101: {Interview} Transforming Exhaustion into Energy with Robyn Engleson

Who else is here for MORE ENERGY?? It's a YES PLEASE for me!! With more energy we can do more and give more and all of that points back to how are we taking care of ourselves. That means mentally & physically. If you want to learn more about how to regain more energy, this episode is for YOU!

In this conversation, Robyn Engelson shares her transformative journey from struggling with an autoimmune disease to becoming an energy solution expert. She discusses the importance of nutrition, fitness, mindset, and accountability in achieving personal wellness and energy. Robyn emphasizes that true change begins with a shift in mindset and the necessity of having accountability in one's journey. She also introduces her upcoming book: Exhausted to Energize aimed at helping others overcome exhaustion and thrive in life. Her book is out and launching TODAY!! 

takeaways

• Robyn's journey from illness to wellness took two and a half years.
• Proper nutrition is crucial for energy and clarity.
• Fitness is essential for everyone, not just athletes.
• Mindset is the key to making lasting changes.
• Positive self-talk can significantly impact your mindset.
• Accountability helps maintain new habits and goals.
• Investing in a coach can accelerate personal growth.
• Consistency is vital for achieving long-term results.
• Robyn's book offers a structured approach to overcoming exhaustion.
• Self-love is foundational for helping others.

Robyn is a Wellness Specialist, Nutrition Educator, Lifestyle Transformer, and Host of The Robyn Engelson Podcast. Connect with Robyn further HERE

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Transcript

Caroline (00:01.18)
Welcome Robin!

Robyn Engelson (00:03.104)
Thanks Caroline, I'm so happy to be here.

Caroline (00:06.498)
So tell me about where you are now and how did you get there? I want to hear your story.

Robyn Engelson (00:10.974)
Absolutely, thanks for asking. So I have an advertising and marketing background.

And I was doing that very successfully and I had a three and a half year old little boy and was trying to get pregnant with another child and I couldn't get pregnant and so when you have a child you're thinking what's wrong what you know something's got to be happening so I went and got tested and had lots of tests done and I came out with an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto's which is a thyroid autoimmune disease which is not life-threatening but is definitely life-changing and some other medical complications and then it was a two and

half of your journey of literally going from exhausted to energized because I was sicker and sicker and sicker from the medication. And the doctor kept telling me that I was fine based on my blood work, but I wasn't because I had to stop working. I was in bed 12 hours a night. My hair was falling out. My nails were brittle. My brain fog was severe. My muscles ached. My body ached. I just hurt. I couldn't take care of my toddler. I was miserable, literally miserable going from a

high functioning corporate mom going down to hill fast, like super fast. And so over two and a half year journey, I figured out how to help myself, how to, like I said, go from exhausted to energized. And what I did was I just leaned in, right? I literally leaned in and found my heart and how to love myself and how to feel my body with proper nutrition, how to exercise and my fitness to fuel for my autoimmune disease.

and not what I was doing. And also, I figured out accountability and had someone, multiple people actually, that helped me get to where I wanted to be and mindset. And that was the key to everything. I was able to change my mindset as a model of positive change and really just reframe the programming in my mind from

Robyn Engelson (02:09.628)
because a lot of things were coming up that weren't related to my illness from my childhood and other things in my life and I was able to overcome that. And so you know, Carolyn, when you're not feeling well, you're not outside with your kid, you're not hanging out with your other moms, you're not going out with your friends, you're not out with your family, you're definitely not on social media.

That was two and a half years. And then I started to feel better based on my nutrition, fitness, mindset, and accountability. And I always thought I'd go back to advertising and marketing. That's what I knew. That's what I loved. But my friends and neighbors started asking what I was doing. And so I tried, I started to help them, you know, because I started going on social media again. Started being out with the kids again and the moms and my friends and my family. And so I helped them. And they got results in their nutrition, fitness, mindset, and accountability in a very short amount of time. I was able to compress time for them.

in less than 90 days. That took me two and half years. So I started to develop a clientele. I started to post about this on social media. And here I am 13 years later as an energy solution expert. And that's how I arrived to where I am today.

Caroline (03:15.66)
love your story and I love that you share and pour into your clients what took you two and a half years and condense it down to 90 days for them because that is a serious game changer whether or not you have an autoimmune disease or not. I mean to have a huge lifestyle change like that, energy shift, a mindset shift, an accountability shift, that's a game changer right there. Which leads me to our next question. So on your LinkedIn profile you have that in your business you energize executives to start

living and sad.

Start living instead of existing through nutrition, fitness, mindset, and accountability. Okay, tongue tied up there. So tell me, I wanna kind of break each piece down. So let's start with the nutrition piece. Why is what we fuel our body with so important?

Robyn Engelson (03:53.194)
Yes.

Robyn Engelson (03:57.46)
Yes, you're correct. Okay.

Robyn Engelson (04:04.004)
Yep. So here's the thing. People think that they're healthy, but when you really dive into it, most people are not. And so they nutrition is so important because what you eat fuels your body.

What you, it's same as your energy. It helps you with clarity, right? It helps you not be bloated. It helps you not be constipated. It helps you literally run your day. So if you're not eating all day or you're eating the wrong foods like pizza, ice cream, all that stuff, not saying it's bad for you once in a while, but every day, all day, if that's your, those are your meals. You're eating a lot of empty calories and empty carbs, then you're gonna feel like crap. You're gonna have sugar rushes, okay?

that I call it like the jitters right and then you're gonna crash. It's kind like coffee right if you have multiple cups of coffee each day you're not gonna feel good and you're gonna be relying on it to keep your energy up and in fact it's hurting you right.

And so when we feel our body with the proper nutrition, when we eat according to how our body type is and what we want to do with our life, what we're doing during the day, and we may eat a little bit more often with smaller quantities, know, higher protein, healthy carbs, healthy fruits and vegetables, then we start to feel better. And you'll notice it very quickly, right? Within a day or two, you'll notice your energy's higher, your brain fog has gone, you have complete clarity, and you just feel good.

There's something to say that you don't know how bad you feel until you feel better. So when you do feel better, it's a game changer and nutrition plays such a huge part in that.

Caroline (05:45.038)
Add to that too, when you feel better, you perform better. And I don't care if you're an entrepreneur listening to this or you're a corporate girly, you can actually perform and do your job better, whatever that looks like, if you are fueling your body the right way.

Robyn Engelson (06:02.028)
100 % and I want to add to that too as an athlete and following different athletes too, know athletes have certain Regiments that they follow and there's a reason for that to your point Caroline They perform better when they're on their regiment, right and their nutrition is on point Yes, and you are going to perform so much better in the workplace, you know, whether that's home or in the office with colleagues and also just being a mom as well

Caroline (06:30.83)
So let's shift to the fitness piece. Why? And I'm a fitness girlie. I get up every day at five o'clock and I'm at the gym at six. And that's just what I do Monday through Friday. It starts my day the right way. And I, if I don't have energy to go to the gym, I actually don't want to be there. But I know when after I do it, I will feel better. And so, so I do it. So let's talk about that piece. So pairing that piece with the nutrition.

Robyn Engelson (06:38.346)
Woohoo! Yes you do!

Robyn Engelson (07:00.638)
Absolutely. So fitness, like I mentioned, I'm an athlete. I'm an ex cardio junkie. And I'll explain that in a moment.

So, you know, exercise is so important. Everyone is an athlete. If you walk daily, you're an athlete. If you jog, if you bike, if you play pickleball, if you play tennis, whatever you do, you are an athlete because you're moving your body, right? And movement is medicine. So I used to be a cardio junkie. used to only ride my bike, only run, only dance. And cardio is great. But for someone who has an autoimmune disease and also

women, men, when you're aging, cardio can be detrimental to you. And also, especially if you're looking for weight loss, right, and to define your muscle, right, the muscle, because what cardio does, if you do it all the time, and especially HIIT cardio, which is high intensity interval training, and for listeners, what that means is if you're on a bike and you go 30 seconds sprinting and you rest 15 seconds, 30 seconds again, rest 15, right, and that's not bad.

But if you do it consistently every single day, you're raising your cortisol, which is your stress level, which you're actually gonna gain weight in your belly area, and you're not gonna gain lean muscle, nor are you gonna lose weight. So what you need to do is shift that a little bit, and do that maybe twice a week, right, or every other day, and start lifting hard stuff.

Right? Lift your weights. Lift weights, right? Weight training is so important. And it doesn't have to be heavy weights. It can be free weights. It can be in the gym, whatever works for you. If you're not familiar with it, definitely get a trainer or watch some videos online, because you don't want to injure yourself. But weight training is the key to helping you feel good and getting your desired results. And when you pair that with your nutrition, right? You're fueling your body for your workouts, you're going to feel even better.

Robyn Engelson (08:57.536)
Right? Like you're going to feel so good, you're going to feel stronger, which makes you feel more confident, and you're going to perform better. Right? So it all plays into the pieces of the puzzle.

Caroline (09:09.71)
for me with the nutrition piece and I practice the 80-20 rule. So 80 % I'm very clean, organic. I try to buy local meats, local, I live by the coast in South Carolina so I try to buy local fish as much as possible. We have a local fish market. But I also have to allow myself some grace to have some deviations of pizza and sushi and Mexican food. And so I do the 80-20 rule. So 80 % clean, 20 % is the wine, the cheese and the carbs.

Robyn Engelson (09:39.404)
100 % and that's called living right like that's called living and there's one word I Dislike so much is called dieting like if you diet you are on a roller coaster hamster wheel And you're never gonna be getting results right so I love that you just said that girl, and that's really well said

Caroline (09:57.336)
Yeah, I'm not a diet fan either. I've never done a diet. I don't ever plan on doing a diet. I just try to plan on doing these things and I do it with intention. So as long as I plan, I set my alarm clock every day to go to the gym. I have the meals prepared and I don't do this whole fancy meal prep. I go to the seafood market on Tuesday and I buy fish the rest of the week and we eat fish and vegetables until the weekend and then we can fall off the rockers a little bit. But then we get back on it on Monday. And so it just takes a little planning to do that. Okay, so.

Got our bodies in a good spot, we're working out, we're eating clean. Why is the mindset shift and the mindset piece so important?

Robyn Engelson (10:37.748)
That is the key. That is the glue that holds the puzzle together. Because if we do not change our mindset.

then nothing changes, because nothing changes if nothing changes. So in order to invoke change, we get to change our mindset as the model of positive change, right? So if we had different nutrition habits or different exercise or fitness habits, we get to retrain our mindset to be able to get to do those, right? And so many times,

When I'm working with people, it's that it has nothing to do with they're doing in the moment. It has everything to do with their past, their childhood, their upbringing, someone said something to them and it carries through their life and it's weighing on their shoulders and they have no idea. So in order to change that, we get to reprogram our mind so we think differently, right? So we can be proactive instead of reactive and not have triggers literally devastate us in the results that we're going for.

and living in life. So mindset is so key and so important to all areas of your life, but especially when it comes to nutrition and fitness and getting results and feeling good so you can thrive in life.

Caroline (11:53.368)
I'm gonna add to that that I think it's really important to be kind to yourself and talk to yourself and be, talk to yourself with kind words rather than mean words because that really goes a long way. Okay, so what if someone's listening to this and they're like, okay, I want to have a different mindset shift. Where do you start in that category?

Robyn Engelson (12:11.05)
Yep, great question because most people don't have any idea and I didn't at first either, right? So the best way to start is first you have to have awareness that you want to change.

Because without awareness, you have no idea who you are and what you're doing on a daily basis. So you have to have awareness that you want to change. And then there's little things. I love what you said, Caroline, as far as being positive and kind to yourself. So I call them positive talk and positive affirmations. So it's like sometimes something happens, you're like, can they let that happen? What the heck's wrong with me? If you change just little words every day,

Right? 1 % better every single day. So we're like, I can't believe that I did this, but it's OK because I know next time I'm going to be better. Right? So just that little small shift in how you talk to yourself every single day. Another way is IAM affirmations. Most people don't.

Caroline (12:50.153)
I want this to be better.

Robyn Engelson (13:11.946)
Most people want to say them to themselves first, then they whisper them, and then they look in the mirror. The goal is to look in the mirror, look yourself in the eyes with self-love, and say to yourself whatever you believe or whatever you're putting out into existence, right? That may not have, you haven't accomplished yet. So for example, I am confident, I am loved, I am happy, I am accomplished. Whatever resonates with you, it can be the same thing or different things every single day, but that really will help you start changing your mindset.

So again, it's 1 % better every day. positive, first is having the awareness, and then two actions you can take to evoke change are positive talk, positive affirmations, positive self-talk. So you just really want to invoke that change by taking the action. And here's the thing, Caroline. People might want to know how you do it, but the best thing they can do is actually do it. Because so many people want to do it, but they don't do it.

So I hope the listeners that are listening right now are able to invoke the change because the work is where the change happens and where you can shift your mindset.

Caroline (14:19.446)
It's funny you bring that part up because as you know, I coach female entrepreneurs on LinkedIn and how to start growing scale in there. And I meet with so many women and they just want to know like, how did I get over 10 K or how do I these bookie, these speaking engagements or how do I have this podcast? And I'm like, so much work mindset, taking action.

behind the scenes has gone on to make it happen. There's not gonna be an easy button that you click and all this is gonna happen for you. You actually have to do the work. And it took me a year and a half to get to where I'm at now. And to your point, it took you two and a half years to get to where you are now and you've now trained your clients to do it in under 90 days, which is incredible.

Robyn Engelson (15:05.292)
Absolutely, and that's the key. People don't see what happens behind the scenes. There's so much that goes on behind the scenes. Ups, downs, crying, happiness, joy, all the emotions. It is a roller coaster, but the key is to do the work and to stay on for the long haul. Don't quit on yourself. The worst thing you can ever do for yourself is put on yourself. Believe in yourself that you can do it and it will help.

Caroline (15:33.518)
I love that you said that because I literally get asked all the time to like, tell me about how you grew your podcast or tell me about how you you blooped your LinkedIn. And I'm like, I just stayed in every single day. And yes, there were plenty of days I woke up. I did not feel like doing it. I was in a mood or didn't get a lot of sleep or just not feeling at all. And I just kept grinding it out. And that's what happens. Like these are the results that you can get.

what you do for your job, what I do for my job. It all just takes time. And so whoever is listening to this podcast, if you're doing something right now or trying to do something or want to try something new and you're beating yourself up because it's not happening right this second for you, it will just stay in the game.

Robyn Engelson (16:16.044)
100 % consistency is the key and it will happen. Most people give up and that's why it doesn't happen for them. That's really a shame. So the listeners, I just want you to know that you can do it. Don't give up and don't quit on yourself.

Caroline (16:31.822)
Okay, let's go to the last piece of your framework, which is the accountability piece. Now, tell me, is that being self-accountable? Are you having someone that you love or that you hire hold you accountable?

Robyn Engelson (16:47.446)
So it's combination of both. It's holding yourself accountable, but it is also hiring someone that does accountability for you, right, and with you, right? Because most people fall off after four to six weeks of any new habit because they don't have accountability and they don't know how to hold themselves accountable.

Right? So once you are working and hire someone that helps hold you accountable, then they'll teach you how to hold yourself accountable. So you don't have to work with them forever. Right? But initially, it's super important to have someone hold you accountable. And I like to have someone that's a couple steps ahead of me so I can see the vision of where I'm going. Because I've already been where I am. And that's the key. So they understand where you are so they can take you and move you forward.

Caroline (17:38.158)
love that you said that and I am assuming I know the answer to this, but for me at least hiring a coach, hiring an expert, hiring someone like you said that's a couple steps ahead of me to help me has been the game changer and the supercharger for me. Yes, I could have stumbled around my podcast, but instead I invested in a podcast mastermind with a coach who has a massive podcast. Just any of those things, any of the...

clients I have that I teach LinkedIn to, working with me has supercharged the entire process. So what would be your top advice for a high achieving entrepreneur that's trying to get to the next level?

Robyn Engelson (18:21.566)
Invest in yourself and hire a coach that is a couple steps ahead of you where your vision is and you see yourself in a year from now or five years from now. And interview multiple coaches because every coach is not for every person.

And I think that's really important. And also, you will outgrow your coaches and move on to other coaches, right? I've had multiple coaches throughout my life and career, and they've all played a huge part and had a purpose in my life. But when the time was up, the time was up, and there's no hurt feelings, right? You've outgrown them because you're growing, and they've got you to where you want it to be. So investing in yourself is not selfish. It is necessary self-care for you.

Caroline (19:10.402)
Yes, I love that you brought the outgrowth piece too because a lot of times I meet with people and guess what? Working with a coach is gonna take time and it's gonna take money but it's gonna be worth it. Every time I worked with a coach, no matter what it was for, it comes back and tenfold to me as far as results, as far as relationships, as far as expanding my network, all the things.

Robyn Engelson (19:32.836)
And that's the thing, if listeners are out there that they have never invested in themselves for anything, like maybe they've never bought a fancy purse or I don't know, a fancy, I don't know, why not just fancy dinner, right? I know, or never just spent money on them, this is the best opportunity to do that.

Right? And there will be fear that comes up, but the opportunity to overcome that fear is so much greater, so much greater, that you will be thanking yourself because it will come back to you 100%.

Caroline (20:06.19)
Okay, so you have a book coming up. Let's hear about it. I wanna hear all the things.

Robyn Engelson (20:10.956)
sure do. So my book, Exhausted to Energize, 90 Days to Your Best Self launches on Amazon November 12th. There is an ebook version, which you don't have to have Kindle for to download, and also the paperback. So I recommend getting both, right? Get the ebook and then get the paperback as a bonus because there is so much value in this book.

my gosh, so much value. So it is to help people who have chronic illness, pain, trauma, burnout, really just want to overcome exhaustion. Because everyone's exhausted, right? At the end of the day, everyone's exhausted. And how to bridge that gap to energize and thriving in life in 90 days or less. Right? So it compresses time for you. It walks you through my journey from the beginning to where I am now and what I went through and how to overcome that.

It also has activities in there. I call it the heart work section because everything I do is my heart work.

I learned through my journey how to love myself and then I could love others. And that is the work and that's what we talked about Caroline, the work is what's gonna get you to the other side, right? So I'm just excited to help all of those people that are silently suffering and afraid to admit that they're exhausted and that nothing worked and they are sick of spending any more time, don't wanna spend any more time in doctor's offices.

Caroline (21:36.75)
I love it. So as we wrap up, how can our listeners find you?

Robyn Engelson (21:40.586)
Absolutely, so I'm on social media, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Robin Engelson, so it's at Robin Engelson, R-O-B-Y-N-E-N-G-E-L-S-O-N, and my website is the best way also to at robinengelson.com.

Caroline (21:56.184)
Thanks, Robin.

Robyn Engelson (21:58.112)
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here and for all the listeners out there. If no one's told you today I'm proud of you and I love you.