Your Questions Answered [Ep. 84]

This is eight. Well, I think, well live well podcast. I'm Lisa Salsbury, and this is episode 84. Your questions answered.

Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food. I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury. I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter. I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating.

Hey everyone. Thanks for being here today. It means a lot to me when I have listeners say, I love that most recent episode or got so much out of it. I also just always want to know like what my listeners and women that are on my email list. What they are interested in learning about and what they are struggling with. So earlier in this year, I did a survey to try to understand you better. You may have replied to that. I got some great responses. And I've been going through that content and have done a couple of episodes specifically based on some of the questions there. But today I just wanted to run through several of those and see how far we can get in 25 to 30 minutes, because not all of these topics are either something that I'm an expert on. And so I may still be working on getting an appropriate guest or they may not fill an entire episode. So I thought I could answer some of those questions back to. Back. So without further ado, let me just jump right in. So let me just also say, this was in response to my question, which was, what topic do you really hope is discussed on the podcast this year? This is probably your one burning question about weight loss or health. And so that's what this is regarding Katie. The first one says I'd like more about menopause in managing symptoms and hormones without medical intervention. Okay, this is a good question. And absolutely, I think there are things we can do to manage menopause symptoms. I am working on getting a menopause expert on the show. I have. Reached out to a few. So wish me luck there. If you know anybody that you'd love to hear, talk about menopause, please let me know. I first would want to know more about your symptoms, the person that asked this question so that I could answer this better, but I'm assuming if you are struggling with the vasomotor symptoms, like hot flashes night sweats, that you're pretty miserable. So here's my favorite nonmedical intervention for that. It's my bamboo sheets. I swear, they have made such a difference for my night sweats. My sheets got accidentally swapped with my daughters last month after our cleaning ladies came and I thought, oh, no big deal. You know, we'll just switch them back the next time I wash. But wow. Like after a couple of nights, I was like, I have to have my bamboo sheets. I was shocked how many times I woke up sweaty. So that's just kind of a silly thing, but really your nonmedical interventions for menopause would be regular exercise, specifically strength, training, and walking, the strength for maintaining muscle and bone health and the walking specifically for stress and some low intensity steady state cardio. We don't need to be, or want to be doing excessive amounts of cardio. that will be counterproductive in our peri menopause and menopause years. Stress reduction with the walking or yoga or any other form of movement that reduces your stress is also a extremely effective non-medical intervention for menopause. Um, secondly, if you want to think about your nutrition, increasing fiber and decreasing sugar intake is going to be very effective at mitigating that visceral fat that tends to come on during menopause. It's not that you can spot reduce, but visceral fat is very different than subcutaneous fat, and it actually does respond better to high fiber. And low added sugar diets. Fruit is not a problem. So notice how I am saying added sugar. That's like on the label when it says total added sugar underneath the total sugar line. In the ingredient list, you're going to see cane sugar or corn syrup products, honey, et cetera. It's not the naturally occurring sugars found in dairy or fruit or vegetables that we need to. pay attention to it's those added sugar Gramps. So that is something that you can work on as far as if you're having some of that visceral fat deposits that's and by the way, that is the fat that's coming in and around your organs. And it, what is what causes the sort of increase in that belly fat look, looking area in the, the menopause belly kind of thing. So lastly what I'll say to this, um, to this person to ask the question is why are you against medical intervention? Specifically by the way, identical hormone replacement therapy is the most effective treatment for menopause and has been proven time and time again. To be safe. According to the Mayo clinic, estrogen therapy is the most effective treatment option for relieving menopausal, hot flashes and night sweats. These are those Faiza motor symptoms that I was talking about. Vaginal estrogen is also safe and effective for vaginal dryness, as well as just treating the entire area, the bladder, the urethra, plus all the sexual organs are very, very estrogen dependent. Vaginal estrogen can be effective in maintaining health in this area and even prevent urinary incontinence as we age, because it keeps all of those tissues. Healthy. You can use a vaginal ring tablet or cream. There's lots of options, but this does require medical intervention as does bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. So if you're going to go this route, make sure you're using a qualified doctor in menopause management. That knows not to put you on birth control or other oral estrogen. You want transdermal in the form of a patch or an oil cream. There's lots of options. Um, I, I am wondering if this particular question asked her has had a bad experience with a provider who maybe has put them on birth control or heaven forbid pellets don't ever let any practitioner put pellets under your skin, especially the testosterone ones. They are way too hard to adjust dosages. And they're just a bad idea all around. That's a whole nother topic, but you do want something that can be easily adjusted as far as the dosage. So make sure you're going to someone who is qualified to do that. Okay. Second question. If you only notice weight loss with long-term diligent, macro counting. How do you move to intuitive eating without anxiety and also with results? Okay, so you are preaching to the choir with this one. For me, this was absolutely me for a long time. When I was actively counting macros first, it was calories. Then I switched to macros. And I was like, but how will I know, how will I know. If I'm in a deficit, right. Because that's what you're talking about with results. First of all, if you have counted for that long. Trust yourself. This is really huge. You actually know. You don't have to weigh a chicken breast to look at it and know. That, that Palm sized piece of chicken has 30 grams of protein. You know what 30 grams of protein looks like. You know that a piece of fish or five eggs or a cup of cottage cheese. It's 30 grams of protein. You know, all this without having to wait and measure. So first, just believe in yourself, you actually are super knowledgeable about nutrition. If you have counted macros for many years. This is something that I have actually really worked on with myself for a long time. I regretted all of the years I spent on yo-yo diets and I on fad diets and all of that. But then I realized, you know, what. I actually learned a lot about nutrition. I actually know a lot about what a serving of protein looks like. So now. When experts tell me, Hey, you should get 30 grams of protein at each meal. I don't have to weigh and measure because I already know what it looks like. So trust yourself that, you know, What looks like a balanced meal. Second. Expect some anxiety. Because the second part of her question was. How do I move into a, more of an intuitive eating type of pattern without anxiety. And I'm going to tell you that's not going to happen. The first time I ate lunch without tracking. I was like, well, this feels bizarre. I could just sit down. And eat what I think I'm hungry for, and then not log it by weight, into my app. I had anxiety. Of course, you're going to have some apprehension, some anxiety, because you're like, what if this doesn't work? So expect it. And don't add anger or annoyance on top of that with thoughts, like I shouldn't be anxious about food. Or, um, I should be able to do this or any kind of shame, field, secondary emotion. Okay, this is a different way to approach your plate than what you've been doing. So expect a little bit of anxiety so that you can just deal with that primary emotion and not add a secondary shame field emotion on top of that. That you shouldn't be feeling anxiety. I know this probably isn't the answer that you wanted. You're like, I just want the anxiety to go away and it will, but it will go away a lot faster. When you do these two things, the number one, trust yourself, you actually know what a healthy plate looks like. And what works in your body and number two. Don't be mad that there's anxiety expect it deal just with that process. Just the anxiety. Okay. I'm feeling some anxiety here. This is what it's called. This is where it is in my body. This is what it feels like. And don't add on secondary shame that you shouldn't be, or that, you know, better. Or any of those kinds of thoughts? Okay. And then the last part of her question was how do you get results? Consistency. Consistently paying attention to your body and your hunger scale. Consistently waiting for hunger to eat and then eating just to enough. And then on the nutrition side still prioritize your protein. 30 grams of protein. Or one serving at each meal. That's how you're going to get results. Paying attention to your hunger scale. Prioritizing. Protein fiber and fat at each meal, making sure each meal has some of each of that. Okay. Third question is, uh, I had a request for an episode on cholesterol. This is not something I am an expert on. Um, the one thing I will say to this listener is this could be genetic. So, um, she had a lot of comments about cholesterol throughout the survey and frustration about, you know, I'm, I'm eating healthy, I'm eating things that are supposed to lower cholesterol. Do some Rachel research on. Um, first of all, the fact that Ansell keys study. Is completely been debunked that dietary cholesterol com. Converts to blood cholesterol. So be careful that believing that what you eat is going to directly affect your blood cholesterol. Um, this also could be genetic. Sometimes there's nothing we can do about it. But the other thing is your sugar intake is actually going to be, have more of an impact on your cholesterol. If you are this person feel free to email me a little bit more on this one. Alright, next question. How can I have a healthy relationship with food instead of using it for fill in the blank, joy, relaxation. Et cetera. This is a great one. We've done episodes on this, about emotional eating. The difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger is what you really want to pay attention here too. So physical hunger is any time we get a signal from the body that we are physically hungry and ready to add a fuel onboard. This is typically if you are eating, prioritizing your protein, fiber, and fat at every meal, you're typically are going to be able to go somewhere between three and five hours in between meals. Uh, most of my clients go about four hours. And so if you've gone that long and you get a hunger signal that is physical hunger. If you are getting a signal and by the way, this is something that is going to start in the body. You're going to feel it in your body first. And then it is going to travel to your thoughts. And you're going to become aware that you are having this physical symptom. This happens in a flash. So sometimes. You have to really think like, oh, why, why am I having this thought that I'm hungry and checking in with the body? If you have a thought about food, And then you create some hunger after that Typically that's going to be emotional eating. So what this kind of looks like is you see something. And you're like, oh, that sounds good. And then your body agrees. That's going to be emotional hunger. The other way we have emotional hunger is that was a really hard day. That was a really hard interaction that, um, my kids are being difficult, anything that's kind of challenging. And then your brain goes, you know, what's going to help with that is a little snacky snack. I just going to have a little sliver of those brownies that are on the counter. I'm just going to have a few crackers to take the edge off any time you're feeling like you need to take the edge off. We are using food for. Managing that emotion. And that is what this, uh, this question is about. So how do we stop using food to manage our emotions? So the first thing is to. Recognize it notice when this is happening and when you are eating because you are emotionally hungry, but you aren't physically hungry notice without any shame or judgment. Oh, I see what we did there. Got to know I wasn't hungry, but I ate that thing because I was looking for some relaxation or looking for some joy. Or whatever it is that the emotion is that you're looking for. This may happen several times before you start to notice it. While you're doing it. That would be the next step. So the first step is to notice after you did it. The second step notice while you're doing it, you're mid bite or maybe midway through that pop tart and you realize, Hey, I'm not actually physically hungry. I'm only eating this as a reward for getting the kids to school on time. And then you finally will notice it happening before you actually eat. You'll hear that thought. Oh, we should swing into Starbucks for a slice of lemon loaf. Since we got all our errands done early. And that's when you get to decide, am I going to just be proud and give myself the praise I deserve? Or do I need food to do that for me? Here's the thing. In the vast wisdom of Shonda Rhimes. One of my favorite quotes from her book year of yes, is food works. Don't ever let anyone tell you that food doesn't work. Anyone who tells you food doesn't work is either stupid or a liar or has never had food before you can tell them. I said, so it works putting food on top of it works. If food did not work, if it didn't work at slutty gluttonous, maura's more magic. Everyone in America would be Angelina Jolie thin no one would drive through no one would sprinkles or pink Berry or any of it. Yes. I looked up that quote for you so I could read it to you because I love it so much. Similar to the answer about, expecting anxiety that I gave earlier. Let's not get mad that food works. It's normal. We have to just decide if we want to keep doing that. Or to work through it. So ultimately the answer to this question about having a healthy relationship with food and not using it. Is mind management. You can do that through coaching, either using the model yourself and self coaching or hiring a coach, such as myself to help you see your thoughts around food and what is driving the overeating. This question specifically listed positive emotions, joy and relaxation, but you might also be experiencing. Oh, emotional eating and response to covering up negative emotions. So you have to get honest. With what you really want. Do you want to say yes to your body as Shonda did in her book, which is what this was about saying yes to her body, instead of saying yes, always to the food. Do you want to say yes to living well and making the decisions you feel, make your body function the best. Or do you want to always say yes to whoever offers you the food? Or to your lower brain, which tries to consistently convince you the food will make it better. Yes, it makes it better in the moment, but in the long run, Food does not actually solve for emotions. You still have to do that work, even if you put it off with food. All right. I want to come to the next question. How do I know what will work for me? I have tried everything. Okay. I am so sorry that you feel this way to the person that asked, asked this question. I'm so sorry that you feel like you've tried everything. And that nothing has worked. I do not want to invalidate your. Experience. I think there's a lot of people on Instagram or maybe fitness professionals that are like, well, you're just obviously like eating too much or lying about what you're eating, but. I just want you to know that. I believe you, I believe that you are stuck in your weight loss. The problem with you believing that there's no way out that you've tried everything is that your brain gets stuck there. And doesn't continue to look for solutions. Typically when I see someone who feels like they have tried, everything has tried tons and tons of different diets. And what they haven't tried. Is staying on the same diet forever. All diets work to create weight loss, meaning anything. Termed a quote-unquote diet is aiming to get you into a deficit or bringing on less energy than what you need in a day. So that you end up using some of your onboard fuel, hopefully in the way of fat tissue to burn his energy. And that creates weight loss. I said, hopefully fat tissue, because we want to not dip into our muscle tissue. As much as possible. And by the way, we do this by eating an adequate amount of protein while we are losing weight. So the biggest problem for having tried everything, is that nothing you tried. With something you could adhere to. And this is the biggest problem in intentional weight loss adherence you have got. And by the way, I believe that you've tried things and I don't want you to think I'm criticizing you like. But the truth is study after study shows that adherence is the problem. You have to instead do something that you can picture your 75 year old self still doing, meaning you have to develop a way of eating. That you could see yourself doing for a very, very long time. You are aiming to try to eat like your goal, weight, self eats. This is what my clients do. I do not put them on a super low calorie diet. I don't ask them to eat things that they don't like to eat. I don't even create food lists for them because they know what they like. What you have to stop doing is trying to diet down to your goal weight, using some sort of plan where you're having to just like use tons and tons of willpower and you know, your fists are tight and you're trained just to. Keep it together until you get down to that goal weight, and then go back to your regular way of eating. You've got to start trying to develop a way of eating that your future self eats like that future version of you that is maintaining her weight. What does she eat for breakfast? Day in and day out, not for six weeks. But forever. This is adherence. This is how you stop jumping from one thing to another. So when you say, how do I know what will work for me? I want you to get really honest with yourself about your past attempts. Which diet or which thing did you try that felt the most doable? I'm guessing it's not keto by the way women need carps. Don't do that. It's not possible to do that till you're 75. Which thing did you try that you lost the most amount of weight on. Or what was the easiest way that you have lost weight in the past? Even if it. I was only five pounds and then you're like, I stopped doing that thing. Get curious about what you actually liked about different ways of eating you've done in the past. So when you say you've tried everything, I'm assuming you've tried keto, you've tried macro counting. You've tried weight Watchers. You've tried random diets. Like I have like the fast metabolism diet and the south beach diet. What of those things made the most sense to you? When did your body feel the best? And now think about how you could incorporate some of the things that you did during that time. This week? Not all. I'm not telling you to go back onto the south beach diet. That's not at all what I'm saying. But let me give you an example. Most diets I've been on in the past, had a large component of vegetables. Okay. So I'm going to take a look at my current intake. If I were you. And I would say, is this the same amount of vegetables I was eating? The, when I was able to lose weight in the past. Is it the same? No. Okay. I need to maybe add in a few more vegetables. Okay, how am I going to do that without adding tons of extra work to my day? Because this is part of the adherence problem. We can do anything for six weeks, not only the eat anything, but spend an immense amount of time in the kitchen every day or doing all this meal prep. For these diets that we've been on. Right. But it's not practical. Long-term. So now we have to get creative. How can we incorporate more vegetables and get up to the level? That we were at on diets or past times that we've attempted to lose weight. How can we get up to that level of vegetables without adding tons of extra work to your day? I want you to think about that, but I'm going to give you a few ideas. Number one, precut, frozen vegetables. I just tried the fire roasted ones from Costco last week and I am absolutely loving those. I've tried them like three different ways already. They're very good. And the AirFryer sauteed with extra sauce on them. So easy. You can also dry roast, frozen vegetables, like broccoli or green beans. So just toss them out on a tray, put them in the oven and roast them dry without anything on them until they dry out. So you want to get like all that ice off, get all of that evaporated, pull them back out, drizzle them with some olive oil, put some salt and pepper, whatever seasonings that you like. Put them back in the oven and then crank up the heat for 25. If you have a convection oven, this works great for Browning vegetables. And roast them until they are browned and done through you will be amazed by this trick. I actually, I saw this on Instagram to be honest, but it totally works. And it tastes just like fresh. This will save you time. And this will make it possible for you to get vegetables into your diet without a lot of extra work. Um, second idea back salads are your friend. This is just one thing potentially you could add in just add in a bag salad. Anytime say you want to have more salads for lunch, like say the diet that you felt the best on. You had to make salad every day for lunch. Great. Use a bagged salad. Do not try to chop that whole salad every single day. That's going to be a lot of work and you will burn out on that. This is just one idea that you could potentially add in the vegetable idea. And then what happens is you end up crowding out other foods that you no longer have room for when you are using my hunger scale, because you're eating the vegetables. Okay. So. This is just one idea too. Access some wisdom from past diets. What worked well for me, another idea is like, okay, I notice that I'm currently not eating very much protein for breakfast, but when times when I felt really sustained throughout the day, it's because I had a high protein breakfast. Great. How can we add protein to your breakfast this week? What are some easy ways? Well, number one, you could use a protein shake as a supplement. So this is the idea of this here is just to use. Uh, protein powder and water or almond milk, something fairly low calorie, four to six ounces. Shake that up, use that as your drink. And this is a becomes a protein supplement. It's not a meal replacement. We're not adding yogurt or fruit or bananas. That's a protein shake. That's a whole meal replacement. That's going to be something altogether different. If you want to up your protein without a lot of extra work, without a lot of cooking and eggs and Turkey sausage, and. All of that hope lot. Just use protein as a supplement. You can also, I like the, um, I like the Fairlife nutrition plan. chocolate shakes. Those are 30 grams of protein. So it's a great way to boost that protein, using it as a supplement, rather than just as something that you're eating. So that might be something else if you're like. Yeah. I need to add more protein to my breakfast. Once you start doing these little things, you're developing a way of eating. That, like I said, your future self at your goal, weight eats. This is going to help you with adherence because you're only changing one small thing at a time. Now I'm going to go back to your question. If your question means that you've never lost weight on any diet. Then we need to chat. If you have attempted to lose weight and have never seen the scale go down ever. Then I need to hear what you've tried. I need to know how your body reacted to those things. But if you mean that you've never been able to adhere to anything long enough for it to work. Or it worked, but then you gained it back. Then I want you to think about making these changes slowly. And just one at a time. Just one at a time until it's a habit. And then go to work on the next thing And I think that you'll find this is something you can actually stick to. All right. Uh, the next one says, I love the podcasts that are about the model. And or emotional eating. So we've talked a little bit about emotional eating already. And thank you. I love those too. I love to talk about the model. I will refer you to those episodes in the show notes, And I'm sure there are many more to come, but I'm not going to do the model here again today, but I will keep that in mind to continue to incorporate the model, work into my episodes. Okay, the next one just says, sleep. I feel like this person is just like help sleep. Yes, such an important topic, sleep. Is the absolute foundation for health. Health of any kind mental health, physical health, all of it. It affects the adherence. I was just talking about. When we don't sleep our hunger hormones like leptin and ghrelin, get out of whack and start triggering desires for especially more highly processed carbon fat combinations because those are quick energy and we're tired. So nothing triggers a craving, like lack of sleep. If you are chronically under slept, see a doctor for sure. See if there's anything you can do medically. If you are just struggling to fall asleep or stay asleep, this can also be a perimenopause or menopause issue. And I would refer you back to question one. And encourage you to consider some HRT CF that can help you sleep. It has helped me immensely. Um, I also have two episodes on this topic. I am not asleep expert, but I will pop those episode numbers into the show notes. And remember that this is a request and something that is frequently asked. So I will seek out another expert on this to talk about sleep some more in the future. Okay. The next one says nutrition and exercise for in your forties and beyond. So I did just have Alan Meisner on the show. Last week, we talked a little bit. About, um, his podcast it's, it's called fitness over 40. So he's definitely the expert on this. So I would refer you to some of his episodes, but here are the main things. That you'd likely need to shift focus on for your forties. If this is just the nuts and bolts, I'm sure he talks extensively about these things on his podcast. But I'm going to give you. Um, for things. Number one prioritize your protein. I think there's a little bit of a theme here on this podcast. As we age, we have the natural muscle wasting called sarcopenia. This is going to happen regardless of what we do. So we have to combat that with Adequate protein. In fact, even when we are in a weight loss phase, this is the best way to maintain your muscle mass. Because if you think about the way you build tissue, When people want to recomp their bodies, you know, they want to lose fat and build muscle. You can't do that at the same time. Because you can't build muscle. You can't put on tissue unless you are in a surplus. And you can't burn fat unless you are in a deficit. So we need to do these things on two separate phases. First we lose fat. Then if you want to put on more muscle, you do that after you're down to your fat loss school. Now, what we want to do during the fat loss or weight loss phase is to use primarily fat as fuel rather than muscle. So that when we get down to our goal weight, We are not under muscled at that point. So, this is why protein is such an important aspect of a weight loss phase because eating adequate protein will keep you from. Using the muscle as fuel as much as possible. It's not going to be a hundred percent. This is just the idea that if we are losing, say five pounds, we're hoping that like four and a half pounds of that is fat and a half a pound as muscle. Adequate protein intake is not going to keep you from losing muscle at all. We still will lose some. But it will help to maintain your muscle mass as much as possible. What is adequate protein intake? For a woman in her forties or fifties, we're looking for at least 30 grams per meal. And hopefully an additional 30 grams somewhere during the day. So. that goes back to the idea of using protein as a supplement. Okay. Number two for nutrition and exercise in your forties is to strength. Train. So this is again about muscles. We have to maintain our muscles in order because muscles are your metabolic tissue. This is what keeps your metabolism going strong, meaning it's using the same amount of energy day in and day out rather than declining, declining, declining. When your metabolism declines, you have to eat less. Otherwise you will gain weight. So we've got to maintain our muscle mass. So we've got a strength train, but beyond that beyond the, just the weight maintenance feature. Strength training in our forties is setting you up for longevity because this also supports your bone health. So not only are we going to be stronger and have more balance. It. So obviously we're looking at preventing falls in our old age, but if we do fall, if the dog does walk in front of us and we trip over the dog, or what have you. When we have strong bones from having strength trained, we're less likely to break them. Um, number three, lay off the multi-day super intense cardio. Every week. We do not need to be doing superintendents cardio in our forties and beyond low hit intensity, steady state, or Liss L I S S is perfect for women in their forties. Combining that with strength training. So, as I said in the, uh, answer to the menopause question, strength, train, and walk, those are your two most important things. One day. Maybe to have higher intensity. You could do like one day of Tabata or interval training, that would be plenty to keep up your VO two max and in your steady state. Cause your VO two max is still important here in your, in these decades, because that is also a big indicator of all cause mortality. So we want to definitely maintain our cardio fitness, but we don't want to do that at the expense of burning up all of our muscles by doing too much cardio. Okay. And number four, be aware of functional movements. So where are you having any weakness in your day-to-day life? Um, is it carrying things, picking things up? Is it overhead movements? Is it grip strength? These are indicators of where we might want to focus in the gym in your younger years. You've probably been very focused on particular muscle groups and how that made your body up here. And while that is great and you know, no problem there. As you're getting older, you want to be more concerned about your functional movements and your functional abilities instead of just doing lifts and movements for appearance. So make sure that you're paying attention to things that might be happening to you. Functionally that you are like, oh, okay. That's an area of weakness that I could work on in the gym. Okay. Um, I don't know what number question we're on anymore because honestly I didn't number them. So. Let's see how much time okay. We I'm way over time. I said I would, I would go for 30 minutes. I'm going to have to do more of these again on another day. So I'm going to answer one more because it's really short. And before I do that, I just want to say, I am going to pop a link for a Google form in the show notes. And it's just going to be an simple, simple, what do you want to hear on the podcast? Or what question do you have? I'm actually really loving this format. And so I'm just off the cuff deciding to do this right now, and I'm gonna make a Google form for you As an easy way for you to submit your burning weight loss questions. So anytime you want to add a question in there, once I have enough to do another episode like this, I surely will. All right. The last question I'm going to do today is tricks to drink more water. Such a great question, because water is so, so critical. Your water intake is very personal. Yes, there is the standby recommendation of eight, eight ounce glasses a day. That is very, very generic. It absolutely depends on your body, your activity level, the weather, how much time you're spending outdoors. It's going to vary day to day. So. You, you know, when you are hydrated best because you're the one that looks at your output. So use the color of your urine as the best indicator of your hydration level. But, I want to say that all waters count, so we're not going to count soda, as far as like sweetened soda, like full calorie, sweetened soda, even, even diet soda. With, caffeine and it can be a dehydrating. So we're not going to count that, but if you have one of my favorite tricks at home is a soda stream and I sparkle water all the time, like literally every day. And I love to put those true lemon, true line packets in there. Actually the true grapefruit is the one that's my favorite. So sparkling water and a true grapefruit. It's really similar to something you might pick up like a Spindrift or a LaCroix. So if you enjoy those kinds of things, it tastes similar to that, but on that topic, any of those kinds of non sweetened seltzer water that are so prevalent today, all the different fruit flavors. Those are water. So that counts. you can also flavor your water with, again, I, this is not sponsored. I have no affiliation. I don't even have an Amazon affiliate account, so I can't even put like a, an affiliate link. But I love the true lemon lemonade packets. So I like the strawberry lemonade, the raspberry one. Those are sweetened with Stevia. And the are they're really good. I really like, um, You know, not everyone likes Stevia, but I don't think they have a strong Stevia taste as some other ones do. So think about those kinds of things to flavor sweeten, and just make your water more interesting. And then lastly, my clients have had great success and I am not kidding with a new water bottle. If you just never know what's going to motivate you. So get something cute. Put a little sticker on it. And, you know, make it fun. Some of them have markings on them with times so that you are getting to a certain amount. Depending on what time of day it is. And they, I have clients that like to play this game and like beating themselves on, you know, getting it in before the time expires. So. Lots of different of different water bottles out there that you can try, that don't have to be super expensive and we don't have to beat each other down to get the exact right color of the Stanley in order to drink more water, but do have a water bottle that you've like, because you're more likely to bring it with you and have it with you all the time to something that's easy to carry, which means it might not be the biggest one out there. You might have to refill it occasionally. Um, and the last trick I'll tell you about drinking more water is don't be annoyed that you have to go to the bathroom. Like these things happen. It's part of normal human function. So try not to get frustrated when you first are drinking more water that you have to use the bathroom more often. But I would also like to caution you, especially if you're having any trouble sleeping. Taper off your intake. As it, as it gets later and later in the evening. So after about seven 30 for me, I have to really be cautious about my water intake. Because otherwise I'm going to have to wake up and go to the bathroom. And I don't like to do that. I don't like to interrupt my sleep. So I front load my day with my hydration. I drink probably 60 ounces of water before lunch, because I want to be well-hydrated before I get into evening. And.'cause I don't like to be thirsty then, because then I'm going to drink a bunch of water and interrupt my sleep. So I protect my sleep in that way by front-loading my day with my hydration. All right. I hope this was fun and helpful. Please send in your questions. I would love to do full episodes on your questions or. Another episode like this, where I just rapid fire answer a bunch. And if my approach is something that really appeals to you, I would encourage you to schedule a free coaching session with me. I still am offering free strategy sessions. Those are 30 minute appointments for you to get a feel for what kind of coaching I can offer you, how that might help you in your life, and really get some of your questions answered. One-on-one. The link for that of course, is in the show notes. Thanks again for listening to the eat. Well, think. Well live well podcast.