A kitchen-bench breakdown over meatballs became the wake-up call: it wasn’t more hacks I needed... it was sleep. In this conversation with integrative health expert Lucy Gable, we unpack the foundations that actually move the needle: parasympathetic breaks, moderate movement, and balanced fuel. You’ll learn how to choose the smallest change that makes the biggest difference—and why protecting your sleep can turn fog into clarity, anxiety into steadiness, and “overdrive” into okay.

We cover:

• Micro-breaks that switch on calm (in minutes)

• Why moderate movement and calm breaths is more productive than pushing through

• Food as fuel (without rigidity)

• Essential sleep hygiene

Invitation: if you’re ready to explore your one smallest shift, book a free Curiosity Call. If you’re clear you want support now, you can also book a 90-Minute Somatic Clarity Session.

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Luci Gabel helps driven professionals become high-performing leaders—without burning out—using science-backed strategies that elevate performance.

Her approach blends 20+ years in leadership and health-science—with experience as VC-funded founder, leadership strategist, and professor of integrative medicine.

As an integrative leadership coach & trainer, author of Eat to Lead, and host of the podcast Leadership, Life, Health & Happiness, she’s known for translating complex science into real-world strategies—and for keeping it both practical and human.

Luci’s

Website: https://www/lucigabel.com and https://www.eattolead.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucigabel

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  I was standing at my kitchen bench. I had my hands covered in chicken mitts and tears for rolling down my face and there were stop, and I just had this big emotional, ugh. All of the emotions were coming up and it felt so overwhelming and I was even thinking like, wow, I'm supposed to be better at this, right?

I've learned this before. And honestly, the reason that I had this little breakdown while I was making some chicken meatballs with Sun Tomato Rizzo, which is absolutely delicious, and if you want the recipe, I'll send it. It's one of my favorite meals right now. Um, was because I hadn't been sleeping. I hadn't been sleeping, and there are things that we can do to optimize our life, to support ourselves, to support our mental, mental health, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But if we don't have the foundations of movement and sleep and food, right, it's gonna be. Really exhaust. Not exhausting, but it's just not gonna be effective. And I like things to be effective. So I have a really beautiful colleague. Her name is Lucy, and she. Really, she supports people who are navigating burnout as well,

But her approach blends more than 20 years in health science. She has her experience as a BC founded founder, leadership strategist, and professor of integrative medicine, and what I've brought her on to chat to you about today is. Food, 📍 sleep, and Movement. She's the author of Eat To Lead and hosts of the Leadership Life Health and Happiness podcast, and we're gonna be talking about those three together today . She's gonna give you one insight at the end on how to pick. The smallest change that will make the biggest difference in your life, whether it's food, sleep, or movement, and what that change might need to look like. 📍

my biggest question for you, first of all, between sleep movement and food, if somebody was sitting and listening and they were just feeling overwhelmed and they felt like they were behind on everything and maybe everything, maybe they felt even a little bit numb because of everything that's been going on, what is the first place that you would recommend they really focus on honing or improving for better nervous system health?

Hmm. You said between sleep, movement and food. So, you know, the funny thing is I would rec not recommend food because that's not where we go to for rest. Right. And I'm gonna dive in from what you just started talking about, which is where most so many people are. Overwhelmed and just their brain is maybe in three different places all the time, or maybe they're doing large projects and they're switching from one LAR large project to the next.

Any which way you look at it, we're pushing our brain super hard, and our brains have finite energy. We forget that just like the body, our brain needs rest and food and rest includes sleep, but it also includes just time off in order to be able to work the best and it also needs movement. Can you imagine that?

But yeah, current research is showing now, starting to build that our brain does really well when we exercise in all different kinds of ways. So when you say, what's the first thing that someone needs to do? The first thing I think about when you're in that situation is you need a break. You need a set break where you actually make your brain not think about work, where you actually look at something pretty.

And just enjoy it or be in an environment that you can just enjoy. And that the great thing about that is that it turns off the brain for a few minutes. Doesn't have to be hours or days. I mean, depends on how much you need, but a few minutes really can help to rejuvenate at least. And then if you can implement that, you know, throughout the day, pepper it in.

Then you start to feel the rejuvenation coming back. That's what I would say. What do you think? Well, then you start getting into the parasympathetic nervous system and that's like regulation and pleasure coming in at once. Um, yeah. And at the same time, for me, it always starts with sleep. It's like whenever I have somebody come to me, I'm like, okay, cool.

How are you sleeping and not that if we kind of like fixate on one and just like try to fix it, that's not a healthy approach either. There might be other reasons why we're not sleeping, such as, you know, your mind can't turn off and you haven't done any emotional processing, or maybe you ate really badly during the day or you had a coffee.

Really like too layer, but you're not thinking about that stuff, but mm-hmm. Um, it took me a little bit of time, maybe this is an age thing. It took me a little bit of time to be really selfish, almost about my sleep, and really sleep and really guarded around my sleep, and I've noticed over the past.

Couple of years since I started being really protective about my sleep and like, I'm gonna get this many hours and it's not a super large amount of hours. Um, but just like having really good sleep hygiene, I notice when things are out of whack for me. It's usually because sleep kind of slipped through the cracks a little bit, um, or when things are difficult for me.

I, it gives me a sense of control and like your brain does so many amazing things while you're sleeping, like the ability that it has to learn and to consolidate memories and to flush out your nervous system and like that really deep, deep, deep rest where your brain is just like you said, completely off, um, is so foundationally important for your body that I think it's worth being a little bit.

Um, mm. Like fussy about it, you know, and like really making sure that you prioritize it. I agree. It's worth it. And this is great conversation between you and I right now, because I think we're showing two sides of this issue. Yours is about the deep, fundamental, necessary sleep, and I'm about okay, what you just said earlier about.

Not being able to sleep well when we're not able to sleep. There are a lot of things that feed into that. One of them also is the amount of breaks you give your brain during the day. Because I was just thinking of this, by the way, we've talked about this earlier. I've been on a huge treadmill. I allowed myself to get on there.

I allowed myself to put that treadmill up to nine, 10, you know? And when we need, we absolutely need to get off that treadmill. We can't, we should not be doing a treadmill on ten four. Um, many months at a time, let alone years. Yeah. We need to give ourselves stopping times, slow walking times, fast walking times, you know, but when it's time to get off.

We can push that off button and even if we're super tired, that treadmill's gonna wind down and you're gonna still have to keep up. This is what just came to my mind before we start talking. You press off and if you've been on a treadmill, you're still holding on 'cause you really need to stop. But that treadmill's gonna take some time to wind down, so your legs are still going like, ah, ah, ah, ah.

You know? Yeah. So unless you put those purposeful breaks. In your day, then that treadmill's going on high and then you wanna get to bed. Now, you know, you have to pace yourself. It's not just day by day, month by month. It's throughout the day. Yeah. That's such a good point. I forget about that. Uh, I think I forget about it 'cause I kind of do it.

But you're right, it's, it is, it's interesting 'cause you can't really isolate. Each one of them. So then C, can you speak more about movement? How does movement, um,

influence our ability to show up or how have you seen it influence our ability to show up how we want?

It's movement to me is part of those breaks. Yeah. We can talk all about health. I mean, movement is essential to keep our bodies moving appropriately and our everything working right and top notch. But if we're just talking about our ability to perform, let's say at work or with other people, then. Those little movement breaks in our day do so many things.

It gives, we have to say, okay, I'm gonna turn my brain off for this five minutes. I'm gonna walk around the block and I'm gonna look at the scenery. I'm going to smell the fresh air. If you're not in fresh air, I'm going to just observe people around me, look at the sky, you know, be 100% present. So those movement breaks.

Double up for your health of your body and your brain. And I think that's the, that's the key point I wanna get there. Yeah. So what about, what would you say to someone who's. He's like, yeah, I get it. I should move my body. I'm really tired, or I'm just really busy. What would you say to them, Uhhuh? I know it is such a hard hurdle to get over that.

Taking these little bits of time is so. Will improve your efficiency and effectiveness so much more than continuing to try to be productive. Yeah. And it's hard to test it, but I am gonna encourage your listeners to test it, see how it is, because it's really true. You have to be, you know, observant of your day if you wanna test it.

Uh, but that movement break is gonna give your brain oxygen as well as your body. It's gonna circulate the nutrients from. Wherever they are in your body, your digestive system or elsewhere into your brain, so you're gonna get more of the nutrients. If you're trying to eat well, you're gonna get more of that to your brain and it still does the cleansing.

You know, sleep cleanses our nervous system, so does movement. It cleanses because of the increased circulation so much there that it's gonna help you to do. Also contrary to what people believe they think. I'm tired, so I'm not going to exercise. Guess what? Exercise wakes you up. Yeah. So you don't want to exercise late at night because it will keep you awake.

And if you do go out on the exercise break, what you don't wanna do is. Super hard exercise and then have to go back to work because it will make you relax. It'll release those chemicals afterwards that help you to relax and also be happier. So do a moderate intensity, you know, if you still need to have a significant amount of day left, but don't keep it so low because you're afraid you're gonna make yourself tired.

If you walk a little faster or do something a little more vigorous, it will wake you up. It's interesting what also, what it also does is it increases your, um. It's almost like increasing your vagal tone. So it's increasing your ability to go from really strenuous activity to rest. So the, when we do like moderate amount of exercise consistently and then return to rest, we teach our body, and this is for the listeners, we teach our body that it can exert itself and then rest, meaning like it can have a hard conversation and then relax.

It doesn't have to live in a, in a activated state where it's like preoccupied. I did. And I was reminded by this to of this just this week because I usually try to get in like two, one or two like little run slash walks. It's just like 20 to 30 minutes long a week. And I find it difficult to motivate myself for it.

Um, and I actually asked her GBTI was like, I know this is really good for me. Um, I really am struggling to get motivated. Can you just tell me the science of why this is really good for me? And so you can like pick whatever it is. Like, mine has been weightlifting lately. As I, after I turned 30, I was just really.

Aware of the fact that my muscle tone had decreased, even though I've been doing yoga six days a week for many, many years. Um, and I was thinking about, you know, my bone density will decrease and then they have like osteoporosis. And so the best way to navigate that is by having more muscle mass so that I have healthy bone structure and then I have a long, healthy, a, a body for a really long time.

Um, and so I just like literally asked cha PT of like, can you tell me the science of like why this matters? To me when I'm feeling like a little bit

unmotivated. Yeah. What are your motivation tricks? Uh, uh I love that you asked that. I am the same though. I, I really have. I'm one of those. Unusual people who wants my future self to be healthy. Yeah, true. That's not a lot. I mean, I know everyone says that, but Right. What research actually shows that that's one of the most, the most important things.

That's. People don't have is that desire to have their future self be happy and healthy. People don't think about that. They don't touch base with that. And that's why so many people don't stick with changing their habits or New Year's resolutions, things like that. So what you did was perfect. We wanna train our brain to think that way.

All the good things we're doing. But I feel that we can. Seriously go back to the first piece that we were talking about in the sense of, you know, we all want immediate satisfaction. We want immediate results from something. So aside from the fact that it's gonna take you a while to get significant change in your body, if you wanna work out for that reason, immediate results are, it's gonna wake me up.

It's gonna increase my mood how many times I've gone to the gym because I knew I was in a bad mood and I needed to shift that thing. And it shifts, like after one workout, you get in a better mood because of the happy hormones that come out into your system when you're working out, you know, and also it gets rid of cortisol, things like that.

So, um, I would say those are the immediate factors, reasons why I go to workout, the mental and the energy. Yeah, it, it's really good way to also just process emotion, like move energy through your body so that you're not looking at things from such a painful way. Yeah, that's true. Oh, the energy we do. Yeah.

And I, I have, and I know so many of my clients have epiphanies while working out. Yeah, because of the, exactly what I'm talking about because hormone shift and brain starts to think differently. When we're moving, we start to get more calm. We start to see things in a bigger picture way. We're stepping back from stuff, even just by being in the gym, you know, or outside.

We're stepping farther back from our issues and we switch the brain to another subject, which is when all the stuff in the background can actually process and get to work. Yeah. Magically resolves. Yeah. So. What about food then? How does that impact our energy? How do you see that impacting our energy and our ability to think clearly and get answers?

Answers. Food is fuel. Food is our fuel. Now granted there we were just talking about repair with rest and we were talking about energy and maintenance with exercise and food is fuel. So when we eat things that are not so great for our body and our brain, we feel sluggish. And I've worked with so many people who to shift their diets, and by the way, we don't have to have a whole conversation about what a good diet is.

I mean, I think a, most people know what a good diet is, but when we shift our diets to healthier. Even in the slightest way, we start to feel different. We start to think better. We start to, it affects how well we sleep. It affects how easily we can move pretty. That that happens in a couple of weeks. Also, if we're paying attention, we can feel it.

Yeah. Can you speak to maybe like if there are any patterns that you see around eating that actually increase anxiety or fatigue or dysregulation? I mean, one of the things that I think of is like, not eating a lot of protein or healthy fats, um, but eating really high amounts of like sugar and or carbohydrates.

And for some people's bodies that's easier and like, and that's more appropriate and for other people's bodies. That gives them a bit of like a, um, a spike at a friend. She was like, I just had started having this panic attack in the middle of the day and I just couldn't really figure it out. And then I remembered that I had had two really large coffees.

Yes. Without any food. I, I just wrote that down. Uh, I love coffee and I also like wine, and I love sugar. I love wine and sugar. You know, we've heard women talking about this. Yes. Yeah. Um, and I haven't given them up, but I have noticed that as I progress through life and become more aware, more finely tuned to my body, I wouldn't say it's anything except that I've become much more in tune with my body and so I can sense things much.

Faster and caffeine. Caffeine will do it, alcohol will do it, sugar will do it. It'll make you feel nervous or kind of hollow, but energized, you know, which is a weird feeling, right? Hollow, but excited and like out of control. So we can still have it, but I'm gonna back up to something that you just said earlier about, um, protein and fat.

And I'm gonna, I am. A contradictory person in this area because, yeah, go ahead. Carbohydrates, increased dopamine and serotonin. They're essential for dopamine and helps, and this where it's like and are essential for tryptophan working from the protein, they're essential and tr all these things help us to calm down, to relax, to feel happy, and to sleep.

Yeah. And hopefully it's about having, no, it's about having your, that somatic intelligence and that ability to, to actually develop that skill of checking in with your body and noticing, because I mean, I couldn't live without carbohydrates, but I was vegan and raw vegan for a really long period of my life, and that wasn't good for my mental health.

Um, and so it's like, for me, it's about having balance. I have friends who are like. Full carnival friends who are like, absolutely won't touch any of that. That's not good for my body. But it's almost like about experimenting and listening to your body, and it's about, like you said, refining. Yes. And I know we're kind of getting close on time, so that's why I'm pushing in now.

So it's about it. Balance is exactly what you said, and I feel that a lot of times, especially now with social media and media and people who are talking about nutrition, science, who don't have a background in it, we're just taking little pieces of it and what we get. For the public is hyped up little areas of knowledge that are hyped up as if they're like the only way.

But yes. I love that you said the word balance. We need protein, we need carbs, and we need fat, and we need them all in their healthiest form. So no, not talking about go to the seven 11 and buy a donut every morning. Absolutely. No, but I am saying that carbs are not evil. They're actually essential. Yeah.

And sometimes with the fad diets that go on. That'll wreck our energy. It'll make us either tired or like over energized, like you said, can't sleep. Um, and a variety of other things. You know, all the fad diets will actually eventually do something not great for your body and brain. A thousand percent. So that being said, I mean, this is why we have people like you to help with the intricacies of.

Nervous system health for diet and exercise and sleep and all of that stuff. Um, when you're working with somebody, if they were to come to you right now, can you speak to us about like what is like kind of the mindset or the approach that you take? Is it one of like compassion or experimentation or trying to get things to fit macros and things like that?

What's like the mindset that you find the most helpful? The easiest way I can say it is I always start from where they are. I don't believe in making yourself miserable. It shouldn't be a process of making yourself miserable, changing your diet. It should actually be a process of expanding your horizons and also listening to your body and learning what really works.

So I don't give people a plan. I never did that. Uh, it's about tweaking little things as you go, as you feel like you're comfortable and you're ready. And what's the, if we were just to get together, once I, we would talk about what's the biggest thing that, that you need to change and what's the smallest step you could take that will make the biggest change for you and most efficient?

You know, what's the smallest step you could take that would make the biggest change for you? That's why I always come back to sleep for myself, for my body. Yeah. Or like protein or eating well or having one less coffee. Yeah. What, what's yours? Less. It's always different. I'm really pretty and I'm always shifting just a little bit.

I'm pretty honed in on all this stuff though. I've been doing it for over 20 years and always experimenting with myself first. Right? Uh, so for me it's little tweaks all the time. What do I need today? What's going on today? And that usually is affected by what happened yesterday, the day before, right? So we all, and what's going on like in our lives, you know, it affects all that.

The holidays are coming up for many people. That's gonna be a big thing. There's gonna be a lot of stress, there's gonna be a lot of food, there's gonna be a lot more to do, right? So that's people are going to need the smallest little thing. What's the smallest thing I need today? That I can do today that'll help me to have more energy and also be happy with myself and pleased with the decisions I'm making, you know?

I'm coming up with a very small little micro program for exactly this last thing. We're talking about picking a small thing, making a step together in a group.

So, uh, I can't say when it's coming out because I've been working on it, but I'm hoping to get it out over the holidays. So if people wanna just, uh, wanna follow up, they can check out my website, lucy gable.com or check out any of my social media, uh, platforms and they can see. What's happening? Yeah, I'll make sure those are down in the show notes.

And we connected on LinkedIn and that was great. So everyone goes Hello to Lucy on LinkedIn and check out the program. I can really attest for just having accountability and picking one thing. And if you might, there might be a part of you that's like, oh no, I need like some big massive program or like, no.

Pick one thing, work with somebody that's gonna help you with that one thing, like she said, or like Lucy said, you know, the smallest thing with the biggest impact. That's what it's about,