In this episode, I chat with Jennifer Stark, a certified holistic health and wellness coach with a background in professional one-on-one and couples counseling, personal training and group fitness instruction.
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She helps her clients take a holistic look at their struggles—the blocks that keep them from experiencing happiness, vibrant health, and fulfilling love—and empower them to take action to reach their goals.
Jennifer Stark is a Life, Love and Wellness Coach. She believes implementing a holistic approach helps her clients reach a more optimal level of health—mentally, physically, emotionally and relationally—and tie all aspects of their lives together so that they experience more profound shifts and empowerment for lasting success.
Jennifer holds a Master of Science degree in Counseling Psychology and a Holistic Health Coach Certification from the International Association of Wellness Professionals.
Her supplemental certifications include Life Strategies Coaching and Stress Management Coaching from Spencer Institute, and Personal Training and various group fitness instruction certifications from FitTour.
After 18 years working as a counselor in public schools and family counseling centers and as a personal trainer and group fitness instructor in several gyms, Jennifer decided to move forward on her own and created Stark Wellness, a private coaching and consulting business. She works with clients remotely via WhatsApp, Skype or Google Meet sessions.
Blog Title: 10 Transformational Insights from Jennifer Stark on Holistic Wellness and Lasting Change
SEO Title: 10 Powerful Lessons from Jennifer Stark to Improve Your Health, Relationships, and Stress
SEO Description: Discover 10 powerful, holistic insights from wellness coach Jennifer Stark that can help you improve your health, reduce stress, and strengthen your relationships. Real strategies, real results.
What if one small change could transform every part of your life?
In this episode of the Results Without Restriction podcast, I sit down with Jennifer Stark, a certified holistic health and wellness coach who brings together her background in professional counseling, personal training, and group fitness to help people create real, sustainable change.
Her approach is grounded in the belief that all areas of life are interconnected—your relationships, your energy, your sleep, your mental clarity, and your physical health. When one improves, others often follow.
Here are 10 transformational takeaways from our conversation:
1. You Don’t Have to Choose Between Mind and Body
Jennifer blends her clinical background in counseling with her experience in fitness and wellness, proving you don’t need to choose between emotional and physical health. They support each other.
2. Stress and Strained Relationships Are Often Linked
Most clients come to Jennifer because of stress or tension in their relationships. But the causes often overlap—what you eat, how you sleep, and whether you’re hydrated can all influence how you show up in your relationships.
3. Holistic = Whole-Person Health
Forget the buzzword. Holistic wellness simply means looking at everything in your life—emotions, habits, nutrition, sleep, stress, relationships—and seeing how they impact one another.
4. Sometimes Water Is the Answer
The snowball effect is real. Jennifer shared stories where simply drinking more water led to better mood, improved sleep, fewer arguments, and even stronger connections between partners.
5. You Don’t Need to Fix Everything at Once
Rather than aiming for a life overhaul, Jennifer encourages clients to focus on one simple action that can ripple into multiple areas. Small tweaks. Big impact.
6. Coaching vs. Counseling: Know What You Need
Coaching is ideal if you have goals and need support, strategy, and accountability. Counseling is more appropriate for deep trauma or a need for diagnosis. Jennifer, with her background, understands how to help you decide what’s best.
7. Couples Work Includes Health, Not Just Emotions
Jennifer supports couples not just in communication, but in building habits that help them feel better individually—because that naturally improves the relationship. Think: sleep, stress management, exercise, and nutrition.
8. The Trickle Effect Works Both Ways
Negative habits can lead to a spiral of fatigue, frustration, and burnout. But positive habits (even tiny ones like daily deep breathing) can lift multiple areas of your life at once.
9. Self-Awareness Is the First Step
Jennifer recommends starting each day with a self-check-in. Ask: Have I eaten? Slept? Had water? Moved my body? Sometimes the most heated arguments are actually symptoms of unmet needs.
10. You Deserve to Feel Good—and Connected
Whether you’re stressed, struggling in your relationship, or just feeling low energy, you don’t have to accept that as your norm. With the right support, healing and thriving are possible.
About Jennifer Stark Jennifer is the founder of Stark Wellness, a holistic coaching practice designed to help individuals and couples improve their emotional health, physical well-being, and relationships through an integrated approach. She combines personal training, group fitness, wellness education, and professional counseling into one powerful support system.
By offering kind of a broad, I call it broad spectrum, you know, like sunscreen, you’re doing all the different things because it’s like a blanket. It’s gonna, it’s gonna solve all, like a whole bunch of problems at one time. You know, 10 birds, one stone.
And I hope to see more people doing that because I, I think it, we really do need to talk more about how everything is interrelated and things you’re doing physically, like drinking water, eating regular meals, getting enough sleep, impact, mental health, stress. Anxiety, depression, and things that you can be doing, like journaling and all these activities. It’s all interrelated.
It can all, they can all have positive effects in different areas. So I hope to see more of this. I’m Laurie Mallon, and this is the Results Without Restriction podcast, the show where results have nothing to do with weight and everything to do with setting and reaching health and fitness goals that focus on what we’re achieving and not what we’re losing.
We’ll talk about deprogramming from diet culture and get expert advice on reclaiming your relationship with food and movement. Join me on this journey to get results without restriction. Welcome, everyone.
I am here with Jennifer Stark, who is a certified holistic health and wellness coach with a background in professional one-on-one and couples counseling, personal training, and group fitness instruction. She helps individuals and couples take a holistic look at their struggles, the blocks that keep them from experiencing happiness, vibrant health, and fulfilling love, and empowers them to take actions to meet their goals. Welcome, Jennifer.
Hi, thank you. I’m so excited to talk with you this morning. The first thing that I always ask my guests, I don’t know if you’ve listened, but I always like to kind of get your background and what brought you to this point.
I spent years working as a professional counselor in different settings. I worked in clinical settings and schools and marriage and family centers, even did some public speaking. And along the way, I also worked part time doing personal training and group fitness and wellness classes.
Like you said before, I worked at gyms and I even did health classes for some of the companies that I worked for as a counselor. And after I married my husband, I stopped all the part time jobs. And then when my son came along, I always thought I would be a working mom and daycare and school were fine.
And I pictured myself being the best mom and still being the best counselor and best wife and doing it all. And when he came along, I was in the PhD program and life was good, but that didn’t last. And I hated handing him over every day and being without him all day.
And I would just want to be with him. And I started losing desire to work, finish that PhD program or really do anything else. And I was just so exhausted and stressed from trying to do all that.
And I wasn’t being the mom that I wanted to be. So my husband and I did a lot of talking and full searching on this. And we decided that dropping out of the PhD program would be OK.
And then we decided that quitting the job would be OK, too, as long as I worked part time and still helped out financially. And I always wanted to start a private practice. So that was the time.
So while I’m getting my new life and part time, but very traditional private practice set up, I was missing and started thinking about all that work that I did in the health field again. And I was really missing it. And I kept having this idea, just welling up in me, kind of hearing about coaching, life coaching, wellness coaching and all these different areas of coaching and thinking of how I could make my private practice incorporate all of those things.
And right then it dawned on me that private practice means this is my own. I can do this how I want, how I’ve always wanted. And I’ve always believed in the mind, body, heart, spirit, connection.
And so this was my chance to make that, to make one place, one space that people can get holistic help. So I jumped into a holistic health certification course and life strategies coaching class. And I reinstated all my personal training and all the different group fitness instructors, certifications.
And I let that professional counseling license fire and then started my dream coaching business that I call Stark Wellness. I love that. So it was really about taking all of the components that really lit you up to help people with and putting it all in one place.
And that’s what holistic really means. I know a lot of people when they hear holistic, that’s kind of a buzzword that kind of has a connotation that in truth it means looking at it as a whole. But it’s taken on this meaning of being woo woo and like essential oils and all these kind of like pseudo sciency things for holistic wellness.
But it really means looking at your life as a whole and all of the different components, how they fit in, how they interact with each other. So can you walk us through a little bit like when you are talking about holistic wellness, you just you touched on it a little bit. I’d love for you to expand about what that means, body, mind, spirit, all of those things.
Yes. And the wellness part of it is where you come to the understanding of how all the aspects of your life tie in together. Your physical, mental, emotional health, relationships, your spirituality, your overall well-being, all interconnected and how what’s going on in one area of your life is impacting other areas of your life.
And it could be negative and positive ways, which to me, that’s the beauty of holistic wellness is it not only helps you really come to root causes and really see what’s happening in your life, what’s going on behind the scenes and bringing things out to manifestation, but it also gives you like an open book to resources for yourself. Also, you know, any goal that you have, there’s more than one way to reach that and achieve that. And there’s because everything in your life impacts, there’s a trickle effect in a negative way, but there can also be a trickle effect in a positive way.
And so, you know, just a simple example, drinking more water and you think you’re doing something for your body and your physical health. But you’re also helping your mind to be more clear because you’re staying hydrated and you’re helping yourself sleep better. And then those things help you wake up a little more quirky in the morning and they help you get through the day better because you’re staying hydrated and your mind is more alert.
And it’s probably helping with your stress levels and things like that. So it gives you just a broader range of all of these different ways that you can help yourself and really maximize your potential. So what it sounds like is there are lots of very simple strategies that have snowball effects in ways that we don’t even know.
And it sounds like what you specialize in and what you’re able to do is understand and kind of look at the big picture, right? You’ve got that objective perspective. To be able to look at somebody’s situation and kind of see where a tweak over here might trickle down over there. When you’re in a situation, it’s really hard to see all of the different moving pieces.
But you can kind of look at it and have that visibility and say, okay, I see a couple of things that may help you. If you’re sleeping better, you’re less stressed, you’re not picking fights, you’re not tense, you’re not getting into these arguments with your partner. They kind of trickle down, like you said, and impact all these different areas.
You have this therapy background, sorry, you have a counseling background and now you’re doing coaching. Talk to us a little bit about the difference between the two. How do we know when we need either one? Right.
That’s a really common question. And it’s a good question. It’s important, too.
So I help my clients work on achieving goals and creating new lifestyles, improving the overall quality of their lives. I partner with my clients and inspire them. I hope I inspire them to become empowered and move forward.
So some might say a counselor spends a little more time examining the past and deep emotional concerns. So with my background and counseling experience, I know that our past, I mean, we all know, our past does need to be addressed. It does affect our present time and it will still affect our future and it needs to be addressed.
So I do help clients heal and learn from past experiences. But for anyone with significant psychological problems, I recommend always contacting a licensed therapist, some cases a physician, especially if they’re seeking a diagnosis for insurance purposes, because coaches definitely should not make diagnoses. And I’m happy to work in collaboration with these professionals.
I think the most obvious answer when you’re trying to think about how do you know which one you should do? Should I try a counselor or should I go to coaching? If you have specific goals and just need some guidance, need some support, you need some accountability, or maybe you’re feeling stuck in some kind of negative patterns, but you don’t have severe emotional and mental disturbances, then coaching might be right for you. It just might be perfect for you. It might be the best thing for you.
And also, it could be to help you along as you’re healing in your work with a therapist. So someone might be working with a therapist to recover from an eating disorder that’s associated with past trauma. And they might be working with a coach to make some lifestyle adjustments that are recommended by that therapist or a nutritionist.
And somebody could be seeing a doctor for some specific treatment for a disease or even a mental disorder, like a psychiatrist. And they might work with a coach as well, just to get some extra help and accountability and to really explore strategies to stick to a protocol that a doctor has given them. The doctor doesn’t have time to meet with them weekly and to make sure that they’re doing all these things.
And so that’s where I can come in. And I could be help with the accountability, but also the strategies. I’ve worked with a client who was an alcohol anonymous, so another area where he had been in the program and treatment and sober for two or three years.
And he was still attending meetings and still getting support from a sponsor, but he just wanted some more help in making some other changes in his life. You know, we don’t exclude talking about his addiction, but only as it relates to his current circumstances and his triggers and the choices he’s making right now. And so if he were to start relapsing or anything like that, then my recommendation is that sponsor, you know, he’s got that sponsor, he’s got that group to tie to with that.
So you’re really focused on strategies and, you know, approaching forward movement, going working towards a goal, helping to create a vision now moving forward. And, you know, considering what’s happened and what you’ve come through and how you want to move forward now. So you mentioned that you work not only with individuals, but also with couples.
Talk a little bit about what that would look like. I’ll just give an example of one couple that I worked with. We started out, they started out calling me, of course, distressed in their relationship.
The probably two biggest calls I get are, I’m stressed or we’re stressed. So we start out, when I work with a couple, we start out, you know, of course, looking at what’s going on for them and getting stories out. And I say stories because there’s two sides, right? They have their story within each individual story.
And that’s where I try to come in and help them to see what’s going on interdependently. Right. So, you know, there’s, yes, communication, yes, things between them, but then they each also, you know, they’re each a separate person, right, with separate personalities.
And we are raised in different families. We have different examples of what a husband should be like and what a wife should be like and what a mom should be like and what a dad should be like. And we have different ideas about what’s romantic and what shows love and what means love and how to handle conflicts.
And then you have your personalities and then you have your, and we try to bring that into a relationship and how do you meld all that together and get along on a daily basis. So I help them kind of muddle through all that and, you know, go through their old stories and kind of what brought them to where they are and their hopes for the future and the expectations that they had and things like that. And so there’s a lot of work like that in the beginning and definitely working on communication and understanding each other and understanding how to approach each other and how to get the other person to listen.
Right. That’s a little common thing. Is the answer, drink more water? Because I could do that.
That sounds like, I’m wondering if that’s part of the trickle of the snowball effect of drinking water that you’re, you know, you’re fewer, fewer arguments with your partner. It definitely can help because, hey, it can’t hurt. I’m thinking it can’t hurt.
So, you know, well, in eating well, I mean, my husband would say he is always making sure that I am eating throughout the day. And not missing meals because he’s had the wrath, right? The hangry. And I get that way.
And so I know that I got myself and I have to say, I can’t let myself go, you know, long, long times. But he also, he knows that about me. And so he’s just little things like that.
You think it seems silly, but if if a husband or wife can understand that about their partner, they can soften up a little bit when they, you know, he softens up a little bit. He used to be just like telling me, you know, stop getting so snippy, stop. And now he’s like, okay, she hasn’t eaten.
I’m gonna let that slide. She needs to eat. You know, we need to get to a restaurant.
We’ve been out too long or we need to get home or whatever. So yes, I mean, right, the health aspect comes into it too. But I was talking about a particular couple.
And after several weeks of working together, and they were really feeling good about their relationship, and then they start wanting to improve their health. Oh, we want to start eating better. We want to start working out better.
We found this personal trainer, but we’re gonna have to drive an hour away and like, hey, I can do that too. Like, do I have great news for you? Exactly. And so then, you know, we moved into that.
And it’s great because we still touch on some of the issues they were having emotionally. How are you doing on that? And to me, it’s not separate. Like, some people might think, oh, no, you shouldn’t have that kind of dual relationship.
But to me, it doesn’t, you can’t keep it separate. Like, they’re gonna work with another personal trainer who doesn’t know how they react to each other. And you know what I mean? It’s like, if I have this holistic understanding, and I felt like I could help them in a good way.
And they did benefit from it a lot. And they love that. Also, you know, even after that, they’re like, well, maybe we could just, you know, pay you to come and cook at our house and everything.
And we had been working together for so long, over a year. I was like, you guys, maybe we could just be friends. Finding ways to pay me to come around, you know.
That’s the kind of relationship that I like. And even with couples, because couples is a different, is a little bit of a different frown because you can really get into some deep emotional issues. Those issues can not get resolved, but lighten up.
Because each one of them is coming to some other realizations. Like, you know, I haven’t been feeling good about myself. And I haven’t been, I used to run.
And I used to go hiking. And we used to go swimming all the time. I haven’t been doing those things.
This is going on with my boss. And this is, I’m stressed at work. And then I’m coming home and taking it out of my family.
And so that trickle effect. So with a couple, it’s just double. You know, it’s just, it’s just double the trickle effects.
But taking a holistic perspective opens so many doors because you never know what might make a difference. And I am all about trying things. I had a client and I was working with the two of them together, but also her separately.
And she was feeling slumpy, she said. And then we talked about meditation, just deep breathing. And we talked about yoga.
And at the end of the conversation, she’s just like, I just, I just feel like my issues are just way more than, you know, a couple of pills and deep breaths and the yoga pose or two are going to make any difference. But whatever, I’ll try it. Like a couple of weeks later, we are talking and it’s the two of them.
And he is talking about how man, she’s really perked up and, and it makes me, you know, perked up too. And she’s like that. And it’s like, oh, well, you know, what’s been different? And she says, you know, well, I’ve been taking those vitamins and I’ve been deep breathing every morning and I haven’t been doing the yoga poses, but I really think those other things are healthy because that’s all I’ve done.
And, you know, you just never know like what could make a difference. And so not to underestimate the little things. And then that trickle effect took place.
Like she kept, she was saying that she felt like she was a better mom because she had more energy and him, you know, saying that seeing her happy boosts him as well. Just an example, another example of the power of taking a holistic perspective and the power of small steps and being open to trying things. So I was kind of joking about drinking more water, helping your relationship, but apparently that’s the thing.
It can help. It looks like it may be, you know, something to add on the list if you know, it can’t hurt. How about that? I think drinking water is like the most important thing that you could do for any part of your life.
Listen, you sound like my husband. So my husband is to me drinking water. Like your husband is to you eating food.
So he is constantly reminding me, you know, drink your water. Where’s your water? Any any physical thing that I complained about? The first thing he will ask me is, have you been drinking any water? Where’s your water? How much have you had today? It’s it’s it’s kind of it’s kind of a joke now, but I am terrible about drinking water. I’ll fully admit that I need.
I need one of those gallon things. It just I need one of those coolers. It’s just right next to my desk.
Apparently, that’s the only way it’s it’s really gonna I’m gonna get on track with that. But I want to go back a little bit about one of the things you’re talking about the impact of stress on relationships. Well, I guess it is like stress on your own health and then the health your how your health kind of trickles down into your relationship.
Sure. You know, we are always multitasking. Our bodies are always multitasking.
And we just don’t live compartmentalized lives. And it takes a lot of effort to focus on one thing at a time. And even if you can focus your mind on something, your body is still active inside, responding to the environment and the food you ate earlier and the stress from the meeting you had a few hours ago, the fight you have with your partner.
And how can we possibly bring closure from one thing to another all day long, and we can try to cut back but it’s hard and things just pop up on us a lot. So, I think that the key is building resiliency within ourselves and lessening the effects and becoming more aware of the impacts of one thing on another, becoming more aware of where those true effects are starting. And, you know, sometimes we want to find the root cause, definitely.
But when there’s a trickle effect, really, when you can get in there anywhere and make an intervention and change things, you know, you don’t always have to know exactly what triggered that and started that everybody’s stress responses are different. And how your body bounces back is different to like for some people are really high strung and really need some kind of a physical release and some people need some relaxing yoga to calm down. And like for me, I see quiet, I need quiet alone time.
So when I’m thinking about my self care, you know, have I, why am I so uptight right now? Why is what he’s doing triggering me so much right now? I’ve got to think about that. Have I had any time alone today? Did I wake up late and my son, when I wake up late and my son wakes up right at the same time, I just, I had to say it, but I feel cheated sometimes, you know? And it’s like, but it’s my fault. It’s my fault that I didn’t take care of myself the night before.
And, you know, or through the night, I didn’t sleep well, and I didn’t wake up early enough. It’s my fault. So look, really looking at things like one of the first things, working with couples or even I also get a lot of individuals who it’s, they don’t come together, you know, most of the time, that’s just the woman, most of the time, and really encouraging them to first look within just first.
I’m not saying that what they said was okay, or I’m not saying that they didn’t do something that they shouldn’t have, or you know what I mean, I’m just saying first, just really look within. And am I taking care of myself? Am I being my best self? Am I getting the time and space that I need? Am I, you know, eating right? Am I getting the exercise I need? Am I fulfilled? Do I have friends? Do I have a job I love? You know, looking at those things first, or if it’s a specific, you know, coming off of an argument and you’ve gone your separate ways for a little bit of time and really thinking through of what’s my heart in it? What, how have I, did I blow up for another reason? It just came out right now, you know, when what my wife said triggered, but… So kind of taking like a, like an inventory of my own self care checklist for the day, you know, am, have I fed, watered, rested myself, done the things that I know I need to like be? So I’m not up here. I’m not down here.
Just my regular, you know, calibration where I, where I normally hang out. Am I there? Have, you know, have I done all those things? Or something, something off today? Right. And I like that word.
And then I have to calibrate it. Yeah. So, and then it just kind of has, you know, is that lack, you know, the things I didn’t check off? Is that why I’m kind of, you know, acting kind of like this because I didn’t do things that I know I need to do for me? Right.
You gotta take care of yourself first and then, you know… Right. And just first, like you said, just first, you’re not going to keep it there, right? You’re going to share. And you don’t have to stay with them either.
I mean, eventually, you got to come back together and, and talk it through or work out some strategies or, you know, something. But I’m just saying just first step back and go within for a minute. Because honestly, that’s the easiest for you to control.
And if you, if you see a pattern of, you know what, whenever I, whenever I stay up late, I always end up having the same fight with my partner or I end up stressed and trickles down and then I’m forgetful and then I’m anxious and these things. So, you know, do I have a pattern of behavior that I can kind of look for a strategy or look for a solution? And maybe I’ll stop having as many of those episodes and maybe it’ll stop kind of trickling down to everyone around me. Right.
We can all live happier together. How about that? That’s right. That’s the hope.
One of the things that I was, I was curious about is what is one of the most common issues for your clients, the things that people come to you with the most? Stress and strange relationships are the most common calls I get. And they’re generally kind of like one is from the other one, one feeds into the other. There’s a lot of overlap there, I imagine.
Yes, for sure. And I do work with some clients solely on health issues, but the majority of my calls are first related to stress and strained relationships. And then a lot of times there’s health issues as well.
And I think that what drives them to come to me is that if you look at my website, I have a lot of blog posts on all areas of health and pages talking about coaching. I think that you get a good idea of who I am. So with the couples, I have a lot of articles and I do get a lot of comments like that.
Oh, that’s so true. I read that when she said that I have the art of loving a woman and the art of loving a man. And they get a lot of comments that it’s right on.
That’s right on. You know, I wish my wife would read this and I wish my husband would read this. Like, well, share it.
Send it to them, you know, let them read it. So I probably attract a lot of couples because of that, because you just see it a lot on my website. And and then also I just I love the love that I just I do.
Then with the stress, I think it’s the most common because it’s just we are all stressed. Like I said earlier, we’re we’re always on the go. And even when we aren’t on the go, you know, our bodies are still trying to settle down.
So they’re still kind of on the go, even when you stop. And it’s just it’s it’s common. It’s especially with the last couple of years and what’s going on in our world.
And things have been right in our people for everyone and different circumstances. You know, maybe there were already problems before and now they’re exacerbated and or maybe there weren’t weren’t problems. And now you have to be home together all day.
It’s different. Also all the uncertainty. The thing about stress is you think of I’m just doing too much.
And stress is related to so much more than that. And again, we get back to the holistic view. It’s related to so much more than that.
But there’s also more than just going to pull my kids out of one sport because they’re in too many sports and we’re driving all over the place. And there’s other things, too, like your your physical health affects your stress and it affects it as in some of it could be related to the food that you’re eating or what you’re drinking or other kind of habits along those lines.
In this episode I’m chatting with Heather Nasella, a certified personal trainer and expert homeschooler (she’s been at it for almost a decade!)
Heather is an expert at creating an effective home workout space and strategy for women who either can’t get to a gym or simply prefer the convenience and privacy of home workouts.
She shares how she started working out at home, how she turned that practice into a virtual personal training business, showing other moms how to create the space in their home, and their lives, for life-changing fitness.
In this episode I’m chatting with Melissa Rohlfs, a certified holistic health and life coach whose mission is helping busy women identify and rewire the habit of stress/emotional eating so they can be calm, confident and at peace. In stressful situations. In their bodies. In their life. She shares how she learned to deal with her broken relationship with food and the strategies she’s learned (and now uses with her own clients!) to break free from diet mindset and the emotional eating triggers to repair her relationship with food and her body.
Hi, I’m Melissa! I’m a wife to my husband Chad and mama to two blessings.
At one point in my motherhood journey, I was crabby, exhausted, and living off of sugar. Instead of processing through my feelings, I stuffed them with food {usually sweets!}. I learned how to identify and articulate my feelings rather than stuffing them.
New healthy habits started to emerge and I felt empowered! I became the calm, confident and peaceful mama I always longed to be.
As a result, I felt called to help other moms who are where I was…and, that meant more than the latest diet and exercise program.
This is why I went to school to learn how to help mamas get out of overwhelm and feeling stuck. As women we are stressed and overwhelmed, and put ourselves last.
As a coach, I teach busy women simple strategies that they can fit into their busy lives. I help women get unstuck and find freedom so they can be calm, confident and at peace. The mom you desire to be is in there, waiting to come out.
In this episode I’m chatting with Hailee Didio, who is a certified health coach and meditation teacher.
After personally experiencing a ‘lifestyle 180’ by implementing her own meditation and mindfulness practice, Hailee decided to become a certified coach to help teach the strategies that helped her turn her own life around.
Hailee teaches meditation classes, coaches in both group and 1-on-1, and runs a monthly membership program that offers fitness classes, yoga classes, meditation sessions, and more!
We talk about the sneaky symptoms of stress, how meditation can help get it (and keep it!) under control, the challenges of starting a meditation practice, and how you can avoid the frustration that so many meditation that a lot of newbies experience!
In this episode I’m chatting with Sarah Knight, who is a holistic nutritionist and founder of Eat Like a CEO.
She helps entrepreneurial and professional women get out of the tired-wired cycle and have natural energy without relying on caffeine or sugar.
We specifically talk about how meal planning can serve as a form of self-care as we’re taking intentional action to reduce the stress for future us!
About Sarah
Sarah Knight is a holistic nutritionist and founder of Eat Like a CEO. She helps entrepreneurial and professional women get out of the tired-wired cycle and have natural energy.
She’s passionate about helping women systematize their nutrition to reduce decision fatigue and get the nutrients they need to have the energy, focus and confidence to make power moves in their businesses, careers and lives.
This page may contains affiliate links, meaning I receive a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links at no cost to you. Please read my disclosure statement for more information.
[Updated May 2025]
Table of Contents
Meet our guest – Brooke Spendlove
I’m chatting with Certified Intuitive Eating Coach, Brooke Spendlove. Brooke helps moms get off the diet roller coaster for good and tap into their intuition to guide them and make peace with food.
What she actually does is help her clients to love what they see in the mirror so they can stop hiding and start showing up in their lives. Her mission is to help other women to find the freedom to live without constantly thinking about how they look.
Brooke is a certified Intuitive Eating Counselor and NASM Certified Personal Trainer and the owner and creator of Spendlove Coaching.
Her own wellness journey led her to getting a Master’s Degree in Health and Wellness Coaching, where she realized that her obsession with tracking, weight and doing everything “right” was escalating and she knew something had to change.
She discovered Intuitive Eating as a way to improve her relationship with food and her body and now leads other women on the same journey.
For many the first step is getting off the diet rollercoaster…
Welcome, everybody. I’m here talking today with Brooks Spendlove, who is a health and wellness coach, a certified Intuitive eating counselor, and a certified personal trainer. Now, Brooke’s journey sounds very similar to mine. We’re gonna talk more about this, but she spent more than a decade working in the tech world before switching lanes and joining the health and wellness industry and finding an audience that she resonates with.
So Brooke, I want to talk a bit about your background because so much of this connects with me. You left the corporate world to join health and wellness, and you said in your- in your bio that I read that it was due to a desire to help clients fix and-” fix themselves and hit their ideal weight and size”, and I- I hear this.
Can we talk a little bit about just that part, like when you decided to kind of leave where you were and- and- and join the health and wellness industry?
Sure. So my undergrad was in health education, and so even though I was in healthcare IT, there was always that desire to- to teach and to help people have the right information when it came to taking care of their health. And for me, being in healthcare IT was really convenient, (laughs) but it wasn’t necessarily something I was super passionate about. I definitely appreciated the fact that we could help get data in the right hands, um, to help doctors make better decisions and reduce duplicative tests.
But for me, I knew when I kind of looked at what I wanted to be when I grew up, the one-on-one connection was a lot more impactful, and really, I looked at when I- when I was thinking about going back to grad school, I thought, “You know, I see people, I see doctors who are seeing people when it’s almost too late.” You know, they- they’ve already had this journey, and they’ve gone too far, and they’re not healthy. Wouldn’t it be great if I could work with them before that and get them to a place of- of overall better health and- and do that from a one-on-one perspective? And so coaching was just really, it just drew me in, um, that idea that I could- that I could do that and- and help, uh, help individuals that way. Um, to your question is, you know, I wanted to help people lose weight and hit their ideal weight.
That was probably more of a personal thing because I was on that journey myself at- at one point, and, you know, being the mom of four kids, you get to that point where you think, “Oh, well, I want my,” quote-unquote, I’m using air quotes here for the- (laughs) for the audience. “I want my body back, or my pre-body- pre-baby body back.” And so that was more of a personal journey, and I thought, “Okay, I’m gonna figure out the solution,” again, air quotes for that. Air quotes, yep. Yeah. (laughs) Yeah. “The solution, and I’m gonna then help other people do the same thing.” And obviously, that’s not where I ended up (laughs) overall,
I say that I resonate with this so much because my background is, you know, computer science- Right. … software development, and then when my- when I got remarried and relocated, I started my online personal training and health coaching business. Um, and again, it was because I felt I always had this interest in working out and- and doing all these things, and this is some way that I can help people. Um, but so many of us, and I think you’re gonna talk about this in a minute, I feel it coming on. So many of us who get into this work find that we have our own problematic relationships with- with our bodies and with food and what we’ve kind of been indoctrinated with, like, in terms of, like, what health means, again, with the air quotes. Um, you know, with- and so a lot of this, like, diet culture, we’re- we’re- we’re indoctrinated. So then, of course, like, having this kind of, we’re looking to help, but the way we’re going about it is- is not really helpful, but it’s not our fault because so much of this messaging is just unavoidable. Um, and we feel like we can help others do, like, get these results, again, air quotes, and then, um, but then you said you, as you work with clients, you saw a lot of weight rebounding, which is totally normal.
And is that what brought you to explore intuitive eating and the focus on more of, like, healthier habits and behaviors for long-term health rather than focusing on that- that quantitative outcome? Yeah. And again, it was also a personal journey as well. Uh, I was, you know, you name it, I did it when it came to the different levels of popular restrictions. I don’t even want to name some of them, to be honest with you. (laughs) Let’s not. Let’s not. We won’t even give them- we won’t even give them the attention- Right. … that they want. (laughs)
But, you know, if you think of- if you can think of them, I probably tried it in that never-ending attempt to hit what I thought I was supposed to look like, or the number on the scale, or the- the measurements, whatever it was. And I- I found that I was- that- that goal was never attainable. Even when I thought I would, you know, I was at my lowest or whatever, I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t satisfied and something, I just kept trying. Nothing was working. It’s a moving target. Yeah. And- and the air quote’s “working,” and so I got to a point where I realized I was willing to do things that I would never coach someone to do, and then I really had to take a step back and say, “What does long-term health look like?”
And so it became a really introspective journey that got me into the world of Health at Every Size and intuitive eating, and really that health is not a particular look. It’s not a particular size or weight, and that there really is so much work to be done in removing that stigma to our sizes and our weights, and just a focus on health-promoting behaviors, and whatever happens to your weight-… we don’t know.
Your weight could go up, it could go down, it could stay the same. That’s what I usually tell clients. I’m like, “It can go three ways.” But there’s no disadvantage to adding these health-promoting behaviors into your life. And so let’s focus on those. If you didn’t think you were going to lose weight at all, what would you still be willing to do? To- You are speaking my love language. Okay? (laughs) All of this is, like, just music to my ears. I love this. Um, let’s talk a little bit about body respect- Mm-hmm. … and how we use that to get to body positive. Yeah. This is one of my favorite concepts to coached around. So I do a lot of mindset work in my coaching just because our minds are so powerful and so connected to our bodies and what we’re able to do.
And so, you know, based on cognitive behavior therapy, the idea that our thoughts can create feelings and actions and results, the things that we want in our lives. So the women that I gen- tend to work with, we’re talking decades often, maybe just years, but (laughs) years, maybe decades of being dissatisfied with their bodies. And so if you go from, “I, I don’t like my body, sometimes I even hate my body. I, I wish my body were different,” and try and jump to, “Oh, I love my body and my body’s fantastic,” it’s too big of a thought jump. It, your, your mind will say, “That’s not true. You know you don’t believe that,” and the work’s not gonna be… it’s just not gonna work. And so what I work with clients to do is to k- to take that middle ground where that is where you get to body respect. And so we talk about how if you respect something, how do you treat it?
You know, whether it’s just an item, you know, I respect a person or I respect another thing, I’m going to treat it with care. I may not be to the point where I am loving it completely, but if I respect my body, there’s gonna be different choices that I would make and then that’s just kind of our middle ground. I call it a bridging thought that can get you over to the point where you’re body positive. So sometimes body respect can be almost neutrality. Just, “This is my body, this is how it is right now, and let me respect my body in this space.” And it’s a, you know, it really is a journey to become, to really get to a point where you’re loving your body and just so grateful for everything it does. And so this is just part of that journey to help them get to that, get to that place.
Excellent point because I know when, uh, when I do, you know, coaching and just, just in terms of, um, you know, better habits and things like this, a lot of people do affirmations. Mm-hmm. Right? And affirmations is kind of, you know, speaking something to, like, about the, the person you’re, you’re striving to be and speaking as if you are, but if that future state that you’re, you’re, you know, you’re working towards is so different than where you are right now, your brain cannot make that jump and you’re s- you know, subconsciously you’re resisting any of that because you know in your hea- you, you know that that is not how you really feel and it can sometimes work against you.
So I love this point of kind of gradually moving that needle to saying, “Okay, maybe I don’t love it today. Maybe I’m not looking in the mirror and, and, you know, hearts everywhere- (laughs) … but I definitely, like, can respect it and treat it with care and do the things I know I need to do like move it and drink some water and maybe throw a vegetable in there or something. Like, just do the things that I know are gonna long term be beneficial even if I’m not madly in love with my reflection or the way I feel about it or anything like that.” So I love that. Right. It is also the eighth principle of intuitive eating, so it, it goes nicely with the concepts that I teach in my program because that is one thing you do have to, to work on is respecting your body.
Because in reality, like you said, feeling neutral, you have a far better chance of eliciting happiness than feeling hatred or self-loathing. So it’s just really that first step towards body positivity. When it comes to, you know, history of, uh, chronic dieting, you know, we’ve kind of reinforced a lot of negative self-talk or negative just thoughts and have, we’ve kind of grooved in that, you know, he- we’re, we’re not even aware that we’re talking to ourselves like that. How does that kind of work in with, um, the body respect process and just trying to undo kind of th- these loops of, of negative self-talk? That’s a great question.
One of the exercises I like to have, actually there’s two exercises that I like to have clients do and the first is a dieting history almost. You do a download of diets that you’ve done, um, and a lot of times people are like, “Well, that wasn’t a diet.” Any time you’re looking for outer, external factors to tell you what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, that’s a diet. Let’s just make that clear. Are we, are we sometimes in denial that what we’re doing, you know, we call them healthy lifestyles, but- Lifestyles, yeah. (laughs) Yeah, yeah, it’s get- I love the idea that if it’s a, if it’s something that you cannot maintain for your entire life, it’s not a lifestyle.
So if it’s anything that you do for a little while and then you have to back off because it’s too much or it’s too restrictive, that’s not a lifestyle. That’s still a diet- Mm-hmm. … even if you don’t call it that. So I’ll go, have them go through that and, you know, kind of list out how long they did these different diets and the results and so they can see that, yeah, there’s a history of needing to always go back on one and what are the results that came out, whether it was a lack of confidence because, oh, the weight came back on or I don’t trust myself, I couldn’t, I could only eat this amount of food, some of the feelings that come up when you’re doing those, those, those diets. Um, now I’m… totally forgot your question. (laughs)
Oh. Well, it was about, it was about the, um, the negative self-talk and the loops and how we kind of have conditioned… like, our subconscious just- Right.Okay. Got it. (laughs) The, the constant negative, like- Uh-huh. … messages that we tell ourselves when we fail on a diet, or we couldn’t- Mm-hmm. Like you said, you do like a diet list and they- Right. … have reasons like, “Well, I, you know, I, I lost weight, but then I had to go… I, I fell off the wagon.” And they blame themselves, right? So then when the diet doesn’t work long term, which it’s not supposed to, it’s not designed to, and they blame themselves for not making that the lifestyle. Right. Do you see a lot of that too? Definitely. And thank you for bringing me back. Um, yeah, there’s the feeling of failing.
And that’s one thing I love about the concept of intuitive eating versus dieting is dieting, there’s a very black and white, “I have failed. I have, you know, I have not met my goal,” or like you said, “I fell off the wagon.” There’s a right and a wrong way to do a diet or do whatever type of restriction you’re doing. And with intuitive eating, it’s just learning. There is no right or wrong way to intu- to do intuitive eating. You take whatever lesson learned and then apply it and go, “Okay, I learned from this. I got too hungry in this instance and I ate past the point of being comfortably full, and now I can look back and go, what should I have done different?” There’s no right or wrong. You don’t… There… You can’t fail at intuitive eating. You can just continue to learn and adjust.
And so that’s a big mind shift for most of my, my clients is you can’t fail. They’ll be like, “Am I doing intuitive eating right?” And I’m like, “There’s no right way (laughs) of doing intuitive eating. It’s just learning more about you and about your body’s cues.” Um, just to go back to the, the thoughts and kind of where those thoughts come from when you’re talking negative thoughts with dieting, an act- another exercise I love to do is have clients look at, um, the root cau- like when you talk about like functional medicine, a lot of times they’ll talk about root causes. So what’s the root cause of this symptom? What… Or what have you. And so it’s also helpful to do with your thoughts. And so I have this exercise that actually has a tree (laughs) on the picture and it has the roots and then also has the branches.
And so it’s helpful to look at anytime you’re thinking, “I need to go back on a diet,” or, “I failed at this diet,” what are your root thoughts in that? And it’s, “Okay, maybe I think I should look different. I think I should weigh different.” And so it’s a lot of, I should appear different kinds of thoughts and that creates these root or these branches that then, you know, affect how you react or how you act. And so it’s, it’s always helpful to look at why am I acting a certain way? What are the thoughts that are taking me there? And can I change those thoughts?
Because I don’t want to be dieting anymore, so I need to address the thoughts that encourage those, those actions. I love that. And I will say based on, you know, my own experience with, you know, chronic dieting and going to intuitive eating and knowing other people who are also kind of struggling to, to break that cycle and, and, and move forward, um, having the shoulds, the should, those should thoughts, like, “I should look this way, I should…” And a lot of this is the media, and social media hasn’t really helped a whole lot with that, right? Because we, we’re seeing everybody’s highlight reel- Mm-hmm. … um, and we’re starting to kind of get these, these negative… It, it reinforces the negative shoulds that, that we’ve kind of- Yeah. … um, been programmed. Let’s talk about when we talk about dieting, right? It’s, it’s, it’s conforming to a certain, you know, either a food list or times we can eat or how much we can eat or what we can eat and things like that. So breaking that restrict, crave, binge cycle, right?
Because, uh, l- like you mentioned, falling off the wagon with the air quotes- Mm-hmm. … which is a natural, your body’s natural reaction to restriction. Right. And there’s so much self-blame when that happens. Could we talk about that a little bit? Yeah. I love to use the analogy of a pendulum. So anytime you pull a pendulum back and you let it go, it always is gonna swing wide the other way. And eventually, if you let the pendulum… if you leave it alone, it’ll settle in the middle. Unfortunately, when you’re talking about a restrictive behavior, like restricting eating of a particular food category or just a particular food, when you restrict it and then you let it go and you swing wide the other way, and so that’s where you kind of overeat and there’s that fear, the, the swinging back to get to neutral is scary because there’s that feeling of I should be controlling this better.
And so to break that cycle, that restrict, crave, binge cycle, because like you said, it’s a physiological reaction. You know, I love the idea that Evelyn Tribole of Intuitive Eating will say, “When you hold your breath for a really long time, and then you finally allow yourself to take a breath, if you’re taking gulps of air, and no one ever tells you you’re binge breathing.” (laughs) Like, you shouldn’t be breathing like that. Oh my gosh, I’ve never heard that, but, oh, wow. Right? Like that is, that is… Seriously- Do you ever… Do you ever hear that? Well, you sh- … binge breathing. Shame on you for binge breathing. Not- No, I don’t think that one’s fair and right, yeah. Oh my gosh.
So whenever I talk about a food that someone feels very nervous around because they restricted it and they always say, “Well, I can’t, I can’t allow myself to eat it-” Sugar. … because that trust is, has been broken, um, there has to… there’s, there’s either two feelings when it comes to those types of food. It’s fear or excitement. There are elevated levels of feeling around food. And when you allow those foods in your life and you get past that fear, and l- again, let the pendulum even itself out, you get to neutral and food becomes just food. And you can look at every opportunity when that food is presented and say, “Do I actually want it?” And that’s a really powerful place to get to when a food doesn’t scare you anymore. And you realize- That’s great. … hmm, do I want it now? And then you’re able to, to tune into your, your body’s cues of, well, now I’m done and I… you know, I know I can have it maybe tomorrow or another, another opportunity will come up that I can have it and I don’t need to eat it to the point where, you know, I’m never gonna have it again.Do you… Uh, so in my own experience w- with clients and things like this, the number one thing that, that people are afraid of, that they’re addicted to, that they cannot control themselves around is sugar. Mm-hmm. And I h- I would hear so much, “Well, I’m addicted to sugar. I can’t have it. I can’t trust myself.” And then when they would restrict sugar, they would, they would see physical, you know, results, they would lose weight, and they would say, “Oh, this is the answer. If I just don’t eat sugar, I won’t have this problem,” quote unquote. “My body will look the way I want it to. Oh, here, that was easy. Like, why didn’t I just do that?” And then what happens? Right? Right.
We know what happens. (laughs) Um, yeah. Yeah, exactly. It’s like, you know, a sugar avalanche and then you’re… and then you can’t control yourself and then it’s all your fault, and then it’s that cycle of, you know, guilt, shame, further restriction, and then on and on it goes. So what would be like one of your, your top tip or top suggestion for somebody who’s kind of in that mind frame right now with, with something specific like sugar? Mm-hmm. Well, I love to talk about the concept of self-limiting beliefs. Um, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with that, but just the idea that you wanna get curious about those beliefs that you just accept as fact. So someone who says, “I’m addicted to sugar,” they think it’s true, and they are scanning for evidence of, well, this is true. And so like in the example that you gave, when they restrict and crave and binge, well, binging is a sign that it’s true, right?
So, it’s always helpful to take a step back and just challenge those, and get curious. What if I’m not addicted to sugar? What if I could eat it and then know when to stop? So, that’s usually the first step, is just challenge that belief that you accept as fact, because it may or may not be true. You know, obviously, I don’t believe it’s true, but I… you can’t always change someone’s mind right away. Um, and then I always find that it’s helpful to do an experiment and just try something out. Now depending on the, the client, if there’s something that they’re very anxious about, we don’t necessarily go with that one. So you make a list of foods that maybe are considered forbidden and choose one that they feel comfortable trying out, and, and do an experiment with it. Do an experiment of habituation with it, which is allowing that unconditional permission to eat that food, but just doing it in a more controlled environment so that they’re not feeling like, okay, I’m gonna eat everything. So we’re just gonna deal with this one food. It is fascinating to watch this with my children, (laughs) who, you know, being the, the, the health coach that I was, being very disordered eating, there was a lot of things I restricted for them. And having to let go of those and relax around foods, sugar cereals, things that are really highly palatable, you know, my kids would go just crazy about them.
And when I started to buy them more, which seemed so counterintuitive at the time, (laughs) like, I’m gonna buy them. I’m gonna have them in my house. I’m going to experiment on my kids almost. And it was amazing to watch my kids return to the intuitive eater that is all always inside of all of us so quickly. I think it’s easier for them because they’re younger and they’re n- they don’t have the years of disordered eating under their belts, but I could watch them have the sugar cereal and as they saw that there was another box there, it’s like, eh, okay. And then they recognize, okay, well, that food taste good for like a bowl. And then I have my 10-year-old requesting regular Cheerios more often than anything else. And he has habituated to, well, the sugar cereal is there when I want it.
Then I can choose when I actually feel like having it. And the amount that they eat has regulated quite a bit as well as a result. So those would be my, my tips of, of just challenging those thoughts and then opening yourself up to just experimenting maybe with one particular food that you feel like you can do and get to a place of neutral with it. I love that. So our audience is mostly women. Mm-hmm. Um, probably, you know, 30s and up, who wanna move past diets. They’ve, they’ve done the chronic dieting. They’re over it. They’re done. They know that this is not the way to live. They wanna make peace with food and their body. And some of them come to intuitive eating as a way, a non-diet approach, to normalize their weight, which to help their bodies reach their healthy weight.
Again, that’s in air quotes. So how do you kind of approach this where we know that intuitive eating is not… it’s not a weight loss approach. It’s not a tool for losing weight, right? So how do you… what do you say to people who are, who are maybe thinking of intuitive eating as, um, you know, as the non-diet weight loss approach? Yeah. You know, there, there’s a lot of ways to approach this, but I think the first step, and I always emphasize this, is we have to put weight loss on the back burner. If… And know that’s a process. It’s still even a process sometimes for me. We live in a world of a, you know, $75 billion diet industry that wants you to question that.
So it doesn’t mean that you don’t ever want to lose weight and, you know, that desire has immediately gone away, but the reason that you need to put it on the back burner is that if weight loss is still your main focus, you will always struggle to make peace with food. That fear will persist, and the diet and the restriction will win. It’ll eventually win over. So to put it on the back burner and put your health on the front burner, put that as the focus. What health-promoting behaviors, you know, can we add into your life? Um, and of course now I forgot what my second thing was, but… (laughs) That’s probably the, the first thing that I would say to do is just really look at, okay, how can I do that?
The other thing, again, when you’re talking about the difference between a diet and intuitive eating is with a diet, there’s a really easy way to see that it’s worked. Okay, the, the number’s gone down on the scale. Um, my size is smaller, or, or whatever is working for that particular diet. With intuitive eating, because there’s no, it’s wor- you know, there’s no number, there’s no obvious evidence necessarily that it has worked, each client gets to decide, what does success look like with intuitive eating? And the answers really are so personal, and they’re beautiful, to be honest. Um, to hear people say, “Okay, I was able to be mentally present at a meal instead of doing the numbers of the calories or the macros in my head and just be there and just eat.” Or, “I was actually able to go out to a party or out to dinner with friends instead of staying home because I was feeling more comfortable because I had more control over my food.” Basically giving themselves the permission to show up in their lives instead of, “Well, it’s just easier to stay home.” So putting weight loss on the back burner would be number one, and number two would be deciding what success looks like for you in intuitive eating that has nothing to do with a change in your size or a change in your weight. I lo- I mean, I’ve got a little over clump there, okay? (laughs) That was… I love that.
So I assume you know who Christy Harrison is? Yes. Mm-hmm. Okay. Love Christy Harrison. Yeah. Um, and she talks a lot about how, you know, weight loss really can’t ever be a goal. Right. Like, and we kno- we know this because there are no safe and effective long-term ways to lose weight and keep it off in a way that’s healthy, right? Because the, the weight cycling is actually more physically harmful than carrying the extra weight. Mm-hmm. Um, what do you tell people? And maybe I’ll delete this after, but this is my own curious answer because- (laughs) … this was my… this was something that I struggled with and, uh, we all, uh, uh, anybody who’s done this journey is like, “Can I ever think about weight loss? Can I ever… Can that ever be my goal? Is it wrong to, to want to lose weight?” You know, where… how, how do I safely and, like, does it make me a bad person to want to lose weight? You know, all of these things around this topic because we do live in a, in a world which is very, um, y- you know, favors people in smaller bodies. Mm-hmm. And if you have a larger body, then you are… you’re living in a different world. You’re stigmatized, yeah. You’re stigmatized. You are suffering, um, and because of it. And, you know, can this ever be something that we work towards? That’s a great question. Uh, and you laid out… I mean, basically, you laid out the answer because we know that… I’m hoping you have a better answer. (laughs) I was hoping I had a better answer.
Okay. Well, I don’t know that I do. Okay. I think sh- what I usually… and this is, like I said, this is a journey. This is something I still grapple with here and there because you, you write, it there- it is stigmatized. So what I have personally had to do, and this is what I tell clients to do, is I curate my social media feed. I… if, uh, things start to pop up from ads or different things, I report them from different diets and things like that because what you see as normal and what you see as applauded, it go- it’s going to cloud your judgment and cloud your view of what is good and what is right. And so that’s the first thing that I did when I really started this journey was I needed to unfollow all of the people that I had been following and really take a step back from what I felt was, was good and healthy and, and then start flooding my social media feed with different body sizes.
People that look and, and are proud of their different sizes. So it was changing what I saw and then also confronting, as, uh, we probably all need to do, our own fat phobia. Mm-hmm. Why do I think this different size body is bad? And as I have done that, I have loosened my grip, my idea of, well, weight loss will always be still, you know, on that back burner for me. Will it always be there? And it has started to come up less and less for me, but I’m talking years into my journey. It’s just, it’s still there, so I have to keep, keep facing it. So I know that so much goes into our weight and as we age and go through different experiences in life, our bodies are just going to change. So my goal has shifted from w- you know, that original, I wanna help people get to their ideal body weight. I want to show someone what health looks like all along our lifespan and that it changes how it looks. I do not look like I did when I was 20, but I’ve had four kids.
One of them was a set of twins, you know? Um, (laughs) I love your eyes light up. Um- Yeah, when they start coming out two at a time. (laughs) Yeah. So, you know, I really… I have to say, okay, I want to be an example of what health looks like and that it changes in our lifespan. And that’s been my journey. Other people will have to go… and they may always have weight loss kind of on that back burner, and no judgment. I think because of the world we live in that it’s gonna be there.
But as I add more goals in, it gets quieter and quieter and quieter for me.
So you’re kind of crowding it out.
Yeah. So that eventually it goes from the back burner into the freezer, where- And it’s- … into the freezers where we put it when it, you know, when we’re done with it. Yeah. Back in the freezer- And it’s got freezer burn and we just throw it out. It’s got freezer burn and then we just chuck it ’cause we, we, we pull it out. We’re like, “I don’t even know what this is anymore. I didn’t label it.” Chuck it. Right. That works also. (laughs) And it goes back to the mindset and the cognitive behavior therapy.
Most people can’t go from “I will never want to lose weight.” having that be a goal for so long for so many women-… to, “Okay, it’s not a goal. I don’t care,” that’s too big of a shift.
So it’s a process. It’s a step to where, you know, why do I want to always be smaller? That was probably the first question I started to ask after I really got into intuitive eating, is I saw women, I’m like, they are amazing women that I look up to in every way. They’re serving others. They’re so loving. But they always just want to be smaller. And why is that? And so that, that question really got me towards, you know, addressing my like, why do I always want to show up physically smaller? It’s the patriarchy, hint hint. I know. I don’t want to say it, but it’s true. Oh, we all know. We all know. Yeah. Let’s just, let’s just put it out there. (laughs) Put it out there. Yeah. They want us, they want us to shrink down and, and be seen and not heard. So… And why do I want to, you know, bend to that? I don’t. Exactly. And I don’t want other women to do it too. So it’s all about rewriting that narrative around our bodies so that, you know, the next generation, my kids don’t have that on their shoulders as much as I have. I love this. This has been amazing.
I was gonna ask you for three top tips, but you kind of already like went through them. If you wanted, do you have like three that you want to leave? Okay. Yeah. Then we’ll do that. Okay. So let’s, we’re gonna wrap up here. This has been an amazing chat and I’m just, there’s so much to unpack here. Um, but let’s end this with, what are your three like top tips for setting and reaching, you know, healthy goals? Okay. So I may have answered this a little bit different, but my tips are more like three questions that I have clients continue to ask themselves on those days or those moments when you’re doubting your thinking. Is this working? You know, maybe I should just start dieting again. It felt easier to just hand over my control to someone or someone else. And so these are three questions that I like to keep in my back pocket and I like to have my clients ask themselves when they are struggling. And the first one is, what if, you know, it’s questioning that, that thought again. You know, what if I could love or accept my body like it is? What if I could? What does that look like? The second one is, what do you value about your body or what has it done for you today?
And that, the underlying thing on that is, if we’re basing our self-esteem on how we view our body, it’s gonna go up or down because our body looks different in different lights and different clothing and different views. But our value, if we’re basing it in our value, that’s a lot easier to get your mind around and to feel confident in and to feel secure in. So what do you value about your body or what has it done for you today? And then the last one is, what does honoring or respecting your body look like today? That was probably three big tips, but the reason for that last one is, honoring your body each day is gonna look different. Some days it may look like changing what you’re wearing because you’re just uncomfortable in that particular outfit. It could look like having a, you know, doing a really hard workout because you wanna get stress out or it could be just not working out at all because you’re tired. And respecting and honoring your body like it is in that moment is what’s gonna build that trust with your body back that you’ve lost. So I’ll repeat those since they were really long. What if you could, what if you could love or accept your body like it is? What if you could? What do you value about your body or what has it done for you today? And then the last one of what does honoring or respecting your body look like today? And usually those three questions and the thoughts that come out of it help me turn my, my day around and help clients make, you know, have a better day and see like, okay, I can see where the thoughts were coming in that might have had me start spinning and thinking I need to start dieting again. Those are amazing. Those, I mean, I got a little choked up there.
Like, I, I’m, I mean, I wish I was exaggerating. I’m not. That’s- (laughs) That’s, that’s, that’s an incredibly powerful tools to have on days where you’re, you’re having those moments where you’re slipping back into the thoughts, you’re looking in the mirror and you’re like, “Ugh, I’m not, not loving this.” Mm-hmm. You know, and you start to play that loop, right? So those are amazing and I’m definitely gonna be keeping those handy.
I know personally I’m gonna be listening to this over and over ’cause there’s just so much in here that you have provided to our listeners. And I really appreciate the time that you took today to come and talk to us. I imagine you will be back on here soon. (laughs)
