Maintaining Health While Navigating Grief

Calvin and Brooke Masters: Thanks for tuning in to Master Your Metabolism. If you found value in today's episode, it would mean the world to us if you'd hit subscribe and share this episode with someone who could use a little guidance in their health journey. Ready to take the next step? Head over to www.mastersfitnesscoaching.com and you can book a free call right from the site. You've counted every calorie, tried every diet, spent hours in the gym, and still something's missing. You want more than just weight loss. You want your energy back. You want your confidence restored. You want a way of living that doesn't feel like punishment. Welcome to Master Your Metabolism, where we cut through the noise, ditch the fads, and give you a real plan to become the healthiest, strongest version of you. Brooke Masters: Hey there, everybody. Welcome, welcome back to Master Your Metabolism. I am here today with Amanda, our mindset coach. the topic for today that I wanted to touch on, because I've been seeing it a lot recently, is grief and you are able to maintain your health during this grieving process. And grieving, not with to losing a family member, losing a loved one, having to move through something like that, but also the experience of grieving because I hear a lot of the women that I'm working with that are over 40, over 50, that are moving through a time in their lives that they're actually grieving who they were. the that we were, the ability that had when we were in our ⁓ 20s, in ⁓ 30s, what were responsible for and now, Calvin and Brooke Masters: so we can chat about your goals and how we can help support you. forget to join our Facebook group where we're sharing coaching tips, support, and tricks to help keep you on track and continue making progress. You don't have to do this alone. We're here to walk with you ⁓ step of the way. Until next time, stay consistent, stay kind to yourself, and keep mastering your metabolism. hosted by our team of expert coaches with proven strategies, science-based tips, and real life encouragement, not just to help you lose fat, but actually create that lifestyle that you love. You've tried everything. Now, let's try what actually works. This is your turning point. Let's go. Brooke Masters: the things that were putting value or what we felt put value on us now aren't there anymore. Those responsibilities are now, hey, instead of taking care of the kids, you are now sitting on the sidelines and watching and hoping you did a great job and hoping that they've learned through this experience. And even just being able to multitask and take care of all of the things like we did before for the household and everything with Calvin and Brooke Masters: Let's do this together. Brooke Masters: hormones changing and your capacity changing that you don't even have the same ability and you feel lost. You can't put words together sometimes. And it's that feeling of not having the control, not having the same ability that you did. And it's almost like grieving who you were. that is really challenging for people. So I wanted Amanda on here so she could kind of explain what grieving truly is, what the stages of this process are what to expect. So you have an idea and not just moving through it and feeling lost and feeling broken, ⁓ actually understanding what is happening and how to also move this time and how to start feeling stronger, start moving ⁓ and more in control. Because I feel like a lot of the women that I work with that I coach, when they understand what's happening, it makes it a little bit more validated as to what is going on that they're not, it's not that they're not trying, it's not like they're not motivated, it's not like they're not doing all the things, it's that their abilities have changed learning how to work with what is going on now and focusing on what we can control. So I'm gonna start just kind of asking you, Amanda, is just maybe starting off with sharing. about grief and what those stages are so people know what to expect. Amanda Blumenstein: Yeah, I think grief often compared just to physical death. So someone dies you experience grief, but grief can be the death or the loss of many things. It be the of an idea, loss of identity. What Brooke is talking is that loss of that death of the former self. And in psychology, The way that we kind of explain grief and break it down was done by Kubler-Ross and it's the five stages of grief. And I'm go each one and explain what they each are. They usually happen in this order. So it's helpful for identification purposes. So the first one is denial. Denial is, usually if someone were to pass away that immediate thought of ⁓ that be true. There's no way that's ⁓ that's body's way of putting up a force field, right of protecting you from what it is you're about to experience because you know that you're about to experience so your body is actively trying to come in and protect you from experiencing the feeling that you're about to feel. The second stage of grief is anger. And that is a very common one that people often miss. think they're just angry, but anger is a manifestation of that grief. So maybe angry at the situation in which the person died, maybe angry at the person for how their death took place. It could be any variety of things, but it's that feeling of anger, which is usually fueled by sadness, which we will get to a little bit later on. Number three is So this is also a common thing you'll see with the death of someone a loved one where what what I would give if I could just have ten more minutes with them or Just kind putting it out into the universe. Like please I will give myself for this person that I lost when Rationally, we understand that's not possible. The person is gone but emotionally we're so desperate to heal that grief that we're actually bargaining usually with a higher power of some sort to kind of make it all go away. And then stage four is actually depression. So you go through three stages of grief before you get to that I'm lying in bed, I don't wanna move, I'm sad. I'm hopeless. What's the world gonna be like without this person or this animal or this version of myself? Could be any of those things. It's the most widely recognized stage of And people often think that that's the correct way to grieve. But the correct way to grieve is how you feel you need to grieve. And grieving is very process. and it takes an undetermined amount of time. Everybody through grief at a different pace. So just because your is already to work and functioning like nothing happened, that doesn't mean you have to be there too. Because all of our connections to that individual, to that idea, were personal. that's probably the most important thing to remember is that grief will take as much time as it needs to. And we don't really have a lot of control over that. And that brings us to our final stage, which is the stage we all hope to be at immediately, which acceptance. So ⁓ this has passed, they had best possible life. And now I need to move on and maybe honor their memory. live my life in honor of them. As Jews, we say, may their memory be a blessing. And that really is the acceptance piece where it's you're no longer angry, you're no longer bargaining, you're no longer in denial, you're no longer weeping, you're able to move forward into your life. The problem is going from step one to step five happens a lot slower than we would like it to. And that's where people get stuck. and I think that's probably where Brooke is going with this, is what do you do in the meantime? Is that, yeah. So what you do in the meantime? I recently suffered the ⁓ of my dog. had him for 13 years. And yes, I know was a person, but to me that was an unimaginable loss. Brooke Masters: Yep. Yep. Amanda Blumenstein: And he was very sick for a long time. it became harder and harder for me to want to track my macros, to care about how much I weighed that morning because I'm devastated, right? And especially afterwards in that depression stage when you don't want to get out of bed, you don't want to do things. And I myself to do the best could. So that's not completely forget everything. It's also not, we're not performing at a hundred percent either. It's what you can manage that day and day to day can be different. So there were days that I tracked my macros. I was sad, but I was able to track them. There were days when I just focused on eating, you know, a third, a third and a third. There were days when I know I've been in this game a long time, there are certain meals that I know work in my macros. So just eating those meals instead of trying to make it more complicated. It's really about honoring the stages of grief, but knowing that whomever died that loved you, even if it was a former version of yourself, wouldn't want you to suffer at their expense. And this is something you're doing to become a healthier version, whether emotionally or physically or both, we have to fight through the urge to just give it up because something terrible happened. Because we have to think about all the other things that we do when something terrible happens. When something awful happens, someone dies, you're still going to brush your teeth. You're still going to go to the bathroom. These are bare minimum things, but it's proof that you are capable of doing at least the bare minimum, which is more than nothing. So it's really about learning how to moderate yourself for that day. So if you're having a good day, do a little more, go for a walk that day. If you're having a bad day, just try to get your water in. It doesn't have to be the all or nothing. And I think keeping in mind the person you loved or the idea that you loved would have wanted you to be successful and would have wanted you to continue healing. And for me, that helped. Bubby not have wanted me to be sad. And he have wanted me to keep doing all of the things that I do because he loved me more than anything in the world. So I know I'm talking about a dog, but it's the same concept. ⁓ Brooke Masters: It is. I had the same thing when my mom passed and it was devastating. know that I literally hear her. Like, you put own needs. And again, sometimes I felt like it was the only thing I could control. When all the feelings were being felt, it was really the only one spot that I actually felt like I had control when I was in the midst of all of these processes and what was going on. Amanda Blumenstein: So yeah. Brooke Masters: and reminding myself of what she would have wanted, what she has brought me up and how she has taught me to kind of move through life is you always want to pour into yourself so that you can handle going through those stages, you know, giving myself the things because I don't need one more thing I'm feeling sad about. You know, if I let myself go and I don't do the things and I start eating like garbage and I start feeling like garbage and my body starts changing, then it's like, now I'm not just dealing with this. now I have something else and I could have controlled this. So there days that I was perfect? Yeah, were there days that I was way off? Yeah, but maybe like you said, I was still like at least moving my body. I was still at least, you know, making sure that I had time to myself, making sure I got a good night's sleep. So it could really look however it is for you, right? To whatever degree. But there definitely were days, like you said, that I had to go, I was at like 80%, there were days that I was at like 30, I knew when I looked back over time, the majority of the time I was trying to do all that I could. So it definitely is something. And I think it's more so also, know, when, in when things start changing and it's not a true loss, but it is definitely something that... Some days are good, some days are not good. know, talking to people that either, and you had mentioned this also about comparing it to people that have a lot of weight to lose and losing the person they were, you know, and coming from that perspective of what you were able to do before, ⁓ you were before, and now becoming, even though you're working in a direction that you're improving. And I tell women going through perimenopause, like, The woman that I am now is definitely not the same woman that I was 20 years ago, but I almost feel like now stronger, if that makes sense. And now it's definitely something that it's like, I can't do a lot of the things I did before, but now I feel like a little bit stronger and more in control than I was before. Amanda Blumenstein: Thank you. Strength often comes from wisdom. So you know things now that you didn't know then and you understand them on a level that you didn't understand them then. in what you're talking about with that concept of the death of the former self, I talk a lot with my clients who are very overweight, who had a lot of weight to lose or has already lost the weight. And I can tell you from my own personal journey, It does it gets to a point where you start losing and you're swept up in the momentum. You're doing well, you're losing weight, you're that numbers dropping and then all of a sudden you hit a number or you reach a size where you have to take a step back because you're so afraid all of a sudden of the progress that you're making because what that progress means is that you have to also relinquish who you used to be. And there are, yes, pieces of you are going to transfer. But the example I give is I heavier, was a lot more shy and a lot more quiet because I was afraid of other people's thoughts and feelings about me ⁓ and my body. so... in public places, I would kind of shy away. And now I'm much more talkative. But once that started happening in the grocery store and the post office, it scared me because I was like, wait, this isn't me. And they're actually both me is the thing. And one a me that served a purpose at one point in my life. And now there's another me that serves another purpose at this point in my life. So even though it's a loss just like when you're ⁓ perimenopause or menopause, it's that loss of your younger self who was maybe, you know, able to eat and not gain a bunch of weight, who was able to sleep through the night, who was able to not have constant brain fog, all of those things. And we look at that person, we're like, man, I wish, and this is that bargaining, I wish I could be like her again. So that if you're still feeling that way, tells you you're at stage three, you've got two more stages to go. So that ⁓ of I once was versus who I am, we wanna merge those two, but we wanna also be willing to let go of the pieces that don't serve us anymore. And in own experience losing 100 pounds, there were a lot of pieces that didn't serve me anymore. and I was afraid to let them go. being emotional slash comfort eating. Who am I if I'm not the girl eating all the food at the party? Like, who am I? If that's a you can ⁓ ask yourself, means that you're still in that questioning stage. And it's really just about being able to continue to do the things you know you need to do ⁓ to push yourself the next best version of yourself. and the most authentic version of yourself. You will find if you look at a past version, there are going to be a lot of protective mechanisms up in your past version. If there weren't, your past version would be your present version. So if your past version has all of this guard up and you're working really hard to take all that guard down, we have to move away from that in order to start our new chapter. Brooke Masters: Wow, that's pretty interesting. That makes a lot of sense though. You know, because it is something and I tell people like, I almost feel like you always have to grow. You always have to improve. You always have to get better. And it doesn't mean that like for me, it's not like my prior self was, had flaws, prior self had things wrong and I'm coming down on everything, but it was definitely, I always look to be. better each day, even just a little bit in some area, some form, some fashion. it's when you were saying that about people getting to that certain point and they move back because I see so many times with clients that you almost, get to that, they get to number. It's like they have a number on the scale. a number of like their clothes where it fits and what they're wearing. There's some number. It is like, Amanda Blumenstein: to get scared. Brooke Masters: It's strange that it's a concrete number that they identify with. And as soon as they hit it, that's where I see them self-sabotage. That's where I see them doing things. It's like, wait a minute, we were rolling here. Like were making great progress. And the same with myself is like, I feel like I'm doing great. And all of sudden it's like things start happening and it feels like really random. But then I'm like, wait a minute, that's weird that that just happened at that moment. Amanda Blumenstein: It's all based on a lot more subconscious thought. And that's why I love doing the work that I do with my clients is unraveling why. So like you hit 170 and all of a sudden you're shooting back up. What happened? What does 170 mean to you? You may not even be aware of what 170 means to you, but it means something because you're actions changed your behavior changed and That's why we have to look at the behavior throughout this process so we can find the meaning Behind the behavior whether it's a positive behavior or a negative behavior and that's how you learn okay. So if this means that now we can figure out how to work around it But if we don't know what it means Then we're like every time you hit 170 you shoot back up. It's so weird. So random like Why? Well, if we actually figure out why, can figure out a way around it. But if we don't know what the reason is, it's just gonna keep happening because you're going to continue to see, yeah, you're gonna keep having the same lesson over and over and over again until you learn it. And that's the way this process works. Brooke Masters: Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's why it's so important. know, like grieving your old self is definitely why the mindset coaching with our clients has been such a game changer because what I hear from people when they first get started is I've tried everything. I have already done this and it never works. never, I never could follow through. I never could keep moving. And so it's ⁓ having the support and getting to that route and figuring out what that block is. That's what allows us that we could do our job and like, here's the plan. And then they have the support to be able to carry out the plan and figure out why the plan didn't work. It's like those two things together is why the clients are able to get to that place because everybody thinks it's all about macros and it's some magical count. It's a magical workout. Like it, Being in a cut, being in a deficit is gonna work. But if your mind keeps sabotaging you and your mind isn't ready to move and your mind is going to keep stopping you because it's trying to keep you feeling safe it feels uncomfortable when things are new, ⁓ if that isn't addressed, you're gonna keep doing the same thing until you fix that one. Like you said, it's like you're gonna keep stubbing your toe on that. stupid thing that you keep walking by on the bed until you like turn the freaking lights on and see it there so that you can walk around it. Amanda Blumenstein: it's probably the hardest piece that's often most neglected when I start with my clients in the beginning, most of them are a little apprehensive. And that's okay, I'm totally cool with that. Because I know that the work that we're gonna do is going to provide them with more information about themselves, so they can be more active in their choices and not have subconscious behaviors pop up and that's the number one thing we work on is awareness what is actually going on here like yeah you binge ate 32 cupcakes last night what happened what happened before what were you thinking about what was going on where have you done this before what was it like the last time you did it what were the repercussions the last time you did it it seems like a lot of work But that's the work that's going to help you have the information that makes you feel competent and strong enough to follow the process and find the discipline. So it's that very first chapter. And it's also a chapter that meets people along the way too. There are plenty of clients that start with Brooke and then somehow wind up with me after a while and then they go back to Brooke. And I think just really acknowledging the power of the mind is this is not a physical process. It is a physical process, but it's not just a physical process. Your mind tells you what you choose and what you don't choose. So if you're ignoring your chooser, how are you going to stick to a plan? Brooke Masters: Yep. It's true because think about everything that you do. It's just even like from when ⁓ are little, right? They're reacting to something. Something happened and they react, but eventually they mature. They learn. They understand that this happened, but there's a reason that it happened. There's a reason and a better way to be doing it. Things happen, but there are some behaviors that happen that are never identified, never addressed. And those things I find manifest and then you find them much later of, well, my mom never let me have this. we had money for food, so I make sure. Like ⁓ all of little things that you think were in the past until you realize what they how they impacted things and what. it how it influences your decisions today. It's those quick little knee flex reactions I find that keep happening until you start, like you said, associating. well this happened this, and this was what went on in the past. That makes sense that this happens. And it's like, it's almost like the little light bulbs go off and the little things start happening that people are like, okay, cool. So next time we feel this, going to stop. And I think that's the part also that I know that you work on with the clients a lot is just, okay, I feel it happening again. Before we do that, let's take a moment and, understanding what to do in that moment so that they can move through it again, whether it's, you know, moving through grief through something they've been through their former self. again, through perimenopause, all of the things, but I think it's the same reactions of understanding why. you had mentioned, the of grief. For me, that makes a lot of sense. And I can pretty much tell you when I went through each of my stages and where I am right now in some of them, I know and that makes sense. So for me in my brain, I need things to make sense and then I can understand it and know where I have to go and what I have So, cool. Well, I think this was really helpful. unless you have anything else that you wanted to add or touch on before we wrap this one up in a bow. Amanda Blumenstein: only other thing I would kind of add that I didn't totally touch on but kind of did is the concept of that all-or-nothing thinking ⁓ especially in grief thinking well I need to be in bed I need to be sad I need to be doing it this particular way and then applying that all-or-nothing thinking into well I can either give a hundred percent or give zero percent I don't have anything in the middle well whatever's in the middle is totally acceptable Brooke Masters: Hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: And I think that's probably the hardest mental block deal with with my clients is that all or nothing thinking where it's like, well, I can either eat, you know, one or not eat any cookies and, or could eat 35 cookies. Well, okay. How do we moderate that? How do we make that make more sense? So I think being aware ⁓ when you're grieving blocking yourself into corner. and giving yourself allowances. Because I know for me, something bad happens, then I like to say, well, something bad just happened, so I can have fill in ⁓ blank. And allowances are fine, but they can't be on repeat. And that's the problem, is because if you're allowing an extra helping, Brooke Masters: Mm-hmm. Amanda Blumenstein: because you're sad that your mom passed away, is absolutely understandable. But your mom's still going to be gone tomorrow. So is that dessert also acceptable? And it's asking yourself those real questions about how do your behaviors impact ⁓ success based off of what you're going through. So it's not that you shouldn't grieve everybody needs to grieve the losses that they experience and they need to grieve them in their own time I You know, I know lots of people who spend years Grieving and that's what you need to do, that's totally fine But if you have goals for yourself as well we have to figure out how to make space for both the grief and the progress they can share a space and over time the grief will lessen and the progress will ⁓ But it's really acknowledging that you can be both grieving and Brooke Masters: I like that. I like that. Because it is. That's a great way how you said that the grieving was going to shrink and the progress was gonna expand because it does. It's in the beginning. may be a little bit, the ratio may be a little bit off, but as long as you're moving in the direction that you should and space for, again, what that person would have wanted for you, what you should want for yourself. Making the efforts to be able to improve and to continue to get better and to continue to heal I think is really key. So thank you. Thank you All right, everybody. you so much for joining us once again in this episode I hope that we brought you some value and always if you wouldn't mind to share a review We would greatly appreciate it and if there are any other topics that you'd like us to share definitely drop them in the comments and Until next episode. We'll see you guys later Ciao.