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Transcription
Beth discusses three client stories that highlight the ways cannabis can help with fitness and nutrition. The first story is about Anxious Andrea, who used a combination of CBD and THC to manage social anxiety and avoid overeating and overdrinking at social events. The second story is about Stress Sally, who used CBD to regulate her mood and reduce stress eating triggered by arguments with her husband. The third story is about Perfect Patsy, who used cannabis to reduce stress caused by deviations from her routine and avoid making unhealthy choices as a result. Overall, these stories demonstrate the potential benefits of cannabis in managing stress, anxiety, and emotions in relation to fitness and nutrition. Hi, my name is Beth and you are listening to the CannaFitness and Nutrition podcast where we are hanging out at the intersection of fitness, nutrition and cannabis. And today I'm going to share some of my CannaFit client stories, some of these success stories that we've had from CannaFit because while everybody's unique and individual, these stories are relatable and you might find that you relate to one of these and it sounds like you or maybe even more than one. So I want to share this because I want to, again, make more points about how cannabis can really help with our fitness and nutrition, especially in these specific ways. Now there are a lot of ways that cannabis can help. As I've mentioned before, it's more than just anxiety and stress. It can help with insomnia, it can help with pain, things that are preventing you from living a fit lifestyle and making healthy choices and really being as healthy as you want to be. So I'm going to go through a couple of different scenarios. So these are particularly relatable if you have a lot of stress and anxiety. Now here's the thing, before you turn it off, you may not even realize that the stress and anxiety is what's keeping you from being healthy and fit and having your goal weight. You may not even be aware of that because I wasn't for a while. So hang tight, listen up and see if this relates to you. So the first client I'm going to talk about, now again, I'm using fictitious names because it's more fun and I don't want to embarrass anybody if they're not comfortable with the actual scenario. But the first one is really neat, but we're calling her Anxious Andrea. Anxious Andrea, and I actually did have a client that had a similar situation that I did, but I'm going to describe my situation. So old me, it was 2013 and I was at a wedding. It was actually in the wedding, which is kind of stressful, especially if you're a girl and you've been a bridesmaid, you know what I'm talking about because it can be stressful. And I didn't really know a lot of other people in the wedding. So I'm an anxious person and I have a lot of social anxiety and of course that made me nervous. So because I was anxious, and again, I didn't necessarily realize it at the time, but at the wedding, I drank way too much and I ate almost an entire tray of bacon wrapped scallops because one, they're amazing, and two, I was drinking too much, so it wasn't in control. And three, it was something to do because I was nervous and I wasn't comfortable because of my anxiety. And as you can probably imagine, that felt pretty gross. So that night, the next day, I just felt really terrible physically and mentally because I knew what I did and I felt guilty about it and I beat myself up. I always have been wanting to maintain weight and be as healthy as possible and that, I felt like that just derailed me. So fast forward now is with cannabis, I actually was at a wedding this summer and I, again, don't know a ton of this person's friends, so I took some CBD and some THC. Now THC is the one that makes you high and CBD is the one that does not. So when you take them together, you're not as high. You're only a little bit of a buzz, but the CBD brings down the THC. So I took a little bit of both, so it was an equal ratio, so that I could be relaxed. And what that allowed me to do was stay in control of what I was eating, so I was able to enjoy the hors d'oeuvres and the appetizers and the meal and be completely comfortable. So I didn't have to feed my feelings. I didn't have to hide at the food table or behind the drinks. I was able to taste the food, eat to satisfaction, and not be emotional. Now I did have a client with a similar situation over this past summer who decided to try the same thing, would drink, would be socially anxious at parties, and would hide and hang out by the food table. She would hang out by the food table, hang out with a drink in her hand, which if you've got a drink in your hand most of the time, you're just drinking it, and then you need another drink in your hand because you feel nervous. So you end up drinking more than you want to. And so she decided to try what's called a micro-dose, which is a very low dose of THC, and that allows you to, because it's low dose, you're not super high and you're not out of control. You remain in control with a little bit of a buzz that takes the edge off the anxiety. So she had said after we talked and she tried that at a social event, she emailed me the next day and said, you know what? I took a micro-dose of THC and I didn't overeat or overdrink at the party. And that is one way, just one way, of how we can use cannabis to manage our stress, anxiety, and emotions in a social situation. So if you have social anxiety and feel nervous when you're at parties or weddings and tend to overindulge, that might be because of your anxiety and because you're trying to feed the emotion, keep yourself busy so that you don't have to be uncomfortable in your feelings, in an uncomfortable environment. So Anxious Andrea, that's the first one. So Stress Sally, let's talk about Stress Sally. Now this is based on an actual client. And this actual client has been working on weight loss for quite some time and decided to adopt a low-carb lifestyle, which really fit her lifestyle perfect, it fit what she liked to eat. She was doing really well with that, but kind of hit a plateau. She also noticed when we started to talk and meet, she was telling me that she would be great during the day, but then at night, she would start to pick a little bit. And it would be a snack, which would lead to another snack, which would lead to another snack. And then before you know it, she's eaten a whole other meal when she didn't need to eat a whole other meal. And that's common, and you might relate to that, nighttime snacking, man, can just get out of control. So what we did was we decided to look at some strategies for that. And I asked her to start to really look at what's happening in the situation. She knew she wanted to try some CBD for sleep. So we went to the CBD store, and we talked to Kira at my local store here, which is, she's fabulous. And Kira suggested some products that she was comfortable with. And so Stress Sally, she noticed, and we told her that some of that could be anxiety, so we talked a little bit about that. But she knew she had stress, and she knew that some of the eating was because of stress. So what she did was she noticed when she started taking the CBD, now again, this is no high, there's no high to CBD, simply relaxing. She noticed that her mood was different. Her mood was very different. And what she finally revealed to me was that not just was she stress eating after dinner at night, was that it followed an argument with her husband. So she would get into arguments, or just have stressful situations, I'll say, stressful situations at home. So whether it was with a partner, or kids, if you have teenagers and you know what we're talking about, it can be stressful. Even little kids can be stressful. And that stress, what was happening was she was taking that stress, and then the snacks were helping her relax from the stress. So fast forward, taking the CBD, she noticed that her mood was so much better, and she felt like she was able to regulate her stress and her emotions. So instead of, after having a stressful conversation with a partner or a child, she, instead of just going automatically to eat something to deal with that, she was taking the CBD and not having as strong of a reaction to the situation. So she was able to handle the situation at home in an easier way, because the CBD, it emotionally regulates us, and that's how it works in the endocannabinoid system. It regulates all of our systems, but if you tend to have a lot of stress and anxiety, then one of the main things that it will help is that, and it will help regulate your emotions, which is one of the reasons I love it. So stressed out Sally, she started taking the CBD, she started noticing that she was more calm and just more able to handle stressful situations, and she was more able to control herself. So instead of, if a stressful situation happened, she wasn't as triggered, we'll say, by it, and she didn't automatically go to that same routine of grabbing a snack after snack after snack to try to calm herself down. She actually created a new routine for herself, so she was able to catch herself. Now that she's more emotionally regulated, she was able to change location, try different things. When she got stressed, go for a walk, go to a different room, change it up so that she wasn't just automatically going to the couch or the chair with the snacks. She was able to do that. So stressed out Sally is going to achieve her goal because now she's not stuck in this cycle of stress eating, emotional eating, and that snack eat at night, which is what was happening with her. So that might sound relatable to you if you tend to be one who uses food to calm down from a stressful situation. Okay, next up we have perfect Patsy. Perfect Patsy. So perfect Patsy stresses out any time, any time that the calories or macros or carbs or exercise isn't completely dialed in and isn't in line. So if something throws off the routine, perfect Patsy stresses out. Perfect Patsy doesn't like deviations from the routine. And if there are deviations from the routine, automatically it's, well, I'm going to make up for it the next day, right? And if it's someone who messed up, quote unquote, messed up over the weekend, maybe they went out to eat, maybe they overindulged. And then automatically on Monday, they're all, I can't wait to work out and I need to not eat sugar all week just to make up for what I did. Or sometimes you'll hear it in relation to alcohol, where if you drink too much, then perfect Patsy will say, I'm never drinking again, or I need at least a month off of drinking just to make up for. Perfect Patsy is always trying to compensate and make up for not being perfect. So as soon as something gets off track, so say you're following, say you're just watching what you're eating, maybe macros, maybe carbs, maybe calories. As soon as that gets off, perfect Patsy is trying to overcompensate really, it's overcompensation the other way. So perfect Patsy is trying to cut out something to make up for something that already happened. So again, CBD is an amazing mood regulator, which can help bring down those feelings of perfectionism and getting so stressed out from perfectionism that we need to go too far the other way. So it's a person that didn't work out over the weekend or didn't work out Friday, Saturday, Sunday, so needs to go balls to the wall Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, until they get too tired and then Friday comes around and they're too tired to work out anymore. So that's perfect Patsy and perfect Patsy tries CBD and notices, similar to Stress Out Sally, that the mood regulation is amazing and is able to see clearly for the first time that there's balance out there. There's balance and that missing a couple of workouts or going out or overindulging once in a while isn't going to make or break your progress, it's not going to make or break anything. But imperfectionism can be a symptom of anxiety and again, you may not even realize that, that it is a symptom of anxiety, but it is a form of being anxious about being perfect. So with emotional regulation from CBD, and again CBD is no high, then you can see the light that there is balance out there. So perfect Patsy is going to achieve her goal because she's not constantly in a cycle of what we'll say, quote unquote, mess up, and then what I call give up, or mess up, overcompensate, and then get too tired and fall off again. So it's kind of a cycle of that when you're in perfectionism, it's that I'm not perfect, I have to overcompensate, and then I get tired, and then I'm not perfect again. So perfect Patsy is going to achieve her goal because she's able to see the light and see that it doesn't have to be all or nothing, and it doesn't have to be overcompensation to make up for mistakes. So perfect Patsy is also going to feel a whole lot better because she's not constantly trying to compensate for her lack of exercise, or lack of being perfect with her protein goals, for example. So if perfect Patsy maybe has pizza, and the pizza doesn't have any protein, and perfect Patsy's goal is to have a lot of protein, then perfect Patsy is going to freak out because she had pizza, and try to not have carbs for a whole another week or two because she ate pizza. So perfect Patsy is going to, with CBD, is going to see the light, and she's going to feel a lot better with that. Now, the final example is we're calling her Emotional Eater Emily. Okay, now this one I hear a lot from not just CanAfic clients, but just all clients in general. Even my training clients will say that this happens to them. Because Emotional Eater Emily is the woman or the person who doesn't sit down all day. It's go, go, go, go, go. From first thing in the morning, you're up and doing things, you're out the door, you're getting the kids on the bus, or the dog's in the crate, whatever it is, and you're at work, then your activities, and then you have another activity, and then you've got to drive here, drive there, quick make dinner, get everything cleaned up and ready for the next day, and by the time you get to sit down at night, it is the only time you get to relax. So Emotional Eater Emily is those of you that finally get to sit down at eight, nine o'clock at night, and at that point, it's time to unwind, and for Emotional Eater Emily, unwinding means maybe it's a glass of wine or two, maybe it's some cookies, maybe it's a sleeve of Oreos, maybe it's a bag of chips, it's some sort of comfort food that allows you to relax. So Emotional Eater Emily is exhausted because she has no time to herself, which that's actually the problem. It's not a psychological problem, it's more of a time management problem, really, but again, everybody's different, so I'm not going to get into that here. So Emotional Eater Emily feels so exhausted, doesn't have any time to herself, and finally gets to sit down at night to relax. Usually there's wine involved, a lot of times there's wine involved, a lot of times there's cookies and chips involved, and then she can chill out, and then she can fall asleep. So here's the thing. Emotional Eater Emily tries CBD. Again, no high. Emotional Eater Emily tries CBD and is able to relax before she goes to sleep, before she goes to sleep, before sitting down at night, because Emotional Eater Emily, she's going to take this CBD, maybe she takes it all day, maybe she takes it in the evening, and it starts to kick in, and her blood pressure starts to come down, her speed level starts to drop a little bit, and she starts to relax, so that when finally it's time to sit down, whether it's kids in bed, or just chores are done, or the laundry's folded, or whatever needs to be done for the day, when she finally sits down using CBD, she can just sit back and breathe, because again, of the emotional regulation and the relaxation and chill factor. Now this would also be a great scenario for a little bit of THC, because a blend of CBD and THC, THC is great for relaxing, we want to avoid the munchies, especially if we have a habit of emotionally eating, or snacking at night, so in order to avoid the munchies, we want to have a blend of CBD and THC, and again, that's the high plus the no high, or the buzz plus the no buzz, as I say, and the CBD, because it works as an antagonist for some of the THC properties, it actually suppresses your appetite, so CBD by itself will completely suppress your appetite, but CBD plus THC will suppress your appetite as well, so you're getting the relaxation, but it'll counteract the munchies, so that's a great case, emotional eater Emily could benefit from either a blend of CBD and THC, or CBD by itself, and that way she can just relax and feel her brain turn off for once, and feel that spiral just stop and be able to relax without having to have a glass of wine, without having to have a snack, now emotional eater Emily is going to feel so much better, she's going to sleep better, she's going to be able to achieve her weight goals, because now she's not just snacking at night and adding extra calories to her day, and she's going to feel so much better the next day, and that's going to translate into a better next day too, so it actually dominoes into one good day, leads to the next good day, leads to the next good day, and before you know it, we have a whole new set of habits, so we've got to recap, we've got anxious Andrea, which was the social anxiety at a wedding or an event where you're hanging out by the drinks and the food, and overindulging because you have anxiety, then CBD and THC can do wonders for just bringing that anxiety down, and helping you focus and control, have control, instead of overindulging and mindlessly munching on things like bacon wrapped scallops, or overconsuming alcohol. Stressed out Sally was able to recognize that the stress at home was causing some of the late night snacking, and the CBD allowed her to see clearly what was happening, and that she had a different choice to make, and she was able to make a different choice because of the emotional regulation. Perfect Patsy was overcompensating any time she messed up, and the CBD was, the emotional regulation of the CBD allows Perfect Patsy to again see the light, and have less anxiety, and feel less inclined to be perfect, and then overcompensate when they're not. There's a little bit more of a chill, I messed up, but it's not the end of the world sentiment. Then emotional eater Emily was at the end of the day, the only time she could relax was when she finally sat down, and was able to unwind with that glass of wine, and let's say a sleeve of Oreos, and that was when she was unwinding. Now that either a blend of THC and CBD, or CBD by itself, allows her to start to unwind a little bit earlier, and start to unwind by just relaxing, and breathing, and creating new habits at the end of the day, instead of having to drink or eat in order to relax. Those are just four scenarios. These are actual client scenarios, and these are also, I picked these because not only were they actual clients who used CannaFit, but they are common. I hear this from other clients, like my personal training fitness clients also have said similar situations. I know these are common, so you may identify with one of these, and if you do, then CannaFit might be something you want to consider. As I've mentioned previously, my background, and what really got me hooked was the anxiety as well. Noticing that CBD really regulates emotions, and regulates anxiety, so that I wasn't so stuck in an emotional spiral, or an emotional, an anxiety spiral, that I was so stuck in an emotional spiral, which led me to some of this dysfunctional behavior, like overeating, or emotional eating, or being so stressed I couldn't see what was really the right thing to do. That's just a quick example of some of the ways that CannaFit can help. If any of those sound like you, please let me know. I would love to talk about it with you, and I would love to help if there's anything I can do to help. My CannaFit program is open now for 2024, so I am taking clients. It's a 12-week program where you and I work together to find the right type of cannabis for you, and that might be CBD, no buzz, or THC, with buzz, depending on you and your goals. Then we apply that to your behaviors. If you're not a cannabis person, if maybe you live in a state where it's not legal, or you have a job where it's not allowed, then that is what my ForeverFit program is for, because we look at these same behaviors, which are, as I mentioned, a lot of them are rooted in anxiety, and there are other tools for anxiety, and there are other tools to overcome some of these situations. ForeverFit is a 10-week program, and we work actually in a group, and we work to overcome and keep you accountable for these changes that need to be made when it comes to either whether it's eating behaviors, or whether it's just getting back in shape, getting back into the gym, or working out, or whatever you need to do to get yourself to feel the best you absolutely can. I want you to feel the best you absolutely can. I want you to look the best you absolutely can, and I want you to feel good in your skin. That's it for me today. Thank you for listening, and I will look for you next time on another episode of the Canna Fitness and Nutrition Podcast.
