How to Tackle Stress, Live Life on Your Own Terms, and Achieve Health at Any Age with Lisa Bilyeu
Primary Topic
This episode focuses on self-empowerment and practical lifestyle adjustments for stress management and health optimization, especially for women.
Episode Summary
Main Takeaways
- Empowerment through Knowledge: Understanding the long-term effects of lifestyle choices is crucial for making informed decisions.
- Physical Activity as a Lifeline: Regular physical activities, such as walking on an incline, can significantly enhance longevity and reduce health risks.
- The Importance of Diet and Supplements: A carefully chosen diet and appropriate supplements can profoundly affect overall health and prevent future ailments.
- Mental Health is Equally Important: Maintaining mental fitness and resilience through self-awareness and self-care strategies is essential.
- Planning and Prioritization: Effective time management and prioritization of health over less significant activities are vital for long-term wellbeing.
Episode Chapters
1: Opening Discussion
Lisa discusses the regrets people, particularly women, have from not living life on their terms. She emphasizes the importance of making informed choices. Lisa Bilyeu: "Decide what life you want. Don't get blindsided by regrets."
2: Health Strategies for Longevity
Discussion about actionable strategies like diet changes, physical activity, and mental health practices to promote longevity. Lisa Bilyeu: "I want to live till I'm 100, so I'm adjusting my life now to achieve that."
3: The Role of Self-Awareness in Health
Lisa talks about the importance of self-awareness in maintaining health, recognizing personal needs, and setting boundaries. Lisa Bilyeu: "Know thyself to manage your health effectively."
Actionable Advice
- Incline Walking: Incorporate incline walking into your daily routine to strengthen muscles and prevent injuries.
- Enzyme Supplementation: Consider enzyme supplements to aid digestion and nutrient absorption, especially if over 40.
- Balanced Diet: Focus on a balanced diet rich in essential nutrients and tailored to personal health conditions.
- Regular Health Check-ups: Schedule regular check-ups to stay on top of health issues and get professional advice on maintaining health.
- Mental Health Practices: Engage in mental health practices like meditation or therapy to ensure psychological resilience and coping mechanisms.
About This Episode
This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers, Momentous, and Lifeforce.
Living a life of longevity includes prioritizing habits that promote health and having the confidence to know what serves your goals and what can sabotage your health. On the road to living to 100 and beyond, today’s guest shares her top tips on longevity, boundaries, and learning to save yourself.
Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with entrepreneur, best-selling author, and host Lisa Bilyeu. Lisa shares the regrets people have when they don’t live life on their own terms and fail to set boundaries that serve their goals. She discusses tuning in to your inner voice and gaining confidence by taking action. Lisa also shares her personal health journey and the daily practices she has implemented to heal her body. Get ready to be inspired by Lisa’s honesty and Radical Confidence.
Lisa Bilyeu is an entrepreneur, producer, best-selling author, public speaker, and host. She co-founded the billion-dollar brand Quest Nutrition and is co-founder and president of Impact Theory Studios, a revolutionary, digital-first studio that produces wildly entertaining and original content focusing on themes of confidence and empowerment. Lisa built a global audience while creating an impressive slate of content, including her hit digital series “Women of Impact,” which features extraordinary guests who, through their stories and expertise, help viewers build their confidence. Lisa tells her story of self-empowerment and success in her best-selling book Radical Confidence.
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Transcript
Dhru Purohit
Lisa Bilyeu, what do you feel is one of the top regrets that people, but in particular women, have from not living a life on their own terms? I just want people, specifically women, because that's really my jam. I just want us to know the truth. Take off all the freaking blinders. Don't worry about my emotions or my feelings or how I'm going to feel about your information.
Lisa Bilyeu
I've got to put my feelings aside. I just need the information. Once I have the information, then I can decide what life I want. Lisa Bilyeu and that's what I want for everyone else. Decide what life you want.
If that means you're going to freaking go hard as an entrepreneur, go ham Mahomey. I'm here to support you. If that means that you want to be a wonderful stay at home mother, because that is one of the hardest freaking jobs on the planet, go ham Mahomey. I'm here to support you. If you want to do both, go ham.
But know what it's going to cost. Know the realities of the decisions that you're making so that you don't get blindsided. And God forbid, I'm obviously not making this immediate connection, but I don't want you to find yourselves in your seventies or your eighties with Alzheimer's or dementia, regretting your life. Know what we're doing, know what's happening to women's bodies, understand what's happening to our hormones so that we can have the life we want. And so for me, I.
I really do want to live till I'm 100. And so I'm doing the work now as I'm 44 to figure out what I need to do in order to live till I'm 100. So, number one, I watched that docuseries on Netflix. I don't know if you saw it. They're like, live to live your hundred.
Like the blue zones. Yeah. Oh, you better believe after I watched the one about, it was like one of the greek islands because I'm greek. So I was like, oh, that's my jam. It was like, one of the reasons why they feel like people in this one tiny little greek island live the longest is because the church is at the top of the hill and they've correlated longevity with an incline in walking.
So every day, these really old people walk to the church to pray to God, which is exactly what my grandmother did. You go every day to the church, but because of the incline, it strengthens your hip flexors. One of the causes of death, I think, for women is I think you're predicted to within a year to die by something like 70% if you have, if you break your hip. So I go, okay, there's a correlation between death and breaking your hip. What can I do in my forties to make sure I don't break my hip so that I don't die within the next year?
Walk uphill, Lisa. So what do I do now? In my forties? Every day I'll take at least five or ten minutes, and I'll go on a treadmill while I'm working. I put it on a bloody six or a seven incline, and I just walk for ten minutes.
So everything that I do is all based on my goal. And so I just want the knowledge so that I can choose what I do on a day to day basis. And sorry, I can't remember what your question was, but I just went on a whole tangent there. It doesn't matter what my question was, because your answer was fantastic. Let's build on that a little bit.
Yeah. Chances are if you're over 40, your enzyme levels have already begun to decline. Enzymes are the workhorses of our digestion. They break your food down into usable macro and micronutrients. And research shows that by the time that someone hits 65, their saliva and pancreatic secretions, both of which are involved in enzyme activity, can have declined as much as, get this, 50%.
Dhru Purohit
This decline creates chronic indigestion, setting the stage for gut issues, yeast and mold overgrowth, and even malnutrition. This is why I'm a huge fan of enzyme supplementation, and one of the best enzymes I've ever come across is from my friends at bioptimizers, and it's called mass zymes. Mass times is the most complete, most potent digestive enzyme I've ever seen or experienced, with over 102% more protease than the nearest competitor, and between 300% to 500% more per serving than most popular brands. That's super crucial, because protein is the most complex macronutrient to break down when left undigested. Protein putrefies in the gut and creates a variety of problems, from bloating to inflammation and beyond.
I love keeping mass zymes with me on the road, especially when I'm going on summer vacation with my family. And, you know, sometimes I eat out at different restaurants or I eat food that I don't normally eat at home. That's part of living. The best part about this is you can try mass zymes today risk free. They're 365 day full money back guarantee is the gold standard in the industry.
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To get 20% off my favorite creatine today. You had mentioned that you are gearing up for this phase of perimenopause, and then next up would be menopause. And again, you've had a lot of top experts on this topic, and a big aha moment for a lot of women is even just understanding that perimenopause can take a while, right? It can take a while. And that means a whole host of changes.
How body composition is distributed inside of the body, energy levels that are there, how well you sleep or don't sleep, anxiety, mood, etcetera. So, building on this idea of your goal of wanting to live to 100 and be healthy and be, can I say, over 100? Over 100. And being mentally fit and having your mobility along the way, one of the first things you mentioned was walking mobility, maintaining that mobility. As soon as that mobility is lost, all hell breaks loose and our body declines.
In fact, I saw a study last week that showed that being in bed rest, I think, above the age of 50, if you're at bed rest for more than three weeks, that's more damaging to your body than 30 years of age. Wow. It's shocking, but I believe it. Yes. So walking and maintaining your mobility.
Lisa Bilyeu
Yeah. To be very clear, walking, your incline. What are some other couple things that you are including in your life now on your pursuit of those goals that we mentioned of living to 100 and beyond? All right, I got a list. Drew, you ready?
Dhru Purohit
Yes. Let's do it. All right. So, number one, I got my brain scan from doctor amen, and because my grandmother had dementia, and I saw this loving, sweet old lady turn into someone who would swear, spit on the floor. I mean, it was heartbreaking.
Lisa Bilyeu
And so I was like, okay, I cannot ignore that my grandmother was likely like this. Let me go see if I've got the genetic mutation or whatever. I'm not sure what word to use of dementia. So I went and got my brain scanned by doctor amen, and I don't. But what I found out in visiting him is he says only 30% of people that have dementia actually have the genetic marker.
So that means 70% of people don't have the genetic marker and still get dementia and Alzheimer's. All right, that's fact. How do I prevent it? He said, well, you know what? If you do the sauna, that can really help, because what it does is it helps push oxygen into your brain.
And so I was like, all right, cool. If I don't want to get dementia, one of the things I need to do is do the sauna and help oxygen get to my brain on a regular basis. So I try to do it once a week. I try to do it as a date with my husband, as a way to combine our. We get to sit.
It's just us two. We get to talk, we get to have the pressure together, because I think it's actually very empowering when couples go under pressure together. So it's like the pressure of the sweat. So I do a sauna as much as I can. I also, in moments of emotional weakness, I do cold plunges.
That helps me get strong, which then helps me stay strong on my habits. So things like the sauna and everything else that I do, I need to keep that habit going. How do I keep that habit going? I need to keep my confidence up so that I can do things even when they're hard. When I feel weak in my confidence, I do cold plunge.
Because the cold plunge, I hate it so much. I hate. Capital h a t e, hate. I hate it so much that when I do it, you better believe I feel like a freaking badass after I've gotten out of that. So I even have mechanisms in which I encourage myself to do things.
Sleep. Sleep is super important. So I have. Oh, God, what was it I had the other day? I have.
It was something like sleep resentment, someone, I can't remember the exact phrase, but it's like I'm the person that because my every single day is scheduled from the moment I wake up to moment I go to bed on a Friday night, I have sleep resentment, which means that I just try to stay up as long as possible because I resent the idea of having to go to sleep. I recognize this about myself. And I was, like, falling asleep, waking up, falling asleep, waking up. But I was like, it's only midnight, Lisa. You deserve to stay up till as long as you like.
I realized that wasn't serving me in order for me to live, you know, long for the rest of my life, because I understand sleep is important. So I now try to go to sleep, sleep on a weekday at 09:00 p.m. on a weekend maximum 11:00 p.m. so that's another thing that I do. And now I'm on a lot of supplements.
I'm doing a lot of beam minerals. I take a lot of those just to make sure that I'm getting my daily supplements and I work out. I lift heavy weights. That's actually part of, I think probably I would say the final piece is I was the person, going back to the very first question you asked me about being skinny. I was the person that I wanted to be skinny at all costs.
And that meant that I would count every single calorie. I would try to get under 1000 calories at the time. And if I had a sugar free popsicle, a sugar free popsicle, which I remember is like ten or 20 calories, I would punish myself on the treadmill the next day, and I would beat myself up emotionally, like, you're freaking weak, Lisa. You had that popsicle when you told yourself you wouldn't, and that was a vicious cycle. And so the final piece for me to make sure that I'm always mentally healthy as well as physically healthy, the things that go beautifully together was lifting weights for me, because I can't measure anything.
All I can say is, Lisa, you woke up today, you told yourself you were going to go to push ups. Did you do the push ups? Yes or no? And so that became the final thing that helps me get mentally strong every day. That also going back to the hip flexor thing, when I hear about how many people have back pain and they have back operation, and then they're in bed for three weeks, to your point, it's like, all right, I've just got to take care of every single muscle.
I've got to keep my strength up, because as I get into my forties, as I learn more about menopause, your bone density starts to diminish. And so, obviously that starts osteoporosis and things like that. So I know what's coming. I know what potentially could come up. And I'm trying to do everything with my breakdown like I just did in how I'm showing up stronger, hopefully every day.
And then, of course, diet, which I will happily go into if you want me to. Yeah. If you want to share a couple things that are there. All right. So because of my gut issues, I think, again, how it's, um, Tony Robbins, I think, said, how do you make the worst day your best day ever?
So the day that my gut erupted, my entire life changed. My entire life. I didn't eat out for over a year. I mean, I couldn't be intimate with my husband. I mean, it was bad, bad, bad.
How is that the best thing that's ever happened to me? All right, well, for nine years, I haven't been able to eat fast food. For nine years, I haven't been able to eat these crappy oils that people hide in your foods. I have had to be so obsessed with what oils go in my food, how clean the food is that? For nine years, I've been so clean, quote unquote, with all, let's say, pesticides.
I eat grass fed. I used to think that was B's. I only eat organic fruit. I used to think that was B's. I was like, it's just the way of industry making more money from me.
But that was just me dismissing facts now that I know more, it's like, yeah, berries especially. You better believe I'm only eating organic berries or I don't eat berries. Like I said, grass fed, cage free eggs. So, like, the quality of food is super important to me. And then my snack, I think that a lot of us will snack in moments where we haven't anticipated when we're going to be hungry, if we're hungry.
And so what I do is I actually bake into my calendar every single day. Time to eat. And no matter how busy I am, my team is over 40 people at impact theory. We are so insanely busy. I still make sure that I have scheduled time for me to eat.
That's mandatory. I make sure that I eat in peace. So my dinner every single night is in peace. Now, that can be. I sit with my puppies and I eat and play with my puppies.
I eat outside in the sun. That is me to decide. But I absolutely make sure that what I eat and when I eat are both aligned. And so I schedule it and then I plan my snacks. So before I came here, I knew that I was going to come here.
So I was like, all right, Lisa, I know I need to fuel up. What time am I going to eat? How do I make sure that there's a space between when I eat and then when I do something that is going to need my energy and focus? Because I, again, knowing myself, I know that if I eat immediately and then do something very energized, I get upset stomachs. So I need my food to digest before I do the energized thing.
I just know that about myself. So I know I need a two hour gap. So everything Drew, nothing's left to chance. Nothing. When it comes to my food and my health, I leave to chance anymore.
That's how you take full ownership where you go. I'm going to prioritize my health. I'm going to schedule it. I'm going to know thyself and everything that happens. I'm going to take full ownership.
So if I find myself stuck or stranded somewhere and I don't bring a snack, that's on you. Lisa, you got to know that your health is the most important thing. And if you know that it's a possibility of getting stranded, what are you going to do differently next time? So you never have this happen again. So now what I do is I carry a bag with me wherever I go.
I never leave my bedroom without my bag. And in that is hand sanitizer, beef sticks, Brazil nuts. Those are the three things you better know that I never leave home without. Why? I have Brazil nuts, because I'm really low in selenium.
I've just done my hormone test, so I'm now having a lot of Brazil nuts because I try to intake foods that actually have the thing instead of supplements as much as I can. So I have my Brazil nuts. They're also very filling. So if I'm hungry and I need something, the Brazil nuts are there. So I'm now getting my selenium, and I'm craving my appetite, so I don't start snacking on stuff that doesn't serve me.
And then I have my beef sticks. Now I make sure the beef sticks are gluten free. They're paleo, they're limited ingredients. I always read in ingredients, and now I just walk around with three beef sticks. And I know that the three beef sticks will sustain my hunger for multiple, multiple hours.
So now I take the ownership. I plan in accordance, and I never caught off guard. So you can imagine I've been doing that for nine years. I've got this shit down pat now. Look, things change, so then my habits change, and how I show up changes.
But you'll never catch me, Drew, now, ever saying, oh, I don't know. Oh, I'll figure it out. I'll eat when I figure it out. No, no. This is exactly what puts us into trouble.
So I call myself on my own crap. I give myself the grace, and then I make a change. That's an incredible list, you know, to build on that list, that list was a list of things that you have added in habits that you've put in. Can you add to that? Things that even psychological, energetic.
Dhru Purohit
What are things? Ideas, beliefs that you've removed as you are also pursuing this goal, what have you taken out? What have you let go of? What have you left behind that previously you might have carried with you, but is taking you away from that goal of living to 100 and beyond in a healthy way, and more importantly, that your spirit still is on fire throughout that process. What have you taken out?
What have you removed? I think the big thing is I'd rather feel better than look better. That was one of the things that really I removed, and it took me a while. It took me time to really practice not beating myself up in the mirror because that was really very powerful to keep me where I was, to never try new foods because I was so scared. And so in order for me to change that, because I realized being skinny wasn't serving me anymore, but it was a habit.
Lisa Bilyeu
It was an idea. I was brought up with a mum that was borderline anorexic and a sister that drunk slim fast every day. So I understood and knew I had to change the wiring of my brain. It wasn't just telling myself, feel better and don't care about your looks. It was, I had to rewire my freaking brain.
And that took time, that took acknowledging where I keep falling into the trap. And that was the mirror. So that was one of the things I was like, okay, take inventory of how I speak to myself when I look in the mirror. And that was step one. And I was like, okay, every time I look in the mirror, I just go to the things I hate about myself.
All right, so step one is I need to stop saying the things I hate about myself. How do I do that? Maybe I can't look at my body for at least a month in the mirror. And so I kind of think about what I'm trying to achieve and then what I need to do, like, no bull, what I actually need to do in order to achieve that. So once I realized it was the wiring on my brain and the belief system that I had that was not serving me, that was really, you know, being detrimental to my health, I knew that I wanted to live till I, you know, was, I didn't actually have the words back then, but I wanted to live a long life.
And I knew that my habits that I was doing right now wasn't going to get me there. But I can't just beat myself up and tell myself that I've got to do better. That won't help. I can't just tell myself, well, look at that person. They can do it.
Why can't you? I actually have to think about where I get tripped up. Lisa Binu, not anyone else, not the model that says that they, you know, they eat carbs and they're just automatically slim. Lisa bilieu. And that took me a couple of weeks just to take inventory of the traps.
Trap number one, having sugar right in front of you right now. Lisa, you're not fueling your body, so you keep getting weak when you see the sugar. Okay, replace all of the sugar with fat, because now you're hearing new news about fat. Maybe you should eat more of it. Okay, number one, don't beat myself up.
Just change the habit. Cool. I won't ever have. I won't have sugar now in my fridge. I'll now replace it with avocados.
And that will now be my automatic go to thing. I won't look in the mirror for a month. But when I do start to look in the mirror again at my body, I have to force myself to focus on something that I love. And that was this thing that I actually had to force myself because I got teased and bullied and mocked for my looks and for my nose. You better believe, every time I looked in the mirror, that was the thing.
I insulted myself, or I'd look at my butt, and I'm like, oh, my God, you've got such a flat butt, Lisa. And now I'm like, oh, look at your little tushy. Like, that's how the voice in my head changed. I can't. Your butt's so flat.
Oh, God. Before now. Aw. Cute little tush. I do that over and over and over and over again.
Even when I don't believe it, eventually, I start to believe it. Eventually. The funny, cute little voice that I do in my head is now kinder. So I just take the time to go. This isn't going to happen overnight.
I need to identify the habit. I need to practice the habit. And one of my favorite movies is karate kid. Wax on, wax off. Lisa, right now, in the fact that the fact that you're telling yourself that you love parts of your body that you actually don't really love is part of the process.
So it's not fake. You're just waxing on and you're waxing off. So I step in the mirror, I'll tell myself, I even have, like, a little wake, and you can even hear my tone, right? Someone's listening to this. You can hear my tone.
Even changes. I even, like, have a little smile on my face if you can see me. I change my entire being around the thing that I want to adopt, and that is how I slowly start making these incremental changes. So the weight was one of them. The looking in the mirror was the thing that was holding myself back.
The food. Okay. Change the way that you do your food. My sleep. I recognized that when I was going to bed late, I was craving more different foods.
Okay, cool. What happens if you don't go to bed late? Are you now going to help yourself eliminate the urge to go and get that snack? Oh, yeah. Actually, it does.
And so I just did every. Looked at every habit, ask myself, is this habit serving me? Yes or no? If the answer was no, what am I going to do differently? Give myself the grace for 30 days and then keep going?
And, in fact, there was something that. Do you know Jamila? Jamil, the actress? Yes. She's publicly spoken about anorexia and body dysmorphia.
And I interviewed her, and one of the things she said to me really hit me. And she said, lisa, when you've got got body dysmorphia and all you do is hate your body, it can even be triggering when people are saying, love your body. She's like, when you hear women now say, no, love your body. She's like, that's triggering. Because now you're telling me that I'm failing because I don't love my body.
She's like, you know what? I'm just trying to get back to body neutrality. Forget about love. I'm just striving for body neutrality. And I was like, wow, that's so true.
We put pressure on. If you're going to do it, you have to be loving yourself and feeling the best, and if you don't, you're not doing it right. No, no incremental steps. What's the thing that doesn't serve you? What are you trying to change?
And how can you be better tomorrow than you were today? That is it. Don't, obviously, I have audacious goals, so I don't want to say don't set audacious goals, but know exactly what you're doing and what you're changing incrementally every single day so that you can focus on and go, cool. Today I actually want to live till I'm 100. What do I need to do today in order to do that?
I need to sleep. All right, it's almost 10:00 p.m. are you living in accordance to what you said you want in your life, yes or no? And I call myself out every single day. And I said, you've set this goal, and you're acting like this.
Which one's more important? And every day, every time I call myself on it, you're about to stay up late. Lisa, but you said you want to live till you're 100. Which one's more important? And every time I ask myself that question, I give myself the answer.
And here's the great news. Only you can answer it. You cannot answer it for what other people would say to you, because people are like, oh, of course you got to go to bed early, of course. You got to eat healthy. Of course, of course.
Of course. We all know what we should do, but what do we actually do? And in certain moments where I know, you know what? I am so strict to myself, I tell myself to go to bed early every day. But today, in order to serve my future self in order for me to live till I'm 100.
I'm actually going to go to bed late tonight, and I'm actually going to watch terrible tv because that's what my heart wants and I need to do that today in order for me tomorrow to go to bed again at 09:00 p.m. but we all think that it has to be one or the other, all or nothing. And if you end up going to bed later than you said, or if you end up having that snack that you told yourself you won't do, all of a sudden you're a bad person. You tell yourself that you're garbage, all of a sudden you think you have to start from square one. No, you actually can say, this is part of the process.
I actually needed that Snickers bar in order to help myself stay on track so that I can live till I'm 100. It's the foundation of all the things that you commit to do on a daily basis. But the grace that allows you some flexibility to know that that flexibility is what keeps you going long term. Yeah, it's self awareness. And I think so many people, including myself, I wasn't self aware.
I didn't actually ask myself questions. I didn't realize, why are you staying up late, Lisa? Like, you're tired. Why are you staying up late? If you just ask yourself the question and actually you're honest with yourself, with the answer, with Grace, you're going to hear me say that a lot.
I don't beat myself up over the answer. Even if I'm horrified by the truth of the answer. I don't beat myself up. I'm like, oh, you are resenting having to go to sleep because your entire life is scheduled. All right, amazing.
Now I know I just resent the fact that I have to go to sleep. What am I going to do differently? So I don't resent having to go to sleep. And then I structure my life in accordance. I just make sure, though, that I know myself and I'm not listening to other people.
I'm not blindly following pattern that I've set for myself because I think I should do it and I think that that's another thing. Well, Lisa said I should do this or Lisa says she does this, so I guess I'm going to have to do it. No, no, you don't have to do anything. You set your own goals and then you ask yourself, no b's, what is it actually going to take for me to get to the goal and that's really, I think, a big part due that people don't do, like lay out. What is it actually going to look like for me to live over 100?
All right, let's just make up a list for now. In just very short, quick timing, you have to walk on a treadmill every single day for the rest of your life uphill for at least 15 minutes. You have to never eat out. You can. I'm just going to make some things up to make it even more hard.
You can never travel because actually travel is so much pressure on your body with the inflammation of the air pressure. So if you actually want to live to 100 litre, you can never travel on a plane again. You also can never eat out, which means at these birthday parties, you either can never go or you have to take food with you. You know, you can. You always will have to go to bed at 09:00 every single night.
You know what, not even once. You're going to be able to stay up to 01:00 a.m. so imagine I write an entire plan of how I actually get to lime 100. That's no b's, how I'm going to get to ahama 100. Now, the great thing is, what I do is I just ask myself is that the lifestyle I want, that is going to lead me to the goal.
And if the answer is no, I don't want to bloody have to walk on a treadmill uphill for 15 minutes every single day for the rest of my life. All right, I'm just going to own that. I really don't want to do that. All right, so, Lisa, you've probably shaved off four years of your life, so now you're down to 96 years. All right, well, I really don't want to never fly because I love to traveling and so the air pressure on my body may take off another three years of my life.
All right, Lisa, so you were down. You were at 96 years, now you're down to 93 years. All right, you know what? 93 years isn't too bad. If I get to travel and I get to stay up late, you know, a couple of time.
Yeah, that sounds like a life that I actually want to live. And the goal I want to get to. What you're talking about is being honest about whatever it is you're going for and do you want to put in the effort? And obviously, you know, you can still travel and go towards 100 and beyond and you can still stay up late sometimes and you can still eat out. You're just making an example to say when you want to be a creator like you who has millions of followers.
Dhru Purohit
Okay, great. What does that consistency look like of doing interviews, hitting publish on social media, whatever else it might be, and work backwards from there and say, hey, is this something that I actually want to do to achieve those goals? Yes. And then you can answer it with utter clarity. So now if you answer, no, actually, you know what?
Lisa Bilyeu
Who the hell never wants to go on a plane again? Well, screw that. I don't want to live till I'm 100. And now you actually feel okay versus you travel, it taxes on your body, obviously. I know travel does impact your body, but I'm not saying it's going to shave that much.
Ease off your life. I just want to make sure people know that I'm giving that as just an example. But you just go, you know what? Now I really want to travel, all right? I actually don't want to live till I'm 100 because I'd rather travel than live to 100.
Now, you don't beat yourself up. You don't ask yourself, oh, my God, I'm a loser. I can't believe that I did this again. Wait, in fact, let's actually talk about that. I bet that's way easier for people to digest.
Wait, if someone says, I want a six pack, all right, it's probably cape. You're probably capable of creating getting a six pack pack. But holy smokes, what it's going to take for you to get a six pack. With your genetics, your body build, it's always going to vary for different people. But I've seen people go to extremes in order to get a six pack.
That means they boil their chicken breast so they're not taking in sodium. True story. I've actually had someone tell me that, and I'm like, that sounds like a crappy life. So the truth is, if I had to judge, do I want a six pack and eat boiled chicken, or would I eat, rather eat grilled chicken and not have a six pack and have a two pack? Yeah, I think I'd rather have a two pack.
Now what am I doing? I'm never beating myself up over never getting to that six pack, because I've opened my eyes to the reality of what life, what it will cost me to get to the goal that I'm looking for. And now, once you know that, you never have to beat yourself up, you never look in the mirror and go, I can't believe that you still got only a two pack instead of a six pack. Or I can't believe you have a belly and you don't have a six pack. You just go, yeah, I chose that.
I'd rather eat chocolate than have a six pack. And now you don't beat yourself up. That is the most freeing idea I can ever give anybody. It was so freeing to me that now I make decisions with my eyes wide open. No one gets to tell me how to live my life.
I get to choose how to live my life based on my own goals that I've set for myself and the realities it will take me to get there. This episode is brought to you by Lifeforce, the diagnostic company I personally use every quarter. You know, I love learning about the latest longevity research, but ever since I turned 40, I'm even more interested in learning how to apply it to my life so I can get the most benefit. That's why I was super excited when I found out about Life Force, a revolutionary new health platform thats changing the game when it comes to personalized performance and longevity based action plans. Heres what sets Lifeforce apart from all other testing companies out there.
Dhru Purohit
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To save $250 off your first diagnostic and optimize your health and longevity today. You know, in a way, you're talking about the ways that in your story, but also you're such a champion for women, which is why you're here on today's podcast. You're talking about the top ways that they end up sabotaging their health and their happiness. One of them that I see is that you just outlined is that they think that one day when this thing happens, they'll finally feel happy which is a lesson you write about inside of your book. Build on that a little bit further.
What are some of the other top ways that you feel that women in particular sabotage their health and happiness? I think we sacrifice a lot. And here's the weird thing about sacrificing that's going on in the media today. Everyone's like, don't you sacrifice? You do you.
Lisa Bilyeu
And the problem is, is that everyone wants it to be binary. You want it to be put yourself first. Only think of yourself or sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice. And I think there's just a place in the middle that isn't sexy, that no one's talking about. Because here's the truth.
If you're a kind, caring person, of course you're going to sacrifice sometimes for the people you love. You should never dismiss that. You should never neglect that. That is an important part of the human nature, that we want to be there for other people. Now, especially as a woman, estrogen makes sure that you are there to take care of other people.
Let's face it in the back in the cavemen days, if you had a child, nature makes sure that you're going to help that child grow up because it can't take care of itself. So it's biological that it's ingrained in you. So I try not to, quote unquote, beat it out of myself. I just accept this is actually part of the beautiful female experience. Now, the problem is, it's trapped us because we've leaned into it so much that we neglect our bodies, we neglect our wants and our needs.
So to me, the happy medium is figure out what your wants and needs actually are. Bake that into your every single day activity. Everything that you do. If you wake up in the morning, how are you going to serve yourself that day? That is important, but not in spite of neglecting everybody else.
So then lay out how you want to show up for other people. And that's what I ended up doing. Okay, what makes me feel great woman as a wife, that's important. How do I show up for my husband, but at the same time, write a list of how I also show up for myself and know that every single day isn't going to be a balance. Everyone wants a balance.
I just call b's on that. I don't know how you can create balance without being anxious every single freaking day. Instead, what I do is I work under harmony. Today. Actually, you know what?
I've neglected my husband for two weeks. Today I'm going to actually pay attention to him and I'm not going to do my self care because right now it's important I show up for him. But tomorrow I'm going to go do a sauna. I'm going to go do a cold plunge. I'm going to go eat healthy.
I'm going to go work out. And so as long as I'm constantly creating that harmony in my life, I think that we're able to show up for ourselves and be there for other people. But going back to your very poignant question is we do one or the other. We give up everything for the person we love. We give up our wants, our needs.
We ignore our bodies. So if our body is saying, hey, you need rest today, you need to actually sleep, a lot of us will ignore it. A lot of us will still set the alarm to wake up after 5 hours because we have to show up for the kids or we have to cook for the husband. That's where it starts to become extremely detrimental to our lives. So I think there is a happy medium.
We just spill over too much into giving everything over because this means I'm a better person. In fact, let's just even take mothers. I don't have kids, but I have a lot of friends with kids. And the one thing that I keep hearing is the pressure to have to do the home baked cookies. Why does it have to be home baked?
Every time I ask a person that a mother, they usually say, well, because that's what great mothers do. And I'm like, according to who? Is that what you perceive a great mother to be? Or is that what other people perceive a great mother to be? So I think that that's also the final key.
Write out who you want to, quote unquote, serve. I want to serve my husband and I want to serve my family. Great. What does that look like? I am going to be attentive to my husband at least once a week, and that means I cook him dinner once a week.
Does that make me feel like a great wife? Yeah. You know what? It really does. Now I've got my definition of what a great wife is.
I've got my definition of a great sister, a great daughter. So if someone can do, if you can do that work, anyone listening right now, write out what a great mother, daughter, wife, whatever looks like. Then write out what their needs are. Your husband, your kids. Then on the other side, like I said, write out all of your needs.
And then write out your schedule on how you're going to show up the bias. You know, you mentioned a really important idea that you talk about it in your book. And that idea is, how often do women in particular, not that men don't do this too. I'm the first person to say that men do this as well, but this conversation is about women. How often do they use the word should to sort of blanketly cover and set up these false expectations in their life?
Dhru Purohit
Can you talk about that for a second? Yeah. I mean, look, growing up, that always became the thing, like, oh, you shouldn't do that. You should eat all of your food on plate. That was my greek orthodox dad that hammered that into my head.
Lisa Bilyeu
You should eat everything as a woman. You should be married, you should have kids. And so what that does, I think, at least for the younger me. And, you know, I'm curious about your audience, but what it does is it shapes your belief system. So growing up, because I was told I should get married and have kids, it never even dawned on me to question it.
And I think that that's what it's done to most of us, is it's built our belief system that we haven't necessarily questioned because we just assume that that's fact. And so it wasn't until we started quest nutrition. Quest nutrition grew at 57,000%. That took us from zero to a billion dollars in five years. It wasn't until that happened that I was like, oh, what life do I actually want?
I was in my mid twenties, early thirties, in fact, where I started to ask myself, what do I actually want? So if you're not even sure, write down all of your shoulds. What do you actually think? Write them out. And then next to it, ask yourself, do you actually believe that, or is that a belief that's been put on you?
If it's been a belief from your parents or whoever, then just with grace, don't beat yourself up. Say, okay, I didn't know any better. I was told this was fact. I believed it. But now the brilliant news is I'm an adult and I can decide for myself.
So let me take all these shoulds and actually acknowledge whether I agree with it. Yes or no. Then the last part I will say is, we cannot pretend and fool ourselves that we still don't use the word shoulds about other people. So even when I talk about health and someone asks me, I'm like, oh, you should do this. And I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe I just said should.
So I even catch myself because I believe it to be true. So I am pushing my opinion on other people. I am now literally doing what my parents did to me. So in real time, you will see me go to say the word should and then, like, try to take it back. Okay, I don't mean should, but you should.
You may want to consider, and I try to find other ways in expressing it because the final part is, I don't ever want to force my belief system on anyone else. I am here to tell you what I believe and why it is up to you to take that and use it in your life or not use it in your life. And that has been my way to undo and unwire the word should and how that impacts how we show up every day. You know, we were chatting a little bit before we started recording, and I was telling you that my audience, largely women watching on YouTube, care a lot about the topic of longevity. But that's not just about how long you live.
Dhru Purohit
It's about living a meaningful and most importantly, a healthy life. Live as healthy as you possibly can. Then one day, if we're lucky enough, we go to sleep and we don't wake up. Right now as part of that process of living a long and healthy life, one of the challenges that happens is that there are little ways that we end up tricking ourself. We sabotage ourself.
We get in our own way, and we don't even realize it. When you think about your story here, and you've already shared a couple of really great tips, was there another way that you were getting in the own way of living the life that you know, that you are meant to live? Oh, yeah. I mean, the thing that came to mind is boundaries. I was terrible at putting in boundaries, and so that impacted the way that I was showing up every single day.
Lisa Bilyeu
And a lot of us think that if we don't put in boundaries, that we're going to be loved because we're yes people. It's like, oh, my God, of course I can do that. And so you end up saying yes to things, you end up doing things that end up really shortening your life. So I actually interviewed doctor. Amen.
And he was the one that said to me, married men live longer than single men. Married women don't live as long as single women. That really hit me because he said, women are very health conscious. So if they're with someone, they're telling their partner, don't text while you drive. Make sure you get your yearly checkup.
You know, you've got a cough. You should really go and see the doctor. So the women encourage the guys to go and do it. So that's why guys live longer when they're married. But when a woman is single.
Sorry. When a woman is married, she's pouring herself into the other person. She's saying yes to things because she doesn't have boundaries. She wants the people. Please.
She wants to help. Now, what that does is it ends up shortening your lifespan. So if you can think about single women live longer because we think about our health more than we think about other people's, that should really guide us of what we're doing wrong on a day to day basis. That's actually holding us back from living that long life that we want. So I go, cool.
I embrace. That is true. I'm still going to care about my husband. But how the hell do I show up for myself? What does that actually look like?
And how do I make sure, for my husband's sake, that I live till I'm over 100? Like, that's actually one of my goals. I want to actually live till I'm over 100. With brain clarity. I do not want dementia, and I do not want Alzheimer's.
So I am really looking into how do I actually do that? And one of the things is setting boundaries, knowing where my energy goes, knowing what I say yes to and what I say no to. If I say yes to this, how am I going to show up for myself, and how am I going to live till I'm 100? Once I have that north Star? Everything works around that.
So you said about the longevity. Understand that it isn't just living long, but that is important to me. It's a huge piece. So everything I now do, whether I show up or not, whether I'm anxious, like, I don't like setting boundaries. Sometimes I feel like I'm a bit of.
A bit bossy when I do it. I think people don't like it sometimes, so it doesn't even now, it doesn't come naturally to me, but I know if I want to live till I'm over 100, I have to protect my peace. What does that look like? I can't say yes to everything. If I can't say yes to everything, it means I have to set boundaries, even though I'm not comfortable setting boundaries.
How do I set boundaries? And then it goes to cool. How do I set boundaries? I learn it. I read books.
I listen to podcasts. I have this woman called Terri Cole, who's one of my favorite people on the planet now, and she wrote a book called Boundary Boss. And I go in, going, cool. I know my goal. I know I have to set a boundary.
How do I do it? Let me read a book. Let me practice. And every single thing that I do, that's pretty much the templar that I live by. I know I need to achieve this.
What's the strategy? How am I going to learn it? I can see an audience member listening or watching and saying, lisa, it's so easy for you to set boundaries because you are confident. Tell us why that statement misses the point. Even though it's coming from a true place.
Dhru Purohit
Somebody might be feeling that. What are they missing about that? By just labeling you as, oh, it's easy for you. You're confident. Okay, I'm going to use a Lisa Nichols quote.
Lisa Bilyeu
Don't make me extraordinary to let yourself off the hook. And what that means is, is with utter compassion, right now, you're comparing yourself to me, and you're using me as a barometer that maybe you shouldn't start because she's confident. I can't do that. You were letting yourself off the hook by making me extraordinary. I was a mess.
I had no idea what I was doing. I was eight years as a supportive wife when I didn't enjoy cooking and cleaning. Why? Because I thought I needed the confidence to make a change. Now you see the byproduct of the person that just took action anyway.
That is how you build confidence. People want the confidence to get started, but the confidence is the byproduct of taking action. So you have to act first in order to build the competence so that you can build the confidence. So who you see today is ten years of work. Who you see today is the person that would go to sleep crying themselves to sleep because they felt badly about themselves, because they lived eight years of an unhappy life and they didn't actually speak up.
You're seeing the result of all of that. But imagine you flashback, and you were with me ten years ago. You wouldn't think that. So don't let your. Don't give yourself the excuse to not get started because you think that you need the confidence that I have now.
This is years and years and years of freaking work that you see. This is me falling down and getting back up. This is me falling down and literally talking harsh with myself and saying, lisa, no one's come in to save you. You better get the f up. That's the journey.
So I don't want people to use me as an excuse because you're getting in your own way. You know, you mentioned something very important there. You said, nobody's coming to save you. That is one of the lessons in your book, radical confidence. Eleven lessons on how to get the relationship, career, and life that you want.
Dhru Purohit
Why is that such an important lesson for people to understand? I'm going to tell you a heartbreaking story, but this was the lesson that I learned. One day. I'd said that my gut felt like it erupted. I really mean it.
Lisa Bilyeu
I couldn't stand up for longer than five minutes at a time. I could only eat up to about five ingredients. Ingredients, drew. That is, salt is an ingredient. So I could eat salt.
Lamb, chicken, and coconut oil and beef. Five ingredients for a year. My nails were brittle, my hair was falling out, and quest was one of the fastest growing nutrition companies in the world. So you can imagine how I felt about myself. My company's getting accolades, it's getting awards.
Our bars are freaking everywhere, and I can't even stand up. That's how bad my health had gotten. So I now feel like I am burnt to a crisp. I don't understand what's happening to my gut. I don't feel sexy.
I don't feel confident. I'm so skinny. That's going back to my first answer, why? That's the worst thing that ever happened. I was so skinny, and I'd never felt worse about myself.
So in that journey, I kept looking to Tom, my hero. He was my husband. I kept turning to him. And so as a solve, he started a show called health theory. So he's reading these health books.
He's trying to help his wife on her gut journey. And we're just. We're reaching dead ends. We're reading some books, and we've got so many questions. So, as the Trojan horse, he starts his own health show.
He brings on these doctors. So we start talking about my health now, in that I kept turning to Tom. Thank you. Tell me the information. What should I do?
I was turning to the doctors. Give me a pill. Help me. I was literally returning to everyone else to come and help me. And at no point did I say, hang on.
How the hell am I going to help myself? So, one day, I'm doing a photo shoot. I don't tell anyone. I'm in absolute gut disarray. It's hard for me to even take a breath, but I pretend, because that's what women do, right?
We just pretend that we're okay. So I'm in a photo shoot, I have a whole crew, and all of a sudden, my gut starts to act up, and I can barely breathe. And in that moment, I said, sorry, guys. I just have to excuse myself. I'll be back in five minutes.
I run to my bathroom because we're shooting in my house. I run to my bathroom and I literally fall to my knees in the bathroom. Now I have a deal with my husband. If I need him or if he needs me, we can call each other and we're allowed to ignore each other's calls. You can call the first time, we can ignore each other.
You can call the second time, we can ignore each other. If either of us call the other person for the third time, I don't care what you're doing. You could be interviewing the president of the United States. And if I ring for the third time, Drew, it means you have to leave because your wife is calling you. We've just got that deal.
So I'm on the floor, I'm clutching my stomach. I'm trying to take my next breath. I pick up my phone and I call my husband. And I'm like, I need him to save me. I need him to save me.
And I call him. He doesn't answer. The second time, I call him again, he doesn't answer. By the third time, I'm like, alright, he's going to answer, Drew. He doesn't answer.
So my game plan is out the window. So now I'm on the floor going, I need my husband. I need my husband. Holy crap. What am I going to do?
I need my husband. Well, at that point, all right, Lisa, you've got a choice. You can stay on this cold floor or you can recognize you're the hero of your own life and you can get the effort up. What are you going to do? And I was like, well, I guess we're getting up then, aren't we?
And I took a deep breath and I got up. And in that moment, it was like a lightning rod. I was like, oh, my God. This whole time I've been dismissing my own power. I've been saying I need my husband.
I've been saying I need the doctors to save me, but I don't. I want them to, but I don't need them to. I can save myself. And that idea changed everything. It changed.
I go to a doctor and the doctor gives me a pill. He's like, you should take this. You know what I do now? I ask a thousand questions. I don't take the pill.
I sit still. I listen to my body. How does my body intellectually respond to the idea of taking this tablet? Let me do some research. Let me see the people in the field that I respond.
What are they saying about this? I didn't do any of that. So going back to my story, when the doctor was giving me antibiotics, at no point did I ask, hmm, why do people say you shouldn't take too many antibiotics? I never did the research. I asked the question in my head, but I never even googled it.
I'm blaming the doctor. He gave me antibiotics. All right, Lisa, did you force it down your throat or did you willingly take them? I willingly took them. All right.
How are you going to take ownership in that? Are you a puppet? Are you a goat? Do you just follow people or sheep? I should say decide.
And I was like, no, I'm not a sheep. I don't just follow people. I'm the hero of my own life. What does that mean? I would do my research.
When I do something, I take full ownership over it. And that that was how I ended up just looking at my life, looking at how I make sure that I show up for myself and making sure that I don't point the. I literally don't point any finger now at anyone else. You know what I do? I point all ten fingers back at myself.
Dhru Purohit
Hmm. You know, because our channel is so focused on health, we've done so many episodes on gut health and had different experts on here. And also many of our audience who have written in, they know that sometimes these very chronic issues like gut health can take a long time to navigate. And even more of a reason that we need to have resilience, that we need to have the confidence in ourself, that we can make progress and head in the right direction, because you've brought it up, I'd love to just ask you a little bit. You shared this story about growing up, taking antibiotics, not asking any questions, and ultimately, it reaching this crescendo moment of you having some alcohol, which looks like that was sort of a very impactful thing in that moment of the water getting all the way to the top and spilling over.
Right. And you have mentioned that you've suffered for years with debilitating gut issues. Tell us, as you continue to work through them, what has helped give you the energy to continue to feel like you can make progress and not feel like you're losing hope? Oh, amazing. I love this question because I had so much hope, it became false hope.
Lisa Bilyeu
And in the force hope, it started to actually ding my confidence. So what I mean by that is, when it first happened, I thought, at least you'll be fine in a week. Okay, I wasn't fine. In a week, you'll be fine in a month. I wasn't fine in a month.
And all of that false hope kept making me go, huh. What are you doing wrong, Lisa? How can you, like, you thought it was going to be a week, and now it's not. Oh, my God. Right?
And I started to judge myself. Now what I ended up doing is, all right, how do I use. What can I tell myself to empower myself? Because I always know the goal. I'm always very clear about what the goal is in this moment is to feel great about myself emotionally.
All right, so how do you do that? I'm beating myself up day in and day out, that everything that I'm do is that everything I do isn't working. This isn't serving me. It's making me feel worse about myself, not better. What mindset could I adopt that would make me feel amazing about myself?
And so I just sat still, and I was like, huh? What if you just tell yourself, Lisa, you may never heal? And it was the most empowering idea, Drew, because I was like, oh, my God, if I never heal, how do I just incrementally get better? And so that became, instead of trying to go for, I'm building a business so that I can sell it for a billion dollars, it's like, oh, I'm building a business so I can actually financially be secure today. All right.
Maybe that's a great first step. I have the goal of potentially getting to perfect. I just never know if I'm going to get there or not. Not. So what I can do every day is what am I going to do today to feel great, to feel incrementally better today than I did yesterday, does that mean I have to maybe sleep more?
Okay. If that means I have to sleep more, I have to switch off all my alarms. I can't wake up to an alarm. If I actually have to slow down. Instead of eating fast food, I actually have to think about my food and I have to cook.
All right, if that's going to help me get incrementally better today, how do I change my schedule? What do I have to do to show off myself that I can actually have a healthy meal today? And now what I do every day is I just get proud of myself. I'm like, you're the person, Lisa, that said that you have to work 15 hours a day to feel good about yourself, but actually, you only worked 12 hours a day, and you gave yourself an hour off so you could go and do the sauna for your brain. All right, I don't feel perfect.
All my symptoms are still there, but you better believe I went to bed that night feeling damn proud of myself. What have you seen has made the biggest difference for you now? Kind of getting into the weeds, a little bit of gut health. Right. What has made the biggest difference for you?
Dhru Purohit
And as somebody who has access to a lot of the same experts that come on this podcast, right. What is your sense of what you feel is going on with your gut? And I'm asking this because I know for a fact that there's people that are listening today that are trying to piece their own health journey together. And it's not that their situation may be the exact same as yours, but they're trying to get an understanding of how you're thinking about your situation. Okay.
Lisa Bilyeu
This is great because I really am. I had no idea what I was doing. I'm around experts all the time, but I'm not a doctor. So I'm just like, I feel like this. How the hell do I show up, feel better and just have a bit more confidence?
Like, that was my goal. So I stumbled in the dark over and over and over again. So that actually, I think, is empowering because anyone at home that's listening, that may feel hopeless or may feel like I'm doing a bad job, I just can't get incrementally better. Know that I've been there time and time and time again. And the great news is, every day you can wake up and learn a bit more and do that practice.
So that's kind of what I did, is I wasn't the next. And I just tried to figure it out because I started to listen to my body. I literally was ignoring my body for so long because my mind is very powerful, my mind is very strong. So as we're building quest, I had zero business experience. So my husband and his business partners had over ten years of business experience.
So we start quest. I have zero. The imposter syndrome is through the roof. So I show up thinking I have to do work twice as hard and twice as long to get equal amounts of respect. This was all me.
They didn't say that, but this was my thoughts. So in that process, it means I'm not going to listen to my body. I'm just going to go, go, go over and over again. That was so detrimental to my health because I didn't listen to my body. Now, once my gut health really plummeted, I remember sitting with a doctor and I had food diary.
I was so obsessed with being the person that was going to help myself that I took nothing to chance. So for over three months, I took a diary, an inventory, every single day. And this is actually something I would urge anyone listening right now to. Do you do a diary every single day? That diary looks like, what did I eat in the morning?
What time did I eat? How much did I eat? When was my bounty movements? How much did I sleep? How did I feel when I woke up?
I just did that every day. Number one, I started to know the pattern within myself. No doctor could tell me. I noticed the pattern, and it was a pattern that I didn't believe until I saw for myself. So I'm talking to a doctor, and I ask them, sorry.
And I've got my food diary. And they're like, okay, so tell me, Lisa, what did you do when you ate breakfast? And I'm looking at my diary. Well, what do you mean, what did I do? Don't you mean what did I eat?
And they're like, no, what did you do? And I was like, why is she asking me what I do? Like, that's got nothing to do with my gut. Now, this was seven years ago, so knowledge wasn't, as you know, well known as it is now, but stress. Stress.
Oh, my God. I thought it was all about what I ate. The stress. Your lifestyle will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. And that was real for me.
I didn't believe it when the doctor asked me. I dismissed them. I was like, this person doesn't know what they're talking about. Until I started to look at my diary. And what I noticed was, at the time, we had just left quest nutrition and Tom had just started his show.
And what I noticed was, even if I ate the same foods every time we had a shoot, right after the shoot, I would have the worst gut disarray, pain, agony. Even if I ate the same food on a day that we didn't have a shoot and ate the same food on the day we did have a shoot. Now, I'd been warned that I dismissed it. I didn't listen to my body. So I wasn't able to get to the conclusion until I just started to take a bird's eye view of my life and the stress, the lifestyle of it.
I really worry a what that's doing to just humans, but I really, really worry about what that's doing to women. And can I talk about touchy subjects? Actually, right now, I only want the truth. It's heartbreaking to know if the truth is what I think it is. But I just want to know the truth, and no one's willing to have the discussion with me.
Drew, I worry the stress of women now as we go into the workforce, just like I did, is really impacting our fertility. And if I look at my own life and I go, okay, I start working full time. I go. And I work 14, 15 hours a day, nonstop, for years. I'm talking weekends.
I'm talking date nights don't exist. I poured my heart and soul into the company. What do you think the first thing that happened to my body was? You lost your period? Lost my period.
It's never come back. That was 2010. So when I think about the impact of stress, the impact of how we show up, like, I love freaking being a badass, don't get me wrong. But I do really consider the impact it's having on my fertility. And now that I'm learning more and more, I don't want children.
I'm 44 now. But now that I learn more and more about menopause, I learn that you are more likely to go into menopause if you don't have kids. So now I go, oh, this decision that I've made that I. Or if you've lost your period. So I go, okay.
If stress is really impacting women, if it's actually eliminating our periods, if we have. If we stop our periods early, and that's activating menopause early, well, shit. I cannot close my eyes to this. I cannot pretend that isn't true. And what I worry about is that people here.
I'm saying women shouldn't work. And I think that's why people don't want to have the honest conversation. And I'm like, I freaking chose not to have children so that I could work and serve the community and people. So I'm not saying that, but I need to have the honest conversation, because if stress really is impacting our guts as much as I really think it is, and if that's really impacting our hormones, which I really think it is, and if that's all impacting whether we can have kids or not, which I really think it is, I need women to at least know. I don't think it's fair.
I freaking want to scream from the rooftops, what the hell? I want to be, like, a man where I can do both. But if it's not true and it is impacting our fertility, let's have the honest conversation so that women at least know and they can prepare themselves for. What life do you want? And I wasn't given that gift of knowing the impact of stress until it was too late.
And I want to give other women that gift that I never had. And so I don't know if you know any. If you have any knowledge in this area, but I really do want to talk about it because I just want to serve women with the truth. Powerful. You know, I heard this quote once from a friend, and he said, people often speak to themselves the way that they were spoken to.
Dhru Purohit
And so a lot of us have this inner voice, and we don't realize it, but it's kind of inherited. And we heard the way that our mom would speak to us or our dad or an authority figure. And even if they were well meaning and they loved you, there's still bad habits that have been passed down from generation to generation when it comes to that inner voice in the head and the dialogue that is at the root of self sabotage. And people like Eckhart Tolle would say is like, the root of, like, the ego that's there. Were there any modalities, books, workshops, any practical things, any physical things that you did in your life to be able to understand that intellectually as you're talking about it, it makes sense, right?
Don't be yourself up. You know, it's not productive. It's not there. And yet, for so many people, it's kind of baked inside of them at layers that they may not even understand. What's been the most supportive for you, on a practical level, to sort of unearth it.
Anything that's been helpful in that category. Okay. There's two things that I did that really changed my life in this area. Number one is I understood and realized what I call, and I've sworn a few times on this podcast, I didn't even ask you. Can I swear?
Yeah, absolutely. Okay. Jennifer asked you before. I'm just like, foul mouth. Okay?
Lisa Bilyeu
So the voice in my head is, I would call her the bitch. She's so freaking mean to me. Oh, my God. She. I do think part of it is probably parents and upbringing, but also, it was the school.
I got bullied and teased, so it's my surroundings. I had young kids, young girls telling me that I was stupid. I had boys calling me ugly. So it's other people's opinions start to. You start to adopt, and you believe in it yourself, and it becomes your own opinion.
Opinion. So she was a bitch in my head. She was always telling me I was no good. And that was exactly why I ended up being a stay at home wife for eight years and never once vocalized that I was profoundly unhappy. That was the main reason.
Dhru Purohit
You're saying, is because you didn't feel that you were good enough. The voice in my head. Yes. Originally was trying to soothe me, to be like, don't worry, it's not for long. You're just doing this for the greater good, right?
Lisa Bilyeu
Convince you to do something that you don't want to do. I didn't want to be a stay at home wife, but the voice was like, no, no, it's for the greater good. You're doing this for your husband. Gratitude can be amazing. And so in that moment, it was actually very helpful.
It was like, oh, yeah, I am very grateful for having a husband. But you do that over and over and over again when it starts to conflict with the person you actually want to be, and it turns into what I call toxic gratitude. That toxic gratitude sounds like, how ungrateful. You don't want to be a stay at home wife when you have a husband that loves you and you don't even have to work. So you can see how that voice that was like, no, be so grateful you got a husband that loves you, kept me where I was in a healthy way.
But a year later, two years later, four years later, eight years later, she was really the freaking bitch in my head that every time I was like, I'm not happy. I just want to tell my husband, I'm not happy. She was punishing me in that sense of, like, you're so ungrateful. You know, how many people would die to be in a position like you? And so I never spoke up.
Now what I realized is, she's always gonna hold me back. And now I've got a choice. How do I? Or, in fact, in the moment where I realized she was holding me back, I would tell people, and the feedback I got was, oh, you just gotta be nicer to yourself. And I'm like, how?
How? Maybe it's easy for you to just say, be nice to yourself, and you're nice to yourself. I feel really incompetent right now because I don't know how to do that. I want to be nicer to myself, but the damn voice won't be nicer. How the hell am I supposed to shut her out?
And so I just grappled. I tried to read the books. I tried to listen to the experts. I tried to follow everyone else's guide, and it didn't work. And what I realized was, Lisa, you're never getting rid of her.
Okay, if I'm never getting rid of her. How do I. Going back to everything that I've said today, how do I use her to empower me instead of hold me back? It's a pivot. So I sat back and I was like, okay, she's trying to hold me back.
And let me give you a real world example. It was, I want to empower women, and that's my mission statement. And I got offered to go on a speaking gig to go on the stage, and I was like, oh, my God. You joking? The voice in my head was like, don't you dare do that.
You're gonna mess up. People are gonna mock you. You're gonna freeze. That's all the negative voice. The bitch in my head is telling me all the reasons why I shouldn't do public speaking.
And I was like, she's holding me back. Okay, number one, going back to very concrete tips. Number one, I just asked myself, what's more important, feeling good about myself, because that's what the ego is trying to do, is trying to prevent me from embarrassing myself, so it's keeping me safe. Don't go on stage, Lisa, because you're going to feel badly. If you don't go on stage.
You're not going to feel badly. So that's the ego trying to make you feel better about yourself. She's literally warning me, if you do this, you're going to feel bad, so don't do it. Cool. My ego protecting me and my mission, help women when I can be completely emotionally sober, which means never making a decision based on my emotions, but actually stepping back and I ask myself, what is more important, my ego or my mission?
It's very clear it's always going to be my mission. So once I decide what's more important, and it's my mission now, I go, okay, but how do I actually get on stage? Because there's one thing saying, ignore your ego. Get on stage. It's a whole other thing to actually then get on stage.
So I look at my ego and I say, okay, you're trying to scream at me not to do it because you're afraid I'm going to embarrass myself. Instead of me looking at you like the enemy, what if I looked at you like my best friend that's trying to warn me? Because think about your best friend. You trust your friend, right? Yeah.
If your friend tells you something, especially if it's a friend that you've been around for a long time, do you think they've got your best interest at heart? Yeah. That's the hope so. If they tell you something that's hard to hear, do, would you try, obviously, it's never going to be easy, but would you try to open your heart and listen to what they have to say because. Because they actually want to help you.
Dhru Purohit
Absolutely. That's what I did with my negative voice. So I sat down and I wrote out everything that she was telling me. Don't get on stage, Lisa. You're going to mess up.
Lisa Bilyeu
Write that down. Don't get on stage, Lisa. You may freeze. Don't get on stage, Lisa. You may be mocked for your looks.
Don't get on stage. Right. And I wrote them all out, and I was like, okay, what if this can actually help me? All right, the first one is, don't get on stage, Lisa, because you might mess up. What if she's right?
Okay, take that as fact. Lisa, you've never been on stage before, so what are you going to do if you mess up? Use her. Instead of seeing her as a critic, see her as your coach. So she's saying you're going to mess up on stage.
Thank you, coach. How can I prepare so that if I mess up on stage, or how can I prepare so I don't mess up on stage number one? And then how can I have a plan B in case I mess up? So that's exactly what I did, Drew. I went back, I was like, all right, if she's warning me this, what can I do?
I wrote my script out. I wrote my speech out. I practice and practice and practice. Okay, that was trying to eliminate number one, that I'm going to mess up because I don't know what I'm talking about. I practiced.
I wrote what I was going to say, okay? So I did everything I possibly could there. Then the second part is, what if you actually mess up? What are you going to do? So before I ever got on stage, I was like, all right, you need a plan.
So what's my plan? What's my plan? What's my plan? Aha. I know that if kids fall down, they look at the parent to see if they should cry or laugh.
So what is that doing? Mirroring. All right, I understand mirroring. If I freeze on stage, what's everyone in the audience going to do? Freeze.
Be nervous. Be tense. Because I'm nervous. I'm tense. All right, Lisa, if I know mirroring is true and I know that that happens with kids, what am I going to do to empower the audience to not freeze?
If I freeze? Oh, you can't freeze, Lisa. You just have to laugh. If I laugh, will the audience laugh? Probably.
So that was my game plan. I practice my speech, I go on stage, and if I mess up, I'm going to laugh. What do you think happened, Drew, in the first three minutes of my speech, you messed up. I messed up royally. The first speaking gig ever was for TEDx.
So let's just put that pressure in. I get on stage, first three minutes in, I mess up. And I say, if my dad gave birth to my grandmother, instead of, obviously, the other way around and my grandmother giving birth to my dad. So I froze and I went, well, that would be awkward. And I just started to laugh.
And the audience did what you just did. They all just laughed, and I just moved on. So that was in real time. Very strategically, how I took the bitch in my head. That always held me back to using her as my best friend.
She went from my critic to my coach. And that very detailed way that I did it is how I now do everything with my negative voice. And over time, what it did is instead of me pushing her every time she comes in to my head and the thoughts start to come, I'm just like, ah, my BFF. Come on in. You know, I even talk like that.
I did put on my cockney accent. I like my arm out. My BFF, right? Like, because it makes me feel better about myself. It makes me joke about the thing that was literally the thing that held me back in life.
I've got to joke about it. I've got to find the humor in it, and I've got to find a way to make her work for me. And that was exactly how I made her work for me. That's powerful. Kind of goes back to this idea in, like, the book, of course, miracles.
Dhru Purohit
What you resist will persist. What you accept, you go beyond. And so there's this deep acceptance, which just goes back to this, you know, one of the lessons you talk about in the book of hearing the truth, right? The truth is we all have a voice in our head, and there's an acceptance, and I'm not going to resist it, and I'm not going to try to get rid of it. I'm not going to try to overpower it.
That's just not going to work for anybody who's tried that. Instead, I'm going to hold it. I'm going to make it a part of myself. I'm going to laugh with it. I'm going to joke with it a little bit, and I'm going to understand that there might be some guidance that's there.
Sure. I might have to filter the language a little bit if it says that you're gonna freeze on stage, as you said. Okay, what happens if that happens? Is that also so bad? We might have to do a little bit of interpretation with the voice in our head that's there.
But when we step into that, you're showcasing to us that our life can forever transform, because I truly see it with my own life, but also my friends, my family, everybody that I've met. That voice is the root of all self sabotage. You're not good enough. You're not going to do it. Why would you try?
You shouldn't do it. Oh, you're going to do it. You're going to get it wrong. Anyway. It always starts with a voice.
That's why I love Byron Cady's quotes. Who would you be if you didn't believe the thought, if we just didn't believe that voice? Which obviously, we need a practical way to step into that. That's what you just outlined for us immediately. Now, the life that we're meant to live starts to unfold for us.
And I want to touch on this. We talked about it earlier, but this is so key. You shared something. I watched a video that you did where you broke down the ten lessons that were inside the book. Eleven.
Now, I think you added some bonus chapters that were there. And inside of that, one of the important, important things that you were saying is that you said that confidence, and the book is called radical confidence. Confidence comes from doing things, not the other way around. You don't get confidence, and then you go and do it. You don't feel ready to go, and then you go and try to build that business, and then you go try to build that YouTube channel, or then you go try to fulfill that wildest dream you have.
You start to make progress along the way, and you build up, up tiny little receipts. You build up little receipts. And those things are the things that gave you confidence, because even if they don't work out, like your speech, which still worked out, but even when you mess up, you get on that TEDx stage, you mess up. Okay, you messed up, but it's still worked out. Now, that gives you confidence for the next time that even if things go bad, I'm still okay.
And I think that's a super important lesson for our audience today. Thank you. Yeah, I just think it holds us back so much. It is like, the one thing that I think has held back every pretty much woman that I know is that they think they need the confidence to get started. But if I reposition the way that we think about confidence, so think of it as like, if I say confidence was exactly like learning to play the piano, would you think that you would be able to, on an average day, wake up and be able to play the piano?
No. You know that intellectually, right? No one. You'd be like, what do you mean? You're waiting to just be able to play.
Lisa Bilyeu
You can't just wake up one day and be able to play. You'd have to learn how to read sheet music. You then have to actually get piano. You then have to practice. You then probably need a teacher or a course, and you probably need to put in the hours, right?
And intellectually, we all know that about a skill when it comes to something like the piano, but we don't think of confidence as a skill. And now to break it down even more, think of it like a sport where you've got Michael Jordan, right? Michael, he was like the freaking goat at basketball. And then he goes and plays baseball. He's the freaking goat at basketball.
Not so much at baseball. So that's confidence. You can have confidence. You can be so freaking confident in your business and you can crush it. You know your stuff.
You know your, you know, you can go into any business, you can fix their p and l. You got this. And then you get into a relationship and all of a sudden you let go of your boundaries and you don't understand why you're being walked over and you get side blindsided and maybe they've betrayed you. Right? Like, I could go on with the extremes, but people wonder, like, how, how is that possible?
You're so confident. It's a different freaking sport. Yes, it is a sport, but it's a different sport, just like Michael Jordan. So people think that just because maybe, you know, base basketball that you're going to be amazing at baseball. No.
Even though you've got confidence in your business, doesn't mean you're going to have confidence in your relationship. You have to build it, like the skill, like the piano in every single area. It's never going to come naturally. One sometimes may fortunately spill into another area. So it's like if I build my confidence in my relationship, it's going to spill into my business because I'm more confident.
But it's never in and of itself going to make me confident in my business. Being in a relationship and having confidence to set my boundary with my husband is very different than commanding respect in a group of 40 people, it's just a different mechanism. So I have to build my confidence in this area independent of itself. Then I'm building my confidence in this area. And you better freaking believe I go into every single thing thinking of it like a skill.
So if I go to speak on stage. All right, Lisa, you're starting from square one right now, is you don't know how to read sheet music. You have to learn in order, the equivalent of that, you have to learn in order to get on stage. All right? People want you to coach.
All right? It's very different coaching than getting on stage and given a keynote. It's actually very different sitting in front of all these cameras in your crew than it is me getting on stage. So each thing, I don't think a, I'm going to be terrible for the rest of my life, and I don't think I'm going to be amazing. Automatically I go in with the idea that I'm the learner, period.
That idea of the identity of being the learner changed my freaking life. Because everything now you better believe I can tackle anything, put me anywhere. Scuba diving with sharks. All right, I'm the learner. I'll figure it out.
Piano in front of an orchestra. All right, it's going to be tough, but I'll figure it out. I don't know how. I don't have the confidence to do it, but I know the mechanisms that it's going to take in order for me to incrementally get better so that one day in a year from now, you can come to the Disney Opera house and you can, you know, hear me play the piano, whatever, but I never dismiss myself that I can't do something, and I never glorify myself to think that I've got that shit down pat out of the gate. I want to talk a little bit about your why, you know, you have your YouTube channel, women have impact.
Dhru Purohit
Fantastic. We've had a lot of similar stuff. I watch your stuff all the time, by the way. Whenever I'm getting a guest on, if you've had them on, I always watch your. Thank you so much.
I love the guests that you have, and I love your dedication to women. And this book, obviously, which is now out in paperback, I believe, right, is a continuation of that. What is your why that drives you to dedicate so much of your life, to empowering women? Going back to the negative voice, it held me back so much that I needed a way to make sure that it didn't. And that's what I then call my North Star.
Lisa Bilyeu
So I always need something that I'm working towards with utter clarity, so that when I don't feel good about myself, if I feel sick, if my health's plummeting, if I'm arguing with my husband, I always need that one north star that I can go back to over and over again. And so that's kind of the why Mother Teresa said, not everyone will fight for the masses, but everyone will fight for the one. So if that's true, I just take that as fact. Who every day am I fighting for? Who's the one person that you better believe?
If I don't feel good enough about myself, if I don't feel adequate, if I don't know something, how am I always going to overcome it? Who's the person that you think of? And it has to be someone very real to you. So, for instance, at quest nutrition, it was my mom. I grew up with a mum that was borderline anorexic.
And then as I got into my teenage years, she became morbidly obese. So now we start quest nutrition. I don't know what I'm doing. My ego is taking it in. Every single day I'm facing my inadequacies.
Every single day. I feel terrible about myself because every day I'm doing something, I have no idea what I'm doing. We were growing so quickly, though, that I just had to ask myself, all right, Lisa, you cannot do it and, you know, save your ego, or you can show up and figure it out for your mum. Your mum can lose the weight. You can save your mum.
If you figure out how to ship this freaking bar to Dubai, that's actually a real story. You can save your mom's life. You can literally add years to her life by creating a product that she can eat so that she can lose weight, so that she can live longer. All right, are you going to fight for her today, Lisa, or are you going to get in your stay in your feelings or feeling badly about yourself because you don't know how to ship a bar? So the why I really urge everybody for it to be the person they can think of in moments of weakness, and they can just ask themselves what's more important.
So my why does change depending on my goal, but they kind of interact with each other. So what I mean is, you need to know who you want to impact, and, you know, you need to know where you want to go so that those two can align. So I think of it as a mission statement. I think everybody needs a mission statement. In their lives.
And a mission statement, to me goes. Covers the what, the who, and the why, because the why in and of itself is a great feeling, but it doesn't allow me to be so concrete with clarity that I know where my time and energy goes every single day. Because I'm a people pleaser. I just know that about myself. Okay, so the what, the who, and the why so that you can show up every day with that clear north Star and not pretend.
Because I don't know about you, but I hear a lot of people say, I want to help people. I want to impact people. What the hell does that mean, Drew? Okay, you want to impact people, go and help. Go mow your neighbor's lawn.
You're technically helping someone. So we don't have clarity on that North Star so much that we're living in accordance every day. So I want people right now to get out pen and paper and write down they need a mission statement, and it needs those three things. So I'm going to tell you my mission statement and give the example. I want to create content that impacts 14 year old girls so they never have to unwire the negative mindset that I've had to.
All right, that's short. That's succinct. I can say it over and over and over and over and over again. Why do I need to be able to say it over and over again? Because when moments when I don't feel like I'm good enough, in moments where I'm telling myself, you don't understand what you're doing, Lisa.
You're terrible. In moments where I would normally freeze, I need to be able to recite my mission statement to myself. Number one. Now, number two, how does that break down into those. The things that it needs.
So, the mission statement. The what? Create content. That's very important to me. Why?
Because I actually want to help people on a global scale. I have zero judgment for anyone else, but I chose not to have children so I could impact people on global scale versus people as in my children. That was a decision I made. So it's content. I know that if people ask me do I want to create content, I know that then achieves my bigger goal, which is reaching people on the masses.
And so that's very important. So you can imagine, if someone asked me to mow their lawn, what do you think I'm going to say? No, it's not content. The 14 year old girl, that is very important to me. Why the 14 year old girl?
So I told you my mum was for quest. My mum now isn't for impact theory. My mum's lost the weight. She's managed to keep it off. She believes in herself now.
I don't need to influence her like I did, but I really, really will wake up every day for that 14 year old girl. Why? Because I remember how it feels to be bullied and teased when I was 14, I remember what it was like to tell myself, you're dumb, Lisa, you're stupid. No one's going to love you. You're ugly.
I literally would tell myself that I know how that feels. I don't want any 14 year old girl to feel like that. Now, what does that look like? As it echoes? It looks like 20 years of the work that I've just literally been spending this entire interview talking to you about.
Everything I've said today has been unwiring the negative mindset I had when I was younger. We started with the word should. Everything that I've done, my health issues, the way that I think through things, all because I felt badly when I was 14 years old. So you better believe I'm going to show up for that 14 year old girl now because I don't. Back to now the why, because I don't want her having to spend the next 20 years unwiring the negative mindset that I've had to now.
That's my mission. So everything I do all stems from that 14 year old girl. Every time I feel weak, I remind myself of her. Every time I feel like maybe I should say yes. And I ask myself, is it content?
And the answer is no. I'm able to say no without feeling badly. So having that much clarity on your why, so that you can consistently show up and feel good about yourself because you're on your mission, not anyone else's, is literally the last 15 years of my life is exactly what I've done. In order for me to build quest nutrition that became a billion dollar company impact theory, where our content now collectively has been viewed over half a billion times. That hasn't been easy.
I don't think I'm anything special. I don't think I have a special gene that I was born with. I think the thing that I have that I think a lot of people don't is I'm able to self soothe, which means when I feel badly about myself, I don't let it get in the way of my actions and I always get back up. You can knock me down, I can be knocked to my knees, I could be weeping, feeling like I am broken to my core, and I will still get back up.
Dhru Purohit
Powerful. Lisa, this has been fantastic. I so appreciate you coming on the podcast and stepping into your mission, which is advocating for women, in particular, that 14 year old girl. I want to give an opportunity. Is there any lesson that we wanted to end off in that we didn't touch on in the interview?
And this is for my team's note, if you don't have anything, I can go into my own conclusion, but just wanted to give you the opportunity. If there was any lesson that we. Didn'T touch on, the only thing I want to actually say is, one of the things I'm really fighting for now is the idea that as women get older, we become less needed and less important. And as women age, we're getting dismissed. We're getting neglected.
Lisa Bilyeu
And I'm 44 years old, and I'm very aware that my hormones are about to change. You mentioned earlier about perimenopause and menopause. Pause. And I'm on a freaking mission to make aging cool again. And that means that I'm going to be very honest about everything I'm going through.
I'm going to see this as my superpower. I think us women in general need to support each other more and more. We need to be more empathetic to each other, and we need to be more honest, because the idea of all the stats and things that I'm finding out about menopause, I'm like, how did I get to 44 in the health industry? And I've never bloody heard this. One in five women will quit their jobs if they're in menopause.
Why? Because of brain fog and memory loss. One in five? That's insane. That's not okay to me.
Why? Because women are not speaking up. We're not saying that these are symptoms. We just feel badly about ourselves, and then we quit. When I hear that 70% of divorces are initiated by women during that period of menopause, again, the amount of marriages that are failing and people are separating because of menopause and what we're going through, that's not okay.
I am now talking to Tom about it. I'm literally vocalizing, hey, I know we've been together for 21 years. The woman that I was ten years ago, that's not the woman you see today. I am more sensitive. You cannot say those words to me that once upon a time, like, fuck, yeah, I can do that.
If you say that to me now, I take it as a. As a criticism. It isn't. You babe, it is me changing my hormones. But it is true.
So if it's true that I'm changing and my hormones are changing, when you say those words that once upon a time, I may have laughed at, I now as truth, take it as criticism. So while you were able to say that to me ten years ago, you cannot say that to me now. And I'm just navigating in real time with my husband and my team and anyone that will bloody listen of, hey, we as women, it's amazing that we're getting older. It's. You got a choice.
Get older or die. So the fact that we're getting older, we shouldn't be doing it in silence. We shouldn't be doing it and hiding our pain. We should be open about it, discussing it with other women, talking about it on these types of podcasts, so that no one ever feels like they're not normal or feels like they're going crazy like hell. No, not under my watch, Drew.
So I am very much focusing on that, the stats and data out there. I'm learning more and more it is crazy. It is not okay. And when I ever say it is not okay, it means I have to do something about it. So I am going to be the biggest advocate on women in hormone change in this part of their lives and how we can see it as a superpower, not as a death sentence.
Dhru Purohit
Powerful. And just to add on that is that. Have you heard of, like, the menopause theory of longevity? No, but tell me. Okay, so Sarah Gottfried writes about this in her book, and Doctor Mary Claire Haver has chatted a little bit about this.
But this is why this mission is so important. A huge part of this is what this theory says. Our success as the human race has been grandmothers. Grandmothers traditionally have been the sort of wise peacekeepers, and also, they played a huge role in the passing down of wisdom and the actual bringing up of children. And one of the ways not all species get menopause, in fact, most don't.
There's, like, a whale that gets it. There's, like, the humans get it, and, like. But, like, not all species get menopause, which means that the women in other species, many other species that don't get menopause, they are a competitive threat biologically to other women, even at an older age, because they can reproduce up until they're no longer here. And because women in particular, or get menopause, human women, it's a signaling. It's a biological signaling that, hey, look, I'm not a threat.
This is what this theory is saying biologically. In fact, I'm here to support you. I'm here to support the family. I'm here to be here. Now, obviously, times have changed.
We live differently in other components, but I truly believe in that same way. You know, our society, we need the harmony of the strong masculine and the strong feminine and the best of both worlds of what they bring. And I think our society has gotten a little bit in one direction and we need to bring back in some of that wisdom, right, of the strong feminine, like the strong feminine that's there, the peacekeeper, the wise individual that's there. And I couldn't think of a better reason and a better person to be advocating on women's behalf through navigating through this period of time. Because as you mentioned, women are suffering and families are suffering.
I think the stats are that women are getting diagnosed at Alzheimer's at twice the level and rate than men are. And we could keep on going further and further. And there has to be a new level of health education and also personal development education that's there to help people navigate during this time. And not only are you going to be doing that, but you're doing that right now. And I just want to take a moment to acknowledge you.
Tell us a little bit about the book. You know, of course people can get it anywhere that books are sold. You know, who is this the perfect gift for? Besides getting it for themselves, who is this the perfect gift for? Thank you.
Lisa Bilyeu
This has been such a pleasure. It really is. For anyone that isn't living the life that they really want, period. It's like it can be any age, you can be doing anything if you're in the workforce and all you want is do is quit your job and you really want to be a stay at home wife and nurture your children, but you're not sure about, you're not sure about the feedback and you're worried that you're going to be judged in today's society, that, oh, my God, you choose to be a stay at home mom. No.
Live the life you want. If you feel like you need the confidence to speak up, you don't. You just need the book. So that gives you the tactical skills in order for you to then make that change. So anyone that is living a life where they're want to make a change and they don't know how and they feel like they need the confidence, this book is for them.
Dhru Purohit
Fantastic. And it really goes in any area of your life. By the way, I wrote this book as I was still living it, because I then had the imposter syndrome of being an author. So some, the publishers were like, oh, write a book. And I was like, oh, God, who's going to read my book?
Lisa Bilyeu
My book. No one's going to buy it. And so then I had the imposter syndrome. As I'm writing the books, I'm like, oh, I'm going to use these tactics and tips as I write my book to my sure that I don't stop. So it really is a book that's a rinse and repeat for anything you need in life.
It just gives you those stepping stones. Because when someone says, just do, you know, have, don't have the confidence and do it anyway, is not speaking to somebody like me who has such petrifying negative thoughts and anxiety that when you tell me, just do it anyway, it doesn't work. I need a blueprint. I need to know what I have to do today in order to get to the next step tomorrow. And that's exactly what the book is.
Dhru Purohit
Fantastic. Well, we're going to link to the book and the show notes. People can pick up a copy. And also please, please, please, today, subscribe to women of impact. You guys have like a few million on YouTube.
Congratulations on all the success. And make sure that everybody, especially my audience, that's perfectly in that demographic for these conversations that you're having, please be sure to subscribe. Lisa, bill you, thank you so much for being on the podcast. This is such an honor. I've watched your videos all the time, so it's so fun to be on the other side.
Yes, thank you so much.
Hi, everyone. Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app.
And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do to support this podcast is share with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called try this.
Every Friday. Yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year, I send out an easy to digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. We cover everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free, and get my weekly step by step protocols for whole body health and optimization. Click the link in the show notes that's called try this.
Or just go to druprowit.com that's dash Rupurohit.com and click on the tab that says try this.