my bike ride like I did this morning, I came back like, whoa, do I feel fantastic. I feel great. I could never have done that while I was in there.

At the time, I didn't know I was so unbalanced, but unbalanced I was.

If you looked at my four main areas, like this kind of four main areas you can put your balance in, mine was all for work. Work, work, work, work, work, work, work. It was all work and work took over my life day and night.

I barely got, I only got home, had a dinner, got to sleep and back in the gym in the morning taking people and they were, it didn't make my day. You know, when I heard people going, Sheree, you have totally transformed my life or people would cry when they got to our desk and go, oh my gosh, I'm terrified of being here, but I know I need to be here. And I was able to gently guide them through their first session in our gym.

That was, that was awe inspiring. That will, it will be five years of my life that I will never leave behind because I'm thankful for every single person that I was able to impact. And I do care for people.

I've got a very caring, nurturing nature. And so I was able to care for every single person that came in and I, I love them all. But you know, it came to a place where it wasn't healthy for me.

And, um, and I'm in a much healthier state now because I've got work. I've got, um, I've got my, my enjoyment. So if you look, look at all the four pillars, most of the time I've got them good on the odd time, uh, I don't, but on the whole, my new nutrient is pretty good.

My nutrients. Um, so yeah, make sure that what is that called? Uh, nourish.

I nourish my body. Yes. And sometimes I, I have, um, odd things, but that's all right on the whole.

I nourish it. I keep my body incredibly strong. So it is a strong body.

And, uh, yeah, I'm getting impressed sometimes with what this 57 year old body can do. Woohoo. It's pretty cool.

And then I also, I take time out. I go camping these days because I can, I'm not stuck in a bricks and mortar place where I can't go camping and restore myself. And I also believe, so I have great belief in, um, in what I can do.

And I've had wonderful people that have come alongside me. I think some of my main rah-rah people who believe in me are my clients. They, you know, who else does a job where they can get, um, an applause at the end of a strength training session and all the girls are red faced and exhausted, but they all clap me and go, Sheree, another awesome session.

I mean, I am blessed because I've got brilliant clients. Um, I'm in a great place and look, I'm not always in this great place. As I said, the day before I wasn't, but guess what?

Today's a new day and I am. And so I would like to encourage all of you out there just winding up the balance is trying to maintain these four pillars equally. If you can, we're never going to be 100% equal, but if you know you're out of balance in one place, come over to the other area where you know that you don't have enough of and give to some of that.

Okay. We can't be totally unbalanced. You, you start to lose the plot.

When you find yourself out of balance, just start to make those daily decisions, which take you to the place that you need to be. And those daily decisions you take become a lifestyle change. They become a habit, which becomes a huge lifestyle change.

You know, Rome wasn't built in a day. So whatever we do today is not going to equate in where we want to be tomorrow. But you will be surprised in three weeks, in a month, in six months, in a year, in five years where you are if you start today.

So I just like to encourage you to try and be balanced.

And yeah, just start to make some small moves today. And so, so I'm just Cherie from spicefitnessst.wpengine.com. I'm glad you could join me today.

If you thought you'd need more balance in the area of being a strong body and having strength training, go to spicefitnessst.wpengine.com. We run our Spice Strong program on there for around $5 a week. It's an awesome program.

It takes you through strength training. You can do at home with nothing more than a fitball or a band or a weight. That's all you need.

And you don't need any of those or all of those because we do body weight work. That's a well, but I'd love to see you on there. I'm really all about you achieving stuff.

It's not about me. And that's why we've made it so affordable because I'd like to see you in there. Being able to achieve some of those dreams if you wanted to be strong.

See you next time. See you next week when I interview, hopefully I can still get her one of our clients for working out what it is that she has found about getting older and how her life has totally transformed. See you there.