Kickass Life Project

Jenny Eden Berk is an Eating Psychology coach, Culinary Nutritionist and #1 best selling author of the book, The Body Image Blueprint. She helps sensitive and soulful women release chronic stress, restore body confidence, eat consciously and heal their relationship with food. You do not want to miss this fun interview where we discuss the common questions that come up when people start to eat mind...

Have you ever struggled to get your butt off the couch and exercise? I have!! Yesterday is a prime example. And the day before that. Motivation to workout is hard, even when you know it will feel good afterwards. I don't actually have the stats but I'd make the wager it's #1 on the list of 'things people procrastinate about'. Now overcoming procrastination is not my speciality but when it comes to...

"I'm doing all the things - yoga, meditation, journaling - and it's not working; I'm still anxious all the time. What the FUK is wrong with me?!" Probably....nothing!   Anxiety feels bad, but it is not an emotion; it's a physiological state. And there is a useful purpose to that physiological state. It's a smoke alarm. It's a check engine light flashing at us. The anxiety might be there...

Depression IS a protective state from an emotional storm. It might feel like you are slightly removed from the storm, watching it from the side lines or from above in disbelief, or maybe the best analogy is like you are in the eye of the storm and have nowhere to go without getting swept away and so you just don't move. Depression is shut down. Depression is conservation. We're gonna talk about on...

Abortion is not about killing babies, but banning abortion is about killing women. (metaphorically and literally) Think about all the things women will not be doing while they are busy fighting for their reproductive rights? Think about all the things women won't be doing while they are busy raising children they couldn't afford or didn't want. Think about all the things women won't be doing while...

Are you happy? Are you depressed? Are you angry, grieving, excited, motivated, tired, hungry, proud? Are there parts of your life that you feel are finally balanced and right where they should be? Are there aspects of that have been knocked off balance and you’re fighting to straighten out or have decided to give up on? When we want to change we struggle, and when we don’t want to change, it somet...

This is a fitness personality quiz I made up years ago to help people identify the ways they 'fail'. And failure is a good thing! Failure is part of our success. But I also give you some tweaks and 'do it now' tips so you can use those failures to your advantage.  Blog Your fitness personality quiz Journeys mentioned in the episode Undiet your Life (free) Fierce AF (90 day program) Connect wi...

"For most of history, ‘anonymous’ was a woman”. ~ Virginia Wolfe It is always interesting to me when I speak to the men in my life and most of them fully believe women do have equal rights and opportunities, but most of the women I know would say, “umm no, we aren’t there yet.” Let's also touch on the idea of equality and question whether or not that is actually the goal. Equality is this idea tha...

The question that comes up so often around abusive relationships - "why don’t people just leave?" There are actually two things I am going to talk about. I would not call them mirrors of each other, but parallel tracks. They are not the same thing, but they share similarities in regards to how we might live life. Those two things are fitness and mental wellness. (not a big shock, right?!) I’m...

There was a storybook I had as a child about a little dragon the size of a kitten. He visited a young boy who talked to him and played with him, but when the boy showed the dragon to his parents, they denied the dragon was there (because dragons obviously don’t really exist). The dragon got bigger. The boy took the dragon with him to school and the teachers all claimed there was no such thing as d...

Useful may be the unsexiest way to describe this episode, but practical and useful is what it has going for it!  We’re gonna dive into the fitness lingo and all the acronyms that, if you are new to working out in an intentional way, may seem like totally overwhelming gibberish. If you’re not new, I may surprise you with a few of these, (or not), but I still think you’ll get some new info from...

Imagine a product that failed for the majority of people who used it, diminished your enjoyment of life, and blamed you for not being good enough instead of trying to improve the product. Would you buy that product? Would you buy multiple versions of that product in different styles and from different brands?  If we replace the word product with 'diet' or 'fitness program' then the answer is...

This is an episode about abuse. It is not intended for children and may trigger uncomfortable emotions or painful memories. It is an important story, but please look after yourself first. The purpose of today’s episode is not for me to give you answers, but to help you ask some questions. Questions, I think, we need to be asking as a society. I will tell you there is a mind blowing piece of the st...

This is a totally random episode! Ten sassy cards (aka: my favourite inspirational quotes and messages) and ten random stories that highlight each one. Tell me your favourite sassy card and I'll tell you how you can get a physical copy of that card. Welcome to 2022, everyone :) This is a great way to get some motivation for starting your year off thinking differently and getting different results....

Dieting bad. Healthy eating good. But how do you separate the two? Isn't it healthy to watch what I eat and avoid junk food? Aren't I supposed to lose weight for health reasons? What if I told you the answer to was no... How would that change your life? “Diet culture” refers to a set of beliefs that values thinness, appearance, and shape above health & well-being. It places importance on restr...

A pep talk podcast that will leave you feeling more hopeful, seeing things a little differently, or maybe, just maybe, believing everything will be ok. Plus practical, actionable things you can do to start feeling better when things don't seem ok. There's also a fun exercise to prove how strong your mind/body connection really is and the power you have over your own body just using your thoughts.&...

HRV improves with exercise. Improved HRV means improved vagal tone. It is like a beacon signal to our nervous system that we are ok, that we are safe, that we are capable. These are all things that light the way back to the ventral vagal beach. Now I am not saying exercise is a magic cure for trauma, but it sure as heck is a useful tool. And it is a tool we can use to communicate from body to brai...

If you want a relationship that looks and feels like the most amazing thing on earth, you have to treat it like the most amazing thing on earth. This 5 part Polyvagal informed fitness mini series is all about the relationship you have with your body - what relationship is more important and amazing than that? The key here is autonomy (choosing to vs having to). Part one, two and three of this mini...

From a fitness perspective, all movement is the creation and then resolution of tension (or stress). Which kind leads nicely into something I said I’d talk about in the last episode - how to resolve the sympathetic energy in a way that doesn’t automatically drop you back down into dorsal. This episode is about the movement that matches a sympathetic state, how to move around the ladder using fitne...

If we are in a Dorsal Vagal state of energy conservation, in order to get back to ventral, we must pass through the sympathetic system. You’ll remember the sympathetic system is fight/flight energy - it’s mobilization. So if we add energy into dorsal, it pushes us up the ladder a bit. Now some of you brilliant listeners might be thinking, “then why don’t we just force ourselves to go for a jog and...

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - Maya Angelou This really sums up what we are going to cover in the next few episodes on the Kickass Life Project podcast which is the long ago promised topic of Polyvaqal theory and Trauma Informed Fitness. I have been using trauma informed fitness practices...

I know what it's like to be lonely, worried, & fed up with trying. That's exactly why I created the DATE YOURSELF journey - to take you from discouraged & disenchanted to finally understanding how to make yourself fairytale happy. The Date Yourself Journey is a FREE and SECRET... one of the ways you can find it is by listening to this podcast.  This episode will give you 5 dates yo...

Who knew these Automatic Negative Thoughts are not only running around in our heads, they are so common that mental health peeps around the world have named them all - like biologists have named whale species! From Zebra and Telescope ANTs to the Blaming and Shaming Twins, there is  a transfiguration formula for neutralizing them that doesn't involve forcing positive affirmations that feel li...

How to worry better. I’ve got 5 worry strategies I’m going to give you that you can apply to almost anything -  some of them will be applicable to big things, some of them will be applicable to little things. All worries are valid! All worries impact us. You'll get ways to calm your body and disarm the alarm signals it is sending, plus ways to deal with worries that will free up your tim...

Victim and survivor are not a one way linear path. They exist on a sliding continuum within the same person... two labels that must exist together in order for either to exist. Yet, we use the word survivor like we're putting someone on a pedestal and the the word victim like we're victim blaming... and it needs to stop. (IMO) I’m willing to bet that if the label of victim gets slapped on you, it...