Do you want to look and feel younger? Have more energy? This week, I am talking with Erin Nielsen about her Youth Method and how she by making small changes to her life, has recovered from Rosacea and looks much younger than her age.
What you will learn:
- How to eat for a youthful look
- The best exercise for youth
- How to lower stress and why it is important for feeling youthful
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3 Steps To Look And Feel Younger – Transcript
Ari Whitten: Hey there, this is Ari Witten, and welcome back to the Energy Blueprint Podcast.
Today, I have with me Erin Nielsen who is the founder of the Youth Method. Erin’s been a physical therapist for the last 20 years, she’s also a certified health coach. Her passion, is really all about helping people, especially women, look and feel great as they get to be 40, 50, and 60 and beyond. And through nutrition fitness and mindset, and with a huge heart for others, her mission is to inspire and empower others to live their best life in a healthy vibrant and youthful body.
So with no further ado, let’s get straight into the interview.
Welcome Erin thank you so much for joining me.
Erin Nielsen: Thank you for having me.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, so can you just talk a bit about your background, and what what made you so passionate around looking and feeling ageless?
Erin Nielsen: Yes, so I have been a physical therapist for 20 years, believe it or not, I still can’t believe it. And through all of those years as a PT, and honestly through my own struggles as I started to reach my 30s and I’m in my 40s which is crazy to believe.
But with with my own struggles and working with patients for 20 years, I started to see a lot of pain that was occurring, that shouldn’t be occurring, just because a lot of people didn’t have the right information. And I didn’t have the right information at the time.
So, people were in a lot of pain, they had low energy, they were
Coming in and having that hip and knee
Replacement at really young ages, and I’m like there’s just got to be a better way .
I was able to help them after the fact, you know, when they’re already coming to me in pain. But what my heart really started telling me I needed to do, was how can we make this not have to happen in the first place? So they’re not having to go through all the suffering? I had some of my own issues of pain and skin issues, energy issues all that was occurring once I hit my 30s.
As a physical therapisti love research, so I just started researching more in alternate things that we could do to, hopefully, prevent this from happening and I really got passionate about it’s kind of a scientific term called epigenetics. But really that’s just a fancy name for saying that how we eat, and how we move, and how we think, can really affect our bodies and how our genes express themselves.
So we can’t really change our genes but we can change what genes express themselves more than the others. And so, that’s the idea behind the fancy term epigenetics. Over that research and all of that time I started to make some of the changes around those three things. Moving, thinking, and eating the right things or the wrong things.
I started to make better choices and noticed huge changes in myself. My skin cleared up, i’d, actually, been diagnosed with rosacea and couldn’t fix it myself, couldn’t fix it with a dermatologist, and once I started eating these right foods, managing my stress, that are all things we’re talking about, my skin was like completely different, and my energy was completely different, and everything was completely different, and I had even started having some aches and pains to which I was getting nervous about. ”I would have to do physical therapy on my self now”.
Ari Whitten: Mm-hmm
Erin Nielsen: Once I started seeing them working with me, I started offering some, just kind of free, coaching to my patients along with the regular physical therapy, and told them what I was seeing within myself.
And then I started seeing the changes in them too. And so, I was like okay. This is amazing and this is why I have been so passionate abut it.because it’s been such a change in my life and a change in my patients lives, so…
Ari Whitten: Beautiful, I love that, so what… As far as as far as the specifics of your methods. What would you say are the top three things that are aging us?
Erin Nielsen: Yes. So, to kind of go back to the epigenetic thing it’s exactly that. So it’s most of us, because we’re taught the wrong things. We don’t move and don’t eat and don’t think in a way that is healing to our bodies.
Most of us, when we don’t know what we’re doing, or don’t have the knowledge of what we’re doing,
Do things that actually age us faster, because it’s increasing inflammation in our bodies. And inflammation, which I’m sure you know a lot about too, because you talk about energy a lot.
It’s one of the worst things for your body because it really destroys your body at the cellular level. So all of your cells. It could be your skin cells, which is why people age faster and look like they’re aging faster. But but at a deeper level it can it can um be destroying your cells on the inside – so you’re hurt and you know it can cause cancer, it can cause joint pain, all of the cells of your body can be affected by inflammation.
So if you’re not if you’re not diving in how you’re moving and how you’re eating and how you’re thinking in a positive way that’s what’s happening on the inside and you can’t see inflammation necessarily all the time so it’s it’s something that a lot of us don’t understand. And why I’m so passionate about teaching people to move, think and eat in a marketing way.
Because if you don’t you notice people that are not doing those things the way they should be. I was one of them for a while. People look older, you look more tired, you feel more tired, you have aches and pains, you have belly bloating, youhave all these things that can come along with it.
So, the good thing about it is you can’t change your genetic code, you can’t do anything like that, but you can really manifest your good genes so that you feel better, because it’s gonna help you age much more slowly.
You’re gonna look better feel better and everything’s just gonna be how you want it to be. So if you can nail all those things, in which I have some tips for later, it can make a huge difference in the way you feel and the way you look.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. So let’s let’s get into some of the specifics around that. So, what’s like what’s the number one thing the most important thing that people can start doing today to start looking and feeling younger
Erin Nielsen: Yeah. And that’s… The thing I love is, you can literally start today doing these actionable things and you will notice within a day or two, that you’re feeling better. And then, in like a week or two, you’re looking better.
So, my number one thing you can start today, because it’s the easiest thing to change and I will say don’t try to do all of it at once, cuz it can be a little overwhelming.
I always tell people to start with their nutrition. And that was one of the three things we talked about which is how you eat. And that can really affect your genes and the inflammation in your body.
Most people… There’s a lot of confusing information about there about eating and what is good and what is bad.
I just try to keep it really really simple for the people that I coach, and people that I mentor, is just to try to eat wholesome real foods. And one of the ways, I make that even easier is I have a thing that I say just remember the four Ps really. What are the four Ps? And so really what that is if you want to try to have some sort of protein which is the first P, and some sort of produce which is the second P, at every meal. Even your snacks.
And so those are what you want to include. What you want to exclude, or avoid, are the other two Ps which are packaged and processed foods. There are a small amount of packaged and processed foods that are coming out that are healthier. But for the majority most of them are sugar filled and have a bunch of ingredients that you don’t even know what they are.
So, those things like we were talking about before are not healing to your body. So again, you want to have protein and produce and avoid the packagaged and processed foods. And if you can do that, what’s really nice about that is you’re automatically reducing your sugar, cause if I lead with that if I tell people you have to stop eating sugar they look at me like I’m crazy.
So, if you tell them to eat the four Ps you can still have a lot of amazing delicious foods that taste sweet especially good fruits and it’s just an easier way to kind of ease people into eating the right way.
Ari Whitten: Yeah absolutely.
Erin Nielsen: Yeah, and you know, we all know that sugar is the ultimate kind of inflammation producer. Not only does it increase inflammation but it messes with your blood sugar, it messes with your insulin levels, all those things that are not good for our bodies
What I do tell people though is, once you start changing your nutrition, it can be a little overwhelming. So, just remember the four Ps. Remember that you do want to include some healthy fats just so you’re staying satiated and not really hungry.
Some healthy fat examples are, you know, olive oil which a lot of people know about, avocados, healthy nuts so things like that. And scourge once in a while on some like dark chocolate. And you know, many things like that. So that’s one of my biggest things that people could literally start today.
You could go to the store, try to avoid the middle parts of the store, which is where all the packaged and processed foods are, and try to stay in the perimeter of the store. And your skin, within a few days sometimes, clears up
Ari Whitten: Amazing. Yeah, I have to say, you know we we met several weeks ago in person
And I’m I’m very surprised to hear that you previously had rosacea. Because, having seen you in person your skin is beautiful, your skin is perfect. And so I’m like, normally when you see even people who used to have really intense rosacea they sometimes they have like kind of pits and scarring and still kind of inflammation
Yeah, and you don’t, so…
Erin Nielsen: Yes, and I think that was one of the things, as I always had really great skin growing up, and I like I said it wasn’t until my 30s. So, when I started getting these blemishes it was like I was it was very upsetting and so very shortly after that is when I started researching and all the other stuff I talked about that was going on in my life and my patients lives. So luckily it didn’t go on as long as some people let it go on. Because I was like, I’m not having this, you know, so yeah.
Thank goodness but it makes such a huge difference the nutrients you feed your body, the effect it has on your skin it’s it’s really it really does come down to the inflammation. It just calms everything down and you… People just start to glow. And people that do my program… That’s one of the things they are always like. I can’t believe how much younger I look and my I feel like my skin is glowing. So you just kind of glow from with it from within.
Ari Whitten: Nice, so do you have a, you know, some on the theme of inflammation still and nutrition, do you have any other kind of…once somebody has that foundation that you just talked about in place, are there any other maybe one or two other tips that you could give, nutrition or supplement wise, that are really good anti-inflammatories.
Erin Nielsen: Yes, one of the things I tell people to eat a lot of is not eat a lot of, but take to take a fish oil
Supplement because I think that’s really beneficial for reducing inflammation. And I, I just tell people in addition to, that’s really that’s really, all I talk about the most is just eating that balanced the four Ps and then having that fish oil supplement are my favorite things. Because I think if you’re getting the correct amount of nutrients in your food, you shouldn’t have to have a ton of supplements that’s the way I look at it.
A lot of people have different views on that, but that’s where I feel like I have had my best health and where the people that I coach and mentor have their best health. So, those are my biggest things there.
You also want to kind of monitor your alcohol intake, or caffeine and take those types of things. But the other thing I think that’s really important, that I like to share with people, I work with a lot of women, and a lot of women have a lot of guilt around eating. And if they fall off the wagon, and you know indulge a little bit too much one of the things… I just like to say is it’s okay to mess up sometimes don’t beat yourself up because sometimes when that happens they’ll get on this vicious roller coaster of, ”Well I’m just gonna really binge or something like that.”
So I think it’s important to… Just like I said before, don’t try to do this all at once. You can’t be perfect all at
Once. But just if you can remember those few easy little steps, like the four Ps, healthy fats, and the fish supplement, you’re going to be doing amazing.
Ari Whitten: Beautiful. Now, do you recommend fish oil supplements over fresh seafood or do you have any guidelines around these?
Erin Nielsen: I always feel like the fresh seafood is the best. I feel like, anything you can get through real Whole Foods is going to be better in the long run and be better for your body and your cells for the absorption of the nutrients than the supplements.
But if you’re having trouble. Some people, unfortunately, don’t like fish and they won’t eat it. So for those people I definitely tell them to do.
Ari Whitten: Okay, do you have any recommended brands on on fish oil? Because I… From a lot of the research i’ve read, there’s a lot of brands that have been shown to contain oxidized fish oils, when they
Measure the peroxide content and stuff. I think on the neighborhood of 70 or 80 percent of the brands have shown like sky-high peroxide levels like way higher than they should be.
Do you do you have any particular brand that that you found that’s high quality?
Erin Nielsen:
I particularly take the Daily Energy supplement fish oil. I have been taking that a few years now and I can’t tell you what the exact… Research what you were just talking about but I can definitely do that get back to you.
Ari Whitten: On that, well I’m happy to send you the the studies on it if if you’re interested… But you know they this study didn’t break down specifically, which brands tested as the ones with high peroxide content and the ones that tested as not having high peroxide content. I was just kind of shocked to see that it was like 70 or 80 percent of the brands have yeah highly oxidized fish oils fatty acids in them.
Erin Nielsen: Have you found any that you like at all?
Ari Whitten: I, to be honest, I personally prefer krill oil because the astaxanthin content and it protects the fatty acids from from oxidation. So I I find that useful. But I am also aware that like there are certain brands of fish oil that I think are really produced in very, very high-quality ways. And are cold processed, and processed in the dark and they make sure to keep them very fresh to the time they hit the shelves.
So I think it’s possible to get good quality fish oil but I also think that the majority of the fish oil on the market is not good quality.
Erin Nielsen: Yeah and actually I think now that you’re saying that the one that I have downstairs, that i’ve been taking is a krill oil. So I can send a little picture on it for you so you can see.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, that’d be great.
Erin Nielsen: show the viewers too because I agree with you.
Ari Whitten: Okay, and then for people listening on it, and on the show notes page for this episode i’ll just put a link to those things. I’ll put a link to the research on this, and maybe we can find some between us we can find some links to high quality fish oil brands that have been lab tested and shown not to have very high
Peroxide levels.
Erin Nielsen: That would be great
Ari Whitten: Cool. So what are some other tips that you have for for anti-aging, for energy enhancement, for overall youthfulness? Talk to me about some of your other methods.
Erin Nielsen: The other things we were talking about in reference to that epigenetics. We talked about how we eat. So the other two are, how you move and how you think. And those a lot of people understand that movement is important.
But a lot of people either, are too sedentary or they may be doing the wrong type of exercise. They may be doing the type of exercise that is producing chronic inflammation in them. What I would I really recommend for people that are sedentary is just to start getting out there and starting to walk.
You don’t have it just be low low key a person and generally build up as you go. But what I really… For people that are already active I really try to recommend short burst workouts.
So you’ve seen nothing really over 30 minutes if it’s really high-intensity at the time 10 satine you do it much longer than that you’re going to be producing more of that chronic inflammation that we don’t want.
That’s one of the things I really teach my my followers is that it’s really important to do the right kind of exercise, because if you do the wrong type of exercise. It can just be just as damaging to your body it’s not working out.
Ari Whitten: Let’s go deeper into that. So talk to me more about what what you feel are the best forms of exercise and some of the worst as far as aging and energy enhancement.
Erin Nielsen: Yeah. So, if you’re, if you’re doing prolonged high-intensity exercise longer than 30 minutes what it starts to do when you’re doing short bursts workouts, less than 30 minutes, you’re having what they call acute inflammation in your body, which is actually good for your body.
It’s a stressor for your body, but it’s a good stressor. If you start going beyond that 30 minute mark and you’re doing really high intensity for really long amounts of time, you’re starting to produce what we call chronic inflammation, which is just as bad as the other types of things we were talking about that produce inflammation.
So you think, ”oh I’m working really hard for an hour, this has got to be good for me. And in some ways you’ll see good things. You’ll see good muscle definition, but you don’t see the things that are happening with inside your body which is that chronic inflammation that can be really harmful to your cells.
So if you’re doing really high-intensity exercise you want to keep it under 30 minutes, so you’re just having that acute inflammation occur that’s actually a really good thing for your body to see changes.
Ari Whitten: Okay, so just for people maybe not familiar with the term ”high-intensity” can you maybe give some examples of what types of things would be high intensity versus not high intensity?
Erin Nielsen: Yes. So with the way I explained high intensity to people is, you’ve got a scale of 1 to 10 on the intensity rating. So if you’re working out at a high intensity level you want to be somewhere between an 8 and a 10, or a 7 and a 10. Some people still don’t really understand what that means. So I say well at the end of your workout you should be sweaty. You should be breathing heavy. And it should be relatively hard to talk continuously. That time you know you hada high intensity workout.
You’re notgetting to that degree of intensity working out more than 30 minutes is okay, but if you’re if you’re working at that high level, more than 30 minutes is going to be too much for your body and it’s
Going to start to produce that chronic inflammation.
Ari Whitten: Okay so if somebody’s doing a little bit lower intensity cardio, more endurance type activities do you have any time recommendations on that. So let’s say if somebody wants to go for a jog, but they can carry on a conversation at that level of intensity, are there any time recommendations that you found to be beneficial?
Erin Nielsen: I think anywhere, look, if you’re going for a new stuff like a jog, I tell people actually in one of my exercise programs they do high-intensity workouts five times a week and then they do two days a week what I call active rest.
Active rest is like a yoga class or a long hike or you know kind of a leisurely jog or a long walk or swimming
Or a bike ride that’s not getting your heart rate up too much like we talked before or that in that high intensity level area I usually recommend. I mean, if you’re if you’re doing a nice leisurely hike you can go a couple of hours if you want to but if it’s just like a nice long walk or a jog you know past an hour I don’t think…
I worry about people’s joints more than anything as a PT for people jogging and running even surfaces. So I think as long as you’re staying in a very lower intensity and it’s not hard on your joints there shouldn’t really be a time limit necessarily. But if it’s if you’re doing hills and you’re still on unlevel surfaces I think you kind of still need to keep it with within the hour range.
Ari Whitten: Okay, so what is your kind of ideal set up as far as an exercise regimen look? Like as far as is it more high-intensity interval training based, or weight training based, or bodyweight resistance exercise?
Erin Nielsen: It’s a little bit about… So, normally I start out my clients with… Like I said, if they’ve been sedentary just walking. But if they’ve been exercising a little bit I will start them with body exercise. So all
Bodyweight working multiple muscle groups at a time in that high-intensity fashion, so that they’re getting the most bang for their buck during those shorter workouts.
Then, and then, I do eventually like myself I do now I use weights with my intensity exercises so
That’s kind of the scale that I put them through. And most people love adding weights and later on when… They’re like always scared they’re gonna add bulk and I’m doing weights and I’m not bulky and so oh this must work it’s nice to be an example for people for that.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I was, I was a personal trainer for many years and I’m very familiar with working with with women who are afraid of lifting weights and that they’re gonna get bulky. And I used to tell them I said, ”look, I promise you, if you lift this heavy weight, you’re not gonna wake up tomorrow and have biceps like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I wish that was the case, I wish gaining muscle was that easy otherwise I would be huge by now.”
Erin Nielsen: That is so true. I know, I know, it’s amazing and I don’t know why I never really was afraid of that when I started lifting weights. So then I kept hearing it from all of my patients and all of my my clients that they were so afraid I said listen, ”Do I look bulky well be to you?”
Ari Whitten: Yeah. Yeah absolutely, I mean the reality of it is if in general if a woman tries as hard as they can to use as heavy of weights as possible and lift in a way that they’re trying to get as muscular as they possibly can what they’ll end up with is a slight amount of muscle gain, that actually makes them look really good.
Erin Nielsen: Exactly. Curves where you want them you just look lean and toned.
Ari Whitten: Yeah. Exactly. And then and then when you go into it thinking. ”oh I don’t want to push too hard I don’t want to lift heavy weight because I don’t want to get too muscular. What ends up happening is kind of nothing like you end up doing, spending lots of time doing something that doesn’t really result in much noticeable change. So for me I was trying to get people as much as possible into the mentality of, you want to think about lifting as hard as you can as muscle gain is so hard, that you need to be doing that in order to make change.
Erin Nielsen: Exactly, yeah. And it’s fun to see that it’s time to see, like I be like I was talking about some of my clients are super sedentary when they come to me, and so you starting with walking and then you started with the body weight and then they start loving the way they’re looking, even with the body weight
Exercise. And I’m like wait until you see lifting weights you’re going to love it and they love it.
Ari Whitten: Nice. So you is your ideal setup kind of a mix of weight training, and then some high-intensity interval training. And then the active recovery?
Erin Nielsen: Yeah, actually, what I mean, a lot of what I do with my short intense workouts is they’re doing squats, lunges, all those multiple body movements together with the weight. So, it’s kind of all one workout in one
Ari Whitten: Yeah, it’s they call that it’s like a hybrid. It’s high-intensity resistance training that’s like high-intensity interval training but with resistance training movements. Very…
Erin Nielsen: The most efficient. I feel, like you get the most out of them. A lot of people don’t have a ton of time to work out, so I think it’s really great for people to just start with those. And if they then, if they want to do more, they can but they work they work really really well they do.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, beautiful. So what what else, what other tips do you have? So we talked about exercise talk to me about something else.
Erin Nielsen: Yeah. So the other thing with the epigenetics going back to that, was how we think and what our thoughts are and how that affects our genes. And many, this is one of the things that many people are surprised to hear about that it can age you faster. But if you think about it, your thoughts are directly related to your stress levels and also how you’re sleeping.
So stress and sleep have huge effects on our body and our ability to you know handle inflammation and handle life. And so, if we’re not handling stress and sleep well our thoughts can become negative and the maximum age is faster.
So I think the – when one of my… I have another kind of fun easy thing that I teach my follower is about
Managing stress.
There was actually a study out of University of Wisconsin doctors did a study there and they found that people that practice the numbers 5, 3, 1 and i’ll get to those in a minute. But people that practice those numbers became happier and less stressed and what those numbers are, is the number 5.
Is basically 5 minutes of reflection or meditation or prayer a day whatever works for you or you know you believe in
And in the number 3 stands for writing down three things you’re thankful for.
And then the number one is just doing one act of random kindness today so they did the study where they have all these people do this and people report it after I think like a six-week great week period might have that wrong but that they were just over overwhelmingly sleeping better, they were less stressed at work, they enjoyed work better, they enjoyed their family better. So when I teach my followers is, I actually add an extra member in there.
I call it 10-5-3-1 because I try to say get at least 10 minutes of movement in a day so I’m going to move in of some sort.
Ari Whitten: I like that
Erin Nielsen: Very least and the 5-3-1 and it just really helps you deal with stress in your life better.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, yeah that’s awesome and I hadn’t heard that that breakdown in the numbers
That’s a really useful way of remembering some really important things to do every day.
Erin Nielsen: Yeah, it’s so nice so I actually just get up about a half an hour early and you know do my 10-5-3-1 right. They’re usually more than ten minutes for the exercise. But if it’s a busy day ten minutes and it’s just something that you can do to start your day you’re reflecting right away. It’s hard to be in a bad mood if you’re writing down three things you’re grateful for because even in the worst times of our lives we can still have some things we’re thankful for. So it’s really helpful.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, actually, one thing i’ll add on the stress there’s some interesting research that I stumbled across in the last couple weeks as I’m writing some stuff on stress there’s some there’s some interesting body of research around perceived stress.
And looking at how a person perceive their stress load and kind of just looking at not just the stress itself but whether a person thinks they’re very stressed work or thinks that they cope well with stress or whether they they don’t.
So if a person thinks, ”Oh, I’m really stressed, and stress is really bad for me.” The outcomes that they
Actually measured health outcomes and found huge differences in health outcomes so the people who perceive themselves as being really stressed and perceived stress as being very very bad for them, actually, had much worse health outcomes. And there’s many different studies measuring lots of different health outcomes. But across the board, the research is very consistent, that if you perceive yourself as being really stressed and you think stress is really, really bad for you it will be worse for you.
Erin Nielsen: I completely believe that. Your perception is everything. It’s so true and that’s like I feel like this has really helped me I mean even before I saw the study on the doctors I was already I’m doing the thinking of three things I was grateful for, but I didn’t write them down. And then I started writing them down and that even made a bigger difference.
One of the things that the study really encourages you to do, is write down something different every day. So you can’t write the same thing same three things every day. You really got to think about it and reflect and so it really takes you out of that behavior we were talking about where you’re just focusing on negative and oh you know what was me or I can’t believe I’m so stressed, so bad for me, and really focusing on more positive things makes such a huge difference.
Ari Whitten: Awesome.
Erin Nielsen: Yeah so the other thing, obviously, that affects stress, is how much sleep you’re getting too.
So one of the other things I teach is just and some people do this and some people may be a permissible for but really once, once the Sun sets and getting into that normal circadian rhythm you really wantto start dimming your artificial light.
So once the Sun sets dim your artificial lights try to unplug from Facebook and wherever else you’re on because all of that artificial light is really disrupting your melatonin production for that night and so you’re
Not going to be able to find out as well.
So there are some things out on the market like that like those orange glasses I forget what they’re called but you can buy those things, yeah so if you still want to be online, but I always tell people unplugging early and maybe even either just any time withyour family to talk or read a book or something is so great for your stress levels to constantly being bombarded by outside world. But, if you really must be on social media late at night, I’m sorry the orange light glasses.
And then the other thing I really tell people to do, and this helps me a lot is I kind of do what I call like a little
Brain cleanse before I go to bed. And I just write down anything that’s, has, or anything…
Ari Whitten: Yeah. On the note of being on social media or or working late at night. I’ve studied
Circadian rhythm for a long time so I know a lot about it i teach a lot about it in my Energy Blueprint course and so i’ve designed my house and my lifestyle to be very good as far as artificial light at night and wearing blue blockers and many many other things. But even wearing blue blockers even with the artificial light at night. If I’m on my computer working till 10:00 or or 10:30 and then I try to go bed to bed right after that. I notice there’s a huge difference for me if I work till that late til you know and kind of just cut off work and go okay now I’m gonna go to bed versus if I cut off work at 8:30 or 9:00 p.m. And then have an hour or an hour and a half buffer of just relaxing. Maybe i’ll read, or maybe i’ll watch something educational, or even just watch something silly a comedy, or whatever.
For me, because my brain is in work mode and think thinking mode so much of the time I have a big big hard time turning that off and shifting intosleep mode. So having that hour or hour and a half or two hour buffer between the end of work and sleep, for me, makes a huge difference even beyond the circadian rhythm light stuff.
Erin Nielsen: Yeah. I’m the same way I make myself stop normally by like 7:00 7:30 but the other night I did what you were just talking about it worked until 10:00. It was just one of those days and I had some techie
Problems and I could not sleep that whole night because problems were still rolling over in my head. I didn’t have enough time to to space myself from it and it’s a huge, it’s really a huge problem.
So I do it, it doesn’t happen to me a lot because I know what you’re talking about.
Ari Whitten: Yeah, well such as life for the entrepreneur. No we don’t work 9 to 5 jobs and so sometimes work doesn’t end at the end of the day.
Erin Nielsen: Yes and the weekends too.
Ari Whitten: It’s like yeah so I’m curious what are, what what you find in your practice and coaching people what do you think are the biggest obstacles or stumbling blocks for people what where do they get off track? Where do they derail? Where do they get off the program? And what causes that? And and how do you deal with that?
Erin Nielsen: I would say two things. I would say I think I mentioned it before a little bit a lot of the women I work with have a very strong guilt mentality. If they do something wrong and so that once they do something wrong they kind of just crumble and then they just go back to their old ways, cuz they’re like, ”well, I’m never gonna be able to do this. I failed once, and you know, just forget it.”
And I actually used to be that way. I used to, before I really started eatin more healthy if I in my way long ago years when I was doing like low fat diets and stuff and so awful all the time so I I’d go off with this thing and start eating something bad for me and then I feel awful that I did that, and then I just eat more because I felt awful it I did that.
So, I see that all the time with with my clients, all the time.
So the way I counteract that is one, I just tell them it’s it’s one day. It’s a brand-new day the next day. Just start over but I also give them a little leeway and often say, you know if you haven’t reached your goals where you might, if your energy is still low, if you’re still not feeling loved, you’re not where you want to be in terms of food, try to just 90 percent of the time. Do good and then if 10% of the time you mess up, or you just choose to indulge okay not gonna mess up your results.
But that gives them. I think, so many people think they have to be perfect and if they’re not, then they’re not going to get the results that they want. So if you can say, you don’t have to be perfect all the time, you can have a little leeway, and don’t beat yourself up if you fall off. I think that makes a huge difference. And that makes a huge difference for me.
But the other thing that that I see, and I didn’t touch on before, and it kind of has to do with stress is most adults don’t play enough. They don’t they don’t enjoy things. They don’t take time to do the things that they love and that I know we target is their spirit and when you recharge your spirit and you just recharge your whole life you can recharge your whole body so that’s something I work on with a lot of women.
Because women especially, I think all people do this, but especially women don’t take enough time for themselves and to do the things that they love and so when they start doing that and it might just be like five minutes a day or ten minutes a day that they’re doing something that they love, they realize how much more they can handle, how much better their energy is, how much better they feel, and how much better their mood is.
So those are the two things that I try to teach people, play once in a while and it’s ok not to be perfect all the time.
Ari Whitten: Beautiful. On that note I think that’s those two messages are a great place to end. So where can people find more about your work?
Erin Nielsen: yeah so my website where you can find all of my, everything we’ve talked about here, basically, and anything You might want, is the youthmethod.com. I have a free gift for you there that, if your followers want to take advantage of that, or I’m really baby into like we talked about before, nutrition and there’s some really great recipes to just kind of detox your body,and get you pitch you going the right
Direction, there’s a free gift there for you for recipes for that and all the recipes are amazing and you can make each recipe in under 10 minutes so they’re great for busy mom, any busy professional to just get in there get something healthy so…
Ari Whitten: Beautiful. And all of that, all the links, will be on the show notes page for this episode. So Erin. Thank you so much it’s been an absolute pleasure interviewing you and and and thank you for sharing your beautiful messages with my audience
Erin Nielsen: thank you Ari, it was a pleasure being here.
Ari Whitten: Likewise. All right take care
Erin Nielsen: Bye
