The Power of the Pause and the Fasting Mimicking Diet | Michelle Perchuk & Dr. Elena Klimenko

Hi Elena. It's so nice to finally sit down and have our afternoon tea on Friday. I'm so happy it's finally Friday.

Tgif. Michelle, thank you so much for arranging for this casual discussion about extremely important topic for everyone.

Yes, I agree. Thank you so much for joining me. And I've been seeing a lot of uncertainty from my clients for months. But for the last couple of weeks it's really been very frustrating for them because they are lost and they really don't know how to approach their career. Their transition, getting a first job out of college and it's causing my clients a lot of stress.

What do you see? What people are they motivated? Are they not motivated? What are the signs that you see in your clients? Why do you think they are lost?

People just can't get out of the mindset of performance. It's like submit your resume to a hundred more jobs online, network, network, network. And they really keep going like a hamster in a wheel doing the wrong thing over and over and over again. And that's creating a lot of stress. They're really blinded by their over performance.

Yes, I see slightly different. Maybe I see them on the other end of the spectrum when they running like a hamster in the wheel and finally they exhaust it and they're find that they're not efficient anymore, inefficient in their effort. It takes longer time for them to complete the same tasks. They have to spend more time doing the job that used to take an hour. And they also, I think that also progresses into certain emotional and mental health symptoms like disattachment, anger, mood swings, irritability, inability to maintain intimacy, communication and most importantly cynic. Believe it or not, a lot of people become much more cynic. And this is also the robot like behavior, right? We're like plugged in into doing something day in and day out. And all of those things are actually a signs of burnout. So what do you recommend to them?

Well, all of those things that you're seeing are getting in the way of my college grad clients in finding their first job. It's getting in the way of my professional clients who want to get promoted or get a better job and most of all people who want to retire early. This is getting in their way as well. And several of my clients have confided in me that they're starting to have health issues because of this performance based meaningless activities that really do not give them the results. My suggestion has been to them to really embrace the uncertainty, accept it. We are in very Unusual time in history, but at the same time use the power of the pause. I know you love this statement, but I've been advising my clients to really pause, embrace the uncertainty, reflect, walk away from what they're doing and then come back later after planning, after working with me, a certified career coach, come back and really have defined action steps and really get where you want to go.

Sounds like a really sound advice. And of course the power of the pause and power of stopping and reflecting and embracing the reality and think about what, what do you want to change is extremely powerful in my field. I also find that taking a pause from major physiological processes like digestion is also changes creates the changes on physiological level as well as on the mental level that are unprecedented. And I'm talking about actually taking parts from eating. Fasting A particular system of a five days fasting mimicking plan shows amazing results for my clients. Usually at the end of my initial evaluation, I recommend people to implement certain dietary changes or lifestyle changes. And as you know better than me, no changes come easily, right? Everything comes, any change creates stress, anxiety. Sometimes there's so many moving parts and so many consequences of changes. So people get really shocked and scared of their even my recommendations and I found that if we if the client or my patients encouraged or have our guts to stop eating for five days and take that pause in digestion creates unprecedented changes not only on the level of metabolism, of course it comes as a nice side effect to lose a couple of pounds because you just stop eating as much as usually. But also there's processes of cellular cleaning. It's like your body is finally getting a chance to clean up. We call this process autophagy or self eating, right? Analogy that I usually use is that we all have to clean our house. And when is it easier to clean your house? When you have five family members in the house or when everybody's asleep and you can finally go into every crevices of the house and clean the dust, right? It's much easier when nobody's there. The same thing with the food. When we are not consuming three, four meals a day and snacks in between our digestive system all of a sudden resting and all the resources of the body is directing into the different place cellular cleanup. So that also is reflecting on the mental health. Because people all of a sudden feeling calmer, they feel much more reflective and much more as I said, channeling. Because all of a sudden they get thoughts and decisions and solutions for long term problem. But most importantly for me, and that's probably one of the most attractive factor in fasting for five days or fasting mimic plan that we're talking about is that people stimulate their own stem cell activity, which means that we're not just cleaning, but also repairing the organs that were ran down from day to day activities. So all those things are so amazing. And I find that my patients benefit from it tremendously sometimes. That is their moving point, to create the change and help people to embrace the change and then move much smoother into their milder activities, like stop eating bread or dairy, right? What initially probably scared people after fasting for five days, they're like, oh, it's okay, I can do that. So that's, that's my example that power of the pause creates in my clients.

The benefits are astounding. The way that you're explaining it makes so much sense and people should just try it because the brain fog, the repair, the resetting of your digestive system, all those things really get in their way of them improving themselves in their career. So this is really a fantastic way where you leave off. I actually pick up, right, My clients. With my clients, I tell them a story that happened with me a couple of weeks ago where I was recording a few webinars and just the energy was not there. And because I'm so in tune with my body, I listened to my energy. I almost have this gut feeling that I'm very familiar with and I just was not feeling it. Many of my clients try to truck through it and they're like, no, I need to get this done. They actually don't realize that if they implement the power of the pause at that moment when they're not feeling it with their body, they actually go away and come back and show up more powerful with more of an impact. And we all training yourself to really listen to your body. And in your case, listening to your body, where you are gaining weight or you're bloating or you have allergies or skin conditions, I mean, the list could go on and on and on. People just ignore those things.

Science can be very subtle. What you said that people, majority of us sometimes just plow through this. They think, oh, I just have to meet this deadline and then things will go different, right? And as a result, people consume more coffee to keep themselves up to beat. They consume more alcohol to calm themselves down, they smoke more, they use other stimulants or sedatives. All of those things are actually signs of ran down or burnout. And this is a perfect time before you hit the wall to reassess and take a pause. What I find is difficult that, you know, many people think, oh, I'm gonna go on vacation and that's gonna be my pause. But actually, it's not. It's not a pause. You preoccupy yourself with excursions and activities and meeting friends and drinking, eating. You're not really reflecting. So what I found is a structured pause is so important, something that they don't have to think about. Like, in the case of this fasting, mimicking food plan, it's so important to know exactly that this is all you eat right now for five days. And you don't need to think about cooking dinner. You don't need to think, what are you eating, what are you snacking? Everything is so structured. So in your case, structured pause is also probably extremely powerful.

Well, the structuring comes into play when I work with my clients because I actually developed framework that people can follow and they don't need to think of anything else. Just like they could follow this mimicking diet, they could follow my framework. So they establish a goal that they want to meet at a certain. By a certain time, they start working with me. We define action steps. I keep them accountable. We meet for three sessions, six sessions or 12 sessions, whatever they would like the program to be. Then by the end of the sessions, they are closer to the goal or they have additional insights and they continue going. So there's actually. When clients work with me, they gain not only the knowledge that I've had in executive recruiting my entire career, but they actually walk away with a framework that they could follow not only in their career search, but. But they could actually follow it in.

Other life goals and identifying the barriers. Sometimes we can get to that goal, but finding out what holds us to accomplish that and maybe pausing and reflecting on that is so important. You're doing such a great job for people and humanity, Michelle. And so many people can be influenced by your skills and get where they need to be to meet their purpose in life and feel accomplished and feel that they're living the full potential.

Absolutely. And it's interesting how we are from two completely different industries, but the actual coaching is what really brings us together. Because I do one type of coaching with my clients. And I'm sure that you do a lot of coaching with your clients.

Yes, well, of course, the word doctor is a teacher, and of course, teachers coach as well. So we definitely implement a lot of coaching for our clients because change is not easy. We also have some coaches in practice who will walk with the patient. Basically, holding their hand to accomplish what they need to accomplish health wise and bring them to the optimal health.

So what do you recommend? If some of my clients would like to get started and have a health assessment, what do you recommend that they do?

Well, they just need to call our office, 212-696-health-H E A L or just Google my name, Elena Klimenko, and you'll find the telephone number. So I think starting with their phone call is the most essential thing. Just dial that number and then we'll take the client through the process of understanding how we work. It might not be for everybody. It's definitely functional. Medicine is for educated and motivated consumers. But sometimes, as you know, in marketing, someone has to hear about five to seven times about some service before they subscribe and understand that they need it. So hearing about it, contemplating on it, taking a pause, making a phone call, all those steps I'm sure you promote in your clients to get them to the goal as well.

Absolutely, absolutely. And with my company with MTV coaching, the most logical step is also to schedule a discovery call with me and we identify a goal with the client. We figure out where do they want to go, how much time do they want to dedicate to that. Then magic happens. Coaching is transformation.

Do you operate now on the telephone number on the website, how people will contact you?

The best way is to contact me by email. And My email is michellemtvcoaching.com My website is mtvcoaching.com There are many YouTube videos that I've recorded. I have an Instagram account under Michelle Perchuk, a Facebook page on LinkedIn, all the social media channels. They want to find me, they could find me. Scheduling a discovery call is pretty easy. Just an email. I give my availability and I meet. I like to meet with clients by Zoom. Sure.

Well, we're in the Zoom century.

Yes.

So we. I do a lot of Zoom work as well and I'm definitely promoting your services to my clients. And there's so many newly graduated children. We can call them children because they are compared to us. Right. And what do they face now? It's really a lot of times of uncertainty, not only for the senior and mature career people, but also for the young kids who graduated and don't know what to do, which door to knock to get the job. So I think it's such a timely service to offer. And kudis to you, girl.

Thank you. Well, cheers. Let's make a toast. Power of the pause.

That's right. Power of the pause.

See you next week.

Take care Bye.