 Can you all hear me okay? Okay, I like to walk a little bit. I feel like I'm back in front of a classroom, which is great, but I always walk a lot. So I'm gonna try to keep it to a minimum so that I don't make anybody dizzy. I am Steph Gaudreau, and I do a lot of different things. I wear a lot of different hats. You can see I have a lot of letters after my name. And for a really long time, I struggled to tell people what I did. We'd go to a party or an event and people would say, hey, what do you do? And I'd say, I used to be a teacher and I'm a blogger and a podcaster and an author and I'd like go down the list of all these things that I do every day. I wear a lot of different hats. And a few years ago, I was perusing the internet as I do. And I came across a TED talk from 2009, I think, from Simon Sinek. Anybody here heard of Simon Sinek? Yes. He's amazing, by the way. We bumrushed him in the Auckland airport in New Zealand. We happened to see him a couple of years ago, which was really cool. But I found Simon Sinek's TED talk super late to the party, but his TED talk is called Start With Why. And that really, really inspired me to start leading when I meet people by telling them why I do what I do. And it's really evolved over time, but it's really gonna help set the stage for this talk so that you know why I do what I do. And it's morphed a bit over time. But I have this vision and this vision is my why. And the vision is that someday, little girls will grow up into strong women who embrace their bodies, know their worth, and take up space without, yes. Can we get an amen for that? Without the pressure of relentless dieting, the scale, and exercise as punishment. And I don't know about you. Most of the people in here are women, but I don't know about you. This was my life. Relentless dieting, mental gymnastics with the scale, and exercise as punishment. Feeling like I would never be good enough. I would never be worthy. And that's the why. That's the vision that I hold in my head every day when I go to work. So I've created something called the core for, and I'm gonna share that with you today. And hopefully inspire you to, first of all, be a little bit kinder to yourself when you're trying to make wellness a priority in your life. And then eventually to help you see how you can move beyond yourself and really impact others and impact the world. Because that vision that I have, the why that gets me up every day, I can't do that by myself. I need all of you. You need all of you. We need to do this together. So this talk's probably gonna be really different from what you're gonna see at most of the rest of the talks here at AHS. There are so many amazing, super nerdy, super cool sounding talks. Mine's more of a bit of like a collective hug and I really wish I could be standing down here and you were all sitting around me. Because I feel like something that's needing, that's needed and that's a bit lacking from our wellness community in general. I talk a lot about optimization of macronutrients in our diet and we talk about all sorts of things with fitness and how we can improve that. But we don't often talk about what has to happen in here, the healing that needs to happen. So this might be a little bit of a different talk but I'm glad that you're here for it. So when I'm trying to help women step into their power, realize their worth, embrace their bodies, it's really because currently in our world, for time immemorial it seems like, women have been super distracted by stuff that doesn't matter. And that keeps us doing two things. One, playing really small in our lives and I'm not necessarily talking about like physically small, although we do a lot to make ourselves physically small too. But this relentless dieting, this exercise as punishment, it keeps us from stepping into how amazing and powerful we really are. So we play small one and it keeps us distracted from what actually really matters. And I'm here to tell you that yes, this isn't, we're in our nice friendly AHS bubble, everybody here gets everybody else, like we're like, yes, my people, somebody gets me. But when you go out of this event and you go out into the world and you take a critical look at the messaging that we're still getting about what is the right way to show up? What is the right way to look? What is the right way to sound? What is the right way to do things? It is in the larger world but some of it is in the wellness community too. You have to look for it. So my challenge is for you to take this stuff that you hear today and not only apply it to your life but help other people, help other women, help improve this situation because we deserve to play big and we deserve to pay attention to what matters. So I have this program called the Core 4. I developed it in 2015. It was called something else back then. It's morphed a little bit over time but I really sat down and I thought what are the things that women are really struggling with? What are the things that if we could stop trying to be perfect at these four things and just maybe gave ourselves a little bit of grace and space and looked for a more sustainable way to do these things, we could make a big impact in how we feel. I mean, how many people here have felt the pressure to like they have to do it and do it all and do it perfect or it's maybe not worth doing? Yeah, thanks for your honesty. I've felt it too. This was my life for many, many years. It's like do it perfect or don't do it at all. I've been working on those issues. So the Core 4 really started as an online program and over the course of the last four plus years, over a thousand people have gone through this program. Most of them women. I think we have like two honorary guys and they're great but something really interesting happened. First of all, this is not a weight loss program. This is the health gain program which is very, very different. And so when I talk to people about the Core 4, they're like, yeah, but like how much weight can I expect to lose? And I'm like, I don't even know. Maybe none. So I'm really interested in helping people improve their health in many different factors. And so these Core 4 pillars which are probably not gonna sound all of that unique to those of you sitting here, they're really there to help you build health in multiple different facets. Your physical body, sure, but what about your mental health, your emotional health, your spiritual health? Because if we have one of those things, but not the others, we're not truly healthy. And we focus a lot in the wellness space and in the wellbeing space on the physical body. And I totally get that because when I was really treating my body like a dumpster for a lot of years and subsisting on protein bars that I bought at Circle K and then drinking half a bottle of wine at night to wash it down. And that was basically my diet. When you don't feel good in your body, it's really hard to get anything done, right? So yes, the physical body matters quite a bit. But what I'm really interested in helping women do is introduce sustainable changes to their life without guilt and shame. Oh gosh, there's still so much guilt and shame around our bodies and them not being good enough. And when you're not in that space, when you're in that space rather of guilt and shame, it's really hard to come to a place where you respect your body and you introduce things that are going to work for the long term. So some of my letters that you saw at the beginning are NTC, I'm a nutritional therapy consultant. And I, as a nutritional therapy consultant and nutrition professional, I actually don't care what you can do perfectly for a week. I care what you can do pretty well for a long period of time, right? So we have to let go of that stuff. Shame has no place in wellness. We cannot lead with that. You cannot hate your body into changing. Now you can get fed up with things and say, oh, girlfriend, we need to have a talk. Like it's time to make some things happen. But we can't hate ourselves into long-term sustainable change. It doesn't work. Now there's a whole bunch of psychology about why we keep coming back to it, even though it doesn't work and that's not what this talk is about. But I would really love to see a space in which we feel like we can work on these things. We can address these core four pillars that I'm gonna tell you about from a place of I deserve this because I'm caring for my body. I'm caring for my emotional self. I'm caring for my mental health and I respect myself. That's why I deserve it. I don't deserve it. Like when I lose those last 20 pounds, I deserve it right now. And if you want to learn more about shame, you can definitely go dive into everything that the queen, Brene Brown, talks about. So the first pillar is to eat nourishing foods. And again, these four pillars are not gonna sound like anything revolutionary to those of you here, but keep the why in mind, right? The why from the very beginning. So this is really a multifaceted framework that I teach people, I teach women. And yes, real whole nutrient-dense, properly prepared foods that work for your bio-individual self are super, super important. But I also introduced a couple of things that really surprised people. So they're like, so what do I have to remove, Steph? Like where's my no list? And I say, okay, well, first, yes. If you have allergies or foods that you know don't work for your body, let's keep those off the list. However, every diet that has ever been created in the history of ever gives you like this big giant list of foods that you can never eat and your subconscious brain goes, oh, but I haven't thought about cookies in like three weeks, but now all I want is cookies. Because I can't have cookies. So instead of leading with everything that you have to remove, I actually challenge people to start adding things to their routine. And they're like, oh, that sounds like a trap. I get to add stuff. Yeah, like why not add an extra vegetable? Why not think of the color of the rainbow? So when I used to teach chemistry, we would do flame tests. Anybody remember that from Chem Class? Yeah, it's like the funnest lab ever. And it's the one that everybody remembers because it's full of pretty colors. We love colors. Okay, so let's think of Roy G. Bivv. And let's go to the grocery store. And the next time I'm there, I'm gonna add something red to my cart that I previously didn't. Let's make it fun. Let's add things. Maybe we're gonna add a fermented food for the first time in our entire lives. We're like, all right, fun. I'm gonna try sauerkraut. I'll give that a shot. Maybe I'm gonna try adding bone broth or I try adding a new recipe. And the point is not to overwhelm, but just get away from this idea that I have to remove everything. It feels different. So that's one of the things I teach people. Another thing I teach them is the how of eating. We spend a lot of time talking about what we should eat, what we shouldn't eat. And instead I challenge people, okay, well, that's all well and good, but what about how you're eating? And they're like, huh? Yeah, are you slowing down? Are you making sure that you're activating your parasympathetic nervous system? Are you chewing? And they're like, mm-mm, I ate that Chipotle burrito in like three minutes. I'm like, how does your stomach feel? Oh, well, I do get really bloated right after I eat. I'm like, okay, let's talk about the how. Let's slow down a little bit. Let's take some of those deep breaths and activate our parasympathetic nervous system and the vagus nerve. And how cool is the vagus nerve also? Like super highway between the brain and the gut. So these are a lot of the things that I teach women. Again, it's not like, okay, we need to slash all of our calories. We need to be trying to figure out our macro splits forever and ever and ever. The hope is that by adding things, you start to crowd out some of the other, I used to call them junk foods and I've now changed that language. We wanna crowd out some of the fun foods. Let's be honest, like we can't just eat cake all day every day and we know that. But let's eventually crowd that stuff out. So this approach does surprise people and they're like, but shouldn't I be calculating how many things, shouldn't I be tracking all of this? And I'm like, I don't know. Does that make sense for you for a short period of time? A week? Maybe get a sense of where you're at? Sure. But for a lot of people, and this is some of the stuff I'm gonna talk about later, that stuff really quickly becomes disordered. And in this community, and I say this community, I mean like wellness in general, that disorder is becoming more and more and more real and it's affecting more and more and more people. And the intention might be really benign. Like, okay, we need to track our calories and what we're eating and be really strict and rigid. And if that rigidity works for you, that's cool, but if every time you're not rigid, you're like, oh, my life is out over and I can't handle it, what happens? Yeah, that's not good. So obviously things are tools and they can help, but we wanna try to get away from rigidity when possible. So that's just a little bit of eat nourishing foods. I wanna talk about moving with intention. So movement is so important and unfortunately it's taken on this connotation of like exercises, like when I teach people chemistry or I tell people, I used to teach chemistry. Nine out of 10 do this, they shudder. One out of 10, like the fellow nerds are like, yes, that's so awesome, it was my favorite class. When I tell people, they're like, but do you mean exercise? And they're like, oh, that sounds so gross, I don't wanna do exercise. I'm really interested in how you're moving your body. And this could take many different forms and I'll tell you the most important thing you can do is do something you like. Find a way to move your body that you enjoy. Zumba, dancing, jiu-jitsu, that's mine. Lifting weights, going for a walk, whatever it is, dancing around your kitchen, I don't care, find something you like doing. Did you know you get a choice in all of this? Sometimes people ask me, what's the first thing I should change? And I'm like, I don't know, what are you willing to change? What do you like to do? They're like, I don't know, I've never thought about it before. Okay, cool, let's figure it out. But moving with intention, from an evidence-based point of view, we know for women that strength training or resistance training has so many benefits, I could rattle them all off here, but I'm sure I'm sort of preaching to the choir with all of that. If you're gonna add in things like high-intensity interval training, let's think of a pyramid here. And unless you're a competitor, you don't need to fill the base of your pyramid with lots of high-intensity, high-stress stuff because we know allostatic load is a real thing and we need to think about how much stress we're putting on ourselves. So can we do a lot of low-key movement? Are we maintaining our body and doing regular maintenance? And it doesn't have to be, a massage is so nice, but it could be free stuff. I don't know, go put your legs up against the wall. Go do some stretching. Get a foam roller for 20 bucks and use that thing too. So there are lots of low-cost and free ways to do all of this stuff, but think about including a little bit more movement when you can. I keep pointing it at that, that's not where it goes. The third pillar is to recharge your energy. So people are like, oh, you mean sleep more? Yeah, but that's ideally what, eight hours of your day. That's a third of your day. What are you doing for the other two thirds of that day? How do you work? Like if you work outside the home or you have a career, what is your workflow like? What is your, how much multitasking are you doing? How exhausted are you? Who cares, you get to the end of the work day and you're like, I know I did a bunch of stuff, but I feel like I got nothing done. I do that quite a bit. I'm like, I worked all day, but I have nothing to show for it. Are we taking breaks? Most people here are familiar with sleep cycles, right? Anybody, yeah, sleep, sleep, okay, cool, sleep cycles. Did you know that you have cycles that occur throughout the day as well? It's called ultradian rhythm. So like every few hours, you might kind of feel a little bit low. Well, what do you do with that? Like what do we do with that information in order to recharge? So these are some of the things that I go through as well. And yes, how to sleep a little bit more, how to improve the sleep. And I really try to meet women where they're at because look, quite often women will say, well, I'm a stay at home mom. And I say, uh-uh, household CEO, thank you very much. First of all, but sometimes you don't have the luxury of just getting more sleep. You might be working third shift and like that's literally your job and you can't just quit. Or you might have a new child that you're taking care of or perhaps you're caring for an elderly family member and you're up all night. So we can't just, it's nice to say, just get more sleep. And certainly there are things we can do sleep hygiene wise. So I really try to meet women where they're at with those sorts of things. Like, all right, what are the really easy things that we can do? Can you get yourself a pair of amber glasses and put them on when it gets dark? Probably. Can you get some blackout curtains? Probably. Right, so we can start making these like really low barrier to entry changes. So that's recharging your energy. And then empowering your mind. This is kind of the big one and I was saying earlier, this is like the umbrella under which everything else fits. But it's also like the most hard to grab one because our thoughts become our feelings and our feelings become our behaviors. And if you know anything about cognitive behavioral therapy or just psychology, that's kind of how it works. But one of the reasons that so many of the women I work with struggle to create lasting change. They're like, I know what I need to do, but I just won't do it. Or I'm good at it for a week and then I stop and I can't figure out why or I keep sabotaging myself. What's going on there? And so through this pillar, I really helped them take a look at some topics that are really related to mindset, but it gets a little bit broader than that. Well, I don't know, let's take a look at your values. What's really important to you right now and you're here in now life. Not when you were in college and you were like 21 and everything was very idealistic. You know, not when you were five years ago when you were in a completely different place in your life. But what's important to you right here and now? What about self-limiting beliefs? And that's a whole thing. And I say this quite a bit. I'm like, look, we have to be real about some of this stuff. If you have things like past trauma, if you have significant issues, if you have mental health issues, if you have brain chemistry issues, if you're neurodivergent, all of those things matter. We can't just be sort of idealistic and say, we're just gonna change this in six weeks. So I really love to recommend to people, hey, like go through the appropriate channels. If you need therapy, that's fine. There's no shame in that. If you need to work with a coach, great. There's no shame in that. You don't have to do it all yourself. But a lot of these mindset issues then pervade these other three areas. And so I really try to help women unpack and I'm trying to get better at my motivational interviewing. Anybody know what motivational interviewing is? Yeah, it's a coaching style where you ask a lot of questions. But you're really trying to help women discover for themselves what is important to them, how they can weave these pillars into their life because I'm constantly saying this, we are forever as a society trying to shove our lives into these other boxes instead of trying to make these things work for us. So the four pillars are not intended to be something that you do every day, all day. You do it very perfectly. But it's a challenge. It's a way for you to say, oh, you know what? I've been trying to dial in my carb intake for like the last five years down to the gram. Are there other areas in my life where I could maybe move the needle quite a bit? What are those? And how can I really get started? How can I make change that's going to last? What do I like? What works for me? There's so much research about people who are really consistent with healthier changes. You know what the key is? They enjoy what they're doing, right? Imagine that, they get to choose. And sometimes for the people that I work with, that's a really hard thing because they're used to outsourcing everything in there. They're like, well, I heard from here, I heard from there, I heard from here, I heard from there. So I think it's really important that we start meeting people where they're at. We start treating people like individuals so that they can eventually feel better. And then when they feel better, they can do better. And I mean, do better, like do better in their lives, in their communities, with their families. I'm often asked, which pillar should I do first? I don't know. Take a look at your life and what's really important to you. There's no wrong way to do it, but just be honest with yourself. What areas could I really stand to explore? And so the unofficial motto for the core for is the acronym LEG, which is kind of weird, but it's learn, explore, and grow. How can I come at this from a place of curiosity? How can I come at this from a place of learning and exploration and eventually growth? So I've been coaching women in this for the last four years. I just wrote a book on it as well. And through the last four years, something really curious has happened to my brain. I've started asking a lot more questions and going beyond the surface, like wondering why do we still struggle with this as women? Why are we still beating ourselves up over this? Why do we think that a perfect body is the most important contribution we can make to this world? Why is this stuff here? And the more I got into this, the more questions I asked, the more I realized that this is way bigger than just eating nourishing foods, moving within tension, recharging our energy, and eventually empowering our mind. Because again, I'm here to help you embrace who you are, embrace your strong body, and own how powerful you already are. My job isn't to fill you up with power, it's to help you realize you're innately powerful. So I started learning a lot and asking a lot of questions, and I wish I could come with a warning label. Because I had some interesting side effects to some of these things that I was learning. And so this is one of the things I wanna share with you, because a lot of you here are coaches, you're professionals, you're in the field, you're trying to help guide your community in some way, or you're working with people one-on-one, maybe you guide policy, maybe you're the head of your organization. So some of the side effects that I started feeling as I started learning these things were mental discomfort, questioning literally everything that I knew, wondering why things haven't changed yet, being frustrated. But curiously also having a lot of really impactful dialogue, not only with the women in my community, but with other practitioners. Taking a broader look at wellness through a lens of access and inclusion and expanding my own perspectives. I turned 40 this year, I think this had something to do with it as well. This is kind of like humility of like, I actually don't know anything. And the show Game of Thrones is one of my favorite shows and I felt often quite like Egret telling Jon Snow, you know nothing Jon Snow. But it's not all, I mean, this is not all bad, but it is a little bit earth shaking and it has been for me. And what I'm talking about and why I think women are struggling so much, like on the surface we know these things. Eat well, move your body, get some sleep and try to deal with the thoughts that are going on in your head, but why is this so hard? And I'm gonna leave the end of this presentation is more like all the things that I think of every day. And I think that if we're gonna be in this wellness community, we need to start thinking about a little bit more. And I'm not perfect at any of these. So the things that I've seen my community of women are dealing with are things like diet culture and impact of that. And even though this might not be a community, a wellness community, you know, we sort of laugh when we see old slim-fast commercials, you know, a shake for breakfast, everybody knows it, a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch at a sensible dinner. We might not be in that paradigm of nutrition, for example, but the tendrils of diet culture still make their way into our community. And how is that impacting women? Again, the shame piece, Brené Brown, go look her up, she's amazing. And then stigma, the stigmas that we carry, how that is impacting us on a much larger level. And what are the roles that we play in all of this? As practitioners, as coaches, as even members of the community, it's left to me with all the questions. And so I'm gonna share some of the questions that go through my mind on a daily basis. And you could take these, I hope, in the spirit of curiosity as well. I don't have the answers to any of these questions. And that's been the really humbling part, the part I've had to meet with a lot of humility, is that I don't know what the answers are, but with my community and the women that I'm working with, I'm asking a lot more questions now, some of these questions too, questions like, who is wellness really for? I don't know. If you Google it, Google healthy woman, there are lots of really funny salads in the world. You know, healthy woman is like holding a salad, she's like, ah, this is so wonderful. But what does that woman look like? Who is she? What about even having access to fresh food? What about food deserts? I used to work in Chula Vista. That's where I taught high school. And I taught in a food desert and I didn't realize it until after I stopped working there. My students shopped for food at the 7-Eleven. How could I have a conversation with them about healthy eating when they couldn't even walk to a grocery store? What about food insecurity? What about the rise in our communities of disordered eating, orthorexia and eating disorders, not just in women, but in men too? Y'all are struggling as well. What about the impact of loneliness on health? Community, right? That stuff's so important. What about the lack of connection so many of us feel in this world? Who has a seat at the table? Who has access to fitness facilities? We just say like, just join a gym, it's super easy. Is there a gym in your area? I mean, can you afford it? What are the classes like? Do you have childcare? Who feels represented and not? How do we talk about these things? This is the hardest part. In open and honest dialogue, without getting upset or defensive or threatened or challenged in a way that makes us close off, how do we learn to listen with more compassion? Because the first step is meeting ourselves where we're at in the present. And we have to do that for ourselves, but how do we do this with each other too? It's really, I don't have any answers. It's really hard. How do we foster safe spaces and heal? And ultimately, how do we go from me to we? Because I'm really glad if you feel great in your body. I feel pretty good in my body every day. When I get sick, I'm like, oh, feel rubbish. But if I take all of that knowledge and I keep it to myself, who am I helping with that? Nobody. We really need collective healing. We need community. We need each other and we need love. Just to leave you with a quote from the amazing Maya Angelou. And a lot of you know this quote, but do the best you can until you know better than when you know better, do better. So my challenge to you is, what way can you do a little bit better? Thanks. Okay, amazing talk and really helpful, I think, not just to women, but really to everybody. And so we're running just a little late. There's a break in five minutes. We restart at 2.30, but we have time for questions. So questions for staff. There's, should be a mic over there. Don't be shy. Okay, so I have a question. So what was the, what was it for you? What was the thing that like you said, you know, I'm really unhappy with it. I'm gonna do this. Like what was it that made you decide to do this? That's a super great question. So my struggle with body image goes back to when I was a kid. And it's been a long, long road. And in 2010, I'll just like jump to the end. In 2010, I was doing a triathlon in Lake Tahoe. And my then husband took a picture of me standing at a waterfall and I was doing one of these. Double biceps, like bodybuilder posts. And I got the phone back from him and we went into the car and I looked at that photo and I said, you are disgusting. That was the thought that went through my head. And looking back, I was probably at the smallest weight and body size I had been in a long time. And I just thought, I can't keep doing this. And so the year 2010 was actually really symbolic for me in a lot of ways. I started changing what I ate. So I started welcoming nutritious fats into my life. I started eating more food instead of restricting and withholding. I eventually left the endurance world behind. I was racing for maybe eight years. And I started looking for a sport or an activity or a movement where I could really focus on what my body could do and not what it looked like. And those were kind of the two biggest things that happened that year. But it's not, you know, a lot of people think, oh, it was just like a light switch. Like you just got better. And the way I like to think of it is an unraveling. Right, it's an unlearning, it's an unraveling and it's things changing slowly over time. So I'd say if there was one kind of moment of rock bottom, it was probably that one. Yeah. Hello. Hi. How are you? So something we've spoken about in private, how do we get more people to be behind on a stage that are underrepresented? I know we don't have answers, but. Yeah, I think first of all, we need to start following the people who are out there doing that work and listening to them and letting them tell their story. And so one of the very first things you can do is start looking at the people you follow on social media, for example. If they all look exactly like you, then it might be time to diversify. And honestly, if you need suggestions of people to follow, you can message me and I'll give you some. And I think it is, we need to have examples for not only our children, and I don't have kids, but those of you who are parents for our children or for each other, examples of people from all different backgrounds, right? Because we do have, in wellness in general, is very white, cisgendered, able-bodied and young. And I think that the way to start doing that is educating yourself and looking for more diverse voices to follow and elevating those voices when you can. So, are you sharing that stuff with your friends? Are you including them in conversations? Even myself as a podcaster, I had to really take an honest look at who I was inviting on my show and I realized it wasn't very inclusive and it's something I still work on. I'm still looking for people who are not the most famous because that happens a lot with podcasting. I'm speaking to another podcaster here. So sometimes it can be really tempting to want to just get the people that have the biggest accounts on your show so that they can share it and it becomes one of those things and it's like, no, are we actually inviting those people to share their stories and then elevating their stories? Yeah, just that. Oh. Thank you.