Getting to our ideal weight goal has always been a problem for many. Thankfully, people like Dr. Heather Denniston, a seasoned chiropractor with an additional certification as a Wellness Chiropractor, (CCWP), can equip us with the right knowledge and process to become healthy in life. Through online content, public speaking, and coaching, Dr. Denniston shares wellness, fitness, and nutrition advice for those looking for deeper change. In this episode, she shares her expertise to help us become fit by addressing our anxieties and gathering a support system. She also presents the importance of self-care and self-awareness in our road to wellness. Learn some of the best fitness tips you need in your journey and take a step towards your personal best in this episode.

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Erin Learns About Her Wellness “Why” with Dr. Heather Denniston

I have Dr. Heather Denniston with us. She’s been a friend of mine for a long time because of our kindred spirits. The truth is we haven’t been friends for that long, but I sense that we’re going to be seeing a lot more of each other in the future. She is a seasoned chiropractic doctor with an additional certification in Wellness Chiropractic. She has a wellness program called The Change Cave. She has this book that is amazing called The Three Day Reset Program. How did I do?

You did great. That was awesome.

I’ve invited Heather to keep adding her credentials because what she’s about to tell you, knowing this woman, has all been vetted and everything like that. If she says it, it’s true. Here’s what I want to know. You have a rock-solid brand when you go visit your website and your Instagram channel. Where can everybody find you?

It’s @WELLFITandFED.

If I go to WELLFITandFED, you have a rock-star following. There are lots of people, lots of social engagement and lots of community. I thought, “How did someone like this get this started?” You were a chiropractor at an office. How does one go from that to shazam? How do you do that?

I practiced in brick and mortar sense of the word for the past couple of years. I will tell you a story. A good friend, who’s a chiropractor, taught her kids when they were little. Her kids have a hard time expressing their feelings or understanding their feelings. She said, “When you pet a cat and you pet it the right way, it feels good. It feels good to you. It feels good to the cat. When you brush a cat the wrong way, it doesn’t feel good. You don’t feel good.” All of a sudden, my cat fur was running the wrong way. In the last couple of years of practice, it felt like things were shifting for me. I’ve learned over the years to really tune in to that. I think a lot of folks are running fast and so busy that the inner voice sometimes gets shoved down. The volume gets turned down and we don’t hear it.

Some of the greatest changes I’ve made in my life have come from listening to that and making that scary shift. I said, “I’m going to sell my practice.” My husband said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I’m going to go online and write stuff.” I jumped ship and I started writing. I realized very quickly I didn’t know what I was doing. I started attending some seminars on online partnerships, blogging and all of that. I felt like such a little baby. It took a lot of time to learn that stuff. It’s been a labor of love. I’ve absolutely been passionate and enjoyed it equally as much as I did the brick and mortar practice.

You’re doing a great job. I see you all the time online. You’re hiking and you’re eating well. You are your brand. You live it through consistently. You’re not this closet binge yucky eater. I’m not saying you don’t indulge. We have a mutual friend that for your health, you need to eat a certain way for your lifestyle and for your nervous system. If you don’t do that, it’s going against the grain. Would you agree that would be true for everybody?

Yes. I need to make two comments on that one. I am a binger. It’s a long-standing issue with me. It’s what got me into all of this in the first place. I don’t want to gloss over that. I’m definitely a clinical binger. It is an addiction. You never completely get over it. You learn to work with it and live with it. It’s a big part of why I’m passionate about what I do. A lot of us have these health and food behaviors that are very difficult to deal with. Yes, I would agree, Erin.

The bigger thing that I work with clients on bridging that transition is it’s not just about how I want my nervous system to work well, I want to be fit. If you are not optimizing your health, you are experiencing your life in a dimmer way. You are not seeing sunsets the same way. You are not interacting with your grandchildren in the same way. You are not tasting food in the same way. Your life experience is dimmer as a result of the choices that you make every single day regards to your wellness. That’s where I started. Most of us get, “I’d be healthier if I ate better.” Do you know that your life is different? Your whole experience, your energy that you are putting out and taking in is different. That’s the key to be aware of as well.

This is a two-parter. I’ve always appreciated when I’ve read your posts or videos or we’ve had conversations. You’re very outspoken. You are very transparent about any anxiety you could endure or have experienced, as well as chronic pain. I appreciate that. I do experience that also. Not as much as the chronic pain as I do the self-induced. I don’t know if it’s anxiety, but it feels like I’m getting a bear hug around my chest sometimes. It’s like I have a blood pressure cuff around my whole chest area. At first, I thought I needed to go to a cardiologist. I went to a cardiologist. It’s anxiety. I took some of those, “Swallow this and within an hour you’ll be Zen,” but the feeling didn’t subside. It didn’t go away. I think that it’s a mixture. I know it’s a mixture because I have met with a few doctors. I’m fine and I’m healthy, but I’m aware now. I appreciate it when somebody else who seemingly has it all together.

That’s the biggest mistake people make about me. They think I’m busy and they may misunderstand that this circus chaos is me having it all together. I don’t necessarily have anything together, but I’m also not winning all of it. That’s what I’ve noticed. Part one is let’s talk about anxiety and maybe that stems a lot with the bingeing. Part two of that is I know better. I know my health needs to be better, but I don’t think I care a lot about it. I care when I’m laying out flat or breathing into a paper bag. I’m laughing that it did happen to me one time, years ago. As an entrepreneur, as a mom, I was going through a divorce and not one thing I think causes any of this but the health, my fitness and my weight, I’ve made some good health changes but it’s never my priority. I wish I could change that but I can’t, not yet.

The anxiety piece, you and I had a very similar experience. I couldn’t get a full breath in. I had numbness and tingling in my fingers. I thought I was having a cardiac arrest. I realized that it is a form of anxiety. I thought anxiety was a symptom. Let’s figure out what’s beneath it. For a lot of folks, there are fear component beneath anxiety. We need to explore that. What I identified was I was an introvert living in an extrovert’s body. I was disrespecting that girl. I needed to connect with my introvert and say, “What do you need?” She spoke and she said, “You need more breaks. You need downtime.”

My fitness is my chance to process independently. That helps from a brain perspective. Anxiety is so common right now. My husband and I spent three months in Spain and coming back, it was like being hit in the face with a fire hose. The pace that we run and what we tried to do in a day is insane. It’s no wonder that anxiety is such a big issue. There are ways that we can deal with it. For many people, it’s ongoing management. It’s not a cure. There are things that we can address that, everything from supplementation to meditation, to exercise, to sleep and how we’re scheduling our day efficiencies and productivity. I still deal with it a lot, but I find having dug beneath the surface a little bit, when it shows up, I was like, “I know what part of you was about.” I can address that. Sometimes I have some breathing but for the most part, it is so much better.

The second part of the question is I work with a lot of executives, CEO type of women, high-paced women, entrepreneurial women, and the big thing is digging down to a wellness why. That sounds superfluous but the process is interesting. I’ll give you an example. I was working with a woman and she’s got 60 in a very fast-paced business. She said the same thing that you did. We were working together and I said, “We need to come up with a wellness why.” She thought it was a silly exercise. I said, “I want you to write a statement of why you want to be healthy.” She said, “Because it’s important,” I asked, “Why is it important?” We started to why it down. We kept saying, “Why?” We dug deeper. She said, “Because I want to be able to hang out with my grandkids.” “Why?” She said, “I don’t ever want to say no to an interaction or experience I can have with them because of my health.” We took that and said, “Let’s use that for when we’re setting strategy for your nutrition or your fitness. Let’s keep coming back to that. That will get you out of bed at 5:00 to get to workout. That will help you do a two-hour meal prep on a Sunday.” It’s tiny baby steps. This is a long game, not a 21-day or a 30-day. It’s small shifts sustained over time.

What do you think about over 40 crowd? We’re running around where our kids are. They’re in college or we don’t have kids. We have husbands. We have dogs. We have somebody. We have a goldfish. I have a very needy goldfish. We always have these things around us. If it’s not a living thing, it’s something that we’ve given so much energy that we make more important than us. What are our important things that the 40-plus-year-olds need to keep in mind with staying on track with wellness or getting on track? Even thinking, “There’s a track.” I’m plowing through life and I have no wellness why. I think that there are some things that we need to know over 40 that we need to keep in mind. Do you have any advice there from that?

Being Well And Fit: In becoming fit, it is ideal to surround yourself with a small team of wellness influencers that you trust and can keep going back to.

We are a unique group of women over 40 compared to women in their 20s and 30s. The wellness why is key. We’re not born experts in this. Surround yourself with a small team of wellness influencers that you trust and can keep going back to. That might be a physical therapist. It might be a chiropractor. It might be a naturopath. It might be a coworker who’s really got her act together and can be an accountability partner for you. Establish a team around you, a pit crew, who can help you because this is very tough to do on our own. We need people to be able to speak in, teach us and allow us to make little steps forward and support us along the way. In counseling, we talk about connecting with your inner child and have a conversation with her. I say connect with your septuagenarian. Sit down on a park bench. Have a freaking conversation with you at 70 or 80. Ask them what they want, what they need, how they want their life to look and work backward. It starts now.

She’s going to tell you to stay mobile. She’s going to tell you, “Don’t freak out about everything. Eat as well as we can.” The 80/20 rule, let’s be gentle and kind to ourselves. That’s one of the biggest things. The women in our group, we’re at our busiest. We have teens in college. It is an opportunity for us to be so hard on ourselves. I think one of the first steps is to start to turn inward with kindness and love. The final thing is understanding what true self-care is. There’s a miss-messaging with, “Go have a bubble bath and go have a massage.” That’s lovely. It’s not true self-care.

Somebody said to me, “I scheduled a self-care appointment to get my roots done.” I’m not saying, “Go to the salon to get yours done.” I don’t know what I feel about it but I’m saying I loved it because it is self-care to get my roots done. I’m always bashing myself as to why I need to fix something. I need to fix that. What is this self-care language we’re speaking?

It’s gone a little crazy. It is a false curtain in front of what actually the work we need to do. Getting in the bath and going to get your roots done, it feels good for about 25 minutes. Then you’re back to feeling too much sense of urgency, adrenal fatigue, not feeling good about yourself. True self-care is learning how to love yourself passionately. Learning how to be kind to yourself. Learning how to put yourself first for your own health and wellness needs. That is so you can be fully present for those that you love and being in very incredibly back and forth loving relationships, two or three of them. That is true self-care. Working on these things are lovely, but if we’re not attending to our hearts and we’re not attending to our deep inner sense, it’s going to feel like a short-term experience.

A quick drive through manicure at that point. You’re a mess, but you don’t have dark roots.

It’s scarier to start to attend to the things about how much do I love myself. Why are there things that I tell myself that aren’t true like, “I’m ugly or I’m fat,” or any of those things? “Why am I having those inner conversations?” Those are important questions to ask.

It’s like you’re reading my mind because I do want to talk about these inner conversations. I’m two-faced to myself. I’m very good at that devil-angel thing. I say I want to be thin and fit. I have no idea what my wellness why is, but I will find out. Within the past years, I lost 100 pounds and I gained 25 pounds back. There was no talk, no chatter, nothing going on, and then I was down to 100 pounds. I was a brat about it. When everybody said, “Do you want to go to a pool?” “Sure.” Nothing like, “Do I have a cute cover-up?” None of that. I was silent. It was beautiful. I must have hated it because I allowed 40 pounds. What I’m saying in my head is, “You’re an idiot.” I am kicking my ass in my head with talk. It’s unfortunate. I’ve started walking for four miles at a very fast pace. I hired a trainer to walk with me.

You’ve got your pit crew.

Mike Silva is definitely heading up the pit crew. He has me starting intermittent fasting. Sometimes, I want him to define that for me. I try to say acknowledge it all along the way. If I could shut her up in my head, I’ve tried to do the meditation where I go in and I hug her. I give her love. I want to give her the finger honestly. She’s an ass. She’s in the way and yet I must be listening to her because I might have released 10 of the 33 pounds. What do you do with her? I’m going to kill her and yet, in essence, I’m killing myself slowly because instead of being joyful, I’m like, “Everyone’s thinner than me.” Then the fat girl is jolly. I’m a bad episode of this is us without a great moment in the end. I’m the jolly without the shift at the end of it. Can you help me? What should we do about this?

This is a common issue. It’s often layers. One of the things I typically start with is the concept of the enabler and the encourager. When you are intermittent fasting, she knows you’re intermittent fasting, but she shows up at your door at 9:00 in the morning with donuts and coffee and says, “You can do this one time. It’s no big deal.” That’s your enabler. It’s almost worse than an inner bully because she’s subtle. She doesn’t have your best interest at heart. The encourager is the girl that goes, “Come on, Erin, you can do this. Let’s go for a walk. I’ll go with you. You are amazing. You are beautiful and perfect in any size.” What I coach people is to delineate between the two. Listen. They can’t both talk at the same time. We focus on encourager-type statements, that if we have to keep saying them out loud or we hear them in our head. We keep saying them and we keep practicing them. The other thing that I typically work with is I will say to look at her and go, “I’m doing it anyway. I hear you and I’m going for a walk anyway. I hear you. I’m going to go ahead and eat this one time. I made a mistake, but I’m back on.”

Being Well And Fit: Focusing on wellness strategies geared more on longevity and ultimate health and life experience means you’re not hyper-focusing on weight.

We have to acknowledge even the encourager if you side with the enabler.

It’s the other way around. If the enabler is super loud, say, “I hear you girl.” You’ve alluded to this. It may or may not work for everybody, but it’s a powerful conversation to have. Focus on building up that encourager’s voice and statements that she can say that drown out the other one. This is an ongoing process. It is more amplified for women than men. We have to keep working on the structure. If you have all wellness stuff built into your schedule and it’s a non-negotiable appointment with yourself, then whether the enabler is screaming at you or the encourager is encouraging you, you’re doing it anyway. You’ve got your walking buddy. You’re going to still go and you’re going to get the benefit from that. Even if you started out feeling, “Why do I have to do this?” You’re going to still be able to do non-negotiable appointments where you do it anyway and focused on encouraging type statements.

The enabler comes to the workouts. I don’t ask her to. She’s the one that is, “You need to tie your shoe. You need to stop. That left shoe is feeling tight.” The encourager and I get to the workout, the enabler flipping comes, which we don’t invite her. She’s like, “We’re not eating donuts at 9:00 AM. We’re on this walk. Let me try and zing it.” She untied my shoe. I stopped. There was a dog who needed me. I had to stop and pet the dog. I don’t like her at all.

She’s much louder in the absence of a solid wellness why. Getting back to doing that work where you understand, “Why am I deeply wanting to do this?” Once you identify that, her voice is weaker. It’s still there but weaker.

I’m afraid maybe if I was skinny, people wouldn’t like it.

That’s something that we have to identify as either weight or lack of fitness or even in my case, chronic pain, how is it sometimes somehow feeding you? One of the questions I ask is what would be expected of you in the absence of it? What would you lose if you suddenly were this other person? That’s a common thing to think. We have weird psychological ties sometimes with an easy example, but there are other things too. There are lots of different wellness examples for that.

When I was single, I was dating skinny and then I fell in love with Rudy. I think there’s some of that going on. You have your TV show. You want to start telling people, “I’m going to be on camera.” If you’re really skinny and you’re telling people you want to be on camera, I’m afraid people would say, “Who does she think she is? She’s almost 50.” You never wanted in the TV world where I grew up with Barbara Walters. Somebody has to be eventually the person that goes on camera, but the one that would self proclaim, “I should be on camera.” You thought they were conceited. The ones that did better were the producers, executive producers and directors behind the scenes. They made everybody look good but they weren’t on camera. I’m wondering, this is a little teeing us off to my wellness why. I’m heavier. I don’t know what my wellness why would be to keep me at my ideal goal weight. We’ll have to see about that. I can point out quickly what’s wrong. I’m not good at that.

I think most of us are. Erin, when I was about nine, I grew like a mastiff puppy. I grew six inches in a year. Mastiff puppies can’t do backhand springs on the beam. I was a competitive gymnast, so I quit. That was okay. What happened was my 3,000 calorie a day bingeing habits suddenly came out of the closet. I put tons of weight. By college, I was about 235 pounds. What I realized when I hit my bottom, it’s not about the weight. The weight is a symptom of underlying things. It was self-esteem. It was not knowing how to fuel my body, not understanding what food actually was, that it’s not a friend, that it is fuel. Understanding what fitness meant for a woman and how to work out to be truly fit. It is not because you want a bikini body. It was mindless. It was self-esteem. It was a lot of those things.

Once I connected to that instead of weight up or way down, that made a very big shift for me. When I was ten pounds up or ten pounds down, it didn’t matter as much because it’s like, “Am I well? Am I doing the things I need to be doing to be fit and healthy?” Those quite became a much less emotional conversation because fat up, fat down is highly emotional for women and for anybody. For us as women, those are triggers for us. That’s something that women can focus on too. Let’s get our mind off the scale and let’s work on what actual wellness stands for. What the foundational principles are there and how do we build on those. How are you feeling? How are you doing otherwise?

To your point, I am in a much better psychological. I’m wondering if I could have told me when I say this statement. If I could have explained this to me, would it have been received? Now that I’m in motion with it, even though it’s not happening or I’m not releasing that weight. I still have 25 pounds more to go to get back to where I was. I’m still beating myself up, but I feel a lot healthier mentally in motion to do something other than where I was the last holiday season, where I was talking about what I could have or should have. Being of all things I hate, which are, “It must be nice to have been 100 pounds down. I must fit into those skinny jeans.”

I’m the girl that used to have three sections in my closet. Now, I have two sections. My version of thin, medium and chunky. I’d have sections of it. Somebody told me, “Why don’t you throw out the chunky clothes and live with it?” I did that. I also have credit cards. I make decent money because I work really hard. If we all can go to a store and buy clothes, your size is too big, then start hanging that up. We’re all seeing where I’m going with that. Now, I’m in those regular clothes. They fit me but I’m feeling a little up over. I’m not rocking it anytime soon. I can’t be the only one out there that’s feeling this way. It has to be more than me.

It is still a lonely feeling that when you meet somebody else that looks like you or how about this? How about when you meet somebody that you don’t think you look like and they’re thinking they’re confiding in you saying, “If we could drop 50, you know what I mean?” At that point, I want to think I have glandular issues and lost 300 pounds. This is the new goal weight. There were tons of lies at that point. I can’t believe I’ve been brought into somebody’s company and yet they’re trying to be something but not cruel. I want to be thin enough so nobody from my past weight or my bigger size section in my closet brings me into a little come to meet. I don’t want to do that. No one talked to me about the wait, I get it.

It goes back to that strategy. If we’re focusing on wellness strategies that have more to do with longevity and ultimate health and life experience, then we aren’t hyper-focusing on the weight. That is super important and it’s a practice. It is a discipline. It takes a long time to shift to that. We still fall backward, but that’s a good aspiration to have for women out there who are struggling with that. Take 30 days and say to yourself, “I am going to focus on the encourager. I’m going to look at ways to stay healthy and not focus on my weight. I’m not going to get on the scale for 30 days. I’m going to see how I feel about myself at the end.” That’s something that is an easy starting place.

Tell everyone how they can get in touch with you. How can we be healthier and start working with you?

My online membership program is called The Change Cave. It’s a twelve-module foundational principle system that includes weekly mindsets and newscasts that come out with recipes and fitness tips. It includes lives and lots of expert wellness presenters who come and speak directly to The Change Cave. The biggest thing is this fierce community of wellness warriors who all connect together and support each other and their goals. If you want to reach out and have a conversation, I can be reached on Instagram, @WELLFITandFED, Facebook on WELLFITandFED or the website which is WELLFITandFED.com.

Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Important Links:

• The Change Cave
• The Three Day Reset Program
• @WELLFITandFED – Instagram
• WELLFITandFED – Facebook
• WELLFITandFED.com

About Dr. Heather Denniston

Dr. Denniston inspires passion and ignites the first steps in women ready to aspire to optimal health.

As a Corporate Wellness Strategist, the host and creator of The Junk You Should Know Show and the Developer of the online membership program The Change Cave, Dr. Denniston is continually creating practical and easily integrated strategies for transformational change.