How To Make Your Body Your Teammate, with Tracy Cromwell

*The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

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And one of the things that’s really amazing is obviously everybody needs to have a starting point and maybe you’ve been in a situation where you’ve been cooped up in the pandemic, you’ve been you just really don’t know how to get yourself back into life again and all of a sudden, all this wonderful weather. It happens, and you’re going to new restaurants that because other ones were fallen away and all of these things. So now it’s like we’re all facing a lot of this. Have gained a lot of weight during the pandemic. You know, all of those things, and so this is such a timely topic for ancers, for elders, Radio Tracy, and I’m so glad that you’re here with us today. You you kind of set me, and this is a very intriguing statement. It says your body is your number one teammate, and I never think of my body being a teammate of my mind. But it’s really body, soul and spirit, right, it’s the whole picture. It’s the mind, it’s the body experience. So obviously those are two different energies in place. Is that correct? Yeah, so what I came to as I realize my body is always, always trying to do its best for me. It really is. It’s carrying me as best account every day and it’s and it wants to do everything it possibly can to like you know, again, the cells regenerate to to live, the heart, it’s always like everything. It is a miracle creation, let’s put it that way, and and the the fact that we get to experience our lifetime in this amazing body. It it’s here with us. And so when I again, I had had such a volatile relationship with mine where it just it wasn’t good enough. And, like I said earlier, it’s the reason because it’s not perfect. My Life’s terrible. When I realize, though, what was happening because of my thought process towards it, I was harming it, I was I was this, my thoughts were. My thoughts were, we’re just needing to be educated. And so when that hum a bit moment happened all the time, I was like my this’s my friend, this is my you know, I’m here to take care of it. You know, it’s my responsibility. And so so what I love is it’s very forgiving, I mean. And so when if we can look at with it with empathy, with carrying, with compassion, and say, okay, I’ve gained some weight over covid a lot of people have. I know, it’s not, you know, your fault body. You know, we just kind of fell off the you know, like everybody else, we we probably just ate few too many of this and that. But listen, how about we watch TV shows? Yeah, you know, maybe, and candy. I want. You may have decided to do. Your body is going to be very forgiving and and so when I decided to to start out with that mindset. Instead, I want to see what it can do when I treat it this way. You know, when I when I love it, when I eat to care for it. And now, listen, everybody, I I’m an eighty five percent on the ball person now, but I still love a treat. I still will have a little ice cream, I still want Carmel Popcorn. So when I say this, it doesn’t mean I have given up some of those things. I don’t crave them anymore like I used to, but but now when I eat, I’m thinking, wow, that asparagus, for example, I know that that asparagus is going to serve my body. Make me, somebody else asparagus might be the worst thing they could eat, you know. But what I decided was, I’m going to learn how to drive this Ferrari. You know, we all have this amazing whatever for your favorite car is. You’re not going to put some subserving like, let’s just say you have a Ferrari. You’re not going to put, you know, cheap gas in that right, but what if you did? Or maybe you accidentally put diesel fuel in? It gums up the motor causes problems. That’s kind of what happens when we choose, you know, foods that the body is like hey, don’t put that down here, you know, stop and so, you know. So what you do is then you you you start to reverse that, you start to to try out different fuel, you try out different and as we get older, some of the indicators, I know, acid reflux, I’m sure, is you indicated and even for young today it was really Susan. What’s really hard today is there are more kid kid’s getting getting diagnosed with type to diabetes, and the statistics are that’s these kids will die before their parents. So a lot of what I’m saying. Sadly, our kids are aging so off. It’s just awful. Right now it’s going on and again it is what fuel is going in and our lack of movement. Yeah, it’s so besides that, warning signs that you’re not feeding your body in the right way, I’m thinking, off the top of my head, heartburn, acid rethelos you know, obviously you know any sort of reaction after food. Your Tummy mate like when you eat, if it distands and starts to you know, maybe you’ve only had a few BIS and it starts to balloon out and pain. I used to think that was that I was just certain foods made me fall faster, and then I would keep eating them because I know I hadn’t had enough, but I was bloated. So bloating, that painful bloadloating feeling, yeah, yeah, or that felling just you know. I know for me, any time I eat, even though I love fish and chips, but it’s the grease, it’s greeny fish and chips or Greasy Burger, anything that has like heavy grease, it feels like a rock in my stomach. Yeah, that’s that’s why I describe it. And my husband goes, oh, it’s great. I’m going like Oh, no, no, yeah, great, yeah, saying yeah, exactly. And and so it’s those things. I’m just saying, okay, if he like my husband, he loves fish and chips and he’ll eat it, and I opt out, you know, because I know I’m going to pay the price for several hours and I don’t play the price anymore. Right and I the other, another good thing to think about. So if your blood work symptoms, I’ll talk about this. I can the book. In the book we talked about symptoms as a gift instead of looking at them is horrible. Symptoms are are really just our body is saying, Hey, see me, I have to tell you something. So if you have a symptom of bloating or swelling or acid reflux or or blood sugars raised, or you’re getting blood work coming back that’s elevated or not, what you closed for? All? Yep, high clustered, all those things. If if you can look at it as like, oh my gosh, my body’s talking, it’s telling me something, me something. Yeah, and if you can take it like that, and then and then and then practice and again. I’m not saying that it is always easy, because we have habits and we have things that we’ve attached emotion to and regard to food or behavior. But say, okay, what choice do I want to make? Do I want to do? I want to see if I can modify some things with what, how I eat, how I move to help my body be the best it wants to be. And then and then be open to that journey. And so so look at symptoms as a gift. And then other symptoms are if you have lots of energy, if you feel great after your dinner, you’re not wanting to pass out and do the you know, the carb or sugar nap, if you’re if you realize you’re getting up in the morning and you have your you don’t have anxiety or depression anymore. But pay attention to those as well, because that means something, something is going well for you. They’re so yeah, and so I think about what I eat now. I just pay attention. What’s going to happen? How am I going to feel? They’ll be like, oh, okay, well, that was I though, or Oh okay, yeah, that’s a yes, you know. So it’s really creature. So you talk a lot about, you know, this personal journey with food. There’s a lot of opportunities. If you’re starting to have these you know, your body is talking to you. You have tools to help with that, to answer it back. I’m assuming that’s what your book is. Yes, so the ideas that in the book actually there’s some a questionnaire and the questionnaire will help you decide what order you should read the chapters in. Okay, so, which is really neat and and in there we address body movement, sleep, making sure you understand food labels. You know how again, I talked about being a super slave and enjoying that journey of learning about yourself. We talked about how to help the body kind of get rid of toxins and different aspects of that to just overall self confidence and and self awareness. And in there there’s no recipes. It’s not a book like that. You can find recipes everywhere. You know really great at recipes. It’s about you figuring out where you are and not in judgment. You’re where you are, we are where we are, and then saying, okay, let’s go on this journey and we’re gonna got to figure it out. And in there we say too, if you haven’t been in the doctor, get to the doctor, get that blow, those blood panels done. If you if something, you have chronic pain and you haven’t, you know, had it looked at, please go. You don’t have to live in yours these lifestyle chronic illnesses. You know, some people are afraid to go to the doctor. Find when you like, shop around, see what you can do, because if you get that great team, build a support around you, of professionals. You can eat when you are aging. You can, as we had in our family, our family, the Grouvo Lady, shows a hundred three my husband’s aunt when she passed away, but she was out walking and very just doing great, and so she was our grival lady. I want to be. I want to be groovy like her, the Tracy. You have this amazing book and let’s tell everybody what is the name of the book? It’s called your personal journey with food, a a guy, ha ha, a guide for the confused and frustrated dietter. H Huh. But, as we had the reviews of it before it was launched, it’s a great book for everybody. It doesn’t matter what level nutrition or fitness knowledge you’re at. It it’s a great book. Well, you know, I want to talk a little bit about you know, and and while we’re taking a break, I want our listeners to think about what what are what is your body tell you every day? What are you telling your body every day? What are you doing? Because we’re going to come back and we’re going to talk about the body mind connection. This is a big piece of how we can be better in our health, in and our wellness and so everyone. Tracy will be right back right after this. We at answers for elders. Thank you for listening. Did you know that you can discover hundreds of podcasts in our library on senior care? So visit our website and discover our decision guys. That will help you also navigate decision making. Find US at answers for elderscom