322: Why High-Achieving Women Struggle with Self-Care with Elizabeth Harris

Hi there. You’re listening to the Leading Lady podcast. I’m your host, Alison Loftus, and I’m a certified professional coach specializing in leadership and work-life balance. I work with clients to shift their limiting beliefs, insecurities, and self-doubt. This podcast will be filled with tools and strategies to help high-achieving women like you feel connected, empowered, and in the lead of your life, both personally and professionally. Let’s transform your life, starting now. Lead yourself. The rest will follow.

Hi there, leading ladies, and welcome to today’s episode. I am joined by a dear friend and fellow leading lady, Ambassador Elizabeth Harris. Elizabeth is a registered dietitian, certified intuitive eating counselor, a media spokesperson, and an entrepreneur. She collaborates with organizations nationwide to create employee wellness programs that lower stress, elevate performance, and promote whole-person health, helping individuals and businesses thrive.

In her private practice, Elizabeth guides women to stop dieting. Yep, let’s just opt out of diet culture, ladies. Make peace with food and their bodies and create sustainable habits for lifelong health. She also co-hosts The Wellness, Rebranded, a top 2% globally ranked podcast, where a dietitian, a personal trainer, and a mental health therapist team up to give women in midlife the tools and conversations they need to finally feel good in their bodies and their lives without the guilt, shame, or grind.

I am thrilled to have Elizabeth here with me today. Elizabeth, you have made such an impact on my life and my business. I cannot wait to talk about our topic today. So thank you for joining me.

Elizabeth: Oh, me too. Thank you. Likewise, I could say the same right back about you. And I’m so excited to be here again.

Alison: Yeah. So today we’re just gonna… we’re gonna call it out. High-achieving women, entrepreneurs, business owners, leaders, we struggle to prioritize our health. Why do we do that? And what are we going to do about it?

Elizabeth: Yeah. This is one of my favorite topics because I think it’s… I think we think it has to be so hard, and it really doesn’t have to be so hard. And I’ve seen the impact of it, and it is just literally life-changing, business-changing, all the things. So I am also excited to talk about it.

Alison: Yeah, I mean, I was kind of falling apart a few months ago, and I sent out an SOS text to you, Tara, and Maria, my three wellness ambassadors, also the Wellness Rebranded trio. Yeah. And I was like, “SOS, I need help.” Like, this is not sustainable. I’m not taking care of myself. And what’s crazy to me is I know all the things that I need to do. I have the resources. You’re literally right here with me, and I’m still struggling. Why? Why? Why does that happen?

Why High-Achieving Women Struggle to Prioritize Their Health

Elizabeth: Yeah. Well, I think there’s so many reasons. I mean, it’s obviously a pattern that I see over and over and over again when I’m working with people. And the truth is, everybody’s different, and there are different reasons and different circumstances, but there definitely are some common characteristics that I see show up over and over again. And so I think we should just dig into them.

And first of all, I think we just need to acknowledge that we all have a lot on our plates, right? We are legitimately juggling a lot, that we have a lot of priorities, a lot of responsibilities. I think the version of healthy habits and wellness that we’re given from the world is way overcomplicated, very toxic. I think it has us chasing the wrong thing and just can kind of get in the way, to be honest.

But yeah, I think we have a lot on our plates. And I think especially the pattern that I tend to see is, like, people are pushing it off, pushing it off, thinking, “I’ll get to it later,” or, you know, “I’ll do it when,” without realizing how much time passes and they haven’t prioritized themselves. And then they don’t think about it until they’re experiencing burnout or chronic fatigue, or they start having digestive problems, or they got lab markers that were out of whack. And that’s when I usually see people like, “Okay, I got this wake-up call, and now I need to prioritize it.”

So all that is to say, I think it’s… there’s just a lot on our plate. And I don’t think it happens on purpose. I think—

Alison: Totally.

Elizabeth: —it just gets away from us. And in the beginning, we’re probably feeling okay, right? We can push through and do all the things. And so it’s easy to keep thinking that we’re fine until we’re not fine. And next thing you know, you’re sending an SOS to your wellness team.

Alison: Yeah. You know, and you talk about us, like, juggling a lot. And even in the pre-interview here, you know, before Elizabeth and I jumped on, I was sharing to her. It feels like sometimes life feels like whack-a-mole. You’ve got all these things that are popping up that need your immediate attention. And the next thing you know, you’ve been putting out fires or dealing with all these, like, pop-up emergencies that you haven’t taken care of yourself. And I love that you pointed out that we’re like, “Oh, I’ll get to that,” without even realizing how much time has gone by that we’ve been kind of pushing it off.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And something you said made me think, I think also of high-achieving women. We’ve sort of been conditioned, unfortunately, to tie our success or our value or our worthiness, or whatever you want to fit in there, to productivity.

And so it feels like the most important thing we need to do is produce the next thing, do the next thing, put out the next fire, do all the things for everybody and everything else. And we’re also equating that with kind of our own success in a way.

And it can feel, you know, sometimes what you need is rest, and that can feel like you’re doing nothing, right? And opposing kind of all the other things that we think we need to be doing. So yeah, I just think kind of tying our success into output and productivity is also a trap that we a lot of times fall into.

Alison: 100%, 100%. You know, and when I was building the strategic wheel and trying to identify the pillars of healthy businesses, you know, I’m a business strategist. That’s what I do. I look at your business. I look at these pillars of what’s working, what needs support. Nutrition is not missing from that. Nutrition is one of the pillars because our business is only as healthy, not just nutrition, but wellness. Yeah. Our business is only as healthy as we are.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And not just us, but the individuals who make up our businesses, right? And so, and, and are doing all the things, we collectively and our businesses truly are only as healthy as we are. And imagine if you and every team member and every employee you had was showing up as their kind of, you know, like, happiest, healthiest, most energized, well-fueled self. Of course, that’s going to translate into better business results, but we’re just not trained to think about it that way.

Alison: Right, right.

Elizabeth: Feels like fluff, or it feels like somehow not as important as all the other tasks on our to-do list. And I just am really, really passionate and, like, the core of my being believes that you have to be healthy first.

Alison: Right, right. My husband always says, like, you can have 99 problems, but if health, if, if health is one of them, then you really only have one problem.

Elizabeth: Yeah. And, and it’s—

Alison: So true, right?

Elizabeth: All of a sudden everything else gets put off. But at that point it’s to deal with a crisis. And so my invitation is, like, well, what if you figured out smaller, simpler, more sustainable, impactful ways to weave it into what you’re already doing? Kind of a phrase I use a lot is like, what if self-care wasn’t a thing on your to-do list, but the way you do the whole to-do list?

Alison: Right, right, right.

Elizabeth: Not another thing, but the way you do everything, then everything changes, right?

Alison: At our recent networking event, the interns, you were here. Our summer interns shared kind of what surprised them about Leading Lady and the work environment. And I loved that they could immediately see that we prioritized wellness here.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Alison: They talked about the nutritious food that was available to them, the invitation and the opportunities they had to participate in workouts and yoga and quiet time, you know, like, and I love it. And I’m also kind of sad that that was such a novelty.

Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I wonder in their, like, in their case specifically, this is, you know, one of their first introductions really to the workplace. So yeah, maybe it just was like, I don’t know, is it a novelty or just something they learned? And if it is something that they learned at the outset of how important it is and how it should be built in, like, oh, what a gift to every organization they ever go to after this.

Alison: Right, right.

— AD —

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Leading Lady Podcast. I’m Heidi Schmidt, leading lady ambassador and owner of Heidi Schmidt Creative, a content marketing and social media marketing agency. I help reduce the overwhelm of marketing for business owners like you, and I would love to connect. Reach out to me w w w dot dot com or on Instagram at Schmidt Creative.

Making Health and Wellness Feel More Doable

Alison: Now, you talked about how nutrition and self-care, it can be so overwhelming and we kind of think that we have to go all out and, like, it’s… it’s one more thing on our to-do list, right? But I think what’s beautiful about the work that I’ve done with you and how I’ve seen you work with others is that it doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Alison: And it really isn’t, like, out of reach.

Elizabeth: Mhm.

Alison: Right. So can you talk to us a little bit? You know, how… how do we approach that to-do list with health and wellness instead of adding that to the list?

Elizabeth: Yeah. Well, so I—

I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t expand on something I alluded to earlier, which is, like, what makes it feel that way? Daunting and overwhelming and kind of restrictive or punishing or all the things is that we live in a crazy toxic diet culture that just puts, I describe it as pressure. It’s like pressure to eat a certain way. Pressure to exercise a certain way, pressure to look a certain way.

And we start to… all the wellness advice we’re given is just so restrictive. It’s so confusing. It’s so contradictory. It is oftentimes not really about true wellness, and it makes it feel unattainable. And it can make us feel like there’s this perfect way to do it. And if we’re not doing it perfectly, then my gosh, why even bother? Because what’s the point, right?

And so it’s so common to fall into all-or-nothing mindset traps around it. It can make it seem like, especially with food, that it’s just really about being super restrictive and super disciplined and cutting out everything under the sun. And just like, even just the idea of that is like, well, I don’t want to do that, right?

Alison: Right.

Elizabeth: That sounds terrible. And what about when I want to go on vacation, or I want to go out and socialize with friends or coworkers or all of the things?

So I think, like, the first thing I would say is just start by noticing, as we’ve talked through some of the traps, like which ones feel true for you, which ones feel most prevalent. Because if you can identify where you’re getting stuck, it’s going to be a lot easier to then figure out where to focus your efforts on making some changes.

I also think it starts with a decision, and the decision is that your health and your self-care matter, that they deserve to be on your priority list, that it’s not selfish, that it’s not fluff, that you won’t do it later. Like, it starts—

Alison: It’s not—

Elizabeth: Shallow.

Alison: It’s not—

Elizabeth: Yeah, it’s fundamental. And it starts with just recognizing that. And if you haven’t been treating it that way so far, that’s fine. Like, there’s no shame or judgment or anything. But I would invite you to consider shifting that and deciding that your needs matter.

Not only do they matter, but they’re actually the thing that allows you to show up for everybody and everything else effectively in the way you want. So decide. And then the best thing I can say is start. Really, really, really small.

I call it looking for the lowest hanging fruit. If you are really—no pun intended.

Alison: Yeah, yeah.

Elizabeth: Um, I love a good food pun. I wasn’t thinking of that as one of them, but seriously, look for the lowest hanging fruit. If you are just, I don’t know, staying up until 3 a.m. every night, plowing through your to-do list and waking up at 6 a.m. exhausted, try going to bed an hour earlier.

If you get to the end of the day and realize, “Oh my gosh, I haven’t eaten, like, a single fruit or vegetable,” throw one on your plate, right? If you realize, go get up from your desk and grab a glass of water. Like, it can be so simple, but pick one thing that’s really simple that you’re pretty confident you can do.

And it may seem so insignificant as to be like, “What the heck is the point?” But in my practice, what I try to coach people to do is, you know, we’re gonna make small, simple action steps, and you’re going to focus on doing it until you’re doing it consistently and you’re feeling the benefit of it.

Like, take time to notice. It felt good when I drank that glass of water. It felt good when I got up and walked to the mailbox and cleared my head for a minute. Notice how it feels, and then we’ll tackle the next one and add them on.

And I call it win stacking. But essentially, like, one small healthy choice can fuel and launch another. And they tend to kind of… they snowball over time. And that’s where they start to add up, not by overhauling everything, but by tweaking one small thing and then building on it.

I often in my head think of it like stringing a pearl necklace, right? If you put one, one pearl on a chain, like, okay, you know, like, it’s pretty, but it’s not going to knock your socks off or anything. Maybe, right? Like a really amazing, big, special pearl. But the more when you string them all together, it adds up to something beautiful. And that’s how I like to think about self-care.

Building Sustainable Healthy Habits

Alison: Yeah, yeah. I love that. You know, and I love the win stacking. I love the paying attention through the years of knowing you and hearing you and, you know, following you on social media and obviously working with you.

I find myself like your voice is in my head. I open the pantry door and I’m like, “Oh, I shouldn’t eat that.” Who says I can’t eat that? There’s no food police in here. Like, I want to eat that. That it is okay to eat that, you know, just kind of challenging that, learning that sometimes I mindlessly snack because I’m dehydrated and a tall glass of water does the body good. And it usually satiates me and I stop the snacking because I’m not great at staying hydrated.

Elizabeth: Yeah, right. It’s amazing what a glass of water can do for you.

Alison: You know, but just being a little bit more attuned or aware of what’s going on with your body. I know after I sent out that SOS text to you guys several months ago, I focused on one thing, and that was my sleep. And I recognized that my sleep hygiene was just, like, not thriving. I was not—not working till three in the morning, but laying awake worrying until three in the morning or doomscrolling instead of having a steady bedtime routine and getting sleep.

I’ve learned through this that at my age and phase of life, I need a little more sleep than I used to.

Elizabeth: Yeah, much more elusive, right?

Alison: Right. The great irony. Why? Why is it so hard to sleep in my 40s? Yeah, but I will say it’s made a huge difference. Yeah. Of prioritizing that.

And I’m moving more. I’m not doing crazy workouts. I mean, for goodness sake, I used to be a bodybuilder, a marathon runner. I’m an extremist, right? And so to have that mentality of, “I have to go all in or why bother,” to, “Oh, I can go for a walk. I can stretch. I can, you know, do a 30-minute class with Tara.” Yeah. All of those little wins have really added up. And it makes me feel more resilient in my business and in my life.

Elizabeth: Yeah, definitely. I think it’s a reminder that, first of all, to build habits that fit your real life, not your ideal life, right?

Alison: Right.

Elizabeth: They have to fit kind of your current situation, not your ideal scenario necessarily, or what you’ve been told. Like, it has to work in your real life.

And then also, I think we’ve been conditioned also to define success incorrectly. Being successful doesn’t mean doing it perfectly, and doing it perfectly… it doesn’t mean doing it perfectly. It’s actually doing it consistently.

What and how you eat most often matters most. What and how you move most often matters most. How much you sleep most often matters most, right? The goal is to be consistent and to kind of…

We’re all going to get thrown off track on some of our health habits all the time, frankly. But what happens next, right? Start beating yourself up? Do you give up? Do you give up? Do you think you need to go search out the next, like, diet or more discipline or more willpower? Or can you just, like, get back to it?

Alison: Yeah, right.

Elizabeth: In the way that fits that moment. And that is really, truly a skill and a mindset shift.

The Nourish Table

Alison: Yeah, yeah, I love it. So we can talk for hours about this, you know, obviously, and it’s exciting. You have recently come up with a new resource that everyone is raving about. Anyone that I know that is getting these recipes from you is like, “Oh my gosh, have you tried this yet? Did you, did you—”

Elizabeth: Love it.

Alison: It?

Elizabeth: Yes.

Alison: I’m excited. So yeah, but I’m also a total—

Elizabeth: Foodie, and I love cooking. So I was hearing from many, many people, especially high-achieving business owners, that the decision fatigue at mealtimes is just, like, real and getting in the way, and people just finding the process of getting food on their plates overwhelming, from getting to the store to figuring out what to buy, to figuring out what to make.

So I created something called the Nourish Table. And essentially it’s a recipe club, but it’s actually so much more than that.

So every month I send out five recipes that I have personally tried, fed my family, kind of pre-tested. I know that they’re nourishing for your body. I know that they taste good.

So you get the five recipes, you get the shopping list so you can, like, print it and head right to the store. And then you also get a whole bunch of ideas for how to turn that one recipe you made into multiple meals. And not just leftovers, but really kind of reimagining how it shows up on your plate.

It’s one of my… I call it being meal ready, but that’s one of the strategies that I teach all of my clients and that I use in my own life, is figuring out strategies so that you can be ready to put a meal together and being able to kind of mix and match and repurpose and understanding the elements of what make a balanced meal is one component of that.

So I’m kind of doing it for you in, in the recipe club when you get it each month. So it’s called the Nourish Table. It comes out every month on the first of the month. I love, love, love it. Other people have told me how much they’re loving it. I would love for anyone to come join us. I will drop the link.

And then, if I might be so bold as to share another resource, I also have a free resource that people can check out. It’s a quiz. It takes two minutes. If you feel like you’re struggling with your relationship with food or struggling to make kind of healthy eating and habits stick consistently, and you just can’t figure out how to get out of your own way, this quiz is going to help you figure out what’s really driving your eating, and then give you some simple next steps to begin transforming your relationship with food.

Alison: I love it.

Elizabeth: I’ll give that to you too.

The Ripple Effect of Workplace Wellness

Alison: That we will put that in the show notes for sure.

And one thing that we haven’t talked a lot about, but I brought Elizabeth in, Aubrey and I, we brought Elizabeth in to our preschool program. That’s my first company that I started 22 years ago. We just celebrated 22 years.

But Elizabeth came in and worked with our staff and really helping support our staff in their nutrition and their wellness. And we saw so much benefit from that. Less call-outs. Staff was more energized. They were in a better mood. The language that they were using around the food, how they were even talking about food at mealtimes with the kids, which then went to the parent. Like, it was such a ripple in our community.

Who knew? Who knew that bringing in a registered dietitian to talk with our staff would have such an impact?

And Elizabeth, so you go into organizations, corporations, businesses, and you do corporate wellness as well. I do, yeah. Do you want to just touch very briefly on that and why—why that is important to you?

Elizabeth: I think it’s important to me. Well, I know it’s important to me for the very thing I said at the beginning, which is like, if we can all show up as our happiest, most energized, most taken care of selves, then the world is just a better place.

Our businesses run more smoothly. Our people, we deserve it. Our employees, our team members. Everybody just deserves that. So that’s why I’m so passionate about doing that work.

And yeah, the ripple effects are amazing, and it’s super fun for me to do it because I, in my private practice, am typically working with people more one-on-one or in very, very small groups, and it’s a way for me to get the broader message out into the world.

And not just the message, but the tools and the resources, so that people can actually do it and use it during the workday, and also just change workplace cultures, because it’s not about weight-loss challenges or hitting a certain number on the scale or anything like that. It is truly just about making healthy, impactful habits practical and doable and enjoyable. And it changes individuals and cultures. So I—

Alison: For sure, yeah.

Elizabeth: Yeah.

Alison: Yeah. I think that’s probably one of the most impactful things we’ve done in our 20-plus years of professional development staff support, because that—

Elizabeth: Makes me so happy.

Alison: Yeah. Especially caregivers. It’s kind of our shtick to put other people’s needs before our own, you know, and anyone who’s ever worked in education knows that teachers are usually, like, not eating all day or inhaling a granola bar in the corner on a break or, you know, it’s just not the most ideal environment to prioritize your own wellness.

And having the opportunity to kind of change the script with that, I don’t know, it just really made a huge impact for myself, my company, my team. We’re very grateful. So I wanted to make sure we touched on that and that our listeners knew that you were available for that as well.

Elizabeth: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. And we’re coming back soon.

Alison: Yeah. You are, you’re, you’re doing a little mini retreat for us. We’re really excited about that.

So Elizabeth, is there anything that you want to leave our listeners with today? This was such a powerful conversation. And like I said, we could talk about it for hours. But yeah.

Elizabeth: No, I would just leave people with a really simple thought that, you know, your health matters, you matter. And it does not have to be overwhelming. It really, truly can be doable.

And just look for that smallest, simplest thing you can do today and put your head on your pillow tonight and be excited that you did it, and start there.

Alison: Yeah, I love it. All right. Well, thanks for joining us. Until next time, take the lead.

Thanks for tuning in for another episode of the Leading Lady podcast. You can find all of the links and information mentioned in this episode at w w w dot dash dot com. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to follow the show so you don’t miss any future episodes. And while you’re there, it would mean the world to me if you would take a few seconds and leave me an honest review. This will allow me to be able to help other high-achieving women find inspiration, connection, and develop strategies to live and lead with purpose and intention. See you here next week.