197. Breaking Free From the Diet Culture vs. Body Positivity Double Bind
197. Breaking Free From the Diet Culture vs. Body Positivity Double Bind
If you’ve ever felt trapped between the restrictive rules of diet culture and the unspoken pressures of body positivity, you’re not alone. In this powerful episode of the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast, I’m joined by health coach and behavior change specialist Hadlee, who introduces us to a liberating third paradigm—one that centers nervous system regulation, true self-respect, and body-led empowerment.
We unpack:
The disempowering double bind of modern wellness
Why “moderation” isn’t always helpful
How to spot control masquerading as health
The problem with morality in wellness culture
How perfectionism and performance keep women stuck
Hadlee blends her background in public health and Ayurveda to help women break free from food obsession and embody lasting health habits that feel natural, sustainable, and soulful.
This episode is a balm for the high-achieving woman who wants freedom in her body and peace with food—without getting caught in all-or-nothing thinking.
Tune in now to explore this paradigm shift—and reclaim your energy for the life you’re meant to live.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Hadlee’s Instagram: @happyhealthyhadlee
Great White Giveaway: Earn 1 of 2 Spots Into Food Freedom Fantasy Beta Round
Hadlee’s Embodied Activations
1. Embodied Practice: Sleep Like You Mean It
“Get enough sleep—and know that enough for you might be more than you think. Some people need eight and a half or even nine hours a night. Prioritize it not as another task, but as the foundation for everything else in your life and health.”
2. Embodied Reflection: Ditch the Morality Trap
“Journal on all the areas where you’re assigning morality to your health, food, and body. Where are you labeling things as good or bad, right or wrong? Noticing those patterns helps you step off the rollercoaster of all-or-nothing thinking and into true body neutrality and empowered choice.”
Transcript
Kayla: Hello Hadlee and welcome to the Embodied Writing Warrior Podcast.
Hadlee: Thank you so much for having me, Kayla.
Kayla: Thank you for being here. You are the guest that I invited on because I knew we were gonna have the best conversation about. The dark side of the wellness industry, the selfish side of wellness, which I'm so excited to talk about, and just some of the ways both of us don't necessarily agree on some of the typical health coaching stuff that's out there.
Totally,
Hadlee: Oh, I'm so excited to dive into this.
Kayla: Why don't you share a little bit about. Who you are and how you got into the work you do today.
Hadlee: Yeah. So I am a health coach, but not your typical health coach. I got into this work because I really struggled with my relationship with food and with my body starting from like earlier than age 10, maybe age eight.
My sister recently was like, oh yeah, I saw this picture of us on the beach, and she's like, in a bikini and I'm fully dressed. And she was like, you know, it was that far back that you were self-conscious about your body. And she was like, it's just so sad. And I think that many, many, if not most women.
Experience some level of that. Right. I know that that's been something that you've talked about as well is just, and not even necessarily eating disorders though. Yes. There's so much of that. So much more than we think there is. And there's also just disordered eating. Pretty much every single woman I've ever talked to has some form of disordered eating, and some form of self-consciousness around their body.
You know, whether it's their weight or their wrinkles now, or, whatever weird little thing it is that they're feeling, self-conscious about. And it doesn't feel weird and little to them, it feels very big. And so something that I realized when I was in grad school because I decided to go to grad school for public health, but specifically in health behavior and health education because I knew so much about health, I knew so much about nutrition.
I knew so much about, what I quote unquote should be doing in my health. I even had been studying Ayurveda for three years, and it was. I was super disordered in all of it. I was gaining weight rapidly. I was binge eating. I had psoriasis all over my body. I was getting sick all the time, and so I was like, I need to figure out why.
I know all of the things to do, but I'm not actually doing them or why I'm doing the things that I know aren't serving me. And how do I stop doing them? So that's why I decided to go to grad school, for that. And I also got certified as a health coach while in grad school. So it was kind of a synergistic,
you know, grad school was, I went to University, university of Michigan, which was like very western science like, and then my health coaching certification program was in Ayurveda, so it was like these two worlds, which at the time felt really like dis disconnected, incongruent. But now I'm like, wait, no, it's.
So fun to combine the, the science, the western science, and then like the ancient wisdom and all of that. And it's like, I love geeking out about all of that. So as I was in grad school and I was, studying a lot about our relationship with food, food psychology, that kind of thing too.
And it wasn't just about food, but health in general. I started talking about all of this stuff and about my relationship with food, and I realized that yeah, every single woman that I talked to is like, oh yeah, I experienced that too.
Yes. And it was, is an unspoken thing that almost every woman felt like they were alone in it. Never talked about it with anyone else. And so I was like, okay, this is my work in the world. I was seeing at the time, and I'm seeing it again, that there were these two different paradigms that were available to us in wellness and health, and that was either this.
Like diet culture, skinny culture, toxic wellness culture that was all about controlling our bodies and or there was this like, just stop caring so much about your health and you know, there, body positivity, which is not actually saying that, but the perception. Is that that's what they stand for often.
So that was what I was seeing was like these two different things. And so at first I was like, let's find a middle ground. Like let's find a middle ground between those two things.
And then I realized that. That's actually also not it. It's unplugging from both paradigms completely and plugging into a third paradigm fully. So
Kayla: there you go. Okay. It's amazing that you bring that up because I have had in my list of podcasts to create one day.
Is this diet, culture, body positivity, double bind? 'cause it feels like that's a very real thing where you can either. Subscribe to diet culture and do all the typical health stuff to shrink your body at any cost. Very controlling, very, you know, internalized fatphobia is a real thing there. And then you've got the body positivity movement that talks about health at every side, but sometimes you can actually feel shamed by that group if you celebrate that you have had a body transformation.
It comes from taking great care of yourself. So it feels like you're gonna make someone mad offend someone or, or do something wrong either way. So please, let's talk about this third paradigm.
Hadlee: Yes. It's so good. My favorite thing from the Barbie movie was the speech where she was like, you're supposed to wanna be healthy, but not skinny, but you're supposed to be skinny.
You're just not supposed to say that you wanna be skinny and like, you're supposed to just not care at all. But also you have to look a certain way. Oh my God is so good. I know you, also had a, an episode about the Barbie movies. So good
Kayla: That one was one of my favorite ones to create because it.
Yeah, I love that movie. And there was so much goodness in it.
Hadlee: Yeah, yeah, for sure. So yeah, so I found that really it's a false dichotomy. We think that it, that it's either or, and I find that this is the case in pretty much every area of life. Like last night, I was trying to make a decision about what my husband and I wanted to do.
We had someone in town who was visiting and I was like, I don't wanna do this and I don't wanna do this either. There has to be a third option. My perspective of life is that there is always a third option. There is not an either or, like, really ever. And that's what I feel about this topic, the wellness, and.
Something else that I wanted to mention is that you, that you were saying that there is like, shame around doing it a certain way, even in the body positivity or especially, in the bo body positivity movement. I was just talking to a potential client on a discovery call and she was like, I know that like, you know, weight's not everything, but like, I really wanna lose weight, like, you know, whatever for my health.
And I'm like. You are allowed to wanna lose weight and the amount of weight that just like poured off of her shoulders from hearing that she was like, oh my God, I am, oh, it just made me wanna cry because we're just shaving women whenever they choose. Like, ah, no. So yes. Let's talk about the third, the third paradigm.
So what I would say the third paradigm is, is connecting with our bodies and letting our bodies lead us. So we're not trying to control our bodies in either the body positivity, where like sometimes it's like. Well, either way it's mine over matter, right? In the toxic diet culture, it's mine over matter.
Try to try to get skinny at all costs in the, the body positivity where there's like some, like it's not the original intent of the body positivity movement, but where there is some of that like, that stuff that doesn't feel so good, that. There's like a, there's a level of control there too. So recently I was talking to someone who had recovered from an eating disorder, and she was like, you know, I recovered from this eating disorder.
I no longer have it, but now I feel controlled by food. In the opposite direction because now I always feel like I have to say yes to dessert. I always have to say yes to the thing that I, you know, wasn't allowing myself to eat before. But that's a level of control as well. Something outside of you controlling you.
So what if we could come to this third paradigm of I am fully and completely allowing myself. And respecting myself enough, respecting my body, but also respecting my experience of life. So my everyday life experience, not even just my body, but literally like how do I want to feel? In the next hour, in the next few hours tomorrow.
I'm like respecting myself enough to want to have the best experience of life possible so that's where I come from.
Kayla: You said so much brilliant stuff there, and I think the biggest thing is. Twofold. Is that part about respecting our entire experience because we are more than just what we're eating and how we're moving and also moving outta that place from control, whether it's the body positive control or the diet culture control, and moving into that place of body cooperation and seeing our body as.
Our vehicle to experience life, and when we're trying to experience life, it's not necessarily about saying yes to every indulgent or restricting every indulgence. It's moving from a place of I think pleasure and energy and satiety, and every person is gonna have a different way of approaching food that's gonna give them their optimization of all those things.
Hadlee: Totally. It's like I have a controversial belief that I don't really believe in moderation as an empowering thing. Moderation can also be a trap where it's like, well, let me, you know, I'll eat this, but then I'll also eat this and I'll also like drink on the weekends and I'll also do this.
And I'm like that could be an empowered choice. But it could also be another way that we are controlling ourselves. So it really, you never really know, like someone could be acting in a certain way with food and with health and all that, and you never actually know whether they are empowered by it or not, unless you're in their head.
So it's going to look completely different for everyone, like for me. The past two years, you know, I used to be a big believer in moderation, but the past two years I've had mold exposures and some different like health issues because of that. I haven't eaten sugar in two years, and that's an empowered choice for me because it made me feel really, really terrible whenever, like even just like the smallest amount, it would make me have a terrible day the next day and whatever.
So again. It really is bringing the locus of control from the external environment, internal and, and really bringing in that respect for ourselves and our life experience, and making decisions from there.
Kayla: It's definitely moving from that place of what you're doing to how and why you're doing it.
Hadlee: Exactly. Ooh, yes. That's good. That's good. Yeah. So no one will know. Only you'll know.
Kayla: Here's a question, 'cause this might. I know this has come up with clients of mine in the past. What if the client themself isn't entirely sure? What if they're trying to approach their health and fitness journey and they wanna do it in this very empowering, liberating way, but they're not quite sure.
Is this control or is this cooperation? What are some the red flags that is controlled? Ooh,
Hadlee: I like that. Okay. I would say anytime you are making a decision based on how will I look, if I do this, whether, whether it's like, how will I look the next day?
You know, like, will this make me bloated for that kind of thing? Or whether it's like, how will this decision make me look to other people while I'm doing it? Right? So, will eating this thing make. People think, oh, she shouldn't be eating that because she's overweight or whatever. Or like, wow, she really should just let go a little bit and eat this thing and like, I can't believe she's so restricted and whatever.
Anytime we're making a decision based on what other people are gonna think of us, that's the biggest red flag I would say.
Kayla: I wholeheartedly agree, and I think that fear of judgment is one of those highly overlooked challenges that actually keep us stuck in like food and eating and just health struggles.
So thank you for sharing that.
Hadlee: Yeah. For sure. I am not judging anyone for making decisions based on what other people will think of them. I've had people be like, oh, you're a health coach.
Like, don't watch me eat this. And I'm like, I literally don't judge any decision that you make. You have full autonomy. You get to decide how you live your life, and if you want to live this empowered way with food and with your body and all of that and your health.
Then here's what we can do, but I'm never going to judge someone for feeling judged by other people and doing certain behaviors. Because of that, there's also a level of like, we really have to learn how to regulate our nervous system enough to stand in our self and our embodiment.
So that's a lot of what I do is that empowerment piece of like, let's get fully embodied so that we are making decisions from that place. So in Ayurveda, there's a term or a word for health, which is s fossa, that's a Sanskrit word. S fossa means health, but it also means to be seated in the self.
And so that's my goal for all of my clients is like, let's get you seated in yourself so that you can make these empowered decisions. And not from a rebellious place where I'm rebelling and I'm just gonna eat everything, or from a, I need to follow all the rules place, but rather from that centered in the self space.
Kayla: I think that diet culture is one of those things that takes women away from that so much. And that's something I think you work with people a lot on is like getting away from diet culture away from performative wellness because that can be a big trap for people. So can you share how like some of the typical wellness industry things actually keep people stuck and actually disconnected from themselves?
Hadlee: Totally. Yeah. I mean the first thing that's coming to mind is like the, all of the tracking. It's like broadly, I mean, and, and I will say there is nuance here. Tracking can be helpful at first to get you to understand. What your body is communicating with you and why. So that can be a first step.
Again, depends on how you're viewing it, where it's like, oh, when my body communicates this thing, it's because of this. And we can understand that a little bit better. So there's nuance here. It's not like never use a tracking device, never do any macro tracking, never do whatever. Although macro tracking, I'm really not a fan of.
But. Anything can be useful. That's like a thing in Ayurveda too, which I have that background in if you take a tantric approach to Ayurveda, anything can be medicine and anything can be poison. It just depends on dosing and person and place and time and all of the things.
So yes, tracking devices like. Glucose monitors are really, really trendy right now. Those can be problematic. Unless you have prediabetes, or diabetes. Which then yes, yes. To this. Or potentially you use it for a little bit of time to get more understanding of how your body is communicating certain things with you,
but, tracking even I have. Okay, so even like the aura ring tracking sleep. Hot take, but that can be problematic too. I have had friends who are like, oh. I had to stop tracking my sleep with my aura ring because I would feel fine in the morning, but I would look at the data and be like, oh, I didn't get the quality of sleep that I wanted to get last night.
I must be tired. And then they convince themselves that they're tired. And it can cause a lot of stress too. Like, oh, I didn't get the sleep that I needed to get last night. It disregulates their sleep and their nervous systems and all of the things. So yeah.
Kayla: There is definitely a little bit of a placebo effect there, and those things are not fully accurate.
Like I have a Fitbit and it tracks my sleep and I'll look at it and sometimes it'll be like, you got four hours of sleep. But I look and I'm like, I remember sleeping from this time to this time and you said I was awake, but I had a literal dream. So I hyper rely on those things. It can create that totally unnecessary stress.
And again, it disconnects you from your body. Yes. Because it's a number that can Yes. He tweaked by like you whole having your watch or your ring on the wrong way. Right. So,
Hadlee: yeah. Totally. And, you know, I really think that it takes us, so the other thing about this is a lot of times when we're tracking things even like not just wearable devices, but like tracking macros, tracking.
Calories, which is kind of out of favor now, but tracking macros is the new counting calories, right? Like it's another level of how do we control ourselves. So and again, could be useful in certain situations but, all of these things are, the reason that they're not helpful is not because they don't work.
They do. They do work to get you to whatever goal you wanna get to. The problem is that they work so well that you think that then you have to be on them for the rest of your life. So it's a trap. I think that it's what sells and so then people lean into it and that's how they make money I'm not assigning morality to it necessarily. But I don't think it that it's helpful because it is so effective.
And then we think that we need to be on it all the time now. It's effective in the short term. Typically, you're not gonna be able to stay on any of these things long term. Even if you do stay on it long term, it does tend to taper off the effectiveness as well, because it's not agile.
None of the tracking devices that we have, none of the macro counting, none of all of that stuff is agile enough to know what your body needs at any given time. Only your body intuition is agile enough to know what your body needs at any given time. So something that I talk a lot about with my clients is like seasonality and how our bodies shift throughout the seasons.
And then obviously women, we change throughout our cycle and stuff too, but you are not gonna need the exact same, ratio of macros at different seasons throughout the year. You're not gonna need the same types of food at different ratio or at different levels, throughout the year, you're going to need different types.
And so, you know, I talk about that a lot with my clients, but I also am always just pointing them in the direction of what are the little nudges from your body telling you? And here's how we can navigate how that's communicating with you and what the needs are when your body does communicate these things to you.
Does that make sense? It absolutely does.
Kayla: And I think another thing I'm hearing there is finding the things, the habits the routines, the practices that you can do indefinitely that you want to keep doing because they actually feel good, not just because they quote unquote work,
Hadlee: yes, yes, yes, yes. Totally. And I will say too, again, my background is in like behavior change science, and so I am a big fan of getting your health habits. Not just implemented and not just prioritizing your health. I actually am like whenever someone says, oh, I need to start prioritizing my health again, it's a little ding, ding, red flag for me because it indicates an all or nothing mentality around your health.
And I'm always like, okay, what if we didn't prioritize our health at all? What if we had it down automated? So fully that it's just how we lived and we no longer had to put any mental energy into it. That's my goal for my clients, is to stop utilizing, so much of your energy focused on your health and your health behaviors and your food and your body and all of that stuff.
I had a client once. It was like my first client ever who was like, if I put the amount of mental energy that I'm putting into my health and like all of this in my body and like how it looks and all that, if I put that somewhere else, I could have cured cancer by now because I'm just using so much brain power on this,
automation automating, like people think that like living on autopilot is a bad thing and I'm like, well, living on autopilot when it's not serving you with the things that you're doing is not great, but living on autopilot with the things that like are serving you. We like that and then we can free up all this other energy and capacity and bandwidth to like get excited about things that we feel passionate about.
Kayla: You said a few things there that. Resonated so hard, and one is that idea of prioritizing your health, that is a red flag because it means the person is gonna go all in and really take care of this area. I also find with that. When people say that, it can also be a protective mechanism because maybe they do wanna go out and put their energy and resources somewhere else that's more big and expansive and exciting.
Also scary because it's unknown. So then they start to notice their health habits spring and they're like, I need to go back and go inwards and prioritize my health so they don't have to go and do those big scary other things. Mm-hmm. And that's another thing that. We work with people on is getting them away from that selfish side of wellness where people are so caught up in like the prioritization of every little thing, but it becomes all consuming.
So can you share a little bit about the selfish side of wellness and how to move away from it? Totally.
Hadlee: Yes. So, this is something that I've been seeing so much more recently, like within the last year. It was kind of the case when I first started doing this work, and then it got better, I would say, and then it has gone back, where there is a level of, well, even just the term, like I gotta protect my peace.
Is a weaponization of like therapy talk, right? Is like, oh, I'm not going to do the hard things, you know, have maybe harder conversations or potentially like, know what's happening in the world around us. Take action on the things that we feel, that we feel like impacted by, that we like, that our heart goes out to.
Right? And now I am not saying that we need to take up every single cause that is recipe for burnout. That is not what I'm saying at all. And I find that there, I have a whole module on this in my, in, in my, one of my programs. There is an energetic of giving and receiving that we absolutely need to have in order to feel fulfilled.
So I, and I see this especially with women right now where. They are trying to get their fulfillment out of optimizing their health and their wellness, and they just keep churning and churning. It is not getting them anywhere because they don't feel that level of fulfillment of like the overflow of generosity and the overflow of,
now I can help people with this capacity that I have cultivated for myself because they're actually not cultivating capacity. They're actually cultivating this, hamster wheel of continuing on the health and wellness stuff. So again, they are not bad or wrong for that. It's kind of what the industry has become.
And when we go into this other paradigm. We will naturally have that overflow of generosity, we will have that desire to help other people when we actually do cultivate that capacity. Does that make sense?
Kayla: It absolutely does. Yes. The industry kind of sets us up to be on that hamster wheel.
So it's not making anybody like wrong for it. It's baked into society and that's why I love conversations like these so people can see it and then realize, wow, no, I actually have gifts to give to the world and I'm here to do big things and I have a powerful impact. I can. I don't get to make it if I'm trying to get every macro and every part of my wellness journey just right, because that pursuit of almost perfection versus health is what holds so many women back from bringing
Hadlee: their gifts to the world.
Totally. Yes. And I will also say like, the concept of perfection is always such a, an interesting thing to me because like. What is perfect. Like we've just kind of like decided what perfection looks like and it's like what if what you're doing is perfect because it's what you're doing? What if it's exactly how it needs to be, because it's exactly what's happening right now.
So that's also getting out of that paradigm of like either perfectionism or. Rejecting perfectionism there's like a third thing that we can plug into where it's like, what if it's all just perfection?
Kayla: Yeah. Yeah, that sense of like deep approval and just refusing to argue with reality.
Hadlee: Yes. Yeah, exactly. And you know, that can be like a, uh, kind of like an esoteric concept, but once we put it into practice, it is a practice because again, we're so baked in this culture of either or, when I work with people, I work with them in a group capacity.
I also have one-on-one, but they get access to the group as well because. It is so important to soak in a different culture our culture again is this, this one paradigm or the other. We really need to be steeped in this other way of viewing things that no one else can really understand except for these people that we're doing it with.
Kayla: Absolutely. And this conversation lights me up because I had a guest, recently and they said, there is no my truth. There's only one singular truth. And it's absolute, and it's black and white. And I was like. You're saying a lot of really powerful, amazing things, and this is not one that I personally subscribe to.
I think there is always nuance. I think that there is paradox and I think that there's leaning into the stories that move you forward and make you feel your best, and that's gonna look different from person to person. Doesn't mean they're lying, just means that humans do have different storylines.
Hadlee: Totally. Yes. Yeah. And it's like, what's useful? What's useful for me? But what's useful for the collective too? Something that I've learned a lot from my husband, actually. He is so. Collective focused. He often makes decisions based on, okay, what is going to benefit us as a couple?
And if we're in a group of people, if we're traveling or whatever, he's like, what is going to benefit the whole right now? Thinking from that perspective doesn't mean that we need to. Ditch ourselves and be a martyr and totally not look at what we need. But it's more of a concept of what do we all need?
And is there a way, again, the third option that we all get what we want and there like pretty much always is so, yeah. Oh, one other thing that I wanted to mention is, we're talking about like not, not judging these different things. A really big thing for me in the work that I do is like not assigning morality.
Mm-hmm. And, and it sounds like a little bit what you're talking about with like the truth thing. So, so it's interesting, a lot of the like, really bad things that humans have done in the world they've done because they've assigned morality to, this is good and this is bad. So it's like. What if, what if we didn't assign morality to like anything?
What if we just had a nuanced, approach to it? And yes. Okay. There, there can be some areas where we're like, no, this is, this is bad, this is, this is wrong. And when it comes to our health, certainly there is no bad or good, or right or wrong. There is what serves me in this moment in time. Maybe what serves my body, whatever.
But like I think a lot of times in the health, the wellness industry, there is a level of judgment on even, not even just like what your body looks like, but like are you pursuing health? And even if we can take away that assigning morality of like, you are good if you are pursuing health.
So if you are pursuing health, we have this judgment that, that is good. And if you're not pursuing health, then I am not gonna respect you in that. You know, and I just, I. What if none of that was true? Like we can have respect for every single human being because they exist, because they are human, because and And it doesn't have to be I'm good, I'm bad.
I'm right. I'm wrong. Because then we shame ourselves and then we also shame other people. And something that I find that I was just talking about with my clients a couple weeks ago. Because they were asking me like, how do you deal with people judging you for making like healthier choices for yourself that like actually serve you better?
You know, there a couple of my clients were like, we're going on vacation. My reply was, you have to come to it from a level of you're not judging them because they can feel your judgment when you make decisions for yourself and you're judging them for making a different decision, they can feel that, and that's why they want to like bring you down a notch because they can feel that you're judging.
So I found that that was the case for me when I like. I haven't had like a drink in eight years, which is crazy to think about now because when I stopped drinking I was like, I'll just drink when I want to again. And it's been eight years. Just haven't really wanted to, again, not doing the all or nothing thing, though it seems like I could be doing the all or nothing thing, but internally it's like, I just don't want to, when I first started, people would. Talk about it and poke fun at me. It wasn't terribly, mean or anything like that, but they would always poke fun. Once I stopped judging them for making a different decision from me, I stopped getting it completely. It's been years since anyone has ever made a comment to me about not drinking.
Probably like five years since anyone has made a comment to me. So it's really like when we can ditch the morality, it's so freeing in every level of existence.
Kayla: Yeah. So it's not looking at, this is good, bad university, especially in health because there are certain things like murder.
Right robberies. Those things are like 99% of people would say those are morally wrong most of the time. Totally, yes. Unless you're like robbing from Donald Trump. Anyways, you need another. But else, like there's no real good or bad. And I think another thing that is so important to remember is that I think there's a embedded amount of privilege in the wellness industry.
Oh yeah. Some people don't talk about, like, you know, you see some of these people, like, this is my three hour morning routine where I do all these wellness things, but they're also not sharing that they have no kids. They're wealthy, they're well supported. If someone isn't making health a priority because they're working two jobs or have eight children.
They are not lower than this person with this three hour privileged morning routine. They have other priorities because they're in a place where they don't have those same advantages, and I think that's something that. Be problematic about the industry as well, and I'd love your thoughts.
Hadlee: Yeah, totally. I would even take it a step further. And even if you did have all the privilege in the world, but you still decided not to prioritize your health neutral. Not good, not bad, neutral. It's all just neutral. But yes, I think that's a really, really important point is that we,
we have so much. Judgment and privilege, like all of these things that again, I mean my background is in public health and like there is so much in depth study of why the systemic issues of why people are not. Healthy. And most of the time it's because they don't have, you know, the resources and the different things that we as a society absolutely need to help with.
And so that's the kind of thing that I'm like, okay, once we have our health and our capacity and our energy and our bandwidth improved, those of us who do have the privilege to be able to work on that, then we have that capacity to help with some of these other things that are. Systemic issues, that we need, especially in America, it's so sad because we have so much wealth and there's not enough of that money and wealth trickled into the rest of the people, in our country.
And it's mostly just like that wealth and privilege. So something else that I see a lot is like. There's no excuse to not do this. That bothers me a lot when people say that. There is a level of privilege to that because obviously there is. Always nuance to people's situations and some things that we can't even see is their situation that is impacting, how they're deciding to move forward with their, with health or quote unquote prioritizing health.
So yeah, that's what I would say about that.
Kayla: Thank you so much for that, and I know we're getting close to the end of time, so just a few more questions. So in your work, which is very habits, behavior-based change and rooted in this place of help for your real life, not help for, you know, self-care on steroids basically.
Yeah. What are like three to five of the habits or the practices that universally just sing to most of the women you work with? Hmm.
Hadlee: Yeah. The habits that are, I would say the most important, number one, sleep. And not just like getting enough sleep, but like really what I do with my clients when they first come into working with me is how do we optimize your circadian rhythm and really get into. You know, if you don't know what the circadian rhythm is, basically get in attunement with the nature of your body and how it's, related to the sun.
So essentially like getting to bed around the same time every night, waking up around the same time every morning is actually like really, really, really important. So a lot of times I will have clients who are like getting to bed. Sometimes at like nine 30 and then other times at 1230 and they're like, I don't understand why I'm feeling so tired and like I'm getting, I'm still getting the same amount of sleep each of these nights, but I'm, you know, I'm waking up feeling groggy and all of these things.
So the first thing is, is sleep and then also like getting enough sleep, tackling any insomnia things that you might have, all of that kind of thing. And the first phase of the work that I do with my clients is, is really solidifying that circadian rhythm. Not just sleep, but like movement and, morning routine, which again, like you don't have to have like a four hour morning routine, to get some benefit from like having something in the morning.
Sleep hygiene in the evening, all of that kind of thing is like the first phase that we do. And then the second phase, before we even tackle any sort of food, anything before we tackle anything to do with your relationship with food, nutrition, all of that. But then the second phase is food psychology, nutrition.
Tailoring it to your unique needs. I use Ayurveda and the doshas, which we don't need to get like super deep into, but essentially there are three different mind body types and we can tailor some of these nutritional information to your unique mind body type so that it's not just like one size fits all because that doesn't actually work.
And so I would say circadian rhythm. Food and nutrition and food psychology. And then the third is nervous system regulation And emotional processing is like the third phase of the program because that is crucial to getting past the prioritizing our health and into just, this is how I live my health and I never need to take this program again because I've just got it.
Automated. My nervous system is good. I'm fully embodied with all of that, and I'm able to process emotions and do all of those things because like often we. Have issues with food because we're not processing our emotions and we're using food to do that for us. And it's really effective, at numbing emotions.
Like I used to think I wasn't an emotional eater. I was just like, I just need more willpower. I don't have emotions around it because I was so successfully numbing them. So yeah. So those three things I would say are the biggest ones.
Kayla: Yes. Those three are definitely powerful, especially the.
Emotional one, which a lot of health coaches don't touch, and it is so important. Yeah. And then I always get my guests to give the listeners an embodied challenge of some kind. So if you were to give our listeners something they can take away from this episode and do after this, what's one thing you would recommend?
Hadlee: Well, as far as like, well, okay, can I give you two answers? Yes. One is like very practically get, get enough sleep and, and enough sleep for you might be like eight and a half hours. Like I sleep at least eight and a half hours every night. So getting that sleep will help you. With every single other area of your life.
It's wild. Like people who are like, oh, I just give myself seven and a half hours of sleep. I'm like, that's fine. Some people can handle that, but some people need like almost nine hours of sleep or nine hours, so that's the first tangible thing that I would say. And then the other thing is that relates to more of what we've been talking about, this whole episode is.
How can you stop assigning morality to everything? So maybe journaling about like all of the areas that you assign morality to health, to food, to all of that kind of thing. This will also help with any all or nothing behaviors because once you see these things as neutral and not good, bad, right, wrong.
You kind of get off that rollercoaster ride of like, oh, I'm doing good, I'm doing good, I'm doing good, and now I'm doing bad and I need to get back on the wagon and all of that. If we see it as neutral, that starts the process of being able to, come to a place of body neutrality, food neutrality, and moving from that place of empowerment.
Kayla: I love both of those. And the second one, I'm definitely gonna have to view myself. 'cause it's an interesting question and I think it can be a sneaky one. 'cause you might not even realize where you're assigning morality until you notice what you judge yourself for.
Hadlee: Mm-hmm.
Kayla: That's probably one of those big red flags of Yes. If I'm judging myself, probably judging other people too.
Hadlee: Oh yeah, totally. That's another thing is I find a lot of times it's really hard for people to identify where they're judging other people because they think of judgment as a really bad thing.
They're a saying morality to judgment. And especially when you're in the spiritual world and you like don't wanna be judgmental. I have fully embraced the. Like acknowledgement of where I'm judging other people and I can laugh about it now. So when you can kind of get to that place, you can be like, oh, like you're so cute.
Like, look at you judging other people and kind of put a hand on your heart and just be like, it's all good. Like, you don't need to judge that other person. There's, you know, or yourself about this. And again. Yeah, I laugh about it because humor can kind of break that like shatter that judgment.
Kayla: Humor.
And even if you have to give her like her own archetype, because this is something I've struggled with for a long time and I have an archetype and her name is Judge Judy. And my husband, if I'm like judging someone while we're driving, I'm not even driving, he's the driver, but he's like Judge Judy. Or when I was working at my door building job, I'd be like judging the guy feeding the doors.
And my sweet coworker could be like, judge Judy. And I'd be like, yeah, I needed that. And then you laugh and you realize, oh, I'm doing it again. And you move on and it's so helpful.
Hadlee: Totally. I love that. Something that my husband and I will do is like, if we ever find ourselves like talking bad about someone, is I've asked, well, he's asked me to, to ask him, is your heart open right now?
And I've told him like, if you say that to me, I'm gonna get like annoyed and be like, whatever, you know? So I'm like, what I want you to do for me is put a hand on my heart. That will automatically crack. I'm just like such a feeling person. If you put a hand on my heart, that will crack my heart wide open and I don't need, it doesn't need to be in the mind of like, I'm judging or whatever, and so I should stop and like I need to judge myself for judging other people or whatever.
But just placing a hand on my heart, putting a little pressure on there, it just immediately like melts my judgment. So that's another little tip.
Kayla: I love that. Thank you so much for sharing. You have so much knowledge, so much value. My listeners are gonna eat this up, and when they want more, Hadlee, where do they go?
Hadlee: Yeah, so I'm on Instagram is like where I hang out the most. I have like TikTok and stuff, but Instagram is where I hang out the most. Happy Healthy Hadlee is my Instagram handle. Hadlee is spelled with two E's, so it's H-A-D-L-E-E not EY, and then my website is happy healthy hadlee.com.
I can also give you, a link to sign up for a discovery call. Would love to chat with you, if you wanna work with me, either in a group capacity or a one-on-one capacity. We can talk about whether it's a good fit in that discovery call
Kayla: now. Include all of that in the episode description.
So thank you so much again for being here, Hadlee.
Hadlee: Thank you so much for having me.
