On today’s show, we are talking regularity, how consistent habits and training pay off in the gym – and the bathroom! I’ll explain what you need to do the day before to make sure that morning poo arrives on time and your day gets off to a smooth start. Hint: hydrate, eat lots of fiber, and shut it down early if you want to experience stool (and gym) nirvana the next day.
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On today’s show, we are talking regularity, how consistent habits and training pay off in the gym, but also in the bathroom. My guest today is my good friend, Rebecca Haehnle. Rebecca is a small business owner, but her passion is wellness, exercise, fitness, and regularity. She competes in the hybrid fitness space in events like HYROX and DEKA. And in fact, Rebecca represented the US in the HYROX World Championship in Nice this year. In other words, she’s a badass. Rebecca, welcome to the Gutbliss Podcast.
Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
So you guys can’t see her, but let me tell you, she is built, she is a thing of beauty, sculpted. And she’s here with me in her workout clothes because she trains at what, like, five o’clock in the morning, preferably?
5.45.
This morning at around 7.40 a.m. my husband was like, does Rebecca drive a Jeep? And I’m like, mm-hmm. He goes, yeah, she’s out there. I said, yeah, she is, you know, we all have those friends, the ones who turn up early and they definitely arrive versus the ones who may or may not come. Just like bowel movements!
I was trying to kill time. I didn’t want to come too early.
Boy, we can have fun with that! You want to have that bowel movement where rain or shine absolutely that bowel movement is coming, and that is you Rebecca. So tell us about your routine and how you make sure that the bowels are as regular as everything else in your life.
Listen if I don’t have a good bowel movement before I work out I’m not having a good workout. Actually I’m not having a good day. Most important for me, I get up probably about 4.30. I know, it’s painful. But the first thing I do, I get up and I go to the bathroom, and I sit, and I relax. Now because I’ve been sleeping, you know, it doesn’t take me very long to have a good poo.
Because you’ve been feeling relaxed already?
Yeah, I’ve been sleeping, I get up, the first thing I do is I go take a poo, that’s number one.
Do you drink a glass of water or something to stimulate? You know, there’s this thing, the gastrocolic reflex, where the first thing in your stomach stimulates your colon. Do you find you need to drink some water or something?
So the first thing I do is I go to the bathroom, but I do not have to have anything to drink before I use the bathroom in the morning. I do have some water before I go to bed.
So you hydrate before you go to bed?
Always, always. And then I keep a nice bottle of water next to my bed. So in the middle of the night when I have to go up and go to the bathroom, I’ll have a little bit of water, but I don’t need it before I have my first poo in the morning.
Fantastic. I suffer from what I call “granny bladder” being a menopausal woman. So I have to shut off my hydration by about eight o’clock at night, otherwise it’s up continuously at night. What time do you go to bed, speaking of ending hydration?
I shut it down by 10 o’clock. That means I go lay down in my bed at 10 o’clock. Now I probably fall asleep maybe about by 10:30. So I get roughly about six hours of sleep.
Do you feel like that’s enough?
It’s not enough for me during the week, but I cannot go to bed any earlier than that. Monday through Thursday. Just with my day of working, I don’t get out of work until about seven, so it’s hard for me to, my nervous system is still inflamed at that point in time, you know, I’m still thinking about my day. I’m very consistent about the 10 o’clock though. So I go to bed by 10:30. I do set my alarm, and I don’t need my alarm.
But you set it just in case?
I set it just in case, but 4:30 is the time because I do need time to take a poo.
I love that you make time for that!
I make time. In the morning.
When we come back, more on how Rebecca’s diet and nutrition has evolved over the years to support her training and her regularity. We are back talking with Rebecca Haehnle about regularity, not just in the gym, but also in the bathroom. Rebecca, tell us about how your diet and nutrition have evolved over the years since you started competitive racing.
So one of the things that I learned was I wasn’t eating enough food for the amount of training that I was doing. I really have spent a lot of time, money, and energy on really learning how my nutrition plays a huge part in my fitness.
Before you tell us about the nutrition, how much training are you doing?
I move seven days a week. I train five days a week. I’m doing something every day. I train either endurance or strength. That’s happening Monday through Friday. And then Saturday and Sunday, my weekends, it could be a long walk. It could be a hike, or it could be a long run. So there’s always movement happening.
So I think a long run counts as training!
Yeah, it does. But it doesn’t happen every weekend. But I’m always moving. So my nutrition is going to change based on my activity level. I typically eat four times a day and those meals are always going to have a level of protein and then a carbohydrate and a fat. Very balanced.
And what’s a typical day? I know today’s a little atypical because you’re not going back to work today – your day off. But in a typical day where you were also working a full day, take us through what time you get up, you know, the whole thing.
So my workouts are typically 6 a.m. and they’re always fasted, so I do not eat before my workout. My first meal is going to be about an hour after my workout before I go to work and it’s always the same. I always have oatmeal, and I have eggs. Those are two things I always have. The oatmeal will always have some type of fruit, maybe strawberries, blueberries. And my egg white omelet with mushrooms or peppers. So it’s a nice hearty meal that’s packed with protein and some carbohydrates.
And plants! Which is great, because it sounds like you’re dressing up the oatmeal with berries, maybe some nuts or something. And then veggies with the eggs, so I love that. I assume you rehydrate too.
Right, I’m drinking at least 24 ounces in the morning, even before I leave the house. So two 12-ounce glasses of water just like room temperature, or maybe a little lemon squeezed in there. But I’m really trying to hydrate.
Yeah, and that’s great for the bowel function too, setting you up for success the next day because you’re already making sure that those pipes have water moving through them. So you do your workout, which is usually about an hour?
About an hour and 15 minutes, an hour and a half, no more than that.
And then you head to work. And you’re also moving around during work. You are constantly back and forth and you’re on your feet.
Yes. So I’m a hairdresser and yes, I am moving around. I’m never sitting down. So my second meal is going to be a lighter. It’s going to be maybe some Greek yogurt, full fat, with some berries and nuts. It’s, you know, chocked with some goodness there. And then I have that and then for lunch I’m going to have some protein. It could be chickpeas, could be lentils, always some vegetables, green beans, zucchini.
Is it usually plant protein?
I do like plant protein for my lunch. So I eat a lot of chickpeas, I eat a lot of lentils, I love broccoli, I love green beans, I love kale.
So it’s going to be some type of veggie protein bowl? I love that! And again, another reason, if you are listening, another reason why she’s having success in the morning. She’s drinking a lot of water in the morning. She’s having protein but also plants as a first meal. And then she’s having a lunch, again, high in protein but plants and high fiber plants like chickpeas and lentils, broccoli.
I will take that bowl and either I’ll just put everything together or I will wrap it in a whole wheat wrap if I need a little bit more carb that’s what I do I’ll just add that that wrap to everything it puts it all together.
Fantastic and then you’re at work often, you mentioned, till like seven o’clock?
Most days. I have three meals at work sometimes. And people always say to me, how do you do it? I have to really be very consistent with my meal prep and making sure I have everything put together before I leave for work. But I also have to be mindful when I’m at work that I carve out time. It’s difficult to actually eat.
Yeah, because I’ve been to your fabulous place, Parlour, and there are often two or three people waiting. So you have somebody in the chair, you have two or three people waiting, and they’re giving you stink eye, like, hello, I’m here for my appointment.
But the thing is, one of the things I talk about, I communicate to my clients all the time about what I’m doing. They know, they’re very familiar with my fitness. They understand that I prioritize my wellness and my nutrition. So when I say to somebody, can you give me five minutes just so I can eat, they say absolutely! They’re very gracious about that.
Also, you know, she’s practicing some psychiatry for her clients in the chair as she’s making them look fantastic doing their hair. It’s about the relationship. That is also exhausting. So in addition to your physical workout, you are talking to clients, many of whom you’ve known for decades, sometimes about personal things.
Yes, and honestly, when I get home in the evening time, sometimes I need about 20 minutes of just quiet time and meditation. Don’t talk to me. But there’s a lot of time that I spend eating at work because a lot of those meals have to happen during my work day. I try not to eat – and this is another thing that I think is really important for people to understand – I really try to condense the amount of time that I’m eating into a block. So I do not eat after 7 p.m. So, because I go to bed at 10 p.m., I really want my food to digest.
And that’s another really important point. I’ve talked about this on the podcast before about the idea that your GI tract has a bedtime. It works in cycle with the circadian rhythm, the light-dark cycle. So once the sun sets, and where we are in Washington, D.C. this time of year, that’s around five, six o’clock. So really shortly after that, your GI tract is not contracting, it is very dormant. And unfortunately, that’s when most people are putting in the bulk of their calories. So they are also complaining of bloating and feeling really full, uncomfortable. It interferes with their sleep because their body’s still trying to digest. Digestion is a really active process. So it’s another thing that you’re doing right, which is that you are sort of shutting it down by about seven o’clock.
Right. So I’ll have a, after my lunch, I will have another snack. That could be, I prepared a soup, like a vegetable soup. So maybe I have a bowl of soup at work. If I’m leaving work by six, I get home and then I will have a good salad, a vegetable, and a protein.
So another balanced meal. When we come back, I want to hear about what happened in Chicago. You were racing in Chicago You were racing in Chicago recently, about a month ago, HYROX, and something happened, and I want to hear more about it when we come back. Just a couple weeks ago, you competed in a HYROX event in Chicago. And first of all, just tell people a little bit, just in a sentence, what is HYROX?
HYROX is fitness racing. It’s hybrid fitness racing that takes endurance and strength, puts them together, and you’ve got a great race.
So it’s different stations and you’re doing different things. You’re like pushing the sled, you’re doing…
You’ve got stations, and between each station, you’ve got a 1K run. So there’s strength and running, you put those together. But it’s a race that absolutely anybody can do. If you’re into fitness, you work out, you can do it.
Got it, got it. So you’re in Chicago at this HYROX event and tell us a little bit about what happened there. You changed some things up.
Number one rule when you are racing, running a marathon, doing competitive racing; you don’t want to introduce anything new to your routine. No new shoes, not even new leggings, certainly not changing your nutrition or adding supplements where you don’t need them. And that’s what happened. I made the mistake of, you know, I really take my fitness very seriously and I really research, and I love to look at new ideas when it comes to my fitness. And I introduced some supplements when I shouldn’t have. And I should have relied on my nutrition, which I always have. So what happened was I added too many electrolytes, too much sodium, too much potassium. I pulled back on my food intake, and I didn’t hydrate as much and that was to my detriment.
Gutbliss 101: food! And I promised Rebecca, I’m not going to rant, but I really want to emphasize this. Your body has your back! Your body has something called homeostasis, which balances the electrolytes, etc. Of course, if you’re doing endurance racing, like you’re doing an Ironman or a marathon, you may have to hydrate a little bit differently, but a banana is still a great way to add electrolytes. And you start doing these powders, sodium, potassium; this stuff can really mess you up. It can also really irritate your GI tract. And one of the things I see in my medical practice is so many of the people who are coming in with GI distress, with bloating, and they feel uncomfortable, they’re a little nauseated. When I have them empty out their shopping bag of supplements and convince them to take a break from this stuff, I would say 50% of them get better. These things are synthetic compounds. They are mostly ultra-processed, and they’re made in a factory, and have a long shelf life. They have a bunch of stuff in them and they’re irritating to the GI tract. The GI tract does not recognize them as food. So I’m sorry that it sort of messed you up, but in a way I’m glad because your body gave you the feedback. Your gut was like “no!”.
So this is the interesting thing. Once I worked with my coach after the race, I realized that prior to the race, I was down like 500 calories to 700 calories per day when I was training, and that made such an impact on my actual race. So removing too much food and relying on supplementation is not the way to go if you’re training for anything.
Such a great lesson. So actually you need the food: less supplements, more food. The last thing I want to ask you about is what motivates you? I mean this is like a professional athlete schedule almost. 4.30 wake up, you’re really focused on your food, you’re meal prepping, you’re eating these meals. What keeps you going?
I’ll be 52 in February, and I love where I’m at in terms of my body, my wellness. I feel very blessed to be able to do everything I can. I do it for me. I’m happy to get up at that hour. I’m happy that I can do everything that I can do. My body allows me to do. I do it for my family. I do it for the other women out there in my age bracket to inspire them. I want to introduce more people to what I do, more women to what I do, because I feel like when I get out there I don’t see us, and I want to see more women like me out there doing the same things I’m doing. So if I could build more of a community and introduce more women to this that’s why I do what I do. That’s why I talk about it.
Well I’m so glad that you’re not just talking about it; you’re doing it! Both physically as well as from a gut point of view, it sounds like what you’re doing is working so well. Thanks so much for sharing with us, Rebecca. It was a pleasure having you.
I want to leave you with three takeaways about regularity.
1) Consistency is the key to getting regular – whether we’re talking about the gym or the bathroom.
2) What happens in the morning is determined by what you do the day before. Hydrate, eat lots of fiber, and shut it down early if you want to experience stool nirvana the next day.
3) Food over supplements, every single time.
So that’s it for this edition of the Gutbliss Podcast on getting regular.
