Episode 98 - What To Do When Your Busy Life Is Sabotaging Your Wellness Success With Fitness Expert Andrea Marcellus - Part 1 (Full Transcript)

This is a full transcript of the Nirvana Sisters podcast Episode 98

Editor’s Note: Please know that this podcast transcript is automatically generated and may contain minor errors such as typos and word switches. For more information, be sure to listen to the podcast here.

Unknown: 0:06

Welcome to Nirvana sisters podcast where we take the intimidation out of well being and beauty to help you achieve your highest state your nirvana. We are sisters in law and your hosts. I'm Amy Sherman. And I'm Katie Chandler. So let's get into some real conversation Welcome back to the show Nirvana sisters family. We are sitting down today with Andrea Marcellus, a Los Angeles based fitness expert and life strategist for over 30 years Andrea is the founder and CEO of and life it's a life maximization brand with a mission to help busy people prioritize their physical and mental well being with minimal effort and sacrifice. We all need that offering unique. So she offers uniquely engaging solutions to both individual consumers and large scale organizations. And life is scaling Andrea's personalized, proven wellness methods via its proven shape up body and mind program. Live and online events. The enlive total fitness lifestyle up and connect workday, wellbeing video library. Andrea is also the author of the top rated book the way in five winning strategies to lose weight, get strong and lift your life. So we have so many questions for Andrea she Aye. Aye. Well, both of us came across Andrea on Tik Tok. And she has the most amazing content and gives such great tips and strategies and those little brief tick tock snippets. So we're so excited to have you here. Welcome to the show, Andrea. Thank you. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. Before we get started. Let's go ahead and kick it with a nirvana of the week. Amy, do you want to do you want to start? Yes. So So I guess there's been a few Nirvana's this week, but I'll say one, okay, so my Nirvana this week was an exciting one. And it's actually something Katie and I can't really talk about yet, but it's coming soon. We just signed a contract on something really exciting that we will unveil soon, but that was definitely one of my Nirvana's this week. So super excited to share all with our Nevada sisters family soon. Yeah, agreed. What about one of my Nirvana's as well, it can't wait till we can spread that news. It's very exciting. The secret secret secret nirvana? Yeah, so that was a highlight. But I had another Nirvana this this morning. We're having a some friends over for dinner tomorrow. And for the first time in I don't know how many years. I cooked for hours without a child at my feet without my husband saying I need this without having to like multitask or be somewhere I made. The time. I think that was the key why it was so enjoyable and relaxing. Because I said, I'm all I'm doing on Friday morning is cooking might be Forgan Yan for Saturday night. That's what I did. It was very relaxing. And I enjoyed it. That's amazing. So that was mine. What about you, Andrea? Oh, nice. I love that. I have a couple one, my son got 100 on this math test that he had taken twice and yay. Even though we do it, and it's like, you know, when you're a parent, and you're trying to help your kid, you know, achieve something that's hard for them. It's it was pretty cool. So that was one. And the other is I and we are having friends over tonight to play dominoes. I love playing games. I love fun. And I can't I can't tell you when the last time we've had friends, like without realizing it. It's just been a very busy time. And then, you know, sometimes you just don't make plans. So we made some plans and I've been excited about it all week. Yeah, that's so fun games like game night. That's great. I haven't done that in years. And it really is a such a great time. So yeah, that's, that's exciting. It'd be a fun Friday night. It sure will. Alright, well, let's kick it off. It's funny that you say that just really quickly because I have been hearing about this lately. But my son, I have two boys, Andrea 13 and 16. And my 13 year old is going to a party tonight. And it's like a murder mystery whodunit party, and they all get dressed up and like it's this little thing and a friend of mine at Worlds same thing. She did something like that a few weeks ago, and I was like, I love these fun interactive parties. Yeah. That's very Yeah, it's a great thing. Well, you know, it gets you out of your head. That's the whole thing like these and we'll talk a lot about stress relief today. But like that's, that's part of it. Like just even knowing oh my gosh, all I need to focus on right now is Mexican train. That's amazing. You know if you can fully focus, the good. That's really fun if you're like alright, well let's get into it because we have a lot to ask you. And first thing that that we are trying Amiens You're trying to understand. So you're a fitness expert. But it's not just fitness as an exercise and working out and going to the gym, you encompass the whole thing, the the mind, the body, the nutrition, the health, all of that, how did that start? And just tell us a little bit about about that. Yeah, because fitness is actually more about your mind than your body. That is what I've come to understand. That's the, you know, the spoiler alert moment of this whole thing I started in exercise. And you know, that's, I would say, that's truly my gift. People love working out with me. And that's what people would come for. Because I don't know, if you came and worked out with me today, I would come up with stuff I have never done before watching you move, and we would just make up things, and I'd see what your body is good at. And I'd also see where there are areas of challenge, I can just see it and I can make things up really fast. And on the fly. And that's like my gift. So that's what I love. But what I came to understand, starting out just as a trainer, essentially in a class instructor was wow, this is only a very small part of the equation. And really, it's our relationship with food. And, you know, I really the interesting thing is I spent the first 16 years of it's going to be 31 year career in in July 1 16 years doing everything you and everybody else thinks they need to do to you know, be fit. And I was an actress, I wasn't even supposed to be doing this. I went to NYU for acting, I was supposed to be a star. So this was just an artist. Thanks so much. It was just so different than what I thought. But it's awesome. You know, and it's, it's interesting. I, I was trying so hard to be super fit and back. Now this is 30 years ago. So that was like the Kate Moss era, you weren't even allowed to be like a normal human. And the harder and harder. I tried to be lean, the more weight I gained. And part of it was stress. And part of it was a really bad training strategy, which was overtraining and workout lifestyle, I call it and not really developing a really good relationship with food. I mean, it was terrible. And at a certain point, I didn't even gain 25 pounds. It was like muscle, I didn't need a layer of flab that would never go trying to maintain that workout lifestyle. A lot of people get into this rut and it was somewhere in my early 30s It was about 33 I had a celebrity client coming in. And I remember staring at the wall and going you know, I was putting together the calories in calories out equation thinking what we're going to do with this guy and I remember going this doesn't work. Like honest to goodness, this doesn't work. It's it. I mean, I'm to where I'm at, which is not even to my personal goal white knuckling it. All my clients are white knuckling it, like and it's it's just there's got to be a better way. And so what I did was start guinea pigging myself with a kinder gentler approach to the entire thing and developing a really great friendship with food. Through that very much a less is more process. And then I started introducing it to my clients who would be game for going a different route. I mean, nobody was talking about this short workouts, workouts interspersed between the day and eating all the foods, not eliminating anything unless you have a medical reason, and really working on bringing joy into your life. And the people that would do that they shrunk pretty quickly too. And before I knew it, I was starting to write a book and I was starting to codify it into a methodology and then that's become what what I do now, that's really amazing because I can see how it's all stress related. Like you were saying you're overtraining and huge stress on the body. You're overly focused on calories, that's a stress on you mentally and emotionally. You're you know, you're like people starve themselves. You're thinking about food and you have that mental stress. Right? So I get why I use the you know, it's stress, it's directly related to stress. What would you say because I've seen some of your your tips and and also some of the some of the like the little things that you talk about like food soothing and things like that. Let's talk let's talk about that. Food soothing. Yeah. So I mean and this is the really interesting thing and why I talked about my program is called the shape of body and mind program and it really I would almost call it mind and body because it comes it starts with your brain. So when we think about food, soothing, and I you know, and I just want to say right from the get go. The only reason I know anything about all of this is because I personally We know it, I've done everything. I mean, I done all this like and I, How did I manage to get myself to stop? It wasn't from some, you know, diet plan or meal plan or willpower certainly wasn't. It was behavioral changes. And you have to understand like, Well, where are those behaviors coming from? So in terms of food soothing, you have your vagus nerve, and it you know, runs from your brain, it connects. Basically, think of it this way, in layman's terms, there's your jaw, your lungs, your gut, so you have a gut feeling about something that's for real. When your body you're like, out of nowhere, you are kind of stressed out and you just go, you take a big deep breath. That's your vagus nerve, like showing up for you trying to get you to drop a notch trying to help your central nervous system, you know, take you down a notch because you're you're too keyed up and your jaw. Think about this when we were babies, you know, what did we have we had a pacifier there, that nerve in your jaw, it will help to soothe you. So now as adults, what do we do? We sit in front of Netflix, and we chew and chew and chew. So it's like, well, if these are our soothing mechanisms, like well, how can we use them to our advantage? Or how can we, you know, stay away from this mechanism of using our jaw to chew and use something else, because we're not going to stop the stressors from coming into our life, we have to get better at how we respond to them. So what I do is, I help people develop one in the moment stress management strategies where we take anxious energy, worried energy triggered energy, anger, and we shift that it's just energy energy is energy, right? So you can take that energy. And if you have some tools and some practice, you can quickly shift it into positive energy and energy that goes towards a positive purpose in your life, it's pretty cool. So you can always think of something that's triggering you is actually an opportunity to go get something done. And then we work on teaching your brain not to over respond to stress so much in the first place. And then that keeps you at a hormonal advantage. So not only is it easier to lose weight, if you need to do that, but then to maintain it very, very important. So it's, this is where calories in calories out fails, that that whole or macro count take or that whole approach, they fail because they don't take into account your humanity. The fact is, everything is running from your brain, and your brain is operating off of feelings. And you know, feelings aren't a math equation, you're not a math equation. And you know, those approaches do not take into account, you know, even more basic things like hydration, sleep, if you're in laws or in town, if your dog if you just want a prize, you know, like if you're at your wedding, and even if celebrations you see what I mean. So you've got to take your whole humanity into account and how that's impacting on your brain. And then how the brain is responding hormonally to that. I love that whole philosophy. Can you give us an example of like you were saying, if you're stressed strategies to you know, turn that around, like, give us examples of what that looks like, Oh, I'd love to, here's one of my best that I give people quickly all the time that anybody could do. So your brain, your attention and your brain, you it operates like a flashlight, right? So you have different brain centers, and you can only have certain things on or else the flashlight goes in the other direction. So think of it that way. When you're triggered, you have this amygdala in your brain, it is only triggered by one of two things threat or scarcity. So in our modern times fear city is I'm not going to have enough time energy or funds. And threat is I'm going to look stupid, or I'm unlovable it every you know, I'm going to I'm whittling this down to just I'm gonna look bad, right you get it's an ego thing. So when something like that happens, that amygdala starts pumping out adrenaline and cortisol, the cortisol, we all know that's going to create a problem with insulin that we all that's been talked about a lot everybody listening to this gets the concept of why that's not awesome. But the adrenaline becomes the issue the adrenaline, when you don't have a lion to run from our burning building, you know, and you have all this adrenaline and makes you snappy, it makes you moody and makes you make quick decisions that will soothe you in the short term immediately, but they often go against your long term goals. So the key is to short circuit, this amygdala, that when when you're triggered, and it's starting to send out what are designed to be protective hormones. This is designed to protect you to help you survive, you know, but you can teach your brain I got it, I got it. One of the simplest ways is to combine a balanced move with breath in some sort of coordination. So I literally just have people stand on one foot and just lift your heel towards your tush and then put it back down and And then just lifted up and put it back down and your hands are in front of your desk, your abdominals are deep, your shoulder blades are sliding down your back, you have the best posture, you can and you're just lifting your leg up and down, lift the heel up and down. And then we add the breath into it, and you'll take it, two counts up, and four counts down, two counts up, four counts down. That's all we're doing. So what's happening here, we're activating the hippocampus, the cerebellum and the prefrontal cortex. When those things are active, and the flashlight is in that direction, guess what has no light on it whatsoever, the amygdala, the brain cannot multitask. So in that little moment, what it takes your brain to accomplish, just lifting your heel towards your tush and putting it back on the floor with a coordinated breath means you can't be worrying, the body cannot be shooting out adrenaline and cortisol, it's busy doing something else. And in those short moments, we give ourselves enough that we can actually break away from that feeling. Now we're down a notch, you can restart your day, you know, from a different place. And over time, and with practice, we train our brain not to overstate but rover respond to stress so much in the first place. So that is one of the simplest ways that's fascinating. Yeah, I'm gonna be trying that later. For sure. Yeah, and then you said something before, which caught my attention, which was, because we're all guilty of this, but I definitely am of like, this food soothing, and like, you know, watching a show, or even like, you know, just that the habit of you know, when we used to which no one goes to movies anymore, but go to the movies and get popcorn, you know, it's just like that habit? What is a good strategy to get your mind off of like, those cravings? Are those like, oh, I need to have something sweeter? Oh, I need it. Or I need to eat while I'm watching TV. And you're not even hungry. But it just makes you feel better for some reason. Like, do you have any good tips there? Sure do. That's the whole method I teach. Because you can't, you can't, you can't get your mind not to do something. Things don't exist in the negative they only exist in the positive. So what do you do? What you do is you teach yourself and this is what I do with people individually, it's very individual. But what is the schedule of eating that is best for your body in the energy appropriate portions, these portions of the key? Figuring out what kind of amount of beneficial fats and proteins you need throughout the day and where I'm headed with this. And especially because it's usually night food, soothing, you know, we all everything like air quotes, good during the day, and then I lose it. Or on the weekends, what you have to do is make it so it is not a matter of willpower, that literally your stomach is full, that literally you can't eat another bite. And it's hard to trust because what people do is they go, Well, I'm going to eat a lot tonight. So I don't eat all day. Well, this is actually the opposite strategy of what you need to be doing. We need to be eating regularly throughout the day. High quality foods you need to give yourself social foods at night is what I call them, they might be less beneficial, but they feed our soul. And the afternoon snack is the absolute key if your afternoon snack includes a protein and or a beneficial fat. And it's just it can be very small, but it's something in that afternoon, so you do not go into dinner hungry, then the dinner won't open the floodgates for you and you will have been satisfied all day. And if you do this day after day, it only takes about three days or so you will find that at night when you sit in front of TV or something. You're actually like, wow, I'm good. Like you can have a little something, you have to be a little bit mindful for half a second. But what what actually happens is, is if you do this, you know day after day, and then a week or two goes by it actually becomes physically uncomfortable to just graze grazing is the enemy. And but you can't just go I'm not going to graze that's white knuckling it again, we have to practices in place where that is not your preference anymore. And the best way I know is making it so that the way you live is that if my stomach is too full, if I graze I become overfall it is actually physically uncomfortable. And I stop you you were in my head this past week with your afternoon snack being a protein and a good fat and I've been doing it all week and I did I do notice a difference. And the other thing also at what was I didn't see that one. Oh the on tick tock. Yeah, what was the protein that I was going to ask? Like, what are good, like, examples of what are your favorites? Yes, yeah. What are the good fats that you're gonna have with some protein? Oh my gosh, there's so many right. But here's here's a easy way to do it. I think what did you have for dinner last night? Generally people have like some I don't know there's soy protein and some vegetables. Just eat a little of that. If you don't have it if it's too hard to put something together but like, you know, a quarter of an avocado was something avocado is one of the best foods in the whole world. I have a recipe on my and Life app called chia seed pudding. This is a life changer for most people. Like, I can't wait to go to Starbucks and tell them you need to sell this. Yeah, sorry, I literally just came up with this one day, like, you know, and like, it's the one everybody loves, because you can make so many variations of it. But you're getting your omega three fatty acids. And you're, you know, it's just absolutely delicious, just a few bites of that. But truly, it could be anything, often, I will just throw an egg in a pan with some olive oil and some spinach and the eggs on one side, that spinach on the other side, it takes what 94 seconds to make that. And that's my afternoon snack, you got to think real food. And if it's coming in a package walk away, there is something fresh in your refrigerator that is going to take you less like no time. And again, you know, if real food is the key, real food is the path, not only to, you know, if you have to lose weight, you know, and to be well and to, you know, to feel lean and strong. But it's the path to longevity, we're getting nutrition, we're relying on these bars, or a protein powder or something. And I mean, I'm 50. So you know, collagen powder might, you know, into your life at a certain point when your protein meats go higher. But this is not what we want to rely on. You want to like every opportunity you can to get something from nature in your body that's going to nutritionally level you up, that's what you want to do. Yeah, that's a really good reminder. Because I definitely fall in the camp sometimes, like get in the phase of like, I need protein, I'll have a bar that has 20 grams of protein, or I'll make a shake with protein powder just because I feel like I need protein. But it's yes, it's much better to eat real food. It's just I think, like us, you know, and I love your content too, because it's for busy. Women like all of us and like just having these small ideas of what you could make like the egg and spinach or avocado and something else just to have those like ideas in your head almost makes like, it's just like the thinking about what you're going to eat is worse than the actually like doing it. It's just sometimes you're like, wait, what should I have for my snack 100%. So that's like, literally in my program, what I no brainer for people is okay, let's come up with a go to foods list for you of things. And you know, and then like on munchie days, one of the best things to do is like if you like coconut, get the unsweetened coconut flakes, and put them in a small ramekin in the front. And I put some blueberries there and I put some of that and now I'm not a grazer, I'm not a fan of grazing. But sometimes you open the fridge and some you grab something and we don't want to be doing this. But if you those things take long that takes a long time to chew, you put them together. Wow, we just got like a ton of antioxidants, anti inflammatories, beneficial fats, and we're actually satisfied for a while walk away. You know, like, that's, it's just trying to strategize. So that's what you have to do for yourself. Like that's one that works for me. But the important thing is not what Andrew Marcellus eats, the important thing is for you to figure out, what do I like. And then you'll stick with it. This is a really interesting thing. If I can just make one big long run on sentence paragraph. There's a great study in my book The Way in about, about how your brain has to like your food. Another reason diets do not work. There's this great study called the milkshake study. And this woman at I think it was Johns Hopkins, she tested these folks they came in and basically they tested the ghrelin in their stomach. Ghrelin is the hormone in your stomach that tells you I'm hungry, go find food. And when you start to eat, then leptin comes out in your brain. And leptin is the hormone your portion controlling hormone. That's the one that's like, hey, yeah, that's enough. Okay, walk away. So we want a really good relationship between these two hormones. We want a very, very loud conversation happening where they can hear each other really well. And this is one of the reasons not for grazing because that messes all that up. But in this study was incredible. She brought people in, she tested the grill and level she gave them a shake, one chocolate shake, that was about 600 calories, it said on the label and it was called decadence or something and she tested the ghrelin level in their stomach. And then they she tested it again after they after they had some and then two weeks later, they came back. And she did the same thing, trust the grill in their stomach, gave them a shake. And this one was called like since ABA or something like that. I'm saying it wrong, but it was like a diet meal replacement chocolate shake, you know, and it was like, I don't know 150 200 calories. So they think they're, they're having a diet shake and teach test the grill and level in their stomach. I'm gonna get this number a little bit wrong, but the point where we made it was either the Gremlin dropped either three times more or six times more with That decadent chocolate shake, then the shake, that was the diet shake, right? And when ghrelin drops, that means leptin shooting out telling you to stop eating. It's really important. So now here's the thing. They were the same exact shake. So what wow, people thought of the show, oh, that's a tournament when they were satisfied. And this is why I insist people like their food. And if you're dieting, it's not going to work. If you're doing what you should be doing, instead of what's bringing you joy, then it's just not going to work. And that's why it's crucial that everything like people ask me, Do you have a meal plan? No, I have to meet you. Or, you know, my app tries to help you figure it out for yourself. But you know, it's like, No, we got to find out what works for you. It's so true. So I saw this on your content as well, earlier in the week. And you're in my head. This was, I want to say Tuesday night, we had a snow day. So our kids were at home. And just it was a long day, we ordered pizza, never ordered pizza, but we ordered pizza. Kids love it. I am lactose intolerant, so I don't really eat it. And if I do eat it, I enjoy it. And I do it maybe like once a year. And you were in my head. And I thought, You know what, just have a slice of pizza with your salad, your salad with the grilled chicken. That's what I would normally eat. And I had a slice of pizza. And I was so satisfied. And I was so happy. And I was cool. Like that was that that was all I needed afterwards, I was good. Normally, if I had, you know, just a grilled chicken salad, I might want to go an hour later. And like I'm digging in the cabinets for something to satisfy that itch. I guess that's exactly what happens. And see, and we all experienced that you're talking about something we've all experienced. And so, you know, when I was coming up with this methodology, I was like, I'm just gonna give it what would happen. If I just had what I know it sounds so like, I mean, that's the holy grail to be able to do that. And I think I mean, I definitely have problems with grazing, I'm more of a grazer than like a meat eater. So like, I've been trying not to do that. But it's really difficult. Like, yeah, and that's the thing, not that I'm against therapy or people thinking about their stuff. But I find practices, best practices that walk us into better behaviors, and that just solve the problem, or kind of better way to go than wasting too much time delving into your why? How about, fix it, you know, and I think a lot of us get bogged down in the intellectual trying to understand ourselves. And I know personally, for me, just diving into solutions. And actually, you know, when you talk about stress management, you talk about chronic stress, and you talk about things like that. And I mean, I've tried all sorts of solutions in my life, but I find things that combine breath and movement, and this is actually studied to be far more effective than say, Talk therapy. at helping you overcome these moments, and I'm interested in people, you know, I'm interested in less cortisol, I'm interested in hormonal balance for what people come to me for, but you can kind of apply this to anything where, you know, you're having, you know, I, in my program, I even go into dispute resolution with your partner, your roommates, like things like that, you know, like you have to strategize this stuff. And it's like, well, how do you get to the solution faster? How do we get to faster solutions, and just being solution oriented in general, and mostly, you know, all of this is about embracing who we are rather than, like always keeping this carrot stick out there and who we want to be like, how does your life actually operate? Let's like, let's, you know, talk about food and exercise in terms of how your life actually operates. And I bet we'll get a better solution not be wishing that you were like somebody else, you know, and I think I think that's really important to always come back to, you know, who are you and maybe stop overthinking it. Maybe just try the solution on first Yeah, and then go back and and then go back and look at your stuff. I'm not saying don't look at your stuff, but I'm saying why not look at your stuff from a place where you feel better and more confident to begin with. I love that. Thanks for listening to Nirvana sisters. For more information on this episode, check out the show notes please subscribe and leave us a review. also find us on Instagram at Nirvana sisters. If you loved what you just listened to or know someone that would please share it and tag us. Tune in next week for a fresh new episode of Nirvana sisters will continue to watch out for all things wellness so you don't have to. Bye.