We all know the importance of self-care for new moms… we need realistic solutions!
On this episode of the Learn With Less podcast, Ayelet speaks with Shannon Shearn, a health and wellness coach and personal trainer. Shannon is passionate about helping women (especially moms) regain control of their wellness, and prioritize their health and happiness.
Shannon is the owner of Savage Wellness, a remote coaching business to help bring affordable, high quality fitness, nutrition and wellness coaching to mamas everywhere, creating a community of support, motivation, and inspiration. She is a mom to two young children, and has made it her mission to provide realistic solutions that match a “new mom” lifestyle. She believes wellness is about being healthy in both mind and body, and encourages her clients to focus on living a healthy and happy lifestyle.
We speak about how to simplify self-care for new moms – making healthy choices in both the traditional sense and also for ourselves in this raw time during early parenthood, Shannon’s best tips for getting in more physical activity when you have tiny humans to care for (without having to go to the gym, find childcare, or feel guilty if you’re a working mom for spending more time away), and Shannon’s favorite resources for wellness and self-care.
QUICK ACCESS TO LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:
Wellness Perks just for Learn With Less listeners!
Shannon’s Savage Wellness programs and services
Wise Mama 30-Day Meditation Challenge – Exclusively for Moms
S. Well Moms Facebook group
“You are a good mom” affirmation mug (affiliate link)
Connect with us
Ayelet: Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest
Shannon: Website / Facebook / Instagram / Pinterest
Text transcript of the episode
Welcome to episode 54 of the Learn With Less Podcast. Today, I’m speaking with Shannon Shearn, a health and wellness coach and personal trainer. Shannon is passionate about helping women (especially moms) regain control of their wellness, and prioritize their health and happiness!
She is the owner of Savage Wellness, a remote coaching business to help bring affordable, high quality fitness, nutrition and wellness coaching to mamas everywhere, creating a community of support, motivation, and inspiration. Shannon is mom to two young children, and has made it her mission to provide realistic solutions that match a “new mom” lifestyle. She believes wellness is about being healthy in both mind and body, and encourages her clients to focus on living a healthy and happy lifestyle. Shannon, welcome to Learn With Less
Shannon: Thank you so much! This is exciting.
Ayelet: We’re so happy you’re here! I’ve asked you to come onto the show today to speak about some of the ways that we can simplify the notion of self-care, right, which as parents of infants and toddlers can sometimes feel like an impossibility! So, first, I’d love to hear a bit about you and what brought you to the kind of work you’re doing today. I understand that you are a reformed circus performer, turned mom and health coach! So, let us know – how did you get here?
Shannon: Yeah. Well, it’s kinda, you know, I’ve weaved my way over here, but… I won’t even go back into before I became a circus artist – I tried quite a few little careers here and there. And then, yeah! I ran away and joined the circus! I moved to Montreal, and then to Sweden. I was really enjoying pushing my body to its limits. I was in my late 20’s and didn’t realize this could be possible, and so just kind of enjoying this whole discovery of how you can re-invent your life so late – well, late-20’s is still pretty early!
But you know, you think you’re grown up and you’ve done all the things, and you had dreams, but they’re kind of on their way out, and so, it was just kind of this amazing experience that I got to do, having been a gymnast as a kid and it was awesome! And then, let’s see, I broke my leg… well, broke a lot of things, but the last one was my leg, and it just was… it was going to be a long road to get back to where I needed to be. And I was, at this point, 30, and just kind of thought, you know, that was fun, I have some stories to tell my grandkids, so I’m ready to settle down! And, luck would have it, there was a very handsome man waiting for me back in California…
Ayelet: Ha! So you could make those babies to make your grandkids! How lovely!
Shannon: Exactly! We got engaged, we got married, and we’ve known each other for so long it was kinda like, ok, now we know we work, so let’s just do this thing! We had kids and I was like, well, what can I do now? I really like helping people get healthy, so I just started doing that. Yeah, I worked a lot with the elderly population at first, I watched my grandparents age and all the issues that came up with them, with not having any strength built in.
So, I worked a lot with people with Parkinsons, and all sorts of “getting older issues.” And then, of course, when I had kids, it just kind of evolved, and then I started to work with moms. And that’s when I started really seeing the need for a different mental approach – this missing piece to fitness for moms. And it’s not just being skinny and being fit and being able to play with your kids – it’s about the whole mental aspect of being happy and fulfilled and making time for yourself, so you’re not punishing yourself in the gym. So, that’s how I started piecing this whole thing together!
Ayelet: So, let’s talk about this notion of taking care of yourself. Ok, so how, in your mind, can moms especially make healthy choices in both that traditional sense of sort of that eating and fitness and exercising piece, but also for ourselves in this raw time of early parenthood?
Shannon: Well, it’s hard – it’s hard even for me! I love being a mom and taking care of my kids, and so it’s just what I want to be doing. I want to take care of them, I want to cook healthy dinners, I want to be out with them and engaged with them, to hold them when they’re crying and snotty and let them barf all over me.
Like, I just want to do all those things, and I love it, but I’ve realized there would just be this breaking point where all of the sudden, I would just realize, “I’m covered in barf, I haven’t showered in a week, and I’m not doing anything for myself.” And so, I would hit these kind of blocks of just, “oh my god, I need somebody to help take care of me.”
And, I would see that in my clients, too, especially with the workouts and just, you know, “I couldn’t stop eating the cookies, and I was just so angry with myself,” and it was like, “no, no!” If you’re going to have cookies, be happy about it! You don’t have to be angry with yourself!
So, I realized there was a lot of self-talk that came into the picture, and just kind of teaching people (myself included) how to allow yourself to take care of yourself. So, I started with little things. We do breakfast, I clean up from last night, and then, I sit and drink a hot cup of coffee. And I tell my kids, “no, I won’t play with you.” And at first, they were like, “um… what?” And I just said, I need to drink this coffee. I did my stuff for you, now you can play, I’m going to sit right here, I’ll talk to you, but I’m not getting up out of this chair until I finish my coffee.
And now, you know, I just say, “I’m not done with my coffee yet,” and they say, “ok!” and then they keep playing, and it’s – you know, it’s easy! It’s hard to make that effort, but it’s easy once you start, and they get it, and they see you being happy and prioritizing you a little bit, and you’re needs. And they start to understand like, “oh hey, she’s a person, too, yeah.” So anyway, it benefits the kids too, and that’s what I really started seeing. And that’s where you can start talking to mamas too about, hey, this is also for the kids.
Ayelet: Yeah, that’s a really good point, because when little people see us doing things for ourselves, that shows them that we can all do that! So, but your kids are a little bit older – not older-older, but tell us about your ages of your kids?
Shannon: Matthew just turned five in February, and Jason turned two in November, so, yeah.
Ayelet: So, what about when they’re slightly littler, smaller. What are some of the other kinds of things that you can talk to us about, the kinds of self-care strategies that you like to practice or suggest to new parents.
Shannon: Well, I coach a lot of parents, I coach a lot of really new moms, so I definitely have a lot of tips and strategies that I use for having infants around because you can’t just walk away, you can’t tell them no… I mean, you can, but… they don’t get it.
Ayelet: If we’re talking about ‘best practice,’ here…
Shannon: So yeah. What I try to talk to new moms about is celebrating small successes and realizing that you have control. So, we kind of talk about taking back control of your health and saying, you know, I might not be able to get to the gym, I might not be able to shower this… week, but I can drink enough water today. I can take a multi-vitamin. I can, you know, just these little baby steps!
I can hold this baby, and I can do 15 squats. You know, just little things that help you see that you’re in control, and that you can do things that benefit your health, so that when you do eat that bag of cookies (because you’ve been breastfeeding all night), you can say, “but look! Look at all these healthy choices I did make, and I just needed that!” I just needed some cookies, and I do feel better, and now I’m gonna take the baby for a walk, and drink my water, and take my multi-vitamin! So I think helping kinda give permission, is a big, big part of that early parenthood thing.
Ayelet: Yeah! In all senses of the word, I think! I mean, it’s like we need to give ourselves permission to take care of ourselves, to take a nap, like, why do we forget all this? Well, of course, because we’re sleep-deprived and we’re slightly insane!
Shannon: And they’re so cute!
Ayelet: And they’re so cute! You just want to look at them. I want to know… alright, so you’ve been giving us the example of the cookies. What are your things? Do you like cookies, or do you..
Shannon: Actually, well, yeah, I love a home-baked chocolate chip cookie – that, to me, is probably the perfect food. But, you know, I’m a junk food girl. I love any processed meats and cheeses… which is just not that healthy. And one of the big things that I talk to moms about is taking those toxins – the preservatives, and all that junk that you’re putting into your body, and trying to get that out of there, because at least, if you’re not going to change the amount that we’re eating (which, we shouldn’t have to if you’re hungry, you should eat), but just clean it up. Eat a little cleaner.
But, that being said, we all have the things that we love, and I love French fries and I love hot dogs, and yeah – I just kind of develop little rules around those things. And so, I help people say, ok, if it’s Girl Scout cookies, here are some rules that we can set, you know, maybe only after 4 o’clock, and maybe stick to half a box of cookies, or you know, just sort of giving yourself… and so for example, I’ll eat French fries once a week, and that’s it.
And if I’ve had my French fries for the week, then I don’t have them again the next day, that’s it. But I know that I’m allowed to. So, just having that feeling that I’m not sneaking this and I’m not doing something that’s not good for me, I’ve got a rule, and I’m sticking to it, and I can still eat my French fries, and be healthy, too!
Ayelet: Nice! I love that. Ok, so let’s just take a little break to hear a word from our sponsors, and then we are going to hear a few tips and resources from Shannon about her favorite ways to get in more physical activity and other self-care when there are little people to care for!
Ayelet: Alright, Shannon. Let’s hear those tips. We’d all like to get out of the house and get to the gym, but you know, faced with expenses and the notion of finding childcare, even the working-mom guilt of spending even more time away from our kids, what are some of your tips for new parents to get in both more physical activity or other wellness strategies when there are young kids at home?
Shannon: That is a great question. And that is one of the reasons why I started this – because my kids, they don’t go to daycares, they’re pretty clingy, they cry and then they come get me and say, “hey, your kid’s been crying for 15 minutes, don’t come back.” So, I had to get creative! I love taking the kids out for walks, I live somewhere where that’s pretty easy!
So, that’s another thing, I mean, it also depends on where you live. But, I get the kids out, with the older kid, I put him on his bike or his scooter so that we can kind of move the pace along. And at first, I would kind of just tell him, hey, this my workout, so we’re gonna go kinda fast, and he would want to stop and smell flowers or, you know, look at the dead animals on the road, but you know, I would just kind of say, you know you could be in day care, but you’re here with me, and let’s have fun doing my workout.
And then we’d go to a playground and they could play, and I would do some strength work on the playground, step-ups onto the little thing, and sometimes I can involve them in the game, like, I can do little peek-a-boos… And I think it just kind of helped me feel like I was getting something out of a time that they were really enjoying, too. So, you know, setting up little races and say, ok, I’ll race you to the end of the block – to get my heart rate up a little higher. So that’s one of my favorite ways to get kind of actually a more intense workout.
But other things I love to do are just, I keep a set of hand weights upstairs and one downstairs, and if the kids are playing nicely, I’ll just do a little circuit of exercise – and often times they’ll join me! And you know, just knowing that it’s ok to put the weights down and go help the kid. And so you’re not stuck in this, “oh, I’ve gotta get this workout in, and it’s gotta be 40 minutes.” It’s like, no, no, I squeezed in a set of bicep curls and did some push-ups over here, and did some squats.
So just kind of understanding it’s all about just little things that you can do! So just squeezing it in whenever you have a few minutes. One of my clients, she calls them her “potty squat-ees.” Every time she goes to the bathroom at work, she does a little set of push-ups against the counter, squats, some jogging in place – I can’t remember exactly what it is, but it takes all of a minute and a half, and she just does it every time she goes to the potty!
You know, creating little things like that. Little routines, little places where you can add them in, so I talk to clients and say, oh, “if you have to hold your baby all night…” well, maybe not at night, but during the day! You know, here’s some ways that you can get some exercise in with the baby, so just kind of staying active, and just realizing that making a choice to be active for five minutes is so much better than making no choice. And you, know, they all add up.
That’s what I do for activity. I just feel like a lot of, especially moms, just need to learn how to squeeze it in, and how to go from being someone who goes to the gym for two hours, three times a week, to maybe somebody who does 5 minute circuits, you know, everyday.
Ayelet: Mm-hmm. What other kinds of wellness or self-care other than physical exercise?
Shannon: Well, I recently started meditating. When I started doing these private programs for people, and kind of showing people how to get healthy in a certain amount of time, one of my first clients was really into meditating. And she’s like, “oh, well I do this every morning.” And I was kind of like, well I’m not really sure I can teach you much – because she’s already working out, she goes for runs, and so I didn’t think that I was able to teach her much, and she actually taught me about meditation. So I was like, if she loves this, let me try it.
I started just giving myself 5 minutes everyday. If I could just do a little 5 minute guided meditation, where I sit – and that was hard. It’s actually pretty hard to find 5 uninterrupted minutes a day. So, I started allowing myself to kind of do it during that coffee time. I’ll just sit, put some earbuds, close my eyes while the kids play. Sometimes if I get the luxury of going to the grocery store by myself, I will park in the driveway, and just sit and do a little meditation in the driveway, and so that was kind of cool! I just kind of got to this point of, ok! It’s kind of, I do feel better about myself, and having somebody else tell me what a great person I am and how much potential I have… is actually kind of working!
And then when I let it slide off a little bit, one day, I was getting really anxious, and, I think, you know, hormones, all that stuff, but I was having a really rough morning, and I yelled at the kids, and I couldn’t let go of that feeling of guilt that I had kind of snapped at them when I shouldn’t have. And I was sitting… I was about to just cancel work for the day, and I just sat in the car and I did one called like, letting go of frustration, letting go of things that make you angry, disappointment… and 5 minutes and I felt so much better.
Just taking those few minutes and the importance of self-talk, to me, I didn’t realize. So, I focus a lot on talking to my clients and even when they post in the group, “hey I did this… I wish I had gotten this in,” and just – no, no, no! You’ve got that, and that’s amazing. Just helping them understand how to speak to yourself and how to speak kindly and treat yourself with the respect that you would give to somebody else.
Ayelet: Nice. And I love the example because a few minutes ago before we went live, we were talking, and you were holding your coffee mug, which says what, exactly?
Shannon: You are a good mom. And then under, it says, “that’s all.”
Ayelet: Aww, that’s lovely. Simple, little things like this. I mean, if you need to write that on your coffee cup or on your refrigerator, that’s great. And I think, I mean, it’s very easy… you and I were talking before we went live with this, about how, maybe before we felt… before we were ever in such a vulnerable state, like motherhood, maybe we would have guffawed at silly little things like that, but now – they are simple tools that we can use!
Shannon: Yeah. I mean, imagine somebody created a coffee mug telling me I’m doing a good job. It really helps make my day! Because little kiddos aren’t going to do that.
Ayelet: That’s great. Right – and your partner may or may not, depending on the kind of day he had!
Shannon: Yeah.
Ayelet: Great! Awesome – so what are some of your favorite resources for wellness and self-care. You mentioned these guided meditations, obviously some great workouts. Where can we find some of these good ideas?
Shannon: So, I have a ton of good resources, it’s sort of how I run my whole mama groups. I love telling people to go find a class, if they can find it. Even if you can’t get to it very often, it’s a great way to just say, you know, life’s been crazy, I haven’t been getting in my workouts, I’m just gonna go to that class. So, finding a place that you know you can always kick start yourself back up again.
And, you know, not necessarily always looking at what the workout is, but the community, the feeling of what it feels like being there – because, I think there’s a big difference between, for example, Soulcycle and Barre3. So, just kind of, what do you want to get out of it. So feeling good about being there, not just getting the workout in.
I also, let’s see, oh, I love that 30-day meditation challenge – we might be able to post a link somewhere at some point.
Ayelet: Yup, I can include those in the show notes.
Shannon: I’ll send that over to you. There’s a 30-day meditation challenge that one of my good friends wrote up, and she just wrote a new one, just for moms. And it’s 5 minutes of meditation that come to your inbox everyday. I love that. It’s a great way to just get started. Let’s see. I have a group that’s all just geared towards helping mamas find the resources that they need in their communities, and that’s called S.Well Moms, and my website is https://www.besavagewell.com.
But yeah, other resources… I always say get a cute water bottle and just carry it around with you wherever you go. It’s so, I’m a visual person, obviously, I love having little things that remind me to have fun and be active, and having a cute water bottle reminds me to drink water.
Ayelet: The little things, they add up!
Shannon: All the little things, yeah. And just finding your little go-to’s that you like. Like, find a healthy snack that you like that’s kind of good for you. For example, I love Knudsen cottage cheese (I don’t know how you pronounce it), which is not, you know, it’s not the “good stuff.” It’s probably full of hormones and, whatever-whatever, but it’s relatively healthy! So when I want a treat, I’ll treat myself to that. So finding little things like that, too, is always important – over French fries!
Ayelet: Right! We’re talking about comparative successes and achievements! This is great. Start small – lovely. That’s great! Thanks so much, Shannon! And thanks to all our participants of the Learn With Less® Curriculum Online Program for families who are listening here, live. We’re about to continue the discussion and open up for a Q&A session for you guys in just a minute. For everyone else listening at home or on the go, thanks so much for joining us, and we will see you next time.