Podcast appearances and mentions of jen what

Todd: Jen, we're talking about gifts. We were talking about giving gifts before. Now let's talk about receiving gifts. What is the best and worst gift you have received?Jen: Why don't you go first.Todd: Sure. Mine is easy. My step-father made a basketball hoop for me in our driveway. He made it for my birthday. It was pretty cool because, he put it up in one day. I had a car at that time, so I would have seen him making it, but I just came home one day, and there was a big basketball hoop with a big bow around it. It was on my birthday, and it was great. I used it every day and I had nieces and nephews. They used it. I had all my friends in the neighborhood come over. We had basketball tournaments. It was a really good gift.Jen: That's really cool. It's so nice of him that he would go through all that, and give you such a special gift.Todd: Yeah. The funny thing about it is, I think he really regretted it because, he wasn't thinking how loud a basketball would be when you bounce it. So when you would bounce the basketball, it made this really loud noise, echoing sound down the street. My dad was great. He was really cool.Jen: That's really nice.Todd: Yeah. It was nice. So how about you? Do you have a really special gift?Jen: For me, my special gift would be, my mom once made a suit. A pair of socks for me. They were really cute with little flowers on the right side of the socks. I would wear them every day when I was a kid. I though that was really special. I still have them in my bag.Todd: Oh really? Wow.Jen: Yeah. Winter is coming. I'm going to use it again.Todd: Socks wear out pretty easily. You've really kept them in good condition.Jen: Yeah. She probably used really good wool because, it's still there, and I still wear it a lot.Todd: That's great. What about a bad gift? Or a gift that you were not so crazy about.Jen: I don't know if it's okay to say I have a bad gift or something. But, yeah, once I did get a very big teddy bear from a friend who loved toys, by the way. She thought that I would love it as much as she did. She gave me this big toy, and I didn't know what to do with it. I was so embarrassed by it that I would actually hide it in my closet so that other friends cannot see it. Yeah. Every time she came to my house I would take it out and put it on my bed, but I hated that teddy.Todd: Oh no. Wow.Jen: What about your worst gift?Todd: Yeah. For me, a very close person to me, a good friend, bought me a shirt. It was lime green. It was so ugly. The texture also was really kind of rough. It had this ribbed texture. I knew the minute I saw it I would never wear it, ever. I felt bad because this person would come over to my house, and you could see where I kept my clothes in my closet. It was a very small room. That lime green shirt was just always there.Jen: That's so funny. What did you do with it? Did you wear it?Todd: I was thinking of a million ways to get rid of it. I would wear it occasionally if I knew my friend was going to come around and I wasn't going outside. I knew I had to wear it one or two times. Then, I used it to mop up some coffee once, and then I threw it out.Jen: What?Todd: I know.Jen: That's so crazy.Todd: I know. But, it wasn't quite so bad because there were actually two shirts. My friend bought the shirts, two for one, I guess. I still have the white shirt. But the lime green one, I got rid of. Yeah.Jen: You know what? You could have actually worn it during winter and put on a sweater on top of it, and then a coat or something. You didn't really have to do that. That's kind of mean.Todd: It is actually. It is mean. I don't know why, but for some reason, I really did not like the color. I just don't like lime green. I don't like neon colors, and I would see that bright, neon color all the time.Jen: I understand what you feel, but I do feel bad for your friend, though.Todd: I know. So am I a bad person?Jen: I don't know.Todd: No comment?Jen: No, you're not a bad person. Everyone has some problem with colors and stuff. I guess it's fine.Todd: Have you ever had something that just rubbed you the wrong way? For some reason, you look at it and it was an eyesore. You just hated looking at it. Like a piece of clothing, or maybe something in your house.Jen: Besides that toy I got, which I actually kind of like nowadays just because, it's with me and when I own something, after some time, I end up liking them because, they're mine, you know?Todd: Yeah. It grows on you.Jen: Exactly.Todd: Actually, just thinking about that lime shirt, it is growing on me now, and now I really regret it. I wish I had kept it.Jen: Too bad. You already spilled some coffee on it.

Todd: So, Jen, the holiday season is coming up, and many cultures give gifts around the New Year's for different holidays. First of all, do you like to give people gifts?Jen: What kind of a person would I be if I said, "No, I don't like people giving people gifts?" But yeah, I'm not really good at choosing gifts for people though.Todd: Why do you think that?Jen: Because every time I go and buy something for someone, I want to buy something that I like, and I would think that it would look good on them or something. But then my friends end up being like, you know? They don't really like the gift so much because it doesn't suit them, or something?Todd: Yeah.Jen: For example, I bought this pair of earrings for this friend, and then I realized that she doesn't really like jewelry and stuff, so she never wore it.Todd: Right, yeah. It's kind of hard to know what they want. Actually, for that reason, I don't like giving gifts at all. I think it's because of my background, like studying economics. It's just, to me, it's inefficient. You're buying something, you don't know if they really want it, and they say, "Oh. It's the thought that counts." But the time that you waste finding the gift and then you give them the gift, and maybe they don't use it. So I'm not a big fan of gift-giving. Even for birthdays.Jen: I actually agree with you. And for me, if it was my birthday, I would rather have someone make a card for me. It would have more value than someone buying gifts for me anyway, you know?Todd: Yeah. I think, like in Asia, it's more common, which I like. And that's kind of the gift you give to somebody when you travel. So if I travel somewhere, I'll pick something up for my mom, from a country I went to. Or somebody ... Let's say they went to Korea or China during their break, they might bring back some special food to the office, and everybody can have a cracker or a cookie, or something like that. I like that.Jen: I'm from Nepal, and here too. In my country too, they would rather give us like, fruits and like different kind of ... Other sweets and stuff rather than clothes and jewelry, you know?Todd: So true. Yeah, actually another thing I like to do is sometimes buy a really nice gift, and then for one year, and then maybe for the next year or two, don't buy the person a gift. For example, like maybe one year, I bought my landlady, who I'm very close to, I bought her an iPad. I'm like, "She's kind of older, and she never had an iPad." So I bought her an iPad, but then the next year, I didn't buy her something really expensive. I bought her like a box of chocolates or something, you know.Jen: In that case, I think it would create a problem, because once you give someone a really special thing, then the next year, they will expect something more, you know?Todd: Yeah.Jen: So like, it'll be really disappointing if they get something that's not very valuable than it was the year before.Todd: Yeah, it's kind of hard to climb back from that, isn't it?Jen: Yeah. Off an iPad? It would be bad.Todd: Though, she's a really nice woman. She definitely ... I don't think she thinks that way at all. She's actually better at giving me gifts. She's always giving me gifts. So, have you gotten any gifts recently for anybody? Are you already planning to get your gifts for the end of the year?Jen: I actually just presented a pair of shoes for my friend, because it was her birthday. The thing is, we don't really celebrate New Year at this time of year. It's kind of different for us, because we celebrate the Lunar ...Todd: Ah right, which is in April, right?Jen: Yes.Todd: Okay, cool.Jen: So haven't really thought about like Christmas gifts or anything.Todd: So in your country, in Nepal, like when do people give gifts? On what occasions?Jen: During our New Year. We have a lot of festivals, so more than gifts, we just invite people and ... you know? Gather around and eat good food, that's it.Todd: Yeah, that's the best.Jen: Yeah, I believe so too.

Todd: Okay, so I'm here with Jen and we're talking about clothing. Now, Jen, I'm a bit older than you, so I probably don't really care about what I wear so much. I always kind of pay the same price for my clothing. So I'm wondering, what's it like for a younger person? How much are you willing to pay? What is your price range?Jen: It depends upon like what you're buying. For example, if it's a pair of jeans then I would pay around 4,000 yen, that's Japanese yen. $40?Todd: Oh really? That's still relatively cheap. Like some people pay like $100, right? Or $200.Jen: I don't think I would ever pay that much because I'm a student right now,so paying more than that would be something I wouldn't do.Todd: Well what about in your home country of Nepal? How much would people pay for pants there?Jen: In Nepal, like compared to Japan, it's really cheap there. You can actually get a really decent pant in 1,500 yen.Todd: That's like $15.Jen: Yes.Todd: Around. Oh that's good. What's the cheapest you would pay? I mean, I guess you could get stuff for free, but what's the lowest you pay for clothes? Or for pants? For pants?Jen: Okay, so sometimes when there's a sale and especially if there's shorts then you can just get it for like 500 yen.Todd: Oh wow. Five bucks.Jen: Like five bucks, yeah.Todd: That's good. Now what about shoes? Do you have a lot of shoes?Jen: Yes I do.Todd: Okay, for some people like shoes they spend a lot of money on shoes. I have a rule, unless it's dress shoes for work, I don't like to spend anything over $100. If it's athletic shoes, like sneakers, never more than $50. Ever.Jen: Okay.Todd: Like how much do you on average pay for shoes?Jen: I think it's different for girls, because our shoes range from $10 to, you know, a lot of money.Todd: What's the most you've ever paid for a pair of shoes?Jen: $100.Todd: Oh really? That's not too bad.Jen: Yeah, it's not bad at all.Todd: Yeah, no, that's good. Kind of good range. How about the cheapest? Five bucks?Jen: Not five bucks, maybe 10 bucks, yeah.Todd: 10 bucks, yeah. All right. I don't even know if I could find shoes for five dollars. They'd fall apart, right?Jen: You can, though.Todd: Oh yeah?Jen: Yeah. On sale you can even get it in like three bucks.Todd: Okay. That brings up a good question because we're talking about shoes. How important is fashion for you? Are you willing to wear uncomfortable clothing to look good?Jen: Not always, because I really like comfort. I would rather wear pajamas and go out than, like you know, wear something really uncomfortable. But it depends, like if you're going to a party then you would obviously want to look good and wouldn't really care about comfort much. But in a daily basis, I would go for comfort always.Todd: Okay. Nice. How about for example, jewelry? Do you like to wear necklaces, earrings, rings, things like that?Jen: No, I'm not much of an accessories person.Todd: Okay. Now in your home country, Nepal, is it common for people to wear a lot of jewelry?Jen: Yes, they do.Todd: Oh yeah? Oh, okay. What do people like to wear?Jen: Everyone prefers gold I guess, because it's like people think that if you wear gold then you are rich. And yeah, gold, silver, and some wear diamonds.Todd: Okay, nice. Nice. I don't have any jewelry, I don't think. Oh wow, I didn't even realize that. I don't have one piece of jewelry.Jen: Really?Todd: Yeah, I have no rings. No necklaces. I have a broken watch. But yeah.Jen: Don't you ever feel like buying one though? Don't you ever follow a trend and thought about piercing your ears or something?Todd: That would be interesting, piercing my ears. You know, when I was your age, which was about over 20 years ago, it was just starting to happen that boys or men would pierce their ears. But it was a bit controversial, it wasn't like it's common now. So yeah.Jen: What about necklaces?Todd: Yeah, I used to have a necklace, yeah. And I just stopped wearing them, it's just not a thing. Yeah. How about you? Would you like to have piercings? Like do you have, you have earrings, right?Jen: Yes, I do, but I rarely use them because at some point it's just hurts and you just feel like you don't really need it, so yeah.Todd: What about in your country, do people have piercings in different places like eyelids or lips or ... ? Like a nose ring?Jen: Yeah, they have nose ring and then they also pierce their ears, like in so many different places. But I've never really seen anyone really piercing their eyelids or stuff. I would want to pierce my-Todd: Belly button? The belly button?Jen: Yes.Todd: Oh my gosh, that looks like it would hurt.Jen: I know-Todd: So much.Jen: -but I really want to do it.Todd: Really? All right, well, just be careful.Jen: Okay, I will

In this episode, Pastor Jeff Cranston and Jen Denton will be answering some theological questions that have been submitted by our audience to wrap up the series on Christology.If you are interested in learning about any specific theology topic to study, you can go back, check out the archive, and listen to previous episodes. [00:01 - 05:00] Opening SegmentJen talks about the topic of today’s episode.Question from Asher Auburn via Instagram: “ Is Jesus God? Did the biblical Jesus exist?”Pastor Jeff suggests to check out episode 35, titled ‘The Deity of Christ’, where we discuss this exact topic to answer the first question.Jen reminds us of how to connect or send us any questions and comments.See links below.[05:01 - 14:59] The Archaeological and Extrabiblical Evidence of Jesus.Pastor Jeff talks about the sources that explain the existence of Jesus.Check out the link to the article below.Pastor Jeff talks about the archaeological evidence about Jesus.Pastor Jeff shares some extra-biblical writings and passages from Jewish-Roman historians.Flavius JosephusTacitus [15:00 - 21:59] Does the Cultural and Time Differences matter?Question from Matthew via Instagram: “Since Jesus was on the earth for such a short time years ago, how does He relate to today’s’ day and time?”Time, culture, space, and ethnicity, or anything else that we have to deal with would not make any difference to Jesus; all of that would be superfluous to Him. [22:00 - 31:29] Jesus Physical AppearanceQuestion from Jen: “What do you think Jesus’ physical appearance looks like?”What he looked like is pretty elusive because the Bible doesn't describe Jesus physically.Pastor Jeff pieces together what we do know about Jesus.Jewish Galilean 30 year old man that did not stand out in any particular way physically.[31:30 - 33:23] Closing SegmentJen talks about the topic for the upcoming episode.Final words from Pastor Jeff and Jen.Tweetable Quotes:“ Time, culture, space and ethnicity or anything else that we have to deal with would not make any difference to Jesus, all of that would be superfluous to Him. ” - Pastor Jeff Cranston.“What he looked like is pretty elusive because the Bible does it describe Jesus physically.” - Pastor Jeff Cranston.Bible Verses and Other Sources Mentioned:The Bible Says Jesus Was Real. What Other Proof Exists? By Christopher KleinDid Jesus Exist? Searching for Evidence Beyond the Bible by Lawrence MykytiukDid Jesus Exist? By Bart D. Ehrman15 Things Jesus Would Say to You if You Met Him for Coffee by Donna JonesJohn 4Isaiah 53:2Revelation 1: 14-151 John 3:2Join the ConversationWe love your feedback! If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review. If you have any questions or comments on today’s episode, email me at pastorjeff@lowcountrycc.org.Visit my website jeffcranston.com and subscribe to my newsletter. Join me on Sunday mornings at LowCountry Community Church. Check-in with us on Facebook or Instagram @pastorjeffcranston.Remember, the real power of theology is not only knowing it but applying it. Thanks for listening!

Dnes Vám přináším další skvělý a zajímavý rozhovor v angličtině s úžasnou Jenn, Američankou, která se před několika lety přestěhovala do Prahy a teď inspiruje a pomáhá spoustě českým studentům posunout svou angličtinu na vyšší úroveň.V dnešním poslechu se dozvíte více o tom, kdo je, proč se sem přistěhovala, jaké vnímá kulturní rozdíly, jak "bojuje" s češtinou a mnoho dalšího. Tento podcast využijte k tréninku porozumění mluveného projevu. Otázky k ověření porozumění: 1. Who is Jen? What is she like?2. Why did she start making videos on YouTube and what kind of videos is she currently making?3. How did she make a living when she came to the Czech Republic and what does she do now?4. What did she and her students used to laugh about, as she mentioned?5. What does she like about the Czech Republic and which Czech habit does she particularly like?6. Describe her journey as a Czech language learner. How is she working on her Czech?7. From her experience of teaching Czechs, what do they struggle the most with?8. What is her advice on how to learn a language effectively?9. How does she spend her free time?10. What is her secret dream and why?K poslechu existuje i transcript, neboli písemná verze pro ty, co úplně nerozuměli s výkladem použité slovní zásoby a gramatiky. K materiálům mají přístup studenti výukového programu VÝUKA AJ ONLINE. Informace k tomu, jak se zapojit, naleznete zde: https://www.vyukaajonline.cz/Jen'sYTB CHANNEL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeV4rGWFAevPTQw4jN2hLNAJen's IG: https://www.instagram.com/jendreamprague/Můj IG: https://www.instagram.com/vyukaajonline/

In today's first Success September Interview I chat with Jen Jonas Saint who is the CEO and Founder of Jen Inspiring Coach which is a heart centered and value based life and financial coaching business. Jen is certified as a coach and helps people gain control over their life and money to create the life they want. Jen is a transplant from Trinidad who now lives in Massachusetts and is a wife to a strong loving leader and the mother of one handsome, creative and curious tween inventor. For more of Jen: What's App: https://wa.me/7816913726 Website: https://inspiringcoach.wixsite.com/website Coaching: http://lifecoachmatch.com/user/creativecoach/ https://www.savvyladies.org/about-us/helpline-volunteers As always we appreciate your support! ***Every penny helps... $.99 a MONTH (99 Cents!) really does help and make a difference! https://anchor.fm/successfuldiligence/support Thank you for listening and sharing!*** Send us a voice message: https://anchor.fm/successfuldiligence/message we would LOVE to hear from you! **Sign up for the Successful Diligence™ Newsletter so you never miss a thing! https://successfuldiligence.ck.page/ There are lots of new opportunities to interact with the Successful Diligence Community and some content is ONLY released via the Newsletter - So don't miss out!! https://linktr.ee/shelmy_life **Enrollment is open for our Mini Courses: Gateway to Gratitude™ and The Butterfly Impact™ , as well as our signature course: The Butterfly Transformation™ (at the Launch Price) at https://successful-diligence.teachable.com*Email us through the Contact tab on https://www.successfuldiligence.com to get a 50% coupon! Podcast listeners get 50% off ALL paid courses available in the school! ** (Code: Podcast50) ~ Successful Diligence™ Merchandise is available! Click to check it out! https://www.teepublic.com/user/successfuldiligence/ https://teespring.com/stores/successful-diligence ~ Copyright © 2020 Successful Diligence™, LLC All rights reserved. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/successfuldiligence/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/successfuldiligence/support

Episode 4 discusses myths & misconceptions of cruising which means we get to debunk some things that just aren’t true...or are they? Plus stories from Special Guest Paul Baya (Oceania Cruises), who was on one of the last ships with guests in March 2020.Get In Touch!Any more myths, misconceptions or questions? Send us to discuss in future episodes. Find us online and send us your questions and topics you would like to hear about. Subscribe to the podcast also watch the video version on Youtube. Email: cruiselifeexperience@outlook.comFacebook: www.facebook.com/cruisedirectormitchInstagram: www.instagram.com/cruisedirectormike Instagram: www.instagram.com/cruisedirectormitchWatch on YouTube: www.youtube.com/CruiseDirectorMitchShow notes:0:01 Intro and show descriptionMyths & Misconceptions about the Cruise industry00:35 If I go on a cruise, I will get seasick...Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabilizer_(ship)Link: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/cruise-secrets-how-ships-mostly-keep-you-from-124815777812.html1:06 Isn’t cruising for senior or older people?Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/douggollan/2020/03/08/cruisings-silver-lining-only-13-of-customers-are-over-70-years-old/#1d03268c2bc0Link: https://www.cruise1st.co.uk/blog/cruise-holidays/how-old-is-the-average-cruise-passenger/5:08 Link: https://www.carnival.com/onboard/bolt-ultimate-sea-coaster5:53 Are we going to eat in buffets all week long?Link: https://travelnoire.com/virgin-voyages-says-goodbye-buffet-a-cruise-ship-tradition8:06 The rooms (cabins) are all small right? Link: https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruise-rooms/royal-suite-class9:50 Mailbag questions:Jen: What happens with the food waste? Do they just throw everything into the ocean?https://www.businessinsider.com/how-symphony-seas-worlds-largest-cruise-ship-deals-with-waste-2020-3Sean: Can you divulge the actual work schedule and responsibilities of crew so guests understands what happens behind the scenes?12:58 Special Guest Paul Baya of Oceania Cruise Lines - Was on one of the last ships at sea with guests in March 2020. - Any interesting stories from your life at sea?- What was it like being one of the last ships at sea in March during the outbreak?Link: https://www.facebook.com/paul.baya/posts/1016352777776543431:55 Before we go, one last story - Mikes great sign off prank

A Sordid Tale of AfterEllen with Former Content Contributor Karen Frost  First of all, for people who might not know… What is AfterEllen? For the Generation-ZERS  AfterEllen was founded in 2002. Prior to its founding, there hadn’t really been a queer women-specific site that focused on queer female representation in the entertainment industry. AfterEllen flagged for readers when there was a queer female character on TV, offered movie reviews, and conducted interviews with women in queer roles. Over time, the site went through several sort of cosmetic variations, to include video logs and sock puppet re-enactments of “The L Word,” but for 17 years it’s stayed true to its original ideology of identifying and promoting queer female visibility on TV and in movies. Show Notes:                                         Before the Intro - 15 secs  What About Dat? Is a Podcast Queens Production,  Sponsored by Archetype Footwear.  Archetype Footwear OVER MUSIC INTRO - 30 - seconds Jen - Welcome Back to another episode of What About Dat? A podcast where I talk about socially relevant television and speak with thought leaders who want greater visibility and representation in film, television, and digital publication for women, lgbtqia, and their allies.  Today on the podcast we are joined by arm-chair TV-Pundit, former content contributor for AfterEllen, Lez Watch TV, and Tello Film Productions. The Queer Queen of analytics and data and Young adult novelist of the upcoming, “Daughter of Fire Series,” Book 1. Conspiracy of the Dark.   The lovely Karen Frost. Jen - Thank you so much for joining me today, I’ve been a huge fan since you decided to eat your sandwich next to me at Clexa Con.  Karen - Thank you for having me.    Jen - What did you do before writing for AfterEllen? What compelled you to reach out and become involved in the publication?  Karen - I’d read the site since probably a few months after its founding. Every day, I would go on and see if there was a new article. Frankly, back in the early 2000s there was so little representation that there were only new articles a few times a month. The site was absolutely pivotal to my formation of a queer identity as a teenager, and I’d always dreamed of contributing, so when a call went out for writers in 2015, I hoped I’d be picked. Jen - Of your 182 articles what is the piece you are most proud of?  Karen - Let me preface my answer with a bit of a story. In 2016, there was a MASSIVE uproar in the queer female community after the character of Lexa on the CW show “The 100” was killed. Without getting into fandom-specifics, one of the things to come out of it was the feeling, “Why are our characters always being killed off?” For the first time, someone put together the data on it, and we discovered that 25-30% of all queer female characters have been killed off on TV shows. That’s a rate orders of magnitude larger than straight characters. Put another way, there was a statistically significant tendency of shows to kill off our characters. But had no one done the math, that knowledge would have remained in the realm of “feelings” rather than “data.” Because of work to highlight this problem, the next two years saw a plummeting in the number of queer female characters who were killed. Now, to get back to your question of what article I’m most proud of, I would say that the articles that I’m most proud of are the ones that used data to make a point about representation, for example showing that an actresses’ best chance of getting an Oscar nomination and winning since 2002 has been to play a queer character. I believe that it’s hard to convince Hollywood to have more representation using just “feelings,” but if you use data to show the profitability, then it’s hard for Hollywood to say no.   Jen - At ClexaCon, you briefly mentioned a mass exodus from AfterEllen? What happened? Why did so many writers cease their involvement with the publication?  Karen - The mass exodus happened in September 2016 when then-editor Trish Bendix was fired after six years at her position. Evolve Media, who owned AfterEllen at the time, announced it could no longer keep a full-time editor given that AfterEllen wasn’t meeting revenue goals and that it would be reducing the amount of content produced. The relationship between Trish and Evolve immediately soured, and all the writers but me chose to leave in solidarity with Trish. Anyone interested in those dynamics should read an article Trish posted about the dying queer media and the struggle to monetize it. She had a first row seat for years in seeing how the entire media landscape was affected, not just AfterEllen.  Jen - You wrote an article entitled “Why I stayed,” which was a compelling counter-argument for why you were going to continue to contribute articles to AfterEllen during a time when other people were leaving. Why did you stay?  Karen - As I mentioned before, AfterEllen was an absolutely pivotal part of my identity formation as a teenager, and I realized that the site would continue to exist whether all the writers stayed or left. It would continue to be a global platform with the ability to create positive impact for young women coming to terms with their sexual orientation. Girls in Bangladesh, Kenya, South Korea, Argentina, and even in the US wouldn’t know about the backstory with Trish. Two or five or however many years later, they would log onto the site and I wanted them to have something to read that would help them. I think we often become very myopic and Anglo-centric when we think about the world just because we write in English, but there is SO much of the world that is also impacted by what we write. Jen - What was your turning point? What made you finally leave?  Karen - After Trish, Evolve Media hired Memoree Joelle as the new editor. Memoree came to the site with some baggage in the sense that she had expressed what were perceived to be anti-transgender comments in the past. We writers knew about those sentiments, but for the first several years, she kept the sentiments behind those comments private and off the site. In late December 2018, however, when it became clear that Evolve Media was looking to sell AfterEllen and would no longer be monitoring whether she was publishing anti-trans rhetoric, she began to publish that rhetoric through the AfterEllen Twitter handle. That’s actually a bit of an over simplification in the sense that Memoree would argue that she’s not “anti-trans” per se but rather that she feels that as the LGBT community has focused on trans issues, it has come at the cost of lesbian issues and therefore she seeks a more equitable balance of resources and energy. However, the delivery of that message came across as extremely anti-trans.  By December 2018, I could no longer remain with AfterEllen. As someone who doesn’t share Memoree’s ideology, it was impossible to continue to be associated with it. As much as I believed in the spirit of AfterEllen’s mission, to have stayed any longer would have been to condone that sort of bigotry, which I don’t.  Jen - What are some of your takeaways from working at AfterEllen?  Karen - I would say the biggest takeaway is that Hollywood is changing. Often we get impatient at the pace of change, but in 2002 we might see three queer female characters in movies a year and in 2019 we’re talking about whether Valkyrie and Captain Marvel will date in massive, billion dollar grossing Marvel movies. The amount and quality of representation today is unbelievable compared to two decades ago and earlier. I’d like to believe that some of that is a result of the great work done by people at AfterEllen, Autostraddle, and other sites.  The other takeaway is that yes, queer media is dying. That’s for a variety of reasons, but one thing that I would flag is stovepiping in our community. For a decade, readers would come to sites like AfterEllen or Autostraddle and they would read about all the queer content on TV. There was a unified base of knowledge that was shared among the community. Everyone knew, for example, the ten shows that had queer characters. Now people seem to be falling into a few fandoms and not paying attention to what’s happening outside those few. Readership for sites like AfterEllen is dying in part because rather than going to AfterEllen, viewers are going to show-specific sites. But if we lose these universal or aggregative sites, then we lose a really good repository of knowledge. Book Trailer - 1min + Jen- “Conspiracy of the Dark” - Is really different from the deeply analytical articles you’ve put out into the world. Where did the inspiration for the project come from? How did you find your story? Karen - I’ve always loved Young Adult fantasy. Ever since I was a kid, that’s always been my favorite genre. But there really haven’t been a ton of queer protagonists in mainstream books. When I was a teenager, there were three: Malinda Lo’s “Ash” and “Huntress,” and then Tamora Pierce’s “The Will of the Empress.” So with “Conspiracy of the Dark,” the inspiration was just to write a good and interesting story, but also to create more content for young queer women. We need stories of our own, and if mainstream publishers aren’t particularly interested in giving it to us, then we have to write it and disseminate it any way we can.  Jen - Being that you write high-fantasy, what kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book? One of the luxuries of high fantasy is that no research is necessary! I love it. You just open up your computer and go. Jen - What does literary success look like to you? If you could have it all, what would it look like with journalism and writing, what does success look like for you?  Karen - I would say that literary success for queer content looks very different from straight content. Here’s what I mean: JK Rowling has made a billion dollars off the Harry Potter series and merchandising. If you’re going to write straight content, that’s success. Success is fame and fortune. But queer content will never sell like that. No one will be getting rich off queer content, and in fact I only know of one queer female writer who makes enough to do it full-time. To me, success in our genre is impact. If someone reads my book and says, “Wow, this is fantastic. I’ve never before seen myself portrayed as a knight or a mage,” then that’s success. All I want to do is put out the content that didn’t exist when I was a teenager. Let’s fill figurative libraries with the content that the mainstream has denied us for centuries.   It’s largely the same with journalism: success is about creating impact. It’s almost impossible to know if the articles that I write have caused anyone in Hollywood to re-evaluate how they do representation, but I hope they have. Ultimately, fame is fleeting and subjective. Here today, gone tomorrow. But if an article plants the seed where Hollywood says, “Hey, maybe Captain Marvel CAN be gay,” then that’s impact forever. Jen - What’s the most difficult thing about writing queer characters?  Karen - There’s nothing difficult about writing queer characters…if you’re already queer yourself. I think where we see more difficulty is when straight people are writing queer characters.  Jen - How does your background in queer pop-culture effect the way you write characters? Karen - Not exactly. I will say, however, that there was a queer couple on TV whose dynamic I really liked so I used their dynamic as the basis of the romantic pairing in my book.   Jen - What was your hardest scene to write? Why? Karen - The opening few pages of my book. In the initial draft, I wanted the description of my character’s world to be very detailed so that readers would feel immersed in it. I immediately realized, however, that it was too much and no one would get past those pages. They would stop reading. So I had to go back and cut.   Jen - What was the pitch process like trying to sell your concept to literary agents? Karen - The way publishing works is that for mainstream publishers, normally you get a literary agent and the agent then tries to market your book to publishers like Harper Collins. So in essence you have two barriers to get over: finding a literary agent and then finding a publisher. Literary agents post online what they’re looking for: cook books, fantasy, sci-fi, etc. I ended up querying 17 literary agents, all of whom specifically said they wanted LGBT content and fantasy content. Every single one of them turned the book down. Then I tried Bella Books, for which you don’t use a literary agent, and also was turned down. The truth is that mainstream publishing really doesn’t want queer female YA content right now, and the two or so books a year that come out with it feel like a miracle. For me, I was also hurt by the fact that to date, queer women haven’t shown an interest in YA fantasy as a genre. The most popular genre is contemporary romance. So for any publisher taking on the book, it’s a risk. It could turn out that neither gays nor straights want to read it.   Jen - How did you connect with Ylva publishing?  Karen - I sent my manuscript to them using the website instructions. To be honest, it was my last effort. If Ylva hadn’t taken it, I would have given up. Ylva has been wonderful to work with, and I really, really am glad they believed in the book and decided to take a chance on it. Jen -  Moving forward what do you think will happen to queer digital publications? Do you think you will ever return to journalizing or has that ship passed?    Karen - I think we’re seeing an atomization of queer digital publications. The revenue structure that supported blogs and websites in the mid to late 2000s is gone. There’s just not the money in it, and that hurts websites. When they can’t stay monetized, they fold, and that trend impacts not just the queer sites, but everyone. For queer content, what pops up are small, personal websites run by one or two people. The problem with sites like that is it’s hard to direct traffic to them. With so many, how do readers know to go to them? It’s not that they’re bad, but rather it’s hard for them to promote themselves. For myself, I love writing about queer topics, particularly in the entertainment field, but frankly, my ability to return to that field isn’t contingent on me. With this atomizing, people feel like they want to run their sites themselves without outside content. What that’s meant is that I can’t get anyone to take my free articles. So while I have lots of ideas for articles, I have no place to publish them.   Jen - This has been an interview with Karen Frost, thank you so much for being here today. Your presence elevates the podcast. Please come back soon. Be sure to follow us on twitter @whatabout_dat.  Music Outro   

Could you be supervising your kids too much? Safety is important, but that doesn’t have to translate watching your child’s every move. Annie, Lauren and Jen are joined by parenting expert Allana Robinson to discuss outdoor unsupervised play, fostering independence and life skills and finding more balance as a parent.   What you’ll hear in this episode: Societal pressures around supervision and engagement of parents with their kids The amount of time working moms spend with their kids vs stay at home moms in the 50s What science says about enrichment and play Motor skill development and play How motor skill development affects reading ability Facilitating outdoor unsupervised play through relationship building in your neighborhood The value of small risks in learning to prevent injuries How children's’ injuries have changed with the introduction of “safer” equipment How to introduce unsupervised outdoor play in an age-appropriate way Boundaries and consequences - how to use them Helping kids learn to entertain themselves Judgement and the mom on the phone in the park What happens when you interrupt or correct play Isolation and the need for community of parents and of kids Zooming out from our kids’ behavior and learning to see it in context   Resources: Uncommon Sense Parenting Facebook Page Allana’s Facebook Group Ping GPS The Gift of Imperfect Parenting Your Kids Need to Play Outside Without You podcast episode (Allana Robinson) Marian Diamond Rat Enrichment Study No Child Left Alone study Learn more about Balance365 Life here Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or Android so you never miss a new episode! Visit us on Facebook| Follow us on Instagram| Check us out on Pinterest Join our free Facebook group with over 40k women just like you! Did you enjoy the podcast? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Google Play! It helps us get in front of new listeners so we can keep making great content. Transcript Annie: Welcome to Balance 365 life radio, a podcast that delivers honest conversations about food, fitness, weight and wellness. I'm your host Annie Brees along with Jennifer Campbell and Lauren Koski. We are personal trainers, nutritionists and founders of Balance365. Together we coach thousands of women each day and are on a mission to help them feel healthy, happy, and confident in their bodies on their own terms. Join us here every week as we discuss hot topics pertaining to our physical, mental and emotional wellbeing with amazing guests. Enjoy. We live in a culture where parents are expected to be with or entertain their kids all the time, but we also have other responsibilities inside the house that need taking care of too, and as a result, our kiddos' outdoor playtime often gets cut short, but today's guest has solutions. She understands the importance of outdoor play for kids and wait for it, she encourages unsupervised outdoor time. Yeah, you heard me right. Alanna Robinson is an early childhood educator and parenting coach for parents of toddlers and preschoolers. She helps parents understand why their children are misbehaving and what to do about it without yelling, shaming, or using timeouts. On today's episode, Alanna, Jen, Lauren and I discuss why your kids need to play outside without you and how to begin implementing that today so your kids can play outside and you can tackle your to do list inside or you can always just relax too. But before we dive in, it's important to note that we have a diverse audience, and even though we don't have immediate solutions for everyone, we want to acknowledge that inequalities do exist and people with different socioeconomic and racial backgrounds may have a different experience with outdoor play. But as always, we don't want anyone to feel left out of this conversation. And if you want to discuss any of these topics further, we invite you to join our free private Facebook group. Healthy Habits Happy Moms. Enjoy. Lauren and Jen, welcome to the show. We have a special guest. Lauren, are you so excited? Lauren: I am so pumped. I'm so excited to learn all the things. Annie: I know. Jen, I know you're excited cause this was a guest you found and you brought and you were like, "She needs to be on the show." Jen: Yeah, I'm part of Allana's, I'm in her parenting posse Facebook group. Actually, Allana, I found out about your Facebook group in our Facebook group. Allana: Oh yeah? Jen: You were, or did someone just recommend your Facebook group to me in our Facebook group to me in our Facebook group. So group to group. So I joined yours and you have said some things that have been so profound and have changed the way I parent and discipline, which is amazing. Allana: That makes me so happy. Jen: And even though you specialize in one to six year olds, I have, well, I've been in your group for quite a while, but my boys are transitioning out of those ages. So I have a five, seven and nine year old. I find your advice still works for my seven and nine year old. And so you just scale it to their level and yeah, it works. It's amazing. And it's taken so much stress out of parenting, right? Especially with discipline because you're always like, "Is this enough? Did he learn his lesson?" Annie: So in other words, welcome to the show, Allana. How are you? Allana: Thank you so much for having me. I'm great. Annie: Good. Allana: Making me so extremely happy because you never know if what you're putting out into the world is actually landing with people and it's just, it makes me so happy to hear when it does. Jen: I don't, I just read along. So I would say I'm a lurker in your group. I've posted once, but I read. And so it's actually a good reminder for me that in even our Facebook group, I'm sure there's tons of lurkers, so nothing you say is ever really wasted. And so I read whatever you write. So whatever you're doing in that group, I'm a step behind. Annie: And then she comes to me and she's like, "Hey, you need to check her out." And then I went to your website and listen to one of your podcasts. And it was about why your kids need to play outside without you. And I was like, "Freedom!" It was amazing. Jen: That was a huge moment for me and you're so open about your own parenting practices and you're not just telling people, "Hey, here's what to do." You're like, "Here's what what you should do. And I'm doing it. And this is what happens in our day to day life." And can I say the comment that blew my mind? It was just from a couple of weeks ago. Can I say that? Am I allowed? You told everybody, someone asked when they can let their toddler play in their backyard unattended. And then all these women were giving advice, right. And it was this huge thing and all of a sudden you swooped in and you said your youngest or you start them out one and a half years old playing independently outside by themselves at one and a half. And your son has been walking down the street to the park from four years old. Allana: Yup. Jen: On his own. And I was like, "Wow." And you said the world is safer today than it's ever been. There's this perception that it's more dangerous and we actually have more things in place to keep our kids safe even though it's safer. But that's killing us as parents. And actually what it's leading to is a lot more indoor time and screen time for kids because it's actually not realistic or sustainable to expect parents to be playing or even supervising their kids 24 seven and so kids aren't even getting the minimum amount of movement that they should be just because it's actually become impossible for families to provide that. Allana: It's an impossible standard. There's also a study that was done not that long ago about the difference in the amount of time working mothers today spend with their children versus stay at home mothers that spent with their children in the 1950s. Working mothers today spend more time on average with their children than stay at home mothers did in the 1950s so this concept that we have to constantly be in their face, we have to constantly be engaged with them. We have to constantly be enriching them. Jen: Right. Allana: Putting this impossible, impossible load on us. And you know where that came from? It came from another study. There was a woman named Marian Diamond who was in the 1960s, she was doing research on rats and how big their brains got when they played versus rats who weren't given the opportunity to play. Allana: And she was a woman scientist in the 1960s and she was playing with rats. So she got ridiculed socially by her male colleagues for being the girl who plays with rats. And in order to try and make her study, her papers more serious, have a bit more aplomb, she removed the word play and she changed it to enrichment. And nobody knows this woman. Nobody has ever heard of these studies before, but they have just trickled through our societal psyche to the point where we believe that we always have to be engaged with our kids or they're going to be stupid. And what that study should have said is the more time the children play, the smarter they get, the bigger their brains get. And that tiny little change in the way that we communicated that idea has had such a prolific impact on North American society. And now we're at the point where it's breaking us to meet those expectations. And we're so terrified that if we don't, that our kids are going to be stupid. And it's, yeah. So this fear that everybody has, and it's a deep seated subconscious fear that we have to be with them all the time or they're going to be taken or stupid. And it's just, it's not sustainable. You can't do it. Jen: Can I just, I'll just add another fear. That they're going to get hurt and someone's going to call child and family services on me and my kids are gonna get taken away because I wasn't there when they fell off their bike, broke an arm. Like, you know, it's just, I'm afraid of what my neighbours are gonna think of me. Not so much anymore because my kids are a bit older. But when my kids were younger, it was, we lived near a park, I wouldn't dare have sent, you know, in my head I'm like, "I'm sure they'll be fine." My Dad used to do some very questionable, like, I mean over the line questionable things. So you know I'd always have my dad be like telling me "It's fine!" Just, but you know, you, you actually worry about your neighbors. And actually I've been on social media for several years now and shared a lot of our family during that time. I think I started after my third was born and I have had many people message me and threatened they're going to call family services on me, like awful telling me I'm an awful mother. Like, if I'm trying to share like our mom life moments, you know, like, there's accidents- Allana: That hasn't happened to me yet quite frankly, because as you said, I'm very open about what I allow my kids to do. And there's more studies. There was this study that was done in 2016 about, it's actually called No Child Left Alone. And it was a study that was done by a small group of researchers and they basically asked a large, large group of people, they gave them scenarios in which a child was left alone and every single scenario was exactly the same except for the reason why the child was left alone. So they varied the reason, like, you know, mom went to go see her lover versus, you know, mom had an emergency at work and couldn't find a babysitter. And what they found was that people assessed a higher risk to the child based on what they morally felt the reason was for leaving the child, even though all the factors were exactly the same. And so what that means is that people don't just think things are dangerous and therefore, and moral, they think things are immoral and therefore dangerous. So, and when I say to people like "I let my five year old walk to the park," they're like, "Aren't you afraid CPS is going to get called on you? Aren't you afraid that somebody?" And I'm not because I know my neighbors. And that is how we combat that, because it's a lot easier to judge somebody on their morality when you don't know them, when you can't put a face to them, when you've never spoken to them. So, and it's awkward, super awkward. But when we moved here when my son was a year and a half old. And so he was just starting outdoor play and he was, he's tiny for his age, like he looks much younger than he is. And so I actually took his hand and we went around and we walked up and down our street and we knocked on everybody's door and we introduced ourselves. And I said, you know, "My name's Allana. This is my son Logan. You might see Logan around, he likes to play outside by himself. I'm okay with that." And people were kind of like, "Okay." And it was, it was awkward as hell. And you know, we have a bit more in depth conversations with our immediate neighbours who can actually see into our yard. But so no, nobody ever, I gave my phone number to everybody and said, "Hey, if you ever see him doing something questionable that you're not sure it's safe or appropriate, please send me a text message. Like I am always, I will deal with it." And what that people call CAS because they see a child doing something that they're not sure is totally on the up and up and they don't have a touch point. They don't have anybody to go to other than the police. So if you go to your neighbors and you say, "Hey, this is who I am, this is my child, this is my phone number, please call me if you know you ever need anything," it removes that ability to have such a quick moral judgment on you because they seen your face. They've spoken to you, they've had a conversation with you and that I think because we don't know our neighbors, in this day and age we move around a lot more. We live in much larger communities. Houses are much closer together. We don't, we don't know our neighbors the way that our parents did or grandparents did. So it takes a conscious effort on our part if we're going to be sending our kids out into the world by themselves that we know we've scoped out the world for them, right? Jen: Yeah. Go ahead, Allana. Allana: Oh, I was just going to say it like, he has, he's walked to the park before and I've had neighbors text me and be like, "Hey, so your kids at the park by himself?" And I'm like, "Yup." And they're like, "Oh, you're okay with that?" "Yup. Thanks for letting me know though." And they're like, "Okay, great." And that was the end of it. And they know him, he knows his boundaries, like, and there's a certain amount of teaching to this. You don't just send your kid out the door and be like, "Off you go." There's a lot of very conscious teaching that has to happen in, right. Annie: Allana, I would love to get into, like, how do you actually implement it in a little bit? Because I know like you can't just take a kid that, like, hasn't had any unsupervised play and be like, "Okay, see ya. Have fun." But I want to back up because you have quite a bit of information about, like, the benefits. Like why does this matter to the kids and why does this matter to parents? Allana: Well, because the outdoors is basically, like, nature's occupational therapy, right? Like the rate of children in occupational therapy has soared since the 1990s and it's because the kids aren't getting outside. When you go outside, first of all, the environment is perfectly sensorially balanced. It's made for us. It's not too loud. It's not too quiet. Depending on where you live is not too hot or too cold. But you can adjust it, you know, generally it's not too bright. There's, you know, very subtle sounds that help you orient yourself in space. Like just the sounds of birds tweeting and leaves rustling helps your brain figure out where you are in space. It has, there's so many sensory experiences, mud, grass, air, everything is a sensory. The heat from the sun even is a sensory experience that helps your brain integrate the input that it gets both indoors and out. It's not controlled and there's things that you have to adapt for which you wouldn't have to adapt for inside because everything is so controlled inside. So our kids aren't getting that stimulus that hopefully we got that our parents definitely got outdoors and the result is that there's a lot of kids in schools right now who have vestibular problems and it's affecting their ability to read. It's affecting their ability to sit down and concentrate. Spinning, spinning has been shown, if you spin for five minutes, it's been shown to increase your attention span for two hours. They've removed every single merry go round. Every single spinning toy. Kids aren't allowed to spin on swings anymore because it's "dangerous." They've shortened the height of swing sets. If you look at pictures of swing sets from like the 1960s, the set itself is super, super tall and the chains are super, super long, which means they got a lot larger range of motion. When everything got scaled down and we got super safety conscious. We literally scaled down the swing sets. The chains are much shorter. They're not getting as large a range of motion. They're not getting as much stimulation. So it's vital not just to, you know, their ability to entertain themselves. It's vital to their long term learning. If you don't have a body that can integrate all the information that you're getting, then it's going to crop up down the road in lots of different ways. Jen: Wow. You know what? We moved from Vancouver, a huge city in Canada to a very small city, in the interior British Columbia, 90,000 people. And then within that community we live in like this tiny little suburb that backs on to, like a provincial park. So just hiking trails and stuff. My children's life has changed. Being so close to nature and having other children on the block, like our doorbell is ringing constantly. These kids are outside all the time, way more than when we lived in Vancouver. When we were in Vancouver I felt like I had to facilitate everything because you're in this big city you like, it's just, yeah, it was, there was just, it was very, and it was very stressful and I don't even think I realized how stressed I was until I wasn't living there anymore. And I have so much more freedom. I, you know, we even live close enough to the school that, like, boys can walk to school and walk home. And then just my free time has gone way up. Like as far as, and the load of parenting has gone way down for me living in this neighborhood and in this smaller city and I just can't believe how the quality of our life has improved. It's crazy. Allana: Totally. And like I have a lot of parents were like, "Listen, I don't have an outdoor space for my kids. Like we live in an apartment building and I can't let them go downstairs and play in even in the public green space by themselves because there's, you know, 60 back balconies that face onto it and somebody is going to take issue with it" and I always say "Some is better than none." Jen: Yes. Allana: Taking your kids to a park and take them to a park where there's no equipment. Right. Don't take them to a park where there's all these plastic climbers and stuff. Take them to a park where there's no equipment, provincial park, national park somewhere that it's more of a natural space and let them play there rather than let them climb the trees, let them walk on the logs, let them go, you know, dig in the ravines and the ditches. That's much more high quality play than the kind of contrived play that happens on swing sets and stuff like that. Jen: Yeah, they, when my kids were young, we lived in New Zealand and they are extremely progressive as far as play there. And this is kind of when all this started coming to me, because I had never heard this kind of talk in Canada and they talked a lot about the benefits of decreasing supervision and increasing risk on playgrounds because for example, our school, our playground no longer meets safety codes anymore. And so our school is paying $100,000 this spring that we all had to fundraise for to put in a new, new safe playground. And I'm kind of sitting back while everyone's very excited, great, but I'm sitting back going like, this is a hundred grand on a new safe structure that- Allana: Is going to do them a disservice. Jen: Right? And so - Allana: Yeah, I know the feeling. My son's play, my son's school, he's in junior kindergarten here in Ontario and they don't even have a playground. They don't have any, like they have a fenced in yard and there's a play structure for the kids who are in grade four and up. But anybody under that isn't allowed to use it. And we're moving schools next year. And his first question was, is there going to be something that I can climb on Jen: Right. Allana: Yeah, dude, that's like one of my top priorities. Jen: Yeah. I see just as many kids in the field next to the school. It's all fenced and stuff than I do on the playgrounds. Right. So it's and then tell me this, I don't know if this evidence based or not, but I often wonder what happens on playgrounds when the kids are bored and there's no risk anymore. Like do they turn? Like is that why they're turning on each other at recess? Allana: When there's nothing to do, you're going to create something to do. And so the nice thing like, and people will often say to me like, "How do your kids play outside for hours on end? There's nothing in your backyard." And there isn't. We literally have a yard and a shed and, but there are things in my backyard. We have lots of loose parts. We have, when my husband built that shed, he took all the off cuts and just kind of sanded down the edges generally so that he wasn't getting any splinters. And so there's, there's a ton of lumber back there. There is sticks, there's mud, there's a sand pit, we have a water table that kind of turns into a pond during the summer because nobody cleans it out. It gets very disgusting but so they have all that stuff out there and they'll take like, you know, an action figure or a car or something, one little thing and they'll build this whole playscape off of it just because toys are built with a very specific purpose in mind and kids know that they're supposed to use them that way, right? You're supposed to use a tool the way the tool is supposed to be used. We're very, very clear about that with young children. So when you give them a toy and it's only able to be used one way, they're going to get bored with it really, really quickly. And then when there's nothing to do, they're going to start disturbing. Jen: Bleeping the child psychologist. Allana: I always have an explicit warning on my own podcast because when I get passionate I run my mouth. But yeah. So, but if you don't give them those things that are closed ended to begin with, if you give them open ended stuff and you expect them to create their own world, they'll do it and it will be so immersive for them that they won't have time to make, you know, trouble. They're going to be so engaged in it.   And that's the other thing is toys generally can only be used by one or two people versus open ended materials. "Okay, you want to come play with me? Great. Go grab a stick. Right?" So that's, it's a lot easier for children to join play when there isn't set materials for them to use, when everything's very open ended because they can modify what they're doing to include more people very easily.   And to come back to kind of what you were saying about the play structure, that's another problem, right? There's usually limits on how many kids can be on the play structure, especially in school environments where they're like, you know, there can only be five kids on the play structure at a time that just hamstrings them. It cuts them off at the knees and when there's children, you know, want to come in, they can't. So keeping things and it's just really, the science across the board just says "Back off! Back off and they'll figure it out. That's what their brains are designed to do." Jen: Right. And that's really what builds a resilient person. Right? They can figure it out in a moment. Right. The other thing that had been talked about in New Zealand I remember is as playgrounds were becoming more safe, they were not just less risky as in, "Ooh, am I going to fall? Or it was also, they were less physically risky in that it didn't require as much strength to go over these different spots in the park. So the upper body strength in children is coming down big time because they are taking out monkey bars. They're taking, you know, they're taking out all these upper body things." Allana: Exactly. Because you've got children in occupational therapy to build that up because they're not naturally getting it, they're not weight bearing. I have so many clients who their child is in kindergarten and first of all they're asking these kindergarten kids to read and write when that's not developmentally appropriate, but they also can't physically do it because they don't have the strength in their muscles to do it. Like fine motor skills starting in your shoulder and they work their way down. Jen: Right. Right. Allana: If you don't use your gross motor skills. You can't use your fine motor skills when you need to. So yeah. And the other thing about reducing risk is that they're reducing small injuries, but the injuries that do happen are much larger. Children are breaking bones more frequently. They're, you know, having huge concussions when they do, because their vestibular system is so underdeveloped, they don't know the limits of their body. And so when they go to try and do something new, they can't tell if they can actually do it or not. Jen: Right. Because they've had no lower level risk that warns them Allana: They weren't able to build up to it. Jen: Amen. Yeah. Allana: We've reduced, you know, cuts, scrapes, minor stitches and we've turned that into breaks and concussions and it's, ask any occupational therapist and they'll tell you that a lot of these things are very easily solved just by sending them outside to play. Jen: Right. That's so interesting to just reframing it, right? These things are good. Like this is good for your kids to make these mistakes, have these small falls. None of them are life threatening, but they're teaching them about their environment and saving them from future. An analogy to that, actually, I posted a insta story a year ago with my oldest son on a little mini quad at his grandparents' farm and he was doing donuts and it was all dusty and I got so many from women that were like, "I would never let my child do that." And he had an accident that summer. He bumped into the side of his uncle's truck and he flew and hit his chest on the handlebars and it really hurt him and it really scared him. I mean, he's wearing a helmet and we've got that safety stuff. And I was like, "Good." I could see the donuts were getting a little out of control. I could see that kid needed some kind of little bump to remind him that he is on a machine and it happened and it was good. And he is much more safe now. And I guess, I guess what, and also my dad's a farmer, so I grew up in, you know, "dangerous" environment of, like, just roaming around a farm and yeah. And it's like, I see now how good that is, but you know, and I moved to the city and I think of all these city kids getting licenses at 16 and like, you know, we're a little, when you grew up on a farm, you're just driving, you drive, right? Like you drive when your dad's lap or you, you're helping, you know, you're way too young. You're 12 years old and you're helping move trucks from one field to another. And then I think of all these city kids getting their licenses and it's like that's crazy that they have no driving experience. And you know what I mean? So it's like- Allana: I was reading something the other day about how it's taking longer. Like when I turned 16 almost all my friends got their license on the first try. And apparently there's some statistics now coming out that it's taking teenagers longer to learn to drive because they're having to develop vestibular and proprioceptive skills that they didn't as a child. And so they're not able to judge where their car is in space. Jen: Oh gosh, that's so interesting. Allana: So yeah, it's, this isn't just about mom getting some breathing time of being able to clean the kitchen without anybody crawling up their back and about the kids being able to entertain themselves. These skills that they develop, that looks like they're doing absolutely nothing are so important. And they will follow them for the rest of their lives. And it's just, it frustrates me so much. Jen: Lauren had a question, I think. Allana: Oh yeah, Lauren, did you have something? Lauren: Yes. Can I, can I? Hello? Annie: Hi. Welcome to the show. Lauren: Hi, I'm over here. I'm trying to get a word in next to Jen. Annie: Good luck. Jen: Classic little little sister moment. Lauren: So I love all of this. Can I ask some practical questions selfishly that hopefully will benefit all of our listeners? I have a five year old and a one year old and I'm wondering like, okay, my one and a half year old obviously is probably going to have different boundaries than a five year old, but the five year old, I mean, I let her play outside sometimes, but I'm usually watching her through like the window and whatever. Like so what are, how do I introduce this concept to both of them in age appropriate ways? Allana: So the five year old, as you said, it's going to have a much longer leash than the one and a half year old. If you have fenced space, it's, that's easiest because it's easiest for us to back off. But generally what I do with little kids is I start by being outside with them but not being engaged with them. So like blowing snow in the driveway. They can't participate in that, but they can be outside while we're doing it, weeding the garden, they might join in but they're going to get bored and they're going to go do something else. Doing things that need to be done anyways, but, and that we're around, but we're not focused on them. We're focused on something else. So that's like step one is generally just getting them used to the idea that you're not going to be watching them all the time. And then step two of that is starting that way and then being like, okay, I'm going to go in and go to the bathroom. I'm going to go in and make dinner. And just gradually lengthening the amount of time that you go in at the end of your play time so that they're not going from "I'm inside and supervised, to I'm outside and not supervised." There's a buildup to that and it's amazing how, like, children are very intuitive. So if we have concerns, if we're scared of them doing something, they're going to pick up on that very quickly. Their limbic system is very connected to ours and our inter brain is going to go, "You're not safe!" And so they're not going to feel safe. So it's a workup for us too, right? We need to feel confident and comfortable leaving our kids alone. So those are steps one and two generally for me is just being outside, not engaged with them but being outside with them. And then at the end of that starting to introduce, I can go inside and you don't have to come with me. And once you kind of work up to a good chunk of time, then you can start sending them out by themselves and lengthening that amount of time so that you're like, "Okay, well, you go out and I'll meet you there. Like I'm just going to go and put this in the oven and then I'll be outside." And starting to get them used to going outside without you following behind them. And then you can go out again, do something else, not be engaged with them, but be around and then go back inside. So you're kind of working it from either end rather than just sending them out on their own. And that's generally a nice good workup for kids. They don't feel scared because they know you're coming, you know that you're not having to like peek through the window to keep an eye on them either because they can sense that too. Windows don't block limbic resonance. Lauren: Do you have tips if your yard is not fenced in, like, do you give them ahead of time, like, boundaries? Allana: Absolutely. So my favorite tool for this is go to Home Depot or Lowe's and grab some of that neon paint that they mark gas lines with when you call and be like, "Hey, I'm going to dig in my yard." And then somebody comes by and like Mark's all your gas lines so you don't hit a gas line when you dig. Go and get that and spray your property line. And I do that every spring with my two, because I have a two and a half year old. And so last year he was a year and a half and he wants to play in the front yard with his big brother, but there's no barrier in the front. So he was getting really angry because my big can let himself in and out of the backyard and the little one can't and he'd be so mad when my big one would leave him in the backyard. So I did. I went and I got the orange paint and I sprayed, just a line right down our ditch and down either side of our front yard. It doesn't look great, but when you mow the grass goes away and he, and I was like, "Listen, you cannot cross the orange line without mummy or daddy." And we walked the orange line and I showed him, "Yes, no, you cannot go on this other side." And it did. We had to work up to it Again, starting with me being outside with them and keeping an eye on them, but not engaged with them, reminding him that he can't cross that line and just very gradually backing away from him and letting him have more ownership over that. Now we can go just about anywhere. Like we have a cottage with a waterfront that we go to in the summer and now I can like walk up and like spray that line along the waterfront and I'm like, you can't cross the dark line- Jen: Take it to your hotel. Annie: The restaurant. Jen: The restaurant play here, don't worry, you can mow it out. Allana: I've done it with orange electric. Try and pick a color and stick to it because kids tend to get that, like, color association. But I've done it with orange electrical tape, like, we were at, actually just this last week, my big one was hospitalized and we were in this waiting room, like, it was like an examination room with the door didn't close. It was kind of like just a triage kind of space. And my little one was kept trying to escape and I busted out my roll of orange electrical tape and put on a hard line on the doorway and I was like, you can't cross the orange line. And he was like, "Okay." Jen: That's so awesome. Annie: it is. Allana: At this point that he's like, "No, we don't cross orange lines," causes problems when they're like, "Here you can go!" Like where were we? We were at Wonderland or something like that last summer and there was, like, a line on the ground to mark where you can't cross to go before you go on a ride. And they were like "Come!" and he was like, "Uh uh, we don't cross orange lines." Annie: So I have a feisty two and a half year old and I'm picturing this like it, like I'm, this is not that I don't believe you, but I mean- Allana: It's not an overnight thing. Annie: Yeah. I'm picturing me, like, getting out, like, rope or a spray can and like her just laughing in my face like, "Yeah, okay, mom. Right." Allana: Right. Well and they do. But that's the thing where you have to very consistently redirect them back to the other side. And- Annie: What have you used as appropriate consequences? Like do you say, like, "Sorry, we can't play outside then if you-" Allana: Yeah, well if you can't, so I often say like "If I can't trust you to stay on this side of the orange line, then we're going to have to go inside. Or if I can't trust you to go stay on this side of the orange line, we're going to have to go in the backyard that's fenced" and, or "if I can't trust you to be playing up" like often when I was starting to do this with him, I would be washing my car because my husband's a car nut and so it makes him very happy when I wash my car frequently. So I was like, all right, this makes him happy. This makes me happy. We're going to wash the car while the kids play in the front yard. And like, I mean it's nice when you have an older child who gets to be the tattle tale, but it was like, "Mom, Owie's going into the road" and I would bring him back. "If you can't stay on this side of the orange line, then you're going to have to come and sit in the car." And he was like, "Uh un." And I was like, "Yeah." And it doesn't take very many times of, like, "Hey," as long as you tell them what is going to happen before it happens. Like you can't spring it on them and be like, "Nope, if can't stay on this side of the orange line I'm going to strap you into your car seat." And then they're like, "Well, I didn't know that was what was on the line." Jen: That's actually, this is another huge takeaway I've gotten from your group is the whole concept of natural consequences, like, life changing. We could do a whole other podcast on it and I'm sure people can find more about it on your podcast. But I, it's just like brought my chill level into a normal range around my kids. And, you know, even, it was in your group, it was something about, it was just like this, right? So it's like you lay out the boundary, you tell them what the consequence is and it's a natural consequence. So it's so it's not like disciplining anymore, right? Allana: Exactly. Annie: It's about getting them to connect to the consequences of their actions. Allana: and kids can tell when we're pulling a power trip, right? Timeouts all that stuff. They know when we're like, "No, I'm just doing this because I can." And so, like, things with, "Okay, if you can't stay on this side of the orange line," the best logical consequence for that would be, "Okay, well then you need to go into the gated area." Like that's, he doesn't want that because he knows his big brother's not in the gated area. He knows that, you know, he wants to be in the front with us. And so that creates a consciousness in him that he's like, "Okay, I need to think critically about this. I'm not going to," and they will test. Kids are scientists. They use the scientific method with much more accuracy than any adult. And they will have a theory and they will test every variable possible, which is why I say, like, try and keep the color consistent because like my son, we were at my mom's once and she didn't have any orange paint, so I busted out some pink. Pink apparently doesn't have the same staying power. It is not an orange line. Jen: Oh my kids would do that. Allana: Because right. Anytime you introduce a variable, they have to test it. They have to, they're so inquisitive. They are scientific little minds. So, and that's where you have extinction bursts where they're like, "Okay, this was the limit before and now it's, there's a new limit. How hard do I have to push until we go back to the old limit?" So staying consistent really is the key to the whole but yeah, keeping, I've lost my train of thought now. Jen: You're amazing. Like you, it's like you're in a child's brain and the way you explain things is so fantastic. I can't wait to send everybody to your podcast and you just, and then suddenly my anxiety in parenting is just gone when I listen to you because I know I'm doing the right thing and it will work out. Right. You sometimes feel like you're just trying whatever, just try it, see what works. But I just have this, like, reassurance from you that it's just consistency. Allana: it's so much easier to let go when you know what's going on under the hood and you know how their brains work. And that's, like, my whole philosophy is if you can understand how your child's brain works, then you can work with it instead of against it. And so many of the conventional parenting wisdom is working against their brain. Annie: Right? Right. Jen: Yeah. Allana: Dominant. It's trying to exert dominance. Jen: Then you get struggles and they feel, yeah, it's- Allana: They feel controlled and nobody likes to feel controlled. You push back and they feel like they're being manipulated and treated like subhuman. So when we just treat our kids like we would not how we would treat an adult, but when we are give them that kind of respect, it's amazing how quickly they come onside. It really is. Annie: And I think from like a parenting perspective, hearing you as an expert in this field, pun intended, it's almost permission giving to say like, "It's fine. Go inside, go to the bathroom, put a frozen pizza in the oven. I mean that's what I would do. Like make a phone call, whatever. There'll be okay. And they need it. It's not just for you." It's, like, it just helps me like do this guilt-free. Allana: Totally. And like I've had clients with 11 year olds who will still make their 11 year old come in from the backyard when they need to go pee. Like when you go to the bathroom. Jen: Like that thread in the group before you came in and laid it down with everybody. I was like, "Who are these people?" Like how long are you gonna be like basically- Allana: And the funny thing. It's like my babysitter, my main babysitter is 11 years old. And when I tell people that they're like, "What?" They're like, "But you don't her alone with them." And I'm like, "Oh yes I do. She can." My 11 year old babysitter can feed my children dinner, bath them and get them in bed and an hour and a half flat. I can't do that. Jen: That's the other thing is that eventually we're working up or my son turns 10 this summer and we've kind of given him the, when you are 10 we will start leaving you a home alone. Like if I'm popping out for groceries or whatever. And it's this thing he's looking forward to and that's kind of the law here. Just so everybody knows. I know the law's different in different areas. But that is, we are law abiding citizens anyways. And so if you can't leave your child, like it has to start happening at some point, right? On a gradual basis. You can't be micromanaging your kid. And then he turns 10 or 11 or 12 and then you go, "Okay, we're leaving you alone." Allana: We don't give children any ability to experience minor risk and then they turn 18 and we're like, "Go out and innovate." Jen: Yeah. Go live alone. Annie: This sounds like- Allana: And they're like, "I've never done this in my entire life. You can't start with, like, throwing them out the door. Jen: And then they struggle. Right. And mental health issues in freshmen university students are just skyrocketing. Allana: Of course, living with their parents for longer and longer because they just don't have- Jen: They're not self sufficient. Allana: Yeah, you don't know how to cope without somebody micromanaging you and telling you what to do all the time. And then when people are like, "Make good decisions," you're like, "I don't know what that means." Because you have no. Jen: Yeah. Allana: Litmus test for it. So it's, it really is, you know, when people say early childhood is so important, it is the foundation for your child's entire life. And if you can't start trusting them when they're four with little tiny responsibilities, how are you going to trust them when they're 16, 17- Jen: Right. Yeah. The other thing I learned from you Allana that I wanted to say was about this bored thing. Cause I think that's the next thing, right? So, okay, your kids are playing alone, but they come back and they're like, "I am bored." I learned this from you in your group. You said it is not your job to entertain your child. And I, so that's just what I say to them. Now they come to me and say they're bored. I'm saying "That's not my job to find something for you to do. Like you, go find something to do." Allana: You are not a clown. You are not the family cruise director. Jen: Right. Sometimes I'll say, "Here's your options. You know, you can get out the coloring stuff. You can go out and jump on the trampoline" or I'll give some options to "Go get your bikes, go down to your friend's house, see if he wants to play." But I tell them all the time that "I am not here to entertain you. That is not my job." And that's been such a revolutionary thing for me too, because I, you know, you feel the pressure around that. Allana: Well, exactly. And that comes again to that pressure of they need to be enriched 24 seven if we want them to be smart. And that the only person that's available to enrich them is me so I have to be constantly engaged with my child and it's just not true. In fact, it's damaging. Jen: Right, right. Lauren: So I have my one and a half year old, like, he'll go play by himself, like, no big deal. But my five year old has always been, she wants to play with somebody. Do you have any tips for like training that'd be like you can, like, she'll go play for a little bit but it's, it's just she's completely different than my one and a half year old and she seems to only want to play with me. Jen: Or what about an only child? Like people that have one child? Allana: Only children I find are actually the best at entertaining themselves because they have no expectation. Like, even my older son is super good. He's really good at playing by himself because he had to, he had nobody to play with. My younger one is not so good at playing by himself because he's always had big brother being his cruise director. I actually find only children are usually very good at playing by themselves. It's not usually such an issue with them. There are children who are just, they're extroverted. They take energy from being around other people. Whereas introverts, that's expending energy, right? So it's a difference in what we find stressful. And so for kids then that's typically how I find kids who are extroverts is when they're like, they always want to be with someone. I'm like, "That's because that refills their tank. That's actually calming. Jen: Interesting. Allana: Versus children who are spending energy. So for them it's actually more calming to have people around and to be engaged with people. And these are the people who when they're in their 20s want to live in those houses with like 40 other people and they're like, "This is fun." And you're like, "No, that's stress. Stress." Jen: Annie, sorry. Annie's been waiting. She's got a question. Annie: No, no, no, no. Jen: She'll try to shut us down, I know it. Annie: I'm giggling because I am an only child and like- Jen: Oh right. Annie: But also, but I'm also an extrovert, so I grew up in a house where, and this might've just been a reflection of my mother and father who both worked full time. And I know that they were just tired when they came home from work, but I always got to have friends over. But I grew up, this supports kind of what you're saying. I grew up in a neighborhood where my, you know, I had three or four best friends within a block of, and we would just skip through the yard to get to, cut through yard backyards to go to the other person's house. And it was like, you just come home when the street lights turned on. That was like our guide and I was, you know, that was probably fifth or sixth grade, but that was there, you know, get on your bikes and you just go, you, you, and, and as long as you're home, by the time the street lights come on, like, we're good. Jen: I'm at the point where I'm like, when my kids are hungry, they'll come home. Like I trust. I've come to trust it. And because you're building this relationship, right, you give them more boundaries and more boundaries and then you as a parent, you trust. You know, it's always a little, once you give them a little more, then it's another trust thing. But then, you know, I've built, like, in our neighborhood with my three kids, we just, there's a lot of trust there with my kids now. And maybe I do, maybe I have my kids have more free reign than some of my neighbors, but I have trust there and I know my kids will get hungry eventually and they will come home and we just, it just works. Allana: Totally. And even like people will say to me like, how can you let your five year old go down the street? Aren't you scared he's gonna get hurt and not be able to tell you or you know that somebody's going to snatch him? First of all, my child is usually low jacked with a GPS. So we do live in 2018, these devices exist. Jen: Oh, you actually have a gps on your son? Annie: I actually have a gps on my son. It's the size of about a quarter or a looney. Jen: What do you wear? Can you tell us about that? Where you put it, how you? Allana: Yeah, so it's just I have, you know, those, tags that they put on merchandise in stores so that when you walk out, if you don't pay for it, it'll beep and flash and all that stuff. So those have a pin that need to be removed with a magnet. Right. So I have just a little fabric pouch. GPS goes in the pouch and it gets pinned to his, he's usually wearing cargo shorts. So we put it inside the cargo pocket and we pin it in there so he can't lose it. Nobody can take it off of him unless they removed his pants. And- Jen: And that's connected to your phone? Allana: It's connected to my phone. It doesn't track him. It just tells me where he is, where the gps is in that moment when I go to look at it. So I can tell if he's, and it's accurate to about 20 meters, so I can tell if he's in the general area that I expect him to be in. It also has the ability to send an SOS. So he just pushes on it and it'll alert my phone that he needs help so then I can go find him. Jen: What brand is this? Could you share that with our- Allana: Yeah, it's called a Ping gps. Jen: Wow. I am getting three. Allana: It is awesome. I love it. There are about 80 bucks and then they cost about five bucks a month US to run. But you can't get a cell phone plan- Jen: Look at Lauren writing. Taking notes. Lauren: Ping GPS. Jen: Lauren lives on a beautiful acreage with a huge, that's why she was asking about the fencing and stuff for kids. She always posts on Instagram these beautiful pictures of her back- Lauren: Snow covered. Jen: Yeah, it's November, but it's gorgeous. So, these would be very handy for you, hey, for your- Allana: Yeah. Jen: Country kids. Allana: It also takes off a little bit of that, you know, CAS call pressure- Jen: What if? Allana: Everybody's so scared that somebody is going to go, "You don't know where your kid is" and you're going to go, "You're right. I don't." Whereas if somebody comes to me and says, "You don't know where your kid is," I can go "Actually, he's within 20 meters of-" Jen: Right, right. Allana: The whole like, and even, I was talking about this on my personal Facebook page where I was sharing that No Child Left Alone Study with just with my friends cause somebody had asked about it and my aunt was actually like, well, like she was the perfect example of where you're not judging something based on the actual risk factors. She was "Never be too careful and the world is a dangerous place." And I was like, but it's not based on the statistics, based on the information we have, it's not. Jen: Right. Allana: We were talking about it because as you said, you know, we always give them those incrementally larger responsibilities. My five year old has wanted to walk to the bus by himself in the morning for school, for months now. And the other day he said to me, "Mommy, please, can I have the responsibility to walk to the bus all by myself?" Well, I can see his bus stop from my front window. It's literally two doors down. Our neighbors all know him. My neighbor who lives beside me is on maternity leave so she's watching him out the front door. She's always texting in the morning like "Good morning," I'm being watched. So I know she's watching him too and she's one house closer to him and I was like, I really had no reason to say no to him other than people who don't know you might think you're too stupid because you're too young. That's not a good enough reason for me. So I let them walk to the bus by himself and one of my neighbors took offence and called the bus company and was like, "I don't think this is okay." And they called me and I was like, "That's their problem." Jen: Right? Totally. Good for you girl. Look at you go. Allana: He's, you say, and it's again, we're, I'm pretty sure the directives we get next year are going to be rewritten because their directive saying that children need to be supervised at the bus stop. I'm like, that literally means they need to be watched. And I was watching him. It doesn't say they need chaperones. So we need to start kind of advocating on the competence of our children too because so many people are so quick to say, "Well, they're five, they're stupid" and no, like you know what your child is capable of and even what they're incapable of and nobody knows your kid like you do. So if you genuinely don't feel like your child can handle walking to the park by themselves because they don't have the awareness of people around them. They're not able to walk on the side of the road. Like I didn't just send my five year old to the park, we walked to the park together for many, many times, almost the entire summer. You know, I would send him to the park and I would stand at the end of the driveway and watch him walk to the park and then I would follow him with his brother. And we would do the same in reverse and like, again, you work up to it so you have to know your child's competency level before you, you try and give them a responsibility, right? Annie: I find it really inspiring and encouraging to listen to you Allana. Like just own your choices even with some pushback from spectators or neighbors or family because I would have, I think that that's something that I get a little nervous about too is, like, my kids, my two oldest run the neighborhood and I really don't, like, I trust them. They've haven't violated my trust. Knock on wood, I have no reason to second guess them that they're going to come home and they're going to be where they are and, but I am always like, what do other people think? Do other people, like, know that like they're okay and that we've had these talks and like there's just this fear of judgment or fear of like getting criticized and then they- Jen: They think you're a bad mom. Allana: Or that I'm just lazy. Jen: It comes down to that in so many situations of decisions we're making and Annie and Lauren and I talk about this around nutrition all the time, right? So it's like you're scared. Do they think I'm a bad mom? Like it's just this constant thing. Allana: And it's that moral judgment again, right? Like do they think that I'm being, that they're doing this because I'm lazy? Does that make them think that they're at a greater risk than they actually are? Annie: I just want to sit on my couch sometimes, and like, don't move. Jen: I do.The thing is, and this, I mean you see it too, like, if you want to take your kids to a park and sit on your phone, I'm like, do it. And I see these posts on Facebook. They're like the mom who just sat on her phone or her kids had to play by themselves and the child was shouting, "Mom, watch me." And the mom didn't look up. I'm like, the child will live, like- Allana: Our parents didn't do that for us. Jen: No. And sometimes it's all the mom has in her day to just be chilled out. Like I had three kids in four years and we lived overseas. So no family and in New Zealand, a lovely thing about New Zealand too is that all their playgrounds are gated. So, and you can't get out. So I could literally go in and just sit and just Facebook or read or whatever, just ignore them. And that was the only time I had and I'm all the power to ya, girl if that's what I'm on. If I see a mom with- Allana: On her phone and I got in it last summer with the mom, cause I do the exact same thing. I bring my laptop generally and I will tether to my phone and like work at the park so that my oldest, my youngest kid run around and ours has a fence but it's not a closed off fence. So I mean if they want to, they can escape. I've walked the perimeter with the many times we've talked about what the boundaries are. If my little one, I've showed him there is a gate, it's open, but that means it's a doorway and you need to stay inside the park or we're going to have to go home and he wants to play. And every once in a while I'll just shout out like "Cubs, where are you?" because we call them the bears and they'll go, "Here, here!" And I'll go, "Great!" And I don't even look up as long as I can hear them I know that they're close. And this woman was like, "Excuse me, do you know what your son is doing?" And I looked up and he was climbing and I was like "On the play structure?" And she was like, "Yes." And I was like, "We're at a park." That's what he's supposed to be doing. And she's like, "But you didn't know that you had to look." And I was like, "That's generally how sighted people determine information. Yes." She was so angry because I didn't have my eyes glued to his butt the whole time. Jen: Oh this busy bodyness is just killing us. Annie: Yeah. Allana: Kids don't need us to be in their face 24 seven. They need the space to play. And in fact, if you're playing with your kid and you're not into it, it removes all benefit of play for them. Both, all the people who are playing something need to be in a place state in order for the play to be beneficial. One person or group that isn't enjoying the play removes all the benefits of play for every single person in that group. So if your kid is forcing you to play trucks with them and you're like, "Oh my God, when is it nap time, I don't want to be here." They're not actually getting the benefit of you playing with them. Jen: Yeah, that's so interesting. Allana: So it's better to find something that you actually enjoy doing with your child and do that so that you're both in a play state, it's a frame of mind. It's not an action. Jen: Brene Brown has in her parenting book The Gift of Imperfect Parenting. They sat down as a family and made a list of things that fill everybody's cups and found the common ones and then that's what they focus their family time around now. And I thought, I thought it was such a good idea, right? Like it's mind. So Brenay Brown said it's mind numbing to play board games for herself and so she's just done. She's not doing it anymore. I was like, "Wow, it's so nice to hear someone like you give me permission to not do these things that I don't like doing with my kids. And I don't, I don't do things I don't like with my kids anymore either." Allana: Like I swim with my kids. That's what I enjoy doing. So we go swimming once or twice a week and we get in our mommy and kid time and that's great. Other than that, I'm like, "Please go do something else." And they're like- Jen: Raise yourselves. Allana: "How are you running a business at home? Mostly by yourself. Two little boys at home." And I mean, my oldest is in JK but he only goes three days a week. And I'm like, because they play by themselves. They go, I feed them breakfast, then I'm like, "Okay, play time." And they go and play in the basement and I'd go work and then they come up when they get hungry and I feed them and the little one goes down for a nap and the big one goes downstairs and play some more and it just gives you so much more freedom. It's actually better for their brain. Jen: And you're happier as a parent, right, having some time. And I guess before we wrap this up, I want to, you know, I just, I guess it's to, it's nice to let parents know that there is detrimental effects to your child by over supervising them, right? So just saying like there's measurable detrimental effects to these kids. Allana: Children who are closely supervised during their play will hamstring their own play. They won't allow themselves to go into a full play state because they're anticipating being interrupted or corrected. Jen: Oh interesting. Allana: So if you are constantly supervising your child's play, they probably aren't getting the benefit of their own play either. Even if you're not playing with them because they're anticipating having you go, "You can't do that. Don't use that that way. That's a firetruck, not a helicopter." And they're not allowing themselves to go into that fully immersed play state where all those benefits of play, all the problem solving and executive functioning skills and all that really get used in that play state. They keep their play very, very surface level when they're being supervised closely. Lauren: That's interesting because I find myself, I can't not correct when they're in view. So I put them out of view. I'm like, "Go in the playroom and play because when you are doing this, I cannot help myself but say stop it." Jen: It's like when I bake with my kids. I, like, can't handle cooking or baking with my kids because I, I just am like, "Don't do that. That's wrong. You're going to break it!" Allana: My mom's a pastry chef and God bless her, she can and I'm like, "Okay, that is your thing, Nana." She is totally into the whole cooking thing. And you know he got all these little, like, real knives and stuff, but they're small so that he can handle them. And the other day we were making, just chopping up potatoes for like roasted potatoes for dinner and he was like making these, like, really, like, random sized chunks. And I was like, "Okay, you're too," Jen: You're like twitchy about it. Allana: One inch cubes, not two, you're holding a knife and you're doing well. You're not killing yourself. Annie: Oh, that's awesome. So a lot of this is, I mean, it's not just about retraining kids to do this. It could be about retraining yourself too, or both or both depending on what you're kind of used to and what your goals are. And, but either way, I mean, just to summarize, this is good for both sides. Both parties, both parents, caregivers and kids when they have unsupervised specifically outside, but unsupervised play. So- Allana: Absolutely. And so many parents, so many moms express that guilt to me cause they're like, "I feel bad making the play by themselves. I feel bad that I'm not engaged with them. I feel super guilty." And it's like, "This isn't about you. This is about them." And it's, yes, it benefits you as well and that's nice, but this really is about them. This is for them. And it takes that guilt away. You don't have to feel bad for making your kids play by themselves. It's good for them. Jen: I want to just kind of leave us with this vision. I'm going to tell you something that really struck me when my kids were younger and was an eye opener moment for me actually. And I was watching, I was in a hard place with motherhood, right? Like these three kids under five, oh my gosh, under four actually. And I was watching The Good Shepherd and it's an old movie that takes place in the fifties. It has Matt Damon and Angelina Jolie and there's this scene where Matt Damon, he's coming home at the end of the day and all, and he's walking up to the house. It was a well researched scene and this is not even what the scene was about. It's just something that I noticed. The moms were all grouped together chatting in one person's front yard and they were all smoking as they would be in the 50s and kids were running everywhere. And I like had this pain in my chest when I saw it because it reminded me of how lonely I was and how parenting must've been so differently back then. Different back then. And not just that, I think moms are more lonely now. It's that kids are more lonely now in a way too, right. Because we are very isolated inside the homes and yeah, I just quite, I really quite crave are return to that and I feel like we've kind of found it in our new neighborhood and like it's just easier and simpler and yeah. Allana: I think, I think once we realize that what children do naturally is, there's generally a reason behind it. We don't tend to trust kids in what they're doing. We want to, we think we know better, but children know what they need and they'll do what they need. And once you can start to trust your kids that way and realize that what they're doing, whether it's a behavior, even if it's a maladaptive behavior, even if it's like what they're playing, if it makes no sense to you, children are doing things for a reason. There is never a child that is doing something just because they feel like it. Like there's never not a reason behind something that a child does. And so when you can trust that and trust that your child is doing what they need, it's so freeing for us. And it does allow us to go back to that, you know, children are allowed to be rambunctious. They're allowed to get hurt, they're allowed to be unsupervised. And you know, people keep thinking, "Oh well, you know, lots of, you know, the good old days didn't exist." Well, no, but we can bring them back in a modern way that is safe and comfortable for everybody. It doesn't have to be the way it was in the fifties for it to be beneficial. Jen: Right. We have tape and our GPSes. Allana: Exactly. That was a hard thing for me because I was like, I have a Bluetooth tracker on every, on my keys and my wallet. Even on my car. I have ev

  Parenting can be exhausting, especially if your kids aren’t sleeping well. How do you help your kids get the sleep they need? How do you get the sleep you need? Jen, Annie and Lauren discuss these important questions with Dr. Craig Canapari to get listeners and their kids on their way to better sleep. What you’ll hear in this episode: Misconceptions about sleep training The role of mom shame in the decision to sleep train or not Harnessing habits for better sleep in your kids Sleep as a buffer for toxic stress Sleep debt - what is it? All or something - the value of incremental gains in your sleep habit At what age should you sleep train? Social jetlag: what is it and what does it have to do with sleep? How to shift your sleep schedule Dividing sleep responsibilities Sleep routine in blended families or single parent households Screens in the bedroom - why you should unplug How limiting screen time can improve your sleep How to help your kid stay asleep or in bed longer How sleep impacts weight Resources: Atomic Habits by James Clear It's Never Too Late to Sleep Train: The Low Stress Way To High Quality Seep for Babies, Kids and Parents - Link when available Dr. Craig Canapari’s Blog Learn more about Balance365 Life here Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or Android so you never miss a new episode! Visit us on Facebook| Follow us on Instagram| Check us out on Pinterest Join our free Facebook group with over 40k women just like you! Did you enjoy the podcast? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Google Play! It helps us get in front of new listeners so we can keep making great content. Transcript Annie: Welcome to Balance365 Life radio, a podcast that delivers honest conversations about food, fitness, weight, and wellness. I'm your host Annie Brees along with Jennifer Campbell and Lauren Koski. We are personal trainers, nutritionists and founders of Balanced 365. Together we coach thousands of women each day and are on a mission to help them feel healthy, happy, and confident in their bodies on their own terms. Join us here every week as we discuss hot topics pertaining to our physical, mental, and emotional well-being with amazing guests. Enjoy. Annie: Welcome back to another episode of Balance365 Life radio. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to share with you a really sweet review left for us on iTunes. SPagan84 says, "I beg of you. This is what female need to hear. Annie, Jen and Lauren cover a lot of freaking rad topics. Women empowering one another, women evolving to be the best version of themselves and women learning to love themselves. This podcast is so much more than fitness and nutrition though they have a no bs approach to diet and fitness that applies to real life. I love, love, love the Balance365 life." Thank you so much to all of you who have taken the time to leave us a review on iTunes, we read every single one of them and they all mean so much to us. Alright, let me tell you about today's guest. Annie: Dr. Canapari is the director of the Yale Pediatric Sleep Center, father and author of his first book, It's Never Too Late to Sleep train. Shortly after becoming a father, Dr. Canapari realized that all of his years of 36 hour hospital shifts didn't come close to preparing him for the sleep deprivation that comes with parenthood. Inside his book, Dr. Canapari helps parents harness the power of habit to chart a clear path to high quality sleep for them and their children. Sound familiar? On today's episode, Lauren, Jen, Dr. Canapari and myself discussed the importance of quality sleep for not just your children, but why it's so important for parents and caregivers as well. Plus he shares a ton of great insight on to how to improve sleep for your whole family regardless of age. Enjoy! Annie: Welcome to the show. We have a special guest today. Jen, do you want to tell us how you met our special guest? Jen: Sure. So this is Dr. Craig Canapari. Hello. I found his blog, it would be over four years ago now because I had, my third son was a nightmare between the hours of 7:00 PM and 7:00 AM and I had never experienced this before. My first two were natural sleepers and I was going out of my mind by the time he was one. And so one night it was late and I was googling anything and I came across his blog and I got some answers to my questions and I've followed him ever since. Annie: Doctor, welcome to the show. Dr. Canapari: Thank you for having me. And that's very kind. I wish I could actually see what time of night people are reading my site relative to time zone because I suspect it's probably mostly in the middle of the night. Jen: It was probably 1130 for me and I was like crying and I just, yeah, so now I refer people to your site all the time as, like, an evidence based resource for um, parents whose children have sleep issues, which it's hard, you know, there's just so much. One thing that I will tell you that I appreciate and that I think a lot of our listeners might be able to listen to is that there's a lot of, I don't know if you want to call it pseudoscience or opinion based sleep recommendations online. And when I had my third, um, we lived in New Zealand and I, you know, they just, what I'll say is I was very wrapped up in the natural birthing community by the time I had my third and sleep training is just like "N-O" in that community. Like, your kid's going to get brain damage, they'll have neurological issues, attachment issues for life. Jen: And so I really thought if I tried to intervene in my child sleep that I was going to give my child brain damage. And what happened is I pretty much got brain damage from that year of trying to deal with him. And I mean I literally felt crazy where I, when he was one, I pretty much had a nervous breakdown and was in therapy and I was a mess. And it was, like, my marriage was falling apart, everything. And it was all because of, I wouldn't say all, you know, nothing happens in a vacuum, but in hindsight now we're four or five years later, I'm like, that year of sleep was like, it made me crazy, like crazy and this stuff is serious and people don't take sleep seriously enough. But like there are some women and men out there that are really, really suffering and they don't know where to turn. Dr. Canapari: Well, I think there's a, there's a lot of good points in what you're saying and the first thing is that I think that like sleep and bedtime are really personal things for people and, it's a totally separate issue, but you know, in our town, and you know, I've been involved locally, regionally, nationally with sleep issues for teenagers and trying to get more humane start times for teenagers. And there's something personal about bedtime and what happens in your house at night. So people aren't always open to advice. And I think there's also the thread of, it generates a lot of strong feelings for people and people have very strong opinions that aren't always grounded in facts. And I always laugh about the the idea that crying can damage your child's brain. I mean, my kids used to cry all the time over like the dumbest stuff. Dr. Canapari: Like in the book I talk about my kid was four and found an ant on his donut and he was crying. And I'm like, I don't think it damaged his brain, you know? But I think we're also a little bit more vulnerable when we're sleep deprived that things that are, you know, if you stop for a moment, you're like, you know, I think it's reasonable for me to expect that I get a decent night of sleep my child does. But you're more vulnerable to kind of this judgment that can kind of come in and, and you guys know all this as moms too, I think that the whole sort of mommy shaming thing is real. Jen: Yes. Yes. Dr. Canapari: You know, my boys were both born via c sections and the first one was cause he, you know, he couldn't be born any other way. And I remember my wife talking about, you know, some people would say things that almost made her feel like she hadn't, you know, delivered my son. Jen: Right. Like, are you mom enough? Dr. Canapari: Yeah, totally. Totally, totally. So I think that it's not that everyone has to sleep train their child. It's not that you have to use cry it out sleep training and it's also that sleep training has such a negative valence in our society. People are like, "Oh, it's just cry it out. And it's just this thing that a lot of people view very negatively." There are lots of things you can do that don't necessarily mean that your child is going to cry more. Jen: They are not talking about it publicly, but we're all googling it. It's one of those, like, it's become one of those secret underground things that we all want to do but we are afraid to admit it. I experienced this big time. I formula fed my first baby and um, that was horrific. I had a woman come up to me in the grocery store and ask me why he was drinking from a bottle. And it's just, yeah, like you, I've had three children and my youngest is now five and in hindsight I wish I could take all that pain away for new moms. Like I wish I could say, "Hey, it doesn't matter. Like, it really doesn't matter. Once they get up and going, you know, it's just, I can't tell the difference between my three kids who I sleep trained, who I didn't, who had formula, who had breast milk, who was born by epidural, who was born naturally. They're just, just choices that we make." Dr. Canapari: And especially with the first child, it's so fraught. I remember one of the biggest fights that my wife and I ever had was about what stroller we were going to get. Right. You know, and, and, and you know, I wanted of course this really stupid technological thing that she didn't want. And with the second kid, you're like, "I want the cheapest stroller that I can fit in my car really easily." It's just, you get a little bit more perspective, but I think you're totally right. Like as a parent, you kind of need to give yourself permission to be like, you know what, I'm going to do something a little bit different from some of my peers and it's okay. Jen: Yeah. In the end, you, you need to be okay. And I guess that was my greatest lesson from having postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and like, basically a nervous breakdown as I just talked about. I was not okay. In my pursuit of trying to find what was "the best" way to raise a child, I personally was not okay. And now I just believe so wholeheartedly that children need their parents to be okay and we'll and to be okay we'll all kind of make different choices in that pursuit. Dr. Canapari: I think that things have kind of pendulumed away from self care for parents, especially moms. And, you know, when the term attachment parenting was coined, it was in the 60s, and back then people were like, "Oh, if your child's crying, you should ignore them because otherwise you're going to spoil them." And clearly that's not true, right? It's natural to comfort your child. And, you know, there was a, uh, a lot of pioneering work done by a woman named Mary Ainsworth that sort of showed that, well, that's not correct and it's okay to comfort your child and be emotionally available for your child. But when we think of attachment parenting now, we often think of, you know, Sears and everything that's kind of come out of Sears' work. And I agree with a lot of what Sears said is that like, you know, you should be close to your child and it's valuable to make time if you would like to breastfeed to make that a priority. But, you know, there's little room there for the needs of parents, especially moms in that conversation these days. And you know, I tell parents all the time, like, you know, it's okay to fix this for the reason that you're falling apart. Like, you're a better parent if you're not super sleep deprived and your child will benefit. You know, it's totally, you know, and that's kind of my job. They know it's the case, but they almost need someone to give them permission to make some changes. Jen: And there's not, and you know there's like zero to 60 and then there's like level one, level two. Do you know what I mean? Like not, and I think it's scary to go from zero to 60 but you don't have to necessarily go to 60. There's interventions that can start here where you're comfortable and then you can assess from there. Dr. Canapari: Totally. It's not a binary thing that like you're doing everything or nothing or they're perfect or it's terrible. It's usually somewhere in between. Jen: Right. Dr. Canapari: And we all know as parents, you figure some things out, you get your kids sleep the way they're going, and then all of a sudden another kids waking up at night or they get a cold or it's never going to be perfect. Jen: Right. I feel like managing my kids sleep is like this ongoing thing that, you know, there's always something. So anyways, yeah, as long as we're all sleeping good enough, I'm okay. Dr. Canapari: That's my goal. Have you heard the whole a good enough mother? Donald Winnicott was this psychiatrist and pediatrician in England in the 60s and he coined the term "being the good enough mother." And it's just the idea is like if you love your child and you do your best to take care of them, they're going to turn out fine. You just need to be good enough. Jen: Right. Dr. Canapari: And I, and I just love that idea. It's like, "Hey, look, it's not going to be perfect." And like so much of parenting now is, like, full contact and be like, I've got to get my two year old studying Mandarin or you know, they're not going to law school or something like that. And really it's just, you know, do your best. It's okay. Jen: Right. Annie: Doctor, before we get into some of the questions we have for you, can you tell our listeners a little bit about your book? I feel very special. Your team sent me, an unofficial an uncorrected proof that's not yet for sale. So I feel like VIP having this book here- Dr. Canapari: It's full of typos. Annie: You know what, that's great because I'm the world's worst proofreader. Lauren and Jen- Jen: It makes us feel good enough. Dr. Canapari: I just went through, I think the final proof and I still found a bunch of stuff and I'm like, "Oh," I'm like, I can barely read it anymore. I've read it like a thousand times. Oh, I'm sorry. Go. Annie: I thought it was great. It's called, It's Never Too Late to Sleep Train: The Low Stress Way To High Quality Seep for Babies, Kids and Parents. And what I loved about it is that you have this little dedication right in the front of the book there to your wife and kids and it says "You're the reason I get out of bed in the morning, in the case of Teddy, often, literally." It's like you've lived this, like, it's not like you're just some doctor- Dr. Canapari: I've been in the trenches. Annie: Yeah. Which I appreciate. So can you tell us a little bit about the book? Like, when will it be for sale? Where can they find it? What's in it? Just give a little overview. Dr. Canapari: So the book is coming out in May 9th and you know, just to backtrack a little bit, I started writing stuff for parents online, in 2012, back when I was over at Mass General in Boston with the idea of that, my background was in pulmonology. I trained in sleep medicine as well, but I used to do sleep apnea research and the behavior stuff was kinda new to me and I was like, you know, I'm going to start writing these articles for parents and it's going to be my way to master this material as well and to have resources if someone's in the office and I don't have time to go through everything and be like your go to my website, this is exactly what I think is important. And, you know, as going through this over time and kind of learning how to do this as a parent and as a doctor, I realized there's a lot of great sleep books out there, but I generally felt like a lot of them are pretty long. Dr. Canapari: You know, I think Ferber's book, which is great, it's about 600 pages long and it covers things like narcolepsy in teenagers. And you know, if your one year old can't sleep, you probably don't care that much about that. And I also think that there's been a lot of new research since Weiss, Bluth and Ferber wrote their books that kind of, perhaps demystified this a little bit. And specifically looking at the psychology of habits, which is, you know, habits are such a hot phrase nowadays, right? There was the Charles Duhigg book, James Clear just came up with Atomic Habits. But just the idea of there is an underlying psychology that underlines all these automatic behaviors we have all the time. Right? Those fights we have with our kids, every day, that's a habitual behavior, right? Dr. Canapari: So if you understand how that works, you can maybe tweak those behaviors to, for lack of a better word, to kind of use the power of these automatic behaviors to help rather than hinder you. So in the book we talk about if you want to change your own habit, and I bet you guys, in terms of what you do, talk a lot about habits with your client. Jen: It's all we talk about. Lauren: I have James Clear's book, like, literally right next to me. Annie: Same. Dr. Canapari: Yeah, no, I heard it's great. I haven't read it yet, but I've followed his stuff for a long time. Jen: Yeah, he's good. Annie: He's great. Dr. Canapari: The difference is if you want to change a habit, you're going to change the behavior. You know, if we talk about the habit loop, you have a cue that triggers a behavior and you have a downstream consequence. And it loops around and around. Your child is not going to raise their hand and say, "Hey, you know, mom, you're super tired and I'm just going to stop getting up at 4:30 in the morning." Right? That's the behavior you want to change. So you have to think about what are the upstream things you can change and how can you change your own behavior in the way that you respond to what your child's doing to help to shape their behavior to what you want. So anyway, this book is my summary of the things that I've learned in my journey as a sleep doctor and as a parent. And, my specific focus is in a population that I think people don't focus on as much. Like there's a lot written about infancy and I think infant sleep training is actually really simple. Dr. Canapari: It's not easy, but it's simple. And I cover that in the book. But also what do you do if your child's a little bit older? What do you do in a toddler or an early school age child where the, when we think about sleep training, we may think about cry it out. That's not going to work in a three or four year old. You know, it might work, but it would be horrible for parent and child. So what are other ways that you can change a child's behavior that really just aren't so unpleasant or scary for parents and kids? Jen: The reason I found your blog was because my youngest son, no, this wasn't why I found your blog. I found your blog because of sleep aids, my son had a sleep aid and it was me. And, the second time I revisited your blog in detail that was helpful to me was that my youngest son has night terrors. And your, one of your sons had night terrors. Dr. Canapari: Oh yeah. And now he sleepwalks too. We were just on a vacation with his cousins in the middle of the night, we found him just sitting on the toilet with his pants down, but not awake. And I'm like, his cousins found this pretty amusing as did we, yeah, he's 11. He found it less funny but- Jen: Right. So yeah, I mean you really have been in the trenches and there isn't a lot of information once you move past the infant years. And so yeah, that was the second time your blog was very helpful to me, was seeing you had, you're not just talking about this, you had experienced night terrors with one of your sons and just the science around it and what, how you guys ended up dealing with it, which is now how I deal with it. And yeah, I mean that stuff is scary and very stressful for parents. Dr. Canapari: Yeah. And I think that, in some of the things you guys have, with the topics today, just sort of talking about, sleep and sleep debt and I think of sleep as a, it's kind of a capstone skill for parents and families, right. If sleep is good, other things get easier. If sleep is bad, everything gets, everything gets worse. Jen: So would you call it a skill? Cause I noticed, you know, you're not calling it a habit, you're are calling it a skill. So would you say learning to sleep as a skill? Dr. Canapari: Well, I think yes. I think especially for, look, you said your two older children were good sleepers. Right? Jen: Fantastic. Dr. Canapari: And, it just kind of came naturally to them and we all have experienced this as parents. Like, you know, my older son is a great sleeper, but when he was little, he was a picky eater and every child is good at some things and bad at other things. So, like, I think some kids sleeping comes naturally to them. Like self soothing, sleeping through the night is very easy. Other children need to need to be taught. And the way we call, sleep training is the process, the term we use to describe teaching our children to sleep independently with our help, either falling asleep or staying asleep. And it's funny, some of the research, one of my colleagues is doing at Yale now, Monica Ordway is, we're looking at sleep as a buffer for toxic stress. Like, you know, stress is, we all know what stresses, right? A little bit of stress as good. You want to study for an exam, you need to be a little bit stressed to do it. But being chronically stressed is, it can really cause harm to health. Like when your son wasn't sleeping for a year- Jen: I ended up with a registered Dietitian who was amazing, but I had gone down the woo hole, which Lauren, my partner here pointed me out, with diet, but I mean I was breaking out so badly and I was like so inflamed and I thought it must be nutrition related. And there were a couple of people out there willing to tell me it was nutrition related. So it's cutting out all that stuff and it wasn't working. And I had, I did go see two GPs where one prescribed this cream that basically burned my face off. And the second one wanted to put me on the pill, which is fine, but I didn't think that I was like, "No, there's something, like this is not, this is very abnormal for me. I've never struggled with this." It's finally Lauren had said, you need to get to a registered dietitian. Jen: And she sat down with me, went through what's happening in my life and was like, you need to get some sleep. Like you are so inflamed because your body is so stressed. And that ended up being what it was. It ended up being that when I buckled down and we kind of dealt with these issues with my son and actually what happened was my husband took him away to his parents for five nights cause he just needed to be away from me I think. And within three weeks my, everything was calm. My face was calmed down, starting to heal. Like, I would just wake up and look puffy, like when I was so sleep deprived, I wake up and look puffy and almost feel hungover and that all just, once I fixed our sleep issues, that all went away. Dr. Canapari: I find that totally believable. And first of all, as a sidebar, how great to find a provider who looked at your whole set of issues and really like, there's no upside for a nutritionist to say "It's actually your sleep," right, financially. Jen: Right. Dr. Canapari: But I think I know, Annie, you work as a trainer, right? Annie: Yep. Dr. Canapari: So I bet if your clients aren't getting results, you're probably like, how much sleep are you getting at night, right? Like you can't, you're not gonna you're, you're going to struggle with your weight if you're sleep deprived. You are, I mean, I know you guys wanted to talk about sleep debt. Sleep debt certainly is a real phenomenon. It's hard to measure biologically. It's not like you can do a blood test and say, "Oh, you have, you know, your level of this neurotransmitter is high, that means you're in this amount of sleep debt." Dr. Canapari: But we know that it's a cumulative phenomenon and you can't really catch up on the weekends. Right. There was a study of teenagers, again, I know we're talking about moms and little kids here, but I think it's very interesting. This researcher named Dean Bebe had this fake summer school for kids that they were enrolled in as a research trial. And they'd have these classes that were kind of boring and they'd sleep deprive the kids for like six hours of sleep a night for two weeks. And they let them sleeping on the weekends. And what they found was every day their performance was getting worse. And if they did, in terms of how they were retaining material, in terms of their vigilance, et cetera, and if they got catch up sleep on the weekends, they got a little bit better, but they didn't get back to their baseline. Dr. Canapari: So the next week they started off worse than they had in the beginning. So it just is going to keep snowballing. And the classic example is of a parent. I mean I think that there was a research trial published a couple years ago that said single moms are the most sleep deprived people in the United States, hands down, which I find totally believable, right? Jen: Absolutely. Dr. Canapari: If you're working outside of the home, you're a single parent, you know, you are getting your kids to bed and then you have all the work of the household to do. It's just, it's nuts. And it's not like with airline pilots or bus drivers or something like that where we actually have rules saying, well, you have to sleep x amount to do your job. Nobody's, you know, nobody's looking over your shoulder as a parent and saying, "Hey, you know what, it's 10 o'clock, you know, I'll take it from here." Right. Annie: Wouldn't that be nice? Dr. Canapari: Yeah, it would be pretty cool. Annie: That's actually, quite in line. You and I have talked over the phone before this podcast that we address sleep in Balance365 as one of, kind of the habit foundations or habit accelerators because we know, as people in the health and wellness industry that when you're tired, everything just seems harder. Annie: So in terms of sleep debt, if you have a sleep deprived kid or adult, how can you get out of it? Like how- Jen: I don't think we defined sleep debt either before we started talking about, so sleep debt Is what accumulates right? Once you go without sleep, you accumulate, you owe sleep debt. Dr. Canapari: Yes. Essentially. Essentially if you are consistently sleeping less than the amount of sleep you need, and we know for adults it's anywhere between seven and nine hours of sleep at night. Your sleep requirements might be a little bit different than mine. If you think back to before you had kids and you imagined f you went to bed at a certain time and you could wake up spontaneously without an alarm, that's about how much sleep you need. If you do that consistently over a couple of weeks, of course, none of us with children ever experience that. But it's if you are constantly getting less sleep than you need or your sleep is interrupted frequently as it is if we have a child that's sleeping poorly at home, you're developing sleep debt, which is just the biological imbalance. Dr. Canapari: When you think about sleep it's sort of like breathing, eating healthy food, breathing clean air, drinking enough water. We know if we eat poorly, we feel worse. If we we're having too many calories, the wrong kinds of calories, but it's the same. It's the same deal with sleep and sleep is, it's very easy to shortchange sleep, right? You can't manufacture extra hours in the day. It's easy to stay up a little bit later and you know, either catch up on work, do your email, fold laundry or even just get caught in that cycle of say, binge watching or something like that. Because we're surrounded by these addictive technologies that want to, you know, have our eyeballs instead of having us go to sleep. Jen: And, and just to that point, I mean we do, we're human beings are amazingly resilient. So anyone can tolerate a couple nights of bad sleep or a couple of nights of not great eating habits. It's really what we're doing day in and day out, week to month to yearly, right? Dr. Canapari: Right you can catch up to a degree on weekends, but again, most parents don't have that luxury. I think that the real key is, look, some people have weeks, months, years of sleep debt, the key is just going forward. How are you going to change your life to allow you to start getting caught up on that? And I think even if it's just allowing yourself to get an amount of sleep so you feel rested in the morning. In my clinic, we look at an incremental gains, right? Like if someone's going to sleep at midnight every night, again, I deal with a lot of teenagers who are sleep deprived. I don't want immediately go and be like, well, you should go to bed at eight o'clock night. We sort of start seeing, well, what, what can we do to get you to sleep at 1130 or 11? Like getting those small incremental gains are going to make someone feel better and be more successful even if it's not perfect. And it's likewise if you're working on your child's sleep issues, again, like little kids usually aren't that sleep deprived, right? Because they're going to make it up during the day. They're going to make it up in the car. They may have naps at preschool. They may nap great a preschool even if they refuse to now for you, which is a really frustrating phenomenon, right. Lauren: That's happening to us right now. Dr. Canapari: Yeah. And they're going to catch up but as parents we don't have that luxury, right? We can't take a nap. We need to be attentive when we're driving in the car, giving presentations at work or anything like that. When you get into older children, think later elementary school, middle school, high school, that's when those kids are going to have more difficulty catching up. The biggest reason to fix the problems in young children is to me, it's the benefit for the parents. Jen: Right, right. Annie: That's actually something you also addressed in your book, which I so appreciate as you have a section about what sleep training will do for you. You know, it's like it allows, it's like the snowball effect. As I said, everything's just seems harder when you're tired and all of a sudden when you're getting more rest, maybe you have more energy to get in a workout or have some extra time to go do Xyz or you're more productive at work or you're more efficient in the home or what, you know, whatever. It just seems to carry over and spill over into so many areas outside of the bed. Jen: What happened with my youngest son, and if you think this is way off, Dr. Canapari, you can tell me to shut up. I had three kids in four years and then my last one was this terrible sleeper and then I ended up, you know with the doctor or with that dietitian telling me you need to get some sleep. Even though my acne started clearing up after three weeks of consistent sleep, I noticed that I didn't wake up feeling refreshed for about a year. Like it took like a year for me to feel like I was recovered from those years with the kids. Dr. Canapari: So I think there's probably a lot of factors there, right. You know, working off a sleep debt is not something that happens easily, right. If perhaps your husband had said, I'm actually going to take all three of the kids for a month. Jen: Right. Dr. Canapari: You could've gotten caught up. But also, and excuse me for presuming you mentioned you were also struggling, struggling with some postpartum depression and that probably also could be factored into this as well. Jen: And starting this business and you know, there is stress definitely in my life. And also let's go over that year, the kids would get sick and you know, it's not like I had a year of perfect sleep before I felt recovered, but I just remember at that one year mark going like suddenly realizing, "Oh my gosh, I'm waking up in the morning and I'm feeling, like, refreshed." Like, yeah. So it was just, I was just very tired for quite a while after even getting the sleep training and not that, you know, not that things didn't improve for me, right, just by getting better, right? We talk in Balance365, we have this saying called all or something and it's like, when will it ever be perfect? But you can always, you know, there's usually a better choice available to you. It doesn't have to be all or nothing and- Dr. Canapari: Totally right. Jen: So and we have a lot of women who talk about, you know, they're just so fried from work and parenting that the evenings feel like the only time they have for themselves, like get the kids in bed at, you know, say 7:30, 8 o'clock and then they stay up til midnight because it's the only time they have for themselves in their week. And they just, they're just like selfish with it. They just crave that alone time so badly. But, and I, we all deserve that. Like, I get it and we all deserve that. But just even saying, okay, well instead of four hours for yourself, can you take three, go to bed at 11 instead of midnight. That gives you something. Right. Dr. Canapari: Well also, I mean, I think that if you can convince someone to get an extra hour of sleep at night, they're going to be like, "Oh, that is for me. Right?" Like getting that extra sleep is actually a really powerful tool I have to make my life better. Jen: Right. Dr. Canapari: And, you know, I certainly, you know, Annie and I were talking like, you know, to have finally developed an early morning exercise practice and now I just go to bed earlier cause I feel tired at like 10 o'clock at night and wow. You know, I used to stay up til like 1130 or 12 and I'm like, "Wow, I actually feel *inaudible*" and I'm like a sleep doctor, I should know this, right? It was very easy to stay up and like, you know, watch another show on TV or just kinda, you know, the time gets away from you when you're tired, right? You can just sort of be scrolling through Instagram or watching Netflix and all of a sudden you're like, "Holy crap, it's like 1145." Right. And I see parents where their young child is going to sleep at 11 or 12. It's more common than you'd think. Annie: Wow. Dr. Canapari: And I'm always saying to people, I'm like, "Look, I love my kids, but I am so done with them by like 8:30 at night. You know, like, they need to go to their place and be on their own so I can, you know, my wife and I can unwind." Jen: Right, right. Is there any truth to this fact that getting every hour of sleep you get before midnight is like two hours of sleep that you're getting after midnight? Is there any truth to that? Dr. Canapari: I think that's probably, I haven't heard that. I would say that when it comes down to is, the fit of when you're sleeping versus when your body wants you to sleep. Jen: Oh, okay. Dr. Canapari: I don't know if you guys have ever heard the phrase social jetlag. It's something we think about a lot in teenagers, but it can happen a lot in I think mostly not parents cause we get up early on the weekends. But if you think back, I can think back to before I had kids, I had a weekday bedtime and wake time and a weekend wake time and bedtime and wake time, right. Jen: So your weekends are maybe 2:00 AM to 10:00 AM. Dr. Canapari: Exactly. Jen: Yeah. Okay. Dr. Canapari: So I'm sort of like, on the weekends I was living on California time and the weekdays, I was living in Boston time. Jen: Right. Dr. Canapari: And we know it's not just the duration of sleep, it's the quality of fit to what your natural body clock schedule is that has a lot to do with it. Like, we know that shift workers, even if they get adequate sleep, are more vulnerable to certain types of cancer, certain types of chronic disease because they're not sleeping at a time where their body really wants them to do it and, we know, you know, you probably know, we all know, are we more of a night owl or a morning lark? A lot of us as parents, we become morning larks because we have to, and there's actually, if you look up online, you can look up a morning-ness, this evening-ness questionnaire that will actually tell you where you fall on this continuum. Dr. Canapari: You know, teenagers are, you know, kids are naturally kind of morning larks. Like most kids before puberty, they tend to want to go to sleep earlier. They want to get up earlier on average though there are exceptions. When they hit puberty, their sleep schedules shifts two or three hours later. So that is our, you know, in the, and that's when all of a sudden your kid that was going to sleep at eight o'clock, can't fall asleep till 11 o'clock at night and it's not just cause they're on snapchat or their smartphones and doing homework on the Chromebook. It's also just their natural biology. So I think that thing you're referring to is probably, you know, get to the idea of are people just not sleeping at a time when their body wants them to do it? That being said, most people are naturally, you know, I'd say if they go to bed between 10 or 11, get up between six or seven. Again, this sounds like a pipe dream for a lot of parents, right? But around there we'll probably feel pretty good. Jen: Can you shift that too, so if you found yourself to be, I mean it may mean some of us are forced to because of our morning lark children, but I recently, I would have considered myself a night person but starting in November I started getting up at 5:30 in the morning just because it feels like the only I can exercise or on days I'm not working out. I can get some work done before my kids are up. I'm less distracted in the mornings that I am in the evenings for whatever reason. And I feel myself shifting where I'm like- Dr. Canapari: It absolutely is something that you can shift. So generally, the levers you have to pull are, the most powerful one is light exposure. So light exposure in the evenings will tend to shift your body clock later and these are slow changes although it is always easier to stay up later, than go to bed earlier. Right. Jen: Right, right. Dr. Canapari: If you want to shift your sleep period earlier, you could probably go 10 or 15 minutes a night. If you wanted to shift your sleep later. Again, it's not usually what I'm trying to do in the clinic or what most parents are like, "Boy, I'd like to stay up three hours later and get up three hours later." Jen: Right. Dr. Canapari: But it's easier to go in that direction. So light exposure in the evenings is going to push your clock later and think about, well what's the light emitting device that we hold about 12 inches from our face? Jen: Smartphone. Right. Dr. Canapari: So smartphones will tend to push people's sleep schedules later. Evening exercise will also push it later. Jen: Oh, okay. Dr. Canapari: Conversely, exercising in the morning light exposures, the best is natural light exposure will move things earlier. So someone wants to get in the, you know, like you said, getting up earlier, exercise in the morning. If you can't exercise outside, that's great. Probably in Canada or Connecticut, we're not exercising with natural light in the morning at 5:30 in the morning cause it's still dark out and it's below freezing but those are really helpful things. In our clinic too, we use a lot of Melatonin. Melatonin in the early evenings will help shift people shift their schedules earlier as well. Certainly that's something someone wants to talk about with the doctor. Jen: Right. If melatonin is right for them. Dr. Canapari: Right. Jen: Okay. So back to sleep training kids. I know we don't want to talk too much about infants cause that's not even, we just don't want to spend too much time there because actually our audience has a wide range of age of children. But when I think one of the most controversial things is when to start sleep training a baby. Dr. Canapari: Sure. And I think that, you know, it's funny, there was a couple of years ago, there was an article in New York Times about a group in Tribeca, which is a very trendy neighborhood in Manhattan, was recommending the people sleep, train their kids at two months of age. And you know, they didn't publish anything on this, but they said they were getting good results. But I think that's a little bit too early. If you look at your average baby between four to six months of age, that's when they're going to start going for longer stretches of sleep at night. They're going to start to be able to fall asleep without being soothed by their parents at bedtime. So that implies to me that naturally speaking, they're evolving the capacity for longer periods of sleeping night. Jen: Okay. Dr. Canapari: I would say for most parents, between four to six months is probably the sweet spot. Jen: Okay. Dr. Canapari: But before then, you really, you know, the best thing to do is to soothe your baby to sleep, rock them, nurse them, give them a bottle, lay them down in a bed when they're asleep. Then around four to five months, that's when you can start trying to put your baby down drowsy but awake. And, if they fuss a little bit, that's okay. If they're screaming and yelling, maybe they're not quite ready from a biological standpoint. Right. It's, you know, the funny thing about when I had my second son is I'm like, "Oh, he's not exactly like the first one," which if you asked me intellectually I would've said, "Oh, of course they'll be different," but you expect your child to be this kind of the same. And, you know, and I say, parents just try putting them down drowsy but awake and see how it goes. If your child's hysterical, then wait a week or two and try again. Jen: Right. Okay. Dr. Canapari: If your child's sleeping through the night and you know, no matter what you do, you don't have to sleep train. Right. You know, it's not something you have to do. The reason you do it is so your child can fall asleep independently and stay asleep for the night so that we can get a good night of sleep. Annie: So two and a half is maybe a little too old to be coddling to bed. Is that what you're saying? Dr. Canapari: I mean, I think that it's fine if your child sleeps well at night, right? Like, you know, I always say like, if what you're doing is working, great, you don't have to change a thing. There's nothing, you know, sometimes I lay down with my kids at night at bedtime. My younger ones, like, will kick you out in five minutes. It was like, "That's great dad. You can go." As his words are, "I want to go to sleep in my own time." He doesn't even want me to see him setup his blankets and the older one wants me to stay a little bit longer. And I'm like, "Well, this is precious. He's 11. Pretty soon he's going to want nothing to do with me." So I'm happy to lie there. And I don't think there's anything wrong with it if your child is sleeping great and you're happy with how your child's sleeping, however, if you're not happy with how your child's sleeping, if you have to spend three of those precious hours in the evening laying with them to get them to fall asleep, if they need you multiple times during the night, then you may want to make a change. Dr. Canapari: Right? But you don't have to change anything if you're happy with the arrangement. The same thing with bed sharing. If you have a family bed and it's going great, provided that you're observing safe sleep practices with an infant, more power to you, that's wonderful. But if you're not happy and if someone's not sleeping well, then you may need to make a change. Annie: I want to keep the cuddles at bedtime and let her fall asleep on me. I don't want her waking up at night. Jen: Yeah, that's what I like. Annie: I want the best of both worlds. Jen: But I think that's quite common. It's, so there's getting the child to sleep, you know, baby, toddler, child, what, how do you keep a child sleeping? Dr. Canapari: Now that's the trick, right? So you know, I think it was actually, it was Richard Ferber, which came up with this idea of sleep onset associations. The idea that your child falls asleep under a certain set of circumstances, and then naturally, as he or she goes through the night, she wakes up at night. We've all experienced that. We may wake up at two or three in the morning, adjust our pillow rollover and go back to sleep. You may not even remember it if you're up for five minutes, but you know, as Ferber talks about in his book, if you woke up in another bedroom, you might be like, "What the Hell is going on?" And you might go investigate. So, it's hard to know what babies are thinking. But if your child falls asleep with you present and then goes through a natural awakening at night, she might need you to go back to sleep. Dr. Canapari: That's why working on independent sleep at bedtime tends to make those nighttime awakenings go away. Because once your child is able to put herself to sleep, she can go back to sleep with a natural awakening. And this dovetails nicely with a phenomenon we've all seen. Your child will have three hours of the deepest sleep of the night, stage three sleep, slow wave sleep at the beginning of the night. So that's like if you're driving back from somewhere, your kid falls asleep. You can pick your kid up, change the diaper, put them in a bed, they don't wake up and that's about two or three hours of sleep. But then, say you put your child to sleep at eight o'clock, you're getting to bed 11, all of a sudden you hear your kid calling for you, right. Because that's when they come out of that stage of sleep and they go through a period of REM sleep, REM sleep, or dream sleep clusters in the second half of the night. And it happens every two to three hours after 11 o'clock, that's when your child is going to wake up and request your presence. Jen: That's exactly what's going on in my house. It starts around 11. Dr. Canapari: Yeah, exactly. Just when you're getting the bad and you're lying- Jen: Yes. Dr. Canapari: Maybe tonight's going to be different, right? Lauren: Right. I remember that sense of dread. 11 o'clock. Jen: And that's actually when my sons, my boys go to bed at about 7:30, between 7:30 and 8 and they go to bed really well independently. But when my son was having really intense night terrors, I could almost set my watch to it. It was around 10 30 or 11 when he would start screaming. But now he's not having his night terrors s just getting up and coming to find me. And you know, parents are too tired, you're too tired to take them back to the bed. So he crawls in bed with us and I'm not happy with that, but it just seems like our best option right now. And I think what I found, cause I had mentioned earlier, I found on your website to talk about sleep aids and I think I'm my son's sleep aid. Like it's me. It's actually, and when he goes to his grandparents' house, he does not wake up through the night. He sleeps all night. It doesn't go looking for anybody. Dr. Canapari: Is it frustrating? Jen: It's so frustrating. Dr. Canapari: I guess you're doing it wrong. You know, I always like my parents applying like the finest seventies parenting techniques. No, when my kids are over there and I'm like, you know, I just, you know, give them like Coca Cola, like all the stuff that I'm like, I would never permit in my household and, you know, it's fine. But that is one of those things. And that's why I think one of the things in your outline, is I think is, I just want to get to is, is dividing sleep responsibilities in the household. If there's a two parent household, it's very important that both parents participate at bedtime. And, I can't tell you often I hear the story of you know, someone and it's, let's be real here, if it's a mom and a dad in the household, it's usually the mom coming in and saying, "Well, he'll only go asleep for me." Dr. Canapari: And the dad may say, you know how dads are, "I can't do this. You know, you have to do it." And, you know, I think that best practice is at an early age, get both parents involved at bedtime. But if, you know, sometimes, as you said, sometimes mom needs to go out of town. Right? Like if you can't, if you leave town for a couple of days, guess what? The dad's gonna figure it out and your kid will figure out it as well. It's not like if you, you know, if you had to go away on a work trip, your child would not sleep for five days. Right? Like, that's just not how it works. And I think it's really important that any one of the household who is a caregiver helps. Dr. Canapari: And, you know, I even give parents a script. I mean, I to say, you know, "I know we're both concerned about our son's sleep. I really need your help. You know, like, the doctor says you need to help at bedtime and I'm going to go out." You know, it's likewise in blended households, if parents are separated, like single parents, et cetera, it's very important that kids have the same set of rules and have consistency at both homes if there are sleep difficulties. This is the struggle for a lot of families. I mean, you know, many, you know, every parent wants the child to sleep well, but say they're at mom's house on the weekdays and on the weekends the Dad may let the kids stay up later, and just lie with them to go to sleep and that you know, that it's fine if things are going great but if things aren't going well it's really important that everyone who cares for the child get on the same page. Jen: Right. And with the same routines. Dr. Canapari: I mean it's not going to be the same in both households but as close to possible in terms of the timing, in terms of what you do and specifically in terms of is a parent there when the child falls asleep or not? Annie: Right, right. Okay. Do you have any, I know you have a whole chapter in your book dedicated to sleep environment and location and I think there's probably a lot information in that chapter that could apply to adults in addition to kids. Do you have any, are there any like non negotiables are things that you would really encourage people to consider in their sleep environment? Dr. Canapari: Oh man. I'd say getting the screens out of the bedroom and, I think there is, when I started working as a sleep doctor, when I finished my training in 2007, the big argument was does your kid have a TV in the bedroom or not? Right. That was what, you know, that was often the conversation. That's often the conversation I was having with families would be like, "You need to remove the television from your child's room because they're sleeping poorly." Nowadays it's not a conversation about television in the bedroom, it's about tablets, smartphones, et cetera. And we know these devices are corrosive to sleep, you know, as we were talking about earlier, the bright light can actually shift your biological clock later. We also know that these devices are profoundly addictive, right? Like Instagram doesn't make money if you're not looking at Instagram. Jen: There's a lot of research put in to how to keep people there. Dr. Canapari: The smartest psychologists in the world are in Silicon Valley trying to addict you to these services. Jen: Right. Dr. Canapari: Yeah. And, I encourage people to keep them out of their bedroom and really to be pretty strict. I love now on, what's the feature called on the iPhone? It's screen time. Lauren: Screen time. Yeah. Dr. Canapari: It's generally been a positive with my kids, except when I'm at work on a snow day, say, and they keep sending me messages to give them more screen time, but I think they kind of get it. And I also liked in my phone says at 10 o'clock being like, you know, it basically kind of shuts it down and I can bypass it. But taking that step being like, "Do I really need to keep scrolling through this right now?" You just need that little check and really ideally keeping the devices out of the home because, you know, I'm very careful about shutting off alarms on my phone. My wife has all these alerts on her phone. So if like something on the Guardian website, the UK goes off a news alert goes in the middle of the night, she gets an alarm and I'd be like, do we must we know what, what the queen said in the middle of the night? Sometimes I get up in the middle of the night and I turn off her phone. Jen: So just getting all those alerts off notifications, like just- Dr. Canapari: Yeah, if you can keep out of the room and if your kids are little, setting this example now will pay dividends when they get older. Right. Jen: Yeah. My son, I did this as an incentive for them to get their butts going and get ready for school in the mornings. They are allowed to watch TV or play video games once they are ready for, ready to go for school. So that just got them go hustling. Right. So they could watch some TV before school and when it started they would, that meant 10 of TV before we had to leave for school. But I have found over the last year that it has increased because they're getting up earlier and I am not sure. I'm wondering if that's because there's some kind of habit or something built in where they're there, maybe start rousing a bit in the morning, but then all of a sudden it's like "TV, I can watch TV." And so it's, I didn't mean to, so there's, it's like they're sleeping less and I don't know if there's any science behind that, but I swear if I cut out TV in the morning, they'd sleep longer in the mornings. Dr. Canapari: Well, I mean, how badly do you want to do that, right? Jen: I don't know, I don't know if it's negotiable or not. Dr. Canapari: In general, I like incentives for behaviors that are desirable and really getting kids ready in the morning are one of those situations where you have so little leverage, right? Jen: Right. Dr. Canapari: Like if your child, if your child is difficult in the morning, what is the outcome for them? You have to drive them to school. Like they know that they have you over a barrel. I think that maybe putting a limit on being like, well you know, here's the maximum amount of screen time you could get. But it is one of those things like as you go through the night, your sleep gets lighter and lighter. Right? That's why it's so much harder to get kids to stay asleep. Especially to do early morning awakenings than it is to get them to fall asleep. Both in terms of behavioral techniques and even, cause I see kids with sleep problems bad enough I write for prescriptions. Dr. Canapari: Any medicine that can last long enough to keep a kid asleep in the morning is going to last too long. You just can't calibrate it that way. So I think that if your children are functioning well in the morning and going to sleep at a reasonable hour, they're getting enough sleep. I wouldn't worry too much about it unless it's disruptive. But if you feel like they're really struggling during the day, like if the teachers are giving you feedback or they're falling asleep on short car trips during the day, then maybe you want to think about a different incentive to get them going. Annie: Right. Right. Jen: Right. Lauren: I'll say, Jen, something that we did with Elliot this year is she would wake up at like 4:00 AM and come in my room and wake me up. "Is it morning time yet?" Cause it's dark, you know, when she would wake up I'd be like, "No, go back to sleep." She'd come in at five. "Is it morning time yet?" So we got this little alarm clock thing that lights up green when it's morning. Dr. Canapari: The "Is It Ok To Wake?" clock? Lauren: Yes. Dr. Canapari: Yeah. No, I think, I think that works really well. And, you know, it's, I think Andy alluded at the beginning, my younger son was, for a while, was a real early riser. I mean, I remember going to Disney World when he was like seven and taking him for walks so my older kid and wife could sleep until 6:30 in the morning, you know, like, I like the okay to wake clock and an older child to who can get it, you can be like, look, "You can get up and play in your room and read books." Lauren: Yeah. She's five, so she's old enough to understand, you know. Dr. Canapari: Yeah. I mean a two or three old is just going to roam, right. You know, but and that's the important thing too, you know, in terms of the sleep training conversation, it is very clear that sleep training, even cry it out sleep training is effective and it's safe. But the best study, looking at the safety of it, they were looking at things like that always gets trumpeted as side effects of sleep training, elevated cortisol levels at all, et cetera. It all was fine at the time where kids were age five and it really seemed like most kids were sleeping pretty well by age five, no matter what you do. There are exceptions to this, right. You know, I've explained this in my home, in my clinic certainly, but I think the message to parents is positive. Like address the problems you need to address for your sanity. If you're doing things that you know aren't quite best practices like lying with your two and a half year old until they fall asleep and they sometimes crawl in your bed at night but you can live with that, that's okay. Your child is going to be fine. If you are okay, if you can live with it, right? It's like parenting is an exercise in compromises. You can't potty train your kid and sleep train your kid and like you can't fix everything at once. So it's okay, pick a problem you want to work on and work on that. Let the other stuff slide you're going to be okay. Annie: I think that's a wonderful message to wrap up on because it's like, it's very much in line with our program as well. Like, find what works for you and it's good enough. That's all the is really important. Even if it's not best practice, you know, the ideal or whatever it is. Dr. Canapari: Well. Yeah, and I think that if, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe one of the focuses that you guys talk about with, is clients the right term? Annie: Members, yeah. Dr. Canapari: Your members is weight control, right? And I just want to leave with you with, I think that's something that's so important is we know that sleep curtailment is associated with increased appetite and increased weight gain. And, I just saw a great research talk showing that the hormonal reasons for this were different for in men and women. But the outcome is kind of the same, that if we sleep poorly, we accumulate more adipose tissue, more fat. We have more hedonic eating, craving for salty, sugary foods. So I think, and of course I'm biased, but for people that are struggling with their weight, improving their sleep is such a important thing to do. And if the way you do that as improving your child's sleep, think about that as another goal why this is worth your effort, right? If, we'd all like to, most of us, you know, want to maintain a healthy weight, and working on sleep is going to help people do that. So I think that's an important message even if your members don't have kids, working on their own sleep is going to be a really high yield thing for them to do in terms of their health. Jen: Right, right. So like regular sleep will lead to more regulated eating, which leads to a stable regulated weight. Dr. Canapari: Absolutely. Annie: There's not much that more sleep wouldn't do good for people. I can't think of any, too many negative outcomes for more sleep. Dr. Canapari: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that most of us professionals, grownups, we're working on sleep debt, we need to chip away at it because it's going to help us be healthier, feel better, and you know, to kind of be the people we want to be. Annie: Yeah. Thank you so much doctor. There's so much good information here. I can't, I think our listeners are just going to really, really appreciate this. And we will send links to go find your book because I'm sure by the time we release it will be out. So congrats on the book and thank you for joining us. We appreciate your time. Dr. Canapari: Thanks guys. It was fun. And yeah, I'm sorry we didn't answer all the questions you sent me in advance, but I'd be happy to come talk to you guys again some time. Annie: Yes. We'll have to have you back for sure. Okay. Dr. Canapari: Take care. Jen: Thank you. Lauren: Bye. Dr. Canapari: Bye guys. Annie: This episode is brought to you by the Balance365 program. If you're ready to say goodbye to quick fixes and false promises and yes to building healthy habits and a life you're 100% in love with, then checkout Balance365.co to learn more.  

In this episode, Jen, Annie and Lauren are joined by James Fell, the author of The Holy Shit Moment, a book that explores epiphanies and how behavior can change overnight. James shares his insights from his own radical behavior change grounded in a lightning bolt moment of permanent change, and talks about the science and stories behind these important moments. Tune in and learn how you can find your own shift, what drives lasting change and how everything can come together in an instant.   What you’ll hear in this episode: What James Fell’s epiphany was and how that changed his life How personal responsibility can be empowering Global versus focal change – what’s the difference Identity shifts and their impacts on relationships The model of personality and how it relates to change Vanity goals: do they work? Are holy S. moments always bad? Gradual vs. Immediate change What supports immediate change? How does gradual change work? Crystallisation of discontent defined The breaking point and change The quest for greatness as an impetus for change Does sucking it up every work? Building habits and enjoyment over time Weighing the pros and cons of action and committing even when it’s unpleasant Acting like a tortoise but thinking like a hare – what does that look like? Post diet rebound, pendulum swings and coming back to centre Resources: Good To Great by Jim Collins The Holy Shit Moment by James Fell Lose It Right by James Fell Learn more about Balance365 Life here Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or Android so you never miss a new episode! Visit us on Facebook| Follow us on Instagram| Check us out on Pinterest Join our free Facebook group with over 40k women just like you! Did you enjoy the podcast? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Google Play! It helps us get in front of new listeners so we can keep making great content. Transcript Annie: Today’s long awaited guest has been a longtime friend and supporter to Balance365 and whenever we ask our community which guest we should have on our show his name always comes up. You might know him as the man behind Body for Wife but we can’t get enough of his straight shooter honest approach to behavior change. Joining us today is the one and only James Fell. James is a highly regarded science based motivator for lasting life change. James recently launched his second book and on today’s episode he shares with us how love and a Joan Baez as quote changed his life forever, how getting clearing your values can make change feel easier and why relying on willpower is a bad idea. We had so much fun recording this episode with James and we know you’re going to love it too, enjoy. Jen and Lauren, we have been waiting for a really, really long time for this podcast episode and I know our community members have been too. Are you ready for this Lauren? Lauren: So ready. We had to reschedule. Annie: Jen, are you? Jen: Yes I’m ready. Annie: Sorry, Lauren, what was that?  I’m so excited I just cut you off. Lauren: I was going to say, we had to reschedule so I’ve been waiting for like an extra week. Annie: I know and every time we ask our community insider Facebook group Healthy Habits Happy Moms who we should have on as a guest, notoriously this man’s name keeps coming up. It is James Fell. Welcome to the show, how are you? James; I kind of feel like a rock star right now after that intro. Annie: You kind of are a rock star. James: Yeah, well, tell my kids that one. Jen: We also get a lot of referrals from you so thank you. James: Oh you’re very welcome, you know- Jen: A ton of women that said they found us  through you. James: We have like minded followers I would say. Annie: Yes. We, James and Healthy Habits Happy Mom’s which is what Balance365 was before it became Balance365 go way back so we’ve been pals for a while and Jen and James, you guys met, I think before James and I met, how did you two meet? Jen: In Vancouver. Oh, like, we just met online, small world as we talked about, when you are not shucking B.S. to people and then we met up in Vancouver and we had coffee which was awesome. James: Yeah, that’s right, I was in Vancouver for a conference. So we got to do the, you know, going from being internet friends to real life friends which is always exciting when that happens, so high five! Annie: Yeah and I met James when I went to the fitness summit in Kansas City many years ago, I mean, gosh, that was probably 3 or 4 years ago I suppose but it was, like, one of those whispers in the lobby like, “That’s James Fell.” James: Don’t make it weird, Annie. Annie: That’s what the women were whispering in my ear and I’m like “Oh, OK, OK.” It was fun to have a couple of drinks and since then our relationship with our company and you have fostered and we are excited to bring you on because you have a new book coming out. This is actually your second book, second to Lose It Right, is that correct? James: That’s correct!   Annie: It comes out January 2nd and I told- James: January 22nd. Annie: Oh, sorry, January 22nd and I told you before we started this that we have labeled our podcast as clean, which means it doesn’t have any explicit lyrics and the title of this book is called the Holy S. Moment and that’s what we’re going to call it for this podcast because we know we have people listening with little ears within earshot but you can probably imagine what the title of that book is and I just have to say it’s not actually out in print yet, is it? James: No, no, we’re, so January 22nd, so as of recording right now we’re 6 days away, so it depends on when you publish this. Annie: So by the time it’s released, this episode is released they’ll be able to find it, where can they find it? James: Anywhere, so it’s being published by St Martin’s Press in the United States and Canada and if you have any listeners in the U.K. Harper Collins is the publisher there so this is this is my 1st international released book. My 1st book Lose It Right was just published in Canada. Annie: That’s exciting, do you feel good about it? James: Oh yeah, I’m really stoked. So yeah, they can find it in any bookstore, any platform, there’s an audio recording too so if people don’t hate my voice, I’m the one that did the narration for the audio. Annie: I love it when authors do that. Jen: I do too. You really feel connected to that author. James: Yeah, I love it too because they paid me to do it. Annie: Winning and the cover of the book, unless it’s changed, because you were kind enough to share the digital format with us, the cover has a lightning bolt on it, right? James: Yes, it does. Annie:  And I don’t know if you can see that but I’ve got a big old tattoo on my trap so, you know, I feel like it was clearly, this was a book that was meant to be in my house. James: Annie Brees, me and Harry Potter are all big on lightning. Annie: Except I’ve never seen Harry Potter, I’ve never read Harry Potter- Lauren: What? Annie:  I know nothing about. I know. James: OK, you just lost some fans. Lauren: I’m sorry. I’m not cool. Annie: Okay, I just wanted to get this out too because on page 6 it just says “hi mom” and I was like- Jen: Oh, that is so sweet. Annie: So you definitely earn some bonus points but what I want to talk about is, if you know us, you know that the 3 of us are all about slow and sustainable change but you actually wrote this book because you found yourself as a coach encouraging slow and steady change but that actually hadn’t reflected your experience in how you forever changed your life. Would you mind sharing the story about the moment and the quote that you think shifted for you? James: Yeah, so before I get into that briefly, like, when it comes to say health and fitness, I don’t mean, you know, jump into your first session with Attila the trainer and go hard core and wreck your self on day one. When it comes to the the change of changing one’s body, you still need to be rational and don’t destroy yourself but the change that I’m talking about is the way that you’re motivated, that quite often we talk about motivation as a form of baby steps, being a tortoise not a hare as well, you slowly, step by step drag, yourself over a motivational tipping point developing, you know, habits that become sticky and the reality is that there’s a lot of people that don’t do it that way. They go from 0 to 100 miles an hour in a moment and they stay that way because of some transformative life changing event that just wakes up a part of their brain where they achieve a new purpose in life that endlessly and vigorously drives them forward. So that’s what the book is about is the science of that event and so there’s the, you know, all the scientific aspect but there’s also a lot of anecdotal stories that run the gamut of, you know, relationships and career change and battling addiction but also, yes, there are some weight loss stories in there as well but to my personal, the first big transformative experience for me happened when I was about 22 years old and I was in university and I’d actually gotten a letter that said, this isn’t verbatim but it boils down to “Your grades suck, we’re kicking you out” and I was, you know, I was in debt, you know, the credit card companies were calling. And I wasn’t looking after my health, I was drinking too much and and I was in a state of despair and part of that had to do with my girlfriend was that she was a very driven woman, straight A student, destined for med school and I knew that if I got kicked out of school and I do not say this to ever speak ill of her but I knew if I got kicked out of school that it was going to be the beginning of the end, that, you know, she wasn’t going to stay with a guy that was a drunken dropout who was letting his health go to hell and so I was, I was really kind of freaked out about what am I going to do and so I’m reading the university newspaper and there was this section that’s like there classified ads called 3 lines free and it’s, you know, a mixed bag of things from quotes and witticisms and proclamations of undying love or temporary lust or whatever and there was a quote in there from of all people Joan Baez the folk singer and the quote read “Action is the antidote to despair.” And I read that and it didn’t hit me immediately but it’s the 1st thing was I realize that, you know what, all these problems that I have can be fixed via action. If I get down to get to work I can fix this stuff and that was the first little wake up and then the next part that hit me bigger was the realization that I had been pretty lazy my entire life. I’ve been skating turned on cruise control, not really putting much effort into anything, these problems that I was experiencing were of my own doing. You people know me that I’m not one of those guys that say “Oh, just suck it up” and you know, I realize that there are people that, you know, life is garbage sandwich and it’s not their own doing but my this was my fault. I had dug this hole myself and only I had the ability to dig my way out and and so there was that realization that I’ve been really lazy and I was actually putting effort into being lazy by, you know, the mental gymnastics it took to, you know, shirk my responsibilities each day and that was when my brain woke up in an instant where I said, “If I just put effort in a positive way, if I just got down and started working, I could fix all this” and that’s the way that these life changing epiphanies work is that they are there a big picture concept, they’re fuzzy, they’re not usually very concrete. The concrete action plan comes afterward, after you have the event but the event happened was like, “If I just work I’ll fix everything” and in that moment I experienced what’s known in Psychology of behavior change circles as dramatic relief, where suddenly you see the light at the end of the tunnel, all the problems haven’t gone anywhere, still there but you know you’re going to fix them and you know that the light is there, you can see it and you’re going to race toward it and everything’s going to be OK. And from that moment, in that instant, I was a changed man. Jen: Wow. James: I got 2 master’s degrees. I didn’t flunk out, I went on and got 2 master’s degrees, oh and that woman, the girlfriend, we’ve been together for almost 30 years now and so yeah, I told you she was the one and you know, got in shape, got out of debt all that good stuff, I don’t brag. Annie: I don’t want to spoil, I didn’t want to spoil it for everyone but when I was reading this part about your, like, this moment that you were having reading that quote I was like “Did he do it?” and he did! And that’s, oh my gosh, that’s so sweet. But I love that realization that you said, I was in this position because I had put myself there and while that can maybe feel a little like, “I did this to myself” it can also feel like that “I can get myself out” like the flip side of that coin is, “Yeah, I put myself here but also I can get myself out” and that’s really like encouraging and empowering I think. Jen: I got goosebumps and I don’t know if you can see that on camera but my hair is standing on end. So I see that shift with some of our Balance365 members sometimes and I agree some people get a garbage sandwich but it is so important to reflect on our contribution to where we’re at in life. I believe that wholeheartedly that it is so important to reflect on that. There are obviously things that were out of your control but there are also things that you have done and you know, for this is a very complex topic but especially, you know, just the different members we have in the different lives they come from but I feel like that can be such a light bulb or that lightning bolt they need to go, you know, maybe they can’t change everything about their life but maybe they have more control than they have let themselves believe, leading out to that moment. James:  And the thing is that there’s focal changes and then there’s global changes, what I experienced was largely a global change, that I just decided that it wasn’t that I was going to get in shape or that I was going to stop flunking out of school, I was going to fix everything and so that was a global change. Other people had these focal changes, like the example in chapter one of Chuck Gross, who had started with his weight because he weighed over 400 pounds and that was a life changing epiphany after having struggled and tried and failed to lose weight many times, he had this transformative experience and that he knew it was going to work and the direct quote from Chuck was “I didn’t have to struggle with my motivation. It came built in.” And he lost over 200 pounds and has kept it off for more than a decade but the interesting thing there is that these experiences often have cascading effects where afterwards, he ended up, he went back to school and he was a straight A student, he went through a personality shift where he went from very introverted to, you know, more confident and more extroverted, it was better for his relationship and it just had a lot of other positive impacts throughout his life. Jen: What about, something on the other end of the scale, I was listening to a podcast the other day with a therapist and she was talking about the high failure rate of relationships after somebody has weight loss surgery and they didn’t dig into that but it relates back to what we’re trying but here is because a lot of people, it’s not about the weight loss, it’s about the identity change that they have because of that huge event and I can also see it going the other way, that, I mean, this happens all the time in relationships, I guess, you have people go through identity shifts throughout their life and it can also affect your relationship negatively. And so I can see it also, you know, not that anyone should stop themselves from changing but it’s just to show this is radical, right, it’s radical what happens to people and this cascading effect that you’re talking about, it can affect, we have in Balance365 these women that go on, like, one woman has founded a feminist nonprofit in Vancouver and is building this huge community and she talks about how it was Balance365 that just, it just was that moment, right, everything changed from there and it’s just interesting to see and we’ve had women applying for jobs they didn’t think they were qualified for and we’ve had women leave their husbands, we’ve had, you know, it’s just that radical personal growth shift that just, yeah, cascades everywhere. James:  Well the research you’re talking about with weight loss surgery, of which I am very supportive, I’ve written an article about how I think that if people that think that that is the right decision for them I’m the last person that would ever shame someone for doing so because the research shows that it can be quite effective but I’m not aware of and I’m not denying it, I’m just saying that I can’t speak to that. Jen: Right. James: However, in these instances I didn’t interview anyone for the book that had undergone very bariatric surgery but there were a few people that had experienced significant weight loss and as well as gone through many other changes and the one theme that I noticed is that what we’re talking about is, yes, there’s an identity shift, yes, there’s a value shift, that’s what makes it effortless. There’s the whole, it refers to Roky, social psychologist Milton Roky teaches model of personality which is, like, the whole, you know, ogres are like onions. Well, people are like onions, too. We’ve got our actions and behaviors at the extra layer which is, if you focus just on changing behavior, that’s why you need to be slow and steady because you’re in conflict with those more internal layers of your values and your identity, whereas if you go through an identity shift and a shift in values, the outer layers just sync up effortlessly which is what happened with Chuck Gross. He went through a rapid identity and values shift which just brought his actions and behaviors into line immediately. But so here’s the thing that, yes, this entire book is about a shift in identity and values which sounds scary. So this is anecdotes, not data but the examples in the book, many of these people were in relationships when they went through this dramatic shift, those relationships got better. Jen: In the examples in your book. James: And I can posit a hypothesis as to why that happens, which is that it’s actually and there’s even some philosophy in there and psychology is that this is not a false construct that you’re creating. When you go through something like this, it’s more like the current identity that you’re letting reign is the fake one, that’s the one that is, you feel that you need to survive each day because of societal pressures and pressures of, you know, maybe toxic people in your life or your job or whatever else is going on that this is the thing that, you know, it can be referred to as the despised self that you’re letting rule your life and then all of a sudden, the true self that, this is the person you’ve been yearning to be your entire life, is suddenly let loose. It’s not invented out of thin air, it was there deep down and it was like every little movie that you watched where there was a hero that did something that impressed you or a story that you read that you say “I wish I could be that brave” or all these little things are tiny bits of data that get lodged in your unconscious that that have the ability to coalesce in a profound way in a moment. So when you go through this type of identity change, this is not slow and steady, it’s such a dramatic emotional event that it’s something where it’s unleashed, it’s like, it’s like a volcano where the magma has been bubbling under the surface, building for years and then all of sudden kerblewy, it explodes.   That’s why it’s a, it’s a holy s. moment because you have this sudden realisation and because and when we look at our relationships with other people that when you fall in love with someone, you have a tendency to idealize them and you’re falling in love with what you, the vision you have of them as their best self. You see, you know, they’re not always that way but when you see the best in them, you have a tendency to overlook the bad parts the parts that annoy you, hopefully. I know my wife does it with me all the time. Then when that real true best self comes to the surface and is allowed to let reign, it’s, like, yeah, the other member of that relationship is very welcoming of that, so I’m not saying it’s a guarantee, I’m not saying it’s going to work that way every time but it sounds good, they said. Jen:  James, what do you think of this, all of this in terms of dieting. So in our community, really, what we have founded everything on is that dieting does not work and a lot, I mean, it doesn’t work for the majority of people and what happens with women is that dieting becomes a part of our identity over time, so you are or losing weight or maybe you’ll tell me, I’m not using the correct scientific terms for all of this but it may feel like part of our identity. It is so ingrained in us to be basically defining our self-worth based on our ability to lose weight or at least trying to lose weight makes us feel worthy and we get, you know, many pats on the head for it as women when we’re doing that. I would say men probably experience that as well and so feel like when women join Balance365, when we help give them, you know, turn the light on a little bit and they join Balance365 and they realize dieting doesn’t work, and for some of them it happens like in “Zing! This does not work. This I have been doing for 25 years does not work” or sometimes it happens slowly, it’s like, “OK, maybe it doesn’t work” but then they, like, come back, you know, and then maybe they pull back from us a little and go, “Well, I’m just going to try one more diet, just to double check” and then would you say that’s a change in identity happening? James: Absolutely and I think you really nailed it, that a lot of people, so that’s that is, sort of a despised self identity that is being allowed to flourish because their values are the approval of other people or living up to some toxic ideal that you see in an air brushed model on a cover of a magazine and looking at food as something that, you know, what they consume is something that they need to suffer through and this is, the thing about these type of events is the whole goal is to remove suffering, when you focus strictly on behavior change, that’s why the tortoise’s preached over the hare because if you change too much all at once, the amount of suffering you experience is quite high because it’s at odds with the more internal layers. And that’s why they say baby steps is because you’re trying to minimize the discomfort until it gets to the point where you just kind of get used to it and you come to tolerate it and yeah, you know those things can work but we all know that the failure rates are pretty high and what can be a much more positive shift in identity is having self compassion, realizing that you are a fallible human being and that food is something that is supposed to be enjoyable and nourishing and necessary for life and that you can stop caring so much about what other people think and worrying more about the way that you, what you think about yourself. And how you feel about the way you look in the mirror and how you feel physically, like, when you wake up each morning and you know hopefully bounce out of bed and then looking at food as something that nourishes you and because you have compassion for yourself that you want to feed yourself in a healthy and nourishing way and that you want to exercise because it’s good for you and it’s enjoyable and it’s OK to have some vanity goals but if vanity is your overrunning motivator I’ve never seen that work out well. Yeah, you know, for many years I had a shirtless photo of me on my website. And you know, I’m wearing the short sleeved t-shirt- Jen: Snug fit. James: And I think it’s OK to have some of those motivations but you also need to think about the, you know, I’m never going to be as buff as the next guy, I’m never going to be as ripped as the next guy but that’s OK because my wife likes the way I look, I like the way I look and I like running, I like lifting weights, I like riding my bike, I like fueling appropriately, I like the way I feel when I eat mostly healthy food, I like the way I feel when I don’t drink very much, all those types of things, that’s part of my identity, that just being kind of Zen about this whole thing. You know, just do the best you can, enjoy your life, enjoy your food, enjoy your exercise, that’s identity and values right there and that’s a positive one as opposed to all “Oh my God, I’ve got this flab from Christmas” which I totally do and you know, that’s a positive shift that people can make because they hear me talking about it, they hear other people talking about it, they read it and this type of information percolates in your brain and maybe one day it bursts through the surface and you say, “That’s who I am.” Lauren: Can I ask a question before we kind of move on or switch gears? When you were telling your story, I kind of had this realization that I listen to a lot of podcasts and there’s always people, you know, being interviewed and telling their stories and it’s usually someone who has accomplished something or done something and a lot of times you’ll hear them have that Holy S. Moment, you know, whether it’s, you know, they had a big realization or whatever and I am realizing that a lot of times, it’s kind of like they’re, it’s a bad moment, right, like, they’re kind of in a low place when they have that moment, is that and I know you have a lot of examples in the book, is that true for all of them or is there another way you can kind of come to that moment? James: It’s common but it’s not the law so, you know, in my example when I talked about the one when I was flunking out of school, yeah, the whole action is the antidote to despair quote, I was in a state of despair so that’s one of the reasons why it really spoke to me. Despair is not same thing as depression, just so we’re clear. And but and so what happens with a lot of people, one example is called crystallisation of discontent which is a psychological term which refers to discontent is, you know, say there’s one problem that’s bugging you and it’s not that big of a deal by itself you’re like, “Yeah, whatever, I can live with that. Crystallization is when you look at all the other little problems and the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts where they suddenly crystallize all together and you reach a point where you’re like “OK enough of this, you know, we’ve got to go in a new direction because this is just not working for me anymore.” So that’s an important shift people can make. Then going deeper, we also have the breaking point, which we see quite often with addiction where people are in a horrible state and they realize that they just can’t do it that way anymore and they’ve got to go in a different direction and it is very common for people battling addiction where one day they just “No, this is it, never again” and they’re done and they are done so that’s another way but on the other end of the spectrum, we also have the good to great mentality which is and I’m stealing that from a book of the same name by Jim Collins and and the book is actually about corporate change where corporations want to go from being good at something to being great but it actually, there’s a lot of good stuff in that book that applies to people as well and what it is is someone, you know, life is pretty peachy, things are going along OK, you know, it could be better but then suddenly a quest enters your mind, like, “I gotta do this” where where it’s not like you want to be great for greatness sake, you have discovered something that makes you want to try to create it. And you know, for me people who have that big life changing event often have more later on clarifying epiphanies and for me it was being a writer that I had reached the age of 40 and I had an MBA, I had a successful business career and I didn’t hate my job but I did not love it and I knew that writing was something that I love to do and I realized life was too short to spend the majority of my waking hours doing something that I wasn’t really passionate about and I was going to give it my very best effort in order to make a career out of this and so that was a, life was good and then I became a writer and it became great. Maybe not quite financially great right away. But trust me, you know, I just turned 50 last year and my forties were awesome because I decided to become a writer and my fifties are looking to be even better. Lauren: Right, that’s good to know, you know, you can have these epiphanies without being at like rock bottom. Annie: I would just like to say that James pretty much just described my last year of therapy in like 15 seconds. Because we actually have a section of our program called The Story of You which is where we help members get clear on their values and I think Old Annie, Annie 2 years ago would have just poo-pooed that, like, “Why does this even matter, I just want to lose weight, I just want to build muscle, I just want to, you know, run this or lift this or whatever, like, I want to look a certain way or I want to feel a certain way, why does my values even matter?” and you wrote in a blog post that you encourage people to spend less time worrying about the exertion of will and engaging in continual resistance and suffering and forcing yourself to do what you really would rather not and spend some quality time on examining who you really are deep down and you encourage people to, like, really look at their values, like, what really matters to you and you’ve found in your book evidence that supports that that will help, as you said with that one gentleman that he didn’t have to rely on willpower because this is just what he wanted, like this is was him. This is what he wanted and so we hear it from a lot of women that they feel like they need more willpower and more self control and you’ve dug into self self control, self love and willpower in your book and on your blog post and as you know, the fitness industry loves this like “No excuses, just shut up and do it, grind through it.” So after looking at your work in the book and knowing you and knowing your personal and professional experience, what do you think about that? I mean do you want to expand on that barfy noise? James: There was a lot of research in the book debunking the whole myth of willpower  and seeing it as a limited resource that you can strengthen and you just gotta suck it up, we know it doesn’t work, people have been told to suck it up forever, there’s research showing that the efforts to to strengthen willpower are futile. There’s more research in the book that people who do use what they call grit, that you just tough it out no matter what even though you hate what you’re doing, it’s actually physically damaging, it has negative cardio metabolic effects as well as negative effects on I think the telemores which has to do with your life expectancy and so yeah, it’s and it’s just not fun. Willpower and grit and powering through all imply suffering and I just, we don’t want to suffer, we seek to avoid it. Our entire evolution as a species has been about trying to find ways to make things more comfortable for us so instead a person’s ability to do things, like, I will get up and put on a ridiculous amount of layers of clothes to go out for a 6 mile run in minus 30 and it’s not because, you know, I don’t hate doing it, I actually feel a sense of accomplishment, like, it’s kind of cool for me knowing, “Hey, I’m out doing something that other people think is crazy” and so that’s one of the things that motivates me to do it is that it’s, you know, it’s just I get a bit of a an excitement out of it even though, yes, it’s really cold out there and I’m kind of slow because I’m trudging through snow but it’s just, it’s this neat little sense of accomplishment and also a shower after a run at minus 30 feels really, really good. Jen: And I’m over here like, “No way.'” It brings me zero joy to do something like that. James: So that’s not, I’m not suffering. Jen: Right. James: All that being said and I’m really hoping this book takes off because if it does, not only will I feel validated which I kind of need, then I want to write a sequel about what happens after the holy S. Moment and you know, how do you keep snowballing the success from it and I think that doesn’t rule out discipline, so discipline is different from willpower. Discipline is about things, like, you know, getting, formulating routines that you stick to even though you don’t want to and yes, there are days that I don’t feel like running but you know, I just, you know, I figure I’m still a runner, that’s who I am and I don’t always succeed but there other times when I don’t want to but I’m going to do it anyway and you make yourself do it and then you get out there and yeah, maybe the first kilometer and sorry for the Americans that are listening, the first kilometers kind of drag but then you get into it and after it’s like, “Yeah, I’m really glad I did that” so there’s it’s not like everything is a joyous “Oh yeah, I can’t wait to do this.” But it’s just, it’s because it’s who you are, it’s not that big of a deal. Jen: Annie just talked about this in a workshop last night that we did for our members around exercise, you know, it’s like we do encourage people to find exercise they enjoy or can tolerate and Annie just said “Look, it’s not always going to be super fun, you’re not always going to be like I can’t wait to get to the gym but even if you can tolerate that exercise and afterwards feel accomplished and glad you went” Annie:  Then, yeah, there’s like this like acclimating period for a lot of people that aren’t super jazzed about exercise or movement that it’s like they kind of just have to get over that hump of maybe they’re a little bit sore or they’re getting into a new routine, they’re like, I think of it as like snowplows, you know, like or you’re going through a gravel road, like the first time you go through like fresh gravel it’s like a little bit wonky and then you keep going through and you keep, like, grinding those, like, pathways and-“ James: Grind isn’t a good word to  use, we don’t want to be in a rut. Lauren: No. Annie: But eventually, the pathway is a little bit smoother and you have less resistance but initially, when you’re getting going or maybe you’re trying something new, you’re learning a new skill, it’s not all fun and there’s certainly days where you’re just tired and you just don’t want to do it for whatever reason. James: And sometimes you do and that’s great and other times you don’t, you know, don’t beat yourself up over it because you know, tomorrow’s another day and one of the things that I want to be clear about is that, you know, not throw out the tortoise approach to this because if you think about motivation as, like, a mountain and at the base of the mountain that is 0 motivation to do the thing. And then the peak of the mountain is absolute 100 percent motivation to do everything associated with this goal with inspired vigor. Well, if you’re down at the base of the mountain, you don’t just hang out there and wait for sudden inspiration to arrive and Star Trek transporter your butt all the way up to the top. That can happen, sometimes it does, that’s what happened with Chuck but it doesn’t always work. You increase your odds of success if you start to hike awhile and you do those baby steps, because what it does is that it opens up new experiences to you. It gets you thinking because this is something that happens in the brain and if you are having these new experiences and starting to think about this and examining yourself and how you feel about it and looking at your, this is an emotional experience and that’s what happened for me is I talked about the, you know, the change in school and the change and you know, getting out of debt, all that kind of stuff. I didn’t get in shape right away, that came 2 or 3 years later when I finished my undergraduate degree, stuff was really busy with school and I was really busy with working to pay off my debts and those kind of things and I didn’t do anything about my body because I felt like I didn’t have time and then as soon as I finished my degree I looked in the mirror and said “Wow, I got kind of heavy. Maybe I should do some about that.” That became my next mission, I’d learned how to work hard but it doesn’t mean that I liked it. I started going to the gym and I did not like it one bit and it was after about 2 months that I was, you know, just forcing myself to go because I knew that this was something that I had to do and I was powering through on that grit and that willpower and I came close to quitting so many times and I felt like I was losing no weight whatsoever and then, so I was doing that that slow hike up the mountain of motivation and then one day I’m walking out of the gym after a couple months and the person at the front desk said “Did you have a good workout?” and I stopped and I thought about that for a moment and I said to myself, “Well, it didn’t totally suck” and I thought “It used to totally suck” and hopefully we can say suck on your podcast. Jen: Yes. Annie: Yes. James: OK, so it went from totally sucking to not totally sucking and I thought, well, if I could evolve from it toward it not sucking then one day I could learn to love it and in that moment, I wouldn’t say that I transformed into loving it but I did make a life altering decision that said “OK. One day I can learn how to love that” so therefore, I’m going to keep doing it until I die and that was 25 years ago still going so, go me! Jen: There are a lot of aspects that suck about running a business, it’s coming together but ultimately when you’re, you know, values, you know wake up in the morning and being safe, having financial autonomy is so so important to me, I will, we will show up and we will do those sucky things because ultimately our value of having financial autonomy overrides the pain of doing those sucky things. James: Yeah and it’s, you know, the alternative is is worse, right. Jen: Right, is way worse, yes. Annie: I think that that’s an important point that I hope our listeners grab, especially, you know, I’m talking about exercise because I’m a trainer but so often people think that they love something so then they’ll do it and that’s how you do more things, right, you have to love it first but like you just described, you can actually do something, get a little bit better at it and that cultivates a sense of love or enjoyment, so you can, in essence, learn to love something, like, you learn to love exercise and I think that that’s what so many women who don’t naturally love exercise like I do, I get it Jen and Lauren have expressed that they don’t share their passion for exercise like I do all the time. But that that doesn’t mean that they’re just out of luck. James: And for the analogy that I would use to describe it is that when you take this approach hiking up that mountain and then waiting for sudden inspiration to move you much further up the mountain, you know, dramatically increase your motivation all of a sudden, I refer to it as acting like a tortoise but thinking like a hare and so people need to be receptive to the possibility of this sudden gaining motivation and if they’re more receptive to it, if they’re more mindful of it happening, it dramatically increases the likelihood of it taking place. Annie: I like that, that’s really good. Jen: One of our members, her husband’s in the Army and she had this really good saying on one of our podcasts around motivation and behavior change and self-awareness, I guess, sometimes you need to know when to advance and when you just need to hold the line and I feel like that was a real, like, that’s kind of the hare and the tortoise thing, right, like you just, sometimes you have an opportunity in your life to advance and you need to take it. Motivation isn’t bad, it’s just knowing, yeah. James: Something interesting happened with me, so I was talking about how new experiences and an openness to new ideas that wake up a part of your brain that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t gone out and tried that thing, that’s what absolutely happened to me with running. So when I decided to take up running, so I’d lost a fair bit of weight with weight lifting and dietary changes and then I decided, well, I want to lose more and this was before Facebook, so I actually knew that that running was good for weight loss, that it could work because I hadn’t bought into all the fit pros saying “No, cardio makes you fat.” So I decided that for me that running would be a good choice and that it would also be not just good for weight loss but just good for my health, it’s good for organ health and all that kind of stuff and so I decided to start doing it and I was terrible at it and it was painful but I just started it, really short distances and gradually built myself up and I was just thinking about the outcome, like, this is good for losing weight, this is good for my health, that’s why I’m doing it and something completely unexpected happened was that that being a writer and being a person that likes to create stories and tell himself stories is that became the most creative part of my day was when I go for a run my best ideas come to me, either when I’m running or going for a bike ride and I just love the free association that I get to do. I’m away from technology, you know, I don’t have my phone with me or anything like that and it gives me that time alone in my head that, you know, that I just didn’t realize how much I craved that. And it makes such a big difference to me that that was really what I fell in love with, that if I hadn’t actually tried running I never would have known that that was the thing that I needed. Annie: Yeah, that’s really pretty, that’s a beautiful story. Lauren: That’s really pretty. Jen: James, can I get your take on another behavior we see quite often? James; Sure. Jen: So what happens very often in our community when women have the epiphany that diets don’t work and they’ve been living for years and years under a very restrictive way of living, they have their pendulum swing out the other way so many of our members talk about, after they join Balance365 they overeat, go swing into this period of eating all the things that they have denied themselves for so many years and that usually comes with weight gain and a lot of them say it became a necessary part of the process for them in order to have their pendulum swing back to center and be able to be more objective and balanced in their approach. What is your, do you think it’s necessary and or do you, is there any science or anything that you know of to explain that or what’s your take on it? James: So, I mean, I, the first caveat is that I’m not actually a psychologist. Jen: Right. James: I interviewed a whole bunch of psychologists for the book and we didn’t specifically get into that type of stuff. I would say that if you are hearing a lot of people saying that that was necessary for them and that it worked, then it sounds like there’s got to be something to it. For me, like I always would like to say err on the side of caution a little bit but you’ve got to do what you gotta do. Jen: Right. James: If you have been punishing yourself this much for so long and you reach this breaking point and you just got to go in another direction where you’re like “OK, I’m sorry but this is, I just need a break” and that what happens then, then that makes sense to me but at the same time, you need to keep something in the back your mind that says “This is temporary, that this is a reset” because you don’t want to go off the rails, right? You don’t you don’t want to never stop because and it’s not about shaming people for their body weight but just being concerned for their health and you being concerned about your own health and how you’re feeling and that as long as you realize that this is a temporary reset and that it’s part of finding a mentally and physically healthier way to move forward it sounds OK to me but- Jen: Right. James:  Just realize, OK, how far does that pendulum need to swing the other way before it comes back and don’t go beyond what’s necessary? So just little bit of caution. Jen: We have to have these come to Jesus talks with our members often on how far that pendulum has swung out and how far, how long they’re willing to stay there because in the end, a lot of women feel they came from a space where they were controlled by the diet industry saying- James: Oh yeah. Jen: Right, but then they’re screaming out into this other space where I’m like “But you’re still not really free, like you’re still not making free will choices if you can’t get your pendulum to come back to center.” James:  Exactly- Jen: You’re just in a rebound state. James:  You let the food hedonism rule instead. Jen: Right. James: You go from restriction ruling the life on one hand to highly palatable food ruling it on the other hand. Jen: Right. James: So you’re still, like you said, you nailed it, you’re still not really free, so be careful how far you let it swing- Jen: Right. James:  Consider it a bit of a mental reset that it’s almost like a statement that you’re making- Jen: Exactly. James: A rejection of this toxic diet mentality where OK, and then you make your point, “Forget you diets.” And then you come back to what you really feel is going to be both physically and psychologically nourishing for you. Jen:  Right, exactly. Annie: James, I know you have to get going because you have more interviews, you are just an in demand man. The first time we tried to schedule this episode you were just coming off of another interview and it was right before another one and everyone wants to talk to you, so I’m so thankful that you gave us some of your time. I know our community is just going to really enjoy this episode and I bet they cannot wait to get their hands on your new book which comes out the 22nd of January, so by time this should be available. James: Yes, indeed. Annie: And where, I know they already know where to find you but if they’re new to you, where are you hanging out online, where is the best way to connect to you? James: So if they want to find a book probably easiest place is well, they can either walk into a bookstore or go to bodyforwife.com and there’s a book tab that has links to every possible platform they can want. I think I mentioned that I did the narration for it so they can also get the audio if they want to do it that way. We have a lot of fun on my Facebook page, really good crowd there. Jen: Oh yes. James: It’s, I think we’re over two thirds women on the page and they’re very accepting, very feminist environment, sometimes some very foolish men show up and get their butts handed to them righteously and that’s an awesome thing to witness. Annie: You’ve had some threads that are like “Get your popcorn ready” sort of thing. Jen: You know, I don’t even say a word, I just read through them and I’m like, “Whoah!” James: Yeah, well and the thing is that people like the smack down because it serves as a lesson to other people and I learn things by, because there are so many really intelligent women on that page that, you know, people say “Oh, you know, you really get this whole kind of feminism thing” and it was like “Well, it’s only because I’ve been reading comments on my Facebook page from awesome women who know this stuff really well” and so yeah, that’s Facebook.com/bodyforwife, Twitter, Twitter sucks. I’m on Twitter let’s stick- Jen: What about Instagram? James: I’m not on Instagram, I don’t take good selfies. So Twitter is Twitter.com/bodyforwife as well. Annie: Awesome, well James, thank you so much, I cannot appreciate you enough, I’m really excited for everyone to check out this book and we’ll hope to have you back soon, OK? James: I’d love to and in closing, the one thing I will say to everyone that’s listening, that when it comes to these types of life changing epiphanies, the most important thing is to understand these things happen all the time and it is really important to believe that it’s something that can happen for you because that’s what opens yourself up to actually experiencing it. Annie: Awesome, thank you so much. James: Thank you. Annie: We’ll talk to you later. James: Bye. Lauren: Bye. Annie: Bye.     The post 51: James Fell: Epiphanies and Life Change appeared first on Balance365.

When the New Year rolls around, people start making resolutions to change their lives. More often than not these ventures end in failure, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s not a lack of willpower, motivation or hard work. It’s just the way we make resolutions isn’t always consistent with the science of behavior change. Jen, Annie and Lauren explore the three ways you can make better resolutions this year, or even decide whether you need to make resolutions at all. Resolve to join us and learn more! What you’ll hear in this episode: The best time of year to buy used exercise equipment New Year’s resolutions and FOMO The Power of Suggestion, product placement and targeted ads Jumping on the bandwagon and following the leader The perfect storm of post-holiday shame Shame-based marketing as motivation for change Ending the binge-restrict cycle Learning to let the pendulum settle Zooming out to give context to holiday eating What happens when you try to change too many things at once Outcome-based goals vs habit-based goals How to turn an outcome-based goal into a habit-based goal Resources: Five Stages Of Behavior Change Episode 15: Habits 101 – Hack Your Habits, Change Your Life Episode 22: The Oreo Cookie Approach To Breaking A Bad Habit Learn more about Balance365 Life here Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or Android so you never miss a new episode! Visit us on Facebook| Follow us on Instagram| Check us out on Pinterest Join our free Facebook group with over 40k women just like you! Did you enjoy the podcast? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Google Play! It helps us get in front of new listeners so we can keep making great content. Transcript Annie: The New Year is upon us and with that comes optimistic feelings of a fresh start, a clean slate and a chance to reach our goals. Love them or hate them, it’s estimated that almost half of Americans make resolutions every year. Step into any gym the 1st week of January and it’s clear that fitness and weight loss goals are topics for most resolution makers. Resolutions are a dime a dozen. It’s sticking to them that can be difficult. Sadly, the reality is that most of us who vow to make changes in 2019 will drop them before January is even over. On this episode of Balance365 Life Radio Jen, Lauren and I dive into common reasons why New Year’s resolutions fall flat and changes you can make to help ensure you stick with your goals long after the New Year’s excitement fades. Enjoy! Lauren and Jen, welcome back! We are discussing New Year’s resolutions already, can you believe it? Lauren: No. Jen: I can’t believe how quickly this year has gone. Annie: No, I feel like I blinked and it was like the end of the year. Jen: I feel like I just saw you guys in San Francisco in February. Annie: I know, it was like a year ago. Jen: I know. Annie: That’s what happens when you see each other every day and talk to each other every day, all day. Besties. So we are talking about New Year’s resolutions because, I mean, it’s obviously a timely subject, we’re coming up on the end of the year and people are thinking about what they want to accomplish in the New Year, right? Which is ironic because we used to have a challenge, we did a challenge a couple years ago called the Screw Your Resolutions challenge and it was our alternative, our Balance 365 alternative to resolutions because so many of us have made resolutions and failed, right? Have you done that? Jen: Most people. Lauren: Yeah. Jen: In fact. Lauren: No, I’ve never done it. Jen: In fact, I keep my eye out for workout equipment around March and April because it all goes back for sale, you can get really good deals on treadmills around that time. Annie: Yes and workout clothes as well too, like they’ll go on, I mean, they’re not on sale right now necessarily but because it’s a popular time to be buying them. Jen: Yeah. Oh I mean second hand- Annie: Oh, OK. Jen: March, April, yeah people, they buy, they get the deals in December-January, they spend $2000.00 on a treadmill and then by March-April it’s back up for sale for like $400.00 So keep your eye out- Annie: Because that treadmill trend- Jen: on buy and sell websites. Yeah because you just hang laundry on it, really. This is what you do. I mean, I’ve been there as well. But I sold my treadmill when we moved last time and I really regret it because now I’m looking at getting another one. And but I’m going to wait I’m going to wait for the New Year’s resolution dropouts to put theirs up for sale- Annie: Yeah, she’s going to take advantage of you guys, listen. Jen: March-April. Annie: She’s going to prey on you. Lauren, what about you? Have you made a resolution and failed to keep it? Lauren: Yes, pretty much every year besides the last five. Yeah, it was always obviously diet exercise related too. But then I would add, like, other things so I would want to do all the things. Annie: Yep. Which we’ll talk about. Please don’t jump ahead of my outline. Lauren: I’m sorry. Annie: We’ve talked about this. Jen: I made a New Year’s resolution-ish. It was a couple years ago it was really big to choose a word, like choose a word for 2016 or 2017 whenever it was and I jumped on board that train and it was a success but we will talk about that later. I won’t skip us ahead. Annie: What was your word? Jen: It was respond. Annie: Oh, OK. Jen: Rather than react because I found myself, I was, like, you know, I could be quite reactive. Annie: No. Jen: So I really worked on that secondary, that response, when your inner B. F. F. comes in and it’s like “Whoa, chill out, girl.” Annie: Yeah, I dig that. Jen: What about this? Annie: Yeah. Jen: So then I would find, you know, I think it was 2016, I worked really hard on it and I’m much better at keeping my reactions under control and responding. Annie: Well, I’ll be interested, maybe a little bit later you can tell us about why that was so successful versus other attempts. But before we get any further, really, today we just want to discuss, I have 3 main reasons that we see resolutions kind of fall flat and I want to be clear that we are not anti resolutions, we’re not anti goals, we’re not anti action plans or whatever you want to tackle, resets, restarts, refreshes in the New Year because I’m totally one of those people that gets super excited about the idea of like a clean slate, like, that’s really, like, I love, like, a fresh start, going to start over. I get to do this. I’m going to do it right. It’s super exciting and super motivating but just the way in which people approach them and their expectations around resolutions are usually why they aren’t successful with them. Jen: Yeah we are pro, we want you to be successful. Annie: Yeah so we’re going to discuss 3 ways you can make your resolutions a little bit more successful because again, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with resolutions inherently, It’s more how we approach them and our expectations surrounding them. So let’s just dive right into it. The 1st one is that remember that you can set goals, create new habits, set intentions any time of the year, right? Like this is not something specific just to New Year’s Day or New Year’s Eve, you can do this February 1st, just the same as you can March 1st or May 15th, like whatever time you want to set new goals, you can make new goals and as I noted, I totally understand the excitement that comes when everyone else around you is doing the thing, right, and it’s contagious and I have severe FOMO, you know, fear of missing out so I feel this pressure like “Oh I want to do that, like, that’s really exciting, right?” Jen: Well, it can be like when you go shopping with your girlfriend and you only need one thing, like you need a pair of jeans and then you get in the store and your friends are like “I’m getting jeans. Oh, I also need earrings and look at this top, it’s so cute, and this coat” and then all of a sudden you’re like “Yeah, those things are so great. I should look at them too and I should get them too” and then all of a sudden you’re leaving the store with like 6 bags and you only want one pair of jeans, right? So during New Years, it’s just that you’re just surrounded by people changing all the things and you’re like “Well that is such a good idea, I need to address that in my life too. Oh and that would be great too and that too” and then all of a sudden you’ve got 10 New Year’s resolutions. Annie: And the power of suggestion, sorry, Lauren, go ahead. Lauren: I was going to say, well, even more than that for me is I would feel like I had to make a New Year’s resolution period, like even if I was not in a particular space in my life where I could handle a new goal or setting a New Year’s resolution, like, I had my daughter 5 years ago on December 1st and so it was like “Oh, I should make a New Year’s resolution” while I had an infant, you know, right, probably not the best time. Annie: Yes and I was just going to add to the power of suggestion is really, really strong around this year because Jen you’ve shared advertising budget numbers from the diet and the fitness industry, they spend a large percentage of their marketing budget this time of year. They are pushing, pushing, pushing- Jen: Yeah, the first few months of the year, the 1st quarter. I can’t remember what the numbers are, I’ve shared them on a past podcast but it’s like 65 percent of their marketing budget is spent in the 1st couple months of the year. Because yeah, so it’s everywhere. Annie: So you’re really, really, you’re likely seeing it in magazines and commercials and newspapers, in bookstores and anywhere you’re going, essentially, to buy this product, buy this program, purchase this service, purchase this membership- Jen: Yeah, people have no idea, like, how much thought goes into marketing and so even, you’ll see, I noticed in my local bookstore that throughout the year when you walk in there’s different tables set up featuring, you know, new books or this all these books on this topic. Well, in December or January the diet table comes to the very front of the store so when you walk in it’s right there. Because they know, they know that that’s the time to be selling these books, to put them right in front of you, get you thinking about it, it makes you buy them. We like to think we’re so in control of our choices but we really are not. Annie: I was just going to say that because I know, Annie 10 years ago would have walked into Barnes and Noble or whatever this bookstore, saw the diet book and “it’s like they knew what I wanted,” like, yeah, how did I, like, you know, how did they know but really? Jen: If you don’t even think about the change, it’s like, this must have always been here. Annie: Right, it’s like, like, you know, it’s like, it’s, now we have Amazon ads popping up on our feed, you know, like Lauren, you just talked about how you were, posted about your standing desk. Lauren: Oh my gosh, yes, I got this standing desk which is amazing, I got it from Costco, I don’t know if it’ll still be here when this airs but I got it from Costco and I posted about it on my story and I had never seen an ad for a standing desk before and after I posted it on my story I was started seeing Instagram ads for this other standing desk and it freaked me out. Jen: Oh. There’s so many conspiracy theories around what Facebook and Instagram listen to and of course they deny, deny, deny but that happens to me all the time. Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a friend about something, like, in person- Lauren: Yes. Jen: Then I’ll start seeing those ads on my feed. Lauren: Yeah. Annie: There’s a meme that it’s like, of course, if I had a dollar for every time I started a sentence with “There’s a meme” on Instagram that says “Oh, oh, that’s weird how this showed up on my feed when I didn’t talk to anyone about it, I didn’t type it, I didn’t search it, like, it’s, like, there in your brains, you know- Jen: You thought it. Annie: Yes, but anyways, it is, you know, it’s kind of like when you go to Target and your kids don’t want goldfish until they see the goldfish and then you know and it’s like “Now I can’t live without the goldfish.” Jen: And you have to and there’s also food, food companies have to pay more to get their products on the shelf at eye level. Lauren: Yes. Jen: Do you know I mean because they know it leads to you choosing it more so they make a deal with, you know, whatever supermarket chain and they pay a fee to have their product at eye level, like, you really, if you know what I mean, like, it’s just there’s so much of this that goes on that consumers aren’t aware of. Annie: Right, which we kind of went off on a tangent there and I think that would make a really great podcast about how the the science and psychology behind marketing and how it works the way it does, especially when it comes to health and wellness but the point here is that you can set these goals any time of year, so even though the bookstores are pushing it or you might feel like you’re seeing these messages to get these really brand new fresh goals around your health and your wellness. It seems like it’s everywhere. Remember that you can set these 6 months from now, 3 months from now, any time a year. You don’t have to feel pressure to do it on New Year’s Day. Jen: Yes and now that we have told everybody about it, you will start noticing it and you can be more critical about it and this is called media literacy and media literacy has been found to be one of the greatest tools in preventing disordered eating and body image issues. So pass it on. Annie: Pass it on. Stay woke, right? Jen: Stay woke. Annie: OK. Number two, remember your why. Ask yourself “Does this really matter to you?” when you’re setting your New Year’s resolutions because along the same lines of getting caught up, this can tend to be following the leader, kind of like Jen said when you’re shopping with your girlfriend and in my experience, what’s personally happened to me before is one girlfriend dinner is like “Oh yeah, I’m going to join this gym, I’m going to start this program, I’m going to start this diet” and the rest of us are like “Oh yeah, like, I guess that sounds good,” like, “That sounds good to me, I’ll do that too” or like “Guess I hadn’t really given it that much thought but she’s done the research. And she seems to think it’s a good idea so I’ll do it too” and if you listen to our Stages of Change podcast with our Balance365 Coach Melissa Parker, you’ll know that skipping stages like contemplation, where you’re thinking about doing a thing and preparation, where you’re making plans to do the thing, are actually really vital to your success and this is one of the reasons people- Jen: Not skipping stages. Annie: Sorry, yes, not skipping stages. It’s really vital to your success and this is one of the reasons that people can fall flat on New Year’s resolution time is because they join the gym, they buy the meal plan, they sign up for the challenge or whatever it is they’re doing without really considering “Does this even matter to me? Is this a good time in my life to do this? Is this reasonable to think that I can do whatever is required to make this goal happen?” Just like Lauren said, like, she just felt this pressure to make a resolution and it’s like “Hey, I just had a baby. Maybe now isn’t the time to be all in on whatever it is I’m wanting to do” and if you give it some reflection and you come up with like “No, this isn’t OK. This isn’t the time, this isn’t the thing I want. That’s OK. It doesn’t mean that you’re stuck wherever, you’re out forever. It just means that maybe you need to re-evaluate and get some clarity on what your goal is and how you’re going to get there. Jen: Yeah, it often is related to, I think, feelings of guilt around holiday eating as well so, I mean, that’s why the advertising is so successful, right, because they know you’re feeling bad about all the eating and sitting around you’re doing over the holidays and that becomes your motivation, right, which is shame-based motivation, which we also know through research that shame-based motivation is not lasting. Lauren: Yeah, and I’ll add too on this that this is why we actually added a section in Balance365 it’s called The Story of You and it helps you to uncover what your values are and what your core values are and so not only does that help you when you are making changes because when you make a change if it connects with one of your core values you’re more likely to stick to it but it also can weed out this extra stuff so you can think back “Well does this really support any of my core values?” and if it doesn’t you can feel a lot better of saying like “Oh, this isn’t for me, like, it’s good for them, it’s not good for me.” Jen: Right. Annie: And circling back to what Jen said about shame-based marketing, you know, I think in the past when I have started a new diet or a new exercise routine on New Year’s Day it has usually been to combat those feelings of shame and guilt about eating too much, missing the gym because I’ve been busier than normal, the weather’s been crummy, not enough daylight, you know, whatever fill in the blank and they know this. Lauren: Yeah, that was always me, like it comes right after the holidays, right, where everyone’s crazy busy, there’s treats everywhere. And it’s just like, it’s kind of like a perfect storm, right, everyone’s doing it, you feel crappy, the advertising is being pushed to you, so it comes together on January 1st. Jen: Yeah and it’s just it’s all part of that roller coaster, though, you could start if you zoom out a bit and start identifying trends so most people wouldn’t binge over Christmas if they weren’t dieting before Christmas. Lauren: Right, yeah. Jen: And most people wouldn’t diet before Christmas if they were bingeing at Thanksgiving. Lauren: And then you wouldn’t feel crappy, right? And wouldn’t be like “I need to do something.” Jen: Right, so the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas is also a very, very popular time to go on a diet so, you know, people go into the holiday, basically, diet to counteract their Thanksgiving bingeing and to prep themselves for Christmas. Someone just said the other day, told me a friend of theirs was working on losing 5 pounds in preparation for the holidays and I’m, you know, it’s funny kind of, but you’re also like, I just cringe and think, “Oh my gosh, like, you’re basically just announcing that you have an eating disorder and that you are starving yourself in preparation for being able to binge.” Lauren: Right and that just feeds right into the cycle. Jen: Yeah and then so you binge over Christmas and then you get back on that diet rollercoaster for January and then, you know, then you restrict, then you binge and then you’re restricting for your bikini season and then it’s just, it’s just wild. Annie: And most people are trying to stop that cycle in the binge, when they’re in the binge they want to pull all the way back to restriction which I totally get, like, that seems to be, like, “Well, duh, like, I, you know, I’m either all in or I’m all out, I’m on the wagon, I’m off the wagon,” like there’s just two extremes and our approach would be to just let that pendulum settle down in the middle like, don’t pull it so far back. Jen: Yeah, so Chastity, she’s in Balance365, she said the other day is that people want to stop bingeing but unfortunately they don’t want to stop restricting. However the solution to stop bingeing is to stop restricting as well. Lauren: Right. Jen: And people just really have a hard time wrapping their heads around that. Annie: Absolutely, I mean, it can be scary because it feels like you’re letting go of some of that control, especially if you’ve been dieting for years and that’s what you know, that a lot of women feel comfortable and in control when they’re dieting, even if they’re miserable, even if they’re white knuckling it. Lauren: I remember someone when we first started doing this had been dieting for years and years and she was terrified when we told her like stop counting your points, stop counting, like, just give yourself permission to eat and she was like “I will literally start eating and never stop.” Jen: I remember that too. Lauren: And like, spoiler, that didn’t happen and now she lives a free life and she doesn’t count and she’s happy with her progress but she was terrified, like there was a real fear for her. Jen: Right. Annie: So once again we went on a little tangent. Jen: As we do. Annie: I’m just looking at our outline, like “Remember your why” and now we’re talking about restriction and it’s all connected though, isn’t it? Jen: So remember your why. So remember that you don’t want to be on the diet roller coaster and that is your why for not jumping on board a new diet in January. Annie: Well and why am I doing this again, if I am being honest and years past it would have been to try to avoid or to remove some of those feelings of guilt and shame, so it’s like “OK, I’m just going to try to regain all of my control by doing all the things and doing them perfectly” and you know, again, it just, what that does is eventually perpetuates the cycle of this diet cycle. Jen: Yeah, an alternative to feeling guilty is to say “Wait a sec, I’m human and just like everybody else at Christmas, I indulge in the holiday foods and move along.” Annie: Yeah. Because the holiday foods are yummy. Jen: They are. Annie: They are yummy. And yeah and just cut yourself some slack, right? Lauren: Yeah. Annie: OK, so we covered the first two. A, you don’t have to make these New Year’s resolutions just this time of year, you can set goals or new intentions or create new habits any time of year, then you evaluate like “Does this really matter to me? Why am I doing this? What’s my purpose? What’s my mission behind this? What am I hoping to get out of this?” and then if you come to the conclusion that “I still want to move forward. I still want to make change” and your resolutions are around things like eating healthier, exercising more, drinking less, quitting smoking then we’re talking about changing habits which, shockingly, is something we’re pretty good at helping people do. Surprise! And Lauren you have some really good information about creating and changing habits, but essentially it boils down to you don’t have to overhaul your entire life overnight because so often people go to bed on New Year’s Eve and they’re like, they set these plans and they’re going to wake up like a person with completely new habits on January 1st, like 12 hours later, new year, new me, right? Lauren: Right. That would be really nice. Annie: It would be great if it were just that simple, if all the change could happen. Jen: If worked, we would encourage it. Lauren: Yeah, right. Annie: Yeah, it’d be a heck of a lot quicker but will you share the statistics about why changing too many things at once isn’t likely to bode well for you? Lauren: Yes, so we share this all the time, actually but I find that it’s so eye-opening for people is that studies show that if you want to change a habit and you change one small thing and only that thing you have about an 80 percent chance of sticking with that change long term, which is actually really good for percentages. If you try and change too things at the same time your success rate of sticking with both of those things drops down to about 30 percent and then 3 or more changes at the same time your success rate drops to almost 0 sticking with all those changes and then the more things you add on, the less and less your success rate will be. Annie: That’s not very promising to change a lot of things at once is it. Lauren: No, so not only do you not have to, you shouldn’t if you care about sticking with it, right? Annie: Yes, so when you think about someone that wakes up New Year’s Day and is like I’m going to change all 3 of my meals, plus my snacks, plus my sleep habits, plus my water and alcohol consumption, now I’m also going to add going into the gym 5-6 times a week, that is so many behaviors that it takes to change, I mean we’re talking about, like, let’s take a look at a meal, like, what does it take to change a meal, like, it could change what you put on your plate, how you prepare your food, what kind of foods you’re buying at the grocery store, it might require, do you even go to the grocery store in the first place versus eating out, I mean, and those are the little steps that take to build a really great solid habit that so many people overlook. They just think “I’m just going to start eating a balanced breakfast, lunch and dinner tomorrow, all the time, forever and ever amen.” Lauren: And our brains just don’t work like that. It’s just the way we’re wired and you know, we, like our brains, like consistency and constants and so it’s not going to bode well for you if you try and change everything all at the same time. Jen: I don’t even like going somewhere new in the grocery store, like a new aisle. Like when I when I’m looking at recipes and there’s just some whacko ingredient, you know, that either you can’t find in a regular supermarket or I’ve just never seen that before I’m like, “Next!” Like, I just really resist. Yeah. Annie: I think, yeah, I mean, obviously when it comes to cooking I’m the same way. I see it is a recipe with more than like four ingredients and I’m like “No, I’m out.” Lauren: Thank you, next. Jen: Yeah, I know as far as our plans on expanding our our recipe collection on our website and just looking at, like, when we had a woman making recipes for us this fall and the first couple she sent me I was like, “Listen, like chickpea flour is just not going to fly.” Lauren: I feel like we should have a test where like if Annie, Lauren and Jen can’t make it it doesn’t get put out there and we would be like, “Pizza. Quesadillas. Chicken.” Jen: Yeah yeah and so it’s like, I remember I would go all in like back in my dieting days on making things like cauliflower pizza crust. Lauren: Yes I would take so long to make meals and they would always taste like crap. Jen: Yeah and so but then it’s like, you know, five years later, we’re just having pizza, like just regular crust and it’s way better. Lauren: Like, it’s fine. Jen: It’s like all those steps, right, like all those steps to make, to just get in the habit of making these healthy pizza crusts and yeah just really makes no difference. Annie: And now, yeah, I feel good just throwing some veggies and some fruit and some extra protein on my Jack’s frozen pizza. Jen: Yeah, like, I’ll just have a side of cauliflower with my regular pizza. Instead of trying to work it into the crust. Annie: I really like how you say cauliflower. Lauren: Cauliflower. Annie: Anyways, yeah, but truly I think people really underestimate how much energy is required to change just one habit and it’s definitely a slower process but what we hear from women in our community that are working through our program is that it feels effortless, they’re not white knuckling through all these changes and just like, “Oh my gosh, I hope I can do this. I just need to do this for a little bit longer before it comes automatic.” They’re like, actually, they’re kind of like looking around like “Is this really all I’m doing? Like, this is all you want me to focus on?” and we’re like “Yeah, actually.” Jen: Just this one thing. Annie: That is. Jen: Yeah. Annie: And if you’re talking about changing existing habits, which that comes up a lot around New Years resolutions too is the best way to change an existing habit is to replace it with a new one and Lauren and I have a pretty good podcast, actually two podcasts on how habits are built, like Habits 101, and then how to change or break bad habits, so if you want more information on the science and the process behind habit building and breaking bad habits, I would highly encourage you to listen to those because, I mean, I think we give some pretty good tidbits. Lauren: It’s pretty good. Annie: I mean, it’s alright. And the other thing I want to add onto that too in terms of habit changing and going a little bit slower is to discuss the difference between outcome-based goals and behavior-based goals because so often, again, resolutions seem to be outcome-based goals. I want to lose 10 pounds. I want to run a 5K. I want to compete in this challenge or whatever and it doesn’t really address the behaviors, like, OK, how are you actually going to do that? What actions are you going to take to lose 10 pounds? Like I’m not poo-pooing weight loss as a resolution goal, your body, your choice. But how are you going to lose that 10 pounds? It might be I’m going to start exercising on Monday, Wednesday, Friday for 30 minutes or I’m going to replace, you know, X, Y, Z with vegetables on my plate or I’m going to increase protein or you know, whatever that looks like, we would encourage you to write your goals based off of your behaviors, not the outcome you want, because so often if you take care of the behaviors, which we have more control over, the outcome will just naturally be a byproduct of it and so often I see women doing all the right things and they don’t get the outcome they want and then they feel like a failure, you know, they’re making all these great changes. Especially when it comes to weight loss. We’ve seen women work their butts off to try to lose weight, you know, they’re maybe exercising more, they are addressing their self talk, they’re getting more sleep, they are cutting back on sugary drinks or alcoholic drinks or whatever that is they’re working on and they step on the scale and they’re down 3 pounds instead of the desired 10 pounds and all of a sudden they feel like they’ve failed. Lauren: Right. Jen: When they’ve actually succeeded in all these areas of life that a lot of people struggle to succeed in and it’s huge, it’s a huge big deal. Lauren: Yeah. Annie: Yeah, when really if you just zoom out and it’s like “Oh my gosh, look at all this great change I’ve made, I’m feeling better I’m taking better care of my body or you know, whatever it is, fill in the blank, that we just tend to lose sight of that when our goals are outcome based. Lauren: Also when they step on the scale and they see that, that they haven’t lost as much as they had hoped, they also a lot of times will be like “Well, what’s the point, right ?” and then they don’t continue doing those behaviors and it’s the continuation and consistency of those behaviors that’s going to lead to possibly them reaching their goal, right? Annie: Yeah, so the easiest way to turn your outcome based goal, if that’s what you were thinking about before listening to podcast, into a behavior based goal is to just ask yourself “How am I going to achieve that? How am I going to run a 5K? How am I going to run a marathon? How am I going to lose 10 pounds? How am I gonna?” Jen: Yeah. Annie: You know, like and then usually that how, that’s the behavior. Jen: Yeah and then realize that that outcome goal you have actually could be made up of a series of behavior changes that need to happen one at a time, therefore it may not happen as quickly as you like, which is OK. Life is long. Annie: Yeah, it’s the tortoise and the hare, right? Jen: It’s a journey. Annie: Yeah, as cheesy as that sounds, people are probably like, “Oh, come on.” Jen: It’s a journey. Lauren: Zen Jen over there. Jen: I know. Annie: Enjoy the process. Jen: Gandhi. Annie: We need one of those successory memes. You know, popular in the nineties. OK, well those are the three main points I wanted to discuss when it comes to New Year’s resolutions. Is there anything you two would like to add? Lauren: I don’t think so. Annie: OK, let’s do a quick review. First of all, before you set your New Year’s resolutions remember that you can set these new goals, create new habits, set new intentions, you can have a clean slate any time of the year. I totally understand that it’s super enticing to have like new year, new me but you can do this on May 1st just as easily as you can January 1st. The second one is to remember your, why does this really matter to you? Are you just doing this because your girlfriends are doing this or because marketing is telling you to do this or is this something that you really desire and then on top of that are you willing to do what it takes to make that happen and sometimes the answer is no, like Lauren said, you know, she really maybe wanted some of the things she wanted after having Elliott but it just wasn’t, the timing wasn’t good and honoring that, and being like, “Hey, I can just put that on the back burner and wait a little bit to start that until I’m ready to make those changes and I’m able to make those changes and stick with them” is absolutely, that’s an OK answer. Jen: I know you always say, Annie, there is more than two options, it’s not always “yes” and “no”, there’s a third option which is “later.” Annie: I would love to take credit for that but that’s actually Lauren. Jen: Oh, I’m sorry, Lauren. Lauren: Yes. Annie: Yes. I was like, as soon as you said that I was like “Oh, I really wanted credit for it because it’s good, it’s good advice, but I’m going to be honest, that’s Lauren’s advice.” Yes, later is always an option which I think is, that’s goes back to your maturity about responding, Jen, versus reacting, you know, so many people can get reactive during New Year’s resolutions like they feel compelled to do something just because everyone else is doing them and it’s like, if you just have pause, like think like “Do I want this? Was I considering this before I heard Susan over here talking about her weight loss? Like. Jen: I always think of my inner BFF like she’s, she just like, she comes to me in that first second I react and then give it 20 seconds and my inner B.F.F. is sitting beside me like “Hey, girlfriend. Calm down.” Annie: That first voice in me though, she can be really kind of grumpy sometimes. Jen: She’s my naughty friend. She’s naughty. Annie: Let’s do it! Yeah! Is this is code for Annie and Lauren? Jen: There’s Annie and then there’s Lauren. Annie: Annie is like shoving you into the mosh pit at a concert, like “You can do it!” and Lauren’s like, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Jen: Let’s stay safe back here. Annie: Both are needed sometimes, OK? And the last point we just discussed today was that you don’t have to overhaul your life in one night, that to think that you’re going to go to bed on December 31st and wake up 8 hours later a completely different person doesn’t usually happen for people and that’s not, that’s not because you lack willpower or motivation or determination or discipline, that’s just the way behavior change works and it takes time and slowing down the process to focus one thing until that becomes automatic and then layering on brick by brick is usually the best place to start and we have a saying too that we stole from James Clear that “Rome wasn’t built in a day but they were laying bricks often” Lauren: We changed it to make it our own. What’s our new one? Beyonce wasn’t built in a day. Jen: Beyonce wasn’t built in a day. Annie: Beyonce also wasn’t built in a day. So if you could just lay a brick, you know, if you have these big goals 2019, 2020, 2021, start with a brick, really and lay your strong foundations, good solid habits, one by one and you’ll get there eventually and hopefully you’ll wake up one day and you’ll have this big beautiful Coliseum and you’ll be like “Oh, that was easy.” Jen: Exactly. Exactly. That really is how it happens. Annie: Yeah and I know that’s probably sounds a little bit ridiculous or a little bit too good to be true but you need to be able to play the long game for behavior change, you have to have big picture and patience which, I’m saying that to myself right now. I’m talking in a mirror. And yeah, hopefully this helps people build some better resolutions. I would love to hear what people are working on. So if you are working on something for the new year and you want to talk about it, please join our Facebook group, it’s, we’re Healthy Habits Happy Moms on Facebook. We have 40,000 women in our private Facebook group and if you need a place for safe support, reasonable advice and moderation, this is your place to go. Jen: I got a huge compliment yesterday. I was at a cookie exchange with 10 women and not many people know about my our company locally where I live and actually a couple women from my community just joined and the one woman said to me yesterday “Your group is the first place I’ve ever found that actually promotes you giving yourself grace.” Lauren: Aww. Annie: Can we like get a testimonial from her? Jen: I’ll ask her. She’s in Balance365 now. Annie: Oh that’s wonderful. Jen: She would be happy to. Anne: Yeah, I think it’s a pretty sweet place. We have amazing women, it’s really, it’s not it’s not us, it’s our community that’s made it such an amazing place to be, they provide support, applause and encouragement and tough love sometimes when it’s needed. It’s a great place to be, so find us on Facebook at Healthy Habits Happy moms You can also tag us on social media on Instagram and show us what you’re working on, show us your more reasonable New Year’s resolutions. Jen: Yes. Lauren: Yeah, I like that. Annie: Yeah, me too. OK, anything to add? Jen: No. Lauren: No. Annie: We’re good to go? Alright, well, we’ll talk soon, OK? Lauren: Bye. Jen: Bye. The post Episode 46: 3 Ways To Improve Your New Year’s Resolutions appeared first on Balance365.

'Why were you running from the Guild, Jen? What did you find out?' Support Tin Can on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tincanaudio This episode features the voices of David Pellow, Julia Douglas and Malcolm Rumbles, as well as cameos from Elizabeth Clutterbuck and Cameron Clow The opening features a sample from Hamlet starring David Tennent

What is Puerto Rico? Many Americans - if not most - are unaware that Puerto Rico is a part of the United States. In this episode, learn the history of our scandalous treatment of the US citizens living in Puerto Rico and explore how Puerto Rico’s past foreshadowed the United States' present… and possibly our future. Please support Congressional Dish: Click here to contribute with PayPal or Bitcoin Click here to support Congressional Dish for each episode via Patreon Mail Contributions to: 5753 Hwy 85 North #4576 Crestview, FL 32536 Thank you for supporting truly independent media! Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes CD128: Crisis in Puerto Rico Additional Reading Book: War Against All Puerto Ricans by Nelson A. Denis, March 2016. Article: Puerto Rico Warning Congress Its Health Crisis Will Impact U.S. States by Suzanne Gamboa, NBC News, March 22, 2017. Document: Testimony of Jose B. Carrion III, Chairman, Financial Oversight & Management Board for Puerto Rico, March 22, 2017. Article: Why the GOP's proposals to cap Medicaid funding won't work by Ana Mulero, Healthcare Dive, March 21, 2017. Article: Fed Raises Interest Rates for Third Time Since Financial Crisis by Binyamin Appelbaum, The New York Times, March 15, 2017. Letter: Fiscal Plan Certification, Financial Oversight & Management Board for Puerto Rico, March 13, 2017. Press Release: Jenniffer Gonzalez Calls for Fiscal Oversight Board Action to Prevent Medicaid Crisis by Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, March 13, 2017. Article: Tensions heighten following control board rejection of fiscal plan by Luis J. Valentin, Caribbean Business, March 9, 2017. Article: A bad deal for Puerto Rico, Globe control board opinion, The Boston Globe, March 5, 2017. Article: Quest for statehood: Puerto Rico's new referendum aims to repair economic disaster by Danica Coto, Salon, February 3, 2017. Letter: Letter to Governor Rossello Nevares, Financial Oversight & Management Board for Puerto Rico, January 18, 2017. Article: Puerto Rico's New Governor Takes Over as Debt Crisis Reaches Climax by Tatiana Darie, Bloomberg, January 3, 2017. Article: Puerto Rico Control Board Names Carrion Chair Amid Protests by Katherine Greifeld, Bloomberg, September 30, 2016. Article: Puerto Rico's Invisible Health Crisis by Valeria Pelet, The Atlantic, September 3, 2016. Op-Ed: Understanding Puerto Rico's Healthcare Collapse by Johnny Rullan, Morning Consult, June 20, 2016. Article: Puerto Rico not sovereign, Supreme Court says by Richard Wolf, USA Today, June 9, 2016. Article: US supreme court says Puerto Rico must abide by federal double jeopardy rule by Alan Yuhas, The Guardian, June 9, 2016. Op-Ed: No More Colonialism Disguised as Financial Assistance: The US Must Relinquish Puerto Rico by Nelson A. Denis, Truthout, May 19, 2016. Article: Sea Turtles Delay Debt-Ridden Puerto Rico's Gas-Switching Plan by Jonathan Crawford, Bloomberg, March 23, 2016. Article: There's a big sale on Puerto Rican homes by Heather Long, CNN Money, February 21, 2016. Article: The US shipping industry is putting a multimillion dollar squeeze on Puerto Rico by Rory Carroll, Business Insider, July 9, 2015. Article: Harvard's billionaire benefactor also a GOP sugar daddy by Vanessa Rodriguez, OpenSecrets.org, June 4, 2015. Interview: How the United States Economically and Politically Strangled Puerto Rico by Mark Karlin, Truthout, May 24, 2015. Article: Why Have So Many People Never Heard Of The MOVE Bombing? by Gene Demby, NPR, May 18, 2015. Article: Puerto Rico Expands Tax Haven Deal For Americans To Its Own Emigrants by Janet Novack, Forbes, January 27, 2015. Article: Citizenship Renunciation Fee Hiked 422%, And You Can't Come Back by Robert W. wood, Forbes, January 13, 2015. Article: Puerto Rican Population Declines on Island, Grows on U.S. Mainland by D'Vera Cohn, Eileen Pattien and Mark Hugo Lopez, Pew Research Center, August 11, 2014. Article: Puerto Rico woos rich with hefty tax breaks by Sital S. Patel and Ben Eisen, Market Watch, April 22, 2014. Article: Bankers Crashed the Economy - Now They Want to Be Your Landlord by Rebecca Burns, Michael Donley, and Carmilla Manzanet, Moyers & Company, April 2, 2014. Article: 'Backdoor bailout' boosts Puerto Rico's revenues, Bond News, Reuters, February 10, 2014. Article: Economy and Crime Spur New Puerto Rican Exodus by Lizette Alvarez, The New York Times, February 8, 2014. Article: Everything You Need to Know About the Territories of the United States, Everything Everywhere, June 27, 2013. Document: Puerto Rico's Political Status and the 2012 Plebiscite: Background and Key Questions by R. Sam Garrett, Congressional Research Service, June 25, 2013. GAO Report: Economic Impact of Jones Act on Puerto Rico's Economy by Jeffry Valentin-Mari, Ph.D. and Jose I. Alameda-Lozada, Ph.D. April 26, 2012. Article: Massive Puerto Rico pipeline triggers debate by Danica Coto, The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 14, 2011. Article: Island residents sue U.S., saying military made them sick by Abbie Boudreau and Scott Bronstein, CNN, February 1, 2010. Article: At Riggs Bank, A Tangled Path Led to Scandal by Timothy L. O'Brien, The New York Times, July 19, 2004. Case Study: Money Laundering and Foreign Corruption: Enforcement and Effectiveness of the Patriot Act by the Minority Staff of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, United States Senate, July 15, 2004. Article: MIT to Pay Victims $1.85 Million in Fernald Radiation Settlement by Zareena Hussain, The Tech, January 7, 1998. Article: Police Drop Bomb on Radicals' Home in Philadelphia by William K. Stevens, The New York Times, May 14, 1985. References U.S. Energy Information Administration Puerto Rico Territory Energy Profile Puerto Rico Territory Profile and Energy Estimates Average Price of Electricity to Ultimate Customers by End-Use Sector Video: 1985 Philadelphia MOVE bombing This Day in History: March 2, 1917: Puerto Ricans become U.S. citizens, are recruited for war effort FBI Files Pedro Albizu Campos - includes letter about his radiation torture Pedro Albizu Campos - full files Luis Munoz-Marin 1986 Congressional Report: US Army & US Atomic Energy Commission radiation experiments on US citizen prisoners 1995 Dept of Energy Report: Human Radiation Experiments OpenSecrets Excelerate Energy: Profile for 2016 Election Cycle Crowley Maritime Excelerate Energy Company website Lobbying Report American Maritime Partnership Company website Lobbying Report Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico Control Board Website Control Board Document List Website: Puerto Rico Tax Incentives Law 20: Export Services Act Law 22: Individual Investors Act Department of Economic Development & Commerce: Act 73: Economic Incentives for the Development of Puerto Rico 26 US Code 936: Puerto Rico and possession tax credit IRS: Expatriation Tax Forbes Company Profiles Johnson & Johnson Pfizer GlaxoSmithKline Travelponce.com: Ponce Massacre Museum Sound Clip Sources Hearing: Oversight Hearing on The Status of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) Restructuring Support Agreement, Subcommittee on Indian, Insular and Alaska Native Affairs, March 22, 2017. Witnesses Panel I The Honorable Ricardo Rossello, Governor of Puerto Rico Mr. Gerardo Portela-Franco, Executive Director - Puerto Rico Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority Panel 2 Mr. Jose B. Carrion III, Chairman - Financial Oversight and Management Board of Puerto Rico Mr. Luis Benitez Hernandez, Chairman - PREPA Governing Board Mr. Stephen Spencer, Managing Director - Houlihan Lokey Mr. Adam Bergonzi, Managing Director & Chief Risk Officer - National Public Finance Guarantee Corporation Mr. Rob Bryngelson, President & CEO - Excelerate Energy Ms. Ana J. Matosantos, Member of Financial Oversight and Management Board of Puerto Rico Interview: Interview with Luis M. Balzac, March 7, 2017. Luis: Puerto Ricans in Puerto Rico, contrary to common opinion, we do pay some federal taxes. What we don’t pay is federal income tax. Jen: Okay. Luis: So we don’t pay federal income tax. However, Puerto Ricans pay Medicare at the same rate that you pay in San Francisco/California. Jen: Do Puerto Ricans get the same benefits that I get in San Francisco? Luis: No, we do not get the same benefits that you get in San Francisco. Jen: Oh. Luis: So, for example, there are states like California, New York, and other states that I believe get about an 83 percent federal subsidy for Medicare expenses. There are other states—and I realize I’m being recorded, but don’t quote me on it. This you can check, also, very easily— Jen: Sure. Luis: Other states—I think it’s Tennessee— Jen: And you don’t have to give me exact numbers. Just go ahead and, like, big picture, tell me the situation. Luis: Got it. Jen: Yeah. Luis: Even better. So, there are states like California and New York that get about 80-some percent of reimbursement on their major expenses from the federal government. There are other states that get less. I think Tennessee gets less; I think Tennessee gets, like, 50-some percent. Puerto Rico, I think it gets about 23 percent. Jen: Oh, god. Luis: It’s important to understand that, where does the other—if we use 23 percent as an example for Medicare—where does the other 77 percent come from? State funding. Jen: Okay. Luis: So, please understand that if you move to Puerto Rico as a U.S. citizen, and you, for any reason, need Medicare, and you go to the hospital, those hospitals that you go to have to comply with MCS, which is part of HHS—Health and Human Services. And you have to comply with all the regulations and requirements of a hospital to be reimbursed and enjoy federal dollars. However, that institution/Puerto Rico is only getting cents on the dollar compared to other states, but someone needs to make up for that short fall. Jen: Yeah. Luis: The state does. Jen: Well— Luis: That lack of equality translates to Puerto Rico’s budget. Luis: I’m a proud American, and I will defend our country wherever I go. Jen: Mm-hmm. Luis: But I’m also a realist. I cannot expect Congress to give the people in Puerto Rico a fair share of the pie when we don’t have a delegation sitting at the table when the pie is divided. Luis: When I ran the office of the governor of Puerto Rico in New York, and we were lobbying to be included into the Affordable Care Act, my biggest argument, when I met with members of the Senate or the House, in states that had a large Puerto Rican population—Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, by way of example—my point to these members of Congress was, I need your help; I need you to be a voice to Puerto Rico to be included in the Affordable Care Act. And the staff would be like, are you kidding me, Luis? That is none of our business. And I will be like, well, let me—give me an opportunity to maybe convince you that it is your business. The problem is— Jen: Yeah, because you’ll pay for them when they come here. Luis: —you will pay for it. And by the way, we don’t even have a way to qualify because guess what, a lot of them are coming in, getting services, and going back to Puerto Rico once they’re done. Some are staying— Jen: Yeah, that's what I would do. Luis: Some are staying, but others are just coming here, and you have no way of qualifying and quantifying it because they’re United States citizens. You can’t stop it. Jen: Yeah— Luis: And how could you blame them? How could you blame them if Puerto Rico does not have the facilities to treat a cancer or SSI or any other initiative and my mother is risking her life? I’m going to take her to Orlando— Jen: Mm-hmm. Luis: —without a doubt. Jen: Yeah. Luis: I will say that Puerto Rico, even though we have all the issues that you and I have been talking about, we are still part of the United States, and it’s somewhat similar to the changes that we see here, stateside, in the contiguous 48 states, where I would say that from coast to coast, from Florida to California, I think the middle class in the United States has been shrinking. Jen: Mm-hmm. Luis: Likewise in Puerto Rico. Jen: Okay. Luis: But I would say that it is more like the United States, and we are not like Latin America and other third-world jurisdictions. We have a decent-size middle class because we don’t have the IRS because we are not paying federal income tax. There is in Puerto Rico a large underground economy where people work on the side, get paid in cash, and don’t report their earnings to the—there's no IRS—or to the local version of the IRS which is the Treasury Department. So, what you have in Puerto Rico is that you see somewhat of a thriving economy. So those people that are in commercial real estate and they’re doing business with big national chains like Macy’s and JCPenney and all that stuff, you will see in Puerto Rico sales records being broken and people spending a lot of money in the island. So, it’s not like the Dominican Republic. Even people in the projects that are subsidized by state and federal dollars, you can see that they have a/c in the walls, the projects are made out of cement, and you will be able to see all that when you go there in person. So, when you drive around Puerto Rico, all over the island, it is nothing like the Dominican Republic. We are way better, and— Jen: Well, I’ve never been there, either, so a comparison doesn’t really… Luis: Yeah. We are way better—and I realize that I’m about to contradict myself, okay?—we are way better, and it is thanks to the United States. So even though inequality has got all these problems and it’s affected the debt and all that stuff and we are looking now at serious issues, Puerto Rico is still better than—I will never move to Cuba because I think Cuba is better than Puerto Rico, so I get it— Puerto Rico is United States, and we’re doing better than most. Jen: So that brings me to the control board, because now we have Puerto Ricans saying on paper, no doubt, we want to become a state, and yet Congress just did this thing where your government, your state government, or closest thing—what do you call it? Territorial government? Luis: Yeah. Jen: Is that the proper phrase? Luis: Territory. Jen: Okay. Luis: Yeah. Jen: So your territorial government was, basically just taken over by this weird board that has some dictatorial powers. Is there any one in Puerto Rico that’s happy about this? Is there something I’m not seeing? Luis: Yeah. Okay, so, I’m going to compare that. First of all, let’s be fair, and we’re not the first jurisdiction that, let’s say, enjoys the benefit of a control board, because D.C., New York City, have both had it in different jurisdiction relationships, but they did, and it helped. Okay? Jen: O-kay. Luis: The difference between New York City is the following: you have a city that imposed a board by the state. So people in the city of New York, even though they had a control board years back, they had a control board what was decided by politicians who they elected. Jen: Yeah. Luis: Okay? Jen: Mm-hmm. Luis: So, that makes it—but it’s still the same in that you have a higher jurisdiction imposing a control board for fiscal reasons over a lower jurisdiction. Correct? Jen: Yes. Luis: And then you have D.C. They also had a control board, and the list goes on and use the federal government, if I’m not mistaken. So there you have a jurisdiction of a federal imposing in D.C., which is not independent. Now, let me tell you where emotions can go a little crazy here. And remember I’m a stakeholder; I’m pro American. Jen: Yeah. Luis: However, we did not invite the United States of America, back a hundred-and-some years ago; we were invaded. Jen: Yeah. Luis: So, we are invaded, we are treated unequally, that inequality causes financial chaos. We are told by the Supreme Court that our constitution is not really a constitution—you should research that; that was recent—an opinion by the Supreme Court. So, really, our constitution, that we thought we had a constitution, is not worth anything on paper because Congress has complete control of that jurisdiction. Jen: Mm-hmm. Luis: So, what we have is, back to your question about a board, is a federal government imposing a board on people who did not vote for those that imposed that board. Jen: Yeah. And I know that in Congress Puerto Rico has a representative at the time that this was created—I think it was Pedro Pierluisi—but he didn’t have a vote, so— Luis: No. Jen: And even on the board, the governor gets to sit at the table, but the governor of Puerto Rico doesn’t get a vote of the board. Luis: No. And there’s a slight correction to what you said about Pierluisi in your podcast: the resident commissioner does have a vote in Congress—not on committees, on subcommittees. Okay? Jen: Okay, so he has a vote on a subcommittee but not— Luis: No. Jen: —in the committee or the main House. Luis: Correct. Now, are you ready for the kicker? Jen: Yes. Luis: If the vote on a subcommittee comes to a point where the resident commissioner becomes the deciding vote, it doesn’t go. You’ve got to vote again. Jen: No! Luis: Yeah. Jen: So, that’s— Luis: Can I give you an— Jen: —kind of not really having a vote. I mean— Luis: No. Jen: —he does— Luis: No, I know. Luis: Let’s talk for a second about the pharmaceutical industry, okay? Jen: Yeah, because— Luis: Not to be confused— Jen: —just so that I’m on the same page as you, you worked for Pfizer for a while, too, right? Luis: I directed governor affairs for Pfizer, and that included jurisdictions of New York City and Puerto Rico. Jen: Okay— Luis: And San Francisco. Jen: —and when did you do that? Luis: I did that in 20—I took a year off of the government and I went to Pfizer, did not like it, then went back to Puerto Rico government. So that was 2011. Jen: So was that before the Clinton administration took away the tax credits or after? Luis: Oh, no, after. Oh, yes. Jen: Okay, okay. Luis: 2011, before I became a deputy secretary of the United States. Jen: Okay, got you. Luis: Okay. Jen: So this is after all the tax benefits were gone, and was Pfizer still—when did the pharmaceutical industry, like, leave Puerto Rico? When did they leave? Luis: No way. Why are you saying that? Jen: Because that's what I read. Luis: That's wrong. Jen: Is that not what happened? Luis: No! That’s wrong. I’m about to clarify that. Jen: Okay. Luis: All right. So, if you look at the pharmaceutical industry, if you search, let’s say, BIO, I believe BIO is still the pharmaceutical, big pharma association, the industry association, trade association, okay? If you look at that, you will see that in Puerto Rico BIO had a membership of a huge number of pharmaceuticals. And then you may look at BIO now, and the Puerto Rico chapter, which has another name, has way less pharmaceuticals. So the normal person that doesn’t understand how things work will say, well, everyone left. Well, let’s slow down and look at what are the names that are missing. Well, some of those names don’t exist anymore because the industry has completely merged and consolidated their resources. By way of example, I will tell you that in Puerto Rico alone, Pfizer bought Wyeth. Jen: Pfizer what? Luis: Pfizer bought Wyeth. Jen: Oh, okay. So, okay. Luis: Okay? Jen: Gotcha. So Pfizer got bigger by eating a smaller company. Luis: Correct. And there’s nothing wrong with that. So what happened was that I believe at that time when that happened, Pfizer had three operations in Puerto Rico, Wyeth had three operations in Puerto Rico, okay? So now when they merge, they have six plants in Puerto Rico. So what do they do? They are able to— economies of scale and to do streamline, and they are able to close two and stay with four. And now Wyeth is not in Puerto Rico— Jen: But the effect— Luis: —and people think Wyeth— Jen: Is the effect of that, of the people of Puerto Rico, that the people that worked in those two plants are now out of a job? Luis: But it has nothing to do with 936. Jen: Remind me. I did that episode, like, eight months ago. 936 was the tax credits disappearing? Was that…? Luis: That’s exactly—they disappeared with a coin toss, you said. Jen: Okay, okay. Thank you. Luis: So, so, that consolidation, that example that I’m sharing with you, I believe all happened after 936 stopped, but the reason why Pfizer and Wyeth consolidated was for reasons that had nothing to do with 936. Jen: Yeah. Luis: It had a lot to do with being more productive and being able to share assembly lines and being able to share resources and the same CEO and all that stuff. And so, to the untrained eye, to the Puerto Rican, what they think or see is, oh, Wyeth left. No, they didn’t leave; it was absorbed by a larger pharmaceutical. Jen: So, is the pharmaceutical industry still a major employer in Puerto Rico? Luis: Yes, it is. And I will tell something else: Pfizer and many pharmaceuticals, for many years, are enjoying tax benefits on—there’s something called CFC—controlled foreign corporations—and they are able to enjoy benefits that are comparable to 936. It’s just a different name; a different loophole, you want to call it—I don’t want to call it a loophole—it’s a different tax advantage. Luis: Remember, the pharmaceutical industry, way back when—and we’re talking about right after Puerto Rico changed from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing economy, okay? Jen: Mm-hmm. Luis: I really need you to follow me on this. Puerto Rico used to be sugarcane industry. Jen: Yeah. Luis: And we changed. Take my great uncle. He was the governor of Puerto Rico for the other party, the commonwealth party, and him and Governor Luis Munoz Marin came up with this tax incentive with the federal government and 936 were invented, and Puerto Rico changed—completely—and became a manufacturing economy. Jen: Okay. Luis: No more sugar cane; now we’re manufacturing. And when that happened, pharma came to Puerto Rico. What we have to remember is manufacturing industry also included, probably, the largest textile industry. Textile was huge in Puerto Rico. Now— Jen: Is it still there? Luis: No! Why—now, you’re smart. Why do you think textile is gone in Puerto Rico? Where is textile nowadays? Jen: Probably China, India. Luis: Yes, yes! So, in this case, it left to other jurisdictions for minimum wage and for a bunch of other reasons. 936? Yes! It was not great when it left, but the industry changed. Textile goes wherever you have the cheapest labor. And Puerto Rico— Jen: So— Luis: —cannot compete with India, China, Dominican Republic, where people get paid a dollar an hour. Forget it. You can’t compete with that. Jen: And it sounds like the same problem we’re having in California, in Texas, and Massachusetts, and everywhere. Luis: Yeah, yes. Jen: What would you like to see happen on the island? What do you think could help? Luis: Becoming a state. Jen: So that's the goal. Luis: Yes, without a shadow of a doubt, because if we become a state, we are able now to have the congressional mitigation to help us, and we’re able to fight for equal funding so that the state does not need to subsidize such huge percentages. And now we have an equal playing field. Now if I get in debt— Jen: Okay. Luis: Now if I get in debt, go ahead and criticize me all you want. Jen: Well, then you have bankruptcy protection if you go into debt. Luis: Also. Luis: So, you understand the reason why people are going to Puerto Rico is because of Law 20 and 22, right? Jen: Um, I don't know. No. Luis: So, I’m going to share with you the Law 20 and Law 22. Both laws were passed by Governor Luis Fortuno, which is a governor that I worked for. Jen: Okay. Luis: And those two laws were used, pushed, and promoted big time by the previous governor, Alejandro Garcia Padilla. You can do a quick Google, and you will see how most people went nuts over those two laws, and those two laws is the sole reason why people in stateside, mainland U.S., are fleeing to Puerto Rico to enjoy those tax benefits. Jen: Well, what are those benefits? Luis: I'm going to tell you. Jen: Okay. Luis: So, first, you have Law 20. Law 20 is better known as Export Services law, meaning you and I can open a corporation in Puerto Rico that exports services outside of Puerto Rico. Services, not manufacturing. So you and I can open a consulting firm that consults on any issue, and if our clients are not in Puerto Rico, if our clients are in Europe or New York or California, when that company in Puerto Rico bills those accounts, that corporation will only pay local four percent tax and no sales tax. Wow! Jen: Okay. That's crazy. Luis: Okay? So that means that you and I can have an existing company and have a law firm in New York, and you and I are the partners, and we’ll make—and let’s say that half of our clients are not in Puerto Rico, so why don’t we just open an office in Puerto Rico and do all the billing out of Puerto Rico and serve those clients from Puerto Rico—by the way, you and I can hire attorneys in Puerto Rico that are bilingual; graduated from Harvard, Yale, all those popular universities; pay even a fraction of what you and I would pay a lawyer in New York, and we bill them to the clients that are outside Puerto Rico, and we only pay four percent tax. That’s Law 20. It’s beautiful. Jen: Wow. Okay. Luis: All right. So, now, Law 20 was supplemented, complemented, by Law 22. Law 22 is called the Investor Act. So, now, you and I are the partners of that law firm, and we’ve moved operations and the corporation is only paying four percent tax, local tax, okay? Jen: Okay. Luis: Got it. You and I have not lived in Puerto Rico for the last 15 years. Jen: Okay. Luis: So we, you and I, have our attorneys will review Law 20, and what Law 20 says is you and I can move to Puerto Rico personally, and when we’re in Puerto Rico, our Puerto Rico-sourced income will be tax free. Jen: So the income—so, it’s the Investment Act. So are you talking about, like— Luis: Yes. Jen: —instead of paying capital gains tax, they pay nothing. Luis: Nothing. Now, it needs to be Puerto Rico-sourced income. That means that if you and I own Apple shares, or Microsoft, and we move to Puerto Rico, that’s passive income. We’ll pay taxes because that income is generated outside of Puerto Rico. Jen: Okay. Luis: But if you and I go to Puerto Rico like Paltry and Paulson moved to Puerto Rico, and we invest in property, and we invest in the business of Puerto Rico, that Puerto Rico-sourced income will be tax free. Jen: Federally or are there any state taxes? Luis: Both. Jen: Wow. So the state— Luis: I don’t have the law— Jen: —doesn’t even get anything from that. Luis: Well, yeah, they do because think about all the jobs. You know it’s crazy how much money is generated by having those people in Puerto Rico. Of course it generates— Jen: Yeah. I guess that makes sense. Luis: It’s called economic development. Yes, it generates—I have a lot of people that have new accounts with those individuals all the way from real estate, legal fees, engineering. They’re all millions and millions and millions of dollars that were not moving around the economy until they moved there. Jen: And so, are these two laws something that you personally support? Are they a good idea? Luis: I think it’s a good idea. We somehow need to generate some federal activity. Jen: We do, but at the same time, your government is broke. So isn’t raising revenues, isn’t that a solution? Luis: Well, no. Well, you know what? It’s a little contradicting, so when I say I endorse it, but I just told you a little while ago that I want to be a state. And if I was a state, that would probably not be possible. Jen: Yeah. Luis: Those two laws would not be possible if we’re a state, but guess what—we’re not a state. Jen: Yeah. Luis: And what the heck are we supposed to do? Jen: Yeah. I guess that’s true. You’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt. Okay. Luis: I would rather not have those two laws and be a state. Jen: Okay. That's fair. Luis: Education. I think that your podcast touched on education about 100 schools being closed. Jen: Yeah. Luis: Yeah, but how many people have moved to Orlando? We do not have— Jen: So there's not as many kids? Luis: No! No! Now, I’m going to defend, I’m going to defend this. With me, you may go crazy because I jump from side to side, so for one, one part of me says— Jen: I do that, too. I totally get it. Luis: One part of me says, the student body—I think the island student population went down from half a million to 400,000 students. That’s 25 percent. Jen: Okay. Luis: Okay. That means that I should be able to cut 25 percent of schools and 25 percent of my budget. Right? Well, let’s look at the other side. You and I, again, are married, right? Jen: Uh-huh. Luis: And you and I have a boat, and we have two kids, and the schools that we have our kids are three blocks away. Beautiful. Well, you and I bought a house because it was right next to the school. So now they’re going to close that school, and the next school is five miles away. Jen: Yeah. Luis: Are you and I pissed? Jen: Of course. Luis: I don’t give a crap that there’s less students. I’m going to picket, and I’m going to make a lot of noise, and I’m going to make it impossible for the government to close that school, which is what happens. You know what? Somebody else should sacrifice, not my wife and I. We have it good. I like to be able to walk three blocks and grab my children by the hand, have a beautiful conversation with them while we eat cookies, and we go to the school right next door. Well, guess what? The population is so much smaller now that somehow we cannot justify having the same number of schools open. I believe that happened in Chicago under new jurisdictions. We have to adjust. So guess who needs to deliver those bad news? The fiscal control board, because you cannot possibly justify having all those schools open. So who’s going to be the bad guy? Thank God there’s a fiscal control board, because if you leave, you allow the local elected official to make those decisions, it would be political suicide. And that transfers to any state. Ask any governor to close down 25 percent of schools, and they’re going to lose the election. Jen: Well, I mean, I think that’s just a part of the job. The problem— Luis: I know! Jen: —that I’m seeing as— Luis: No, but wait a second the problem is that the governor can’t do it because when you commit political suicide, and you need to support the legislature to do that, the elected officials in the legislative body would be the first ones that won’t back you up. They’ll say, you crazy? I’m not going to back you up; I want to get elected next time. That’s a huge problem. He says, I can’t do it without you. People are like let’s not do it; let’s let the other guy do it. And he’s like, no, we don’t have enough money. The students are leaving Orlando and New York. They moved away. We don’t need so many schools; we need to close. And the senators will be like, I’m not going to pass that law; are you kidding me? We’re all going to be out of a job. Jen: Well, I mean, and that’s the thing, like, maybe you’re not supposed to serve forever. Like, I just feel like those tough decisions are a part of a job of being elected, and one of my concerns of this control board is that those families, they can’t petition to this board. There is no voice for the Puerto Ricans where the governor doesn’t have a vote. I guess I’d feel more comfortable with it if I thought that those families could petition to their governor, and it would be one vote at the table that would have those political calculations in mind. But with these seven people that were selected by Congress, I mean, is there any concern that they’re going to prioritize the bankers over the Puerto Rican people? Luis: I think a lot of people are concerned about that. Cover Art Design by Only Child Imaginations

We're back with another weekend of the Cabral House Call! Here are today's community questions: Susie: Brown mark on upper lip and it’s not hair - is it hormone related? Jen: What’s better for energy during longer run & bike workouts - goo packs & caffeine or coffee? Anna: What's your opinion on collagen powder drinks for joint pain? Enjoy the Q&A and all the tips along the way! - - - Show Notes: See all the Show Notes, Links & Recommendations at: http://stephencabral.com/154 - - - Get Your Questioned Answered! Each week I answer our community questions and I'd love to answer yours on an upcoming show: http://StephenCabral.com/askcabral      

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