275: Mastering Your Mindset: Tips and Strategies for Fitness Success with Natasha Wakefield

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps After Babies Radio Episode 275. 

Hello and welcome to Biceps After Babies Radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PR's. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife and mom of four. Each week my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise, mindset, personal development and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in. Now, let's jump into today's episode.

Hey, hey, hey! Welcome back to another episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke. And today on the podcast we're talking all things mindset which I know is such a buzz word but I'm getting into it with my guest Natasha Wakefield and we are talking about the mindset shifts that need to happen in order for you to be able to be successful on your fitness journey. This is a fantastic episode. Natasha gets really granular with giving you some actual tips and tricks and strategies that you can start implementing now to be able to really improve that mindset, and when you improve your mindset, be able to be more likely to reach the goals that you have set for yourself. So if you are somebody who has a big goal or even has a medium size goal that you are trying to achieve, this podcast episode is going to be for you, so let's jump into the interview.  

Amber B 01:40 

All right, I am so excited to welcome, Natasha to the podcast. Natasha, thanks for being here today. 

Natasha Wakefield 01:47 

Thanks so much, Amber, I'm super excited to be here chatting with you. 

Amber B  01:50 

So excited and I'm so excited to just get to sit and listen to your accent as well. That's just a blessing. 

Natasha Wakefield 01:59 

It's so funny. I mean, as an Australian, I kind of feel like our accent can sometimes be a little bit harsh. So I love hearing other people's accents, but yes, I am an Aussie. If you haven't picked that up already. Yes, but I I love the, I love the American accent. Quite similar to Australia, depending on where you are. In Australia, your accent can sound quite different, and that's obviously the same for in the US as well. Varies quite a bit. 

Amber B 02:25 

Totally. Oh, that's so. Yeah, that's, that's fascinating. I mean, it makes sense, right? Like the American accent is different, whether in the North or the South or the East or the West or Midwest. That's fascinating. OK, so you're Aussie. Tell us a little bit more about yourself. Give us a little rundown of who Natasha is. 

Natasha Wakefield 02:40 

Sure thing. So I am 32. I'm mom of 1 beautiful boy called Sonny, who's 5 and he's just started school this year, very cute, he's been very excited. I am a nutritionist, a trainer, I'm really passionate about helping women build a really healthy relationship with food while still seeing results at the same. And we do that through my company called Girl Fit Method. Uh, what else? I love the beach. I love the ocean, the warm weather and I like eating pizza. Yeah, that's a good summary of me. 

Amber B 03:16 

That's fantastic, I love it, one thing that I know that you are really big on is helping women with mindset. And I know that that's a big part of your Girl Fit Method that you help clients with so. And mindset I feel like is like the buzziest of all buzzwords. Today it's like everyone's like, oh, you gotta work on your mindset and, and it then they just stop there. It's like just to have a better mindset so it's, let's like make it a little bit more concrete for people when we talk about improving your mindset or you're, you're saying I help clients with your mind, their mindset, what does that mean? What does that look like? 

Natasha Wakefield 03:51 

Yeah, I totally agree with you because the idea of changing your minds that I think people think can be really overwhelming and quite vague, and it's like, where do we start right when I'm referencing mindset, really what I'm talking about is the way that we think about ourselves and the thoughts that run wild in our brain that sometimes we're not even quite aware of and we underestimate the power that those thoughts and beliefs have on our life, so we can go through life thinking a certain thing and not achieving what we're wanting to achieve because we have a certain narrative playing in our mind in order to achieve what we want to achieve, we need to change that narrative. And I guess when we talk like eye reference mindset work, it's really about changing that narrative, changing the story to align with the goal that you're wanting to achieve. That's what I would sort of look at mindset work as being. I'm going to ask you again, what was the second part of that question, how this how we start working like? 

Amber B 04:49 

And then, what does it look like? Like if someone is going to change their mindset, like what does that processing look like? 

Natasha Wakefield 04:57 

Yeah, well, that's a very, very big question and it's, the first thing I want to say is it takes time. I think we are always, all of us are always working on our mindset, we never arrive at this destination where we've got it all together and we never have negative thoughts or we don't have any self-doubt. So that's the first thing to remember. It's a lifelong thing that we need to really, chip our way out. But I think where women in particular go wrong is that we sometimes don't stop to hear the noise in our head and maybe listen to what we're telling ourselves. I remember if I just referenced back to my own journey, you know, if I go back to when I was in my early 20s, I had a, I had a really bad relationship with myself and the thoughts I would tell myself where I wasn't good enough. I didn't feel like I held any value as a person. I had nothing good to bring and I limited myself in so many different ways, and I sometimes wasn't even really aware that I was having those thoughts when I was wanting to achieve something instead of just going for it the first thing that would pop into my mind was you can't do that. You know you're not smart enough. People don't like you. You can't achieve that. And so we can sometimes just believe that and then go about our day. And becoming aware of those thoughts is number 1, and it's not about just changing those thoughts and spinning it into a positive, because, let's be honest, if we could all just think positively, we all would, right? That's a really, really, really difficult thing to do. The first step that I take with our girls. And that I would, you know, suggest. Wheel stop, which is what I had to do in my own journey. It's just become aware of those thoughts in my mind and begin to question them. Sit like allow yourself to sit with them and just be with them and think, OK, well, is there actually evidence to back up this belief? And that's really what I would say is the starting place. If you're wanting to change your mindset. 

Amber B 07:02 

Yeah, and I think like you said, sometimes that seems like such a simple like, Ohh well, OK, that's, that's really simple, Natasha. Like, give me something. Give me something more juicy. But I think what you said is like that actually is really challenging because those thoughts and those narratives are running on a loop in the background all the time and we've just gotten so used to them, it's kind of like when you're in a room with a fan, you, you know, you, maybe you enter the room and you hear the fan, but very quickly you stop hearing the fan and you just, it's just background noise and you don't really pay attention to it anymore. And I think a lot of times our beliefs and our thoughts are like that, there, there are background noise and so if you haven't been listening to the background noise, even just starting to become aware of that background noise, it's, it's a challenge and, and it can be hard to even just start to, I get that a lot, my clients are like how, how do I do that? How do I start to pay attention to the thoughts? Do you have any tips for anybody who feels like they can't hear their thoughts or they can't, they can't identify what they're thinking? 

Natasha Wakefield 08:03 

Well, I think that's a really big problem with this because we like to drown out that noise because we don't actually want to deal with it. And distraction is the thing that we use to pretend those thoughts are, aren't really ruminating in our brain. And it's really funny that you mentioned that because what I see and you probably do as well and I've done this in my own life is I have believed that losing weight, looking skinnier, eating better is going to make me happier and it's going to make me like the way like myself. Once again, that's a distraction, and there's nothing wrong with any of those things necessarily. But if I'm seeking that in order to think, I'm going to think better thoughts, I'm going to feel better about myself. You're going about it the wrong way, and it doesn't even need to necessarily be weight loss. It can be you're seeking someone, a relationship or a partner. That you think is going to make you happy or feel loved. You are trying to achieve a certain job or earn a certain amount of money in order for you to feel like you are enough or you're valuable. We're all going about it the wrong way because ultimately our reality starts with what we tell ourselves and when we tell ourselves those good things and that we're already enough, all these other external things, the, the surface level stuff that we're going to achieve just come to us, right? So that's really important to keep in mind, I think stopping and realizing that we need to prioritize mindset work is really important. Becoming aware of those thoughts is difficult because it requires us to sit in the mess and we don't really want to sit in the mess. It's really hard to, to accept that maybe you really don't like yourself and that maybe you believe that you're not good enough because you were told, you know, by a parent for years and years on years on end that you weren't good enough or you were in a relationship and someone was manipulative or abusive and told you horrible things about yourself and you've just carried that along the way. And instead of dealing with that, you've just taken that on and now you just believe it. And in order to undo that, you've got to sit in that mess, and that's what we don't want to do. So that's the first thing is that understanding this process is going to be really hard. The next thing I would recommend doing, and I do this for myself as well, is journaling and writing things down and just writing down our thoughts with zero judgment whatsoever. I'm just going to I'm, I'm going to give you example of someone. A woman that let's just say tends to emotionally eat or turn to food for comfort. So in that, which is a very common situation. And we can get into this behavior and we think about why do we do this behavior and it really comes down to it. It's become a coping strategy for us, but there's something going on in our brain here that's leading us to, to want to do this. And just writing down, let's say before you feel the urge to go and overeat, or after, write down without any judgment exactly how you're feeling in that moment. And that's going to give you a really good idea of what thoughts are circulating in your brain. There's a real power in putting pen to paper that I think we underestimate and sometimes just allowing yourself to write down exactly what you're thinking. I've done this and I'm not sure if you've been in this situation, but you're right and you're thinking, oh, I didn't even. That's right. That is how I'm feeling. But I wasn't even aware I was feeling that. And there's a real magic in being able to journal and just without judgment, running down exactly how you're feeling in that moment. 

Amber B 11:49 

Yeah. I think for me. I think so fast and I'm doing so many things all throughout the day that what journaling forces me to do is it forces me to slow the heck down and to be able to actually like go through the whole sentence, go through the whole thought instead of it just going like, you know, going by me at like 60 miles an hour, it's like, no, that has to slow down and because writing takes time, and it makes you, forces you to slow down, so I think for me that's one of the benefits of, of journaling is I just can't go buy me fast. I have to slow everything down and then I can actually look at it like you said, and actually be amazed at what the thoughts have been going through my head. 

Natasha Wakefield 12:27 

Yeah, absolutely. I'm, I'm with you there, I'm 100 miles an hour kind of person too, I just not necessarily a bad thing, but there is a real importance in rest. Yes, and silence and cutting out all of the noise as well. 

Amber B 12:41 

Yes, so so good. So you kind of mentioned that a lot of women and, and I see this a lot too, the struggle with believing that they're worthy, or believing that they're good enough and, and that was something that you kind of referenced as something that you have see clients dealing with a lot as well. And that sometimes that comes from our childhood, that comes from other people telling us, it comes from abusive relationships. So you know what are there, if for someone who feels like maybe they've identified that as, as a block for them, that they, they are saying yes, Natasha, I struggle with self worth as well. I tell myself, who are you to have this? Who are you to be successful? Who are you to be able to, you're never going to, you're going to be able to achieve that goal, what are some ways that we can help start to improve that mindset so that we can break through those blocks and really be able to finally reach those goals that we've set for ourselves? 

Natasha Wakefield 13:30 

Yeah, that's a really great question. The first thing I want to say is sometimes going and seeing someone, like a therapist can be really helpful to, to help you unpack that. You mentioned sometimes not knowing what your thoughts are. There's negative thoughts and that can be helpful to see a professional in that area, but I understand that it's also not accessible for everybody, and sometimes it's actually not necessary either, but it is a really great option if you can do that. The second thing I would say is taking action in some capacity. So when we have a goal that we're wanting to achieve, it's really common that if we've got self doubt or we don't believe in ourselves or we don't think we're worthy of achieving something, that we won't give it a go, it's too overwhelming. We set up these really lofty expectations for ourselves and we almost self sabotage it for us because we know we can't actually achieve that. We can't go from 0 to 100. But what we want to do is we want to set ourselves up for success because when we have little wins over time that builds confidence in our ability and where girls go wrong is that they reflect back on what they didn't achieve when they tried to achieve something they failed. “they failed”, right? So they're gonna bring that belief then into the present and tell themselves, well, this thing that I want to achieve, I'm never going to be able to achieve because look what I did, you know, two years ago, I've never achieved that. And I can't do it today. So what we need to do is breakdown that goal, or whatever it is they believe that they're wanting to change and really put it into little bite size amounts that feel achievable, and they might even feel really, really silly. So an exercise that I get my girls to do and that I've done for myself as well, and I'm going to just reference body image here because a lot of women have issues with body image and self worth, is that there's all, you know, a part of our our bodies are we're all flawed. No one is perfect and we have parts of our bodies that we, some of us despise, right. We really don't like our legs, we don't like our arms, we don't like our ears, whatever it is for you. And it's really easy for me to say, do you know what? Just write some, just write some affirmations and say: I love my legs. I love my legs, I love my legs, I love my legs. Great. That's awesome. Well, first of all, it's going to feel incredibly uncomfortable, which is really, really normal, but also how sometimes we feel so far away from that, that that almost feels like an impossible thing for to come out of our mouth. So what we want to do is find value in the value that we bring to the world, to society and almost shifting the focus off of ourselves so much because we all live in our own heads and we are the  center of our whole world. What I would recommend doing and starting is thinking about the goal that you want to achieve. Let's just say you want to build a healthier relationship with your body and your body image. Then what I need, but what you need to think about is things that don't necessarily things about yourself that have got nothing to do with the way that your body looks, and I'm saying this because this is my own story. So I was very hard of myself, perfectionist, all or nothing. Look at my body, scrutinize it, hated it. The thought of liking myself felt so far away. It felt so impossible. And the way that ultimately I got around that was I realized, oh OK. Well, in fact, my value lies in the legacy I'm going to live in my life and the impact I can make on other people and so instead of focusing so much on the physical and trying to love the physical and love my legs and love my arms. I decided to work on my character and to give and to figure out, what it is that I bring to the world? Because what actually happened is that I realized I had a lot of value. I realized that I had lots to bring and that I could help other people and that built confidence in myself and gave me a purpose that I looked at my body as a vessel to be able to achieve all of these things that I wanted to achieve and instead of being so mean to myself, I actually really appreciate it. Didn't necessarily love every part of myself, but I appreciated my body. Now I've gone on a little bit of a tangent and a bit of a rant, but I think it's important to understand all of that because what we need to do is really remember where our value lies. So small action steps to take towards that would be to think about things that you want to achieve and really think about breaking that down. What I did for myself is I realized I wanted to change careers. I was working kind of in social work. And I wanted to move away from that and I totally believe that I would fail and that I wasn't good enough and wasn't able to do that. So for me it was taking uncomfortable action towards that goal that was really small. So first of all, it was inquiring about this new career that I wanted to do. It was finding people that were doing that career and just talking to them about it. Right. OK, tick, I've done that. Awesome. I'm really proud of myself that was out of my comfort zone, but I'm really proud of myself that's built confidence in myself. What's #2? Alright, I'm going to inquire about where I need to study for this course. I'm not. I'm not signing up to it. Tick. Did that. Awesome. I'm really proud of myself for doing that. And you just build upon that and that can look like you would do that in any, absolutely any aspect of your life. But that would be the starting places to not look at the big goal of you wanting to achieve ex. Love myself, love my body. Have all of this confidence, but to break it down really slowly and to prove to yourself that you can do what you're telling yourself you can't do. 

Amber B 19:15 

That’s so good and one of the things, that's two things that stood out to me as you were speaking. One was this idea of getting outside of our comfort zone, and we all know that in order to grow, we have to get outside of our comfort zone. And but what I found is that there is a balance between getting outside of your comfort zone and getting way outside of your comfort zone. I think that's what you're speaking to is like can we build some confidence by just getting a little bit outside of our comfort zone, what I find is if people go way outside of their comfort zone, they freak out and they retreat, and they never go back. So I love your idea of, of just let me take that next step that's outside of the comfort zone. I'm not going to sign up, I'm not going to like I'm just going to research it right that that next little step that feels uncomfortable. But it's it's it's within that your ability to handle that discomfort and then the second thing that I heard you say that it was so valuable is that idea of celebration of when you do it, celebrating yourself and and saying, yes, I did it. Oh, so good. Like, really reaffirming that to yourself that you are stepping into that, that, that new version of yourself, who now can do these things, who is able and confident and, and capable of going outside of your comfort zone and I think that's a piece that a lot of women miss because we're good at saying negative things about ourselves, we're good at finding our faults, we're good at nitpicking ourselves and a lot of us aren't really great at celebrating ourselves. But the brain loves celebration. The brain loves the validation. The brain loves that, like, you know, spike of, of Dopamine that comes from the pleasure center when we, when we do things like celebration and, and rewards ourselves. And so I think that's such an important part of this process. I love that you broke it down into like, how can I step a little outside my comfort zone and then how can I celebrate that and say I'm amazing, I'm awesome. And then take that next step and, and then that next step, I think that's, that's an awesome way to be able to really start to break down some what's and sometimes feel like an overwhelming goal for a lot of people to achieve. It’s really good. 

Natasha Wakefield 21:16 

I couldn't agree more. And as you're talking, what I'm thinking is that all-or-nothing mentality.  

Amber B 21:20 

Yeah. 

Natasha Wakefield 21:20 

Which is exactly what we all fall into. So it's either all or nothing. We either achieve the huge goal or all these little steps and things that we should be celebrating these wins aren't good enough because we're not at this end destination and that is that mentality is going to keep you completely stuck for the rest of your life. We need to get rid of that, and understand progress is progress. We want to wake up and be 1% better each day, just 1%, and that might look like the tiniest step forward. But we need to reflect on that, celebrate it and then build upon that. 

Amber B 21:53 

Yeah, that’s so good, I'm curious. You shared a couple of personal stories, but do you have an example of when you really noticed that, that connection between your mindset and what you were telling yourself and any kind of results that you are trying to achieve? 

Natasha Wakefield 22:10 

Well, what a loaded question. I would say in everything I've achieved in my life, there's just been such a correlation between my thoughts and actually achieving that goal. But I'm going to talk about my own health and fitness journey because it might be relatable to your audience. So I like I've sort of touched on a bit earlier, had a really unhealthy relationship with my body and in turn then created a really unhealthy relationship with food and with exercise. I, when I was in my late teens I suffered from anorexia, so I had an eating disorder. But then when I came out of that. I still had a terrible relationship with my body and viewed exercise and viewed some viewed exercise as a form of punishment and a form of, you know, burning calories because I didn't like the way that my body looked, so it was an action I took out of self-hatred, really. And the same with food. I earned food through the amount of exercise that I did. I would allow myself to eat certain foods and if I didn't eat certain foods, I was a bad person and I would feel incredibly guilty. And it was this high a horrible spiral. I'd feel depressed and it was just really, really, really yucky. And so all the decisions that I was making around food and exercise throughout my fitness journey at that time in my life was due to the fact that I thought I wasn't good enough. My body needed to change, and it was. It came from no place of self-respect. Now what the game changer was for in my life, and I'm going to skip a probably a whole decade here, is that I realized that when I when I first did that mindset work and I decided I wanted to eat, I wanted to exercise from a place of respect. For myself. That's actually when I got the results that I wanted to get. So instead of, you know, overeating, you know, with dinner with friends one night and then feeling like I need to go to the gym and do a 2-hour workout to build off those calories and be really disappointed with myself. I number one, got educated around. OK, well, like, what does training look like? And #2, what should I be eating to fuel myself properly? And then from there. What I was able to do is, because I already had, the I I talk about love, and I think sometimes we don't need to feel love for ourselves, but we need to feel acceptance for ourselves and just still want us to have good things in life. It's always going to be parts of us that we don't like and that's actually OK, but ultimately it was about me learning that my value lighted more than my exterior and the way that my body looked. And so in order for me to achieve all of these things that I wanted to achieve, which had nothing to do with my body, had everything to do with making an impact on other people's lives. Just things that I wanted to achieve, I wanted to be the healthiest, strongest, happiest version of myself. So what did that mean? That didn't mean going and having a 2-hour workout after I over ate the night before? No. What that meant is that I'm gonna follow a, you know a program that I really enjoy doing, that's getting me stronger so that I've got energy then to go and do these other things. Same with nutrition, I wanted to be cognitively with it. I wanted to. I wanted to have the energy to be able to do these other things that I wanted to achieve. So through changing my belief about myself. Within my fitness journey, my relationship with food and exercise did a complete 180. And I ended up with my end goal anyway, the end goal that I was hoping to achieve through my, my over-exercising or my under-reading actually came when I started to exercise from a place of self-respect. And love as well as nutrition side of things. 

Amber B 26:08 

It's so good. So how did you do that? Because I know there, I know there are women who are listening there like that, that sounds fantastic that you just, you know, were able to get there and you saw those results when you got to that place of, of self-acceptance. And I, I know we've talked a little bit about this, but I, I want to dive in even a little bit deeper because I know that there are women out there being but like how? How, how do I, how do I get there? So from your experience, can you remember back any of the milestones that are pivotal points that were you made decisions or you tried something, or you tested something and it made all the difference for you and being able to get yourself to that place where you could exercise out of a place of acceptance for your body rather than from this place of hating your body and, and just wanting to change that because I think a lot of women are stuck in that in that place right now and want to get out of it. 

Natasha Wakefield 26:58 

Yeah, yeah. And I can understand if you're in that situation, that can seem so far-fetched, but the reality is, there's one day I woke up, and I'm going to share this with you as well. So when I was very unwell with anorexia, I was obviously not of a healthy weight. I was very thin and I was in hospital. I was really sick and you know, it was really funny is that I still at that weight had Cellulite on my legs and I looked at myself in the mirror and I thought, you know what? I'm probably going to die with Cellulite on my legs. So what am I doing? because losing weight is and fixing it, not eating's not fixing it or whatever. Whatever you're trying to do genetically that's just the way that my body is. OK, So what am I going to do moving forward from here? And what I realized is I was so sad. I was so sad in my whole life revolved around negative thoughts in my brain about myself and this unhealthy relationship with exercise and food. But I wasn't through doing that. I wasn't even getting the results that I wanted. So what are my options? Or I either keep doing this and still not getting anywhere, staying stuck. I couldn't add anymore into my life. I knew that I couldn't do that, so I needed to take a different approach. So I had to realize that and I, I got to a really low point where I was like, OK, I actually don't have an option. I don't know what to do. That's the first thing you've got to get to that realization. You just have to for yourself. And then you know, I'm not even saying this because we're both coaches, but I did actually work with the coach and it was life-changing for me because I had, I thought I knew about exercise. I thought I knew about food and I had no idea. And it was a very educational process. I worked with the right person which was really good. And I realized ohh OK like if I want to get X result, this is how I need to eat and this is what the process looks like. So I had to be held accountable, which is really important because I was terrified of losing control and changing the way that I was exercising. Exercising less, eating more. It was all terrified. I didn't go into it. Going alright, I'm ready for this I didn't feel ready, but I knew that I just wanted to feel happy again. And I didn't want my life. I didn't want to waste another two or three years of my life doing the same stuff and getting no result. So I sought help because sometimes we need help, right? We need community. We need people around us that can lift us up, and we need someone that actually understands that world. So I had someone there for accountability. I had structure and I had a plan, which was really, really important. That would be my biggest piece of advice. It was an absolute game changer for me, but if you're not in a position to be able to afford that, there are so many free resources, I mean your podcast here, I've got a podcast, loads of podcasts. There's great Instagram accounts now where you can get really great information from very educated people, and you need to let go of, control of what you think is best and listen to people that are experts in that field. And once again, take really small steps in changing your habits towards, habits are going to better serve you. 

Amber B 30:08 

That's really good. 

Natasha Wakefield 30:08

That's probably the, the biggest piece of advice. I'm just going to add in a second one, which is a little bit nay sure, it's not going to apply to everybody, but I had a little baby boy and when I had my son, that really, really changed a lot for me and I realized that my life now didn't revolve around me, but it revolved around this other little human, and I didn't want to waste any of my time consumed with not liking myself because he thought I was the business, he thought I was fantastic and he was a real game changer for me as well, and that doesn't need to be you having a child but it could even be people in your life that you know really love you and they love you for who you are and remembering that. 

Amber B 30:51 

Yeah, I think, I think what it is, is it, it's a different perspective. It's an outside perspective and for you it was a child giving you that outside perspective and like you said, it can be anybody. It can be a loved one, a mother, a sister, a friend. But seeing yourself from that outside perspective just gives you a different way of looking at yourself rather than what we do is just from an inside out perspective and I think that you can just give you a way to see yourself differently and, and recognize the value that you do bring to the world, and it's not how pretty you look, you know I don't know if you know the Kite sisters who are both PHD's, but they have the saying that your body is an instrument, not an ornament and I love that saying because it is, it's, it's we are not. we're not put here on the earth, just for people to just look at us and to just be pretty. But like you said, it's so much more about what can I do, what type of person am I. And that's one of the reasons that I love fitness. I think people think sometimes I think it's ironic. They're like, oh, you're in this world of, like, weight loss and, and fitness and aesthetics and all of these things. But what I think a lot of people don't understand is that fitness simply becomes a vehicle of refinement, becomes a vehicle of teaching yourself about what you're capable of doing. It, it becomes this vehicle of becoming the type of person who's committed or driven, motivated, wants to, you know, sets goals, achieve them, like that is crafting me as a person. And it's much more about that process of me being molded and shaped and realizing what's possible for me than it is ever about the end result or you know, how my body looks, looks at the end of the process. 

Natasha Wakefield 32:30

I couldn’t agree with you anymore and that's what we need to treat women is I think it's, it's easy to say that, but unfortunately, society kind of draws into us the importance of the way that we look and how to exercise, the whole reason we exercise but how good, how awesome do you feel when you set yourself the strength goal and you, you achieve it? 

Amber B 32:48 

Like you can, like take on the world. 

Natasha Wakefield 32:49 

It's amazing. It is absolutely. And how much confidence do you build in yourself and your capabilities? Yeah, rather than just losing 5lbs on the scale, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it's absolutely shouldn't be the sole reason why we do it. 

Amber B 33:04 

Yeah, it's so good. So last question for you, I'm curious. I find that there is often this tension about wanting to achieve results wanting to drive, wanting to push, wanting to reach for you know, whatever big goals it is that we're trying to achieve and yet having self compassion along a way of avoiding that all or nothing mentality of like I have to reach this goal or else I'm not worth anything. How do you find that balance between trying to achieve big big things and reaching for big goals but, but not getting into that all or nothing mentality of if I don't achieve that then I'm, I'm not worth anything. 

Natasha Wakefield 33:42 

Yeah, it's a big load question. The first thing I think everybody needs to understand is no matter what, you're wanting to achieve in life, you can fail, or you're just going to fail. So if we can go into any single thing that we're wanting to achieve or and by by failure. I mean things aren’t always going to go to plan. So you plan on doing XYZ, I'm telling you right now, it's not going to happen on one day and if you set this expectation for yourself, get into that all or nothing mentality where you need to do things perfectly. Then as soon as that doesn't work out, you're going to feel like you've failed and you'll give up. And that's what happens. People never achieve their goals. If you go into it going to know what there's gonna be days where I'm going to be really else you know I'm not going to be able to get to the gym. I'm probably not going to be able to hit my protein goals. All of that, then, that's cool. So you're, you've prepared yourself you're not going into it putting this expectation, this unrealistic expectation that you're going to be perfect. So that would be the first thing. The second thing, and this is really important is that it's going to take time. There is no rush. We've got years on this planet and it takes years to refine anything in life. And we can set an idea or a time frame in our minds where we feel like we should achieve XYZ and when we don't, we feel like we're not getting closer to that goal, when in fact it usually takes double the amount of time to achieve anything that we're wanting to than what we think it'll originally take. So there's no rush and it just goes back to once again I always think about how can I be 1% better today? How can I make one small step towards that end goal today? because ultimately it might seem like the tiniest thing, if you're you haven't worked out in years and you're so overwhelmed about starting working out again. Do you know what? just putting your gym clothes on your dressing table is, is that 1% closer you need to go to the gym, but that's that 1% closer. What can you do the next day? Can you go for a 10 minute walk? Awesome. Celebrate that win, over time you'll achieve that goal, but thinking that you need to go from zero to 100 overnight and feeling like you need to do it perfectly. It's going to be your downfall. 

Amber B 36:00 

Yeah, that's so good. That's awesome. Well, thanks. This has been so fun to be able to chat about mindset. I think it's such an important topic that not enough women spend enough time actually focusing on in their journey. So if someone want to connect with you, how can they find you? 

Natasha Wakefield 36:16 

Yeah, sure. So I'm, I'm on Instagram @girlfitmethod. I'm on TikTok @girlfitmethod1. I think someone had my, my business name and then I also have a podcast with The Girl Fit Method Podcast. 

Amber B 36:27 

Fantastic and we'll link that all up in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom and your knowledge with my audience, I really, really appreciate it. 

Natasha Wakefield 36:38 

My pleasure and have a great time. Thanks. 

Amber B 36:43 

I hope that you enjoyed that podcast episode with Natasha. Such a fantastic conversation around the importance of what you're telling yourself, the importance of what you believe is possible for you and how that really really does impact the results that you are getting in your journey. If you love this episode, I would be so grateful if you shared it with a friend and took the time to leave a rating and review on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you are listening. That is one of the cheapest and fastest ways you can say thank you for the free content that is put out on this podcast. So thank you for those of you who have taken the time to do that. It really, really does help me and it helps the podcast grow. That wraps up this episode of Biceps After Babies Radio. I'm Amber, now go out and be strong because remember my friend, you can do anything.  

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