The Power of 5 with Gregory Anne Cox

Today's guest, Gregory Anne Cox, is a certified health and weight loss coach for women over 50 who want to take a rebellious approach to aging. Greg also used to coach for people who spoke at masterminds to help them pitch and speak better.

The foundational pillars of Greg's health coaching is called the Power of 5:

1. Fall in love with fat. Fat keeps us full, doesn't raise blood sugar, and is the best source of energy.
2. Eat protein at every meal and snack.
3. Learn to balance your blood sugar. Try eating fewer meals or possibly intermittent fasting to avoid spikes.
4. Rest. Find a way to get enough sleep.
5. Move. Find more opportunities to move throughout the day - it doesn't have to be an hour at the gym.

Connect with Greg:
Online: https://rebelliouswellnessover50.com/power5/
On Facebook: https://facebook.com/rebelwell50
On Instagram: https://instagram.com/rebelwell50
Connect with Magic:

A Magical Life Podcast on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amagicallifepodcast/

On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wholisticnaturalhealth/

Online: https://wholisticnaturalhealth.com.au

A Subito Media production

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 1:00

Welcome back to a magical life. I'm your host magic Barclay. And today I'm joined by Gregory and Cox. Greg is a certified LA. Weight loss and health coach for women over 50, who want to take a rebellious approach to aging. This means finding alternative ways to stay well, look, and feel great and avoid prescription pad medicine when possible. It means adopting the mindset of possibility at any age, letting go of shame and resentment and exploring the inner world of the soul. Greg says she's not all woo. Her work. Rooted in science. I love that she's fun, articulate and speak on a long list of things. And listeners, if you saw the guest sheet, Greg sent me back, you would know that's true. This is going to be an amazing episode. And in fact, we're going to do a couple of episodes here with Greg. So without further ado, welcome Gregory and Cox.

Gregory Anne Cox: 2:02

Thank you so much. Magic Barclay. I appreciate you having me.

Magic Barclay: 2:06

Absolute pleasure. Now just before we, uh, get into things, I just asked you off air about your name. So maybe you can explain that to the listeners because I think it's just beautiful.

Gregory Anne Cox: 2:20

Oh, thanks. My grandmother's maiden name was Gregory and I was born into an Irish Catholic family and I was born on St. Gregory's day. And so they felt like that was confirmation that my name, even though it was not a common girl's name should be Gregory.

Magic Barclay: 2:40

That's so great. I just, I love that. Okay. Now, in your show notes that you sent me, you said you have for babies and chickens, what sort of chickens do you have?

Gregory Anne Cox: 2:53

We have all sorts as my English husband would say. We have chickens for eggs. My husband manages a property for a family and we have an organic garden, a flower garden, and the hens, because of course. Everybody loves fresh organic free range, chicken eggs. And w it's kind of like a sanctuary too, because as they get older, they don't always keep laying, but they're never going to leave their forever home until they're ready to cross over.

Magic Barclay: 3:20

I used to have some chickens and the same thing. You know, they'd stop playing and just live out their days in peace. And it was just so lovely. They're amazing people.

Gregory Anne Cox: 3:30

I can just stare for hours. If I need a break from work, I just go up and sit there or stand there and look at the chickens. And they have really funny little personalities, some of them.

Magic Barclay: 3:40

They do, and their personalities are so much bigger than they are.

Gregory Anne Cox: 3:44

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. We have these hens that are gigantic when you look at them, but if you were to pick them up, there's no weight to them. They're just all feathers.

Magic Barclay: 3:53

Yes listeners, if you ever wanted a really intelligent pet, that really doesn't need a lot from you, think about a chicken or two. Now, Greg, you've got two businesses. So your first one is rebellious wellness over 50. And so that's health coaching, and then you've got, be more marketable, which has copywriting for coaches and those impersonal development. Tell us a little bit more about that one.

Gregory Anne Cox: 4:22

Well, I came into the world with a love of words and I would say. Puzzles. So all of this over the years became a way to find the right words. I used to coach, for people who had masterminds, I was the coach for the speakers and the pitches, and it all had to do with words. And I would hear over and over again, people that I knew had brilliant things to offer services and products, and they all sounded alike. And so I thought there has to be a better way, but how do we make people different? Well, the puzzle for me became that. How do I make somebody different? When there could be five people in a room of 20, that really are either a life coach or a health coach or a lawyer. And so I developed a way to discern, what is different for people? And I thought I have to offer this because nobody it's not that nobody teaches copywriting or nobody teaches marketing, but I knew that I had a special connection to the coaching industry. I've been a coach for 17 years and I understand how hard it is to differentiate ourselves, but how important it is for the world to have the voices and the services of those coaches that are really up in their game. Doing really, really well. So I hung out a shingle and I just started doing it and I have been, um, it's been great. It's been about I don't not quite four years and I really enjoy it as an adjunct to health coaching.

Magic Barclay: 5:52

That's great and message to all the coaches out there as a podcast host, I've actually had to knock a few back because when I interview them, they're just giving me buzzwords. They're just giving me ad words, Google Edwards in the whole half hour that I'm chatting with them. Please don't do that. See someone like Greg and really get your niche market and your niche message out to my listeners properly. Please stop doing listeners on podcasts, a disservice by not telling them what you're really about and only telling them the words that you think they want to hear.

Gregory Anne Cox: 6:30

I think it's great. And if I could add one thing, because people will say, okay, great. How do I do that? The question that I always ask first and before niche before any of that is what do you really do? And most people will say, well, I'm a coach. Okay, great. But what do you do for people? Health coaches provide a way for people to reach a goal, a health goal, money coaches provide a way for people to either save or buy a house or whatever it is magic. You provide a service that isn't just what it says on your, in your tagline or on your resume. Right? So we have to figure out what it is we actually do. And you can build from there.

Magic Barclay: 7:10

Totally. Totally. All right, let's get into this, Greg. So we do talk about healthier when we're talking health. It's not just the physical, which many people think it is, but also the emotional and spiritual. So what can your expertise do to accelerate health?

Gregory Anne Cox: 7:28

I would say that accelerating health really starts with a deep conversation with the person who is getting little hints, maybe symptomatic, uh, uncomfortable in their body. Those are all ways that the body talks to us and people say, oh, listen to your body. I don't know how to listen to my body. You do, and how to listen to your body. You just, I think dismiss that what you are getting a hit on is real. So what I would say. In order to accelerate your health, you have to say, I'm not in as good a place as I would like to be, or this is really gone too far. I've put it off way too long. Now is the time. And then from there you can start a journey towards whatever health goal it is or health condition you have to reverse, but it is a spiritual journey. It all, any kind of change that we take on is personal development, because many, many things, including the culture around. I would rather, we just stay the same.

Magic Barclay: 8:29

Very much so. Now in your show notes, you talk about the power of five. Can you explain that please?

Gregory Anne Cox: 8:35

Sure. The power of five is the five pillars that I have, or all these years of coaching and working with women and myself, the five pillars of attention, where we have to put our attention in order to maximize our heads. And wellbeing and quite frankly, add more life to the years that we have left rather than decline. Because it's possible, although I don't believe that age equals decline, it can happen if we aren't in control of how we think about and do for our lives. So the first pillar, and really this is in a circle, so I'm going to start with one, but they all relate to the other. So don't feel like, oh, I don't want to start with food. The first thing is not food in general. It's fall in love with fat. Fat is the thing that keeps us full. Fat is the best source of energy for the body fat doesn't raise our blood sugar, which is one of the pillars, and that is a really important thing. As we get older. Uh, because it raises inflammation, inflammation we now know is, responsible for, or the result of many of the lifestyle symptoms that we suffer or the diseases that follow. The next thing is eat protein at every meal and snack. I don't want people to think they have to have a steak for dinner and hamburger for lunch and eggs for breakfast. It simply means even for vegetarians, the best formula for food is fresh, healthy, alive, organic, like a half a plate of that. If you like grains, if you do well on grains, not everybody does some whole grains. And then three to four ounces of protein. Some people can eat more. I think women in general don't get enough, but, um, protein necessary for every single cell in the body. It is the building block from which all things stem. Good heart, good bones, good brain, et cetera. The third is learn to balance your blood sugar. Now that sounds like a science experiment. A lot of people don't want to think about science and chemistry. It's not like that. If you get cravings right after you eat, if you get tired after you eat, if you're hungry right after you eat, if you want sugar throughout the day, pretty much your blood sugar is out of balance because when the blood sugar is after we eat blood sugar goes up within 90 minutes to two hours. It should come back to baseline. If it's not doing. The possibility for diabetes, as many people will have already understood too much. Blood sugar means too much. Insulin leads to diabetes and other things. Again, inflammation, heart disease. So balancing your blood sugar. If you start with protein and fat and then add that half a plate of fresh, either cooked or raw veggies and some grains, you don't have to worry about blood sugar. Unless of course you're eating throughout the day. I know some people believe in, you know, six meals a day, whatever works for the person. Is the best program to get on. But I would say that if you're having blood sugar issues or cravings or crashes during the day, try to eat just a couple of times, three times a day, or try intermittent fasting, which I'm not going to go into. Cause it's too long a conversation, but the fourth one is. And rest, we have to find a way to get enough sleep. And as we age, people think they need less sleep. That's not true. We still need the same seven to eight hours. Most people, not all, maybe 10% of the population can really live on three to four, five hours. And they've discovered genes that prove that that is okay for that population. For most of us, we need between seven and eight. We still need that as we age. And I think that people give up and they get frustrated and now I just can't sleep. I've tried everything. I bet you haven't tried everything and I'm not being critical, but there are so many ways to enhance the possibility of a good night's sleep. And one of the things that I have to say is worrying about when you're not sleeping is one of the worst ways to get back to sleep. So try to entertain yourself with some, you know, a podcast or aroma therapy or something to relax you and take your mind off. If you can. The fact that it's now 3:00 AM and you're still not seeing. The fourth one. Oh. And rest, make sure that you rest when your body needs rest, just take a nap, take a sit, take a walk in the fresh air, whatever feels restful for you. Meditate. We have to make time for these things. It's just they're non-negotiables. And the last one, and here comes to the part that nobody likes to hear his move and notice. I didn't say exercise. Exercise is great for those people that like to go to a class or get on their bike. And they say, I'm going to do this for an hour. But exercise is something that we tend to think of as a box to be ticked. And then we're done for the day. What we're learning now is that movement throughout the day is just as important, if not more. So for most people to stay strong and stable as they age. And you want to get your heart rate up. If you can. Now, for people that are not able to get their heart rate up through cardio, there are other ways to do it. Chair yoga is a great one. Uh, lots of different options, but those are the five things. So fall in love with fat protein at every meal and snack, get some rest, move your body and learn to balance your blood sugar.

Magic Barclay: 13:32

I love that. And protein at every meal could be as simple as adding some collagen into your, your water or your juice. It doesn't have to be ate meat and eggs. Right, right. And certainly with movement, incidental movement folks, as we're getting older, I mean, jeepers, I'm almost 50 in a couple of months. I'll be 50. As we get older, things just don't move the way we expected them to for the past 50 years. So getting out there and go. Instead of getting something to kneel on, make sure that you're standing and then squatting to do the weeding and then standing again, there's incidental movement. Make sure that instead of bringing your compost bin closer to you, that you make smaller trips with handfuls of compost or weeds to go in there, like there's things that you can do to add to your movement every single day. Absolutely. Great. Now we do talk about wealth here. So wealth is not just financial, as the listeners know, can be emotional wealth, personal wealth, but we do talk financial as well. So what are your top three tips, Greg to creating wealth?

Gregory Anne Cox: 14:53

Hmm. If I, I'm assuming we're talking to entrepreneurs and I would like to say that the wealth of. The power of five could easily be translated into five things for a successful business or creating wealth. And again, creating wealth doesn't necessarily mean selling a service or selling a product. Um, lots of people are making money in other ways, but let's just imagine that we're talking to somebody who has a service or a product to sell. They're a solopreneur. The most important thing again is. Take a, an assessment of where you are in the skills that it takes to run a business on your own. Not everybody comes into the world with business skills. Most of us don't, but they are learnable. And I don't want to suggest that it's Google and look for the template or swipe file. That's going to give you the copy. That's going to sell the thing. That's not what I'm talking to. If you're great at numbers, you probably don't need to hire a bookkeeper. You can do the bookkeeping and then get an accountant. If you're great at copy, you don't necessarily have to have a copywriter, but maybe you're not good at the backend. And you want a virtual assistant to help you, and then be realistic about what you have to spend. When I first left my career before this, I was a chef. I was working as a private. While I was getting my coaching certification and then working for the, uh, coaching company. And I really was so anxious to hang out my shingle that I thought I can't cook and do this at the same time. So I'm going to quit my cooking clients. Well, that was a really dumb thing to do because the company I was working for, I think I was making maybe five or$600 a week. Cause I was training and I had a mortgage and I had other responsibilities like everybody does. So I would say building wealth does not mean going into debt over your eyeballs. And then digging yourself out while you're trying to put a hundred dollars away in a SEP IRA, or, you know, save some money for the future. There are times when you want it. I would say extend yourself beyond your comfort zone, but just be mindful that if you have a hundred dollars product and you want to sell one a day, that's a lot of marketing, unless you have a huge list of things. To get, if you lay out$5,000 on a course, what do you have to sell to get back that to make it worth your while? So I guess what I'm talking really about is mindfulness. And again, being honest with the things that we are, that we have when we start the business inherent in us to look at places we're not that strong and what can we do to bring somebody on that could help us with that. But wealth really, it's a discipline. It's like everything else, you know, and especially as we're getting. Some people are starting late in the savings game. I was one of them. So I'm mindful of the expenses of my business in a different way than I was when I first started, when I had way more years to save. So mindfulness and honesty and know your strengths, I guess.

Magic Barclay: 17:42

Exactly. And I think certainly for women, many of us do start late because whether it be divorce or, you know, once we've finished raising the kids, we kind of start close to 40, some of us to actually start accumulating wealth and really growing. At finances, but also our personal wealth. So we finally find out who we are once the kids are grown up, because before that, where so-and-so's mum or so-and-so's wife, and, you know, you get to, like I said, around the, the 40 ish mark, and you go, who am I? What am I doing? What do I have behind me? What do I have for the future? So I think they're really great things, especially for women too. Comprehend is that you can start at any point, but it's how you go about it.

Gregory Anne Cox: 18:37

Yes.

Magic Barclay: 18:38

Now we do talk about weight loss here, and we know that stress is often a key issue in weight problems, be it weight gain or weight loss. So I've got a long question here and. Let's just go for it. If you've ever battled your weight, what was the trigger to lose it? And what can you offer the listeners to reduce their stress?

Gregory Anne Cox: 19:03

This was a tricky question. Okay. I think that what triggers the desire to lose weight in a person is obviously personal, but it could also come from a physical. Or a practitioner of some kind, if we are faced with, um, one of the lifestyle diseases like diabetes, um, other ones that, you know, moral inflammation is not a disease, cortisol, insulin resistance, all kinds of things, then that that's a good trigger. But then that doesn't mean that the person really wants to get on board. Even when we say I want to lose weight, we may want and want and want what, what's the impetus, how do we decide? How do we go with. And I think one of the things, I was a chubby teen and almost into high school, into high school, but early years, first couple of second year. And the impetus for me to lose weight was that I felt out of place. And I really wanted to be more like my peers who were playing basketball and soccer and this and that. And it wasn't that I couldn't, I wasn't obese. I just didn't want to cause I was a lumpy dump. And so for me, it was an extrinsic motivation at that time. So we either have extrinsic, like maybe somebody is going to a wedding and they want a mother of the bride wants to look really great in a dress. They have two months, that's an extrinsic motivation trigger. Would you say intrinsic? Of course, listeners probably know these two differentiations is something inside of us just speaks to us and it may be, I want to be as healthy as I can. I have a grandchild on the way, or I don't want to be debilitated as I get older. I don't want to have to rely on other people. Those are intrinsic motivations and how you. Is if you're not really sure what your body needs, how, whether you run well on carbs or not, or more fat or less fat, then I would say, find somebody that you trust, who has done what you want to do. You know, a lot of coaches or programs out there, you don't know that that person has gone through what you're going to go. Like I wouldn't take a program from a 30 something guy about how to lose weight and he may be all buff and cute and adorable and on Instagram, not going to understand my body. So we have to be sure that we're giving ourselves a relationship with a person who really understands us no matter what they say they can do to help us. That was the first part of the question. What was the second part? Magic? How can people reduce this stress of stress? That's right. You know, stress. I am not a Buddhist, but I I'm listening to a, book on tape about a Buddhist psychogenic. And the Buddhist concept of suffering is holding on and he calls it clinging. And I do believe that that is one of the greatest stress producers in the modern age. And, you know, everybody gets older. I don't know a single person who doesn't have, I'm going to use air quotes or regret something we wish we had done differently. Maybe we're presently experiencing a family upset. Maybe there's COVID anxiety, all of these things. Are present for us in different ways. And if we hold onto the idea of the thing, it creates a lot of stress in the body. The thing is the thing that our bad relationship with one of our children or the divorce, we didn't want to go through the COVID that we have long symptoms from. Those are very real things happening in our life, but how we look at them and what we say about how they are affecting us or how they, how we will let them affect. Are definitely stressed producers. Now there are stresses we can control stresses. We can't, if you've got COVID you have long symptoms, there's nothing you can do to control those, but you can do everything in your power to support your body, to heal. If you have toxic people in your life, those are very stressful. I was just writing an article and rereading part of a book by a woman who was an ICU cardiac rehab nurse. And she talked about. So patients would come through heart surgery and be in anesthesia, completely out, not able to communicate. If somebody walked into the room like a spouse or a child that was a toxic relationship in their life, even though they were not apparently conscious, their blood pressure would go up. That's something we can control. We can control the toxic inviting. The persons. It's not easy. Maybe to tell somebody I'm done with you. I can't have this in my life anymore, but those are the decisions we have to make. What's worth more our health, our life, or keeping things in the status quo.

Magic Barclay: 23:36

And I think no matter where you are with religion, certainly some of the Buddhist teachings, some of the Hindu teachings. We'll both help you with reducing your stress. So we've all heard of meditation, but not many of us know that it doesn't have to be sitting cross legged on the floor saying, oh, you know, it can be in the garden.

Gregory Anne Cox: 24:00

It can be going for a walk. But just having that time where you're not overthinking where you're peaceful with yourself, no matter how that looks to other people. So for me, my meditation is. Lying on my bed with my legs up the wall and listening to eighties music. And my kids know when they come into my bedroom and the legs are up the wall. Don't talk, don't make a noise. Mum's meditating. That's hilarious. We've all got to do our own thing. Oh, absolutely. And I would say one thing about stress as it relates to weight loss. Cause I think that was where, how the original question was formulated. Uh, don't expect your body to do any weight loss on your time. It is absolutely crazy and possible, especially with hormones fluctuating in the body. So I say rather than setting a time goal set, and if you have a certain amount of weights, you know, I want to lose 20 pounds or I want to go from a size 14 to a 12, those are fine, but then don't put a timeline on it. What you want to measure is how much you're doing towards getting that weight off. I'm going to walk five days a week. You can measure. But you can say, I'm going to walk five days a week and lose five pounds. You may, but you may not. And then you'll be disappointed. So measure what you can control,

Magic Barclay: 25:22

Agreed. Now you do have a book and you actually address all of this. So the book is called your genes. Do not determine the size of your genes. Now tell us a little bit more about that.

Gregory Anne Cox: 25:34

Yes. I, that book sort of download, you know, people say, oh, it's just downloaded to me. I was, um, in a speaking program and they said one of the, uh, qualifications was you have to agree to write a book. I thought, how bad could it be? Sure. And then, and I was writing a lot in those days, uh, for my original rebellious wellness business. So I had a lot of information and I was really angry about a lot of it. There was so much and still is still are so many. Uh, truths, I'll call them about weight loss and health and hormones and the transition from perimenopause and menopause. And I thought, well, I'll just take that on. And I had a great experience. It was actually a meditation on the structure of the book. This person did a guided meditation on structuring your book. And it was amazing. It was an hour long. And once I did that, I literally had the bones of the book. And then of course it was, um, a matter of this. What was really going to help people, um, rather than just being a book of information and me being pissed off at the world of big pharma and big medicine. And it was there's, uh, there are the five pillars are in there, but I didn't realize they were the five pillars at the time, but I talk a lot about. Um, calories in don't equal calories out. So why can't I lose weight if I'm, you know, lowering my calories as well. A lot of it has to do with balancing blood sugar and what you're eating. And one thing led to another, and I was passionate about hormone replacement for women, because I know how, um, declining estrogen leads to a lot of the problems that we see in aging women, um, deterioration in the brain, the heart, the bone. And so I just, I checked in once I thought, oh, this is important for me. I would send out a survey or I would ask the people that are of my peers and people on my list when I'd see them, what else do you want to know? What can I put in there? So it really was a collective effort of what went in the book, but I call it the missing midlife manual because, and I'm rereading it because I'm either going to write another book or I'm going to update this one. A lot of it is true still to this day. And it's at least eight, nine years. Um, but sadly, a lot of the misinformation is still being touted by some of the biggest marketing companies out there. And so that's what we hear. And that's what, you know, the cholesterol leads to heart disease. It doesn't, there's no direct correlation and half the people that die of a heart attack have regular levels of cholesterol. So just those kinds of things were important for me to, to have a say in, um, for the public. I love that just on the cholesterol. Uh, message listeners. Cholesterol is actually your friend. You need it. So cholesterol or lipids or fats. Actually reps, all your nerves sheets and protects them. And the one thing that detects those cholesterol wrappings is viruses and also gram negative bacteria. And why they do that is they steal your cholesterol to protect themselves from your immune system. So, you know, that's the science behind cholesterol. Two second spiel. But you know, when you hear from doctors, cholesterol is not your friend. What it actually is. So really delve into the science, not the fed. Yes. Now we do love freebies here for the listeners. So Gregory, what is a freebie? You can offer our lovely listeners. I actually have two and they're both, um, one. Well, they're both on my website, but I have a separate page for the power of five. So the power of five is a five-day email course where I explain each of the power of five pillars. And then the last day I sort of wrap it up and let people know if they want to stay on the list, whatever. And that can be found@rebelliouswellnessoverfifty.com slash power five. It's also just at the bottom of the, under the header on my website. And I also have a tab on my website for the book. And there's a, you can get a download of, I don't want to say it's a free chapter. It's actually the, the introduction to the book, the theory behind it, the what went into it and who it's for. So you can go to rebellious wellness over fifty.com and click the book tab, and you can go there and get that information.

Magic Barclay: 30:00

Thank you so much now, listeners, you can, uh, jump onto the socials and find Greg there. So on Instagram at rebel wealth 50 also on Facebook at rebel. Well, 50 indeed. Now listeners, this was your episode, 97 in 98, Gregory. And we'll be back with us talking all things rebellious wellness for now. Listeners. Thank you for your time. Go forth and create your magical life.