Joyful Balance Podcast: Recent Episodes

Meera & Denise

Join us (Meera & Denise) on the exciting journey of the brain, mind and body and how they're connected. We provide the human element to understanding the relationship between the three. We will share our personal experience and guidance to enable you to feel less alone in the journey towards healthier relationships with your mind and food, your existence and your everyday self.

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It was Stress Awareness Month in April so we’re bringing you a belated episode all about stress, what it is, what it means for your body and mind and how to tackle it and cope with stress a little bit better.

This week, we cover:

  • Real and perceived stresses and how they’re one and the same thing
  • The stress response and the physiological impacts of stress
  • Your built-in relaxation system: the parasympathetic nervous system
  • Spotting the signs of stress therefore preventing burn-out
  • Our own experiences of burn-out
  • Manage stress with these top tips

We can’t stress enough (pun intended) the value of social connections and self-care during times of stress: whether that’s driven by internal or external pressures.

Please reach out to loved ones and/or healthcare professionals whilst you engage in lots of self-care to get you to a much healthier and happier place.

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We know the January Blues are a real thing, and that this month can be a bit of a struggle. We’re no stranger to this, both personally and professionally. If you’ve ever wondered what depression is, what it can look like in people, and what causes it (from a neuroscience perspective), this is the episode for you.

Whilst it’s impossible to put all of the information and science out there in this episode, we’re putting this episode together as a gentle introduction to the topic to expand your knowledge on the subject. Don’t worry, there will be plenty more episodes from us on this subject to come!

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If you’re struggling with feelings of low mood and/or depression, please seek help. Consider speaking to a friend, colleague, family member or your GP as soon as possible.

If you’re in crisis, please consider calling 116 123 to talk to Samaritans, or email: jo@samaritans.org for a reply within 24 hours or Text "SHOUT" to 85258 to contact the Shout Crisis Text Line, or text "YM" if you're under 19

On this episode, we cover:

  • What is depression
  • What are the signs and symptoms to look out for
  • What causes depression
  • Brain chemistry and depression 101: neurotransmitters and how they contribute to depression and how antidepressants can work
  • Changes in brain activity we see with depression

If you like what you hear, please do consider supporting us to keep our little show running:

Instagram: @joyful_balance.me

Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me

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CLICK HERE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH MEERA (NUTRITION)

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Happy New Year! We’re back with an episode all about a controversial subject: New Year's Resolutions, health habits and how to work towards your health goals.

Here’s a clue: we’re not all that into New Year’s Resolutions! Intrigued? We’ll tell you all about why they can often fail, and we’ll tell you how to set yourself up for success when it comes to habit change.

Some topics we cover:

  • Our Christmases
  • Habits we want to pick up (again) this year
  • How to start building new healthy habits
  • Why New Year’s Resolutions often fail
  • How hypnosis helps habit change
  • Habits we want to stop
  • The importance of starting small when it comes to habit change

Like what you hear? Give us a like, follow and/or subscribe and you’ll always receive out latest episode right there wherever you listen to your podcasts.

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Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me

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We’re back to you after yet another (unplanned but much needed) hiatus. We’ve been busy trying to get all our ducks in a row to come back to you more regularly with episodes. We’ve missed you and the podcast! Now is a perfect time to be back in your ears and minds in the lead up to what feels like the biggest celebrations that we’ve had in a while: Christmas and how to eat well during this time period.

We’re the first to point out that (we hope) this is a time to let your hair down a little, but to do so consciously - which means being less conscious during specific meals, but more conscious of what you’re doing around those specific celebrations to stay well. Not sure what we mean? Don’t worry we’ll help!

In this episode, we’ll discuss

  • What we’re up to over the festive period
  • Are Christmas dinners unhealthy?
  • How to eat well over the festive season
  • The importance of keeping up healthy routines and habits during Christmas
  • Our views on celebrations and managing our health during this period
  • How to cope when Christmas isn’t a happy time

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After a little break, we’re happy to come back with a stellar podcast episode: the issues we have with Diet Culture. We cover a huge amount of topics within this umbrella term: diets, the culture of dieting and wacky diets being introduced to help with weight loss. We discuss a little bit about weight loss and about the nutritional considerations when it comes to eating more optimally for your goal weight. However, this isn’t a podcast that offers weight loss advice - we’d always encourage you to read up on nutrition and consult a specialist who can help you with your personal health needs and goals. On this episode, we cover:* What we think about calories * Diets based on body shape * Weight, BMI and health * Thinking about weight loss as the side effect, rather than the main goal * Why many weight loss diets fail * Our problem with diet culture * The dangers of yo-yo dieting * The illusion of quick fixes in weight loss * Why giving up your control to an app isn’t helpful * Why reading nutrition labels is key * Making intentional choices with lifestyle changes * The value of small changes

SUPPORT JOYFUL BALANCE PODCAST: Feel free to share your support with us, by donating a cup of coffeeInstagram: @joyful_balance.meEmail: hello@joyfulbalance.me—-Work with usCLICK HERE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH MEERA (NUTRITION)CLICK HERE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH DENISE (THERAPY)

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Welcome back to the Joyful Balance Podcast with your two delightful co-hosts, Meera Malhotra (Nutritional Therapist) and Denise Iordache (Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist). Today we’re tackling a topic that hits home for most of us: emotional eating. At some point, we all fall victim to stress eating, eating more comfort foods in times of low mood, or being unable to stick to our health goals sometimes out of boredom. We cover the following:* How we’re doing * What is emotional eating and what isn’t * Our own experiences with emotional eating * Hedonic and homeostatic hunger * Why noticing hunger and habits is very important for health * How to address emotional eating patterns

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too!SUPPORT JOYFUL BALANCE PODCAST: Feel free to share your support with us, by donating a cup of coffeeYouTube: Joyful Balance PodcastInstagram: @joyful_balance.meEmail: hello@joyfulbalance.me—-Work with usCLICK HERE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH MEERA (NUTRITION)CLICK HERE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH DENISE (THERAPY)

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Welcome back to the Joyful Balance Podcast with your two delightful co-hosts, Meera Malhotra (Nutritional Therapist) and Denise Iordache (Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist). After a bit of an unplanned break, we’ve returned for the second episode of the third season, and this one is different! We’ve scoured the pages of Reddit for all kinds of nutrition content to help figure out what our audience do and don’t know about nutrition and lifestyle changes.On this episode, we’ve taken to the * Nutrition myths we wished would die (is brown rice really better than white? Is eating fruit the same as eating a candy bar and is a raw diet the best diet for health?) * Small lifestyle changes that have had an outsized, beneficial effect on health, nutrition and happiness (eg. using smaller plates, practising good sleep hygiene, flexibility in your thoughts when it comes to achieving your health goals) * AITA: AITA for trying to get my 91 year old grandmother to get some more variety and nutrition in her diet and it’s my week to take care of her?

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too! We’d hugely appreciate it if you could support us! SUPPORT JOYFUL BALANCE PODCAST: Feel free to share your support with us, by donating a cup of coffeeInstagram: @joyful_balance.meEmail: hello@joyfulbalance.me—-Work with usCLICK HERE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH MEERA (NUTRITION)CLICK HERE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH DENISE (THERAPY)

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Welcome to the Joyful Balance Podcast with your two delightful co-hosts, Meera Malhotra (Nutritional Therapist) and Denise Iordache (Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist). This is the first episode of our new season where we take you on a journey of how your mind, brain and body are interconnected. SUPPORT JOYFUL BALANCE PODCAST: Feel free to share your support with us, by donating a cup of coffeeWe’re finally back with Season 3 of the podcast! We’ve taken all the data from the podcast and we’re bringing you more episodes you love - all about food and setting ourselves up to eat more healthily on a regular basis for your wellbeing. Not sure how to go about it? We’ll give you all the tips and tricks you’ll need to get you on the right track!Topics we cover this episode:* Catch up with us since Season 2 * How to get enough iron in your diet if you’re full vegetarian * Meera’s top tips to set yourself up for success in making changes to your diet * The value of starting small and knowing your starting point * Denise’s top tips for healthier living * Thinking about ‘treats’ differently and the importance of assessing how you feel after you eat

YouTube: Joyful Balance PodcastInstagram: @joyful_balance.meEmail: hello@joyfulbalance.me—Work with usCLICK HERE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH MEERA (NUTRITION)CLICK HERE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH DENISE (THERAPY)

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Welcome to the Joyful Balance Podcast! Denise and Meera are here to take you on a journey of understanding your mind, your brain and your body and how all three things are very much interlinked.

This is the final episode of Season 2! The theme running through this season has been about personal change for us both, learning to action the advice we give you! Today we’re rounding up on how we have been finding our own sense of balance between living healthily and enjoying life (knowing the two aren’t mutually exclusive).

On our final episode this season, we cover:

  • The value of getting outside your comfort zone
  • How to keep going and get back into healthy habits when you face a blip
  • Why routines are really important over external pressure for consistently reaching your health goals
  • What balance means to us
  • The danger of all-or-nothing thinking
  • How to maintain balance over the long term

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Welcome back to the Joyful Balance Podcast! This week we’re talking about a topic not often thought about very deeply - Resilience. A hugely underrated skill, Meera and Denise cover the benefits of resilience on a neuroscience and psychological level, and how you can develop resilience like any other skill - with practice.

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Listen to us as we explore:

  • What resilience means to us and what it actually means
  • The neuroscience of resilience and what you can use neurobiology to your advantage to make you more resilient
  • How you can improve resilience with cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy
  • What resilience actually is
  • How to identify a resilient person
  • The value of positive social connections to resilience
  • Other useful factors that help you become more resilient
  • Final thoughts on the importance of resilience

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Welcome back to the Joyful Balance Podcast! We cover all things related to mental health, brain health and physical wellbeing and all of these are closely interlinked.

As part of this season’s theme where we put the spotlight on our own health and hold ourselves accountable, we’re spending this week’s episode looking at what we do on a daily basis to look after our health and wellbeing. Like you, we have our challenges and successes with keeping healthy so we’re here to share our experiences as honestly as we can!

If you like what you hear, please do consider supporting us to keep our little show running:

SUPPORT JOYFUL BALANCE PODCAST: Feel free to share your support with us, by donating a cup of coffee

On this week’s episode, we cover:

  • Meera’s relationship with exercise and getting back into the gym
  • Other little changes Meera made to her diet and lifestyle
  • Denise’s journey with seeking joy, nature and snail watching
  • Denise’s experience with sticking to regular walking and heading towards burnout
  • The importance of self-awareness to get you back on track when you fall off the health wagon
  • The value of manifestation for Denise
  • What hasn’t worked for us during our journey to better health

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We’re absolutely thrilled to have a colleague and friend of Meera’s, fellow nutritionist and functional medicine practitioner, Anastasia Smith. Anastasia specialises in Whole Mind Health - supporting clients experiencing the full spectrum of psychiatric conditions and also works with clients experiencing neurological pathologies such as Alzheimer’s.

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Tune in to hear all about:

  • Anastasia’s journey into nutrition for mental wellbeing
  • What is Whole Mind Health
  • How hormones affect your mood
  • How can you find out whether your sex hormones are balanced?
  • Are “detox” and “cleanses” actually necessary?
  • Thyroid hormones and their effect on mood
  • How to avoid hormone disruptors in your environment
  • How to solve for constipation
  • Sex hormones (oestrogen, progesterone and testosterone) and mood
  • Top tips for hormonal health

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Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me

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This week we’re covering a much-loved topic for both of us: sleep! Sleep is so important for your mental and physical wellbeing that we cannot tell you enough how much a good night’s sleep is priceless for your health.

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It’s really common to have trouble with your sleep, and stress can massively impact on your ability to sleep and stay asleep. If you’d like to learn how to sleep better, check out our tips and tricks for better sleep in this episode!

  • Checking in with how our health journeys and what our relationship to sleep is
  • The problem with sugar and sleep
  • Common sleep issues we come across in our practices
  • The benefits of boundaries around sleep
  • Setting your bedroom up for a solid night’s sleep
  • Problematic and helpful habits for sleep
  • How to handle doom scrolling
  • How to set up the best environment for sleep
  • What to do when you wake up in the middle of the night or you can’t get to sleep

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too! We’d hugely appreciate it if you could support us!

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Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me

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We’re joined by another fantastic guest today - Consultant Nurse, Mindfulness Teacher and Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist, Slee Parish!

Slee heads up True Thoughts therapy and alongside her incredible NHS 40+ year career as a Consultant Nurse, she’s also a Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist (and Denise’s supervisor during her training!) and a Mindfulness teacher. Slee focuses on problematic thoughts and how they can be reframed to help achieve your health goals. Not only this, she also joined forces with Alex James (also a CBH & mindfulness teacher) to create nhsinmind.co.uk - a hugely successful initiative during COVID to help front-line staff with their mental health during the COVID-19 crisis.

You can find Slee at https://www.truethoughts.co.uk/

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We’re here today talking to Slee all about one of our favourite subjects: how to change habits for long term health!

  • What does Slee normally do to help a client change their habits
  • Needing to become aware of a habit and the value of a habit diary
  • Eating instead of quenching our thirst and addressing eating habits
  • Dopamine and eating habits
  • Why taking incremental steps to a bigger habit change habits works and how to do it
  • How to use mental rehearsal when you’re making a habit change
  • Adding in coping statements when you’re mentally rehearsing and going through habit change
  • Slee’s technique of freeze, breathe, examine and exchange when you’re about to engage in an unhealthy habit
  • How mindfulness helps habit change and how to stay in the present moment
  • How Slee integrates her practice in her NHS work and personal journey with habit change

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too! We’d hugely appreciate it if you could support us!

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Instagram: @joyful_balance.me

Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me

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On this week’s episode, we’re talking all about mood and what neurotransmitters (brain chemicals that are little emails between your brain cells) and hormones (signalling chemicals in your body and brain that tell your cells to take certain actions) and how they affect your mood.

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Meera takes you on a short and sweet tour of the main neurotransmitters and hormones that affect your mood. This isn’t an exhaustive list and we’re covering specific sex hormones and thyroid hormones in another episode so stay tuned! Here’s what we cover:

  • What factors affect your mood
  • Serotonin, your mood and gut health
  • Dopamine and how to increase it
  • Oxytocin, the love hormone and what it does
  • Adrenaline/Epinephrine
  • Cortisol and stress
  • Why laughter is medicine
  • Endorphins and endocannabinoid system

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too!

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Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me

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On this week’s episode, we’re delighted to have Dr Nisa Aslam, an Urgent Care GP and medical practitioner for LiveSmart, a digital health company. Nisa has a strong interest and practice in preventative medicine and lifestyle changes to improve health. With over 10 years of medical experience to draw on, we couldn’t think of a better guest to talk to us all about what wellness for a healthy and happy lifestyle actually means in practice!

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Topics we cover:

  • How Nisa became interested in lifestyle medicine
  • How much lifestyle leads to illness and the role of prevention
  • Little hacks to your diet to avoid abdominal fat
  • How Nisa talks about lifestyle to her GP patients
  • Where Nisa sees patients go wrong with their lifestyle for health
  • How Nisa looks after herself on a daily basis
  • How lifestyle medicine fits in with NHS guidelines
  • Mental health, gut health and lifestyle medicine
  • Lifestyle habits on a budget

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too! We’d hugely appreciate it if you could support us!

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Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me

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CLICK HERE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH MEERA (NUTRITION)

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Welcome back to the Joyful Balance Podcast with your two delightful co-hosts, Meera Malhotra (Nutritional Therapist) and Denise Iordache (Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist). This is the first episode of our new season where we take you on a journey of how your mind, brain and body are interconnected.

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We’re mixing things up for this new season, we’re taking a look in our mirrors and seeing what's going well in our habits and lifestyles and what needs a tune up to better support our physical and mental wellbeing. We’re showing you that we’re also “walking the talk” and taking our own advice!

Topics we cover:

  • The theme of this season’s podcast: “walking the talk”
  • Thoughts about self-talk and promises you make to yourself
  • The importance of one small step at a time
  • What we’re trying to achieve in our respective health journeys
  • Tips on how to start changing your habits and lifestyle for better health
  • How shifting your energy can help you achieve your goals
  • What are the promises we are making to ourselves
  • Manifestation in your life: book recommendation - Jordanna Levin’s ‘Make it Happen’

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too!

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Instagram: @joyful_balance.me

Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me

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For our bonus episode this first season, Meera’s back with tons of information all about neurotransmitters and hormones and their effect on your appetite!

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If you thought you knew why you ate, you might want to listen to this episode! There’s plenty of useful and valuable information for you. We cover:

  • The different types of hunger
  • The different parts of your brain that control appetite
  • Hormones that regulate your appetite
  • The rewarding side of eating
  • Why comfort food is so comforting
  • Theories around eating disorders and your reward system
  • How Meera works with clients wanting to address their food cravings
  • How the gut microbiome influences your behaviour and appetite
  • Probiotics and prebiotics
  • How we feel about cake
  • How Denise helps clients change their relationship with food

This is a big episode, full of our experiences both personally and professionally, and we’ll give you some tips on how to interrogate your hunger and appetite a little more and enjoy your meals.

That wraps us up for this season but don’t worry we’ll be back after a short break to bring you many more episodes! If there’s anything you’d like to know, get in touch with us below:

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Welcome back to the Joyful Balance Podcast! This week we’re talking about... Talking.

Specifically, how we talk to ourselves and how that self-talk can set you up for success or failure.

On today’s podcast you can hear us talk about:

  • What we’ve been up to and how we’ve been
  • Why self-talk is important for our self-belief and how what we say to ourselves becomes reality
  • How negative self-talk affects your performance, confidence and self-esteem
  • The importance of awareness of your self-talk and sowing the seeds of doubts
  • Our own experiences with addressing our self-talk
  • Denise’s experience of working with clients on self-talk and the essential role of awareness of your self-talk
  • How you can start working on your self-talk and set ourselves up for success!

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels.

Feel free to leave us a comment too!:

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We’re back for another episode! This week, we cover lots of information on nutrition for better brain health.

Firstly, Meera sets the scene on brain health and functions that are really affected by nutrition and why. Then our conversation moves into more specific subjects, such as:

  • Denise and Meera rave about Blue Zones
  • Meera talks about the Mediterranean Diet and why it's so good for brain health
  • How your gut and brain are BFFs and your ‘gut feeling’
  • The vagus nerve, heart rate variability and vagal tone
  • Gut microbiome, psychobiotics and the brain
  • Holistic lifestyle practices for brain health
  • Relationship between stress and gut health
  • Meera’s top 3 takeaways

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too!:

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On this week’s episode, we’re delving into the link between emotions and food and how they both are very related to each other.

This really is our bread and butter, particularly for Denise who takes the lead this week. We share our own personal experiences with this topic so you know you’re in good company!

Top tips for tapping into your dopamine reward system: eat protein, take cold showers, get regular exercise, listen to your favourite music (or podcast, such as ours), spend time out in the sunshine.

In this episode, we cover:

  • Why do we eat?

  • Eating when we’re not hungry

  • A quick segue into the dopamine reward system and food

  • The vicious cycle of eating treats and low mood

  • The associations we make between emotions and food

  • Alternative rewards to food

  • The importance of a micropause in decision making

  • Meera and Denise’s own personal experiences with emotions and food

  • Why we should be our own detective

  • Why you need food and why we don’t recommend strict restriction

  • The importance of setting yourself up for success and how to do it.

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too!:

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Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me

Disclaimer: this episode is a whistle stop tour geared around understanding the connection between food and emotions. It is meant as guidance and it may not be necessarily appropriate for people who have been clinically diagnosed with eating disorders or other mental health conditions. If in any doubt, speak to your doctor or therapist about the connections you make between food and emotions.

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This week, we hear from Meera, our resident brain expert all about the brain! We also talk about how therapy can be of help. Topics we cover:

  • What exactly is neuroscience?
  • How the brain is divided up
  • Deeper structures of the brain
  • Interesting brain facts
  • Prefrontal cortex development
  • Neuroplasticity and why that’s so important for building new skills and habits
  • Cortical homunculus *this is the one to search for and see the image
  • Mr Tan and Phineas Gage
  • The Reptilian Brain
  • The limbic system
  • A brief view of how therapy helps you

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too!:

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We’re doing something a little different today with being honoured to have our very first guest, Andreea. She is a certified NASM Physical Trainer, PN1 Nutrition Coach and Mindfulness Practitioner with a strong interest in counselling and coaching her clients. Now, she’s also a mum to two beautiful 10-month old twins, while running her coaching business called Livit. You can find her at www.livit.fit

Andreea has worked with clients all over the world, helping people lose weight, gain muscle, and improve their fitness levels. Andreea knows how challenging it can be to find time to work out, how to get back to exercise after a break (eg. to have children).

On this episode, we cover with Andreea:

  • How she finds the time and motivation to exercise with two small children
  • What would Andreea say to people who don’t like or are intimidated by starting to exercise
  • Who is Andreea’s ideal client
  • What are realistic fitness goals and how Andreea thinks about goal-setting
  • Thinking about how you feel vs how you look when it comes to goal-setting
  • How Andreea makes sure she’s eating well for her brain and body

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too!:

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Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me

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Join us on the Joyful Balance Podcast as Denise takes us on her journey to Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy - what it is, what it isn’t, how it works and about how she came to train as a Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist!

We cover:

  • What is Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy (CBH) and how it works
  • How can hypnotherapy help change habits and behaviour?
  • How does Denise start working with a client and what happens in a CBH session?
  • How does Denise use hypnotherapy with different types of clients (eg. phobias)?
  • What led Denise into CBH?
  • Denise’s personal journey with CBH
  • The importance of doing work outside sessions
  • How much control you have over your own mind, reactions and recovery
  • CBH in the comfort of your own home
  • How can you set yourself up for success with CBH
  • How to put yourself back in the driving seat of your own health and wellbeing
  • Denise’s biggest learnings with CBH

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too!:

YouTube: Joyful Balance Podcast;

Instagram: @joyful_balance.me;

Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me

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Join us on the Joyful Balance Podcast as Meera lays all her cards on the table in an interview about what drove her to leave her corporate life behind and restart her career as a nutritionist.

Here’s some of the topics we cover:

  • What attracted Meera to neuroscience
  • Meera’s subsequent journey through mental health recovery
  • How and why Meera qualified as a Nutritionist
  • What does it mean to eat healthily for your brain?
  • Meera’s top 3 learnings through recovery
  • Meera’s obsession with almond butter
  • How Meera approaches working with a new client
  • Do we only use a small percentage of our brain?
  • Who is Meera outside of neuroscience and nutrition?

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too!

YouTube: Joyful Balance Podcast;

Instagram: @joyful_balance.me;

Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me

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Welcome to the Joyful Balance Podcast with your two delightful co-hosts, Meera Malhotra (Nutritional Therapist) and Denise Iordache (Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapist).

We’re here to help take you on a journey through your brain, your mind and your body and how all of these are interconnected. In this episode, we cover what the Joyful Balance Podcast is all about, who we are, what you can expect from the podcast.

Bear with us, it’s our first one! We’re learning as we go and we’ll take you along with us.

Topics we cover:

  • A brief introduction from Meera and Denise and how we got into our careers
  • How people react when we tell them what we do for a job
  • The mission of the Joyful Balance Podcast
  • Practice vs. progress
  • The importance of a balanced lifestyle
  • What’s in it for you from the Joyful Balance Podcast
  • How we came to be

We hope you enjoy the episode, and if you do, please follow us on any/all of the channels. Feel free to leave us a comment too!

Instagram: @joyful_balance.me

Email: hello@joyfulbalance.me