Okay, welcome to this latest podcast episode. I am super excited to welcome back Trisha Mchale, who is going to chat with us today about empty nest, rediscovering yourself, and navigating identity shifts as your kids grow up. Trisha is a psychotherapist and supervisor working in private practice in Galway since 2006. In 2019, she went into partnership with Mind and Body Works, who operate two psychotherapy and counseling centers in Dublin and Wood Quay in Galway, and there's a new center now opened on Dominic Street in Galway. They have a team of over 50 psychotherapists and psychologists who offer counseling to adults, couples, adolescents, and children. They offer a wide range of therapies including CBT, EMDR, and art therapy. They also operate a low-cost counseling service which is provided by mature trainee therapists in their final degree or masters.

If you'd like to contact Trisha at Mind and Body Works, you can call her on 091725750 or email galway@mindandbodyworks.com. If you're in the Dublin area, you can email info@mindandbodyworks.com. I'll put that on the show notes.

So, I really hope you enjoy this podcast episode. I'm super excited to talk to you about it, Trisha. What a brilliant topic. Thanks, Jessica. Yeah, it's my favorite, my favorite topic. It's my favorite area of work, working with women and working with women in midlife and all of the associated stuff that goes with being a woman at this stage of your life.

If we're talking about empty nest, we're generally talking about women from kind of early forties upwards who are in a space in their lives where their children have left home. It's a time where our identity is shifting. Our identity as a mother, wife or partner, and worker, these are the labels we put on ourselves to identify in the world. Once our children start to move away and separate, it can be a very difficult and scary time. It can bring about feelings of loss, depression, and anxiety, as we try to find our way back to our sense of self and ask, 'Who am I when I'm not defined by my roles?'

Women in midlife experience tough emotions such as fear, anxiety, and worry. We constantly worry about our children, even when they're away from home. This shift in identity can be shocking, especially when it coincides with other life changes like aging parents, marriage issues, menopause, and loss of friends. It's a negotiation of what to do when we no longer have a defined role in our children's lives. The separation can feel like a huge loss, but it also means we've done a good job as parents in allowing them to live their own lives.

For those at the beginning stages of this journey, I would suggest preparing yourself and finding things to fill the space and time that opens up when your children leave home. Women often struggle with finding hobbies and interests because our lives have revolved around our children. Building a community of women who prioritize self-care and support each other can be powerful. It.

Navigating the empty nest phase can be a challenging but transformative experience. As your children leave home to pursue their own lives, it's natural to feel a sense of loss, loneliness, and uncertainty. However, it's important to remember that this is also an opportunity for personal growth, self-discovery, and reinvention.

One way to cope with the empty nest is to focus on self-care and nurturing your own well-being. Take the time to explore your interests, passions, and hobbies that may have been put aside while raising your children. Prioritize activities that bring you joy and fulfilment. Engaging in regular exercise, practicing mindfulness or meditation, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle can also contribute to your overall well-being.

Creating a supportive network is another valuable aspect of navigating the empty nest phase. Building a community of women who prioritize self-care and support each other can be powerful. It allows you to connect with others who are going through similar experiences and provides a space for sharing and learning from each other.

In addition, self-reflection and personal growth are important during this time. Reassess your goals, values, and aspirations. Explore your own desires and dreams that may have been put on hold while raising your children. Consider seeking support from a therapist or counselor who can help you explore your feelings and guide you through this transitional period.

It's normal to experience a range of emotions during the empty nest phase. Give yourself permission to grieve the loss of your previous role as a full-time caregiver while also embracing the new opportunities and possibilities that lie ahead. Remember, this is a time for you to focus on your own needs and aspirations.

Embrace the freedom and possibilities that come with this new chapter of your life. Practice self-care, establish healthy habits, and prioritize your well-being. With time, patience, and self-care, you can rediscover yourself, find fulfillment, and create a meaningful life beyond the empty nest.

Hi, my name is Jessica Cooke and welcome to my podcast. My mission is to empower women over 40 to transform their lives through fitness. I've made this podcast so I can share with you my tips, tools and strategies I use on myself and my clients to get you feeling fit and healthy, feeling great in your clothes with so much energy and positivity back in your life, no matter what, your age head over to jessicacooke.ie and you'll find lots of free stuff to get you started on your journey.

You are so welcome to this latest podcast episode. Thanks for tuning in. It is absolutely roasting this week and I'm definitely not complaining. It's just takes a little bit of getting used to, doesn't it? Because when you're on holiday, you've got all the holiday gear on for some reason. In Ireland, I resist to put on my holiday clothes. What's about that? I just could not walk around in a pair of shorts. I don't know. I, I have no idea why that is. I must figure it out. The weather is just, just lovely and I want to talk to you today about your holidays and the ultimate guide to maintaining your well being on holiday. And there's a couple of approaches I need to take to this because going on holiday and what it is that you want to do is going to be different for maybe each of you listening to this podcast episode. Um, the problem that I want to fix on this episode is the one where you come back from your holidays and you feel so bad. That's the problem that I want to tackle.

And I think that's relevant to all of us listening to this. Um You go away on your holidays, you, they have been healthy before on, on the run up to your holidays. You head away, the whole idea is to relax and to feel really good and you come back and you feel desperate like there's so many things in that, that we have to discuss in today's podcast episode. I mean, just from a personal point of view, I used to go away on holidays when I was unhealthy and I would just continue on being unhealthy. So there wasn't really much of a difference in how I felt. I just was always feeling really bad. Um And then I feel like it was kind of the next phase of moving into more of a healthier life where I exercised and I drank water and I ate healthy. However, I still had alcohol and food issues running alongside of that. But I felt that I was healthy. I going into my holidays and I had all these lovely new habits accumulated, um, and practiced and well practiced. And I was this healthy person who now had healthy action steps and then I would go on holidays and I would be the old me. And the only reason I've come to realize that a lot of people do this without giving it a second thought is that we're practiced at our new habits every day, every week. We focus on our action steps.

We focus on learning how to be consistent with exercise, on learning how to eat healthy, on how to reduce our stress and anxiety. We don't walk around in our day to day lives learning how to have healthy action steps that make us feel good on holidays. So it makes sense that you would default back into old habits if you'd never practiced it before. And this happened to me for years. Healthy, healthy, healthy, go on holidays, super unhealthy around like day six day seven on the trip. Start to feel really bad in myself. Like huge self loathing. I know this sounds crazy. Like Jessica, what's wrong with you?

Why didn't you enjoy your trip? And I, I did but only really like night time after a couple of glasses of wine. Um But I used to start feeling so bad in myself like I go away on holidays with my clothes just about feeling ok, like, you know, that feeling where you just about get there. No, no wiggle room though to, to have any unhealthy action steps and then you'd go on your holidays and you, it'd be a complete free for all for me. Just alcohol, alcohol, pasta pizza, anything, just not necessarily overeating," Just eating anything I wanted on my meal times and, um, around day six, day seven, just this self-loathing.

It was just bad mental health because of all the toxins running around in my body. Um, looking at myself in the mirror, like, more than normal, the same thing, seeing myself in reflections and just this awful self-loathing. Just this awful, like, then I would go and start comparing myself to other people and I would just feel really bad. I've never really felt good on holidays. It's only in the past couple of years that I actually feel good. Um, and, uh, it's a horrible feeling. You're kind of feeling bad on the second half of your holiday. And then I used to come home and just feel worse. Um, and I would, I would hear like, on social media or reading the paper about unwinding and downtime after all the hard work. But it got to the point for me where it felt the same as weekends and I know I've chatted to you guys here about weekends, like working hard all week to look forward to downtime at the weekend, but feeling so frazzled and so anxious and so crazy on a Monday because I was drinking and eating too much. So, the purpose of the weekend of, of downtime and relaxation and calming your brain. You know, I never got that at the weekends and I certainly didn't get that on holidays. I would come home thinking I needed a holiday. And in a sense, my work, my, my life outside of holidays was like the healthy holiday from what I would do on holidays. So wherever you're at right now, in terms of what you want for your holidays, I'm going to cover each and every one of you.

 So first off, I want you to know you're heading away on your trips this year, you're going on holidays or maybe the kids are off school and summer time is just a little bit less of a routine for you. I first off want you to know what you actually want out of your holidays. Um, because if you want to go wild and you want to go crazy and you don't care, then this podcast episode isn't for you. And I'm definitely not gonna discourage you to do what you want. I am talking to you if the holidays previously, you've come back from them and your clothes are really tight and you just feel like you've undone all the good work and you want to be this new, healthy person that you are now and the other person that I want to talk to in this podcast episode is, is you, if you want damage control, if you want to limit the amount of damage that you do on your holiday, so you don't come back, just feeling so bloated and so overweight and your clothes feeling really tight and you can really enjoy yourself, however you can come back and feel ok. And you're close.

 There's kind of two things there. So I want to talk to you first of all about damage control. So you want to really enjoy your holidays, you have your vices, however you don't want to come back. Your clothes being mega mega tight feeling like absolute crap. Um So let's start, let's start with that first. So first things first, I always think you have to pick your vice when you're on holidays. If you want to come back, feeling not the worst. If you drink alcohol, if you love sugary stuff like ice creams and desserts. If you love carbs like pizzas, pastas breads, I recommend that you pick one and I used to do this quite successfully up until a few years ago, up until last year when I stopped drinking for good.

"Um, is that you and I and I loved all three? Is that it doesn't work when you do all three. If you go away on your holidays and you drink wine most nights and you have the bread basket and you eat pizza and pasta and rice and you have desserts or ice cream most days of your holiday, you're going to come back feeling the way you don't want to feel your clothes are going to be mega tight and you're going to feel horrible. So, what I would do and what I have done in the past and I still do it now actually is, is I pick my thing.

So if I absolutely love carbs, they're my favourite thing in the world. I tend to not go for the sugary stuff or the alcohol. Um, and if I drink alcohol, I definitely wouldn't be going for the Cary sweet stuff. However, not being too rigid on the sweet stuff may be saying to yourself like you'd have an ice cream every day or every second day. Um, and it all depends on how much you indulge if you are like me and you're probably not somebody that does everything in moderation.

And if you do, you don't even need this podcast episode. If you go away on your holidays and you drink a glass of wine and have a small ice cream in the day and every second day you have a dessert. You are good. I just have never experienced a holiday like that. I just done the dog and everything and come back feeling really bad. Um, but if, if you're the same, if you come back and you're like, no, here I go again. I feel so bad, starting from scratch. Then do pick your vice, you'll just find it easier to manage. You won't be thinking, well, look, how many bits of sweet stuff have I had this week? Just, just pick your thing. If you love sitting back with a cocktail at five o'clock when the sun is going down and then you like to have wine with your meal and you really enjoy the whole alcohol side of your holidays. I wouldn't be on top of that, having desserts and reaching for the bread basket and ordering pasta and rice with dinner.

I would tend to stick to like potatoes and other forms of carbohydrates. I definitely wouldn't go carb free because you'll just end up getting too drunk. Um, but you could have like potatoes and lots of other different dinners. I just can't think of the top of my head, but I would just go easy on the pasta and rice. I probably wouldn't have any pizza and I probably wouldn't have any bread and, uh, I wouldn't be having dessert if you don't drink a dessert every night is just the most wonderful thing. So, next up, um, the exercise if you're on a two week holiday and you have been exercising consistently all year, um, I really recommend that you use your trip as a break away from exercise, it is really, really important that you let the body recover from all the exercise that you've been doing all year.

And I want you to think of yourself as an exerciser as you are and somebody that is healthy that works out consistently. People like that need their rest, they need their downtime. You're not going to gain weight from a two week break from exercise. Your muscles are going to recover, your bones are going to recover. Everything is just going to get stretched out and relaxed and it's really, really important when you exercise consistently when you're away for two weeks that you take the time to relax. And what I do on my trips, uh, now is I swim, like gently messing with the kids. I, I there's no kind of workout swimming involved. 1% not at all. And anything that I do movement-wise is literally just exploring while I'm on holidays.

I definitely don't, um, like have a workout schedule. I don't do workouts and I don't, um, go for like workout style walks. And I really recommend you do the same, like you take the two weeks off and you think of yourself as an athlete that needs time to recover if you don't recover, like for two weeks or the time you go away on your trip, when will you, when will you, however on saying that if you're somebody that's new to exercise and you've just found it and you absolutely love it and you've only been doing it a couple of months and you want to work out. Definitely, by all means, go for it. However, if you're a consistent exerciser, take the time out and find other ways to move. If you want to relax, I just don't want you to feel any pressure to working. You don't actually need to work out. Um,

My next tip is, is just to drink loads of water. It's just going to help you so much. It's going to help your mood. It's going to keep you away from being dehydrated. You're going to feel so much better. If you drank too much wine the night before and you get the water into you early in the day, you'll feel less hungover. You won't feel as bad."

I really recommend you just sip water throughout the day. Um, having things like a salad for lunch, just having a starchy carb-free meal every day, I think is really good. I definitely don't recommend having a carb-free meal at dinnertime. I think carbohydrates at mealtime are really important for the brain to slow down, wind down, fill you up, and relax you. I think a carb-free meal at dinnertime can just lead to eating after dinner.

However, I do think during the day, if you're on holidays and you're eating a little bit more than normal and you don't want to be watching your food too much, just having simple guidelines like having a salad for lunch. That's such a simple guideline to remember when you're on your holidays. You have a salad at lunch, and that simple habit can really help you when it comes to ordering your food. You don't even look at the pizza section or the pasta section. You're like, "Yum, I'm so excited. Which salad am I going for?" because you know the crack with salads on holidays, they're gorgeous. They're not like lots of the salads that you get in Ireland. They're so filling and delicious and nutritious, and they just have Spain and France and they just have such a way with making salad so amazing.

Another tip I have for you is having a healthy breakfast. I think when you go away on holidays and you have things like fries or things that aren't necessarily healthy for you, it's just such a waste of your tokens. Let's call them food tokens in the day. You've probably had a light meal the night before. Why on earth would you want to go and just put bad stuff into your stomach, like bacon and sausages first thing in the morning? I really think it is such a quick win if you just go and have a healthy breakfast. Have porridge with honey and milk or maybe some eggs or an omelet and just have a healthy breakfast. It has never made any sense to me if you struggle with your clothes why anybody would start the day off the wrong way. Start the day off the right way. There's going to be so much time for you during the day to have your little indulgences of ice cream and your lovely meal.

And I think as well, by having an unhealthy breakfast, you're not really anticipating your lovely indulgences later on in the evening time. You're just up, bang, straight into the unhealthy food. When it's me on my holidays, I tend to avoid bread and unhealthy breakfast, and I tend to keep it lovely and simple. And when I'm on holidays, I love to have omelets. Um, I haven't really had porridge abroad. Um, I think omelets and eggs are great, but if you don't like that, like, uh, cereal or porridge would be absolutely terrific.

So what else did I want to say? Yeah, avoid the bread basket when you're out for dinner and you really want to feel good in your clothes and you don't just want to get bloated really quickly. I really recommend if you're having a starter and a main course, which I think is lovely, having a protein-only starter can just be absolutely brilliant. And when you're away on your trip, everybody does starters so good. Now, no matter where you go, it's so easy to get a protein-only starter. I always get the prawns in garlic. Um, and there are so many other things you can get like tuna fish, um, chicken, just a protein-only starter. And then for your main course, if you want to just keep an eye on things when you're away, they just do such lovely main courses with fresh fish, potatoes, and veg, and things like that.

And the toughest part is the drink. Like, if you can just get past the ordering phase, the rest is easy. You just get handed your food. And I always find it's a slight struggle, especially if you're hungover. I don't drink now, but when I used to and I would rock up at the dinner, I'd be like, "Oh, I'd be in such a cary mood." And I could easily have had like three slices of bread from the bread that's on the table. Then I would have ordered like maybe garlic bread and then I would have had like a pasta dish that's like cary hungover, want me.

However, now because I love feeling good in my clothes and it's really important to me that I feel fit and healthy and I feel good in my clothes, I just get the ordering done. I'm like, "Okay, have something lovely and protein for your starter. Order your main course." There's always going to be a part of you that wants to have the pizza. Embrace that inner you and say to her, "Maybe not tonight. Let's just go for this gorgeous fresh fish," and just order it and get it out of your head. Don't be thinking that you're missing out or you're depriving yourself. Every time you feel like you're depriving yourself (and I'm talking to myself here), this is what I say: "Do you love feeling healthy? Yeah, oh, I do so much. Is that pizza worth you feeling bad?" And if the answer is no, that you prefer the way you feel over choosing the thing that you know is going to make you feel bad, then just do this. Just remind yourself every time you have to order, "How is it that you want to feel?"

And sometimes I ignore that and I go ahead and order the pizza, and an hour later, I feel like crap. My clothes are tight, and that inner complaining is coming out. So just remember that you have a choice, and you might have built up all these lovely new habits and you might have realized that the new you loves to feel good in your clothes. However, the old you, that isn't practiced on holidays, might come out in force and just automatically look at the pasta dishes and the rice dishes and the pizza and eat the bread. And just while you're doing that, ask yourself, "Do you want to do it?" And if yes is the answer, that's really cool. If no is the answer (which has been me for a long time), and then I would still go ahead and do it anyway, and then all of a sudden this lovely awareness comes where you're not only aware that you don't want to do it and you're doing it, you're aware that you don't want to do it and you don't do it. That's a really cool place to be in because all of a sudden you're starting to do what you want to do, not the old you with different conditionings and belief systems about who you are, but the new you, the new you that you love so much.

And I know that if you haven't taken care of yourself at all or if there's no self-care there, holidays can bring that out. Holidays can kind of show you that there's self-care to be done. Like drinking too much, eating foods you don't want to eat, knowing you're going to feel like crap. That's all evidence that you're not taking care of yourself. So it's food for thought. I just want to encourage you to eat well on your holidays. And I'm not saying to restrict yourself or be really restrictive. Just find those little golden habits that you love, like a healthy breakfast and a protein-only starter, and just go for it.

Thank you. It's easy to beat on yourself. However, it's a very exciting time because you're getting closer and closer to the person you want to become. And it's a wonderful feeling when you shed those layers and you start to make choices on your terms, not choices that you may have made because of reasons that got you to make those choices in the first place. Like maybe you had a very tough time growing up or you've experienced some kind of trauma or somebody has bullied you or spoken very badly to you that you've kept with you all those years. And that's why you, you don't know how to take care of yourself for whatever reason it is when you finally start to listen to yourself and find out what it is that you want to do on your trip, on your holiday, how you want to live your life, then it becomes really exciting and I know this episode is so much more deep than, oh, you know, 10 tips to staying healthy on your holidays. But it's, I just think it's such an important topic. Um, and I really just, I can't get that image out of my head of like you, the person that has worked so hard to become consistent with their exercise and their healthy eating and they love it so much and they're so excited and then they go on holiday and just because they haven't really thought about it and, and at all they're straight into bad eating, drinking too much, not taking care of themselves. And it's just a lack of thought and a lack of practice. Um, but if you just put a little bit of thought about what it is that you want out of your holiday, you'll come back and you'll be bloated and your clothes are tight because that's the choice that you made. And that's cool. Or you'll come back feeling a little bit better. And that's because of the choices you made too. And that's also cool. It's just all about you doing whatever you want to do. I also found very helpful like throughout the day when you're walking around the shops or you're just having an explorer to just pop into one of the shops there and grab a banana. Um or an apple like snacks are really good, healthy snacks are really good and rather than arrive starving at your dinner and rather than needing an ice cream because you're so hungry, I think it's a really good idea to just have a little bit of fruit throughout the day just to keep hunger at bay and to also send little self love messages to yourself. Like, hey, look at me, I'm eating a banana. This is showing me that I love myself. I think it's really important that you show yourself the love and the tenderness and the care that you deserve. Um So on top of that, I've covered the exercise. I really encourage you to rest and recover on your trip. However, if you're a super duper active person. And I still recommend you take a break from working out and strength training. However, walking and hiking and all that stuff is absolutely brilliant. If you don't want to work out on your trip and you have been working out up to before your holidays, don't work out, take the time off if you want to sit on a sun lounger all day long, do that and don't feel one bit guilty. On that note, just before I came on to this podcast episode, I was doing a little bit of a research into what other people found made me laugh so much about healthy tips for being on holiday. And I remember googling it myself years ago when I was struggling and it's just crazy, you know, the, the.  

It's easy to beat on yourself. However, it's a very exciting time because you're getting closer and closer to the person you want to become. And it's a wonderful feeling when you shed those layers and you start to make choices on your terms, not choices that you may have made because of reasons that got you to make those choices in the first place. Like maybe you had a very tough time growing up or you've experienced some kind of trauma or somebody has bullied you or spoken very badly to you that you've kept with you all those years. And that's why you, you don't know how to take care of yourself for whatever reason it is when you finally start to listen to yourself and find out what it is that you want to do on your trip, on your holiday, how you want to live your life, then it becomes really exciting and I know this episode is so much more deep than, oh, you know, 10 tips to staying healthy on your holidays. But it's, I just think it's such an important topic. Um, and I really just, I can't get that image out of my head of like you, the person that has worked so hard to become consistent with their exercise and their healthy eating and they love it so much and they're so excited and then they go on holiday and just because they haven't really thought about it and, and at all they're straight into bad eating, drinking too much, not taking care of themselves. And it's just a lack of thought and a lack of practice. Um, but if you just put a little bit of thought about what it is that you want out of your holiday, you'll come back and you'll be bloated and your clothes are tight because that's the choice that you made. And that's cool. Or you'll come back feeling a little bit better. And that's because of the choices you made too. And that's also cool. It's just all about you doing whatever you want to do. I also found very helpful like throughout the day when you're walking around the shops or you're just having an explorer to just pop into one of the shops there and grab a banana. Um or an apple like snacks are really good, healthy snacks are really good and rather than arrive starving at your dinner and rather than needing an ice cream because you're so hungry, I think it's a really good idea to just have a little bit of fruit throughout the day just to keep hunger at bay and to also send little self love messages to yourself. Like, hey, look at me, I'm eating a banana. This is showing me that I love myself. I think it's really important that you show yourself the love and the tenderness and the care that you deserve. Um So on top of that, I've covered the exercise. I really encourage you to rest and recover on your trip. However, if you're a super duper active person. And I still recommend you take a break from working out and strength training. However, walking and hiking and all that stuff is absolutely brilliant. If you don't want to work out on your trip and you have been working out up to before your holidays, don't work out, take the time off if you want to sit on a sun lounger all day long, do that and don't feel one bit guilty. On that note, just before I came on to this podcast episode, I was doing a little bit of a research into what other people found made me laugh so much about healthy tips for being on holiday. And I remember googling it myself years ago when I was struggling and it's just crazy, you know, the, the.

the tip,

It's easy to beat on yourself. However, it's a very exciting time because you're getting closer and closer to the person you want to become. And it's a wonderful feeling when you shed those layers and you start to make choices on your terms, not choices that you may have made because of reasons that got you to make those choices in the first place. Like maybe you had a very tough time growing up or you've experienced some kind of trauma or somebody has bullied you or spoken very badly to you that you've kept with you all those years. And that's why you, you don't know how to take care of yourself for whatever reason it is when you finally start to listen to yourself and find out what it is that you want to do on your trip, on your holiday, how you want to live your life, then it becomes really exciting and I know this episode is so much more deep than, oh, you know, 10 tips to staying healthy on your holidays. But it's, I just think it's such an important topic. Um, and I really just, I can't get that image out of my head of like you, the person that has worked so hard to become consistent with their exercise and their healthy eating and they love it so much and they're so excited and then they go on holiday and just because they haven't really thought about it and, and at all they're straight into bad eating, drinking too much, not taking care of themselves. And it's just a lack of thought and a lack of practice. Um, but if you just put a little bit of thought about what it is that you want out of your holiday, you'll come back and you'll be bloated and your clothes are tight because that's the choice that you made. And that's cool. Or you'll come back feeling a little bit better. And that's because of the choices you made too. And that's also cool. It's just all about you doing whatever you want to do. I also found very helpful like throughout the day when you're walking around the shops or you're just having an explorer to just pop into one of the shops there and grab a banana. Um or an apple like snacks are really good, healthy snacks are really good and rather than arrive starving at your dinner and rather than needing an ice cream because you're so hungry, I think it's a really good idea to just have a little bit of fruit throughout the day just to keep hunger at bay and to also send little self love messages to yourself. Like, hey, look at me, I'm eating a banana. This is showing me that I love myself. I think it's really important that you show yourself the love and the tenderness and the care that you deserve. Um So on top of that, I've covered the exercise. I really encourage you to rest and recover on your trip. However, if you're a super duper active person. And I still recommend you take a break from working out and strength training. However, walking and hiking and all that stuff is absolutely brilliant. If you don't want to work out on your trip and you have been working out up to before your holidays, don't work out, take the time off if you want to sit on a sun lounger all day long, do that and don't feel one bit guilty. On that note, just before I came on to this podcast episode, I was doing a little bit of a research into what other people found made me laugh so much about healthy tips for being on holiday. And I remember googling it myself years ago when I was struggling and it's just crazy, you know the tip, the over-the-top tips that people give on holiday, like making sure you get loads of sleep, making sure that you eat lean protein and lots of veg with your dinner. Like you're not on a health camp. You're designing your holiday the way you want to design your holiday, and you do, however, know what it is exactly that you want. And once you do know that, you'll come back feeling in control because the problem with not knowing what you want or not taking care of yourself and going into default old you on holidays is you come back really upset. I used to come back really upset, looking around me at my workout studio going, "Why do I feel like I was happier before I went on my trip?" That makes no sense. Surely trips are supposed to be... I used to come back in rag order, rag order. Surely trips are there for you to come back rested and recovered and refreshed.

So, food for thought if you also don't come back recovered and refreshed. One thing that I love to do on my holidays to make me come back really excited for when my trip is over is to journal my goals and my dreams and my plan for the year. I love that so much because rather than just being on your trip and being fully in the moment 24/7 and then coming back and trying to pick up where you left off, which can be a little bit stressful, when you're away on your holiday and you're relaxed and you might be sitting there with a lovely cup of tea or a glass of wine or a glass of sparkling water, just relaxing and looking out to see wherever you are, you can ask yourself, "What do I want out of my life when I get back to my country? What do I want out of my day-to-day? What do I want out of my life?"

And when you're in such a relaxed state, the answers can really come to you, and you can ask yourself all sorts of things like, "What do I want to subtract? What do I want to get rid of? What am I doing too much of? Where is my passion in all the different areas of your life?" And then you can set a plan for when you get back, and when you get back, you're not just getting back to your usual day-to-day. You're coming back with a plan, and you're excited about that plan, and you've set the plan on holidays. And what I've noticed about that then is that you have this beautiful little memory of your holiday, and your holiday has, in a really lovely way, influenced your actions and your goals for next year.

If you're off for three months of the year or you're with the kids for the summer month and you start to feel a little bit like, "Oh God, I wish I was back doing my thing," or you feel a little bit out of control, just journal what it is that you want to do and make big plans and get excited. And then it'll allow you to really enjoy yourself while you're there, guilt-free. And also, to have this wonderful thought-through plan that you have been able to take time out of your busy schedule to decide where it is exactly that you're headed and where you want to go. I love that so much. It's so exciting to go on your trip and find a small space somewhere with your journal and your pen and a drink and just plan, plan, plan.

If your mental health gets worse on holidays because you drink too much, I definitely recommend taking a little bit of a break in between your trip, just for a couple of nights off, and you will feel so much better. You'll feel a lot more rested and calm. And remember that if you get anxious on holiday or you feel stressed out, just ask yourself, are the foods and the liquids that you're ingesting just the cause of that? Because sometimes it can be just as simple as that. I know alcohol used to cause me huge anxiety towards the end of my drinking years, and I would not always put two and two together. It's like, "Why am I feeling so anxious today?" Well, maybe because you had the wine the night before. Just find your little rituals that work for you.

Like if you've recently stopped drinking or you don't want to drink, just find other little rituals. Like myself and Joe, it sounds cracked, but we used to order a pot of black tea in Spain last year. We would sit outside, people watch, have a wonderful meal, have our sparkling waters (has to be with ice and lemon), and just the art of sitting down and relaxing and chatting and chatting about all the people passing us, and then ordering a pot of tea, just sitting there over the tea, letting it cool down, having the tea, sharing it with Joe, having the chats. It was really, really nice, and I recommend you don't knock it until you try it. We came back to Ireland and tried it, and I was like, "What are we doing?" But honestly, give it a go if you're not drinking or trying not to drink or have alcohol-free days on holiday or even if you're in your own home in the summer months and the weather is constantly tempting you to have a glass of wine, which it used to do to me. That there's nothing as big as a pull for me as a hot day, just looking in the back garden and going, "I'd love a glass of wine."

But one of my favorite expressions now is, "The first one gets you drunk." And if you struggle a little with limiting your alcohol intake or alcohol makes you feel bad, and I'm just talking about having one drink, if it makes you feel bad but you struggle to not have one, then find another little ritual that you enjoy. For me, it's sharing a pot of tea with Joe in the blazing hot sunshine at night time in Spain, and it's just wonderful. When you're not drinking as well, I did it for the first time last year on our trip, and I was nervous about it. It's amazing. The food just tastes so good, you have amazing chats, you've nothing to be scared of. It's really, really wonderful. It's honestly just absolutely delightful. And I know I'm saying this now on a particularly hot day, I think a cup of tea would be nice. But give it a go if you struggle with alcohol. Oh, it's amazing. I never experienced meals like the alcohol-free ones. They're absolutely brilliant. For me, alcohol doesn't enhance the meal at all. I just got to a point where I could have left the meal and just drank. Now, it's all about really enjoying and savoring the food and the chats and the cup of tea afterwards.

I'm hoping you guys will bring your books over and relax. I'm sure you're all avid fiction readers and unwind, sit on your deck chairs and your sun loungers, and really enjoy yourself. So just to sum this up, if you have lovely healthy action steps at the moment and you want to continue some of them on when you're on holidays, have a little think about the action steps that you would like to continue while you're on your holidays. Be kind and gentle to yourself if it doesn't always work out to plan because just remember, you've had practice with the new you on holidays. Give it a little bit of thought, a little bit of awareness, and it'll help you when you get on your holidays, not just go mental. That may be the old you doing that action because you're just not used to the new stuff on holidays.

If you want to enjoy yourself and indulge, but you don't want to come back with your clothes too tight, pick your vice. If it's sugar or carbs or alcohol, I promise you, if you pick just one, you will come back feeling a lot better. If you're having desserts and sugary stuff, ice creams, and alcohol, and lots of carbs, you're going to come back feeling very out of control and uncomfortable in your clothes. Drink loads of water. If you've been exercising and lifting weights throughout the year, there's absolutely no need for you to work out in the two weeks that you're away. I actually encourage you to not work out and to really take the time off to recover your body with gentle swims and walks. There is absolutely no need to go looking for a gym or to go looking for anywhere to work out. Remember that working out won't really counteract what you're doing. There are lots of other ways to get an endorphin hit than throwing yourself around the gym after a truckload of wine the night before. So just be careful of why you're doing the things. If you want to take time out and sit in your sun lounger and read your book and have a lovely sparkling water or a glass of wine or whatever it is, you don't want to work out, don't work out. Just enjoy yourself and know that you'll pick up the workouts when you come back. It's really important that you rest.

And my last tip, just to remind you, is to bring your journal over. And when you have downtime, just get excited about your life and ask yourself what you want to get rid of, what you want to keep, and what changes you want to make. And you'll come back feeling so much more in control and so much more rested, and you'll be absolutely raring to go. All my love to you. I really hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, I would love you to do me the favor of telling one friend about my podcast. I would appreciate that so much. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode, and you must let me know by getting in touch. Don't forget you can head on over to jessicacooke.ie where you'll find lots of free stuff to get you started on your journey.

Hi, my name is Jessica Cooke and welcome to my podcast.

My mission is to empower women over 40 to transform their lives through fitness.I've made this podcast so I can share with you my tips, tools, and strategies I use on myself and my clients to get you feeling fit and healthy, feeling great in your clothes with so much energy and positivity back in your life, no matter what, your age head over to jessicacooke.ie and you'll find lots of free stuff to get you started on your journey.

Hi.You are so very welcome to this latest podcast episode and thank you so much for tuning in.I want to talk to you in this uh short podcast episode about some tips to help stop eating late at night.This seems to be one of the biggest problems, one of the biggest obstacles and barriers in front of a lot of us and is stopping us getting the results that we want to get.And I know so many of you struggle with, with making dinner your last meal.Um I actually recently did this with my clients recently and it's such a popular topic and it is quite a difficult habit to stop eating late at night just to make dinner your last meal.However, when you crack it and if you stick with it, it is so worth it, it's so worth it to, to be free of, of eating late at night, most of the time for the rest of your life with much more ease than you think.

Right now. It has to be, you'll, you'll just be so delighted that you're stuck with it. I used to eat late at night up until recently enough. I was healthy in a lot of other areas but eating after dinner was something that I found extremely difficult to control. 

 I would, I would often three or four nights a week, have something after dinner.And if you think about it, if, if you love to be healthy and feel good in your clothes, if you're having more days where you're having something after your dinner, then you are, then you aren't, then you're not gonna really get exactly where you want to be.

However, I used to think that it wasn't really the, the eating late at night that was holding me back thinking, well, come on. It's only a few biscuits. It's only an ice cream. It doesn't take much though. It doesn't take much, um, for, for you to not feel as good in your clothes as you want to.So it's with this, that I want to help you.If you feel like you're spinning your wheels at the moment, if you feel like you're doing all the good stuff you're working out, you're doing the right type of workouts, your strength training, your drinking water, you're eating healthy most of the time and yet you're not really where you want to be, have like a half stone, a stone that's bothering you and you think you are late night eating, you're eating after dinner that I promise you.If you crack this, you're going to feel amazing in your clothes, that extra half a stone or stone um is going to go and you're really going to notice a big difference if you're down to that last half stone, I promise you.It is this, um that that's really going to help.

 I speak in stone and pounds by the way, because it's easier for me to get you to visualize what a half a half a stone is.However, I really discourage you from weighing yourself. Um It's just kind of like the easiest way.to get you to know where you are in terms of, okay, I need to lose this amount of weight or I want to lose this amount of weight, but I really encourage you to focus on how you feel in your clothes, how you feel in your body, how you feel in your energy levels, because that's really what matters the most. And sometimes the scale can be deceptive. It can fluctuate. It can make you feel discouraged when you're actually making progress in other areas.

So let's dive into some tips to help you stop eating late at night. The first tip is to establish a cut-off time for eating. Set a specific time after which you will not eat anything. This could be 7 p.m., 8 p.m., or whatever time works best for you and aligns with your lifestyle. Having a cut-off time helps create a clear boundary and signals to your mind and body that eating time is over for the day.

Next, create a nighttime routine that supports your goal of not eating late at night. Engage in activities that relax and distract you from thoughts of food. You can take a warm bath, read a book, listen to calming music, or practice meditation. Find what works for you and incorporate it into your evening routine. By filling your time with enjoyable and non-food-related activities, you reduce the likelihood of mindless eating out of boredom or habit.

Another important tip is to address the root causes of late-night eating. Often, it's not just physical hunger that drives us to eat at night, but emotional or psychological factors. Take some time to reflect on why you feel the need to eat late at night. Are you stressed, anxious, or bored? Are you using food as a way to cope with emotions or fill a void? Identifying the underlying triggers can help you find alternative strategies to address those needs without turning to food.

One effective approach is to practice mindful eating throughout the day. By being more present and attentive to your meals, you can improve your satisfaction and satiety, reducing the desire to overeat later on. Chew your food slowly, savor each bite, and pay attention to your body's hunger and fullness cues. When you're more attuned to your body's signals, you're less likely to eat out of habit or for emotional reasons.

It's also helpful to create a supportive environment that aligns with your goals. Remove tempting and unhealthy snacks from your pantry and replace them with nutritious options. Stock up on fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains that are readily available when hunger strikes. Having nourishing food options easily accessible makes it easier to make healthier choices and resist the temptation of late-night snacks.

Lastly, enlist the support of a friend, family member, or accountability partner. Share your goal of not eating late at night and ask them to hold you accountable. Discuss your challenges, progress, and strategies with them regularly. Having someone to share your journey with and provide encouragement can make a significant difference in staying on track.

Remember, breaking the habit of late-night eating takes time and patience. Be kind to yourself if you slip up occasionally. It's a process, and each day is an opportunity to make better choices. Stay committed, stay consistent, and celebrate your successes along the way.

That wraps up today's episode on tips to help stop eating late at night. I hope you found these strategies helpful and empowering. Remember, you have the ability to take control of your eating habits and transform your relationship with food. If you'd like to learn more, visit my website at jessicacooke.ie for additional resources and support.

Thank you so much for listening, and until next time, stay focused, stay positive, and keep nourishing your body and mind. Goodbye!

In this episode, I share with you simple strategies I follow to keep anxiety at bay

How hard is it to get into shape after 40? In this episode I go through the things that’ll make it difficult and what to do to make it easier.

In this episode, Psychotherapist Orlagh Reid shares with me her 5 Steps To changing Unwanted behaviours. You can contact Orlagh or visit her website here: www.orlaghreid.com

From Mind Full to Mindful: Mindfulness Coach Ceara Belviso chats to me in this episode about how to bring mindfulness into your day without it becoming another big thing to add to your to do list.