Asking for a Friend - Health, Fitness & Personal Growth Tips for Women in Midlife

Ep.126 Tanja Shaw on Intuitive Eating, Mindset Shifts, and Overcoming Weight Loss Resistance

• Michele Henning Folan • Episode 126

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This week I am speaking to Tanja Shaw, a seasoned health and fitness coach, as she reveals her personal story from fitness enthusiast to advocate of holistic well-being. Her pivotal shift in 2014 toward intuitive eating and a mindset focus reshaped her coaching methodology, emphasizing healthier relationships with food and oneself. Tanja candidly shares how understanding the psychological aspects of health can lead to profound lifestyle changes, fostering self-care and sustainability in wellness.

Explore the power of mindset transformations as we tackle common obstacles like perfectionism, people-pleasing, and body image struggles. Tanja offers practical insights on achieving harmony between body acceptance and health aspirations, all while underscoring the significance of self-love and confidence. For those over 50 and post-menopausal women, we discuss the specific challenges of weight loss resistance and the interplay with factors such as stress, sleep, and insulin resistance, highlighting the role of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic in this nuanced landscape.

Tanja underscores the importance of variety in fitness and nutrition habits. From the balance of strength training and cardio to the art of personalizing dietary plans, learn how to craft a regimen that aligns with your unique lifestyle. Tanja shares experiences with virtual coaching and retreats, practical tips on hydration, flexibility in workouts, and sustaining an active life. Tune in to be inspired by Tanja Shaw’s expertise and her enthusiasm for guiding others on their journey toward health and vitality.

Tanja's tofu scramble:
Firm tofu broken up with a potato masher
A little bit of almond milk
Turmeric
Nutritional yeast
Salt

Inspirational book:
God on a Harley

Tanja Shaw coaching and podcast:
https://www.tanjashaw.com/





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Are you ready to reclaim your midlife body and health? I went through my own personal journey through menopause, the struggle with midsection weight gain, and feeling rundown. Faster Way, a transformative six-week group program, set me on the path to sustainable change. I'd love to work with you! Let me help you reach your health and fitness goals.
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Michele Folan:

Every woman has a story. When I work with clients, they each come to me with their why, their why, as to what motivated them to seek assistance in getting fit, nailing down their nutrition and focusing on longevity. Sometimes it's an upcoming trip, maybe it's a wedding, or they're now an empty nester, but for some women, they may have gone through a really rough patch in life. The common theme, however, is that they've put it off far too long and they're finally ready to make themselves a priority. When we take care of ourselves, it not only does amazing things for our physical and mental well-being, but it has a positive ripple effect on those around us. I'd like to share Faster Way with you. Let me show you what has been a game changer for me. Go to the show notes of this episode or reach out to me on social media Health, wellness, fitness and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, michelle Follin, and this is Asking for a Friend. One of my goals of the podcast is to support other women in their business ventures and passion projects. It is very important that we embrace the mantra that all boats rise in high tides. I've had other podcasters and health coaches on the show, because one size does not fit all, and I think it's nice to hear other points of view and approaches when it comes to health and fitness. There is such a great opportunity for us to learn and embrace new ideas to help us along the wellness path, and I know today's guests will definitely deliver, because the first step in any health journey starts with the right mindset.

Michele Folan:

Tanja Shaw is a health and fitness coach. While she does have some letters after her name, she is a nutritional therapy practitioner. She's a kinesiologist and high performance coach. Her ability to create a shift in her clients was learned through working with hundreds of men and women, as well as through her personal journey. Tanja founded Ascend Fitness and Lifestyle to help men and women eat better, move better and think better so that they can feel amazing. Progress at Ascend isn't about how many squats or pushups her clients can do. It's about how empowered and confident fitness makes her clients feel. Tanya also has a podcast called Fit and Vibrant. You, Tanja Shaw, welcome to Asking for a Friend. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to meet you and been following you for quite some time on social media, and I think we'll start there because I'm really curious, because I really don't know you a little bit more about your career path, where you're from, and I would love to know what propelled you to where you are today.

Tanja Shaw:

Awesome, thank you. So I live in Chilliwack, british Columbia, which is about an hour and a 15 minutes east of Vancouver in BC, just north of Seattle, about two and a half hours north of Seattle, right close to the Washington border, and I've actually lived in that area my whole life. But it was when I was a young kid. I just fell in love with fitness. I was never the fastest by any means, I was actually quite slow, but I started running. I played basketball, I started a sport called modern pentathlon in high school and I love the community. I love the camaraderie of people that I was training with. I loved especially howaderie of people that I was training with. I loved especially how fitness made me feel I felt more creative, more happy, more joyful, more present. I just really fell in love with that.

Tanja Shaw:

And then I found out that there was this thing called kinesiology, where you combine science with my love for fitness. And I did that in university and I never thought I'd be doing what I'm doing now. I thought that because I started my career as a personal trainer. I am a personal trainer, I did my degree in kinesiology, love the science, that sort of thing, and after, when I started working as a kinesiologist, I started coaching men and women in more of the personal training space, and I absolutely love that as well. I moved to Chilliwack, started my own business in 2007. I still have Ascend Fitness to date, and coaching men and women very personally is personal, and I quickly realized maybe not so quickly, but over a couple of years that the plan and the knowledge was helpful, but it wasn't what most people actually needed.

Tanja Shaw:

It's super awesome to have it and plans are important, but people were struggling with this rocky relationship with food or being wildly inconsistent. They would lose weight for a while, then gain it back. They would always talk about that one program. They did that one four-week program, six-week program where they lost weight, felt great, and now they fell back to old habits. And it was about 2014 when I actually had turned inwards on myself as well and called myself out on my own very disordered relationship with food because I was doing double workouts every day. I was tracking absolutely everything, weighing multiple times a day, defining my self-worth by the number of the scale, all that kind of disordered behaviors when it comes to food and weight loss, and really one of my big focuses in life was to always get to a smaller size, and I realized that I had an issue, I had a problem. This wasn't healthy and I found intuitive eating, I found that sort of other way of looking at things and I totally rejected it. I told myself that I would do that once I lost the weight, once I got control over my food, once I was consistent and got to my ideal body weight. And, yeah, at the same time, I'm coaching other people on this, trying to help them be healthy and here struggling myself as well.

Tanja Shaw:

So it was around 2014, 2015, where I really made a shift in my coaching practice. I actually made a shift in my coaching practice. I actually started a really small program at Ascend I think at the time it was called Fit and Lean because it was great for marketing, but it was really about the mindset, really about making people actually be consistent, because, yes, we want to be fit and lean, but you can do it in lots of different ways and lots of terrible ways to do it as well, but ultimately, we need to be consistent for the longterm and how you think really really matters. And so I dove really into the mindset piece. Now I coach in the online space women to really help. My clients have been struggling with weight and diets for years, decades, to overcome that rocky relationship with food, to get to the root cause of their weight loss struggles, so they can just really feel good in their body and feel good in life. And along that way I also realized that I got a little bit too much into the mindset piece and a lot of my women were doing well mindset-wise but still were having a hard time getting results. And so then I dove a bit back deeper into the body science side of things to find out so what is going on with hormones and gut health and things like that, to mineral balance to help support and that. So I mean I do a lot of.

Tanja Shaw:

I love learning. I think when you learn new things it keeps it fresh for us too as coaches, because doing the same thing for you know, for 20 years can be a little bit repetitive. So I think it's really, I mean it's fun to learn, and so I just I'm fascinated with the human body and fascinated with psychology. I by no means know like everything, and in fact the more you know, the more you realize you don't know, right, but it's fun, right, it's really exciting and I'm just delighted. I get to learn and build programs and coach people and it's been quite the journey and alongside I'm still a work in progress. I haven't arrived at this perfect mindset or anything like that. There is no arriving, it's something I still work on. But I've come a long way and I'm proud of that and I'm happy I get to help the women in the way that I do.

Michele Folan:

First of all, I appreciate your vulnerability in mentioning that you too even struggle with some of that crap.

Michele Folan:

I will say that diet culture has thrown at us and just having to kind of overcome some of that, because we often look at that pair of jeans maybe that's in the closet that we've hung on to that we may never fit into them again and why do we necessarily have to torture ourselves to be that one size and that's really one of the things I wanted to talk to you about, tanya is the mindset, the foundation, and you did talk about that, how that was.

Michele Folan:

One thing that you really learned was you needed to get your clients to a place where they could be successful, because there is no six-week diet out there that is going to be successful in the long term. And so you kind of got to get clients buckled up. You know right. You got to get them in the right state of mind to say you may not see a lot of results in four or five, six weeks. It's going to be longer than that. So give me a sense of how you get your clients past some of those preconceived ideas, not just about themselves, but about diet culture.

Tanja Shaw:

Yeah, it's well, there is no one size fits all approach. I'm very happy and very fortunate. A lot of my clients find me after listening to the podcast for a long time or they hear me on another podcast and when I say, resonate, so they kind of listen to me long enough that a lot of what I say kind of sinks in a little bit and they can kind of like. So I have a bit of a leg up there. I think it's a lot harder when you take someone who is, you know, really hardcore into like wanting to get results for the that vacation to Mexico, and then here I am telling you something different. But I do think that you have to like, you have to fundamentally also be kind of ready for it, because most of the women I work with they have done so many diets in the past, they've tried so many times in the past. They just realized like yes, I wish it would work. Like, just like how I rejected intuitive eating when I first found it. I'm like I'll do that when I lose the weight. Or we say like I'll work on the mindset piece when I lose the weight. So I think somehow you need to be a little bit ready for it as well. You need to be a little bit ready for it as well. You need to be recognizing that this is something that we actually have to work on, and I think right now there's a lot more of that conversation in social media and just in society in general about the importance of mindset. I don't think mindset's everything. You can have the best mindset in the world and still do a crappy program and not get results and feel pretty crappy, but mindset is really important. But mindset really is the set of beliefs, the thoughts, the ideas that we have about something, and I think it's best to start to know what you want and then you start to break down. The mindset is not just one thing, it's a whole set of different beliefs and over time, what happens is you have a goal, you have something you want to achieve, and then you realize well, here's my sticking point I constantly self sabotage. And then you realize that that's probably because, somewhat because of how you're thinking, and then so you can kind of determine, like, what are the thoughts, what are the mindsets that you might have that are not going to be helpful? And so, instead of having this generic like diet culture, anti-diet culture mindset. I think it's really about figuring out specifically for you and there's lots of different ways to do that Like. I think coaching can be really helpful to start to determine, because when you're always thinking something, you don't realize that there is another option, until someone points it out to you or someone reflects back at you and then you realize that I mean, you don't know what, you don't know it just it just it just is just, it's how you operate. I think being like listening to other podcasts, listening to yeah, I do group coaching as well Listening to someone else speak, can be really helpful, because sometimes someone will say something and then you'll kind of reflect on yourself and realize that there's something going on.

Tanja Shaw:

Then there's like very kind of common mindset shifts that we need to make. For example, most people who struggle with food, in my experience, have a tendency to be perfectionists and have a tendency for people pleasing. So there's certain mindset traits that kind of come along with perfectionism and people pleasing that need to be broken down, and so it's a bit of a process, because there's not just one thing that's going to fix all of it, but this is constant, like challenging your thoughts and being aware of the thoughts that you're thinking, which is actually, I mean, that's the kind of the first step is just to become aware of the thoughts that you're thinking and so you can start to challenge those. But it's fascinating, I mean, what you said there about having this size of jeans that you want to fit into. I'm not saying you can't, like you absolutely can, and for some person maybe that's what they want, and who am I to say that that's okay or not okay, like that's their choice, they can do. You know that's awesome and I'm there to support and celebrate and encourage somebody.

Tanja Shaw:

But it's also good to ask or ask these questions for yourself, for example, like how is life different if I fit into a size four or a size six or a size eight? Like, why is that important to me? And there's definitely a health perspective. Like I think that sometimes we like to look at things in sort of as black or white way of thinking, where it's either body acceptance and, just like you know, be whatever, or you have to, like die yourself down and be super restrictive and obsessive, and I don't think either has to be the answer, but you can ask yourself. So, like how is life different? Do I feel more confident, to feel happier, and why do I think that that's going to make me feel happy? If your goal is happiness or confidence, you can work on happiness and confidence, and quite often what happens is when you work on happiness and confidence, your relationship with food changes. You probably eat more for hunger and satiety and you might just get to your goal weight anyway.

Michele Folan:

Well, and some of it is the self-love piece. I know there are a lot of nutrition coaches out there. They talk about accepting your body and I think you can still accept your body where you are at that moment, because that's self-love, and still have health goals.

Tanja Shaw:

A hundred percent. I love that you said that, because they're not two competing ideas. A hundred percent. I love that you said that, because they're not two competing ideas. They're very complimentary. In fact, when you accept yourself or you love yourself, or whatever you want to call it, sometimes love versus acceptance is it feels different too much. Maybe it's respecting yourself, or when you have that, you come at things from a place of more like you're doing it from a place of love versus I'm not enough the way I am and therefore I'm going to like hate myself into a better body. It really does change and it's not always easy and it's not like you're going to like feel love every single day or every single moment of your, of your life. But I think that's you're absolutely right.

Michele Folan:

It's they're not contradictory ideas at all, and I, the way I looked at it too. If you, if you want to approach your weight loss journey in a really healthy manner, think of it as starting from the inside out, so do the stuff that you know is going to help your inside. It's about really looking at the long-term impact of making these changes, and I tell my clients, if you start thinking about how this is going to affect your insides, your outsides will start to reflect those positive changes that you've made. So, yes, we want to fit in the jeans or we want to look great in the dress for the son's wedding. Those are all very important goals and I get that, but I think, if we focus on the bigger picture of where do we want to be 20, 30 years from now, totally Right, yeah, and that's actually been a big wake up call for me too.

Tanja Shaw:

Even recently, I've changed my I know we're going to talk more of like the nuances of how I do things, but I've changed my workouts a fair bit in the last little while because I recognize like right now there's a huge push about weight training and strength training, which is amazing.

Tanja Shaw:

I love that. But I think what's missing from the conversation is joint health, and I see a lot of people who are lifting probably heavier than they should from their actual functional movement perspective and sacrificing like, yes, you might get strong muscles for a little while, but what are you actually going to do in terms of like that longevity piece? So for myself, I've really been thinking about that a lot more, just even in the physical side of things, like I want my body to last and, like you said, there too, it's really about playing the long game, yeah, which I think also alleviates a lot of pressure that we can put on ourselves, recognizing that it's not really about what you do in the next week or six weeks or 21 days, it's really about what you do in the next 30 years. That could be really helpful.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, you know I'm 60. And so, you know, when I talk to my friends, you know many of them are having grandchildren right now, and I say, well, don't you want to be healthy for those grandchildren so you can play with them on the floor and be there at graduation and all of those things? And to me, that's probably one of my biggest motivations is I want to be around and I don't want to be in a wheelchair and I don't want someone to have to think for me, and so you know, that's those are my motivations. But anyway, I want to ask you though, because most of my listeners are probably 50 plus I'm guessing maybe 45 plus. There's a term and I may have read this on one of your social media posts or maybe on your website about weight loss resistance, especially after menopause. How can you get patients to, I guess, be fat burners at a more advanced age?

Tanja Shaw:

yeah, and that's going to depend on a lot of different things. So with my clients I like sometimes, honestly it's as simple, michelle, as honesty. There are women who are doing everything right and or they're not doing everything right. If you're doing everything right, you're not getting results. You're not doing everything right. So there are some who are just not following the basic principles. I know like this is can be kind of hard. This is where you really gotta be honest with yourself, because that does actually happen, where you say you're, we're just so good at overestimating or underestimating how much we eat and overestimating how much we move, like we really are good at that. So that's one, uh, one big thing of it. And then, above and beyond that, sometimes it's consistency over the long term.

Tanja Shaw:

Uh, for a lot of women, sometimes there's hormonal things going on, like a thyroid function is really important, and thyroid function isn't just about being hypothyroid from a clinical perspective or how you get isos with your physician, but you can just have a slight of thyroid. That could be a big part of it too. Stress can be a huge part. Stress also, as we know, doesn't really help us make better choices more often, and that could be a big part. There's sleep, there's movement, but often we're just not following the basic principles consistently, like we're not as active. There's a huge change that happens when you just start walking more often, making sure you have enough protein. Protein is going to help for muscle sparing, but not only that, but you're also going to be more satiated and you actually burn more calories with protein, which I know you know and you've probably talked about lots on your podcast. But there's some really really simple things you can do. And then, beyond that, sometimes it's looking at things like your gut health. Sometimes it's looking at just like what's going on with your body from a more like looking at the labs a little bit deeper, but honestly, a lot of it is going to come down to movement, like how much you're moving your body. I know it sounds so simple making sure you're having enough protein.

Tanja Shaw:

Your carb intake can kind of differ depending on what your goals are, what your activity levels are, whether you're struggling with any insulin resistance, like that's another thing that can come up quite often for weight loss resistance. But a big part is just the willingness to look at our habits and be honest with ourselves. I wish there was some magic thing that we could just do. And it's just this one little thing. Look at the women who say they can't lose weight but then go on a Zempik and lose weight. Why do they lose weight? Because they're obviously eating less. Like that's what the report and I guarantee that, even if you think you're like not eating much or can't lose weight, if you were tied up to a tree for a long time and not working on any food you'd lose weight. So it's possible.

Tanja Shaw:

We got to kind of just look at what we're actually doing with honesty and be consistent with that. And then sometimes too, we do things like we go into calorie deficit for too long and what usually happens with that is we upregulate our hunger signals so we tend to eat more, or we also downregulate how much we move. Like just your spontaneous movement seems to go down when you go into too much of a calorie deficit. So it's looking at those things, but it's honestly. Weight loss can be pretty simple. It can take time, like I know we wish it was as fast as it was in your twenties and thirties. It can take some time, but it really is a lot of being consistent over the longterm and the good news that there's so many different methods and tools and plans and programs you can choose that works for your lifestyle, so that you can be consistent.

Michele Folan:

Have you had clients that have been on one of the GLP-1 drugs? Yep, yeah, and I know what my approach is with those clients, because I've had clients who have been on them and then gained their weight back. And then I have some clients right now that are currently on them, and I like that because I want to be able to work with them while they're on it so we can spare their muscle and get them eating enough protein so they don't have sarcopenia. What are you doing for those patients or clients, patients, clients, my clients yes, a big part just like any.

Tanja Shaw:

So same sort of thing. The basic principles still apply. Having enough quick protein, working on your strength training that sort of thing is still going to be really important. What I found is that people can still gain weight on GLP-1, ozepic if you try hard enough, just like people can still gain weight after having gastric bypass surgery, everything else because it still comes down to fundamental habits.

Tanja Shaw:

If your eating was completely emotional before, a lot of the cravings do tend to go away with drugs like that, but it's still possible to override that if you really try.

Tanja Shaw:

I think a big part of it is still the basics. It's still working on the mindset, it's still working on habits, it's still working on how you speak to yourself, your identity, all that sort of thing as well. But I'm actually pretty excited with the possibility that some of these drugs are going to offer people, because, I mean, one standpoint is like, well, it's a big bad pharma and we should do everything drug-free. We have not done that really well as a population and if there's something that's coming along that can really help people get a leg up on how they feel and what life could be like when they lose weight A lot of people have struggled for so many various reasons and so many different things. I don't think that's a bad thing. I think it's a great thing, and if we can embrace that and use it as one tool to help people become a healthier version of themselves, I think that's amazing.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, I launched. I worked for the company who had the very first GLP-1. Back in 2005. And it was very exciting Because we truly were educating people, the medical community, on a new molecule and a whole new way of treating type 2 diabetes. And now hearing all the other things besides weight loss and we knew it was. We knew it was help with weight loss back then, but that there's GLP-1 receptors all over the body and in the brain and some of the ideas that could have a positive effect on longevity with the brain and I mean there's a lot we don't know yet but super exciting, totally. It's pretty it's.

Tanja Shaw:

It is exciting and things like what I've heard lots of people both like from listening to, like the studies and or some other podcasts, and also with my personal experience, a lot of people who are taking things like Ozempic are now like they're not drinking anymore and there's a desire to do those kinds of behaviors or just addictive behaviors. It's also going down. It's also super cool and, yeah, like I think that we can be short-sighted and just think that everything should be done you know, quote, unquote, naturally or you know that drugs are cheating in some way.

Michele Folan:

I don't know what other kind of words we can use for that, but I think it's just a great tool that, for a lot of people, can be really, really helpful, yeah, and not to belabor this topic too much, but I do want to say that the frustration comes that when people do lose the weight and they gain it back, people do lose the weight and they gain it back. They're not gaining back the muscle they lost, they're gaining back fat, and that's where then we're having. People are behind the eight ball then, and so I think the more we talk about it to make people aware because not everyone's getting that education at their doctor's office, sure.

Tanja Shaw:

You know, and that makes a lot of sense, Just like again, just like gastric bypass surgery. There's people who they lose weight initially and then, unless you work on the actual lifestyle piece, it's not a quick fix, it's not a permanent fix. You absolutely have to do, or I would like you to do, the other work as well.

Michele Folan:

Right, exactly All right. I am kind of curious what you do. What's Tanya's day look like and what does your own diet and workout schedule look?

Tanja Shaw:

like. So I ebb and flow. I never attach myself to one specific plan or protocol. It depends on the season, depends on how I'm feeling, depends on lots of different things. I love variety. I really do. My workouts are going to change depending on the season.

Tanja Shaw:

I pretty much have a non-negotiable where I strength train at least twice a week, although this last month that's not been like that at all. I've been doing lots of multi-day hiking adventures and just has not been practical. But generally for my workouts I strength train two to three times a week. I do full body exercises. Sometimes I change it up every single time I go. Sometimes I follow a great many programs and I go for longer and just track things for a while and work on, like improving my strength. I think that's awesome. But I also love the variety. I love doing things like that too, and I try to keep that a bit of a base to keep my strength up.

Tanja Shaw:

I'm usually at the gym for about an hour or so. I do some mobility first. I am really focusing on mobility right now. So there's some stretching most days of the week, ideally like foam rolling and all that kind of stuff too. It's just so important to keep your mobility up.

Tanja Shaw:

I walk most days the summer a little bit less because of the heat and just because my son's off of school, and just a little bit different right now. But generally I walk at least five to seven kilometers a day and I also do cardio a couple of times a week. So right now I'm not running because of my knees are not super happy, but usually it's hiking. I live in a place where there's lots of hikes. We can do that. A couple of times a week. I'm riding my bike. When the winter comes again, if I'm still not running, I'll probably do some just a little bit at the gym as well.

Tanja Shaw:

I think right now there's a really big push away from cardio, which is nice in some ways, because I think before I was just going to ask you, yeah, so there was a big push. Before, like it was always about cardio, cardio, cardio, and now we're recognizing that it's not as like it's, it's good to have, but that strength and walking can be wonderful. So I think that gives a lot of freedom. But it kind of depends on what you want to do, because for me, like I have totally, I fell into that for a little while, but I'm like but realistically like I'm going to go on a seven day backpacking trip next week. I'm going to go on a seven-day backpacking trip next week. You freaking need cardio. For me, it makes a lot of sense. I do think that cardio is. I think we can sometimes swing too far the other way too.

Tanja Shaw:

I think cardio is really important. I think getting a heart rate up is important, but I'm glad that we're having some flexibility now. It doesn't have to look like spending hours and hours on the treadmill. You can do HIIT workouts, you can do longer endurance training as well, which is totally fine. I think it really depends on what you like as well. There could be the best ideal way to work out, but at the same time, it has to work out for your real life. I love hiking, I love riding my bike, I love if my knees feel better soon I'm going to work on that now. I love running and so I still see there being. It comes down to the individual, what you like and also if there's sometimes reasons to back off a little bit. So while I love, like I said, the de-emphasizing of cardio, I still think it's also really important to keep your heart rate up and to keep your cardiovascular fitness up. So generally that's what I do for exercise.

Tanja Shaw:

I'm pretty active, I live an active lifestyle. I have a treadmill desk behind me that I often just walk on while I work things like that. And then, food-wise, sleep is important. I go to bed pretty early. I'm an early riser as well. What time do you go to bed? Oh, generally by nine I am like yeah, it's. And then up, usually around between five and six. Again, it's the summer right now. I've been on vacation a lot, so it's a little bit different.

Tanja Shaw:

And then for food, I phase in and out of tracking. I used to track relentlessly and I didn't track for a long time because I just went through that swing of just recognizing. I had a bit of an issue with it. And now I'm back to I phase in and out, kind of depending on if I need to kind of just tighten things up a little bit. I don't think it has to be something that we need to do for the rest of our lives, but I do think it's a great tool to bring in once in a while. So currently I'm tracking when I'm home I don't track when I'm away and generally just focusing on adequate protein and looking at fiber and then just keeping tabs on what my caloric intake is and then I weigh myself regularly just to see if I'm gaining, losing, maintaining from there. So I keep it pretty simple. I think if you were to track, I mean you can track all your. I mean if you track on an app, you're going to look at all your macros anyway. You can't track without looking at your macros. But I think focusing on adequate protein, fiber and then just general calories is a good way to start.

Tanja Shaw:

There are people who are going to promote really low carb, really high fat or vice versa. I think it depends on the person. It depends on what you want to be consistent with. Some people love oatmeal, some people love bacon and avocado. I don't know. It doesn't seem to matter too much. What matters more is what you're going to be consistent with. So I find, um, when I fill up with protein, like most people, um, you just feel more satiated, like you feel a lot better and that's been yeah, it's been pretty good. The last couple days I've had a bit of a um gi thing going on, so I haven't eaten a whole lot, but, um, when I'm, when I'm on, I will stay focused. Stay focused on that. Yeah, I keep it pretty simple, though I I think that, yeah, I also track my habits. Right now, I have a couple of habits that I'm working on, like you know, just my mobility and strength workouts and things like that. And, yeah, keep it, keep it Okay.

Michele Folan:

So back to your protein. How many grams of protein do you try to get a day?

Tanja Shaw:

Oh, it varies, I'd say, between about a hundred and I mean on a low day, about 100. Like yesterday, I didn't eat a lot, so it was probably about that to 150 is kind of like the range.

Tanja Shaw:

I go All right. So I like the idea of, let's say, floating right now it's kind of like 0.7 to 1 gram of pound of ideal body weight, like the ideal body weight is the part that some people forget about. Not necessarily occur, but that's a pretty good place, and sometimes I've been incorporating a lot more plant-based proteins to my diet as well. I think there's a big in the functional health space. It tends to be very kind of not quite anti-vegan but very anti-vegetarian that meat's so important for us. I think that as humans, I think meat can be wonderful, but I do think that from the health of really the population and the planet, I think having more plant-based protein can be really awesome as well.

Tanja Shaw:

I don't think that there is. We have this idea that we should all eat. I don't want to get a little bit off track here, but there's this idea that we all need 150 grams of protein or so much protein and that we should all eat like. I don't want to get a little bit off track here, but there's this idea that we all need like 150 grams of protein or so much protein and that we should all have like properly prepared, you know, ethically raised animals to do it, but it's just not realistic that we can all do it like that. So I think having some plant-based proteins can be really great. So I like I mean I like variety, I like a lot of things.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, I think it's good to mix it up. I do a vegan protein powder but I eat meat, I love bacon. I mean I try to get it all in there. You know, edamame is great Totally.

Tanja Shaw:

I think we can get very dogmatic when it comes to certain foods and there are certain you know kind of camps out there that are very like. Again, like soy is the devil and soy is awful. I'm like well. But then you look at the populations in the world that have a lot of like the highest longevity and health and a lot of them eat a lot of soy.

Michele Folan:

So yeah, you know I have to. I have to ask you about soy, because my husband he's trying to convince me that he knows how to make tofu, oh dear. And I look at it, I touch it and I go ugh, I can't. So I'm not there yet on the tofu.

Tanja Shaw:

Yeah, I'm not the person to talk to about making tofu. I'm not great at it. They actually have a cooking class in my community once a month that teaches about plant based cooking, and I think the one in September is going to be on tofu, so I'd like to go there and learn more about it. I've had the best luck. Will you report back?

Tanja Shaw:

Yeah, let me know, I've had the best luck, though, with scrambled tofu. If you take firm tofu, I think it was firm, not extra firm and then I just use a potato masher and I mix in a little bit of almond milk, a little bit of almond milk, a little bit of turmeric, nutritional yeast, salt, and it makes it like scrambled eggs, and that I find the most. It actually kind of like looks, and I mean it doesn't quite taste like scrambled eggs, let's be honest, but just like cauliflower rice doesn't taste like rice, but it's still good.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, okay, all right, that's I've had the best luck with All right. Oh, I'll. I'll put that in the show notes. Write down Tanya's scrambled tofu recipe. Oh Lord, all right. So you do count macros, but you don't like weigh your food every day, and I'm kind of there too.

Tanja Shaw:

Yeah, if I'm counting, like if I'm tracking, I'll weigh. I it's really simple to have a food scale out and just sort of tear it and put your food in a bowl. Sometimes I just like the structure like that, sometimes I don't. It just works. And this is where I think we sometimes get caught up with the thing. Whether it's journaling or habit tracking or counting your macros or not counting macros, we think that that's the goal and that's not the goal.

Tanja Shaw:

The goal is for you to be a fit, vibrant, healthy person and to like feel good, and so there's so many different ways to get there. Like there are people who are plant-based, there are people who are higher protein, like you know kind of paleo-based type eating styles. There are people who count macros or people who, like you know the coaches that will hang their or plant their flag on the idea that we I don't make you count like cause, counting's like terrible or counting's like who has time for that. It's like there's lots of different tools. Some people some of my clients are very analytical. They love looking at all the data. Some people don't. They just want to know that they need to eat certain and everyone has their own bandwidths and kind of abilities to do different things in their life too. So okay.

Michele Folan:

What about water? How much water do you drink a day?

Tanja Shaw:

Oh, I don't even know, but lots right now. I usually have a big jar beside me with a big straw.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, it's so obviously our listeners can't see that it's like a freaking huge mason jar which has got a straw in it.

Tanja Shaw:

Yeah, it's the big mason jars. And the cool thing with these mason jars you can actually buy on Amazon tops for them so you can put a straw in them. And that way I have a cat who likes to put his paw into my water, so it's nice to have a top sometimes or to prevent spills. So if I'm at home I usually have one of those going on. But I would say probably about I don't know three liters a day ish.

Tanja Shaw:

I never track my water because I just I never. There's been a few times where I might've not drinking enough, like rarely. Like our last backpacking trip I did probably didn't drink enough water, but that meant I didn't have to go pee in the middle of the night, so it was kind of good for me. But yeah, one of the habits I have is first thing in the morning when I wake up, before anything else goes into my mouth, I have a big glass of water, and that's nothing I force myself to do. It's just that when you do it often enough, it's like brushing your teeth you can't go to bed without your teeth brushed.

Michele Folan:

Yeah, so a couple of things there. With my clients, they'll I'll, you know we really try to get them to drink more water, and the first comment I get is oh, I had to get up twice in the middle of the night last night, you know. So I know that that's a problem. But one thing that I've started doing, and this I started doing this maybe three or four months ago, but I started putting a good pinch of sea salt in my water in the morning and I'll tell you, it really has made a huge difference. So I feel so much better.

Tanja Shaw:

I do that usually in the summertime, when I sweat a lot more, I'll put a pinch of sea salt, because it's a great electrolyte. I also carry always sea salt in a little like pill container when I go hiking, because it's great for electrolytes and it's way cheaper than like the other stuff out there too. Not doesn't taste as good, but really helpful for that. And in regards to going pee in the middle of the night, I learned this actually andrew huberman uh, the human lab had a really good podcast on water and I think it was from this one, but he said that I don't know where this came from.

Tanja Shaw:

But if you drink more your water within the first 10 hours of waking you like, that's where it's the most important, so you can kind of try to get it in there and then you can kind of just not drink as much water towards the later part of your day. And that could be helpful because then you don't have to go pee so often and also it's a little bit of a just getting used to it. Like, I actually rarely go pee in the middle of the night. I usually go pee in the middle of the night. I usually go pee in the middle of the night, when I go, when I'm in a tent, but probably because I wake up and I'm like, then I think about having to go pee, but usually I don't, I don't. I drink a lot of water.

Michele Folan:

I would love to know how you work with your clients, and you said you do. You do some virtual as well, right?

Tanja Shaw:

Yeah, so I do. I mean, at Ascend we have a personal training studio, so that's mostly the fitness focus, although we do some nutrition coaching there too. But yeah, I do virtual coaching mostly, whether we do lab testing or the mindset coaching that I program as a hybrid between group coaching and then one-on-one as well. Yeah, so it's kind of the beauty of having Zoom and having that ability, but I love also in person. I'm actually hosting my first retreat this October and so I have a couple of clients coming up, for I have a small retreat on a little island on the just off of Vancouver, so it'll be lovely.

Michele Folan:

Oh nice, oh, good luck with that. That sounds awesome, thank you. Oh nice, oh, oh, good luck with that. That sounds awesome, thank you. And then about your podcast you have a podcast called Fit and Vibrant You. I would encourage everybody to check it out. You've been doing the podcast since 2015. Yeah, I am like blown away.

Tanja Shaw:

Nine years, that's a long time years, it's a long time and it's funny. You think that at some point you like you run out of things to say, but you don't. I did do a couple of repeat episodes, like I just took them from the vault and re-released them this summer because I was taking a bit of time off. But no, it's um, there's lots to talk about and that's, that's consistency Sometimes. Yeah, it's been good, I just keep giving it.

Michele Folan:

That's great. And then I would want to know one of your own personal pillars of self-care.

Tanja Shaw:

Oh, personal pillars of self-care. That's a really good question. My definition from self-care has changed a lot in the last little bit. I did a podcast. Actually I read a book called God on a Harley and there was this one quote of the book about how he was talking about being a character of the book and how she thought she was taking care of herself because she worked out, she ate pretty well and all these kind of things and that sounded like me.

Tanja Shaw:

I'm like, I take care of myself, I work out, I walk every day, I take some time off, I sleep well. I think self-care really does. For me has been realizing it comes down to how I treat myself and how I speak to myself, because sometimes we I'm not really that mean to myself but there are sort of subtleties of judgment or it's that and really honoring my desires, like this. Last three months I've taken a lot of time off and I'm just recognizing that going forward, self-care for me is going to mean actually having routines and rituals of rest and adventures and things that really light me up on a regular basis. So yeah, it's changed a little bit for me and I'm still sort of working out what that looks like, but I think a lot of it is, I think, stepping out of just like the basics of exercise and eating and really about what we need to really feel fully alive and fully, whole.

Michele Folan:

I love that. Tanya, yeah, thank you. Yeah, I really like that. I think that would be a great practice for everybody. I mean, we take care of the outside and the inside, but are we taking care of our heart and our mind?

Tanja Shaw:

Totally. Yeah, this book I actually have beside me. No, I don't have it beside me. It was called God on a Harley. It's a really, really short book. It's like 100 pages or 150 pages. You can read it in probably two hours, like in short pages. It's a little book and he talks about six principles to live life by. So she ends up meaning God, but God's not really God. God's like comes on a Harley Davidson. And one of them was about take care of yourself first and foremost. But then it was really about kind of changing how you define self-care. So I thought that one kind of hit me, resonated with me, so it was really about kind of changing how you define self-care.

Michele Folan:

So that one kind of hit me resonated with me, so it was good. Okay, I'm going to put that one in the show notes too, along with your tofu scramble recipe. All right, tanya Shaw, where can the listeners find you?

Tanja Shaw:

Oh, thank you. You know what? The best is? Probably my podcast, which is everywhere you listen to podcasts Fit and Vibrant you. I might change the name eventually. I'm kind of thinking it might take me time for a reinvention, but currently it's Fit and Vibrant you, or my website is tanyashawcom, and then when you get there I have links to all like my Instagram and Facebook and all that kind of stuff.

Michele Folan:

So, alrighty, again, we'll just make sure that we got all that in the show notes. Tanya Shaw, this was a lot of fun. I really am glad that we connected, and thanks for being a guest today. I so appreciate it. Thank you, I am so grateful for the ratings and reviews from our listeners. Did you know that your reviews help other people find Asking for a Friend? If you like what you hear, won't you please leave a review on Spotify or Apple? Thank you from the bottom of my heart.