185: The Truth About Fitness, Nutrition, and Motherhood with Joelle Cavagnaro

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Brianna Battles  00:01

Welcome to the Practice Brave Podcast. I'm the host Brianna Battles, founder of Pregnancy and Postpartum Athleticism, and CEO of Everyday Battles. I'm a career strength and conditioning coach, entrepreneur, mom of two wild little boys and a lifelong athlete. I believe that athleticism does not end when motherhood begins, and this podcast is dedicated to coaching you by providing meaningful conversations, insights and interview topics related to fitness, mindset, parenting and of course, all the nuances of pregnancy and postpartum, from expert interviews to engaging conversations and reflections. This podcast is your trustworthy, relatable resource for learning how to practice brave through every season in your life. Hey everyone, welcome back to the practice brave podcast, and today we have Joelle Caballero here, and we're going to be talking all about nutrition and fitness and just she's been in the game for a long time, and I really appreciate her no nonsense take on navigating the fitness industry, especially for female athletes and moms and business owners. So there's, I think, a lot of parallels that she's going to be able to provide for this audience that you all will really appreciate. So Joelle, thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me absolutely. So give us a little bit of a background on what you do and just where it all started for you.

Joelle Cavagnaro  01:26

Yeah, sure. So without getting too much into the weeds, I will say I was a pretty active child involved in sport. Grew up watching my dad compete in bodybuilding like my parents were. Were gym goers. You know, I was definitely raised in that setting. You know, I was in gym childcare, you know, while my parents went and got their workouts on. And so the gym space and exercise was not entirely new to me, but I was mostly involved in sport until I went away to college. And up until then, I was one of those kids who, like, could eat whatever they want and not gain weight, kind of thing, right? And then I went to college, and I stopped having that same level of activity, but kept the same previous eating habits, and I gained about 30 pounds my freshman year of college. And that was actually what sparked my health and fitness journey from the get go due to and I know that you and I will talk more about this, but due to the misinformation at the time, and just to kind of give people a little bit of timeline here, I'm talking about 2011 2012 is around when I was a freshman sophomore in college, starting to take my health and fitness more seriously, going to my school's weight room, things like that. And the best way that I could just wrap this all up for you is that the pendulum swung really hard from weight gain into weight loss, and this was when Instagram was just starting to get a little bit more popular. Pinterest was really, really popular, of like, the exercise girls on Pinterest and pinning, you know, the girls with ABS, up onto your Pinterest boards and all of that. And there was a lot of misinformation circulating around fitness and nutrition, no different that it circulates today, probably even worse now, misinformation really led me down a pretty dark path that eventually became what I like to call an unintentional eating disorder, where my goal was just originally to lose this weight and to be lean and look like a bodybuilder. And at the time, no one was talking about maintenance phases or bulking. It was just, if you want to be healthy, you should be dieting, you should have ABS, you should be doing cardio. And so I kind of almost like backed myself into a corner, and then didn't know how to get out of it. And that was all kind of my freshman year of college, and it really inspired me to learn as much as I possibly could about health, fitness, nutrition, and I happened to be in school at the time for health and phys ed, so I wanted to be a teacher. And I did teach for a while, and I took one undergrad anatomy and physiology class, and my whole class failed it, and I got an A in it. And I was like, Oh, I am fascinated by the human body. This is really cool. And then I took an undergrad exercise science class, did great in the class. All the other PE majors failed it. And I was like, Okay, I think I'm onto something here. Like, I think I really, really like this stuff. And so I went on to do a master's degree in Exercise Science, and my master's thesis is in blood flow restriction and kind of very niche topic, but I from that point, just kind of made it my mission to learn as much as I possibly could about health and women's health and exercise science so that I would be able to better decipher, really, for my own selfish interests, better decipher myth from fact. And that kind of inspired me to start sharing what I was learning with other people, and it kind of snowballed into what it is now. I did teach high school health and PE for a few years, and I ran a. On one coaching business on the side, and that one on one coaching business continued to really thrive the more that I shared information and educational posts on Instagram, and I eventually left teaching, and now I am full time CEO and business owner,

Brianna Battles  05:17

yeah. So tell me about your current business and what that looks like, yeah. So

Joelle Cavagnaro  05:21

we have a health and fitness coaching company called levolution coaching, and we are a team of 16 of us now. Then all of our staff ranges from exercise physiologists to registered dietitians, pre and postnatal coaches, menopause specialists, kinesiologists, athletic trainers. So we are really in a unique position, because we are able to help such a wide variety of people, whether you're interested in weight loss or you're interested in training for a marathon, or you're postpartum, or you're pregnant and you need more guidance with your nutrition or your training, and a more just kind of custom approach to your health and fitness. That is who we help, and that's we're in a great position to be able to help a lot of different people, because we have kind of a wide array of specialties. So that's kind of where, where business is at now,

Brianna Battles  06:15

yeah, and I appreciate that you know you've brought in an evidence based care approach to your staff, and just the overall coaching methodology. Because, you know, to kind of circle back to what you were saying earlier about the era you came up in, I'd say like that, 2010 to 2015 16 era. Like, I'm a little bit older than you. I was having babies in 2013 ish, okay, yeah, and it was just such a freaking toxic time on the internet because social media, we were starting to use it for reasons beyond like Facebook, I guess. And you know, Instagram is coming around that you said Pinterest, and what we were seeing was just like a lot of exercise and nutrition disorders and dysphoria being presented as what health and fitness was, and that was what was sort of glorified, is what to follow along, like, whatever was in this magazine, whatever you saw somebody post on this blog, and it was so easy for I think a lot of us, even with a background in coaching and exercise Fizz, to be like, Well, God is that? Like what you're supposed to be doing, because so much, and, I mean, I don't know what your experience was, but I felt like so much of my undergrad was just like, not applicable to real life coaching and real life training. It's like I understood the anatomy and the physiology and the biomechanics, but then when it came to, like, real practical application, practical application, I it was learning by actually working with clients and being my own client, that really was the way through. Obviously, things have changed, but man, it was just quite the era. It's

Joelle Cavagnaro  07:52

funny. I don't know if I can't tell if social media is worse now with that information, or if we've just gotten used to it, but I find that a lot of people who come to us even for coaching, they're like, I just want someone in my corner who can tell me if what I'm even doing or following makes sense, because I could scroll Instagram and see, hey, you should be working out like this if you're a postpartum or you should be working out like this if you're a menopause. And then I see the next post that says, don't listen to any of that you know. And then now you have coaches and creators reacting to something someone else said, and like now it's just this battle of He Said, She Said, and who do you trust more? So I think it's almost gotten more confusing, because now you also have people who seem like an authority figure, either by way of a degree or by way of their following who have gained trust, and now people are really confused, like I really do feel for the average consumer who doesn't have a specialty or degree or does not have the ability to read scientific literature like In perpetrate research, because it's got to be so confusing right now to just be a consumer,

Brianna Battles  09:05

yeah? And then the research doesn't even always check out. Like we look at the research, I'm like, well, that doesn't actually apply to like me, or it's just it's kind of missing the point in a lot of ways. And I say that when people are, like, cherry picking data, yeah, or, like, even just looking at pregnancy and postpartum, they're like, Well, yeah, like exercise is safe. You can do X, Y and Z. I'm like, right, but it's missing the fundamentals that really encompass a holistic approach, which is like, core pelvic health, mental health and long term athletic performance. The research does not reflect that side of what we're looking for. It's not just health and safety of mom and baby. Like, of course, exercise is beneficial. So we're absolutely in research, and that's that's just looking at the pre and post natal space, nevertheless, all the other spaces that influence health, training, nutrition, fitness, whatever it might be in women's health, like it is, so that makes it really hard to both practice evidence based like coaching. But. Do it in a way that is actually practical because of the experience and the reps that you have personally and with the people that you're working with. Yeah,

Joelle Cavagnaro  10:08

did you also start out with kind of like in person coaching before you kind of went the online route?

Brianna Battles  10:14

Yeah, I feel like it's super negligent to just jump into I will always say that on this podcast and on social media, like, you cannot be successful online sustainably, without the real life in person, in person experience title, yeah, because otherwise you're just repeating like you're just repeating something that somebody else on the internet said, or something that you were told by a bro trainer, or, you know, your strength conditioning coach who was like, 50 years old, that like, those were great coaches for me, but they weren't great coaches for, say, pregnancy and postpartum information. That's who I was wanting, like, when I was first pregnant, I was looking at my coaches who were all older than me and have been in the game for a long time, and they didn't know anything. They're like, well, you're fit, you're just gonna, like, birth a badass baby, which, like, true. He is a little bit of a badass. They both are. But like, I mean, my God, our bodies go through so much, and there's such a disconnect in what the fitness and health and nutrition industry can do for a lot of people. Yeah,

Joelle Cavagnaro  11:18

and there's still so much misinformation around pregnancy and exercise even, you know, I even ran into that with my own doctors. I my very first pregnancy, I had an OB who I fired, like, 18 weeks into my pregnancy because he told me I shouldn't be exercising. And I was like, Oh, is there something that you're seeing on my sonograms or in my medical notes or in my lab work that is making exercise contraindicated. Well, no, I guess you could exercise just, you know, no squats or anything like that. I'm like, why can't I squat? And he turned around and he said to me, Oh, you're going to be one of my difficult patients, aren't you? Yes, I am. And I was like, hi, time to find a new doctor, because I shouldn't really be more up to speed on the ACOG guidelines than you are, sir, I

Brianna Battles  12:08

know, and the ACOG guidelines are still like, I mean, it's just so basic, like, it's not even hard to be up to date on that, yeah, but we see that it's so broad. No,

Joelle Cavagnaro  12:18

it's so broad. It's yeah, it's broad. It's vague. It's like, it's not all that much different from, like, the ACSM guidelines, right,

Brianna Battles  12:25

which are also, like, leaves a lot, yes, big,

Joelle Cavagnaro  12:28

yeah, like 150 minutes of moving your body. Okay? Cool, cool, cool,

Brianna Battles  12:32

yeah. And I think, like, we've seen a huge cultural shift in how women have participated in exercise over the last even decade, like, how you and I were maybe training back in like, 2010 to 2013 is very different than how people were training in the early 2000s or before that. Like, so even we've seen a huge shift in women being in the weight room, and that being a lot more normalized, versus being one of the few people that were, you know, few women that we're lifting. So when people were telling me, like, Well, I'm not an athlete. I don't coach athletes, and I'm like, right? But like, you don't realize that how you train is actually pretty athletic, especially because all of the pre and postnatal guidelines, and frankly, most of the certifications out there are through the lens of very generic, pretty outdated forms of exercise for how women train today.

Joelle Cavagnaro  13:21

Yep, yeah, that's so true. Yeah. Like, we

Brianna Battles  13:25

just, we've seen a big shift in just how women know to participate in fitness. Like, they're like the girls that are in their early 20s now, their strength training, their strength training and like that is athletic. Get the information if they have babies in the next five to seven years, like, it's still very much through the lens of pretty moderate, basic aerobic 150 you know, whatever, like, it's just it leaves a lot left. I

Joelle Cavagnaro  13:53

think there's this misconception, though, that depending on your age or depending on the stage of your life that you're in that your training needs to be significantly different. How should I be training in my 20s versus my 30s, versus my 40s, versus menopause? And the reality is, regardless of the age, you should be strength training a few days a week. You should be doing cardio a few days a week. And again, I like I know that's vague and that's broad, but it comes down to finding exercise that you enjoy, because what you enjoy is what you can stick with, finding exercise that you can perform well and recover from, you know, and a piece of recovery is obviously going to be your nutrition and your sleep and things you're doing outside of the gym, but cardio and resistance training, I don't care if you're in menopause. I don't care if you're pregnant. I don't care if you're postpartum. I don't care if you're in your 20s or your 70s, these are the same rules apply, the same big rocks. They're all the same,

Brianna Battles  14:47

right? And I think we do have to focus on the big rocks, but on in these new seasons, people get hyper focused on the little ones. But the little ones aren't really the things that move the dial the most, and it's so much of it, is it? Attached to, like the relationship and the adjustments we're willing to make with our body and with our training. Because so many people are like, Well, I have to keep doing what I was doing when I was if you're if they're in their 50s, they want to do what they were doing at 30. And if they are now pregnant, they want to keep doing what they were doing prior to getting pregnant. And if they're postpartum, they want to keep doing what they were doing even during pregnancy. And it's like we're always looking in the rear view mirror instead of like making a game time adjustment to the body and the season of life that you are in now. Because if you are what I call in pursuit of this lifetime of athleticism, which I think ultimately is the goal, you have to change your approach throughout those seasons while keeping the big rocks the big rocks.

Joelle Cavagnaro  15:40

Yes, that's a really great way to put it. Those big rocks remain the same, but the frequency, the intensity, the duration that you are contributing to either exercise or something else, that stuff is allowed to shift, and it should shift. I do not work out the same way I did pre kids, not because my training strategy is all that different, but a I don't want to be in the gym for two hours a day anymore. Like there was a time in my life where I rarely ever took rest days. I wanted to train every day. I was training two hours a day. I'd go do two hours of lifting and then an hour of cardio, like a crazy person, and like, I don't have the time, nor the passion at this point to work out for two, three hours a day. So I think sometimes women need to hear that a, your goals are allowed to change. B, your priorities are allowed to change, and C, your fitness is allowed to look different than it used to, and it very likely will. I think women feel a lot of pressure to maintain what they were previously doing, and you can do what you were previously doing, but like, just a little different version of it exactly.

Brianna Battles  16:45

I don't think people realize like that maybe what you were doing before actually wasn't fully serving you. Like, that's why I tell people like, you actually become a better athlete when you are a mom. And it's not because of necessarily. Like, yes, there are physiological benefits to motherhood, yes, but I'm talking about like, this overall, like, maturity that happens in your approach to training, the relationship you now see, like, I really need to get my shit together when it comes to how I view my body, my training, my nutrition, like I don't want to be that version of myself that was in a lot of ways, like we were toxic and in our approach in Our training, and like how we were training may not be what we would have been recommending to other people, and sometimes it takes this transformation that is motherhood, that is seeing your body change, your lifestyle, your priorities, your time, your capacity, all those things change. So reassess how you want to show up in your relationship with this long term health and fitness.

Joelle Cavagnaro  17:40

Yeah, yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think that we have to be able to adapt, and that, especially when you become a mom like, you're needing to become so much more efficient. Like, first of all, I'm going to the gym at five in the morning now because I want to be done and, like, done and dusted before my kids even wake up. Because a now I get to start my day and do something else, do something for me before I do everything for everyone else for the rest of the day. But I also, like, I have a friend who's like, you know, you never film your workouts. And I'm like, I am in and out. Like, just efficiency wise, I want to be in. I want to be out. Like, I'm not there to dilly dally. There was a time in my life where the gym was very much a dilly dally place for me, and I do still very much enjoy like the social aspect of the gym. I work from home, and sometimes I don't speak to an adult all day, except for at five in the morning at the gym. So I do like the social aspect, but I'm efficient with my workouts, and that has forced me to train a little bit differently and change the intensity of my workouts and the frequency and the duration of my workouts, but it has only benefited me.

Brianna Battles  18:48

Yeah, no, absolutely. We get a little bit more efficient and then, like, you're in a little kid season of life. I'm a little bit ahead of you. My kids are like, just little boys. Now and then you start to see it shift again, like, slowly, you're like, okay, they're in school a little bit longer. My business is in a different place. My life is a different place. I actually, like, don't want to see how heavy I can lift anymore. I can still lift heavy. But like, I'm not chasing prs. I'm not on this crazy, structured program. Whereas, like, the 10 years ago version of me was like, I gotta be working at 85% of my one rep max this week, and if I don't, then I'm not gonna hit this lift or whatever. And it's like it was just so consuming, and it's really freeing to not be consumed by really rigid approach to your training, yeah,

Joelle Cavagnaro  19:38

and even your nutrition. I think so much of that carries over with food too, like I haven't for a long time. I track macros meticulously and weighed everything that I ate. And I do think absolutely that there is a time and a place for that, but like, this season of my life, I have no interest in doing that. Yeah, and I let's talk

Brianna Battles  19:55

about that a little bit, because I think it's really interesting. I will totally tell you i. Used to think, like, God, if you're tracking then, like, your dad's like, neurotic, that's borderline disordered. I used to think that, and then I, like, also wasn't happy. You know, I kind of went through, like, that pendulum swing, because it went from, like, not eating anything and being really skinny to then seeing, okay, that was messed up, to then, all right, I'm just gonna, kind of full send it, I'm gonna eat whatever I want. Like, body positivity, well, like, that's also toxic to an extent, too. At least for me it was, and I'm like, why now I don't like what I look like or how I feel? Like, where's the middle ground? Yeah, and then, like, you add in, for me, it was, like, my mental health. Like, it could have been really shitty when I was really lean, but it was also, like, kind of shitty when I was, like, over more overweight for my body. I'm like, Okay, this is not working. And it wasn't until I decided to start competing in jiu jitsu that it literally forced me to improve my relationship with the scale and my relationship with macros. And I like to share this story kind of repetitively, because we see, we've seen that extreme again, this, like, last 10 year era of all the messaging on social media and, like, what camp you're in where this is toxic? Well, this is toxic. This is healthy. This is unhealthy. And you have to find what that actually looks like for you and for me, that was saying, like, Okay, I need to get over my own Bs and the own narratives that I've created as a coach and as an athlete and even as a mom, and say, like, what's gonna help me feel really healthy? I couldn't even look at the scale. I had to have my husband look at it, which honestly to me, I'm like, actually, that feels worse. But I couldn't look at the scale. And then finally, I just got a little bit more comfortable with it, and then it was just became data. And then same with macros. It's like, okay, this isn't telling me I can't eat. It's just giving me information on where I'm, like, maybe a lot more, like, nutrient deficient than I thought I was. I thought I was eating a lot of protein or, like, more fat, but I actually am not super out of ratio, and it was kind of counting macros for a while that absolutely improved my relationship with food and my body and just finding a really healthy homeostasis.

Joelle Cavagnaro  22:07

Yeah, I had a very similar experience. And I know to your point and exactly what you said, for some people, tracking macros can be really disordered. You know, if you have a history of an eating disorder, it's not always recommended to track Necros. For me, I had kind of the opposite experience, where I had so many food fears, kind of trying to get through that eating disorder. And disordered eating stage of my life, with orthorexia, right, this obsession with clean eating and over exercising, that

Brianna Battles  22:37

paleo era and all of that. Yeah, that hit hard. That hit hard in your college in my right out of college era, yeah,

Joelle Cavagnaro  22:44

that's exactly what happened. And I had so many food fears. And eventually I started working with a coach who was like, let's have you start tracking macros. And I that was a new term to me. I had no clue what that meant. And he, you know, went on to explain to me, like, Look, if you need 2000 calories a day, and you could fit a cookie into that 2000 calories, you can't gain weight from that. And I was mind blown at the time, like, wait a minute, you're telling me, I can eat a cookie and it won't instantly make me fat. You're telling me this is about calories overall. And that was really, really helpful for me. And so macro tracking became a really, really helpful tool that actually helped me overcome my eating disorder, because it allowed me to recognize that I didn't need to fear food.

Brianna Battles  23:32

Yeah, and I remember that almost as, like a weird rebut, not, I don't even think it was an intentional rebuttal, but to the paleo and all those things attached to paleo, like, clean eating stuff, and then there was like, the If It Fits Your Macros, like, group and messaging the Pop Tart, yeah. It's like, yes. And it just like, that was, again, a different variation of how confusing it is to navigate. Well, what is actually healthy? Because if it fits my macros, but it's a pop tart, like, is that so toxic? Because paleo over here is telling me it is. And then again, it's teaching women and people in general how to like, find the nuance here and what's actually going to work for you, what's sustainable, what moderation looks like, and that you can change your body positively without being neurotic. And sometimes changing your body might mean that you gain weight and you give yourself a lot more flexibility. Go into maintenance, you go into just trying to gain a little bit. But sometimes it's also like losing, and that's okay, too. It doesn't have to be like, I guess we just still see that. And that was like the previous iteration of it.

Joelle Cavagnaro  24:36

I think what's so interesting today is that, look a people love extremes. People love flashy. Flashy is what gets clicks. It's what gets good engagement. And you and I both have never been dogmatic, at least in this day and age, maybe when we were younger, but dogmatic in our approaches to health and fitness. And you said a really. Really important word, which was nuance. There is nuance to macro tracking, to whatever type of diet to like food dyes are a big topic of conversation right now. Like none of those are black and white topics. There's nuance. There's a lot of nuance and context involved in those conversations. And I think, quite frankly, the coaches or creators who are quote, doing it right, are the people who are sharing, hey, Nuance matters. Context matters. This is not black and white. We can't make a blanket statement. We can't speak in absolutes. Because for some people, macro tracking might be a great fit, and for other people it might not be, and that goes with any trend or thing that you could think of when it comes to the health and fitness space. So I think people just keeping in mind that nuance matters and context is really important for the person who struggles with food fears they don't need to go online and hear that if they have a cookie, it's going to be the death of them. And there are other people who need to hear, hey, I probably am eating too many cookies, and I need a little bit less like it depends. It depends on the person and the phase of life that they're in.

Brianna Battles  26:12

Yes, I 100% agree. And this is a pretty good segue into our next maybe slightly controversial aspect of a conversation here. But I think what we're seeing right now is this hyper fixation on food diets and seed oils and sort of like, again, the little rocks in comparison to the big rocks. Something I try to tell my clients all the time is like, choose your toxic right? Choose the thing like, choose the thing that maybe you don't want a lot of that, but then if you're going to be, like, freaking out over the ingredients in your makeup or in your food or whatever, but at the same time drinking alcohol every single week, like, Okay, we just have to understand that there might be a little bit of, like, contradictory understanding of what is healthy, what is actually toxic. What does that even mean, and how to like, sort of sort out a lot of the messaging that we hear, especially is what I want to talk to you about in the mom space, with what we are feeding our kids and so like what we are not just us consuming as grown adults, but then a lot of the really confusing and honestly, like, pretty messed up opinions out there, guiding moms and, like, a lot of shaming messaging. Yeah,

Joelle Cavagnaro  27:31

I'll be very honest with you. Brianna, so one of the biggest things that bothers me about the food dye crusade, if I'm again, if I'm being honest,

Brianna Battles  27:42

yeah, we're candid here. Girl,

Joelle Cavagnaro  27:44

is that I feel as though moms were targeted by this conversation, and because every mom wants to do right by their kid, every mom wants to make sure that their kid is healthy, and moms are really, really vulnerable when it comes to challenging if they're doing right by their children. And so I kind of hate that moms became like the I don't know if I would say like the leaders of the crusade, but I just feel like moms were targeted in this conversation, and it's something that really bothers me. I can completely get down with the message of people wanting nutrient density in our foods and people wanting better ingredients and higher quality ingredients in our foods. But again, this is a conversation that I believe is very, very nuanced. I don't think it's as simple as dyes are bad. Get them out of our food. And I've talked about this on a few podcasts, and I've talked about it on social media, but I think there's so many there's so many different levels to it. One of the arguments is not everyone can afford to just have less Ultra processed food. First of all, let's just cover this. If you don't consume a lot of ultra processed food, you're not really going to consume a lot of dye in the first place. So what's interesting to me is that, like fruit loops, for instance, became like the the plastered food, right? Of food that, well, no one's eating fruit loops because they're healthy, first and foremost. So now we have, like, this health movement of wanting to get the dye out of Fruit Loops, as if that is going to change anything about the health of the individual who's eating the fruit loops, and then people like to come back with you know well, obesity rates are higher than ever, and chronic disease rates are higher than ever, and that that is all true, but we have to come back to the big rocks. We are averaging, like less than 2000 steps per day as the average American. We're averaging less than one serving of fruits and vegetables per day as an American. We're averaging almost zero minutes of physical activity per day as an American. We're averaging three to four hours of TV time per day as an American. And we're talking about food dyes, like, we're talking about the dye and Fruit Loops, like, there's you got to start with the big rocks and like that. Like you said, choose your tox. Sick. And so I don't think that it's not worth having a conversation about. I just don't think it's the hill to die on if we're trying to improve health overall,

Brianna Battles  30:09

right? And I think you made a really great point that, like moms, we want to do right by our children. And I mean, I was so when I first had my boys, it was like, I must breastfeed. I cannot give them formula, and then I'm gonna do all, like, organic and healthy food, and then, like, suddenly they're eating, like, goldfish from the bottom of their car seat. You know what I mean, like, and you're like, how did we get here? I never thought I'd do this. And it's so funny, because all of my like, when I look around at, like, my friend circle, we're all, like, very health and fitness minded. We're all kind of from that same era where, like, Can you believe how our kids are eating right now? Like, holy crap. Like, and it's not obviously we like big rocks, but try to, like, give them nutrient dense food, but at the same time, like, they're gonna have exposure to food that just isn't healthy, that has stuff in it that maybe we don't love. But again, when you look at the sum of all the things. Like, that's where you have to put your focus and effort. Is your kid active? Is your kid getting exposure to healthy food? And it doesn't have to be every single night for dinner. Like, there's so many nights where, you know, full disclaimer, we get home really late and I'm like, okay, like, we're just gonna heat up some, like, chicken nuggets, snacks, some chicken nuggets, some meatballs. And like, we're just gonna, like, crush that and get some food, you active, crazy little boys, and then get to bed, get to bed, and it's okay that not every meal is super structured and super healthy, even coming from a background of wanting to again, do right by your kid, give them a healthy life. But so much of giving them a healthy life is creating balance and not so much dogma attached to their food choices as a young kid. And now that my kids have other kids over, I can see where, like, I know exactly what you're being told at home, I know exactly what you're being told. And for better or for worse, it's hard to see sometimes I can

Joelle Cavagnaro  31:56

even tell, like, I have a three year old who's in preschool, and I can even tell when, like a teacher says something about her food, or like her packed lunch or her snacks, because she'll come home and say something to me, like, Mom, sugar is bad for you. We're not supposed to have sugar. And I'm like, I don't use that language in my house. So that came from school. And then we sit there and we have a conversation about sugar and what it does for our body and why we need it, but also we don't want to have too much of it, and we might get a belly ache, and I'm speaking about it in three year old language. You know, not the same way I'd speak to an adult about it. But I think that, to your point, what we are doing and what our children are doing most of the time, most of the time, is what's going to have the biggest impact. There's going to be exposures to food dyes or to things that we don't always want them to have, or to extra screen time given the circumstances. But is that what we're doing most of the time? And I know, just to mention one other thing about the food diet conversation and moms specifically. You know, anytime I've posted about this, I get the like, Well, I'm a teacher, and I see it in my classroom that all these kids are hyperactive, and all of these kids have ADHD. And in my head, I can't help but also feel like, well, how much screen time has that kid had? How much recess has that kid had? Has that kid had phys ed today? Like, have they had a chance to get any outside activity or play physical play, or have they been trying to sit in a desk all day, and they're struggling to do that because they have energy that they need to get out. Maybe they didn't have phys ed, maybe they didn't have outside recess because it's too cold, and maybe then they go home and they watch four hours of TV time until dinner. Like, is it the food dies? Or is it possible that there are other things contributing,

Brianna Battles  33:41

oh, 100% and I have that kid. I have my son, Kate. He's in fifth grade, and from the beginning of time him going to preschool, it's always been like he just has a lot of energy. He cannot sit still. And I can tell you, it's not because I'm feeding him a bunch of crap, and it's not because he does not exercise or has screen time. He is just wired to move. And I would argue that all kids are wired to move, and they need the opportunity to move. They need that outlet, they need that reset, and their attention span in general is not made for a typical school structure. And so it's like these kids aren't fitting into the system, which this is a whole other conversation, and my kids are in public school, but I look at that and I just tell the teacher, I'm like, when he is acting out, when he is trying to just be funny or get whatever, or just, like, not listening or whatever, tell him to go take a lap, like, literally, make him run. Go, like, run an errand for you. Just take a lap. Go run outside, and then come back and reset. I have had to do that with him since he was two years old. Like, I'm telling you, he just can't, he can't sit still for that long. And so again, it's not always that they're being fed all this crap, yes, and sometimes yes, and you'll see, but you'll see that manifest in so many other ways. To see that in a lot of other ways. And that's

Joelle Cavagnaro  34:54

why it's like you can't blame one thing, right? And even if you look at the research on the food. Dye stuff. It's so interesting. Like, when all this started to be get get a little bit more popular. I'm like, Alright, let me sit down and, first hand, dive into some of this research. And this is such a great example that I like to give. There was a study back in like 2007 they looked at three year olds and eight year olds, and then they had parents and teachers assess if the kids seemed more hyperactive after they gave them a drink. Now, you know what eight year olds act like? I know what three year olds act like. They're so volatile, like you're gonna tell that was your test. You know, like that was the study. And not to mention they gave a drink that had like four different dyes or ingredients in it. So first of all, how do you even know which, which thing did it right? Because that's a terrible, like, just a terrible even study, like, whoever, whatever conducted that study, the methods were not great. And so, you know, a lot of people like to bring up this ADHD piece of it. And while research says this, and I'm like, well, they gave them one drink, they used four food additives, and then they gave a placebo, and they said, Okay, well, it looks like the three year old's hyperactivity increased with the drink, with one of the drinks. Okay, my three year old, she could drink water, and her activity would increase if she was dehydrated. You know what I mean? Like, right? I think that we get very, very quick to put blame on something, especially if we could do something other than blame ourselves as moms. So it's like, oh, owning that my kid watches five hours of TV, or we don't go to the park, or we don't exercise, or we don't move. I don't want to have to own any of that potentially. But if I could put the blame on something else who dies, it's they're poisoning us now, I have been able to kind of outsource that blame and make someone else take responsibility. And I'm not sitting here trying to, like shame parents at all about if your kid has ADHD, it's all your like. That is not what I want to make that clear. I'm not here to shame parents. My point is nuance and context matter, and the big rocks Matter movement, sleep, nutrition. You know what we're feeding our kids, how much our kids are moving, how much social interaction they're getting. All of those are big rocks, how much sleep our kids are getting. Those are big, big rocks, and

Brianna Battles  37:21

we have to teach and instill those big rocks. And what I see is it is so attached to how the family operates, how the parents operate. If they're like, hyper focused on only on some, maybe some of the little rocks themselves, then that's what's going to be passed on to the kid. And like you said, and then after school, it's like, well, what do you guys do after school? Well, school? Well, we just kind of come home and we hang out like, man, let me tell you. Like, again, my kids are a little bit older. It is absolutely critical for my kids to have something after school. Pretty much every single day. It is critical for how they operate, how they think, in their energy. And I'm not saying that has to be five days a week, but I'm saying between three and four days a week after school. I cannot imagine a world of them coming home and just sitting around like, What the hell are we doing? Absolutely not. They have been in school all day. They need to get out and express themselves in other ways. Be in different environments. Be outside, be playing, be doing a sport be learning a new physical task like this absolutely critical to their entire development. And I feel like that is something that is critically missing, and I'm seeing that now from the scope of being like a coach, but now so immersed in the mom's space,

Joelle Cavagnaro  38:37

yeah, yeah. It's funny. I even with my three year old. There was a day I went to go pick her up. This was a few weeks ago, and her teacher was like, she kind of had a hard time today. And she said, and it wasn't just her, it was a lot of the class, she said, but she was getting really frustrated easily. She was just kind of temperamental today. She was just, she really had a hard time. Okay, good, good to know. I said, Did you guys happen to go outside today? She said, No, it was too cold. So we got in the car, and I said, Sloan, why do you think you had such a hard time today? And she said, Mommy, I just wanted to move my body. I was like, first of all, love that she is three and can vocalize that. Like, how freaking cool two. How cool is that, that she was able to have the awareness to recognize, like, I feel better when I can move my body. And I had so much stuck in me that I just couldn't get out. And so the next day, I went into the teacher I'm like, Look, I know that there are, there's rules about, like, if it's under a certain amount of degrees, they can't go outside. But like, you guys have a whole gym. There's a rock wall in that gym, like, can you go into the gym? And so they have been doing that more, luckily. But you know, we're the same, like our kids. You know, when Sloan comes home from school, we head to the local park, like, we go to the park almost every day, assuming it's not like 10 degrees out, and if it is 10 degrees out, we actually, just this winter, got a. A jungle gym kind of thing that we put in our basement, and there's like, ladders on it, and there's a slide on it, and there's like a little rock wall portion of it. And we just go downstairs and they climb over and over and over, like, I gotta pry them off of that thing to even get like, they're just so happy to move their bodies. Like kids wanna move. They wanna explore, and it's good for them, like, they sleep better, their behavior is better. They eat better. So yeah, and when

Brianna Battles  40:26

I think this is I mean, and we say all of this obviously, not from a place of like, dogma or must be nice, but from a place of like, again, if we're so concerned and what we're hearing in the media and all around us and in our different mom groups, which mom groups are the most sanctimonious source of information? It is not a good place to get your info. I don't care how well meaning they are. Your fellow mom circle is not the person and people you turn to for advice on some of these big rocks. But if we're so hyper focused on some of these little details that we're missing the forest through the trees, in terms of like, we're obsessed about the Tupperware that we're using with our kids, but we're not also encouraging them to be in a sport and moving outside and having, like, protein for whatever, like, we're missing it, and I it's just a an invitation to zoom out a little bit and, like, reassess what we're giving so much Energy and anxiety too.

Joelle Cavagnaro  41:20

Yeah. So you mentioned that your kids are, they're always pretty much doing something after school. Is that all organized sport, or are there other things, activity wise, that that they do outside of organized sport? And I'm asking from a place of being completely naive, because I have babies and I don't know what, what bigger kids do, yeah,

Brianna Battles  41:40

and, you know, and, and I'll say this with the, I guess, the preface, yeah, the preface, thank you. My brain was not working. I have two very active sport loving children, and maybe my approach would be slightly different if they weren't. But I do believe that there is a sport or physical hobby for every single child. It is your responsibility as a parent to help them find that. So that is my like preface to this. But my boys are very athletic. They are very motivated by sports. They love it. And so they play a sport every single season. We start with like flag football or football, and we merge into basketball season, and then from there into baseball. And then they do Jiu Jitsu year round. But then the volume and intensity, if that just looks different at different points in time. With Jiu Jitsu, that's very much for us in our family, anyway, a life skill versus a sport. It's something that you've got to know how to do in general for your mental, physical, emotional development and self defense. But all the other sports, it's good because they're around teammates. They're around different coaches. It helps reinforce so much of the parenting that I try to do that works. Just teach so much more beautifully and organically than me just telling them. And if there's a night where they don't have a practice, ultimately, they're playing outside. Luckily, we live where there's a ton of kids around and they do that. But guess what? Like, it's we've instilled this culture of like, they go outside and they play basketball, they go to the park and they play football with their friends, and it is. It's been so nice to see that, to see that that's just part of the culture that we've established. Or Furthermore, like they watch my husband and I train like we both do Jiu Jitsu. And so it's not uncommon for them to come to a practice and see their parents right doing practice. So I was saying, like, if I'm not at your practice, you're at my practice. So because, again, it's so important to occupy their brains and their bodies after they've been such a structured environment all day, they need to go into a different environment, even if sports are still structured, yes, play and just have that exposure to that physical outlet, the change in energy, the change in dynamics of people that they're around. And I feel like that's been really critical, is just seeing like, their development, because, yeah, if they have a problem at school that day with a friend, well, if they're going to baseball, they're going to be around new friends, and it like, gets them out of that funk. And I'm just sort of anticipating what's to come as they get older. And that's like, God, wergen, and it's gonna be such a crutch to have that kind of physical outlet.

Joelle Cavagnaro  44:04

Yeah, after school, it's funny. I was just listening to this podcast. What is his name, Jonathan, something. He wrote the anxious generation book. He was on Dr Becky's podcast. If you've heard of Dr Becky, like the parenting expert lady, I catch a few of her podcasts here and there, and he is a psychologist that has done a lot of research in kids and why kids are so anxious these days, and why their parents are so anxious these days. And it was a such an interesting conversation about how much since, you know, we've always heard like, Oh, now that there's more technology, we're moving less. But he really dove into like, when that change happened, why it happened, and how like kids are, kids have phones now, like they're on smartphones from a young age, or they're on tablets from a young age. And it's not that the tablet itself or the phone itself is always inherently harmful. It's that what the kid would be doing if they weren't on that. Be outside, or they'd be with friends, or they'd be in sport, or they'd be socializing in person, or they'd be riding a bike outside, or they'd be playing hide and seek. Or, like, when I was a teenager, we were playing manhunt with all the other teenagers in my neighborhood, and so that was really, really interesting for me to hear like, oh, it's not just the screen time. It's what the screen time is taking away from in terms of childhood experiences and social interactions and and taking risks like just how what kids are exposed to is so much different now, and as parents, we're more anxious about letting them do unsafe things. And I heard a while ago, like, you have to let your kids do unsafe things safely. Like, just supervise it, like, but let them do unsafe things. It really changed my perspective on just how I handled my girls, even, like, at the local park, my three year old be like, Mommy, I want to climb this and I'd be like, No way. That's that's for the bigger kids. You know, you're too little for that. I don't want you to get hurt. Can I just try? So one day, I let her try. She did this whole one of those ladders that I don't know, it's hard to describe, but it's this crazy looking ladder that's not a just straight up and down ladder. And she did the whole thing. And she's like, I mean, I did it. I was like, Oh my gosh, you did that. You're so strong. Wow. You were so brave. And now she's like, Mom, I'm strong, I'm brave. I could do it. And I see even the way that she talks to herself and affirms herself, because I'm no longer anxious about her doing something. So it's interesting how, like, our own anxiousness can even bleed into our children, and then that dictates the risks that your children are willing to take. And I used to all the time be like, be careful. Be careful. Be careful. And now I've really tried to stop, like, be careful in because I'm like, I don't want to. I noticed it when she would start telling her younger sister, she's 22 months she'd start saying to the little one, be careful, Reese. Be careful. Reese. And I was like, Oh my gosh, she's I'm making her anxious. And now Reese is making her like. I was like, oh my god, we I gotta drop the be carefuls. And so now she's climbing something. I say something like, trust your body, or pay attention to where your hands and your feet are, or you're brave. I know you could do this. Your legs are really strong. I know you could climb this and instilling that. And then she gets to the top, and she's like, so proud of herself, like she does. She's like, I don't even need you to be proud of my mom, like she's so proud of herself. And I just it's been really cool to see that shift. But it's very interesting how I hear it. You see it bleed into your kids,

Brianna Battles  47:32

you do, and you just see, like, there's so many different ways we can empower our kids, and like, movement and these big rocks are the ways that we can empower them, instead of creating fear and anxiety around food or around their bodies when they move and like, when, like, oh my god, are you okay? And I see that with, like, my, my seven year old. Like, it is so different because, yeah, he's, he has been raised with his older brother and all of his older brother's friends. So he is, like, he is the most durable seven year old. He's got more exposure, yeah, oh my god. I mean that kid, he had like, a football thrown in his face at like, two days old, you know? So, like, he had to be very durable from the get go. But it's interesting seeing him interact with, like, other kids say, if he's on a basketball team, like, the kids are, like, crying when they fall, or this happens, or that's not fair. And like, chance is, like, he's got a little more grit to him, and like, grit is instilled and it's reinforced. And I think again, whether that is having to do that with yourself and who you surround yourself with, and the information you take in as a mom, as an athlete, as a coach, or what you're there for, then instilling into your kid, like we have a lot of opportunities there to teach that and to practice that. Yeah,

Joelle Cavagnaro  48:43

I think parents are in a unique position in this day and age, because our kind of like millennial generation has been a generation of like people that have been in therapy and people who are trying to like work through their own traumas and things like that. And I love that for our generation in terms of wanting to better your mental and emotional health. And have had this conversation before, even with my own therapist, of trying to find the balance between I want to raise strong, resilient, gritty kids and I also want them to feel heard, and I also want them to feel that they could trust me, and they could come to me and tell me something, and I never want to tell them don't cry or don't show I want them to be able to show their emotions and and I also want them to be gritty and know that they could do hard things. And I think it's probably the first, I don't want to say the first time ever, but I would say it's something that our generation specifically is so hyper focused on, like, wanting to find that balance between grit and grace.

Brianna Battles  49:50

Yeah, absolutely and again. I think this makes such a case for if you're trying to, like, raise those healthy, resilient kids, which I think all of us would love to think that. That's exactly what we're trying to do, focusing on those big rocks of like activity and exposure, but then also following up with the ability to have a conversation, so that your kids learn how to have a conversation at a young age. A lot of people from our generation maybe weren't taught how to communicate as well, or told that we couldn't say this or say that or have that kind of conversation, and that dynamic with your parent, and it's been now that again, Kate is a little bit older. He's 11. I am so impressed by the conversations he's able to have and how, like, emotionally intelligent he is, while at the very same time being an extremely active, spirited, stubborn, Crazy boy, like very crazy boy, and then at the same time, he can tap into his emotions. And I'm like, okay, like, I think, I think we're kind of figuring this out. I think I'm doing okay, and it's obviously an imperfect situation, but you do start to see doses of their personality and what you've tried to instill in little, little opportunities over time start to add up, and I have no idea what the future will hold. Yeah, it's

Joelle Cavagnaro  51:01

cool when you see them express it too. Sloan could do something. I'll be like, how did you do that? She'll just say to me, I mean, I can do hard things. And I'm like, I know where that came from. It came from me telling her, like she would get frustrated with something. And I tell her, you can do hard things, try again. It's okay if you're getting frustrated. Let's take a deep breath. But now try again. She can sit there and have those tools and those tactics of, I could do hard things, and also she could see her sister crying, and say, Reese, do you want to take a deep breath with me? You're just like, as a parent, you're like, oh, okay, I'm doing something right? Yeah? They're

Brianna Battles  51:33

hearing it. They're hearing it, yeah. And I think that is so much of it is just like the example. One thing I always try to tell people that I didn't realize at first with my business, but it was like you have, like your female athlete, and you have that identity, and then you become a pregnant athlete, and that's a very temporary identity, and then you're a postpartum athlete. That's also a very temporary season. But then you move into being an athlete mom, and as a mom, ultimately you are the coach of your family. And so it's like that athlete mom role goes into becoming this coach and then raising whether they're athletes or they're active kids or whatever it might be, either way you're raising this next generation of kids that you want to go out there and be the healthiest versions of themselves, mentally, physically and emotionally. So it's like so much of our life trajectory as a female athlete is really setting us up to support our kids in their life, trajectory as an athlete. And so I'm going to preface this next thing by saying that, because I think we do as moms, get so tempted, even as athletes, to kind of hold on or try to get back, similar to what we talking about earlier. And we get tempted by a lot of the messaging on social media from a certain diet that they should be doing, or if you're this is the only kind of exercise routine you should be doing if you are this age, or whatever. Or even now, some of the conversations around like a GLP one and saying, Well, I want to be healthy. Is that the thing that's going to be healthy and right and best for me. Like, not necessarily a quick fix, but it seems like a shiny solution to a lot of people when we are again kind of navigating this. Like, how do I want to show up? Well, I want to be healthier for my kid. I want to be healthier in my family. Should I do this exercise? Should I do this diet? Should I do this? GLP one like, what should I do? And I would love to just kind of hear your opinion on that, that mix of elements of things, yeah.

Joelle Cavagnaro  53:28

So GLP ones are definitely a loaded topic, yeah. And I don't think that, like most things, at least my stance, and I know yours too is nuance and context matters. Yeah, I do not think you know that a 21 year old or a 19 year old who wants to lose 10 pounds for a spring break should go on a GLP one. That's absurd, right? I like to say, like, if it's strictly for vanity and not for health, like, we need to reconsider, yeah, we need to reconsider that. In specific populations, we know that GLP ones can be really, really helpful now, mainly, what happens when someone is taking a GLP One is there's a massive, massive reduction in appetite and food noise. If you've ever been in pretty restrictive dieting phase. You know, food noise kind of gets a little louder, like you're always kind of thinking about your next meal, or, yeah, you're constantly thinking about snacking or what you're going to be eating next. For me that I had very, very intense food noise and kind of the thick of my eating disorder, I was always thinking about food, yeah. And so the reduction in food noise and the reduction in appetite, because there's a delaying in gastric emptying food sitting in the stomach longer. And so people, by being on a GLP one, end up putting themselves in a caloric deficit. And that's something that I think is very important for people to hear. Because I think some people. Will just perceive that, you know, you take this injection and it makes you lose weight. And I think it's helpful to understand that the mechanism by which it works is still you being in a caloric deficit. You know, if you took a GLP one and you still were eating in a surplus somehow, which would be very, very difficult, because the appetite reduction is pretty intense. You wouldn't lose weight if you were still in that surplus. And so one, I think it's important for people to hear that the deficit is what is causing the fat loss, right?

Brianna Battles  55:30

Which is still the big rock? Yes, you know, it's just a different strategy, but still the big rock,

Joelle Cavagnaro  55:37

you can't escape the calories in, calories out like you can't escape the energy balance component of fat loss, right? Where I am very cautious about the prescription of GLP ones. A few things. One is muscle mass. It is so, so crucial whether you are on a GLP one or not, when you are in a deficit, you are more at risk of muscle loss. And muscle loss is one of the worst really health things that could happen to us, because muscle is so protective and having lean mass is so protective for our health, that losing muscle, not just from a metabolic standpoint, but from like, a cardiovascular standpoint and a respiratory standpoint and injury risk standpoint and all cause mortality standpoint. Muscle is really, really important. It's a very, very, very protective organ. And so when we put ourselves in a very steep deficit, which is typically what's happening with the GLP one, we are even more at risk for muscle loss. And there's kind of two components of that. One is very low calories, of course, can make for more atrophy. And the other piece is that if previously you were exercising because it was allegedly going to help you lose weight, and now you're taking a GLP one, and you're like, I don't even need to exercise anymore, or I don't have the energy to exercise anymore because my calories are so low, you're at even more risk of losing muscle. And so to me, it is crucial, absolutely crucial, that you are strength training if you are on a GLP one, really, if you're in a deficit at all. But especially with a GLP one, because calories are so low and because the deficit is pretty steep, you got like, yeah, it would be a non negotiable for me, like you would have to be strength training,

Brianna Battles  57:42

right? Absolutely. And I'm starting to hear more use of it in the athlete community, especially in weight cut sports. Again, I'm in like the jitsu world, and I'm wondering if you have input on, I guess, on the performance ramifications of that common sense, but tell me, if you're not fueled appropriately for your activity, you might see some repercussions, but at the same time, like, it also helps with, like, insulin and all of that stuff. And, yeah, you know, and it's just, I think there's, again, a lot of nuance here, but just kind of bridging that that's

Joelle Cavagnaro  58:18

very interesting. That's the first I'm hearing of really, like athletic populations wanting to use it. I didn't think about that like for weight cuts. That's very, very interesting in weight, weight related sports where there's a weight class and you might need to cut down to a certain weight. I understand logically where that thought comes from. I would agree. If the deficit is so vast, not only are you putting your actual muscle and strength at risk and your endurance at risk, but yeah, how could you perform well on 800 to 1000 calories? I mean, that's what most people are averaging on these drugs, between 800 and 1000 calories. Mostly, that is really low, very low. That is a very, very steep deficit. And especially if I think about, like, 200 pound male, right? That's low. For 120 pound female, that would still be low. But I think about, you know, an athlete who needs more nutrients and more calories to perform well and recover well, I don't think there's been any research on it, but I don't think you need research to tell you like, it's probably like, kind of Contra indicated. And I think the other thing that comes up is, especially with the muscle side of things, not only are is your deficit so steep, and then you are more at risk for muscle loss. The other piece of it is, if you can only fit in your stomach, 800 calories a day, call it maybe even 1000 calories per day. How much of that is coming from protein, how much of that is coming from fruits and vegetables, especially if the mindset of the person taking it is now. Now that I'm on a GLP one, I don't have to work out, and I can eat whatever I want. Now I know that that's not everyone's mindset when they're on it, but there are a lot of people who that probably is, you know, I've even heard of doctors saying to patients like you, take this. You won't even have to work out. Eat what you want. Eat what you could fit in. And so now we're talking about people being at risk for a nutrient deficiency even because we're not able to even fit in the food or have the appetite for the food that we would otherwise be consuming. So I think that, again, I'm not anti GLP one. Someone very close to me who really, really, really struggled with weight loss for a very, very long time has been on a GLP one for probably over a year now, and it was life changing for her. She had felt like she tried everything under the sun to lose weight, and had even done very low calorie diets, and wasn't really feeling the effects of that right, and struggled with a lot of food noise, and this person was already walking 10,000 steps a day, doing cardio multiple times a week, strength training four times a week, like she was a great candidate for it, and it was life changing for her. And she still continues to focus on protein and nutrient density and strength training and cardio, and she's doing all the right things while she's on it. And so my point is, if you're going to go on it, you have to focus on strength training, you have to still move your body. You have to still prioritize protein and nutrient density and color in your diet. And so I think that there's a, I don't want to say a right and wrong way, but there's a better and worse way to go about it. Yeah. And

Brianna Battles  1:01:41

I think it all comes back to, like, the overall theme of this podcast episode is focusing on the big rocks and then use the little rocks to sort of supplement aspects of what you're already doing. For some that might be a GLP one, for some that might be reducing some of the the dyes in their food, fine, but make sure you're focusing on the big rocks of physical activity, lifting weights, cardiovascular health, well rounded nutrition, and just trying to improve the quality of your life, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, all those things. That's what's going to move the dial for most people and ultimately, most families seeing that, exemplified by you, whoever's listening to this, that's going to be one of the biggest drivers for sustainable health practices and belief systems that we're putting into our kids. One

Joelle Cavagnaro  1:02:33

of the other big rocks, I'll just add this, because I think sometimes this one gets forgotten about. You know, we talk so much about movement and protein and sleep and stress management, but this one especially because I think this is another like, Mom vulnerable thing is alcohol. And until I became a mom, I didn't realize how much of like the mommy wine culture was a thing. Oh yeah. And that became like this token strategy of how moms are supposed to cope with motherhood or with their day. And we have normalized alcohol to that degree, especially in motherhood, in the last few months, the Surgeon General, you know, there was this new Surgeon General's warning now about alcohol and alcohol may cause cancer. And there were all these polls and stuff done, and it was something like 60% of people didn't know that alcohol was bad for them. And that was mind boggling to me, that people genuinely didn't, didn't know, like, didn't know that alcohol has harmful effects and that there are seven alcohol related, you know, alcohol induced cancers. And that was very, very eye opening for me to see those stats, because I was like, wow, we the health industry, the fitness industry needs to do a better job of talking about this if people are still thinking that alcohol is doesn't come with consequences. Like alcohol is one of those big, big rocks. If you are consuming alcohol in the regular and you are worried about seed oils and food dyes, like we are missing the forest for the trees. Big, big, big time,

Brianna Battles  1:04:14

yep, oh, I couldn't agree more. And again, it doesn't have to be this all or nothing, but it's acknowledging that this is a critical piece of your health practices and where you're focusing a lot of your a lot of your energy, a lot of your efforts, and not overlooking that piece of it. I'm really glad that you brought that part up, because you're right. Very much infiltrates the mom circle, including a lot of female athletes, and how people you know like to spend their social time, but there are you can socialize without alcohol. Might not always be popular. It doesn't have to be every single time, but there's a way of working around that. Well, we've been yapping for a little while here, and I am I feel like we could just keep doing like a part two and part three, because there's so many rabbit holes we could go down, but I'm so grateful for your time spent with us today. Having these conversations, and honestly, like, really candid conversations, which I feel like there just needs to be more of, because it is messy out there online. And you've been in the game for a long time as well. We've kind of seen all those pendulum swings, a lot of the extreme messaging, and just trying to figure out how to navigate it as a coach, as an athlete and as a mom. And I think you do a great job of that. Very grateful for you. And can you tell us where we can learn a little bit more about you and your business? Yeah, absolutely.

Joelle Cavagnaro  1:05:25

So I am mainly on Instagram. I'm not cool enough for Tiktok, but you could find me at Joelle Samantha. My coaching company is levolution coaching. It's LV, LTN, so levolution coaching com, or you could just find me on Instagram, and if you did listen in. I'd love to hear from you, so let me know if you listen, if you enjoyed it, or if you hated it. Just let me know

Brianna Battles  1:05:47

I think it went great. I'm really appreciative thanks for sharing your time. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the practice brave podcast. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review and help us spread the work we are doing to improve the overall information and messaging in the fitness industry and beyond. Now, if you are pregnant and you are looking for a trustworthy exercise program to follow, I have you covered. The pregnant athlete training program is a well rounded program for pregnancy with workouts for each week that are appropriate for your changing body. That's 36 weeks of workouts, three to four workouts each week, and tons of guidance on exercise strategy. We also have an at home version of that program. If you are postpartum and you're looking for an exercise program to follow, the eight week postpartum athlete training program would be a really great way to help bridge the gap between rehab and the fitness you actually want to do. From there, we have the practice braid fitness program, which is an ongoing strength conditioning program where you get new workouts each week and have a lot of guidance for myself and my co coach, Heather Osby, this is the only way that I'm really offering ongoing coaching at this point in time. If you have ever considered becoming a certified pregnancy and postpartum athleticism coach, I would love to have you join us. Pregnancy and postpartum athleticism is a self paced online certification course that will up level your coaching skills and help connect the dots between pelvic health and long term athletic performance, especially during pregnancy and postpartum, become who you needed and become who your online and local community needs by becoming a certified pregnancy and postpartum athleticism coach. Thank you again for listening to the practice brave podcast. I appreciate you, and please help me continue spreading this messaging, this information and this work.