Cultivating Calm and Confidence: Heather Lillico's Holistic Journey Through Anxiety Management and Mental Well-being

What if you could manage your anxiety naturally, without relying on medication? 

Our latest episode features an inspiring conversation with Heather Lillico, a holistic nutritionist, yoga and meditation teacher, who transformed her life from being overwhelmed by severe anxiety to becoming a guide for others seeking natural ways to manage their mental health. 

Heather's journey began in university with her first panic attack, leading her to explore dietary changes, yoga, and meditation as alternatives to medication.

She shares her story and insights from over seven years of coaching, highlighting how nutrition, physical activity, and a positive mindset are interconnected in managing anxiety.

Curious about how small habits can make a big difference? Heather introduces us to her Cultivating Calm method, a holistic approach that integrates mindset, nutrition, and movement to manage anxiety. 

From meditation and gratitude journaling to incorporating mood-boosting foods and engaging in gentle exercises, Heather offers practical strategies that anyone can start implementing today. 

We also learn about the Cultivating Calm app, which provides community support and tools for managing anxiety holistically. Heather dispels common misconceptions about anxiety, emphasizing that understanding and accepting it as a natural protective response are crucial for improvement.

Discover the powerful link between diet and mental well-being as Heather delves into nutrient-rich foods that can alleviate anxiety symptoms. 

She provides actionable tips for including these foods in everyday meals and discusses the seasonal impacts on nutrient levels that can affect anxiety, especially during winter. 

Heather also underscores the importance of prioritizing self-care and setting boundaries to balance work and personal life, sharing her own experience of reevaluating her values during long-term travel. 

Tune in for Heather’s gentle, step-by-step approach to navigating anxiety and fostering mental well-being.

Chapters

• 0:50 Heather Lilico
• 6:05 Cultivating Calm
• 17:43 Nutrition and Anxiety Connection
• 22:19 Prioritizing Self-Care and Boundaries
• 26:16 Navigating Anxiety

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:50

Hello everyone, welcome to Spiritual Spotlight Series. Today I'm joined by Heather Lilico. She's a holistic nutritionist and yoga and meditation teacher. She teaches overthinking, people-pleasing perfectionists how to manage anxiety naturally and holistically. She's been featured on iHeartRadio and Zoomer Radio and in the National Post and Tiny Buddha. Heather is a creator of the anxiety support app. Cultivating calm has helped hundreds of women find freedom from anxiety and self doubt. Thank you so much for coming on special spotlight series and so happy you're here.

Speaker 2: 1:21

Thank you for having me, Rachel. I'm excited. I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 1:25

Heather, can you maybe share your journey of what led you to become a holistic nutritionist and also like incorporating yoga and meditation into your um all of your education that you've done?

Speaker 2: 1:37

Yes, absolutely Happy to share a bit of my my journey. So it started for me in university. I remember when I had my first anxiety attack, I was at a crowded party. I all of a sudden started to get this sort of tunnel vision. Like my palms got really sweaty, my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest. I felt so overwhelmed and like this sense of dread and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm having a heart attack. So I locked myself in the bathroom and I remember just sliding down the wall and waiting for it to pass. And then I started living in fear of like when was the next anxiety attack going to strike?

Speaker 2: 2:14

And that's really where I went on this journey to learn what can I? What can I do? Because I started feeling so overwhelmed and I was under I was putting myself under so much pressure in school and I went to my doctor and I said you know I'm having a lot of anxiety, like what can we do? And my doctor pulled out her prescription pad and started writing me out something for anti-anxiety meds and I was like, let's just pump the brakes because I really haven't explored other avenues yet and I really for myself, like I want to solve this for myself and understand the roots of it, like why, why am I experiencing this? And to me it wasn't going to. It wasn't going to fix if I could just take a pill and really not get to the root of it. So that's really where I started going down this rabbit hole of natural wellness is.

Speaker 2: 2:59

I started with my diet. I started removing some foods that I thought maybe were spiking anxiety and adding in some real whole foods that would help me feel calm, and I did. I started to feel calmer, and I still felt, though, like my nervous system was just jacked up all the time and I could just so easily go from you know zero to a hundred and feel anxious. So I started practicing yoga, and when I incorporated that as like a regular part of my routine, I noticed that I could regulate easier, that I could calm my breath, and my body and my mind started to really relax when I was doing those classes, but I still felt like, outside of that, I had a million different thoughts, and each one felt so stressful and I would spiral all the time.

Speaker 2: 3:45

So I started practicing meditation, and that was like the last piece of the puzzle for me that it really clicked in my mind that, oh, it's not just one thing, it's piece of the puzzle for me, that it really clicked in my mind that, oh, it's not just one thing, it's all of these different things together that are making a difference and helping me feel more confident, more calm, more grounded and centered. And so that's really why I became a nutritionist and yoga and meditation teacher is because I thought this stuff works and I don't think people are really making that connection between what they're eating, how they're thinking, how they're moving their body and how that might affect their mental health. So that's that's really why I went down this this journey to figure it out.

Speaker 1: 4:23

So how did your personal experience with anxiety maybe shape your approach to helping others manage it naturally and holistically?

Speaker 2: 4:32

I think it was because when I was experiencing this, you know, I was so overwhelmed and, just to be totally frank, like I really didn't think I was gonna make it to age 30. I was like I can't deal with this, it's too much, like I really just wanted to crawl under a rock and never come out because I was so overwhelmed and I, you know, I couldn't make a decision, even like a simple decision going to a pharmacy and trying to decide what shampoo do I want. I would be stuck there for so long thinking what if I chose wrong? And like just things like that were really impacting my life. So for me it was a lot of trial and error that I thought, okay, if I'm going to continue to be on this earth, then I got to really make the most of my life and have, and you know, work on myself and sort of unpeel these layers so that I actually am truly happy and can enjoy the moment instead of worrying about all the you know 10 worst possible outcomes that could happen.

Speaker 2: 5:29

So for me it was. It was so much trial and error at first to figure out what works and you know I had struggled with anxiety for over 10 years by the time where I really feel like I got a handle on it and and now I've been a coach for about seven years, so I've been able to also work with clients to figure out, oh interesting, like when we, you know, reduce caffeine, you feel better. When we, you know, reduce caffeine, you feel better. When we, you know, incorporate meditation, you also feel better. So that's how I sort of like fine tuned this method is trial and error with myself and a little bit of a guinea pig over the last seven years of coaching.

Speaker 1: 6:05

I love that. So what are the main pillars of your cultivating calm method and how do they work together to support anxiety management?

Speaker 2: 6:14

So cultivating calm is, and how do they work together to support anxiety management? So cultivating calm is is built on the principle that it really does require a holistic approach for anxiety, that there is no, you know, silver bullet, like one specific, like everyone is always looking for, like the hack right? What's the one thing that's going to shift it for me? And and I believe more in small, consistent habits, and so cultivating calm is built on that principle of what we do every day matters, what you know, the, the actions that we take, the habits that we have. That tells us what we believe about ourselves.

Speaker 2: 6:46

And so I've worked to incorporate these pillars of mindset, which is about the thoughts that you think. So it's about meditation, gratitude, journaling. Nutrition, which is about the foods that we eat, incorporating mood boosting foods. And then movement, which is moving your body in a way that is regulating your nervous system. So these like lower intensity types of movements, and I've sort of fine tuned this method so that it takes less than 30 minutes a day. So five minutes of meditation incorporating two mood-boosting foods, which takes just a couple minutes, and then 20 minutes of low-intensity movement or exercise. If we can do that every day, we're going to really get a handle on anxiety.

Speaker 1: 7:29

Perfect. Can you tell us more about the creation and purpose of the Cultivating Calm app? Sure?

Speaker 2: 7:35

So the whole purpose was. I mean, this is really like the app that I wish I had when I was struggling with anxiety, because for myself it felt really isolating and alone, that I felt like I mean, part of the anxiety voice was sort of feeling like everybody hates me, I'm not good enough, major imposter syndrome and everything I do, like everybody's mad at me. And so I wanted to create this, this space, this community, where people could come and feel supported and connected and feel like there's someone you know who's sort of helping them along the way. So that's why I wanted to create an app with a community space that you know we're sharing wins on there, we're sharing challenges and people are, you know, supporting each other through it and everybody kind of has this, this common goal. And then not only the community aspect but this holistic aspect that to my knowledge, no other anxiety app combines the holistic power of mindset, nutrition and movement. So I wanted it kind of all in one place for people, because with anxiety as well, like it's overwhelming.

Speaker 2: 8:35

It is overwhelming to constantly have your mind turned on and thinking a million different thoughts and it's really hard to just you can't just consciously that they can really get deeper into those roots of like. Why am I feeling anxious, right? How can I just sort of like ride the wave of this and really move on to and shift into this different identity, right Of like, I'm a calm, like. I don't identify as an anxious person anymore. I'm a calm person, I'm a confident person. I still have a feeling of anxiety sometimes. That's, you know, that's, that's natural. But that's really what we're trying to do in this community is really shift into this, this new identity.

Speaker 1: 9:31

Okay, that's perfect. What are some maybe common misconceptions about anxiety and its management that you may often encounter misconceptions about anxiety and its management that you may often encounter.

Speaker 2: 9:41

So I think with anxiety it's such a good question. We often think that there is this, this level of healing, that we'll get to where we'll never experiencing anxiety. And in my experience that's just not the case. Like anxiety, if we think about the purpose of it. The purpose of it, the purpose of it is to protect us. It's to alert us to some type of danger. Right, and that works really well for a physical danger, like you're walking down the street, you step off a curb and a car's coming towards you like whoa, you have that sort of nervous system activation, right, jump out of the way. It's great for that.

Speaker 2: 10:18

But if we think about the types of things that make us anxious, it might be like a boss sending you an email and saying, hey, we need to talk, come into my office like immediate spike in anxiety, right. Or a friend texting you and saying, hey, we need to talk. Or putting yourself out there and speaking up at that meeting, at work. Those kinds of things are causing anxiety and that's more of like the emotional threat. So it's still like a danger, we could say, and that is like an evolutionary response.

Speaker 2: 10:49

So the goal, I think, with anxiety is not to completely eradicate it and expect that we would never be anxious again because it's just your and expect that we would never be anxious again because it's just your danger system alerting you. But the goal is how can we acknowledge what's coming up for us and that maybe something is being activated or triggered, like, oh, I'm going to present or speak up at this big meeting at work, that feels really scary. People could judge me, people could reject me, and so that might be why I'm having the feeling of anxiety. People could reject me, and so that might be why, you know, I'm having the feeling of anxiety and if we can kind of get to that place where we're not so much at war with it I'm not going to say like we have to get to the place where we love our anxiety, but get to the place where we can find a little bit of acceptance of like, oh, this makes sense of why I'm feeling this, and that helps us process it and release it a lot easier.

Speaker 1: 11:37

Oh, I love that. I love that. That's such good advice it really is. So your approach is holistic. How do you address, maybe, overthinking and perfectionism in your clients?

Speaker 2: 11:48

So I think, with these the overthinking and perfectionism, we have to really think of, like the root of these right, like, where are these coming from? Why are we having let's use perfectionism as an example, because, as myself, a recovering perfectionist, this is something that comes up for me, me a lot, and even when I was launching this app I had this. I sort of delayed the launch of it because I really wanted to get it right and I could see that I was pushing it down the road. Pushing it down the road and it was because I was so scared that I was going to do something wrong and end up failing or end up, you know, getting in trouble in a way, or or ticking people off or not you know, serving in like the best way I could. But with perfectionism, what happens a lot is we end up not taking risks, we don't take chances, we play small right Cause we're so scared of failing or we're scared of judgment from others, and so I think, to really get to the root of that, we have to see like, okay, well, you know what was happening when we were children growing up?

Speaker 2: 12:48

Like, did we have parents that made us feel that, you know, we couldn't make mistakes, that we would get in trouble when we made mistakes. And you know, I grew up in a generation where and my parents are like loving amazing humans and did the best they could with what they knew but I still sort of got that messaging that if I made a mistake I was going to be sent to my room and punished, right and therefore like separated or alone, and I sort of internalize that as if I make a mistake then I'm going to be separated from my caregiver. That feels really scary to a kid. So we got to kind of like understand, I think, a little bit more that as adults it's never about the situation itself.

Speaker 2: 13:30

Whatever is triggering like you know, we're feeling that anxiety, we're feeling that perfectionism come into play, where we feel like we can't make mistakes, like we have to overachieve and go, go, go. We got to hustle for our worth. It's never about that situation itself. It almost always comes back to like what did I learn in childhood and that's some of what we untangle through courses on. The app is diving deeper into like what are these beliefs that you have about yourself? Because we got to rewire those neural pathways, we got to change, yeah, so that you believe that you know you are good enough, you are worthy, that your worth is never dependent on your achievements. Like those are the kinds of affirmations and messages that we need to be building in through things like meditation.

Speaker 1: 14:18

I love that. How do you help women maybe break free from some anxiety patterns and feel confident in their own decisions?

Speaker 2: 14:25

The decision piece is so big because what I've seen comes along with anxiety, is a lack of confidence and an indecisiveness. So you know, should I apply for a new job or should I stay where I am? Should I leave my partner or stay with them? And those are like bigger decisions. But even you know the smaller decisions, like should I take this program or not? Should I invest in this way myself or not?

Speaker 2: 14:53

I see people just take so much mental space to devote to these decisions instead of making a decision and realizing that, whether it's an immediate success or not, you get a lesson out of it either way. Right. And so that's the kind of reframe that I like to offer my clients is you're either going to, you're going to learn from it, or it's going to be a raging success and great, and both of those are incredibly valuable. But we have to give ourselves the grace and compassion to get it wrong. That it needs to be okay to that. You know we're not going to get everything perfect and right. We got to let go of that old belief and mentality and step into this version of ourselves that acknowledges, like we're human, we're allowed to make mistakes.

Speaker 1: 15:40

It's okay, so you just brought up a good point. So what role does self-compassion play in your method and how can somebody maybe cultivate it more in their daily life?

Speaker 2: 15:52

So let's talk about what self-compassion is, because it's so, oh, it's so, it's so juicy and it's so key. Because a lot of us who are recovering perfectionists grew up thinking that self-criticism is our main motivational tool, right, like if we, you know, didn't get that a hundred percent. It's like what happened, what happened to the 2%, and so we've sort of grown up expecting, like these really high expectations of ourselves and then when we fall short, we end up beating ourselves up, we end up going down that that shame kind of spiral, and so self-compassion really is like the antidote to all of that shame that is holding us back. So self-compassion is just acknowledging that, okay, we're human, it's okay to make mistakes, it's allowed, and offering ourselves the type of words and comfort that we would a close friend, right? So if someone else was struggling and, you know, made this mistake, they messed up this project at work, like what would we say to them? And then can we turn that around and offer it to ourselves, right?

Speaker 2: 16:59

And when I do self-compassion as part of the Cultivating Calm method, we do it with, like hand on heart and just sort of like offer ourselves that, hey, this is feeling really hard right now. Right, this is a moment of suffering, and even just that brings like a little bit of softness to it, that so many of us don't even take the time to feel that this is an acknowledge, that this is hard and this feels icky. And you know, we don't. We don't want to be feeling like this. We just go towards like shove it down, move on, suck it up, keep going, and then eventually that backfires and explodes and catches up with us.

Speaker 1: 17:40

That's the truth, sister. What are some of the targeted anti-anxiety nutrients that you recommend, and why are they effective?

Speaker 2: 17:58

Yes, so the diet piece is so underrated, it's so underutilized by people that a lot of us don't make the link between what we're eating and how we're feeling. Yes, and I mean in some sense, we, you know, we have a sense like a little bit that okay, if I eat a lot of fried foods, I'm probably not going to feel great, fair enough, but we don't make the sort of connection between these real whole foods and how incredible they can be for anxiety. So some of the categories of foods that I recommend are nuts and seeds incredible for anxiety. So we see things like magnesium and zinc in them, healthy fats that help stabilize our blood sugar. Leafy greens are incredible for anxiety as well, like the deeper the color, the better. You could even incorporate things like Swiss chard or like dandelion greens or mustard greens, beet greens, like the tops of beets. People don't realize that those are edible. You can put them in smoothies, you can put them in salads, stir fries, so those are incredible. Fermented foods these are foods that contain live bacteria. So things like yogurt, kefir, kombucha, cultured vegetables, real pickles those are going to provide bacteria that are going to support the gut, and the gut is oh my gosh, it's so important for mental health and for anxiety, like those bacteria in your gut are making a lot of your mood boosting neurotransmitters, so we want to be able to support them and um and uh and and feed them. So fermented foods, and then bright fruits and veggies, things like cherries, plums, red cabbage, broccoli, peppers. These are going to provide antioxidants which are going to support the brain, and there's some interesting research about vitamin C specifically and anxiety and how it can help us feel more calm. So that's another great category of food to incorporate.

Speaker 2: 19:49

So what I recommend is choosing two servings of mood boosting foods every day. So that might mean you're having two servings of nuts and seeds, or one serving of leafy greens and one serving of a bright fruit and veggie. If you feel like, okay, I already have some of these pieces in my diet, then aim for two servings of all of those, those four categories of foods. But for most of us with their diet, it's at least like a step up. If we really just get more intentional about what we're eating and think.

Speaker 2: 20:17

The question I ask myself at every meal is how can I boost this? So if I'm having a salad already, okay, great, healthy choice, but could I top it with a sprinkling of seeds on top. I'm going to add some hemp seeds on top. Could I add a fork full of sauerkraut to this so I get a fermented food on there? Could I chop up a red pepper and add it on there so I get a bright fruit and veggie? And that, I think, really retrains our relationship with food. Right, so that it's not oh, this is so boring or I can't have this food. It's more like what can I do? That's going to take me very little extra time and just elevate what I'm eating.

Speaker 1: 20:56

I love number one how excited you get about talking about nutrition and yoga and meditation.

Speaker 2: 21:01

Like you, can tell you just love what you do.

Speaker 1: 21:03

And the second thing I want to say is I wonder if you've thought this and if you haven't that's okay Because I'm a registered nurse and I'm like thinking about vitamin C connection with anxiety and I'd be wondering if, because vitamin C is usually depleted more in the winter months when people get sick, I wonder if there's more anxiety issues in the winter months because they're depleted of vitamin C. I'm having a moment in my brain.

Speaker 2: 21:25

Well, hey, it's a great connection Rachel to make, because also there's links with vitamin d and anxiety right and the winter months there, like so many of these nutrients that you know, depending on the weather, that maybe we're not getting enough of, and also just like our food system, like so many nutrients are depleting, are being depleted from soil, so we're really just not getting like enough of the nutrients that we need, even if we are eating really healthy foods. So it's, you know, I think it is important to consider supplements.

Speaker 1: 21:55

They have a time and a place and when it comes to anxiety, that can be the right time and place and also like where you live in the world, like I'm in upstate New York, so we have a lot of dark season, so it's very much like I know that a lot of our patients that come in they have very depleted vitamin D and it's I and I bet a lot of them have anxiety or depression or bone issues or sorry, we could go off on a whole, nother topic right now.

Speaker 2: 22:19

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:21

Yes, yes. Let me ask you this how do you balance your professional work with your personal life, especially given your past experience with anxiety?

Speaker 2: 22:31

And so let me say that this is sort of a new concept for me of balancing my work and my personal time, because what I used to do is I would wake up in the morning, I would go teach a morning yoga class, then I would go work for the day at a corporate client, so I would do like in-house wellness for a corporate client, and then after work I would see clients online for my nutrition practice, and that was like most days, it's a very long day. There is very little personal time built in for that, for my own yoga meditation practice, to prep my meals, and so I ended up getting really burnt out, that I was just exhausted and this was sort of like coming through in the pandemic. So what ended up happening is my husband and I decided that we were just going to leave Canada and we were going to go travel for just over a year. So we left for 14 months. I left like the business and the practice that I had built and I took a step back, and traveling for that long just really gave me that bird's eye view to see like what, what was happening in my life, and that I wasn't practicing what I preach, like I wasn't prioritizing myself and doing my own self-care practices. So by taking that step back, I really decided like, okay, what is the most important to me? And it's having my time and my my self-care. So since we've been back in Canada, I've been able to build a business.

Speaker 2: 23:57

That has felt really good that I no longer see clients in the evening. That is my personal time. I will still teach yoga, but I only am going to take on a shift if it is in line with my schedule. And I'm just a lot more firm on boundaries now and I have found that when I can set good boundaries and prioritize myself and I mean that comes from a shift in beliefs as well right, like before, I don't think I believed that I was good enough, that I was worthy, that I was deserving of this personal time. I was still coming from a perfectionist mindset of having to achieve and like prove my worth and look at this business I'm building. Of having to achieve and like prove my worth and look at this business I'm building. Now I would say my priorities have shifted and that I'm very much interested in my own healing and continuing along this journey, because I know that when I am working on that then I'm a better practitioner and better able to support other people.

Speaker 1: 24:50

I love that. I love that you were able to kind of take a step back and realign your boundaries and your beliefs and your whole entire life. It sounds like.

Speaker 2: 25:00

Yeah, it was a really big. I mean, it was a really big change. And you know, it did come with a lot of anxiety taking a trip like that because I was like what am I doing? I'm in my mid thirties and I'm I'm totally just going against the norm of what everybody is suggesting and it was really scary. But it also just I felt sort of like a pull to it and I just kind of wanted to explore, like, how do other people in the world live? And it was amazing to be in some of these different countries where people do value family and connection and personal time and you know, tuning out at the end of the day and really like disconnecting and shutting off, like when I could see people do that and just like a different focus on wellness. I thought, oh, this is really like, this is life, this is so important, this is what I want to cultivate.

Speaker 1: 25:47

Oh, sounds beautiful. Before I ask the last question, if anyone is interested in learning more about you, maybe downloading your app or anything like that, what is the best place for them to go to?

Speaker 2: 25:57

Yeah, I would recommend that they check out cultivating calmca. To cultivating calmca and you can learn about the app there. You can start a free trial from there. You could also head to the app store, google play, and just type in cultivating calm and download the app and and uh, have a free trial and get started on it.

Speaker 1: 26:14

Awesome. So, lastly, what pieces of advice would you give to our listeners who may be struggling with anxiety and maybe looking for some natural ways to manage it?

Speaker 2: 26:27

The piece of advice I would give would be one step at a time. One step at a time Because when I was starting my anxiety journey, I did try to sort of do everything at once. I wanted to do all of the things, and that was that perfectionism mindset, that all or nothing thinking of, like I'm going to do this and I'm going to do it perfectly, and that really ended up setting me back, because when I fell off of whatever I was, you know, whatever routine I was trying to perfect, that, um, that really took me back and it took me out of it for a bit. So I would just offer to people, like you know, go easy on yourself, and one step at a time, because anxiety is overwhelming enough and we're not looking to add, you know, a million different items on your to-do list and overload you. It's just really like one step one day. Sometimes it's one moment at a time. So, true, that's a beautiful piece of advice.

Speaker 1: 27:21

Well, Heather, thank you so much for coming on Spiritual Spotlight Series. It's truly been amazing to speak with you today. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Rachel.