Women's Inspire Network Show

Pepper Hustle is an online community of women who are looking to help themselves feel better through the power of nutrition, the power of movement and the power of mindset, so positivity, being kind to yourself. It's a group of ladies who are out support each other, who participate in Pepper Hustle's programs, which is showing people how quick you can get your workout out of the road. It doesn't have to be hours of exercise. You don't have to be any Jamie Oliver in the kitchen and you certainly don't have to be any kind of master in mindset in order to feel good and help yourself feel better. They really just want to show women that by making very small changes that you can consistently improve your life.

"We're always trying to come up with recipes that will, that will work for everybody and that will kind of cut down on time. I'm a big fan of cutting corners and if you can make a double batch, by all means, make a double batch and have that freezer stash for the days where you are too busy to cook. Cause we're all busy people. And I'm not saying you have to cook every day. Absolutely not. But it's to have a plan."

"I had this dream of kind of setting up this online community and this online fitness offering for women who didn't have the confidence to leave their home, for women who didn't feel like they'd be any good to kind of join a fitness class, for women who wanted to do something for themselves, but maybe their husband travelled with work. Maybe they were on their own. Maybe they had no family to help, you know, no support network."

As women, we are the world's worst at putting ourselves at the very end of a long list. Everybody and everything tends to come before ourselves, our needs. So, Pepper Hustle are trying to educate women that, okay, we're all time short most days, but don't forget yourself. Give yourself that half an hour or whatever and allow yourself to feel good. And get the consistency because then you know you will build to that. And more importantly tell yourself you can. Because if you tell yourself you can, you can. And that is with everything.

Our New Ear's was founded about five years ago now by Rachel Broderick and Lorraine Murphy. They started originally as a kind of complete political campaign asking the Irish government for funding for the cochlear implant department. They have now started is a support network and communication for someone.

When you have deaf children, one of the first things that's going to settle in your mind is communication. Connection. That distance. How do you bridge that distance? It's not a medical perspective. It's a whole child perspective. It's the individuality of your family and how it works within your family. Because 95% of deaf children are born to hearing parents. So the first deaf person you will know intimately is most likely your baby.

When it comes to charity, it's about investing in people. It's about removing an obstacle. Everyone wants to find a passion in life. Sometimes your passion finds you.

In today's show we're talking to Sharon D from Ireland's Got Curves and On the Plus Side.

Mum of 7, Glamma of 2, Sharon loves her family. Being a mom is great, it's the best thing in the world, but you do lose your own identity a little bit. It's true. So, Sharon had a midlife crisis. She didn't buy the sports car or get a toy boy or anything like that.

"I started investing myself again. I started looking at myself health-wise, where was I going? And it took me on a journey of looking at my body. I'd always been down on myself and my body for a number of years and I decided, no, I'm going to turn this around. So in 2016 I lost four stone and I did my first triathlon size 18 and it was a real eye opener for me.

It made her look at body image and how negative body image is and how that actually stops people doing it. So Island's Got Curves became born out of that.

"I was looking at the people that go to the gym that were plus size and feeling like they had been looked at and laughed at. It just stopped them going to the gym. But surely the gym was the place they needed to be. Food is an addiction for a lot of people and a lot of people, confidence and everything else. And it's possibly really hard addiction. I've not had any other addictions, but I would say the thing with food is something that you have to do to live."

Everyone wears clothes so we should see clothes on everyone. So Island's Got Curves is a curvy convention. Nowadays in the industry 12 is plus size. It's a curvy convention that happens annually in Dublin and it has like stands and businesses and catwalks and the catwalk models come along up to size 36 and all ages. Clothes can make you feel great as well though if you've got the right size clothes and the right style and the right colours.

"Stop abusing yourself. Stop beating yourself up. You're beautiful. You're the most beautiful today that you might ever be again. And you almost might be not at your best today and you're never going to be that way again. But it's today. And don't let life pass you by. Don't miss out on opportunities just because of feeling like you can't go or that you might not fit in somewhere. But if you want to do something, if you want to start a business, for example, I would hate that to stop someone."

Don't let anything hold you back. It's not all about size-related. It's looking at the plus side of life, positive mind thinking. And it's for people that aren't going to sit there and put other people down to make themselves look good.

My first guest is the beautiful Helena Tubridy who is a fertility expert.

Helena is the bridge between infertility and pregnancy. She is a medical professional so she can unscramble for people all the clinic jargon, what questions to ask, what they should be doing. So it really is at their level and it is helping them to make the most of IVF if they're doing it. And also to boost natural fertility. And it's for women, but it's also for the guys.

Helena has been doing this for the last 30 years and over the last 12 years she has really been raising the awareness to get people talking, to get people comparing and to get our government to give free IVF, to support it, to regulate the whole business.

She is part of the journey, the whole journey. Not every pregnancy goes to plan. Miscarriage, pregnancy loss, stillbirth, fatal fetal abnormalities, etc. Helena is a therapist, a mental health professional, so I can help people through that, through the trauma. And I'm an EMDR therapist as well, so that means a very, very quick reduction of therapy. And I have a major role for the guys as well. So I'm seeing more and more and more and more men coming, which is fantastic, you know. And what do you feel is the, with the guys. Okay. So do you find that they're reluctant to come to you or when they do come to you, what do you find is the biggest fear? I suppose that the biggest fear, I suppose, you know, the sense of we're doing fine, we'll get there and trusting in something outside themselves, like IVF being the bullet and we keep battering away. Thought, I mean, people having four IVF in one year is extraordinarily expensive, which nobody talks about.