How my body & mind has changed with age

Published Aug 18, 2024, 2:00 PM

Is age something you fear or something you embrace? There are so many physical and mental changes that occur as you get older, which aren't too commonly spoken about. In this week's episode of The FIT(ish) podcast, host Phoebe Parsons chats to content creator, nutritionist and retreat host Jacqui Toumbas about the biggest changes they've noticed in their diets, exercise routines & confidence as they transitioned from their 20's-30's as they head closer to their 40s. 
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Follow Jacqui on instagram here https://www.instagram.com/jacquitoumbas/

Welcome to FITSH. I'm Phoebe Parsons and this is the podcast that proves that you don't have to choose between staying fit and having fun. The only time in life age really matters is when you're seventeen and can't.

Legally by alcohol.

So then how come every year after that all we want to do is reverse the clock. But instead of fearing it, why don't we start frothing it? Because with age comes wisdom in so many areas, areas I went pretty deep with with my guests this week.

I now accept myself and I think that was the biggest thing for me.

BA can help me fill my cup. But it's not not enough. It's not enough. We're not overflown yet. A moment where I was like, I love myself, I love my body.

Welcome to the podcast.

Nutritionist, retreat host and content creator Jackie Tumbis Well, Welcome to the finished podcast. Jackie. I'm so excited to have you on the show, and I I want to start by asking you what makes you fit?

Ish The fact I can eat a block of chocolate and then go to plarties in the morning.

Yes, that's exactly what I feel guilty about it that is exactly it, one hundred percent. That is what balance pasta.

I'm a pastor.

So my shirt today I thought it was very fitting.

I love that so much.

Now you and I are of a similar age. I'm thirty four turning thirty five in October, and you are thirty.

Six thirty six. So what I want to talk to you.

Today about is aging, and I think it's something that's not spoken enough about, especially in relation to exercise and nutrition and how that journey evolves as you grow older. So I firstly wanted to ask you what has been your favorite age so far?

Oh, thirties, I don't even have to think about it.

I think twenties was like twenties is a hot mess, dumpster fyre that I would never in a million years if someone paid me a million well, okay, a million dollars maybe, but like I would not willingly go back to that day. So I think, oh, my thirtieth birthday was a breakdown and you could just ask anyone in my friends or family. But after that, going forward, it was so good and I love it. I love I can sit here and tell you that I love my life.

Does it make you that off your forties because I feel like, you know when you watch celebrity interviews and everyone's like, twenties a shit, thirties are better, forties, fifties sligh, and like every decade just seems to get better and better.

Of course, like I'm loving every moment of it, and I just think I'm not scared anymore to get older, which I was petrified, Like I locked myself in a unit on my day, turned my phone off, I did warnt like the close people to me, Like no one talked to me, and I'm pretty I just cried, listened to some like really old school R and B neo. Maybe needs to be done, Yeah, needs to be done now every I actually love celebrating my birthdays.

Now. So do you have a scary age? And the reason I asked this is because it's in reference to an episode of Sex in the City where Kerry and Miranda are talking about their scary age and for Carrie it's forty five, and I think Miranda is forty three.

No, I haven't thought about that, like I think forty. It's more like everyone's like, ooh, forty.

But I'm also, like I've.

Said to all my friends, I was like, we're going to like Mexico or Italy for my fortieth, like, and we've already started planning it. But I think maybe if anything like the fifties or the forty nine, I think of, yeah, forty nine, let's go with forty nine.

Yeah, I'd probably agree. But then the flip side to that is fiftieth are the most fun birthday parties I've ever been to in my life. So that's something to look for to as well besides family. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, true. Well I've been to one friend's fiftieth and it was one of the best days of my entire life.

So I'm excited for that.

But I mean, like, even when you think about celebrities, like look at people like Anne Hathaway, she's like forty two. Jane fucking Fonda is eighty four years old. Eighty four years old, and she looks incredible. She is living her life, Like look at Jalo, Like, I swear to god, these women just blow up as they get older.

I'm waiting for that moment.

Well, it's because we haven't hit the decade yet.

Yeah, we haven't.

But I think I also think it comes down to priorities, and the biggest thing is like not caring what other people think anymore and just going for it. And I'm at the start of that, like I'm at the bottom of the hill of the not giving it.

Fuck.

Yes, I was like, shit, not giving a hill, Like I'm at the bottom of it. I'm climbing up it.

Yeah.

I think that's really refreshing to hear you say that. But also I think it's because as you get older, you genuinely start to want to look after yourself, which was something that you didn't want to do, and you now have more of an intention behind what you're doing, specifically in relation to things like exercise and nutrition.

I also think, and I don't know if this is a controvery, I also think you might have the means more now, Like I think absolutely income adult money.

Who can afford it form with pilates in their twenties. I'm sorry, but who was paying for your membership?

I was like, so coming out of my account and I'm like, yep, cool, Like you know, doing my budgeting, I don't really budget. My sister's gonna laugh when you hear. But I could have never done that when it was in my twenties. I would have never like and it wasn't a priority either, Like my priority was buying the newest dress to be able to wear out the club.

Absolutely, So let's actually start with fitness. I think that's a good place to start. How has your fitness routine and I suppose approach or even philosophy to exercise changed from your twenties to your thirties, because I feel like for me, like I said earlier, I think the biggest shift for me has been the intention behind what I'm doing. And I think that when I was in my twenties, I was purely exercising for punishment. I wanted to go as hard as I physically could. If I didn't finish a workout feeling like covered in sweat, like I was going to physically keel over, that wouldn't have counted in my mind. I was cardio queen. I even had a fucking single it from Laurna Jane that said cardio Queen that I used to wear. I'm not saying that I don't do cardio now, because I still do some cardio now, but it was that mentality, and it was even on strength days because I've always trained at like an F forty five or kind of that group fitness setting gym, I would change the exercises on the strength days to cardio days because MYMO was to get my heart rate as high as I possibly could, to burn as many calories as I possibly could, Whereas now the intention behind what I'm doing has changed so much and it's more about, in a non cliche way, I want to feel good during and after my workout, and for me, that's not slamming myself as hard as humanly possible anymore. It's lifting weights to feel strong, which I know again sounds really cheesy, but the feeling that you get after one of those classes is like nothing you've experienced.

So I think for me it even goes before twenties, Like I have to take it back to and I have this vivid memory of waking up at like before school early to do what those o OZ workout. Those workouts are the people with.

The ab Yes, I was aerobics, I know one of the women on there.

Yeah, So I think that was a mental like because I thought I had to lose weight.

Did your parents do that? No?

Oh my, like if you saw a photoh my god, can't even walk down dragway.

Any But that was so normal to us. We were so accustomed.

It was to punishment, and it was one hundred percent of punishment, so prior to twenties. But I took that punishment into my twenties. Okay, one hundred percent I think for me, finished school, went into full time work. But then I studied nutrition. I went to QT study study nutrition, loved it, but took it to the extreme. So you're in the cohort obviously of like the exercise physiology, like all of that sort of thing.

And I was waking up as stupid, like, Okay, you wake up earlier. I don't wink up, but I paid to wake up. Yeah, like I wouldn't if you paid me. I probably would.

Actually I do one days that I have work jobs, so I yeah, would wake up suit stupidly early.

I would be doing two. So I would do boot camp at the Kangaro Points.

Oh my gosh, actually Bind's boot camp, but it was I think I did that a few times though it was not. And then I would go to the gym at two pm in the afternoon, and then I'd make sure I went for like I was doing two minimum too hard workouts to day and I was like burn, like keep track wouldn't have watches, and like, yeah, I would keep track of my calories.

And it was that purely to burn calories, Like that was the exercise was I.

Only went to the gym or to boot camp or to anything to burn X amount of calories and that was a motivation. It was nothing else. It was either motiv yeah, calories or wait that sort of basis.

Or like to earn you knew you were going to have like cocktails that night and do guinea friends, and it was like I have to do this in order to have this.

I think when it changed was my early thirties, and it was when I went through a period of act not doing anything and realizing, oh, I don't love the way I feel. I was constantly tired and all that sort of stuff. And that's where I found reformer parties. So a lot of people are like, like.

You try and tell my brother. I'm like company is like you know what, men are the ones who benefit.

The most from parties suffer anyway, So yeah, I started that and I actually remember the moment I finished a class and I walked down and got my kindness out of crying because I had realized I wasn't going and I was on like this roll, like I was going every morning.

But it wasn't a punishment to wake up.

It was because I do feel good yeap.

And those mornings that I woke up, maybe it was a little bit tired, but I don't feel like going today. Firstly, I thought, shit, if I don't go, I'm gonna be charged an extra few dollars. Secondly, it was like, but Jackie, remember the way you feel afterwards, the energy you have for the day, how happy? Like I genuinely noticed that I was not this negative person anymore. I was happy and any issue that came along the days to say it was something can work, something didn't go my way. My mentality of how I process that was so different, so it was like, oops, oh no that didn't work today, Let's see what we can do rather than had to work bad day, Shit's happened today? I hate my life. It was so different, and when I noticed that, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I just couldn't believe it. And I was so happy that I had come to this point in my life where I loved working out, probably not to the accept that you do, but I just I found so much enjoyment in it, or whether it was the moments where I would go for an afternoon walk headphones in, my music in or a podcast.

In, and I loved it.

It wasn't like, Oh, I've got to go for a walk because I need to get X men of steps in. I actually don't wear my watch anymore.

And I think everyone semi goes through that, especially when you start an exercise routine. Whether it's a myzone, heart rate monitor, whether it's an Apple watch. We all have those periods where we've become so attuned to the number that we're seeing or the result on that fitness trucker, and then it's not necessarily My trainer actually told me this, who's also my best friend, which is very very handy for me, but she said, it's not the way you handle it when you have access to it. It's the way you handle and deal with something when you don't have access to it. So, say your my zone dies and you're at the gym, the old meat would have had a fucking melt down and been like it's not even gonna count because I can't track it, Whereas now I'd be like, whatever, Yeah, I'm still doing it, and I see so many people now on TikTok talking about how their relationship with exercise change when they got rid of their apple rings or they got rid of their watch or something.

And it's just it's really interesting to see how everything, Like, so I went through I think we've spoken before about me freezing my eggs, right, I went through a lot of hormone things after that, and I realize the stress that even the fitness had on me and my mentality between burning calories and working out and my quarters olt levels that when I wasn't stressed to work out, I was actually losing weight. That not that that was my goal, but my body was changing and ating to what I was doing because I wasn't stressing myself out about working out, And that was probably for me the biggest like because I was monitoring for about two years my hormones really strengsly just to see after my freezing the eggs what happened. But for me, that was the biggest thing that I was like, I can actually see on a cellular level what that stress of working.

Out had on me.

Yeah, right, And so it's benefiting not only my mind, which is great too, but it is benefiting long term Jackie, Like, you know, when I'm forty and thriving.

Literally, And I think that not many people realize that in terms of like the chloric burden things like that from exercise. Everybody's body has a baseline that they sit at when they are just happily living and existing, and that is doing some exercise, eating balanced food. And when you hit that point, it's ironic that you're like, oh my god, everything's fallen into place. But it's not a coincidence that that's happened. It's because your body is so much smarter than you give it credit for. So when you actually start to give it the respect that it deserves for doing what it does, it rewards you.

Yeah, And I think it's the same with food.

Like I always talk a lot about understanding your body and feeling your body and understanding how your body processes things and stuff like that, and when you also start to understand that with your fitness, it is just this like absolutely mind blowing experience and you feel, you know, you're in that equilibrium, you're sitting in that good place. So I can always tell when I feel a bit out of it, and I might be like, yeah, you know, last few weeks have been busy with work, Like, there are times I'll admit that I won't do anything because I'm waking up early, I'm on you know, site for a shoot, or I'm doing something, and that's fine. I will not stress myself up to be like I need to wake up at three am so I can do this to fit everything in. No, Jackie, honor your body right now, get through the next two weeks, and then keep going. It sounds so simple now to me, but if I told myself this in my mid twenties, I would have freaked out.

Yeah, one hundred percent.

And like I said to you earlier, it's that same concept of it's not what you're doing consistently, it's how you handle a situation when say, you do have a really busy work week and you don't have as much time as you would like to get to the gym, which happens to everybody. How do you react in that situation. That's I think where you can tell what your actual, honest to god true relationship with exercises like, which is very confronting at times, but life has its seasons and we all go through those periods, and it's something that you have to learn, particularly if you get injured, like it happened for me big time last year when I was in a moonboot for seven weeks. But that I think was a huge mindset shift for me, and that's when I became really obsessed with strength training. Yeah, because I was still able to strength train, and at the start, I was catastrophizing, like, oh my god, I'm not going to be able to do any cardio or any of this, and I felt so much more energized and happy and strong, and even like from a physique perspective, I looked better, like everything just it kind of takes that uncomfortable period to then get to that endpoint. But I wanted to go back to nutrition because this is something that I think I'm really interested to hear your perspective on, firstly as a nutritionist and secondly as a Greek woman, because this is something that you and I are going to have very different experiences with and that's how your journey and relationship to food has evolved. And I've actually never heard you speak about this before. So for me, it was very much, very similar to exercise. It was I didn't really care about the nourishment I was giving to my body. It was all about the calories. So in my early I've always spoken very honestly about having like an eating disorder for many many years and my struggles with that. But everything I was eating at that time came from a packet because I could monitor how many calories were in it. I could monitor when to eat. It didn't need like a fridge or you know whatever all that stuff. And it wasn't until I would definitely say probably my thirties. Especially now that I'm really focused on nourishing my body, I reckon more than half. My diet firstly, is made up of carbs, and I used to be terrified of carbs like most women are. Your past ship, I actually have one of the Muscle Nation eat pasta run faster, and I actually went on a run the other day. I feel that can work. But now I'm fully in the mindset of doing things that can optimize things like my gut health. So i this. I realize how much of a loser this makes me sound like. But I currently have a spreadsheet that I'm tracking my plant based foods every week to hit minimum thirty plant based foods a week, which is actually really hard, especially when you're quite a regimented person, and I easily fall into the trap of like eating the same thing every day because it's easy, I make it in bulk whatever. But that wasn't doing anything good for my gut health. And now that I've started investing in this kind of nourishment work, I'm trying to do things that are better for my body. From that perspective, so much has changed for me, so much, and I wish I started this earlier.

Look one hundred spent so my I guess I've only recently started talking a lot more about my relationship with food because I've been able to reflect on it and understand.

I guess where it came from.

So born and raised, big Greek family, love them. My grandma literally lives below me in the unit below me. Best thing ever.

And Greek families revolver and food, don't they like every gathering get together.

So food was for me was connection, purely connection. So it was sitting down at Grandma's house having a bowl of her pasta, and it's love and connection and there is that is beautiful. I love that and still that is what I've turned everything into now.

But then moving into UNI.

I had a few years off after finished school, decided what do I want to do? What do I love? I love food, didn't want to be a chef, so I went into nutuition. Loved it, but took it the opposite way, to the point that prep my meals every week.

I couldn't.

I could not do that now because I love fresh, like fresh meals, to the tea of every single every single calorie, like I mean the broccoli like way way measuring anything I was training to three times a day. It was insane. I got down to I think it was like sixteen percent body fat and like, for me, that.

Should not happen. I met my grandma being like, you've got no boobs, thanks Grammer, Yes, thanks.

But it got to the point that it was affecting my life in a way that I wasn't going out to celebrate friends birthdays or friends events anything. And if you know me, you know how much my grandma means to me. I wasn't visiting her WHOA because I was too scared to eat out.

Of your routine, my routine and you're safety in it.

It was a very I.

Look back at photos now and I'm like, I was a very sad person and it makes me really emotional because not that I lost a lot of time, but I would not wish that upon anyone, So I would I would cry myself to sleep. I would sit there and pray and say I want to lose weight, please help me lose like there is so much more going on like that is just it makes me so sad that I found thought my worth was in my weight.

But I don't think you should discount that because for someone who hasn't experienced it, I don't think it's all well and good to say there's war going on and there's this stuff going on, But the chatter in your head when you're in the midst of something like that is something I would not wish upon any anybody. It is all consuming. It is so hard, so hard.

And that's the thing. It was.

Every single thought of my day was about what I'm eating next, what I just ate, what I was about to work out, like should I take the stairs instead of the lift, like to that extent that it just made like, yeah, I look at it now. So I finished UNI and I started to it started to slowly unfold, and then I opened my cafe Miss Bliss. And this was because I couldn't find somewhere to eat with my My dad is.

Like loves coffee club, loves.

Toast with butter and some shim me a blt and chips.

That's my dad. Love him for that. Also weird how he's never been sick or like you know, but like I'm gonna live forever. He also just drinks coke zero and smoked cigarettes. So but how did I come from that? So I wanted to open a whole foods cafe, so somewhere that you could have I could go for breakfast with Dad. He could have his toast with whatever he wanted on it, but I could get anourish bowl and Britsman didn't really have that. Then it was one extent or the other. It was you go somewhere and Dad would be like I can't eat anything, or we go somewhere that is just like your big breckya's yep. So when I created that, I started we made everything from scratch in the cafe, and I started to see this like love for things like olive oil. I used to count my calorie count and weigh my olive oil as a Greek that's very disrespectful.

So moved into the misless era, which was the era of.

Like finding myself and loving myself and it's just like the most beautiful.

Blossom through a hard time.

Only a cafe was very difficult and it had its own issues, but for me, my relationship with food totally changed. Yeah, I started, you know, and I could go out and eat that chocolate and do those things and.

I didn't feel guilty about it.

And then moving into a lot of I did a lot of inner work at this period, and I did it mainly more because of the work, like me trying to manage work and expectations of success and what that means. But in the realm of that, started to think about what people think and why did I care? And I think the only way I can explain it from my experience is that when you grew up in a very time Greek community, there was a lot of well in my experience, of what other people think. And still to this day, my grandma will make a comment and she's like, oh, but what will people think, and I'm like, well, does that really matter? And having to unwind that not only was a process in me learning to appreciate food, whole foods and how my body processed them, but also in a way in terms of work and success and all different things, Like it spanned over my whole life in that sense, and it was the best thing that I could have ever done for myself was invest into inner work that then allowed me to understand myself and not put that thought of well, if I'm not this weight or this thin, what.

Will other people think?

Yeah?

I do also looking at it in their like growing up and I was watching something O there what was It's a JLO documentary I'm pretty sure ages ago, and she makes a comment about how every when she first started getting fam how every.

Person would only make a comment on her butt and her size of her butt.

Yeah right, And I remember growing up it made me think, I've always had big hips and a big butt. There was no representation until you j Low's and your beances came along. They're not like that anymore, but you know, and it sort of was like, oh, wow, that is the importance of that representation, and no wonder we grew up in an era like I don't think I'd ever thought about it of what the media represented a successful loved female acts.

And that's where it all stemmed from. I sadly love my family, but.

Also got comments like my grandfather would make comments about if I had put on weight all my my dad still does to this day, my brother. I've learnt though, like then that was through the inner work not to take that on.

And I think it's a generational thing that you understand only when you hit a certain point in your own life that you realize your parents are doing the best that they can do with the tools that they have.

That is mind blowing.

Because when I worked that out, I was in changes. Oh they never meant that like that. I was also probably taking that on as a negative thing, but no, like so, I think for me it was that miss Bliss era.

So that was the sart of my thirties, what was it?

It was the start of like end of twenty started thirties, but the biggest okay, the biggest mind blowing experience and not that it's sad that it took this long. So last year I spent six weeks in Italy on my own. It was a trip that I always wanted to do with a partner and I'm single, thirty six year old female, and I took the chance and I was like fuck it, I'm going I know this is cliche, but it was the most life changing experience for me. And I remember sitting on the beach in southern Italy and before I went, those thoughts started to creep in your pre Europe.

You don't need to go on your like you're a shred.

No, And I was very like, and we've spoken about this like the devil and the angel sort of, you know, when we have those thoughts. And leading up to my trip, which I was so excited about something I've wanted to do my whole life and this big thing for me, I had those thoughts. And through my inner work, I've always been told you imagine like your younger.

Self and talk to that.

I could never really grasp that, but I think about my niece, and I think about if my niece came to me tomorrow and said I need to go on a euroshred before, I would shake her and be like, you're being an idiot.

Stop it. So for me to get to that space feel super confident, and.

I preach I've never felt more confident, more happy, more myself than sitting on that beach in a skimpy like I wouldn't never wear a skimpy bikini and I look at it and like I'm getting tearing out because it was just this moment where I was like, I love myself, I love my body. I love everything this body has done for me, going through you know, egg freezing, going through hormone issues.

You know.

I just think it was that moment that changed it all for me. And I was like, how can I bottle this up and bring it home with me because I don't want to go home and I don't want to cry myself to sleep about not being that size. And the most beautiful thing was I my online community noticed it.

Wow.

I remember getting messages from people I had never met, being like, we.

Love euro Jackie.

And I had never really gotten into posting about like clothing or fashion because.

I was like, you know, I was twelve to fourteen, like why do people want to see that?

And now I have this most incredible community of people like we love what you wear, you know, Like it's just it's changed this whole thing, and I now can not many people know this. When I was in when I first year at a high school, actually studied fashion.

Oh, I never knew that, Yeah, well you always look very stylish.

But I don't think I took it because of that inhibiting thought of I'm not skinny enough to be to be in this industry. I love food more though, but I do love that and I think I've been able now to be like I can wear those things. I can be that I can do that because I now accept myself. And I think that was the biggest thing for me. Last year was like life changing. And I think that's why Sudden Italy has this like special place for me, because it was a place that I feel like I first met myself, Like you know, of all the seasons I've gone through, I think that was the most honest and raw. Oh I love that word, and it is because of the age I'm at. I don't care what other people think I don't like and I could really sit in that and appreciate that.

But I think it's important that you normalize that those triggers and thought patterns still come up, because that's all part of the human experience. And I think that no one is ever going to reach a point in their life where you are one hundred percent healed and you never have to deal with those kinds of thoughts, like that's not what being alive is, and If that's how you feel, then you're probably not alive. You're probably yeah, life is not actually going the way it's supposed to. But I also want you to know how many other lives you helped with Miss Bliss, because this is my experience. When I moved into a role at Lorna Jane head office, I was editing the Move Nourish Belief blog at the time, which was when wellness had just boomed, and that blog was getting like one hundred thousand unique visits a week. It was all about nourishing your body, moving with intention, and that was such a big part of my personal healing journey, going from this like eating disorder, calorie restriction, mentality, to then moving into a space where my whole nine to five, my whole life was suddenly surrounded to helping show people how to do these things. And Miss Bliss was such a Brisbane institution and all of a sudden we had this place we could go and you could order pancakes and it wasn't scary anymore.

Yeah because spell Banker.

Yes, so they were next level and you could suddenly eat things that for the longest time, so many people had demonized because it was bad like pancakes or burgers or toast or whatever it was for you at the time. But me and Lauren, I remember we were there probably once a week men in morning, Yeah.

After you went to the gym, and a lot of people because I like, I've made a lot of friendships through that place. So that is such a special period of my life, and like it healed me. It's incredible, and I think I didn't get to appreciate that till after I had sold it and now looking at it, and I just think it was the most beautiful blessing I ever could have had in my life.

And it changed so many people, which is so incredible. Yeah, so incredible. So then let's finish with confidence. And this is just I know we've been speaking about it like scattered throughout the podcast, but I think that even something as small as like makeup and skin care and the way you wear your hair, and I remember when I was in my twenties, I would not leave the house without a full face makeup on. I was even at a point that I was so bad that I think I was at UNI still and I wasn't leaving the house. It was like a full study day at home. I would wash and straighten my hair because I was that self conscious in just being like myself or a slob for no other reason, like what no one cares, but it was just something I had in myself. And it was so much then about like the makeup you could use to cover your skin, and I've always been not anymore, but I was very self conscious about how pale and how light my skin was, and that was a huge I actually don't think I've ever spoken about that before, but that was one of my biggest insecurities when I was younger, because there was no kind of like you said before, with the body icons. There was no representation in the media. There was like Nicole Kidman, but everyone takes the piss out of her. I don't know why. I think she's studying. But now, when you hit a point, you realize that your skin is something that you take the ground when you're a lot younger, and it's something that in your thirties you are so committed to investing in. And now I'm like, if I had to choose between spending money on serums and makeup, I am choosing the serums without even.

A shadow of a doubt. My thing like you're talking about your skin. Was my hair.

So I have very, very thick hair, to the fact that it would usually take me three hours from washing, drying, straightening. Used to do the whole iron on the hair. Yep, me and my cousins. But it would end up like this, like a triangle, like a triangle, big fluffy hair. So I think for me as young as I was, like, I was so self conscious about my hair. But now I got to a point where I never swear my hair back, and today I was like, yeah, put my hair back.

And this is an Italy thing.

All goes down to Italy. Last year obviously it's so hot and humid. It was my little part slicked back, and I look back at photos and I'm like, damn, girlfriend, you look great.

I can relate to that so hard, because when you're younger, it's you get a horrifying thought to slick your hair back. You hide behind straight your curled hair that's around your little face. What are these tendrils? Yeah, t nils, whatever score you went to, there's gonna be a different nickname for it.

Because they were too frizzy, so it was just but then put gel over the top, so they were.

Like, no, God, I love it.

See for me.

Also, I had a pretty visceral reaction to buns because I did ballet for eighteen years, so I couldn't stand the thought. No, it was just something about and it was more the discipline, like if I got kicked out of class once for not wearing a hair net, so it was like it was a very strict it was a discipline thing. So I feel like I rebelled for a lot of my life by not slicking my hair back and just having it like Wednesday Adam's style just like as straight and slicked like that avall Levine style. But now I'm like, put my hair in a pony, Like if I ever have a wedding, I'm.

Wearing my hair up.

I'm wearing it and a hi literally up.

But also then I think about how good it is for your hair to have those natural oils through your hair, and I'm like, bring it. Whereas like twenty year old me would be having a conniption right now if she knew I was sitting here with oily hair being fucking filmed. Yes, And I think that, like we were saying earlier, with the representation in the media, I think that's something to be really grateful to social media fort that we have access to so much more diversity and people that we can see online as opposed to when we were growing up and the only thing we had access to was tabloid magazines.

Yes, that was all we had.

So you're just looking at these, you know, like Jessica Simpson has dropped down to forty one kilos and all that kind of stuff.

That's all we saw.

Was the very generic stereotype, the diet, the diets, the diets, like I think of it, I did some crazy stuff. But I even look at my mom and like, this is not fair for me to say this without her consent or her being involved in this discussion. But she is still very much heavily influenced by calories. And that's not her fault. That's because she grew up in an era where that was what was dictated to her, and that's what was normal to her. So she grew up like most of our parents did in the Weight Watchers era, and the.

I'm ever going to a Weight Watches meeting, it was like.

A yep and everything was about points and good foods and bad foods, and everything was about calories. And carbohydrates. And so for our parents, they I mean, I can say this honestly, they've not done the work because they kind.

Of I feel like our parents were in this era of I call it pure selflessness, where it was all like your child, this the best everything. Still in this era we have women are doing that, but they're finding that balance. They're finding a way too, because they understand by taking care of themselves they can take better care of their children, they can show up better for their children. So it's a big thing about why I go away every well now every year to Italy is because I know I come back a better sister, friend, daughter, granddaughter. Like I give myself time to film pure just to fill my cup. Like yes, a Sunday bath can help me fill my cup, but it's not enough.

It's not enough enough. We're not overflown yet we're like a sip left.

I'm still thirsty.

So I think we're in this era of people actually wanting to take care of themselves, educate themselves, learn better ways on. It's not just now about losing weight, it's about having better gut health because we know what that does to our bodies, you know, hydration and things like that, and I'm loving that era that you know, we just want to do good because we want to be show up better for the people around us and for ourselves.

It's like awareness and confidence. Yeah, has had a baby and it's the new era.

Yeah. Sure.

Then what is one piece of advice you would give to everybody listening to this episode about aging?

Oh, just don't be afraid. That is it. Do not be afraid that.

There is no rule book, there is no like you have to do something a certain way, and just to embrace it.

That's a lot of tips.

So my advice is just lean the fucking honestly, don't be afraid, don't dread a birthday. Live every day like it to birthday. That's my advice. Yeah.

So is that cake every day?

Yes?

That is cake every day. Thank you so much for listening, guys.

I really hope you enjoyed the episode, and don't forget to help a sister out by following the podcast on Apple or on Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Rate it, write me a review, and if you want more finish, we do have a private Facebook group. There is going to be exclusive Q and A is happening with my guests in that group. That's going to be events going live first, so much fun stuff happening. Just look up fit ish in brackets on Facebook and you can be part of the Finish online community

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