The Modern LeadHer Way

[098] An Empowered Decision to Use Mounjaro as a Health Tool

• Emma Clayton • Season 4 • Episode 98

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Emma delves into the critical connection between health and effective leadership, sharing her personal journey with weight management and her recent decision to try GLP-1 medication as a tool for better health.

She covers how:
• Health is a fundamental pillar of the Modern Leader Success Roadmap
• You cannot be an effective leader with sub-optimal health
• The problem with exhaustion and burnout for women leaders in their 40s and 50s
• Emma's 30+ year journey with emotional eating and weight management
• The health impacts that drove decision-making
• The vision of being in the best shape of her life in her 50s – physically, financially, and impact-wise
• Her research-based decision to try Mounjaro (GLP-1 medication) as a tool
• How reduced "food noise" has improved focus and productivity
• Addressing underlying fatigue through functional health approaches
• Taking charge of health as an empowered leadership decision

If you want support with your health journey as part of your leadership development, book a discovery call to see how I can help you implement lasting change while breaking the habits of a lifetime: https://mlhconnect.youcanbook.me/

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Speaker 1:

This is the Modern Leader Way, the podcast for corporate career women who want to feel good on their way to the top. I'm Emma Clayton and I'll be sharing with you tangible advice to help you stop sacrificing your soul in the name of success and experience more balance, confidence and fulfilment both in and out of work. Hello and welcome back to another solo episode of the Modern Leaderway podcast as we near the 100th episode and second year birthday of the podcast. So thank you for being here, and I would love to hear if you have been here since the very beginning, like where are my diehard listeners at? Please tell me, because sometimes it feels like I am speaking into the ether and I have no idea who's listening. I can see some stats, I can get some numbers behind the scenes, but I have no idea who's out there unless you tell me. So I would love it if you could reach out to me and tell me you have listened to every single episode or you've at least tuned in every week for the last year or so. I would love to thank you personally. So please do reach out and let me know. And as we enter that 100th episode, I have a very special guest lined up actually to come on for that episode.

Speaker 1:

And there has been a theme running in the last few weeks, and over the next couple of episodes as well, as we near it, and that is that kind of theme of really taking a step back. Taking a step back to take a cold hard look at your life and the direction that you're heading and really evaluate whether or not you're on the right path. And when I say the right path, I just mean your path versus someone else's path, because it's so. It's so easy to find ourselves 20 years down the line, having followed a path that we thought we wanted, or at least someone else said they wanted for us, when we were perhaps too young to even like really know. And it's not until we stop that we go. Oh christ, yeah, like there must be more to life. If you've ever thought there must be more to life than this, then I would imagine it's time to get off that treadmill, get off the hamster wheel and work out how to get on your own path. So we are leading you with intention to the next few episodes where I'm going to be revealing the Modern Leader Success roadmap off the back of my Success Redefined workshop at Womanifest. So watch this space for that.

Speaker 1:

And one of those kind of real pillars of success when we think about the modern leader way is health, and this is the theme with the timeout retreats. It's that taking off that treadmill, giving you that pause, space to reflect and really connect back to that vision that you have for yourself. I actually worked with someone for a VIP day on Friday and she had a very clear vision of the future and that had been with her for a while and we were able to deepen it and like broaden it and bring senses into it, like smells and tastes and people and just life into this vision, and really build it out that way. But a lot of people don't actually know what it is that they want and the first thing I would say is, as you imagine yourself older with potentially grown-up kids and grandkids on the scene, or maybe you're no longer working in this older vision for yourself. The one thing that I'm guaranteed that you'll want to have to make sure that you have as you get older is your health. And even if we bring it back down into like the current time, right, the present moment today, we're all leaders here. We're leaders of our life if we're not leaders in our work. And I want to just be quite blunt with you and say you cannot be an effective leader if you have sub-optimal health.

Speaker 1:

And I have so many conversations with women who are exhausted. They're sleeping all weekend and not really enjoying life because they're so shattered from the week and they know that they need to prepare themselves to go back on Monday. I have so many conversations with women who describe themselves as burnt out and they're in their 40s or early 50s and this can't go on. Imagine, like how difficult it is to get through a week at the high standard of delivery and that like high functioning level of performance that you bring no doubt because you're here. Imagine how much easier it would be if you weren't burnt out, if you weren't exhausted, if you weren't battling tiredness and needing to nap all all afternoon. Imagine how much easier and how much better you would perform if you did have optimum energy levels for for a starter. And we get used to walking through life feeling a bit sluggish and a bit low on energy and having not had the best night's sleep. But actually that's not normal and it doesn't have to be that way. So you're gonna bet that in my one-to-one work with the women that I work with.

Speaker 1:

Health is high up there on the list. It's why it's one of the pillars of the Modern Leader Success Roadmap. And yeah, I just want to bring you along on my journey with health, because I don't claim to have nailed this yet and you know what. I don't have to have nailed it to be walking the talk, and this is what I want to share with you today Some decisions that I have made along the way over the last 10 years, not even just more recently, but to support myself in finding a way back to a healthy standard, to a healthy balance, to a healthy way of being and feeling in this body that I move through life with. All right. So this is a perfect time.

Speaker 1:

This episode actually falls on summer solstice or around the summer solstice, so we are at the official midway point where the sun is the highest in the sky. It's the longest day, so you're going to see the sun out for and hopefully you'll actually see it out We've had some really good weather at the moment for the longest and then we start to see the nights creep in again from here on in. We start to see the nights creep in again from here on in. So not to depress you, but just to give you that you know there's no better time than now to actually go. Oh, okay, we're six months into the year and where do I want to be in six months time? Like I still have six months of the year left. So how am I going to to utilize that? How am I going to make this work in my favor for the next six months?

Speaker 1:

So, as you know, I have been very open about my challenges. Let's just call it that my colorful relationship with food. I have done an episode I think it was just before Christmas, end of last year, 2024, confessions of a Secret Bindjita. That was the story of my life From about nine or ten. I would say. I have been a secret bindjita Not so secret in the last sort of ten years as I've been more and more open and honest about it and sharing my story. But certainly the journey I've been on with my body is one where I think it was 10 years ago. It was 2020. Yeah, it was 2015.

Speaker 1:

2016, when I was working with the health coach. Last week, you heard me talk about my retreat in Bali. That changed the whole trajectory of my life in 2017. Before that, I had been working with that health coach and that was the first kind of time in my 30s that I had really not necessarily calorie counted or counted points or restricted calories necessarily. I was counting macros but actually was eating an awful lot. So, in sort of obsessing over weighing protein and chicken breasts and seeing how much protein I could get in during the day, I was actually eating a lot. So I was really happy at that time because I could still eat all of my favourite foods, just as long as I ate more protein, like that was basically how it felt and I was in probably the best shape of my certainly my 30s, if not my 20s as well um, as I was cross-fitting and running. So that was around that 2015 kind of time.

Speaker 1:

And then in 2016 I, when I finished with her, I kind of realized that I was left with some of the similar traits around this obsession around food. Right, you're still counting macros at the end of the day, you're still trying to get in within three to five grams of protein like 150 gram protein goal for the day and it did create these kind of similar habitual patterns around food that I was trying to move away from by not counting, by not um, not counting calories, not counting points, not restricting all that kind of stuff. So I actually it was then when I stumbled across the body positivity movement and I started really looking at what I could do to unlearn some of the things that I had learned through my like early years, through my teens, from the influence of my peers, through magazines, what you see on tv, through the whole model like 90s modeling where we saw the painfully skinny models on our front pages of our magazines and everything to try and really unlearn that and appreciate the body that I'm in right now. And that set me on a journey really to start to love the skin I'm in. And my first iteration of my business actually was, whilst it was around how I felt in my work with anxiety and how I was a high functioning, high performing person with a generalised anxiety disorder diagnosed by a psychotherapist. A big part of that anxiety came from being very paranoid about being in a bigger body. And I would say I've been in a bigger body since my late 20s.

Speaker 1:

So in my 20s, after a heartbreak at 21, I started gaining weight Year on year. I probably gained a stone through my 20s and that was through a mixture of no longer exercising like I did when I was a late teen, like no more gymnastics, no more netball, no more going to the gym. I was working harder. I was in and out of relationships that weren't great I mean, there were two years at a time, most of them but they needed a lot of energy from me and, yeah, I guess I wasn't happy because I gained weight and I turned to food and I wasn't really cooking. At that time I didn't really know about nutrition. I was eating a lot of takeaways. I was drinking a lot like weekends involved a lot of alcohol, if not socializing in the week as well. So my 20s were like year on year, gaining weight. So I think I hit 30 and I was around the 17 stone mark and that's when I was in Tenerife.

Speaker 1:

I've told this story before. I looked at myself in the mirror, couldn't have been like less happy with what I saw or more unhappy should I say um, with what I saw in the mirror, and I was just like, how have I got here? But actually there was this voice, this overarching voice. It was like there is a better way to think and feel about yourself and it's not this. And I kind of said about my 30s thinking this is my time to really undo that, because I know that I meant to feel better about myself that this isn't it. And so my 30s was unlearning some of that stuff. It was learning about nutrition, learning how to cook, learning how to read food labels and to understand the difference between processed foods and like how to cook with natural foods. And um, that's when I came across Anna Marsh.

Speaker 1:

That's when I was like at my peak fitness for my mid-30s and um, and then, off the back of that, I did regain some weight because I got my last promotion. My whole kind of routine was upheaved and I was now commuting to London a bit more regularly. I was also traveling around the world quite a lot, very rarely at home. So CrossFit went out the window, my healthy habits went out the window and I started regaining the weight again. So I would say um, around that time I was working with Anna. I think at my peak I got down to about 15 and a half stone and um, that was starting to gradually come on as I took that last role and I think I was back to around the 17 and a half stone mark within a year.

Speaker 1:

So I was just like fed up of constantly, like putting in this effort only to regain the weight and just being in this cycle of restrict, restrict and then not necessarily even binge eating now, but just like these, these habits. What I would say was now I had these healthy habits, I knew how to cook, I knew how to put healthy food in front of me. I would eat very healthily and we do today but there's all the crap that would go on top of that. So when I was traveling through airports, you know, it was a perfect opportunity to pick up some, some chocolatey snacks or some um a prep bar or something like that, or drink milky coffee and all this stuff. So all the extras that went on top of the eating healthy probably meant that I was eating way above my maintenance calories and that's why I gained weight.

Speaker 1:

And at my heaviest ever I was at 20 stone and I have found myself through my 40s probably between 18 stone and 20 stone and that's a lot. That's a lot. That size wise dress size wise, I think at my heaviest I was. I was sort of needing a size 22, but for the last probably four or five years I've been around a size 18 slash 20 and again I was hitting my heaviest ever and was really not feeling great in my body.

Speaker 1:

So whilst I have learned to love the skin I'm in and you know you will find me unapologetically on a beach in the summer in my swimsuit. I wouldn't say I'd wear a bikini anymore, but certainly in a swimsuit I'd be. I'm happy to feel myself getting in in the sea, for example. Or I definitely don't shy away from seeing my body on camera. You see me all across my social media taking selfies and, um, you know being unapologetic from that perspective.

Speaker 1:

But I still don't feel great. And this, to me, is where I know I can. I can reach so many more people and impact so many more people if I am feeling so much better than I do now. So at the moment I have a certain level of impact and influence and presence and visibility, and if I felt even better, then I know I could have a bigger impact, a bigger influence, bigger visibility, and so where I've got to more recently is very much that in the last seven years I've had problems with my knees.

Speaker 1:

That is no doubt weight related. You know our knees carry us around this world and they take the brunt of all the action right, all the physical action they're taking the brunt of. So I have had meniscus tears, which is on the inside of the knee, on both sides now, seven years ago and again three years ago, and so I get a lot of inflammation around there. I have osteoarthritis which is just wear and tear. So that's not going to get any better. I think the tears have healed. As far as they can, I am very mindful of not overstretching and tearing them again, because I really don't want to be hobbling around. I no longer hobble as much as I used to. I do still think I walk with a bit of a limp, but anyway, my knees aren't great but they're really good at the moment, I must say. But that's one of the drivers for me to also want to feel good, because I want to really protect my knees that carry me through this life.

Speaker 1:

And the other thing is I was diagnosed a year ago with obstructive sleep apnea, moderate obstructive sleep apnea, which means I'm losing oxygen in my sleep, and I'm pretty sure 100% sure that it is weight related, because I used to hit 17 stone and then I would start snoring and Adam would start complaining, and for the last year or so we've actually slept in separate rooms because my snoring is unbearable to him and you know him being in the bed next to me, waking me up every five minutes because you know I'm losing oxygen 17 times an hour at my worst. It's unpleasant and neither of us are getting a decent night's sleep. So we now sleep better because we sleep in our own rooms. That works for us. It also works for sleep better because we sleep in our own rooms. That works for us. It also works for our energy types. We're in in human design. We're both manifestors, so we're non-energy types and we need to have our space to be able to really get a decent night night's rest.

Speaker 1:

So, taking a year for my follow-up on the sleep apnea and I now have a CPAP machine, which is one of these oxygen masks that you sleep in and I'm getting on with it for the first few hours and then, when I'm waking up for my two o'clock wee, I'm usually taking it off, so it's far from ideal. It's they're all weight that, like my knees and the sleep apnea, are weight related issues that I don't want to live with, and that's that could just be the start. Right as I near I'm now 46, as I near 50, I'm really conscious of my longevity and how I want to be mobile and flexible and functional into old age. So that is like my main motivator through my health. Now it's less about physically how I look to the outside world, and it's more like how I feel and then how that enables me to move through this life. So I have one vision, one goal, if you like, that is my driving force from here on in, and that is to be in the best shape of my life in my 50s. So I've got four years to get there, and when I talk about being in the best shape of my life, that's physically, fitness wise, mobility wise, but also financially and impact wise. So through my business, I want to be making the most money that I've ever made and I also want to be like that to be a reflection of the impact that I'm making with the amount of women that I'm working with and who I'm impacting in their lives.

Speaker 1:

And for me, the first way I'm going to really experience any benefits is if I can shift some of this weight. I've been carrying this around for nearly two decades now, so it's really it feels really tough to shift it, and I have tried many a time and what I keep coming up against is this really well ingrained reliance on food to a give me energy, even though it's having a counter effect on my energy ultimately and um and b to satisfy something emotionally in me, right as an emotional overeater, you know there is still that habit. Is this path that I have trodden for the last 20, 30 years now, plus 30 plus years that I haven't been able to shift? Whilst I eat really healthily every single day, I still have a tendency to, you know, get the ice creams in, we have the crisps that we share at the weekend, there's sometimes biscuits that sneak in there, so all this other stuff is still in there on top. So I have made the decision after a long period of research.

Speaker 1:

I have not taken this lightly at all, but I have been looking with interest at the GLP-1 medications that you might, more commonly known as Ozempic or Manjaro, and these are, first and foremost, diabetic medications that actually, my dad is on for type 2 diabetes, and when he started on a different version, it was trulicity that he started on, one of the pleasant side effects that he had after he got over the, the nausea and just general crappy feeling was weight loss. But they didn't tell him that was what he would experience. He just so happened to lose some weight. And so also, here's this big guy who's always been a certain weight in his life and has managed to lose weight at certain periods, like my sister's wedding, for example, he lost a lot of weight, got in this really lovely suit to do his father of the bride speech and then regain the weight again. So he's been a yo-yo dieter, but he's actually lost weight on this drug and managed to keep it off. And I was looking at him thinking, well, if I'm starting to experience, you know, blood sugars at the point where it could be pre-diabetic, then one day I might actually have to be on this medication for diabetes. So that was sort of in my favour and at the back of my mind as I was going through my research.

Speaker 1:

But I've certainly listened to endless podcasts with, let's say, experts on the subject, not just randoms. I've also listened to many users of the drugs. I have researched the side effects and how they work and what it targets, and the thing that was really appealing to me was how it helps with food noise with reducing food noise, and so that was a real draw to me. It wasn't so much. You know, a lot of the bad rep that the drug gets is that people are seeing it as a magic pill. They're seeing it as oh, I just inject myself and then I let the drug do the thing and I'm just going to lose a load of weight. That was never a draw, quite frankly. It was more a tool to enable me to do everything I know I need to do to lose weight healthily, sustainably, slowly, steadily, but with my ultimate health in mind.

Speaker 1:

So it was a long period. I think it was three or four months that I was researching it. Three or four months I was going through my mind, having conversations with Adam, having conversations with my dad and also listening to all these books and podcasts and all the things. And I made the decision in April that I was going to trial it because I thought if I don't try it, I won't know.

Speaker 1:

And now I'm not someone that wants to put a pharmaceutical drug in me quite easily, like I would resist, even reject, like I have not had the COVID-19 vaccination, because I just didn't, I just didn't feel like I needed it. I didn't want to be one of the first to get it. I didn't want to be in that unknown category and having it and taking it unnecessarily when I didn't feel like I was at risk of getting COVID anyway or like suffering with COVID. So I'm not someone that takes that decision lightly, not in that place where I am so focused on the number on the scales and the fat loss for aesthetic reasons. So, yes, it would be lovely to be able to wear some of the smaller clothes in my wardrobe or even to walk into a shop and I'd try something on off the shelf in a size 16, let's say that would be a dream right now. So not to say those things aren't in it.

Speaker 1:

But my main ultimate goal is to feel so much better, to feel lighter in this body, to feel like it's more easy to move through this world, to feel like I can focus, and that has actually one of the the main benefits as I've started this journey in mid-April. The main benefit has been the reduction in the food noise and I would say it was almost like that part of me that I've just been so used to being the voice in my head has just kind of gone on vacay. It's like vacated the building and left me with all this headspace to think straight, and it's been blissful. It's like that part of me was an old part of me and with the absence of that, it just means the part of me that I'm becoming, or the part of me that I've always known I've been, can shine, can take the lead, can lead myself. Now, without this voice and that has been I guess the intention of starting these was really to experience that.

Speaker 1:

But I had no idea what that would free up in terms of, like, my focus and, yeah, my ability to focus and be more productive. Now what that has done is revealed some fatigue beneath that, because I think how I would have dealt with the fatigue is reach for food as well to give me some energy, and it would have had a counterproductive effect. Right, because it would have. Actually, I would have experienced some energy dips as a result of reaching for the carbs. So it's revealed this fatigue that I'm no longer feeding and it just allows me to go to that next deeper layer. So I've hired help to get to the bottom of where the fatigue is coming from. So we're getting some blood tests. I'm wearing a continuous blood glucose monitor just to see what the effect of my current diet is doing on my bloods. And yeah, we're going to go from there and see how we're getting on. I'm no doubt hormones are coming into it as well. Like I'm 46, I'm at that perimenopausal age where progesterone levels drop off and leaves you with oestrogen dominance, and unless your oestrogen detox pathways are, you know, really functioning, then we're going to be experiencing the effects of that as well. So all that to say is I have decided, from a very empowered place, I believe, to use a GLP-1 medication to act as a tool to enable me to implement all the things that I know I need to do to lose weight well and healthily.

Speaker 1:

And in the next episode I'm actually going to share with you my diary so far. So I recorded myself after week one, when I was just like in awe of this new found headspace that I had, and then week five, five, when I was in Spain, I actually recorded myself. I just hit record and just started talking about all the things that I was seeing around me in the communities of people, of many, many people, who are taking these drugs, the sort of problems I see with that and where perhaps the drugs get a bit of a bad rep. And then I also updated you as to where I'm at now around week nine, and then I will be back with an update at the end of the summer based on how I'm getting on with Liz Sargent and her team to look at the functional side of things and make some adjustments and hopefully see some improvements in my energy levels. And then, I don't know, there's no stopping me from there.

Speaker 1:

So, yes, yes, I'm taking Manjaro and no, I don't see that as a defining moment at all.

Speaker 1:

Um, I see it as a very empowered decision that I've made, that I haven't made likely, but as part of this ongoing quest to find the most optimum health for me so that I can be the healthiest leader that I came here to be and make the impact and the influence that I want.

Speaker 1:

So this is your invite to look at where your health is being most impacted right now and what you can put into place to shift how you're feeling about yourself, how you're feeling in your body, how you're moving through this life, and if you want any help with that, please reach out. There are various ways that we can work together and, like I said, health is very much part of the conversation, which is why I'm not just a career coach or not just a leadership coach. I'm also a life coach and I am your biggest cheerleader when it comes to this sort of thing. I totally get the challenges when it comes to implementing lasting change, when you're trying to change the habits of a lifetime. So I get it. I am on your team. You will get no judgment from me, but reach out and we can always have a discovery call and see how I can actually help you with that.

Speaker 1:

All right, my lovely, I'm going to leave that there. Thank you for listening again and, yeah, tune back in next week for the Manjaro Diaries and then make sure you're here for the 100th episode. I've got a very special guest and we're going to talk about a very similar topic, about how you can't ignore the signals of your body and how it is absolutely critical that you remain as healthy as you can for as long as you can, especially when you're trying to be effective in your leadership role. Until then, take care, thank you.

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