Business Mom Summit Day Three-Self Preview Episode

Business Mom Summit Day Three-Self Preview Episode

It’s Amanda Tento, and I am here with Elizabeth Doll. She will teach us in the summit how to fit exercise into our schedule and make it more of a priority. I’m very excited to have you because this is something that I am currently struggling with, and I would love to hear what you’re going to be teaching us and a little bit more about that and how it can help us. So first, I want to ask you how you got started in this business and how you got started helping women with their wellness.

I started as essentially a personal trainer. I decided that I was planning to go to nursing school and did some rotations and just decided I wanted to help people feel better and take. Prevent them from going to the hospital, even though I know there’s not always, you can’t always do that, but helping people maintain wellness.

And so I started in personal training and I loved it and it was fun, but I noticed there was a disconnect for me that I would tell these women, I love to work with them. Like, Hey, here’s your plan. This will get you your results and all that stuff. And you know, we had some success, but we also had a lot of struggles.

And they would come back and say, ” Oh, I didn’t do that. This got in the way, got in the way. And I started to realize that. Life is part of wellness. And it’s not just about having a perfect plan. It’s not about me giving you this like, here, this will work. If you follow it, it’s, oh my goodness, I have stress in my life.

I have kids in my life. I have a business; I have all of these things. How do I incorporate wellness and health into my lifestyle? And that’s what started transitioning me more into the wellness coaching side of it. Then, behavior changes. How do we understand our behaviors? How do we change them and incorporate that wellness into our life?

I went on, went back to school, and got a master’s degree in exercise physiology and wellness coaching. I wanted to go more toward coaching and helping women understand those barriers that come up, that trainers don’t have the time or the resources to help with. And so that’s where I got started. I wanted to help with the behavior and help women find the reasons for exercise and wellness in their own life and help them overcome those barriers.

And that’s what I’ve been doing in the corporate world and now on my own with my own business. So that’s, that’s where it all. That’s awesome. And I can see that, especially if you were to have a male trainer or someone that doesn’t have that. You know, lifestyle as you, they don’t understand those challenges or how severe they might be.

That’s a perfect point. And I don’t think I did at the time either because I didn’t have a family then, you know? It was hard for me to understand, and as I’ve gained a family, I’ve also learned these things for myself, which I’ve got the education, and that real-life experience.

It’s a different ballgame, and that’s why I. This summit is extremely important for me because it’s one thing to be a business owner and a person, like a singular person, but it’s a completely different thing to be a business owner and a mom. And, you know, all of the other things that we do and all of the hats that we wear as moms, like the homework checker, the, you know, the grocery shopper, all of those things, and adding all of those hats on.

But I’m so happy that you are here to adjust our mindset and discover ourselves regarding exercise. I am excited to do that today. I hope that’s what we get out of it.

What is the number one struggle you see in your work with business moms regarding exercise? Not knowing why, not knowing the reason for training. So often, we approach practice from a to-do list standpoint or a checklist standpoint. As the doctor told me, I should do this. I should do this to lose weight. All those lists of reasons, right? We have all those reasons.

That’s the first thing, not understanding the why, so it’s the first thing to do when things get hard. And so one of the things that I, from the very beginning, recommend to moms, women, and everybody that wants to develop a better exercise program in their life, is to understand, first of all, why they want to do it.

Let’s forget the outside sources. Let’s forget about the doctor. If the doctor says you need to lose weight, if you feel like you need to prevent disease, it’s not very exciting, right? It could be more fulfilling to do. And so I want to bring back the joy and the excitement into the exercise.

Could you tell me what your why is doing it? Is exercise an outlet for you? Is exercise? Space for you, like away from your kids? Do you like to be out? Is exercise an opportunity for your brain to feel happy? Like that’s, that’s a physiological thing that happens in our bodies. And so if we can look at it that way, That can help us determine why we want to approach it so that when things get hard, we can return to that.

I had a client I was working with recently, and she told me she was having a hard time with exercise. We kept talking about it, and she came up with her why being the enjoyment of wellness. And I always share that because I love it so much. It feels more achievable.

It feels more attainable, like, If that’s why I’m approaching exercise because it makes me feel good and enjoy it. And being able to have energy with my kids and, and do the things, you know, be the businesswoman that I want to be and all those things. Then that’s yours, why and what will get you up in the morning.

If the morning is when you need to do it, that’s what will get you moving when it doesn’t feel great or all of those things that life happens. Could you please figure out your why first? I know that in business, we learned that figuring out the why behind your business is the most important thing to start with.

That it makes total sense that that same technique would translate into exercise, but I never thought of it that way seems, Simple but also profound.

I like you’re blowing my mind here. I have never considered the intrinsic why, like I know how it makes me feel and that kind of thing, but I’ve never like really.

That’s awesome. So how would you say a mom can figure out how to implement what you will teach? Like, is it going to be over a course, the course of like months, Or is it over like weeks? Or how can they work your method into their life? 

The first thing I want every woman to understand is that you will have ebbs and flows of exercise in your life.

You can still have a good relationship with exercise during all seasons of life. Let’s say you’re postpartum, and that exercise is very different, right? Or you’re busy or whatever. And so the first thing to know is that your. Relationships will kind of go like this. Our goal is that it’s not going like this.

The big up and downs. And so that’s okay. It’s okay to be in an ab influence with exercise. That’s the first thing. The second thing to go along with that is to understand where you’re at right now. So I want you to meet yourself where you’re at, not where the neighbor down the street is, not where the woman at the gym that you saw, like crushing it the other day is; where are you at, right?

And meet yourself there. So start where you are right now if that means five minutes of Pilates on a mat before you do your work for the day. Or if that means, you know, if you like to go to the gym classes, whatever it looks like. Remember that we have a start where you are because if you don’t, you have the potential for burnout and injury.

And those are the two biggest things that stop us from exercising. We start to lose joy. We begin to lose that enjoyment of exercise. And so I know sometimes it can feel frustrating to feel like we start. Maybe from the beginning. Again, you know, if you’re, if you’re in a season of a lull with exercise, but the good news is, are our bodies have muscle memory and they’ll, and they get back, and so you’re not going back to square one.

A lot of women feel that way, like, oh, I’m back where I started. You’re not back where you started because your body remembers and knows how to do these things. It’s just learning how. Back to where maybe you want to be, not where so and so down the street wants to be, where you want to be, where your why is, and then start there.

You can meet yourself where you are and add one step at a time when you feel comfortable. I’m ready for the next step. I’m going to add this. So that’s like a, a, an overview of like, let’s start here, meet yourself where you are. And then the second thing is to learn what you need to.

Because sometimes we approach exercise with this. How do I do it all? How do I do it right? How do  I get started? Find something fun, then learn what you need to know about it. You may want to do some weight training. That could be an opportunity for you to ask a friend.

If you have a friend who knows how to do it, or there are lots of resources available, or hire a trainer once to say, can I learn the basics so that you know what you can do? You go online and find a really simple Pilates program for you. And so really we have to have.

Then motivation and the like the enjoyment of wellness. What is your why, starting where you are and then acquiring skills you need to succeed so you don’t feel like you don’t know what you’re doing? 

That’s great advice. There are so many resources out there online to show you proper techniques and things.

That is an integral part of that. The next question that I have is who, or let’s see, have you had a client that has transformed their lives through wellness and getting to the bottom of what was holding them back before and then having an entirely kind of different life or energy level or anything in their life.

I have to tell you something kind of funny. As a trainer, I was known for helping women get pregnant. I don’t know what it was, but they’d come to me as if they’d always tried to have babies. And that was the stage that I was attracted to. But I felt like as we started to work together, everyone just ended up pregnant.

It was fun. And that’s, you know, like. I’m not saying I’m any fertility, anything, but I think, you know, that’s maybe something that brought them a little bit less stress and relaxation. The biggest thing I think about is that I’m trying to think of a particular client, but, in general, I like approaching.

What would happen if these women would come, let’s say, a particular client would come in and she would say, okay,  I want to lose weight. I want to feel good in my body. I want to tone up all these things that we approach exercise from that standpoint. Or, like, the doctor told me I need to lose weight or something.

And so we talk about, okay, we have all these outside voices coming our, in, into our bodies. Someone outside is telling you how you should exercise, how much you should exercise, what kind, and how you should exercise, and all of these things. And so you get bombarded with, ” Okay, I should do it this way, this way, this way.

 I first say, let’s get don’t should all over yourself. Well, let’s get rid of those should. And go deeper. Like, why is this important to you? Why is it important to be able to? Move your body. What is it? Do you want to run a marathon? Do you want to go out and hike a mountain whenever you want?

And so I would help these women get to this place of what is it that you want to be able to do daily? Do you want to be able to leave your house and go for a run? And if that’s what you want to do, then that’s a that’s like, let’s get you to that point. Let’s find that enjoyment of exercise to that point to meet you where you are.

And then, just like helping them understand, the rest of their life comes in. So I also help women heal their relationship with food, which is a whole different thing, but it goes into play, right? And so it’s thinking about what is, what’s, what are all these barriers in your outside.

And how do you lower the activation energy? This is a really interesting topic, or you haven’t heard this word before, but you lower the activation energy for exercise, making it easier to get started. So what we do is we go to the very, very basics.