Podcast Episode: Hannah Farrow on the accessible integrative health of sleep, real food, and mindful attention

Podcast Episode: Hannah Farrow on the accessible integrative health of sleep, real food, and mindful attention

Transcript

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:00)

Have you been on many other podcasts?

Hannah Farrow (00:02)

I was doing one with a business colleague of mine for years, and it's been kind of on, back to the drawing board, doing it, not doing it, back and forth. So I've been on, I've been on those, and then I've been on one with a good friend of mine. So this, but this is like my first one with a new colleague.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:23)

Right, with a new face.

Hannah Farrow (00:25)

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:26)

That is so good. And you're talking to someone on the other side of the world as well.

Hannah Farrow (00:31)

Wild. I know, here in Australia. I actually have a cousin who lives there for six months and then lives here for six months. And so I, I really love being able to chat with her. She's a cousin by marriage, and she just kind of newly came into my life, and I love her. She's fantastic.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:51)

That's so good. Which part of Australia is she in?

Hannah Farrow (00:53)

Sydney.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:54)

That's where I am.

Hannah Farrow (00:55)

Okay.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:55)

So whereabouts are you?

Hannah Farrow (00:56)

I'm located in Fort Worth, Texas.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (00:58)

Cool. Awesome. And so, diving in with the podcast episode, how do you explain to everybody what you do?

Hannah Farrow (01:05)

When I'm an integrative health coach, I really help folks use the levers of biological health and relational health to create a more wholesome life that they feel better in.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:18)

More wholesome life. What does a wholesome life look like?

Hannah Farrow (01:21)

Believe a wholesome life is an integrated life. So it's a life where there's not this compartmentalization, compartmentalization, where you're having to kind of cordon yourself off. You get to show up as your full self. You feel like, I tell my clients, it's like you feel like your soul reaches the edges of your skin, instead of feeling like you can't express yourself or dealing with limited mobility or those kinds of things.

And so it's really anything that we can utilize from a health perspective, from a relational health perspective, to help us be more of who we actually are and the version of ourselves we want to be.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (01:58)

Okay, what led you to prioritize this?

Hannah Farrow (02:03)

Absolutely. I was a ridiculously sick kid. I was dealing with tonsillitis, really severe abdominal pain, very bad migraines, and the doctors couldn't tell me why. And they had all these tests, and it just never became clear to me why I kept getting sick, sicker than my friends, for sure. And when I was about 17 years old, they told me they needed to take my tonsils out. I was getting recurring tonsillitis.

And I asked the doctor, I said, "What did tonsils do?" And he just goes, "You don't need them." And I was like, "What the hell? What do you mean I don't need them there in my body? What did they do?" And he just wouldn't answer my question. And so I kind of threw my hands up, and I was like, "Well, I'm gonna try everything I can to not have the surgery." And it was crazy. It was apple cider vinegar, coconut, cayenne pepper, and lemon. And I drank that for three days, never got tonsillitis again, didn't have to have the surgery.

But I was like, what in the world were they not telling us? And so it just opened up this whole world, because the real question was, how does somebody heal? And that started 10 years ago, when that kind of all came into a culmination point for me. And I've been on that journey ever since.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:16)

That's amazing. You had such a natural solution.

Hannah Farrow (03:21)

And they were going to cut something out of my body. It's so insane. So insane.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (03:26)

And we need to be so delicate in acknowledging that everybody has a choice. We can, of course, support that people should talk to their doctors about their unique situations. But I can share with you that I know what it's like to go along with a surgery because people tell you to. And that's intense. It's… it's a lot to get cut open for anything, so it's amazing that you felt good with your wellness through an alternative to that. How did that influence your professional life?

Hannah Farrow (04:04)

It was really interesting, because I, I love allopathic medicine. Like, surgeries save lives. I love medical doctors. I think that there is, there are levels of intervention that make sense considering what people are going through. And so if that's a chemical intervention with prescription medication, or if it is a surgical intervention, these things still save lives.

They give people their mobility back. They give people their health back. And I think they're wonderful things. But what that experience left me with was really this desire to know a fuller picture of healing. So it started with personal training. And I got some formal education in nutrition, biomechanics, how people lose weight. And so that was more of a side hustle while I was in my undergraduate degree, trying to figure out exactly what path I wanted to take to health, because I know I wanted health. And it was just a really long and winding road. So it started with personal training, and now I'm here in my doctoral program for chiropractic. I'm a certi-, certif-, certified integrative health coach, and I teach yoga. So it's just been a really wild journey.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (05:21)

This is a beautiful combination.

Hannah Farrow (05:23)

Thank you.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (05:24)

The yoga, going to yoga after a personal training, what sorts of differences have you seen going from one specialty to the other?

Hannah Farrow (05:34)

I think that a lot of folks know how to work out. Like, it's so easily accessible. But I think that having a professional sit there and watch whatever you're doing, if it's yoga, if it's weightlifting, if it's whatever, is going to be that edge that gives you the next leg up in your health journey. And going from doing personal training and teaching yoga as, like, my main mobility training and my main movement training that I do with my clients, the real difference is the emphasis on the nervous system. And that emphasis is more about teaching my clients how to sit with an uncomfortable feeling, and they can take that skill set into their relationships, into their careers, because discomfort is everywhere.

And yoga is such a wonderful physical practice that we can train our bodies with to better sit with uncomfortable moments. And that's really the big thing I've seen.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (06:35)

Sit with discomfort. That's what we're getting from this. What sorts of discomfort do you see that people need to sit with? And what does that look like? Because, of course, we don't want to be in excruciating pain, but do you find that people are avoiding discomfort and wanting to be happy all the time? What does this actually look like?

Hannah Farrow (06:58)

I think what it actually looks like is our inability to be in uncomfortable situations without immediately resolving them with a less successful strategy than if we just let them play out a little bit longer. And so this really looks like my clients eventually getting to the point where they're able to sit with anger a little bit longer, sit with stress a little bit longer, because through the yoga that I teach, it's called Hatha yoga, there's a big emphasis on breath work, which in the Sanskrit, that's gonna be the pranayam. And that breath work is really a practice of finding calm in an uncomfortable position, literally, right? So we're in Warrior Two, we're in that knee bend, and our arms are up.

And to sit there for about 45 seconds and just breathe while you're standing still teaches your body what it's like to choose an uncomfortable situation and stay in it and know that it's safe. And it's interesting how that ends up translating into their work, into their relationships, into even, like, emotional distress. So we can get away from patterned eating that might be emotional eating. It's just really no end to what happens when we work on our nervous system and how we can utilize that in our day-to-day.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (08:23)

That is powerful. You're bringing Hatha yoga to my attention so much, because I have mostly seen the vinyasa, the very flowy practices where people are moving a lot more. Hatha, I'm keen for you to describe for the listener and for anybody what makes Hatha unique. You say that we hold practices for about 45 seconds.

I practised Hatha a couple of times, but I've done other forms of yoga hundreds of times. So, but some listeners might have never practised yoga at all. What, what do people need to know to understand what we're describing here?

Hannah Farrow (09:06)

Say it's not so much about a preset limit set on how long you need to be in the pose, or even what the pose has to look like. Hatha yoga is very much based on the integration of breath and intention. So instead of me kind of in the vinyasa flows, which vinyasa is wonderful, like, it's a truly wonderful, aerobic, movement-based modality, and I practice it myself too.

But Hatha yoga is really about the focus of breath and attention. So when I'm lifting my arms up, I'm using my breath through the movement. And so where we might find ourselves in a position to where we just want to get into the pose, and we're not really thinking about utilizing our breath to carry us there, Hatha is in that distinction. So where I start my inhale with my movements. So if I'm going to be in a pose, let's say, let's just, like, lifting my arms up into the sky, right?

So before I lift my hands, I'm starting my breath to coordinate with the movement. So I'm gonna be inhaling all the way through this motion and then exhaling all the way through the exit. And that's really the basis for all of Hatha yoga. You're using the breath through the movement. The breath is in step with it. And that is the point of trying to yoke that breath and attention in the body. And that's the other thing, too. It's a really deep internal focus. I have a teacher, and his teacher, his name was Kumar Falana. Kumar was one of the great yoga teachers of really the 20th century. And he would always say, "You have to look with your eyes." But he was talking about proprioception, utilizing the body's natural ability to find itself in space, to feel your way through the movement, guided with breath.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (10:50)

We can find our way and look within. I'm curious about what transformation that can make, when, I'm guessing, one of the great applications of this is that we are typically in very busy lives. People rush around with work, but also, of course, social responsibilities, all sorts of things. And there's also a bit of a hectic pace in this world.

People are flicking through phones, scrolling on phones. What sort of fast pace have you seen that people are slowing down from? And also, I'm wondering, after we do have so much external stimuli, again with the phones, but with anything else, what does looking within do in this world that we're in?

Hannah Farrow (11:40)

Think that to make it, I like to make things as practical as possible, and, you know, I am in a doctoral program. I consider myself a scientist before anything else. And so I just, I kind of want to actually bring up a study about attention, because what the actual measurable difference that has been seen in these studies is that Hatha yoga specifically, because of its emphasis on the breath, has this beautiful effect on attention.

So attention isn't necessarily a muscle, but we can think of it like a muscle. It can be trained, right? And so there's all the ways to train attention. Studying intentionally, which none of us like to do, is something that trains our attention. But there was a 2023 meta-analysis, 111 randomized trials of 9,538 people. And so mindfulness training was found to improve executive function and sustained attention.

Right. And so this level of using the breath as the cue to guide your mind into deeper attention is really training your attention. And when we talk about the fast pace of modern life, what I find is that a lot of folks, they just want to get it done. Like, you want to be done. You want to be done so you can get to the next thing, to get to the thing you really want to get to, right? But what Hatha yoga really teaches, in its ability to train the attention, is you can find peace in this moment with the thing that's right in front of you. And maybe that means you just take five more minutes, but because you took five more minutes, you told your body, we don't have to rush through this. Your nervous system is processing that moment so much differently than if you were just rushing through it. And that really does translate into everything.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (13:24)

Slowing down. Absolutely. What else should everybody know about the doctoral learnings? What else have you seen in that space?

Hannah Farrow (13:35)

Honestly, as I study the nervous system more, because that's really the way that I want to conduct myself as a physician in the chiropractic space, I'm learning that everything feeds us. Movement feeds us, our relationships feed us. Obviously, diet feeds us. Our environment feeds us. And so you kind of have to think about your body as this major processing unit. It's taking in all this external stimuli through our eyes, our ears, our nose, our mouth, our sense of touch. And it's also taking all of this internal stimuli, which is going to be our thoughts, what's going on with our biological functioning, all of these things. And it's using the nervous system to integrate this experience so we can have this thing called life, right?

And what I've found through the doctoral studies and looking at the nervous system is that there are levers of health that we can utilize, not necessarily to always fix everything that's going on, but I do believe that these levers of health that we can use, guided by our understanding of the nervous system, can make it better. It can make sleep better. It can make, it can make day-to-day living better. It can make cognition better. It can make attention better.

And that's really what I've been learning through the doctoral studies, is that there's not a one-stop shop, a one-size-fits-all approach to health that is going to work for everybody. But it has helped me identify the levers of health that make the biggest difference. So I can give that to my clients through integrative health coaching. And I can utilize that in the yoga to help them find those levers. And we use that to figure out what health looks like for them.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:23)

For them, it's very individual.

Hannah Farrow (15:25)

Very individual.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (15:26)

You mentioned that relationships and environments can influence us. What impact can they have?

Hannah Farrow (15:32)

With the way that cortisol affects the body and the low-grade inflammation that can happen when stress, cortisol is the stress hormone, when stress is prolonged, that's going to cause all types of issues within every system that we have, that low-grade inflammation. Everybody talks about it. But relationships and relational health have been, in these past 10, 15 years, starting to become one of those big levers of health that everybody's starting to kind of realize. I think that the big mental health boom, right, that we've been experiencing is really reflective of this. So you have a relationship that is full of conflict. There's not a lot of reverence for each other. Maybe the communication has fallen to the wayside, and that's going to put you in a state of stress.

And your body is really two systems responding at the same time. You have your frontal lobe, it's your executive processing. And then you have this, then you have this autonomous, then you have your nervous system that's responding, like doing your heart rate, it's pushing blood through you. That's that thing you can't control. And so in those relationships where there's toxicity, or there's some type of big issue, it's constantly interpreting that as a threat.

So you don't really ever get to calm down and come back to baseline. And it's never, I always think about relationships like this, because I'm not a therapist, right? If I have a client and they're really, really struggling, I get the right people involved. I'll get medical doctors involved, I'll get physical therapists involved, I'll get a therapist involved, because some relational issues are really deep and very complicated. But the health of our relationships really does have a huge mitigating factor, because when you have a healthy relationship, when you have somebody who you can have a bad day and you can call them, that's going to release all those feel-good chemicals that we hear all about, the oxytocin, the dopamine, all those things. And that is going to be a trigger for your body to settle back into a regulated state and start doing what it can only do in that state, which is going to be the repair work. It's going to be the growth work of building those new cells.

And so relationships are like walking environments. So you walk into a relationship with somebody, and their presence gives you an experience. And if it's something that has been full of issues, it's going to give you a really stressful experience. If it's been something that you guys have both worked intentionally at, you're gonna feel safe. You're gonna feel seen. You're gonna feel like you belong. And that has such a good effect on your body, because it helps you recognize safety. And once your body knows it's safe, it starts doing all the things it's supposed to do, the way it's supposed to do it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (18:20)

We need to feel safe before anything.

Hannah Farrow (18:22)

Have to.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (18:23)

Interesting, interesting. And the environment, I'm wondering how else, whether there are any ways you've seen the environment impacting people. And I ask that because we can be in crowded spaces like a city, or perhaps some people feel understimulated when they're not around people, or perhaps there are other environmental things, like being in a very noisy space. But what sorts of environmental factors are influencing all of this?

Hannah Farrow (18:53)

I love that you said that, because a lot of my coaching comes from the approach of utilizing your environment to create the cues to pull the levers of health. And when you have an environment where you know that you're an extroverted person, you know you love people, you know you love the music and all those things, but you move out to a secluded cabin in the woods, you're gonna hate it there. You know, and it's not really an emotional thing. There's this idea of temperament that we all have, and it's relatively stable over the lifetime. And you really have to pick an environment that at least supports your temperament when you're starting to feel those lower days. Because I always tell my clients, if you're having a low day, don't put yourself in the challenge place. Put yourself in the comfort place. Do the hard things, and then come to a place where you're safe. So the environment being something that's out of tune with what you know that best supports you is always going to make anything else you do an uphill battle.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (19:53)

Interesting. The low days. I'm curious about whether that's emotional or also energetic. Do you find that some people simply have a bit of a flat day and then other days have more energy, or does it mean something else to you?

Hannah Farrow (20:08)

To me, it's just a part of being human, you know? Some days are just gonna suck. That's just what it is. So I actually have a framework for, for, I, for my clients when it comes to this. So we talk about three types of days, right? We talk about the hard days, where it was long, it was challenging, it just sucked, whatever, but it wasn't something that was a tragedy, right?

It wasn't something that you messed up about. It's just life presented you with a lot of challenges that day. It wore you out, right? Those days are probably majority of the days if you're living a life that's really pushing you to grow and to develop things. Like, that's gonna be, you know, probably three to four days a week if you're doing something that's really causing you to stay engaged and causing you to grow as a person. And so if, there's nothing wrong with those hard days, right? But we can have days that are tragic, right? We can have tragedy happen: death of a family member, loss of a job, an unexpected diagnosis, a car accident, loss of some type of asset, or loss of housing. These things are tragedies, right? And those are days where you really need to make sure that you have a support system that you can lean on.

And then we talk about the third type of day, which is a bad day. It's where something tragic or something hard happened, and then you go and make it worse. And it's like, you don't want to have that happen, right? So we talk about these three types of days because we've all had these types of days. We've had a tragic day. We've had a hard day. And then occasionally, we will all go and make those things worse and do something that makes it more problematic. And then we have a bad day, right?

But it's not about necessarily preventing those days. It's about having a strategy for those days. So when we do have hard days, or we do have tragic days, we don't have to make them bad on top of it with habits that we know don't serve us. And so for the hard days, we utilize the levers of health that support a physical body that can sustain itself during the hard days. That means we're eating right, we're utilizing exercise, we're utilizing our environment to be a place where we can recover from those hard days, right? And then for those tragic days, that's where community becomes so imperative. And it's really important that the work you've been doing in your relationships will show up on those tragic days by the quality of the relationships you have to support you on those days. And that's why we do the work in communication. That's why we do the relational work. Because on those tragic days, you don't want to be alone. As much as you might think you want to be alone, you need people. And so that's where the work of what we do in our relationships and in our community shows up on those tragic days, and it supports us. And then on those bad days, that's where I think that the mental health gets really important. And you have a good framework for forgiving yourself, understanding that you just had a bad day, you made a stupid decision, but that's not the end of the world. You know how to recover, and you can be honest about it.

And you can go forward, and maybe the next time you turn a hard day into a bad day, you don't do it to quite the extent that you did it the last time. And we call that a win.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (23:27)

Right. Doing things a bit better than the extent we did last time. So this means we don't have to do a complete 180-degree turnaround instantly, is that right?

Hannah Farrow (23:40)

That is the way I coach people. And I honestly think that's the only way that creates a sustainable model for continual development as a person, because that whole "I'm gonna be the person who wakes up at 5 a.m. I'm gonna start working out, you know, an hour and a half every day, five days a week, and then I'm gonna change my diet, and then I'm gonna go confront my boss about that tone that they used for me. I'm gonna start my own business." It's like, this is all beautiful, and I want all these things for us. But there's a way we can carry out our goals that will be nourishing to the life we're trying to build, to ourselves and to the people that we're in relationship with. And that is the goal.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:20)

Making gradual progress.

Hannah Farrow (24:22)

Yeah, safest bet.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (24:23)

Amazing. In an everyday, normal routine, what do you do to, to make all of this happen for yourself?

Hannah Farrow (24:34)

Yeah, absolutely. I think about a framework that I was actually given by a coach that I hired, because I have, I have a therapist that I see biweekly, and she's just a support mechanism. She's literally just there for accountability. And I've had coaches, and I've had different types of therapists, because I'm of the mindset that I'll never ask my clients to do something that I myself haven't done. And so in that, I have this support system through a therapist, but I also have really strong friendships that I've worked really hard at over the years to keep me grounded, keep me dialed into my community. And on the day-to-day, I just focus on the fundamentals: water, a meal with protein in it, vegetables, a call to a friend, and having my stated goals for the day somewhere that I can see them. And that's really it. That's really what keeps me grounded.

I don't like to give very complicated ways of moving through things because, once again, super different. Our, in, in, in my formal education at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition, which is where I got my integrative health coaching certification from, we talk about the idea that everyone has bioindividuality, right? And so I use the fundamentals, those levers of health: water intake, diet, really just real food, you know, trying to stay away from that takeout, trying to stay away from packaged foods, and sleep, you know, making sure I go to bed around the same time, waking up at the same time. That's really how I create this for myself. And yoga. I use yoga a lot myself. Like, I'm doing it just about every day, mostly to train my nervous system, to make sure that I'm doing what I need to do, because that's my healthy coping mechanism.

That's what I've seen be the thing that keeps me grounded. But that's all it is for me. It's just the fundamentals. A little bit each day goes a long way.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:31)

Amazing. That's a great routine.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:33)

The food and sleep.

Hannah Farrow (26:35)

Mm-hmm.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (26:35)

Everybody needs to hear more about that. What got my attention is that you simplified the food issue, firstly, to partly that we need to eat real food. It's that simple. For me, I don't eat meat or dairy or eggs. It's a bit of a personal preference. It just feels right for me. But I know that what matters more is that I try to eat real foods like brown rice, beans, that sort of thing. However, everybody has a different version of what real food is. What we can all agree on is that the McDonald's, of course, is not the best option, or a lot of things from packet, of course. The obvious things is that where you normally start with food, avoiding the obvious things, and what… What do you guide for people to simply eat real food?

Hannah Farrow (27:33)

Absolutely. That, that is usually where I start. Like, I think that the big thing for my coaching strategy with my health coaching clients is we gotta start with the easiest way. And it's honestly something that the yoga has taught me as well. My yoga teacher, Jeff, he's always told me, we start with where we are, you know, and that's a good principle to take into all of life. So wherever you're at with food, we start there. And mainly that means a couple of things in the beginning for my clients.

Usually the big things that they're struggling with is meal times, right? Snacking, fast food, and packaged food. And so we work on those things first, before we ever talk about any type of paleo, vegan, vegetarianism. Like, I believe that everybody, like I said, everybody's body is different. So those different modalities of diet are going to have different effects on different people. But what we know is that the fast food is not helpful. What we know is that the packaged food is not helpful. What we know is that large amounts of sugar are not helpful. We know that eating at 1 a.m., in the, like, having that snack after you're supposed to be in bed, is not helpful, right? So we start with those things, and we kind of go from there.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (28:48)

The snack at 1 a.m., what does that do to us?

Hannah Farrow (28:51)

It's really about your circadian rhythm. It's really about giving it a message to the, something of the effect of, not only are we supposed to be up right now, but we're supposed to be digesting and eating right now, which is a level of functioning that your body has to kind of go through that isn't very conducive to your sleep. So that whole idea about rest and digest, yes, that's true, but food is an external stimulus and an internal stimulus.

And so, depending on what you ate, it could have that effect of causing the cortisol level to go up, just because of that spike in blood sugar. It could also be one of those things where you ate, and now you feel a little wired, because sometimes after a meal, we all feel, like, a little bit more energy. Other times it's like a big fee, a big meal can put us right to bed, but we don't sleep that great because it's sitting on us. It doesn't feel good. And so these are super basic things that I think we all experience, and we all know that eating late at night or eating on an irregular schedule, that's just not going to be the most conducive thing for your body. But our bodies are also very forgiving. So there's this narrative out there: the body keeps score. Yes, it does. But it's also extremely forgiving. And it will respond this day if you decide to do something a little different and a little better for yourself. And it will give you a better outcome. That's the beautiful thing about it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (30:13)

It really does. The change can happen so quickly. It's amazing. It's almost magical how the human body can transform.

The, the packaged foods. You talk about foods from a packet. I wonder about the grey area foods, because there are the obvious ones. We know that the Doritos are what they are, but then people go for the frozen meals. All sorts of things appear in the freezer section of the supermarket. But also, I'm guessing, I'm curious about whether you agree there would be other foods that aren't from a packet. Perhaps people are going for the pastries a lot. And there's nothing wrong with a treat, I guess, and you can agree or disagree with that. But you get my drift. The grey area foods, what do people need to know about the things that seem okay but might not be the best option?

Hannah Farrow (31:07)

It's really about what your body's saying when you have it. I, and I always take that to my clients. It's like, you know, if right now, because of the season you're in and life is just requiring a lot of you, all you can do is frozen meals, try and pick some frozen meals with some vegetables. You know, it's like there's so many little changes we can make, even if we can't do exactly what we imagine health looking like, that instead of, like, the big thing of Stouffer's mac and cheese, you go get a frozen meal that has broccoli and some rice and chicken in it, you know, a Swanson meal like that. Like, that's gonna be better than that big thing of just mac and cheese for the night, right? And so that's a little small shift that can make a difference. But also, those gray area foods, I always say that you have to listen to your body primarily, and what it's saying, and, like, how your mood feels after you eat those things. And it's a lot about attention, paying attention to yourself and paying attention to the effect of what happens after you do XYZ. And that doesn't matter if it's eat one of those gray area foods, like, say, you know, like a granola bar, right? Beautiful example. You know, it's got the good grains in there, got a little fiber.

Maybe it's got too, a little bit too much sugar, but it's probably better than nothing if that's what you're working with, right? And that, every once in a while, where you're on the go, that's perfectly understandable. And your body has plenty of forgiveness for those types of things. And some, for some people, they seem to be beneficial. Like, their body seems to handle carbs a little bit better. They seem to do better with a little bit more sugar. Like, it really is dependent upon the person. And those gray area foods, the only thing that I really have to say is you just have to be mindful of how it affects you and then make your best decision. 'Cause I am not the expert on you. You're the expert on you. I'm the expert on the levers of health that can help make you feel better, but ultimately, you're the only one who can really attest to whether or not this was something that your body responded positively to or negatively to. And those gray area foods, I think, like the granola bar, or like the pretzels, or like the packaged popcorn. I love, like, SkinnyPop. My God. Like, that's my thing. Like, it's this just really simple salted popcorn that's in a package that we have. It's wonderful. And so it's like, you have to just pay attention to how these things affect you over time. But I don't think that they're the end-all, be-all when it comes to diet.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:33)

I miss popcorn, if what you're describing is just salt and popcorn. I mean, some experts get so strict with salt. Okay, and that's a whole thing in itself, but at a phase of making popcorn, yes, some of these treats are so good. But what you're saying here is that everybody is different.

Hannah Farrow (33:56)

Everybody is different.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (33:57)

We're all different.

Hannah Farrow (33:58)

We're all different. And I think we, we know that, but ultimately, it's not, it's not an excuse to not be able to find what's right for you. It's just information about the fact that what's right for you might look much different from somebody else, or from your favorite influencer. I have influencers that I love, and that they have these amazing things, and they're, you know, they're living their life, and they're doing their diets, and, but, you know, vegan, it was terrible for me.

I thought it was gonna be great, but I didn't respond well to that modality. And that's just the reality, and that's why health is so challenging, because it really is very individualized.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (34:39)

Things are so individual. It's great you bring up the influencers, because that's a great way to illustrate how everybody has a different take on the ideal. I won't name the very famous influencer who doesn't eat kale. I mean, okay, fine. I won't give up kale even if they do.

Hannah Farrow (34:59)

Right.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (35:01)

Do you see people going to extremes with rules that they think are a good, but then it's becoming so strict?

Hannah Farrow (35:09)

Very much so. It's actually really funny that you say. A couple weeks ago, on my Substack, I posted a blog called "Optimization Sickness." It's a phrase that I use with my health coaching clients, where you are so obsessed with optimizing your health and your relationships and all these things that it literally makes you sick. It puts you in a state of hypervigilance where you're like, "My God, I ate a granola bar today. I have to go work out for an hour, because I'm supposed to be all raw foods," you know? And it, and it's like, in the, in the small moment, that sounds a little ridiculous, but we've all had that moment where we're like, "My God, I ate, like, half a cake. I need to go do a three-day cleanse," and, like, that kind of crazy thing. It's like, that's not necessarily the way that you want to be functioning, because it's just another, it's just another bear.

Right. I say that, like, these things that cause high stress that get us all riled up, our nervous system is interpreting that as an actual threat to our safety. It's the bear, it's the lion, it's the tiger. And when we get so riled up in this attempt to achieve perfect health, it ends up being a detriment to our health, because it causes that same low-grade level of stress that any other chronic stressor would. It becomes this continual self-vigilance, where you're constantly judging yourself, and you have this harsh, critical voice saying, "My God, I'm such a slob. I sat there and I had two McDoubles, and I went and got chicken nuggets too, and I had this shake." And that is going to be just as detrimental to you in the long run as your bad habits would be if you just left well enough alone. And so I see this a lot, and I really, I have a lot of compassion for folks who get in a position to where they experience positive things once they make these changes, and it's almost addictive. It's like, "My God, I made these changes. I feel so much better." And then it's like, "How, what else can I do?" But there's no balance to that equation. And that can cause just as many health issues as the negative health habits can.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:17)

Can relate to that so much, and I do want to ask in a second if we give ourselves sometimes too much compassion, and we need to still eat well. But the anecdote I have is that I'm so whole foods that I can call out my own BS a little bit, because my silly line I had a day ago is I said to my partner, "Look, I did something. Okay, I really, I'm so sorry. I, I did something." I didn't apologize, but it was sounding like I was going to confess something, and I had two Impossible burgers.

Hannah Farrow (37:52)

It's like, this was it a murderer or what? No murder, it's just a murder.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (37:57)

Yeah. What did you do? That's what it is. Burger. You know. We treat it like an actual confession in our minds of "I did this thing." But I wonder if we also go so far in the other direction. I'm wondering, you know, some people kind of give themselves so much compassion that life ends up resembling the Super Size Me movie.

Where do you draw the line? Do we still need to do what we can?

Hannah Farrow (38:28)

Absolutely. I think, and that's where the balanced approach really comes from. And that's where I really spend a lot of time in the later weeks of my coaching. It's a three-month coaching program with the integrative health coaching. And in the later weeks of the program, we really talk about balance. We talk about things that can be signs for that person that they've gone a little too far right or a little too far left. And so these are the, going to be very specific to each individual, right? Me, my, just to give you just a real-world example, it's like, okay, cool. I had a glass of wine this week. And I had a glass of wine the day after that. And it's like, okay, three glasses of wine in a row. We need to kind of come back. And it's like, these are the things we need to pay attention to. It's like, okay, I've had takeout. You know, I had takeout yesterday, and I'm having it for lunch today, and I'm having again the next day. It's like, we have to start to think about that. But it's true in the reverse. My mother, she is the light of my life, my whole world. I absolutely love her. She went like 500 days without taking a day off from exercising. Yeah. And when I say I'm not exaggerating, literally 500 days. And I s-, and when she told me that, I was like, "Mom, unacceptable. You must take at least one day off a week to let your body recover." She finally did it. But I'm just saying, it's like, these are the things where we start to see ourselves get out of balance, and that's going to look different for each of us. But what I walked through in those last weeks with my clients is like, what does it look like for you to get off balance? What are the signs? Let's keep those top of mind. Let's communicate those to the loved ones in our life. So when they see you, for three days in a row, having that glass of wine, or maybe the two glasses of wine, or when they see you not resting for weeks at a time, they can kind of help you bring back if you yourself can't catch it. And so we start to build those kind of accountability networks that keep them in a balanced way of living.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (40:29)

I'm so glad you brought up other ways that we get unbalanced, like the sleep, because sleep is a big one, and you mentioned exercise as well. I wonder, there's a fine line with all of these, because we know that some people get on track more when they are measuring how they are really doing, so they have a reality check. But then it's possible to get a bit obsessed with the scale, obsessed with the, the amount, the exact weight we are, or on the treadmill, how many minutes on the treadmill, whatever it might be. So do you see people needing some balance with those things, and with sleep in particular?

Hannah Farrow (41:16)

With sleep in particular, for certain, because I think we all kind of subscribe to the lie that "I'm going to catch up on sleep this weekend," right? That does not exist. It's not real. There is no catching up on sleep. There's the sleep you missed and the sleep you got, and that's it, right? But when it comes to getting back to a balanced state with it, it's really about what you practice every day. It's really more about the fact that setting up routines and setting up habits is really going to be the best thing you can do for yourself to kind of create a little bit of balance in your life. And you want to create balanced habits, right? You don't want a habit of going to the gym every single day, unless, like, you know, maybe you're a professional athlete, maybe you're a bodybuilder, and that's what your life is requiring of you for that time. But if you're going to do that, you have to balance it out with proper nutrition. You have to balance it out with proper sleep to support whatever you're doing. And that's really why balance is a difficult thing for people, because it looks different as life goes on. Balance for a young mother is going to be different than somebody who had kids later on in life and they have three kids, right? Balance for somebody who is living with a roommate is going to be different than someone who's living single.

Balance for somebody who's juggling two jobs is going to look different than someone who just has the one job. And so we have to use the levers of health to build habits that support what's happening in our lives at the moment.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (42:53)

Absolutely. So much of this is coming down to environment and the life stages, right? The situations we are in. And that's relevant as well to the food scenarios you were talking about, right? Because we can only access what's possible with all of these things. Is that another source of compassion, that we are in the surroundings we are in?

Hannah Farrow (43:16)

Absolutely. You have to understand that, you know, if you can't afford to have the trainer and have the, you know, dietitian and all those other things, you gotta work with where you're at, because that's just gonna be another source of stress. But there's a really interesting study, actually, that found single mothers who cook at home five to six days a week were, on average, healthier than those of higher income brackets that were eating out every day.

And so these are the kinds of things that we can do that really don't take as much resources as we might imagine. And so I think that when we talk about what's available and what's possible, we have to be realistic, so we can set ourselves up for success.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (44:00)

I would love any examples from you about the, the methods that are affordable and accessible, because my example, even that I did today, I got a whole lot of, I cooked up a whole lot of lentils from dry, though fully cooked, and mixed it with just, right, canned beans, frozen corn, one onion, and some taco seasoning. And I don't know how many portions of food this is going to be. It's ten Australian dollars' worth of food, and it's nuts. There's so much. But for you, what does wildly cheap food look like? People need to know.

Hannah Farrow (44:36)

Absolutely. I think that, well, right now, everything's expensive, right? Everything's expensive, but you do potatoes, right? You do root vegetables, carrots, onions, those types of things. And those are going to be good sources of fiber and good starch and good carbohydrates. You do the rice, that's going to be on the less expensive side. You do the, if it's protein, you're going to find that chicken's gonna be kind of a cheaper option in many cases. Red meat can get expensive, but there's also times when it's not suit, it's not too bad. So really, just kind of watching the prices at your local grocery store. Turkey is really inexpensive. Brown turkey can be a really great get for folks who are kind of on that kind of ball and on a budget type situation. I'm in, you know, grad school. I'm balling on a budget myself.

And so the things that I stick to were potatoes, brown rice, and you can get that in bulk in many places. Beans are great, you can get that in bulk. When it comes to vegetables, a lot of times you can find that, like, those root vegetables are gonna be really solid. When it comes to fruits, fruits are tough, because it just kind of seems like they're kind of expensive no matter what, but the citrus fruits are going to be on the cheaper side of things, typically.

And so that way, you can get a little bit of that vitamin A. Apples tend to be on the cheaper side of things. Berries tend to be on that more expensive side of things. And so you can kind of stick to, with those apples. You can stick with the citrus fruits, and you can still get a lot of nutritional value from those things. And then keeping it simple with, like, vegetables like green beans, spinach, broccoli, these things aren't too, too bad when it comes down to it. And if you can't afford to buy organic, that's not a reason not to eat your vegetables. Like, that, even if it's GMO, all those things, that GMO broccoli is gonna be better than that GMO bag of Doritos every time. No…

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:42)

That's…

Hannah Farrow (46:43)

…way around it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (46:45)

I'll put that everywhere online, because it feels, it feels obvious, but people need a reminder. We want the ideals. And I'll ask about frozen fruits and vegetables. People, people have opinions about frozen, but is that still okay enough?

Hannah Farrow (47:03)

Yeah, absolutely. I, and it's like, when we talk about the quality of food, I think we have to also remember that none of this exists in the bat vacuum. Everything does feed us. So if you're doing frozen fruits and vegetables, and you are maybe even doing some canned meat, like tuna or even canned chicken, this is always going to be better than that bag of Doritos. This is always going to be better than that bag of Skittles. You know, like, there's no way around that. And I don't think anybody would contest it. And if that's what you can afford right now, there's nothing wrong with that. That is a beautiful place to start.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (47:39)

Absolutely. If people get anything from this, I adore this conversation because it's going back to the basic.

Hannah Farrow (47:45)

Too.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (47:46)

I mean, you've worked in all these specialties, you're doing this graduate work and study with all this expertise. I can, you are one of a bunch of people who've been on the show with great expertise telling us all, go back to the basics, get your sleep, eat your potatoes, right?

Hannah Farrow (48:09)

Well, because I think that a lot of folks think it has to be this big thing, and it really doesn't, and it shouldn't be. It really shouldn't be. And I understand why we all got here, but it actually makes me think, just going back to the idea of training your attention with the yoga, right? I think that a lot of times, it's not so much that we don't know what to do. It's really that we are not paying attention to what we're doing. And it's because life gets so fast.

And so many things start pulling at our attention. And in this day and age, with the scrolling, I love an Instagram scroll. Okay. Like, I love some TikTok Shop. I love watching me reels. I love to laugh. So I'll sit there, and I will cackle for, you know, however long on socials. But we have to be mindful and be in the practice of bringing our attention back to the true present moment, not the one that's on our screen, but the true present moment. And it's really about getting into the habit of doing that, because, like I said, it's not necessarily that we don't know what to do. It's the fact that we're not paying attention to what we're doing. And I myself found myself in a position where I looked up, and all of a sudden, I'm 190 pounds. I'm only five foot four inches, you know, and I don't, and, like, I, I've been in this field my whole adult life. But I still was sitting there 40 pounds overweight. And it's because I quit paying attention.

It's because I quit being intentional. It's not because I didn't know what to do. It's not because I'm a bad person. It's just that life got hectic, and I didn't do what I was supposed to do to bring it back to a pace to where I could be intentional throughout my days. And it sounds so big. That sounds like, "My God, Hannah, I have three kids and a business and a husband or a wife or a partner. And I've got all these things, and you're telling me to slow down." And you're like, "You, girl, because I'm not doing that. You don't know how hard it is for me and all those things." And it's like, I hear you, but it's because you think that the fix is really difficult and complicated. And it's not. It's a, "Hey, I'm going to take a deep breath today. I'm just going to drink one more cup, water, cup of water than I usually do." It's, "I'm going to take another beat before I go into this hard conversation with my partner. And I'm going to take a deep breath, and I'm just going to calm down before I walk in there and have this tough thing."

It doesn't have to be three hours of your day. It's really five minutes that can make the difference.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (50:34)

Suggestion. I totally agree that we do rush around in life, and yes, we need to improve step by step. Also, the simplicity of what we're talking about, it's an extreme contrast to the superfoods, the "let's have a spirulina powder with our whatever Egueneth has now," and then measure our fitness on a watch and a ring. I still don't know what those things do.

Right. We are taught to overthink it. So that's why it's so refreshing that, with all this expertise, we can go back to, yes, incremental steps and mindfully looking at what's in front of us. Because if you want to buy whatever Apple has put out, or whatever Zach is telling us to do, then cool. But until then, the potatoes will help us anyway, right?

Hannah Farrow (51:29)

And bedtime will do wonders for you. They really will.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (51:33)

This is the, this is the best. So thanks. Aside from potatoes and bedtime, what final lessons? Which lessons do you believe that everybody needs to keep in mind? We can really sum this up here, because we've looked at the whole spectrum. We've looked at sleep and movement and mindfulness and food. So let's bring this all together. What's a simple to-do list anyone who's listening can look at to, frankly, simplify, instead of transforming their whole lives or any, anything else? What are a few things anyone can do to simplify and tick enough boxes?

Hannah Farrow (52:15)

Love it. Pick a time to wake up, and wake up at that time, you know, and try, and try to the best of your ability to stick with it. Drink a little bit more water than you have been. Just a little bit more. Maybe do one more fruit this week. Just this week. You know, it's the simplest things. And I think, when it comes down to it, it's really, do the things that allow you to grow your attention.

Of course, I know I've talked about Hatha yoga and its ability to strengthen people's attention. Before we wrap up, there is this study. So there was a randomized yoga study with movement and breath-focused practice that they both showed, like, movement being that vinyasa flow, right? But the breath-focused practice being the Hatha. And they both reduced stress, but only the breath-focused practice significantly improved sustained attention.

And so Hatha yoga, reading, studying, all these other things can extend your capacity for attention. And that is going to be one of the biggest levers of health you can pull, because if you have a better ability to pay attention to your everyday, you have a better ability to stop yourself from turning one glass of wine into six days of wine. You have a better ability to notice, "Snap, I haven't had seven hours of sleep in nine days." You have better ability to be like, "I haven't checked in with my partner for real in, like, a week." And it's because of that greater capacity for attention. And so the biggest lever of health that I could give to people is to work on paying attention, growing your attention, being able to regulate your nervous system through good food, good people, and easy living that is encompassed in really the fundamentals, which is: get enough sleep, eat real food, move your body, love your people. That's it.

Melanie Suzanne Wilson (54:12)

I love those final lines. That is my favorite reel of the whole month. Hannah, thank you so much for talking on the podcast.

Hannah Farrow (54:21)

Thank you for having me, Melanie. This has been such a delight. I really appreciate the opportunity.