Today, we're joined by the incredible Tanessa Shears for an exploration of biohacking's transformative effects on energy, focus, and overall well-being. Tanessa unveils the vital role deep sleep plays in preventing Alzheimer's by cleansing the accumulated proteins from our day. Biohacking, she explains, is the personal journey of self-experimentation to enhance physical and mental health, steering away from generic health routines.

Tanessa guides us through the world of biohacking, emphasizing its power to banish brain fog, boost energy, and leave us waking up refreshed. It's all about observing how small lifestyle changes affect our bodies and minds, and making informed decisions backed by the data. We also delve into the intriguing realm of sleep schedules and how understanding your natural chronotype can revolutionize your well-being.

As a busy mom, Tanessa shares invaluable tips on self-care, meal planning, and optimizing productivity. Discover the magic of personalized health and wellness plans with Chat GPT, and the importance of continuous learning in the digital age.

What you'll hear in this episode:

[0:00] Biohacking and its impact on energy, focus, and overall health.

[5:05] Biohacking and sleep schedules.

[9:55] Sleep habits and their impact on health and well-being.

[13:25] Biohacking for better sleep with a busy mom.

[17:45] Understanding and managing your menstrual cycle for better productivity and self-care.

[21:25] Managing energy and productivity as busy mothers.

[24:05] Meal planning and using AI for time-saving.

[29:05] Using ChatGPT for personalized health and wellness plans.

[34:15] The importance of continuous learning and critical thinking in the digital age.

[37:00] Biohacking for better sleep and productivity.

[41:30] Work-life balance, ambition, and travel goals.

[48:00] Biohacking, emotional resilience, and personal growth.

[52:35] Biohacking, self-care, and parenting with a focus on setting a good example for kids.

CONNECT WITH TANESSA

Follow Tanessa: @tanessahears

Learn more at: Health Consultant for Entrepreneurs - Health Consultant for Entrepreneurs (tanessashears.com)

Tanessa's Free Resource: 12 Ways to Biohack Your Energy (systeme.io)

CONNECT WITH KELSEY

Follow Kelsey: @thisiskelseysmith

Follow Momma Has Goals: @mommahasgoals

Download the app for Apple or Android

Learn more at https://mommahasgoals.com/

Join our text list. Text "Goals" to (707) 347-0319

0:00

So specifically in answer to your question deep sleep, our brain shrinks while we go into deep sleep and the fluid in our spinal column in our brain, it think of it as giving your brain a bath and what it's washing off are some of the proteins that accumulated during the day. Now, if you look at Alzheimer's patients, there is a high accumulation of these proteins. So deep sleep is one of the best things you can do in prevention of Alzheimer's down the road. Not to mention having really good high quality sleep to help you regulate a hormone called insulin. And insulins job is to keep our blood sugar stable.

0:34

Let's reimagine mom life together. Mama high schools is your hub for relatable support and helpful resources that help you fuel yourself alongside motherhood. Your identity is bigger than mom, in whatever your goals are. Together, we're making them a reality. You ever looked at someone that has a lot of energy or how they're showing up in life? And you're like, what are they on? What is the magic pill, there isn't a magic pill that I'm aware of. But there are some different tools and things that we can implement that support our lives, our goals, our health, motherhood, all the different things and today we're going to talk about biohacking and what biohacking is and how you can implement different tools into your life to help you eliminate brain fog or wake up well rested, to be able to have more energy and more resilience as a mom, especially as a mom that's going after whatever your goals are in life. Also when we have those hard days and we have different moments that show up. Sometimes it's a chemical situation that's going on in our body. And so to NASA shears helps entrepreneurs ambitious women, double their energy and focus so that they can make more money and have more progress and success with their goals in their lives. She works closely with business owners and like I said ambitious mothers and women to eliminate that brain fog to wake up well rested, to get more done in less time, maintain consistent, stable energy throughout the day, and feel better in all the years and all the things that you want to do. So nessa is also the host of the becoming limitless podcast and she shares her expertise on optimizing health and focus for life and business success. I'm super excited for you to tap into this conversation. If you've ever heard someone talk about biohacking or whether you should do intermittent fasting are not how to sync your cycle, what different sleep habits you maybe should have or shouldn't have different light techniques and all the different things. We also talk about a really fun way to use chat GBT for meal planning, what is chat GVT and how you can use it to optimize some different things in your life. So dive on it today. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. biohacking is one of those buzz trend words to some people and other people. It's the day to day life activities that they're taking. And I would say that for me, it's more of those buzz trend words and I'm starting to implement different things into my life. And so I am super excited about this conversation just bought my aura ring really tapping into learning what is going on with my body. And I want to start with just like an overall conversation about what is biohacking if someone's listening in they're like, what does that mean? What am I hacking? Are we getting into the dark web? What's happening? So can you give us an overview explanation of the dark web of our bodies? biohacking and what that is?

3:25

I love that I always say don't go Google biohacking, because you will find the most extreme end of the spectrum and you're just like, what is it but if you were to break biohacking down into exactly what it is the experiment on you, whereas you find like regular health hacks online, they are all just designed to be very general but biohacking is all about how it affects me how it affects my body to make me feel more energized to make my brain work better to make me live longer to make me feel healthier in my body, and how I like to do biohacking. It's very popular, you brought it up, you have an aura ring, I have an aura ring. And if you're listening going, what the heck is an aura ring? It's a ring that basically tracks data. And I like data. Because with data you can make decisions. So when I implement a biohack like, I change one of my bedside lamp tables to a red bulb, I'm watching okay, how long does it take me to fall asleep down? Does that exactly turn up in my data? So biohacking is making one change. It's an experiment and then directly seeing how it affects you, instead of working on these generic health habits that you have no idea if they have any input.

4:31

I love that because we all are so different. We have a different genetic makeup. And we have different variables and lifestyles that affects all of those different things. So it's like this nature versus nurture thing where it's okay what is actually happening in your life and also how were you made and what are the things that are going to help you and that is so important. Now for someone that this comes like a little bit less naturally to and they're listening and they're like I'm just trying to get my laundry folded. There's dishes in the sea. I Can't bring all these other things into our life. I want to just wash it that for endo squash isn't the right word like honor it and, and these things help us show up in a different way. Right. So let's talk a little bit about how just as a whole biohacking can be something so small that you implement in your life, like you said, changing a light bulb, or it can be these bigger things. But this is really for anyone, any variables in your life, anything that you have going on, let's talk about a little bit how someone can implement really small things or big things and just that you can be busy and do this too.

5:32

Yeah, I think it's by really understanding the whole experimenters mindset, right? Imagine this, imagine you were baking cookies, but you didn't have a recipe, and you were like, Okay, I need to figure out what's going to make this better. If you had a batch that went terrible, you wouldn't throw the whole thing out, what you would do is you'd be like, Okay, maybe they weren't really that sweet. So maybe I need to add more sugar. Okay, let's try this again. And you make that one small tweak, distribute the next batch turns out, this is the same way with this, let's say you're just like, oh my gosh, I need to get more sleep, I am going to go to bed 15 minutes earlier, and I'm going to make that one change. I'm not implementing this night routine, I'm not biohacking my bedroom, I'm not getting the funky red glass, I'm just gonna get into bed 15 minutes earlier, and see if that helps. And not only am I making one change, notice it was one small change. And then what happens is, this is how we make a sustainable health practice, right? You layer in one sustainable thing at a time. And at all points you want to be like, This is what I'm experimenting with. And the rest of

6:32

who I love that. So we're gonna link below your playbook on 12 ways to biohack your energy, but I want to unpack a couple of them. And I want to start with sleep, I'm happy that you brought that up. Because for my entire life, I've been like I'm a night owl i My brain is so active at night I and then I started talking to more people listening and we'd say Oh, I don't need a lot of sleep to function like I function really well on little sleep and, and my husband sending me podcasts and articles telling me that's not real. I need to get more sleep, and all these things. But there is you talk about asleep Crono types. So talk to me about what that is and where maybe we can have different sleep schedules and where that's not real. And we need to get more sleep.

7:15

Yeah, we both heard of the idea of like an early bird and a late night owl, right. But we just think that those things are preferences, but they're actually genetically determined. Think about this, your eye color is inherently your eye color or your hair, my hair is brown, I could die a black, but it's going to come back Brown, it's still there. That is how your Chrono type were and your chronotype is just a fancy way of saying you have a set of genes that determines whether your brain and your body are a morning preference or an evening preference. So I am a 10 to 15% of the population that naturally rises at 5am. And I feel amazing. However, I also have a client who naturally rises at 8am and feels amazing. And I think what happens is we look online, and there's the 5am Club and discipline people get up early. And if you want to be successful get up before everyone else. And I think we get stuck in this mindset of if I want to be good do exercise succeed in life, I have to be part of that 5am Club. But here's the funny thing. I wonder who's writing the books, it's probably the people that are naturally gifted as part of the 5am club. So there is a free resource that you can do. It was a book that I read, it was called The Power of when by Dr. Michael Bruce, specifically on his website, he has a quiz. And you take this quiz and it classifies you into one of four we call Chrono types, or scheduled to preferences like whether you like morning or evening. And that's a really good place to start just to get an idea of Oh, no wonder getting up at 5am made me feel terrible, I should be getting up at seven. And then one layer deeper than that is like this aura ring that we have on. Once you've had it for two to three months, it'll give you based on your activity levels, your heart rate, your blood pressure your skin temperatures, when your ideal sleep schedule should be. So if you have that flexibility, you can start leaning into that where

8:57

it's possible. Oh, and being an ambitious mom being a mom with goals, I can hear myself say I can shift this I can become this EI and it can go either way. So I have been telling myself I'm in a season where I want to start waking up earlier, I want to become a morning person rather than a night owl because that fits my lifestyle a little bit better right now. But then there's other people that get into graveyard shift. Or maybe that's fitting their lifestyle better. They're trying to work at night, because that's the time for them to launch their business or their next big idea. What is the kind of, hey, you're meant to work this way. And you should work within that. And you can allow yourself to biohack or make changes to become a different version of yourself. Is there a line there?

9:42

11:24

I like that you bring up bring me coming back to the baseline. So for me when I was in the season, I was like, I'm operating right now. But then I started thinking about okay, what does that mean for 10 years from now? Because even if it feels okay, now, am I setting myself up for poor house down the road? Am I really hurting my body now? Even if I'm not recognizing it? So how does that show up with sleep or really anything else that you I feel okay, now, but you actually need to be thinking about the future.

11:51

Yeah, this is so prevalent with sleep specifically with while you are asleep, when you've probably heard that, like when you sleep, your dream that's called REM sleep, rapid eye movement. And then there's deep sleep. And these things aren't just like, whatever things that happen, they have purposes. So specifically, and as for your question, deep sleep, our brain shrinks while we go into deep sleep and the fluid in our spinal column in our brain, it think of it as giving your brain a bath. And what it's washing off are some of the proteins that accumulated during the day. Now, if you look at Alzheimer's patients, there is a high accumulation of these proteins. So deep sleep is one of the best things you can do in prevention of Alzheimer's down the road. Not to mention having really good high quality sleep to help you regulate a hormone called insulin. And insulins job is to keep our blood sugar stable. Most of us don't even think about blood sugar, because we relate it to having diabetes. But fluctuating blood sugar levels throughout the day lead to brain fog, energy crashes, lack of concentration, just not feeling like your brain is working properly. With a whole other host of health issues. And when you're not sleeping effectively, insulin doesn't work well. So you have trouble with cravings, over eating, feeling those like energy crashes, and then drops like all of this can be linked to sleep. So if we want to have what we feel is a healthy body composition, and a healthy brain that lasts us into the future like sleep. It's vital to that.

13:11

Wow. Okay, so moms of little humans or older humans that are wanting to stay up and not sleep well. What are some habits as a family that you can implement so that you have a culture of like positive sleep in the house? And I don't mean like the newborn stage where you have to wake up and feed but I mean, once we can get out of that, what are some things that we can implement in our house?

13:35

Yeah, I have a one and a three year old right now. And they are well biohack. Meaning I think it's so fascinating. We think about evening routines for our kids, right? Like we know that. Okay, there should be a little bit of a wind down, meaning maybe we don't want to feed them a bunch of sugar and have them jumping around and watching screens right until bedtime. I think intuitively we know that there is some type of process, whether that be a bath, get the PJs on, and winding down. That's also something we can think about for us and having kids has been the best thing for my sleep after the newborn phase, of course, because what it does is it invites an opportunity for routine and sleep are great friends, because we want to really think about our brain and slowing it down both with like cues with lighting color and lighting brightness, slowing our brain down so that we can fall asleep. So what we have done with our kids is we're looking at okay, I know lights are starting to get dim an hour and a half before bed. I'm looking at maybe we're switching on the orange bulbs we have in their bedroom instead of the bright overhead light. But we do like to do the warm bath and then let them cool down. We have sound machines that go on. We have blackout blinds. So we're looking at creating this routine. And I think the thing that's made it the most successful with our kids is we pair it with a lot of language around what sleep is for. So if you ask my three year old like, why do we sleep she'll tell you to get more energy to get stronger. And so we always I love talking to her about, okay, we're gonna go to sleep, we're going to wake up, this is going to make us feel amazing tomorrow, and Mommy's gonna go to sleep because I love feeling amazing too. And so she has this whole narrative around sleep in her brain that it is for her. And she loves going to sleep every night, as is my 18 month old. It's

15:17

just something we do as a family. And it's a priority for us. I love this. And I can hear moms, I know a past version of myself, our community going, that's great for you, our life doesn't work that way, we can't implement these routines, these habits, we have too many other things going on, as well. Some of that can be true in different ways. You're also about to go travel for a period of time, and be in a new country, bringing in a lot of different variables into your life. You're an entrepreneur, you're a busy mom. So you can have these variables and have certain non negotiables, or habits that help that routine. So what are some things that help you have flexibility, so maybe you're in a place that you don't have blackout curtains, or you aren't able to do that orange light bulbs in the hotel room or whatever else in the Airbnb? What are some ways that you're like, This is what you figure out is unnecessary. And these are like nice to haves. Yeah, I

16:15

love this question. Because this is often something new moms will go through is they're like, if I can't sleep seven hours a night, then I'm not going to focus on sleeping at all, it's just all going to be terrible, right? But I'm this is this, my sleep really became something that was important when I was realizing that, okay, if I can't get consolidated sleep, I'm gonna get the best day broken up sleep that I can. Right. And so the same with travel. I mean, we're going to be in like airport overnights, we have we're switching time zones by three hours, we're going to be moving around from place to place in a new country. And we're at this point now where it's just okay, how can we make the sleep we are getting the best we can and there's I'm like, What can we bring? We can bring the sound machines, we can bring the sleep masks, what can we do when we're there, we can honor wine downtime, even if it's at a different time zone or we get there and all of a sudden it's at 10. At night instead of seven and eight, we can honor the fact that we all need 30 to 40 minutes beforehand, to quiet the noise to quiet the stimulation to quiet all that and to shift into sleep. And so I think it's really looking about okay, I can't control everything. What do I have? What am I able to still make a difference with? Oh, I

17:25

love that. Okay, so sleep is a huge part of biohacking. But there's all these other things that you can do AI and there's like devices like the aura ring, or Fitbit. There's cold showers and cold therapy, there's lights, there's caffeine intake, hormones, all these different things to take into consideration. And sleep is something that we all do, right. So it's a great place to start. But if someone else wanted to take it one step deeper, or implement one other thing into their schedule, what would be your second step that you would recommend for most people, because again, it's unique to each person. But let's say an ambitious mom trying to accomplish your goals. She's okay, I'm going to do my sleep a little bit over here. Now I want to get a little more like creative with my bio, what's the next thing they would do?

18:08

I think the biggest thing that will make the impact across the board would be understanding how your hormones fluctuate throughout a month. I know back when I don't know when I was starting personal training, I used to think yeah, go hard at my workouts, it's the same with I do spin on Mondays, it's always spin on Monday, when like you get into these routines, where we eat the same every day, we exercise the same every day, we work the same every day. But that's based on this idea that our bodies are the same every day and men their hormones, the same 24 hours, they get a full reset start again, but ours take anywhere from 28 to 32 days. And so why I like to use this is to develop compassion with myself, because I am not the same like firecracker, at the end of my cycle, like couple days for my period starts that I am like maybe 10 days it and I use that more of a hey, I just need to create a little more space in my schedule. I can't operate at that same jam pack level. And if I'm trying to and it's not working, hey, that's okay. And understanding that how that applies to exercise, my intensity comes down just naturally that your body has more stress at that time and you're not doing anything wrong, you're not less worthy, you're not less valuable, you're not less productive, your body's producing more stress, whether you like it or not during those last 10 days. And so if you feel more stressed, you're not doing anything wrong. And that compassion has let me be like, okay, all right. I'm not going to be the perfect picture of health this week because I need to go and sit in the bath instead of go out for this power walk and get this thing down and do that load of laundry and this week that load laundry is going to sit at the end of the bed because I'd rather have that time for me. So understanding that cycle fluctuation has been so good for my mental health and not beating myself up for not performing the same every day. Love

19:53

that. Okay, two questions. One. Is there an app or a calendar a free resource Someone can go in and figure out what their schedule is. And then second question, what is the balance between knowing this about yourself and also using as like a crutch or an excuse to be like, Oh, I'm in this phase. So that means this.

20:14

I love that question. So first weapon, wearable trackers will all do it. Like whether you have an aura ring, or a Fitbit, I imagine Apple Watch would do it too. If you just go into any app store, you can pretty much type in like period tracker. Or if you want to do it on pen and paper, you get your period on day one, and then you go through the month, you count all the way up until day one again, when you get your period again next time. So that's an easy way to track it. And I love what you said about this, I was having a conversation with my husband just about this the other day about I wonder if this conversation around the generic term for it is cycle sinking, sinking your life to your cycle, I never use it as an excuse not to show up, I let it be a place of compassion to not beat myself up. Because, for example, I work out four days a week, if at the beginning of my cycle, I'm doing like peloton spin bootcamp classes, and I'm like dripping on the floor at the end of it. I'm still doing four workouts in that end week. But they might look like Pilates, I might go for a power walk, I might do a recovery spin. So do you see the difference between the idle you'll like it, versus this is what my this is what I feel like doing right now. And it is still doing something for me. So not an excuse, but a way of saying here's what I can still do. And this is why it feels different. And that's not a bad thing.

21:27

I love that. So let's put that in the sense of scheduling with like work or business or whatever it is that you have going on. And I know a lot of people will say I'm going to do these certain meetings or these certain things in this time of the month. You can't just not show up to work in this phase of your cycle that you're feeling like you don't want to be there. But maybe you're saying okay, I'm gonna see if I can move that deadline a week later. Or if my content that I put out or the way I show up at work or the laundry doesn't get as done as well, during that period of time. You can understand maybe why and say, Okay, this is why I'm feeling this way I have something to pull it back to but it doesn't mean that we just lay in bed for a week, right? Yeah, exactly. Because like

22:09

with with my bread and butter, my businesses, podcast interviews, I love doing them, they're a lot of fun. However, they can't all fall in a 10 day period, I would be on interviews all day long, they have to meet throughout the month. So there's certain times where I'm like, Alright, I am going to make sure I am in bed on time, the night before that I am going to ensure the best I can that I wind down, whether that means I need to do a little extra breathing the night before,

22:32

I'm going to make sure my breakfast is supportive of a clear brain and I'm not throwing off my blood sugar. So what you start doing, if I know that this is more likely, I'm not going to be at my best. So I'm gonna do the best for myself to help myself get there. I love that. And now I want to talk about some of the tools I think motherhood life. It's all about finding the tools that can go in your toolbox. And biohacking is such a cool example of that because it's saying, okay, know that these things exist. And they can help you in these different ways. And you choose which tools are going to apply to you which tools you're going to pull out of your toolbox, and they're going to fit and you can go off the deep end as some would say where you end up with all these things in your cold plunging every morning and you're on sauna mats and red light maps and all these different things. Or you can focus where we said like sleep in hormones and come back to the day to day. It's not that the other things are bad. But as busy moms, there's only so many things we can implement in our day. And so we don't have to have this three hour biohacker routine every day to be able to have some huge improvement. So we talked about sleep, we talked about hormones, I want to talk a little bit about food and routine and how that shows up whether it's blood sugar or energy, just culture. What are some of the ways that you see that showing up with your clients and yourself alongside the commitments of kids activities and sitting down and playing and all of that? What do we have control over and how can we implement like good habits and routine

23:59

I see two major areas that I can see instant energy improvement when clients will come in these two areas. Number one is they're skipping breakfast daily nonstop because they saw on the internet that internet intermittent fasting will help them lose weight and feel good and all that kind of stuff and this is not a knock on intermittent fasting it has its place 100% But it's just this like blanket I don't do breakfast I'm too busy. Number two is looking at what we're eating for breakfast and it's I have a piece of toast with jam and like this sugary bowl of cereal and my coffee and I'll break down why those are a little problematic. So intermittent fasting. I'm a fan of it has its place. However, intermittent fasting during the last specifically more 10 days of your cycle and when we talked about stress being high fasting is also a stressor so if you find you get bad PMS if you're dealing with endometriosis, PCOS any, even if you get headaches, mood swings, irritable, bloating, PMS, any of that, it may be that your system is a bit too stressed out during that time. So this is actually a good time to let off the gas on fasting. And really let go of that belief that if I'm not on 100% of the time all the time, I'm not going to get results. That's just not how the body works, I think understanding that there's a time for nurture, and there's a time to put on the gas. And I always liked the idea of eating breakfast most days anyways, because our blood sugar is a little more wacky at night. And if you are one of those people that has trouble falling asleep, or you're up in the middle of the night, you may just be eating food that makes your blood sugar spike in the evening or too close to bed. So I always like to shift back to the morning. Now, one of the things I like to work on the simplest places to start is what are we eating for breakfast, because this is how you're starting your day. And we want to think about we keep coming back to blood sugar. And essentially, when your blood sugar goes up, your energy temporarily goes up. But what goes up comes down, and we get that crash. And a lot of it comes with a brain fog as well. And just feeling like lack of motivation. My brain doesn't work anymore. So I'm literally working on a client with this week. And we're like, Okay, what she was eating was neutre everything like neutral green cereal and black coffee. And so I said to her, okay, let's just keep it super simple. How can we add 20 grams of protein to your breakfast, because protein will slow the blood sugar spike, and it'll help you feel fuller longer, and you'll have less crashes and a lot clearer brain. So you start with just Can I add protein to breakfast, that can be something simple, like you can add eggs. If you don't like eggs, sliced up, grilled chicken breasts will do the job. We have a breakfast hash that has ham and stuff in it in the morning. There's lots of options here. Your level two two that would be minimizing carbohydrates that are processed at breakfast periods. So you're looking at like your cereals, your breads and stuff like that and looking at your breakfast and saying did it come from the ground? Or did it have a mother. So by eating breakfast consistently, and by bringing in a low blood sugar spiking option, that's a great way to give yourself a head start every day.

26:56

I love that. And we know the mental load is huge, and life and motherhood and all these things are going on. You recently did an episode on your podcast talking about how you use chat GBT to help you use the mother mental load and help meal plan and I think this shows up so much in this conversation. I would love for you to walk us through that a little bit and just specifically how you could make it your own. Whether you're like vegan, you have certain protein goals. I was obsessed with that episode, and I'd love for you to take us through it. Oh, that's

27:26

some fun. Yeah, that I put an Instagram post up just posting a couple ideas and it blew up. So if you're not I don't know what chat GBT is it's artificial intelligence. It's like a, you can have a chat with it. And so I was on it one day, and I have a client. She's Nessa. I cannot do eggs and cheese. You need to think of something smarter and something faster and something easier. And I was like, Sure. So I went on chat, GBT, I was like, give me five breakfast options that have no eggs that have 25 to 30 grams of protein that are Whole Foods only. And it spat out five options. And it was like full fat Greek yogurt with berries and mixed nuts. And then it was like, it had all of these options in there. And I was like, this is incredible. And so over time, I've been adding new things and and like other things that it could do is okay, I want to eat a pagan which is plant based, or it's like paleo mixed with vegan, I want to eat a pagan lifestyle. I want this many grams of protein per day, you can have it design entire meal plans. And you can craft it whenever you want. Let's say you're like, I only want to cook three days this week. And the rest of it has to be leftovers. It will do that for you. And then you're like, hey, let's take that meal plan and make a grocery list. Okay, cool. I like to shop at Walmart and Costco, divide those groceries by cost between these grocery stores. And it'll give you the list of where to go for what like the powers of this are endless. And so what I always advise is okay, get one week worth of meal planning done. Repeat it for three more weeks and you have a month and then you never need to meal plan again. You just cycle through these for your plans and grocery lists. And it saves you so much time you never stare into the fridge being like that. I thought something. It's just your planning is done. Yeah,

29:05

I was, like I said obsessed with that episode. And one of the other ways that you said you used it was you said, Hey, I have these three things in my fridge are my pantry, create some recipes for it, create a meal plan for it. And I think so often we can get caught up in like, how do I make this work? I don't have the brain power. It's use the technology. There are so many things that you can do. And you don't have to be tech savvy like you literally go to Google type in chat GBT, it'll come up. And then you just type it in just like you would in Google and it will give you all these really cool thing. I love that you bring up having it create a grocery list for you. And by store. I know that you can also say like for a low budget for like organic foods for whatever it is that you have going on in your household. And I've also seen people do this for eating out so if you say like, my kids have sports activities three nights a week, we're not going to be able to cook How can I pack up food or eat out following In this goal, and so I think just like allowing yourself to not have all the answers and do this is so huge. What is a way that you could implement chat GBT? Or asking questions in different ways to also benefit your lifestyle biohacking as a whole? What are some other things beyond food that you could maybe see someone going in and saying, like, how do I implement this? Or is that a bad idea? Because you're gonna end up with who knows what,

30:25

you know what I think that Chad GPT is only as effective as the prompts you give it, or what you finish. So I always like to be very clear. So if I go in there, I would be like, I am a mom, I have a one and a three year old. Currently, I am working four days a week right now. And I'm currently going for two walks a week, I'm not doing anything with my food, and I'm really tired in the morning and sleep, I want to work on my sleep, my exercise and my food, can you made me a step by step six month plan where I only implement one new thing a week, you could do something like that. And it was like literally, maybe it'll I don't know, maybe even maybe you even say I want to focus on sleep first, I don't know what it would give you. But you could get the plan out and take as long as you want it to take and as long as we can get out of the mindset that there's no rush. It's really about this one experiment at a time and just plunked it that way. Yeah.

31:17

In this is such a great resource, right? It's a great foundation, it's a great place to start. But we know that it's not the same as replacing like a coach or a support person. And so I would love for you to talk a little bit about how you see that show up with your clients or in your becoming limitless program. And kind of the difference of where you need that one to one support or that community to help nurture you because I know for myself, like not as great when I'm in the Super curiosity phase. And I'm like, Okay, how could this work? For me, that's when I find that super helpful. But then when you commit to something, and you say, Okay, here's the transformation I actually want to receive in my life, you need some accountability, you need a mentor, you need someone to help you and support you. So what are some ways that you see the difference with that with your clients, and within your program? I think you

32:05

34:17

That reminds me of another concept of like science and facts first trend. And social media is such a good thing in so many ways. Like I'm actually a huge advocate for social media for that same kind of reason of chat GBT of like giving you this, you know, curiosity phase and seeing what's out there. But then there's the dark side of it. And I don't want to I don't even think dark is the right word, but this other side of it where you get down this rabbit hole that isn't super factual, and it's maybe the highlight reel different things like that. That can be super common and biohacking because maybe that person that you thought was a really great person to follow for health is actually promoting products for revenue or your which I'm all for that when it's done ethically. But we know when it's not. And then on the other side of it, of knowing that person has a totally different lifestyle than you, or totally different things that don't apply, or maybe that's a new trend and a new phase that actually hasn't been super tested yet, and isn't a good thing for you to put into your life. Where do you see this show up in? What is your feedback on sounding out the noise of the trends versus the science and where to take action?

35:23

I love this question. Because I feel there's a lot of people online that aren't continuous learners. And those are the scary ones. It's like they learned something once and have stuck to it. Like I just put up a post recently on five controversial things I've completely changed my mindset on. So keep in mind, I have been, I did my undergrad in biomedical physiology, kinesiology, like this is my wheelhouse, then I became a personal trainer. And I can tell you today that the videos and the content that I was putting out, then I no longer agree with because I will not stop educating myself. And so the problem is, we don't know where you're finding someone in their journey if they've just started and they are just copying this other Instagram account they found, or if they've been in the trenches, with experience with clients experience with themselves, like always being called to find out like what else could be true. And being willing to change your mind and be wrong, I feel like we protect our ego so much online, if I tell them I was wrong. Like that's something for me, when I changed my stance on intermittent fasting. I've changed my stance on melatonin. And I've changed my stance on blue cold showers. In some areas of our cycle, I feel like that is what is necessary for growth. And so that is what I would look for, I would look for people that hold firm and a belief and also show willingness to change their mind when they have been shown something that may be more correct. So good.

36:43

And with anything we don't know until we know, right? And so something can be released. And you can be like, This is so great. This is so cool. And everyone can agree. And then new information is provided because there's more people doing it, there's more data, there's more science, then you're able to have a different opinion on something. So I absolutely love that. One of the things that you share in your 12 ways to biohack your energy that we'll link down below is the hand test. And I've never heard of this before. So can you walk us through what the hand test is and how everyone can go take action on that part today?

37:15

Yeah, so when you're laying in your bed at night, tonight, right before you fall asleep, you turn the lights out, I want you to stick your hand five inches in front of your face, if you can see it, your room is not dark enough to have optimal quality sleep. Yeah, you'll sleep but it's not as optimal quality as it shouldn't. The other time you do this test is first thing in the morning. Now, I'm in the Pacific Northwest. It is dark here early, and it is dark here late. So in the winter, you'll notice you might be able to get away with this. But where are you start to look at this as in the summer when the sun gets up for 35. In the morning, if that sun is entering your bedroom and lighting it up, you will decrease the quality of sleep that you get and the amount of sleep that you get. So if the basic rule is if you can see your hands six inches in front of your face, when you're going to sleep you're waking up, you need better blackout blinds, blackout curtains, roller blinds, find something that does a better job of sealing light out of your room. Wow, I

38:08

find this so interesting because we have curtains in our room. And I've heard from so many people that you want to wake up to sunlight, you want sunlight to be one of the first things that you see. And waking up to the Sun is a really natural way for your circadian rhythm and all these things and I'm not into all of it enough to know. So I've just heard different opinions. So talk to me about the people that are preaching that and where you know, not to create, like disagreement, but where you see some faults in that logic. Yeah, I think

38:35

we're looking at an optimized circadian rhythm following the sun is one way to do it. But how do we also justify the fact that in Vancouver, it's not bright out till eight in the morning here. And in the summer, it's 430 Is that swing doable if we go back to our conversation on Chrono types, and so that you can definitely follow the sun, but it's hard when it does that for our swing. So what you can actually do instead is they have these things called Light alarms. And you can put them on your bed, their sunrise alarm, so basically alarm clocks and you set them for let's say 7am and 20 to 30 minutes before your alarm goes off, it will slowly start to brighten your room as if the sun is rising. So I love the idea of rising with the sun and going to bed with the dark but this doesn't always work right and the only other option is to be using artificial indoor lights in the evening to keep you up later. And so I always let's make it black and if you need to wake yourself up we can use one of these sunlight sunrise alarms to get that same benefit and at least keep your timing more consistent. Oh, I

39:29

love that because yeah, that's why I haven't implemented it because I'm like that doesn't work with our lifestyle. The sun does come up when I needed to come up and it doesn't work at those different times. So I absolutely love that. Another thing that you list in this 12 Things is brain I build our core routine around for this community is brain dumping, building your schedule around it in your priorities. I'd love for you to talk through your brain dump process and where there may be some overlap and some differences especially as it comes to biohacking not just like moms schedules and In mental load, yeah, it's funny. I

40:02

just coached a client on this yesterday on our group call, she came and she's I just moved my business from Las Vegas to California. And that's a lot of people. I don't know, I'm so overwhelmed. And it's interesting. I was like, Okay, where are you keeping track of all this and she's in my head. I was like, let's talk about brains or for brains are for making decisions. They're not for carrying large amounts of information, because they feel we don't have stuff written down. Our brains just like to like, oh, my gosh, am I gonna forget this? And it's those are the things that have you up at 330 in the morning being like, do the to do it. Oh, my gosh, what have I done. So I love to start, especially when I'll give you a great example, this trip to Panama, we started planning it six months ago, we were going for two months with toddlers. And it is a country which doesn't speak English, there are their English pockets. But there's a lot to consider here. So I write out absolutely everything I can think of as it pertains to this project or this trip, you could do it as to fleet, whatever you want, then what I do is I go through and break everything down into 15 to 30 minute tasks. Because if I'm looking at something like get travel insurance, oh my gosh, I have to watch the YouTube videos, I have to read the reviews, I have to choose the company, I have to choose the plan, I was like, I have to check the policy. So breaking it down into 15 to 30 minute tasks. And then what I do is every Saturday, I sit down, and I plan out my week, especially my work week, day by day in blocks. And so I know if I have nine to 11am on Monday morning to work on these type of tasks, I have two hours, I will put in 90 minutes worth of tasks. And that way, I have a little bit of buffer time in there. But at any point in my week, you could walk into my house, go over to my calendar, look at what I should be working on and find me working on it. Most of the time. There's obviously exceptions to that. But I found it, it's given me such freedom because when I don't have it planned, I get to enjoy leisure time, guilt free there, I'm not supposed to be doing work, I should be getting more done. Nope. This is time I don't have to do anything. And I feel that has given me so much freedom and really getting through tasks efficiently, staying productive and still getting a ton of downtime.

42:02

I love that. And just like a reminder, for everyone listening, you have a one in three year old. So like you have all these other different variables in your life. And you can do it. Now. Let's talk about Vanessa like 10 years ago, AI and where you're at now. And do you that version of yourself. I know you were a full time physical trainer, personal trainer. And so you've had a layer of health for a period of time. And then your priority shifted from that physical perspective into Okay, I need to nurture my internal system, and how I show up now that I'm a mom. But let's talk about just the ambition part of it and the dreaming part of it for a second, the going and living in Panama for two months. Some of that is this always been a dream, or did this shift and this is a new version of your family.

42:49

I have what I called my third of life crisis. And back into January I turned 34. And I had this moment of Hold on, what goals am I chasing here? Because I had been part of so many business masterminds and communities that were like, now we're aiming for $30,000 month, you got that now it's $50,000 months now, what's your million dollar year and I had been so surrounded with that, that I had stopped listening to what I wanted. And I and my husband, he had launched an Amazon business that required us to be at home all the time. And it was just all of these things. I was like, Where are we headed? And when it's enough, like for real when is enough? So him and I we went on one or two walks a day with our kids for about a month straight and we ironed out what do we want to do? What does this look like? And in that moment, we're like, Okay, here's how much income we actually need. Beyond that, just fun. But if it starts eroding the bandwidth for our enjoyment of our life, our time with our kids, we don't need anything more than this. And then we were like, what do we think about the idea of traveling and this literally just came into place last January, we thought of this idea, and implemented it because we're fast, we fail hard. We've lost lots of money on business investments, but it's because of that fast action taking that we move so fast. So it was through that we just wondered what it would be like to do the same life. One and three year old husband, wife, we go and work and live, but in the sun on the beach and raise our kid around culture and what would that look like? And so it's been putting pieces in place ever since then. But that vision of travel just hit like this year. I

44:23

love that. And I think sometimes you have to see something as possible before you can see it for yourself. Was this something that you saw whether it's like online and random accounts, or did it just really come from just the inside of each of you?

44:36

How did you see this even being a possibility to say we could do that too? Yeah, one of my friends had an old coaching client and the coaching clients name is Robert Murgatroyd. And him and his wife have a podcast called the fry date podcast. And I was looking for something I felt my energy was really like, like cortisol li like I couldn't calm down and there's this all just about they just decided to pack up their Life and moved to Italy. And it was a failure. Remember, this was a really early morning and I was out for a solo walk. And he had asked about this question of when is enough? And the way he stated it was like, enough is enough when it erodes the bandwidth for a great quality life. And it was this whole moment of what are we chasing this for? are we chasing? Are we gonna hustle as hard our kids life is gonna pass us by? Are we going to be stressed out and chasing money to get to 65 so that we can what then start to live. And so we started doing this whole process of unwinding all of these beliefs we had, and I even invited Rob on my podcast, I was like, You need to tell this story again, because it was so good. But I think it was really hearing him go through this process of realizing that more isn't more, there comes a point at which it doesn't, when it starts to erode the bandwidth for your life. It's just not worth it. That was huge.

45:49

Yeah. And that someone else is more might not be your more, right. I think that's really important to understand, too, that your more can look so different than someone else's. Or when more is not enough, or not the right thing, that just what feels good for you doesn't have to be someone else's. And I think this is actually really important when it comes back to biohacking because if your body isn't in a state where you can even know what feels good, and you're not able to get silent and present with yourself and feel those things, you don't even know you don't know what feels good. You don't have maybe the right situation going on chemically in your body to even know what feels good. Does that show up with your clients? Do you realize that they're more in tune with who they are in their confidence and what they want to create in their life once their body is calibrated? Yeah,

46:37

we're asking like, when is enough? was so much of it? Like think about this? How many of us believe that workouts have to be an hour? How many of us have done the whole? Oh, it should be five days a week of one hour workouts? Would you ever wonder where that came from? Do you ever wonder who Why not like think about all the things that we just think of as facts. This is eating healthy. This is proper enough exercise? This is all of this kind of stuff. And we never actually question it. So I always like to break everything down and ask what would you add back in? And why? And if it's because you saw it on the internet? Okay, no, wait, no, what would feel good? What do you actually want to do? And start building that back in. And that's one of the reasons I really love having data, right? It's like constantly measuring the return on investment for your time. Like, I want to know, okay, if I'm going to start sleeping more, I want to start feeling better, am I doing stuff that actually improves that? Am I doing stuff that actually makes a difference, I think we get really stuck up and just stuck in doing things that we find online, because that person has a really big Instagram following, they have to know what they're talking and look at her glutes, she must know what she's doing. Like we just make these assumptions based on a follower size or a snapshot of a body that they know what is best. And so we just blindly do it. So I always love that combination of tracking, and asking us like, hey, where did I get this belief that this is what I should be doing? And is it what should be the I

48:01

mean, we think of health as saying scientific in ways like that comes a little more naturally to understand that we're going to measure data in that way. But I actually hear so much about motherhood. And what you're saying too, is you see someone post something, you're like, Oh, if I do that, I'm a good mom. Or if I do that, I'm going to be a ambitious, good goal, get our person where really you need to look at the data and say, Okay, if I make those Frankenstein Rice Krispie treats for my kids party, did that really make a difference? Maybe there's nothing wrong with doing that. If that did make you feel good, or your kids feel good. But also, you could just pick up the napkins and then play with your kids that night too. And you could measure the data in that way, and be able to find the balance of what works for you. And coming back and saying, okay, just because that person told me to do this in my parenting or that person told me to do this to hit my goals. It doesn't mean that it's the right thing if the data is not matching. And I think that is so important. What are some habits or routines that you have as a person, whether it's like how you talk to your kids, or you and your partner connect some things that just bring you back to a human that help you be connected to that gut feeling of what feels right to you.

49:15

Oh, this is what I did a whole podcast on how I biohack to my kids, and especially, I went over a lot of how I'm teaching them emotional resilience, because it was something I wish I had been taught and I feel like as adults, we're brought up taught that people cause our feelings. Hmm. When so much of it I think all of it really is like, a lot of our life circumstances are neutral. It's we have sentences in our head that give them meaning that hurt. And that's okay. It's not that we should eliminate negative feelings. But I think that getting that personal responsibility back and really just acknowledging feelings that so many of my clients come in and I'll ask them, like, how, how does that make you feel? And they're like, and they'll tell me a story. And I'm like, No, how does that make you feel? And they're like, and they'll tell me another story. And I'm like, no, no, no. finger. And so with my daughter right now she's in that phase right now, she's three lot of big feelings that she gets, like really feisty, and like to yell and stuff like that. And she gets really frustrated. And I'll tell her, I'm like, you're just feeling frustrated. So what we're gonna do right now, is we're gonna take a breath, and it's okay that you're frustrated right now. And we take a breath together. And now shoes will come up to my husband, and I should be like, Are you frustrated, take a breath. We don't need to get rid of negative emotions. And that you can be just as you are, you don't need to change it, you don't need to hide it. And taking a big breath and slowing down and just acknowledging what is there without needing to distract with a TV or eat something to feel better about it or beat ourselves up. It's just, I'm frustrated. And that's okay. And that's

50:45

been really fun as well. So good. Now, before I ask you my final question, I'd love for you to just tell everyone where they can find you where they can get into your world, if definitely, we'll have that 12 ways to biohack your energy linked below. And then talk a little bit about your program if they want to work more in depth with you. Yeah, so

51:03

outside of that 12 ways to biohack your energy, it's that PDF that's got like my favorite bio hacks, it'll give you a really good head start inside there, each one of those hacks is linked to a podcast episode where I take it super deep on, here's why it works, here's how to play here's how it's gonna affect your life. And you'll find with my podcast, like you're getting exactly what you need to know, I'm not going to tell you the what to do, and not the how you're going to get it off. So you'll walk away with actual stuff you can implement, which is really fun. But beyond that, I'm really active on Instagram, I'm at Janessa shears, I always love to respond, I post on there five days a week. So that's a really good place to come hang out. As far as my programs, I work with clients very, always a very small group at a very close proximity because I want to be able to roll up my sleeves, so to speak, and get elbows deep into what's going on in your world and understand what makes you tick. And through that developing a very clear process of okay, we're going to work on this and helping you decide what experiments to do and what order because we all know what to do, you can find that if you're just looking for what go on my podcast. But if you want help, like fast forwarding, the time that you spend, and helping with the implementation and making the sustainable mindset changes so that you don't get pulled off the wagon again. That's where I come in. And so my specialty is it's a mix of consulting, it's a mix of coaching. I offer suggestions, you make decisions, and then I coach you on how to implement it.

52:17

So it's cool. Awesome. And if someone wants to hear more about that program, is it sending you a message on Instagram? What's the best way for them to get in your world?

52:24

Yeah, a DM on Instagram is a really easy way to get a hold of me if you're wanting to just create the program page first, my website Janessa shears.com, you can go to the becoming limitless program page and just see what's involved. And then if you want to consult colleges, feel free to apply and we can jump on and talk to see if it's a good fit.

52:38

Awesome. You're going to be going to Panama in just a month here and traveling with the kids. You have so many fun things going on. Is that the number one thing or is there something else that you're really excited about in this season, a goal that you're working towards what is really lighting you up right now.

52:55

I'm constantly redefining this program that I'm working on. Like my thing right now that I've been digging into is the discomfort and feedback. So I have been going through everything and asking for feedback on everything because I am a really big Alex for mosey fan. Do you know who he is? Yeah, he's in the business world of the product has to be the thing that creates everything else. So I'm really into right now understanding like, how can I make this better? How can I get results faster? How can I make this feel more personal? And so that's what's been I'm geeking out on right now. It was like building relationships with the people that have put their trust in me on a deeper level. Oh,

53:29

I love that. So good. Okay, we covered a lot of different things today and biohacking can be really overwhelming and in depth if it's new to you. So for anyone that's getting off this podcast today, if they were just going to make one switch implement one thing, what would be the one thing that they could take action on today or tomorrow?

53:45

Pick a bedtime. honor it.

53:47

Love it. So good. And for the kids, right? For the kids? Yeah. Yeah, but starting with us so we can model good behavior. So that was such a good conversation. Thank you so much for being here. I cannot wait to dive into all the 12 ways biohack your own energy and get my wiring so I can get into all the data. This is so good. Thank you. Thanks. Sometimes the smallest acts of love is all a mom needs to feel reinvigorated. If you can relate to that I feel so supported by your five star rating and written review. Take a moment and let me know what you thought about this episode.