Realistic & holistic wellness with Megan Caldwell, personal trainer and health coach, who helps busy moms prioritize self-care, move past overwhelm and exhaustion to find strength and confidence in both mind and body.
What’s Ahead…
In this Episode
Megan shares her journey of transitioning from a stay-at-home mom to an entrepreneur, running a fitness franchise for moms. Despite the success she found, she was burnt out, putting her own wellness on the back burner.
Recognizing the importance of holistic wellness – meaning it’s more than just fitness – she now focuses on five pillars of health: movement, hydration, nutrition, sleep, and stress management, because taking care of yourself, creating habits, and finding systems that work with you and the season of life that you’re in are critical to maintaining your physical, mental, and emotional health.
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Welcome everyone. I am here with Megan Caldwell. She is a personal trainer and a health coach who helps busy moms prioritize their own self care and find ways to truly feel like their best selves and every aspect of their lives.
00:46 As a wellness and empowerment coach, she helps her clients move past overwhelm and exhaustion to help them find strength and confidence in both mind and body.
00:55 Welcome Megan. Good morning. How are you? Okay, Megan. Let’s dig in here. What I want to do is start with your best story.
01:02 Tell me how we got to this point. Yeah, I find it so interesting. When we take a look at our own stories, each of us have our own stories.
01:09 I started in my professional career in education. So as a high school special education and math teacher, I was also a basketball coach.
01:16 Very engulfed in my career and loving it and had my first kid. And as those of us that are moms know, perspective change priorities change and my own health was suffering as I was trying to balance motherhood with balance and balancing career.
01:31 Brand new mom. I had actually stepped into a new role working at a university coaching and teaching teachers. And I got to a point where for the first time I really felt my own mental health suffer. I was having anxiety and panic attacks. And I got to a point where I said, I can’t do this anymore. So my husband and I picked up camp.
01:48 We were in Los Angeles and we moved up here to just outside Portland, Oregon, which is where we had family. And I said, I just want to be a stay at home. Just want to stay at home. I just want to raise this baby.
01:57 I just want to be a stay at home. I eat the hardest job in the entire world because I learned that I would not be my best self in that full time stay at home.
02:07 So four months after moving up here, I had the opportunity to own and operated a fitness franchise for moms called fit for mom.
02:14 And I took that on and I dove in and it was awesome. I could bring my kids to work. I ran the business out the whole my groove from a small thing into this great big entity here in Portland where at one point I had a team of 14.
02:25 I was nationally recognized by the organization. All these great things. And two more babies into that space while I was in that role.
02:33 This entrepreneurship and it was such an amazing season of my life. And from the outside, it looks like I had everything put together.
02:41 I had three healthy kids. I had a marriage. I had, you know, this really successful business and underneath the surface.
02:49 I was just pedaling constantly. I was putting my own wellness on the back burner again. And I hit burnout for the second time in my first two careers.
02:59 And I had women in the and asked me weekly, Megan, I don’t know how you do it. You’ve got it all put together.
03:04 And here I am leading these other moms and women and I’m saying, oh, yeah, I know it’s hard, but like I’m doing it and I’m leading.
03:11 And so it didn’t take me till I was about five years ago where again, I hit a low and I recognize this is not where I want to be.
03:17 I don’t want to be putting my kids on iPad so I can continue to serve others. I don’t want to be disregarding my marriage.
03:25 I want to feel good. And what does that even mean. So I got to the point where I’m I didn’t, I didn’t even know what I needed.
03:33 But what I learned is I needed to prioritize my own wellbeing first. I started seeing a therapist. But when I started taking care of my own sleep, my own fitness, my nutrition stress management boundary setting.
03:46 Time management, all these different pieces. When I started taking care of this, I was able to start to shift to see what does Megan need because I know I can be successful, but how can I be successful and also to care of myself?
03:57 Because I truly believe that when we as women take care of ourselves first, then we can serve better. Where this led to is I ended up selling my fitness franchise.
04:07 I recognized in my own journey and the work I was doing in the fitness space that wellness is more than just fitness.
04:12 So I truly believed when I was in the fitness franchise, that if women just came to my classes, like all the problems would be solved.
04:18 Everything would be good. You’re going to hit your goals and again through my own journey and just the work that I’ve done with women.
04:23 It is more than just fitness. It’s taking a look at our own holistic being, identifying what are our needs, what are our desires and then setting up sustainable habits to keep us feeling the way that we want to feel.
04:35 So a lot of it got me to this point on my own journey, again being in the fitness space and recognizing that movement is a piece of the puzzle.
04:45 But what else is needed here. So I now kind of preach five pillars of health. So movement and fitness is one piece of it.
04:53 Hydration kind of has its standalone pillar because it’s got such benefits and it’s one of those domino habits I call where when we have hydration in place.
05:01 And oftentimes other things on the place. Nutrition we’re taking a look at how we fuel our bodies rather than to pry our bodies.
05:07 We look at sleep. And then the biggest piece of the work I do in my coaching work across the board I’d say is stress awareness and stress management figuring out how we move through obstacles because we could have the best plan in place for fitness and nutrition.
05:20 And again, when your kid gets sick. When the life happens when you move it could all go out the window.
05:27 All of the things that you mentioned fitness, nutrition, hydration, stress management boundaries all those things. I love these because these when I was a coach this was these were all part of my program called results without restriction which was not about looking at what we can take away and what
05:44 We can force ourselves to do. But what are we adding what are we what are the things that are outside the gym or outside the kitchen that impact health and wellness.
05:54 So I love that that is is part of your program as well. I love that you include boundaries and time management because a lot of people do not recognize how those two things can impact your physical mental emotional health and that you are protecting your resources you are protecting your energy.
06:15 You are protecting your piece when you have boundaries and it is a critical piece of self care. So I love that you have incorporated those hydration.
06:26 I am the worst at drinking water. My husband is always like never I have some kind of physical. Oh, I have a headache.
06:31 Well, I feel tired of this. How much water have you been drinking? Finally bought a big like half gallon joke and I’m like, okay, this is happening.
06:39 This is what I’m going to do. And I started drinking two of those a day and I was like, is this what people feel like every day?
06:46 It was such a difference. Tell me more like how did you feel like a brand new person? My husband was like, I do not even want to hear it.
06:53 I do not want to hear it because I have been. He was the prepping the few for years. He has been saying it for like a decade and I’m finally like telling like I’m coming back to him.
07:03 Like it’s brand new information. I’m like, did you know that if I drink all this water and when they I feel so much better?
07:08 My stomach felt good. I don’t know how else to do more headaches every day from dehydration. Because one of those things that people often like hear hydration and they just think it’s so basic.
07:19 Like what is that actually going to do? What our body is made up of like 90% water or something, right?
07:24 It’s like something crazy like that. And so this is exactly like the aha that and it doesn’t always just take a week or two for women to figure out how to make it work.
07:33 I do find the vessel, so the water bottle and having it accessible can be like one of the easiest ways to help consume more water.
07:42 But that’s exactly what I work with with my clients is figuring out how to certain actions, especially when we get into hydration and nutrition is how to certain things actually make you feel, right?
07:52 Because you could be told that like X number of ounces of water is what you need per day. I know for a fact I need close to 100 ounces.
07:59 If I go less than that, I just feel parched and that is just me building this habit over time. I have other women who are trying to build up from 16 ounces a day to 24 ounces a day, right?
08:10 And just figuring out what is that number that you and your body needs first, what you’re told you should be doing.
08:16 Well, if the other part of it that was key for me was having a big container that I didn’t have to keep refilling because if I have to keep refilling it, it’s not going to happen.
08:25 And when I brought this joke home, it’s like a half gallon, he laughed at me and he’s like, you have a million water bottles.
08:32 Why don’t you just use those? And I’m like, because they have a whole 20 ounces, I have to keep getting up.
08:37 I have to like if I have to refill it, that’s just not going to happen. He can’t wrap his head around why that’s hard for me.
08:41 And I’m like, I can’t either, but listen, this is just where we are. This is what I need. And it works.
08:47 For me. So for me, it was making it so super, stupid, easy to just have it there and not have to like even make more work for myself.
08:55 Like don’t put speed bumps like on your own path to success. Like make your, make your, make your plants easy to water.
09:01 Okay. Just like make it super simple for yourself. But then stress management. I love that that is a big part of your program because when you’re not doing that that has such far reaching impacts physical mental and emotional.
09:14 I don’t think people realize that having an active stress management strategies in place can have that much of an impact on their physical health because it trickles down to everything.
Totally. And we know, we know for a fact that that increased stress and increased cortisol levels will lead to other health challenges down the road.
09:34 And so even if it’s thinking about those longer term thing, I work with a lot of women who have anxiety who have ADHD who have kind of these higher levels of sensory input if you, if you will.
What you need for stress awareness and management when you’re out and about at the grocery store is going to be different than when you’re doing work in your office.
And not only that, but there’s like that chronic low grade stress and then there’s like life event stress. And I think that the chronic low grade stress is so sneaky because you don’t even realize like you recognize when oh somebody close to us passes away that’s stressful or somebody’s a job or something like that that’s an event that you can recognize okay this is stressful. The constant little things that are like what’s that phrase like death by a thousand cuts it’s cumulative.
And I think that was a really big aha in my own journey is when I was working with with my therapist is she brought that to my forefront to say Megan you have been living in this state of stress up here that it’s not surprising that you have trouble making decisions.
That’s not surprising that you blow up at your kids when they do nothing it’s not surprising that conversation with your husband’s tens right because when we are in this constant state and again it doesn’t mean yes there’s a cute as you said like acute life events.
The death of a lump one a big move of whatever it is that will trigger great levels of stress but it’s more of all of these just like the hustle of everyday living that over time really catches up to people and that’s where I find women speak me out is they say I don’t want to do this anymore right.
I know that I can do this but I’m at a point where I don’t want to it doesn’t feel good.
I think too another factor in there is like social media so we see everybody everybody dying for the award of most busy look how many things I’m doing look how.
I’m going to be showing you a highlight reel where she’s doing all these different things of course she’s snapping like a twig as soon as she gets home but she’s not showing that so we are all kind of comparing our behind the scenes to everybody else’s highlight reel and we’re feeling kind of bad about
ourselves about what we feel like we should be able to handle. Totally and I think that so many women suffer from that is just that comparison truly is the thief of joy right if we’re constantly comparing ourselves to the rest of the world to other people’s highlight reel.
Yes, then when we see that and we feel that we’re like only down here we self sabotage right we continue to engrain stories that do not serve us.
12:07 One thing I work with women we talk about just even measuring success is how do we measure progress and not just again a over perfection right perfection being what you see on that person’s Instagram.
12:18 What are our measures of success because very well what you’re seeing on the screen isn’t even how you want to measure yourself.
12:25 It’s a little tricky to because we have die culture we have socialization of like how we’re measuring success are always these numbers right but there has to be like a qualitative way to look at how we’re improving different areas of our life versus a quantitative and saying how do we measure how we’re
12:42 improving our how we’re making progress without getting into. Numbers that aren’t necessarily indicators of health or indicators of anything right that’s that’s really helpful.
12:52 Right, I totally agree there’s one exercise I do with clients which I call the joy exercise which is really figuring out like what are the pieces that are missing in your life that you want that will bring you joy and for some it’s like peeling back the layers to say well I really think it’s this I
13:06 used to do this and recognizing okay that actually doesn’t serve me or in the season of life I’m in I can’t do that activity right and it’s figuring out ways exactly that at the end of the day.
13:15 I want my clients to feel good right and we know that feeling good isn’t going to be a number on the scale it’s not going to be the size pants that you’re wearing again in this culture where we are constantly trying to rise to a certain standard.
13:29 What happens when you hit that number what do we often do we then try to go up to the next and the next and it’s like we’re constantly striving rather than also just recognizing where you are how you can be happy in that moment.
13:40 Right it’s never enough when you’re like okay well this feels good well what about more and what about more. And then we’re constantly on that that hamster wheel of going to the next thing not to mention we’re socialized to think you know that if you hit this number the pantsize the scale that’s going
13:56 to be some kind of measure of happiness measure of you as a person. And yes we do live in a society that treats people better the smaller they are so they’re they’re going to always benefits just by society by achieving these things but it’s not it has nothing to do with your happiness and your life
14:15 and the things. Right because we know that sometimes the people that look that standard are the most unhappy right it’s figuring out what are what are those things that make you tick what are those things that are going to really make you feel good and make you feel like you are thriving.
14:27 All right Megan talk to me about your program to help people can work with you what does it look like.
14:32 I have been loving the work I’ve been doing in the wellness and empowerment coaching space that’s what I call myself a wellness and empowerment coach.
14:39 Because again I want to walk alongside someone until they feel that they can just take it on their own. Currently I’m taking a new one on one clients in my holistic wellness coaching which I do primarily virtually so you can be anywhere and I have what I call the best self package it’s how do we help you feel
14:54 like your best self and kind of as we talked about today. Take a look at some of those basics like the hydration nutrition movement and then we do get into the boundary setting and really it’s tailored to whatever a woman needs so I have someone who really like to dive deep into that nutrition space
15:09 and work for it’s mindful eating and I have someone where I just do a lot of work around organizational and time management stuff.
15:17 It’s everything not just fitness it’s not just foods you do a lot of mindset work and empowerment and why that is integral to building a practice that’s sustainable over their lifetime empowerment.
15:30 I’m curious if people use that word to describe what they want it is what they want they want to be empowered but are they using that word are they like man you know what I could really use some empowerment today.
How can I how can I get empowered but but the thoughts that they have that mean that are more like man I wish I just felt like I wasn’t always like at the end of my rope I’m not always exhausted.
I wish I could like offload this on to somebody else or I wish I could just kind of like clear my schedule and take some time for myself.
Yeah, I find that women don’t often use that word empowered or empowerment but more so we’re hearing it kind of exactly like you said more I want more of a sense of control.
Which comes down to kind of again with the way the brain works in terms of that all or nothing mindset is we want it this way or this way well, how do we find that happy medium right.
I also find women and just in the work I do at the crossover between wellness coaching and craning clients physically training clients is just the feeling of strength and this feeling of energy right because one of the number one.
I guess challenges that the woman I work with face is just this constant feeling of exhaustion and like we’re constantly spinning the wheels.
So how do we work to change things so there’s not so much brain power. And that face so we do feel more empowered and we feel more in control, if you will, of of what we’re choosing to do with our life.
The human brain is such an interesting thing, which has evolved over millions of years and we just naturally as humans are brain goes to the negative as a safety mechanism to try to protect ourselves as human and keep us safe.
And so part of the work that I do with women is helping them shift that mindset to adopt a more positive mentality not to say that there’s not space for negative thoughts and for pain and for all of that, but just learning how to reframe certain situations so we can continue to move forward in the direction we are wanting to go. So is this kind of like a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. Yeah, absolutely exactly that you know fixed mindset being that you are set in your ways, but the cool thing, especially I’ve got a background in education is human brains are adaptable and malleable and so just being able to recognize that we have the power to change our brain change our thinking just as we do any other habit that we’re looking to change.
Right, so it’s not a change in all of these kind of grooved in patterns like neuro plasticity it’s the power to be able to go in and say this is the way I normally would approach like not even meaning to but just my default mode of when this happens.
18:09 What I think this is how I feel you can reprogram that that is mind boggling that you can change the reaction to have to something just by observing the pattern of what you normally do and stopping it and saying this is how I want to think about this and then you start to do it.
18:26 Exactly, and I think that we live in this culture and society were constantly on the go I work primarily with busy moms who are just like holding all the roles and constantly go go go so many expectations that oftentimes we don’t even take the time to.
18:40 I think that we do have the power to make those changes in brain and in body. Something that I’ve noticed and that something you’re doing physically can change where you are mentally like it really changes your state when you do something physical.
18:57 I do believe that movement is one of those kind of keys to unlocking women’s health when we can figure out how to insert regular movements intentional movement and purposeful movement as I call it.
19:08 Then we start to see some of the other shifts in their wellness happen to just such an unlock for a lot of people kind of connecting to the things that we’ve already talked about the brain piece and the thinking piece with the movement piece of this what I find.
19:24 With a lot of the woman the woman that I work with is that we have these beliefs as to what fitness what exercise needs to be, just based on the way that we are raised.
19:34 So we have this notion that it has to be a 60 minute class it has to be hard and sweating it has to be at the gym it has to be all these things and so then we fall into this all or nothing mindset of well.
19:45 I didn’t make it to my 60 minute class so I might as well just start again tomorrow or I’ll try again tomorrow as opposed to recognizing the power of again a lot of the woman I work with our working moms.
19:55 And just being able to take. 3 10 minute breaks throughout your day or 5 minute breaks even to just get up and move your body is that walking up and downstairs putting your laundry in is it a light stretch.
20:07 And again just working to shift the mind because when we change the mind we can then help change those actions for long term success.
20:14 For me it’s like lifting weights. If I can just take a few minutes take a few minutes to lift some weights my whole day is different.
20:23 Yeah and there’s so much research behind obviously just the power of movement whether it’s strength training whether it’s going out for a leisurely walk and just the power of moving your body and the endorphins come up and you know clearing the head some.
20:36 I think also you know there’s this the saying I guess that motion changes emotion. It’s even something as simple as okay you’re sitting at your desk your work done a work project you’re getting really frustrated you’re feeling anxiety come in as you can’t figure it out even just to physically remove
20:51 yourself from that space and change your location. Right it’s the physical movement and then it’s also just being in the front space can have so much power that’s why my watch is always like alright.
21:01 It could happen to go somewhere else for like five minutes you don’t have to do anything just go be somewhere else for five minute stand up just stand up.
21:10 Yes, we’ll look a little bit different when you sit back down. Totally and I think that one thing that I’ll often share either with clients or if I’m doing you know presentations or workshops is just to remember that as human beings again we talk a little bit about the human brain but as human beings
21:22 we are naturally born to be moving creatures. Hundreds of years ago we are hunters and gatherers and so just naturally our body doesn’t care for the sedentary lifestyle and over the last couple hundred years what do we do.
21:35 We sit at our jobs we sit in consume social media or TV or even sit and read right do we just have such a sedentary lifestyle that our body actually craves it and so I love this because we just covered physical activity impacts mental state and then the way you think about how you move.
21:53 Can also impact how often you do it and it’s a kind of like a back and forth like change the way you think about what activity needs to be you’re gonna do it more often you’re gonna have that physical movement that’s gonna change how your brain is kind of working at the moment and it’s going to snowball
22:10 . It totally is and it like comes down to that concept of the chicken and the egg right where which one comes first which one do you need first and I feel like for a lot of people changing up here can be really challenging.
22:21 So why not start by just trying to move your body start with five minutes and then see where that goes because it’s hard to just change the thoughts to then change that behavior right kind of take action and learn from it.
22:33 Like whatever new habit you want to have do something this big and then just let that momentum push you to keep doing other things and keep it going.
22:43 Building sustainable healthy habits is at the base of my holistic wellness coaching. I see so many women come in and saying I want to feel better I want more energy and they’ve tried all these extremes in the past with work for so long right we can do an intense workout program or eight or 12 weeks.
22:56 And then what happens is eventually life happens you get sick you travel some variable changes and then we fall off and need to come back and that’s why my approach is start small use habit stacking.
23:10 You know again success build upon success so we can just find tiny success recognize it and celebrate it. Do you do online and virtual personal training.
23:19 I do majority of my business is online and virtual a lot of strength based personal training as we know that’s so important especially as we age, I we have a lot of the wellness coaching work into it.
23:30 My training approach in the in the physical space but it’s all about functional movement. It’s what type of movements do we need and how come against strength so we can continue to enjoy the activities that we want to be doing one more 70 right.
23:43 Yeah, as we get older things are things are different. Yeah, they’re much challenging there are things I need to be doing so that I can keep moving it’s not always going to be this easy.
23:53 My target market is busy moms who are feeling overwhelmed and I help them find that confidence find that strength in both body and mind.
24:00 So I do some in person personal training but most of the stuff I do is be a zoom either personal training and the wellness coaching as well.
24:08 I love that now you do like real time zoom session like most of my clients I work with one time a week and and we’ll do one live 45 or 60 minute session depending what we’re set up on.
24:19 And then I do use an app where I can program and other workouts for them as well to do on their own time I also have a big of live recorded workouts from my group fitness virtual classes so often direct women.
24:34 To some of those as well for those that prefer to like work along with something as opposed to just check exercises off the box.
24:40 It’s nice to at least feel like you’re working out with somebody like when you’re home alone, but at least you feel like you have some kind of support.
24:48 You have a free gift for our audience it is the weekly wellness tracker can you talk to us a little bit about what that looks like.
24:54 Yeah, this is something that I created based on different trackers different planners that I’ve personally used that I’ve used with clients in the past.
25:02 I find oftentimes when women feel so far off track or want to work towards some type of change one of the easiest ways to plan and see success is using some type of tracker.
25:14 So I’ve set this up pretty simple. You can track kind of my five basic wellness areas or you can put your own stuff on there and I use it as both a planning tool as well as a tracking tool when I say tracking.
25:29 I want it to be a space where you check it off or you put the sticker on to celebrate because as we’ve talked about like our brain wants to see success.
25:37 And I love this even more so I know that some women start with this with me and then move into an app or move into the regular planner but having of your wellness and one space can be really powerful.
And I am one of those physical write out my so I can check things off because I have tried to get into apps for it but something because it’s so easy right you have it on the app it’s all organized you can like, but what something about seeing it on a piece of paper checking a box putting a sticker seeing it done. It has so much more of a mental impact
I agree yeah and I think the physical writing of it there’s research behind that just says that that will ingrain more into your into your brain into your psyche you know like to help you find success like yes apps definitely have a place and for some women that is what works at the end of the day, I don’t works for you.
Megan, what I like to do at the end of every episode is have my guests give us their top three tips.
The first one is just to remember the season of life that you’re in oftentimes we are comparing ourselves back to our past cells And so remember what’s within your control, because it’s very easy to get caught up on everybody else’s ish or things that are outside of our control so to just remember when making change remember the things that we do have the power to control.
My second one is giving yourself permission, I think, as busy women, especially moms again we are constantly in this giving mode that is what society preaches to us is that We should be meeting everybody else’s needs, we should be giving all the time give yourself permission to prioritize yourself.
You have to until you give yourself permission and recognize that you can take time for you, you can put your own needs first it’s really hard to make change, because otherwise you’re doing it in a resentful state. I heard a lot of should so having that thought we’re like I should be doing this I should be doing that should that be like that should be a flag.
We could talk a whole episode on this constant of shooting ourselves give yourself permission and identify what are the things that you actually want to do what you need and want to prioritize.
And then I think the last piece of advice is just don’t feel like you have to go it alone. There is such great power and accountability and camaraderie whether it’s finding a group support whether it’s having an accountability buddy or if you are ready to take it to that next level, finding a coach, finding somebody who can help guide you and see your cheerleader, give you tools and support and help you work through the change that you’re looking to have.
We know for a fact that motivation is going to come and go. So if you’re feeling motivated to start something, reach out, find a buddy, find a coach, right, because when you come to your lower points, that’s when you’re going to want to have some systems in place and have some other links, I have your website, I have all of your social media links, I’ll be putting those in the show notes as well as some of the links, some other things that we kind of mentioned like some studies you talked about.
So I’ll put that in the show notes as well and a link to book a call with you and connect with you directly.
Megan, thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Laurie, this was fun. I’ll see you next time.
