Erin Azar is a YouTube, Tiktok and Instagram star, joins us this week to discuss Mrs. Space Cadet, training for a marathon, and why she calls herself an imperfect mess.
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Alice: Have you been struggling to exercise lately? I know I have, I’ve been using two rocks that I found on the beach as my weights. I’ve also been getting my cardio in by walking back and forth to the fridge. But today we have Erin Azar, joining us Erin who is a YouTube, Tiktok and Instagram star, joins us to discuss Mrs. Space cadet her Channel’s name about training for a marathon and as she calls herself an imperfect mess and we’re so excited to have her on, thank you for being here.
Erin: Yay! Thank you. I’m excited too.
Alice: So we’d like to start with a more like fun fast round. So running or cycling?
Erin: Running.
Alice: Cool, roses or tulips?
Erin: Tulips.
Alice: Baseball or Football?
Erin: I honestly can’t pick, I hate if I had to choose I guess football.
Alice: Okay, I feel the same way. Dark chocolate or milk chocolate?
Erin: Milk chocolate.
Alice: Coffee or Tea?
Erin: Coffee
Alice: Cupcakes or cookies?
Erin: Cookies.
Alice: Apples are oranges?
Erin: Apples.
Alice: Awesome.
Erin: Absolutely.
Alice: Can you talk about where you’re joining us from?
Erin: Well, actually my husband’s truck right now. We live in a rural Pennsylvania area and our internet is so slow. So when you said hey, we’re going to do this podcast on Zoom immediately like, all right. Well, I got to pick what parking lot to drive to and use the hotspot on my phone. So that’s where I’m joining.
Alice: Amazing. And where are you in the country?
Erin: Actually, Pennsylvania. So yeah, Southeastern Pennsylvania Berks County.
Alice: Oh great. Yeah. What’s your favorite part about that area?
Erin: Definitely just space. I don’t like, I love visiting cities. There’s just so much diversity and things to do in cities, but in terms of everyday life, I start feeling claustrophobic.
Alice: Okay.
Erin: So I just love the openness about it and I can go on my runs and not see anyone for like five miles and it’s just quiet fresh air and close to my family.
Alice: That’s nice.
Erin: Yeah.
Alice: Can you talk about your running? What prompted you to start Mrs. Space Cadet and what is it?
Erin: Yeah, well, Mrs. Space Cadet. I actually had my YouTube channel for a while and I would just post random funny things about like how you said my imperfect mess of a life and that name of the channel actually came about when I was maybe 11 I was a kid and I think I lost 20 dollars or something on a school field trip or a girl scout field trip and my friend’s mom said Oh Erin, you’re such a space cadet and that kind of always stuck with me. And I really am Spacey. I don’t know what it is in my brain that makes me that way but I decided you know what I’m just going to embrace that and so if you come to my channel, you know, it’s not going to be you know, I’m not going to be put together but the running actually started after I had my third baby last year.
I found myself just really overweight for my body. Like what was normal for me, I wasn’t feeling healthy, I was pretty miserable and it was warm weather and I just thought you know what I’m putting on these, you know sneakers with holes in them. I’m going to wear whatever radicals I have and I’m just going to get out and run because I just felt like this kind of like anxiety or feeling in my chest. I just had to do something about it.
And so I thought to stick with it. I’m just going to challenge myself to do it every day for a month and the amount of life-changing like epiphanies kind of, that came to me on those runs was so empowering to me and I’m like, you know what I’m going to go for a marathon even though I never ran anything close to it. I’m just going to do it for myself. I have to try you know, so that’s how that started.
Alice: And have you already run your Marathon? Are you training for the next one?
Erin: I’m training for my first one. So the longest run so far has been 12 miles which I just did on Sunday.
Alice: Wow.
Erin: And yeah, so this coming Sunday will be 13 miles.
Alice: Amazing.
Erin: And I’m just I’m so glad that I started filming even when I was trying to run one mile because if you come to my channel or my Tiktok or something like that now, you’ll see, oh, okay. She’s running 13 miles. I could never do that I’m not interested. But if you go back like this, it’s all documented. You can see me struggling it kind of near tears in my first video of the playlist where I’m really just trying to run one mile. So it’s really empowering and motivating to see, I started there too, and I’m still overweight, I’m still not you know, the perfect like a fitness model, but I’m progressing, you know?
Alice: That’s amazing.
Erin: Well, yeah.
Alice: What’s the marathon you’re going to run? Do you have it all set? Like, which one are you going to hit up?
Erin: I think I finally decided on the Philadelphia Marathon. I also heard the wineglass marathon and there’s also one I think in Hershey, that is also good but I’m like, I’m going to do the Philadelphia one. I hear it’s really fun and people do ask, What are you going to do if it’s canceled? And in that case, I’m I hate to even think of this but I’m going to make a route out here and there’s a ton of really huge hills that I run on out here. So I don’t really want to run a marathon but I’m just going to do it because just how I am. I need a date I need to stick with it. And whether it’s them here, I’m going to do it.
Alice: Wow, that’s amazing. I’m from New York City. So every day every year there’s like the whole fanfare the whole city like celebrates the New York Marathon and it just amazing.
Erin: Oh, I love that.
Alice: We have to do that one year.
Erin: I do want to, I do.
Alice: Yeah, it just looks awesome. One of my friends just ran it last year and just was like amazing like because you can track people and you like go and you yell like where they’re going to be like you take a look really quickly and find them.
Erin: Yeah, I love that. That’s awesome.
Alice: And can you talk about inspiring people to get up and move? You said like your first video it’s like your breathless and out of breath, have you talked to some of your followers about their own running and getting up and exercising?
Erin: Yeah. When I started this I really was just documenting it for myself because I’m a visual person. I need to see, okay, I have three miles now and now I’m going to go back and look at how I try. I couldn’t know one mile because that’s kind of what motivates me but what I started noticing especially when I started posting the runs on Tiktok, one of them blew out to like over a million views and that really, you know funnel people over to my YouTube channel and my Instagram and what I do after each run or each Instagram post, I always ask a question to them. Sometimes it’s what are you struggling with your running, you know your eating habits or something and we can all have this huge conversation in the comments section, which I love I’m so like it’s my accountability. It’s my everything.
I just love talking to them and what I noticed started happening was people were actually commenting, “Hey, you’re inspiring me” “you’re motivating me to run” or “I just ran my first mile” and it still makes me like tear up a little bit because I never thought I would have that kind of positive effect on somebody but it’s addicting like every comment I read like that, I’ll have a full-on conversation with that person. Like I want them to keep going because the high that I got the first time I like progressed to two miles that how good and empowered I felt, I want everyone to feel like that. So I don’t want people when I kind of read their comments and I feel like they’re stuck like how I was I want to help them so and it’s such a good feeling when I see them succeeding. It’s really amazing.
Alice: Well, that’s wonderful.
Erin: Yeah.
Alice: And can you talk about how you’re staying in shape and what you’re up to in quarantine?
Erin: Yeah, quarantine has really – I’m an introvert. So I like outgoing online and everything but you know in a group of people, I don’t know I’m like, so to me it’s kind of nice to stay home, but I’m struggling with the kids. My daughter missing her end of kindergarten. And I’m an empath I feel everyone else is feeling so if she said I’m sad if the kids are frustrated, I’m frustrated. You know, I just feel for them. It can’t be fun being stuck inside and not fully understanding why like we’re open there’s this virus and we have to be careful. And so that’s kind of that’s been my most difficult part, but in terms of quarantine, I feel like it’s really kept me focused on my goal of running the marathon because the only things I have liked all the other outside society social things are cut out. So all that noise. Yeah, it’s really like you can really focus in on what you want to get done.
Work, I do have another job for a medical device company. So I’ve been focusing a lot on that between having the kids, they’re like not in school and stuff. So that’s been a little tough and but just this, you know, a brand I guess that I’m building a Mrs. Space cadet and just community has been what’s really driving me and I definitely want to grow it and helped a ton of people.
Alice: That’s amazing. And can you talk about your sweatbands? I know they have in your videos and on YouTube.
Erin: Yeah, it’s definitely I got these sweatbands that are I got one in like every color. When we went to visit my parents in Puerto Rico over the winter, I just sweat so much like yeah. I just I’m just a sweaty person when I work out and it’s not pretty you know?
But one of my friends suggested hey, you should wear sweatbands because in sweat they won’t get in your eyes. So I decided you know, what I’m going to have fun with it, I’m going to get the brightest colors I can and just rocking with my tie-dye shirts and you know, whatever.
And I feel like it’s when people come to my channel this is how they see me, you know ready for a run. So I thought I’d present myself like this today.
Alice: Incredible. And you recently tried to Jubilance. Can you tell us about how you found it?
Erin: I actually feel like, you know something in my phone was listening to me because I had a conversation with my sister. We did a little social distancing porch talk the one day and especially since starting this training, I have two horrible weeks a month every month. And for years, I’ve kind of been looking for answers here and there like and it really presents as anxiety, gloominess, really tired, complete lack of motivation. I’m going to train a train for a marathon and that’s not very good.
Alice: Yeah.
Erin: So I had this conversation with her, she suffers from the same thing and I’m thinking it can’t just be, I know it’s hormones, I understand that you know certain ones go up and down throughout the month. But what is it that’s missing that there has to be some kind of supplement right? That’s what I was trying to say. And honestly the next day I think it was I saw an ad for Jubilance and I thought, I’m not even mad about this. If something was listening to me and put it on there, I’m not mad about it because that’s exactly what I was looking for. I couldn’t find anything until then so, I researched it and I was kind of weary about a supplement.
But I just looked into It, I read the reviews and I’m like, you know, what’s it going to hurt to try it for 30 days? So this is actually the end of week 3 so this week would have actually been one of my really horrible weeks and so far, I have not had the anxiety. Oh, another thing is sleeplessness. I have slept so well, this probably helps with anxiety, like you don’t sleep and you can’t really think right you probably feel anxious and gloomy so that has been a huge game-changer this week. I want to continue taking it for the rest of the 30 days and really feel how I feel but believe me if this actually does work for me, I will be sharing about it on my social media because it’s, oh another thing I realized, speaking of my community in the comment section. When I asked what something that you guys are struggling with in terms of a health goal the overwhelming amount of women that said, I start working out and then after two weeks I fall off the bandwagon because I’m not motivated. I’m wondering do you track your cycles?
Alice: PMS.
Erin: Because I really feel like we could have a big data dump like just you know analytic what’s that called? Not analytical.
Alice: Yeah.
Erin: Just case by case.
Alice: Yeah, we can look at their data.
Erin: Yeah and just see like do you guys notice a trend because I do.
Alice: I certainly do.
Erin: Yeah. So I am wondering for them, maybe that could help, maybe it is PMS or you know, it’s not them just “oh, I’m not motivated anymore” “I fall off the bandwagon.” It could be actually, the cycle thing.
Alice: Wow.
Erin: Well, yes, I’m interested.
Alice: I’m glad it’s working for you so far. You’ll have to keep us updated.
Erin: I will
Alice: We’ll send you some for you and your sister to try.
Erin: Oh good. I’ve been raving about it to her this week.
Alice: Good, she could try it too.
Erin: Right, yes.
Alice: I have two sisters and they were constantly on it as well because the household is crazy. It’s something that I always ask on here is what is womanhood mean to you? And I know that’s like constantly changing, it can change like 30 seconds from now, but what is it right now?
Erin: Right, yeah. That is a very broad question, but what I do know is that has changed through the years for me, totally like when I was younger and very much meant like feminine and beauty and you know, all those traditional things you think about but it has definitely an evolved for me. It just personally for me womanhood definitely means lifting up others and raising good humans. I feel like especially being on social media, I see so much mom-shaming, so many women shaming in general like women shaming other women say, it’s someone that wants to share their beauty routine and they’re putting on makeup and someone comments like, oh, you’re not doing that right or why do your eyebrows look like that? Yeah, so that hurts my heart to see and so I definitely feel kind of like this protective instinct, I guess and that’s what womanhood is to me right now, is just lifting each other up and myself up. I feel like that’s important that a lot of women don’t do is lift themselves up.
Alice: That’s wonderful. And if you could have like share one piece of advice that you’ve learned from Mrs. Space Cadet to some of your followers or to just a woman on the street. What would that be?
Erin: I think definitely just be authentically yourself and get rid of the people that don’t like it. Yeah.
Alice: Yes.
Erin: And just always try and you never know what someone else is going through and just be there for people. I feel like that’s really missing sometimes in society. We just always pre-judge, you know, but I feel like when I started this whole running journey what was missing and myself was definitely self-love and you always hear that, like you need to love yourself, you know before anyone can love you, but it’s who cares about someone loving you, you need to love yourself to just be happy with yourself, you know? to have a happy life and how and be healthy. Yeah. That’s I think I would just share things like that.
Alice: Thank you so much, Erin.
Erin: Yeah, Thank you.
Alice: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Erin: I don’t think so. I think just you know if you’re someone who’s feeling how I was before I started this kind of lost-down-on-yourself-unmotivated-feeling-unhealthy head to my YouTube channel, even if you don’t want to subscribe, just watch a video that you can relate to I would say watch other videos, but the reason I started mine is that there aren’t videos that show someone like me really struggling with life and running or just you know, find something that’s relatable to use on social media, it’s everyone’s highlight. So if you look at a typical Instagram or an athlete you might start feeling down on yourself. So just go on one of my videos, comment on something you will have so many supportive people writing to you wanting to help you including myself, I’m always there and my DMs on Instagram is always open too.
Alice: That’s so nice. Thank you, Erin.
Erin: Thank you so much. This is a lot of fun.
Alice: Thank you for being on today.
Erin: Thank you.
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