The Body Effect with Dawn Cuckow

Today's guest is Dawn Cuckow, author of "The Body Effect" and qualified nutritional therapist. We will discuss ways to reduce stress so that your body is able to release excess belly fat.

Dawn works to help clients discover their unique path to fat loss, craving control, and end overeating. Visit Dawn's website to get your own personalized blueprint today!

Connect with Dawn:
On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DawnCuckow.TheBodyEffect/
On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cuckowdawn/
Online: https://www.dawncuckow.com/
Find her book and more: https://linktr.ee/dawncuckow


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

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Magic Barclay 1:01

Welcome back to a magical life. I'm your host magic Barclay and I'm today joined by Dawn Kal. Dawn is a qualified nutritional therapist and author of a radical new book aimed at readers who want to discover their unique. Path to lasting weight loss, it's called the body effect and the book has already become a best seller on Amazon it's for people who want to get to the root causes of why their body is blocking their weight loss, and her approach helps you discover what's triggering cravings and belly fat, and then target these imbalances. So it becomes so much easier to lose weight and sustain it. Oh my goodness. I'm so glad I'm talking to you, Dawn kow. Welcome. Thank

Dawn Cuckow 1:47

you so much for having me here.

Magic Barclay 1:48

Magic pleasure. Now, before we get into the questions, that just sounds great. That bio. So what are the main things that block weight loss?

Dawn Cuckow 2:03

Well, I think for most people is either cravings or you want to eat more than you actually need. There's a desire overeat. Or sometimes the internal messengers in your body are just telling you to store fat or to store belly fat. So whatever you do, it seems to be impossible to shift that weight.

Magic Barclay 2:22

I think I fall into the third one there, but we'll get more into that. Now. I always ask the same three questions to my guests. And I'm amazed by the array of answers I get. So let's just go for those right now. And the first one is what can your expertise do to accelerate health? Not just the physical, but the emotional and spiritual health of a person.

Dawn Cuckow 2:47

Okay, well, this approach is actually a very holistic approach. So it's about bringing your body into balance, but first of all, you have to discover what the imbalances in your body are. And many people find that a lot of people have a lot of shame around their overeating or they beat themselves up about it. But when you discover that it's. An imbalance in your body. That's triggering those cravings. That's triggering you to overeat. It helps you to become more compassionate to yourself and it can take away the shame around your overeating. And when you bring your whole body into balance, you just feel better. This is whilst it's a about weight loss when it's about really about health and bringing your body into balance. And when you bring your body into balance, you just feel better. Everything improves your energy, improves your well, your whole wellbeing, improve.

Magic Barclay 3:36

Exactly. And this is why holism itself is so important. Not going to ran here, listeners, you know how I feel about modern medicine, but the reductionism technique just doesn't work. Whether it's for your health or for your weight loss, you can't look at your belly fat and say, that's something in isolation. It's a symptom of something else. So what is this something else? And then what is up the change from that? And then what is up the change from that? And this is why holism and treating holistically is so important.

Dawn Cuckow 4:14

Absolutely.

Magic Barclay 4:15

Yes. Now look, we discuss wealth here a lot on, and many people think wealth is just the financial, but you can't have financial wealth without personal and emotional wealth. So what would be your top three tips to creating wealth?

Dawn Cuckow 4:33

Well, for me, I would, of course, of what I do, I would focus on bringing your body into balance so that you are just feeling better in general. So my first tip would be to have some protein with each Mer and snack, because that helps stabilize your body. It helps stabilize your energy levels. It helps balance your blood sugar levels. Um, my second tip would be to do with fats and it would be to eat the fats that are anti-inflammatory. And to reduce the fat that are inflammatory. So that's increasing fat, like the O omega three fats in oily fish, cheer, seed, flaxseed, and reducing the fat in foods like meat and dairy. That doesn't mean you have to cut them out, but just eat a bit less of them because that helps your whole wellbeing. It's um, if you've got inflammation, you're probably not gonna be feeling so good. You might have inflammatory conditions like arthritis, but also. Obesity is an inflammatory condition. And so it helps you. It helps you get outta that cycle of if you have inflammation in your body, you're more like to gain weight. And if you gain weight, your body is more inflammatory. So the fat you eat are really important. And my third tip. Is to fill half your plate at mealtimes with vegetable or salad. And there's lots of reasons for this. I mean, vegetables contain lots of nutrients that are really, really good for you. It can also help you to eat less, or if you eat the same portion size, you consume less calories. So there's so many benefits for increasing your vegetables.

Magic Barclay 6:10

Exactly. Right there. Now listeners with proteins. You really, really do need proteins of some sort in your body. And the reason is your immune system seeks proteins, right? So a healthy immune system keeps you healthy in general. That helps you build your wealth. That helps you build a wealth of. Your finances because you're able to go and make money. It helps you build your personal wealth because you feel stronger. Everything is operating correctly and eating fats is very important because fats or lipids actually coat your nerves. Now you can't have personal wealth. If your nervous system is shot, it just doesn't work. And having your nerves functioning properly and having good vitamins and minerals in your system will actually help you function every day and stop working via your adrenals. And we have spoken about the stress adrenal connection before on this podcast, but you can't. Find your wealth, no matter what sort of wealth it is, if you are purely running on cortisol adrenaline and nor epinephrine, it just won't work. You'll end up burning out. We've spoken to burnout coaches here before, you know, you're just chasing your tail. If you don't have nutrients, that's what I'm saying. That's it in an up shop. Now look, we do talk about weight loss here. A. And this is what I really wanna delve in with you now, Dawn, I guess my question has a few parts. The first part is, have you ever battled your weight? Because I think many people out there think, you know, as coaches, we've never battled our weight and if anyone's listened to the podcast, they know that that's been pretty much a lifelong thing for me. Um, but have you ever battled your. If, so what was the trigger to lose it? And what can you offer the listeners re to, and what can you offer listeners to reduce stress? Which we know is a key issue in weight loss issues.

Dawn Cuckow 8:40

So the first part of that question, have I ever battled with my weight? I actually had an eating disorder for several years. In fact, I had disordered eating for many, many years, which ended up in bulimia for a couple of years. So I had a terrible relationship with food. So for me, it wasn't so much about my actual weight, but more about my feelings, about my weight and my relationship with food. So what was the trigger to, to deal with that? Well, there wasn't actually really a specific trigger. It's just a really, really horrible way to live. And I didn't want to live caught up in this, in this way of being, I wanted to, to feel well physically, emotionally, I, I didn't want so much of my emotional energy being taken up with food. So what can I say to listeners about stress and managing their stress? Well, there's so many different answers to these questions, but from a nutritional point of view, what I would say the most important thing to do is to balance your blood sugar levels. Because when your blood sugar levels drop too low, then you release stress hormones, and your body doesn't distinguish between the stress hormones. It releases because you're in life threatening danger and the stress hormones from low blood sugar levels. So by, by managing your blood sugar levels and keeping them in balance, it can help your body to deal with stress.

Magic Barclay 9:56

Now, just on. Blood sugar levels. Many people are insulin resistant due to high levels of stress for so long. Cause we know that cortisol itself is a sugar. So how would you suggest people nutritionally help to get around that insulin resistance?

Dawn Cuckow 10:21

There's a number of different things you can do. It's again, coming back to fat. Some fats are help increase insulin sensitivity, and some fats make your body more insulin resistant. So the fat that can help increase insulin sensitivity are the mono unsaturated fats, such as olive oil, the fats in avocado and the O omega three fats are also very good. And again, we've talked about them earlier and the saturated fats in particularly in red meat and dairy, they're the ones that make your body less sensitive to insulin.

Magic Barclay 10:59

Great. Thanks for that. Now, if someone is dealing with belly fat and it's that belly fat, that no matter what they seem to do, it hangs on it just literally hangs on it stays there. It's not going anywhere apart from eating good fats, reducing. Sugars having a good array of vitamins and minerals. Is there something else they can do?

Dawn Cuckow 11:26

Okay. So with belly fat, I think with, with whatever you've got going on in your body, whether it's belly fat or cravings or whatever, it's really important to know what's triggering it for you. So, two of the key reasons we've put on belly fat are stress and female hormone imbalances. And the reasons for this is that if you are stressed, then your body's on stress alert and your liver can convert fat back to, um, sugars to fuel the fight or flight response. So storing it around your belly means that it's close to your liver, so your body can access it quickly. So you need to calm your system down. So. If stress is the reason for your belly fat, then find what it is really important to find a way to relax. It's so important to take time out, to relax, to look after yourself. That's not a luxury it's actually essential for our health. Um, the other key reason, I mean, there's a number of reasons why you may be storing belly fat, but another really common one is female hormone imbalances when your Eastern levels drop, which is really common as you reach a perimenopause, which is why we get that middle aged spread. Um, your fat cells, particularly belly fat can produce estrogen to boost your declining levels. So there's a number of things that you can do to help balance your female hormones. We've talked about balancing your blood sugar, which is really important for stress. It's really also really important for female hormone imbalances. Another thing that you can do is to include foods that contain fight two estrogens. So they are plant estrogens and they're in foods like, soy fermented soy. So that's tomorrow Tempe. Tofu isn't fermented, but it can be fermented by your gut. Bacteria provided your gut bacteria are working well, then you also get things like beans and lentils. They're a very good source of phytoestrogens. Some herbs are good sources of phytoestrogens, like Sage past these cinnamon. So you can do really simple things like put the cinnamon on if you have porridge or cereal have cinnamon on, on your cereal in the morning. Uh, so there's a number of different things that you can do.

Magic Barclay 13:38

There's some great tips there. Listeners. Now, Dawn people can find you on Facebook at Dawn cook dot the body effect on Instagram at cook Dawn. And your website is Dawn cook.com. That's D a w N C U CK. O w.com. We love freed here for the listeners, and I know you've offered a couple of great PDFs to me. Where can the listeners find that? Can you pop that on your website or can they email you, how would you want them to find that PDF?

Dawn Cuckow 14:17

Um, they can access them via my website or via Instagram. Actually, they go to the buyer at the top.

Magic Barclay 14:25

That's great. Dawn. It's been great having you if it's okay. Um, we'll get you back in our next episode, cuz I really wanna explore this book. The body effect listeners that was your episode. 1, 1 7 Dawn will be back in one eight, and we're going to learn all about the body effect for now. Thank you for your time. Go forth and create your magical life.