3 Reasons Your Hubby’s Losing Weight Faster Than You

I think it’s fair to say we all love our husbands on some level yet there are those little things that annoy us about them.  This happens in any kind of partnership whether you’re in your in a relationship with a man or woman.  There’s always going to be little quirks that just get under your skin.

One big frustration for women who are in a relationship with a man is how easily they build muscle and lose fat.  It’s almost like they can just pick up a dumbbell, do some bicep curls, and they wake up the next morning and they have huge biceps.  Or you can literally see the fat melting away during a 60 second plank.

Okay, maybe this is a bit of an exaggeration, but it can feel like this at times.  I used to get so frustrated when my body was burning fat and growing muscle at a snails pace while my hubby was looking leaner within a few days of cutting out junk food.  I could not understand why it was so easy for him to build muscle and burn fat and it was more difficult for me until I started looking into the difference between my body and his.

Here’s the thing about fat loss: Each individual body has its own challenges it has to overcome.  For example, women have different hormonal fluctuations and each woman will experience a different cycle than other women.  I’ll touch on this later on so be sure to keep reading.  In addition to this fun fact, women are not just small men.  We have different nutritional, fitness, and rest requirements so our strategy isn’t the same as theirs.  Plus, there are some biological differences where our bodies want to hold onto extra fat.

Let’s dive into the top 3 reasons you’re not losing weight as fast as your hubby.

Women have a lower resting metabolic rate

Your resting metabolic rate is also known as your metabolism.  This is how much energy your body expends to keep you alive and kicking throughout the day.  Your body also uses energy to digest your food and make sure all the nutrients go where they need to go.  Since most women are smaller than men, we don’t have as much weight to carry around so we don’t need to burn as many calories to stay alive and we probably don’t eat as much as men.

One thing that can increase your metabolism is building more lean muscle mass.  Yup, getting your strength training on and toning up your body will help increase your metabolism.  You don’t need to spend hours a day throwing heavy weight around in the gym.  Bodyweight exercises are a great starting point if you’re new to strength training.  If you feel intimidated by strength training, check out my podcast episode 3 Tips To Get Comfortable With Strength Training.

Coaches Note: Your metabolism won’t increase significantly when you tone up but every little bit counts.  Plus, there’s several other benefits of building muscle we’ll get into in another blog post.

Women don’t bulk up as easily as men

So many women worry about getting big and bulky if they start lifting weights.  I have great news for you if you’re one of these women: it’s very difficult to get super bulk unless you’re “juicing” (taking performance enhancing drugs).  Women don’t naturally make enough testosterone to get super big and swole like men.  It takes our bodies longer to build lean muscle mass.

Don’t let this fact deter you from starting (or continuing) your strength training program.  You can build a good amount of lean muscle mass that’s appropriate to your body type when you eat enough protein and consider supplementing with creatine.  Before you think “Now I have to track my protein intake.  I don’t have time for that!” I can tell you right now you do not need to do this - unless, of course, you want to.  Protein intake is always a guesstimate and can fluctuate from day to day.  Since it takes time to get a feel for the amount of protein that’s right for you, I encourage you to do mini experiments as you’re navigating your weight loss journey.  This is something I can help you with when you enroll in one of my programs.

Use this fun fact as motivation to create a healthy, lean body that can effortlessly navigate any stage in life and age gracefully.  Tap into your femininity and use your woman super powers to live the life you dream of and, more importantly, deserve.

Women have different hormonal fluctuations

One important factor that may often get overlooked is that women have different hormonal cycles than men.  Your hubby doesn’t need to navigate PMS, bloating, mood swings, fatigue, and all the other fun things we experience being a woman.  Okay, maybe they have to deal with these things indirectly by listening to us complain about intense cramping and doing their best to be sympathetic when we bite their head off for no reason other than an unexpected mood swing.  So, yeah, men have to deal with PMS too.  Just in a different way.

Okay, back to the topic at hand.

There are different times of the month when you’re feeling energy surges where you feel like you can run a full marathon even though you’ve never run one before.  There are other times when you experience energy lulls and you feel like you want to curl up in bed with a box of cookies and fall asleep binge watching your favorite TV show (Friends anyone?).  It’s super important to take this into account on your weight loss journey if you want to learn how your body can lose fat almost effortlessly.

During these hormonal phases, it’s important to give your body the rest it needs or go hard with your workout and make the most of your energy surge.  If you feel hungrier right before your period, feed your body with more healthy proteins, fats, and carbs.  Give it what it wants.  Within reason, of course.  I’m not encouraging you to eat an entire box of cookies.  There are lots of healthier ways to satisfy your sugar cravings like one of my favorites: roasted potatoes.

If you’re not aligning your nutrition, fitness, and rest with your cycle you could be slowing down your fat loss.  The key is find what works best for you and your body and adjust as needed.  This process takes time and a lot of patience.  I speak from experience.

To put it simply, ladies, weight loss isn’t a race.  Remember to stay in your own lane and find a way that you and your hubby can support each other.  It’s about small steps, big victories, and treating yourself like the boss lady you are along the way.

The Key To Effortless Weight Loss

Today’s health and wellness brain teaser is one that many people get stumped on more often than not…

What’s one thing you have control over that can be the catalyst for effortless weight loss?

If you’re thinking exercise, it’s a good guess, but not the one I’m looking for.  Exercise is definitely an important part of a healthy lifestyle but it’s not the catalyst for sustainable weight loss.  So, you can stop exhausting yourself with intense cardio workouts every day and take a nap.  You deserve it.

The answer is (drumroll please)… the food you eat.

We always say in our home that you can’t exercise your way out of a bad diet (or what I like to call eating style). Without an eating style designed around whole foods, you’re unlikely to find success with losing weight and keeping it off.  I’m talking about genuine fat loss that helps you lean up and feel like a boss lady every day of your life.

The best way to design a weight loss eating strategy that works for you is to cook more meals at home.  I’m not talking about boxed Kraft mac-n-cheese or frozen meals with 5,000 ingredients in them that you can’t even pronounce.  I’m talking about meals made from whole foods: veggies, meat, eggs, seafood, spices, etc.  If this sounds overwhelming just thinking about it you’re definitely not alone, but hear me out.  It’s actually easier that it sounds.

I get that it can sometimes feel like a chore to go through the whole process of finding recipes, going to the store, cooking the meals, and then cleaning up all the dirty dishes.  I love to cook and some days it feels like a chore to me.  Sometimes grabbing takeout feels like it’s the most convenient way get food in your belly.  And sometimes it is the best way.

While takeout can be really convenient when you’re not in the mood to cook or clean, there is an easy way to create homemade meals without the overwhelm.  It doesn’t need to be complicated.  When you’re juggling a full-time job, kids, partners, laundry, and all the other fun adulting tasks, adding one more thing to your to-do list can feel like it’s too much.  Finding ways to make it easy for you and your schedule is the key to success with home cooked meals.  This is something I talk a lot about with my clients.

Plus, there are several benefits of making homemade meals, one of them being your ability to dial in your nutrition to actually work with your body and give it what it wants when it needs it.

Here are 5 reasons to cook at home more…

#1 You have complete control over the ingredients

There’s a lot of not-so-healthy ingredients that restaurants use when they prepare meals, most likely because they’re cheaper.  The same goes with processed food you find in the frozen food section at the grocery store and in the boxed meals on the shelves.  Nowadays, there are healthier frozen food options that are super convenient to just throw in the oven.  Those I’m totally onboard with.

When you cook at home you can choose higher quality meat such as grass-fed beef or pasture raised eggs.  With that being said, don’t get too caught up in grass-fed and pasture raised.  Just get the highest quality your budget allows or what’s available.

There’s a lot of frozen food and jarred sauces that have vegetable and soybean oil in them.  These are the oils that you want to avoid most of the time because they can wreak havoc in your body and cause all sorts of inflammation (and not the good kind).  If you’re in a pinch and you really want a sauce for your meal, don’t get too caught up in the ingredients.  Just be sure to add these sauces to your “occasional” food list.

#2 You can make more than enough and have leftovers for lunch (or dinner later in the week)

One thing I love about making dinner at home is that I can make more than I know we’re going to eat in one meal.  This means I have leftovers to eat for lunch the next day. Having cooked protein ready to add to any salad or pop in the microwave with some veggies is a super convenient way for me to have a nutritious lunch on a busy week day.  As a bonus, sometimes the meal tastes even better when it’s been marinating for a day or two in the fridge.

This is a game changer when I’m at the end of my cycle and PMS cravings are trying to get me to eat junk food (you know what I’m talking about!) when my body really wants nutrient-dense food, it’s easier to fight the cravings and make different food choices when I have whole foods readily available.

#3 You can make it super easy any day of the week

I don’t know about you but I don’t have time to make a meal that takes an hour or more to prepare and cook during the work week unless I want to eat at 8pm, which I don’t.  That’s the time I’m flossing and brushing my teeth, getting ready to get into bed and dive into the fiction book I’m reading.

I make a lot of meals that take 30-minutes or less during the week.  Taco bowls are super easy to make because all you need to do is cook up some ground meat (which takes about 15 minutes) and grab your favorite toppings.  We add taco seasoning, olives, salsa, and guacamole.  If I make homemade guacamole, I make it while the meat is cooking.  I always make two pounds of meat to make sure we have leftovers for salads, soups, or whatever spontaneous meals I decide to throw together.

We also buy grass-fed beef patties from Costco and turkey burger patties from Trader Joe’s that can be cooked from frozen.  You don’t even need to remember to take the meat out of the freezer the night before.  With my perimenopause brain fog that’s currently happening in my world this makes my life so much easier.

You can cook up some frozen veggies to enjoy alongside your meat and you have a delicious nutrient-dense, homemade meal in less than 30 minutes.

#4 You can add as much flavor or spice as you want to make it appetizing

Everyone has different taste preferences.  Some people prefer spicy while others not so much.  At home, you can season your food to your liking along with the rest of your family.  When we make taco bowls, we add our own amount of taco seasoning to our individual servings.

This is great if you have a family to feed and everyone has different taste preferences.  Your kids might like their food on the bland end of the flavor spectrum while your partner might like theirs on the full flavor end of the spectrum.  Everyone in the family can be happy with their meals, even the picky eaters.  You know who they are!

#5 You’re more likely to lose weight and keep it off

There’s a lot of temptation when you eat out which means you’re more likely to indulge in foods that might not align with your health and wellness goals.  If you’re avoiding bread because you just don’t like the way you feel after you eat it, it’s easy to say yes to the bun when you order a burger or fill up on the bread before your meal.  Freshly baked, warm sourdough bread with butter on it is one of my indulgences when eating out.  It’s super easy for me to over do it which is one of the reasons why I avoid eating at restaurants that serve it.

If one of my clients recognizes there’s too much temptation with certain foods when they’re right in front of them, we work together to create a strategy to make it harder for them to eat those foods.  It’s easy to minimize food related temptations when you prioritize making homemade meals.  At home, you can simply choose not to buy buns or any kind of bread.  If the bread isn’t readily available, you’re way less likely to give into the temptation when you’re is craving it.

Now it’s time to take action!

What’s one step you can take towards cooking more meals at home?

Are you the leading lady in your life?

Life is full of challenges.  It may feel like you’re having to climb to the top of Everest to overcome some challenges while others might be a breeze to overcome.  This is the reality of adulting and life in general.  It’s not always fun and at times it feels like one challenge after another is coming at you like a cheetah running as fast as possible in your direction.  You have to do your best to tame the cheetah by giving it an edible or shot of whisky to calm it down (unless cheetahs are angry drunks. I’m not sure since I haven’t met any drunk cheetahs…yet.)

As women, not only do we have day-to-day challenges of work, kids, and partners (having a husband can be a lot like having a kid) to navigate but also health related challenges that come up thanks to the hormonal changes we experience throughout the days, months, and years.  Our hormones can be a bitch to deal with especially during PMS or perimenopause (can you say sugar cravings and crying fits!) and not always easy on our partners, either.  I’m sure my hubby would lovingly agree with this statement. [SMILE]

Are these challenges that than can be avoided?  Maybe. With a few small changes to your nutrition and fitness they can at least be minimized.  Here’s the catch, making these small changes comes with another set of challenges: new habit creation.

Creating new habits and letting go of old ones takes time, patience, and most importantly, effort.  When you’ve been doing the same thing for several years, you’re on autopilot.

Your autopilot:

• takes you to the drive-through to pick up dinner.

• keeps you scrolling through social media when you could be sleeping.

• presses snooze instead of getting out of bed to workout.

Any of this sound familiar?

You may feel super comfortable while being on autopilot and think you’re taking the easy way out but you may just be creating more challenges for you in the future.  One day you may wake up overweight, exhausted, and moody asking yourself “What just happened?  How did I end up here?”

Whether you’ve experienced this moment or not, there’s still time to change the script and write a new health and wellness future for you.  The very first module in my signature program talks about how you’re the leading lady of your own life and now is the time to start acting like it.  The first step is to ask yourself: what do you want your life to look like?

• Do you want the challenge of taking medication for diabetes and experience all the fun (not-so-fun) side effects that come with it or learning how to eat to train your body to be a fat burner?

• Do you want the challenge of not being able to get out of bed very easily or creating an exercise routine that you’re willing to do?

• Do you want the challenge of being overweight or learning how to give your body the nutrition it wants when it needs it?

• Do you want the challenge of feeling tired all the time or creating morning and nighttime routines that help you get awesome sleep?

You always have the freedom to choose your challenges.  Even if a challenge is out of your control, you have the choice to change your mindset about it.  Is it easy to do?  Not always!  Mindset is something I’ve struggled with most of my life and still do to some extent today.  I’ve learned over the years how to overcome any mindset challenges that come up for me by putting in the work.  Getting my mindset in check is definitely one of the most important skill sets I’ve learned over the years.

This has helped me create sustainable nutrition, fitness, and sleep habits that help me maintain a healthy weight, experience consistent energy levels, and minimize any perimenopause symptoms up to this point in my life.  I’ve become the leading lady in my life and I challenge you to do the same.

What’s one health and wellness challenge that you want to eliminate from your life right now?  What are you willing to do to overcome this challenge to become the leading lady in your life?

3 Reasons to Ditch Your Scale (And What To Do Instead)

If you’re someone who gets obsessed with the number of the scale, I invite you to join my new Obsessed With The Scale Club.  I already have thousands of women on the waitlist to join this exclusive club.

If you’ve ever felt frustrated that the number on the scale was either not budging or going up, weighed yourself every day (sometimes multiple times a day), or increased your intense cardio workouts from 5 to 7 days a week to get that number down, you’re a prime candidate for my new club.

What will we talk about in our club meetings?  Well, I’m glad you asked.

First, we’ll begin by talking about why the number on the scale is so important to us.  My gut is telling me there will be a consensus that this number defines where we are on the hotness scale.  The higher up we get on the scale, the more confident we’ll be according to society.  Who doesn’t want to be a confident bad ass woman? A She-E-Oh of life?

Next, we’ll talk about how many times we go crazy about the number going down one day and going up the next day.  This will be a great segue to into our next conversation about how we can decrease the number of calories we eat in a day and increase our cardio workouts from 5 days a week to 7.  We’ll come up with all sorts of “great” ideas that seem totally logical at the time but in the end will lead to chronic fatigue, insomnia, intense PMS, mood swings, hormonal imbalances, sugar and salt cravings, and, ironically, weight gain.

The cycle will start all over again from the beginning and it will go on for the rest of our lives.  If you feel the need to let your inner rage woman out, please so do now.  Just be sure to do this without harming others or yourself.

Okay, I really haven’t started a Obsessed With The Scale Club.  I think you’ve already picked up on the fact that this is club is tongue-in-cheek.  I’ve worked with many clients (including some men) whose primary focus is the number on the scale.  This is totally understandable.  As women, we’ve been conditioned to weigh a certain amount in order to be seen as hot, beautiful, or gorgeous.  This is a mindset I’m on a mission to help women change.

Here are 3 reasons why you should ditch your scale and what to do instead.

Reason #1: Minimize Confusion, Frustration, and Disappointment

Focusing too much time on the number on the scale can cause a lot of confusion that naturally leads to frustration and brings feelings of disappointment to the surface.  You think you’re doing everything right: one hour of cardio a day, counting calories or carbs or both, strength training sessions five days a week, and working out no matter how you feel, even if you’re tired, hungry, and crampy.

Your body can be predictable if you actually take the time to get to know it.  I say this over and over again and I’ll say it again: your body wants you be healthy and it’s designed to help you thrive when you give it what it wants. You just need to know what to give it and when.

One great way to get to know your body is to track your menstrual cycle.  Think back to the first day of your last period.  This is day one of your cycle.  If you can’t remember when you started, wait until you start again and make a note of this day.

Once you know where you are in your cycle, you can start taking note of your energy levels, sleep patterns, hunger levels, mood swings, and anything else that you’re inspired to write down.  You may notice that in the first few days of your cycle, you’re not in the mood to workout or just don’t have the energy to.  This is actually to be expected.   I do a deeper dive into all of this in my signature program you can check out here.

Once you get a few weeks into your cycle and you’re at the point when you’re ovulating, you may feel like you have a surge of energy and want to go hard during your workouts.  Go for it!  Just proceed with caution because along with high energy levels and better moods, your chances of injury go up.  Fight the urge to overdo it.

After you get close to the end of your cycle, you may notice your hunger levels increasing to the point where you eat your first meal of the day full of protein and healthy fats and an hour later you’re hungry again.  This is how I feel during this phase of my cycle.  I feel like I could eat all the food in our fridge, freezer, and pantry within 24 hours.  Even during this phase when I eat more I still don’t gain weight because I know how my body operates.  It needs the extra nutrition.

Coaches Note: When your hunger increases, this is not the time to indulge in junk food.  Focus on whole, nutrient-dense food that your body thrives on.

Reason #2: There’s Other Ways To Measure Progress More Effectively

Here’s the hard truth about the scale: the number on the scale doesn’t always reflect your progress accurately.  There I said it.  Now that the truth is out there, let’s talk about it.

Fun Fact: Muscle is denser than fat. Yup, it’s true!

If you take a fistful of fat and fistful of muscle and place them each on their own scale, the number on the scale with the muscle will be higher.  So, if you’ve been getting your strength training on for several weeks or months, you’re most likely gaining lean muscle mass which will make the number on the scale either stay the same or even go up a little.

A more effective and accurate way to measure your progress is to go by how your clothes fit.  If you have a pair of jeans that are just a bit snug and then one day you slip them on and they feel a little loose, this is a sign of weight loss, most likely fat loss.  This means you’re most likely leaning up and building muscle mass to mitigate osteoporosis, support your joints, and be able to defend yourself at any time.

Taking measurements of your arms, hips, thighs, and stomach with a fabric roll tape measure is another accurate way to measure your progress.  This bad boy will give you a good baseline to measure your progress for whether or not you’re burning fat and gaining lean muscle.

Reason #3: Sustainable Fat Loss Results Take Time and Patience

Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you started eating better and moving your body more and the fat just melted away until you got down to the weight you want?  The reality is your body doesn’t work this way.  You may notice that you lose weight in the beginning of your weight loss journey effortlessly and think “Cool!  This is actually working!” However, this may just be water weight and not necessarily fat.  This is actually your body adjusting to your new eating style, movement routine, or both.

To burn fat and keep it off in a sustainable way, your body does this slowly.  Sometimes so slow it can be incredibly frustrating but it’s actually a good thing.  You most likely gained the weight slowly over time and now your body wants to slowly burn the extra fat slowly to keep it healthy.

I say this over and over again in my programs and I’m going to say it again right now.  Your body wants you to be healthy and this is always its number one priority.  The challenge is there’s sometimes a disconnect with your timeline and your body’s timeline to get to a healthy weight and they don’t always line up.

Rather than focusing on the number on the scale, start celebrating the action you’re taking every day to get to your healthy weight.  Did you eat more protein at breakfast?  Give yourself a high-five!  Did you do a strength workout after work?  Do a happy dance!  Did you get a full night’s rest and wake up feeling awesome?  Be grateful for your efforts to get to bed on time!

Shifting your focus from the number on the scale to your daily wins will shift your mindset to the things you can control: your efforts and actions.

So, how do you gently tell your scale you need your space?

Now, you don’t need to break up with your scale completely.  Taking small steps to simply scale back (pun intended) the number of times you hop on the scale to check your weight might be a good starting point for you.  If you currently get on your scale once a day, maybe get on it every other day or once a week, instead.

Before you get on the scale next time, remind yourself that you are a bad ass confident woman no matter what the scale says.  It doesn’t define who you are as a woman.  Your effort, commitment, and trust in your body are what makes you the bad ass confident woman that’s going to get you to a healthy weight for YOU.

Want to brainstorm ideas on how you can move away from the scale? Go here to book a free call with me and we’ll chat about what might work best for you!

What’s the threshold when you want to give up?

We’re just about to wrap up the second full week of 2025 which probably means you’ve been working towards your New Year’s resolutions for a few weeks now.  Maybe the newness and excitement of a new health and fitness journey is starting to wear off.  Or things just aren’t going the way you planned so far.  This was me the last few weeks.

We live in Southern California and thankfully the fires are not close enough to us that we’re in danger, however, we’ve experienced power outages and super strong winds that got in the way of my personal and professional goals.  It was not the way I imagined kicking off 2025 and definitely threw me for a loop.

It got me thinking about New Year’s resolutions and how to navigate challenges when they come up right at the beginning of the year.  Many studies show that most people never follow through with their New Year’s resolutions.  Yup, that’s right!  I typed NEVER.  By the time February rolls around, they’ve thrown in the towel and gone back to their old habits.

To be honest, this doesn’t surprise me at all because habit change is hard.  It’s hard for me and I’m a trained health and wellness coach who teaches people how to create lifestyle habits that stick.  So, if this you and you find yourself saying, "I can’t do this s#%t anymore!” within the first six weeks of the year, I get it.

Challenges are inevitable and a part of life regardless of what you’re working towards.  I’ve worked with several clients over the years and noticed a pattern when it comes to creating nutrition and fitness habits that are sustainable.  The bottom line is it’s not a linear path, especially if your goal is weight loss.  There’s ups and downs along the way no matter how motivated and committed you are to achieving your goal.

Fun fact: I recorded a podcast episode last year about this pattern.  If you want to learn more about the Wellness Abundance Coaching 5 Stages of Habit Creation, go here to check it out.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

One thing that I believe is super important to know about yourself is, at what point do you seriously think about giving up?  I’m talking about the “cracking open that bottle of wine and throwing away the cork because you know you won’t be needing it” phase.  Or the “eating an entire box of cookies in one sitting” phase.  Or the "sulking on the couch letting all the negative chit chat in your head tell you all the reasons you can’t make it happen” phase.

Now, I’m not trying to say there isn’t a time and a place for drinking wine straight from the bottle and bypassing the wine glass.  Believe me, it’s something I’ve considered many times and I know you have too (no shame in this!).  Sometimes it’s a necessary part of the process to get to where you want to go.  So, I’m here to encourage you to do what you need to do during this time.  Just be sure to truly enjoy every single sip from that bottle of wine and savor every single bite of every cookie you eat.

After you’re done, you can just give up OR shake it off, put on your big girl panties, and move on to the next step.   

The important thing is to recognize that this might be your “giving up” threshold, which is actually really exciting!  It may not feel exciting at the time BUT it’s the first step in the next phase.  You’re coming out of the “I just can’t do this!” phase and moving into the “I’ve totally got this!” phase.  At the beginning of the “I’ve totally got this!” phase, you may need to just keep doing what you’re doing and develop more patience or channel your inner Ross Gellar and pivot.

Working with a health and fitness coach like myself can help you navigate this territory.  Let’s be real and admit that we can’t be successful on our own.  Do you have the ability to make a lot of progress tapping into your own resources? Yes, of course you do!  However, I guarantee no one who has ever been successful at creating new lifestyle habits has done this without help.  I know I can’t do it on my own.

The ideal time for you to reach out for help is actually before you hit your giving up threshold.  If you get ahead of it and brainstorm ideas on ways you can overcome any obstacles that get in your way, by the time you get there you already have a list of ideas ready to go.

If you’ve already reached that threshold and you actually don’t want to give up but don’t know what to do, I can help.  If you’re willing to put in the work on your end, I’ll do the same on my end.  I’m confident I can help you get past your giving up threshold and get to your destination.

As much fun as it sounds, sitting around sulking with your bottle of wine and box of cookies probably won’t give you a body that ages gracefully, is full of energy, and stays lean and strong.  There’s no magic formula (if there was one and I knew it, I would share with you in a heartbeat!) to overcome the hurdles.  You just have to go at them head on, whatever that looks like for you.

So, go here right now to book a free call with me so we can chat about your “I just can’t do this!” threshold and create a strategy to help you get past it.  Set yourself up to be on the “I followed through with my New Year’s resolution(s)!” trolly.  You’ll look back at this time with a smile and feel a wave of gratitude that you didn’t give up.

The Fertility Trifecta

Have you or anyone you know struggled with fertility challenges?  If you’re going through this right now, I empathize with you.  While I haven’t been through it myself I have plenty of friends who have struggled to get pregnant over the years.  I’ve seen first hand how stressful and emotional the entire fertility process can be not just for women but in men as well.  Fertility can be a journey that can feel lonely and confusing and be challenging on relationships.

While there are several different paths to fertility, the one I would begin with if I was experiencing infertility is lifestyle habits.  Specifically, what I like to call the Fertility Trifecta (i.e. the Wellness Abundance Trifecta).

If you’re not looking to get pregnant, don’t stop reading now.  There’s lots of good stuff here that will help improve your overall health.  So, keep reading…

Your body’s ability to grow a human inside of it at any time is actually a sign of a healthy, thriving body.  Even if you’re like me and not looking to bring another human into the world, being fertile is something to strive to in your reproductive years.  Plus, the lifestyle habits you create now to boost your fertility will help you navigate perimenopause and menopause almost effortlessly.  And, let’s be real, I think every woman wants to age gracefully and breeze through the inevitable changes our bodies go through later in life.

So, what is this Fertility Trifecta of which I speak?  Well, it’s actually very simple (yet not always easy to implement): whole food nutrition, frequent movement, and good quality rest.

Ready to dive into all the juicy details?  Let’s do this!

Whole Food Nutrition

Now, with nutrition it’s super easy to go down the rabbit hole of supplements especially if you’re working with a fertility practitioner.  Often times practitioners will create a protocol to help with any nutrient deficiencies that includes supplements.

Here’s the thing about supplements: they’re meant to be taken if you don’t eat enough whole foods with the nutrients you’re deficient in, or if your body doesn’t absorb those nutrients properly.  In my professional opinion, the first line of defense for nutrient deficiencies should be whole foods.  If there’s any nutrients you’re deficient in and you don’t like any whole foods with those nutrients, then supplements are great.

Two supplements that I take daily are magnesium and collagen.  These are nutrients that are difficult for me to get enough of through my whole food eating style.

Now, let’s chat about whole foods.  I think it’s pretty obvious that your body thrives on whole, real foods such as veggies, fruit, meat (especially red meat), seafood, eggs, and nuts.  Creating an eating style that focuses more on whole foods is a great way to build a foundation for a nutrient-dense eating style for when you’re pregnant and passing nutrients on to your developing baby.  And it can be super helpful after your little one comes into the world with your recovery from pregnancy.

The challenge is moving away from processed foods and incorporating more whole foods.  Being super strict right out of the gate can be difficult and isn’t always the best strategy for most people.  I did this when I was training for my first half marathon.  I was super motivated to dial in my nutrition to support my training efforts.  If you can find the motivation within yourself to be strict in the beginning, go for it.  Just be sure you have a solid strategy in place to help you stick to it.

For most people, slowly moving away from highly processed food and focusing more on whole, nutrient dense foods that you enjoy is a better strategy.  Once you slowly start to add more whole foods into your eating style, you’ll have more consistent energy levels, sleep better, your mood will improve, and you’ll simply feel better overall.  Focus on how you’re feeling after eating a nutrient-dense meal and use this as your motivation to keep moving forward.

Frequent Movement

I think it’s safe to say we all understand that frequent movement is a key component of a healthy body.  With that being said, too much intense physical activity can inhibit weight loss, decrease fertility, and put too much stress on your heart muscle and the rest of your body.  Finding the sweet spot for your lifestyle and fitness level is key to creating an exercise routine that you can stick to and that’s effective.

When someone asks me what the best exercise routine is my answer is always the same: the one that you enjoy doing that includes cardio, strength training, and recovery.  One of my favorite aspects of being a fitness coach is helping my clients personalize their exercise routine.  I even do this with my group fitness classes.  If you’re struggling to find the motivation to exercise, you’re most likely choosing workouts that you don’t enjoy.

If you feel anxious or unsure about exercising, work with a professional to make sure your form is on par to avoid injury and get the most out of your workouts.  This is the  number one reason my clients come to me for help.  It’s super important to make sure you’re doing the movements correctly to not just avoid injury but to get the most out of the movement.

Good Quality Rest

We all have some form of stress in our lives.  Your fertility challenges can be causing a strain on your relationship with your partner.  You could feel a little (or a lot of) jealousy when a friend or family member shares that she’s pregnant.  You could feel pressure from people in your life to have a baby when they don’t know you’re trying and it’s not working out at this time.  Even when your little one arrives, you’ll experience different stressors in your life.  These are just some of the mental stressors that you may experience.

Then there’s the physical stressors from workouts.  When you do a strength training workout whether it’s with your own bodyweight or lifting weights, your muscles get micro tears in them.  These tears need time to heal and repair to grow more lean muscle mass.

Sleep is one of the best ways to recover from any stressors in your life.  This is the time when your body’s recovery systems kick into high gear and goes to work to realign any systems that aren’t working properly.  For example, if you’re struggling with insulin resistance (your body’s ability to process carbs efficiently) your body will make sure your stress hormones (cortisol) drops to a healthy level to enable your body to process carbs more efficiently.  This will also help you squash any sugar cravings before they start so you reach for whole, nutrient-dense foods rather than the ones filled with sugar.

While sleep is definitely super important, there are several other ways you can rest and recover from daily stresses.  Going for a walk, journaling, meditating, stretching, having coffee or lunch with a friend, intimate time with your partner, and reading a good book are all ways you can relax.

This is a topic that comes up a lot with my coaching clients.  As women, we tend to put other people’s needs before our own.  It’s in our nature to be the nurturing one.  The problem with this is we take on too much and, before we know it, we’re experiencing mood swings, weight gain, and the fluctuation of our energy levels throughout the day; it feels like we’re on roller coaster.  It doesn’t have to be this way.

When you implement the Fertility Trifecta (a.k.a. Wellness Abundance Trifecta), you’re investing in yourself and creating a healthy baby-making body.  When you invest in yourself you’ll be a better parent and partner.  This in and of itself will help you create abundance in other areas of your life.

Check out our podcast episode on this topic here.

How to Make 2025 Your Healthiest Year Yet

A brand new year is a great time to create a fresh start. It’s an opportunity to work with a clean slate while still taking into account where you’ve been and where you are in this moment. It’s an exciting time to get ready for the positive changes up ahead.

Now, I realize any time is a great time to create a fresh start, however, there’s just something about a new year that ignites hope and motivation within people. Maybe it’s because the holiday season is over and it’s time for a new beginning. Or the previous year was so stressful and chaotic that you simply want to move on to a new season in your life and a brand new year helps with the moving on process.

Whatever the reason may be for you, now is an opportunity figure out if you want to continue to move in the same direction or make a few tweaks to get to a new destination.  

 “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” Lao Tzu

If you feel like your health and wellness is heading down a path that’s causing too much stress, confusion, and creating unnecessary challenges, asking yourself the following 4 questions will help you get clear on what you want to accomplish in 2025 and how you’re going to make it happen. Just to be clear, you can think of this as a template to help you get started. Nothing is set in stone. You’re not married to this plan. If you find it doesn’t work for you, you’ll figure out what will work for you. 

How do you want to feel at the end of 2025?  

First, fast forward to December 2025 and imagine what your life will look like after you’ve taken control of your health for a full year. Maybe you’ll feel confident that you can stick to an exercise routine that works for you. Maybe you’ll be more aware of what your hormones are doing throughout the month so you can make nutrition, fitness, and rest choices that align with your body. Maybe you’ll treat yourself with more respect like you would a friend when you eat five cookies and not just one. Maybe you’ll know how to say “no” to indulgences more often than the beginning of the year. Imagine yourself slipping into the pair of pants you never thought you’d be able to fit into again.

Give yourself permission to really visualize what you want your life to look like at the end of 2025. This first question will help you begin stepping into the woman you’ll transform into over the next 12 months.

What health and fitness challenges do you want to overcome during 2025?

Write out every single health challenge you’re experiencing right now. This includes fertility issues, extra weight that just won’t come off, creating an exercise routine that you can stick with and you actually enjoy, navigating the unknown territory of perimenopause, managing your PCOS symptoms, and anything else that comes up for you.

Creating lifestyle habits around the Wellness Abundance trifecta (nutrition, fitness, and rest) can make all of these challenges so much easier to overcome. The best part about creating lifestyle habits around this trifecta is that they can call be personalized to fit into your life, align with your tastebuds, and your fitness ability.  

What tools do you have in your toolbox right now to start taking action on your 2025 health and fitness goals?  

You already have at least some of the resources within your reach to get started today.You may not be able to see results immediately with these resources but it will put you on the right path to get you to your end of the year destination.  

Here are a list of tools you may already have in your toolbox:

• A strong Why to keep you moving towards your goals (if you don’t have this yet, I’ll help you get clear on this when you join one of my programs)

• Shoes and comfy clothes to exercise in

• A kitchen to prepare nutrient-dense homemade meals

• A health and fitness coach you know and trust to help you along the way (my superpower is guiding women just like you towards their health and fitness destination, just in case you didn’t know)

• The ability to begin a workout program in the comfort of your own home with just your bodyweight 

• A comfy bed to get a solid nights sleep 

There’s probably tools that you don’t have available to you at the time that will help you get to your destination that you may not need right now. Keep an ongoing list of these tools for the future and acquire them down the road.  

What’s one step you’re going to take in the next 24 hours to jump start your 2025 health and fitness goals?

Now, this is my favorite question to ask because it gets you into the “action phase” of your health and fitness journey.Without action nothing happens and you might just end up overwhelming yourself with a long list of reasons (which are probably actually excuses) not to do anything right now.  

Make a list of every step you can take within the next 24 hours to get you on your 2025 health and fitness path. After you make your list, choose one thing that’s the most doable and figure out how you’re going to do it. If you want to go for a walk in the morning after you wake up, get your workout clothes and shoes ready the night before. Be sure to set your alarm to get up in time if needed. 

 Want to schedule a free wellness strategy session with me? Go here right now to find a time that works best for you. If you can’t find a time that works for you, email me at melissa@wellnessabundancecoaching.com and we’ll make it work.  

How to Squash Your Sugar Cravings Before They Start

Do you ever feel like your body craves sugar? It just needs that little bit of sweetness to make it happy. The next thing you know, you’re looking at 5 empty candy wrappers or half a box of cookies that was brand new 10 minutes ago.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever experienced this. I’m definitely raising my hand! If you’re hand is up, you’re human. I’m here to share with you that it’s not your fault and you can take control of your sugar cravings before they start. And, it’s actually pretty simple. It may not be easy at first but once it happens, you’ll feel like you can overcome any hurdle in your life.

Before I share how to squash your sugar cravings (and it’s not about willpower), let’s dive into why you feel like your body needs sugar.

Sugar is in a majority of processed food on the market: sauces, condiments, baked goods, crackers, protein bars, and the list goes on. According to Grand View Research, the market size of sugar in 2023 was $66.39 billion. That’s incredibly high considering there’s zero nutrients in it and it’s an ingredient that causes chronic disease in millions of people in the U.S. and billions around the world.

In the Simpson’s episode Sweets and Sour Marge that paints a great picture of how dependent we are on sugar. Springfield, the home of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, is declared the fattest city in America and Marge is not happy about this. She goes to work to get the residents of Springfield to sign a petition to ban sugar in Springfield.

As she’s going around town collecting signatures, Chief Wiggum says that sugar is the reason his son Ralph is happy and angry at the same time. She stops by the house of Springfield’s resident hillbilly, Cletus, and he signs the petition because sugar is the reason his sister is obese and has diabetes. The show cuts Cletus’ sister using an ab roller and eating a bite of cake as a “reward” for her fitness efforts. Rewarding yourself with sweet treats (or any other indulgence) is an entirely different conversation. We’ll tackle that another day.

Marge gets enough signatures and Marge’s Law is passed. All the food with sugar in it is burned in a pile. Except for the Butterfingers candy bars that the fire spits right back out because, according to Chief Wiggum, “Even the fire doesn’t want them.” After all the sugar is burned in a big bond-fire there’s very little food left in Springfield. Homer walks in to Apu’s Kwik-E-Mart and the shelves are pretty much empty. This is actually a little scary because it’s the reality that we would experience if sugar was banned. A whole lot of food would disappear off the shelves.

When you go to the grocery store, a majority of the food on the shelves is processed foods. To be clear, there are some packaged processed foods that are made with whole food ingredients that are on the healthier end of the packaged food spectrum. However, most of the processed foods, in my opinion, are highly-processed. This means they have more chemical ingredients in them than real ingredients.

If you’re eating a lot of this processed food (cereal, condiments, baked goods, chips, crackers, pasta, etc.) your body doesn’t really know how to burn all these calories off for energy. Amongst the confusion with what to do with extra energy floating around in your bloodstream, your body stores it as fat for later use. This is also when you feel the ups and downs of energy levels. When you feel low energy, your body tells you to reach for the sugar even though it has more than enough.

So, how do you squash your sugar cravings before they start? Let’s dive into the one simple thing you can do to help you feel confident going about your day without even considering eating a sugar filled treat.

Eating enough protein throughout your day will train your body not to crave sugar. Here’s the thing about protein: it helps keep you feeling satisfied longer and it’s hard to eat too much of it.

When your body feels like it’s had enough to eat to power all the systems in your body it needs to survive, your hormones are telling your brain “We’re good. We don’t need any more calories of any kind to continue functioning efficiently. You’re free to go about your day and do what you want without having to worry about eating for now.”

Now, I realize in theory this solution sounds simple but it might not be easy, at least at first. I’ll walk you through a process that works for me (and that I share with clients) to help you get your protein intake dialed in.

Make sure you’re eating a good amount of protein with every meal, especially your first meal of the day. In the morning, I’ll eat 2-4 eggs, hard boiled, fried, or scrambled, whatever I’m feeling or have time to prepare. Sometimes I’ll throw in some uncured bacon or breakfast sausage. I’ll often have a collagen protein shake as well. Just a quick note on collagen: it’s not a complete protein so I wouldn’t recommend adding it to your protein intake tally. It’s an awesome supplement to keep your skin, hair, nails, and joints super healthy.

Any kind of animal protein is great at any time of the day. I ate leftover fish for breakfast one day this week and it was delicious! Think outside the cereal box in the morning and get creative with your protein packed breakfast.

Build the rest of your meals throughout the day around protein. For example, if I feel like having chicken, I’ll cook up some chicken with mushrooms and onions and add some bone broth or veggie broth based soup (without sugar) to the mix and within 30 minutes or less I have a nutritious, delicious, satisfying meal ready to eat for dinner.

Eating enough protein, especially for women, can be a bit challenging. Slowly increase the amount of protein you eat each day or week and you’ll get to a point where you naturally don’t crave sugar any more. If you’re not sure whether or not you’re eating enough protein, go here to check out a Wellness Abundance Podcast episode on the topic.

Enjoy your protein-packed meals!

3 Reasons You’re Not Losing Weight

Do you ever feel like you’re spinning your wheels trying to get the extra weight off your body? I’ve been there myself and it can be incredibly frustrating.

Whether you’ve been advised by your doctor to shave a few pounds off the number on the scale or you’ve noticed your pants feeling a little snug, losing weight can be a complex process. Often times when women tell me they’re doing everything right yet they’re not losing weight (or they’re gaining it), that’s a red flag that there’s a missing link (or two) in their weight loss action plan.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to weight loss, which is actually great news for you. Because who wants to feel like they have to eat a giant salad for lunch every single day just to drop a few pounds to fit into your favorite pair of jeans. If you want to eat a giant salad for lunch every day, go for it! I used to eat giant salads all the time filled with protein and healthy fats until I started getting a little bored with them. Now I switch it up and am able to maintain a healthy weight.

Creating a personalized weight loss action plan is an opportunity to make this journey an enjoyable one for you. It may be challenging in the beginning when you start making changes but with the Wellness Abundance Fat Loss method you’ll create a way of life that keeps extra weight off for good.

Okay, let’s get into the nitty gritty of why you may not be losing weight and what small changes you can make to slip into your favorite pair of jeans effortlessly.

Reason #1: Not enough strength training

I’m dating myself here, but remember back in 80’s when Jane Fonda workouts were all the rage. Jazzersize and leg warmers were a must if you wanted to get skinny back in the day. Or so we thought…

What we’ve learned over the last three decades is that strength training is the way to go if you want to lose fat and not just weight. Here’s the thing about weight loss: you really want to lose fat and not just weight in general that can include muscle mass and bone density.

If you’re doing enough strength training, you’re most likely building - or maintaining - muscle and burning fat. The number on the scale may not go down much BUT you’re body is shedding any fat that’s no longer needed. The best way to measure this is by how your clothes fit.

If you’re doing too much cardio and not enough strength training, you could potentially lose muscle mass. The thing about muscles is you need to use them regularly for them to stay strong. Plus, strong muscles help support healthy bones. As we age, our risk for osteoporosis increases significantly which is definitely something you don’t want.

Doing at least two 30-minute strength training sessions a week lifting heavy things should do the trick. If you’re new to strength training, go here to watch my podcast episode where I share 3 Tips To Get Comfortable With Strength Training.

Plus, too much cardio can increase your stress hormones which causes your body to go into protection mode. This means your body is going to keep any stored fat on you just in case it needs it in the future. I’m telling you, your body is smarter than you think it is. It knows what it’s doing. Trust it.

So, slip on your leg warmers, grab your Thigh Master®, step aerobics equipment, and get your strength training on.

Reason #2: Not eating according to your cycle

Yes, you read that right. Eating according to your cycle actually is a thing. At least it is in my program. I’ve been doing this for a few years now and it’s been a game changer.

Since your hormones fluctuate throughout the month, why not switch up your food along with it? Once you get the hang of it and get to know your body it becomes second nature.

When your hormones are higher during the first half of your cycle, your body is able to process the starchy carbs like rice, potatoes, and bread a little more efficiently. This means when you eat these foods your body most likely won’t be storing it as fat.

On the other hand, during the second half of your cycle your body is not really a fan of processing these starchy carbs and wants to resist burning them for energy. Your body retaliates against you for eating them and stores them as fat.

This can be a really challenging time because this is when your PMS cravings kick in and you could be more hungry than usual. Your brain is telling you to order a cheeseburger, fries, and a shake from In-n-Out. (Seriously, this was one of my go-to orders back in the day.) You justify it because you’re “listening” to your body when this actually isn’t what your body wants.

This is just your hormones confusing you about what your body actually wants and needs during this time. When you train your brain to say “No thank you!” to these foods it’s easier to make food choices that your body actually needs: whole, nutrient-dense foods.

My point is that making conscious food choices to work with your body rather than against it will make eating nutrient-dense foods most of the time so much easier. You can indulge occasionally. Just know your limits.

Wellness Abundance Coaching Tip: Track your cycle so you can make conscious choices about what you eat to work with your body. This may vary from month to month and as you you get older. This is where working with a health and wellness coach in addition to your healthcare provider can help.

Reason #3: Not getting enough sleep

Ah, sleep… One of my favorite things to do. It’s the time when your body’s recovery systems kick into high gear and help you recuperate from the stresses of the day, both physically and mentally.

Sleeplessness can cause your hormones to go into all sorts of chaos within your body. Not getting enough quality sleep can cause your stress hormones to go sky high. You already learned earlier that chronically high stress levels promotes your body to store more fat. This is obviously not what you want when you’re wanting to burn more fat.

Not only does your stress hormone increase, your hunger hormone overrides the hormone that tells you when you’ve had enough to eat. When this happens, you tend to eat more and have more cravings for junk food. We all know what this leads to, right? Eating more processed food that doesn’t support your weight loss efforts.

In addition to your junk food cravings coming out of nowhere, if you’re a stress drinker you’re probably going to pop open a bottle of wine, skip the glass, and drink right from the bottle. After all, you’re drinking from a glass, right?

Reaching for the wine when you’re stressed probably isn’t the best way to cope with your emotions, plus your body is simply going to just store more fat as you drink and eat, regardless of what you eat.

So, the bottom line is do your best to move mountains to get great sleep. If you need to, rearrange your night time routine to make sure you get to bed at a reasonable time, put down the electronic devices, and do something relaxing to calm your mind within two hours before bedtime.

So, out all three of these reasons, which one do you feel you can work on improving in the next 24-48 hours? It only takes one step move you closer to your weight loss goal, whatever that looks like for you.

Unhealthy Habits Disguised as Wellness

Have you ever considered that your “healthy” habits are inhibiting your weight loss? I know, it’s kind of a loaded question. There’s a reason (and it’s a good one) I’m asking you to think about this for a minute.

Our brains are flooded with information about what we “should” be doing to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight. There’s always articles sharing studies that prove that specific habits are helping you burn more calories. Some of them are accurate and valid while other articles have cherry-picked data to make specific habits look good.

The challenge comes in what to believe and not to believe. This can be a struggle and something I help my clients overcome. By the way, once you implement the Wellness Abundance fat loss method, it’s easy to overcome these challenges and lose weight effortlessly.

Here are 3 habits that are disguised as wellness that might be inhibiting your fat loss efforts:

• Eating three square meals a day with snacks in between

• Doing an hour of high intensity cardio 5 days a week

• Drinking a protein shake filled with all sorts of fruit (Jamba Juice, anyone?)

If you’re doing any of the above, it’s okay. You’ve made these choices based on what you were told was the best way to lose weight. This is what the professionals are telling you works.

The tricky thing about the human body is that we’re constantly learning new information about how it works. This is one of the reasons I became a health and fitness coach. I love learning about how our bodies can help us not just survive but thrive.

Your body is an amazing being and knows exactly what to do to help you burn fat effortlessly if you give it what it wants and needs. The best part is, this is actually not that complicated.

Let dive into these habits…

Eating three square meals a day with snacks in between

Learning to be in tune with your actual hunger cues is why you don’t need to eat three square meals a day with snacks in between. Unless you’re a professional athlete or training for the Boston marathon, there’s no need to eat as frequently as you’ve been taught. You should absolutely eat three meals a day if (and that’s big IF) you feel like your body is asking for the nutrients.

If you’re eating enough protein and healthy fats during your first meal of the day, this should hold you over for at least 3-4 hours, maybe more. The definition of “enough” varies from person to person. For example, if I eat at least 30 grams of protein (2 hard boiled eggs and a protein shake with two scoops of protein powder) at around 8am, I’m good until about 12:30pm. Not eating between meals helps mitigate sugar cravings and gives your body a break from having to work to digest food.

Doing an hour of high intensity cardio 5 days a week

Too many high intensity cardio workouts will increase your cortisol levels (also known as the stress hormone). When your cortisol levels are super high, this not only inhibits your ability to burn fat efficiently, but causes too much stress on your heart. Your heart is a muscle so when you do a cardio workout, your heart is contracting just like your thigh muscles do when you squat. Too much of the this for long periods of time too frequently causes stress on your heart. Just like your other muscles, your heart needs time to recover from workouts.

Move your body frequently throughout the day if possible and shift your focus to building lean muscle mass. You really only need to do about 2-3 strength training sessions a week. And they can be around 30 minutes or so. You’ll get your heart rate up just enough to give your heart muscle the exercise it needs.

Drinking a protein shake filled with all sorts of fruit

I’m a big fan of drinking protein shakes to get extra protein or if you just need a quick and easy meal replacement. Adding fruit to them is a great way to get extra nutrients such as potassium, vitamin C, and antioxidants. The kicker is when you put too much fruit in your shake. Here’s the thing about fruit: it’s still sugar. It’s definitely better than throwing a bag of Skittles in your shake but too much of it can spike your blood sugar and wreck havoc with your hormones. If your body doesn’t burn the sugar within a reasonable time it will store it as fat.

I usually add about 1 tablespoon of frozen blueberries and about 3 frozen strawberries to give my chocolate collagen protein shake just a tad of sweetness. I’ve found this is the right amount of healthy carbs for me to have in the morning to start my day. Your carb intake can vary depending on where you are in your hormonal cycle and your activity level. This is something I encourage my clients to experiment with while we’re working together to find that sweet spot (pun intended).

These aren’t the only habits that can be disguised as wellness. What might be a healthy habit for one person may not be for you. The beauty of working with a professional like myself is you get to explore your habits and decide whether or not they’re supporting your health and wellness goals.

If you think you may have some habits that are disguised as wellness, let’s chat. I’m happy to hop on a free call with you to talk it through.

Dieting vs Lifestyle Eating

Food is one of my favorite things in life. I like talking about it, eating it, creating delicious meals with it, and buying it. I’ve always had a healthy appetite, even as a kid, meaning that I never starved myself. What I didn’t always have was a healthy relationship with food.

What I’ve learned over the past decade is that if you don’t have a healthy relationship with food, you’ll never lose weight or be able to maintain a healthy weight for your body type.

Let’s do a deeper dive into diet versus lifestyle eating.

We all need food to survive, right? Your body uses the calories from the food you eat as energy to fuel the systems it has in place to keep you alive and surviving. Without food your body will simply stop working. It sounds pretty simple, right? Eat food (any food) and you’ll stay alive.

However, eating can be a bit of an emotional process for many people, especially women. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you’re eating whole, nutrient-dense foods that help you thrive and not just survive. The challenge comes in being surrounded by junk food that does more harm than good.

To paint you a picture, I’ll share a quick story about my emotional eating journey over the past few decades.

When I was in high school, I ate fast food almost every day for lunch. My girlfriends and I would hop in one of their cars and head down the street to the cluster of fast food joints. Cheap tacos and hanging out with my girlfriends are some of my favorite memories from my high school days.

I ran track and lifted weights in high school so I didn’t gain any weight from the tacos I was stuffing my face with on school days. Heading into my college years and later on in my 20’s was when I would start to see a difference. When I was in my mid-twenties I noticed my clothes were a little snug. I thought I just needed to workout harder and I’d be able to exercise my way out my bad diet. Or I’ll just go on a “diet” and lose the weight. Super easy, right?

I was totally wrong about this.

I hear women say all the time “When I turned 30 the weight just started piling on.” The reality is it wasn’t because of turning 30, it was because your body was very slowly storing extra calories that it wasn’t able to burn immediately as fat. It doesn’t happen overnight regardless of how it might feel.

The same is true about weight loss. Your body knows exactly how to burn any excess weight it doesn’t need over an extended period of time when you give it the tools it needs to make this happen (proper nutrition, sleep, and movement). It’s a slow and efficient process. Trust your body. It knows what it’s doing.

I have tried just about everything to lose weight: counting calories, low fat, no fat, intermittent fasting, keto, etc. While some of these methods do actually help you lose weight (keto is great for menopausal and post menopausal women due to the lack of estrogen), it’s all about how you think about it.

If you tell yourself “I’m on a diet” this could cause your emotions to go all over the place. The thing about “being on a diet” is it comes across as being restrictive and depriving yourself of foods you enjoy eating. This could make you miserable and unhappy which is the exact opposite of how you want to feel when you’re on a weight loss journey.

You deserve to feel excited, energetic, and happy when you’re doing what you need to do to lose weight and maintain it. To be perfectly clear, I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, especially at first. There will be challenges that may take some critical thinking to overcome. This is to be expected.

When you feel happy and energized, you’re keeping your stress at a healthy level that will actually support your weight loss efforts rather than inhibit them.

One thing I tell all my clients is that you should enjoy the food you eat on a daily basis. You shouldn’t force yourself to eat food that you really don’t like the taste of just because it’s nutritious. This does not sound fun to me and I’m sure it doesn’t sound fun to you.

When I learned how to create an eating style for myself that was made up of whole, nutrient-dense foods that I actually enjoyed eating, the weight started to fall off on it’s own. Now it’s easy for me to make food choices that help me not just survive but also thrive. It’s lifestyle eating that’s helped me to maintain a healthy weight and give me the freedom to live a life I love and deserve.

You have the power to create an eating style that you enjoy, gives you energy, and helps you be the healthiest version of yourself.

Need help creating your personalized eating style? Go here to book a call with me and we’ll create a strategy that works for you.

How to Ask for Help

When you feel overwhelmed how often do you ask for help? If your answer is not very, you’re like so many other women. Women tend to naturally be the one in the family who takes care most of the items on the household to-do list in addition to taking care of kids and/or bringing home income.

I believe this is in our DNA as women. In the hunter and gatherer society, the women were the gatherers. Women would hold the babies while gathering any veggies and fruit they could find. They were able to focus on multiple tasks at the same time. Men, on the other hand, were the hunters. Their primary job was to be laser focused on hunting animals to feed their family.

So, it’s natural that women feel the need to handle everything else in the household to make sure everyone in the family is fed, clothed, and well taken care of.

Of course, in today’s society things are little different. These days more men are willing to share the household responsibilities, yet, women still do a bulk of the tasks that keep the household running smoothly. This can be because women don’t know how to ask for help.

There are several reasons why we don’t want to ask for help. It can be fear of losing control or feeling like no one else can do a task as good we can. When we come up with reasons like these, our focus is on why we can’t ask for help rather than how we could we ask for help. This is where a simple mindset shift can be a game changer.

“If you change the way you looks at things, the things you look at will change.” Wayne Dyer

So, how do you ask for help in a way that relieves the pressure you feel and helps you feel comfortable passing the baton? We’ll use meal prep and cooking as an example as this is a challenge my clients experience and I’ve had challenges with myself.

I’m a big fan of planning meals a week in advance. I’ve found from personal experience this helps me find the motivation to cook a homemade meal when I’m tired at the end of the work day and just want to relax. Having the ability to come home and simply look at a menu makes it super easy for me to get out all the ingredients and get to cooking. However, this does require you to carve out time the week before to plan the meals, do an inventory of your fridge and pantry, and go to the grocery store.

Tip #1: Make a list of all the ways you’ll find freedom in asking for help.

When I was feeling overwhelmed with doing all the meal planning for dinner in our home, I imagined what it would feel like if I asked my hubby, Scot, to share the meal planning with me. What I learned was it would give me an opportunity to transfer my meal planning energy into other things such as relaxing or focusing on how to better serve my Wellness Abundance clients and community. It was one less thing for me to stress out about during my day.

Tip #2: Make a list of ways in which the person you’re asking for help from can benefit.

This can be a game changer when it comes to enrolling your family in the meal planning and cooking process. Part of it was about taking some pressure off of myself and another part of it was giving my hubby the opportunity to utilize his creativity skills in the kitchen. My hubby can get really creative in the kitchen and has created some of the most flavorful and nutritious meals we’ve enjoyed together. I love watching his face light up when he’s experimented with a new recipe that turns out to be really yummy.

Another benefit of Scot helping out with meal planning and cooking is he gets to be my hero. He loves being my hero so if giving me a night off from cooking means being my hero, he’ll do it in a heart beat. This is something that brings him so much joy.

Tip #3: Create some guidelines with your new process in collaboration with the person you’re asking for help from.

After Scot was onboard with sharing the meal planning and cooking with me, we talked about how we would make it work. We decided that whoever was the chef that night would be responsible for choosing the meal that night. The chef would not be responsible for clean up duty. When he cooks, I clean and vice versa. We bought a small white board that we have in our kitchen that lists the days of the week and the specific meals that we’ll have that night.

Before we assign ourselves to a day of the week, we discuss the schedule for the upcoming week. Most of the time we both stop working by 6pm, however, occasionally I’ll hold a coaching appointment or join a Beautycounter meet up after 6pm. These nights Scot will be in charge of dinner and it’s usually something quick and easy like bacon and eggs. We also schedule a date night once a week and get take out or go out to eat to give both of us a break from cooking and cleaning.

These three simple tips have helped me focus on the benefits of enrolling help and how it can actually feel empowering to ask for help. It feels incredibly liberating to relinquish control over some areas of your life so you can focus your energy on activities that align more with your strengths and move you closer to your goals.

What area in your life could you ask for help?

Fresh Perspective on Morning Routines

Many successful people say the key to a productive day starts with your morning routine. While I believe there is truth in this from what I've learned from personal experience, there's a misconception that your morning routine has to be perfect every day.

Let me share a little bit about mine and what works best for me. This might give you a fresh perspective on morning routines.

My mornings usually start out with my hubby and I playing chicken with who's going to get out of bed to make coffee. We brew pour over coffee by hand so we can't just fill the coffee pot with water, place coffee grounds in the filter and press brew. It's a bit more of a process for us (and totally worth the extra effort).

After we decide who's getting out of our warm, comfy bed to brew coffee, this is how the morning usually plays out. If my hubby gets out of bed to make coffee, I usually stay in bed until he brings me coffee in bed. Yup! This is why I keep him around. He brings me coffee in bed.

Before I take a sip of coffee, I always drink some water first. This is the only consistent part of my morning routine that I do every single day. This habit to me is like brushing my teeth at night. It’s a no brainer in my world and I can’t not do it in the morning.

My hubby and I drink our coffee together almost every morning. Sometimes we’ll have a conversation and other times we’ll read. I like to read inspirational and educational books that get me a positive mental space first thing in the morning. However, sometimes I grab my phone and check my email or read the news. While I’m fully aware this isn’t the most productive way to start the day I’m ok with it. I remind myself that I’m human and I don’t always do things that move me in the direction I want to go in. I view this as a learning experience.

After enjoying coffee with my hubby, I usually get up and do the coffee dishes. I put my workout clothes on even if I don’t feel like working out. This helps motivate me to do some sort of physical activity in the morning even if it’s stretching. If I have my workout clothes on I will eventually workout because I’ll tell myself, “I have my workout clothes on so I might as well exercise.” I never regret exercising in the morning because I always feel so positive and energized after my workout. After my workout, I shower and get myself dressed for the work day.

My morning routine is not always perfect and I like the fact that it’s not. While I like routine and structure I like being flexible and not so rigid. Being flexible with my morning routine has taught me to be flexible in other areas of my life. When the pandemic started in March of 2020, I had to pivot within my health coaching and personal training practice which was not an easy task. Leaning how to adapt to what’s happening around me has helped reduce my stress levels significantly. I believe we should all develop the skill of navigating life when things change that are out of our control. This happens even when we’re not living through a global pandemic.

Starting my mornings off on a positive note with some form structure whenever possible is a key component of the rest of my day being productive and successful. I encourage you to evaluate your morning routine. Make a list of habits you want to implement in your morning routine such as reading, journaling, showing gratitude, or meditating. Choose one and start doing it the following morning.

Keep doing it and tweaking your routine until you find what works best for you. Take note of how your day goes and how you feel throughout the day. Make sure it’s a routine that’s enjoyable to you otherwise you won’t stick to it. Most importantly, be creative and have fun with it. I believe if we all added more fun and creativity to our lives we’d be so much happier.

The Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting are two buzz words that are floating around the health and fitness world. It’s a controversial topic among health professionals such including dietitians and nutritionists. Some say it’s healthy while others say it’s not a healthy practice to have when it comes to optimal health. While I wholeheartedly respect all of my fellow health professionals, I firmly believe there’s a time and a place for fasting.

In this article, I’ll share how our bodies benefit from fasting. I’ll also share my tips for incorporating fasting into your lifestyle including when you should and shouldn’t fast.

What exactly is fasting?

Fasting is the period of time between meals including snacking. Unless you sleep eat, you’re fasting while you’re sleeping. It’s a time when our metabolisms get a break from breaking down food.

Fasting is also a time when our bodies essentially “take out the trash.” Our bodies have systems in place to get the toxins out so it can create new cells that are healthier. There are also anti-aging benefits to intermittent fasting. As a bonus, our bodies naturally become more efficient at burning fat when we incorporate fasting into our healthy lifestyle habits.

How to incorporate fasting into your lifestyle

Incorporating fasting is an opportune time to truly get in tune with your body’s hunger levels. Experimenting with different time frames of intermittent fasting is a key component to learning more about your body’s caloric needs.

The first thing to consider before fasting is your eating style. While I follow mostly a paleo/primal way of eating, I don’t like to put a label my eating style. I simply focus on eating whole, real nutrient dense foods and limit the amount of processed foods. Even if it’s paleo friendly processed food. If you, like me, eat mostly who foods that come from the ground or an animal you’re probably ready to start taking your fasting to the next level. You probably feel satiated for extended periods of time. This means your body most likely relies primarily on fat for energy.

If your eating style consists of mostly high carb and processed foods, you’re most likely not ready to incorporate intermittent fasting into your lifestyle. Fasting should be an effortless process and if you’re eating too many processed foods you will not have a pleasant experience fasting. When you eat mostly processed food, your body relies primarily on carbs for energy. Our bodies burn carbs first and then fat. This means that when the carbs we’ve just consumed are burned too quickly we run out of energy quickly. Our bodies then require us to consume more food shortly after we’ve had a meal. This makes fasting more challenging.

I encourage you to focus on eating whole, nutrient dense foods for 21 days before experimenting with fasting. Eat only vegetables, whole fruits, eggs, meat, seafood, healthy fats (olive oil, avocado oil, butter, ghee), herbs and spices. This might be a stretch for you so do the best you can with your available resources. You can go here to check out my simple whole food recipes.

On day 22, go as long as you can without eating whole food after you wake up in the morning. I encourage you to stay hydrated by drinking water while you fast. I will still have a few cups of black coffee in the morning during my fast. The jury’s still out on whether or not unsweetened black coffee and unsweetened tea with no cream significantly breaks your fast.

Take note on your energy levels, mental clarity and mood. The first time might be difficult mostly because it’s new to you. If you feel hangry during your fast, you most likely need to give your body more time to transition into becoming a fat burner. Simply continue to eating whole, nutrient dense food for another week and then experiment with fasting again. Keep doing this until you can go at least 15 hours without eating whole foods.

When it’s not an ideal time to fast

If you’re pregnant, please consult with your doctor before experimenting with intermittent fasting. I’m not a medical professional and have never been pregnant so I’m not an expert in this area.

If you have increased your training schedule for any reason this might not be the best time to fast. The more calories our bodies burn the more we need to consume to replace those calories. It’s important to keep up with protein requirements so your muscles have the resources they need to grow and recover.

If you truly feel hungry shortly after you wake up, eat breakfast. Sometimes I plan 15 hour fast and end up only fasting for 12 hours. This usually happens when I’m craving a specific whole food. I see this as a message my body is sending me that it’s lacking a certain nutrient or multiple nutrients. If your body is telling you it needs nutrients, give it what it needs and don’t fight it just because you said you would fast for a certain amount of time.

As I mentioned earlier, fasting should be an effortless process. It should physically and mentally feel good so that you’re benefiting from it. If it feels forced, it’s probably not an appropriate time to skip a meal. Forcing a fast will have a negative effect on your physical and mental health.

Let me know in the comments what your experience is with intermittent fasting.

The Benefits of Working with a Health Coach

Imagine this. You wake up in the morning feeling refreshed and energized ready to take on the busy day ahead. You reach for your glass of water by your bed and drink the entire glass feeling your body slowly start to become hydrated. After you hydrate your body, you sit silently in bed feeling gratitude for your life and proud of yourself for investing time and energy into designing your life the way you’ve visualized it to help you become the healthiest version of yourself.

You have your self care routine that you do throughout the day. Your self care routine consists of eating whole nutrient dense food, moving your body frequently, enjoying a cup of coffee in the morning in silence, and meditating. Most days you’re really good at sticking to it, however, there are days where you allow life to get in the way. You’re ok with this because you realize your human. You choose focus on progress not perfection.

You feel great in your body and are able to think clearly most of the time. You’re leaner, your anxiety has decreased drastically, and you no longer need the sugar boost in the afternoon to make it through the rest of the day. Your family and friends keep telling you how much positive energy you’re carrying and passing on to others. You feel more confident than you have in years. Your partner is sharing how proud he is of you for all the hard work you’ve done during the past year to make simple lifestyle changes that have helped you get to this point.

You’re more focused at work and have become more creative with your job. You’ve earned the promotion you’ve been working towards for a few years. You have a team of coworkers that are feeding off of your positive energy and your department has been more productive this past year than it has in the last three years.

Parts or all of this story you just imagined could be you. What’s the one simple action you can take to make this happen? Start working with a health coach.

“But Melissa, what exactly is a health coach?” Well, I’m so glad you asked! A health coach is a behavior change specialist who teaches you how to create healthier habits that are sustainable to help you become the healthiest version of yourself for life. When we carve out time to invest in our physical and mental health everything else in our life seems to fall into place more easily.

Along with being a behavior change specialist, a health coach is usually an expert in one or more areas of health. For example, I specialize in helping women with anxiety and depression design their life by creating healthy habits that give them more mental clarity, more energy, and more control over their physical and mental health. One health coach I know works primarily with corporate men to help them lose fat. Another one helps women with endometriosis. There’s so many health issues that we struggle with as a society so it’s super important that we have experts in all different areas.

How do you choose the right health coach for you?

Health coaching is a very personal investment so it’s super important to find a coach that’s a good fit for you. Here are five area I recommend exploring when considering investing in a health coach.

Personality

In my opinion, first and foremost should be personality. The relationship between a coach and a client is a neutral one. This means both the coach and the client are on even playing field. Even though I’m viewed as the expert, it’s not my job to tell you what to do. My job is to listen to your wants and needs and then ask questions to help you find the solutions within yourself that work best for you. After all, you are the expert in your own life.

This is why it’s super important to find a coach that you mesh well with. You want to feel some level of comfort being open, honest, and transparent with them. The more open and honest you are with your coach the better they can help you.

If you want a coach who will be a drill sergeant, go find one that will be firm with you. This is not my personality style. I will be direct and honest with you at all times. I wll always share my thoughts with you along with compassion. I will encourage you to always stretch yourself but never push you too far out of your comfort zone.

We all go at our own pace on our health journey. I will always be your cheerleader even when you have setbacks. In fact, if you have setbacks I believe in celebrating them. Setbacks are always a learning experience and an opportunity for growth so I view these as a positive.

Values

When I’m looking for a coach in any area of my life, I want someone who shares similar values I do. For example, when I was looking for a business coach, I wanted one that made healthy lifestyle choices a priority. If my coach prioritized eating whole food and exercising, I knew she would be able to teach me how to run a successful business while still putting my health and wellness first.

I also look for someone who values family time as well. In our home, we make spending quality time together a priority. It is an area in our life my husband and I both agreed from the beginning of our relationship was a non-negotiable. We really value all the time we spend together as a couple from our date nights to our weekend get aways. I want coaches in my life who encourage quality family time together and carving out time to relax and rest.

Gender

It was also important to me that I invest in a female business coach. I know there are several very successful and fully qualified male businesses coaches out there but they don’t understand what it’s like being a woman.

I was just watching a video the other day with my business coach talking about getting help not just in your business but in your home as well. This is something I struggle with every day. I feel like I need to do every thing myself at home including cooking and cleaning. When I allow myself to get carried away with laundry, dishes, cooking, grocery shopping and all the other tasks needed to keep a household running smoothly, I neglect not only my business but myself as well.

Since this is very common struggle for women, I knew if I hired a female business coach she would give me tips on how to delegate household tasks and encourage me to do so.

Financial Investment

One thing I learned from experience in my twenties is that financially investing myself is priceless. Yes, there is an actual dollar amount on coaching programs whether they are online, in a group setting, or one-on-one. However, if you actually apply the principles that you learn to your life and you experience amazing results such as more energy, better relationships, or getting off medication, it’s hard to put a price on that.

With that being said, I highly encourage you to look at your finances and plan a head whenever possible. When I invested in myself in my early twenties I wasn’t making much money and I was terrible at saving money so I invested in books and trainings that were within my budget. Sometimes an investment was just barely within my means which meant that it was stretch for me. I know when something is a stretch for me I’m much more likely to commit and follow through with it.

These days I’m so much better at saving money! I’m so grateful that I did what I needed to do to get in the habit of transferring money into my savings account with each paycheck. Now I have money in the bank and a portion of it is set aside for coaching programs I want to invest in now and in the future.

One-on-One or Group Coaching

I’ve worked with clients both one-on-one and in a group setting. In my opinion, both are beneficial and effective if you do the work. However, what I’ve found is that most people benefit more from one-on-one coaching.

During one-on-one coaching sessions, you can dive deeper into your personal challenges. What I love most about one-on-one coaching is watching my clients have “aha” moments. These are the moments when they suddenly become aware of why a certain habit they’re doing is no longer supporting them on their health journey.

I had a client last summer who had a great “aha” moment during a one-on-one coaching session. He was experimenting with a keto eating style and had a hard time getting away from bread. During one of our coaching sessions, he realized that he didn’t even enjoy eating bread. When he was growing up, his mom always served bread with meals and he naturally continued this habit as an adult. After this realization, eliminating bread was easy.

Group coaching is a great option for people who thrive in an environment with people who are on a similar health journey. Knowing that other people are also having challenges finding time to exercise and cook healthy meals lets people know they are not alone. So many other people have the same challenges. In a group, we can all support each other by sharing ideas and inspiration with one another. Accountability is an important component of being part of a group.

I encourage you to take these into consideration while carefully choosing a health coach to work with. Most coaches (myself included) offer a free discovery call to give you the opportunity to ask questions about their programs and how they work as a coach. I highly recommend doing this with any coach you think might be a good fit for you.

I know from personal experience, as a potential client myself, these phone calls are incredibly valuable. When I was looking for a life coach last year I got on a discovery call and learned about another program this coach offered that was a much better fit for me than one-on-one coaching. I’m so grateful I took 20 minutes out of my day to connect with a coach to learn about which program was best for me.

I invite you to schedule a free discovery call with me here. I’ll answer any questions you have about my programs, the coaching process, or my experience as a coach and personal trainer. I will always be honest and transparent with you during these calls so you can make an informed decision.

I look forward to chatting with you!

6 Tips to Improve Your Physical and Mental Health

These past weeks I’ve been reflecting on our current global health crisis as I’m sure you have been, as well. There has definitely been some underlying anxiety along with my reflections. While we are living in an unprecedented time in history, I’ve been thinking about what we can learn from all of this. There is a list a mile long with takeaways and things we can do differently in the future both collectively and individually. In fact, I’ve already shared three of my takeaways here. My reflections have actually helped ease my anxiety and given me hope for the future.

The one thing that’s really been on my mind this past week is the physical health of people in the countries where, unfortunately, the death rate is higher than most. Now, I want to be clear that I’m not a medical doctor, nor am I a scientist. However, I have been studying health and fitness for the past 20 years. I find health and fitness incredibly interesting, which is why I became a certified health coach and personal trainer. I love researching and geeking out on this stuff so I can help people become the healthiest version of themselves.

When I got over my initial shock of the rapid increase in the number of infected people and the number of people dying, I became curious about those who were passing away from complications from COVID-19 and those who were recovering. While there are several factors when analyzing the data, including the number of people being tested, who is self-isolating, and who is taking other recommended precautions, and when local governments started taking the situation seriously, to name a few, there is one factor that I believe plays an important role in all of this: physical health.

I started doing some research and found that a majority of the people who are passing away from this infection have underlying health issues such as diabetes, respiratory issues, high blood pressure and heart disease.

One article stated that New Orleans’ death rate is the highest in the United States. This is mainly due to many people in New Orleans being overweight. A friend and fellow health coach who lives a few hours from New Orleans once told me that people in Louisiana love their flavorful, fried food! It’s an important part of their culture to gather together and enjoy a delicious beignet after a meal that includes deep fried anything.

In Italy, most of the deaths are said to be older people with underlying health issues. One of the reasons I think it spread so rapidly there is they are known to have large family gatherings and they greet each other with kisses.

“But, Melissa, what about the younger population being infected?” Yes, I understand there is a small percentage of young “healthy” people who are being gravely infected with the virus. In my opinion, this could be because they have not yet been diagnosed with a health issue or perhaps have been misdiagnosed. From my knowledge, some diseases could take years to build up which means they wouldn’t be diagnosed until years later. A friend of mine who is a registered nurse told me that a person can be a diabetic for up to 10 years before their numbers actually confirm they are, in fact, diabetic. That’s crazy!

The obesity rate is also high in the U.S. so we are expected to see a high death rate here, as well. Fast food and a sedentary lifestyle is way too common in our country. Much of this has to do with people being under educated about what a healthy lifestyle looks like, to no fault of their own. They prioritize what’s important in their life by what they are being told by authority figures that may not necessarily be true. I could go into more detail here but I’ll save it for another article.

I don’t want to drive fear into you with this information because we all know there’s more than enough fearful energy flowing throughout the world as of late. I do, however, want to bring awareness to you. If there was a perfect time to start taking control of your physical health this is it!

This global pandemic has brought so much clarity to my life that I’m more motivated than ever to help people create healthier lifestyle habits. While changing your lifestyle habits now might not be enough prevent your body from getting infected with this virus, you can start right now to prepare your body for future viruses. While, according to scientists and medical professionals, this may be the most intense virus in our lifetime there will be more to come.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that building a strong immune system is a key component in giving our bodies the ability to fight off disease. Our bodies are very wise. When we give our bodies the appropriate input they will provide us with the optimal output to live a healthy, abundant lifestyle. Here are my six simple healthy lifestyle tips for you to start incorporating into your life one at a time.

Tip #1: Get adequate sleep

In our home, we make sleep a priority. Lack of sleep negatively effects our mood, appetite, cognitive function, and our physical fitness. When we sleep our bodies (and brains) take that time to recover from any physical and mental stress. In order to do this, it’s important that we follow our circadian rhythm. This means winding down at night when the sun goes down and waking up when the sun rises.

Tip #2: Eat delicious and nutritious food

When we eat healthy food that nourishes our body we have more energy, better cognitive function, and enhanced mood. When we eat highly processed foods with little nutritional value, our bodies have little to work with. Our bodies thrive on a whole food diet of vegetables, starchy carbs, healthy fats, high quality protein, (and fruits and dark chocolate in moderation). It’s simple: just eat real, whole food. Your body will thank you!

Tip #3: Cultivate meaningful relationships with your tribe.

I’m a firm believer in surrounding yourself with people who are going to support you and who share your values. It could be your immediate or extended family, friends, or co-workers. It is so important to nurture these relationships on a daily basis. So, what does this look like? When you’re having a meal together put the phones away and steer your energy and focus to the conversation and the other person’s needs. During this time it’s important to utilize technology. We had an Easter get together over Zoom yesterday with our family. We’ve also been using FaceTime to talk to my mother-in-law who lives 10 minutes away to be sure we’re physical distancing ourselves.

Tip #4: Make time for the 3 R’s: rest, recovery, and relaxation.

There are some days when I just want to lay on the couch and watch movies or binge watch a TV show all day. When I don’t feel like working out, or cooking, or cleaning this is my body telling me I need a break. Some days I just want to sit outside in the fresh air and enjoy a delicious beverage. I like to take a hot shower at the end of the work day before I jump into making dinner. This helps to me relax and wash off the busy day.

Tip #5: Move your body frequently doing activities you enjoy.

Our bodies are meant to move frequently. My husband and I have a rule: we only do physical activities that bring us joy. I love riding my bike around town, whether it’s to our favorite local coffee shop, to the grocery store or just around the block. We’re also into hiking, whether it’s a challenging quad-buster or easy stroll.

Tip #6: Express gratitude throughout the day.

When my husband and I have a meal together we share at least one thing that we’re grateful for. We also share our gratitude throughout the day when we are truly feeling grateful for something in our life. This habit reminds us to appreciate all the abundance in our life even in the face of life’s challenges.

During the month of April we’re offering our group and one-on-one coaching as an “invest what you can” program. What does this mean? If you’re ready to make simple healthy lifestyle changes one a time you tell us what you are able to invest financially and we’ll work with you on a flexible payment schedule. When you sign up for one-on-one coaching you are invited to join the bi-monthly group coaching sessions. Let’s hop on a call together to see how we can make health coaching work for you!

Lessons Learned

Anyone else tired of being overwhelmed by bad news about the virus? Yeah, me too! My husband and I have been talking so much this past week about how there’s so much we can learn during this uncertain time. While it’s important to be informed and up to date on the situation (I know this is challenging because it’s changing ever so quickly) I believe it’s beneficial to take notes on what we can takeaway from this. There is a much longer list of things we can learn right now but I’ll just start with three. I know this information might not be new to you but I encourage you to read this with an open heart. Let’s dive right into my main takeaways from our current global situation.

Savings in the Bank

Now, I want to be clear that I am by no means a financial expert so if you would like more information on this topic, please reach out to an actual financial expert to help you. I will share how I was able to save money as it might work for you. Ok, I’ve put my disclaimer out there so let’s continue.

I’ve heard it said many times by financial experts to always have at least six months of living expenses in the bank in case of an emergency. I understand this seems a little daunting when you live paycheck to paycheck. I see you. I’ve been there. In fact, I was there for many years. There were many years when I had zero dollars in my savings account. At one point, I didn’t even have a savings account.

One thing I’ve learned over the past 10 years is how much control we have over designing an abundant life we want and deserve to live. Regardless of how much money you think you don’t make there’s always money to put into a savings account.

When Scot and I decided to really get serious about saving we created a spreadsheet with all our monthly living expenses. This included food, rent, utilities, insurance, car payment, streaming services, and cell phone. We did have a Disneyland annual pass at one point so we included that as well. We added up our net income and subtracted all of our living expenses. With the money we had left over at the end of the month we chose an amount to put into our savings accounts. We started small with an amount we thought was doable and increased it as our income grew. We put most or all of our financial bonuses into our savings accounts.

When we wanted to increase our savings amount we revisited our monthly expenses to see where we could cut back. As much as we love supporting local restaurants, eating out is usually the first place we cut back. We still eat out occasionally just not as often. After all, it is important to us to have regular date nights. Sometimes we want to go on a date night and not have to cook or do the dishes.

Is saving money easy? Not always. However, we focus on our reason why we want to save money. We are so grateful that we have cash in the bank to fall back on right now just in case we need it.

Strong Immune System

Building a strong immune system over time is a key component in reducing your risk of getting any type if illness. It’s been almost eight years since I really started focusing on getting quality sleep, adequate sunshine, and eating an abundance of whole nutrient dense foods. I’ve noticed that when I get a cold I recover so much faster than I did before and others who have the same illness. This is because of healthy habits I’ve intentionally created over the past eight created. While I’m not 100% all the time with my healthy habits, I know it makes a big difference.

When you have healthy habits in place and you do get sick, it’s important to recognize where you may have fallen off the healthy habits band wagon. For me, it’s usually because I’ve had multiple nights in a row of poor sleep. Right before Christmas I got a head cold that had me in bed for a day. I made sure I took extra good care of myself and recovered in a few days.

During Christmas I indulged a little too much in sugar and wine and it negatively effected my sleep and immune system. The day before New Year’s Eve I started coming down with something again. And then on New Year’s Eve I progressively got worse. I developed a fever of 103 and spent New Year’s Day laying in bed watching Gone with the Wind while my amazing husband brought me food, water and Advil when I needed it. Thankfully my fever went down within 24 hours.

I had not been this sick in at least 10 years. My husband and I have been together eight years and he had never seen me that sick. It was a doozy! Thankfully, within a few days I started to feel like a human being again. It took about two weeks for my cough to go away but eventually I was able to get back to my regularly scheduled active lifestyle.

I share this with you to emphasize the fact that no one is immune to a virus that’s spreading like wildfire but there are preventative measures we can take to lessen the severity. This is why I’ve been intentional about creating a nighttime routine to help me wind down so my body can rest and recover through the process of sleep. This is why I’ve drastically cut back on my sugar intake the past three months. This is why I recently started journaling to help me get my feelings out in the open. This is super helpful in reducing my stress levels which helps strengthen my immune system. This is why I focus on moving my body everyday even when I don’t “feel like it.” Just like saving money, it’s not always easy but my why is very emotional. My why keeps me going.

Be Flexible

Life will never be the same since this pandemic has hit the world so hard. I was at a Primal Health Coach Masterclass in Austin, Texas, last April with one of my mentors from a distance (yes, you can have mentors from a distance) and he said something that stuck with me. As a business owner, you have learn how to pivot and be flexible. This is a big lesson we are all learning right now.

We’ve all had to learn how to pivot in most areas of our lives. People are being forced to work from home which I know can be a challenging adjustment. After I left my corporate job in September of 2018 to health coach and train people full time it took me months to adjust. Even though it was my choice to leave my job to work from home it was still hard.

For many people now, being forced to work from home can really throw them for a loop especially if they thrive on routine. One thing that really helped me adjust was setting up a designated work station. Even though I work from a laptop, I have a stand up desk station that I use quit often. I occasionally will sit on the couch to work. There’s something psychological that’s helpful with having a work space.

I’ve had to move all my coaching appointments to Zoom (an online virtual meeting platform) or postpone them until this virus is under control. While I prefer meeting in person, especially if my clients are local to me, virtual coaching sessions can be just as powerful. For those of you who have not yet embraced technology of video chat I encourage you start now. With our lives being disrupted like they are now, I have a vision that working remotely and communicating virtually will be more of a constant in our every day life.

Doing a simple task such as going to the grocery store can be stressful these days. The stores are way more crowded with people and less crowded with food on the shelf. You walk around wondering who is carrying the virus that doesn’t know it or stressing out over whether or not you have it and you’re compromising other people in the store. We are being forced to be more mindful of the distance between us and the nice person in line in front of us.

Up until last week I would go to the store a few times a week for a few items just to get out of the house for 30 minutes. This past week I went to the grocery store on Monday and my husband went on the way home from work Monday night. We don’t plan on going to the store for at least another week. We’re stocked up on food and water until then so there’s no need to stress out over simply going to the store.

I want to hear from you! What lessons are you learning from this time of uncertainty?

Please feel free to reach out to us at melissa@honeybee.kitchen if you need anything from us. We’re here to support you during this time.

Stay safe and healthy!

Supporting Your Fitness Efforts: Part Two

Last week I talked about supporting your fitness efforts by eating whole nutrient-dense foods. This week I’ll talk about one of my favorite topics: sleep.

Part Two: Sleep

In my opinion, one of the greatest feelings is waking up in the morning feeling refreshed and energized. While it takes me a while to actually wake up, I do enjoy the mornings when I wake up feeling like I got a good night’s sleep. Which is one of the reasons why we prioritize sleep in our home.

Sleep is an important time for the entire body, including the brain, to recover from the physical and mental stress of the day. As I mentioned in part one, muscles grow during the recovery process, not during a workout. Our bodies produce hormones such as human growth hormone when we sleep. Human growth hormone promotes fat burning and increases bone density. Since bone density can be improved through strength training it’s important to that we provide our bodies with the proper amount of sleep to allow it to do it’s job.

As mentioned earlier, sleep helps our bodies recover from the mental stress of the day. When we sleep, the emotional part of the brain has the opportunity to process emotions. When we are able to process emotions we reduce anxiety and depression. How is this important to support your fitness efforts?

First of all, when we feel anxious our cortisol (the stress hormone) levels are most likely higher than normal. When we do a high intensity workout this naturally increases our cortisol levels even more, which is good thing in this case. One of the reasons we workout is to improve our mood. When our mood is already on shaky ground due to anxiety, increasing cortisol levels could make that worse. Of course, a low to medium intensity workout will help improve your mood. But if you have chronic high stress levels and you’re not able to do high intensity workouts you’re missing out on all the benefits of this type of workout such as increased fat burning at a resting state and improved overall fitness.

On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re not getting enough sleep and feeling depressed you may not have the motivation to even get outside and go for a walk. I know from personal experience depression can make a person not want to do anything regardless of how much they enjoy a specific activity. When you consistently get a good night’s sleep you’re less likely to be depressed and more likely to be motivated to get up and exercise.

Before I dive into steps you can take to get adequate sleep, I want to emphasize one important point that often gets overlooked. If your schedule only permits you to exercise in the morning and you have a hard time getting out of bed, rather than focusing on how you’re going to get up earlier, focus on how you’re going to get to bed earlier. When we get to bed at a decent time and create a soothing night time routine (which I’ll get into in a moment) it makes it so much easier to get out of bed in the morning.

Imagine staying up late watching a movie. The movie ends at 11:30pm but you don’t actually fall asleep until 12:30am because your body is telling you it’s not time for sleep yet. This is because staring at screens after the sun goes down inhibits our body from naturally winding down to go to sleep. Your normal bed time is 10:00pm so this is two and a half hours past the time your body is used to going to sleep. You wake up at your normal time the next morning but you have a hard time opening your eyes. You drag yourself out of bed, put your workout clothes on and go workout. You feel sluggish during your workout and you’re not having any fun whatsoever. By the way, your workouts should be challenging and fun at the same time. After your workout you feel even more exhausted than when you woke up and then you feel sluggish throughout the day. While it’s normal to physically feel tired after your workout, your workouts should give you energy throughout the day. While staying up later than normal is ok every now and then, it becomes an obstacle when it occurs multiple nights in a row.

Now lets talk about the steps can you take to make sure you get adequate sleep. First, wear amber colored glasses after the sun goes down. We use amber colored safety glasses that you can buy on Amazon for about $10. This will help your body produce the “it’s time to go to sleep” hormone. You might look a little silly wearing them but you’ll get used to it. If you start to feel funny wearing them, ask yourself what’s more important: not looking funny in amber colored safety glasses or getting adequate sleep? The choice is yours.

Next, put the screens away at least one hour before you want to go to sleep. This includes tablets, computers, TV, and smart phones. If you like to read on an e-reader before you go to bed like I do, be sure to wear your amber colored glasses while doing so.

Lastly, do a relaxing activity before you go to sleep. This can be anything from stretching, yoga, or having quality time with your partner. Sometimes I like to have a hot cup of herbal tea before bedtime.

If you have a night when you don’t get adequate sleep give yourself permission to decrease the intensity of your workout or skip it all together. You’re more likely to injure yourself while exercising when you’re tired than when you’ve had a good night’s sleep. If you injure yourself you could be on the bench for weeks or even months. If possible, sleep in a little longer than you normally would to give your body the extra rest. Giving your body the appropriate rest it needs will support your fitness efforts in the long run.

Use your nighttime routine as a time to wind down and just be. What are you going to do in the next 24 hours to make sure you get a good night’s sleep? Do you already have a favorite nighttime routine? I invite you to share in the comments below.

Supporting Your Fitness Efforts: Part One

Welcome to part one of a two part series on how to properly support your fitness efforts outside of your actual workouts. Throughout these articles I’ll share my personal and professional opinions on how to get the most out of your workouts before and after you exercise. I’ve found from personal experience and working with my clients that many people are missing three pieces of the healthy lifestyle puzzle that are just as important as the actual exercise. In part one I’ll talk about the importance of food. Part two will focus on the benefits of sleep. And part three will focus on mobility and stretching. Let’s get started.

Part One: Food

Back in the day, before I was a health coach and personal trainer, I had the mindset that I could eat whatever I wanted to after my workout because I “earned” it. I gained about 20 pounds working at a sedentary job in college and eating anything that my body “craved.” A light bulb went on in my head when I realized my workout routine stayed the same but the pounds kept adding up slowly. I knew I had to clean up my eating style in order to lose the weight that wasn’t serving me anymore.

I’m sure many of you can relate to this or a similar mindset. Why is it that we think we can eat whatever we want if we exercise? Often times it’s only when we’re not moving frequently that we think we need eat healthy. Maybe you’ve heard from a fitness professional that it’s ok to do this because quality isn’t really what matters in your food. Calories and fat content are more important. “Everything in moderation” is a common phrase among health and fitness professionals. Or could it be just an excuse to indulge in too many high calorie processed foods?

I’m here to tell you the quality of food matters most when it comes to how you fuel your body before and after workouts. While the number of calories does make a difference with replenishing your body after a workout, it’s definitely not something to put at the top of the priority list.

When you workout, your body is burning energy in the form of calories and fat or glucose, depending on the intensity of the workout. After your workout, even though you may feel a surge of energy, your body is fatigued and deserves proper replenishing.

When your body is burning calories (which it is all the time), it’s either using “clean” or “dirty” fuel. Dirty fuel is processed junk food such as fast food, packaged baked goods, processed meats, etc. with little to no nutrients. Clean fuel is whole nutrient-dense food such as healthy fats (avocado or olive oil to name a few), healthy proteins (grass-fed animals or wild caught seafood), and starchy and non-starchy vegetables. After you burn the calories you consume, it’s important to replenish those calories with clean ones.

Think about when you take a shower or bath. When you’re feeling grimy because you haven’t showered in a day would you take a shower in dirty water? Probably not. This kind of defeats the purpose of taking a shower to get clean. Sure, using soap will help but you’ll likely still feel grimy after a dirty water shower even with the soap. On the other hand, when you shower in clean water and soap you’re able to wash away all the dirt and grime that’s built up on your skin.

It’s the same concept with food and fitness. When you exercise, the goal is to become healthier in one way or another, right? This can be anything from training for an organized race to simply being able to do daily activities such as getting out of chair or carrying a bag of groceries. Putting your body through a workout, regardless of the difficulty, fatigues your muscles, nervous system, and joints. In order to help your body fully recover it’s important to replenish it with healthy, natural foods to support your goal of becoming healthier.

When we do any type of strength workout our muscles actually get micro tears in them. During the recovery process, the muscles repair themselves and grow. Muscles don’t grow during the actual workout so this is why it’s so important to eat healthy sources of protein to support muscle growth.

When we do a vigorous workout such as a sprint session or high intensity interval training our bodies are utilizing glucose (carbs) for fuel. When our glucose stores are depleted we need to make sure we replenish them for the next workout. There are two healthy ways we can do this. The first is simply eat starchy fruits and vegetables. Sweet potatoes and bananas are my go to foods to replenish my glucose supply. Any other root vegetables or fruit work well, too.

If you’re on a super-low carb eating style such as keto, eating an adequate amount of healthy protein is another good way to replenish your glucose supply. When our bodies recognize the need for more carbs and they’re not being consumed at the time, it will go through a process called gluconeogenesis (glue-co-neo-genesis). Yeah, I know, such a fun word to say! Anyway, during this process our bodies will take protein either from food consumed or lean muscle mass, and break it down to make glucose. We want to avoid breaking down lean muscle mass so it’s important to eat adequate protein.

When you follow the simple rule of eating whole, real nutrient-dense food your body will recover faster and more efficiently after a workout. In order to make this happen, it’s important to have whole, real nutrient-dense foods available after you workout for whenever you feel hungry. This can be anything from a homemade protein smoothie in an insulated container, a protein bar made with real ingredients (no sugar or fillers), or a home cooked meal with a piece of fish and side of vegetables with butter. This can be shortly after your workout or whenever you feel hungry. Remind yourself that you just burned all this energy and want to replace that energy with clean fuel rather than dirty fuel.

I encourage you to be mindful of your food intake in the next week and take note on how you feel before and after you exercise. Plan all your meals including snacks in advance if needed.

Next week I’ll talk about the importance of sleep.

Top 3 Tips for Sustainable Weight Loss

Losing weight can be a challenging and frustrating process. If you’ve tried numerous diets and still haven’t found a way to lose weight and keep it off you’re not alone. The weight loss industry is flooded with so many different methods of losing weight. Some are sustainable while others offer a quick solution to your weight loss goals and then you gain the weight back.

As a health coach, I teach a method that’s sustainable for everyone if you’re willing to be patient throughout the process. Behavior change is the key ingredient to creating a recipe for sustainable weight loss and weight maintenance. Here are my top three tips to get your weight loss journey off to a successful start.

Create Your Why

This is the most important step to take when starting your weight loss journey (or any new journey for that matter). Your Why (yes capital-W) is the one thing that’s going to drive you to keep going when you don’t feel like it. When I work with clients (health coaching or personal training) either one-on-one or in a group setting this is one of the first exercises I have them complete. Why is now the time for you to lose weight? Have you been diagnosed with a preventable disease? By the way, many diseases are preventable through lifestyle habits. Are you a grandparent for the first time and you want to live long enough to see your grandkids grow up? Or are you simply sick and tired of being sick and tired? Whatever the reason is it has to be emotional enough for you to be willing to do the work to change your habits.

Decide Where You Want To Start

Do you feel overwhelmed by the number of lifestyle habits you want to change? I can totally relate and so can many of my current and prior clients. Where do you begin? Start by making a list of all the lifestyle habits you want to change. Take 10 minutes to write them all down no matter how big or small you think they are. It’s ok if your list isn’t complete. You can always add to your list as you think of more habits you want to change.

After you have your list written out, review your list and choose one habit that you feel will be the easiest one to change at this time. For example, if you want to eat more vegetables and you enjoy eating salads, commit to eating a salad with healthy protein and fats for lunch four days a week. Do this for one week and then reevaluate. Did you eat a salad for at least for lunch at least four days this last week? If not, decrease the number of days per week for the next one. If you did, keep your commitment going for the next week.

Join A Group Weight Loss Program

People who join a weight loss group are more likely to lose weight and keep it off as compared to people who are not part of a group. As a health coach, I’ve seen first hand how powerful participating in group coaching can be. Not only do you receive guidance and education from a behavior change expert but you also receive an invaluable amount of support and accountability from others who are on a similar journey as you. If you’re having challenges in one are it’s likely someone else in the group is having similar challenges. Being in a group environment is an excellent opportunity to learn from each other.

If you’re not sure if a group setting is a good fit for you I encourage you to join our 21 Day Whole Food Reset program starting January 6, 2020. For a low investment, you’ll receive three group coaching sessions, a private Facebook group, and a healthy lifestyle tip sent right to your inbox every day for 21 days. Everyone who signs up and completes the 21 Day Whole Food Reset will receive a $50 gift certificate to use towards any of our programs including our online self-paced program, one-on-one health coaching, or one-one-one personal training.

This is a great way to dip your toes in the water with group coaching rather than jumping all the way in feet first. If you’re not sure if our program is a good fit for you, I’m happy to hop on a call with you to chat. Just email me at melissa@honeybee.kitchen to schedule a time.