In this episode, we are joined by special guest Tanessa Shears who is passionate about helping business owners and high achievers optimize their health to show up like a BOSS!  Giving your all your time and attention to your business or career may seem like the quickest way to achieve success – but if you are sacrificing your health and wellbeing, your efforts may lead you straight to burnout. Small adjustments to your daily routine can take you from stress and fatigue to optimizing your energy and being in the zone. Listen to find out what biohacking is, and for the MANY tips Tanessa shares on how you can master sleep, eliminate brain fog, and reduce stress – to optimize your brain and body!   

About the Guest: 

Tanessa Shears is a health consultant and host of the Becoming Limitless podcast. She helps entrepreneurs scale their business by optimizing their health, focus & productivity with science and biohacking. Her passion is working closely with business owners to implement effective sleep, nutrition, movement, and out-of-the-box stress management strategies to eliminate brain fog and wake up feeling well-rested, energized, and focused. She does this by optimizing the performance capacity of your body & brain so you can produce more meaningful, impactful work output and scale your business faster. 

Links:

Website: http://tanessashears.com/

Becoming Limitless Podcast: http://tanessashears.com/podcast 

12 Ways to Biohack Your Energy: http://tanessashears.com/energy 

instagram.com/tanessashears 

About the Host:

I am a financial professional, who specializes in helping people to achieve their financial goals.  My absolute passion is creating new possibilities in people’s lives by showing them the ropes when it comes to money. I’m here to spark healthy and positive conversations around wealth and investment and create a world where nobody is limited by their financial situation. I believe this begins with education and shifting our relationships with money. I love getting to witness people achieving their most ambitious goals and creating new possibilities for themselves and their families! 

I love your questions! Reach out to me anytime at:  

Email: kalee.boisvert@raymondjames.ca

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kaleeboisvert/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/wealthandwelln2

https://www.facebook.com/kaleeboisvertwealthandwellness/ 

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Welcome to the wealth and wellness podcast with me Kaylie Bob air. I specialize in helping people to achieve their financial goals. I have a love for all things numbers, and I'm passionate about financial literacy. My goal is to spark healthy and positive conversations around wealth and investment and create a world where nobody is limited by their financial situation. But wealth is just one piece of the equation of living our best lives. So join me as we explore both wealth and wellness topics. From your net worth to your self worth. Get ready to take confident action. Hello, this is Kaylee and thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the wealth and wellness Podcast. I'm really excited for today's episode, we're joined by a special guest today. Our guest today is Janessa shears. She is a health consultant and host of becoming limitless podcast. She helps entrepreneurs scale their business by optimizing their health, focus and productivity with science and biohacking. Her passion is working closely with business owners to implement effective sleep, nutrition movement and out of the box stress management strategies to eliminate brain fog and wake up feeling well rested, energized and focused. She does this by optimizing the performance capacity of your brain and body. So you can produce more meaningful, impactful work output and scale your business faster. I love that. So important, so relevant. I think a lot of the people that listen to this podcast to really fallen into that realm. And so this is going to be a great chat. Thank you so much for being here to NASA. And just to get started. Can you tell listeners maybe a little bit about your background? And what brought you to do the work that you do today?

Yeah, so my name is Tanessa Shears. And I am working currently as a health consultant primarily with high achievers and entrepreneurs. But it didn't start that way. I was the girl that would show up late to pee on purpose in high school. So I didn't have to get sweaty during the run that was timed at the beginning. So let's just say it's definitely come a long way. But over, you know, over the years, it's evolved into a true love of just health and fitness and what started as a opening a personal training business and actually 2014 that grew really quickly. And it was so fun. And when I started, you know, just getting interested in adding in bits and pieces like nutrition and sleep and stress management and stuff like that, my clients kept getting better results. And I remember there was a point in time where I looked at my clients, and I was like, You guys are all very similar. You're either like entrepreneurial based, you're in high corporate jobs, your CEOs, theirs, what is going on, and they're like, you know what's fascinating. As much as you know, the exercise, and the workouts in the form correction are great, I am finding the time sleeping so much better. I have way more energy, I'm more productive, I'm not getting that energy crash at two to three in the afternoon, my thinking is clear. I'm focused, I'm making decisions a lot faster. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I've tapped into the most fun niche of people that were just like me. And I was like I am there are so many people out there and you know, high performing people are unfortunately victim to this most often the oh, I can get by on five or six hours of sleep, or I only give myself that or I haven't worked out in forever because it's just till we get to this next milestone, or just until we earn this next amount of income, then I'll take care of my health. But if you're if you're someone who really likes to set goals, that horizon is always moving. So one part of my job is to really educate in the fact that like, our job is to is to feel good in the business we have now and have a high performing brain now because that is what makes this whole journey so much more fun.

I love that. Absolutely. Being in that state now then yeah, when I'm when I achieve this goal, when I get there when my you know my business is at a point where I can sort of scale back a little bit or take my foot off the pedal, then I'll have the time. But you're right, it's and this it's so true with money too. So often people think about their wealth goals and they're there they go, you know, yes, I'll do that saving when or I'll make sure I'm mindful of this stuff when I get that raise or when I you know, pay off this bill or whatnot. And the same thing. It's like it has to happen now the best time to start these things is right now. So I love that. And I love that holistic approach that you've taken, where it isn't just about necessarily the fitness but it's it's all parts working together, to feel your best and to have that whole wellness. So for those people who are maybe unfamiliar with the term biohacking or maybe they've heard it and they're not really 100% Certain on what that entails. Can you share with listeners what biohacking is?

Yeah, isn't that an intimidating term right off the top like when I first heard it, I was like, alright, this sounds illegal. I'm not sure if I'm into this and then you do some Googling and of course you're gonna get the spectrum. So biohacking essentially like if we break down the term biohacking. It is like the art of like balancing inner health and outer health. So you're looking at your environment, what we're putting on our skin, how we're moving, and then the inner environment, you know, how our brain is recharging what we're feeding ourselves, all of that stuff coming together. And the way I like to do biohacking is in a way that you're always measuring if something you're doing is worth your time, if I implement a bio hack to help my sleep, is it actually improving my sleep? Or is it just another habit that's keeping me busy? We don't have a lot of time for stuff like that. So I'm always like, looking at the return on investment of my time spent biohacking and like I said, though, if you do Google it, you're gonna find all kinds of things, like people laying on energy mats, re injecting their blood cells back into their body under their skin, like there is a whole spectrum of biohacking. And while that stuff is like advanced and techy and cool, I like to kind of focus on the spectrum of biohacking that meets people where they're at. And for the most part, how many of us just really want to be able to fall asleep when we want to go to sleep, sleep through the night without waking up and wake up feeling more rested? I mean, how many of us just need to eat more vegetables and more whole foods? How many of us just need to not sit at our computer all day, and just maybe even hit 5000 steps a day. So the area of biohacking that I focus on is the area that's meeting the entrepreneur that is, you know, starting to achieve their goals. They're they're financially feeling a little bit stable right now. But they're at that point where they're like, Okay, I just need I just need to start feeling healthy again, and at that base point, and that's kind of where I like to meet people where they're at with biohacking.

Okay. I love that. That's great explanation. And what do you think like the biggest challenges that I mean, I guess you kind of alluded to this, but what do you think the biggest challenges are that maybe entrepreneurs or high achievers are facing maybe biggest challenges like to their health, and maybe biggest challenges that hold them back from taking these steps?

Yeah, it's brain fog, hands down, it's brain fog. It's that feeling of just feeling like you're forgetting little things. You just have low energy throughout the day, kind of wake up in the morning, just drag and you need the coffee to get going. And you have that energy crash that happens in the afternoon, you're just generally having a hard time focusing, you're distracted easily. Decisions don't feel clear, you feel like you're arguing with yourself, and you're thinking feels really clunky, and cloudy. And this affects so many areas of our life, from how we interact with our family. And if we are present or feeling distracted on our phones, if we're actually getting time out of our meeting, if we're putting time into our health and when it comes to our careers. I mean, if we're if we have an inability to focus and make good decisions and show up the way we want to that is going to affect the product of our work, right? Whether we are in business or working for a company, that brain fog is slowing us down. And it's being caused by all this inflammation that is running rampant in our body. And we know inflammation from thinking like I sprained my ankle, it gets red, it gets swollen, there's fluid accumulating, that happens all throughout our body. Specifically, we're looking also at our gut and in our brain. And when that happens, brain fog shows up. So when we start looking at our lifestyles, well, the majority of the inflammation is coming from what we eat, it's coming from the inability to manage the stress and emotions are under and it's also coming from just an inattention to quality sleep.

I love it. I love it. So looking at those factors and like brain fog being you know, the biggest thing and I think you're right like that, that resonates with me and times that I've had in my in my career in my business, and I'm like, Yep, I got some of that going on, for sure. Um, so you talked about that. Okay, so the way we eat stress, sleeping, can we break it down into some of the changes or adjustments that we need to start looking at or considering?

Yeah, I love to start with sleep primarily because it is free. It's something we already all do. So why not just make the sleep that we do get better? I feel like that's a really beautiful place. Because sometimes when I, when I work with people, they're like you You mean you want me to take time away from something I'm already not feeling productive with and you want. I had a client that started with me back in if I was probably about to say about April, and she at that point was sleeping three to four hours a night she was running two very large tech companies. She would work from like eight until 10 At night, and then she you know, she would just be like a vegetable on the couch after that absolutely exhausted. And I said to her, Okay, you're getting three to four hours of sleep per night now. And look what you're creating. Can you imagine if your brain was working the way it was supposed to be working, and we have her up to now sleeping between six and seven hours per night which is a huge improvement. But I remember she said to me, it was about two months. And she says, You know, I get more done in six hours now than I used to get done in a couple days. So, like sleep is hands down that way to start. So when we're looking at sleep, one of the things we want to look at is actually our sleep duration, and that we're not under estimating it. So if you think about the time you spend in bed, let's just say let's just use for ease 11 to six, that's seven hours a night asleep. And we think, you know, if we close our eyes at 11, we wake up at seven that we got seven hours of sleep. So what most people aren't aware of is that our brain spends time awake each night, both falling asleep, tossing and turning, if you wake up in the middle of the night, and that time while your brain is waking up in the morning, and when I work with high performers, because of the anxiety and stress that they're often under, they are awake, have a wait time between an hour and an hour and 20 minutes every night. So now you take that off of your seven hours, and you're getting five hours, 40, maybe six hours of sleep per night, your brain is chronically sleep deprived, and it is not going to be performing the way that it should be performing. So I always say like, let's start there. And actually ask yourself, like, if let's just say I'm one of the average people that gets an hour awake every night. am I allowing myself the opportunity to even get enough sleep in the first place?

Yeah, okay, so is that window enough time then? Do Yeah, do you need to adjust it? Do you need to be going to bed earlier to kind of incorporate or go okay, if I'm if I'm tossing and turning an hour or whatnot, then yeah, do I need to add in an hour when I start, okay. Anything else like for people that are struggling, maybe falling asleep or have that stress and whatnot going on throughout their sleep? Yeah,

so we're a fun new breed as as, as people who like to go and get goals and do all those things, we like to run our days right to the very end. And we like to have our brain stimulated. Because we do best we think we do best in doing energy, planning, scheduling, being productive. That's what we feel our results are based on. And we feel like if we stay in that energy, we maintain our results. So we never actually allow that time to slow down. Because we have this really funny belief that if we slow down, our results will slow down as well. And it's often creates a bit of a fear around the idea of slowing down. And there's guilt that comes with that too. So what I see is we're going going, going going all the way to the end of the day, and then maybe we let ourselves have a little bit of break. And we watch TV, and we're staring at the TV. But we're also scrolling Instagram, because we cannot just possibly stay fixed on one thing at a time. And we're also probably trying to spend quality time with our partner or kids. And we're doing all these things at once. And then we decide to go to sleep, and we close her eyes. And we're like, huh, my brain won't turn off. And then we end up realizing that there was no intentional downshift of your brain because your brain, your brain has different frequencies for the brainwaves, and they're depending on what you're doing. So while we're having this conversation right now, or you know, if you're listening to this podcast, and you're thinking about what I'm saying, maybe you have a question, maybe you want to write something down, your brainwaves are in a state called beta alert, focused, productive, this is excellent. And most of the time, we're way too good at this, we go into high beta, which is a bit into anxiety. However, there are other states that our brain needs to experience especially to get the sleep that's dropping down into alpha brainwaves, which is you know, loose relaxation. You know, kind of that feeling when you're like nice and relaxed, you're cozied up, you're reading a book with a cup of tea kind of feeling. And then there's theta, which is you know, when you're in that meditative state, and delta, which is while you're asleep, now, our brain needs to go through this progression to fall asleep. But we're staring into blue light screens, which is keeping our brain telling it it's the middle of the day, we're being stimulated by Instagram and dopamine from the things we're seeing on TV. It's GO GO GO GO GO thinking about our to do list, checking in our email, and then we slam to a stop and try to go to sleep. That's why we're having so much trouble. So I often like to look at the hour before bed as a progressive descent into sleep. So we start by looking at, okay, what can I do to start removing the stimuli lowering the lights. So I look at things like you know, brushing my teeth, washing my face, spending some time maybe tidying up putting my daughter to bed. So kind of that activity where you're still doing, but it's not like you're not getting fed information. Then beyond that, I like to slip into more of a progressive relaxation state. So looking at something that slows your mind. Things like reading a fiction book, maybe doing some writing some breath work and meditation, talking to your partner, if that's something that soothes you, looking at something that kind of makes your brain feel like it's falling into sleep, and I like to feel that gradual slide into sleep instead of doing what we do now, which is like full speed break slam on why can't I fall asleep?

I love that. That Okay, so that yeah, being intentional, that downshifting and kind of having that hour before as that downtime to move into it. I Love it. It makes sense. Absolutely. And I mean, we we do a chore kids like we're always kind of like, no, it's bedtime soon, like, we don't want them getting all riled up and eating the sugar and things like that. But oftentimes we don't do it for ourselves like that, that slam on the very thing that makes perfect sense. I think I do that way too often?

Well, most of us do, we're trying to our nature is to maximize the productivity of our day. And I think once we really truly see that, like, you get to have both, it gets to work, your life gets to work, your business gets to work. And you can have that time to actually wind down to get good sleep, they get to work together, because we often have that fear of slowing down because like, oh my gosh, then what if my business revenue drops? Or what if I don't get those work tasks done. But it's exactly the opposite. It's it's creating that sense of anxiety and almost leading to that burnout, when you don't have that balance between being energy and doing energy. We're not human doings, we're human beings. And we forget that sometimes.

Absolutely. I love that, okay. And so that amount of sleep then or that window is that going to be a little bit different for everyone, though, as well.

I mean, guidelines on average, say, between seven and nine hours per night, and everyone's going to function on something a little different. I have found through just, you know, monitoring my sleep and noticing I feel best around seven hours, 45 minutes, that seems to work for me. But the fascinating thing is, the amount of sleep you get actually depends on something called your Crono type. So your chronotype is how you are genetically geared to sleep. So there is a gene that we have, and without getting too fancy, it's called your PE or three gene. And the longer it is, the more geared towards being an early bird you are. So people that either are early birds, or they stay up later, they actually tend to require a little less sleep than those that you know, feel best on 11 to seven. So there's a whole book of this is something you're like, oh my gosh, I didn't even realize you know that this was a thing. 5am Club is not for everyone. Some people are genetically never going to be morning people even though you might want to be. So there's a book that I read called The Power of win by Dr. Michael Bruce. And he has a really interesting quiz on his website called The Power of when quiz calm. And he divides everyone that takes a quiz into one of four Crono types. So he'll it'll give you one of four animals and those animals, he gives a pretty good explanation relate to when you are most likely to get the highest quality sleep. So for the longest time, I tried to be an 11 to 710 to like 11 to seven persons. I just thought, you know, isn't that when everyone sleeps. And I was always kind of tired. And I didn't realize until I was the early bird, I have that long fear 3g. Now I sleep for about 845 to five. And I am so much more energized in the morning. And I rarely wake up tired. I don't need an alarm clock. This is just where my body's adjusted by tuning into that you start fighting against your biology more and start leaning into it. And by also on the same note recognizing you're not a morning person, you can drop the guilt about not getting up at 5am. Because you can be just as successful waking up later if that's genetically how you're geared to operate. Yeah,

yeah. So not looking at as a comparison or this is the way it's supposed to be. I mean, if you have the ability and flexibility, especially in your life and career, making sure I did one of those, like the genetic things. And it did, like my results came up that said, I need more sleep than the average person. I was like, well, that's great quality.

Yeah, it just made me bring it a little more time to recover. But I think that's one of those things that we realize that I think our brains always think that oh, that's more sleep equals more time not doing something productive. But I always think about it like this, what if getting enough sleep meant you could be more productive, could make more use of your time could get done in six hours will usually get done in eight. And I always think of it as sleep is not something that takes away from your time, it gives you time back in the form of how your brain works. Okay. Okay,

so looking at it as giving, not Oh, how am I gonna carve out time for this? Apparently,

it's like that client that I had that I started with back in April, the who has the tech companies and she said to me, she goes, you know, to NASA, if you'd have told me a couple months ago that you were going to make me start sleeping three hours more, I would have told you no. But now that I can see it in action, it's a lot different when you're feeling it, versus just seeing it as I'm losing more time.

Yeah, I love it. Okay. Um, any like advice for people that wake up? Like if they are waking up frequently in the night? Is that something that they can change or ship? Is there something you know, going on in our diets or lifestyles or?

Yeah, so I find that here's where I like to start. I mean, everyone's different, really just depends on what's going on. But there's one of three reasons we're waking up in the middle Night. One, we're drinking too much water before bed and we have to pee. And it's that sounds intuitive. But I cannot tell you how many people I've coached with the idea of what if you cut off water, like regular gulping, drinking cups of water and tea around 637. And it's just as simple as that. And it's so interesting, because we know that that's the problem, but we don't do anything about it. That is a very simple one, number one, number two, if you're waking up, and especially if you're waking up and you feel like your brain is on, that tells me one of two things is happening, you're either likely running out of the hormone, melatonin, or your cortisol, your stress levels are too high going to sleep. So Melatonin is a hormone that our body produces, that tells our body to start going to sleep. It's like, okay, we got to shut down the brain, we're getting a little tired now like, let's get into bed, that's melatonin job. Now, if we are if we are in full blown beta mode, thinking, you know, running around the house, staring into blue light screens, if we're you know, bundling up and staying really warm, these are all things that can prevent melatonin from being released. And if you don't have enough melatonin produced before you go to fall asleep, you will run out earlier. And when we run out earlier, that's what keeps us asleep. So then you're sitting there going, like, it's literally like the sleep button turned off. Your body's like, that's good. And we're just sitting there going well, that's not that's not what we want. So looking at your before bed routine, making sure you know you're at least turning off your screens and hour before bed and having that progressive wind down. But as far as if you're waking up and you're literally your brain is on that's telling me your nervous system is stuck in overdrive. Now I heard this a beautiful analogy from a sleep doctor and neuroscientist named Dr. Huber Minh. And he described it like picture one of those old school teeter totters that used to be on the playground, you know, the wood ones with the triangle fulcrum in the middle and they go side to side. On one end, you have your stress response, your fight or flight, you know, your alert, your focus, everything like that. And on the other side is Rest Digest relaxation. Normally, if you picture you're standing in the middle of teeter totter, you should get a little lean left a little lean right a little stress a little recovery. Problem is if we do not successfully manage our stress, that teeter totter gets jammed one way completely, like you know, when you're a kid, and somebody would let your butt hit the ground really hard at one of those. And he slammed down to one side, that's what's happening, we have an inability to pull ourselves out of that. And our nervous system stays stuck in fight or flight. So that high cortisol level is actually what's causing us to wake up. And if your brain goes on at four o'clock in the morning, and you are just like, how could I possibly go back to sleep that is a sure sign that your adrenaline is disproportionately like imbalanced with your ability to turn off and recover. So those are the big three, are you have drinking too much water? Is your melatonin production being disrupted? Because you're too warm, blue light not winding down? Or are you overly stressed during your day and leading into sleep?

Okay, I love it. And maybe that kind of leads well into like stress than as a topic to like, you know, it was sleep as kind of the primary talked about but then it's stress and what we eat as well as these big impacts for life. So can we talk a little bit about stress then?

Yeah, absolutely. So when we're looking at stress, like we always see this as like, just something that happens to us for the most part, right. But if you actually look at what is causing a lot of the stress, it's that inability to pull out of sympathetic nervous system or fighter fights like that teeter teeter totter example, right. So the fascinating thing is the example that was given there, if you think of the hinge of the teeter totter, you want it to be well oiled, so it doesn't get, you know, stuck on one side sleep is what greases the hinge. So first things first, if you're finding that you are under constant stress, and this doesn't need to be just mental stress, like you're worried about work or your kids, it can be physical stress on your body as well. And it can be emotional stress, right? So if you find that you're getting stuck in that you need to check in number one with sleep. But beyond that, we're going to go back to that idea of the being energy versus the doing energy. And if you look at your work block, are you scheduling all of your meetings or your client calls back to back to back to back to back? With no rest in between? And you're literally on? Are you scheduling everything back to back? Are you eating your lunch at your desk while totally plugged in? Like do you have moments interspersed and we often we get, we get a little confusing this idea of self care that it needs to be like an hour and I need to have time to do a bubble bath and I need to have time to do long naps. But in our energy the way we are the best way to think about this is to think about scheduling it in because that's how our brains are really work really well. But micro dosing, checking in with ourselves. So really good examples of things I like for this is leave 10 minutes between your meetings. Just get up from your desk, get some water stretch, here's a really good Want to do a quick body scan? Like actually if you check your your body right now while you're listening to this and being like, where do I feel tense? I feel it in my low back. Why can relax right? Muscle feeling it a bit, my glutes my jaws are a little bit tight. We never check in with ourselves. And if we took 30 seconds between each call, to just say, How am I feeling right now? What's my body feeling like? Where's this tension going? Something as simple as that, asking yourself how you're feeling. And I know it seems trivial. Here's another one. If you're like, I don't want to think about how I'm feeling. Try this. Take your pulse for 30 seconds, and pay attention, tuned back into your body, get out of your head, actually feel your pulse count the beats. Doing that between meetings will remind you to ground yourself. And I mean, beyond that, if you're like, Hey, I like the 32nd things. And I want a little more fun a 10 to 20 minute time where you just grab a book in the middle of your day or or just like eat lunch, and just eat lunch, or you know, plan a 10 minute walk in or add a little bit of a stretch it. But that is what allows us the whole idea behind a being energy is the idea of feeling. Feeling your feelings being intuitive, that intuition, that kind of flow feeling. And it's inserting micro doses of that throughout your day so that we don't end up fully in fight or flight for the eight hours or 10 hours or four hours that we're you know, diving into our work

all day. Okay, so even Yeah, like even finding tiny moments for that is going to make a big difference.

Yeah, I mean, just as soon as you're done listening to this, just actually, even if while you're listening to it, just take your pulse like that, just the thought idea of slowing down. And it's if we can start to wrap our mind around the fact that things like that do add up. And they do matter. When you start integrating those, you will notice that slowing down does not make you less productive, it does not make you it does not change your result, you know what I mean? It's not like it's going to affect your revenue, or, you know, the number of calls you make that day, it's just really understanding that in order to to have good sleep, and to you know, reduce brain fog, and to reduce the overwhelming overload and actually feel good in the life that you're designing and living right now. If it comes back to feeling like we said, you have to if you want to feel good, you have to feel you can't just distract yourself with more work and expect life to feel better.

Yeah, yeah, like when you're even seeing the body scan, like how often do we not even realize if you have a pain in your back or your you know, your legs or your arm is you just it's like you're on this autopilot, and you've completely ignored your body and what's going on and how you're feeling. So doing that scan. I think that's such a good tool for people to use. I love that idea. Um, anything I guess the other element then was eating and how we eat or what we're eating, can we chat a little bit about that, too, then that.

So when we're looking at the food that we're eating, we're wanting to think about it like this way. So you know, we talked about that concept of inflammation? Well, inflammation can happen in your gut too. So the most There are obviously the big things that are most likely to cause that inflammation. And we want to be mindful of how often and when we eat these foods. And these are often things that we know they're not whole foods. So I often like to look at my plate and ask myself this, did it come from the ground, or did it have a mother at some point, that is the best way you can determine if it is a whole food or not. So you want your plate most often to be that for a couple of reasons. Whole Foods are usually less likely to be damaging to the gut lining and cause a lot of that inflammation. So like compare a pizza, to asparagus and some chicken and some brown rice, right. So we're looking at that whole food component and wanting to keep our body healthy. But the second component of it is looking at our blood sugar. And most of us never give any thought to our blood sugar beyond knowing that it has something to do with diabetes. And somebody's uncle once had it like that's all we know about it. But we all have blood sugar, and it all fluctuates. And it really affects our ability to focus and our energy. So when we are eating primarily Whole Foods, meaning, you know, really healthy fats, high fiber carbohydrates that are you know, plant based, and we are eating, you know, protein sources that are high quality and things like that, they generally have minimal effect on our blood sugar. So we get a little bit of a rise and a little bit of a drop. And this is great. But when we're eating a lot of either, you know, dense processed flowers and carbohydrates and you know, junk foods and processed foods and passes and stuff like that. When we eat these things, we get a big spike in blood sugar, and a big drop and what goes up comes down. So that is where we're getting those afternoon energy crashes, the brain fog, all of that. So think about the last time you had a big past a meal. You probably didn't feel like being very productive. After that. We probably felt like we slowed down, maybe wanted a nap. So I'm conscious of what I'm eating mostly all week, but especially if you're in that place right now. We were like what are you what are you talking about? I only have sandwiches and pasta for lunch right now. I want you to think about this. In a way that protects your brain during your work. So if I'm looking at the meals that affect my brain during the workday, it's going to be breakfast. It's going to be lunch, dinner. Yeah, of course, all your meals are important. But if I'm looking at not getting an energy crash during the day, I am looking at keeping my breakfast and lunch as whole food as possible. So thinking things for breakfast like eggs, avocado, that kind of stuff. And for lunch, thinking things like you know, your king was your brown rice, you brussel sprouts, maybe get some salmon in there, something like that. So that these whole foods are not causing you to lose two to three hours on the end of your day, because you're recovering from that blood sugar swing from eating processed foods.

Okay, yeah. So even being mindful of during the work day, the ones that are going to impact you the most. What about any, like intermittent fasting, like, would you recommend, I mean, that's probably a whole big topic itself. But if Does that have an impact on people like if they're not eating as much during their working hours, or leader,

intermittent fasting is a fantastic topic. And I'll try to be as brief as I can on here. But there's been a lot of research coming out lately, that has shown that chronic intermittent fasting meaning like everyday, I don't eat until noon, or 11. Chronic intermittent fasting is actually having negative results on female hormones. So I'm not talking about if you do this once or twice a week, but if this is the way you live your lifestyle, and that has to do with the fact that as females, our hormones fluctuate in a 28, to 32 day cycle, they're not static, right. So there are certain times of the month where our appetite is naturally less, we naturally burn less calories and have less requirement for carbohydrates. And that's usually from the first day of your period to the middle of your cycle. So we actually function better sometimes in an intermittent fasted state, which is great. But when you're looking at mid cycle all the way through to the end, we require more carbohydrates. We're hungrier, and our blood sugar is a lot more unstable. So if you place an intermittent fasted state, in that time, you might actually find that you're foggy, or you're getting cravings that are unexpected. And then that's kind of just when you'll find dessert reaching for the junk foods and stuff like that. So it's actually knowing your hormones better. So there's definitely plenty of advantages to it. But it's something that you're going to want to think like how is this affecting my hormones? And how can I time this better with my body?

I love that. That's interesting. I've never that's not something I've ever heard. So that's really interesting. I feel like you've given so much information and so many good tips and, and bio hacks that people can start using right away. This is amazing. Like, I was just mind blown and like oh, these are great ideas. I'm gonna start doing this stuff. Um, for anyone listening in what what does work and listeners find you how can they reach out what's the best place for them to go to find more of you? This is good stuff.

Yeah, well, if you're really wanting to nerd out on like some in depth biohacking stuff. I have a podcast called Becoming limitless. And this whole podcast focuses on biohacking for entrepreneurs and high achievers, you'll get just as much out of it. But it really integrates how it affects your business in your career, and how biohacking can help you get more out of that. So it's a really good place to start. But if you're more like the I want the hacks now, without the listening, I have a playbook called 12 ways to biohack your energy. So over the years, I've taken the bio hacks that are the most effective with my clients at creating energy in the morning stability through the day and clarity of thinking and put it into this playbook. So that's at senesce shears.com/energy. And then you can learn you know, I'm on Instagram all the time at Cecil shears, posting all the things but a good place to go. You'll get it all at once is Vanessa shears.com/energy and signing up for that freebie.

Perfect. I'll put that in the show notes as well, so people can click that link. That's amazing. That sounds a good one. I want to see that one too. This has been this has been so good. Thank you so much. Janessa I've really loved this conversation. I'd love to have you even back because I feel like there's so much more that we can go into. And there's just not enough time but there's so many more topics and I love this. So thank you so much for your time and sharing your your wisdom with the listeners as well. Thank you so much.

Thank you for having me on.

Awesome. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for listening in and we will catch you on next week's episode. All right, bye for now.