Sending greetings and love from the Black Sea Coast in Bulgaria! Of course, we have spent some time watching the animals around here. The pigeons and sea gulls make me think of our ducks and guinea hens back home. Yet, they’re completely different! If you enjoy watching animals as much as I do, take a minute to watch the pigeons playing with sand on the beach… Truth be told, they’re probably looking for food, not playing. But I like to imagine they’re playing :)

I was grateful and blessed to spend the day yesterday with a cousin I hadn’t seen in over two years. At one point, she asked me what my fasting strategy is, how much I fast every day. I said something like…it varies day to day. I hadn’t really thought about what my fasting strategy is right now. When I started fasting, I had all sorts of plans and strategies. At first, it was 16:8 that I tried. 16:8 helped me curb nighttime binges and balance my blood sugar. Then, I experimented with 18:6. I extended my fasts to 24 hours, 36, and eventually 48. At some point, I got into a pattern of doing two fasts a week of 42 hours, doing one feasting day with 3 meals or more, and the rest of the time doing 16:8, or something like that. Every 3 months, I would do a 3-5 day fast to get into deeper autophagy. This pattern was ReALLY effective for helping me let go of over 70 pounds of excess weight. Most recently though, my pattern is “I do what I feel like.” The technical term for it is IDWIFL :oP It’s been working pretty well for me. I strive for doing at least one fast of 36-42 hours per week, but it doesn’t always happen. Last week, I had 3 days of one meal a day, and one 36 hour fast. This week, I’ve had 3 days of 3 meals a day. For my birthday in the beginning of May, I did a 5 day fast to gift myself stem cells. Then, I parent chaperoned a trip to Catalina Island and didn’t fast at all for a week. Well ok, I fasted once for 18 hours, but that was it. If I find myself feasting a lot, I make it a point to take more pauses in between eating and lean into fasting. If I find myself fasting a lot, I recognize it’s time to feast and throw in a day or two of feasting. I don’t stress about it at all, just strive for having some sort of balance between fasting and feasting. And it works for me :) What’s your fasting strategy? Do you have one? How about a JOY strategy? I’ll share about my joy strategy in the comments.

While this week in our community we were talking about 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐜𝐲𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐮𝐬 (like, homeo- & allostasis and hustle & flow switching), there are also many cycles that it might be better to BREAK! 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝒔𝒑𝒊𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒍 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰, 𝐰𝐞’𝐯𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐨𝐜𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐲𝐜𝐥𝐞𝐬, where certain patterns are passed on from generation to generation and you might not even be aware of it. This actually came up for me quite intensely this week as I had a call with @Lesley Christine inside her lovely community “Playing the Game of Life” here on skool. I connected to Lesley after I had an intuitive download for myself that I shared here in the Thrive Community, in which I for the first time linked my emotional eating to my grandfather: As kids we were told the story that when he finally was released from Russian war captivity after WWII in 1947, he ate a huge pot of split pea soup my grandma had just made. And that’s why was always a “rounder” person (only later did I learn that it actually made him quite sick and he almost died form it 🤯). Wanting to tune into this and possible other subconscious reasons for my pattern of emotional eating which Lesley does with muscle testing, she discovered that this pattern emerged at least 4 generations back from my mothers/grandfather’s side 🤯! Wow. Will need some effort to clear THAT energy 😅 𝐀𝐧𝐲𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 – 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐬𝐨 𝐚 𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 (𝐨𝐛𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐥𝐲 😏): 𝑬𝒑𝒊𝒈𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒄𝒔! In a nutshell, epigenetics are a sort of tags that can be added to your DNA and activate or inactivate the tagged genes (“one level above”, so to say, hence epi – genetic). These tags are one reason, for example, why identical twins (especially when growing up under different circumstances) are never fully identical even thought they share the exact same DNA.

A quote I LOVE the sound of… and still need reminding to actually live 😅 “Ask yourself, ‘What if it were easy?’ Then go ahead and do that.” Tim Ferriss So naturally… I made an acronym 👀 💚 E.A.S.Y. ✨ ENJOYABLE Sometimes we accidentally make healthy habits feel harder by focusing on everything we won’t enjoy. “What if this was easy?” might look like: 🥔 keeping meals simple 🌮 repeating favourite recipes 🎧 listening to a podcast while food prepping ☀️ walking outside instead of forcing yourself onto cardio machines you hate Healthy doesn’t need to feel miserable to “count.” ⚡ AUTOMATIC You know what makes things feel REALLY hard? Overthinking them for three hours before doing nothing 😅 “What if this was easy?” might look like: 👉 immediately chopping vegetables after groceries 👉 setting a pot of lentils on to cook while making breakfast 👉 putting workout clothes on before motivation arrives 👉 scheduling the thing instead of mentally wrestling it daily Tiny automatic actions save enormous mental energy. 🌱 SUSTAINABLE Setting the bar too high can secretly become procrastination and perfectionism. “What if this was easy?” might look like: 💪 a 15-minute workout 🥗 one EASY tray-bake meal to have on repeat this week 📹 one imperfect video instead of waiting to become confident first 🚶‍♀️ consistency over intensity The best routine is rarely the most impressive one. It’s the one you’ll actually keep doing. 🫶 YOUR BEST INTERESTS Some things feel easy now… yet become heavy later. Future-you matters too. “What if this was easy long-term?” might look like: 🌈 keeping healthy food visible and ready 😴 protecting sleep 💚 choosing habits that support your energy instead of draining it 🥙 learning a few EASY healthy meals that make eating food that loves your body back feel realistic instead of overwhelming The older I get, the more I think “easy” is underrated. Not because life should be effortless. Because unnecessary struggle is exhausting 😅 I'd love to know: Where could you make life 1% easier this week?

This is probably really obvious to most of you, but I wanted to make it super clear, thanks to prompting by @Charles Fielder that nothing in this group is replacement for medical advice. If you have any questions or concerns about your personal health conditions, make sure to reach out to a trusted medical, psychological, or natural health provider. In this group, we share our experiences and talk about various best practices for releasing excess weight, supporting mental and emotional health, living a life of health and vitality, etc. You are welcome to try things and do whatever you want with the information here. This also applies to Group Coaching and Individual Coaching. None of this is a replacement for medical advice, and anything you try or experiment with, you do this on your own volition, and you take full responsibility for your experiments and your results. Sound good? When you’ve read this, please comment below with, “Got it,”or “I understand,” or something along those lines. With all that said, I also wanted to mention that we have some amazing providers in this very group! Looking for a naturopath, contact Dr @Abigail Seaver , Ayurvedic practitioner-call @Gwendolynn Diaz , psychotherapist-contact @Mary Rose or @Nancy Candea, professional mental health provider-call @Ryan Peters , Dietitian-see @Lucy Hutchings . Personal trainer or Sleep Sensei, @Joshua Haag is your guy! Herbalist/personal trainer? @Vincenzo Fanfarillo has you covered. If I missed you and you have a mental health or physical health practice, feel free to share below in the comments! Now, back to our regular programming :)