247 – Upleveling Your Health

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Elizabeth: so you’ve outgrown drugstore, nail polish, you’ve got a stylist, now you drink wine that doesn’t come in a box. You fly first class when it matters, and you don’t have time for cheap clothes that fall apart, or relationships that drain you. So let me ask you this. Why are you still treating your health like it’s supposed to be cheap, easy, or something that you can figure out with a PDF and a 30 day challenge? If you’ve ever said, I know what to do, I just don’t do it. Or I should use the programs that I already bought. This episode is for you because you don’t have a discipline problem. You have a misalignment problem, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

So today I am talking about the invisible disconnect that so many women in midlife are living with. The gap between the life that you’ve built and the way that you’re still treating your [00:01:00] health, like a DIY project. This episode is a loving wake up call, and if it stings a little good, that means it’s working.

So stick with me because this might be the episode that changes how you really think about what you deserve.

Welcome to the Total Health and Midlife Podcast, the podcast for women over 40 who want peace with food, ease in their habits, and a body that they don’t have to fight with.

Hey there, and welcome to the Total Health and Midlife Podcast. I am your host, Elizabeth Sherman, and I am really super glad that you are here with me today. So this episode came out of a conversation that I had with one of my clients.

Her name is Kathy, and something she said just stopped me in my tracks. We were talking about how much she had invested in her business, coaching, training, mentorships, things like that. And then she said, I have spent thousands of dollars on my business without even blinking. [00:02:00] But when it comes to my health, I’ve always tried to figure it out on my own.

That hit me right in the gut because it’s not just Kathy. I have heard some version of that so many times from women who are brilliant, successful, discerning, and still treating their health like it’s some sort of weekend DIY project from Pinterest. So that’s what we’re talking about today, this strange little disconnect that happens in midlife.

You’ve upleveled everything, the wine, the skincare, the wardrobe. You’ve got a stylist for your hair, a landscaper for your yard, and you fly first class when it counts. And yet when it comes to your body, your energy, your mental clarity, you’re still cobbling things together from old diet books, from free workouts,

And vague advice from your friend’s cousin who sells supplements on Facebook. If [00:03:00] you’ve ever thought I know what to do, I just don’t do it, or I need to use what I already have bought. This episode is going to hit close to home because today I want to offer you a different way to think about your health.

One that actually fits the woman that you have become.

So let’s be honest, you have outgrown a lot of things at this point in your life. You’re not buying drugstore box color or cutting your own bangs in the bathroom anymore. You’ve got a stylist now, someone who knows your hair, your lifestyle, your vibe, and you’re not buying scratchy. Outta shape. Old Navy jeans that lose their shape after one wash.

You invest in clothes that actually fit your body, feel good to wear and last longer than a season. And wine. If it gives you a headache, it’s not worth drinking for you, you’ll spend a little bit more because you’ve learned that quality matters. This is the woman that [00:04:00] you have become. You’ve elevated every area of your life.

Your relationships, your standards, even your couch is nicer. Maybe you have a housekeeper, a landscaper, someone who helps with groceries. You’re not doing everything yourself anymore because you have learned that Just because you can doesn’t mean you should, except when it comes to your health. When it comes to your health, you’re still DIYing it.

You’re still saying things like, I know what to do. I just need to do it. I’ve already spent so much money on this stuff. I should use what I already have, or my personal favorite. I just need to get motivated. You would never say that about your taxes, your wardrobe, or your hair. You wouldn’t look at a pair of two tight jeans from 2007 and say, well, I already bought them.

I should try [00:05:00] harder to make them fit. You wouldn’t dig an old Revlon compact out of your bathroom drawer and say, well, this’ll do. But when it comes to your health, your energy, your sleep, your focus, your digestion. Your ability to move and feel comfortable in your skin. You’re still trying to piece together freebies, challenge groups, programs designed for 25 year olds, and diet rules that you absorbed from your mother’s Weight Watchers meetings in 1990.

That’s not how you treat anything else in your life. So why are you still doing it with your health? It’s not because you’re lazy or undisciplined. It’s not because you’re not trying hard enough either. It’s because we were taught to believe that our health should be easy, that we should be able to do it on our own, that it should come naturally, that if we just ate the right things [00:06:00] or moved a little bit more, everything would fall into place.

That being healthy was about looking good, not feeling good. We were taught that health was about willpower and waistlines, not sleep, or digestion or boundaries or energy or joy. We were sold the idea that health was about appearances, not capacity, that it was about shrinking, not expanding, and we were absolutely taught that it should be cheap.

Investing in our health was vain, and that anything more than a multivitamin and a salad is indulgent that we should be able to quote unquote just figure it out. But that story, that story is a lie, and it definitely doesn’t fit the woman who you are today.

So here’s what I wanna tell you. You don’t have a discipline problem. You have a misalignment problem. It’s [00:07:00] not that you’re not trying hard enough, it’s that you’re trying to follow systems that were never designed for a woman like you. You have outgrown the frameworks that you use to rely on. The food rules, the color coded containers, the 30 day challenges, the online programs that treat you like a blank slate instead of someone with decades of experience, someone who’s managed a household, built a career, raised kids, cared for aging parents, maybe all at once.

What you know about health is a patchwork, A mix of old diet advice, random tips from wellness influencers, and maybe a few things that actually worked when you were 32, but your body isn’t 32 anymore. Your life isn’t 32 anymore, and your standards sure as hell aren’t 32 anymore, either.

And yet. You’re still operating from the [00:08:00] same outdated manual, still measuring success by how good you were that day. Still thinking that motivation is the missing ingredient, still thinking that you should just be able to figure it out. So let me ask you something. If you are smart enough to lead a team, run a business, hold a family together, manage a household, and solve a thousand problems a day.

Why hasn’t that translated to your health? Why does this one area still feel stuck? Here’s the truth that no one talks about. Most health advice was built for general populations, and most of it was built for people who haven’t done what you’ve done, who haven’t lived your life, who aren’t carrying what you carry.

It was built for women who are still hustling for external approval, who still believe that shrinking is the goal. You’ve [00:09:00] outgrown that. So, of course it doesn’t work. It’s like trying to wear a dress you bought 15 years ago. It might still technically fit, but it doesn’t feel like you anymore. It rides up in weird places.

It pulls where it shouldn’t. It belongs to a version of you that doesn’t exist anymore. That’s how most of us are approaching health and midlife, squeezing ourselves into something that doesn’t fit and wondering why it feels uncomfortable. The truth is, if you really knew what to do in a way that actually fit who you are right now and the person that you’ve become, you would be doing it.

But most of what we think we know is built around rules, around restriction, around discipline and willpower, around fixing what’s wrong instead of building something strong that’s not health, that’s control. You’ve lived [00:10:00] long enough to know the difference. What you actually need isn’t more knowledge, not more techniques.

It’s a new framework, one that’s designed for a woman with your complexity, your priorities, your responsibilities, and your values. You need something that doesn’t just tell you what to do, but rather honors why it matters. That respects your lived experience, that understands that you don’t need to be pushed.

You need to be seen, Because the truth is, is that you don’t want six pack abs. I mean, hey, they would be nice, right? But you want energy, you want ease. You want confidence. When you walk into a room, you want to be able to eat a piece of cake without spiraling.

You wanna trust yourself. You wanna feel at home in your body again. And none of that is going to come from a checklist or a 90 day plan. It’s going to come from treating your health like what [00:11:00] it actually is the foundation of everything that you care about.

It’s not an extra, it’s not a side hustle. It’s not a problem to fix. Your health is what lets you enjoy the life that you’ve worked so hard to build, and it’s time for it to match the rest of your life.

So let me tell you about my client, Kathy, when she booked a consultation with me, she wasn’t new to self-improvement. She had read all the books. She had hired coaches, she had worked with mentors and spent tens of thousands of dollars easily on her professional development. She was successful, she was driven, she was curious.

She loved a good growth edge, but when it came to her health, that’s where things got a little bit fuzzy. She wasn’t in crisis. She wasn’t dealing with a scary diagnosis. She just felt off. Her sleep wasn’t great. Her energy dipped halfway through the day. [00:12:00] She wasn’t eating terribly, but she was grazing a lot, especially at night.

She described it as hovering in this weird space between fine and frustrated. Nothing terrible, but nothing great either. And somewhere in her mind, she had filed that under, this is just what life is like in midlife. But during our call, when I asked her what she really wanted, her whole posture change, her voice softened.

She said, I wanna feel like I’m taking care of myself on purpose. Like my choices reflect the kind of woman that I am. And that was it. That was the click. We talked through what that could look like, how it would feel to trust herself again, to move her body because she wanted to, not because she felt guilty to eat in a way that gave her energy instead of just checking a box.

And then she said something that stopped me in my tracks. She said, [00:13:00] I’ve spent more than $10,000 on business coaching without hesitation. I’ve never invested this intentionally in my health. She wasn’t saying it with guilt. She wasn’t beating herself up about it either. She was just seeing it for what it was for the first time.

And once she saw it, she couldn’t unsee it. She had spent years pouring time, money, and attention into becoming the best version of herself in every other area. Her leadership, her mindset, her relationships. But she still treated her health like a low priority side project.

That was the moment she gave herself permission to stop trying to piece things together to stop acting like her health should be free or easy, or something that she figures out. In her spare time, she stopped asking, can I afford this? And [00:14:00] started asking What would change if I stopped putting this off?

Because here’s the truth, Kathy is not the exception. She’s the mirror. Her story reflects something that I see every single day. Smart, capable women treating their health like an afterthought. Not because they don’t care, but because they were taught that their health should be convenient, quiet, cheap, uncomplicated.

But the woman she’s becoming, she knows better. She knows that being healthy isn’t about restriction or weight loss. It’s about capacity. It’s about showing up for her life with energy, clarity, and presence. It’s about being able to enjoy the things that she’s worked so hard for.

what if the problem hasn’t been you? What if the problem is that you’ve been trying to solve a high level, multi-dimensional, deeply personal [00:15:00] challenge with tools that were never designed for your life.

That’s not failure, that’s just misalignment. And once you shift that, everything else starts to feel different.

So let’s talk about what’s possible. What would it look like if your health actually matched the rest of your life? If your energy reflected the level of life that you’ve built, not just getting through the day, but actually enjoying it, waking up with clarity. Sleeping deeply, feeling steady and focused, not constantly wondering if you’ve forgotten something or fighting off a fog that you can’t quite name.

Imagine a version of you who moves with ease, not dragging yourself through punishing workouts, but feeling strong, capable, and proud of what your body can do. A version of you who eats in a way that feels both [00:16:00] satisfying and simple. You are not counting things or obsessing, you’re just nourishing yourself on purpose with ease.

What if confidence wasn’t a project that you had to work on, but a natural result of the way that you treat yourself? What if your health didn’t feel like a never ending to-do list or a minefield of shoulds, but instead felt like an extension of your values, like a curated, elevated experience that supported the life that you actually wanted to live. Because here’s what no one tells you. Sustainable health for a midlife woman doesn’t come from more restriction. It doesn’t come from willpower or motivation or trying to be more disciplined than you were last week.

It comes from choosing a different lens. It comes from working with someone who understands your complexity, not someone who hands you a [00:17:00] food log and a workout plan and wishes you luck. It’s not about giving up the things that you love. It’s about having a framework that helps you decide what’s worth it and what’s not.

It’s about making choices that feel aligned and not forced. It’s about trusting your own wisdom instead of outsourcing your health to the latest influencer trend. And when your health reflects your standards, your real standards, the ones that you’ve applied to every other part of your life, it changes how you feel in your body, but it also changes how you show up in your relationships, your work, your rest, and your fun.

It’s not about being perfect, it’s about building a life that feels as good as it looks like from the outside.

Now if this episode stirred something within you, if you found yourself [00:18:00] nodding along, recognizing those old beliefs or patterns, I wanna offer you a next step, something small and doable depending on where you are in your relationship with me and your health.

If you are new here, first of all. Welcome. I am so glad that you found your way to the Total Health and Midlife podcast, and I want to invite you to start with something simple and foundational, which is my free guide called The Eight Basic Habits That Healthy People Do. These are the exact habits that I work with my clients on, and they’re not flashy, they’re not complicated, but they are so super powerful,

If you spend any amount of time bouncing between diet plans or trying to figure out how to eat, move, or take care of yourself in a way that actually lasts these habits are your ground floor. Because if you can do these eight things consistently. You will never need another diet ever again. So you can get the [00:19:00] guide@elizabethsherman.com slash habits and the link will also be in the show notes.

Now, if you’ve been around here for a while, if you already have the eight basic habits guide, if you already know what’s in it and you’re still not doing them. If you’re nodding along and thinking, okay, this is me, Elizabeth. I’ve elevated everything else in my life, but this piece is still not fitting quite right.

Then I want to invite you to take a bold step. Book a free strategy call with me. I call it the, I know what to do, I’m just not doing it. Call because that’s what I hear from women over and over and over again and together we will unpack why. We’ll take a look at where the misalignment is, what’s keeping you stuck, and what would actually help you move forward in a way that fits the woman that you are today, not who you were 10 or 20 years ago.

There’s no pressure. It’s just a conversation, and it might be the most [00:20:00] important one you’ve had about your health in a really long time. You can book that@elizabethsherman.com slash consult, and that link is in the show notes too. Now, whether today’s your first episode or your 50th, I want you to know that this is powerful.

You can stop settling. You can treat your health with the same intention and discernment that you’ve brought to every other part of your life, and you deserve to.

You deserve to feel as good as the life that you’ve created. Truly. You do all of the care, all of the effort, all of the decisions that brought you to where you are now. None of that was meant to lead you to a place where you are just getting by. If this episode stirred something in you, if you found yourself thinking, wait a minute, I do this.

I’ve grown this too, that’s not an accident. That’s the beginning of a new standard. A [00:21:00] standard where your health isn’t treated like an afterthought, where you’re not just settling for fine and good enough. Where your energy, your confidence, your ability to feel at home in your body finally matches everything else that you’ve built in your life.

And look, I get that this might feel like a big shift, but you don’t have to do it all at once. You just have to decide that you’re no longer willing to do it the old way. That’s what Kathy did, that’s what I did, and that’s what’s possible for you too. If you know someone who needs to hear this message, someone who’s upleveled everything else but is still stuck in old health patterns, send this episode her way.

Text it to her, share it in the group chat. Trust me, she is not alone. And if you wanna keep this conversation going, come hang out with me on Instagram. I’m at elizabeth.sherman.coach. Tell me what landed. [00:22:00] Tell me what you’re done putting up with. I love hearing from you. My listeners. Thank you for being here today and I will see you next time.

Bye-bye.

Thank you for joining us on today’s episode. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by all the health advice out there and looking for something that’s straightforward, my eight basic habits that healthy people do, guide and checklist is just what you need. It breaks down essential habits into simple, actionable steps that you already know how to do.

By following these habits, you’ll set yourself on a path to better health, surpassing most people that you know. To get your free copy, just click the link in the show notes or go to elizabeth sherman.com/habits. It’s an easy start, but it could make all the difference in your health journey. Grab your guide today and take the first step towards a healthier you.